If you’ve spent any time on social media site such as Facebook, you’ve likely come across plenty of brands offering you a chance to win something just for entering a contest. What you have to do in order to win — answer a trivia question, post a photo or simply like a post — or what you can win will vary, but one thing is constant. Companies run contests to engage their audience and grow their social media base.

While some people might think that running contests on Facebook are tacky, the truth is that they can be an effective social media marketing tool — if done right. Here are a few things to consider before you dive into the world of social media competitions:

New Facebook Rules Impact Contests: At the start of 2015, Facebook instituted new rules attempting to keep contests that are simply driven by “liking” a page from showing up on News Feeds. Instead, Facebook wants brands to create contests that engage their customers and create an exchange of information rather than just asking for likes.

Have a Clear Goal for Your Contest: As with any other online marketing campaign, you need to have clear objectives in place before you start planning your competition. Are you looking to get more people signed up for your newsletter, or is the ultimate goal to get them onto your site and looking at your products? The results you want to achieve will dictate what type of contest you run.

Pick the Contest That’s Right for You: You have many different types of contests that you can choose from when running a contest. Asking people to submit photos through Instagram is a great way to boost social media sharing and increase your followers. Having an instant “lottery” prize drawing pulls people in immediately and is an outstanding way to get them to sign up for your marketing newsletters. You can work with a social media marketing consultant like eVisible to determine which type of contest is right for your brand and objective.

Make the Contest Easy to Understand and Enter: If you can’t explain the contest to followers in more than one or two sentences, people will be too confused or bored to enter. Remember: being creative is great but being overly complex only drives potential entrants away. In addition, you don’t want to give people too many steps to undertake in order to enter your contest — asking them to fill out a large questionnaire is only going to serve as a barrier to entry.

Set a Fixed Time Limit: People will likely only enter a contest when they know that they deadline is approaching. It’s human nature to want to be a part of something that is ending soon. Set relatively fast deadlines so that people don’t get bored with your contest and you can wrap it up and start a new one.

Have Your Contest Engage Your Audience: Using custom banner ads, images and other concepts are great ways to move beyond text and get customers to notice your contest. It’s great if you can show potential entrants some of the best entries that you’ve received so far — this spurs their interest and makes them think that they can do better. This is one reason why contests that require creativity and that ask a customer to explain why they love your product can be so effective.

Social media activity is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. As a marketing tool, posting on sites such as Twitter and Facebook can help you mitigate possible deviations in your organic search results and create a deep connection with your customers. Of course, many other companies recognize this as well, making it often difficult to stand out in a crowded social media landscape.

Fully understanding the capabilities of different social media platforms allows you to maximize your use of them. One example is with Twitter Cards, which allow you to add rich media, calls to action and other addition content to your tweets. Twitter followers can view this content and click on links without having to leave their feed. This leads to an integrated Twitter experience that is more pleasant for customers can cuts out the steps between them and your content.

Twitter offers eight different types of Twitter cards that you can implement by adding some simple meta tags to your page. Choosing the right type of Twitter card for your content can go a long way in helping them be as effective as possible.

The eight variety of Twitter cards are:

Summary Cards: They provide information about your web page including a title, description (such as product information) and a Twitter handle. They also include can include a thumbnail image or a larger image.

Photo Cards: These cards act much like Summary Cards but instead of having a small thumbnail image, the photo is larger. This is perfect if you want to make a picture the focal point of your tweet.

Gallery Cards: You can take photo tweets to the next level with Gallery Cards. Instead of just having one photo embedded into your Tweet, Gallery Cards let you have up to four.

App Cards: If you sell apps, an App Card is a must. Any time someone posts a Tweet about your app on a mobile device, the App Card automatically embeds a link into the tweet to download it.

Player Cards: Add audio or video into your tweets with a Player Card, which lets people listen to or view media content directly from a tweet.

Product Cards: Much like Summary Cards, Product Cards let you put basic information into a tweet; however, they offer the ability to add product information such as price and availability.

Lead Generation Cards: With one click of a button embedded in a tweet, users can send you their email address to get further information about your goods and services.

Website Cards: Unlike Summary Cards, Website Cards are designed to draw traffic to a home page or other specific landing page.

Need help implementing Twitter cards as part of your Twitter campaign? Turn to the experts at eVisible for help. Our social media marketing services are catered to the individual needs of our clients. We’ll review your business and goals and come up with a social media campaign that drives visibility and leads to sales.

The world of SEO is changing. Changes in the algorithms used by major search engines such as Google have redefined how a business can improve its page rankings. It’s no longer enough to have a standalone SEO campaign; today, you need to integrate your SEO tactics with other aspects of your online marketing if you want to find success and your social media presence is a big part of this.

The reality is that SEO by itself simply doesn’t work anymore. Combining your social media and SEO tactics is not just a good idea — it’s something that’s a must. A strong social media presence won’t directly increase your page rankings for your main site. However, it can help to spread the word about your brand and links to your site. If other people share these links, that will only help your overall SEO. This is the type of effective link building that works in the new world of SEO.

Small businesses also need to refine their focus on their target audience in order to succeed. More specifically, businesses need to understand the type of online content that customers are looking for in order to deliver this content to them. High quality content not only helps to attract customers but will help with Google rankings.

One way that businesses can help to improve their SEO presence is by utilizing the small business SEO services offered by eVisible. Our site has several free and premium tools available that let small business owners to do some basic but critical SEO work themselves. This can include keyword research, tracking social media involvement and monitoring the readability of content on a site.

Doing this kind of basic SEO work on your own can be extremely valuable for a small business. However, there are still likely to be many aspects of SEO that a business owner won’t be able to do on their own.  One of the most common SEO questions for small local businesses is how they can fit SEO into their (likely very limited) budget. The good news is that eVisible can help businesses of any size improve their online marketing with tactics that include search engine optimization. For a relatively small expenditure, a small business can positively impact their online presence.

Building organic traffic is the most effective way to grow your online business. While using tactics such as PPC and online advertising can get eyeballs to your site and can serve as a major part of an online marketing campaign, organic traffic that naturally flows to your site has its own benefits. When you reach customers organically, you build online loyalty and trust and increase the likelihood that they will share your site with their friends and family, helping it to “go viral” and grow quickly.

So what is the best way to do this? eVisible has many different tactics that we use with customers to building organic traffic. Here are three that have proven to be the most effective:

Publishing Early and Often: You don’t want to have a limited amount of content available when you first launch; similarly, you don’t want to publish all of your content right away and then go weeks or even months before you add new content. Make sure you are publishing multiple pieces of content every day and try to publish three or four times a day in the early stages of your launch.

Listen to Your Customers: By doing the proper market research, you can have a strong idea of which topics are right for your initial content rollout. eVisible’s simple keyword research tool  will give you a good idea about which topics will naturally fit the keywords you want to target. From there, keep an eye on your metrics and see which topics are getting views and shares; you’ll want to increase your attention on these, since it’s clear it’s what customers are interested in reading more about.

Back Your Content Up With Facts: When you first launch your site, you won’t have the credibility and trust that an established website will have with readers. One way to gain the trust of your readers is to publish content loaded with references to factual information. Including links to research, analysis and news from trusted sources makes you look more reliable in the process.

President Obama has declared June 16-22 as “Small Business Week” in America. It’s a way to recognize the small businesses that drive the American economy. This isn’t the first Small Business Week – it goes back to 1963 – but this one is particularly important because of the impact the recent economic downturn has had on small businesses. In the current economy, small businesses need to use every tool necessary to stay ahead of larger competitors.

If you are a small business owner, one of the ways you can do this is to leverage the Internet. Small business Internet marketing can help your small business reach customers throughout the world. However, if you are in a competitive market, you’ll need help to make sure that people can find your website. eVisible specializes in helping small businesses gain visibility online by using a variety of proven of tactics including:

SEO: Getting your website to rank highly for specific keywords is about more than just luck. You need to research which keywords will be the most effective to target and have a dedicated game plan for how to increase your page rankings. By doing search engine optimization correctly, your site can rank higher than larger competitors and get more clicks from curious customers.

Social Media: Establishing a strong social media presence is a highly effective online marketing tool for small businesses. By leveraging outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, you can make a personal connection with potential customers that makes you stand out from larger competitors. A strong social media campaign lets happy customers spread the word about your company to their friends, one of the most powerful forms of marketing.

Directory Submissions: Local directory submissions help to ensure that potential customers have all the information they need to choose your business for their needs. Customers want to know as much as they can about any small business, including positive reviews, pictures and contact information.

eVisible wants to help take your small business to the next level. Find out more about our small business services <https://www.evisible.co/small-business-solutions/> and contact us today for a free consultation.

Starting an SEO campaign from scratch can seem like a daunting task. This is especially true in the “new world” of search engine rankings. Algorithm changes such as Google’s Panda and Penguin have changed many of the basic SEO fundamentals. It’s no longer acceptable to create as much content as possible – no matter the quality – or use manipulative links to get clicks. Search engines such as Google are looking for high-quality content and links that get people to stay on a site – and that’s only part of the equation.

If you are launching your SEO campaign, the best bet is to work with professional search engine marketing specialist such as eVisible that can craft an effective campaign and implement the tactics. However, there are many steps that you can take yourself to get your SEO campaign off the ground. Here are five steps that any small business internet marketing professional can do to get immediate SEO traction:

Start a Pay Per Click campaign. While you will want to do keyword research to give you guidance on which keywords to target, you can also do your own testing on a small scale. By investing in small test runs of ads using different keywords, you can see which ones generate clicks and which ones generate more sales – which is always the most important thing.

Build links. You can do this by researching the web pages which have links that are ranking near the top of Internet searches for your targeted keyword. By creating and using a simple email template, you can easily and quickly reach out to hundreds of website owners and start building high-quality links.

Create a Facebook fan page. Facebook fan pages are about more than just increasing your social media presence. They are also an effective tool for SEO purposes in their own right. After all, many Facebook fan pages will come up within the first page of Google and other search engine results.

Get active on Twitter. Just like a Facebook fan page, official Twitter accounts also can rank very highly on Internet searches. And like with Facebook, it’s important to make your Twitter profile as active, complete and dynamic as possible to send the right social signals.

Write great content. If you are an expert in your industry, you can use this knowledge to boost your SEO by writing powerful content. Think about how you can address problems your customers might have and how you can write to grab their attention.

Any social media marketing company will tell you that content is king when it comes to a successful SEO and Social Media campaign. But not all content is created equal. How you structure your blog posts, social media updates and other content and what you say in it will play a huge factor in attraction attention to your campaign. Here are five types of online content that are proven to boost your SEO campaign.

The Mission Statement

One of the most important factors in making your social media marketing campaign connect with its intended audience is to establish its identity. You can easily accomplish this with a blog post or other type of content that spells out your mission statement. Think of it as your manifesto for the campaign and the reason why you are doing it.

Example: Three Reasons Why Solar Power is Important for Our Future lets readers who are interested in solar power know that this blog will speak their language.

The Pot-Stirring Post

Controversy generates conversations and if done the right way, taking a stand on a controversial subject will get people commenting on your campaign and following what you are going to say next. Be careful with this type of post – going too far can get you in trouble.

Example: Warren Buffet’s recent op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy took the stance that the richest Americans took the stance that the wealthiest Americans should be required to pay some income taxes regardless of loopholes. It was quickly shared and debated by people on both sides of the issue.

Timelines

People always love quick fixes and seeing fast results. Give this to them with posts that promise results in a set period of time if they follow your steps. This is a close cousin of the “Best Of…” list posts that we’ll get to shortly.

Example: 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger gives people one action to try each day to improve their writing and publicity skills.

ASAP Posts

These posts feature a headline that grabs your attention and frequently will spur you to urgent action. If nothing else, you’ll be compelled to read the article to see what is so important that it can’t wait.

Example: Top Ten Reviews’ 10 Things You Can Do Now To Protect Your Identity addresses a serious subject and makes it clear that it contains actionable steps that can help a person become a victim of identity theft.

List Posts

People love lists and rankings and blog posts that do this attract attention and comments as readers debate the validity of your list and come up with lists of their own.

Example: This Bleacher Report ranking of the Biggest One-Hit Wonders in sports brought interest from fans of all sports.

Need more help guiding your SEO campaign? Along with content creation, eVisible has many social media services available to help brand managers, bloggers and other people boost their visibility and track their success. Make sure you check out our new Social Involvement tool at https://www.evisible.co/tools/social-involvement/, which tracks the interest the social world has in your web pages.