Rejoice fellow Canadians! After years of crying foul and bugging Bing engineers at search engine conferences I can finally say that Canadian business owners can submit their business to Bing Canada for free instead of relying on YellowPages listings; which were an unreliable solution at best. What follows is a little more detail on the subject and a full walkthrough of the submission process and end result. Also, if you wish to see just how much anger and frustration the previous system created please see my article “Bing’s Local Listing Center Lacks Forethought” posted in 2009: yes 4 years ago, so you can count me frustrated (politely put) with them as well.

What Made Bing Get its Sh*t Together?

Sadly it seems we have no need to thank Bing engineers (or my significant prodding) for this advance in Canuck accessibility because it was Nokia who bridged the chasm. Nokia increased its already significant maps partnership with Microsoft to allow their Nokia Maps system to update Bing’s Canadian Local data. This all started, it seems, back in January 2012 but I can’t find any indication this bromance between the two companies included Canadian business submissions that early in the game. Anyway, if you go to Bing and try to submit your business you will now be redirected to Nokia Prime Place where you can  follow their submission and address verification process which I have outlined in detail further along in this post. Read more…

StumbleUpon is so rarely thought of when it comes to marketing that it seemed perfect to write about the advantages it offers in an article for the Fall Edition of the Search Marketing Standard which is available in print at marketing events around the world or online.

The article is called “Thumbs Up For StumbleUpon’s Marketing Platform”

Here is an excerpt from the article available online or in the latest print magazine:

StumbleUpon  (SU) is my favourite tool for creative inspiration and web discovery but from a marketing perspective the site is not necessarily a good fit for all companies looking to increase targeted traffic to their website. The key to knowing if StumbleUpon is right for you is to intimately know your target market which I have to assume you do for the purposes of this article.

A Short History Lesson & Some Metrics

Founded in Calgary, Canada in 2001, StumbleUpon  is considered a “discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users” according to Wikipedia.

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I recently worked with a team to launch World Elephant Day (WED) on August  12th, 2012. In the lead up to WED our Facebook campaign was going well; however, we wanted to increase our overall engagement. To do so we implemented 3 key tactics to increase the campaign’s Facebook engagement.  As a result our total reach boosted from 1500 to over 200,000 people in the days leading up to and right after the campaign.  Below outlines the 3 most successful tactics used to generate this increase.

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It has come to our attention there really IS a social media guru out there and the gang at SocialMediaTips.com found him. Check out this startlingly profound video and share if you dare risk losing this edge you will now have on social media tactics!

Key Takeaways

If you need help making the best out of the myriad of social networks and strategies online here are a few thoughts: Read more…

Pinterest, when used correctly, can drive valuable traffic to your website, promote your brand recognition, and increase conversions. In fact, according to HubSpot, as of January, 2012, Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic. Shoppers referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to make a purchase than visitors arriving from other social networks, and are likely to spend 10% more.

Read on to learn how your brand can cash in on the Pinterest phenomenon:

1. Include images on every page and blog post

Pinterest is image-based; if a page doesn’t have an image or photo on it, no one will be able to pin it, no matter how interesting the article is. And, the more interesting/thought-provoking/funny/unique/artistic your images are, the more likely people will pin and repin them, giving your site the exposure that you’re seeking.

2. Claim your brand or business name

Or if it’s already taken, find one that’s as close to it as possible. Because Pinterest is indexed by the search engines, the closer you can match your Pinterest URL to your brand’s name, the better for your business’ findability. It will also make it easier for other Pinners to find you just by searching in the on-site search box.

3. Optimize your account

Take advantage of Pinterest’s profile features; add links to your other social profiles and website. Complete your bio, using keywords in the description.

In the pin and pinboard descriptions, use hashtags so that they’re easily found, and include a website URL in pin descriptions where it makes sense. Don’t forget to include relevant keywords in the actual descriptions themselves. Some well-branded or optimized pinboards are ranking well in the search engine results pages. Read more…

There are a lot of articles out there that provide advice on how to develop a strategy for Twitter, however once you have a strategy, it can be challenging to implement if you don’t know HOW to act on the tactics. This article discusses several key objectives we all want to do on Twitter and how to go about putting them in to play.

Please note: this post will not define Twitter marketing strategy. Instead, it will show you the best ways to make Twitter work for you so you can achieve your objectives.

How to Find New Followers

• Look at who is following your competitors. Scan their past tweets and see what they have been tweeting about. If relevant to you, follow them and engage them by responding to one of their tweets or RTing something valuable they’ve posted.
• Find a link that is a hot topic to do with your industry, enter it on Topsy and see who has been tweeting about it. For example, say I was looking for new followers interested in elephants. I come across this article titled “The Last Day of the Elephant Female.” I enter this link into Topsy, and out pops all people that have tweeted about it. If you highlight over the tweeters, it allows you to follow them directly from Topsy.

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I have always been fascinated with how fast things can spread on social media and how this can be used for social good. Recently a campaign has exploded online which I’m sure you have heard of by now – Kony 2012. It’s a campaign put on by the Invisible Children, a non profit organization in the US. They’ve sparked this campaign through a 30 minute video (see it embedded below). The video has only been out since Monday and its unbelievable what has come of it. As of Wednesday night they had over 15 million views (that’s only 3 days of it being online) with their YouTube and Vimeo video combine. And they’ve got people talking! Opinions are flying, sharing and liking and tweeting are going crazy in the social sphere. Read more…

At the most recent Victoria Web Marketing Meetup we had a full house as Gil Namur, President and Creator of the popular ezine LifeasaHuman.com presented his secrets behind building his successful website. The reason Gil was chosen to speak was because our Meetup membership showed great interest on WordPress and he had a mountain of knowledge to share after creating LifeasaHuman.com on the WordPress platform using StudioPress and taking it from zero traffic to 200,000 Quantified visits per month (add 30% to get a more accurate number says his tests).

In addition, I know Gil personally and was convinced he would give a great presentation and indeed he did. To that end, you can view his presentation in all its glory below. Read more…

As web marketers, we are always trying to find new ways to generate exposure for our clients. Until recently, I’ve only been using StumbleUpon as a hobby of sorts (despite my boss’s insistence it was a powerhouse), viewing recipes in my spare time and my favorite category “bizzare/oddities.”  But recent stats from the growing social bookmarking site reveals it’s underlining potential.  In the USA, StumbleUpon is trumping use over all social media site referrals holding over a 50% share of the top 7 from August- November 2011.

On average, people spend 69 minutes on a session; that’s more than three times the average time on Facebook! What’s most interesting is the longevity of a link on the site. The average half-life is exponentially larger than Twitter (2.8 hours) and Facebook (3.2 hours) at an astonishing 400 hours. Read more…

A friend of mine recently asked me to comment on why I felt so strongly the rel=”author” attribute would play a large role in the future of search rankings. In order to answer his question I felt I needed to take this a step further and explain how rel=”author” appears to fit into a much grander plan Google is implementing around personal profiles. Please note, what I have shared with you below is merely my opinion based on experience, analysis, and  discussions with some of my fine colleagues in the SEO community; not the least of whom is John Carcutt (my co-host on SEO 101 Radio).

First consider what we know:

1. Google is taking into account the personal blocking data (the block site option in results) from users that have a long and trusted profile; confirmed by Matt Cutts in his September 21st Q&A (the first answer on the linked page).
2. Right now, if you have a highly trusted profile and you have authorship markup (rel=author) on your articles/copy you will get representation in Google search results – by having your photo show up next to the article.
3. In order for this markup to work you need to have a Google Profile and it must be correctly associated with the sites you write on and your author page on the site has to connect back (a few hoops are necessary) to your Google Profile to finalize the association.
4. Google is integrating Plus into most (if not all) of their products – this was confirmed by Vic Gundrota on a recent Web Summit 2.0 interview with him and Sergey Brin.
5. In order to be on Google Plus you have to have a Google Profile.
6. Your Google Profile prompts you to connect all of your social profiles so Google knows your social fingerprint and can highlight content in search results that your friends have socially shared/liked.
7. Links are an important part of Google’s algorithms but they are heavily gamed and likely cause the majority of spam found in Google’s results.
8. If Google sees that others like your content then it has a better chance of appearing at the top of relevant searches.

Next, let’s connect a few dots and make some educated assumptions:
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