Interested in visiting the Islands of Loreto? WestJet can take you there!

Do something each day to bring you a little closer to your dreams…….. Dustin N Salzano

Originally posted on Vancouver Bits and Bites Blog:

If you’re planing a romantic gateway for next year, WestJet, Canada’s most-prefered airline, will start launching non-stop weekly service between Calgary and the Villa del Palmar resort beginning on February 14, 2015. The airline may bring the service to Vancouver, depending on how successful the flights out of Calgary are.

After the course of three short years, Villa del Palmar at the Islands of Loreto has been rapidly growing in popularity with adventure-seekers and connoisseurs of pure relaxation alike.

Considered a  luxury destination resort –  Villa del Palmar is located on the Sea of Cortez, off the eastern coast of the Baja peninsula overlooking Danzante Island. The resort’s many amenities include: three gourmet restaurants, five swimming pools,  spa and wellness centre and a private beachfront.

Guests have many adventures to choose from, such as SCUBA diving lessons, snorkelling, world-class fishing, paddle boarding and kayaking only to name a few.  With complimentary…

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Why Social Media Marketing Represents the New Face of PR

Google’s approach towards updating its algorithms has become increasingly aggressive in recent times, as the brand have introduced a higher volume of radical changes that target spam-laden websites and farmed content. This has hit webmasters hard, while it has also courted controversy thanks to its stringent and unflinching nature.

There is method behind such madness, however, as Google remain committed to improving the online experience and driving higher levels of customer engagement. As a result of this, content marketing has now emerged as the single most effective method for promoting products, sharing information and driving brand recognition.

Blurring the Lines: Why Social Media represents the new Face of PR

Content marketing is a diverse and fluid entity, however, and one which continues to blur the previously distinguished lines between disciplines such as PR and social media. With Google taking an increasingly dim view of paid content or earned media such as PR, for example, social media is becoming a more viable medium for sharing material, engaging the interest of customers’ and driving traffic to a commercial website. With this in mind, let’s consider the benefits of owned media such as social media and the advantages that it offers content marketers: -

1. Compliance with Google’s Current and Future Algorithms

While complying with Google’s current algorithms is important, it means little unless you can pre-empt future changes and tailor your strategy accordingly. Although this is not easy to do with any authority, it is clear that Google will continue to crack-down on paid content and article syndication, meaning that rehashing the same content across traditional PR distribution networks is unlikely to benefit your online brand. With this in mind, social media offers a clear advantage as it is entirely free to access and enables you to actively share and promote your content in a natural and organic manner. You can also reach a far larger audience through an integrated social media platform, while it also lets’ you tailor your message and generate real-time interaction with customers.

Related Resources from B2C

» Free Webcast: Four Ways To Improve Your Content Marketing Maturity

2. Networking with Industry Contacts and Potential Customers with Real-time

Whenever you publish a piece of content on a PR or earned media site, you usually have the opportunity to share contact details including telephone number, email address, website URL and social media home pages. While it is possible to share comprehensive contact information, however, earned media sites do not have the capacity to host social conversations or build real-time business relationships. Social media does have this capacity; however, as industry contracts, clients and consumers can instantaneously share your content, add you to their network or send you’re a direct message. This is a huge boon for business owners, sole traders and creative entrepreneurs, who can build a productive network of followers and communicate with them in a convenient and real-time manner.

3. Create and Maintain a Consistent Online Brand

The worlds of business and commerce are extremely fast paced, and brands are often pressed for time when competing in a busy marketplace. This can impact on the quality of their messaging, however, and create inconsistencies that undermine an entire campaign. The use of an integrated social media network makes it far easier to review your previous output, however, while also providing a real-time forum for customers’ to share their feedback on the quality of the brand and their perception of its positioning. This is in stark contrast to earned media sites and high-profile article directories, which would require you to locate and read every single piece of content in order to create a consistent message. These resources also fail to provide any form of direct link with your customers, meaning that it is almost impossible to measure the impact of your campaign and the exact perception of the brand.

Content Source - Social Media Marketing Represents 

Is Apple Finally Getting Over Its Allergy To Social Media?

After Apple AAPL -0.35% unveils the iPhone 6 today, you’ll hear about it just about everywhere — on TV, on news websites, and relentlessly on Twitter TWTR -2.67% and Facebook. Just about the only places you won’t hear about it are on Apple’s official corporate social media channels, because they basically don’t exist.

More than a decade after the creation of Facebook and more than eight years after the founding of Twitter, the world’s most valuable company and second-most valuable brand is an increasingly lonely social media holdout. Though it maintains accounts for iTunes and the App Store, Apple doesn’t have an official corporate Facebook page or Twitter profile. Nor does it have one on Instagram, Google GOOGL -1.59%+ or Pinterest. The CIA may feel like it can’t afford not to tweet, but Apple is a little more careful with its communications, thank you very much.

But that may be changing. Following the hiring of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts last October, the consumer electronics giant has been tentatively — very tentatively — moving toward having a more active social presence, according to a person familiarized with the company’s thinking. In recent months, Ahrendts has brought on several key people, including global digital strategy head John Agnew and digital marketing director Musa Tariq. Both came from Nike, where Tariq was head of social media and community.

According to this person, Apple sees itself as being in transition from its old communications model, where a “single narrator” — aka the late Steve Jobs — articulated a “singular narrative” at a time and place of his choosing, to a new model where the company speaks in multiple voices and participates in two-way discussions with its consumers and fans.

It’s a shift pretty much every other other big consumer-facing corporation on earth has already made, but it’s causing more than the usual amount of anxiety at Apple, not just because of the legacy of extreme message control, but because of its ethos of perfection in all things. If a year or two ago Apple was still ambivalent about whether it needed to be on social media at all, now it’s moved onto the question of how it can be as deft at Facebook and Twitter as it has long been at traditional advertising. And Apple doesn’t want to dive into those platforms headlong until it has figured out how to do that, even if that goes against the trial-and-error ethos of the medium.

But there have been experiments. In May, Apple debuted a new ad campaign for the iPhone 5c on Tumblr, although the campaign has since been taken down. And then there’s the “Your Verse” campaign for the iPad, the individual components of which were “ co-created” with users. Aside from LinkedIn, which the company uses primarily for recruiting, YouTube, where the “Your Verse” videos live, is the one big social platform Apple has embraced wholeheartedly at a corporate level. It has more than 2 million subscribers there. While a wholesale migration onto Facebook and Twitter may be months or years away, expect to see more experiments like “Your Verse” in the near future.

Content Source - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/09/09/is-apple-getting-over-its-allergy-to-social-media/

7 Ways to Optimize Image Files for SEO

Have you ever puzzled over what image file types you should be using or if you really need to add file names and alt text to every image on your website for SEO’s sake? Don’t let these nitty-gritty details intimidate you from achieving the next level for your on-page SEO or showing up in image-based search engines like Google Images.

Let’s breakdown the basics on how you can optimize image files to be more SEO-friendly.

1. Use clear and descriptive file names

Aim to make your image file names easy for Google to comprehend. For instance, imagine you’re Google and you come across an image titled: Image01.jpeg. Would you know what that image stands for? It would be much better to name an image file more along the lines of Optimize-Images-SEO-2014.jpeg, especially if the content on the page is also about optimizing images for SEO. Essentially, the more clues that Google can use to figure out what a site is about, the better.

SmartBug tip: Careful not to be spammy by writing excessively long file names or keyword stuffing.

Related Resources from B2C

» Free Webcast: Build Better Products by Identifying and Validating Your Riskiest Assumptions

2. Use keyword-rich alt text

Alt text simply refers to a text alternative for images when a web browser can’t properly render them. How many times have you opened up an email on your desktop or mobile device and the image(s) didn’t load? Did you still decide to click on the image or call-to-action to visit the landing page? As marketers, we want to take advantage of writing a descriptive, keyword-rich alt text to increase the likelihood of click-through-rates even if our images can’t render properly for our users.

Additionally, if you decide to use an image as a link, make sure to include alt text that is relevant to the link’s destination to improve the user experience.

3. Context is key

Wherever possible, make sure that images are placed near the relevant text because you don’t want to confuse search engines. Search engines assess what page the image is on and the content around the image to dissect important information about the subject matter of your image. Basically, don’t feature an image about a cooking recipe if you’re content is about setting business goals. (A little farfetched example but you get the idea).

4. Monitor page load times

Use the “Site Speed” tool in Google Analytics to your advantage. By monitoring page load times, you can compare how each page is performing in comparison to the site average. This may help you uncover that you’re using too many or too large images. A general rule of thumb for page load time is between 3 and 5 seconds.

Remember, it’s all about the user experience and search engines recognize this important element in their ranking algorithm as well. If necessary, you can reduce the number of files that need to load on the page by combining images and code files, as well as removing any unnecessary images.

5. Reduce the files sizes of your images

Here’s are a few simple ways to reduce the files sizes of your images:

• Crop your images to the correct size of your page width. So if your page is 970 px wide, resize the image to that width.
• 
  
• Show a smaller image and provide the option to view a larger image in a pop-up or to be displayed on a separate webpage.
• 
  
• Reduce the color depth to the lowest acceptable level.

6. Use commonly supported file types

It’s widely recommended to use JPEG as a first choice, and PNG as a second choice. It’s also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the file type (Ex: .jpeg or .png).

7. Supply an image sitemap file

Consider consolidating your images into a single directory rather than having image files spread out in numerous directories and subdirectories across your domain. An image sitemap file title such as smartbugblogposts/images/ would simplify the path to images for search engines. Furthermore, this helps webmasters stay organized behind the scenes.

Now that we have covered the basics of how you can optimize image files for SEO, it’s important to remember that the user experience should always come first. Great image content is an excellent way to build traffic to site, however, users need to be able to find it first! Following the best practices listed above will increase the likelihood that your images will be returned in those relevant search results.

If you haven’t considered optimizing image files for your overall SEO strategy yet, now is a great time to start.

What other best practices for optimizing image files can you think of? Please share below.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/seo/7-ways-optimize-image-files-seo-0991081#8UUEvIYzfx0LZ1HU.99

Learning How to Score a Job Using Social Media, for Beginners

With 92% of companies using social media in their hiring efforts, job seekers can’t afford to overlook social as a vital resource in the job search. While you're busy job searching, employers are leveraging online resources to find candidates just like you.

That's why Mashable is collaborating with The Muse to bring you a free, email-based class series called How to Get a Job Using Social Media. The series features five different lessons with actionable tips on how to boost your job search strategy. Once you subscribe, content for the class will be delivered to your inbox each day.

These beginner-level classes will teach you how to establish your social brand, network with people online, identify career opportunities through social media, and turn leads into job offers. The classes include homework assignments to give you a head start in the process. Links to advanced readings will direct you to additional resources.

Content Source - Social Media 

5 Selfie contests that truly flashed on Social Media?

‘Selfie‘ was dubbed as the word of the year by oxford dictionary in 2013. Well it just doesn’t end there, your social networks are swarmed by selfies of friends, relatives and admit it; even you have taken a selfie and posted it on your social channels. Brands are not too far behind they have tapped in this craze and incorporated it in their campaigning efforts. Love them or hate them, selfies are here for now!

Marketers have started to cash in on this trend. To highlight the importance of this pop culture trend, below is the list of selfie contests which will hopefully inspire you with some selfie marketing ideas for your next campaign. Like we did the best twitter campaigns article sometime back. But first, let me take a selfie

1. AXE

Axe just launched AXE peace, a new range of their products. Thus, they kept the launch of their new product as the core idea when they ran their selfie contest on social media #KissForPeace – Twitter, Instagram & Facebook. The contest began on February 2014 and ended in June 2014, wherein they had 4 sub-contests (themes) i.e. – Kiss your loved one, kiss your rival, Pucker up and Kiss your AXE.

To qualify in these contests, for example in ‘Kiss your AXE’ step 1 – Kiss your favourite AXE product, step 2 – take a selfie when your kissing your product, step 3 – upload it on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the #KissForPeace and stand a chance to win a trip to Berlin. The central idea of this contest was to draw awareness about the new product, and the themes arose from the variant name itself – in a world filled with war, the greatest weapon is love. Make love, not war with new AXE Peace.

2. Turkish Airline

Selfies are great way to get your customers involved, but roping in celebrities is a great way to increase participation and awareness of the contest. Turkish Airlines took its #SelfieShootout contest one step further by hiring Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi to market the campaign via a YouTube video.

The #SelfieShootout contest lasted for 3 months. 2 winners were announced on the basis of most likes they received on social platforms and they were rewarded a Turkish Airlines roundtrip flight ticket. The YouTube video received more than 130 million views within two weeks of its release. It just shows incorporating selfie + celebrities = Viral campaign!

3. Kenneth Cole

Kenneth Cole launched their selfie contest on January 31st 2014 and it ended on 31st March 2014. To participate the contestants had to follow their Instagram account, take a selfie with the message strip and post it with the hashtag #DressForYourSelfie. Winners stood a chance to win free shoes a year!

With this contest, the brand is trying to showcase the perfect example of leveraging user-generated content through the means of those message strips, it increases visibility of the brand, and helps gain more followers & credibility. Great way to get the word out, by inducing selfies and mind-numbingly amazing perk!

4. T-Mobile

T-Mobile has launched its back-to-school selfie contest #GradeUp wherein the contest consist of 5 entry periods and each entry period is divided into 2 parts – voting day & selfie day. To qualify participants have to follow T-mobile on their Instagram account, then they need to vote daily for their favourites and lastly have to post their selfie on the designated day on Instagram mentioned with the hashtags #GradeUp and #Sweeps. At end of contest 5 winners will be announced for each entry period and they will be rewarded with a prize package.

This contest is a great way to get an understanding of which product the users prefer as they are made of vote daily between two products, thus giving a better understanding of their consumer’s choices!

5. Ponds

Ponds tapped into the selfie craze as well and ran the selfie contest on Twitter wherein followers had to upload selfies with the hashtag #PondsSelfieReady. They promoted this contest on their Facebook page as well to increase awareness and participation. The contest begun on 18th April – 12th June 2014, the contest had 2 phases.

Simply click your selfie and upload it on the microsite to stand a chance to be showcased on a billboard across 6 cities. 3 winners were announced on 12th June and the ones who were shortlisted, were presented with a Ponds hamper. Ponds ran a very well executed contest, it being such a long duration created enormous buzz around it and in-turn increased participation.

Get inspired with these contest ideas and think how you can tap this to create next Selfie contest. All you need to do is carve your own niche, and use the medium to engage users with your brand and let them talk about your brand. To ease out your process of planning & implementing make use of various contest tools to boost your results.

Have you seen any other brand leveraging the power of selfie in their social media campaigns? Plus a little insight into what did you like about the campaign? Share your thoughts below!

Content Source -  http://blog.digitalinsights.in/selfie-contests-on-social-media

Social Media 2014 Statistics

How fast Social Media is expanding in 2014? Do you know how many active users Facebook has? How fast Google+ is evolving? How many users have never tweeted after opening their account on Twitter? Do these numbers matter to you? Let me give you a quick example-

A friend of mine who has been struggling to hire a PHP developer was chatting with me and I suggested him to try Facebook ads to reach out good developers based on his desirable location and other preferences. He wasn’t ready to try this at all. I took the liberty and started some Facebook ads on my own, fixed a budget of $20 for a day for a pilot project. He was stunned to see the results, more than 23K people reached, 300+ visited the site and 43 forwarded their resume or called him. All this, just for $20.

If you’re managing social media for your businesses, it is important to keep track of statistics so it keeps your strategy in-line. Last year we received an overwhelming response with our social media statistics of 2013. This year again we have taken upon ourselves to answer all your questions about various social networks and their active/total users in 2014!

The infographic below covers all the latest Social Media facts, figures, numbers and statistics of 2014. Some of the mind-blowing facts are mentioned here:

• 75% of the engagement on a Facebook post happens in the first 5 hours.
• 53% of interaction between Google+ user and a brand is positive.
• 44% of users on Twitter have never sent a tweet!
• 84% of women and 50% of men stay active on Pinterest.
• More than 2 users sign-up for LinkedIn every second.
• 23% of teens consider Instagram as their favourite social network.
• Weekends are the most popular time to share Vines.
• Number of snaps sent per day on SnapChat is 400 Million. (Yeah! that’s true)
• 40% of YouTube traffic comes from mobile.
• B2B marketers using blogs generate 67% more leads. Check out more about lead generation through Social Media.

Content Source - Social Media 2014 Statistics

7 Sins of Social Media Marketing

This article is part of SWOT Team, a new series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.

Remember when social media was a new, unchartered territory for brands? Consumers flocked to platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn overnight and marketers knew that, in order to stay relevant, they had to follow suit. 

Fast forward to today: 97% of marketers use social media to connect with buyers. The problem is, most still haven't figured out how to leverage social to create a personalized, relevant and enjoyable experience for their audience.

Socially awkward brands aren't just pushed to the sidelines, they miss out on building valuable relationships, or in some cases, end up on a viral list of social media blunders. Whether your brand is too boring, too tone-deaf or too promotional, your social media approach can’t be an afterthought. Here are seven deadly sins of social media marketing to avoid at all costs to keep your audience engaged, interested and loyal.

1. Being all talk

Image: Flickr, smkybear

The key to social media content is to show, not tell. Audiences prefer engaging with visual content over text anyday; did you know that tweets with image links get an engagement rate 200% higher than those with just 140 characters? Flooding your feeds with line after line of text could cause you to miss out on a huge opportunity to connect with your buyers. Instead, we should be emulating brands like Oreo, whose Twitter feed is addicting thanks to charming illustrations, clever videos and mouth-watering images.

Lucky for us, it’s easier than ever to share visual content, thanks to free design tools like Canva and seamless embed options on social platforms. For marketers, a picture really is worth a thousand words — act accordingly.

2. Putting on a one-man show

Trying to apply your advertising approach to social is a big mistake. In fact, one of the reasons social media is effective is because so many people tune out traditional media and mass messaging. On social, it’s even easier to mute brands that talk, but don't listen — with a quick click, consumers can unfollow or remove your content from their feed for good. Instead of talking about yourself nonstop,

make your audience the center of attention by highlighting their interests

make your audience the center of attention by highlighting their interests, like Monster Energy on Facebook, or sharing their content on Instagram like Sharpie. Your social following isn’t a captive audience, so take a break from broadcasting and start sharing content they'll actually want to click on.

3. Forgetting to think before you tweet

Staying relevant today isn't easy — trending topics go from viral to ancient history daily. So how can marketers keep up? Cue newsjacking. Instead of trying to generate buzz from scratch, brands piggyback on the popularity of top headlines to amplify their own content. We see clever newsjacks during the Super Bowl and the Oscars, but occasionally, the not-so-savvy attempts end up being headlines themselves.

Last year, AT&T earned serious social backlash for a failed 9/11 tribute, and, Gap crossed the line when it took to Twitter to promote discounts during Hurricane Sandy. It’s true that marketing today is time-sensitive, but you'd rather be late to the game than be perceived as offensive.

4. Thinking all social platforms are created equal

                Image: mkhmarketing

Your social strategy shouldn’t be one size fits all.

Your social strategy shouldn’t be one size fits all. For example, B2B audiences spend most of their time on LinkedIn, while B2C buyers can be found on Facebook, according to Social Media Examiner. Find the channels that best align with your audience's interests, then experiment with the type, cadence and style of content you think will resonate most. Measure what works and what doesn’t and optimize accordingly. Instead of publishing the same content to every channel, the best social media teams create tailored approaches based on the medium and the message.

Need inspiration? Check out GE’s Vine, JetBlue’s Instagram, L.L Bean’s Pinterest or Cap’n Crunch on Twitter. Each has a pitch-perfect approach for the company and the channel.

5. Putting your customers on mute

It used to be that if a customer had a complaint about your product or service, they could tell their friends, family or a 1-800 number. Today, consumers can share negative reviews with their entire network — and the searchable social web — through a simple click. Not surprisingly, 72% of customers who complain about a brand on social expect a response within an hour. But in some cases, they are lucky to get noticed at all. This Facebook post from McDonald’s sparked tons of nasty comments slandering the company's food and service, but last I checked, the Golden Arches hadn’t chimed in to put out the fire. Whether you have a handful of followers or 31 million Facebook fans like McDonald’s, you can’t afford to ignore your audience, period.

6. Forgetting to be a human

Image: Flickr, Henry Schimke

In an age where buyers are constantly bombarded with deals, promos and ‘lowest price’ taglines, your brand’s personality is crucial to stand out from the pack. Corporate jargon and automated replies will send your audience running in the other direction, while brands that aren’t afraid to let loose will be welcomed with open arms. This Twitter conversation between Pizza Hut and one of its followers is a great example of a brand having fun with its personality.

Ultimately, building a community of brand advocates today isn't about what you're selling, it’s about what you're saying. Luckily, the casual nature of social media makes it easier than ever for us to talk to our audience like humans.

7. Assuming your social strategy works

In the Mad Men era, measuring the true impact of your marketing efforts was nearly impossible. Luckily, marketers today have more data than ever to truly understand how our efforts impact the company’s bottom line. Still, of the 88% of brands using social media platforms for marketing, only about 37% are taking the time to measure the ROI of their efforts. It’s easy to tally likes and retweets to get an idea of how engaged your audience is on social, but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. There are myriad metrics to consider to help put a dollar value on your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn efforts. Having a data-driven handle on your marketing’s impact is something even Don Draper would be envious of.

Today, the customer is in control, and they expect marketers to know where, when and how to connect

Today, the customer is in control, and they expect marketers to know where, when and how to connect with them on social media. Every marketer has a different road map for getting there, but avoiding these seven social mistakes can help us all steer clear of serious potholes.

Content Source - http://mashable.com/2014/08/28/social-marketing-sins/ 

10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

For business owners just getting started, a guide to build brand buzz and boost your bottom line.     

Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.

It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and -- perhaps most importantly -- your bottom line.

1. The Law of Listening

Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.

2. The Law of Focus

It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.

3. The Law of Quality

Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.

4. The Law of Patience

Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.

5. The Law of Compounding

If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.

This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.

6. The Law of Influence

Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.

7. The Law of Value

If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

8. The Law of Acknowledgment

You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.

9. The Law of Accessibility

Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.

10. The Law of Reciprocity

You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.  

Content Source - Social Media Marketing