Social media is just a catalyst for great, valuable, engaging content. With the right strategy and the right timing, social media can take your website or product to the next level. Whether your website has hundreds of followers or thousands, follow the tips below for increased engagement, exposure and more. Plus, check out some of our favorite social media engagements.

7 tips to boost your social media:

1. Vary Your Content

In order to promote your content it needs to be fresh and different every time. Keep your audience interested with opinion pieces, guests bloggers, reviews and even a new look on an older post. Give your readers something to look forward to.

Also think about what mediums you are using. Are all your blogs just text or do you use videos, memes and gifs to draw the interest of your readers? What other ways do you have to deliver your message? Changing up the layout of your blogs is as important as changing up the content.

2. Be Personal

No matter what your company or product is, social media requires personal attention. By allowing your readers to write on your posts, respond to your blog, ask questions and more, you are automatically engaging them and drawing their interest. People like to share their opinions, so let them!

Make sure that you are attentive to your readers, letting them post questions and not answering them is a big no-no. Offer support and respond to comments as often as you can. Otherwise your audience will lose interest and assume you have too. Even if you are the social media manager of Coke, your fans want to hear from you.

3. Viral Doesn’t Just Happen

Once in a blue moon a video or image debuts and spreads through social media like wild fire. The reality is though that the majority of videos, images and articles and blog posts need a boost. Take the time to create a campaign for your product or website by using PPC, promoted Facebook posts and more.

Think about what campaigns will work best for you and your potential audience and get out and reach them.

4. Timing is Everything

There are so many social sharing options out there it would be a shame to not use them to your advantage. Hootsuite is just one example of how to get your posts and tweets out even when you’re unable to share. Have a flight to catch or sitting at a conference? Get your posts out at exactly the time you wish even when you’re unavailable to send a quick tweet.

oktopost is another great option for this. There are many, so check out which one you think will work best for you and get to sharing on several platforms at once.

5. Make it Easy to Share

Your followers are your best allies. Make sure you’re using all of the tools that will work best for you to have your fans be your word of mouth social media army. Facebook has the like button as well as the recommend button which shows a piece of your actual article when pressed. Have your posts tweeted and shared on Google+.

You may want to consider placing a social counter on your site so your audience can see how many times a certain article has been shared. This will add value as well as encourage more sharing.

6. Creative Isn’t Enough, Check Your Analytics

You may be doing everything in your power to share your content but if you aren’t measuring your success, you’ll never know what works best for you. Maybe you’re spending too much time on one area that brings in the lowest amount of traffic.

Use all the tools you have at your fingertips to see what plan of action worked best for you and focus more of your attention on that. Bring in more followers with your successful tactics.

7: Fun and funny always work

Add a little humor to your work! People like to laugh and blogs with images, memes or gifs are shared more often than blogs without them. If you bring a little comedy to your routine people will welcome it with open arms.

Here at Infolinks we like a good time too. Below we gathered a few of our favorite viral social media videos, posts and more to share with you.

James Brown’s “This is a Man’s World” mashed up with Game of Thrones’ “A Song of Fire and Ice”

This is an internet masterpiece that received coverage from both The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed and had Game of Thrones fan squirming in their seats.

Game of Thrones characters doing everyday things

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan then chances are these pictures will blow your mind. These characters have real lives, dress in modern clothes and goof off?

True Blood Premiere Breaks Social Media Records

Last year, True Blood’s season five premiere was the most talked about premium cable season premiere ever. Watch this year’s premiere and see what you think.

Game of Thrones Characters Reimagined in Mad Men, Seinfeld and Arrested Development

Try your luck at figuring out who is supposed to be who in these fun reimagined renditions of Game of Thrones characters in other popular TV shows.

What is your favorite from the above? Have one you want to share? Post it on our Facebook page and let the good times roll.

A few weeks ago we brought you some great SEO ideas along with how to start your SEO plan. While SEO is one way to deliver more traffic to your site, a good old promotion tactic can help loads. There are several ways to go about promoting a website or blog with the benefit of increased, continual traffic. You don’t want visitors to come by just once, but rather to keep coming by often.

Here, our beneficial tips on how to improve your promotional skills, your site’s user experience and more:

Social Media

Social media is a great way to keep in touch with your friends but it’s a great tool for promoting your website. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and any others you use as the perfect outlet to spread the news about your website or blog. Ask your friends to help you along by liking, tweeting and reposting your site or blogs posts to spread the word to others. Internet users are more likely to visit your site if it’s recommended to them by a friend (word of mouth is the best advertisement). You can even try using a social media managing platform like HootSuite that allows you to promote your site on all social media outlets at once.

Forums

Social media is huge when it comes to spreading the word about just about anything, but don’t forget about forums. There are endless forums for you to engage in conversation about your website’s needs, and even more so, the niche topic you focus on. Place your site’s URL in your forum signature – you’ll be sharing and learning about your topic as well as spreading the word about your site.

Design

In an earlier Trend Center article we tested the top 200 highest paying Infolinks websites to see what they all had in common in terms of design. It turns out the design, colors and themes of a site make a difference! For example, we found that websites with grey backgrounds and white foregrounds were the most common in the 200 sites. Read the entire article here.

 User Experience

Is your site easy to navigate? Make sure that your site plan is easy to follow. If visitors to your site can’t easily find what they’re looking for or get to pages they’re interested in, they will be unlikely to return. An easy to find menu bar and grouping relevant topics together are just a few ideas to keep your readers happy. Most of your readers will be all too happy to share with you their thoughts on your opinion, writing skills etc., and this isn’t always bad! Engage them with a comments section and end each post with a question to make sure they get involved.

Guest Blogging

If you blog about something you love and you’ve become an expert in your field, you should try guest blogging. It’s a great way to share your expertise and to spread the word about your website. When people like what they read they’ll visit the link to your site for more helpful tips.

Video Blogging

You can find just about anything on YouTube, so why shouldn’t users be able to find you? Record anything you feel like users would find helpful. Try reviewing a new product connected to your site’s category or promote a product of your own. Your video may not go viral but it may have just the effect you’re looking for. From there, Google will index your content, and others can embed your video on their blogs and share it via social media.

Link Exchange

One of the most important ways to get traffic to your site is through a link exchange. You can do this with your friends or websites that you work closely with, for example one that you guest blogged on. Other ways to do this are to simply write to a website you want to link to your site and ask them for a link exchange. The word they use to link to your site should be related to your site, not just a “click here”. For example if your site is about cake design, the word linking to your website should be a high-ranking keyword in this topic.

Write On

Once you have successfully promoted your website or blog you want to make sure your readers keep coming back for more. The best way? Keep on writing. Post regularly so that your readers have something new to come back to each time. Let your knowledge flow!

Whatever tactics you choose, promoting your website is a must for those looking to boost their traffic numbers. Let us know your favorite website/blog promoting tips on our Facebook page.

April is among us and with it the hope of spring and sunnier days ahead. While this means a big spring cleaning at home for a lot of people, it should also mean freshening up your blogs. While you may be thinking to yourself that the regular site maintenance you keep is good enough, when was the last time you snooped around your SEO doings or written a new plan?

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important parts of building a website. With a good SEO plan you can increase the traffic to your website.  Creating and implementing a SEO plan allows Google and other search engines to crawl your website and see if it is a relevant search result, and you want your site to be a relevant search result! Check out Google’s SEO starter guide for more information.

As usual, Infolinks is here to provide you  with some assistance. We scoured the net to bring you the most essential tools to help you bring your SEO plan up to date.

SEOmoz Pro

SEOmoz on its own is a great place to start, its and excellent resource for all things SEO and has tremendous amounts of information for all to glean from. If you’re looking for a bit more, SEOmoz Pro is your one-stop shop. Have a specific question or looking for something you can’t find elsewhere? Just turn to the community forum.  Not only is the forum full of others ready and willing to help, SEOmoz guarantees that your question will be answered, if not by the community than by a SEOmoz professional. Now that’s service. Tools, resources and software to manage your SEO campaigns are sure to get your plan off the ground and running.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a place where SEO planning finds great tools and marketing professional find great resources. SEMrush was created by SEO/SEM professionals for SEO/SEM professionals so they are the real deal. Just to name a few of the numbers and tools you can expect from SEMrush: AdWords ad copies and positions, organic positions for domains and landing URLs, search volumes, CPC, competition, number of results, and more. Marketing professionals can research how products are advertised and learn the best way to phrase text. This is a great tool for both SEO planning and marketing planning.

Some of our other favorite websites for the latest on SEO include Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal, each with their own blog to fill you in on SEO tips. SEO Quake is a great on-the-go tool that will show you the SEO parameters of other websites. Make sure this spring doesn’t catch you off guard without any updates for your SEO plan.

Do you have a favorite SEO website or resource? Go ahead and share with the rest of the Infolinks community in the comments on our Facebook page.

Controversy, it takes guts and can propel your blog to great heights if well received or turn off too many readers if it’s a flop. Depending on your blog’s theme, taking a risk with a controversial blog post may be the edge you need in Social Media platforms to garner new readership and turn up the volume on your voice and viewpoints. However, successfully pulling off controversy is an art and you should heed a few rules before taking the plunge.

Take a cue from Ol’ Blue Eyes, “Regrets, I have a few, but then again too few to mention.” Keep this lyric in your head when constructing a post that may turn some readers off – don’t write something that you will regret. To keep your writing “regret free” apply these 7 tips.

1. Sleep on it

There are two rules: never go to sleep angry and never publish a blog post when you’re fuming. Although your emotion can fuel some very good writing and interesting points, its best to let the dust settle to be sure that you can stand behind your words. A good edit the next day and a good night’s sleep can provide clarity and sanity to your blogging.

2. Get a second opinion

Employ one of your most diplomatic friends or even someone who may have an opposing view to give insight. One sided and offensive writing will limit the audience who can truly appreciate your righteous indignation.

3.  Avoid stereotypes

Generalizations are dangerous and can cause a kind of controversy that you really don’t want. It’s a big no-no to group people together in your controversial post. Instead be as specific as possible. This will give your writing more credence and ensure that people will finish reading everything you have to say instead of being immediately turned off by your over generalization.

4. Hostility in Moderation

Avoid at all costs using rude and hateful speech. If your message is valid, it doesn’t have to include unkind words. The truth will be strong enough on its own. Plus colorful language can create problems with different advertising channels that may not want to be associated with wording that is deemed hateful or inappropriate.

5. Back it up

Do your research and find out what others have to say about what has got your all fired up under the collar. Find numbers and facts to support your message and link to others who can back up your message to amplify your point. An educated rant is much more alluring that just listening to someone’s ignorant kvetch.

6. Be Courageous

Own it and stand behind your message. If you’ve followed all the tips above then your will should be fortified. Prepare for some readers to have strong and differing opinions than yours.

7. Keep your cool

Not everyone will exercise the same amount of self-control and respect as you, but don’t lose your cool. You’ve stood your ground and shared your thoughts; don’t give into internet trolls that may not show you the same courtesy. Giving in to petty arguments on comment threads and social media will only weaken your stance. Stay cool as a cucumber.

Good luck!