As part of our Bloggers Ideas interview series, Ann Smarty of InternetMarketingNinjas discusses how to use social media for marketing and figured out how to get links from difficult sources. Ann Smarty also writes for some of the top Online Marketing sites like SEOmoz, Mashable, Social Media Examiner and many more! I know This interview is rather long, but is worth for all bloggers & webmasters ! Thanks so much to Ann Smarty for spending the time to answer all of my questions!
Please introduce you to my blog readers? Explain who are you apart from blogging life?
I am founder of MyBlogGuest, the free community of guest bloggers preaching high-quality guest posting. I am also community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and co-founder of Viral Content Buzz.
My oldest site is SEOsmarty.com which is my personal SEO blog. That’s the blog that built my brand!
Please define terms “blogging” and “money making from a blog” your experience on them?
Wow, a tough one! Blogging means creating useful content regularly and sharing it with your audience. The content can be anything you have any expertise or interest in. For example, I started my blog when I was learning SEO and the main aim was to organize and apply the new things I was learning!
“Money making from a blog” is any way you can monetize your site (which I’ve never been too successful at).
What are your tips on traffic generation? Please reveal some must use techniques to get more traffic to new blogs?
The first step is to create content. It should be very unique (and I don’t mean just original). The content of a good blogger reflects his/her personality, taste and voice. If every new blogger just spent first 2-3 months of blogging just finding their voice and working on research and content creation, the web would have been a much better place!
Promoting and generating traffic comes next when you already have good content live. I’d suggest trying ViralContentBuzz.com as we are doing our best to generate valuable social media shares for your content!
Recommended: Importance of Social Media
How to get prepared for next Google updates and stay safe? What resources you read to stay updated?
I read and contribute to Threadwatch, I am also quite active at SEOchat. Those two would give any newbie a good update on what is going on in SEO world without too much cluttering.
As for getting ready… if you are honest to yourself and if you are putting high-quality content online, there’s not much you should be doing to get prepared. The only thing probably is to make sure you can filter FUD (filter, uncertainty, doubt) from real news and keep sanity!
Which social sharing sites your prefer and how to get more traffic from them?
Historically I am most active on Twitter. The best way to get results from Twitter is to participate in Twitter chats. TwChat is highly recommended for that as you can add favorite Twitter chats to bookmarks and use the calendar to plan your week!
What are your top favorite 3 tools for managing social media campaigns and why?
- Social media signals + Authorship: This tool allows me to quickly copy-paste my recent articles and measure their impact.
- Tweetdeck because it lets me tweet and interact while still actually working: I love the desktop updates and I have learned to read them without any sacrifice to my productivity
- Commun.it I love the reports there and the easy dashboard to track interactions.
Do you Pinterest for your business, what kind of Pinterest tools you use?
I am not using Pinterest too much apart from pinning images I like (basically I don;t have enough time to make the most of it).
I did cover some Pinterest tools here.
How Do You Conduct An SEO Experiment & What you do when you get your client’s project. First thing you would do is?
I don’t do too much experimenting these days as they tale time and I don’t have much.
The first thing I do when looking at the website is Google cache.
What kind of SEO Tools you are using right now. Can you tell us?
Ironically, not many (“Ironically” because I write more on them than I actually manage to use) – mainly because I am not doing to much of SEO these days.
Here are a few:
- MajesticSEO for checking backlinks
- Get URLs from Search Results Plugin for searching Google
- Web Page SEO Analysis Tool – This one I use to explain various people basic issues with their basic. It’s perfect for newbies!
Do you use Blackhat SEO techniques in a white hat SEO way, Like scrapebox & Xenu’s Link Sleuth…
I have never considered myself a black (even gray) hat SEO. However they say white hat SEO actually doesn’t exist 🙂
I have used Xenu but only for “white” reasons 🙂
Do you think 3rd party blog post links and eBook submissions are playing vital role these days? How to use these opportunities?
Of course it works! I believe in guest blogging and eBook marketing. Both boost your content marketing efforts and build your assets.
On Reporting – What Kind of Reports do you Give to your Clients?
I am not doing reporting these days – All i am doing is basically blah-blah-blah (the fancier word is community management:))
On Social Media – What Kind of Things have you Done on the Social Side?
When it comes to social media, I don’t think there is such a thing as “Done”. It’s a continuous never-ending process. I did a Slideshare presentation on what I am actually doing:
What kind of Content Marketing tactics you are using to increase user engagement? Why landing pages are playing important for increasing conversion rates?
My most successful content marketing tactic is a smart and creative re-packaging. You can turn text into an image, PowerPoint deck, video, etc. this opens up the whole new world of marketing channels (which you couldn’t have used with just text). I believe in this tactic and I think it adds value to the web while adding variety to your marketing tactics:
I hope you learned a lot from Blogging expert Ann Smarty. Dont forget to share this article in social media! You can also Join BloggersIdeas on Facebook & Google+ for getting similar updates.
Hi Jitendra,
Since I’m a newbie in blogging, I did not get much about the technical stuffs. But I loved the idea about content re-packaging. I will use them in my upcoming blogs posts and hope they yield some positive results. Thank you for this informative interview.
Cheers!
Hey there,
This is really nice! You have shared the best resources. we really liked the way you have mentioned every pearl of the community here. It would allow anyone to easily gain access and its Another long and interesting post. I know hard worked to prepare such a great piece by you. Learn many new things from your post.
Thanks for the sharing this kind of information.
Hi cristina, I have tried my level best to interview Ann Smarty. She had shared bets resources here. She is blogging queen. I am glad that you learn some new things here
How informative this interview post is! I know nothing about SEO and hopefully will gain some knowledge through this post and your blog 🙂
Regards,
Sindhu
Ann Smarty as revealed in this interview is down to earth. She has good understanding of what an SEO should do. The person should show confident and professionalism. This is what she has exhibited as a SEO professional.
Nevertheless, her take on getting prepared for the next Google updates:
is really the right kind of response. A great interview I must comment!
Hi Sunday , I agree with you that Ann is down to earth. she is very kind and composed person I know. I am glad that you liked that interview pretty much. Ann has given her best she can
Nice Job @Jitendra 🙂
Ann Smarty is my new Inspiration. I have read her few article and those are too good.
Hi Tanya, Thanxx very much for liking that. She is inspiration to me too. I love her articles too
Awww thanks for the kind words, Tanya! And for publishing our eBook review too!
Thanks for such awesome post Jeet. Ann’s MBG is a hit among bloggers especially new guys and thanks Ann for sharing so many tools & resources.
HI Jatin I am glad that you liked this post. Ann is definitely an blogging queen. I learned lot from her.
Very revealing interview with Ann Smarty, Jitendra. I particularly like her response when asked how to be prepared for Google updates and how to stay safe. Like she rightly pointed out, “if you are honest to yourself and if you are putting high-quality content online, there’s not much you should be doing to get prepared”. Absolutely correct.
The year 2014 will see more bloggers spending quality time to write high quality KINGLIKE content. With the right type of content and a little sharing in the right places, it can be amazing what results will be achieved.
Thanks for reading it, Kingsley! I know “create quality” sounds very obvious but I really don’t know a better way to be safe from any Google update! Thanks for your kind words!
it’s good to know that Ann claims herself a white hat SEO, I thought she might accept herself a grey hat as accepted by many SEOs and me too 🙂 Anyhow nice interview Jitendera
Hi Syed , thnxx for stumbling on my blog. She is white hat seo queen. No doubt in that.
Just kidding, she’s an expert no doubt about that and there are many bloggers following her as she’s an inspiration for them.
Now as far as black, grey and white hat is concerned, bear in mind that black and grey hat doesn’t work anymore. so you have to do white hat that’s the only option.
I know syed. She is expert and I respect her a lot.