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Surviving Google Panda and Penguin Updates, 2 Client Success Stories

Google’s Panda 3.5 and 3.6 updates, along with the Penguin update, in April of 2012 had a devastating impact for search rankings on many websites. Many reported traffic drops of as much as 85% and search rankings dropping from page one to to the basement. Esotech and our clients were very fortunate to have been unscathed by Panda and Penguin. All of our clients either held steady or increased through both updates, with just one client having a small rankings drop that is now climbing again. Here are two examples of websites that not only survived Panda and Penguin, but actually thrived after the updates and increased their search rank positions. Below are search rank summaries for two of our clients are shown a travel company and a marine manufacturing company. Search rankings are shown for April, the month that Panda 3.5/3.6 and Penguin were released and had the most dramatic impact. We also show search rankings in July roughly 3 months after the infamous Panda and Penguin updates.  In both cases search rankings for these websites increased overall.  In our next blog post we will talk about what to do if you have been Panda-Penguin Slapped and how to avoid Google penalties.   Example 1: Travel Company – highly competitive market We developed the SEO and SMO (Social Media Optimization) campaign for this client long before the Panda and Penguin updates came out. Our SEO strategy for this involved building an SEO friendly website with an well thought out Information Architecure, quality content, and On-Site SEO to ensure all the pages are blogs are constructed properly. We also had a solid Off-Site SEO campaign for this client that focused on high quality and diverse link building. The results speak for themselves, quality websites, with excellent content, and professional SEO always do well.   Search Engine Rank Position (SERP) April 2102 – immediately after Panda and Penguin Updates The search engine rank summary below shows the rankings for this travel site after the Penguin update. What is remarkable here is that they retained 38 page one positions and 17 positions in the top 3 on page one.     SERP April through July 2012  Here are the search rankings 3 months after the Panda and Penguin updates, and again remarkable results. While many other sites had not recovered or even dropped further, this site increased its search rankings overall. Three words did drop out of the top 3 position, but page one words increased from 38 to 42.         Example 2: Marine Manufacturing Company – very strong competitors We also developed the SEO and SMO campaign for this client long before the Panda and Penguin updates, and again strategy involved an SEO friendly website, Information Architecure, quality content, and On-Site SEO. This client had a very robust Off-Site SEO campaign since they are new in the business and competing against a very well established competitor with excellent search rankings. Once again, the results speak for themselves…   Search Engine Rank Position (SERP) April 2102 – immediately after Panda and Penguin Updates  The search engine rank summary below shows the rankings for the marine manufacturers website after the Penguin update. Again, remarkable results, they retained 25 page one positions and 8 positions in the top 3 on page one.       SERP April through July 2012 Here are the search rankings 3 months after the Panda and Penguin updates, and remarkable results again. This site increased its search rankings overall, page one words increased from 25 to 30, and top 3 words on page one increased from 8 to 16!   

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How to Create and Edit WordPress 3 Webpages and Blog Posts

  Beginning with WordPress can be challenging at first but after reading this post, you will have a clearer understanding of the basic techniques to use in order to make your page professional and interesting to your readers. First allow me to start off by saying a post and a page are two, minor, differences. A post is done in chronological order, whereas a page is a fixed and independent page. Both of which are easily done about the same way.    Creating Your Title After you have decided what you want your page to be about you need to think of an interesting/catchy title for your page. Make sure you stay relevant and informative as well as keeping it as a teaser. Try not to make it “spammy” by making the title something that has nothing to do with your page just because you know readers are currently searching for the topic. Once you have racked your brain long enough and are ready to finalize your title you can type it along the top barline as shown:  Once you have typed in the title that you interested in calling your page you will notice that a permalink will automatically generate underneath. If you would like, you can edit that link to whatever you would prefer.   Subtitles  Within your webpage setup you may be interested in making subtitles, or what WordPress calls, “Headlines.” It is used to create sub paragraphs that can be easier for your reader to spot immediately, so if they have a specific interest within your page that they are interested in, they can find it more effectively. The easier you make it for your readers, the better. Something to keep in mind is you never want to select Heading 1. Reason for that is your main title that you originally created is considered heading 1. When making your subtitles in your article you want to start with Heading 2. In order to do this you want to select from the drop-down menu Heading 2 as shown:   After you have typed the heading and you have hit enter to begin your paragraph, the font will then change back to the original paragraph font.   Adding Your Featured Image Your featured image is what the reader will see before clicking on to your page. It is used mainly to advertise your page in an effective way. In order to add your featured image you want to scroll on your page until you see the box shown:   Proceed with clicking the “Set featured image” link. That will then take you to a new pop up screen where you can either drag and drop your photo into the dotted lines, or you can simply select the “select files” button and locate your files that way in order to upload them. Once you have done so you will be brought to a page that displays your selected image along with bringing up options to add more specifics to your featured image so your image itself can be searched giving you higher SEO.     Adding Image to Page  Just like adding your featured image was simple, so is adding an image to your page itself. All you need to do is click on the link located above the toolbar titled “Upload/Insert” with the little media caption (I have highlighted it in pink.)    After that, you follow the same basic and easy steps you did when you added the featured image to your page.    Adding Hyperlinks  Let’s say within your page you want to link your readers to various pages or websites that may be helpful to them. In order to do so, type what you would like the link to be and then highlight it. Once you have done that, refer to your toolbar for the button that looks like chains being linked together.      I have outlined the button in yellow in the example above. After you have clicked on that, you will get a pop up that asks for the URL and the title of the link. After you have filled everything out accordingly, you have officially created your hyperlink. When editing your page you won’t be able to click the link, but when the page is published the link is then clickable.    Adding Numbers and Bullets  When editing your page, you may come across some key facts that you would like to address by using either numbers or bullets so that your reader can read these facts and remember them easier. When wanting to bring this process to your page you simply click either the bullet or number button as shown:     The green outline is for the bullet option and the blue outline is for the numbered option. Both of which serve basically the same purpose, it just depends on the point you are trying to make in your page.

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Apps to Make Pinterest and Pinning Easier and More Fun

Pinterest has become one of the fastest growing social networks largely because of the unique experience it offers for sharing pictures and images of the things that interest you.  Pinning is easy with just a click of the Pin It button, but some websites and blogs aren’t Pinterest friendly because they either don’t have images or the images don’t convey the thought well for Pinning.  While Pinterest offers zero SEO value, because all of the links are no-follow links offering no benefits for search rankings, it does drive traffic to your website and develop brand awareness. We believe Pinterest should be part of most SMO Strategies.  We found a few websites and apps that make Pinning easy and more fun by giving you the ability to pin a screenshot of the website or make a text quote into a Pinable image.   4 Websites and Apps that Make Pinterest and Pinning Easier and More Fun 1. Pinterest Goodies Official Pinterest page for apps and tools.  The Pinterest goodies page has handy apps and the HTML code to install a Pin It button on your Chrome bar, iPhone app (see below), Pinterest Follow button for websites (cut and paste the HTML code), and our favorite and perhaps the most important a Pin this button for your blogs and website.   2. Pinstamatic Easy way to Pin sticky notes, calendar dates, Twitter profiles and screenshots of websites.    3. url2pin.it Want to pin a screen shot of a website or maybe a different image that what Pinterest grabs, use this handy website to do it.   4. PinaQuote Found a cool quote and want to pin it, but wait, there’s no image or the images doesn’t make sense?  Use PinaQuote to Pin quotes to Pinterest.   Mobile Apps for Pinterest iPhone app for Pinterest Reviews complain about it freezing up.  Android App we only found one Pinterest app for Droids and the reviews and other blogs complained about spam and had concerns about security.  So for now, sorry fellow Droid fans, no good app for our phones.  Pinterest said they are working on it, but that was in Sept 2011.  We recommend waiting for the official Pinterest app to come out.  

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Defending Your Reputation and Copyright on the Internet

Your brand image is predominantly defined by what is shown on the first page of Google, Bing and Yahoo search results. Under normal circumstances one would expect the first page of search results to be your webpage, blogs, webpages and of course your competitors. What happens if an angry customer or client decides to start posting negative comments about your company or you or worse creates a website dedicated to harming your reputation like www.your-company-name-here-sucks.com and this content creeps onto page one? Google and Bing’s algorithms are very blog-centric due to their unique content and keywords. Thus, if you have a dissatisfied client and they blog negatively about you and your company, there is a strong possibility that it will show up on search results next to the company’s site and for related keywords. Our previous blog discussed how to repair a reputation damaged by negative content, in this blog we discuss what action you can take if your online assailant crosses the line.  Copyright and Brand Protection One way you can ensure your name is protected is to diligently enforce your copyright on your content. Your site content is the key to revenue for your company. The more unique the content you post the better ranking you will receive. If others are using your content, your search rankings may be affected and their content may rank nearby yours. Such duplicate content, if not properly attributed to your company, is a violation of copyright. To be clear, you do not need a registration to hold a copyright on your content. As soon as your work is made public, you own the rights to that work- the registration however, affords you stronger protections and higher damages if you register the your work before the infringement occurs. The first step to discovery Copyright infringement of your web content is to use a site such as http://www.copyscape.com/. This site scans the web for plagiarized content and gives you a list of all sites which might have stolen your content. If the goal is to preserve costs, you should first attempt to contact the site owners yourself and notify them of the content you believe they have stolen. If this proves to be unsuccessful you should contact an attorney and ask them to give you a cost benefit analysis of enlisting their services to achieve removal of the content.  Defamation Protection Courts are beginning to recognize rampant defamation on the internet as a serious problem. If a blogger or reviewer goes outside of pure opinion or fact to slam your brand then they are well on their way into defamation territory. For example, stating “The mechanic is a jerk” is likely safe on the opinion side; however, stating “The mechanic is a thief” sways dangerously close to defamation. By monitoring reviews and content on the Internet for negative postings you can keep your brand name clean. While one review may not do much damage, if you begin to notice a smear campaign against you by an angry customer you may want to consider contacting an attorney to weigh your options for putting an end to these damaging statements. The above is a simplified summary of complex topics of law. A quick and reasonably priced Cease and Desist Letter can solve these problems a majority of the time. If you suspect infringement, defamation you should seek professional legal advice regarding your options. About the Author: Brittany Grunau is an attorney licensed to practice law in California. Brittany can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. The above is not to be construed as legal advice. Communication with Brittany Grunau by e-mail or telephone does not cause you to become a client of Brittany Grunau or afford you to the protections of confidentiality or attorney-client privileges.

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Beware of Proprietary Website and CMS Platforms – Don’t Create a Legacy Site!

Some systems will lock you in. It’s not impossible to get out! Also, we share some tips on choosing your next platform.

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How to Use Google In Page Analytics to Analyze Website Design and Performance

Google Analytics has powerful tools for analyzing how users interact with and navigate through your website.  Our previous blog explained How to Use Google Analytics Visitor Flow graphs to understand how visitors are flowing through your website.   In this blog we will explain how to use In Page Analytics to understand how users are interacting with your website, what they are clicking on, what is working, and what is not working.  We use both Visitor Flow and In Page Analytics in our SEO Analysis prior to doing a new website design.  We also review this data to see how our client websites are performing (along with other metrics we track). Google In Page Analytics; example of website with poor click throughs This is the same website we used in our previous blog as an example of a website with good traffic, but poor visitor flow and poor click throughs.   We are in the process of designing a new website for this client and we used both Visitor Flow and In Page Analytics as part of our SEO Analysis to better understand how the current website is performing and what needs to be improved. Something very important to observe here is that the Top Navigation (colored diamonds) has zero clicks.  This is because it is not obvious that it is navigation and also because the titles are not compelling or interesting, bottom line, the eye just passes right over it!  This is an excellent example of why “pretty” or “clever” website design is often ineffective from a performance and functionality standpoint.   Google In Page Analytics; example of website with good click throughs This is a great example of a website with excellent click throughs as well as good Vistor Flow.  You may have noticed that good click throughs = good visitor flow.  This is absolutely true, clicks leads to flow and the two are directly related.  The Visitor Flow graph show the flow through the website, the In Page Analytics shows how they are getting there and what they are clicking on.  To fully understand what is going on with a website you need to review both. What we like about this website is that not only are visitors clicking and going into the interior pages, BUT they are clicking on what the client wants to them see, THE BOATS!  This is a result of both good website design AND good SEO.   The SEO is targeting the right keywords and delivering the right traffic and once the visitors are there the website is enticing them to look further.  This is exactly how it is supposed to work!   Google In Page Analytics; another example of good click throughs We choose this website as an example for two reasons, firstly it is getting very good click throughs to the pages where the client wants visitors to go to (again a result of good SEO plus good website design); but secondly for a more subtle reason.  This is a very simple and clean website design.  It is very straight forward, not “sexy” from a website design standpoint, and it is performing very well, in fact, it is performing better than most sexy website designs. This is a great example of how simplicity is often a better design than an overly busy and complicated one.  The visitors to this website are professional clothing buyers, they are busy, too busy for a bunch of gimmicky Flash animation, video, or a complicated website that is hard to navigate.  They are looking for clothes, and want the information quickly.   Google Analytics In Page Analytics Menu To see In Page Analytics  for your website you must have Google Analytics installed on your website and a login, usually a gmail account to access it.  If you do not  have Google Analytics installed or do not have access to it ask your webmaster to set it up for you.  This is very easy for a webmaster to do and should be running on every website.  Our team can set this up for on your website or do a complete SEO Analysis of your websites performance and ranking.  Click on Jump to contact us about this or any other questions you have about our services and of course we welcome blog comments and are happy to answer questions here as well. Below is the Google Analytics menu where you will find In Page Analytics, from Home or the Dashboard click on Standard Reporting to see this menu:    

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How to Use Google Analytics Visitor-User Flow to Optimize Website Traffic

The Google Analytics dashboard and traffic graphs of are familiar to many, but few go beyond these very basic tools.  Google Analytics also has great tools for analyzing how visitors (users) interact with your website.  Visitor-User Flow and In Page Analytics are two tools that provide great insight into how your website is performing with respect to converting traffic into visits, and ultimately leads or sales.  We routinely use both Visitor-User Flow graphs and In Page Analytics to see how our client websites are performing and we always review this data when we do an SEO Analysis prior to starting a new website design or SEO campaign.  In this blog we are doing a tutorial on how to use Google Analytics Visitor-User Flow graphs to analyze the traffic flow of your website.  Our next blog will be on using In Page Analytics to analyze your pages and improve your click throughs. Traffic figures alone really don’t reveal much about what is going on with your website.  The Visitor-User Flow graph shows where visitors go on your website and how they navigate your website.  Used in conjunction with In Page Analytics you can see a clear picture of the traffic through your website as well as which icons and menus are getting the most clicks.  Visitor-User Flow and In Page Analytics are very useful when designing a new website.  By looking at past traffic flow patterns you can identify what is working and what is not, what is drawing visitors into the website, and where they are dropping off and leaving. Below are three examples of Google Analytics Visitor-User Flow graphs; the first is for a website that needs a redesign as it is performing very poorly, and the next two examples are websites that have excellent visitor-user flow and traffic conversion.  At the end of this blog we show the Google Analytics menu where Visitor Flow is located. Visitor-User Flow Graph Example: Weak Flow & High Drop Offs/Bounce Rate Below is a website (not designed by our team) that we are in the process of redesigning.  This is a excellent example of a website that is not performing well.  Although the website has good traffic over 1,000 out of 1,450, nearly 70% of visitors, dropped off the homepage without visiting any other pages!  A quick look at the flow shows that only 367 visitors clicked for a 1st interaction (going beyond the homepage), and only 198 went on to a 2nd interaction and so on.  The Visitor Flow shows where your visitors are going and the flow of how they got there.  The red column is a visual indication of the magnitude of drop offs from each page, not that on the homepage the red column for this website is very large whereas on the next examples it is much smaller indicating far fewer drop offs. (click to expand image)  Visitor-User Flow Graph Example: Excellent Flow & Extremely Low Drop Offs/Very Low Bounce Rate This is an excellent example of a website that has both excellent traffic, over 30,000 visits to the homepage, and also has excellent visitor flow with very low drop offs and a low bounce rate.  Note that for this website nearly 60% of visitors went past the initial landing page and on to a 1st interaction.  Likewise nearly 80% went on to a 2nd interaction.  This is easily seen by looking at the flow to the inner pages and the red drop off columns which are very small.  Looking at this flow graph by itself would not be so enlightening, but when compared to the one above, the contrast and distinction between the two is very clear. Visitor-User Flow Graph Example: Excellent Flow & Low Drop Offs/Low Bounce Rate Below is another example of a website that is converting traffic into visits very well (just so you don’t think that a high performance website is a one shot thing).  This website is for a yacht manufacturer and demonstrates excellent visitor flow for a very niche product and highly targeted customer demographic. Google Analytics Menu; Visitor-User Flow To see Visitor Flow graphs for your website you must have Google Analytics installed on your website and a login, usually a gmail account to access it.  If you do not  have Google Analytics installed or do not have access to it ask your webmaster to set it up for you.  This is very easy for a webmaster to do and should be running on every website.  Our team can set this up for on your website or do a complete SEO Analysis of your websites performance and ranking.  Click on Jump to contact us about this or any other questions you have about our services and of course we welcome blog comments and are happy to answer questions here as well. Below is the Google Analytics menu where you will find Visitors Flow, from Google Analytics Home or Dashboard click on Standard Reporting and you will see this menu:  

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How to Unblock / Bypass SOPA with local HOSTS File: Solutions and Discussion

SOPA proposes to force ISP’s to shut down DNS resolution for infringing sites, which at this point, could be any site due to the vague nature of SOPA verbiage.DNS, or the Domain Name System, is a protocol that turns websites into numbers, like facebook.com into 66.220.149.11. Every time you type in a website address you ask your internet service provider like AT&T or Comcast for a number, that number then provides you the website. It’s like having a name on your home address instead of having to give out the full address. This is called DNS ResolutionA little after the 2012 ball dropped, Gregory Conroyand I were discussing possible solutions should SOPA go into effect, he came up with an idea that was, remarkably simple…Modify your HOSTS file to resolve the the desired IP Address! You have a choice, you can ask your internet provider(Comcast, AT&T, etc.) for the IP Address of the website you want, or you can ask someone else(a remote list)…or even define it yourself(your own list)! SOPA does not prevent accessing websites based on IP address however, so some sites will still work by typing in the number. For instance, if you want to go to Facebook you could type: http://66.220.149.11 and it would take you to Facebook. SOPA is not as malicious as the Great Firewall of China because of this lack of IP Blocking, and allows for easy circumvention. Essentially, it would just block websites from non tech savvy people who do not understand what an IP Address is. What is not commonly known, except among tech/gadget circles, programmers and pirates, is that your local computer can decide what IP Address a domain points to and bypass the ISP’s DNS resolution, this is a huge part of your privacy, there is a reason why I always recommend the privacy filters. We use this in web development to “spoof” a website locally, pointing it to our development servers while we work. The solution to SOPA is achieved by simply modifying your HOSTS file to point the domains you commonly use and domains that are at risk of or are being blocked, to their proper IP Addresses, bypassing your ISP’s DNS Filter. Basically, you manually set facebook to 66.220.149.11 Please note that while this is easily done, and we expect it to be a common method to circumvent SOPA, it may actually be illegal to do this. There is argument over whether or not using a circumvention tool violates law, whereas it is almost certain that creating a circumvention tool will be a violation of law.  The sad thing is that this brings the government home, deciding what you can and can’t install or use on your personal computer…its a slippery slope. Here is an example of a windows HOSTS File and how it would look if you decided to do it (By the way, the HOSTS file is in c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/ and you must set unset the file from “read only” to modify it.) # Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp. # # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows. # # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name. # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one # space. # # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual # lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol. # # For example: # # 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server # 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself. # 127.0.0.1 localhost # ::1 localhost 66.220.149.11 facebook.com 66.220.149.11 www.facebook.com If SOPA passes, simple scripts can be written for people to automatically modify their HOSTS file and continue accessing sites that have been blocked, heck, you could even write an application that locally manages your hosts file and updates it based on remote parameters…which can be risky This is EXACTLY what the DNS system was built for and what it does; it is also the goal of DNSSEC: because the remote host would have to be trusted. to create a trustworthy domain name system(DNS) based internet. SOPA will cause more problems than it resolves as people look for alternative ways to connect to their favorite websites while those websites sit in the court system pending legal resolution whether they were mistakenly or rightfully blocked. SOPA will destroy the DNS system and cause users to create solutions of their own, or solutions provided by untrusted sources, exposing them to both viruses and unnecessary hardships. Due to this threat, there are already projects udnerway that are implementing similar solutions…They are getting ready because it seems that there is too much money involved in getting  SOPA to pass. Every major entertainment industry is for it. One that stands out at the moment is Reddit’s Meshnet Plan which is trying to get up and running by January 31st, 2012 (When SOPA may be passed). Their plan is to: To create a versatile, decentralized network built on secure protocols for routing traffic over private mesh or public internetworks independent of a central supporting infrastructure. This would remove the need for trust in one single protocol such as DNS, and make it very difficult for a government or corporate entity to police, as the resolution of IP addresses by domain would be controlled by groups of networks instead of one single source. [6:03 PM] Bill Grunau: well in that case if SOPA gets past Internet goes from Web 2.0 to Web 0.1 [6:03 PM] Alexander D. Conroy: no [6:03 PM] Alexander D. Conroy: Web 4.0 [6:03 PM] Alexander D. Conroy: User controlled internet

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Social Media Tips: 5 Steps for Creating Great Social Media Optimization Content

There have been lots of blogs and discussions about developing website content for SEO, but what about creating content for social media optimization? Just like website content can be optimized as part of an SEO program, so can social media content. This is often referred to as SMO, social media optimization, and while SMO is strictly about social media it is also an important part of a comprehensive SEO program today. Done right social media content can help your search rankings, drive traffic to your website, and more importantly engage and develop a loyal audience for your brand. Done wrong your tweets, blog posts, and Facebook page will be ignored or worse viewed as Spam in which case your social media campaign could actually hurt your brand. Below are some Social Media tips for creating great content. Before you start develop a Social Media Strategy: There is nothing worse than starting a social media campaign without a strategy. Because the tone of social media is casual many take a casual approach to it and do not take their social media campaign seriously initially. Take the time up front to understand what your audience wants, their style and most importantly how their interests in your brand. Identify your Personality, Tone, and Style: This is a vital part of social media that many overlook. What is your social media persona? Yes, your brand has a personality in social media. Consider for example the Redbull Facebook page and Twitter vs Coke. Both are beverages and the similarity ends there. Their social media personas are completely different. It is important for you to define how your brand will interact and behave with your audience. For now I will leave it at that as this can be an entire blog on its own! Quality Content: This phrase gets used a lot often with no explanation of exactly what “quality” means. Your blog posts, tweets, and Facebook posts should offer your audience something interesting and useful. Note that this is different for each platform. On Twitter it might be as simple as a discussion between tweeps. On Facebook it could be responding to a question or post, or posting a link to an informative blog or article (not necessarily your own). And your blogs in particular should offer great content and be informative. Keep your content spam free: Again this relates to quality content and again it merits a separate mention. If your content is an overt or obvious advertorial or stuffed with keywords over and over no one will finish reading it, they will never come back, and they will never recommend it or share it. So much for the social part of your content! In addition if the content is overtly stuffed with keywords the Google algorithm will likely detect this and penalize you for it in the case of a blog or webpage and in the case of other content it will just be deemed Spam. Use long-tail keywords: Simply put Long tail keywords are a specific phrase. While long-tail keywords have lower search volume, the searches are more specific and thus more relevant than broad generic keyword searches.  So in creating your content be specific and focus on one topic for each blog post or Facebook post. When you tweet about the blog post again be specific about what the blog is about and consider using a relevant #hashtag. Cast your social media net wide: Social media is lumped into one singular topic, however, each social network is very different.  For example some users may follow you on Twitter, but not your Facebook page even though they are also on Facebook. It is important to participate at a minimum on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus; and in some cases LinkedIn as well. Get Hooked Up!  Connect your social media and networks to your website and blog.  Connect your social networks to your website so you can immediately publish new blog posts. Also make sure you set up Open Graph Share-Like icons, RSS, Twitter tweet icon, etc. so visitors can share your content with their friends.

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Social Media Tips: Who Owns a Twitter Account-Name

Who owns a Twitter name-account? When an employee is tweeting for a company, and compensated for doing this a part of their “job”, who owns the account when the employee eventually leaves? A lawsuit between a blogger and former employer over Twitter account ownership may lay some ground work to finally answer this question. Unfortunately this is not a great test case since the employment circumstances are a bit murky as wells as the promises made over compensation. The real problem here is that the account ownership was not clearly established from the beginning and there was no transition plan established for when the employee eventually left the company. This is the big lesson to be learned from this case.  Below I have outlined 5 Steps to Protect Ownership of Your Company Twitter Brand Your Twitter Account: For company twitter accounts-names make sure your brand name is in it. For example, Comcast, Best Buy and ATT uses Twitter names such @comcastcares, @comcastvoices, ATTTeamTatiana, @ATTcustomercare, @coral_BestBuy @Gina_BestBuy. Note that Best Buy incorporated the individual’s name in the Twitter name along with their brand name. This personalizes the account and is a good idea as long as you clearly establish up front the Twitter account is owned by the company. Company email address: On Twitter the email address assigned to the account pretty much determines who has the ultimate control of the account. If the account is assigned to a company controlled email account you   have control over the email address and should the employee leave you will be able to reset the Twitter password and retain control of the account, and even rename the account if you want to. So make sure all company related Twitter accounts are set up with company email addresses and not personal email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. Written Agreement: Set up a written agreement clearly stating that the employees social media activities on behalf of the company are to be conducted on company owned accounts and must follow company social media policies.  See my previous blogs on 10 Practical Steps to Develop a Social Media Policy and Social Media Policy Examples and Best Practices. Separate Personal and Business Social Media: Make sure your employees use your company social media accounts for business and only for business and use their personal accounts for all personal matters.  While their personal accounts are private, make sure your social media policy prohibits use of company trademarks and discussion of company business on personal accounts. Termination: Upon termination or an assignment change of an employee using a company social media make sure you do a debriefing and transfer usernames, passwords, and all other relevant information to the person that will be assuming the role moving forward. You want to make sure this is a seamless transitions without any wrinkles or missteps along the way or afterward.

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