This morning, you may have seen a new, interesting look to the Burger King Twitter account. Why was Burger King advertising McDonald’s new McFish Bites? Well, apparently, their account was hacked by a well-known group.

This group went so far as to change the name of the account to McDonald’s and changing the background pictures to those matching McDonald’s products. Then, they began to create several posts, including one of a male with a needle in his arm, stating, according to them, that it was an employee. Other posts included one stating that Burger King had been sold to McDonald’s and one with a link to a video promoting Chicago rapper Chief Keef. Several of the posts contained vulgarities.

It is unknown yet exactly who is responsible, but the group that may have done this is previously linked to previous hacks to several MLB websites and celebrities. Authorities believe the group to allegedly hacked the page may have chosen today because many of Burger King’s corporate employees have the day off for President’s Day.

As of early this afternoon, Twitter has suspended the Burger King page and its future is unknown. It is believed that the Burger King corporate office is now aware of what is happening. Their next steps will be intriguing for those in social media to see exactly how they deal with this crisis.

Burger Kings Gets A Whooper of a #McHack

Storified by Kevin Dean· Mon, Feb 18 2013 11:31:16

This question is one that marketers struggle with on a regular basis. While it would be awesome to have both SEO and Social Media to help your following grow, it isn’t easy to incorporate both methods into your company. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but it depends on your company, and what you want, to determine which one will work best for you.

There are many advantages to SEO Marketing. They are:

1. Creating content you can repurpose- You can blog using utilizing key words that will feed to your other marketing efforts. They can be used for lead nurturing, email marketing, lead generation, and social media.
2. Long term gains that don’t diminish- The web pages you create are available to search for years to come. They are searchable in index search engines. A blog post that will be relevant for a long time that might take a few hours to create will continue to drive traffic to your site for years.
3. Long-tail search yields targeted traffic- A long-tail search is a search term that is 3 or more terms. When people search for something specific, they usually use a long-tail search. The longer the key words you use are, the more specific searches will yield traffic to your site.
4. Inbound links help your website and your reputation- You can offer your blogging services to other companies and be a guest blogger. By doing this you generate inbound links. Another benefit of doing this is that you can form strong relationships with heavy hitters in your industry.
5. SEO gives an edge to local businesses- Most mobile searchers are usually out and about when they are searching for something. They could be searching for something by zip code, or by the area they are in. Most of the time they are closer to the point of purchase than those who search at home.
6. SEO is easier to use than it used to be- Good content is really all that you need to be found.

While there are a lot of positive advantages to SEO marketing, there are also disadvantages. They are:

1. SEO takes a lot of time- You must consistently create top notch content, which can be very time consuming. Sometimes it can be very overwhelming as well.
2. You still need to invest in a technical SEO- A technical SEO is someone who can help with website issues that might arise. A technical SEO can be a valuable investment in case a problem arises, and to help make sure your site is being seen by others.
3. You don’t have just Google to think about- There are other search engines out there, like Yahoo, or Bing for example. With each different search engine there are different rules that need to be followed.
4. Too much is out of your control- Sometimes it is hard to get those quality inbound links. And you need those to have your content be seen by others. Good content isn’t always enough because if there aren’t links to your page, people won’t be redirected to your site.
5. You can’t measure everything- Google no longer passes referral data for logged in users when they click on a link after a search. This means that marketers have lost insight into a big amount of their organic insight. It has created a hurdle for marketing analytics.
6. SEO requires long-term up keep- You must consistently and continually create optimized, quality content and generate inbound links to your site, or your rankings will slip and all of your hard work will not be seen.

Now that we have covered SEO Marketing, lets take a look at the advantages of Social Media Marketing. They are:

1. Social Media improves your SEO- Social shares of your content are a “vote” for your content. The more people that like your content and share it, the more other people will see it.
2. You will build strong personal relationships- Maintaining an active social media presence allows you to carry on prolonged, friendly conversations with your followers. Your social reach extends even more as your follower’s network sees you showing up on their news feeds. You also have the ability to provide personalized service to your customers that other marketing channels struggle to match.
3. Social content can be repurposed- You can repurpose your content from network to network, or add a link to your page from Facebook, or Twitter.
4. More targeted networks means more customers- Social Media allows you to target customers once you have discovered which networks they use. There are different options of which networks to use, so you have the ability to try them out and see which one(s) work best for your business and your goals.
5. Social Media provides the user-generated content you need to drive sales- Social Media is powered by user-generated content which is critical for driving sales for your business.

We have seen the advantages of Social Media Marketing, now lets look at the disadvantages. They are:

1. Social Media fails without content- Without content, what will you be sharing? Just posting Tweets, or statements on Facebook won’t drive traffic to your website. You need links to your website that has the content that you want people to see. Creating that content takes a lot of time and dedication.
2. Success takes a long time- Creating a Social Media following does not happen over night. It can take months and sometimes even years to create the following you are hoping for. It is a process.
3. Social Media content expires quickly- Because so many people belong to Social Media networks and post on them frequently, the posts that you do can get buried withing minutes or hours depending on the news streams.
4. Monitoring is time intensive- In order to be successful with Social Media Marketing, you must monitor your Social Media sites every day! You must read and respond to all of the the content that is posted, which takes a lot of time and effort.

We have gone over the advantages of both SEO Marketing and Social Media Marketing. Both have great advantages and some not so great disadvantages. Can you use both? It seems that they would work better together. They both rely on quality content. If you don’t provide quality content, nothing will show up when people search for you, and you might lose followers. Also, the lines between search and social search are becoming blurry. You can search for things on a Social Media site just like you can with a search engine.

It isn’t always an option to use both SEO and Social Media Marketing. If you have to decided which one to pick, you could either hire a social media manager to promote your content, grow your social following and monitor and engage with your social networks, or you could hire a technical SEO who can ensure that your website is operated so that people are able to actually read and index all of your content. These two options are both things that Manobyte can help you with, and help you decide how to effectively use the wonderful content you have created.

By: Kim Koetje

In the early mid-century, consumers did not have as many mediums to use to research products and services like we do today. There weren’t 100′s of television channels for them to watch, there were only a few, and there also weren’t a lot of newspapers to choose from. It wasn’t as difficult to reach consumers as it is today. Today, consumers have 100′s of television channels that they can watch, they can order a newspaper from across the country, and even view it online. They can research a company and the products that they offer online, instead of seeing it in a newspaper ad or on TV. They can search the competition at the same time that they are looking at an organization’s products to compare. So how do you make sure that consumers find you and your products? What is the best way to reach them when they have so many options?

Reaching consumers is more difficult now than it has ever been, and that level of difficulty will continue to get higher. There are three factors that impact how a customer will find you. They are:

1. New Sources of Information: Consumers rely on word or mouth, and the referrals from friends about a product or service.
2. New Forms of Media: What channels we have now (paid owned, and earned) are being intermixed. Social Media sites now have social ads, which is a new form of media that companies must embrace.
3. New Screens: The tablet is becoming more and more popular among consumers. Before it was just TV or laptop, or mobile. Now the tablet offers yet another way for consumers to find organizations.

Consumers can use almost any source to find what they are looking for, whether it be a laptop, TV, mobile device, tablet, and so on. So wherever consumers are, they have access to whatever they are looking for. One way to make sure you reach your consumers is to figure out what type of medium they are likely to use. From there, you can create a site that is fitting to that medium. Consumers who usually use their mobile devices will appreciate a mobile site so they can quickly see what you offer, and how to get it, whereas consumers who spend their time performing in-depth research before they make a purchase will appreciate the time you spend on your website to explain what you offer. Learn how your consumers are finding you, and adapt to that to reach them, and more consumers like them. ManoByte can help you discover who your consumers are, and how to best reach them.

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The world of Social Media is continually growing, and will grow even more in the future. CEOs are learning that not only do they have to be involved with their company on a business level, but also on a Social Media level. The rate of CEOs participating in Social Media is expected to grow 41% within the next 5 years.

This increase is expected because CEOs are realizing that using only emails and phone calls to get their message out isn’t sufficient anymore. Utilizing Social Media will allow organizations to engage with customers, suppliers, and employees, as well as allowing them to be more adaptive and agile.

Using Social Media will develop openness within organizations. Employees are not encouraged to speak up, exercise personal initiative, and connect with fellow collaborators. They will be able to work with each other on ideas in a more time efficient manner.

The example set by how a CEO utilizes Social Media will be followed by employees. The more involved the CEO is with Social Media, the more employees will follow suit and be involved as well. This allows for a more open work environment, which has proven to be a key factor to an organization’s success.

CEOs are planning on using Social Media in different ways to increase success within their organizations. One way that they will utilize Social Media is to collaborate with outside organizations. They will be able to view other organizations’ methods, as well as draw feedback from what works and does not work for organizations in their fields. Another way they will utilize Social Media is to connect with consumers. Right now, Social Media is one of the least utilized ways of customer interaction. Over time, that is projected to change to being the number two method of interacting with customers, following face-to-face interaction.

A main goal of using Social Media is customer interaction. By having a Social Media plan in place, CEOs are able to gather data and insight on what customers think about their product. With Social Media, customers are able to find the organization and comment on what works or does not work with the products. It is a central place that can be used to gather information that will help organizations grow and become more involved with what their customer’s needs are.

With Social Media growing every day, CEOs are discovering that by being involved in the different Social Media outlets, they will be able to reach more customers. They will be able to be more involved with their employees and create a more encouraging and inviting work environment.

With the right tools and training, CEOs will be able to incorporate Social Media into their organizations, not only with consumers, but with employees as well. Manobyte can provide the necessary training tools needed to successfully integrate Social Media into their everyday business lives.

By: Kim Koetje

Step 1: Start Internally First? Train your Employees!