'Net Features : twitter, facebook

Five Mother’s Day Social Strategies

Allison Howen — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:00:00 GMT

Sunday is Mother’s Day, which not only means that you still have time to pick up gifts for the most important ladies in your life, but also that brands have put their Mother’s Day marketing campaigns into full force across all social networks.

In fact, every holiday, event and change of season provides marketers with a timely promotional angle. And naturally, all brands take a different approach in their holiday-related campaigns. For example, a retailer typically promotes products as gift ideas, while content publishers create relevant content or contests to increase engagement. Yet, the best and most complete strategies combine multiple techniques in order to cater to every fan and followers’ preferences.

Website Magazine located five stellar Mother's Day social examples to offer inspiration for this holiday and future ones, too. Remember, Father’s Day is just around the corner…

Goal: Get People Talking

Brand: Seventh Generation

Social Network: Facebook

Strategy: Seventh Generation took to Facebook to ask a feel-good question and remind us how important moms are in our lives. The company’s use of an image to assist in asking the question “What is the best advice your mom has ever given you?” certainly grabs fans’ attention better than a text-based post and most likely leads to better engagement rates. Additionally, these fan interactions help Seventh Generation foster better relationships with its customers, as well as helps to increase brand awareness.

Goal: Generate Conversions

Brand: Sephora

Social Network: Pinterest

Strategy: Retailers and Pinterest go together like peanut butter and jelly, as this social network has proven to drive valuable traffic to e-commerce websites. Beauty company Sephora is taking advantage of this influential social network by creating an entire board devoted to Mother’s Day gift ideas. Not only do these featured items take visitors directly to product pages on Sephora's website when clicked on, but many of the images also include the hashtag, #mothersday, in order to increase the product's and Sephora's visibility on the pin boarding social network.

Goal: Boost Follower Numbers

Brand: ExtraTV

Social Network: Twitter

Strategy: Giveaways and contests are always a good tactic for increasing your social following, so why not combine these promotions with a timely event? Not only does this strategy from ExtraTV help the brand obtain more followers, but since the company asks for retweets, it also increases their visibility. Plus, this strategy will ultimately leave the two winning followers very happy.

We're giving away 2 @bfflco gift bags for #MothersDay! Follow @extratv & RT this message for your chance to win! bit.ly/MDWin
— ExtraTV (@extratv) May 7, 2013

Goal: Increase Brand Awareness

Brand: Google

Social Network: Google+

Strategy: Another feel-good strategy comes from Google, who has chosen to use Sunday’s holiday as a way to shamelessly promote its very own social network. That said, this video is very relatable (almost a tear-jerker), and truly shows how technology can be used to connect with the most important people in your life.

Goal: Improve Visibility and Engagement

Brand: Beats By Dre

Social Network: Twitter

Strategy: Advertisements are always a good way to increase your brand’s visibility, but Beats By Dre takes this strategy a step further by using an interactive and timely Promoted Tweet to reach new audience members. In fact, once someone clicks on the link to make a #Pillconfession (Pill is the name of one the company’s wireless speakers), they are directed to the company’s website where they can explore products and interact with the #Pillconfession campaign by posting a Mother’s Day confession either on Twitter or Facebook. Additionally, visitors can view the confessions of other consumers at the bottom of the webpage, which features an interactive collage of tweets and posts.

Got a #pillconfession? Make yours on beats.is/PillConfessTW. Apologies to moms everywhere! twitter.com/beatsbydre/sta…
— Beats By Dre (@beatsbydre) May 2, 2013

2013: Social SEO Required

Administrator — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:47:00 GMT

By Clayburn Griffin, Organic Search Director at Catalyst

Good SEOs can no longer ignore social. It may have been possible last year, while search engines were still experimenting with the incorporation of social signals into their algorithms, but in 2013, Social SEO is required.

The Web is an evolving system. The old system of using backlinks to determine authority and relevance by the search engines has become outdated. This was the system pioneered by Google, and while links are still important, search engines are realizing that social media has changed the very nature of the Internet.

Now people online engage with content and websites in a variety of ways that all tie back to their identity. Identity is the key to Social SEO. Search engines are giving people their own authority and relevance, just as they would a website, and the signals that a user gives to a piece of content pass the user’s authority and relevance to it. These signals tell search engines that a user, a specific user with certain interests and proficiencies, approves of pieces of content. These signals range from simple votes (likes, +1’s) to shares (tweets, posts) and even commenting. Search engines incorporate these social signals into their ranking algorithms.

Social SEO is about optimizing for these social signals in order to boost search engine rankings. To get you going in the right direction with your Social SEO initiatives, here are a few tips that will help to ensure your Social SEO strategy is successful.

Optimize Your Site for Engagement

You drive traffic to your website from several channels, but without engagement from these visitors, you’re missing the opportunity to enhance your authority. You can increase engagement by making it easy for them by including proper social sharing buttons. Don’t go with one of those catchall widgets that clutter your website and look tacky. Use the buttons that matter most, namely: Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet and Google +1.

These buttons allow easy sharing and should be placed within or around the content that they’re meant to share. Don’t put these buttons in your header. People expect share buttons to be associated with the content they’re positioned around on a Web page. If you have a Like button in your header, then it may seem to be for your brand’s page or your homepage rather than the specific content being shared. And a single page that lists many pieces of content should include each piece’s associated share buttons in an intuitive way.

Facebook Like:

• Consider whether you should use Like or Recommend. Should you include Send?

• Set the proper Open Graph tags on each page so that the posts to Facebook contain the appropriate information. Always include a thumbnail image (e.g., the og:image tag to designate the specific image on the page).

Twitter Tweet:

• Set the tweet text. Use an engaging message that will describe the link and help get click-through from impressions.

• Use relevant hashtags. You can set the hashtag attribute to pre-populate the tweet with a hashtag. If your content is relevant to a popular hashtag, include it to help every tweet get more exposure and add more relevancy to the link being tweeted.

• Identify yourself as the author (via). After the tweet, users are suggested to follow the Twitter handle. So, help them connect with you when they share your content.

• To make a secondary suggestion, fill out the Related attribute. This account will be suggested alongside the author recommendation. Commenting is also important to engagement. Make it easy for users to comment on your content without the need to log in. If you include a login feature as well, provide multiple options. Disqus is a particularly good commenting system and is a social network of its own in a sense.

Use Google+

Don’t neglect Google+. While the activity numbers may not be as impressive as Facebook’s, it has a far greater impact on search results. Whether people actively use Google+ or not, many are performing searches while logged into their Google account (and in many cases this is also their Google+ account). Organic traffic from the (not provided) keyword has been increasing substantially recently, and this traffic is from people signed into Google when performing a search.

So, even if they aren’t posting to Google+, their search results will be affected and their social connections will have a big influence on those results. That means the people who are using Google+ regularly have considerable power to shift rankings.

Make sure you’re on Google+ connecting with people and sharing your content. Gain additional exposure for your brand by contributing in relevant Google+ Communities, as well.

Empower Your Employees

Having a social media policy that encourages employees to be active in social media can help create many brand evangelists on the Web for you. In addition, key members of your organization may be in a good position to lend major credibility and authority to your Social SEO campaign.

Provide a list of your social media profiles so that employees are able to find them easily. On occasion send out a company email to promote new content on your website and ask employees to share it via their social media accounts.

Read More

For a more in-depth analysis of Social SEO, you can read Catalyst’s newly published ebook “Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.” The publication explains the nuts and bolts of Social SEO, as well as provides a roadmap for campaign set-up, strategy development, execution tactics, tools, automation and performance metrics. The complimentary eBook (PDF format) is available on the Catalyst website at:

By Clayburn Griffin

Clayburn Griffin is an Organic Search Director at Catalyst, a pioneer in strategic digital marketing services for Fortune 1000 brands. Catalyst’s services include: SEO, paid search marketing, social SEO, content strategy, digital asset optimization, e-retail optimization, and more.

Pinfluencer Gets a New Name and Social E-Commerce Product

Michael Garrity — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:15:00 GMT

Pinfluencer literally made a name for itself by providing marketing and return-on-investment (ROI) analytics to brand’s using the Pinterest social network. However, as the company begins to move away from only using information from Pinterest and Facebook to incorporating image-based sites like Twitter, Tumblr and Polyvore into its platform, it felt like maybe a name-change was in order.

From now on, Pinfluencer will be known as Piqora, a marketing suite that will include analytics, promotions, content management and even social e-commerce.

“We have changed our name to Piqora, because it is an elegant blend of piquing one’s curiosity and inquiry about products,” explained the company’s CEO, Sharad Verma. “The new name also implies pictures and the IQ lends itself to deep analysis. This encompasses the essence of what we do.”

As mentioned, the new moniker isn’t the only big news to come from Piqora; the company is also launching a new social e-commerce product for brands on Pinterest and Facebook known as Gallery, a tablet-optimized and automated visual feed of a company’s current stock and top trending products on social media. Not only will this establish a social commerce experience for consumers, but (more importantly), it helps marketers turn their social traffic into conversions.

Since Pinterest is such a visual discovery experience that promotes browsing, pinning and purchases, it seemed like a natural choice to the folks at Piqora that they should find a way to turn these users into customers. Naturally, the best way to do that is by offering visually compelling product options on channels like Pinterest and Facebook. The Gallery landing pages for Pinterest-driven traffic promote on-site product browsing, pinning and purchases.

“Our new Gallery product gives brands a way to nurture their discovery traffic from social networks and tablet users,” said Verma, adding that it can also “showcase what is most popular and offer customers a rich, boutique-type browsing experience.”

In addition, Piqora will also monitor the social “pinning” activity on Facebook and Pinterst and examine search queries, traffic and purchase data from Google Analytics, Omniture and Coremetrics.

Content Marketing Without a Blog

Administrator — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:00:00 GMT

It’s no secret that content marketing has a phenomenal ROI (the statistics only seem to get better with each passing year). In fact, Kapost and Eloqua recently produced an eBook on the ROI of content marketing in which they stated that per dollar content marketing produces three times the number of leads as compared to traditional marketing.

Unfortunately, many businesses have shied away from content marketing, mistaking the term for a synonym of “blogging,” which is not the end-all-be-all of content marketing. In fact, I can think of seven ways you can do content marketing without a blog…

Vlog

Not much for writing, but love talking? Share your experience and knowledge through a vlog series on YouTube, and promote it through your Twitter and Facebook page. Trust me, this works. If you need any evidence, allow me to point you to the wildly successful "Will It Blend?" campaign by Blendetc.

Podcast

You aren’t much for appearing on camera either. That’s fine – go the route of the podcast. Interview experts in your industry, or just take 10 minutes to address your customers’ frequently asked questions. The podcast is still a viable form of content marketing. Plus, it’s the only non-visual form on this list.

Facebook & Twitter

It almost goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter are great ways to drive a content marketing strategy, but don’t take my word for it. 76 percent of businesses are using social networking for business objectives.

Infographics

Are you in an industry that loves statistics and facts? (Hint – the answer is a resolute ‘yes’.) Put the right amount of creativity and effort into it, and you can have an infographic that goes viral. Seriously, any business can leverage an infographic to their advantage. As an example, take Brilliance, a jeweler whose “Kardashian Wedding vs. Average Wedding” infographic went viral in 2011. The infographic brought in thousands of visitors to the company’s website because it was well done and interesting.

Whitepapers

So, I said I have seven strategies that avoid blogging, but not writing. If you’re a B2B company, then a white paper could be just the thing you need to widen your reach and generate hundreds of new leads. If there’s no one in your company capable of writing a rock-solid white paper, then it’s worth budgeting some cash to pay a professional to do the job. A half-baked white paper receives the same critical acclaim that a half-baked research paper earned you in high school. Back then, it was a C+. Today, it’s money down the drain.

Knowledge Bank

You can approach the Knowledge Bank strategy in one of these two ways (or both): your bank could be an organized index to all of the resources on your website, and/or it could serve as a roundup of the web’s “Best of the Best.” Either way, the point is to make valuable information organized and easy to find.

Pinterest & Instagram

At the end of Aug. 2012, the Los Angeles Times described Pinterest and Instagram’s growth as “meteoric,” citing a 2,183 percent growth over the course of one year for Pinterest. Instagram has performed remarkably well, too. From July 2011 to July 2012, monthly traffic increased from 56,360 to 12 million. On Thanksgiving Day 2012, Instagram users shared a jaw-dropping 10 million photos. If your product or service has a visual draw, then sign up with these sites today.

The Bonus

There are many benefits of doing content marketing with a blog. According to the 2012 Digital Content Marketing Survey, blogging is the second-most utilized form of Web content (75 percent), right behind social media (90 percent). Also, the best results come from social media content, e-newsletters and blogs.

Though we’re still waiting on the 2013 Survey, I’d be surprised if the blog isn’t holding steady.

About the Author

Amie Marse, is the founder and managing partner of Content Equals Money, a content writing service for agencies and Web-based clients.

Profile Inspirations for the Big 4 Social Networks

Allison Howen — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:55:00 GMT

In today’s digital age, it is important for every business to broaden its audience reach by maintaining a presence on four of the ’Net’s most popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

However, posting engaging content and interacting with fans is just one part of the equation when it comes to maintaining a successful social presence, with the other part of the equation being design. In fact, often times, brands focus solely on posting a variety of content to social networks and forget about optimizing the real estate on their profile altogether.

Luckily, Website Magazine has found some of the best examples of social profiles on the Web to help provide some inspiration for future profile-redesign projects. Check them out below:

Facebook

There is a large amount of space to work with on Facebook Pages, most notably, the 851 x 315 px cover photo that is featured at the top of every profile. Although most brands have a Facebook presence, few utilize the social network’s design aspects quite like the brands below.

Kit Kat
This sweet company takes fan engagement to a whole new level by prominently featuring fans on its cover photo.

Priceline
This travel company has streamlined its marketing initiatives by using its Facebook cover photo to promote its ongoing “Priceline Negotiator” campaign. Moreover, the image features a specific hashtag so that fans can take their conversations from Facebook to Twitter without missing a beat.

Method
Method maintains a clean design by featuring and identifying its line of products on a white background in the company’s cover photo.

Twitter

Designing a Twitter profile can be tricky, because this micro-blogging social network displays profile pictures directly in the middle of the 520 x 260 px header images. As if creating a design that works with two images wasn’t hard enough, Twitter profiles also leave room for background images, which can appear differently on computer screens depending on resolution. However, the trick is to make all these elements come together into one large design.

Beggin’ Strips
Purina’s Twitter account for the delectable doggie treat, Beggin’ Strips, uses strategic placement to make its profile picture and header image appear as one design.

IKEA USA
While IKEA USA’s Twitter header and background image flow together nicely, the company keeps its branding initiatives strong by featuring the company’s icon as its profile picture.

CoreCommerce
CoreCommerce does a really good job at maintaining a simple profile design on Twitter that still attracts attention with the use of bright colors. Additionally, the company uses its background design to let prospective clients know exactly what type of services they can expect from the CoreCommerce platform.

Google+

Although Google+ hasn’t taken off in the way that social sites like Facebook and Twitter did, it is still vital for companies to maintain a profile on this network – to boost their SEO initiatives, if for nothing else. The main design elements to focus on when optimizing a Google+ profile include the large 250 x 250 px profile picture and the even larger cover photo, which measures 890 x 180 px.

San Diego Zoo
The San Diego Zoo has an unfair advantage when it comes to design, because its entire business is built on animals, and who doesn’t like looking at pictures of animals? That being said, the zoo still took some time to create a cover photo and profile image that feature a variety of the zoo’s inhabitants – mammals, birds and amphibians.

Instagram
For proof that simple is sometimes better, look no further than Instagram’s Google+ profile design.

Silverpop
This cover photo has been leveraged to visually feature the types of services that Silverpop offers.

Brands attract a whole different type of audience on LinkedIn, which is a good thing. However, optimizing the design on LinkedIn Company Pages can be a bit of challenge because brands want to attract attention yet stay professional at the same time, all with a limited amount of customizable space. That being said, the focus for these pages should be the 646 x 220 px main cover photo, because this is the first thing people see when arriving at a Company Page.

Nokia
Nokia uses its cover photo for featuring a variety of its products on a simple background.

General Motors
This automobile company optimized its cover photo specifically for LinkedIn by keeping the focus on people.

HootSuite
Just like Nokia, HootSuite does a solid job of featuring the type of services it offers without being too flashy or over-promotional.

Social Media for Home-Based Businesses

Administrator — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:15:00 GMT

When running a home-based business, the pressure of completing vital daily actions, in addition to time constraints, means social media strategy may not be your highest priority. But to outreach to an extensive customer base, build your online authority and gain a valuable platform for real-time customer service, it should be.

All social networks are not created equal, however. Brand social media is not a tool exclusive to large organizations, and for home businesses especially, can be crucially beneficial and should play an active role in daily business. Choosing a social channel for business depends on a number of variables, so before selecting one (or jumping straight into all networks) consider:

• What the home business is

• Who the target market is and which channel they are most likely to be active and responsive on

• The nature of the products and services sold

Considering what you want your social strategy to achieve can also help with your decision. For example, if you want to build yourself up as an industry leader, network, or promote your company and yourself through industry based discussion, then LinkedIn may be the most suitable network. But if you're likely to post numerous, frequent news, product and offer updates, and want to target and interact with potential clients more directly, using Facebook or Twitter may be a better route to take.

Of course there's nothing to stop you from using both! If you can meet the time requirements to maintain a dedicated and active presence across numerous social media channels, you'll be presenting a more varied, accessible and authoritative business profile. Just note that you don't have to join all networks at once, and be wary of the dangers and damaging effects which incomplete and sloppy social profiling can have.

Key social networks you may consider choosing include:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn acts as a virtual CV, networking and job-hunting tool, and for that reason works well as a B2B social network. Giving you the social status to network as a business figurehead, creating a LinkedIn company page can inform LinkedIn users of your home business, as well as your personal attributes and will showcase your services and company updates. Networking to contact key industry individuals and participation in regular discussion groups can establish your authority as a thought leader within your industry or area of business. It can also allow you as a business owner to advance, network, and raise your professional profile.

Depending upon your business or service offering (this may work well for freelance services for example), LinkedIn can also be an excellent way to source clients.

Twitter

For most organizations, Twitter is the go-to network. With users expectant and tolerant of much more frequent posting (some more brand active profiles post upward of 10 tweets a day), news, links relevant to your industry, retweets and other shared content can boost your profile. Plus, by taking advantage of Twitter features, such as hashtags, your tweets can be easily found in searches and your presence raised. Allowing you to present an accessible front, promote new product and converse with your client base, Twitter lets you directly access a much wider potential customer base, and can be a great way to gather feedback. Have an active follow and interaction strategy to boost and interact with followers and spread the name of your business.

Regarding the time restraints of being commercially active on Twitter, tweets can be scheduled, searched for and ordered using management applications, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck - meaning all daily social activity can be done at once.

Pinterest & Instagram

For businesses that offer a visually appealing product, having a Pinterest or Instagram account can be incredibly beneficial. Whilst Instagram works well in conjunction with Twitter (owing to its use of hashtags allowing users to locate images) and can be a way to encourage customers to create social content/ their own images related to your brand product, Pinterest works more as a virtual pinboard. Allowing users to 'repin' images of your product (once you have a developed profile), if your product can be aesthetically endorsed, both networks could work very well to an advantage.

Facebook

This is an excellent tool for home businesses with small audiences who wish to get to know their audience and fans. You can use your page insights to see what sort of content garners the best responses. Facebook is ideal for sharing and is more directly personal than Twitter, so knowing what content (images, links, competitions, etc.) your Facebook followers respond best to, can work to a business advantage in that you can encourage those followers to share your brand content to their own friends and followers as well. As a great place to share news, offers and promotions, Facebook works well for businesses with a wider consumer base, such as fashion or food, and offers a simple approach to customer service (comments and interaction).

Google +

Though less popular than the other networks, a Google + presence can be just as important. More relaxed when it comes to self-promotion, Google + allows for status and content sharing as with Facebook and LinkedIn, but importantly, as a Google owned service, means it is linked with all of Google's other products. An active account can provide additional SEO benefit: especially useful for smaller, location-dependent businesses.

Once you've decided which network to use:

Any social network can encourage customers to move from your social profile to your business site, and once you've decided which network(s) to be active on, you should consider some form of basic strategy to build a following - this can be as basic as deciding to use HootSuite to schedule in a certain number of tweets a day and replying to any customer feedback (good or bad), to forming a more comprehensive approach such as following targeted users and ensuring you mix your content between status updates, links, images etc.

The approach you take toward social media will vary depending on the time you have to invest in it, but making this investment can really help launch the profile of a whole business, especially if targeting a local market. You should make it easy for people to access your social networks, connect, share and promote you.

About the Author: Alastair Kane is a freelance writer working for 2touch, a leading provider of fulfillment services helping businesses keep their customers happy.

Life in the Fast Lane – Social Predictions for 2013

Administrator — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:30:00 GMT

By Richard Pasewark, CEO, Visible Technologies

This past year the social media and marketing world saw many evolutionary changes including the IPO of Facebook, market consolidation and increased adoption of social media sites like Pinterest and Instagram. As we move forward into 2013, companies of all sizes will realize the necessity of utilizing social media data and analytics to better serve, engage and help their customers. Simply participating in social media is no longer enough. Companies need a well thought-out social media strategy to stay ahead of the competition. Below is a snapshot of what the industry can expect to see this year and which areas companies should focus on when developing their marketing plans.

“If you build it, they will come”

As more and more of the large enterprise technology companies acquire social marketing tools and stitch together social media “suites”, clients are increasingly assessing if these toolkits meet their needs. 2013 will be the year that marketing leaders determine what type of software and solutions they can count on – whether it’s delivered from an independent vendor or the result of acquisitions. Many marketers need clear and clean solutions that meet immediate needs – as social media analytics and engagement continuously play a prominent role in their actions and effectiveness, they will need agile vendors to address their dynamic needs.

English isn’t the only language spoken in the world

The growth of social media in English speaking channels is enormous; yet we need to acknowledge the same rapid ascension of the social global movement, driven by mobile in many parts of the world. In 2013 it will be imperative for global brands to establish a multi-region, multi-language footprint in social channels to reach customers in all markets. Even though Facebook has been banned in countries like China, there is still a major adoption of social media use on homegrown sites such as Sino Wiebo. According to eMarketer, 54 percent of Internet users in China would make a purchase because a friend “liked” or follows the brand on a social network. That’s too big of a figure for companies to ignore. In order to be successful it will be important for companies to monitor their activity on international social channels as well as in non-English speaking channels in order to penetrate new markets. In turn, software companies will need to focus their efforts on developing solutions that can accurately understand and measure the sentiment expressed in languages beyond English. With nearly 20 percent of the world’s population speaking Mandarin or Arabic, both character-based languages, companies will also need to focus on identifying and reading these characters as well.

The rise of Pinterest will foster new technology that tracks the sharing of images (vs. text only)

The rise of visual social media like Pinterest will create a need for businesses to track the sharing of images versus just text. With the proliferation of images, videos and infographics going viral over the last few years, enterprises will begin to demand software to track these mainstream marketing and advertising methods. A fun example is the smiley face ;-), which is one of the most tweeted terms, making it imperative for companies to shift their technologies in this direction. With this will come new abilities added to search engines allowing users to copy and paste images to find a match versus relying on text-only options. This will open the gates of opportunity for other search engines to flourish if Google and Bing don’t evolve with these changes. It will also open new avenues for analytics as data sharing and influence will have new dimensions of insight.

Social media analytics will become the de facto source of customer input

Social media has already begun to pave the way of transformation in the customer service sector. As more and more customers voice their opinions online, companies have been forced to engage with consumers on their medium of choice. In 2013 we can expect this to continue and establish itself as the primary means of gaining customer feedback to improve customer experience. Data analyzed from social media sources will become a de facto way for companies to measure customer sentiment and satisfaction and be an essential channel to identify problem areas. Companies will no longer rely on surveys to gauge the success of their products and service, and will increasingly use social media analysis and community engagement to solicit and respond to customer input.

Product development will begin to lean on social channels

Much as customer service teams began addressing customer issues via social channels this year, product development teams will begin to look to social media to determine their next move. In order to meet consumer needs in a constantly changing marketplace, product development teams will begin sourcing ideas and preferences from social chatter when determining which capabilities or enhancements to focus on. This in turn will give the customer more power, allowing them to have a say in what innovations they see next.

About Richard Pasewark

As Chief Executive Officer of Visible Technologies, Rich provides strategic leadership to bring value to clients and partners. Prior to this role, Rich was President of Cymfony, where he scaled the organization to meet the growing demand for insights delivered from Cymfony’s technology and analyst services. Rich brings more than two decades of experience as a business leader, strategist, and software visionary for industry leaders such as Quark, Adobe and EDS. Rich values the opportunity to create new solutions in the emerging and continually evolving social media analytics market.

A Lack of Social Media Cohesion

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:50:00 GMT

New research from eCommerce and digital marketing company Acquity Group reveals that more than 75 percent of brands lacked a cohesive social media presence across the major platforms.

Results from the agency’s 2012 Brand eCommerce Audit, which evaluated Interbrand’s 2012 Best Retail Brands on customer engagement across major digital channels, indicated that while every brand on the list (except one) had a Facebook page, and 45 out of 50 are on Twitter, only 12 of the brands had a cohesive presence across all five of the major social networks that were analyzed ( Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube.

Twitter had the largest gap between usage and interaction according to the study. Less than 27 percent of brands analyzed actively participated in Twitter conversations with consumers, even though 90 percent of those brands had a presence.

Other highlights from the Acquity study include:

- 80 percent of the brands analyzed leveraged YouTube with an impressive 85 percent engagement rate.
- 56 percent of brands do not yet utilize Instagram, but there is a high level of interaction at 79 percent.
- 60 percent of the brands had adopted Pinterest and interaction rates on the social pin-board were 70 percent.

Acquity Group also profiled 10 brands that scored best overall in social interaction including Target, Home Depot, RadioShack, Bath and Body Works, Nordstrom, Gap, eBay, Coach, American Eagle Outfitters and Banana Republic (in the order of their ranking).

"Although most brands are signed up for the major social networks, many struggle to understand how they fit into their overarching business strategy. As a result, our audit revealed several critical areas of improvement when it comes to actually connecting with consumers across social channels," said Jay Dettling, Executive Vice President at Acquity Group.

"The important take away for brands is to avoid haphazard or sporadic use of social media. When a new social media channel is introduced, brands need to take the time to analyze the potential impact and return, and develop a solid strategy from there."

Political Campaigns & Digital Marketing: Did They Miss the Mark?

Administrator — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:30:00 GMT

We all know how online marketing and social media can be a goldmine of potential consumers.

Brands like Whole Foods Market and Samsung have succeeded on Twitter with as many as 3 million followers each. Coke triumphs over Pepsi on YouTube with about 108 million views and 83,700 subscribers. Among media brands, Disney dominates with nearly 38,700,000 Facebook fans. In 2011, Netflix’s display advertising received 36.9 billion ad impressions and was cited as one of the top 10 display advertisers in the United States.

But when you look at political spending, campaigns are still spending more on traditional media platforms than online. Consumer brands are learning how to harness online and social media, but political marketers can take a lesson from those finding success with digital marketing. Online and social media is an advantageous investment if political campaigns wisely use online channels, especially their analytics tools.

But if online and social media are so powerful then why are the presidential candidates and Super PACs not investing more into online advertising? Why are campaigns and Super PACs less interested in social media than offline?

Traditional media is still the force in political spending. True, online spending is six times higher for this year’s election than it was in 2008, but for political advertising, TV is the main medium—approximately $7.3 billion dollars for broadcast TV, cable and radio versus $159 million for online, according to Borrell Associates.

Historically, political campaigners had two rivals in the final stretch on an election: a Democrat versus Republican, and those two camps spent money on their campaigns. Now, Super PACs have flooded the ad market, driving up the competition and the inventory price within paid search advertising. For instance, if there are only two people bidding on keywords, there’s a limited competition with keyword bidding. However, if you have 10 people bidding on the same keywords, it drives up the price of inventory and increases the cost-per-click.

Obama advisor, David Axelrod, may have put it best when he said that local TV is “still the nuclear weapon” within an election. This doesn’t mean, however, that political marketers are not concerned about the digital battleground. One of the biggest wins is the investment by the Obama campaign in its social and online media. By numbers alone, Obama leads in many fronts on the digital battleground—from Twitter, online display ads and paid search marketing. But you need more than mere numbers to be successful. Candidates, like consumer brands, can better leverage online and social media to keep and win supporters.

First, test, track and analyze your political messaging in the digital space. For instance, let’s say you have a rally in the battleground state of Ohio and want to ensure high voter turnout. Social and online marketing are useful to engage and motivate your base, as well as communicating with your base quickly and in real-time. As you gather your online following, you can test and track which messages resonate with those people before creating a costly TV ad or making a speech. That’s a competitive strategy that marketers can use before going to market.

Second, marketers should invest marketing dollars into online display ads to target undecided voters. Marketing is not solely about the size of your budget but who’s going to spend their budget more intelligently. Display advertising or banner ads can be the tipping point because of its granular level of targeting. Within this channel, you can find such information like demographics, geography, and user behavior, making display ads far superior than TV and allowing marketers to gain more precise and targeted reach.

Third, think like your competitor both online and offline. Some people believe that “big data” can solve many marketing problems but that’s a misconception. Like any amount of information, you need to gather, organize and properly analyze it. You need the attention to detail and objectivity to find any missed opportunities or big wins – for you and your competitor. By investing more resources into data analytics tools (Google Analytics and Adobe SiteCatalyst), you have greater insight into the effectiveness of your online advertising than with other medium, such as how many donations are you receiving from a banner ad versus a paid search campaign.

To sum it up, it might not be that political campaigns are less interested in digital marketing. They also need to consider if they are investing their ad dollars where it counts—through quality analytics.

About the Author: Jon Morris is the founder and CEO of Rise Interactive, a digital marketing agency in Chicago, specializing in digital media and web analytics.

Obsessed with Klout?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 30 May 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Over the past few weeks, I have been obsessed with Klout. No, not clout, but Klout — the Web-based measurement service that gauges just how influential a person really is in the social sphere of the ’Net.

My interest in Klout, by all accounts, had been mild up until now. But my score has gone through the virtual roof in recent weeks, fueling this obsession. That rise was not caused by my incredibly witty tweets, nor was it due to my numerous and strangely compelling Facebook updates. Neither was it because I’ve quickly managed to build an inordinate number of new connections through LinkedIn, Tumblr or Google+.

No, the real reason that my Klout has increased is a simple one. I actually — finally — connected my social accounts to the system. For several months or longer, I had lingered around a wildly depressing and uninspired Klout score of 12. Okay, it was actually 11 — but who’s counting?

Knowing in my virtual heart of hearts that I was, in fact, more influential than that forced me to submit myself fully and completely to the Klout system, throwing my digital hat in the ring to see how I truly measured up. As you might imagine, connecting all your accounts — revealing all of your connections to the world — can do wonders in terms of boosting your credibility with Klout.

My number jumped to a far more respectable score of 56. And there was another benefit — a far more important one.

Editor's note: you can follow Website Magazine Editor-in-Chief Pete Prestipino on Twitter, Facebook and even Google+.

In the few weeks since my raging Klout obsession began, I have posted more frequently to Facebook (doing so at both peak and off times — hint, hint) and now I engage with the status updates of others more often, liking and, more importantly, commenting on what is shared by my friends and followers. Even though some of them, by the way, have ridiculously low Klout scores.

I have reintroduced myself to Twitter (although, I must admit, my hectic schedule is not always tweetfriendly), and now I make a genuine effort to retweet what I believe my own followers would find interesting or entertaining. I try to balance that with a few interesting highlights from my own life — both personal and professional, of course — along with my newfound commitment to using the platform as a way to complain or congratulate other people and companies for a job well done.

But that’s not all. Google+, the social network I once thought was good only for shoring up search results positions, has also seen an influx of activity from me — as have both my LinkedIn and Tumblr profiles. I have to admit, I’ve gained more from these networks than I ever thought possible in the form of new friendships as well as exposure to ideas and information.

Needless to say, my increased participation has been well worth the investment of time. But I’m not done yet — not by a long shot.

As I have become more focused on engaging in activities that I likely should have been doing all along, my Klout score has slowly — very slowly, actually — inched upward. Who would have thought that by committing to more and deeper social connections you can develop and increase your Klout (and clout)?

Make no mistake; I know that true “reach” and “influence” is nearly impossible to measure. I have seen firsthand where those with incredibly high Klout scores in the 70- and 80-point range couldn’t influence me to drink a glass of lemonade on a hot day. But for me, my Klout score is less about others and more about me — what I can become, what I want to become, what I will become.

I check my Klout score every morning — sometimes even before I get out of bed. It is now a constant reminder for me that what we are is not what we will become.

It requires a commitment to increase your Klout score as much as it does to improve you life. But in the end, the commitment is worth it.

If only for the perks.

Are You Ignoring Facebook Posts?

Michael Garrity — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:30:00 GMT

Marketing agency Mr Youth recently conducted a fairly comprehensive study about the role social media played in holiday gift purchasing decisions this year, and what they found wasn't all merry.

For the three weeks leading up to and including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Mr Youth gathered data on social media interactions to see how they affected holiday purchasing decisions. On the upside, they concluded that about 65 percent of user recommendations made or received on social networking sites led to a purchase, and these recommendations were twice as likely to lead to gift purchses. However, it seems that many brands are apparently just not responding to consumers on these same social media sites; only 55 percent of brands regularly respond to users on Facebook, meaning nearly half of all consumer comments are ignored.

The numbers are a little better on Twitter (this study was obviously conducted before it rolled out brand pages), where brands respond about 61 percent of the time, largely because it allows for both private DMs and @ replies. Also, Facebook has recently been toying around with the idea of introducing private messages for pages to help alleviate this problem, but it still speaks to some potentially damaging missed opportunities by these supposedly social-savvy companies.

Perhaps that explains why the study also found that just 36 percent of social media users find brands with a social presence more trustworthy than brands who aren't on social networks. And online trust seems to be important, as 52 percent of users would be willing to pay more for brands they trust, while just 29 percent of people who aren't on social media will pay more for a brand they trust.

If that's not enough, 80 percent of users who got a response from a brand on a social networking site would go on to make a purchase based on the interaction. This speaks volumes about the crucial role that social media plays into today's marketing environment, as consumers are ever-increasingly expecting brands to interact with them on a wholly personal level, and the responses they get could be the deciding factor for turning a potential customer into a real live paying customer.

Social Sharing in 2011 via AddThis

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:30:00 GMT

Who is the winner of the social sharing wars? Well, Facebook of course. That's what indicated in data released today by ClearSpring Technologies, makers of the popular AddThis sharing platform.

AddThis is really the perfect platform to help understand social sharing trends. The tool is currently used on 11 million domains and see 1.2 billion uniques a month. So who are the top sharing services?

Facebook makes up 52.1 percent of sharing on the Web, followed by Twitter at 13.5 percent. Both Twitter and Tumblr are growing however with 576 percent and nearly 1300 percent growth for the two social sites respectively.

Some other highlights from the study:

- Stumbleupon creates a "viral lift" of 320 percent
- Google +1 grew 373 percent by has platuead
- Sharing on Digg and MySpace declined by 47 percent and 56 percent respectively

Twitter Tops Facebook for Press Release Efficiency

Linc Wonham — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:00:00 GMT

PR Newswire and social marketing platform Crowd Factory have released new data that provides some insights into the social engagement around press releases.

The two companies looked at tens of thousands of press releases, month over month, to analyze where, when and how news releases were shared across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The data reveals that although press releases are more frequently shared on Facebook, shares on Twitter drive significantly more traffic back to releases than shares on Facebook. The data also confirms that optimizing content for sharing pays off when it comes to amplification of news.

Key conclusions from the analysis include the following:

Each press release share generates two new views; expands total audience by 70 percent
Creating shareable content and enabling sharing capabilities through the relevant channels can dramatically increase the number of views for releases. The research found that each share generates an average of nearly two click-backs to the original press release. Additionally, sharing of press releases across social networks increases the total audience, or social reach, for this content by nearly 70 percent.

Press releases are shared more on Facebook, but Twitter sharing drives more traffic
Among the three largest U.S. social networks, Facebook is tops when it comes to the sharing of press releases: 48 percent of press-release sharing happens on Facebook, 37 percent of sharing happens on Twitter and 15 percent happens on LinkedIn.

But not all shares are created equal. In spite of Facebook’s greater popularity for sharing, each share on Twitter actually drives about 30 percent more press release views than a share on Facebook.

Multimedia press releases generate 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases
Not surprisingly, multimedia press releases that include photos, videos or audio generate more views, shares and clicks than text-only press releases. Adding a photo to a press release increases engagement by 14 percent; adding a video and a photo actually doubles the engagement rate. Press releases that contain photos, video and audio generate the most engagement, with 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

Picture Proof of Email's Value

Michael Garrity — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:00:00 GMT

One of the more well-received presentations at HostingCon 2011 was by Jeff Hardy of SmarterTools about the importance of email. The presentation has been put online and accompanied by an infographic that displays the difference in size and value between email and its closest competitors.

To quickly summarize the data in the graphic:

- Websites: There are 463 million websites, this term meant in the most general sense, that are currenly online with about 3.3 billion daily searches.

- Google+: There are 10 million accounts (obviously this is higher now, since they've had over 25 million users since August) and about 1 billion items shared on the site daily.

- Twitter: Twitter has more than 300 million accounts, though new statistics tell us that over 50 percent of those are inactive, and registers about 140 million tweets a day.

- Facebook: The world's largest and most infuential social network has over 750 million users and sees about 60 million updates every day.

- Email: Across the world, there are 2.9 billion email accounts, or the equivalent of approximately 42% of the world's population, and there are 188 billion messages sent each day.

This means that there are about 3 times as many email accounts as there are registered Facebook and Twitter users combined. Daily posts on those two social networking sites only account for 0.2 percent of the email traffic that occurs in a single day. The total number of searches on Google, Yahoo! and Bing, combined, is only about 1.1 percent of daily email traffic. Finally, the total number of page views on the Internet every day still only accounts for one-fourth of all of the emails sent.

Hmm, what possible conclusion could this draw? Well, let's go out on a limb and say that email is important. Web companies should take note of the power that their email has and how much it means to a company like Google, who find value in users above and beyond the price of email hosting.

As the infographic states, "Email is the most used, most valuable and highly-prized real estate on the Internet. This is why everyone wants it."

It's clear that even with the social media revolution in full swing, it's still going to be a long, long time before email is dethroned as the ruling power in Web business and marketing.

How Long Do Links Survive?

Michael Garrity — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 05:30:00 GMT

Who would have thought that bit.ly was useful for more than just shortening your URLs?

The popular link shortener recently released on their blog the findings of a very scientific study that they conducted about the lifespan of shared links.

Their work led them to two major conclusions: timely content has a shorter lifespan than information that can be appreciated at any time, and links posted on Facebook tend to last much longer than Twitter, but both pale in comparison to video-streaming site YouTube.

They started by studying a story titled "Baby otter befriended by orphaned kittens," initially shared by StylistMagazine on Facebook. They evaluated the perserverance of the link by determining it's "half life," which is lifted from a scientific term used to refer to the period of time it takes a decaying substance to decrease by half. For their study, the folks at bit.ly use this term to refer to "the amount of time at which this link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it's reached its peak."

The following graph shows the results of their observations on the life of the link. The half-life of this particular story was 70 minutes, which captures all of the clicks that took place between the gray lines.

Next, they decided to see what the lifespan would be for a link with drastically different content. This time, they went with "East Coast earthquake: 5.8 magnitude epicenter hits Virginia," originally posted by the Washington Post on Twitter.

Like the otter post, the graph for this link showed a pattern of a fast rise and relaxed drop-off. Of course, the amount of traffic coming to this link is much larger than the previous one, as an earthquake story interests more people with more diverse backgrounds than the story about small mammals. However, in studying its existence, bit.ly found that its half-life was only 5 minutes - after just 5 minutes the link had already seen half the clicks it would ever see.

What this data appears to show is that links with content associated with timely events, such as the earthquake, drive traffic much more quickly than content that can be enjoyed at any time. That is why the number of clicks in the initial spike is so much higher in the second graph. However, also because it is timely, interest in the content wanes much more quickly, because it is no longer relevant after a while. That is why the half-life of the earthquake story was so much shorter than that of the otter and kitten link.

The bit.ly people also theorized that it may be more than just the type of content that extends link life, but also where the link is posted.

Their next move was to look at the half-life of another one thousand popular bit.ly-based links. They yielded similar results.

According to their study, the average half-life of a link on Twitter is about 2.8 hours, whereas on Facebook they typically hang on for about 3.2 hours. When it comes to "direct" sources, like email or IM, it's slightly longer still, at 3.4 hours.

"So you can expect, on average, an extra 24 minutes of attention if you post on facebook than if you post on twitter [sic]."

They also noted, however, that there is an exception to this regular pattern: YouTube. Links originating on the Google-owned video-streaming site typically have a half-life of a whopping 7.4 hours, which means that clickers tend to hold their interest in links on YouTube much longer than other social networking sites.

The graph beow shows the distribution of half-lifes for each referring site:

"We'd expect to see link half lifes of less than 20K seconds (5.5 hours) for facebook, twitter [sic] and links shared directly," says bit.ly, on their blog, "And we'd be very surprised to see any link maintain significant traffic for a lot longer than 60K seconds (16 hours)."

They go on to add that they would actually be surprised to see YouTube links with half-lives of anything less than 5 hours.

To finalize their study, they concluded that the half-life of the average bit.ly link is about 3 hours, unless it is published on YouTube, where it will be around seven.

Ultimately, they say "that the lifespan of your link is connected more to what content it points to than on where you post it: on the social web it's all about what you share, not where you share it!"

Well said, bit.ly.