By Frederic Lardinois at TechCrunch: YouTube’s comment section isn’t exactly known for being a hotbed of in-depth intellectual conversations. One of the reasons for this, some would argue, is the fact that YouTube still lets people post comments using handles like ‘cutepuppies99′ without having to reveal your real identity. Starting today, however, you will have the option to use your Google-wide Google+-based identity that will show your real name (or at least the name you are using on Google+) to all YouTube users.
Google actually has been giving new YouTube users the option to use their Google-wide identity on YouTube since March. What’s new today is that even existing users can switch their old YouTube handles to their Google+ profiles. This means you can now use both your real name on YouTube and display your Google+ profile picture.
Given that you may have posted some videos or comments under the guise of anonymity that you would rather not be associated with under your real name, Don’t worry. Google also lets you see your comment and video history, as well as your public playlists, and lets you decide whether you want it to be associated with your full name.
By Devon Glenn at Social Times: Twitter users are more engaged with Pinterest than Facebook, according to data visualization community Visual.ly. In this infographic, see how @pinterest and @facebook compare in terms of demographics, number of followers, and interactions on Twitter.
Although Pinterest and Facebook have thriving communities of their own, each company maintains a strong presence on the microblogging site, where they can post updates that link back to their blogs. That’s because Twitter is where people go for news. (The exception of course, being Mark Zuckerberg’s double announcement of the Facebook IPO and his marriage to Priscilla Chan on his own Facebook page.)
To create this infographic, the Visual.ly team pulled data on each account from People Browsr and the Twitter API to create a side-by-side comparison of each social network’s followers on Twitter. Facebook still dominates the landscape with 4.06 million followers. Pinterest, by comparison, only has 832,700. (Neither company seems to follow very many people back.)
By Thom Craver, At long last, the Google Analytics team has announced an official Google Analytics mobile app. There are nearly a dozen apps in the Google Play store that use the Google Analytics API to display reports and other dashboards.
The app uses a swipe-gesture interface to switch between screens that include access to multiple reports for all your Google Analytics profiles, including real-time analytics, all your dashboard stats and even goal alerts, all on-the-go. "Our users have been asking us for a Google Analytics app for some time now, and we're so excited to make it available today on Android," said Peng Li, a software engineer at Google. "This project has been a real labor of love, and we're thrilled that users can start downloading the app today."
Earlier today, the Analytics team also announced Mobile App Analytics. With their newly release app, you can now check your mobile app's analytics with the Google Analytics mobile app.
By Mary Long at Social Times: Do you post you tweets on LinkedIn? Well, not anymore you don’t. LinkedIn just announced that starting today, regardless of whether you sync all of your tweets with the professional networking behemoth or only those designated with the #in hashtag, you will no longer be able to share your 140 character posts.
Why? Good question.
Here’s the announcement LinkedIn just sent out to platform participants:
Since Google became the most popular search engine the SEO industry has grown exponentially year after year. Since the term was coined in the lately nineties, this industry has taken off. Today there are million of searches every month, more are more people are interesting in Search Engine Optimization. Because of that interest, there are hundreds of books on Amazon.com, thousand of experts on Twitter, blog posts, etc.
So, this infographic is aimed to answer questions like: How big is the SEO industry? Which one is bigger: social media,ppc or SEO? Which are the top SEO terms? How many SEO books are available on Amazon.com? This Infographic is Published by BlueCaribu
The infographic breaks down Facebook user stats by state, as well as some other potentially handy tidbits that could help social media marketers and business owners understand the “who”, “where” & “what to say” -type issues that can lead to an under-developed social media campaign, if left unanswered. This hearkens back to a simple rule, divulged the first week of English 101, and what we think should be the Golden Rule of social media marketing: “When writing anything, know your audience”…especially where they’re located! This Infographic is Designed By Crest Media, Inc.
By John Haydon at Social Media Today: The great thing about Facebook is that what works and what doesn’t work can be measured very specifically. And there’s probably nobody more experienced in the science of social media than Dan Zarrella. Dan recently published an infographic based on more than 1.3 million Facebook updates from the top 10,000 pages. Here are a few things that stand out:
Photos get the most likes and shares
On your Facebook Page, you can publish updates, videos, photos and links. Of these four type of content, photos get the most likes and shares (as shown below).
Positive or negative is better than nuetral
Facebook users want you to pick a side. Take a stand! For or against! As shown below, posts with a high positive sentiment get more likes, while posts with a high negative sentiment get more comments.
Best time of day is around 8:00pm
Facebook users like and comment on content the most around 8pm(local time), but share posts the most around 5pm (local time).
Via Spice Up Your Blog: Google want to crawl your content, Google want your content to be easy to crawl, They want your site optimized and if your content is unique and useful they want to rank it on the first page of their results for related searches.
So in this post I have added 10 videos the Google search quality team created this week to help beginners get their sites and blogs on Google.These videos are listed in a 'Step By Step' format and I highly recommend everyone from beginners to experienced bloggers take a look.
There’s no love lost between Android and Apple users, or at least among the fanboys and fangirls. The flamewar between the passionate adopters of the top two mobile operating systems has persisted for awhile now, even in spite of our pleas for a detente. Luckily, one startup is on a mission to bridge the gap between the Open and Walled Gardens, so that we can all join hands and walk off into the sunset.
At Google I/O today, BlueStacks staged a mock wedding between Android and Apple as the backdrop for the launch of its Android App Player for Mac — software that aims to bring 400K+ Android apps to iOS.
BlueStacks’ alpha release, which is available for free on the startup’s website, gives Android users the ability to run their favorite apps on a Mac, so that they can download Angry Birds, Temple Run, Evernote, etc directly into BlueStacks, or sync apps they already have installed using the startup’s “Cloud Connect” app.
The Mac release follows BlueStacks’ release of its platform for Windows, which allowed users to download and play their apps on any Windows machines. The PC version went like hotcakes upon its release in March, reaching one million downloads in just nine days. As we said at the time, the real key to BlueStacks’ success was its “ability to run graphics-intensive Android apps on desktop PCs, using its patent-pending technology called ‘Layercake’ … allowing Android apps to run on x86-based PCs, including apps written for the ARM processor,” like Angry Birds Space or Fruit Ninja, for example.
By Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch: Here’s an interesting twist for Yahoo, the beleaguered internet company, and Spotify, the upstart streaming music service that is taking the market by storm: today the two have announced a global deal, in which Yahoo will integrate and promote Spotify’s music service on the Yahoo Media network; and Spotify will get a Yahoo app on its platform. The move shows how Spotify is teaming up with a big, old-school internet player in an effort to ramp up its user numbers, and how Yahoo is looking to new blood to rejuvenate itself. But it is also a big blow for Rhapsody, which Spotify will now be replacing as Yahoo’s music streaming partner, a spokesperson has confirmed to TechCrunch.
The deal will see Spotify first rolling out to Yahoo Music. Later it will also start appearing in other verticals within the media network, including Yahoo Movies and omg!, says Yahoo. That represents a much wider-ranging agreement than the one Rhapsody had with Yahoo since 2008.
Yahoo says the app that it will create for Spotify’s platform will feature original, music-related content created by Yahoo — artist profiles, musical programs and other features. Spotify has 10 million users of its service. The app is due out later this year, the companies say.
Are you looking for ways to market your small business website with a limited budget? Whether it’s with established sites such as Google and Facebook, or newer outlets like Pinterest, there are plenty of options available to promote your site. There are at least 30 ways to market your website with a time investment and no credit card required. Some of these are oldies but goodies, while others are newer and exciting avenues you may not have tried out yet.
Here are 30 things you can do today to get started marketing your website for free.
Press releases still work. Granted a submission to PRWeb or a Vocus account make the pickup and link benefit much easier, but those cost dollars – so for this article lets reiterate the best free press release sources:
Send the press release to your local media outlets, or any niche media outlets that may be interested in what you do.
Claim, verify, and update your Google Local Business listing. This is extremely important. Google Local Listings have been absorbed into Google+, so be sure to check out this great resource over at Blumenthals.com to keep up to date on how to manage your Google Local Listing.
Find a niche social media site that pertains to your exact business and participate. Be helpful, provide relevant and useful information, and your word of mouth advertising will grow from that engagement.
Search your niche or service plus forums to find ideas. If there isn’t a forum out there, consider starting one.
Build a Google+ page for your business and follow businesses that are related to your product or service niche. Share informative and relative content and link to your profile from your website. You should also consider allowing users to +1 your content on a page by page basis.
Setting up joint benefit with local businesses or others in your niche can help you reach eyes you never did before. Be sure to answer the question "Will my user find this information beneficial as they shop and purchase?" every time you link to a resource, or request a link or listing on another site.
Comment and offer original, well thought out, sensible information, opinion and help on blogs that are relevant to your website's topic and be sure to leave your URL. Even if a nofollow tag is attached, you could gain a bit of traffic and some credibility as an authority on the subject matter. This is not blog comment spamming, this is engaging in a conversation relevant to your website's topic.
Set up and verify a Webmaster Central Account at Google.
Update or create your XML sitemap and upload it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Write a "how-to" article that addresses your niche for Wikihow.com or Answers.com. This is kind of fun and a good resource for getting mentions and links. Looking at your product or service in a step-by-step manner is often enlightening in several ways. It can help you better explain your products and services on your own website. I will say I don’t know why some of these sites still rank well, many of them are junk. I do like most of the answers on the two sites mentioned above. Be picky with where you participate.
Write unique HTML page titles for all of your pages. This is still extremely important, don’t skimp on this one.
Share your photos at Flickr – get a profile, write descriptions, and link to your website. Don't share photos you don't own or have permission to use.
Start a blog. There's nothing wrong with getting the basics of blogging down by using a free service from Blogger or WordPress.
Make sure your Bing and Yahoo Local listings are up to date.
Update and optimize your description and URL at YP.com. They'll try to get you to spend money on an upgraded listing or some other search marketing options. Don't bother with that, but make sure the information is accurate and fresh.
Use your Bing Webmaster Tools account to look at your incoming links. How do they look? Are all of the sites relevant and on-topic? If not, reevaluate your link building practices and start contacting any of the irrelevant sites you can and ask them to take down your link. A clean and relevant incoming link profile is important; cleaning up bad links is a necessity until we can tell Google and Bing which links we want them to ignore.
Make a slideshow of your products or record an original how-to video and upload to YouTube. Be sure to optimize your title and descriptions. Once it's uploaded, write a new page and embed the video on your own Web site. Add a transcription of the video if possible.
Try a new free keyword tool for researching website optimization, then see #20.
Add a page to your site focused on a top keyword phrase you found in #19.
Build a Facebook Page and work to engage those that are interested in your product or service. Facebook is so much more robust than it ever was! Create groups, events, and photo albums. Link to your Facebook profile from your site and allow visitors to your site to like and share your content.
Install Google Analytics if you don’t have any tracking software. The program is pretty amazing and it's free. You need to do this if you haven’t already. It's that important.
Start Twittering or start doing it much better than you are now – it's a great way to network with like-minded individuals.
Pinterest is hot right now. If you have visually stimulating content that is relevant to the site's demographic, you can find great success right now. Be sure you're using solid practices for marketing on Pinterest as you get started.
Create a new list in Twitter and follow profiles of industry experts you know and trust. Use this as your modern feed reader. I don’t use RSS feed readers anymore. I like content that has been vetted by my peers and is worthy of a tweet or two.
Try a new way to write an ad for a struggling PPC ad group or campaign.
Review your Google Analytics In-Page insights and take note of how users are interacting with your page. Where to they click, what is getting ignored. Make changes based on this knowledge.
Set up a Google Content Experiment through your Analytics account and test with the information you obtained and changes you made in number 27.
Build a map at Google Maps and add descriptions for your storefront, locations, and nearby useful points of interest. Make your map public and embed it on your own website. Add links back to relevant content on your site if possible to each point of interest.
Keep reading Search Engine Watch for more free tips and tricks.
By Mike Isaac at AllThingsD: Zynga’s game playing network is massive — more than 290 million people play the company’s games each month. The problem is, Zynga says, those players are scattered across multiple devices and platforms and can’t always sync up to play the same games.
Zynga aims to change this. At the company’s second annual Zynga Unleashed event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Zynga unveiled a unified platform to bring players together across portals such as the Web, Android and iOS, Facebook and Google+.
“The social engagement across our network is industry leading, but it’s also fragmented,” said Manuel Bronstein, Zynga general manager.
The idea is centered around the Zynga message center — the hub found on Facebook and Zynga.com that contains a player’s friends list, an activity feed of friends’ gaming statuses and a list of gaming suggestions based on what games you and your friends are already playing.
Also, with the newly launched Zynga API, third-party developers can beef up their games with widgets previously available only on Zynga.com, like group chat, a live social activity stream, and a zFriends list. More social, the philosophy goes, means increased engagement — exactly what Zynga and partner developers want.
Players can also connect using the newly launched real-time multiplayer feature which, just like it sounds, allows multiple players across separate devices to play with — or against — one another simultaneously. That’s a far cry from the typical turn-based gaming that Zynga offers, like those games in the “With Friends” franchise.
By Mila Araujo at Social Media Today: There’s a misconception in the business world on the potential of Location Based Marketing. Many companies focus on the “How do we use this to attract customers”. However there is a flip side to the story, one many people in business just aren’t realizing. The power that location based apps give us to get to know our potential target clients, members of our community and our clients.
It’s Personal
When you as a business owner or business person start letting members of your community into your inner circles on location based apps, suddenly you have the opportunity to get closer.
You get to know your clients, where they shop, what they do with their weekends, how much they travel. Sure it sounds like pretty high end market research, but take this to the base level. Take it to the one on one level, where you as a professional link in with your client, and you share with them all the things that they do. Suddenly you are seeing them taking their kids to sports, to the beach, going out to dinner, or maybe not doing any of this. As you get to know your clients via location based services you really develop an understanding of what they love, what they value.
Next time you see them, you can ask them how they liked that camping trip, or about the great Thai restaurant they tried.
Two Location Apps that Give You New Insight to Your Client Base
Location based services like Foursquare and EchoerApp bring these previously cold relationships to deeper levels.
EchoerApp allows you to see what is happening in the community around you. It helps you frame what the people who travel through your area *really* think. It shows the ideas form and be amplified nearby, allowing others to guide themselves to the hottest spots, meanwhile providing insight to what the people in the area are really thinking. What do they really value?
Foursquare is individually based, it can help you get to know your client specifically.
Think about this when you consider the true value in getting involved in location based apps and services. Sure it’s great to make the mark for people to see you and what people are saying about you…but think about the flip side, isn’t it incredibly interesting to learn more about them?
Isn’t that the key to great service? Knowing your client?
By Zach Bulygo at KISSmetrics: 228% – that’s how much Groupon grew their revenue in one year. As one of the fastest growing companies around, Groupon employed many growth hacks that helped lead to massive growth. In this article we’ll examine some of them and how you can apply them to your own online business. As you’ll see later in this post, Groupon is based of turning subscribers into marketers by giving them control to spread the Groupon product.
1. Sharing is in Groupon’s DNA
You just found a great deal on Groupon. It’s one that you can’t pass up. The only problem that jumps in your way is that not enough people have signed up for the deal – and the deal expires in 2 hours.
You may see something like this:
Your motive is to spread the word, not just about the deal, but also about Groupon. Telling your friends, family, followers and whoever else you can about the deal and encourage them to buy. Those uninitiated with Groupon will become introduced to it through the deal.
Takeaway: Have you built your own Groupon style promotion? If not, try running a sale on a certain item. Or try offering big discounts to your current customers only if they sign up X amount of people within Y amount of time.
2. Tell Your Friends After You Bought a Groupon
After the user makes a purchase for a Groupon, they can share it on social media. This spreads the offer and the Groupon product to their friends and/or followers.
Takeaway: The option to share a purchase on social media is nothing new, but it can be quite popular. Leave the option open for a customer to share their recent purchase with the people they know. Chances are if they see the Tweet or Like buttons there they will click it. They probably won’t think about going to Twitter or Facebook to post about their purchase if no buttons are there.
3. Groupon’s for Multiple People
A movie ticket for one may be a nice deal, but what about for 2-3 people? These Groupon’s for multiple people help spread the advertising of Groupon.
Takeaway: Whatever your business does, it may be beneficial to add a package deal. If you run a SaaS company that sells project management software, you should try a ‘Buy one, get one for a friend deal’. Similar to referrals, this would have a customer buy your software, getting a discount for them, and then giving the software to another person who has never used your product before. The individual that got the referral then gets a month or two free trials. This spreads your product and increases your viral coefficient.
4. Daily Emails
It may be overlooked, but the fact that Groupon sends daily emails can be attributed to their surge in growth. Less frequent, more frequent, or no emails at all (requiring users to go to the Groupon page themselves), would negatively impact their growth. Emailing too often will lead users to unsubscribe. These daily emails get subscribers to keep coming back to the Groupon product a few times a week if not every day.
Takeaway: Email is a great way to get users to keep coming back to your product. It can also be a great way to lose a customer. Value and respect the fact that someone gave you their email address. It may be best to tell them up front how often they can expect to receive mail from you. So how do you know what frequency you should send email out to hit that optimal point of return? Answer: Test. Test your email campaign frequency and determine which rate works best for your business.
5. Share with a Friend, Get $10 in Groupon Bucks
Groupon turns their customers into marketers by encouraging them to refer friends. Under the Featured Deal page, Groupon subscribers see this:
If they click:
The person can only get the $10 when their friend buys a deal. They don’t get $10 just for signing up a person. The cost for Groupon to run this is $10 per person. According to Quora, the lifetime value of a Groupon customer is around $25-$35. Groupon profit with this referral would be around $20. Facebook is (as of January 2010) easily the biggest referrer for Groupon. This tells of the powerful synergy of combining referrals and social media.
Takeaway: What’s the lifetime value of one of your customers? Once you know it, try a referral system similar to Groupon’s. Don’t just have an option for emailing, make it possible for them to get referrals via social media. Watch out for fraud, some customers may refer a friend, have the friend signup, and later the friend will cancel their account. Consider building a system that can reverse the transaction if fraudulent activities occur.
6. Buy for a Friend
In yet another way Groupon turns customers into marketers, they allow subscribers to buy for a friend. If the friend is not a subscriber to Groupon, they get a nice introduction to it by receiving a free deal & see what process is like with Groupon.
Takeaway: Your customers certainly know someone who could use your software. It may not work great, but try having a ‘Buy for a Friend’ or ‘Give [enter product name] to a friend’. For most businesses, customers would rather refer, but some unique businesses may be better served by a ‘Buy for a Friend’ function.
7. Their Brilliant Copy
You’ve likely noticed that outside of the daily deals, Groupon posts a “Groupon Guide to [enter something weird here]” or something similar. These short, humorous “guides” are quite popular. Each one gets at least around 90-120 Likes, all of which drive traffic to the Groupon website and offer page.
Takeaway: It’s not about adding a bunch of different components to your website and attaching the Like and Tweet button to it. If you have something valuable that you think people will want to share, whether it’s a product page, funny video you made, or great copy.
Author: Zach Bulygo is a blogger for KISSmetrics, you can find him on Twitter here.
By Mike Lewis at Social Media Today: Wondering if LinkedIn or Pinterest are right for your brand? You are not alone – marketers have been focusing their efforts on the Big 3 (Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) but increasingly are looking to LinkedIn and Pinterest to build a presence and connect with their constituents. As a follow-on to our latest white paper, Five Killer Strategies to Dominate Social Media’s Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which offers insights into how the leading social platforms can be used for marketing success, we turn to dissecting the best social marketing practices on Pinterest and LinkedIn, among the most popular social platforms of our days. LinkedIn boasts 147 million users and Pinterest recently hit 10 million unique active users. These two social networks hold untapped potential for reaching new customers waiting for your brand to make connections with them. Here are some ideas on how marketers can approach the social platforms along with some suggestions for tools they can use to get the most of their efforts. We also bring two great examples of brands doing it right on Pinterest and LinkedIn. How to Use Pinterest and LinkedIn While the social channels may seem different, marketers can successfully apply the same strategies to each by using different specific tactics. For example, successful use of Pinterest and LinkedIn requires great content, but on Pinterest it’s best to “avoid self-promotion” (see Pinterest’s terms and conditions), while LinkedIn content focuses heavily on company and product updates. Pinterest and Linkedin can be used by brands to effectively achieve key marketing goals such as:
Increase social reach
Engage fans through effective content
Identify and engage with influencers
Increase lead generation
Integrate activity with analytics
Pinterest How-tos: Although Pinterest is still in its earlier stages, it’s clearly here to stay. Tools are popping up left and right to help marketers increase the effectiveness of their Pinterest efforts. Tools such as PinReach and PinPuff make identifying influencers easier and more efficient. Content development tools for Pinterest, such as Pinstamatic, Snapito, and Pinerly, allow brands to be creative and visually stimulating with their pins. Chobani, a yogurt brand, uses Pinterest as a way to tap into their customers’ lifestyles and create a sense of brand loyalty. The themed boards are based on their target audience’s interests, such as recipes using yogurt, nutrition, and being active. Chobani uses creative titles, such as “Chobani Fit” and “Chobaniac Creations”, a clever strategy that have helped the brand gain over 6,000 followers on Pinterest.
LinkedIn Success: LinkedIn has gained a reputation for successful lead generation, with marketers ranking the platform as 277% more effective than other platforms in a marketing study conducted by HubSpot. The “Products and Services” tab that displays customer-generated recommendations make LinkedIn an extremely effective lead generation tool. Embedding the “Recommend on LinkedIn” widget on your homepage is one way to encourage customers to actively promote your brand.
Juniper Networks, a business-to-business company that offers high speed, reliable switching routers to satisfy ISP-level performance, has a great LinkedIn company page. With over 40 products and services listed, Juniper Networks has 215 customer recommendations on their “Products and Services” page. The “Overview” tab is effectively utilized with widgets that give the most important and updated information about the company.
By Devon Glenn at Social Times: Apple has officially ditched Google Maps. When the company releases iOS 6 this fall, the latest iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices will come standard with Apple Maps. And instead of Zagat ratings and Google’s user reviews, Apple Maps will be integrated with Yelp, a popular social network for rating local businesses. If the new map doesn’t work out, at least you’ll know where to send your complaints. Apple announced the Maps feature at its annual WWDC conference earlier in June. A preview of the tool shows a local business finder. You can tap on a location to pull up a phone number, address, website, and pictures. It’s very similar to what Google Maps already has, but it comes with the brutally honest reviews and ratings from Yelp, which read like brief food memoirs, complete with personal backstories.
By Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch: Facebook has created a new feature that lets users find friends and potential friends nearby. Currently Initially called “Friendshake” and also accessible through a URL that is the abbreviation of “find friends nearby” (http://fb.com/ffn), it’s another step in Facebook furthering its reach into mobile, and creating services to meet new people — rather than building up more connectivity with the ones you already know. And, in keeping with Facebook’s emphasis on being as ubiquitous as possible, for now it’s not being delivered in a native app, but via the mobile web. Update: it’s accessible via Facebook’s mobile apps, too (see below the break for more details, including comments from the developer). The service comes a little under two months after Facebook announced the acquisition of Glancee, a mobile app that helps users discover people near them with similar interests, whose three founders have now joined Facebook and closed down their app. It is not clear if Friendshake has been created out of that acquisition, or if it has been developed along an altogether different thread — or how the functions of the two may eventually dovetail.
Second biggest European economy but a weak number 3 in the Online Economy, France is actually half-way down to second division when it comes to Search Marketing. So whereas the French population (65 million) is actually bigger than that of the UK (62 million) and the two almost have the same number of Internet users (50 million in France versus 53 million in the UK), when it comes to Search Marketing there is a tremendous gap as Search Advertising in France represents half of the amount it represents in the UK! This Infographic is Published by BDBL Media and Designed by WebCertain
By David Harry, If there's been one thing that tends to get me going, it's when people in the industry start talking about social signals. In particular, Google using them as a ranking factor. Is this truly the case? Or do a lot of folks have it wrong? Or is the answer a bit more complex? That's what we'll get into today.
For starters, let's get the easy bits out of the way. Most social websites of consequence use the nofollow attribute. This means that the traditional PageRank approach to scoring is a non-starter. Yes, there are those that believe Google is selective in how they treat NF links, I am certainly not one of them.
Personalization & Social
One area to consider of course is personalization. We all know by now that when you're logged into Google these days social elements most certainly can and do, change the rankings and what's shown for a query. But that is happening because of the relations one has in the social realm. The question at hand today is more about non-personalized search rankings. The concept that a lot of sharing (legit or not) can affect how the core rankings are scored. Let's consider this study Google did about sharing on Google+. They state:
67.6 percent of all items were shared using Circles and 33.8 percent of items were shared publicly (these percentages add up to more than 100 percent since some users combined sharing options for posts).
Here's the qualitative end of the study, from asking users: They do indeed have a deeper understanding of sharing that in the past when only accessing publicly available data. It stands to reason that they may see sharing as a more personalized activity than a broadcast channel. In that study they also look at naming conventions for Circles where they consider categorizations of 'life facets' (associations such as work, school etc..) and 'tie strength' (is a circle a catch-all or inner circle?). You can read the study yourself, but my point is not so subtle: social signals are possibly being seen as personal.
Signal vs. Ranking Factor
We next need to consider that a signal isn’t always the same as a ranking factor. Google has said, (in late 2010), in regards to retweets:
"Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article."
By and large social elements are for display, more so than as a scoring element that re-ranks results. An important distinction. Other types of signals can include:
Discovery
Trust concepts (pages and users)
Temporal (velocity)
Context (semantics)
Behavioral
Of the above, the more sensible are discovery and velocity. Certainly it can be said that a page can't rank if it isn't indexed, so social channels can have an effect as far as discovery is concerned. We also have elements such as the QDF (query deserves freshness). There could be some element of social sharing velocity that could play into that. I'll grudgingly give that some consideration. As for potential social signals that could be used for search rankings, Bill Slawski highlighted a post about Google's acquisition of some Groupivity/Appmail patents. Some types of implicit/explicit data he highlighted include;
Sending (via email, instant messenger, etc.) a link or bookmark to content to another user
Posting content (e.g., adding to a blog which becomes visible to others)
Applying a label to content visible to others
Making making a purchase or request from a website
Participating in social bookmarking
Promoting or demoting content in search results
Posting comments on bookmarks, news, images, videos, podcasts and other web pages
All are sensible approaches, but they do seem to make more sense in a personalized (logged-in) state than for open search. These forms of behavioral data would make tailoring content more robust and may be too noisy in a normal search setting.
Authority & Trust
Now, if I were to start to consider social as a ranking factor, I'd be inclined to look at how search engines deal with entities and trust. Meaning, the entity that is sharing the content would need to be a trusted source for any search engine to truly use it as a type of (non-personalized) scoring factor. This is where it starts to make more sense. Social media signals are inherently noisy and spammable. By giving different weights based on known entity data, the lower end of the spectrum would have less, or no effect on search rankings. That can help with spam to a large degree. Slawski also mentioned the recent addition to AgentRank (patents) doesn't treat all endorsements, (social votes) the same. Saying that, "those endorsements don't impact the content being endorsed directly, but rather indirectly by impacting the reputation score of people being endorsed. Which certainly makes sense. He added that, (...) if you endorse something that isn't worth being endorsed, your reputation score might take a hit." It becomes about the quality of your interactions, the value of contributions and sharing. In a situation such as this building one's reputation in a social graph is considerable effort, whereas losing it can be easy. Just always try to consider your TrustRank concepts; good links to good, and crap often links to other crap. Another element is of course categorization of users topically and establishing authoritative topics for each. Looking at some of the so-called 'FriendRank' patents from Google, they talk about categorizing elements of users within the social graph into;
Open Profile (user identification) – Uses identification and scoring/categorization analysis of a user profiles
Custodian profile (content relational) – Looks at inferences between the viewer of a web page and the person that created, or manages it.
Relationships and Topics – For looking at common relationships among users and related topical categorizations (and behavioral metrics).
Much of this seems to certainly show an interest in more refined social signals and social graph targeting. But still we're left to wonder; is Google using them beyond personalization?
Correlation and causation
Recently my friends over at Searchmetrics put out an interesting study that looked at some ranking factors and came to the conclusion (as have others) that social activity correlates well with Google rankings. The study was fairly broad in scope, something I usually bitch about, (thin data sets in the space). They covered some 10,000 keywords, 30,000 SERPs, 300,000 titles, 338 million Facebook comments, 8.1 billion Facebook likes, well... you get the idea. Massive. Here are some of the findings: Of course, we have to state the obvious: correlation is not causation necessarily. Slawski said he's been "a little wary of correlation studies because they sometimes don't tell us things that aren't fueled by confirmation bias or coincidence." In short, unless we actually knew all the factors involved in ranking on Google, it becomes hard to establish exactly what's going on.
That being said, we can surely say that regardless of Google, engaging in social channels would certainly have a direct or indirect effect on the world of search optimization. In many cases the activity results in wider visibility which can lead to links and other signals (as discussed earlier).
What's Google Saying?
Google has said in the past that they "(...) do compute and use author quality and that Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search." Traditionally social signals were used by the (now defunct) Realtime Search and Blog teams at Google. But the last we'd really heard on the matter (from Mr. Cutts) was that they were "studying how much sense it makes to use it a little more widely" in web search rankings.
More recently though on their own sharing system, Cutts has stated that +1s aren't the best quality signal right now.
If I had to take a guess as to what it all means? Again we can see that Google seems unconvinced on where these signals value lies. If they're unsure of the value for their own metrics (+1), one has to wonder how comfortable they are with 3rd part signals such as Facebook, Twitter or other social services.
The Final Word
And as always I am sure you're sitting there (having scanned to the pay-off) wanting to know the question we started with: How much do social signals play into Google rankings?
Don't be daft, I haven't a clue. The destination of this excursion was one that leaves you to ponder this yourself. When it comes to the big black box that is Google, we will never know exactly what's going on. Don't believe all that you hear. Don't jump on each passing bandwagon that meanders down the lane. Think about it first.
To rank based on tweets, Likes and +1s may not make a whole lot of sense. Does one count a share or a like? What if those change? Anyone remember that before +1s there was Buzz? How about the Twitter firehose getting turned off? Oh look, a new site called Pinterest! See where I'm headed?
It makes more sense to look at the users (entities) in the social graph instead of the actual sites where they're active. Search needs to be scalable and one would have to imagine that reliance on any third party site, metric or specific instance (tweet, +1, like etc) seems a bad choice.
Should you stop all your SEO endeavors and just spam social and links? Probably not a good idea. Ultimately there are many reasons to embrace social media in your marketing endeavors. Most of them have little to do with SEO. Embrace it because it makes sense to your business, not because it has magical ranking powers, and you'll make out fine.
By John Souza at Social Media Today: A lot of businesses are posting day after day, with absolutely no idea that they are publishing the worst kinds of posts on their social pages. These posts make people cringe, drive fans away or worse – they bore people to death. If your business is guilty of one of these 7 deadly sins of social media posting, then you need to correct it now!
#1: Lusting To Sell More To Your Fans If nearly all of your posts try to sell your fans something, then you’re guilty of lusting after their money. You’re also guilty of making the #1 mistake in social media – direct selling, instead of letting your reputation, knowledge and community sell for you. If your Facebook, Twitter and blog pages are strewn with sales talk, get rid of it all right now!
#2: Being Gluttonous About Information Most social marketers spend their days working to collect or encourage interaction on their pages. This could involve all sorts of marketing tricks, in a desperate attempt to get some comments, likes or shares. Don’t be gluttonous about information – the more you give, the more you’ll receive. Help people, teach people, comment lots and lots!
#3: Having a Greedy Attitude About Who You Are You must have noticed that the businesses that do really well with social media, are the ones that highlight the people that run their platforms. It’s far more interesting listening to Greg than it is reading something from a stationary company. Don’t be greedy about who you are, you are your business – so share your personality with your fans.
#4: Moving Like a Sloth on Your Posting Plan A torrid sin in social media posting, is posting too little. Fans like to visit your page each day and see something new there, even if it’s something small. If you’re like a sloth when it comes to strategies and plan implementation, then you need to change your ways – or your social media sites will go one way – down.
#5: The Wrath of The Online Business Guru It’s nice to be respected in your field, but don’t forget to be humble about it. Being overtly negative in your posts, or overly hostile to an incredibly angry commenter – is not going to elevate you in the eyes of your fans. Settle disputes by email, or at least calm the person down with promises of free samples, incentives and customer service.
#6: Envious of Other Pages Resulting in Copycat Syndrome If your competitor is doing something great and you feel compelled to copy them all the time, keep in mind that it takes a lot of resources to make an idea work. You could be driving away the fans you have, for the sake of posting something you ‘think’ will work. Find what works for you, use your analytics systems and test out your own campaign.
#7: Too Proud to Ask For Help No business is an island – I say it all the time. In social media, it takes a community to make a page work, so don’t be too proud to ask them for help. After all, they use your page as well. Get ideas, knowledge and help from your pool of fans, and improve your pages the old fashioned way.
Do you know of another deadly social media posting sin, that small business owners need to avoid? Tell me about it here!
By Zoe Fox at Mashable: As Google works to improve its mobile product, the company says its redesigned ads in Google Maps will increase click-through rates by 100%. The changes will being rolling out for all users Friday.
The new search results feature larger and more clickable buttons to place calls or find directions. Websites will load within maps, rather than launching a separate browser page. Google is also launching a blue hyperlocal marker, showing your distance from nearby businesses.
Maps is an important opportunity for advertisers, because 94% of smartphone users search for local business information. Of those searchers, 90% make decisions based on the results. Do you search for nearby businesses within maps? Let us know if these changes sound like improvements for your usage.
By Kandra Churchwell at SocialMedia Today: As anyone on this site is probably aware, Pinterest has become a power when it comes to driving traffic to retail sites. In the wake of this explosion, there’s already been a fair amount of wriitng on Pinterest as a marketing tool. We haven’t seen much (a little, not much) regarding Pinterest as a branding tool.
Pinterest has some pretty sweet demographics. Everyone knows the ladies love it. It turns out, those ladies tend to make more than $100,000 per year, while 50% of them are in the coveted 25-45 year old cohort. Half of them have kids. So – upper middle class, harried moms. A simple, attractive, social site like Pinterest is like... tailor made for these folks and some retailers (and some other often surprising brands) have taken notice.
Using Pinterest for Branding
Make sure Pinterest fits into your brand and social media strategy. No brainer here, but obviously not every social media outlet is appropriate for every brand. Although some entities and organizations that I wouldn’t have expected (looking at you, US Army)have turned up on Pinterest, and are apparently successful there.
Focus on lifestyle, not products. Brands like Whole Foods have been successful on Pinterest, not by posting links to their own products (although they do this), but by promoting a lifestyle that supports their brand. Their pins are shots of beautiful people in beautiful kitchens making beautiful food (hey! That’s available at Whole Foods!) Links to their own products are in the mix, but don’t dominate.
Make sure your own photos rock. Look at the other photos in your stream if you’re not a photographer and emulate your favorites. Or hire a professional photographer to shoot your merchandise.
Build an online catalog – if you’re a fashion designer, for example, create separate pinboards for your collections. Pretend this doesn’t contradict what I wrote before.
Optimize your Website for pinning by making sure it includes great images. On the other hand if images are not a strong suit for your brand, or simply inappropriate for your market, Pinterest may not be the most effective space for you to market. Stay away.
Place a “Pin It,” button on your Website, especially if you have great photos of your products. This allows users of your site to easily post images of your amazing wares to their pinboards.
Pinterest still has that “new car smell.”Right now Pinterest is an exciting new toy. Everyone loves it and almost everyone is using it, but we still don’t know if this is a long-term success or a flash in the pan.
Regardless of its staying power, though, the most important keys to effectively using it for branding are not that different from any other branding tool. Know your market. Measure your results. Be consistent and persistent. Don’t contradict your core brand values. Finally, Pinterest’s strengths (simplicity, visual flair) lend themselves to having fun with it. So have fun!
Which is why none of them will talk about it to the press. They’re terrified that if they do, Facebook will kick them out of the club — which is what many people in ad tech believe has already happened to two of them.
The story I’m hearing, from people who aren’t supposed to tell me about it: After news of the Facebook Exchange leaked to the press last week, Facebook came clean and announced its list of preliminary partners (TellApart, Triggit, Turn, DataXu, MediaMath, AppNexus, The Trade Desk and AdRoll). And then it told all of them not to talk to the press, or they’d be cut off.
Who got the boot? Well, nailing that one down is a bit tricky, since no one’s supposed to talk about it. And if those two companies want back into the club, they’re certainly not going to say anything.
But if you had to bet, the most likely wager would be on DataXu and MediaMath. That’s because the CEOs of both companies published bylined pieces about Facebook Exchange in Forbes and AdAge, respectively, within a couple of days of the initial announcement.
Hard to see how there’s anything in either piece that Facebook would find objectionable, since they’re both (unsurprisingly) overwhelmingly positive about the program.
But if Facebook’s point is that the only company talking about Facebook’s ad program should be Facebook, then you could guess that Facebook wouldn’t be happy about either piece. And if you’re looking for Facebook to clear this up, then I would like to offer you some shares in the upcoming Brooklyn Bridge IPO.
DataXu and MediaMath “are still on our list of partners,” says Facebook rep Brandon McCormick, via email. “We aren’t commenting on timing for any specific partners.”
By Adam Stetzer,at Search Engine Watch: Making search engine optimization (SEO) work in a competitive keyword space is difficult. The secret about Google is out – there’s big traffic to be found. Making things even worse, SEO campaigns die a premature death every day because the appropriate return on investment (ROI) parameters aren't in place. With an intense focus on the mechanics of SEO, small business often lacks discipline when evaluating the success of an SEO program, missing key components that simply can’t be missed.
Don’t Fly Blind
Believe it or not, people actually spend time and money on websites that don’t run analytics. This is crazy. You can’t fly an airplane without instrumentation, unless you want to crash into a mountain. You need to know your traffic sources, such as the percentage of visitors that come from search engines versus referral sites. You need to know what keywords perform, which means tracking time-on-site and bounce-rates at the keyword level. You simply can’t have a positive ROI from your SEO campaign without tracking, studying and really understanding your traffic.
Non-Branded Traffic is Key
Mastery of web traffic analytics means understanding the types of traffic as well. Branded traffic are visitors that either directly type in a domain name or use a search engine to find a variation of a business name they already know. If a veterinarian clinic in Cleveland is called DrPuppy.com, then a visitor who found the website via Google by typing in “DrPuppy vet” would be considered a branded visit. These are very important visitors as this customer already knew the business name. Public relations, reputation management, advertising and branding will drive this traffic. SEO, on the other hand, is about non-branded traffic. A potential visitor who finds the website via Google by searching “vet in Cleveland” is a non-branded visit. This is SEO at it’s best. A well-positioned website scooping up existing demand in the marketplace that had zero knowledge of the business name, but is searching in a relevant category.
Conversion is King
A great deal of time and resources are spent getting visitors to a website. A common trap is to then forget about the experience after a visitor lands. Typical conversion rates are in the 1-3 percent range. That may sound small, but it’s huge. The difference between a 1 and 3 percent on-site conversion can make-or-break the ROI for an entire SEO strategy. Study this. Use tools to understand where people go on the website and why they leave. Complete A/B testing to tune the site.
People Like Telephones
When focusing on Internet marketing strategies, it’s easy to forget that people like to use phones for initial contact. Up to 40 percent of conversions can come from phone calls for customers who were on the website before deciding to call the business. Without phone tracking techniques to understand which phone calls were ultimately from organic web sources, the ROI will look much poorer than it really is.
Email is Alive and Well
A confirmed lead from a website must be automatically enrolled into an email nurture program. While not a sexy topic, email is in fact one of the best tools for keeping leads warm between sales calls. The metrics on open and click-through rates are easy to understand and should be reviewed. Sophisticated sales managers also understand the importance of integrating email nurture data events (such as a lead opening an email or newsletter) with sales CRM.
Conclusions
SEO is a competitive place. With such a strong emphasis on specific SEO mechanics and tactics, it’s easy for small business owners to lose the forest for the trees. A disciplined approach that surrounds sound SEO with best-in-class measurement and evaluation techniques is critical. Furthermore, tight integration between SEO and other marketing processes such as email nurturing and sales CRM might just make the difference in achieving a positive ROI for SEO.
