It is a complaint from many ‘old skool’ people: social media makes that people are only looking at their screens, they are not in a ‘normal conversation’ anymore. You are hearing these remarks more and more often, and if you look around you, you will indeed see many people staring at their phones. But is it true? Is Social Media really making us less social? What do you think? (more…)
State of Search
Posts About ‘Social Media’
Social Targeting – Know WHO You Are Looking For!
This past week I have had the displeasure of hearing a wide variety of social media talk that has me perplexed. Is it not so much that people targeting social media are doing it wrong, or even that they have the wrong intentions. The problem merely is that they don’t understand what social media is, how to interact with it, and how they benefit from it.
I recently walked past a meeting room where a start-up was deciding which route to go with social media. A very boisterious message was delivered fromt he guy who is presumably in charge – “What social media platform are our customers reaching out to us the most?” The answer came, and his closing was “great let’s target that.” (more…)
Germany – Holland on Social Media
As a Dutchman this is not an easy post to make. Last week Holland lost (big time) to Germany at the Euro 2012 Football Champhionships. Now that is not something you as a Dutchman want to be reminded off too much. But with Social Media this has become relatively impossible. Because there is so much discussion going on about it and it doesn’t go away.
The Germans (they won so it makes sense) decided to put all the Social Media activity in an infographic. That brings some interesting data to light.
Facebook Gives Social Media Managers A Helping Hand
Facebook has finally implemented some well overdue changes to their ‘Pages’ feature which means that administrators will now be able delegate just that bit more effectively. The two features currently being rolled out are the ability to schedule posts and option to create different tiers of access and control. Like I said, well overdue 
(more…)
Big Brand Keynote Panel
Here we are at SAScon, the Manchester-based search, analytics & social conference that just keeps getting bigger & better.
After an emotional introduction from Manual Link Building‘s Gareth Hoyle and Manchester Digital‘s Richard Hudson, we kick off the first day of SAScon with a big brand keynote session moderated by Richard Gregory and featuring Ben McKay from Moneysupermarket, Martin McDonald from Expedia, and James Hamlin from Seatwave. (more…)
Google+ify Or Die
Danny started by giving the background on Google+ and how we need to engage with it to expand and future proof our SEO strategies.
Bas van den Beld, Chief Editor, State of Search
Bas started by going through the numbers. Google + is still very small when compared to Facebook from an engagement and a visitor perspective. This leads to apathy towards Google+ but there is more to it than that. Eric Schmidt’s recent quote about everything moving towards the Google + platform in the future shows how important it is.
Mind set
People are using Google+ because they have to. The mind set is key. The most basic human needs is the need to connect with others. It’s a nice sentiment but how is it important? Google has started analysing how people work and are translating that to the search engine. People trust authorities, People want what others have which is largely fuelled by jealousy. We are also open to peer pressure. We also like to spread the word about products and other people.
Google + is bringing in these elements into the search environment. Stop thinking they will kick out Facebook, it’s to get a grip on who we are. It’s all about data. We are getting personalised results in the US already and that’s coming to Europe soon. This is all to figure out who you are, who your friends are, what you do and to which entities you are connected. Go to http://google.com/s2/search/social#gd and you can see who Google thinks you are connected to. These connections power Google social search and they are constantly trying to get more of the offline world online.
How do these factors influence the results?
They are showing authoritative people within each sector. Rel Author is also powering this. Personalised search is also sharing other things like who is at which event. The images increase the amount of click through for those results. You can also thank people that share your content. Google results are also showing conversations in Google+ and you can participate in that conversation in the search results.
How do you use this?
People are more interested in the stuff their social circle share than your stuff. Your target audience are the people that share your content as much as the people that are buying your product. Find your brand advocates. Make sure that you make your content shareable. Work on your social circle and create content that your market wants.
Kevin Gibbons, Director of Strategy, SEOptimise
Kevin wanted to share how much juice you get from Google+, in theory annotations can increase your CTR by 5- 10% according to Google.
1) Miele: 19% CTR without +1s and 0% with the +1s.
2) Soft32 has 456 people that like their brand page – 9% CTR without +1s and 5% CTR with +1s
Overall in both CTR cases G+ had a negative impact but it actually makes sense because the +1 listings are less relevant than the informational results. The second reason is that the brand CTR is always going to be big compared to the deeper pages. Kevin argues that the CTR is really not the major win. The win is that you are getting traffic you would not otherwise get.
He tested clients with G+ vs. clients without.
They saw a 19.5% decrease in organic traffic for clients that aren’t using Google+. The converse was true with clients seeing a 43% increase in clients that did use Google+.
Asos is doing a lot with Google+ which has had a major search impact for Asos.com search impact. They are seeing a 100% improvement on organic traffic.
This doesn’t mean that Google+ has a direct correlation to organic rankings. Google+ doesn’t really matter at the moment in the algo but it is very likely to be there in the future. Google + is being pushed like crazy with 353 million pages indexed.
With Google penguin making things harder links are becoming more outdated as an authority element. This paves the way for social signals to form a bigger part of the algorithm.
5 tips for G+
1) Focus your SEO strategy on great content, don’t chase the algorithm, build great content
2) Build a great content team. Community managers, bloggers, content strategists, infographic designers, guest authors and video producers are all key parts of SEO teams in the future. Bring in people that can make your content stand out more.
3) Use rel=author to get more value
4) Create a G+ brand page and link to your site this syncs up your home page + 1s with your brand + 1s. Brand page +1s have been shown to influence search more than home page + 1s
5) Go in once a day and share your post and comment on your friend’s posts
Google + Tools:
1) View your social connections to a scary level (link is above in Bas’ presentation)
2) Find influencers on findpeopleonplus.com
3) Analyse your reach on Google+ Ripples and evaluate people that share people like you
4) Social sources analytics stream in GA
So in summary G+ has a negative CTR but that doesn’t matter because they are ranking better because of it. Ensure that content marketing is a central part of your SEO strategy.
60.000 Twitter Accounts & Passwords (Many Duplicates) Published on Pastebin
Twitter is looking into a possible hack on their systems when last Monday almost 60.000 Twitter accounts were published on Pastebin, a site which is usually used to share code between coders, but is often used by hackers to share stolen data.
It seems as if many (almost half so far) of these accounts were either Twitter bots, spam or duplicates. So far it is not sure if any ‘real’ accounts were published. According to Twitter many of the passwords are also not correct or not connected to the right names. Still, a list of almost 60.000 accounts with passwords showing up without a trace of who posted them is worrying. (more…)
Ray-Ban Hoax on Facebook Shows Even Marketers Fall for Peer Pressure
If something is popular and a lot of people go to a specific place you are certain that that place is going to be the target of those trying to do wrong. A busy shopping street will attract a lot of pick pockets. A busy website will attract hackers and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook will attract spam and hoaxes.
Usually most marketers know when something is a hoax or not and don’t respond to it. Last Friday however we witnessed a hoax attempt on Facebook go viral. The interesting part there was that most of the people who ‘fell for it’ were marketers. A funny side effect here was that they ‘fell’ for what is part of their own strategy: human psychology. (more…)
Friday Talk: Brian Solis at Affiliate Summit West 2011
Brian Solis, author of the bestselling book, Engage, delivered the keynote address at Affiliate Summit West 2011 on Tuesday, January 11, 2011.
Social Media PPC – Even More Ways To Spend Your Advertising Budget
We all know that search engines like Google and Bing are a fantastic place for brands to advertise, but did you also know that the bigger social networks offer their own advertising programs? Now more than ever before, it is essential to expose your target market or demographic to the services or products you offer and those potential customers are just as likely to find you via social media sites as they are via the search engines. In advertising, whether on or offline, it is vital to go to where your potential customers are and social media sites are becoming one of the most popular ways for people to interact on the internet on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Even when they are not actively searching, people are still being served feedback on products and services from previous customers and from their peers.
Advertisers who use Social Media PPC are tapping into the viewing and buying habits of those born after about 1980, the so called ‘Generation Y’. These users are the most comfortable with the internet and use it as their primary method of gathering information and making financial transactions. With 85% of Generation Y thought to be actively participating on social media networks, there is obviously massive potential to sell to them in a way they are comfortable with. The main players in the social media advertising market are Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn, and we will take a quick look at each of these social networks in turn. (more…)
Social Media Marketing 2012: Highlights
SocialExaminer not long ago came out with the Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Its a very insightful report which still is available to download. We will be discussing that report on a later stage, but VA Simple Services already made an infographic out of it which we didn’t want to keep from you.
The report is free and available for download until April 19. Visit SocialExaminer.com (more…)
Facebook Slowly Rolling Out Facebook Offers, Watch Out Groupon
It seems as if Facebook has started to slowly roll out Facebook offers. It seems as if they are contacting advertising clients who now are the only ones who can use it.
Facebook also published the video below on their YouTube channel explaining what Facebook offers is. Facebook has been testing offers for a while and has had different types of services just like this, but this time the Social giant seems serious. Rolled out like this Facebook Offers could mean a huge competitor for Groupon. (more…)
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