On February 1st, you’ll be able to buy yourself a Twitter brand page – if you have $25,000. I don’t know about you, but that price seems a little steep to me.
Twitter had originally accepted a minimum of $2 million from 20 large companies on the scale of Coca-Cola and Disney for the privilege of being the first companies to have brand pages on the microblogging platform. The pages look quite nice.
The big question is, when will the rest of us gain access to Twitter brand pages and how much will it cost us?
It’s obvious that Twitter is using this opportunity as a way to raise operating funds. But the problem, as I see it, is that the companies spending the most amount of money and getting in earlier will have an advantage over companies with smaller pocketbooks. They’ll effectively be the Twitter users that set the policy for the rest of us. They could use Twitter to shut the door on their competition, and may already have.
Has Twitter sold out to the highest bidder? Has it become a haven for big brands? Will it go by the way of eBay and alienate its smaller, less wealthy users?
Only time will tell or provide any answers to these questions. Meanwhile, if you’ve got $25,000 in your pocket, then you can buy yourself a Twitter brand page. Someday, you might be allowed to establish a Twitter brand page for your company for a monthly or yearly fee. Average that over a lifetime and you could very well spend $25,000, or more, for the privilege of tweeting 140 characters at a time.
Let’s hope that Twitter doesn’t become the social media website of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich.
You’ve likely seen those social media badges on your favorite blogs and websites. Facebook has the Like button. Twitter has the Tweet and Retweet button. And Google+ has the +1 button. Except now, it just got better.
That’s right, Google+ has improved its +1 button.
The new options include:
- Choosing a width for your Google+ button that works for your website’s design
- Finding a badge that works with the dark background of your website
- Using a badge that also shows your Google+ profile’s circle count
Google+ pages can also display a Google+ badge, which makes them a lot more attractive as well.
It’s already been proven that websites with social media badges get more shares, Likes, tweets, and +1s. Social media sharing is a great way to connect with new followers and potential customers. Google+ is a new social media site that also carries search engine marketing benefits so you can no longer discount it. I highly recommend using it.
Another thing you can do through your website that you should do is encourage your website visitors to add you to their circles on Google+. It’s easy to do and it carries a ton of benefits. I think those benefits are going to get better.
If you’ve been wondering about using social media badges on your website, start with a Google+ badge. Work your way up from there.
There’s a new social media site in town. It’s called Pinterest. And in the last month the site has gained 7 million new visitors.
Pinterest is an interesting social media experiment. And it looks like it could become one of the powerhouse websites, especially for women, its largest set of users.
The cool thing about Pinterest is that it is highly graphic. Take a look at its home page and you’ll see all the photos and images, and it isn’t cluttered.
The way it works is you set up your own pinboard. You can have one for your company just like Mashable has. And just like Mashable’s, it can be branded.
Notice how Mashable’s pinboard has the Mashable name in it. That’s great for reputation management and branding. Then, on the left, you can see the big Mashable logo with the website URL underneat. Again, that’s great for branding, but the URL back to the website provides a useful inbound link for SEO purposes.
If you look at the pins that Mashable includes on its pinboard, they’re not all self-promotional. They spend a great deal of time promoting other items around the Web. That’s great stuff. It’s the way that it should be done.
You don’t have to be a rabid self-promoter to be successful in social media generally or at Pinterest in particular. You just have to have a solid strategy for your online content, a strategy that includes promoting others while branding yourself. That’s the best social media strategy in the world, and your company can make that happen.
Rand Fishkin is at it again. Predicting the direction of search for 2012. He does it every year.
Two things stand out in this year’s predictions:
- “SEO without social media will become a relic of the past”
- “Google will make it very hard to do great SEO without using Google+”
These two predictions are intricately linked. If SEO and social media go hand in hand, then that includes Google+. If Google forces search marketers to using Google+, then that will enhance the need for social media overall. I agree with Rand. It’s coming.
Google could see this as a way to control link spam. Which brings up another one of Rand’s predictions: “Google will finally take stronger, Panda-style action against manipulative link spam.”
These three predictions seem to be linked in ways that make sense. If you are using Google+ to improve your website’s ranking prospects, then you aren’t out building questionable links. Link building, as we know it today, could be a thing of the past after 2012.
I think a lot of SEOs would welcome that change. A lot more will hate it.
But it could be a way for Google to finally kill link spam once and for all while improving the search results for users – especially users who are also on Google+. What do you think?
If you plan on doing any online marketing in 2012, what are the important methods of marketing that you should focus on? What should you stay away from?
First and foremost, SEO is definitely not dead. You shouldn’t give up on that yet. But it has changed in the last five years.
For instance, if you are out prowling for links and looking for high PR do-follow links, then you are probably wasting your time. But if you are focusing on placing your unique articles on high profile, high traffic websites where they will be seen, then that is a much better way to go about link building in 2012.
Social media is another online marketing tactic that isn’t going away. However, don’t just sign up for a bunch of social media websites and forgetting about them. Stick the large sites with current traction and high traffic. For most businesses, that means Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. If there are niche-specific sites that you can focus on, join them too.
Whichever social media websites you decide to join, stay active.
Video marketing and mobile marketing are two other online content strategies that are gaining ground and look to be effective in 2012.
Online marketing hasn’t changed much in the last five to ten years, but it has changed. Make note of the changes and keep promoting your content far and wide.
Thanks to Marketing Pilgrim for pointing this out. Google is marketing its new social network Google+ on TV. The Muppets have a hangout, which is one of Google+’s best and most popular features, and hold a concert performing the cover “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie.
Awesome!
This makes me wonder whether Google+ Hangouts can be used for marketing purposes. I don’t see why they can’t. In fact, I know they can.
Brands can set up a Google+ page, but to do so they first need to have a Google+ account. That account has to be a personal account.
So let’s say your CEO gets a Google+ account then sets up a Google+ page for the business. As a page, he could start a hangout and invite anyone he wishes. What he invites all of the page’s circles into a hangout and while inside the hangout he entertains a little while providing a bit of an uplifting marketing message?
The hangout could just last for a minute, but during that minute the CEO could field questions from the people in his circles providing for an interactive marketing moment.
Welcome to the new world of marketing and advertising. Social media is getting better all the time.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. A lawsuit over who owns the Twitter account of an employee (technically, a former employee) who used the account in part to tweet on behalf of the employee. Sidebar: There was contract.
In the absence of case law, a case like this is far from open-shut. In fact, it could get dirty. But I suspect that PhoneDog Media saw an opportunity to bully for money.
Ask any lawyer and he’ll tell you that a business should “aggressively” protect its trademark and other business interests. Otherwise, the company could lose them. It’s a standard line, and its one that is often interpreted to encourage business owners to pursue litigation for even the most extraordinary and awkwardly absurd situations.
I’m not saying this situation is “extraordinary and awkwardly absurd,” but if you read the company’s response to The New York Times, it smacks of legal double-talk.
“The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media L.L.C. We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”
When employers and employees begin to make handshake agreements regarding the latter’s social media accounts and using them on behalf of company business, it’s an area of law is very murky. It is in both party’s interest to get a contract. It could save a lot of headache in the long run and spell out the particulars that could make a lawsuit unnecessary and avoidable.
Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended to be legal advice. Seek an attorney before making decisions about your social media accounts.
Here’s an interesting take on an old saw. Your so-called social influence may be a sham. But that doesn’t mean it has no value.
I like the last paragraph of the article cited above:
If the Harvard Study is right and “peer influence is virtually nonexistent,” that doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the social media towel. All it means is that you may need to adjust your thinking. Instead of pushing to bring new lambs into the fold, sell to the ones you already have corralled.
First, it’s long been a business principle that it’s easier to upsell to current clients than it is to sell to prospects. Nothing new there.
But the study that says that people become friends because they are already interested in the same stuff more than people interest their friends in new things isn’t really new information, is it? I mean, isn’t that how it works in the real world? You become friends with people who have similar interests. You may, once in a while, talk a friend into taking an interest in something new on the basis of your existing relationship. So what?
The so what here is that, though rare, social influence does happen. While it might be savvy marketing to put some money into that influence, there are more cost effective online marketing techniques. And they’re not hard to find.
Conversational marketing is a concept that has been around for about as long as the Internet. First outlined in a book titled “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” it espouses that idea that markets have always been conversations – with the exception of that brief period in the 20th century that was dominated by mass media.
Unfortunately, some businesses – big businesses, in particular – are still trying to play the mass media game. But it doesn’t work. Not in conversations.
The Internet allows consumers and marketers to enter into a conversation where they can mutually agree to terms that benefit both parties. That’s what commerce has traditionally been based on. Both parties receiving a benefit in exchange for a benefit. And that’s what the Internet fosters as well. You and your clients can enter into transactions that lead to mutual benefit. But it starts with a conversation.
Online, conversations generally take place through social media.
If you’ll open up accounts at the popular social media hot spots – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ – then you can enter into conversations with your customers, or prospective customers. Then you can take those conversations to your blog and ultimately to your internal communications – videoconferencing, phone, e-mail, etc.
Don’t overlook the power of conversational marketing. It is a two-way street that offers untold benefits in the digital age.
Internet marketing is an ever changing discipline. How to effectively market your business and manage your content today is nothing like it was ten years ago, or even five years ago. If you plan to do business online, then you’ve got to adapt to the changing landscape of online marketing. That means adjusting your aim and trying new things from time to time.
Social media has only been around a short while, but it’s undoubtedly the way to market your business online today. And I don’t mean in the usual way that most Internet marketers today think of as social media.
The big secret in this industry is that most Internet marketers are about five years behind the times. Yes, five years.
They’re still trying the hard sell. They’re still pretending like SEO is the holy grail of online marketing. And they’re still banking all their social media coin on social bookmarking. But that’s not what social media is all about.
What it is about is building relationships. It’s about attracting the type of person you want to do business with. Nothing more, nothing less.
When you employ a successful social media campaign, you’ll know in the gut that you’ve made the right connections. And many times that translates into positive SEO. But if that’s your end goal, then you’re doing it wrong.
According to a recent survey, Facebook is the most effective social media website. Surprised?
A look at the numbers is really telling:
Very Effective:
- Facebook = 36%
- Twitter = 14%
- Video sharing = 14%
- LinkedIn = 10%
- Review sites = 7%
- Google+ = 5%
- Local/daily deals = 5%
- MySpace = 1%
Moderately effective:
- Facebook = 47%
- Twitter = 32%
- Video sharing = 23%
- LinkedIn = 24%
- Review sites = 12%
- Google+ = 7%
- Local/daily deals = 6%
- MySpace = 2%
Don’t use the site:
- Facebook = 4%
- Twitter = 24%
- Video sharing = 47%
- LinkedIn = 38%
- Review sites = 65%
- Google+ = 70%
- Local/daily deals = 76%
- MySpace = 81%
I don’t think anyone is surprised that more than 80% of small businesses aren’t using MySpace. What is surprising is that 76% of small businesses aren’t using the local and daily deals websites. Or that 65% aren’t using review sites.
While it’s easy to say that Facebook is effective for the small businesses that are using it, it’s really difficult to compare it to sites they aren’t using. Can we really compare?
Who’s to say that review sites and local deals sites wouldn’t be more effective if more businesses didn’t use them?
The question on everyone’s mind is whether or not there is a social media site poised to give Facebook a run for its money. Right now it seems that Google+ might have the mojo, but getting small business owners to try it seems to be the challenge.
If you are a small business owner and you’re ready for social media, are you going to try Facebook? Do you see an alternative?
You cannot manage a website without traffic. It is the lifeblood of any online business. So how do you drive traffic to your website? How do you ensure that your website is profitable when you are building your business?
Here are 5 incredible sources for website traffic no matter what kind of business you are running online:
- Search Engines – Search engines are still the No. 1 driver of traffic to most websites online today. That’s why we always recommend that you dedicate a portion of your online marketing budget to search engine optimization.
- Pay Per Click Advertising – PPC ads are immediate. You can start a campaign today and see business results today. Yes, you pay for the clicks. But if you do it right, it will be profitable. And the results are instant.
- Newsletter - An e-mail newsletter is one of the most profitable investments you can make. After more than 20 years, it’s still one of the most effective online marketing tools. You can take e-mail subscriptions right from your website and deliver your newsletter electronically more cost efficiently than any other kind of online marketing.
- Videos – Online video marketing is just as effective as TV advertising and much more cost effective.
- Social Media Marketing - The best thing about social media is it allows you to build relationships off site, then you can drive that traffic to your website for the close.
Use these five online marketing strategies together for incredible traffic generation results.
We’re continuing to deliver the latest news on Google+ developments and here’s another reason you should join the service. If you are a PPC advertiser on Google’s AdWords platform, then you can see social annotations if you turn them on.
I believe social annotations are going to become a key metric for a lot of online marketers. They could very well be a major part of your PPC campaigns going forward, and it’s real easy to see why.
Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew says that 71% of shoppers online make decisions based on the recommendations of their friends and family. If that’s true, then you give your fans every opportunity to +1 your content, PPC ads included. When a searcher calls up a search results page and sees that their friends have +1ed your ads, they’ll either +1 it themselves or click on the link. It could increase the effectiveness of your advertising.
At the very least, you’ll have a key metric to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. Getting tons of +1s? Then you’re making an impact. Getting +1s but no click-throughs? You can evaluate the reasons why. Getting +1s and click-throughs but no conversions? Check your landing page.
Social annotations are here. Now it’s time to try them.
The latest development in the Google+ saga is that the search engine is telling searchers how many +1s a particular search result has in their local area. That’s pretty awesome.
The question is, How can this benefit your business?
I look at it as like a metric. It’s nice to know how many +1s your content is getting around the world. For instance, let’s say you write a blog post and within 30 days you discover that it has 200 +1s. But what if you found out that 125 of those +1s were local to you? That would be a useful metric, right?
I think it would certainly be a useful metric if your business is a local business. It can tell you how effective you are at reaching your audience and that’s always good knowledge.
Another thing Google is telling searchers is who shared a particular page of content through Blogger. This could potentially make Blogger a much more valuable piece of real estate for SEO purposes, and for social media marketing purposes.
If Google keeps making these kinds of changes to its SERPs, then Google+ could become a much more valuable social media outlet than people are currently giving it credit for. This is worth keeping an eye on.
Google+ Pages for Business are finally here. Some of use have been waiting for these for awhile.
If you’re wondering just what a Google+ business page is, think of it as a Facebook page for Google. There are, of course, some subtle differences between Google+ pages and Facebook pages. One such difference is that you must have a Google+ personal account before you can add a page. But that’s a minor hurdle. I recommend that you get a personal account as well.
So what can you do with a Google+ business page?
For one thing, you can post to Google+. If you’re not sure if that’s a benefit or not, consider these points and then make up your mind.
- Google+ is owned by Google, the largest search engine online. While SEO benefits are currently unproven, you can bet that Google will eventually provide greater weight to personal profiles and business pages for brands.
- Increased online reputation management opportunities.
- Better targeted marketing as you can create circles around your different market segments and communicate with each segment more easily.
- Multiple pages possible, which means you can have one for each product or brand you support as well as each location you serve.
- More effective video marketing since YouTube and Google+ are integrated allowing you to share videos more easily.
- Google+ is the fastest growing social media website in history.
- You can schedule hangouts with your clients and partners and communicate for free with them via video right inside Google+
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Google+ is only going to get better. If you haven’t joined yet, I highly recommend that you do and set up your business pages now.
Social media sites have risen from nowhere to be the most popular sites online. Facebook is currently the most trafficked website online. It used to be Yahoo! Then Google.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine online. But it’s more of a social media website due to its viral video nature.
Twitter and Google+ are both in the top ten most trafficked sites online as well. And LinkedIn isn’t too far behind.
But the race isn’t over yet. All of the social media sites are working hard every day to improve themselves. The latest, Google+, is constantly improving and growing fast. It could become the second most trafficked website online in a matter of months. And Google is already suggesting that it will be the face of Google in the future. How that will affect its traffic numbers is anybody’s guess.
Who will ultimately win this war between social media websites is indeterminable. What is important for business owners is that you have menu options. You are not stuck using one social media site for your marketing and branding.
In fact, if you aren’t using multiple sites to establish a social media presence, then you aren’t getting the full benefit of social media marketing. The best approach to social media is to analyze the sites for their strengths and determine which ones make most sense for your business, niche, and situation.
Here’s an interesting post on how social media is changing search. There’s actually some real serious thought fodder here.
Specifically, here are a few snippets to bite into:
If I want to find information about very recent events, such as the things going on at occupy wallstreet or occupy oakland, I’ve been finding it much easier to type the hashtags for those into twitter than search at Google or Bing or Yahoo. At this point, Twitter still seems to be very much ahead of Google’s new freshness approach in pointing out recent pages about those protest movements.
Amen to that! Twitter’s been ahead of the search engines on recent information for a couple of years now. Twitter has actually become a breaking news center and is able to get news to the public faster than traditional news outlets. The search engines have yet to capitalize on that need.
(Source) So Google needs to have the best product to continue selling ad space. That product was ironically endangered by Caffeine. With Panda Google tries to solve the content issue and with the Social Signals linked inextricably to the Authors and Publishers tries to solve the obsolescence of the Link Graph.
Bill Slawski concludes:
Some topics demand very fresh content, and social media has raised the expectations of searchers by providing them with a way of finding fresh information on natural disasters, breaking news events, and other topics that are recency sensitive. If you search at one of the search engines and get no results for those topics, that might seem like a failure on their part. Google’s move towards providing fresher results was pretty much demanded by the expectations of searchers who want fresher content.
I for one believe the search engines have not yet fully tapped into social media’s potential for their search results. We’ve got a ways to go. But I do believe they are working on it. Bing is probably ahead of Google in terms of social media impact on search results simply because it includes Facebook in its results. And you can use Facebook to conduct Bing searches.
Don’t think that Google isn’t thinking of ways to make its search better with social media. Google+ is a big part of that effort and I suspect will become an even bigger part of the picture in the future.
You’ve likely heard that content is king. And that’s true, if you are talking about website marketing strategies. Nothing beats content. But PPC is king in terms of online marketing strategies.
Pay per click marketing wins hands down for a number of reasons even though it costs you money.
For starters, PPC allows you to get instant results. Write your ad and get it live today, you can actually see click throughs today and marry those up with conversions. No other online marketing strategy has that potential. If you build a website, you’ll have to get it indexed. There’s no guarantee that will happen in one day.
Social media can be effective marketing, but it likely will take you some time since you have to build up a following, build trust, and develop a track record. That takes time.
Video marketing can also be effective. Again, the chances that you can produce a video, get it online, and see results in one day are pretty phenomenal. It can happen, but not likely.
Other online marketing strategies show similar potential. You may get better results long term from SEO, social media and video marketing, but only PPC promises same-day results. And that’s just one reason PPC is king. There are others.
Influence is a measure of your ability to affect others, either for the positive or the ill. Klout is a social media metrics company that attempts to measure influence across a broad range of social media. They’ve recently announced a change in how they measure influence.
The question, are these changes good or bad?
Some people are reporting a drop in Klout score. These are usually social media marketers who started with a high score – in the 70s or 80s. Other social media marketers – mostly those with lower scores – are reporting an increase in their influence. Klout is claiming the changes make its scoring more accurate.
I guess time will tell whether that’s true or not. In the mean time, do you know your Klout score?
I’ve been pretty impressed by Klout. It determines a score of influence based on the number of people you reach, how much you influence them to take actions such as Liking, retweeting, and sharing, and how influential the people you influence are. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a darn sight better than most other social media metrics I’ve seen.
It makes me wonder, though, will we soon be making decisions about who we follow on social media based on their influence scores? I hope not.
If you’ve had one eye on Gogole+ and the other trying to figure out why you’d try it, let me give you 11 reasons why you should try it. You don’t have to leave Facebook and Twitter behind, and you don’t have to spend all your time on Google+ checking out your friends. But if you run a business, Google+ can be your friend.
11 reasons to try Google+ now:
- Every time you use Google+ your Google profile rises in search. Give yourself more search prominence.
- Because Google+ is owned by the largest search engine online you can bet there will be search benefits in some fashion.
- There is a built in local component with the tie-in between Google Maps and Google Places and Google+
- You can use your Circles for better targeting of your prospects.
- Google+ business accounts are soon on the way.
- Sharing YouTube videos is much easier through Google+
- Google Picasa allows you to share photos easier through Google+ and you have unlimited photo storage.
- Google Hangouts.
- Google+ allows you to add hundreds of new people to network with one click through Circle sharing.
- You can set the privacy for each component of your Google+ profile.
- It’s easy to use.
So how many more reasons do you need? Google+ offers you the best in search and social. Try it.
