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We all know that Facebook is one of the most visited websites in the United States but statistics were released on Mashable today illustrating just that. While other websites may have more visits than Facebook, like Google, users spend more time on Facebook than any other site. And it isn’t even close.
These days it seems that everyone has gone gaga for Lady Gaga and as of today we may be seeing more of her than ever before. It all started when USPS declared that it was throwing out the rule that only dead celebrities can appear on stamps. Gaga’s fans were excited to learn that the Lady was now eligible to be immortalized in the form of a stamp.
I came upon an interesting article today on Mashable about how brands could gain more awareness on Tumblr. My first thought was brands use Tumblr? Not really, I know that they do. I also know that there was some controversy about this earlier this month because Tumblr was charging exorbitant advertising fees to fashion companies during fashion week. Tumblr has been the go to social media site for the fashion industry with good cause as the format suits editorial and runway photography. Seeing Mashable’s guide today made me wonder if Tumblr is a very valuable tool for social media marketing?
Today’s blog post deals with the subject of Google’s +1 button. For those of you who don’t know, the +1 button appears next to search results on the SERP. +1 is similar to “liking” a page on Facebook, it shares that with your friends. For example, if I’m searching for Chinese food in Boston, and my friend Jane Doe +1’d a local Chinese food restaurant, it would say next to that particular page on the SERP “Jane Doe +1’d this page.” Seems harmless, Google is making its search more of a social experience. Search engine marketing is now impacted by social media marketing.
Social media has become an integral part of any online marketing campaign. As with all technologies it is good to have an idea of what is going on in the world at large regarding social media. That is why I was excited to see this interesting infographic on Mashable.
The internet has been referred to as the information super highway and for good reason. The online universe is ever-changing but more importantly ever-expanding. New channels for communication continue to pop up every day and users and internet marketers alike are finding this torrent of media difficult to navigate. There was recently a post on the NY Times Bits blog about a new tool that could lessen the information overload that we experience as we become an increasingly digital civilization.
Recently digital start-ups have been setting a trend; not letting everyone join. As humans we want to fit in and if we feel as though we are the odd man out we are unhappy. This is one of the reasons that Facebook has millions of users. If you don’t have a Facebook you are looked down upon by your peers and made to feel as though you are a pariah (or at least a social media pariah). I didn’t have a Facebook for about a year after all of my friends had one and I finally caved in to the peer pressure and created a profile. But many people have a strong desire to be cool, hip and ahead of the trends as opposed to just following the herd. Some companies are playing on this desire by making their services invite only instead of appealing to the masses. This way, they get the early adapters and digital trend setters who will inevitably talk about their services to their less fortunate friends. This creates a demand for inclusion which eventually leads to the company going public. But the essential internet marketing question is does this actually lead to a traffic increase or do people just lose interest? Let’s take a look at some of the companies who have embraced this trend and their corresponding traffic for an answer.
Back in JulyI wrote a post about how Twitter was introducing Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are now referred to as Sponsored Tweets and are paid for by the advertiser and appear in the timelines of users who follow them. By doing this Twitter was able to monetize its service without becoming intrusive to users (because they only see the Tweets of companies that they follow). Today Twitter decided that with all of the early U.S. Presidential election buzz they would offer Sponsored Tweets to politicians.
I know what you are thinking, this is nothing new. While it is true that Facebook has given users the capability to “like” ads for some time this has only been an on-site feature. Google+ changed that when it was announced that Google would now been adding +1 buttons to display advertising. This is a really interesting idea as it flips the idea of social media advertising from sites hosting ads to ads that host social media capabilities. The real question, however, is how this will affect search engine marketing and PPC?
Right now the trend of personalized technology is exploding. From the US release of the personalized music discovery program Spotify to the introduction of the smart book recommendation site BookLamp it seems as though consumers want their information as personalized as possible. I have wrote several blog posts about how companies are integrating personalization technology into their websites and software (most notably CNN) due to consumer demand. Yet, it seems as though people are not willing to provide marketers with even the most basic information.
