7 differences between Social Media & SEO (Infographic)

There are some key differences between Social Media and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and for any marketer these differences are definitely worth understanding.

Gone are the days of 'Matching Luggage' (Link article worth a read)...well in reality sadly not for a lot of brands, but gone should be the days of matching luggage where the expensive hero television commercial is essentially rolled out across digital touch-points for all to hail the campaign as being 'integrated'. These brands then wonder why the digital element didn't meet over-inflated expectations. It was flawed to begin with!

Anyway, that could be an entire blog post in itself.

Social Media and SEO are ever evolving and both can have critical roles in helping a business achieve its objectives. Different marketing channels can have (and should have) different roles - the marketing content created for one channel does necessarily work for another, the marketing tactics created for one channel almost definitely will not maximise effectiveness when used on another.

The infographic below created by Orbit Media Studios explains some fundamental and important differences between the Social Media and SEO across seven categories. Understand each one to maximise both your Social Media and SE0 strategies and to manage expectations of both.

#1 - Speed
#2 - Upper limits
#3 - Topics
#4 - Formats
#5 - Audience Intent
#6 - Effort
#7 - Measurement

The Facebook free bus has left this town

I recently read a good article by Jeff Bullas which raised some very good points about Facebook. For people who work within social media it is common knowledge that the proverbial Facebook 'free bus' has gone - this post is for the marketers that perhaps were not fully aware of that. 

Without alienating you with social media lingo that often gets bounded about ten to the dozen, my summary and takeaways below are in lamens terms.

Jeff's article focuses on the biggest social media platform of them all, Facebook. I think this is a very pertinent topic for many brands that are active on this platform.

For those of you who maybe aren’t too familiar with Facebook media / advertising, I have some bullet points at the bottom of this post that explain what is possible on this medium.

Twitter - Trust, security and the sheer scale of tweets (Talk)

Below is a short, candid and interesting talk by Del Harvey, who has the arduous role of VP of Trust and Safety at Twitter.

Twitter has come along way in the last 5 years! From 2 million tweets per day back in 2009 to 500 million tweets per day in January 2014, which according to her maths is an increase of 24, 900%, and equates to the 2009 per day total of 2 million tweets now happening every 6 minutes! Del demonstrates the sheer scale of the task of trust and safety on Twitter, and what they are doing to combat it.

Delivered in an entertaining and almost positively satirical tone, you will hear about cats, street slang, the international space station and geo targetted images.

This is a good-sharp talk with interesting insights that makes me think how enormous their task of balancing trust and safety, whilst allowing freedom of speech and the many exceptions to the rule to exist.

Social Media Growth (Infographic)

The infographic below created by Search Engine Journal at the back end of 2013 basically speaks for itself in that it gives an impressive graphic overview of how huge social media has become over the last decade.

Huge in terms of monthly active users on social media, time spent per day on it, mobile skew, and huge in terms of the number of brands considering it within their marketing.

Facebook leading the way

With 1.5 billion active monthly users and a 57% penetration rate in Australia (12 million people), Facebook is very much leading the way, but are brands reaping a positive ROI from platforms such as Facebook versus the time they put in? Across the board I am not convinced.

I think there was (and still is) a huge knee jerk reaction for brands to get themselves onto networks such as Facebook simply because 'everyone else is'. Don't misunderstand me here, some brands are getting an excellent return from their social media activity, but the brands that are are the brands that have specific objectives, specific budgets, and specific resources and roadmaps for social media itself. These brands have also moved away from the oh so very annoying and to be honest ridiculous metrics of success of likes and followers. The targeting tools on networks like Facebook are increasingly improving to the point of being pretty excellent, but with more and more people advertising on there, brands need to maintain creativity and proactivity (and a healthy media budget) to be noticed from the ever growing crowd.

SUPER China, Amazon the Predictor, & 10 Useful Marketing Lists

The post delves into and discusses two interesting marketing articles that I have recently read that are definitely food for thought, and also one really useful digital marketing resource.

• Amazon: There is the potential Ecommerce delivery game changer waiting to happen with Amazon patenting technology that will guess and deliver products before the sale even occurs. 

• China: It has become apparent that the Chinese online-digital market is, well huge. With the incredible online-digital user numbers, connectivity, innovation, increase in disposable income, rise in educated graduates, and digital trends occurring in the mahoosive Chinese marketplace; this is a game-industry changer that most of us aren't even aware of; and we should be. 

• Resource: 10 useful digital marketing lists. 

The State of Social Media Marketing (Infographic)

SMM - Should we?

Since time began for Social Media Marketing (SMM), the big debate and quest for analysis of the 'return on investment' from SMM has long been the talk both in the marketing world, and the board room.

As many brands were barely getting the feet wet with basic digital marketing tactics, others were starting to realise the potential that SMM had, especially at first in terms of brand/product awareness, engagement, and being a valuable customer service channel.

Below is an interesting infographic by WishPond that shows the state of Social Media Marketing. It consists of data collated from a number of reputable sources (Experian, Hubspot, Social Bakers,
Nielsen).

Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

10 seconds and I know you...

You meet someone out one night, you're looking to employ someone, you're trying to find Mr or Mrs right, your networking; the thing is you can quickly 'know' quite a lot about that person just by using basic tools on the internet. Think Google search or Facebook just by typing the persons name.

And here's the thing - What you know about this person is probably (or at least quite possibly) more than that person would like you to know in order for you to base your first and maybe lasting impressions on them. There's that old adage "don't judge a book by its cover" - but it is simply hard not to sometimes, it's easy to see/read something which may well be out of context and then subsequently form a strong opinion.

And that strong, perhaps jaded opinion may be the difference in you getting a job, or someone connecting with you or not, or you missing an opportunity that may be have been perfect.

Social Media Networks by demographic (Infographic)

There is always a lot of discussion about Social media advertising.

• From the advertisers "does it work? How do I measure ROI"
• From the publishers "Yes it does, spend some more $$"
• From the industry "How to calculate your Social Media ROI....Social Media 101.." etc etc

According to a recent Nielsen Report, 64% of advertisers said they will increase their Social Media advertising budget this year, so it pays to know a bit about the audience, and how they differ.

When thinking about Social Media advertising, or simply activity on Social Media Networks, Marketers may have questions like?

• How do I get the best ROI from advertising via social Media?
• Does it work?
• Who is the audience?
• How is the audience changing?
• How does one network differ from another in terms of demographics?
• Etc etc?

Well, this post isn't isn't about answering all of those questions, it is about the audiences, and how they differ.

Pinterest - Putting the IN in PIN

Since it's launch in 2009 Pinterest has experienced explosive growth. Some reports claim that active users on Pinterest in the US has caught up with Twitter, with 15% of adult internet users on each respective network. (Source - Tech Crunch).

Impressive.

The point is Pinterest continues to grow in terms of active users, functionality, and now its growing up by introducing its own analytics platform to capture the ROI crowd. Exciting times for Pinterest and marketers.

Below are a couple of inforgraphics that may of interest to new and old Pinterest users, which detail what it is (for those of you that don't know), the recent design and functionality updates, how people interact on Pinterest, and also Pinterest tools and other blog articles I have found useful.

Check Pinterest out, I believe there are a lot of marketing opportunities for brands and people using this platform. Don't be discouraged by the female majority demographic; the base continues to grow, evolve and attract new types of users. It's what you do with the platforms and how you market what you do that will attract people.

Top 20 Fast Food Brands on Social Media

Fast food - love it or hate it, the fast food industry is huge, and continues to grow. In Australia alone it is worth $16bn a year, and has an annual growth of about 4%. (Source)

If 'convenience' was a chess piece, think of it as a Queen or a Rook. It's the top trump. No matter how many consumer research groups, documentaries, and general bad publicity fast food retailers have constantly biting at their ankles, the 'proof is in the pudding'; convenience prevails. I guess the masses are just too damn busy (and hungry) to care.

And that is what amazes me. I actually almost admire the fast food industries ability to constantly re-invent / re-position themselves, and prevail despite the constant surge of negativity around them.

Social Media, education and customer service plays a major part in some of the major fast food retail brands strategies, especially where the brands can now be publicly attacked, and their responses are open to the world to see.

A brief history of YouTube in an infographic

In 8 years Youtube has grown from 0 to 800 million monthly unique users, 72 hours of uploaded every minute, and 4 billion hours of video viewed each month. There's no wonder YouTube is the #2 search engine, after...you guessed it Google; who actually owns it.

Below is a simple and interesting infographic by Shorty Media showing YouTubes incredible evolution.

Social Media Measurement - are we really doing enough?

Social - what's the value, worth?

What does a like, follower, share, mention, re-tweet, pin etc actually mean? What are they worth? How do all of these social interactions affect sales and retention, and how the hell do we compare an action on one social media platform versus an action on another? Should we? Can we?

All of the above are extremely valid and pertinent questions within the marketing industry, and to be honest, below are reasons why I think we are still a distance from having the real, or truly accurate answers.

This post isn't to give you the reader another 'Social Media - Return on Engagement' equation, there are too many of them about. It's really a discussion on how I believe the focus on 'social media metrics'  is a little too siloed, and what I believe needs to be done about it.

Social Media Network stats for 2012

Wherever and whenever there is data, beware of the 'smoke and mirrors'. By this I mean data is often isolated to tell a particular (and convincing) pre-defined story. Social Media Networks
can have enormously varied audiences, functions and therefore user behaviour stats. A universal metric (think follow on Twitter or like on Facebook) can have a hugely varied value and meaning depending on the network.

That said, in a world where a new social media network is pretty much launched on a daily basis, and where the big boys like Facebook are ever changing things to monitise the service and further increase market share; it's interesting and useful to look at some top level user stats.

The infographic below created by Pardot is a useful snapshot of the most popular Social Networks in the Western World. These include; Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google +.

Pardot have collated Nielsen data to show each networks growth, monthly visitors, and estimated ROI. These factors have then been converted into a grade and presented like a 'report card'.

The Psychology of Social Commerce

Twenty five years ago, if you wanted to buy something, anything, you had a few of options:

1. Go to a shop / face-to-face with the buyer
2. Order via a catalogue / respond to a classified ad
3. Order via the phone

There was no internet, social media, and therefore zero ecommerce going on. Want to reminisce on evolution of Digital - take a look at this previous post of mine Digital evolution infographic. 

A customers decision to buy was based upon (in retrospect) fairly limited information, whilst the masses perception of the brand/product was largely based upon the advertising dollars pumped into the marketing, or 'pushing' of the product. 

Sure word-of-mouth influence occurred but only within a persons immediate network of friends, and the friends would have to know that the person was thinking about purchasing a specific product/service to know whether to give up their knowledge and opinion.

Facebook Graph Search: 7 implications for brands

Guest post by Oli Mistry, Digital Strategy Director at Leo Burnett Sydney

On January 15th Facebook made one of its biggest and most interesting announcements relating to a major platform update it is planning to launch, Graph Search. Graph search will allow users to search Facebook for people, interests, places and photos. Unlike other popular search engines the results will be based on the interactions and updates of the user’s first and second-degree connections. Their friends and friends of friends.

An example of this might be a user planning a holiday being able to search for friends who have been to Thailand. They will potentially get results that show their photos, see where they checked into and stayed, where and what they ate and therefore who to contact for advice and recommendations.

We all understand the power of personal recommendation or brand advocacy and its influence in the decision making process when it comes to purchases. This is a hugely exciting update for marketers and although there are no details out there on opportunities for advertising it’s certainly possible to speculate with reasonable confidence about what opportunities might begin to emerge.

So what does this all mean for brands? What are the dangers, what are the opportunities, where might this initial update be leading longer term and what should we be starting to think about in terms of actions and strategies to gain competitive advantage?

The first port of call when it comes to predicting future developments is to look for insights into the company and industry.

Digital Marketing & Social Media tools guide

Digital Marketing - How do I....? 

Here's a generic situation, which may sound very familiar to some.

A buddy approaches me and asks for some marketing help. The last few years of slogging it out in a job they care little about has paid off, they now have a business idea of their own, some money in the bank, and a revived focus for their career. They are untouchable, fired up with energy and ambition, and all they want to do is get stuck straight into their new project, make things happen and make some $. It's time for them to let the world know, but the problem is they don't know how to, or better put, they don't know the best way to do so. So they look on the web and can quite easily be pulled in every direction by the pure volume of articles, 101's, books, video's, guides and expert opinions.

So after spending a few weeks/months learning, trying, failing, succeeding (repeat), they ask their buddy who works in Marketing for help, as he must know!...

• How do I get my site ranked on Google?
• How do I know if my marketing is working?
• What marketing should I be doing?
• Should I set my brand up on Social Media?
• How do I monitor my brand on Social Media?
• Should I use 'this' tool? Should I pay for 'this' service?
• Etc

All you need to know about Twitters new image editing tools for IOS

With the recent saga going on between Instagram and Twitter it comes of no surprise to many of us that Twitter has finally released its suite of image filters for IOS devices.

Much the same as found on Instagram, when uploading an image, you are presented with a set of editing tools that allow you to edit and see the modified image before making it live to the world.

This is a short post about the Twitter image editing tools on offer.
Editing tools are: Magic Wand, nine filter/effects and a crop tool.

Klout - A waste of time or no time to waste?

Working in the marketing industry, I hear and read a lot of strong opinions regarding Klout, so I thought it would be interesting if I asked five marketing professionals ten questions about Klout. Their answers are not only interesting, but reveal and represent the diversity of thoughts, opinions, challenges and gripes regarding online influence scoring metrics such as Klout. This article is not really about defining what Klout is. If you want to know more about Klout have a read of their website.

Metrics, data, and more metrics

We live in an age that is dominated by the internet and digital data. A world where to be without the 'web' would be as alien as a cowboy without his gun. A place where at least some of a persons online identity is publicly available, with the 'some' not necessarily being the parts you would choose.

Where there is digital, there is normally data metrics and accountability. People pay attention to metrics, they compare, benchmark, compete, and base KPI's on them. Successful marketers are using data metrics to optimise their activities. Overtime, the type of metrics utlised evolve in accuracy and flourish in functionality and use, but data/metrics are very much here to stay. In fact they are becoming the norm, the standard.  It comes of no surprise that there are companies such as Klout that are striving for a quantifiable metric/score that aggregates and collates data across multiple touchpoints, which, in Klouts case, represent (accurately or not) an individuals or brands online influence.

In the news and marketing landscape (particular US based), every now and again we hear about another Bluechip company that has implemented Klout scores as part of its recruitment process (think Salesforce), or about a social media/marketing course that has started attributing part of the final year grade to a students Klout score. Commercially, it seems more companies are jumping on-board with Klout Perks, where customers who have a certain Klout score are identified and rewarded.

36 Faces of Facebook Fans - which one are you?

I recently wrote an article Has too much social media turned you into a zombie that had a brilliant halloween themed infographic created by confused.com that compared social media users to types of zombies...(it was Halloween!!). Well, to continue the themed pigeonholing of social media users, or I should say, the known user types that are found on Facebook, I wanted to share this great and amusing slideshare presentation by Soap Creative that attempts to categorise the 1 billion+ Facebook users into 36 types of users.


From 'The Firsty', 'The Hater', 'The Expert', 'The Moral Highgrounder' to 'The Drawler', 'The Spammer', 'The Wannabe' and the 'Troll'; there is something for everyone.

Engaging, funny, true, and interesting. Enjoy.

Does the anonymity of the internet encourage dishonesty?

For some the Internet can be an escape from reality, a place a person and their actions can largely remain anonymous, where one can have a different name or names, a different persona, a place where reality can be distorted into; well anything. For others the internet is a place to extend offline influence, a place to connect with like-minded people, a place of opportunity and learning. And for others, (arguably the majority), it is a place somewhere in between the two extremes, oscillating between them for the many different uses it has.

Has too much social media turned you into a Zombie?

Many of us (me included) spend a considerable time using social media. This is no bad thing, amongst other things it keeps you connected to friends and family, up-to-date with news you probably wouldn't have known about otherwise, and engaged with other like minded people.

But some of us can get (at times) a little obsessed with it, you know the person who can't seem to put their phone down when in a restaurant, or has to check it when in the cinema, or must tag someone on a night out. That person is normally me, and it annoys the hell out of friends! Again, not necessarily all bad, but sometimes we can perhaps get a little too 'addicted' to it, if addiction is the right word.

With Halloween in mind, Confused.com have put together a great, Halloween themed, slightly satirical infographic, comparing obsessive social media users to zombies.

Facebook's Edgerank explained in an Infographic

Below is a short summary about my thoughts on Facebook's Edgerank and peoples obsession with increasing their fans. Don't get me wrong, I think the fan base metric is important, but would argue engagement rate and dialogue with fans / prospective fans is more important. It's a quality over quantity thing. If you can have both, even better - but work upwards from the lowest hanging fruit aka 'quality'. Perhaps this analogy doesn't even fit, as 'quality' is actually one of the hardest things to get right, and is the element that is often comprimised!

Within the marketing landscape, I am constantly seeing articles and video 'how to's' describing how I can (a) 'Increase my fans / followers', (b) 'Get my website better ranked in Google and (c) basically do a better job with minimal effort and maximum success....

What is Collaborative Consumption and what does it mean for the economy?

Firstly, what a find. A fantastic TED Talk by Rachel Botsman! Even though the sun was out in Sydney as I watched this talk in my lunchtime yesterday, I was transfixed, engaged and unfazed by the lure of the nice weather outside. Sign of a great talk.

Rachel Botsman discusses collaborative consumption, something which to be honest I don't really know much about. Or put another way, something I thought I knew a little about but now realise there is much more to learn and appreciate on this topic. This talk really made me think outside of my personal management of online reputation and made me think of the evolution in business transactions.

Rachels TED Talk very eloquently puts across the huge role that reputation has, especially for the many growing new businesses that are operating on a trust basis. It's actually quite astonishing at how many businesses / jobs are now being created within the 'Collaborative Consumption' vertical (or should I say horizontal), and as Rachel creativity puts it - Business examples based upon Collaborative Consumption are like "Lemonade stands on steroids".

Influence (think Klout) is an important metric, but real reputation is contextual and is a true weighting that as Rachel argues will become more and more important for business of the future. (It's already happening now).

What is second screen viewing and what are the marketing opportunities for it

I recently read a great article by Marketingmag on the 'Top 10 ways Marketers are using the second screen" and it was very pertinent to a project I am working at the moment. Essentially to transform our limited (in accessibility) online media player, to a multi-platform accessible player that adds real value to our customers. A very important product to have for an International Sports Broadcaster.

So it got me thinking...

10 Great Blogging tools for beginners and seasoned pros alike

If like me you are new to blogging, or you are seasoned pro that is just researching the blogging landscape for new tools then 10 Best Blog Tools for Beginners post by Alison posted on May 21, 2012 is exactly what you need. Being new to it myself, I have read a lot of good (and bad) posts on Blogging tools - this is a good post and I wanted to share it.

Short extract to wet your appetite. 

"Blogging can be challenging for beginners. We’ve all been there: the early days of blogging when it’s exciting just to receive a single comment on one of your posts, when writing good content takes up all of your free time, and when it feels like you’re talking to no one on social media.

So today, I wanted to share with you all the best blog tools for beginners. These tools can help you make friends online, find new readers, save time, and avoid common blogging mistakes.And of course, I hope there are a few tricks in here for experienced bloggers too! I didn’t start using some of these tools until late in the game, simply because I didn’t know about them."

Full article

Digital Marketing - What's it all about

This is a time where digital is booming. The last 5 years has seen an exponential increase in Digital Marketing spend; be that on media such as Search, Display, Social Media, Email, Affiliate and let's not forget the many analytics and database analysis tools which (should) be the backbone to any Digital Strategy. More brands are starting to migrate a larger percentage of their marketing budgets from traditional media to digital....

But Why? Obviously the below points really depend on the actual activity but generally..

How many fake followers do you have on Social Media? INFOGRAPHIC

Interesting #infographic showing the number of fake followers people have on Twitter. I totally disagree with companies that 'buy' followers. It's the anti-thesis of building an engaged audience!

Recent stats show that fake followers for some big brands / celebrities can be over 30% - which is a lot!

There is a great free tool http://fakers.statuspeople.com/ that allows you to see the authenticity of your personal or brands followers on Twitter. Thankfully only 7% of my Twitter followers are fake.

Full article via Mashable

Screenshot of the report below.

Digital Marketing & Social Media - My thoughts on todays landscape

My professional career has piggy backed the constant evolution of digital marketing. From the very first paid search engine marketing craze at the beginning of my career, to SEO where everybody and their dog thought they had the magic insight into beating Googles algorithm and promised to get your website to the top of the seach rankings, which even as someone who 'sold SEO' felt morally obliged to tell people it was a black art and the best I could offer clients was guidance on best practice (which is important). Then we had display & affiliate campaigns, email and then mobile marketing, bespoke web development which then blossomed to easy to use content management systems where anyone could easily set up a website. Then website functionality started to bloom with intelligent web functionality such as related products, wish lists, fully customizable AJAX tools, RSS feeds etc all of which we all know as web 2.0.....and let us not forget social media, which had been brewing away all along.

Digital:

The thing I love and continually excites me about digital is the accountability, the user centric focus, and the constant evolution and drive by the successful practioneers out there to deliver something that people want, in the way people want it, probably done best by people that understand people. This is a big shift from marketing from yonder years were there was a huge emphasis on the 'push' mentality. It must also be noted that there are many people using digital very badly.

Great Analytics tool for Social Media

Easy to use and free tool to track/monitor social media activity over time plus competitor comparison #wildfire

Find out more 

9 Tips for Running Successful Facebook Contests

Short and interesting post on Facebook contests advice by Jim Belosic.

Good Read