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Aim Social Media Marketing at Loyalists not Prospects!
Joan Voight | September 9, 2011
Brands should letting existing fans spread the gospel on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Marketers who put out their brand message on social media in order to attract new customers will be sorely disappointed, according to Gallup researchers. Instead companies should use Facebook, Twitter and other social media, combined with offline word of mouth, to persuade existing customers into recommending their products to prospects.
In other words, it is largely a myth that branded social media will generate sales from new customers. But it can generate the kind of insider recommendations that lead to sales increases.
The findings are based on a Gallup survey of more than 17,000 social media users completed in October 2010. The research evaluated everything from the latest mobile social media apps to old-school word-of-mouth. Analysis of the numbers was released September 1 in the Gallup Management Review. According to the survey, branded social media initiatives don’t drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network. But prospects are likely to try a product or service if they hear good things about the brand from an engaged existing customer in their social network.
“Since marketers are less likely to engage prospects directly through social media, they should encourage or guide their current customers to advocate on their behalf instead,” say Gallup analysts Jim Asplund and Blaise James. The research also suggests that brands should concentrate their social media efforts “on your most engaged customers because these customers are the most likely to advocate on your behalf and the least likely to criticize you,” say Asplund and James.
Specifically, about three-fourths (74 percent) of loyal customers engaged their social networks in a complimentary way about their favored brand, product or service, according to the survey. Loyalists never engaged their network in a derogatory way about their favored brand. In contrast, only 1 percent of disinterested customers complemented a brand, product, or service on their social network, while 14 percent criticized a product or service they bought.
Gallup’s analysis takes it a step further, saying that metrics such as Net Promoter, followership, app downloads, hashtags, and click-throughs are not useful for revealing a brand's social engagement (the degree to which customers will work for or against your brand within their social networks) and subsequent sales increases. James points to Apple as an example of a high-engagement and high-sales brand. “We compared the Apple brand to the Microsoft brand in our research and found out that Apple has almost 3 times as many fully engaged customers. Apple also enjoys a social engagement score that was almost 4 times higher than Microsoft.”
The analysts stress that a brand’s social engagement with a customer should be measured and managed across all channels -- online and offline. “Digital-only social media initiatives are leaving far too many prospects and customers untapped. Our analysis suggests that the most frequent type of social networking is still analog -- face-to-face or over the phone. Don't confuse the channel (social media) for the desired outcome, (social networking),” they warn.
Other researchers acknowledge the “friend factor” in social media marketing. Gian Fulgoni, comScore’s executive chairman, says comScore’s findings reflect the persuasive influence that fans have on their friends in driving sales. He calls it “the amplification impact of a trusted communication,” and compares it to the way that an audience's recommendations to their friends determine the success of a Broadway show.
Incidentally, the Gallup survey also shows that the likelihood of people relying on online ads and TV ads to decide what product or service to buy is about the same as the likelihood of relying on company Twitter or Facebook pages – a mere 1 percent.
Tags: Facebook
Categories: Social Media
Brands should letting existing fans spread the gospel on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Marketers who put out their brand message on social media in order to attract new customers will be sorely disappointed, according to Gallup researchers. Instead companies should use Facebook, Twitter and other social media, combined with offline word of mouth, to persuade existing customers into recommending their products to prospects.
In other words, it is largely a myth that branded social media will generate sales from new customers. But it can generate the kind of insider recommendations that lead to sales increases.
The findings are based on a Gallup survey of more than 17,000 social media users completed in October 2010. The research evaluated everything from the latest mobile social media apps to old-school word-of-mouth. Analysis of the numbers was released September 1 in the Gallup Management Review. According to the survey, branded social media initiatives don’t drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network. But prospects are likely to try a product or service if they hear good things about the brand from an engaged existing customer in their social network.
“Since marketers are less likely to engage prospects directly through social media, they should encourage or guide their current customers to advocate on their behalf instead,” say Gallup analysts Jim Asplund and Blaise James. The research also suggests that brands should concentrate their social media efforts “on your most engaged customers because these customers are the most likely to advocate on your behalf and the least likely to criticize you,” say Asplund and James.
Specifically, about three-fourths (74 percent) of loyal customers engaged their social networks in a complimentary way about their favored brand, product or service, according to the survey. Loyalists never engaged their network in a derogatory way about their favored brand. In contrast, only 1 percent of disinterested customers complemented a brand, product, or service on their social network, while 14 percent criticized a product or service they bought.
Gallup’s analysis takes it a step further, saying that metrics such as Net Promoter, followership, app downloads, hashtags, and click-throughs are not useful for revealing a brand's social engagement (the degree to which customers will work for or against your brand within their social networks) and subsequent sales increases. James points to Apple as an example of a high-engagement and high-sales brand. “We compared the Apple brand to the Microsoft brand in our research and found out that Apple has almost 3 times as many fully engaged customers. Apple also enjoys a social engagement score that was almost 4 times higher than Microsoft.”
The analysts stress that a brand’s social engagement with a customer should be measured and managed across all channels -- online and offline. “Digital-only social media initiatives are leaving far too many prospects and customers untapped. Our analysis suggests that the most frequent type of social networking is still analog -- face-to-face or over the phone. Don't confuse the channel (social media) for the desired outcome, (social networking),” they warn.
Other researchers acknowledge the “friend factor” in social media marketing. Gian Fulgoni, comScore’s executive chairman, says comScore’s findings reflect the persuasive influence that fans have on their friends in driving sales. He calls it “the amplification impact of a trusted communication,” and compares it to the way that an audience's recommendations to their friends determine the success of a Broadway show.
Incidentally, the Gallup survey also shows that the likelihood of people relying on online ads and TV ads to decide what product or service to buy is about the same as the likelihood of relying on company Twitter or Facebook pages – a mere 1 percent.
Tags: Facebook
Categories: Social Media
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Hoteliers social media case studied
Hoteliers : Here are 50 Social Media Case Studies Worth Bookmarking reviewp.ro/rajrTW
Thursday, September 8, 2011
intro-to-facebook
intro-to-facebook
Shelf Life of Social Media Links Only 3 Hours [Data]
from HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Pamela Vaughan
shelf lifeWhen it comes to link sharing in social media, it turns out it's not about where you share it -- it's about what you share. New research from URL shortening service bitly focuses on how long a link is "alive” before people stop engaging with it and whether it matters what kind of content it is or where it was shared.
By calculating what bitly is calling the link's 'half life' (the time it takes a link to receive half the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak), bitly evaluated the persistence of 1,000 popular bitly links, and found some strikingly similar results.
Half Life Research Results
* The mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours.
* The mean half life of a link on Facebook is 3.2 hours.
* The mean half life of a link via ‘direct’ sources such as email or instant messaging clients is 3.4 hours.
* The mean half life of a link on YouTube is 7.4 hours.
halflife density2 resized 600In a nutshell, bitly's research reveals that generally, links shared on Facebook, Twitter, and via direct sources like email or instant message have a shelf life of about 3 hours. This excludes YouTube, where people remain interested in links for more than twice that -- 7 hours! And while you can expect that the majority of links will only remain interesting for less than 2 hours, others can generate a lot more interaction and clicks, lasting for more than 11 hours.
From this, bitly concludes that when it comes to the lifespan of a link (if you exclude YouTube from the equation), it's not where the link is shared that matters; instead, it's more important what the link shares (the content) that has the potential to attract more clicks and engagement.
Marketing Takeaway
Bitly's research indicates that when it comes to promoting content in social media, marketers need to focus mostly on quality. Whether a link makes it in social media depends on the content it points to, so marketers should put the majority of their efforts into creating remarkable content that has the potential to make an impact. It's not enough to just post any links to Facebook and Twitter. Rather, marketers need to make sure that the content they link to is high in quality and valuable to its audience in order to reap the maximum benefits of social media marketing.
When it comes to content creation, are you placing enough emphasis on quality?
Photo Credit: Alex Barth
Shelf Life of Social Media Links Only 3 Hours [Data]
from HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Pamela Vaughan
shelf lifeWhen it comes to link sharing in social media, it turns out it's not about where you share it -- it's about what you share. New research from URL shortening service bitly focuses on how long a link is "alive” before people stop engaging with it and whether it matters what kind of content it is or where it was shared.
By calculating what bitly is calling the link's 'half life' (the time it takes a link to receive half the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak), bitly evaluated the persistence of 1,000 popular bitly links, and found some strikingly similar results.
Half Life Research Results
* The mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours.
* The mean half life of a link on Facebook is 3.2 hours.
* The mean half life of a link via ‘direct’ sources such as email or instant messaging clients is 3.4 hours.
* The mean half life of a link on YouTube is 7.4 hours.
halflife density2 resized 600In a nutshell, bitly's research reveals that generally, links shared on Facebook, Twitter, and via direct sources like email or instant message have a shelf life of about 3 hours. This excludes YouTube, where people remain interested in links for more than twice that -- 7 hours! And while you can expect that the majority of links will only remain interesting for less than 2 hours, others can generate a lot more interaction and clicks, lasting for more than 11 hours.
From this, bitly concludes that when it comes to the lifespan of a link (if you exclude YouTube from the equation), it's not where the link is shared that matters; instead, it's more important what the link shares (the content) that has the potential to attract more clicks and engagement.
Marketing Takeaway
Bitly's research indicates that when it comes to promoting content in social media, marketers need to focus mostly on quality. Whether a link makes it in social media depends on the content it points to, so marketers should put the majority of their efforts into creating remarkable content that has the potential to make an impact. It's not enough to just post any links to Facebook and Twitter. Rather, marketers need to make sure that the content they link to is high in quality and valuable to its audience in order to reap the maximum benefits of social media marketing.
When it comes to content creation, are you placing enough emphasis on quality?
Photo Credit: Alex Barth
New Article: How to Use Twitter Hashtags to Generate Event Marketing Buzz
New Article: How to Use Twitter Hashtags to Generate Event Marketing Buzz
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Wednesday, September 7, 2011
HSMAI eConnect - Five Tips for Engaging Guests on Twitter | By Pedro Colaco
http://www.hsmaieconnect.org/news/154000370/4052827.html">HSMAI eConnect - Five Tips for Engaging Guests on Twitter | By Pedro Colaco
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Does PageRank really matter
Does Google PageRank Really Matter?
by NEIL PATEL on AUGUST 31, 2011
Does Google PageRank Really Matter? quicksprout.com/2011/08/31/do
So what’s the deal with PageRank? Should you panic over every little change in your PageRank scores? Or do you even need to focus on increasing your PageRank?
Although those are all good questions that you have, before I dive into the Google PageRank (PR) metrics, let’s look at exactly what PageRank is and how it’s gained or lost. By understanding how PageRank is calculated, you can see its specific limitations in the evolving world of search, as well as what it can still be used to measure effectively.
What is PageRank?
As far as a working definition of PageRank goes, you don’t need look any further than Google’s own Technology Overview page, which describes PageRank as:
When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data.
Basically PageRank, which was also named after Google co-founder Larry Page, assigns a score to every page in its index based on the number of websites linking to it and the relative quality of these links. PageRank scores are reported on a 0-10 scale, with PR0 being the lowest indexed rank and PR10 being the highest.
If you have a new website your PR will typically be N/A until a PageRank update happens.
And if you are wondering how PageRank is exactly determined, according to PageRank Explained, the equation used to calculate PageRank is likely version of the following formula:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))
The formula above is the original equation that was published when Google was first developing the PageRank metric, so although it’s probably gone through a lot of changes over the years, the base variables are probably still similar.
And while you probably don’t care how it’s calculated, the important conclusion to draw is that links coming from a PR3 site with 5 outbound links would be more valuable than links coming from a PR5 site with 1000 outbound links.
The other thing to note about PageRank is that it operates on a logarithmic scale. This means that the difference between a PR0 ranking and a PR1 isn’t the same as the difference between a PR7 site and a PR8 site. This image below by Elliance should give you a good understanding of how it works.
How often is PageRank updated?
In 2008 there were 5 PageRank updates, 5 in 2009, 1 in 2010, and 3 so far in 2011. Although historically it’s updated a few times a year in the toolbar, it’s actually constantly being updated on Google’s end.
The reason Google doesn’t want to constantly show you your new Google PR score on a daily basis is because they don’t want you to obsess about it instead of focusing on creating a site that doesn’t just provide value to people, but also solves problems.
So whether you have a new site or an old site, it’s good for you to realize that your PageRank score is being update and you shouldn’t focus on what the toolbar is reporting. Instead you should focus on your marketing efforts to grow your business.
Is PageRank important?
PageRank does not correlate that strongly to search engine results placement, just because you have a high PageRank it doesn’t automatically guarantee you a high placement on Google. And if you also rank really well, it also doesn’t guarantee you a high PageRank.
In SEOmoz’s study, they analyzed the search results for 4,000 keyword phrases and compared the sites that appeared in these SERPs with their individual PageRank scores. If the two variables were perfectly correlated, in which the highest PageRank pages were first, the correlation would be 1.00. But as you can see from the graph, the correlation between rankings and PR in Google’s SERPs was barely .20.
The overall result of the study was that Google’s PageRank is, slightly correlated with their rankings as well as with the rankings of other major search engines.
So while it’s true that PageRank played a huge role in Google’s ranking algorithm in the past, its role today clearly isn’t as important in terms of rankings, due in large part to the fact that plenty of other ranking factors have been introduced since the launch of PageRank. As more ranking factors are introduced, their relative weight must get smaller, as each represents a smaller percentage of a site’s total score.
For example, when PageRank was first launched, it was one of maybe a few dozen factors that were considered by Google’s ranking algorithm. Today, however, the algorithm considers more than 200 different variables, decreasing the importance of each single ranking factor significantly.
My PageRank experience
I’ve own dozens of sites and they have all have a different PR. Some of the sites I own have a PR that is as low as 3 and I have a few that are as high as a PR8. The one thing that I’ve noticed is that 5 or so years ago the sites had really high PageRanks did really well in Google. But sadly it isn’t the case anymore.
It could have been the way I was increasing my PageRank as I was getting sites like TechCrunch and all of Gawker Media to link to my blog from every one of their pages through a business development deal I did with them (no money was exchanged). Doing this not only drove good traffic to my site, but it typically got my site to a PageRank of at least 7 if not 8. After years of doing this and realizing that I wasn’t really ranking higher on search engines by boosting my PR and my traffic wasn’t growing by leaps and bounds, I went back to old school link building to increase my traffic.
I personally don’t focus on PageRank anymore, but instead I focus on:
Social media traffic – as your social media traffic increases, you’ll typically get more links coming into your site and in the long run you’ll rank better.
Create good content – if you have good content that is unique, people will find out about your website and link to it.
Clean code – if your website code isn’t search engine friendly, you won’t rank that well. From meta tags to URL structures, those simple things can have a big impact on your traffic. For example, by just tweaking TechCrunch’s meta description and title tags I was able to increase their search engine traffic by over 30%.
Time – SEO is no longer a quick game in which you can rank on the top of search engines without putting in the time and effort. Don’t focus on growing too fast, but instead be patient. Build quality links instead of going for quantity and just give them time to kick in.
Site authority – it’s all about the long tail. If you want to get millions of visitors to your website you can’t just focus on ranking for a few keywords, you have to rank for thousands if not millions. Build links to your internal pages and you’ll notice that your overall site will get a higher authority and rank better across the board.
Conclusion
So based on this information, it would be easy to assume that PageRank doesn’t matter as much anymore. And, in some ways, it doesn’t. Having a higher PageRank isn’t going to get you ranked higher in the search engine results, which means that working towards a high PR isn’t going to bring in more website traffic or, consequently, more sales. From the standpoint of improving the metrics that actually make a difference for your site, it’s true that PageRank doesn’t matter much anymore.
Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google sums up this idea nicely in a post on the Google Webmaster Central blog:
I posit that none of us truly care about PageRank as an end goal. PageRank is just a stand-in for what we really want: for our websites to make more money, attract more readers, generate more leads, more newsletter sign-ups, etc.
However, this doesn’t mean that PageRank is totally worthless. There are two areas in which PageRank still plays an important role:
The way PageRank contributes to your site’s indexing frequency.
Using it as an indicator of penalties from from bad back linking strategies.
First off, PageRank plays a role in determining how often your site is re-indexed. If your site has a high PageRank, Google considers it to be more important and worthy of being crawled and analyzed more often than a lower PR site. Being crawled more frequently can lead to content being ranked in the search engines more quickly, so for this reason, having a high PageRank is still important.
Also, PageRank has long been used by Google as a warning shot to penalize website owners who are using linking strategy that violate Google’s terms of service. Recently, both Forbes.com and JC Penney suffered high profile penalties for using paid inbound links to boost their PageRank unnaturally or for selling them.
So with regards to our original question about whether or not PageRank matters anymore, the answer is yes… and no. While focusing on improving your PageRank isn’t going to directly correlate with better rankings I wouldn’t recommend abandoning it entirely.
If you see a dramatic downward shift in your PageRank, take a good, hard look at the SEO strategies you’re using. If your number continues to increase gradually, it’s smooth sailing for you.
So do you think PageRank matters?
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Adsense101 » Blog Archive » SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 31, 2011
August 31, 2011 at 11:08 PM
My Secrets to Improve Page Rank | Increase Page Rank Fast | Improve Google Page Rank
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