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My first Search Engine Land article was published today! Search Engine Land is one of the top SEM websites and gets over 500k visits a month! My article offers effective ways to measure the value of social media marketing when it comes to business.
I did a presentation at my full-time job last week about the importance of social media and what it means to our business, a marketing agency (BIGSHOT). Everyone thought it was a great and informative presentation and I thought I’d share what I offered.
Here’s the video I showed as an introduction:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BIGSHOTmktg Free micro-blogging website where users can only post updates (or “tweets”) of 140 characters or less. Good for promoting website links, coupons, and specials. Has grown from 1.6m to 32.1m users just in the last year.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bigshotKC The most popular social networking/media site, where anyone with a valid email address can join for free. Separated into networks of schools (high school and colleges/universities), companies (they have to apply for their own network), and cities (usually only metros and capitol cities, as of now). Now has over 250m monthly active users (as of July 2009), with 120m users logging on at least 1x/day. The fastest growing demographic is adults ages 35+.
MySpace: Like Facebook, except MySpace offers the ability to completely customize profiles. Bands, Businesses, and Individuals all have profiles, there are no pages. Monthly page views have decreased over 20% in the last year, from 47.4b to 38b. Focus is on music, video, and celebrities.
LinkedIn: For professionals; focused on business and career networking. Their slogan is “Relationships Matter.” Had 43m registered users in over 200 countries as of July 2009. Profile focus is on job experience, skill set, what the user is looking for, and recommendations (references) from other contacts.
Why Should You Care? In the last year, social media has become one of the most influential components of the web. Because of it, newspaper readership has been steadily declining, about 10% from April 2008 to April 2009, according to comscore (during that same time period, online newspaper readership increased 5%). Studies show that internet users also let social media affect their online shopping choices.
“For every download of Windows Internet Explorer 8 from this site we will donate 8 meals to Feeding America…“ I already know what you’re thinking … there’s no possible way I can make fun of this, and I would like to let you know you are only partially right. Of course this is a great idea, who can argue with helping the less fortunate? And now that I’ve clearly stated I believe donating to starving Americans is a good idea and in no way condemn, judge, or regret this marketing campaign by Microsoft, let’s get to the question I know everyone is thinking: What do browsing the internet and feeding the hungry have in common? What mystery link has Microsoft placed between these two unrelated items to make them seem fusible? I’d like to say it’s guilt. Americans love to think that doing things they always do will somehow help the “less fortunate”, even though they probably have no idea who the “less fortunate” even are or where they live. So downloading a internet browser (something you would do anyway) and it will feed 8 people? People”ate” that up (pun intended).
Now, of course, we could always go with the mindset that Microsoft is doing something purely at the benefits of others, a truly self-less deed. But in an economy that is crappy at best, no one is expecting a multi-million dollar company to just give away money without personally gaining from said money. IT’S A PUBLICITY STUNT, and probably a cheap one at that. In all actuality, for each download Microsoft donates $1.15 to Feeding America, which has been rounded to be about eight meals (for every dollar Feeding America donates 10lbs of food). So for a mere 115 cents per actual download of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Microsoft reaps the benefits of positive exposure as well as use of their product. (Is it just me or is this plan sounding more and more ingenious?)
However, Microsoft has also shown what not to do. If this plan is so amazing why haven’t more companies picked up on it? Why isn’t everyone playing the sympathy card and guilt tripping customers into spending mere seconds on a good deed? How good can a product be that embodies Mother Teresa and still trails behind more competitive browsers like Firefox and Safari? But this is besides the point. Microsoft is using shady business tactics in order to persuade customers.
Personally, I see this ad as a recruiting attempt by Microsoft to sway consumers before the inevitable Apple vs. Microsoft battle. Building up their army so that iBombs and iTanks can be equally gunned and platooned against. Well march on Microsoft- I guess I’ll overlook your shady antics as long as there’s charity involved. After all, it makes me a good American.
– Bethaney Wallace is a English Literature and Creative Writing Major at K-State. When she’s not ranting for The Social Robot, Bethaney is co-copy editor at the K-State Collegian and attempting to finish her last semester of school.
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P.S. From Kelsey: The IE8/8meal promotion has ended, but if you like wasting time on the internet for a good cause, I strongly recommend Free Rice, which supposedly donates rice to the hungry if you are awesome at vocabulary. And let’s just say the staff here at The Social Robot donates a lot of rice.
For those who keep up with Twitter news, you couldn’t have missed the big news last week that Twitter was attempting to kill off all spam accounts on their website.
Twitter spam was getting out of control, and even though many users experienced heavy drops in the number of their followers because false accounts were being deleted, this can only have a positive impact on your business.
Once Twitter has mostly gotten rid of spam accounts, then you will have a more accurate picture of the genuine people are that are actually following you. For example, when you are thinking about tweeting about your newest blog post to your 10,000 followers, it will reach a much lower number of people, as almost everyone has some sort of spam account following them. Once these spam accounts are removed, you will have a more accurate number of people you are reaching through your tweets.
If you follow @tless, they will automatically send you a direct message every week with your total number of new followers and a total number of people who have ‘dropped’ you (stopped following you). For my personal Twitter account last week, I had 20 or so adds and 56 ‘drops’, due to the eradication of spam accounts.
While I’m not happy with the lower follower number, I do know that this is definitely more accurate, and I applaud Twitter for their efforts to get all that nasty spam outta’ there!
NOTE: If you don’t want your business account to be labeled as spam, read this great article on What is and Isn’t Spam on Twitter on ClickZ.
Yay!
