Archive for the ‘Social Media Marketing’ Category
48 Ways to Measure Social Media Success
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011Ultimately, as Olivier Blanchard has pointed out repeatedly, social media marketing has to demonstrate an ROI (though he acknowledges the questions have to be made more specific). In the b2b world, the “R” is generally leads (website call-to-action conversions) with some monetary value applied to them.
But it’s crucial to the social media ROI debate to recognize that “R” is an end-of-the-process measure. There are numerous in-process measures that may be impossible to tie directly to ROI, but are nonetheless critical in producing that final “R” value.
Consider automobile manufacturing as an analogy. There are an abundance of measures, from machining tolerances on shafts to the temperature in the paint room, which are vital to track during the manufacturing process. The C-level folks may not know or particularly care what these numbers are, but if those values are off, they will affect quality, which impacts rework and warranty claims, which impact manufacturing and repair costs, which impact the ROI of each vehicle.
Similarly, in social media marketing, there are numerous intermediate “process” measures that don’t fit into an ROI equation, but which are vital in optimizing social media efforts in order to minimize “I” and maximize “R.” These metrics don’t represent the goals of social media marketing in and of themselves, but are critical measures to help optimize processes to achieve the ultimate objectives.
Here are 46 intermediate metrics (and two final measures) to help marketers evaluate the success of their social media programs and optimize their associated processes. Most of these are easy and free to track.
Nine Blog Metrics
- • Overall traffic
- • Traffic quality (e.g. bounce rate, average time spent per visit)
- • Most popular posts (indicates topics with highest interest)
- • Search traffic
- • Social media/network-referred traffic
- • Other key sources of traffic (e.g., company website, newsletters, syndication sites)
- • Number of RSS subscribers (regular readers)
- • Number of email subscribers
- • Top visiting organizations (measure of targeting effectiveness)
Six Twitter Metrics
- • Total number of relevant followers (exclude the inevitable spammers and oddballs who seem to be attracted to any active Twitter account)
- • Interaction (@ mentions)
- • Retweets (reflects both level of engagement and quality of shared content)
- • Most tweeted links (i.e., which content is most popular with followers)
- • Influence (e.g., Klout and Kred scores)
- • Brand and mention tracking (e.g., from HootSuite or other social media monitoring tool)
Six LinkedIn Metrics
- • Number of company followers
- • Recommendations on products or services
- • Page views (of LinkedIn company overview)
- • Unique visitors
- • Click-throughs (on product links)
- • Followers by industry, function and company
Five Facebook Metrics
- • Number of Facebook page “Likes”
- • Friends of fans (indicates an organization’s total potential reach on Facebook)
- • Number of people talking about you (the number of unique people who have created content about the company page on Facebook in the past week)
- • Weekly total reach (the number of people who have seen one of the firm’s messages on Facebook in past week)
- • Most popular posts
Ten YouTube Metrics
- • Number of subscribers to the company channel
- • Total number of video views
- • Change in views and subscribers over last 30 days
- • Engagement measures:
- » Likes / dislikes
- » Comments
- » Shares
- » Favorites added or removed
- • Top videos, last 30 days
- • Playback locations (e.g., regular YouTube page, company channel, mobile device, etc.)
- • Top traffic sources
Two Google+ Metrics
- • Number of people / organizations in company circles
- • Number of people / organizations that have company in their circles
- • Note: Google has indicated that it plans to introduce more advanced analytics for Google+ soon
Ten Company Website and Cross-Social-Network Metrics
- • Total social media-generated visits to the company website
- • Lift in direct visits (an imprecise but correlated measure)
- • Lift in branded search visits (another imprecise but correlated measure)
- • Major social network visits by source
- • Traffic quality by source
- • Most-viewed pages by social media visitors
- • Top visiting organizations (all social media sources)
- • Top visiting organizations (by major social network)
- • Lead conversions (all social media sources)
- • Lead conversions (by major social network)
If you’ve utilized the first 46 metrics to continually monitor and adjust your social media activities, the final two—the real return on investment for b2b marketers—should validate and quantify the value of all your hard work.
10 Ways to Use Social Networks for B2B Marketing
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011Social networks are essential for expanding your web presence—not only for creating social signals now a key component in search engine rankings, which makes your website and blog easier to find in search, but also by giving you more places to be found online.
Creating your profile on each of the major social networks is a first step, but just that. A profile alone won’t get you much. As with most things in life, you’ll get out of social networks what you put into them.
Once you’ve filled out your profile (particularly including your core keywords and links), the basic process for using any of the more than 500 social networks now in existence is pretty much the same:
- Find interesting/relevant/influential people to follow/like/connect with.
- Grow your influence and attract followers/friends/connections by sharing interesting and relevant content—your own, from third parties, and from people you are following / would like to have following you.
- Interact (e.g., ask and answer questions).
- Recommend.
- Repeat.
The “big 5″ social networks have a definite “order of familiarity” to follow for proper social media etiquette:
- • Twitter, YouTube and Google+: you can follow/add virtually anyone you find interesting/relevant/influential. Don’t be offended if they don’t follow/add you back immediately; they may very well do so once they’ve gotten to “know” you better through your social networking activity.
- • LinkedIn: it’s best to have some familiarity (real world or online) before trying to make a connection. This is a level deeper than the majority of more superficial social networks. This also applies to other professional / social networks (e.g. Plaxo).
- • Facebook: liking a brand page (or asking someone to like yours) is fairly superficial. However, friending someone on Facebook is widely viewed as a deeper level of social networking connection. Put another way, the common pattern is to have more Twitter followers than LinkedIn connections, and more LinkedIn connections than Facebook friends. Only the gauche and boorish would try to friend someone on Facebook that they have no prior connections to.
With those basics established, here are 10 ways for small (or really, almost any size) businesses to use social networks for marketing and PR.
1. Create valuable backlinks for SEO. Links from your profiles and social network posts / updates all help to increase the authority of your website and blog with the search engines, leading to higher rankings. What helps most, however, is having your content shared and passed along by others with high influence in your market space. To encourage sharing, in addition to being active on the leading social networks, place social sharing buttons on your site.
2. Expand your online presence. Google, Yahoo and Bing aren’t the only places people go to look for information. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube all include their own powerful and popular internal search capabilities, and there are numerous social search engines that specifically search social networks and other social media sites. The only way to found on social networks is to be active on them.
3. Develop reputation as a thought leader (or something equally positive). By sharing relevant and helpful information, whether your own of from other sources, you increase your value to those following you, and expand your network. Sharing content developed by others makes you social; sharing content written about you by others enhances your brand image; and sharing your own thought-leadership or other helpful content solidifies your reputation as a smart, valuable resource that can influence decisions.
4. Promote your content / increase web traffic. It’s been written that, “If content is king, links are queen.” In other words, as essential as it is to develop great content, the search engines won’t give it much weight and few people will ever see that content if it doesn’t get linked. Social networks are a great place to build quality links, again particularly when key influencers within the various social networks share your content with their followers.
5. Expand your network of connections. In almost any major city, on almost any day, there are various types of business networking events: breakfasts, happy hours, seminars, forums and other types of events where local business people can meet each other and form new connections. Social media makes it easy to expand your network globally—or at least well beyond the confines of those who either live nearby or travel to major industry events. Social networks are invaluable for helping you make connections with prospective customers, additional contacts within client companies, industry journalists, bloggers and other influencers that it would be difficult if not impossible to connect with otherwise.
6. Develop and build relationships. Making connections is just the beginning. Social sharing and interactions enable you to develop relationships that can be very meaningful and rewarding, over time, with people you’ve never physically met, perhaps even never spoken with by phone. These relationships can lead to increased online exposure, expanded knowledge, new insights and ideas, partnerships, referrals, and ultimately—increased business.
7. Perform competitive and market research. Social media isn’t all about you, of course. Knowing what kinds of questions your prospective customers are asking, what problems they are trying to solve, and their opinions and observations about competitive firms can help you develop content that better meet market needs and set you apart from competitors.
8. Spot opportunities for innovation. Knowing more about the issues and concerns of your target prospects can also inspire ideas for product enhancements or new products, services or processes that lead to increased sales, greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, and/or new market opportunities.
9. Improve customer service. Traditional customer service channels are great for capturing information about and resolving specific customer issues (e.g., product malfunctions or “how do I…” questions). Social networks, however, open up possibilities for learning about other types of issues that may never lead to a customer service call: your product disappoints in some manner, your online form is too long and/or complicated, your website content is confusing, a particular piece of information or contact phone number is difficult to find, etc.
10. Generate leads and grow your email list (carefully!). There’s a reason this item is last on the list: while the goal of social media marketing is ultimately to produce an ROI, where the “R” is usually generated by increased sales, it’s crucial not to promote your offerings too blatantly or too early in the social networking process. Engaging in self-promotion too early will get you labeled as a spammer, damage your reputation and hobble your ability to grow a productive network. Promoting too blatantly is never advisable. Rather, once you have a network established, use social media to promote “gated” content like white papers or reports, invite followers to register for webinars, and promote your newsletter on your blog and other content pages in order to build a list for lead nurturing.
Establishing a presence on the leading social networks and utilizing an effective social media strategy will enhance your online presence and “findability” on search engines as well as within the social networks themselves.
Best Social Media and Digital Marketing Research and Statistics of 2011, Part 1
Monday, November 28th, 2011Sure, teenagers spend a lot of time on YouTube, but did you know that three-quarters of business executives watch work-related online videos weekly? Or that 73% of U.S. companies now use social media for marketing (though the figure varies widely based on size of company)? Or which four cities rank ahead of Seattle and San Francisco as the “most networked?” Or that49% of B2B journalists write blogs, and 84% are on Twiter? Or that a third (or more, depending on which study you believe) of all clicks go to the top result on a search engine query?
Get the details behind these stats and many, many more here in more than 40 of the best articles and blog posts about social media, search, budgeting and digital marketing research, facts and statistics of 2011 so far.
Social Media Stats, Facts and Research
Does Facebook Need To Build A Search Engine? by MediaPost SearchBlog
Social media sites now drive more traffic to many popular sites—including Comedy Central, NFL.com and Netflix—than Google does. Citing these and other statistics, Laurie Sullivan ponders the meaning of the term “search engine.” She quotes Wedbush Equity Analyst Lou Kerner, who has called Facebook “‘the second Internet,’ with time spent on Facebook and page views surpassing Google search.” Facebook has become the (far more successful) second coming of what AOL was back in the early 90s. As Mark Twain allegedly quipped, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Executives & Online Video [CHARTS] by eStrategy After Hours
David Erickson shares eMarketer findings about the popularity of online video among business executives. Among the findings: “Three-quarters of all executives said they watched work-related videos on business websites at least once a week, and more than half did the same on YouTube.” Nearly a quarter prefer video content to text. And nearly two out of three executives have visited a vendor’s website after viewing an online video elsewhere.
Content Sharing Trends in 2010 [Infographic] by Pamorama
Pam Dyer reports on data from AddThis showing the top methods for sharing information from more than 300 options. Not too surprisingly, Facebook is the #1 method for passing along content, followed by email and then Twitter. Gmail and StumbleUpon are the fastest growing methods, however.
B2B marketers: give us inbound, social, e-mail, marketing automation and content by Conversion Marketing Forum
After pondering some of the differences between B2B and B2C marketing, J-P De Clerck shares data from MarketingSherpa showing that lead generation is (by far) the top priority for B2B marketers (with 78% saying that generating high-quality leads is their top priority) while budget increases are going overwhelmingly to inbound marketing tactics (with 60%+ spending more on content, social media and SEO).
Pew: Republicans, Democrats Use Social Media Equally by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh summarizes research findings from a Pew survey revealing that “22% (of) online adults used Twitter or other social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace in the months leading up to the November 2010 elections…Among social network users, 40% of Republican voters and 38% of Democratic voters used these sites to become involved politically.” At least something is bipartisan.
Social Media 2010, The Fastest Growth Ever by MyCorporateMedia
Randy Schrum supplies some interesting social media statistics, such as: Twitter users post more than 65 million tweets per day. Over 2 billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube. And 73% of U.S. companies now use social media for marketing.
16 social media statistics that might surprise you by Communications Conversations
Arik Hanson lists social media stats from various sources showing that 75% of brand ‘Likes’ on Facebook come from advertisements. 22% of Fortune 500 companies have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months. Fridays at 4 p.m. eastern time (U.S.) are the most retweetable day/time of the week, per Dan Zarella of HubSpot. (I don’t buy that one, as in my experience, Twitter pretty much dies between noon on Friday and early Saturday morning.) 48% of Twitter users say they rarely or never check Twitter. (That I believe.)
Report: CMOs Eager To Integrate Social Tools by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Gavin O’Malley reports that chief marketing officers have embraced social media: “From Facebook to Twitter, a full 90% of chief marketing officers now participate in an average of three or more social media activities.” And 93% planned to use some form of user-generated content in their marketing efforts this year, including customer stories, product suggestions or ideas, and customer reviews.
65 Terrific Social Media Infographics by Pamorama
Writing that “These snapshots communicate essential information to help marketers make sense of the social networking space and how people are using it in their everyday lives to communicate and share information and ideas,” Pam Dyer shares a huge collection of infographics on everything from the history of social networking to how marketers are using social media to the meteoric rise of Twitter to how people are using social media on mobile devices.
Is a Blog Still Important in 2011? by Edelman Digital
Noting that “a blog is a focal point and acts as a base of operations for communications,” Jonny Bentwood details the benefits of business blogging as well as the growth stats: 39% of U.S. companies are currently using blogs for marketing purposes, up from 29% in 2009 and just 16% in 2007.
Minneapolis is 4th-Most Socially Networked City by Twin Cities Business
Congrats to my fellow Minneapolitans! According to the TCB article,”If you live or work in Minneapolis, chances are good that you have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and/or a LinkedIn page. The city ranked fourth on Men’s Health magazine’s just-released list of the ‘most socially networked cities.’ Minnesota’s most populous city earned an A+ grade and ranked just behind Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; and Denver, Colorado.” Minneapolis ranked ahead of Seattle (#5), San Francisco (#6) and Boston (#9). Oh yeah.
Social Ads Spur Big Engagement Opportunities by iMedia Connection
According to research from social media advertising firm appssavvy, social activity ads (e.g., “an item in a social game or appear after a social network user fills out an online poll”) significantly outperform rich media ads, performing roughly twice as well. Paid search ads, however, still outperform both.
Social Media Statistics by The B2B Guide to Social Media
***** 5 Stars
This is one of the most amazing and comprehensive sources of social media statistics anywhere (other than the Webbiquity blog marketing research section, of course). Among the multitude of stats you can find here about blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, video, social gaming and more:
- • 49% of B2B journalists have blogs. 14% of all blogs are about technology and internet marketing.
- • Only 20% of blogs attract 10,000 or more unique visitors per month; 48% draw less than 1,000 readers each month.
- • 70% of marketers planned to increase their social media budgets by 10% or more in 2011.
- • 85% of B2B journalists are on Facebook. Almost one-third of all Facebook posts are created from mobile devices.
- • The number of monthly active users on Twitter increased 82% from January to September 2011.
- • 84% of journalists are on Twitter.
- • 58% of people said “they unfollowed someone because their tweets appeared automated” while 34% said the same because the offenders tweeted about themselves too much.
- • 66% unfollowed someone due to excessive tweeting (35 tweets per day is considered, on average, the upper limited of acceptable tweeting).
- • And much more.
The Winners & Losers of Social Networking [INFOGRAPHIC] by Mashable Social Media
Observing that “social networking as a whole might be leveling off,” Jolie O’Dell explains which networks are still on the rise (e.g., Tumblr, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn) and which are declining (MySpace – there’s a shock, Friendster, Ning and Hi5) as well as sharing details about the demographics of several top social networks (e.g. Habbo users are the youngest, Plaxo’s the oldest, and LinkedIn’s the wealthiest).
Under 1 Percent of Web Visits Comes from Social Media by Marketing Pilgrim
Cynthia Boris shares research findings from ForeSee Results indicating that, across a cross-section of websites, less than 1% of visits come directly from a social media URL, though an additional 17% of visits are “influenced” by social media. That sounded low to me, so I checked some of the B2B technology client sites I manage. Their social media traffic ranged from 4% to 9% of total traffic. And nearly 15% of visits to this blog come from social media sources (including other blogs). So, check your own stats; your mileage may vary.
Study: 93% of B2B Marketers Use Social Media Marketing by Social Media B2B
The always insightful Adam Holden-Bache reports that according to research from BtoB Magazine, “B2B marketers overwhelmingly favor ‘the big 3′ social media channels, with LinkedIn being the most-used channel (72%). Facebook (71%) and Twitter (67%) are close behind…Other channels used by B2B marketers include YouTube (48%), blogging (44%) and online communities (22%).” Although B2B marketers are increasingly using social media channels in their marketing and PR efforts, however, Adam notes that “75% of B2B marketers who conduct social marketing say they do not measure the ROI of their social marketing programs.”
Report: Where Marketers are Focusing in Social Media by Social Marketing Forum
Jim Ducharme demonstrates the increasing importance of social media for marketers based on the amount of time spent on such efforts. 58% of marketers devote six hours or more each week to social media, while 15% spend more than half their time with it. The amount of time spent tends to increase with experience. Preferences also shift: while Facebook is the top network of choice for those with one to three years of social media marketing experience, Twitter is the favorite tool of those who are more seasoned.
Report: Future Plans for Focus in Social Marketing by Social Marketing Forum
In a follow-up piece to the post above, Jim Ducharme discusses social media marketers’ future plans. The largest percentage (77% overall, 82% in large enterprises) plan to invest more in YouTube and online video in the coming year. 75% intend to increase efforts on Facebook and blogging, 73% on Twitter, and 71% on LinkedIn. Just 19% plan to increase efforts with GroupOn.
Social Media 2011 Just The Stats by Reciprocate
Karen Emanuelson shares research from HubSpot showing that there are 10.3 billion searches on Google each month; one-third of U.S. consumers spend at least three hours per day online; 9 out of 10 internet users visited a social networking monthly last year; more than half of all internet users read blogs at least monthly; and many more fascinating and useful statistics.
Marketers: Content Sharing Fuels Social-Media Boom by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Gavin O’Malley delves into the differing social media habits of men and women. “While women outnumber men online — 53% vs. 47% — males are more likely to share digital media content — 51% vs. 49%.” Men are more likely to share information that they feel is important and helpful to others (such as how-to tutorials) while women are slightly more likely to share information about “common interests like politics, art and parenting.” One other interesting finding: “60% of content shared on social platforms includes a link to an external site.”
Study: Marketers Reporting Social Media ROI of 100, 200, Even 1,000 Percent by Forbes
Lisa Arthur nets out research from MarketingSherpa showing that “the overall average social media ROI reported by CMOs who are measuring it is a whopping 95 percent. What’s more, nearly one-third (30 percent) of those in the survey reported a ROI of at least 150 percent!” Still, 54% of survey respondents identified “achieving or increasing measurable ROI from social marketing programs” as a top challenge, while 55% said the same for developing an effective social media strategy and 45% converting social media followers into paying customers. Most importantly, Lisa shares the study’s conclusion that “marketers who are new to social media tend to focus on “fast and easy” tactics…rather than on those that show a much higher level of effectiveness (blogger relations, SEO, e.g.). More advanced social media marketers work from a strategic plan and know that often the most difficult and time-consuming tactics are worth the extra effort because they are the most effective.”
What Marketers Can Learn from Consumers’ Sharing Habits by eMarketer
According to an AOL/Neilsen report, “93% of internet users turn to email to share content, while 89% use social networks and 82% use blogs.” Sharing habits differ based on the group being shared with, however, as “Social networks are the top method for sharing content with friends (92%)…In sharing online content with the general public, consumers prefer to use message boards (51%) or blogs (41%).” 60% of shared information contains links to published content (online publications, blogs, etc.); just 4% contains links to non-blog corporate website content.
Infographic: What the Largest Social Media Companies Are Worth by The Atlantic
Is there another tech bubble forming? Hard to say, but draw your own conclusion after taking a look at these possibly “over the top” valuations from Derek Thompson. Facebook was valued at $15 billion in 2007, but is expected to go public next year at a valuation of close to $100 billion. Valuation timelines and stats are also shown for Skype, delicious, Groupon, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Large Enterprise Social Media Research, Facts and Statistics
Inc. 500 Social Media Success by e-StratgyBlog.com
Stats guru David Erickson compiles figures for the popularity and year-over-year change of several social media marketing tactics among Inc. 500 companies. 93% now consider online message boards successful, while 86% say the same for blogging and 81% for Twitter; all figures similar to the previous year. Online video and Facebook increased in popularity while podcasting fell somewhat.
Fortune Global 100 Social-Media Savvy, Getting Savvier by MarketingProfs
According to research from Burson-Marsteller, 77% of Fortune Global 100 companies now have Twitter accounts (up from 65% in 2010), 61% are on Facebook (up from 54%), 57% have YouTube channels and 36% maintain blogs. Geographically, 83% of large companies in Europe are on Twitter, versus 72% in the U.S. and 67% in the Asia-Pacific region. However, Asic-Pac companies tend to be more engaged than their large firm counterparts elsewhere, as measured by average number of Twitter followers, Twitter @ mentions and Facebook page “likes.”
Most Fortune 50 Brands Still Hiding Their Social Media by AdAge Digital
The delightful B.L. Ochman breaks the news that “Only 44% of the Fortune 50 have any social media icons on their home pages, and 60% hide their Twitter streams. Call Inspector Clouseau if you want to find the rest. Kind of amazing considering the prevalence of social buttons of all types all over the web.” Just 30% include a Facebook icon on their home pages, and only 4% provide a blog link there. Most of these companies do include their social media links somewhere on their websites, but these are often buried on “about,” “contact” or investor pages.
10 Reasons Brands Need a Social Media AOR by iMedia Connection
Asking, “now that social has crossed the chasm, do brands need a dedicated social media agency?,” Avi Savar answers “yes” and explains why. What’s most interesting here though are the statistics showing the disconnect between why companies think consumers follow them in social media and why consumers actually interact with brands through social networks. The biggest disconnect: consumers say that discounts and purchases are their top reasons, while businesses place these at the bottom of the pecking order. 64% of businesses believe consumers follow them to “feel connected” to the brand, and 61% say it is to be part of a community. Just 33% and 22%, respectively, of consumers say they follow brands for those reasons.
Small Business Search and Social Media Statistics, Facts and Research
Small Business Owners Still Don’t Get Search Marketing by MediaPost SearchBlog
Despite findings that show “56% of small businesses that plan to allocate marketing budgets toward search or social media advertising in 2011 admit they need help with some part of their campaigns,” nearly three-quarters try to manage their search campaigns internally, and more than one in five “have a staff member handling SEM in addition to other responsibilities,” (e.g. a non-specialist) reports Laurie Sullivan. In short, while small business owners increasingly understand the importance of digital marketing, most aren’t taking advantage of tools and outside expertise that could improve their results.
Social-Media Study Teasers Unveiled by InformationWeek SMB
Michele Warren reveals that “the most widely used social media channel for small and midsize businesses are company pages on Facebook (and) SMBs are ditching e-mail marketing in favor of social media advertising.” According to research from the SMB Group, 32% of small businesses have Facebook pages though just 18% use free tools like TweetDeck and only 3% are utilizing fee-based social media tools.
Small Businesses Online Marketing [CHART] by eStrategy After Hours
The prolific David Erickson passes along stats from eMarketer showing that “More than a third (35%) of US small businesses reported using online social networking for marketing, up from 15% in fall 2009. In addition, 12% of respondents were using blogs as a social tactic, nearly double the figure from fall 2009.” Somewhat surprisingly, just 36% of small businesses said they are doing SEO on their websites, and only 17% are using paid search advertising. Over half (56%) say they don’t use social media.
Search and SEO Facts, Statistics and Research
20+ stats you might not know about user search behaviour by Econsultancy
Jake Hird shares some interesting findings about web searchers, such as: 37% of people don’t know the difference between paid and organic search results (including 20% of 20-somethings). 20% of people say they click on paid search results “always” or “frequently;” 37% said “rarely” or “never.” 6% said they rarely or never click on organic search results (so why are they searching?!). 48% said that they click on a company or brand if it appears multiple times in the SERPs (which is why web presence optimization is so important) while 28% are more likely to click on results that include a video.” And contrary to results you may have seen elsewhere, “79% will go through multiple pages of results, if their query isn’t answered in the first page.”
The Value Of SEO [CHART] by eStrategy After Hours
How important is a (very) high ranking in the search results? Rounding these numbers from David Erickson, roughly one-third of clicks go to the top result in search; another third go to results two through five; and most of the remaining third click on results six through 20.
Google Click Distribution – How Important is Number One? by Internet Marketing Blog
A study from Cornell University found results different from David’s in the post above. According to this study, more than half of all clicks go to the top link on Google, and almost 90% go to the first five spots. Interestingly, being at #8 or #10 generates slightly more clicks than showing up at #7 or #9.
Search Behavior Shines Spotlight on Organic Results by eMarketer
eMarketer reports several interesting statistics from recent eye-tracking and click studies on Google and Bing. First, paid ads are 3-4 times as likely to be seen if they appear at the top of the organic results as opposed to the right side. Second, 81% of searches on Bing result in a click, versus just 66% on Google (Bing results are more relevant?). And third, “internet users were 22 percentage points less likely in 2010 to rely on search engines to find websites than they were in 2004,” due to both increasing sophistication of internet users as well as greater reliance on social media.
SERPs: The Benefits of Being No. 1 by MarketingProfs
Yet another study on clicks-by-search-rank, this one from Optify, concludes that the top spot in search generates 36% of all clicks, and the top three places combined account for 60%; but appearing at the top of page 2 is actually slightly more productive than being at the bottom of page 1. What’s most notable in these results, however, is the difference in performance of multi-word long-tail terms versus shorter head terms: for long-tail terms, being in the top spot in much less important, as click-throughs are higher in the lower spots on page 1. And in SEM, relatively low-cost long-tail terms (being more specific than head terms) generate significantly higher CTRs than expensive head terms.
SEMPO: Social PPC is Giving Google Adwords a Run for Its Money by MediaPost Search Insider
Rob Garner reports that “Facebook has rapidly become a top PPC advertising vehicle,” and that advertising on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube–while still small compared with search advertising–is growing rapidly. In addition, “Three-quarters (74%) of North American agencies say their clients run PPC campaigns on Facebook. Three-fourths of companies (75%) use Twitter for brand promotion, and more than a quarter (27%) of companies now use LinkedIn specifically for PPC campaigns.” Note that these results are skewed toward larger enterprises and B2C advertisers. Social media advertising is still a relatively rare tactic among B2B vendors and in the SMB space.
Marketing Budget Trends, Statistics and Figures
Online gets bulk of increased marketing budgets by BtoB Magazine
Kate Maddox reports that after two years of budget cutting, 52% of marketers planned increased spending for this year. Customer acquisition is the top goal (69%) followed distantly by increasing brand awareness (18%). 79% of marketers planned increased spending on online marketing this year, far more than for any other tactical area. Breaking that out, 71% planned higher spending on their websites, followed by 68% on email, 63% on social media, 57% on search and 51% on web video. 69% of b2b companies now say they are using social media for marketing.
Social Media Marketing Budgets by e-StrategyBlog.com
“In 2010, 53% of social media marketing budgets were spent on Facebook,” according to statistics compiled by David Erickson, while 8% was spent on games and apps and just 3% on Twitter. However, among the Global Fortune 100 firms, 65% use Twitter compared to 54% maintaining Facebook fan pages, 50% having YouTube channels and 33% writing blogs.
B2B Inbound Marketing: Top tactics for social media, SEO, PPC and optimization by MarketingSherpa Blog
***** 5 Stars
Adam T. Sutton summarizes MarketingSherpa survey results showing that website design and optimization is the top budget priority this year, cited by 69% of respondents as an area of increasing investment. Social media is a very close second, followed by virtual events / webinars, SEO, email marketing and paid search. The post also identifies the most effective tactic in each area: for example, the top tactic in SEO is on-page content optimization, while blogging is the most effective social media tactic.
‘Advanced’ Companies’ Spend On Social Media, Nets by MediaPost Online Media Daily
What separates the cutting-edge companies in social media use from other businesses? According to Mark Walsh, reporting on research from Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group, “they have formalized programs, dedicated teams, line-item budgets, and have been at it for more than two-and-a-half years,” among other characteristics. Budgets are a major factor: advanced companies spend nearly twice as much as their more average counterparts on social media generally, and almost 70% more on social-marketing teams specifically.
Other Marketing Research and Statistics
Who Do You Trust? Industry Analysts Reign Supreme by IT Marketing World
Tom Pisello shares findings from SiriusDecisions research showing that industry analysts are viewed as the most trusted source of information by buyers during the B2B IT buying cycle, followed closely by peers. Vendors are viewed as the least credible source (ouch!). However, the “most-trusted sources” vary by stage of the buying cycle. In addition, the study found that “The most favored sources of content during the early stages of IT decision-making are white papers (64.4%), peer referrals (51.1%), webinars (48.9%), trials or demos (42.2%) and analyst reports (37.8%).”
12 Mind-Blowing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know by HubSpot
Marta Kagan shares a dozen interesting marketing stats, among them: “78% of Internet users conduct product research online,” (seems low). A similar number check email on their mobile devices. Blogging is really important–57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog, and businesses with blogs generate 55% higher web traffic. And my favorite: “200 Million Americans have registered on the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. That’s 2/3 of the country’s citizens. The other 1/3, I’m guessing, probably don’t have a home phone anymore.”
Is Working From Home Becoming the Norm? [SURVEY] by Mashable Business
Jolie O’Dell brings to light some interesting findings on the state of working from home today, such as: 62% of businesses now allow at least part-time remote work (this varies by business size, with 77% of the largest organizations permitting this). The ability to work from home is rated by employees as the third-most important determinant of job satisfaction. And 56% of decision makers believe that remote workers are more productive.
Eight Factors to Consider When (Re)Launching a Business Blog
Monday, November 21st, 2011Over the last decade, business blogs have gone from being a novelty to a leading-edge practice to an essential element for any company seeking to optimize its presence on the web. According to Small Business Trends and HubSpot, the percentage of businesses with blogs has increased from less than half in 2009 to nearly two out of three in 2011.
Why are so many companies now embracing blogging? In addition to the traditional benefits of business blogging, recent changes in the way search engines rank content have made blogging crucial for obtaining and maintaining high search engine visibility.
Three ranking factors that have recently taken on increased importance from Google (and will therefore likely soon become important to other search engines as well) are content quality and authority, social media links and content freshness. A blog helps on all three fronts much more than a standard corporate website. Google is also placing increased weight on link quality and diversity; thoughtful, helpful blog posts are more likely to attract such links than typical vendor product and service content.
What’s more, blogs are a central component of web presence optimization, and the core of a productive social media strategy.
Once your organization makes the decision to start a blog—or to re-launch one that’s been neglected or has underperformed—here are eight key factors to consider.
1. Location. Will the blog be part of your corporate site or have its own unique URL? The more common practice today is to treat the blog as a section of the website, often with a URL like company.com/blog. The primary advantage of this approach is that all of the SEO value of external links accrues to the corporate site, giving it more authority in the eyes of the search engines.
An alternative approach is to treat the blog as a separate entity with a meaningful URL. For example, if Acme Widgets wants to rank for the very competitive phrase “widget management software,” and their corporate site is at acmewidgets.com, they may want to use the URL widgetmanagementsoftware.com for the blog. This option is worth considering in product categories that are highly competitive in search. It also provides the opportunity to give the blog a distinct and less “corporate” personality of its own, as well as potentially providing the company with an extra spot on the first page of search results.
2. Author(s). The internet is littered with a hundred million abandoned blogs, for two primary reasons: first, it’s a fair amount of work to research and write quality content on a regular basis. And second, there is no instant gratification—it takes time to build an audience and authority with the search engines. Assigning multiple writers (i.e., creating a group blog) can help spread the load and allow for more frequent posting, a variety of styles, and broader topic coverage. Just make sure all of the authors have what it takes to be successful business bloggers: writing skills (of course), but also originality, subject matter expertise, a point of view, and most importantly—persistence.
3. Tone. Sassy? Intellectual? Helpful? Informative? Sophisticated? Technical? While a blog is likely to contain a mix of attributes (particularly a multi-author blog), think about the overall tone and personality your blog should have. Unlike website copy (which tends to be feature/benefit, marketing oriented), a blog can project a distinct and less directly sales-y side of your organization.
4. Design. Some corporate blogs (particularly those integrated into the company website) simply match the look and feel of the corporate website as closely as possible. But while a company blog should carry over certain key branding elements (e.g., colors, logo), it can also have some distinctiveness to its look, reflecting the tone (above) and setting it apart from the “commercial” content of the corporate site.
5. Platform. Just kidding, this really isn’t a tough decision: use WordPress. Sure, there are alternatives, ranging from other free or low-cost platforms (e.g., Blogger, TypePad) to fee-based systems (e.g., Compendium, HubSpot) to tools built into web content management system (CMS) platforms, but it’s tough to find an alternative that can compete with the flexibility, affordability, capability and search engine-friendliness of WordPress.
6. Structure (topics). Though these will likely evolve over time, it’s best to think about at least the obvious subjects for your company and industry up front. First, doing so will help keep subsequent posts organized into logical groups, without “category proliferation” (an excessive number of categories) or multiple overlapping topic areas.
Second, properly naming the categories is critical both for human navigation and for search engine optimization; a mis-named category (e.g., one that uses internal company jargon rather than the language of your prospects and customers) won’t attract as many readers as a better-named category would, and won’t help your blog rank as well for popular industry search terms.
Determining a set of baseline categories up front also helps in developing an editorial calendar. While this may be too formal for a single-contributor or small company blog, it can be very helpful for assuring topic diversity and a steady stream of content.
7. Post frequency. As Heidi Cohen points out, there is no hard and fast rule as to how often a blog needs fresh content, but the best strategy is to “blog as often as you can create quality content.” In terms of a blog’s impact on customer acquisition, posting once per week is nearly 50% more effective than posting only once per month, and more than twice as effective as posting even less frequently. But posting 2-3 times per week yields only a small incremental gain, and posting daily provides an even smaller incremental improvement.
Again, having multiple authors (see factor #2 above) can help increase post frequency without placing an excessive burden on any one contributor. Five authors, each writing two posts per month, would result in 2-3 posts per week—a highly effective frequency for customer acquisition. Spreading the burden should also (at least theoretically) improve the depth and quality of each post as well.
8. Features. Any blogging platform should provide the capability to add common features to your blog like a subscribe-by-email option, buttons/links to your social media accounts, and social sharing buttons to make it easy for your readers to share your posts on social networks and social bookmarking sites (though few platforms offer as many options for “pimping out” a blog as WordPress—see factor #5 above).
WordPress plugins let you add a wide variety of more advanced functions to your blog such as incorporating feeds from social media sites, enable your readers to rate posts, build customized contact forms, automatically display contextually related posts, add an online directory to your blog, display your most popular posts, insert a customized greeting based on the site that referred the reader to your blog (e.g., Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn), even create an e-commerce store.
By addressing each of these factors in your blog planning and setup, you’ll be ready to launch (or re-launch) a business blog built for success.
12 Ways to Avoid Being a Dork on Twitter
Thursday, November 17th, 2011Note: a version of this original post appeared previously on the B2B Twitterer of the Year (B2BTOTY) blog.
If you regularly read blogs like this, you’re probably already a Twitter pro. This post will be review for you. But, you also almost certainly come across new followers and others who haven’t attained your level of expertise. You know the type. You may want to pass this along as needed.
Complete your Twitter bio. You’ve got 160 characters to tell the world who you are, what you do, who you do it for, what you’re passionate about. Plus a link. Use it. Seems like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how many people leave their profiles blank. Or type in something short and lame like “Always learning!” or “Master of the Universe.” Whether trying to be mysterious, or just lazy, it looks bad.
- Use your real picture. Find one that reflects you in your best light. If tweeting for a company, using a logo is okay, but accounts with a real person behind them tend to get more followers. Again, seems like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many people use photos that look like Nick Nolte’s mug shot, or worse – the default Twitter egg.
- Avoid stop words in your bio. Most people have figured out that “MLM,” “network marketer,” “work from home” and “Internet marketer” are synonyms for “spammer.” Don’t be that person.
- Avoid obnoxious words in your bio. Unless you are actually a Hindu mystic, have recorded an album that’s gone platinum, or are extremely skilled in the martial arts, avoid the terms “guru,” “rock star” or “ninja” in your bio. They are over-used and just kind of silly.
- Watch your following/follower ratio. The numbers will never be identical, but you don’t want to let them get too far out of whack. The worst case is when someone is following 2,001 people but has only like 300 followers and is on four lists. That smacks of desperation. Or like someone who’s ignored tips #3 and #4 above.
- Neber twet when yur drunk. It wont com out good an u will end up regrething it.
- Never tweet when you’re angry. If you’re tempted to do so, go get drunk. Then see tip #6.
- Retweet others! It shows you’re paying attention, helps build your network, and will make others more likely to follow you and share your content.
- Say “please” and “thank you.” It’s common courtesy, something people learn from grandma, but not always common on Twitter. Again, thanking someone for a retweet or an answer to a question makes it more likely they’ll do for you again in the future, and it shows followers you have manners.
- Know when to DM. A little bit of banter back-and-forth with another Tweeter shows you are social. Too much makes your Tweet stream look worthless. If the interaction goes beyond three tweets, it’s probably time to take it offline and use direct messages.
- Be careful with repetition. If you’ve come across something, or written something yourself, that is truly brilliant and deserves to be shared far and wide, it’s okay to tweet it more than once. Just be sure to 1) space your tweets at least an hour apart (preferably longer), and 2) tweet other content in between. Nothing turns off current and potential followers like a Tweet stream with the same message repeated over and over and over and…
- Don’t use automated welcome DMs. One would think that Twitterers would understand by now that automated DMs are pointless and annoying—but like some of the more regrettable music from the 1970s, they refuse to go away.
Bonus tip: be very careful with automation, not just on Twitter but any social media site. While it’s okay to automate certain tasks like using an app to pre-schedule tweets for off-hours, social media is fundamentally about engagement. In other words, unless you really are a broadcaster (i.e., it’s your job to tweet on behalf of CNN or Fox News)—don’t be just a broadcaster.
Following these tips will make you look classy and sophisticated to others on Twitter. Or at least not like a dork. As noted above, feel free to pass this along to anyone who demonstrates the need for it. In the meantime, got any tips you’d like to add? Feel free to share them in the comments below.
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