B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity

Posts Tagged ‘HubSpot’

9 Criteria for Selecting a Social Media Monitoring Tool

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Social media monitoring tools are increasing essential for companies of all sizes as the explosion of social media content renders manual monitoring efforts hopeless. But how do you choose one? With almost 200 social monitoring tools (and new entrants still coming to market), available at a range of price levels from free to if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it, how does an organization select the right social monitoring tool for its needs?

Whether you’ve a selection team working on this or the entire project has been delegated to you, here are nine critical considerations to keep in mind as you review and evaluate your options.

Range of coverage. Virtually every social media monitoring tool worthy of the label covers the big social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit) and content sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr). Many include at least the most popular blogs as well. The best also monitor message boards and forums, easy to overlook but critical particularly for niche b2b products and services. For example, a discussion of the latest developments in aerospace composites is probably more likely to happen on a niche engineering forum than on Facebook.

Frequency of alerts. News can travel extremely fast through social media. Even if it’s “only” a customer complaint, you don’t want it sitting out there unanswered for long. It’s imperative that your social media monitoring tool provides realtime or near realtime monitoring and alerting, so you can respond to critical items promptly. Certainly, not every comment requires an immediate reply, but when a customer or prospect has a question or issue, response time matters. And in social media, the whole world can see how fast (or not) your response time is.

Workflow capabilities. A blogger raises a question about your company’s financial outlook. A user is frustrated by a perceived malfunction in your product. A customer shares an idea for an enhancement. A highly favorable product review is published in an online journal. You may discover any of these events through social media monitoring, but in each case not is the response different but the respondent is too. The financial question needs to be directed to your CEO or CFO; the user issue to customer support; the enhancement idea to product management; and the product review to marketing. If there is any significant volume of social media commentary about your product, service or company, look for a social media monitoring tool that provides workflow tools that make it quick and easy to notify and direct the right person to take action on each new mention.

Value. Price is always a consideration of course, but in selecting a potentially critical business tool like social media monitoring (consider the cost of BP’s social media failure), the more important consideration is “value,” as in: does the tool do at least as good a job at meeting the specific social media needs of my company as competing tools, and is it priced similarly or lower than tools offering equivalent functionality? “Free” is always a popular price point, but in the world of social media tools (as in many other areas of life), you get what you pay for. There are several free social media monitoring tools that provide limited functionality but can serve as a starting point for small businesses; however, larger and more socially active organizations will quickly recognize a need for more sophisticated fee-based offerings.

Support and training. Even with advanced UI design, more sophisticated tools are fundamentally more challenging to use. Be sure to get clarity on what kind of training is offered upfront, how much personalized assistance is offered as part of the package, how to get questions answered and how robust the internal help system is for ongoing use.

Metrics and reporting. What kind of reporting capabilities does the tool provide? Your specific needs will of course vary based on company size, level of social media activity and your organization’s specific goals and objectives, but two critical roles of reporting for any organization are: 1) the ability to demonstrate progress/change over time (e.g. more website traffic driven by social media) and 2) actionable analytics (measures that enable you to determine whether you should do more a specific activity, do less, or do it differently).

Geographic/language coverage. Enterprises that do business globally need the ability to track social media mentions across borders and in multiple languages. Global monitoring capability adds cost and complexity to a tool, so don’t buy it if you don’t need it, but for multinational businesses, this is essential functionality.

Integration with other applications. Again, small companies with fairly simple programs don’t need to be too concerned with this, but companies with larger, more complex social media programs should investigate how their social media tools under consideration integrate with applications such as CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce.com), marketing automation tools and web analytics packages.

Monitoring beyond social media. Finally, organizations that actively target both traditional and social media may want to look at tools like Vocus, Cision and/or Sysomos which integrate PR and social media monitoring functions into a single platform. Social media isn’t an island and marketing / outreach efforts there should ideally be integrated with other programs, so in these environments, monitoring capabilities beyond social media become valuable.

Keeping these nine criteria in mind (or least those that pertain to the size and complexity of social media efforts in your organization) will help you make the right choice from among the broad array of social media monitoring tools on the market.

Tags: Alterian SM2, analytics, Beevolve, BP social media failure, Buzzlogic, Cision, Converseon, free social media monitoring tools, HubSpot, Jive, Klout, Lithium, OneRiot, Radian6, realtime alerts, Salesforce.com, Scout Labs, social media monitoring tools, social monitoring tools, Socialmention, SproutSocial, Sysomos, Topsy, Trackur, UberVU, Vocus, workflow
Posted in Social Media Marketing | 21 Comments »

Best Twitter Guides, Tips and Tools of 2010

Monday, January 31st, 2011

Twitter came of age in 2010, growing at a scorching pace—from 75 million users at the beginning of the year to more than 190 million by the end of December. Twitter is used (officially) in 65 of the Fortune 100 companies, 63% of small to midsized businesses, and nearly half of all B2B enterprises.

As adoption skyrockets, marketers are striving to optimize their use of the world’s most popular microblogging platform. And that leads to questions, like: What are the best ways to attract more (relevant) followers? What types of information are worth sharing, beyond blog posts? Which companies are really succeeding on Twitter, and how are they doing it? How can I get more retweets? What’s a Twitter chat, and how do I participate in one? Which are the most helpful third-party tools for Twitter?

Get the answers to these questions and more here in some of the best Twitter guides, tips and tools of the past year.

How to Get More Followers on Twitter

How to grow your Twitter following by iMedia Connection
***** 5 Stars
Based on research, Courtney Wiley reveals what type of content to tweet, when to tweet it, and the ideal frequency of tweeting to use in order to grow a Twitter following.

47 Twitter Power Users’ Secrets To Getting Many Followers by JobMob

A selection of the Twitterati share their advice—ranging from short snippets to fairly detailed guidelines—on how to grow your Twitter following. Robert Scobel, Dan Schawbel, Peter Shankman and many of the others are legit no doubt, though a few of the “power users” here are questionable. Still, lots of good advice.

Get More Twitter Followers by Treating Your Profile Like a Landing Page by Social Times

Darko Johnson shows how to apply the principles of effective landing page design to your Twitter profile in order to increase the likelihood that people who see your profile will choose to follow you.

20 ways to increase the number of your followers on Twitter by Web SEO Analytics

Wisely warning against the use of automated programs or techniques, Vasilis Vryniotis offers 20 “white hat” best practices for increasing your Twitter following naturally, such as promoting your Twitter handle in online and offline locations (your blog, website, email signature and business cards), adding yourself to Twitter directories, and perhaps most important: mentioning and thanking the people who help you.

Why 150 Followers Is All You Really Need by TwiTip

Then again, do you really need more followers? Srinivas Rao uses the theory of Dunbar’s Number to argue that 150 followers is all one needs on Twitter. The author makes an intriguing case, but I’m not sure I buy it (particularly given that he follows over 1,300 people on Twitter).

How to Do Lots of Other Things on Twitter

16 bitchin’ commands and shortcuts for Twitter by eConsultancy

Want to quickly see the last tweet from a particular Twitterer? Or the most recent tweets mentioning that person? How about performing advanced searches on Twitter, like exact match, either/or, hyper-local (with x miles of…), or find questions you can answer? Chris Lake shows you how to do all of this and much more with these helpful Twitter shortcuts.

40 useful things you can share on Twitter besides blog posts by Social Media Today

Frequent best-of contributor Adam Vincenzini contends that “the more unusual and varied your stream is, the better—both for you and your followers.” And with that in mind, he lists more than three dozen types of items you can share on Twitter other that stuff from your RSS stream, such as a new app or tool (with a quick tweet review), an interesting hashtag or discussion, an interesting/relevant YouTube video or a link to a Twitter list you think is worth following.

7 Really Cool Things About the New Twitter by Social Media Today

Tia Peterson praises seven features of the new Twitter interface (such as the “Recently Listed” box, easy DM replies, and ability to send a tweet from any page) but also cites three areas that still need improvement.

How Many Times Do You Tweet Your Blog Post? by Ask Aaron Lee

Most bloggers tweet each of their posts only once. How many times should a post be tweeted? In this post, Aaron Lee and Guy Kawasaki recommend an ideal frequency, backed up with some highly logical reasoning. Spock would approve.

How Twitter increased my blog’s traffic by 300% in one week by MackCollier.com

Ever wonder exactly what impact Twitter can have on blog traffic? Mack Collier details an experiment he ran and shares the nitty gritty numbers and percentages, as well as the process he used, concluding “even if you only have 100 followers, you can still leverage Twitter as a tool to build your blog IF you are active on Twitter. Active interacting with others, engaging in conversations, and linking to valuable content.”

13 Twitter Tips for Increasing Engagement by Sazbean

Sarah Worsham lists helpful tips for increasing engagement and growing your following on Twitter, such as sharing and retweeting, asking questions, attending tweetups and using Twitter directories to find people in your industry.

Twitter success stories: Explaining the ROI of Twitter by {grow}

As Mark Schaefer explains, “There are MANY benefits to Twitter besides direct sales.  You might gain information, competitive intelligence, insight,  a new supplier or partner, publicity, brand awareness, an idea, customer insights, and yes, even a potential customer. And while all of these are great, most are intangible and difficult to display in an Excel spreadsheet! So why keep trying to do it?…When benefits are difficult to quantify, the best way to explain the value is through a story.”

8 Ways to Not Get ReTweeted by HubSpot Blog

Dan Zarrella uses extensive HubSpot research to show that practices like talking about yourself, dumbing down the readability of your tweets, eschewing links, and repeating the same things everyone else is saying are great ways to avoid being retweeted.

26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets by Social Media Examiner
***** 5 Stars
Debbie Hemley provides a highly creative A-Z list of practical tips for maximizing the business impact of your tweets, from Answers and Behind-the-Scenes info to utilizing YouTube and a Zippy Writing Style.

4 Rules for Marketing on Twitter by Practical eCommerce

Paul Chaney reveals the “unwritten” rules for earning influence on Twitter, for example: “Don’t Follow Just to Pitch. A distasteful trend has developed among newer Twitter users. For example, people are following me and when I respond in kind, their first tweets are frequently to pitch me on a website they want me to visit or a service they provide…If you want a formula for how marketing via Twitter and other social networks should work, it’s this: Connect > Converse > Convert.”

Calculating and Improving Your Twitter Click-through-Rate by SEOmoz

The brilliant but oblivious Rand Fishkin illustrates how to calculate your Twitter click-through rate (CTR) and notes some findings from his own experience: shorter tweets and those that are on-topic (whatever your primary topic is) tend to get retweeted more frequently. Somewhat surprisingly, Klout scores appear to have little correlation with retweet rates.

Twitter Dictionary | 35 Twitter Abbreviations by Bit Rebels

Primarily for Twitter newbies, Diana Adams defines nearly three dozen common Twitter / texting abbreviations such as DM (direct message), IRL (in real life) and Gr8 (self-explanatory).

Typecasting Twitter: 7 Top Uses by iMedia Connection

Noting that “Twenty nine percent, one in every three tweets yields some kind of reaction—comments, re-tweets or clicks. Ten percent prompt a reply to the original tweet. These are direct marketing nirvana numbers,” Daniel Flamberg dissects research to isolate the seven most common uses of Twitter.

How to Participate in a Twitter Chat Session like #BlogChat or #AgChat by ag – a colorful adventure

For those who haven’t participated in a Twitter chat session before, Janice Person provides clear, step-by-step instructions for getting setup, using controls, and keeping up with the stream of conversation.

3 Absolutely Cool Twitter Search Tricks to Help You Save Money! by Sexy Social Media

In this helpful but brief post, Annie Wallace shares three clever Twitter search tricks you may not be aware of.

Best of 2010: 14 Ways Every Business Should Be Using Twitter by Inkling Media

Ken Mueller lists 14 practices businesses can adopt to optimize their benefit from Twitter, such as providing customer service, promoting events and monitoring competitors.

Twitter Tools

20 Top Twitter Monitoring and Analytics Tools by Pamorama

Pam Dyer serves up brief reviews of more useful Twitter tools including Twitscoop (trend-monitoring), TweetBuzzer (identifies popular brands on Twitter), Twitter Analyzer (kind of like Google Analytics for Twitter) and Tweeps (get stats that help you decide who to follow—or not—and find people you’d like to have following you).

How to Add a Tweet Button Anywhere by SitePoint

While there are several easy avenues to placing a Tweet button on a blog, Alyssa Gregory supplies simple instructions for adding Tweet buttons in other venues like emails, PDFs and Facebook pages.

11 Websites to Schedule Your Tweets Online for Free by TwiTip

Young Yang reviews free tools for scheduling tweets, like FutureTweets, HootSuite and SocialOomph. It’s important to remember that Twitter is a social platform, so your followers will expect interaction; if you’re busted relying too heavily on automated or pre-scheduled tweets, you will lose followers. However, these tools can be very helpful if used strategically and sparingly.

Tweetvolume

Type in any three words or phrases and compare how often each is tweeted about.

5 Best Twitter Tools For Smarter Blogging by Smedio

Sridhar Ramunajam provides quick reviews of five helpful Twitter tools including dlvr.it for auto-publishing blog content to Twitter and TweetStats, which provides stats about your account (e.g., tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline) in graphical format.

Six Benefits to Using Twitter.com Instead of an App by TwiTip

Shannon Albert makes the case for using Twitter itself rather than a third-party app (e.g., HootSuite or TweetDeck) for interacting on Twitter: it’s faster, has no limits on Tweets per hour and lets you see other users’ custom backgrounds among other advantages.

Twitter Stats

All You Need to Know About Twitter in 2010 [Infographic] by Mediabistro

Lauren Dugan presents an infographic from Flowtown that reviews Twitter highlights of 2010, from Bill Gates setting up a Twitter account in January through celebrity digital death at year end.

Related Post

50 (of the) Best Twitter Guides, Stats, Tips and Tools of 2010 (So Far)

Tags: Aaron Lee, Adam Vincenzini, Alyssa Gregory, Annie Wallace, Chris Lake, Courtney Wiley, Dan Zarrella, Daniel Flamberg, Darko Johnson, Debbie Hemley, Dunbar's Number, Hootsuite, how to get more retweets, how to get more Twitter followers, HubSpot, Janice Peterson, Ken Mueller, Klout, Lauren Dugan, Mack Collier, Mark Schaefer, microblogging platform, Pam Dyer, Paul Chaney, Rand Fishkin, Sarah Worsham, Shannon Albert, Sridhar Ramunajam, Srinivas Rao, Tia Peterson, TweetDeck, Tweetvolume, Twitscoop, Twitter b2b use, Twitter guides, Twitter tools, Twitterati, Vasilis Vryniotis, Young Yang
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Twitter | 11 Comments »

Best Business Blogging Guides and Tips of 2010

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

How can you improve your blog’s position in search engines? Grow your audience? Effectively generate content contributions from subject matter experts in your organization? Produce more stylish and readable content? Find free, high-quality images to add visual appeal to your posts? Avoid common mistakes that can cost you traffic and goodwill?

Discover the answers to all of these questions and more here in the final selection of the best guides and tips for business blogging from the past year.

Blogging Guides, Tips and Techniques

The Step-by-Step Guide to Guest Blogging by 2 Create a Website

One key way to spread the fame of your own blog is to guest post on others; you reach a new audience, hopefully pick up some new fans, and get valuable backlinks to your blog. Here, Ann Smarty contributes a guest post on best practices in guest posting, from planning your approach and brainstorming topics to following through by responding to comments.

5 Reasons Why You Should Respond to Every Comment by Daily Blog Tips

In another guest post, Pat Flynn details five benefits of actively responding to comments on your blog, such as the fact that doing so encourages more comments: “People don’t leave comments just so they can be left unread. By replying, you’re not only letting people know that you’re actively involved in reading the comments, but you’re encouraging them to come back and comment again later.”

7 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts for Maximum Exposure by Quick Online Tips

In yet another guest post, Jonathan Beebe offers seven common (e.g., promote via Twitter and Facebook) and not-so-obvious (e.g., use automated social bookmarking tools like IMAutomater and Shareaholic tips for increasing traffic to your blog.

How To Optimise Your WordPress Ping List by Pimp My WordPress

A colossal list of more than 120 sites to add to your ping list for automatic notification each time you publish a new post.

Best practices for a killer corporate blog by iMedia Connection

Sarah Hofstetter offers 25 outstanding tips for developing, maintaining and promoting a successful corporate blog, from creating an editorial calendar and incorporating visuals to setting up email distribution and tracking actionable metrics.

Blogs are Becoming the New Front Door for Prospects: Is Yours Open? by MarketingSherpa

Sean Donahue notes that, “If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors,” then provides tips for maximizing company blog success.

Why Host a Blog on Your Corporate Website? by ClickZ

The smart and prolific Mark Jackson supplies five compelling reasons for adding a blog to a company website, both subjective (a blog gives you the opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership) and objective (blogs are much more effective than typical commercial website content at attracting unsolicited links).

What’s Up, Blog? Seven Ways to Revive a Neglected B2B Blog by MLT Creative

Acknowledging that “Blogging is hard work. You must consistently create relevant compelling content,” Martine Hunter presents seven tactics for re-engaging with a neglected blog, including refreshing old blog posts, turning news releases into blog articles, and enlisting guest bloggers to lighten the workload.

How I Achieved Blogging Success In 30 Days by bizchickblogs

In you guessed it–another guest post–Wayne Howard describes his method for quickly building the following for a new blog, using tactics such as Facebook postings, the BloggerLuv community, Twitter, LinkedIn and contests.

Inciting Insight: How to make thought leaders think by The Communicator

Peter Schram offers a “recipe” for designing a thought leadership program within an organization to create a steady stream of fresh and compelling content, such as priming the pump: “Ideas are usually generated incrementally. This means that the more ‘inspiration’ that a thought leader is exposed to, the more valuable and insightful their ‘Big Ideas’ will be.”

35 Ways to Market Your Blog by Junta42

The brilliant Joe Pulizzi shares his list of 35 “common and some uncommon” methods for promoting a blog, from putting your blog URL on your business cards and leveraging Twitter hashtags to showcasing employees and using the blog as your customer FAQ.

Is blog marketing dead or just growing up? The naked (conversation) facts by conversionation

J-P De Clerck reports that less than half of companies have blogs, despite the fact that “blogs are real social media hubs and cornerstones of inbound marketing.” Furthermore, many of the companies that do blog don’t do it well; nearly three-quarters of all corporate blog posts don’t reflect the company’s message. Given that more than half of all Internet users in the U.S. read blogs, and the figure is expected to rise to 60% in the next four years, J-P notes that corporate blogging, far from being “dead,” is an area of growing importance and opportunity.

How to Make an Awesome Corporate Blog by Entrepreneur Magazine

Bianca Male shares tactics for corporate blog success (such as “Your content should go beyond your company…contribute to the discussion of topics that readers are interested in, by talking about trends in the industry and having thought leaders offer their take, for example”) and links to some noteworthy examples, closing with “If you can’t commit to focusing on fresh, interesting content, avoiding all direct marketing ploys, (and) getting creative and moving beyond boring company info…just don’t do it.”

10 Proven Blog Marketing Tactics You Can Use Today by The Future Buzz

Adam Singer provides 10 valuable tips for effective blogs, including investing in a custom design, connecting with the social web “power users” in your segment, and even making enemies (the kind that will debate you blog-to-blog).

What Can You Learn from 7 Awesome Corporate Blogs? by KISSmetrics

Cameron Chapman highlights winning corporate blogs (such as The Facebook Blog), discusses the key features and provides takeaways from each (e.g., “having a huge blogging team that includes employees from throughout your organization makes your blog much more engaging for users. Your CEO should be blogging, but so should your interns”), and concludes with a brief guide to starting a corporate blog.

9 Awesome Ways to Market a Business Blog by HubSpot Blog

Kipp Bodnar details nine techniques for increasing traffic to a company blog, like including your blog URL on business cards and in corporate email signatures, name-dropping media editors and other influencers, and checking out content networks in your niche (content syndication and aggregation sites such as Social Media Informer in the social media space).

Tim Gunn’s Top 5 Tips for More Stylish Content by Copyblogger

Erika Napoletano channels fashion authority Tim Gunn to provide style tips for bloggers, such as “SEO is not the new black” (“you don’t have to optimize every piece of content you create) and “conversation never goes out of style” (embrace comments).

Get High Resolution Photos And Edit For Free by Trailblaze Social Media With Josh

Joshua Lyons reveals his favorite source for free photos and his favorite free online tool for editing them.

Five Key Ingredients for a Successful Corporate Blog by Sysomos

Mark Evans offers five commonsense, but not always adhered to, recommendations for corporate blogging success, starting with the need for quality content: “Content that provides insight, perspective and information. At its core, a corporate blog has to give its readers information they can use to increase their knowledge, learn new things or receive insight.”

Ten Blogging Mistakes I Learned in Year One by Nectar

Josh Wade shares 10 common blogging mistakes to avoid, like misspelling someone’s name when you highlight them in post (oops!), picking fights, trying to be everywhere rather than focusing, and being a conformist.

8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content by Copyblogger

Pamela Wilson suggests that “writing less and styling your text so it’s easy to read” is key to attracting greater blog readership, and offers corresponding tips for doing so effectively such as breaking up blocks of copy using subheads, bulleted lists and numbers.

Blog SEO

11 Must Do SEO Tips for WordPress by Better Blog Building

An excellent list of SEO tips for WordPress blogs, including using (optimized) images, installing key plugins like All In One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps Generator, and linking within your posts to relevant older posts.

6 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines by Social Media Examiner

Jim Lodico offers six helpful tips for improving your blog’s position in search engine results. While the tactics themselves are mostly common knowledge, the value of this post is in the tools Jim recommends (such as SEOCentro’s Meta Tag Analyzer for optimizing meta tags).

7 Ways to Create Blog Content That Attracts More Back Links by Digital Labz

Links are critical both for SEO purposes and attracting direct traffic–but they don’t appear magically. This post provides proven strategies for naturally attracting more backlinks to your blog posts, such as capitalizing on current events, making big lists (think “101 Tips” rather than “10 Tips”) and creating an infographic.

Link Building Tips for Personal Blogs by SEOmoz

Links are SEO fuel, and in this post SEO guru Rand Fishkin helpfully advises bloggers on which link-building tactics to avoid (generic directories, link buying) as well as dozen technigues to use such as niche blog listing sites, answering questions in online forums and social sharing in order to improve your blog’s rank in search.

And Finally…

90 Tips To Make Your Blog Rock by Jeff Bullas

And as if all of ideas above aren’t enough to keep you busy for the next year, Jeff Bullas offers 90 more including writing about industry trends, highlighting customer successes, writing a series of “how to” posts and then turning those into short videos, turn the results of surveys or polls into blog posts and more.

Related Posts

Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 1

Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 2

Tags: Adam Singer, Ann Smarty, Bianca Male, bizchickblogs, blog SEO, BloggerLuv, blogging for business, Business Blogging, business blogs, Cameron Chapman, ClickZ, corporate blogging, Daily Blog Tips, Erika Napletano, Future Buzz, guest posting, HubSpot, IMAutomater, Jeff Bullas, Jim Lodico, Joe Pulizzi. J-P De Clerck, Jonathan Beebe, Josh Wade, Joshua Lyons, Junta42, Kipp Bodnar, KISSmetrics, Mark Evans, Mark Jackson, MarketingSherpa, Martine Hunter, MLT Creative, Pamela Wilson, Pat Flynn, Peter Schram, Rand Fishkin, Sarah Hofstetter, Sean Donahue, Shareaholic, Sysomos, Timm Gunn, Twitter hashtags, Wayne Howard, writing a business blog
Posted in Business Blogging, Social Media Marketing | 5 Comments »

Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 2

Monday, October 18th, 2010

How can you craft more compelling blog headlines? Which SEO tools should be part of every blogger’s arsenal? What characteristics do successful bloggers share? How can you get more links to your blog? Continually come up with fresh and interesting topics? Avoid dumb mistakes that even smart bloggers make?

Find the answers to those questions and others here in more of the best guides to business blogging of 2010 so far.

10 SEO Tools Every Blogger Must Use by Daily SEO Tip

Anil Gupta provides mini-reviews of 10 useful SEO tools for bloggers, from the popular (e.g., Google Analytics) to the lesser-known (e.g., Ranks.nl keyword density tool and Sitening.com SEO Analyzer).

Blog Optimization, Post Title SEO & Deadeye Targeting by aimClear

Marty Weintraub explains, with his customary depth and real-world illustration, how to use keyword research to craft blog post titles that draw both human readers and high organic search position.

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers by Copyblogger

Want to join the ranks of highly successful bloggers? Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Annabel Candy details eight traits to cultivate for blogging success, such as being concise, focused and persistent.

Meaningful Metrics for B2B Blogging by Proteus B2B Marketing

The prolific Galen De Young first clarifies which commonly used metrics aren’t particularly important (and why), then does a deep dive into several more valuable ways to measure the impact of a corporate blog, including analysis of total site traffic driven by your blog, your blog’s impact on search traffic, and visit quality.

Top 10 Blog Directories by SEO Wizardry

***** 5 Stars
Pete Hollier lists the top ten blog directories for listings that will generate both direct traffic and valuable backlinks.

The 5 Old Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership by Outspoken Media

The highly linkable Lisa Barone showcases five “old rules” for blogging success that no longer apply, and recommends new ones to replace them. Example: “Old Rule: Good Bloggers Keep Posts Short…Instead of insight, opinion and commentary, we got copycat stories and blogging for blogging’s sake. It was riveting. Only not. New Rule: Size doesn’t matter, the content does.”

Smart Professionals with Dumb Blogs by Writing on the Web

Patsi Krakoff presents a list of common “dumb” mistakes made by otherwise smart bloggers (long sentences, overuse of “we,” vague terms) along with recommendations for writing better posts.

17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts by Copyblogger

Lamenting the lack of a “succinct summary all in one place” of the most valuable guidelines for bloggers, Jill Chivers proceeds to offer her own excellent summary of four key factors in writing a compelling post, eight ideas for more interesting content and five things to check before publishing.

4 Business Blogging Best Practices by HubSpot Blog

Noting that “Great business blogs have to walk a fine line: they have to create value for current and prospective customers while at the same time supporting a strategy that provides business growth,” Kipp Bodnar advises business bloggers to think like publishers, consider SEO and provide a clear connection to the corporate website among other practices.

7 ways to get more link love by iMedia Connection

Garrett French offers seven tips for getting relevant links to your content, such as constantly looking for ways to link to your peers first: “Link lavishly, and it will return to you in time.” Hey, it worked for him here.

50 Ways To Optimize Your Blog by jeffbullas.com

Jeff Bullas presents 50 tips to increase your blog’s readership, like asking questions of your readers, using StumbleUpon and AllTop, thoughtfully commenting on other blogs (with a link back to your own) and tweeting each of your new posts at least twice.

100 Sources of Blogging Inspiration by Ink Rebels

Diana Adams compiles an outstanding list of “though starters” to help break through blogger writing block, including writing a follow-up to an earlier post, lessons learned from an event you’ve attended, a book review, a case study, or if all else fails—inviting another blogger you’re socially connected with to write a guest post.

Tags: aimClear, AllTop, Anil Gupta, Annabel Candy, blog link love, blog SEO, blogging for business, business blogging tips, Diana Adams, Galen De Young, Garrett French, HubSpot, Jeff Bullas, Jill Chivers, Kipp Bodnar, Lisa Barone, Marty Weintraub, Patsi Krakoff, writing a business blog
Posted in Business Blogging, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Best Social Media Stats and Market Research of 2010 (So Far)

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Data junkies, stats addicts, web trivia buffs rejoice — here are a deluge of social media, search and other marketing research facts and figures from 50 articles and blog posts published so far in 2010.

How are marketers planning to allocate budgets this year? What percentage of Fortune 100 companies are on Twitter? Which social networking site is used by 92% of senior marketing executives? What social media tool helps small business double their reach on Twitter? How do B2B social media marketing practices differ from B2C companies? What percentage of web searches stop after page one of the results? How much do small businesses spend on search engine marketing? How many journalists also maintain blogs?

Find the answers to these questions and many, many more here.

Social Media Statistics

Study: Spending On Email, Social And Search Rising by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Despite the fact that more than half of marketers responding to an ExactTarget survey planned to to either reduce their overall marketing budget for 2010 or keep it flat, 54% planned to increase spending on email marketing and 66% planned to increase expenditures for social media “even though about 80% of those acknowledged the difficulty in tracking ROI in the medium.”

National Survey Finds Majority of Journalists Now Depend on Social Media for Story Research by Cision

A national survey of reporters and editors revealed that 89% use blogs for story research, 65% turn to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% utilize microblogging services such as Twitter. While the use of social media sources by journalists is growing rapidly, the reliability of such information remains an issue, as “the survey also made it clear that reporters and editors are acutely aware of the need to verify information they get from social media.”

Social Media Not Preferred Recommendation Resource by MediaPost Online Media Daily

In a study asking consumers to rate the most influential sources of information for their purchase decisions, 59% said “personal advice from friends or family members,” followed by 39% search engines, 36% articles in newspapers or magazines, online articles 28%, email 20% and social media 19%. Three caveats: first, though low, the influence of social media is growing. Second, social media and search are rated more influential by younger buyers and high-income consumers than by other groups. Third, the survey was heavily consumer-oriented; b2b figures would be different. The key takeaway — companies can’t put all of their marketing eggs in one basket, but need to balance budgets across several areas including email, social media, organic SEO, paid search and offline campaigns.

Social Media: Everybody’s Doing It, But For Different Reasons [Charts] by Pamorama

While 28% of U.S. adults say they give advice about purchases on social networking sites, only 17% say they seek out such advice when making buying decisions. “70% of social media users between the ages of 18-34 regularly use Facebook more than other sites such as MySpace, Twitter, and Classmates.com,” and women use Facebook more than men.

Senior marketing execs see their companies moving to social media in 2010 by The Viral Garden

In a recent study of high-level marketing executives, 70% plan new social media initiatives in 2010. 92% said they personally use LinkedIn, versus 56% on Facebook. While 28% planned to use internal resources to launch new initiatives, 25% turn to social media consultants. The two most important criteria when hiring a social media consultant are examples of previous work and recommendations; number of Twitter followers is the 12th-most important factor.

Social Media Users’ Interests and Expectations Vary by Network [Stats] by Pamorama

Another notable Pam Dyer post, this one summarizing a study from online advertising network Chitika which shows that Twitter is the best place to share news: 47% of the outbound traffic from Twitter goes to news sites, vs. 28% from Facebook, 18% from Digg and an imperceptible share from MySpace. Digg is the most technical; 12% of its outbound traffic goes to technology sites, vs. 10% from Twitter and 7% from Facebook. And for what it’s worth, Pam points out that “celebrity/entertainment is the only genre in the top 5 of all sites.”

What Type Of Social Media Ads Are The Most Effective? by MediaPost Online Media Daily

According to a recent study from Psychster, “Among the seven most common formats, sponsored content ads — in which consumers viewed a page that was “brought to you by” a leading brand — are the most engaging, but produced the least purchase intent. Corporate profiles on social-networking sites produce greater purchase intent and more recommendations when users can become a ‘fan,’ and add the logo to their own profiles, than when they can’t. And ‘give and get’ widgets are more engaging than traditional banner ads, but no more likely to produce an intent to purchase.”

Study: Americans’ Social Net Use On The Rise, But Services Not Entirely Wasted On The Young by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Nearly half of all Americans are now members of at least one social network, double the proportion of just two years ago. While social network use is highest among the young, it’s not exclusively their club: two-thirds of 25- to 34-year-olds and half of those aged 35 to 44 also now have personal profile pages. 30% of social media users access a social media site “several times a day,” up from 18% in 2009. Also, nearly half (45%) of all mobile phone owners send text messages on a daily basis.

Deciphering Shady Social Media Stats by Social Implications

Yes, Facebook is a big deal, but there is no way it “controls 41% of social media traffic” as was reported in a post on Mashable back in April. Jennifer Mattern rips the statistical methodology behind this reporting to shreds and reminds us all of why it’s important to be skeptical of social media statistics that don’t sound quite right.

Social Media Revolution by YouTube

Social media stats in video form. Some of the numbers shown here lend themselves to the skepticism recommended in the post above, but all are documented so take `em for what they’re worth. There are more Gen Y’ers than Baby Boomers, and 96% of them have joined a social network. 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. 80% of Twitter use is on mobile devices. YouTube now hosts more than 100 million videos and is the second largest search engine. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations when making purchase decisions; just 14% trust advertising. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (videos, photos, blog posts, links etc.) are shared on Facebook daily.

New Chart: Survey Says Inbound Marketing Budgets on the Rise by HubSpot Blog

In a study of 231 (likely a bit more social media-savvy than average) companies, 88% planned to maintain or increase inbound marketing budgets in 2010. 85% view company blogs as “useful,” while 71% said the same for Twitter (up from just 39% in 2009). More than 40% of respondents reported acquiring at least one new customer from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or their company blog in the past year.

Social Media: What a Difference a Year Makes by ClickZ

Erik Qualman updates some statistics from 2009, showing how rapidly this landscape is changing. If it were a country, Facebook would the third-largest on earth, up from fourth-largest in 2009. 80% of companies use social media in some manner for recruiting; of those, 95% use LinkedIn. 50% of mobile Internet traffic in the U.K goes to Facebook. And my favorite: “The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in five years.”

Look Ma, No Hands: More Than Half Of Companies Say They Are Using Social Media With No Strategy by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Among companies who say they are using social media in a recent Digital Brand Expressions survey, only 41% said they had a strategic plan in place to guide activities, and only 69% of those (28% of all social media-using companies) have set up metrics to measure the ROI of social media activities. Worse, on 29% of firms with a plan in place (12% of the total) had written social media policies in place for employees.

52 Cool Facts About Social Media by Danny Brown

Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook. Twitter adds 300,000 new users and gets 600 million searches daily. LinkedIn has more than 70 million members worldwide — including executives from every Fortune 500 company. More than half of YouTube users are under 20 years old, and let’s hope they live long lives: it would take 1,000 years to watch every video currently posted on the site. 77% of Internet users read blogs, but only 14% of blogs are published by corporations.

Twitter Statistics

Twitter Demographic Report – Who Is Really On Twitter? by PalatnikFactor.com

Who’s really using Twitter? According to this report, 44% are between 18 and 34 years old. A slight majority (53% to 47%) are female. Just over a quarter of tweeters qualify as regular users, accounting for 41% of all traffic, but the 1% classified as “addicts” account for a third of all tweets. Twitter users tend to be readers of TechCrunch, Wired magazine and CNN.com, but also (ugh) PerezHilton.com — so make what you will of that.

2009 Twitter Demographics and Statistics Report by iStrategyLabs

The largest cohort of Twitter users (47%) are in the 18-34 age bracket — but the second largest (31%) are 35-49 years old. 74% of twitterers have no kids at home. Almost half are college graduates and 17% have post-grad degrees.

Twitter Usage In America: 2010 Statistics and Ad Agency New Business by Social Media Today

While many executives still dismiss Twitter as a waste of time, recent research suggests it is one of the most valuable social networks for business. Awareness of Twitter has exploded; 87% of Americans said they were “familiar with” Twitter in a poll taken earlier this year, versus just 5% in 2008. Although only 7% of Americans maintain an active Twitter account (vs. 41% who are on Facebook), Twitter users “are far more likely to follow Brands/ Companies than social networkers in general. 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks. Twitter users frequently exchange information about products and services.”

Facebook Statistics

Facebook: Facts & Figures For 2010 by Digital Buzz Blog

Interesting, though slightly out of date (Lady Gaga’s page is listed as 9th-most popular) Facebook infographic. Half of all Facebook users log in on any given day, and more than 35 million update their status. More than 100 million users access Facebook through their mobile phones. The US and UK have the highest number of Facebook users, but the #3 country? Indonesia.

Report: 6.8% Of Business Internet Traffic Goes To Facebook by All Facebook

How are employees using the Internet at work? A recent study concluded that almost 7% of all business web traffic goes to Facebook, twice as much as Google (3.4%) and well ahead of Yahoo! at 2.4 percent. DoubleClick got 1.7% of all business traffic due to its massive online banner advertising network. In terms of bandwidth use, YouTube takes the single biggest share at 10%, followed by Facebook at 4.5% and Windows Update at 3.3%.

The Ultimate List: 100+ Facebook Statistics [Infographics] by HubSpot Blog

Men and women both average about 130 friends on Facebook, but men there are more likely to be (or least claim to be) single (33% to 26%) while women using Facebook are more likely to be (or at least say they are) married, engaged or in a relationship (47% to 41%). The three most “liked” types of food pages are about ice cream, milk or chocolate. Facebook pages that use the words “collaboration” or “blogger” have on average three times as many fans as pages about SEO or optimization. Pages about movies and TV shows generally get the highest number of “likes” while those devoted to government and public service get the least. Within the U.S., Washington DC and South Dakota have the highest percentage of residents with Facebook accounts (one of the very few phenomena they have in common), while New Mexico has the smallest percentage of its population (10.3%) on Facebook.

Social Media Use in Large Enterprises

Social Media Trends at Fortune 100 Companies [STATS] by Mashable

Among the world’s 100 largest companies, two-thirds are using Twitter, 54% have a Facebook page, 50% manage at least one corporate YouTube channel and 33% have created company blogs. Overall, 79% of Fortune 100 companies are using at least one social media channel, with the highest use in European (88%) and U.S-based (86%) companies. However, only 20% of these companies (28% in the U.S.) are using all four major social media platforms. 69% of U.S.-based firms in the study have a Facebook page, but just 32% have posts with comments from fans.

Fortune 500 favors Twitter over blogging by iMedia Connection

Among the world’s largest 500 companies, 35% had Twitter accounts in 2009, but only 22% maintained company blogs. Less than half effectively used SEO.

Twitter Moves Ahead of Blogs in Fortune 500 by Social Media Today

Among Fortune 500 companies, 108 (22%) have an active, public-facing corporate blog. 93 (86%) of those blogs are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account. 173 (35%) of the Fortune 500 firms maintain an active Twitter account, including 47 of the top 100 companies on the list.

How Fortune 100 Companies Leverage Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] by Penn Olson

Social media use by the Fortune 100 in visual Infographic form: the average Fortune 100 company follows 731 people on Twitter and is followed by about 1,500 (seems like small numbers for big companies). However, the average socially active Fortune 100 company has almost 41,000 Facebook fans and 39,000 YouTube channel subscribers.

Social Media in Business: Fortune 100 Statistics by iStrategy

According to a Burson-Marsteller study, 79% of the Fortune 100 are “present and listening” on at least one social networking platform. 20% of these corporate giants are using all four of the main social technologies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs), and 82% of the Fortune 100 companies on Twitter actively engage with customers there at least once per week.

The State of Social Media Jobs 2010 – A Special Report by Social Media Influence

Although “the importance of social media certainly is resonating through many big companies,” just 59 of the Fortune Global 100 firms have hired staff specifically to perform core social media tasks such as customer outreach, PR, marketing and internal communications. The most social media “active” industry sectors include healthcare, telecom, retail and automotive, while companies in heavily regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, energy and utilities are among the social media laggards.

Social Media Use in Small to Midsized Businesses (SMBs)

Small Businesses That Blog Have 102% More Twitter Followers by HubSpot Blog

Still wondering if your business should have a blog? A HubSpot study of more than 2,000 companies showed that, for businesses of all sizes, companies that have blogs have 79% more Twitter followers than those that don’t. Blogging “increases Twitter reach by 113% for B2B companies and 30% for B2C companies.”

Where SMB Spend their Marketing and Advert Money? [Infograph] by Thoughtpick

At the other end of the scale, for small to midsized businesses, marketing budget allocations are changing. Traditionally, small business marketers have favored email and search, and spent the majority of their marketing dollars offline. In 2009, only one-third of SMB marketers viewed Faebook as “very” or “somewhat” beneficial. But for 2010, 74% planned to increase their use of email marketing and 68% planned larger expenditures for social media. Over the next five years, social media budgets are expected to grow at a 34% annual rate — twice as fast as all other forms of online marketing. By 2014, Forrester predicts that social media spending will be higher than that for both email and mobile, though still much smaller than search and online display advertising.

Small Biz Lead Gen Surges with Social by eMarketer

According to a HubSpot study, “not only can inbound marketing bring leads for less money but it can also double average monthly leads for small and medium-sized businesses.” Twitter reach is critical for increased lead generation: “Companies with 100 to 500 followers generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Beyond the 500-follower mark, though, there was no further gain,” as is blogging — but the study noted that “Businesses must produce enough content for their blog to kick off growth in leads, which starts with about 24 to 51 posts…more indexed pages on Google also translates to more leads. Every 50 to 100 incremental indexed pages can mean double-digit lead growth.”

Social Media in Small Business is Anything But Small by Social Media Today

The prolific Brian Solis reports on recent research showing that social media adoption by small business doubled from 2009 to 2010. 61% of small business owners now use social media to help identify and attract new customers, 75% have a company page on a social networking site, and 45% expect their social media activities to be profitable within the next 12 months. 58% say that social media has met their expectations to date, and only 9% expect to lose money on social media efforts for the next year.

B2B Social Media Marketing Statistics

B2B Marketers Severely Lag B2C Players in Social Media by My Venture Pad

Andy Beal reminds us that “It’s a pretty well known fact that B2B marketers have been slower on the adoption curve of social media (than B2C marketers.” But why? One reason is executive buy-in (or lack thereof); in a recent study, one-third of claimed low executive level acceptance of social media was holding back efforts, while only 9% of B2C marketers said the same thing. Another is that 45% of B2B marketers said their company had a basic social media presence but didn’t use it as an active marketing tool; only 26% of B2B marketers concurred. Finally, “46% of B2B respondents said social media was perceived as irrelevant to their company, while only 12% of consumer-oriented marketers had the same problem.” If you’re one of those 46%, hopefully you’ll find facts and statistics in the following posts to help build a business case for social media in your company.

The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers by Social Media Today

***** 5 stars
Brian Solis breaks down B2B vs. B2C use of social media marketing. B2B companies are more likely to maintain a company blog (74% to 55%), participate on Twitter (75% to 49%) and monitor brand mentions (73% to 55%) while B2C firms more often advertise on social networks (54% to 42%) and use Facebook (83% to 77%) and MySpace (23% to 14%) as part of their social media strategy than their B2B counterparts.

Will B2B Companies Embrace Social Media in 2010? by MediaPost Online Media Daily

B2C companies led their B2B counterparts in adoption of social media marketing because more people are active in social networks for personal use than business, making it easier to target someone who is interested in golf than, say, machine tools. However, B2B use of social media is on the rise, with 6 of 10 companies planning to increase their spending on social media initiatives in 2010.

Creating Engagement in B2B Marketing by Buzz Marketing for Technology

93 percent of participants in a social media in business study believe that all companies should have a presence in social media. And 85 percent believe “companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them,” according to Paul Dunay.

Vital statistics for every B2B marketer by Earnest about B2B

75% of B2B marketers use microblogging tools such as Twitter vs. 49% of B2C marketers. The biggest barrier to adoption may be CIOs; 54% of CIOs block social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, in the work environment. 93% of B2B buyers “use search to begin the buying process,” and 9 out of 10 say that when they are ready to buy, they will find vendors. Plus much more.

B2B Spending on Social Media to Explode by eMarketer

B2B marketing on social networks is expected to grow 43.3% this year, and Forrester Research B2B spending on social media marketing to reach $54 million in 2014, up from only $11 million in 2009. Paid advertising is expected to account for only a small portion of spending, but “when companies budget for social media marketing in 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of their expenses will go toward other initiatives, such as creating and maintaining a branded profile page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the effect of a social network presence on brand health and sales.”

Vital statistics for B2B Marketers by EarnestAgency’s Channel (YouTube)

An entertaining and creative presentation which makes the case that B2B actually leads B2C in social media marketing — because that’s where their buyers are. 37% of b2b buyers have posted questions on social networking sites, 48% follow industry conversations on key topics of interest, and 59% “engage with buyers who have done it before.” 53% of C-level executives prefer to find information themselves rather than tasking subordinates with this, and 63% turn to search engines for their research. Many of the statistics used in this video can be found elsewhere, but not in such an engaging fashion.

What B2B Marketing Tactics Are Up, Down, Flat? (Survey Sneak Peek) by Everything Technology Marketing

Holger Schulze shares results from a study showing how b2b use of various marketing tactics have changed over the past three years. Social media saw the biggest jump in activity, with 81% of respondents doing more of it (as Holger points out, “not surprising considering social media use in B2B was still nascent 3 years ago”). Content creation (68%) and website marketing (56%) are also increasing, while direct mail and print advertising saw the biggest drops.

SEO Statistics

First Page Or Bust: 95% of Non-Branded Natural Clicks Come From Page One by MediaPost Search Insider

***** 5 stars
In SEO, how important is a page one ranking? This post tells you: according to a recent study from iCrossing, across the three major search engines, 95% of the clicks came from page one. While Rob Garner notes that this figure is higher than in other studies, the clear implication is that doing some extra optimization to move your site to page one from page two or three can pay off in dramatic traffic gains.

Organic Search Still Reigns by eMarketer

Diving deeper into the iCrossing study referenced above, Google accounts for 74% of non-branded search traffic, with Bing and Yahoo tied at 13%.

Small businesses spending more on search by iMedia Connection

The average small business spent $2,149 on search engine advertising in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 30% from 3Q09 and 111% from the final quarter of 2008. Also, video is taking off in this segment: at the end of last year, 19% of small businesses were using video on their websites, up from just 5% the previous quarter.

Content Marketing

Most Valuable Content and Offers for IT Buyers by High-Tech Communicator

***** 5 stars
If you’re trying to sell to technology buyers, note that a recent study shows the types of content they are most likely to click on are “news and articles (84%), competitive comparisons and buying guides (73%), and promotional content (70%).” These decision makers are about equally to click on offers for promotional content, online tutorials and demonstrations, competitive comparisons and buying guides, free research, and educational content.

Search Engine Marketing

SEMPO Report Suggests Measuring ROI Still Challenging by MediaPost Online Media Daily

The share of North American companies using paid-search marketing increased from 70% in 2008 to 78% in 2009 and 81% in 2010. 97% of these companies use Google AdWords; 56% advertise on Google’s content network. 59% of firms anticipate spending more on search marketing in 2010; 37% say budget3 will remain the same, while just 4% planned to cut spending in this area.

Study: Three-Word Queries Drive Most SEO Traffic by Search Engine Land

Three-word search queries are the most common, at 26% of all searches; 19% are two-word queries, and 17% use four words. Yet for paid clicks, keywords of 4-6 words in length drive the highest average CTR at 1.1-1.2%. The overall average CTR for paid search ads was 0.91%.

Other Online Marketing Statistics

What’s Changed This Decade (1999-2009) by Virtual Video Map

An enlightening, graphic guide to many of the changes seen over the past 10 years, from the growth of the U.S. economy and national debt to the incredible expansion of Internet use. Examples: The number of Internet users worldwide grew from 350 million a decade ago to 1.7 million today. One out of five (actually now almost one of three) of those users has a Facebook account. Cell phone use increased from one of out of 10 people in 1999 to two out of three in 2009.

Did You Know? (video) by EducoPark

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. Half of all workers have been with their current employer for less than five years. There are roughly one billion searches performed on Google every day — more than ten times the number just four years ago. It took radio 38 years to reach a total audience of 50 million people; it took the Internet just four years to reach that number, the iPod three years, and Facebook only two years. There will be more pages of unique information published this year than in the last 5,000 years combined.

SuperPower: Visualising the internet by BBC News

This slick tool visually illustrates the growth of Internet penetration, by country, from 1998 through 2008.

Small-Biz Success from Deeper Online Interaction by eMarketer

Ye shall reap what ye sow online, apparently: a study by American City Business Journals concluded that small businesses who were most active online achieved higher sales than those who made less use of the Internet. The study concluded that “‘Interactors,’ the most active participants online in almost all respects, accounted for only 15% of businesses but 24% of sales. ‘Transactors,’ somewhat less active online but the group most involved in online selling, also overindexed in sales. The least involved groups, ‘viewers’ and ‘commentators,’ also exhibited the worst business performance.”

Here’s What’s Really Going On In Online Media Consumption by Business Insider

Of the four largest daily print newspaper websites (the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today), only the New York Times has gained visitors in the past 12 months — and that growth has been modest. Among weekly news magazine websites, The Week (focused on multi-source aggregation) has shown dramatic 170% growth in the last 12 months as Newsweek.com, once the leader in this segment, has seen a 17.5% decrease in traffic. Visits to the Huffington Compost are up 86% in the past year.

And Finally…

The Ultimate List: 300+ Social Media Statistics by HubSpot Blog

If this post hasn’t satisfied your data fix, knock yourself out with this extensive collection of videos, infographics and presentations compiled by HubSpot with still more social media stats and figures like: Twitter has 50% more activity on weekdays than on weekend days. Facebook is the most popular way to share information, followed by email, then Twitter. More than twice the amount of information is shared on Twitter as on Digg. 48% of bloggers are US-based, 2/3 are male, and 75% are college graduates. 35% of traditional journalists also blog. Social networks Bebo, MySpace and Xanga attract the youngest audience; Delicious, LinkedIn and Classmates.com have, on average, the oldest demographics. More than 210 billion emails are sent daily, which exceeds the number of “snail mail” letters sent each year. Etc.

Tags: Andy Beal, b2b social media, Brian Solis, Chitika, Cision, Danny Brown, Earnest Agency, Erik Qualman, Facebook statistics, Fortune 100 social media, Holger Schulze, HubSpot, Jennifer Mattern, Lady Gaga, Pam Dyer, Pamorama, Rob Garner, SEO statistics, social media research, social media statisitics, social media studies, social networking, Xanga
Posted in Marketing Research, Social Media Marketing | 5 Comments »