Social Media

31 July 2009

Twitter Tools-Twitter Bootcamp

Posted by Marc Elison

Our very own SEO manager Kate Gamble recently spoke at the Sydney Twitter Boot-Camp on the subject "Twitter Tools" and by all accounts was a great success. Kate is speaking again at the Melbourne version of the event so while we can't give away all her delicious secrets we can put up her first slide entitled " The Butterfly Effect of Social Media". In addition I have selected a few of the more interesting tweets from the stream. The entire stream can be found here

• problogger 8 Lessons on Twitter from @markpollard 1 it does take effort. 2 there is a lot of recycling. 3 it can be addictive #tbcau
• problogger cont... 4 anxiety does feed the beast. 5 one dimension-itis isn't cool. 6 Twitter thrives on appreciation. #tbcau

• problogger cont... 7 Rejection happens. 8 lifestyle change #tbcau

• michelle_falzon According to @markpollard Harvard survey shows people who are more connected online are 30% more creative! #tbau #tbcau

• switchedonmedia Time a big factor for Twitter for business, good reason for outsourcing, need to know what makes sense for biz. #tbcau - tamya baohm

• switchedonmedia RaboPlus secured a sponsorship deal with tour de france to get exclusive content thru their social networks. nice!! #tbcau

• michelle_falzon Cool tools for Twitter research Twist - awesome tweet trends analysis & Monitter - geo locate tweets thx @kategamble #tbcau

• switchedonmedia Twitter traffic not counted as referrer in analytics is counted as Direct. #tbcau good consideration from @kategamble

• web_goddess How does 'automate as much as possible' jibe with idea that good Twitter use is all about meaningful conversations? #tbcau

• switchedonmedia RT @PRIANational: Web signal = brand + key word - Great idea #tbcau

• chrisgander Top 3 things I took away from Twitter Boot Camp #tbcau. 1. "Web Signals" 2. "Be Human" 3. "Stay Active & Reactive"

Kate's full Twitter Tools presentation will be posted here once she has spoken at Twitter Boot-camp Melbourne, Have a great weekend everyone

Posted by Marc Elison on 31 July 2009 at 3:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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3 July 2009

Facebook Search

Posted by Martin Orliac

Last Wednesday, I was reading this article on Mashable about Facebook publisher when I thought it looked more and more like Twitter. No surprise then, when after two days, I was reading a second article on Facebook's fan revealing the new Twitter-like features that Facebook will be unveiling for its publisher status bar. Facebook already had a Twitter application allowing its users to tweet without leaving their site, but this new step shows how Facebook is concerned about the recent traffic growth on Twitter (+40% between March and May 2009 according to compete.com). The imminent release of Facebook Search brings a whole new perspective in the search market, where people will be able to search real-time information on news, major events, and among the massive amount of data available on Facebook.

Real-time information
The publisher bar allows Facebook users to share pretty much anything with their friends, but the new bar will feature an innovative option allowing them to expand the audience from a select group of friends to "everyone".

Publisher status bar now:

Future publisher status bar:

Looking deeper into this, I went to check on the Facebook Q&A page to understand what they actually mean by "everyone", and it confirmed that "everyone" means "anyone on the Internet". In other words, you will soon be able to tweet to your "fans" on Facebook. By the way, I find "fans" quite awkward as a term for "followers", so please Facebook, try to come up with something a little bit less intense.

It is now clear that Facebook is trying to counter-attack by enabling its users to have the same real-time feature offered by Twitter.
The question is how this new feature is going to impact Twitter?
Even if Twitter is a trendy topic on the Internet, its traffic is nowhere close to Facebook's. Actually, a recent article on TechCrunch revealed how Facebook's traffic is getting nearer to Google's and even exceeded MSN's. Besides, MySpace attracts more than twice as much unique visitors than Twitter! This reveals what people are really using, and if Twitter has experienced a fair growth in traffic recently, people don't use it as much as its main competitors.

TechCrunch has used compete.com as a reference, and so I did to forecast the future traffic for Facebook and Twitter using a simple linear rule - and it doesn't look very promising for Twitter. It appears that Twitter has doubled its traffic between February and March, so it could probably happen again, but Twitter would need to see its present traffic multiplied by 6 to reach Facebook.

But what I found really interesting was seeing the difference in impact for a major event like the recent death of Michael Jackson. You would assume in the first place that Twitter really is the best way to get real-time information and you would be right in a way, since the first information is said to have been tweeted, and not shared on Facebook. However according to this other article on Mashable about the web impact of Michael Jackson's death, you can see on this graph how massive the impact has been on Facebook, and if you have a very good sight, you will be able to see the relatively minor impact of this event on Twitter (in purple).

Facebook Search
Facebook has recently announced the test of their brand new Facebook Search feature, allowing users to find content amongst the world's largest online social media website. According to their statistics, more than 900 million photos are uploaded to the site each month, and more than 1 billion pieces of content are shared each week. Facebook has officially more than 200 million users, and if just 10% of these users choose to publish their status updates to "everyone", it means that 20 million users will generate fresh search engine indexable content.
Facebook couldn't buy Twitter and is about to launch a service nearly identical, but based on a much bigger community. So will users who currently utilise both social networks consolidate their users? Given this, what will be the future of Twitter?
Either way, from a SEO perspective, it will be interesting to see how the major companies react to these two real-time search engines. These 200 millions+ users are obviously quite tempting for the marketers, especially considering the amount of data Facebook has on each user. But so many questions remain regarding Facebook Search: Are the Facebook users really going to use Facebook Search? What is it going to index? Will it differentiate real-time results with static results in its SERPs? And why not Facebook Webmaster Tools, hey?
Regarding spamming, how are Facebook and Twitter going to filter their SERPs? Search Engine Land has recently posted an article about real-time spam on Twitter, and offered recommendations such as:

• "Accounts less than a day old don't get to show up in Twitter Search and/or show up for trending topics
• Figure a reputation score for accounts and only let those appear in for trending topics
• Partner with a service for malware detection, so that any links Twitter puts out are analyzed to be safe"

The impact of such a potentially powerful tool for online marketing hot shots everywhere could bring a whole new perspective to the Search market. How much of the blue chip advertising budget is going to be spent on these new means of promotion? SEO firms might soon optimise companies' pages and content for Facebook Search or even give recommendation on the right keywords to use for tweet copywriting. Now let's see what impact such new features will have on the major search engines like Google considering that Facebook is attracting nearly as much traffic as Google.

Posted by Martin Orliac on 3 July 2009 at 8:23 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
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7 May 2009

Why I have quit Twitter

Posted by Kate Gamble

Recently I have seen a lot of posts about how 'big' twitter is getting (I was a pretty early adopter due to the SEO industry I work in). It is also interesting to see people comment on the rate of growth of Twitter all while my personal use of this network drops off rapidly.

So why the decline in my interest in Twitter?

Twitter, like an extra strong cup of coffee, gives you a massive buzz up front, but leaves you feeling distracted and short tempered for the rest of the day. The buzz I used to get from Twitter was like connecting to an infinitely wide network of people who related and enjoyed the same type of media consumption that I did. One of Twitter's initial appeals for me was the fact that I could connect with fellow search junkies and social media mavens any time via my browser, iPhone, tweetdeck etc. Logging on and having the news as filtered by my twitter stream, rather than a Sydney Morning Herald editor was refreshing and relevant.

So why is twitter doomed to be J.A.S.N (just another social network)?

Just like Facebook, people will bastardise anything once it reaches a certain size. Twitter is going through its 'facebook app' equivalent stage, you know that period when everyone wanted to play you in poker, dungeons and dragons or any other of the myriad of annoying time wasting games available to the avid procrastinator. This is the future of twitter, more brands are starting to spam you about products and offering they hope you will find relevant.

But brands aren't the only ones who are sabotaging the beauty of Twitter, no sir, just like the hole in the ozone layer above Australia, we are all to blame. As Twitter catches on and people follow their friends they will be introduced to an intimate level of understanding about the everyday exploits of people they would ordinarily catch up with infrequently. Is this really what we want? Face it, just because I am your mate does not mean I need to know you are "on the bus" / "eating a sandwich" / "on the loo". I don't want to know people! Hence my new conclusion that my real world friends are not as interesting as the industry leaders for blogging, social media, tech news.

Once the percentage of my twitter stream tweets turned from experts / evangelists to tweets on sandwiches, this social network becomes less vital to my morning routine. But what is the solution? It is rude to unfollow mates; imagine the scandal "didn't you see my update on twitter, I can't make lunch at 12!" So now, rather than being a source of interesting internet highlights, Twitter is a clogged up stream of 'too much information' and many social faux pas

Twitter as a ticket to play

Our famous microblogging engine has (almost) become the norm and so we watch it descend from its noisy heights into one more internet website you need to monitor for your company / brand / social life.

Twitter is now a "ticket to play" in the social media sandpit; the leverage opportunities are limited and while most brands will jump on the bandwagon trying to be the first to market to leverage the ever growing traffic opportunities, most will be left cold as the wave washes on by.

The solution is to be one step ahead, remember that while social media platforms come and go, your message, if it's a good one, can have a lasting effect. So Twitter become just one more social media breadcrumb box to tick. Are you anticipating the next big thing your company can be preparing for?

So what is next?

The solution to my problems with Twitter is Foursquare, a new social media network that plugs into Yelp so that you can geo-target your posts to different GPS locations. I am not saying this is going to grow massive overnight; I am making the point that this social network will help ME with my problems on Twitter. What's going to help you with yours? Answering this problem might help you figure out where to put your social media resources next..While Foursquare is not available here in Sydney we will hopefully see its expansion soon.

Posted by Kate Gamble on 7 May 2009 at 1:27 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
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1 May 2009

Facebook causes boost to global clothing sales, Maybe

Posted by Marc Elison

It is fun Friday here at the Bruce Clay Australia offices and I decided that there should be a blog post in line with that. I have had an idea ruminating in my mind for a few months regarding Facebook's effect of user's buying patterns with regard to clothes and how use this change to improve SEO, today I am going to elaborate on this.

So I know you must be thinking, Marc is going to bring out stacks of data, historical and current, gathered from multiple reputable sources, repackaged it in a nice easy to understand way to support his theory, not this time :). The only evidence I have for this phenomenon is purely anecdotal from my own opinions and peers I chat to. Now I'm not talking about the advertising that Facebook supplies that in the words of Facebook "Reach your exact audience and connect real customers to your business" rather I am talking about photos, pictures, movies, mobile phone vids etc that get posted by your 'friends'.

The latest statistics indicate that Facebook has about 15 billion photos, with Facebook users adding photos at a rate of 850 million photos per month and that content is supplied by around 200 million active users. Now if you do the maths correctly (which I have not always done) that works out to roughly 75 pictures for each Facebook user, that is not including videos.

This brings me to the crux of my argument, a few months ago I was looking through my photos on Facebook (491 to be exact, but hey it's not a contest) and noticed that a large majority of the photos were from nights out on the town. While scrutinising these photos a little more carefully (strands of the Carly Simon song " You're so Vain" resound in my mind) it appears that I seem to be on a rotating schedule of only 5 shirts, or in fact that all I owned in the world were those 5 shirts. [how many are pink? - Kate] Wherever I look I seem to be in a similar outfit and I'm a guy, I shouldn't even be noticing/thinking about this kind of thing. This struck me as fairly odd; I always thought I had a fair variety when it came to my wardrobe, apparently not.

After this discovery I decided to consult people who would probably be more aware and perceptive of this phenomenon, the fairer sex. Voila, apparently I had stumbled onto something that until now had been the privy of those "girly talks" in powder rooms at venues across Sydney. [hehe, the privy in the privy - Kate] Some even griped how expensive it was getting as they felt every time they were invited to a function they felt a need for a new outfit so as not to have the shame of appearing in the Facebook photos section wearing the same thing time after time. Others went so far as to de-tag themselves in photo's where they felt they felt they had worn the same outfit one time too many.

Now what does this have to do with search engine optimisation? Unfortunately not a great deal but an element nevertheless. However online clothing stores may want to choose different value propositions when deciding which keywords to target for search engine marketing. I would suggest online retailers extend the current value and quality propositions that they use to sell their products (and by extension their keywords) and adding additional propositions (in this case variety). Then they should conduct extensive keyword research regarding these additional propositions and use it to garner a whole slew of longtail customers looking for variety in their wardrobe, as for me, Im off to buy some new shirts. Have a great weekend all.

Posted by Marc Elison on 1 May 2009 at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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20 April 2009

Twitter and the Power of Persuasion

Posted by Marc Elison

Twitter and the power of persuasion.

The Purchase Decision Process for consumers was first identified and analysed by psychologists 1940s. Over the next 60 years the process has been constantly refined and examined by psychologists and marketers alike.

One of the vital steps in this process is the "information search" iteration. In this step consumers use internal sources (recalling past experiences with the brand/product in mind) and external sources (personal sources, such as friends and family as well as public sources, including various product-rating organisations and the one that particularly concerns this diatribe, marketer-dominated sources, such as advertising and company websites). Now if you are asking yourself "what in the name of Zeus's big toe does this have to do with Bruce Clay Australia and Search Engine Marketing", please bear with me, I am getting to that.

Now with the explosion of the Internet in the past 10 years, comprehensive information has become easier to find. Of course, this information has not always been as focused to the needs of the individual searcher as it could be. However there is a phenomenon that is currently sweeping the globe that has made this information hyper focused and relevant... that innovation is Twitter.

Twitter is described by Wikipedia as follows; "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them."

Twitter (for those who use it) has become a key conduit in the external source aspect of the Purchase Decision Process. Now not only can you observe what your peers think of a certain product or brand but you can follow the brand directly and be notified of specific offers or specials. The messages are short and succinct due to the limited size of tweets and this leads to a high degree of relevance.

Now you can obtain similar information through using a search engine or receiving RSS feeds regarding the product or brand but with Twitter the information is at your finger tips - complete with evaluations from people you consider peers and whose judgement you trust. That is, if you don't follow 1000s of people indiscriminately.

A really good example of this is Carnival Cruises. They have utilised Twitter not only to bring specials to their followers but to interact and answer potential customer's questions. Their Twitter page encompasses special deals, peer review, a wealth of information regarding the cruises and brand building activities - very few "normal" corporate sites can do that in 1 page.

As reported in the Bruce Clay Australia blog Twitter usage jumped 131% in March, this indicates that Twitter is rapidly gaining momentum. As recently as last week there was a high publicity "contest" between CNN and Ashton Kutcher to see who could accumulate one million followers. Ashton emerged victorious.

Now imagine Ashton tweeted about how he loved a certain kind of widget; their sales would go through the roof. Every enterprise that has some semblance of a social media strategy should use Twitter and its unique power of suggestion to connect with their clients and ramp up revenues. In addition, all tweets that mention a certain keyword in conjunction with a product, service or brand, have an impact of the ranking of that keyword or keyword phrase (particularly now after the Vince update). As a result of this Twitter has a direct impact on rankings and therefore the SEO industry.

Posted by Marc Elison on 20 April 2009 at 5:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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17 April 2009

Insights and statistics from comScore

Posted by Marc Elison

comScore has just released some interesting search engine ranking stats for March 2009. To round up:

Google took its widest-ever lead in the U.S. search market in March, it had a 63.7 percent market share of the 14.3 billion U.S. searches in March, increasing 0.4 percentage points from February. Yahoo's market share slipped slightly while Microsoft's improved marginally.
Overall U.S. search queries in March increased 9 percent from February, however the fact that February is significantly shorter than March accounts for many of these searches.
Twitter.com jumped 131% in March to 9.3 million visitors! That's 5 million more visitors than in February.
Facebook's usage in European countries grew by 314% to 100 million visitors in February from 24 million the same month a year earlier and is now the 6th biggest Web property worldwide, posting 275 million visitors in February, a 175% increase from the same period a year ago.

These figures, of course, confirm that the future looks promising for SEO and social media.

Source: ComScore, Inc

Posted by Marc Elison on 17 April 2009 at 9:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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4 April 2009

Rand Fishkin - What is ethical social media marketing?

Posted by Neerav Bhatt

The 1st session in the Social Media track this afternoon: "What Is Ethical Social Media Marketing?" presented by Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.

Since attending his first ever industry conference in 2005 (SES New York City), Rand has guided SEOmoz to being one of the most world's most respected search marketing companies.

You can chat with Rand on Twitter

Ethical Tenets

Rand believes there are a few ethical tenets that we should be paying very careful attention to when engaging in online social media:

Don't break the law
Don't hurt other people or organisations

Obviously, this rules out downright malicious techniques such as malware or email spam but, Rand feels it's OK to use an anonymous "sock puppet accounts" to promote content under a contract. An oft overlooked tenet that many people miss is creating value for the client. You have an obligation to do the best job for them.
Organisations should be participating in social networks and the best way to do this is to recruit social media experts for help.

A common question often asked by clients: "Is there value in full disclosure when participating in social networks for a client or even for your own company?
The consensus from the SMX Sydney audience is that marketers should operate ethically, but without disclosing all their activities upfront. Although, I wonder, is this non-disclosure deceptive in itself and how far should a marketer push this limit?

Rand signs off with 10 Tips for Social Media Success

Build simple stuff
Make if look authentic
Expect 75% of viral social media campaigns to fail
If more than 5-6 people are involved in planning it will FAIL
Funny sells
Funny is really hard - Interesting is easy
Consider microsites for social media marketing
Hire professional pushers (eg: Digg voters) and leave them alone
Don't try to help them - it will backfire
Use social media to accomplish business goals

Posted by Neerav Bhatt on 4 April 2009 at 2:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Darren Rowse, ProBlogger

Posted by Neerav Bhatt

In the 2nd session Darren Rowse aka Problogger presents "Twitter Tips & Etiquette". Darren Rowse is founder and editor of ProBlogger.net, a Top 50 Blog Globally (as ranked by Technorati) and one of the leading sources on the Web for information about making money from blogs.

Darren is a full-time blogger himself, making a six-figure income from blogging since 2005 and in 2008 co-authored the book 'ProBlogger' (Wiley Pulishers). In addition to ProBlogger, Darren also founded and edits the popular Digital Photography School (digital-photography-school.com), TwiTip (a blog with daily Twitter Tips) and is a co-founder of the b5media blog network with 300+ blogs across numerous verticals.

18 months ago Darren was a Twitter doubter (weren't we all?), now he has around 50,000 followers (Darren's next birthday is presumably being held at the Telstra Stadium?) and is the most followed person in Australia on this fast growing online network. Send Darren a tweet @problogger

Darren's initial Twitter-phobia was caused by the people talking about cats and what they were eating, but he has since been swayed by the $250M micro-blogging platform.

BENEFITS

A few Twitter benefits from Mr Rowse:

Darren asked his followers a research question for a blog post yesterday and he received 100 responses in 10 minutes. Twtpoll.com is a service that allows you to collect data from your followers
Branding
Driving traffic - #3 referrer to traffic to his blogs
Humanises his site
SEO (indirect)
Acts as an outpost/satellite to promote and make his sites more visible

OPPORTUNITY

Twitter is the fastest growing community site on the web amongst 35-49 years of age (Neilsen data)
Hitwise says Twitter is the 85th most popular site in Australia and it is trending up the list really fast

WAYS THAT BUSINESSES ARE USING TWITTER

Directly with their own accounts eg: @bigpondteam
"Making"/encouraging employees to spend time on Twitter during work therefore dispersing information about the company's activities
Internal communication - like Yammer
As a monitoring tool - what people are saying about them and monitoring their industry/niche e.g.: using tools like Twitterhawk.

Tips for Business Twitter Accounts

Identify your objectives - consider having multiple channels, each of which has specific objectives e.g.: US office, UK office, Australasian office. Dell has 34 Twitter accounts.
Provide value, solve problems and fill needs
Leverage other profiles and networks like your blog/website which already have readers/subscribers
Dress nicely: use an appropriate avatar and twitter background wallpaper for your profile
Introduce yourself - Use the whole biography space to describe yourself and your interests accurately
Reserve your company name account now even if you don't plan on using it soon
Learn the culture and language - make sure you are aware of the rules of engagement
Link to a twitter specific landing page from your twitter profile which encourages people to follow you
Identify people who are participating in Twitter well, and see how you can emulate them
Ask questions and answer other people's questions
Be conversational and be as active as you can. Be active when the people you want to communicate with are online.
Be a thought leader
Use direct messaging or Skype etc for conversations that go beyond 3-4 tweets back and forth
DO NOT send automatic direct messages to each new person who follows you
"Cotweet" is a new service that businesses could use to monitor and manage multiple corporate twitter accounts
Use an URL Shortener like www.bit.ly