Tag Archives: social networking

Explaining SEO to a CEO: Interactive Marketing & Social Media Marketing Strategies

In this multi-part series, we’re discussing the development of marketing and socialization with a narrow focus on how news is received and shared and the role brands play in seamlessly interfacing with media to incorporate marketing into our everyday lives.

Our last segment covered social networking and its role in human interaction over time, even before the Internet came to be what it is today.  This segment breaks into Interactive marketing and hitting your target audience.

What exactly is Interactive Marketing, and How Can My Business Benefit by Using it?

According to John Deighton of Harvard University, “Interactive Marketing” refers to the evolving trend in marketing whereby marketing has moved from a transaction-based effort to a conversation.”

Interactive Marketing requires an overall and web strategy, social media marketing, Content Search Optimization, Brand reputation management, search engine marketing, and Search Engine Optimization.

Today there are roughly 1,173 billion Internet users.  This is a 225% user increase worldwide from early 2000.  Africa has seen a 650% increase, while Latin America had a 500% increase in Internet usage.  By 2012, about 60% of the planet will be on the Internet.

The Bottom Line: Reaching The Most Targets in the Shortest Amount of Time

How do you reach 50 million people?  To do so, it took radio 38 years, and it took television 13 years.  However, it took the Internet just 4 years, and iPods were in the hands of 50 million users in only 3 years!

Facebook added 100 million members in under 9 months. If websites were countries, the populations on Facebook & MySpace are the 4th and 5th largest in the world.  Social media sites are taking over rapidly, and businesses are honing in.

In the next segment of this series, we’ll share ways to create an effective, measurable Interactive Marketing Campaign strategy that helps your brand hit its target demographic.

For further questions or a social media marketing strategy, comment below, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter @WebSeoMarketing.

 


Explaining SEO to a CEO: Social Networking & Online Marketing Strategies

In this four-part series, we’ll discuss the evolution of human socialization with a focus on how we receive and share news, and how brands incorporate seamless marketing into our everyday lives. 

How do you explain the value of creating an online marketing strategy that incorporates social media and its role in increasing website traffic to industry leaders who are more accustomed to classic print, radio and television marketing?

We’ll start at the beginning.

Social Networking Existed Even Before the Internet

Back in the good old days, we received our morning paper, chatted about the news to co-workers around the water cooler, and then came home to watch the evening news.

Today we get our news from phone calls, text messages, websites, RSS feeds, Blogs, video chat, e-mails, instant messages, Twitter, and Facebook status updates.

We have become more media-savvy, and trust online sources and social networking connections more than ever. We choose when, how and in which format we want to receive the news, and we get to choose exactly what news we want to receive.  The power is in our hands to decide how and when we want to interact with one another.

From the plane crashing into the Hudson River to Michael Jackson’s death and even the earthquake in Chile, some of the biggest stories are first breaking online through Twitter and TMZ, tipping off broadcast television news stations about the breaking stories.

Statistics from Pew Research Group show newspaper readership has been in a steady decline since the early ’90s, and Internet news has been increasing since the mid ’90s. Across the board, 2000 through 2010 has been a solid decade of growth in interactive marketing and online news.

How did it all happen so fast? 

In 1958, After USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite, the U.S. formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency within the Department of Defense, with the goal of establishing U.S. lead in science and technology applicable to the military. 

Ten years later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contracts with BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman) to create ARPAnet.  By 1970, ARPAnet had five nodes: UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, University of Utah, and BBN.

In the 1980s, the DNS, or Domain Name System was established, with network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu. 

By the 90s, the Internet had approximately 45 million people worldwide, with roughly 30 million of those in North America.  Between 1995 and 2001, there was a “dot com bust”. 

In a Nutshell…

Investors thought this was the new big thing—which in a sense, it was, but premature.  Let’s just say “strange business models”, unregulated markets, creative accounting, eager investors, and thirsty shareholders all added fuel to the flame.  Eventually it had to burst….

Stay tuned for our next segment, which will focus on online statistics and designing a strategy to hit your target market.

For further questions or a social media marketing strategy, comment below, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter @WebSeoMarketing.


Social Media and Google Collaborate for Real-Time Search Results

Google has acquired deals with MySpace and Facebook allowing real-time updates posted by publicly-posting users to be part of a real-time index on Google.

Recently Twitter signed a similar deal with the search giant, and the two new partnerships are reported to be going live on Google throughout all English language domains starting this week.

What is a real-time search?

When a user searches a particular keyword phrase or topic, real-time updates from various social media sites including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter will appear in the search engine results page, along with the regular search results.

Prior to these changes, people searching various current events would only find news reports or Wikipedia entries on the topics, but not real-time information or opinions in Google searches.  A visit to search.twitter.com would be the only way to search through Twitter updates as events are occurring.

Now, Google and Bing are forming partnerships with social media and social networking sites to create more relevant and real-time search results. On the flip side of the coin, these search engines will have to work out how and when to serve users with real-time results, since real-time results are not always relevant to a person’s search.

One of the most essential components of search to a user is the speed at which results become available, but there’s another part of speed beyond how quickly a user accesses the information – how quickly the search engine can index the information in order for it to be searched and found.

Although Google remains tight-lipped about financial terms of the agreements with the social media sites, the chief operating officer of Facebook stated Facebook is receiving no financial gain from allowing public status updates to be available to Google.


Social Media Popularity Reflected in 2009 Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year

It’s that time of year – tinsel and string lights come out from storage and the New Oxford American Dictionary announces its word of the year… just in time to wrap it up nicely and place it under the tree.  

Last year Oxford gave the gift of hypermiling but that didn’t take us very far at all.  However, this year is different — social networking-savvy folks are already more than familiar with the  2009 Word of the year:

Unfriend.

The ultimate Secret Santa gift, you’ll notice this one’s wrapped in bitterness and vinegar with a ribbon of denial, and tagged with one less number of friends than you had yesterday… and it’s going to take you a long time to figure out who it came from.

Oxford’s official definition of the verb unfriend is “To remove someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program Christine Lindberg states “It has both currency and potential longevity. In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”

Lindberg continues to explain how “Most ‘un-‘ prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar ‘un-‘ verbs (uncap, unpack), but ‘unfriend’ is different from the norm.  It assumes a verb sense of ‘friend’ that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!) Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

Some runners up for the 2009 Word of the Year include the following:

Hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets

Intexticated – distracted because texting on a cell phone while driving a vehicle

Netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory

Paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers

Freemium – a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content

Oxford determines the Word of the Year based on lexicographic tracking of the English vocabulary, observing how it changes from year to year.  Ultimately when the word is chosen, its selection reflects the mindset of the year as well as its potential to last and maintain cultural significance and use.


Microsoft Live Search for Facebook

Microsoft’s initial investment in the social networking website Facebook gave many the impression that live search would be integrated into the site. This was assumed for a variety of reasons, including the highly publicized deal with Google and Facebook social network competitor Myspace. 

Myspace and all of Facebook’s other social network competitors all have web search capability. It has been a surprise that the social network has existed this long without search capabilities.
Within the last month Microsoft released intentions to unleash Live Search on Facebook, as well as paid search advertisements. The deal is said to be pending within the next calendar year, and Facebook users have surely noted the available “try the new Facebook” banner on their home pages. 

The advertisements on the new Facebook include a thumbs up or thumbs down button for the user to guide the advertisers in the right direction. Upon clicking the up or down thumb Facebook asks the user to select the reason why they like or dislike the advertisement including options misleading, relevant, interesting, repetitive and more.

This option creates a great target marketing tool for advertisers, and for Facebook users who are participating in the process by searching the ads and providing valuable feedback to the advertisers.