Archive for the ‘Social Media & Online PR’ Category
There’s been plenty of talk about how Twitter and how the proliferation of URL shorteners has broken the link graph. Everyday millions of links pass through URL shorteners, and although some do pass link equity, if one goes under (which plenty have), that leaves thousand of broken links. Not good news if you happen to be a search engine that relies on the link graph.
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That seemed like the perfect reason for Google to launch their brand new Goo.gl url shortener service but I think there are alterior motives for them to launch the service.
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We’ve already talked a little about Twitter tweets appearing prominently in the search engine results pages. It’s open to exploitation that’s for sure…
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If you’re a big brand, this is especially worrying, as someone else might be getting the lion’s share of your branded search, but it’s not all bad news. There is one company that’s doing great out of Google rolling out a huge but half-baked change in their search results – Twitter. Read on
Google has started rolling out real time search, which has far-reaching implications for brand reputation monitoring and SEO, particularly for those brands that up to now have largely ignored social media. Those brands that dismiss the need to monitor their online presence, or are just not well equipped to do so could quickly start to see unfortunate results – just ask Tiger Woods. With the inclusion of live Twitter streams in the natural SERPs, brand reputation has never been so important.
Folks who are just Googling for a brand are soon going to know all about the current hot issue for that company, good or bad, live from the people who matter – the actual end users, the customers. One entry into the search box will bring up everything you need to know, and you won’t have to search Twitter for more personal opinions and anecdotal evidence before you choose to buy or book.
Now it’s more crucial than ever to have constant monitoring for potentially tricky situations. Brands need to be ready with quick responses, information and, where possible, solutions and apologies to combat a potential wave of negativity that could spring from one tweet or blog post.
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I have spent the past year helping a small group of strangers raise money for the NSPCC. In the wake of the Baby P tragedy, we have collectively walked, ran and bungeed, baked and bellydanced, and many other bonkers activities. OK, nothing unusual about that, except that the main people involved didn’t actually know each other, and still haven’t met in the flesh. We all met via Facebook. I only met my first fundraising friend for real this September, which was a bit like a blind date!
In November 2008 when Baby P first hit the headlines, many people were drawn to the 500+ groups on Facebook to discuss the horrific case. Some were spurred into doing something positive in his name. One such person was Louise Harvey, who founded an official fund via the NSPCC, the Baby Peter Tribute Fund , to raise money for them in Peter’s name. Her original target was £5,000.
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You might be expecting to get let down by such a spamtastic blog post title but I will really show you how to get thousands (actually unlimited) links from a PR9 domain. However this post isn’t really about a stupid link trick, it’s about the inherent flaws in all types of quantitative link data research. But you’re probably not going to read down that far anyway so don’t worry!
Sweet links dude!
At a panel we did for the DPA conference yesterday I mentioned it was possible to get dofollow links from Facebook pages or profiles. This has been possible for a fair while using numerous Facebook apps but as soon as slightly backdoor tactics to get links from prominent sites start getting talked about at conferences or showing up on Seomoz you know they’re not going to last long anyway. We’ve seen this lately with Twitter closing out dofollow links through applications and more recently Dave Naylor’s Flickr comment trick getting ‘fixed’
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Though the fuss about widget’s really seems to have quietened down in recent months, there really did seem a strong agenda of pushing them as an elixir of ‘doing social media’, and while I can’t argue with the success stories, it’s not hard to search Facebook and the like and find failed widgets of every shape and size.
And while with every marketing campaign there will be successs and failures, I think there’s definate reasons why some web agencies have been keen to push widgets as the magic wand.
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Mostly I spend my time doing search marketing for companies, and the edges between what we do and social media are a bit blurry. We’re not alone in that like almost any company that’s doing anything that slightly overlaps with social media, we’ve been trying to get a piece of the pie.
Given the current financial climate, it makes even more sense to explore other ways make more money from your agency other than your traditional business. I’d like to think we’re different, but the sad news is for most companies their agency can’t really help them no matter what they set out to achieve. Read on
It’s tempting to think that some kind of social search could topple Google but I don’t think Twitter search or anything similar will ever truely replace traditional search entirely.
I think what will happen is there will be a blurring between what is social and what is search. It’s been around for years already but universal search, I think, was the first big step on what will become an inevitable journey, but I can’t see a purely ‘social’ search engine catching on.
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As much of the English speaking world seems to be poking, tagging and micro-blogging on a daily basis, is it time to start advertising on social networks?
Fast growing Demographic
People in the UK spend more time on Facebook than any other social network. Surprised? Probably not. What is interesting for marketers though, is the fastest growing demographic are not the kids… but women over 55. The 35-65 year olds now represent a third of all Facebook users. One explanation for females leading the way is they want to view their families’ photos and Facebook has become the biggest online repository of photos in the world.
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Occasionally a company creates the perfect storm when trying to promote their product or service via a new technique or channel, and inevitably becomes the proto-example used for years to illustrate how to get it right.
The recent success of DIY website provider Moonfruit may very well be the latest of these uber-case-studies. Their recent competition on Twitter increased traffic to their website by over 600% and got their brand over 30k followers on Twitter in a matter of days. Read on