2010 In Review
It’s hard to believe, but this year is winding down quick! This video pretty much sums it up. Take a look back at 2010 through the eyes of Google. Happy New Year!
Did You Get On Board With Social Media in 2010?
First off: We hope you all had a Merry Christmas. As the year comes to an end, we thought we would try one more time to express how crucial a social media strategy and campaign is to a thriving business. We came across this blog post from Clare Lancaster and thought we’d share her thoughts on this subject. Here’s what she said:
2010 will be remembered as the year that social media made a big splash in the lives of business owners.
If you’re someone who runs an online business, you’ll have realized that social media has joined the ranks of SEO as a must-do activity (and, for some, has started to rival the number of traffic referrals sent, too).
While many people made mistakes as they tried to cash in on the next phase of the Internet, it was those who embraced the social element of social media who forged alliances, and built audiences and sustainable businesses.
Are you participating?
If you’re not participating in social media, you’re missing out on a lot.
The New York Times reported that Americans are spending as much time online as they are in front of the television set.
People are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
Facebook served over 500 million active users, and 50% of those users log on to Facebook in any given day. The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages, groups, and events. If Facebook was a country it would be the third-largest in the world. Do you have a presence there?
Let’s not forget about Twitter—the social networking platform is on track to serve 200 million users by year’s end. I’ve got to ask you the same question: do you have a presence there?
Of course, people aren’t just networking and connecting online, they’re publishing too. As of December, 2010 there are over 32 million WordPress publishers.
Personal influence and reach is easier to build than ever before, and it’s more powerful than you could imagine. People’s purchasing behaviors are changing, as are the ways they find and consume content.
An introvert who spends most of their time on a computer in a basement can influence a network of thousands. What if they visit your blog and like what they see? You’ve got ways for them to share your content with that network, don’t you?
The bottom line
The way we use the Internet has changed, and social media simply reflects this. If you aren’t taking part, you’re getting left behind.
Have you actively used and experimented with social media over the last year? How have you fared?
*** If not, 2011 is the year for you and your business to jump on board with social media and make use of social media marketing. We’d love to help. Contact us for details on how we can increase your business by generating leads for you.
Goodbye SEO. Hello SMO.
We’ve (GTK Solutions) been talking and blogging about SMO (social media optimization) since our launch. On our website, you can read more about SMO and learn what all the buzz is about. Basically, it’s a long-tail approach to marketing. Social media, as we’ve said before, takes time and will pay off down the road. Gone are the days of paying a company to quickly get you to the top of Google. Google changed it’s formula for how it ranks sites and social media, authority, incoming links, back links, and of course content are king.
Ben Elowitz recently wrote, “Over the past five years, Web publishing has been so heavily dominated by search engine optimization (SEO) that, to many publishing executives, the right keywords have become far more important than their sites’ actual content or audience. But this movement toward SEO has been dangerous, as it’s moved publishers’ eye off their most important job of creating great content, and onto the false goals of keywords, hacks, paid links, and technical engineering that their audience doesn’t know or care about.”
The recent announcement of the Facebook/Bing partnership to integrate social and search results clearly marks the beginning of the end of SEO, and the smartest digital publishers will drop everything to rethink their distribution strategy entirely. (More on this in a future blog post).
Elowitz says, “With the rise of Facebook, we’ve entered a new era of digital media: personalized discovery. The balance of power is shifting: Already sites… are seeing more audience coming from Facebook than from search.
Search was critical when answers to questions were scarce. Google can find an answer to almost any keyword query from among the zillions of pages on the web. But at a time when such answers are abundant, it’s far more valuable to find the best content for me – and increasingly, find it before I’ve even asked for it. The sort algorithm that works best for that is more correlated to who’s doing the asking than how they would phrase the ask. For that level of personalized results, no abject algorithm can keep up without deep knowledge of its users. Advantage: Facebook.
The encouraging implication is that the audience values content, not keywords. And Facebook sides with the audience. And so it’s time to christen a new era of social-media optimization, or “SMO.” The era of SMO liberates publishers from the exercise of tricks, hacks and keywords. Instead, the big opportunity is now once again creating and refining the most appealing content possible.”
Elowitz says, “SMO strategy means appealing to the audience, not an intermediary; knowing what drives interest; and activating people’s desire to consume and share. Sure, there is buzz among many publishers around Facebook logins and likes, and the traffic bumps that come with them. But SMO offers more far than that. It’s about creating a positive feedback loop, where users are rewarded for both consuming and distributing content. The key is to develop virality in media like that of Zynga games and Groupon offers. Beyond, of course, creating great content and experiences that are worth sharing, publishers need to then reward their audiences with the full range of possibilities, including prestige, access, exclusive content and enhanced experiences.”
For those who are still working on implementing search strategies: if you haven’t turned your focus to SMO, you will be left behind. Period. Goodbye SEO. Hello SMO.
The Social Media Revolution Rolls On
You’ve probably felt the rumblings, heard the buzz and/or seen the signs – there’s a revolution underway and it’s only picking up steam. Social media is quite frankly where it’s at these days and is where business happens. We, at GTK Solutions, would like to thank Danny Brown for blogging about facts on social media. Check out what he listed just about Facebook:
1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.
3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.
5. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).
8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.
Statistics from Facebook press office. For more cool facts about social media, read his blog post HERE.
We came across this updated version of “The Social Media Revolution” video (2010 version) on YouTube. This video is now out of date. At the time, the video stated that Facebook had 350 million users. Facebook has now passed 620 million users. It seems like it was just a month ago that they broke 500 million!
The revolution is going on. Notice that the video states that 83% of all businesses use Facebook. Read that again! If you haven’t seen this video yet, give it a watch – chew on it, digest it and share it.
Have a favorite video on social media? Comment and send us the link. We’d love to watch it and might even post it or add it as a Favorite on our YouTube page.
Rifle Marketing (As Opposed to Shotgun Marketing)
We understand: your marketing and advertising budget is small or has been cut. The economy has tanked. Business is slow or non-existent. Your struggling to keep things afloat and you think “Who has money for marketing?”
Often and unfortunately when a business feels the sting of the economy, the first place they cut is marketing. This should be the last thing you cut. It’s been said, “You need to spend money to make money.” Truer words were never spoken. If you want to increase your business and gain new customers/clients, you’ll have to market your product or service. Please understand: marketing takes time and commitment. But, it can be one of the most cost-effective uses of time in your business. As marketing consultant Roy Young states in his article by the same name, “Marketing is the root of all income.”
The title of this blog (Rifle Marketing) is important because if you have a limited marketing budget, you really need to FOCUS it and concentrate your advertising dollars on social media marketing. Why? As we’ve stated before, “Social media marketing is CHEAPER and FOUR TIMES more effective than traditional marketing.” (Forrester Research)
Check out what the New York Times had to say last year: “For many businesses with Low ad budget, the Social Media Networking is their sole means of Marketing.” – New York Times (July 23, 2009)
Our advice? Instead of taking the limited amount of funds that you have and spreading it out across several marketing channels (shotgun marketing) – this could be a mixture of social media, direct mail, newspapers, billboards, magazines, TV and radio, etc. – take whatever you can afford and bet the house on social media. Put it all in the one area that gives you the most ROI and bang for your buck.
* Obviously, if you have a large marketing budget, you can afford to spread it around. This blog is intended to encourage those with a limited budget.