Alliance Blog Reviews

Image by luc legay via Flickr How we interact with others can either cause joy, pain or leave no impression at all. What impression are you leaving behind you on Twitter and other social networks ? Pain is caused on Twitter when… - Spam and hacking occurs and we feel our safety and privacy is compromised. - An opinion we make is “flamed” by others or they fail to get what we are saying - We use Twitter to be negative about others. Think about high profile cases this year where it has been a case of “tweet in haste, repent at leisure” (or not leisure, in a world where reaction is global and swift!) To avoid causing the pain on Twitter: - Review your account often and report any spam appropriately - Make your posts meaningful and value laden - Don’t spam others, ratio your tweets about your biz with conversations and helping out others - Don’t get involved in an argument - Treat others as you wish to be treated yourself Joy of Twitter… Twitter can be a joy. It is a way to reach out to people, to build new relationships online, and to gain valuable feedback. Some tips to help keep your use of Twitter Joyful are: - Tweet about what you are interested in rather than what you think you should be tweeting about - Be mindful in your tweeting. Tweet from the heart. - Treat Twitter as one of your social media and other marketing activities and don’t get sucked in to feeling you have to be there every single minute – have some fun!! - Connect with other like minded people and use the @reply and RT to start great conversations - Reach out to connect and grow your relationship with your most regular twitter contacts The anonymity of neutrality… Sometimes on Twitter I think it is easy to get sucked into posting “for the sake of it” and this is where neutrality can sneak in. Think value, think connection, think first. And have a joyful time connecting using Twitter. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . The Joy of Tweeting

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The Joy of Tweeting

While most of us in the Internet marketing “industry” were all aghast at the Facebook privacy problem of ’09 , the rest of the world could have cared less. You know those people, right? The ones who don’t live and breathe this stuff to the point that all perspective is lost? These are the ‘everyday’ Facebook users who don’t give a rip about Mark Zuckerberg and the continued search for 7,000 people who care enough to impact any policy changes with the social media giant. So those regular folks pushed Facebook to a point where it had never been before: the number one site during the Christmas holiday. ReadWriteWeb tells us Christmas is a holiday that brings people together, so perhaps it should be no surprise that Facebook has become a part of millions of peoples’ Christmas experiences. For the first time in its history, Facebook was the #1 most visited website in the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, according to traffic analyst firm Hitwise today. Makes sense doesn’t it? Personally I was more prone to using Skype rather than updating everyone but that is certainly a personal preference. So while the site finished third for the year behind Google and Yahoo Mail it was certainly a milestone to be seen as the Christmas site of choice. Last year Facebook finished second in this contest to Google but was able to flip positions this year. See what a year of gigantic growth can do for you? Wonder if Santa will be as nice to Facebook next year after the rest of the world catches on that their “goings on” at Facebook aren’t as private as they used to be?

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Facebook Receives News of A Merry Christmas Indeed

Reading Biz Stone’s op-ed in the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper almost had me snoozing. Not that Biz is boring–he’s actually quite fascinating–but the article was just a recap of stuff we already knew. Then I saw these closing statements: ..It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news… In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world… (Emphasis added) Er, did he just say billion? With a "b"? Does Google know about this? You don’t need to answer that, I know it knows. But seriously, Twitter’s serving 1 billion search queries a day–and it’s not even a search engine? No wonder Google and Bing rushed to sign partnership deals with the micro-blogging site. No wonder neither of them could find the right price to acquire the company! According to recent estimates , Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day–about half of what Biz boasts Twitter is seeing. And, let’s not forget, Google IS a search engine. I can’t make up my mind the exact reason Biz slipped that into the piece. I’ve narrowed it down to two reasons. One: Twitter just wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of traditional search engines. Put them on notice, if you will. Two: We’ll see a Twitter IPO in the next 12-18 months . Twitter has far more users than Google had when it went public. If it can reveal revenues anywhere close to $100 million a year, then I think investors will be tripping over themselves to buy in. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Twitter’s New Year Resolutions: 1 Billion Searches a Day & an IPO?

If you are new to the world of social media marketing it is helpful to know where to start networking.  The best places are the social networks that already have a large amount of traffic and members because social media marketing is a time consuming task.  Thus, you want to make sure that you narrow your markets down to the areas where you can have the largest impact which is why you may want to read about the top social media marketing websites.  College craze gone viral: The Facebook The Facebook started with just four schools in Boston and grew into one of the hottest social networks online.  By building a business profile and taking care to friend everyone you know you can quickly spread the word about your business via their profiles attracting people as they read their friends profiles.  Like most social networks, The Facebook can be used like a spider, once it gets going it continues to spread like rapid fire. The Celebrity network: Twitter Twitter is probably one of the most famous social networks due to the fact that celebrities use it on a frequent basis.  In the same way that celebrities keep their names fresh and current by ‘twitting’ so that their fans stay abreast of the activities, you can use Twitter to keep your business name, sales, and promotions fresh in patrons minds. Add in the fact that you can twit for your business and catch people while they are already outside of the home, and you have a slam dunk for getting customers inside your doors on a regular basis with an appealing enough Twit. The professional network: Linked In For those who are looking at social media marketing as a way to strengthen their business or start a joint venture the best social network on the web is LinkedIN.  Here you can find professionals from all walks of the world who you can network with to exchange advice, business ideas, and possibly even financial backing if you align yourself with the correct contact.

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Social media marketing top websites

Facebook has drubbed MySpace on almost all fronts—in the media, with users, in growth, in traffic—except ad revenue. But expect that to change next year, according to eMarketer : “It will surpass its former rival, MySpace, in ad revenues in 2010, when marketers worldwide will spend $605 million on Facebook versus $385 million on MySpace.” The projections for next year show MySpace on a downward trend, falling from $490M worldwide this year to $385M next year. Facebook on the other hand is still climbing: from from $435M this year to over $600M next year. Meanwhile, overall social network ad spending is going up. eMarketer predicts 7.1% growth for total ad spend next year, bringing the total to almost $1.3B. Although they initially expected 2009 to see a downturn in revenue, now the stats show 3.9% growth over last year. Back in September, we saw that 20% of all online advertising was on social networks , with MySpace slightly leading Facebook (9.2% to 8.2%). I suppose we can expect the social share of online advertising to continue to grow—but not MySpace’s. The biggest factor contributing to Facebook’s revenue growth this year, according to ClickZ , is its growth. They reached 200M users in April —and just five months later, they’d added another 100M users . Now at 350M active users, Facebook has doubled in size since February of this year. Yeah, I’d say that would drive some revenue growth. What do you think? Will Facebook really pass MySpace? How has MySpace been able to retain its revenue lead for so long?

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Facebook Set to Pass MySpace Revenue Ahead of Schedule

It’s hard to believe that 2009 is finally coming to an end. As is always a very popular practice the media likes to take us on a stroll down Memory Lane but make sure we take a brief turn onto Morbid Court. Why? Because it is important to recap what celebrities either died or train-wrecked their lives in the past year. I admit that I read these lists more often than I should and often have the “I didn’t know they died!” moments which do literally nothing to make life better. They just happen. So why not look at how advertisers may have or could have benefited from celebrity news that range from death to sordid trysts to you name it? Search Engine Watch has spoken to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland and came away with this The sudden death of actress Brittany Murphy this week tied a morbid bow on a big 2009 trend — that of celebrities dying and falling from grace. According to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland, the unfortunate events provided advertisers on his network, at times, with a considerable amount of additional exposure at no cost. At this point there are a million places to go with this one and most are not complimentary. I am going to stay on the purely business side of this one though which is sordid enough. Basically, there appears to be a little disappointment from CEO Copeland in the structure of the advertising world as agencies and red tape don’t allow for advertisers to fully take advantage of traffic spikes due to these ‘events’. Though Copeland explained that his company could get campaigns “up and running in a matter of hours,” he said that Blogads didn’t receive any calls from marketers during the celebrity events. “Most major brand campaigns are planned weeks or months…ahead of time. So we haven’t had any ‘drive-by’ advertisers hop on a hot story.” He continued, “We don’t anticipate this kind of demand going forward because of the way the ad agencies and their clients are structured… There’s just [too many] decision-makers and [too much] budgeting, time-lag, and iterative looping built into the process. A really agile and smart advertiser should jump into these stories; but the structure of the ad industry makes it almost impossible.” Well, this just seems too good of an idea to pass up! I have the solution to this and I sure hope that no one takes this one and runs with it. I am going to hang out my shingle for my new ad agency called “Advertising Ambulance Chasers”. I think I will add the tag line: “We Get You There Even Before the Lawyers”. I understand traffic is critical for advertisers but are we going to be heading down this road to make sure that we advertise around tragedy because its good business? I hope not. We can leave that to the cable news networks who don’t realize just how pathetic they look when they make all of their pretty graphics and pithy sayings around the major headlines of the day which are always about some form of pain and suffering. Maybe I am just being naive and it doesn’t really matter how you get the exposure just as long as you do. Imagine though, that people get used to your brand showing up around tragic events? Just seems odd to me. As an advertiser or just an Internet marketer in general, what are your thoughts on trying to be ‘agile enough’ to advertise where the trouble is? Is this how you would like to have your brand known? Is there any potential harm in trying to be a morbidly opportunistic marketer? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Celebrity Death and Misfortune May Help Advertisers

It is often pointed out that the disconnect from those in the social media trenches to those in the C-level corner offices is significant and often damaging to the marketing efforts of many companies. While it can be fun to generalize and then make those at the top of the marketing food chain the culprits in the “Great Social Media Under-utilization Caper” it is starting to become much less accurate. One way to see that CMO’s are taking a real interest in social media and user generated media as part of their overall marketing efforts is to see the results of a recent study done by the CMO Club. That’s right. CMO’s hang out in a club while you slave away at your community building efforts. It’s all cigars and mahogany furniture around the fireplace for the CMO set. Just kidding. In fact, The CMO Club and Bazaarvoice surveyed 133 active CMO’s to get their real world take on social media. Here’s how the respondents were broken out Of these, 42% focus on business-to-consumer marketing, 41% focus on business-to-business marketing, and 17% market to both consumers and businesses. Leading participating industries include software/hardware (17%), finance/insurance (9%), travel/hospitality (9%), media/publishing (9%), consumer goods (8%), and retail (7.5%), among others. Annual revenues ranged from $6 to $50 million (25%), $51 to $999 million (42%), and over $1 billion (23%). So what did they find? This chart is pretty telling as they attack the three letters that keep most CMO’s up at night: ROI. ROI is certainly the Holy Grail of the C-suite with regard to every facet of marketing. What makes it difficult for social media is that there are not real clearly defined measurements or metrics that create a line to what is termed social commerce. Whether you are a C-level marketer or a day-to-day social media practitioner what are your thoughts on measurement in the social media space? What do you use for tools where are you having success and where are you having trouble? Feel free to download a white paper synopsis of some of the findings of the survey. Maybe the more that C-level marketers and the ‘rank and file’ of marketing work together there can be more advancement in this emerging field. Is that a reality at your work or is that just a fantasy?

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The CMO Club Lets You In On Their Social Media Thinking