Author Archive
What the Heck is Pinterest and Why Should You Care?
Quick. Take a stab at naming the top ten social sites.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn… these ones come easily to mind, but it may surprise you to learn that Pinterest also makes the cut. Coming in at #10, it’s clear that Pinterest is gaining traction fast. It may be time to sit up and notice it, if you haven’t already been lured by its slick and glossy look.
What the heck is it?
The name explains the essence of what it’s about: ‘Pin’ items of ‘interest’. It acts like a virtual pushpin board for things found around the web. Users can create multiple boards, each dedicated to something of interest to them. For example, a board for travel, a board for recipes, a board for home decor. You get the idea. It’s social bookmarking, revisited & refreshed.
Although still in invite-only mode, in just one week alone last December (2011) Pinterest is said to have attracted 11-million visits. It’s growing at an incredible rate, seeing a 4000% jump in traffic from just six months ago. Monthly visits are said to be averaging 3.2-million.
The website is most popular with women aged 25-44, accounting for 58% of the userbase in the past three months (Experian Hitwise). Here are some thoughts on why those who like it, like it a lot. Indeed it must be onto something when it starts spawning copycats.
So why should you care?
There is a business case for participating on Pinterest. It is reported that Real Simple magazine is getting more referral traffic from Pinterest, than from Facebook. From a business perspective, there are many opportunities for building a fan base, building awareness for products, and getting more traffic to your website, but you need to go about it the right way. Pinterest states very clearly there shall be no blatant promoting and marketing on the site. So what can you do? Some ideas are expanded on here, but I think one truth for gaining traction as a business on Pinterest is to have smoking hot photos of smoking hot products. This will inspire members to pin them on their boards, and thus increase the exposure of the business through the image. (Images link back to the original site)
So there you have it. Some pretty compelling reasons to consider Pinterest as a serious player in your ongoing online strategy.
Erin
Tags: facebook, pinterest, strategy
Making Sense of Google+
As all 62-million of us continue on our learning curves of Google+, here are a few “good-to-know” points that you may find useful or fun. We start with personalized search (the hot topic of the month), then talk hashtags and doctored photos. Let’s get started.
You’ve likely heard by now that Google has introduced personalized search for logged-in Google users, called “Search Plus Your World“. This means when you conduct a search on Google, the results you see will be based in part on what you’ve shared on Google+, what others in your circles have shared, and from your personal search history. Personalized search results on Google are not new, but the emphasis on G+ content and profiles is. This places a lot more importance for brands to establish and build a business page on G+. If Google is going to rank G+ content over everything else in search results, businesses would be smart to invest some time there, and fast.
For the record, there is a way to turn personalized search off. Read all about that here.
If you’re like me, reluctantly placing more trust in Google than in Facebook, especially in light of this recent Facebook development, then you may have content of a private nature in your G+ profile that you’re only intending to share with a limited audience. Trouble is, if you use the same Gmail account to log into other Google accounts like Analytics, Webmaster Tools, or Adwords, you run the risk of others inadvertently tripping into your G+ account. There are ways to get around this, of course, by not sharing access to GA using your own Gmail login, but you would be surprised how many people do just that. Don’t. Here’s how to share access to GA without sharing your personal login.
On a completely separate note, G+ now includes auto-complete for common #hashtags. Watch it in action here. Hashtags are useful for grouping content and making related content more discoverable.
And to wrap up on a fun note, search #funwithphotos on G+ to see how you can now add text on top of photos. Here are a few for inspiration.
If you’re still feeling a little in the dark about Google+, especially with regard to its relevance into the foreseeable future, I encourage you to read this comprehensive FAQ article by Marketingland. It links to multiple articles on G+.
Erin
Tags: google, Google Analytics
Insights to Improving Your SEO
- When it comes to purchasing decisions, a recent study found women turn to social media for research, more than men. However, the study found search engines are the most popular resource for researching for purchasing decisions.
- New website content needs to go up, or be up on nights and weekends. Need to make sure your website is functioning at full capacity (as in: not down or slow) on nights and weekends. The reason? Spiders crawl most on weekends and nights.
- Don’t write for spiders. Write for people. A recent study showed people gauge trustworthiness of organic search results on the descriptions that appear in those results. So write for people not bots.
- General speaking, blog posts get the most uptake on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Earlier in the morning is always best. The “Linkerati” (those who posts tons of links in social media) look early to figure out what they’re going to post.
- A blog post containing video gets more links, than blog posts with pictures. Don’t know why.. that’s just what the study found. So experiment with video in your blog.
- The more you post to your blog, the more links you get. That’s a fact.
- Conversations on your blog will not help your SEO. Links to your blog help SEO. Period.
- The optimum length of the title of a blog post, the sweet spot 40-100 characters. These get spread through social media the most. You will get better SEO results.
- The most important piece of SEO, and the hardest thing to get, is a link. The more links you can get, the better.
- Don’t worry about SEO as a tactic, think of it as a function of what you do. On that same note, Dan Zarrela said (emphatically) “Don’t hire an SEO consultant to help your SEO, hire a content producer.” You need good content more than you need a spider-tailored meta tag.
- The most linked-to words right now are:
1. recent
2. insights
3. soon
4. answers
5. analysis - The least linked-to words right now are:
1. settlements
2. franchise
3. deliverables
4. episode
5. carpet
Any surprises here for you?
Erin
Move Over Explorer…
Move over Explorer. Here comes something leaner. (tell me you’re old enough to remember Sizzlean)
Working in online strategy and regularly analyzing Google Analytics accounts for various clients, we’ve seen first hand the evolution of browser usage. We’ve watched traffic from Explorer moving from first position, to second, third, and so on. It comes as little surprise to many that Firefox, Safari and Chrome are gobbling up market share away from browsers like Explorer.
Although in the market place at large, Explorer is still on top (for now), these other browsers are experiencing significant growth. This summer, it was reported that Chrome now enjoys 20% of global internet browser market share. What this means to anyone with a website is it’s high time you ensure your website works well (read: isn’t wonky or dysfunctional) with these other browsers. Even better would be to look at your own analytics. If you see, under ‘Technology’ in the new GA, that the majority of your visitors use Chrome to experience your website, you will want to optimize it for this browser and ensure all future improvements consider browser usage. It’s surprising how often this is overlooked.
Do you have a favourite browser? Which one and why?
Tags: chrome, Firefox, internet explorer, safari, website compatibility
Google Domination
Google has just unveiled its Google+ Project. Essentially, the social sharing and networking features are very similar to Facebook. At least one Google representative suggested that people desire a better version of Facebook. Google+ hopes to be the answer.
But wait a minute. All the similarities of the new Google+ features position Google to take on a lot more than Facebook. See for yourself.
Google+ offers its users a new way to…
- Organize friends & connections thanks to +Circles.
Or you could keep using: Facebook Groups. - Communicate with specific groupings of friends and/or family thanks to +Circles.
Or you could keep using: Facebook Groups, Email groupings - Group-text thanks to +Huddle.
Or you could keep using: Beluga, GroupMe, WhatsApp, Grouped{in},KIK, or countless others. - Show off photos taken with your phone thanks to +Instant Upload.
Or you could keep using: Instagram, Hipstamatic, Pano, Pocketbooth,
Camera+, 360, Mobli, or a zillion other apps. - Geek out over niche interests thanks to +Sparks.
Or you could keep using: Quora, Blogs, or many forums. - Group chat thanks to +Hangouts.
Or you could keep using: Skype Group Chat, Fring, or video-enabled instant messaging. - Share your physical location with friends thanks to +Location, Location, Location.
Or you could keep using: Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, or several other location-based apps. - Share content thanks to +(all of the above).
Or you could keep using: all the things you’re used to.
Well, you’ll likely have to for the next while anyway – as Google+ is pre-Beta, meaning invitation-only. No confirmed date on when Google+ will roll out to a general audience.
Have some more tools we could add to these lists above? Share ‘em and I’ll add ‘em.
- Erin
Tags: google
