1. Quora: The question and answer platform was predicted to be the next big thing in 2010. However, half way through 2011 the big buzz surrounding the site slowly started to fade off. The site still receives decent traffic, with an estimate of 500,000 users, however, as new social sites emerge Quora might not be at the top of social minds.
2. Digg: The once beloved site-sharing website has been dying a slow death for several years. It hasn’t been able to compete with sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. It is my opinion that it is just a matter of time before it completely fizzles off. A few months ago it did launch a new version of the site, however, it doesn’t seem like users found it very appealing. A couple of years ago a great article would have received on average 3000 Diggs, now you’re lucky if you even get 100.
3. Delicious: This social bookmarking site had everything going for it back in 2005. It was new to the scene and had no real competitors. What happened? As new bookmarking sites started to saturate the market Delicious didn’t reinvent quickly enough. Rumors are it might shut-down or sell its technology.
4. Gowalla: This location-based site was once a fierce competitor for foursquare, both entering the market at about the same time 2 years ago. However, foursquare quickly gained momentum with over 1 billion check-ins to date, leaving Gowalla in the dust. Gowalla’s leadership has now joined forces with Facebook. According to industry insiders, Facebook has not purchased the technology, only the talent. Gowalla will slowly fade out.
5. QR Codes: There’s a huge online debate about whether QR (Quick Response) Codes are slowly starting to die off before they’ve even had the chance to really take off. Some people may think, why would QR Codes be on the “fadar”? I see them everywhere? Well, that’s exactly my point. The ubiquitous use of QR Codes in often ill-conceived marketing efforts, is what might lead to its demise.

What do you think? Do you take issue with any of the above observations? Are there networks or tools you feel should be on the fadar?

Maryam Mehrtash
@socialmaryam

Here’s the scenario. You own an online sports equipment store and you are able to sell products online. However, from now on, your website can only allow 100 visitors per day to enter the website. Your company’s revenue will depend solely on these 100 visitors per day so you better make sure the people who visit your website are people who are ready to purchase something.

How would this affect how you do business?

Scarcity is something all businesses have to deal with. This scenario is actually not far from reality depending on how you look at it. For example:

• Your PPC budget is exhausted after 100 website visits per day (or click-throughs)
• You only have enough time to reach out to 100 people on Twitter and Facebook
• The QR code campaign budget can only print 100 posters

When creating a digital strategy, it is important to allocate resources where there is highest potential for achieving the strategy’s objectives.

In the scenario above, the objective is to maximize revenue.

• If you are bidding on a PPC campaign, you’d likely want to bid on more targeted keywords which suggest users are further down the sales funnel. For example, you would rather bid for “buy hockey equipment” over just “hockey”.
• If you are investing time on Twitter and Facebook, you’d likely want to reach out to 100 sport related key influencers rather than 100 spam bot accounts.
• If you are distributing QR codes, you’d likely want to place posters around athletic facilities rather than general locations like a coffee shop or bus stop.

Scarcity > Decisions > Strategy

Victor
Digital Strategist

Photo Credit: albertogp123

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What If …. Series.

What If…Your Twitter and Facebook Posts Were Deleted After 24 Hours?

What If…There Was a 2-Tweet Per Day Limit?

There are all sorts of conflicting statistics about the failure rate of online marketing campaigns. The numbers don’t really matter. There are enough highly publicized train wrecks to safely conclude that a good percentage go wrong. The more interesting question is why?

One reason may be the ground is constantly shifting beneath our feet. Facebook today. Pinterest tomorrow. It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to building a high impact web and mobile presence. Here are 10 pitfalls to avoid when designing a digital strategy for your client or brand.

PITFALL #1:

Rolling Out A Strategy Before Conducting An Assessment

If you take only one point away from this paper, please let it be this. Before even thinking about whether your business needs a Facebook page, a Twitter account or a new fangled iPhone app, do a rigorous assessment of your existing online and mobile presence and that of your competitors. Find your audience online and understand how they want to be engaged. Research the online advertising climate and see if any firm, anywhere, is establishing online and mobile marketing best practices. What has worked? What has crashed faster than a Kardashian wedding?

An assessment lays the groundwork for the strategy. You can’t figure out where you want to be until you know where you currently are, online.

Takeaway

• Analyze the company’s website for ease of navigation, broken links, see how it ranks in search results.
• Review your firm’s (or your client’s) social media channels, note the frequency of post, the level of active engagement from your target audience.  Apply the same analysis to your competitors.
• Search forums, social media, and blogs to find your target audience.  Understand where they are, how they like to engage, and take careful note of key influencers.

PITFALL #2:
Objectives.  What Objectives?
Imagine jumping in the car and pressing the gas without knowing your destination. How would you decide which route to take?  That’s what it’s like to design a roadmap for a digital strategy that does not have clear objectives. How can you know whether a pay-per-click advertising campaign is better than a frequently updated blog if you don’t know what either tactic is trying to achieve.

Clients often say their online objective is to grow revenue. That’s not sufficiently clear. A more valuable goal would be to increase revenue from online sales by 7% in a specific time period. The more specific the objective(s), the better.

Takeaway

• List your goals for the digital strategy as they apply to your larger business goals.  Review and refine until they are crystal clear.
• Select and customize web and mobile tools, design timelines and structure content to meet those objectives.

Download the rest of this white paper here.

By claiming your foursquare profile you can personalize it to suit your business and take advantage of integrating this platform into your social media (geo-location) strategy. In addition to checking-in, claiming badges and mayorships, now users can search for locations, deals, and places on their desktop using the Explore feature. Some people don’t like having a Foursquare account on their mobile phones and “checking-in” all the time, but would like to use this feature to see where their friends are checking-in and what they recommend. Foursquare Explore allows you to go online and search without having to use the platform as a check-in tool. It is useful for the end user to go through the 15 million tips that are gathered on the site already when deciding on where to go and what to eat… or drink!

Here are five tips to include in your strategy in order to ensure increased visits from Foursquare Explore to your company’s profile page:

1. Regularly monitor your foursquare account. Review check-ins, comments, and tips to see what users are saying.
2. Use QR codes to encourage check-ins, tips, and submissions.
3. Promote Foursquare ads to encourage check-ins.
4. Include sentiments and adjectives in your foursquare ad strategy (i.e. romantic, Friday, sweet, summer, wine list, etc…)
5. Use keywords when posting deals on your foursquare account to help with search queries.

Happy searching!

Maryam
@socialmaryam

What if …  a new feature was introduced where Facebook Wall posts and Twitter tweets were automatically removed after 24 hours?

If you did not post anything new in a 24-hour period, your Facebook Wall and Twitter profile would be empty, showing just a blank page. If you’re managing a Facebook Page or a Twitter account for your company or client this would be a big deal. It’s equivalent to having a company website with no content.

Would this give you more incentive to publish content more frequently?

This hypothetical scenario isn’t very far from reality, considering the effective lifespan of the average Facebook post is 22 hours and the lifespan of the average Twitter tweet is 1 hour.

It’s a balancing act. Publish too infrequently and you’ll gain minimal benefit from your social media profile. Publish too frequently and you risk annoying your followers.

Keep this in mind the next time you are developing a digital strategy. Is your publishing frequency maximizing your impact online?

Victor
Digital Strategist

Photo Credit: JanetR3

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

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

The biggest concern for marketers is the ability to sort through all the fluff and not get bogged down. Recent studies are showing that the level of information we are being asked to break down can cause increased stress levels. So how do we keep on top of the abundance of information and still keep our sanity? Learn how to filter through the fluff and manage your time. Here are 5 tips that can get you started:

TIP #1. BE SELECTIVE. Don’t follow every single person on Twitter who follows you, or subscribe to every blog with the word “digital marketing” in it. Be selective to what you subscribe to and who you follow. Similarly, don’t feel the need to subscribe to every single news outlet, most likely they all end up publishing the same stories within 24 hours of each other anyway. By being selective you can start filtering through the noise and choosing what you really want to focus your brain cells on.

TIP #2. TAKE TIME OFF. Set aside certain time periods when you are active on social media, reading the news, updating your blog, and so on and so forth. We spend most of our waking hours connected to some form of digital media. Sometimes it’s nice to tune out. Take a break and set rules and regulations. For example, when you are at the gym don’t be the person on the treadmill who is replying to emails and tweets. It’s okay to not reply back right away. Let your body relax and do something else. You can set time limits for yourself of when you are on and off, even computers need down time.

TIP #3. UTILIZE DASHBOARDS. Dashboards help aggregate various accounts and create search tabs to sort through specific content. Hootsuite is a great dashboard that allows you to do both. You can add all your social media accounts to this one dashboard so that you don’t have to keep switching between tabs or windows to get up-to-date on all the new content. You can also create search tabs with specific keywords such as “online marketing” or “search engine optimization” and Hootsuite will then aggregate content based on that filter. That way you can sort through the fluff without actually having to do it yourself, the dashboard does it for you.

TIP #4. ACTIVATE GOOGLE ALERTS. There are a ton of free tools available online that help you filter through the data, Google Alerts is one of them. Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your queries. You get the most up-to-date information sent directly to your mail box.

TIP #5. CREATE YOUR OWN READER. Setup a RSS Feed Reader or News Aggregator by adding your favorite blogs, and websites to it so you can keep on top of the latest content without actually having to visit the site. Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

Hopefully these tips will help you stay on top of your content, and help save you a little time and stress!

Maryam Mehrtash @socialmaryam

I believe innovation, inspiration and imagination begins with someone asking “What if…?”. Sometimes, when we’re in the midst of creating a digital strategy, implementing a marketing tactic or developing creative content, we conform to familiar ideas, paths and practices. But, what if we took a step back and challenged the current norms and limits in today’s online environment? Maybe, just maybe, we can create a spark that will set ablaze the next big success in digital strategy.

I will begin a series tackling the idea of “What if…?” I hope you will come along.

What if…Twitter allowed users to publish only 2 tweets per day.

For some users, publishing 2 tweets per day is already a lot to manage. For other users, it’s a huge restriction. This 2-tweet per day limit will likely affect the serial tweeters and the notorious spam bots the most.

Twitter is filled with a lot of noise. Some people try to manage it by only following back a small number of users, using hashtags to organize tweets or by using the search function to find desired information. Others simply give up on using Twitter.

But if Twitter introduced a 2-tweet limit per day, the noise would be drastically reduced. Here’s why:

• The quality of tweets by legitimate users should increase because they will have to think carefully about what they tweet. For example, “Do I really want to use up my quota and talk about what I ate for breakfast? Or should I save my last tweet of the day in case Google announces they are taking over the World?”
• Spam bots that plague Twitter will also be limited to the amount of spam they can generate in a day.

Limits, when used effectively in an appropriate context can help shape people’s behaviour. By creating scarcity, tweets become that much more valuable.

What do you think about a 2-tweet per day limit on Twitter?

Victor
Digital Strategist

Whether you “Like” a Page or not doesn’t count towards engagement anymore like it used to.  You could have millions of “likes” on your page but what really counts is whether people are “talking about this.”  This feature measures activity that is initiated by the user, not the administrator, including a wall post, “liking,” commenting, or sharing a Page post, answering fan questions, mentioning a Page, and “liking” or sharing a deal. Media strategists love this new feature because it illustrates actual activity generated by the user, which gives you a pretty good picture of who is really talking about your brand. This doesn’t mean “Likes” are completely irrelevant, but it just goes to show that just because someone “Likes” or identifies with your brand, it doesn’t mean that they will engage or care about it.  Or not care about it for that matter, since “talking about this” also counts trash talking.

Additional metrics that have been added to Pages Insight that would be of interest to media strategists are “Friends of Fans” and “Weekly Total Reach.” Friends of Fans calculates the total number of friends your fans have, giving you an idea of how far your reach could be if all your fans engaged by sharing your content. Weekly Total Reach gives you an assessment of how many total people have posted something about your Page, including news organizations, references, and shares, giving you a clear picture of your Pages’ viral distribution.

Facebook also rolled out a location feature “were here” on Pages that represents how many check-ins a brand has compiled. This is similar to the former Facebook Places that was killed off earlier this year. We knew location based social media activity wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon; it just needed a bit of a facelift apparently. It does make one wonder what Facebook will do with Gowalla’s technology since its acquisition and what location-based changes will come out in 2012. To be able to use the “were here” feature you need to provide an address on your Pages to use this feature. Restaurants, retailers, and other businesses with a physical location for their customers to go to can benefit from this by being able to gauge foot traffic. I don’t really see a huge benefit for business owners with no physical space, artists, or online stores. Also, another downfall to this feature is that if you are a big brand such a Burger King that has multiple locations but one fan Page you can only enter one location and the stats of how many people “were here” will only include that one store. Big brands like McDonalds have figured out a way around this, by contacting Facebook and having their own Facebook rep group all their locations. Obviously, not everyone is McDonalds and can just pick up the phone call Facebook and drop the dough – it will be interesting to see how long this feature will last and what Facebook will do to make it more adaptable for the smaller players.

Lastly, if you haven’t seen the “write a recommendation” feature on Pages you can check it out on the side bar of any Page. Or if you’ve “Liked” a new Page recently you might have received a pop-up widget asking you to write a recommendation to help your friends learn more about this Page. Again this is Facebook testing, and retesting various methods that will stick and work in increasing online engagement! But don’t get too comfortable, as with the launch of Timeline this last week, I’m sure Pages will get a huge makeover any time soon!