For those not entirely in the loop of Google’s frantic attempt at world domination, here’s the short version.  Search dominance.  Created crap ad program.  Shafted the competition (affiliates).  Bought out a bunch of companies.  Shafted the competition in more markets.  Kept quiet about the fact that they were harvesting data from all their free products.  Laughed while Bing poured money down the drain trying to compete.  Sucker punched the webmaster community who had been providing aforementioned free data for all those years.  Cried when Facebook wouldn’t share their toys.  Currently pouring money away trying to compete in the social media market.  Clearly not seeing the comparisons between Bing trying to compete in search and Google trying to compete in social.  Now trying to leverage mammoth traffic levels to hook people into sharing their personal data like they did to webmasters (before shafting them).

Did I miss anything?

You’ll never be Facebook

People like Facebook (pardon the pun).  I mean, real people. Not companies or marketing professionals who have had the carrot dangled in front of their mouths, salivating at the prospect of even an imperceptible boost to the holy grail of Google rankings.  You know how Google has played their cards quite close to their chest for all these years – no transparency when it comes to rankings and penalties – webmaster community climbing over each other to try and appease the mighty Google.

In many ways, the webmaster community were both the reason for Google’s success and a victim of it.  Perhaps that’s why Google thinks these early adopters will help kick off their social media domination.

But I don’t think things will work out that way.  Look at how Facebook started out – students – groups of friends – a network that built up naturally.  Now look at how Google+ started out – businesses & marketing professionals – SEOs (who make a living from gaming Google), many of whom have fairly negative opinions of Google.  That’s a somewhat “poisoned” starting group of users – how will that ever grow organically like Facebook did?  It may become something big, but I don’t think it’ll ever become the social network Facebook is.

How much spam did other social media channels have within months of launch?

There are already loads of “buy Google plus one” services out there, but I guess those were previously established networks geared up for Digg, Facebook and Twitter spamming – so a G+ service offering isn’t that hard to do.  But there are still quite a lot of people shooting at G+ for such a new product and although Google have faced that particular issue for years with their search product, will it be too much for a social network to handle?

People can deal with poor quality search results – in fact, most normal (non SEO geeks) are none the wiser.  People tend to notice when spam makes their way into their social circle.  I haven’t used G+ much except for a bit of a play around when it was launched – I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about it so I didn’t stick with it.  But I do see loads of people on Twitter complain about it because their business orientated social circle is suddenly poisoned with spam and irrelevant crap like photos of kittens and random jokes.

And there’s the stumbling block for Google.  They’ve taken a step forward on the basis that business users will drive their product to the next stage, but the reality is that it isn’t a particularly good social network for business users and it’s a pale competitor to Facebook for regular users.  That’s the flaw in the strategy.  Look at new navigation bar – I use search (I have a toolbar for that).  I used maps (I have an app for that).  I use Youtube (I have an app for that).  I use Adwords, Adsense and Analytics (those haven’t even made it to the primary – or secondary navigation).

The whole move reeks of geek logic applied to business.  Bland designs and high ambitions with no real substance.

Managing events like this has always been difficult and no one has really got it right.  The issue when managing data on that scale is it that is a big job with many facets – date, location, type of event.  Date is easy to do.  Location is tougher but if you are talking about doing it on a national scale then with the right technical setup it can be simple (given the scope of the project) – just a matter of buying the venue data and feeding it into your system.

Events are tougher.  No one really does it – largely because there’s no money in it and you have to expend resources gathering data from multiple sources.  Even at a town level this can be tricky – how many cinemas, theatres, sports stadia, pubs, clubs or whatever are there and how many different types of events may they hold in the next 12 months?  The numbers quickly spiral out of control.  Foursquare are managing this situation by partnering with vertical information providers (ESPN, SongKick, MovieTickets.com) – a sensible approach (in the UK it used to be the case that you’d need to go to each individual cinema and pay them to be provided with movie times data – not certain, but I think the print media still do that…).

Events are a natural evolution of Foursquare and I’m sure many of their users will embrace the new features as they have with the rest of the site’s bells and whistles.  But more than that, the company is displaying a characteristic almost unheard of in the social media / dotcom start up world…flirting with a business model that might actually be viable from the start!

Events are great.  I like doing stuff.  You like doing stuff.  We like doing stuff.  I occasionally like organising stuff.  Having a cost effective local tool to promote my stuff is nice.  Real nice.

It’s almost like near virtual classifieds prospect – a few quid (or bucks if you’re across the pond) to promote your gig / fundraising activity / play / demonstration / brand launch / etc.  Quite well targeted events for a reasonably price?  That would be pretty cool and probably a good, sustainable revenue stream for the company.

Foursquare are limiting events to those provided by their partners right now, but plan to include user generated events at some point in the future.  Whether or not they are paid or free is unknown.

I read some survey results this week that noted only 5% of the respondents (UK small business owners) knew what Foursquare is.  It’s one to watch, that’s what it is and has the potential to be a more potent social marketing tool for businesses in certain verticals than Twitter or Facebook.

One of the key issues as I see it is the large indifference social media users have when it comes to monetisation.  It’s a free service and loads of people use it, so they don’t want to start paying (remember the outcry when FaceBook hinted at moving to a paid membership model?).  This, combined with general blindness and apathy when it comes to bog standard advertising, leads us down an unknown road where these companies are in the position they need to monetise, but traditional methods may not be that effective.  So some ideas on how Twitter could monetise?

Introduce a paid directory

Say what you want about directories, but done well they can be very useful resources for both businesses and customers.  Could Twitter introduce a directory?  Well company Twitter profiles already off some brand protection (the pages rank on search engines) and as a honey pot to attract customers – so why couldn’t that idea be expanded?  Businesses wouldn’t mind paying and regular users wouldn’t be affected – that could end up being a really nice residual income for the company.

And frankly, browsing through the limited category structure to find people to follow on Twitter is somewhat lacking in functionality (unless you know what specifically to search for).   A more elaborate directory function might be more useful for new users (particularly those who aren’t that tech savvy, which is essentially the last untapped market that Twitter has been moving into).

Paid surveys

AKA FaceBook questions, but hopefully less annoying and trivial.  They could easily be posted to the sidebar and have nifty little yes or no buttons for people to click.  Not sure what the general user enthusiasm would be for this, but would certainly be useful for businesses.  Perhaps allow a paid survey to be added and syndicated around your followers for a nominal fee?

This is no more than an extension of the current promoted accounts, etc that are already offered.

Contracts, jobs and tenders

Social media is all about connecting with your own personal network and expanding that network using the tools provided.  So why not expand this to include other key business areas like sales and recruitment?

The one drawback I see is that many businesses use Twitter and FaceBook to advertise vacancies and to look for suppliers, so they might not be keen on moving to a paid model to do the same thing.  But the problem that needs to be solved is how to add value to the new paid service – for example by promoting the tweet to an extended group and not just your own followers.  There needs to be a balance of course, but many online businesses do well on a free vs paid model so there’s no reason Twitter can’t.

Sell links!

I hear those viagra people pay well.

So how would you monetise Twitter?  Big flashing banners?  Pr0n links?

Scott (on Twitter)

Numerous reports have shown the engagement with social networking is on the increase, both in the UK and abroad, but there remain questions over whether the platform is profitable for businesses.

Nielsen‘s latest figures show that Facebook and Twitter are the biggest sites, while the popularity of MySpace has dropped off, with the number of minutes spent on the channel falling by 31 per cent in April compared to the same month last year.

Overall, use of social networking sites in the US has risen by 83 per cent, with the Twitterati spending almost 300 million minutes on the site in April and Facebook users updating statuses and the like for a total of 13.9 billion minutes, making it the number one website.

Analysts recently estimated Facebook’s worth at $10 billion (£6.1 billion), although theories as to the actual value of social networking sites continue to circulate.

Jon Gibs, vice president of online media and agency insights at Nielsen, warns of the promiscuity of users when it comes to social networking.

“The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favour with consumers,” he says.

“Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice,” Mr Gibs adds.

Rachel Hawkes, co-founder and editor of the Social Media Portal, said the online marketing industry is watching closely to see how social networks will go about profiting from the popularity of this trend.

“Social media and networks have as yet not been able to demonstrate a long-term, sound financial model and generate a profit. We all understand and appreciate the value and potential they hold, and are eagerly waiting to see the first true success of monetisation,” she commented.

“In order to be viable long-term, it’s vital that social networks such as Twitter develop a solid business model that brings money through the doors off its own back, outside of venture capitalists and/or selling to a media giant, which seems to be the sole business goal of many start-up social networks today,” she added.

Meanwhile, a survey by Deloitte has revealed that US companies see social networking as an important element of branding, but have also expressed concerns about the potentially negative effects of sites.

Almost a third of the firms surveyed said they see the platform as part of their operations strategy, while a smaller but still significant number said they used Web 2.0 tools to build their brand, communicate with their employees and recruit staff.

However, they highlighted the danger of the company’s reputation and brand being damaged by social networking, with almost three-quarters saying it was easy for this to happen.

“With the explosive growth of online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter rapidly blurring the lines between professional and private lives, these virtual communities have increased the potential of reputational risk for many organisations and their brands,” said Sharon Allen, chairman of the board at Deloitte.

Advertising in social media can be like gatecrashing a party. People who use social media are much less tolerant to have their conversations interrupted by advertisers.

Apt I think you’ll agree.

Clearly, a serious lack of judgement from Habitat (who claim the mistake was made by an intern who no longer works with the firm – pretty much the same BS response that any firm caught spamming spews out to the baying masses), but it serves as a good example of why all marketeers should know their limitations and not simply jump in feet first with any old sales technique that they think will work. 

Trying to capitilise on the tragic events in Iran is clearly a stupid thing to do – moral and ethical implications aside, the logic from a marketing point of view is non existent.   Seriously, what dumbass thought that would be a good idea?  Too much time spent on Twatter and not enough in the real world methinks…perhaps the marketing team at Habitat need a new motivational poster for their wall…

“You don’t have to be crazy to work here – you have to be a talentless, narcissistic, evil c*nt with absolutely no moral centre and such distain for everyone that if there was any fairness in this world, you would just f*ck off and die.”

Or something like that.

Haven’t ranted in a while.  Feels good even though it’s dark and cold down here lol!:)

Scott

Figures from comScore, released earlier this month, showed that the popular social networking site Facebook became the sixth ranked online property in the world with 275 million visitors in February – a 175 per cent rise on the previous year. In Europe, the site has experienced a 314 per cent increase to around 100 million visitors.

According to comScore, Facebook also has a highly-engaged audience as the average user spends three hours every month using the site. One year ago, usage of the social networking site accounted for 1.1 percent of all minutes spent online in Europe but by February 2009 the figure had increased to 4.1 percent of all minutes.

“Facebook has very quickly taken a leading position across most of the European social networking market despite having a strong foothold in just a few European countries one year ago,” commented Mike Read, comScore managing director of Europe.

Use of social networking sites has also reportedly taken over online shopping in terms of internet visits in the UK. Hitwise figures revealed recently that 9.8 per cent of all UK internet visits went to social networking websites, in comparison to 8.6 per cent on online retail websites.

As for marketers taking advantage of the platform, Econsultancy’s UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2009, undertaken in association with search agency Guava, revealed that 65 per cent of companies involved in a poll said they are using Facebook as part of their marketing strategy, with 49 per cent using Twitter.

Other comScore data noted that Twitter more than doubled its visitor base in the US during March, ranking as the top-gaining property in the month – something that could happen in the UK.

But what about what the consumer wants? Research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), carried out by the Opinion Matters Tickbox.net panel, revealed that 31 per cent of social networkers do not like constant requests to join groups and download applications. The study of around 2,000 internet users also showed that 28 per cent of people would be happy joining a group if they were offered exclusive content or something relevant and free.

Russell Goldsmith, digital media director at Opinion Matters, commented: “Our research for the IAB should remind marketers that, whilst it might be a cliche, it’s important to understand that when it comes to reaching your end audience within social network environments, content truly is king.”

Let’s call a spade a spade here.  It’s a nice big glossy way of extracting loads of reasonably accurate information out of people in order to market to them better.  You add in your music and film tastes and preferences so you can “explore other people’s tastes” – what a crock of shit!

What it boils down to is that some bright spark at HMV thought, “hey – social networking site users are very forthcoming with their personal details – can’t we use that in some way?” and GetCloser.com was born.  What a goldmine of information – these days you don’t really need solid contact details to market to people – mass market user data can be a little FUBAR at times anyway (as people fill out fake details) so it becomes a fruitless exercise trying to disseminate any traditional marketing demographic data.

But user tastes and preferences are great and something that was never really available to marketers (focus groups or other kinds of feedback and research are very limited).  With specific user preferences and interests (that you know will be pretty accurate), companies can conduct a much more serious level of marketing – micro marketing (user specific) as opposed to macro marketing (mass market).

So obviously you can’t just churn out a social networking site expect people to give you their information for nothing – you need to fluff it up a bit.  That’s where the “features” of sites like these come into play.  GetCloser has a (admittedly mildly interesting) feature where you can add in two films or music and you’ll get a “connection” returned – i.e. a story or fact that connects the two entities.

Seems a little ambitious to me – I would hazard a guess at the connections might be made based on user input – i.e. 10,000 users have the favourite film “Star Wars” and music artist “Queen” – and possibly supplemented by user or company generated stories (star appearances, cameo roles, before they were famous).  It’s a nice little concept (not sure if it’s worthy of a dedicated site – more akin to a FaceBook app IMO) but my initial thought would be how do they get that critical mass of information to user a good result for every query (see how I brought SEO back into this)?  HMV is a big company so there’s a load of resources going into this no doubt – but the combined music and film industry (in terms of information) is a huge market – getting a complete collection of data is an immense task.

ADDED:  Just read that they only intend to populate the site with staff first and closed Beta.  Way to avoid hiring any editorial staff guys!

From what I can tell, their strategy is very web focused, something along these lines:

• Use of “Hubs” – basically optimised portal pages for band names, actors, etc.  Think IMDB meets Bebo.
• User generated content – reviews, etc.
• User profiles – my films, my reviews, etc.  Has a “DNA” feature which tells you if your film collection is lame or not…
• Gimmicky stuff – see DNA feature / connection feature.
• Promos and videos – naturally.

Basically, a dressed up excuse to encourage people to add their music and film collections to the site so they can be profiled and marketed to.

Giving your data to Bebo or Facebook is one thing.  At best you get generic ads forced on you – no big deal.

But here we’re talking about giving your details to a company that sells the products you own.  It’s not like your Amazon purchase history / recommendations – that’s just a neat little feature that is helpful and is good for marketing as a consequence.  With this you would be giving very detailed information about your lifetime purchase habits (almost anyway) to a company that has the intention of selling more to you.

I may just be a little cynical in my old age but that seems like a step too far.  It’s not just “monetising a site with advertising” or “making best use of company information” – those are legitimate business activities (although social networking sites can be difficult to monetise).  This is setting up a process that is likely to be popular with kids and adults alike who aren’t going to pay any attention to the privacy policy.

It’s a honey trap for user data IMO.  As with all areas of life, there is a fine line between what is acceptable and what isn’t (and that line differs for everyone) – my article on doorway page spam for example shows how this is the case in the SEO industry.  I just think the intention behind any activity is the key – Bebo set out to be a social networking site.  GetCloser is setting out to farm user data.

Thumbs up from a SEO perspective – nice looking site and covering all the prime keywords in an original way (and not just the bog standard, pseudo doorway page crap that most SEOs produce).

Yah boo sucks from a user’s perspective though – an excuse to trick unsuspecting users into handing over personal information.  Someone explain to me – if Phorm are getting so much heat from the UK Gov and the EU over privacy concerns, how is this any different?  At least Phorm provides a service to businesses and is unobtrusive to users – GetCloser is literally the largest legitimate phishing venture we’ve ever seen!

Boo, boo and thrice boo!  I think “get closer” refers to how they will “get closer” to their users!  My advice would be to “Get Further Away”!

Scott

1.  Submit your site to directories.

If you aren’t already doing this as part of your link building efforts, then directory submissions can be a quick and easy way to help with your SEO efforts.  As long as you train your staff member on the basics (following submission guidelines, varying anchor text) there’s not really anything that can go wrong.

Lists of directories to submit to can be found easily enough via search engines.  If you feel like, why not submit to mine?

2.  Participate on forums

Don’t do this simply for link building – that can lead to a world of pain.  Just look at the negative publicity Jobsite got after spamming one of my forums!

But good, solid community participation can be a great way to gain exposure for your business and brand name, while at the same time helping a little with link building from your signature links.

The aim should be to build the reputation of your company, and not simply to whore yourself for links.  Don’t drop links in posts unless they are relevant – try to offer advice to offers where appropriate and generally conduct yourself as if you were attending a networking event.

Added bonus – any forums that display thread view counts can be a great way to find new keywords to target!  Unusually large thread view counts can suggest that the thread is receiving a lot of traffic from somewhere (and not just the normal forum browsing traffic).

3.  Contribute to the company blog

Even the opinions and thoughts of a junior member of staff can make an interesting read and can also be a good part of their training.  You will need to carefully focus your staff member’s efforts and not simply let them loose on your site, but done well and it can add valuable content to your blog.

4.  Monitor social networking sites / forums / competitors

If there are active communities within your niche, then it is worthwhile keeping up to date on what’s going on in them.  It might give you ideas for new features for your site, or new markets to target.

While the forum participation is an active role within these areas, monitoring them is more of a passive activity – this is information gathering for internal use, rather than participation to improve the outward value of your company.

5.  Link request emails

I’m not a fan of this – it needs to be done right.  You really don’t want to spam other sites with automated link requests – that’s bad for your reputation.  However, sending a few select link requests can be considered a more public relations role – you build a relationship with the site, not just try to get something from them.

For example, getting in touch with local newspapers for a link can lead to conversations about your business and possibly some free exposure.  Treat your link requests in this manner.

6.  Competitor SEO analysis

Scrape their keywords (grab them from title tags) and do some keyword research on what you find.  Are you missing out on some juicy keyword markets?

Ditto for backlink counts – are you missing some nice link sources?  You can usually forget all the directories and crap like that, but finding news site links on the back of some exposure can give your marketing team some ideas that will eventually help with SEO.

7.  Social networking

Get your staff registering accounts with the likes of Linkedin and so on.  Set up a company Facebook account – perhaps advertise them via any forums you participate on. Over time this will build up a nice portfolio of contacts.

8. Rankings analysis

Do you have any rankings bringing in traffic that aren’t number 1?  Then perhaps these are worth attention – perhaps your on page optimisation isn’t quite geared towards that term – perhaps some deep links will do the trick!

9.  Find online marketing opportunities

Small sites offering banner advertising or larger sites offering newsletter sponsorship – these are great ways to expand your marketing activities.  A staff member with some time on their hands can easily compile a master list of sites with advertising options for you to look at later on.

———–

I might update this list at a later date (feel free to comment with any suggestions).  The key here is that all this stuff doesn’t require much experience to do well – it’s all about common sense (with a little guidance from more senior staff where appropriate).  It’s good for your staff to be getting involved as well – particularly junior staff.  Just doing this stuff will not only benefit the company, but will help new staff familiarise themselves with your industry more quickly than the usual training manuals, etc.

Perhaps they needed to free up some funds?

If you are new to SEO or unfamiliar with my sense of humour, you should be warned now that this isn’t an entirely serious post.

7 steps to get your crappy link spam published

1.  Get that temp in your office to regurgitate a story they read somewhere.  Be sure to kill all the links to decent sources and instead link to optimised pages within your own site.  Horde that lovely link juice!  Yeh baby, a link to a page on your site about Google is much better than actually linking to Google!

2.  Setup one.  No, two.  OK, just setup as many accounts on your social media site or forum of choice as you want.  I mean, it’s not like anyone will check or notice you are the same person.  If you are really cheeky you could get your mates or colleagues to register accounts for you.  Sneaky guys!   You’re so clever!

3.  “Participate”.  Well, just vote for a load of random articles so it looks like you are active – you don’t even need to read them.  Also be sure to leave a few comments on some articles – only if they serve your commercial interest though!   Don’t want people to think you have an opinion that differs from your corporate overlords now do we?

4.  Use one of those “extra” accounts to start off a few harmless topics.  Of course they will be revolutionary, ground breaking, intellectually challenging insights into your industry.  Or just the usual trash you churn out to try and whore some links.

5.  Wow, great!  By lying, cheating and manipulating you have now convinced yourself that you are a well respected, authoritative member of the community!   Yay!  And everyone else agrees.  Really.  They do.  You are smarter than everyone and no one has ever tried that before.  Seriously.  Well done.  Head of the class.  Top o’ the world.  King of the Jungle. 

6.  So it’s time to submit your link to your forum or social media of choice.  But first, you need to find some decent stories (i.e. well written, informative and from respected sources – basically the opposite of your story) and submit them before and after your submission.  That way they create a magical invisible spam shield that means regular users and editors / mods won’t see your spam.  Or just start a discussion that will lead on to an opportunity to allow you to self promote.

7.  This one is the kicker.  If you work for a large brand and you take pride in your ethical approach to SEO, then FFS don’t tell anyone that you have been repeatedly banned from WebmasterWorld, SEW et al under a variety of different usernames just because you like causing arguments, link dropping and generally just wasting the time of mods and admin.  I mean, if you are so belligerent then someday someone will just out you.

So there we are – a rookie guide to spamming social media sites and forums!

Personally I think the Digg approach to spam is pretty good – just ban the offending domain for life.  Fuck em.  I have to waste about an hour a day deleting spam from my forums and blogs – it’s bad enough that work from home affiliate types do it, but when big companies start it then IMO it’s time to take the hard ass approach.

Thoughts / musings / flames?

MG