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.

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

No doubt the likes of Slashdot have already dealt with and got over the impact the SEO industry may or may not have on the operation of their site – having implemented procedures to deal with comment spam, crap submissions and the like, Slashdot is still doing fine.  So why are newer community driven big brand sites so anti-SEO?

There has been loads of drama surrounding Digg’s approach to the SEO industry, which has been driven largely by its user base that seems to be largely anti-SEO despite many top Diggers being SEOs themselves.  A notable example was Danny’s recent article being buried.

And now, MyBlogLog is getting in on the SEO witch hunt as well, after banning SEO Shoemoney for “publishing other people’s data on the site and urging readers to spoof them”.  OK, a fair argument, but ill-timed given that the SEO industry is still fist-shaking after the recent Digg drama.

Regardless of the specifics of each situation, what annoys me is that these large and popular sites are so inadequately handling the nature and reality of the web.  Both Digg and MyBlogLog offer a system where websites can promote themselves (submitting an article to Digg; making use of MBL widgets, profiles, etc), yet they seem to be handling the Internet Marketing industry so badly.

We’re not working in a new industry – SEO has been around for years now and it really unbelievably amateurish for such large brands to emerge offering services that are obviously attractive to the marketing industry, yet are unable to manage their online PR with any level of competence.

After burying Danny’s article, the Digg user base now finds itself having lost an insightful and informative article written by one of the industry’s most respected individuals.  How does this reflect on Digg?

Eric Marcoullier from MyBlogLog talks about “staying ahead of SEO-types who try to game the system” – no offence Eric, but you (well your company) created the system and it was blatantly obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that this was the inevitable outcome on the back of the system’s success.  You created a marketing tool and now are complaining because marketing professionals are using it.

That’s like Google complaining because small businesses who self manage their PPC campaign don’t get as good an ROI or exposure as professionally managed campaigns.

Natural selection anyone?

Here’s an idea for Digg.  Realise that a community based on anonymous voting by a predominately tech geek crowd is an inherently flawed model that will reach a critical mass and then simply fail.  Either take your community and refocus it to serve niche markets which would make good use your users’ professional knowledge – or – adapt your system’s model to accommodate mass market use to avoid one social group dominating the results.

Otherwise your site is simply going to become (or stay as) a bitching ground for geeks.  We’re all adults here (mostly) – I think it’s time we moved on from the “majority rules and the rest gets binned” philosophy.

How about creating specialist areas for your users so their votes carry more or less weight where their own specialism and past voting history is appropriate?

Here’s an idea for MyBlogLog.  Profiles, stats, networking – regardless of how your corporate strategy defines your site, it is in fact a marketing tool for bloggers – within this market, SEO plays a very significant role.  To avoid this, ignore it, or even fight against it is an unnatural way to approach the issues you are facing.  Embrace the “problems” and reassess your strategy to incorporate new ways to turn them into positives.

Don’t like half naked chicks as avatars?  Then implement a review process. PokerStars.com does this for gamer avatars – you need to wait a few days for a review and you can only change your avatar 1 time after this, but there are no offensive images at the tables.  And I bet they got way more users than you do!

Don’t like comment spam?  It’s not 2002 – there are plenty of ways you can implement self moderation / community moderation features to kill it off.

Don’t like BS communities / profiles that don’t deserve to be there?  See above re: community moderation / review process.

——————————–

The main problem Digg and MBL have is that both sites are based on a LAZY business model.  They simply setup free and easy ways for people to contribute the content and have next to no internal review processes in place.  And now the sites have reached a critical mass of users that laziness has come back to bite them on the ass – and instead of doing something about it they are pointing fingers.

Change, innovate or be remembered in Friday Foo “what ever happened to” posts.

MG

“When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned. The domain would consistently get reported as spam otherwise.”

Sooo…I thought it would be worthwhile writing a post that looked at social marketing, with a particular focus on Digg.

First of all, some background reading if you feel like it:

• Threadwatch – Growing list of domains getting banned at Digg
• Lee Odden – The hypocrisy of Digg and spam
• 10e20 – List of domains banned by Digg
• V7N – URL banned by Digg.com
• Graywolf – How to be a dirty Digger
• Digg – FAQ

The difference between social marketing and SEO

I think this is core to the issues facing a lot of sites that have been banned by Digg.  An SEO strategy is a very flexible thing.  You can take your broad strategy for any site (or page for that matter) and apply it to other sites (or pages).  Of course, this is an over simplification – there are obviously differences from industry to industry and site to site, but generally, what works for one site can more or less be applied to another site for similar results.

You optimise the same core areas, write content in a similar style and build links from standard sources.  It’s a very transferable strategy.

Social marketing has largely been adopted by the SEO community due to the fact that “buzz” and “viral” campaigns can result in some sweet links, which are great for SEO.  But more and more, SEOs are beginning to appreciate the traffic and brand value from this form of marketing – the problem arises when the SEO mindset is applied to this emerging channel of marketing.

Simply put – a social marketing campaign needs to be tailored to your specific objectives and although certain aspects are “standard”, each strategy isn’t as obviously transferable as SEO is.

Example 1 - an innocent mistake

A blogger who has been banned from Digg had posted on his blog that he had “only” submitted each of his 30 or so articles to Digg once.  Not gonna name names at this point because I do think it was an innocent and non-malicious action intended to “seed” the stories on Digg in the hope that they would “grow” in popularity.  However if he reads this and doesn’t mind being named, I’ll happily add in links, etc to his posts.

The problem here is not his intention – just the implementation.

When devising a social marketing strategy, we need to look at the big picture, particularly when exposing our sites to a large community.  As with forums or blog news sites such as Threadwatch, there are different levels of issues and etiquette we need to consider.  For Digg, I would make the following assumptions:

• They receive a lot of rubbish submissions
• Most of which probably come from the SEO community (or at the very least, people with a knowledge of SEO)
• As such, the Digg community may frown upon SEO flavoured submissions.

So, in this example, submitting every one of his blog posts, the author has applied a SEO mindset by creating a social marketing strategy that isn’t entirely appropriate to meet his objectives.  By submitting so many of his own articles, the community system (a combination of human and automated factors) has flagged his domain as spam.  The number of submissions as a proportion of the size of his site were so high that Digg has banned his site (as most articles would have been buried).

The point here is that not every post made on a blog actually deserves to be added to Digg.  Most blogs cover niche topics and in the grand scheme of things, it’s unlikely that everything you (or I) write will be “Digg worthy” – remember the community out there is much larger than just SEO.

A more appropriate strategy for this type of site (a blog) would be to submit ONLY articles that high quality and are likely to appeal to a broader community, or at the very least just space out your submissions (as submitting an article from your own site as and when you post them could trigger a spam flag).

Example 2 – social bookmark buttons on larger sites

Another domain that has been banned from Digg is the popular business networking site ecademy.  This is an interesting one, because it is an active site with a vibrant community of it’s own.

Of course, I can only speculate as to why they were banned, but I would assume that the following factors are core:

• Lot’s of user generate articles (different authors), each with a Digg It link.
• Authors most likely Digg their own submissions.
• AND / OR regular users Digg the story.

Why is this a problem?

Let’s put it in context.  The site receives 100,000’s of visitors each month and as a networking site, a high proportion are likely to be returning visitors and as such they will be familiar with regular authors.

The chances are that even if the author doesn’t Digg their own story, some regular users will.  Only one person needs to do it, but given the scale of the content being generated this could lead to a lot of submissions on a regular basis.  Again, as with example 1, lots of submissions + low Digg count could lead to spam flagging.

But surely sites shouldn’t be banned because users Digg their content?

No, of course not.  But what we would like and what happens in reality are two different things.  I’d love for Google to not index the site belonging to the guy who is copying my content, but here we are!

As I said at the beginning – we need to look at the big picture.  Where do your articles fit into the grand scheme of things?  Generally, not where we would like, but then that’s why we’re developing a marketing strategy, right?

The reality of the situation is that Digg receives a lot of spammy submissions and as such we need to factor this into our strategies.  Some people will spend time working out ways to get around this – fake usernames, pay to Digg, etc.  Personally I think this is a waste of time.  It is social marketing after all and if you can’t embrace the community for what it is, then you have a larger problem that won’t be solved by a short term burst of traffic from social media sites.

Tips for smaller sites and blogs

I would be inclined to avoid larger social media sites such as Digg until you can get yourself some decent professional kudos from fellow bloggers and industry professionals.

Basically, if you are considered to be a nobody, then your submission isn’t really going to carry the weight that it otherwise would.  But if your site or blog has a lot of blogsphere / press / authoritative exposure, then the articles you write a much more likely to stand up to close inspection.  Plus it’s useful for smaller sites to have an established user base that can support submissions by Digging them – that will mean there’s less chance of your submission fading away into nothingness.

Also, think about it before you Digg something.  Does it really warrant the submission?  Is it a topic that would spark a several page discussion on a forum or be covered by industry news sources (or is sufficiently sensationalist for neither of those to matter)?  If you can’t answer yes to any of those questions, then why would other people Digg your submission?

Tips for larger sites

If your site generates a lot of content (larger forums, sites where users can submit articles, etc), then consider how you will approach social bookmarking buttons.  Do you really want every piece of content to have a Digg button on it?

In my opinion, a good strategy for larger sites would be to have some mechanism to monitor and list popular topics – either by comments, replies, page views, etc.  If you can shuffle these to a “popular page” and then ONLY add social bookmark buttons to these pieces of content, then there’s more chance it will be accepted by the Digg community.

Basically, for most sites, the onus is on the site owner to filter out the crap content and promote selective social bookmarking, instead of broad based bookmarking with a “let them sort it out at their end” philosophy.  This will give you the best return on your efforts, while minimising the risk of a ban.

MG