Archive for September, 2011

Twitter To Be A Leader in Advertising Revenues

Published by admin on September 30th, 2011 - in Social Media

Twitter will earn $139.5 million in global ad revenues this year, up 210% from $45 million in 2010, according to a new forecast from eMarketer. By 2013, eMarketer estimates worldwide ad revenues at Twitter will reach nearly $400 million.

This forecast features a slightly lower 2011 ad revenue estimate than eMarketer’s previous estimate from January 2011—a result of Twitter’s slower-than-expected rollout of several advertising initiatives, including ad sales offices in markets outside the US and a platform enabling advertisers to buy ads on a self-serve basis. In January, eMarketer forecast that Twitter would have $150 million in ad revenue this year.

 

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Ninety-six percent of Twitter’s ad revenues will come from the US this year, eMarketer predicts, falling to 88% by 2013 when ad dollars from elsewhere in the world will make up a more substantial revenue stream. Twitter’s US ad revenues will still more than double during that time period, rising from $133.9 million this year to $351.6 million in 2013.

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Are You Using Tumblr Yet?

Published by admin on September 23rd, 2011 - in Social Media

Tumblr, the social blogging site, has seen solid growth since its launch in 2007. More users are publishing on the site and viewing others’ posts, while brands, media outlets and marketers are experimenting with how best to leverage this growing community.

In its “State of the Media: Social Media Report Q3, 2011,” The Nielsen Company tracked Tumblr unique US visitors from May 2010 to May 2011 and found 183% growth in a single year. In May 2011, the site had 11.9 million unique visitors, up from 4.2 million one year earlier, and averaged  21,280 messages and links posted per day.

Combining elements of both traditional blogging and Twitter, Tumblr makes it easy to create posts that include photos, videos and links, and offers a more social element, including following other blogs and re-blogging posts. Fashion brands have quickly taken to the site, posting vivid photos of clothing and other items, while media outlets have made use of the site to share the latest news.

As more users create blogs on the site and marketers experiment with how their brands can be involved, Tumblr is likely to become a bigger player in the social space.

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How to Post Local Business Customer Reviews

Published by admin on September 20th, 2011 - in Featured

The importance of local business map listings continue to grow as more consumers are using mobile devices to search for local businesses.  The local business map listings are an important component to every business’ online advertising strategy.   This is an ideal tool to connect your business with consumers that are searching for a product or service that you provide in the marketplace. As more mobility enters our daily lives, business must adapt to these changing consumer behaviors.  Where do you start?  The best place to start is get your business listed on Google Places, Bing Business Portal and Yahoo Local.  However, you must go beyond just being listed and strive to increase your local business rankings.

Local business rankings are dependent on the consistency of your business listing (name, address and phone number), the content of your website, business citations linking to your company and the customer reviews of your business.  The criteria for business rankings are changed frequently by Google but the items listed stay consistent across all business listing websites.

While it is difficult to determine exactly which items are most important to the search engines, it is obvious to the consumer.  Will you stay at a hotel with a poor customer rating due to bedbugs?  Would you eat at a restaurant with customer reviews indicating sanitary difficulties?  When consumers see items like this they will drive by these businesses as fast as possible.  The point being that consumers look at business reviews and ratings on the internet while searching for products and services. These customer reviews are being used by Google Places, Bing and Yahoo Local to comparatively rank your business in their local business listings.

You being a business owner should be prepared to monitor and improve your online business reviews.  The first way to start is simply ask your existing customer to provide an online review at one of the business review sites.  This will start to build business reviews for your business over time.  However, you must be more aggressive to get a significant amount of online reviews.  You can use survey cards to ask customers for reviews.  This can be done in store or through mailings.  Then, you can rapidly increase the number of customer reviews.  But how will Google, Bing and Yahoo find your hand written customer reviews?

To be found by the search players, you must add your review to the online business review sites. This is done by converting the written review into an electronic review the posted to the review website.  This can be performed manually but it will be an laborious task.  The answer may be found in the Local Business Listing Robot (LBL Robot).

The LBL Robot will automate the process for you.  You can use the customer review to create a quick listing with a title, description and star rating.  The LBL Robot will then post the reviews to business citation places.  Now, don’t get over enthused just yet.  The LBL Robot will post the customer reviews over time so the citations do not get flooded with new reviews.  This will automatically build your amount of customer reviews in a gradual process to stay within search engine parameters.

See LBL Robot in Action With This Video:   Click Here for Video

The LBL Robot allows you to post unlimited reviews for unlimited number of businesses.  This will save you both time and money by automating the process.  The software is easy to use and has significant education videos to walk you through the setup process.  The LBL Robot will also post videos to YouTube using the same software.

The review sites currently supported by LBL Robot are as follows:

United States Citation Review Sites:

  • Google Maps
  • City Search
  • Insider Pages
  • Judys Book
  • Kudzu
  • Local.com
  • Yellow Bot
  • Yellow Pages
  • Super Pages
  • Yelp

United Kingdom Citation Review Sites:

  • Google Maps UK
  • Free Index UK
  • Scoot UK
  • Thomson Local
  • Touch Local UK
  • We Love Local UK

Canada Citation Review Sites:

  • Google Maps CA
  • CanPages
  • N49 CA

Australia Citation Review Sites:

  • Google Maps AU
  • Start Local AU
  • True Local AU

 

LBL will not post duplicate reviews.  As soon as all your reviews have been posted, LBL halts the project to avoid duplicate postings. If you get more reviews you can simply add them to the system to start posting again.  Each time LBL posts a review, it will pick an account at random from this pool and post your content. This insures that any review is never posted to the same user account.

If you want to increase the number of customer reviews and your business listing ranking, you must check out LBL Robot
today.

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Yahoo Plans For Mobile Search

Published by admin on September 20th, 2011 - in Mobile Marketing

Mobile makes up about 20% of searches globally for Yahoo. In some regions, such as Indonesia, 80% of all searches on Yahoo come from mobile. In the United States that number ranges between 10% and 15% on feature phones and smartphones, according to Shashi Seth, senior vice president of search products at Yahoo.

In the next 12 to 18 months, mobile searches in the U.S. should account for between 25% and 30%, Seth said during a call with Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter. Searches on smartphones contribute between 7% and 8% sequentially. Mobile revenue continues to increase at about 100% year-over-year.

Smartphones, compared with feature phones, produce higher revenue per search (RPS), but tablets are a “work in progress,” he said.

Yahoo continues to use two different ad-serving platforms. In the United States, Yahoo relies on Microsoft adCenter; and internationally, it continues to use its Panama platform. Seth did mention that all international algo search results, except Korea, switched to Microsoft as of Thursday, Sept. 15.

In the past 17 months, Yahoo has gained Web search market share because of a focus on product features, according to Seth. He points to relationships with U.S. telecom carriers AT&T, Sprint, U.S. Cellular and Metro PCS, as well as original equipment manufacturers such as Apple.

Nearly 30% of U.S. mobile traffic to Yahoo comes from iPhones. Although the feature does not exist yet on mobile, it might explain why earlier this year, Apple engineers approached counterparts at Yahoo requesting support for a feature in the iOS X Lion platform that gives consumers the ability to search on highlighted terms.

Source: Mobile Search Becomes Focus For Yahoo.

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Social Media Is Where To Find Consumers Online

Published by admin on September 19th, 2011 - in Social Media

The internet continues to become a more integral part of the American lifestyle.  As the access to information increases with more digital products and smartphones, the internet is the center of social life as it is the most convenient and consistent form of communication.  Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other website as it is great to communicate and to find those friends from yesterday.

In the U.S., social networks and blogs reach nearly 80 percent of active U.S. Internet users and represent the majority of Americans’ time online.  The value of the time consumers spend online and on social networks and blogs continues to grow, most visible through the influence on purchase decisions.  For instance, 60 percent of people who use three or more digital means of research for product purchases learned about a specific brand or retailer from a social networking site.  Forty-eight percent of these consumers responded to a retailer’s offer posted on Facebook or Twitter.As the influence of social media – and those using social media – continues to grow, it’s crucial for traditional media, retailers, brands and advertisers to understand how different consumer segments use and share content.  Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Social Media Report – Q3 2011″ presents a snapshot of the current social media landscape and audiences in the U.S. and other major markets.

Additional Findings Include:

  • Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online, now accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet
  • Social media has grown rapidly – today nearly 4 in 5 active Internet users visit social networks and blogs
  • Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other U.S. website
  • Close to 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
  • Social networking apps are the third most-used among U.S. smartphone owners
  • Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social network-ing through the Mobile Internet
  • Although a larger number of women view online video on social networks and blogs, men are the heaviest online video users overall streaming more videos and watching them longer
  • 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user
  • 53 percent of active adult social networkers follow a brand, while 32 percent follow a celebrity
  • Across a snapshot of 10 major global markets, social networks and blogs reach over three-quarters of active Internet users
  • Tumblr is an emerging player in social media, nearly tripling its audience from a year ago.

Source: Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Social Media Report – Q3 2011″

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Keep It Simple When Using Mobile Shopping

Published by admin on September 19th, 2011 - in Mobile Marketing

A key challenge for retailers is finding ways to drive consumers in-store to make a purchase.  Mobile is the solution, according to experts.  Brands need to think outside the box, and at the same time, develop programs that will not overwhelm potential shoppers. In particular, retailers need to incorporate loyalty and rewards programs, keep their applications simple and include content to the shopping experience.

Targeting loyalty and rewards program users via mobile is an effective strategy.  Mobile shopping is on the rise and retailers could be missing out on extra revenue if the experience is not up to par.  When targeting a loyal shopper, it is important to keep the mobile experience simple and easy to use.

It is easy to think of mobile as an extension of a brand’s Web site, but retailers need to understand that it is an entirely different medium.  Therefore, a mobile Web site needs to be built with the on-the-go user in mind.  Search functionality should be front and center.  When building mobile apps, retailers should keep the loyal on-the-go customer top of mind.  Apps are designed for more loyal shoppers, since they are a way to create a deep relationship with consumers.  Retailers can use mobile apps to help consumers make purchase decisions.  For example, one way that a brand can leverage the in-store experience within an app is to let consumers scan products to find out more information about them or find the item at other nearby stores.  Brands can also stimulate shopping via mobile by giving users access to unique, in-store experiences, such as finding the music that is currently being played in stores.  Retailers can bolster sales by using location to drive traffic.

Another difficult area for retailers is the small screen on the device.  Therefore, it is important to include only the most crucial features when developing an app or a mobile site. Store locators must be included.  An additional benefit of apps is that they have the potential to target users based on their preferences and past purchases.  Retailers need to make mobile an aggressive part of in-store shopping in addition to promoting it in other marketing initiatives.

 

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Does Peer Pressure Work In Social Media?

Published by admin on September 17th, 2011 - in Social Media

On one level, the research that emerged from HP Labs Friday is unsurprising: we tend to bow to peer pressure, and it’s as true in social media as in real life.

But how much peer pressure does it take, and what other factors come into play? The answers may surprise you.

HP Labs computers scientists, including veteran online behavior researcher Bernardo Huberman, asked 600 participants to answer a few simple questions about online photos. Which of two baby pictures is cuter, and which of these two couches (above) would you choose to buy for a friend?

Whichever one they chose, the researchers rigged it so the other picture was shown to be more popular, using a Facebook-style Like system. The participants then had a chance to change their minds. Each time, however, they changed the number of Likes each picture got, and waited for a different length of time before giving them a second chance.

The result: 22% of people were swayed by the peer pressure — but only if there was a long gap between the first and second chance. Given the chance to change their mind immediately, only 14% of participants did so.

Most interestingly, people were only likely to change their minds if there were a moderate number of Likes on the other side. As soon as the Likes on their choice of picture were outweighed by 20 times or more, participants dug in their heels and stuck with their original choice.

Translation: if there’s a large number of people who disagree with us, we’re stubborn as hell. If you want to persuade someone to change teams, make sure their side does not appear to be outrageously unpopular, crushed by a giant weight of evidence. That, as I’m sure you’re thinking too, could explain a whole lot about politics.

Huberman’s advice for marketers? “Rather than overwhelming consumers with strident messages about an alternative product or service, in social media, gentle reporting of a few people having chosen that product or service can be more persuasive.”

Check out the full study, in PDF format, here.

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Are You Mobile Ready For Black Friday?

Published by admin on September 7th, 2011 - in Mobile Marketing

With holiday shopping just around the corner, new findings from Google’s AdMob predict that 15 percent of Black Friday Web searches will be done on mobile devices.  Additionally, the Google insight found that consumers are using their mobile devices to drive in-store traffic. Sixty-five percent of users polled in the study said they used their mobile device to find a business to make an in-store purchase.

In addition to Black Friday mobile results, Google projects a large volume of mobile search results to generate from last-minute shopping.  The findings predict that 44 percent of total searches for last-minute gifts and store locators will be from mobile devices.  Even though many consumers use their mobile devices to shop last-minute, the findings also indicate substantial mobile use for consumers beginning their holiday shopping at Thanksgiving.  More than 33 percent of consumers of both smartphone users and tablet users plan to start their shopping before Thanksgiving.

 

 

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Geo-Targeting Will Go Mainstream

Published by admin on September 1st, 2011 - in Local Search

There are still several areas that need to be addressed before we will see geo become mainstream.

Firstly, the ability to geo-locate consumers is far from reaching critical mass.  A consumer’s location can only be identified by one of two methods – either via a location aware app – with consumers having consented to sharing their physical location – or via the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of their IP address over a Wi-Fi connection.  The increasing proliferation of GPS-enabled apps coupled with a growing willingness among consumers to share their location, either within apps or via check-ins, will help geo-targeting gain traction.

There is also work to do on the end-to-end tracking metrics that will provide the necessary visibility to accurately gauge the true success of geo-targeted campaigns.  Campaign tracking needs to be fully integrated throughout the process from the initial ad impression right through to purchase or redemption at the point of sale.

Take the couponing model as an example.

When a mobile coupon is redeemed in store, the advertiser needs to be able to see the specific campaign and the specific ad network that generated that redemption to determine their cost per redemption.  Couponing presents the ideal future scenario whereby a coupon can be swiped at the till to identify the offer, the discount applied, payment taken and the process tracked back to the original campaign that generated the transaction.

This is the Holy Grail that the industry must collectively work towards if geo-targeting is to achieve mainstream status.

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Smartphone Shoppers Engage With Ads

Published by admin on September 1st, 2011 - in Mobile Marketing

According to research from Yahoo! and Ipsos, smartphone users spend the bulk of their mobile time (38%) connecting, including by voice, SMS, IM, email or social media. They spend just under half as much of their mobile time with search or entertainment, and a relatively small 7% of their time shopping.

But mobile shopping is the task marketers are most interested in when it comes to smartphone users, especially in regards to advertising. The Yahoo!/Ipsos research found that US smartphone users were most likely to recall and engage with ads they saw while shopping on their phone. Nearly two-thirds of users had seen an ad while shopping and more than half that number had clicked on one.

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