Archive for June, 2007
What A Week
Who says that things are slowing down for the summer? We had more visitors and new subscribers this past week than any week since we launched the blog.
We kicked off the week with our inaugural Inside Social Media interview with Kris Jones, President & CEO of pepperjamSEARCH. Over two days Kris discussed how Pepperjam uses social media tactics to distinguish itself in the market as well as how Pepperjam’s clients are using social media to grow their business online. The interviews in full are available here and here.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Social Retailing : Comments (1) : Jun 29th, 2007
Customer Reviews Reduce Product Return Rate
In the past we have asked whether Customer Reviews Increase Sales and the importance of User Generated Content Important in Buying Decision.
A recent story about Petco said that products reviewed by customers on the site had a return rate that is 20% lower, on average, than for products without reviews. And the return rate continues to decline as a product gains more reviews, with return rates on products having 50 or more reviews 65% lower, on average, than for products with no reviews.
Filed under Social Media Optimization, Social Retailing : Comments (0) : Jun 28th, 2007
The Knot Combines Social Retailing and Social Networking
Internet Retailer reported that the wedding planning site the Knot Inc. is combining e-commerce and social networking with the launch of its newest web site: TheNestBaby.com
More than 60% of the visitors that used TheKnot.com to plan their wedding also plan on starting a family about the time of their third anniversary, company research shows. To help them plan for both new and growing families – and generate more e-commerce and advertising revenue – TheNestBaby.com features niche communities and editorial areas devoted to infertility, adoption, twins and other topics. The site also features family pages for posting photo galleries, e-mail-based questions and answers with health providers such as pediatricians or fertility specialists and a baby naming blog.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Social Retailing : Comments (2) : Jun 28th, 2007
Advertising on StumbleUpon
Our social media case studies and experiments have shown that StumbleUpon can be a really good source of social media traffic. For those of you not interested in becoming a regular StumbleUpon member, there advertising program is a great way to drive highly targeted traffic to your web site and a very competitive cost per click.
What I like about StumbleUpon’s ad program is that there is no ad impression or click-through. Instead your page will be the only content displayed in the user’s web-browser. Your site isn’t wrapped inside a frame or presented as an ad within another page.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Jun 27th, 2007
What Law and Order, Slate, and The New York Times Taught Me About Social Media
This has been an interesting week for Social Networking and SMO, with varying examples of social media sites popping up into (somewhat more) traditional media.
Law and Order – Last Sunday’s episode, a re-run originally airing in 2006, centered around the slighly sinister social networking site, BeFriends.com, an obvious and thinly-veiled reference to a pre-Rupert Murdoch MySpace.
Slate.com – On Friday, everyone’s favorite online news magazine (alright, *my* favorite online news magazine) published, in its technology section, an interesting column entitled “In Your Face; How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google.”
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Jun 27th, 2007
Kris Jones of Pepperjam Talks About Social Media - Part 2
We are really excited that Kris Jones, President & CEO of pepperjamSEARCH has agreed to be the inaugural interviewee in our social media optimization series.
Pepperjam is an industry leading full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing privately-held businesses in the United States.
We broke the interview into two parts because of its length. Yesterday Kris discussed how Pepperjam uses social media tactics to distinguish itself in the market. Today we will talk about how Pepperjam’s clients are using social media to grow their business online.
How Pepperjam Clients Are Using Social Media Tactics
Filed under Brand Marketing, Interviews, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Social Retailing : Comments (1) : Jun 26th, 2007
Kris Jones of Pepperjam Talks About Social Media
We are really excited that Kris Jones, President & CEO of pepperjamSEARCH has agreed to be the inaugural interviewee in our social media optimization series.
Pepperjam is an industry leading full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing privately-held businesses in the United States.
Kris is considered one of the top internet marketing experts in the world. A true pioneer and leading voice of the industry, he is a prominent speaker and moderator at leading national and international marketing conferences.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Interviews, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Jun 25th, 2007
Planning A Social Media Campaign
One question that I have been asked as a result of our social media case studies was whether the steps we took to get social media links was how a social media should be planned? The answer to that is no.
By submitting to all the social sites at once you are hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. The problem with this approach is that everything must line up just perfectly for you to succeed. And even if you do get on the first page of Digg or Netscape, the impact on your search engine rankings will reduced as your page will probably stop getting any new links 24-48 hours after your campaign ends.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (4) : Jun 21st, 2007
Social Media Optimization Blog Changes
When I first started this blog last fall social media optimization was in its infancy and this was one of the first blogs on this subject. Less than a year later, the social media space has really grown, with Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us all getting mainstream media attention.
The growth of the social media space has brought some challenges, as it is harder to keep up with all the SMO news as well as explore social media tactics to see what actually works.
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Jun 20th, 2007
Hillary Goes Viral
Whether you love her or hate her, you have to give kudos to Hillary Clinton for the Sopranos spoof. The Clinton campaign has been trying to drum up interest in its campaign song which is about as exciting as watching paint drive.
So what did the campaign do to promote the fact that they chose ‘You and I” by Celine Dion as their new theme song? How about a new video staring Hillary and Bill that is a spoof of the Sopranos ending! The video is complete with bad guys in the diner and someone doing a bad job parallel parking. Who would have thought that the Clinton’s had such a great sense of humor!
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Jun 19th, 2007
