Archive for April, 2008
Twitter Still Niche
There are very few communities that are as devoted as the “Twitters”. A lot of people (including me) use Twitter, but how big is it compared to the other major networks? Well according to Heather Hopkins at Hitwise Twitter is still very niche.
On the positive side traffic year on year to Twitter is up 8 fold. In the past three months, visits have more than doubled and traffic continues to climb, up 60% in the past month.
As the following chart from Hitwise illustrates, the growth has been slow and steady with an acceleration in the past few weeks.
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Apr 30th, 2008
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles
Compete has some interesting data on the top Wikipedia articles for February and March.
It is quite apparent that Wikiepdia is the destination of choice for people looking for more information about people in the news as Eliot Spitzer demonstrates. Spitzer’s Wikiepedia page saw a 5316% increase in views after news of his scandal broke.
Most popular articles on Wikipedia during February 2008.
- Barack Obama - 553,364 Views
- John McCain - 266,661
- Miley Cyrus - 186,851
- Wikipedia - 167,925
- Naruto - 163,817
- Chinese New Year - 134,950
- No Child Left Behind - 132,270
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Apr 28th, 2008
Playing Around With Video
We have been playing around with creating some video files for client sites and submitting them to the social video sites. One site that we have found very useful in the submission process is Tube Mogul. TubeMogul is the video equivalent of SocialPoster, but the big difference is that TubeMogul has a dashboard that lets you know how many people viewed your video across the different video sites. This is a very cool tool and it the biggest reason that we use Tube Mogul.
Before you start shooting your first video here are a couple of optimization types to keep in mind from WebVideoUniverse.com.
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Apr 24th, 2008
iPhone and Yelp
I recently upgraded by phone to an iPhone. I have been a long-time Verizon user, but I wanted a phone with a real browser and Verizon doesn’t have anything that browses as good as the iPhone.
It seems that I am not the only one who wanted the iPhone for web surfing. According to Internet Retailer:
A survey by Viewpoints.com, a rating and review site, found 48% of iPhone users frequently use their iPhones to look up specific information online, compared with 5% of other cell phone users. And 45% of iPhone owners frequently use their phones to browse online, compared with only 6% of users of other brands of cell phones.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (5) : Apr 23rd, 2008
YouTube Audience Ages
Heather Dougherty at Hitwise had an interesting post last week about people are spending more time on video web sites and search engines and social networks are now accounting for an equal share of referred traffic to these sites.
What I found most interesting was this graphic about the demographics of the YouTube audience.
Video web sites have started to attract a more mainstream (older) audience. For the 4 weeks ending April 12, 2008 the percentage of YouTube’s traffic of 18-24 year old declined from 30% to 21%. The biggest percentage jump in traffic came from the over 55 age group. Who would have thought that 20% of YouTube’s traffic came from those over the age of 55?
Filed under Demographics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Apr 22nd, 2008
American Airlines Crisis Management and Response
American Airlines has been in the news a lot recently because of the cancellation of thousands of flights due to mechanical troubles. What has been interesting is watching how AA have approached this PR nightmare. AA first step in conjunction with its PR agency of record, Weber Shandwick, was to immediately initiate a major crisis-communications plan.
AA Crisis Response
- Immediately issued a press release to drive passengers to the advisory section on its website for updates
- Communicated with frontline employees so they were prepared to deal with questions from travelers
- Proactively and reactively worked with media through its news desk
Filed under Brand Marketing, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Apr 21st, 2008
Testing Twitter
You might have noticed the Twitter box that has appeared in the sidebar.After talking to John Cass about Twitter and seeing that Mr. SEO has begun to use it, I have decided to test Twitter out for several weeks. If you are interested in following me on Twitter you can here or if you already have a Twitter account let me know.
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Apr 20th, 2008
Power of a Negative Review
So what happens when a blogger has a bad experience at your restaurant? Well if you are the Melting Pot in Burlington MA the answer is a top search engine results that does not paint a positive picture of your restaurant. Soxy lady (http://soxylady.blogspot.com/) visited the Melting Pot in Burlington MA and had a very poor dinning experience. Here review of the meal can be found at The Melting Pot Burlington: Two BIG THUMBS DOWN.
A sample of her dinning experience:
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Apr 18th, 2008
Women Trust Blogs
A just released survey, conducted with Compass Partners LLC, illustrates several surprising new trends in social media, specifically that 36.2 million women in the U.S write and read blogs every week and approximately half consider blogs a “highly reliable” or “very reliable” source of information and advice.
The 36.2 million women who actively participate in the blogosphere is comprosed of 15.1 million who publish at least one post a week and 21.1 million who read and comment to blogs a week
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (4) : Apr 16th, 2008
Adding Chat To Social Networks
The International Herald Tribune had an interesting article recently about the new wave of Silicon Valley companies who are focused on putting the social back into social networks.
The IHT had this interesting description of social networks:
Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social. People visit one another’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It is like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Apr 15th, 2008
