Read between the lines.
Did you hear that at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the video? This niche industry blog is generating 5,000 organic pageviews per month and a significant Twitter chat following.
Want to learn how to do that for your industry? Drop me a message and we’ll talk.
Yesterday at the I/O developer conference, Google announced planned improvements for the future of Google TV. In addition to offering more second-screen support, Google plans to expand their Play marketplace to include an extended library of movies and television shows.
In other words, so far Google seems to be attacking TV with an approach similar to Vudu, Amazon, iTunes, and who knows who else. While it’s nice to know the entertainment library available to cord cutters is inevitably expanding, this fragmentation of availability should create an interesting dynamic moving forward.
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I’ve been fairly silent on my blog lately, partly because it’s time to scale my social media marketing business. (I’m in that insane phase where I need more talent to streamline my work.) I’ve also been busy with a project for Bedrocket Media Ventures.
In case you haven’t heard, Bedrocket enlisted me two months ago to create a marketing and insights platform on top of YouTube. It’s been a wonderful ride so far, and every day as I envision new features I believe I’m exactly where I want to be.
Working in a fairly new field, I’m pushing the limits of what’s been done before to discover what’s possible. Can I mine prospective customers’ social streams, for example, to rank their affinity to a specific niche and predict how receptive they will to becoming a brand advocate? What else can I find out about them, and how can I frame my messaging to them to create the most excitement about what I’m presenting?
I’m looking for a high quality writer/blogger for part-time, ongoing work.
Responsibilities include writing and placing blog posts on sites (in the sales and social media niche), as well as creating buzz about said content across social media channels. Articles will require some research, and initially we will need to familiarize the chosen writer with specific technologies such as WordPress and Google Analytics. That said, candidates who are good writers and quick learners can expect to catch on quickly and excel.
Work can be done anytime and from anywhere as long as we communicate via email and/or on the phone, Google Hangouts, or whatever works best. If the candidate has interest in expanding their responsibilities beyond writing and basic social tasks, there is potential to take a more active role on the marketing side.
Tumblr announced a one dollar highlighted post feature into the fold of their blogging platform a few weeks ago, but now it seems Facebook is following in their footsteps. The social network is experimenting with $2 highlighted posts that let regular users buy increased visibility in friend’s Facebook newsfeeds with one simple payment.
(Note, this should not be confused with Facebook’s pinned or highlighted posts for brand pages. This feature for brand pages is free, and it allows page admins to anchor posts in the upper left-hand corner of the timeline for a few days. You’ll also see a tiny orange flag that demarcates these pinned posts, but what we’re talking about here is a feature Facebook is testing for regular members of Facebook.)
Under normal circumstances, the only way for people to make sure your posts earn maximum visibility in friends’ newsfeeds is to collect a significant number of likes and comments on a given post. This algorithm helps Facebook surface relevant quality content, but apparently if you’re not interesting or interactive enough, highlighted posts means money will get you visibility too.
It’s an interesting approach, and I can think of more than a few friends who would use this feature to announce important life events. On the other hand, as a light Facebook user from a personal perspective, I can’t imagine purchasing people’s attention like that.
If you’re a holdout on the importance of content marketing, perhaps the latest buzz about Amazon will convince you otherwise. According to GigaOm:
The Daily cites unidentified “multiple sources in the Seattle area” who say Amazon plans to launch three blogs: one “designed to compete in the tech news space with websites like Gizmodo and The Verge” that would be “populated with unbiased reviews that would link back to Amazon’s retail site,” one on “film, comics, TV and other geek-related activities” and one on “the emerging market of mobile phone photography apps.”
Oh what an April it’s been! Social media is going visual, marketers are getting settled with Facebook Timeline, and I landed an awesome new project creating a marketing platform and popularity algorithm for online video with Bedrocket Media Ventures. April was great, but I suspect May will be even better. And now onto our statistics fix for the month…
There are currently 9 million Facebook apps and 901 million Facebook users in the world. In case you don’t want to do the math yourself, that’s one in every 7.7 people in the entire world. – Source, Facebook
Facebook’s daily active users are up to 526 million (up from 372 million last year) – Source, Facebook
3.2 billion Likes and Comments are posted daily on Facebook. – Source, Facebook
Forrester released a study this month supporting evidence that Facebook fans are in fact some of a companies most valuable customers. According to the study:
Research by Bain Consulting shows Apple fans are worth 90% more to the company than a regular customer ($4,400 vs $2,300), mostly because Apple fans convince a new customer to go Apple every year. This kind of fan advocacy accounts for 17 percent of all of Apple’s new customers.
Finally, in honor of the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook, I present to you a statistic on Instagram. It’s still hard to believe that after all the numbers were sorted through, Instagram made $725,000 per day in the short time it existed before the acquisition.
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Interested in more recent statistics? This post is part of a monthly series and you can view January, February, and March social media stats here:
It’s been almost a month since Facebook made the mandatory switch to Timeline for pages and for some people the addition of pinned posts, highlights, and other more visual features adds enough complexity to create total confusion.
As a result, I send you to this wonderful graphic that spells out just about everything you need to know about features associated with the new Timeline layout for pages. Click on the image for a larger view, as all the info on pinned posts, starred posts, and Facebook apps is a wonderful guide for everything you need to know.
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