Who Will Gain Social Supremacy?

Posted in Facebook, Google, Social Media, Twitter on August 4th, 2011 by Steve

There has been so much written about social media lately, it is of little surprise this week that we again find ourselves discussing who’s shaking up the world of social networking. Week after week it feels like the three big players, Twitter, Facebook, and of course now, Google+, are trying to out-do one another. Each wants to reign supreme as the number one social network – especially when it comes to attracting business.

They are also, naturally, trying to expand and grow, and move with the times. So what are they all doing to woo business to interact with their platforms?

Google+ Business Pages

To begin with, let’s look at how Google+ has attracted millions of users, and is currently trialling its business pages. In its short life Google+ has already gained over 20 million users worldwide, and whilst businesses were told to stay away from it as a marketing platform, Google has been working hard to build a business friendly field whereby a company can host a business page in order to then generate further brand awareness and, of course further business. Business pages, such as the one Ford have been lucky enough to secure, are rumoured to have an impact on how well the brand will rank in search – something which will no doubt motivate many businesses to sign up when they are allowed.

“Facebook For Business”

Facebook last week announced the introduction of its “Facebook For Business” site, and, on the face of it, it seems to be a way by which they plan to maintain a presence and influence. This is, somewhat cleverly, aimed at smaller businesses rather than huge brands. The reason I believe this to be a clever move by Facebook is because smaller (especially local) businesses will be more willing to give it a go in order to see if it helps their business grow, whereas large brands may decide to disregard it in favour of more traditional goals such as mass reach and search rankings.

New Tweets

Twitter haven’t exactly been quiet either, recently announcing a tweak to their sponsored tweets to make them simultaneously more prominent for advertisers, but less intrusive to users. Being able to engage a visitor with advertising, without putting them off using the service, is a critical challenge for any social website.

In addition, the update Twitter has announced will put every Twitter user on the same platform, those that are still using an older interface will therefore be forced to upgrade. This can go one of two ways: either those forced to upgrade will dislike the very fact that they didn’t get a choice and thus switch off from Twitter, or they will prefer their new interface and their experience will be enriched.

Final Thoughts

These are just some of the latest examples of how social networking has clearly become such a key component to modern marketing. Online social media is expected to continue booming for years to come, with some 52% of all internet users expected to have a regular social media presence by 2013. With the increased take-up, and increasing time being spent on social media, advertisers will play a key role in shaping which platforms thrive, and which ones fall away.

A picture is worth 1000 words

Posted in Social Media, Twitter on June 7th, 2011 by Angelina

In one of our previous blog posts, we explained the importance of Twitter and how it is growing. At the beginning of this month, Twitter announced its plans to roll out a feature that allows tweeters to upload photos alongside their tweets, directly from Twitter.com (hosted by Photobucket).

Having a photo sharing feature on Twitter may encourage businesses to connect with their customers more, as they will be able to upload their photos easier, whether they are tweeting pictures of what events are happening, what people in their organisation are doing or what’s new at the company, without actually having to leave Twitter to use a 3rd party application to do so.

Third party photo sharing applications

Many people have already been sharing photos on Twitter via 3rd party applications such as Twitpic, Flickr and Yfrog. These applications have already allowed businesses to get some statistics to track the response and who has looked at their photos. Not only will Twitter also have the same features, but they will also appear in the results page when consumers click on a trending topic or when they search for something related.

With Twitter having their own photo sharing service, 3rd party applications are worried that they will be pushed out. However, a spokesperson from Twitter explained that “Twitter are still supporting other third-party photo services in our desktop and mobile, therefore users can choose the application that works best for them”.

Who actually uploads photos and what application do people use to do so?

Sysomos, a social media monitoring company recently launched a report to show which services tweeters are using to share photos and how often they included photos in their tweets. The tweets were analysed on 30th May 2011. Sysomos found that Flickr only had a contribution of 2.1% of the photos shared on Twitter for that day, whereas Twitpic was the most popular application (45.7%), followed by Yfrog with 29.3%, Lockerz with 17.4% and Instagram with 5.2%.

Of the all the tweets from 30th May 2011, only 1.5% contained a link to a picture from a photo sharing application and 14.9% of them contained a link.

Why share photos on Twitter?

Sharing photos is a great way to engage with people and potential customers on Twitter. People are generally interested to know what’s going on around the world and being able to see what other people see. If they like it, they’ll usually re-tweet it and share the photo with their followers.

It’s a great marketing tool for different types of businesses. For example, restaurants and foodies can upload pictures of their latest creations, making consumers want to buy and taste the food. Fashion magazines could upload a picture of their staff’s ‘outfit of the day’ which might start up a discussion, or cosmetic brands could upload pictures of their makeovers or their latest product, encouraging people to go out, buy and try their products.

As previously mentioned, even though Sysomos found that only 1.25% of tweets contained a link to a photo in their research, with Twitter having their own photo sharing application, it will build more of an opportunity to make photo sharing a more common activity.

Who Actually Uses Twitter Anyway?

Posted in Social Media, Twitter on May 6th, 2011 by Matthew Read

Next time you are with a group of your friends ask them “what do you think of Twitter?” and I bet you will get the same response I get from every Jane Doe and Jo Blogs I ask “erm…I have a Twitter account but I don’t really see the point of it…I prefer Facebook”.

Yes, despite having more than 200 million users, Twitter still seems to have this odd reputation as being not as good or important as Facebook. What’s more, it isn’t just individual users who appear to have this thinking, but also many small to medium sized businesses as well.

Every day I seem to come across more and more small to medium sized businesses with well optimized sites, beautiful blogs and fantastic Facebook pages but have Twitter accounts with no Tweets, no followers and not even a picture!

For a few years now many small, medium and large businesses all around the world have been realising the importance of Social Media for online brand awareness, website traffic and Google Rankings. Yet despite these businesses doing excellent things with blogs and Facebook pages, their Twitter accounts seem to have been left behind, given less attention, time and focus.

Why Twitter is Becoming More Important
In recent months we have seen Google release 2 new features to try and make search results more personal, refined and more social. Blocked and +1 have both been developed to help make Google more of a social network, focusing more on individual user’s preferences, connections and tastes, to help deliver the most relevant results for each individual user.

With this, all signs are pointing to the idea that Google rankings are being more and more influenced by user generated content such as comments on blogs, Facebook Likes and of course Tweets! With Google apparently in the process of trying to acquire Twitter and already having access to their vast amount of user data, they appear to be attributing more and more importance to businesses Twitter accounts when it comes to rankings.

Links vs Tweets
It may seem farfetched to attribute higher Google rankings to the number of Twitter followers you have, but as we can see from the latest SEOMoz Ranking Factors data, as well as other research, Twitter seems to be having as big an impact as blogs, keyword focused content and even links.

Of course, this is not to say that traditional SEO methods, such as onsite optimisation, keyword focused content and link building, are no longer important, and a strong SEO campaign should feature all of these elements. However, it is clear that we need to keep pushing Social Media and start giving Twitter the attention it deserves.

We already know how important Social Media can be for brand awareness, online promotion and networking, but now it also appears to be having an even greater impact , affecting Google’s search results.