Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

LinkedIn Link Value and Great Presentations

Posted by Christina Keffer On August - 21 - 2009

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of sitting in on Stephan Mack and Dave Moser’s presentation about the value of LinkedIn links at a Pittsburgh SEO meeting.  He and his colleagues at EDMC did a study on the value of adding keyword rich anchor text links to your public  LinkedIn account.

7 EDMC employees, randomly chosen, added a link with the anchor text Design School and pointed the links at the Pittsburgh Art Institute.  According to the results of the study, the Art Institute’s rankings for this keyword jumped pretty significantly as a result of their efforts. Further proof the efficacy were the resulting slump in rankings at the termination of their test when the employees removelinkedin2 d the links from their profiles.

It was a really interesting presentation. I was also presenting, so I couldn’t come up with any insightful questions or comments at the time, but the ideas and conclusions have had some time to marinate in my head for a while and I have some comments about linking from social media sites to share.

The Value of Links from Social Media Sites

There are many social media sites out there that, like LinkedIn, will transfer link juice out of their site such as Propeller, Digg, and Stumble Upon.  However, the only place they offer the do-follow links are in your personal profile pages.  These links are valuable in the sense that all do-follow inbound links are valuable, but don’t expect a link from a LinkedIn profile page or a Digg profile page to take care of all of your linking needs.

The domains as a whole are incredibly powerful, but the actual profile pages hardly have any demonstrable page rank. That means the link juice they pass on to you will be more like a dribble.  That is to say that link from your profile page on Digg will not carry nearly as much weight as a link from Digg’s home page (which, incidentally, are no follow.)

In other words, the homepage of Digg is like the Hawaii beachfront property of the internet.  It has huge value, but doesn’t pass that value along through do-follow links…which is how the page remains so powerful. The profile page is like the servant’s quarters that overlook the dumpsters.  They’re still technically on beachfront property, but it’s not as valuable as the big house… Now I’ll continue on before I trip over my own metaphors and kill myself.

Common Myths About Social Media

One of the most common myths about links from social media profile pages is that the number of people who connect to your profile page will raise the amount of link juice that is passed through your link.  This is simply untrue.  The amount of value passed through a link on a profile page is just like the amount of value passed through any other link on the web: only the strength of the profile page is the only measure of the worth of the link. That means that unless the amount of connections you have somehow raises the page rank and strength of your page, there is no difference between a profile page with one connection and a profile page with 1000 connections.

That’s not to say that the link won’t provide more TRAFFIC if you have more connections.  However, traffic and link juice should not be confused.

Another common misconception is that the strength of the whole domain will be passed through your profile link.  As we discussed before, only the page rank of the profile page dictates the amount of actual link juice value the link will pass on.

Twitter

What about Twitter you might ask.  The number of followers that you have on twitter does directly affect the page rank of your profile page.  Unfortunately, Twitter has all that PR to pass around because it does not allow link juice to flow out of ANY link on it’s domain. No matter where you link to from Twitter, you’re not getting any PR value to the site that you pointed the link to.  Sad, but true.

The Networking Benefit of Links on Social Networks

All talk of PR passing aside, social media links are incredibly beneficial whether they’re do-follow or not.  There are many aspects such as branding, popularity, and raw traffic that you have to take into consideration.  LinkedIn might pass minimum PR, and it might not matter how many connections you have from a link juice-passing perspective, but the number of connections you have does directly affect how much referral traffic you get from the site.  Same with Digg and any other social media site.  They can be veritable goldmines of free traffic if you play your cards right.

Popularity: 5% [?]

SEO, Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

Twitter Contest: Win a Free Social Media Identity Protection Package

Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On July - 9 - 2009

Big day today! Eyeflow celebrates 8 years of providing internet marketing services! And here’s the best part for you: We are giving away a social media identity protection package normally offered for $350. We will register your brand name on 150 social media websites. Apart from the popular social media sites, we continuously scan the web looking for any upcoming ones and add them to our list. In that way, you don’t have to worry about which site will be the next big thing and whether someone else will register your brand name before you do. The Social Media Identity Protection is part of our Social Media Marketing Services. Here at Eyeflow, we hold a holistic approach to Social Media Marketing and this is why we offer a number of social media related services to our clients.

Over the next weeks, we will be raffling off more of our premium services for free. Stay tuned for some amazing SEO packages or even Social Media Marketing packages that will be offered for free.

To be eligible to win all you have to do is follow @eyeflow and tweet this update below. You can also click here to tweet it.

RT @eyeflow Win a free Social Media Identity Protection Package ($350).Follow @eyeflow & RT to be eligible.http://bit.ly/gEac8

Each user may retweet the message up to 5 times.

We will choose the winner randomly on Friday 5pm EST. We will announce the winner on twitter and on a new blog post.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Social Media, Twitter

Twitter Marketing to catch Facebook Marketing in Search Volume

Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On June - 24 - 2009

I get always fascinated when comparing search volumes for competing keywords. Today I thought of comparing these two: “facebook marketing” and “twitter marketing”. I also tried out “social media marketing” just to see where it stands next to the other two. Apparently, the results are pretty interesting. There are three major things to point out:

Search volume for “twitter marketing” is almost reaching “facebook marketing” in the United States

facebook twitter marketing chart graph

After an impressive jump last week, the search term “twitter marketing” got very close in reaching “facebook marketing” which on the contrary stayed at the same levels. The term “twitter marketing” had historically half the search volume of “facebook marketing” but since March 2009 things have started to shift. This observation supports the fact that twitter is becoming an essential part of every social media marketing toolbox. On the other side facebook holds strong, shows no decline but still, no increase as well. Again, these are only observations from Google search volumes (and only for USA). But who is to disagree that Google search is the starting point of the majority of any internet activities?

In worldwide basis, the search volume of “facebook marketing” still doubles that of “twitter marketing”

ffacebook twitter marketing chart graph worldwide

I am pretty sure this is to change very soon, even thought “facebook marketing” shows no sign of decline. If we agree (ok.. not everybody) that the social media trends are driven from the United States because the major online social networks (myspace, facebook, twitter) started here, then we should agree that the United States is setting the trends for the social media marketing as well.

Search volumes for “twitter marketing” and “social media marketing” catching up with “facebook marketing”

facebook twitter social media marketing chart graph

Surprisingly, the search volume for “social media marketing” is the same with “twitter marketing”. Especially in the last 10 weeks, their search volumes are very closely correlated. So what do all that mean? My explanations:

  • People relate social media marketing more with twitter marketing than with facebook marketing.
  • Following the search trend, twitter is becoming increasingly more popular marketing tool than facebook

This is just search. It may be that people just search for “twitter marketing” more aggressively and even try it out more but don’t stick with it. We have yet to see.

Manolis Kounelakis manages the Social Media Marketing portfolio for Eyeflow.
Interested to see how Social Media can help your business grow? Let us show you.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Social Media, Twitter

8 Stats and Facts Everyone Should Know About Twitter

Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On June - 19 - 2009

Here are some quick facts and stats about twitter that are really interesting:

2 out of every 10 users joined twitter out of curiosity. And still, they didn’t even tweet.

If you are a woman, it is 25% more likely to follow a man than another woman.

Only 15% of the users remember to tweet every day. (The rest 85% have to set a reminder..)

If you have over 1000 followers, you should tell your friends you belong to the top 0.76% of all twitter users.

If you don’t want anybody to read your tweet, post it around 5am (EST).

99,3% of the users decided to hide their age upon registration.

Did you start tweeting 2x more just after reaching 1000 followers? Apparently, you did!

One of the most common phrases in the users’ bio is “happily married”. Hmm..

    Sources:
    http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter
    http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

    Manolis Kounelakis manages the Social Media Marketing portfolio for Eyeflow.
    Interested to see how Social Media can help your business grow? Let us show you.

    Popularity: 27% [?]

    Social Media, Twitter

    A SWOT Analysis of Twitter

    Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On June - 9 - 2009

    There is undoubtedly an information overflow around Twitter and it’s related services. I thought it’s a good idea to group and present this information through a SWOT Analysis so that it would make more sense to the reader. As everyone would expect, strengths are much more than the weaknesses. However, there are way more threats than I expected.

    Feel free to comment if you believe I missed something.

    Strengths

    • Gets tons of publicity.
    • Is a thing on its own (almost no competition in microblogging).
    • It is simple but powerful.
    • It is 100% social in an all-social web.
    • It is free.
    • Has a strong brand name already.
    • Created the bluebird craze.
    • Provides authentication for other applications (OAuth).
    • Has developers creating hundreds of applications around its API.
    • It’s definitely not evil (yet).
    • Businesses like it a lot.
    • It is real-time.
    • Has no ads.
    • It is searchable.
    • It is totally RSS-enabled.
    • It is the ultimate link discovering and sharing tool.

    Weaknesses

    • Needs more horsepower. It is down quite often.
    • The API calls are limited. Hurts App growth.
    • Unequal distribution of tweets. 90% of tweets are coming from the top 10% of the users.
    • Has low retention rate. Only 40%.*

    Opportunities

    • It can become a dominant search engine.
    • It is becoming the biggest social media marketing tool.
    • Develop a Twitter Connect tool to make every site social.
    • It may acquire some of the desktop clients or the url shortening services.
    • It may become the dominant way for businesses to communicate with their customers.

    Threats

    • It got too much publicity in a short time. May get burned out.
    • It is getting dangerously spammy.
    • Has no solid revenue model.
    • May have trouble with unauthorized accounts on behalf of celebrities.
    • Paid twitter streams may hurt the brand image.
    • Facebook may get even more twitty and compete face-to-face with Twitter in microblogging sphere.
    • Friendfeed and identi.ca may grow and steal market share.
    • Acquisition by a bigger player (Google) may disappoint early adopters and loyal users.

    *Credit goes to Jeremiah for his suggestion.

    Manolis Kounelakis manages the Social Media Marketing portfolio for Eyeflow.
    Interested to see how Social Media can help your business grow? Let us show you.

    Popularity: 100% [?]

    Social Media, Twitter

    7 Unwritten Rules of Twitter

    Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On June - 4 - 2009

    No introduction. Right to the point (like a good tweet) :

    1. Listen & Interact.

    Don’t use twitter just to broadcast. It is a 2-way communication platform. Read others’ tweets and respond (quickly) by @replying or RTweeting. Don’t overdo it though. It’s not a chatroom.

    2. Don’t just RTweet. Add your comment.

    That’s obvious. Even if it’s just one or two words, your followers want to read your comment on a tweet. It adds value and it shows that you spent more than 2 seconds to retweet it.

    3. Contribute more in the beginning.

    If you just started tweeting, you should be patient. Things will go slow. Contribute and interact actively to grab attention. Make useful comments until you catch some eyeballs. From then on, your follow counter will go up.

    4. Do not spam with same tweet.

    You do not want to look like one of these people that tweet every hour about how they increased their followers from 10 to 10,000 in 2 days. If, for some reason you want to repeat a tweet, alter it and post it at the most 4 times. Sometimes, repeating a tweet makes sense. You cover different time zones and reach the maximum of your followers.

    5. Be selective of who you follow.

    Just because someone decided to follow you that doesn’t mean you have to follow him/her/it(!) back. Take a look at their bio, their link, their recent tweets and their followers/friends ratio. If something is wrong about these, just skip them. It is not rude. It is a normal human behavior.

    6. Don’t use your twitter account to just sell.

    It is ok if you want to promote your products or services through your twitter account. But if you tweet only about how great they are, you will look spammy and lose your followers. Try to tweet about news and tips that are related to your industry. Interact and add value to the conversation. People will then trust you more when you promote your products.

    7. Keep your background image simple.

    Just because twitter allows you to upload your own background image, it doesn’t mean you can use it to write your life story. I would say your logo, 5 words for what you do and some contact details are enough. And keep it aesthetically simple but attractive. I believe that the background image can tell the nature of the user behind it. If it is aggressive with flashy colors, expect a tweet storm.

    Update: 06/18/2009

    8. Don’t send automatic Direct Messages to your new followers.

    It is better if you don’t send a DM at all than sending out an automated one. By setting up your account to auto-send DMs when your are being followed, you immediately fall into the “lame” twitter user category. Users associate you with excessive twitter usage and spammy intentions.

    9. Thank people.

    If someone RTweeted your tweet and also commented on it if it is about your new blog post, then it is a good idea to @reply and thank him/her. Also in occasions like #followfriday, saying thank you is always a good gesture since you enforce your social media relationships.

    10. Any rules I missed? Post them below — and thanks!

    Manolis Kounelakis manages the Social Media Marketing portfolio for Eyeflow.
    Interested to see how Social Media can help your business grow? Let us show you.

    Popularity: 46% [?]

    Social Media, Twitter

    Why is Twitter a Form of Social Intelligence?

    Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On June - 1 - 2009

    Two weeks ago, I attended the Carnegie Mellon University 2009 Commencement Ceremony. The keynote speaker was Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. Towards the end of his speech (see embedded video below), he prompted students to work in groups and use Twitter as a form of social intelligence. I was a bit surprised to hear this term being assigned to Twitter. I was ok with the social part. Where does intelligence come in though?

    So far, we all know and love Twitter for the fact that we can discover and share news, blog posts, links, tips, pictures–pretty much anything–in real-time. What Eric Schmidt pointed out is that it is these exact qualities of real-time discovering and sharing that are actually creating a form of social intelligence. Twitter is like a super-brain that everyone can use. Everyone can contribute new knowledge and everyone can search and extract this knowledge. To me, this definitely sounds like “social intelligence”. So, why Twitter and not Google? Well, Twitter is real-time and is driven by people who decide what is popular and worthwhile instead of an algorithm. These two factors make a big difference. Let’s drill down to some more reasoning of why Twitter is a form of social intelligence.

    Get answers from real people in seconds.

    Depending on how big your Twitter network is, you can ask a question and get answers in an interactive manner. You can harness the knowledge of a large group to expand your own knowledge.

    Search for the answers among billions of tweets.

    Ever since twitter made search possible, it released the power and accumulated knowledge and opinions of billions of tweets to everyone. Depending on what you need do to know, twitter is currently more efficient than Google.

    Tweet once, share forever.

    Yes. Twitter is the easiest way to share information forever. In 140 characters you can share anything you have in mind and contribute to what the vast cloud of what will be termed “social intelligence” from now on.

    Retweet. That’s how you promote knowledge.

    Useful tweets are the ones that get retweeted and through this, reach more people. Tweets that do not contribute to social knowledge do no travel as much in the twittersphere. In other words, through retweeting, Twitter is able to promote valuable knowledge continuously.

    As more people use Twitter, the amount of knowledge and intelligence generated by it will grow. This growth is socially driven and the result is “social intelligence”.

    Go to 9:03 for the part where Eric Schmidt talks about Twitter and social intelligence.

    Manolis Kounelakis manages the Social Media Marketing portfolio for Eyeflow.
    Interested to see how Social Media can help your business grow? Let us show you.

    Popularity: 37% [?]

    Social Media, Twitter

    Twitter: Less people asking, More people using

    Posted by Manolis Kounelakis On May - 26 - 2009

    Last month’s big question “what is twitter” has finally been answered for many out there. Less people are asking google about it. Oprah and Kutcher powered up the buzz for millions of people outside the ring of social media. The chart below shows this spark around mid-April. This trend is cooling down. Here’s the relevant chart from Google Trends.


    Google Trends: What is twitte

    This downtrend does not, however, seem to affect the actual traffic of twitter since the unique visitors keep increasing. Below is the chart from compete.com.

    Unique visitors of twitter.com

    Now, the big questions are: how many of the ones asking “what is twitter” actually registered on twitter and more importantly how many still tweet?

    Manolis Kounelakis manages the Social Media Marketing portfolio for Eyeflow.
    Interested to see how Social Media can help your business grow? Let us show you.

    Popularity: 24% [?]

    Social Media, Twitter

    Eyeflow’s Weekly Twitter Recap for 2009-05-04

    Posted by Chris Hornak On May - 4 - 2009

    Popularity: 15% [?]

    Twitter