Facebook is hoping to raise $5 billion by selling shares this spring (some reports are saying $10 billion—not sure who’s right but $5 billion is cited more often). This is larger than Google’s 2004 IPO that raised $1.9 billion at a valuation of $23 billion. Speculation is that Facebook’s valuation could be as high as $75-100 billion.
Buyers got a look at the financials yesterday, which showed the company made $1 billion in profit last year. 85% of its $3.71 billion in revenue is from advertising.
Other big stats:
845 million members, and more than half (483 million) return to the site daily
Collectively, we have produced an average of 2.7 billion “Likes” and comments a day in the last 3 months of 2011 (Oct, Nov, Dec)
I suspect your company is not getting this much attention today so here’s a 1 Minute Marketing tip on increasing the visibility of your Facebook Page by linking it to your profile.
As a note, my wolf in sheep’s clothing metaphor is more to do with mistakenly trusting that your Facebook content is private, not in regards to the IPO or Facebook’s valuation.
In the post, we outline 5 common web design mistakes that kill search engine optimization and why teamwork among SEOs, web designers, marketers and developers is critical during a blog redesign process.
Here are 5 design mistakes to avoid:
1. High-traffic pages are removed or deleted
2. Top-level keyword terms are omitted from new copy
3. The new design does not leave enough room for copy
4. The beautiful design takes longer to load
5. CMS changes affect URLs
More specifically, according to a new report from the CMO Council (PDF) when respondents were asked about customer service online. One-third of respondents (33%) said they will post on a brand’s Facebook page when they need to communicate with the brand (while only 12% will tweet). When connecting with a brand online for customer service issues, 47% (nearly half) of respondents expect a response within 24 hours; 22% expect a response immediately, and 19% expect a response within an hour.
So what do you do when you have a customer service question on Facebook that you can’t answer?
Follow the 3Ts of online customer service:
1. Provide a timely response
2. Tell the truth
3. State a turnaround time
It’s ok to say “I don’t know but let me investigate and respond by the end of the day.” If you are diligent and still don’t have an answer then post again about your progress and ask to take it offline. Provide an email address and ask the customer to contact you there so you can more easily stay in touch.
Any response to a customer service question is better than no response.
The CMO Council study found that when asked what customers think it means to “like” a brand on Facebook 49% said they “like” a brand because they are already loyal customers.
Loyal customers expect brands to be listening. I believe that most people don’t expect brands to be listening 24/7 but that they do, as the study suggests, expect a timely response. A Facebook response time of 24 hours is good but ideally you’d provide a response within an hour, especially if it’s during business hours.
A timely, truthful response is better than a fake response.
Don’t say you’re going to investigate and then never report back. Don’t make up an answer when you really don’t know the answer. And certainly don’t tell a lie. Getting caught out in a lie or half truth is worse for brand management than offering a brief, true statement.
A timely, truthful response that offers a turnaround time is the best customer service response.
When you need to take your time to provide a quality response, buy some time by providing a brief initial response with a turnaround time for a full reply. Then stick to your turnaround time.
Speed of response should not be confused with quality or depth. Customer expectations are high when engaging with brands online so manage expectations by providing an initial response that is timely, truthful and offers a turnaround time for a response. Then do what you say you’re going to do, and follow up within that timeframe.
Being responsive to online customer service questions, complaints and feedback is essential to good social media marketing and keeping customers engaged with your brand. Do you have any stories or examples to share?
Google Search Results have changed significantly over the last 3 months, and if you haven’t been following along, here’s what you need to know.
Google has made a ton of changes to how search results are displayed. These are big changes.
Imagine that Google is your favourite grocery store and you know exactly how to navigate the aisles, that the deli is always labelled “Deli” and that the aisle end-cap promotions are the same whether you have a carry-basket or a cart. Then one day you walk in and all the aisles are rearranged according to what your friends like, the deli sign sometimes says “Deli” but other times says “Cold Cuts” or “Lunch Meat”, and the aisle contents vary depending on the mobility of your chosen device (carry basket or cart). This is the new Google Search.
Here’s a recap of 5 recent changes that affect Google search results.
Jan 12, 2012: Google implements “better” titles in search results
Google will now change the meta title displayed for your webpage in search results if it feels that it can improve the relevancy between the content of your webpage, the search query and the meta title in search results. There’s no report for when Google does this or what title they choose to use, but HTML Suggestions in Webmaster Tools will provide suggestions.
Recommendation: If you are using a meta title not specific to your page content, you are likely to see Google search results displaying a different title than your meta title to create more relevancy in search results.
In Google Analytics, set the advance segment to Non-Paid Search Traffic and use the Site Content > Page Title report to see what pages get the most visits from organic traffic. Add a secondary dimension to see Keywords. Is the keyword found in the page title? If not, you might want to revisit how your meta title is generated and talk to your SEO expert.
Jan 10, 2012: Google Search plus Your World launches
Users logged into Google see a different set of search results than those not logged in. In particular, those with a Google+ account see a big difference. The search results are specific to you and the things shared with you or amongst your Google+ circles.
Name searches auto complete with people and pages in your network so that People and Pages are easier to find within a few clicks (the assumption is that this is what you are seeking).
In some ways it reminds me of the bad paperclip that used to “help” me in Microsoft Word. For example, searching for “John Battelle SOPA” before he wrote his recent post only displayed his Twitter, Google+ and other social media accounts. I could not find a result for his blog. Here’s what SEOMoz to say (with examples).
Recommendation: Social sharing and a solid social media outreach plan have always been important. Now more than ever, socialization in addition to optimization is required to show up in results. Local search guru Andrew Shotland believes aggressive social sharing is the future for brands.
Dec 15, 2011: Googlebot-Mobile crawls webpages
Smartphones and tablets are on the rise. Googlebot-Mobile is a spider that crawls your website to see if it is optimized for mobile. The bot is looking specifically for mobile-optimized webpages. Mobile optimization does not mean “I think my site looks ok on the iPad and I can zoom in to see it on my phone.” Mobile optimization means do you have a mobile version of your website because Google search results on phones and tablets will skew towards websites that are mobile optimized, meaning your webpages might not show up in mobile search results.
Recommendation: Visit Google Analytics’ Audience > Mobile report. If more than 14% of your traffic is from mobile, you need a mobile optimization plan. Doing nothing is not an option—That’s like running a 7-11 and randomly closing 1 day a week. Check out the GoMo initiative, and if you run a big ecommerce site, definitely talk to our friends at Mobify.com.
Dec 14, 2011: Authorship introduced
Google search results now show annotations for authors. See below. This happens only if you verify ownership of the sites where you blog. Stats appear in Google Webmaster Tools under the Labs tab.
Recommendation: If you are going to blog seriously, you want to verify your authorship so your webpages stand out more in Google search results. The avatar is your Google+ icon so there is some linking that happens between your posts, your Google+ profile and what appears in Google search results via a snippet of code . Google Support offers some simple steps for verifying authorship here.
Nov 11, 2011: Mobile Advertising, Mobile PPC
Google launches the mobile site development portal mentioned above, HowToGoMo. The push for mobile optimization is not going to go away. Adwords, into January, is still adding new features to improve the granularity and targeting available to mobile search advertisers. And remember Google owns Android. They have a vested interest in mobile usage and sites optimized for mobile experiences.
Recommendation: If you are running Google Adwords, separate your Mobile campaigns from desktop campaigns as the landing page for mobile ads needs to be optimized for mobile otherwise visitors will have a poor experience and are likely to bounce at a higher rate, which affects your quality score, and ultimately what you have to pay per click in order to have your ads appear.
Those are just 5 recent changes to Google search results in the last 3 months. That’s a lot of change quickly, especially when it comes to mobile optimization and social search, and the pace of change is likely to continue.
Want insights into the grand plan for Google search? Watch this 6-minute video on the evolution of Google.
Search marketing, as part of the online marketing industry, is operating at lightning speed. If you don’t have someone on your team who is staying on top of it, you’re going to fall behind quickly.
Wordstream has a great infographic this morning on “What Industries Contributed to Google’s $37.9 Billion in 2011 Revenues?” If you’re running PPC campaigns on Google Adwords, then you might want to check this out because 96% of that $37.9 Billion came from advertising. Is your industry among the top 10 industries that spent the most on Google Ads in 2011? And, are you also bidding on the 5 commonly used keywords? If yes, check out the average cost per click—$1.20 to $43.39 depending on the industry and keyword phrase.
Play with the Google Zeitgeist to see mattered to use in 2011. The Zeitgeist sorts the billions of Google searches from last year into the 10 fastest-rising global queries and it lets you drill down by country and month. Seems like 13-year-old Canadian musician Rebecca Black was #1 fastest-rising search globally and in Canada. Take that Justin Bieber.
Clay Shirky stopped by the TED offices to chat about “Why SOPA is a bad idea.” 100% totally worth watching. Shirky offers a great explanation, with metaphors that help SOPA and PIPA make sense, and a quick history of how we got into this copyright infringement debate with rights holders anyway.
SOPA and PIPA Blackouts are planned across the web tomorrow in protest of the two acts before the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The web is going on strike as a protest to legislation that tampers with the participatory culture of the web for the sake of large corporate and government interests.
What is SOPA? What is PIPA?
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) aim to prevent online piracy of films and other forms of media by giving the US government and copyright holders the right to seek court orders against sites they believe infringe copyright or enable infringement.
Sites affected include search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, ecommerce sites like eBay, and participatory sites like Wikipedia and Reddit. Really, every site is affected but these are the big players opposing SOPA and PIPA. Other opponents include Reporters without Borders, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and tech-news sites like Boing Boing.
So what’s the big deal? Copyright infringement is wrong.
Copyright infringement seems to be at the heart of this legislation, but the real opposition is that the legislation introduces censorship and abuse by larger powers while not stopping piracy. People who want to pirate media will always find a way around censorship. In this particular case, downloaders will simply enter the IP address for the site vs the domain name. For example, http://198.171.79.36/ is the IP address for http://www.whois.net/.
The legislation does not stop piracy but if passed, gives the US government and rights holders the ability to get a site censored. On top of that, US-based internet service providers, payment processors and advertisers would be prohibited from doing business with alleged infringers. SOPA, in particular, could force search engines to remove infringing sites from their results.
Opponents to SOPA and PIPA say the legislation is destructive, unconstitutional, an extraordinary measure and that it endangers free speech and has an impact on users beyond the US.
1. Both bills would allow the blocking of entire websites, even though the site may contain a large percentage of perfectly legal speech.
2. Sites can be shut down whether or not they’ve done something wrong. Enabling or facilitating copyright infringement could be flagged due to a commenter linking to a site that uses a copyrighted image inappropriately. The site with the comment is liable to the full extent of the broad enforcement powers.
This is a big deal for social media sites and participatory sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, and any site with comments open.
3. SOPA doesn’t stop real pirates (not the cap and eye-patch kind but the real infringers) but it does mean that an ordinary user who posts copyrighted work could go to jail for five years. If you post on YouTube or Facebook a link to your cat dancing to a copyright song, that means you could face prison.
4. SOPA affects how domain names and registrations are handled, which may open security loopholes and give hackers easier access to websites.
5. It will cost $47 million tax dollars a year for a bandaid that doesn’t stick to the right injury.
At all points of transition in cultural and entertainment history, we see panic from the establishment and energy wasted seeking bans to protect the old ways. The first recorded music freaked out musicians. TV freaked the movie makers. The written word upset the orators. Go further back, electricity upset candlemakers. The printing press upset the scribes. It’s all so misguided.
Here’s a nice bit of content that infringes in the best way to explain SOPA.
“You don’t destroy the internet because it doesn’t fit your business model.”
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