If you aren’t already on the visual sharing site Pinterest, then consider this another reason (among many others) to sign up to the service. It has experienced the fastest growing site in terms of referral traffic than any other social media site. Its volume of traffic is so great that if you combined the referral traffic of LinkedIn, Youtube, Google+ and Reddit, it still wouldn’t beat the growth experienced by Pinterest.
The findings, compiled by content sharing company Shareaholic, looked at aggregated data from more than 200,000 different publishers, reaching a combined total of more than 260 million unique visitors every month.
Overall, Pinterest only commands 3.6% of all referral traffic since January, with its nearest rival being Youtube (1.05%). The greatest site for referral traffic is Facebook which commanded 26.4% of all referral traffic last month, more than four times greater than its nearest competitor StumbleUpon (5.07%).
Following those two sites is Google (incorporating services such as Google news, Google Images, Gmail etc.) with 3.62% and Twitter with 3.61%. Facebook is also notable as it was the second fastest growing referral site after Pinterest.
What’s more impressive about this is that the site isn’t officially opened as it’s invite only: you either have to put yourself on a waiting list or have one of your friends who’s already on the service to invite you. The idea behind Pinterest is for users to find and share items and images they find online. This is all organised into categories and different pinboards that’s meant to appeal or inspire users.
Every week we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there and sift through the thousands of articles to bring you 25 that you simply have to read. These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media.
You might not be able to get through them all in one sitting but the idea is that after a busy week where the real time streams can be out of control, we offer you a selection of curated news that you can read at your leisure. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee and start reading.
Every week we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there and sift through the thousands of articles to bring you 25 that you simply have to read. These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media.
You might not be able to get through them all in one sitting but the idea is that after a busy week where the real time streams can be out of control, we offer you a selection of curated news that you can read at your leisure. This week all the big stories from the week involving SOPA, Megaupload, Apple, Google, Pinterest and Facebook with some super stories from the industry.
It seems like social commerce reports are the new buses, you wait ages for one to appear before a number of them arrive at the same time. With more and more similar reports coming out about brand engagement and social commerce appearing with contrasting results, it’s becoming harder and harder to gain a clear picture of just how businesses are coping with social media.
Now another report from Social Media Marketing Software Site Wildfire has come to light, featuring an ROI survey with over 700 different marketers from across the globe. Their major findings was that 97 per cent of those surveyed believed that social media marketing benefited their business, with 75 per cent intending to increase their spending in this sector in 2012. It’s here that there’s a contradiction, businesses are adamant that social media is vital to their plans, yet a tiny fraction have active engagement with their audience as central to their plans. So who’s right and who’s wrong?
Presence Vs Interaction
First of all, it’s worth bearing in mind that in Wildfire’s report, 85 per cent cited engaging in dialogue as a benefit of social media. But what would happen if you asked the same businesses to define ‘dialogue’? Would they say it’s a conversation between them and customers, where an exchange of ideas and thoughts takes place, or would it be more a case of them posting or tweeting links and company news for their fans and followers to read and maybe like?
The answer would probably fall inbetween the two. We can safely assume that the vast majority of businesses are present on the main social media sites, but realistically, how many of them update it regularly, or post statuses that offer their followers more than company updates?
The answer would be much harder to define, but you could assume that a good number do approach the medium passively. We have to remember that while social media has been around for a while, it’s still a medium that businesses are adjusting to.
There’s too many variables within these reports to determine whether their engagement goes beyond simply appearing in their fans’ news feed (for example, how many posts and what type of posts are made? What percentage of these businesses are small enterprises? How does social media fit in with their advertising strategy? Do they have a dedicated social media or community manager to handle these accounts, etc.). Until somebody compiles a report highlighting how exactly marketers and companies engage with users, this will remain the case.
Still, the fact that companies recognise the value of fans on Facebook is encouraging to say the least, and their valuation of fans does suggest that they feel the benefits are there to be taken, but as Wildfire allude to, strategies need to be in place if a brand is to properly engage with and grow their fan base.
Are you curious about what the fastest growing Facebook pages are today? What brands, sports teams, politicians are gaining the most fans? Or maybe you’re interested to see what type of pages are popular with Facebook users?If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then you’ll be interested to hear that a new beta site called Socialmedia Live has gone online and is tracking the growth rate of over 38 million Facebook pages, two million of which can be viewed.
Each page comes with various statistics such as rate of growth within one hour, six hours or one day, absolute likes, percentage of fans who are male and female and noteworthy newcomers. The site updates its Facebook page data on 90,000 ‘World Leading Pages’ every ten minutes, fast growing pages are checked every twelve hours while the remaining pages are checked every five days.
While you can check categories and create comparisons via graphs, there is no search function so there is no way to find similar statistics about your own Facebook site or rival pages for example. While there are 36 million pages analysed, there doesn’t seem to be a way to access any pages outside the biggest ones, hampering the site’s usefulness. That said, the site is still in beta mode, meaning that there is potential for it to improve over time.
In the site’s FAQ section, the site states that SocialMedia Live can be employed and used as a monitoring tool by small and large businesses, which gives you an idea as to the direction its taking. It mightn’t be there yet but if you’re looking for an interesting snapshot of how Facebook pages are growing, then SocialMedia Live will provide you with enough relevant data to keep you occupied.
Every week we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there and sift through the thousands of articles to bring you 25 that you simply have to read. These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media.
You might not be able to get through them all in one sitting, but the idea is that after a busy week where the real time streams can be out of control, we offer you a selection of curated news that you can read at your leisure. This week Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Facebook are all represented with some super stories from the industry.
Google have been taking a fair amount of heat in the last couple of days since they launched their social search product with the blogosphere up in arms about their handling of the launch. Rather than using the publicly available data from Twitter and Facebook, they have instead decided to go with their own Google + data which is of course far more limited considering barely anybody uses the service.
In an unusual move Twitter (who Google used to have a deal with) weighed in with a statement and now the way Google have launched the product has attracted attention from the FTC over anti-trust issues. It’s a complicated topic that can be seen from a number of different angles so here are a selection of the best posts looking at the issue from the various angles.
The Must Read Content
If you haven’t been following this messy story, then this is a good recap over on Marketing Land about all the main points and some of the technical questions answered behind what this all means.
Google replied with a comment on Google + itself that attracted over 150 comments and some interesting insight. As you can imagine, the comments on Google + itself are all pretty positive in their favor.
Google Chairman and Ex CEO Eric Schmidt gives his take on it all and seems more than a little peeved by the questions
Techcrunch come at it from a different angle by saying that Google could have known exactly what it was doing all along and is trying to drag Facebook in to a storm ahead of their IPO.
The first couple of lines of this post sum it up perfectly… “In today’s business climate, it’s not normal for corporations to cooperate with each other when it comes to sharing core assets. In fact, it’s rather unusual.” The full post is well worth a read.
We’re only eleven days into the new year and already there has been a lot of activity among the major social media players. With Facebook, Twitter and Google+ vying for people’s attention, it’s become harder and harder for new sites to gain a foothold as they are automatically compared to the main players.
But with the numerous changes made to Facebook and Google+ to try and make their sites into a online hub for all your activity, it means that sites which focus on a particular quality will stand out far more. It’s a strategy that’s been adapted by big companies such as Microsoft (university students) and Warner Bros (family photos) as well as former social media giants MySpace (Music and celebrity).
These are just some examples of a massive field that will only continue to grow. Yet with users who have become more savvy with social media and smartphones, this could be the year where they will pick social media sites that reflect their personality and interests. The landscape is ever changing and such movement will be beneficial for both users and smaller developers for the following reasons:
The Rapid Growth of Mobile
The most obvious reason is that the explosive growth of smartphone owners means that there will be an increased focus on the mobile experience, developing accompanying apps for every site. The spontaneity associated with updating or posting something anywhere you go is addictive , and so more and more people are updating via smartphones or tablets. It’s come to the point that any self respecting social media site has a dedicated app for users to download and this year, the benefits of such a feature will become even more apparent.
The Major Players Are Fighting Among Themselves
This has been mostly limited to Facebook and Google+, but with the search changes made by Google yesterday, this fight has recently engulfed Twitter too. Both Facebook and Google+ have been making significant changes over the past few months not only to score points against the other, but to make their site a central hub where all web activity converges.
Consider Facebook’s recent additions to the site outside of Timeline: social reading, social music via Spotify and now actions. Because Facebook’s rapid growth is going to end one way or another, their strategy is shifting to giving users more reasons to make their page the first one you upload. And that doesn’t mean Google+ aren’t trying to do the same either – their addition of social search yesterday was perhaps their most blatant attempt to convince people to use the service yet.
Ultimately it means that people will become disillusioned with these changes and reactions that they will then look elsewhere for social media interaction, sites that focus on making the experience consistent and free flowing.
Diverse Choice; Tailored To Specific Interests
With more and more social media sites and apps appearing before us, we are truly spoilt for choice when it comes to range. There are apps and sites which focus on specific areas such as photography, food, tourism, art, and even emergencies. Through this, you’ll be able to interact with like-minded people who share the same interests, apparent since the site in question will appeal to a particular demographic.
One example would be Oink, a review site designed to help users discover new places to eat and drink. The app is simple, to the point and targets a specific demographic (food lovers). Because of this, it has gained popularity in the U.S., where the app is designed mainly for those living in urban areas, and continues to grow over there (however Europe isn’t as quick to pick up).
Easier To Establish A Core Audience
The most important factor for startups or companies dipping their toes into the market is whether there’s an audience for their site, and there’s no better way to establish a foothold than to focus on a niche interest. Referring back to the examples given at the start, there’s a greater chance of success if a site focuses on a particular niche and focus on a single strength instead of trying to shoot at many different targets at once.
While the audience size is determined by the niche you’re appealing to, once you’ve appealed to them, you’ve obtained a core audience who will be loyal to your service. Developing a community tends to be the hardest part for any social media outlet to achieve – just look at Google+ – and knowing your target audience goes a long way towards establishing a site or app.
One app that’s received a lot of coverage recently is Path, which is similar to Facebook but instead gives you a limit of 150 friends to connect with. This appealed to those who felt that Facebook lost its purpose when you could become friends with someone you had minimal or no contact with, meaning you could connect and share information with those who truly matter to you. The fact that it’s a well designed app also helps matters.
As most companies have now embraced the benefits of utilising social media sites in order to engage with consumers and clients, the challenge for many may be how to maintain and manage a constant interactive online presence. Smaller businesses have much to gain from an online presence, but the practicalities of regularly updating Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts may pose an issue, simply because of the time consuming nature of visiting each site individually and posting individual updates.
That’s where programs and applications come in, letting you simultaneously display and update all your social media accounts and make management easier. Here are ten apps, dashboards or platforms that aim to simplify the management of multiple social media accounts by displaying them all together and/or enabling simultaneous updating. While Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are the most recognisable names in this field, there are a variety of other options that provide similar and sometimes quite specialized services.
Tweetdeck
TweetDeck by Twitter is a free service which can be downloaded as a Chrome app, or to the computer desktop, or as an app for the iPhone and Android. You can add Facebook and Twitter accounts to Tweetdeck and arrange them in the order of your choice, displayed in an easy to read, manageable format. It also boasts filters and the ability to schedule Tweets, which many companies and individuals would find useful in order to make an impact on followers in different time zones.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite describes itself as “the leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks,” and has over two million users which include high profile names such as The White House, the Onion, Fox and Time. It operates a basic free package or you can get added features by paying for their ‘Pro’ option.
Hootsuite is targeted at brands rather than individuals, as the logos of high profile users that are on display on the homepage indicate, as well as features such as analytics, automated reports, a custom dashboard, team collaboration and its availability in a number of languages. Hootsuite also boasts its own well maintained blog, library and events pages.
Bottlenose
Bottlenose is a recently new player on the scene, founded in 2010 by Dominiek Ter Heide and Nova Spivack (the latter was involved in the DARPO CALO Project that developed Siri). This dashboard is currently in private beta, and therefore may not be a suitable option for everyone as immediate use is not an option. Although Bottlenose say on their site that if you sign up they will send an invite as soon as they can.
Bottlenose’s buzzwords are what they call “stream intelligence” and “social assistance”, but perhaps its most interesting feature is its interface Sonar, which is an exciting and engaging new way of presenting the various social streams and information. Bottlenose could be set to become Hootsuite’s and Tweetdeck’s biggest rival once it becomes widely available.
MarketMeSuite
MarketMeSuite is a social media dashboard targeted to marketing users, as the name suggests, and one of its advantages to businesses is that it is a free service. The site says that it “allows small businesses to manage and monitor their social media, as well as create new leads, build relationships with new and existing customers.”
MarketMeSuite describes itself as “an ethical marketing app”, and it also features location targeting, and cloud technology, with tweet scheduling available via Android, iPhone and Blackberry by way of Google Calendar. It presents itself as being accessible and easy to use, as the video below demonstrates.
SocialMention
Social Mention is different from the sites above in that it is a search and analysis platform instead of a dashboard. Although it does not gather all your accounts in one place, it is still a useful tool in that you can search for any topic immediately; when you arrive at the homepage you are presented with a search bar and can search a topic or your business name under a number of catagories such as blogs, microblogs, networks, videos and news, without the need to download anything.
Feedback is provided with the search results in percentages under four informative headings ‘strength,’ ‘sentiment,’ ‘reach’ and ‘passion,’ which are useful to help assess your business’s online presence in a number of ways. Social Mention can also provide API and daily social media alerts.
Seesmic
Seesmic is available for desktop, web, Android, iPhone and Windows Phone, can be downloaded immediately and is free to sign up to. It seems to be a good option for Windows Phone users, as Seesmic’s latest blog update details the update of the app specifically for the Windows Mango phone.
The information offered on the site about the product itself is basic, it does not offer specific details about how it operates or how it presents your social profiles like some of the other apps and dashboards do, the ‘about’ section consists of just three sentences, which makes Seesmic stand out from other information-heavy home pages of other apps with its simple, direct approach, but a quick look through the Seesmic blog will provide the potential user with more information on its functions.
Digsby
Digbsy is a desktop app whose tagline is ‘IM, Email and Social Networks in one easy to use application!’ With its cute widget and colourful site, the emphasis is placed on interaction with friends, so perhaps not the best choice for a business. Digsby was acquired by Tagged in April 2011, and the most recent addition to the Digsby blog was added in the same month, which was eight months ago, so it’s unclear what direction the the app is taking since its acquisition, although users are still active on its forum.
Yoono
Yoono does not specifically target business users, instead like Digsby it promotes its abilities to enhance your interaction with online friends. It supports Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Twitter and Flickr among others but the interesting thing about the Yoono app is the variety of formats it is offered in. For example, its desktop app is suitable for Linux and USB keys in addition to the fairly standard Mac and Windows options.
It can also be downloaded for Firefox or Chrome, and as an iPhone app, which comes in two options, as a paid Yoono app or as Yoono Free, which features ads. Yoono advertises the fact that it has over five million downloads, and it recently added a beta version of a feature called Socialzine, which displays feeds and networks in a magazine style format.
Netvibes
Netvibes, on the other hand, is specifically aimed at business users, targeting agencies and enterprises, offering “Dashboard Intelligence for Professionals, Brands and Enterprises.” It’s been around since 2005 and maintains that it “pioneered the first personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web.”
Netvibes has a free basic service in addition to its paid premium options, which offers a wide variety of services, including analytics, curation, collaboration and sentiments. Netvibes has won numerous awards, and has high profile customers including The U.S. Department of Energy, L’Oreal and Lufthansa.
Ping.fm
Finally, at the opposite end of the spectrum to the feature heavy, business-geared Netvibes, Ping.fm is a simple service for just simultaneously updating social networks.
Ping.fm launched in 2008 and was acquired by Seesmic in January 2010, and remains an easy option for those looking to simply update their social networks, without features such as dashboards and analytics. It is free to download and supports the major social networks as well as networks such as WordPress, Photobucket, and Tumblr.
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If you aren’t already on the visual sharing site Pinterest, then consider this another reason (among many others) to sign up to the service. It has experienced the fastest growing site in terms of referral traffic than any other social media site. Its volume of traffic is so great that if you combined the referral traffic of LinkedIn, Youtube, Google+ and Reddit, it still wouldn’t beat the growth experienced by Pinterest.
