OK, this snapshot was taken just around the time of the Google+ launch so one would suggest the changes in landscape may continue to change yet further however I was fascinated by a recent chart I came across from Vincenzo Cosenz whilst doing some European Social Media research.

Despite the recent slowdown in Facebook’s growth in more mature markets, Facebook still continues to grow rapidly around the world, recent figures would suggest an audience of around 750m users. The increased penetration of Facebook is very well represented as it continues to make significant inroads into a rapidly expanding European social marketplace.

Social Media penetration in Europe

Social media usage by age

Source: Comscore

Social Network overview

Source: Vicenzo Cosenz

The Future
Social certainly is on the up, theres no doubting that – and increasingly we are starting to see advertiser budgets shift from their traditional safe havens into social media. This isn’t always filled with success stories – Pepsi being a fantastic example of this in action where they have now moved down to third in terms of sales having allocated a significant proportion of the advertising spend to social media.

Its still early days though, and as advertisers we are still learning. One things for sure, like digital, social are here to stay.

There was an interesting infographic that came out last week relating to the growth rate of Google+. Despite the fact it hasn’t even been live for a month yet, user figures put uptake of Google+ at around 18 Million users and rising. Startling figures particularly when one

Whilst overall these user figures pail into insignificance in comparison to Facebook who have upwards of 750 million users, it is still a hugely interesting fact. Google has achieved what Facebook and Twitter managed in around 1/50th of the time. Further to that we have to bring into the equation some major caveats

• This is just the first phase of the Google+ Project. We know there is more to come
• Social is at the heart of many of Google’s new products. If we take a look at the new changes to the Google Places pages, and the prominence of both UGC and in particular the fact they have stated there will be greater integration of social
• The wider Google Product set. I would suggest once people have a reason to use Google there is a plethora of tools out there for them to use and make Google a more significant part of their communications toolkit
• Closer integration with Google Docs. To me this is another of those tolls that with greater collaboration with + could be a real big usage piece for business users.

Hypergrowth often comes with disadvantages, however lets face it – Google have been here before – and two failed social attempts to boot. Google+ in many ways is not a new product but the result of a number of trials and testing. When one looks at the wider picture as well – its obvious Google have a very clear strategy as to where they are going and how they are getting there. I would have to suggest here that neither Twitter nor Facebook would appear to have that same luxury.

Now we have a talk from Jonathan Allen (@jc1000000) about how Search Engine Watch time the distribution of their tweets.

Jonathan admitted that he didn’t like Twitter to begin with he used the analogy “Twitter feels like a party with everyone hanging around in their own groups”. The point he was making was that when he first signed up that there where all these hashtags, followers and RTs going round and found it difficult to engage.

So he researched a number of tools to help tweet and interact not just for himself but for SEWatch. Below are some pointers he learned from using them and how you can apply them to yourself

• Use CoTweet to submit to multiple accounts. This has some cons such as if users follow your multiple accounts then they will get bombarded with the same tweet 3 or 4 times maybe more.
• Use Google analytics to schedule tweets. Look at the times when user visits your site and schedule your tweets accordingly.  Also on scheduling, try to schedule your updates to hit different time zones
• Try to get listed on Topsy or Tweetmeme, this allows you to acquire links to your any of the URLs you tweet.

To shine numbers on their activity Jonathan, showed with good timing you can generate a lot visitors in short period of time. The example he used was when Google changed their doodle to commemorate JFK they received around 4,700 visitors the same was also done for Rosa Parks which received around 26,500 just from timing the distribution of tweets effectively and efficiently.

Twitter Automation – Fantomaster tips

Here are some of the tips from Fantomaster when it comes to automating your Twitter account.

• Surprisingly don’t automate adding contacts, it will just mean you will end up with a lot followers that won’t find your content interesting or engaging.
• Be savvy, if you are going to automate try to be human about it. Use common sense
• Be interesting, offer content that will interest your followers – not surprisingly Youtube videos do very well
• People are not stupid, don’t try to deceive them!
• If you have a large number of followers make use of filters to keep track of various conversations, what’s being retweeted etc.
• Try not to post and peak times i.e. lunch time. It just means  that your competing with other tweets, try to stagger your delivery.
• Don’t automatically assume that everyone reads every single tweet you send out. If some has 5000 followers they are not going to see everything!
• If you are pushing the same link, try to vary the content of that tweet, try and use content spinning tools or if possible try to manually rewrite the same post several times.
• The power of Twitter is in the Retweet. Try not to make the tweets longer than 100 characters, this will allow for retweets. Also try to keep the title short, snappy and attention grabbing.

Some of the tools he recommended to aid with automation where SocialOomph and Pluggio

I’m going to try and provide a live update of the sessions that I attend through out the day.

First up is the Intro to Social Media with Lisa Myers. A great session covering the basics of social media, online pr as well as what tools you can use (free and paid) to monitor the campaign.

Some of the take aways from the talk are:

Before setting up your campaign

• Obey the rules – listen, engage, be honest and ultimately don’t be a d**k (not my words!)
• Use the 3 pillars of social – Viral, Online PR and Networking
• Be aware of your brand and how it is being spoken about, make a list of what you want to achieve from the campaign is it traffic generation? link generation? or conversions?
• Do the research, who are your target audience remember age, gender and location.

When you begin.

Before you begin blogging decide before hand what your main categories are going to be this gives you focus and means that you are not writing for about everything and anything. Decide who is going to blog, having someone who lives and breathes the brand helps and also decide who is going to look after it i.e. technical help, updates of plugins etc. Having this before hand can save you many headaches in the future as you know who is responsible for what.

• Use social media elements such as content marketing and link baiting
• Start by blogging, its a great way to hone your skills.
• Blogging gives you the opportunity to give your product/service a personable voice, it also helps you develop a positive online reputation and thirdly gives a great way to expand the content on your site.

If you are going to do Online PR make sure to give something back as Lisa mentioned that the best responses were when the online pr involved engagement i.e. competitions etc.

Lisa mentioned that if you are going to engage in Online PR she had 3 points that she follows everytime.

• Do your research, Lisa said that it is better to be highly targeted than the throw mud against the wall approach and see what sticks.
• Hunt down the most appropriate contact, this can make the difference between you getting you featured or not
• Tone of voice, customise any letter or response to your contact. Don’t just send a generic email saying “can you post this”
• Relationship, build a relationship with your contacts, this can make getting future content hosted easier!

One last note  don’t just sit and wait to be discovered, engage, engage, engage!

Lisa also ran through a number of tools for the full list and the full presentation you can find it here Lisa Myers Social Media Presentation

I always watch with interest the adverts which increasingly use the ‘search for’ options within the above the line advertising activity, particularly television. This is something we increasingly see the larger brands utilising, sending offline consumers of their advertising online – and then tracking them back via online analytics (or uplift there of at least)

Today I noticed one for new movie ‘I am number four’ – coming out this spring here in the UK, which encourages users to go google number four:

The net result is as follows and may suggest a Health and Beauty Salon in Cornwall may be getting a boatload of unexpected traffic:

I can’t help thinking the whole campaign however has been woefully implemented given the potential real estate on offer both from Google and secondary sources. One only has to look at the first result to suggest driving traffic to this result may not have been the best idea – with the first organic result a imdb result suggesting the site was a 2/5 film.

This is representative of a number of the campaigns out there which have tried to integrate the two channels. Tactical use of PPC in such cases is obviously essential however more and more of these campaigns should integrate the considerations of organic search into these campaigns. For example,dropping users into a google search for ‘I am number four’ see a much better overview and one that may actually provide people a better source into the website itself.

Further to that, some foresight in terms of planning may have provided them with some capacity to actually optimise their site for the term ‘number four’ or ‘ I am number four’ instead of leaving organic search as an after thought and relying solely on the Facebook PPC ad at the top – which in my opinion doesn’t really offer much.

So where did they go wrong

1) Don’t rely solely on paid search. In many of these instances particularly with movies organic search is going to offer significantly greater returns for two reasons – one it gets more clicks naturally – and two its possible to integrate the blended search results in – which again is likely to draw traffic to the organic search results.
2) Plan in advance. This in my opinion smacks of an after thought. Integrate such planning months in advance so that all your ducks stand a chance of being in order.
3) Pick a particular niche term – This will allow a greater transparancy in being able to track effectively the incremental uplift in traffic as a result of the above the line activity.
4) Don’t leave things to chance – The likelihood is that your campaign will significantly under perform.
5) Track track track – Get your baseline identified early – and understand the trend. This will allow you to better spot the opportunities as they present themselves.

This is still early days for many of these ‘integrated’ campaigns, however again it seems extremely underwhelming much like many of their predecessors. Perhaps it is due to the lack of case studies maybe,or it may simply be down to segmented marketing activity. However the net effect is this campaign could have been so much more powerful if they had incorporated consideration for both SEO and PPC and integrated subsequently with the social and above the line activity.

The feedback on the first couple of sessions of the Q&A has been very good, for our experts thoughts on the future for both Google and the more widespread industry as a whole. Social has very much been a massive talking point both during our initial questioning and for the best part of 2010 – whether it be the suggested integration of social signals into the algorithm or the integration of social networks themselves into the search engine results (ie Facebook/Bing – Google/Twitter)

Our next question was thus:

Do you think Social media’s influence on SEO will continue to increase or fade away?

David Harry

Hey man, didn’t I just answer this one? lol. Unfortunately in SEO circles it will continue to grow because people dream of being SMMs and sitting around on Twitter and FB all day lol. Does that make it right? Not really. I don’t think SEOs have really grasped how social really affects search, at least in terms of it’s true value to SEOs. Google has stated a distinct interest in mixing the social web and PageRank, not to mention a long standing interest in personalization. This seems to be where things will be headed. It’s not going away, I am just uncertain if SEOs will grasp how this can be truly leveraged.

Ben Bisco

I can’t see it going away. It seems like such a logical step

Paul Reilly:

While I think I know what you’re getting at here.. I think it’s important to remember that social platforms are simply new communication mechanisms. Like e-mail, telephone, even the printing press. All as equally game changing in their time, but fundamentally an evolution in communication. Social communication tools are simply the next step, engineered for viral distribution and massively enhance the potential velocity and reach of information.

From a link based “Google” SEO perspective, any information that travels faster and reaches more people and is sufficiently citation worthy, will also gather more links and rank in traditional search engines for this reason I see no need for a Search Engine to fold social into it’s core ranking algorithm.

It just reinforces the need to great content, great strategy and makes the whole game harder to spam – which is good for everyone.

Bas van den Beld

It will increase in 2011 and then the integration starts. But not with Social “Media” but with Social in general. People are already slowly recognizing the fact that they are also using Social Elements offline and that they need to integrate social, search and offline. That realisation will continue, but unfortunately only in small steps..

Nichola Stott

Increase significantly. Pre Google, Pages’ link analysis algorithm was seen as genius, as this component looked to the volume and quality of reference (in the form of link) from sites to other sites. In the same way it is also valid for sites to reference and be referenced by social mechanisms and the existence of related social entities. How can an SEO not pay attention to social media? It would be like saying “we don’t do that link-building thing” shortly followed by “we can get you number one on AltaVista”.

Judith Lewis

Increase. I think you are able to do some extremely complex calculations based on social signals which can be used to help filter spam. Yes, I can also think up ways to automate things so you could beat the algorithm but the more I look over it, the more I see that that + search spam filters = awesomely clean results WITHOUT penalising affiliates for simply being an affiliate. That kind of stuff annoys the heck out of me because what is Go Compare but a rich and complex affiliate…?

Andy Beard

What influence? I still have tests on Buzz that show that a page otherwise not in the index posted on Buzz doesn’t get indexed, even with quite powerful links to the page on Buzz itself to ensure juice.

I haven’t seen any long-term benefit in increased search traffic directly from Twitter, though it might influence what ranks at a particular time that doesn’t mean there is some long-term authority generated.

Andy Redfern

The blurred lines between SEO and Social Media will be emphasised even more this year, particularly with new social elements additions being added to search engines. The big development for me is that Bing will look to make its Facebook investment work in 2011. Facebook listings will start to appear in more “interesting” places, while impressions and “like” data will be put to good use in its keyword ranking mechanism. Google already has a bias on most tweet stories but expect this to spread into prominent positions and on bigger keywords

Shaun Anderson

I think it will continue to increase in 2011. The mania around it will increase, that’s for sure. i think the way social media is abused at the moment might make it difficult to adopt as a KEY ranking factor in any search engine. i think Google still has the best search engine algorithms that result in stable rewards for a search marketer (when you are trying to get a visitor to buy something like a product). Google adding realtime results to SERPS is one thing, but using social media as a key part of ranking algorithms somehow different to what they do with links today? We’ll see….

Peter Young

One would suggest its perceived influence can only increase during the course of 2011. Sources such as Facebook and Twitter are mature products in their own right and I think the level of analysis technology and understanding is now such that the search engines can use their data with a degree of ‘certainty’. I have said before I doubt we will ever see Google completely use social factors in their algorithm as some people have said – however there is no doubting that it is being utilised and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Will Critchlow

Increase. I actually think the distinction between “social media” and “the rest of the internet” is more likely to fade away than social media have less of an impact than it currently does.

Other parts in the Experts View series:
Q1 : Do you think a viable competitor to Google will emerge in 2011?
Q2 : Where do you think the growth area in search will emerge in 2011?

Its getting towards that time of the year again when many of us starting thinking about next years calendar – and what/which conferences we may attend during the course of the year. We in the UK are fairly spoilt for choice. We in the UK are reasonably spoilt for choice with global brands such as SMX/SES, Affiliates conference A4U, the International Search Summit and some out of London fayre in terms of Think Visibility and Sascon.

If you think of any we may have missed out – let me know and we will add them in (and I’m sure people will as is the nature of these polls)

Today saw a great social media campaign break here in the Manchester area. For 24 hours the Mancheter Police are live tweeting the inboujnd enquiries and 999 calls for all to see. The brainchild of Gabba run by social media expert Paul Fabretti, it has certainly got a number of tongues wagging and whether people are discussing the state of crime in the Manchester area or the uniqueness of the campaign itself its definitely created a buzz.

call 1329 threats from unknown man in Salford #gmp24

October 14, 2010 2:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@gmp24_4

rs

call 1185 ladder lying on M56 #gmp24

October 14, 2010 1:08 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@gmp24_3

GMPolice

call 1471 male arrested for indecent exposure in Rochdale #gmp24

October 14, 2010 2:58 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@gmp24_2

GMPolice

call 1079 Woman reports her horse refuses to come back over bridge #gmp24

October 14, 2010 12:32 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@gmp24_3

GMPolice

The campaign is being run by two police staff who are responsible for tweeting these updates, both from our PR department, rather than front line police officers. The accounts used are as follows:

1. gmp24_1
2. gmp24_2
3. gmp24_3

The trial itself is interesting for a number of reasons:

• It is being run in what is traditional offline sector
• It is heavily utilising the Twitter social media network – one from personal experience  many public sector organisations traditionally shy away from social media.
• Users can obviously respond to the tweets to the police themselves

THere are however a number of areas I can’t help could have added some additional value

• Whilst call references are used, there is no way to easily differentiate this from other numerical data. It may have been interesting to hashtag (or similar) this data so that subsequent information retrieval could be undertaken – think #uksnow. This could have provide a valuable insight into the breakdown of what crime occurs across the Manchester area – and where.
• Locational references could have been done in a similar ay. This could then be referenced as above to provide an insight into where particular trouble spots occur.
• Not seen that much interaction between the accounts and respondants as ye

However its certainly a fascinating insight into the work of the police, and crime in Manchester in general – and to the geek in me a fascinating usage of social media as a genuinely useful broadcast mechanism. With so much money being used to communicate with the general public – is this a potential insight into potential future broadcast channels or a one off. I would hope something like this should be given time to mature, as first impressions would certainly appear very positive.

Interesting news coming out of the US tonight with Facebook announcing a eye-opening partership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Whilst we have got used to Google announcing a number of improvements during the course of the last 12 months – such as the recent Google Instant announcement – we haven’t heard alot from Bing until now…..

The Facebook relationship is interesting for a number of reasons

1. Google can’t quickly reproduce this
2. Facebook represents a far bigger potential audience set than Twitter – which is currently integrated into Google’s real time search results.
3. This would appear to be a reasonably sized step into the socially integrated search engine – something I guess we are expecting more from with Google.me.

Whilst many in the industry would suggest this is by no means a Google killer its a reasonable step in the right direction particular in the US where the Bing market share is far higher than here in the UK or in Europe. It should be added the integration of Facebook is mere usage of data rather than full scale integration of Facebook into Bing.

It should be noted that for any of this to work you need to integrate your Facebook account into Bing. Bing becomes the latest site to make use of Facebook Instant Personalisation, effectively this means if you’re logged into Facebook, when you arrive at Bing, you should see a message telling you that it is going to personalize your experience based on your Facebook profile. It should be noted that Bing works perfectly fine without Facebook, and both companies stress that using Facebook personalization is totally optional.

The results themselves appear prominently within the mainstream results highlighted below (This is where I am going to have to use reference to some of Danny Sullivan’s very good post over at Search Engine Land, as this would appear limited in rollout to US users at present – certainly I am logged into both Facebook and Bing and not seeing much apart from the traditional integration)

Source: Search Engine Land

Source: Search Engine Land

From the analysis done by Danny, results would appear to be based on the responses within your social network – however much of this is still open to debate.

Its interesting in itself that Facebook have decided to partner with Bing rather than Google – and even more so I would suggest are the quotes by Mark Zuckerberg himself:

“The thing that makes Microsoft a great partner for us is that they really are the underdog here, and because of that, they’re in a structural position where they’re incentivized to just go all-out and innovate,” said Zuckerberg, via webcast. “And when you’re an incumbent in an area, no matter how smart you are, there’s just always this tension between trying to innovate and push new things, and trying to preserve what you have. And we’ve never felt that with Microsoft.”

As we mentioned earlier, this is by no means a Google killer. It is however a big step in the right direction in my opinion and in Facebook I think Bing have the perfect partner, certainly given Google’s recent behaviour I can’t help going with them may have been a mistake. The Facebook data is not used to influence the search results (at present) and is merely at present used to enhance the results than influence them – they leave that to the other 1000 factors that influence Bing.

Where Google go from here – I think its wait and see time. Whether this has any impact on their plans for Google.me – again one will see. As I have said before though – more competition for Google is only a good thing….

Lisa starts by saying that the currency of the webs is no longer links but also takes into account social media. SEO has changed a lot in recent years including

• Incoing links are judged more strictly, big crackdown on paid links (personally don’t 100% agree with
• SEO’s have had to take into account social media channels into account
• Social media + SEO help spread the word – its not all about twitter / facebook they’re just TOOLS! its about grouped ideas

Before you start – understand – whos your target audience, what are their age, gender, location. Put yourself in their shoes – what problem are they trying to sound, how do they find what they want

Linkbaiting here comes into vogue. Create a piece of content that specifically increases chances of increasing organic links. Spread the word – no point doing it without doing this. The creative concept is fundamental for success here. Once you have this – find the linkerati – the people that are going to help you get the links. Be smart about finding them and remember they are not stupid. These people are usually

• Bloggers
• Tweet peeps -her words not mine
• Networkers

Host your content – don’t host it elsewhere , not via third party. Creating a link on an external domain obviously takes the link element out of it thus does not have an SEO benefit.

Integration is crucial – Make sure all components work together. Things have to be easy otherwise people won’t spread it. If its not easy people wont use it – something I think people often dont consider from a social perspective  -however they would do on aspects like conversion optimision.

Give something back – why should they link to you. Content? Discount? Breaking News? Free “something”.

I will try and get Lisa’s slide deck for later to talk through the examples – in particular I would draw your attention to the Yale Locks slides.

For the first time I have attended Dom Hodgson’s Think Visibility conference over in Leeds. Despite the fact I am one of the founders of Sascon over here in Manchester, I always like to get behind other North West ventures – and Dom’s conference is one of the better ones around.

Following a brief introduction from Dom – which introduced all of us to the conference. Mel Carson introduced us to Bing’s Learning and Earning with Social Media

He starts off by introducing some great examples of Social Media in action. Bartells Drug Store in particularly will be happy to hear that Mel did indeed keep his promise to start his next presentation with an example of good search and social media in action.

This leads him in to how Microsoft have approached the path to social media. According to Mel much of this started around five years ago, with the launch of blogs and forums back in 2006 – which allowd Microsoft to have a forum where

• They could have an official voice
• Calling Card
• Ask For Feedback
• Feature Requests – talks through the fact that its all about listening
• Signing up Beta Testing
• Help Advertisers – some people dont want help  they just want the tools to develop things themselves

Further to this Microsoft actively understood the requirement for advocacy. In particular the use of 3rd parties has been embraced by the use of sites such as Sphinn. Twitter as well has played an important part in this evolution (Mel here thanks David Naylor for gettig him into Twitter) – with Microsoft now running two accounts (was previously 3). They monitor these accounts in a daily basis as a tool to help support and promote the Microsoft product. Further to this other channels such as Facebook – also allow greater awareness of their toolset. The benefit for them is the accountability with Microsoft able to determine a number of tangible metrics to ai them.

Other channels Microsoft have utilised increasingly as part of their social media strategy include:

• Youtube
• Flickr
• Windows Live

All allow greater touch points to the community which people can use to communicate with Microsoft. Mel also continues to suggest traditional channels such as PR are a crucial part of the communications strategy – and one that appears to becoming increasingly integrated – something I personal believe is crucial – and so often underutilised by organisations

Whilst having all this content out this is important, understanding and reporting is just as important. IN particular discipline n report is crucial.  Looking at his slides their active use of Buzzmetrics allows them to listen and understand not just how much is being said but sentiment as well – as well as allowing them to respond to individual contacts themselves.

A showreel highlights the fact that events often allow them to attract new followers and visitors. Looking at the slides he is showing he highlights how a myriad of technologies allows them  to support and promote their content in a format that they want – and gives people a really good indication of what they want.

He finally highlights 7 value indicators:

• Measure growth and translate as reach
• Think how you’re lowering costs
• Information and Empowerment leads to increased spend
• Internal education leads to external evangelism
• “Earned Media” – Windows 7 Launch (221M Impressions)
• Think “Social Media Marketing” – Be disciplined
• Whats the return on in-action (what would the difference be if you didnt get into social media)

After months of planning, we are pleased to announce the launch of SASCon (Search, Analytics and Social Conference) 2010. The event is being held at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester – and will bring together some of the best digital marketing speakers in the UK including Jon Myers, Richard Gregory and Dixon Jones, but also bringing in some of Europes finest such as Fantomaster and Joost de Valk. More speakers are to be confirmed too.

The event is being organised by a number of industry prominent national and regional search marketeers including Ben McKay (MediaEdge), Richard Gregory (Latitude), Simon Wharton (PushOn), Nicky Wake (Dont Panic), Peter Cobley (iSpy Search) and Peter Young (MediaVest).

SAScon Event Details

Date: April 28th 2010

Venue: The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK

Early Bird Tickets: £225 + VAT (Available until the 1st March 2010)
Early Bird SEMPO / Manchester Digital Member Tickets: £195 + VAT

SAScon is going to be one of the UK’s finest search and social events for those agency and client side looking to excel in their field.

For further information or to book tickets please go to the SASCon website which can be found at www.sascon.co.uk.

If you would like to sponsor the event, please go to our sponsors page or contact Nicky Wake @ Don’t Panic on 01706 828855

To follow SASCon on Twitter go to twitter.com/sasconference

This was supposed to be the accompanying post to the post last year, but for a number of reasons (primarily work related) this never got done. This year the work is still there, but I promised myself I would get this done. From the start this isn’t going to include any of the obvious ones, ones, people have on the follow lists as a matter of course – these are ones I have got to know from Twitter, and ones I have learn’t bits (and in some cases a lot from) in that time.

Please note, these are not in any particular order, nor are they the obvious tweeters, who frequent most of the major conferences – however they are people who I have found to be either greatly personable and engaging or very knowledgeable in terms of their search marketing experience

David Harry
Company: Realiable SEO
WHO?: The man behind SEO Dojo aka The Gypsy
WHY: Someone I have learn’t a hell of a lot from during the course of 2009, and the first on my list of people you should be following without fail. If you aren’t following him, my advice would be to change that – NOW!
WHERE: http://twitter.com/thegypsy

Bas Van Den Beld
Company: Nettraject / State of Search
WHO?: Owner of Nettraject, Co-owner and Chief Editor of Search Cowboys and presenter at Webmaster Radio
WHY: If many people had been asked who Bas was 2 years back, many of us would not have been able to answer, however now Bas’s stock is high, very high – and a really nice bloke to boot. That and he has an acute awareness of what is going on in this crazy world we call search….
WHERE: http://twitter.com/basvandenbeld

Sebastian
Company: Smart IT Consulting
WHO?: Owner/Blogger at Sebastians Pamphlets
WHY: Great posts, great tweets – highly recommended follow
WHERE: http://twitter.com/SebastianX

Darren Slatten aka SEO Mofo
Company: –
WHO?: Worlds greatest SEO (OK thats open to debate)
WHY: Not for his highly entertaining tweets, nor for his highly commendable rationale in the recent SEOMoz nofollow debate but because he has the best SERP description of anyone I know

WHERE: http://twitter.com/seomofo

Bryan Eisenberg
Company: Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg & Associates
WHO?: aka The Grok
WHY: Saw him at SES 2008, and thought he was fantastic. Engaging, funny and highly intelligent – backed up by a hugely impressive CV.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/thegrok

Ann Smarty
Company: Search and Social
WHO?: Search Geek, Social Media addict and synonymous with Search and Social
WHY: A name I often associate with Search Engine Journal, Ann has compiled a significant number of posts on the SEJ blog – many which must be in the top 20 top 20 posts
WHERE: http://twitter.com/seosmarty

Susan Gray
Company: -
WHO?: Head of Search from Cape Town, South Africa
WHY: As if I was going to do a post like this and not include someone from my homeland? Seems to have a finger on the pulse, and doesn’t seem to ever be away from twitter (apart from 2 hours of deep tissue massage)
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/Sznq

Brent D. Payne
Company: Tribune
WHO?: SEO Director at the Tribune
WHY: Some of the issues Brent faces, most people only dream of (or have nightmares about).
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/BrentDPayne

Justin Parks
Company: Freelance
WHO?: Spanish based, Northern Ireland SEO
WHY: Supremely funny, but behind it a hugely capable search marketeer.
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/justinparks

Brett Pringle
Company: MediaVision
WHO?: Director of Search at MediaVision with Louis Venter
WHY: Another South African, but don’t let that hold you back – but well worth following.
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/brettpringle

About this time last year, I did a post on 10 search marketing people you should be following on Twitter, which was very well received. Twitter is now a year older – and significantly more popular – and I thought it would be an interesting post to revisit that initial post and include people I have got to know and respect during the course of 2009. I will also be doing an World one of this – something I meant to do last time but for some reason never got round to.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhammza/204690293/

This year I have tried not to go for the quite as obvious choices who often dominate these types of lists but instead focus on people who I have learnt from during the course of the year, or debated with during the past year

Joanna Butler
Company: Latitude Group
WHO?: SEO & online marketing consultant currently based in London, UK
WHY: Joanna has had an awesome 2009, including a number of well received speaking sessions including A4U in London.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/joannabutler

Richard Baxter
Company: SEO Gadget
WHO?: Ex European SEO Manager for Cheapflights
WHY: RIchard has not only contributed to a number of interesting discussions on Twitter, but also on his SEO Gadget blog and via a number of presentations including SMX 2009 in London
WHERE: http://twitter.com/richardbaxter

Rishi Lakhani
Company: -
WHO?: Ex-Search Marketing Strategies at Bourne Leisure
WHY: Rishi was unlucky not to be on my 2009 list, so I have made sure he has made the 2010 list. Hugely popular online, and a must follow for your Twitter account.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/rishil

Sarah Goodwin
Company: Bloom Media
WHO?: Digital Marketing Manager at Bloom Media and recent addition to SEO Chicks
WHY: Sarah is never short of something to say or to voice her opinion. Her recent addition to the SEO Chicks bloglist is testament to her increasing influence within the industry.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/Yoshimi_S

Malcolm Coles
Company: –
WHO?: Internet content consultant: an experienced editor who also advises on SEO
WHY: Malcolm has had a number of well received posts on his blog including a number of pieces on the use of SEO by 3am in particular. His Tweets are just as good, and well worth following.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/malcolmcoles

Lyndon Atcliff
Company: Cornwall SEO
WHO?: Social Media Buzz Marketing Expert
WHY: Controversial definitely, knowledgeable maybe (:) ), boring never.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/lyndoman

Jaamit Durrani
Company: Fresh Egg
WHO?: SEO Bod at Fresh Egg and Gooner (how unfortunate )
WHY: Always has something to say, and often quick of the mark when stories break. Certainly one to keep an eye on.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/jaamit

SharkSEO
Company: iCrossing
WHO?: SEO at iCrossing
WHY: David has had a great year both on his blog and on Twitter. His posts and response relating to Vince in particular were impressive and he has continued to go from strength to strength in 2009. Does a more impressive 2010 follow?
WHERE: http://twitter.com/sharkSEO

Ben McKay
Company: MediaEdge:CIA
WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaEdge:CIA
WHY: Increasing popularity online follows a busy year. Blogs at his blog “Just me and my”, regular guest posts including Search Engine Journal as well as helping run industry events such as Manchester SEO (with myself & Shane Jones – next one January 28th btw) and SasCon (Further details following soon)
WHERE: http://twitter.com/yetanotherben

Dom Hodgson
Company: HodgeTastic
WHO?: Conference Organiser, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Moaning Bastard and Huggable Bloke
WHY: Organiser of the increasingly popular Think Visibility conferences (next one March 13th 2010), Dom is hugely entertaining both via Twitter and via his blog
WHERE: http://twitter.com/thehodge

A lot has been made of augmented reality recently, with launches of enhanced street view maps highlighting the fact Google in particular are seriously looking at it as a serious part of their armoury.

So what is augmented reality, according to Wikipedia augmented reality could be described as:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, like for example sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time.

Current augmented reality however does seem a lot more advance than earlier incarnations of previous modelling platforms and technologies, one that springs to mind is VRML -and the commercial opportunities that this brings appear to be quite significant. Even more encouraging is the number of good commercial examples already being used:

Even more encouraging is the apparent portability of augmented reality as technology within mobile devices increases. Mashable recently posted the top 6 augmented reality apps – which I would highly recommend a read of and a play with should you have the applicable hardware which include the following example for ‘local tube stations’ for London

Theres no doubt its early days yet, however the examples above highlight the huge potential available particularly for search marketeers, if one considers both product and local search targeting. Its not there yet, but its certainly one to watch.

Update: David Lindop from BurndownEasy just highlighted this great use of Augmented Reality as well

Social Media is hot, very hot and has been for a while. Many organisations are engaged with it, via a variety of sources whether that be Twitter, Facebook, Bebo or merely blogger relations – both large and small organisations alike. There have been some great successes in that time – in particular the following examples spring to mind.

Compare the Meerkat
One of the best examples of a completely integrated campaign, encompassing offline, online and social media facets and one of the most successful campaigns of the last 12 months.

Evian Babies
Over 10 Million views is testament to the viral nature of this video for something as unexciting as water.

T-Mobile
As much as I personally hate this advert – I can’t deny what a good integrated campaign this was, well planned well implemented and well seeded online. Not only that but it combines mobile, offline and online together in one campaign – and a huge dose of social media

Will it Blend
One of my favourites – and a hugely successful one at that. Watch and enjoy

This has subsequently meant demand for social media specialists has increased significantly, however much like their search marketing counterparts – good social media experts are hard to come by  - although there are obviously some about (in particular the likes of Ciaran Norris and Paul Fabretti spring to mind) – however there are some jey things to bear in mind before embarking within the social media space

1) Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
For every meerkat, t-mobile dance or Evian Baby there is a 1000 other commercial campaigns that fell flat on their face. Examples such Zuzzid (the social network (owned by Norwich Union/Aviva) where people were encouraged to talk about insurance) highlight the potential obstacles advertisers face when engaging online.  Just because you can engage on Facebook – and company x has 100000 fans doesn’t mean that this is going to work for you

2) Research and understand your target audience

One can only communicate effectively if you understand your audience. Carefully monitor your brand territory, understand your customers and detractors – and above all understand where they converse. By doing so you stand a far better chance of your social media campaign working than merely jumping in feet first.

3) This is not a new chapter, its a whole new book

Digital has changed things. Tactics and rules of engagement has changed significantly and more importantly customer response has to. No longer do consumers merely take what is thrown at them, the modern consumer is free to choose – who, what and when he consumes.

This should always be central to your social media campaign, push too hard and you will fail. Effective communication is key to social media – and that is not a one way thing.

4) Understand this is an evolutionary process

There is no one who can claim to know everything about social media. Not only is it a new channel, it is one that is continually evolving. As such what is here today, may be gone tomorrow. Social media advertisers need to be fluid and be able to change with the times

5) Test, Learn and Refine

Very few people get it right most of the time, and nobody gets it right all of the time  but the best people take what they do and make sure they learn from it – whether that be good or bad.

Social media should be fun, it is a vibrant channel and one that should provide some fantastic campaigns over the coming years

THere are some interesting stats being published from Neilsen online as regards the audience figures for Twitter. It has often been assumed that Twitter is a younger persons tool (by younger persons I am talking >30 however recent research would suggest a far more skewed profile.

The Neilsen Online research published today in the NMA suggests that the number of 50-64 year olds using Twitter actually outstrips that of its younger audience by 2:1, suggesting a more mature audience profile of Twitter users particularly compared against that of other social media platforms such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook.

The breakdown of audience profile was as follows:

• 18 – 24 year olds: 11%
• 25 – 34 year olds: 22%
• 35 – 49 year olds: 33%
• 50 – 64 year olds: 22%
• Other                       : 12%

The share of the biggest audience segment, that of the35-49 year old audience – was down 5% on last years figures. Given the potential number of competitors within the younger audience sectors, one probably shouldn’t be suprised at the lack of traction within the 18-24 audience segment however it is still suprising given the uptake in other areas.

Whether this breakdown continues is open to debate, however by its very nature I would suggest Twitter is likely to continue to be skewed in favour of the older profiles for the short to medium term.

One of my colleagues Paul Maddock here at MediaVest noticed a rather strange occurance on Google when typing in the term

twitter is

You will notice from the screenshot below that perhaps some people arent as bigger fans of Twitter as me

Every now and then you come across a parked domain page that makes you stop and chuckle, and today is just one of those days – thanks to my colleague at MediaVest , David Lindop.

Fancy a new job????

A case of someone having a laugh – or freak occurance? You decide….

In one of the bravest social media campaigns in recent times, Skittles turned over the shop space to the general public. Not their real shop space but their virtual one – and integrated their homepage with Twitter. This sent the blogospere and microblogging sites alight with buzz regarding the campaign, not least Twitter. However, the page has now been taken down to be replaced by their Facebook page

Skittles Social Media homepage

The initial response was overwhelming and I would suggest well beyond what Skittles would probably have been expecting, however this turned sour on Tuesday, as a number of ‘Twitter vandals’ started tweeting profanities which ended up on the Skittles homepage. Whether or not this type of activity should have been foreseen by Skittles is another question, however it is unlikely we would have seen the same level of buzz had this been deeper embedded within the site. The whole campaign was based on impact and impact was certainly what it got, however by trusting consumers with content, in a medium where they could not control the conversation – they lost control of the conversation and tone of conversation on a very public forum.

Given the well established nature of the brand, I personally believe it was slightly naive of the brand to undertake such a brave step, however well intentioned it was. That aside, for around 24-36 hours I would suggest Skittles would have been extremely happy, however it was always (imo) a risky manoeuvre – and it proved as such.

For that reason, I would suggest the following lessons should be taken from the campaign:

1. Undertake due diligence before you undertake the campaign. Make sure you understand the full implications of the campaign, including both pros and more importantly cons.
2. Choose your medium carefully. Twitter is the current flavour of the month, but it is an unmoderated forum and as such is not without considerable risk. Other channels such as Facebook or blogs, could provide a far more manageable forum in which to have such a discussion, which could be seeded by channels such as Twitter.
3. Ensure your monitoring tools are in place, you need to know what is happening quickly and effectively. There are a number of online monitoring tools out there including Radian6, Sentiment Metrics,  Market Sentinel,  Trackur, even Google Alerts will suffice.

Despite the fact it has ended slightly unceramouniasly, I can only applaud Skittles on the campaign to a certain extent. If nothing else it has given the rest of us a fantastic case study on social media and the power of word of mouth.

I did  a post a while back on 10 UK Search Marketers you should be following, and given its been over a month since that post was written, I thought it would be interesting to see the effects of new followers in terms of some of those people included within the piece (as a follow up I guess to Dixon Jones (@receptional – and highly worth following for those that aren’t) piece – A Blog Link is worth 5X a Comment Link.

Using TwitterCounter, I have revisisted some of those profiled to see what impact it had, firstly Jon Myers – and one not originally included – but who followed up on the post very well (Dixon mentioned above). I would explain at this point, that Photoshop and me do not get on very well together and thus the lack of arrows on this is due to that – however I would draw your attention to the 6th January and the following are apparent

• Significant spike in followers round the date of the post and subsequent days
• Spike followed by plateaux. This was the case in nearly all profiles – PatrickAltofts excluded – which just seems to have a constant spike on it.
• Strangely – despite being heavily involved in the initial ‘promotion’ (Kevin Gibson @SEOptimise sphunn the post – and was one of the first to read), followers to @KevGibbo seems to take longer than those of other ‘participants’
• Higher follower increases seem to have been experienced to those at the top of the post, reducing for those at the bottom (similar profile I would suggest to SERP behaviour). This was one of the points highlighted in Dixons earlier post.

Increases in followers - @JonMyers and @receptional

Patrick Altoft (@patrickaltoft), Kevin Gibson (@KevGibbo) and Andrew Girdwood (@AndrewGirdwood) follower profile

Dave Naylor (@davenaylor), Ciaran Norris (@ciaranj) and Lisa Ditlefsen (@lisaditlefsen)

It should be noted there was one user, possibly most people wouldn’t have heard of – and it was interesting to see the effect of followers for him. Dan Alderson (@pinje) was added to see what sort of effect such a post would have (I will be honest – I in no way expected the response it got) – however it was interesting to see the knock on effects of the post on his follower profile below.

@pinje visitor profile

It would be interesting therefore to further explore this moving forward, certainly in terms of how this affects the increasing numbers of brands entering the Twitter arena, with the likes of Thomas Cook, Dell to name a few who are already in the Twitter domain.

In a year that has already seen significant growth for Twitter, things continue to go from strength to strength. Following on from making around $1 million during the Christmas break by alerting followers to sale items, Twitter has announced a range of Twitter-sclusive deals for its near 12000 following.

@Delloutlet on Twitter

As expected the announcement was made via Twitter as well as on via this Direct2Dell blog post:

Beginning today, Dell will offer deals from the Dell Outlet exclusive to Twitter in the U.S. With over 11,000 followers, our team wanted to show their thanks to the Twitter world through these new deals which will continue each week.

Its interesting to see the continuing evolvement of Twitter, it will be interesting to see how the continuing engagement with Twitter affects how other channels particularly email.  I single out email particularly because of the similarities – however the ‘invitation’ nature of twitter may mean take up of Twitter sales messages may be higher as a result, however at present I have seen very little evidence to support that.

However there are increasing numbers of intuitive and inventive tools and ‘plugins’ to Twitter, something which I feel is going to continue to see the potential monetization of Twitter move forward apace, particularly as I would suggest Twitter has four main benefits over other comparison channels:

• Users are warm prior to engagement. Primary readers are generally followers and thus highly receptive to any sales messages you may be distributing
• However responses may be read by secondary ‘followers’, and also be tertiary distribution points such as blog plugins and the like.
• Twitter is accountable (Yes I did say accountable). URL shorterners such as TinyURL allow you to pass tracking parameters which could be integrated back into your analytics.
• Twitter is permanent – well to a degree. Once posted the post cannot be deleted from the timeline by your recepients – unless they remove you – thus tone of voice and quantity are important (a bit like email)

Given the continuing uptake of Twitter by the mainstream public, perhaps the Dell example may be the first of many…

Link development remains one of the most important aspects of any search engine optimisation campaign. Whilst the mechanism of acquiring links may have changed over the last couple of years, the desire for good quality link certainly hasn’t. A few years ago, many search engine marketing experts could acquire links via various directories (paid and otherwise) and via various paid link networks such as TextLinkAds (and for some sectors the use of various link networks (no names mentioned of course )

These days Google is a lot more fussy about what it determines to provide value in terms of linkage. Many sites have seen a significant impact on performance as Google tweaks its algorithm accordingly. For that reason we have put together a list of link acquisition tactics, ranging from simple to implement to the more far out suggestions.

Get Creative with your link building

• Use badges. For example – If you are a retailer who has resellers who sell on line. Let them put an ‘authorised reseller’ badge on their website with a link back to your website.
• Provide something useful – For example – mortgage provide -> Mortgage Calculator, Debt Specialist – Outgoings overview. One of the best blog related examples is how much is my blog worth
• Develop a useful tool (and don’t forget to promote it) – SEO is full of such examples. Using for example Joost De Valk @ Yoast.com – developing wordpress tools or Dave Naylor’s multi-browser SEO Tool
• Offer awards – for example Lee Oddens BigList of search marketing blogs (PS Any chance of an add Lee )
• Hold a contest. One only has to look at the success of HP’s 31 days of the dragon campaign to see this in action. Not only did they see significant increases in sales, but a significant increase in linkage as well for both them – and the people involved
• Acknowldege good work by others. Our recent post on ‘10 UK search marketing people you should be following on Twitter‘ has not only enjoyed significant buzz, but also generated a nice amount of inbound linkage
• Promote Local relevant activities. Local Conferences, charities etc could be great ways of doing this.

Don’t forget the basics of search engine marketing

• Submit to Quality directories only. Paul Teitelman over at SearchEnginePeople has compiled a great list of good directories
  
• Submit your blog posts to search engine friendly social media
• Swap links with partners, suppliers and related business. This can have secondary benefits in terms of credibility and the like -  For example – http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/clubcard/partners/?page=EONEnergy
• Distribute your offline press releases online. Services such as Marketwire and PRNewswire will allow you to target both national and regional news sources, as well as online news sources including Associated Press.
• Distribute articles to article sites. Not everything is newsworthy so a range of different sources is always good
• Engage with blogs. I use again the example of the HP ’31 days of the dragon’ campaign which used 31 prominent blogs to promote their products. Perhaps send a product sample of your product to key blogs – ie if you are a chocolate blog – you may send a product sample to various food or chocolate blogs to see what they think.
• Trade articles with other webmasters. Donna Fontenot aka Dazzlin Donna recently did a great article on ‘How to create No-Fail Hot Content’
• Search for sites with dofollow ‘trackbacks’ and link to some of their blog posts. Google for example is great for this – and a great source of subsequent traffic.
• Study competitors banklinks via Yahoo Site Explorer, and request backlinks from many of the same sources. Competitor Analysis can be a great source of links you may not have considered
• Include links in your RSS footers, so content scaped from your site contains links back to you.
• Don’t forget other blended search opps. Video and Images on sites can be a good source of traffic and potentially linkage. For example lets not forget the Cadbury’s Gorilla ads from last year.
• Don’t forget to submit your blog to RSS feed directories
• Linkbaiting can be a great way to get linkage – however it is not without risk
• If you have other sites – don’t forget to link to them. Don’t overdo this but it makes sense for customers not just search engines
• Work with affiliates, maybe even go as far as developing your own search engine friendly affiliate scheme.
• Don’t forget to offer secondary support, social media platforms that arent SEO friendly may still offer secondary promotional opps (ie Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc)

Thought Leadership

• Develop whitepapers
• Participate in survery and questionnaires. Good responses can often be included in any subsequent promotion
• Build definitive lists and resources for others (This being just one such example)
• Offer to do guest posts on other peoples blogs. For example I do guest posts for both Marketing Pilgrim and E-Consultancy
• Develop guides as to how something can be done – For example MoneySupermarkets top ten ways to cut insurance costs
• Release unique research results – For example iProspects study into ‘Offline channel behaviour on Online Search behaviour‘
• Be the first to news stories – For example the Blogstorm/Nokia/I-Spy comment spamming story that broke late in 2008
• Comment on the blogs of others in your industry, or those of related sites. Not all blog comment links are no follow
• Engage in speaking opportunities. For example – many of the sessions at SES/SMX are covered on various blogs and forums.
• Get yourself known by industry, national and regional media. This may result in ongoing coverage and a regular source of linkage. In the UK this may include NMA  and the like.
• Search keyword “add url”, keyword “add site”, and don’t forget to add your site to those sites

One thing is apparent when looking at the list above. SEO has become more closely aligned with traditional marketing practises than ever before. SEO is not about automated link acquisition, SEO is a social activity. Anything less is likely to result in reduced performance and ultimately a short lived campaign.

Think, be creative and ultimately enjoy your link building.

Other sources on this subject

8 ways to buy links without buying links
The Definitive List (75+) of Link Building Techniques in 2008
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website

As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things – he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer – and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm ). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer – DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie – http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts – Latitude – SEO – Stephen Pavlovich – Bonytoad – http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland – SEOMoz/Ayima – Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis – I-Level – Search Director at I-Level – http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen – Base One – Head of Search at BaseOne – http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin – Johnston Press – SEO Evangelist – http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh – Various – http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington – http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis – RedFly Marketing – http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson – Amaze PLC – http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

Much like 2008, 2009 is forecast to be another difficult year for businesses. In the UK, we have seen the demise of many established bricks and mortar retailers, household names such as MFI and Woolworths. It is no surprise therefore that advertisers are demanding that their advertising and marketing activities are as effective as possible, and this can only mean that agencies will have to ensure their campaigns are water tight.

It is also a time when advertisers will be looking at trimming wastage from their marketing budgets. We have already seen a number of traditional channels seeing significant falls in spend, areas such as radio in particular. Online is not immune from this, and there is evidence of significant reductions of paid search campaigns and display, affiliate and SEO budgets.

However despite these reductions we are still seeing increasing numbers of advertisers shifting budget allocation from traditional channels to online marketing. These are new and interesting waters for everyone. The last time, many people experienced a recession was in the last century, and many organisations such as Google, Yahoo et all were either in their infancy, or not even thought of. For this reason it is difficult for marketeers to draw directly on any previous experience, however that is not to say, previous experiences should not be discounted.

In particular, during previous recessions – there were examples of many organisations that decided the ‘bunker’ approach. That is – they decided to wait it out, until the recession ends cutting back on assets and investment – including marketing. This often results in an inability to react when market conditions improve – and thus a loss to faster, more nimble competitors. Recessions often see periods of real innovation, and we only have to look at the boom of e-commerce & as a result of search following the dot-com bubble bursting to see how a potential negative can become a positive very, very quickly.

With many downturns, two things often go hand in hand. Accountability on the one , and innovation on the other.  For this reason, I would suggest the winners from this recession are going to be those that innovate during this period – offering clients extra value for their money, and those that invest and provide quality service to their clients.

Accountability is not a difficult thing to cover. In times such as this clients want their money to work even harder. Channels which do not perform will either see reductions in budget, or alternatively the chop altogether. Display for example is seeing falls in budget as marketeers struggle to determine effectiveness.It is therefore imperative, the tools in place to measure effectively – thereby allowing you as the marketeer to make educated decisions based on fact rather than guesswork.  Simple Clickthroughs and traffic are not enough. Conversions and ROI are going to play (and are already playing) a more and more important part – and branding exercises are likely to become more and more scarce.

Spending through a recession may seem like a daft idea, however Dave Morgan of AOL makes an interesting point

“The financial pressure will be severe,” …”When you take out big chunks of money, it’s not just the spend that disappears but also the competition.”

This is likely to mean that two potential scenarios could develop. Areas where ROI cannot be easily determined are likely to see slowdowns in spend (if not reductions) – with channels which deliver on spend seeing increased spend – albeit this comparitively. Expert analysis would suggest channels such as Search (SEO and PPC) are likely to see stability in spend, with other areas such as social media still remaining high on many peoples agendas. Whilst social media has been a bit of a hit and miss channel for many marketeers, there are becoming an ever increasing number of success stories such as Comcast – who have seen successful campaigns on social media platforms such as Twitter, and I would expect the number of success stories to continue to increase in 2009.

Reductions in spend however are reflected in industry figures – E-Marketer have forecast an increase of 8.9% in 2009, from $23.6 billion to $25.7 billion – down from an initial forecast of 14% back in August 2008.  As an agency, we are going to have to work harder to make campaigns work – advertisers are going to be scrutinising all aspects of campaigns, and as a result, I would suggest we are going to see greater movement between agencies over the coming months. It is therefore essential that you get your house in order now – before it is too late.

This is the first post in the Digital Marketing and the Recession series.

Twitter has been one of the tools I have been most into during 2008, something which has given me the opportunity to interact with some people I have only had a fleeting chance to meet during speaking engagements, industry events or attendance of conferences. This has included the likes of Kevin Ryan, Dave Naylor and various people from agencies such as Latitude  and BigMouthmedia.

For people not familiar with Twitter, Twitter is a microblogging service which allows a maximum of 140 characters, something which allows for a service which in my opinion ends up midway between an instant messsenger and a blog.

Twitter

There are a number of reasons however I may choose or not choose to connect with someone on Twitter – for example:

• No Introduction – Always nice to know a little about you before I choose to follow (or not as the case may be)
• No link to website – If your description doesn’t suffice, then a link is always good, so I can find out more about you.
• What you say – Probably one of the more important factors here. There are an awful lot of people who have over 18000 comments. No offence you either have
  1) Too much time
  2) Write a lot of rubbish. I am one of those that would rather have 500 interesting posts than 18000 telling me that you are in Puerto Banus or the like
  3) Swearing and the like. On personal level I am not one of those that wants to read a load of cussing when looking at Twitter. That combined with 2 is a definite nono.
• Kan jy Engels praat – In english – do you speak English. Unless your Dutch or Afrikaans there is not a good chance of me understanding you so in practical terms there is little or no point me following you.
• Have you written anything. I often receive a number of ‘follows’ from people with no comments. What is the point of me following you – if you don’t say anything?
• Are you a brand – Not a keen follower of brands unless I really like you (@starbucks for example)
• Frequency of tweets – One tweet every four months is not that interesting – unless its worth waiting for (and lets face it 140 characters really is difficult to write something knockout in – although I will stop short of impossible)
• Self Promotion – Shameless self promotion is a definite turn-off. People don’t use twitter for pure business purposes (if you want that LinkedIn or Ecademy is great for you. I tend to find people like to get to know you more ‘personally’ rather than your corporate persona.
• Are you in an industry I am interested in. For obvious reasons, SEO, Paid Search and other online marketing professionals are always an easy win – although Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and MCHammer (Remember him) have somehow made their way onto the list

If you are on Twitter, feel free to drop us a line – twitter.com/peteyoung, if you aren’t give it a try (and forget about your social life – at least without Twitter)

Over the last year or so, there have been a number of posts declaring the so-called death of blogging citing reducing blog volumes, lack of uniqueness and a number of other metrics. I would however suggest, that it is not so much that blogging is dying, more that is has matured.

In particular it was the recent announcement by Hewlett Packard (HP) , highlighting an 85% increase in sales – as a result of a targeted campaign using blogs. In an environment were hyper sales increases are becoming less and less common – such figures are all the more suprising, and even more so – when it is considered that this has been mainly attributed to activity focussed primarily online.

The figures primarily centre around the HP Dragon, a range of laptops whose sales were mediocre to say the least, a laptop whose specs should not be frowned at – sporting a 20.1 inch screen, 500GB disk space, and weighing in at a mere 15 pounds.

Following a social media campaign, aptly named ‘31 days of the dragon‘, in which 31 prominent blogs (based on influence andpower (links, rank and recommednations)  were targeted and given the chance to offer 31 laptops as prizes in 31 days – effectively a months worth of competitions where the blogs made up their own competitions with their own rules – but agreed to promote the contests of everyone else in the group.

The result was that the first five pages of Google results for searches on HP and HP Dragon were blog posts about the contest. At the last count HP they had over 380,000 links to the 31 sites discussing the contest. Bloggers got over 25,000 contest entries and an average 150% increase in traffic.

The sites included were:

02 May – 09 May www.absolutevista.com
03 May – 10 May www.arstechnica.com
04 May – 11 May www.osnn.net
05 May – 12 May www.jkontherun.com
06 May – 13 May digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com
07 May – 14 May www.bostonpocketpc.com and www.techronical.com
08 May – 15 May www.the-gadgeteer.com
09 May – 16 May www.thedigitallifestyle.com
10 May – 17 May www.digitalhomethoughts.com
11 May – 18 May www.windows-now.com
12 May – 19 May www.windowsconnected.com
13 May – 20 May www.geekstogo.com
14 May – 21 May bink.nu
15 May – 22 May www.mediablab.com
16 May – 23 May www.last100.com
17 May – 24 May www.labnol.org
18 May – 25 May www.notebooks.com
19 May – 26 May www.slashdotreview.com
20 May – 27 May www.neowin.net
21 May – 28 May www.geek.com
22 May – 29 Mau www.lockergnome.com
23 May – 30 May www.planetx64.com
24 May – 31 May www.thegreenbutton.com
25 May – 01 Jun www.istartedsomething.com
26 May – 02 Jun www.bleepingcomputer.com
27 May – 03 Jun www.hardwaregeeks.com
28 May – 04 Jun www.geeknewscentral.com
29 May – 05 Jun www.geekzone.co.nz
30 May – 06 Jun www.thetabletpc.net
31 May – 07 Jun www.gearlive.com
01 Jun – 08 Jun www.gottabemobile.com

The Result: An almost 85% increase in sales of a computer that was released over nine months ago.

Startling, and even more impressive if you consider the ongoing benefits

• The amount of positive brand coverage relating to the brand is immense – with the knock on effect – that many of these sites have significant followings – and thus considerable influence
• The increase in natural buzz is significantly better, given both the nature of the sites targeted, and the natural syndication from there. Certainly stats such as those released above are all the more likely to increase the awareness of both the product and brand itself

Certainly a significant argument that blogs are not dead. In my opinion what we are starting to see is a maturity in the channel – don’t get me wrong – there is certainly room for manouvre and improvement. For those that remember some of the posts that were released following Jason Calacanis retirement announcement – and the insuing blogging is dead posts , I would suggest that the above data highlights the power and influence that blogs have and how they have matured, and that blogs are likely to be around for a while yet, because:

1. Many blogs are now established resources – one look at my – and many other peoples RSS readers will display a plethora of blogs amongst their regular online haunts. Many of these blogs have become media properties in their own right – and have built up followings and fanbases.
2. Blogs are evolving – new sites such as Twitter and Tumblr are providing innovative new ways of interacting with audiences
3. Social Media Hybrids – Sites such as Facebook allow you to interface your blog with your social media profile – thus creating a hybrid of technologies
4. Blogs are interactive – Many blogs don’t just contain content – they are  a mix of video, content and imagery.
5. Many businesses have not embraced blogging let alone social media

Certainly the opportunity gap is shortening – however from a commercial perspective I would suggest there is still room at the table…..

A post a little of our normal path, however social media is integrated with a number of search marketing channels. Richard Scoble speaks to Chris Putnam, the software engineer at Facebook in charge of video regarding the release of its new HD Video feature.

Worth a watch… (if not to hear about the way Chris himself got hired – perhaps even you were subject to his ‘cover letter’)