Weekly Wrap #15
Websites strike back! A blackout of several major websites took center stage this week, but read on to see what else is keeping the Internet buzzing!
Weekly Wrapup #2
1. Twitter reaches 100 million active monthly users
Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, announced on Thursday that the platform is broadening its user base. According to Mr. Costolo, there are now 100 million worldwide active Twitter users monthly — up 82 percent since Jan. 1 — and half of them log in every day (with some 55 percent of them being mobile users). What constitutes “using”? Apparently 40 percent of them don’t tweet, or haven’t tweeted in the last month. He also noted that Twitter is on pace to add another 26 million active users in the next four months, equaling the total added in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. What are your thoughts on the micro-blogging platform’s future? Read the full article at Ad Age and tweet us @hmandp.
2. Brandology – what’s in the mix?
With the vast assortment of online media opportunities, a brand has the opportunity to pick and choose where it decides to operate. Among so many assets there are five different types of media according to Brian Solis and JESS3 – paid, owned, earned, promoted and shared. By combining these types of media each brand’s “Brandsphere” can allow the brand to drive online experiences, conversation, and create new opportunities for the company. Find out more at Pop-ology.
3. Duke Study reveals social media marketing spending is on the rise
Social media is proving its worth to marketers. In fact, according to a new Duke University survey, marketing exec’s are planning to increase spending in social media in their overall marketing strategies, from the current level of 7.1 percent of their overall marketing budget to 10.1 percent during the next year. They also expect to see this percentage increase to 17.5 percent in the next five years. Despite the data, many U.S. companies still have not integrated social media into their overall marketing strategies. I think it’s safe to say that social media is not just trend, it’s a tool and for many a necessity. Check out the Triangle Business Journal for details.
4. Public Relations proves valuable in pharmaceutical brand growth
While pharmaceutical marketers have long used public relations to support their brands, recent field research from Best Practices, LLC suggests few companies have utilized the full potential of PR campaigns across the entire product lifecycle – preparing, launching, growing and extending the commercial life – of a brand.
According to the study, the phases that showed the most effective and active use of PR tactics are the pre-launch, launch and brand-building years. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of all research participants assessed many PR tools – both new and traditional – to be effective during launch and brand-building years.
5. Google works to ensure clean SEO business practices prevail
In the past, it’s been difficult for honest companies to rank well against some businesses using questionable SEO tactics to move their pages to the top. But that’s all changing as Google works feverishly to ensure that users get the most relevant results, eliminating scandalous SEO practices and rewarding innovative and engaging online marketing. Since Google’s 2011 Panda update, “black hatters” are suffering the repercussions of years of questionable practices, and ethical marketers are seeing their sites moving into the places they deserve. There are still important technical SEO principles to keep in mind, but since Panda, transparency, authenticity and creativity are more important than they’ve ever been. Three cheers for the SEO good guys!
Image by – JESS3 & Brian Solis Brandsphere
How Companies Can Use Google +1 for Recommendations
Google just announced the +1 feature to bring social recommendations to search. The initial presentation of the button is that it gives people the ability to endorse search results, and share that with their networks. The problem with that idea is that people are unlikely to recommend a search result without clicking through to the page. But the real idea behind the +1 button is that it will be incorporated on web pages and blog posts across the web, and when people in your social network +1 things on the web, they will show up in your search results.
Continue reading on SocialMediaB2B.com
A PR Lesson Learned
We pride ourselves on trying to always do the right thing for our clients and for the agency. That means being smart, strategic and ethical. And, I am proud to say, we have nothing to be ashamed about.
With that said, it has been very interesting to read about how one of the largest and respected public relations agency’s in the world, Burson-Marsteller, made some very poor choices in an effort to meet its client’s goals and objectives of fighting Google. According to USA Today, Burson consultants “approached top-tier media companies and high-profile technologists, on behalf of an unnamed client, to seed largely unfounded allegations about privacy shortcomings in Google’s Social Circle service.”
But the word got out, and one blogger posted his email exchanges with Burson asking him to put his byline on an op-ed that the agency had ghost written.
And, most recently, Burson’s unnamed client was revealed — Facebook. Now spokespeople from Google, Facebook and Burson are in the news along with any one else connected to this PR effort gone bad.
There will be many discussions about this incident and what can be learned…as there should be. We will certainly talk about it here at our agency. What do you think?
Saving seconds with Google Instant
When it comes to Google, it seems good things really do come in threes.
A few weeks ago, Google gave Gmail users the ability to make calls from their e-mail, last week, Google launched the Gmail Priority Inbox, and this week Google enhances its search abilities with Google Instant. More »
I don't have e-mail, I have Gmail
Reflecting back on the past couple of days, I realized that 70 percent of my conversations this week at my internship, school and beyond have revolved around Google. Why?
Two days ago, Google launched Priority Inbox. This new feature is an algorithm that studies your e-mail habits to prioritize and categorize the way you view your messages. For example, Gmail Priority will track who you e-mail the most (and vice-versa) and mark their messages as first priority. It also divides your messages into categories, such as: starred, important and unread. More »
Tara's Top Three Tweets of the Month
As usual, I’ve been incredibly busy lately, and there have been a TON of great articles tweeted out that I’ve wanted to blog about. Since I’m short on time, I’ll just mention a few articles that are really, really informative and/or inspirational. And instead of sticking with just one topic like I’ve done in the past, this collection of links are quite diverse – from cool billboards to Google to typographic effects in portraits.
More »
One way to get a job in advertising
This guy took out google ads for 5 Creative Directors. And it worked.
Google Search Stories – Raleigh's Mad Men
Remember the popular “Parisian Love” Super Bowl commercial that had Googlephiles and sports fanatics alike oohing and aahing over a love story made possible via Google search?
YouTube and Google have teamed up to let anyone create their own online timeline via its Search Story tool. Enter up to six search queries, choose where you want to search (blogs, images, maps and more), pick a soundtrack and upload to YouTube. More »
Tweet Tweet…Shhh! Library voices!
The 140 characters of the little blue bird have found a nesting place among the stacks at the Library of Congress.
Fellow Tweeps, if you never thought you would get your 15 minutes of fame as a published author with enough clout to be among the greats in the card catalog, never fear! Thanks to Twitter’s collaboration with the Library of Congress every 140 character message you have posted over your Twitter lifetime will soon be on display for all to see.
There is a six-month lag in storage so you can’t look back to yesterday’s gossip, but the archive will prove useful to look back at significant moments such as the very first tweet ever posted and events such as coverage of the Haiti earthquake.
One other reason to check yourself before you Tweet – your great great grandkids can look back and find out when you had a “fail whale” of a day. You don’t want to be rolling over in your grave now do you?
Side note: Another neat tool released recently by Google is Google Replay. It lets you re-live real-time search results from a certain moment in time (right now only back to Feb. 2010, but it will soon go several years back).
