It’s finally here: after months of speculation following Mark Zuckerberg’s comments about the creation of a Dislike button, Facebook has unveiled an extension to the Like button that will allow users to express emotion when reacting to content.
Facebook is by and large a friendly place for brands.
Yes, consumers can and do voice their displeasure on the world’s largest social network, but when it comes to what can be done with the click of a mouse, consumers are limited to ubiquitous Like. But that all could be changing.
Yesterday, I had a rather heated debate with a fellow online marketer, on one of the most popular topics within SEO at the moment: Namely, the impact of Google+ (and its +1s) on search rankings – or lack of, to be more precise.
Let me start this post with a couple of caveats. First up, whilst I’m very much on record as not being a fan of Google+ (I *may* have called it ‘The King’s New Clothes of Social Networking’ a few times) my opinion about the topic in question is entirely unrelated to this.
I may not be a fan, but I certainly recognise the impressive offering Google have developed in the fight against Facebook. I have a Google Plus profile, I encourage our clients to use it too and I pop on there at least once a week to see what’s what.
Facebook announced the latest in its never-ending series of updates last night, with some significant changes to competition and promotion rules.
While these announcements are ten-a-penny, this latest tweak could have a fundamental effect on the way many pages are run.
It’s time again to share the best digital marketing infographic we’ve seen this week, which this time comes from Dan Zarrella.
The graphic uses data from blogs, Twitter and Facebook to look at which calls-to-action encourage the most shares.
It shows that by asking for retweets marketers can increase the amount of social interactions by up to 120% on Twitter, while including the word ‘like’ in a Facebook post can increase rngagement by around 0.4%.
Online electrical retailer Appliances Online (now rebranded as AO) has seen impressive growth on its Facebook page, recently hitting the milestone of 1m likes.
According to AO, it is also making Facebook sell, something not all retailers have managed to do.
It has seen a 60% in branded search traffic, which has led to a 58% uplift in sales driven by brand terms.
To find out the secrets behind this growth, I’ve been asking AO Social Media Manager Yossi Erdman…
Last week, Facebook made what could prove to be one of its most important announcements ever.
After years of discussion, speculation and debate, the world’s largest social network is finally executing on a search strategy, and while it doesn’t look like a threat to Google, at least initially, Facebook’s Graph Search is no less interesting.
Brands are increasingly paying for ‘Likes’, followers and reviews, and despite the risks associated with this activity and the questionable efficacy of the tactic, there may be a logical reason for it.
That reason: according to Nielsen, consumers trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and online reviews, far more than they do paid media.
According to new data, Google +1s have a stronger correlation to high natural search rankings than Facebook Likes, and play a bigger role in a blended natural search strategy.
Digital agency Stickyeyes has looked at the influence of both Google +1s and Facebook Likes as emerging ranking signals using its Roadmap tool, which analyses over 100m ranking signal metrics each month across a 13 terabyte database.
This study looked at over 7,000 URLs that rank in the top 20 positions across multiple competitive sectors in Google.co.uk and correlated their actual +1 and Like counts versus ranking position.
The results suggest that +1s have the strongest correlation with search rankings…
Brand marketers may ‘like’ Facebook, but the world’s largest social network has created numerous challenges. ROI is often hard to find; Facebook says it can take a year to produce. And despite the promise, certain kinds of initiatives may simply not work.
Now that it’s a publicly-traded company, Facebook is under even greater pressure to live up to its valuation, which currently reflects the fact that investors believe the social network has significant room to grow. To deliver the necessary growth, it has to find ways to convince marketers that it’s a productive marketing platform.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, that may not be easy, and it may create big headaches.
The future of Google’s greatest social networking effort to date, Google+, may be debatable, but the search giant hasn’t found it very difficult to lure brands to Google+.
And for good reason: Google+ has been Google’s most respectable social effort to date and brands have learned that getting on board services before they get big is often a far better strategy than waiting until it’s too late.
For brands using the seemingly ubiquitous Facebook ‘Like’ button, more is usually better.
Translating all those ‘likes’ into sales, however, is for many if not most brands, a difficult exercise. After all, it’s easy to get consumers to say they like something than it is to get them to pull out their wallets.