Posts tagged Their
Unmasking an SEO spammer and rewarding their competition (a case study) – ZDNet (blog)
Feb 9th
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Unmasking an SEO spammer and rewarding their competition (a case study)
ZDNet (blog) By Stephen Chapman | February 9, 2012, 2:26am PST Summary: Starting with the comment of an SEO spammer, I bite off more than I can chew when I investigate just who the spammer is. If you read just one case study all month, let this one be it! |
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[STUDY] 59% of Customers Don’t Know About Their Banks’ Social Media Presence
Feb 9th
In ComScore’s report on The State of Online and Mobile Banking, it cites social networks as a space where banks are creating a presence, and improving their capabilities. But do any of the banks’ customers even know about this? Apparently not.
Even though financial institutes have increased social networking activity, ComScore says that only 18% of customers knew that their financial institutions had a presence on social networks. A total 59% had no idea, and 24% were unsure of what their financial institutions were doing on social media sites.
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The data shows that customer visits to banks’ Facebook pages have increased by nearly 25%, whereas on Twitter and LinkedIn that number has enjoyed less much less growth.
For institutions that are creating a presence on social media sites, take heed: customers are not interested in solving customer service issues on those sites. If Facebook did update its brand pages to include private messaging options, this might change. For now, however, customers who do follow their financial institutions on social networking sites are mostly interested in retail, credit card and online shopping offers.
As social commerce continues to try and find its place on Facebook thanks to new social apps, and payment services like PayPal build a presence on Facebook, will banking be the next move? Or are social networking sites just a place for banks to build their brand? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Image via Shutterstock.
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3 Ways Enterprises Cripple Their Online Marketing Efforts – Search Engine Land
Feb 7th
 Search Engine Land |
3 Ways Enterprises Cripple Their Online Marketing Efforts
Search Engine Land An increasing number of enterprises are engaging in PR, SEO, social media, and content marketing. Having these four areas covered is great, but many companies are not getting anywhere near the full ROI from their investment in them. Hands-on conference teaches PR and marketing pros how to write social media … SEO Training SW hosts a #Social Media Workshop – Phoenix, Arizona |
View full post on SEO – Google News
3 Ways Enterprises Cripple Their Online Marketing Efforts
Feb 6th
An increasing number of enterprises are engaging in PR, SEO, social media, and content marketing. Having these four areas covered is great, but many companies are not getting anywhere near the full ROI from their investment in them. In today’s column, I am going to explore the reasons why…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Study: 91% of Gen-Ys Use Their Phones in the Bathroom
Jan 30th
Some people won’t go anywhere without their smartphones. Not even the pot.
A new study from 11mark surveyed 1,000 Americans about their smartphone usage, and found that a whopping 75% of American smartphone owners have used their phones in the bathroom. More women have used their phones in the bathroom than men (76% vs. 74%), but men are actually more attached to their mobile devices than women. Thirty percent of men surveyed said they won’t go to the bathroom without their phone versus 25% of women.
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The study breaks down grossness by phone type, pointing out that Droid users (87%) are more likely to use their mobile phones in the bathroom than those with a BlackBerry or an iPhone (84% and 77%, respectively). Blackberry users, however, were more likely to answer or initiate a call from the bathroom. iPhone were the most polite of the three, with 67% using apps (67%) and 53% playing on social networking sites.
Believe it or not, Gen-Ys were more likely to use their phones in the bathroom than Gen-Xs, Boomers or the elusively dubbed “Silent Generation” (people born before 1946). But even some people ages 66-years and up used their phones from the bathroom.
OK, so maybe mobile phones really are the new cigarette. Does this look familiar?
But maybe we should be less concerned about mobile habits than hygiene habits. After all, phones carry germs. And while 92% of respondents said they washed their hands after using the restroom, only 14% admitted to washing their phones.
Comic via Blogwell.
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[Research] Half of U.S. Cellphone Owners Research In-Store Goods With Their Devices
Jan 30th
The rise of mobile commerce is going to give traditional retail stores a headache. Results from a survey done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that 25% of cellphone owners used their phone to look up the price of a product before buying it at a store. More than half of cellphone owners used their phones to determine what product to buy while in a retail store.
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Pew’s research only touched on the notion of consumers researching products before buying them. The survey did not include a segment on mobile payments, where consumers actually paid for the retails goods in-store with their cellphones. That is an important distinction. Retail stores could stem the tide of users researching products on their phones and buying the product elsewhere if the industry were to combine the research process with the actual transaction.
About 38% of American cellphone owners called a friend for advice about a purchase while shopping. 25% looked up prices for a product found in a store while 24% looked up product reviews. The cumulative total was that 52% of U.S. adult cellphone owners used their cellphones while shopping over the holiday season and 33% use their cellphones specifically for online information of physical goods.
According to Pew, one in five of these “mobile price matchers” would eventually make a purchase online instead of at the retail store. That translates into 5% of all cellphone owners who made purchases online after stepping foot in a retail store. That may not seem like a big number but when it comes to big retail, each percentage point could mean millions if not near billions of dollars. The old retail adage of “just get them in the store” is starting to slip as easy access to information sits in every consumers’ pockets.
Of the mobile price matchers, 37% decided not to purchase the product t all, 35% purchased the product at the store, 19% purchased the product online and 8% purchased the product at another store.
The biggest takeaway from Pew’s findings is that mobile commerce starting to significantly affect the conversion rates of physical retail stores. How can retail stores stem the tide of consumers deciding to make a purchase elsewhere once they already have them in the store?
The strategy revolves around having a strong mobile Web presence. That does not necessarily mean an actual native app. If you are in a retail store researching with your phone and you Google the product, the retail store should be one of the first results. With the location abilities of smartphones, the search could even tell you what store or neighborhood you are actually in. The retailer could then be able to offer a deal or an incentive to buy and offer to complete the transaction through the device. The mobile Web app could hook into your mobile wallet and bill you directly or instruct the consumer to see the cashier where payment could be made by either near field communications (NFC) or by scanning a QR code. The idea is to control both the research and the transaction. Channel the consumer to your product.
Did you research your holiday spending on your phone? How have your shopping habits changed since you bought a smartphone? Let us know in the comments.
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How To Learn Who Has You In Their Google+ Circles
Jan 27th
The second-most important thing about social media is talking to people. The most important thing is to know whom you’re talking to. We can’t have a conversation about “authenticity” or “realness” or any other airy social media concept until we understand that there are people listening on the other side of that megaphone, and that’s very nice of them to do. In order to get something out of social media, our listeners have to get something out of listening to us.
To give them what they want, it helps to know who they are. With the integration of Google+ into search, Google’s social network will become an increasingly important part of the Web. By Google’s count, it has 90 million users already. If you want to have a presence in Google search, active participation on Google+ is a good idea. I tested a tool for understanding the Google+ audience today and found some interesting insights.
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Global Google+ Demographics
The tools at PlusDemographics.com gather many of the basic statistics one needs to understand who uses Google+. They offer a free global report that they compiled by crawling 45 million public profiles, a very healthy sample of the estimated total, and normalizing the somewhat erratic data they got to within acceptable limits.
As it stands in January 2012, 70.38% of Google+ users identify as male, 28.77% are female, and the remainder fall into Google’s third category: “other.” Nearly 80% of users fall into the 18-34 age brackets. Over 30% of users are from the U.S., followed by around 14% from India, although the #2 state/region and seven of the top 10 cities are in India.
The majority of Google+ users surveyed are not active on Facebook or Twitter. 99.7% are not active on Foursquare. Google+ is a different place altogether from the rest of the social Web. How do my own followers compare?
Personal Google+ Demographics
PlusDemographics also offers personal reports for a fee. Single reports cost $4.99 for personal profiles and $9.95 for business pages. There are discounts for buying reports in packs. Personal reports crawl up to 10,000 followers, which ought to be enough to get a sense. It gives you general demographic information about your people as a whole, and it highlights some individual users following you based on their “prominence” on the network. Here’s what it found from mine:
Almost 87% of my encirclements identify as male. That’s a pretty remarkable indication of the demographics of people who follow tech bloggers on Google+.
The age breakdown is comparable to the global population, trending slightly older, which I find flattering.
The majority of my Google+ followers do use Facebook, which is different from the general population. Almost none are active on Klout, but that’s more than in the global report, which found less than 0.1% used Klout.
These are all very basic data points, of course. Only a rough understanding of my encirclements is possible from these data. The way to get to know the people they represent is by talking to them, sharing with them and following their links.
How do you get to know the people on your social networks?
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Nearly 1 Million People Jailbroke Their iPhone or iPad Over the Weekend
Jan 24th
People sure do love jailbreaking their iOS devices. In fact, after Friday’s launch of the Absinthe A5 tool, jailbreaking iOS 5 on A5-powered devices was almost as popular as the iPhone 4S itself when it first launched.
Nearly 1 million people jailbroke their iPhone 4S or iPad 2 between Friday and Monday, according a blog post from the Chronic-Dev Team, who took the lead in developing the untethered solution for jailbreaking iOS 5 on Apple’s newest gadgets.
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News of Friday’s launch of Absinthe A5 temporarily crashed the greenpois0n site, as it evidently gave hundreds of thousands of users a fun weekend mini-project. The initial tool was only released for Mac OS X, but a Windows version quickly followed over the weekend.
Not surprisingly, the iPhone 4S was the most-jailbroken device with over 491,325 phones broken free from the restrictions of the iTunes App Store. Since iOS 5 came pre-installed on the iPhone 4S, this is the first time its owners could jailbreak the device without tethering it to a computer, which is too cumbersome a process to be considered by most users. The iPad 2 saw n 308,967 new jailbreaks, on top of the 152,940 second generation iPads running iOS 4 that were re-jailbroken. Those users were likely waiting to upgrade to iOS 5 until this solution was available, which is one of the drawbacks of jailbreaking.
Why People Jailbreak
For devotees of the jailbreaking process, the drawbacks are vastly overshadowed by the benefits. Rather than be able to cite a single “killer app” that makes it worth it, most just prefer the general freedom and customizability it offers. That includes the ability to tweak the visual appearance of the device’s UI and run any number of unauthorized apps.
Cydia, the repository of apps for jailbroken iPhones and iPads, contains many applications that would never meet Apple’s approval requirements for inclusion in the official App Store. For some, it’s because of trademark or copyright issues, such as video game emulators or controversial music services like Grooveshark.
Quite often, the apps don’t adhere to Apple’s agreements with the carriers, who would obviously never approve of an app that lets users tether their phone to their laptop and use its data connection without paying extra. With the iPhone 4S, the feature that offers perhaps the most new potential for jailbreakers is Siri, which developers have wasted no time hacking and tinkering with.
As controversial and officially frowned-upon as the whole thing is, many of the experimental features available on jailbroken iOS devices actually end up being included in the next release of the OS. This was true of recording video, which was technically possible on a jailbroken iPhone 3G. Similarly, the overhauled Notification Center found in iOS 5 bears a striking resemblance to the notification system available on jailbroken devices running iOS 4.
Jailbreaking May Not Be Mainstream, But Its Popularity is Growing
As Apple’s gadgets continue to burn through sales records, there also appears to be a growing interest among users in doing more with their phones, much like Android device owners are already accustomed to.
Truth be told, jailbreaking probably isn’t something the average user is going to get into, given the nature of the process, its risks and the tools involved. It’s really something more geared toward tinkerers and those who want more control over what their device can do.
Given the massive number of iOS devices out in the wild, several hundred thousand new jailbreaks doesn’t come anywhere close to a constituting majority of of users. Rather, it’s the pace of the growth that’s interesting to see.
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Parse.ly Dash Will Make Web Publishers Eat Their Vegetables
Jan 23rd
This morning, Parse.ly launched Dash, a content management system smart enough to make a blogger weep with joy. It analyzes the Web to show publishers what’s hot. It tracks trends within the site, revealing what works for the audience. It points out when old posts are getting popular again. It follows individual authors over time and shows how their coverage performs. It shows where traffic is coming from to improve targeting. In short, it helps publishers plan.
It does all of this by analyzing the billions of page views it tracks anonymously across its whole user base. Parse.ly started as a feed reader for pros in 2009, and Dash expands its capabilities with predictive analytics for one’s own site. The software gets a sense of what topics and stories are most important and whether they’re trending up or down. That’s a great thing for publishers. Is it good for readers? I can’t wait to find out.
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Online Omniscience
It’s no secret that blogging is a game of page views. Without good analytics, blogging is all about watching, intuition and guesswork. After you’ve done some of that, you write some spaghetti posts, throw them at the wall and see what sticks. Dash gives publishers the motherlode of data about page views and how to get them. It shows them the past and the present of their site, and its ability to measure Web-wide trends offers a glimpse of the future.
Dash offers three tiers of services starting at $499 per month. The basic “Track” tier enables internal tracking of authors, topics, sections and referrals, as well as predictive analysis of trends and real-time site stats. Tier 2, “Plan,” adds the Web-wide trend analysis, search and filtering within the analytics, customizable dashboards for editors and downloadable reports. The top tier, “Promote,” measures shares and impact across the social Web, and it sends email alerts to editors and writers when something urgent comes up.
Installing Dash requires nothing more than dropping some JavaScript into the site’s footer. That’s enough to capture the traffic and put the dashboard to work.
A tool like Dash gives a site a huge advantage in the short term. While some sites putter along without this kind of detailed feedback, the ones who have it could dominate. The ability to see exactly which topics and events need covering, and exactly how to cover them for a particular audience, is a sort of online omniscience.
Vision, Voice & Tactics
But hopefully, in the long term, this will lead to a new generation of content sites that all have these abilities. If every publisher could know its audience this well, there would be no more spaghetti-against-the-wall, side-boob-heavy, all-caps-headlines blogging tactics.
This week, Gawker is experimenting by letting writers go crazy with these old-school page view tricks, hopefully to prove the point that they aren’t what the market really wants. But if all publishers had Dash or something like it, we’d all know that. Then the differences between sites would be all about editorial vision and voice, not just tactics.
It will be even clearer who’s playing to the crowd and who stands out. Sites who just play the predictive analytics game will all start to look the same. But the gift of a tool like Dash is that it helps sites get to know their audience. It highlights the surprising things. The sites that stand out will be the ones who know their audience so well that they can consistently surprise them.
Parse.ly was co-founded by CEO Sachin Kamdar and CTO Andrew Montalenti and is based in New York City. Check them out at Parse.ly.
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Survey: 41% Of Teens Experience Cyber-Bullying On Their Cellies
Jan 20th
Teenagers are endlessly fascinating, strange balls of neurotic/sexual energy. What company isn’t interested in collecting data points about teens’ behavior toward technology? (If you can think of one, please tell me in the comments. I promise to send you a shout-out on Twitter.)
A new study from Openet, a provider of Service Optimization Software (SOS) conducted a small-scale survey using data from 503 U.S. 13-17 year-old cell phone users. The survey discovered that cyber-bullying on cell phones was a major issue. Interestingly, only 1% of teen sext, which dispels a myth perpetuated by the teen texting trend wave. And apparently cyber-bullying on social networks is not an issue for the teen set as people previously believed. The real problem starts and ends with phones.
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The survey reveals both the bullies and victims of cyber-bullying. So even though 41% of teens have been cyber-bullied on their cell phones, it’s 25% of those kids are the actual cyber-bullies. The survey also found that heavy cell phone users were more likely to engage in inappropriate behaviors. Only 23% of teens fit this category of heavy cell phone users, sending approximately 1,800 texts per month. Of these types, 46% experience cyber-bullying on their phones versus 23% of normal users.
Don’t Fall Asleep With Your Phone, Kid
These days, it’s common to be glued to your phone, mobile device, mini-computer, whatever you want to call it. Heavy users admit that they’re more likely to use their devices during inappropriate times. A total 94% of this type say they’re using their phones at night when they should be asleep versus only 70% of lighter users. They’re also more likely to use their phones at school during class (74%) as opposed to only 41% of regular users.
Image via decoder.drugfree.org.
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