StumbleUpon – Gabriel Catalano®

Scoop.it Now Runs on HootSuite’s Social Media Dashboard

Social Media is easy. But only in theory.

When you get down to the practical things Social Media requires, you realize that a lot of them take time, require some special skills or are simply too complex to bother. While blogging and social networks have now been around for years, the truth is that for a lot of people, using Social Media in a professional way is still anything but a no-brainer; whether your job consists of running a business, pitching new customers, fundraising for a cause, educating students or coaching clients, it usually takes a good 100% of your time, so how can you “do Social Media” on top of that?

The key to solve this includes working on smarter workflows. At Scoop.it, for instance, we realized that having a suggestion engine combined with a bookmarklet for 1-click publishing greatly helped our users. And by adding features like the connections to the social networks they wanted or the ability to rescoop one another’s content, we have taken – and continue to take – steps towards making the whole Social Media Publishing workflow much simpler.

HootSuite is another company that has worked extensively on this workflow problem. By combining monitoring and cross-posting, they’ve built one of the most popular Social Media platforms to date with millions of professional users.

We’re therefore thrilled to be partnering with HootSuite today and to introduce the Scoop.it App for HootSuite. From now on, HootSuite users can combine the powerful stream layout that enables them to monitor various sources of content at once with Scoop.it’s easy content curation capabilities.

This means more relevant content but also more visibility for this content when it’s published to your Scoop.it pages, whose topic-centric nature drives on average 3 clicks per visitor and greater discovery from Social and Search.

Scoopiteers who already leverage topic-centric content curation to develop their visibility online can now diversify their sources of content by using HootSuite to monitor various content streams, including the topics they follow on Scoop.it or some specific Scoop.it searches to closely monitor their interests.

Datos Demográficos de las Redes Sociales en 2012 | vía Víctor Martín

http://victormartinp.com

Completísimo estudio demográfico del uso de las redes sociales en todo el mundo que ha realizado Royal Pingdom, en el que se incluyen las 24 redes sociales más populares: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr,Reddit, Hacker News, Slashdot, Github, Stack Overflow,Orkut, Quora, WordPress.com, Blogger, Flickr, Myspace,Tagged, Hi5, LiveJournal, Yelp, deviantART, StumbleUpon,Goodreads y Last.fm.

El estudio se realizó utilizando los datos que facilita DoubleClick Ad Planer y curiosamente no incluyen datos de Google+, por ese motivo no aparece en la lista. Cabe decir también que los datos demográfics extraídos hacen referencia a los Estados Unidos.

Distribución por edades

Más de la mitad de los usuarios tienen edades comprendidas entre los 25 y los 44 años.

Distribución de edades por sitio

55% de los usuarios de Twitter tienen 35 años o más.
63% de los usuarios de Pinterest tienen 35 años o más.
65% de los usuarios de Facebook tienen 35 años o más.
79% de los usuarios de LinkedIn tienen 35 años o más.
58% de los usuarios de Reddit tienen menos de 35.
60% de los usuarios de Github tienen menos de 35.
63% de los usuarios de Hi5 tienen menos de 35.
69% de los usuarios de Hacker News tienen menos de 35.
69% de los usuarios de deviantART tienen menos de 35.
83% de los usuarios de Orkut tienen menos de 35. Continuar leyendo «Datos Demográficos de las Redes Sociales en 2012 | vía Víctor Martín»

SEO Site Tools: A New Chrome Extension To X-Ray Any Website Instantly

Robin Good: SEO Site Tools is a professional SEO extension for the Google Chrome browser which acts as website x-ray analyzer by providing tons of useful information about any URL you provide it with.

Besides providing a PageRank value for any page you are on without even needing to click on it, SEO Tools extracts this useful data from any URL:

1) External Page Data

– Google Trends;

– Google Indexed Pages & Domain Links;

– SEOmoz Linkscape;

– Quantcast Ranking;

– Alexa Data;

– Majestic SEO Data;

– SEMRush Data;

2) Page Elements… Continuar leyendo «SEO Site Tools: A New Chrome Extension To X-Ray Any Website Instantly»

Are You Making These Online Advertising Mistakes?

But just because you can get an ad campaign running with little to no effort doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing it right. In fact, I would say that many advertisers are missing the boat when it comes to getting the most out their advertising dollars – and with just a few small changes here and there they could be getting a much bigger impact out of their advertising efforts.
The following list of faux pas are what I’ve found to be the most common things marketers are missing when running online advertising campaigns. None of the following best practices are super complicated or hard to figure out, but they do take some time and attention to get right. As you’ll see from the list below, online advertising is all about trying different types of ads, testing a lot and tracking everything. Once you get all of these things working together you’ll start to see your advertising efforts pay off more than ever.
1. You’re only trying one source of online advertising
There are more ways to advertise online than you can probably handle, so what’s a marketer to do? My advice would be to not throw your money around and try out everything, but to find and try the ones you feel are most worth your time and focus on those first.

I would highly suggest starting out with AdWords, Facebook and doing some direct buys on specific websites. It won’t take you long to get started with the first two since they’re both completely self-service. With AdWords you’ll target your ads based on search or content keywords while Facebook will be targeted based on audience interests and demographic information.

With the direct buys you can contact the websites via email or use BuyAds.com to find and buy advertising directly from the websites that best fit your audience.

Once you give each of those a good run you can also add some more non-traditional advertising options into the mix like LinkedIn, Reddit and StumbleUpon Paid Discovery. If you feel like your target audience is likely to be found through one of those sites, then it’s worth testing out and it won’t take a whole lot of additional effort on your end.

LinkedIn ads are similar to Facebook’s in the fact that they’re targeted to the information that’s available on someone’s profile like age, work experience or company. Reddit ads are unique to their community and could be a great fit if you’re looking to get exposure for a product or service that’s funny, entertaining or geeky. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery is a way to get whatever you’re pitching into the StumbleUpon community with hopes that it could go viral. Just be sure to choose the right category when submitting your paid submission because if you don’t your campaign will go nowhere fast.

How to start with big or small budgets

If you only have a little bit to spend, say $100/month, then buying ads from AdWords or Facebook will give you the best bang for your budget. You’ll need to be very stingy with how much you’re bidding, but you can get a decent amount of exposure if you stretch out the $100 as much as you can. The more unique and less competitive the people or keywords you’re trying to target, the longer your $100 will last.

http://blog.kissmetrics.com

Let’s face it – even though online advertising can sometimes be a dirty word, most web businesses can really benefit from it. Online advertising is a powerful way to get your message in front of a specific audience in a relevant and actionable way and there’s not a whole lot of knowledge or know-how you need to get started. Just a little bit of cash and some keywords and you’re off to the races.

The following list of faux pas are what I’ve found to be the most common things marketers are missing when running online advertising campaigns. None of the following best practices are super complicated or hard to figure out, but they do take some time and attention to get right. As you’ll see from the list below, online advertising is all about trying different types of ads, testing a lot and tracking everything. Once you get all of these things working together you’ll start to see your advertising efforts pay off more than ever.

1. You’re only trying one source of online advertising Continuar leyendo «Are You Making These Online Advertising Mistakes?»

4 Ways to Tell if You’re Getting the Right Visitors to Your Business Blog

You’re not done studying your site analytics, yet. Next, take a look at the search terms that are driving traffic to your site.

If you sell sofa-beds, but are posting about — and getting search hits for — your dog rescue efforts, you’re probably not using your blog effectively as a marketing tool. Rescuing pets is certainly commendable, but the people visiting your site to read about how you saved Shadow aren’t likely to shell out for a sleeper sofa.

If many of your most popular website search terms are for terms that are only tangentially (or not at all) related to your core business, it’s time to start thinking more strategically about creating content that relates to your business goals. Start a secondary blog for the side project or hobby that’s bringing in keyword traffic, and focus your main site on content based around keywords that your target consumers are likely to be searching for.

By KATHRYN HAWKINS | contentmarketinginstitute.com

When you’re looking at your business blog metrics, it’s always nice to see high traffic. But the number of visitors your site receives is just a small part of the picture. What’s even more important? Finding out whether your visitors are truly engaging with your content — and, even more importantly, if your site visitors are viable sales prospects.

Try these strategies for assessing whether your content marketing efforts are reaching the right audiences.

Analyze your referral traffic sources

Most business sites receive traffic from a mix of referring sources, which might include social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter; social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, or Reddit; and links from websites on similar topics.

Social bookmarking sites often send the most traffic — in fact, StumbleUpon accounts for more than half of all U.S.-based social media traffic, according to a recent report. But, even when the numbers are high, you may not be reaching the audience you’re seeking.

Consider the common audience demographics of your referral traffic sources: If you run a business-to-business site, does traffic from individual-focused sites like StumbleUpon and Digg fit your mission, or should you focus your promotional efforts on business networking sites like LinkedIn? Continuar leyendo «4 Ways to Tell if You’re Getting the Right Visitors to Your Business Blog»

The Ultimate Online Marketing Recipe

At this point you also want to set up your corporate blog and start posting right away. Make sure you submit your content to social sharing services (like StumbleUpon) and bookmark it on sites like Delicious. Research popular keywords related to your content and make sure you tag your posts with those words, and include them naturally within the content itself.

On the technical end of things, you’ll want to set up a Google Analytics account, a Google Webmaster Tools account, and a Feedburner account for managing and monitoring your RSS feeds. Analytics will help you monitor exactly what’s happening on your website, where your traffic is coming from, etc. Make sure you set up some goals and conversion funnels there, and annotate any important events (like a mention on a big blog) so you can remember six months from now why you saw a spike or a dip in traffic at a particular time.

At the same time, you should be gathering up leads for your product or service launch. Make sure you use a hosted email provider like Gmail, not a program like Outlook. Create your email template at this time, too.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

Set Up Your Website Correctly.
Build a website. Chances are your company already has one. But if they don’t you can’t go any farther. Your website is the central hub of your entire online marketing strategy.
Install Google Analytics. Make sure the analytics code is on every page of your website.
Set up a Google Webmaster Tools account. Create a sitemap XML file and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. Be sure to have your web designers or developers fix any errors that Google Webmaster Tools may alert you to. We have a pretty comprehensive guide to Google Webmaster Tools here.
Claim Your Social Networking Profiles.
Sign up for a Twitter account. Think about your Twitter name because people will naturally “mention you” on Twitter by typing @yourcompanyname. Therefore you’ll most likely pick a Twitter name and URL like: http://twitter.com/yourcompanyname. Be sure to link back to your website in your profile.
Have a professional designer create your Twitter background. Your Twitter background should be consistent with your website branding and offer some basic contact information. Consider communicating your value proposition on the background or in your profile description.
Create a Facebook page (not a profile). Like Twitter, create a Facebook page and claim your Facebook URL to be something like: http://facebook.com/yourcompanyname.
Set up Your Company Blog.
Keep your blog on your company domain name. The whole point of blogging is to attract relevant traffic back to your website. Blogging on another domain other than your company domain, defeats this purpose. This is the fundamental reason why blogging is good for SEO. For example, your blog should be located somewhere like: http://www.yourcompanyname.com/blog or http://blog.yourcompanyname.com.
Keep your blog design consistent with your website design. They don’t have to look identical, but for the same reason you keep your Twitter profile in alignment with your company branding and design style, you should do the same for your company blog.
Get your Email Marketing Ready.
Choose an email distribution service. Sending mass emails from your personal computer email client or web based email account is a sure fire way to shoot your email marketing campaign in the foot. Choose an email distribution service like Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Aweber to send out your company newsletter. Each of these services are great for making sure your emails get through to your email base while minimizing the dreaded spam folder. On top of that, they make adding new emails to your marketing list a snap.
Create an Email Template. Again keep your email template consistent with your website branding and design style.

http://blog.kissmetrics.com

The basis for any good online marketing plan is an awesome landing page. But regardless of how incredible your landing page is, you still need to get people there. That’s often the part that breaks down when a company actually starts marketing a new product or service online. They’ve got the landing page that’s been expertly designed and follows all the best practices, but they’re not getting conversions because they’re not getting traffic.

There’s tons of information out there for crafting an online marketing program that won’t cost you much more than time. One little problem: there’s so much information available that it’s often overwhelming. Even things like infographics that try to break it down can be too much.

So we’ve crafted the ultimate online marketing recipe. One that’s easy to follow and breaks everything down into steps. We’ve linked more information about most steps throughout the article so you can easily access more in-depth information if you need it.

Stage One: Gather Your Ingredients

Image by Like_the_Grand_Canyon

The first stage of your marketing recipe consists of gathering up your ingredients. You’re laying the groundwork here for the rest of your marketing efforts, so make sure you don’t skip anything. Think about what happens when you leave out an ingredient in a recipe for a cake. Leave out the flour, and you get a soupy mess. Leave out the sugar and the taste is horrible. Leave out your eggs and the whole thing crumbles. The same thing happens if you leave out a key ingredient of your online marketing plan.

So let’s start by claiming your brand on the major social networks: Google+ (as soon as brand pages are available), Facebook, and Twitter. Depending on your industry, there might be niche social networks where you also want accounts (for example, an author might want to set up an account on Goodreads and LibraryThing as well). Make sure you customize your Twitter background. This can serve as your social landing page until your website and other landing pages are ready.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

Set Up Your Website Correctly.
- Build a website. Chances are your company already has one. But if they don’t you can’t go any farther. Your website is the central hub of your entire online marketing strategy.
- Install Google Analytics. Make sure the analytics code is on every page of your website.
- Set up a Google Webmaster Tools account. Create a sitemap XML file and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. Be sure to have your web designers or developers fix any errors that Google Webmaster Tools may alert you to. We have a pretty comprehensive guide to Google Webmaster Tools here.
Claim Your Social Networking Profiles.
- Sign up for a Twitter account. Think about your Twitter name because people will naturally “mention you” on Twitter by typing @yourcompanyname. Therefore you’ll most likely pick a Twitter name and URL like: http://twitter.com/yourcompanyname. Be sure to link back to your website in your profile.
- Have a professional designer create your Twitter background. Your Twitter background should be consistent with your website branding and offer some basic contact information. Consider communicating your value proposition on the background or in your profile description.
- Create a Facebook page (not a profile). Like Twitter, create a Facebook page and claim your Facebook URL to be something like: http://facebook.com/yourcompanyname.
Set up Your Company Blog.
- Keep your blog on your company domain name. The whole point of blogging is to attract relevant traffic back to your website. Blogging on another domain other than your company domain, defeats this purpose. This is the fundamental reason why blogging is good for SEO. For example, your blog should be located somewhere like: http://www.yourcompanyname.com/blog or http://blog.yourcompanyname.com.
- Keep your blog design consistent with your website design. They don’t have to look identical, but for the same reason you keep your Twitter profile in alignment with your company branding and design style, you should do the same for your company blog.
Get your Email Marketing Ready.
- Choose an email distribution service. Sending mass emails from your personal computer email client or web based email account is a sure fire way to shoot your email marketing campaign in the foot. Choose an email distribution service like Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Aweber to send out your company newsletter. Each of these services are great for making sure your emails get through to your email base while minimizing the dreaded spam folder. On top of that, they make adding new emails to your marketing list a snap.
- Create an Email Template. Again keep your email template consistent with your website branding and design style. Continuar leyendo «The Ultimate Online Marketing Recipe»

60 seconds in social media [infographic]

Nicholas Cage would have trouble driving this lot away. Every minute in social media there are millions of interactions taking place – they happen on Pinterest, Foursquare, Flickr, Tagged, LinkedIn,StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as detailed by this nice infographic here detailing what can happen in a mere 60 seconds in social media.

How many Tweets do you reckon? Enough that if you read them all it would take days to get through them all. And forget about Facebook with 700,000 messages you could be there for weeks.

by Polly Becker
http://wallblog.co.uk

Gone in 60 seconds - 175,000 tweets that is

How many Tweets do you reckon? Enough that if you read them all it would take days to get through them all. And forget about Facebook with 700,000 messages you could be there for weeks. Continuar leyendo «60 seconds in social media [infographic]»

Are You Making These Online Advertising Mistakes?

The Conclusion

Now that you know some of the more common mistakes that marketers make with their online advertising you should now be prepared to go out there and advertise like you never have before. As I’m sure you already know, there’s a lot of opportunity available through the different ways you can advertise online, but first you need to make sure you’re doing it the right way.

If you want three easy things to remember the next time you’re ready to throw down some money on online advertising, here they are:

Test, test, test and then test some more. You should always be testing to find out what’s working and what’s not.
Be sure to try out different advertising sources. Ad platforms like Facebook Ads and AdWords are a given, but you should also try out others sources like buying direct, email newsletters and social sites like Reddit or StumbleUpon.
Know your ROI goals (especially identifying the right “R”) and always have a way to know if and how much value advertising is creating for your business.
About the Author: Ryan Hupfer is the Customer BFF at isocket and BuyAds.com and is oddly passionate about supercharging direct ad sales for both advertisers and publishers. Be sure to say hey to me on Twitter at @hup.

http://blog.kissmetrics.com
-.-

1. You’re only trying one source of online advertising

There are more ways to advertise online than you can probably handle, so what’s a marketer to do? My advice would be to not throw your money around and try out everything, but to find and try the ones you feel are most worth your time and focus on those first.

With the direct buys you can contact the websites via email or use BuyAds.com to find and buy advertising directly from the websites that best fit your audience.

How to start with big or small budgets… Continuar leyendo «Are You Making These Online Advertising Mistakes?»

Experience EasySearch in kikin Browser for iPad today!

kikin Browser demo

kikin Browser demo from kikin on Vimeo.

47 Essential Social Media Tools for Content Marketers

It’s hard to believe the sheer number of social media tools we use everyday to help grow the Content Marketing Institute and SocialTract, as well as my own personal brand. Since there are so many, I decided to update this post from almost three years ago. It’s amazing the number of social media and content marketing tools that I continue to use, as well as the many that died over the years from lack of use.

Which ones am I missing that you cannot live without? [disclaimer: many of the tools below are CMI partner tools]
The Basics

LinkedIn – Start the practice of connecting with every business card you receive from contacts.
Facebook – Less business, more entertainment the better.
Twitter – The best way to broadcast great business content…period.
Google+ – The fastest growing social media network of all-time. Due to Google’s link with search, Google+ is now critical.

By Joe Pulizzi | http://blog.junta42.com
-.-

Which ones am I missing that you cannot live without? [disclaimer: many of the tools below are CMI partner tools]

The Basics

LinkedIn – Start the practice of connecting with every business card you receive from contacts.
Facebook – Less business, more entertainment the better.
Twitter – The best way to broadcast great business content…period.
Google+ – The fastest growing social media network of all-time. Due to Google’s link with search, Google+ is now critical. Continuar leyendo «47 Essential Social Media Tools for Content Marketers»

Human Behavior Theories That Can be Applied to Web Design

Humans are logical creatures, and as surprising as this might be, when we visit a website our minds make a series of decisions that affect the actions we take. The ability to reason enables us to form judgments, reach conclusions and make decisions. If, on the web, we weren’t able to think on the spot and then take action, we would trap ourselves in crippling situations of mindless clicking.

Behavioral psychology is an advancing field, and we web ninjas need to understand something about psychology in order to make usable websites. If we understand human needs and emotions — how we interpret what we see and how we choose to act — then we will better understand our site users. We’ll be able to choose and create meaningful layouts, typography and colors.

This article is no substitute for a degree in psychology (so don’t give yourself an honorary Ph.D. after reading this). Also, the items mentioned here don’t account for every circumstance, because no two people are the same. Yet by understanding the theories outlined below (there are no hard facts in psychology, just theories), you can better understand how your design work will be perceived and used.

by Alexander Dawson
http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/human-behavior-theories-that-can-be-applied-to-web-design/

This article is no substitute for a degree in psychology (so don’t give yourself an honorary Ph.D. after reading this). Also, the items mentioned here don’t account for every circumstance, because no two people are the same. Yet by understanding the theories outlined below (there are no hard facts in psychology, just theories), you can better understand how your design work will be perceived and used. Continuar leyendo «Human Behavior Theories That Can be Applied to Web Design»

2010 State Of The Blogosphere: Facebook And Twitter Drive The Most Traffic (Slides)

Earlier today, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra gave his annual State of The Blogosphere presentation at the ad:tech conference. Technorati will be blogging about the findings over the next few days, which is based on a survey of 7,200 bloggers. But we have the full slide presentation below. [Más…]

Some key takeaways:

* Self-employed bloggers now account for 21% of those surveyed, compared to 9% last year.
* But only 11% say their primary income comes from blogging.
* Hobbyists still make up the bulk of bloggers at 65%, but that is down from 72% last year
* Corporate bloggers now make up 4% of the total, up from 1% last year.
* Two thirds are male
* They use many types of social media (LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg), but when it comes to driving traffic back to their blogs only two social media services really count: Facebook and Twitter
* Tablets and smartphones are impacting impacting blogging styles for 39% of bloggers
* Of those, 70% are writing shorter posts, 50% are posting photos from their smartphones, and 15% are using less Flash
* When writing about brands or products, 71% will only write about brands they approve of.
* One third boycott products, but only one fifth write about their boycotts

Erick Schonfeld | http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/03/state-blogosphere-2010-slides/

In Social Media, You Cannot have Success without a Team

If you can get your blog on one of these front pages, you dramatically increase your chances for growing your community and building a follower base. (Especially if you do this for a long period of time, allowing your material to saturate the online space)

You aren’t going to be able to win at this unless you have a strong team. What does a team do? People on it back you. They upvote your stuff — usually because they like what you try to share. It’s also a simple fact of life that people stick with people who they like. It’s called friendship. (It’s also common for people of similar political, religious or other viewpoints to hover around each other online.) When you and a group of people cluster around specific content, it increases the chance the content will be noticed by people outside your group. That’s just a fact of life in social media.

by Guest Contributor
http://www.flowtown.com/blog/in-social-media-you-cannot-have-success-without-a-team

In the fast-paced, ever-evolving world of the social web, it’s often hard just to figure out how to use some of the more popular sites that let you share your favorite articles and videos, much less bring traffic and followers to your site from them. With so much to think about and do on these sites, you are only going to get by with a little help from your friends. I’m not just saying that because I’m a Beatles fan. It’s really the only way you can have any success, and transfer some of that success to your own blog.

Continuar leyendo

10 Social Media Marketing Ideas That The Experts Are Talking About

Social media is empowering startup brands and forcing established brands to create new measures of success for their campaigns. The day and a half I spent at the Social Media Strategies conference was a buffet of problems, solutions and more than a few predictions of what lies ahead for the advertising industry in the rapid evolving social media landscape.

My takeaways include restatement of social media marketing basics worthy of repetition and some fresh ideas for you to consider as you move your campaigns forward.

#1 — Social media is motivating brands to provide more responsive customer service

Several speakers expressed that it is essential that brands monitor social media conversations for complaints about their brands and suggesting the right “formula” of on-platform and behind-the-scenes resolution. It’s great that a consumer can voice his or her grievance on Twitter and get a rapid response. It stinks that so many brands have been failing for years to provide this respect for its customers via its support channels. If brands provide better service in response to a tweet than to a phone call, are we going to inadvertently create a culture of public “whining”?

Posted by Neil Glassman | http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/10/social-media-marketing-advertising-ideas/

My takeaways include restatement of social media marketing basics worthy of repetition and some fresh ideas for you to consider as you move your campaigns forward.

#1 — Social media is motivating brands to provide more responsive customer service

Real-Time Social Influencer Notifications in WordPress

1. Someone comments on a blog post
2. This person gets automatically imported into Flowtown
3. You get notified if their an influencer, have a particular occupation or is in a certain location
4. Instantly send a follow-up email or follow them on Twitter
5. Wicked cool

The folks over at Web Design and User Experience Agency Digital Telepathy, creators of SlideDeck, have built a rocking Flowtown WordPress Plug-in. Now anyone with a WordPress blog can seamlessly integrate their Blog with Flowtown!