Social is gaining share in referrals
From Study Gives Insight Into Content Discovery Trends Across the Web’s Leading Publishers @ blog.outbrain.com:
Currently, search methods [...] send the largest slice of referral traffic to content. Links from publisher sites make up 31% of referral traffic to content pages [...], portal homepages (AOL.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com) account for 17% of traffic, and finally, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Fark.com, reddit, Digg) send 11% of traffic to content pages.
What kind of content do people share online?
This infograph says it all:
Download a high-res PDF of the report: Content Discovery and Engagement Report, Q1 2011 (.pdf)
Most Facebook Pages reach only 3%-7.5% of their fans
Social analytics company PageLever came out with a study last month that proves how content posted on your Facebook Page has to fight its way to its Fans' NewsFeeds.
Some data from the report:
Key take-aways:
- Spend energy on newsfeed content rather than custom tabs. As a page grows from 10,000 to one million fans, pageviews drop 12x faster than impressions.
- Post at least once a day to get more unique impressions per fan.
- The larger you get, the more Facebook promotes your page in NewsFeeds. Facebook ranks Pages with more fans higher in the search results, and features them more often in "Suggestions".
Further reading:
- How we measured that most pages reach only 3%-7.5% of their fans - PageLever
- SHOCKER: 3% To 7.5% Of Fans See Your Page’s Posts - AllFacebook
- Popular Facebook Pages Have Fewer Unique Page Views Per Fan, Most Engagement is in the News Feed - InsideFacebook
- Report: Only 3% to 7.5% of Fans View Posts From A Facebook Page - SearchEngineLand
- New Study: Only 7.5 Percent of Fans See Your Facebook Page Posts - Marketing Pilgrim
The Content Grid: a framework for the process of Content Marketing
From the (excellent) Social Media ProBook:
The "buying" process begins long before a sales person contacts a prospect. The fuel that drives a prospect from latent interest to active demand is created, curated or procured by a brand, distributed over social channels and measured against business objectives.
Their list of KPIs is particularly interesting:
Awareness:
- traffic / page views / time onsite
- content downloads
- inbound links / page rank
- fans / followers
- mentions / comments / shares
Consideration:
- open / click-through rates
- inquiries / database growth
- form submission rate
- funnel conversion (stage change)
Close:
- qualified / accepted leads
- meeting with sales
- opportunities
- active pipeline / pipeline value
- closed deals
Flickr: a hub for photography enthusiasts
From the (excellent) Social Media ProBook:
Flickr: The popular photo and video sharing site launched out of Vancouver in 2004. Acquired by Yahoo! just one year later, Flickr grew into an online home for more than 51 million users and 5 billion images. But as Facebook and mobile photo services like Twitpic and Yfrog add options to the photo-sharing market, Flickr has seen a decline in their audience over the past two years. The site is far from dead, however, as accounts like The Official White House Photostream continue to drive traffic to Flickr. In some ways, it’s returned to the purest version of itself – that is, a hub for photography enthusiasts. It never became the corporate marketing “outpost” some originally imagined.
A rather unexpected way to explore Flickr is the notorious Flickr Panda.
Content marketing and b2b: what’s the ultimate goal?
As we've previously pointed out in Content marketing tactic: Trusted Filter, it can become quite a challenge to filter out the noise. But then again: this is a huge opportunity for people or parties that position themselves as a trusted filter.
Content marketing evangelist Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) nails it in this presentation during a recent workshop in content marketing for associations and non-profits:
The ultimate goal of content marketing in a business environment is to be the trusted, expert resource in your niche wherever your customers are online.
7 suggestions to keep your Facebook Fans happy
Recently eMarkter updated their charts about the top reasons people became fans of brands on Facebook. Ignitesocialmedia.com points out that the results show a shift from the rather opportunistic "to receive discounts and promotions" to "to get the latest news about the brand".
So what does this mean for Facebook Page administrators? Here are some tips from the Fans in the research - in order of importance:
- Advance information and previews of future products, future offers
- Ability to take part in games, competitions
- Access to exclusive information
- Invitations to events related to the brand beyond Facebook
- Involvement in the development of new products, new offers
- Ability to order products online from the page
- Discussions with brand representatives
Content is the fuel of the social web
In June 2010, Nielsen and AOL began studying the factors that influence consumers’ choice of content. Among their findings, Nielsen and AOL determined that users spend over half their time online consuming content. Social media and email were the next largest categories of consumption. This prompted the question: How much of a user’s communications also involve content?
Some highlights from this study:
- Content is the fuel of social interaction and connection across the web – 23% of conversations include links to content.
- Content sharing is important across social media platforms – email is the preferred mode of sharing for 66% of users.
- Share everywhere – For people using a social network, 99% of them use multiple platforms for sharing content.
- Email, the new social networking platform – 66% of the population use email as the primary method for sharing content.
- Content sharing is an authentic activity among consumers that connects their peer network to brands – Friends and family are the most commonly shared with group.
Marketing Opportunities:
- A Pass-Along Strategy (e.g., branded entertainment) ensures that the brand’s message travels with the content being shared. This strategy is optimal for embedded media, such as images or video.
- A Link-Back Strategy (e.g., content advertising) ensures that a brand is “there” when consumers come back to the source of content.
More where this came from:
Our digital lifestyle has us drowning in data
Realtime video curation engine magnify.net has just released the results of their Digital Lifestyle Survey. Some of the highlights:
What keeps us busy online?
- 76.7% read email and respond on evenings and weekends
- 43.2% answer texts or emails on date/social occasion
- 57.4% never turn off their phone
- 33.0% check email in the middle of the night
- 35.2% answer work emails while with children
- 46.9% are unable to answer all email
Conclusions the report:
- The volume of raw data coming at us has increased more than 50% in the past 12 months. As more digital devices and software services proliferate, the volume of data and speed of increase will grow exponentially.
- People have reached their capacity to manage data, impacting family, friends, productivity, and even sleep. Algorithmic solutions (better spam filters, smarter search, more connected devices) will in fact expand the problem, creating more undifferentiated data.
- Human data management, shared and community filtering, and personal recommendations will fulfull individuals Digital Identity as content curators - while allowing content consumers to "surf" less, and consume curated content delivered to them by trusted sources.
Starting conversations by creating compelling content
One of the big questions companies ask themselves as soon as they've decided to "start the conversation" in social media is: how should they fuel the engines? How can you open up the channels and start conversations, instead of just reacting to them?
The answer is simple: with a content marketing strategy. Or in other words, by producing and publishing lots and lots of content. Not just written text, but anything that promotes high levels of interactivity in social media, such as photos, videos and blog posts.
In the September 2010 report ‘b2b Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends’, content marketing evangelist Joe Pulizzi defines content marketing as follows:
Content marketing/custom media (sometimes called custom publishing, custom content or branded content) is the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.
But what exactly is compelling content?
Contentmarketinginstitute.com just published an essential checklist for creating valuable content. The checklist is designed for digital content creators and marketing teams, and it defines valuable content using five benchmarks:
- Findable
- Readable
- Understandable
- Actionable
- Shareable
Let's have a look at the fifth benchmark, Shareable. Will the user share the content?
- Something to provoke an emotional response
- A reason to share
- An ask to share
- An easy way to share
- Personalization (add hashtags to tweets, etc)
Or in other words: make sure your content behaves like social objects, dominant and influential topics in on-line conversations as they are conducted in social media.
Further reading:
- Creating Valuable Content: An Essential Checklist @ contentmarketinginstitute.com
- Creating Valuable Content Checklist™ (.pdf)
Content marketing tactic: Trusted Filter
As early as 1967, Canadian philosopher, scholar and writer (of "The Medium is the Message" fame) Marshall McLuhan stated that information has become “electric” leads to information overload:
One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.
"Information overload" as a term was popularised in the early 1970s by American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler to refer to the limits of human attention. “Electric information”, or digital data and content distribution have radically reduced the cost of creating, storing and sharing information and opinions.
There is, however, a solution. In a September 2008 keynote, American writer, consultant and teacher Clay Shirky famously said:
It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.
More on this concept in my keynote on Trusted Filters at VRT's ZepposFestival: