Newsletter Archives

March 11, 2011

Do you have a friend or colleague who constantly talks about ingenuous ideas or situations that make you sit back and say, “Wow, this guy (or girl) is a
genius?”

Do you want to be that friend or colleague?

If you have answered yes to either of these questions, then it is imperative that you read on. Besides, why wouldn’t you want to?

It’s time, once again, for a magical dose of search and social media insights to entertain your mind and soothe your soul.

Social Media was a big trend for our blog posts in the past few months: Influencer Chris Dollard discusses Radiohead’s use of Twitter to promote their
latest album in “Radiohead and Social Media: The Twitterized Release of ‘The King of Limbs.'”

  • Joseph Henson expresses his love for Levi’s jeans while debating the relevance of sponsored stories on Facebook in “Sponsored Stories: Bad News or the
    Next Big Thing?”
  • Also, three of our team members were invited to speak at the Search Marketing Expo in San Jose, CA this past week. Be sure to read about it in “SMX
    West 2011 — The Aftermath.”

SMX West 2011 — The Aftermath

SMX West 2011 was a complete success for our Influencers. The two newbies, Anthony Coleman and Rodney Hess, successfully dominated their sessions, and veteran Will Scott successfully dominated Yelp during his.

You may have missed it live, but you don’t have to miss out on the great information provided there. Check out the live blogs below to get your fill of SEO info. Anthony Coleman spoke during one of the very first sessions of the conference – Google Instant: Six Months Later. He was the only speaker to talk about how the update affected and could even benefit paid search. Follow the link to the Bruce Clay live blog

Rodney Hess was one of the speakers during the Location Services: The New Local Search session. He focused on how location-based services can be used for SEO purposes and presented data from a survey of check in service users. AimClear live blogged the session.

Read the full post here: http://www.searchinfluence.com/2011/03/smx-west-2011-the-aftermath/

Radiohead and Social Media:The Twitterized Release of “The King of Limbs”

The members of Radiohead are a private bunch, often very selective with their interviews and keeping low-profile lives in their hometown of Oxford, England. As such, the press scrambles over every utterance that the band might put forth, which isn’t much. But their online presence,long established, is staggering. Their website, entitled “Dead Air Space,” has gone through countless incarnations, including wormholes of old information about their previous art and music. It primarily serves as the band’s blog, strewn with “office charts” of the music they’re listening to and links to new music or websites of political and social issues.

Some of the members keep more-or-less active Twitter accounts, including one for the band itself, and the people they follow seem to form some of their inner circle, like the artist Stanley Donwood, amongst others.

These twitter accounts, along with those of their fans, were an epicenter of activity last week. On Monday, February 14th, Radiohead posted via Twitter:
“Thank you for waiting…”, which was followed by a link to www.thekingoflimbs.com, a website designed for the release of “The King of Limbs,” their new album slated to become available for download the following Saturday. Four days later, on Friday the 18th, Radiohead tweeted again: “It’s Friday…It’s almost the weekend…You can download ‘The King of Limbs’ now if you so wish!”

Read the full post here:
http://www.searchinfluence.com/2011/03/radiohead-and-social-media/

Sponsored Stories: Bad News or the Next Big Thing?

Last week, Facebook announced its new ad unit, Sponsored Stories. With Sponsored Stories, advertisers will now have the ability to utilize user actions – such as Places check-ins, “Likes”, Page posts and even actions in custom Apps within their Facebook ads. This means that if I decide to “Like” Levi’s 514 Jeans (“Like” really doesn’t sum up my feelings about these jeans, but I digress…), Levi’s can now use that “Like” as an ad in the right-side column, slap their logo on it and show it to all of, and only, my friends.

The concept behind this new format is that an ad unit that uses your friend’s content will build more trust and generate greater buzz than a traditional ad
would. While I’m sure Facebook will allow advertisers to filter out some negative content, ultimately the message will be controlled by the users.

Read the full post here:
http://www.searchinfluence.com/2011/02/sponsored-stories-bad-news-or-the-next-big-thing/

Actionable Social Media Analytics: Likes to Leads

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting on Social Media Analytics at SEMpdx SearchFest. Most of our customers have no interest in Likes and Followers for their own sake. What we’re interested in most is Leads.

In other words, do our Social Media Analytics enable us to track actionable data, most importantly, leads?

Read the full post and view Will’s powerpoint here:
http://www.searchinfluence.com/2011/02/social-media-analytics-searchfest11/

Be sure to check out these stories, as well:

Articles From Around the Web: