SEO Werkt!

We are suckers for an infographic chock full of information aimed at CMO’s. The 2012 CMO’s Guide to the Social Landscape does just that. We often mock the CMO for their seemingly disconnected existence from the social landscape. We also get a little shiver when we hear that those who climb to the top of the marketing food chain stay there only an average of some 23 or so months. I have said in the past it’s like CMO’s climb a burning rope to the top. What they used to get there is often already being replaced by newer more efficient (and yes cooler) communication channels. Remember, though, it’s not about technology, it’s about communication.

So click through to enjoy the chart. Let us know if you agree or disagree as well. That’s always fun.

You can visit an interactive version here as well.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Every couple of months, Twitter inches slightly closer to their goal of becoming an advertising force in social media.

This week’s action was pushing Promoted Tweets out to the mobile apps. More importantly, they expanded who sees the ads and that’s great for marketers.

Previously, Promoted Tweets only showed up in your stream if you followed that brand. Now, advertisers can choose to show Tweets to anyone with similar interests.

The way I interpret this is, if I’m following Coca-Cola on Twitter, then Pepsi can choose to send me their Promoted Tweets.

Twitter says they decided to make this move because the response they got to their mobile testing was positive. Will it stay that way?

It does seem that people have stopped carrying on about the presence of advertising. Perhaps they’ve finally realized that it’s not only necessary if they want the app for free, but it can be helpful.

Yes, I said it. Advertising is a good thing. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but perhaps my word will spread to the masses and people will learn to embrace ads, not run from them.

Twitter says 55% of the more than 100 million regular users check in at least once a month using a mobile app. With the upgrades in navigation and presentation, this number should continue to climb.

I had a real love affair with Twitter at the start, then broke away for several months. Now, I’ve found I really enjoy sitting on the couch, flipping through the day’s tweets with my iPad. The app allows me to easily click through to read submitted articles and I feel like I’m getting more out of Twitter than ever before.

How about you? Do you use Twitter on mobile? How does it fit in to your marketing plan?

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Let me repeat that headline. In 2012, 1 out of every 5 people in the world will logon to a social network at least once a month.

Incredible, isn’t it? eMarketer says those 1.43 billion social network users represent an increase of 19.2% over last year. Think that’s something? By 2014, they say it will be 1 in 4.

And for the people who believe that Facebook is part of an alien plot to take over the world, here’s a look at their success stories.

The good old U.S. of A is way out in front, but since almost everyone in America already has a Facebook account, other countries have a chance of catching up. Check out India with nearly 50% of the US number. And Brazil with their 45.4 million Facebook users.

What’s more interesting are the countries that didn’t make the top five. Where’s the UK? China? Russia? Are they too smart to fall for Facebook’s evil plan or is Facebook simply waiting for the right time to invade?

At the rate we’re going, it seems that social media will one day consume the world. At that point, we’ll all quit our jobs and stay home posting updates and playing games while our entire civilization crumbles around us.

Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll tire of all this sharing and find a new way to spend our free time?

What do you think? Is social media here to stay or could it fade away as quickly as it came?

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Foursquare has always been the leader in the location check-in app battle. For a little while, though, Gowalla was looking like some real competition. Then Facebook bought Gowalla and on March 10, 2012, they shut them down.

Yes. Gowalla has gone-walla.

This would seem like good news for Foursquare but it might just be a sign of the times. A sign that location-based check-ins aren’t on trend anymore.

Earlier this month, Foursquare’s CEO Dennis Crowley spoke with TechCrunch about the future of the business.

“People are using the app, but they’re not checking in. I asked myself: did we break something? But in fact, it’s because people are using Foursquare to look for where their friends are, to find things, and as a recommendation service. It’s almost like it doesn’t occur to them to check in.”

This would appear to be bad news, but Crowley says it’s just the nature of the beast. And instead of fighting the crowd, they’re going with it, shifting the emphasis from check-ins to recommendations and content.

Kudos to Crowley for seeing the need and rolling with it. There have been those before him that refused to give up on their vision, even when the audience made it clear they wanted different glasses.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

So while Foursquare may not be going the way of their competitor Gowalla, it does make you wonder about the whole concept of location-based check-ins. Now that the novelty has worn off, are we done with them? Google obviously doesn’t think so since they recently added check-in to their Latitude service.

For me, it’s all about the “gimmie.” If you want me to check-in on your platform, you’ll have to offer me something more than a kick up the leaderboard or a virtual sticker. Give me points for prizes or instant deals and then maybe I’ll let you know where I stand — literally.

If you’re on the web daily, you’ve heard of Pinterest. You’ve probably heard about the crazy numbers they’re pulling in and the incredible growth.

Here’s a visual from an infographic published by Performancing:

Wow, it’s ike Mount Everest climbing up into the clouds. Pretty amazing. But just because people visit the site, doesn’t mean it’s good for marketers.

So we move on to referral traffic, this one from Shareaholic:

Look at Pinterest and Twitter. In January, they were even Steven. In February, there’s Pinterest creeping past Twitter on its way to beating StumbleUpon.

Well, that settles it, right? Pinterest is great for marketers! Maybe, as long as you’re pitching to the right audience. Let’s go back to the Performancing infographic:

Pinterest is extremely female-oriented, sitting mostly in the 25-44 pocket. If that’s your audience, then by all means, jump in. Fashion, home decor, food, celebrities — it all looks good on Pinterest.

The site is designed for one-click sharing between folks and more companies are using Pin It buttons on their websites in order to making Pinning a snap.

So, it’s visual, female oriented, easy to use. Pinterest has traffic and tremendous growth and people are starting to click the links. The only thing we don’t know is, does Pinterest convert?

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Remember the haydays of StumbleUpon where you’d wake up to a mammoth spike in traffic from a page that rose to the top of the rotation? Nice to see on the analytics, but generally the traffic from SU hits, leaves right away and doesn’t stop to buy or read. Is Pinterest delivering the same kind of referral traffic or will it convert? If you’ve got numbers or even just thoughts on this, let me know in the comments below.

Want to see the full Pinterest Infographic? Click here to visit Performancing.

Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Google+ is the Internet industry’s favorite whipping boy but that doesn’t mean that there are not those out there using it effectively and also promoting its use.

The infographic in this post was done by Chris Brogan and BlueGlass. As with anything relating to this topic, especially as it relates to Google+’s use for business, people like to squabble as to just how viable Google+ is as a platform beyond it being Robert Scoble’s personal playground. Personally, I think there will be enough of an audience and one that, due to its smaller user base, can more easily defined and developed. To think it is going to overtake Facebook is not the argument to chase. It’s more about what niche it will serve and if marketers can take advantage of it. Also, the integration into Google’s suite of products and services is still the search giant’s ultimate goal, in my opinion.

Take some time to comment as to whether you agree or disagree with the content of the infographic. There is a lot to digest for sure.

If this subject is of interest to you and you would to hear more from yet another source you can join Chris Abraham on March 13th at 11 AM EST for a 30 minute webinar entitled, surprise, surprise, Google+ for Business! This is part of Mike Moran’s Biznology series.Click here to register for this free webinar.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

You know those Facebook ads that say how many of your friends like the product (or is it the ad they liked. . . )? Turns out, they work.

Nielsen dissected the results from 79 Facebook campaigns and the graphic shows you what they found.

People who saw social ads had 55% greater recall than those who saw regular display ads.

And suddenly I feel like I’m in a fifties toothpaste commercial — 55% fewer cavities with Crest!

Joking aside, that’s a nice lift, much better than I would have thought. Of course, Nielsen warns that your mileage might vary but they’re pretty confident in their results.

This confidence comes from a prior survey where 76% of US internet users said their most trusted recommendations came from people they knew. 49% said they trusted consumer opinions they found online. We know that trust plays a big part in successful advertising, so put it together and it’s easy to see why social ads work.

Do you have experience with social ads versus non-social ads? We’d like to hear if you’ve had more success with one than the other.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

First there was e-commerce, then Facebook or FB-commerce and now AdAge is predicting Tweet Commerce in the near future.

It truly is a wondrous world we live in.

As of this past December, Twitter’s biggest advertisers were able to customize their Twitter profile page, turning it into a brand page, thusly.

Pretty, but other than the ability to pin posts to the top and change the decor, it’s not that far away from everyone else’s profile page.

AdAge says that Twitter has big plans in the works, to expand brand pages into a full-featured content page. That means adding apps for contests, coupons and even. . . yes. . . e-commerce. You will be able to buy your next pair of Nike’s and then Tweet about the sweet deal without ever leaving the page.

I think that the concept of expanding Twitter brand pages is huge but there are a few issues. One, it doesn’t look like they’ll be available to anyone but big Twitter spenders. I suppose it could help push a fence sitter to go ahead and buy that Promoted Tweet package, but I think it would benefit Twitter across the board if they made it open to all businesses.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

The other side of this is that a large portion of people never go to Twitter to Tweet. They use HootSuite or TweetDeck, or apps on their phone. Would brand pages be seen? Would they encourage more people to visit Twitter? I’m not so sure.

In the end, Tweet Commerce is likely to end up like Facebook Commerce, with stores opening, then closing due to lack of interest. The whole point of Twitter is that it’s fast. It’s consumable in small chunks when you have two minutes to spare. How does that translate into shopping for a new pair of shoes?

I’m a big Twitter fan and I applaud their attempts to expand into something more than just a micro-blogging service. But Tweet Commerce is reaching.

What do you think?

I was tempted to start this post with a sentence about Facebook making an offer you can’t refuse but that would be cliche and I’m better than that, right? (Hush, you.)

So let’s skip the pleasantries and go right to the meat. Facebook has a new “deal” option called Offers. Using the system, a business can place a coupon on their Facebook page. Fans click the coupon to claim it, they get an email with the coupon code, and hopefully they use the coupon to spend money at your business.

Neat.

Here’s a sample:

Facebook only just made the announcement official, but one Facebook marketing blogger, noticed a few of these offers back in February.  She has a great post outlining the whole claiming process with lots of graphics. As she points out, these ads are one-click simple and they work on Facebook mobile, which is huge.

What’s not so wonderful is that they’re currently only available to managed advertising clients. It’s a good bet that once they have the bugs worked out, offers will be available to everyone, but not yet.

As for bugs, they appear to have some. Look at the response Einstein Bros. Bagels got to their Leap Year B1G1 offer.

Of 205 comments, quite a few were complaining about not getting the email. Some found it hidden in spam folders. One woman said the store refused the coupon when she went in. That’s poor communication on Einstein Bros.’s part.

For others, the system worked as it should and they were pleased.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

As a coupon fan, I think this is an excellent marketing opportunity as long as small business owners don’t get carried away. Remember all of the Groupon sellers who ended up losing thousands of dollars because too many people claimed the offer.

The “how to create an offer” guideline on Facebook doesn’t show any way to cap the number of people who download the coupon. That could be a big problem.

My favorite line from the FAQ has to be this line:

To keep track of how many people have redeemed the offer at your business, set up a special sale code in your point-of-sale software or train your employees to keep a tally of redemptions at the register.

All this technology and in the end, the success or failure may rest on a part-time, minimum wage worker’s ability to make a tally mark on a piece of paper. Sigh.

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Socialbakers, a social media statistics portal, has decided to create a monthly infographic showing the top brands in the space.

We’re bringing you this information, because we feel there’s always something to be learned from those at the top of the heap. Also, because we like infographics.

*Side note here to the Socialbakers folks, next month can we have some more colors and cool images?

First, let’s look at the Top 10 YouTube Brand Channels based on views. A deodorant for men tops the list with a drink aimed at adventurous men right below it. You have the game oriented EA and Playstation. Nikefootball and volkswagen are also decidedly male. (Noticing a trend here?)

Life’s for Sharing is a T-Mobile channel that’s pink, so that falls in with Disney Pixar, which, I’m guessing, has a large female following.

YouTube’s own demographics says that around 60% of all men ages 18-54 are on the site. This compares to 55% of women. Looking at the top brands, I’d say the men are ruling by more than 5%.

Continuing along these lines we see that YouTube is the top media site, followed by MTV and Musica. But I’m heartened to see National Geographic and Animal Planet in the top ten.

Top brands by number of followers are as expected Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Red Bull, Oreo (which is a little surprise). But when it comes to engagement and response, the international brands take top honors. Not sure what that is all about. Could be that the US brands have too many followers to keep up, or that we simply don’t have the same social skills as those abroad.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

From soft drinks to shoes, to sports and cars, there is one thing all of these top brands have in common. They all have a very defined niche and every message they put out there speaks clearly about the brand. Red Bull ads are always going to be adventurous and a little crazy. National Geographic is always going to bring you closer to nature and the world in an educational but entertaining manner.

Take a look at your marketing, on social media and otherwise. Are you putting out a clear and consistent message? If not, then it’s time for a retooling.

Here’s the full infographic from Socialbakers.