So the SXSW conference took place this March and a bunch of interesting things came of it, not the least of which were comments made by Matt Cutts, the Google guy in charge of the webspam team. He said that basically, Google is going to change the Googlebot to put less emphasis on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and more on great content. So to those webmasters that are wearing the black hat of SEO: You’re going to get your come-up-ins. Continue reading
Get on the Bandwagon!
On March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages will get a new design.
-A message from Facebook on the top of all the Facebook Pages I manage.
No sooner had I just finished three Facebook business pages when Facebook comes out with a game changer: Facebook Timeline for Business Pages. Continue reading
When new technologies and new methodologies emerge on the internet, people make up new words to try and communicate these new ideas with others. There really isn’t any problem with buzzwords unless they are used to confuse people. All too often people use buzzwords in order to sound knowledgeable about a subject.
Ok, I admit; I did it too, way back in high school. I try to simplify things now and explain to clients what a particular buzzword means before I start using it in conversation. I certainly don’t want to be accused of playing “Buzzword Bingo”.
You can be proud that you have a couple of hundred fans on your Facebook page, but are they quality fans? What’s the difference really? Well, the difference is something called Edge rank. Edge rank is an algorithm that Facebook uses that determines what shows up on the newsfeed, and that includes the posts and other information from your pages.
We can all understand why everything that everyone posts on Facebook can’t possibly make it to our newsfeed, but how does Facebook go about determining what actually does show up on your feed?
EdgeRank formula
Looks complicated? Well, let’s go through it:
μe – the affinity score. How often you interact with a particular Facebook friend raises your affinity with that friend.
we – the edge weight. What interaction is going on? more weight is given to a comment than a like, for example.
de – the time delay. How long has the information been up. The longer, the less it’s worth.
So what does this all mean? Well, when all these factors are multiplied together, a high number means your object (picture, comment, tag, etc.) is more likely to show up on your Facebook friends’ newsfeed.
Taking this all into consideration, and making it simple; the people that interact with you, and you with them, are more likely to get your fresh objects in their newsfeed.
When I tell people I’m a social media marketer, people often respond with something along the lines of “So you’re in advertising…”
Well, yes and no. Yes I do use social ads on Facebook and yes I do generate some content and creative that would be classified as advertising, but no, social media marketing is not about advertising.
It is about generating interest and making connections. That may not sound like a completely worthy venture for business, but it is and I’ll tell you why: no business survives without a network of connections. You must respect your connections, they are valuable people. Social media allows you to not only connect with them, but with their network of equally valuable people.
You wouldn’t go to a business cocktail meeting and advertise your business to everyone in the room, or the next time you’ll be having cocktails alone, on your balcony with only your thoughts for company. Think about it for a minute; if one of your connections needed the widget that your company sells, wouldn’t they already know you sell them? Unless they are the newest of the new connections, they probably already know you sell widgets and didn’t connect with you to get spammed with widget ads.
The idea of social media marketing is to keep you and your widgets top of mind for the next time someone in your audience (or your audiences’ audience) is in the market for a widget. Instead of spamming your audience with advertising, (of which we are all inundated with) provide them with some useful, interesting, or entertaining content related to the widget product/industry. You need to make connections, widen your network, and grow your business, but a sure shot way to get “de-friended” or have your feed blocked is to advertise relentlessly to your connections.
Can you advertise with social media marketing? Yes, but keep it less than about 20% of the time. Maybe only when you have a super mega blow out special on French Dijon widgets.
