This week, some of the biggest sites on the net are standing in solidarity to protest against SOPA, an online piracy bill making its way through the house. On January 18, Reddit, the Cheezburger network, Scribd, and many others will be turning off their websites and going black for a day of protest. For a summary of exactly what SOPA is, watch this short video on the subject explaining how SOPA breaks the internet.

In a twist for Washington, the bill is very much bipartisan and has support from both party’s. Below is a full list of current house members who support this bill. I’ve added their social profiles so you can directly connect with your representatives. Enough noise and their stance will change.

The US Senate has a similar bill called PIPA, and I’ll be updating their list with those names as well.

*UPDATE*

President Obama has come out against SOPA, which hopefully means that these bills will not be an issue. The only developing news from the time this was posted to Obama’s announcement was this post…which we can only conclude that the president reads this blog and we totally influenced his decision.  Well done everyone!

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I'm Super Excited To Start Using Goolge+

Google+ currently has 62 million users and change. But if those users are anything like me, they are relatively inactive. I’m pretty much connected to the same people I’m already connected with on Facebook , Twitter, and LinkedIn. I have no use for another social network that doesn’t do Facebook better than Facebook, Twitter better than Twitter, or LinkedIn better than LinkedIn.

I’ve recommended that most of my clients stay away from diving in outside of a few where the user base demographics make sense to be active. But for the majority of businesses, there is no need to spend more time on a network that won’t drive results.

The time has come to announce that Google+ is now relevant. (insert sigh)

• Is it from a new user base goal they’ve reached….nope.
• Oh, some awesome new feature they can offer marketers? Try again.
• Sweet analytics we can use to enhance strategy. Nada.

This week Google announced that Google+ will start to effect search results. This means that Google+ has now become relevant because Google is going to force you to start using it. As much as people (including me) will bitch about how this is total crap and not fair…it is the new reality.

You’ll see posts about how we should all go to Bing and boycott Google. These are the same hollow threats that people give about quitting Facebook when a new privacy violation is reported. No one is going to stop using Google based on this news.

So give Google+ a few moments of your time. Not cause it’s fun, or productive, or beneficial to marketers over other social networks…but because you have to.

This feels forced. If left alone and offering better features over time I would have come over to the Google+ boat anyway. But I’m defiant by nature. If you make me do something I’ll generally find a way not to like it regardless of features. Strong arm tactics don’t initiate fans who will spread their passion to others. Reminds me of the sobbing mob of “sad” women at Kim Jong Il’s funeral. It’s easy to display excitement or emotions or energy with a gun to your head.

So see ya on the inside.  Oh, and you can add me to your Google+ circle here.

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Like it or not, Facebook is going to be a permanent fixture in the social landscape for years to come. For many people, Facebook is social media. Businesses need to learn to adapt to that reality and leverage Facebook’s power to connect people to expand their reach. Most of the corporate heavyweights have already accepted that fact and administer Facebook pages for their brands. However, there are still plenty of holdouts who haven’t hopped on the bandwagon. There are a few very important reasons why they should do so immediately.

800 Million Users

Within the next year or two, Facebook will be able to boast a billion registered users worldwide. For those keeping score at home, that’s nearly one-seventh of the population of the globe. As such, there’s no more powerful way to raise awareness of a company’s brand and interact with current and potential future customers. By not fielding a basic Facebook company profile page, many businesses are missing out on untold millions in revenue that could have been attained through the use of social marketing. With Facebook’s website hosting so many profile pages, the advertising possibilities are virtually endless.

Catching A Rising Star

While Facebook’s income and profit numbers are already impressive, the fact of the matter is that they’re really just getting started. The true potential of Facebook as far as targeting consumer demographics through intelligent social interaction and advertising has yet to be realized. They haven’t yet expanded into social search, and their sharing and monetization systems are still massively underdeveloped when compared to their possible scope. If a company is under the impression that they’ve missed the boat on profiting through Facebook interaction, they’re sorely mistaken.

Social Interaction Breeds Trust

People tend to buy from companies they inherently respect and trust. While it’s not really possible to develop a personal, one-on-one relationship with a corporation, Facebook can go a long way in humanizing companies in the eyes of consumers. When the average consumer’s expectations are vastly exceeded by a company, they sometimes share that with their peers. In some cases, the result is an organic viral campaign that wasn’t even planned. Facebook and similar social sites are a cheap way to generate instant credibility under the right conditions.

Using Facebook The Right Way

A recent survey showed that 67% of businesses polled won’t be investing in social media in 2012, even though 88% acknowledged the potential value of such an investment. That’s a shame, as Facebook’s capacity for customer outreach and business to consumer interaction is just starting to be fully explored. Facebook doesn’t require a sign up fee or even website hosting costs to use, even though those fees are usually pretty low as you can see at thetop10bestwebhosting.com. All you really need is a unique approach to communicating with consumers through your Facebook page to stand apart from the crowd. Thinking outside the box is the key to getting the most out a Facebook page for any business.

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Judging folks based on possessions is something we just do. No it’s not right but that’s just how it is. We are constantly bombarded by flashy reality television shows flaunting über fancy “cribs” and cars. We’re told through advertising that if we don’t have the latest iPhone, iPad and matching Mac Book Pro … well, then, you ain’t cool. As a culture, we’ve always been concerned with “the haves.”

But, over the last few years, as social media becomes a bigger part of our culture and lives, an interesting shift has occurred in how we are viewing status symbols. There’s a new dimension to what people are paying attention. On top of status being based on worldly possessions, we’re now judging people based on virtual followings. Kim Kardashian, for example, is rarely mentioned in the tabloid magazines without including that she has 11.5 million Twitter followers. She is looked at as more of a legitimate celebrity simply for having a massive online following.

This new status measurement is also used with digital marketers and brands. Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and Klout scores are used as a quick barometer for how competent individuals are and how well brands are doing. Marketers are the first to jump for excitement when they reach a high number of Facebook fans, as if they’ve achieved validation for success. Social media blogs write stories about what brands have the most fans and followers.

We seem to have replaced “keeping up with the Joneses” with “keeping up with the @kardashians.” And the culprit responsible is what we call vanity metrics.

There is a certain segment of social media metrics that we often use as a measurement of businesses’ success. These metrics are called vanity metrics, and marketers are hypnotized by them. Vanity metrics are numbers that most marketers focus on because they look great in press releases, but they don’t necessarily affect overall marketing or business goals.

The term vanity metrics was coined by Eric Ries and made popular by his book, The Lean Startup. They are defined as numbers that might make you feel good, but they don’t offer clear guidance for what your business should or should not do in the future. Their intense focus is a big reason why social media ROI is difficult for most brands to judge. Vanity metrics do not necessarily correlate with other measurable numbers that really do matter for your business. These growth metrics can often be signs of traction (which is why they should be monitored), but it is important to distinguish between these vanity metrics and real digital metrics, like conversation rates.

A brand with a huge online following can be less successful than a smaller following of passionate and raving customers. Follower counts alone do not help to evaluate whether or not your strategy is working. They are no indication that your competition is doing better or worse than you. These metrics should be watched, but you should not to be fooled by them.

Moral of the story is to not get swept up in the hype of who has more. Businesses would be wise to quit trying to keep up with the @kardashians and, instead, focus on keeping up with the strategy.

This article appeared in the latest issue of Bozell Thinking.

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Facebook Ads Effectiveness Can Break Or Bring The Bank

There are many reasons that people use Facebook. In fact, a survey of users found that the number one reason people use Facebook is to “See what my friends are up to”. Unfortunately no one said they use Facebook to be advertised to. That’s bad news for you because an ad with low effectiveness can drain your budget fast.

The good news is however, that compared to other online display ads the Facebook ad CTR is extremely high. But it’s still only around 2%. Many of my clients request Facebook advertising and as a social media marketer you need to know how to create ads that convert to clicks.

Here  are 20 tips for better Facebook Ads Effectiveness

1. Make sure that your image tells the story of your message (it needs to grab attention)
2. Be sure that you image is relevant.
3. Be aggressive in your text but not insulting
4. CPM can be less expensive per click than CPC but it’s a risk, so make sure you put a cap on your daily budget.
5. To test your Facebook ads effectiveness, check the conversion rates after two days. If it’s lower than 2%…try a new sample target.
6. Send your ad to a Facebook page, users do not want to be sent to a landing page outside of Facebook.
7. Use proper grammar with no ALL CAPS and shortened or appreviated words. Make things clear.
8. Don’t go with an initial target audience below 50,000 people. Any lower than that is to small of a sample group.
9. Use colors that are contrasting to all of the blue…such as green or red.
10. Add copy inside of your image to add to content that sticks out.
11. Lead your ad to a branded and customized landing page that has a similar look and feel to your ad
12. Use horizontal / landscape images to ensure you’re maximizing the space available (which is 110×80 pixels).
13. Have a strong call to action. Tell people what they need to do.
14. Bribes work. Tell your audience why or what they get for their click.
15. Shorter ad copy is better than clutter. Cut out what you can.
16. Ads with people, and especially close ups of faces and eyes tend to get a higher click through rate.
17. If appropriate to your audience, use a locally recognizable photo.
18. Multilayer your targeting as specific as you can be (get to know your audience)
19. If your campaign CPC drops off a cliff…wait a week or two and try a message to bring your campaign back to life.
20. You can usually get a away with offering a relatively close to the lowest suggested bid. Might as well save money where you can.

Hope that helps! I’ve got a campaign going right now and these are the techniques and approaches that we use help us boost our Facebook ads effectiveness. If you have any suggestions you use, drop them in the comments.

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How To Get Hits

Generally the rule of thumb on how to get hits to your blog or website is that you need to create more content. The more you write, over time, the more traffic will come in. While this is certainly true, it’s absolutely inefficient. New blog posts takes a lot of time and effort to create. I think the easier move is to make your content that you’ve already written go farther and work harder.

I’ve highlighted four easy techniques on how to get hits:

Increase Your Content Click Through Rate:

CTR on Google Webmaster

Click through rate for your blog is the percentage of people that click on your website / blog from searching specific keywords. Generally your click thru rate is pretty proportionate to what position your post ranks in search engines. Statistically, the top spot in Google gets 38.19% of clicks, number two 21.73%, and the third place averages 11.94% of the clicks that search for it.

(Click here to read about click through rates for serp)

While these may be the averages, they are not set in stone. As you can see I have a post with a CTR of 46% that ranks 4.3 . That link is performing much higher than the average. Start by finding how your own posts are converting. Go to Google Webmasters and find out your blog’s CTR. Match up your posts based on their ranking and see if your posts are performing lower than the averages.

For those that are not converting clicks based on a high search engine ranking, change up and rewrite your post Meta Description. This is the paragraph that shows up on Google under the URL that describes the post. Have you even written one? How does it compare to others on the page? Think of the meta description as a sales letter and you have 160 characters to sell why someone should click on your link.  Sell it.

Get Linked In Other People’s Posts

Getting other writers to link out to your content is a fantastic way on how to get hits. When I wrote a post for Mashable, I had free traffic for weeks because my bio linked back to this blog. The problem though is that a guest post means writing content and guest posting on other blogs can take a lot of time and a ton of work. This post is about how to get hits without writing content. With little effort, you can sign up for link networks like Eightfold Logic Linker that connect your site with similar blogs and link back to your content. The benefit is more SEO juice and free traffic. You can also use social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to post older content that might generate new life from your network who may have not read those posts before. You can use tools like Buffer to set up a post schedule to your social networks.

Social Bookmarking

An easy technique on how to get hits, and in some cases a ton, is to utilize social bookmarking sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg. Some content plays better on these sites than others, but Reddit was a huge source for viral traffic to our zombie campaign and StumbleUpon continues to be a top refer to this blog.

The Need To Rank Better

The most obvious way how to get hits without writing new content is to have your old content rank better in Google.  While it may be obvious, SEO generally leaves people’s heads spinning as they don’t know what to do. For a quick analysis of your blog use SEMRush and run a quick report to see where each post ranks. If you see any links that rank well (I’d look for those in the top 10-15) add ten to fifteen back-links within your own blog posts and you’ll see some upticks in some of your own links. There are better SEO strategies but that will work.

So content may be the best way to keep your blog or website fresh, but it’s not the only way on how to get hits. These are some quick ideas that require little effort to maximize the content you’ve already produced. If you’ve got your own ideas, leave them in the comments. Best of luck.

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It's Now A Much Smaller World

Social media marketing is the biggest thing to happen to the world of business communications since televisions arrived in every home. The increasing popularity of social networking sites has provided an effective way for businesses to communicate directly with existing and potential customers all around the world, and companies both big and small are taking advantage of the fact.

The truly worldwide nature of the web has made the possibility of reaching out across geographical barriers more attainable than ever before, but cultural and linguistic divisions remain and companies are coming to realize that a monolingual, mono-cultural, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is no longer enough. If you’re looking at targeting customers in foreign countries and cultures, your SMM approach needs to be localized – but not everyone realizes this.

Econsultancy’s 2010 Social Media and Online PR Report noted that, while 83% of marketers had plans to increase their spending on social media this year, only 26% had plans to run campaigns in more than one country. Given the increasing pervasiveness of social media throughout the world, it seems that many may be missing out on a golden opportunity.

 It’s not just Facebook…

 It’s true that the giants of the social media world, such as Facebook and Twitter, have international appeal. The role played by both in the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions and protests should be enough to convince any onlooker that their influence and appeal goes far beyond the English speaking or western world.

Facebook and Twitter have both enjoyed recent upsurges in the Arab world, as well as the vast emerging markets of Latin America and elsewhere. These sites certainly shouldn’t be neglected, but there are other platforms you’ve probably never heard of that rule the roosts in their own backyards. These sites often mean little outside their own spheres of influence, but within them they’re market leaders, and due consideration should be given to which sites are popular within each target market.

•  In China, Qzone and its associated messaging service QQ are massive, with parent company Tencent declaring a staggering 636.6 million active QQ accounts as of September 2010.

• Cyworld is a market leader in South Korea. The site also has a presence in China and Vietnam but has failed to take off elsewhere, recently ceasing its operations in Germany, Japan and the United States.
• IRC-Galleria is the biggest social networking site in Finland. With half a million users, it certainly doesn’t have the global impact of Facebook but, if you happened to be targeting the Scandinavian country, you’d be foolish to ignore its most popular site.
• Mixi commands an 80% share of the Japanese market, which equates to around 30 million users.
• Facebook is the single biggest social media site in France, but blogging platform Skyrock is an increasingly popular and influential competitor.

And the list goes on. New social media sites are springing up every day, often tailored towards specific countries, areas and markets. It can be tempting to just stick to the familiar, but even the most cursory research may turn up more efficacious sites, depending on your own requirements and those of your target markets.

 Getting the message across

Once you’ve identified the best platform or platforms, you still have to use them to communicate effectively. Services such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck for Twitter, Google Alert, and various programs designed specifically to trawl forums and message boards for specific keywords (such as your company’s name), will help you to keep track of who’s talking about you and where.

Machine translation software such as Yahoo! Babel Fish and Google Translate can be ideal for getting an idea of what other people’s posts are about, but when it comes to posting your own, it might be worth considering a native speaking translator.

Even the best machine translation programs can be prone to errors and this can make your posts or responses seem stilted and unprofessional. A native translator will not only catch contextual errors but will also provide a more ‘local’ feel, with colloquialisms, abbreviations and knowledge of culture-specific references.

It may, of course, come down to a question of resources as to whether you can afford to invest in in-country copywriters or translators to localize your social media content, but the fact remains that clear and effective communication is the name of the game when it comes to approaching different cultures via social media.

About the author

Christian Arno is the founder of Lingo24, one of the world’s fastest growing translation agencies. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over forty million words for businesses in every industry sector, including the likes of MTV, World Bank and American Express. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

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Many social media marketers have become the company “Facebook guy / girl”. While this is a fine place to start off your digital marketing career, it is not a destination or label you want to become permanent. Simply being branded as the company’s person who is responsible for posting content does not create long term value and you’ll never get a seat at the big kid marketing table if you don’t start to provide your team, your bosses, and your company with more .

As important as it is to work hard, it’s equally important be able to communicate how  your activities directly align with goals and growth. I’ve highlighted five questions that you need to be able to articulate with others. Your boss or company executives should be asking you these questions already but my guess is that they are not. So start bringing them up.

How Are We Doing?

How your social media strategy is going may seem like an elementary question but most social media marketers cannot answer it beyond “good” or “fine”. Good or fine are not answers, they’re opinions.  You need to understand exactly how your efforts are driving marketing and business goals. The better you can align your actions to company success the more value you can prove you’re worth. The more specific the better. Concrete statistics regarding outcomes should be what you strive to record and report.

How Can We Get In Front Of More Eyeballs?

As a social marketer, your job is to generally either to increase awareness or increase sales. Either way you need to get in front of eyeballs to accomplish this. If you’ve been successful at attracting one new customer or been able to reach one qualified target you should have a plan how to reach two. If two, then how can you reach four…and so on. Answering this shows a drive to connect with prospects and keeps you focused on how to track it.

What Should We Be Doing?

Whether or not you’re asked, you should be supplying recommendations. Opinions are for suckers, instead provide recommendations with numbers and statistics to back them up. If you think you need a mobile app, then provide information exactly why it will be successful and why the investment makes sense. Become an invaluable asset by providing a blueprint of actions that will help move the dial faster and or more efficiently.

What Results Can We Expect?

Success is often determined based on expectations. Too often expectations are set way too high when it comes to social media campaigns. You need to be able to establish accurate expectations and properly communicate them.

Why?

Every good marketer should be on a continuous journey to want to know more. Why are we having success. Why are we coming up short? Why isn’t the content being shared more? Why are we getting more website traffic? Each previous question’s answer needs to be followed up with a “why”.  The why takes us from a snapshot of results to action steps for improvement.

The faster you start providing data and answers to these social media marketing questions, the faster you’ll start showing others the true value of your work. See you at the big kid table.

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Before diving head first into a lake, I’d rather be the guy who waits to see how deep the water is.

With all of the new changes announced yesterday to Facebook at their F8 conference, we have come full circle. Facebook is back to a beginning. Marketers are already salivating at the new Facebook…but please just slow down a second.

The new features and layout will provide a new way for users to use Facebook. As I tweeted yesterday:

Q: So what should a marketer do?

A: Wait.

Facebook is back to a beginning. As when they first started as a new social networking platform Facebook is not exactly sure how users are going to use these new features. The mob will decide, not marketers. So rather than grabbing your marketing team and budget and running full speed into the abyss. Wait.

There is no way for you to know how all of these new features will be used, or not used. Rather than trying to jump in and take advantage just slow down cowboy.

Understand that the reason people are on Facebook is not to learn about your new products or interact with brands. Yes users can and do interact with brands, but this is not their primary motivation for Facebook. No one is going to update their timeline with what they’re cooking with the hope that Kraft comments on their wall.

Social media marketing rarely awards the spoils to the first adopters. The winners are those who understand user’s motivations and activities and then play seamlessly into those activities. Monitor your friends and see how they adapt. Don’t look at other marketers profiles because we don’t count. Look at your old high-school friend with no reason to be on Facebook other than she wants to be. These are the real users, not you.

Use this time to truly study the users. Facebook has changed, it’s users will change with it. See you on the other side.

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter.

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(insert long and tired sigh)

In yet another completely unnecessary opportunity to prove to business professionals and the main stream public that social media is only for kids and startup companies, exists Social Media Week.

Really?  I mean really?

I don’t ever remember there being a telephone week, a fax week, or any week dedicated to a communications medium. Aren’t conferences, blogs, webinars, tweets, Facebook posts, and everything else we use every day enough? I mean we couldn’t just tryout a social media day first, we had to go for an entire week? Seems a little ambitious.

Yes there is a fashion week (which I love) but that comparison is ridiculous. Social media is not an industry. Social media isn’t a thing. It’s an idea.

I’m not sure why I’m surprised this exists. I suppose this completely makes sense. Ultimately and ironically the most popular thing on social media platforms is not to communicate with others, but essentially to talk to and about ourselves. So why not have an entire week dedicated to us talking about how important we are.

As “social media marketers” we scream and claw and cry for the rest of the company or for real business and industry to take us seriously. Only a fraction of businesses are using the tools available to them so the opportunities are tremendous. But somehow I don’t think Social Media Week is the wake-up call we so desperately want them to receive.

Social Media Week seems like a Super Sweet 16 party that we make so exclusive we don’t invite anyone to it…but to absorbed to know that no one wanted to go anyway.

Perhaps this rant is nonsense. Perhaps at Social Media Week we will take the opportunity to invite new users and showcase business and profit opportunities to our coworkers. But my guess is that we will instead use the week to talk to each other, talk to ourselves, and talk about how everyone else “just doesn’t get it”.

Eventually though, we’re going to have to grow up. Eventually we’ll need to earn the respect we so desperately want. And if you don’t agree with me, I’ll just block you on Twitter talk about your ignorance over on Google Plus.

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter.

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