The Week in Review
Facebook Slashes Ad Size
Facebook account managers are apparently telling page managers that the character limit for the body ads on the social networking site will drop from 135 to 90. “Shorter ads would make it easier to fit more of them onto the screen, something that Facebook has already been testing.” (AllFacebook)
How to Set up Your YouTube Channel for SEO Success
Once you understand the importance of YouTube as a channel for your business, it’s time to optimize it for usability. Here’s a look at editing your profile, YouTube channel views, editing a channel and analytics. (SEOmoz)
Finding Link-Building Targets With Social Media
Social media offers a great way to find and target industry users for specific link-building outreach campaigns. The three strategies for choosing your audience are: industry players, audience platforms and natural sharers/curators. (Search Engine Land)
The Future of SEO: Change, Convergence and Collaboration
“Like it or not, SEO has changed and its future relies upon a complex relationship with content marketing, social media, and collaborative technology.” Here’s an in-depth look at the changing work, tools and approach to SEO. (Search Engine Watch)
7 Must-Have Search-Related Chrome Extensions for 2012
Search marketers using Google Chrome should take a look at these seven extensions: 1) BufferApp, 2) Explain and Send Screenshots, 3) StayFocused, 4) LinkClump, 5) SEOmoz Tool Bar, 6) SEO for Chrome, and 7) Check My Links. (Search Engine Journal)
Facebook to Start Running Mobile Ads as Early as March
According to the Financial Times, Facebook is planning to run mobile ads as early as March. The social network is talking with ad agencies about creating sponsored stories to appear in users’ news feeds. (TIME.com)
Who Won the Social Media Super Bowl?
During the Super Bowl, there were nearly 5.7 million Super Bowl-related tweets from 46 countries, according to ExactTarget Social Media Lab. Doritos was the advertiser with the most mentions and keyword buzz on Twitter, followed by H&M and Chevrolet. (ExactTarget)
U.S. Retail E-Commerce Spending: $50 Billion in Q4 2011
According to comScore, online retail spending in the U.S. reached $49.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 14 percent from the same period in 2010. Digital Content & Subscriptions was the top performing online product category. (comScore)
8 SEO Tips That Takes 15 Minutes or Less
SEO doesn’t have to be about long, drawn-out efforts – there are quick things to do that can turn the needle in your favor. Among the eight quick SEO tactics included here are to review your Robots.txt file, review your site organic CTR by page and assess canonicalization of your domain. (Search Engine Watch)
7 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2012 (and Key Tactics to Address Them)
According to Silverpop, the seven marketing trends to watch in 2012 are: 1) location; 2) personality; 3) “screensizeapalooza”; 4) re-engagement and remarketing; 5) unlocking the power of behavior; 6) being everywhere your customers are; and 7) email as a cutting-edge, personalized messaging machine. (Silverpop)
5 Things to Do to Improve Your Affiliate Program
Here are five action items for invigorating your affiliate partners and helping to recruit and retain top publishers in your program: 1) send an email to your affiliates, 2) poll your affiliates, 3) audit your creative and links, 4) add your personal touch, and 5) show affiliates some love. (Marketing Land)
10 Effective Calls to Action
Getting that right call to action involves a handful of factors perfectly mixing together to keep bringing people back and add immediate value. Among the 10 calls to action to be mindful of are cost, offering a benefit to the reader, coupons, videos and human connection. (DazzlinDonna)
Why Focusing on CPL Is a Bad Idea
If you use cost per lead (CPL) as your PPC benchmark for success, you’re likely missing out on additional conversion volume and revenue, wasting a significant portion of your budget on keywords/placements generating zero revenue, and introducing campaign complexity for no good reason. (PPC Associates)
4 Social SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Social SEO is the meshing of social media marketing and SEO, two disciplines that overlap much more than some marketers believe. Four pitfalls to avoid when using them in tandem are: 1) using social media as an advertising vehicle, 2) assuming social profiles will replace your website, 3) expecting overnight success and 4) targeting the wrong audience. (Search Engine People)
Dear Facebook: Where’s Our Cut? Love, Your Users
“By my calculation, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, owes me about $50.” Facebook is built by user-generated content. Is it time for social sites to pay its users for their content, while earning money off that content via advertising? (NYTimes.com)
Find New Keywords: Simplified Keyword Research
Find New Keywords is a new campaign feature from SEOmoz. “With this feature, you can view keywords sending you organic search traffic, filter on your brand rules, and determine if you want to track them in your campaign.” (SEOmoz)
Facebook Likely to Reject Traditional Mobile Ad Types
Facebook understands the importance of monetizing its mobile users. The most likely format the company will go with is Sponsored Stories, while interstitial ads and mobile banner ads are very unlikely. (Inside Facebook)
My Short Life as a Facebook Advertiser
This short-lived Facebook advertisers shares his experience with the social networks ads. He spent $72.80 to get 182,901 ad views and 26 clicks. (Bloomberg)
7 Ways to Lower Your Site’s Bounce Rate
Bounce rate — the percentage of visitors that come to your page and don’t go to any others in the same site – is the enemy of every site. Here are seven ways to battle it: 1) be mindful of ad placement; 2) lazy-load third-party content; 3) contrast is key; 4) clean, accessible navigation; 5) an immediately obvious message; 6) no distractions; and 7) a responsive layout. (Mashable)
Facebook: 1 of Every 5 Page Views in the U.S.
According to Hitwise, Facebook accounts for one of every five page views online in the U.S. “Furthermore, in terms of engagement, the average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes, and breakdown of male to female in Facebook’s visitors, shows that the social network is more popular among women, as 57 percent of its traffic for the last 3 months, ending January 28th, came from the ladies.” (TechCrunch)
Facebook’s $5 Billion IPO
Facebook filed for its long-awaited initial public offering Wednesday. The social networking giant is looking to raise $5 billion in initial funding. The most recent estimate for its price per share was $29.73 on Dec. 31. Among the interesting tidbits of information in Facebook’s IPO filing were that Zynga accounted for about 12 percent of Facebook’s revenue, there are 845 million active users on the site and Mark Zuckerberg owns 28 percent of the company. (Reuters, TechCrunch, Wired.com)
Mobile Ads up 981% With Apple, 759% With Android
According to inneractive, mobile ad clicks grew 711 percent in 2011, while ad revenues surged 522 percent. Ad requests on the Apple iOS platform rose 981 percent last year, while requests on Android grew 759 percent. (The Next Web)
The Guide to LinkedIn Ads
Here’s part one of a series on LinkedIn ads. It covers the basics, including who should advertise on LinkedIn, who sees LinkedIn ads and the anatomy of a LinkedIn ad. (KISSmetrics)
How Targeting People Will Change Paid Search
“Google’s privacy policy revisions and the continued expansion of Google+ are part of a nascent, but important, trend in paid search: targeting ads to people, not just search queries.” Here’s an overview of relevance, interests, conversations, relationships and controlling data. (Search Engine Watch)
‘Groundhog Day’ for Email Marketers
Email marketers find themselves in the shoes of Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” where he relives Groundhog Day over and over until he recognizes his faults. In the same way, email marketers are ever “performing the same action over and over, but expecting different results each time.” (ClickZ)
