YouTube Is Looking For The Next Vlogging Star

YouTube is announcing a new program to nurture the next generation of video bloggers.

The Next Vlogger initiative is part of YouTube Next Creator — where, as the name implies, the site tries to find and mentor future YouTube stars. It already held similar programs for cooking and fitness, as well as nonprofits.

Creative program manager Austin Lau says he’s looking for vloggers who have already “put in some time trying to make YouTube work” and built a following, but who aren’t quite top-tier stars. The winners will receive $5,000 worth of video equipment and $10,000 worth of promotion on YouTube and elsewhere. They’ll participate in educational workshops with Google+, and they’ll receive mentorship from “top vloggers” like Justine Ezarik, a.k.a. iJustine.

Ezarik tells me that she sees this as an extension of the mentorship that she’s already doing through her show Vlog University. She’s hoping to offer a range of advice, technical and non-, she’s even open to working on collaborative videos.Ezarik has parlayed her YouTube stardom into assorted TV appearances, so she says she’s often asked whether YouTube leads to bigger things. Clearly it can, but she adds, “I think YouTube itself is actually a pretty big thing.”

Once the Next Vlogger program is complete, Lau says he’s hoping the participants, in addition to becoming super-famous, will serve as “ambassadors to the greater YouTube community,” who share what they’ve learned. Lau also says the vloggers could be well-placed to participate in “opportunities not necessarily available to greater public,” like YouTube’s Partner program.

You can apply for the Next Vlogger program here.

Bookmark It: Bliss Control, A One-Stop Shop For Updating Your Social Network Profile Settings

I’m interrupting your tech news flow to tell you about a nifty little tool you’ll probably want to bookmark for later. It’s called Bliss Control, and it comes from the same folks that brought you the email notifications management utility called Notification Control (and seriously – check that one out, too, if you get too many social media updates in via email. Inbox savior!). 

Expanding on the simple use case of its predecessor, Bliss Control also provides a one-stop-shop for managing various aspects of your online accounts. Except this time, instead of providing a link list that connects you with the right page on websites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, YouTube, Foursquare and more where you can disable email notifications, this new service provides a single directory of links to manage all your other social media settings.The utility has an interface that seems very much inspired by IFTTT, with a straightforward layout, big buttons and black-and-white text.With just a couple of  clicks, you can choose one of many settings from across the social web, including things like “change profile picture,” “change password,” “change email,” “change 3rd party permissions,” and more. You then click on the icon to pick the service where you want to make the change.

At launch, Bliss Control supports: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Path, Flickr, Meetup, StumbleUpon, Foursquare, Google+ and Instagram.To be clear, the service doesn’t require your login information to work, it only points you to the right settings page on the appropriate website.Like Notification Control, Bliss Control isn’t providing anything you couldn’t do from any of these web services themselves. The beauty here is that it organizes all the links on one page, allowing you to quickly perform the updates without having to search around for the right settings area from site to site. That’s especially useful because when you go to make a change – like a new profile photo or email address – you often want to make that change everywhere across the web. This speeds up the process by providing a centralized place for your efforts. Nothing to it.

A centralized settings resource may seem like a meh utility to some of you, but it’s one that generated a lot of interest when it originally launched. I mean people were shouting, thank god for this thing! But maybe some of us just have too many web accounts, huh? I guess I’m also a sucker for a handy little, bookmarkable utility like this, I have to admit. (And so’s your mom, so please let her know.) The service was created by Ben Lang, who just left San Francisco to serve in the Israeli army in two weeks, and Alex Wolkov. Ben, who previously teamed up with Tim Kendall on the earlier email service, also gives a special thanks shoutout to Tim on the new website, too.

DIY SEO Startup BrandYourself Has Nearly 6,000 Sign-Ups

BrandYourself made the famous startup pivot earlier this month, and now it’s sharing some data about the initial results.The company started out as a way for people to control the impression they made online, both through search results and on social networks. It even recommended articles that you could read and share in your chosen subject area. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron says his team eventually realized that the approach was “too much,” and that “the one BIG thing people loved about us was helping them improve their search results.”

So the new version of BrandYourself pares away all the other features, focusing exclusively on your personal search results. In both cases, BrandYourself pitches itself as a more affordable, DIY alternative to a service like Reputation.com. Instead of hiring someone to improve your results and paying them thousands of dollars, you can just log in to the BrandYourself dashboard, submit the links that you want to show up more prominently in your results, and get recommendations on how to improve their placement (for example, it recommended that I connect my personal website to a BrandYourself profile page, and also include my name in the text of the website). BrandYourself also tracks whenever the rankings change. You can get free recommendations on three links — after that you have to pay for premium membership, with pricing that starts at $9.99 per month.
Ambron says the new version of BrandYourself launched on March 8, and that 5,870 people have signed up since then. And of those sign-ups, 154 of them became paying members. In comparison, the old product saw about 15,000 sign-ups in the course of a year.
Oh, and this isn’t a business win, but it’s nice recognition: BrandYourself won the Best Bootstrapped Startup award at the South by Southwest Startup Accelerator earlier this week.

Why Google’s Plan To Make Maps Pay For Itself Could Backfire

Google was once satisfied to have its satellite products, like Maps, drive goodwill among startups and create new exposure to their users. But now we’ve heard Google’s new plan is to make these products self-sufficient. It’s begun charging high-volume users of its Maps APIs. Companies like Foursquare and Apple are balking at the price hike and looking to strategically reduce reliance on Google, so they’re switching to OpenStreetMap.

This short-term revenue play could turn into a long-term disaster because OpenStreetMap users have to contribute the improvements they make to its data, so one day it could become better than Google Maps. And who’ll be next to bail on Google’s API? Yelp comes to mind.
The Google Maps API used to be free, as it was trying to gain popularity and displace MapQuest and Yahoo. At the beginning of March it began charging anyone pulling over 25,000 page loads a day $4, $8, or $10 per additional 1,000 loads, and also now offers Premier Tier. Foursquare and Apple jumped ship, plenty of other big companies might do the same. With it now publicly traded, investors could push Yelp to switch to a free alternative.

Digtal Trends published some great background and analysis on the maps industry this morning. It explains how Foursquare is using a company called MapBox to improve data it pulls from OpenStreetMap, while Apple might use acquired companies including C3 Technologies to add 3D graphics.
This is where Google’s long-term problem emerges. OpenStreetMap, or OSM, is totally free at any volume, but if users improve its data on their own, they have to contribute those improvements back to OSM. If someone augments OSM with satellite, street view, reviews, or other mashups, everyone’s maps benefit. As more big maps users switch to it, it will get better and better, creating a snowball effect where it gets more attractive with time.
While Google has the best maps right now, these contributions mean it might not stay that way. Like crowdsourced Wikipedia usurped traditional encyclopedias, the same could happen with maps. One day even low-volume free clients might switch to OpenStreetMap and end users might prefer it. This could hurt Android, which is Google’s future. The search and ads giant has plenty of ways to make money. Charging for the Google Maps API seems like a wrong turn.

50 Ways to Get More People to Like your Facebook Page

I hope you enjoy this post about 50 Ways to Get More People to “Like” your Facebook Page, and if you do I would really appreciate it if you share these tips with your friends, and join the FanpageFlow Facebook page.


Here are 50 more tips:

1. Post a Status Update

Post a status update mentioning your facebook page.

Don’t be afraid to outright ask people to join your facebook page.  Ask and you shall receive.

Give them a great reason why they should join, tell them news, or find a creative way to mention and link to your page:


2. Get fans to upload and tag photos

If you host (or attend) an event with several of your fans take a bunch of pictures, post them to your page, and then ask your friends to tag themselves in the pictures.

If you can get your fans to upload pictures to your page, or tag themselves in pictures you uploaded, this will post to their walls as well and will lead to additional traffic for you.

3. Offer an incentive for people to sign up

Using custom iframes you can create a dynamic facebook landing page with a “reveal tab” that contains content that is visible only to fans of your page.

The more valuable your incentive is, the more people will be compelled to click the “Like” button to access it.

Examples of exclusive content could be: An exclusive Video, an exclusive whitepaper/.pdf, exclusive pictures.

The image below shows different levels of increasing effectiveness for acquiring new fans.

Involver offers apps (and several of them are totally free) that make it easy to create a “Fan Gate” containing incentives, like a file or coupon, that will cause more people to “Like” your page.

4. Contact admins of groups related to your page

Groups are more powerful than pages in terms of their messaging ability. Pages send updates, but groups send messages directly to a users facebook inbox, triggering an email alert.

If you contact the admin of a facebook group with some valuable content that adds value to their readers then this can help them nurture their community and help you build yours.

5. Get people to join your page via SMS

Send a text message to 32665 (FBOOK) with the words “fan yourusername” OR “like yourusername” (without the quotes).

This feature is ideal when you’re in front of a live audience.

6. Install a page Badge


Facebook Badges are a simple, yet effective way to link to your facebook profile.

Unlike widgets, badges are simply images, and will load much faster.

7. Install a facebook “Like Box” into your site

Installing a “Like Box” is an excellent way to allow visitors to your site become fans without even leaving your page.

The like box builder tool makes it easy to customize the size of your like box, the number of connections to display, and even the color scheme.

Shown in the image below is the rarely used “dark” color scheme.


8. Use status tagging

Status tagging is a cool and fairly new feature of facebook.

This feature allows you to tag any page or person by entering the @ sign and then typing the name of the page or person you want to tag.


9. Suggest your page to friends

Use the “suggest to friends” feature of your page. Use this feature sparingly. Personally, I try to only invite people go my page once because I know it annoys me when multiple people invite me.



If you have many friends you might want to consider using the “invite all” Google chrome extension, rather than clicking hundreds or thousands of times.

10. Install a Like Button into your site

Installing a like button allows visitors to like your page, and when they do this posts the their activity stream.

This can send more traffic to your site and if you have a facebook “Like Box” and other content promotion your fan page, since this will help you convert your visitors into fans.

11. Connect your page to Twitter

Connecting your page to Twitter is an excellent way to convert your twitter followers into facebook fans.

Using this strategy will cause all of your posts to be sent to twitter, with a link back to the facebook version of the post.

www.facebook.com/twitter

12. Link to Your Page as  a Place of Employment

The info box uner profile pictures is being phased out, so now if you want an omnipotent link on your profile to your page you will need to list your Page under employment.  Once you do this your Facebook Page will appear under your name on your Profile.

13. Install commenting on your landing page

This will allow people to comment on your page, even if they are not a fan.

Any comments made can broadcast to news feeds and lead to more traffic to your page.

Setting up facebook commenting requires registering a facebook application, so act on this tip with caution unless you are comfortable with code.

14. Leverage Traditional Media

Since facebook is so widespread you can use any forms of traditional media and achieve results.

Newspapers, Media Buys, Radio, and TV all work, but are often very costly.

To maximize your promotion offer a free gift to those who join you page.

15. Newsletter Promotion

If you do email marketing send a message to your subscribers letting them know about your fan page and consider including a link to your fan page in every email.

16. Email Signature

Every email you send is an opportunity to link to your facebook page.

Check out the email signature tool wisestamp for a creative way to link to your social profiles.

17. Get business cards promoting your Facebook page

Business cards are cheap.

You can get 500 business cards from Vista Print for $1.99.

For this minimal investment you can get up to 500 new fans for your page!

Throw a link on your card and people will almost certainly check it out.

If you’re pressed for space in your design all page urls can be shortened from facebook.com to fb.me, or fb.com.

For example, www.facebook.com/fbflow, www.fb.me/fbflow, and www.fb.com/fbflow all point to the same page.

18. Fiverr


Fiverr is an online marketplace where services are sold for five bucks.

Check out their “Social Marketing” and “Advertising” section and here you will find some people who are willing to suggest your page to 5,000 of their friends for just $5.

You will need to make the person who will suggest your page to their friends an admin in order for them to do this for you, but if you are willing to place your trust in someone to do this and they come through for you this will allow you to pick up dozens if not hundreds of new fans.

19. Create a Landing Page with Static FBML


By creating a custom landing tab for your facebook page you can increase the conversion of visitors to fans.

Check out my post on customizing your page with static fbml for a tutorial explaining exactly how to set a custom welcome tab up.

20. Run a “fans only” contest

An excellent way to run a fans only contest is using wildfireapp.

There are rules and regulations around running a contest on facebook so be sure to check out the facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (“Statement”) before you run one.

21. Link to your page from your profile

Edit your Facebook profile information to include promotion for your Fan Page.

At the bottom of the info section of your profile you can include links to any websites you are affiliated with.

The more links you can build to your Page, the more traffic you will be able to send to your Facebook Fan Page. I am constantly seeking new opportunities to build links that will send traffic to my Fan Page.

22. Blog Commenting

Comment on blogs and in the website section use a link to your fan page.

23. Link to your facebook page from your linkedin profile

Linkedin gives every user three slots for links to whatever you’d like right on your profile.

You can make the anchor text of these links whatever you like, so I recommend using a call to action such as: Join my facebook page.

24. Upload video to facebook

Facebook video is very underrated, and exceptionally powerful.

When you embed a facebook video on another website this video includes a watermark link in the top left corner to the fan page it came from.

25. Watermark your videos with a link to your website

Using a video editing program include a link to your website.

I use camtasia to add my watermarks, and to record any screencast I create, and this program comes with a free 30 day trial.

26. Create a memorable URL

If you go to facebook.com/username you will be able to create a custom URL for your page.

Remember that this cannot be changed once it is set, so choose wisely.

27. Deliver an exceptional experience

Although facebook pages are no longer officially considered “fan pages” if you work to create fans of your brand many of them will certainly seek out and join your facebook page.

Strive to deliver an awesome experience for those who interact with your brand. Go above and beyond when engaging with your community and they will spread the word.

A famous article called 1,000 true fans maintains that they are all you need to create a thriving business. Don’t try just to get people to click “like” but instead seek to create raving true fan who will spread your word far and wide.

28. Link it up

This tip comes from @garyvee and it’s a good one: link it up!

Hyperlinks are what weave the web together so use them often and every time you do you are opening up another gateway into your fan page.


29. Flip the funnel

Drive your fans back to your website for new blog posts.

Make sure that your blog has social sharing and many of your fans will “like” your blog posts and tweet it out to their followers on twitter as well.

30. Track your growth with Facebook insights

Facebook insights shows you how many fans you have over time, and some fairly detailed demographic information as well.

Using this knowledge you can analyze what activities drive the most growth, and then duplicate your success.

31. Analyze your demographics with insights

Facebook demographics are a powerful feature of insights that allows you to determine the gender and age of the people in your page.  Once you know this information you can focus your content to appeal to the age group and gender of your fans.

Here is the demographic information of the FacebookFlow fan page:


32. Talk and Blog about your page

Word of mouth does not start itself. Get the conversation going by mentioning your facebook page in blog posts and in every day conversation.

33. Learn more about Facebook

The more you know about facebook the more you can use this knowledge to drive the gowth your community.

To learn more about facebook enroll in our FREE facebook ecourse.

34. Drive more traffic to your website

Use these tips to get more free traffic to your website. Make sure that your “Like Box” is featured prominently, and plenty of this traffic will “Like” your page.

35. Produce Epic Content

If your blog content is epic this will drive the growth of your page in a serious way.

Epic content has the best chance of going viral and if a blog post goes viral this also causes it to move up in the rankings in Google, leading to even more traffic, a percentage of which will convert to fans.

36. Install a like button into your posts

Installing a like button into your posts will help drive extra traffic to your posts and it will also show that facebook is an integral part of your brand.

If you have a self hosted wordpress blog I recommend installing the WP FB Like plugin.

The more you can integrate facebook with your site the more likely people will be to join your facebook page.
37. Make a Facebook like sign

Blue Sky Factory created a  Facebook “Like” sign tool that you can use to create a cool image that will help promote your facebook page.


38. Buy Them

Although I do not recommend this option, there are several services out there that sell facebook likes.

The first 1,000 fans are usually the hardest to get so a service like this might help you get the critical mass needed to get more genuine organic fans.
39. Run a targeted ad campaign

Facebook advertising is exceptionally powerful due to the ability it offers to hyper target your market.

Facebook ads can be targeted based on age, location, and interests.
40. Turn your customers into fans

If someone likes you enough to buy your product then there is a good chance that they will like you on facebook as well.

Rig up your “thank you” page with a facebook “Like Box” and you’ll be good to go!

41. Advertise your page

The more you advertise your page the more fans you will be able to achieve.

Facebook advertising s a smart way to promote since you can target specific demographic and interest groups.

You will need a sales funnel in place in order to justify an advertising budget and I recommend setting this up prior to advertising on Facebook.

When I signed up for my Hosting account with GoDaddy I was able to get a free Facebook advertising coupon for $50 and I believe they are still offering this promotion.

42. Use Hootsuite to manage your page


By using Hootsuite to manage your facebook pages you can maximize engagement by scheduling your posts ahead of time to go out when they will get the most attention.

Facebook posts get the most engagement early in the morning and a few hours before bed.

43. Get an attractive profile picture

A picture says a thousand words, so to really optimize your business page you should use the largest profile picture possible.

Currently the maximum profile picture size is 200 x 600 pixels.

44. Do a “fan of the month” promotion

By highlighting one of your best fans every month you indirectly encourage fans to engage more, so that they can win the coveted fan of the month title the next month.

Offer a monthly prize, such as a cool free product or service related to your brand, and the competition for this title will only increase.

45. Message your friends and ask them to join

This tried and tested method takes more ground work, but this method will allow you to build relationships and target the friends that you think are the most relevant to your page.

46. Include a link to your fan page in your forum signature

If you are active in any forums you will have the option to attach a “signature” to every post that you write.

Throw a link in your signature to your facebook page, and it will be clicked.

Do your best to add value and answer questions with your posts, and people will be more inclined to click your link and join your page.

A link with a call to action is more likely to get clicked than a link alone, so go with “Join my Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/fbflow” instead of simply: “www.facebook.com/fbflow”

47. Create a redirect URL

Creating a redirect to your facebook fan page is one way to “presell” the people who click it on joining your page.

For example, if your link is: www.yourdomain.com/joinmyfacebookpage anyone who clicks it will probably join your page.

Here is an article on how to redirect a webpage.

https://www.facebook.com/BrainstormTechnologies

48. Give away fan page swag

Websites like Zazzle make it easy for people to customize swag, such as the nifty “you like this” t-shirt below.

If you gave away shirts (or mugs, or stickers) like this with your facebook url included you could easily amass an army of walking billboards for your facebook page.

49. Find more facebook friends

The more friends you have, the better your chances will be that some of these friends will join your fan page.

Facebook has a “Find Your Friends Tool” that allows you to import your contact list from a variety of email clients, or an email list.

This tool also displays “People you may know” which I have found is very good at suggesting people that have many mutual friends as me.

50. Share this article with your facebook friends

If you share this post with your facebook friends and it will become obvious to them that getting more fans important to you, and if you have included a link to your facebook page in your info box or the “Website” section of your website there is a good chance that they will click it.
Feedback

Your Average Facebook Post Only Reaches 16% Of Your Friends

You’re not unpopular, it’s just the nature of the news feed. Amongst all the business-related news at FMC, Facebook revealed that the average news feed story from a user profile reaches just 16 percent of their friends. Your actively shared links, photos, and status updates probably reach much higher than 16 percent of your friends, while more inane auto-generated posts about new friendships, wall posts, and articles you read may only be seen by your closest buddies.
Overall, this is actually a good thing, because the reduced visibility of irrelevant content makes room for what you want to see. But don’t be alarmed if all your friends don’t like that awesome concert photo, they may just be offline.
After his Q&A session about ads during the Facebook Marketing Conference, I followed up with Boland, asking if the 16 percent average distribution rate hampered communication. He defended Facebook’s news feed, saying “No, there are pieces of content you create that are interesting, and there’s some that are not.” And the 16 percent doesn’t just apply to users. Business Pages have the same average reach, which is why Facebook is launching its new “Reach Generator” to help marketers buy extra distribution of their Page posts on the ads sidebar, in the web and mobile news feed, and even on the logout page.
The stat from Director of Product Marketing Brian Boland was backed up by VP Chris Cox who said this holds true “in aggregate across all profiles, all types of content, all interactions, all ages, and all demographics.” By reducing the reach of low relevance posts, Facebook leaves news feed space for compelling wedding photos, new job announcements, funny videos, and urgent questions. Still, it means the ambient intimacy of the news feed can’t completely replace the reliability for direct communication.

How to Promote your BRAND on Social Media

One of the most important considerations in a company's social media campaigns is to provide a consistent brand image across different platforms. Ben Norman, Managing Director of digital marketing agency, Koozai, gives advice on how to go about this.
Social media is a huge subject area and all manner of issues arise when considering how to carry out an effective campaign. For example, you need to decide which of the many platforms to use, how to get them to feed into each other and how often to use them.
However, one thing is essential to a successful social media campaign, and that is your brand. Or, more accurately, brand consistency. In this article, I want to share some specific tips for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn, that you can take away and implement today.

Branding consistency

It is important to keep branding consistent across your website and tie together all your social media properties to ensure a consistent message is portrayed. This is essential to ensure that when the different properties are viewed that they are recognized as being connected to the company that you are promoting.
If you are running a Facebook and Twitter profile for your brand, for instance, the design skins need to match each other. A good way to achieve this is to ensure that you have clear brand guidelines in place that all members of your team and suppliers can adhere to.
This may seem a simple enough thing to achieve, but many companies, time after time, continue to get it wrong.
So, how can you ensure that you portray your brand consistently across the different platforms? Easy. Just follow the advice below.
When setting up and using social properties for the first time there are many different steps to follow to make sure your campaigns are as on message as possible. Setting up the platforms in a non-consistent way will only limit your chances of making social media a successful marketing channel for your business.

Points for all platforms

1) Use the same username on all of the profiles, preferably your company name. If you are unable to get your company name try to be creative and find something that works for you.
2) Use a good quality logo for the main image/avatar on each platform (PNG image files tend to work well and retain their quality).
3) Write unique bios and include a link back to your main company website.
4) Write in the same style and tone as you do on your main website.
5) Portray your company ethos and represent your brand throughout.
6) Before putting anything live, get the copy proofed so there are no silly mistakes.
7) Have one person dedicated to managing all company social media accounts.
8) Do not let your social properties sit dormant! If you have them, you need to use them frequently or you will quickly lose followers.

Twitter

Twitter is a fantastic platform to use to integrate into your industry and push your brand. Over time, if used correctly, you will be seen and recognized as an expert in your field and this can be extremely valuable to a brand.
When you first consider using Twitter, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. In certain industries, it may not be the right platform and there is no point setting up a profile and then not using it. If you won’t have useful things to say or share every day, then don’t use Twitter.
Another useful aspect of Twitter is that it enables you to connect with prospective customers and partners quickly. Whether you want to communicate with potential buyers as an encouragement to make a purchase, or provide ongoing support for existing customers, it can be an invaluable tool.
Via Tweetdeck and Hootsuite you can set up useful search filters which pull in all mentions of your brand across the platform, ensuring that you can reach out to potential customers quickly and deal with any negative press you may receive.
Here are five of my top tips to use on Twitter:
1) Get a Twitter handle (username) that is your company name. If the name is already taken by another user and your company name is trademarked, you can approach Twitter and try to get it back (see this State of Search article for more information).
2) If you have a company blog, get it set up to automatically post to Twitter by installing a plugin (Wordpress Tweet Button or Twitterfeed, for example. This will ensure your profile is regularly updated with content you want to push.
3) Interact with followers on Twitter and follow relevant users back.
4) Push any positive feedback by re-tweeting and engage in the conversation if you can.
5) Deal with negative tweets appropriately so others can see that you are trying to put it right.   At Koozai, we have taken the approach to have a dedicated company account but we also have accounts for each employee within the team. This has allowed us to grow our brand online quickly as all members of the team are helping to push messages about the brand and our services.
If you decide to take this route, the employee Twitter handles should contain the company name along with the employee’s name. For example, my Twitter handle is @Koozai_Ben. Wordtracker's is @Wordtracker

Facebook page

Facebook is a very good place for you to push the ethos of your brand in a fun and social environment. You can also use it to communicate business updates and developments in a non-corporate environment. And it allows you to educate and keep fans of your page up to date with what your company is doing.
A lot of tips below can be used across all the social media platforms, but here are six that are specific to Facebook:
1) Rather than using the normal Facebook page design and layout, create something that is unique to you. However, make sure it mirrors your website and other social properties and that your logo appears so it can be used as a thumbnail.
2) Check that the thumbnail image of your logo is displayed correctly in posts. Some logos don’t fit well into the small square and half the logo gets cut off so always good to check this and amend where possible.
3) Add relevant company pictures and videos to the page. If you have company events, photos are good to get across the social side of your company.
4) Populate the About Us section with relevant information about your company and be sure to include mentions of the brand name throughout.
5) Track and respond to all comments and keep an eye on who “likes” your content as they can be useful in promoting future items.
6) Users of Facebook get frustrated with companies that post excessively, so keep this to a minimum. Once per day should be ample for Facebook, unless you have a flood of major announcements.

YouTube

If you have videos or are planning to make them for your brand, YouTube is a platform that you should definitely be utilizing. You can show your brand as an authority in your niche and you will find that there are not many companies using YouTube in the correct manner.
And as video tends to have a higher perceived value than other forms of marketing such as audio and print you can really show your brand as a thought leader.
1) Ensure that the quality of your videos is high and audio is clear.
2) Video length should vary – we have everything from 60 seconds to 20 minutes.
3) Include links to your main company site and a call to action at the end of videos.
4) Utilize the channel description as a way to drive visitors back to your main website.
5) When logged into your account, go to the Channel Settings and switch to ‘Player Mode’. This is the newer layout and allows users to see and select your existing channel and new videos.
6) Update the Title and Meta tags for your channel using the Settings functionality in YouTube.
7) Post transcripts with your videos (this is a legal requirement, but very few people do it).   Uploading videos to YouTube can be time-consuming so I wouldn’t recommend doing this on a daily basis. Fortnightly should be sufficient for YouTube.

Google+ Pages

Google+ is similar to Facebook and Twitter in many ways; but it is a very high profile social platform that has a strong effect on rankings and is gaining traction fast, so should not be forgotten.
You can set up a company profile on Google+ and it allows you to add links off to your other social profiles. To verify your Google+ page, you need to link to it off your main company website and this is a step that a lot of businesses are not aware of.
1) Be sure to populate all possible fields to give your page the best chance of showing up in the search engines.
2) Create circles of people so that you can communicate messages to certain groups easily.
3) Link to your other social profiles, not forgetting your own website.
4) Verify your account by adding a link on your main site.
5) Post photos in a similar way to Facebook.
6) Add useful content daily.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most widely used social network for businesses and individuals in businesses and can be a great sales tool if used in the correct way. You should set up a company profile on LinkedIn and also get your employees to set up a personal account if they don’t already have one.
1) For the company profile, complete all fields that are offered to you to ensure that your page looks professional.
2) Get your employees to link to the company profile from their personal accounts.
3) Encourage employees to add links to your main company website with relevant anchor text.
4) Senior members of the team should have Premium Accounts as it allows to you track who has viewed your profiles. This is great for a sales team as they can get in touch with prospective customers.
5) Employees can link their company Twitter accounts to automatically post on LinkedIn.

Automatic updates

Now that your social properties are set up you need to ensure that they are populated on a regular basis. This doesn’t have to be as daunting or as time consuming as you may think.
There are tools available that allow you to automatically push content to Twitter and Facebook. One tool that I can recommend is Twitter Feed, as mentioned above, which is a free and easy to use tool.

Post frequency and cross usage

Many people set up social platforms and lose interest very quickly, leaving the properties to sit with no new content or updates. This will be more damaging than not having a profile at all.
When users find a property that hasn’t been updated for a long time it can cause them to question whether the brand is still in existence. It is very important to keep profiles up to date so having someone in the team dedicated to this task can be beneficial.
I recommend the following updating frequency to get the most out of your social platforms:

Platform	Frequency
Facebook	Daily
Twitter	Multiple times per day
YouTube	Fortnightly
Google+	Daily
LinkedIn	Daily

If you follow the above it should help to ensure that your social media campaigns are successful and that when people come across your different profiles they will have no problem associating them with your website and brand.

173 General Truths of SEO

General truths

1) Information is powerful - but it is how we use it that will define us
Avinash Kaushik
2) Experiment or die!
Avinash Kaushik

SEO

3) The only survey you should run on your site should be based on task completion rate. Ask visitors: why are you here? Were you able to complete your task? If not, why not?
Avinash Kaushik
4) The top 50 ecommerce companies only convert 2% of all their visitors. But don't optimize only for the 2% who convert - optimize for the rest as well. Make sure visitors want to come back.
Avinash Kaushik
5) SEO should not be just about rankings and traffic but conversions.
Lisa Myers, Verve Search
6) Search engines use 200 factors to rank including title tags, alt tags, url structure, and on page text. Even Google's engineers don't know the definitive ranking factors.
Judith Lewis, Seshet
7) Eyetracking - test different images and/or text color to change where your viewers are looking. Track with eyetracking software.
Judith Lewis
8) Optimize images using appropriate keywords.
Judith Lewis
9) Choose a content management system that creates clean URLs without multiple variables and with keywords included.
Judith Lewis
10) Have your most important content at the top of the page.
Judith Lewis
11) If using Javascript includes or AJAX use progressive enhancement to ensure that your content is visible
Judith Lewis
12) Make your site crawlable, visible and well-structured.
Judith Lewis
13) Lots of sites already rank for 'click here' - don't use the phrase in your linking text.
Judith Lewis
14) If you want to steal something from a brand you're competing with, optimize around the brand term eg Eurostar weekend breaks. Searching for that term at one time didn't present the Eurostar site in the top 10 Google search results. (It does now.)
Judith Lewis
15) Go for high search volume/low competition keywords - the undesirables are low search volume/high competition.
Judith Lewis
16) Optimal keyword density - there's no magic number. Ignore all the theories, just make your content readable.
Judith Lewis
17) An acronym to remember: SPAM - sites positioned above mine :0)
Chris Boggs via an unknown participant of Threadwatch 2005 (?)
18) Retail sites should measure the number of unique keywords being used to enter their sites because it's an indicator of whether they're optimizing holistically to rank for lots of different keywords.
Chris Boggs
19) Financial services companies should look at how many searchers are coming into their branch locator pages. And what the user's path is after that entry.
Chris Boggs
20) Offline drives online - very important
Judith Lewis@judithlewis
21) SEO must constantly evolve. The next big thing SEOs are talking about is also being seen by Google. They'll make sure it's not working as well in six months' time. And then the next big thing comes along...
Ammon Johns
22) Have a dedicated page per search phrase full of related unique text.
Peter Van Der Graaf
23) Don't just read blogs about SEO - try stuff out and see if it works.
Jonathan Stewart
24) Advanced operators like intext, intitle and inurl are powerful research tools.
Jonathan Stewart
25) Find out what your spammy competitors are up to, make it white hat and use their methods yourself.
Jonathan Stewart
26) Carry out keyword research for the words who, what, where, why and how for content ideas.
Patrick Altoft
Or use Wordtracker's free Keyword Questions tool - Ed.
27) Prioritize your web pages by working out sum of keyword search volume on your pages.
Patrick Altoft
28) Vary the anchor text across all your keywords.
Patrick Altoft
29) The Alexa ranking tool is great for checking out your direct as well as indirect competitors.
Joel Davis

Analytics

30) Tracking page views = high quality garbage
Avinash Kaushik
31) HITS - How Idiots Track Success by concentrating too much on things like page view, engagement, and of course, website hits.
Avinash Kaushik
32) Don't just measure revenue - figure out the economic value of all your visits. Eg, visitors who order a catalogue but don't purchase anything. The catalogue will result in many more orders than one internet order - measure that!
Avinash Kaushik
33) Internet marketing is unlike traditional marketing in that it is a two way medium.
Avinash Kaushik
34) These are metrics you should care about:

• Conversation rate - does anybody care? What about the number of comments per post?
• Amplification rate - Avinash has 70,000 followers but those followers have 6.5 million people following them. Look at your forwards and reTweets.
• Applause rate - no. of favorites, no. of likes, no. of Google+ etc
• Economic value - sum of short and long term revenue and cost savings of social contributions.
  Avinash Kaushik

35) Understand, test, then be less wrong
Avinash Kaushik
36) Test for incrementality rather than try to do 900 things at once. Eg, test how much profit you earn by sending out: catalogue & email, then catalogue only, then email only, then no marketing at all to sections of your subscribers. This will help you understand the value of each of your channels.
Avinash Kaushik
37) Media mix modeling - what is the optimum mix of a company's spend? How should you allocate budget to search, content, YouTube, and Facebook?
Avinash Kaushik
11) Why/when to measure your SEO metrics:
Chris Boggs

• Reactively - following a loss of rankings, conversions, emails etc
• Proactively - when a new competitor appears on the market, to protect yourself an algorithm update or industry shift
  Chris Boggs

38) You should be measuring proactively but have a reactive plan
Chris Boggs
39) Make sure you link up Google analytics and Webmaster tools.
Kevin Gibbons
40) Break down your SEO campaigns into a scalable and measurable project plan by categorising site sections as adgroups to create content and link building SEO plans. Eg, look at road bikes in Jan: mountain bikes in Feb, Cycling clothing in Mar.
Kevin Gibbons
41) Forecast results: find your average position for your target organic keywords and build an SEO forecast to show the predicted value.
Kevin Gibbons
42) Carry out monthly reporting - weekly's too often, quarterly's too slow.
Will Critchlow
43) Discover problems before the reporting stage. Look at what the actions are and what's going wrong there before your results come in.
Will Critchlow
44) Start-up accounting - research your microconversions, do people love your stuff? Again - don't wait for the bad results to come in.
Will Critchlow
45) The ABC of analytics. Measure Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions
Yehoshua Coren, Analytics Ninja
46) If your analytics data looks wrong, it probably is
Yehoshua Coren

Landing page optimization

47) Learn how to sell face to face, and you'll learn how to optimize a landing page. Ask your best salesperson what's wrong with your page. Ask them what common objections they face before people will buy
Karl Blanks
48) Before you start writing a landing page, try buying the product yourself (with your own money). Start with a search and follow the process from keyword to sale. What obstacles do you have to overcome?
Karl Blanks
49) Don't create abstract personas. Write for actual customers that you actually know.
Karl Blanks
50) Find out why people aren't taking action. @KissInsights is a great way of finding out why your customers aren't buying. It takes 55 seconds to create a survey on your site (apparently)
Karl Blanks
51) The act of writing turns many geniuses into morons :) Write like you'd say it. Say your words out loud. Record yourself saying the words. Listen back. Do you sound like an idiot?
Karl Blanks
52) Get someone else to read out your copy. When they stumble, or when they don't understand, you know your writing's unclear.
Karl Blanks
53) Copywriting tip. Be concise.
Karl Blanks
54) A headline must make your reader want to read more
Karl Blanks
55) Landing page optimization. Make the first sentence short. Make it bold.
Karl Blanks
56) Include a risk-reduction strategy - such as a money-back guarantee
Karl Blanks
57) Q: What's the most important part of a landing page? A: The part that's not working at the moment
Karl Blanks
58) Optimizing for an immediate sale can be unwise. You should also consider the need to generate and nurture new leads.
Karl Blanks
59) Conversion optimization can give you bigger budget for SEO because you're pushing more people through the sales funnel, which gives you more revenue.
Stephen Pavlovich
60) Stickiness improves conversion optimization and is about engaging customers, even after they've converted.
Stephen Pavlovich
61) Awareness, consideration and purchase is the buying process: does your marketing and website capture and engage visitors during all three phases? (Not just the last two.)
Stephen Pavlovich
62) Your visitors' path through your website: Immediate (when they first see your site - you want them to stay there) - session (their path through it - you want them to buy something) - between sessions (they've left your site - you want to get them back) - conversion (they come back and buy something).
Stephen Pavlovich
63) Goals for your website should be - relevance, trust, appeal and clear action.
Stephen Pavlovich
64) Relevance - make it abundantly clear what your product is.
Stephen Pavlovich
65) Action - make it clear what to do next.
Stephen Pavlovich
66) Instil benefits and trust. One way to do this is to have a good strapline. Eg John Lewis' 'Never Knowingly Undersold.' And make sure the strapline's visible - don't hide it in the smallprint.
Stephen Pavlovich
66) Capture contact details so that you can market after their first visit to your site - offer a free trial, free guide or email price alerts.
Stephen Pavlovich
67) Increase stickiness by persuasion and usability.
Stephen Pavlovich
68) Expedia found that increasing the number of results returned when someone searched for a hotel also increased conversion.
Jeff Slipko
69) Images set expectations - but the picture has to be good.
Jeff Slipko
70) Have clear price displays - with a big, bright font and marketing message above it.
Jeff Slipko
71) Increase urgency - Expedia do it by saying that a hotel has been booked 33 times in the last hour or that there are only 5 rooms left.
Jeff Slipko
72) Streamline your checkout process - make it one page only if possible. And don't include links back into your site - keep your customer focused on buying.
Jeff Slipko
73) Transactional sites: focus on conversion - not time spent on your site.
Jeff Slipko
74) User experience - make it as easy as possible for them.
Jeff Slipko
75) Be transparent about what you are offering.
Jeff Slipko
76) Start by reading these 108 conversion tips
Karl Blanks

PPC

77) Use PPC research and competitor ranking data to find the full potential of your market.
Kevin Gibbons
78) Personalize your landing page for each visitor
Nathan Richter from Monetate
79) Make your message consistent, from the PPC ad through the landing page to the point of sale
Nathan Richter from Monetate
80) Don’t let your ad write cheques your site can’t cash!
Avinash Kaushik
81) Why invest in PPC? Because it works - your competitors are already doing it.
Duncan Parry, Steak Digital
82) PPC captures demand other forms of advertising - Eg, television - generate
Duncan Parry
83) PPC performance reflects consumer attitudes, which are different in different countries
Duncan Parry
84) Google had 93% of UK search engine market share in Jan 2012. Microsoft and Yahoo are stronger in the US than they are in the UK.
Duncan Parry
85) Yandex has 63% of the Russian search engine market and is partnering with Twitter, Baidu has 78% in China (government protected against Google, mind you).
Duncan Parry
86) Twitter has recently announced it's starting a self service advertising program in the US and rumour has it they will do in the UK in Q2 of 2012.
Duncan Parry
87) Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter ads don't and won't perform as well as search ads. It's worth looking at them, as long as your/your clients' expectations are lower.
Duncan Parry
88) Use search query reports in AdWords to help discover the negative keywords you should be using. (Keywords you don't want your ad to appear for.)
Duncan Parry
89) If an ad's doing too well, there may be something wrong. Don't just look at the clickthrough rate - look at the click to sale rate to double-check.
Duncan Parry
90) Think about your brand when you're writing a PPC ad - it may look spammy and may not be good for it.
Duncan Parry
91) Look at the structure of your website to help design the granular structure of your PPC account. (You need structure.)
Duncan Parry
92) You can target mobile and tablet in your PPC campaigns - there's a strong correlation between TV campaigns and these gadgets in the evenings, for example.
Duncan Parry
93) AdExtensions in Google AdWords are free to add and can show, eg show the number of Google+ clicks on a link; or call extensions (useful for takeaway restaurants).
Duncan Parry
94) Sitelinks in Google AdWords add additional links to ads in top positions. They're great for directing consumers to the right page in one click.
Duncan Parry

Link building

95) Diversity in link building is key. Use blog posts, press releases.
Judith Lewis
96) Google knows everything about your link building efforts. Do it organically and naturally or you'll be found out.
Judith Lewis
97) Link syndication - only try it if you already have lots of links.
Patrick Altoft, Brand3
98) Reciprocal links are good quality unless they come from a links page
Patrick Altoft
99) The easiest links to get are from people you already know: customers, suppliers, friends, bloggers
Patrick Altoft
100) Linkbait (eg a great infographic) is difficult to create, it's hard to control the anchor text you receive, and you'll only get links to your linkbait page.
Patrick Alto ft
101) If you make linkbait, email your contacts to let them know about it, don't just release it on social media
Patrick Altoft
102) Bad links can hurt sites and the only way you can recover is to remove the links and submit a re-inclusion request
Patrick Altoft
103) Identify the social influencers in your markets and find out where they live: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook?
Lisa Myers
104) Analyze the anchor text of the links to you and ask to have it changed if necessary
Lisa Myers
105) Link management is necessary, especially if there's more than one person in your company doing it. If only to stop you targeting the same person twice.
Lisa Myers
106) Don't build links without improving your website first.
Patrick Altoft
107) Find sites that have published similar content to yours, to target in your link building campaigns.
Patrick Altoft
108) 'Search by image' in Google. Put in an image url and you can find out which competitors published that image. They might be someone who wants to publish your infographic.
Patrick Altoft
109) The tag hreflang is extremely useful if you want to sell anywhere other than UK. There's more information at on hreflang on this blog post
Patrick Altoft
110) Hold a competition. They're good for links, social media integration and natural traffic.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen
111) Focus on the 'best' in your competition, eg most beautiful baby or coolest car. People can't resist joining in.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen
112) Make it easy for people to participate - just ask for name and email address and you'll get more participants. You can always get more details at a later stage.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen
113) Create a hitlist - people love them, especially if they're on them.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen
114) Post a link on Wikipedia even though it's nofollow. People will use that link on their own website where it might not be nofollow.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen

Social media

115) Have a qualified person doing your social media, and give them enough time to do it, but: automate the rest or the ROI will swallow you whole
Paul Madden
116) Facebook campaigns are difficult to automate. Concentrate on Twitter.
Paul Madden
117) Volume of updates on social media platforms: post no more than two a day on Facebook or people will get irritated. On Twitter post between 12 and 20 per account (you can have more than one account).
Paul Madden
118) Monitor relevant social campaigns of brands, direct competitors and large advertisers that mention your niche.
Marcus Tober
119) 'Hijack' large events eg the Superbowl, soccer matches, Academy Awards.
Marcus Tober
120) Retweet an influencer. If he retweets you back, you can gain a lot of followers.
Marcus Tober
121) Facebook marketing tends to require superb content and a complete social media strategy. Both are hard to come by when you're on a budget.
Marcus Tober
122) Topic hijacking is much harder in Facebook - posting on a brand's wall is not very effective.
Marcus Tober
123) Pinterest is the brand new and massive social media platform. Where Flickr meets Twitter.
Joel Davis
124) 5000 Dell employees have been trained in social media, and many of those are listening and engaging with customers
Joel Davis
125) Measure

• conversations
• source
• geo
• sentiment
• influentials
• text analysis
• content

126) Human analysis should account for 80-85% of social media measuring.
Joel Davis
127) The National Express website and Marks and Spencer are examples of great social engagement. Don't shout at your customers.
Avinash Kaushik
128) Social is not a sideshow anymore. It's not just Twitter, Facebook etc - it has a much deeper impact that will become more and more important.
Avinash Kaushik
129) Google+ may not be a ranking factor at the moment but it is a visibilty factor so don't ignore it
Judith Lewis
130) Branding: Give your blog a name. Give your email newsletter a name.
Sundeep Kapur
131) Choose several keywords that are critical to your business. Monitor them on Twitter. Use them in your Tweets.
Sundeep Kapur
132) Podcasts are much underused. Answer customers' questions - in bite-sized chunks. A great way of building a relationship with your customers.
Sundeep Kapur
133) Social media success relies on actionable headlines. WineEnthusiast.com ask their audience to choose the headline for the following days email
Sundeep Kapur

Social tools

134) Tools for monitoring social media, Strawberry Jam and Pearltrees
Andrew Girdwood
135) Use BufferApp.com to enhance your Twitter campaigns. It works out when the best time is to send your tweets.
Andrew Girdwood
136) Monitor cheaply and react quickly.
Andrew Girdwood
137) Strategy is better than shortcuts.Andrew Girdwood
138) Social Oomph - creates reservoirs of updates for various platforms and emails you when it runs out.
Paul Madden
139) dlvr.it - takes a feed, applies filters, posts to a network and is free
Paul Madden
140) Social Enhancer lets you export data from social campaigns to csv, xls etc. It pulls the data down to let you analyze it.
Paul Madden
142) If you're paying for a tool, use it!
Marcus Tober
143) Paid tools such as Radian6 SM2 Brandwatch and Sysomos are better than any of the free social media monitoring tools.
Joel Davis

Advertising tools

144) Outbrain is a related link widget for the bottom of your blog.
Andrew Girdwood
145) Tumblr for $1 lets you promote your product.
Andrew Girdwood
146) Luminate - lets publishers put ads on their pictures.
Andrew Girdwood
147) Skimlinks and Viglink are very useful affiliate tools.
Andrew Girdwood
148) XAd - advertising for mobile devices.
Andrew Girdwood
149) Guess which ads were more successful at Which test won and learn which ones will work for you in the process.
Dax Hamman
150) Use Canned banners to help create your own banner ads.
Dax Hamman

Retargeting/remarketing

151) Retargeting: determine the best time to remarket to your visitors. This might not be immediately (if, for example, you sell seasonal products)
@guylevine
152) Use lots of different designs to prevent banner burnout
@guylevine
153) Use frequency capping and ad scheduling settings to prevent over-exposure
@guylevine
154) Innovation: Ads with no call to action can be used to build your brand image. You got lots of views and low costs (but few clicks)
@guylevine
155) Create marketing lists that you want to convert at a particular time of year (eg, if you sell winter coats, annual car insurance, mobile contracts)
@guylevine
156) Don't be a stalker. Limit the number of views and the timeframe for your ads
Dax Hammond, @chango

Mobile and local

157) According to IBM, Black Friday 2011 saw 155% growth in the use of mobile purchasing between 2010 and 2011. 14% of purchases on that day were made using mobile devices.
Dan Patmore
158) John Lewis are very good at optimization for local search. Each of their branches has a page to itself and are linked to from the opening times websites that are springing up.
Dan Patmore
159) Richer Sounds makes great use of locally based offers.
Dan Patmore
160) >100% better clickthrough rate has been seen at times for mobile activity compared with traditional.
Dan Patmore
161) There are fewer ad spaces on mobile, therefore there will be much more aggressive competition.
Dan Patmore
162) Bear in mind what time of day your customers will be using their tablets (in the evening, in front of the tv perhaps?) and target campaigns accordingly.
Dan Patmore
163) Should tablets be treated as mobile, or as desktop? Testing campaigns are the only way to decide this. It may turn out that they need to be treated as a separate entity altogether.
Dan Patmore

Competitive analysis

164) Match the effort of the top positions or you'll not catch up
Peter Van Der Graaf
165) With tech and text you can only make 100% effort but you can have lots more than 100% by getting more links than your competitors.
Peter Van Der Graaf
168) Research your competitors in the top 10 (pick comparable samples) and examine their backlinks. (Wordtracker's Link Builder tool will help you do this.)
Peter Van Der Graaf
166) Find out what their link acquisition strategies are.
Peter Van Der Graaf

Duplicate content issues

167) Short term fixes are no good - address the issues first and then do the spring cleaning. A good way to start is by having a logical information architecture eg a travel site will have continent/country/city.
Sam Crocker
168) Create mapping and rewrite rules.
Sam Crocker
169) PPC landing pages, for example with different price structures. The first thing to ask yourself is why you need two pages. Noindex/follow or rel=canonical if you really need it.
Sam Crocker
170) How to investigate for duplicate content:
Sam Crocker

• Snippet test your own content from time to time.
• Create a script to automatically set up Google alerts for the first couple sentences of everything you publish.
• Monitor your server logs for traffic spikes and carefully block IPs if you spot a pattern.
• When all else fails, DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) them.
• For image theft use the Google 'search by image' as mentioned above. Replace the image with something silly to make them look like fools. :o)

171) There shouldn't be duplicate content on your mobile site, as it will (or should) probably target different keywords.
Sam Crocker
172) Same for international content. It should be optimized for that market - not a straight translation from the English. Hire a translator if it is a straight translation - don't automate it.
Sam Crocker
173) Check that copy you've commissioned isn't copied from the web with Copyscape and the like.
Ralph Tegtmeier, Fantomaster
Thanks to everyone for their contributions. We were blogging live, so please excuse any errors. :o)

Google’s Diversifying Display Ad Business Could Pass Facebook’s, eMarketer Guesses

Research firm eMarketer has put together a few interesting data points that show Google doing better in display ads than you might have realized. That is, by growing this business across properties and networks that it at some point acquired — YouTube, DoubleClick, and mobile (AdMob) — it’s set to pass Facebook’s own display business.

The social network had the highest online ad sales of any company in the U.S. last year, at $1.73 billion. But that was a mere $200 million or so above Google. This year, eMarketer expects a similar story, with Facebook bringing in $2.58 billion versus Google’s $2.54 billion. Things change in 2013 and 2014, further off from what the data can tell us accurately.

The firm thinks Facebook’s growth rate is going to plummet after this year, down to 13 percent in 2014, while Google’s is going to continue at nearly 50 percent through 2013 and still at nearly 30 percent in 2014.
I’m not ready to bet on that.
The estimates are based on publicly available documents from both companies, and other sources. On Google’s side, its earnings from last quarter indicated that its non-search ads were on track to reach $5 billion a year, or 12 percent of its total business. This is double what it brought in over the previous five quarters. YouTube is getting better and better at monetizing videos, Double Click is a market leader in online display ads, and AdMob has a strong position across mobile platforms. I agree it makes sense to be bullish about this part of Google’s business.
On Facebook’s side, eMarketer’s original estimate for its revenue had been $2.01 billion in the US, but Facebook’s S-1 filing proved this to be around 15 percent over what it actually was. The projections here read as if eMarketer feels burned by being so positive about last year. But the report manages to qualify itself in the event that Facebook revenue does in fact start to grow more quickly, by noting the potential benefits of newer advertising features like Sponsored Stories.

That’s the thing. Facebook’s ad business is still young, the company is fine-tuning all sorts of interesting features, and there are other ways that the business could see new growth, for example if Facebook launches a web-wide ad network that competes with Double Click and the rest of the online ad industry. 2013 and 2014 are a long ways off, and other numbers like traffic are looking fine.

Google Chrome Is Now Available For Android (And It’s Fantastic)

If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while.

Because Chrome just landed on Android.
It’s faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it’s also loaded with potential.
Google’s Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town, has long been strangely absent from Android. To be clear, Android has always shipped with a browser of its own — and it actually shares much of the same codebase with Chrome, including the V8 JavaScript engine. But next to the real Chrome, it’s a clear wannabe. After using it for a day, I really have no intention of using the older browser again.
Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, Chrome is only available for Android 4.0 and higher — which means the vast majority of Android users won’t be able to take advantage of it yet (devices that support 4.0 at this point include the Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, Xoom, and the Nexus S). Google says this was done in part because Chrome needs to take advantage of the hardware acceleration features that were introduced in the latest build of the OS. If you have a device that supports it, you can download it right here
.
So what makes Chrome great? Let’s take a look at the features.
The most obvious difference between Chrome and the stock Android browser is the UI.
For one, Chrome comes with the browser’s gray color scheme, rather than the ICS ‘Holo’ styling. Browsing through the app you’ll notice plenty of subtle effects that contribute to the browser generally feeling more polished. Tabs slide in when they open, and fade out when they’re closed, which helps you stay oriented in the app. The ‘all tabs’ button, which includes a number to indicate how many tabs you currently have open, pulls up a ‘stack’ of your open tabs that you can slide around to get a better look at the tab’s content before you actually open it.
Another nice touch: if Chrome notices you’re trying to tap an area that has a dense cluster of links (in other words, you might have trouble tapping the right one), it’ll launch a neat magnifying pane so that can you tap the one you want.
But the changes run far deeper than the UI. My favorite is the support for sync.

For some time now, the desktop versions of Chrome have allowed you to connect a Google account to your browser, allowing you to sync browser history, bookmarks, apps, autofill, and other data between multiple computers (in other words, if you have a laptop and a desktop machine, you can ensure they’re configured the same way). Now you can hook your Chrome mobile app to your Google account too, and it’ll sync much of the same data (it doesn’t autofill or apps yet, though).
The syncing feature comes with a neat trick: open up Chrome on your phone, and you can see a list of all of the tabs you currently have open on your computer’s copy of Chrome, which is awesome if you’re frequently having to email yourself directions or links to various product reviews. Better yet, this works even if you’ve shut the lid on your laptop and it’s in ‘sleep mode’ — though if you exit out of the browser entirely, the list will go blank.
(As an aside, if you’re looking for these features and are on an older Android device, check out Firefox for Android, which can do many of the same things).
And then there are the speed boosts. Chrome definitely feels snappier, no doubt in large part to its hardware acceleration. It also comes with several speed-related features like pre-fetching — Chrome will automatically begin loading the page it thinks you’re visiting next (it only does this on Wifi by default, though you can change it to work over your mobile connection as well). It also includes some key features that the stock browser doesn’t, like Web Workers and WebDB. One thing it doesn’t have: Flash, because Adobe stopped development on mobile Flash. Can’t say I miss it.
But while Chrome is definitely a major upgrade, its Beta tag is well deserved, because it’s actually missing some subtle features found on the stock Android browser. The most noticeable omission is the lack of a ‘Request Desktop Site’ feature, which made its debut in the browser that ships with Android 4.0. If you’ve ever browsed to a site from your phone, only to find that it detected your mobile browser and served up an inferior, “mobile-friendly” version of what you were looking for, then you’ll appreciate that tiny checkbox. It’s missing on Chrome for now, but it seems obvious that it’ll be added at some point.
As for the long-term outlook, Chrome is looking great. Extensions aren’t part of this launch, but they are inevitable. And while Android 4.0 will continue to ship with its stock browser for now — which means it will live side-by-side with Chrome — down the line Chrome will be replacing that stock browser (it’s a little unclear how exactly this will fit into the Android Open Source Project, but for starters much of the code from the mobile client will be upstreamed to the Chromium project).
Oh, and as for you iOS users? I asked Google’s VP of Chrome Sundar Pichai whether Google had considered building on top of iOS’s WebKit-based browser (they wouldn’t be able to introduce Chrome’s rendering engine, but they could potentially offer the syncing features). Pichai didn’t rule this possibility out, but it sounds like an iOS version won’t be coming any time soon — for now, the team is watching how the Android version is received.

Those Millions on Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit

 

On the first page of Facebook’s prospectus for its sale of stock to the public, it pegs the number of its “monthly active users” at a whopping 845 million people. The social networking site arrives at an even more astounding number when it comes to “daily active users”: 483 million people.Those are some huge numbers. If it is hard to believe that so many people are clicking on facebook.com every day, that’s because well, they aren’t, exactly. Those eye-popping numbers should have an asterisk next to them.

If you managed to wade through to Page 44 of Facebook’s prospectus, you’d discover that the company provides a definition of an “active user” — and it is unlikely to be what you expected.
Facebook counts as “active” users who go to its Web site or its mobile site. But it also counts an entire other category of people who don’t click on facebook.com as “active users.” According to the company, a user is considered active if he or she “took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party Web site that is integrated with Facebook.”

Come again?
In other words, every time you press the “Like” button on NFL.com, for example, you’re an “active user” of Facebook. Perhaps you share a Twitter message on your Facebook account? That would make you an active Facebook user, too. Have you ever shared music on Spotify with a friend? You’re an active Facebook user. If you’ve logged into Huffington Post using your Facebook account and left a comment on the site — and your comment was automatically shared on Facebook — you, too, are an “active user” even though you’ve never actually spent any time on facebook.com.
“Think of what this means in terms of monetizing their ‘daily users,’ ” Barry Ritholtz, the chief executive and director for equity research for Fusion IQ, wrote on his blog. “If they click a ‘like’ button but do not go to Facebook that day, they cannot be marketed to, they do not see any advertising, they cannot be sold any goods or services. All they did was take advantage of FB’s extensive infrastructure to tell their FB friends (who may or may not see what they did) that they liked something online. Period.”
Facebook appears to be using the term “active” as a euphemism for “engaged” rather than how many users are actually going to its site every month.
Of course, this raises an obvious question: How many users actually are active, using a more traditional definition?

In December, Nielsen Company, which tracks usage on the Internet, counted 153 million unique users on the Facebook Web site for the month in the United States, though Facebook says in its filing that it has 161 million monthly active users. Assuming that Facebook’s United States traffic accounts for only about 19 percent of its business, that means the numbers are off by at least 40 million users from the 845 million Facebook defines as “active.”Facebook, which declined to comment for this column because it is in a so-called quiet period before its initial offering, says in its prospectus that its numbers “will differ from estimates published by third parties due to differences in methodology.”
The company acknowledged that “there are inherent challenges in measuring usage across large online and mobile populations around the world” because, for example, “applications on certain mobile devices may automatically contact our servers for regular updates with no user action involved, and this activity may cause our system to count the user associated with such a device as an active user of Facebook.” Still, the company says this kind of fictitious usage accounts for less than 5 percent of its totals.
This is not the first time that a dot-com company’s metrics have come under scrutiny. In a particularly egregious example that this column documented last year, Groupon created a ridiculously misleading accounting metric known as Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income that included all sorts of income, but excluded marketing costs. The Securities and Exchange Commission raised questions and the company dropped the metric.

Facebook’s definition of “active” is nowhere near as problematic as Groupon’s fanciful accounting, and it does not appear that Facebook is trying to deceive investors.
Facebook’s counting is, oddly enough, actually more transparent than that of some of its rivals. Google was recently criticized for disclosing only the number of registered users on its Google Plus service, not how many people actually use the service regularly. Twitter has similarly been criticized. At least Facebook is trying to count only those people who are somehow engaged with the service in a meaningful way.
In fact, Facebook’s “Like” button on third-party sites or through “Facebook Connect” — its platform allowing users of other Web sites to sign in through Facebook and share information — is valuable, even if it isn’t easily monetized.
All of those “Likes” help Facebook create a treasure trove of data that should make its ability to target advertising to its users all the more valuable. (Of course, some people will be unnerved by how much Facebook knows about them.)
And there is no question that Facebook users are an engaged bunch and growing. A Pew Study recently rebutted any concerns about “Facebook Fatigue”: “We found no evidence among our sample that length of time using Facebook is associated with a decline in Facebook activity. On the contrary, the more time that has passed since a user started using Facebook, the more frequently he/she makes status updates, uses the ‘like’ button, comments on friends’ content and tags friends in photos.”

The big question is how Facebook can put all of its “active,” er, engaged users in front of advertising?
At the moment, none of its mobile users — which the company counts as 425 million of the 845 million monthly active users — see any advertisements. That is likely to change; but the margins on mobile advertising, at least for now, are much lower than on a computer screen.
Will Facebook one day be able to force third-party Web sites that have integrated its “Like” button into their pages to also accept a small ad next to it? Perhaps.
In the meantime, while Facebook has clearly become an important platform with hundreds of millions of users across the Internet, it could make more “friends” by being slightly more transparent: disclosing the distinction between the number of people engaged with Facebook broadly and those who go directly to its Web site.

How Facebook Really Stacks Up Against Pre-IPO Google

Now that Facebook is preparing the biggest tech IPO in history, it is possible to compare its financials and potential market value to Google’s when it went public. At first glance, all of Facebook’s numbers look bigger. Its pre-IPO revenues of $3.7 billion in 2011 are more than two and a half times larger than Google’s 2003 revenues of $1.5 billion (Google’s IPO was in 2004). Facebook’s $1 billion in profits is ten times larger than Google’s pre-IPO profits of $106 million. And its expected market cap of between $85 billion and $100 billion will dwarf Google’s IPO market cap of $23 billion.

Facebook, no doubt, will be emphasizing these differences. But in many ways it is a false comparison. Facebook is going public after 8 years as a private company. Google went public much earlier in its development, after 5 full years. So, yes, Facebook at Year 8 is much bigger than Google was at Year 5 of its trajectory. A better way to see how the two companies stack up is to compare their revenues and profits at the same points in their histories. In 2008, Facebook’s fifth year of existence, its revenues were only $272 million, and it lost $56 million.

If you chart Facebook’s revenues for the past five years and compare them to Google’s for the five-year period preceding its IPO (see below), a truer picture emerges of each company’s size at similar points in time. You need to compare Facebook as a 5-year-old to Google as a 5-year-old.Matching both companies year-for-year, its is clear that Google grew faster and was always substantially bigger no matter what year you look at. Year 8 for Google was 2006, when its revenues were $10.6 billion and its profits were $3.5 billion. As an 8-year-old, Google’s profits were almost as large as Facebook’s revenues as an 8-year-old. (Google was incorporated in September, 1998, so I am using 1999 as Year 1 for the purposes of this analysis.

Facebook started in January, 2004, which I am counting as it’s first full year).But which company grew faster? It turns out that the 5-year compound annual growth rate for each one’s revenues during these comparable periods (2002-2006 for Google, and 2007-2011 for Facebook) was almost exactly the same: 89 percent a year (Facebook grew a smidgen faster at 89.22 percent a year versus 88.96 percent for Google, but Google started with almost twice the revenue and thus ended up much larger five years later).

Facebook’s growth is astounding, but it is important to keep it in perspective. In many ways, it is still trying to catch up to Google’s past.

Google Adds A New Security Layer To The Android Market… A “Bouncer,” If You Will

Android malware has been an issue over the past year. Granted, most of the numbers we see out of security software companies are inflated — including malicious apps from third-party sources and ignoring small download figures — but that’s not to say that we can just brush that dirt off our shoulders.
Google knows this, and has for a while. Despite the fact that downloads of malicious apps are down 40 percent between the first and second half of 2011, seeing that 14,000, 30,000, or even 260,000 devices have been affected by this or that malicious app requires action. That said, Google is adding a new security layer to the Android Market: codenamed Bouncer.

Originally, the Android market implemented three different methods for ridding the market of malware: sandboxing, permissions, and malware removal. Sandboxing keeps one app from infiltrating another, with one very important exception: permissions. Google sees its permissions system as a layer of security in and of itself, but permissions can actually be seen as a vulnerability. In some cases, the reasons behind the permissions a developer asks for aren’t immediately obvious to the user, and it can be tough to check everything, especially to the novice user.Past that, Google’s always been good about removing malware from the market as soon as the company becomes aware of it, and in some cases, has even remotely wiped affected devices of malicious apps. The tool is a useful one to say the least, but it’s not enough.Bouncer adds another level of security to the platform, automatically scanning new and existing apps for known bits of malicious code. Google has actually been scanning apps whenever new malicious code is discovered, but Bouncer will automate the process, scanning for known spyware and trojans, too. Bouncer runs every new application on Google’s cloud infrastructure and simulates how it’ll run on a device. That way, Google can see straight away whether an app is misbehaving and flag it accordingly.Another smart feature is that Bouncer isn’t 100 percent automated. Once something is flagged, there’s a manual process for confirming the app is indeed malicious, reducing the risk of false positives.To be quite honest, the Android platform is way more secure than most people think. I spoke with Android VP of engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer, and he seems to feel the same way. “There’s this impression that Android is a huge target for malware, and I really don’t think that’s the case,” said Lockheimer. Google polices the Market, scans for known malicious code (though most instances of flagging in the past have been from users notifying Google), and is quick to act when an issue pops up. But where the platform has fallen short (in one respect), is the developer registration process.Becoming an Android developer is as easy as pie. I actually did it myself just to see how easy it is, and it literally takes five minutes and $25. After clicking accept a few times, you’re good to go. In fact, developers can register under pseudonyms if they’d like.From a certain perspective, this is amazing. It allows young entrepreneurs to offer a product to millions of users for a very low cost, lowering the bar for developers who can’t afford to jump through Apple’s hoops. At the same time, it makes it easy for malware writers to get the ball rolling.
Sophos blogger Vanja Svajcer said it best:

The requirements for becoming an Android developer that can publish apps to the Android Market are far too relaxed. The cost of becoming a developer and being banned by Google is much lower than the money that can be earned by publishing malicious apps. The attacks on the Android Market will continue as long as the developer requirements stay too relaxed.

With Bouncer, Google is recognizing this issue without making things difficult on developers. Devs will still be able to submit an app and see it in search results within minutes — Bouncer’s scanning process only takes seconds — and they’ll still be able to register for $25 and a few clicks on “Accept.”
But… now that Bouncer is in place, previous offenders will have a much more difficult time sneaking back on to the platform by registering under a new name. According to Google’s blog post, the search giant will be “analyzing new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.” This is what I believe will make the biggest difference when it comes to the threat of Android malware, and I’m more than thrilled that the company is making it a priority moving forward.

Google+ Now Open To Teens 13 And Up

Google is opening up its social networking service Google+ to teens as of today, according to a post from Google’s VP, Product Management, Bradley Horowitz. The move puts the network in closer competition with Facebook, which also requires that individuals be at least 13 year old before creating an account.
Says Horowitz, everyone who’s old enough for a Google account (13+ in most countries), can now create a Google+ account too.
The announcement was made alongside news of a few new safety enhancements to the service specifically for teens, including those that focus on sharing content, hangouts (video chat) and notifications.
One of these is a message that appears when a teen tries to share outside of their circle of friends. The message reads: “When you share publicly, people you haven’t added to your circles will be able to view your post and may be able to comment.”
This seems a little obvious, but given Facebook’s ever-shifting levels of post visibility, it can’t hurt to bang people over the head with the definition of “public.”

Google will also place limits on its video chatting feature called Google+ Hangouts when used by teens. If a stranger (someone outside the teens’ circle) joins a hangout, Google will temporarily remove the teen from the hangout by muting the mic and video feed. It’s interesting that it wouldn’t just remove the stranger, or perhaps remove strangers ability to even join hangouts in progress, when posted by teens. But I suppose this move is targeted towards those teens who inadvertently (or naively) make their hangout public instead of private, which could invite in an unwanted element.

Notifications are also being restricted, so that only those in teens’ circles can contact them via IM, and blocking is easily accessible. This feature is not all that different than how chat operates by default for adults, to be fair. Any Google+ user can configure which circles are chat-enabled, for example.
It should be noted that not all countries have the same age restrictions. In Spain and South Korea, the age limit is 14 and up, while in the Netherlands, it’s 16 and up.
Google recently announced that it has now reached 90 million users worldwide. By opening up to teens, it clearly hopes to quickly grow once more. However, we have to point out that, unlike Facebook’s growth back in the day, Google+’s growth is more manufactured than organic. The company has carefully timed its feature releases and integrations with other Google services to provide ongoing boosts to user count numbers which it can then, in turn, proclaim to be “growth.” But in some cases, Google is forcing Google+ upon users – e.g., when a user creates a Google account, they’re given a Plus account, too. No doubt a few weeks after the teen surge, we’ll hear more about how much Google has “grown” yet again.
In case you’re wondering, Twitter used to require its users to be 13 and up, too. The current Terms of Service make no mention of an age requirement.