This week, one of our team members, Philip Mastroianni shared with the IMI team some insight into Reddit.com, a highly effective social news and entertainment website.   Reddit, familiar to many of us already, has a bulletin board system where users submit content, can vote up or down a post, and comment on many different subtopics.

So why is Reddit still a worthwhile social site?  As of 2012, Reddit has about 37 billion page views, 400 million unique visits, 30 million posts, and 4.4 million page views. The site got up to 1.6 million unique visits in one day.  In 2011, Reddit received a Quantcast US rank of 66 (out of all the sites on the web), and an Alexa US rank of 43.

Popular Reddit Terms

Despite its plain interface, Reddit is a sophisticated site with its own lingo. Some commonly used Reddit terms are listed below:

OP: Original Poster

“According to the OP, the image was taken from The New York Times“.

TIL: Today I learned…

“TIL that taxonomically, modern-day birds aren’t just descended from dinosaurs, but are considered to BE dinosaurs“.

DAE: Does anyone else…

“DAE think that Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street should have their own full-length sitcom?”

IAmA: I am a….

“IAmA Police Officer in Arizona, AMA”

AMA: Ask me anything.

“I have had 2 ACL reconstructions. AMA.“

TL;DR: Too Long; Didn’t Read

“[After a long, detailed story] TL;DR I went to Vegas, found a monkey in my hotel room, and lived ‘The Hangover’ in real life.“

FTFY: Fixed that for you.

Term used when someone makes a change to another user’s post or image, often with humorous results.

Famous People Who Use Ask Me Anything on Reddit

• President Barack Obama
• Larry King
• Molly Ringwald
• Bill Gates
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
  (Who also happens to answer questions
  in r/fitness from time to time)
• Zach Braff
• Jimmy Kimmel
• Ron Paul
• Stephen Colbert
• Bear Grylls
• Firefox UX Design Team
• Mars Curiosity Rover engineers and scientists

Ask Me Anything – Upcoming  Chats

• 98 Degrees (Band)
• Charlie Rose (Talk show host)

Before posting something on Reddit, you want to make sure that you post it in the right category. The more people that “upvote” your post, the better chance it has at reaching more viewers.  Some of the most popular and active categories are listed below:

What is Karma on Reddit?

Karma reflects how much good the user has done for the Reddit community. The best way to gain karma is to submit links that other people like and vote for, though you won’t get karma for self promoted posts. So, what can you do with the Karma you receive on Reddit? Nothing, but with more Karma, you gain some credibility with other users.

Top tips to get Karma:

• Cat pics … and more cat pics
• Random Wikipedia article and /r/TIL
• Random famous person and random quote
• Post to /r/atheism
• Funny GIF files (nostalgia can work)
• Original meme content
• Bad Parking Job Pictures
• Reposts (wait 2-4 weeks)

The Reddit site categorizes topics very effectively and prioritizes stories by how many upvotes they receive. This distinguishes them from Facebook or Twitter.  For internet marketing news, for example, you may want to check out these subreddits:

• /r/seo
• /r/google
• /r/wordpress
• /r/facebook
• /r/twitter
• /r/adwords
• /r/gmarketing (guerilla marketing)

Content Promotion on Reddit

With so many people using Reddit every day, it is a great way to promote interesting content. For example, let’s say you have an infographic you want to share. There is an infographic category that you can share it in. We recommend interacting with a community and commenting and voting up other members’ posts besides just sharing your own. Like anything, the better the content is, the more it will get shared.  For example, pictures with funny text on them, or memes, do really well on Reddit.

As Philip explained in his presentation, Reddit  is a great site and when used regularly, can be an effective source for content promotion. What has been your experience using Reddit? Leave a comment below.

With so many ads bombarding us online, it is refreshing to see an ad that makes us smile and resonates with us personally. Today, brands are challenged with figuring out how to make money from their online community. Most of the time we don’t want to be interrupted while we are trying to get our social groove on, so how do you wiggle your way into  your customers’ browsing experience in a way that doesn’t make them annoyed? You can start by creating tailor made content that your fans will naturally like. Just ask the online strategists from some social savvy brands that figured out how to do this – Gatorade, Whole Foods, Samsung, Oreo, and Coke.

1. Gatorade – Gatorade is a brand that has a lot of sport and celebrity relationships and lots of opportunity in the social space. So how did they take advantage of this to create content that their users will like and share?  They had PR, media, and brand managers listening and learning from their followers online. They didn’t just look at the number of fan increases every month, but instead really listened to what their fans were saying. They also analyzed their web traffic to see how their consumers were finding the website.

One of the things they learned was that people were mentioning on Twitter that Gatorade was a hangover cure. They then created campaigns that identify with this and  engaged with their consumers. They also started a #winfromwithin campaign that encouraged followers to share how they emit strength using that hashtag. They created images that inspire that included their logo.  Their fans associate Gatorade as a drink for the workout warriors and a brand that implies through imagery – Drink Gatorade and you can be like Dwyane Wade!  In this case, they didn’t ask fans to sign up for something for “a chance” to win free product. They created content that people wanted to share – without being asked to.

2.    Whole Foods 

At this year’s Online Marketing Summit, I heard an innovative case study from Michael Aaron Bepko, the community manager for Whole Foods. He explained how important it is to really listen to your fans and give them what they want. By doing this, they decided instead of just having 1 Facebook and 1 Twitter account that they needed to segment out different topics and create more brand accounts by topic.

For example, they noticed a lot of site traffic came from Pinterest based on people searching for recipes. So not only did that encourage more pins, but also a Whole Foods Twitter account just for recipes. They also segmented out their meat posts into a whole new Whole Foods meat account – to please their vegetarian fans who were complaining on the main brand’s feed. They also started a Twitter account just about cheese. I would even suggest doing a Google Plus hangout with their cheese enthusiasts and talk about their cheese selection and how to cook with them.

They also noticed that users in different parts of the country have different needs and topics that concern them. So, different Whole Foods stores’ around the country made their own Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts. This created a sense of community for the followers and also sparked competition between the different stores to get the most amount of likes and engagement. For this strategy to work well, they closely monitor and regulate who is posting on behalf of the brand and what is being posted.

By extracting data from the social space and segmenting out their user activity to figure out what people are actually saying, Whole Foods discovers what their followers are passionate about, and learns more about what is important to them.  They then create engaging content that their users enjoy. This creates an emotional bond and relationship with their customers, one that might make them loyal to Whole Foods instead of another grocery chain. Again, here they are not creating sweepstakes or giving away free products, but ultimately getting to know their fans.

3. Samsung – “The Next Big Thing is Already Here”

Samsung did something out of the box and it resulted in a huge profit and growth for the brand. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on a boring and flashy TV commercial, they paid attention to what consumers were saying online before even releasing their product.

They closely monitored what people were saying in real-time about their competitor’s product, the Apple iPhone5 on Twitter. Then, they shared that feedback with their product development team. The result was The Samsung Galaxy S III, a product that fixed some of the issues that people complained the iPhone 5 didn’t have. In this case – taking the time to listen to people online and give them what they wanted had a massive impact on their success. Samsung then translated this into a TV commercial that showcased what they learned from listening to people on Twitter and Facebook.  Below is a commercial that not only did great on TV, but also went viral on the web – with over 17 million YouTube views.

Notice the actors in this commercial are mimicking what people were saying online about the iPhone5. This contextual advertising is the direction more brands need to take to reach their customers.  If you are creative enough to come up with a great TV commercial, people will share it and talk about you online.

However, they won’t necessarily buy your product unless it is a great product that does what they need. For example – would you buy a Dodge Ram based off on an entertaining commercial they made about farmers? See the engaging Superbowl commercial – So God Made A Farmer. This commercial has over 14 million views on YouTube and many rip off videos – but not many that are associating the Dodge brand and truck with the content.

4. Oreo

Speaking of Superbowl advertising, a highly engaging and relevant ad was done in the spur of the moment that fans went wild for online.  Marketers were sitting in a room watching the Superbowl during the black out and came up with:  “You can still dunk in the dark”.

This was a simple yet effective way to engage with people as they waited around for the lights to come back on. They were able to do this because they got approvals quickly and thought on their feet. As the web changes, marketers need to change how they reach their audiences. In this case, Oreo seized the day and capitalized on an opportunity that their competitors did not, and got over 16,000 re-tweets from it.

5.     Coke

Coke has been around the block for awhile –so engaging with their audience is not their first rodeo. From creating the image of the modern day Santa, to dancing polar bears – they are masters of creating great content.  So what are they doing online? They have content that is created by full time employees, over 40 freelance writers and photographers, many people throughout the Coke system, marketing, and public relations teams coming up with engaging content.

This is a collaborative internet marketing strategy that all brands can learn from. Don’t just have one stressed out person come up with all your advertising collateral.  Instead, utilize the minds of different people to get ideas of what will work. As one of the fastest growing agencies in the country, we have access to diverse teams and the best tools that strategize  for you.  We also work with you to create engaging content.

An example of a great Tweet by Coke was done by a creative writer: “When you open a Coke, 12,352 bubbles are born. Happy Birthday bubbles.” Another great piece of content I found was a video they made for Valentine’s Day and posted on Twitter saying, “Our #Valentine to you. Love, @CocaCola”.  The video below called, “Love is in the Air – a Coca-Cola Valentine” creates an emotional bond with viewers. It shows happy couples getting a balloon magically at their feet arriving with a fresh can of Coke.

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So how should you spend your marketing dollars online? Start by really getting to know your audience and building relationships with them. Figure out your organic brand advocates and utilize them for ideas, product development, and content. Reward your online customers for their loyalty by letting them be the first to know about new products. Whether you are promoting your Instagram pictures on Twitter or sharing your TV commercials on YouTube, being contextual, collaborative,  and creative is the path to success. We know you might not have the mega marketing budgets that these 5 brands do, but we can help you grow with our integrated SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

Updated: On Sunday, August 19th, Jenn Mathews posted a public response on her blog regarding the “Search and Social” service mark.  In her post she goes in depth about her road to attaining the service mark.  From her initial industry work experience to planning the “Search and Social Woot!” conferences, she divulges her intentions and how she plans to move forward. 

Last week Jenn Mathews announced that she has a registered service mark for the popular industry term,“Search and Social”. She publicly posted the below image on her Facebook Timeline, where she was promptly greeted with negativity and complete dismay from thought leaders in both the social and SEO industries.  I would like to update this post to reflect Jenn’s recent discourse and insights that continues to shed light on this discussion.

Who is Jenn Mathews?

Jenn Mathews

Jenn is the current president at Wappow, where she orchestrates conferences and networking opportunities for individuals and companies within the online marketing and emerging media space.   She is well versed and experienced in SEO, PPC, social media and other media outlets, and has over 10 years of experience in the industry.

I do not know Jenn personally, and I am excited about how this topic and discussion is carving a path for open conversations about this event.

Why did she register “Search and Social” as a service mark?

Despite initial negative public discourse surrounding her announcement, Jenn defended the service mark stating,

“I did it to protect the Search and Social Conferences, the Search and Social workshops, and the Search and Social Consulting company I run.
I have run across others using it, and we have mutually worked out an agreement.”

 

Are we experiencing trademark déjà vu in the industry?

Remember the guy that attempted to register “SEO” as a trademark in April 2008?  Jason Gambert truly riled up the SEO community when he attempted to take ownership of “Search Engine Optimization”, SEO, stating that he was the first person to use the term.  His argument for registering is below and was first posted on his personal blog.

“My goal in owning the trademark for the word SEO is not to try to force people to change their SEO process, but rather, prevent companies from selling “SEO” as a service under false pretenses.

…We will also be forming a board of directors to oversee changes to the process, and format in which SEO can be sold (basically the BBB for the SEO industry).
We will restrict businesses from selling the process of SEO as an “SEO” service if they do not meet the process approved by the SEO trademark requirements.
Those approved will use SEO as normal, but will now be able to use the term as SEO™, and will be able to claim that their SEO service is approved under SEO
trademark guidelines.

This power is for the people of the Search community and the protection of the general business consumer.”

Rhea Drysdale

The challenge began when SEOmoz filed the first opposition to the trademark in 2008. However, the company never pursued this further due to their legal spat with Ripoff Report.  Ultimately, the victory of the industry came down to SEO enthusiasts and the incredible perseverance of a certain individual, 25-year-old Rhea Drysdale (right), who fought the case with her own finances, and almost two years later, won the case.  In March of 2010, Gambert’s claim was formally blocked.

Seeing that this instance was successful in disputing a previously registered trademark, could this happen once again?  Click here to learn more about disputing registered service marks.

In an updated statement from her blog yesterday, Jenn states:

“I can only hope in this blog post and as as time will tell, that I am making myself clear – I do not in any way have the same, or even similar, intentions [as Gambert's attempt at trademarking the term "SEO"]“.

What does this mean to our search and social media industries?

As the search and social media landscapes continue to evolve and are increasingly relying on high synergy between the two, this news could have been incredibly problematic to the industry.  Many arguments can be made about:

• The broad nature of the terms,
• Inability for others to promote internal and/or external service offerings such as (conferences, events, groups, etc.),
• Loss of business and revenues of those in the industry who have previously invested in the term
  • Traffic to site that drove visitors via “Search and Social” term
  • Do these events pose a potential to be a monopoly of the industry down the road?

I thought Jenn’s closing remarks were particularly interesting, so I am quoting them below to help frame the discussion as well as her overall intentions with the service mark:

• Does this mean that my event won’t be able to be duplicated? By no means does this protect the unique format I have created, which still leaves me nervous as I see events duplicating the format already.

• Does this mean that no one can have a conference called “Search and Social”?  Technically, no they cannot – but I’m a pretty reasonable person and am happy working with others that would like to use the phrase. In fact, Rob Garner and myself just worked out an agreement for his book “Search and Social“ which is coming out November 6, 2012. In fact, he’ll be speaking at Search and Social Hawaii 2013, and we’ll be handing out copies of his book to all of the attendees. (Rob let us know this comment in response to Jenn’s above statement: Just want to clarify some of the facts here. I do not have any agreement with the person mentioned above, contrary to what is stated. I will not be speaking at this conference, and there will be no books handed out. As I have stated to this person in what I thought was a private email conversation, “search and social” is a generic term. Again, no deal or agreement was made. Thanks, Rob)

• Does is mean that no can can define their event using “search and social” as a description?  Gosh no… I want this industry to use the two as a cohesive means to market their businesses. SEO’s should be using social, social media professionals should know SEO, and let’s not forget that SEM and PPC have morphed into social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin and any SEM would be crazy not to be utilizing them.Just as the song “Happy Birthday” is sung by millions all over the world, the rights belong to Time Warner, but no one is going to come barging down your door if you start signing.

Please tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.  What do you think of Jenn’s response?

Side note:  Jenn, thank you for taking the time to respond – it is greatly appreciated!

Google+ burst onto the scene just over a year ago and has since been integrated into almost every facet of Google. From the Google+ SERP integration with Search Plus Your World to the integration of Google Places, brands are wondering what the potential impact on their business will be as a result of adopting yet another social network.

Google+ Ripples has been introduced to provide a deeper insight into the social reach of public posts and “re-shares.” The problem is, it is only on a post per post basis and fails to pinpoint the many aspects of user engagement that are captured with tools like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics. Google+ Ripples lacks the usability and depth of these other tools including exporting functionality, date sorting, gender and age demographics, topic trending and geographic reporting. SEMPO released an eye-opening study in February that revealed Google+ averaged only 3 minutes of monthly user engagements compared a staggering 405 minutes on Facebook from September 2011 through January 2012. On the flipside for Google+, users tend to engage primarily via thought leadership on the site, which is beneficial to brands with large numbers of circles because they are much more likely to share posts circling that brand.

Andrew Devine, Senior SEO Strategist at Covario in San Diego, outlines the potential pros and limitations to Google+ Ripples in “Google+ Ripples: Insights & Limitations.” He notes that while Google hasn’t released any tools specific to Google+, users can still isolate the impact a Google+ profile has on a brand’s site by using any standard analytics platform. Simply by isolating the plus.google.com sub-domain, traffic statistics can be collected and compared over a specified date period. The problem here is that it isn’t possible to narrow down to the referring keyword, making it difficult to pinpoint which keywords are driving large amounts of search traffic to a company’s specific Google+ post.

Devine wraps up a few actionable insights into tracking your businesses web visibility until Google releases an on-page analytics solution for Google+ profiles. He recommends using referral reports in your analytics software to monitor traffic to your site that is being driven from your Google+ profile and use Google+ Ripples on a post-by-post basis to identify industry influencers. As Google’s 250+ million users increase, the Google+ social platform will likely provide deeper insight for businesses tracking their brand’s web visibility.

What do you think about Google+ Ripples? Is it an adequate solution for brands tracking their visibility on the web?

Who would have guessed social media would take as successfully as it has been? If you still haven’t arranged to have your business interact on the many popular social media platforms, you will probably find some new motivation after reading this latest update on the rapidly growing social media industry.

According to Gartner, global revenues due to social media for 2012 are expected to grow over 43% from last year’s numbers. Thanks to successful internet marketing, $8.8 billion of this revenue is projected to come from advertising.

Social media marketing packages account for the significant growth within this sector for the upcoming years. According to predictions from eMarketer, revenues from social media are projected to reach $11.9 billion in the year 2014. The U.S.’s portion within these predicted revenues will continue to be at approximately 53% for the next few years.

To put things into comparison, the Interactive Advertising Bureau estimated that the global ad revenues from internet advertising were $31 billion back in 2011. The numbers from social media advertising have not been released from the Interactive Acting Bureau at this point in time.

To the businesses who are actively involved with social media, good job and keep up the great work. To those who are still uninvolved, what are you waiting for? With even more growth expected for the years to come, now is the time to get your foot in the door and take off with using social media as a creative personal way to interact with your customers.

After recently posting revenues of $1.18 billion, Facebook has beaten second quarter estimates. This small bump in revenue calms some people’s nerves as fears of the company’s success were still looming over their heads after an abysmal IPO. The site’s large majority of revenue came from advertising at $992 million, beating expectations by $71 million. Facebook reported that there were jumps in daily, monthly, and mobile users of 32%, 29%, and 67% respectively.

This news comes as relief to many, not only investors, but also to the rest of the industry as many companies have begun investing in social media, with Facebook being the main priority. Recently, the whole notion of content is king, and an emphasis on social media along with connecting with consumers has taken the forefront for many internet marketing companies. These positive reports from the popular website may be a precursor of something to come in the future. Social media has become more important over the past year and is said to even be good for ranking within Google. Is this the beginning of social media exploding into the internet marketing world?

Many tactics and processes that were once prominent with SEO and internet marketing have now become obsolete with the new Google updates. Many marketers and companies have turned to social media sites such as Facebook as another avenue for reaching their target market, especially as popularity has increased among these types of sites. Will we see Facebook increase its revenue in the future with more and more companies pouring their trust into the social platform? Or will we see it all come crashing down?

Any regular Facebook user has seen an increase in ads finding their way onto its pages, and users aren’t the only ones to realize this. Advertisers for products and jobs have recognized Facebook as a great marketing resource. The opportunity Facebook provides is off the charts and targets many different demographics. Five reasons in particular show why you should jump headfirst into the Facebook marketing game.

1. You Can’t Miss it

It’s no secret that Facebook is the largest social media network on the planet with over 500 million users logging in everyday to see what it has in store for them. There aren’t many places where a job posting can potentially be seen by that many people.

It may sound easy just to post a job and figure that out of those 500 million daily users someone will be interested in your recruiting, but instead of putting luck to the test, investing in Facebook ads can lead more potential recruits directly to your pages, right where you want them.

2. Target Acquired

Facebook makes networking with friends and family easy, but it can also make targeting the right candidates for your job a cake walk. Finding qualified candidates for job postings is a whole lot easier when your candidates put their personal information and interests on Facebook. By using Facebook, your recruiting can be geared toward high interest candidates for your job posting; easing the process of sorting through hundreds of unqualified applications.

You’ll find that Facebook can target someone based on education, location, age, skill level, etc., making them almost too easy to find.

3. Economic Recruiting

You want to make sure that your advertising spending is economically friendly and effective. Facebook helps out by offering cost per click (CPC) ads, so basically your spending is going toward potential customers only.

4. Getting the Turtle Out of His Shell

Reserved or passive candidates can be a real challenge for job recruiters. With the more reserved candidates it can be hard to advertise for something they want, unless it is an opportunity they really like that is laid right out in front of them.

Facebook can assist you here by allowing you to advertise specific job opportunities to these candidates. You’ll want to make sure they are for mid-senior level positions, to get those passive candidates out of their shell.

5. Establish Your Community

Traffic is the almighty when it comes to any sort of online marketing. With increased traffic flows you enable a larger group of people with different interests to discover your product or service. For job recruiting this is half the battle, the other half  is quality traffic. As discussed previously, Facebook allows you to do this by targeting the traffic and directing it to your page.

From qualified applicants you acquire high value customers, and with cost per click advertising you minimize costs. The result of all this is low cost efficient recruiting, the ideal business model for you.

Facebook rivals any job board posting site in its targeted low cost high effective recruiting. Even a top competitor like LinkedIn struggles in compassion because of its primary targeting focus on the white-collar work force.

Daily deals are a great way to promote your business and get customers flowing through the doors. While that may not seem like a problem at all, losing profit from the discount deals you offer is quite the issue. Groupon and Living Social are both companies that businesses have used to promote their deals via Internet marketing, but savvy deal hunting customers are getting the best of these services. When promoting these daily deals, businesses are finding more and more customers coming in just for the deals and not for regular business.

In a growing world of SEO, SEM, social media and other forms of internet marketing, infographics are becoming more popular throughout the web. If you’re unfamiliar with infographics, they’re basically visuals that have information and statistics about a topic. You could also find charts, facts and predictions within the all-mighty infographic. By incorporating charts, facts, bold visuals, colors, and other eye-catching details, more attention is drawn to infographics. It is important to attract and hold the attention of the consumer these days with so many other distractions on the web like Facebook, email, Twitter, and a list of other links.

Now that you have a handle on the background of the infographic you’re probably wondering how to create an infographic that will get the people going. One of the key aspects when designing your infographic is to be creative and come up with a layout that will attract people’s attention. Make sure that your infographic is relevant content to your topic and also has some knowledge to send a message about your point. If you’re struggling to get your infographic going, start a flowchart of ideas and go from there. After you get some structure into your chart, start adding color schemes and bold visuals. Don’t forget to put in the research to make your infographic accurate with up-to-date information. Editing is the last key element. You want your image to be easily understood by whomever looks upon it.

Being far more interesting than just plain text and more informative than a picture with a caption, infographics serve as great online marketing tools. You’ll find that infographics have a large effect on your social media marketing as well as search engine optimization. Users intrigued by the infographic share it among friends and co-workers, bringing in those precious inbound links. So next time you consider what strategy to use to build up back-links to your webpage, consider an awesome infographic.

The Twitter news feed is probably where you get the latest news as a result of busy conversations that are “trending” on the social site. Viral stories develop as people tweet a topic that suddenly becomes a trending hashtag or term to click and learn more about. This is how people learn about stuff that they otherwise would have missed thanks to Twitter Trends. However, the new Tailored Trends introduced by Twitter almost a month ago is showing users results only within their own social bubble.

What does this mean?

Tailored Trends is a recalibration of the old Twitter Trends algorithm that is designed to customize trends based on your location and who you follow on Twitter. This change is now the new norm on every member’s homepage and has changed user’s results with most people not even realizing it. Now users are only seeing Trends that relate directly to them rather than the tweeting activities of the world at large.

Before Tailored Trends, Twitter Trends opened up users to the wider world of Twitter activity. Yes, you probably tweeted about things that interested you and followed people with similar interests to you. Twitter Trends would show you results catered to those interests as well as things outside your own particular passion.

The new Tailored Trends narrows the search to much more local activity since it filters by your location and hides things from you that you don’t care about because it is only based on who you follow. This prevents internet marketers from extending their reach to users who are confined to local search results.

It is also slightly misleading to the user. It lets people think that their interests are much more important and relevant than they really are. Twitter is now simply showing you Trends that are exclusively what you were searching for without opening up the realm for a greater, more encompassing experience. The moral of the story: it might be in your best interest to turn off Tailored Trends to once again see what the Twitterverse has to offer.

What do you think about Twitter’s Tailored Trends?