With so much competition among the many social media platforms it takes something very unique about the platform in order to drive the most traffic. So perhaps the world’s new obsession is “pinning”; browsing the web for the latest trends in style, food creations, photography, and home décor. Pinterest is sure beginning to catch the attention of many web surfers, specifically the online pin board accounts for 3.6% of the total referral traffic from January, according to Shareaholic (which is based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors). Pinterest is up a notable 1.1% just from December, making it almost even with the amount of traffic driven through Twitter; while Google Plus on the other hand dropped 0.02% to a total of only 0.22%.

The above chart tells us that Facebook, to no surprise, is still the leading social media platform, accounting for 26.4% of total referral traffic. So although it seems like Pinterest has a way to go before becoming the next Facebook, its noteworthy enough to cite the extreme jump in numbers in just one month, not to forget to mention that it is driving more traffic than Google Plus, LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube combined.

The infographic below, “Is Pinterest the Next Social Game Changer?” helps us visualize how much attention the new social networking site really has gained in comparison to others. A shocking increase of 429% occurred last year from September to December, putting its estimated unique visitors at 7.21 million. According to Monetate (creator of the infographic), Pinterest is now part of the top five social networking and forum websites driving the most referral traffic, with Facebook taking the number one spot and Google Plus not even making the list.  Having only been around for two years now, we are excited to see if Pinterest will remain on the Internet as the hot new trend, or is it just a fad that will leave our minds soon enough?

Do you ever wonder who started the juicy gossip you catch up on from day to day? Well now you can find out who were the top contributors to those stories and much more through Google+ Ripples. A few weeks ago Google announced this “Ripple” feature that seemed to almost be overlooked, when in reality it should be of much consideration to us marketers, and here’s why:

The ripple effect allows us to:

1. Find a influencer (Dalai Lama)
2. Make a connection to that influencer
3. Repeat to find who the influencer is sharing with (Vic Gundotra) to virally spread your content even more

The above example was a public post shared by Dalai Lama which illustrates the spread of the post (you can find the Ripple of any public post using the dropdown arrow menu at the top right of the post). If you watch the spread, you will see the content being shared to more and more users over about a months’ time frame.  Also, at the bottom of the page you will see the influencers (people with many public reshares), Statistics (how this post publicly spread), and Languages (of public shares of this post). As seen below:

So How Will This Help Us?

If we’re able to locate the influencer that is sharing content of our interest, then we’ll be able to connect to that influencer through Google+. Usually many other social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) are linked with their Google+ account which allows you to tack action with your preferred method of making a connection.

Once you’ve made the connection, put out something of value to them or possibly share their post so they know you’re interested in what they’re sharing. Hopefully at that point, they will see you sharing their posts and return the favor by sharing your content to their huge circle of followers. It’s important to not bombard the top contributor with too much content; rather research into who they’re sharing posts with (the influencers of the influencer) and reach out to them as well.

It’s all about finding that niche target market, and now thanks to Google, it’s easy (and fun!) to watch content go viral with the use of Ripples.

On  11.11.11, 92 years after the first proclaimed Veterans Day by former President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, we once again remembered and honored  all of our brave military veterans.  In these nine decades lots of things have happened, one of which is the technological boom that has brought us the likes of Facebook, Twitter and other social media applications.  Social media is a source for social interaction in an attempt to make our large world seem just that much smaller.

Social media and holidays together make a lot of buzz on the internet as there are lots of web interactions during times of holidays like Veterans Day.  This is not just by random people either, these are our veterans who are different than the previous as times have changed.  Nowadays these veterans are instead trying to get on Twitter or Facebook.

The effect of Veterans Day on social media is something you can see taking form.  Earlier this week there was a Facebook fan page launched for the US Military on Facebook to show support for members of the military, as well as both veterans and their families by sharing info and maintaining a connection.  Also, a new application on the U.S. Military Facebook page was created to give thanks to military members in your life, titled “A Nation Gives Thanks”.  We at Internet Marketing Inc. have also been able to utilize our own Facebook page for the celebration of Veteran’s Day by thanking our veterans as a whole, including one of our own.  Co-CEO Brent Gleeson served as a Navy SEAL operator at SEAL Team 5 located in Coronado, California.  Brent completed three separate tours of combat, with two tours in Iraq and one in Africa.  His job as a Navy SEAL was running Capture or Kill missions in tandem with the CIA.  So as it being Veterans Day we appreciate what our Veterans and Brent have done for our country.

Facebook is not the only social media app to see the effects of Veterans Day, Twitter has seen just as much traffic in regards to the national holiday.  Today many of the hottest stars and celebrities are taking to Twitter to honor the brave men and women that serve our country, like Toby Keith who is a notorious patriot. See what he said below:
Toby Keith (@TobyKeithMusic): Happy Veteran’s Day. To all Veterans, THANK YOU for our freedom.

Also on Twitter the tweet tag “#HappyVeteransDay” and “Happy Veterans Day” have been trending a lot as well.  The History Channel has also done it’s part for Veteran’s Day with it’s new social campaign of “Thank a Vet” through Twitter too.

Thanks to the internet we can see who and how many people are honoring their veterans and  grasp how important these men and women are in serving our country.  With our constant elevation of social media technology we are able to bring our world closer together one tweet or like at a time.

Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google +, have recently begun to affect what comes up in your search engine results. The problem is not that people don’t understand that social media affects SEO, but how it affects SEO. Google released Google Social Search tool back in October 2009 and made it available to all users in January 2010. This tool basically allows you to find articles written by people you know and trust, the same basic concept as following someone on Twitter. What people really want to know is; how much does social media news really affect search engine results?

Back in December of 2010 Google’s Matt Cutts stated, “I filmed a video back in May 2010 where I said that we didn’t use ‘social’ as a signal, and at the time, we did not use that as a signal, but now, we’re taping this in December 2010, and we are using that as a signal.” Social media has fit its way into SEO and has started to alter traditional organic search results. If you are logged into your Google + while searching for something on Google, your search results will be different than if you were not logged into a Google account. If one of your friends has a web content that is related to the topic you are searching for, then Google gives that web page higher placement on SERPs. Google and Bing have both admitted that they look at their users’ social authority when making search engine ranking decisions.

Social media can influence search results depending on the number of times an author’s content is shared on a social networking site. If you are not connected with any social media sites, do not fret because there are steps that you can take to change this. To get more traffic through social media, you first want to build a presence on a social media site and stay up to date with your followers. Optimize your website for social media sharing, for example if you are based in WordPress you can install the Sharebar plugin to enable sharing. Lastly, you are going to want to constantly encourage your followers/views to share your content through other social media tools. Just because social media is booming doesn’t mean that traditional SEO is irrelevant. There will always be that group of people that don’t prefer social media sites, so traffic for non-social media site users will not completely diminish, but realize that traditional SEO is beginning dwindle, so changing with the times is not a bad idea.

For more information on this topic visit:  Quicksprout.com

Mark Zuckerberg watch out- Google+ is not going anywhere. It has been open for a little over a month now and everyone’s been asking whether the new social networking site is here to stay, and YouGov took matters into their own hands to find the answer. They conducted a survey for 1,003 adults in the US regarding Google+ usage, future use, and usage of other social media websites (like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter). Their results bode well for Google, which they summarize here.

There are already 25 million Google+ accounts, which is 13% of the US population. While Facebook has penetration of 71%, Facebook has a considerable head start. YouGov predicts that over the next year, there will be an additional 9% of the population acquiring a Google+ account. According to their survey it looks like 30% of Facebook users, that also have Google accounts, are planning to cut down on time spent on Facebook.

When compared to the Facebook demographic, there are some stark differences that YouGov points out:

• 3 men on Google+ to 1 woman
• 59% of Google+ people have a college degree while Facebook has 37%
• 48% are single, while Facebookers are 33% single. In my own experience with Facebook though, many relationships are jokes between friends. In my opinion, the count on “real” relationships reported on Facebook cannot be determined by Facebook relationship status.

Google has a different target market than Facebook, which appeals mostly to college students while Google+ aims for college educated young men

In fact, Google+ is predicted to become the #2 site behind Facebook in the next year with 22% penetration while LinkedIn, Twitter, and Myspace all have under 20%. With the next push for Google+ accounts over the next 12 months, the social media industry is going to have a run for its money… well, whatever part of it isn’t owned by Google already.

Twitter has just announced that they have acquired Bagcheck, a new fun way to talk about and share what’s inside our “bags” with our Twitter followers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but a warm welcome is put out to Sam Pullara to the Twitter engineering team! Mr. Pullara is the CTO and co-founder of Bagcheck.

Bagcheck is an innovative way to share and discover what’s inside your “bag.” Now you may be wondering what exactly characterizes a bag. In a broad sense, the startup refers to any sort of curated list or collection as a bag. As you can see to the right, people can post bags of backpacking essentials or coffee-making gear to what their favorite apps and accessories are.

The brains behind Bagcheck found their inspiration by simply wanting to expand their discussion of the products they love to use with the rest of the social networking world. It provides people with a place to share their “bags” of items they feel most passionate about with others who may share the same interests – whether it’s photography, cooking, computing, or sports.

Bagcheck still remains in service online for all those who already have accounts. Therefore, the content already created in current users bags will still remain with the same URLs. However, soon enough things may change so Bagcheck has made it quick and simple for current users to export your bags anywhere you like.  Your bags will be wrapped into a set of HTML and JSON files that you may then save or post to other social networking platforms.

On behalf of Bagcheck, they’d like to take the opportunity to show appreciation for all the people involved in creating bags and sharing their passions with others throughout the site thus far. They hope you’ll continue to do so. Happy Bagging!

More and more Facebook users have found a new home in Google+, but have been stumped by a single problem: where did all my pictures go? On Facebook, the amount of photos that people have been tagged in usually outweighs the amount of photos that someone has uploaded himself or herself. For the person that relies on getting most of their pictures from other friend’s albums, this poses a problem.

Recently there have been multiple methods on how to transport your Facebook pictures to Google+ that have proved to make this moving processed a little bit easier. Out of all of the methods that I tested, the easiest and most efficient one I discovered was posted on moveyourphotos.com. For this process all you have to do is download either the Google Chrome or Firefox add-ons that I have placed below and follow the guided instructions on how to transfer you Facebook pictures.

Download Photo Importer for Google+ (Firefox)

- Download Photo Importer for Google+ (Chrome)

Instructions:

1. Download and install the add-on from the link above (simply drag the file onto the Firefox window to install)
2. Navigate to within a Facebook photo album which you would like to transfer to your Google+ account
3. Enter a name for the album in the text box on your brand spanking new photo-importer toolbar.

   

4. Click ‘make album’
5. At this point, you may repeat the last 3 steps with as many different Facebook albums as you want
6. When you have recorded the information of all the albums you wish to import to Google+, click ‘submit all albums’
7. You will be brought back to moveyouralbums.com and given a link to login to your Google account
8. Once you have logged in to Google we will begin processing your photos, upon completion we will give you a link to your new albums on Google
9. AND YOU’RE DONE!!! Don’t you just feel all warm inside now?

Long the subject of speculation and prediction, the world’s most active micro blog, Twitter, announced major changes to their social network in an attempt to position their network as a profitable enterprise.  Twitter Feeds will no longer be free of the influence of the almighty dollar as Twitter unveiled its new Promoted Tweets function, which is basically Adwords for Twitter, and TweetUp, the latest development out of Idealab which is a search engine and bidding marketplace that works in collusion with Twitter.

Twitter offers advertising partners top post

On the Twitter blog, the company enumerated specific expectations of the advent of Promoted Tweets.  Advertising partners can bid for keywords to ensure their tweets reach the top of the pile once a certain keyword is searched for, much akin to the Google Adwords model.  Twitter lined up commercial partners to start using Promoted Tweets that include Starbucks, Virgin America, Best Buy, Red Bull and Bravo, and offers as example that Starbucks Tweets will always turn up first for a Twitter search for the term “coffee,” provided Starbucks continues to bid on the term.

Twitter emphasizes that they are only in the first phase of their Promoted Tweets program and insists that the promotional aspect of the tweet placement does not mean a decay of quality.  Promoted Tweets, according to Twitter, must meet a higher standard than your average tweet, resonating with users and garnering retweets to maintain its placement as a top tweet.

TweetUp seeks to establish bidding marketplace

TweetUp is a bit more complicated than Twitter’s Promoted Tweets as it utilizes an algorithm taking into account a tweet’s author, number of followers, influence score, number of retweets, along with the user’s bid for their tweet.  Keywords will cost 1 cent per impression; however, if a tweet does not meet the aforementioned qualifications, there is no bid high enough to launch it to the top of the feed (like an Adwords quality score).

All in all, major changes lie ahead for the social network taking its first steps toward monetization; however, Twitter promises the integrity of its network will be maintained, if not emboldened, as the white noise of real time updates won’t hide relevant tweets in the shuffle.

You may know how many friends, followers, and connections you have on your various social networking sites. But do you know how many are actually agents from the FBI, looking to comb through your profile and pictures for criminal leads? Maxi Sopo, a fugitive living abroad in Mexico, sure didn’t when he began posting Facebook status updates saying he was “loving it” and “living in paradise.” While Sopo had been careful to stay private on his social networks, unfortunately for him, his list of friends was not. And so — with the click of a button – a friend request was made, accepted, and the Secret Service was able to track down Sopo’s location and arrest him.

Kind of makes you re-think the last friend request you accepted.

But this is how U.S. law enforcement agents are updating their tactics in a world that’s become increasingly more connected through social media. What’s most surprising, though, is the lack of boundaries for federal authorities within these spaces. Previously, the stories revolving around investigators catching crooks online involved a lot of criminal stupidity: Thief caught after stopping to check Facebook. Bank robber arrested after boasting of crime on MySpace. However, today’s federal authorities are proactively seeking evidence using social networking sites. Some of these investigative techniques include verifying alibis though Twitter messages, uncovering illegal activity through Facebook photos, and using Google Street View to investigate taxpayers. Even more, because of unclear regulation online, agents are currently able to impersonate a suspect’s family member or friend under the guise of a social networking account.

So how concerned should I be?

Assuming you’re a perfect citizen and have absolutely nothing to hide, keep on tweeting and posting to your heart’s desire. For the rest of us though, use some common sense about online privacy. Be sure you understand who you’re accepting as a friend and why you’re accepting it now. Sift through and remove any incriminating pictures from your profile. And be discreet about not only what you’re posting but who can see it (there’s some great privacy filters in Facebook you should be aware of). Until there’s more regulation on what the Feds are able to do online, your best bet is to be cautious.

Or, at the very least, not accept that friend request from the Secret Service.

If you’ve ever wondered what makes something go viral, hopefully this blog post will uncover some of these hidden characteristics. Last Friday, viral scientist and author of The Social Media Marketing Book, Dan Zarrella, gave a webinar on The Science of ReTweets. He collected over 100,000,000 retweets and observed almost every element possible within its 140 characters. He looked at everything from word choice to punctuation to the time of day – all in his quest to discover what makes something “retweetable.” In the end, he came up with a collection of tips and tricks to make your tweets go viral.

1.    Use the most retweetable words

Of the millions of tweets in his database, Zarrella identified 20 words or phrases that are more retweeted than others. These include (in order): ‘you,’ ‘twitter,’ ‘please,’ ‘retweets,’ ‘post,’ ‘blog,’ ‘social,’ ‘free,’ ‘media,’ ‘help,’ ‘please retweet,’ ‘great,’ ‘social media,’ ‘10,’ ‘follow,’ ‘how to,’ ‘top,’ ‘blog post,’ ‘check out,’ and ‘new blog post.’
While it’s unsurprising that the most retweeted words are those relating to Twitter or social media, it’s interesting to see that the phrase “top 10” makes the top 20. Zarrella explained that people, on average, like to see “chunked content” or readings that are easy to skim and digest. Seeing words such as “top 10” or even “how to” are signals to people that the link is easily readable and, therefore, sharable.

2.    Avoid the least retweetable words

Here’s some words you should probably avoid using in your next tweet (also in order): ‘game,’ ‘going,’ ‘haha,’ ‘lol,’ ‘but,’ ‘watching,’ ‘work,’ ‘home,’ ‘night,’ ‘bed,’ ‘well,’ ‘sleep,’ ‘gonna,’ ‘hey,’ ‘tomorrow,’ ‘tired,’ ‘some,’ ‘back,’ ‘bored,’ and ‘listening.’ In other words, don’t be boring! Ask someone why they’re not on Twitter and you might hear: “why would I want to know when you’re eating breakfast?” Well now there’s proof of the unattractiveness of these status updates.

3.    Include a link in your tweet

It’s hard for something newsworthy and sharable to be self-contained within only 140 characters. That’s why the most retweetable tweets include a link to something interesting. Also, the use of URL shorteners (especially bit.ly) leaves enough room in the tweet for others to add a short comment. Don’t miss this opportunity. Link to the story and keep it short!

4.    Tweet the news

Another unsurprising tip, but important nonetheless. Breaking news, in particular, is one of the most sharable types of content. And again, guess what’s not sharable: small talk.

5.    Use longer and more unique words

The average tweet has about 1.58 syllables per word, while retweets have 1.62 syllables. Also, retweets often contain words that are uncommon in average tweets. In other words, be unique and interesting in your choice of words and you’ll be the social butterfly of the Twitter Party.

6.    Use colons, not semicolons.

In general, Zarrella proved that tweets with more punctuation are more retweetable. While you would think that the opposite would be true given the focus on rationing your characters, it turns out proper punctuation is a more attractive characteristic. And the use of colons makes for great “Headline: Sub-headline” news stories. Semicolons, interestingly, actually make it less likely for you to be retweeted—perhaps given the ambiguous nature of when to use it properly.

7.    Write entertainment tweets for women, opinion tweets for men.

This tip is actually more dependent on your particular audience. But if you’re unsure what kind of content your followers would be willing to share and you skew a particular gender, use this rule of thumb.

8.    Avoid the self-reference

Even though Twitter previously asked its users to share “What’s on your mind,” it turns out that the self-referential tweets are the least retweetable. In fact, this goes for every sensory experience that just involves you. Instead, your tweets should focus on social experiences, focusing more on “we” instead of “me”

9.    Time your tweet for Friday 4-5pm EST

Like every good comedian knows, timing is everything. And it’s no different in the world of twitter. Zarrella identified that people are more likely to share another tweet on a Friday and anytime from late afternoon to evening. But the sweet spot is definitely from 4-5pm EST.

10.    Ask for it!

They always say the simplest solution is the correct one, but on Twitter this is especially true. Adding “please retweet” to your next tweet makes it 5x more likely to be retweeted! (Just remember to use this tip sparingly since it can become a bit annoying).

So Why Should I Care About Retweets?

It may seem a bit geeky to focus so much attention on just one of Twitter’s features, but in reality, learning to craft better tweets can have a great impact on your bottom line. The more your message is retweeted, the more other followers will notice you. And the more followers you gain, the more traffic you can convert on your website! Even more, learning the rules to go viral on Twitter can help shed light on other ways to make your other content more viral. So with that said, I’d like to craft the perfect tweet given our tips on retweets:

“Please Retweet: Top 10 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets on Twitter!”