traffic
Facebook and Twitter lead to 82% rise of time spent on social networks, year over year
Jan 27th
On 22 January Nielsen published new metrics which reveal that users spent 5.5 hours on social networks like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009. In comparison to December 2008 (3 hours) this represents a 82% rise!
Expepctedly, Facebook is by far the No.1 social networking platform and had 206.9 million unique visitors in December 2009 – this is 67% of all social media users in the world (jesus…). Time spent on site is also impressive – the average time of a user is almost 6 hours a month… maybe mostly spent in farming and in viewing your friends’ photos.
On average time spent, social networks and blogs are the most visited online platforms. Right behind them are online games and instant messaging.
In the United States Twitter remains the fastest growing social network in terms of unique visitors – with 579% year-over-year increase, by 2.7 million uniques in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009. Month-over-month, however, unique visitors deflated with 5%.
The United States continue to be the leader in terms of social networks and blogs usage, charting a 142.1 million unique visitors with an average time spent of 6 hours per month. The States are followed by Japan, whose unique visitors total 46.6 million for December with an average time spent of nearly 3 hours per month.
While the UK, Italy and Australia are with smaller user numbers (which is normal, because the US have much more citizens in comparison) all of them chart an average time spent between 6 and 7 hours.
What do these results mean?
From this year on, we will see more earnest efforts by marketers to penetrate Facebook and Twitter. If you can not be strategic, however, or if these websites do not fit into your existing marketing strategy – better don’t even try.
There is something else, too, that many people these days fail to notice – businesses offering development of corporate/personal/etc websites are about to face “extinction”. It is much easier, profitable and cost-effective to just go and create a profile on an already existing platform where your audience already is. Consider Basecent, Etsy, Linkedin, Shustir…
And here is the visual data:
10 tips to increase your Twitter followers
Oct 20th
Kevin Rose, a founder of Digg, co-founder of Revision 3 and Pownce, as well as investor in Twitter, has just published his tips to getting more followers on Twitter. With over 1,167,000 followers he is the most followed user of Twitter after Barack Obama.
So here are his tips:
1. Explain your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links.
This will promote your username not only in Twitter, but all across social networks. Further, you can follow your retweets using the Retweetist software.
2. Fill out your Bio (adequately).
This will allow people that you do not know to learn a little about you. This field is also published on the “suggested users” Twitter page. A blank or inadequate bio will eventually discourage people from following you.
3. Post links to your Twitter profile EVERYWHERE!
Post links to your Twitter profile on Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, in your blog, in your email signature and all your other online profiles. You can also use TwitterCounter widget for your blog. It is much like the FeedBurner counter.
4. Tweet about your passions in life and #hashtag them.
The use of #hashtags helps users to find content and thus people with similar interests more easily. If people like your content they will follow you.
5. Bring your Twitter account into the real world.
Push your Twitter profile in your presentations, podcasts, business cards…
6. Take pictures.
Photos are easily shared on Twitter. Those of the US Airways flights that landed in the Hudson were viewed over 350,000 times. Also use iPhone apps such as Tweetie or Twitterific for photos taken on your mobile.
7. Start a contest.
@jasoncalacanis promised to offer a Macbook Air if he became the most followed person on Twitter. He did not succeed in becoming number 1, but this strategy allowed him to gain several thousand of followers.
8. Follow the top Twitter users and watch what they tweet about.
Notice how they address their audience and what kind of content they tweet about. But never copy them!
9. Get involved in #hashtag chats.
On search.twitter.com you will find a list of the hottest current Twitter topics. Join the conversation and use the #hashtags in your tweets.
10. Monitor your results (of course)
The TwitterCounter tool allows you to know how many new followers you acquire every day. Quitter notifies you if someone unfollows you after and after which of your tweets.
You need to realize, though, that increase in number of followers is not a goal in itself. There are many tools, which i really do not approve of, that will generate you thousands of followers quickly, but it is actually better to have 100 followers only that are actually interested in what you tweet, than to have thousands of followers that do not even read your tweets. However, integrated in a larger strategy, the tips recommended by Kevin Rose can be really useful. Please, do not hesitate to comment about your own thoughts and experience on this subject.
9 ways to be retweeted on Twitter (statistics based:)
Oct 18th
There are many people looking for ways to increase their Twitter followers, retweets and thus traffic to their websites and blogs. No wonder since it is already a proven fact that Twitter marketing is now much more powerful than email marketing. Consequent to Twitter becoming such a powerful and popular platform is the occurrence of many paid info and software products about Twitter marketing. To be honest with you – all of these products suck big time and in order to keep it ethical to some extent i won’t mention their names.
If getting more retweets is your case, then check out the study called The Science of Retweeting by Dan Zarrella. After having spent 9 months in analyzing 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets, he has now published his Nine tips and tricks on how to get retweeted on Twitter.
To those who are still wondering in why we need retweets, Dan Zarrella explains that retweets may seem like a small idea, but are applicable to the viral concept for other media.
Well, here are the key conclusions of his study:
1. The shortest links get the most retweets.
Retweets contain 3 times as many links as normal tweets. New URL shorteners such as bit.ly, ow.ly, is.gd are more popular than longer ones such as tinyurl.
2. Ask for retweets.
Contrary to popular belief, it is favorable to you if you openly ask people to retweet you. According to Dan Zarrella, the words “please”, “retweet”, “check out”, and “new blog post” are often to be found in retweets.
3. Be pertinent.
Facts such as you may not have slept well or are drinking wine right now do not interest anyone. If you do not have anything interesting to tweet, you better do not.
4. Do not use abbreviations.
Retweets contain more syllables per word than normal tweets and are more difficult to understand.
5. Use punctuation marks, but avoid semicolons.
98% of retweets contain punctuation marks, while 86% of normal tweets do. The most popular punctuation marks in retweets are: the colon, the period, the exclamation mark, and finally the comma. Punctuation marks to avoid: the hyphen, the question mark, the ellipsis and the semicolon.
6. Tweet original content.
This may sound banal, but is still important to mention: original content is retweeted much more than already known and popular information.
7. Use names.
Retweets mostly contain nouns, proper names and verbs in the third person (example: Lindsay Lohan escapes from rehab facility; ).
8. Be pertinent.
Tweets about work, religion, money, media and celebrities are retweetd more often than tweets containing vulgarities, negative emotions or ones that talk about the author himself.
9. Wait for the ideal time to tweet.
Tweet on Friday afternoons at about 16:00. The proof is below…
Are you ready to tweet now : )
John Chow reveals his blog business model
Jul 14th
Today i stumbled upon a video recording of John Chow speaking at the Vancouver Business, Marketing and Entrepreneur meetup. It is almost a month old, but if you have not seen it – you really need to check it out.
Almost an hour long, the video gives you an insight of best practices on the web now that work. The topic is How John Chow Makes $ 40,000 a Month From His Blog.
People who visit his blog know that he offers a free ebook on how to make money blogging, which is pretty thorough and extensive, but here in this video he reveals even more about his practices and business.
I have said it before, and will say it again – if you are looking for a quick and easy to understand make money formula – just go to John Chow’s blog and opt in for his ebook. I should now add to this – …and watch the video ;)
My Blog Business Model from John Chow on Vimeo.
And HERE is his original post
The Dark Side of Twitter
Mar 29th
Lately more and more people are discussing their visions of Twitter being a powerful marketing platform. Many of these people start using their Twitter followers with the same intention they use their mail lists – the intention to sell.
As a result other people started providing the needed tools (sold via clickbank of course) to generate more and more followers, viral tweets, etc.
Inevitably the following question occurs:
Is Twitter yet another platform which “marketers” (in this case i’d rather say “spammers”) are going to corrupt?
For a really short time a majority of people got to generate more than 10 000 followers and flood twitter with their affiliate and cpa offer links. This made me stop following back people who have more than 1000 followers, unless i know them personally.
By nature Twitter is a simple social appication and everybody loves it because of its simplicity. As i have written some time back – people love Twitter, because there is no right or wrong way to use it – there are people who use Twitter to just update statuses, others to chat, others to coordinate events, and recently there are people who try to market on Twitter.
I’d ask the latter if they know what is the difference between a marketer and spammer?
Marketers build relationships no matter the channels they use to market. Real marketers value their potential customers and this is why they are less likely to disappoint their customer. Real marketers are not aiming at your one-time spent 20$ – they want you to come back for more, which means – they will not scam you.
Spammers – they do not have customers. They are just looking for a way to earn some quick money.
Spammers target at larger audiences since it is more likely to make, let’s say, 3 people to buy out of 30 000; hence the fact that Twitter is getting crowded with spammers.
What drivers spammers in Twitter is the idea that – When you follow someone, they are very likely to follow you back.
They use software to follow 30 000 people, for example, and at least the half of them follow them back. Then spammers start blasting some affiliate/cpa links and hope they’d convert. Even if they do not – it does not cost them anything to try.
I’d definitely advise spammers to stop blasting only affiliate/cpa links and start talking like real people from time to time. Remember – as it is with mail lists – your relationship with these people is much more important than the size of your list. Focus on building on relationships with people.
And i would also advise the regular Twitter users to pay attention whom they follow, do not let yourself be flooded.
I WANT TWITTER BACK!
CPA | Online Lead Finder
Feb 23rd
For all the CPA marketers out there – i came across a very interesting tool. I am sure you have heard of the Lead Evolution software that sells for about $4k. There is also another software you might have heard of – Lead Portal that goes for $1500. The person who made it is Duncan Wierman. He says that Dr Mike and Brian Koz ripped it from him so he decided to give his tool away for free. You can read more about this story here – http://onlineleadfinder.com.
So what does Online Leed Finder do?
You can search for particular keywords in CL, Backpage, Kijji, collect emails and, of course, mail these leads! In order to do that you need to configure your email seetings. If you use gmail – there is no problem. Gmail’s mail setting are:
smtp.gmail.com
pop.gmail.com
yourid@gmail.com
password
This thing can be so powerful if you use it right!
Google Slapper Review
Feb 16th
Another product is going to hit the market soon. It is still in prelaunch, and it is about to be launched on March 3.
It is called Google Slapper. To tell you the truth i have already sneaked a peek in the VIP Platinum Members’ are and was totally amazed by the amout of quality content Jay Deiboldt made available for such a small amount of money (price is something like 70$).
This guy shows you not only how you can create a promo page (this info you ca get for free, if you want), but he shows you at least 30 methods on how you can promote your promo page. And no, he is not telling you about bookmarking, as if you were some moron who does not know about it – he shares some fresh techniques! He shares advanced techniques in three parts – pdf books with video follow ups! How do i know all this?! I have already bought it!
Jay Deiboldt also shows you how you can crush your competition for 45 minutes straight for a keyword term with 5 000 000 competitors. How about that?
This product will surely leave a mark! And if you want to know more real details about it, not sales copy, as what all of the other people do – drop me a line. I have already tried to product and can talk about it in details.
