Facebook Continues to Lead Social Traffic Referrals

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Over the past year, more than a few people have predicted the death of Facebook. They cite the shrinking number of teens signing up for the social site and the increasing difficulty for brands to get organic exposure as proof the end is near. But, a new report from Shareaholic show Facebook is still going strong.

Facebook has consistently been the leader in social referral traffic for years, and their share of traffic referrals is only growing especially during the last quarter of 2014. In fact, Shareaholic’s data suggests Facebook may be responsible for nearly a quarter of all traffic online.

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The most popular social media site reached over 25% of the total share of visits to Shareaholic’s network through October and December, however it fell to 24.64% in December. Overall the site gained 2.27 percent since the third quarter.

The report confirms Pinterest’s popularity, as the data showed the site in second place. Still, even Pinterest can’t compete with Facebook’s share of traffic referrals. Pinterest’s share was only 5.06%, nearly five times less than Facebook.

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Pinterest Is Trying to Woo Male Users With Gender-Based Search Results

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Pinterest_Sticker_Icon1While Pinterest has quickly become one of the most popular social media sites around, it is no secret that the company struggles to attract men. The problem is so widely known, Wall Street Journal profiled the company’s attempts to bring more men onto their site today.

The latest estimates from comScore indicate up to 71% of Pinterest’s 72.5 million visitors in December 2014 were female, and a recent Pew Research survey found that only 13% of American online men use the site. Despite this, Pinterest claims it doubled the number of male users last year, but it still isn’t out of the woods.

Pinterest is currently making strides to increase revenue, which means the company has to convince advertisers it can reach a wide range of demographics – including men. To accomplish that, Pinterest told the Journal that it is working to make the site more “gender neutral” and has adjusted the sign-up process to give new users content-following suggestions based on their gender.

In an attempt to cater the site towards user interests, Pinterest announced a few interesting changes in the article. Perhaps most intriguing is the news Pinterest will begin personalizing search results based upon users’ gender.

For instance, depending on whether a male or female is browsing, a search for “workouts” generates fitness tips that are as different as the pages of “Men’s Fitness” and “Women’s Health.” In the past, the results for male users would have included a mix of men’s and women’s workout regimens. Pinterest says this feature, now available to all of its users, has led to increased engagement on the platform.

Pinterest never mentioned this algorithm in the past, but some tests from Marketing Land show the difference in search results is pretty stark. Here are some examples:

Results for “Party”

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Results for “Shoes”

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New Facebook Tool Helps You Target Your Ads For Super Bowl XLIX

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facbook-advertisingThe Super Bowl is quite possibly the biggest single day for advertisers. There aren’t many other times you’ll hear anyone proclaim they are watching something “just for the commercials.” But, it has always been difficult for online marketers to get into the mix. That all might be changing as Facebook has announced a new tool to help online advertisers target people interested in the “Big Game.”

The “Big Game” targeting segment allows advertisers to reach people specifically based on real-time online discussions related to the Super Bowl.

According to the announcement, the segment will go much further than simply targeting football fans. The “Big Game” segment will also include those liking, commenting, and sharing content related to party planning, recipes, or even flatscreen TV purchases in the days leading up to XLIX.

The targeting tool is also designed to be updated frequently, so that ads will be directed based on up-to-date information.

The new tool is a change of strategy for Facebook, who used interests and liked pages to target ads last year.

According to the social media platform, combining ads with live sporting events is a highly effective strategy for reaching specific targeted demographics. For example, it cites a cross-platform Nielsen study that analyzed at a Microsoft commercial that was shown during the 2014 Super Bowl and found Microsoft was able to reach 35% of persons 18 to 49 in the United States during a four-day run of the TV spot.

Using Facebook ads during this campaign allowed Microsoft to extend that reach to 57% of the national target of people 18-49. Among the younger 21 to 24-year-old audience, Microsoft more than doubled its reach, extending its TV reach of 24% to a combined TV-plus-Facebook reach of 53%.3.

The new targeting segment is available starting today for all advertisers. It can be found in the Facebook ads interface within the “Behaviors” section, under the “Seasonal and Events” category.

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8 SEO Trends You Should Know in 2015 [Infographic]

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SEO is an essential part of growing your business online, but it can often seem impossible to keep up with the constantly changing trends and policies. With the never-ending changes coming from Google and the other major search engines, you could drive yourself crazy trying to react to every single update.

Thankfully, a recent infographic from CJG Digital Marketing breaks down the most important trends and changes coming for SEO in 2015. With these tips, you won’t have to fight to keep up to date with the latest changes because you’ll be prepared before they even happen.

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New Survey Shows The Majority of Small & Medium Businesses Find Online Marketing Effective

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Many small businesses are pretty cautious when it comes to investing the very limited amount of time and money they have into marketing, but a new survey shows the vast majority of small or medium businesses who use online marketing are glad they did.

BrightLocal’s annual SMB Internet Marketing Survey asked 736 businesses with 1-50 employees about their feelings and use of internet marketing, mobile marketing, and marketing services in October-November 2014.

Of those who responded to the survey, 95% were businesses located within North America (92% U.S.; 3% Canada).

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When asked how effective each respondent felt internet marketing is at attracting new customers to their business, 32% said they found online marketing to be “very effective” (compared to 27% in 2013). Combined, 75% felt internet marketing is “effective” or “very effective” at attracting new customers (compared to 68% in 2013).

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The findings of the survey also show that many small businesses are still reaping significant rewards with internet marketing on a limited budget. The report says 70% of those who responded to the survey are spending less than $500 per month on marketing (compared to 73%), and 83% are spending less than $1,000 per month.

There are several other interesting findings in the study, but the overall message is clear. Online marketing is highly effective, even for businesses who don’t have extensive resources to put towards marketing.

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Pew Survey Shows Facebook Is Still The Most Popular Social Media Site

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Facebook may still be the most popular social media site, but Instagram is easily the fastest growing site, according to a new survey released by Pew Research Internet Project.

The survey shows the most popular social media site’s growth may be stagnating, but their most recent changes seem to be improving engagement.

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The Pew numbers suggest Facebook facilitates the most engagement of any social platform, as 70% of users fully engage with the site daily. That’s a notable increase from 63% last year. In comparison, only 49 percent of Instagram users and 17 percent of Pinterest users engage with the sites on a daily basis.

While Instagram is unable to draw the engagement levels of Facebook, they outpace anyone in the market when it comes to attracting new users. Over the past year, the number of American adults using Instagram rose 9 percent. That means 26 percent of all adults in the U.S. now use the site.

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In comparison to, Pinterest only grew 7 percent, LinkedIn grew by 6 percent, and Twitter grew by 5 percent. Instagram’s huge rise shouldn’t be too surprising, as they recently announced reaching 300 million monthly active users, surpassing Twitter for the first time.

Some other interesting findings in the report:

  • Daily use of Twitter dropped 10 percentage points to 36%. Twenty-two percent say they check the site several times a day, 24% a few times a week and 40% less often.
  • Instagram showed statistically significant growth across all age demographics, while still skewing younger. Notably 53% of younger adults (18-29) use the service, up from 37% in 2013. Instagram users are very active; 49% say they use the site daily, 32% several times a day and 24% weekly.
  • Pinterest is still favored mostly by women, with 42% of all online U.S. females saying they are Pinterest users. That’s up from 33% the year before. Men, on the other hand, are still lagging at 13%, an increase of 5 points over 2013.
  • LinkedIn users are coming to the site less often with weekly users dropping to 25% from 34% and those who visit every few weeks or less increasing to 61% from 52% the previous year. Users of the career-oriented network still skew older, higher income and college educated (50% of college graduates — an increase of 12 percentage points from 2013 — use LinkedIn).
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Facebook Highlights Huge Increase In Video Uploads and Views

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Expect to see a lot more videos in your Facebook feed. According to the social media platform, people around the world are posting 75% more videos to Facebook compared to this time last year, and that growth is even greater in the U.S. where video uploads on the social network have risen 94%.

Unsurprisingly, this surplus of video content has also led to a much greater amount of videos being featured in users’ news feeds. Facebook says the number of videos featured in news feeds has risen 360% over the past year.

“With people creating, posting and interacting with more videos on Facebook, the composition of News Feed is changing,” said Facebook in the announcement. “Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed has increased 3.6x year-over-year.”

“Since June 2014, Facebook has averaged more than 1 billion video views every day. On average, more than 50% of people who come back to Facebook every day in the US watch at least one video daily and 76% of people in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.”

With the fast growth, Facebook is poised to overtake YouTube as the primary place for marketers to post videos, especially as previous studies have found that on desktop Facebook has already surpassed YouTube in monthly video views.

Facebook also included suggestions for video creators to ensure you get the most reach possible for videos on the platform:

As a creator, you should be conscious that people will discover your video in News Feed next to a photo from a friend or a status update from a relative. Your video needs to fit in, and it needs to be something that your audience will want to watch and share.

With the launch of auto-play and the surge in mobile use, it’s also important to focus on posting videos that grab people from the first frame of video. Shorter, timely video content tends to do well in News Feed. Keep in mind that auto-play videos play silently in News Feed until someone taps to hear sound, so videos that catch people’s attention even without sound often find success.

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Twitter Starts Showing Users New ‘While You Were Away’ Feature

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Twitter is making some big changes to its feed for the first time since the company established itself as a major social media platform. Users are spotting a ‘While you were away’ feature which helps sort through the noise of your feed to find the best content.

The feature is not available for everyone yet, but the increasing number of users seeing it suggests it will be fully available soon. Twitter is currently declining to confirm when a full release is expected.

‘While you were away” is the first notable non-chronological feature available on Twitter, making a significant break from the traditional time-sorted feed on the site. Twitter indicated something similar was coming back in November, when the company said it would allow you to find the ‘best’ tweets from your feed since you last opened Twitter.

“Every time you open the Twitter app, you’ll see something great,” said the announcement.

In the past, Twitter would alert users to popular Tweets with email and push notifications. The new feature should streamline the process to make it easier for users to catch up with their friends without having to scroll through endless posts.

‘While you were away’ may also have some potential benefits for businesses as well, depending on the platform’s algorithm. With continued visibility of successful posts, there is a greater chance for people to see anything you share once it has gained traction.

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Pinterest Expands Promoted Pins To All Users

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Pinterest started 2015 with a bang by expanding Promoted Pins to all users yesterday morning. Promoted Pins were first introduced early last year when a beta roll out was given to a select number of advertisers. The social platform announced the expansion Monday, while also providing some pretty astounding statistics about Promoted Pin performance.

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Here are some of the benefits Pinterest claims Promoted Pins can provide:

  • Promoted Pins perform as well or better than organic Pins.
  • Brand advertisers achieved about a 30% bump in earned media from people who saw a Promoted Pin and saved it to their own boards
  • Promoted Pins are repinned 11 times more than organic Pins on average.
  • Promoted Pins draw engagement from users well after a campaign has ended.
  • Businesses typically outside of Pinterest’s core categories and interests were also successful with Promoted Pins.

While these findings sound nice, it is important to remember that Pinterest’s beta launch of Promoted Pins was given to a select number of well-established brands. While the new promoted posting system may carry some weight, the data is based on a test of high-quality targeted ads. Your mileage may vary.

To help businesses get introduced to promoting themselves on Pinterest, the company is establishing the “Pinstitute” – a new interactive program to educate businesses on how to connect with users and improve their return on investment.

The “Pinstitute” helps you learn about what kind of Pins perform the best, what users are interested in, and what products will be coming from Pinterest in the future. The program will also invite select groups of brands and agencies to quarterly workshops. The Pinstitute will have provide webinars and other online education tools tailored for the needs of local and smaller businesses.

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Instagram Purges Fake Accounts, But Large Brands Are Largely Undisturbed

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Instagram LogoMany celebrities and popular internet figures were shocked last week when they lost thousands upon thousands of followers in the Instagram Rapture. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, as Instagram gave warning they would be deleting fake and spammy accounts, but the purge of useless accounts still caused an uproar across the social network.

Celebrities were the hardest hit, as Justin Bieber lost over 5 million followers, or 15% of his total followers. Kim Kardashian lost 1.3 million, but rapper Mase received the most embarrassing lost as his 1.6 million followers dropped to only 100,000 in under 20-minutes. His account was deleted quickly after.

Instagram was clear the purge would be coming in their announcement they had hit 300 million active followers. They noted spammy accounts had already been deactivated for violation of community and were not included in the count.

“When we remove accounts from Instagram that don’t follow our Community Guidelines, you may see a decrease in your follower count,” the company wrote in its blog post. “This shouldn’t affect engagement from authentic accounts that like and comment on your posts.”

Celebrities may still be reeling from their large drops in followers, but most marketers are celebrating and larger brands haven’t seen much of a change. For marketers, the deletion of spam accounts means better analysis of how many people are being reached with each post.

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