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Last week, Mashable published an article about the value of a Facebook fan.  This article has been shared thousands of times and reposted all over the marketingverse, and I’m terrified by the implications of how may people have read it (more on that later). Using a CPM model, Vitrue calculated that a Facebook fan is worth $3.60.  Here’s the math: from: Mashable There’s one problem: This is NOT how Facebook works. This statistic reinforces one of the most common misconceptions about social media.  A misconception near-and-dear to people who think in TRPs and GRPs that is so flawed that it threatens to destabilize your efforts on Facebook and potentially reward bad behavior by community managers. This statistic puts a value on 1-way communication and totally overlooks the core of a good Facebook campaign. Engagement When working in social spaces, engagement is key.  Lets say you have a million fans and you post daily.  By some miracle you get a 100% impression rate, but only 5 likes and 5 comments.  The bulk of those million impressions came from people scrolling through their newsfeed where your post is likely sandwiched between posts by friends, other brands and in the worst case scenario a note that a friend has engaged with your competitor.  Few intelligent media buyers would pay $5 CPM for this kind of cluttered and shared text-only inventory. In this case, you had 10 meaningful engagements and a boatload of mediocre impressions, especially since you probably got most of your fans through an engagement block that allowed people to become fans without ever visiting your page.  Your 1MM fans are hardly worth $3.60 a piece at a 0.001% engagement rate.  If you were buying banner inventory and had a 0.001% engagement or click-thru rate, you’d move your money elsewhere, but by Vitrue’s logic each of these fans is still worth $3.60 However, when someone comments on your wall or likes a post or uses an app, their activity is shared on their newsfeed.  All of their friends see someone they know, and hopefully trust, engaging with your brand, which is effectively an endorsement.  Most brand activity in social spaces is not instigated by brands.  It’s people asking their peers for advice, and a personal endorsement is the best you can hope for. So how do you measure

So Twitter’s got a big – whoo-pished! – backlash after announcing they will be launching promoted tweets. I’m seeing twitter users saying that it will turn Twitter into a male enhancement and teeth whitening spam box; it wont work and threatening to leave the platform; and quote unquote ‘experts’ claim it is not much of an innovative idea. Here’s an adage, which may bring some light to the issue: KISS – Keep It Simple Shithead. Twitter may have had all type of creative ideas on the table; ‘Oh, lets have advertisers pay for tweet in 3-D that will smack fire out the user until he pays attention. hmm; its going to cost a Wall Street Stimulus package and the resurrection of Thomas Edison to develop – lets just go with promoted tweets.” Promoted tweets will be posted and will only be allowed to stay on the site if people reply, retweet, or favorite it; This is like the user-voted ads on Digg and sponsored posts written by the editorial staff @ Gawker and Federated Media. This is what spurred the buzz around the launch of Google Adwords – ads displayed based on relevance 1. the amount of money paid 2. the amount of times people clicked on the ads. God bless Google. The only thing I see is that the Google Adwords algo can’t be as easily manipulated because you have to pay for each click; will Twitter charge for retweets, favorites and replies – spam popups of teeth with black craters? Will these charges ad to positive ROI; The only thing i see on which twitter could improve, is only letting big name companies like Starbucks, & Virgin America play first. Big brands are big brands – Richard Branson could fart and people would follow him and do as he tweets; where if a small business owner were to fart, she would just clear out the elevator and get wacked upside the head with a purse by the lady who couldn’t exit the elevator because the batteries in her power scooter died. I would recommend to also open it up to the mom&pops; the internet is built on the creative spirit of everybody that can hit buttons on the keyboard. Like with Google, once the mom&pop pig farm drops a case study on how they’re selling more mail-orders of fresh-cut bacon and chicharron, that’s when everybody will want a piece and start to throw money at promoted tweets – think long-tail Twitter – the short tail’s still looking for penis enlargement just to keep up. And for any marketers that are criticizing this move – shame on you! You know that you have to hunt for a marketing campaign that slaps some cash on the table; solely found through trial & error; let the Twitter boys and girls experiment – if you’re focusing on building your brand instead of branding every other social media website spending too much time on them; you should be alright. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Mind Your Neck and Stop Knocking Promoted

Google has again proven its might as it reports its Q1 2010 revenue growth at 23% compared to the same period in 2009. Total reported revenue for the quarter ending March 31 is at $6.77 billion. Traffic Acquisition Cost (TAC) amounted to $1.71 billion or 26% of advertising revenues. Despite suffering from a decline in stocks prices, Google however managed to beat the Wall Street expectations. Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google has issued the following statements regarding their first quarter financial report. “Google performed very well in the first quarter, with 23% year over year revenue growth driven by strength across all major verticals and geographies,” said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google. Some key highlights of Google’s Q1 2010 Financial Report are as follow: Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.77 billion in the first quarter of 2010, representing a 23% increase over first quarter 2009 revenues of $5.51 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC. Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $4.44 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 20% increase over first quarter 2009 revenues of $3.69 billion. Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.04 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 24% increase from first quarter 2009 network revenues of $1.64 billion. Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 15% over the first quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 5% over the fourth quarter of 2009. Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 7% over the first quarter of 2009 and decreased approximately 4% over the fourth quarter of 2009. TAC – Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.71 billion in the first quarter of 2010, compared to TAC of $1.44 billion in the first quarter of 2009. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 26% in the first quarter of 2010, compared to 27% in the first quarter of 2009. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Off to a Great Year, Gains $6.7 Billion in

What do you think of when I mention Twitter?  Do you think about teenagers posting what color socks their wearing to school today?  Or do you think about the sales/conversions your company makes by utilizing these accounts?  Social media is a fantastic way to increase your brand exposure.  By creating a successful Twitter account you essentially have a direct line to your customers.  Utilize the following tips to gain “followers” and to maximize your company’s Twitter experience. 1. Carefully Choose Your Twitter User Name Make sure you put some thought into what username you want to use on Twitter.  Do you want to use your company name, brand name, or your full name?  Each one of these types of user names has an advantage, for instance we use @DKS_Systems for our Twitter user name.  @billgates chose to use his real name even though he is the founder of his company Microsoft.  It’s up to you; decide which one is the best fit for your company. 2. Your Twitter Image Your Twitter image is what everyone will see next to your username.  Every time you publish a tweet people will see this image.  Does it make sense to put your company’s logo as the image? Alternatively you can post a picture of yourself.  Considering Twitter is a social network I like to suggest that everyone posts a picture of themselves.  This I believe adds more of a community feel and less of a B2B connection.  I find that it’s easier to get people to follow your account with a personal picture than a company logo.  This is an issue you can always test as Twitter easily allows you to update your picture within your account settings. 3. Twitter Profile Optimization The search engines will index your Twitter profile so it’s important to optimize as much as you can.  Below are a couple fields you can change to help your profiles search rankings. Title Tag – This is your “Name” followed by your Twitter user name. Meta Description – Google shows your profiles “BIO” as your meta description.  So keep in consideration whatever you type here is what will show up in the search engines. Your website URL – take the www out of your URL.  This way people can see more of the actual web address.  Twitter only shows 17 characters.  Our website address just makes the cut and shows “http://dkssystems” 4. Customize Your Twitter Background Twitter allows you to create and display your own custom background.  Create a background image that displays more information about your company!  (I will freely admit that I too really need to work on this tip!)   This is by far the best resource I can point you to on how to create the best Twitter background for your account. 5. Be careful who you follow You may not have any control over who follows your account however you do have full control over who you choose to follow.  Don’t follow any accounts that you wouldn’t be willing to explain to your boss or even your clients.  I have never seen this being an issue however it would be a real shame to lose a sale/client over you choosing to follow a specific political candidate or questionable celebrity.  This tip doesn’t apply to every user; however it’s something to keep in the back of your mind. 6. Use Hash Tags In Your Tweets It’s very important that you use Twitter just like everyone else on the website.  #hashtags help categorize your tweet in with a specific topic.  If you’re talking about SEO you might want to consider adding #SEO at the end of your tweet.  This way anyone who is searching for “SEO” tweets will find yours in the results. 7. Don’t Spam People Who Follow You! Remember how I suggested that you be careful who you follow on Twitter?  If you send out ten tweets in a one minute period your followers are going to be annoyed.  If you annoy them enough they may just un-follow your account.  You need to publish your tweets sparingly.  I would suggest a couple of tweets an hour at most.  This is just a general rule and is something you will need to figure out as you get use to your Twitter account. 8. It’s Not All About Business Don’t bombard your followers with your company’s products and or offers.  Twitter is a virtual hang out space for everyone.  If someone in real life got in your face and tried to make you buy something wouldn’t you avoid them each time you saw them on the street?  However, if one of your “buddies” suggested you go see the latest movie or buy a certain product wouldn’t you take it into a little more consideration?  Make sure to tweet about everything.  The color of your socks, your amazing fast food lunch, and a funny joke someone told you etc.  After several of these posts you can slide one or two tweets advertising your product or service. 9. Think Before You Speak… I Mean Tweet How many times have you read in the news about a celebrity or a successful business person putting their foot in their mouth?  People don’t always think before they tweet.  Twitter is not a place for you to complain about your clients or customers.  You don’t want to say anything that will sabotage your brand or company either.  My rule of thumb is before I submit a tweet I ask if my boss would be ok with reading this.  If I think it’s questionable I will re-phrase it or choose not to tweet that message.   Just remember to think before you tweet, if you don’t you may get yourself and or your company in trouble! 10. Personal Messages and Re-Tweets As mentioned before, Twitter is all about being social.  Talk to your followers, ask them questions, and make sure to answer any questions they may ask you.  You want to maintain a form of friendship with your followers.  Twitter allows customers/clients to have a direct access to you that they otherwise wouldn’t have.  Take advantage of this, write them personal messages. (Tweets only they can see)  Also make sure to re-tweet (RT) their tweets if you find it interesting.  Building these relationships may help you create some sales in the future. Have You Created A Twitter Account Yet? I hope that this article has shown you the value of investing time into Twitter.  Twitter is a fantastic way to keep in touch with your existing clients and customers. When customers get a sense of satisfaction they are more willing to make additional purchases.  Twitter also gives your company an opportunity to reach out to people interested in your niche.  Engage with them and answer their questions, you may just have another customer in the future if you do it right. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Does Your Company Twitter? 10 Tips To Become A Great Business

As a user nothing can be more frustrating than waiting for a site to load. So when I saw a video near the end of 2009 I was excited to see that Google would be taking site speed into consideration, giving credit to sites that load fast and penalizing those that load slowly. I have to agree with Matt Cutts in the video when he says “The web should be fast”. The Internet should snap and respond quickly. So if you have clients with slow load time here is a short simple list to get started: 1. Use Flash Sparingly I personally think flash is pretty cool. There are a lot of amazing things that can be done with it. But as with most good things, too much can be a bad thing. If a webpage is loaded with flash it can take some time to load. It is possible to build a site without flash, but if you must use it treat it as salt. Only to enhance, never to overpower. Should you choose to use flash heavily I’d compress the files as much as you can so they can load faster. This last sentence about flash is more of a recent frustration but I think it still holds true. As a side note, if you don’t have a link for visitors to update their flash player please add it. Nothing is more frustrating to me than visiting a website and having to go find what I need in order to enjoy the contents on said website. 2. Compress Images My first experience with compressing images was a brutal one. I worked for a non-profit who sends numerous teams internationally to provide medical care. And each team that returned had at least a thousand photos. By this point they had a ‘designated web guy’, me, to crop and upload the photos. So when I got in to work and had 50 CDs full of photos waiting for me, I panicked a bit. Thankfully I only had to upload 50 photos from each team. But I quickly learned a few things about image load time: Be sure the dimensions for all images/photos is set within the code If thumbnails are used, set them to open in a new tab when clicked In case the full size is really big the user can click the previous tab to browse while it is loading If the file is missing either find it, or remove the spot where the image is supposed to be When you have a lot of photos consider using something like Flickr We had pretty good success with Flickr, but I have heard some who did not. What has been your experience? There was initial resistance to use thumbnails, but as most things, once the administration experienced our site without thumbnails a unanimous decision was made to use them. While these pages I worked with weren’t meant to be landing pages, I did learn to integrate images efficiently. 3. Less Cookies If you didn’t hear, Sesame Street taught Cookie Monster that cookies are a ’sometime’ food . As funny as it may seem, we can learn something from this. If it is possible, reduce the amount of cookies on your site. This isn’t because of the cookies you’ve got, but you don’t know how many cookies that user’s particular browser has already ‘eaten’. A user can set his/her browser to accept/reject cookies, but then it is up to you to make sure they can access the site should they choose to not accept the cookie. No sense feeding someone that doesn’t want to be fed right? As with flash, minimize the amount of cookies and make it possible for users to enjoy your site whether they accept the cookies or not. 4. Less Widgets Ah widgets, I remember the first time I learned how to add widgets to my website. By the time I was done I had 20 or so lining the right and left sides of my site. I was excited, then a friend from college called me, “Dude, your site is taking forever. What’s up?” I was on a pretty quick connection so I didn’t notice, but when I tried accessing my site on a slower connection, I realized it was taking a little long to load, around 15 seconds. So I took a second look and decided to reduce the number of widgets. Presently I’ve got 5 located on the right side of my site. Just in case you are debating about adding widgets consider the following: How many do I presently have? Which do I need? How will this widget enhance the experience on my site? As with the previous methods to quicken loading time, too much can be a bad thing. Hmm, there seems to be a common theme throughout these tips. Too much can slow a site down. No matter what connection speed a user is on, the internet experience should be the same for everyone. It’s one thing to have a site that has the right information a user is looking for, but if that site takes too long said user will settle for a faster site that might not have the ‘perfect content’. Sites can have a lot of information to provide users, and they can have a lot of things to entertain. When the two come together it’s best to have a good ratio so the experience is enjoyable. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . 4 Simple Ways to Speed Up Your