Mobile phones and mobile web presented an increasingly popular medium for digital marketing.  With more companies investing in mobile, more advertising dollars being allocated into mobile campaigns and Smartphones becoming more advanced than ever before (flash integration, better usability, html5).  Although this is still a small part of overall advertising budgets, it will continue to have strong growth in the New Year.

Search engines rolled out some big changes to the way their search algorithm works in 2011. Google emphasized cleaning up their search results, as seen with the new Block Sites feature and the release of Panda.  The update represents a new path for the future and a change that has made SEO and internet marketing much more challenging – but  also creates a better landscape for quality content online, which is beneficial to everyone.

In terms of web activities on the search engines, while most web users searched for celebrities, some key news stories ended up on the top 10 list of searches for 2011. Each year Google lists the Top 10 global search trends, in a variety of categories, and then breaks those trends down on a nation-by-nation basis. According to Google’s Zeitgeist list for 2011, the things that Canadians most googled were Statistics Canada’s census website and, not far behind, the Canada Post strike.

2011 Canada’s fastest rising search’s from Google

1. www.census2011.gc.ca
2. Skyrim
3. Canada Post strike
4. Rebecca Black
5. Ryan Dunn
6. Japan earthquake
7. Game of Thrones
8. Jack Layton
9. Royal Wedding
10. Google Plus

We have also compiled a list of the major internet marketing and online business news throughout 2011.  Here are some big news makers.

January:

• Canada named world’s top country brand

February:

• Google makes a major algorithm change (aka Panda) in efforts to remove copycat websites from search results

March:

• eBay agrees to buy GSI Commerce, provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $2.4 billion
• CRM company Salesforce.com acquires social media monitoring company Radian6

April:

• Facebook launches “Social Deals” to challenge Groupon and LivingSocial

May:

• LinkedIn IPO
• Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 Billion
• Google stops its project to scan newspapers

June:

• Report showing Facebook loosing visitors for 2nd straight month. Lost 1.52 million users (down to 16.6 million)
• Introduction of new social networking site, Google+
• Music streaming site, Pandora, prices IPO at $7-9/share
• Google’s Panda 2.2 update goes live with improvements to scraper detection

August:

• Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

September:

• The 60-day comment period on draft regulations related to Canada’s anti-spam legislation ended
• Google+ social network open to everyone

October:

• Google redirects signed in users to https:// and removes search referral data

November:

• Google crawler able to execute JavaScrip/AJAX
• Google+ Pages released worldwide allowing business to create their own profile page.
• Groupon IPO debuts at $28/share
• Twitter and Mozilla struck a deal that makes Twitter search one of the default search options in the new Firefox 8 web browser.

December:

• YouTube launches biggest redesign in its history
• comScore reports Bing and Yahoo have 15% equal search market share in US. Google holds 65.4%
• comScore reports Canadian have the highest number of videos per viewer, average about about an hour watching 10 videos online / day
• StatCounter reports Chrome 15 becomes World’s most popular browser, beating IE 8
• Twitter Launches Self Serve Ad Platform
• IBM found online shopping jumped 16.4% on Christmas Day over last year. 7% of all online purchases were made using the iPad

Did I miss anything?

It was an eventful year to say the least. I project that has more to come 2012 in the mobile web and that we will see watching videos online becoming more mainstream.  Just as the music and newspaper industry has changed with the rise of the Internet, watching television and movies will continue to evolve into more web based platform.  I see the number of new social users leveling off, rather than increasing, and instead the social networks will focus on expanding their service offerings and integrating features with other applications.

It’s never a dull day in the world of the web!

As the Internet industry continues to rise and become more popular, companies are looking for the most effective ways to advertise their site to increase their brand and sales. Many companies are trying to advertise on search engines, social media platforms, online press releases, etc. You are probably asking yourself, whatever happened to good, old-fashion television, newspaper and radio advertisements? The answer is in the question itself, with the phrase, “Old Fashion“. People these days get their information through new and more convenient forms of technology, such as smart phones and tablets, by accessing the Internet and online apps. 9th sphere wrote an article in February regarding a topic similar to this on Why SEO Deserves to Be on Your Marketing Budget.

Even though SEO as a concept and practice has been around for quite some time, the evolution of online marketing has never seen such drastic changes as it has in the recent few years. Some larger companies are hiring online marketing teams  to advertise their company’s websites online. But what about the medium to small sized businesses who don’t have the budget to hire a team? Have no fear. There are SEO firms out there that provide services to help companies rank higher on search engines and promote their brand name. But you must be careful when choosing an SEO firm. I have heard and personally seen  firms that guarantee that their clients will be ranked on the first position for keywords but when they decide to cancel their services, the rankings will not be found again. Also there are many stories about firms that spam their client’s websites in efforts to get links and ultimately got them banned from search engines.

Here is a list of some key factors to consider when finding the best SEO firm:

1. Just like when you hire a new employee, you always check for references. An SEO firm is no different.
2. Research the company. You want to make sure that the firm is doing SEO, PPC, Social Media, etc. on their own site as well. They should have expertise in web design, technical development and copywriting as well. SEO alone may bring traffic, but it doesn’t convert. It’s important to deal with a company that can offer you a full-service solution or at least work very closely with your other teams. The closer the teams work as a unit the better for you.
3. Make sure the SEO company keeps up to date with the latest news and trends. Online marketing constantly changes and SEO’s need to be on their toes on the latest development. Note that they change almost daily.
4. Since SEO can be a very slow and long process in terms of showing results, you should discuss a long term plan and that the firm you deal with is in it for the long haul. Expect 3-8 months depending on your current website situation.
5. Discuss the rights of the website. You want to make sure that everything the firm wants to do go through your approval first before implementing any changes.
6. If an SEO firm guarantees you that your keyword will be ranked on the first page of Google, most likely they are doing something fishy. No one can promise a top ranking. Think about how long other companies have been working on that particular keyword.

By following the steps outlined above and doing some homework about online marketing, finding the right firm for your business needs should not be a problem. Just remember to always do research on the firm and make sure that what they are doing is completely legit.

This is exactly what we were looking for – if web popularity could ultimately predict the most popular candidates and provide a clear indication of a winner.

After watching and reporting on the election web popularity numbers, social media did reveal changes in popularity for specific candidates, however not in a way that when compared to others would indicate a clear winner.    For instance, Jack Layton’s spike in poll numbers, according to main stream statisticians, in the last two weeks of the election was also seen in online social media.  One may have concluded that since the increase in his followers increased higher than any other candidate he could be seen as an upcoming threat to the leader at the time. Although Jack Layton spike did ultimately give him the second most popular party, the total numbers were still lower than the Liberal’s who came in a distant third.   Social media only provided trending data that showed the sudden increase in popularity, and if based on percentage of increase, Jack Layton would have won the election instead of coming in second.

A surprising difference in correlation between the Toronto mayoral election and this federal election was the importance of Youtube channel views. Unlike last time,  the most popular person online, in relation to YouTube video channel views and Facebook Likes did not win the election. Perhaps Ignatieff’s online supporters didn’t come out to vote or there may have been too many false negatives – meaning that people who didn’t necessary support him watch what he was doing and didn’t support him – to allow for a correlation. The age of each social networking account may have a relation to this.  We found that some candidate profiles were much older than others, potentially inflating numbers that may not support the actual election and therefore have a smaller impact on the actual increases.

After the election was finalized and the winners were announced, we looked at each candidate’s final web popularity numbers among the different social media properties and found Twitter to have the closest correlation.  In the last web popularity poll we conducted for the Toronto mayoral race, we found YouTube Channel views to have the closest correlation to the winner when a similar analysis was conducted.  In this election, the winning Conservative Party lead by Stephen Harper had the highest number of Twitter followers, but not YouTube Channel views.  Facebook and Google searches had similar relationships; however, when looking at both the primary winner and the others in sequence, Twitter was the closest from a total numbers perspective.

The important message to take away is that social media essentially provides a platform on which to share ideas, opinions and information.  Politicians can reach out to supporters and potential supports in a way that is more efficient and somewhat more personal.  One cannot make a solid conclusion from the numbers specifically, other than understanding the kind of audience, perhaps their appetite and familiarity with social properties and providing an opportunity to interact with supporters.  Assuming that each political supporter has the same number of internet savvy supporters, one may be able to see trends in support compared to the next candidate.  I would also conclude that due to the instant nature of social media, changes in followers, views, likes, etc., would give strong insight into the public’s interests and preferences. This may even entice account holders like politicians, celebrities, leaders, and others to monitor their reputation online and compare them to others.  These brand tracking tools provide a low cost and real-time indication of changes in public opinion.  Perhaps we will be able to see stronger correlations with the next election, as more people and politicians alike become more familiar with social media and a larger audience embraces it.

Note that we are not a polling company, nor have we conducted any scientific audit of our calculations. 9th sphere has no commercial connections to any specific party.  9th sphere’s Internet Marketing team has put together a Web Popularity Poll to gain insight and evaluate the impacts of social media, the web’s definition of popularity vs. real-world popularity.  We will be updating the poll numbers weekly until the election on May 2, 2011.

The Results this far…
The increased buzz in web popularity among all candidates over the last 7 days definitely shows that election day is near.  Most notably in the last 7 days, Jack Layton had a 16.5% increase in Facebook likes and a 6% increase in Twitter followers. This is more than double an increase when compared to any other candidate.  Despite the increases, Michael Ignatieff has the most Facebook Likes and Stephen Harper still has the most Twitter followers to date.

Jack Layton also had a 32% increase in YouTube Channel views – the largest increase of all the candidates. Michael Ignatieff was a close second at a 14.5% increase.  Overall, Michael Ignatieff still has the highest number of YouTube Channels views, with Stephen Harper at a very distant second.  In an older poll we conducted for the Toronto mayoral race, the number of  video channel views had a much closer correlation to the ultimate winner than any other metric.

We are definitely seeing a correlation between increases in the public opinion polls and our web popularity poll, however the web popularity poll is not currently favouring Stephen Harper as do the opinion polls are.  This Monday, May 2 is Election Day and will help to solidify how accurate web popularity is in predicting Canada’s next Prime Minister.

How it’s Calculated
Our findings were based on the use of both automated tools and manual reviews on the day of posting.

We calculated the numbers based on the following criteria:

1. Number of Video views and comments. This refers to the number of views on each candidate’s campaign YouTube Channels.
2. Number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans. This metric calculated “likes” on Facebook, and the number of followers on Twitter.  We didn’t use Twitter “mentions” since we  felt it gave a less accurate indication of positive intent.
3. Number of times names have been searched online. The Keyword tool that we use allows us to input keywords and provide an estimated number of times the keyword was searched on Google. Although the number of searches are approximates derived from Google’s Traffic Estimator system, we looked at who had more requests relative to the other candidates. This metric doesn’t provide the insight to tell us the searchers intent, so it has little weight on the overall poll.

The Details

As of April 26, 2011 (between 10am – noon)

As of April 19, 2011 (between 10am – noon)
As expected, all the numbers for the candidates have increased since last week.  The recent calculations as of April 19, 2011 continue to support Michael Ignatieff leading in YouTube video channel views and Facebook Likes.  Similarly, Stephen Harper continued to lead in Twitter followers.  Most interestingly noted, is the 13% jump in Michael Ignatieff’s YouTube channel views and both Gilles Duceppe’s 10% and Jack Layton’s 12% increase in Facebook Likes since last week.

As of April 13, 2011
The calculations as of April 13, 2011 indicate Michael Ignatieff is leading in YouTube video channel views and Facebook Likes.  Stephen Harper leads in Twitter followers and has the most Google searches for his name.

When working in any type of industry and especially in Internet Marketing, we have to educate ourselves so that we can be the best of the best.

Are you a car mechanic? Every year new cars are built with new features that may fail and you have to learn how to fix them. Are you a lawyer? New laws are constantly being implemented and you have to be up to date so that you can help your clients. The list can go on and on, but the question is: how and where can you go to gain the knowledge to be the best in your industry? One way is to attend industry Events. There is no place better than a seminar or conference for listening to the leaders of the field giving out the tips and information you need to succeed in your job.

In the world of Internet marketing, it is strongly recommended to attend events and listen to what the search engine leaders are doing. Some of the most popular events worldwide are SMX ( Search Engine Land) and SES (Search Engine Strategies). They travel all over the world, from New York to Toronto to Stockholm, and offer workshops and networking activities delivered by top industry professionals. It doesn’t matter if you are new to the industry, planning your search strategy or managing an Internet marketing team, you will get the knowledge, ideas and contacts needed to boost your results.

If you want to succeed and grow take the next step in being ahead of the game and attend a conference or event. Sitting in front of your computer reading articles about the search engines is great, but it is much better to be live at an event and get firsthand knowledge from the experts themselves explaining what’s new or what’s going to happen in the future.

Below is the list of some of the latest Internet Marketing Events in 2011.

SES (Search Engine Strategies)

• SES (Search Engine Strategies) February 10, 2011 – February 10, 2011

  Downtown Westin Gaslamp Quarter, Downtown Westin Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego, California
• SES (Search Engine Strategies) February 21, 2011 – February 25, 2011

  The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Broad Sanctuary, London, London
• SES (Search Engine Strategies) March 15, 2011 – March 21, 2011

  Hilton New York, New York, New York, New York
• SES (Search Engine Strategies) June 13, 2011 – June 15, 2011

  Hyatt Regency Toronto, Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
• SES (Search Engine Strategies) August 15, 2011 – August 19, 2011

  Moscone West, San Francisco, San Francisco, California
• SES (Search Engine Strategies) September 20, 2011 – September 21, 2011

  Hyatt Regency Tsimshatsui, Kowloon, Kowloon, Hong Kong
• SES (Search Engine Strategies) November 14, 2011 – November 18, 2011

  Hyatt Regency, Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

SMX (Search Marketing Expo)

• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) March 8, 2011 – March 10, 2011

  San Jose McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, San Jose, California
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) April 5, 2011 – April 6, 2011

  Hilton Munich Park Hotel, Munich, Munich, Germany
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) April 14, 2011 – April 16, 2011

  Hilton Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, Australia
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) April 28, 2011 – April 29, 2011

  Expo Hall, Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) May 16, 2011 – May 17, 2011

  Millennium Gloucester Hotel & Conference Centre, London, London, England
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) June 6, 2011 – June 7, 2011

  Seattle, Seattle, Seattle, Washington
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) September 13, 2011 – September 15, 2011

  Jacob K. Javits Center, New York
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) November 16, 2011 – November 17, 2011

  Hilton On The Park, Melbourne, Australia

Mesh – Canada’s Web Conference

• Mesh – Canada’s Web Conference May 25, 2011 – May 26, 2011

  Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

Fusion Digital Marketing

• Fusion Digital Marketing May 6, 2011

  Marriott Renaissance Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia

Marketing Optimization Summit

• Marketing Optimization Summit April 26, 2011 – April 29, 201

  Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

Which one are you going to attend?

The numbers supporting the use of the Internet
eMarketer’s December 2010 study of Share of time spent per day with Major Media study found that people are spending 11 hours per day consuming media.  Of this time TV is still on top. The breakdown looks like this:

• TV 40%
• Internet 23.5%
• Radio 14.5%
• Mobile 7.5%
• Newspapers 7%
• Magazines 4.5%
• Other 3%

In a similar study Forester found that people are spending as much time Online as they are watching TV. Forester found that number to be 13 hours per week on the two activities.

According to a 2007 MarketingSherpa Inc. study, 52% of people find retailers by searching for products using Google, Yahoo and other popular search engines. Word of mouth through family, friends, and colleagues resulted in only 17% of the traffic to a site and advertising on TV, radio, newspapers and magazines only 14%.  Email newsletters had only 9% and advertising on another website 6%. Social Networking, blogs, and discussions groups had the smallest percentage at 2.  Another similar study from MarketingSherpa outlined traffic sources for eCommerce Website visitors were derived from the following:

• 24% direct to site
• 24% paid search
• 15% email house list
• 14% SEO
• 10% affiliates
• 9% online advertising, portals
• 4% email rented lists

The e-tailing group and PowerReviews findings of the 2010 Social Shopping Study Results indicated that online research remains central to consumer shopping behaviour, with 50% of respondents reporting that they conduct research online for at least half of the purchases made. 29% of consumers spend a few hours of research prior to making a purchase decision while 60% conduct research for a week or more.  When asked where consumers are doing research online, the study found that the majority (57%) of shoppers begin their online research with a search engine.

StatsCan most recent study found about half (51 %) of Canadians aged 16 – 34 purchased a product online in 2009, with men (42 %) more likely than women (37%) to have made an online purchase. The top 25% of online shoppers spent an average of $4,210 during 2009.  Travel services, entertainment products such as concert tickets, books and magazines, and clothing, jewellery and accessories, continued to be the most common types of online orders.

Where your business needs to be
As you can see, people rely on the Internet. Since the majority start off at a search engine or their favourite social media site, you need to get people’s attention when they are conducting a search.  This is the point at which they are searching for related materials.  Your business needs to show up within the search engine’s results pages.

This is where organic listings (improved by SEO) and SEM (paid ads) are utilized to showcase your website and garner attention by potential consumers.  Since Google has the lion share of search traffic (85%) in August 2010 reported by comScore qSearch, the results are clear that advertisers need to go where the people are.  Note that it’s important to still conduct your own target market research to identify where your market is spending their time.   There is still a very large group of people who may not rely so much on the web for purchase decisions. No marketer would suggest spending your entire advertising budget on one medium.  Although TV holds the most consumption of time, most small to medium size businesses cannot afford the cost.  TV is also currently not a very engaging medium, meaning that content is being pushed to the viewer. Search Engine users are actively seeking information. The 23% represents a very interested and active consumer, where as TV viewers are much more passive, therefore we see the 40% there are not as valuable as the 23 on the Internet.  The Internet is the next largest consumption media and then becomes a more affordable option that can be reasonably budgeted for.

For most small to medium size business markets, the division of advertising mediums vs. the average cost to advertise may look like this.

Direct mail – approx. $5 / mailer
Newspapers/magazine – approx. $4,000 / ad
Radio – approx. $10,000 / week
Tradeshows/conferences – approx. $ 10,000 / show
TV – approximatly $35,000 / commercial
SEO/SEM – approx. $1000 / month

Note: costs may exclude any related creative, consulting or strategy work.

Options to be displayed in search results pages
There are many areas of a search results page where a website or its assets can be displayed.  I will focus on Google since it currently holds the majority of search traffic.

1. Google Places – this is the area of the search results page that typically shows local business listings. It’s a yellow pages-type listing with a map, business name and link to its Google Places listing.  This section is great for local searches for restaurants, dry-cleaners, etc.  There is no cost for adding your business to these listings. With the proper account setup, a business can be displayed on relevant searches within this area.
2. Google Ads – these are the first 2-3 spots on the top of the page and the rectangles down the right hand side of the page.  Theses sections are titled Ads and display paid advertisements that are relevant to the searcher’s keyphrases.   There are many factors that contribute to which ads are displayed – the top criteria includes proper campaign setup with relevant keyphrases, the ad’s content and your budget allocation on a per click basis.
3. Organic search results – this is the main body area of the search results page, which shows websites with a title and description listing.  These results are based on over 300 different factors that determine the relevancy and priority of ranking. The system that calculates this is Google’s unique algorithm.  What SEO does is optimize those factors to prove to Google that your website is more relevant then the others so that they put your website higher than your competitors in the rankings.  An SEO company collaborating with a business will make necessary changes and contribute materials that promote website position improvements. Organic search results currently attract 70% of clicks on any given search results page – making SEO an affordable, and wide reaching marketing choice.
4. Also Organic search results could contain Universal Search (or Blended search results). These results were introduced in 2007 and include images, videos, news, tweets, weather updates, stock quotes, dictionary definitions/answers and etc.

Every option to get displayed in search results is important. Utilizing SEO you get additional expose is the cost effective way.

It is very clear that Internet Marketing and particularly SEO is a profitable and economical advertising medium for businesses today, namely because it displays a solution to a customers problem when they are looking for one.  It’s also not as fully utilized as it can be; therefore the amount of work to get good results is not at its peak. As SEO becomes more popular, the effort to get good results and maintain the economical aspect of it will be much harder to achieve, but for the time being, businesses should seriously if not already be profiting from their Internet marketing initiatives.

Google published this video of how its works if you would like to learn more.

If you obtain traffic through SEO, this feature will affect you in some very important ways.

1.    Good web design has always been important. It not only shows professionalism and distinguishes your brand from others, but also communicates your message in the right way.  Google’s Instant Preview takes a snap shot of your website from a moment in time and will often take an image of the full page.  Previously, searchers would need to decide if they were to click onto your website by reading the Title and Description.  In many competitive industries, unfortunately website Titles were almost exactly the same.  Today, searchers can now use the website’s overall design and visual intent to factor a click-through. The preview image is a scaled down version of your website.  In order to make a good first impression, which is always important on B2B and B2C websites, the components on the page, images, colours, and fonts need to be clear and headlines need to be properly formatted and large enough to make the right impression in this preview. It’s also about content relevancy. Instant Preview shows a pop-up over the areas where the searcher’s keywords appear on the page with a small snippet of your content.  Therefore, placing the right message is very important. Flash and videos currently get blocked out. Therefore, having a Flash detector with an image replacement background will improve the issue of seeing a blank space with a puzzle piece icon – Google seems to be altering how this has been rendering recently.

2.    Traffic and bounce rates are likely to decrease – in a good way. Most web surfers don’t read everything on a page, which is why many will scan a site for a few seconds then decide if they are going to engage with your site or click the back button and continue their search.  Visitors may come across your site due to its position on the search engines, but then decide to go back to the search results page because they didn’t find what they wanted.  This experience increases your site’s bounce rate and negatively affects your ranking.  However, this may very well be traffic you don’t want.   Perhaps you’re trying to sell something, but the searchers intent wasn’t to purchase; the result may have previously provided lots of visits, but a high bounce rate.  With Google Instant Preview, ideally you would receive the traffic you want and help keep your bounce rates lower as well.  However, this is not what is currently happening.  Google Analytics reports are showing searchers that click onto the preview as a page view with a 100% bounce rate.  Google is apparently working on this issue, but we are hopeful that these statistics will be separated going forwards.  Hopefully Google will share statistics about Instant Preview somehow.

3.    Frequent Design Updates. If you run regular sales or change your pages frequently, the screenshot preview Google takes on the actual site won’t be the same and therefore sets the wrong expectations.  In this situation.  Although frowned upon, one may consider altering messages which only Google reads and gets picked up for display purposes.  Alternatively, website owners do have an option to block Google Instant Preview as well.

I suspect Google is using partial click intent and full click intents in their ranking factors which may also give weight to the site’s ranking over time. What would be a great help to website owners would be including these “intent clicks” into analytical data so that website marketers could get insights as to the number of searchers that previewed the site, but didn’t click-through.  Although bounce rate may have a correlation, I would expect bounce rates may be a result of many other factors on the site whereas Google’s Instant Preview would be more indicative of first website design impression.

SEO and website design have always been an important balance for us.  Having website design, development and Internet marketing teams working together is vital for true business results.  Months ago, Google pushed the importance of website performance and site rendering speed, which led to helping make Google Instant and now Google Instant Preview work efficiently.  Increasingly on-page optimization factors, like website design, will have an inherent impact on click-through rates and reward website owners who take a holistic website approach.

So Do You Need to Hire One?

Most companies that utilize internet marketing to some degree see its inherent value.  Over the last five years, social media, from the likes of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are much more mainstream than they ever were. So much so, that companies of all sizes are using these mediums to engage with prospects and clients, even to the degree of promoting a company’s Facebook’s fan page via other traditional advertising efforts.

With over 15 millions users in Canada alone, Facebook is more frequently used than Google.  Other social sites, like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Yahoo Answers, are frequently used to learn, explore, connect and discuss with all types of topics and people.

Social media marketing is a great way to engage with your community.  It not only helps contribute to fresh and ongoing content, but also to get others talking about you and increasing the number of inbounds links a site receives.  This added popularity, not to mix this up with authority, helps contribute to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.  Most SEO work today has some level of social media as part of their strategy.

Community Managers need to know your offerings.  Social media and networking, in particular, requires an individual with a thorough understanding of your offerings; someone who can respond quickly, and someone who is truly passionate and believes in your company.  No one can talk about your company like one of your employees, which is why I often suggest this is someone who works inside your company.  Paying an agency or an Internet marketing company to do this for you may not achieve the same level of results and is often more expensive.  Although outside help is useful for providing insight, training, best practices and monitoring assistance – they shouldn’t be the one interacting with your market.

The Ideal Candidate
This employee doesn’t need to be a senior marketing manager or a programmer; they just need to truly believe in what you offer.  An ideal candidate would be a social butterfly by nature and someone comfortable with using social type websites with a marketing background.  Ideally this person would be responsible for monitoring brand mentions, contributing to online social networks, engaging with prospects, answering questions and even promoting the brand at events, conferences and tradeshows.  The web is a soap box for many people.  This calls for a deep understanding of customer service. There is a careful and delicate balance between being friendly, respectable, and sincere and knowing when to apologize.  The ideal candidate would work with the Internet marketing team both to understand trends, and how learn to optimize content for SEO and Online Reputation Management (ORM) benefits. They would also work with your customer service department to understand best practices for handling complaints and forwarding them to the appropriate units.

Community Managers can be a valuable resource if utilized properly. Working with the right teams and external vendors, such as an Internet marketing company, can help showcase huge business opportunities that may have otherwise been missed.  I’m not suggesting to hire a Community Manager to do away with the work an SEO company may be doing.  Instead the Community Manager needs to work closely with the SEO company to realize the best outcomes for both teams.

Hiring a Community Manager may not be right for all companies today.  An Internet marketing company may be able to provide similar services; however, the day will come when a more permanent position will be a necessity.

PS: Thanks Elie for your feedback and help on this one.

During the last week of the Toronto mayoral elections, an interesting discovery was made in reference to Internet Popularity.  We had monitored the elections and reported each day over a five day period prior to the election which candidate was more popular online.  9th sphere’s Toronto Mayoral Web Popularity Poll, looked at social profiles like Facebook, Twitter, as well as online activities like YouTube video views, and positive versus negative postings on the first page of the search engine results.  We looked at these items as support for positive reinforcement that may provide insight into which candidates were more popular and therefore win the election.  Interestingly enough, the results that supposed one candidate over the other for the entire reporting period was the candidate who didn’t actually end up winning.

What We Found
In the five day period before the election, one candidate had more Likes on Facebook, followers on Twitter, searches on Google and the least amount of negative postings on the first page of the SERPS. These results all favored this candidate for the period in which the results were gathered.  One would think that this same candidate would be the winner of the election if web popularity was indicative of the physical world of votes.  However, this candidate lost the real election and by a large margin – over 47%, a difference of approximately 93,000 voters (source).

The winning candidate surpassed his opponent in only one of our web popularity poll criteria – YouTube Channel Views.  He had a 27% margin of difference.

There is a well-known scientific testing methodology which states that all factors need to remain constant except for one to accurately measure the reaction of the changing factor.  In our web popularity poll, one candidate was the dominant figure in all measured criteria, except YouTube video views. The only anomaly in our findings, coincidentally was clearly in favor of the actual winner. This either allows us to see the potential influence of this one criterion, or leaves us wondering about chance and statistical relevance.

Canadians online users are both large in numbers and a more web savvy bunch than others. Over 80% of the population has Internet access and more so in Toronto.  About 51% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 34 purchased a product online in 2009 (source). According to many statisticians, the demographics of the early polls for Canadian voters for the candidate who won the mayoral race was largely made up of seniors and baby boomers. The candidate that lost, the one who had many more signs of web popularity, had voter demographics largely consisting of university voters (source). So while university students and this age bracket have a greater web presence, and likely contributed to the candidate’s online popularity, they do not have the ability to surpass the large population of seniors and baby boomers in actual votes at the polls.

One could conclude that when looking at positive web popularity criteria, Facebook, Twitter and the number of searches don’t necessarily correlate to popularity in the physical world. However, YouTube Channel views would.  For argument’s sake, if there is a correlation between voting in the physical world and popularity online, YouTube video views would be more indicative of strong support for a winner.

Watching videos is one of the most popular online activities.  In our theory, those that engage in social networking are typically stronger brand advocates and part of the conversation.  These supporters are loyal, but fewer in numbers.  Most voters are not as engaged and won’t make as strong a connection to the candidate.  Online videos are more similar to TV; they reach a much larger market, demographic and have a bigger impact.  If people are not sure who to vote for, they may prefer to watch a video online and then read their platform materials.

Although the circumstances of this election illustrated a very telling story to social media marketers, we will be watching the next elections to see if this correlation continues.

(as of October 25, 2010 evening)

Based on the numbers, if the election was based only on Internet votes, Rob Ford had more people searching for him online and viewed more of his videos, however, George Smitherman had higher numbers in online social activities and therefore is currently winning the Web Popularity Poll.

Our findings were based on the use of both automated tools and manual reviews as of the evening of October 25, 2010.

1. Number of times names have been searched for online. The Keyword tools that we use allow us to input keywords and provide an estimated number of times someone has entered that keyword into Google, Yahoo or Bing. Although the exact number of searches is not accurate, we looked at who had more requests relatively to each other. In all three tools we used, Rob Ford was more frequency searched.  This obviously won’t tell us the intent of their search so it has little weight on the overall poll.

2. Number of Video views and comments. George Smitherman had more videos on this collective YouTube Channel, however, Rob Ford was more popular based on the overall number of views.  George Smitherman won this one by a land slide with more than double the amount of posts of his competitor.

3. Number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Both candidates had similar numbers of “likes” on Facebook, with Smitherman having a slightly higher lead, but with Twitter followers -  George Smitherman has many more followers.  We didn’t use Twitter “mentions” as a metric since it gave a less accurate indication of positive intent.

4. Number of positive versus negative pages in SERPS (Based on top 10 results on the first page in Google.ca).  Smitherman won this category by a small margin showing more positive and  less negative search results.

If history tells us anything about how the web may influence who will untimely win, we may have our winner.

George Smitherman may just have the better Internet marketing and online reputation management company working for him

Historical Results:

(as of early morning October 21, 2010)

(as of October 22, 2010 evening)

(as of October 22, 2010 evening)

* 9th sphere has no connection or preference to to any one candidate. We are just reporting on the numbers.

PS: Thank you Gary for your help on this one.