search marketing blog: ambergreen

How much does the traffic from social networks cost? Setting up a blog is a long term commitment and often requires deep engagement in the community, i.e. not only adding content but also responding on existing content and answering questions. This is usually the barrier that stop most companies investing in social media optimisation. The large number of different communities with different demographics does not make this investment cheaper. Whatever the barriers are new corporate blogs are created and they often live until the initial enthusiasm wears off. So is it possible to increase traffic to your blog from social networking websites? How to maintain the traffic and enthusiasm as well?

We’ve decided to perform an experiment in order to measure the potential of traffic from social networking websites.

SMO campaign Step by Step guide

In our research, we’ve taken the following steps.

Step 1: On 14th June 2007 we’ve created a Blogger account and the Uncontrolled experiments blog was born. We’ve also set up a Google Analytics account to measure the effects of our social networking campaign.

Step 2: The same day we’ve added a blog post “The Four Best Ways To Sleep At Work“

Step 3: We’ve submitted the blog post to the following social networking/bookmarking websites.

• Digg.com
• Netscape.com
• Reddit.com
• Del.icio.us
• Stumbleupon.com
• Google.com/Bookmarks
• Myweb2.search.yahoo.com
• Technorati.com
• Indianpad.com
• Socialogs.com
• Furl.net
• Diigo.com
• Wirefan.com
• Bibsonomy.org
• Looklater.com
• Blinklist.com
• Blogmemes.net
• Bluedot.us
• Myjeeves.ask.com
• Backflip.com
• Netvouz.com
• Folkd.com
• Blinkbits.com
• Bmaccess.net
• Shadows.com
• Ma.gnolia.com
• Plugim.com
• scoreguru.com
• Bestofindya.com
• Linkagogo.com
• Dotnetkicks.com
• Mister-wong.de

Step 4: Added a question on Yahoo! Answers with a link to the blog post

Measuring the SMO campaign effects

Day 3: Although it wasn’t the aim of our experiment on the Day 3 we’ve noticed that the page has been indexed by Google are ranks for a targeted search query.

Day 4 & Day 5: 73 visitors, most referrers from Yahoo! answers, however, the traffic still hasn’t peaked.

Day 6: On the 6th day of the experiment we’ve noticed a considerable increase in traffic, in total 15,370 users visited the page. We’ve also found that pages related to our content now take most of the space in SERPs when searching Google for “ways to sleep at work”.

Day 7: On day 7 an avalanche of traffic and traffic sources has started. We’ve noted an increase in visits from domains such as mail.google.com, webmail.aol.com and mail.yahoo.com, which suggests that the story has not only travelled across social networking websites but also email accounts. The total number of visitors on Day 7 was 20,386.

SMO campaign summary

Conclusion

1. We’ve proved that traffic from an SMO campaign doesn’t have to be expensive

2. It’s unpredictable and we can’t forecast traffic volumes

3. Requires unique, creative content and a catchy heading

4. Only effective if it targets the right audience. We’ve noted very different traffic volumes from different social networking sites, which suggest that the content and message has to be specific to a particular community.

A new report from JupiterResearch suggests that 2007 is the year for marketers to use social networks as a way to spread their branding message.

“Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” shows that as many as 48% of brand marketers will deploy marketing on social networking channels in 2007. Last year, only 38% were messaging using these channels.

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Viacom is suing Google over alleged breaches of copyright at its video sharing site YouTube, filing a $1 billion damages lawsuit and saying that the company has is guilty of ‘massive copyright infringement’.

In a statement, Viacom claims that YouTube’s business model “is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws,” a claim which Google denies.

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Yahoo has been busy on the social networking front, this time on the Answers site. The new feature allows users to build a network of smarty pants contacts, giving direct, easy access to the questions they ask, answer and star on the site.

Yahoo’s director of product management for social search, Tomi Poutanen said that the new service: “… allows you to identify individuals on Answers whose knowledge you value and make them part of your friend list.”

At the moment you can’t combine your Answers contacts with contacts from other Yahoo! properties such as Flickr, although this is on the cards for the future.

MyYahoo! has had a bit of a Web 2.0 overhaul, making the world’s most popular customisable homepage (the service has 50 million monthly users) even more easy to personalise and holds more interactive features than ever before.

According to a post at Read/Write Web, who managed to get a look at the private beta version (only a small number of users being offered a beta account at http://cm.my.yahoo.com/upgrade. Yahoo will use their feedback to make any necessary changes before a full launch later this year), the MyYahoo! upgrade has some great new features including;

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Google has replaced Yahoo! as the ad platform for social networking site Friendster as it ramps up international expansion plans.

One of the original social media success stories, Friendster launched in 2002 only to be overtaken by MySpace as the most popular networking site. Friendster currently has 37 million registered users in 75 countries, but has been recently been working to increase the reliability and speed of the Friendster site, citing this as reasons for users defecting to rival sites.

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As part of its continued efforts to become a user organised news portal Netscape has rolled out a personalised start page at My.Netscape.

The new site hosts over 100 modules allowing users to easily add weather reports, news, horoscopes and more which users can use to create custom RSS feeds, as well as giving users the chance to customise the look and feel of their chosen modules.

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Where does the time go? As of Saturday 3^rd March, Flickr is three years old. When half of the internet using population is still getting to grips with Web 2.0, one of its pioneers has been through growing pains to become part of Yahoo’s drive to promote social communities.

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Successful corporate blogging comes down to a three step process according to Forrester Research as it publishes its latest study, The ROI of Blogging: The Why and How of External Blogging Accountability.

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Creating a successful corporate blog that that increases brand visibility, customer insight and sales generation is a three step process according to a new report from Forester Research.

The study - The ROI of Blogging: The Why and How of External Blogging Accountability – was specifically developed to help companies understand the complexities of corporate blogs and how to ensure that your blog is successful in increasing brand visibility and generating customer response.

Forrester Research said that the most common benefits for corporate blogs were increased brand visibility, reduced impact from negative user-generated content, savings from customer insights and increased sales efficiency.