Mickellaneous

Yep.

Agreed.

Social media now directly influences search rankings

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 23, 2011 in Advertising, Marketing, Social media, Social networks, Strategy | 4 Comments and 0 Reactions

In a recent stunning article, SEOMoz highlighted that Google’s search results are now being adjusted on a per-person basis depending on the searcher’s social connections.

If you follow me on Twitter and then search for email marketing, Blue Sky Factory will rank higher than it would if you didn’t follow me on Twitter, because I share stuff from BSF on Twitter, and Google’s algorithm assumes that because we’re connected, my voice as a social connection should be more influential to your search than some SEO’s optimizations.

Let that sink in for a moment. That’s monumental for three reasons.

1. Influencers who have large social networks are no longer just spreading word of mouth, they’re now causing search engine adjustments (at least on Google and Bing) based on what they share.

2. “#1 ranking for a keyword” on Google is less meaningful now if the #1 is displaced by social sharing influence. My #1 for a search term will be significantly different than yours because we follow different people.

3. If you’re marketing something, there’s now a direct incentive to build your network as large as possible among your prospective customers. Size matters. By connecting with them in as many social channels as possible, you’re effectively doing free retargeting advertising in organic search, since the next time they search for something related to your company’s keywords, your shared items (which presumably include your company’s digital properties) will rank higher with your prospects than if they were not connected with you.

So what should you be doing to take advantage of this amazing sea change in organic search and social media?

1. You absolutely, positively must connect with your customers and prospective customers as soon as possible. If you’ve got any kind of form on your website, asking people for their Twitter ID or Facebook name isn’t optional any more. I just recently changed the form on my site to include Twitter ID, and I’m working on Facebook form integration to be rolled out soon.

2. In tip #5 here I recommended FollowerWonk.com as a way of finding people of influence in your specific industry or niche to follow. Start typing in job titles of your prospective customers and get following; those who follow back are now effectively opting into a passive retargeting program that will show your stuff to them more prominently when they search. Likewise, get to know other influencers in your space and get your content shared, liked, or retweeted by them in order for your stuff to be seen by their audiences.

3. You have a direct disincentive to share or link to your competitors now. If you share or link to their stuff, their content placement in search results will be influenced by your connection to your prospects as well. You’re much better off citing them in a no-followed blog post on your own blog and sharing that.

4. If it’s not obvious already, make sure you’ve socially shared key pieces of content for the digital properties you want to market. Make sure you’re sharing at a minimum on Twitter and Google Buzz, as those two networks are indexed rapidly and aggressively.

5. While there’s no direct evidence that the content around a socially shared link matters, it’s still not a bad idea to give it some context, both for followers and possible contextual association. Here’s an example of two tweets:

Check out my new blog post on @blueskyfactory: http://blog.blueskyfactory.com

versus

Check out my new email marketing post on @blueskyfactory: http://blog.blueskyfactory.com

This sea change is going to have massive ripple effects throughout the social and search industries. Start making these changes effective immediately, and you’ll be ahead of the curve and your competitors (unless they read my blog too).

I was just talking about the rise of individualized search yesterday at lunch with a business advisor.

We’ve seen a lot of footage of the tragic Japan tsunami, but this clip is the most horrifying yet. Entitled “South Sanriku — Tsunami seen from Shizugawa High School,” it’s shot from high ground, but toward the end of the video you can see panicked residents running for their lives.

Almost as dramatic as the video is its audio track, where even if you don’t speak Japanese, you can tell the people are expressing concern at the beginning, but by the end, their voices have reached a high level of panic and horror as they watch their homes washing away.

Shortly after the tsunami, one survivor called the oncoming deluge “a gigantic pile of garbage coming down the street.” That’s an apt description, as you can see an entire town reduced to a huge pile of watery debris in a matter of minutes. Shocking.

[Via YouTube]

Wow. Incredibly intense.

Sadly incredible.

Over at the MBO Partners Consulting Blog, Jay Lash's essay The Way Work Gets Done in the Emerging "Project Economy" examines the shift to project-based work. 

Key quote on companies shifting to project-based work:

"Instead of building a large and expensive management infrastructure that previously comprised most growing corporations, work is now sliced and diced into bits of work called “projects.” Projects can be outsourced, traded, and performed anywhere, by any number of resources, many of whom may not be employees. Technology enables endless configurations of contributors to collaborate and produce work output."

This is a fundamental change in how work is done - and it is clearly happening.  Lash covers potential implications for both companies and workers in his essay.  It is well worth reading.

A 21st-century view of employment.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again. If you don't "get it," ask your teenager. HT: JDJ

Yesterday’s discussion of the intensity and duration of bull markets — and the current powerful market — led to an interesting question: Exactly how much has QE1 & 2 impacted stocks?

The Fed’s historically unique monetary policy is obviously a factor in the current market — but how much?

Perhaps we can fashion a guess looking at duration and intensity of market moves.

Let’s use the averages of the rallies over 12 and 24 months, going back to the 1930s: After 12 months, returns range from  21.4% (1987) to 121.4% (1932). But its worth noting that the other post-depression rally (1935) was 81.4%; remove these two outliers, and the next most intense move was 1982 at 58.3%. That is, until the 2009 rally. After 12 months, it stood at 68.6%. The average of these rallies at the 1 year mark was 47.3%.

After one year, we had a rally that was 20% stronger than the previous post-WW2 rallies, but not as strong as the post depression rallies.

Looking at these rallies after two years is where things get very interesting: On average, the rallies strengthened, from 47.3% to 56.1%. This despite by month 24, the two post depression rally outliers had given up all their gains and were in the red.

I have been saying for several years now that 1973-74 is an excellent parallel to the current crash/recovery. And indeed, up until 2009, the strongest rally from post Great Depression was 1974 — at 65.7% after 24 months.

Until 2009. After just 22 months, this market broke through the 90.1% level. No other rally even comes close, and 1974 as the runner up. The current run is a full 37% greater than the next closest rally, and over 60% greater than the 2 year average.

How much of this is attributable to the Fed? Its only a guess, but if merely half of the markets excess gains (over the past rallies) are attributable to the Fed,it means that the US Central Bank has artificially created several trillion dollars in market capitalization.

The end game of this, and the unintended consequences, are beyond my ability to guess . . .

>

Tables after the jump . . .

Courtesy of Investech Research

As he says, what are the unintended consequences?