Inbound Industry Report: May 1, 2012
Top marketing news, articles and tips from the last week of April 2012.
Marketing Measurement
You’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” Avinash Kaushik (@avinash) views this concept from a marketer’s perspective, and believes that you are what you measure, meaning the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you measure and report on will communicate to your organization what’s important. Take a look at how Kaushik juxtaposes common metrics to show which holds more weight:
- Page views vs. visitor loyalty: measure not what happens inside a single session, but behavior across sessions.
- Revenue vs. economic value: instead of single-session conversions, focus on micro-conversions, which engage awareness and consequently increase value.
- Number of followers vs. conversion rate: Look beyond +1s, followers and likes; leverage the social media channels you’re really good at.
Google Search
On April 24, Google launched its Penguin Update, which punishes pages that have been violating guidelines by keyword stuffing or cloaking. Because this is an algorithmic change, there are no exceptions, and penalties are applied automatically.
Have you seen a major decrease in traffic when compared to pre-April 24? Then, you may have been hit. To get back on your feet, start by removing any spam or spam-like qualities on your site. Also, take a few minutes to learn how the Google search really works, what the crawling, indexing and serving pipeline looks like, and how it all fits together. Doing so will ultimately help you maintain a high-quality site, and adhere to SEO best practices.
Social Business for Corporate Communication
CEO of Yammer, David Sacks (@davidsacks), sits down with Eric Knorr (@EricKnorr) to talk about the enterprise social network, and the movements it stands for. Now in its fifth round of funding, Yammer’s success is due to its adoption across businesses of all sizes—from Fortune 500 companies to startups.
Knorr and Sacks discuss everything from embedding social networking into enterprise apps to the consumerization of IT. But what does Yammer mean to Sacks? The movement to bring social networking to the enterprise and give employees a voice, improve internal communication and knowledge sharing, and consumerize enterprise software.
Branding
Small businesses need a solid, defined brand to set them apart from the crowd of competitors. Often, people forget that branding is still relevant, even when we have less ownership or control of the message. Dylan Mazeika (@dylan_mazeika) makes the point that branding may be even more critical when it is in the hands of the consumers, and why it is essential to business success.
Marketing Team & Skills
Solid, technical talent is crucial to marketing success, and many are finding that there is a shortage of available tech-savvy professionals in the industry. What’s a marketing leader to do? Scott Brinker (@chiefmartec) addresses this concerning “tech talent bomb in marketing” with three suggestions involving budget, culture and education.
Similarly, Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) identifies that, as marketing demands shift, hybrid agencies need to build their teams with top performing young professionals—the ‘A’ players—to gain a distinct advantage.
Industry News
Acquisition & Finance
- New information suggests that Instagram’s one-billion dollar price tag may have been influenced by a previous bid by Twitter to acquire the photo-sharing app.
- Surfacing rumors of Microsoft trying to sell Bing to Facebook are confirmed—Microsoft execs approached Facebook CEO Zuckerberg about the offer while discussing acquisition of patent deals, though the offer was denied.
- Apple’s newest numbers are in, with a fiscal second-quarter profit increase of 94%. Over last year, sales increased across the board, including the iPhone (88%), iPad (151%) and Mac computers (7%).
- Facebook amended its IPO with updated user stats and Q1 2012 financials. The social network now claims 901 million monthly active users and 500 million mobile users, with $1.058 billion in first-quarter revenue.
Google & Search Stats
- Google released Google Drive, a place where users can seamlessly create, share and collaborate, and keep all of their digital “stuff.” As a consumer-driven service, think twice about privacy concerns before storing sensitive business information.
- A recent report revealed that at least two colleagues were aware of a Google engineer’s program that collected persona data from wi-fi networks.
- A study by Chitika (@Chitika) looks at how different operating systems affect search traffic trends like traffic rate and local search rate.
Marketing & Advertising Campaigns
- The New York Times launched a social media ad program to reach online audiences that are finding content through social media. This new, interesting approach to media buys blends social and paid advertising, acting as a potential revenue generator for online media.
- Pepsi’s new rebranding campaign, Live for Now, centers around the #NOW board, a visualization platform that highlights the top pop culture stories shared on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. In addition, Pepsi has partnered with Twitter to stream live video from concerts to its followers.
What articles made your top list last week? We’d like to hear your opinions.
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