Random Acts of Progress – Practical insights about the chaotic, continuously expanding and morphing intersection of Digital Marketing, Online Technology and Business ROI.
The craigconnects team researched how the top 50 nonprofits do social media. Then they decided to dig a little deeper to find how nonprofits by area of focus use social media and what kind of an impact that they were having in the social media space. Here’s the Infographic they came up with.
Two emperor-warriors, each restlessly probing for the other’s Achilles’ heel. Brilliant field commanders and generals, making sacrifices and sometimes falling in battle. A recently deceased king, with a potential power vacuum left in his wake. Is it Greek history? No – it’s Silicon Valley, with their own epic story of the Clash of the Titans. It’s Google versus Facebook, Page versus the Zuck, search versus social media. It will be a great story one day for history books and memoir writers; in the meantime, as marketers we need to know how to work with both of these superpowers without offending either.
Google and Facebook represent far more than two powerful companies fighting for market share. Rather, their two business models represent two dramatically different paradigms of what the Internet should be or should evolve into. To understand these two paradigms, it’s helpful to briefly review the life stories of the two emperor-warriors of the online world: Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg.
Larry Page is a computer scientist and math guy with two computer scientist parents. He visualized the Internet as being one huge graph, and with his fellow Stanford Ph.D. student, Sergey Brin, Google became the ultimate calculus equation. Google’s strength still lies within the mathematical precision of its algorithms.
Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg, eleven years Page’s junior. Whereas Page was the son of two computer scientists with one older brother, Zuckerberg was the son of a psychiatrist and a dentist and grew up surrounded by three sisters. Though the book Accidental Billionaires would later portray Zuckerberg as a cold-hearted, socially isolated computer geek, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Computer geek, yes, but socially isolated? Zuckerberg was a frat guy planning to double-major in computer science and psychology before he dropped out to pilot Facebook. He is, and always has been, a very smart, very geeky, but also very social guy.
Zuckerberg and Page’s orientation towards gathering and parsing information are reflected by their two different inventions. Page created a mathematical formula to sort that which was worth knowing from that which was not. Zuckerberg, the computer geek frat guy, created something totally different – a way to sort what was worth knowing from what was not based on what your buddies thought. For Page, the Internet was a fascinating robot, a machine. For Zuckerberg, the Internet was a newly discovered life form, a living, breathing, ever-evolving organism.
It turns out that other people like Zuckerberg’s paradigm of what the web should be. Like the Blob, Facebook has spread itself relentlessly across the web, quietly oozing into places like Yelp, Spotify, and on every blog and news media site known to man. Its presence is now inescapable; as a result, many of its 800 million users spend more time at Facebook than at any other corner of the online universe.
Just as Microsoft realized it had miscalculated the importance of search and tried desperately to catch up with Google, Google is now in the position of desperately trying to catch up with Facebook when it comes to social media. The new Google+ is trying hard to grab a bigger piece of the social media pie for Google and is proving that Google hasn’t become so big that it can’t still evolve.
While Google+ might just give Facebook a run for its money, Facebook launched its own set of aggressive changes at its recent f8 developers event. From the new timeline feature, to verbs other than “Like,” to relegating uninteresting bits of news to the ticker, the f8 event sent a tidal wave of changes across the social web. Just when it thought it was gaining on Facebook, Google+ is once again two steps behind.
Those of us who rely upon the might of Google and Facebook to market our products and services may not care who ends up as Silicon Valley’s undisputed ruler; we mostly just want to know how to use the two companies’ battle spoils to boost business. Here are three takeaways from the Clash of the Silicon Titans that you can apply to your own marketing:
1. Zuckerberg’s paradigm is probably going to win, but that doesn’t mean that Page’s paradigm is going to go away. Search and social media are eventually going to live in symbiotic harmony. For the foreseeable future, we will continue to use Google as the primary means to look up phone numbers, get directions, find the closest pizza joint, and learn the final score of last night’s football game. However, once we click on the pizza joint’s site or visit our favorite football blog, we’ll immediately see which of our Facebook friends have already been there and we’ll be influenced by what they have to say about it. Who finds your content is now just as important as – and influences — if your content is found in the first place.
2. Pay-per-click is still best left with Google, but not for much longer. At the moment, Google is poised to conquer a whopping 41% of the US online advertising market. This is still one arena where Facebook is playing catch-up to Google. However, they are catching up fast. Ad analytics are still stronger with Google, but Facebook has social media and word-of-mouth on its side. For the time being, ROI with Google’s AdWords is stronger, but sharing your PPC budget with Facebook isn’t a bad idea.
3. Online video will be a field commander in both armies. Google owns YouTube; Facebook shares videos. With the new f8 changes, videos are weighted more heavily than other types of content, meaning that a video you upload is more likely to make it into your fans’ news feed. Whether you’re trying to dominate the search engine results page or get your message to spread on Facebook, online video will be an increasingly important part of your efforts.
This war between Google and Facebook probably isn’t going to end in a clear victory for either side. For now, Facebook will continue to rule social media, but Google will continue to rule search. While we still need both, as a marketer, you can’t afford to neglect either one. Caught in the middle of these Titans, make sure you are paying due homage to each — unless you want your business to become collateral damage.
Return to top: Google vs. Facebook: What Your Business Needs to Know
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You want to make the most of your business’ Facebook page, but when you start reading articles with phrases like “time decay,” “Facebook EdgeRank algorithm,” and “affinity variable,” your eyes glaze over and you click the “Back” button on your browser as quickly as possible. However, if you truly want your social media marketing to reach your audience and convert browsers into buyers, you need to understand Facebook’s EdgeRank and GraphRank. What follows is a non-techie explanation of Facebook EdgeRank and GraphRank, and how to apply your new understanding to improve your Facebook page’s impact on your business.
The average Facebook user has a lot of Facebook friends and follows plenty of Facebook pages. If every single action of a friend showed up in a user’s News Feed, that user would be totally overwhelmed. In order to optimize a user’s News Feed, a formula called Facebook EdgeRank was created. Facebook EdgeRank decides what’s most important to display in the News Feed. If Facebook EdgeRank decides it’s not important, then it gets dropped off the Feed – very bad news for a business owner who isn’t getting much Facebook interaction from fans and wants his or her brand to stay in the forefront of people’s minds.
There are three basic components to the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm: Affinity, weight, and time decay.
“Affinity” refers to the user’s relationship with the item’s creator. For example, if you have an old acquaintance whose Facebook profile you haven’t visited in two years, they would have a very low affinity ranking. If you have a significant other whose profile you visit every day, they would have a very high affinity ranking. This is good for Facebook EdgeRank.
“Weight” combines what the item is and how it’s being interacted with. As for the “what,” videos, photos, and links are generally considered to have the highest weight. In other words, if a fan views a video on your page, this will score far more points in Facebook EdgeRank than if they simply visit your page.
The other component to Facebook EdgeRank is how the item is being interacted with. A “Like,” for example, gets less weight than a comment.
“Time decay” refers to how recent the item is. Old news drops out of the news feed, so newer items are more likely to appear on a feed than older items. Understanding this, to increase your Facebook EdgeRank, post your links, comments, and photos at times when your users are most likely to be logged in to Facebook.
Now that you understand the basics of Facebook EdgeRank, how do you increase the likelihood that your products or services will appear in as many of your fans’ News Feeds as possible? Here’s a hypothetical story to give you some ideas.
Meet Joe. Joe is an independent filmmaker who’s trying to create some buzz around his latest documentary about french fries. He’s got over 1,500 fans, but he hasn’t posted anything in a while, so he suspects he might have dropped off the News Feed for many of them. He decides not to immediately jump into promoting his french fry film. First, he sets out to increase his Affinity score. He starts a few controversial surveys on his page and encourages readers to comment. All those comments increase his page’s Weight and hence his Facebook PageRank. He asks a few direct questions of his fans to start conversations, which also bump up his Affinity score. Then he starts posting still pictures from his new documentary, and since photos have higher Facebook EdgeRank, his weight score goes up again. Only after working on improving his score with his fans for a couple of weeks is he ready to release the trailer for his movie. If he didn’t put in the extra time to build his Affinity and Weight and hence his Facebook PageRank, his movie trailer wouldn’t have reached nearly as many people.
Now that you understand Facebook EdgeRank, let’s take a brief look at GraphRank. GraphRank is a subset of Facebook EdgeRank that targets mainly Facebook app developers. In essence, GraphRank is designed to help Facebook users find apps that have been a hit with their friends. The more their friends appreciate a certain app, the more prominently that app will display in their News Feed.
GraphRank is good at determining whose opinion you are most likely to listen to. For example, your college roommate’s opinion from 1990 is going to have less weight than your best friend’s opinion, with whom you interact on Facebook every day. As your relationships with your Facebook friends change, what GraphRank displays will also change.
The GraphRank formula is different (but not much) from the Facebook EdgeRank formula. GraphRank takes into account Affinity, Weight, Interactions, and Time Decay. The Affinity score in this case is based not only on how much two users interact, but also how many common interests they have together.
Many of the same tips for increasing Facebook EdgeRank will help you to improve your GraphRank. For example, releasing your app at the right time is of critical importance to get people to pick it up right away. If you’re marketing an app to a bunch of night owls and you release your app at seven in the morning on a Sunday, this will not help you increase your GraphRank. Don’t just make an app and expect people to find it on their own. Now that GraphRank is around, that’s going to happen even less frequently than it did before.
GraphRank only applies to apps. Pages are still ruled by Facebook EdgeRank. Therefore, unless you are an app developer, GraphRank is not something you need to be concerned about. Instead, focus your marketing muscle on improving your Facebook EdgeRank by reviewing and implementing the tips listed above.
Here’s Stephen Paul’s Top 3 picks from the latest round of Social Media Infographics. Say what you will about the tidal wave that is social media: it’s over-hyped, a fad halfway through its 15 minutes, that surely won’t be around in a few years’ time.
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Here’s Stephen Paul’s Top 3 picks from the latest round of Social Media Infographics.
it’s over-hyped, a fad halfway through its 15 minutes, that surely won’t be around in a few years’ time. But take a look at the Infographic below – the steep curve of the user growth rate in all age ranges and demographics, and the continuing pervasiveness of social media into every facet of work, play and life in general. It’s hard to argue that social media hasn’t changed forever how we interact and connect online. See for yourself. Here’s the Infographic:
Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic
And, increasingly, smaller-scale operations are turning to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media channels for promotions, customer acquisition, and sales leads. An impressive 75 percent of small businesses now have a presence on a social media site. Interestingly, 27 percent of small businesses are on Facebook, while 18 percent reside on LinkedIn, and just 7 percent use Twitter. This new data comes from CrowdSpring, a Web design firm that crowdsources all of its projects and that created the new Infographic below. Probably the most revealing social media stat here: 64 percent of Twitter users are more likely to buy the brands they follow or for which they’re a fan, compared with 51 percent of Facebook users. Here’s the full breakdown on usage at the top social media spots:
Source: Crowdsourced Logo and Graphic Design by crowdSPRING
When it comes to being prepared for a disaster there are a number of basic items to include in your emergency kit, like water, food and a battery-powered or hand crank radio. However, armed with your smartphone and a knowledge of social media, you can be better prepared for an emergency situation. Here’s the Infographic:
Return to top: Social Media Infographic picks
What’s your favorite Social Media Infographic or thoughts? You can share your comments below.
