Weekly Marketing Skinny • August 31, 2013

Don’t have the time to read all the marketing news, blog posts, announcements, and other content related to SEO/social media/online marketing published each week?

I’ve got you covered.

I sift through trillions (well, hundreds) of online publications to stay on top of marketing news that might affect your online business.

Let’s start with the news from Traffic Generation Café.

At TrafficGenerationCafe.com

5 Custom Google Analytics Dashboards in 5 Minutes [Free Downloads]

Google Analytics is the best freebie an online business owner could ever asked for.

Yet most of us don’t even scratch the surface of how it can potentially turn our businesses around.

Why? Because we have neither the knowledge to put it to work nor the time to learn more about it.

So how do you take advantage of Google Analytics if you don’t have the resources, time or knowledge?

With these custom Google Analytics dashboards all set up for you that take but a click to set up in your Google Analytics – literally.

SEO

As promised, I’ve been keeping up with SEO news in my State of SEO and Link Building: Continuous Coverage of the Recent Google Updates that I am planning on keeping updated as Google news come out.

Click here for all the latest SEO news (will open in new tab).

In SEO spotlight this week:

• Official: Google’s Keyword Tool Replaced
• Google Wants To Know Which Small Sites Should Rank Better
• Google Plus Impact on SEO

And here’s one for the road:

Matt Cutts Is Working on his Spam Network Jokes

Matt Cutts tweeted that he is working up several “ghost-related puns for a spam network.“

Thinking of ghost-related puns for a spam network. “They try to look super natural, but using them will dampen your spirits.”

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) August 29, 2013

Is this a sign that Google just released yet another target aimed at another spam network? Could be.

Social Media

Facebook Lifted Restrictions on Promotions

Facebook removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps.

Now, promotions may be administered on Page Timelines and in apps on Facebook. For example, businesses can now:

• Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post
• Collect entries by having users message the Page
• Utilize likes as a voting mechanism

As before, however, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.

Facebook Unveils Shared Photo Albums

On Monday, Facebook announced the new feature, which lets up to 50 users contribute pictures to the same album (this does not apply to albums for Pages).

Mashable has instructions.

Facebook Considers Adding Profile Photos to Facial Recognition

Take a deep breath…

Here’s the scoop:

• This is a possibility; NOT probability.
• The technology is already in use - it currently automatically identifies faces in newly uploaded photos by comparing them only to previous snapshots in which users were tagged.
• The goal is to facilitate tagging so that people know when there are photos of them on Facebook.
• Facebook users uncomfortable with facial recognition technology will still be able to “opt out” of the Tag Suggest feature altogether.
• The feature MIGHT be used for other purposes in the future.
• Facebook also amended its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities on Thursday, adding and tweaking the language so that members under 18 years of age are deemed to have affirmed that a parent or legal guardian has agreed to allow marketers to use some of their personal information in ads.

Facebook Explains How They Use Your Data in Ads

This one needed special attention, IMHO.

In the above-mentioned Statement of Rights and Responsibilities in a section titled About Advertisements and Other Commercial Content Served or Enhanced by Facebook, Facebook explains how the company collects and uses data — particularly in advertisements from brands that the user has liked on Facebook.

You give us permission to use your name, and profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or relatedthat content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us, subject to the limits you place. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.

If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to the terms of this section (and the use of your name, profile picture, content, and information) on your behalf.

Facebook is accepting user feedback about the changes on its blog post for the next week. As you can imagine, there’s already of negative feedback, as is always the case when Facebook updates its privacy and governance documents.

Source.

Do Pictures of People Increase Facebook Engagement?

A post at Convince & Convert turned up pretty surprising (to me anyway) findings: after analyzing 3,656 Facebook image posts from fourteen different brand pages, the conclusion was that brand images without people are associated with greater engagement than those images including people.

As a matter of fact, images of a body part (wow!) lead the pack, “no person or body part” images are stepping on their toes, with images that include people left in the dust.

One possible explanation would be when a Facebook user encounters a brand image of a product, lifestyle, or landscape without a person shown, the user is better able to project themselves into the image and therefore more likely to like, share, or comment on the image.

Of course, not all brands fall into the same category.

For Victoria’s secret, images with people (most of whom are scantily clad Angels models), engage the audience at an incredibly high rate, more than 2:1 over images in which people don’t appear.

I wonder why…

Twitter Introduced Conversations View

Twitter is becoming more and more Facebook twin-like with the introduction of Conversations View.

Tweets that are part of a conversation are shown in chronological order so it’s easier for you to follow along.

You’ll see up to three Tweets in sequence in your home timeline; if you want to see more, you can tap a Tweet to see all the replies, including those from people you don’t follow.

Google+ Hangouts Go HD

Google has quietly started to roll out HD for Hangouts to a subset of its users in the last few weeks and hopes to complete the rollout soon.

But the change isn’t just a quality upgrade – it’s part of a bigger move towards open standards that will eventually bring us video chat in the browser without the need for any plugins.

YouTube is Retiring Video Responses

According to YouTube, video responses have a click-through rate of .0004% — in other words, only 4 out of every 1 million users who sees a video response clicks on it.

So, on September 12 YT is going to retire this little-used feature and will most likely replace it with enabling you to share video links in comments. Doing this in comments will let creators and viewers add more context to a video, and more context should drive more engagement - at least, YouTube hopes so.

WordPress

Media Explorer on WordPress.com

This is the first time I (very briefly) wish this was a WordPress.com blog.

Using the new Media Explorer, you can now insert tweets and YouTube videos without ever leaving WordPress.

This tool lets you search Twitter and YouTube from inside the “Insert Media” window in your WordPress.com Dashboard, which makes it easy to find and embed relevant Tweets and videos in your posts and pages.

To open the Media Explorer, click the “Add Media” media button.

The feature might soon be available as a part of Jetpack of self-hosted WP sites.

Marketing This & That

Apple Siri On Google Glass: Don’t Wink At Me

Apple Siri has added some cute responses when you go ahead and say “Okay Glass” to it.

For the slow readers like me, here are the responses:

• “Stop trying to strap me to your forehead. It won’t work.”
• “I think that Glass is half empty.”
• “I’m not Glass. And I’m just fine with that.”
• “Glass? I think you’ve got the wrong assistant.”
• “Very funny, (name). I mean, not funny ‘ha-ha,’ but funny.”
• “Just so you know, I don’t do anything when you blink at me.”

Hat tip: Barry Schwartz.

New York Fashion Week is on Pinterest

Eye candy! New York Fashion Week is on Pinterest.

With over 80 boards already posted, the image-focused social media platform claims users will get a “behind-the-scenes look” from more than 100 designers, brands and industry insiders.

Special Post Highlight of the Week

How I’m Promoting the “ISH” Outta My Blog… FREE! - Kurt Frankenberg at ShoeString101.com

This post started with a comment and a challenge:

And the post that inspired it all?

Promote Your Blog: 10 Steps to Ultimate Blog Promotion [My Personal Cheat Sheet]

Kurt began his four week challenge on August 17. That’s when he decided to sit down and actually go, step-by step, through my 10 Steps to Promote Your Blog infographic.

He has only been using the free promotion methods I recommended in the post and haven’t even gotten to all of them yet.

However, he’s already seen a dramatic increase in traffic (minus a sudden drop-off due to Kurt’s hosting company changing servers and traffic being totally suspended for nearly 24 hours):

Not too shabby, Kurt…

And here’s Kurt’s challenge to you:

“Who would like to join me in this grand experiment? For the next two weeks I’ll continue to use these methods and report to you again.

Do it with me! Put your commitment to try in the comments.

Whoever gets the greatest spike in traffic from September 1-30 will receive a $25 gift card to Starbucks, not to mention… well, a huge spike in traffic.

Duh. Leave me your commitment to participate in the comments section.”

Visit Kurt’s post to give him thumbs up and join this in this challenge, which I’ll be closely monitoring as well.

More free traffic, here YOU come!

Thank You

To all of you who mentioned Traffic Generation Café in any share or form in the past week, my whole-hearted THANK YOU.

Traffic Generation Café would NOT be what it is today without you.

Here are just some of the mentions I came across in the past week:

How To Get People to Share Your Posts - Mitz Pantic at letsbuildwebsites.com

Advantages Of Genesis 2.0 and How To Convert To HTML5 - Reginald Chan at reginaldchan.net

Yakezie Update: We Broke The 200,000 Mark! - Peter H. at ubersteward.com

The Nearly Ultimate Benefits and Features of the Awesome Twittonomy Tool - Peter Kanyo at compellingadverts.com

Fetching Friday – 21 Marketing Links - Kristi Hines at kikolani.com

Grand Prize Guide: How to Get Prospects to Your Email List From Social? - Zsuzsa Szabo at antavo.com

The Amazingly Simple guide to Share your Content after writing your Blog Post - Abhijit Mahida at geekslaboratory.com

The Hidden Treasures of 26 Famous Marketing Blogs - Ericson Ay Mires at bloggerjet.com

Keyword Tools for Blogs and Websites: Wordtracker and SEMrush - Jeannette Paladino at writespeaksell.com

Google Plus SEO, FaceBook Promotions, Small Website Rankings - Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com

Have I missed your mention? Let me know in the comments!

Want to see your name here? Mention Traffic Generation Café in your next blog post!

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To an even better next week,