Category Archives: SMO

SMO

The Rise and Fall of Facebook

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With the current changes in the layout of Facebook last week. Which has caused consternation in the community. I was going to write my own post about it, but than I came across this article written by Jason Lee Miller.

Which raised the same issues that  I was thinking about. The crux of the problem is that not enough people are clicking on the advertisements on their profile page. Running Facebook is not cheap. One can only hazard a guess at the number of transactions that our carried out daily on their servers, but I would put it in the hundred million for sure.

Everybody was having a good old time on FaceBook. Posting links to their new website, project, photographs etc. Of course they  thought it was all free. Well it looks like the free lunch is over. I would personal start clicking  on the advertisements but I do not think that would solve the problem, unless one brought what was on offer.

So what are the other options? Paid subscription service might work… May be we really have started to see the decline of the social network advertising model. Facebook are unique in that both Linkedkin and Xing offer paid subscriptions model. Of the two only Linkedkin is making any money. In fact Linkedkin is the only cash postive social media site that I know off.

Below is excerpt from the blog post by Jason available here here

“What do you do?

Do you:

A.    Don’t fix something that’s not broken. And by not broken, it means that meteoric growth over the past year led your site to trounce MySpace and every sensitive person on the site is relatively happy in their social networking habitat.
B.    Ignore that a growing number of people seem to like an incomprehensible platform much like a feature you already offer. Remember that you have 175 million and growing members, and that Twitter does not, and show that you have plenty of confidence in your product. After all Google didn’t just become a portal because some people didn’t get the spare interface.
C.    A and B, and focus on Job 1, which is figure out a way to monetize so that you can rejoin the Masters of the Universe at Davos next year.
D.    None of the above. Instead, hold a press conference. Announce you’re making the website more democratic if that’s what everybody wants and call for a vote. While everybody’s busy voting on that, change everything.

If you picked D, congratulations, you’re thinking like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.”

Consultancy, Relationship, SMO

You Got 7 Seconds To Do It – Hot Data

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I have been reading the IOD magazines in my Christmas break and they have got an interesting article on e-commerce. They claim that you have got seven seconds to capture and interest your visitor. With so much content online these days the old maxim that content, content, content would guarantee a number of visitors is yesterdays news. Why?

First it takes time to produce quality content, not only do you have to be well informed you also need an opinion. Even if you have these two aspects it may not be enough. Writing content is an art as Sherrilynne over at Strive Pr can explain. Is it cheap to produce quality content? Hell no, even the most established bloggers such as Dosh Dosh require an indeterminate amount of time to write and check there content before it goes on there website. Other bloggers or companies employ other people do it for them. Which ultimately costs money instead of time.

Is Content King? Nope. A few months ago I looked at setting up a debt recovery business. In my research I was staggered to find so much quality content already on the net . I could have written till I was blue in the face with original content. I do not think that that my debt recovery website would have got on to the golden first page of google results for debt as a search word. As Chris Barling, in the IOD article also CEO of e-commerce software company Actinic, explains: “People try to trick Google, but it’s very good at finding relevant sites.

So what to do? Owen and I have been talking too about this problem recently and we do believe there is a solution. It does not lay in the content that you produce. Although original content is beneficial. It is no longer about one certain area but the concept as a whole. You can now buy a very respectable website for £1000 pounds. Unless it is geared to engage your market in all honesty you are better spending the money on hosting a wine and cheese evening for your potential customers . The only problem with that is, in a time poor world you are severely limiting your market and my 7 seconds was up long ago.

Ask a Question, SMO, work connexions

Networks Are A Bit Confusing

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Networks are bit confusing especially as there are so many of them. I tried Xing for while on a recommendation, but it seems to be a bit restrictive unless you pay full whack. Of course 5 Euros a month is not a great deal to pay. So may be one should just pay that and be happy.

It is cheaper after all that ecademy.

If price is not question which one should you use? I quite often see people posting all sorts of job adverts/advertisement in forums on LinkedIn. I know this happens on all networking sites. I suspect still that the problem is deeper than the question which site should you use?

As one may still not be sure whether they are reaching the most productive audience (or any audience). In short I guess it is better to have all these discussions on your own website.

Which is what work connexions is about, we can build that sort interactive market for business consumers in there choosen field.

Thoughts