“What a great example to kids to know that what makes a mother a good one is how much over-expensive bling she buys them at Christmas.”

Littlewoods is attempting to keep the damage to a minimum by disabling the comment option on YouTube and apparently censoring its Facebook page – although it has denied this.  They are maintaining that the number of complaints in comparison to the number of views is minimal and the positive response overshadows the minority.

Encouraging consumerism or just another Christmas advert encouraging people money?

Littlewoods Christmas Gift Advert

Do you like to find out different, interesting information? I know I do. Especially those little fun facts, that won’t crucially change your rhythm, but gives you that “Hmm, I didn’t know that – it’s interesting” feeling.

• Fun Fact Nr. 1: We all know that YouTube is a video-sharing website. I personally found interesting that it was created by 3 former PayPal employees (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim) in February 2005, so in 2012 little YouTube is going to be 7 years old. YouTube is based in San Bruno, California, but it’s early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen’s apartment. Karim didn’t attend the party and denied that it actually occurred, while Hurley commented that the idea of YouTube being found after a dinner party was probably a marketing idea to create a true and digestible story. The very first YouTube video was entitled “Me at the zoo” and shows founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video is still available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw It is 18 seconds long, was shot at 8:27PM on the 23rd April 2005 and posted live that same day.

• Fun Fact Nr. 2: Did you know that you are able to express yourself in 140 characters and allow other people read it a.k.a. tweet nearly 6 years now? Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July 2006. Twitter gained worldwide popularity with over 300 MILLION users and generating over 300 MILLION tweets per day. Twitter’s origins lie in a brainstorming session held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr. Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50PM  “just setting up my twttr”. The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.

• Fun Fact Nr. 3: As a blogger I can say that personally after trying Google’s blogspot.com and wordpress. com the second option is more closer to my convenience. WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. The name WordPress itself was suggested by a friend of Mullenweg Christine Selleck. WordPress won several awards – in 2007 it won a Packt Open Source CMS Award, then in 2009 won the Packt best Open Source CMS Award. In 2010 WordPress won the Hall of Fame CMS catefory in the 2010 Open Source Awards and in 2011 won the Open Source Web App of the Year Award at the Critters. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet‘s top 1 million websites and as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. Currently it is the most popular CMS in use on the Internet. As of February this year, the version 3.0 was downloaded 32.5 MILLION TIMES.

Given that there are so many rankings to choose from, metrics like ‘influencer points’ or sentiment trackers and score cards make it tricky to know what counts and what just passes for a bit of fun. When marketers check to see how influential a source is on the web, the task becomes a full-blown mission, particularly for PR and digital agencies, often relying on tools like Technorati and PeerIndex to gauge who is worth talking to. Tools give a number and often have a crude formula that can help to find new bloggers and influencers in the social space, but nothing beats sitting down, reading a blog, getting to know the field and asking – “do I really trust this source?”

Once that has been done, it’s worth using paid-for tools like Radian6 to generate a better understanding of the sector using keyword searches (e.g. Chefs > UK > Cooking). Looking at activity like this, it is possible to drill down and discover who are the noisiest people in the social media space, read their content and then make a decision about whether or not to approach them.

A simple approach but skips the need for score cards, rankings and points systems but gives you a good idea who is worth getting in touch with. That being said, (and just for the record) I’ll leave my Klout Score here!

To talk about social media drop me a line at ben.romberg@tugagency.com

Or find me on Twitter @benromberg

Many link builders struggle to find contacts and establish long term relationships with bloggers. In fact when you are doing the blogger outreach it is important to contact the right audience to build links in coherent content websites. If Google (you may have used the search operator to investigate your community) has been your main tool to find contacts, the introduction of Followerwonk will far expand your list of bloggers and this will result in getting more leads.

These are some suggestions you may want to use when you are planning a guest blog, organizing a competition or developing social content for you clients:

1) Identify your audience

That’s the first step and it will provide you with the characteristics of your stakeholders for example mums, sport lovers, food bloggers, geeks or more particular niches like hyper local news sites, events directories etc.. Every group has specific interests and requests so you would be better to tailor your email to their needs.

2) Followerwonk search Bios section

This social media management tool is integrated with your Twitter account and lets you search through bios, analyze and track followers, and find influencers within a specific niche. With this i have been able to easily reach different audiences. Choose 1-2 keywords that represent your target that these may have included in their bios section. Choose a particular location if you are offering something related to a specific area (for example: a book about Scotland) or a certain amount of followers if you want to generate buzz through Twitter. In particular i have noticed that including the keywords “blogger” or “blog” in the description would provide you with a list of good ones usually managed by highly participative writers that contribute constantly and are usually prepared to collaborate with you.

3) Investigate hash tags that your audience use

Some bloggers participate in online debates including hash tags in their tweets. As online marketers use #seo to highlight related posts and comments, mum bloggers that have been to the #cybermummy conference have also exchanged opinions with their peers. If you can find out some hash tags connected to your niche, this will help you to contact Twitter users that can contribute at building links.

In conclusion, it is arguable that having a look at the buzz on certain topics in Twitter and in social media is a good move to compile your link building outreach gaining precious and useful contacts. It is now up to you to find a good and creative strategy to get links from them.

These are 4 suggestions why it would be good to use this content in your corporate blog to boost your rankings:

1) Keywords
As you have already done the keyword research for your website, this is useful for the blog copywriting as well. You should target a specific keyword for every blog post, this means you must include this in the title and in the body (repeated 3-4 times) of the article.

2) Links
Inside the blog post you should deep link in your website with a keyword rich anchor text. An example would make this step clearer: you sell sweets online and you have just written an entry about the biggest pistachio chocolate ever made. In this case you should link to the page that shows fancy flavour bites on sales or the biggest bar you offer.

3) Social media
As soon you have produced and uploaded a great piece of content, you need readers and you want them to share the article. Use your company Twitter and Facebook profile to syndicate the content.
For the first account, you may be better crafting an appealing tweet with a shorten link to your blog post and preferably a related hash tag. For Facebook, use your fan page and invite your customers to participate into a conversation, for example ask what is the sweetest thing they have ever done.

4) Social Bookmarking
The social bookmarking services store website address and can be considered as article directories. They have the power to bring tons of visitors to your blog and consequently send positive social signals to Google. When you post is live you should bookmark  it in Reddit, Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. You may need to say to your colleges/friends to do that as well!

One issue arises in the fact that although it is very easy to set up a brand page, this also means it is very easy to set up a fake brand page. The biggest hurdle when setting up a fake brand page is you have to agree to Google’s Page’s Terms, which state that only users “with authority over the subject matter” can set up a Google+ Page. If these terms are then breached, Google will or take down your page.

Google has attempted to take steps to prevent this by providing verification badges to confirm authenticity of the page. Jim Prosser, a Google rep – “Verification badges are designed to help our users find what they’re looking for by ensuring that people, brands and businesses that are subject to broad-based impersonation are protected,” he says. “Because of this, it’s intended primarily for global or broadly known brands.” Such badges appear as a check the right of the brand’s name on its Google+ page; if you run your cursor over the check mark, it reads “verified name.”

Google has always previously had a lot to say about fake accounts but their current relaxed approach does not seem to reflect this. Facebook and Twitter have tighter regulations when creating pages and hopefully as Google+ grows the same will be said for them.

Naturally I got curious – how many Latvians use Facebook? And which countries use Facebook the most?

So if you are as curious as I was, see below the Top 10 countries using Facebook:

• In 10th place it is Germany. The total number of Facebook users in Germany is reaching 21 634 380 and grew by more than 3 857 920 in the last 6 months. Facebook penetration in Germany is 26.29% compared to the country’s population and 33.22% in relation to number of internet users.
• The 9th place was achieved by France with the total amount of Facebook users reaching 23 248 340. In the last 6 months the amount of users grew by more than 1 994 240. Facebook penetration in France is 35.89% compared to it’s population and 52.10% in relation to number of internet users.
• 8th place goes to Philippines reaching 26 725 000 Facebook users. The penetration is 26.78% compared to the population and 90.07% in relation to to the number of internet users. The amount of users grew by more than 3 532 360 in the last 6 months
• Mexico took the 7th place with  reaching 30 121 140 users and grew by more than 6 166 720 in the last 6 months.
• In 6th place is Brazil. It is reaching 30 453 260 Facebook users and in the last 6 months grew by more than 12 888 040
• Respectable 5th place was achieved by Turkey. In the last 6 months it grew by more than 2 064 240 and is reaching a total of 30 473 280 unique Facebook users.
• Who do you think conquered the 4th place? Well say “Hello” to the United Kingdom reaching 30 481 300 Facebook users. The penetration is 48.89% compared to the UK’s population and 59.25% in relation to the number of internet users.
• And in 3rd place it is India reaching 38 045 000 Facebook users and growing by more than 12 646 400 in the last 6 months.
• Right in the middle is Indonesia achieving the 2nd place  with reaching 40 829 720 Facebook users and growing by more than 4 224 960 in the last 6 months.
• So who do you think was able to take the 1st place? I guess it won’t be a surprise to anyone, that the United States of America is the leader here. The Facebook penetration in the USA is 50.28% compared to the country’s population and 65.20% in relation to the number of internet users. The total number of Facebook users in the United States is reaching a massive number of 155 981 460 and grew by more than 1 023 720 in the last 6 months.

Chinese Authorities have continually been questioned behind their motives for having such tight guidelines on internet usage, with many speculating that this is just another means of maintaining control over its forever growing population.

China attracted a lot of attention back in 2009 when it famously banned social networking site, Facebook, claiming that it was the means and cause of social unrest and consequently was not healthy for the development of the country. With China having more than 500 million internet users, it is hard to imagine how they have managed to cut out what other societies now accept to be such a norm of everyday life. With the help of a series of censorship policies and human rights violations, China is going to pretty much any length possible in an attempt to control the information its citizens can access.

I can understand where the Chinese authorities are coming from, in the sense that sometimes the internet has been known to do more harm than good. Rumours, gossip and slander have the ability to spread like wild fire within a matter of minutes. But, and this is a very BIG BUT, is China going too far in its quest to supposedly maintain peace and serenity in its nation?? Is Facebook really that dangerous?

It is not a secret that the best advertising resource is the word of mouth. And what better word of mouth could be in the internet environment than Twitter? I guess Facebook’s quick wall posts, but lets admit, they are not the same.

According to a new study by Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey, people who follow brands on Twitter say they are more likely to buy products from the brands they follow and more likely to recommend those brands to friends (a.k.a. followers).

The research discovered that among surveyed Twitter users who follow at least one brand on Twitter, fully one half (50%) say they are more likely to buy products from brands they follow on Twitter. An interesting fact is

that male brand followers are more likely to buy a brand’s products after following it on Twitter than female followers (55% vs. 45% – not a huge difference, but still 10% are pretty noticeable).

Following brands on Twitter motivates people to recommend those brands: Overall six in ten brand followers say they are likely to recommend a few (42%) or many (18%) brands to friends after following them on Twitter. Interestingly people who are under 35 are more likely to recommend the brands they follow on Twitter to their friends than people who are 35 to 49.

And would you recommend a brand you follow on Twitter to your friends?

What’s going on in the search engine market this week? Google announced that it is going to retain keywords data from the logged in USA queries while it develops its PPC product for example the dynamic search ads. On the other hand, Bing seems to have improved its results as much as they can but still seems to look very similar to their fellow search engines! Its not finished there because MC Hammer is launching a keywords relationship based engine that has a completely different approach than the others and it is called WireDoo.

What happens if you want to search social media conversations instead of the websites? Try Topsy, a great real-time search engine for the social web. It is a great tool with functions that are useful for SEOs and marketers looking to develop a conversation inside the web. Here you can see some of the features:

-Search tweets by keywords
-Influential twitter accounts within a topic
-Visualise the mentions of a keyword for the past 30 days
-Trending in Twitter
-Search photos and videos
-Create email alert