The Power of Hyperlinks

In SEO, I find that too many people get lost in link building, nofollows, dofollows, anchor keywords, page ranks, ect. I think we need to step back and really understand how powerful hyperlinks really are. In a matter of a click, we can have access to so much information. Why aren't marketers more excited about this? My guess is because hyperlinks are so embedded in our daily life that we forget about them.

In traditional marketing, say advertising for instance, people would see your ad and the experience stops there. The internet and links allow that person to go further. Imagine if every billboards were clickable? Marketers would make sure that the public receives the full branding experience. That same feel that display/merch teams create for customers when they walk into a retail store. 

Imagine: A customer is able to "click" on a billboard ad and he is instantly transported inside the store in the exact aisle where the product advertised is located.

That is called online marketing. The difference is that, let's be honest, online banner ads suck. They are mundane and not creative. So people do not click (pun intended). I am not very interested in PPC or banner ads so I will keep that discussion for another blog post.

I want to bring you even further. Imagine that rather than clicking on a billboard ad, you can click a video or a book or even an experience your friend has recently been exposed to?

That is social media marketing. I believe content marketing is at its best through social media marketing because it is the most effective form of word of mouth. The anchor for its effectiveness is in the hyperlinks.

I want to leave you with a great video @olegr shared with me. This Youtube clip is created by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. It offers great insight about the power of hyperlinks and content. It discusses Web 2.0 and the future of the web.

The importance of content

Content marketing is not an easy concept for businesses to get. I can understand why some companies can think that posting content can be a waste of time but content is exactly what you are pitching to prospective clients in your sales call. I know there still are many companies who feel that sales calls, cold calls, direct marketing or telemarketing is more efficient because it feels like you are doing something but who really believes that cold calling works?

I know that times are hard and everybody is stressed but please take a step back, take a deep breath and think about it. What are you doing in sales calls? You are trying to demonstrate value in order for your potential clients to buy your products or services. What is content? It is demonstrating why your product or service is valuable. It is showing your clients how it is of value to them.

The only difference is that rather than being unsolicited, good quality content is solicited. It is only the packaging that is different. What is the point of a really good product when nobody is listening? If they don't listen, it doesn't matter how valuable your products or services are.

This is the beauty of the Internet. Now that anybody can be publishers, you don't have to hope to get picked up by the media or pay the media in order to have people listen to you about your products. Not only that, Social Media is like word to mouth marketing on crack. Social Media makes it so easy for people to share and be instantly exposed to the message.

Before Social Media, before Internet, word of mouth was not as efficient. If you liked a product, you might only tell a small group of people about it and it was on a long period of time because you are not in touch with them as easily. Now with Facebook and Twitter, if you like something, content you like, you can share it with hundreds or thousands of people in an instant. "Sharing" is essentially talking about it. Not only that, rather than being exposed to the product after a couple of days, because it is not accessible, nowadays hundreds or thousands of people can be exposed to the product within seconds. That is the power of hyperlinks. Moreover, they can even learn more about the products with a quick search. Hence, the importance of your content being found easily and the importance of your branding, the experience, you transpire through your website.

Content Marketing is the content of your sales call. Just packaged in a form that will be solicited ie: white-papers, videos, webinars, blog articles, images, etc.

Photo by: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Google Events for Business

Google is opening Facebook to the web. In a race between the two eGiants to dominate the web socially, Google has opened Facebook's event to the world. Websites can now bring people together more than ever with the launch of their new event gadget. 

The function is simple, by installing the gadget on a web page, you can promote your event without having any web page programming knowledge and allow people to RSVP to your event online easily, as well as allowing other people to see who is attending the event. Google is making it easier for Social Media Marketing to complement event marketing.

What this means for your business or organization :

1. You have more control on your branding because rather than creating a Facebook event, thus having to be restricted to a small logo and a dull format controlled by Facebook, you create the page the way that you want and insert the gadget in. 
   
2. You can measure, with web analytic tools such as Google Analytics, you can find out how many people have visited your page, where they come from and by the amount of people attending, you can calculate the conversion rate and determine your efficiency.
3. You can reach a non Facebook audience. As attractive as Facebook's population is, not all of your target market (eg: decision makers) is on Facebook. However, anybody can connect with their Google, AIM, Yahoo or Open ID account.
4. Set up a poll on the page or in the future for feedback to learn more about your target market and why they did not attend your event. Learn from the comments and do it better the next time around.
5. Use a URL shortener like Bit.ly to promote the event online in emails, Facebook page, Youtube or Twitter and offline through word of mouth or promotional products easily eg: bit.ly/myevent.

What else do you think Google Friend Connect's new event gagdet can do for a business?

Google's official video explaining how to use the event gadget:

Youtube Analytics and SMM ROI

Youtube Insight has existed for a little over a year now. Youtube Insight allows the uploader of the video to learn more about the web analytics of his viewers. It allows him to perform market research on the gender of the viewers, their age group, their geographic locations and even how they landed on the video. Was it done by a search or did it come from Facebook? Youtube Insight also reports the community engagement. How many people has set the video as their favorite, it reports information about rating, comments, etc.

A tool I think Youtube Insight lacks is web analytics about the sharing of the video. I think Youtube did a great job at improving the viral nature of a video by making it easy for viewers to share the videos through social media. However, I think it is unfortunate that Youtube does not gives information about how often it was shared and track how many times it was viewed based on that share. It is possible to have an idea because Youtube informs you of the sources from where the visitors landed on your video and you can make an educated guess but it would be much more favorable for marketers and corporations who spends the marketing/advertising dollar to have better information about the viral effect of their content. It would be a great tool to calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) of Social Media Marketing.

If a business is willing to pay to place an ad in a magazine because it approximates how many eyeballs might stumble across it I think the same business can be very interested to see how many times the video they created was viewed but also, how many times was their video handed to the next person and next person after that? Time magazine has the highest pass along readership and I am sure if marketers are willing to pay for an estimated number of a static picture, I am sure marketers would be very interested to see how many people shared the videos and how many more people have viewed the video on Youtube thanks to the share?

Don't forget that you can embed a hyperlink in the video description and with Youtube Annotations, you can improve the level of engagement from your users ie: have a call to action for them to check out your landing page by clicking on the link in the video description. After that, just open your Google Analytics and continue the tracking!

Just make sure that your link is associated with a campaign!

Here is an video overview of Youtube Insight:

Facebook - SMS Service for Pages

Great Facebook news for both online and offline marketers today. People can now become a Facebook fan without even having a smart phone or be on their computer. You can do it while standing in the mall! Inside Facebook reports:

“Imagine the scenarios- you can ask 10 people in a Board room to take their phone out and become Fans, or 100 people at a rally to become political supporters, or 30,000 people at a concert or ballpark to become fans via mobile device,” wrote Dave Kerpen at theKbuzz, who discovered the new feature earlier today.

Very powerful tool. Unfortunately, I can't see how it applies to the employment field yet. The tool is there and it is great. The challenge and creative part, which can be both fun and frustrating, is to figure out how I can use it in my industry: employement. I can definately see how it can be used for bands and multinational corporations in any of their promotional events though.

This can be a great step into social media marketing for retail and for their brand to get more brain share. They can set up a Facebook fan page for their store and whenever clients walk in, have an anouncement that they have Facebook they can become a fan by texting xxxxx and be the first to be notified about their sales, specials or new collections. Great way to be in touch with your market and have them buy clothes at your store first.

Read more on SMS Service for Facebook Pages at Inside Facebook.

photo by: jamesbt