Social Media Demographics

by John Eberhard

I recently came across some demographic information on the various social media sites, i.e. who uses them, that I thought would be very interesting and helpful to people in terms of deciding which sites to use to market their business.
There is an article on www.pingdom.com entitled "Report: Social network demographics in 2012."
This article breaks down who the audience is of the main social media sites by age and gender. Take a look at this chart:

I found this information surprising. Note what percentage of the audience of some of the top sites are over 35 years old:
Facebook: 65% of users are over 35 years old
Twitter: 55% of users are over 35 years old
LinkedIn: 79% of users are over 35 years old
I guess no big surprise on LinkedIn, as that is a site that is really geared towards professionals and business networking. But Facebook? 65% over 35 years old.
This charts breaks down social media sites audiences by gender:

Once again I am surprised by the results. Except for a small handful of the sites reviewed, most are frequented by over 50% females. 60% of the audience for both Facebook and Twitter are female. Even LinkedIn: 53% female. The audience for Pinterest is 79% female. And the audience for Blogger is 66% female.
Social Media Users by Income
The next bit of information is from www.kissmetrics.com, from an article on their blog entitled "Who Likes What?".

	$0-25K	$25-50K	$50-75K	$75-100K	$100-150K	$150K+
Facebook	12%	34%	32%	12%	7%	4%
Twitter	15%	33%	25%	16%	7%	4%
MySpace	12%	51%	22%	9%	4%	2%
Digg	19%	37%	21%	15%	5%	3%

Social Media Users by Education Level:

	No HS Diploma	High School	Some college	Bachelors Degree	Graduate Degree
Facebook	10%	10%	55%	18%	8%
Twitter	7%	7%	49%	28%	9%
MySpace	14%	8%	63%	12%	4%
Digg	8%	7%	43%	33%	9%
StumbleUpon	7%	6%	55%	26%	7%
YouTube	13%	10%	51%	18%	8%

By knowing who is frequenting the various social media sites, and comparing that to the demographics of your business, i.e. who buys your products or services, you can make intelligent decisions on which social media sites to use in marketing your business.
(Grateful acknowledgement to Pingdom.com for permission to reprint their charts above.)

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Online PR as a Component of SEO

by John Eberhard

Search engine optimization (SEO) today typically consists of two components:

1. "On-page optimization," which means doing keyword research and then writing titles and descriptions using the keywords and inputting that data onto the pages of a web site.

2. "Off-page optimization," which means link building. This is the process where you create links on other web sites that link to your web site. This improves your ranking on search engines and leads to more traffic.

It is possible to just do the "on-page optimization," but it is much more effective if you also do a link building program for a period of time, usually 6-12 months or more. And by more effective, I mean you will get much more increased traffic to the site from search engines.

One action my company has done as part of link building campaigns, for the last 6 years, is online PR. So what exactly is online PR?

Online PR is where you write a press release about the activities of your company, and then this gets posted in various places online. The press release is written in journalistic style, usually at least 300 words. We have found that some of the topics that can be used for a press release are:

1. Some actual event that occurred with the company, such as a new web site, new product or service released, new person hired or promoted, company receives award or certification, company exhibiting at trade show, company holding seminar, etc.

2. The company just completed some service with one of their clients to a good result.

3. Company releases some list of useful information or recommendations to the public, related to the company's activity. Or company warns public of some danger.

4. You can write a release about one of the company's services. It does not have to be a newly released service. You do not state it's a new service but sort of imply it.

Once written, then the idea is to get the press out where it will create links back to your web site. Depending on how aggressive you want to get, here are some places where you can post a press release online:

a. Free online PR sites. There are a variety of these. My company typically posts client press releases on five of them, each selected because if accepted the press release will also be posted on Google News. These sites tend to be rather arbitrary in their rules of what they will accept, hence our practice of posting to five of them. Also when they do accept the releases these sites tend to rank very highly on search engines, thus giving what I call a high quality link.

b. Blogs. We maintain blogs for client news, and we have also put up client news blogs on a number of free blogging sites. We also often set up blogs for each client on the free blogging sites. We post the release to all these, including 3 keywords in the release linked back to the client web site.

c. Paid PR sites. I typically have not used these in the past but just starting using a paid PR site last month and my client's release ran on 105 sites, including a number of sites for major daily newspapers. So I am starting to implement that for a number of press release clients.

The main purpose of press releases and online PR for me up until now has been part of search engine optimization and building up links. But with paid PR sites we can add getting the release to run in a lot of media web sites to the equation. And each of those counts as links too.

Online PR is a powerful way to create high quality links to your web site, as part of SEO.

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Responsive Web Design

by John Eberhard

In my article last week on New Year's Resolutions, I realized later that I should have included something on "responsive" web sites. The idea being that people should convert their web sites to being responsive this year. What is this and why is it important?

Wikipedia defines responsive web design as:

"Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)."

There are a number of ways to accomplish a responsive web design. I convert the site to Wordpress and use a customizable theme called Catalyst, which then allows the site to be responsive. Catalyst allows you endless customization, so you can create virtually any design, and you can convert virtually any site into Wordpress via Catalyst. And all the new sites I am designing are responsive.

So when you have a web site that is responsive, people using pad devices or mobile smart phones can view your view without having to scroll from side to side. It takes the content of the site and sort of rearranges it so you can see most of it by just scrolling down the page, rather than back and forth. If you have a graphic that is wide, i.e. more than say 500 pixels, a person on a pad or mobile will still have to scroll from side to side to see that whole graphic. But for most content, the user won't have to scroll from side to side.

So why is this important?

Well a lot of people are using pad devices and mobile phones today. I heard a statistic in the last year that 50% of all interaction that people are doing with social media sites are being done on a smart phone. So half of what people are doing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites, is being done on a mobile phone.

Especially if yours is a local business like a retail store, a restaurant, a home improvement business, or a health care practice, people may be trying to find you while they are out and about, and if your web site is mobile-friendly, that is going to be a plus, because the person can take greater advantage of the site while they are away from their desktop.

I saw something in the last year that predicted that desktop computers were going to soon be a thing of the past, with everyone doing their computing using pads and smart phones. I don't agree and think that is taking it a bit too far. Certainly people are not going to do all their computing chores on the small screens. I like my big screen desktop, thank you very much. But it's an indication that mobiles and pads are an important trend. And having your web site so it can easily be seen on a mobile is the first step in keeping up with that trend.

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Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions for 2013

by John Eberhard

It's that time again to do your planning for the new year, and to make resolutions on how you will improve the marketing of your web site. Here are my suggestions.

Think Big: I resolve to think big and think in terms of how I can significantly increase and improve my web site marketing this year, and work to break out of the trap of agreeing with the sorry economic news that greets me regularly.

SEO and Keyword Research: I resolve to get search engine optimization done for my web site in 2013 if it has not been done in the last two years, knowing that SEO and link building are the best route to significantly increasing my web site traffic. I know that I should be targeting keywords that have high traffic, but a low number of competing sites, and that single word keywords are almost impossible to rank for. I know that with a local business I should be targeting local oriented keywords.  

Link Building: I resolve to greatly increase the number of links to my site from other sites, knowing that Google says that the number of links is the most important criteria they use to determine how high my site will rank for my targeted keywords. I resolve to do link building on a continuing basis and I know that it takes time but if I stick it out the rewards are great.

Google Maps: If my business is a local one servicing one geographical area, I resolve to take steps to get a Google Maps/Places listing online for my business and work to get that listing onto the first page of results by getting lots of positive online reviews about my business and putting up lots of listings about my business, all of which pushes my Google listing towards page one.

Posting to the Blog: I resolve to post new content to my blog at least once a month in 2013, realizing that search engines give more weight or importance to blogs specifically because they usually have fresh content added regularly. I realize that a blog post can be just a comment and link to some other content on the web, or posting a video of interest from YouTube. I realize that putting up a blog, but not posting anything to it in 2012 (you know who you are) doesn’t help my online efforts.

Email List: I resolve to take actions to build up my in-house email list, and to email things to it regularly. I resolve to offer items on my site such as free email newsletter subscriptions, and free reports and eBooks, to capture the identities and email addresses of people visiting my site.

Copyrighted Content: I resolve not to use copyrighted content, such as text and pictures, from other web sites, knowing that people are getting sued for this.

Survey Data: I resolve to get more survey data on my targeted public this year, so I know what message to use to motivate them to buy.

Pictures on Social Media: I resolve to use more pictures in social media, not just text posts, as this has become increasingly important in the last year.

Negative Search Engine Listings: I resolve to take steps to handle any negative search engine listings related to my name or business name, knowing that something can be done about this.

Web Statistics: I resolve to ensure my site has Google Analytics on it, and to regularly check the stats so I know how many people are coming to the site, what pages they are visiting, what sites are referring me traffic, and what keywords people are typing in on search engines to find me. I know that without web statistics I am flying blind.

Web Site: I resolve to make sure my web site gets fully re-designed in 2013 if it has not been re-designed since Egypt was a super power, and to update the content of the site regularly so it is current and fresh.

Video: I resolve to get a video made for my business in 2013 if I don’t yet have one, or to create more video content in 2013 if I already have some, knowing that online video is one of the best ways to present my business and sell it.

Don't Be Timid: I resolve to be aggressive in promoting my business, and to realize that contrary to what some people seem to think, that marketing online is not a crime. I resolve to continue communicating online about my business and its products and services.

Google: I resolve to be aware of what Google is doing, in terms of its Penguin and Panda updates and how that impacts my online strategies. But I resolve not to give Google god-like status like some people do, and realize that despite their size, they do not dictate all online actions. 

Consultant: I resolve to respect and take the sagely advice of my marketing consultant, and to pay him on time.

I wish you the best in 2013 and want to put out the decision that we will make 2013 the best year ever.

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