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Is Adding Photos and Videos in Social Media Worth the Hassle?

Snippet of M BOOTH infographic of power of photos and videos in sharing social media

M BOOTH Infographic Snippet

It should come as no surprise that photos and videos engage social media users more than plain text. Here’s an infographic of the results of data measuring engagement related to our favorite social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more.

The use of an infographic, another popular visual media form, in telling this story is a great example of how to add interest using images to enhance text. If the article stated the results in numbers and text, readers would quickly lose focus and then move on to the next article that catches their attention. Numbers hold very few people’s attention and for many can be intimidating. When the numbers are explained in the form of a picture, whether photo or infographic, the image makes sense of the numbers for the reader.

Videos Shared Twelvefold

Videos drove the most engagement and were shared 12 times more than links and text posts. Again, this should surprise no one but it’s nice to have the numbers to back up the logic for spending time and money to produce videos. More telling would be an analysis of what kind of videos were shared, and an attempt to understand commercial success. The former is easy to categorize after some sampling, but the latter is more difficult to determine.

How do videos of specific lengths perform in sharing? How much of the videos are watched before sharing? Does music or sound quality play a role? Are the videos most likely to be shared personal or commercial in nature? Are they funny, serious, informative, or cat videos? This information would be very useful for small and medium size businesses to understand in order to produce the most cost effective and engaging videos possible.

The danger in a study with this data, is that tastes change quickly rendering results meaningly and even misleading. We also risk seeing cats in every FaceBook Page video. The point here, is to allow for some experimentation and don’t rely on only one video style to show off your business or personality. Make them fun and informative, but vary the lengths and settings enough to gage visitor reactions. Look for patterns of engagement using video insights, or analytics tracking. If a video receives a poor response, look for contributing factors such as what day and time it was posted.

Bottom Line

Bottom line: if you wonder if adding a photo or video is worth the inconvenience, it is. Just look at the infographic, or show it to decision makers who want proof, in a pretty format, why it’s worth the effort. Users share more when photos and videos are involved and that is a prime indicator that you’ve reached your audience in a meaningful way.

Find The Most Popular on Social Media

Fan Page List categories to filter searches

To the Point Logo

Using fanpagelist.com provides an easy way to drill down into who, and what brands, are most popular in social media. There are useful filters to find people and brands relevant to your industry. Use these results to find people and brands to follow. This shows your potential followers that you align yourself with the best. It also keeps you up-to-date with the key players in social media related to your field.

If your industry is small, or somewhat obscure, this might require a bit of digging to find brands of interest. Look for brands that are loosely related, and then see who they follow. This can point out great brands to follow that may not be sexy enough to make the big lists.

Trending on Facebook and Twitter

By hovering over Top Users, a second menu line appears below that provides links to Trending Facebook and Trending Twitter. Currently sports, celebrities, and some politicians are trending. These tools can indicate areas of interest that you may be able to use for content on your website, or your own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Drill into the top trends

Search the Top Trending

It also provides an opportunity to study why someone might be trending. Some will be obvious and not relevant, like the VP running mate selection. Look for the hot trends that are surprising and click onto their page. What is the conversion like? Are their images and videos that are compelling and pulling in followers? How are they capitalizing on these new followers? Learn what you can from these real world examples and how you can incorporate what you learn into your own social media tactics.

Any Hidden Opportunities?

As you search around, you may notice areas that seem underserved. Maybe there’s an opportunity to enter an area as a test to determine if building an audience holds promise. Explore a bit more to decide if data might be missing, or if there’s a reason why no one yet has built their own following.

Travel news category has no FaceBook presence

Where’s are the FB Pages?

Does Klout Manipulate Your Behavior for Their Gain?

Klout tricks to suck you in

Forbes article screenshot

 

Anthony Kosner, in a Forbes article, claims that Klout purposely makes users feel bad in order to manipulate their behavior. He points out that when first signing up to Klout, your score is posted artificially low as it “gathers” information about you and slowly raises your score. In the meantime, users feel bad about their score so Klout offers ways to improve it by getting you do what they want.

He goes so far as to use the word “groom”, which conjures up the tricks that pedophile’s use to lure potential victims. Even the dictionary uses this as an example, see Apple Dictionary app definition of one use: “prepare or train (someone) for a particular purpose or activity: star pupils who are groomed for higher things…(of a pedophile) prepare (a child) for a meeting, esp. via an Internet chat room, with the intention of committing a sexual offense.”

What motivates Klout?

Mr. Kosner points out that,

Klout makes its money by collecting your data that it uses to help advertisers who want to promote their products using your social influence.

Considering that, who really benefits from you spamming your friends with your Klout invites and activity?

Read Mr. Kosner’s article for some tips on how to limit some of the pitfalls of participation. There’s a lot of good food for thought here. While it would be difficult to prove the ranking is doled intentionally to entice users into following Klout’s pre-planned behaviors, it’s very reasonable to believe.

It’s also interesting to see how the other platforms tend to manipulate as well. Facebook likes, Google +’s, Twitter followers, etc., are all metrics that encourage users to do everything they can get more of. It’s a game in which the platform gets the users to add content, data, and behaviors that they can later tap into for advertisers.

Pinterest Mobile and Mainstream

CNN ran the announcement that Pinterest released new mobile apps on the front page of their website today. There’s no better reminder of the importance of social media than seeing it covered so highly in the mainstream media. In case you’ve been hiding under an internet rock, Pinterest is a social bookmarking service that skyrocketed in popularity to become a social media powerhouse behind Twitter and Facebook. Yes, they just released an Android app, an iPad app, and a refresh of the existing iPhone app.

Announcing new Pinterest Android, iPad, and iPhone apps

CNN Pinterest Apps Article

 

The second interesting point, is that Pinterest held a special event as their press release, rather than an online announcement. According to CNN:

The summer-themed event featured paper lanterns, finger sandwiches and stations inspired by popular Pinterest topics — a polaroid photo booth with mustache props, DIY postcards, temporary tattoos and a design-your-own terrarium table with the ultimate Pinterest staple, mason jars…An in-person announcement is a departure for Pinterest, which typically rolls out features slowly and announces them on its blog. However, the shift to mobile and the gathering of people tied into its newest theme: using Pinterest to do more in the real world. “Our goal is to actually get you offline, to get you to go out,” said Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann, citing the large amount of do-it-yourself actionable content people pin on Pinterest.

Pay attention to this shift in “offline” thinking and how to integrate your message, product, or service to a mobile format. Go where your customers are. Take a look at the new apps to look at how Pinterest is managing this, and consider how to apply this in your business.

If your business, or an aspect of it, is a good fit for Pinterest then it should be a big part of your social media strategy. Pinterest is not perfect – with all the attention, comes spam. Count on the fact that at some point they’ll roll out filters to control it. As always, play by the rules of the platform you’re using and any future updates can only improve your standing.

Pinterest continues to get big time press and there appears to be no stopping it. The fact that they are recognizing the importance of “offline” content by going mobile, is a trend to consider in how you market your own business.

 

 

Google DMCA Penalty

Google is updating its algorithm to consider copyright infringement claims against webpages as a signal to lower a site’s rankings. They already have more than 200 signals used in ranking results. This new signal is based on, “the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.”

What Data is Used?

DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act enacted in 1998 that, among other things, addresses U.S. Copyright laws related to the internet. Per Google’s FAQ:

The DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a U.S. law that provides qualifying online service providers like Google with a safe harbor from monetary liability for copyright infringement claims. One of the requirements of these safe harbor provisions is that the service provider remove or disable access to allegedly infringing material upon receiving a request that meets certain requirements. In responding to copyright removal requests, Google complies with the requirements of the DMCA.

This means that Google has direct access to claims of copyright infringement through their own copyright removal requests process. By incorporating this information into their algorithm, they can push repeat reported offenders’ sites further down the ranking in the search results pages.

Past month stats of copyright removal requests

Number of Requests screenshot

 

Why it Matters

There’s plenty of controversy surrounding this update, but for small businesses marketing online some of the takeaways are:

  • Yet another reminder that algorithm changes constantly
  • It makes sense that Google will try to keep the search results relevant using all means at their disposal, consider that with everything you do online
  • Don’t infringe on copyrights
  • If someone makes a false copyright takedown request against you, respond to it
  • Monitor for yourself if a copyright removal requests is made against you

A few more relevant Google Removal FAQs:

How quickly do you remove search results after a request is made?

We remove search results that link to infringing content in Search when it is brought to our attention, and we do it quickly. As of May 2012, our average processing time across all removal requests submitted via our web form for Search is approximately 10 hours. However, many different factors can influence the processing time for a particular removal request, including the method of delivery, language, and completeness of the information submitted.

How many of these requests did you comply with?

We removed 97% of search results specified in requests that we received between July and December 2011.

Do you inform users before acting on a request?

When feasible and legal to do so, we try our best to notify users to give them an opportunity to submit a counter-notice in response to copyright removal requests. For Search, it is extremely difficult to provide meaningful notice to webmasters whose pages have been identified in copyright removal requests, because we do not necessarily know their identities or have an effective means of contacting them. If users have registered with our Webmaster Tools as web site owners, we will notify them there. We also share a copy of qualifying copyright removal requests with the public site Chilling Effects, where a webmaster may inspect it as well.

Why Now?

As seen in Google’s graph below of URLs requested to be removed from Search per week, the increase in the number of copyright removal notices is significant, and according to them now provides enough data to use in their algorithm:

URL removal request graph

Number of Requested Graph screenshot

 

Per Google in their announcement:

Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009…we will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.

 

 

Reuters Hack Due to Old WordPress Version

Here’s a real world example of why it’s imperative to keep your WordPress installations up-to-date. Reuters may be a larger target than most for hacking, but hackers don’t have to target anyone in particular in their search for vulnerable sites. To find software platforms with known security issues, they simply run a script to search for sites using x,y,z versions of the software, and then run the script to take advantage of the hole. Remember, we may be talking specifically about WordPress, but this applies to all software whether it’s on a server or your desktop/laptop.In this case of Reuters, they use WordPress for the blogging platform of their site. The hack resulted in several fabricated articles posted appearing to be factual from Reuters that contained false information related to the Syrian conflicts.

The WSJ blog reported that: [quote]According to Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers of the WordPress core, and a member of the WordPress security team, Reuters was using version 3.1.1 instead of the current version 3.4.1, which has the most recent security patches.

Jaquith said the platform includes update notifications and a self-updating feature to help customers stay up-to-date with security patches. “If organizations ignore those notifications and stay on an outdated version, then they put themselves at risk of these sorts of breaches,” he told CIO Journal in an e-mail.[/quote]

You have the latest version of WordPress

Click to enlarge

Keeping your site updated is easy, but it’s not always simple. Make sure your theme and plugins are compatible with the new version and have a current backup first. After running your updates, test the look and functionality of your site to make sure nothing broke in the process.

There are no guarantees that an updated WordPress installation will prevent hacking, but it is one of the most critical tools you have the ability to control.

Lifetime Customer Valuation

Ever wonder how much to spend on an ad campaign, or another customer acquisition or customer retention program? Brad Sugars provides a calculation to consider:

Lifetime Customer Value = (Average Value of a Sale) X (Number of Repeat Transactions) X (Average Retention Time in Months or Years for a Typical Customer)

Knowing your numbers will help you to make more informed decisions. The lifetime value number is important, but make sure to use it in conjunction with conversion numbers. In his example, he uses free gym memberships to drive traffic. If you had 50 people take the free offer, but only 1 signed up as a member then your acquisition cost per that 1 member is really much higher than first glance.