| Social Graph - Implications for Social Network Marketers |
The social graph is a notion that refers to the data that expresses an individual: their consumer preferences and behaviours; and their various social networks, including friends, family, professional associates and online contacts. The social graph, as expressed in social networks, will be an important point of debate in 2008 as it poses two key problems: for users there is the challenge of managing multiple networks - including logins and importing/exporting personal data. For social network owners, there is the commercial decision of how they should participate in an 'open Internet', defined by platforms that permit data sharing between networks.
While these may be technology or end-user considerations, marketers will need to watch this issue closely as it could impact how they choose to work with social networks. This could involve developing widgets that are compatible for multiple social networks, or applications that draw in data from the full spectrum of a user's social graph. Other potential avenues for marketers include targeting websites that facilitate management of user data sources, such as Plaxo.
The movement of Australian Internet users across multiple social networks is highlighted by the figure at the end of the article. The downstream traffic from each of the major social networks to other industry players demonstrates a wide dispersal of traffic.
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Of the traffic that MySpace, Facebook and Bebo send to other Social Networks, more than 89% of their downstream traffic is sent to second-tier players. While the major players hold concentrated market share of visits to the Social Networks custom category, there is significant referral traffic to minor networks. This underpins the importance of understanding multiple network loyalties.
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After visiting Facebook or Bebo, most users are likely to visit MySpace. While this is a reflection of the dominance of MySpace in market share of visits, it could also be because MySpace offers additional features to the other networks, such as bands and artists content. Network differentiation is likely to be an important factor in how Social Networks will compete for users.
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Bebo received 2% of downstream traffic from MySpace, compared to 1% from Facebook. This indicates that MySpace and Bebo users could have stronger network 'affinities', with users influencing migratory behaviour across both networks.
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| The Great Walk To Beijing |
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In April 2008, Olivia Newton John will be joined by international stars and cancer survivors to walk 228kms along the Great Wall of China in just 21 days. This event will raise funds for a world-first cancer centre which will treat the mind, body and spirit of cancer patients. To sponsor a walker's steps, click below.
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| Industry Search Terms Report for Community - Humanitarian |
The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 weeks ending 22/03/2008 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Community - Humanitarian' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'world vision' representing 1.67% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Community - Humanitarian' industry.
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| 1. |
world vision |
1.67% |
| 2. |
good friday appeal |
1.42% |
| 3. |
red cross |
1.28% |
| 4. |
salvation army |
1.26% |
| 5. |
oxfam |
1.03% |
| 6. |
mission australia |
1.03% |
| 7. |
amnesty international |
0.92% |
| 8. |
st vincent de paul |
0.87% |
| 9. |
lifeline |
0.76% |
| 10. |
united nations |
0.75% |
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| How Well is Your Website Optimised? |
Search Engine Optimisation is a necessity for any website eager to gain traffic, however, it is a complex tactic which involves the optimisation of many front end and back end features of your website. As such, Hitwise Search Marketing Services recommends using the following checklist to evaluate how well your website is optimised.
- Are the website's title tags optimised with important keywords?
- Do the description meta tags contain compelling copy that encourages searchers to visit the website?
- Can search engines access links in your website's navigation menu?
- Are important words and phrases included in the content of each web page?
- Does each web page use heading tags (H1, H2, H3 and H4)?
- Do links to other web pages of the website use relevant text and descriptions?
- Can you navigate to any page within 2 or 3 clicks from the home page?
- Does the website have a Google page rank of 5 or higher?
- Does the website have more than 1000 back links?
- Do any websites with a page rank of 5 or more link to the website?
- Is the website listed in important directories such as Yahoo Directory & DMOZ.org?
If you answered no or not sure to any of these questions, your website may not be reaching its potential and your competitors may be attracting your potential customers.
To learn more about Best Practice Search Engine Marketing - download the whitepaper today!
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| MySpaceTV - www.myspacetv.com |
MySpaceTV, MySpace's video-sharing platform, has jumped 71 places to rank as the 43rd most popular website visited by Australian Internet users during February 2008. During the same period, this jump in rankings represented an increase in market share of over 228%. Among the non-branded search terms directing traffic to MySpaceTV, during the 4 week period ending 1st March 2008, were 'youtube' (0.37%), 'artificial ball lightning' (0.25%), 'parkway drive' (0.15%) and 'underbelly video' (0.14%).
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| Music - Companies |
This category includes all music companies and record labels, plus music publishers, musical organisations and recording studios. The data below is based on All sites - Weekly rankings for the week ending 22/03/2008 - Ranks by 'Visits'.
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| 47.7% |
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of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.
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| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
54.62% |
| 2. |
Search Engines |
29.18% |
| 3. |
Music |
17.63% |
| 4. |
Social Networking and Forums |
17.13% |
| 5. |
Entertainment |
8.69% |
| 6. |
Shopping and Classifieds |
7.41% |
| 7. |
Bands and Artists |
7.24% |
| 8. |
Email Services |
4.04% |
| 9. |
Business and Finance |
3.49% |
| 10. |
Companies |
3.13% |
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| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
28.60% |
| 2. |
Music |
23.30% |
| 3. |
Entertainment |
16.26% |
| 4. |
Shopping and Classifieds |
12.87% |
| 5. |
Social Networking and Forums |
10.95% |
| 6. |
Business and Finance |
7.63% |
| 7. |
Search Engines |
6.70% |
| 8. |
Companies |
6.05% |
| 9. |
Music |
4.86% |
| 10. |
Multimedia |
4.63% |
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