LinkedIn Direct Ads: Is the Social World Ready to Respond?

Let's do some LInkedIn Ad eh? That's what the guide below (first section only) provides those interested in doing so at professional networking social media site LinkedIn. Predictions are being made that organizations will put dollars into the direct, and ppc style ads at both Facebook and LinkedIn (among others) in the coming year. What do you think?

Amplify’d from partner.linkedin.com

Best Practices for Advertising on LinkedIn

Create effective ads

1. Create effective ads

Choose words that grab the attention of your target audience and clearly explain what you offer. People use LinkedIn in ways that differ from other websites, so put yourself in your audience's shoes as you're creating your ads.

Give people a reason to take notice and click to learn more by highlighting special offers, unique benefits, whitepapers, free trials or demos.

Include strong call-to-action phrases like Try, Download, Sign up, or Request a Quote.

Include an image with your ad that's relevant to what you offer. The maximum size of the image is 50 pixels wide by 50 pixels high, so be sure that the contents of your image are readable at this size.

Review the advertising guidelines for details on what's acceptable to include in your ad.

Effective

What works well: This headline clearly describes the products or services offered. Try an ad variation with a question in the headline to engage people. This description lists clear benefits and suggests a strong call-to-action.

Less Effective

What could be improved: The logo and the text within the image are too small and hard to read. This headline displays the company name rather than a word or phrase describing the service or key benefits of the service. This description does not use complete sentences and proper punctuation. Read more at partner.linkedin.com

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Social PPC a Move to New Ad Networks?

It seems the PPC ad networks at Facebook (and perhaps LinkedIn) will be receiving more interest as we round the corner of 2010 into 2011.

Amplify’d from www.emarketer.com

Why Social Media Is Top Priority for Search Marketers

Social will be at the center of SEO and PPC campaigns

Social media will also play an important part in paid search efforts next year. Search ad campaigns on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn were top of mind for nearly half of advertisers surveyed—far ahead of priorities like local search or dealing with recent changes to major search engines (for example, Google Instant and Yahoo!-Bing integration).

The report noted that major spending increases on Facebook search advertising are planned for 2011. Covario estimated many advertisers would be spending 10% to 20% of their pay-per-click budgets on Facebook next year, giving the social networking site a major share of that market Read more at www.emarketer.com

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Social Media Priority for SEOs in 2011

Nice piece from eMarketer on the interest SEOs have in social. They highlight link building aspects of social but also include overall integration which no doubt is adding to the visibility of clients. ... compelling news to me.

Amplify’d from www.emarketer.com

Why Social Media Is Top Priority for Search Marketers

Social will be at the center of SEO and PPC campaigns

Is 2011 set to be the “year of Facebook,” even among search marketers? Based on what US advertisers told search marketing agency Covario, it’s definitely the year of social. Search marketers have discovered how social media marketing can help build their search engine optimization efforts, and respondents to the Covario survey said their No. 1 priority for SEO next year was integration with social media programs. According to the report, “leveraging social media for scalable link-building efforts is a major initiative for advertisers.”

See more at www.emarketer.com

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Location Based Flopworks?

Food for thought from earlier in the month, with links to research.

Amplify’d from liesdamnedliesstatistics.com

Research shows: Location based networking, yes / Location based networks, no

For example, Invoke Solutions recently had some good and bad news for location based networks.   The good: 52% of (US) consumers would be willing to share their location in exchange for retail perks.   The bad?  Facebook Places had 5% use and Foursquare 3% use.   Interestingly enough, the same study did show an appetite among respondents for ShopKick, which gives you (real) rewards for checking into places.

Invokes stats are echoed by research from Pew among Americans and their willingness to use the current crop of location based networks.   Only 4% of Americans use these services, and on any given day 1% will be ‘checking in.’

Will Location-Based Services Ever Go Mainstream? (gigaom.com)

Pew: Only 4% of Adults Use Location-Based Services (socialtimes.com) Read more at liesdamnedliesstatistics.com

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My Day so far...

How about jumping into a week full of fun? Alright. But, what if that fun is really not fun? Just keep on keeping on I guess. Or, maybe .. try LIMBO!!

Amplify’d from www.mentalfloss.com

2. The Soul-Crushing Origins of the Limbo

If you think the limbo was created for middle-aged couples in Hawaiian shirts, you couldn’t be more wrong.

According to most sources, the dance came to America by way of Trinidad, where West Indian slaves invented it to simulate the descent into a slave ship. The lower a slave went into the ship’s hull, the harder it became to break free. Now try enjoying the dance on your next trip to Club Med.Read more at www.mentalfloss.com

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How Effective are Facebook's PPC Ads?

The Wall St. Journal posted a story about entitle "Valuing Facebook's Ads" and lightly explores the the growth of the ad network. In comparing Facebook's ads to other online ads the cost difference is noted. Similarly, noted are the desire of some to have more interactive ads, and the happiness some marketers find with the word of mouth sharing aspect of Facebook.

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

Valuing Facebook's Ads

Facebook Inc. is attracting more advertising, but marketers are still trying to figure out the value of those ads.

Facebook served up almost a quarter of the 1.3 trillion online display ads in the third quarter, according to ComScore data. But marketers are trying to figure out how to value the ads on Facebook.

Several agencies put the average price of an ad on Facebook in the U.S. in the $2 to $8 range for a thousand views, depending on targeting options and where it appears on the site. The price is lower than the average $15 that other premium media sites can charge.

"Where our ads show additional impact is that they can let people engage with them and share them with their friends," Ms. Sandberg said. "This is word-of-mouth-marketing at scale pretty much for the first time."

Although the prices are relatively low, the number of people visiting Facebook is so large that low prices can add up to big dollars fast, advertisers said.

The site is proving to be a hot spot for advertisers who want to drive direct response, like for deal-of-the-day sites.Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com

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Filtering Streams and the Fully Integrated Organization Ideas for Tomorrow

This post is helpful and points out some very compelling developments in the field that I'd like to delve into at the appropriate time. These issues include.. semantics, the future role of SEO, filtering tools and, thematic keyword search. The enterprise is an interesting animal, and one that also should remind us of the variety of areas social media touches. The review of the 'socially integrated' organization, too is something I mean to provide some time for.

Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com

Four Key Steps to Normalizing Social Media Listening and Intelligence Across the Enterprise

When I first started as an Account Manager at Visible two years ago most of the social listening projects I worked on were with small groups from Interactive teams, Market Research or Corporate Communications from within large and often exceptionally diverse global corporations.

What we found though is that as you listen to conversations across social media channels and pay attention to how people feel about your company and how your products or services are resonating with your target market you can find yourself saying “oh this is totally something that other people in our company should know.”

As social listening projects have become more and more commonplace I find that more and more business groups want to hear what is being said and know what it can do for them and their unique business goals

As a large or small company, any new initiative can be exciting and a bit scary.  Normalizing social listening and intelligence across multiple business units is an evolutionary process.  With these key components hopefully it can be a smooth one. Read more at socialmediatoday.com

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@eMarketer on SMB spend toward Websites, Email and Social Media

A wide swath of small to medium sized businesses focused on their website this years as eMarkter reveals website spending in 2010 is up. Moreover, continued cash flow toward websites (17%), email (15%), and social media (13%) is predicted.

Amplify’d from www.emarketer.com

Small Businesses Focus Online Spend on Websites

Looking to other low-cost marketing options

This year, SMB allocation of online marketing budgets leaned toward websites, where 27% of SMBs with 1,000 or fewer employees spent at least 30% of their budget. Email took second place with 18% devoting 30% or more, followed by social media, where 10% of SMBs said they spent at least three in 10 marketing dollars.

The tilt toward investment in websites should continue, as 17% of respondents said they planned to increase budgets for their site in 2011—the highest percentage planning to up any budget line item. In comparison, 15% said they would spend more next year on email and 13% on social media.

See more at www.emarketer.com

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Will Twitter Allows Businesses to Claim their Space?

Twitter will do well to get in the game of geolocation by allowing businesses to claim a location. The verdict is still waining as to how soon and how involved general consumers want to get into the check-in game.

Amplify’d from mashable.com

Is Twitter About to Let Businesses Claim Locations? [UPDATED]

Twitter has allowed users to tweet their location via its Places feature for a while now, but now it looks like the company is taking Places a step further with a feature that lets businesses “claim” a location or place.

The feature, first spotted by the Hacker News community and tech pioneer Dave Winer, provides a permanent URL for specific locations, along with a list of people who have recently tweeted from that location and their tweets. The interesting part though is that at least one of these pages, Twitter HQ, has been “claimed” by @Twitter.

The “claiming” of Place pages could be a sign that Twitter is getting serious about competing in the geolocation space currently dominated by Facebook and Foursquare. It could give businesses a new avenue to promote themselves on Twitter, and it could lead to new revenue possibilities for the microblogging service. Read more at mashable.com

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Get Involved: A Plea from Me.

Here's a video I created tonight using a site called JayCut. The video includes an Arcade Fire song and a variety of photos gathered from around the Internet.

My main comment with it is to CARE. The environment is taking a shellacking and without effort we won't see a positive change. By 2050 the world's population is predicted to double in size. More people, more pollution? I hope not.

One of the facts I came across in putting it together is that 40% of the rivers and 46% of the lakes in the U.S. not clean enough to fish, or swim in any longer. Please Get Involved.

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