Pinterest Drives Shares, Not Sales, According to Amazon 7 1 Pinterest Drives Shares, Not Sales, According to Amazon After a few quarters of almost unbelievably positive numbers, it looks like Pinterest's reputation as a social shopping machine is starting to come back down to earth. All hypes eventually do... According to Zappos Labs, all that stuff about Pinterest driving outrageous sales volume is no longer accurate. In fact, they say that, while Pinterest
Why Did Twitter Drop 3rd Party Badges? 4 0 Why Did Twitter Drop 3rd Party Badges? Badges? Twitter don't need no stinking badges... For years, experts have argued over whether social media dashboards, like Hootsuite or Tweetbot, were actually worth the convenience. The theory was that Tweets and status updates were seen as less valuable if they had been posted through a 3rd party. It makes sense... when people see that
Digital Content Soars At B&N... Nook Nosedives [INFOGRAPHIC] 2 2 Digital Content Soars At B&N... Nook Nosedives [INFOGRAPHIC] More good news for digital authors... Barnes & Noble's customers are showing some strong demand for digital content, even when Nook sales are lousy. I say that's good news, because despite the Nook's crappy sales numbers, B&N's digital content sales rose 46% over last year. It's clearly not good news for B&N's Nook division. Hopefully,
How Google's Pirate Penalty May Affect YOU 1 0 How Google's Pirate Penalty May Affect YOU The word "copyright," when applied to the internet, has always been a kind of slippery, nebulous concept. Lots of web superpowers have been built on shaky ground, as far as the law is concerned... The most obvious example was Napster. But with the explosion in user submitted content and social sharing, the copyright infringement issues
FB Virality vs. Organic Engagement: Which Is Right For You? 1 0 FB Virality vs. Organic Engagement: Which Is Right For You? As you may have noticed, we've been testing all kinds of new engagement strategies on our Facebook pages here at Idea Inc. -- contests, videos, images, and even live Q&A posts. Our Social Media Specialist, Luis Ramirez, has been cooking up all kinds of creative tests and closely monitoring our insights to determine the outcomes.
DM Quick Tip: Formatting The Perfect Facebook Post 1 1 DM Quick Tip: Formatting The Perfect Facebook Post Like most marketers on Facebook, here at DM we sometimes get hung up on the big analysis questions (e.g. what's a Like really worth?) and we forget that all of the Likes, comments, etc. are actually feedback... All the engagement and reach that we like to obsess over is actually a result of our posts.
Will The Redesign Lift Digg Out Of The Hole 9 0 Will The Redesign Lift Digg Out Of The Hole A couple weeks ago, I was totally floored by the news that Digg had been sold to Betaworks for a grand total of $500,000. In a world where Facebook is snatching up photo-sharing apps for $1B apiece, Digg's six-figure price tag just seemed... beyond pathetic. However, if you read past the headlines, you probably noticed
The 3 Keys To Tracking Facebook Engagment [VIDEO] 0 0 The 3 Keys To Tracking Facebook Engagment [VIDEO] When it comes to Facebook, engagement is everything. For those of you stuck in the old mindset that your #1 goal is to simply get users to Like your page, it's time to re-evaluate... That's no longer what truly gets rewarded on Facebook. In fact, having thousands of inattentive, unengaged fans is actually a negative,
Why Your Next Job May Be In Social Booking Management [INFOGRAPHIC] 0 1 Why Your Next Job May Be In Social Booking Management [INFOGRAPHIC] As a social media manager, a pretty huge part of your job ends up being reputation management in one form or another... there's really no way around it. Consumers are going to going to give feedback and lodge complaints however they see fit, and that's often via social media. In the hospitality industry, the need
Another Mobile App Rakes It In 18 Months After Launch [VIDEO] 0 0 Another Mobile App Rakes It In 18 Months After Launch [VIDEO] The market for mobile apps is heating up again... not for consumers (where it never cooled off), but for tech companies looking to buy quick mobile growth. Yesterday, entertainment software company Autodesk announced it was buying video-sharing app, Socialcam, for $60M. It's far from the eye-popping Instagram deal from earlier this year, but yet another
Are Facebook's Promoted Posts Worth The Money? 2 1 Are Facebook's Promoted Posts Worth The Money? Facebook ruffled some feathers back in June with the roll-out of "Promoted Posts," a new service that allows page managers to pay Facebook to expand the reach of a particular post on their Timeline... Or as some angry page owners dubbed it, Facebook payola. More than a few Facebook activists revolted, and still are, I
The State Of The Buying Cycle [INFOGRAPHIC] 0 0 The State Of The Buying Cycle [INFOGRAPHIC] Remember that old graphic called the "Buying Cycle" from Marketing 101? It was basically a flowchart that had things words like "Awareness" and "Evaluation" on it? It doesn't matter, because either way, you can chunk it... Thanks to advances in digital marketing, that old flowchart has so many new stages, complications, bypasses, and loops that
Groupon vs. LivingSocial vs. Google Offers 0 0 Groupon vs. LivingSocial vs. Google Offers Despite all the lumps Groupon's taken in the media, the Daily Deals industry as a whole is continues to be a go-to resource for local marketers who need to scout out some new leads. That's because, for lots of local businesses, daily deals are the most cost effective way to advertise... and it really does
Hint: Start Using Pinterest [CHART] 1 0 Hint: Start Using Pinterest [CHART] Just when you think social media's visual revolution is going to start cooling off... Shareaholic releases a new traffic report that puts Pinterest over Bing, StumbleUpon, and Google's referral traffic. Despite all the naysayers, Pinterest has continued to keep growing steadily, even after the initial hype wore off... and turned into jealousy and contempt. Actually,
Which Day Of The Week Is Best For Social Media Engagement? 2 0 Which Day Of The Week Is Best For Social Media Engagement? In the past, we focused lots of resources on finding out which days/times are best for sending out email offers. But as social media becomes more and more important to list-building (and retention), it's high time that all digital marketers start approaching social media the same way. When it comes to email, we know that
DM's Summer List Optimization Checklist 0 0 DM's Summer List Optimization Checklist (Yes, I know this title's redundant) Stock brokers have a saying, "Sell in May and go away." And while you may see dozens of articles debunking this age-old saying on popular finance websites, it certainly would have been good advice to follow this May... and last May too. All economic calamities aside, summer is traditionally
Don't Listen To GM: Facebook Ads Still Work 1 0 Don't Listen To GM: Facebook Ads Still Work We all understand that advertising isn't a simple, cause-and-effect transaction, right? Don't we? That truck month commercials don't make Mini drivers go out and purchase a pick-up? That light beer commercials don't cause teetotalers to suddenly run to the store for a 6-pack? It's not a difficult concept to grasp, right? Unless you work at
The Mobile-Friendly Email Checklist [INFOGRAPHIC] 1 1 The Mobile-Friendly Email Checklist [INFOGRAPHIC] Social media moves traffic to blogs and blogs move traffic to landing pages, it's true. But for a whole bunch of reasons, email is still the most important online marketing channel... and it will continue to be for at least a few more years. That's why you absolutely can't afford to ignore your mobile email
The Massive Tectonic Trend That's Changing Everything [INFOGRAPHIC] 0 0 The Massive Tectonic Trend That's Changing Everything [INFOGRAPHIC] Most of us spend far too much time getting caught up in the minutiae of tweaking offers and rewriting sales letters, and not nearly enough time looking at the big picture. If you're like me, you like to come up with an idea and start hammering away. That kind of ready, fire, aim process is
Don't Let Your Small Business Be A Shrimp Online [INFOGRAPHIC] 1 0 Don't Let Your Small Business Be A Shrimp Online [INFOGRAPHIC] Small businesses are often given a lot of credit for driving the US economy, and rightly so... If anyone's going to kickstart the money machine, it's going to be ambitious small companies and start-ups. That's why I felt a tinge of fear and loathing when I came across the infographic below. Apparently, 40% of small
Can Display Ads Bridge The Mobile Gap? 0 0 Can Display Ads Bridge The Mobile Gap? A new report shows that search spending is still running circles around display ad spending... in every market across the globe. In the US, where the gap is smallest, $811M is spent on search vs. $572M on display, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. It's funny, while analysts predict that display will eventually come out
The Viral Content Marketing Launch Strategy 2 0 The Viral Content Marketing Launch Strategy Content marketing has been exploded across the social web, just in case you hadn't noticed. Infographics, in particular, have become a fan favorite and a marketer's favorite all rolled into one. Why? They're a form of fun, helpful share-candy for bloggers, pinners, and social media addicts. That's why I do my best to include one
3 Dirt Simple Timeline Marketing Tactics 1 1 3 Dirt Simple Timeline Marketing Tactics It's been a busy year for Facebook. With all of the agony and ecstasy surrounding the IPO, it's hard to believe Zuckerberg and Co. had time to launch a major overhaul that completely turned Facebook marketing on its head... but they found a way. Two months after the switch to Timeline became mandatory for Pages,
How Travel Networks Are Using The Piggyback Launch Model 0 0 How Travel Networks Are Using The Piggyback Launch Model Have you ever made friends with a stranger on a long haul flight? Or sat next to someone who basically made your flight miserable? If so, then you know exactly how important a compatible seatmate can be to having a enjoyable flight. That's the idea behind a whole new wave of social travel networks that
Why Oracle Paid $300M For A Social Media Marketing Company 1 0 Why Oracle Paid $300M For A Social Media Marketing Company By Josh Loposer A few years ago, before social media manager was an actual job title, managing a social media account for your business was kind of a cutesy, flavor of the month experiment. Most media companies would just enlist whatever interns were hanging around the coffee machine to post their tweets and status updates.
