As 2011 draws to a close, Facebook published Memology 2011, a list of statistics regarding global topics, trends and cultural phenomena. These statistics are generated and compiled from the over 800 million Facebook user’s status updates. The top 10 global topics identified by Facebook, quite accurately represents the media highlights of 2011. However, the top 10 global topics make it clear that the majority of Facebook users reside in the USA, with ‘Packers win the Super Bowl’ being the 2nd most popular global topic of 2011.

Quite understandably, especially from the perspective of the United States, the top global topic of 2011 was the death of Osama bin Laden. The deaths of Apple’s Steve Jobs and singer Amy Winehouse were the 5th and 7th most popular topics respectively and Charlie Sheen’s antics landed him as the 4th most popular global topic on Facebook in 2011. The Royal Wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William, which happened in April, is at position 6. The massively popular Call of Duty game franchise, was the 8th most talked about global topic of 2011 with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Other topics in the top 10 include: ‘Casey Anthony found not guilty’, ‘Military operations begin in Libya’ and ‘Hurricane Irene’.

Facebook also provides country specific status trends of 2011 (you can take a look by following the second link below). Unfortunately South African topics are not provided (I am sure the Rugby World Cup would have featured in one form or another). Some interesting status trends from other countries include: UK Riots (United Kingdom), Skrillex (Canada), Planking and Skrillex (Australia), UFC and Slipknot (Brasil).

2011 has certainly been an exciting, tragic and strange year for the 3rd rock from the sun.

Learn more about Social Media Marketing

Links:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150391956652131
http://www.facebook.com/facebook?sk=app_271705986210152

Why are companies with Facebook profiles on the hunt for more “Likes”?
It could be one of the following reasons or in most cases all of them:
To gain more social media fans, to gain brand exposure, to position their brands in the eyes of the consumers, and ultimately to effectively utilise this medium to run competitions and promotions.
As the Social Media Expert at SAbest it intrigues me as to why Facebook users do not want to like a Company or Brand on Facebook. I did some research to see why and what expectations people have when they do interact with a Company or Brand socially.

There are various reasons why Facebook fans don’t “Like” a Company on Facebook:

• 54% don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads,
• 45% don’t want to give any companies access to personal profile information,
• 29% don’t want companies to contact them through Facebook,
• 23% don’t see the benefit of it,
• 4% don’t understand what it means to “Like” a company.

If a Facebook fan likes your Company page, it is very important to observe that they do so with an expectation. People don’t just “Like” every page on Facebook, they “Like” it for a reason. Fans like Company pages to gain access to exclusive content, events, sales or promotions.

47% of users “Like” a page to receive updates about the company, persons or organisation in their newsfeed. 26% want to interact with the page owner. The survey also shows that only 24% want to be contacted through other social media channels such as Twitter once they have interacted with a company on Facebook. 37% do not expect anything to happen.

Media such as photos and videos always perform well on Facebook. It grabs attention in newsfeeds and it is easy to share.

Just ask. People like to interact with each other so ask for those opinions on topics, and if you want your fans to share favourite content, go ahead – ask them.

One of a fan’s expectations is that the page owners will thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions. From time to time, talk about things other than your products. Wish them happy holidays. Ask them fun questions or to share their personal stories.

Remember, if a fan likes your page; interact with them, because it’s one of the biggest expectations any Facebook Fan has.

After an almost 3months field trial, Google+ Social Network is now open for anyone to join with or without invite.

This was announced Tuesday 20^th September 2011 by Vic Gundotra, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering on the company’s blog. “For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal. We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups. This way anyone can visit google.com/+, join the project and connect with the people they care about.”

The new features are said to be rolled out over the course of today globally. [1]

Some of these features include improvements to +Hangouts which uses video to allow people to connect “face-to-face-to-face”.

Hangouts on your phone – the mobile app was rolled out on the Android Market Tuesday allowing Hanging out anytime from almost anywhere.

Hangouts On Air – allows Google+ users to speak to large audiences or view public broadcasts.

Hangouts with extras – offers additional features enhancing time spent hanging out such as : Screensharing – so you can show off pics, high scores or anything else that may be on your screen. Sketchpad – to allow drawing, doodles or scribbling together. Google Docs – enables writing, planning or presentations as a group. Named Hangouts – for creation of a public hang out based on any topic, be it Medicine, Politics, Fashion, or Music. Thought the extras are still under construction these features are being previewed and Google is looking for feedback.

Hangouts APIs – allows developers to build apps and games.

Search in Google+ – Enables users to perform searches of any topic returning relevant posts and popular web content. “Google+ search results include items that only you can see, so family updates are just as easy to find as international news”.  [1]

Google+ brings interesting innovations to Social Media as we have come to know it, and is sure to give long standing Social Media front runner Facebook a run for its money. Though the product is still new it has built a lot of excitement and looks promising to keep and build on this momentum.

References:

1. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-92-93-94-95-96-97-98-99-100.html

Today it is extremely important to have an online presence and without any marketing, your website would not get the right traffic for the products or services you provide. A lot of small companies start by doing some type of internet marketing themselves to drive traffic to their websites in the form of PPC, some SEO or via social media. Soon they will find out that this is a full time job and to do it properly they will need professional help.

This week we will have a look at why you need to get professional help for your website, from the management of the website to all types of online marketing that can be utilised. The online marketing industry is an ever changing environment and if you are running your own company and still need to keep track of all the best practices needed to stay ahead something will get left behind.

Online marketing professionals work with websites and the marketing thereof everyday and trusting a company to handle your website might be worth a lot more than just the extra money that you will spend for their services.

People that I’ve met that ran their own PPC campaigns for example, realized that it was getting too involved for them to manage it properly. After handing it over to us they could focus more on their business and performance of the PPC campaigns also improved. Trying to do SEO yourself might be a bit more tricky because SEO is a lot more technical. You need someone that understands the technical side of how websites and search engines work to do that properly. Managing your social media marketing by yourself might work for a while but you will soon realize that as it grows that it will become time consuming, and you will never get to everything that you have to and do proper management of your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Do check back here the rest of the week for more reasons why you should use an online marketing expert.

It is very important to clearly define a set of goals before you start any social media marketing campaign. Without clear goals that you wish to achieve you will only waste your time, and measuring success will be very difficult.

Here are some goals that you can work towards in you social media marketing campaign:

Brand Awareness:

By creating interesting content and spreading it through social media platforms, people will start to get more familiar with your brand. Keeping your content unique will make you stand out from your competitors. You will not only make people more aware of your brand but they will also have the ability to engage and interact with your brand, by taking part in blog discussions etc.

Reputation Management:

You can use social media to influence the way customers perceive your brand. Social media give customers the power to complain about your company or say positive things and it is there for the world to see it. By making sure you give attention to any comments made by customers social media can work well.

Increased Traffic:

If you create unique relevant content on your social media platforms you will get relevant visits to your website. The people in your online community are interested in your products or services so make sure to give them relevant information. Also make sure you join communities with a similar audience than yours, to broaden your reach.

Promoting a product or Service:

You can also improve sales for specific services or products by advertising it through your social media channels. If you have already build up a big community and the products you are advertising are relevant, your advertisement will be very targeted.

If you set goals you will stay focussed and remember why you are blogging and tweeting.