http://searchconcepts.com
On June 9, 2010, In SEO, by Scott Monty
I see Facebook’s demographics for the top 15 country markets. Okay, so that may not rhyme, but at least you know what this post is about, right?As always, the source Inside Facebook has an in-depth look at some Facebook demographics that matter. I…
As always, the source Inside Facebook has an in-depth look at some Facebook demographics that matter. In this case, a look at some international statistics in the 15 largest countries represented on Facebook. I only have information on four of the markets - you have to be a member of Inside Facebook Gold to get the full report. Let's see what we've got for now.
U.S. Statstics
The U.S. market has been widely documented, with slightly more female than male users (57.5%), and a healthy population of users over the age of 25. But as Facebook approaches 500 million users, approximately 70% of them are from countries outside of the United States.
We know the U.S. members are continuing to grow: 4.4 million were added in April, and another 7.8 million joined in May, bringing the U.S. total past 125 million.
United Kingdom
Let's hop over to the U.K. where, thankfully, we don't need to bring a translator (although George Bernard Shaw once said that we are "Two nations separated by a common language."). The female/male split is more of an even match, with women taking the lead at 51.1%.
But where we really see a difference is in the percentage of individuals in the 18-25 and 26-34 range - clearly this is the core market for the U.K. And with 43.5% of their users under the age of 25 (compared to the U.S.'s 39%), it's a slightly younger crowd.
Indonesia
Would it surprise you to learn that Indonesia is currently Facebook's third largest country? It shouldn't, as it's the world's fourth most populous country. It also shouldn't surprise you that the country with the largest Muslim population also has a larger male presence on Facebook: 59.2% male vs. 40.8% female.
Another huge difference: a vastly younger population. Users under 25 years of age make up 72.5% of Facebook's Indonesian population. Users over 35 only account for 8.9% of the total userbase.
Turkey
We've got a similar makeup in Turkey: more male than female - only even more so. Men comprise 64.4% of Turkish Facebook users. And they're fairly young, too: 56.5% of male users are under 25 and 63.7% of women are under 25. However, there's a healthy chunk remaining across both sexes in the 26-34 and 35-44 age range as well.
France
Not too surprisingly, when we get to France, we return to data that are more reminiscent of what we saw in the U.S. & U.K. A fairly even split of male and female users, but with just about 50% of users under 25 years of age. The over-35 crowd stands at about 25.7%, which still has a ways to go to equal the U.S.'s 38.2%.
Additional facts
Overall, Facebook's youngest country by demographics is Indonesia, which is also its third largest. It may be a while before we see a leveling out of the age of Indonesian users, but it bears following. Largest userbase over 35, in descending order: United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
What this all means is that you should check your facts and the most up to date information on whatever platform you choose to participate on in the social media space, because it's dangerous to assume that a U.S.-centric approach will work around the globe.
Image credit: chicks57 (Flickr)
http://www.scottmonty.com/
On May 27, 2010, In SEO, by Michael Brito
Love to see non-profit organizations like Earthjustice embracing social technologies. Each time someone “checks in” at an Earthjustice poster in the San Francisco BART stations, one of Earthjustice’s donors will give $10 to support their cause. The ads, featuring images of Lake Tahoe, oil rig platforms, and the little furry endangered pika, can be found throughout the BART stations coming this summer.
Though Foursquare does not yet have the wide market penetration that Facebook and Twitter enjoy, the hope is that through its embrace of location-based services, Earthjustice can connect a younger audience to its work, whether it’s curbing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic or protecting endangered species like the pikas of the Sierra Nevada.
At the same time, Foursquare users on BART will get their shot at becoming the “mayor” of Earthjustice ads and help protect the environment, all while doing their daily commute. Aside from the donation aspect, [...]
Love to see non-profit organizations like Earthjustice embracing social technologies. Each time someone “checks in” at an Earthjustice poster in the San Francisco BART stations, one of Earthjustice’s donors will give $10 to support their cause. The ads, featuring images of Lake Tahoe, oil rig platforms, and the little furry endangered pika, can be found throughout the BART stations coming this summer.
Though Foursquare does not yet have the wide market penetration that Facebook and Twitter enjoy, the hope is that through its embrace of location-based services, Earthjustice can connect a younger audience to its work, whether it’s curbing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic or protecting endangered species like the pikas of the Sierra Nevada.
At the same time, Foursquare users on BART will get their shot at becoming the “mayor” of Earthjustice ads and help protect the environment, all while doing their daily commute. Aside from the donation aspect, the check-ins also encourage users to learn more about Earthjustice through other Foursquare features, such as tips or “shout outs.” You can follow them on Twitter here of “like” their Facebook page here. I just did.
To amplify the campaign even further, I would recommend the following:
- Aggregate all check ins and tweets somewhere on their web site
- Recognize and showcase each mayor (i.e. on their web site or fan page)
- Create a mechanism that integrates with the campaign and allow users to make contributions easily
- Tweetup / fund-raising event
Heck, I may even take Bart a few times when this launches to show my support. Hopefully you will too!
http://www.britopian.com
On May 5, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
The Labour Party harnesses the efforts of its candidates alongside its online activists with the help of Twitter and Facebook. …
The Labour Party harnesses the efforts of its candidates alongside its online activists with the help of Twitter and Facebook. ...
http://searchenginewatch.com/
On April 14, 2010, In Internet Marketing, SEO, by Pat McCarthy
In the last few days we’ve had two announcements about advertising platforms based on Twitter in TweetUp and Promoted Tweets, even though Twitter is claiming their “Promoted Tweets” aren’t actually ads.
While it’s still way too early to know how either of these platforms will play out, it’s extremely exciting to see some new advertising opportunities [...]
In the last few days we’ve had two announcements about advertising platforms based on Twitter in TweetUp and Promoted Tweets, even though Twitter is claiming their “Promoted Tweets” aren’t actually ads.
While it’s still way too early to know how either of these platforms will play out, it’s extremely exciting to see some new advertising opportunities that will have some scale to them. After search advertising took hold, it took a while before the Facebook and Myspace ad platforms started having enough scale to really get people’s attention. Of course, display advertising has been chugging along through all of this, but it looks like TweetUp and potentially Promoted Tweets will have the ability for anyone to eventually go in and start buying ads.
Not only is this interesting for marketers, but will this create a new type of ad network or new types of tools that are developed on this? Will there be Twitter focused ad networks who will optimize campaigns for you on the Twitter ad platforms? If you’re a larger advertiser, do you now need to optimize budget across search, display, Facebook, and Twitter options? Is there any ad network or agency that can do that? Is there any tool or service? There will be.
http://www.conversionrater.com
On April 11, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
Yahoo and Bing have been hoping and praying that everything with their recent partnership would go through as smoothly as possible with no hang ups. Recently everything was approved for these two giants to be allowed to put their heads together and change things for the future of both businesses. With Bing really increasing in [...]
Yahoo and Bing have been hoping and praying that everything with their recent partnership would go through as smoothly as possible with no hang ups. Recently everything was approved for these two giants to be allowed to put their heads together and change things for the future of both businesses. With Bing really increasing in market share and Yahoo decreasing, it was an obvious marriage that had to happen. Don’t forget that Yahoo is still a very powerful website and one of the most trafficked websites in the world. How is this going to change things for SEO professionals who have been focusing on just Google for so many years?
The united pay per click advertising platforms of Bing and Yahoo will surely be a new force in the industry. As reported by the Associated Press they will be sharing ad revenues which is really going to change the way businesses market their websites outside the walls of Google. Bing is also working on a unique partnership with Facebook allowing almost everything in the social network to be completely searchable in the search engines. Pretty soon if you want to find something on a specific person you will be able to search in Bing and it will filter not just for their name but through their profile for items as well. It seems like many people are very excited to see this go through. According to a poll done by Search Engine Journal , 62% of voters think that this partnership is going to give Google a real run for its money. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Don’t be surprised if you see Bing making some serious moves that involve sacrificing revenues just for market share increase. I think these massive search giants want to do anything to just pull users away from Google and they are ready to use anything within their grips to make it happen. There has already been chatter in the industry how there will be a massive forward step to outperform Google’s algorithm in the newly combined search engine.
I think eventually we will see a shift as to how search engine marketing professionals approach their focus. Over time we will see an importance for businesses to be visible in Bing as well as Google. Everything that comes up must come down sooner or later and I don’t think Bing will take out Google but they might pull some of the focus off of it for quite a while if they play their cards right.
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
On April 8, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
Search engine optimization is all about creating targeted streams of inbound traffic coming to your website on a daily basis. A dull SEO campaign really doesn’t help anybody. The user who might bump into that piece of marketing won’t find it useful and the search engines just get cluttered with more material that just gets [...]
Search engine optimization is all about creating targeted streams of inbound traffic coming to your website on a daily basis. A dull SEO campaign really doesn’t help anybody. The user who might bump into that piece of marketing won’t find it useful and the search engines just get cluttered with more material that just gets in the way of things. With the search engines evolving and changing it is important for your efforts to really have some sort of personality applied to them.
Let’s take a look at some of the areas you can give your online marketing efforts a kick start to get people wanting to click on your website:
Online PR: Instead of just sending out a press release to get more links why not trying to send it out to get great links and fantastic press. If you send out dull pr you might notice that there are some blogs that pick up anything just to build content. That is not going to help you or your business. If you want a major online publication to pick up your pr topic you will have to give that pr topic a bit more flavor. Try announcing a new client that might be larger than normal if they allow for their name to be used. Maybe you have formed some sort of partnership that is worthy of a headline. This is more likely to get picked up and receive better links than just announcing a new section of a website launching. Put some personality into the pr and it will go much further.
Social Media: Instead of just launching a Twitter or Facebook page and dropping links to your blog posts take a different approach. If you can get your community conversing with you your social efforts will go much further just helping your SEO efforts in the process. SEO is much more than just creating rankings, it is about building your business online so it requires more than just placing links here and there. Ask questions in your community. If you have followers in your Twitter account people will respond you just need to give them a reason to do so. Ask relevant industry questions to get some conversations started.
Video Marketing: Video marketing is a great way to really spread your presence online but you have to do it the right way. If you have the budget buy a decent camera, a tripod and some editing software. Take the time and make some good solid promotional videos to help you spread the word online. If you make it right people will pick up your video and blog about it. This action will give you nice strong links pointing to your website. Always shoot for making your video viral.
Putting some personality into your marketing will allow things to go much further online for your business than if you didn’t. People don’t respond to just links, they respond to marketing so go and brand yourself as a real business online.
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com