How Google+ Affected Social Shares and +1 Adoption Rates

July 10th, 2011 - Posted by dohertyjf to Behavior & Demographics

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Google announced the +1 button in March much to the enthusiasm and confusion of webmasters and SEOs the world over. "What's the point?", people asked. "Why should I +1 a site? Should I implement it on my site?"
It seems the answer now is clear, with the launch of the Google+ "social experiment" last week that has kept me from getting work done as Google continues innovating and brilliantly drawing me back to Plus everytime that little notification indicator turns red.
I'm not here to talk about that though, because we've put together a bit of data for you today about +1 integration and social sharing statistics. This post originally was conceived by Tom Critchlow and I before Google+ was launched, so it has gone through some iterations.
We wanted to get outside of our typical SEO circles though and see how the general public is adopting the button. To keep things interesting, I also gathered some well-trafficked SEO sites and their social numbers. What I have done is gathered the Technorati Top 100 sites and their RSS feeds. Then I pulled their 20 most recent blog posts (both before and after Plus was announced) and grabbed their +1, Twitter, and Facebook share data thanks to an awesome script by Tom Anthony.
The data got interesting pretty quick. Here are our findings.

Technorati Top 100 Stats

Since we were interested to find the rate of +1 adoption by the Technorati Top 100, we pulled the numbers before Google+ was launched and after. I removed the Gawker sites since their RSS feed is all-encompassing and skewed the numbers terribly. Here are the numbers for the other 95 Technorati sites:

The numbers changed thus: Pre Google+, only 22 had implemented the +1 button. After the launch of Google+, that number increased to 25. 22 of the sites had +1s, but 8 of those sites did not have the +1 button implemented! These were predominately technology sites, which is no surprise, but also two LA Times blogs (The Opinionator and L.A. NOW) as well as entertainment site TMZ. Takeaway: If you own or have a client who owns a technology, opinion, or entertainment site, you should implement the +1 button.

Average +1s per article, Pre and Post Plus Launch

As you can see, the average number of +1s per article for the Top 100 almost doubled. The number of +1s per SEO article also increased by about 30%. It is not surprising that SEO sites have more +1s than the Technorati Top 100 on average, but the increase is especially interesting given the next two charts.

Average Facebook Shares per Article and Ratio of Plus to FB Shares

Here are the average shares from the Technorati sites as well as SEO sites:

We must note that the Facebook share numbers went down for the Technorati sites, but increased for the SEO sites. One possible explanation for the SEO sites is that SEOs were sharing Google+ news on Facebook, but this is simply a hunch and not proven. Here is the most interesting statistic I found, the ratio of +1s to Facebook shares on the Technorati sites:

The number was cut almost in half. Perhaps we could guess preliminarily that the launch of Google+ has adversely affected the amount of information shared on Facebook? With the rise of the number of +1s and the decrease in Facebook shares, as shown by the last graph, I think this could be a safe assumption, at least with this limited data set. This graph might also support this hypothesis:

This graph shows that before Google+ was launched, there were 2 Facebook shares for every tweet given to articles on the Technorati Top 100. Post Google+ the ratio is almost even, with tweets being more prevalent than Facebook shares!

What do we do with this data now?

There are certainly some takeaways from the data presented. There are certain niches where it makes sense for us as SEOs to encourage our clients to implement certain sharing features. On other sites, especially in dodgier or more regulated industries, social share buttons do not make as much sense. One of the most interesting bits of information that came out of the data was the number of sites that have +1s, but do not have the button implemented on their site.

• 10 Technorati sites without the button have +1s; and
• all of the SEO sites I looked at have +1s, even though only 2/3 have implemented the button.

Based off these discoveries, I'd recommend that if you have an SEO site, it should have a +1 button. Even if +1s do not count for rankings at this point, they are displayed in the SERPs and therefore probably help with click-through rates. If +1s are used for rankings in the future, which I am not convinced of but still remains a possibility, then you will be one step ahead of the curve. Also, if you or a client has a site in one of these niches, you should probably have a +1 button on your site:

• Technology
• Opinion (Political or other)
• Celebrity gossip

This discovery is also interesting because it means that people +1d these from the SERPs, which is something we all wondered how we would do, and more importantly if people would do it. It appears that people do. I think this discovery reinforces that we as webmasters/SEOs (we are often both, after all) need to find ways to track social engagement around our sites. If we see engagement, we need to encourage it. Google has recently helped us accomplish this goal by adding +1 tracking to Analytics.

Making the most of your Facebook page profile picture

By: Keith Heustis

Facebook hasn’t always made it easy to figure out what size is best to use for a profile picture or how to control what your Facebook thumbnail looks like in news feeds and other areas of the site.
 
Some of that is changing and Facebook has made it easier to manage profile pictures, but for many Facebook users there is still some mystery involved in how to take full advantage of the options that Facebook offers. In this post I hope to dispel some of those mysteries.

Getting the right Size:

Let’s start off with some of the basic specs that Facebook provides. Facebook recommends that profile pics should be a maximum of 200px wide, while height can vary as needed with a maximum height of 600px allowed. Lets see what this looks like in practice. Below are three examples of different Facebook page profile pictures that utilize the full width of the Facebook specs, but have varying heights.

As you can see by utilizing the varying degrees of height there is a lot of room to creatively utilize the space of a Facebook profile picture. I am often surprised at the amount of businesses that fail to utilize this space.

Understanding How Facebook Crops Images:

Perhaps part of the reason that many pages don’t utilize the full depth is due to the extreme measure which Facebook will crop the profile image. This has forced many users to format their profile picture so that it is square and doesn’t get cropped in strange ways. Left unchanged Facebook will take a long image and crop it automatically smack dab in the middle of your profile picture to create a 50px by 50px thumbnail. The resulting image taken from our examples above would look like these below:

Default thumbnail cropping

As you can see these thumbnails are confusing to look at. I could never guess who or what these organizations are in a news feed or on someone’s wall. So how do we fix this? Let’s start by understanding exactly how Facebook works when it comes to cropping your profile picture. On an image that is 200px wide Facebook will utilize a 15px margin on either side before cropping, so when making a profile picture keep this in mind. An easy way to visualize how Facebook will crop your image is to simply use your image editing program of choice, in my case Photoshop, to create a 170px square semi-transparent box over your 200px wide image to see how much space you have to work with. Keep it centered on the profile image and you’ll see exactly how your thumbnail will look.

Cropping your picture in Facebook

Now for the part that most people don’t know about. Facebook actually allows you to change the position of the cropping area on your image. This was only just recently made much easier, so there’s no excuse to not take full advantage of this feature
Step 1. To see how this works simply go to your Facebook page and click the edit icon located in the upper right corner of your Facebook profile image. From the drop down menu that appears choose “Edit Thumbnail”.








Step 2. A dialog box will open allowing you to simply drag your image up and down and slightly side to side so that you can properly crop your profile image.

Design Tips:

Hopefully this little tutorial has given you some new insight on how to better utilize your Facebook profile image. From now on it may be helpful to think of your profile image as a banner ad. Using it to promote events, special offers, etc. are all great ways to effectively use this valuable space. As you design your new profile picture keep Facebook’s cropping specs in mind from the get go and make sure part of your image - preferably your logo - can be fully represented in the cropping scheme. As you can see below all of the thumbnails from our examples are now fully recognizable and carry a strong brand presence. Applying these ideas to your profile picture will allow you to have an advantage visually on crowded news feeds, walls and other important areas of Facebook.

 

Custom thumbnail cropping

If you’d like some help getting your Facebook profile picture freshened up or would like some advice on other ways to improve you social media efforts feel free to contact us we’d love to help!

 

UPDATE!

Facebook recently changed the maximum dimensions that are allowed for profile images. At the time of writing these dimensions where 200px wide by 600px high, however the new numbers are slightly smaller: 180px wide by 540px high. Please take these new dimensions into consideration when you design your profile image. Also keep in mind that from now on Facebook does not allow images that are more than three times as tall as they are wide. I hope that makes sense to everyone. Also a special thanks to Kathy Burckhardt for making these discoveries and sharing them in the comments below.

New Episode of ClickBank’s Affiliate Marketing Today Show:

Secrets from a ClickBank Super Affiliate

Author: Beau Blackwell, ClickBank |  July 2nd, 2010

The second episode of the Affiliate Marketing Today show, hosted by Beau Blackwell and Dush Ramachandran of ClickBank, is now available.

In this episode, we interview Kyle Wakefield, long-time ClickBank super affiliate and creator of The A to Z Guide, and get some great tips from him on how to be successful as an affiliate. He shares some powerful and unconventional wisdom that you don’t usually hear from affiliate marketers.

Check out the episode now!

New Affiliate Marketing Today Podcast:

The Power of Video Sales Letters

Author: Beau Blackwell, ClickBank | July 22nd, 2011

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru
We’ve got a great episode of Affiliate Marketing Today for you this week, with our special guest Chris Haddad, who is a master copywriter and has become extremely successful by creating powerful video sales letters that drive huge conversions! In this interview, he shares his secrets for creating video sales letters that get a massive response and keep viewers hooked in all the way until the end. Many copywriters don’t use his formula and end up losing out on a lot of sales. You can apply his techniques and advice to your sites and sales letters, whether you’re a vendor or an affiliate, and no matter what niche you operate in! You don’t want to miss this one.
Warning: Some of Chris’ product names mentioned in the show are a bit risqué!

Click here to listen now!

To become an affiliate for Chris’ hugely popular Text the Romance Back product, visit his Affiliates page now.

New Affiliate Marketing Today Podcast: The Power of Video Sales Letters

Seven Easy Ways To Instantly Power Up Your Copy

Author: Molly Lane, ClickBank | July 19th, 2011

Written By: Tina Lorenz, Guest Author

As a direct response copywriter, marketing strategist, and mentor, I find a lot of marketers get frustrated and intimidated when they begin writing copy for their business. Maybe you feel that way sometimes too.

The good news is–even if you are brand new to marketing, there are simple steps you can take to instantly improve the power and effectiveness of your copy.

So let’s get to it…

#1: Create Compelling Headlines The Easy Way

Your headline has to blend benefits and curiosity. And it has to pack a punch, because you only have 7-8 seconds to grab your prospect’s attention.

The whole purpose of your headline is actually quite simple—it’s to get you to read the next line. So before you run screaming into the night over headlines, remember all you really need to do is entice your prospect to read the next line.

For example, if you wanted to write a headline brimming with both benefit and curiosity for an acne product, you might start with “7 Ways To Rid Yourself Of Acne In Time For The Prom.” Or if your product worked super fast and this were true, you could say “How To Clear Up Your Acne In 7-Days Or Less.”

If that were an accurate depiction of your product, and you were a prospect with acne, a headline like this would certainly grab your attention and pull you into the copy.

Of course the headline needs to be relevant to the truth of your product. You don’t just make things up to create a headline. So how do you get started?

There is something in copywriting we call “swiping” and it’s not unethical in any way if you do it correctly. It’s not plagiarizing—it’s borrowing concepts that are proven to work as headlines, and adjusting them to make them your own.

For example, the acne headline above could be changed to “How To Lose 5 Pounds In 7-Days Or Less”—you’re taking the basic premise of a compelling headline and “tweaking” it to fit your product.

You might be wondering where you find proven headlines you can use as inspiration—and there’s a very rich resource at your fingertips: Magazines.

Every time you are standing in line at the grocery store, you are surrounded with proven and tested headlines on all the major magazines. While you might be embarrassed to be seen buying it, The National Enquirer has some of the best headline writers around. Other fantastic resources are Oprah, Prevention, Men’s Health—the list goes on and on. A fast way to have a treasure chest of headline ideas is simply to go to magazines.com and start rummaging around.

Bookstores like Barnes & Noble are another valuable resource, as are book titles and chapter titles at Amazon.com. Just dial up the volume on your marketing brain, and keep your eyes open. There are ideas all around you for compelling headlines.

#2: Reduce Hype & Increase Credibility By Slashing Exclamation Points!

I challenge you to go through your copy today and do this one thing: Remove most of the exclamation points.

People often think, “OK, I’m going to make a lot of energy in this! I’m very excited! I’m going to talk like this all the way through my sales material to make my point! And the way I’m going to do it is I’m going to put lots and lots and lots of exclamation points!!!”

Seriously, do you actually talk this way? No, not really.

So be ruthless about taking them out—slash and burn your way through your copy. Don’t worry that you’re going to take the energy away. Too many exclamation points ramp up the hype and hard sell, which ultimately increases skepticism in the mind of your prospect.

Save these tiny emphasis points for when they really count—for those times when you have an especially important or energized statement you want to emphasize.

Even if it feels weird to do it, go through your materials, take them out, and reread your copy. I promise you will soon see and feel the amazing difference of this one simple strategy.

#3: Avoid Dangerous Questions

Another often overused “small but mighty” element of punctuation is the innocent looking question mark. It is very common for people who are just starting out to ask a lot of questions in their copy as their “conversational” element. They mistakenly think they are getting right into the mind of their prospect.

But what you end up with is something like this…

“Do you feel like this? Has this ever happened? Are you spiritual enough? Do you want this one or do you want that one? Do you want more money? Do you want less anxiety? Do you want me to quit asking you questions?

It is question after question after question. And quite frankly, it’s irritating.

There are several reasons not to ask numerous questions unless you are extremely skillful in writing copy, and you know your target audience like the back of your hand.

For one thing you cannot afford the wrong answer. If you’re saying “Do you ever feel like this?” And they say “NO!” you’re all done right there. If you needed “Yes” and they said “No”—they are already gone.

It can also feel like you’re the guest of honor at a painful inquisition. Your reader starts feeling nervous or anxious—“I have to answer this; I have to answer that; I might get it wrong and I hate being wrong.”

I call them dangerous questions because you can’t afford the wrong answer. So if you already have copy riddled with question marks and you’ve been quizzing people up one side and down the other—here’s the solution. Turn the questions into powerful statements.

For example, instead of saying, “Do you have lots of painful headaches?” You can turn it into a powerful statement like this: “If you are sick and tired of painful headaches, here is the solution.” You turn the question into a powerful statement.

#4: The…Dot…Dot…Dot…

A handy little tool for smoothing out your copy is the ellipsis; the dot-dot-dot can bridge the gap in your copy and keep your reader moving forward.

Unfortunately, the ellipsis is often overused, creating a choppy “stop and go” rhythm to your copy. You don’t want that to happen, because your goal is a smooth flow to the sale.

The correct use of an ellipsis is as a little “cliffhanger” to the next concept in your copy, or as a connector. Used correctly, the ellipsis increases the conversational tone of your copy.

Here are some effective connectors where your ellipsis shines…

In other words…
Let me explain…
Here’s what this is about…
Here’s what to do next…

#5: Talk Your Copy

Talk to one and you talk to all. So act like you’re talking to one person. If you have to put a picture of your Aunt Martha next to your computer because you’re writing about a solution for arthritis and Aunt Martha has painful, swollen knuckles–you talk directly to Aunt Martha.

And when you do that, you talk to all the rest of the Aunt Martha’s out there too. You do not talk to a crowd. When you write “we all,” “they all,” “everybody” and “everything” you’re talking to the masses. And there is no personal connection when you do that.

It’s “you and me baby”–I’m talking to you and you’re talking to me. That is exactly how you write it.

Be real. Be authentic. Be transparent.

But if you have trouble getting from Point A to Point B with a conversational tone, here is a very powerful tip for you.

Talk your copy. Speak it, record it, “talk it” to someone else. Pretend you’re going to tell your mom about this fantastic widget you have that gets people on track or motivated or gets rid of their headaches–whatever it might be. Say it exactly like you would chat with a friend or family member about the product. Share why you’re excited about it, and what it is going to do for them.

A lot of times people get very self-conscious in their copy, which kills the conversation. It’s almost like you’re standing over to the side watching yourself write this epic sales letter and feel pressured to make it very meaningful from the get-go.

Forget all that. Just say it straight out, write the darn thing, and don’t self edit. You can always fix it later. Let it go, talk it, write it and then fix it. It’s always easier to tone down your copy and bring the energy level down if you’re too hypey, have too many exclamation points or “shouting”. It’s a whole lot harder to try and breathe life into dull copy. So just go for the gusto and then fix it later.

#6: Tell Em’ What To Do & How To Do it—Nicely Of Course

Always remember you need to spell out what you want your prospect to do. This is your “call to action”. Quite simply, it is called “direct response marketing” because we want them to respond with a specific action.

Keep in mind this is not an exercise in creative writing. You are SELLING. You want them to DO something.

But keep things simple—both for you and your prospect. Too many choices clutter people’s minds. And confused minds do not buy.

So don’t say “We have it in pink, purple, yellow, white, and green—and we have platinum, silver, gold, bronze levels, and then there’s the freebie…and you can pay in one payment, 3 payments, 6 payments, or on lay-away!”

It’s too many things for them to think about, and people don’t like to make the wrong decision. So if they are confused, they simply won’t make any decision at all.

Be very concise about what you have for them and give them a clear path to the sale or action. If you have more than one option to choose from, number them—list them sequentially. This isn’t the time to get creative or leave anything to doubt. This is all about an organized offer, laid out as literally as 1-2-3.

Use formatting to set your offer components apart. For example, you can use bold font for each number, bullet points, and spacing between elements.

You want a smooth flow to the sale or lead generation. Whatever your goal is, you want to clear away any obstacles and make it very easy for your prospect to successfully take action.

#7: Find Your Voice–Read All Your Copy Out Loud

I do this for every single element of copy I write. And you should too.

Here’s why. If you cannot successfully read your own copy aloud without stumbling over the words, feeling confused about what you just said, or even falling asleep at the wheel—something is wrong with your copy.

As you read it to yourself, or even better to a willing participant, you will definitely find the rough spots, points of confusion, and even typos. Keep a pen in hand as you go, mark the copy as you find the problem areas, and keep going. Then go back and smooth things out.

I even print out everything I write (yes, I recycle!), literally holding the pages in hand to read aloud. Keep in mind your prospect may do this too—and you want to see what THEY see.

Not only will you find the weak spots in your copy—you will also have a complete visual of how the copy flows. If there is too much dense copy on a page, you can break it up with bullet points, subheads, and more “white space” making it easier to read and comprehend.

Creating compelling copy is an art, and there is so much more we could discuss.
But even with these seven simple strategies, you can instantly power up your copy and effectiveness. If you already outsource your copy, this will also help you gain more clarity about the necessary foundation you want for all of your marketing.


About the Author:

Tina Lorenz is called the “Queen of Copy” and “Millionaire Maker” because of her multi-million dollar online launches. Watch her free marketing videos at www.authentic-copy.com

Seven Easy Ways To Instantly Power Up Your Copy

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