President Obama appears to have more of a grasp on the influence of social media, particularly when it comes to the instantaneous power of how people utilize 140 characters on Twitter. The first night of the campaign was a huge one for the Obama camp as First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a speech that even had political experts in awe. The First Lady posted an incredible 28,000 Tweets per minute, double the rate (14,000) that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney posted last week at the RNC in Tampa, Florida and more than four times the rate of Ann Romney (6000). The hashtags of #michelleobama and #firstlady were both in the top five for trending topics on Tuesday, September 4 and her Twindex score rose to 84.

Night Two showcased President Bill Clinton. When his speech was over CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer commented that the speech may have been the best of President Clinton’s career, an impressive observation considering Bill Clinton is considered by many to be an incredible public speaker. A speech that was heavy on the “arithmetic” and full of a plethora of facts produced a rate of over 22,000 Tweets per minute.

President Barack Obama had a heavy task ahead of him to produce the same type of results and he not only maintained that momentum in terms of social media, he hit a home run. The President set a new record in terms of Tweets of a political nature with an astonishing rate of 52,757 Tweets per minute. The largest Twitter spike (43,646) during his speech came just after he stated that “I’m no longer just the candidate, I’m the President.”

If a Presidential campaign was simply decided on social media statistics Barack Obama would be preparing for a second term in the White House. Time will tell whether the President can use this social media momentum to help carry him to victory in 60 days.

Have a good weekend!

CyberMedia India Online Ltd. – What Mitt Romney needs to learn from Barack Obama
ClickZ – Kate Kaye – Obama and GOP Twitter Buys Inspire Passionate Tweet Trend
Reuters – Jill Serjeant – Michelle Obama wows social media, TV audience steady
Search Engine Land – Matt McGee – Search Activity Makes Michelle Obama The FLOS (First Lady Of Search)
TechCrunch – Drew Olanoff – Barack Obama’s Record-Setting Speech: 52,757 Tweets Per Minute, 9M Total DNC Tweets

The post The Silverback Marketing Round-up for September 3-September 7, 2012 appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

Tuesday, September 4 Zuckerberg delivered some good news to the online world and in particular to investors in the social network. The announcement made that day indicated the face of the social brand would not be liquidating any of his stock for at least a period of twelve months. This is good news for the company and hopefully will create a positive chain reaction on Wall Street.

The news comes nearly three weeks after one of the top early investors in the company Peter Thiel dumped 20 million shares of his stock in Facebook on August 16-17. Coupled with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz selling off many of his shares as well, Facebook investors were becoming nervous about the future of the value of the stock with two prominent investors showing no willingness to weather the early storm and see how things would progress with the value of the stock. Mark Zuckerberg showing a willingness to be patient did cause a bit of positive activity as the stock rose nearly 2% on September 4. However, the growth came after the stock had posted a new low of $17.55.

Considering the original IPO for Facebook stock was $38 trading is still taking place at a price far below the original rate. Zuckerberg has declined comment about the stock and performance of the social medium since the company first went public. Silverback Marketing will continue to monitor this story and see if Facebook can ever completely recover.

The post Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hanging on to his stock appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

• Be sure to explain any link you post or share – A user visiting your profile will not be as likely to click a link that you posted if the link lacks a description. Make the description short but ensure that the reader will have a sound idea about the nature of the link.
• Inspire interaction with your audience – Posting a question on your social media profile or creating a poll for people to respond to is an excellent way to coerce people to interact with you online. Social media profiles that do more than just provide information for people to read create a desire to be engaged with the profile. That engagement leads to posts being commented on, Liked, shared and re-posted. The popularity of your profile will expand the more this occurs. More important, when an individual takes the time to comment on one of your posts, be polite and take the time to respond. People like that type of online acknowledgement and many times those people will make a point of visiting your profile again as a result.
• Make use of good images on your profile – One of the quickest ways to draw attention to your profile is to post pictures that are pleasing to the eyes of users online.

Remember to be conservative in the amount that you post, keep the posts interesting and keep your audience engaged!

The post Social media sharing – find a balance between sharing too much and not enough and make it interesting! appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

Facebook is increasing the number of automated tools it is using to detect bogus Likes on the social medium. The hope is that by updating the security tools being used to find fraudulent use of the Like button Facebook will be able to better identify suspects it believes is engaging in the behavior. An online scam artist will use fraud and malware to generate Likes that never should have occurred on the social brand.

This type of deceptive practice allows a spammer to increase the popularity rate of the Facebook profile he or she is using, meaning that individual could in turn collect a higher affiliate rate from an advertiser that wanted to use that profile. An advertiser obviously wants to capitalize on a Facebook brand page that statistically has a high popularity rate. Fake numbers regarding the number of times the Like button is clicked will deceive those advertisers.

As long as a brand abides by the terms and conditions created by Facebook the likelihood of having the number of Like clicks removed is miniscule. Facebook states that only approximately 1% of Likes would be removed, even with the tougher standards in place. The change should make it easier for a user to find legitimate Pages and Profiles to subscribe to and follow.

The post Facebook expanding tools to remove fake Likes appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

Google often creates Google Doodles to commemorate a special day in history. Many times the day honored with a Doodle is an annual holiday, such as when Google creates a Google Doodle for Christmas. Other times the Doodle honors an individual that has provided a great service to the world, such as the August 15^th Google Doodle honoring the 100^th birthday of Julia Child. Whatever the occasion Google Doodles are meant to be fun and transform the normal Google logo on the Home Page into an interesting piece of artwork.

Google went for ultimate simplicity with the Google logo for Labor Day 2012. Rather than use the Home Page logo as an elaborate new artistic creation to commemorate the holiday, Google chose to keep the regular logo and place an American flag underneath the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons. Here is what the Home Page looks like on September 3, 2012.

Some people may have preferred that Google had done a bit more with the logo for the holiday. This has been a criticism of the search engine in the past, particularly on holidays such as July 4^th. The addition of the American flag does not make this an example of a true Google Doodle, but it is nice to see Google recognizing this as more than just another Monday.

Whether you are working or not today, Silverback Marketing wishes you a happy and safe Labor Day!

The post The Labor Day 2012 Google Doodle appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

Let us take a look at the positive numbers first. Bluefin Labs, a social television analytics organization tracked the social media responses to this year’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. Hurricane Isaac caused the 2012 RNC to be shortened to a three-day affair. Night One of the convention the individual posting the highest volume of social network responses was Chris Christie with 8892 peak comments per minute. Governor Romney’s wife Ann was second with 8223. Night Two Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan had a peak comments per minute total of 9457 with former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice second with a number of 7010.

Night Three of the RNC is going to be the night people may be talking about for years to come regardless of the outcome of this year’s Presidential election. The Republican nominee Mitt Romney naturally posted the highest mark of any of the speakers for the week with a peak comments per minute of 17,548. The number that will intrigue most people is actor and director Clint Eastwood’s number of 16,193. Eastwood may not be running for President but his unscripted address to President Barack Obama captured the attention of Republicans and Democrats. The address was made to an empty chair signifying an absent President Obama.

The social media firestorm was incredible with a new Twitter account of @InvisibleObama almost instantly created to poke fun at the speech. Perhaps even more humorous was the hashtag of #eastwooding and pictures on Twitter of people pointing or scowling at empty chairs. It remains to be seen how long this trend lasts but one thing is certain. The Romney camp may have spent time supporting the antics of Clint Eastwood on Friday, August 31, 2012 but they have to be concerned about the long-term effects the outburst could have on the campaign.

We shall see how social media plays a part in the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Have a great holiday weekend!

AdAge – Simon Dumenco – The Republican Convention: A Post-Game Social TV Scorecard
ClickZ – Kate Kaye – Romney Camp Runs #BelieveInAmerica Promo Trend on Twitter
LA Times – Susan King – Bob Newhart to Clint Eastwood: Call me, I can offer comedy tips
Reuters – Jill Serjeant and Piya Sinha-Roy – Eastwood, empty chair hijack Republican media coverage
Washington Post Business – Hayley Tsukayama – #Eastwooding is the Twitter meme of the day

The post The Silverback Marketing Round-up for August 27-August 31, 2012 appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

A recent blog post from Yelp on July 26, 2012 states that mobile usage of its site stands at 40%, a monumental increase of 13% from the 27% posted back in 2010. Yelp is an online review site for restaurants, a great way for people to find a recommendation for a good restaurant in their area and read reviews from fellow Yelp users. Mobile use of the site makes perfect sense considering how many times users are searching for a restaurant on the spur of the moment.

Webmasters need to more conscious than ever about ensuring their sites are mobile friendly. Desktop searches still exist but for a category such as restaurant searches the percentage of mobile searches will more than likely continue to increase, perhaps even surpassing the number of desktop searches at some point. If you are in the process of creating a new website for your restaurant it may be a good idea to design the site as mobile-first that will also effectively work on a laptop or desktop computer. Also, take the time to ensure your restaurant is listed on websites geared toward phone usage. Google Places, Yelp and OpenTable are vital sites for the success of your business.

The post Mobile search for restaurants continues to increase appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

Most blogs have a spam filter built in that flag potential comment spam and hold the comment in a separate folder until you review the comment for legitimacy. Some bloggers edit their settings and automatically send comment spam to a trash folder so they never have to deal with those comments. A spam comment could be a statement such as “I reviewed your site and am satisfied that you shared this useful bit of information with us.” Other spam comments may offer suggestions on ways to improve the ranking of your site. None of those comments will offer any true value to the ranking of the blog.

The user information such as the comment itself, the user that created the comment and the user’s email address are dumped into a database that tracks comment spam. This information is shared with Google and if the search engine senses multiple spam comments like this, chances are great that the origin of the spam will experience a drop in ranking since Google will devalue the website.

It is beneficial for you as a blog writer to leave comments on other blogs since the comment will link back to your site. However, if you had any plans of spamming multiple blogs with random comments in hopes of gaining a wider audience, that idea needs to be extinguished. Comment spam will only work against you today.

The post Will leaving comment spam on a blog affect you in a negative way? appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

Some of the more common browsers used by people include Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Chitika analyzed these browsers to track which search engines the majority of online users are utilizing for their search activities. Google was used 74.7% of the time on the five browsers mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. Yahoo took 12.3% of the searches while Bing was third with a search percentage of 9.74. The Google domination is not surprising but the study went beyond simple examination of Google search percentage.

The August 28, 2012 blog post from Chitika entitled “Google Usage Rates Vary Across Browsers” provides some interesting information. Although its use is far below the numbers Google posts, Opera has the largest Google use at 95.3%. Chrome is second at 90.5%, Safari third at 85.5% and Firefox fourth with a percentage of 78.5%. The IE percentage is very interesting, a “mere” 53.1%. Since the Internet Explorer Google use is just over 50%, where is the rest of search use going?

Bing has the second highest search engine percentage use on Internet Explorer with a 22.5% usage share. It makes perfect sense the Bing tally is that high since Bing is the default search engine on IE. Yahoo is third with 19.1% of the search share on Internet Explorer. Google still maintains the top spot on IE, but the percentage of 53.1% is intriguing considering that Google posted an overall mark of 74.7%.

The post Which browser possesses the largest search share from search engines other than Google? appeared first on Silverback Marketing.

• Use existing social mediums to sign up – if you already have a Facebook or Twitter profile you can click this link and connect to Pinterest using the existing social network. However, not using one of those social brands does not mean you cannot create a Pinterest profile. The same page has a link to create a profile using your email address if that is the case. Connecting Pinterest with an existing Facebook or Twitter profile can help you expand your presence in a quicker fashion.
• Create fun and exciting boards – When possible you may want to create board names that focus on keywords relevant to your site and the type of category the Pinterest board is going to represent. However, try not to spend too much time or get too hung up on the process. The focus needs to be on creating boards that your audience will enjoy, allowing a greater opportunity to gain more followers of your profile.
• Always use good quality images – Other social networks use images but the pictures are absolutely the key on Pinterest! Therefore, pinning high quality images will make your profile that much more attractive and inspire a greater chance of repeat visitors. More important, good and unique images have a greater chance of being re-Pinned on another Pinterest profile. That could prove to be a gold mine for the advancement of your profile.

Take a few minutes to watch this video created by MDG Advertising that highlights some of the facts about this popular social medium.

The post Pinterest continues to grow and the social medium is easy to use for your business appeared first on Silverback Marketing.