The open-source effort that aims to make the mobile web less frustrating for users is gaining momentum. Developers will now be able to measure results better.

Martin Beck

Facebook’s effort to make the mobile web less frustrating is gaining momentum. Only 3 1/2 months since introducing App Links, its open-source platform for deep linking within mobile apps, Facebook says more than three billion urls have been updated to work in the system.
A month ago that total was said to be one million. The pace is being picked up by what Facebook says is now hundreds of app developers using the system. That means fewer people are experiencing this maddening scenario: tap on, say, a Pinterest link on a smartphone and be taken to a mobile browser page, instead of the appropriate place within the installed Pinterest mobile app.
Facebook product manager Vijay Shankar said too many users give up at that point.
“It’s a frustrating experience any time people click on a link and it takes them to Safari,” Shankar said in news briefing today in San Francisco. “People actually want to take action, they are ready to go do something, the intent is there but the experience is broken.”
App Links aims to fix the problem. And to make it more enticing for developers to adopt the standard, Facebook announced several improvements to the platform today:

• App Links analytics: App Links now includes support for three different analytics tools including Facebook Insights, Parse Analytics and Mixpanel, to measure traffic associated with the integration. Developers can also build their own analytics solutions using the open-source system.
• Improved Windows Phone support: App Links now supports Windows 8 and universal Windows apps.
• Back button Android support: Enabled support for back button on Android devices so developers can better understand returning traffic that comes via App Links.

Also, to better communicate about App Link developments, Facebook has created a blog on the AppLinks.org site, and its first post explains today’s update in detail.

“Ads on mobile have a lot of catching up to do, and this is going to help with that.”

For marketers the benefits of widespread adoption of the standard are clear. Any content that uses App Links will be more accessible to mobile phone users. And that includes advertising, the same plumbing that works for organic content can be used to serve links within ads.
“Ads on mobile have a lot of catching up to do, and this is going to help with that,” Shankar said. “Anyone who relies on ads in the mobile ecosystem in general can take advantage of it.”
E-commerce developers are also interested in tapping the system’s potential, Shankar said, and have inquired about enabling affiliate referral programs. Shankar said that is supported and that Facebook and its AppLinks.org partners are willing to adjust the system.
“We are basically trying to make any use cases that apps want to unlock possible,” he said. “For example if e-commerce apps want to test out the affiliate model, and they want to request a change to the standard to make it work better, we want to do that.”

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

 

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By Matt Laddin

Blogs are like puppies.  Getting one seems like such a great idea.  You get one, and reality takes hold.  You’re left amazed at how much work, time, and attention they take up.  So should you blog?
Certainly, just as every home doesn’t need a dog, every business doesn’t need a blog.  But if you determine that it makes sense to take the plunge and become one with the blogosphere, the benefits can be significant.  Here are five reasons why you should.
Get Found.  
Developing good blog content helps with discoverability.  Search engines are notorious for changing their criteria for SEO.  Good, relevant, and ongoing content is a great bet for coming up high in search engines regardless of all the never-ending tweaking they do.  If you blog using WordPress, pull in an SEO optimizer and it’ll rate each of your posts for discoverability.

5 Reasons to Blog for Business

Your blogging workstation.

Who Are You?
Blogging works wonders at showing the world your business persona.  Your customers want to work with people, and your blog allows them to gain insight into how you think.  Don’t be afraid to show your personality.  Certainly, you’ll keep it professional, but you’ll attract more attention by humanizing your approach.
You’re the Authority. 
You work hard to know your stuff.  Blogs allow you to showcase what you know.  Let your prospects know you are the real deal.
Showcase Your Multi-Dimensional Business.
In most cases, there’s more than a single differentiator for your product or service.  Blogging is a great way to clearly define your most important attributes over and over again in ways that marketing pieces simply don’t allow.
Interruptions Be Gone.  
Want to make enemies fast?  Use “interruption” marketing tactics that annoy your prospects.  That leads to doors closing, and locks being engaged.  Blogging is a form of permission marketing and soft-selling.  Used as one part of an integrated approach, it can have significant value.
So are you going to blog?  Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve.  When you start, make sure you write frequently.  It takes time to get noticed. Good luck, and if you take the plunge, keep on writing!

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By Justin Wilson

If you spend time on social media marketing, it is inevitable that you will encounter a troll – someone who has posted purely to start an argument, upset people or generally post offensive content with the objective of getting a response.
So, with this inevitability, what should you do in order to minimise the impact of trolls?
Get a Measuring Tool: This is the first step. There is nothing in the trolling rules which says that all content should be tagged with your company name so that you can see it (although often trolls do this so that they can get the attention!). There are lots of good monitoring tools out there, but do bear in mind that it is tough to track every mention on every social network – conversations between personal Facebook profiles are effectively closed conversations with privacy issues, but on Twitter (unless the account is protected or the dialogue is over DM), the conversation is in the public domain.
Develop a Triage Process: If you don’t have a clear process which you should follow in the event of trolling of your company, you cannot expect to be able to handle it well. You should develop a process where there is a clear chain of command through which any criticism passes with defined responsibilities and outcomes. This will take a lot of the panic away when something negative happens.
Don’t Feed Them: OK, this is a real cliche, but it does work. It is very easy to reply to a troll with anger and emotion, but remember, this is what the troll is hoping for. Doing this will not only satisfy the troll’s appetite, it will also get seen by other people and this is where conversations can escalate – not only in terms of emotion, but also in terms of audience. There are lots of examples of people not following this, and it does not make pretty reading.
Is it really trolling? Every business will receive criticism – it is an inevitable part of running a business. However, criticism or disagreement does not equal trolling. There are no hard and fast rules here, it is a judgement call, but trolls and critics are two totally different groups. Don’t treat both groups with the same response.
Block as a last resort: If all else fails, then you should block the troll – it is likely that they will move on to another ‘project’ pretty quickly.
You really should prepare your marketing campaigns for trolling – it is almost guaranteed to happen to you, so preparing for it will ensure that their impact, and emotional response, is kept to a minimum – good for your community and you.

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Barry Schwartz

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Bing Maps Adds Hundreds Of Streetside & 3D City Images; Plus New HD Aerial Images
  Bing announced a large maps update today, where they have added hundreds of Streetside images, 3D city images and new high resolution aerial images. Bing Maps now has over a 100 cities that support Streetside imagery available across America. The images are available in these cities: Alameda County, CA Fresno, CA Richmond, VA, Anaheim, CA […]
  
• Live @ SMX East: How To Secure Your Site For Google’s HTTPS Algorithm
  Google wants everyone to secure their websites, to make the browsing experience on the web safer for everyone. Google has even gone so far as to say that sites that implement HTTPS — adding an SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site — will give it a minor ranking boost. What’s not to like about […]
  
• Google’s 2013 Mobile Search Revs Were Roughly $8 Billion
  How much money is Google making in mobile search? There have been various analyst estimates for some time. However now we can do the calculation with greater accuracy. Last week the IAB released an updated report on global mobile advertising revenue. The trade association said that worldwide mobile ad revenues were $19.3 billion, representing 92 […]
  
• 3 Simple Ways Email Can Drive SEO Results
  While emails can’t directly impact search engine rankings, smart marketers can use email campaigns to further their SEO initiatives.
  
• Google AdWords Launches New Bulk Editing Tools
  Google announced on Google+ that they are rolling out a new bulk editing feature within the AdWords console. The new tool enables you to update your settings across your campaigns in a more efficient manner. The features in this tool include: Filter for campaigns targeting a specific location Update multiple campaigns with a new targeted […]
  
• Search & ROI: Make The Most Of This Evolving Relationship
  Paid search has made it easier than ever to demonstrate the value of advertising, allowing us to rethink our methods for measuring ROI.
  
• New AdWords “Conversions For Optimization” Setting Puts Focus On Key Actions
  Google is rolling out a new Conversions for Optimization setting in AdWords over the next couple of weeks that isolates a conversion action for reporting and bid automation. With the Conversions for Optimization setting enabled, you’ll now be able to set bid strategies for specific conversion actions. For example, if you’re tracking catalog downloads and […]
  
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Yahoo paid about the same price for Tumblr, around $1 billion, as Facebook did when it acquired Instagram, and the two had similar numbers of users at the time of acquisition, in the realm of 30 million.
But whereas Instagram growth only accelerated after the sale, passing 200 million earlier this year, Tumblr’s is flattening out, and it will never reach anywhere near that size, according to a new long-term forecast by the research firm eMarketer.
Of course, Instagram-versus-Tumblr is a rather artificial comparison; aside from some surface similarities, they’re not much alike. A photo-sharing service, Instagram is almost exclusively mobile, and just about everything happens inside the app, whereas Tumblr is a multi-faceted publishing platform whose blogs live on the open web as well as within its lesser-used app.
I’ve noted a couple times that traffic to Tumblr sites leveled off after the Yahoo acquisition and hasn’t been growing since, according to the measurement firm comScore. But eMarketer says the number of active users with Tumblr accounts has grown jumping 46.2% last year in the U.S., and it will end 2014 up another 24.8%.

Even with those gains, however, Tumblr will still only have about 17.1 million users in the U.S., or about 40 million worldwide, assuming the geographic distribution of its user base reflects its traffic, which skews 42% domestic, according to the company. (That’s the same calculation I used in estimating that Tumblr had around 30 million active users last year.) And even in 2018, when Tumblr’s growth rate will have fallen to 6%, it will still have fewer than 60 million users worldwide, eMarketer projects.
Does that mean the acquisition was a bust for Yahoo, which has been losing share of the display advertising market to Facebook, Twitter and even Microsoft? Not necessarily, says eMarketer analyst Martin Utreras. Because many Tumblr users have multiple blogs, the number of blogs (currently 200 million) and daily posts (84.2 million) grows at a multiple to the number of users, giving the company a lot of new, mobile ad inventory — if only Yahoo can figure out a way to sell it.

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By Richard Weston

Facebook is determined to finally crack e-commerce and if it proves to be a success, its rivals are determined to cash in too.

In recent years, Facebook has been frustrated with incorporating micro-payments, removing its virtual currency ‘credits’, as well as twice culling its ‘gifts’ offering, and several major brands have closed their Facebook stores too, after claiming that return on investment was poor.
Now the social network is hoping a ‘buy’ button, currently being tested by a few businesses in the US, will enjoy prolonged success. If it does, then Twitter and Snapchat’s recent moves in e-commerce will leave them well-placed to capitalise too.
Twitter appears ready to monetise beyond advertising too, after acquiring payments company CardSpring. It has previously experimented with a ‘buy now’ button and letting its users add items to their Amazon shopping carts by tweeting #AmazonCart. Meanwhile, Snapchat has filed two trademarks hinting at the eventual incorporation of in-app purchases and payments.
In fact, the reasons behind social companies’ latest e-commerce drive become clearer when considering that one of Snapchat’s investors, Tencent, owns Chinese mobile messaging service WeChat. As we discussed on the blog recently, this app has monetised well through in-app purchases and marketplaces – this year, it sold 150,000 smartphones within 10 minutes. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has previously expressed his admiration for WeChat’s business – Facebook and Twitter’s new micropayments strategies suggest that they too share the sentiment.
WeChat’s success suggests that, managed in the right way, Facebook and other social platforms can succeed with e-commerce and enjoy several important benefits. If Facebook takes a small cut of sales, or charges retailers for selling their products on the site, e-commerce could be a way of monetising the social network beyond advertising revenue. It could also provide Facebook with additional data on users’ purchasing habits, enriching its comprehensive understanding of its customer base.
But social or mobile messaging e-commerce is far from a guaranteed win and needs to be handled carefully. Facebook’s previous e-commerce attempts, its so-called ‘f-commerce’ stores, have seen some high-profile failures. Clothes firm Gap and games retailer Gamestop have both opened, then subsequently shut, stores – Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told Bloomberg that selling on the social network is “like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.”
Nevertheless, the potential for success has again been outlined in China – last year Gap was one of the 10 most popular international brands on Tmall, an online marketplace with social channels owned by Alibaba. Thanks in part to Tmall, responsible for half of China’s $300bn business-to-consumer market, Alibaba is expected to go public next month and raise $20bn – surpassing current record-holder Facebook’s $16bn IPO in the process. If the West’s social companies can learn from China, then social e-commerce could finally truly take off.

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