Marketing Pilgrim Published: "LinkedIn's Valuation Going Up, Up, Up, Up, Up!" plus 5 more

Link to Marketing Pilgrim - Internet News & Opinion

LinkedIn's Valuation Going Up, Up, Up, Up, Up!
13 Quotes of Note From SMX London
Local Search Ad Revenues Looking Up
Magazine Apps Have Readers Opting In and Coming Back
8 Out of 10 Women Believe in Supporting a Cause
What Does Social Media Really Do? [Chartoon]

LinkedIn's Valuation Going Up, Up, Up, Up, Up!

Posted: 19 May 2011 07:50 AM PDT

OK, before you read on do yourself a favor and sing this post's headline to The Rolling Stones "Shattered" where Mick says "Don't you know the crime rate's going up, up, up, up, up!". It's fun, honest.

But back to the news. LinkedIn's first day of trading is off to a killer start. TechCrunch reports

This is a big day for professional social network LinkedIn, which was founded in 2003. After filing its S-1 with the SEC in January, the company has begin trading its shares, under the symbol LNKD, on the New York Stock Exchange this morning. As we learned yesterday, LinkedIn priced its IPO at $45 per share, giving the company a valuation of $4.5 billion. Today, the company began trading at $83.00 per share, a 84 percent increase from $45 per share. That's a $7.8 billion market cap. It's now up to $90 per share, but is fluctuating.

Sure it's early and there is no telling where this will ultimately settle in at but to have this kind of interest in what many see as the sleeper of social networks is encouraging for the space as a whole.

Let's face it, if the money is there then something's happening that is beyond all the expert, guru, ninja silliness that is the day-to-day of social media in many cases. Real business is occurring.

This is a great chart from SAI that shows where LinkedIn makes it's money and why people are encouraged to throw investment dollars at them.

As for LinkedIn themselves? Gotta figure they are pretty excited. Check out this picture below. That's the one that gets hung in the LinkedIn lobby.

So the boring old LinkedIn that has been doing it the old fashioned way since 2003 is seeing the payoff all the way here in 2011. I say good for them and I hope they continue to provide something of value that stays away from the online grey areas and just provides a useful service.

With publicity like it will receive today and some new cash there is no telling where they will end up.

13 Quotes of Note From SMX London

Posted: 19 May 2011 06:54 AM PDT

SMX hit London this week and Marketing Pilgrim writer Gareth Davies was on hand to capture 13 of the most notable quotes by this year's speakers. So here they are.

1. Why does page speed matter?

"Because Google has announced – let's make the web faster"

Richard Baxter – Seo Gadget

2. Twitter advertising

"Promoted Tweets with no targeting cost…$80,000 a day!"

Martin Macdonald – OMD Group

3. Bing

"Bing sucks at broad matching. Don't expect Bing to recognise broadly matched synonyms like Google"

Daniel Ruby – Chitika

4. FaceBook

"Facebook exists to keep people on Facebook…they only give lip service to Bing"

Daniel Ruby – Chitika

5. Bing/ Yahoo traffic

"Google UK traffic is dwarfing Yahoo and Bing on some of our sites"

Gil Reich – Answers.com

6. Targeting keywords

"The long tail of search is 94% of searches. If you only focus on the head of the search tail you are potentially missing out on most of the traffic"

Kevin Gibbons – SEOptimise

7. Twitter traffic

"Digg traffic used to top out at around 20-30k visitors in day. Twitter can be a much bigger referer and refer up to 70-80k visitors in a day"

Patrick Altoft – Branded3

8. Does content have to be remarkable?

"The execution of link bait is very important. Fairly average content that has been well executed can work well"

Pete Wailes – Strategy Internet Marketing

9. Where does Google want to send people?

"Google wants to convert people before they land on a business's actual website. Google Product search is being localized and you can now even make hotel bookings direct off some of the Google Places pages"

David Mihm – GetListed.org

10. The Google algorithm

"Around 300-500 updates are made to the Google algorithm in a year"

Max Thomas – Thunder SEO

11. User engagement

"Matt Cutts mentioned that if you have a lot of URLs that people are not engaging with, then you might want to remove them from your website or no-index them"

Max Thomas – Thunder SEO

12. Best advice for SEO?

"I published this idea about 10 years ago. It is a very effective strategy…I'd call it the best SEO strategy ever, and its very, very simple. DO NOT OPTIMIZE FOR SEARCH ENGINES. Focus on users to stay ahead of the engines, this is the best SEO strategy I can offer you today and tomorrow"

Mikkel deMib Svendsen – deMib

13. Advertising on LinkedIn

"Give until it hurts…do negative calls to action and then close with organic"

Mary Morud – aimClear

Gareth Davies has worked in SEO since 2002 and is director of the SEO agency GSINC Ltd. As well as client work he also consults for the web retailer group SafeBuy and is editor of Ecommerce Monthly newsletter. Follow him on Twitter @GarethGSINC

Local Search Ad Revenues Looking Up

Posted: 18 May 2011 09:15 PM PDT

By now we all get that local anything online is important. That fact is understood very well by the Internet industry because we see it play out first hand in percentage of searches with local intent and the mainstreaming of smartphones that will accelerate this growth.

As with most things, it's important to have some numbers to back up the observational 'gut feel' we get when it comes to trends. BIA/Kelsey has put some numbers to this phenomenon and for the foreseeable future, local search revenues will ride the wave of this growing popularity.

Of course, this is continued good news for Google since they will take the lion's share of that revenue. Rather than gripe about the rich getting richer, though, it is better to think about the commerce that will be facilitated by that advertising on Google. Railing against Google's dominance in the search space is a waste of time and effort.

"Local search ad revenues hit an all-time high last year, driven primarily by better product integration across search engines, especially Google," said Matt Booth, senior vice president and program director of BIA/Kelsey's Interactive Local Media practice. "Revenues will continue to grow as better targeting, increased mobile usage and improving integration drive up local search activity."

As for whether Google will still be as dominant in five years as it is today? I say it will be but maybe you have another view of that.

The BIA/Kelsey report (which is available Kelsey customers only) also showed the rise in local ad spending in all interactive areas. Based on these numbers search will represent about half of that spend so the expectation that social will take away money from search may have merit but it won't end search's influence in the market.

One interesting prognostication coming from the Kelsey report is that by 2015 30% of total searches will have local intent, which is up from the current industry standard quote of 20%.

Is this focus on local something you see happening as well? How does it impact your business or strategy if at all?

Magazine Apps Have Readers Opting In and Coming Back

Posted: 18 May 2011 03:54 PM PDT

A new study by digital publisher YUDU, states that 40% of people who download a reader app register their personal information when given the option. It's a surprisingly high number given all of the public outcry over privacy online and "do not track."

Magazine apps had the highest opt-in rate at 41.48%,with brochure apps coming in just below that at 38.65% and catalog apps at 37.48%. YUDU thinks that the number of people opting-in to the sales apps is surprising in its own right. As a shopper, however, I see it the other way around. I'm happy to give a company my personal data if it's going to help me buy a product I want, but why does a magazine need my address when it's all digital?

The study also shows that the average reading time for iPad magazines has increased by 50% since they began monitoring the situation, which fits in with studies that show that overall iPad usage is growing.

What's even more remarkable is the 64% of magazine app users, return to the app again and they do it an average of 3.7 times. Almost half of those who downloaded digital brochures came back, revisiting the app an average of 1.8 times.

In the "I'm not sure what to make of this" category, the YUDU study shows a large jump in in-app sales in January and then again in February, but after that sales drop off, still up over last year, but not anywhere near February's numbers.

Maybe all those new Christmas iPad owners simply ran out of money by March and had to stop buying things. Your guess is as good as mine on that one.

What you can make of all of this is that digital magazines have a future and that means more places to digitally advertise your goods and services. It also means, that if you can put together your own branded digital magazine, you have a very good chance of getting and keeping an audience.

You can read the full report from YUDU when you click here.

8 Out of 10 Women Believe in Supporting a Cause

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:19 AM PDT

Cause marketing isn't just for non-profits. Almost every high profile company has been involved in some kind of charity effort to the point where it can look more like a play to up profits and less like an honest attempt to do good.

If you're involved in cause marketing, take a look at the results of this study by Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and Georgetown University's Center for Social Impact Communication.

The study is called Dynamics of Cause Engagement and it explores a wide range of areas including, in this case, the differences between the sexes.

More than four in ten Americans (45%) are actively involved with supporting causes, and women make up a significantly larger part of this group than men.

The top causes among both men and women are feeding the hungry and supporting the troops. Women also support breast cancer and youth-related causes while men leaned toward political efforts.

Both sexes will equally give money or discuss the issues with others, but women are more likely to volunteer their time or donate items to charity.

Cause Marketing and Social Media

Two-thirds of women (65%) believe that social networking sites can increase visibility for causes, and six in ten (60%) believe they allow people to support causes more easily.

Women were more likely than men to join a cause on a social network, but it looks like we might be reaching the saturation point.

Nearly half the people surveyed said they get too many cause-related emails and three quarters said that these emails feel like spam.

Nearly half the respondents also said that "liking" a cause of Facebook doesn't mean much because every does it just because they feel like they should.

The upside for cause marketers is that women will reward your efforts by becoming a loyal shopper.

Survey results confirm that American women are significantly more likely than men to show their support of a cause by purchasing products or services from companies who support the cause. In addition, women are more likely to learn about causes through corporate partner or sponsor promotions, including advertisements, product packaging, and in-store displays.

Overall, it's pretty good news. So if women are your target audience, initiate a charitable effort through your business. It will be good for you and for the world.

What Does Social Media Really Do? [Chartoon]

Posted: 18 May 2011 08:56 AM PDT

Some of the fun we have here at Marketing Pilgrim is getting people riled up about something in the Internet marketing universe.

Last month our own Cynthia Boris reported on data that was produced regarding web visits from social media. Of course, since we have all graduated from the "It's Not the Content, It's the Headline That Matters!" school of journalism the post was entitled "Under 1% of Web Visits Come From Social Media". That was simply a statement from the findings but not necessarily our position. Not everyone saw it that way, .

One of those folks was our Inbound Marketing Channel sponsor, HubSpot. They even took the time to get very creative about the mini-storm this headline generated and created this 'chartoon' (that's a chart and a cartoon for you folks squinting right now). Take a look.

We love creating a little controversy and fortunately our industry provides plenty of fodder for that. What's your opinion about social media? Is the traffic useful to your business? How are you measuring the impact on your business? Let us know.