We are excited to welcome our newest member to the Inside Social team, Bryan Short. Bryan is a crazy talented software engineer, joining us from Microsoft. In Redmond Bryan worked on cool projects such as Office, XBox Live and Casual Games. He is a UCLA grad and has the bball chops and knowledge to prove it - John Wooden would be proud. Welcome to the squad Bryan!
The Inside Social team just got stronger with the addition of our newest team member, Asmi Joshi. Asmi is our UX intern and is a current Masters student at the University of Washington in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Program. You can find her on linkedin http://lnkd.in/9DDr-
Welcome Asmi!
Exciting news from the team at Pinterest this week. They are introducing Pinterest Web Analytics. Data for pins and re-pins is not a new concept and there are companies focused solely on this, but Pinterest releasing this simple analytics product is an important marker in the evolving world of social business. There is real value being created and this is a nice first step by the pinterest team to put some hard numbers around this value.
However, I am sure you analytical thinkers, data junkies and revenue maximizing wizards are feeling a little unsatisfied, because the truth is, this platform doesn’t really answer the hard core questions you are asking. The metrics of pins, repins, pinners, clicks etc., are important for brand building, and allow you to do some quantitative analysis, however, you are still forced to infer the value being created, specifically dollars coming in the door.
Pinterest is a great product and company and they know in order to create a big business (ie. make money) the analytics platform will be a necessity for advertisers. This is a case of learning from those who came before you; facebook, twitter and other networks released analytics offerings far too late in their existence, allowing upstarts to capture that value. I believe the platform starting with the basics is a strategic move by Pinterest and a good one; I am confident it will evolve into a much more sophisticated tool. In the meantime, those of you who can’t wait should check out Pinfluencer, and keep your eye on this blog. We are striving to make the business of social more data-driven, and it is fantastic to see Pinterest taking the all important first step of acknowledging this need.
It occurred to us today that we don’t have a picture of our team. Well with Roxy in the office, we decided it was the right time to get a snap of the founders. We are hiring, so if you want to join these charming fellows, give us a ring [email protected]
According to AdAge, Youtube is going to be introducing paid channel subscriptions ranging from $1-5 per month. This unsurprising development highlights the increasing trend in paid content. Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish is another timely example.
The truth is, however, that the default expectation for quite some time will still be free content. Even as paid content proliferates across the web and with increasing velocity (which we believe it will) publishers will still be battling for a finite pool of consumer capital. Think about it, if all of the content you now consume suddenly costs $1 per month per site, how much would you actually pay for and which sites would get your money? The number will be different for everyone, but it is easy to see that the upper bounds will be reached pretty quickly and the websites with the most perceived value will get the cash. Therefore, most websites, if they want to keep their traffic numbers up, will continue to offer free content for most of, if not all parts of their websites.
In order to survive in this world where some can charge and some cannot, publishers are going to need to get smarter and smarter to stay alive. With a lack of innovative new business models, most publishers will have to work within existing monetization frameworks. Ben Elowitz got it right when he suggests a focus should be on audience development, but that is just part of the equation. A larger and better audience is important, but not sufficient. Time on site, repeat visits, etc. all matter a great deal. Up until now strategies for optimizing these metrics have more or less been “one size fits all”, given aggregated analytics data. However, to truly squeeze out all the potential value (as will be necessary) we need to dig deeper. No longer is optimization for 75% of your audience sufficient. The goal should be understanding every individual visitor and optimizing the experience FOR THEM and not for the group they are most statistically likely to fit in.
Despite the growing trend in paid content, most sites will be unable to charge and therefore will have to extract as much value as possible from current monetization strategies. In order to do so, the thinking must evolve beyond audience averages.
Thanks to our friends over at Geekwire, we found this amazing story about the Akron men’s basketball team wearing the team twitter handle on their uniform. The NCAA denied the request to wear the @ZipsMBB on the back of the jerseys, so the team will wear it on their warmups.
Maybe if it is newsworthy it is not so ridiculous? Will monitor the follower count to see what happens. If you are an Akron bball fan, you can follow them here.
The announcement last week of Facebook’s Graph Search has ignited the media and blogosphere. As expected the opinions range dramatically from people calling it guaranteed to spark a search revolution to doomed from the outset to somewhere in between. We even talked about the implications on this blog.
I am not going to weigh in here on the debate, but rather comment on something quite obvious: simply that having the right ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ is important, but can seem daunting to acquire. As suggested here the value of a follower is really defined by its authenticity… so the important question is: How do I get authentic social media followers??
Simple answer: start by asking!
I am in no way belittling the many creative and important strategies to gather likes and followers, but the starting point should be very simple. Ask your users/visitors/peeps if they want to connect with you socially. Hey, maybe they do right now! And if they don’t it doesn’t mean you have lost your one opportunity. Of course there are many ways to optimize this ‘ask’ to maximize results and minimize friction, and at Inside Social we are working to deliver these optimal experiences. However, all good strategies should start from the beginning, so keep it simple and ask if people want to connect… you might be surprised by its effectiveness!
We’ve seen some amazing results thus far and we would love to help you reach your social media goals and it all starts by connecting with the right people.
Drop us a line at [email protected].
Hey Folks,
We will be playfully highlighting #awesomelyriduclous attempts to get people to like or follow brands, products, businesses etc. These will include only things we love and are definitely worth liking, but would NEVER be effective in converting someone into a social follower. If you find any examples please shoot them our way to [email protected]. We would love to see them!
Courtesy of our favorite local beer stop, Thomas Market and Deli . This place has one of the best beer selections around despite being pretty tiny. Check em out!
If you are interested in participating in the Inside Social beta, feel free to shoot us an email or sign up at www.insidesoci.al.
Hi!
You have probably already figured this out, but we are Inside Social. We help brands and digital publishers grow the quantity and quality of their social followings by better leveraging their content. We do this with a product we like to call a ‘Social Gateway’. We have been building and testing it for a few months now and we are thrilled with the results. However we are just getting started.
If you or someone you know is interested in growing their social following, we would love to chat and get you an invite to our private beta. Just shoot us an email at [email protected] and tell us a little about yourself or you can drop your email at www.insidesoci.al and we’ll get in touch with you.
We are really excited to share this product with the world soon and we would love to give you a first look. Check back at this blog for product updates, thoughts on finding the right social followers, and some cool tech stuff too.
You have a great smile.
-Alan, Brewster and Joey