Inbound Industry Report: August 6, 2012

Top marketing news, articles and tips from the first week of August 2012.

Brand & Search

As humans, we have an inclination to choose

 things, go to places and be around people we know. In other words, we’re biased toward familiarity and trust.

Rand Fishkin (@randfish) shares some interesting stats on how this tendency carries over in the business world, showing the relation between brand and search, and why the two cannot be separated. Here are a few takeaways for marketers to remember:

1. Build a brand name people trust; brand preference will impact both SEO and PPC.
2. Unbranded or misbranded domains may result in a loss of traffic from branding activities.
3. Links and social shares may impact click-through-rates, further impacting search engine positioning.

Content

One way to build your brand recognition is with memorable content. Ali Luke (@aliventures) offers some clever writing tricks to supercharge your blog posts, including:

• “You” and “I”—Create a personal connection.
• Contractions —Write how you speak.
• Imperatives and Examples—Tell and show readers how to do something.
• Repetition and Patterns—Make messages stick with similar groupings.
• Numbers—Engage your audience and strengthen claims.

Agency-Client Relationships

When you hire a PR agency, you expect results. It’s important, however, to understand that success is a two-way street, requiring effort from both teams along the way. Rachel Thexton (@dunnpr) has encountered failed business-agency collaboration, and explains what you can do to ensure your PR spend is worth it:

• Communication—Whether it’s community involvement, business activities or blogger relations, provide your PR team with additional information about your company.
• Strategy—Involve your agency in crafting marketing and communications plans. They may have insight to offer that other teams don’t.
• News—Rely on your consultant’s expertise to push out authentic and interesting stories. With the right details, he or she can pitch a great story.

Google Headlines Galore

• Gmail users will now be able to use the Hangout feature within the mail interface, replacing video chats.
• Google acquired marketing software developer Wildfire for $350 million in hopes of creating a better platform for managing all aspects of digital media marketing.
• The recent “Cookiegate” privacy episode is anything but sweet for Google, resulting in a hefty $22.5 million fine for bypassing mobile Safari’s default “no third-party cookies” settings.

Company News

• If you’re a Dropbox user and haven’t changed your password yet, do so now. The cloud file storage service admitted “a small number of Dropbox accounts” were compromised by hackers.
• After a six-week hiatus, Digg fans welcomed a new version of the social-news website. Aside from an updated design, human editors now choose stories, with added weight from number of Facebook and Twitter shares. (Check it out.)
• LinkedIn proved its social staying power, releasing its Q2 revenue total of $228.2 million, up 89% from last year.
• Yelp is also posting record Q2 numbers, logging $32.7 million in revenue and 78 million unique monthly users.
• Software company Eloqua rose as much as 6.4% in its trading debut after raising $92 million in its IPO, pricing shares at $11.50.

Studies & Stats

• According to a report by Forrester Research, 30% of online buyers said they first used Amazon to research their most recent online purchase, versus only 13% who used Google.
• “Millennials”—or those of Gen Y—are making waves with fierce brand loyalty by bringing back “word of mouth” marketing via social. 84% of millennials said social opinions influence their purchase decisions, whether strangers or friends.
• To prove their social status, the millennial group is also topping the Twitter usage charts, with 31% of internet users aged 18-24, and 17% of internet users aged 25-34, active on the network.
• Facebook acknowledged that 83 million accounts on the social network are fake, including duplicate, user-misclassified and spam accounts, putting its total active user base around 872 million.

What articles made your top list last week? We'd like to hear your opinions.

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