Leadpile’s Blog

This is a topic very near and dear to the Leadpile families’ heart.  Starbucks.  We as a company could probably support a single Starbucks on our own.  Combine the rich coffee blend with the free Wi-Fi they started providing in July, we could setup offices there.

Starbucks also recently announced the launch of its digital network later this fall.  The new, in-store digital network will offer localize content, entertainment and news.  A splash page will be presented to customers when they log on to the internet in Starbucks stores that they can choose to explore or navigate away to continue to their desired destination.

The popular Zagat review will lookup local restaurants, runners, bikers and hikers can plan routes through Rodale using geo-targeted maps and Patch will offer local neighborhood events.

Revenue sharing opportunities will be available to marketing partners for customers that purchase downloads or subscribe to partner services.

You would have to be in a hole if you did not hear the catastrophic disaster going on in the Gulf of Mexico. Two months ago an oil rig had an explosion that has since caused the worst oil spill ever! The company in the middle of this disaster is BP Global. BP is the third largest energy company, however it seems that this disaster has not prompted BP to turn to one of the biggest potential allies it could have: social networking sites. Why is that? With the number of people these social networking sites can reach, why would you not incorporate some sort of PR campaign through the internet?

Unfortunately, what seems to have happened is those on sites such as Twitter and Facebook have created BP bashing posts that have ultimately hurt BP even more that what this disaster has caused them financially. The question is should companies that are going through large “reputation killers” look to social media as a way to help their image? It seems that the public does think so because many appear to be upset that this company has not even made an effort to recover their image.
BP… might want to look to Facebook to help you put a happy “face” back on our nation’s
faces!

You better stay on your toes when it comes to keeping up with social media and it’s newest players.
This could be great for restaurants, stores, local hangouts and bars if this sort of next generation social media emerges successfully. Businessweek.com broke it down on what this new social media “service” is all about. “Foursquare, a 20-person company that operates out of a crowded loft in New York’s East Village, adds a game-like twist. Its 1 million-plus users earn badges by “checking in” at certain bars, restaurants, and other venues by pressing a button on the app upon arrival. A user can earn a “mayor” icon from a bar if he or she has checked in more than anyone else during the previous 60 days. The business model is simple: Generate as big a user base as possible and sell national brands and local merchants on the possibilities of marketing to people as they congregate—ready to eat, shop, or spend.”
The next thing we know we will have sales people cold calling to these establishments trying to get as many businesses on their “route” for people to go to. This is a great idea and I don’t think I have heard of anything else like it. Negatives to it? If you are someone that does not like people to track your every move…. IE things such as Twitter (as some call legalized stalking), this might not be the thing for you.
Pat on the back to those over at Foursquare for coming up with something truly innovative, and we will see what the next BIG THING will be in this wonderful internet world!

We are always keeping up on the social media industry, but the one thing that has stood out is how can you really make money with it? Interesting study out by social media management company Virtue, each Facebook fan is valued at $3.60. Those that are looking at utilizing social media need to be conscious of what the true value is of having these fans, and is it really worth the marketing effort to build your fans?

Here’s some interesting Facebook math:

So what this means is that the value of Facebook to companies can be enormous if built up correctly. Instead of thinking how many fans can I have on Facebook as just a competition thing, now maybe companies should start looking at the number of fans they have really equals revenue in their pockets.

Twitter has exploded over the past few years, empowering news to travel at nearly lightening speed.  Over 50 million people post on Twitter per day right now!  But this big question has always been, what are their plans for a business model?  Well, the latest news is that companies will now be able to advertise on Twitter.  This plan for advertising will start with 10 companies including Starbucks, Virgin America and Best Buy.

The advertising program will be called Promoted Tweets.  The ad-matching and pricing formula for this advertising has not been announced yet, but preliminary discussions indicate a CPM pricing model.  As they continue, Twitter will likely seek other alternative ways to charge advertisers.

In the new Promoted Tweets program, when a company pays for a tweet, the promoted message will appear at the top of the results, regardless of the time it was written.  Promoted Tweets will also appear in the organic Twitter stream rather than on the side like other social networks promote.  Additionally, they will also be highlighted so that companies have the capability to respond if conversations turn negative.  It is still unclear how these promoted posts should appear, but it may be based on topics, geographic locations or shared interests.

Much more to come on the Twitter Promoted Tweets program, but affiliate marketers all over are likely “tweeting” about how to capture this audience even more with this new program!

Leadpile is very much familiar with email marketing and works with a lot of publishers that are generating traffic through this source of marketing. Because it has become so popular with companies trying to monetize data, and publishers trying to have a less expensive way to generate traffic, reading up on any new email marketing trends is important. DMNews brought up some key points about email marketing:
1. Permission and privacy: Various states are making rulings on cases that involve consumer’s information, so keeping up with not only CAN-SPAM but other legislation involving consumers privacy, is key to keeping your nose clean with the law.

2. Video in email: The next biggest thing is utilizing video in emails. If you are not someone that is utilizing this yet, you better start reading up now.

3. Partnership of email marketing and social media: Incorporating links to social media in emails is something that marketers picked up on last year, however the future of these two is going to be big. Perfecting the use of social media in email is something that all emailers will have to learn more about, because this is going to be something that is going to continue to emerge and you will need to learn to keep up with it.

“Nineteen percent of online marketing budgets are now allocated to e-mail, according MarketingSherpa, and 54% of marketers plan to increase their e-mail budgets this year, based on research from Econsultancy and ExactTarget.” If you are not a company that is looking at increasing your email marketing budget, trends show you might want to reconsider this!

No really? The social networking site Facebook has hit it BIG because it passed Google in the number of visitors coming to their site. Information Week stated, “For the week ending March 13, Facebook accounted for 7.07% of all U.S. Internet visits, while Google accounted for 7.03%, according to Hitwise. It was the first time Facebook had held the No. 1 spot for a week.” This is great news for Facebook, because this sort of ranking could potentially help them out financially. So, who will benefit besides Facebook themselves on this sort of increased ranking?
In the lead generation space I wish there was maybe some additional opportunity for this mega social networking site to be able to truly produce some great lead generation results. I have yet so see a publisher we work with at Leadpile that is effectively using Facebook to generate leads. What needs to happen in order for Affiliate Marketing to truly be able to capitalize on this site, or are there publishers that are showing success with monetizing Facebook traffic? I would like to speak with them if it is happening!
Great job Facebook… keep doing what you are doing, because it’s working!

Being in the internet marketing industry, it is pretty common knowledge that there are huge benefits to utilizing the social networking site LinkedIn. However, have you ever thought of LinkedIn as a source for traffic to your site? Webpronews, referenced some good points about the business social networking site, and it’s huge advantages. “You need to take into consideration that LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site (even NYTimes.com and BusinessWeek.com readers).” “That being said, these are business decision makers you are targeting with your traffic from LinkedIn. The network is for real, and it will only continue to grow in time as there are currently 60 million professionals.”

The steps you should follow in order to truly maximize the capabilities of the LinkedIn site:
1. Complete your profile.
2. Increase you connections.
3. Customize your website links.
4. Answer questions.
5. Update your status.
6. Join niche groups.
7. Post comments in groups.
8. Add RSS feeds to groups.
9. Create a group.
10. Add the blog application to your profile.
I find this information very helpful and am going to look at following these steps with my LinkedIn profile, but also with the Leadpile profile. In the age of competitive traffic, finding a “free” way to get more traffic to your site is very very important. LinkedIn seems to be able to help with that if we all use it to it’s fullest potential.

Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks and express gratitude. The LeadPile team would like to express our appreciation for your business! In combination of saying thank you, we thought we would share some helpful ideas on increasing your sales during this holiday season:

- Send Thanksgiving cards to your customers, everyone likes to hear thank you!
- Send out an email blast to your clients offering discounted services. This keeps your name in front of your customers and potentially brings them back for more services.
- Get involved with your community and do local sponsorships, to get your name in front of more people. Now is the time to share and people appreciate companies that help the community.
- Look at utilizing social networking as a source for advertising and building relationships, because families and friends stay well connected over the holidays.
- Emphasize family in your communications with your customers.

These are all ideas that might help you jump start your sales during this holiday season.

LeadPile wishes you a warm and happy holiday.

95 percent of college students between the age of 18-24 use some form of social networking. That is defiantly not a surprising statistic. What is more surprising is that the students who are involved in using social networking tools, which includes texting and instant messaging, are more apt to learn. This is because many of the students are using the different social networking tools to network with their teachers/classmates for academic help. It makes for a quick and easy way to get the answers or information that a student needs. This could help increase the performance of the students because they have all their resources right at their fingertips.
I know when I was in college a few years ago, I found texting and social networking tools such as Facebook, to be a huge help. Not only with talking to my teachers on chat, but talking to other students as well. It was a great way to get informed on a class that I may have missed, so that I did not fall behind. It was also extremely helpful for online classes because you can get into chats and discuss as a group what is going on in the class and hear different perceptions on a single topic.
Online classes and community college is also a great way to advance yourself. Everyday LeadPile matches people who are interested in advancing their degree with the right college program. By taking online classes and using some forms of social media, being involved in your studies may be much more beneficial than you may have thought.

We hear so much news about social networking sites and all the changes that are going on with them. However, I would have thought that reports would show internet users tend to use social networking sites more than content related sites. That does not seem to be the case. DMNews is reporting that users are actually spending almost twice as long on content websites versus the social networking sites. I found that very surprising. According to the reports, “Consumers spent an average of 6 hours, 58 minutes on content sites, while they spent about half of that time on community sites: 3 hours, 1 minute.
Consumers spent an average of 2 hours, 40 minutes a month on e-commerce sites; communications — e-mail and instant messaging — sites commanded 4 hours, 54 minutes; and search took up 57 minutes. Compared with 2008, time with content rose slightly, while communications, community and commerce slipped a small amount, and search jumped by a few minutes.
In terms of share of online time per category, people sent 42% of their time on content sites, down 2% compared with 2008. They spent 13% of their time on e-commerce sites, down 19% vs. 2008; and 13% of their time on community sites, up 63% compared with last year. Time spent on searches remained flat at 5%.””
So actually when looking at the numbers the community sites/social networking sites had increased which now really makes sense. In future years, this report I am guessing will continue to show a rise in the social networking sites year after year. I would also have guessed that e-commerce sites would have been higher because a lot of people purchase products online. Maybe because of the status of our nation’s economy has made an impact on the figures for that category? Either way, this is pretty interesting information for all of us that are looking to know where consumers are.

Believe it or not there is a network out there promising if you pay, they can increase your Facebook friends. Does more friends really = something worth paying money for? With today’s use of social networking, I might have to say yes. According to Adage.com, as we all know Twitter and Facebook are effective marketing tools, so maybe the idea of companies really getting into this and helping others build their “friends” list, could be an effective idea. If “friends” = more money then this is certainly something I could see other marketing companies looking into doing. Nothing is free and who has time to try and generate 5000 new friends like this company says they can help you do? Great idea.. hope it works out for this company! At the present time, Leadpile will continue to build our “friends” list and Twitter “followers” little by little.