Episode #21 - January 2, 2009 Intro How to interact on Twitter: @karenrubin @mvolpe Remember to subscribe in iTunes - http://itunes.hubspot.tv Thanks for all your support in 2008 - we're up to 200 iTunes subscribers and are getting 10,000 views per month MailbagSomething cool to talk about on HubSpot TV would be best practices for status updates on Facebook and Twitter. There are those of us (myself included) who use the Twitter for Facebook application to keep everything in sync. But this annoys a lot of Facebook users due to the pace that I tweet (which is only 5 times a day that aren't @replies). (from Ellie: Dare I plug my own blog? Feel free to grab the content from here: http://www.elliemirman.com/bid/4257/twitter-facebook-app-why-i-love-it-how-i-could-love-it-more) Joe Mako: question for your next HubSpot TV: what is a safe place to check domain availability, to avoid front-running? I used to use "Suso's domain availability checker" : http://support.suso.org/dns/saferdomainlookup.php but it has since been taken down Headlines Krafts Facebook apps perform very differently http://daveibsen.typepad.com/5_blogs_before_lunch/2008/12/kraft-gives-facebook-users-a-reason-to-interact.html Marketing Takeaway: "Make the application 1) relevant/meaningful to the audience, 2) appropriate for the site and 3) as interactive as possible." Holiday ecommerce sales Flathttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/holiday-e-commerce-sales-fall-flat/ Marketing Takeaway: Ecommerce is now mainstream enough that the economy fluctuations will effect it. Facebook Growing by 600,000 Users Per DayMarketing Takeaway: Facebook is mainstream. Start using it before you get left behind.Facebook fraud in Higher Educationhttp://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/12/18/facebook-pay-attention/Marketing Takeaway: If you are a university and involved in social media, make sure it's clear to your students that you are the real deal. If this scares you, all the more reason to get involved. Google SEO Updates - Page Rank and Search Rankingshttp://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/12/18/facebook-pay-attention/http://searchengineland.com/google-updates-toolbar-pagerank-15982019121.htmlhttp://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019121.html Marketing Takeaway: Page Rank is becoming less and less important over time, so don't worry about it. Monitor your search ranks for important keywords, but don't obsesss about them. The goal is to increase overall traffic from Google via SEO, not to worry about ranking #1 for a particular phrase. Internet Overtakes Newspapers as Top News Source For young people (under 30 like Karen, not like Mike), the Internet is overtaking TV as the top source. http://people-press.org/report/479/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source http://www.briansolis.com/2008/12/newspapers-are-old-news.html Marketing Takeaway: To get into newspapers or on TV you had to pay a lot of money for advertising. On the Internet, you can publish your own blog, pictures, videos and more for very low cost. This is another proof point that inbound marketing is the next phase of marketing. State of the Twittersphere - Q4-2008http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/22/the-state-of-the-twittersphere-hubspot-edition/ http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4439/State-of-the-Twittersphere-Q4-2008-Report.aspx Marketing Takeaway: Twitter is not mainstream yet, and there are a lot of the 5 million estimated users that are not that active. But, it is growing fast and getting started now gives you an advantage later. Forum FodderI read in a post by one of the inbound gurus from Hubspot (cant recall which post) that hubspot has over time "trained Google" to visit Hubspot very frequently looking for fresh content. I am assuming everybody here would love to know how this can be done? Is creating fresh content almost on a daily basis is the only way? Is there anything else you need to do in conjunction with creating new and meaningful content?http://success.hubspot.com/Customer-Discussion-Forum/forumid/97/postid/5345/view/topic http://www.clickandclimb.com Marketing Tip of the Week: Try to find some data you have and compile it into a report that will gain your company media/PR exposure (like the State of the Twittersphere report) Closing