Posted by General Team Login on Fri, Feb 26, 2010 @ 12:08 PM
It seems that there are more Social Media Tools on the market today than there are Starbucks, so it's more important now than ever to save time (and money) to find the tools that excite even most experienced Social Mediaphiles.
That's why ymarketing would like to share some of our favorite (and free!) Social Media Tools for 2010, in no particular order. Some of these tools have been out for some time, while others are brand spanking new. The purpose of this blog is to promote Social Media tools that will make your life easier and more fun, thus the categories will be somewhat random, but their effectiveness will not. Enjoy!
Great all-in-one comprehensive browser for real-time and social web. Tweetdeck allows users to open their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace accounts all in one directory.
Productivity enhancement service for Social Media users. Hootsuite Helps organize, schedule, and deliver content through Facebook and Twitter.
bit.ly is one of the first, and still our favorite, URL shortener for tracking and analytics.
Voice interface technology that let's you instantly acces your Facebook and Twitter accounts simply by speaking into your phone. Vlingo is a great hands free option for mobile tweeting on the go.
Allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so. No dropped balls with CoTweet, no stepping on each other's toes.
flickr creative commons search is a great place to find free photos (under a creative commons license) that you can use in blog posts, presentations, etc.
Great competitive intelligence for twitter is what Topsy gives you. Keep your social media ear to the ground with this excellent tracking tool.
Want to see how popular you are on twitter? Wefollow allows you to view categorical rankings of who's hot on Twitter.
For those of you who are interested in everything social media tools, and want a few suggestions of some great paid tools, here you go:
Flowtown is a super cool tool allows you to take a random person's email address and quickly determine what social networks that person is on, as well as name, age, gender, and occupation. (I believe it costs $15 a month)
Dashboard program for your Social Media account, Swix promote it as Google Analytics for Social Media. We love the scorecard aspect of it. ($10 a month)
Posted by Donald Nosek on Thu, Feb 25, 2010 @ 07:40 PM
American Idol Season 9? February 2010? Sorry, we had to question that ourselves when we looked at the search and social media data following American Idol's Guys Top 12 show. Why?
Show contestant Todrick Hall is running neck and neck with pre-show favorite Andrew (don't call him Andy) Garcia in Google News results. Garcia earned that popularity with a bold, acoustic version of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" during the Hollywood Auditions. But Hall? We didn't see that coming.
That's the beauty of this American Idol Prediction Project, we never know what we'll find in the data. Turns out Adam Lambert tabbed Hall as his "favorite", on a day when the man that beat him out for American Idol Season 8, Kris Allen, headlines the performances on the results show.
Twitter & Blog Data Predict First Guys to Leave Show
If you read our prior post noting the American Idol Top 12 Girls we think are in trouble in tonight's elimination, you'll know that we wanted to use social media and news data early on this year while the search trend data builds. We narrowed down the list of the two girls that will leave tonight to the three most likely, with another two on the fence. With the guys, it's more difficult to discerne which two will leave American Idol this week.
We would assume that any Guy with both good Twitter mentions and news result lift (over baseline, lowest news results by Michael Lynche) would be safe. While any American Idol Top 12 Guy with low numbers on both would be in trouble. But what do you do with the Guys who have mixed data? Please, look at the chart below and tell us what you think. Here's what we see:
Safe: Andrew Garcia, John Park, Tim Urban, Alex Lambert, Casey James.
Bottom 3 Bound: Jermaine Sellers and Lee Dewyze.
Mixed Data: The rest of them, who knows. To us Tyler Grady and Joe Munoz seem most at risk, followed by Aaron Kelly and Michael Lynche (although their Twitter pull should keep them safe this week).
Our Prediction: Of the two Guys leaving, they'll come from the group of Sellers, Dewyze, Grady and Munoz.
Posted by Donald Nosek on Wed, Feb 24, 2010 @ 09:37 AM
Finally! That's about all you can say if you're a fan of American Idol. Finally, there's more to talk about than Ellen and Simon. Finally, we get to Hollywood, get on with the competition, and get to vote some contestants off the show.
On Tuesday night American Idol showcased the Top 12 Girls, followed by the Top 12 Guys on Wednesday and a Thursday night elimination show where two from each group will be headed home. If you watched the show, tell us who you think is leaving this week with your comments below. But before you do, check out these facts.
NOTE: If you are a new reader to ymarketing's American Idol Prediction Project please check out our past blogs to understand our Idol Prediction work, and how it led to the correct upset prediction of Kris Allen over Adam Lambright last year.
Tweet Volume
We like to use TweetVolume as one quick and easy measure of popularity. The only drawbacks are you can't customize date ranges and you can't distinguish positive Tweets from negative ones. Still, it's a great tool for the pulse of the masses.
Looking at Tweet Volume following the American Idol Girls Top 12 show, we see some clear winners and losers. Ashley Rodriguez owns Twitter with 132,000 micro blog mentions, outpacing her nearest challenger, Janell Wheeler, by 3-to-1. (No surprise, as Randy Jackson called her "Simon's girl" on the show, in reference to his comments thus far in the competition.)
Besides Rodriguez and Wheeler, the only other Idol Girls showing Twitter strength are the young teenagers, Haeley Vaughn and Katie Stevens. Some Twitter activity centers on Lacey Brown, Lilly Scott and Didi Benami but the rest are off the RT radar.
News & Google News
This year we'll be taking a look at how the media can shape public opinion and influence who becomes the next American Idol. Case in point, Crystal Bowersox. This wholesome, natural musician from Ohio has one of the lowest Twitter mentions and appears to be the contrarian; perhaps the most anti pop-idol of the group. However, her guitar-harmonica rendition of "Hand in My Pocket" by Alanis Morissette struck a note with the press, placing Bowersox in headlines and lead images on USA Today, Newsday and more. (Perhaps no surprise, as her interaction with her young son has been one of the heart-warming stories of Season 9 to date.)
The net result of Bowersox's media coverage? She's safe. Looking at all News mentions and then again at just Google News articles within 24 hours of the show, Bowersox leads the news coverage. For our data chart below, we took the lowest number of news mentions as a baseline and noted incremental mentions. Our theory was there is some amount of press that all the Top 12 girls get, regardless of popularity, and we prefer to measure lift.
Who's in trouble? Google News Predicts the Bottom 3 Girls
Take a look at our Tweet Volume and News Heatmap. It clearly shows that Michelle Delamor, Paige Miles and Katelyn Epperly should plan on wearing comfortable shoes Thursday night, as they may never see the safety of the couch. The only other two that could slip into this bottom 3 appear to be Lacey Brown and Siobhan Magnus.
What do you think?
Agree or disagree with our data? What other data points would you like us to explore? Post your comment below and together we'll track how American Idol Season 9 plays out.
Posted by David Carpenter on Tue, Jan 12, 2010 @ 07:25 PM
Will Ellen or Simon Emerge as the Leader in Web Searches & Tweets
As the new season of American Idol begins this week - and before we get introduced to the new contestants and begin to know their names by sight and voice - the questions we want to know all center around the judges:
- Simon Cowell - Will he leave after this season? What about that contract?
- Ellen DeGeneres - Will she bring value to the viewers and How much will her Twitter Army affect this year's outcome?
- Paula Abdul - Will America miss her? Did she get a raw deal?
- Randy Jackson and Kara Dioguardi - How much attention can they attract amongst these dynamic personalities?
American Idol Trend & Research Methodology
Readers that followed this ymarketing Predicting Idol Winners blog series last year are familiar with our approach; we use online research tools that measure the impact and scale of searches, comments and buzz around an individual (or a brand) and assess their relative popularity online. While some of our much larger competitors used only search engine data to compile their predictions last season - and got it all WRONG, picking Adam Lambert as the winner - we focused instead on a much broader picture of online interest, factoring in data from Digg, Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, blogs and other social media.... and arrived at the documented CORRECT prediction that Kris Allen would win Idol.
Who's the Judge On Fire?
As USA Today's recent article and Idol Chatter Blog noted, the buzz this season is "all about the judges as Ellen arrives" and "Simon Cowell's exit." You might think that Simon Cowell would lead all judges in terms of popularity and buzz - especially with all the contract talk of late - but by Google and Twitter standards it's all Ellen. Worldwide interest in Ellen appears to have its epicenter in Canada, followed by the US, Singapore, Australia and South Africa.
The Most Tweets?
Ellen DeGeneres is by far and away the leader on Twitter as well. Hmmm, with three Twitter accounts of her own including @TheEllenShow (4 million followers), @Ellen_DeGeneres (85K) and this fan site @EllenFans (34K), I guess this Twitter thing actually works, huh? Simon, in contrast, appears to have just 21K followers @Scowell1 and four tweets to his name (lame, come on Simon!).
Twitter volume with the first names of the judges
Twitter volume with the full names of the judges
Digg
Digg - with a large following of over 40MM unique visitors - is another quality measure of online popularity. And the Idol Heatmap for Digg clearly shows Simon out front, followed by Ellen and Paula, with Randy and Kara bringing up the rear.
Paula Interest Still High
Paula Abdul pulls in the 3rd place rank overall in interest in search and social media with relatively strong showings in both Twitter and Digg, while Randy and Kara are nearly non-existent.
Idol Interest
So what do you think? Will Simon and Ellen continue to dominate headlines throughout the year or will the contestant chatter takeover in coming weeks? Did anyone emerge in the debut show you think can draw significant interest?
If you are keeping score at home, for now it's:
- Simon Cowell - Digg #1
- Ellen DeGeneres - Google #1, Twitter #1
- Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson & Kara Dioguardi - So far in a clear trailing position
Posted by General Team Login on Fri, Jan 08, 2010 @ 12:03 PM
The ymarketing Paid Search Team recently read an update to the beta for Google Lead Generation Forms in paid search ads at SEOroundtable.com. Have you ever wished you could easily increase leads for just the cost of a click? Google is testing it out with Google AdWords Contact Form Extensions to normal AdWords ads. The current leads are phone number based with three custom fields. Delivery of these ads is via email as a moment and clients are committed to contact the lead within 24 hours.
We have noticed the Mortgage and Entertainment Industries testing In the new Contact Form Extension. We have also seen other bloggers and paid search companies mention these ad format updates such as this blog post from DailyRadar.com
Things to know about the AdWords Contact Form
- It will only associate with ads in the #1 position.
- The Leads will be priced with the Max CPC Bid during beta test.
- About the form: Requires Phone Number Collection, up to three custom questions, questions shown will be determined by Google quality algorithm.
Get whitelisted into the Program through your AdWords Account Manager at Google and start getting your phone leads from Google AdWords!
Here are some sites that like the new Google Contact Form Adwords Feature: searchengineland.com, insideaffiliates.com, seroundtable.com
Here's a site that dislikes the new Google Contact Form AdWords Feature: blog.hubspot.com
SEO specialist ymarketing thinks:
This is worth testing. We want to see the results of the beta ASAP!
Do you have "real experience or results to share about your experience with this beta?"
What do you think?
Contact Us or Leave a Comment!
Posted by General Team Login on Thu, Jan 07, 2010 @ 07:42 PM
AdWords Contact Form Extension: Apply by Contacting Google AdWords Account Managers
ymarketing, a digital search company, recently found news of a new AdWords Lead Form at SEOroundtable.com. If you have a Google AdWords Account Manager you can apply today to be whitelisted into the new AdWords Contact Form Extension beta.
What is the goal of this AdWords Beta?
1. Increase ROI from your Paid Search Ads on Google.
2. Pay for Leads. During the beta your price per lead will be priced at your regular CPC Bid.
3. Integrates into your current ads " Ad enhancement".
Paid Search Managers everywhere are seeking for all three of these things. We were definitely interested in news about the Contact Form Extension. 
Here's what the ymarketing paid search team had to say:
"Google is definitely shortening the click-2-lead behavior funnel by offering to use the search engine ad as a call to action."
We will be watching to see:
• How much will CTR improve in various industries?
• What will be the cost of leads after the beta?
• During the test the leads are limited to phone leads, will Google provide integration into CRM applications at some point?
Connect With Us:
As new paid ad betas and extensions are released we hope to hear from those who try these new ad formats to see the results. Please feel free to post your results in the comment section of this blog.
Posted by David Carpenter on Tue, Nov 17, 2009 @ 02:04 AM
In poll and after poll of marketers and business decision makers alike, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes out on top or near the top in terms of ROI. But how do we really know? How does an organization measure the ROI of an SEO initiative? And with mounting evidence of the impact Social Media has on Search Marketing, how do we measure the ROI of Social Media initiatives?
ymarketing conducted extensive research on the web from July to October of 2009 looking for the definitive answer for Return On Investment from SEO and Social Media (looking for ROI calculators, case studies and other research) and, aside from a bevy of polls citing the high ROI value of SEO, were surprised to find that there seem to be no great standards or agreed upon methodologies.
TopRank poll on the top digital marketing tactics in 2009
Your Input Sought
In the first of a series on the topic, we'll share some of the evidence we uncovered and invite readers to contribute their own innovative ideas, experience and evidence that they've found. If you'd like to participate, leave a comment below and add it to the discussion.
What's Coming Up
In part 2 of the series we'll cover the traditional methods that SEO practitioners use - ranked keyword lists and other forms of measurements that, by today's real-time web standards, look pretty crude and unscientific. We'll also de-mystify the confusion around ROI and ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) and evaluate if there is a meaningful distinction between the two.
SEMPO Study on top three marketing tactics for 2009
In part 3 of the series we'll delve into solutions: new methodologies, tools and solutions companies are using to track, measure and quantify the value of their SEO initiatives, including exploring a topic we like to call organic keyword monetization.
Because of the tight partnership between Social Media and Organic Search, a part of this discussion will be focused on exploring a topic raised by David Spark in an article "Social media success doesn't start with ROI" which highlights the troubles in using old media metrics in a new media world.
There is consensus about the value of SEO... but how do we measure it in our own businesses?
Posted by David Carpenter on Sat, Sep 19, 2009 @ 12:03 PM
LinkedIn has quietly posted some very impressive numbers once again.
Sure, Twitter gets all the media attention, but it's warranted given its explosive 802% year-over-year growth. But LinkedIn's 89% YOY numbers look remarkable when compared to anything but Twitter or Facebook. But look deeper at the numbers and you'll find that LinkedIn actually grew 6Xs faster than Twitter in August, and 4.5Xs faster in July, according to compete.com
Consider LinkedIn's vitals (as of August 2009):
- 27 million total users
- 14.2 million users in August 2009
- Representing all 500 of the Fortune 500 (how many companies can say that?)
- Average stay: Over 7.3 minutes per visit
- Visits per person, per month: Over 3.7
- Pages per visit: Over 13
- Rank: #67 among all websites (ahead of USA Today, Southwest Airlines, HP, Wells Fargo, TicketMaster, Priceline and MLB.com mid-summer)
But this isn't meant to be one more blog raving about LinkedIn's interconnected networking prowess. What we're looking at is LinkedIn's power to elevate your business for free; specifically to lend search equity from LinkedIn's mighty vault into your company website's SEO account.
Here are six (6) ideas you can implement to improve your website's search equity leveraging LinkedIn:
1. Company Page
Within LinkedIn your company page serves as a "cliff notes" version of your website and as a valuable "peek inside your company" as it will contain links to the individual LinkedIn profiles of each of your team members who has associated their individual profile with the company's. This serves you well as long as the page is kept up-to-date and as long as individual members keep their profiles in good shape. We recommend businesses ask all key employees to setup profiles, keep them up to date, and associate them with company page.
2. Anchor Text
Nearly every LinkedIn user knows they can include their company website (example shown), but the common setting does not give your company's site as much value as it can. By selecting "Other" instead of "My Company" you can use descriptive text, keywords that describe your business. After all, you don't want your website to be found for the term "My Company", do you?
The way to really leverage this idea is to get everyone in your company using the same keywords, the same descriptive text. This works because of the inherent Search Equity that LinkedIn has earned (and passes each time it links to your site) and because of the extra value search engines place on keywords placed within anchor text (the descriptive text that contains a hyper link).
3. Join a group, Create a Group
As our good friend from Hubspot Pete Caputa says so well, "LinkedIn Groups are an amazing opportunity to build an opt-in email list quickly. (Almost like the early days - late 90s - of email list building.) If you're into internet marketing... you should join the HubSpot Pro Marketers list." (nice plug, Pete!)
"You should also start your own group about a topic related to your business, which would interest your target prospects," Caputa notes. "LinkedIn Groups spread quite virally throughout LinkedIn because group badges automatically display on members' profiles. Once your list is built, you can gently promote your educational content, blog, etc. For example, if you sell software to accountants, create an 'All Star Accountants' group or something along those lines."
4. LinkedIn Answers
Answer a question and your connections will see it in their Network Updates feed. LinkedIn rewards quality; you will gain expertise points when the person asking the question votes your answer as the "best answer".
5. Network Updates
These are the LinkedIn equivalent of your Facebook Status update, or your latest update on Twitter, and they tell your entire network what you're up to. This is a great place to let people know of your latest blog post.
6. Direct Advertising
While the minimum advertising level used to be $50,000 a month, LinkedIn has followed Facebook's lead and rolled out an innovative new advertising platform they call "Direct Ads" that, at a $50 minimum and a pay-per-action / pay-per-click model, is affordable to a much broader array of businesses.
Ads are simple to create, targeting is powerful and relatively simple, and the scale and access to high profile decision makers is unparalleled on any network.
We've been running these paid campaigns on LinkedIn and Facebook for our clients and have developed a testing strategy that works. With the right strategy and attention, you should be able to recognize results from your paid social network efforts as well.
Feedback
What do you think? How are you utilizing LinkedIn in your business? Do you have some great ideas we missed? We'd love to hear from you and add to this list...
Posted by David Carpenter on Wed, Jul 15, 2009 @ 10:33 AM
As I talk about the virtues of social media marketing and blogging in particular, with business owners from 20-person companies to marketing executives representing Fortune 1000 enterprises, I frequently encounter the same objections when it comes to Business Blogging:
• "I just don't get it. How would blogging possibly help us reach our business goals?"
• "Blogging is fine for other people, but we're serious about driving our business forward and need to spend our time marketing."
• "Who has time to blog unless they're unemployed?"
And just recently I heard my favorite objection yet:
• "Don't some people blog when just a simple tweet would do?" (a hip reference to Twitter and its 140-character limit and a shot directed at the long-windedness of some bloggers, all rolled into one!)
All of these are legitimate questions and objections (and they all have equally legitimate answers, hopefully answered in this post).
Businesses that don't invest in blogging are losing out on a huge opportunity.
Here are the top six (6) reasons Why Businesses Must Blog, in order to thrive in 2009 and beyond, in order of importance:
1. Increase Search Equity. Search Engines crawlers (affectionately known as "spiders") scour the internet for food daily; their favorite meals consist of text, headlines (H1 tags), meta data, page titles and links with descriptive anchor text. Well-crafted blogs are a virtual feast. The search engines behind these spiders don't really care if a newly discovered page is a blog or a regular web page; what they're particularly interested in is new, unique, well-crafted content. Blog posts between 200-400 words with good use of headlines, descriptive anchor text and relevant keywords are a virtual Olive Garden to the search engine spiders in a sea of soup kitchens. So the domains these Blogs reside on are rewarded with deposits in their search equity account. If your blog is on your company site (i.e. blog.yourcompanyname.com) then your site benefits and accrues the search equity; if you use a "free" blog site (i.e. yourcompanyname.blogspot.com) then Google or some other webhost gets the benefit. If you need more convincing that using a "free" service is a bad idea for your business, read Top Reasons Why Business Blogs Shouldn't Be On BlogSpot.com.
2. Increase Website Traffic. The clients who we have worked with to setup and properly promote integrated blogs (blog.yourcompanyname.com) have seen their traffic increase between 300% and 2,000%. The effect of these traffic gains - although by itself quite dramatic - is that the number of inbound links multiplies and additional search equity is applied. Since starting our blog (blog.ymarketing.com) we've seen our amount of content pages indexed on Google and Bing triple, and the blog has played a direct role in tripling the number of quality inbound links to ymarketing.com.
3. Increase Search Engine Spider Crawl Frequency. The question of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it fall" has an application in the world of search: if a website gets updated and no search engine spider comes by to re-index the site, then the change didn't really do your business any good. We've seen clients increase their crawl frequency from monthly to several times a week; I have to attribute this primarily to the addition of an integrated blog, and the results are that changes to the site (i.e. meta data testing, new content pages, news updates, etc.) get indexed nearly immediately, so we can get a read on what changes had a positive impact right away. The whole process of test, read and refine is greatly accelerated.
4. Increase Sharing and Word of Mouth. Have you noticed that people typically don't share product information on Facebook? Not too many people "Digg" company information sheets, right? And most of the Internet population resists the temptation to "bookmark" the "About Us" page on your site. People like to share things that are of interest to them on a personal level, and things they think their peers and friends would be interested in. This is true for B-to-B as well. Blogs make it easy for people to share with others. They give site visitors a reason to connect on an emotional level. In our research we have collected data that proves that referred visitors are between 1.5X and 4X more likely to convert into a qualified lead or new customer than general website traffic, so the financial, rational argument for sharing can be made. When we setup client blogs we include the most popular business sharing tools as buttons to make tweeting, digging and sharing on Facebook and LinkedIn as easy as emailing a friend.
5. Qualify Leads before they ever make contact. I recently experienced this myself. A prospect for our business read a comment that I wrote on someone else's blog, liked the line of thinking of my comment as much if not more than the original author, followed the link I provided back to our blog, read several posts, agreed with our approach and philosophy, then contacted us as a well-read, highly-informed qualified prospect. That is happening more and more, and would not have been possible let alone probable before we started blogging.
6. Build Community. The reason most people think of first ("You blog so that you build a community of like-minded individuals, promote discussion, etc.") is actually my #6 reason Businesses Must Blog. Let's be real: If you're not the size of Microsoft, Cisco or Netflix, the community construction aspect of blogging is going to take a while to fully develop. But it will, as long as you make the decision to start blogging, continue to publish quality content, and invite others to participate in the conversation.
A Word on Blogging Best Practices
The Best Practices of Blogging recommend that you spend equal portions of your time reading the blogs of others, commenting on those other blogs, and crafting your own. So if you can only invest, say, two hours a week to this valuable new pursuit of blogging, be sure you start with 1 half hour into finding and reading other people's blogs of interest to you and your business goals, a half hour or more leaving comments and asking questions on those blogs, and an equal amount of time writing your own posts.
Leaving Blog Bread Crumbs
Taking a cue from would-be social media pioneers Hansel & Gretel... One of the best ways to build a community in the early days of blogging is to include a bread crumb - a link to your blog - every time you read and comment on someone else's relevant post or blog. An example:
"A very interesting and provocative idea about the greening of marketing, Michael. I thought you were absolutely right on your assessment of the topic of how direct mail impacts our environment, but consider this one idea you may have missed: Search is the new direct mail. I've written about this topic at http://blog.ymarketing.com/?Tag=inbound%20marketing and invite you to have a look..."
That way when interested readers see your comment and agree with your point of view or unique insight, they'll follow your link and discover your blog.
What do you think... What did we miss? What are the compelling reasons for business to blog that we neglected to include?
Posted by David Carpenter on Wed, Jun 03, 2009 @ 07:00 AM
Can Search and Social Media data predict the value, the interest, the likelihood that an individual division of GM will survive? As readers of this blog know, we successfully used this very same data to predict winners and losers of American Idol. This time we turned our data and analysis to three key pistons inside the engine of GM that are likely to play a major role in the bankruptcy, sell-off and self-dubbed company "reinvention": Cadillac, Hummer and Saturn.
Cadillac - down but not forgotten
In the green we've charted Cadillac's unit sales over the last two years (annual volumes shown) and estimated a small downturn for 2009. The blue line indicates the relative interest in Cadillac as shown by volume of search queries across Google in the automotive category alone ("Cadillac Margaritas", for example, would not show up in these results). Using search volume as a proxy for consumer interest, we can see that interest in Cadillac has remained fairly high, with an index of 73 for Q2 of 2009 - nearly the same as the 75 index in Q4 2007. Although interest has been a bit higher (the peak was an index of 83 in Q1 2008) and a bit lower (the low was 69 in Q3 2008), it has remained relatively consistent across the last 7 quarters.
But what about Social Media? Using Facebook Lexicon as a proxy for Consumer Interest (what Facebook's 200 million members write about on each other's "walls"), we see a slightly different picture. Cadillac mentions peaked in Q4 2007, had a brief resurgence around the Holidays of last year, but have been falling ever since. With an index of 41 now vs. 73 in 2007, Cadillac's Social Media index is now off more than 40%.
Since a careful analysis of both Facebook and Google data revealed the winner of American Idol, we're going to keep close tabs on both of these disparate data sources for now. However, if we follow the assumption that Facebook represents consumer perception, higher up the sales funnel than Google search, one might assume that Cadillac search and purchase interest might wane in coming quarters.
Hummer - a lost cause (but you knew that)
Hummer interest is off the charts... in a bad way. Google search interest is way off, down to an index of 39 from a high 67 in Q1 2008 (off more than 40%). Facebook chatter paints the same picture: In Q2 2009 the index is 64, down from the high in Q2 2008 of 97 - a drop of nearly 35%. It seems that the oil crisis of Summer 2008 may have doomed this brand for good. Sales figures from GM confirm this fact as well, as Hummer posted less than half the 2008 sales as in 2007.
Saturn - sales holding steady, but interest is falling out of orbit
Studying the search and social media around the Saturn automobile brand by sticking to just automotive categories - carefully excluding the search mania centered around "Viewing Saturn" as it approached Earth in July of 2008 - shows us that while sales volume drop off (22% drop from 2007 to 2008) Saturn has fared better than most GM divisions. But, this particular division just doesn't seem to get people "talking" (or more accurately put, searching or writing wall posts).
Worldwide Google search volume for the Saturn brand peaked last Summer (while fuel approached $5/gallon) but has dropped off considerably since that time; from a high index of 65 in Q3 2008 to just 42 in Q2 2009 (a drop of more than 35%).
The Facebook index paints a similar picture: The most recent quarter's index of 29 is down more than 35% from last Summer's high of 45.
What's even more interesting?
You can compare the Facebook indices between the brands, and you see a picture that emerges like this for the most recent quarter:
What's Surprising? Hummer has by far the most interest among Facebook's masses, and Saturn has the least; the inverse of their sales figures. What we've learned from analyzing Facebook for some time now is that the TRENDS are far more important than the overall volume of data, and trend-wise it doesn't look good for any of these three falling brands.
What about Google? We can compare the indices for 2009 here as well:
While overall interest among searchers is highest for Cadillac by nearly a 2:1 margin worldwide...
... Growth in searches is for Saturn is actually faring the best, with Cadillac making a surge in interest late in May 2009. Interest in Hummer has lagged the general category for all of 2009.
We're talking about Global data for Google Searches, so we asked the natural question: where are all these buyers?
Interest in the Cadillac brand is actually highest in Iraq (as measured by Google's weighted indices around the globe), followed by the US and Canada, with Estonia and Sweden rounding out the top 5.
The hot bed of Hummer searching is in Costa Rica, believe it or not, followed by three other Central and South American states. The US ranks 7th, just behind Slovakia.
The Saturn brand appears to be almost entirely a North American phenomenon, likely owing primarily to distribution. Although there are pockets of interest in Europe and Mexico.
What do you think? How will Cadillac, Hummer and Saturn fare under the leadership - permanent or temporary - of the Obama Adminstration? Your opinion, comments and questions are welcomed here.
