Facebook as a Pathogen: Predicting the Next Big Thing

According to one Princeton professor, social media sites such as Facebook are akin to the pathogens that have plagued humankind, save for one important difference.

Facebook, according to Dr. John Cannarella, is a pathogen of the mind. Cannarella isn’t judging the site or its content, but is instead referring to the idea that websites are memes.

A meme—not to be confused with a viral Internet photo—is a concept form the social sciences. Fundamentally, a meme is an idea. Like a pathogen, it is passed from person to person. As with any virus, the population can gain immunity.

The Princeton Study

In his paper, Dr. Cannarella predicted that Facebook will lose over 80% of its user base by 2017. The professor and his team analyzed the growth curves of Facebook and MySpace, and then they compared the curves to those of common pathogens.

Surprisingly, the curves matched. In the case of MySpace, the social network’s curve matched the average rate at which a population recovers from an illness.

Dr. Cannarella notes that Facebook is just beginning to enter the “abandonment phase,” the point at which its popularity is beginning to taper off. To gather their data, the team analyzed Google searches relevant to the networks over several years.

Facebook began as a tool for Harvard students, but it was soon opened to the general population. Users took to the site’s clean interface and useful features. Today, the site enjoys over 1.23-billion members, and over 900-million mobile users. Yet now, according to Dr. Cannarella’s thesis, Facebook users are beginning to chafe.

Immunity

In this model, users of social networks gain immunity as the networks mutate from their original state. Any good pathogen seeks to infect as much of the population as possible before becoming harmful. Put another way, as networks seek to monetize, they make changes that irritate users. Users then begin to develop immunity to them.
Facebook, which recently went public, is particularly susceptible because the changes they now make are driven by a desire to turn a profit for their investors. Networks Twitter and Pinterest, on the other hand, have high survivability according to this model because they change little and have high utility.

Effects of Mutation

In 2014, Facebook spent time in the limelight for supposedly cooperating with the NSA’s PRISM project and for conducting experiments on its users. Both of these stories had Facebook users up in arms, and the latter spurred one creative agency to launch a non-profit experiment of their own.

The agency, Just B.V, is calling for Facebook users to give up the network for 99 days and to take happiness questionnaires periodically throughout that time. As of July 2014, over 6,000 Facebook users have signed on. Just as illuminating, a Cornell University study revealed that 25% of Facebook users periodically deactivate their accounts.

Extrapolations

It’s unlikely that Google+ will be “the next big thing.” The network is associated with Facebook in user’s minds, and not in a good way. Naturally, the next Facebook will utilize cutting-edge algorithms that make it easy for users to connect in meaningful ways, and it will be heavily focused on mobile. Tying into a user’s geographic location has several advantages.

Such a network could alert the user to resources in their immediate environment, as well as to people of interest. The Geo-fence will likely come into play here, and the network may help shoppers find valuable discounts in brick and mortar stores.

The age of social media for fun is likely drawing to a close, so expect the next Facebook to focus on saving users time.

Networks that continue to cater to teens—who have infinite time—are in danger of becoming the next MySpace. The next big thing can crop up at any time, so be vigilant. You’ll want to get in before it’s saturated with marketers.
Keeping tabs on the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Hank ...

Use Instagram to Connect with Your Audience

Instagram began as an iPhone and Android app that allowed users to share photos on Facebook directly from their phones. It has since become a social media channel in its own right. Marketers are learning that Instagram is a powerful marketing tool.

An interactive audience

One of the main reasons that Instagram is so powerful for marketing is that it delivers marketing messages in the exact way its audience wants them delivered. According to social media experts, the Instagram community is more interactive that other channels such as Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

To be successful on Instagram it is very important to interact with your Instagram followers. Here are some tips for engaging with the Instagram community.

Have conversations

Communicate with your followers by replying to comments and post questions. If you respond to comments, be sure to use the @mention feature. This way, the original commenter will be notified about your response.

Use images to tell stories

Instagram is all about connection and authenticity. You can humanize yourself and your company by posting behind-the-scenes photos. You can also use photos submitted by your followers. Instagram offers several photo-editing tools to allow you to quickly and easily edit your photos and give them a professional polish.

Promote events

If you are planning an event such as a contest, give away, or sale, Instagram is a great place to promote your event. Use visuals and hashtags to key your followers in to your event. Interested members can use the hashtag to find out more about your event.

Offer Incentives

You can use Instagram to offer various incentives such as discounts, coupon and custom codes. These incentives can be used to encourage participation. For example, you can use incentives to reward your followers for looking at your images and reading your descriptions.

Photo contests

You can use Instagram to run photo contests to increase engagement among your followers. Just like events, give your photo contest a unique hashtag. Ask your submitters to use the hash tag. This way, the photo entries are easy to search. Visitors can find the photos and cast their votes. You can also use the hashtag to find all user-submitted photos and decide on a winner.

Let customers sell your brand

Passionate customers are your best advocates. They will tell your story from an outsider’s perspective. This can be a powerful selling tool. Feature your customers’ pictures on Instagram. In addition to rewarding your customers with recognition, customer photos offer powerful social proof for your products. Your customers will love the recognition as well. Lastly, customer-submitted photos give you a unique view into how your customers experience your brand. You can take that information to strengthen your brand.
Instagram is a powerful marketing tool, if used correctly. The Instagram community is built around engagement. Use comments and photos to interact with your followers on Instagram.

Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

See How Google has set the Content Bar Ever Higher

In Google’s quest to improve the overall quality of content on the Web, the company makes continuous updates to its algorithm. These updates may receive colorful names, but they are serious business. You should familiarize yourself with these changes so that you can remove or change content that Google no longer wants to rank.

Hummingbird Recap

Google released an overhaul to its engine on Sept 16, 2013. The update, dubbed “Hummingbird,” affected a startling 90% of searches. Hummingbird represents the most extensive overhaul to the search engine of all time.

Hummingbird shifts the focus away from individual keywords and places it on longtails. These search phrases are specific to a particular person, place, product or location.

For instance, if someone is looking for widgets in Houston, they might type into Google, “where can I find widgets in Houston?” Naturally sprinkling these longtail phrases into your content can help you outrank people who are cramming individual keywords into their pages.

Additionally, Google has now integrated its Knowledge Graph into search, meaning that Google will attempt to answer questions directly.

The search engine still links to the site that it is lifting the answer from; however, and this can drive a ton of traffic. More than ever, it pays to be an authority in your niche. Google’s overall goal is to make their search engine better understand a searcher’s intent.

Panda

The original Panda updates were designed to prevent sites with low-quality content from ranking higher. These sites typically use SEO tactics to rank, since their content is not very sharable. To combat this, Google programmed the Panda filter to identify poorly written content and penalize it. While the filter isn’t perfect yet, it is already highly effective.

Panda 4.0 is an update to this filter that gives more weight to social signals like +1s, likes, and retweets. It penalizes for duplicate content, as well. This was a major update that affected over 7% of English keywords.

Penguin

Penguin, released in 2012, was designed to penalize webmasters who were trying to game the system. Penguin analyzes the link profile of a site and makes an educated guess about whether the links were purchased.

Sometimes, this is quite easy for Penguin to detect. Sites with mostly do-follow links are prime suspects. Google has also taken steps to de-index networks that sell backlinks. You definitely don’t want your site associated with these services.

Tips

Always produce unique, high-quality content, and don’t scrape content off of other sites. Avoid thin content whenever possible, and aim for at least 250 words in each post.

When you write an article, have a purpose for doing so that goes beyond, “I want to rank for this keyword.” Encourage social shares by breaking your content down into small paragraphs and sections, and use lots of images.

Seek backlinks from authority sites in your niche, but never purchase them. The best way to do this is to forge relationships with the site owners and then point them to your high-quality content.

Ranking well in Google is a powerful means of generating high-quality traffic. If you found this article useful, and want to learn about even more powerful marketing methods, click the link below to find out about my done-for-you system.

Hank van den Berghe

What Is a Sales Funnel?

The biggest mistake many online marketers make is selling a customer a single product one time and then moving on to the next customer.

This approach ignores the important concept of Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer, and increasing the average LTV of your customers should be your primary objective, because it’s the best way to increase your long-term profits and grow your online business.

For example, let’s say you are working in the health and fitness niche and you use a squeeze page to attract new prospective customers.

A squeeze page is a web page on which you offer something with a high perceived value for free in exchange for the contact information of the people who land there, such as their email address or phone number.

Point of Entry: Squeeze Page
In this example, on your squeeze page your giveaway could be something like an exercise video or an eBook on healthy eating – both of which are something people interested in getting fit would likely be willing to trade in exchange for their email address.

An exchange is made, the prospect gets your giveaway, and you get their contact information. This is the beginning of the sales funnel.

You have successfully attracted a prospect into your sales funnel. Your next goal needs to be converting this person from a prospect into a paying customer. You do this by immediately offering them your Lead Product or your first offer.

Offer Irresistible Lead Products
Your Lead Product needs to be something irresistible to your prospect. It should have higher perceived value than your giveaway and be offered at a price point that your customer can’t refuse.
In our example, this could be a series of DVDs or downloadable videos that show how to do 200 fat-burning exercises that you are offering for $9.99. In the fitness niche, and at that price point, the conversion rate for this type of product likely will be very high.

Now here’s the tricky part. You’ve successfully converted a prospect into a customer and have earned $9.99, which is the current LTV of that customer.

Rather than being satisfied with that and allowing them to walk away, your next goal should be to start pushing them further and further along your sales funnel by offering them a series of increasingly more costly products within the same niche.

Exploiting a ‘Buying Mood’
After your customer buys your $9.99 workout videos, you can immediately offer them an upsell opportunity, such as a monthly subscription service that delivers 200 additional videos from a professional personal trainer for $19.99/month.

Frequently, when a customer already has made a purchase, they are in a “buying mood” and are more open to buying additional products. If they buy your upsell, their LTV has risen to $30.

Conversely, if your prospect declines your Lead Offer, you can try to recapture them with a downsell, which is usually a modified version of your Lead Offer at a discounted price. In our example, this might be the Top 10 Exercises for Fat Loss for only $4.99.

Recapturing Lost Customers
Downsells are designed to convert your prospect so that they stay in your sales funnel, even if you don’t earn as much from them on the initial sale.

Now that you have converted the prospects who landed on your squeeze page into customers and have gotten them to buy either your Lead Offer, your Lead Offer plus your upsell (or at the very least your downsell) you can continue to use their contact information to promote a series of increasingly more costly products over the next several days, weeks, or months.

To learn more about how an effective sales funnel can maximize your average LTV, check out our lead generation system by clicking here now.