The Social Media Channel

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Report: Over the past year, search traffic has dropped while social traffic more than doubled Posted: 17 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST Social discovery and sharing platform Shareaholic today released a report comparing search traffic versus social traffic over the last 13 months. While it's no surprise that search is a mature tool and social is still a relatively new one, the biggest trend that immediately jumps out is that the former has started declining while the latter is still exploding. In November 2012, search traffic accounted for almost 42 percent of traffic while social referalls were at just over 11 percent. In November 2013, search traffic had slipped a few percentage points while social referalls had more than doubled. Here are Shareaholic's two biggest takeaways from the results: Search's heyday is over; it's a mature channel. Organic search's share of visits to publishers actually dropped 6 percent. Search engines are more likely to see drastic growth in their personal market shares than they are to see substantial growth in the overall market. That's because everyone already references search engines when they need information. Social Media has barely outgrown diapers; things are just getting started. Referrals from the top five social media platforms more than doubled (growing 111 percent year-over-year)! People are more active on social media than ever. Yet social media is nowhere near full maturity. Indeed, this is just the beginning. Neither of these observations are particularly mind-blowing, but this chart below really sums up the bigger picture: While search is pretty much flat (that 6 percent drop can easily be regained in a few months' time), the interesting part is that social is catching up. This isn't just because Internet users typically stick to one search engine but use multiple social networks. No, the main reason is that many questions that users ask of search engines, their networks of friends, colleagues, peers, fans, and people they follow can answer better. If you're in charge of figuring out where to spend you're marketing dollars, your online budget should no longer just consist of SEO. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

LinkedIn makes it easier to find Influencer content directly from the search box Posted: 16 Dec 2013 08:36 AM PST Last October, LinkedIn launched a new initiative that allows users to subscribe to their favorite so-called "thought leaders". The Influencer Programme rolled out with around 150 of these prominent business figures, each sharing their thoughts via long-form posts with the many millions of users on the professional social network. Now, LinkedIn has announced it's making it easier for users to find Influencer posts – directly from the search box. You can enter a broad topic or even an Influencer's name, tick 'Articles' and then you can filter them down by the author and when they were posted, as well as sharing them across your own network. Last year, we reported that Richard Branson had become the first LinkedIn Influencer to hit 1 million followers, double that of Barack Obama at the time. Other key influencers include the likes of Caterina Fake, Andrew Chen, David Edelman, Steve Rubel, Nancy Lublin, Ryan Holmes, Emily Chang, Peter Guber, Jennifer Pahlka, Jeff Weiner…and The Next Web's very own founder Boris. ➤ LinkedIn Blog | A New Way to Search for Influencer Content on LinkedIn This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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