Matt Dickman crunches the numbers over on Techno//Marketer. Good quantitative data to illustrate what we all know: MySpace is in sharp decline while Facebook is in steep ascent.
By the way, the fastest-growing group on Facebook? It’s 50 and up. This ain’t your kids’ Facebook anymore.
(Which begs the question: Now that the old farts have moved in and ruined the neighborhood, where will the kids be hanging out next year?)
Sooner or later, you’re going to be involved in designing, or managing the design, of a landing page. Or maybe you’ve been working with landing pages for years.
No matter which end of the landing page spectrum on which you fall, you’ll probably find episode 86 of Susan Bratton’s excellent Dishy Mix podcast to be compelling listening. Susan spends a solid hour talking with Tim Ash, President and CEO of SiteTuners.com and the author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.
It’s well worth a listen (or a read, since a transcript is conveniently included on that link above, too) — and not only because Tim answers my question, one I’ve wrestled with over the years, that being: How do you balance the need for selling with the need for educating the potential buyer on any given landing page? (Thanks, Susan!)
Takeaway for marketers: Listen to this podcast. If you’re a relative newcomer to dealing with landing pages, there is a ton of info here that you need to know. If you’re a landing page veteran, you’ll have some food for thought and probably be reminded of some best practices you may have let slip over the years. Either way, it beats spending an hour watching Becker reruns.
Dom Giordano is a Philadelphia talk radio personality and newspaper columnist. He recently interviewed me for an article in the Philadelphia Bulletin about social networking. You can read it over here.
The column was prompted by this incident in which the Philadcelphia Eagles fired a game-day employee (he guarded one of the gates) for something he said on Facebook.
The guy took the post down, but does anyone think that the Eagles didn’t overreact in the extreme? Taking away the man’s job is harsh punishment, particularly in this economy. They should have just talked to him so it didn’t happen again.
The incident raises a larger issue, though: Companies and organizations need to have policies in place for all employees to observe when it comes to blogging, participating in social networks, and general online conduct.
There’s no one set of rules that fits all companies. Some companies will want their employees to have high profiles online. Others will want them to avoid saying anything. Most will be somewhere in the middle. But rules should be drawn up, agreed to by everyone from the C-level offices to the legal department, and communicated to every employee during job orientation.
Rules aside, though: Lighten up, companies. It’s a random comment on Facebook. Don’t be taking away someone’s job over it.
“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.”
—Walt Disney
The Web Pitch has assembled a list of the top 100 Twitter tools. That a list like this even exists is quite a commentary on the pervasiveness of 140-character messaging.
