I think before we go any further I should lay my cards out on the table.  I admire what facebook has accomplished, I’d be a fool not to.  Where my views apparently differ from the mass media is on its future prospects for growth.  I’m not alone in this wilderness.  There are some even more vocal apponents to the current pre IPO stock valuations.

OK so we could touch on the obvious stuff here.  Revenue has fallen in this quarter compared the last.  Profits have fallen over a period when user numbers increased by over 30%.  Click through rates on paid ads fell and continue to fall.  Although they claim to see the future as mobile (dont we all)  they’ve  a poorly executed mobile app (on all platforms). Only a fraction of their income comes directly from mobile ads, something no one has yet to accomplish at scale.  Oh and last and not least, the jury is still out on social media ROI, at least when compared to the much more transparent established search marketing channels.

Anyway the point being, the list is pretty long and getting longer as more of what goes on behind their closed doors becomes public.

All these topics have been covered at least in part by other industry commentators.  So what I’d like to discuss here is something more fundamental in terms of threat to their future growth.

If the future truly is as mobile as zuckerberg believes, then central to that future internet is hardware.  One might argue that its in fact hardware thats facilitated the growth in mobile internet rather than consumer demand.  The iPhone has taken us from the old mobile wap world into a 4G, app driven version..

As the speeds of mobile internet increase it’s easy to believe the bulk of our social interactions will be via mobile devices. They are the ideal delivery mechanisms for this type of information.  Foursquare, instagram, path, twitter and yes even google+, are all potentially standalone mobile apps.  In the case of path and instagram they already are.

So what happens if that social aspect is baked into the hardwares operating system?  Apple already has plans to integrate photo sharing in its next release of iCloud. Facebook’s photo sharing is seen as its core feature.  What if apple was able to make photo sharing seamless?  Photos taken and shared appear on friends phones without the need to load a browser or an “app”.  A kind of next generation instagram.  Fully integrated with your phones camera.  They’re already part the way there with the current iCloud version, imagine what 3 versions from now is going to look like?

Twitter is already built into iOS at a core level, and although Spotify already shares your music across facebook, its not a huge leap to believe that apple will step into the music streaming business in the near future.  Their last major itunes update took them a step closer to that end goal.

Apple already has a notifications screen (following androids lead), which is an, admittedly raw, events feed right now. But again imagine a version thats two or three revisions from now.  We’ve already seen the latest release of windows mobile really pushing the bounderies of whats possible on a mobiles homescreen.  Android is not far behind.

I propose that if you had a device which shared music, status updates and photos in a way that was passive to friends and family (meaning there is no NEW social network to join) there would be massive adoption.  On a scale no web platform has yet to witness.

Apple is moving every closer to that illusive mobile to browser to TV operating system.  The summer release of OSX is going to see us take another step closer.  Incorporating messenging and reminders across all devices.  Joining the existing music, photos, TV, movies.

So when people claim apple has failed at social media, I think they’re missing the point.  They already have the network in place with well over 100M people using it on a daily basis.  Ignoring ipads, they sold more iPhones in the first quarter of 2012 then babies were born on the planet!

Ironically facebooks only really viable defence comes from its current number one enemy.  Google.  The rise (albeit shaky in recent months) of android has at least slowed apples mobile domination.  Its possible that iPhone & iPad adoption, fuelled by an integrated social platform could be a tipping point the likes we havent seen in 30 years.  As windows was and continues to be to the desktop, so too will iOS be to the mobile.  The one remaining questions is in a world where mobile internet rules and is run by apple, how long before the subservient desktop operating systems follow suit?

Google PageRank is one of Google’s original algorithms designed to rank an individual page on a website based on the number on inbound links that page has.

How is Google PageRank determined?

Google PageRank is determined by the number of inbound links to a page and the quality of those links.

Pages are ranked on a scale of 0 – 10 with 0 having little or no inbound links of poor quality, and 10 having a large amount of high quality links.

How is Google PageRank used?

Google PageRank is only used to determine the rank on an individual page; it is not applicable to a domain as a whole.

If two pages have the same content, Google will use PageRank to determine which page is of more importance, i.e. has more high quality inbound links.

How does Google PageRank affect SERP listings?

In theory, Google PageRank doesn’t affect SERP listings as the relevance of the content on the site to the search query is what decides which results are shown.

However, in the case mentioned above where two sites have the same content that matches the search query; Google may use PageRank to decide which site to displayer higher up in the SERPs.

How does Google PageRank affect link value?

The higher the PageRank of a page (which therefore means the more quality inbound links that page has), the more value that page is seen to have.

A page with 100 links from high quality sources and pages with higher PageRanks, will have a higher PageRank than a page that has 10 links from low quality pages.

For a more in depth guide on Google PageRank see the following video from SEOmox (August 2011) – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday

We write so many great posts on different elements of SEO on this blog that it gets hard to keep track of everything so we figure its about time that we make a resource page with some links to (what we think) are the best SEO hints, tools and tips. So here you go:

Google Tools Every SEO & Online Marketer Should Use

Outdated SEO Tips you Should Ignore

Tips for Online Exposure and a Higher Ranking

Let us know if you’ve found any of them useful, and of course, keep browsing through the blog to find even more tips to help you along in the world of advertising!

See also: Resource Page: Social Media for Online Marketing

It doesn’t matter at which level your advertising knowledge is at, you’ll always need a solid foundation to your campaign that only you can build. So here are the 10 steps (some optional) to creating an online advertising campaign from the ground up!

Step 1: What do you want to achieve?

First and foremost, what do you want to achieve from your campaign? Are you looking to acquire leads (email addresses/contact information)? Do you want engagement with a particular page? Are you looking for sales? Brand awareness?

Whether you’re on your own or working in a huge marketing team, sit down all together and come up with a definitive plan of what you want to achieve and make sure everyone understands so there’s no room for error or confusion.

Step 2: Who is your target market?

‘Target market’ in this situation doesn’t just have to apply to a sales consumer, so not just someone who you’d like to buy your product. It means who do you want to see your ads?

What’s demographic? 16–25 year olds perhaps? Male or female (or both)? Sports fans? Social network users? New Yorkers?

Deciding on your target market is vital for an online advertising campaign because it can dictate where your ads should sit, which advertising services you should utilise etc.

Step 3: What’s the best way to reach them?

Next you need to decide how you’re going to reach your target market. Are you going to use ad platforms like Google AdWords and use search engines? Do you already have a contact list and want to use emails/newsletters? Fancy giving Facebook advertising a go if you’re targeting social networkers?

You could also decide on more traditional advertising and use banners or other kinds of creatives on industry specific sites like directories or blogs.

If you go down this route make sure you check with the site what data they can offer you as far as the demographic of visitors goes. It’s best just to double check that you’re putting your money in the right place.

Step 4: How much are you willing to spend?

Another biggy is deciding/agreeing on how much money you’re prepared to put into any campaign. Also decide on what variable you want to measure your campaign in and what price you’re willing to pay per instance.

If you’re going to track CPM (cost per 1.000 impressions) you need to work out how much 1,000 impressions are worth to you. The same applies to CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition).

Working out this kind of stuff tends to be slightly easier when you’re selling a product because you can work out your ROI for each sale against the cost of the entire campaign but with everything else, just make sure you stick to a realistic budget.

Step 5: How are you going to go about it?

This links back to Step 3 and is where you need to think, in more detail, about how you’re going to advertise. If you’re going with banners or creatives then put together a list of specific sites you think are relevant to your product/service.  Find out their pricing, how long campaigns run for, do they offer their own analytics service, etc.

This is more of a planning stage. You can hang around this point for a long time so don’t worry if it takes you a while to completely nail down a plan. If you’re still struggling then you can look at our guide on Which Method of Online Advertising is For You for an idea of costs and visibility.

Step 6: What action do you want your audience to undertake?

After you’ve agreed on your target market, costing, ad space etc. you need to decide which action your audience needs to undertake in order for you to achieve your goals.

So going back to Step 1: if you want leads, what needs to go on the page/in your ad in order for this to happen? How will your audience get from your ad to the action.

Be very specific about what action you want them to undertake. Always try and stick to one. There may be a couple of different actions available that could give you the same outcome but sticking to one not only gives your audience direction, it also makes it easier for you to track what’s going on.

Step 7: Design your landing page(s)

Based on the ideas from the last step, you now need to design your landing page or tweak your current pages to have some relevance to your ad.

Make sure your action is on there nice and clear and always make sure that your ad is relevant to the page. This is particularly important if you’re using ad platforms like Google AdWords or Microsoft’s adCenter (Bing) as the ranking (weight placed on your ad) is directly linked to how relevant your landing page is.

If you want some tips you can also check out this guide on 6 Steps to an Effective Landing Page.

Step 8 (Optional): Design your additional ads (Banners, creatives etc.)

This is optional depending on what kind of campaign you’re running. There are a lot of ad platforms that are just text based so obviously you don’t need to worry about graphics in this instance (Google and Bing can use text and/or graphics).

If you do want to use graphics then you can either design your own ads if you have the capabilities or you can outsource them to a designer for a cost, of course.

This is another step that you should spend some time on. It’s important that you’re sure on what your message is. Remember that ads are usually pretty small so you need to get in all the necessary information to entice viewers to click.

Always make sure your offer is in there and always try and include little perks if you offer them, like free shipping, buy one get one free etc.

Step 9: Run and track your campaign

Now, by this point you should be totally ready to launch your campaign. So go for it!

Remember that you’ll need to give it a few weeks, maybe even months, before you start seeing results (unless you’re running CPC/PPC then you should be able to see the number of clicks straight away).

After a while you’ll be able to get some feed back on the amount you’re spending in correlation to the engagement your ad is seeing, then you can start deciding on bits you want to change.

Step 10 (Kind of a Step 9 cont.): Track and test some more

Once you’ve decided on which elements of your ad to change you need to start Step 9 again (these two are kind of an infinite loop).

You should view any change you make as a new ad that needs to be tested from scratch again. After a few changes your campaign should have been refined enough that you’ll be seeing the kind of results you want.

If after a few changes you’re still really struggling to see engagement then it’s probably best to start the whole process again because you could have skipped out on a fundamental step earlier on.

Personally, I think the best way to link build is to not link build at all. I believe that the relationships you form with influencers and the content you produce should be enough for people to want to link to you, and if its not, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Here are some of the best titbits that I’ve picked up in my travels that can get you started on the road successfully building relationships and in turn, getting some vital links.

“Be the guy with the bandaid” – Wil Reynolds

I went to Distilled’s LinkLove London conference recently and saw the great Wil Reynolds speak (check him out if you haven’t heard of him, he’s awesome). He gave me one of my, now favourite, link building quotes: “be the guy with the bandaid.”

I love it. It summarises everything you need to know about building relationships with influencers. Once you’ve decided on which influencers you want to ‘target’ (for want of a better word, that sounds a bit creepy), you need to start making your name known, and this is where Wil’s quote comes into play.

When your target asks a question, you want to be the one answering it; when they tweet a bit of content, you need to be the one sharing it and telling them how great it is; if they check in at your city, you want to be the one recommending places to eat. Basically, if they fall over, you want to be the guy with the bandaid. (Genius, right?)

How do you know when your target falls over?

So once you’ve chosen your targets your next step is to wait for them to fall over (I’m sticking with the bandaid analogy, stay with me), but how do you know when that happens?

Well, if you’re Wil Reynolds, you ‘stalk’ them, or if you don’t want a criminal record, you follow their movements online. What social networks are they active on? Do they post questions on sites like Quora? What sites do they write for? Who do they favour? (Share content from etc.).

Find out all of this kind of information, and then you can start bringing it together in a manageable way. RSS feeds are a super easy way to do this even though it might feel like the RSS is somewhat dead.

If you add the RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) you can see every web page that has an available RSS, even if it’s not accessible from the actual page.

Then all you need to do is pick an RSS aggregator; Reynolds suggests using iGoogle but you can use Google Reader, Snarfer, FeedReader etc. that type of thing.

Then you pick which sites you want to follow your target on (find out on which ones they’re most active) and add the feeds to your reader. Now you see every update they ever make!

Sticking on the bandaid

So now you know when your target falls over you need to make sure you’re the first one on the scene to stick the bandaid on.

It probably won’t do you much good to monitor the RSS of sites you’re not familiar with or don’t use on a regular basis because not only will you be less inclined to reply, but your lack of followers/friends/whatever won’t work in your favour.

Stick to the sites you’re active on and make sure you check your RSS aggregators everyday, multiple times a day, to make sure you’re up to date with what your target is doing.

The targets you follow will obviously be in your own industry so you should be able to answer or give an opinion on most of the questions and discussions they take part in. Although, if you come across something that stumps you, don’t give up, this is what Google is for.

Don’t be afraid to stick on someone else’s bandaid! If you don’t know the answer to something but you’ve found a great post on Google that sums it up well, then link them to that! You may not have created the content but now you’re the helpful guy that answered the question anyway.

This is by no means a quick fix to link building but I believe it’s definitely the most valuable. If you can become a trustworthy enough source to your target (who you have chosen for their influence within your industry) then they’ll be far more likely to give you the odd link back or Twitter share when you show them something that they find really interesting.