Walking the Social Media Marketing Walk

There's one aspect of the Internet that escapes nearly everyone. Because the Internet is made up of a bunch of computers networked together, the amount of data generated and collected is staggering. Many of our leading Internet companies thrive on that data, and those who use it wisely, grow. Think of Google, Amazon, NetFlix, and Walmart. These are all big data companies.

As you read about this vast, widely connected mesh of computers, you say to yourself, but of course. Everyone knows business in the 21st century is an IT competition. However, there are some secondary implications of this mesh of computers. For me, there is no conclusion more important than, it's very hard to trick or cheat against computers. They are very adept at making the data they collect freely available on the Internet.

On the Internet: We know if you are not walking

While many people and companies can rack up affiliations, leadership experience, and large networks, if they are not using the Internet how the Internet is designed, it will show. Furthermore, each of the wide variety of social networks, each one has it's own unique style and accepted practices. On our social networks, we can tell who is using them efficiently, and who is just there, well just because, you are supposed to be there.

So while, we still may not know if you are a dog on the Internet. I can tell whether you walk like a social media expert should. I would only declare yourself an expert if the metrics on the Internet indicate that you are one. Otherwise, you're actually a dog in a social media expert's clothing.

A challenge for Puerto Rico Broadband Usage

This is going to be short. Recently Akamai came out with yet another dismal report on the state of broadband in the U.S. According to the report, web users in the U.S. connected at an average speed of 3.9 Mpbs in the third quarter of 2009 -- slower than in 17 other countries. One year prior, the U.S. only lagged behind 16 other nations. We're losing ground!

A while back Gil The Jenius suggested that our dismal usage of the Internet for Marketing might be connected to our assumed low state of broadband. Now that I've seen the US's continued broadband usage decline, it made me wonder whether he might be on to something. The problem is, as I've pointed out before, we don't even have enough organization around the Internet to have any reliable information regarding Internet usage. So as far as I can tell, there are no broadband usage statistics for Puerto Rico broadband usage and how it might compare to the world.

So here's my challenge, if someone can provide us with bona-fide Puerto Rico broadband usage statistics, that we can publish for free, then I will dress up in a clown suit and they can throw cream pies in my face in front of the Puerto Rico Telephone Company corporate headquarters. Of course cameras should be rolling for full YouTube coverage. Simple, show me the numbers, and then you can throw pies at my face. I await your responses.

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: SethLemmons

More Internet Marketing Metrics

As I mentioned in my post about Puerto Rico Internet Marketing Metrics, there are two other areas that we can use to measure the success or state of Internet marketing in Puerto Rico.

The first, is to use the recommendations, err, correct that, the selections, of the WebAD Awards given out by the Asociación de Ejecutivos de Ventas y Mercadeo de Puerto Rico (SME). For three yeas now, these awards have been given out during the Puerto Rico Internet Forum. This an an interesting metric to consider because the winners represent the best examples of Internet marketing, from the local marketing communities' perspective. In 2009, they gave out five awards. Here are the categories and the sites (or campaigns) which won:

• Best integration of the Internet in a 360° campaign: Los sueños son como las camisetas - ACE
• Best integration of the Internet ina promotional campaign: Phone Star - Centennial
• Best integration of the Internet in a public relations campaign: Junte Ambiental - Triple S
• Best Internet Page: EyeTour Puerto Rico
• Best Publicity on the Internet: Puertorriqueños por PR / Rogelio 2008

I'd like to be able to at least give you the links to the previous two awards, but the SMEPR site does not have them available. The rules for participation in the 2009 awards are available here (unless they change). The key rule to understand is that

"Judges will be selected by the SME President and should belong to the Internet industry and academia, but not from agencies."

Which is to say, a panel of judges select the winners of the WebAd awards. Again, not to restate the obvious here, but I believe that part of the criteria that the judges should use, should be based on objective measurements, traffic, hits, links, the amount of search marketing dollars used, etc. Part of my aversion to even sharing the WebAd awards as a metric is the closed and secretive nature of the awards. Who knows, they may actually use metrics, but if they do they're not sharing them.

Blogs

The other metric we can use is, to measure the existence and popularity of blogs in Puerto Rico. Luckily there are two websites that have already done some of the work needed to draw some conclusions.

Puerto Blogs

The first is Puerto Blogs. Puerto Blogs offers a directory where anyone can register their blog. At the time of this post, there are 1,271 blogs in the directory. One nice feature the site has is a blog post aggregate. As new posts appear on the blogs in the directory, a snap shot is pulled from the site's RSS feed and listed on Puerto Blogs web site. You can also drill down on a particular category, and get the feeds from the blogs in a specific category.

Blogalaxia

The other site is Blogalaxia. This site also features a directory, where you can register your blog, but the feature that we can squeeze the most juice out of is their ranking of sites for Puerto Rico. In their ranking you can see sites ranked by popularity or by the number of visits. An explanation for how Blogalaxia determines these rankings can be found here. It should not be a big surprise but no major company is listed in the top 50 blogs in either ranking.

Conclusions

From Puerto Blogs and Blogalaxia, we can conclude one of three things. Either the majority of blogs in Puerto Rico are personal in nature, that businesses in Puerto Rico with blogs have not registered on either of the sites, or that there aren't many businesses with blogs in Puerto Rico. I'm inclined to lean towards all of those conclusions, which is what this whole series of posts is all about anyway.

Well, except by word of mouth, that's all of the metrics I know about to measure Puerto Rico's use of social media and/or the Internet in marketing. If I've missed any, please share them by posting a comment. Next, we'll wade into the sticky question. If we assume that most of the marketing and public relations people in Puerto Rico know about the power of the Internet, why aren't they using it and if they aren't, how can they start?

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: Balakov

Puerto Rico Internet Marketing Metrics

In a follow-up to my previous rant, I'd like to share some metrics that we can use to measure Puerto Rico Internet marketing. As I lamented before, it is a shame that organizations like the Puerto Rico chapter of the Internet Society, the Internet committee from the SME of PR, or for that matter any of the local universities don't already have detailed information about the use of the Internet for marketing in Puerto Rico. However, in some ways, the stark absence of any detailed information is metric in and of itself. As anyone with any business experience knows, the key to business success is often tied directly to one's ability to measure and respond to critical business indicators. So if we are not monitoring the Internet, then we must not think it's important, which is validated by the Internet still being lumped into the "Other" category in terms of advertising dollars spent.

So without any directed effort, what can we use to determine our success in social media, SEO, or Internet advertising? Here a few we look at here in Dónde Es:

Alexa - Alexa is a tool that measures web traffic. While it is useful, it's accuracy is somewhat limited. Alexa only measures web traffic for web users who download and install their toolbar. So it is actually only a subset of all Internet traffic. One of the cool things they do is break down traffic by country. Here is the list of the top 100 sites visited by Puerto Rican Internet users of Alexa. It shouldn't surprise anyone, that the "El Numeri Uno" is Facebook. By the way, just in case you were wondering, we're at 710.

There are some other sites available that do monitor traffic, but they are usually only available through subscription or do not break down traffic by country, except by individual sites. One site that we also use is Quantcast. They have a list of the top one hundred sites, plus a list of the top 1 million sites, which is available for download. w00t, we're 280,981! How does your website fair? Does is make the cut? If not, then you got some splaining to do to someone....

Facebook - So if Facebook is our favorite site, what can it show us about Puerto Rico Internet Marketing? Now as you might imagine, first we have to acknowledge that the amount of local ads on Facebook has exploded in the last year, but so far no one has emerged dominant. What we've seen is a lot of ads that come and go. It's our suspicion that the ads didn't meet the marketers expectation and were quickly pulled, but that is just our guess. Oh and by the way, it is estimated that are 702,360 Facebook users who live in Puerto Rico.

A search of Facebook for "Puerto Rico" is curious, but probably not that helpful. Just like while searching Google, a search for Puerto Rico companies using Facebook would have to be done very selectively by carefully choosing keywords. However, one simple metric is taking a look at the Facebook Pages listed in the generic "Puerto Rico" search. Checking FB Pages, here are some leaders:

• El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico
• Pizza Hut, Puerto Rico
• Universia Puerto Rico
  
• KFC Puerto Rico

Most of the other categories (people, groups, apps, etc.) aren't too helpful. One standout is the "Las nuevas 7 maravillas del mundo-PUERTO RICO NOMINADO!!!!" group with 67K+ members.

Twitter - A friend tipped me to the existence of Twitterhollic, a site dedicated to analyze usage of the newest darling of the social sphere. With a little URL hacking, here is a list of the top users of Twitter with "Puerto Rico" as their location. The top Twitterholic is none other than "The Gangster" with almost 7,000 followers. Again, this HIGHLY dependent upon the location each user lists, so your mileage my vary.

In my next post I'll continue with additional metrics, this time focusing on blogs and who the marketing industry thinks is leading Internet marketing in Puerto Rico.

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: !borghetti