SmartMarket Media Blog

HubSpot’s free marketing tool, Website Grader, recently graded its 1 millionth website…and its still counting. The number is staggering and reminds me of how HubSpot is becoming the online marketing equivalent of McDonalds with millions and millions served…I mean that in the most flattering sense.

Forget the “Super Size Me” fast food obesity issues…I mean the real roots of how Ray Kroc founded McDonalds. He gave people a simple eating place with popular food, low prices, friendly service and no waiting. His concept completely revolutionized the food service industry.

Website Grader was the Cambridge Massachusetts HubSpot’s first free diagnostic tool, launched in February of 2007.  It measures the inbound marketing effectiveness of a website measuring website traffic, social media, blog, SEO and other marketing tidbits and provides a score (on a scale of zero to 100) based on these factors.  It also provides great advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective and helps people understand how their site is faring against their competition.

The tool was initially created as a way to build buzz and traffic to market their inbound marketing software so when people evaluated their website using Website Grader, they might decide they needed some help. It was a simple and passive way for potential customers to enter their sales cycle.

To build buzz around Website Grader, Dharmesh Shah and his team at HubSpot promoted the free tool on the company blog and utilized social media and the blogosphere to drive traffic to the site. They posted messages in discussion forums, submitted the site to social media Web sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon, and commented on other applicable blogs with a link suggesting Website Grader as a tool people might like to try.

Today, Website Grader continues to be a valuable tool for HubSpot, potential customers, small to midsized businesses and marketers alike. They have also added other tools to grade people’s Twitter and Facebook engagement as well as tons of free webinars and a free weekly marketing podcast called HubSpot TV that talks about the weekly news regarding online marketing in a fun and informative way.

All of these tools, webinars, podcasts, etc. are all free and all of their efforts are engaging potential leads to check out their product lines. HubSpot has seen the way people are interacting online and is completely revolutionizing the way marketing is done online because of it. Website Grader was the first step on that path. I love to use Website Grader as an example of successful viral marketing when I give seminars and presentations.

So kudos to HubSpot and Website Grader for topping a million websites graded, I hope they are able to grade millions and millions more. Their revolutionary approach to inbound marketing is changing the way businesses are marketing online the same way McDonalds completely changed the entire fast food industry. Is it coincidence that Mike Volpe, the Vice President of Inbound Marketing at HubSpot is obsessed with the McRib? I think not.

Recent Posts:

Online Video Driving Automotive Industry Recovery

Increasing Donations Using Video & E-Mail Marketing

Once again TubeMogul has released some pretty awesome statistical analysis regarding how people find videos online, from embeds on blogs to video search engines. For a two-month period, they recorded inbound URLs for a sample of over 35 million video streams from six top video sites. But which sources drive the most video views? For the full report from TubeMogul Industry Analysis, continue reading here. Here are some of the highlighted statistics that I found truly interesting:

45% of viewers find a video by direct navigation to a video site (i.e. going to YouTube and searching or clicking around the featured or related videos).

No surprise here given that over 10 hours of video footage are uploaded to YouTube every minute that going directly to the video sharing sites and searching would be the top method of finding videos.

In terms of individual web sites referring traffic, no single source dominated, here are the top 20 individual referrers:

However, since there are a limited number of players in certain areas online, TubeMogul was able to infer that:

• 11.18% of all traffic comes from search engines
• 3.66% comes from social networks
• 3.19% comes from social bookmarking sites
• 0.63% derives from video search engines
• 0.05% is directed from Email/IM
• 80.88% makes up the rest of the referred traffic…of this mix it is almost completely made up of blogs from the thousands of different blogs they scanned.

Here are the really interesting facts here:

Digg beats StumbleUpon by nearly 0.4% for video referrals

I wouldn’t have guessed that. When I share videos on both social bookmarking sites my traffic from StumbleUpon is nearly triple the traffic I receive from Digg. StumbleUpon is my #4 traffic source for the website (which of course does include my blog posts) bringing in 9.97% of my site traffic while Digg is my #10 source of traffic (also including my blog posts) accounting for about 3.85% of all my site traffic. About half of my bookmarks are for videos while the other half are for blog posts (possibly even this one will end up on both). Of course this is just me and I am not profiling over 35 million videos for my statistics.

0.05% is directed from Email/IM

This I find staggering to be so low. One of the easiest and most cost effective ways to get people to share your videos is through email marketing – particularly to an existing base of people who have opted in to receive your email newsletter. In a recent post about integrating video into your email marketing campaign I found that there was a significant 175% increase in click-throughs when video content was included in an email campaign. It sounds like a lot of people are missing the boat on this possible distribution channel.

Blogs sourcing most of the 80.88% of all referred traffic in this sample.

To those trying to make a video go viral, this should be telling you to reach out to relevant bloggers who could help you tremendously with the push for video views.

0.63% derives from video search engines

This is bad news to the ever increasing number of online video search sites that seem to keep popping up promising to help your video go viral or supposedly helping you search. With less than a 1% take, that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. I’ve long held that most of these sites have very little value to the online video producer – this study just proves my theory.

So the real take-a-way here…

…is engaging bloggers to work with you by sharing the video with them. If nearly 81% of video traffic is coming from blogs it only makes sense to try and engage relevant bloggers to share your video. The other real key that isn’t really discussed is to make sure you optimize a video’s meta-data to ensure it can easily be found by those who are searching.

How many views make a viral video a success?

How Much of a Typical Online Video Is Actually Watched?

A couple of months ago, I responded to a request on Twitter from Danny Brown asking if anyone would be interested in being interviewed for a discussion on social media. I replied with my answers and became one of the first in a series of posts he did as part of his “Discussing Social Media” blog article series. Knowing what my answers were for why I used social media, I was very interested to hear what Danny’s perspective was on a lot of the same issues, however I changed some of the questions a bit to focus more on PR and how that is changing.

Danny Brown is the owner of Press Release PR, a boutique agency specializing in search engine optimized press releases and social media PR. He is a blog partner of the iEntry and WebProNews business network and a contributor to the Dad-o-Matic project.

Danny Brown: There are many reasons why a search engine optimized press release still offers value even with social media and Web 2.0 taking such prominence. The key advantage is your prominence in search engines. If a press release is optimized properly then your keywords will see you appear near the top of the major search engines for relevant searches.

This makes it easier for your target audience to find you, as well as bloggers who’re interested in your product. So there’s a definite synergy between SEO press releases and Web 2.0 / social media. And of course there are the backlinks to your site.

EG: How does traditional channel public relations differ from Social Media PR?

DB: Traditional PR will see you approach your promotional campaign from the viewpoint of getting your news on TV, radio or print. You send your news out to your media contacts and relevant outlets and hopefully it’ll be picked up. Social media PR still uses these tools, but it also uses much more. Imagine a Twitter conversation where you can have your client answering questions in an impromptu Twitter meeting, using hashtags to separate from the normal conversation. Or you get to the front page of Digg and all of a sudden your news is viral.

Then you have the social media news release benefits, where you can show videos and a visual tour of you, your company or product. This is far more stimulating and interactive than a traditional PR campaign.
THAT’S the beauty of social media – your client can truly interact from the off, as opposed to hoping for interaction with traditional media outlets. It’s also incredibly cost-effective for the client, compared to often prohibitive traditional PR campaigns.

EG: What social media tools or applications do you use?

DB: There are a few I use for different reasons on a personal level. These are the usual suspects – Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, etc.

However, from a PR side, there are some excellent applications that aren’t being utilized anywhere near enough. For example, I’ve been a big fan of BackType from Day 1 – the ability to view comments on blogs that are discussing your business or brand is invaluable, and offers a great way to offer instant reaction. I’ve already mentioned how Twitter can be used for PR – but its applications are where it’s really at.

For instance, I use Tweetcloud to offer clients a visual overview of why Twitter is invaluable at connecting with their audience. It shows how popular a brand or term is, as well as offering a business an idea of what their competitors are discussing, and with whom. This kind of information is invaluable when extolling the benefits of social media. I also recommend any client to use Google Alerts and Serph to monitor their company’s reputation online.

EG:f you only had access to one social media tool which would you choose and why?

DB: If it was just one, I’d seriously have to say Twitter. This is without a doubt the future of business networking and micro-blogging, as well as brand promotion, and I can’t believe how many businesses haven’t realized this yet.

EG: What is the one thing you know about social media that many people don’t know or don’t understand?

I’d probably say the understanding that social media is a two-way thing. Most companies that enter social media do so for the wrong reasons – they’re either looking for the quick result, or the all-important Return on Investment (ROI). Social media doesn’t work this way – one thing I always make sure my clients are aware of.

It’s all about building the relationships with the people that can make a difference for you – customers, contemporaries, even competitors in some instances. Interact with your audience, build up that mutual trust and respect. Know that you’re in it for the long haul and that you can’t use social media just to broadcast messages about you and you alone.

Gaining that understanding will enable you to place more emphasis on building long-term relationships that will offer sustained results, as opposed to the quick buck ones that never last. You’ll also be in a far stronger position to build brand loyalty than any of your competitors that aren’t using social media – and that’s a powerful enough reason on its own for using it.

EG: Thanks Danny!