Today I want to write about something for what I have been very curious and interested to observe and analyze since I have signed up for in 2007: Facebook yes THE Social Network that took a very special place in million of lives worldwide. 

Since 2007, I have been observing my friends behaviors and mine at the same occasion, and I have discerned specific categories of users, note that the term user usually refers to an Internet user or a drug addict which idea makes me smile. As for every usage behaviors, there are various levels of usage from light users to moderate and to heavy users. In the facebook world some people call themselves addict because they are heavy users, meaning that they can not envisage daily life without their shot of  e. social interactions via the social network.

Now, I think it will be more exciting to talk about types of users rather that level of usage. The differences between facebookers ( as I call them ) lie in the types of links, and dependencies they have with the website. Has the social network taken a whole hand on one’s life? or is the facebooker in total control and spends a reasonnable amount of time on it? Does it have consequencies on her/his life such as huge social impact in a good or bad way?

Here is my take on social identities: 

1) The light, distant and in control: this facebooker found that the website was an inevitable and necessary place to be on but did not want it to either take control of her/his daily routine or invade her/his privacy, so she/he decided to use it without sharing to much information and without exposing herself/himself to an extent that she/he considers unacceptable. This person usually shares basic informations and posts very few pictures, never or very rarely updates her/his status. He, she signs in no more than once a week to check event invitations or updates of pages of interests. Eventually this user likes a few pages that her/his friends suggested.

2) The moderate, irregular,  sometimes light and sometimes heavy: this facebooker has period of high level of activity and others of low or almost absent activity. This user has not an absolute emotional control over her/his activity. This user eventually is more involved personally and intimately in her/his usage. She/he is more sensitive to status updates from others, in a good or bad way. The good way is the social, non emotionally involved reaction that is to acknowledge of an information that has been shared by someone simply in order to learn something or to have a discussion without any emotions involved. But facebook makes this a little tricky with the “like” and ” unlike” every interaction is taken to an emotional level. So the bad way is when someone gets too emotionally involved. Let’s take this example of cases of divorces in Great Britain, in 2011 check it here. It is cited that facebook would be in cause of 30% of divorces in Great Britain in 2011, where spouses would have had behaviors on the network that would have upset/hurt their partners. 

3) The Heavy, no less no more:  To keep it simple this one is hooked. She/he connects many times a day and will admit that she/he has a massive consumption and asserts that it is eventually a ” little bit too much” or won’t admit and asserts that because of x, y, and b she/he does not have a problem.This person shares a lot of content: pictures, status and so on.This person interacts with the website with multiple devices all along the day, and usually has set up notifications on her/his smartphone ( which can even wake her/him up at night and get her/him to use the website).

Then everyone gets a chance to showcase herself/himself the way she/he wants, here are the ways I have noticed:

1) The discreet/reserved facebooker: This one is probably a light or moderate user who do not take pleasure in showcasting herself/himself but rather prefers keep things private.

2) The socially engaged: This one is always liking, or commenting and saying nice things to her/his friends, this makes her/him feel happy and in connection with people and it gives her/him a feeling of belonging and recognition that she/he might be seeking.

3) The show, star-system facebooker : This one finds satisfaction displaying more personal information and pictures than others. It helps he/her be insured and feel secured about the state of her/his life. That is to say that this person eventually needs approval of others in regards to her/his life. It is a little bit like asking: Hey guys tell me that you think that I have a great life. And this simple interaction actually makes some people pleased and happy. You may know the phrase by Andy Warhol ” In the future everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes”.

Note that behaviors often fall into a specific age category, but not always it is common to see adults behaving as teenagers and vice versa.

In regards to keywords when doing search engine optimization for a web page, keep in mind that the spiders are looking at these three things:

Frequency: How often a keyword is used on a Web Page. Any word or phrase is considered a keyword if it’s used at least twice in the page.( Note that search engines do not include stop words such as and, the, a, and so forth as keywords, although they may be part of keyword phrases.)

Density: Keyword density is like frequency, but it measures what percentage of the total page content the keyword appears.You will want to have each keyword comprise no more than five percent of the total page content. To determine a density for a specific keyword, say the word appears 25 times on 1000 words page, you divide 25 per 1000 and then multiply by 100 to get a density of 2.5 %.

Distribution: This measures whether the keyword is evenly distributed throughout the page and the site. There is some debate over whether placing keywords higher on the page gives a boost to your rankings. Generally speaking it is better to sprinkle keywords all over the page in a natural writing fashion.It will be easier to read and it scores better with search engines.

Have you heard of blended content for search engine results optimization? chances are you have, since the concept is not new although still evolving. 

The term “blended” in SEO applies to the diverse types of content one can find on a search page results. For example when you type the query Britney Spears on google search box you will find a variety of results types, such as news at the top of the page, then official website followed by image and video results. The concept of the golden triangle is that a web user’s eyes navigate from top left to middle bottom and then to the right side when landing on a search result page. With blended content, the eyes are first caught by images and pictures content, such as news related pics or images and videos, because the eyes are attracted at what looks different.

So when working on an optimization strategy if your industry allows it you might want to focus on this rich and blended content as well as develop link building.

Social Analytics like the new version of Google Analytics   allows to:

• Track goal conversions for your website
• Analyze social media referral traffic
• See the correlation between social media referral traffic and goal conversions
• Analyze direct traffic
• Analyze search traffic

It is useful to know what stands for referral traffic and direct traffic for social media activity. When looking at social stats on google analytics, one can see that social referrers facebook and twitter are only taken as referrers when a link is being clicked directly from a browser but is not taken into account all that is generated through APIs and applications.

All the activity that is from 3rd party agents is thus counted as direct traffic. There is a method to get more accurate results that is to tag your links. It consists in entering the link you want to track and then fill in details about the campaign, learn more here at Google support.