If you’re a marketer, and you’re not familiar with EdgeRank, you should be. This is the algorithm Facebook uses to determine which content to show your fans. But that’s just the tip of the sword.

Raidious works with lots of enterprise-level global and national brands, managing social media for hundreds of thousands of fans and hundreds of thousands of interactions every month. Raidious has been in the social media optimization game for awhile now. Over the last year, we have been doing more homework on EdgeRank to help our existing clients do things like triple their Facebook fan base, add 20,000 fans in a 48 hour period, and drive 60% increases in online sales worth over a million and a half dollars – all attributable directly to social media (and that was just one client). We are pretty excited about what we have learned, and thought it would be valuable information to share with other marketers, who may be wondering why their numbers on Facebook have gone down recently, or why they are not seeing the growth they want. The answer is EdgeRank, Facebook’s content assassin. That’s right:

Facebook is trying to assassinate your content.

Only you can protect it – but you must learn the exquisite art of EdgeRank, grasshopper.

Learn how to become an EdgeRank Ninja, with Raidious and Awareness Networks, at our upcoming Webinar. If the word “algorithm” scares you, don’t worry. This will not be a deep dive into Calculus 401. I’ll give an easy to understand overview of the algorithm, with as little heavy math as possible (although there will be a little bit). I can also guarantee the appearance of at least one cute picture of a kitten, and Animal from the Muppets. Also, lots of ninja pictures, and a behind the scenes look at the end result of ongoing EdgeRank optimization, and some guidance on how you, too, can start leveraging EdgeRank for your brand.

I would love to see you there, and please bring a friend. It will be fun, and you can impress your boss afterwards with your crazy EdgeRank ninja skills. Hiii-YA!

Related articles

• Understanding How Algorithms Impact Content (raidious.com)
• EdgeRank and Graph Rank Defined (insidefacebook.com)
• The End of the Echo Chamber (slate.com)

Email marketing is changing fast.

At a jam-packed webinar last week, Raidious partnered with our friends at Delivra to shed some light on some of the top email marketing trends we have been seeing with our clients. If you were not able to attend the webinar, no worries – we recorded it so you can watch it at your leisure. Just click on the image below to see the webinar, or grab the slides!

Here are some of the trends we covered:

• Multiplatform
• Outside Outlook
• Email Anywhere
• Mobile Expansion
• Versioned Design
• Subject Line Trends
• Audience First
• Hub & Spoke Infrastructure
• Measuring Content
• Measuring Engagement
• Measuring Conversion
• Measuring Amplification
• Real Time Relevancy
• Multiplatform Correlations
• Email Content Strategy

For more detail on these email trends (or just to relive the magic), here is the full recording:

Lots of great questions from the audience are captured in the webinar, but not on the slide deck.

We had a fantastic time with all of the folks from Delivra, and got to see their awesome new office space. Megan Glover from Delivra and PJ Gindling from Raidious did a ton of work to get this prepared. Thanks to you both!

Also, thanks to Neil Berman, CEO Delivra, who was awesome to work with. Most importantly, thanks to everyone who attended or signed up! If you have more questions about Email Marketing or Content Strategy, please feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to help!

Related articles

• Spotlight: Email Marketing with Delivra (marketingtechblog.com)
• Welcome Email Marketing Blog Sponsor Delivra! (marketingtechblog.com)
• Same Email Marketing Pains…10 Years Later. (marketingtechblog.com)
• Use Mobile to Acquire Email Subscribers (marketingtechblog.com)

Thanks for visiting our new site – we have spent the last few weeks on a redesign, courtesy of our very own Brian Conradt. We changed things up a bit from our old site, because a lot of our users were telling us they had visited the site, but still were not sure exactly what we did.

It’s understandable – we are a very different company than most marketers are used to seeing. Most advertising agencies, PR firms, and digital agencies talk a lot about technology oriented stuff like email marketing, integrated campaigns, specific platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and the buzzword of the century (so far) – Social Media.

We don’t use that language because we don’t think or operate like those kinds of companies. We are a content company. We take a content-centric approach to all of those tactics. If you think about it, it’s all content. Email marketing is successful not because of the technology, but because of the content. Social media is all content (what would Twitter be without the tweets?). Websites are just places to put content. Every analytics measurement you make in online marketing is a measurement of the success of the content. Technology doesn’t integrate with offline campaigns – the content does.

So why is everybody else so focused on all the technology?

It’s glamorous. It’s sexy. It’s the new-new thing. I totally understand – everyone at Raidious has a pretty high geek factor. We love this stuff, too. But none of it works without content.

With that in mind, we built a company to solve the right problem – the problem of how to create, manage, and distribute content online for brands in a platform-agnostic manner. What happens when you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in something like MySpace, and then Facebook comes along? If you have a MySpace strategy, you’re screwed. If you have a content strategy, congratulations – you just got a brand new platform to publish your content! When your online strategy is a content-centric strategy, technology can just evolve all over the place, and it won’t matter – because no matter what the new-new thing  is or what it becomes, it will be driven by content.

We also look at social media as a content problem (which it is). We are purpose-built not just to publish content, but to monitor and moderate the dialog around it – to leverage content that other people are producing about your brand. Most importantly, we developed a culture of optimization – we measure and optimize your content to deliver ever-increasing ROI. The longer we work with you, the better your results get.

The big question is . . .  how? How do we make the content? How do we manage the dialog? How are we so different?

The answers are all here – and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, email me, and I will be happy to help. Enjoy the new site, and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments section!

This past Saturday, June 26, we at Raidious celebrated our first anniversary as a company.

The folks at Hirons & Company were kind enough to donate their suite at Victory Field so we could enjoy food, drinks, and some fine baseball courtesy of the Indianapolis Indians.

A good time was had by all. Just watch the video for proof.

On Monday the Federal Trade Commission changed the rules for advertisers and bloggers and how they communicate to the public.  Starting December 1st bloggers that review products must divulge their relationship with the advertiser.

Why change the rules for these seemingly innocent bloggers?

Well for starters the current endorsement and testimonial in advertising rule hasn’t been visited since 1980, four years before wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) was born. And with the continual change of the online social construct (Twitter, Facebook, etc), marketers are seeing the value of the brand journalism that review bloggers do.

For instance, if you follow a home restoration blog regularly, and have for some time, you have a certain amount of trust in what that blogger is writing about. You visit there site for all sorts of reasons: for simple maintenance tips, for help on design options and to see what cute thing their kid did today. This person is real to you and help guide your decisions in everyday life. Therefore you have a right to know if Lowe’s or Home Depot is covering the cost of this bloggers materials or writing them a $5,000 check every month. That is what the FTC wants to clear up.

There are probably bloggers out there clamoring at the thought that they will no longer receive “FREE” items from advertisers. First off, if this is why you blog I can’t help you. Secondly, you as a person have a choice to talk about any product you want, good or bad. That advertiser wants you to write a glowing review, but your opinion is worth more than a pair of adequate sneakers.

“the rules are looking ahead to a quite possible future when there is a market to buy ‘authentic’ public endorsements.” Jonathan Zittrain, professor Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society

Raidious Digital Content Services isn’t in the game of “ghost blogging” or misrepresenting brands. We believe in leveraging owned media to engage the relationship between the user and the brand. Posing as an “earned media” source is underhanded and we are happy the FTC is stepping up to stop this practice.

More Reading:

• NYTimes article “Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure”
• Time’s “25 Best Blogs 2009″