Posted on February 9th, 2010 by AndrewHazenCom | No Comments »
Later today, Google is due to launch a social product that will compete with the currently popular social networks – Facebook and TwitterAs the Wall Street Journal reported, Gmail will get a new module that will stream media and status updates of online friends. This module sounds like a Gmail Labs feature which could be enabled or disabled by account holder’s choice.
Google has already enabled watching YouTube videos in Gmail Chat. Whatever the integration into Gmail would be like, there’s always a kill switch to bring the service back to normal.
Silicon Alley Insider is already calling the feature Google’s “Twitter-Killer.”
Posted on February 3rd, 2010 by AndrewHazenCom | No Comments »
Social media is on EVERYONE’S minds these days….some look to companies like Prime Visibility to strategize and execute social media tactics while others handle all the social media inhouse. In either situation, it is important not to loose sight that it is VITAL to turn your team/staff into social media ambassadors.
Develop a policy that outlines corporate guidelines for communicating in the online world
Build a centralized hub for employees to communicate both internally and externally
Encourage management to actively spread the message through social media.
Make sure everyone on your team is creating social media handles in social platforms such as twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, etc. Does your company have a social media policy? If not checkout our latest Prime Insights due out soon as we cover that very topic! Not getting Prime Insights? Be sure to follow us on twitter @PrimeVisibility and we will let you know when the next issue goes out.
Posted on December 31st, 2009 by AndrewHazen | No Comments »
Was reading a very good piece this morning on how press releases can be great for search engine rankings and search traffic…this isn’t “new” news; however it is often overlooked!
Back in the summer, PRWeb shared a case study, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the “shelf life” of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.
In a study from Arketi Group, also back in the summer, journalists were found to use the web in the following ways:
So – if you haven’t been using press releases the way you should; make it a point to start the New Year right and optimize your press releases accordinly so you can help your business grow, grow, grow!
Posted on December 10th, 2009 by AndrewHazen | No Comments »
Dell Inc., relying on social-networking sites to drum up sales of personal computers, said its promotions on Twitter have helped generate more than $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories and software.
The number of users signing up to get Dell’s tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell’s online unit. More than 100 employees send out the tweets — Twitter’s 140-character messages — over 35 different channels.
Dell, the third-largest maker of PCs, started using Twitter two years ago to reach new customers. The $6.5 million represents the total amount generated through direct customer interactions on Twitter over that time. While those sales are a fraction of Dell’s $61.1 billion in annual revenue last year, the company sees Twitter as one of its most significant ways of interacting with customers, Mehta said.
“It’s a very vibrant channel for us and it’s growing aggressively,” Mehta said in an interview. “It’s not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it’s that it’s happening globally.”
Dell reaches Twitter users in 12 countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, China and Japan. Brazil’s Twitter users spent $800,000 in the past eight months, Mehta said.
Posted on December 9th, 2009 by AndrewHazen | No Comments »
As reported today on the official Google Blog:
Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world’s information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.
That’s why today, at the Computer History Museum, we’re excited to share a few new innovations in the areas of real-time, mobile and social search that we feel are important steps in the evolution of information access.
First, we’re introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
Try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web.
Here’s how it looks
Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it’s happening, even if it’s not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn’t know about it beforehand. For example, in the screen shot, the big story was about GM’s stabilizing car sales, which shows under “News results.” Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the “Latest results” feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM’s CEO stepped down.
Click on “Latest results” or select “Latest” from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only “Updates” from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you’re in line to buy tickets.
And, as part of our launch of real-time on Google search, we’ve added “hot topics” to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time. With this improvement and a series of other interface enhancements, Google Trends is graduating from Labs.
Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we’re announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.
The new features will be rolling out in the next few days and will be available globally in English. You can try them out today by visiting Google Trends and clicking on a “hot topic,” which in most cases will bring you to a search results page with the new real-time feature.
Posted on December 8th, 2009 by AndrewHazen | 4 Comments »
Google plans on mailing around 100,000 window stickers to restaurants, hotels, bars, and other retail entities around the nation during the next two weeks. Each sticker will have a unique scannable barcode that is designed to work with numerous popular mobile phones and help local businesses target on-the-go consumers with promotions such as coupons.
From the user perspective, the phones will need to include a camera feature and have an app that scans barcodes, according to an announcement by the Mountain View, CA-based online giant earlier today. The initiative builds on the brand’s “Favorite Places” program for Google Maps that started last summer, while beginning its first outreach to local businesses in an effort that’s expected to continue into 2010.
A spokesperson for the search site explained the local businesses for this initial run were selected due to having an established account in Google’s “Local Business Center” and producing a high number of clicks on their Google.com and Google Maps listings. Site stats were included in the literature that accompanied the decal-styled stickers, said the spokesperson, as well as “ideas for how to use the ‘Local Business Center’ as a daily tool for running their business, and an overview of why the sticker could be useful to them, and how their potential customers could use them.”
Posted on December 8th, 2009 by AndrewHazen | No Comments »
2009’s crop of top viral video advertisements show us that people are willing to embrace a host of creative approaches on the social video Web, from mini-films, to user-generated advocacy, to YouTube celebrity endorsers, to elaborate commercial-grade productions. That’s good news for creators.
Regardless of the approach, the key for marketers is a solid understanding of what a brand is, who is the brand’s audience, and what moves them. Strangely enough, this formula sounds like traditional advertising. This year’s Top 10 is certainly a glimpse of how the viral video ad business is evolving, and as marketers, what we can learn from that evolution.
