@BasilPuglisi

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Innovative ways Professional PR People are Using Social Media

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Social Media has become part of every serious advertising campaign, and most PR people have been using it on a daily basis; following and engaging in conversations on different media platforms, checking what the competition is doing and sharing news and information about their products.

Besides the usual advice of how to engage your followers on Twitter: use a friendly tone, answer quickly, make Twitter a place where you give prizes and announce competitions, it is interesting to see what the professionals do to take advantage of what the market has to offer.  What causes their blood pressure to go up and what can we, small business owners, learn from them?

Here are a few tips: –

  • Pay attention to the news. Events happening around the world might trigger some reaction and connection in your mind. Try to tie these events to your product or service. Examples? A celebrity (Elizabeth Taylor) passes away. Is there a way you can tie it in to your clothes line? Jewelry? Make Up? Look at what the New York Public Library is doing, which makes it the number one library on Twitter and Facebook. When JD Salinger passed away, they tweeted many of his quotes and linked them to the corresponding books in the library. Newsweek, NPR Fresh Air and other news sites used the Library tweets and mentioned them as the source.

 

  • Find Freelancers to Tweet for you. Use social Media to find the right people. Example: the tourism department of Rwanda wanted people to tweet for them to increase their visibility as a vacation destination. They started a contest on Twitter for people to get an all-paid visit to Rwanda in exchange for tweets about their visit. More than 80 people joined the contest and 3 won. They posted 448 tweets which were visible to 1.5 million people.

 

  • Create an influencer network. Some PR agencies are using social media to deliver a complete network of influencers as a package deal to their clients – A group of bloggers, opinionated and media savvy who use the product and write about it. They can also be used as a test group for new products. Look at what Child’s Play PR did with a network of Moms.

 

  • The immediacy of social media offers PR people an opportunity to insert themselves when news somehow related to them is posted, just like it happened in SXSW Interactive Festival. They secured coverage on behalf of their clients by showing up at events via Twitter. They have abandoned e mail or phone calls as a favorite means of communication.

 

  • Use mainstay advertisement to increase twitter visibility. Freed Maxick, an accounting firm, used billboards in late 2009 to display updates from the company’s tweets in real time. In 2010 they did it with Facebook as well. That drove many people to follow them on Twitter and made them a reputable company that gives up to date, accurate information.

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Did Google Panda Change the Playing Field?

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From time to time, when Google identifies a ‘gaming’ of their search engine results, its engineers open up the algorithms and tweak them, sending shudders in the world of e commerce and Internet advertising. Speculations run rampart until Google launches it to the world.

One such tweak happened lately; in February 2011, Google launched such a change and named it Panda. They called the tweak “A High Quality Sites Algorithms”. It came in reaction to what they call “Content Farms” and the blogosphere immediately filled in the name of one of the biggest player – Demand Media, who was gaining top listings with copied content.

In order to cut on the clutter of results you get from a query, Google is trying to root out the low quality sites either by checking content, enabling users (through a Chrome extension) to block sites from their searches, or by lowering the ranking of copies material. “The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.” Said Google’s Matt Cutts.

This changed impacted US sites only until April 11, 2011, when Google rolled this change to all English language queries and made a few changes. Their statistics show the change has impacted 12% of the queries in the United States. Most impacted were Mahalo.com, Wisegeek.com followed by Ezinearticles.com, Hubpages.com, Suite101.com, Superpages.com and spike.com. The gainers were news sources like Reuters.com, LATimes.com, CBSnews.com and information sites like Techcrunch.com, Blogpost.com, Mashable.com and even YouTube.

The new adjustment was meant to take care of a gap in their program that enables a site like eHow.com not only slide down but gain in ranking. Demand Media, the owner of eHow, was immediately impacted.

Some small businesses might have seen a change in their ranking. Google is said to be open to complaints that will be implemented, if found correct.

Online Publisher Association estimated that $1 Billion will be redistributed across the online publishing industry as a result of this change.

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Google Tags Calls it Quits

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It seems as if April 29th will be the last day of existence for Google Tags. If you have ever used Google Maps or Places, you have likely seen the red tags that represent an ad campaign launched by Google in a testing phase about a year ago. This marketing attempt was created to allow business owners to enhance the representation of their businesses on any Google Maps or Places searches. If a viewer was browsing areas near the businesses location, this handy tag not only designated a landmark, but also provided a more detailed look at that business.

What Are Google Tags?

Once clicked on the tag can display a variety of information including:

  • Directions to and from
  • Zoom in and out
  • Street view
  • Save to map options

And even the options to send the tag information via email, GPS, and other car systems. In addition, when viewing Google Maps or Places in full screen, other options on the left-side panel also provide another great looking manner of business advertising by showing users:

  • Thumbnail photos of the location
  • Other nearby landmarks
  • Related Ads to nearby options that directly support the advertised business. I.E. resort sites are likely to show ads for lodging and travel nearby.

While some users appear to be feeling let down by Google for eliminating this advertising option, others are not so sure that they truly benefitted from it in relation to its cost per month of $25 USD to maintain.

Success Stories More Localized

Google had previously provided a video extolling all of the virtues, benefits, and advertising opportunities within their Tag system. Users, most especially those who live in extremely urban areas report that in a very competitive local war with other businesses offering the same services, Google Tags has helped to direct those most locally to their business once users locate their Google Tag on the map.

Why are Google Tags Going Extinct?

Google execs cite the extinction of Tags due in large part to the fact that it was mostly an advertising experiment to begin with. Back in September 2010, it was reported that Google was aggressively pushing their Tag system for advertising. However, in October, they then pulled their ability to utilize the website URL tag option, which suddenly rendered the system a lot less useful. So, in this past week, Google has announced an end to the Tag system.

Google developers then stated ,”We’ve made a decision to shift our efforts toward other present and future product offerings for local businesses, and will be discontinuing this trial. To that end, we’ve now halted new signups and will be working with existing participating businesses over the coming weeks to help them meet their marketing needs with other Google products where possible.”

They also acknowledged that they had learned quite a bit from the Tags trial and that knowledge and understanding would be carried on with them as they strive to find the most accommodating ways to server their users as well as small and local businesses.

We’ve learned a lot from our Tags trial and will take that knowledge into account as we continue to find the best ways to serve users and local businesses alike. Lastly, we want to thank all of the businesses that were part of our Tags trial, and we hope we can meet their advertising needs with one of our existing products.

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Can Virtual Salespeople Increase the Bottom Line?

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With the rise of digital media communications such as video advertising and remote access viewing, another element that has been showing promise for small and large businesses alike is the use of speaking avatars, or virtual spokes models.

SitePal is one of the websites taking advantage of the benefits of speaking avatars for business and education. Their features allow for detailed personalization such as the ability to upload your own photo in which to create the website avatar, as well as over two-hundred and fifty customizable pre-made examples to choose from or build upon.

Users can use their own voices or take advantage of the built-in version. The good news is that voice synthesis, or artificially produced human voices, have greatly improved since the early days of the internet. Instead of the droning monotone of old, voices now include fairly realistic inflections and the highs and lows of natural speech.

This fun and powerful tool has become more common and beneficial as seen on many of the sites that now use SitePal.

Global ranking for Sitepal is at #34,425. While around one-third of the site’s visitors are from the U.S., it is also very popular in Mexico.

LiveFaceOnWeb also offers an element of employing digital salespersons but with a bit of a more realistic slant than the average creatively constructed speaking avatars. LiveFaceOnWeb stands behind their belief that people relate better to real people, so that providing human models for their digital avatars can help to enrich the interactivity of any website.

LiveFaceOnWeb allows users to choose from a selection of live models to represent their services, products or other online opportunities. Creating the finished product gives the individual purchasing the service the ability to customize video length, shot parameters and the type of presentation.

Users will then create a script and submit it, and within a few days they will have a completed advertisement made with, and by, live professionals in their industries. They also offer packages with complete services for those who have little to no experience.

Whether due to these web sites’ ages or because users prefer the animated avatars to the human versions, may still be undetermined but global rankings show LiveFaceOnWeb at #58,595. The sites viewers are predominantly males between the ages of forty-five to sixty-five and older with some college education. 

The Bottom Line

So how can this form of advertising offer any benefits to your business or services website?

  • Results show that placing an avatar or live human communication element on your website’s landing page can greatly reduce bounce rates.
  • Beyond the aesthetic and the ability to keep readers on your page longer, avatars can also supply a marketing nudge by delivering short, precise sales pitches to the visitor while they are simultaneously browsing the text aspect of your site.
  • Digital advertising in this format has also shown to be effective in announcing discounts, specials and bonuses on your products or services that can lead visitors deeper into browsing your product or service line, as well as closer to becoming a new customer.
  • Custom avatars can also be used to help site visitors navigate your site. This can help users who may be interested in your products and services, but are not net savvy enough to navigate other sites that may be more confusing.
  • Personalized Avatars can also be configured to collect contact information from prospective customers before they exit your website. Attaching interactive contact forms help to make this an easy and flexible format for data collection.
  • Call-to-action buttons or prompts can be reinforced by a speaking avatar that makes the visitor aware  them.

A study conducted by Dr. Ralph Wilson, the CEO of WebMarketingToday, analyzed the influence of the speaking avatar against how long visitors spent on his website. The results showed that the speaking character had enormous impact. The average time spent on his site increased by an average of 33% with a 17% increase in page views for each visitor.

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Loopt: A Social Location Tool

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Let’s say you step out of class or a business meeting or a long day at work, and you wonder; where are my friends right now and what are they up to? What fun activity am I missing?

Loopt, a mobile application, helps you see a clear picture of your social circle, without making a round of calls or texts. This virtual social application is meant to be a facilitator of the real social world.

Founded in 2005 and launched in 2008 as an iPhone app, Loopt is growing and incorporating other social media platforms. In January 2011 the site came up with a 4.0 update that changed the look, added new features and is applicable on all smart phones. At the moment, Loopt has more than 4 million users and have partnerships with Google Maps, Facebook Places and Twitter, among others.

Their application lets you see at a glance and in real time where your friends are hanging out. It will show you who is at a nearby place and wants company. It will show you where is this new place everyone is talking about and who’s there. You can text your friends and get a map how to get there.

Another service they provide are recommendations to places you have never been before. If you are on a business trip, in a new city, wouldn’t you want to get first hand recommendations about places to eat or hang out? Again, you might meet a tall dark stranger who is on your network of virtual friends.

In the latest update, out in April 2011, you can get at-a-glance recommendations about a place. Let’s face it, say the makers of Loopt. Most of the remarks are either very good – people loved it enough to write about it, or very bad – they were really unhappy with something. Who has the time to go through all those posts? Their Loopt Q, lets you see it in a graph form. Good reviews vs. bad ones. You don’t have to stand outside a restaurant for half an hour and read all the posts. This service is now available only in San Francisco, with a plan to roll it soon to other cities as well.

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YouTube founders Gets Delicious

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The top and leading social bookmarking service, Delicious, has been sold by Yahoo to co-founders of YouTube, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. Begun in 2003, Yahoo acquired the service in 2005. Delicious claims a worldwide community of loyal users. Delicious is also a part of AVOS, a relatively new internet company in San Mateo, California.

Although Yahoo will continue to operate the bookmarking site until July, when the transition period ends, all data will be moved to the new Delicious servers. This means that the next time users sign into Delicious, they will be asked for permission for approval in moving your currently saved bookmarks to their new location.

Do Not Forget to Approve Your Bookmark Change Over

Members should have also received a message that provides notification and how to move the bookmarks, as well as what will happen if they do not.

Highly aware that this news has come as a surprise to its many users, Delicious execs also provided all the imperative information to their users today in a fresh press release from AVOS, as well as an explanatory blog in addition to the email sent out to each member.

Good News for Delicious Users

In the end, users should not be worried as AVOS does plan to continue the widely used service and therefore have taken the many necessary steps to ensure that all users know of the impending changeover and have plenty of time to approve their own bookmarks transfer to the new Delicious servers.

Developers and execs are well aware that there will be a period of adjustment as AVOS launches Delicious on their own, but they also have shared that their intentions for Delicious are to continually grow and improve on the services currently offered.

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Meetup: Social Networking On & Off the Web

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Meetup is a social gathering site that helps to organize groups for local events, interest, and shared educational opportunities. Meetup’s major goal is to encourage people to understand that they can change their world, indeed our whole world, by organizing into groups that can be powerful enough to make great differences.

Who Uses Meetup?

Ranked #462 globally, the cities of San Diego and Denver show particularly high viewer numbers. Although it is used in countries like the UK and Canada, 70% of Meetup’s site visitors are located in the U.S. where its traffic rank is #129. Most common users are women from ages 35 to 64 with some college education. Most of these average users tend to browse from work.

People from all walks, niches, communities, and can and do use Meetup. Meetup can help:

  • To find others in your local area who share similar interest
  • To provide forums where users can learn, teach, and share
  • To encourage users to make friends and have fun
  • To teach that groups can be a powerful aspect for the common person to rise up, stand up, unite and help to make a difference on a local or global level

Meetup has 4.6 million monthly visitors with 3.9 million registered users. It helps to organize 80,000 meetings per month involving 37,000 local groups. Meetup provides coverage for over 3,500 topics and interests, in 4,000 cities, in 100 countries.

What is a Meetup Group?

Users can register with Meetup and begin to set up their own groups meetings. Users most commonly will initiate a Meetup group by posting a set date and time for a Meetup. Popular Meetup group topics are interest are:

  • Hiking
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Knitting
  • Moms
  • Poker
  • Travel
  • Writers

The topics are virtually endless and only restricted to the imagination of its creator. Meetup’s goal is to make sure that although users can benefit greatly from communication, education and integration provided by the internet on a regular basis, face-to-face interaction can provide many benefits that online communications cannot.

Major Meetups

This week a major Meetup group will be sponsored by the International Game Developer’s Association in Chicago. This group will help to get to help participate in problem-solving and chapter run events that are available in the United States as well as Internationally. Group members will also have access to literally thousands of highly talented members of various elements of the game development industry.

There are many small businesses that use Meetup for brainstorming better ideas for their businesses, and just as many Meetup groups involved in being active, health conscious or other aspects of the many non-profit agencies that use Meetup for real time group events.

Average Meetup Groups

Average metropolitan areas such as Richmond, Virginia commonly have around 2,000 Meetup groups functioning on site at any given time. However, larger major cities such as New York and Los Angeles have a significantly higher tally of between 6 and 9 thousand functioning groups.

It is notable too that many Meetup groups get their start on Meetup’s site itself. It is not uncommon for groups to originate, build and expand on Meetup for anywhere between six and eleven months before taking to a face-to-face setting.

 

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Online Ad Spending Expected to Increase

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The online advertising industry hit a new high in 2010 with ad revenue topping the 26 billion dollar mark. After a falling in 2009, performance based-spending on forms of search advertising and digital display ads began to lead the way.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that online ad revenue increased by around 15% to the 2010 mark of $26 billion, up from the $22.6 billion from 2009. Other important elements of their 2010 ad revenue report include:

  • In addition to record numbers for the entire year, ad revenue reached a record quarterly high in the fourth quarter of 2010.
  • Search Ad revenue was the most popular format chosen and it alone represents 46% of revenue. Additionally, it achieved an overall 12% growth for the year.
  • With a 142% increase in the fourth quarter alone, Sponsorship ads received the highest growth with an 88% increase.
  • US Mobile ad revenue seen an increase of between $550 and $650 million.
  • Display advertising, including banners and display ads, digital video commercials, rich media and sponsorships continued to see growth with a nearly 10 billion dollar increase over 2009 numbers.

Top Display Ad Networks

Digital display networks are growing swiftly in popularity for small and large businesses. Ad display advertising can offer a company the opportunity to communicate directly with consumers who are interested in their products and services in addition to potential earnings just from advertising revenue.

Several display ad networks tend to reach far more users than others.

  • Yahoo’s network reaches more U.S. users than any others with high reaching numbers at 85.9%.
  • AOL Advertising leads an extremely close second at 85.7%.
  • Google’s own Ad Network comes in with 82.7%.

Other leading display networks include:

  • ValueClick
  • Turn Media
  • 24/7 Real Media
  • AdBrite
  • Collective Network
  • Specific Media
  • Microsoft

With five constructive quarters behind us, online advertising revenue expenditure is likely to continue to break previous financial marker milestones. If last year’s overall ad revenue profits are any sign of impending trends, display network advertising may be making its way into the advertising campaigns of many new businesses.

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Social Media for the Big Business Boys: DELL, IBM, Coca-Cola

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While in recent days small businesses have found themselves caught up in the world of social media and the prospects it can bring directly to their products or services, big business certainly has a brief history of their own in utilizing social media formats for marketing purposes.

So which companies are utilizing social medias these days and just how are they managing their social media campaigns?

Computer manufacturing giant, Dell, utilizes social medias such as in the virtual word, Second Life, for customer engagement. Second Life users can visit Dell Island to check out their latest products. Their blog, Direct2Dell regularly generates over 3.5 million views per month. Along with nine of their official internal blogs, there are literally hundreds of departmental blogs that are available in six different languages.

Dell’s Ideastorm allows their users to either suggest or vote on current ideas encouraging social media interaction. Further encouragement comes from internal Dell developers who do utilize the suggestions made by users for future upgrades.

Dell currently has over 22 corporate accounts on Twitter as well as more than seventeen individuals who currently use their name @dell handles.

IBM, the first large corporation to encourage employee blogging now has literally thousands of blogs, 125 of them corporate blogs, that are directly related to just about every aspect of their business. They host their own forums for interaction and discovery, as well as Podcasting from a place called  developerWorks and Social Networking Now.

With their own ((S3N)) Team on Twitter and Rational Heroes community space they have dove into the social media frenzy with both digital feet.

IBM also supports Meet Mr. Fong on YouTube and machinima videos. The Virtual 3D world, Second Life, even houses the  Rational Software Conference/Hipihi and IBM Business Center.

Coca-Cola who has rarely spared any expense in advertising has certainly taken advantage of all aspects of social media marketing in recent years.

They have their own blog support at Coca-Cola Conversations for discussions on the company’s history, support for online video such as Diet Coke + Mentos or Cans Professional 3. 

They also have their own social networks in CokeTag Facebook applications and Sprite Sips. And as the others do, they also have their own spot in the digital 3D world known as Second Life, called  Virtual Thirst.

Although there certainly is no shortage of companies that are utilizing social media in their marketing campaigns, not all will be able to have the reach as other larger corporations such as those here. However, with little effort and a bit of dedicated time even the smallest business can build a social media fan base that will directly benefit their bottom line.

 

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GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and ShowMyPc

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Remote viewing or remote connections have been an imperative part of the technical support world for many years. However, in more recent years, developers finally found other great formats for remote connection that also has plenty of benefits.

  • Web Meetings and Conferences
  • Webinars
  • Web Training

 Along with other useful aspects, these are some of the reasons why remote connectivity software or programming has become more popular in recent years.

GoToMeeting

GotoMeeting offers their customers a solid package for the price of $49 USD per month. This fee includes integrated VoIP, telephone conferencing service and a single license for unlimited web meetings with up to fifteen participants. With their software package users will be able to:

  • Schedule regular or reoccurring meetings
  • One-click meetings
  • Transfer the mouse and keyboard controls to meeting participants
  • Access to desktop and selected applications
  • Clean screen
  • Instant messaging
  • Activity time-outs
  • Meeting recording

GoToMeeting also allows users to create Webinars. If you are not familiar with the term, think of it as being allowed to attend a large conference from the comfort of your own home.

GotoWebinars allows users to harness the same power of remote meeting interaction but on a much larger scale. Webinars created on this service can accommodate up to 1,000 people and can bring the power of influential interaction, literally, to your fingertips.

How Can A Webinar Benefit My Business?

Using Webinars to market your products or services can offer great benefit in many aspects of your day-to-day business planning by:

  • Reducing travel time so you can focus your efforts on the most important elements of your business.
  • Generating more high-quality marketing leads at lesser cost.
  • Presenting your marketing campaign to up to a thousand people from your home or office computer.
  • Helping to save on the bottom line in travel cost, and other forms of audio conferencing such as international calling. 
  • Reaching locales, niches and regions that you may have been previously unable to market to due to other restrictions.

 Alexa shows that GoToMeeting is ranked globally at #381 while the U.S. shows the highest traffic ranking of #132. Users are predominately Caucasian and African-American women with some college education who use the program from work.

ShowMyPc

In comparison, ShowMyPC is another remote connection service that can help to improve productivity and profitability for your business.

Although it offers the same functions as GoToMeeting it also offers a bit more, as well as the flexibility to choose a package that provides only the features you need. Different packages and capabilities include:

  • Remote Meeting Support – Conduct or attend meetings online.
  • Access Home or Office PCs – Remote viewing and access for technical support activity.
  • Privately Hosted Servers – So that users have the option of their own server for conducting secure meetings or simply secure connections on remote access.
  • Broadcasting Presentations or Classroom Planning – If you have a business that involves training and education this is likely the best option for remote access viewing and interaction.

Considering the packages are separate elements on their own, this is likely the more cost efficient option for those who are just launching this type of web conferencing campaigns while GoToMeeting would provide a better value for those who may need to use all of these aspects of remote viewing in their common activities.

ShowMyPc has attained a global ranking of #41,268 and statistics show that most users browse from work and are predominately educated males between the ages of 25 and 45 with incomes ranging from 30 to 100k USD.

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