Mobile & Technology

Did Google Panda Change the Playing Field?

April 29, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

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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GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and ShowMyPc

April 19, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

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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Social Media & Brand Monitoring: Collective Intellect

April 4, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Collective Intellect, a company out of Bolder Colorado, has been around since 2005. They provide software and services to help businesses monitor and analyze real time marketing intelligence agregated from a broad spectrum of web and social media platforms.

Similar to other companies (Radian6 and SM2 to name only 2) who provide software to monitor brand visibility and statistics on popularity and campaigns, their software searches the web, blogs, microblogging, images, and many social media sites for keywords related to your business.

Refining that search, they claim, is their advantage over the competition. Their solution addresses the inaccuracy and bluntness of keyword search and the abundance of results that have very little to do with your business.

Since all the vetting is done by machines (logarithms), those mistakes are bound to happen and clutter or skew the results you will be getting. Collective Intellect has developed a system that searches the web not only by keywords but by the semantic connection between words. Latent semantic Analysis (LSA) exposes latent contextual meaning within a large text.

They offer these programs plus professional advice for prices up to $1,000 a month. Here are some of their offerings:

CI:Insight – Tells you where you are as a digital brand. Using semantic search and analytics their software will tell you where you are on the “social maturity curve”, as they call it. You can review each phase and decide which tools and methods can help you achieve your goals. The software will automate the results to see the consumer consideration and preference, sentiments, demographics, and influencer’s profiles.
CI:Listen – Social monitoring – tracking online conversations about your brand.
CI:Learn and CI:Listen – Social Presence. Measure your market before and after a launch, take actions in real time, and improve your visibility.
CI:View – Social Research –analysis that is specially configured to your needs for more effective social engagement. It is set to be repeatable, and direct feeds are integrated into the dashboard.
Social CRM & Targeting – strategic guidance, professional services.
Social BPM Engagement – intersection between process automation and social networking

Their customers include PepsiCo, Western Union, CBS, iVillage, Viacom, Dole Food Group and Verizon Wireless, among many others.

The past 3 year growth of the company stands at 1505%. With 40 employees the company’s 2009 revenues were $2.7 million.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWJlTH6sSZU]

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Business Media Solutions: SlideShare

March 30, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Slideshare may be another aspect of online commerce and marketing that may sound like one of the little guys, for now. However, this site offers large varieties of business media solutions in the forms of documents, slide show presentations and even downloadable pdf files. Professionals from many niches upload their business content, while other viewers breeze through and comment on the uploaded media.

Features of SlideShare

Members can have their content uploaded to the site and embed their own personal website or blog
Content can also be shared privately
Can be used as an effective marketing tool in helping to promote or advertise an event

Additionally, SlideShare openly promotes users getting together to create their own groups so that they can interact with people who share the same niche interest as them.

Advantages of SlideShare Coverage

The single most important aspect and advantage of utilizing SlideShare is that every piece of media uploaded to the site can be viewed by their over 70 million viewers per month.

Users can niche network by creating or joining existing groups. This can help increase contacts, and therefore opportunities.

While being a part of a group can have many networking and marketing benefits, SlideShare user groups can also collectively modify and even enhance current online content.

SlideShare Media Creation Tips

Keeping a few helpful marketing tips in mind when creating content that you plan to upload to Slideshare can be imperative to having a successful business media marketing campaign.

Go Visual

Use a lot more visual markers and easy to understand symbolism as opposed to more text. Plain and simple, human beings prefer to be visually engaged if the other option is mounds of jumbled text.

Keep it Short

Try to get to the point of your content quickly. Rambling discourse and biased opinions are unlikely to garner increasing views or ‘word of mouth’ consumers.

Precision Tagging

At the end of each upload users are given the opportunity to choose their content descriptions as well as adding their tags, or keywords. Use keyword tools such as Google’s keyword tool to find the best keywords to describe your content or product.

Call to Action

If your content is one of your marketing tools you will definitely want to supply a ‘call-to-action’ at the end of each presentation. A link to click or short advertisement for your product is sufficient. Badgering your viewers with constant self-serving links is not nessecary.

Who Uses SlideShare?

There are a lot of larger corporations who have social strategist users on SlideShare to help increase awareness and promote their products or services.

A Sears representative, Vanina Delobelle, has uploaded a highly viewed and rated presentation on social strategies. With over 120 thousand views, Vanina certainly achieved a great marketing feat for any level of personal or corporate users.

Niall Cook of H & K has also been a regular contributor since 2006.

Alexa tells a detailed story of SlideShare user statistics. Global Alexa traffic ranking shows SlideShare at 264 with a U.S. ranking of 408. However popular it is in the United States, it is even more commonly used in Mexico. Overall site user statistics show that it holds more appeal for childless Hispanic females with postgraduate educations than any other group, with the age range of most users being from 25 to 44. They view as much from work as they do from home.

There is no doubt that SlideShare has huge marketing value for those who have the knowledge, or quick ideas on strategies that can be shared to garner attention and awareness of their particular products and services.

Here is an example of a Power Point Presentation done by Basil Puglisi on Search Engine Optimization Basics : SEO101

[slideshare id=7181167&doc=seo101-110307150053-phpapp01]

[slideshare id=7447762&doc=hubspotmarketingtransformationfinal-110330085430-phpapp02]

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Press Release: Submission Software & Easy Self Serve Sites

March 23, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

One aspect of online business marketing may require the distribution of press releases for special events, products or even discounts or other coupon or seasonal promotions. And although drawing up a press release may not be that difficult or time consuming, submitting it to the many directories available can be a definite time-killer.

Many have heard of article submitters or even article directory software, however, this is not the same as press release submission. While article or content farms are a dime a dozen, legitimate press release sites are not as abundant. This is a good thing as with less available sites to choose from, comes more coverage and hopefully views, for the content submitted to the quality press release websites available.

What Tools Are Available?

Although there are tons of article submission tools, there are only a couple of press release targeted submitters.

Traffic Mania Pressbot

Traffic Mania Pressbot is also known as Press Release Submitter. Released by Incansoft, this press release submission tool is available under a couple of different titles. The most valuable package it is bundled in includes many different tools available by this developer. Though it is also listed sold individually, with a different cover, but at the same price.

It is hard to find a bad review on this product. Most who use it seem incredibly satisfied with its capabilities and ease of use. The fact that this tool comes with a one-time cost and offering solid technical support and lifelong free updates may make it well worth it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mn6dGCuHq8]

Submit Like Magic

This is a heavy duty marketing tool. It allows users to create and submit articles and press releases, upload videos and even one-click social media bookmark to hundreds of sites. Although this tool is a literal powerhouse, some user reviews suggest that it hasn’t quite worked out all of its initial kinks. Overall, the kinks that Submit Like Magic does have are seriously overshadowed by its capabilities.

This tool will also come with a hefty price at $67 USD per month. They do allow a quick trial period of thirty days for a small fee of $4.95 to test out the software as well. Although this may not be the right tool for those who dabble in marketing, this is definitely the perfect tool for powerhouse marketers. There is little that you cannot do as far as social bookmarking, article directory submission, video uploading, RSS feed submissions and captcha support is concerned.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNih3yAboQ]

Easy Self Submit Sites:

If your looking to just do a little self promotion and want to create a nice simple Press Release then PRLog and FreePressReleases are great sites that will allow you to create a single press release that will be added to the digital world with all the formatting done for you. This is great for small businesses that want to just create or pitch a story from time to time to their local media. Both Sites have the ability to email or send once the Press Release is live.

What Can Press Release Submission Software Do for Small Business?

It can absolutely save a small business owner loads of time and money. By utilizing PR submission software, users are able to eliminate the hours of manual submission and complete their PR submissions to many sites with a few entries and the click of a submit button.

For the minor marketer, Traffic Mania Pressbot is plenty of software, but for the power marketer, Submit Like Magic may be a multimedia marketers dream.

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Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 2: CoTweet, HootSuite, TweetDeck, TweetAdder

March 16, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Being able to monitor what is said about your brand on the internet has become a very important part of doing business these days. Social Media has the power to make or break brand names, and web visibility should be monitored.

Hand in hand with finding out who is talking about you and why, there is the possibility of actively engaging in the conversation. Advertising on the internet have become advertising on social media platforms as well, and keeping track of all those, especially if you have more than one brand, has become very time consuming. However, some web programs are designed to help you monitor and be active on social media platforms from one central location.

CoTweet

CoTweet is a social media engagement, management and reporting site, which aims to help companies of all sizes track and analyze what is being said about them on the two most popular social media sites: Facebook and Twitter.

Built with an emphasis on the needs of businesses, their Standard edition and Enterprise edition, help customer support and marketers manage the daily social media conversations from one place, solve customer service issues, manage marketing campaigns and maximize brand visibility. It enables businesses to engage in proactive marketing and other customer service activities.

In March 2010, CoTweet was purchased by ExactTarget, a global provider of on demand e mail marketing solutions, and CoTweet now includes monitoring of multiple channels including e mails and mobile phones.

It is ideal for multiple account management and multiple users. An application which allows you to invite other people to manage the account with you, and delegate assignments also exists.

Users of CoTweet include Starbucks, Microsoft, Sprint, Coca-Cola and even Tweeter itself.

HootSuite

HootSuite allows users to organize the use of social media tools, launch marketing campaigns and distribute messages across multiple channels in a targeted fashion.

It scans the activity on Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and other social media platforms and is accessible via web on desktop applications or mobile platforms.

But HootSuite is more than just a monitoring tool; it is an account management software as well. Users have the ability to optimize delivery by choosing the best time and date to reach their target audience, fine tune the response team by assigning responsibility to a team member and monitoring responses and progress. It enables the user to effectively join in the conversation, in real time.

Users can update their profile from one place, track click-troughs, deploy timed updates etc. and its mobile version is available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile as well. You will never be out of touch with your customers.

Launched in 2008 by Invoke Media, it is growing in popularity and is used by government (The White House), Martha Stewart Media and Zappos for example.

TweetDeck

Tweetdeck is a real-time browser that can help connect a user to Google Buzz, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Foursquare and other social networking sites. This helps users to keep in touch with what is happening now, all across the board. Users can customize their TweetDeck experience by creating columns or groups as well as saving searches so that users can stay up-to-date as effortlessly as possible.

Responding to what Twitter users or Facebook fans are saying about you and your product or service is easy and real-time management no longer requires incredible multi-tasking skills to accomplish. Sharing your photos, videos and links across the board also becomes a whole lot more simplistic.

With support for desktop computers as well as Google Chrome and Android means this is one extremely versatile tool. It will also soon support iPhone and iPad.

TweetAdder

TwitterAdder is available on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. Its Automated Tweet Search feature searches out specific keywords previously tweeted which helps a Twitter user to find those fellow Tweeters who are interested in, or marketing, in the same niche. This takes the guesswork and the time sink out of building a legion of Twitter followers who already have an interest in the product or service you market. Profile data and location searches get you one step closer to mass marketing locally if your business is based largely in your own community.

TweetAdder also supports multiple Twitter account management and a wide variety of support options for Follow and Unfollow configurations. Automated Tweeting and direct messaging wraps up this all-in-one tool. With a healthy dose of current and historical trend research, you really can’t ask for much more in one single program that can manage your Twitter account from day to day, all by itself.

Video Resource: This was the best video I could find that covered an array of tools. If you like it please share your thoughts with @ErinBlaskie or email Erin at erin@bsetc.ca or erin.blaskie@gmail.com, I personally was very impressed with her coverage of such a variety of tools, perhaps we can get her to do short tutorials for each one individually in the future.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ifuq4XZssU&hd=1]

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What is the Microsoft Cloud?

March 15, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Although the Cloud sounds fluffy and inviting, it really is just another name for the internet. All of us are Cloud users in that aspect, as anytime we use Facebook, or log into Hotmail, we are on the Cloud.

However, recently the Cloud has expanded its niche into an entire new range of different business services. Some of the detailed applications that help business owners are now accessible via the Cloud without the necessity of having them installed on your computer. This gives users the ability to access their information online from anywhere in the world that an internet connection is available.

Although the name ‘Cloud’ was coined for this aspect of internet interaction from the cloud symbol commonly used to represent the web in diagrams and flowcharts, it is a bit more complicated than the name implies. The Cloud uses three distinct types of service.

Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Infrastructure-as-a-Service

These services can be:

Sold on demand. Commonly these services are those that are useful by the minute or hour.
Elastic services. These services allow a user to have as much or as little of the specific service.
Fully managed services. Users will need nothing but their own computer and a connection to the internet.

Benefits for Business

The bottom line of course, is that the Cloud can save you time and money. Your list of software to be purchased to get your business off the ground can be significantly reduced. With no need to buy multiple copies of individual software, this can be a huge money-saver for any business owner.

There will be no money or time focused on maintaining or upgrading services or software.

It is an easily accessible way to carry out required online tasks.

On-demand access for your employees will cut time wasted and allow them to be more productive and effective with their allotted time. It can also reduce the time they spend communicating with one another.

Cloud can also help to reduce operational and capital expenses depending on what may work best for your particular business. With less management and maintenance time spent the Cloud may, in fact, be a very willing and effective partner in most small, or even larger businesses.

Personal Cloud computing can mean that a user can have every piece of data they need to manage every aspect of their business at their fingertips.

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Facebook Marketing Tool: Involver.com

March 11, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Noah Horton and Rahim Fazal founded Involver.com in 2007 in efforts to provide a startup that can help brands begin to get a grip on managing their social media channels. Having grown from a company of a dozen employees to over sixty with many offices in areas such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Austin, and with more coming soon, it looks like Involver, is in fact, fully involved, with no plans of leaving any time soon.

Involver has four main ways in which they help companies and organizations create rich and helpful experiences all across the social web.

Involver helps to generate earned media by attracting attention from influential sources.
Involver helps to get prospective customers engaged with your products and services through social networks.
Involver can help to reduce marketing cost through a series of fully automated social networking services.
Involver helps to maintain constant and consistent branding and advertisement for your products and services.

This kind of brand management can be critical to a company and its ultimate success online. Those who use Involver will also want to take advantage of the features offered in the applications area.

Flickr

You can bring all of your Flickr photos to Facebook with the Flickr App from Involver. This will allow users to stream their Flickr photos displaying their entire album, or allows users to choose sub albums to categorize their photo streams.

YouTube Channels

You can set your video to directly deliver to your social networks upon uploading. This will help incorporate your YouTube videos into your active marketing campaigns.

With so many more applications available there are bound to be at least a handful of ways to improve your social media interactions in Involvers many apps.

Facebook Stories
Social Catalog
RSS Feed
Promotion Galleries
Music Player
Polls
Coupons
Static HTML for Pages

Many more apps available make this attractive and professional option in social media marketing and product or service branding an invaluable tool in the likely already full bag of marketers tricks of the trade.

Get 10,000 Fans on Facebook

“It was in November of 2010 that my train baseball fan page had reached 10,000 fans and I decided that I would finally start a business that aimed at helping other small businesses like you get off the ground using tools like Facebook. So this is where things sit today. I’m 24 years old, and get a pretty neat opportunity to help out small businesses make better use of facebook.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mFBa3QVD2Q]

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Location Trends: Checkpoints

March 10, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

“When was the last time you got a reward for just showing up? When did you get a prize for something you do every day? Now you can, with Checkpoints” is the catch-phrase of a new mobile app called Checkpoints.

Founded by brothers/ entrepreneurs Mark and Todd DiPaola, who put $1 million of their own money into forming a company in April 2010, the new product was launched about 3 months ago.

What Checkpoints offers is product integration, a way to introduce new clients to products in a fun and interactive way.

An example will illustrate it the best: You are about to go shopping for groceries. Opening the app on your cellular phone will show you which markets in your area are participating in the program. By going in and checking in there –pointing your cell phone camera at a bar code and taking a picture – you get some points.

The app will also show you which products in the store they are recommending. By picking a product up and scanning it (again with the camera) you will also get points. You can do the same with any other establishment, and Checkpoints is a universal currency, meaning it is not tied to a brand or to a currency. The points you accumulate can be redeemed for products; from gift cards to new electronic gadgets and airline miles.

For shoppers this app, available for all camera-equipped cell phones, is a fun way to interact with new products and get something in return.

For manufacturers and advertisers, which have been tied to a specific location in their advertisements, Checkpoints offers the ability to expend to the product level and drive customers to pick it up and really look at it, in an interactively engaging way.

Several brands have joined the program immediately; Belkin, Energizer, Seventh Generation, Tyson foods, 24/7 fitness center, and more. Just recently, Lionsgate, the movie production and distribution company has added Checkpoints to all their DVDs and Blu-rays. Customers are able to watch trailers and receive checkpoints for interaction with new movies. They will also have access to movie reviews and exclusive offers. “We know this technology increases the likelihood of purchase and we’re also excited by the sheer power of the experience and the brand engagement it creates” says Anne Parducci, Lionsgate Executive Vice President of Marketing and Family Entertainment.

Checkpoints hit the million check-ins and 600,000 bar code scans in January 2011, about 2 and half months after its launch. The brothers are now contemplating whether to continue in their boot-strapping operation with 13 employees or start a round of financing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXwHkpGlQ00]

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Digital Marketing Trend: Microsoft Tag

March 8, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Microsoft Tag is a new experience in connecting the digital world with the real world. By scanning a tag – a new kind of bar code – with your cellular phone, you can have immediate access to information, websites, videos, reviews and more.

When you scan a Tag displayed on an establishment or product, it will automatically open a web page and give you all the pertinent information.

What was said about the coffee shop you are looking at?
Who is the owner?
What other users said?
You can also see if the place is offering special deals.

Scan a Tag on a concert poster and you will get the dates of their next performance in your city, you could buy tickets or sample a song. The Tag will display a massage, dial a number or add the contact to your address book.

Shopping, Microsoft says, has become a lot smarter and fun; Tags lets you discover interesting new places, it can give access to the things consumers love and then bring them together.

Tags are free to create and use. They can be added to ads, posters, websites, packages, billboards and clothing. And this is but a part of the list. Adding the Tag to your business card will enable the user to add your contact information immediately into their address book.

For merchants, using the Tag not only give them access to customers they never had before, it also enables them to create media campaigns and have advanced analytics to measure campaign effectiveness. This can give you detailed information where the Tag was scanned and what was your most popular ad location.

The Tag reader is a downloadable application from a single website (to eliminate confusion) and can be as small as you want it to be so it won’t interfere with the design. Tags can be customized to your brand’s specific look and feel.

Microsoft is using a cloud based technology that provides access to data that isn’t possible with other bar-code systems because of the amount of information a cloud can store. Unlike other 2D codes that have permanent information and are associated with a single URL, Tags allows you to change the data in its source, update is as frequently as you want, allowing you to reuse campaign materials.

You can create a Tag by going to their website at tag.microsoft.com and sign in. Since May 2010, Tags has graduated from the beta trials and is now available everywhere. For some reason it caught on much quicker in Europe than in the US. In Amsterdam, for example, they are using the Microsoft Tag to advertise accurate bus schedules.

Since the beginning of its Beta trials and until May 2010, over 1 billion tags have been printed all over the world.

Sources:

Special Thanks to David Tesser for presenting this technology and subject to me for the blog.

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