@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Social Brand Visibility

The State of Now – The #140conf

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Jeff Pulver is an interesting character. Not the most charismatic of speakers, yet his words make a lot of sense. He started “in computers”, as he calls it, 17 years ago. He was one of the co-founders of Vonage, and invested in Twitter back in 2007. Here is, paraphrased, what he says about the State on Now and why #140conf. is needed.

Our world is changing very quickly with the new technologies. Things we can do today were unthinkable just 20 or 30 years ago. In his opinion, one of the biggest changes happened with the invention of Twitter. He compares it to the invention of the telegraph or the radio.

Here is why:  Social Media has brought with it a new opening for people to express their thoughts and feelings and share them with others.  The ordinary, everyday folks could voice their opinion. The more people think and feel the same way, the bigger impact the citizens have on what is going on in their world. We saw the power of the internet in raising funds in the 2008 elections.

At the same time, our modern world has made us all Short Attention Span sufferers. We want the information now, and we want it fast and accurate. And we want it short. When it comes to voicing our opinions, not everyone is a good writer who has the patience and the stamina to hold a blog. Twitter combines those two elements and allows composing only a short message that even the untalented writer can do. It opens the door to so much, Jeff Pulver says, that we are still incapable of determining what kind of impact it will have on our future world.

Social media changed advertising, changed reading habits and changed politics. Even though Jeff Pulver said those things in 2009, he was right on the money when you look at the last event in the Middle East.

What Jeff does now is provide a platform for people who spend time learning all those new technologies and implement them on a daily basis, to share their knowledge and observations. He does it in the form of #140 Conferences all over the United States and Canada. He invites interesting people to speak, and the interested to listen and learn.

These conferences, like the June, 2009 #140conf. in NYC have a theme. The New York one talked about the role of news media in the world of Twitter. The uprising in Iran was on everyone’s mind at the time and the experts pointed out that the world was watching – not on CNN but on Twitter.

This year, the conferences are held in NYC (3/9), in Austin during the SXSW (3/14-17), De Moines (5/9), Vancouver (5/19), Twain Harte, CA. (5/24) and Long Island (5/26). An international conference will be held in NYC (6/15-16)

The #140conf. provides an opportunity for the Twitter community to connect, listen, share, engage and learn while exploring the effects of the real time internet on business. As an example some of the invited speakers in the NYC International conference are as diverse as:

Alicia Yarbo, producer of the Today Show and co-author “Today’s Moms”, Alon Nir, founder, Tweet Your Prayers, Craig Newmark, founder, Craigslist, Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ and Hank Wasiak, partner, The Concept Farm, together with other founder of small and large businesses, educators and writers, media and non-profit organizations representatives.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt_qf9YoypA]

The Long Island #140Conf is set for May 26th 2011 at Touro Law Center, this event could be one of the biggest Social Media Events to hit Long Island, especially given that it has been often overlooked in the shadow of NYC. Long

Island has long been host to some great social influence all the way back to the days of AIM. With Long Island boasting a social landscape that forms the bridge between NYC and the coveted Social Elite of the Hamptons, this Social Media Valley is ripe for such an event.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv6QJssVcGs&feature=related]

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Stik: Reviews from your social network

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Making significant purchases such as new homes, insurance policies or even your well-planned retirement investments will require individuals to find professionals they can truly trust. Many unsuspecting consumers may find themselves working with unknown representatives or salespersons who may not always have the buyers best financial interest at heart.

Just as unfortunately it can often be confusing to know where to find a trustworthy partner in this important venture. Although some businesses, online or off, may proclaim their reputable characteristics, there can also be whispers about even their policies or practices being questionable. Most often, the best group to rely on are those who have already made their own investments with the help of good salespeople and had very pleasant and lucrative experiences.

Stik offers a great system for users to leave behind their own reviews for friends who they already know they can trust and rely on. Stik can help take the stress and anxiety from major purchases from the buyer side, as well as providing great feedback to professionals who deserve the recognition for delicate financial jobs well done and beneficial to the buyers.

Get Stik’D

Logging in via Facebook is likely the quickest and easiest option, though if you do not have a Facebook account for some reason, this would be a great time to get one. The integration provided by Facebook will prevent users from having to repetitively enter the same information.

Once you have signed it, Stik will give you the option to select from your Facebook friends users you would like to ask for recommendations from. Once you have sent that on you can leave recommendations of your own for those on your friends list.

Setting up your profile is as simple as entering a few descriptions of your services and allowing Facebook’s regional information to integrate itself. Once in you will be give several search options. Searching through your friends first, shared connections, the distance from your location and even through keyword relevance. Whenever you need to do a new search, click on the Stik site and select the type of business you are planning to do from the available choices:

  • Real Estate
  • Insurance
  • Mortgage
  • Finance
  • Law

Essentially, your Stik profile can help to showcase personalized recommendations or reviews that will encourage prospective customers to feel comfortable entering a business relationship with you. Since you can now display updates from your Facebook fan page on your Stik profile, you won’t have to work twice as hard to post them to both profiles. Simply visit the “Recent Activity” tab on your profile and select the link to “Display your Facebook content here” to quickly display your public posts to your Stik profile.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuvcrPjp860]

Stik Users

Stik’s current US traffic rank is at 3,972. User audience consist greatly of those with limited college educations as well as to women who earn over 60k per year. Most browsers view from work.

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Best Twitter Tools: TweetDeck, TrueTwit, FLLWRS, 20FT, Formulists

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Twitter has become such a media marketing giant on the net in the last few years that there is now an entire industry devoted to the creation of tools, tips and tricks to make your Twitter experience easier, quicker or more user-friendly in just about any manner. Many of those tools provided can help to do quite a few things for your Twitter account. These are a few of the BEst Twitter Tools you can use together for a great twitter experience.

TweetDeck

Well, TweetDeck honestly does a little bit of everything. Its many features include:

  • Updates to Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Google Buzz.
  • Retweet in the common Twitter style, or create your own.
  • Smoothly manage conversations with @replies or direct messaging.
  • Keep on top of trending information.
  • Easily locate friends or other similar niche followers.  
  • View, record and share YouTube videos and clips.
  • LinkedIn contact integration
  • Manage multiple accounts on Twitter

The list seriously goes on and on. This may be the best of the all-in-one tools available for social media management. If that isn’t great enough, the TweetDeck’s Deck.ly integration allows users to continue typing past the character limit and allow Deck.ly to show them the rest.

TweetDeck has a global Alexa ranking of 2,215. Most are highly educated females who browse mostly from work. This site is also popular in Mexico where it is ranked at #796.

 TrueTwit

TrueTwit is a Twitter validation tool that can help you automate a few vital Twitter services. The basic, or free, account provides several benefits.

  • The basic service is always free
  • New followers must pass a CAPTCHA test for validation.
  • Users can decide to auto-follow the new users who are validated.
  • Users can choose to auto-unfollow those users who unfollow them.
  • Users can try out a pro version for 30 days at any time.

The professional, or premium TrueTwit account allows for a bit stiffer and more intensive Twitter management.

  • Users can choose to allow TrueTwit to analyze prospective followers to be certain they are more than just spam or affiliate accounts.
  • Users are provided with a Follower Analysis page that shows a summary of the status of all of your followers.
  • Users receive a free 30 day trial of the product. If satisfied, they pay $20 USD per year.

Ranked 5,384 globally, TrueTwit’s average viewers tend to be Caucasian women between the ages of 35 and 55 who make between 30k and 100k USD per year.

FLLWRS

FLLWRS is another Twitter follower management tool but on a very basic level. Simply click to the URL and select the option to See your twitter follower history. Allow the integration suggestion, and move right into your follower management configurations.

FLLWRS will not only monitor your followers but also provide you with a list with those who have unfollowed you. Managing this list can help a business who uses Twitter understand what may be turning their consumers off about their marketing techniques.

FLLWRS has a global traffic ranking of 55,894 with around 25% of its users located in the U.S. It is also very popular in the Netherlands where its ranking is listed at 5,010. On average, FLLWRS users are educated, childless females under the age of 35 with incomes ranging around 30k USD.

20Ft

20ft is a performance based Twitter tool that allows users to recap their last Twitter week for the user, their followers and friends.

A post about your week on Twitter is published at the start of each week automatically if you configure the service to do so. So what is your week on Twitter all about? And what does 20ft do for their users?

  • 20Ft helps to create a detailed analysis for your social media profiles and provides incredible data in your timeline charts.
  • 20Ft can send their users a ‘nudge’ if their metrics change significantly, for the positive or negative.
  • Users will have their own aggregated statistics in one easy place to access with a simple user interface.
  • This overview can be provided for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Analytics and more.

At #118,130 20Ft still has some work to do to impress Alexa beyond the current ranking. The average 20Ft user tend to browse from work and are on average women between the ages of 25 and 55 with high-end educations.

Formulists

Formulists is a Twitter tool that allows users to organize groups of their Twitter followers into auto-updting Twitter lists. Formulists allows for filter application and networking solely based on your biography, location and supplied keywords or phrases as well as your Twitter activity, the number of followers and more.

Although list creation and management can be difficult for users who are not incredibly net savvy, Forumulists provides its users with helpful text tutorials as well as videos to make set up easier than ever.

Users can choose to create Formulists to help filter those they follow, expand their network, manage current followers, track interactions, or even customize existing lists.

This type of organization and management can help you to create a Twitter following of followers who already have vested interest in your own products and services.

Formulists has a global page ranking of 48,923. Although popular in the U.S., this site is very popular in Bangladesh with a ranking of 12,892. Viewers are primarily females between the ages of 35 and 54 who browse from home.

Another Great tool is Paper.li and was covered in a previous blog.

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Digital Visibility: The Local Search Snapshot

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As a business owner, you know you must have a presence on the World Wide Web to be considered a legitimate business. There are thousands of digital touch points out there, and knowing how you or your business appears to the world is almost as important as being there in the first place.

If you are serious about your visibility, leaving it to chance and luck is not good enough anymore. Sure, Google will do some of the work, categorizing it, linking it, but there is so much more to the World Wide Web than just Google, as big as it may be.

The first step is to make sure you appear in the right places and appear with the correct information. Some companies on the web will help you do just that.

GetListed.org

GetListed.org, in existence since January 2009, serves as a resource for small business owners to find out how they are listed. Their goal is “to help small businesses claim and enhance their listings at major search engines”. They provide a clear picture of how effectively you are using the free resources available today. You might be able to compare it to your competitors as well.

The company has created a resource center which includes articles and tips about internet visibility. They accumulated listings of many SEO experts in different areas and will direct you to the right people.

In this one place you can check, for free, how you are visible to the world, learn about other places and other listings you might want to appear on, and participate in seminars held from time to time in different cities around the United States to help business owners learn about SEO and search engine ranking, in a face to face manner.

GetListed.org operated only in the US until Jan. 2010 when the company started beta testing in the UK as well.

AmIvisible.org

AmIvisible.org is another company which offers their services for free. By goin g to their website you can find how visible is your service or company to potential customers and compare that information with that of your competitors in your area.

AmIvisible.org covers millions of pages on search engines, yellow pages directories and local searches, and provides analysis of your business’s online visibility.

The service is fairly new and is in beta testing in several US cities. It will expand to the whole nation soon.

UBL.org

Universal Business Listing (UBL) strives to be a central collection and distribution point for all your business information online. A one-stop location for complete and accurate listing information.

UBL.org offers more than the sites mentioned above; it will list your business, monitor your presence, provide visibility reports and enhance your profile. They are not only aggregating information, they are actively doing things to change it for the better.

They have packages from $75 as an essential payment, which includes checking listings and monitoring your presence, to $599 which includes all the rest. They have an annual renewal fee of $59, regardless of the program.

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What Mobile Apps Can Do for Small Business

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Mobile Applications have rushed to the forefront of technology and further advancements with the increased usage of net enhanced mobile devices like the iPhone. Breaking beyond the traditional uses for phone and text messaging capabilities, mobile apps have been brought from playroom to boardroom.

Mobile App Statistics

Did you know that 38% of small businesses reporting view mobile apps as an essential aspect of their operations? A recent survey conducted by AT&T defined a few of the most recent statistics on mobile apps and small business. Around 72%, defined by companies that have anywhere from two to fifty employees, have reported that they use some form of mobile applications for their daily operations.

This poll of 2,246 small business owners is likely a great example of the average mobile app demographics for small business owners in the USA.

Most Popular Small Business Apps

The study showed that mapping and GPS tools topped the list of the most popular services utilized by the reporting small businesses at 49%. Other important statistics show:

  • One in four small businesses use social media marketing or document management apps
  • 24% use location-based services
  • 23% use time management apps
  • 22% use travel and expense tracking applications
  • 20% use mobile credit card payment services

When queried as to the chief factor making mobile apps desirable to companies was their time-saving benefits. Even more beneficial was the discovery that the smaller a business, the more likely it is to seek out methods for time saving with mobile and therefore far more convenient applications.

With business apps continually improving, this seems to be in turn, fueling the increase of usage of mobile devices, and therefore mobile applications, by small business owners.

Case Study

Mobile App Photo Sharing with Zurfer

A case study conducted by Mor Naaman, Rahul Nair and Vlad Kaplun of Berkley California, using a high end mobile phone application for photo browsing may give more in-depth clues to how quickly mobile applications are becoming more of a requirement than an option for business owners.

With Zurfer sent to over 500 possible users, only nine of those users participated in the extensive user research. Some of the first statistics noted were those that showed how many users preferred entertainment driven mobile applications as opposed to utilities and working tools.

Nielsen Study

With a recent Nielsen Study reflecting that SmartPhones now cover up to 28% of the U.S. cell phone market, increased usage of mobile applications are an understandable side effect. With studies further showing that the greater part of SmartPhone owners are under thirty-five as well as finding a larger diversity among Hispanic users than may have been expected, this also most certainly opens up some new possibilities for those small businesses that are in tune with mobile application development as well as usage.

Who Are the Main Users?

Perhaps most unsurprisingly, the mobile user market tends to be dominated by younger males with relatively elevated educations and more affluent connections in comparison to the rest of the population. Although studies showed that some users have a disproportionate amount of apps on their phone, the average number claimed a median of ten.

Although apps are not quite as popular yet as photo taking at 76% and text messaging at 71%, the stats provided are still considerable since Apple’s app store didn’t even open until July of 2008.

Overall, considering that there was no app culture whatsoever until around three years ago, most all of these statistics can be most assuredly proof of impressive tech-adoption methods of mobile device users.

The Real Results?

In the end, the case study on Zurfer may have actually proven to supply more much realistic results, as with the reports flooding into Nielsen continuing to show that Game apps are indeed the most highly sought, bought and utilized mobile applications at an average of 60% of monthly downloads, followed by news and weather apps holding around 52% of monthly downloads, social media applications are still listed at number four with a somewhat surprising 47% of downloads monthly.

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EmpireAvenue: Social Networking or Social Training?

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EmpireAvenue is classified as a social network service site which is quite an understatement. Launched in July of 2010, this site resembles a stock marketing simulation game. Users are allowed to buy and sell shares of other users and their websites.

Alexa’s global ranking for EmpireAvenue is #15,209. Currrently statistics show that a disproportionate amount of users are childless, lower-income men under age 45 who do most of their browsing from work. The site is most popular in the U.S. as well as in Norway where it ranks at #705 with Alexa.

One more site with Facebook sign-in integration, getting logged on to begin using EmpireAvenue takes only a matter of moments.  Once in, fill in your profile detail, link up your other social media accounts and you are ready to begin trading.

Playing the “Game”

Highly customizable, EmpireAvenue allows users to set their interest, which in essence, are the same keywords and phrases you have used on your other social media sites to attract like-minded users. Once you have those set you will likely begin to see others buy shares of you.

Each player has their own portfolio in this created virtual economy. Users can increase their virtual worth by participating in the game as well as by building networking relationships with other users, as well as by interaction on integrated social media sites.

As you move along and buy shares of others, you will also see a ticker just like the NYSE bar that floats near the top of your screen. You can easily keep up with your shares of other users and their progress. The money on this system is referred to as Eaves, and although you begin with plenty, around 7 to 9k depending on how many social medias you integrate, you can also earn them or purchase them when they run low.

What Can This Do For Your Small Business?

The quick answer is that it is truly a gamers world, even those who have not spent years of their childhood immersed in anything and everything video game, have quickly flocked to massive social media games such as those found on Facebook. Since its beginning rankings show this site has steadily climbed in user numbers and participants.

A large part of personal branding requires consumers to get familiar with your product, service and you. Interacting with prospective clients or buyers in this manner can certainly increase your web presence, as well as increasing other users trust in you and your products or services.

Once your EmpireAvenue account begins to become more profitable this too can reflect on how driven you are as a business owner to succeed. In addition to that note, once your own account begins to gain recognition, you may have broken through the social media world as a serious competitor.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/naVkQyCCYzI?hd=1]

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New Media Press: Paper.li a Social Media Tool

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Do you get a bit intimidated by data mining or researching through your Twitter or Facebook accounts as they scroll by at light-speed? If you are like many business owners, large and small, you have likely been just as torn as others who know that their social media sites are littered with incredible information, free tools and professionals offering free advice that could mean the difference in a crash-and-burn or soaring to the top, but approaching them may be a different story.

The Good with the Bad

The great part is that if you have this problem, you likely have plenty of friends and followers which was the ultimate goal in the first place. However, reaching those friend or follower goal numbers will also mean that your visits to check on your preferred topics and URLs will take longer each time.

Then there was Paper.li.

SmallRivers, Big Currents

A private startup that was incorporated in Switzerland, SmallRivers was co-founded by Iskander Pols, and Edouard Lambelet. They wanted to devise a method to help cultivate what users want out of their social medias that they have built on for their businesses. One of many ventures between this dynamic duo, Paper.li has become their main focus in recent months which is becoming very obvious with its increasing Alexa rankings.

Survey Says!

Paper.li’s current global ranking is at #808 while about 35% of its viewers are U.S. based where it has achieved a ranking of #508. It is also very popular in the United Kingdom where it is currently ranked at #307. Statistics show that it is used most widely by white, educated females between the ages of 25 and 55 who browse from both home and work. Average annual incomes for these viewers averages $30k USD.

Small Business Benefits

Whether you are marketing a product, service or even yourself, you can always use any tool that helps to organize the information you need. In fact, there is an entire industry built on and successfully creating expensive tools for this exact function.

Whether used alone or even in conjunction with other helpful Twitter tools, Paper.li will help you to take any specific interest or niche, and create an easy to manage and read newspaper out of the chosen keywords or hash tags you have designated.

  • This can greatly reduce cost spent on data mining for the social media aspect of your marketing campaign by providing you with the most relevant return for your set keys and phrases.
  • It can help to build social media relationships with those you pull content from.
  • You can gain consistently valuable information about topics relevant to your small business.
  • You can implement Paper.li fully into your content marketing campaigns.

Who Uses Paper.li?

Many personal marketers and small business owners have begun to implement Paper.li as part of their SMM campaigns. One such company, SBA, a financial service, has begun to utilize it to market in the areas it specializes in as well as to branch out to other markets that other Paper.li users share with them.

They currently use them to span wide markets in the Financing and Accounting of:

  • Jewelry
  • Sports
  • Fashion
  • Marketing
  • Public Relations
  • Small Business
  • Restaurants
  • Pro Job Listings

And these are just a select few of the niches as they plan to continue to add more.

Why Not Paper.Li?

Since most wise business owners know that achieving a balance in advertising and satisfying the bottom line lies with great time management, organization and social interaction, it seems almost irresponsible to not use Paper.li to cultivate the lucrative aspects of your social media websites.

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

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Google Search goes social with +1

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While Google may cover around thirteen percent of US display in online advertising marketing, Facebook may garner around twenty-two percent. Not surprisingly, it seems like Google has decided they actually do like the way Facebook allows users to share their interest, recommendations and ideas. So they have now added their own method of ‘liking’ or upvoting favored websites and other content. This method for helping to endorse chosen content and search results gives Googlers just one more way to endorse the products and services they enjoy.

Along with the recent algorithm change, Google execs say this is just one more way that they are heading off the pass between low-quality and irrelevant search engines results to see that their search engine queries cultivate the most useful and helpful websites that pertain to a users search results, and as quickly as possible. 

The Google Experiment

Testing out this new method for yourself is incredibly easy. Just make sure you are logged into your Google account and head to their experimental search page. Select Join this Experiment, and it is on.  If you are already participating in a Google experiment you will need to select the leave option on the current one to join the +1 experience. Now head to Google search and type in a search query. Once your search results appear, next to the title of the page will be a small, mostly blue edged box with a faint +1. Once clicked, the box will now display as solid blue and a text display just under the title will now show that you publicly +1’d a site.

Now those in your Google network only will also be able to see the sites that you have shown your +1 interest in. Additionally, if your friends have been there before you, and +1’d the same link, this will show up as well. Your Google account profile will also save a list of any site you +1 to your account details. For those who utilize their Google and Gmail accounts regularly, this could be a quite helpful tool for saving any site they may have a particular affinity for.

Pros and Cons of Up-Voting

Although for now, the results of +1’s will only be displayed publicly to those in your network, as well as a select random few public +1 voters, it may also be likely that if results from the experiment are positive, a global public will probably be next in their sights.

It is yet to be seen if having ‘friends in high places’ or highly reputable +1’s will make any difference, but it seems highly likely that if Google Labs does take this experiment to the global public, that having top-notch and highly reputable +1 friends could certainly make a huge difference in a web sites own popularity.

With the internet commerce of all types having such a large crowd of competitors this could certainly prove helpful on the local fronts rather quickly. Search engine queries for local businesses will, of course, display far fewer results then queries on a statewide, national or global scale. With far fewer competitors, favored local businesses will likely be quickly noticeable.

While up-voting may in fact give smaller businesses a shot at more public recognition, it may also leave another slot open for SEO tricksters and black-hat marketers to once again send to the top of the +1 pile those with enough resources and techniques to gain those +’s in perhaps not so organic manners.

Google Goes Social

Although quite an attempt was made at sending Google openly into the social media world with the inception of their Google Buzz system, it has had seemingly little effect or impact in the social media marketing world.

Google does plan to integrate their +1 system with Twitter as well, which will add another huge aspect of socially marketing and bookmarking to a users basic browser search results.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c]

Immediate Impact

Although Google has used social media interactions for years in its search engine displayed results, they seem to have definitely monitored and watched for important signals and statistics to give their regular users the ability to help promote more product-centric marketing.

By 4:00pm yesterday, even though shares had fallen by 2% this year, Google had risen by 11 cents to $581.84 per share on the Nasdaq.

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Social Brand Visibility: UStream

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UStream is a unique platform that consist of networks that include a wide diversity of channels that are open source options for live video streaming. Brad Hunstable and John Ham co-founded UStream while attending West Point, a renowned US Military Academy. Both of the co-founders had long been inspired by technology and received degrees in the engineering fields, however, it may have been their stints in the armed services that had a heavier inspiration for creating a source of live video communications.

With so many friends deployed to Iraq and time very limited in the war zones, an idea like UStream seemed the perfect solution for allowing soldiers to communicate with their families in real time and whenever they were capable.

Getting Started on UStream

Since UStream accounts are free there are some definite possibilities for any users with interest in live video casting. Simply head to the sign-up page and create your own account. Remember to try to utilize your keyword in your user name if at all possible.

Once you have a personal account it is only a matter of creating your own show or channel. You can create your own channel in just minutes as it only requires a quick trip to the dashboard, one-click create a show option and your channel is up, running and viewable by anyone.

Although users can create a snap channel and dive right in, it is also important to those who want to utilize UStream for marketing purposes to take the time to fill in the details. The easiest way to get the most coverage is to enter the correct tags, choose the closest category to your content and uploading a relevant photo.

You also have the opportunity to enter a short description of your newly created show or channel. The information you put here may be the most important as it is what will offer the most inclusive short description of your channel content possible.

Who Uses UStream?

Everyone from rock stardom to political conventions have been covered by UStream. Even big name radio stations such as Air America and Fox News Radio uses UStream to broadcast live streaming video casts which provides an enjoyable and free alternative to straight radio. Even CBS has their own live news breaking feed regularly on UStream.

UStream isn’t limited to politicians by any means and many famous young people are bringing attention to this format originally created with the best intentions at heart. To promote and connect with their fans users also include:

  • Ashton Kutcher
  • Snoop Dogg
  • Miley Cyrus
  • Perez Hilton

And many more celebrities from the A to Z list. UStream can go a long way for those celebrities that have not quite achieved public status. UStream can provide prospective consumers with a teaser of their music or live video shows. Even better yet, live events such as this RV show can be broadcast to those who may have great interest in the product, but no means to attend the event physically.

Recently, UStream was used during Social Media Week 2011 at the Social Media Camp hosted by the Roger Smith Hotel in New York. This event broadcasted live in two rooms as presenters covered various topics related to Social Media.

Statistically, common usage shows that there are only 438 sites with a better quarterly global Alexa traffic ranking than UStream. However, with much popularity in Japan, it is estimated that 33% of its visitors originate from there which has landed it a traffic ranking of 62 for their country. Although UStream began a slow but steady climb on daily traffic and page use in late 2009, numbers for the last thirty days show a 103% in user visits. 

Although obviously very popular in Japan, its average user tends to be moderately college educated and childless Hispanic males, with an age range of 18 to 34, who browse mostly from home.

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SmB Digital Trends: LivingSocial

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LivingSocial offers a system similar to Groupon where users can jot in their local zip code and browse over offers that can be purchased online for personal use, or even sent to others as gifts. This social discovery and networking tool allows business owners to read and review what others are saying about their business, and cater their advertising and promotional ventures accordingly.

LivingSocial isn’t limited to any specific area of commerce. Commonly movie tickets, books and even pet store coupons appear on the LivingSocial site in chosen local areas. As of early 2011, LivingSocial may not have the coverage that larger sites like Groupon currently has, but they are definitely growing, sometimes with cities expanding coverage in just a matter of days.

LivingSocial.com claims to be the most comprehensive and interest-based community online that is helping over 6.4 million users to catalogue their interest. And where would they get such incredible numbers? It seems LivingSocial has been using Facebook.

Full Facebook integration makes LivingSocial easy to use and even easier to share with family and friends. As they also promise the bigger the crowd, the better the deal, this encourages all users to share and equally encourage others to participate. Top notch marketing ideas like this on LivingSocial.com may indeed make it far more widely recognized and used once the traffic starts to bring in more deals, with better coverage.

So What is the Encouragement to Share?

Really, doesn’t every site online these days encourage you to share? And sometimes, when you see a great deal, you may share it, and just as often, you may mean to but forget, or just have no intention of sharing what you think may interest only you. So how does LivingSocial.com succeed in nudging users into sharing?

Simple. Each day a new discount deal will be available, either by viewing the site or by signing up for their daily emails. If this deal interest you, click the Buy Now option. Once you have purchased the deal you will receive a unique link to share with friends, family and those coveted Facebook followers and if three people also purchase the deal using your link, your originally purchased deal is entirely free.

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Who Likes LivingSocial.com?

Alexa says that LivingSocial.com has a global traffic ranking of 514 and a US traffic rank of 147. In comparison to race based internet statistics, LivingSocial.com’s users are disproportionately white, moderately college educated, and childless females over the age of 65, who earn over $30,000 per year and are most likely browsing from work. The sites regional traffic ranks actually show that 79% of its users are logging in from the United States. With a solid page ranking of 6 across multiple Google datacenters, over half of the daily page views are simple one page bounces.

Although the site is nearly four years old, trends in daily deal sites recently have certainly improved significantly since just after the beginning of 2011.

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