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analytics

Did you try? A Look at the data from #SMWsmac [InfoGraphic]

February 29, 2012 by Basil Puglisi 15 Comments

What can you do in 16 days? Try!

With just under a month before Social Media Week 2012, it came to our attention that NYC did not have a daylong event that was tailored to teach the small business owners and professionals how Social Media is and can be used. On Feb 1st, 2012 dbmei authors decided to launch Social Media Action Camp! The event which a few days later became an official part of Social Media Week was set for Feb 16th 2012 at the Roger Smith Hotel in NYC.

Data provided by Synthesio , and a few other sources .

The event tag #smwsmac generated over 1,000 tweets! Which represents about 5% of the social media activity in New York City. The Social Influencers reached over 116,000 followers and generated tweets in 15 countries globally!

In addition to the info from Synthesio, we also know that:

  • 102 people  attended throughout the day
  • 128 viewers at one time on LiveStream
  • 976 views on the Live Stream Channel
  • 1484 tweets to date #smwsmac
  • 71 check-ins on foursquare to the Roger Smith Hotel

The Official Social Media Week event page hosted on SocialMediaWeek.org generated 177 Facebook “Likes”, 250 “shares” on LinkedIn and 834 tweets that did not feature #smwsmac as a tag. Making the event the most socially shared event for ALL Social Media Week 2012 globally!

The Social@Olgivy Movers & Shakers platform supported by Kred featured organizer @BasilPuglisi as the top influencer for Feb 16th and both @BasilPuglisi and @dbmei as the top 5 influencers for the following day Feb 17th 2012.

The event was a mix of speakers featuring some of the digital names like Google, Klout, Synthesio, StumbleUpon, EmpireAvenue & Constant Contact. The event featured digital media professionals like David Meerman Scott, Amy Vernon, Mardy Sitzer, and Lujure’s Nathan Latka. Lisa A Burns, representing Corning Inc.,  spoke about the wonder of how a Fortune 500 Company used YouTube to capture more than 17 million views. Then the dbmei authors Bill Corbett Jr., Jeff Ogden, Craig Yaris and Basil C. Puglisi contributed their take on using social media to generate action!

The real success resulted from the response that the attendees reported.   The mix of content and style presented,  generated useful information in many areas with actionable advice and solutions.

“The diverse group of presenters offered extremely valuable best practices and actionable advice. It was also nice attending a social media event that didn’t cater to newbie’s or skeptics”  said David Gise

The event exemplified the point that “you don’t know till you try”, and while we have a long list of things we can do to make the next event even better, it’s an important point for dbmei as well as the individuals involved to say not only did we try, but we succeeded. If you take nothing else away from the article, we hope that when a opportunity presents itself, you be so bold as to try and make it happen.

 

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Conferences & Education, General, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media Topics Tagged With: analytics, blogger, brand, business, corning inc, dbmei, empire avenue, facebook, google, internet marketing, klout, lujure, Marketing, smw12, smwnyc, smwsmac, Social Brand, Social Media, social media conferences, social media education, social media maketing, social media week, StumbleUpon, synthesio, twitter, Visibility, Visibility Marketing, YouTube

Klout vs PeerIndex vs Social IQ

August 15, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Although Klout is certainly a highly popular format for social influence measurement, it is not the only tool available for this type of social media standing calculation.

Klout Review

Currently, Klout is definitively the leader in this social media-indexing race. Although some people continue to question the validity of the topics that are dubbed as a user’s ‘expert’ topics, others say that Klout is right on time when it comes to knowing what niches a person has a public passion for. 

Since early May of 2011, Klout has shown a steady rise in viewers. With only 1,208 sites having better three-month global traffic rankings, and the site holding steady in the US at #303, it shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. With new Klout Perks cropping up with increasing frequency, the buzz about this choice in social media monitoring does not leave out any of its pros, and even has its fair share of cons as well.

Some users report inconsistencies in what they are truly passionate about, and what Klout has derived as their interests from previous posts, statuses, and tweets. It seems that giving digital high-fives may only be worthy of Klout points if Klout is passionate about your topic, or simply just recognizes it as common.

PeerIndex

PeerIndex is another ingenious algorithm that measures the influence with a three A list.

  • Audience
  • Activity
  • Authority

These three elements are then evaluated and averaged in order to create each user’s Peer Index. The collaborated Peer Index will then reflect a number from zero to one-hundred, one-hundred being the highest.  

Another benefit to Peer Index and Mozilla users is a very helpful plugin that will reflect any Twitter users PeerIndex score on any website, forum, or any html based page where the @ symbol is used before a legitimate Twitter account name. This means that if you ever find yourself in need of someone with high authority in your niche, you are a simple Tweet stream away from the familiar and comforting highlighted PeerIndex rating. It also means an instant perusal of site owners’ proven level of peer influence without the need to manually go on a search.

PeerIndex has also been growing in leaps and bounds and has an Alexa ranking currently of 13,226 global with a U.S. presence at #7,326. However, only around 30% of users are U.S. based.

 Social IQ

A new competitor is also about to break out of beta and into the hands of eager users. Social IQ is defined as an algorithm that was developed by Soovox. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in sunny San Diego, California. Social IQ is the newest concept of the three in social influence calculation and monitoring. Still in their building phase, their main mission is to become a globally recognized element of new media advertising and influence economy.

Social IQ is taking the road previously traveled by Klout by enacting reward systems for users who have targeted niche influence. Login is just as easy on Social IQ s on the previously mentioned with manageable Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn integration.

Although it is still in beta and quite off of Alexa’s shortlist, Facebook integration is already functioning and any user can see what a fantastic tool this will be once completed.

Sources:

  • Alexa
  • Klout
  • Social Intelligence
  • Soovox
  • The Preeminent Intelligence – Social IQ

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Business Networking, Conferences & Education, Social Media Topics Tagged With: analytics, influence, network, Social Brand, Social Media, social stats

Social Media Trends in Europe and Russia

June 29, 2011 by Basil Puglisi 5 Comments

The use of social media is certainly not limited to the United States alone. In fact, for some internet users, social media networks may have been their first experience in connecting to someone outside of their own local, state, or even country.

Russia has a significantly different social media audience in the simple fact that in comparison to the U.S. it is extremely small. The total online population of Russia is just under 60,000 and only 42% of that population is using online capabilities at all.

Russian Demographics

According to eMarketer, 61.9 million people in Russia will use the internet by 2013. This would be a significant jump from 2009 where the number rested at 45.8 million. Although the minor numbers may seemingly indicate otherwise, Russians are actually the most arduous social networkers when it comes the length of time spent on social media sites per user.

Odnoklassniki, Russia’s main social network has a reported user-base of around 30 million. The site helps to connect classmates in Russia and the Ukraine and has over 8 million visitors per day. Nearly 75% of the online population of Russia visited at least one social networking site during the month of the study in August of 2010.

Russians are spending more than double the worldwide average time of 4.5 hours on social networking sites. This makes it rank high at #1 among all countries with reported social networking statistics and open social media option engagement. Following Russia is Israel with an average of just over 9 hours per visitor. Israel is followed by Turkey with 7.6 hours per user spent on social networking websites.

This means that in spite of Facebook’s worldwide powerful command in social networking sites, in an overall majority of this specific internet market, Facebook actually ranks fifth in Russia with just over 4.5 million users. However, recent years have seen increasing growth in Russian internet users who utilize Facebook as a social network option.  This is causing Facebook to quickly outpace the other five top social networking sites. 

European Social Media Statistics

Currently, the top ten countries for social networking are ranked by the time spent per visitor. The current worldwide average time for visitors spent on social networking websites is 4.5 hours. In a 2009 Rapleaf study, it was shown that females are far more active in social media than men. However, this study was focused on the U.S. A newer study from Comscore showed that the same rang true for European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. It should be no great surprise that the younger set of females ages 15 to 24 spend the most time of all age groups on social sites than their male counterparts at a generous 8.4 hours each month. What may be a bit more astonishing  is that the next age group on social media time consumption lists isn’t the 25 to 34 year olds, but the older group in the 45 to 54 year olds. The studies actually showed that the 45 to 54 year olds spent more than double the amount of time on social networking sites than the males of the same age group.

The short top ten list of countries leading in social networking capabilities are:

  1. Russia
  2. Israel
  3. Turkey
  4. UK
  5. Philippines
  6. Canada
  7. Indonesia
  8. Finland
  9. Spain
  10. Puerto Rico

Many European countries utilize social media websites that are not commonly used by U.S. internet users.

Friendster is relatively popular in Russia, while Hi 5 is frequented visited by users in Spain and Italy more often. Netlog is also highly popular in Spain and an unfamiliar sight for U.S social media users known as Studvyiz, is Germany’s most popular social media outside of Facebook and Myspace.

Sources:

  • Edelman Digital
  • Internet World Statistics
  • IAB Social Media Measurement Guide
  • New Media TrendWatch – Russia
  • Russia – The Fourth Largest Social Networking Market in Europe
  • Russia’s Social Network – Odnoklassniki
  • Slideshare IAB Social Media Research

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, General, Social Media Topics Tagged With: advertising, analytics, internet marketing, Marketing, Social Brand, Social Media, Visibility, Visibility Marketing

Klout Measures Your Clout On LinkedIn Social Business Network

June 15, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered how your resume stacks up against others with much the same experience as you? Fortunately, Klout, the startup that previously only measured a person’s influence across the social media board, and LinkedIn, the business-related social networking site, has now partnered up to allow users to see their own influence when it comes to their professional LinkedIn profiles.

Klout and LinkedIn Action

Klout will now quickly assess a user’s ability to influence action on LinkedIn. It will also measure who users may be influencing on LinkedIn and how they are being influenced.

Now when LinkedIn is added to the Klout dashboard, the LinkedIn connections a user has, as well as their activities on the business networking site, will be collaborated with the user’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. From these three accounts, a Klout score will be generated.

Klout CEO and co-founder Joe Fernandez has shared that LinkedIn has been one of the top request from users who want to expand their Klout scores with information from other social media networks besides the previously integrated Twitter and Facebook sites. Klout also shows on their dashboard that integration for Foursquare is not far behind.

While Klout developers passed up the chance to share the exact specifics on what is analyzed, they have shared that part of the analysis will be formulated by the users interactions on LinkedIn. These interactions include who users are interacting with, the type of content users share with their contacts, and the users influence in relation to the responses from those on their LinkedIn network. Klout has also made it clear that the number of connections have no influence in users Klout scoring system. Quality, not quantity, is what Klout is looking for when determining users scores.

Why Does Klout Score Matter?

Unless you have been living under a digital rock, you are well aware of the role that social media plays in internet business and marketing. However, the common sense aspect may not be all that is important when it comes to your Klout and social media influence scores.

Currently, brands and businesses are beginning to test programs that will provide benefits to social media and network users with higher Klout scores. In addition, Klout is currently scouting to help identify experts on a large variety of topics.

Last but not least, if your career involves working with and managing social media accounts, a high Klout score will obviously give you a leg up on your competition.

Who Uses Klout?

Obviously, anyone in a business that will benefit from a great online presence will benefit from a increasing Klout score, but who is actively using this method of measuring a person’s social networking influence?

One of the most well-known Klout reliant companies is the Huffington Post. They have integrated Klout into their article posts to help them locate the highest influencers. The Huffington Post is known for being on the cutting edge of the integration of social media on their site. Huffington Post viewers gives users the ability to not only know who is mentioning an article, but who the highest influencers are on a topic.

Clout with Klout in Vegas

Who doesn’t want some kind of clout in Vegas?  When visitors check into the Palm Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, they may be surprised at what influences the treatment they receive while checked into this top notch resort.

As visitors approach the check-in desk, and their information is pulled up on the reservation screen, another element is included besides just their credit card and personal request. If a visitor suddenly finds themselves invited to the exclusive Hugh Hefner Villa, they may be entirely shocked to understand that it is their Klout score that garnered them this top-notch invitation.

Palm Hotel and Casino uses Klout scores to judge each visitors worth as a consumer. The Palms’ marketing office, Jason Gastwirth is building the Klout Klub for visitors who have the highest and most influential Klout scores. These influential visitors may be privy to some of the Palms’ most impressive set of amenities.

The Palm Hotel and Casino seems to have the right idea when it comes to their influence on consumers who are likely to happily Tweet, Facebook, Digg, and Stumbleupon their social medias to laud the benefits they received while visiting this highly social media oriented resort. While giving away a few amenities, they are also building some serious Klout for themselves. The praise, @mentions and other comments they receive are well worth the cost of giving away a few perks to highly influential social media users.

 

Sources:

  • LinkedIn Users Have Klout
  • Linkedin And Klout Join Social Button Revolution
  • Social Brand Visibility – Klout
  • Klout Expands Influence to LinkedIn
  • Klout and the Huffington Post
  • Palms Hotel and Casino Uses Klout to Give Clout to their Visitors

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Digital & Internet Marketing, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media Topics Tagged With: analytics, brand, engagment, influence, LinkedIn, social network, twitter, Visibility

Tweet Tools: Increase Your Twitter Productivity with TweetSpinner

June 8, 2011 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

If your direct messages inbox is full of auto-follow spam messages or otherwise delayed or old information, you are probably like most other Twitter users that do not have TweetSpinner.

Direct Messaging Inbox Archiving

TweetSpinner provides more control over many important elements of managing your Twitter account fully, accurately, and lucratively. It will allow you to finally de-spam and archive those messages cluttering up your direct message, or DM, inbox.

The moment you log on you can choose to one-click archive your DM messages to quickly clean up that inbox 200 messages at a time. This archiving process saves them to your account so that you can browse through them when you have the time, while still keeping your DM inbox clean and clear. Users are allowed to set filters on what constitutes spam and even if those messages are preferred for archives or deletion. The archived messages are stored at TweetSpinner, not on your machine.

Follower Management

TweetSpinner provides highly sophisticated follower management and analytics with easy to configure filters that will help users locate the most receptive followers while ignoring spam accounts.

It will provide an ongoing and updated display of:

  • People you follow
  • The number and percentage that do not follow you back
  • People who follow you
  • Those whom you do not follow back
  • Ratio of friends to followers

Users with paid accounts then have the option to configure, or prune, their settings, as well as setting some fairly intricate options. Depending on the level of the account, the customization for auto-following, as well as auto-unfollowing, can be incredibly detailed. Keyword following and mimic following are also options within the user Follower Management tool.

Logging onto TweetSpinner is as easy as visiting their sign in page and creating your account. Simply authorize the account and you are on your way.

Profile Rotator

The profile rotator does just as it says. However, this one allows users to important colors and background images of items you utilize on Twitter. Simply change your design at Twitter and try the import feature once more. You then have two unique designs to choose from. These can be rotated on a schedule to keep your Twitter profile interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

Since Twitter only allows for a very small bio and a URL you can now add a bit more of a profile with TweetSpinner. You can create more than one which can also be set on a schedule to rotate to help your account maintain the ability to effectively express yourself to your followers.

Other features such as Smart Tweets will help to guide you into making the most out of your 140 characters or less and the DM Outbox options can help to send out far more personalized messages than before. Their rules-based DM system will make sure that when rules you pre-set are met, a correct trigger will return a personalized message to that user.

Site navigation is as easy as it gets with most management activity occurring from within the same page.

Who Uses TweetSpinner

Currently, users are predominately between the ages of 35 and 65 with global site traffic ranking hovering at 31,003. Most are professional females who are browsing from home. In Johannesburg the site has achieved a much higher ranking at #825.

TweetSpinner does offer a free version but most who will want to use this tool for a professional account will likely want to take a closer look at paid package versions that start at $16 USD per month and can go higher for Pro versions or those accounts purchased for social media agencies.

 

Sources:

  • TweetSpinner Review
  • TweetSpinner to Rotate Avatars, Clean your DMS and More
  • AutoTwitter Review
  • Increase Twitter Productivity

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Digital & Internet Marketing, Mobile & Technology, Social Media Topics Tagged With: advertising, analytics, internet marketing, Marketing, mobile, twitter, Visibility, Visibility Marketing

Tumblr Becomes More Sociable with Launch of the New Share Button

May 18, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

The publishing platform known as Tumblr has officially joined the social networking class of tools alongside more popular Facebook and Twitter options. While the Tumblr button is very similar to other bookmarking buttons offered by a large variety of services, it does offer a significantly more advanced options for the display posted.

Customized Tumblr Display Flexibility

Tumblr developers have provided a short set of coding that is easily copy-pasted into any content that you would like to promote through their micro-blogging service. The difference is in the results. The new Tumblr button gives users total authority over how their content is displayed when shared via Tumbler.

Users can decide if their link appears as:

  • Videos
  • Links
  • Quotes
  • Photos

Further user customization includes attributions, pre-filled descriptions, and even specific selections of text if desired. Buttons can meet configuration standards for Ruby, JavaScript, or PHP.

Add the Tumblr Share Button Bookmarklet

Head to the Tumblr website and log into your account. Go to the Goodies Section, and you will see the new Tumblr share button. Drag it over to your toolbar. Now each time you see an interesting item worth linking, just click on the Tumblr bookmarklet and publish it.

Tumblr Improvements

The Tumblr site is undeniably showing improvements in GUI as well as functionality. Customization options give users immense control over how their shared content is displayed, even offering an improvement in blogging systems.

Tumblr Users

Tumblr’s site has achieved an overall traffic ranking of 50 on Alexa, with a US traffic ranking of 25. Users do show an extended amount of time at around seven minutes. Predominantly users tend to be childless females between the ages of 18 and 34 who enjoy browsing Tumblr’s site from work or college.

Overall improvements of the Tumblr site including the social bookmark sharing tool addition is likely to bring Tumblr just what they were looking for with this upgrade, an increased share of social bookmarking users who enjoy and benefit from their available services.

 

 Sources:

  • Tumblr Share Bookmarklet
  • Tumblr Share Button for Re-Blogging
  • Tumblr Launches Share Button
  • Customizable Buttons for Tumblr Sharing

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Conferences & Education, Digital & Internet Marketing, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media Topics Tagged With: advertising, analytics, blog, blogger, brand, internet marketing, Marketing, PR, Visibility, Visibility Marketing

TweetStats Real-Time Twitter Statistics

May 12, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

There seems to be an entire industry devoted to creating Twitter tools. Some are highly effective and worth the few moments it may take to register or login to their respective systems. Others tend to make a quick debut, likely via Twitter or another social media, and then quickly fade into the background as a victim of not enough features, or too complicated or spammy of a registration process.

With so many social media marketers standing up to take notice of every rise and dip in statistics, many may use a variety of tools to gauge how their marketing efforts may be influencing their brand awareness and subsequent sales.

There Be Fairies Furnishing ur XML

Along with a rather unique loading message, TweetStats supplies one of the first third-party Twitter applications to those who wish to find out basic statistics about their account including:

  • Tweets per month
  • Tweets per selected day
  • Tweet density
  • Aggregate hourly and daily tweets
  • Interface statistics

Users can even check out their Tweet Clouds to see which words are most frequently used by them or in reply to users tweets.

Monitor the TweetStats of Other Users

TweetStats can also be used to monitor the status of other Twitter accounts as well. Users can check on the stats of their favorite brands, closest competitors, and up-and-coming companies they may have an interest in.  It can be used as a highly effective tool for those who may want a birds-eye view of their toughest rivals’ social media campaigns.

Who Uses TweetStats?

Alexa says most users spend around a minute on page views and around four minutes on site examining their Twitter statistics. With a page rank of 14,884 in the U.S. statistics show that most users are Hispanic, highly educated, childless females, ages 25 – 34 who tend to browse from work. An unusual stat for TweetStats shows that in the city of Königstein, Germany, TweetStats page ranking is at #31. Lifetime TweetStats statistics show a lifetime steady growth in popularity for this social media tool.

FEATURED USERS!!!

This is an impressive affordable way to increase your twitter followers, it uses banner advertising on the tweetstats site to allow you do twitter follwer advertising for as little as $40. The system will generat an impression count, a banner from your twitter account and then pay with Credit Card or PayPal and your campaign is underway. This is a wonderful little feature that can help you increase your twitter followers and because it’s tied to tweet stats, you can count onthe fact that they are quality followers.


 Sources:

  • Free Twitter Statistics
  • Featured Followers
  • Spy On Other Twitter Users with TweetStats
  • TweetStats: The Easiest Way to Track Twitter
  • TweetStats Twitter
  • Social Twitter Tools

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Conferences & Education, Digital & Internet Marketing, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media Topics Tagged With: analytics, brand, internet marketing, Marketing, Social Brand, Social Media, tools, twitter, Visibility, Visibility Marketing

Small Business Solutions: Marchex

May 2, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Marchex, a company out of Seattle Washington, is a call advertising and analyzing company, which caters to small businesses to help them in marketing and sales. Where are you listed? Have you optimized your listing exposure? How accurate is the information?  Those are questions Marchex helps answer. They provide analytics that can compare your business to that of your competitors and give you a quick sentiment view.

Call Analytics

Unlock the DNA of your incoming calls – that is what Marchex is offering their clients. Since those who call a company are more likely to be interested in the products or services they offer, than those who just go to the website, it is an important step in understanding who are the callers and what they are after. Call Mining, using speech transcription and data mining technology, enables business owners analyze those phone conversations to detect caller intent, needs and pain points.

All this so the business owner can optimize his/her marketing campaigns and turn calls into sales. Marchex will watch for keywords and phrases and will show the business owner which ones converted to sales and those who didn’t. By comparing this information, the business owner can determine the channels and ads that are driving the highest number of calls, it can give him/her insight into what the customers really want, how they reacted to certain words and adjust the campaign or sale pitch accordingly.

Marchex customers create a list of topics they want to follow. The data they get from the company shows them how those keywords were used; what topics were discussed, who said what, etc.

Local Leads

Marchex creates, manage sand optimizes advertisement and presence in the major search engines and other online and mobile sources, including their own local websites and directories.

Pay-For-Call/ Pay-Per-click

Another service that Marchex offers to small and medium business owners is called Pay-for-Call Exchange, a performance based call advertising products. The business owner pays only for those calls that ended in a sale. Marchex customers can get expert’s advice, help with strategy, site selection, ad creating, bid pricing and optimization.

Reputation management

Marchex gives small businesses a simple way to manage and improve their online reputation. From over 8,000 online sources, including blogs, microblogs, forums and local searches, they deliver analysis that helps the business owner see and maintain good reputation.

Marchex is even being used by ATT, for more see the following blog.

Sources:

  • Marchex: Call Tracking Analytics
  • Marchex: Pay Per Click Advertising
  • Marchex: Small Business Marketing

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Digital & Internet Marketing Tagged With: analytics, brand, call, call analytics, internet marketing, Marketing, Mobile & Technology, pay per call, ppc, Visibility, Visibility Marketing

Can Virtual Salespeople Increase the Bottom Line?

April 27, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

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.

Sources:

  • Alexa SitePal
  • Alexa LiveFaceOnWeb
  • Are Speaking Avatars Beneficial?
  • Success with Speaking Avatars
  • Speaking Avatars for Education
  • Dmoz – Speech Synthesis
  • Sites Using SitePal

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Conferences & Education, Digital & Internet Marketing Tagged With: analytics, avatar, brand, internet marketing, Marketing, sales, social people, virtual, Visibility, Visibility Marketing, website

What Mobile Apps Can Do for Small Business

April 7, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

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.

Sources:

  • Information Week: AT&T
  • Best Mobile Apps for Small Business
  • Life Changing Apps?
  • Mobile Apps for Learning
  • Mobile App Photo Share with Zurfer
  • Mobile Apps Survey
  • Nielsen

Filed Under: Basil's Blog #AIa, Branding & Marketing, Conferences & Education, Digital & Internet Marketing, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media Topics Tagged With: analytics, aplications, apps, mobile, Mobile & Technology, Social Brand, Social Media, Visibility, Visibility Marketing

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