@BasilPuglisi

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Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 1: Radian6, Scout Labs, FlipTop

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Social Media has, in many ways, taken the place of the generalized web search. Personal comments, posted by happy or disgruntled customers, can have a tremendous impact on the reputation of a brand. It doesn’t take long before a social comment creates a chain of complaints, and if it goes unanswered can damage any business. There is no vacuum in the world, scientists tell us, and if you are not present on social media, your competitors can take advantage of your absence.

With so many social media platforms, and new ones joining all the time, the amount of users and comments on social media platforms has overtaken the amount of search engine queries, and by doing so have turned social media into a prime target for advertisers. Where the clients are, that is where advertisement should be.

With that proliferation, business owners have faced a dilemma; devote many hours of the day to monitoring their brand name and engaging in personal advertising across many sites, or hire additional employees to deal with those issues. But help was not far behind. To make it easier to monitor and to use so many social media sites for reputation and advertising, a few companies have created tools to monitor social media presence and plan a quick response. These are tools that not only tell you who is talking about you, what he/she says, but give you tools to see it in one place and analyze the information.

Radian6

By far the most robust site and the most talked about it Radian6.  Formed in 2006, the site helps companies with social media monitoring that enables business owners listen to what is said about their business online, across a wide network of social site including Twitter and Facebook, through text, tweets, pictures (Flickr), Google Buzz, videos, forums and blog posts. Radian6 gathers all that information and gives the business tools to analyze, manage, track and respond in real time.

Users of the software can choose any number of topics and keywords they want to track and get information within seconds. They can even compare them against each other to see which keyword gets the most uses in the social media circles.

Radian6 is a desktop application built on Adobe AIR. This paid program (about $500 a month) is meant for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. It also allows assigning tasks to different team members, and planning engagement times. Users can customize the tracking grid and break down the information by broad or specific topics, by tagging customer lists or by media types.

Radian6 was originally marketed to ad agencies. When the agency works with many brands, it could offer social media monitoring services for their clients. From there it expended to businesses beyond advertising companies and PR firms. They are probably best suited for medium to large sized brands and businesses.

But by far the best feature of the site is its analytics; after some training, you can slice and dice the data you get any way you want; who is mentioning your brand, on what platform. You can get an “influencer report” – who is mentioning your brand and on what source. The workflow view of the site allows users to follow, assign and report on news in real time. You can even have it sent to you via instant messenger.  

Watch a video presentation:

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

Radian6 biggest customers include Dell, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Fujitsu and Sony Ericson.

Scout Labs

 

The company was founded in February 2009, after two years of testing and development. Priced at around between $99 and $250 a month, scout Labs will give the user, after an initial set up, charts and graphs for volume of mentions and compare it to the competition you have set up to track. An automated ‘sentiment report’ follows every search, so you know at first glance if the comments are good, bad or neutral. This aspect is manually scored on Radian6 and comes with the highest paid package. On Scout Labs it is presented right there and then. But, it requires you to trust the algorithms which are applied, to understand the nuances of the language.

Scouts lab allows you to quickly scan all the social media sites for specific keywords or terms. Experts say it turns in more results from pictures and video than Radian6, and the ‘sentiment’ scoring makes it quicker to deal with problems. For $99 a month, their basic program is enough to handle a single brand or small business, and monitor 3-4 competitors. For $249, you get the ability to do more searches for competitors and divisions of your business.

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

You get a better price point with Scout Labs but not as through analytics as you get with Radian6. The latter has internal project management software for quick response that the former has not. Whether you choose Radian6 or Scout Labs depends on the size of your company and the information you want to have. Both are useful and worth the time and money you’ll invest in learning how to work it properly. From there, it will enable you to see a clear picture where your business is, in the big scheme of things.

FlipTop

In its beta stage right now, this promising new Social Media Tool shows some amazing potential, while it offers analytical tools, Fliptop is setup to leverage relationships across the different platforms in such a way that tracking profile and demographic information from those platforms may make target marketing more effective both in, and outside of social media. This tool may not only have the pulse of the social media realm, it may have the pulse of each individual tool providing valuable insight to what is and isn’t working in each type of social media.  

Early Estimates show that it may enter the market at a price point of $99 a month, which should make it very competitive with the existing market. However, don’t expect that price point to last long once they go public, as the suite of tools it seems to have in the beta are likely to get a lot of attention.

I going to stay vague for now, as my beta to this tool was a leap of faith and I want to finishing using it for a little while. I also want to let my contact work with me on  this, but I promise you from what I have seen and heard from the FlipTop rep this is a very promising tool.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYkqwsQfiA]

This is Part 1 of Social Media Monitoring Tools, Part 2 will be later this week.

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Facebook Marketing Tool: Involver.com

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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.

  1. Involver helps to generate earned media by attracting attention from influential sources.
  2. Involver helps to get prospective customers engaged with your products and services through social networks.
  3. Involver can help to reduce marketing cost through a series of fully automated social networking services.
  4. 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

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“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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Social Media Club

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In March of 2006, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells began Social Media Club. Their intentions were to provide a format in which to explore and offer solutions to common issues facing our society as technological advancements continued to shape the way we connected socially on many levels.Benefits of Social Media Club

The global conversation on these issues has continued on to help build an organization and central location where a largely diverse group of people can continue to come together to discuss Social Media. SocialMediaClub.org can be beneficial to users in many ways.

  • All members will be able to sign up on Social Media Club’s email lists and social networks to connect with those who have similar needs and interest. This can also be based on geography if that benefits the member.
  • Members have access to publish in the Social Media Club Observer.
  • Members can receive discounts to the events organized by Social Media Club and its partner organizations and companies.
  • Members have the opportunity to be listed under the Speakers Directory and to receive invitations to members-only events.
  • Jobs in social media industries are also listed on the Social Media Club members section of the website.

Perhaps most vitally, members will have the chance to meet with people just as themselves who are looking for an edge in managing their businesses or personal social medias. Members who are unfamiliar with all of the common aspects of social media will learn to confidently utilize and apply these technological advancements in communication to their everyday businesses.

Members who have advanced knowledge of social media marketing will have many others to bounce their new and innovative ideas off of, those of whom already know their language and can respond in kind.

Social Media Statistics

It is a fact that we will likely never return to our parents, and their parents generations that flocked to radio and daily print to absorb our local or global news and information. Statistics regularly monitored in social medias only continue to grow in unfathomable numbers.

In 2010, during the average twenty minute excerpt of time, there were 1,5870,000 posts to Facebook walls and 2,716,000 photos uploaded. 10,208,000 comments were also posted.

Since April 2010, Twitter has increased their user list by 40,000,000 and have had a 62% increase in the use of mobile platforms.

The average U.S. user will watch at least thirty minutes of video online each day, compared to around five hours of T.V. per day.

Social Media Club Goals

Ultimately, the goal of Social Media Club is to continue to provide a forum where individuals can work together for a universal common good. Part of that goal means to continue to build up and build on more local chapters for all members.

Additionally, Social Media Club stresses that education, management and helpful tools and services are not limited to online availability and that offline events, meets and other knowledgeable networking functions are just as important as the time you spend utilizing them online daily.

Social Media Club Long Island

Founded in 2010 by Hillary Topper, Social Media Club Long Island has developed a following rather quickly in just under a year. The group received its official charter in early 2011 and features guest speakers at every meeting. Much like a Chamber of Commerce, the group gathers business owners and entrepreneurs alike.

The last SMCLI meeting took place on March 4, 2010. I had the pleasure to attend as I recently joined the SMC as a professional member.

The March 4 meeting featured speaker Steve Poppe, Managing Partner of What’s The Idea? (slideshare posted below). Sueanne Shirzay of SMCLI wrote in a follow up SMCLI  internal blog “Importance was put on the tremendous value of creating original content in blogs and websites, as only a paltry 8% of social media users currently do this. He described the creators or original content as “posters” and those who retweet the content or copy it as “pasters”.

In addition to the poster and paster comparison, Steve also brought our attention to the format or content type we use in our posts when we do post. As Steve pointed out that we have all become heavy text based posters, this gave pause to the entire room with a moment of silence to ponder the possibility that even those of us that are creating original content or “posters” have mostly become text based. I took a bit of pride in realizing that I had caught this in my blogs and made the adjustment back at the end of Dec 2010. Yet somehow most of my other social media activities are still overwhelmingly text based.

Social Media Week 2011: Social Media Camp NYC presented by Social Media Club

SMC has networked itself right into the heart of Social Media activities, I recently presented at Social Media Week 2011 and Social Media Club was the organizing sponsor of the event. Clearly this organization warrants keeping an eye on, but clearly it’s something any social media professional will want to join.

[slideshare id=7151078&doc=psomelisomeclub0304-110304112129-phpapp02]

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Digital Marketing Trend: Microsoft Tag

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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.

Blog Tag: URL 2D

SmB Digital Trends: Groupon, Google Offers & Facebook Deals

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Small Business Trends: Groupon, Google Offers & Facebook Deals

Groupon burst into the scene of business client relationship in 2008, and changed the advertising model. It’s mindboggling rise in 2010 is proof they’ve hit the jackpot – an uncharted territory of local businesses and internet users. The virtual world and the physical world intersecting with each other.

A deal-a-day website, Groupon focuses its attention on the buying power of the surge. Every day a new deal in a specific area is advertised, announced by e mail to users by geographic location. The deal offers deep discounts – between 50%-90% off the regular price, and it can be made on merchandise or services (diving lessons for example). For businesses, even though the margin of profit shrinks, the deal has the potential of brining in many new customers and creating repeat business. For the customers it is an opportunity to buy something at a drastically reduced price.

Groupon’s scouts reach out to local businesses they deem worthy and offer to make a deal. Today, Groupon has scouts in over 300 markets in 35 countries, looking for businesses that meet their standards. There are some businesses they stay away from; shooting ranges, abortion clinics, plastic surgeons and strip clubs to mention some. Groupon has a subscriber base of 50 million members.

Forbes Magazine said about Groupon, as was quoted in The Wall Street Journal “We are projecting that the company is on pace to make $1 Billion in deals faster than any other business, ever.”

With the success came attempts by bigger companies to buy them out. Yahoo was rumored to make an offer, which was rejected, then, at the end of 2010, Google offered to buy Groupon for $6 billion. The offer was rejected in December 2010. It is rumored they are preparing for an IPO that can bring in as much as $16 billion.

Google didn’t wait long. At the end of January 2011, Google announced a new product which is in its testing stages. It is called Google Offers.

Google Offers

On January 20, 2011, Google announced on their blog “… a new product to help potential customers and clientele find deals in their area through a daily e mail”.

On the surface it seems to be the same deal as Groupon, but those who saw the program say it is a different model.

It will be an extension of their Google Coupons. You can see it if you google: coupons site:maps.google.com intitle:Google Offers. There you’ll find a list of coupons for businesses according to the geographical location. As you can see on the page, it is not very attractive and it is not easy to find deals in your area. But, if Google will let you know the deal in a daily e mail, incorporating their Gmail service, their potential customer base is enormous.

Opportunity? – With google shifting to local search results in Nov 2010, it might set the stage for a local offer to be ties into the search results in a big (or popup) way! Currently for as little as $25 a month Google places lets business owners produce a deal or coupon special, but this is likley just the begining.

Nate Tyler, Google spokesman, sent this statement a few days later:

“Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted.”

And they are not alone. Where Google goes, so does Facebook (or vice versa).

Facebook Deals

Millions of people use Facebook Places to tell their friends where they are at a certain moment. Now Facebook is going a step further and launching an additional program for smartphone users called Facebook Deals.

We all like to feel we got the best deal possible, especially when it is shared with friends. Starting in November 2010, when you ‘check in’ to a business page on Facebook on your computer or mobile phone, you will see notations if the business is offering a deal. Clicking on it will show you the type of deal this business is offering.

Facebook Places lets you share where you are with your friends and see where they are. With Deals you can also see which businesses offer discounts in the area you are and share that information with your friends. When you go to the establishment, all you have to do is show your phone to the cashier to get your discount or gift.

There are 4 kinds of deals Facebook Deals is offering: Individual, friend, loyalty and charity.

  • Individual deals offer discounts or rewards for you, like a free cup of coffee, a free entrée etc. When you check in you get the offer for yourself.
  • Friend – You have to bring your friends with you. Tagging a number of friends to a business will get all of you a discount or free stuff (like a free T shirt in a rock concert). But you have to be in the company of all those you tagged.
  • Loyalty deals – a local establishment can offers deals that are similar to the punch-in cards, in the vein of buy 5 and get the 6th one free.
  • Charity deals – The establishment will donate money to charity when you use their services.

Since the end of January 2011, Deals is available in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

Which system is best for your business? It depends on your niche, what a surge on clients can bring, or whether you want it to be a one-time deal or an ongoing discount for repeat customers. But one thing is certain – all those offers open a new way for businesses to advertise themselves to customers in their physical area.

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Sneak Peak: Digital Brand Marketing 411: Educate, Embrace, Brand

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So, the internet is flooded with 101 courses, be it Social Media 101, SEO 101, Digital 101, SEM 101 and so on. The shocking part is that we are well beyond Freshman year, perhaps now it’s time for an advanced course.

This is a book in progress and the purpose of this post is to get feedback and support from fellow professionals who will have the chance to help shape its final publication.

Educate, Embrace, Brand

If training programs are a natural part of any induction to new employment, then should we not use this time to maximize the experience both professionally and personally?

Imagine a company that spends time introducing its new employees to Social Media during the training, helps them set up accounts, teaches them etiquette and the role that each different social media has both in personal and professional communication, even if it is at the most basic level.

That same company now embraces its new employees, like a press release, announcing their employment on the company’s Facebook page, twitter accounts, foursquare and more. At stage one, the companies’ own Social Media, has just gone viral with opportunity that has yet to be realized by corporations.

Educating and supporting an employee’s personal brand with the company would touch every contact that the employee has on a regular basis (i.e. profile pictures that resemble something like a baseball card with the team name, or in this case, the company name). The natural progression of Social Media would give the brand a reach and repetition beyond traditional marketing campaigns (This is not even considering the value for professional outreach to clients, service providers and more).

Features, Benefits & Pitfalls

“This section will be the core of the book”

Why?

The ability to control your brand has been lost for some time.  The introduction of reviews, facebook, twitter and more have shifted the spectrum. The current chain of command climate, has corporations and their brands operating as spectators or participants at best.

Your employees are already doing it! A claim like “When John/Joan made that racist, sexist, ageist, etc. etc. comment on facebook, it was not endorsed or supported by [insert company name]”. That’s a PR nightmare, because we all know s/he works for you and now your associated with the people you surround yourself with, or in this case employ.

Already employees are engaging or starting to engage in social media.  In most cases, the biggest threats come from those that will not let you into their social network.  Social Media demands a proactive approach or a great damage control team and understanding stockholders. The best way to understand what your employees are doing on social media is to be an active participant and take a stake in it.

The Coca-Cola Example:

In 2006, The Coca-Cola Company stated that 71,000 people worked for that company.  Imagine what that means in the way of networks if Coca-Cola Educated, Embraced and Branded their people!

If each employee averaged a modest 100 unique Facebook Friends, that’s a reach of 7,100,000 people that will directly see the company name, product or message at least once, if not on a repetitive basis. Take a minimal assumption that 10% of them may do something that others find worthy of sharing in their networks just once in a month and you just doubled your direct impact to a whopping 14 million direct touches with your brand, product or message.  That’s 14 Million a month based on just one touch. We are more than likely talking about a more realistic value of about 30 Million at least once and most of them more than once. How much would you spend to reach 30 Million people? Remembering you have to do it with someone they know and possibly trust or value.

The influence for the book:

Social Media has transformed the way we do business, “This is a massive socio-economic shift that is fundamentally changing the way consumers and companies communicate and interact with each other”, Erik Qualman (Socialnomics, 2010).

Is this True?

I believe that Erik Qualman is correct. However, what most are missing is that we are still stuck in the entry level courses or just fulfilling our general education requirements and the time to be undecided is at an end.

Companies continue to adjust to the trend that Social Media dictates on how consumers spend. Their reactive state has paralyzed them, and no one has taken a moment to stop, think and produce a proactive campaign or policy.

Social Media 101 was the introduction of Away Messages, Chat rooms and Buddy lists. Social Media in the 200’s was all about the personal networks we build.  Whereas, Social Media 300’s have been a consistent battle to generate ROI for business and balance the separation of personal and professional.

Social Media in the 400’s (Senior Year) will be the race towards the podium. The first to Educate, Embrace and Brand will be the Valedictorian. This senior year has some big potential leaders that are laying the ground work. However,  there’s not a single corporation in that list!

The Preview

This is a part of the conceptual work of my book that will be released in 2011. This post is to introduce the concept and ideas of the power behind Social Media that has yet to be realized by corporations. I specifically target corporations because small business owners all across America are already transitioning into this next stage.  Stating “separation” as the key to a business or professional image is proving everyday in small business to be false.

The Naysayers

Some will be quick to jump at the hesitation of individuals to cross the personal and professional barrier, as much as, the companies they work for. However, social media has already crossed those barriers. For those that wish to continue to try and separate the two on a continual basis, Mark Zuckerberg has already covered that for them. That is why education is the first step in this process. There is no one way to accomplish this goal.  Like fire, we can get burned, but without embracing fire we would be hard pressed to stay warm or protected. Companies, Businesses and Organizations are made of people and now more than ever its harder to hide who we, or they are, it’s just a matter of time.

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Google’s Social Search

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A few days ago Google changed the way the company is dealing with social media.

Since the launch of its Social Search in 2009, Google’s social media was kept a little hidden from the general public. You had to know about it and opt-in through Google Labs. Once you did, Google’s search results page would display the results to your query as it is vetted by machines (logarithms) and by people – what did your personal contacts on the social  search wrote about it. The results of people’s recommendations were displayed at the bottom of the page. All that would appear only to those who signed up for the service.

On Feb 17, 2011 Google unveiled its changes to the Social Search, publishing it in beta and turning it on for all who are signed in, in English (so far).

With this new integration, which includes Google images as well, Google is introducing a tie to social search outside its own circle, from Twitter, Flickr and Quara. It uses social profile connected to your profile on Google to deliver items such as photos or blogs and tweets that come from you friends.

The search results will not appear, as they did until now at the bottom of the page, but will be integrated in the search itself, blended throughout the page. This is done through a system that lets you know when a friend shared a specific link or search result in the subject of your query. It appears in the search result page under the site’s url.

In other words, now you can see what your friends have recommended, not only what the logarithms have found out, making the search more personal and specific.

The other change is in its appearance in the search results. Any comment done by your friends on Twitter for example will appear as an annotation saying that your friend “shared this”. The more recommendations, the higher this site will go in the ranking.

Users have control over what gets displayed in social searches. The user page gives the ability to connect their profiles publicly or privately, to their other Google accounts, Twitter etc.

One thing this update does not include is a connection to Facebook. Not at the moment anyway. While still in beta, the rollout will occur in the next few days.

What does it mean?

Even though this announcement went through pretty quietly, it might create a shock wave as far as SEO goes. Search Engine Optimizations means making your site as visible as possible. To be visible, your site should appear on the first page of Google. The ranking on the page is determined by rules Google has put in place years ago: the size of the site, the activity on the site, the backlinks and the keywords that relate to the specific query, among other things.

Now, with the new Google social search – what was written about the subject using social media will have an impact on the placement on the page. The more people wrote and commented about the subject, the higher on the page the article or site will go. Social media, especially those sites connected to Google social search, have become more important in the placement of the search results.

What’s more; the search results may appear differently to different people depending on their circle of friends! If many of your friends talked about a ski resort in Alaska – this resort will move up in your page, but not in mine. Those who didn’t sign up for the social search will get different search placements without the comments, since only the user of the service will be able to see those elements.

With this swipe, Social Media has become more important in Search Engine Optimization. That is, if this service will grow in popularity.

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What is a Creative Commons License?

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With so much business being conducted online these days, it has become imperative to have methods to protect and copyright our works in a manner just as remote as how it was posted. Regardless of whether your work is writing, photography, or even coding or programming, you will want a means to ensure that regardless of what happens with those items, you are given credit for producing them.

When you apply for a Creative Commons license you can keep the copyright to your work, while allowing others to copy or distribute you work, as long as they give you proper credit, on the conditions you get to specify. You may choose to offer your work freely with no desire for crediting, or you may determine exactly the manner in which you want to be credited regardless of its use.

There are some more reputable websites that can help you to create your licensing for your work.

CreativeCommons.org  is an example of a reputable licensing site. You are able to choose a license and once done they will provide you with an HTML tag that will list your work as copyright restricted. However, CreativeCommons is not a registrar and will not retain records of your selections.

Flickr.com also offers create commons licensing and the format to help you protect your work. Flickr and CreativeCommons both have things in common. Their licensing types mirror one another perfectly.

CreativeCommons offers the following licensing options.

  • Attribution: An attribution license will let others tweak, change, build on, remix, distribute or otherwise alter your work, they also have to credit you for the original creation in the manner you request.
  • Attribution NoDerivatives: This particular license allows for commercial and non-commercial use, as well as redistribution, however, it must remain unchanged and all credit must go to you.
  • Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike: Like Attribution, users can tweak, alter, build on and distribute, however, they must credit you and license their own product or creation under identical terms.
  • Attribution ShareAlike: An attribution sharealike license will allow others to alter, tweak and otherwise build upon your original work for commercial purposes. They must however, credit you and license their own agreement under the same terms.
  • Attribution NonCommercial: Others can tweak, alter, rebuild or build upon your work for non-commercial purposes. Any new works should acknowledge the original creator and also be non-commercial.
  • Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives: The most restrictive license, this one only allows others to download or otherwise save your works and even share them with others as long as you are properly credited. This license does not permit users to alter your original creation in any way.

If you are new to creative commons licensing it may be important to read up before making the decision on your license choices.

This is also likely to be one part of your copyright policy and protection practices, an example of how this is used as part of a policy or image see: Copyright Info

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News and Social Media: The “New Media Press”?

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Social media has, without a doubt, changed how the established news media is handling The News. It has changed traditional media in the most important aspects; news gathering, news reporting and news distribution.

Factitious Example not a real press pass or any real affiliation.

  • News Gathering

One of the biggest benefits of social media is how quickly information can be discovered and shared. News organizations no longer are the main source of news, and they don’t “own” the news.

61% of adults get their news online – making it the third most popular news platform. Reporters have transformed from being the gatekeepers of information to gatherers of content from within a public space. Crowd sourcing it is called – the media of the masses, citizen journalism.

A number of top news stories were covered thanks to citizen journalism. The US plane which landed in the Hudson River, was first announced on Twitter. Twitter was also vital in the coverage of the Iranian elections and the unrest that followed.

  • New Reporting

The immediate and intimate coverage of the social media has inspired news organizations to create their own social media platforms. News agencies have come under tremendous pressure to beat citizen journalists by breaking news on the social wire. Social media enables real time updates. Readers get the information much faster thanks to sites like Twitter and Facebook. And that is especially significant in places were the regime controls the mainstream media and the internet; in Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain for example. Rulers can no longer control the information their Subjects get, and the latest turmoil in the Middle East made it proof positive.

  • Blogs

Debate continues to the role and validity of bloggers. However, Social Media pioneer Erik Qualman made great examples of how bloggers can provide more accurate and timely information then traditional news sources. While the debate continues around their practice and standards, one could argue that those that call themselves professionals have just as many examples of poor professional practices as with which we have seen in the blog-o-sphere. The blogger is likely to be a writer of specific content within a specific community or genre, their work is fueled by passion, which makes it hard to believe they do not have valuable insight or a pivotal role to play in the age of the New Media.

  • News Distribution

Today’s news readers have very different expectations from content providers. News sites are embracing the importance of community by integrating social features. It is estimated that 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about them or spread a news item.

News organizations have embraced social media to spread their content through Facebook, Twitter, Digg and others. Since news has extended beyond the typed word and now encompasses multiple media formats like video, podcasts, live streaming and cellphone images, the kind of news media you get depends on your attention span.

The integration between mainstream media and social media was never more apparent than in the case of Al Jazeera network which is headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Not many people in the USA get that channel; it is not included in many cable packages. Yet, when the last events in Egypt enfolded and it became too dangerous for Western journalists to gather the news, Al Jazeera reporters were on the ground, among the crowd. Their reporting got to the world via Twitter and other social media platforms utilized by Al Jazeera, not through the mainstream media. A few days later the Al Jazeera office in Cairo was torched.

Journalists like Nicholas Kristof who writes for the New York Times, uses his Facebook page to add personal observations to what he writes for the official publication.

 “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people of Facebook versus the 2 million of Fox.” said CNN president Jon Klein, in March 2010. The integration of social media into the news media is so deeply entwined today, that it is inseparable.

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