If you have a brick and mortar store, and rely on walk-in traffic for your survival, you may be wondering what the Internet can do for your business. Believe it or not, a lot – and you don’t even need a website.

In the “old days”, the bulk of businesses relied on the Yellow Pages to get the phone ringing. The majority of marketing dollars were spent getting listed in this ten pound paperweight. With the popularity of the Net, less people let “their fingers do the walking” when they need something, and more are letting their mouse do the talking.

Online search has gone mainstream when it comes to searching for local businesses. Google states that 73% of searches are done for local content. Another study by BIA/Kelsey and Constat report that 97% of consumers use online resources when doing research for products/services in their local area.

Google has always understood the power of local search, and years ago launched its Local Business Center where any business can get a listing for free.

Recently, they’ve done a major overhaul and have re-launched with a new name of “Google Places”, showcasing a host of new features.

The name change was done to tie in with Google’s Place Pages which were launched over a year ago and include over 50 million places worldwide.

If you want customers to be able to find you, and haven’t listed your offline store here yet, you need to get with the program. You are missing out on the opportunity to reach millions of Google users, including Google Map users, Google’s 800 Voice Directory Search and even Google Earth. And all of this exposure won’t cost you a dime. It’s totally free.

Now that I have your attention, let’s go over the steps for inclusion. As with all things Google, you’ll need to sign into Google Places with your Google Account. Up to 100 single locations can be added but, if you have more than ten to list you’ll need to use their “Bulk Upload Tool”.

There is a verification process that must be done to prove you’re the owner of the business being listed. The choice is yours, it’s by phone or mail.

Once this is done, your listing goes live.

Now in case you’re thinking all that’s included in a listing is an address and phone number, hold onto your hat. Here are some of the listing options.

1) Show the geographic area you service.

2) Photos- Upload your own, up to ten images per listing, in JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP. A professional photo shoot can also be requested for your usiness.

3) Place Page Posts- You can post real time updates here, up to 160 characters, announcing special sales, events, and new products. One post appears at a time.

4) Custom QR Codes: For use with smart phones to take users to your mobile website.

5) Advertise: They do have a “Tags Program” in select cities for $25.00 a month where your business will be highlighted on Google.com and Google Maps.

6) List your operating hours. Biz description and even reviews.

7) Post Videos: Up to five videos can be posted, but you’ll need to publish them to YouTube first, then include the url’s on your Place Page.

Payment Types Taken

9) Coupons: Create online coupons to give people incentive to visit your site. There’s a separate “coupon tab” that appears on your listing page.

10) Privacy: If you work from home and have no storefront you can choose to make your address private in your listing.

Why Twitter is Getting Away with So Much Downtime

Twitter users know that the service goes down fairly often, but that doesn’t seem to alienate them. While Twitter has certainly had its issues with user retention in the past, it continues to grow. Last month, the site grew by nearly 10% (over the previous month) by our estimates, with total registered users estimated at 122 million. That’s not Facebook-like numbers, but it’s pretty significant. One almost has to wonder if those numbers would be higher if the “Fail Whale” didn’t make so many appearances. Twitter users, for the most part, don’t seem to mind him too much though.

The Downtime

Frequent downtime is nothing new for Twitter. It’s been going on pretty much as long as Twitter’s been around. You would think that by now, they’d have it under control, but no such luck.

The latest post on the Twitter status blog from just today says, “We’re currently experiencing a high rate of errors (whales) on Twitter.com. Our infrastructure and operations engineers are responding to the incident. One from Monday night talks about site availability issues. This is a pretty common theme on the blog. June 9th…”site availability issues”. June 8th…site availability issues…May 5th…”site largely unavailable. April 22nd…”elevated errors.” April 20th…”high error rate.” April 12th….”high error rate.” April 5th…”general site outage.” March 25th…”high error rate.” You get the idea. This is all scattered among posts about missing tweets, missing follower counts, and other issues. And I’m pretty sure there has not been a corresponding update every time I’ve personally seen the Fail Whale.

Is it the Features?

Twitter continues to put out new features. Is it the increased usefulness of the service that keeps people coming back? Most recently, they launched Twitter Places for location-sharing (a very popular phenomenon these days). This will keep that crowd coming back, although too much Foursquare could alienate others (or at least reduce some follower counts).

Businesses are expecting more features specifically for them. Twitter bought an analytics company recently, and more business account-related goodies are expected to come. As we’ve discussed repeatedly, there are plenty of opportunities for businesses to take advantage of Twitter, but what about regular users?

Is it the Apps?

search Twitter for the latest updates on topics, and they search Google, which will also bring up real-time results, heavily saturated with tweets. Is this why people keep using Twitter?

Is it News?

Beyond just search, Twitter provides up to the second news. It provides trending topics where users can see what is being talked about heavily at any given time. It gives users RSS-style, personalized news organization. Twitter put this kind of functionality in the mainstream, and got users reading news this way that never knew what RSS was or understood the concept – the news you care about coming right to you in one place.

It also provides a very easy format for creating the news. If you’re on the scene, it’s easy to push out a quick tweet. Is this why people keep coming back?

Is it the Name?

It seems that people (at least in the media) just can’t get enough of talking about Twitter. You know you’ve heard countless mentions and sarcastic jabs at the use of “Twitter” and “tweeting” on TV news, on the radio, in the newspapers, during sporting events, late night talk shows, etc. Does the constant exposure of Twitter contribute to why people won’t put it down?

Some Answers

I asked a number of people why they think people keep coming back to Twitter, even though the service is frequently on the fritz. Answers vary, but they are probably all spot on.

Starting in-house, our own Mike McDonald says, “Because at the end of the day, nobody loses any sleep over not being able to tweet. It’s something done in passing for the bulk of their user base. If it’s down, there is Facebook or 50 other ways they can broadcast some idea, and it’ll be back up at some point…Twitter is easier.”

A couple good answers came from our Facebook fans. Gary Spencer says, “It’s the funny whale picture, gotta love that.”

Tom Bill simply says, “It’s free.”

Siok Siok Tan, who’s making a documentary about Twitter (which she tells me should be done in August or September…read our intreview with her about that here) says, “Because Twitter’s main attraction isn’t its flawless technology. It is the unique catchment of people that it has managed to aggregate.”

Jason Falls, who runs Social Media Explorer, says, “Why will Twitter users tolerate downtime from the service? Because they probably need a break from it anyway.”

“Seriously, though, Twitter is a conversation place,” he adds. “There’s no network or platform out there right now with as large a user base and an already established network of contacts where you can just go and chat with people. Twitter has the market on open-forum, group conversation enabling. Until there is a better option, people will put up with it.”

Alternatives?

“To clarify the answer: Our instant messaging platforms are mostly closed and don’t allow for open/public conversation among large groups,” Falls continues. “Facebook isn’t real-time enough from a user-experience perspective. The other microblogging platforms (yeah, a few still exist) don’t have YOUR network of friends already built in. And even if they did, none of them have the variety of third party apps and add-ons that Twitter does. They’ve got a monopoly on the online user’s desire to chitter chatter. Sad but true.”

Michael Gray of AtlasWebService, who is a frequent user, says, “In my opinion is has to do with where your friends are. No one likes Facebook’s crazy privacy settings and there are lots of other social networks where you have more control, but none of your friends are there. Jaiku offered a very similar service to twitter, but they where never able to get that critical mass of users. As long a Twitter has the concentration of people you want to share things with people will put up with downtime.”

Mike Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com, has a slightly different perspective, however. He says, “They are moving to Facebook more and more. Keeping Twitter because everyone they trust is there, but moving to FB.”

Will Google Buzz creep its way into the fold? Some think it’s on the way up, and while Google has never presented Buzz as a replacement for Twitter or Facebook, it could happen with the users’ help. It’s already got the retweet-like feature, the retweet button-like buttons, the early adopters (many of the same ones that Twitter had), and now the API to get developers creating and integrating the apps (not to mention all of the other Google properties to integrate if they so choose). What it doesn’t have is the downtime (Gmail fails every once in a while, but it is nothing like the rate of the Fail Whale).

However, Google Buzz also doesn’t have the Oprahs and the Justin Biebers making it appealing to the masses. Sadly, this could be one of the biggest things holding it back. Time will tell if that changes.

But for now, people seem content to stick with Twitter and cut the Fail Whale some slack. It is clear that people love Twitter (maybe we should turn to the one-word answers people gave about Twitter last year). They love it so much, they will put up with frequent downtime, and hardly think twice about it. But Twitter might want to get this under control before it’s too late, because there are alternatives out there, and this Fail Whale tolerance might not last forever.

Social media marketing is an essential tool for any business. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are among the most popular sites regularly visited on the internet and can generate large numbers of visitors and new sales leads.

Many businesses are already utilizing social media marketing as part of their ongoing business strategy, but a large percentage of these are not aware of the essentials required to fully maximize social media to its full potential.

Here are 5 important criteria that need to be addressed in order to run a successful social media campaign.

1. Search Engine Rank Awareness

Social media profiles now make regular appearances in search engine listings. The major search engines are placing greater importance on these profiles as they tend to possess regularly updated topical content and provide quality information that search engine users are looking for.

Any social media profile should be created with search engine placement in mind. Ensure that relevant keywords are placed in titles, and content, and that any links use keywords (located within the anchor text). Brand names should be clearly visible to augment the likelihood of search engines displaying a social media profile for brand-related search queries.

Having a social media profile appear in SERP listings will build traffic to that profile and could subsequently lead to additional traffic to the main business website via that profile.

2. Additional Site Traffic from Social Media Posts

Search engines now index and display individual social media posts in their search results. The search engines consider these posts topical, relevant and useful to their users – 3 of the main criteria search engines look for when ranking a page (or submission).

Posting quality submissions on social media sites and including links back to a main website, or webpage, within these posts can seriously incréase website traffic – if the posts are indexed and displayed in search engine listings.

Social media bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Slashdot have been known to drive thousands of visitors to websites. Submit blog posts – and website content – to these sites and there is a good chance that these submissions will capture the interest of readers and result in increased website traffic.

3. Use Social Media for SEO-Based Links

Links back to a main website can be placed in most of the social media profiles. These are useful links from high authority websites and good quality backlinks influence where a website is ranked within a search engine.

Many social media bookmarking sites now apply the NOFOLLOW attribute to links due to abuse, but there are still some major platforms that continue to use the DOFOLLOW attribute. At the time of writing, these social bookmarking sites still allow DOFOLLOW links:

• FriendFeed
• Furl
• Slashdot
• Digg
• Mixx

Even if a bookmarking site applies the NOFOLLOW attribute, links within posts can still pay dividends. Regardless of their SEO-based backlink power, people will still follow these links back to a main site and this means increased traffic and greater site visibility.

4. Target Specific Markets

The simplicity of creating a social media profile allows for the creation of multiple campaigns. A good business strategy should run a main social media profile and then look to create smaller, laser-targeted profiles that cater for very specific niche markets related to the main business interest.

If a business sells a wide variety of products, it should look to create individual profiles that target the different categories of products sold. This tactic allows the business to concentrate on each subset of product, as well as the potential customers searching for these specific products, or type of products. By breaking down social media campaigns, a business can provide relevant, topical information that caters for very specific individuals.

Where other businesses try to capture all potential buyers in one huge net and can only provide generic information to a wide scope of readers about the entire range of their products – the clever business, with their niche market profiles, will reach out to each subset and be able to provide them exactly what they are searching for.

5. Improved Brand Recognition

Many businesses fail to realize the importance of social media profiles when it comes to increasing brand recognition. These social media platforms have millions of daily visitors and provide an unequalled resource for rapidly promoting a brand, or product.

Having a main website ranked high in a search engine for that particular brand name is great – as long as enough people are performing search queries using that specific brand-name keyword. Social media provide an easier solution for promoting brand recognition and this factor should be forefront in any social media strategy.

Make sure the brand is clearly visible in a profile – include it in the profile title and bio; promote the brand discreetly in sporadic posts and if there is a brand-related business logo, this should be placed on the main profile page.

It has been suggested that a person needs to see, or hear, a brand name seven times before they consider becoming a customer. Social media offers a business the best solution for reaching the largest potential audience.

By utilizing social media marketing and concentrating on these 5 important criteria, any business can potentially expand website traffic, sales leads and easily reach targeted customer bases. Social media marketing is starting to become very competitive, but not everybody has learned to optimize their campaigns and fully utilize the power of social media marketing. The business that learns to adapt its strategies and play to the strengths of social media is the one that jumps ahead of the competition.

Author: D M Gray

Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you’re likely to put into promoting it.

A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help increase your client base.

It’s far from an exhaustive list but below are ten tips to remember when blogging for business:

1 – Set Your Goals Early

In just about every guide you ever read it says “set your goals”; it might be a clich? but it’s true. With a business blog your most likely goal is to increase sales but other worthy goals can include:

* Communicating with your existing or potential clients.
* Relaying company news.
* Answering queries and questions.
* Providing guides for current customers.
* Providing a portal to everything useful related to your industry.

The design of your site, type of content to include, whether or not to include ads, and numerous other decisions will be governed by the reason that you start blogging. The sooner you realize what it is that you want to achieve, the sooner you’ll achieve it.

2 – Use SEO Friendly URLs And SEO Plugins

WordPress is an invaluable SEO tool. It is a dedicated Content Management System but, more than that, it has a team of frighteningly dedicated users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and more and then provide them for free of charge to other users. Among these tools are a great number of SEO related tools that can be used to determine your meta description and title tags.

A simple but potentially effective SEO fix is to change the format of permalinks or URLs so that they dispense with the default page id to be replaced with an easier to read and keyword optimized page URL. You can do this through the WordPress dashboard.

3 – Consider Your Media Placement

Adding photos and illustrations, logos, videos, and other forms of media are great for reader engagement but you should consider each of your blog assets and place the most valuable and useful in the most prominent position. The quicker you can grab a reader’s attention, the more likely you will be to keep it for longer.

Certain themes allow you to easily embed video and slideshows into the sidebar of your blog and this can be a very useful tool to make your pages appear more attractive while relaying genuinely useful information.

4 – Consider Your Ad Placement

The primary target of a business blog is not usually to make money directly through the blog itself. Therefore, the placing of third party ads is not necessarily a good choice. However, you can add ads for your own company or service as well as partner websites. You can even add banners to specific categories, tags, or pages in your blog. Don’t overdo the number of banner ads and other distracting advertisements though and try to keep the interface clean and professional.

5 – Offer Your Readers The Chance To Pass You Around

Add me, share this, retweet, and email this functions should be provided to your users. When you post something useful and one of your readers shares it, it has the potential to go viral and create a lot of exposure for your blog and therefore your website and your business. This works especially well with highly unique content and can be text, audio, video…

Some themes have these functionalities built into them, but do ensure that they’re enabled. Alternatively find a sidebar widget or a social bookmarking plug-in that offers the same features and install this. Many blog readers read a number of blogs regularly and by enabling them to add you to social bookmarking and social networking sites you may well develop a long term relationship with them while also letting them inform others of what you offer.

6 – Keep Quality Content Coming

Try to set yourself a regular schedule but remember that it can be broken and it can be added to when necessary. If news breaks then post your own commentary on it. If you intersperse product reviews and articles that relate to your own business then try to schedule these. Make sure you post regularly, at the very least once a week, and spend some time getting involved in the community that builds up around your blog.

7 – Not Every Post Need Be An Advert

As long as you fill your blog with relevant, interesting, and well written posts then visitors will take the time to look around, read a few posts, and even click the ads to your own site in order to see exactly what you have to offer. Not every single post needs to include multiple links to your website pages.

You can download plugins that increase the likelihood of users reading more posts. Some add a list of related posts to the bottom of each entry while many themes provide the chance to show “most popular” and “most commented” posts to further direct the flow of traffic around your blog.

8 – Respond Where Responses Are Expected Or Deserved

Managing a blog is more than posting a missive of the week’s news every Friday. No matter how often you post you should spend some time interacting with the community that develops around your blog. Answer questions and queries, offer insight, and provide a response where one is requested.

A business blog should always be professional which means keeping posts and messages that are too personal away. Similarly, spam comments can prove extremely damaging for your SEO as well as the trust your readers place in your business. There’s decent spam settings in WordPress and you can further extend these.

9 – Stuck For Inspiration? Immerse Yourself In Web 2.0

More specifically read forums and blogs, wikis and news sites related to your own industry. Look for those news stories, articles, and videos that you like the most and are relevant to your blog and write about them. Read the comments in your own blog and look through your analytics to determine the pages that are most popular with readers.

Look at emerging keywords and news topics and try to act quickly. Slant the resulting article in favor of your business, if possible, and then post this to your blog too. There’s plenty of online portals and sites for news in your industry and you can use email updates, RSS readers, and browser or home page plug ins to display them regularly and in an orderly and comprehensible way.

10 – Blogging Is Great For Business But Business Is Also Great For Business

Getting stuck into a blog and truly developing your blog community can be a great way to build traffic to your website and develop clients for your business. Reading related blogs and becoming an active member in social networks can help you find out what your readers want and deliver it frequently.

Blogging and web 2.0 in general can quickly become addictive. It should be treated as a tool to assist in managing your online business which means that you need to concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Outsource your blog development and content creation if necessary and enjoy the results.

Author: Matt Jackson

Is it just me but didn’t Google recently put everything on its main homepage except for Google Buzz? What’s up with that? For heaven’s sake, they even put the PacMan game in their logo for two days running… you would think some of the brightest minds on the planet would have figured out by now if Google truly wants to try to win on the new memeyouyou web, they simply have to fully integrate all their programs into one homepage or at least place Buzz right there along side the Gmail button.

Google Buzz has all the ingredients to finally make Google your one-stop center on the web. It can be THE place for sharing not just your conversations but photos, videos, and everything else. Will it live up to its full potential and become a true Facebook killer?

The main reason Facebook is such a threat to Google is not because of the massive amount of users it has, but the amount of time those users stay on Facebook. If you just look at the Alexa comparison alone, Facebook users spend over 30 minutes on the site, which is triple the time users stay on Google. Facebook also beats Google in the bounce rate and page views per user. Could all the recent changes to their SERPs be, not only Google’s answer to the upcoming Bing/Yahoo marriage, but a strong way of presenting a real challenge to Facebook’s overwhelming stats.

Web users are lazy and they want a one-stop solution to meet all their needs. They want to connect with friends and family, they want to broadcast to the world, they want to search for something to purchase, they want to be entertained… iGoogle should be that solution/center but I don’t believe it quite passes the test because there is still no Google Buzz?

The main problem with Google is that it has no well-defined center which users could call their own. Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but have Google users fully bonded with iGoogle? Putting the privacy issues aside, I don’t think they have embraced it in the same way web users have embraced their Facebook. What is missing are all the elements that are present in Google Buzz, but again we seem to have two disjointed programs rather than one solid rallying point.

For many web users, Facebook is the starting point of their web day… in many cases, it is probably the only place they go on the web religiously each day. Why? Because all their friends/family are on there and they don’t want to miss out on any news or gossip. Not checking your Facebook page has become the ultimate faux pas of this new social media etiquette.

No one is going defeat or compëte with Facebook you say?

Not so fast! Even empires come and go; a web site is even more fickle, especially if something more convenient comes along. Does anyone remember MySpace which is still a very popular site but no longer has the numbers it once had. Facebook or even Google could suffer the same fate if something better comes along.

Google’s main business is online search. It is its bread and butter, which may have blinded those in charge from seeing the bigger picture. The bigger payday.

Google owns so many popular sites within the top 20 including YouTube and Blogger… if only they could better connect all their interests into one SuperSite or one SuperDevice for those thinking within the box. Online search can still be the main course, but you need to corral all of these different users into one starting point or center with a couple of Billion users logging in each morning to start their web day. Just imagine the ad revenue potential that would generate for the big G.

Impossible you say, but not really, all the ingredients are there to form this SuperSite but it needs one big bang to get it going, to create a center of the web universe, which will be Google.

Whenever I think about Google, I am reminded of a class 5 Hurricane with all these popular sites and programs swirling around it like mad, but there is no eye to this hurricane, at least not yet. Google needs a solid center to draw everything into focus and get everybody at the same starting point. Whether it is the Google search page, Google Buzz, Google Profiles, Gmail or iGoogle… but it all needs to be pulled together if Google wants to truly battle with Facebook for all the marbles.

Almost every social networking site offers a feature called a “profile” that allows members to include their picture, a biography, live links to their websites and other detailed information. Most of us have multiple online profiles that are empty or only partially completed. It is this profile that helps other users decide if they want to work with you. Another perk of online profiles is that the live links pointing to your website may impact your search engine ranking.

It is very important that you think of these profiles as your own “Public Relations Department or Media Room”, specifically designed to sell you and your business. Imagine that you only have a few seconds to sell a new prospect on why they should want to get to know you and possibly do business with you. What is said and offered during these few seconds can make all the difference in the world. This is EXACTLY why your online profiles need to be completed to capture the attention of anyone who visits these sites.

Let’s look at the different aspects of social networking profiles and what information and content you should include to ensure that you get the maximum results. The following information may or may not be included in every profile, but the majority of it is standard:

Your Picture – Your photo is the first thing people will see upon visiting your profile or when reading your posts. How does it represent you? Wearing a tank top while giving the peace sign with a beer in your hand is not the way to impress potential clients. If you are looking for clients, then professionalism is a must. You can show SOME personality in your photograph but try to strive for conservative whenever possible.

Your Biography – This is your chance to tell others more about you, such as interesting aspects of your life and what makes you, YOU. Take your time here, as this area is the equivalent of sitting down with a prospect and telling them exactly why they should do business with you. Include specifics about your expertise, your business, how you have helped others and even your personal philosophies. You want others to be excited about connecting with you and this is YOUR time to shine.

Links – Make sure to include helpful links in order to allow others to find you online. A link to your website, your blog and additional information about your business is crucial. However, some people make the mistake of including each and every link that points to a profile of theirs online. If you have 25 social networking memberships, it is NOT advisable to include them all here. A good idea would be to vary these links on every website where you have a profile.

Contact Information – You have to include contact information if you want people to have the ability to contact you. Do not try to hide at this point. Many people have the wrong opinion that they should NOT put contact information in their profile, assuming that people contacting you for business purposes is a bad thing. Would you include your contact information in a yellow pages ad? Then why not provide it online? Please only include information you want to be made public.

Interests – Do you like to play golf, workout, volunteer or build model airplanes? You might be surprised that many people would be interested in connecting with you just based upon similar hobbies and interests. This connection can lead to a deepening friendship that may lead to business and even referrals down the road.

Education – While some people may or may not care about your schooling, including specifics about your education can do two things to help you add to the number of responses. First of all, those who went to school where you did may want to connect. Secondly, by offering details about your education, it will help others to see your experience and expertise in various areas.

Favorite Movies or Books – While you may not see the correlation between your favorite movie and a potential new client, trust me, it exists. Just like much of the information above, the information in your profile is designed to help you connect with potential clients and to build business relationships. Sometimes, simply sharing your favorite movie can be the start of a beautiful business relationship.

Testimonials from Past Clients – One of the best ways to demonstrate your ability to help others is by including testimonials from past or current satisfied clients. These testimonials will help others to get a snapshot of some of the work you have done in the past and help to build a foundation of a great business relationship.

Looking at the líst above, there is a lot of information that should be included in each and every social networking profile. Because of this, many people decide to skimp and their profile winds up being about 3 or 4 sentences long. This is a mistake. It is better to leave a profile blank than to create such a lackluster one. If you need inspiration, visit some of the most popular social networking sites and read a few profiles to get some idea of how to get started.

If filling out multiple social networking profiles is too much for your busy day, you might look at getting help from a virtual assistant. Many of them have experience in this area and can create a compelling COMPLETE profile that will best represent you AND your business. We live in a world of social networking … making it a part of your business marketing simply makes sense. Take the time to do it right or hire someone who can do it for you.

Facebook Gives Businesses More Data to Measure

At this point, most businesses have probably come to the realization that they are missing out on some serious opportunities if they do not have a Facebook presence. Facebook is showing that it will keep growing, despite all of the recent privacy concerns capturing the media’s attention, and more and more sites across the web continue to get integrated with Facebook, which means Facebook is becoming more and more integrated into people’s online activity in general. While this in itself means great things for businesses, Facebook is now offering businesses new tools to better understand data around user engagement with their brands so they can take advantage of it and better monetize their Facebook presence.

Facebook has now made significant improvements to its analytics for websites, applications, and Pages. This means businesses have increased insights into how people are engaging with their Facebook presence on and off their sites.

Improved Analytics

The improved analytics come in the form of the new Insights Dashboard, which shows data for fully-integrated sites and sites that use Facebook’s social plug-ins. You can also add a non-integrated domain. In addition, the Dashboard displays data from application, including canvas, mobile, device, and desktop apps. Finally, it displays data around Facebook Pages – those created on Facebook itself, and those that are part of Facebook’s Open Graph.

To put it into simpler terms, you can view analytics around specific stories that people “like” on your site, or how many users commented on posts made on your Facebook Page. “From there, you will have a better idea of what your audience finds most interesting and capitalize on that content,” says Facebook’s Alex Himel.

The dashboard has been around for a while, but now it contains more data, as well as new visualization tools. You can view graphs in full screen, print them, or save them. Facebook has also released a new demographics visualization, which shows more info about the audience that is interacting with your site, your Facebook Page, or your app if you have one. Obviously, this can be of tremendous benefit to your marketing efforts.

“As a domain administrator, you can now access sharing metrics and demographic information per domain and per URL so you can optimize your content for sharing and better tailor your content to your audience,” says Himel. Of course growing your audience brings new opportunities for monetization.

Important Info for Webmasters

Site owners should associate their domain with a user ID, Facebook app, or Facebook Page that they administer. This can be done by clicking the green “Insights for your Domain” button on the dashboard and adding the meta tag that is generated within the &’head> tags of the root page on the domain. Note that if your site utilizes subdomains, the root file of each one must be claimed separately.

“If you administer a Facebook Page or have integrated the Open Graph protocol into your Web pages, you can now see analytics for referral traffic and stream stories in the Insights dashboard, as well as tab views for your Page,” says Himel. “Insights will capture engagement with Pages regardless of whether an action was taken on or off Facebook.”

The Bigger Picture

One of the biggest gripes businesses have had with social media, is a lack of measurement. Clearly, Facebook is doing more to tackle this problem, and Facebook is obviously the social network that gives businesses the potential to reach the largest amount of people. Recent estimates have Facebook with close to 500 million users.

It also doesn’t hurt to keep in mind that Facebook is evolving, and rapidly at that. It is already competing with Google for unique visitors (which really equates to mindshare during time spent online). Some may consider such a comparison apples and oranges, but there may be more to it than that.

Recent changes to Google makes it seem like Google is no longer just one search engine but a combination of 6 or 7 different search engines all rolled into one. Your SEO efforts should now be geared to ranking high in these search engines as well as in traditional organic search.

A little while back I wrote an article entitled “The Five Pillars of Google Search” and had I known how important those pillars would become, I would have paid more attention to them.

What I didn’t factor into the equation was Google’s whole re-structuring of its SERPs interface or landing page. It really is a whole new Google with not just one search engine but a combination of 6 or 7 search engines all competing for your attention.

The new left side column with its new functions and displays, opens up new opportunities for webmasters to get their listings within Google on that all important first page.

There are also many new ways to view the results such as view everything or you can view with more or less shopping links. Plus you can also view Google results for books, maps, blogs, updates and discussions – all new ways to get your site or links into Google. Throw in the Wonder Wheel and things are indeed looking very different within the new Google SERPs.

As a full-time online search engine marketer, I should have expected something like this but the recent changes within Google has been totally unprecedented.

We have seen major updates before, some of them very disruptive like the Florida update, but with Google Caffeine, MayDay Update, new layout and the recent shakeup of its Algorithm, Google has fundamentally changed how its organic search are ranked and used.

Before I start sounding too cryptic, these recent changes seem to be a “coming together” of all the different types of searches in Google which have been around for some time.

Now it seems with the new interface architecture… each type of search is given more importance or rather more of an equal billing or footing within Google. There are now multiple ways to get your links viewed and hopefully clicked within the most important search engine on the planet.

First, I always try to start any piece on Google or the search engines with a disclaimer. Mainly, in the course of running 9 or 10 websites, I keep a daily monitoring of the keywords which produce revenue, some of these keyword phrases have been monitored by me for 6 or 7 years, but they are only a small sampling of keywords and sometimes drawing or making conclusions with such a small sample can be misleading or downright wrong.

So take any of the following information on Google with this point in mind, just one webmaster observing what’s happening with Google and putting in his two cents worth.

Now, the reason I say “Google’s New Search Engines” is the feeling which has gradually crept into my daily marketing – it feels like you’re no longer dealing with one organic search engine but 6 or 7 different search engines.

Let me explain, for years Google has been presenting results for not just static webpages but also for images, videos, news, blogs and shopping/products – but recent changes have shaken up things significantly.

With the recent changes Google seems to be placing more importance on these new ways to search.

Videos have taken a big step forward and can now pop up on the first page and stay there. Producing a video is now one of the fastest ways to get on the first page of Google, even for very competitive keywords.

While many online marketers are taking advantage of this fact, it is relatively new and you can have a much better chance of ranking for a video instead of an ordinary web page in Google. It can happen almost instantly.

Personally, I like using the YouTube platform because it is also owned by Google and they no doubt can easily tap into all the background stats on a video such as comments, viewer ratings… and so on.

In other words, Google has always favored ways to make their SERPs more democratic and user generated/rated videos are the perfect fit.

So too are blog posts and entries, these can be easily monitored and (comment spam aside) are more democratic since it’s harder to fake Diggs or Re-tweets.

All of these social bookmarking systems and sites provide the search engines, especially Google, with some very helpful user-generated rankings and ratings.

Blogs now also have two subcategories – Twitter/FaceBook Updates and Forum Discussions, which are now being displayed separately.

Google seems to be placing more importance on popular Posts, Diggs, Tweets… in their SERPs. Again, I find using a simple Google owned program like Blogger to be an effective way of ranking high in Google. For example, my posts in Blogger are indexed in Google within minutes, this recently seems to have been sped up and we are moving more towards instant search results.

Another instant way to get your content onto the first page of Google is to use a News Release.

Google has always listed News Items on the first page but this now seems to play a more important role, especially when you consider all the new features in the left side column. Surfers will probably stay on that first page longer and you have a better chance of getting your news item read.

Within the last couple of years, I have started doing Press Releases, mainly through PRweb but there are lots of free programs you can use. I also like posting my articles to American Chronicle since Google News picks up and displays a lot of these items. Again, like videos, getting your News item listed is almost instant and within seconds you can have traffic flowing to your site.

Images and image search has always been an important feature of Google Search. One that online marketers and webmasters have taken advantage of by creating images to match the main products or keywords of their sites.

Now image search itself is much more varied and has many more options to re-defined your image search, for example you could target a certain color or line drawings. Regardless, images can be an easy way to get traffic from Google.

Within the shopping results is the place to be featured if you have a product to sell. This is the old product listing (Froogle) which Google has renamed to Shopping or Product Search.

For those into online marketing, this is probably the most important listing as you’re sure to attract specific buyers who are in the right mind-set to purchase. To learn more about submitting your products to Google Product Search go here: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/products/submit.html

While all these search options can be somewhat confusing to grasp even for the online marketer, all these options do present different ways to get on that first page in Google search. And while the number one spot in organic search will always be your main goal, ranking for the top spot in the shopping results, video results, news results, blog results, update results, discussion results and image results are all worth aiming for in your SEO efforts.

Some of these are temporary or fast moving, but there are certain tactics you can use which will increase your presence in the most important search engine which delivers the most search traffic on the web.

Make sure you take a holistic approach to both your content and SEO. Create videos and images geared towards your site’s topic and keywords. Make sure you have a blog and a forum on your site to take advantage of these types of listings.

Likewise, fully integrate your site with all the social bookmarking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google Buzz… and become an active part of those sites.

Make sure you’re creating news related items for your site or keywords, to keep your site in the whole mix of things on the web.

Make sure you have a steady flow of fresh content being added to your site regularly and link this content to the “Q&A” types of sites; there is a growing emphasis being placed on these help-based sites by the search engines.

Lastly, I am a firm believer in having all your content/sites/programs interconnected with one another.

Something as simple as using a Google Profile to list ALL your online programs and sites is one way of making them ALL reachable by your visitors and Google. But go for the overkill, do the same thing for your Facebook page, your MySpace page, your Linkedin page… and also interconnect all your different content by referencing your videos in your News Releases, your Twitter profile in your articles, your Facebook page in your posts… well, you get the picture.

Just make sure the search engines, and especially Google, have no trouble finding you or your content.

Make sure this content is varied and displayed in different mediums such as videos, images, news, tweets, blog posts and shopping links. Reaching that first page in Google has become a lot more challenging in many ways, but it also has become a lot more easier to do.

Just go for it.

About the Author: Titus Hoskins

Creating a “buzz” around products, services, businesses or an event is a requirement from all clients. There is no social media marketing wand that someone will wave and a target audience will automatically start coming to your site. And what works for one brand may not work for another.

The process of creating buzz doesn’t start from creating a Blog or creating a video, it’s a social media strategy that encompasses social media and word-of-mouth marketing. We have compiled a list of social media tools that companies use to build their social media marketing mixes.

1. Blogs

Blogs have become a great tool for social media marketing. First because, if optimized correctly, they can be used to drive traffic to a website. A good blog will help in creating internal links, fresh content, active community, or non-search engine traffic.

Examples of popular blogs where you can create your account are: WordPress, Blog.com, Bloggers.com, Typepad, etc.

2. Microblogging

Like blogs, microblogs propose huge opportunities for business endorsement. That is both through content consistency and good optimization. Two of the most used are Posterous and Twitter.

3. Online Video

The importance of online videos has rapidly increased during the last few years. To read more on this topic, have a look at our blog on The Growing Importance of Online Video. Popular video sharing websites include YouTube and Vimeo.

4. Photosharing

Social media is all about sharing! Therefore, there are numerous platforms that allow photo sharing with your friends. Some of them are: Flickr.com, Memeo.com, and Photobucket.com.

5. Podcasting

Podcasting is part of the new media tools that are offered to both promote your brand and your products/services. Check out Blip.fm or RadioPodcast.fr.

6. Presentation Sharing

Another great way to put your brand’s name in the spotlight is by offering presentations on topics of interest for your audience on presentation sharing websites. They are increasingly gaining in popularity nowadays. Some of them are: SlideShare.net, MyPlick.com, Scribd.com, or AuthorSTREAM.com.

7. Social Networks: Applications, Fan Pages, Groups, and Personalities

Social networks are the place to present and promote yourself as well as to keep in touch with your targeted audience. You can read a list of the most popular on our blog on our blog on Top Social Media Network Sites!

8. Crowd Sourcing/Voting

Crowdsourcing is an effective model because it can be used for developing programs, marketing efforts, research, and education. For example Dell has used Crowdsourcing as a distributed problem-solving and production model and has reduced costs and increased their efficiency. Also look at the Grand Challenge for FNIH to see a crowd sourcing campaign.

9. Bookmarking/Tagging

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Examples of popular social bookmarking websites: delicious.com, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot.org, StumbleUpon, Yahoo!, and Buzz.

10. Discussion Boards and Forums

Online forums are a great way to market your products/services and interact with other professionals or your audience. Engaging your audience in your niche forum can bring high value to your site and brand too.

11. Content Aggregation

Content aggregation offers you the chance to bring all news and feeds around your online community accounts in one place. Some say this is the future of social media. Emerging content aggregation websites: Bloglines, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit.

12. Brand Monitoring

Social media is also offering a variety of tools that help businesses understand the positioning of their brand. Popular examples are: Buzzlogic, Radian6, or ReputationDefender.

13. Ratings and Reviews

The best way to find out where your website stands or how your brand is perceived by others is through ratings and reviews. See Yelp, or GetSatisfaction.

14. Widgets

For those who are trying to promote their own brands, they can create personalized badges, using interesting widgets on Facebook, Twitter, and other networks or by simply using WidgetBox or SpringWidgets.

15. Wikis

Wikis are our online encyclopedia. A short list of wikis: Wikipedia.org, Citizendium.org, AboutUs.org, Pbwiki(PBworks.com), or Wetpaint.com.

Along with all the new ways of publishing your content on networking sites, it is important to publish your articles on publishing sites like EzineArticles, eHow, Google Docs (docs.google.com), IdeaMarketers, Yahoo Articles Group (groups.yahoo.com) and submit your press releases on important specialized sites like i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, and PRLog.org.

Social Media Marketing can be very confusing at times. There are lots of networks and channels to choose from. Creating a presence on all the channels is very time consuming and randomly choosing a network is not a good social media strategy. Companies are struggling to understand what social media marketing mix they should use to make their brand successful in the online world.

We suggest it is important to identify which channels are suitable for your business depending on your target audience. Businesses must plan a step-by-step onlíne marketing strategy and brainstorm ideas with their onlíne marketing agency that will work for their products/service.

How Big Will Android Get?

While there are other mobile operating systems that shouldn’t be ignored (Blackberry for one), there are two that seem to get the most attention, and that may end up competing most for user and marketer attention above the rest in the foreseeable future. These are of course the iPhone OS and the Android OS.

Obviously the iPhone OS runs on iPhones, and now on iPads. These are very popular devices, but in the smartphone market Android is gaining a great deal of ground, and in the tablet market, Android hasn’t really arrived yet, but it is expected to soon.

The smartphone Space

At Google I/O last month, Google announced that Android activations had passed 100,000 a day. Also last month, a report from the NPD Group found that in the first quarter of 2010, Android devices actually outsold iPhones in the U.S. The legitimacy of this has been disputed, but I don’t think anyone’s disputed the fact that Android use is gaining significant momentum.
The Tablet Space

A recent study from Retevo found that over half of consumers surveyed would buy an Android tablet over an iPad if it were cheaper. $100 Android Tablets are expected to arrive this year. Now that’s not to say that this version of the Android tablet would be the iPad killer. You have to consider that Android will likely be implemented across a wide range of devices, as opposed to the iPhone OS, which will operate on Apple’s devices.

One reason Android has been able to grow so much in the smartphone market because of pricing deals. For example, Verizon has offered buy-one-get-one-free deals on Android phones. The tablet market could see a similar scenario – pricing playing a major role.

At Google I/O Google unveiled Google TV, a platform that merges the web experience with the television experience. Launch partners include Adobe, Intel, Sony, Logitech, Best Buy, and Dish Network. Sony will sell TVs and Blu-ray players which come with the platform. Logitech will make set-top boxes, and Dish Network will provide its customers with it.

This week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs implied that it is destined to fail, mainly talking about the lack of success of set-top boxes in general and the lack of nationwide cable services as the main barriers. However, Dish Network is nationwide, and is making moves that could net the company more customers away from competitors, even before Google TV arrives this fall. That could mean good things for Google TV.

What does this have to do with Android? During the announcement, Google demonstrated some of Google TV’s Android integration. You will be able to use Android devices to control Google TV, for one. You will also be able to send apps from your Android device to Google TV to interact with them on your television, effectively turning your TV into an Android device. Google TV users may find Android devices useful.

Not To Take Anything Away from iPhone OS

None of this is to discount the importance of reaching Apple’s users. They are consumers too, and there are a lot of them. However, when resources are limited, businesses may have to do some prioritizing. Ideally, you want to get in front of as many potential customers as possible. It just looks like at this point, that Google is positioning itself to get Android in front of a whole lot of people. But still, a lot of this is forward looking.

Quick Tips

1. If you can find an angle that makes sense for your business, and you can afford the resources, develop a mobile apps for mobile platforms.

2. Regardless of whether or not you have your own apps, look for ways that you can get be found in other mobile apps.

3. Look at the most popular apps and find angles for how your business can take advantage of some of them.

4. There may be a great deal of creativity involved in finding the right angles, but there are so many apps out there already (and the number will continue to grow rapidly), there will continue to be more unique and innovative opportunities. Just explore them. By the way,Google is putting apps directly in its mobile search results now for both Android and iPhone users.

5. Advertise. There is also a growing number of mobile advertising opportunities, including various forms of in-app advertising. Watch for Google to offer more interesting formats, now that it has acquired AdMob and Invite Media.

“What’s important for marketers to realize is that it’s a similar redux of the Mac PC wars in the 80s/90s where Apple puts out a great product but constrains the market with its controls & dictation while Android with its openness & no licensing costs allows it to flurish,” Michael Martin, who founded GoogleAndBlog (often cited as a top Android site), and currently runs MobileMartin tells WebProNews. “Case in point, the iPhone is self constrained to AT&T for some time while Android is available on all 4 major US mobile providers as well [as] pre-paid service Cricket along with 50+ other carriers around the world amounting to over 100,000 activations per day – this provides greater marketshare.”

He continues, “Next is mindshare, which for smartphones is predominantly based on the quality and number of applications (as welll device specs & usability)…While Apple allienates developers with its cryptic & arbitrary acceptance rules for the App Store which people had to bite their lip to endure due to both marketshare & mindshare, they are relieved of this with OPTIONS that include the Android Market while they are FREE to provide their applications through other venues.”

“So marketers can see the tide is turning while also saving costs. If developing apps, with a cheaper Android programmer in Java vs a more expensive iPhone developer in C as well, there are now tools from Ansca & Rhomobile that allow cross mobile application development with one click instead of recoding for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm.”