INTERNET MARKETING

So I came up with so many social media resolutions I couldn’t fit them all in one blog post. Thus, I will continue the list today. These New Year’s Resolutions fall into a different category than the last two but they are, again, things that many companies seem to do over and over again year after year. Therefore, in 2012 companies should live by at least one simple phrase when it comes to social media marketing. Read more

So, it is the time of year when we have to take a hard look at ourselves and decide what actions we will take in the year to come to improve ourselves. Some people pledge to do great things for others or improve themselves in a meaningful way when they make a New Year’s Resolution. Other people (most people) make a half-hearted promise to do something that they have been avoiding (like losing weight or washing more dishes) and usually forget about it by mid-March. Read more

According to a study from Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, the percentage of total search engine queries (in the United States) that are only one word is on the rise. In January 2009, 20.3% of all searches were one word. That figure has risen to 27.2% in October. In less than three years, the amount of one word searches (as a percentage of total searches) has increased by over 33%. Why has this happened?

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Emotion is one of the more interesting elements of Google’s search engine algorithm, at least in my opinion. It is unclear if Google’s algorithm takes emotion into account when determining search rankings, but a case can be made for either. Traditional SEO belief was that the more links into a site, the better. Google has made it their goal to make their algorithm more “human;” it should view page relevance to a query the same way a human would. If that’s the case, than emotion should be a factor. If I wrote a blog post talking about an awful Chinese restaurant that I went to and in this post I criticized the restaurant throughout, a human ranker would move that restaurant down in a list of local Chinese restaurants.

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Sprouted Content, a provider of informative article packages for wellness practitioners, engages inSegment to design and develop its first ecommerce website and custom interactive Facebook page. Site is set to launch in January of 2012.

About two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about long tail search and how it has been in decline. The key points of the post focused on how Google, with things like Google Instant and other changes, is eliminating long tail search. Wait just a minute! Not according to a new study from Conductor! A recent article from Search Engine Watch analyzed the findings of the study.

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With every significant social change there are always hold-outs, people who (for some reason) don’t jump on the bandwagon. It is very apparent that social media is changing the way we communicate with one another and function as a society.  To ignore the implications of this would be unwise. Many people have resisted this change saying that they “don’t understand what all the fuss is about” or “I don’t see why I should have to be on (insert social network name here), it is just a waste of time”. Well, considering that about 800 million people worldwide are now on Facebook they better start paying attention or accept that they are going to be left behind.

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When I was making the image for my most recent blog post on social media in 2011 I noticed something interesting. The majority of the logos for social networks are blue. Not all of them are completely blue but an astounding number of them include blue somewhere. Why is this?

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So Mashable just released their report on the “Top 6 Social Media Marketing Trends of 2011”. As a social media marketer I was really excited to see what Mashable had to say on the subject. After reading it, however, I was disappointed. It seems that even experts fall into the trap of confusing social media in general with social media marketing. Several of the Trends were a) not trends and b) not about marketing.

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Recently Matt and I both wrote about the YouTube redesign (with differing opinions). Well, the world of social media has been updated again with what is now being called the “New Twitter”. One of the most important aspects of this for social media marketers is the fact that Twitter will soon be rolling out brand pages. I have mixed feelings about this.

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