How to Write a Great Twitter Bio to Get Targeted Followers. We're not what you think: Debunking the myths about millennials | HR | silicon.com. IoT will force companies to rethink data centers IoT will force companies to rethink data centers The Internet of Things is destined to create huge amounts of data. Will data centers be able to stay ahead of the onslaught? Gartner analysts suggest things will have to change.
Read more → GE launches 'microfactory' for future manufacturing GE launches 'microfactory' for future manufacturing GE has launched FirstBuild, a microfactory and open community space in Louisville, Kentucky for students, makers, and engineers to co-create the smart appliances of the future. Windows XP use declining, but millions still at risk Windows XP use declining, but millions still at risk Many users finally migrated off of Windows XP in the weeks leading up to the expiration of support, but millions of XP systems are still in use by businesses and consumers. Load More Editor's Picks Open climate data can improve community resilience What to do if you love Windows XP and hate Windows 8 IT Buying Cycle Learn more.
Get local: how to get on Google's first results with Google Places. Small Businesses Focus Online Spend on Websites. A plurality of small businesses will keep their marketing budgets steady next year across the board, including spending on websites, direct mail, print, TV and social media, according to research by Zoomerang and GrowBiz Media, a provider of information and services to help organizations reach the small and midsize business audience.
This year, SMB allocation of online marketing budgets leaned toward websites, where 27% of SMBs with 1,000 or fewer employees spent at least 30% of their budget. Email took second place with 18% devoting 30% or more, followed by social media, where 10% of SMBs said they spent at least three in 10 marketing dollars. The tilt toward investment in websites should continue, as 17% of respondents said they planned to increase budgets for their site in 2011—the highest percentage planning to up any budget line item. In comparison, 15% said they would spend more next year on email and 13% on social media. Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Design Coding. RockMelt - Your Browser. Re-imagined. Connect for an invitation. Comparing SEO & Social Media as Marketing Channels.
You may have seen the recent string of posts about SEO vs. Social Media, starting with this effective, but poorly argued controversy-bait, which was excoriated by Elysia Brooker and Hugo Guzman, then followed up with a more nuanced view by Darren Rowse. While I'm not particularly interested (nor do I think there's much value) in re-hashing or arguing these points, I did think the topic warranted attention, as it brings up some excellent points marketers should carefully consider as they invest in their craft. We Search for What We Want + Need The search for information and answers has been essential to humans since time immemorial. And there's no sign that our latest iteration, web search, is losing any steam: Even as we've reached a maturity point with broadband adoption and online population, searches are rising. Search is an intent driven activity. We're Social to Discover and Share - ATG Study on How Users Discover Products via SearchEngineLand And here's social traffic: Takeaways.
Optimizely: A/B Testing you'll actually use. How Connecting Your LinkedIn Contacts Builds Social Influence. Are you wondering how to leverage your presence on LinkedIn to build social influence? Regularly updating your status, joining and participating in groups and answering questions is just the start. There are also a number of ways to build deeper relationships with your connections on LinkedIn. I’m going to ask you to shift your thinking and consider the following: Spend some time on LinkedIn connecting your contacts.
If you truly want to build social influence with your connections and become more valuable to them, dedicating time to strategically helping others can elevate your “social” status. People want to be connected with a connector! Working to connect your connections on LinkedIn not only helps you become a more influential person, you’ll also benefit from triggering the rule of reciprocity. LinkedIn is the perfect environment in which to put the rule of reciprocity to use.
Why? A 3-Step Process for Connecting Your Connections on LinkedIn #1: Analyze Your First-Degree Connections. 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web. Youparklikeanasshole.com. Facebook Comprises Nearly 25% of Page Views in the US. Facebook's domination of the Internet continues, as evidenced by numbers released today by Experian Hitwise today that find Facebook accounting for nearly 1 in 4 page views in the United States.
In March the intelligence company found that visits to Facebook had surpassed those to Google. And since then, Facebook's growth has continued, increasing 60% from the same time last year and making up 1 in 10 website visits in the U.S. last week alone. According to Hitwise stats, for the week ending November 13, 24.27% of page views were to Facebook, almost 4 times the volume of the site ranked number 2 - YouTube, with "only" 6.93% of all pageviews.
Even YouTube plus Google's search combined only comprise around 12% of page views. These statistics are only based on U.S. figures and don't include mobile traffic. Don’t Create an App for Apps’ Sake. The trendiness of mobile apps has made them a popular tactic among some marketers who want the latest, coolest thing—even if it doesn’t always make sense for their brand. In some sense, they may be right. Consumers do consider apps a must, according to an October 2010 survey from interface design agency EffectiveUI conducted by Harris Interactive. More than three-quarters of mobile app users said they expected all brand name companies to have a mobile application, and nearly as many said they expected the app to be easier to use than the company’s website. But the survey also highlighted the danger of developing an app for its own sake. Almost seven in 10 app users said their perception of a brand would be negatively affected if it had an app that wasn’t useful or helpful.
Marketers must keep ease of use and also utility in mind when designing apps. Previous Article. Why Social Media Makes Brands Do Good. Image: Miss-Social.com You hear a lot of social media commentators calling for brands to do good, myself included. So does that make us naive, idealistic or unrealistic? Nothing could be further from the truth. No one expects companies to turn over a new leaf or be any less self interested than they have been. Their first responsibility is still to their shareholders. Rather, I exhort brands to do good not just because it's well intended but because it's well-received. Social media has enabled consumers to dialogue with brands. Consider the examples of Walmart's Sustainability Index, P&G's 'Click for Water' blogivation campaign, Starbucks 'Shared Planet' and the Pepsi 'Refresh Project'. This is not conjecture or wishful thinking.
Results from another 2010 study confirm the same feelings from consumers, especially in regard to the beliefs about corporate responsibility held among Moms and Millennials. Doing good not only makes a company's employees happier. Designing a Background for the New Twitter | Kings of Social Media. Google wants to know all about YOU. What once started as a convenience for users has, over time, started to sound more like some Orwellian nightmare stalking us at our every turn.
When this all began search was relatively sterile and innocuous. We type in a few words and get back a bunch of blue links… 10 of them at a time. But that wasn’t enough. Google wanted to know us even better. Coddle and direct us to what we really want. So what’s the big deal? Let’s Get Personal… While I could easily eat up the equivalent of a book on the topic, we shall try and hit just a few of the high level concepts of where we’ve come to in recent years.
Of the stated goals at Google a deep, broad and comprehensive personalization as been top of the food chain for many years now. Search HistorySurfing HistoryImplicit actions (assumptions)Explicit actions (active participation)Geo-localized dataApplication focus (technology you use) How much does this really affect the SERP presentation? User Profiling Next we can go a bit further. Guess what? Is Social Media Marketing Integration Years Away? Many social media marketers are working with the ultimate goal of integrating social into their company’s overall marketing efforts and gaining the experience to conduct the best social campaigns. But according to research from SmartBrief conducted by Summus, they could have a long wait. The June 2010 survey found that, while a few companies at each stage of experience with social media marketing did have a fully integrated strategy, it wasn’t until companies had been working in social media for at least two years that even a quarter of respondents had fully integrated their programs into their business model.
And integration was more common than more basic coordination only among companies that had used social media for at least three years. Most companies using social media, however, have nowhere near that level of experience, according to the survey. Just 5.4% have been doing social media marketing for more than three years, and another 7.5% have been doing it for two to three years. Online Ad Spend Continues Double-Digit Growth. The economy may be on an upward trajectory, but continued caution among advertisers will lead to a continued shift toward online advertising, eMarketer forecasts. eMarketer, which forms its forecast by performing a meta-analysis of research estimates and methodologies from dozens of firms that track ad spending, projects a 10.5% increase in US online ad spending next year, followed by double-digit growth every year through 2014 when spending will reach $40.5 billion.
“It may seem ironic, but marketers’ economic concerns are leading them to spend more for online advertising,” said David Hallerman, principal analyst at eMarketer. “This trend reflects how most forms of internet advertising are now seen as more of a ‘sure thing’ than most traditional media.” “In addition, marketers of all sizes increasingly acknowledge the internet’s central place in people’s lives by devoting larger shares of their ad budgets to digital,” Hallerman said. Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. The World is Watching: The State of Online Videos. Hello! We've got some exciting updates to share with you today. First off, I wanted to let you know that I will be out for part of the day Thursday, 11.7 & all day Friday, 11/8. I will be back on Monday and checking all PMs.
Secondly, we have a new Site Announcements community! Last (but most definitely not least!) To help improve communication with TV.com Staff, we've created Topics that we'll be monitoring closely: User Support (for TV.com related questions or concerns) Feedback (a place to let us know what you think about TV.com features) Site Announcements (we'll use this area to keep you updated on site news. General TV Discussion (for general TV thoughts) We've also created Communities for our favorite genres, popular TV and movie franchises, sports and more. As with our Show Communities, you can post articles, photos, links, discussion items, polls, and more. Please do continue to post in just one show or topic community at a time, even if your post is about multiple shows/topics. Duplicate Content and Ways around It. What Is Duplicate Content Duplicate content is a forbidden practice in Google World, and probably every other search engine realm.
If you’re unaware of what that phrase means, it refers to content, or even a close resemblance to content, that is used on a second site after being posted on a first. The benevolent intent is to prevent outright plagiarism. But the side effects are nearly worse than the original theft: Inability to post material on one’s own sight after guest posting on anotherNot being able to post articles anywhere else even if you’ve removed from the your home siteBeing bludgeoned by lower Google ranking if another site removes your guest articles and you re-post to your own These are some of the unintended results of the duplicate content policy. The Old Days It’s no news to any even semi-aware writer that the Internet has changed the way we both read and write.
Websites are easy to create. The Workaround: Option One What to do? Two of these hybrid miracles stood out. How to Develop a Social Media Content Strategy. Do you have a social media strategy? Does it involve content? Should it? The other day I drove past a local convenience store that makes most of its profit from beer, Slush Puppies and beef jerky (not that there’s anything wrong with that). A big sign out front asked passers-by to Like them on Facebook. “It’s official,” I thought. “Now every business in America has a Facebook page.”
Unfortunately, few businesses actually have a strategy for their Facebook page, or for the rest of their social media activity. If your social media engagement is reactive rather than proactive, it’s time to step back, take a deep breath and develop a content strategy that will engage your community. A content strategy doesn’t end with good signage. What Is a Content Strategy? Last year while doing some research into what certification organizations were doing in social media, I interviewed Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, who said, I thought this was brilliant. Listen. ROI Measurement for Social Media Marketing — awe.sm. Social Minefield: Navigating The Office Holiday Party. How Social Media Can Make Online Shopping Less Lonely. Lauren Boyer is the CEO of Underscore Marketing, a boutique digital agency that specializes in social media.
Shopping, which was once highly social, is increasingly solo. You can “do errands” from your sofa at home. With mobile and wireless technology, you can shop from anywhere, at any time of day. Food, clothes, furniture and electronics are delivered to your doorstep. You don’t even have to speak to anyone while making a purchase. For younger consumers, shopping online is practically second nature. But how do Americans feel about all this autonomy? “Social shopping” is stepping in to respond to this sense of loss. On one end of the social-shopping spectrum, there are social media sites built around product opinions, reviews, ratings and suggestions. Like Stylefeeder, the site Kaboodle fosters shopper interaction. And taking it a step further, location-based shopping sites like Groupon or Bizzy alert you to shopping deals right in your own neighborhood.