Social media is being integrated more and more into search engine results. Everyone is making deals with Twitter to pull real time updates into the search results, including Yahoo! . But another important, possibly more useful piece of social media will be appearing in Google search engine results: Facebook pages.
The Facebook pages are separate sections available for businesses, celebrities, and organizations. The big news here is the ability to have status updates pulled into the real time search results. Facebook’s status updates allow for full links (no shortening required) and much larger updates than Twitter allows. So if you’re business has overlooked Facebook as a viable strategy for social media, it may be time to take a closer look.
You can read more about Google adding Facebook into real time search results at Search Engine Land.
Yesterday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Eric Schmidt and Hartmut Neven demonstrated a new piece of technology aimed to help aid in language translation. This new technology allows people to take a picture of text with a camera on their phone (such as a menu at a restaurant) and utilize OCR (optical character recognition) to then translate the text into another language. Although at the moment the demo only does German-to-English translations, in the future they plan to be able to translate text from images between the 52 languages Google Translate currently supports.
This new technology shows a lot of promise, especially for those who travel. Google is really pushing the technology on mobile phones. I personally traveled to Europe a few years ago and can think of several instances in which this technology would have been useful.
Our web marketing team is very busy this month educating our community on the benefits of web marketing, mainly social media! On February 10th, we presented on social media marketing for your business to the Jackson Belden Chamber of Commerce. It was a great turnout (despite the weather) and we met a lot of great people!
This morning, Corey presented with Kristie VanAuken, Sr. VP Marketing & Communications at CAK on Advanced Social Media.
According to Corey, it was a great mix of Canton Stark County CVB members that were interested in learning more about how to market their business with social media.
Check out TKG’s upcoming web marketing speaking engagements:
Society of Marketing Professional Services
February 18, 2010
Topic: Social Media
Panelists: Corey Hammond, BrandMuscle Inc, and Constructive Communication
(this event is by invite only)
TKG Breakfast Bootcamp
February 18, 2010
Topic: Email Marketing Techniques
Speaker: Dana Phillips
(registration is free)
There is a rumor circulating that Google is taking Street View off the streets and bringing it inside of businesses. Oh Nuts, a nut and candy shop, tipped off SearchEngineLand with news that a Google photographer came into the New York City store and took pictures of products, displays, etc. This could allow users to shop before they even reach a store – talk about planning ahead! Another bonus is that businesses listed on Google with this new feature should expect to gain some publicity and, ultimately, an increase in visitors. That is especially important in this economy – businesses need all of the help they can get!
It is important to take this news with a grain of salt; no other businesses have claimed that Google approached them with the new feature. Why would Google contact a small candy store in NYC before any other businesses? It seems fishy to me that Google didn’t start with big, well-known brands; I mean there are plenty of those in the Big Apple. Terrence O’Brien from Switched.com also noted that the Google photographer was “lugging around a pretty standard looking camera on a tripod” not the 360-degree camera that Google Street View is known for. There is plenty of mystery surrounding this story, but Google is so far staying quiet. No statements have been issued and no questions have been answered.
There were rumors (Google CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted about it saying “hell had frozen over”) that Google would air its first ever major TV commercial during the Super Bowl. So while watching the Super Bowl yesterday, I eagerly waited to see if all of the tweets and rumors were true – and sure enough Google aired a touching commercial called ‘Parisian Love’. Google explained on their blog that the commercial had been up on YouTube for a few months and already had 1.2 million views. They had such positive reaction that they wanted to share it with a larger audience.
The Karcher Group is growing and we’re on the lookout for SEM talent!
We’re looking for someone who already has experience with natural SEO, paid online advertising, link building (including content distribution), local SEO and social media marketing.
We offer medical, life, 401k, paid vacation and holidays, a great bonus system, and a young, energetic staff full of friendly people!
Learn more about what we offer & what we’re looking for in our next SEM rock star!
President Barack Obama gave his first State of The Union Address to the nation on Wednesday night. During the live broadcast and for a long while after, the #SOTU (State of The Union) hashtag and several other related phrases were trending topics on Twitter. The President has his own Twitter feed @BarackObama that had live updates with direct quotes from his address to the nation and to Congress.
During the State of The Union Address, I kept an eye on Twitter through my phone. There were several quotes I wanted to Tweet, but I had trouble typing them and paying attention to what he was saying. I thought I had found a solution to the problem: the @BarackObama Twitter feed. However, to my dismay, I was unable to RT (retweet) his posts because of the 140 character limit. I’m not a fan of the new RT features on Twitter and I’m not alone. Very few people that I follow employ the new retweet feature. The new retweet feature is confusing to those seasoned Twitter users who are used to the original retweet, “RT @mikehalvorsen blah.” In addition to this, the new RT feature does not allow additional comments, such as “I love USA RT @BarackObama I never said change would be easy…”
At the end of his address, I checked out the Twitter feed on my desktop and to my shock, almost all of the Tweets made from his account during the address were near the 140 character limit. Out of 12 Tweets posted during the State of The Union Address, only two were RT-able using the old school retweet method.
For anyone using Twitter as a way to spread their brand or message, you must cover all bases. If you want your message to be spread around the Twittersphere, you must fully understand its limitations 140 characters at a time.
For those in charge of handling Barack Obama’s Twitter account and that of The White House, give us a call at 1-800-310-0317 for free Social Media consulting. Make sure you ask for me.
Google Webmaster Tools created a quiz based on the most commonly asked questions they receive. The quiz will be available until January 27 at 9pm EST.
By taking this quiz and comparing your answers with the answers they will publish at a later date, you should be able to gauge your understanding of Google Webmaster Tools and some SEO basics.
Go take the quiz and remember to print your answers so you can compare them to the real answers when they publish them.
It seems like everyone has been talking about the Google vs. China scandal, so why can’t I? As almost everyone knows, Google and China have had problems in the past but a situation that occurred a few days ago was the last straw for Google.
The search engine giant discovered that hackers were attempting to access the Gmail addresses of several key Chinese human rights activists. Google has speculated that the attack was coordinated by the Chinese government itself, a claim that the Chinese have quickly denied. Google wasn’t the only business attacked; at least 20 other American companies were targeted as well. China insists that their censorship on the Internet is in the best interests of their people, but can anyone truly agree with that? Google has announced that it has decided to stop censoring its search results in China, but no action has been taken yet.
