Posts Tagged ‘Google’

SEO (search engine optimization) changed forever when Google integrated Google+ into its Google search results a few weeks ago. Basically, Google is now personalizing (to a much greater degree than before) its search results, based on the links and +1 recommendations of people in your Google+ network. Check out the example below.

I did a search for Don Cornelius, creator of Soul Train, on Google. At the top of the search results, there’s a note that tells me here are 20 personal results, or 20 links or posts that mention Don Cornelius by people in my Google+ circles.

If I click on personal results, I see the full search results list, but with the personal links at the top of the list. Holy smokes! That means that the Washington Post article on Don Cornelius, which was previously at the top of the page, just got overtaken by a link on nerdist.com because someone I follow and interact with a lot posted that link on his Google+ page!

This is just another example of how Google is heavily favoring its Google+ social network and another giant reason to:

• Create a Google+ page
• Encourage social sharing of your content across all social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+), but especially Google+

A study by Nielsen back in 2009 found that 90% of people 25,000 people surveyed “trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.” This makes intuitive sense. Think of all the people in your Facebook network who ask for recommendations for a contractor, camera or pediatrician. And consider the crazy, huge influence of mommy and wedding bloggers.

So, what’s your social sharing strategy? It could be as simple as making sure there is a Share This link on all of your articles, meetings and products. Or you could actively ask your customers and members to recommend your products and service to their networks in your e-mails, tweets, and e-newsletters.

• 1 Comment
• Tags: Google, Google Plus, marketing, SEO

On Monday, Google opened up Google+ and allowed companies and brands to create corporate pages. Previously, only individuals could create Google+ profiles (believe me, we tried to create a corporate page and were thwarted by Google!).

If you haven’t done it already, I encourage you to create a page for your organization, company, brand or initiative by going to the Google+ Create Page.

Even if you don’t know how or what you’re going to do on this new social media platform, I think you need to be on it because:

• Google+ has 40 million subscribers and that number is growing fast. It’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 800 million subscribers, sure, but 40 million is still a big number.
• Google+ users tend to be early adopters. According to Target Marketing, in the first few months of the network’s presence, the users were mostly young men, a third of users were between 25 and 34 years old and 59 percent of all visitors were male. This will surely change over time.
• Just as there isn’t one TV network or channel that dominates anymore, chances are your organization’s target audiences are on various social networks so you probably need a presence on all the major platforms.
• Google likes to drive traffic to its web properties, like YouTube and Blogger, so having a corporate presence on Google+ will be good for search engine optimization.
• Google likes to integrate its offerings, so there will surely be really neat tools to tie together Google+ with Google Analytics, Google search, AdWords, Google Reader, Gmail, etc. For example, there’s already a way to +1 an article in Google reader. +1 is Google’s version of the Facebook “like.” I’m especially excited about Ripples, which is an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network and help you discover new and interesting people to follow.

My dilemma right now is that I don’t know how the Matrix Group Google+ page will be the same and different from our presence on Facebook. If you’ve ever heard me speak or if you follow this blog closely, you know that I preach a layered approach to social media where each platform has a different purpose and content strategy. There is overlap to be sure, but it’s best to have a different strategy for each platform to encourage your target audiences to follow you in multiple ways.

As your marketing team ponders this same question of market positioning for your Google+ page, be sure to create your page early to reserve the name and have a presence for the early users who will be looking for you.

Have you created your company’s Google+ page? How will you be using it to connect with your customers, prospects or members?

• No Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, social networking

So I’ve been on Google Plus for a while now. Actually, I’ve had an account for a while now, having received an invitation early, but I rarely post updates and I rarely read updates from my various circles. I’m simply struggling to integrate it into my life.

It’s not that I don’t like Google Plus. On the contrary, I like the interface, I like that it’s so easy to add people to circles and post updates to only specific circles, and I like that the interface is (for now, at least) nice and clean, not cluttered with ads.

It’s just that I’m feeling saturated. I already have my routine of posting interesting news items to Twitter, posting personal updates on Facebook, uploading my weekly video interviews to YouTube, checking into FourSquare when I go out to eat or visit a new place, and blogging once a week.

The question for me has become: what place should Google Plus occupy in my life?

I guess I could simply post the same updates to a bunch of social networks, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m connected with the same people on multiple networks, they would see the same posts and that’s no fun and a waste of time.

Perhaps Google Plus will become, like Twitter, another public persona for me, whereas Facebook is the network I reserve for family, friends and close network.

Sean Parker, a co-founder of original music file-sharing service Napster and a prominent Facebook shareholder, says that, “power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+.” Could this be true? In my case, my techiest of friends and co-workers seem to be more active on Google+ these days but my network is still firmly on Facebook. And yet, Google+ is grabbing subscribers fast. GooglePlusWiki says that there are now over 20M people on the network.

After pondering this issue for a while now, here’s where what I’m thinking. Although the majority of my network is still not on Google+, I need to be on it. Because no one network will dominate and it will be hard to ignore Google+. Just as I tell clients that they need to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr because their audiences are on these networks, I know that I need to be on all the major networks personally. I will figure out where to find the time to post to Google+. I will repeat some posts because there is some overlap in connections but it’s not 100%. I will hope that HootSuite will soon let me post to Google+ in addition to Twitter and Facebook. And I will figure out what brainspace Google+ will occupy.

How about you? Are you on Google+? What is Google+ doing to your Facebook and Twitter updates? Are you posting different things? How are you integrating Google+ into your day?

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, Twitter

I got a voice mail from a vendor the other day. He left me three numbers and the best times to reach him at each number.

One of my Project Managers said she was having a tough time reaching a client. I suggested she try the client’s cell phone since that client is almost never at her desk but she’s almost always available via cell phone.

I have a friend who almost never answers his phone, but if I send a direct Tweet, I get an instant response.

Egads. With all of these communication channels, what’s the best way to reach someone these days?

On any given day, I check multiple devices for voice mail, e-mail or text messages: work e-mail, personal e-mail, home phone, work phone, cell phone, Twitter and Facebook. Some of these channels overlap.  For example, direct messages on Twitter, Facebook messages and work voice mail all end up in my e-mail.

But with so many devices to check for messages, I invariably favor certain methods (work e-mail, work voice mail and cell phone), to the detriment of others. Case in point: I completely missed a friend’s voice mail on my home phone because she called while I was upstairs with the baby one Sunday. Since I was home all day, it never occurred to me that I might have missed a call, so I didn’t check voice mail for several days. Eeek.

Many of my friends and staff have consolidated communications on their cell phones. They have no land line at home and do everything on their smartphone. But my husband Maki and I won’t give up our land line because in an emergency, my trusty land line phone (an AT&T Trimline 210 from 1989) that does not need a power source will still work (unless the central office is out).

I thought Google Voice would save me. Google Voice gives you a phone number that’s tied to YOU, not the device. Currently, I have a Google Voice number that rings on my cell phone and home phone; by the end of the week, it will also ring my direct extension at work. I can program Google Voice to ring on specific phones during certain hours of the day. And I can make free calls anywhere in the US and around the world to other Google Voice subscribers. Pretty cool. Currently, only Maki, my mom and the nanny have this number because they’re the people who MUST reach me when they NEED to reach me. But here’s the rub: Google Voice gives me another mailbox to check! Ick. I hope I managed to disable that feature.

All of this thinking about how to reach me and how to reach other has got me thinking. Are we making ourselves crazy by always being reachable and having the expectation that everyone should be reachable at all times? If you’re an NCIS fan, you know that Gibbs’ Rule #3 is “Never be unreachable” so I guess I need to continue diligently checking e-mail, voice mail, text messages and social media messages. <sigh>

How about you? What’s the best way to reach YOU? And how do you let friends know the best to reach you?

• 3 Comments
• Tags: Google, Productivity

Every day around 3pm, I get my afternoon update of The Washington Post via e-mail.  Each update contains a summary of about a dozen stories and links to the full story on the Post Web site.  Every time I get an update from Facebook about a message from a friend or a comment on one of my updates, I get a URL to click on.

Have you ever noticed how long these Web addresses are?  Ever wonder why these URL are so long?

The answer is simple: tracking codes. Tracking codes are strings of text added to the end of a URL that let you track the source of a click.  For example, if your organization has an e-mail newsletter and you want to know how many people click on the links in your e-mails, you add tracking codes to the URLs.  Your usage tracking software will almost always treat the URLs with the tracking codes as unique from the same URLs without the tracking codes.  So, when looking at your usage reports, you can look at usage overall to specific pages and then figure out how much of the traffic came from the e-mail newsletter.

If you usage Google Analytics for usage tracking, Google has a terrific URL builder that create properly formatted tracking codes to track the source of clicks, specific campaigns, even the duration of your campaign.  Here’s an example of how it works:

Let’s take the URL to my recent blog post on magazine subscriptions on the iPad.  The URL looks like this if I navigate directly to it:

http://www.thematrixfiles.net/blog/am-i-really-going-to-pay-4-99-for-one-issue-of-time-magazine/

When my marketing team promotes this blog post e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, etc., we use the Google URL builder to add tracking codes.  Here’s a sample URL:

http://www.thematrixfiles.net/blog/am-i-really-going-to-pay-4-99-for-one-issue-of-time-magazine/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SM&utm_campaign=blog

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• 2 Comments
• Tags: e-mail, Google, marketing, Web site traffic

Why do restaurant owners love Flash so much that their entire Web sites are in Flash? Don’t get me wrong, I love Flash and I make a living selling Flash movies, branding areas, yada, yada. But most Web sites should not be all Flash!

Here’s an example of an all Flash site that is annoying and borderline useless. I was scheduling lunch with a friend, who asked me to recommend a restaurant and send him the physical and Web addresses. No problem, right? Wrong.

Check out the Web site for Kora in Crystal City - http://www.korarestaurant.com/ The Web site is pretty, but if you’re trying to get an address and send it to a friend, it’s not user-friendly at all!

• It took me 5 minutes to find the address.  It’s not on the home page, nor under Hours and Directions.  It’s under Contact Us and Reservations.
• Because the site is entirely in Flash, I couldn’t copy the address and paste into the e-mail I was sending my friend.
• I also could not copy and paste the address into Google maps so that I could send my friend directions from Reston.
• Forget being able to bookmark specific pages because the URL never changes in the single Flash file for the entire site. So I couldn’t send my friend the URL of a menu page.  Aaaargh.
• Oh yeah, you can’t print Flash pages either unless print-friendly pages have been specifically created; most designers don’t bother.  So if you want to print Kora’s Hours and Directions page, you’re out of luck.

Since I’m lazy and did not want to re-type the address, I simply went to Google, typed “Kora Arlington, VA” and got a link to a map and directions from Google maps.  God bless Google.

I’m sure Kora paid good money for its beautiful, all Flash site, but I bet it’s a pain to update and it’s not very accommodating for visitors who just want to copy and paste an address.  Good grief!

How about you?  Got your own rants against an all Flash site?  Post links and comments!

• 8 Comments
• Tags: Google, marketing, Web Design

It’s the new year and it’s customary to look at the previous year and make predictions about the upcoming year or decade.  Every day in my e-mail inbox, I get a flood of Top Ten lists.  So where do I go when I need statistics about which Web browser is winning the browser war, how many users Twitter really has, or the gadgets and technologies that will likely shine in 2010?  Here are my favorite sites:

• The Pew Research Center has some of the best research about all kinds of trends shaping the US.  The Pew Internet and American Life Project has great information about technology adoption, Web 2.0, social media and the technology divide.
• Ad Age is one of my favorite sites.  The daily e-mail newsletter is one that I read nearly every day.  This article on Where Digital Marketing is Heading in 2010 is a must read.
• When I’m looking for numbers and visitors demographics for a particular Web site, I go to Quantcast.  For example, Quantcast estimates there are 23.3M Twitter users, of which 53% are female, 44% are between the ages of 18-34, and 75% are Caucasian.  The data can be a stale by a few months, which is a problem for fast-growing sites, but the data is usually pretty solid.
• Although I live in the DC area, I’m a huge New York Times fan.  Check out the 9th Annual Year in Ideas (the best!) and an awesome infographic that shows search terms related to cooking and Thanksgiving, by region of the country.

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• 1 Comment
• Tags: Browsers, Google, trends

Google is doing it again.  Google is turning the publishing world upside down with Google Books, currently in beta.  Google Books allows the public to download more than a million public domain books in PDF and EPUB formats.

Google has been quietly scanning the world’s books for inclusion into Google Books, which is both a search and a library.  Here’s how it works:

• Users like you and me and go to Google Books and use the Book Search, which functions just like a regular Google search.
  
• If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google permission, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it’s in the public domain, you’re free to download a PDF copy.
• Books that are still in copyright can sometimes be previewed; you’ll also find links to sites where you can purchase or borrow the book.
• As long as you have a Google account, you can “add” books to your library for later viewing and downloading.
  

For example, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is in the public domain.  I can download a full copy of Huck Finn from Google Books. Read the rest of this entry

• 1 Comment
• Tags: Google

We’ve been kicking around ideas for making the Matrix Group intranet better.  During a recent meeting, the Director of Software Engineering wondered if we should switch from our intranet calendar to the Google calendar. Whoa, I thought. Put my company calendar and personal schedule on Google? My mission-critical data that I would die without?  No way.

But then I got to thinking. Gmail is a seriously good e-mail service.  Google Analytics is so ridiculously good that yes, I would pay for it; in fact, I would pay lots of money for it (don’t get any ideas, Google.)  And before Google bought Postini, it was already a best of breed, commercial anti-spam service.

So I did a little more research on Google apps.  It turns out that the Google apps, terms and conditions I’m familiar with are for personal use.  But Google also markets its services to companies and schools.  Google offers the same services (Gmail, calendar, docs, Web site hosting, and Postini) to companies for a really low price ($50 per user, per year).  So why is the corporate version of Google Apps not free?  For the money, you get a 99.9% uptime reliability guarantee (for Premier Edition users), mobile device support, 25 GIG of storage, and the Google promise of security and compliance.  Phone support is supposedly also available, but I can’t find reference anywhere in the Terms of Service to back-up and retention of data. Read the rest of this entry

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Google, Productivity

All day long, I sit in meetings where my staff, clients and I try to intuit what customers and members want.  We look at usage reports, search logs, customer feedback forms, guestbook entries, and survey results.  All of these sources give us insight into what customers do, seek and want.  But after conducting a focus group for a client this evening, I’m reminded that we need regular face time with our customers and we need to just ask them what they want.

Tonight’s focus group was amazing.  Nearly two dozen people gave up two hours of their day to discuss why they are members of an organization, what they like about the Web site, and what would make their jobs easier.   Some of the ideas were mind-blowingly simple, while others were flat out brilliant.  If half of the product ideas prove economically feasible, this organization has a product road map for the next year.

Speaking of product road maps, I am in the habit of calling a couple of customers after each release of our association management software, MatrixMaxx.  I call to check-in, get feedback on new features, and, most importantly, ask them for  the one thing they would like to see in a future release.  For the 9.1 release, the suggestions were all spot on, some were so easy to implement we wondered why we hadn’t done the work earlier, and some proved to be blockbusters.

But what do you do when you have zillions of customers and you get a flood of customer requests on a regular basis?  Google Moderator allows communities to post suggestions/questions and then vote on all ideas submitted.  President Obama used Google Moderator to accept questions for an electronic town hall meeting; citizens submitted and then ranked questions; the President answered the most popular questions. Read the rest of this entry

• 2 Comments
• Tags: association management, Barack Obama, customer service, Google, software development