Social media for social media marketing & website marketing

Google Social Search is a very new feature of Google.  The intention is to increase your personal trust level by including what you friends and aquaintances have said about the topic you are searching for.

Say what?!  Let me break it down a little deeper for you. 

If you are a regular person looking for info by doing a Google search, Google has always wanted to give you exactly what you are looking for.  That does not always happen – but now Google wants to help increase “word of mouth”  from your social circle in the hopes that you will trust what they have said more than what Google says in the results.

It turns out, that it may be useful to you if info on a restaurant you are interested in was reviewed by your cousin.  People trust their people’s opinions more than what some random search engine, right?   So, if you are typing the name of the restaurant and hit enter, and if you happen to be logged into Google, and you happen to have added your cousin into your gmail contact list or chat list - you will see social search results at the bottom of your page, where one click shows what your cousin wrote.  

Of course, Google still maintains control of the page of results.  They will still send you paid ads and hope you click on those, and still shows the top 10 search results which are determined through their algorhythm.  And then, if Google determines that your cousin’s info is relevant, they may or may not show it at the bottom of the page.  Depends on their, cough, algorhythm, cough.

And, in the end, is Google doing this to keep people on their page instead of using Bing or Yahoo for relevant search results? Probably.  Also, there is that Big Brother feeling in my gut.  To see the social circle results, one has to have a Google email account, a Google Profile, and Google Reader is thrown in also.  And, you have to be logged in.  So, not only do they know who you are, they know what you are doing at all times.  The announcement came with many statements of how using social search is optional, and only at your permission, and could be changed by you at any time.

Perhaps this is why all of this is still in the Google Labs as an experiment for now.

written by admin \\ tags: Google Social Search

If you use the social media king Facebook’s Fan Page, did you know you can insert that into your wordpress blog sidebar?  Here’s how to do it.

Login to your Facebook Fan Page. On the left, look for the link “Add A Fan Box”.  Now you simply copy the code and insert it into your blog.  If you are using WordPress, here is how you do that.

Login to the wp-admin of your blog.  Using version 2.7 and up, on the left, click on Appearance. Underneath, click on widget. Next, you have to decide which sidebar you wish to place a new text box, left or right. Some blog themes only have one sidebar so you won’t be worrying over this choice.  See below.

Using the text box

Once you have selected the sidebar you want, then you are going to either drag and drop your text box from the left, or just click Add next to  your text box on the left. This depends on which version of Wordpress you are using.  Once done, you must click SAVE before we go further.

Adding Text Box

Now, on the right side where you see the new Text box, click to open it.  Inside, you have an option to add a title, so go ahead and add that if you want one.   Below this area, you will copy and paste the html code you found on your Facebook Fan Page.  Once done, you click Save at the bottom.   After this, you are going to Visit Site to see how it all looks.   You can tweak the size of this new text box if it is running off the screen, see instructions below.

Text Box

Of course, you can use this same method to insert all kinds of html objects into your sidebars.   Most social media allow you to copy the html and use it on your blog, and this is the method you could follow. Also, please see the post on facebook and local business marketing.

written by admin \\ tags: facebook, social media, social media marketing

You should know by now that millions of people use facebook as a social media tool. Besides just enjoying yourself online at this site, interaction with others can be very useful for your local business marketing.

Here are 5 ways that you can use facebook to your advantage if you have a business. By the way, I am in progress on each of these steps as I create this post.

1.After you have a personal facebook account, be sure to put links to your business inside your profile. Here is what mine looks like right now:

Remember to type in the whole URL to create a real link, and by that I mean add in the http:// part at the front.  Also, you can add the URL to specific pages within your site, it does not just have to be your home page that you link to.

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written by admin \\ tags: facebook, local business marketing, social media, social media marketing

Social media has been kicking some reputations to the curb, and a new one is the Dominos Pizza youtube video which inflamed the social world.

Apparently two workers (who have since been fired and arrested) decided to video a bad prank this past week on Monday, and the wildfire spread without a fast enough check by the company spokespeople.   Dominos has responded by creating a Twitter account two days after the incident, and put up a youtube video, but it was estimated by survey that in those two days their reputation went from positive to negative by the public. Check out the comments for the company video. And, there are already spin off videos on youtube discussing the event.

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written by admin \\ tags: dominos youtube, social media

In the past week I have read two different blog posts discussing if social media was worth all the hype. And, each of the blogs had many responses from regular folks agreeing that they, too, have not seen any of the exciting results of spending their time keeping up with the latest social media trends.

Twitter is usually the example given as the biggest hyped application, but the least responsive in return for the time spent.

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written by admin \\ tags: internet marketing, social media marketing, web 2.0