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.

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.

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.

2.Create either a fan site or a business page within facebook.

Facebook has lots of help areas within the site to get you started on how to create these pages. The idea is that you can keep your personal facebook account separate from your business facebook pages.   Why would you?  Personal facebook friends may not be interested in the content that you would have on your business pages, and you do not want to confuse the two groups with that content.  My nephew’s graduation photo is not appropriate to my local business contacts, for example.    So, what should you put on your business facebook fan page?  Let me suggest this – search within facebook using terms that relate to your business, and see if you can find some existing fan pages.  Join a few, and watch how they interact with you.  What I take note of also is how often there are updates to the pages.  Please make regular updates to the pages to keep your business fresh in the minds of your customer base.

3.Update your business website with links to your facebook fan site or business page.

This may be obvious to you, however, it is very important that this is done.  First of all, it will increase the SEO factor ( also known as link juice )  to join your sites together.  And, you can gain new fans to either website simply because you do have the links visible.  Also, if you have not done so by now, please do add a link to your twitter account, linkedin, friendfeed and whatever other sites you own.

4.Update your business cards with links to all your social media accounts – twitter, facebook, linkedin, blogs, friendfeed, etc.

Are you using the other side of your business card yet?  This is an excellent area to update with all of your social links, if you do not have room on the front of your business card.   You can grab icons for the various social media sites all over, but here are some various samples and styles you can provide your printer.

Time for an updated business card?  Great!  Run a google search on “printer” and check out the printers local to your town.  While you are searching, take a minute to observe how the local google search works.  Check out the local map, and how many names are listed.  Looking to increase your own local business marketing footprint within google?  Please visit Marketing Local Online to get more detailed info on just this process.

5.Network with other businesses for cross promotions by running a search within facebook to find possibilities.

Go into facebook and again perform some searches for other businesses, but this time, think about what types of businesses could work well with yours as a network relationship or to create a business relationship with.  Be very creative here.  Here is one example -  I know the owners of a greeting card site,  and I referred them to network with a wedding photographer who was looking for resources for his clients.  And, that is another essential tip – when you put your fan page up, please add a discussion area and ask for other businesses to contact you with their resources and ideas.  Please do not underestimate the power of this idea.

Please share your thoughts in the comments area.<–>

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.

Other incidents of this type have occurred, and surely will occur again.

For those who are in business, it might be a big clue to realize that the marketing world has changed a whole lot in the last few years. If you are not on top of your brand reputation and able to react immediately, you might want to heed the warning that this most recent event is giving:  follow your brand reputation in social media starting today.

There are some very simple and free methods to do this , which is great for those of you with small companies who cannot afford to hire a full time social media marketing maven. 

1. google alerts.  This free tool sends you an email alert anytime any phrase you specify is mentioned after being tracked by google. The problem with google is the time element for news to be digested then reported,though.  Helpful none the less!  To set this up, go to google alerts and try it out.   I have used this to track reports of company mergers, my name, and all of my websites.  When you tire of it, but cancel it.  However, if you are checking for brand reputation, you may wish to keep it on at all times.

2.tweetbeep.  Another free tool which sends you an email alert, but this time it is direct from twitter, live and  ontime.  Check it out.

Others? Feel free to drop a comment on methods that you use with social media.

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

Actually, one of the blog authors said that he received no response at all from his tweets, or from using FriendFeed, and that was the basis of his blog post. In other words, how could social media gurus give it the hype that it is all about interaction, when no one interacted with him? He did admit that he still finds value in social media applications, but he doubted that “main stream” users would get noticed enough to continue to find value.

The other blog post was from an “old school” copywriter’s blog, written by Troy White, on The Total Package. This guy and his followers know all the ins and outs of copywriting and have used that skill to make a lot of money on- and offline. They were not finding any monetary value (wondering what the ROI was ) in using Twitter, and wondered if others found the same poor results. Paraphrasing, there were responders who felt the same way, no ROI value for all their time spent, they just did not “get it”. And still other responders tried to explain how they found value in using Twitter.

My thoughts are varied. The simple 140 character limitation of Twitter completely obliterates the copywriting skills of people who have used headlines and words, lots of them, to drive sales for many years. The medium is not what they are used to, but, that doesn’t mean others have not found ways to market using Twitter’s 140 characters, as they have.

Also, considering how many millions of people are using multiple social media applications, people are apparently finding alot of value. But, I personally do not find value in some types of tweets. For example, tweets from well known internet marketing gurus telling us that they had a cigar and what kind of wine with their dinner 10 minutes ago is just not valuable to me. The value to me is the fact that I can send a direct message, if I wanted to, to a well known internet marketer, or a pro basketfall player – no red tape. I am not using that application for actually socializing with these people I do not know. But, I also am using the applications to be social with people I do know.

So let me be more clear. For my friends, I would send a short personal message. But following an “important” person, I find humor in seeing a silly personal type message go out to a gajillion people thinking they would care. However, it seems that lots of “important” people think this is what they should do. And you know, thinking about how isolated some of them are from all of us, I guess they have no idea how to interact anyway. Authenticity, yes, that is an issue. This way they can still dodge the autographs, and believe that they are interacting with their peeps.

There are hundreds of uses for Twitter. Some like it for social interaction, some like it for marketing, some like it simply because it is the new trend. You just can’t suggest the whole thing is useless if you are not getting your expectations met. It is still new. Keep looking for the value, it really is there.