Social Media – What’s This Google + Thing?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Neal Lappe

Social media has “a new sheriff in town” called Google +.  Google has gotten into the social media space in a huge way recently and in only 3 weeks has amassed about 20 million users.  What is it?  How is it different from Facebook, LinkedIn and some of the other social networks?  Is there a business application for this?  How will it affect online marketing activities?  There are many questions about Google + and this post is only an intro to this exciting new online network.

Being the behemoth it is, Google has the existing connectivity to bring a large audience into Google+ and position the platform as a true player in social networking, likely their initial intent – and there’s nothing wrong with that!  Check out this video on YouTube.  It provides a good intro about Google +. 

Video about Google Plus

Video about Google Plus

Google + is simply another online social media platform that enables people (and soon businesses) to create different networks (they are called “Circles”) of people you know and want to “socialize” with. 

One of the many great things about Google + is that you can create many Circles.  You can create a Circle for just your family, or just for work, or just for friends, etc., etc., etc.  You can also reach out and “follow” people just like Twitter, Facebook.  You can put some people you know into multiple Circles.  It’s awesome – you’ve got to get in there and check it out.  Just go to https://plus.google.com/#, sign into Google and begin creating some Circles. 

Is Google + for businesses who want to brand themselves and gain visibility on this platform?  Well, not quite yet but soon to come.  It is expected that Google will soon open the network to businesses and they expect demand to be huge.  In the short term, if an individual wants to create a Circle comprised solely of their co-workers, this can be done and used as a collaboration tool within the firm. 

Google seems to be taking a cautious approach to maintain the credibility of the platform, and I like that.  I even read recently that Google is challenging the integrity of some of the profiles being created.  Someone by the name of Rowan Thunder was banned from the platform because the name sounded like it could be questionable, and Google has since allowed Rowan in because he is a real, legit person.  Facebook seems to have become the “wild west” and it is refreshing to be able to start anew with creating online communications networks with others you know.

What’s ahead for Google +?  A lot!!!  There’s a good deal of talk about games coming to the platform, and this will be a direct hit to Facebook.  Also, the platform is rapidly expanding globally, although the US is by far has the biggest user population.  There is talk about photo sharing and event planning features coming to the platform.  It seems that Google is coming after the social media scene aggressively and it will be interesting to see how it and Facebook play out.  Competition will only make the platforms better for everyone involved.         

One last item not talked about too much yet but will certainly have an impact.  Since Google has virtually double the market share of any other search engine, having all this information about you and your friends will most certainly effect your search results.  I’m certain there will be a great deal of interesting information coming out about this in the future.

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IMO.IM kicks it up a notch, IMO

Posted on August 4, 2011 by David McKillen

I think I’ll go crazy if I have to manage one more social media tool :) Unfortunately the world we live in (at least the business world) requires us to be accessible via multiple devices, protocol, messengers and time machines. (OK maybe not time machines). Instant messaging has become almost impossible to maintain unless you have about 10 different networks running at the same time.

Then imo.im came out a while ago and seemed a little limited, at least compared to meebo.com. It has since blossomed into a very useful tool however and now thankfully I can manage all my instant message accounts in one place – AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber, MySpace and more including the ability to group chat and make calls in Skype! More and more I find I’m using Skype as a chat tool and so being able to integrate ALL messenger applications AND Skype makes Life a lot easier :) .

I even ran into a little bug that somehow caused my AIM friends to appear offline when they were online – I dropped the support team a quick note and BOOM! they fixed it (I’m guessing specifically for my username as they requested I let them know what it was). They have a very cool iphone app now too allowing me to have separate messenger applications running on phone and desktop – useful if for example I use one primarily for work and the other for fun.

Kudos to imo.im – Multiple IM problems solved!

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Online Reputation Management – It Should be a Bigger Priority

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Neal Lappe

Companies are talking a lot about social media marketing and trying to figure out what to do.  Many think having a Facebook page is the biggest priority.  No doubt Facebook is important – after all 600 million users ain’t bad.  But what many lose site of is their reputation online and what people are saying about them online.  This IS social media and many call it Online Reputation Management (ORM).

Why should ORM become a bigger priority?  An article came out this morning about how social media users trust brand and product information.  The survey indicates that 37% of users trust information received from friends and people they know.  This far exceeds the next biggest source of social media information – blogs, which are trusted by 26% of users.  The graph to the right illustrates results from the survey done in May of this year.

Social Media Marketing

People are talking about your brand/product online – are you aware of what they are saying?  Your brand/product may be getting reviewed online – are you aware of the ratings?  We’ve had several clients come to us inquiring about doing Facebook and Twitter marketing, and when we show them they have negative ratings online available for the world to see, they quickly re-prioritize their desires and begin focusing on getting better reviews and communicating with customers who may have had a less than desirable experience with their brand/product

There are many tools and tactics that can be implemented as part of an ORM campaign, and these can significantly improve what users can learn about your brand/product online.  Your reputation is everything, and far surpasses the possibility of having 100 Facebook friends.

As more of us go online to gather information about brands and products, the more we will rely on the comments, posts, reviews and ratings from our friends and others.  Invest in ORM – it will pay off for you.

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Track Social Clicks in Google Analytics

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Chris Leone

Google Analytics continues to add value to it’s ever-improving platform – recently announcing a new tag that will allow you to track social media “shares” from your website into Google Analytics reports. Read more here.

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No Data – No Sales

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Neal Lappe

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Online Marketing – Display Exceeds Search in 2015

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Neal Lappe

Search engine marketing spend is about to become the “little brother” to display marketing in the next few years according to some industry experts.  By 2015, these experts expect marketing spend on Display to be just shy of $22 billion while they predict search marketing spend that year will come in about $21.5 billion.  Display marketing in this context includes online video, banner ads, rich media and the like.  While I was surprised by this at first glance, when I think about the emergence of video, I become less surprised.  After all, YouTube has become the third most popular website (after Google and Facebook) and is considered by many to be the second most popular search engine after Google. 

What is happening to cause this trend and what does it mean to marketers?  First, let’s agree that in the world of online marketing, search engine marketing is an awesome direct response vehicle, and that’s a place many marketers should look first.  Now, that being said, we also know penetration of high speed internet service and the proliferation of wireless networks are causing our eyeballs to go online more than ever before.  In fact, the young adult population is getting more content online than from any other source out there including traditional TV.  That simply means as the years go by, more and more content will be accessed and consumed online than from newspapers, TV, radio and the other traditional media sources.  Consequently, where the eyeballs go so do marketing dollars. 

The prediction that Display will out-spend Search simply tells me that marketers will focus more of their branding efforts online than via the more traditional media sources.  Online Display marketing is the equivalent to branding…branding through banner ad and rich media impressions, online video views, etc.  Search engine marketing will remain a very critical tool in the marketer’s toolbox but Display will become mature and an equally critical tool in that online marketing toolbox. 

Plus, now with the ability to do Display marketing on a cost-per-click basis in addition to the traditional cost-per-impression basis, it just means this medium will grow steadily and quickly.  As Google continues to put emphasis behind YouTube marketing, video development will become another critical element in the evolution of online marketing.

In summary, marketers investing a great deal of their dollars offline need to keep looking harder at online display marketing for their branding efforts.  As our population becomes more internet savvy, and with the proliferation of tablets and smart-phones, branding efforts will go online like never before.

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How Important Is Web Analytics?

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Super

I had the opportunity to speak this week in front of several richmond business owners and managers. The topic of the talk was around web analytics and online trends. It was my hope to simplify the topic of web analytics into something actionable. To do this, it was necessary to over come the biggest burden faced by web analytics: the over-abundance of metrics and reports. Google Analytics alone gives you access to nearly 300 different metrics and dimensions, wrapped into over 80 different standard reports.

That’s a lot.

Access to this much data often times leads to inaction instead of action. Or worse, action taken based on metrics that are given more importance than they deserve. So given this rather glim scenario faced by many companies and organizations, we needed to reestablish not just the importance but the criticality of utilizing web analytics. To do this, I asked everyone in the room a series of questions. The first two were:

1) have you ever used data from your website to make a strategic decision?

2) do you use data from your website to make strategic decisions on a regular basis?

A little less than half raised their hand to the first question. Fewer raised their hand for the second.

I then proposed the hypothetical situation of the internet going away completely and for everyone in the room to determine where their business would be in that scenario. They either:

1) wouldn’t be affected because the internet has a negligible affect on their business

2) would be affected to a degree but the business could survive without it

3) would be forced to close up shop.

The point of this exercise was to reveal that any business that relies in part or completely on the internet should have some sort of measurement process to understand the return on their investment. After all, a business that relies on the internet to generate revenue in likely making an investment into it – be it a website, search engine marketing, social media etc.

So where to start? Remember from above there are nearly 300 different metrics and dimensions to use when analyzing your website. To make sense of the myriad of data, it’s important to understand the question you’re trying to answer. In this case, we’re trying to answer the question of ROI.

The one report we can use to answer this question is a Source/Outcomes report. This report serves to answer two questions: “where did my visitors come from” and “how well did they do at completing my site objectives?”

This is the 10,000 foot view that can quickly tell us which investments are paying off and which ones ares not. It can tell us more about our site than almost any other single report. If you aren’t looking at any reports about your website or you haven’t made a decision from one, this is the report to get started with. It will very quickly tell you what is paying off and what is not in terms of investment.

Beware: making use of this report is a little like opening Pandora’s box. Once you get the taste for blood you’ll be thirsty for more. Inevitably you’ll have more questions about why certain channels aren’t working as well as others or what it is about certain channels that make them work so well. That’s where the other couple hundred metrics start coming into play.

Quick note:
Before signing into your Google Analytics, realize that this report doesn’t come automatically (what good things in life do, right? :) ). No matter what web analytics platform you use, it can’t automatically decipher what your site’s objectives are. That up for you and your team to decide. From there, the proper configuration needs to take place (ecommerce, goals, goal value, event tracking, etc) in order for the platform to show you what you want to see.

In future posts I’ll dive deeper into the content of last week’s talk. It was my hope that with the points made above I could set the stage for the importance of using data and where to start if you were at the ground level (similar to what I tried to do in this post). Although seemingly rudimentary, it is so vital to break through this first wall before trying to tackle anything else.

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Is social media changing our sociology?

Posted on June 17, 2011 by David McKillen

Question: Is Web Social technology consuming us, pulling us away from traditional/physical sociology? If so, is this a bad thing?

It’s funny how we spend so much of our lives now communicating in ways that don’t require speech :) . It seems most of our day it is possible to get from dawn til dusk, socializing and interacting with our peers and work colleagues without ever uttering a single word. With instant message, Skype chat (something I am using more and more), emails, Facebook, Twitter etc. it is possible to complete your entire day without touching, seeing, feeling or speaking to another human being. The sales folks amongst us might be the final frontier in this regard.

The question becomes then is this a bad thing?

On the one hand it can be argued that it is our very nature as social beings is to interact in some “space” with others. Something we innately need whether we realize it or not. On the other hand I wonder if it is becoming more and more acceptable that this “space” actually be “cyber” based and not necessarily physically. When we sit face to face with a friend or work colleague there are likely hundreds of social nuances and signals from which we feed – that define who we are as a society. Perhaps in some way, we feed off the mere presence of another person in the room; some base, primal need is being auto-filled without us knowing, keeping us whole in some way.

Social media might be affecting HOW we communicate, but is it true that we are being forced to become more polite and error on the side of being a little overly cheery to give ourselves a little more insurance on the IM post? What is interesting about our non-physical communications is that if you look closely, we tend to have to exaggerate the niceties in our comments, tweets and posts just to ensure whomever we are speaking to receives our message in an appropriate way. We have a tendency to really enunciate and over exclaim our “Thanks much!!” and our “good to talk to you again!!”  To indicate our mild amusement we might even “LOL” or “RFLOL”, but did we really Laugh Out Loud? Even in some of our more formal emails we will scatter a few smiley faces, in an attempt to keep things happy-happy and light hearted as much as possible. Perhaps it is not enough any more to use just words to express ourselves in this online environment we find ourselves living in.

But it does seem more that we are content to pass Facebook and Twitter messages back and forth to one another without ever uttering a word. We silently chuckle to ourselves at the clever, witty little retorts our friends send us. We go to great lengths to ensure the latest link of our favorite pop video is posted on Facebook; We spend hours interacting via Twitter or Meebo rather than spending 15 minutes on the phone. It is clear that we use these social tools because we love to – not because we have to or just for work purposes. In reality the new social media wave is an extension of what we love to do and isn’t something we are driven to do by necessity.

Are we choosing to communicate in silence over speaking with someone?

There is the argument out there that a Social Tech bubble is forming; that some day it will pop as the Dot-Com bubble did in 2000. You have to wonder though if we are in fact choosing the silent social scoop over physical/verbal interaction because we love to, how can a bubble be forming? It is more likely that we are experiencing a fundamental shift in how society interacts with one another through Social Media as opposed to what happened with the Dot-Com debacle.

I know what you are thinking – yes – it is likely that I have gone just a little insane from spending most of my day alone with my computer. I’m starting to over think things. Next I’ll be having conversations with my coffee cup, God knows I’m already way past that point with my canine companion who faithfully abandons me to go chase squirrels outside. Maybe this blog post is the beginning of my path towards insanity and just maybe I have unknowingly already answered my own question :) .

David McKillen Web Strategies Inc.

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10 useful Joomla! install modules and plugins for starting out with Joomla!: Part 2

Posted on June 2, 2011 by David McKillen

Joomla 1.6It’s been out a while now but only recently have I felt ready to make the transition to Joomla 1.6. I have been super excited about the move because it opens up some fun extra functionality that 1.5 lacked. We are, I think, at a point where migration from 1.5 to 1.6 is possible in most cases because what I believe to be some of the main 3rd party extensions are finally 1.6 compatible! So here again is my list of a few of the nicer primary 1.6 3rd party extensions that make my Life easier in developing the average website (just some little updates from the original post):

5 Must haves:

1| JCE Editor: Really head and shoulders above the generic editor. Makes managing content a breeze (or as easy as it can be with a CMS) for the end user. Remember two things in regards to this: 1) After installing you need to “activate” JCE in the Joomla! configuration tab as it is still set to the default Tiny editor. 2) Make sure to go to Components > JCE Config. > Groups > default > Edit parameters > file directory path to set the images path to whatever you want (most likely images) as it makes it easier for your users to interact with the CMS. Now 1.6 compatible yay! It is a Beta but seems to run smoothly.

2| RSForms! Pro: A useful and flexible forms module that does pretty much anything you want a form to do. Stores user data in an exportable db too which is nice. Now 1.6 compatible yay!

3| Content Version Control: Ever finish a beautiful new Joomla! content install phase only to discover an inexperienced client has accidentally deleted some of your hard work? Well with Fatica’s version control plugin you can simply revert to an earlier version of the article! (A must have if you don’t want to have to rollback your hosting!). Now 1.6 compatible yay! I’m surprised J1.6 doesn’t have some kind of version control yet.

4| Akeeba core backup: Useful for backing up or even transferring an entire site from one Joomla! install to another. Apparently supports tranfers to legacy versions of Joomla! also which is nice. Now 1.6 compatible yay!

5| WordPress for Joomla!: Packed with all of WordPress’s professional blogging tools, you can now harness the power of WordPress without ever leaving Joomla!. Now 1.6 compatible yay!

5 Nice extras perhaps not needed for every site:

6| Frontend-User-Access: to manage user groups and content access: Perhaps not needed anymore due to improved 1.6 user management?

7| Docman: If you need to allow your users to upload, download, do just about anything with files and folders then Docman is a god option. The older version is now free and still extremely useful for a lot of projects. Not yet 1.6 compatible :( but we will just use 1.5 for any Docman focused projects – we’d LURV to see this made 1.6 ready though!

8| Virtuemart: A very serious useful E-Commerce option and really the primary option where Joomla! is concerned. The nice thing about this plugin is that you can use it simply as a catalog or as a more advanced onine shopping cart. Not yet 1.6 compatible :( but we will just use 1.5 for any eCom focused projects – we’d LURV to see this made 1.6 ready though!

9| Mobile Joomla: It’s crazy how easy this app makes producing a mobile friendly version of your website. Easy to install and takes care of most of the heavy lifting associated with making a mobile website. Not yet 1.6 compatible :( but we will just use 1.5 for any Mobile focused projects – we’d LURV to see this made 1.6 ready though!

10| JomSocial: Considering Joomla! has utilized JomSocial for a new “Joomla! People” community, I think it is fair to say that the JomSocial squad have produced an excellent package enabling Joe Bloggs to create his own social network! If you are looking to create your own social network, this one is hard to beat! Now 1.6 compatible yay!

Thanks guys!

David McKillen

Web Strategies Inc.

Posted in CMS, Joomla! | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Joomla! v WordPress v Drupal v …

Posted on June 1, 2011 by David McKillen

I over heard a couple of guys chatting about the never ending battle of the Content Management Systems and thought I’d make a quick post. I wonder does it ultimately boil down to this, or is there more to it than meets the eye?

1) Need a lot of custom extension work specific to your site AND have a reasonable large budget available? = DRUPAL.

2) Have a tight budget and don’t forsee the need to expand your website any time soon to anything needing a little more advanced extensions functionality = WORDPRESS.

3) Want to being able to produce a functionally advanced small to medium size biz website without costing an arm and a leg that doesn’t require re-invent the wheel specific functionality but are happy to use an extensive pre-existing extension pool = JOOMLA!

Is it really that simple? How capable the CMS is of handling SEO, usability and ease of integration with some other functionalities such as Mobile devices etc. obviously also play in. There is a reason of course that all 3 aforementioned are among the finest CMS options out there and that is that they all do at the very least serve their own niche very well.

David McKillen Web Strategies Inc.

1) Need a lot of custom extension work specific to your site AND have
> money to pay for this? = DRUPAL.
> 
> 2) Don't have a lot of money and don't forsee the need to expand your
> website any time soon to anything needing a little more advanced
> extensions functionality = WORDPRESS.
> 
> 3) Want to being able to produce a functionally advanced small to medium
> size biz website without costing an arm and a leg that doesn't require
> tons of re-invent the wheel specific functionality but are happy to use
> an extensive pre-existing extension pool (as is the case with many
> clients) = JOOMLA!

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