Healthy Blog Reviews

I’m at the bank depositing money. That’s a real tweet I saw this week and it was followed by a Foursquare link showing the exact bank. According to new research by Forrester, that tweeter was probably a young adult male with a college degree and he’s one of only 1% of online users who actually do this kind of thing. From my experience, it seems that half the people I follow on Twitter use location-based tweets, but the data says that only 4% of online adults have even tried geolocation and only 1% uses it on regular basis. Really? The study also says that 70% of the users are between 19 and 35 and 80% are male. Again, not my experience, so apparently I have unusual friends. The good news for marketers is that though the group is small, they’re powerful. Melissa Parish of Forrester wrote on her blog: “Our research shows that these users are typically young, male, well-educated, and influential.  In fact, LBSN users are users are 38% more likely than the average US online adult to say that friends and family ask their opinions before making a purchase decision.” So the question becomes, how much of your time and money should be spent marketing to this group? Parrish says very little. “Though many LBSNs are gathering steam, the landscape is fragmented and the programs can’t scale just yet. But with large companies preparing to enter the market (I’m looking at you Facebook and Yahoo!) the time for marketers to get involved is coming.” That is unless you’re marketing a product of interest to college-educated male trendsetters under 35. In that case, it’s time to start working on that Foursquare Mayor of Marketingville badge.

Tags: data, experience, facebook, Forrester, group, half-the-people, landscape, Local/Mobile, marketingville, Melissa Parish, people, Research, time, Yahoo
Posted July 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Ask has always been the red-headed stepchild of the search industry. It’s always lurking in the shadows as the #4 search engine and usually gets a mention in search share only if there was significant up or down movement. Accounting has the Big 4 but search only has the Big 3 which is soon to be the Big 2 ½ or something once bing and Yahoo fully consummate their relationship. Ask is usually not included in those talks but is making changes to differentiate itself and hopefully make more of a splash in that area. The key to that hope: good ol’ fashioned human beings! The Ask blog reports Today we’ve officially launched the public beta for the new Ask.com, which combines our proprietary answers technology (specifically tailored to extract questions and answers from the Web) with the human insight of the thriving Ask.com community drawn from our 87 million monthly uniques. Now available on an invite-only basis (you can request your invite here), the capability to pose questions to real people is now possible for those complex, subjective and/or time-sensitive queries that, no matter how advanced, computers simply can’t address. That means that Ask.com is now uniquely able to offer the most comprehensive and convenient approach to getting answers, combining pages and people to help users find the answers to all questions – even questions for which no answer is published online. In the search world there may just be a place for this kind of service if it can catch on with people who are ‘blue text link trained’ like myself. In this age of social media and trusting sources that reach far beyond our truly trusted circle of friends (be that a good or bad thing, it still is) there may be more of an acceptance of this approach. Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove sums up the improvements for you The beta offering is a product of four new features: a completely overhauled look with a focus on highlighting trending questions from the community, semantic search with answers displayed on the page, a large Q&A database and a user community element that targets members for answering questions based on their areas of expertise. The latter somewhat mirrors Aardvark’s formula for finding answers to user questions, and is initiated when users click the “Ask the Community” button on the right-hand side of the results page. Even if this Q & A approach seems to be somewhat antiquated it could have some legs if for no other reason than it looks different. Once again, though, Ask needs to drive people to the site and in the past their approach has been mass advertising pushes that come on real strong then disappear. There has been very little attempt to keep the Ask brand in the mind of the searcher in a way to help them possibly convert from Google or somewhere else to the new Ask. I have always hoped that Ask would put together something that was worthy of challenging bing and Yahoo! to at least push them a bit. Whether this approach is the answer certainly is a big TBD. If it’s not the answer then the next question has to be, is there a place for Ask at the search table or is it time to move on and look for someone else to challenge the Big 3 (or 2 1/8 or whatever it’s going to be)? Your thoughts?

Tags: answer, answers, ask-com, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, improvements, mind, proprietary, relationship, Search, search-engine, Social Media, thoughts, Yahoo
Posted July 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

A few days ago, Glam Media, the number one vertical media company for women, announced that they were going to buy ad technology start-up AdPortal. The idea was that their tech would help bolster Glam Media’s GlamAdapt program which allows publishers to run their own self-service ad portals. The emphasis is on detailed demographics that will allow the advertisers to place ads based on very specific audience and geographic stats over a wide-range of sites all under the Glam Media roof. AdPortal is a spin off of Sportgenic, a sports ad network. Now, with today’s announcement, it all becomes quite clear. Glam Media is now going after the male market with the launch of their new vertical “BrashSports.” The press release states: “Brash.com, owned by Glam Media, has acquired Sportgenic (www.Sportgenic.com) — one of the leading men’s sports vertical media startups based in San Francisco, and has added leading men’s publishers (including SportsFanLive and Bloguin), professional social media authors, and digital video producers.” “This acquisition expands Brash.com vertical leadership in Men 18-49 to over 30 million unique visitors in the U.S., making Brash #3 after Yahoo! Sports and ESPN with a massive, passionate, and socially engaged male audience online. Brash has added over 25 new men’s properties — making Brash Media a leader in offering 360 degree “whole life” solutions for brands looking to surround and engage men online.” In addition to sports, they’re also moving deeper into entertainment and lifestyle for men. They’re using the tagline “Big. Bold. Brave. Blunt.” along with a photo of Steve McQueen which suggests they’re going for an upscale audience that is classy with a bit of the rebel thrown in. But if you take a look at Brash.com you won’t see big, bold, brave or blunt. Right now it’s a bland blog with a flat, purple navigation bar that does nothing to draw in the reader. Brash has been online since 2008 but only represented 10% of Glam Media’s business. Now it looks like they’re putting the site into high gear in hopes of making it a much larger component. The question is, can a company that’s known for their women’s content, become the preferred homepage for men? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: acquisition, after-the-male, brave-or-blunt, flickr, m&a, marketing, media, press-release, Reader, sportgenic, sports, tech, under-the-glam, women, Yahoo
Posted July 26, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

A few days ago Google launched a new “image search” user interface to the public. If you haven’t tried it yet you should go ahead and give it whirl–after reading this post. My first impression was wow! I really like how the images are positioned in a way that maximizes all available screen real estate. As I continued to search for images and test out the new UI, I had this feeling of deja vu. Something didn’t seem right with this search feature. For some reason it felt like I had used this before. And, then it dawned on me! Certain aspects of Google’s new image search resemble Bing’s image search. The most notable similarity is the absence of pagination navigation at the bottom. This feature change alone on a search engine can stick out like a sore thumb and create a remarkable difference in other similar image search engines like Yahoo for example. Many say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. But in business, there’s sometimes is a fine line between flattery and insult. And when the corporation at hand can drop millions in legal fees on a daily basis, the insult can have a devastating impact. But if you are Google that doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter if Google blatantly copies the features of its competitors? It doesn’t matter because Google dominates a majority of the market. Which means that the vast majority of the folks running image searches have never even tried Bing’s innovative features. Likewise it doesn’t matter if Kevin Spacey imitates well know actors because let’s face it, it’s an honor to be imitated by Kevin Spacey! Having a strong brand isn’t just about making more money or building trust. Often times it’s also about playing by a different set of rules, and sometimes creating your own. So as you grow your business remember that even though there are other ways to create revenue streams, nothing can replace the power of strong brand.

Tags: Business, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, corporation, images, matter-if-kevin, Search, search-engine, then-it-dawned, Yahoo
Posted July 24, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Last week Yahoo sent a letter to their search advertisers about a rather large window for when they can anticipate the integration of bing . In a post yesterday on the Yahoo blog they went a little further and said that they were currently testing the results. Here is what they said We’ve started testing organic (also referred to as algorithmic) and paid search listings from Microsoft for up to 25 percent of Yahoo! Search traffic in the U.S. The primary change for these tests is that the listings are coming from Microsoft. However, the overall page should look the same as the Yahoo! Search you’re used to – with rich content and unique tools and features from Yahoo!. If you happen to fall into our tests, you might also notice some differences in how we’re displaying select search results due to a variety of product configurations we are testing. Here is the screenshot of a page and the ‘changes’ that have occurred. To the untrained eye (and even the trained one) noticing this difference is well, next to impossible unless you had memorized the result set returned by Yahoo. I doubt that happens much. Since 25% isn’t a real large number your chances of seeing this out in the wild is not so strong. Also, unless you are an advertiser or you are a previously high ranked organic site in the Yahoo results this ‘change’ won’t even be noticed. Interestingly enough, this entire change over from Yahoo to bing search is quite disruptive to the industry side of the coin while probably going completely unnoticed by the vast majority of Yahoo search users. So now that we are on the cusp of this ‘historic moment’ how do you really view this play? Will bing being the back end of Yahoo search make a difference for those who use Yahoo as a search engine? Will regular users notice and are they even aware that this tectonic shift has happened? From the little guys’ point of view this is a non-event as long as the search function in Yahoo is not interrupted at great length. This shift effects 13 or so out of a hundred searchers according to the latest search shares . The real impact is to the advertisers and until they squeal this is going to be a non-issue in my book.

Tags: book, difference, event-as-long, industry, integration, look-the-same, Microsoft, screenshot, Search, search-engine, the-advertisers, untrained, Yahoo
Posted July 21, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media