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3 Ways to Get B2B Social Media Value from Google+

tcardamone — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:41:11 +0000

Social Media B2B

Many B2B marketers have already been scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make use of Facebook and Twitter. Along comes Google+, another social network that the average B2B marketer just doesn’t have the time to learn and master. There are, however, reasons to believe that Google+ will be more valuable to B2B companies than Facebook and Twitter put together. And since getting in early is a big factor in determining long-term success, B2B companies should test the waters with Google+ right now.

Marketers Use Growing Number of Tools to Spur Website Engagement

tcardamone — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:47:23 +0000

eMarketer

Marketers have a seemingly endless number of ways to engage with audiences online. But the most common methods are straightforward emails and email newsletters, according to research by Chief Marketer. Video is also quickly emerging as a valuable tool to engage with users. Marketers seem to have an ever-growing number of ways to drive customer engagement on brand websites. In a March 2012 online survey of US marketing professionals, trade publication Chief Marketer found that the most popular tool in digital campaigns was tried-and-true email marketing, which 78% of respondents said they used. Email newsletters were the No. 2 tactic (59%), followed closely by a social network presence (58%). This year, for the first time, Chief Marketer asked respondents if they hosted original video content on their sites or on aggregator sites like YouTube; one-third of respondents said they did.

http://bit.ly/JpVCQu

Google CIO Ben Fried Says Cloud Tipping Point Is At Hand

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:45:41 +0000

Wall Street Journal

The economics of cloud computing are driving down the cost structure of business so far and so fast that it’s scary, Google CIO Ben Fried says. “It deeply disturbed me … in 2006, 2007 consumer companies were forcing efficiencies on a scale never seen before,” Fried said Thursday during remarks at the Bloomberg Link Enterprise Technology Summit in New York. At the time, Fried was working in the technology group at investment bank Morgan Stanley, where he was a managing director of application infrastructure, in charge of software development, electronic commerce and knowledge worker productivity. In 2008, he left the bank and headed to Google, which was at the heart of the disruption that was emanating from the consumer market and beginning to spread through the business world.

Workers, accustomed to using free and simple tools such as Google Apps, Skype, Flickr and iTunes for their personal affairs, now wanted to use those cloud-based software tools at work. And CIOs and other technology executives were beginning to let them, and to experiment themselves with those services.

Bing Gets Social Sidebar, Makes Google Look Bad

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:10:27 +0000

PCWorld

Microsoft’s Bing is about to get a major overhaul, with a new sidebar that shows information from Facebook and other social networks.

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft’s Bing is about to get a major overhaul, with a new sidebar that shows information from Facebook and other social networks. The “new Bing,” as Microsoft calls it, consists of three columns on the search results page. The far left column is the widest of the three, and lists traditional search links. In the middle, a “Snapshot” pane shows relevant information directly on the search page, such as restaurant reviews, maps and hotel room rates. On the far right, a gray “Sidebar” shows social search results.

The Sidebar is the most interesting part of the makeover. Users can ask questions to their Facebook friends directly from the search page, and see a list of who might know about a given topic. From the Sidebar, users can add comments on Facebook and pin Bing searches to their posts.

How Social Media Boosts Search Rankings (Infographic)

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:56:08 +0000

Everything Technology Marketing

Most B2B vendors have already optimized their websites for organic search engine rankings. While further optimization can yield some marginal improvements in rankings, B2B marketers have shifted their focus to offsite tactics such as back links on quality sites to deliver a significant impact on rankings and traffic. With the explosion of social media, Google and other search engines have included social media activity into search results and into the algorithm used to calculate website ranking based on social popularity. And now we have proof that social activity actually impacts organic rankings: TastyPlacement (a SEO and digital design agency in Austin, TX) has created a great infographic based on a study to explore the relationship between social media activity and organic search engine rankings. And is anybody really surprised that Google+ has the biggest impact on Google rankings? Check it out:

http://bit.ly/IMRRsz

IDC Highlights Key Milestones in Mobile HTML5 Development Update

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:53:12 +0000

IDC Press Release

International Data Corporation (IDC) has contributed important data points to a first of its kind infographic that highlights key milestones in the rapidly evolving mobile HTML5 space. In this infographic, IDC notes that 79% of surveyed mobile appdevelopers plan to integrate HTML5 in the apps they will launch in 2012; there will be more than 1 billion HTML5 mobile browsers in the market in 2013; and over 80% of all mobile apps will be wholly or in part based upon HTML5 by 2015.

How to Survive the Google Penguin Update with Effective Content Writing

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:16:20 +0000

Content Marketing Inst.

If search engine traffic from Google matters to your business, then there is little chance that you haven’t heard of the recent Google Penguin update. What exactly is this? Apparently, on April 24, 2012 Google activated new ranking algorithm changes to take care of websites and blogs that indulge in:

• Excessive link building with no regard for quality

• Deceptive doorway pages

• Lots of keyword stuffing

• Publishing lots of meaningless content just to get traffic from search engines

Which, basically, means all websites that don’t comply with Google’s SEO guidelines.

http://bit.ly/JZw23m

IDG World Tech Update- Week of 5/7/12

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:57:07 +0000

IDG News Service

This week’s World Tech Update is at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Austin Texas. Nick Barber gets a glimpse of the future– ZeroTouch moves towards commercialization, Illumishare lets users share physical desktops, DualView lets laptops display two images simultaneously, Microsoft Research projects Humantenna and Soundwave offer gesture sensing alternatives and electric lemonade zaps taste buds.

Companies struggle to engage customers

tcardamone — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:24:40 +0000

Warc

NEW YORK: Less than 10% of US companies think they are genuinely “customer-centric” in their strategy and activities, new analysis has shown. The Temkin Group, a consultancy, polled 255 representatives of firms with revenues topping $500m, and found that just 7% of the panel believed the customer experience they provided was superior to all of their rivals. A further 28% placed performance levels “considerably above” the industry average, while 30% “slightly” improved on the norm, and 23% fell into line with typical standards for their sector.

Technology Industry Seen Growing Fastest in New York

tcardamone — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:24:31 +0000

NY Times

New York City’s budding technology industry is growing rapidly by attracting investors and engineering talent despite spotty access to a reliable broadband network, according to a study released on Wednesday. The study, “New Tech City,” conducted by the Center for an Urban Future, concluded that the technology industry is growing faster in New York City than anywhere else in America and that the city now trails only Silicon Valley as a hub for the development of new technology companies. The study’s authors, Jonathan Bowles and David Giles, identified 486 technology companies that had been founded in the city since 2007 and determined that the financial crisis and the recession that followed did not slow the industry’s growth.