News
Only The Most Relevant News and Topics for Local Offline Marketers.
We sift through the RSS feeds So You Don’t Have To!
7 may 2012
Only 1 in 10 UK businesses measure social media success A recent survey by EPiServer found that social media is a bit hit with marketers but when it comes to measuring its benefits and success most were left scratching their heads. Read more here.
Top 3 tips to integrate social with ecommerce With shoppers spending more time looking for and sharing retailer information through their social networks, brands are rapidly adopting a social commerce model. But more is needed than links to a storefront. Read more here.
Study: Blogging in decline as social media takes over New research by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth reveals that corporate blogging is in decline as corporates turn to social media to keep consumers up-to-date and engaged. Read more here.
Social media logos, messaging on television drive interaction Television viewers are seeing more and more social media logos and messaging on their screens and, according to a new survey by Accenture, they are effective drivers of social interaction. Read more here.
How Followable are You on Twitter? When a customer or potential customer is thinking about following you, the first thing she’ll do is look at your Twitter account to see what you share/post. She’s going to look at your Twitter stream and decide how followable you are. You want to be followable. Read more here.
Doing SEO? Do It Gently Here’s a timely article for those of us entrenched in SEO — Less is definitely more these days! Read more here.
Top 10 Takeaways from ILM East 2012 (And Thank You!) Here is BIA/Kelsey’s top 10 takeaways from the recent ILM East show. It’s basically our top 10 as well! Read more here.
Demand for mobile coupons high yet only 10% have ever received one Just in time for our Webinar with Dave Iago comes this report that shows that many consumers are not yet ready for Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology but there is an area in which demand is high but not being met – mobile coupons. Read more here.
ILM East: Ted Leonsis — Local’s All About Scale, ‘New Currencies’ Any article that begins with a quote like this is a must-read! “Ted Leonsis, Groupon vice chair, American Express board member and Internet pioneer, emphasized the importance of scaling for local in a global economy during a keynote at ILM East yesterday. “Indiana really matters. India matters more,” said Leonsis, pointing out that for larger companies, most growth will come from outside the U.S.” Read more here.
Are Small Business Websites Really This Bad? Here’s one of the more fascinating statistics we’ve read in a while — we’ve known that SMB’s need website help, especially in the mobile arena. But this is rediculous. Check out how many SMB websites don’t put their business phone number on them. Anywhere! Read more here.
Google Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com – Just One Of Several? The battle between Google and those trying to artificially manipulate its search results is an ongoing battle. Google on March 19th took down one of those blog/link networks named BuildMyRank.com. BuildMyRank.com confirmed Google has deindexed an “overwhelming majority” of their network as of March 19, 2012. The management of BuildMyRank.com has decided to immediately shut down their service and provide refunds to customers. Read more here.
Square’s Payment App Goes Over to Android and Over the Counter On Sunday evening, Square launched a completely revamped smartphone application, rebranding its “Card Case” mobile payment app as “Pay With Square,” featuring a redesign that aims to improve local business discovery for prospective buyers. Read more here.
Is Pinterest the next Facebook? More people are connected — one-seventh of the world’s population has a Facebook profile — and most of them are mobile. And with such a low barrier to entry, new social services pop up all the time. Pinterest plans to continue to be better than its competitors if it’s going to thrive. Read more here.
Top Google Places Ranking Factors (According to Bizible) Here’s the list of the top factors according to Andrew’s post on Bizible’s new local search ranking factors study. They are broken down between factors that affected listings in blended results vs those in “pure local” results. Read more here.
Millions of brands switch Pages to Facebook’s new Timeline format Facebook makes a change to the social network and, as usual, many push against it. However, in the case of the new Timeline format for Pages, it seems many are happy to jump onboard. Read more here.
Ex-Google employee says Google+ has ruined the company James Whittaker, who now works for Microsoft, fired off an angry email much like the others we’ve been seeing in the media these days: “My last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation,” wrote Whittaker, who headed an engineering team for social network Google+. “The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.” Read more here.
Can Too Many Pages Hurt Your SEO? Search engine optimization is about improving the search engine and overall web presence of a website, but not just the website as a whole. A good SEO campaign will improve the search engine and web presence of each individual page of a website. So, does that mean that there is a specific number of pages that a business website should have for SEO purposes? Is it possible to have too many and can that hurt your SEO? It depends… Read more here.
PayPal to Announce Square Competitor Thursday [REPORT] PayPal will take on Square with a mobile payment dongle that will let business owners process credit card payments via their smartphones, according to a news report. GigaOm claims that PayPal will announce the solution on Thursday. The report, which cites “sources we’ve talked to who are familiar with PayPal’s plans,” says the dongle will be shaped like a triangle and vie not just with Square, but with Intuit’s GoPayment and Verifone’s PAYware as well. Read more here.
Is the End Near for Traditional Advertising? To really reach today’s consumers, companies and brands will need to build relationships with them rather than simply grabbing their attention or utilizing disruptions as an advertising tool. In other words, marketers should be progressive rather than aggressive, adding a fifth “P” — Participation — to the traditional marketing mix of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Read more here.
B2B Marketing: 7 mobile and social media tactics This article features seven tactics, ranging from why LinkedIn remains the top B2B social media platform, to utilizing QR codes in your mobile campaigns. These tactics include both broad-stroke practices and detailed ideas you can implement into your own efforts. Read more here.
Search users say personalized results a “bad thing” Nearly all online Americans use search engines but the vast majority are worried about their privacy should the likes of Google begin tracking their search activity. Read more here.
15 Ways To Use Pinterest For PR Pinterest is one of the hottest new trends in social media, and millions of people have quickly jumped on the bandwagon. How can you use Pinterest for PR purposes? Below are 15 tips and guidelines that will help you get started. Read more here.
Pros And Cons: In House, Outsourced Affiliate Program Management #AMDays This is a live blogging of the session “Exploring the Pros & Cons of In-house & Outsourced Affiliate Program Management.” Choosing the right person is so important because affiliates will often choose a program to work with based on who is managing the program. A recent statistic found by AffStat.com showed that who manages the program is the third most important reason for joining and working closely with a program. Only brand and payout were a greater influence in that decision. Read more here.
Search Starts Here: Focus on Transformation The Local Search Association and BIA/Kelsey have assembled an agenda for this year’s Search Starts Here conference (April 21-24 in Boca Raton) that focuses heavily on industry transformation. The agenda features 17 sessions with more than 20 speakers representing 17 companies, including Argent Media, AT&T Interactive, BIA/Kelsey, Burke Research, Convergent Mobile, Dex One, Google, MapQuest, MediaTrax, Search Influence, SuperMedia, Telmetrics, The Berry Co. and more. Read more here.
SAP Mobile to showcase new app at SXSW Interactive AP Mobile, the award-winning mobile app from The Associated Press, will host a booth at the 2012 SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas, March 12-15. The AP Mobile team will feature demos of the new app on iPad and iPhone and will stream live interviews with industry professionals at the booth. The latest version of the app was released earlier this week. Read more here.
Smartphone Usage Rising Among Mobile Users Across Age and Income In the past month, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, comScore and Nielsen released data that demonstrates increased smartphone penetration in the United States. More than 100 million U.S. mobile subscribers are using smartphones in Q1 2012, up from 98 million in the previous period according to comScore’s MobiLens service. Read more here.
Compelling Marketing Materials, No Matter Your Niche Here’s a quick read about the different avenues available to offline marketers, and offers relevant marketing materials to specifically help offliners. Read more here.
Local Listings Are The Most Trusted – #SMX West
Local SEO Guide is Andrew Shotland’s blog on local search optimization written while at the SMX West Conference listing a number of interesting percentages and graphs showing the trust level between types of searches being conducted. Read more here.
Why Small Businesses Need BOTH Social & Search
“Should we be spending money/time on search or social media?” I’d like to answer that question with some data from recent surveys that address how consumers use search and social networks in terms of small and local businesses. And I’ll make the point that, since consumers use search and social so differently, the answer to that question is BOTH! Read more here.
Shedding light on mobile marketing
How does a mobile app reach the top of the AppStore? How do you stand out from the tens of thousands of games available? This is what Molecube asked itself a few days away from launching its fourth game. By launching the blog “The Experiment, they are exposing the other side of the coin by applying strategies popularized by marketing experts and benchmarking their efficiencies. They present the case study: Read more here.
Enterprise Mobility: Mobile World Congress 2012: Sights and Sounds
The Mobile World Congress is the wireless industry’s premier annual conference, drawing vendors and attendees from across the globe to discuss, compare and collaborate on the most advanced mobile technologies. In 2011, more than 60,000 people headed to Barcelona to participate in the four-day event, with even more expected to have attended this year. Read more here.
Study: Mobile banner ads very unpopular
Mobile users in the UK aren’t happy about the amount of ads they’re being subjected to on their mobile devices. The worst offenders, according to YouGov research commissioned by Upstream, are banner ads. Read more here.
Survey: SMBs to push more ad dollars to digital
Over the next year it won’t just be the big brands who push into social, video and other online mediums. New data from BIA/Kelsey finds many small businesses have plans to push about one-quarter (26%) of ad budgets into digital media. Read more here.
Traditional SEO Now More Important to Local Search
Google says it’s relying more on regular search rankings — ergo, on traditional SEO — to influence its local search results. This is from Google’s latest monthly roundup of search changes and covers what’s been happening during February: Read more here.
Want to see 2012′s mobile future? Look at 2011
What will 2012 bring to our mobile world where tablets are trying to take the place of PCs and we’re carrying small computers in our pockets? Ofttimes, a good predictor of the future is a glimpse at the past. ComScore has done just that with its 2012 Mobile Future in Focus report… Read more here.
7 Tips to Help Make Your Content Go Viral
‘Content is King’ is a cliche in social media nowadays. Having great content doesn’t guarantee your work will appear in front of billions web users. It requires additional work to get this content in front of an audience. With high quality content at hand, the next step is make your content recognized, shared, emailed, and talked about in various social platforms. Here are a few tips to help your content score higher virally. Read more here.
A Non-Geek’s Guide To Pinterest, The Biggest Internet Hit Since Facebook
Pinterest is a digital bulletin board for cool and interesting things.
Before Pinterest, people went through magazines, clipped out their favorite images, and pasted them in scrap books or push-pinned them to cork boards. Pinterest is a digital form of that. It’s is a way to capture and save images from all over the Internet on one big personal page. If, for example, you stumble across a pair of great shoes on Gilt Groupe, you no longer have to bookmark the link. Instead you pin it on Pinterest with the click of a button and it’s saved for you there. Read more here.
The Local Search Ecosystem in 2012
Here’s the original link to David Mihm’s well-timed and spectacular infographic illustrating where local search stands today, and, more specifically, who powers whom. He updates his chart from 2009 noting new players and what they’re bringing. David requests that the chart be found through his original getlisted.com post. Read more here.