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How to Use Social Media for Personal Branding

By SEO Sapien in Web 2.0

Creating social media website profiles aimed at strengthening your personal brand is an incredibly important aspect of building your online presence. Building a strong online reputation will help you score more gigs, media interviews, conference speaking pitches, and more.

Even if you are working with a company, your clients and potential clients are inevitably going to want to know who you are and where is the first place they will check you out? They will probably search for you on Google. The idea is to control the top ten search results for your name to ensure that they are relevant and most importantly, positive. The last thing you want is for a client to find search results on the front page of Google that say negative things about you.

The easiest way to control your top ten search results is through building your online presence via social media and blogging. Some of the most important online tools you can use are Twitter, LinkedIn, video websites and social networking sites like Facebook. If you have an unusual name, it will be easy for you to control the top search results for your name but if you have a very common name, try using your middle initial as way to distinguish yourself.

Blogging

One of the most powerful ways to build authority within your niche and boost your personal brand is via blogging. If you consistently provide great content and expert opinions, you can build a very successful personal brand through blogging. Make sure to link to a profile page with your bio and name on all of your blog posts to increase search rankings for your name. Write guest blog posts for other blogs in your niche to enhance your online reputation and reach a wider audience.

Twitter

Use Twitter to contribute valuable links and connect with others in your niche. If you build up a large following of relevant users and stay active in the Twitter community, you should expect your Twitter page to rank highly in the search results. If potential clients are looking for information about you and find your Twitter account full of relevant links and expert advice, it is going to go a long way in building your online reputation.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business social media networking site that allows you to share your career history with others. It is a great way to build work contacts and allows potential clients to learn more about your qualifications, educational background, and so on.

Video Websites

If you’ve spoken at a conference or have made an online video presentation, upload it to a site like Vimeo or YouTube. When someone searches for more information about you and finds a relevant video you made, your reputation will be enhanced in the eyes of the searcher. Make sure to use your name in the video headline so the video is optimized for your personal brand.

Social Networking Sites

Now that you have filled most of the front page Google results with positive listings, you can work on adding a few neutral listings such as profiles for social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr. Better yet, find a social networking site that is relevant to your niche (i.e. Sphinn for search marketers) and actively contribute to it so you can show clients that you keep up with the latest news and trends in your field.

Keep these tips in mind in order to dominate the Google search results for your name. If you have quite a few online personalities and would prefer that some of them were not visible to your clients and potential clients, make sure to use different screen names! Optimize anything work-related with your real name to ensure that the search listings that show up when people search for you are positive and help to boost your online reputation.

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About the Author: SEO Sapien is a SEO Company. We offer affordable and guaranteed search engine optimization services. You can visit our site at http://www.seosapien.com for more information and SEO Prices.

Twittering Away Time And Money

By Pat LaPointe in Web 2.0

One of the most common questions I’m getting these days is “how should I measure the value of all the social marketing things we’re doing like Twitter, Linked-in, Facebook, etc.?”

My answer: WHY are you doing them in the first place? If you can’t answer that, you’re wasting your time and the company’s money.

Sounds simple I know, but I’m stunned at how unclear many marketers are about their intentions/expectations/hypotheses for how social media initiatives might actually help their business. In short, if you can’t describe in two sentences or less (no semi-colons) WHAT you hope to gain through use of social media, then WHY are you doing it? Measurement isn’t the problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, any measurement approach will work.

Here’s a framework for thinking about social measurement:

1. Fill in the blanks: “Adding or swapping-in social media initiatives will impact ____________ by __________ extent over _____________ timeframe. And when that happens, the added value for the business will be $_____________, which will give me an ROI of ______________. ” This forms your hypotheses about what you might achieve, and why the rest of the business should care.
2. Identify all the assumptions implicit in your hypotheses and “flex” each assumption up/down by 50% to 100% to see under which circumstances your assumptions become unprofitable.
3. Identify the most sensitive assumption variables — those that tend to dramatically change the hypothesized payback by the greatest degree based on small changes in the assumption. These are your key uncertainties.
4. Enhance your understanding of the sensitive assumptions through small-scale experiments constructed across broad ranges of the sensitive variables. Plan your experiments in ways you can safely FAIL, but mostly in ways to help you understand clearly what it would take to SUCCEED — even if that turns out to be unprofitable upon further analysis. That way, you will at least know what won’t work, and change your hypotheses in #1 above accordingly.
5. Repeat steps 1 thru 4 until you have a model that seems to work.
6. In the process, the drivers of program success will become very obvious. Those become your key metrics to monitor.

In short, measuring the payback on social media requires a sound initial business case that lays out all the assumptions and uncertainties, then methodically iterates through tests to find the model(s) that work best. Plan to fail in small scale, but most important, plan to LEARN quickly.

Measure social media as you should any other marketing investment: How did it perform versus your expectations of how it should have? If those expectations are rooted in principles of profit-generation, your measurement will be relevant and insightful.

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Pat LaPointe is Managing Partner at MarketingNPV — specialty consultants on marketing measurement and metrics, and publishers of MarketingNPV Journal, available online free at http://www.MarketingNPV.com

Social Networking 101 - How to Use It to Increase Your Business!

By Katrina Sawa in Web 2.0

You know how often I get asked about how effective social networking is for someone’s business, from my clients or when I’m out networking from random business owners?? Hundreds a month.

It’s amazing. It’s amazing how many of us are on the social sites but also how many are not!

I think if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter whether you do business locally or globally, you should be doing some amount of social networking as ONE source of lead generation in your business.

Of course there are hundreds of other ways to get leads too and I’m only talking about ONE right now (and it’s not always the most effective depending on how you utilize your time but it’s certainly affordable).

Lead generation is ONE goal to have when you network online but it can also do the following for you:

• solidify long lasting relationships - either personal or professional
• provide an easy way to connect faster with target prospects, referral sources or mentors
• establish yourself as an expert in your field by answering discussion questions, posting tips and articles or even inviting ‘friends’ to live events like teleclasses and webinars
• drive more traffic back to your site for special promotions, downloads or interaction
• provides a central place to share photos, videos and basically get more publicity than you could ever pay (or pray) for

Is it worth it to spend my time on the forums or having profiles on these sites?

I say definitely yes.

• You want to ask and answer questions on forums and blogs
• Post comments, articles, events, information, tips, surveys and polls, anything to get the visitors attention
• Record and post interesting or business related videos (nothing too embarrassing!)
• Send people requests to join your ‘network’, ‘fan page’ or ‘group’
• Pursue those in related groups for interaction, advice, joint ventures, etc.
• Dig deeper into the websites of those you’re really interested in working with or those you want to pay attention to you and relate to them on a deeper level if you can - this is the way to make the most of your time I think.
• And so much more….

Whew! I know this can seem daunting and more sites pop up every day right?

I mean, you can even start YOUR OWN social network these days (not that you want to).

So, what should your ROI (Return on Investment) be you ask?

Well, granted this stuff sucks up a ton of time! So, if you’re delegating some of the initial connecting and basic weekly/daily posts and then you’re only in there mostly to dig deeper, get personal and maximize your time; then you can really build a great following. One that’s loyal and interested in new things you send out. A following that clicks and interacts with your profile, your videos and your website.

This is how then you get them on your list over time, get them to attend teleclasses or join your programs or even refer you!

I can tell you that the hardest part of figuring out whether your time/money invested in social networking is paying off though is that it’s not that easy to track results.

So, if you want to really find out if it’s working for you, you have to set up systems that allow for really detailed tracking - tracking your traffic, conversions, customers and more.

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K. Sawa Marketing International. Katrina Sawa is an Award-Winning Relationship Marketing Coach who’s helped hundreds of small business owners take dramatic steps in their businesses to get them to the next level in business, revenues and life. She offers one-on-one coaching, group coaching and do-it-yourself marketing planning products. Go online now to get started with her Free Report and Free Audio at http://www.jumpstartyourmarketing.com

The Problem With Buying Clicks In Social Media

By Joe Marchese in Web 2.0

Advertisers want to reach people and social networks want to make money from their audience, so all the two parties need is a fair way to exchange. But, creating a marketplace between advertisers and social networks based on selling “clicks” is sure to leave both sides very unhappy. The social networks will be unhappy because they will not be receiving full value for their inventory, as people have a tendency to avoid clicking on advertisements. Advertisers are likely to be unhappy with the quality of the traffic generated by those clicks that eventually occur simply by delivering a massive volume of impressions.

Just because pay per click (PPC) turned out to be the golden goose for Google, does not mean it can solve social networks’ monetization issues. And if a recent TechCrunch post, “Facebook Click Fraud Enraging Advertisers,” is any indication, advertisers are quickly discovering the challenges of paying for traffic coming from social media.

If Google was able to monetize so well using PPC, why can’t PPC work in social networks? Because for Google, PPC factors in that people (aka: consumers, aka: audience) might actually want to “click” on the advertisement, therefore benefiting from Google’s advertisements. The two main times people come across a Google PPC ad unit are when they search the Web using Google, or when they are on a site that uses Google AdSense. Holding aside AdSense for a moment, when people are using a search bar, they are stating their intention to navigate to another site that might have information they are looking for. In short, they are looking to click on something. If Google’s advertisers can provide that “something,” then everybody wins — users are happy, Google is happy and advertisers are happy. AdSense works similarly people’s intentions to “click” have to be guessed at, but the same theory applies. If I am on a site that is all about running, I may want to click to another site that has something to do with running. If Google can provide an advertiser that wants that click, then everybody is happy again.

But when you get to social media, the formula doesn’t work anymore. Even Google, the uncontested master of PPC technology, couldn’t make people click in its deal with MySpace. Here’s the simple reason why: If I go to a friend’s page and my friend loves to go running, it is likely that my friend will have lots of content on his/her page about running — which might tell Google, or any other AdSense-like program, to offer me a chance to click on an advertisement about, or related to running. But I didn’t come to my friend’s page to learn about running; I came to learn about my friend. Therefore I had no intention to click going in, and the PPC model falls down.

Even when PPC ads target me using the data my social networks have about me — for example, Facebook knows I am getting married in September — they end up serving ads that they hope are so relevant that even though I had no intention of clicking on anything to do with weddings, they can get me to anyway. It’s easy to see the difference between serving me a wedding advertisement when I am searching for it, or when I am on a page about weddings, but how does that translate to when I am on my Facebook homepage? It might be relevant in one way, but it is not relevant in BOTH context or timing. This causes lower click rates; and while some of the clicks that do happen would be valuable, it’s just that the total value advertisers and social networks can derive from those clicks isn’t enough to make the relationship work.

In the end, selling clicks and traffic when people don’t want to click or navigate the Web will inevitably fail.

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Joe Marchese - What are your thoughts? Drop me a line, or just follow the continued conversation on twitter @ www.twitter.com/joemarchese. You can also leave a comment on the Spin Board.

Social Networking: 10 Steps to Finding Your Target Market in Facebook

By Donna Gunter in Web 2.0

Everyone is talking about social networking, and many claim social networking to be the panacea for all of your marketing ills. Marketing on social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter can help you increase the size of your email list and help you grow your business. The key to success with this strategy is making sure that members of your target market are in your network.

Facebook is very strict and very particular about how its participants contact each other. Facebook limits the number of new invitations that can be sent in a given day or week. The exact number is a Facebook secret and unknown to the public, but if you exceed this secret amount you can get booted from Facebook. However, I think if you stick with no more than 10 per day, you will probably stay within their limits. Secondly, you are permitted only 5000 friends in Facebook, so if you’re successful in this strategy, you may ultimately need to create a waiting list of friends.

How do you find your target market in Facebook? Whether you’re an experienced social networker or just a newbie, here are 10 secrets to growing your target market network in Facebook:

1. Update-to-date profile and/or Fan page: Before you begin a “friending” (i.e. request to become another’s friend), be sure that your profile is up-to-date with an accurate description of what you do, your interests, and your contact info, including your web site URLs. If you have multiple businesses, invite people in your appropriate target market to become fans of your niche-specific fan page.
2. Follow the gurus. Follow leaders in your field/industry and “friend” them. Anytime you make a friend request, include a personal note, as that will increase the likelihood that they will accept your request. Say something like, “I’m a big fan and have been on your ezine/blog list for several years. I’d love to have you in my network in Facebook.” Once they have accepted your invitation, make comments about their status updates to help you get on their radar and in front of their networks.
3. Friends of friends. Take a look at the people in the network of your industry leaders, as they are probably part of your target market as well, and send friend requests to those of interest to you. When you friend someone that you only know by association, send a personal note as well, like “I discovered your profile in ’s network and would like to get to know you batter by adding you to my network.”
4. Use groups. Look for groups that may contain your target market. In your search for groups, use keywords that describe your niche, your industry, your geographic area, the interests of your target market, or whatever other terms you might use to find members of your target market. Join and begin to participate in the group so that they begin to get to know you. Then peruse the member lists for good prospects, sic as the members you’ve connected with or have gotten to know. Since you won’t be able to view the profiles of the group members because they aren’t in your network, much of your decision-making about whom to friend may be based upon appearance or how you might be connected to them via other friends in your network.
5. Check your own lists. Friend people that you already know from your high school, college, alumni associations, and places of employment if they fall within your target market definition.
6. Facebook-recommended friends. Facebook typically recommends friends based on your current friends list when you log into your profile. I’ve found these recommendations to be pretty solid. Take them up on their recommendation and add those folks to your network.
7. Add by interest or industry. Do a people search by job title, industry, geographic location, or interest. Those people with those terms in their profile will show up in your search, and you can request to add them based on common interests.
8. Build the relationship. Once you friend someone, you need to begin to get to know them and start them on the like, know and trust journey so that you become their top-of-mind expert in a particular area. Begin building the relationship by posting a quick “thank you” note on their wall, as well as a comment about something on their profile that interests you or in which you have in common. Watch for their status updates, as well, and comment on these when appropriate.
9. Create a group. Once you’ve got about 500 followers, create a group for your target market. Provide the group with useful content and and ask questions to stimulate discussion and get the members to return to participate in the group. You can post articles, links to blog posts, or videos you have created. Invite group members to any free virtual or face-to-face events you’re hosting.
10. Integrate into your plan. No marketing strategy works unless you consistently implement it over time. As a newbie to Facebook, you might want to spend as much as 60 minutes per day researching friends and participating in groups. As your network grows, you many spend only 15 minutes 3 times per week on Facebook. The key to success is to put this strategy on your calendar and make it a routine part of your ongoing Internet marketing tasks.

While social networking is an inexpensive marketing tool and can be effective in helping you grow your business, maintain your other marketing strategies, as well, and simply add this strategy to your marketing mix. A well-rounded Internet marketing plan that includes social networking and is implemented consistently will mean that your prospect well will never run dry.

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Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses by demystifying the steps needed to successfully market a baby boomer business online. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.OnlineBizU.com

Down The Mobile Anti-Marketing Hole

By Steve Smith in Web 2.0

It started innocently enough. It was a cool June day on the streets of New York where outside of Penn Station some street marketers were passing out samples of Speed Stick antiperspirant. When I got to my hotel room and unpacked the cellophane bag I noticed that the promo included a 2D code I was prompted to snap and send to a short code.

Ok, fair enough. The theme of the campaign is “Different Strokes for Different Folks,” to promote three kinds of Speed Stick for a range of sweating types (”what’s your pit type?”). And to the marketers’ credit the concept of the 2D code is aligned with the brand message. The offer suggests that by using the 2D code I will be able to “make a 2D code that belongs to you and you alone.”

Eliding the obvious question of sentient beings (Why the hell do I want my own 2D code?) I decide to play the brainless toady brand marketers often imagine me to be and initiate the process. And while I am playing the doofus, how about if I also pretend that I am not versed in mobile media and marketing, and that a 2D code still looks to me like some silly screw-up of a digital image download.

But, of course, without standardized 2D code readers embedded on phones, using this system in the U.S. is a bothersome kludge. You have to text “SPEED” to 87415 in order for the WAP push to initiate the process. I do so and get the link, which opens my iPhone browser to land on a Speed Stick page. I have a choice between getting a 2D card reader or getting my own 2D code. Choice #1 kicks me to the App Store to download a “BeeTagg” multi-code reader - which, according to App Store users, merits two out of five stars. Speed Stick really hasn’t told me much of anything about why I want this poorly reviewed reader or what possible purpose it might have on my deck. In fact at this point I am a few minutes into a process that has yet to inform me sufficiently why I really am here.

Let’s pursue the other path down the brand rabbit hole. Back at the Speed Stick mobile landing page I try the other option to get my own 2D code (whatever the hell that is). Now I get asked for my mobile phone number and my email “to register.” What Speed Stick will be doing with both email and phone number, I don’t know yet. I get an email with a link and a password to enter. You’re kidding me. I have to copy or write down a password now and I still don’t know what I am doing if for? More to the point, this process has now kicked me around three media and multiple platforms: a print card, SMS, app download, WAP push, mobile Web site, email and finally a Web landing page.

Is anyone keeping count here, because I lost track a while ago of how many things I had to click and places I had to input information to get to a payoff that is still ill-defined.

So I get to the speed Stick Web page. Newcomers without login information get a “What’s Your 2D Code” prompt to find out what this is all about. The result is form to fill and a right-hand text description that easily can be mistaken for a useless Terms of Service agreement. For those of us who already went through all the above steps, we get to fill in our name and then get a pop-up with the same three graphs of unadorned explanation for what a 2D bar code is and can do. Finally, after all of that I get the privilege of reading a short story. I know, I sound cranky, but this has been a long brand adventure and I am getting hungry now. And then more forms; selecting a social network to send the code to. After this you can track how your code is being used.

You can tell there is the core of a good campaign in here somewhere. Ultimately the idea is that people are passing their 2D code around and being ranked on-site for how many times they get hit. I am sure the program is still too young for us to assess numbers, but so far the top ten add up to about 60 scans total. I applaud those who were hearty enough to follow through on the whole process and get their own code. I couldn’t follow you. I gave up. I had to eat.

Is this campaign just too clever by halves? I am sure that in outline and in pitch sessions it hit all the right buzzwords. The campaign aligns the technology with the brand message. It leverages numerous touchpoints (WAP, SMS, email, Web). It taps into social networks and uses viral distribution. It appeals to its male target’s native competitiveness and quest for popularity. If it works and catches on, the campaign harvests a crapload of data.

The problem is, it’s a pain to execute. This campaign not only turns me off to the brand, it turns me off to 2D codes as well.

I have never been a fan of slapping these things anywhere. I much prefer image recognition technology for this. UPC codes and the like were made for machines, not people. And most UPC codes are confined to packaging, where they can be tucked away out of sight or restricted to a single page of a magazine.

2D codes threaten to go everywhere. And there is nothing aesthetically pleasing or directly communicative about them. They are just a big fat eyesore that engineers and geeks might find energizing. The rest of us just want to peel them off of our otherwise pleasant-looking world. The prospect of a world filled with these things is too unappealing to ponder.

As someone who wrote years ago about the mind-blowing prospects of connecting the physical world to the digital world via the cell phone, I am a big fan of the basic goal here. But well-meaning campaigns like this remind me how far we have to go before the process is smooth enough, and the technology is ready for consumers to consume. We need time to eat.

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Contributing writer Steve Smith is a lapsed academic who saw the light, bolted the University and spent the last decade as a digital media critic and consultant. He is chair and programmer of OMMA Mobile and OMMA Behavioral conferences from Mediapost and is the Digital Media Editor at Media Industry Newsletter (MIN) from Access Intelligence. Contact him at popeyesmith@comcast.net.

The Five Steps to Increasing Your Presence on The Social Networks

By Cary Ganz in Web 2.0

There is no question that social network marketing is not only here to stay but more than likely a moving force in marketing in general. Sometimes getting started with something new can become a very daunting task so I thought it would be advantageous to write a brief article on making this event a bit more user friendly.

In reality, social network marketing has two basic components. One is the personal side and the other a business event. In both cases the process is basically the same.

Step 1: Finding Your Home - You need to determine where you want to spend your time. Not all of the social network sites are the same. Some lean to different ages (i.e. MySpace), some to different niches (i.e. Facebook) and others more related to business (i.e. LinkedIn). Now, in reality, most of these sites, including the ones just mentioned, cross over to some degree.

If you have the time, join them all. Most people will find one or two networks where they will feel comfortable.

Step 2: Creating Your Profile - One the items common to practically all of the social network sites is the need to create a profile. Tell your future friends who you are, what you like and why you are participating in this specific forum. I would suggest that this is not the place for ’spin’. You need to be honest and forthcoming if you are going to create the long lasting relationships so necessary to be successful in social network marketing.

Step 3: Relationships - OK. OK, we now have to create relationships. Unfortunately this can sound a bit oversimplified but the actual reason for participating in social networking is to create relationships and interacting on a consistent basis about concepts they have in common. That is the true purpose of being ’social’.

This will require effort and time. The internet, being a relatively ‘unsocial’ environment due to the inability to actually ‘touch and feel’, requires additional effort. In most ‘brick and mortar’ relationships you meet someone, you talk, you look each other in the eye and a relationship starts.

Unfortunately this just doesn’t happen on the web. You need to be a bit more resourceful.

Step 4: Content/Frequency - Relationships on the social network scene are created by content you develop and post on the specific site. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s on Twitter or on Facebook or MySpace. There are certain limitations with each of these websites but for the most part, you need to add content that is real and pertinent to your current and/or potential friends. You not only need to add good content but it needs to be frequently placed in order to a) get noticed and b) maintain relationships.

Step 5: Don’t Burn Your Bridges Marketing - OK. You may be reading this article in order to learn how to use social networks for marketing your new or current online or offline business. It is not the intention of this quick article to discuss all of the various ways to help you in that goal. However, there is one real important point to be made here that will make your marketing efforts successful. Be hones. Don’t SPAM or SCAM or you will most certainly burn your bridges behind you.

Like in the ‘real’ world, relationships are made and lost easily. It’s usually more difficult to make friends and real easy to lose them. On the web this process is made a bit more complicated and therefore it requires a great deal of attention.

Before I end this article I wanted to give you a real world example of what I am talking about with the hope that you can extrapolate it to the world of social networking.

The example is the club. When you begin to think of joining a club the first thing you need to determine is what type of club.(i.e. golf, tennis etc.) Let’s assume you are a great golfer and want to find new golfing friends. You join the club and start letting people know who you are. You can join a wide variety of committees. You go to club functions and try to meet club members. You tell them who you are and what you are looking for in the club. Then, you start participating in outings. You join foursomes and play as often as time permits. It is common knowledge that many who join golf clubs intend on using it as a business tool and therefore will ten to find like minded members and will eventually creating business while on the golf course. You’ll be honest and forthcoming or else you will either lose your foursome or even possibly your membership.

Conclusion: Does this sound familiar? Well, it should and the very same concepts apply to joining an online social network “club”. Whether you are currently a member of one or more social networks or planning on joining, be sure to think of the five basic steps before jumping in with both feet.

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You can learn much more about Social Networking and Social Network Marketing at Twitter Right. Cary Ganz is the Creator of The Newbie Phenomenon where you can find over 250 additional products for only 99 cents with unrestricted, unlimited access for thirty (30) days

Have You Ever Binged Yourself?

By Cory Treffiletti in Web 2.0

I Binged myself over the weekend to see what turned up. It sounds a little funny and maybe even a little dirty — or maybe like I hurt myself or stubbed my toe against the leg of the dining room table. But if Microsoft has its way, then that term will become as ubiquitous as the one referring to the 800-pound search gorilla we call Google.

If you’re like me, you’re intrigued about Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft. I’m intrigued because I actually like PCs and I like the most recent Microsoft campaigns — but I’m skeptical about the company’s search strategy. Working in this industry as I do, I’m familiar with the stops, starts and missteps that have defined Microsoft’s efforts in search over the last 15 years. I’m curious about whether the company can right the ship, so I decided to try Bing for myself.

As always, I began with the same two searches I start with on every new platform: “Pearl Jam” and my own name. The homepage of Bing is intriguing. It’s attractive because it changes and uses different pictures rather than the standard white page with search box that Google led with. I like it because it’s simple yet still elegant, but of course I was always taught to never judge a book by its cover, so I went deeper inside. Upon searching for “Pearl Jam,” I was shown some sites that rarely pop up on the first page of Google and I really enjoyed the nav bar along the left that redefines the parameters of the search. Upon searching for myself, I was intrigued to see Facebook profiles popping up, which is something I never see on Google. I dug a little deeper and came up with this brief analysis of Microsoft’s new platform.

The Good

• I love the “Explore” button; it becomes a way of launching into a surfing behavior. I may not know where I want to go, but I can certainly follow a suggested path.
• The dynamic nav bar on the left rail allows you to refine the category of search results, which is a great way of clearing the junk from the results that I’m just not interested in.
• The homepage is very cool, very picturesque, and easy to use. I like pictures and I like the inviting feel of the page.
• I like that it searches deeper Web pages, like Facebook pages, when you are searching for people.
• I like that it keeps my search history. This is useful when going back and trying to use search as a navigational tool for rediscovering something you found previously.

The Bad

• I find the TV commercials annoying . That’s a big statement to make because I honestly and truly love the current Microsoft “I’m a PC” campaign, but not this aspect of the company’s efforts.
• I’m not too sure that I’ll remember Bing all the time, but I always remember Google. Microsoft definitely has an uphill battle to fight, much like Sisyphus, in that the company needs to break a habit, change behavior, and get people like me to stop using the built-in Google toolbar. I did install the Bing toolbar in Firefox to give it the old college try, and so far I’m happy with the experience.

The Indifferent

• The user experience is not dramatically different from that of Google or other engines. The differences are subtle — and subtlety is sometimes lost on the public at large. The biggest hurdle will be in convincing the average user that these results are substantially better, because as many pundits have said, most people don’t know that search is broken.

My summary: I like Bing and I think it’s worth a shot, but if the results aren’t good, then it’s back to Google I go! And just for a laugh, check out what comes up when you search “Bing” on Google. A mix of news articles, energy drinks and Bing Crosby pop up, leading you to be unclear as to whether the name will ever stick.Here’s to seeing what happens over the coming months, because I love capitalism; competition can only be a good thing because it makes everyone better. I look forward to watching the rise of Bing and the response from Google as well as the swarm of other challengers in this highly utilized and highly combative category!

Here’s to all of you!

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Cory Treffiletti is president and managing partner for Catalyst SF.

Building a Real-Time Social Search Engine: Why Google Should Buy Twitter

By Rob Garner in Web 2.0

Over the last 15 months, I have been analyzing both Twitter (feeds and search), and the Google “real-time” Search Options feature for Web Search (many months before release, a Search Options search box could be configured by modifying the URL with its date-based variable).  During this time, I have come to the following three conclusions about the prospects of real-time social search engines:  1) The reality of the robust real-time search concept is much closer than we think; 2) real-time search results have a number of common uses, and are highly preferable over “anytime” search for a wide variety of search tasks; 3) the best way for real-time social search to come to full fruition is for Google to acquire Twitter, and add a social network layer to its crawler-based real-time results.

The prospect of real-time social-search is that it would fill in major gap in the search results, mainly in a shift that might be best described as what is the best result right now, as opposed to what is the best result over time. It’s not necessarily a question of which one is better than the other, but more about which one is more suitable for a particular query and/or search intention. The likely best answer is that the two would complement each other enough to provide a more complete real-time search innovation.

How Twitter’s network can enhance Google’s real-time crawler-based search results
Providing a historical answer (what is the “best” result over all network Web documents produced any time) is what Google and the other major crawler-based engines excel at, though of course it’s not always perfect.  While Google has produced its blog engine, and other results like Google News and Hot Trends  to keep the overall results fresher, its recently updated “Search Options” featuring Web crawls from the last day, week and month have added an important dimension to its results.   Even within the daily or weekly real-time Google crawl, there can still be a lot of noise, and this is where Twitter could come in to add social relevancy to the mix. Both Google’s Search Options and Twitter have proven to be indispensible tools for finding new and useful information, and together they would create a layer to the search experience not possessed by any one engine.

The quality of the real-time network-search experience hinges on keeping out spam - this could be a problem for Twitter, and Google may have the solution
Part of the reason that Twitter Search is useful now is because there is sparse presence of spam in its results.  In terms of being spam-free, this may be Twitter’s Golden Age; at least as far as hash tag search is concerned.  But history shows us that as serious spammers find a new hole, in this case finding out about the reach of hash tags, URLs, keywords and other triggers, we should expect a lot more noise in those streams to the point that it may ruin relevancy.  I’ve personally been seeing more spam on Twitter in the last few weeks than in the prior 15 months of activity.

In the game of real-time search, controlling spam and assessing authority and trust becomes more important.  Google has excelled in getting spam out of the results to increase relevance, and this is where they would be a great partner with Twitter in terms of keeping their real-time results clean.  Spamming in Twitter is only going to get worse unless something drastic is done to combat it (though it is worth noting that Google also has a human search quality review team of thousands — this may make them the first real human-powered social search engine, but in a different way).

Twitter’s data is also not currently being put to its best use in the current iteration of Twitter Search, and other third-party engines are starting to get more creative in the way the data is being presented. One Riot is one particular engine doing innovative things with Twitter search.

Google Search Options and Twitter search represent the two halves required for the whole success of real-time social search.  Google has the crawler, and algorithmic sense to return a useful result.  Twitter on the other hand, has the audience and data that could enable the first true social layer to crawler based search, where trusted users, much like trusted Web sites and links, are moving relevancy in real-time.

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Rob Garner is strategy director for digital marketing company iCrossing and writes for Great Finds, the iCrossing blog. Contact him via email at rob.garner@icrossing.com,and follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robgarner.

Wave Riding Over Bing

By David Berkowitz in Web 2.0

In the future, my dad will be a blogger. He’ll create wikis. He’ll have his work translated into languages spoken across Europe, Asia, and South America. He’ll accomplish it effortlessly with Google Wave. I watched the 80-minute developer preview of Wave, and it’s going to make nearly everyone a social media creator.

Seth Godin made the point that “the real next Google” is Google, thanks to what it’s doing with Wave. He contrasted that with Microsoft Bing, a search engine with a few features that Google can easily copy.

One of the problems with Bing is that it’s anti-social. That’s a dangerous proposition for a new digital brand. Microsoft says in its press release, “The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload.” But that “explosive growth” is largely due to the proliferation of social media, while the tool is still largely standard search functionality.

The release further notes that Bing, the “Decision Engine,” is “providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions.” First of all, I’ve spent some time with Bing, and while it offers many new ways to refine searches, it doesn’t move beyond search in the slightest. On another note, one obvious way to help consumers make informed decisions would be to build in elements that tap their social networks and user-generated content. One start-up, Hunch, aims to do exactly that, by combining user contributions and personalization to help people make smarter decisions. Whether or not Hunch succeeds, it’s a real step beyond search.

Bing is anti-social to the point that it lets you watch Hulu videos within the search results (it feels more like a search portal than a decision engine), but it doesn’t let you share the clips. Contrast this with Google Wave, which is all social.

That’s the simplest way to understand it: Wave makes everything social. It incorporates some elements of other social applications — Gmail, Google Talk, Blogger, collaborative functions of Google Docs — and blends them together to create live and time-shifted social experiences.

The ultimate power of Wave won’t be known for a while. Google is opening up the service for developers to build on, so much of the functionality will develop over time, making it comparable to Twitter. Still, there are some general principles of Wave that should hold true and improve. Here are a dozen highlights:

• Everything created in this new service is a Wave.
• A Wave can be private, much like an email string or an instant message conversation, or it can be public, like a blog entry or wiki.
• Waves can be edited in real time, so that everyone who can access the Wave can see the updates appear character by character.
• Any kind of portable content (including some forms that may not have been easily portable previously) can be incorporated into Waves, including photos, videos, and maps.
• All such forms of content can benefit from Waves’ collaborative capabilities, such as having multiple people upload photos to a communal album and collectively provide captions.
• Changes to Waves can be played back so it’s easy to see the evolution of a Wave over time.
• Games become social, and even competitive.
• Mobile integration is built in, so Waves can be edited from anywhere.
• Waves can instantly translate among dozens of languages on the fly, so that collaborators who natively speak Chinese and Hebrew, for example, can effortlessly communicate with each other.
• Contextual spell-checking happens instantly, with the example shown of “Icland is an icland” turning into “Iceland is an island.” This feature isn’t that social, but it makes contributors look more intelligent when they share the Waves.
• Comments turn into conversations. Many blog tools do this already, but this applies to every form of commenting, from those made during document edits to comments on photos.
• Waves can integrate with other social services such as Twitter and Orkut, plus many more to come.

Not all of this might make sense to someone like my dad, but I couldn’t have explained Gmail to him either in terms of how it groups together email conversations and uses labels instead of folders. I’m pretty confident, however, that once he starts using Wave, he’ll wind up creating photo blogs while having seamless conversations with relatives in France, Israel, and Brazil.

Wave will redefine the “lean-forward” experience of the Web. When you need a break and want to lean back, though, you can watch those Hulu videos on Bing.

David Berkowitz is director of emerging media and client strategy at digital marketing agency 360i. You can reach him at dberkowitz@360i.com, on Twitter at @dberkowitz, and through his blog at MarketersStudio.com. <

© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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