Saturday, 30 July 2011

Killerwebs Bradford | Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Google+ Help From Google” plus 5 more

 

Marketing Pilgrim Published: "Google+ Help From Google" plus 5 more

 

Google+ Help From Google

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 04:04 AM PDT

There is a lot of information flying around about Google+ with regard to what it does and doesn't do, how you should use, how to use it, do you even know you are using it etc, etc.

Apparently Google is trying to get out in front of this information as much as they can and have added a Google+ Help Center to the service. You simply go to the gear icon in the upper right corner of your Plus page and you will be taken here.

Mashable describes the effort as follows:

The "What's new in Google+" section is essentially a list of release notes for the Google+ Project. The updates are smaller than Google's traditional blog posts, but longer than most of its Help Center pages. It's a centralized location for finding out what new features Google has added to its social network.

As Google is prone to these days they have included plenty of videos to help users get a better understanding of the service. Here is an introduction from the community manager for Google+, Natalie Villalobos.

If Google wants this "project" to succeed they will need to continue to differentiate themselves from Facebook with regard to transparency and ease of use. While this technique seems fine in the early stage with so many early adopters being very tech savvy, it will be critical that a full public launch to those with less understanding will be as dirt simple as possible.

Honestly, I am not sure that Google is capable of doing anything simply enough for the general population but they have surprised folks in many ways as of late so maybe they have some more up their sleeves?

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The DIY Guide To Infographics [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 03:28 AM PDT

Let's face it. Infographics are cool. They can take a lot of information and put it into a format that is often easier to understand and, even more often, just more fun to deal with.

Inofgraphics are rapidly becoming a marketing staple for companies of all sizes. Every business, from the multinational technology giant all the way to the corner ice cream shop, has information they can share with customers and prospects alike that will go a long way to helping that person connect with the business on a more meaningful level.

And, to be honest, people just like pictures. So while many love infographics, not nearly as many know how to make them. That's why we have put together the DIY Infographic Production Guide infographic. Enough words already! Enjoy!

USE THIS INFOGRAPHIC FOR YOUR WEBSITE. GET THE CODE HERE.

Voltier Creative


The Right SEO Tools Can Make All the Difference

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 09:20 PM PDT

(The following post is from our SEO channel sponsor Web CEO. Be sure to support all of the Marketing sponsors and check out their offerings.)

SEO is a difficult process and it continues to get more complicated as innovation and the evolution of how people find information on the Internet continues at breakneck speed. In this post, I'd like to highlight the most attractive professional features of Web CEO Online, a new advanced web-based SEO toolkit from the Web CEO Team.

After all of the initial SEO and link building work is done, the main effort of an SEO professional – be it a large web marketing agency or a standalone SEO specialist – is concentrated on the web visibility monitoring and keyword ranking improvements. At this point, tools that help SEO specialists highly automate their work are especially important. Web CEO Online offers a lot of functions for professionals to use to accomplish their tasks.

Web CEO

When users sign in, they land at the SEO Dashboard that gives the most critical information about their projects – these include website metrics such as visitor trend, SE visibility, backlink trend, website audit errors. A quick glance is enough to understand if the website is performing well or it needs your attention.

Web CEO Online professional users can schedule reports to be run and emailed to their clients. Most of the reports – the keyword, ranking, backlink, site auditor and search engine optimizer reports – can be also published online and Web CEO Online professional users can give their clients access to those reports.

Web CEO lets its professional users customize the report layout and web interface for their clients. So a logo, header, footer and color skin can be changed to personalize their service.

Web CEO Online has started providing API to professional users, so they can retrieve the search engine ranking data, which makes Web CEO Online a flexible and safe service. Development of the API is happening at a rapid pace and, in the near future, support for more tools and data will be at hand.

The above features automate support for client sites that are already optimized, so SEO and web marketing agencies will certainly enjoy this feature. Web CEO Online can also be used for SEO collaboration with all of its remarkable sharing features.

As a part of our MarketingPilgrim sponsorship, let me invite all MarketingPilgrim's readers to sign up and obtain a coupon for $50 to be able to see the Web CEO Online professional features in action.

About the author

Marina Savenkova is the Director of Advertising at Web CEO Corp. Web CEO has been a developer of top SEO software since 2001.

The information and opinions in this post do not necessarily represent those of Marketing Pilgrim.


Google Experiments with Hotel Finder

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 12:39 PM PDT

Search is what Google does best. You can see this in their latest experiment, the Hotel Finder. Type in the city and the dates of your arrival and you're presented with an easy-to-read, organized list of potential hotels.

Each line item is easily expanded with one click, giving you a slick overview of the property. Click the photos to get a larger slide show, click anywhere else to close the detail panel. It's the fastest way to check out a long list of hotels without ever leaving the page.

Any hotel can be added to a shortlist with one click, for secondary comparison. You can also drag the box on the map view in order to refine the areas covered.

Google's Hotel Finder is so basic, it's brilliant. With options to search by price, hotel class and rating, it's easy to hone in on hotels that suit your style and budget. The only perplexing piece of data is the "compared to typical" column. This compares the current room price to the average price over the year for that hotel, not to hotel prices overall in the area. I'm not sure how this data helps.

After playing around in the Hotel Finder, I began to think about other categories that would work. Restaurant Finder would be a natural. Looking back on my own search experience this week, I could have used Event Finder combined with Tourist Attraction Finder. That would be an excellent tool for not only those visiting a new area, but for people looking for something new in their own home town.

From a marketing perspective, Google's Hotel Finder has the ability to make or break you. Excellent, enticing photos make all the difference, as does good reviews since they are prominently displayed on the summary panel.

The big takeaway from the Google Hotel Finder experiment is that hotel prices in Los Angeles are insane! I need to find a new place to vacation.


Gmail: The War of the Promotional Videos Is On

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 12:13 PM PDT

Many people use Gmail. Why not? It's free and it works pretty well. Of course, it has become a big advertising tool as well and we all know how Google likes to determine what ads to serve.

In a pretty funny video that may have initially have only been intended for attendees of the MGX (Microsoft Global Exchange) sales conference, Microsoft gives Gmail the once over for its ad generating "techniques".

For its part in the contest, Google has produced this video asking for those who know use and love Gmail to perform an intervention on the few holdouts they may know that are using some other e-mail platform.

More and more we are seeing how the commercialization of the Internet is hailed as both boom and bust. With everything seemingly getting some kind of advertising attached to it, there may be a real move toward getting away from the "we know a lot more about you than you wish" feeling that happens everywhere on the net today.

What about you? Where are you on this issue? Would you like to have more privacy (even at a cost) or is free and scannable the way to go?


Twitter Lifts Up Promoted Tweets, Switches Search

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 12:07 PM PDT

Twitter is still on the move, making changes that are reportedly created to make life easier for you, the user, but really is about making things better for you, the marketer.

It begins with a new feature that pins Promoted Tweets near the top of the user stream regardless of when it actually hit. Once a user logs in to view the stream, the tweet falls into line and continues through as normal (I think, this isn't very clear in the write-up).

Users can choose to dismiss the tweet right away with a single click. And, Twitter says, users will only see Promoted Tweets from brands they follow.

In theory, this could be helpful for users looking for a coupon or a great deal, but I'm not buying Twitter's explanation about how this was created to "enrich" my user experience. What would enrich my experience is a stream that allows the actual cream to rise to the top giving me my favorite Tweeters above those I follow out of obligation or morbid curiosity.

Searching for the Old Search Page

Twitter also "upgraded" their search engine this week and I truly hate it. I'm not sure why I hate it, but I do. In the past, I went to search.twitter.com instead of using the actual search box on Twitter because it returned a better selection of data, in an uncluttered, fast-loading way. Now, when you hit that page, you get an overly enthusiastic search box that says "see what's happening right now." Put in the term and you're taken to the new Twitter interface which has results on the left and detail on the right.

The detail panel does make it easier to get the lowdown on the Tweeter without having to click to a new page. You can also watch linked videos right on the page, but frankly, it's too much input all at once.

The new search also defaults to Top Tweets and you must switch to All Tweets with a drop-down to get the full picture. In that mode, loading more Tweets takes time since you aren't actually moving to a new page as you did on the old search.

What I wish they would add is a drop-down to eliminate Tweets that aren't in my chosen language.

Understand this Twitter, I complain because I care. Twitter is my favorite social network, so I really wish they'd check with me before making these sweeping changes.

All good for marketers, somewhat good for users. What do you think?


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