“Another tip is to enable your photos to be indexed by search engines. Many companies hide images from crawlers. There’s high usage of images by vertical search engines. It also creates the possibility of additional rankings in Universal search results.
Share images through Flickr and other image sharing sites. Link your profiles back to your site. Don’t be spammy. Don’t mass upload.”
Read the full article here.
It seems that following their recent failed $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo!, Microsoft are still in the market for some internet real estate, having reportedly approached Facebook in a takeover bid. Read more Here.
A New Blog post over at SearchEngineWatch has informed me of a brand new Social Interaction website, called “Twitter”.
Twitter is a new website in which you create a large network of friends and update them on your status, for example “i’m eating a sandwich.” Twitter will then track what you’ve entered and keep a history of activities. Below is a snippet from the Search Engine Watch blog post:
“It’s all the rage lately — and with good reason. Twitter offers the ability to connect with a ton of people you normally wouldn’t have access to. I’ll give you a real life example.
The other day, a popular blogger I follow on Twitter sent a “Tweet” calling for “top 10” or “list” type articles. I had written my “30 Free Ways to Market Your Small Business Site” so I sent the link back to him via Twitter. It took me less than a minute, and my article was chosen for inclusion in his daily “link finds.” The traffic and link from that one interaction alone was worth the time I spend there, purely from a branding and “getting my name out there” standpoint.”
Read the rest Here.
“At Facebook we love tools that allow you to see what people around the globe are searching for or discussing on blogs, such as Google Trends or Technorati. We thought it would be cool to show trends on the public and semi-public forums across Facebook (also known as Walls). Today we’re announcing the launch of Facebook Lexicon, a tool where you can see the buzz surrounding different words and phrases on Facebook Walls. Lexicon pulls from the wealth of data on Facebook without collecting any personal information in order to respect everyone’s privacy.
The Wall is a really interesting place to look for buzz, because when one person writes a post on a friend’s or a group’s Wall, tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people might see it; those viewers may read, digest, and pass on that information, spreading it virally. So when my friend Kasey wrote on my friend Blaise’s Wall saying how she really liked the movie Juno, I saw her post and knew I had to see it for myself. It seems like a lot of users share her sentiments; excitement about the movie grew significantly when it was released in early December:
How are these numbers calculated? We have a cluster of computers that count the number of occurrences of every term (for example, “juno”) across profile, group and event Walls every day. The system strips out all personally identifiable information so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person. No human at Facebook ever reads these Wall posts, and Lexicon does not look at personal messages, invitations, or any other private user-to-user communications.
Play around with Lexicon. You can compare up to five different words or two-word phrases and see how many people talked about that term each day. As long as enough people mentioned the term, it will show up on the graph. Want to see how many people are talking about going skiing vs. going to the beach? Go for it. ”
What does this mean for us marketers? we now know exactly how much people are talking about everything!! Personally i think if Facebook users catch onto what theyre doin, theyre could well be an uproar and it may result in a loss of users. Feel free to post your thoughts!
Well known Photo hosting website, Flickr announced last night that they will now have Video sharing capabilities. Below is from the Official Flickr Blog:
“Video! Video! Video! The rumours are true and “soon†is now. We’re thrilled to introduce video on Flickr. If you’re a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream.
90 seconds? While this might seem like an arbitrary limit, we thought long and hard about how video would complement the flickrverse. If you’ve memorized the Community Guidelines, you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,†of capturing slices of life to share.”
Interesting stats from Facebook suggesting that 10% of Facebook employees are ex employees of Google:
“Since there’s been a lot of press lately about Googlers jumping ship for Facebook, I thought I’d search Facebook’s network to see how many folks at the company used to work at Google. As it turns out, over 40, or almost 10% – and mostly engineering or product people.”
Read more HERE.
Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups.
More available Here.
Local SEO Guide have posted an Article on Facebook Pages and Local Search Engine Optimization. They talk about how its possible to use Facebook for Local SEO by creating Facebook Pages and talk you through the process, which includes creating a blog, installing a Facebook application and tips on how to keeo your content up to date. Below is a little snippet from the Article:
“Facebook has an easy way for businesses to create a highly functional webpage that leverages all of the functionality of Facebook and the companies who are developing applications for Facebook’s platform. Every business can have a page and have a conversation with it’s customers. You can make a page in five minutes and add all of your data.”
Read the full article Here.
“Marketing to and through social networks means humans are hot again. Not as directory editors; it’s Web 2.0 and your customers are in control. The old-fashioned media buy has gone bye-bye. Social Media marketing is fast emerging as a must-have in search strategies. Learn about the social search revolution, and hear case studies of how marketers have successfully promoted brands and products with it…..” Read the full article here.
