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Just when you thought there could be no more social networks left to invent, Google joins the social network party again. The reason is they say again is that roughly the same time last year, they made an announcement about a little project that was to become Google Wave
Then there was Google SideWiki which was another social functionality provided by the search giant.

So my question is where does Google Buzz fit into the equation? And the answer I have come to is that I am not too sure.

When Google Wave was announced, I had many of my non-tech friends come up to me and ask plenty of questions about the news. They wanted to know whether or not they needed Facebook, Skype, et al anymore because Google was going to promote this fantastic collaboration tool for both business and pleasure.

Last night however, not one of those people was asking me about Google Buzz.

Now I am not saying it is a guaranteed fail on Google’s part – it’s not really comparing apples with apples. But one of my associates on Twitter (@DDsD) made a very good point:

@BenTortora Not entirely,Google Buzz is like a non-real-time wave.. but that’s what people are used to, wave is too complicated for most.

And I completely agree with that statement. That is the exact spot where the application needs to sit. However, many people are active on one of the following networks:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Foursquare

And from our research and questioning of social network users, not many want another aggregator or somewhere else to connect with people. With Facebook and MySpace about to launch full-blown email services, taking with them their massive existing user base – it seems Google is on the defensive trying to make their email client social.

Another reason why I am not completely sold on the service is the same reason why those aggregators never really perform as well as the networks independently – people are connecting with different groups of people on different networks. I know myself personally, I do not add anyone I have not met face-to-face on my Facebook; I don’t have any personal connections – only business – on LinkedIn; on Twitter I connect and share with both friends, strangers, industry leaders and bloggers that I follow. Aggregating all those different status updates and links would add more noise to those networks - the last thing any user wants from a service.

I guess it all boils down to the fact that I am not really a power user of Gmail to begin with, and the announcement hasn’t really swayed me to become one. And if Google wants it to be Wave for the masses, they are going to need to bump their awareness campaign past forcing people to check it out when they sign into their Gmail.

Foursquare is being the dubbed ‘the biggest thing to hit social media in 2010′ and is set to rock our world just like Twitter did in 2009 (safe enough to say it’s the biggest thing to hit social media in 2010 because we are yet to see out our first month but things still look very promising). It grew in popularity in San Francisco, spread across the US and has just been launched worldwide.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking medium. It is a mobile application which allows you to “check in” every time you visit a destination via your phones GPS capabilities. Locations can be anywhere from shops, bars, cafes and restaurants being the most popular, through to workplaces, banks and parks. Once you’ve checked into a location, Foursquare will then broadcast your whereabouts to your friends and recommend places to go and things to do nearby. The Foursquare website promotes that this is a great way to meet up with nearby friends and learn about their favourite spots and the new places they discover.

Foursquare.com describes itself as an “urban mix tape”, making lists of your favourite things to do and share them with your friends. Foursquare keeps a record of your actions, creates To-Do lists and suggests new things to check out. It shares other user’s experiences in particular locations. For example, if you checked into a restaurant it would unlock a tip suggesting an item from the menu. The game of it is that as you cruise along checking into locations and adding tips for others, you earn points and unlock badges. If you become the frequent Foursquare visitor to a location then you become ‘the Mayor’ until someone else overtakes you and steals your title. Mayors are eligible for freebies such as coffee, ice-cream etc depending on what that particular location may offer through Foursquare.

Example of Foursquare badges

The business applications of this new service are immediately clear:

1.       Customer Intel - invaluable information on how often customers frequent your business, knowing what they are saving about your products and services

2.       Word of mouth Advertising - your own customers recommending your products and services to others!? Wow! Doesn’t get any better than that!

3.       Direct Marketing - want to reward your loyal customers? How about offering a discount to a new customer to inspire them to try a menu item or buy a product?

4.       Potential to Rank in Search Engines - as Foursquare builds up authority with the search engines then their recommendations and listings are likely to rank. So if your business has some rave reviews and comments then you will potentially list in local search results

Why this will work? People love to let other people know what they are doing and how cool it is. People love to earn badges and would all love to be the ‘Mayor’ of something. My recommendations? Get ready for Foursquare to become a big thing. If you’re prepared to jump on this wave then you are sure to have a kanuna of a ride and save yourself being dumped in the shallows.

If you could sum up the latest and greatest buzzword/bandwagon for 2009 (yes, the year is almost over), it would be the whole social web movement. It is the year where Australia really began to take notice of it and ask what it is all about. Everyone was asking everyone for advice, how to setup the accounts, and more importantly, how they could justify wasting time on Facebook/YouTube/et al and still get paid for it.

As is the way with all these movements though, all the snakes came out of the grass offering social media campaigns that generate a whole bunch of talk, crazy promises and empty wallets. By the time the clients realised that their money disappeared with no return, it was too late - they already had lost faith in social media.

That’s why Olivier Blanchard’s slides are so great about social media. In a fantastic display of biting humor and wit, he calls out all those that launch into a campaign without really stopping and thinking about what is going on. We salute the fact that he has taken the time to make those in charge responsible and being able to restore marketing department’s faith in social media.

So sit back and flick through one of the best presentations on the topic this year.

Recent sources have confirmed talk that both Yahoo and Google are now looking into striking up deals with Twitter. These sorts of deals are big news because if undertaken would greatly improve the versatility of the results the search engines serve.

Twitters last reported monthly user volumes of 54 million that generates an excess of a billion tweets. This large amount of fresh user generated data produced on a daily basis could be hugely beneficial to the search engines in that recent and relevant tweets can be integrated into a search result. These listing would play a big part in generating more related, relevant and most importantly up to date results for its users.

This deal if swayed in the direction of Microsoft would most certainly assist its search engine Bing to further increase much needed ground on its main competitor Google.

Though these types of changes would be sure to benefit both search engines and Twitter alike it appears that the social media giant Twitter is in no hurry to make a decision on the matter or to reveal precisely how much data it is willing to release. With recent valuation figures of around the 1 billion dollars it is understandable that they would be in no hurry, they always have the option of investing in their own search engine and taking on the current big players.

Social media is growing rapidly, but a common question is, exactly what industries is this relevant too and even more importantly which ones are growing and which are not?

A recent study conducted be Nielsen online showed that an excess of 17% of internet users time is spent in social networking. This amounts to around 108 million dollars in the month or August of social media advertising revenue. Even though a small portion of this would equate to substantial exposure some industries simply don’t have a large enough presence to justify the effort of getting involved.

The top 5 growth social networking industries out of a possible 13 shown by this study are:

1. Entertainment
2. Travel
3. B2B
4. Automotive
5. Health

The top five in revenue size as of August 2009 are:

1. Web Media
2. Telecommunications
3. Public Services
4. Retail Goods & Services
5. Entertainment

The travel and automobile industries in particular have shifted considerably from other online streams to social media along with finance and retail goods and services.

For a more detailed breakdown of the study conducted please visit the Neilsen Online Article here.

Reports on the official Facebook blog claim that it now serves more more than 300 million people around the world.

What does this mean?

To put this into context, the entire US population is just over 304 million and more than 12 times the population of Australia.

Not only that, it is also collecting more revenue than it is currently spending on maintaining the site. Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the official company Facebook blog:

“We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

This means that Facebook will be able to develop and test out more features and products. Just like Google labs, it is allowing users to test out these prototypes by activating or downloading any of the prototypes listed.

From a marketing point of view, this may allow people or organisations’ more ways to connect to their followers. The future of Facebook looks quite rosy and will definitely be something keep an eye on.

Twitter is a communication platform that helps connect business and their customers. It can help a business act as an information portal to quickly up-to-date people interested in their company. It allows business to gather real time market intelligence and feedback and foster relationships between partners and customers or anyone who is interested about their work and business. As an individual user, you can Tweet to tell a company that you have had a great, or indifferent experience about their business, as well as learning about great offers and product deals.

When you combine tweets that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere you have got a really powerful, real time communications medium.

You might be asking, so how do businesses use Twitter? Twitter connects you to your customers instantly in a way that was never before possible. For example, let’s say you are at work for a custom trailer manufacturer. If you search for your brand, you may find people talking bout how great the trailers are and sharing information about trailers and boats. Or you could find small complaints or queries that your customers would not intend to contact you about. You can find real valuable customer feedback that you could make the choice to respond and rectify or use for future reference and planning. It’s inevitable that others will offer bad feedback which you can turn around a bad situation and prevent bad publicity. It’s commonly known that listening and engaging with your services can ultimately lead to happier more satisfied clients and key product and service improvements.

Twitter isn’t just about the immediacy it also allows you to build long term relationships with customers, allowing you to have direct access to your customers and shrink the emotional distance. These factors can make Twitter an essential piece of your companies digital online business strategy.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent to specifically to encourage a certain action or prompt a specific result. The goal, copy and design of a landing page is to get your potential customers, clients, business partners or patients to take your desired action.

Below are a few example of various ways landing pages can be used with various traffic sources:
• Traffic is sent from a banner or graphic to a landing page designed to address the visitors needs;
• Traffic is sent via a link in an email to a landing page to encourage a purchase or action;
• Traffic is sent from a pay per click (PPC) campaign to multiple landing ages optimised to correspond with the keywords the searcher used.

Tips for writing a top landing page:

1. Make sure your landing page content matches exactly what they read to come there. Matching the language is a great trick as it keeps you visitors oriented and engaged, they were interested initially, that’s what made them click through, maintain their interest and answer their questions. This is by far the most important part of your landing page.

2. Provide a clear call to action. Tell you visitors what they need to do, and easily too. Use large telephone numbers and buttons that stand out, or links and enquiry forms that are user friendly and effortless to complete. You can use more than one call to action, give people the opportunity to call or email, whatever is easier for them. Remember, it’s all about a user friendly landing page, if aspects are too difficult you won’t hear from your potential visitors.

3. Write in second person. Use You marketing, people are interested in themselves and finding a solution to their own answers, no one wants to know about your company they want to know what your company can do for them.

4. Write clear persuasive copy, providing an answer or solution for the visitor, there is no need to write complicated clever sentences, simple and clear is best.

5. Keep your main paragraphs on point a logical progression from your headline banner and offer. Make sure you keep on track, don’t offer any other thoughts or services, you have your visitors hooked already because of a concept don’t diverge from this. Ever diversion is a potential conversion lost.

6. Keep you most important points at the beginning, as people are skim reading, make it easy for your visitor. Short paragraphs and bullet points are always great.

7. Make sure you compose the screen carefully, make note of where your call to action goes having call to action buttons above and below the fold (the scroll bar) is essential. This allows a visitor to be able to take action wherever they are on the screen.

Following these tips can improve your:

Conversion rate:
• A small increase of 1% in conversions can make a massive difference to your business.

Homepage abandonment rate (high bounce rate):
• How many people come to your landing page and leave? Like any page you have a short window of opportunity, utilise it!

Cost per sale:
• Divide your advertising costs by the amount of sales to calculate your average cost per sale. Look at your numbers and make your campaign work for you.

In the world of content, a blog is really the easiest way to add pages to your site (from an SEO perspective) whilst also adding value to your website. How you ask? If a user finds your post in the search engine results page and comes to your website as result of this - then the more informative and relative your post is to this visitors query the more credible a source your website will seem.

So how can your business benefit from blogging?

The first question to address is whether a blog is really the right avenue to take for your business’ website.
You will need someone on staff to maintain the blog by adding the posts and monitoring any comments made by visitors.
Remember your company’s reputation is on the line so make sure you have the correct measures in place to make the blog as successful as possible.

A blog can help you reach your target audience in an immediate and direct fashion. It can also help current and potential visitors connect in regards to their mutual interest - your business!

This will not only help increase awareness of your brand, but also give your company invaluable insight into the markets thought’s on your offering’s. Best of all this is free.

If not handled correctly, blogging can have a negative effect on your business.
The reason why? This conversation with your market if not maintained correctly could adversely affect your business. If your comments and reply’s to your market’s comments are below par – then this may reflect on your business.

The key – If you are intending to implement a blog, plan first and then you will be set the reap the benefits of your efforts.

As your customer’s in-boxes are overflowing it becomes continually harder to get your customers interested in your company’s newsletters. During a recent interview, Dave Robinson Mozy’s vice president of marketing explained how many business owners can make an email newsletter more compelling. Popick, chief executive of an e-mail and direct marketing provider for small business supports Robinsons view and explains how an email is a direct marketing provider for small business.

Here are some tips by Robinson’s and Popick on how to get your customers interested in your company’s e-mail newsletters:

Make it interesting and relative: Offer compelling, engaging relatable stories. People love to read interesting and fun content associated to their topic of interest, stories can be full of fun, interesting and offer valuable advice and tips. Incorporating an exciting and unusual story can help spread the awareness about your company; it can encourage your customers to send your email newsletter to their friends or to bring up your stories as a topic of conversation. Interesting stories entices your customers to spread the awareness about your business.

Be the expert: A customer’s time is valuable so please don’t waste it. Robinson states, “if you don’t have something interesting to say. Don’t say it”. Share your knowledge with others in a “how to” column or “five easy steps to …” Keep your tips short and instructive.

Stay true to customer’s expectations: One way to wow your customers is to under promise and to over deliver. Make sure newsletters are sent out on time if customers are expecting them, be reliable and consistent. Popick states “Be specific regarding the frequency of your newsletter and the value you provide”, once you have a customer on your newsletter base they receive your emails until they unsubscribe. Be aware of your market and make sure each newsletter isn’t to frequent or intrusive but relevant to your customers. Make sure your company meets and exceeds their customers’ expectations. This begins with all point of contact including company newsletters.

Use customers to illustrate your stories: The best way to tell a story is thorough real people and their anecdotes. Robinson advises to restrain from using boring copy and bullet points on your newsletters and instead use images and fresh interesting content on personal stories. A good way to portray this is by incorporating You Tube links to relevant customer stories or news events. If customers are talking about your company on Facebook or Twitter, link your newsletters to those articles.

Deliver great content and the money will follow: A good email newsletter should have very little promotional copy. Robins Sates “we want people to read our newsletters and look forward to them”. Today people are more interested in me marketing rather than you marketing. “If it’s all about the company-give us more money-it turns people off”. We should leave our clients feeling informed, engaged and empowered so much about the content in our email newsletters that they want to find out more about our business and read more about your services.