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6 Tools to Manage Your Twitter Followers

TechGirl — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:00:06 +0000

Managing Twitter followers can become a time consuming task, taking time away from actually sending messages and growing your influence. Here are a few free and paid tools that will save you time and provide all the important data you need.

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4 Ways to Rethink a Facebook Advertising Campaign

TechGirl — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:00:04 +0000

Facebook is a different medium than paid search advertising, with entirely unique advantages. Learn ways to restructure your paid social advertising paradigm without over-committing to media spend and track results and ROI on Facebook.

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For Better Facebook Engagement, Post on Topics Related To, But Not About, Your Brand [Study]

TechGirl — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:00:02 +0000

Facebook shares tips for Page managers looking to increase fan engagement with specific types of content posted to drive different types of engagement. Find out what they learned in an internal brand pages study of 23 brands across six industries.

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Can Negative Parameters Tell You If You Were Hit By Google’s Penguin Update?

WebProNews — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:20:02 +0000

Barry Scwhartz posted this week about a Google query hack, which may or may not enable you to confirm that your site was hit by Google’s Penguin update. Schwartz credits WebmasterWorld member Martin Ice Web with the find.

The user added a negative parameter for amazon with his keywords, and Google returned his site to pre-Penguin rankings. “For example, he search for [blue widget -amazon] and his rankings pre-Penguin showed up on Google for the query [blue widget],” Schwartz explains.

It didn’t seem very reliable at first, so I didn’t bother to cover it. Even Schwartz noted that it failed on some of the queries he tried. However, the comments on his article have poured in since then, and it sounds like it has worked for quite a few people, so perhaps it’s worth taking a look at.

One commenter notes that other negative keywords seem to work as well, such as “-ebay”.

Remember, if you believe that you were unfairly hit by the Penguin update, Google has a form where you can complain. Of course, it’s likely that Google disagrees. After all, they consider the update to be a success.

View our Penguin coverage here.

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Facebook IPO Leaves Winklevoss Twins Speechless (On Twitter)

WebProNews — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:07:14 +0000

There’s been a whole lot of chatter about the Facebook IPO today. However, there’s not been much from the Winklevoss Twins, the Harvard duo that founded ConnectU, and made cinematic history in The Social Network with Armie Hammer’s portrayal of them.

The twins are regularly engaged on Twitter, giving the world a glimpse into their TV viewing habits and animal preferences:

Follow @winklevoss Cameron Winklevoss
@winklevoss #gameofthrones is hands down the best show on television. Absolutely mesmerizing! (Full disclosure: Just watched 3 episodes in a row)
10 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto
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Follow @tylerwinklevoss Tyler Winklevoss
@tylerwinklevoss @Animal_Aisha everyone knows dogs are better than cats…come on now!
19 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
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However, they have not had much to say on this historic day for Facebook, the company founded by their arch-nemesis Mark Zuckerberg. Tyler did retweet a couple of related posts:

Follow @nichcarlson Nicholas Carlson
@nichcarlson FIRST FACEBOOK TRADE $42.05 http://t.co/9DmNHaE5
5 hours ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto
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Follow @WSJ Wall Street Journal
@WSJ Breaking: Clarification: Facebook shares open at $42.99, up about 13% from offer price of $38 a share. http://t.co/u62kj5Ri
5 hours ago via WSJ.com · powered by @socialditto
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But no actual commentary from the twins. Granted, the day is not over yet. Nothing from ConnectU partner Divya Narendra either.

The Winklevoss Twins, however, recently started their own venture capital company, and are apparently on the lookout for programmers.

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Facebook IPO By the Numbers

TechGirl — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:40:02 +0000

While there will no doubt be tremendous demand for Facebook stock today, as it begins trading at 11 AM Eastern time, there should be plenty of it available. As David Angosti reported for Search Engine Journal, the social network raised its target IPO price range to $34 to $38. The move prompted a number of Facebook’s major stakeholders to increase the number of shares they plan to offer – and in some cases, that number went way up. I am not a stock broker; I don’t even play one on the Internet. But I think even the people who crunch these kinds of numbers for a living would be amazed by the c…

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Facebook Goes Public, Doesn’t Update Status

WebProNews — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:33:51 +0000

Facebook is now officially listed on the NASDAQ. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell, and had his own status updated to say: “Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on NASDAQ. — with Chris Cox and 4 others.”

According to TechCrunch, “Some savvy Facebook engineers rigged the NASDAQ button” to update it for him.

If you look at Facebook’s company timeline, however, there’s no update. I have to say, that’s somewhat surprising. This is the biggest moment in the company’s history, and no update?

In fact, Facebook hasn’t posted an update since the Organ Donor thing at the beginning of the month. Has Facebook stopped using Facebook? Just kidding.

Hopefully users are following Zuck. Otherwise, how will they ever find out about the IPO?

On a related note, since we’re looking at Facebook’s timeline, it’s worth noting that only 66 million “like” Facebook. You’d think there would be more, with over 900 million users.

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Promojam’s Social Media Cocktail Handbook 2012 Provides Mixed Drink Recipes

WebProNews — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:28:10 +0000

Have you ever been around a group of people who start talking about social media, leading you to mention the hilarious picture you put up of your cat playing with a ball of string. This in turn leads to everyone laughing at your comment, exposing your naivety towards social media. Yes, those people are most likely pretentious douches, but if you want to keep up with their conversation, Promojam is here to the rescue, with – The 2012 Social Media Cocktail Handbook.

You can download the handbook on the Kindle, Nook, iBook, or the PDF version. Promojam is also giving away a Kindle Fire if you tweet their handbook to your followers.

So what can you expect to find in such a handbook? First, if you really want to impress those people who were laughing at you previously, you can talk about all the big changes in the world of social media. Promojam claims email marketing is going to make a big push, along with the unification of online and offline social media fluidity. You can also talk about how Google+ has a good chance of growing, which will really throw a wrench in those knuckleheads’ so called expert conversation.

If you happen to find one of the people in the group attractive, but can’t find a way start up a conversation, Promojam provides some social media related ice breakers. Here are a couple of examples.

Either you’re best friends with Kevin Bacon or I could swear to God that we’re already connected on LinkedIn.

What are you doing three months from now? Because my Facebook Timeline could really use with a relationship status update…

In these kinds of conversations, it’s generally good to know people and in this case, people who are relevant in terms of social media. Be careful though, these people laughed at your cat photo, so they’ll really have fun at your expense for bringing up a Kardashian. Here’s a preview of people to mention in social media conversation, according to Promojam.

Of course, no party would be complete without some tasty beverages. They’ve provided a good assortment of mixed drinks, for all sorts of occasions.

If you want a hard hitting drink for the Facebook IPO, you can try the ‘Zuckerpunch’…

If you find yourself having to walk away from the party because of a couple of important emails hitting your inbox, you can try ‘The Rusty Email’…

After reading the entirety of Promojam’s handbook, you should have all the tools necessary to turn yourself into the life of the party. Instead of being the person who brings up their cat pictures when talking about social media, become the one who points and snickers at the rube who still uses MySpace.

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Twitter Experiments With Personalized User Suggestions

WebProNews — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:24:57 +0000

Twitter announced that it is conducting some personalization experiments for users. Specifically, Twitter is trying to tailor user suggestions (suggestions for people to follow) to people’s specific interests.

“These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem,” explains Twitter’s Growth and International Director, Othman Laraki. “We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites. By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.”

Apparently this is only the first in a series of experiments Twitter intends to run.

Twitter will show new users a list of suggested accounts on one side of the screen, and a timeline of tweets from those accounts on the other:

For current users, the experiment comes in the “Who to Follow” section:

If you don’t want Twitter to track your habits to personalize your suggestions, you can turn the feature off.

“As the Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, Ed Felten, mentioned earlier today, we support Do Not Track (DNT), which is reflected in our privacy policy as one of the ways you can indicate your preference,” says Laraki. “If you have DNT enabled in your browser settings, we will not collect the information that enables this feature, so you won’t see any tailored suggestions. We hope that our support of DNT highlights its importance as a privacy tool for consumers and creates even more interest and wider adoption across the web.”

Follow @twitter Twitter
@twitter The Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, Ed Felten, just mentioned Twitter now supports Do Not Track. We applaud the FTC’s leadership on DNT.
5 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
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Google Launches Knowledge Graph, ‘First Step in Next Generation Search’

TechGirl — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:40:02 +0000

Three new Google Search features are part of their “next generation search” project, Knowledge Graph. Info boxes, segmented results based on query context and suggestions based on popular queries negate the need to even click off the SERP for info.

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Wajam: We Do Bing Social Better Than Bing

WebProNews — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:11:23 +0000

Wajam recently released a new and improved version of its browser add-on that brings a more social experience to Google. The company has now released the counterpart for Bing and Yahoo.

Since Wajam released the Google version, of course, Bing has unveiled its own major social overhaul. Wajam thinks it can do it better though. The company put together the following video and chart showing the differences:

It’s interesting to see Wajam get the edge on product recommendations, given that Bing has always touted shopping as one of its highlights. Of course, if you use Bing’s regular search and search for products, Bing will still show the social bar, with Facebook likes, and Twitter results if applicable.

The new Wajam is currently rolling out for Yahoo and Bing.

For more on Bing’s new features, read here.

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Mobile Sites: Choosing an Implementation Process & Strategies

TechGirl — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:40:02 +0000

No matter your approach, the mobile landscape is a tricky, expansive space of uncertainty filled with twists and turns that would give even the most solid minded developer or site owner points to pause. Here’s a guide to help you go mobile.

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Why Your SEO & Social Strategy Should Include Pinterest

TechGirl — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:20:03 +0000

You don’t have to be a lifestyle-type site to win on Pinterest, you merely need to make your brand fun and create interesting, shareable images. Pinterest offers other benefits, including social links generated from content shared on Pinterest.

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Google NSA Relationship Secrecy Continues Despite Courts Efforts

TechGirl — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:20:10 +0000

Google and the National Security Agency’s possibly secret relationship will remain secret. The Federal Appeals Court has upheld the NSA’s decision not to release information confirming or denying if they have a relationship with Google.

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Knowledge Graph Reduces Google’s Dependence On Keywords

WebProNews — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:40:02 +0000

Earlier this month, we looked at Google’s big list of algorithm changes from April. One of those, referred to as Bi02sw41, indicated that Google may have reduced its dependence on keywords.

Today, Google announced the Knowledge Graph, which Google is saying makes it smarter at determining what people mean when they’re searching for things. More on the Knowledge Graph here. It also comes in mobile.

Google is indicating that this is a step away from keywords. In the official announcement, SVP, Engineering, Amit Singhal, says:

Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words.

But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.

Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, tweeted about the feature:

Follow @mattcutts Matt Cutts
@mattcutts Big search news: http://t.co/ZMiB88BV Moving from keywords toward knowledge of real-world entities and their relationships.
23 minutes ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto
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On Google+, Cutts said, “Google just announced its Knowledge Graph. It’s another step away from raw keywords (without knowing what those words really mean) toward understanding things in the real-world and how they relate to each other. The knowledge graph improves our ability to understand the intent of a query so we can give better answers and search results.”

Keywords have, of course, been a major point of spam, which Google is working hard to eliminate (see Penguin update). The less Google can rely on keywords to deliver relevant results, the less susceptible to spam it should be.

I don’t think the Knowledge Graph has done anything to diminish the value of using relevant keywords in your content, and it doesn’t seem to affect the regular, organic web results, but who knows if this will change somewhere down the line.

It is interesting to see Google continue to clutter up its search results pages, given that its clean design was one of the big differentiators of the search engine in its early days.

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Ford Retains Confidence in Facebook Ads as GM Quits

TechGirl — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:20:02 +0000

Automaker tells ClickZ it will continue advertising on the social site. While General Motors may halt Facebook advertising, according to a Wall Street Journal story today, Ford has a different attitude toward paid promotions on the social site.

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Life After Google Penguin – Going Beyond the Name

TechGirl — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Don’t try too hard to look for dates and names of updates. Rather, look more to the effects as Google’s algorithm evolves so you can adapt accordingly. What really matters is that Google is looking harder at link spam now, so you should be too.

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7 Time-Saving Google Analytics Custom Reports

TechGirl — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:20:03 +0000

The right Custom Reports can be incredible time savers. Instead of spending time digging around for important metrics, you can find what you need separated neatly into columns for some analysis that will lead to some actionable insight.

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Piwik Open Source Analytics: A Primer

TechGirl — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:40:02 +0000

With a focus on privacy and keeping data safe, Piwik is a web analytics package that aims to be a free software alternative to Google Analytics. Here are some of Piwik’s features and how it compares to other top-billing analytics packages.

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Google: Personalized Search Results Are Lifting Clickthrough Rates

WebProNews — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:00:03 +0000

Google launched Search Plus Your World earlier this year. Most Google users probably just know it as Google filling their results with a lot more results based on social connections. A lot of users complained about it, but Google appears to consider the whole thing a success (not unlike the Penguin update).

Google Fellow Amit Singhal spoke at SMX London this morning, and talked about the feature, and search personalization in general.

Daniel Waisberg at SMX sister site Search Engine Land liveblogged Singhal’s on-stage discussion with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. Singhal indicated that the SPYW is actually increasing search result clicks, and that the filter bubble is not much of an issue. From Waisberg’s liveblog:

Amit says the key motivation behind Search Plus Your World is to have a secured search, it is the first baby step to achieve Google’s dream, and data shows that Google users like the personal results. It also gives the user one click removal from their personalized results. Google is currently analyzing and improving their personalization engine.
Chris mentions that personalization can be narrowing, as it gives people the same results and they do not discover new things. Amit answers that there should be different points of views in any search results, and Google is aware of that and they balance between personalized and non-personalized results.

Danny mentions a Pew research that concluded that people do not want personalization. Amit says “I am a scientist, when I look at researches I look at how the question was asked.” He discussed the specific research, and said that personalization is valuable for Google users. Danny asks: can you tell what percentage of personalized searches are clicked? Amit says people are clicking more than before on searches and it is lifting CTR from search pages. Chris mentions Bing Social efforts and how it is different from Google’s. Amit says: “the key challenge with personalization is that no one can judge a personalized search for someone else.” That’s why Google looks at the data about how users like their results. Search Plus Your World is the same approach as Universal Search, people have to find what they intend to find on their results.

Bing, as you may know, unveiled a big redesign last week, which appears to be the search engine’s answer to Google’s SPYW personalized results. Bing, of course, has data from Facebook and Twitter, which Google doesn’t, which should be one of Bing’s biggest selling points, if you care about social results.

There hasn’t been much indicating that Google will be gaining access to the Facebook and Twitter data anytime soon. The subject was mentioned briefly during the SMX London discussion. Waisberg liveblogs: “Danny mentions the integration Bing did with Twitter and Facebook, and how this might be good for users. Will Google do that in the future? Amit said that their contract with Twitter expired. Google cannot add Twitter and Facebook right now as their information is hidden behind a wall. It has been tough to build an integration in this terms.”

Google’s lack of this data is extremely evident at times – particularly the lack of realtime search when big, breaking events are happening.

The good news is that at least Twitter and Google are talking frequently. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was recently quoted as saying, “We continue to talk to Google frequently and on an ongoing basis. They are a company that’s doing several different things right now. Those conversations have a complexity to them that is different than our conversations with the company.”

Who knows where these talks may one day lead.

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