websense

If you’ve read for very long, you know how I feel about the “next big thing” in search. I wait a while, usually assuming that the next big thing, won’t really be all that big a deal. I’m usually right about these things, of course. Now, social media is important, it plays a role and will continue to play a role in web marketing. For web marketing, it is the “next big thing”. But, in the case of search, specifically, I’m not ready to say the same. I think social matters, it’s important and we encourage our clients to utilize many aspects of social media. But, when it comes to search, I am still in the camp that says SEO is your bread and butter. It allows the people who want what you have to find and buy from you. Simple as that.

If you haven’t heard, Bing and Facebook are joining forces to provide users with a new kind of search result. Bing is going to use data from Facebook social signals (likes, shares, comments, etc.) from your friends to personalize your search results. They are comparing these signals to links in regular SEO. They want these social signals to create a sort of “PageRank” for evaluating the relevancy of your results, based on your friends online activities.

Bing’s social search project is interesting, no doubt. I’m curious to see how it pans out. From a search marketing standpoint, I think that really, the most useful thing to come out of it will be local results. So far, Bing can’t touch Google. Google is always going to be just a click away. Also, I don’t know about you, but I think most people aren’t going to find their friends online activities too relevant when they are researching how to fix their garbage disposal or hunting for the best deal on Jeep accessories, unless they happen to have a lot of plumbers or Jeep enthusiasts for friends. It will have a bigger impact when it comes to “googling” people, such as potential hires, finding event details, restaurants, doctors, dentists or other more local related information.

I’m gonna reserve judgment for now, it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out. If Bing could recruit some users, (which they might draw some curious folks with this new partnership) it would probably have greater impact, but for now I’m gonna guess that while it might be cool to mess around with, I don’t think a significant number of people will start using Bing simply because their Facebook friends activities will be reflected in the results. Either way, this will be interesting to watch.

This is just the beginning – as with any of these big changes, partnerships, improvement, it’s going to take a while to roll it all out, and by then they will have tweaked and changed a few things. This is not going to be the end of traditional search – the “Liked” results don’t change the regular results that Bing would provide, it adds your friends data, if there is any to your results page.

Lastly, I’d like to offer this thought – what about privacy? Facebook is notoriously bad about protecting privacy, and now they are dumping all of this data into a search engine. How much will really remain private? We all should know better by now than to put anything online unless you want the world to know about it – just sayin’ – and this makes that statement that much more relevant.

If you’d like more information, opinion, discussion on this new Bing/Facebook venture, check out the following sites:
http://searchengineland.com/bing-now-with-extra-facebook-see-what-your-friends-like-52848
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/10/13/social-search-links-are-dead-social-is-the-new-pagerank
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/facebook-and-microsoft-team-up-on-social-search/

Okay Folks, I’m getting ready to utter some words I am sure you don’t wanna hear. Are you ready? I know we are not quite at mid-October, but it is time to get ready for…the holidays. I’m sorry to say it out loud, but it’s time to start preparing for the next couple of crazy months, whether you have an e-commerce site, or have a web presence dedicated to your brick and mortar, it’s time to start planning for the end of the year. Yeah, already.

December and January can be challenging months for any business, but especially for small businesses that rely on other small businesses for monthly cash flow. (Here’s where I avoid a rant about the Bush tax cuts ending 1/1/11 – you’re welcome.) Many people go on vacation, throw parties, give bonuses and other cash consuming activities that may make it difficult for them to get all their bills paid. Fox News Business had a brief article last year that had some pretty good advice for surviving the holiday season that is still really relevant, even needs to be said, what with the coming tax changes (I’m done, I promise – for now.) I paraphrase:

No. 1. Make sure you are paying attention to any uncollected or outstanding bills. They can be a real drain on your cash flow.

No. 2. Assess and Reassess expenditures.
Holiday survival requires keeping close track of performance and expenses, such as materials, labor and sales.

No. 3. Keep your people in the loop.
Keep them informed on what is happening with your business, it’s in their best interest to know what’s going on, and they may have good suggestions for dealing with whatever end of year issues you may be experiencing.

No. 4. Show your customers a little love, spread the holiday cheer.
Offer discounts, free shipping, go a little crazy with excellent customer service. Impress upon your employees how important this is, and you’ll end 2010 with a bang!

No. 5. Hold an inventory blow-out sale BEFORE Christmas.
Old inventory has to go, so beat others to the January sales, and hold it now, before Christmas. You’ll catch folks with their wallets out, so give them the open box buys, year end clearances and scratch and dents they are looking for, and increase your cash flow now! Start now optimizing your product pages for your top selling items. Make sure your sale prices are clearly visible to your users.

Remember to make use of your social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to promote sales and clearances.

No. 6. Maximize your Web site to drive Internet sales.
Get your piece of the Web sales pie! Be sure to offer Web only specials, again using your social media to promote your sales.

No. 7. Keep as much cash on hand as possible. Plan ahead for the December/January slow down, and make sure you have cash ready to meet any demands that crop up during what is hopefully your busiest time. You don’t want to have to use credit if you don’t have to.

November/December/January are crazy months, and cash flow can be really tight, but the end of the year is also the time when many businesses make 40% of their yearly revenue, so early planning can be really advantageous. Now, go optimize those landing pages for your holiday sales. Give TKG a call if you need a hand.

If you’re a long time reader or client, friend, family member of TKG, you’ll probably remember Marvin. Marvin was the star of a couple of different ad campaigns in the past and he’s back. If you don’t remember him, I’d like to introduce you. Folks, I’d like you to meet the nephew, Marvin. Sitting next to him are some old guys in ties, and next to them is “The Artist” – you know him, the art major turned Web guy. TKG has a lot of fun with these guys, I hope you will too. Check them out on the Fox News Network.

Small business owners all over America are dreading the end of the Bush Tax Cuts when it takes effect on January 1. Last week Pres. Obama spent a little while in somebody’s back yard, and to his credit, apparently took some un-screened questions from attendees. I’m thinking he got a little more than he bargained for when he stood up to answer questions from David Greenspon, a small business owner who asked Obama to keep the Bush tax cuts. He made the statement that small businesses need the tax cuts kept in place and then went on to ask a question about China when Obama just cut him off. He then went on some spiel about how Greenspon was going on a tangent in left field, cutting him off and not answering the question.

This leads me, and I think many other small business owners, to feel that he doesn’t want to hear what we have to say. The president and congress passed a new small business initiative last week, creating additional loans for small businesses. Another mini-tarp. So, he’s going to loan us money to be able to pay his massive tax increases? Is that profitable for our economy in any way? Not to mention the fact that these loans from the government will come with all sorts of strings attached. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t want the federal government making any sort of decision for my company. They haven’t figured out how to do their jobs, I certainly don’t want to trust them with mine.

Small businesses need help. We are what is holding up the US economy. In some ways, those of us in NE Ohio are fortunate, as we seem to have hit a pretty hard bottom, but have been rebounding for about 10 months or so now. I know many businesses are just beginning to hire again. Small strides are being made. What’s going to happen to all the progress in January? I really, really hope it’s not all wasted.

I really wanna urge you to review your choices for the election in November. We have to be fiscally responsible right now, I think we would all agree that America is at a crossroads. A big part of the election will be determining which road we want to go down. Do we want to continue down the road to bigger government, higher taxes and greater governmental interference in our lives and businesses? Or do we want to pull back, trim the government and their taxes and interferences?

If you read my last post, you know that the power, both positive and destructive, of social media has been on my mind. As a web developer, I like to think I am a fairly cutting edge guy. Not so cutting edge that you fall off the ledge into the abyss – where none of our customers want to go – but enough to stay at the head of the game.

I recently came across a post on Mashable.com that seemed almost like an answer or follow up in some ways to my post about Price Chopper and how not to use social media. This article was centered on empowering your employees with social media. Giving them the freedom to handle customer issues using social media, reworking the way we network, advertise, address problems. I think this idea has a lot of merit. The ability to have TKG’s employees reach out the the public to address questions & concerns, publicize the company, events or products is really appealing. Think about it – we’re a web firm – all of the folks here either blog, tweet, use Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on, and most use a rather large combination of social media platforms. Think of the people we could reach on a minute by minute basis! On the other hand, I would want to make sure that everyone who was speaking for TKG was prepared to answer questions or know where to direct them when they didn’t have the answer. Unlike many other industries, the Group here are entirely too tech savvy, and would blend into this business model quite well.

You have to know by now, I am not one to jump immediately on any bandwagon, but social media has been around a little while now. It’s blending and integrating with both traditional advertising as well as SEO. Most companies are using a reasonable blend of these elements, but more and more, businesses are seeing the value of SEO and social media as the best value for their marketing budget. They are turning to the more targeted, more on topic versions of advertising found in the search industry, rather than the advertising to the masses of print ads.

The article I mentioned above is called How Businesses are Unleashing Their Employees’ Social Media Potential. I found it really interesting, and if you go read it, be sure to check out the comments. Some very interesting discussion going on over there. If you want a jumping off point, Mashable has another great post on some of the emerging social platforms for businesses.

If you really want to learn how to use social media to your business’ best advantage, head on over to TKG’s Breakfast Bootcamp page and send us an email – the classes are currently full, but we occasionally get a cancellation – and if we see a class with lots of interest, we might be persuaded to add another! After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.