I was doing some searches today to see if anything was new and exciting with how Google was handling Social Search results and saw something in the Sponsored Links results that’s new to me.  I searched for Terralever (the online marketing company I work at) and one of the AdSense results was for another local company, bluemedia.

I haven’t seen Google Ads like this before.

These aren’t geotargeted Ads triggered by the keyword “Terralever.”  These ads are different.

Right above the top Ad there’s a heading that says “Related to bluemedia”.  That’s new to me.  I took a quick glance at the AdWords blog and didn’t see any mention of how “Related to” ads would show up.  A few Google searches later and I resigned to the fact that this must be a Google experiment as sometimes the Ads appear and sometimes they don’t.  But, there’s a bigger question here.

What’s making these ads show up?

The “Related to…” leads me to believe this is likely based on social ties between our two companies.  I can think of a few ways that Google could conclude that Terralever is related bluemedia: Our two companies follow each other on Twitter, individuals from each company link to one other on LinkedIn, each company is a Fan of the other’s Facebook Page, and so on.

Just one more reason to buy AdWords ads?

Either way, this example is pretty innocent.  We don’t compete for business with bluemedia.  We do, however, communicate and (occasionally) collaborate with competitors in our local community and beyond.  If this is a sign of a new trigger for Google displaying AdWords ads, should we tighten down our social ties, or jump in and advertise, too?  My guess, assuming this experiment goes live permanently, is that Google hopes we just buck up and buy some ads ourselves.

Following several clunky forays into social media, today Google has unveiled Google Buzz.

From the Official Google Blog:

Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve. We’ve recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.

So what’s your take?  Will Google Buzz make it in the mainstream, or have the front-runners Facebook and Twitter built up too much momentum?

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Back it up with comments!

I recently had the opportunity to sit on a Facebook Deep Dive panel which allowed me to think about Facebook looking forward into 2010. Here’s a few of my Facebook predictions for 2010 that I shared:

Facebook will go far beyond Facebook.com

Facebook interaction isn’t always on Facebook.com, and that trend will accelerate in 2010. While Facebook would love for you to spend all of your time on their site, they know that they can’t force that agenda, nor do they need to. Content and interactions between real individuals and brands are the bedrock of their value, and while page impressions help with advertising, capturing interaction data and building ubiquity is far more important.

Adding “Share” and “Become a Fan” links are a first step, but they are rudimentary. And, of the hundreds of thousands of sites leveraging Facebook Connect, most are merely scratching the surface. Expect to see progressive brands performing much deeper integrations in 2010 that better take advantage of Connect/Open Graph API, and in turn Facebook itself.

Facebook’s on-site search will evolve

Facebook has dabbled with their on-site search, but they haven’t done anything all that impressive. The promise of a true ‘social search’ where results are catered to the individual user is something that Facebook is uniquely qualified to provide. Facebook’s latest redesign (still not ‘live’ at the time of this posting) is a clear indication that search is something they will be giving heightened importance to.

How Facebook handles on-site search results of its own content as well as content from the greater web will evolve throughout 2010, creating both challenges and opportunities for marketers.  What Facebook delivers with search on their own site may very well be something completely abstract to how we understand search at present.

Facebook will do far more for local businesses

Businesses are flocking to Facebook – there are currently more than 700,000 local businesses with Pages. And, these local businesses are important to Facebook. Last year nearly 75% of Facebook’s TOTAL revenue came from local businesses and advertisers ($~229 Million). The rapid uptake in Facebook user mobile usage (currently 65M of their 350M active users) as well as the popularity of sites like Yelp present a further case for Facebook.

On search engines local continues to be a hot topic and area of rapid growth. Numbers vary, but depending on what data source you believe somewhere between 20% and 40% of all Internet searches today are local in nature. Expect Facebook to expand its offering and presentation of local businesses in ways that pay dividends to businesses that are active with Facebook’s various interaction points and have Fans that interact in-kind.

What predictions do you have for Facebook in 2010?

A good friend of mine asked me if I could recommend some good sites for social media marketing so he didn’t have to hunt around and try to figure out what was worth its salt and what wasn’t. Separating the wheat from the chaff is pretty challenging when you’re trying to learn about the topic you’re exploring.

If you’re looking for some reliable social media sources, here’s a few places to start:

• Chris Brogan – Chris Brogan is a fixture in the social media community who keeps a very active blog with insights, tips and strategies for leveraging social media.
• Social Media Explorer – Social Media Explorer is Jason Falls’ site.  Jason’s blog also provides valuable insights on social media, and features the perspective of other social media bloggers as well as his own.
• Convince and Convert – Convince and Convert is run by Jason Baer, an online marketing consultant, consultant adn trainer who specializes in social media marketing.  Jason teaches agencies and companies how to excel at social media marketing, and his blog provides fresh, valuable insights (without the consulting fee).
• Read Write Web – Likely the most trafficked site of the five, Read Write Web publishes on a variety of topics, and social media marketing is a more-than-recurring topic.  They’ve been at it since 2003, and the site is updated at a furious pace.
• Social Media Today – Social Media Today aggregates information from various bloggers covering social media topics and publishes the ones they deem worthy of their readership.  I’d recommend this as a good way to get advice from a variety of bloggers while being confident that the content is being reviewed by a human that green lights it before you read it.

There’s plenty more out there; I just wanted to provide a few for a friend in need.  If you have a favorite which didn’t make the cut give it a shout below.

Photograph by Birger Hartung

If you’re a business and you’re leveraging Twitter, or, if you’re looking for businesses that are using Twitter here’s three twitter directories to check out:

• twibs
• Twellow
• twtBiz

twibs

What’s twibs?  Accorinding to the source, it was created with one purpose: “Give twitter users a place to find businesses online.”  Fair enough.  The directory currently (at the time of this writing) is a couple of hundred businesses shy of being thirteen thousand strong.  If you don’t want to fight your way to the top, or have ulterior motives twibs also offers advertising in the form of page sponsorship.  Listing is free.  Get listed on twibs.

Twellow

If you’ve heard of only one Twitter business directory, it’s likely Twellow.  The tagline reads “The Twitter Yellow Pages,” and their homepage is reminiscent of just that.  The directory is clearly meant to be surfed by category (or searched).  If you’re looking for volume, go to Twellow.  I poked my head into the first category, Aerospace and Aviation, and there were almost a thousand people in that category.  I did a quick search on “online marketing” and it returned over four thousand results. Something tells me they’ve got twibs’ user base covered in spades. Learn more over at Twellow.

twtBiz

The final in the roundup today is twtBiz.  Their tagline/angle has a bit more of a startup flair to it: “Find businesses, entrepreneurs and investors on Twitter!”  If you’re looking to add your business, you’re in luck; I think twtBiz has the same intention.  Landing on their homepage you’re offered a search box to search their twitter business directory.  Right below it: not a link to, but the form to add your business.  Have multiple twitter accounts for your business, such as several employees who all twitter, twtBiz has you covered in that situation, too.  Visit twtBiz.

Any other Twitter business directories out there?

If you’re in Arizona and would like some insight into your web presence, stop by the SEMPO AZ October meeting.  I’ll be sitting in on a panel for their monthly event entitled “Search and Social Media Clinic.”

The panel will be reviewing several web sites, including those submitted by the audience, and providing guidance on search and social marketing as well as site usability.

The event will be held at SkySong in Scottsdale on October 8th from 6pm to 8pm.  For more information on the event, visit the posting on the SEMPO AZ web site.

For more information on what SEMPO AZ has to offer, contact Jason Ferrara (jferrara[at]sempoaz.org) or visit the SEMPO AZ web site.

I know two places: Sphinn and gooruze. Both are created by online marketers for online marketers. Sphinn takes a Digg-like approach whereas gooruze takes a more social route. If you’re in the industry, both are worth a look.

My gooruze page: smcandrew.gooruze.com
My Sphinn profile: smcandrew on Sphinn

Following Monday’s State of the Union Address, both Time Magazine and Slate posted an analysis of its content on their site.  Time bunted; Slate swung for the fences.

Time’s visualization went with a view which scaled the size of the words in proportion to their frequency.  Think tag cloud.  The basic visualization technique was posted under the heading “State of the Union by the Numbers”.  Yawn.

With a simple explanation of how the technique works, a teenager could whip this out with a steno pad and a pencil.  The hardest part would be making it through the whole speech.  Reporting.  Not analysis.

Slate Magazine took a very different approach.  And they knew their results were in a different neighborhood than what Time and others were up to.  Slate’s work-up relied on the slick natural-language processing algorithms baked into Crawdad Technologies’ software.  A bit different than a simple counting exercise.  An excerpt from the Slate article (A Computer Reads the State of the Union):

By natural-language-processing standards, simply counting the frequency of words is unthinkably primitive. As computers get better at understanding the structure of sentences—think about that corrugated green line under a sentence in Microsoft Word reminding you to avoid the passive voice—they can do a much more thorough job reading political speeches and offering their insights.

Needless to say, Slate’s experiment is just a bit more interesting.  Looking at not only last night’s State of the Union, but all of Bush’s Presidential addresses, the software identified “four distinct voices” during his time in the White House:

1. “Domestic Bush” – 2001
2. “Security Bush” – 2002, 2003
3. “Visionary Bush” – 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
4. “Legacy Bush” – 2008

The table below provides further insight.

For another example of their technology in action, visit the Wonkosphere, currently tracking buzz online surrounding the 2008 Presidential race.  Learn more about Crawdad Technologies and their software at their web site, crawdadtech.com.

What does this have to do with online marketing?  Good natural-language processing technology is a Swiss Army knife for measuring buzz—and its tone—online.  Before stumbling across Crawdad I had planned to post about a few companies I’ve been interested in whose offerings cater to online marketers.  As with Crawdad’s Wonkosphere, these solutions focus on monitoring social media outlets.  A few of those companies: Nielsen (BuzzMetrics), Radian6 and Relevant Noise.

Marketers spend great amounts of time and large sums of money ensuring their brand is perceived in the correct light.  Surprisingly, few practice any type of reputation management online.

If you aren’t familiar with it, online reputation management involves being aware of, and participating in, the perception of one’s brand online.  Three factors which have propelled online reputation management to the forefront of digital marketers’ minds:

1. The power of search engines as an efficient way to research companies, their products and services
2. Search engine’s affinity for user generated content, and
3. The increasing amount of confidence consumers pus on the opinion voiced by other consumers, whether they know them or not.

The power of consumer opinion

While the first two points above are largely accepted, the third—the amount of confidence consumer put in the opinion of other consumers online—is both powerful and highly relevant.  An October 2007 Nielsen survey (Trust in Advertising – a global Nielsen consumer report) concludes that “consumers around the world still place their highest levels of trust in other consumers.”  Included in the studies breadth of platforms and sources were:

• Ads before movies
• Brand Sponsorship
• Brand websites
• Consumer options posted online
• Email [the consumer] signed up for
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Online banner ads
• Radio
• Recommendations from consumers
• Search engine ads
• Text ads on mobile phones
• TV

“Recommendations from consumers” topped the survey with 78% of respondents indicating “they trusted – either completely or somewhat – the recommendation of other consumers.”  How all platforms and sources fared can be seen in the chart below.

Clearly monitoring how your brand is being perceived (and participating in that perception) is valuable to any organization. Depending on your need, online reputation management can be handled in house or a digital marketing firm can be engaged.