In Part One, we focused on how to make your brand findable and shareable in social media. A white paper by Gigya validates the shift to, and resulting importance of, social search and its dependence on crowd participation. Online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks. With the advent of social feeds — a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter — consumers can more easily rely on trusted…
Search and Rescue: How to Become Findable and Shareable in Social Media
Search isn’t an isolated experience. The act of looking for information is now fused with validation, which means the socialization of search will unite discovery with context and relationships. It all begins with where we purposely search for relevant content and also where we respond to interesting information that crosses our path. ComScore‘s most recent search engine ranking report offers new insight that will make us rethink how we publish content, increase its findability, and facilitate sharing. In comparing February…
SXSW Was a Tweet Success: Analyzing 2009-2010 Activity and Sentiment on Twitter
As you may or may not know, I am, among many other things, a contributing data analyst at PeopleBrowsr, a leading provider of social search and conversation mining tools and services. While PeopleBrowsr receives the activity feeds of many prominent social networks, among the most fascinating to analyze, is of course, the real-time micro conversations that populate Twitter and the passionate people who tweet towards significance. In the past, we gawked at Twitter’s Most Engaging Celebrities and also boarded Twitter’s…
A Prediction: Twitter to Predict the Future
Trending topics reveal much more than the objects that captivate the hearts, minds, and keyboards of Twitter users around the world. Twitter’s trends is a cultural mirror that reflects the state of attention and intention. And as such, Tweets then offer an MRI that visualizes the minds of consumers and more importantly, serve as a crystal ball that reveals the future of products and services before and soon after they’re released. For the most part, however, the vast amount of…
Social Networks are Touchpoints for Customer Acquisition and Retention
Touchpoints serve as the point of contact between a buyer and a seller. As the race to socialize commerce escalates, these touchpoints represent the nodes that define the human network, connecting people across the social Web and uniting them around common interests, themes, and movements. While the technology to connect buyers and sellers on the social Web is universal, the architecture for true engagement is antiquated. Customers are flocking to the social web to not only connect with friends, family,…
Twitter Writes Its Own Success Stories
In January 2010, nearly 75 million people visited Twitter according to comScore. While that number seems remarkable, it represents only a fraction of what’s realistically attainable. I believe that Twitter’s growth, to date, is hindered not by its ambition nor potential, but by the company’s ongoing focus on competing priorities rather than showcasing how users can effectively communicate and excel on this unique platform. But that’s all about to change… Every day, millions of potential people are introduced to Twitter…
Q&A: Personal vs. Professional Branding in Social Media
Dan Schwabel is not only a personal branding expert, he’s someone I’ve come to know and respect over the years…and definitely someone I consider a friend. We recently sat down to discuss Engage and the resulting interaction culminated in a wonderful discussion that explored the state of professional and personal branding in the era of new media. How do you define “Engage” and do you believe that people and business that fail to engage will cease to exist in the…
Twitter Gets an Extreme Home Makeover with Release of New Home Page
In July 2009, Twitter debuted a new home page to appeal to the early market majority who were suddenly introduced to the popular microblog, but not quite sure what to make of it. Version 2.0 of the home page spotlighted popular themes and conversations through trending topics and real-time search to lure new users into the service through context rather than technology. Almost nine months later, Twitter continues its race towards mainstream ubiquity with the release of a new home…
Redefining Viral Marketing
In September 2008 at Web 2.0 Expo in New York, I shared something that many, to this day, believe to the contrary, “There is no such thing as viral marketing.” The declaration was empathetic in its direction to those marketers who have been on the receiving end of directives instructing them to create and unleash viral content. In parallel, the statement was aimed at those decision makers who assign such projects. Content, no matter how brilliant, creative, abstract, or controversial,…
Twitter and Facebook: The New Tools of Productivity or Distraction
The argument is strong on either side of the case: do social networks increase or decrease productivity on the job? It’s a landmark case where the decision will ultimately determine the fate of business within respective online communities of influence. Perhaps however, it’s also a decision that we may never realize. On one side, the focus of employees and the output of their time and energy, is essential to the livelihood of the company that employs them. Unregulated distractions, especially…
