Google and Personalized Search Results
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Over the past couple of years, Google has made changes to its search engine to personalize the results that it presents. For instance, Google rolled out changes in 2009 to start integrating a user’s social media data on the Results page.
Today, they have announced that they are making more changes to integrate search and social.
What Do The Changes Entail
A huge part of today’s announcement (which Google is labeling “Search, plus Your World”) involves utilizing capabilities of Google+. A person’s search results may now be affected by the Google+ data that they are connected with. This could include:
- People: Users may now see people that they may want to follow based on what they are searching for
- Pages: Search results may now display pages (or profiles) that are related to a specific topic or area of interest that someone may have searched on
- Photos and Posts: Google may now display photos and information from Google+ posts that you have access to within search results
How Can You Prepare for these Changes?
Google has announced that they will start rolling out these changes in the next few days.
Thus, there are things that you can do now to take advantage of them. Here are a few:
- If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
- Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
- Get on Google+!
- Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
- Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
- Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.
It certainly will be interesting to see how users adapt and benefit from these changes. If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality:
PMA@CES and the DIMA Conference
Vegas, here I come!
In a few days, I will be speaking at the 2012 Digital Imaging Marketing Association Conference (DIMA) in Las Vegas, NV. This event is associated with the big PMA@CES festivities as well. I recorded the brief video below to discuss what I’ll be talking about while I’m there.
If you’ll be attending too, please let me know! I’d love to meet up with you.
Click here for more information on the conference >>
A Holiday Card Worth Imitating
Alright, before get too far in this post, I must say this: I received a lot of Holiday cards this year. And I loved them all!
But I just want to take a moment to highlight one that stood out to me.
The Holiday eCard from Fabcom
FabCom is an interactive marketing agency. I love their company and their staff for many reasons. They are energetic, creative, and extremely hard-working. And, they use interlinkONE’s multi-channel marketing software to help them build, manage, execute, and measure marketing campaigns for their clients, which also gives them extra points in my book.
They sent an eCard to a number of employees here that combined a number of things that I like: personalization, humanizing a brand, and gift-giving.
Here is a screenshot of the email that they sent:
Within the email, they did a great job of including a human touch. As an agency, their people are among their most important assets. Thus, by exposing employees faces, they are helping to “open” themselves up to customers, prospects, and vendors. And of course, they did a great job of incorporating a humorous and seasonal touch.
The Landing Page
After clicking the link within the email, people were directed to a landing page. It incorporated video, personalized text, and information about the donation that they were making on the behalf of the individual the email was sent to.
Here is a screenshot of the landing page:
The Inspiration
When it comes to sending holiday cards, companies often have multiple goals. For one, they want to say Thank You to customers, prospects, vendors, industry leaders, friends, and others. But also, they want to do something that will help make an impression about their company on someone’s mind.
I think that Fabcom did a great job of this. They utilized multiple channels and medias to make the recipients feel special in a number of ways.
QR CODES IN THE WILD: DECEMBER 2011 EDITION
Each month we write tons of blog posts on QReateAndTrack.com about the QR Codes that we come across while we are out and about. This month like every other month, we saw plenty of creative ways that people are using QR Codes in their marketing efforts.
Below are some of the pieces that caught our attention over the past month. We hope that you enjoy them.
Salvation Army Donation
Victoria’s Secret
1-800-Flowers
YakTrax
PCC Natural Markets
Harry Potter
Disney
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Tags color, Design, disney, flowers, harry potter, Marketing, mobile, QR Codes, salvation army, style, wild Setting Social Media Goals for 2012
Did social media help you to grow your business in 2011?
We certainly hope so. But we also know that many companies may be wishing they could have experienced more success through that channel.
Of course, simply writing “succeed more” on our 2012 marketing plan will only take us so far. We need to establish more specific goals. What could those goals be? You may find some inspiration in the chart below from eMarketer:
If the items in that survey are ones that you’d like to accomplish in the near future, then your business will no doubt benefit if you do!
Here are a few tips on how you can do some of those successfully:
Development of a Clear Strategy
If you have ever seen John Foley, Jr. (my boss) speak about social media, I’m sure you would agree that he loves talking about the importance of strategy!
Some of the key items that John lists that need to be part of your social media strategy are:
- Define Your Business and Its Goals
- Clearly understand your target audience
- Identify “the one thing” that truly makes you unique
- And more…
If you’d like to learn more about how to successfully develop a clear strategy, check out this presentation from John Foley, Jr.
Executive Buy-In
If you happen to work at a company where folks from the management actively use social media, then this may not be a big problem for you.
However, this may not be the case. Not only will you need to show how social media is helping you accomplish the company’s business goals, but you may also need to spend time educating your management team about how key social media tools actually work!
By putting in the effort to clearly identify the what, why, and how, you may find that people’s buy-in may come a lot easier when you present them the results.
P.S. If you’d like a bit more help crossing social media goals off of your to-do list, I know some great folks at our sister company, Grow Socially, that can help.
