I wrote a post about social media monitoring last week and in the news today is a Chicago company that is suing one of their tenants for $50,000. This lawsuit is already making waves at popular social media news site- mashable. Within the first two hours of the story being posted their are about 900 people tweeting and 115 comments on the blog. The tenant Amanda Bonnen made a comment on her twitter about mold in her apartment. “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.” The reason this story is already grabbing the attention of the social media community is the fact that Horizon’s Jeffrey Michael is quoted in the Sun-Times as saying “The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that”, adding that Horizon has a good reputation to protect. Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet, he said: “We’re – Read the full article
Social media is the phenomenon of this century, and along with huge advances in mobile technology, the Internet has changed our lives beyond compare in an amazingly short time. The tipping point is approaching where more business will be done online (than offline), and companies will have to quickly adapt to these new markets or suffer the consequences. However, along with these vast new markets come some downsides. The free and almost instant communication social media brings means that good ideas can spread quickly – but conversely bad reviews can just as quickly spread and ruin a business. The anonymity it affords means that people are no longer afraid of saying what they think, or going over the top. In the leisure industry, prime examples are review sites, the biggest of which is undoubtedly TripAdvisor. There are few other sites that rely so heavily on good reviews for their continued business, so here are some interesting ideas adopted by some – Read the full article
A potential pitfall for many new Adwords advertising is simply the false pretense that Google’s default Adwords settings are in the best interest for all advertisers. That’s simply not the case. Here are a handful of tips that can take just minutes but provide a significant lift in your online advertising campaign performance. 1. Review your location and language settings Google defaults each new campaign to target theUnited StatesandCanada. If you don’t ship internationally, this is a clear opportunity to narrow your targeting. If you are a localized business serving a specific area there is further opportunity to narrow in your focus by targeting a specific state, city or even specific mile radius surrounding your business location. Advanced Tip* If you are targeting multiple countries, set up separate campaigns for each country. Each geographic area will perform differently due to variances in search behavior. Separate campaigns will provide you much deeper insight into each location’s performance and allow for smarter decisions – Read the full article
According to Greg Makuch, an 18-year proprietor of a Canadian hosting service web company, blogging has become a very important means of marketing products and services these days. Along with that, it is also effective for building your niche in the marketplace. Out of the many blogging platforms out there, WordPress has made a name for itself as being a very reliable and highly customizable means of creating an SEO-friendly blog. Here are some steps you can take to help improve your marketing endeavors with WordPress and increase the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts: Make sure that your meta information is correct for the best search engine optimization. WordPress is set to a default for meta titles that is not fully optimized for search engines. By downloading the All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress it is simple to customize all the meta titles so that they include the keywords you are marketing right up front. Be sure – Read the full article
There are tons of ways to get more followers on Twitter. Don’t believe us? Do a quick search on Google. Countless articles, blog posts, and presentations will show you how to do just that – and subsequently win support for your business and brand through the popular microblogging / social media service. But if you’re looking for unconventional ways to increase your Twitter follower count, it might not be worth your while to sift through so much online content, only to find the same tips and strategies. So we came up with this list, which we hope differentiates your Twitter social media marketing efforts from that of others – and will just as successfully prompt users to click that green Follow button. 1. Join tweetups. These face-to-face meetings between a local community of Twitter users can help you meet new contacts, find new partners and clients, establish your industry expertise, gain more followers, and say something without a 140-character limit. – Read the full article
It is no secret that Google has become a dominant influence in the way the Web is accessed and used. The word “Google” itself has become a verb, and people will often begin their web sessions with Google, even if they know the exact URL of the site they want to access. From E-mail to search to maps to shopping, Google dominates the Web experience of millions of Internet users. Google, however, is not just a passive player. The search engine giant extends its influence over every aspect of the Internet it touches and has aspirations to reshape the whole Web in its image. The purpose here is not to determine whether those goals are good or bad, but to highlight the many ways in which Google has already changed the web and what might be on the horizon over the next few years. Searching for Anything and Everything Google’s bread-and-butter is still search, and they have systematically nurtured their – Read the full article
If only we can search for restaurants, takeout menus, and food deliveries in the same easy, convenient, hassle-free way we can search for pretty much anything else on Google… Wait. Hold that thought. Because there is actually a way to do just that. Or ways, rather. Plural form. Search engines for restaurants? It is no longer just a possibility. It’s now a reality. It’s a pretty convenient reality, too. If you’re a customer, you’ll no longer have to keep calling the same old pizza place every Friday night. No more queuing up for half an hour at your favorite café, and no more getting frustrated by botched phone orders. Just click and eat. If you’re a restaurant, café, bakery, fast food company, florist, or caterer, then you’ll have a chance – unlike any other you’ve had – to leverage the Internet and tap into a new audience: people who stay in and look at your menu – not from the – Read the full article
These days, Twitter is synonymous not only with communication and sharing but also with doing so while on the move. If you need an application to make your Twitter experience more mobile then you won’t have to look too far to find one. Here are 9 Twitter applications to make your life a little – and your business – easier and a lot more fun. Twitpic has become one of the most popular and downloaded apps for mobile phones. Just like the online version, the Twitpic app allows you to easily send images from your phone to Twitter. If that isn’t enough, Twitpic has a bunch of Twitter clients, too (for example, TweetDeck, which has TwitPic integration functionality). Just take a picture (or use your gallery images) and you can upload it to Twitter in an instant. Definitely worth the small cost to download. While of the subject of TweetDeck, what better application is there than this to maintain your Twitter stream? This app – Read the full article
