Aardvark, an Awesome Wave and a Good Buzz

Google’s Social Revolution

Last week’s announcement of Google’s (relatively small) acquisition of Aardvark, the real-time social Q&A start-up, received a fair amount of buzz.  Which was on top of the abundant buzz generated by Google’s release of Google Buzz.  Which, of course, follows last year’s buzz about Google Wave.

Though Wave, a social collaboration tool, is kind of uber-geeky and not particularly intuitive, Google Buzz draws on a now well-known metaphor: the news feed.  And while it has generated some early heat around privacy issues, Google Buzz (in its most current form – they’ve been updating it nearly daily in response to user reactions) draws on your Gmail and chat contacts to form an instant social graph.  That graph enables you to stay connected with your contacts in much the same way you would via Facebook or Twitter (or, more accurately, FriendFeed before…

Social Media Marketing Part 2: Social Media Avenues

Or: What Goes Where?

In Part One of our Social Media Marketing Series, we covered the fundamentals.  What follows is a checklist of great social sites to leverage along with how to get it going and the content you can put into each spot:

If you haven’t done it already, create a Facebook Page for your business (type “Facebook Pages” into the search box when in your personal Facebook account page to find the section, and then click on the “+ Create Page” button to get started).  Once this is done, the obvious next step is to get people to become “Fans” of your business:

- Ask all of your friends and family

- Run a contest to past customers, complementary businesses, or local organizations to get some fans

- Offer a promotional rate to Facebook fans

- Promote your Page in your…

Google Social Search is Live

Social Graph Content in Search Results

Moving quickly to capitalize on its growing relationship with Twitter, Google is now publicly testing a new search feature called Social Search.  Available now via Google Labs, Social Search triangulates your contacts in your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you’re publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed), which Google calls your Social Circle, to find social media those folks may have produced that relates to your search query.

In a blog post at Google Labs, Google’s Matt Cutts says you should login and do a search:

If there’s relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your…

Bing, Google Add Tweets to Results

UPDATE (8:43 a.m. PDT): Microsoft has struck a deal with Facebook to include its news feed updates in Bing’s searches.  Bing powers search on Facebook.

Tweets from users on Twitter have hit the big-time: they’re now going to be featured in search results on Bing and Google.

For those geeks among you who follow news from places like Twitter, Google and Microsoft (maker of Bing) like I do (it’s not a particularly scintillating life I lead…), you were no doubt enthralled with yesterday’s unfolding events.

First there was this blog post by Biz Stone, Twitter’s chief:

…there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish…

Small Business Marketing Series: Basic Twitter Etiquette

Tips and Tricks for Top-Notch Tweeting

Set Up Your Account On Twitter Wisely. When you first set up your account, be sure to pick a user name that is easily / readily associated with your business.  At Yield Software we use “YieldSW” on Twitter and everywhere else.  If your business is named Kathy’s Kupcakes, choose “kathyskupcakes” as your user name.  (Hopefully that’s not a real business! If it is, I swear that was a random choice.)

Remember this formula: Followers = Social Capital; Social Capital = Success. You can begin to build followers by first uploading your address book to Twitter to discover who is already on Twitter.  Follow all those people.  They will get an email saying you’re now following them and will be given the opportunity to follow you in return.  Put a “follow me on Twitter”…

Small Business Marketing Series: To Tweet or Not to Tweet, Or Six Reasons Why Twitter is Good for Business

The Business Benefits of Twitter

On first blush, Twitter can look and feel like a complete waste of time.  Essentially you get 140 characters to say something to all the people who follow you.  And any cursory review of these updates – called tweets – will reveal many, many people who “lifecast”; that is, people use their 140 characters to give an update on what they’re doing or thinking or seeing in any given moment in time such as eating lunch or getting ready to board a plane.

So why would you want your business on a service that has a whole lot of people tweeting about the joys of a grilled cheese sandwich?  Because a deeper view into Twitter will reveal that the number of people using their 140 characters for more serious and helpful purposes are…

Small Business Marketing Series: 10 Tips, Tricks and Strategies for Effective Marketing Communications

Actively Engage Your Customers

Building a sustainable program of communications with your customers and your prospects is an important strategy for continually driving traffic, leads and / or sales. But I often hear from small business owners they just don’t have the time to do the necessary legwork to foster a multidimensional program.

The good news is technology and web-based services are changing so rapidly, there are lots of great ways to create multiple outbound communications that get the results you’re looking for without a huge investment of time or money.

What follows are ten tips, tricks and strategies for effectively communicating with your prospects and customers.

#1: Produce Once, Reuse Many. Many small business owners fall into the trap of believing every form of outbound communication must be wholly unique. While it may be important to adapt headlines and…