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By Neptune Moon, February 25, 2011 10:27 am

Search engines are going social – at least in the results you might see. Both Google and Bing have recently announced changes to their search results algorithms that will start to include “social” results. What are social results and what does this mean for you SEO and social media strategy?

Both sites describe social results as including links that have been publicly liked, shared or commented on by people in your social networks. What does this mean in a practical sense? For some searches, it won’t impact your results at all and for others, you will start to see links endorsed by friends throughout the search results for your queries. Both Google and Bing are banking on the idea that knowing what your friends like is valuable data in your decision-making process. Looking for a restaurant for dinner this weekend? Now you can see more links from your friends. Need a plumber or contractor? Now you can see who your friends like (and dislike) right in the search results.

I tried several searches myself and did not see any social results. I expect that this will change over time though.

So, what does this mean for your SEO and Social Media strategy? It is not completely clear at this point, but what does seem clear is that the convergence of your brand controlled web properties and social media activity will likely become even more intense as this type of search matures. We will be following this story as it develops so we can keep you up to date on the ever-changing social and search landscapes!

Have you noticed a difference in your search results? Let us know, we’d love to hear about your experiences.

Here are the announcements about this from:
Bing
Google

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By Neptune Moon, January 18, 2011 11:03 am

It is getting a little tedious writing about Facebook and its seemingly continual issues with protecting user data. The latest privacy issue to arise with Facebook is the news that the social networking giant this week, began allowing applications to have access to your physical address and your cell phone number. Just take a moment and let that sink in… Like with any application, you must grant it permission to access this information, but most users don’t understand what they are agreeing to when they grant an application access to their profile information. You do have the option to not allow access to this information, but the default is, if you grant an app access to your profile, it will have access to this information.

After a ton of coverage and serious concerns about user privacy, Facebook announced on Monday that they will temporarily suspend this service until the can “fine tune the way it works”.

I’m not sure why Facebook continues to move in this direction? Maybe they figure they’ve got enough users and enough marketshare that even if they are cavalier with users’ data people will complain, but won’t actually stop using their service. That seems shortsighted to me, but I suppose only time will tell.

What can you do if you don’t want apps to have access to this information? You could disallow access to this information when you grant an app access to your profile. Or, you could simply remove your address and cell phone information from your Facebook account all together. There is no reason for Facebook to have either piece of information, in my opinion. I’ve already commented on posting your birthday, as it is one of the key personal identifiers used to authenticate individuals. What do they ask you when you call your doctor’s office right after your name – date of birth.

Read the full story at about the program suspension at CNN.com. You can read more about the specifics of the new app permissions, in their previous form, at The Atlantic.

We will continue to follow this issue.

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By Neptune Moon, December 14, 2010 9:25 am

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released a study about Twitter usage last week and it is full of some very interesting stuff! The headline for the study on Pew’s web site is “8% of Online Americans Use Twitter”. Twitter promotes itself as having millions of users worldwide, but there has not been a lot of data available about who is using Twitter and how they are using it. It is a tool that many businesses and organizations are struggling to figure out how to use in a way that produces tangible results.

What else did the study show? A few other highlights include:

• The biggest age demographic for Twitter use is the 18-29 bracket
• Women are slightly more likely to use Twitter than men
• Urban populations are the heaviest Twitter users

The most interesting finding, I think, was this:

One-quarter of Twitter users check in multiple times per day for tweets from others, while one in five never check for new material on the site…

In the follow-up questions on those October surveys, we found that Twitter users are nearly equally divided between those who check the site on a daily basis (or multiple times per day) and those who check the site infrequently or never.

The study also found that the greatest number of posts were of a personal nature.

So what does this mean for your organization? It certainly raises some questions about Twitter users. I think there has been a tendency to think of Twitter users monolithically, which does not seem to be a smart approach. This study should remind us that all channels we use to communicate with our customers require specific strategies and may also require micro-strategies to reach different target audiences or achieve different engagement goals.

I’d encourage you to check out the full report on the Pew Research Center site – here.

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By Neptune Moon, October 18, 2010 3:09 pm

Not to pile it on Facebook – I know it has been a topic of a lot of my posts, but when news of privacy issues breaks, it just isn’t something I can ignore. Especially knowing how many people use Facebook and how few actually understand how it really works.

I’m not opposed to Facebook, in fact, I find it quite useful to keep up with friends and family who live in different time zones! But I do believe that I, and all users, should be in complete control of the information we decide to post on the site. I am of the belief that whatever you decide to post online, you should inherently understand that you have a lesser “expectation of privacy” (to borrow a Law & Order term!) than you would, say having a face to face conversation with someone. I think we all accept that in exchange for the connectivity these types of programs offer us.

But, when things are happening behind the scenes, without our knowledge or opt-in consent that shares or potentially compromises our information, that is where I think the line must be drawn.

So what’s this week’s issue? Apparently, many of the uber popular apps in Facebook have been capturing personally identifiable information or users and sometimes of their friends and storing it and/or providing it to third party companies. As usual, the Wall Street Journal has a fantastic article on the topic today:

“Apps” are pieces of software that let Facebook’s 500 million users play games or share common interests with one another. The Journal found that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook were transmitting users’ IDs to outside companies.

The apps, ranked by research company Inside Network Inc. (based on monthly users), include Zynga Game Network Inc.’s FarmVille, with 59 million users, and Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, also have been transmitting personal information about a user’s friends to outside companies.

Read the full article here.

To Facebook’s credit, they are taking this revelation very seriously and seem to be making moves to curtail the practice and disable apps that violate Facebook’s privacy terms. In the meantime, now, as always, be thoughtful about what you post online, even if you have your privacy settings set at the highest level. It is ultimately up to you to manage what is even available to a site like Facebook.

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By Neptune Moon, October 13, 2010 11:07 am

The Wall Street Journal has a fantastic series all about this topic – it is definitely worth the read.

The article that originally caught my eye was addressing the topic of data scraping and its pervasiveness. Most of us think that only some of what we might post online is vulnerable to being captured and attributed to us, right? Not so fast! We all know that Google has tons of information in its database about what we search for, and most of us don’t give it a second thought. We also all know that if you create an account with a web site, that company has your particulars.

But what about the stuff you post on a site behind a login, such as Facebook – that is private, right? You have complete control over who can see your postings through the site’s privacy settings… or do you? I’m not just picking on Facebook here, the data scraping is happening over the entire web. I’m using Facebook as an example because it is so widely used. Companies often engage services that help them to find information online about prospective employees, including “private” posts. The WSJ article highlighted a particular case where a marketing company was scraping a private patient discussion board.

Pretty unnerving stuff. I guess the old adage “never put anything into writing you wouldn’t want to have to admit to later” now goes a step further. Don’t post anything online that you don’t want to have to answer for later. To their credit, most web sites are actively mounting defenses against this type of scraping, but much like viruses, it is a constant game of catch up and innovation.

So what’s the bottom line? Most of us know that when we post something online, even if the site is “private” or password protected that there is always some risk of the data being accessed by unauthorized persons. In exchange for easy communication we have ceded some ground on the privacy front – it is a deal we are generally willing to make these days. But it is certainly worth thinking about…

Managing your online data and your online reputation gets more complicated by the day!

Access the WSJ section here.

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By Neptune Moon, August 19, 2010 5:15 pm

Facebook unveiled its new Places feature today. What does this feature do? Why should you care? How can you adjust your account settings?

What does this feature do?

Facebook Places is a geolocation or location-based functionality where you can “check in” via Facebook and let your friends (or the world) know where you are at any given moment. The functionality currently works with iPhones and can also be accessed with other smartphones via the web. Android and BlackBerry support is said to be coming soon.

Why should you care?

Not everyone wants others to literally know where they are – with GPS precision. There are the obvious safety issues to consider and it is probably not a great idea to tell the world you’re on vacation and exactly where – nothing like pointing a neon sign to your empty house! The feature is automatically enabled in your account, but if you don’t actively check in, your location probably won’t appear on your profile or in anyone else’s feed.

If you don’t want your location shared, ever, you should update your account’s privacy settings so that others cannot check you in.

How can you adjust your account settings to completely opt out?

Go to Accounts and choose Privacy Settings. In the list of settings you control, you’ll see a new one called Places I Check In. Click on the Customize Setting option. When you get to the next screen, in the Things I Share area you will see a choice for Places I Check In – choose the level of privacy you want. If you don’t want your location to ever be shown, choose Only Me from the options.

To make sure no one else can check you in either, you’ll need to change another setting. In the Things Others Share section, scroll down to the Friends Can Check Me In to Places option and disable it.

How much information you want to share about your real time, actual location is an individual choice. Just make sure you know how your settings are configured so that information you do not want to be shared remains private.

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By Neptune Moon, July 9, 2010 5:18 pm

Google Social Media + Lead Generation and you’ll find a wide variety of opinions on this topic. I’d like to suggest that can social media generate leads, is not even the best question to ask. A better question is how can we use social media to best support our business/organization and our customers?

There is an interesting article on just this topic over at the American Express OPEN Technology Forum “Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?” – read it here. In it, the author suggests that perhaps social media’s “job” isn’t so much to produce leads, but to allow companies to better or more strongly engage with their customers.

I tend to agree with this premise. I think there is an almost involuntary urge to try to make every technology fit in to an old school box about how to use it and what it does. That kind of thinking is a mistake. While those of you who have read posts here before know that I do believe selling is still about putting the right offer in front of the right person at the right time - with social media, we have a whole host of new tools to help accomplish this task.

Social media can do a lot of things, but expecting to setup a Twitter account, a Facebook business page and/or even a LinkedIn profile and then just have the leads flowing in, is a completely unrealistic view of how these tools work. In order to get benefit from them, you have to actively use them. And not just to post your sales information or press releases, but to actually talk to your customers and potential customers.

Social media has opened up brand new ways for people and businesses to communicate and engage with each other, it’s true. But it is important to understand what these tools can and cannot do and how to make them work for you.

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By Neptune Moon, June 24, 2010 9:15 am

There was a ruling in a major lawsuit between Google (owner of YouTube) and Viacom this week over copyright infringement. But the case is about more than simple copyright infringement in the video and online world – it brings up a much larger question. In today’s world where social media is bleeding into nearly all web entities, just who is ultimately responsible for what users post?

You can read more about the case itself here, but I think this is a really interesting question to consider. Google’s stance is basically that as long as they have a policy in place that specifically states that users may not post anything they don’t have the rights to post and if they take stuff down when notified by the copyright holder of an infringement, that is enough. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act states as much and was cited in the ruling.

But what about materials that are not copyright protected? What about user opinions or reviews that may cause damage to you or a third party? Where does the responsibility lie to monitor this type of posted material? As social media outlets continue to increase in usage and popularity, and as more and more sites add some type of commenting or user-based interactive elements to their web entities, this question will become increasingly important.

Having a clear Acceptable Use & Terms of Service policy is critical. Just as having a Privacy Policy is critical in protecting yourself if you collect any data from users, having a well thought out Acceptable Use & Terms of Service policy is a step you should not skip if you’re inviting users to comment and/or generate and post content. By having a clearly stated policy about what is permissible and what is not, you strengthen your ability to not only monitor, but also remove offensive, defamatory or otherwise problematic materials from your site(s).

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By Neptune Moon, June 21, 2010 10:51 am

It used to be that you only had to worry about your own web site(s) when it came to your online reputation… not so any more! Try doing a search for your business specifically or search for your type of business in your geographic area. You’ll likely be surprised by the results.

These days, search results returned include not only your web site and blog, but will often include a link to entities such as: Google Maps, Yelp.com, SuperPages.com, as well as many other locally or industry focused sites. Did you even know such things existed? Do you know if your business is listed?

These sites take it one step further too. They let people post reviews about your business, often with no verification that they are or were an actual customer of yours. To make matters even more complicated, people often wait weeks or months before posting a nasty review about your business. Good luck finding them to even try to rectify the issue!

So what is a business owner to do? Don’t we all have a million other things we’re already managing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis? How can you possibly get a grip on this brave new world? You can start by claiming your business on some of the major local web sites. If you have not claimed your business on Google, do it now! If you advertise in any of the yellow pages, make sure your online information is correct. If you serve the public, I’d recommend checking out Yelp and InsiderPages and see what, if anything people are saying.

Managing your online reputation is incredibly important. Especially today when more and more people are sharing their views and reviews via local web sites and social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Getting control starts with knowledge – find out where you’re already listed and claim your listings.

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By Neptune Moon, June 1, 2010 6:45 pm

So unless you’ve been living under a rock or in outer Mongolia for the past couple of years, you’ve probably found yourself wondering what the heck you should be doing to take part in this brave new world of social media to advance your career or business…

The prospect can really be quite overwhelming – which media to choose? How to choose? What to post? How often to post? How to interact with others? When not to engage with others? The questions can seem endless!

The good news is, that social media, like anything else is something you can figure out one step at a time. When you break it down into reasonable steps, it suddenly seems like an achievable goal. And don’t we all want to set achievable goals?!?

A few questions to get you started:

1. Who is my target audience?
2. Where do they spend the most time – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, etc.?
3. How much time do you have to commit to social media on a weekly basis?
4. Who in your organization will be responsible for keeping your presence up?
5. Who will develop your social media policies?

Developing and implementing a social media strategy takes time and effort, but beginning to think about these questions is a great place to start!