You might have noticed some movement on your search results today. This little scrolling news feed (screenshot below) is Google's answer to real-time search! What they have dubbed the "Latest Results" is a compilation of consumer generated content that streamed into the search results. Instead of going through the normal Google algorithm of indexing and evaluating content for popularity and relevancy, the "latest results" are pulled in as soon as they are published on the web. Google is of course doing a bit of filtering for obscenity and spammy content.

If you think about it, a big chunk of the "social" content (status updates, tweets, photos, comments, etc) out there is meant to be fleeting. It's relevant at the time, but may not be relevant 10 mins from now. For example, tweets about Ryan's ripped abs on So you Think You Can Dance made sense during his shirtless performance... but 10 mins later, he wasn't even on stage. For this reason, Google has historically ignored most of this social content when indexing. 

This whole idea of real-time search may sound familiar since Bing introduced it earlier this year. While it seemed cool at first, Bing's solution is about to get blown away by Google's. From the user's perspective, Google's real-time search is much easier to use. It's  integrated seamlessly into the results instead of on separate pages (like Bing is doing).  Google is also backed with tremendous reach and unparalleled technology. They'll be pulling content from more places than just FB and Twitter (like Bing is doing).

Why are search engines scrambling to find a real-time search solution? Well, this part I find most interesting. Because search behaviors are changing. Research has shown that users are searching the same query over and over again to see what has changed. Like monitoring stories, tv shows, sporting events, speeches, etc. This is much different than how search was originally intended to work - search for something, visit a site, leave search engine. This behavior points to an idea that real time search being used less as a utility and more as programming itself. Users are "watching" the feed for entertainment!

How does this change SEO? The search engines will still be indexing and evaluating content  as they always have. There will just be a new section carved out in the natural search results for the real-time content. We'll just have to be even more cognizant of the fact that the social web is front and center.

What about paid search? Since users are doing multiple searches on the same query, that  could present some fun sequential messaging opportunities for advertisers : )

Time Magazine has released their “50 Best Websites of 2009” list. After reading through the list, it’s clear that these sites exemplify the primary activities performed in today’s online world – sharing, learning and organizing. I’ve segmented the top 20 sites into these categories below.  However, I realized that a fourth segment is starting to emerge - sites that are replacing “old” forms of media. These sites represent a shift in behavior and provide online versions of activities that have been around for years (tv entertainment, shopping, phone calls, etc).

These online behaviors don’t really seem to be a huge surprise. We’ve all read about online holiday shopping being through the roof,  heard the news media talk on-and-on about Twitter, and watched real-time election coverage on Youtube and Facebook.  So what I find most interesting is that ....65% of these sites were NOT AROUND 5 YEARS AGO (I added some years below if you are interested). 

The rapid growth of technology coupled with the adoption by the consumers….that’s the amazing part.  Broadband has certainly played a huge part in this growth. Without a high-speed connection, sharing a video would be pretty much out of the question. To put things in perspective, take a look at this collection of screenshots from September 11, 2001. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but sites like CNN and MSNBC look archaic. The average American is just adopting a more digital lifestyle in general. It’s become mainstream which is feeding the technology growth and vice versa (a nice happy circle of life). Nytimes did a good job covering this topic a few weeks ago when they summarized Forrester’s annual update on consumers and technology.

Time's Top 20 of 2009 (full list in chronological order can be found on Time.com)

SHARING – Consumer generated content (photos, video, thoughts/text) broadcasted out or consumed by the masses as the ultimate reality entertainment.

• Flickr – Feb 2004
• YouTube – Feb 2005
• Vimeo – Nov 2004
• Twitter – April 2007

LEARNING - Information portals. Tools that make information available and searchable online.

• Google – Sept 1997
• Wolfram|Alpha – May 2009
• Academic Earth – March 2009
• California Coastline – Oct 2002

ORGANIZING - Bookmarks, Group blogs, aggregators – Sites that help consumers organize and filter the information on the web as they please. Customizable crowd sourcing per se.

• Delicious – March 2005
• Metafilter – Nov 2004
• popurls – March 2006
• Boing Boing – Jan 2000

REPLACING OLD MEDIA/BEHAVIORS -  Tv online, reservations online, phone calls online, classifieds online, shopping online, travel agents online, etc.

• Hulu – March 2008
• Fora TV - 2005
• OpenTable - 1999
• Skype – Aug 2003
• Shop Goodwill - 2009
• Amazon - 1995
• Kayak – Jan 2005
• Craiglook – March 2009 **Really smart…Mashes Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps into an RSS browser for Craigslist.
   

#40 on the list gets my honorable mention - Mint.com.  It’s the ultimate financial planning tool. It is linked in with online resources to keep your assets (and debts) up to date and generates pretty charts for you to analyze. Did I mention it’s free? Definitely worth checking out. Since they have  access to everyone’s financial details, they’ve been publishing some  interesting stats lately too. Such as this little widget - Mint Map: America’s Most Frugal Cities

Tracking the effectiveness of a social media campaign is challenging, yet critical. It's easy to see how big of an audience you've attracted by simply looking at how many followers, fans or blog post views you've accumulated.

But is your amassed audience actually listening? How much of your audience is actively participating in your conversation?

"Engagement" is defined differently according to the particular goals of each social media campaign, but here are a few general suggestions to think about. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully it will get you thinking of different ways to track the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

Blogs

• Comment to View Ratio: Divide the number of comments your latest post received by the number of views. Focus on increasing the percentage of viewers who are compelled to leave a comment.
• Trackbacks:  Trackbacks are a way of monitoring who is linking to your blog post. For a full explanation check out this Wikipedia entry. If your post is being linked to by a bunch of other bloggers, your content has been deemed useful.
• Drill into Analytics: Dive deep into your analytics tool. Is there a traffic spike from Facebook? Someone probably posted your blogpost there, an indication of engagement.

Twitter

• Clickthroughs: Some URL shorteners will track how many times your Tweeted link has been clicked. I use BudURL, which offers a bunch of statistics. This definitely helps you track active engaging.
• Responses to Questions: How many answers do you get from questions you pose on Twitter? This is very subjective, maybe your questions are very niche. Still though, conversation is two-way, so how many responses you get is much more indicative of participation than followers.
• Retweets: This is when one of your followers forwards your tweet to their followers. It looks like: RT@seanoakley. An easy way to track is just use twitter’s search, and enter RT@yourprofile.

Again, certainly not a comprehensive list. But hopefully it's given  you a few ideas on how to track engagement. Of course, once we've figured out how to track audience participation, the real goal is to increase it. I'll save that for a later post.

Have a way of tracking engagement I didn't mention above? We'd love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment.

Photo Credit: Tim Morgan on Flickr

Google announced this week that they have begun to show Google Profile results at the bottom of search results pages for US names.  Detailing the way it works in this post on their blog, Google is making it easier for you to control what people find when they Google your name. I mean, surely you've Googled your own name, right? 

Google has also started providing links on the results page to search for a name in popular social media sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc:

Google Profiles have been around for awhile. They are a simple, clean, one page summary you can edit about yourself. It's tied into your Google account, and the profile allows you to write a brief bio, link to all of your social accounts, show off pictures from your Picasa account, etc:

But while Google profiles have been around for awhile, giving profiles such visibility in search results is a new and meaningful development. Yes, the stated motivation for displaying your profile is to provide you with more control over your name's search results. But there has long been the question about Google's absence in the social networking scene. The social networking site Orkut is a Google project, but has really only taken off in Brazil. 

Profiles, along with the networking features in Reader, Picasa and other Google apps is definitely a move towards a social network. Giving profiles a prominent display on search results pages is obviously a move to spark more user adoption.

But beyond social networking, Google Profiles is really another step towards Google providing you a comprehensive online identity, which is what I believe is their ultimate goal.

Anyways, don't want to go too far off on a tangent. If you don't have a Googe Profile, you should set one up. It's painless and easy. Just do a google search for "me" and follow the instructions.

Being aware of what's showing up when employers, prospects and colleagues search for your name is an absolute must in today's world. And having more control over what's showing up when they do search for your name is an opportunity you do not want to pass up.

Yesterday morning an MTA bus crashed into the side of Brookshire Hotel Suites in downtown Baltimore. This story quickly made it's way around Baltimore, and of course, I heard about it first on Twitter. (Even before Facebook.)

When I heard the story being repeated on the evening news last night, it dawned on me exactly how slow traditional news is compared to the lightning speed of word of mouth on the internet.  I'd already heard and seen a picture of the event at 8am yesterday morning thanks to @davetroy and his own snapped picture of the event.

Blogs, which break news quickly, almost in real-time, have long applied pressure to traditional media. Well, Twitter and Facebook actually do break news in real-time, often with accompanying on the street pictures. This isn't some amazing revelation, it just really sunk in last night while I half-listened to the evening news rehash a story considered ancient in social media terms.

The internet is an incredibly dynamic, constantly flowing stream of information. Increasingly this stream is the first place people turn for news, knowledge, advice or anything else. And people are becoming more dependent on the on-demand availability of information. As marketers, it's important that we engage by helping people in their search for information.  

By adding value to the stream, you engage and create prospects, customers and relationships. By interrupting the stream with irrelevant messages or delivering self-centric promotions, you alienate people.

And never forget the lightning speed of online word of mouth. As a marketer, it can either be a powerful ally or relentless foe.

One last note - in trying to find an actual newspaper story about the bus crash to link to for this post, I googled "bus crash brookshire suites." The 4th search result was the very tweet from Dave Troy mentioned above. It ranked higher than news stories by wbal, wjz and abc2news. Once again illustrating how much the search engines love social media.

Hark, a new Internet acronym is born! What was once a facet of a solid SEO program is now being discussed as a major branch of Internet marketing in general.  Like SEO, SMO is the practice of publicizing your site and business online ... the difference is that SMO is not search engine-focused (although search engines (and other Google products) can and should play a significant role (and proper SMO could likely positively influence search engine rankings). Mainly, social media optimization requires brand and visibility-building via 3rd-party apps and content syndication. The idea is simple: Visibility yields popularity and popularity yields more visibility, so start today.

Some examples of SMO activities:

• Blogging or Journaling (You're reading one!) -- Your industry knowledge is valuable. While a spartan website can get by on an "about" page, product listings, and a contact form, going the extra mile and generating content is what end-users demand these days ... because end-users are want to talk about what you said on their blogs. In short, talk about what you know and people will follow it and spread it around.
• RSS and content syndication -- If there's any kind of content you can create on a regular basis (news, events, product listings, blog entries, etc.), syndicating that info via RSS or social tagging sites like ShareThis will allow fans to keep tabs on you (and link to you on short notice) and acquaintances to become fans.
• Embrace community -- Media sharing sites like Youtube.com, Flickr.com, and hundreds of big-name blogs can deliver traffic unlike anything you've seen before. But more than that they can help you craft your brand's personality if you can invest the time and spirit.
• Share links -- Much of blogging SMO boils down to sharing. If you have something to share, people will come to you. And people will be much more apt to pass your content around if they know you'll do the same for them.

Feel free to pick our brains on what social media opportunities might fit with your business.

Q: How can I monitor what people are saying about my brand online?

A: Good job thinking about this. Some businesses assume that a simple Google search for their company's brand name or a couple of keywords ranking well on various search engines are all they need to know about their standing in their industry. And, on the other hand, some folks are so daunted by the mere idea of the task, they ignore it all together. The truth is, if you're actively marketing yourself on the Internet, your company's profile is probably complex enough that just a few searches won't cover all your mentions. However, that does not mean you can't easily hack out a relatively simple system for occasionally monitoring news that's relevant to you and your industry.

Here's another tidy little list of general guidelines and specific tools:

• There be tools: Google Alerts is free. Use it to catch any keyword's appearances on Google News, Youtube, blogs, non-blog sites, and Google Groups. You can have it deliver updates to your email or create RSS feeds so that it doesn't buzz you absolutely crazy (we know this can happen from experience). Other services include "social" search engines such as www.socialmention.com (narrow down your blog searches), samepoint.com (social search with keyword analysis), www.serph.com (special attention to blogs), and Pipl (the definitive people search engine).
• Know thy terms: Whether you have products, models, actions, press release titles, ISBN numbers, public figures, partners, competitors, or your kids to keep track of, make use of keyword lists. Use synonyms. Get plural. Think hard.
• Set up reminders: If you set up alerts to shoot you emails, they'll let you know when you need to know. Otherwise, you should probably set up some calendar alarms so you check things out once a month. Handy with Excel? Track your progress. Make some goals; this week, two attaboys … next week, the World.
• Don't get crazy: Hey, it's just your identity, right?! But, whatever you hear, use common sense when dealing with it. If you find good things, share those links! If you find not-so-good things, learn from them and bury them with good press. And we were kidding about your kids. Don't search your kids. You probably don't want to know. Seriously, would you have wanted your parents to search you?

If you're lucky and you've put in a bit of effort, people are talking about your company. And, whether they're leaving happy notes, constructive criticism, or big, flaming bags of [woof] around the Internet, you need to know and you can find out. Enjoy! And, you know … if you want us to do all this for you and draft it up in pretty reports, we can do that.

We had our first interactive seminar on Social Media today, and the topic of Facebook of course came up. Despite the shifting demographics of the Facebook community, use of the site still remains a controversial topic. Specifically the perspective that some still have of Facebook as a pure time waster.

Now, my first instinct is to blame the time wasting, not Facebook. Facebook is merely a tool, a community, a place to connect. With or without Facebook, those prone to wasting time are still going to. IM, phone calls, texting, heck even just surfing the internet are all ways people can kill time at work. When I hear the time-wasting fear I always go back to one of my favorite exchanges from the classic movie, Office Space (made in 1999, long before Facebook):

Bob: So why don't you start by taking us through a typical day at work.

Peter: OK, Well, I usually come in about 15 minutes late, I come in through the side door so Lumburgh won't see me, then I just sort of space out for about an hour.

Bob: Space out?

Peter: Yeah, you know, just stare at the paper so it looks like I'm working. I just zone out. I do that after lunch too. In fact, I'd say I really only do about two to three hours of real work a week.

Well, Then What Does Facebook Really Offer Beyond Wasted Time?

I'm glad you asked. I'm taking off the marketing hat here, because there is a whole other discussion about the marketing power of Facebook. Here though, I'm focusing more on pure communications and relationships.

[More]

Sean Oakley, Team CM's resident Social Media guru, and the Advertising Association of Baltimore, have teamed-up to present the third installment in the Interactive Essentials series -“Social Media - Taking Part in the Conversation”

In this Lunch-n-Learn Session, you’ll learn the fundamentals of social media marketing, from identifying agency clients ripe for social media, to launching their first campaign and reporting the results to the Executive Board. After the program, enjoy lunch with your peers and presenters while participating in an open forum question and answer session.

Before we go out the masses, we want to offer seats to this event to our blog readers first. We're doing three sessions, each with only 12 seats, so space is very limited. The prior two seminars in the series sold out quickly, so act now if you're interested.

Here are the basics:

Dates
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Time
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM  Presentation
12:30 PM – 1:00 PM  Lunch, Q&A

Location
Congruent Media World HQ
Chesapeake Conference Room
Baltimore, MD

Seating
12 Account Executives from local agencies (limit 2 per agency)

Registration Fee
$40 AAB members / $60 non-members
Includes lunch from Di Pasquale's (they rock!) in Highlandtown, Est. 1914

Registration
Call (410) 534-6800 or email Sean@CongruentMedia.com

Click [Download] below for a rough PDF flier with an overview and agenda. It's not pretty (yet), but l wanted to get this posted quickly as seats are already filling-up.

We hope to see you there!

BudURL sticks out from the URL shortening crowd by adding some interesting tracking tools.Just like it's popular competitor TinyURL, BudURL allows you to easily shorten long URLs, enabling the use of links within confined posting spaces. 

Turn:

http://www.congruentmedia.com/pub/eNewsletter-Campaigns-and-HTML-Email 

into:

http://budurl.com/yn14