Greetings Bloggers! I hope you are all staying cool in these extra toasty summer days.
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Everyone at Nowspeed is excited about our upcoming annual summer outing which will be held at a F1 Boston in Braintree on Thursday, August 2nd. While the level of car racing experience in the Nowspeed office varies quite a bit, we all hope that we can live up to the company name!
Our team has been busy pinning marketing, social media, infographics and other industry images on our Nowspeed Pinterest account. If you are on Pinterest, please visit our boards or if you’d like an invite to Pinterest simply email Mlynn@nowspeed.com and request an invite in the subject line.
In June, the Nowspeed team celebrated our 9th year in business! The team enjoyed a delicious Italian meal nearby, see picture below. To see more fun pictures of the Nowspeed team, please like our Facebook page.
Nowspeed’s Weekly Wrap-up of Company, Social Media, Marketing Strategy, PPC, SEO, Email, Creative and Website News: October 7th
Nowspeed and Client News
- Nowspeed Webinar: How to Advertise on Social Media on Thursday, October 20th
- HubCast was featured in Boston Business Journal and on NECN as one of the companies hoping to pick up the slack from the Post Office
- DMA Show in Boston: HubCast was there promoting their Cloud Printing Solution
Social Media and Marketing Strategy News
- Brian Solis Blog: Social Media Customer Service is a Failure! by Frank Eliason (Formerly @Comcastcares)
- Mashable: Google+ Now Lets You Lock Down Posts Before Publishing
- Marketing Profs: ‘Like’ Means Different Things to Different People
- Mashable: Why Richard Branson Always Makes Time for Social Media
- Dave Fleet: Three Ways To Wag The Long Tail Of Content
PPC, SEO, Search Marketing and Online Advertising News
- Search Engine Land: Google Tweaks AdWords To Give Landing Page Quality More Weight
- Search Engine Land: Mobile SEO & The Need For Descriptive Links
Email, Website, Design and Creative News
- Read Write Web: A Great User Experience: The Web Legacy of Steve Jobs
- ClickZ: Email Trends and Benchmarks: U.K. and U.S.
Are you interested in advertising on Social Media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter but not sure how to get started? Do you want to know which platform is the best for your business?
If this topics intrigues you at all, then you should definitely register for our upcoming Webinar on Social Media Advertising: How to Advertise on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Other Social Media Platforms.
By attending this Webinar, you will be able to answer the following questions:
- Should you consider other advertising platforms like YouTube, Foursquare, Meebo, Gowalla, Mylife and Tagged?
- How should you evaluate your current marketing objectives in order to choose the best social media advertising mix?
- How should you compare Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter advertising to your Google paid search efforts?
- How should you assess your social media advertising platform results and potentially redeploy your dollars?
Greetings Bloggers! Hope everyone’s week is going well. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz on the debate between GooglePlus and Facebook so I wanted to put my 2 cents on here as well. As we all know, Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site and Google is the world’s largest search engine, so it doesn’t surprise me that competition has become fierce as soon as Google came up with it’s unique (but strangely similar to Facebook) social networking site.
With Google+ features like: hangouts, circles, larger images for viewing, and huddles; I have to admit Google+ dominates. However, strangely enough I am seeing many “copy-cat” features from Facebook including: the overall design, stream aka news feed, and the plus button oddly replacing the like button. With these similarities and differences, I truly believe people will have to decide on one social networking site to devote majority of their time to- I mean, come on now, how many social networking sites can a person really manage? I have to admit I find myself logging on to twitter at least 10 times per day and Facebook could vary from 20 plus times-hey my job requires me to be on there!
With all this said, I feel that the ultimate decision of choosing one social site over the other will come down to rankings. As a Google AdWords Certified professional, I can understand the importance behind ranking high on specific search queries. If Google+ designs everything as they hoped, I do believe it will create winners and losers in the publishing world, making Google +1 buttons actually matter. Before that becomes a reality though, it will require an enormous increase in users. A report says that Google+ currently has about 20 Million Users- not bad considering they just recently became public, BUT they still have a long way to go to catch up to Facebook’s 800 Million Users.
In conclusion, Google+ is a bold and sensational attempt at social. There’s a reason why Google calls this a “project” rather than a “product” – they don’t want people to think of this as the final product, but as a constantly-evolving site as more and more great ideas are born. In the mean time, it doesn’t surprise me if Mark Zuckerberg feels like he is sitting on the hot seat as he continues to hear rumors of Google+ far surpassing FB potential. All in all, Google+ is a solid social networking site. But I’m not going to call it a Facebook killer or a game-changer, just yet. If only Google can persuade users to log-in every day, it will become a winner, hands down. In the mean time, however, Google will have to do even more to provide a truly compelling alternative to Facebook. In the time being, Google+ cannot compete with the king of social, but Google does not seem to be in a hurry to take on Mark Zuckerberg’s baby just yet.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment by clicking on the white bubble at the top right, I’d love to hear from you! Also, if this topic interests you- we will be having a Webinar on September 6th at 1 PM EST to discuss Google+ in more detail! More info on that to come! Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to chat there @Mish_Lynn
Signing out- Have a wonderful rest of your week!
Cheers,
Michelle
Target Uses Newspaper Ad and Social Media to Give Back to Communities
I’ve always thought highly of Target’s branding, but its cause-related marketing efforts are equally impressive to me. In fact, since 1946, according to the retailer’s website, “Target has given 5% of our income to the communities we serve. That adds up to over $3 million each and every week.”
Good for Target.
And good for the constituents on the receiving end of such largesse.
Yesterday, in a brilliant, big, double-page spread in The Boston Globe, Target saluted the moms among us (in honor of Mother’s Day) with a short letter (in which the words “more” and “less” were emphasized as a tie-in to the company’s tagline, “Expect More. Pay Less.”) that began as follows…
“Dear Mom, here’s a little more love for you.
Thanks for always being the rock of the family. The teacher. The hug-giver-outer. The first voice we reach for when the day is more than we think we can handle. For saying less when maybe you want to say more”….
If that wasn’t enough to capture readers’ attention, a powerful, “pay it forward”-like postscript was added to the letter…
“P.S. Let’s pass it on.
Mom, here’s one way for you to keep more happiness going: help Target give away $3 million to deserving charities (did you know Target gives this much every week?)”….
And the folks at Target even went so far as to leverage social media (something every brand, big or small, should be doing nowadays) by asking members of their audience to go to their Facebook Fan Page, where they could tell them “which of these ten charity partners we should give to the most.”
This campaign, which apparently is scheduled for a two-week run, has at least several things going for it…
*Timing. Target took advantage of Mother’s Day to command the attention of its audience of, well, moms. Perfect!
*Messaging. The ad I read in the Globe was very well written, striking just the right balance between personal, simple and clever.
*Socializing. By driving readers to Facebook, Target is building a community of like-minded constituents, each of whom has the potential to extend the company’s brand by sharing her ”vote” for charity with her own respective network of friends.
For a list of the ten charity partners Target is supporting in this campaign, and to cast your vote, go to http://www.facebook.com/Target.
For more social media strategies, check out our webinar, “How to Build your own Blog and Social Media Marketing Strategy”
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