Alert Blog Reviews

Search marketers are always interested in local marketing and search. It’s where the rubber meets the road for many businesses including the enterprise (i.e. big box stores) whose real representation of their brand is the local store that someone goes into to buy products. If the local experience is bad then the brand is bad in many consumers’ eyes. So getting down to the local level is critical for marketers especially in the age of continuing social media adoption and influence. Now there is local and there is hyperlocal. Hyperlocal is just as it implies it is getting down to the street level for reporting of local news and events. Noted hyperlocal blogger Matt McGee of hyperlocalblogger.com says this Hyperlocal blogging is writing about the streets where you live. It’s blogging about local news, local events, local businesses — anything that’s happening in your hometown, city, street, or neighborhood. Hyperlocal blogs often talk about things that traditional media ignores, the stuff that’s too small or not important enough to a wide range of people. Well, it appears that what traditional media ignores the VC and M & A crowd are finding interesting. According to theDeal.com While newspapers have been decimated by the economics transforming today’s media industry, Web sites that report news and deliver other content at the neighborhood, or “hyperlocal,” level, are bursting with life, with many of them becoming sought-after targets by big media and big tech companies. It is getting harder to ignore the concentration on the local level that is becoming one of the most important elements for B2C and some B2B online business success. The sound and fury around the mobile market with Google and Apple squaring off is just as much about local search as it is a device. The mobile device and its growth is perfectly suited for the hyperlocal crowd for both creating content and consuming it as well. Chris Brogan talks today about how interesting it would be to be able to geotarget outbound tweets to make sure the local interest of a tweet is not shared across a larger group that don’t have any access or real concern for the data. If you want to judge how big this is by the money it attracts thedeal.com tells us …hyperlocal startups continued to get funded. In December, Outside.in Inc., which pulls together neighborhood blogs and other local content, announced it had closed a $7 million Series B round of funding, led by existing investor Union Square Ventures, with participation from new investor Turner Broadcasting System Inc. As part of Turner’s investment, CNN.com will use Outside.in’s aggregation and curation tools to power hyperlocal news across all of its sites. The new round brings Outside.in’s total raised to $12 million. And let’s not forget FourSquare’s growing success Over the summer, one of the most competitive early-stage fundings the VC industry saw all last year was that of FourSquare Labs Inc., which encourages people to share their whereabouts from local restaurants and businesses via their mobile phones. Union Square and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventureswon the honor of funding FourSquare’s $1.35 million Series A, announced in September, with Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter Inc. and the mobile payments startup Square, serving as an angel investor in Foursquare. How are you and your business addressing the hyperlocal craze? If you aren’t is your competition getting involved? It could be that in the very near future the first to find a hyperlocal hook into a market will be the winner.

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Hyperlocal Being Targeted by M&A and VC Crowd

It appears that not just the Year of Mobile is being christened this January but new competitive lines are being drawn as well between Internet giants Google and Apple. Yes, it’s time to officially deem Apple an Internet company in my opinion but you are always free to disagree. According to All Things Digital Apple is preparing to announce a purchase that virtually mirrors the acquisition made of AdMob by Google. Apple is ready to buy Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Apple had been in the mix for the AdMob deal but Google won that one. So as a result Apple and Quattro’s ad platform will be getting geared up to fight out the looming iPhone v. Droid device conflagration (great ‘over-the-top’ word, huh?) that could shape the future of how many people acquire information from the Internet. Quattro was already ID’d as a potential win as evidenced by investment and there are more players out there says All Things D: Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford (F), Disney (DIS) and the National Football League. Competitors in the space are many still, despite these big acquisitions, including Millenial Media and Jumptap, both of which are now clearly in play to other players from telcoms to other device makers to big Internet companies. So get ready for the battle that lies ahead. Who are you putting your money on?

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2010: The Year of Google v. Apple?

Bing is eyeing the biggest Internet market in the world—China. Still in beta in China, “Bee-ying” was launched back in June without the marketing push and fanfare enjoyed in the US. Reuters emailed questions to Microsoft today, and MSFT responded that they are “committed to the China market and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft.” China is a lucrative market that still remains untapped by most Western companies—especially in the search arena. As we reconfirmed just recently, Google is still a distant second in China to home-grown Baidu. Baidu reports their marketshare at 75%+ and Google’s a dismal 17%. Reuters reports from Analysys International that Google’s share is more like 30%, and Baidu’s at 63.9%. Either way, that’s nothing compared to Google’s dominance nearly everywhere else in the world. Whether its inadequate localization or just the home field headstart Baidu has, Google is struggling—and now Bing hopes to step in and succeed where Google has faltered. It’s little wonder that Google and Microsoft are salivating over this difficult market. With 350 million Internet users and a search market valued at 2B yuan ($293M) China is home to the world’s largest Internet market by users at more than 350 million. Of course, to compete in China means to bow to the Chinese government’s censorship requirements, a practice rife with controversy. Meanwhile, as Search Engine Land points out , Google is working on getting in with mobile companies with Mandarin voice search, the Google-friendly iPhone and the Google-based Android mobile OS. While there are already Windows-based mobile devices, Bing probably still has a long way to go to compete there. (Remember, too, that the mobile Internet is a far greater proportion of Internet usage in China than it is in the US.) What do you think? What would it take for Bing to succeed in China?

Excerpt from:
Bing/”Bee-ying” Eyeing China

In an informal survey it would be interesting to know how many of our readers that made it this far into the post use TweetDeck as their third party Twitter app. I for one do on the desktop and as my mobile Twitter app in an iPod Touch. Alas, the old Blackberry disconnect ends my ability to be a full fledged TweetDecker. Are you a TweetDeck user? If not what are your preferred third party Twitter apps. Just let us know for kicks. So why the interest in TweetDeck? Well, it looks like they are at least finding a way to generate some revenue. In the past the application provider has offered skins for their service for bands like Blink182 but now the film industry is getting on board. Mashable reports TweetDeck kicked off the series with a Warner Brothers partnership for the studio’s upcoming film version of Sherlock Holmes — the accompanying theme, “TweetDeck Telegram Co.,” is now available for download. While I suspect I am not the target market for these things it could be interesting to see just how this kind of promotional option pans out for Warner Brothers. It’s certainly worth a try right? If there is a chance to customize your TweetDeck and be tied into something that is important to you (even for a short time) I imagine there is a decent amount of TweetDeckers who could be takers. In the age of quality trumping quantity in marketing (finally!) it could be a good play if the price is right. TweetDeck says it will be partnering with record labels, bands, movie studios and other media companies to release more themes over the coming year……….Each will present a custom look and feel as well as a dedicated channel for the artist or film alongside the user’s existing TweetDeck columns. In the Sherlock Holmes theme, the dedicated channel features a window into the 221b game. So what’s your take on this kind of promotion? Is there something you would like to see from the folks at TweetDeck? Let’em know!

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Sherlock Holmes Uncovers TweetDeck Promo Potential

Well, since everybody rolled out the trends of 2009 at the beginning of December , there’s really nothing left to do this year but make predictions for next year, right? Forrester is going to kick us off with predictions for marketing in social media . Naturally, they see major growth coming in the SMM arena (which they call “social computing,” but I think that’s something different . . . ). In fact, they see 2010 as they year social media marketing reaches maturity, with marketers (and not just SMMs) focusing on measurement and even getting budgets. The rise of SMM will lead to more transparency and interactivity, Forrester predicts. And that will make SMM even more valuable to companies. Oh, and Twitter will reach profitability —or be acquired. Of course, all this won’t come without challenges. With much of social media still a highly fractured, siloed space, many marketers will have to prioritize various social networks—will they spend their time focusing on getting Twitter right or really interacting with Facebook fans? Meanwhile, they’ll also have to make sure their social media is ready for the mobile web. And of course, measurement continues to be a challenge. Says Forrester: Marketers don’t think they’re very good at measuring social media: On average, they rate their own efforts to measure social initiatives at 4.5 out of 10.3 And there’s no silver bullet — depending on marketers’ objectives and the technologies they’re using, any of dozens of different metrics could be appropriate. But one thing’s for sure: With the need for accountability rising, marketers can’t keep pretending that fans and followers are useful success metrics . In 2010, marketers will finally start to focus on the metrics that match their objectives — and metrics that their CMOs already know and trust. Forrester also explains how they can do this—just like we measure just about anything else. Set a goal, then figure out what metrics will help you meet that goal and track them. (Forrester notes that a lot of these metrics may be more intangible,” like brand awareness and likeability requiring “brand surveys, sentiment analysis, and Razorfish’s SIM score,” in addition to more traditional hard numbers in sales.) What do you think? What metrics are most important in your social media marketing? How do you track them?

Originally posted here:
Starting Up the Social Media Marketing Prediction Engine

Deloitte’s 2009 State of the Media Democracy report was released today. Unsurprisingly, it reports that TV has become more popular in the struggling economy (beating out other forms of entertainment). But the big news might be two of the “lesser” findings—about online recommendations and the mobile Internet. Online recommendations are becoming increasingly influential, especially compared with online advertising. Online advertising doesn’t stack up against its offline counterparts—83% of those surveyed cited TV advertising as having an impact on their buying decisions, but less than half mentioned online advertising among their top three. Even clicking through to another site has dropped from 72% to 59% over the last three years. (Only half would click more on more targeted ads, down from two-thirds last go round.) Online recommendations and reviews, on the other hand, are on the way up: Over half of all U.S. consumers and 69 percent of Millenials believe that online customer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising, and 51 percent have purchased products based on an online recommendation. In fact, 24 percent of U.S. consumers would like to have an online service that recommends a product based on other consumers’ preferences. Meanwhile, the mobile Internet is making great strides in separating the Internet from the perception of a desktop. Of those surveyed, a third used their phone as “an entertainment device” and nearly half (47%) of smart phone owners say their phone is one of their three “most valuable” media/entertainment products (up from 20% last year). 48% of those surveyed have data plans, and nearly all of them (88%) are using their phones to access the Internet. (The rest are paying too much .) Shopping is already making headway on the mobile Internet—15% have purchased something on their phones. Also popular: texting, online search, downloading apps and online GPS. Clearly, both of these findings show us how the Internet is spreading not only in influence but in accessibility. What do you think? How can better you use online recommendations to your or your clients’ advantages? Are you ready for the mobile Internet?

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Online Recommendations > Advertising

Let’s face it: nobody has the attention span to read more than 140 characters anymore. So WordPress’s latest effort— mobile microblogging cross posting to a regular blog —totally makes sense. Actually, it’s really not a bad shot. Based on an API interface, you can now cross post Twitter updates (with geotagging) to your WordPress account. And really, if all you have to say fits in 140 characters, that’s pretty cool. Of course, this also shows that WordPress’s tech team isn’t too worried about Twitter. And honestly, why should they be? Yeah, Twitter is popular and gets a lot of hype, but really, it serves a different purpose than full-sized blogs. Twitter is great for one-on-one, fast conversations (like public IM, I guess), and for interacting. It’s less great for . . . well, anything that takes more than 140 characters, for one. Interestingly, this capability also lets you read WordPress blogs you’re following—through Twitter. Of course, this uses teasers with links, rather than trying to abbreviate 400-word essays, tutorials or rants into 140 characters. All you need to do this is a Twitter client with custom API support. The official announcement from Matt Mullenweg includes a walkthrough on setting it up on the mobile client Tweetie 2. What do you think? Should WordPress be more worried about competition from Twitter, or is it better to go the all-inclusive route?

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Microblogging, Meet “Megablogging”: Post to WordPress via Twitter