New Media & Advertising 2009

By Matthew Hunt | December 26, 2008

Gary Vaynerchuk as usual is spot on with how new media is going to roll out in 2009. If you are a small business owner, I highly recommend you listen to Gary in the video below. He offers real life experiences with ‘what works‘ and ‘what doesn’t work‘ when it comes to advertising for small businesses. Social media and social networking is here to stay, and you’ll want to get real good at using these online mediums for you business fast!

Topics: Advertising, Social Media | No Comments »

Gmail Voice & Video Chat Can Enhance Your Business

By Matthew Hunt | December 21, 2008

You can now talk face to face right in Gmail with free  high quality video and audio.  Watch the video below.  I think this can be a nice feature to offer your customers the ability to speak to someone in your company, particularly for those that are self-employed professionals. Accountants, lawyers, sales people, etc. This also would be a nice addition to your customer support. What do you think…?

You can read more about the new Gmail Voice & Video Chat at their blog.

Topics: gmail | 1 Comment »

Google Friend Connect is LIVE!

By Matthew Hunt | December 4, 2008

Yes, it has finally arrived!

Google Friend Connect is live and ready to be integrated into any website. It will be real interesting to see how this social networking application plays out. I am going to test it out and hopefully will have more to say about this new application. The cool thing about GFC is that it will allow static sites to become social. I am curious to see how GFC can penetrate into the masses. If this application takes off, it may be a great way for small business owners to get more social networking to take place on their site. I made a short intro video below on what the back end office looks like once you set-up Google Friend Connect.

Let me know in the comment section what you think Google Friend Connect will mean to internet marketing and don’t forget to join my GFC! :)

You May Also Like These Posts:

Google Friend Connect Now Open To All Websites

3 Ways To Utilize Google Friend Connect

Topics: Google Friend Connect, Social Networking, google | 2 Comments »

Twitter For Business

By Matthew Hunt | December 3, 2008

Tim O’Reilly recently wrote a post titled, Why I Love Twitter and his company OreillyMedia has recently posted a hour long webinar that explains Twitter and how it works and why it is a very powerful web property that all companies should want to be plugged into. With Twitter now having sent over 1 Billion messages, this is no surprise that more and more companies seem to coming on board to this micro-blogging platform.

Sarah Milstein shows in the video (below) how to use Twitter and other micro-messaging services.  She covers the the benefits and challenges of this exciting new medium, along with best practices and potential pitfalls you can avoid.

This new micro-blogging platform can help companies:

There is an hour’s worth of quality info in the video below, so grab a note pad & a pen to jot down your twitter notes. You can also follow the @TweetReport on Twitter.

You May Also Like These 2 Other Blog Posts on Twitter:

  1. 5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter
  2. How to Use Twitter as a Twool

Topics: Micro Blogging, Twitter, Twitter Marketing | No Comments »

Using Twellow to Network on Twitter

By Matthew Hunt | December 1, 2008

Learn how to find niche related people who are already on twitter through using Twellow. If you are going to follow people on twitter it only makes sense to follow those who are already interested in a similar businesses, right? Watch the Twitter video below and then tell us your favorite way to network with other people on twitter…? Oh! And you can follow me on twitter here: http://www.Twitter.com/MatthewSBOC

Another Post you Must Read if you want to become a Twitter Pro:

101 Ways to Rock and Be Rocked by Twitter by Shama Hyder. I printed this list off and have it now posted by my computer, to remind me of how to best use Twitter.

Topics: Micro Blogging, Twellow, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Grow Your Internet Social Networks and Watch Your Products Sell

By Matthew Hunt | November 24, 2008

Co-Author of “We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business“, Barry Libert, talks about the importance of community in todays corporate and small business world. “What is it that the small business owner can do to help their community?” That is the question that businesses want to ask themselves. This is the way to generate business in today’s market place.

When you do this “the community” will market your products and services for you. Watch the video below to learn how you can use these social networking strategies to help grow your local business.

Topics: Community | 1 Comment »

Google Friend Connect is Almost Here

By Matthew Hunt | November 22, 2008

It looks like Google Friend Connect is finally going to be released soon. Google seems to be on a social rampage, releasing all these new social features. Early it was the new Google voting features on the SERP’s and now it’s Google Friend Connect. Social networking has been around for some time and people have been participating with on on sites like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, etc., BUT “social networking” has not hit the masses yet. I think Google will be the company who will bring social networking to the masses. Between the new DIGG like features on the Google SERP’s to Google Friend Connect, soon the web will be one giant social network.

What does this mean for your small business…?

Well, it means every single person will be able to easily have a say on what they think of your business (online and offline components of your business). This may excite you or it may scare the pants off you - I leave that for you decide. Regardless, “social networking” and all it’s components are here to stay. I would recommend that if you are in business then you will want to learn these more about these social tools and learn how to use them to your advantage, even if it’s only protect your good name.

Google friend connect looks like an excellent tool that will enable you to create conversations with your community. You can easily take your static website and allow it to go social. This means more people engaging more deeply with your website — and with each other. This is what the search engines love and obviously people too, otherwise other social sites like FaceBook and YouTube wouldn’t be as popular as they are. It can be a great tool to help build fresh on going content and conversations about what your business focuses on. Depending on how you use it, it could be your websites best new friend - no pun intended!

Watch the video below and then leave a comment on what you think of the Google Friend Connect Tool.

Topics: Google Friend Connect, google | 1 Comment »

Google Voting - Google Goes Social

By Matthew Hunt | November 21, 2008

I should not even be writing this post right now because I am already so busy, but this is HUGE!

Many active SEO’ers and IM’ers have been blogging for some time now about Google going social and creating their own DIGG like features for the organic search results, but no one knew when it would be officially rolled out. This has been going on for almost a year now. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a post titled “Voting Experiment: Google Sneezed but Keep Your Pants On” last Nov 29th, 2007. We have all wondered when this was going to roll out, well…

IT’S HERE! Just look at the crazy conversations going on at twitter about this new Google voting feature.

Now the real games begin. According to Seth Godin in his article Google Get Jiggy states that “This is going to lead to an incredible rush by small businesses and social networkers. They’re going to go crazy trying to game the system.” I would imagine that he is right.

I even foresee, new marketing businesses being spawned from this new social tool on Google depending on the influence it has on the organic results. Just like how there are tons of companies who help marketers try to game the social sites with fake voting and comments, etc. to influence readers and search engines to give their sites better SERP rankings, this new Google Voting Tool will not be immune from this type of gaming too.

You would think that Google would know that people will try to “game” the system and have filters in place to catch spammers…? We will see, I suppose. What do you think? Do think their will be flood of marketers trying to game these new features?

This new Google feature allows you to vote the results “up” or to use a “X” if you don’t like what the SERP”s returned. You can also suggest a url if you didn’t like any of the top results. Now you have to be logged into your Google account to see these new features. You can learn more from what Google says about their new experiment here.

Also Jason posted this video showing you how the new features work:

What do you think…? How do you think this new Google Voting feature will effect the SERP’s? Are you excited? Scared? What are your thoughts…?

You may also like:

Google SearchWiki - Google’s experiment that allows users to vote and annotate search results is back and this time it has a name: Google SearchWiki. Justin Hileman is one of the lucky people who has access to the experimental feature: “Things are a bit smoother this time. Moving results is a nice, polished animation. I can’t wait for more community features to show up.”…

Google introduces Digg-style voting buttons - Google has introduced a very interesting new feature to their search index - Digg-style voting buttons, where you can vote websites up and down using your Google account. This is something which apparently has been tested for a long time by Google and which has now been released for prime time. Once you make your search for something, you can show your approval or disapproval by clicking the up or down arrow and your name will appear underneath the result…

Personalize Your Google Results - Google has announced SearchWiki, which is a new set of functionality that users with Google accounts can use to customize their results on any given search. SearchWiki allows users to move specific results up or down in rankings so that they appear in the preferred order when the same search is done in the future…

Topics: Google Search Wiki, Search, google | 1 Comment »

YouTube Releases Pay-per-Click

By Matthew Hunt | November 14, 2008

Online videos and all the video sharing sites have been around for some time now and we all understand that they are a huge part of how the web operates, especially when Google purchased YouTube for $US1.65 billion. Google even claims that 13 hours worth of video is uploaded every minute on YouTube. The most current internet marketing news is how YouTube has released PPC (Pay-Per-Click) service that enables YouTube users to have their videos appear at the top of the search results on YouTube for keywords they choose in their ad campaign. Watch this video below where Product Manager Matthew Liu explains how you can you use Sponsored Videos to promote your videos on YouTube.

Michelle MacPhearson has also written a pretty good post on how to set-up a YouTube PPC account. According to Ed Dale (30 Day Challenge’s Maverick) at his Seesmic video account he states that video will be have to be apart of every persons marketing strategy and explains that YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world.

It is obvious this will be a great opportunity for all types businesses and artists to promote and help find their niche group of fans. I can’t wait for all the success stories and new IM’ing businesses that will develop due to this new PPC platform. I will assume that the other video sharing sites will also soon follow suit with their own pay-per-click just like how MySpace followed with their own PPC after Facebook’s PPC program finding huge successes.

I am now signing up for an account and will do some testing. Once I have done a some testing I will report back with the results on how I found YouTube’s new PPC. Before I do, what do you think this will do for your business? Are you currently using YouTube and videos to market your business? If not, will this maybe become a new marketing strategy for you? Let me know in the comments below…

Oh! And if you want to sign up too… go to: YouTube PPC

Topics: Pay Per Click (PPC), Video Marketing, YouTube, Youtube PPC | 2 Comments »

Having Your Business Online Has Never Been Easier

By Matthew Hunt | November 9, 2008

There are no excuses for not have a web presence on the internet for your company! Small businesses have all sorts of great FREE sources to use to get their business seen online. One I suggest to merchants who are in a rush and don’t have a website yet, is to use the free hosted business page from Google.

You see Google wants your advertising dollars and will make as easy as possible to get you using their Adwords network, which i highly recommend that all small business owners do.  You can create a simple Pay-per-click campaigns with a budget under $10 dollars a day (you create any budget you want $1 a day or $1000 day, it’s up to you!) and you then create this profile page Google gives you so you have somewhere to point your potential customers.  It couldn’t be easier.  A newbie could have this all set-up in an hour and see results almost immediately.

Look at an example page.

Again all you do is:

What are you waiting for…?! If you are not advertising online yet, then here is a great opportunity to get your feet wet.

Topics: Google Business Page, Pay Per Click (PPC) | 1 Comment »

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