Posts About ‘social’

Sharing Makes us Feel Good, a Monkey Brain Shows Us

monkey-juice

In the past few years Social Media has often been referred to as being a ‘new’ phenomenon, something we need to adapt to. And in a way that is true, but it wasn’t the ‘social’ part of Social Media we needed to adapt to, but the ‘Media’ part: the fact that everything is shared must faster.

The “Social” principles of Social Media have been there forever. I’ve mentioned Jesus in my presentations before (started with 12 followers) as example of how Word of Mouth has been used throughout history and there are more examples to be found of the ‘social’ principles, sharing, caring and showing what we like and looking at others.

The reason we’ve been seeing the ‘social behaviour’ we are showing on Social Media throughout history is simple: it is in our genes. We are social animals. We want (need) to connect, we want to have what others have and we want to get things from other people.

A new research performed by Duke researchers now shows that ‘giving’, or even better ‘sharing, is most probably something that ‘tickles our brain’. They tested it on monkeys… (more…)

Search, Stockholm and SMX Fun – An Overview of 2012 SMX Stockholm

SMX

New job. New conference adventures. More search education. More Avios BA points.

This was the first time I had gone to a non UK / US search conference and overall my three days in Stockholm was highly enjoyable.

A good mixture of European based search practioneers attended the fifth edition of SMX Stockholm with around 100 folks in all at the Munchen Brewery.

In terms of my main highlights from the two days of talks, I particularly enjoyed the insight from Jon Quinton from SEO Gadget. His talk focused on Linkbuilding Do’s and Don’ts.

As ever the questions about Penguin update quickly rose as Jon asked the audience “Has anyone had a site hit by Penguin? ….(silence)…ok I’ll rephrase that – anyone know a friend who has had a site hit by Penguin? :)

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Friday Talk: Social Good Summit

social-good-summit

A very special Friday Talk this week, because you are not getting just one, but more talks. They are all coming from the Social Good Summit which took place this week and was completely streamed on LiveStream. The Summit combines the possibilities of the web with ‘doing good’: non-profit. Find talks about How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, Embracing Technology to Foster Peace, Mobilizing Young People for the Next Generation of Global Good, Connecting News with Digital Action and much more.

The Networked Nonprofit: Beth Kanter

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What is Google+ Really all About?

google+-logo

Google+ is Google’s Social Network, or at least, that is what we all think it is. It is Google’s effort to push out Facebook and to be the biggest not just in search, but also in social. But in fact Google+ is not intended to be that Facebook killer. Yes, off course, if Google gets the chance, they will definitely try to beat Facebook. But Google+ in fact is more about data: it will be part of every Google product in the future.

If you listen carefully to what Googlers are saying you will get some nice insights into what the intentions from Google are. They are going to change the online world with Google Plus and the crux is data, identification, personalization and integration.

Note: this post has been edited since it first was published in July 2011, just after the launch of Google+. The essence of the post is still the same, but information which enriches the post has been added. (more…)

Study: ‘TV Ads are Most Effective for Students’, But Wait…

college-graduation

Social Media for many is the holy grail, especially when you are targeting the youngsters of this time. The generation which is now in college is ‘only online minded’ is the assumption many marketers have. So you don’t have to look at TV, just target them on Facebook, right? Well maybe not. A research from Barnes & Noble College Marketing shows that students personally feel that TV ads are most effective.

But hold your horses, before running to your media buyer and ordering those new TV ads you always dreamed about producing, there are some ‘buts’ to this. Students may feel that when it comes to advertising, TV is strongest, but maybe that is because they don’t want advertising but commitment and engagement on Social Media. (more…)

A Next (Small) Step of Google+ Integration in SERPS

Google-happy-birthday-Aleyda

When Google+ rolled out first we all knew it was about more than just a social network. Sooner or later it would be about integration of that social element into the search engine result pages (SERPS). Step by step we have seen that happening and we now know for sure Google+ is more than ‘just’ a social network.

The latest addition to this integration is one which shows how ‘social’ Google has gotten in the past few years. We all are familiar with the birthday reminders you get on Facebook, showing you which of your friends has a birthday. It does help me sometimes to remind me of birthdays I forgot. Now Google is integrating that same functionality. But not ‘just’ into Google+, into Google.com. (more…)

Death Eric Sykes Shows Google Direct Answers is Late

10 months ago by Bas van den Beld 1 Comment
speed-measurement

Today Eric Sykes died. For many outside of the UK that won’t mean a lot. For those in the UK it means that an illustrious figure passed away. As always events like this however also tell us a lot about the world we live in.

The online world now gives us instant insights in how we respond to events like this. It shows how engaged we are or not and it also shows how quickly some online players can respond. We saw for example that Google’s newest feature, direct answers, is not as quickly up to date as some others are. (more…)

Social Targeting – Know WHO You Are Looking For!

target-dartbord

This past week I have had the displeasure of hearing a wide variety of social media talk that has me perplexed. Is it not so much that people targeting social media are doing it wrong, or even that they have the wrong intentions. The problem merely is that they don’t understand what social media is, how to interact with it, and how they benefit from it.

I recently walked past a meeting room where a start-up was deciding which route to go with social media. A very boisterious message was delivered fromt he guy who is presumably in charge – “What social media platform are our customers reaching out to us the most?” The answer came, and his closing was “great let’s target that.” (more…)

The Optimal Website User Experience (Part 2)

Buy-Key

Last month I wrote about my experiences on how I recently for the first time had been involved with website re-design and creating valuable on-site directions for site visitors to improve the user’s online experience. In my first post I talked about the ‘Flow’ Notion, Identifying Your Visitors Online Persona, The 4 Online Personas, Trust and a Community and Social User Experience.

This is part two of my learnings in which I will be talking about looking at your competitors, mobile and devices, perceived affordance and the differences between offline and online customer experience management. (more…)

Requesting Bing to Board the European market

boarding-pass

Last week Bing announced another major update to their search engine. They announced the New Bing, with integration of more social aspects and more relevant core information. Within the announcement they stated that “In 2009, we launched Bing with a simple proposition: people should expect more from a search engine.” My response to the latest announcement was the following tweet:

I want to use this post to make a request. I want to reach out to Microsoft and ask them to start living up to their ‘simple proposition’ outside the US and take the European Bing more seriously.

Every time I read one of the announcements of new features to Bing my first response is: “hey, that looks pretty cool!”. But my second response sadly almost always is: “Oh, it’s still US-only”. I would be fine with that if within the next few months Bing would roll out these features worldwide. But they just don’t, leaving the rest of the world wondering if this feature was really as cool as it looked.

For example, in May 2011 Bing launched the integration of information from Facebook friends into their search results, similar to how Google+ powered Google’s search results. It looked like a much more relevant way to socialize search, because more information is shared on Facebook than on Google+. But this feature was launched US-only, never to be rolled out in Europe till this very moment.

The difference between Google and Bing here is very clear. When Google announces a new feature you know it will launch in the US most of the time as well, but you also know it will be rolled out in Europe within a few months. With Bing you know you could have to wait even a few years if you see it ever at all. Just compare the Bing services currently offered in The Netherlands, the UK and the US.

I really want to try and use Bing as a user, I really do. And as an SEO I definitely think the search engine market in Europe needs a competitor for Google. 95% market share cannot be healthy for the market. But if Bing wants to take on Google they really need to take things more seriously. And since more people are complaining about Google now than ever before, wouldn’t it be the perfect time for Bing to enter the European market directly with the New Bing and go full power ahead? What are they waiting for?

Friday Talk: Alex Bogusky on The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur

“Social” is hot. But “Social” for many still means consumer stuff, not business stuff. Still there is a lot of movement in Social for Business, and rightfully so, after all, we are all humans. But how can you make Social work as a company? The trick is probably to actually be social and not act social.

Someone who is successful in social is Social Entrepeneur Alex Bogusky. He is someone who knows PR and Communications and has used that in many ways, including for Al Gore. He knows how to make business out of social as well. In this talk he talks about just that.

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The Optimal Website User Experience

facebook-frustration

Recently I have for the first time been involved with website re-design and creating valuable on-site directions for site visitors to improve the user’s online experience. My professional background is not too tech-heavy therefore I started by looking at the psychology of online users to gain an understanding (in the deeper sense) why someone is visiting your website and what the motivations are for doing so.

I came across the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  who is best-known as the architect of the notion of ‘flow’, as well as being one of the leading researchers on ‘positive psychology’.  His theory is that people are at their happiest when they are in “flow” mode. In other words the condition where motivation, attention and the current situation meet resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback. The challenging part for us marketers though is to create the right conditions for individuals to achieve this state. The art though is to strike the right balance between the skill of the performer and the challenge of the task level. If one or the other is too easy/difficult ‘flow’ will not occur. So how can we transmit that to a website? To increase the likelihood for your visitor to experience the flow state try to remove unnecessarily distractions from your site. Reason being that once the visitor is in the ‘flow’ he/she has to ‘automatically’ block stimuli that are interfering with the task/purchase/sign-up engagement. Therefore we ought to help users not to get distracted. (more…)

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