We talked last week about the 5 year anniversary of Twitter and the crazy growth it’s seen and will continue to see. The numbers don’t lie–people are on Twitter, and no matter what you may think, those people aren’t just the gum-smacking tween types. While the adolescents are certainly out there in the Twittersphere, the biggest estimated group on Twitter right now is in their 20s and 30s, and there’s a strong representation of users in their 40s. So whatever your target audience, it’s a good chance they’re hanging out on Twitter and that this is a social media platform that needs to be monitored and considered in your business’s web marketing plans.
One challenge of Twitter is maintenance. While it doesn’t seem so bad to share a few 140-character thoughts every once in awhile, building relationships and making connections on Twitter requires relatively regular monitoring. And building relationships is really what you want to be doing on Twitter. It’s a tool that will give back what you put into it. So with that in mind, here are some thoughts on how to make the most of Twitter and to build your loyal network, even if you don’t have a ton of extra time:
Know what your fans and potential customers are interested in. Follow conversations on Twitter about topics important to you. Search for tweets about products you sell, services you offer, the industry you work in, etc. You can make decisions–both on and off Twitter–about your business based on this information.
This is a simple one: know who’s talking about YOU. Do regular searches on your own brand and misspellings of your brand name. If you find people referencing you, talk to them! And follow them! Don’t be shy…but DO, of course, stay sensitive to what it is they’re saying.
5 years ago a small team of people started working on a service that is now known by the world as Twitter. As a matter of fact, the first tweet EVER was posted by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey 5 years and 5 days ago from today, on March 21, 2006. From the first tweet and the launch of the service came a world to follow with an ever-growing fan base that’s constantly continuing to rise at exponential numbers. Two days ago, Twitter released some mind-blowing numbers on their blog that could be the cause for some additional celebration (and show some major growth for them in 2011).
Here are some of the numbers:
#tweets
It took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the billionth tweet. (Now there are 1 billion tweets a week)
A year ago, 50 million tweets occurred each day. (The daily average this month is 140 million)
@accounts
This month, Twitter has received an average of 460,000 new accounts each day
Over the past year, mobile users on Twitter have increased by 182%
Those are some great numbers to back Twitter up for their 5th year anniversary, and it’s impressive to see how much the numbers have been growing this year (especially). Not only have the amount of users increased, but the activity has increased three-fold.
It goes to show that Twitter should be used in everyone’s social media efforts (only using Facebook isn’t enough). So, make sure that with your next social media push (or ongoing efforts), you keep saying to yourself “let me tweet that”, and utilize said social network to maximize your campaign’s growth, reach, and overall success.
The team at Lettuce Parties, part of Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants, proved themselves the true Chi-town party experts once again by launching their own blog and event ideas section of their LettuceParties.com website. The blog, titled the Event Book, will feature tips and ideas by their party planners ranging from flowers and linens to shower ideas and Lettuce Entertain You event information. Check back often for party ideas, or subscribe to their RSS feed.
Lettuce Parties is a one-stop shop for party rooms and party planning in the Chicagoland area, featuring over 30 locations to choose from ranging in space from 15-500 people. The envisionit media team is excited once again to have worked with the team at Lettuce Entertain You.
Being that I am the last person at envisionit media that would do a search for recipes, I still found this latest improvement Google has made to enrich the online search experience pretty significant. You know, for those that love to cook (not me), but more importantly for those that feature recipes on their website and want to increase their online exposure for them.
So what is Google Recipe Viewer? Well, in the past, you could do a search for “chicken recipes” in the search bar, and hope that recipes appear in the results. Now, you can filter your results on the left hand side of the results page to search by ingredients, cooking time, even calorie count!
If optimized properly, recipes can get search presence better than ever before. How do you tag recipes to appear better? Recipe View is based on data using rich snippets markup which can be added to the pages of your website that have recipes on them. Pretty simple right? With a little bit of HTML coding, you can be on your way to maximizing the value of your recipes posted on your website.
Don’t yet have recipes posted online? If it is relevant to your business, and can increase the user experience on your website, well by all means, contact us and we can help you out!! And for those of you that actually um like to cook enjoy!!
As I mentioned in my post last month, we are uber-excited for the launch of VIPER ALLEY, the concert venue opening up next week in Licolnshire, IL. In fact, some of us get to party there tonight for their Friends & Family event (oh the difficulties of our jobs…) We love to showcase our latest work, and with a completely integrated campaign we’ve created for the venue, we’re love the design of the iphone app for VIPER ALLEY (not to pat ourselves on the back…again ) Check it out – you can view the latest live events, write on their fan wall, and get insider access to all things VIPER. Download it for free on iTunes now!!
Google Street View, a feature within Google Maps, allows users to see images of city streets in up to 27 countries…and now Israel? According to the Chicago Tribune, Israeli officials are in talks with Google to bring Street View into Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. This would be Google Street View’s first appearance in a Middle Eastern country and could be up and running later this year. Security issues are a main concern in this region, yet when Dr. Andre Oboler, director of the Community Internet Engagement Project at the Zionist Federation of Australia, spoke with Search Engine Land regarding the issue, he reported that the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem is ‘looking forward to working with Google Street View and that it would be good for tourism and Israel’s image’. However, according to The West Australian, Mordechai Kedar, a retired Lt. Col. with 25 years experience with Israeli Intelligence, disagrees by reminding us that Google Earth has already been used by Palestinian militants to help identify targets in terrorist attacks, and Google Street View could further facilitate terrorist plots in Israel. Also, the Center for Digital Democracy additionally warned that Google Street View could be used as a political tool used for government surveillance. However, Google Street View does have some security features listed on their site including:
1. Images are the same as one would see if walking on that street (Public access only)
2. The images are not in real time and can be delayed up to several months or years
3. There is technology in place that blurs faces and license plates
4. There are easy to use tools to allow users to request further blurring of homes, violence, etc.
So things over at Google are getting a little scary, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Although it is still technically in testing phase, Google is allowing users to block domains/hosts from appearing in your personal Google search results. They are also allowing users to report bad links and content farm websites through a new Google Chrome extension. The idea behind the extension, called Personal Blocklist is that users can block websites they don’t want to see in their results and Google can then determine bad websites and content farms by looking at the patterns of websites people most often block.
This is the first time that Google has given a searcher the ability to have an impact on search results and the search engine as a whole. Because of this new extension, users can effectively have an impact on page rank since “the extension will also transmit to Google the URL of the web page on which the blocked or unblocked search results are displayed.”
There are currently 116,995 users worldwide and an average of 23,835 weekly downloads. The extension also has a perfect 5 star user rating. At this pace it’s not going to change the Internet, but it’s a very interesting direction and one to keep your eye on. It is also cool because if you use Google Chrome you can now easily block those websites you don’t want to show up in your results. As search gets more personal, this will certainly have an effect on SEO and finding creative ways to get in from of people who can actively manipulate search results.
And for those of you that actually um like to cook 
enjoy!!
