For those unacquainted, Pipl is a people search engine leveraging the “deep web” to find information on a contact you search for. They use many sources, going deeper than your run of the mill search on one of the big search engines. Whether you are searching for information on a business contact, family or friends, it is a powerful search tool. Some call it creepy, others highly useful. Its popularity is proven as Lifehacker readers rated it the top people search engine.
Pipl recently released a beta version called Pipl Contacts Search which allows you to search your entire address book and use an address book style interface to see deeper information than you may know such as the various profiles they may have across the Internet, media like images and pictures possibly associated with them, publications whether PDF file or other documents with their name in it, and also of course web pages and blog posts.
read more
One of the things I’ve observed in the realm of social media marketing is that many marketing experts debate where you should focus your marketing efforts. This stems from a variety of opinions, experiences, and where their target market’s “hang out”.
Social media marketing puts businesses where consumers hang out. As marketers we love the plethora of information available from status updates, profile information, and other pools of data. Our society has become adept to weeding out the crap, and shoveling in the good, high quality information. Cream rises to the top.
If you look at the following chart comparing traffic metrics of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in the light of sheer volume of people to market to you might right off the bat say, lets jump on Facebook! They have massive amounts of traffic, wahoo!
Now of course there are many other social networks that deserve attention, but for sake of making a point, those three are the ones chosen.
Go where your people are
Taking a holistic approach to Internet marketing and social media marketing is key to success for any business or individual. But taking the time to find out where your target market “hangs out” is critical.
Take a look at the following world map of social networks, courtesy of vincos.it:
You probably see at least some social networks on the map that you’ve never heard of, I know I did. The key is to find out where your market is and to listen, participate and act upon where they are.
The business case and ROI regarding social media has been made time and time over again. Consumers, individuals, businesses, government, and organizations communicate daily using social media and social networking. It is becoming mandatory that customer service monitoring, response and action take place via social media as so many opportunities to build loyalty and solve real problems now exist.
As you whittle together your effort to leverage this communication mechanism for the greater good of your business and customers, it is imperative that you take some time, now, to put together a social media marketing strategy. The following is a guide to get you started on the right path, and give you some food for thought.
read more
Twitter glitch reset followers to 0 (click for larger image)
Never thought I’d see the day that my Twitter followers count was equal to @Oprah @APLUSK @cnnbrk.
Today while Twitter fixes a bug that allows you to control who follows you on Twitter, they had to reset the following and follower count to zero. Their engineering team is working on a fix. For now, many people can bask in being on an equal plateau as some of the largest followed accounts on Twitter.
And remember, that even though you may have a million Twitter followers doesn’t guarantee your influence is spread as wide. Always add value to the conversation, and listen.
Update #1: Twitter solved the issue, follower and following counts are back to normal. More on their Status blog.
Today Facebook announced a change in the way connecting with Facebook Pages has been traditionally thought of. Until today if you found a Page that you like you would “Become a Fan”. That has changed now and is termed, you “Like” a Page, whether its an individual, community, business, product or service. You will already notice the change if you visit a Facebook Page, whether you are an admin, or were a Fan of the Page. Nothing appears to have changed otherwise, just the premise behind the term “Like”. Alex Li said in the announcement, “Profiles no longer are a static list of likes and interests. Now, they are a living map of all the connections that matter to you.”
Facebook posted the following information in their Help Center to give you an idea of what the changes mean to you, as an admin of a Page, or of a Page you may “Like”:
read more
On a scale of importance of from 1 to 10 in early 2009, real-time search may have been given a 5 or 6. But by the end of 2009, the heat was on, and now its given an importance of an 8 or 9.
Real-time search is a hot commodity. Rightly so, because of the power and sheer volume of information available at your fingertips, well, in real-time. The collaboration and syndication of social network information by the big players: Google, Yahoo! and Bing is an indicator of the increasing importance of real-time search.
read more
