The Facebook-only e-commerce player (Payvment Shopping Mall) has seen customers rise more than double from 500,000 to 1.1 million. This has been achieved by not having to buy an ad space on Facebook says Payvment CEO Christian Taylor. What the want and own buttons do is spread the word about certain products that you choose to share, enhancing social media marketing. When you or your friends tap these buttons, those products appear on people’s news feed, allowing your friends to see what others are looking at and are interested in. The like button has always been in place for every product from the 150,000 sellers on Payvment but has never been very effective.

After some research the marketing service firm Baynote found out that during the holiday season the majority of consumers did not buy gifts off of Facebook’s brand pages.  With the new action verbs on Facebook retailers are hoping that this will encourage consumers to share more and become more active when shopping. There will be even more action verbs such as, share, heart, bought, want, and wish where you will see what your friends think about many new products and gifts they want. A chance for affiliate marketing can also be in the future of these new buttons.

Action Verbs transforming Facebook ads

How will these new tools affect ads on Facebook? It will definitely make reaching hard to find demographics a lot easier, while friends see what their other friends are looking at. A Facebook spokesperson states that, “while social apps open possibilities for these new kinds of connections and expressions, these stories cannot currently be sponsored”. Even though it will take time for people to really start using these new action words, they could  prove to be a great advertising tool. Once they gain popularity, these Facebook apps are intended to advertise products, music, and events based on all your interests. It will be interesting to see the reaction to these apps on Facebook.

Many people took time out of their day yesterday to take action against the passing of two proposed bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property  Act (PIPA). An astounding 4.5 million people signed Google’s Anti-SOPA petition, according to the LA Times. Eighteen senators pulled back their position on PIPA, including Senator Marco Rubio (co-sponsor from Florida), and SOPA co-sponsor Arizona rep. Ben Quayle also changed his stance to opposing the bill on Tuesday.

The goal of these bills is to censor your web browsing which would also potentially impose damaging effects on American business and even our very own Internet Marketing Inc. All of you last minute paper writing college students must be in for a tough week because Wikipedia is officially blacked out in an attempt to dislodge the bills from being accepted. Wikipedia is allowing you to raise awareness by putting up a fancy box that allows you to input your zip code and let your voice be heard. After submitting your zip code, information of your district officials allows you to contact them. Feel free to drop them a line, express your concern and give them your opinion on censoring your rights.

Now there is always two sides to the story. Google understands that combatting piracy is vital, but, “the most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs.” Also joining in is Mozilla as they changed their default home page from a blank white background to black.

What are your feelings as to how citizens have reacted to this attempt at censoring your web searches?

Do you ever wonder who started the juicy gossip you catch up on from day to day? Well now you can find out who were the top contributors to those stories and much more through Google+ Ripples. A few weeks ago Google announced this “Ripple” feature that seemed to almost be overlooked, when in reality it should be of much consideration to us marketers, and here’s why:

The ripple effect allows us to:

1. Find a influencer (Dalai Lama)
2. Make a connection to that influencer
3. Repeat to find who the influencer is sharing with (Vic Gundotra) to virally spread your content even more

The above example was a public post shared by Dalai Lama which illustrates the spread of the post (you can find the Ripple of any public post using the dropdown arrow menu at the top right of the post). If you watch the spread, you will see the content being shared to more and more users over about a months’ time frame.  Also, at the bottom of the page you will see the influencers (people with many public reshares), Statistics (how this post publicly spread), and Languages (of public shares of this post). As seen below:

So How Will This Help Us?

If we’re able to locate the influencer that is sharing content of our interest, then we’ll be able to connect to that influencer through Google+. Usually many other social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) are linked with their Google+ account which allows you to tack action with your preferred method of making a connection.

Once you’ve made the connection, put out something of value to them or possibly share their post so they know you’re interested in what they’re sharing. Hopefully at that point, they will see you sharing their posts and return the favor by sharing your content to their huge circle of followers. It’s important to not bombard the top contributor with too much content; rather research into who they’re sharing posts with (the influencers of the influencer) and reach out to them as well.

It’s all about finding that niche target market, and now thanks to Google, it’s easy (and fun!) to watch content go viral with the use of Ripples.

The changing world of internet marketing is constantly strengthening and developing new avenues for lead generation. This year, SEO takes the prize as the number one source for generating leads. Out of the 500 U.S. online marketers surveyed by the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, two-thirds identified themselves as business-to-business marketers.

Social media marketing, PPC and SEO were among the categories considered to have the largest impact on lead generation. B2B marketers accredited 57.4% of their lead generation to SEO, while B2C marketers credit 41%. Although SEO was the number one generator of leads, marketers are planning to increase their social media budgets in 2012 even more than their SEO budgets.

PPC, social media and SEO are all essential aspects of  internet marketing for businesses, but each year we will see those numbers shift with new developments in online marketing efforts. It will be interesting to see how marketers spend their internet marketing budgets in 2012.

Having begun my first week at IMI as the Director of Social Media, I am looking forward to stepping in and continuing to grow and further develop the social media department.  With a background in marketing and experience on the client side of Internet marketing technologies, I am eager to bring my brand perspective to the fast-paced agency world.  I started in the social media realm in 2007 at Upper Deck, a prominent sports and entertainment company, where I built social channels from the ground up and worked to integrate them into existing marketing plans.  In 2010, I joined the hospitality and travel industry, managing online marketing and social media efforts at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, CA.  In January of 2011, I ventured out and started my own social media consulting business, working with a wide array of clients from the medicine field, technology, real estate and non-profit organizations to help businesses leverage the power of social media.

Now, as a part of Internet Marketing Inc., I am excited to bring my unique background to the team, to work with clients to catapult their business into social success through various social media channels.  By auditing a business initially to get a detailed feel for the company culture and existing marketing plans, our social media team then formulates a strategic plan with recommendations on which social channels make sense for each client.

When part of a strategic marketing plan, social media has the power to transform businesses, personifying the brand and cultivating brand advocates that ultimately lead to increased ROI.

Through polished, professional social pages, real-world events, and a strategic backbone to hold it all together, social media has the power to change the way people communicate about your brand.  People are talking about your business — it’s time to join in the conversation!   Click here to request a free consultation and to speak with someone from our social media team.

StumbleUpon drives more than 50 percent of traffic from all top social media sites. It has become the most dominant source of traffic and beats Facebook and Twitter. This search engine service helps discover Web pages based on the researcher’s interests. StumbleUpon has 15 million users and its site traffic is continuously rising. Their newest beta feature called StumbleUpon Explore Box. This allows you to search a specific interest in the explore toolbar and discover related websites that has already been evaluated by “Stumblers”. This search box is located at the sub-section of the website.

How StumpleUpon Works

• The service engine tries to recommend pages based on the number of similar users.
•  Stumblers begin to edit their interests so they can browse through one interest at a time. This allows the site to appeal to specifically defined audience rather than a broad and general audience.
• Websites can receive referrals. So StumbleUpon can play a significant role in a business’ social media strategy. It has durable value.

What Stumblers Can Look Forward To With The Explore Box

Even though StumbleUpon Explore has a search-like presentation, it doesn’t directly rank websites or goes through a full index of information. The service still caters to user’s interests that have already been added to their StumbleUpon profile. They are not technically introducing a search engine but expanding random information on topics of interest.

StumbleUpon is a growing influence in the social media world. It is making innovative moves and designing new features to make it appeal to businesses and individuals. Hopefully, in the near future, the Explore Box can be able to offer targeted advertising opportunities and can work out to the marketer’s advantage.

StumbleUpon is not like any other search engine. Browse through StumbleUpon and see if it accommodates your specific topics of interest.

You can now start a Google+ hangout directly from your favorite YouTube videos, according to the Official Google Blog. Upon clicking the share button underneath each video, you’ll find a link that reads, “Start a Google+ Hangout.” This will open up a new browser in seconds that allows you to add your Google+ Circles that you’d like to share the video with in a hangout. Once you’ve chosen whom you’d like to share the video with, click the “Hangout” button and begin your live video-chat.

According to Senior Vice President, Engineering, Vic Gundotra, “With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts. By combining the casual meet up with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you’re free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face.” Just like how someone walks into a pub to hang out with friends, you now have the option to do so right from your home computer:

So how does this benefit us as marketers? YouTube viewing and sharing has been on an uphill rise in the recent years. This was first noted in 2007 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project when they reported, “more than half of online video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them.”

If so many people are sharing videos by sending each other links, why not just watch the video together in a Google+ Hangout? This is definitely a significant development in the Google+ Project.

Twitter has just announced that they have acquired Bagcheck, a new fun way to talk about and share what’s inside our “bags” with our Twitter followers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but a warm welcome is put out to Sam Pullara to the Twitter engineering team! Mr. Pullara is the CTO and co-founder of Bagcheck.

Bagcheck is an innovative way to share and discover what’s inside your “bag.” Now you may be wondering what exactly characterizes a bag. In a broad sense, the startup refers to any sort of curated list or collection as a bag. As you can see to the right, people can post bags of backpacking essentials or coffee-making gear to what their favorite apps and accessories are.

The brains behind Bagcheck found their inspiration by simply wanting to expand their discussion of the products they love to use with the rest of the social networking world. It provides people with a place to share their “bags” of items they feel most passionate about with others who may share the same interests – whether it’s photography, cooking, computing, or sports.

Bagcheck still remains in service online for all those who already have accounts. Therefore, the content already created in current users bags will still remain with the same URLs. However, soon enough things may change so Bagcheck has made it quick and simple for current users to export your bags anywhere you like.  Your bags will be wrapped into a set of HTML and JSON files that you may then save or post to other social networking platforms.

On behalf of Bagcheck, they’d like to take the opportunity to show appreciation for all the people involved in creating bags and sharing their passions with others throughout the site thus far. They hope you’ll continue to do so. Happy Bagging!

Google just bought high tech facial recognition software called PittPatt. As many of you might have already guessed, it is likely to be used for Google+. According to the articles Google Buys Facial Recognition Company PittPatt by Rob D. Young and How Google’s New Face Recognition Tech Could Change The Web’s Future by Kit Eaton, this new innovative technology could change everything on the web.

PittPatt

PittPatt was founded as spin-off company based on a decade of research project on robot technology at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Henry Schneiderman teamed up with fellow graduates, Michael Sipe and Michael Nechyba to start up the company. PittPatt has developed many innovative software systems that recognize people’s faces from images and motion pictures.

What is so special about PittPatt?

Google has already worked with other existing companies such as Image search, YouTube and Picasa. Some people might think that there is no use for PittPatt to step in with other Google products. As a matter of fact, PittPatt is more than facial recognition software. PittPatt analyzes video dates and tracks people and objects. It can evaluate the number of the people on the camera, the movement of people, the popularity of kiosks and other business locations, and potencial resource for security backup for restricted areas. With these advanced technologies, PittPatt probably can adopt into other Google technology and support the accuracy of facial and object recognition.  Overall, PittPatt’s new technology may just bring Google the extra edge over Facebook even though Google has not disclosed their detailed future plan with PittPatt yet.

Google+ featuring with PittPatt?

It is obvious that PittPatt’s facial recognition system will incorporate with Google+. But how? Google+ is likely to stay away from suggesting tagging images with new facial recognition system due to privacy abuse. Rather, Google will enhance their video tool services. With the precise facial recognition system, their video tool will be able to focus on the main speaker during a video conference. Google will also improve the quality of video chat through Gmail, Google Talk and probably Google+. Perhaps, Google could learn a better way to deal with privacy issues and make it more restrictive tagging suggestions. At any rate, we can look forward to an exciting future with this new technology that Google acquired.

More and more Facebook users have found a new home in Google+, but have been stumped by a single problem: where did all my pictures go? On Facebook, the amount of photos that people have been tagged in usually outweighs the amount of photos that someone has uploaded himself or herself. For the person that relies on getting most of their pictures from other friend’s albums, this poses a problem.

Recently there have been multiple methods on how to transport your Facebook pictures to Google+ that have proved to make this moving processed a little bit easier. Out of all of the methods that I tested, the easiest and most efficient one I discovered was posted on moveyourphotos.com. For this process all you have to do is download either the Google Chrome or Firefox add-ons that I have placed below and follow the guided instructions on how to transfer you Facebook pictures.

Download Photo Importer for Google+ (Firefox)

- Download Photo Importer for Google+ (Chrome)

Instructions:

1. Download and install the add-on from the link above (simply drag the file onto the Firefox window to install)
2. Navigate to within a Facebook photo album which you would like to transfer to your Google+ account
3. Enter a name for the album in the text box on your brand spanking new photo-importer toolbar.

   

4. Click ‘make album’
5. At this point, you may repeat the last 3 steps with as many different Facebook albums as you want
6. When you have recorded the information of all the albums you wish to import to Google+, click ‘submit all albums’
7. You will be brought back to moveyouralbums.com and given a link to login to your Google account
8. Once you have logged in to Google we will begin processing your photos, upon completion we will give you a link to your new albums on Google
9. AND YOU’RE DONE!!! Don’t you just feel all warm inside now?