Date: March 14^th, 2012

Time: 5:30pm

Location: Formic Media Inc., 300 NE Failing St. Portland, OR 97212 (just off MLK, 2 blocks North of Fremont St.)

Cost: Free

URL: http://www.formicmedia.com/seminars

Phone: 503-517-9059

Based on these numbers, it’s not surprising that Google continues to provide and upgrade features that help advertisers make their ads appear more authoritative (sitelinks), provide more relevant information (location/product extensions) and align landing page information with users’ search queries (Quality Score factors).  The more Google can help searchers find the right information through their paid ads, the more people will trust and click – driving Google’s advertising revenue source up.

Check out the complete WordStream Infographic below:

The Top 10 Google AdWords Spenders by Industry for 2011

The Top 10 Industries that Spent Big on Google AdWords in 2011 (from the WordStream Infographic)

1. Finance & Insurance – $4.0 Billion (example keywords in this industry include: “self employed health insurance”, “cheap car insurance”, “credit cards for bad credit”)
2. Retailers & General Merchandise – $2.8 Billion (example keywords in this industry include “zumba dance dvd”, “proform treadmill”, “weber grill accessories”)
3. Travel & Tourism – $2.4 Billion (e.g. “new york hotels”, “plane tickets”, “rental car deals”)
4. Jobs & Education – $2.2 Billion (e.g. “accredited online college degrees”, “online certificate programs”, “unemployment benefits”)
5. Home & Garden— $2.1 Billion (e.g. “replacement windows cost”, “appliance repair”, “cabinet refacing”)
6. Computer & Consumer Electronics – $2.0 Billion (“ink cartridges discount”, “pc memory”, “online video conferencing software”)
7. Vehicles – $2.0 Billion (e.g “cheap hybrid cars”, “certified used cars”, “bridgestone tires”)
8. Internet & Telecommunications – $1.7 Billion (“pre paid cell phones”, “domain registration”, “cable internet providers”)
9. Business & Industrial – $1.6 Billion (“custom business cards”, “cheap office supplies”, “foam packing”)
10. Occasions & Gifts – $1.2 Billion (“funeral flowers arrangements”, “flower delivery”, “wedding gift registry”)

So, what do you think of these numbers and insight?  Let us know in the comments below.

Right now certain brands are benefiting from the most engaged group of users – at least 60% of users are women around 25-44. This demographic has been a boon for companies like Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Martha Stewart, and Real Simple who focus on lifestyle trends, clothing and shopping.  Users can follow brands’ and friends’ Boards which puts every new pin into that user’s stream.

Using Pinterest for Your Brand

Brands that sell consumer goods and image-heavy websites have made the biggest splash on the site so far. Whole Foods has boards for holiday planning, recipes and their philanthropic works. Real Simple Magazine has boards for recipes, decorating ideas, and more. However, Pinterest clearly stats that it’s not for solely self-promotion, so you must get creative with your profile. A few examples include:

• Run contests – Lands’ End Canvas was one of the first to run a success contest where users created a “Pin It to Win It” board for a chance to win one of 10 gift cards. This made fans become brand advocates and promote their favorite products.
• Market research – try testing new products or ideas with your followers first to gain feedback. The ability to “like” and comment on Pins creates an online focus-group for companies.
• Personalize your company – post images of your employees, events, office, etc to give fans insights into your company culture.
• Sell more products – although Pinterest doesn’t want brands to focus solely on self-promotion, they do offer the ability to feature eCommerce goods. By adding a $ sign to a description automatically places a price banner across the top corner of the photo, enticing users to follow through to the product page. This has been beneficial for artists and designer of unique hand-made goods.

Another added benefit of using Pinterest is with SEO. For each Pin there are two links back to the original source web page, one of which is “followed” by search engines and gives more weight to that inbound link. So whenever applicable, remember to pin your own content and encourage users to do so as well. The only question is how long that will last as Pinterest grows. One of the two links was recently switched to no-follow and the other could easily be switched as well.

Getting Started with Pinterest

At the moment Pinterest is still invite only, but with its growing popularity your odds are high that a female might be able to send you an invite.  Pinterest does have a sign-up form for invite, but that appears to be a long waiting line. If you have been lucky enough to join, what benefits have you seen from using it so far? What creative ideas could you use to engage users?

Update 1/25/2012
Both links for every “pin” are no labeled as “no-follow”, so there is no longer really any link value from an SEO stand point. But don’t be discouraged, with Pinterest’s growing popularity links to your content can still drive highly qualified traffic and help your website succeed.

Additional Resources
A Guy’s Guide to Pinterest
Pinterest: Behind the Design of an Addictive Visual Network (Q&A with Co-Founder Evan Sharp)

Date: February 8, 2012

Time: 5:30pm

Location: Formic Media Inc;, 300 NE Failing St. Portland, OR 97212 (just off MLK, 2 blocks North of Fremont St.)

Cost: Free

URL: http://www.formicmedia.com/seminars

Phone: 503-517-9059

Today on the Official Google Blog, Google announced how our search lives will be changed in three major ways:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 
2. Profiles in Search, both in auto-complete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and, 
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

The “Personal Results” feature really is taking personalized search to the next level – maybe even jumping ahead of the cloud.  Google will now be delivering things that you would typically search your computer or post history for, directly to the search engine results page.  Will it change the way people stalk each other?  Doubtful.  Will it change the way we view search engines as a whole.  Probably.  Although, I’m not sure this will make Google anyone’s default destination to find pictures of their vacation from last year, at least right way.  It will take a shift in thinking for this to become your brain’s go-to location for this new style of search.

Second on the list, one could argue that “Profiles in Search” is nothing that new.  It’s no secret that Google+ profiles have already started to dominate the organic results, especially since Google’s deal with Twitter expired in July of last year – effectively eliminating real time search.

Not only does this bring Google+ profiles top of mind, it forces anyone online that cares about their personal brand to at the very least create a G+ profile.  With that, anyone that does care about their personal brand will also want to control the information that people see when searching for them online.  In my opinion, Google is virtually forcing anybody with an online presence to embrace G+ as a viable social network.  If profiles are going to rank well in search, then people will begin to populate those profiles with relevant information.

The third item on the list seems to be the one that will be the most telling.  If people are not willing to adopt Google+ as their social network of choice, the #1 search engine will force them to by flooding the organic results with G+ properties, in addition to the Google properties which already appear.  It’s not quite the case yet – except in this fabricated screen shot:

With so many different properties on the web, all relevant to the same business, it’s scary to think what the search results could become.  What are your thoughts on Google’s latest move?  Game changer, or just a short time before it meets the same fate as Google Wave?

Date: January 11, 2012

Time: 5:30pm

Location: Formic Media Inc;, 300 NE Failing St. Portland, OR 97212 (just off MLK, 2 blocks North of Fremont St.)

Cost: Free

URL: http://www.formicmedia.com/seminars

Phone: 503-517-9059

You may be saying to yourself, I’m on Twitter right now and all I see is the same old boring interface.  You are correct, you still have to wait for the web interface update, but you can access the new mobile version today.  From the Twitter blog:

“We’ll be rolling out the redesigned Twitter over the next few weeks. You can see it immediately on the just-updated versions of mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone, and Twitter for Android. You can get early access on your computer by downloading and logging into Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android. We’re working on updates for other apps, such as Twitter for iPad, and will share news as they become available.”

For those of you that can’t wait for the download to finish on your favorite mobile device, I took a picture for you.  Here it is in all it’s glory:

The biggest updates come in the toolbar right there ↑.  The toolbar will be unified across all native Twitter clients, including Tweetdeck.  According to Twitter, we will now connect in the following ways:

• Home – “Home is where you view Tweets from the people you have chosen to follow. It’s your personal collection of Tweets, featuring the latest news, commentary and information from the sources you care about.”
• Connect – “The new Connect section is where you get in on the conversation.  It’s the place to see who has followed or mentioned you, retweeted or favorited one of your Tweets.  Connect is your way to keep the conversation flowing.”
• Discover – “Discover lets you tap into a stream of useful and entertaining information, customized just for you.  When you use Discover, you’ll see results reflecting your interests—based on your current location, what you follow and what’s happening in the world. As you use Twitter more, Discover gets even better at serving up more content just for you.”
• Me – “The new profile section puts you and your interests front and center.  Others can Tweet directly to you and view your lists, favorites, followers, photos and more. The Me tab is also where you can stay current on your direct message conversations.  The Me tab is your opportunity to introduce yourself to the world.”

The final piece of the update comes in the form of the icon in the top right corner of the screen capture above:

• Speak Up – “Click on the new Tweet button and instantly send your message out to the world.  No matter where you are within Twitter, it’s easy to express yourself. You can upload photos, add your location and link to videos, news stories and more.  The Tweet button lets you share what’s happening right now.”

For a look at what the updated interface will look like on your computer check out the video below:

According to Twitter this is just a jumping off point with more to come.

“What we’re announcing today is just the beginning. We now have a framework in place that we will quickly build and iterate upon to help users connect with whatever is meaningful to them.”

I think the update might actually make me use Twitter on my computer even more.  It’s definitely a lot more interesting.  What do you think of the new design?  Let us know in the comments below.

A big differentiator from this year to last year was the significant increase in mobile device sales.  9.8% of purchases were made from a mobile device this year.  This basically tripled over last year.  Apple and Android devices virtually accounted for all of the Black Friday traffic.

ChannelAdvisor reported a 20% increased in year-over-year sales for its clients on Black Friday.  Amazon was reported to have seen a 50% increase, while ebay experienced a 15% gain.  The only loser reported were comparison shopping engines, which were reported down 1%.

Compuware Gomez reported the best performing mobile sites were Sears, Best Buy and Amazon.  The fastest loading e-commerce sites were J.C. Penney, Dell and Apple.

Page views peaked Thanksgiving night at 1.845 million views per minute. That number fell to 1.25 million by early Friday afternoon, telling us shoppers were out and about off their computers.

stats provided by internetretailer.com

The recent updates to Product Listing Ads, as announced on Inside AdWords:

• More featured products – Product Listing Ads (in the top ad location) can now show up to 5 products at a time, giving users more shopping choices and allowing more advertisers to promote their products.
• More traffic - Since launching Product Listing Ads in AdWords to all US advertisers, Google has seen significant growth with an overall 600% increase in traffic to retailers from Product Listing Ads compared to last year.

Product Listing Ads

Additionally, according to Google’s Holiday 2011 Consumer Intentions Report, 46 percent of consumers plan to use search engines more for researching holiday purchases this year.  eMarketer also estimates that “US retail ecommerce holiday-season sales, which include all retail ecommerce sales during November and December, will rise 16.8% this year to $46.7 billion.”  Advertisers should prepare to capitalize on the projected online spending increase and ensure online ads are showcasing their products appropriately and with relevant holiday deals, sales and limited time only messaging.