blog

Social networks: we’ve all heard of them, and most of us are at least familiar with the basic principles of all the major ones—Facebook is the biggest, YouTube is the place to watch videos, Flickr is for pictures, and Twitter is, well, Twitter. But enough about the basics! We’ve compiled a list of fun social media trivia that’s sure to make you the most popular guy or gal at your next party. Or help you answer a Final Jeopardy question. Or at least make you say “hmm.”

2,330,000,000 – Number of results Google returns for the search term “blog.” The top result is Blogger.com, a Google-owned blogging service.
4,920,093 – Number of people that follow @aplusk (aka: Ashton Kutcher), Twitter’s most popular user.
750,000 – Number of people who joined the group “Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)” when the news feed was introduced in 2005. Twitter, which was introduced in 2006, is a relatively close approximation and simplified version of the Facebook news feed. It currently boasts over 105,000,000 users.
50,237 – Number of times the most popular story on social news site Digg.com has been dugg. The story, entitled “Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,” featured a string of code that could decrypt HD DVD format DRM. It was removed after Digg received a cease and desist notice.
11,091 – Number of results Flickr returns for the search term “platypus.”
2003 – Year Friendster, the site that defined social networking as we know it today, was launched. Friendster is still active today. Approximately 90% of its traffic comes from Asia and it continues to work on expanding its Asian presence.
1998 – Year LiveJournal, the granddaddy of all blogging platforms, was introduced.
130 – Average number of Friends a Facebook user has.
37 – Percentage of users who update Twitter using their mobile phones.
4:3 – Ratio of funny children videos to funny cat videos on YouTube. (Funny children may dominate YouTube, but the most dugg video of all time was, you guessed it, a cat video.)
0 – Number of followers many Twitter users had on May 10, 2010. After discovering a bug that allowed users to force other users to follow them without their consent, Twitter admins reset many account holders’ follower counts to zero while they resolved the issue.

Blogs are absolutely soaring in popularity these days. It seems like everyone from our airlines to our hairdressers are publishing something online. But why? What makes blogs such an important social media tool that Marriott and Coke have decided to adopt them? And more importantly, what separates a good blog from a not-so-good one?

The first thing every social media person should know before diving into the blogosphere is what a blog is and what a blog isn’t. Technically what a blog is is a website that people update semi-regularly with news, information, commentary, or just general day-to-day details. Blogs can either be professional or personal, and both types have their own unique set of guidelines. As far a business bloggers are concerned, a proper blog is—

A Whole Slew of Pages that Search Engines can Index
Any blog platform worth its salt will give each of your posts its own unique URL, which means that every entry you post will be a page that Google can index. If you’re a chef and restaurant proprietor, odds are that you didn’t devote a main page of your site to your love affair with Wusthof knives. However, if you write a post about why you love your Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu sandwich knife for slicing cucumbers, searchers could potentially find your restaurant by way of Googling  a combination of Wusthof + knife + cucumber + sandwich (trust me, stranger search combos have been Googled).

A Place Where You Answer Frequently Asked Questions
If you hear a question a lot, why not post a thorough answer on your blog? You should answer the customer queries immediately, of course, but you could also direct them to your blog if the answer is particularly long or complicated. And chances are, if many people are asking you, many more are asking Google, and wouldn’t it be nice if a few of those Googlers happened upon your company’s blog and used your services?

A Place Where You Demonstrate Your Expertise
When potential customers visit your website, they want to know that your company is the best one for the job. If your blog is full of well-written, informative posts, customers will know immediately that the people behind your business are capable and competent.  

Updated Regularly
I’m not saying you have to update your blog every day, but if there are month-long gaps between posts, old readers will lose interest and you won’t accumulate any news one. A loved blog is an effective blog, so try to keep your update schedule consistent.

Now for what a proper blog is not—

A Billboard
Entries about why your creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip is the best and/or better than the creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip down the street aren’t going to be all that useful. Sure, you can post an occasional announcement or promote a product, but by and large blogs aren’t really intended to be hubs for blatant advertising. If you want to post about the 22nd Annual Half-Price Oyster Week at your restaurant, consider doing so in an interesting way (perhaps you could post about how Oyster Week grew into the tradition that it is today or about which wines go best with fried and raw oysters).

A Will/Business Proposal/Other Official Document
A blog is a pretty informal thing, so have fun when you’re writing it! Use contractions and colloquialisms when they’re appropriate. Joke with the reader. Just remember that the voice behind your blog is the voice of your company, so keep it professional and keep it consistent with your company’s image.

Remember that above all else, good blogs are the ones that people find interesting and valuable. If people like what you’re saying, they’ll come back for more, and there’s a pretty good chance that if something you write is especially useful or fresh, it will get passed around, which could translate into more exposure for your business and potentially more money in your pocket.

On April 3, Apple released the newest member of its uber-popular family into the world, and technophiles were so jazzed that they snapped up over 600,000 iPads in five short days. But Apple-hungry consumers weren’t the only ones who were excited about the iPad—most* of the web’s biggest social players were pretty darned enthused as well, and they weren’t afraid to show it:

Google: To take full advantage of the large iPad screen, Google reformatted Gmail. The two-column display is basically an enhanced version of the single column Gmail for Mobile app that was created for the iPhone and Android. (Some Gmail users even argue that Gmail for the iPad is an enhanced version of traditional Gmail and are going to great lengths to make it their desktop default.)
Flickr: The photo and video sharing site gleefully announced on its blog that it would be making its videos iPad-compatible by introducing HTML5 playback. (Until very recently, nearly all websites embedded videos using Flash, but since the iPad doesn’t support Flash, sites are switching their vids over to HTML5 to keep up.)  
WordPress: WordPress also trumpeted its foray into iPad territory on its blog (a move that was actually quite apropos and vaguely existential). The blogging website has released a new version of its iPhone app that’s compatible with the iPad and comes equipped with all sorts of fun features like the ability to geotag blog updates.
YouTube: I found nary a peep about the iPad on the YouTube blog, but Apple was very vocal on the video giant’s behalf. The iPad comes with a built-in YouTube app, which, like big brother Gmail, is formatted to suit the iPad screen.
Facebook: Facebook has been making apps for Apple products since the beginning of time, so everyone was waiting to see what it had in store for the iPad. As it turns out, what it had in store was nothing. More accurately, a Facebook app was in the works for the iPad, but its life was cut short when its programmer took issue with the App Store screening process and quit the project. Some Tom, Dick, or Steve did create a Facebook app called Facebook Ultimate, but it developed a horrible reputation among iPad users (and infringed on the Facebook copyright to boot) and Apple has since removed it from the App Store. There is a bit of hope for the disgruntled Facebook user, and it comes in the form of http://touch.facebook.com/, which is a stripped down version of regular old Facebook that fits better on the iPad screen.
    
*Twitter is conspicuously absent from this list, and with good reason—the micro-blogging phenom didn’t go to any lengths to adapt itself to the iPad. Happily for tweet-o-holics, however, the App Store has been flooded with third-party Twitter apps (the ones from TweetDeck and Twitterific are said to be particularly excellent) that pick up the slack. 

If you’re one of the lucky few techies who’s already gotten his hands on an iPad, go ahead and tweet, blog, email, or update your Facebook status about how you’re tweeting, blogging, emailing, or updating your Facebook status with your all-powerful fingertips. Those of us old-fashioned mice-and-keyboard folks will be mighty jealous indeed.

Google recently rolled out some highly-anticipated real-time features for its search engine that include Twitter and news and blog feeds that can (and often do) occupy the top spots on search results pages. Google says that the changes will give its search engine users access to the most up-to-the-minute news possible.  We say the changes will give social media-savvy business owners an even greater chance of being found online.

Google’s real-time search is meant to give Google users access to news as it breaks, even if the user wasn’t necessarily searching for news. Google gives the following example on its blog: “The big story [in the top position when we searched for GM] was about GM's stabilizing car sales, which shows under 'News results.' Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the 'Latest results' feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM's CEO stepped down.…” If the real-time search had been live when Michael Jackson died, Google users searching for his biography might have seen tweets about his death before the mainstream media had a chance to report it (I, for example, found out very early by reading statuses on Facebook).

Could some of this “real-time” news actually be just plain old gossip? It certainly could, yes, but that doesn’t stop it from occasionally receiving top billing, and there are some strategies that businesses can use to make themselves visible in that spot:
•    Tweet about trending topics. They are the ones that make it to the top of the search results page.
•    Update your business page’s Facebook status with subjects people want to know about. Facebook statuses are not yet part of Google real-time search, but they will be in the near future. When they are, their feed will probably behave much like Twitter’s.
•    Blog about interesting or useful information that people will want to share. The more popular a blog post is, the better chance it will have of showing up at the top of the results page.
•    Include keywords in blog titles, status updates, and social media descriptors whenever possible. That way, when people search for one of your keywords, the live feed will show them your blog (and, by extension, your business).

It’s important to note that Twitter feeds and blog posts are not always displayed in the prime top position (they usually only appear there when the searched term is a hot Twitter or current event topic). They are, however, always available in the “Show Options” menu, and there’s no telling where they’ll end up once Google has refined the real-time search algorithm. Google admits that there are quite a few wrinkles it needs to iron out of its upgraded system; however, the mere fact that Google is taking the steps to include social media so prominently in its search results points to the breadth of social media’s influence and to its mighty staying power.

*Google has released this video to demonstrate how its new real-time search functions.

We tell everyone we meet to begin a Blog, but we have not been taking our own advice.  Too little time, too much to do is the excuse.  We plan to stop making excuses and begin working on our blogging, adding an ongoing entry on the calendar to add to the Blog and just doing it! 

Finding detail about what to write is not that hard, certainly not that hard in our world.  Many discuss website design, development and Search Engine Optimization and certainly many who are much smarter than we.  But we have a different spin on things, taking other detail and attempting to apply it to everyday situations.  Or at least our perspective on the latest thing, new idea, and new twist.  We will always frame it as we see it.

Tune in regularly to see what's new. Or ask us our view on anything.  Sometimes we will just have to say -- We don't know and investigate. 

Ask your questions, post your comments, let's see what happens.