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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

America’s First Lady joins Twitter

Michelle Obama joined Twitter on January 12, adding more social media power to Obama’s re-election campaign. Like her husband’s Twitter account, it will be managed by campaign staff with occasional tweets with personal signatures. Tweets from the First Lady herself will be signed “-mo”, similar to tweets on President Obama’s Twitter account signed “-bo”. She’s already amassed over 360,000 followers, who she acknowledged in her first personal tweet:

The account has only posted 12 tweets so far, with topics ranging from health care to Martin Luther King Jr. to her recent appearance iCarly, a kid-friendly sitcom on Nickelodeon starring Miranda Cosgrove, which includes a “random dancing” segment where Michelle busts a move!

Ochocinco makes up for 2 years of ignored tweets

Florida college student Victor Gonzalez tweeted his way to see the NFL playoff game between the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos. Gonzalez had been tweeting to Patriots wide receiver Chad Ochocinco for two years and never received a response from him. When he tweeted Ochocinco again to point this out, the NFL star decided to make up for it by inviting Gonzalez to last Sunday’s game. Ochocinco took care of Gonzalez’s travel to Foxboro and hotel stay as well.

Ashton Kutcher gets Punk’d by hacker and vows revenge

Add another person to the list of people tweeting from Ashton Kutcher’s account besides Ashton Kutcher: a hacker. Over the weekend, his Twitter and Foursquare accounts were hacked. The hacker seemed to want to add steam to rumors about a romance between Kutcher and Lorene Scafaria.

A fake tweet read: “First official sleepover with my girl @lorenescafaria so maybe breakfast with everyone next time! (@ Lorene’s House)”, with a link to a Foursquare check-in with a map showing Scafaria’s house.

Kutcher caught on and removed the tweets. But thanks to Foursquare (which Kutcher owns shares in and promotes), Kutcher also caught the hacker’s physical location. He has now vowed to find the hacker, tweeting “I’m coming for you my friend” with a link to a map showing the location, and “You hacked my Foursquare and I now know your address. Whoops…This is gonna be fun.”

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Video Marketing Strategy: Production

Friday, January 13th, 2012

Earlier this week eZanga released an introduction to our Video Marketing Strategy Series which highlighted why video should be your competitive edge in 2012. The first part of the series discusses the production quality of your videos. But first you must ask yourself, is this something you should do in house or outsource?

If you want to outsource these efforts, the average rate for a corporate video usually runs about $1000 per finished minute. If you want to test drive the positive effect video has on your business model first, this may be the route to go. However, if you decide video works, I suggest you hire someone (or a team depending on your company size) in house to implement a successful video marketing strategy. Not only will they have the advantage of knowing the business model, product/services, but they will always be on site to create each video as needed.

That being said, our very own Video Marketing Specialist, Mike Pfeifer, will be co-authoring our Video Marketing Strategy series. Here’s a list of equipment Mike put together for the beginners who are ready to get their video marketing efforts up and running:

Camera- Duh! But choosing the right camera for your needs is very important in video production. If you’re not totally vested in the video marketing idea, it’s always safe to start basic. Mike suggests anything that can shoot HD. In short Mike says, “If you pump enough lighting into it, the footage will look good.” The budget range for a good camera is usually anywhere between 600-1300 dollars.

Mike uses a DSLR style camera. In the past three years this type of camera has become a pretty common buzzword. Independent filmmakers are using DSLR cameras, which are capable of shooting video along with still images. If you check out eZanga’s more recent promotional videos on our YouTube channel, you can see the difference in quality with the DSLR. For some pointers, Mike suggests Philip Bloom’s tutorial with DLSR cameras.

Audio- 50% of your video relies on the quality of sound. Although audio is recorded on your camera device the quality is no where near as good as if you used an audio recorder.  Here is a perfect example of the difference.  Mike’s recommends the Zoom H1 which is about $99, which we use in house.

Lighting- This probably is the most overlooked and underrated ingredient to video quality. Light is everything. Let’s put it this way, if you had the absolute best camera in the world with poor lighting, the video would look…  :/   Yea, that about sums it up. Here’s another great tutorial from Philip Bloom’s website where Eve Hazelton with Underwater Realm discusses the basic techniques of lighting a subject.

Editing- The software for video editing is pretty important as well, since it pulls everything together. Mike says if the budget is there, you should spring for the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium, which runs at about $1699. It may seem a bit pricey, but it’s at the professional level (with a steep learning curve). If you’re looking for a more basic software go for Apple’s Final Cut Pro X which is relatively cheaper coming it at $299.99. This software is very user friendly and has a smaller learning curve.

There you have it, production in a nut shell. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments section and Mike will answer them.

Other blogs in this series:

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Lowdown: Google Search Plus Your World

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

On Tuesday, Google announced on it’s official blog a new search format called “Search, plus Your World,” which will attempt to integrate search and social. By social, they mean Google+. Danny Sullivan describes the format as allowing users to “find both privately shared content from friends and family plus material from across the web through a single search.” Here is a summary of what people are calling “Search+”, along with how others are perceiving the change.

Using Search, plus Your World

Google Search now has two modes: global and personalized. Global search presents results as if you were logged out of Google and Google+. Personalized search results show:

  • Listings from the web, some of which may be boosted either because of your past search behavior or because of your social connections
  • Public Google+ posts and photos from G+ or Picasa
  • Private or ‘limited’ Google+ posts and photos that were shared with you

You can switch between modes using the toggle in the top-right, underneath the search box. You can also opt-out of personal results completely by going to the Search Settings page while logged into Google.

Features

Google’s blog post introduces three new features of the personalized search:

  • Personal results – Personal results show relevant posts shared with you on Google+ as well as photos from Google+ and Picasa. You can see public content, content shared with you, and your own posts and photos.
  • Profiles in search – When typing in the search box, Google will use autocomplete to display Google+ profiles, similar to direct connect for brand pages. The autocomplete predictions will be for users you are connected with as well as prominent users. The results page will offer a fast way to add the users to your circles if you are logged into Google+.
  • People and Pages – When you search for a topic, the results page will include suggested Google+ users “who frequently discuss this topic” and buttons to add them to your circles right from the results page.

Reactions and Concerns

The fact that Google Search, plus Your World doesn’t bring in content from other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter has become a major concern. Twitter even released a statement saying:

“For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.

We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

Google responded on their Google+ page noting that they had a deal to display results from Twitter in the past, but over the summer the deal expired and Twitter chose not to renew the agreement. Google says that they are open to consider including data from other networks but does not have access to it now.

A privacy watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), also believes that the new features raise privacy and antitrusts concerns and is considering filing a letter with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

 

Do you like the new search features, or will you be “going global” from now on when you search?

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Video Marketing Strategy: Introduction

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

It’s a new year with new business goals and initiatives–it’s time to set the bar a little higher. For starters, what are your thoughts on a unique video marketing strategy? When it comes to business and the internet, you are entering a crowded arena. Last year we went through the reasons why you need to be online and how to do it correctly, but how can you stand out amongst your competitors? One of your biggest initiatives for 2012 should be video. Why?

It’s simple: People are lazy. No one thoroughly reads anymore– they skim. We are living in a world where information and communication is done quickly, efficiently, and as easily as possible. If someone clicks on your site to find massive amounts of informational content, chances are they will be quick to leave. Don’t get me wrong, you still need the content (it is king…and hey, I’m writing and you’re reading, right?) but you need a supplementary medium– i.e. video.

Since the YouTube boom, people are placing a huge amount of attention to video marketing. It’s the best way to reach a large audience in the most engaging fashion. People are making money, becoming famous (or infamous), going viral, teaching, sharing, interacting, and so much more! Video hosting sites, especially YouTube, allow you to connect with people who find what you do interesting. It only makes sense to turn video into your own business model.

Over the next week, eZanga will go through the necessary ingredients of a successful video marketing strategy. We will discuss:

Production: Quality is key!  You need the right lighting, camera and editing skills to produce professional videos.

Content: The video content needs to be engaging, unique and must facilitate some sort of conversation with your audience.

Marketing: Research! Figure out who you are targeting, the correct way to SEO a video, and a continual effort to building relationships and establishing a strong network.

Analytics: Not sure if you’re doing it right? The only way to find out is to monitor your results. You need to know how to read your feedback.

Stay tuned for the video marketing basics!

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Rupert Murdoch’s Twitter debut embarrassing for many

When Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter on December 31, people wondered how long it would take for his first mistake to be made. Well, it was January 1, when he said “maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!”

Shortly after Murdoch tweeted this, a Twitter account with the same name as his wife, Wendi Deng, replied to the tweet telling him to delete the offending tweet. He complied and she tweeted “Explaining to @rupertmurdoch about being careful with humor on line. sometimes it comes out as rude!” She continued tweeting at Murdoch and other public figures and celebrities. She even drew media attention. Twitter gave her account the checkmark that signals verification and News International confirmed that it was her.

But it wasn’t. Late last Monday it was revealed that the tweets were not by Murdoch’s wife but rather a mysterious jokester. The individual is no longer controlling the fake Twitter account but has instead moved onto the handle @Ficticious_acct, where they describe themselves in the bio section as “self-proclaimed Twitter expert, social media guru, professional liar and generally loathsome.”

Beyonce and Jay-Z have one daughter, but two names become Trending Topics

On January 7, Beyonce gave birth to a daughter named Blue Ivy Carter. The pregnancy received huge amounts of attention and Beyonce’s rub of her belly (first announcing her pregnancy) in August even broke a record for most tweets per second. So it came as no surprise to see fans as well as plenty of celebrities congratulating the couple on their daughter’s birth. But at first, people were talking about the birth of Ivy Blue, leading it to become a Trending Topic on Twitter. Someone even set up a Twitter handle @IvyBlueCarter (although the account is now suspended).

Tebow breaks tweets per second record for sports

Speaking of tweets per second records, the record for a sporting event was broken this Sunday with Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow ‘s 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime, leading them to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Twitter later announced that there were 9,420 tweets per second, beating the previous record set by the Women’s World Cup. Now we just need to find out how many of those tweets included a picture of someone Tebowing!

Racist receipt from Papa John’s goes viral

After buying a pizza from the Hamilton Heights Papa John’s in New York City, Minhee Cho found a racial slur on her receipt. An employee had described her in the store’s computers as “lady chinky eyes.” When she got home with her pizza, she posted a photo of the receipt (seen left) on Twitter with the text:

“Hey @PapaJohns just FYI my name isn’t ‘lady chinky eyes’”.

According to CNN, the photo was viewed over 200,000 times over the weekend. Papa Johns responded quickly via Twitter, expressing shock and saying that the sixteen-year-old employee had been fired.

Alec Baldwin is back on Twitter

You may remember that last month, Alec Baldwin was thrown off of a flight for playing Words With Friends and subsequently shut down his Twitter account. Well his tweeting hiatus has ended as of Sunday, just in time for the premiere of the sixth season of 30 Rock on Thursday. Since being back, he has tweeted about his vacation, wished his daughter Ireland luck on her English follow, and frequently promoted the season premiere of 30 Rock.

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Time for Google to punish…itself?

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

On Tuesday, Google had to penalize it’s own web browser, Google Chrome, for violating Google’s guidelines against paid links. The action was taken because of blog posts that were part of a marketing campaign for Chrome gone bad. As the story unfolds, it looks like Google agreed to buy online video ads but did not approve the sponsored posts campaign.

Aaron Wall of SEO Book wrote a blog post on January 2 pointing out the paid links. The marketing campaign included paying bloggers to write generic, favorable posts about Google Chrome that linked to a video about the benefits of using the browser for small business. Wall pointed out that when he searched “This post is sponsored by Google”, over 400 results were found, giving scope to the size of the marketing campaign and the number of links it generated. That disclaimer itself, usually found at the beginning or end of the blog post, also linked to the Google Chrome download page in at least one case.

By paying those bloggers to write favorable posts about Google Chrome, Google was also paying them to include the links. Since the blog posts also included the video, it can be said they were also buying views of the video. Per Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, “Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results.” To prevent paid links from impacting search engine results, Google suggests that paid links should contain a “nofollow” tag, which prevents the link from affecting PageRank. However, not all of the offending blog posts used “nofollow” links.

People in the industry are upset not only because of Google buying the links. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land explains in his coverage Google’s fight “against paid links and ‘thin’ content,” both of which the campaign produced. PageRank not only takes into account quantity, but also quality of links. The sponsored blog posts are said to be examples of the “thin” content that the Google Panda update was supposed to fight against.

Google’s stance on paid links received a lot of attention last year, when Google banned companies such as JCPenney, Forbes, and Overstock for using them. As for Google Chrome, a Google spokesman released this statement via email: “We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days.” The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts says in a post on Google+, “After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would.”

As a result of the punishment, Google Chrome went from the second result of a search for “browser” to the bottom of the fifth page of results and has been reported sinking as low as position #73. Search Engine Land also reported that Chrome’s ranking lowered in searches for other terms such as “web browser” and “internet browser.” The Chrome download page doesn’t even rank when searching for “chrome,” “chrome browser,” and “google chrome.” Instead, a help page on Chrome installation has become the top result. When the Chrome download page does appear in results, it does so only as a sitelink.

Do you think this punishment Google placed on itself is fair? With only one violation found so far, do you think it’s too harsh, or is it appropriate for Google to place harsher punishments on itself, who “should know better”?

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

UPS uses Twitter to help consumers on ‘National Return Day’

First there was Black Friday, then Cyber Monday and Small Business Saturday, and now there is National Return Day. That is what today, January 3rd, has been nicknamed. The National Retail Federation estimates that $46 billion in merchandise will be returned this holiday season and UPS estimates that over 500,000 packages will be returned today. This season they hired a social media expert to help consumers with the return process.

Today, at 1pm and 8pm EST (10am and 5pm PST), @UPS will be holding #HolidayReturns Twitter parties to “deliver a bit of sanity and some clever ideas to help take the hassle out of holiday returns.” Blogger Melissa Dawn Lierman (@TimeOutMom) will moderate while she and a team of panelists answer questions and give smart tips to make returns less stressful. There will also be prize giveaways with gift cards to The UPS Store and Zappos.

Howard Stern calls Twitter followers on New Years Eve

Radio host Howard Stern (@HowardStern) gave his followers a unique opportunity to speak to him personally on Saturday night:

Stern and his wife followed through and called several of his followers over the next few hours. He would then tweet about who he spoke to or if his call went to voicemail. He also responded to tweets from a lot of the people he spoke to over the phone, and from the Twitter conversations it looks like some conversations actually got kind of deep and Stern really got to know his fans.

 

NBA launches Twitter account to defend bad calls

On Wednesday, December 28, Miami Heat played the Charlotte Bobcats. The Heat’s Dwyane Wade scored the game-winning shot to beat the Bobcats 96-95 with 2.9 seconds left in the game. Numerous critics accused Wade of traveling and the referees of missing it.

The NBA was not convinced. To defend the refs’ call, it has created a Twitter account, @NBAOfficials, to handle controversial calls. In its’ only tweet so far, the NBA defends the refs’ call on Wade.

Twitter down on New Years Eve morning

If you tried wishing your followers a happy New Year when you woke up on the morning of New Years’ Eve, you likely ran into some problems. Twitter was down for approximately 90 minutes Saturday morning, displaying the graphic to the left. Twitter did not give a reason, but apparently the outage coincided with the time 2012 began over in Japan. So many Japanese tweeters sent out celebratory tweets that they reached over 16,000 tweets per second.

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3 Ways to Interact on Google+

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

When we first started the 3 ways to interact series, there were no brand pages on Google+. But on November 7, Google launched brand pages on their newest social network. Almost two months later, many brands have set up pages but are having trouble building a following on the network and interacting.

The main benefit most brands see in a Google+ brand page is the implications for search, especially as pages begin to show in Google search results. But for your page to accomplish anything, as always, you need to interact. Here are some tips:

1. Use Hangouts. – If you aren’t familiar, Hangouts is the Google+ video conferencing feature where you can “hang out” with up to 10 others. Hangouts also have text chat windows, YouTube integration, and “Hangouts with Extras” (which includes screen sharing and Google Docs collaboration). Try starting Hangouts and joining sessions hosted by others. Use Hangouts to:

  • Hold a “Town Hall” where fans and customers are introduced to the people of your brand/company. This personalizes your brand and lets those in the Hangout learn from your company’s expertise.
  • Provide personalized customer service or use the opportunity to explain things your fans may frequently have problems with.
  • Provide tutorials and demonstrations about things relevant to your company’s industry.
  • Just hang out. You need to know a lot about your audience, and what better way to find out than to ask them? Invite people into a Hangout just to hang out. You can learn about your customers and learn from them, and will make them feel like they really know your brand on a personal level.

2. Connect your brand page. – If you are having trouble building an audience, make sure your page is visible. Make sure you connect the brand page to your company’s website and use the Google+ badge that allows users to add you to their circles right from your website. You can also add links to the “Custom Links” area of the “About” section of your brand page. You can add as many links as you want, so make your other social profiles available that way. Lastly, utilize the +1 button to integrate search with social.

3. Explore and connect. – One downside of Google+ brand pages is that pages cannot add a user to its’ circles unless the user has the brand page in his or her circles. But there are other ways to drive users to your brand page. You can still use your individual profile to connect with people, and this may actually be better than the alternative. Reaching out to someone personally will build more meaningful connections and if you are talking about your brand, they will likely go to the page on their own at some point.

Add eZanga to your circles on Google+

Other posts in this series:

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The Ultimate Year-End Wrap-Up

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

The end of the year is a time of reflection and hope for many people. It’s a time to look back on the previous year as a whole and zoom in and out on things. This often leads to making predictions and resolutions for the year about to start.

This past year was especially important for the evolution of social media and other technologies. Many websites have taken close looks at types of events from 2011, such as social media mistakes or how people have used social media and technology, while others are making predictions for industry trends in 2012.

We, however, are making a super guide to all of these articles so you can easily find the best, worst, and most entertaining events of 2011 and get excited for 2012! If you agree with predictions or want to share your own, please leave us a comment!

 

Social Media

In 2011…

In 2012…

Technology

In 2011…

  • 2011: Tech’s Biggest Winners and Losers – Lance Ulanoff from Mashable looks at the tech events, big and small, that “gave 2011 its character.”
  • The 15 Biggest Tech Flops of 2011 – From Qwikster to the Gmail iPhone app, Business Insider looks at what just didn’t work, with the common theme of businesses trying to compete with the iPad.
  • The Biggest Web Outages of 2011 – Mashable looks at SmartBear Software’s list of the top web outages in 2011, not including outages caused by a third party.
  • iTunes Rewind – An article from MacRumors looks at Apple’s iTunes Rewind 2011 feature in the iTunes store, highlighting the best of music, movies, TV shows, books, apps and podcasts in 2011.

In 2012…

Search

Since two-thirds of the search articles combine 2011 and 2012 into one post, we will combine them into one section of our post!

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

76ers fan tweets himself to a job with the team

Recently, the Philadelphia 76ers held a fan voting contest to choose a new team mascot from three finalists. Jerry Rizzo and Hunter Coleman noticed that the finalists had no presence on social media, and decided to change that. The two friends created accounts for two of the finalists: @PhilEMoose and @BFranklinDogg. They began tweeting from the accounts to promote the contest and drive fan engagement.

That was until they received an official email from the team requesting they hand over the accounts. Rizzo and Coleman reached an agreement with the team where they were given box seats and tickets. But later Rizzo received a voicemail from the team’s CEO, Adam Aron, asking to call him back. After returning the phone call, Rizzo was brought in for several in-person interviews and met with Aron. He was offered and accepted a social media coordinating position for the team.

Twitter reacts to death of Kim Jong-il

Once again, Twitter was a go-to source for breaking news and cracking jokes with the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Saturday. One trending topic that sprung up was the phrase “Team America,” in reference to the movie “Team America: World Police” in which he is depicted as an evil dictator trying to take over the world. Popular topics of tweets included puns on his name and behavior, as well as recapping other significant deaths this year. Read tweets about Kim Jong-il’s death here.

Jon Bon Jovi is still livin’…on a prayer

Singer Jon Bon Jovi is the latest celebrity to “die” on Twitter. A fake news release circulated on Twitter over the weekend claiming that he suffered a fatal heart attack, starting the stream of jokes and puns on the song title “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

On Monday evening, he and his public relations team tweeted a picture and message from the band’s official Twitter account. It read “”Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey” -jbj. Rest assured that Jon is fine! This photo was just taken.” with the picture posted to the right.

New New Twitter allows users to see they’ve been blocked

Last week, we introduced you to what’s been dubbed “New New Twitter”. One thing the redesigned Twitter brings is a bar notification when you try to interact with someone who has blocked you. If a user tries to follow or tweet at another user who has blocked them, a notification at the top will appear. As of now, it’s not clear if this is an intended feature or a bug, similar to the one that allowed users of Facebook’s Timeline to see when they stopped being “friends” with someone.

 

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