Since 2009 Google has been experimenting with a kinder gentler social search. Social media is playing a fundamental part in how websites and internet content gets shared. Thus far Google’s Social media attempts have been a fairly clumsy and ham fisted affair. Google Buzz has drawn public scorn and law suits over privacy violations. Google Search has barely made a ripple in the social tide. Then there’s Google Wave, well let’s not speak ill of the dead. All the while Facebook is generating more internet traffic than Google and encroaching on their advertising dollars.

On March 30th 2011 Google announced “+1”, its new social bookmarking/sharing/recommendation widget thingy. This is not a new concept, but Google’s +1 is placed directly into your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to the right of each listing.  That’s what makes it a bit different and potentially more effective than the other social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. And similar to Facebook’s “Like” button, your social network peeps will see it,……sooner or later.

According to Google; +1 is the digital short hand for “this is pretty cool”. Basically it’s a web page approval indicator to share with People in your Gmail, Google Talk chat list, folks you follow in Google Reader and Buzz and the good people in your “My Contacts” group. In the future, the crowd you are connected to on non-Google services like Quora, Flickr and Twitter will also witness your +1ing.

Google will inform site owners by email when the +1 button is available for their web pages. Until then, +1 buttons can only be found on SERPs for English language sites and next to paid ads. The +1 button will be a natural ranking signal for search results when clicked. It will also be displayed for the searchers own network in their Google Profile. You will be able to see your friends +1’d activity through their profile and on the SERPs page as a little icon image beneath the +1’d listing.

All searchers must have a Public Google Profile and if it isn’t public by the end of July this year, it will be deleted by default. Searchers who have a Google account but no Google Profile will see the personalized +1’s but won’t be able to add them, and those who don’t have a Google Profile or aren’t logged into Google will see aggregated +1 data.

The +1 buttons will be integrated with Google Ads and listings. Google says +1 will not affect Quality Scores but it will influence the click-through rate (CTR) and advertisers should see a pickup in clicks. Also, organic and paid search shares a commonality with +1. That means that if your AdWords landing page was +1’d in organic listing, the +1 will show next to the ad.

According to Google all ads will be getting +1 buttons and can’t be turned off.  The clicks on the +1 buttons next to the ads will NOT count as a paid click but advertisers will be able to see their +1 statistics. Soon, anyone registered with Google Webmaster Central will be able to see +1 stats for their organic search listings as well.

Eventually the +1 buttons will be linked directly to search results. Google Co-founder and new CEO Larry Page sent out a company-wide memo, alerting employees that 25% of their annual bonuses will be tied to the success or failure of Google’s social strategy in 2011.

The stakes are high, and even if +1 fizzles away into ambiguity Google’s social strategy will clearly effect search engine optimization (SEO). The internet is turning into the socialnet and it’s no longer just what you know and sell but who you know, who knows you AND how likable or interesting your content and products are.

I have no idea if Google’s new social experiment will survive. The name “+1” is just awful and there are many questions about algorithm vs human (social) in regards to search results. If I search for apple pie and my wife’s’ aunt Betty’s recipe blog is listed on page one (which it shouldn’t) but, because she’s +1’d it and is in my network doesn’t that go against “organic” rank and the Google algorithm? In time, will all my search results rank according to what my friends have to say about it? And if it does and proves more useful to me, does that mean Google’s search algorithm was wrong all this time? Or I hate the results and there’s no going back? What about spammers?

Are you using the Beta version of Google’s +1? How do you like it? Or if you’re not using it do you think you will? Write back, obviously I need the help.

More and more as I speak to clients about social media they ask where they can find the material that will help them understand this medium. I find myself sending links and blog posts from the same social media champions time and again.  I thought it would be a good idea to list the top 7 resources in this blog because finding pertinent and timely information in the social media realm can be daunting to say the least. When you dive into these 7 websites you will get a comprehensive look at business and marketing resources that can help guide your small business through this vast maze of wonderfulness.

Mashable
Founded in 2005, Mashable is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. With more than 40 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific news site reporting breaking web news, providing analysis of trends, reviewing new websites and services, and offering social media resources and guides. Mashable’s audience includes early adopters, social media enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, influencers, brands and corporations, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists. Mashable is also popular with bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users — an increasingly influential demographic.

Chris Brogan
Chris Brogan consults and speaks professionally with Fortune 100 and 500 companies on the future of business communications, and social software technologies. He is a featured monthly columnist at Entrepreneur Magazine. Chris’s blog is in the Top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150. He has over 11 years experience in online community, social media, and related technologies. Chris is involved in dozens of start-ups and non-profits. I met Chris while taking video at a social media seminar and he autographed his New York Times bestselling book Trust Agents for me. After reading it I went from an interested bystander in social media to changing my career to internet and social media marketing. It was that profound for me.

Brian Solis
Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has influenced the effects of emerging media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and publishing. His blog, BrianSolis.com is among the world’s leading business and marketing online resources, ranking among the top 1% of all blogs tracked by Technorati. Solis is also ranked as one of the leading voices in the AdAge Power 150 index of worldwide marketing bloggers. He actively contributes to FastCompany, BusinessWeek, AdAge, Harvard Business Review, and Mashable.

ProBlogger
Australian Darren Rowse started ProBlogger in September of 2004. This site is dedicated to helping other bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium. This is a rich resource for all thing blogging whether it is for a small business, personal, or for your company. Explore the categories to find what type of blogging interests you the most. Be sure to sign up for Darren’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project. Not for the light hearted but it will most assuredly get you started on the right blogging foot.

ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb was founded on April 20, 2003, by Richard MacManus and grew his blog about the changing Internet into an international team of journalists. ReadWriteWeb is now one of the most widely read and respected blogs in the world, known for offering insightful analysis about each day’s Internet industry news.

Social Media Examiner
Social Media Examiner is a free online magazine designed to help businesses discover how to best use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to find leads, increase sales and generate more brand awareness.  Technorati and AdAge rank Social Media Examiner as one of the world’s Top 100 business blogs. Offering a unique single source of knowledge, the site contains comprehensive articles and videos on how to use the best social media tools, along with original case studies, reviews of the latest industry research and advice direct from the world’s leading experts.

Social Media Today
Launched in 2007 Social Media Today is a collaborative blog, publishing great posts from the web’s best thinkers on social technology. From networking & community building to marketing & trend analysis and help people understand what’s going on in social media. Because Social Media Today works in collaboration with many other social media devotees it offers some of most diverse content.

There are hundreds of websites, blogs and articles that can provide you with great information regarding social media for small business, but let’s start with these seven. There are sites concerning only Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, LinkedIn marketing, YouTube, WordPress etc. The sites above will give a holistic view and then you can drill down to your specific niche of interest.

What are your favorite social media resources? Write back, we would love to know.

Speak your blog.

There are many reasons why businesses aren’t blogging today and the number one reason I hear is that people just don’t have the time. Other excuses are; they don’t like to sit down and type or people don’t know how to spell that well or every time they have a great idea they’re not in front of a keyboard or don’t have any paper on them.  I wanted to show you through this Mobile Phone application called Dragon Dictation that you don’t have to sit at a keyboard, you can write your own content or speak your own content right into this application as I’m doing via my iPhone 4.

You can find Dragon Dictation on the Apple App Store, and here’s the big kicker, it’s for free.  Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Nuance Communications that allows you to speak easily and instantly see your text or e-mail messages. In fact, it’s up to five times faster than typing on your keyboard. With Dragon Dictation you can also dictate status updates directly to your social networking applications like Facebook and Twitter or send notes and reminders to yourself all using your own voice.  So when you’re on the go, stop typing and start speaking from one short text messages to longer e-mail messages and anything in between. Right now Dragon Dictation currently supports US English, UK English and German and French. Italian and Spanish support will be added later this year.

I’ve tried other dictation to text devices before and by far Dragon works the best.

Some things to consider when using Dragon, is that if you shut off the application after you were  finished without copying you could lose your work so I suggest when you are done to immediately copy it and paste into a notes application which I’ve done for this process.

Coming up with fresh content isn’t always easy,  sometimes great ideas come to you when you least expect it, so now when you say you don’t have time to write a blog…..  It’s as easy as speaking the words, saving and copy-paste. With this application there shouldn’t be any new excuses why you couldn’t write a blog for your website.

So that’s it. Now this blog is written. All I had to do now was edit, make sure all the words make sense and if I had miss spoke to correct that, and also make sure that all the punctuation marks are placed correctly within my sentences.

Hopefully for some, this will solve the problem of  you don’t have time to write good content or you’re not a very good typist. So please speak your mind into the comments section, we would love to know what you think about this.

(This blog was written about 90% through the dictation application. You can click HERE and see the unedited version. Admittedly most of the corrections I had to make was because I misspoke or didn’t convey the actual thought I intended. It took me about 15 minutes to dictate and copy text to this blog. It took another 15 minutes to edit, and this is the first time I ever did this kind of thing.  Absolutely amazing how much time I saved and how easy this was. Below is a short tutorial on how Dragon Dictation works).

What Do I Write About in My Blog?

My products & services, RIGHT?  Better not.

Your company blog content is a great way to communicate with your potential and current customers.  It’s a way to give them the news they are interested in.  Reading about the best features of products A, B, and C can easily be done via your website and for a blog post, can be really boring if done too often.  The common question I hear from my clients is, “So what DO I write about?”

I recently came across a blog by Urban Outfitters – a retail clothing store.  They are making the UO Blog thee Go-To Place for current fashion trends.  They are writing about fashion from all over the world – not just their own store.  Their focus seems to be: what else do our customers want to know?  They are writing about things that their clientele care about, in this case, looking cool and wearing the latest trends.

UO’s blog content considers the consumer instead of focusing on specific products.  Their content is updated often, which makes people want to come back for more.  Don’t be taken aback by UO’s choices of clothing in the photos, videos, and set up.  It is uniquely designed to target a specific audience.  Great work UO.  They seem to know their customers well.

But you’re a small business that can’t spend the time or money investigating and traveling and researching.  What is your blog about, then?  If you go back to Urban Outfitters’ focus, it’s simple: what else do our customers want to know?  Do you get phone calls from customers asking questions about how to fix something, how to determine the correct size, what are the best ways to use a product?  Take the answers you provide over the phone and write about them.  Do a little research on Google to enhance your content, and wallah!  You have a great post with little effort.  Write about the latest updates in your industry, the trends; the big news.  Write about what is going on within your business location – remodeling? A party? A promotion? A new hire? The owner’s hobby?  The list goes on and on.

You are an expert already, just write it down.
Where do you get the inspiration for your blog? Write back we would love know.

There’s nothing better than a fired-up client … a client eager to spend resources and energy on doing smart things in a smart way … a client ready for results and willing to do what it takes to get them.

And there’s nothing worse than having to tell that client to holster it back up because they aren’t ready to pull the trigger.

That is sometimes the situation we find ourselves in when our small business clients are interested in implementing social media strategies before they have made sure that the location they are driving traffic to – usually their Web site – is prepared to handle the traffic.

When it comes to marketing their own brand, many small- and mid-sized businesses are working with limited resources.  So a decision to increase focus in one area often inadvertently becomes a decision to decrease attention in another.

Embarking on a social media strategy is a major undertaking for any company, an effort that often manages to soak up a lot of internal resources.  This can mean that the more mundane efforts it takes to update the company Web site can often go ignored, leaving the place you are trying to drive more traffic to looking something less than its best. Why is this a problem?  Because social media efforts are just a means to an end, with your final goal being to convert traffic into sales.

It’s important that the first step of your social media strategy be taking a look at your Web site and making sure it is an effective end-destination for every tweet, blog post and shared video.

• Are there clear “calls to action” throughout your Web site?
• Are your products and service pages current, accurate and complete?
• If you are targeting a specific audience with specific services/products needs in your social media efforts, are those services/products easily found?
• Are your contact pages updated and complete?  Is it easy for customers to continue the dialog that you started with a social media vehicle?
• Is your Web site content of interest to your social media audiences?

Pages that need simple corrections should be taken care of right away.  Any section that needs more extensive effort should be avoided as landing pages for social media traffic.  Once you are comfortable that your Web site is ready and able to do handle the new traffic, your company can feel comfortable in taking its first shot at social media success.

Lately I have been spending a considerable amount of time visiting with our customers located all over the U.S. The purpose in my recent “road warrior” lifestyle is twofold: First, I’ve made a commitment to personally meet with our customers in 2010, and second, I’m presenting many of them with our additional value added services.

The acceptance rate of our community management offering has been unprecedented. As I mentioned in a previous post, this service has to do with our customers’ adoption of social media. Cazbah provides them with the technology, work processes, and dedicated service and support to increase their inbound marketing opportunities. It also establishes them as the center-of-influence within their communities, hence the name.

On a recent visit with one of our clients while presenting a community management proposal, we got into a discussion about the viability of social media within their particular industry. Our client admitted he wasn’t too familiar with social media networks and expressed his concerns about how social media was going to help him sell his products (a very reasonable and accurate concern). While I did take the opportunity to highlight some of the benefits of social media for his business, it became clear to me that we need to  educate all of our clients regarding new media techniques that can improve their businesses.

With a wry smile, the client  asked, “I wonder what Warren Buffet is doing in social media?” He stopped me in my tracks. I thought, “what a great question.” Even though he was half joking, he struck on something profound. Clearly, if you are considering a change, you look to the leaders to gain insight into your decision making process. Who better than Warren Buffet, one of the savviest business men in the world.

Social media plays a vital role in viral marketing and enables further brand awareness. This is accomplished by establishing word-of-mouth communication between community members regarding relevant information which induces purchasing by driving traffic to a company’s Web site. Additionally, social media removes the barriers that may normally exist between a company and its customers, giving them the opportunity to communicate openly and virtually instantaneously.

Warren Buffet’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway now owns a diverse range of businesses including railroads, candy production, retail, home furnishings, encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, jewelry sales, newspaper publishing, manufacture and distribution of uniforms, manufacture, import and distribution of footwear; as well as several regional electric and gas utilities.

A partial list of companies that Berkshire Hathaway either has a complete ownership, a controlling ownership or a significant ownership in include; GEICO Insurance, The Pampered Chef, Dairy Queen, Benjamin Moore & Co., BoatU.S., NetJets, CocaCola and H.H. Brown Shoes. For a complete listing of their subsidiary companies click here http://tr.im/RRM5.

Several of the Berkshire Hathaway companies are major consumer brands like Benjamin Moore paint for example. A quick trip to their company Web site provides a link to their blog and an invitation to join the dialogue on all things color – the newest trends, products, and latest stories on everything from fashion to food, from art to architecture – on the blog “Living in Color with Sonu.”

BoatsU.S., the boat owners association of the United States, provides a listing of boating groups, message boards, member services, not to mention 118 Web pages chock full of boating blogs dealing with topics ranging from trans-Atlantic crossings to how to overcome your fears of traveling to places like Columbia.

The Dairy Queen Web site sports a mug of Warren Buffet himself on their homepage alongside an invitation to download their iPhone app, DQ Craze. A trip to their Facebook page shows an active community of over 800,000 fans. Their Twitter page heralds constant notifications about new content being posted to the company’s blog which, is supported by a team of eight dedicated bloggers.

Who hasn’t heard of (or seen) GEICO or is it Gecko? Needless to say, they’re everywhere and the Web is no exception. You can check out their YouTube channel to see all those crazy commercials featuring that zany lizard, cave man or pile of money with the ‘googly’ eyes. They too have an iPhone app called Glovebox™ with all sorts of info to engage their customers. The GEICO blog shows active participation on the part of four dedicated company bloggers and customers from around the world.

I could go on and on but you get the point. Warren Buffet knows all about social media. All of the companies that Berkshire Hathaway owns, controls or is invested in are currently and actively engaged in all aspects of social media. The bottom line about social media is that it’s all about the bottom line, and Warren Buffet clearly understands the dramatic value and business revenue that social media brings.

Account Manager

Cazbah, an Internet marketing services firm, provides small to mid-sized businesses with everything they need to succeed on the Internet. Our highly effective solution includes a dynamic database driven Web site with simplified content management, search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, e-commerce shopping cart, and dedicated service and ongoing support. Cazbah customers gain a greater level of control and generate measurable results!

Responsibilities
Key responsibilities for the Account Manager position include identifying and defining our clients’ requirements and needs, managing all aspects of a clients’ online sales and marketing strategy, and understanding and applying the Cazbah capabilities to our clients’ situational needs. Responsibilities include:

• Training our clients on the Cazbah tool set
• Monthly contact with clients
• Development and implementation of Internet marketing plans
• Working with the Cazbah production team to implement Internet marketing plans
• Analyze Web site performance and make appropriate adjustments to Internet marketing plan.

Required Skills
Candidate must have Internet marketing experience and have knowledge of how Web sites are built and maintained. A BS/BA degree or equivalent work experience in customer support, marketing or technology industry is also required. Experience working with small businesses/start ups preferred. In support of this, the candidate will have the following:

• Excellent communication skills and feel comfortable dealing with their assigned clients on a daily basis
• Basic Web site editing skills
• Strong knowledge of MS Word and Excel, and basic photo editing knowledge

Preferred Sills
The ideal candidate will have a passion for small businesses along with a strong knowledge of Web development. Preferred candidates will be skilled in the following areas:

• Google AdWords knowledge / certification
• Google Analytics knowledge / certification
• E-mail marketing knowledge
• Social media marketing knowledge
• Sales and distribution knowledge for retail and manufacturing industries

Benefits
The Cazbah Account Manager position is a salaried position with a healthcare plan, and matching simple IRA.

Please send cover letter and resume via e-mail to careers@cazbah.net
No phone calls please. We are an EEO Employer.

I had a discouraging experience a moment ago… I was checking my LinkedIn profile where I have a feed from our company blog – Cazmunity. My discouragement came from the number of days since I last posted. Ouch! It has been way, way too long!

This past year has been a very busy year for us at Cazbah. We actually finished the year ahead of the previous year by about 20% which, in the most severe recession that anyone can remember, is a pretty good thing. We also had our best new customer sales year in our history. It’s clear that more and more specialty small businesses are realizing how important the Internet is to the success of their businesses.

Our customers have continued to reward us with their loyalty as well. The Cazbah business model is predicated on our client’s ultimate success and their willingness to make a voluntary renewal of their business relationship with Cazbah year after year. The exceptional renewal rate and feedback we receive is indicative of our clients’ trust.

The true value of the Cazbah experience is in the personal relationships that our dedicated account managers establish with their clients. As is always the case in a trust-based relationship, our clients confide in us and share their fears, concerns, hopes and dreams for their businesses.

Because we do listen and have their best interests at the heart of what we do, several of our clients have asked us to take on a bigger share, or all, of their marketing efforts. Since these requests are on the rise, we’ve recently introduced two additional lines of business based upon our clients’ needs: Community Management and Strategic Marketing Consulting.

Our Community Management offering takes a hard look at a small business’s position in their industry and establishes them as the center-of-influence in the communities that they serve. Hence the name Community Management. The dynamics of the Web for small business have been steadily changing as social media and networking have established themselves as vital (and viral) communications mediums. Every aspects of a company’s social media activities are taken into consideration, all of which are handled by dedicated Cazbah staff on their behalf, freeing our clients up to run their businesses.

Strategic Marketing Consulting is a very involved five-step process that looks at every part of a small business, leveraging the strong current knowledge that we have with our existing clients. This engagement seeks to create a fit between the company’s resources, capacity and changing market opportunities. Our aim is to shape and focus our client’s offerings so that they produce enhanced financial results.

We have several of these expanded business relationships underway and we are seeing some immediate and exciting result. Please stay tuned in as we’ll be sharing information on a much more frequent basis going forward.

For years now my customers have asked me about video on their websites and how that medium might be used to compliment their products and services sales. Until recently, I have always been a bit cautious because of the time and cost of producing videos versus the benefit received from such a marketing activity.

In the last year we’ve seen a number of tools introduced into the marketplace to increase value while decreasing the amount of time spent producing videos. Social media sites like YouTube and Facebook have made it very easy to upload videos and share them. Additionally, video camera and even cell phone technology have made it much easier to create videos and get them onto the internet for viewing.

Why
So why would you ever want to create a video for your ecommerce web site? You want sales. After all isn’t that why you have a commerce site? Video can give you a real competitive advantage by sharing your knowledge and advice on how to get the most out of the product or service you are selling. This will attract viewers who,if done correctly, can become customers.

How
I like to use a video camera called Flip Video. This inexpensive video recorder is small and easy to use. It creates quality video without a lot of complexity. Most importantly Flip Video has very easy to use software for editing and uploading your videos. Once you have shot your video you need to decide where to upload it. I use YouTube as the hub for my customer’s videos. YouTube allows you to store your videos for free and has a number of tools to allow you to promote them. Once I have uploaded the video to YouTube I can embed that video on my customer’s web site, blog, Facebook, etc.

Results
In the end the reason we do this is because we are creating value. We are showing the world what we know about our products and services so we can build trust and ultimately make more sales. This is precisely what a number of our clients have done. For instance take a look at my customer’s video listed on the Google search page for the term “saniguard spray”. My customer doesn’t just sell Saniguard spray, he creates value by showing how to use it properly. This video has done a lot to increase their sales of the Saniguard spray product line. Lastly I will leave you with a video that took me about an hour and a half to shoot, produce, and upload. I used a Flip Video, uploaded to YouTube and then embedded the video to my customer’s appropriate product web page. The “video value” my customer creates in this video will be sure to increase his sales. How can you increase your “video value”?

(Today’s post is contributed by Jim Pearson, a senior, doing his undergraduate work in Information Technology at the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Jim is presently working as a coop at Cazbah in the IT department.)

When I was growing up, my Dad instilled in me early on a love for technology and all things computer related. He has always had a passion for it himself and thankfully, he passed that torch on to me.

Over the course of my years, I have seen technology change and develop at an exponential rate. This of course has impacted the way the normal person does business in a vast amount of ways. When we got our first family computer, it was (by standards then) a moderate machine. If memory serves it was a Pentium 166 with 32 Megabytes of ram.

Now though, you could buy that computer for around the cost of a dinner at any restaurant. Its mind boggling to think just how far we have come in the past 20 years with computers. Just the other day, I was in the kitchen talking to my parents and my phone rang. I checked it and casually replied “Oh, I have an email”. My Mom looked at me like I had grown a third arm. She couldn’t believe I could get email on my phone. I told her all the other things it could do (email, texting, Internet browsing) and her only reply was “It still makes calls, right?”. We laughed but shes right, my phone now is more of a computer than our family PC was for 10 years.

That’s not it either, as computers become more advanced so do the things we do with them. I can remember a time…a time before Facebook, before Twitter, and when Myspace was just starting out. If someone said the word “blog” you thought they were speaking some other language. In such a short span of time, the Internet (along with computers) has completely changed. People are able to stay in contact with just about anyone in the world. Companies are able to reach out to customers they were previously denied. Nothing, seemingly, is off limits with access to the Internet.

The biggest obstacle is actually knowing how to use the technology available to you, and using it to your advantage. It can be extremely daunting to someone unfamiliar with it, and that can breed hesitation to try new things. The best advice I can give someone who is in that position is to simply ask. Find someone who knows about it and sit them down. Once you know the pros and cons, then make a decision, don’t let fear of the unknown or untested scare you.

Technology has changed drastically in the past 10 years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Embrace it. Adapt and grow with it because as it continues to change (and believe me, it will), the structure of the world and business around you will change with it.

Are you up for it?