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Google Music Lets You Download Your Music

January 25th, 2012

Google Music service, which was previously known as Music Beta, was launched in May 2011. Through this service you can stream music to any computer, mobile, or tablet that supports Flash. One of the best features of this service is that users could upload their own music and then stream it later on. It also has the ability for caching so that users could play the music offline on mobile devices. Along with that, it has a feature called instant mix, which allows the users to create a playlist of songs that would go well with each other.

The only problem that users had with this service was that downloading the uploaded songs was very problematic. To solve this issue, a download feature was added to both the Google music manager application and the Google Music web site. When on the site, all you have to do is select the songs you want to download and then click on ‘Download Selected Songs’. With the app, you can select the ‘Download purchased music option’ or go for ‘Export your library’. Through these steps, you will be able to download any purchased song or any uploaded song.

There is a slight difference between the above mentioned methods for downloading. With the app, you can download as many tracks as you want even if you have exceeded the authorized number of downloads. But  on the site, you can download the purchased track to a PC only twice. Google, which is the top target for any internet marketing firm, became one of the best cloud based music service with this move.

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YouTube Goes Past the 4Billion Daily Streams Mark

January 18th, 2012

YouTube is owned by the search engine giant Google and is an important part of their advertising revenue. It is by far the biggest provider for online videos. It has also become an essential part of any SEO campaign and viral marketing strategies of an internet marketing firm. YouTube also modified the look of their site quite recently and Google has been trying to increase the site’s accessibility by making it compatible with smartphones and televisions. These changes seemed to have worked as YouTube is now streaming 4 billion videos daily. If the company reports are to be believed, that is an increase of 25% in just 8 months.

Google is also making sure to provide more professional content through YouTube. As per the statistics, about 60 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube every minute. This is an increase of 15% from 48 hours of video uploaded per minute in May 2011. Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion in 2006, and since then it has become very important for Google’s business, which is centered mainly on online search ads. The display ads, most of which appear in YouTube videos, were generating about $5 billion in revenue annually.

Even then, many of the 4 billion videos being streamed by the site everyday are not monetized. YouTube recently made a change through which users could see channels that were centered on specific content. It has also revealed that it was a part of about 100 video programming deals with various media partners including Jay-Z and Madonna. 

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Nicknames in Google+

January 11th, 2012

Google+, the social network introduced by the search engine giant a few months back, is being improved constantly. The latest addition to the platform is that users can now include a nickname as well. Google has revealed that during the sign up process, most of the users do not have any issues. But there are a few users, 0.1% to be precise, that do submit their issues with the naming policy. About 60% of these users wanted to add nicknames, 20% were users who wanted to create a business profile and were not aware about Google+ pages, and the other 20% wanted to keep an unconventional name.

Google has decided that to address most of these issues, they will introduce the feature of adding nicknames. Users will also get the option to add names in a different script. To add a new name, you need to go to your Google+ profile, select the edit tab and then select ‘More Options’ after clicking on your name. Keep in mind that once you change the name, it will be changed across every other Google service where a profile name is required.

Google+ has also made certain changes to its policy regarding names that do not represent individuals or are better suited for Google+ pages. So, someone with a well established pseudonym can have a profile with that title on Google+ now. All you need to do is give some evidence to Google+ regarding the authenticity of that name. These changes can be quite influential, especially on strategies that an internet marketing firm may develop for a business.

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Common SEO Oversights

January 4th, 2012

The world of SEO is constantly changing and expanding, with newer techniques emerging almost every day. While it may seem tedious to follow every new practice, there are a few new methods that should not be ignored. These changes in search engine optimization should be taken seriously by SEO professionals to drive more traffic to your website.  

Google being the most popular search engine in the world makes frequent changes to its search techniques. The most recent algorithm update ensures that the ‘freshest’ content is put to the top of the page. However, this algorithm will give way to popular results as well. Although a web page might be a few years old, if it has ranked well on popularity, it will make it to the first page. 

Destination based searches are also being given importance in SEO. With the increasing number of smartphones and tablets around the world, mobile SEO has also gained importance. Google and Bing now cater to location based searched depending on the data provided by the device.

Google recently released its Encrypted Search option that offers safe browsing for users logged into their Gmail or Google+ accounts. Although this may restrict the SEO marketer from studying website traffic trends, you can use Google analytics to read these encrypted search results. The traffic metrics are made visible to marketers and can help your internet marketing firm to attract more traffic.

The increasing popularity of tablets and smartphones are also leading to more apps that offer search results. It is important to focus on providing organic results on search engines and social networking sites. 

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Importance of Video SEO

December 26th, 2011

Recently the world’s largest video streaming site YouTube rolled out a lot of changes to their site. Most important amongst these changes were those that were made to the channels. These changes have re-affirmed the fact that video SEO is becoming more important day by day. Any internet marketing firm will tell you that off late, there has been a huge demand for Video SEO. The reason is that studies have revealed that a video has a much better chance of getting a higher rank on a search engine results page than a normal web page.

Just like a web page, every video also has a title text. The aim should be to always include the keywords you are trying to rank for in this title. For instance, if you are a music artist trying get your music video listed it would be a good idea to have ‘new release’ in the title to attract more people. Embedding the keywords in the title is a great idea. Also, you should take the full advantage of tags present. This aids the crawlers in indexing your video.

Just as keyword density is important in web pages, the video description should also contain keywords in it. A 100 word description with about 6 to 8 words is the best possible way to go about writing the description. Also, sites like YouTube allow users to vote and like a particular video. Make sure you get as many comments and likes as possible for your video. This help in establishing the credibility of the video.

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Get Ready for Facebook Sponsored Stories

December 19th, 2011

Facebook is always coming up with new ways to keep the users happy with their social networking experience and to attract more advertisers to the site. The latest change that Facebook is about to bring is in the form of sponsored stories that will appear in the news feed of the users. These sponsored stories are simply another way to allow brands to interact with those users whose friends like, post a comment, or perform some other actions on the brand page. They will be rolled out in January 2012.

It has been made clear that users will not receive a post from someone who are not their friends or from a brand page that they are not a fan of. Various measures have been taken to ensure that these ads do not get overboard. As per a Facebook spokesperson, users will not see more than one sponsored story per day. These stories will be clearly labeled and their presentation and size would be the same as the other posts in your news feed.

This particular development is supposed to build upon the introduction of sponsored stories in the ticker that is lighter version of the news feed and appears on the right side of the screen. As of now, no decision has been made upon the pricing of the ads and whether they will be available as premium ads, marketplace ads or both. Also, the names of the brands that will be the part of the initial roll-out have not been disclosed yet. Any internet marketing firm should closely monitor this change.

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What You Should Know About Facebook Suggested Events

December 12th, 2011

Facebook was recently in the news because of Facebook Timeline. But there have been certain other not so hyped up changes that have taken place and an internet marketing firm should always be aware of these changes. One of them is the introduction of a feature called ‘Suggested Events’. This particular feature utilizes the information about your log-ins and then uses it to tell you where you might want to go.

Before Suggested Events was launched there used to be a Friends Events menu. This particular feature is not available on every account yet. This might be due to the fact that you may actually need to check in from places on Facebook, or simply the fact that it is a rollout that will be implemented gradually.

If you want to know how to access it, or if you want to check whether you have access to this feature or not, go to your Facebook home page and click on the Events button on the left side of the screen. You will find that various events that are coming up would be listed and below these events you will find the Suggested Events option. Clicking on this will tell you about the events that are coming up later in the week and also in the coming months.

The fact that Facebook uses your personal data for suggesting events might sound a bit unsettling to a few users, but some will find the feature quite useful. This feature might soon be available on iOS and Android apps.

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BlendTec Shows the Way for Figuring Out ROI on Social Media Marketing

December 5th, 2011

Blender manufacturers BlendTec are one of the few companies that have been able to use the power of social media to great success. Their YouTube channel has about 450,000 subscribers and their videos have received more than 180 million views. There are more than 85,000 likes on the Facebook page and over 7,000 people read the tips provided by BlendTec on twitter.

One thing that BlendTec makes sure it does properly is to check whether all the social media buzz is translating into money or not. Tracking the return on investment is extremely important for social media marketing campaigns because you should know if you are getting any benefits or not.

One thing that BlendTec does and should be incorporated by any internet marketing firm is to analyze the traffic on social media pages through tools like Google Analytics. They also check the conversion rates of people who click through and track the number of people who use the promotional codes they share on websites. This allows them to understand whether their marketing efforts are paying off or not.

If you take the example of Facebook, BlendTec interacts with customers by organizing contests and providing coupons to winners. To account for the profit from the sales due to internet marketing, BlendTec traces when the coupon is redeemed. It is important for other companies to learn from BlendTec because a recent survey revealed that 41% of the companies do not track their social media ROI, and the main reason is there is no well-set formula to determine this ROI. 

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Tweak Your SEO Strategy to Your Benefit

November 25th, 2011

Do you feel that your site is falling behind in the SEO race despite your best efforts and you are almost ready to give up? Before you do, consider these factors:

First ask who exactly your online competitors are. Remember that your offline competitors may not have an online presence and that your competitors on the web may be smaller brands you may not even consider competition in the real world. So do a strategy rethink after you have identified your real competition in the virtual world.

Now, run a complete audit of your website’s links with the help of an internet marketing firm. Compare the result to link audits of your main competitors. You may find that you have a couple of thousand quality links while they have perhaps two to three times more.

While quality counts, the combination of this plus quantity can be hard to beat, and you may need to obtain more good links in order to be read and be in the running.

Next, compare your content to that of the competition. You may find they have company blogs while you don’t, or if you do, you are not updating or injecting fresh content into it as often as they are.  Also your content may be promotional while theirs aims to educate the customer.  Assess if their content is more popular from a social media viewpoint and gets cited by others online, and take steps to ensure your site leverages these strategies too.

Finally remember that the SEO process is not one that reaps results overnight. So be patient and keep working on it, tweaking your strategy to suit your requirements, and not just blindly copying the competition.

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Social Media Offers Quick and Affordable Marketing Channels

November 18th, 2011

As a business enterprise in the modern wired world, are you sitting pretty on the social media bandwagon or are you trailing behind it in confusion? The reality is that too many businesses that can benefit from integrating social media into their marketing campaigns have not taken advantage of it.  This may be due to a combination of factors including simply being unaware of how to use it as an effective marketing tool, or finding it difficult to implement as a result of not being tech savvy. The best approach in such cases is to employ the services of an internet marketing firm to aid your online marketing efforts.

Companies that integrate social media into marketing have successfully leveraged its ability to generate leads and realize that they stay ahead of any competition that doesn’t.  Social media has an astounding capacity that lets you interact instantly with hundreds of prospective customers in real-time, allowing you to open leads and close sales very quickly. Finally, your online metrics will show you exactly how many visitors you have had in any time period, which links they used, as well as the sites that generate the most referrals, and so on.

A recent survey has noted that a quarter of businesses at strategic points in social media implementation admitted getting 100% or more ROI through online marketing programs.

The best thing is social media is not expensive at all compared to traditional forms of marketing and advertising. Social media campaigns demand more investment in terms of time than hard cash, so this approach is particularly appealing to companies operating on tight budgets.

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