KoMarketing Associates - Search Engine Marketing Blog

Last night I read via Search Engine Land of Bing’s announcement that they are beginning to integrate real time data into search results.

Starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers (“a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets”), Bing users will be able to search names in association with Twitter to see their latest Tweets come up in real time.

Example of Kara Swisher’s twitterstream in search results:

As the adoption of Twitter rapidly grows, so does the volume of spam, malware and overall “noise” in the network. Twitter’s development of verified accounts might be a first step to combating fraud but it certainly will not be the last. Search Engine Land detailed two more examples of this growing problem as it pertains to trending spam and misleading profiles.

Not everyone following you on Twitter is truly there to be your “friend”.

Beyond Twitter basics, here are five ways that I use for identifying potentially questionable accounts and Twitter spam.

Google has allowed us to use its new interface for a long enough period of time for me to begin forming opinions about it.  I’ve listed below three of my favorite updates that are included in the new AdWords interface.

Better Access to Your Content Network Sites

The new interface has streamlined the site exclusion process for us!  Not only that, but we can view the performance of all of the site we hand pick (via placements) as well as all of the automatic placements that are paired to us through the content network.  This easily gives us the ability to view the success of different sites and different placement strategies, and we can get a better feel for what each campaign or ad group is doing on the content network without having to run multiple reports.

While I remain mixed on how I feel about Google’s new AdWords interface, there is one cool feature that I have been taking full advantage of - viewing “real” search terms that bring traffic via PPC.

When you select “See search terms” you are presented with search queries that triggered your ads and brought visitors to your site via the ads.  This data has long been available through the Reports in Google AdWords, but the new interface brings the data right to your fingertips - all in one place for a particular Ad Group, a set of Ad groups within a Campaign, or for the entire set of Campaigns.

Market researcher Nielsen Online (PDF) reports that the time online users spent on Facebook in April is up 700% year over year. The U.S. spent 13.9 BILLION minutes on Facebook in April 2009 alone and over 20 billion minutes were spent on social networking sites altogether.

The following article was published in our June e-Newsletter (the newsletter is not currently open to subscribers, but we will be changing that shortly):

Why Does Social Media Marketing Take So Much Planning?

Social media marketing done wrong is worse than not doing it at all. Make the wrong move and you could create negative buzz out there.

Social Media Marketing done right is more powerful than any single direct mail campaign, trade show, or print advertising campaign you might do. More powerful than even a few mail drops, show booths, or print buys.

It was disappointing to not be able to attend SMX Advanced as a result of scheduling conflicts but we’re appreciative of the coverage (and time commitment) from others who made it possible.

Search Engine Land has two posts collecting all of the details:

• SMX Advanced Day 1: Live Blogging & Coverage
• SMX Advanced Day 2: Live Blogging & Coverage

Some of the particular session posts I found of interest:

This post is written for all those people who have either begun their Twitter lives on the wrong foot, and as an attempt to help those of you who are just about to embark on your own Twitter initiatives.

There are plenty of very well-written Twitter tutorials out there, and you will find links to some of those at the bottom of this post.

As the title of this post indicates, this is intended to be “the most basic” Twitter tutorial I can imagine.

First, some “don’ts” when you are starting out:

There are times when an online marketing initiative’s results seem to plateau. Ideas grow stale, ambition and motivation might wan or it seems like all of the opportunities have been covered. This happens in every online strategy, be it SEO, PPC, blogging, and building a presence in social media.

More importantly, this doesn’t just happen with unsuccessful strategies. Productive online marketing initiatives need the occasional refresh to keep things moving in the right direction.

Here are some of the things I try to do when it seems like I’ve ended up “hitting the proverbial wall”.

Google has released a white paper touting the benefits of the Content Network. The paper provides the following analysis:

Ads on the Google Content Network can be an effective way to gain additional conversion beyond those you get via search.

• When used in combination with Search, the median advertiser has a content CPA that’s within approximately 2% of their Search CPA.
• The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.

Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.