Blogging News

Blogging Drives 55 Percent More Traffic to Sites

Blogging on your company website could help you bring in more traffic. At least that’s what HubSpot is saying after a recent survey. The company sampled 1,531 HubSpot customers, most of which were small- to mid-sized businesses.  Roughly 52 percent, or 795 businesses, had blogs on their sites, while the remaining 736 did not. 

The study shows that companies with blogs received 55 percent more traffic than with those without. If you are wondering why it is so important to have more visitors to your site, HubSpot says it’s “because more visitors mean more people to convert to leads and sales.” (more…)

Google Sites Makes Site Building Much Easier

Last month, we told you about Yahoo shutting down Geocities.  Google has not wasted any time taking advantage of their free Web hosting site.  With Google Sites, you are able to create a simple web page for your company, classroom, or even just your family.  They also allow you to embed any pictures, videos or other documents you want.

Google had been getting a bit of criticism for the lack of features.  So, Google has taken the constructive criticism and turned it into something “A Whole Lot Prettier” according to Mashable’s Stan Schroeder. (more…)

Social Media Words Enter Official Lexicon

“Word: something that is said. A speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.”  That’s the definition of a word, according to Merriam-Webster. 

The world is full of them.  In fact, there are more than 258,000 words in the English language.  They range from everyday words to silly words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  While most of us can actually pronounce supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the longest word in the English dictionary is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which I’m not sure anyone can really pronounce.  Want to try pronouncing Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahul? No, I didn’t just hit a bunch of keys on the keyboard, either.  It’s actually the Maori name for a hill in New Zealand, and is officially the world’s longest name for a place.

These past few years, pop culture influenced which words make it into the English dictionary. Beyonce’s “Bootylicious” was added to the dictionary a few years ago, while the world of Harry Potter helped “muggle,” a person who possesses no magical powers, reserve a spot in the English dictionary as well.  While pop culture has had a significant impact on the world, it looks like it has stepped aside as social media starts to influence the world even more. (more…)

Twitter’s Big Week

Twitter users from around the world have been seeing some major changes to the website lately, and this week the popular microblogging website rolled out some major features that could be very useful in the future.

A few weeks ago, Twitter launched Twitter Lists Beta, which allowed users to organize a group of followers into specific categories and last week it went live to the entire Twitter community.  This week, 2 new beta features went into effect, which if all goes well should be seen by all users very soon.  First, a small number of users have been granted a feature which allows them to see when someone they are following has updated a post.  The feature will automatically notify them of new tweets since they last refreshed their page from the people they follow on their Twitter.com homepage.  Users be able to click the notification and Twitter will automatically refresh their page without them having to do anything else.  The feature is almost identical to the automatic refresh on the Twitter Search feature. (more…)

Social Media & Breaking News

Social media sites have become an important tool for breaking news, many times breaking a story before the mainstream media picks it up.  Sites such as Twitter have also been important communication tools for those affected by the events as they unfold.

Yesterday, news about a shooting in Fort Hood, Texas, shocked the country and almost instantly became a trending topic on Twitter.  The massacre, which killed 12 and left 31 wounded, sparked interest and supporters from around the world — many of whom ended up  leaving comments on the Army’s social media sites.  The Facebook group “Prayers for Fort Hood” was started soon after word spread, and currently it has just more than 20,000 supporters.   The U.S. Army‘s Facebook page was also flooded with support and prayers from people around the world. As one person wrote, “My prayers go out to the family and friends of the fallen heroes. It’s time we remember to pray for all our soldiers regardless of where they are.”  (more…)

This Week In Social Media – October 23, 2009

iePlexus “Week in Social Media” October 23, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

iePlexus “Week in Social Media” October 23, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

-The Web 2.0 Summit took place this week in San Francisco. Some of the biggest news from the event came out on Wednesday.  Both Microsoft and Google announced they would be teaming up with Twitterto bring real-time search updates to the search engines.  Microsoft’s Qi Lu first announced that Bing.comwould be getting get the real time twitter searchs updates, up on their site, which happened just minutes after the announcement.  Twitter’s blog said that they want to make twitter a search tool to help find people what they need in current time. Surprisingly, just a few hours after Microsoft’s big announcement, Google announced they would also be teaming up with Twitter to bring real-time search.  Neither of the companies would release the financial terms of their deals but are expected to bring more traffic to the search engine sites. There are also rumors the sites are trying to team up with Facebook as well. To watch the announcement’s in their entirety, visit Web 2.0 Summit’s website. (more…)

Mashable Announces 2009 Open Web Awards – Social Media Edition

For the third year in a row Mashable, the popular social media site, is hosting the Open Web Awards: Social Media Edition.  There are 50 nomination categories this year, which is almost double of the amount of categories there were last year.  The Open Web Awards is  an  international online voting competition that covers major achievements in web technology and  in Social Media.  Mashable’s website does say they have extended the voting time by nearly a month and came up with the new categories for voters to reflect on the changes of web culture within the past year. (more…)

Blog Action Day 2009

Blogger’s from around the world today are blogging about climate change and the environment as part of Blog Action Day 2009.  What is considered one of the largest social change events on the web, ever, Blog Action Day is an annual event which finds a world issue and brings bloggers together to not only bring awareness to everyone but also try to find solutions to the problem.  This year over 10,000 bloggers are writing about climate change and the environment for readers around the globe.

Many people around the world are  against the idea of “global warming” and when they hear that studies say the world’s average temperature may rise 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit, they say “what’s the big deal? It’s not that much of a difference.”  But think about it.  Maybe it is a huge difference.  Take the average healthy human for example.  The average temperature for a human is around 98.6 degrees and when our temperature goes up above 100 degrees, we feel sick, start sweating, and don’t fee good.  Well the same concept goes with the Earth.  It is a living thing, so those 2 or 3 degrees could mean drastic changes. (more…)

Google Checkout Store Gadget Makes E-commerce Easy

In their continuing effort to dominate every aspect of your online experience, Google has taken e-commerce to the masses with the experimental release of the Google Checkout Store Gadget, a simple application that makes it possible for anyone with a blog or website to create an online store, with Google Checkout, in under 5 minutes. Google makes it sound very easy when explaining how to setup the gadget and manage the store, and with Google’s popularity and typical wide-spread adoption, this just might be the breakthrough many people need to open up the floodgates to selling online. Although still in beta-mode, Google Store Gadget has the potential to significantly empower those who normally could only turn to sites like Ebay for their e-commerce ideas.

Setting up the Google Checkout Store Gadget seems easy enough. Google states that there are 3 simple steps to getting up and running:

1. Sign up for Google Checkout
2. List Products in a Google Docs Spreadsheet
3. Embed the Gadget Anywhere

All of these steps are obviously free and can be done by even those with very limited coding knowledge. Managing inventory in a spreadsheet and setting it up are as easy as clicking a few boxes to share it online and publish it as a website. Embedding the gadget can be done basically anywhere, as long as HTML code can be added to a site. This means bloggers, website owners and more can quickly add the gadget to their site, enabling product or service sales without the typical hassle of an e-commerce management platform.
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$50,000 Twitter Lawsuit

It was only a matter of time before Twitter became a subject of legal questions. In a bigger picture, however, this happening begs a much deeper question: What is considered public conversation, and how liable are people for that conversation?

On July 27th, less than a week ago, Horizon Group Management of Chicago, a property management company, filed a lawsuit against Amanda Bonnen, one of their former residents, for an update she posted on Twitter. Specifically, the update referred to the realty company and mold in Bonnen’s apartment: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.” The lawsuit, filed in Cook County court, asks for $50,000 in damages, alleging that her statement damaged the company’s business reputation.

Putting personal opinions of this lawsuit aside, it raises serious questions about what we can and can’t be held liable for on a public forum, and what exactly Twitter can be called in relation to those forums. Many people tweet complaints about products, services and companies. Many companies embrace Twitter as a gateway into the  real-time pulse of their customer base, and respond accordingly. Comcast, for example,  solves many technical questions and issues via Twitter and have benefited from being known as a tech-savvy and customer-friendly company, meeting their customer base on their turf, and helping out accordingly. Contrast that to Horizon’s handling of this issue (specifically with legal papers) and there has been quite a backlash of sorts online, with many people stating the obvious PR nightmare this has caused for the property management company and weighing in with opinions of how it could have better been handled.
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