Yesterday Facebook Graph Search launched and our phones were ringing as clients understandably want to know more about it. While we completely understand our client’s interest in Graph Search, we are in the process of gathering as much information as possible. It would be premature to provide a robust list of recommendations for how to get more exposure from Graph Search. For the time being, I would point you to recommendations directly from Facebook about how to help people discover your business. With that caveat out of the way, we have been monitoring the news closely and have some important points we want to address.

What is Facebook Graph Search?

Facebook Graph Search allows you to search for people, places and things by leveraging your existing friend data and publicly shared information of non-friends. Keep in mind that this is an incredible amount of data which allows you to search in new ways. For instance, you couldn’t search in Google for restaurants in East Lansing, MI liked by your friends who went to Michigan State University. Graph Search also has many non-commercial benefits. You can now search for photos, videos, and music that friends have liked. It is in beta right now, but expect it to be available to everyone soon.

What does this mean for your business?

We believe that Graph Search is helpful for certain kinds of businesses. Most of the examples of how to use Graph Search involve businesses like restaurants, retail and some services. You can easily imagine how this will benefit restaurant owners and encourage them to solicit likes. However, it’s unclear how Graph Search benefits other kinds of businesses. People tend to think of search in purely positive ways – find a restaurant, a boutique, a place to dance, etc. In reality people have a lot of interactions with businesses that they might now want to announce to the world. Facebook users are far less likely to “like” their bankruptcy attorney or rehabilitation clinic even if the experience was positive. We work with a lot of B2B clients. I don’t know how many opportunities will be available on Graph Search for businesses that aren’t particularly interested in targeting individual consumers.

What does this mean for Google and other online marketing portals?

We do not believe this presents a meaningful challenge to Google’s dominance in the search space. We still believe that in six months, Google’s share of the search market will not change very much. We believe that Graph Search is fundamentally different than Google search and agree with Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land who said,

“It remains very early, but I already find it fascinating the types of searches this is allowing me to do, searches I hadn’t contemplated before. It reminds me of how in the past, we wouldn’t have thought of doing things like YouTube searches or Twitter searches, since we didn’t have those resources. Now, we search at these places for unique needs. Facebook is a great repository of data, and it finally has a search catching up to all it knows.”

We especially like the YouTube and Twitter comparisons. Google’s stated mission is to, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Graph Search, like Youtube and Twitter, has a far less grandiose mission. Graph Search isn’t interested in organizing all the “world’s information.” They simply want to help you search for nice things your friends are interested in and use Facebook’s data to make their website more useful.

We believe that Graph Search has a bigger impact on other websites. Yelp’s stock dropped 8.5% after the announcement of Graph Search before rebounding later in the day to close down 5.9%. Getting reviews from your friends or friends of friends is more appealing than reviews from total strangers. Others have noted that Graph Search also presents a strong challenge to LinkedIn. It’s easy to see how people would use Graph Search the same way they use LinkedIn today to interact with professionals. We would still be surprised if these popular websites are dramatically impacted by Graph Search. We still recommend pursuing positive Yelp reviews and keeping and updated LinkedIn Business Profile.

What Recommendations Can Evolving Interactive Make at This Time?

We work with our clients to develop fan acquisition strategies. Graph Search only makes a comprehensive fan acquisition strategy more important. The same way SEO evaluates websites by the quality and quantity of links, Graph Search will be impacted by the quantity of “likes.” For more information on how to develop a strategy for your business, contact us anytime.

The important of social media marketing is only expanding, and you’ll need certain tools to start and grow your social media campaign. According to a study by Network Solutions, LLC and the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, about one in five small business owners use social media for marketing. Professional services businesses, real estate businesses, and the entertainment, food, and lodging industry use more email marketing, and the social services and education sector use more social media and direct mail marketing.

Whichever category your business falls into, though, social media marketing is likely to become more and more important to your business in the future. Here are just a few of the best tools that can help you grow your social
media marketing campaign.

Monitter
If you’re already using Twitter as a way to market through social media, you need to know what other Twitter users have to say about your business – and your competition! Monitter is a real-time service that checks in on Twitter mentions. You can set it up to find information on mentions of just about anything, like your business and your business’s competitors. Monitter will then set up a multi-column display that allows you to see what people are saying about you. It’s a must-have tool to track what’s being said about your business and the competition, and it can also help you come up with ideas for further Twitter marketing in the future.

Facebook Insight
Automatically a part of your Facebook analytics, Insight lets you track trends and see how your fans are using your Facebook page. With Insight, you can get a section of demographics about your fans, which includes a list of who most often refers others to your page. You’ll also get analytics about the interactions fans have made with the updates on your page. This lets you see what type of content works best to get a buzz going on your Facebook page, who your fans are, and how you can more specifically market to your target audience.

Bit.ly
This is an easy URL shortening tool that gives you automatic analytics on all your social media. A Bit.ly account gives you an analytics suite that will show you historical data, top referrers, and other vital information about where your links are ending up and who is following them through.

YouTube
YouTube videos are easy to create, and they can be a vital part of a great social media marketing plan. If you’re using every form of social media except for YouTube right now, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon. Upload videos of employees giving presentations. Make walk throughs of how to use your products or troubleshoot common problems with them. Give DIY tips that link with your service industry. Many social media users are more likely to watch a video on a topic that interests them than they are to read a blog post, and once you’ve uploaded videos to YouTube, it’s easy to link them with your Twitter feed, blog, Facebook page, and whatever else.

MailChimp
Email isn’t dead quite yet, and in many industries, the email mailing list is still going strong. Whether you already have a mailing list or want to get one started, MailChimp is a great option for you. You can manage a list of up to 500 subscribers for free, and you can integrate your MailChimp with Twitter, Salesforce, and WordPress. Lots of major companies, including Intel and Fujitsu use MailChimp for their email list management!

While many of these tools are free, some require a subscription or yearly fee, especially if you want to get the most out of the service. If you don’t have it in your business budget to upgrade your MailChimp list, for instance, you have a couple of options.

Guest Blog post submitted by Ashyia Hill. Ashyia Hill from CreditDonkey says you may want to take out a small business loan, or you can look at small business credit cards if you need a quicker option that offers a bit more flexibility. Either way, getting credit to finance your social media growth can be a smart move that may pay of tenfold in the long run.

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This week, Evolving Interactive’s Director of SEO, Mark Bealin sits down with Stik.com founder Jay Gierak to discuss the effects of social media’s integration into search engine results. Stik.com uses your social and professional connections for an informed consumer experience. Watch the interview here:

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A Guest Blog Post by Jerry Hillburn

Rise and shine fellow marketers, a new day has dawned at Google, and the game is afoot. On January 10^th, 2012 at 06:29AM Google Time, Google quietly announced the arrival of Search, plus Your World . The big G has changed how search results are served up, and in doing so has created an incredible opportunity for those who publish daily content to get better positioning for their efforts.

According to Google, “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships”. Interesting! As a fulltime participant in multiple social media platforms I have developed an understanding of the strengths and weakness of each. With Twitter you get tweets and about 5 minutes of fame, and if you’re very lucky, a viral retweet ripple that drives traffic. With Facebook you get a rich environment in which to engage your friends, and through Fan pages customers and prospects. As long as you live inside the walled garden you can have a lovely time with either.

But while both are great in their core offering, neither offer decent search results. I follow search very closely for my clients and I am always looking for ways to get their tweets or status updates seen in the big G search results. Over the past two years we’ve watched Facebook and Twitter updates appear in the results for a period of time, and then completely disappear. These messages come and go with little predictability.
Within the walled gardens of search on FB or Twitter we don’t see much better search results either. We often find that in Facebook Search you have to write your query in “exact case sensitive” detail or you get bounced to the Bing results. Google has owned the best search on the planet for years, but the walled gardens block its bots, which prevent it from serving up consistent Facebook and Twitter results.

For instance, let’s say you’re a chiropractor. You’re interested in finding people who are having lower back pain issues. Prior to 1/10/2012, when you do a search on Google for the exact term “my back hurts”, you would get a list of websites that offer to help you with your pain. But you don’t get a list of people who updated their Twitter, or FB status with mention of their pain.

Of course we will all still be tweeting and posting statuses to our friends, but for those of us who work in G+ there is the added benefit that when our friends, business partners, and clients work in G+, everything they post shows up in the Google search results.

There is a wrinkle. To see those results, you have to be logged into your G+ account when you search. But if you’re like most of us who have a gmail account, you’re always logged in and your search results now will be influenced by that little detail.

And so fellow marketers, there you have it. One doesn’t have to think hard as to how this new paradigm will be of benefit for your customers. And while I am hopeful that other results would appear as well from Facebook and Twitter, given the intense rivalry between these companies, I am not taking bets on it happening anytime soon.

This is a guest blog post by Jerry Hilburn. Jerry Hilburn runs a company in San Diego serving the local small business community with business web development, social marketing, and content publishing services. You can reach him at www.san-diego-marketing.com .

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) has been looming in the House of Representatives for over two months threatening to change the internet as we know it. The Senate has its own version of the law, the Protect IP Act (“PIPA”) that goes to vote on Tuesday, January 24th. Many of the sites you visit on a daily basis may have some form of protest against these proposed acts. Despite the outcry of criticism and support from both sides of the issue, we are fielding a lot of questions about SOPA and PIPA. So what’s all the uproar about and why are technology companies so opposed to it?

For starters, try to think of the internet like a jungle. The Internet has safe places, dangerous places, and everything in between. It has highly useful and informative areas like Wikipedia and Google and it has the not so useful areas such as every cute kitten viral video you’ve ever seen. Yet, all of these things are dependent upon the creative and innovative contributions of webmasters, hobbyists, entrepreneurs and artists all over the world. In short, it’s an organic structure that builds upon itself and is constantly evolving. This has created a vibrant and open atmosphere that is undeniably a source for good in world. SOPA and PIPA are a threat to this organic structure and will inhibit the internet’s ability to innovate and make people’s lives better.

How so? The Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced to the House of Representatives in October, 2011 by Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-TX). Intending to restrict the spread of pirated copyright material; SOPA would bar any advertiser or payment facilitator, like PayPal, from doing business with sites found to have pirated media. It would bar search engines from linking to the site as well as forcing Internet service providers to shut down access to the site. All of this can be done without due process. Also, illegal streaming of pirated material could carry a sentence of 5 years in prison. Opponents of the bill, such as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and many other technology companies (including Evolving Interactive) say SOPA would allow the government to censor the internet and moreover, violate the First Amendment.

With SOPA being the main lightning rod for upheaval, the Senate’s version, PIPA, has received less scrutiny and actually may have a better chance of making it through to the vote. PIPA is essentially the same as SOPA except for a few minor differences. In a minor upgrade from SOPA, PIPA lacks the power to tell search engines they can’t index flagged sites. In a glaring oversight, however, PIPA lacks any punitive actions the Justice Department can take against studios for lying about pirated media. As you’ll read later in this article, studios are not immune from lying and being hypocritical in their actions. Both SOPA and PIPA have at least had the DNS blocking provisions removed due to it potentially causing great harm to the structure of the internet. The fact the DNS blocking provision has been removed at least shows promise that there could be room for compromise. But there is much more to compromise upon.

Despite our opposition to SOPA/PIPA, piracy is still a very real problem. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) estimates that the economy loses $58 billion a year and threatens 19 million jobs in the United States due to online piracy. These exorbitantly high numbers have been called into question by a fair share of industry experts, including Julian Sanchez, who believes the loss of profit is closer to $445 million (roughly the worldwide gross for Chipmunks: The Squeakquel).

Regardless of the financial losses, the solutions proposed by SOPA and PIPA won’t get to the root of the problem. Congress has consistently shown that they don’t understand how the internet works. Every time a torrent or P2P site goes down, another five will pop up. If PIPA or SOPA are passed, the estimated cost for tax payers to enforce these laws is $47 million over five years plus the estimated $142 million hit on the private sector for maintaining and enforcing the blacklists. If PIPA or SOPA are passed, the United States will be a player in one of the most expensive games of Whack-A-Mole ever created.

Another central argument against SOPA and PIPA is the rampant hypocrisy involved. For instance, the author of PIPA, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D. Vt.), spoke out against internet censorship in other countries. In March of 2010, he stated, ‘One of the most pressing challenges posed by the Internet is the censorship
of online information. For some time now, we have witnessed the troubling efforts of repressive regimes — such as the governments of China, Iran and North Korea — to censor, or in some cases eliminate, their citizens’ access to information via the Internet.’ Just less than two years later, Senator Leahy is trying to do the very thing he spoke out against: censoring and eliminating the United States citizens’ access to information via the internet.

The hypocrisy doesn’t stop at just the politicians. Just check out TorrentFreak.com’s study on where pirated movies are coming from. Using a map of Hollywood IP addresses, TorrentFreak found that even studios are pirating. Computers from Fox Entertainment’s studio were torrenting films like Super 8, a Paramount Pictures production. It should also be worth noting that when one of their films, ‘X-Men
Origins: Wolverine’, was torrented, the person who leaked it was sent to jail for a year. Even computers from NBC Universal’s studio were torrenting their own intellectual property like the film Cowboys &
Aliens. If SOPA or PIPA are passed, will the studios be reprimanded? Unlikely since piracy is enforced collectively by groups like the MPAA, the studios, which are the backbone to these groups, will likely never be sought after.

In no way is the disapproval of SOPA and PIPA an act of endorsement for piracy. Piracy cuts the blood flow to the entertainment industry, stealing rightful profits from artists, performers, musicians, writers
and more. Yet, the tactics SOPA and PIPA would seek to rid the internet of piracy are draconic and heavy handed. A possible solution is the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act). With the OPEN Act, the International Trade Commission would be responsible for the enforcement of piracy, rather than the Justice Department. The International Trade Commission is already tasked with
seeking out counterfeits and forgeries of physical products from the US. Their experience dealing with these kinds of issues and the fact that they are less political than the justice department would make them better equipped to enforce piracy laws. The most positive aspect of the OPEN Act is due process and due diligence when investigating. As opposed to SOPA which would make the Internet service provider shut down the website, without due process.

To raise awareness and protest the proposed SOPA and PIPA, Google has censored their logo and Wikipedia and Reddit shut down their sites for all of January 18th. Countless other signs of protest can be found all over the internet. To add your voice to the issue, you can contact your local Congressman through Google by going here: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

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