The Minneapolis Online Marketing blog covers online marketing industry topics, news and events from all angles. This includes search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per click (PPC), email marketing, social media, online PR, web strategy, web development and more. We hope you choose to subscribe to our blog to keep you up on our latest and greatest. Please check back often and feel free to leave a comment! Thanks for reading!
Search
Subscribe to the Minneapolis Online Marketing Blog!
A big announcement happened today from Google, officially launching real-time search, integrated into search results pages (SERP’s).
The real-time updates will include live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles, and web pages will now stream in actual result pages for your query. Don’t worry iPhone and Android users, this feature is built for mobile use (thank goodness).
Included in today’s announcement: Google has partnered with both Facebook and MySpace for their real-time data pull. This will include any public pages within the networks.
Here is the official video demonstrating the real-time search:
Why is this significant? This should simplify search for many users. The goal with this is to consolidate as much information into one central hub known as Google. I cannot wait to try this out and use this first hand. The live stream reminds me of the Twitter Search function, which is very helpful in monitoring real-time conversation about a product, show, or public figure. I am also impressed with the partnership established with Facebook and MySpace.
I am curious as to the potential fallout from this. Once Facebook and MySpace users find out that anything on their profile is fair game, will this prompt people to privatize their profiles? Or will users be more careful of what they say and publish? This may help the social media world grow up and think before they speak.
As we look into the benefits and negatives of this further, there are a couple questions I need to get answered:
How will this impact how people use search engines?
How does this impact the importance of search engine optimization?
Will this detract from people looking at sponsored search ads?
How can we use real-time search to benefit clients?
What new data will we have access to?
What questions do you have about this feature that should be live within the next week?
Greetings to everyone! Due to a high demand, I am posting my presentation for everyone to view.
Thanks to all who showed up to the event, and to those who were unable to show, enjoy the slides. If there are any questions about this presentation, please contact me at .
Spyder Trap Social Media For Business Presentation
Today I saw an article in the Minneapolis Star/Tribune titled: “Med-tech is shy on social media use.”
Among other things it praises a medical device start-up for its innovative and viral use of YouTube. However, it goes on to explain that big medical device and other health care related companies are hesitant to use social media. The writer points to legal concerns, especially retribution from the FDA as reasons for this.
Indeed, it would be foolish for Medtronic, St. Judes and other medical device companies to rush into the social media wave pool. But guess what? It’s not foolish at all, providing they take the right approach.
With millions of people tweeting, posting to blogs, commenting on or posting videos to YouTube, chances are excellent that each of these channels are ripe with conversation about medical devices. Just monitoring and amplifying these conversations hold huge value for an entire organization. I know; I do this for several health care companies.
From the marketing manager to the CEO, the ability to listen to the unbiased conversation between your company’s staunchest supporters and most stalwart detractors provides insight and direction that no focus group or traditional market research investment ever could.
One need not chime into the conversation. Remember the old adage: “You become wiser by listening than you do by talking.” And guess what, no one will even know you’re in the room – not even your lawyers.
Am I off base here? Is engagement the only real goal for a company with regard to social media? Or does listening provide enough value on its own? What do you think?
