Facts about Facebook:

1. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
2. Facebook has about 100 billion hits a day
3. 50 billion photos on Facebook and more than 3 billion photos uploaded each month
4. More than 3 million active pages on Facebook
5. More than 70 translations options available on the site
6. 1.5 million Local businesses have active pages on Facebook
7. Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
8. 100 million active users are accessing Facebook through their mobile phones

So how do companies successfully use Facebook to market its products or services to large group of users? Facebook Optimization is the answer. Here are some key points that need to be followed on a Facebook Marketing Campaign includes: developing specific messages to target audience, paying appropriate attention to what is being discussed, and engaging in a good conversation. There are special tools that are specifically made for Facebook portal that help small businesses engage more and more deeply with the consumers and prospects. Facebook open graph tool help optimize your Facebook pages and with this tool, Facebook Optimization is now increasingly becoming the new SEO.

Not unlike their Farecast technology on the travel page, Bing has unique twists to segment themselves from Google.  They have expanded their entertainment menu to aggregate streaming from Zune, tour details, and links to buy music from a large database. Currently, Bing only has 9% of the search market. It could be all for naught, when facing Google’s capital prowess.

Google purchased Simplify Media in May to counter with a music download service that synchronizes the Android mobile OS and search engine.  Along with the planned upgrade of its video services, Google is really stretching its media boundaries.  We’ll discuss these implications in the future, as many could arise for the music and television industries.  One issue for the music industry is the regulation of infringing material on search results. Google and Bing could offer subscription services to access illegal content through sites like MegaUpload and Rapidshare. The sentence itself sounds unjust.  Chess pieces have only begun to align on this battleground.

It will be interesting to see how this affects search engine campaigns in the future, as new content is added to the search engine results pages at a much faster rate. Website owners typically rely on a steady flow of routine traffic with a Search Engine Results Page position. Google Caffeine may threaten that organic movement. Ranking improvements and demotions may happen even quicker than in the past. Content that you and your competitors create will have a faster impact on the results index. Nevertheless, the objective of any marketer is to deliver optimal value to your audience. In time, the optimization will catch up to speed.

Marketers will need to implement a targeted content strategy to ensure they are updating their sites frequently with relevant information. Programmers also need to build clean and clear sites that allow for this new content to be easily found and indexed. The code will need to be sharp, otherwise your keywords could become conflated or even dated next to rivals.

Google Caffeine will also have some effects on SEO methodology. Our own Prasad Sistla and Asif Anwar, two of our top SEOs, share their thoughts on the key points to pay attention to.

Page Load Time: Incorporating speed means that page load times are going to be an even bigger factor than in the past. While a low page load time is typically two seconds, it is more crucial with Google’s Caffeine jolt. This means that flash objects, videos, content, and so forth will need strong optimization for expedient loading.

Keywords and Phrases: Keyword relevancy is now a premium, meaning that your SEO campaign requires even more attention. This will be a challenge for some SEO professionals, but in these cases, the best ones will make adjustments and continue to thrive.

Social Buzz: Caffeine will really benefit social media and news results for general search inquiry. We also believe that more specific keyword searches will return more website results and advertising shelf space. It will benefit webmasters and SEO specialists in all phases of content to maximize traffic.

Content/Site Updates: Caffeine places further priority on regular content creation and site updates. This means that old, static sites sitting at the top of SERPs will need to produce fresh content to maintain their top standing. Sites that blog regularly and make regular adjustments will benefit.

Ads: PPC management will become more important as well. Caffeine prioritizes organic search results rather than paid advertisements. Thus, the advertisements used are even more important. The necessity for a strong page load time greatly affects your PPC management and Quality Score for AdWords.

Sitemaps: Sitemaps and navigation should be restructured to have deeper pages with fewer clicks and at good positions. Spiders will index the web faster and deeper, without going onto clumsy, discombobulated sites.

Avg Time on Site: Google Caffeine will factor in the amount of time that users spend on sites. Again, sites that have good content and great user experience will rise to the top. This is really Google’s ultimate goal, to deliver the best possible results and improve the user’s experience.

Caffeine’s indexing could also benefit e-commerce sites that have quality products. Since results will be updated on a constant basis, the quality of traffic should improve, leading to more click-throughs and ultimately sales. Try Caffeine for yourself here to see the difference:

The internet is much more than just a channel of communication. In the present scenario, the internet has become the fastest and most convenient way to communicate and to spread the message to the public in a cost effective model. Often called Interactive PR, Online PR or Digital PR, this process is helpful for companies of any size as it is a two-way communication that aims to build better relationships. When compared to the traditional PR, this method helps organizations build reliability with the target audience directly.

VSS data shows that PR spending in the US grew by more than 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. Also PR spending in America is predicted to go beyond $8 billion in 2013 with increased usage of corporate blogs and social media.

The important components of Interactive PR include: distributing press releases online with relevant keywords and optimizing for search engine rankings, news wire services, defining a new blogging strategy to engage prospects and customers in conversation about the products or services, effective podcasting, organizing webinars, starting discussions and following up in forums, creating news and events page in the website to cover the old and latest information about the company.

There is a greater demand for Interactive PR services than in previous years and firms of all sizes are looking at the ways they communicate with their prospects and customers. There are companies that do not practice PR on its own and may request help or outsource their needs for Online PR activities. This way they can build an ongoing relationship with the public and the media in a very cost effective manner.

This form of marketing is often referred to as Content Marketing, which is defined as “words and data to create unambiguous content that support meaningful, interactive experiences”, is now evolving as a new discipline. In addition to all your traditional marketing techniques, this form of marketing uses content to achieve higher sales through profitable actions from the customer and prospect sides.

What it takes, is an effective content strategy. Content development, delivery and administration are the three major points that need to be kept in mind when you define content strategy for any marketing plan. Rachel Lovinger explains more about content marketing in her article, Content Strategy – The Philosophy of Data.

Effective content can be a combination of both verbal and visual information that will have a greater impact among your prospects. Define your content strategy in a manner that can be tracked and results are measured by easy methods which plays an important role when it comes to continuous refining and managing content for future.

There are a variety of vehicles marketers can use to deliver content to prospects which include print and online newsletters, webinars, podcasts, websites, microsites, video portals, mobile content, gaming sites, interactive online forms, email campaigns, blogs and social media. Of all, social media forms a major component of content strategy now and content marketing is replacing certain traditional marketing strategies to achieve results in a cost-effective manner.

Research and survey reports conducted by Junta42 show that now 33% of total marketing budgets are  allocated to content marketing and the main area of focus being mobile and social media. Companies of all size are now taking the help of digital marketing companies to fulfill their content marketing needs.

Blueliner Marketing offers specialized services to clients who need a partner to transform their marketing goals to profitable results. Blueliner creates and administers valuable content marketing strategies to meet client needs and deliver higher ROI.

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.

Converse Domaination from Ross Martin on Vimeo.

Converse has come up with a clever and hilarious marketing campaign centered on keywords. Keywords, as I mentioned earlier this week, have not been utilized properly by corporations looking to promote their products in cyberspace. I guess they have been reading the minds of many executives still looking to optimize their search campaigns at a maximal level. Enjoy.

It clearly depends on your website’s search optimization.  I searched for ‘deli sandwiches’ and this was my result:

The results were interesting in that Schlotzky’s Deli came up second, and I haven’t seen a Schlotzky’s since I left the midwest nine years ago.  In fact, the closest location is in Newport News, Virginia. The company must have a strong web development team to reach second on the results list.  The Texas-based chain underwent a bankruptcy filing and complete overhaul of their operational structure.  They have expanded in the Plains states last summer with more locations coming in the near future, both domestic and international.

I also did a test for the dying record store industry in New York.  I typed in “record stores nyc” and got these results:  

The local business results in this search were quite predictable.  Other Music has been renowned for years with a solid inventory of used and new albums, along with imports and rarities.  I did find interesting that they were ranked second behind Citidex, which is a nondescript guide that has images and coding similar to the Yellow Pages.  In conclusion, major retailers are still working on getting their site optimized for keywords and losing ROI in the process.  Blueliner can come to the rescue today.