Yahoo! Pipes

Let's say you wanted information about a specific sports team from a specific newspaper, but didn't have the time to go searching for articles every day via the web or the physical newspaper. All you need is a medium that will filter all the newspaper's information every day to a separate account instead of going through the hundreds of articles on your RSS reader, or the thousands that may appear in a web search.

Enter:Yahoo! Pipes.

I recently learned of this new medium and its capabilities in my social media class. For me, this tool is absolutely brilliant. Yahoo! Pipes is a powerful tool that has the capability to collect information from around the web, filter it into a specific topic or word you have requested, and deliver the customized information directly to you, free of an extra stuff you may not want. Unlike the regular reader accounts, Yahoo! Pipes customizes everything so I don't have filter through all of my readers to find one article about the one thing I may be looking for.

By using a filter system, Pipes understand different commands through an output system that delivers all specialized content directly to you. It's like reading a personalized magazine every morning, except every article is actually something you really want to read. By filtering out information we don't want, Yahoo! Pipes had reached a new level of RSS customization and news reading.

Imagine what we could actually do with this. How much easier does this make researching the web for different content, or scanning the web for news about your business or organization? This introduces a new way for us to understand, receive, and filter web content every day. And what's better: it's all free.

Watch this tutorial below and get started with your own pipe. Once you understand its benefits, you'll be saying Yahoo!

Social Media Out of Control?

In this new media phenomenon, one question many businesses may have about using the social mediums is whether or not they will continue to have control of it, like they may have in other marketing areas. Admittedly, yes, diving into Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks can be a risk. But let's not blow the risk out of proportion.

Businesses do have control. Individuals do have control. But we don't have control of everything, and never have. Social media did not suddenly make us feel as though perception is out of our hands. The only thing we've always had that has been constant, and will remain so even with changing technologies is influence.

Take a look at this blog to read more about how to address these issues of control and social media:

http://altitudebranding.com/2009/09/social-media-and-the-reality-of-control/

Is Search the New Homepage?

It is no secret that most web visits begin with search. Think about it.

Do you have the tendency to paste a URL into the search bar, or go straight to Google or another search engine instead?

Because of the fact that most of us go to directly to a search engine when looking for reliable information, it could be argued that search engines are indeed the new homepage of the web. As a result, sites such as Google and Yahoo! have developed aggressive visibility strategies that ensure the company or link you might be looking for comes up on the first page of your search engine, the first time you search for it.

An article Edleman Public Relations has published explores this new phenomena that has developed over the last 10 that "search, without question, is the most dominant online activity". The article speaks to two types of primary visibility tactics: paid search and optimized search. Both of these types of search tactics are a more widely known type of search engine marketing, where the process of buying keywords is an expensive and technical process.

More recently, however, two other types of search tactics have emerged: reputational search and social search. Both of these tactics sit in the hands of public relations practices, utilizing social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to create links to their sites and set up the world wide web for the next upcoming phenomena: search and social networking. What happens when we begin to find all our information from social sites? Could another medium replace the power of Google?

As a result of these new search tactics and the increasing importance of search visibility, how we write has drastically changed. Not only do we continue to write for our audience, we must write for the searchers, and more importantly, the search engines. Learning how to incorporate key words into the text and strategizing where these words are placed on the page suddenly takes precedence over how much content we provide. The dangerous pitfall that can result from this, however, is bad writing. It is important to remember that the English and grammar rules aren't breaking just because the way we search the web is changing. The challenge becomes how to incorporate good, clear writing with the strategic ability to have your article or webpage found.

The power of search has quickly linked with the even more powerful social networking sites. Social search, as the Edleman article outlines, is quickly rising to the top of all search tactics. More search queries are rising from inside communities than directly from Google or other search engines. Understanding this convergence could be one of the best tactics to master.

The Power of 150

In my search to understand internet marketing and this current "groundswell", as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff call this social technologies transformation (http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell), I recently came across the top 150 "power blogs" in marketing. Advertising Age, one of the prominent authorities in the marketing business, has complied this list at http://adage.com/power150/. In my enthusiasm to keep up with these social media gurus, I added several RSS feeds from their personal blogs to my Google Reader account; a new love I have also recently discovered.

Since last week when I set up these RSS feeds, I have received hundreds of articles, many of which I have not had time to read. But, the ones I have managed to stay current with have been fascinating. I have learned in this week that not only are these blogs sometimes more informative than my textbooks, but the feeds I receive them through have made researching and keeping up with the incoming news incredibly easy.

One blog I found particularly interesting, and from whom I have re-posted articles to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, is http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/. Jeremiah Owyang, a web strategist, has jumped into the conversation about social media, how it affects buisness, and what we can do to make it work for us. For example, his latest post, "The Three Spheres of Web Strategy" (http://tinyurl.com/qkph9m ) resembles something like a presentation you might hear at a buisness conference, sharing information for free with us about how to make your buisness better in this "groundswell" of information we find ourselves in every day. This is important to me as a student because I am engaged in it as a social medium, but also as a business tool. What are the affects of this for the business world? In some ways having a social media device that is open to the public is a glorified thing, but the fact that business can't control it, also makes it an incredibly scary thing. Learning how to successfully ride this fine line every day is an art. And, understanding how to perfect it is essential.

Another power blog I found helpful was by Matt McGee, who comments on search engines and social marketing at http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/. Understanding the collision between the search world and social media is powerful knowledge, especially when you understand how you can be found in black hole we casually call the Internet. Three magic words can turn any search around on this world wide web: Search Engine Optimization. Matt McGee writes good and useful information on these topics and more, originally intended for the small business owner, but useful for anyone attempting to understand how one's personal blog can be found world wide.

I have only named two blogs here that I follow in a list of close to thirty than I try to check daily. But perhaps the attitude we should all be taking is not quantity, but the quality of the information. After all, to be found on the web, you have to keep bringing the people back. This little, neglected blog is surely no example...but maybe someday it will be. Understanding social media in business and in personal life takes time, effort, and patience. But once you can master these social connections like Jeremiah Owyang and Matt McGee have, who at one time I'm sure knew just as much as I do, the possibilities are endless. Find a niche, gain your audience, and bingo. You have become an authority on your topic. So, keep powering those blogs, friends. You never know who is reading.

Social Trumps All

I recently visited a new site I had never been to before, www.alexa.com. This site ranks the top sites in the world according to specific data. Combing through the massive amounts of information I scrolled through the top vistited sites online in the United States. I am not sure what was more surprising: the fact that most of the sites I saw were mostly social networking sites, or that Wal-Mart, the number one retailer in the United States, came in at a pathetic 44.

The top ten sites were probably what you and I would both expect. Google ranked number one, reaching a far higher popularity than any other site. But Yahoo! came in above Facebook with Youtube following closely behind. Of course, it should come as no surprise that sites like Facebook and Youtube are among the top visited sites in the United States, but it is somewhat of an awakening that we prefer to read-up on what our friends from high school are doing or watch an amateur video online than visit a news site. CNN did not even make the top ten sites; instead it came in 17, not exactly a close fourth after Youtube.

I find it fascinating to visit a site and look up the statistics of what the rest of the world frequents on the internet. But why has social media and social sites become so popular? Is it really that appealing to "tweet" or "facebook" people whom you may have never met, or follow celebrity updates, as boring as they may be? Could the 140 character status bar Twitter has developed really become a source of news for some people?

As a college student in the middle of all of this buzz and hype surrounding social media, these numbers on www.alexa.com aren't a shock to me. But evolution of where we get our information on a daily basis, however, is. As a nation, and a world, we will visit Google or Twitter or Facebook hours before we will open a news story.

A search through India and England's top sites showed similar results to the United States. We are becoming a globalized world, connected by the touch of a keyboard to anyone in the world. The only thing I have to wonder is how impersonal we have become and where we could be headed. What matters to us shows in how we search the internet and what sites we frequent. Whether all this hype and popularity with social media can be a good thing in the long run has yet to be seen. I certainly can relate to the billions visiting these sites every day.

Take a look at www.alexa.com and explore for yourself the fascinating trend social media has taken in our world.