Why Acquiring Glancee is Just as Important as Instagram for Facebook

I’m sure you’ve heard the news – it is Facebook after all – that Facebook has acquired Glancee for an undisclosed amount of moolah. Speculation is still stirring on what they plan to do with the ‘friendly stalking’ app, but it’s quite simple. And while Instagram was purchased because its popularity and skyrocketing user base was starting to scare the social networking giant, Glancee has been gliding relatively under the radar since its inception in 2010. Let’s take a look at some numbers…

• Facebook = over 840 million users
• Instagram = over 35 million users
• Foursquare = over 10 million users
• Glancee = over 20 thousand users

Facebook vs. Instagram vs. Google+

By acquiring Instagram, Facebook eliminated its largest mobile competitor for photo sharing. Since one of the cardinal reasons people use Facebook is to share photos and creep on others’ albums (I didn’t just say that…), it only makes sense that it would buy its main competitor in that arena before it was too late.

Although Google bought photo editing site Picnik back in March of 2010, it has just recently fully integrated it with Google+. Now, while Facebook is still unclear on what they ultimately plan to do with Instagram, here is what I’m guessing.

1. Add photo editing (lens adding) options to photos when you upload them to Facebook.
2. Make Facebook the default sharing option for Instagram.
3. Create overall seamless integration between the two networks so that people can easily connect with and navigate between them and thereby have all social networking (Like, Share, Comment, etc.) and photo sharing options in one convenient location.

If Facebook ends up doing these, they will essentially be eliminating the need for anyone to go on Google+, because most of what people do on social networks will be available in one place. Granted this is not counting the obvious search engine optimization and social media optimization requirements that will motivate businesses to maintain Google+ activity, but it is definitely important to note.

Oh, and for those who still believe Google+ is going to somehow take off and one day overturn its dictatorial adversary, here’s another thought. While it’s fun hanging out on Google+ and all, can anyone say Facebook-Skype integration five times fast?

Facebook vs. Foursquare

Okay this isn’t as epic as Facebook vs. Google, but this is where Glancee comes into play. With Foursquare, you need to check in to different places to earn points, win awards and ultimately become mayor of that location. With Glancee, however – the ‘friendly stalking’ app – you don’t need to check into anywhere. Instead, while you don’t even realize it (Facebook Privacy issues, anyone?), Glancee finds people with similar interests in your area based on Facebook and Twitter profiles and let’s you know who’s around.

Not only is Facebook making a clear statement of its intent to improve both its strength and reach in the mobile world via the acquisitions of Instagram and Glancee, but it’s also looking to reverse the downfall of Facebook Places and ultimately become the most relevant mobile app for connecting similar people in similar locations. There is no word on whether or not Facebook will include a points system based on ‘check-ins’, but regardless – this is a major step for the social media gargantuan to corner the mobile market and truly be the all-inclusive social network, a statement that seemed practically impossible two years ago.

Get SIRIous: Optimize Your Website for Siri

Where are my iPhone fans out there? Is anyone else as addicted as I am? Ever since the iPhone 4S came out last year, Siri has been causing quite a stir in the smartphone world, and has made an impression on millions of people worldwide. But what many are failing to realize is Siri’s enormous potential for local businesses.

I know I’ve told Siri, “I’m hungry for some delicious (whatever) food around here” countless times, and every time she instantly delivers a list of restaurants with ratings and reviews. And after going through the top 5 or so listings and checking out their listing and what other people had to say about them, I choose one and get on with life. For local businesses, Siri holds the key to getting new customers into your location and really capturing the mobile market in your niche. This is especially true for Internet marketing in Orange County because people are always on the go and it seems like everyone has an iPhone these days.

Here are some ways to get Siri on your good side and influence her to get prospective customers into your business.

Check YELP!
When it comes to finding local businesses, Apple has made it pretty clear to Siri that she should stick to Yelp listings when giving advice to iPhone 4S users. And with the most recent iOS 5.1 update, Siri is even more fused with the review site. This means three things:

1. Make sure your business listing is claimed, complete, current and optimized.
2. Encourage customers to share their experiences with these 3 Sure-Fire Tactics to Get Reviews.
3. Respond to both positive and negative reviews on your account.

Basically you need as many good reviews as possible, but having 200 reviews with an average of 4 stars is better than 20 reviews with a 5 star average. The more activity, the merrier.

Siri also looks at other local listing sites like Citysearch, Super Pages, YP, Insider Pages, etc., which are also important for your local search marketing campaign. But with the iOS 5.1 update, Apple has made it pretty clear that Yelp is the most important.

Talk with Siri Like You’d Talk to Your Friends

Siri enables a new style of mobile search because you can talk to her. Instead of typing things into your iPhone and looking for local businesses that way, you are speaking to her and asking her for advice. What does this mean? Long-tail keywords.

In your listings you should not just be including the strict keywords and short key phrases youre optimizing for in your Local SEO campaign. You should also be including phrases long-tail keywords- that would appear in colloquial conversation. Heres an example..

Traditional SEO: “web designer Orange County“
Getting SIRIous: “looking for a web designer in Orange County”

The great part about this is that even by adding both to your local listing, it doesn’t mean that you need to do more work for your Internet marketing campaign. In fact, you’re actually cutting down on time. When you humanize and naturalize your listing, you will not only be helping your mobile search efforts, but you will also be improving your overall local search marketing campaign because Google, too, is getting smart by the day.

Are You Engaging Your Brand Advocates in Social Media?

In the ‘social media for business’ realm, there are constantly an abundance of tips and tricks being thrown around. From all aspects of both offline and Internet marketing in Orange County and across the globe, we constantly hear different perspectives on how to increase Likes/Followers, induce more activity from our fan base and ultimately enhance our business presence online. However, when it comes down to it, all of these ideas come back to four main social media marketing concepts:

• Monitor
• Respond
• Interact/Engage
• Humanize Your Activity

One thing people fail to realize is the importance of brand advocates. In order to grow your brand, one of the easiest and oldest tricks in the book is to reward those who like you and talk you up to their friends. Lauren Carlson, a CRM Analyst for Software Advice, has written a great blog post on the topic and has included an interview with Duke Chung, founder of Parature, which also appears below.

In the video, Mr. Chung gives 5 tips for businesses to flourish in social media. Pay extra attention to the fourth and fifth tips, as these are unique ideas that you might not have thought of for your business.

3 Sure-Fire Tactics to Get Reviews

How many times have you looked at reviews to get more information about a product or service” Wait, let me rephrase that. The last time you bought an app for your phone or searched for a restaurant in your area, did you happen to glance at how many stars it had or what people were saying about it” The answer for most is a resounding “YES”!; and sometimes you probably look at ratings and form opinions without even realizing it.

Whenever I’m looking to buy a new app for my iPhone and can’t decide which one to get – especially because there seems to be 10 apps for everything nowadays I’m always looking at how many stars they have and how peoples experiences with them have been. And when I finally narrow it down to 2 or 3 that have similar ratings, I usually go with the one that has more of them because it’s more trustable.

I’ve been on both sides of the review game. A few years back during my college days in Madison, WI (Go Badgers!!), I was a server/bartender/self-appointed GM (long story) of a restaurant and lounge, where I found that online reviews brought in a lot of new customers and dramatically increased sales. Now working for GMR Web Team, we are always trying to think of new ways to get our clients’ customers to share their (always positive, of course) thoughts on them. And trust me it’s not as easy as it sounds. But that aside, here are 3 tactics that have worked very well for me and can be used for virtually any type of business.

RESPOND
When’s the last time you checked your Yelp or Google Places/Maps listings? How about local review sites to see what people are saying about you? If you have, excellent; if not…. you know the drill.

Whenever you are reviewed you need to respond within a couple of days. This shows your customers (reviewers) and prospects (readers) that you genuinely appreciate their feedback and care enough to take the time and respond. You can simply drop a ‘thank you’ line, or, preferably, turn it into a conversation by asking them more questions, saying something about the product/service they reviewed, etc.

What you say is important- very important- but if you’re unsure exactly what to write, or somehow become enveloped by some unexplainable euphoric haze that clouds your mind and renders you speechless (too much?), just make sure you say something. What will take you 5 minutes can increase your business fivefold. Its that easy.

WHAT YOU REAP IS WHAT YOU SOW

1. Next to the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. icons on your website and blog, you should add new icons that link to all of your review sites.
2. Include a “Review us on” line in the About sections of each of your social networks.
3. Every couple of weeks, make a Facebook status update/tweet asking your fan base to review you and provide a link to the site. When wording the content, make sure you are genuinely appreciative of your customers and are always touched when people take the time out of their busy schedules to write a review of you. And when you are reaching out to your Friends and Followers, it is very unlikely that they will post a negative comment about you.
4. Do the same as above, but in an empathetic and short email to your email list. This is both highly targeted and is a simple process for possible reviewers, as all they have to do is click the links in the email and they will automatically be redirected to the site.
5. When it’s time for them to check out, either online or in-store, feed the information directly to them. If its online, provide customers with links to review their purchase, along with way to connect to your various social media accounts. If its in store, hand them a flyer, look at them in the eye and say something like, Thanks so much for coming in. It would really mean a lot to me if you would write a short review online whenever you have a moment. Its also a good idea to get their email information so you can follow up with it as well. Chances are that they’ll probably forget about it by the time they get home.

INCENTIVES

And by incentives, I really mean free samples. Think about it…..

1. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

And

2. WHO DOESN’T LIKE FREE(!!!) STUFF?!?!

By giving out free samples of your products/services, you are one step closer to making some new friends. And what do friends typically do to other friends” Support them. Exactly. In this case, your support for them was the free sample, and their reciprocation is the review that you so innocently asked them to write when they were paying their bill.

I did this so much when I was a server it was insane. I’d give them a free appetizer for a variety of very random reasons…

“Hey, it’s cold outside… Here’s some flamin’ hot Kasseri (Greek cheese) to warm ya up!” (*cue music from Ferris Bueller* *chika*chikaahh*)
-OR-
“Happy Friday! Here’s a little hummus platter on the house to start your evening off on the wild side.”
-OR-
“You know what? You two seem like really awesome people. Whats your favorite appetizer on the menu? It’s on me.”

Okay I usually said that last one to cute, non-married women; but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right? And while those are just examples, you can do the same for your products/services as well. In the grand scheme of things, food costs on appetizers were small and we would usually end up throwing some out every night because they had to be fresh. The opportunity to get a customer for life who will be your word of mouth advocate, bring their friends to their newfound hotspot and increase your list of regulars is priceless.

For your business, give out something that doesn’t cost a lot but still provides value and encompasses your operations. Also look to give out any new products you’re launching, as this will both increase their exposure and encourage people to write about them, with the latter further reinforcing the former.

Here’s some dessert to end things on a pretty sweet note..

• Traffic increased 158% last year to the top 10 review sites (Compete.com)90% of consumers who trust recommendations from people they know (Ecoconsultancy, July 2009, Erik Qualman, Socialnomics)
• 70% of consumers trust recommendations from people they dont know (Ecoconsultancy, July 2009, Erik Qualman, Socialnomics)
• 92% of people have more confidence in info found online than they do in sales people/other sources (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2009)
• 70% of people look at reviews/ratings before buying a product/service (BusinessWeek, Oct. 2008)
• 7/10 who read reviews share them, increasing their reach (Deloitte & Touche, Sept. 2007)

Now take a minute to digest that. Yep, reviews are important folks. What are your experiences with getting reviews? What has worked and what hasn’t work” Lets brainstorm!

Instagram Schminstagram… It’s Time To Use Flixel!

If you haven’t heard the name Flixel, take note of it now, because in a few months it’s going to be huge. This innovative photography iPhone app allows anyone to create beautiful pictures that have lives of their own.

The interface is simple: you take a picture, and with a few simple taps and swipes on the screen of the Flixel iPhone app, you can manipulate the picture and add motion to the image. Candles can flicker, hair can gently blow in the wind, and pages can flutter. All this in a matter of minutes. In the past, such images would take hours to create, and usually required familiarity with Photoshop. Now, the power of beautiful, subtle image manipulation is at everyone’s fingertips.

This is the time when small business owners should utilize Flixel – right now, before it becomes a household name. Currently, there’s nothing like it available on the web and it creates lovely, eye-catching images. For example, a website design firm that uses Flixel-made images will show that they possess not only good taste, but an eye for technology trends. For a local search marketing company, advertisements using Flixel would undoubtedly catch the reader’s eye, and help them think of the advertised businesses in a very positive light. There are endless possibilities, it’s really a lot of fun and you could be a leader in the next wave of app stardom.

For past two weeks, the Internet has been ablaze with news of Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, which I’m sure you’re sick of just like myself. People were furious about the buy-out and vowed to leave Instagram if changes were made to the site or their images. But they may leave anyway – Flixel features color manipulation templates that are comparable to Instagrams’, but Instagram can’t compete when it comes to the beautiful movement of cinematographic Flixel images. While there are many iPhone apps dedicated to editing images out there, this is one that requires and inspires creativity at the point of capturing the shot, not just after the shot by applying filter effects.