Image coutesy of Burt K

Business is increasingly moving to social media. This allows business of any size to engage directly with their target market and done correctly can create a lasting relationship. We wanted to highlight a story from TechCrunch and it’s overview of six business case studies.

Out Take

It’s great to see case studies like this popup. One of the things we like to do with case studies is to tear them apart and find one thing that we can take an employee in our own business. Years ago when I started reading business books I made a practice to write down key ideas that go beyond that—find ways that I could implement these ideas in my business professional life. We suggest you do the same thing with the six case studies.

Google Seller Ratings

Google introduced seller ratings to its growing lot of ad extensions last month. In addition to titles, prices, and thumbnail images, a searcher now gets treated to a 1 to 5 scale indicating past customers’ satisfaction with a particular merchant. A great roundup from Paul Burani on this move.

Our Take

As with all things Google you know this went through a series of testing. As Facebook steamrolls towards 500 Million members and super high engagement Google house to take notice. The next step for Facebook could be merging social media and shopping. We already know that one of the biggest reasons why people choose to follow companies and Brands within social media is for special deals in special offers.

Is it that far of the leap to think that this could be used as a direct channel for sales. Now we know social media is not for selling but if it was inherent within the experience this could be a game changer. All we have to do is look towards games like Farmvillle to see how social media has changed a dynamic. Social networks have virtually made some of the biggest names in the casual gaming world. Why couldn’t this be done for E-commerce?

Today we talk with Jeff Foster from WebBizIdeas.com. Jeff gives some great tips and advice on your opportunity within Bing, Yahoo, and Foursquare. Some items we talk about are…

• Is Bing local worthwhile?
• Does Bing have a webmaster tools like Google?
• What about content and Bing?
• What is up with the merger between Bing and Yahoo?
• What does it mean for the future of search?
• What are your opportunities with Foursquare?

Once again if you have any feedback or questions you can feel free to email Jeff directly.

Listen Below

Twitter is considering offering a product where users would pay to have their accounts promoted on the website, All Things Digital reported recently. How it would work and whether the users would pay per added follower or a base rate is unclear. Studies have been conducted by Sysomos. The firm recently looked at the authority rankings of five celebrities, five social media heavyweights and five media organizations – and focused on the kind of Twitter users who follow these people. It determined while celebrities have a large number of followers, most of them are low authority users. View More here >.

Mom and Motherhood Market

The motherhood market is both graying and greening, according to a new report from Experian Marketing Services, and the changes are fairly sweeping. Do you sell to this market? If so this story is worth a read.

Facebook claims (Facebook Market Research, Q4 2009) to reach 65 percent of all moms online in the U.S., and to have 17 million mom users who have kids at home. They tell us that 94 percent of moms use Facebook at least once a week, and 53 percent of Facebook moms have children under the age of 5. How does Facebook stack up in the Mom market?

Social Circles in Real Life

I saw this great slide presentation a 216-slides-with-footnotes presentation posted on SlideShare, Google UX researcher Paul Adams. He covered quite a few points from social circles, how we interact with people online and offline, ties of relationship. I enjoyed it and we talk mainly about that presentation. View the slides and check out the podcast here.

Did you notice the competition going on between Bing and Google? The game is still on and after Google announced its new Caffeine search index, it is Bing’s turn to tout the future release of its enhanced ‘Bing Webmaster Tools’ this summer. Check out the full story here >

Where do Americans begin their online day? According to a study released today by ExactTarget, 58 percent check their e-mail, while 20 percent go first to a search engine or portal site and 11 percent start with Facebook. A conscientious (or worried) 3 percent make their company’s site or intranet their first online destination of the day. Five percent go first to a news site and 3 percent go to some other destination. View the overview from Adweek here or view another overview here.

Apple dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on Google this week with its revision of its developer policies. Now, only “independent” ad-serving companies will be able to serve ads for the iPhone. That rules out AdMob, now owned by Google. The changes also appear to target third-party app usage analytics firms. Flurry, in particular, has been singled out for criticism by Jobs. Such applications are also banned from the iPhone. Read more here >

Got to talk to Jeff Foster again and we covered some great information. Listen to the show below.

We first talk about what type of things you should really be focusing on in the search engine world. How to create content and the elements that make up a great content strategy.

Then we move on with the ever important aspect of search marketing–link building.

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Bing is not giving in even though Google–the king of the hill–continues to knock them down. With Google’s recent announcement that Caffeine is in full release it’s Bing’s turn to talk about it’s future releases.

Bing Webmaster

First from Bing is a no cost toolset for websites and webmasters. It’s built on Microsoft Silverlight 4 and with feedback from webmasters and others with SEO knowledge. Part of this release is the “Index Explorer”, think tree view for webmasters to see how Bing is crawling their site.

There could potentially be huge news here. First this looks like it will allow webmasters to access specific items and management controls. URL blocking, cache blocking, and even possible re-crawl requests. If this is something that catches on I’d expect Google Webmaster Tools to follow suit.

Real Time and Social Search Results

Bing released in May real time results. This new search is called Bing Social and can be found here. Social and real time results is really the next frontier for both Google and Bing and I would anticipate we will see tremendous growth in these spaces.

What Does This Mean?

Now more than ever does it matter that you have a social strategy. A strategy that focuses on trusted accounts and connecting with your target market. It used to be just a nice extra to be on Twitter but now if you want want a total digital solution it’s a must. There’s also the advent of searching within Facebook. We’ve mentioned before this is the true power of the platform.

In closing keep Bing on your radar and check to see what you opportunities make be as they continue to keep relevant.

Today on DefiningNewMedia.com Jeff Foster talks with Scott Scanlon about search engines, SEM, and SEO. We talk about the latest release from google called Caffeine.

Some of the questions we answer:

• Has Google and the search engines changed drastically?
• What exactly is Google Caffeine?
• What should you do about it?
• Your strategy going forward to be found on search engines…
• Can and should you take advantage of trending topics?

Each Friday Jeff and I will discuss search engine and online marketing related topics. From real time search, google, bing, yahoo, and other search related items.

Listen to the show below