Fwix launches Local Trend Search
Fwix, a hyperlocal news and information company, has launched a beta version of Local Trend Search, allowing users to search for what's 'happening at any place right now'. Local Trend Search is Fwix's latest addition to its fast-growing local content network and popular iPhone and iPad news app for over two hundred markets in the English-speaking world, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
Local Trend Search rounds up news, events, government data, business reviews and more into a single view of a given location. It also opens doors for advertisers to target local advertisements at users. "Most of our current site searches are for local services and offers", said Adrian Druzgalski, Fwix CTO and co-founder, "which means that our product could potentially be the most hyper-locally targeted solution for advertisers as we scale."
Social Media Marketing isn't a financial asset - Forrester Report
A new Forrester Report this morning shows how even though there are some really big case studies for Social Media Marketing working dramatically for financial success, for many it isn't. To help the exploding investment into Social Media they suggest going back to "old school marketing" to look for justification.
For every Dell Outlet Twitter account, there are many companies struggling to make sense (and cents or pence) out of their new found ventures into Social Media.
This seems to stand around the simple facts, that the investment is measured too closely and not across enough areas of impact. As Forrester's blog post says "Facebook fans, retweets, site visits, video views, positive ratings and vibrant communities are not financial assets", which is a tough sell in these challenging financial times.
It goes on to say Social Media needs to be measured on a "traditional measurement approach'' for cutting edge social marketing. This must raise alarms bells as it seems to sound like the traditional arguments that PR & Marketing have been putting out for decades and are being challenged on a daily basis by many companies who need to show return on investment in a quarter.
At Sitelynx we are practitioners in Social Media Marketing as part of a wider "Earned Media" plan, which we have learnt, is best measured around Natural Search (SEO) for most websites. Therefore if you want to measure Social Media value, look for its impacts in Natural Search as part of the answer. This can be direct through web measurement, indirect through sentiment tracking and collectively, by trend analysis against benchmarking.
Forresters Balanced Social Media Marketing Scorecard
The graph below shows the Forrester recommended measures to take in Social Media marketing and where they sit in both value and time. It shows an interesting framework but lacks a worked example which only exists in the ($499) report.
1. Financial: Has revenue or profit increased or have costs decreased?
2. Brand: Have consumer attitudes about the brand improved?
3. Risk Management: Is the organisation better prepared to note and respond to attacks or problems that affect reputation?
4. Digital: Has the company enhanced its owned and earned digital assets?
Source: Rickmans Posterous- ROI of Social Media Marketing: More than dollars and cents
Google places Android phones on the map - and sales up 350% in the UK
Android OS was the fastest growing mobile phone platform in the last 3 months in the UK, with over 350% rise in sales. One in ten contract phones sold in Q2 2010 in the UK were Android phones, which now accounts for 13.2% of handsets sold. Even more astonding is that Android only accounted for 3% of the UK market in Q1 2010!
The report also shows how Smart phones are now the majority of handsets sold in the UK making up 66.7% in Q2 of all sales.
Also following a series of upgrades both big and small, Google Maps for Android now includes a new mobile version of Google Places with the launch of Google Maps 4.4. This enables users to browse categories of nearby businesses from bars and restaurants to cash machines and petrol stations. In addition, users can create their own custom categories such as 'free wifi'.
Google Places for Android works with the same dataset as Google Maps/Places and Google Local on the mobile web.
The main difference between the Android app Places Directory and Places is that the latter features a search box and the profile pages more directly resemble Places online.
Google Maps for mobile 4.4 is available now for Android 1.6 and above.
For more details of the latest research on Andoid visit GFK Retail and Technology
Small Businesses hit by “Fake reviews” on Google Maps
BBC Click had an interesting story a couple of weeks ago (16 July 2010) on a small photography company in Colchester who was a victim of a “double bluff” fake review on Google Maps. In this case Storm Photography of Colchester had no reviews at the beginning of the year when they placed their listing on Google Maps (via Google Places) and when one did appear it was both strangely negative and from another photographers, in Crewe.
As the BBC reported, Cream Wedding Photography Ltd in Crewe had also been the victim in this scam. They had been named as a reviewer when it appears to have actually been a third party who had taken “Cream Photography” as a name to put negative reviews up on Google Maps for over 100 companies.
The response from Google appears to have been less than helpful with Google advising the Wimpennys (owners of Cream Wedding Photography Ltd) that they would need to pursue the case in a US court. Google says it uses software to automatically detect spam reviews yet didn’t detect these 100 identical fake reviews all posted within the same 24 hours. Google said in a statement that it is working to improve the system, but, that it wanted to balance identifying spam without removing genuine comments.
Unfortunately, Cream Photography haven't yet resolved the problem with their listing. In a phone call with Charles and Carolyn Wimpenny earlier today, we made them aware of how to claim the listing for their business, so they can avoid being hijacked by anyone else in the future.
Also during this call Charles and Carolyn pointed out the aggressive marketing tactics being employed inside, from what looks to the outside, the genteel industry of Wedding Photography.
There was talk of stolen copy and photo’s being used on multiple sites (use of a simple WHOIS look up and contact with the hosting company resolved that issue). YouTube videos being passed off as others work (watermarking is essential for all videos on YouTube) as well as the ongoing false reviews on both Google Maps and other sites.
Generally it seems that small businesses have a lot more to lose than many larger ones, as their main source of leads now come from Google (look at your Yellow Pages to see how much advertising has been dropped from it and where do you think that has gone to?).
If you are struggling with any of these issues feel free to drop us a line at
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