Lucio Ribeiro

Google has announced that results from Google+ and Picasa will be shown on search
results pages. This create as range of opportunities for Google+ early adopters to reach
massive amounts of traffic otherwise unreachable for people and brands with no Google+
presence. This also makes Google+ even more relevant for companies investing in SEO.
The official announcement and video is available here.

This feature is rolling out progressively from today and will only be available for Google+
signed in users. Those users can opt in or out of it at anytime. This means the vast majority
of Google’s 1 billion users, who are not registered to Google+, won’t see any change,
but also gives them one more reason to try the new social network. There are no official
numbers, but analysts believe Google+ has doubled its user base in December and has now
over 60 million users. Biggest audience so far is US based males and directly or indirectly
related to the IT industry. Photography is one of the major topics fostering a community in
Google+ at the moment, both worldwide and in Australia.

This latest move follows previously announced integration of Google+ with Gmail and
YouTube. It is widely expected that major services to be integrated later this year will include
Maps and Places. Eventually, all Google services will feature heavy integration with Google+.
Brands have been given the ability to crate pages with multiple administrators from last
December. Apps and contests on Google+ are still not possible (as at 11 Jan 2012).

Download The Online Circle’s presentation on Google+

Related posts:

1. Google Instant – Pre-Loading Web Pages in Web Results
2. The Future of Search.
3. Google give us +1 a way to e-like things

A Brand Manager walked into a  shop and was looking at the stuff in the store.

While he was there another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, “I’ll have that digital shop please”.

The shopkeeper nodded, went over and gave him a full digital shop. He wrote a contract, gave to the lawyers, and then handed it to the customer, saying, “That’ll be A$5000″. The customer paid and walked out with his digital shop.

Startled, the Brand Manager went over to the shopkeeper and said, “That was a very expensive digital shop. Most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost SO much?”  The shopkeeper answered, “Ah, that agency can do Facebook updates very fast, very cool Flash Websites, funny tweets, well worth the money.”

The tourist looked at the agency in the far corner. “That one’s even more expensive – $10,000! What does it do?”
-” Oh, that one’s a Social Media dedicated agency; they can manage your Social Media strategy, Risk Mitigation, Customer Service integration to Social communication – it can even save you from an online crisis. All the really useful stuff,” said the shopkeeper.

The Brand Manager looked around for a little longer and saw a third agency in another corner. The price tag around his neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, “That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does he do?”

The shopkeeper shrugged and said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t actually seen him do anything, but he says he’s a Social Media consultant.”

Related posts:

1. Brand Awareness x Brand Engagement-Does your agency know the difference?
2. How to Share Facebook Advertising account
3. What’s the average for Likes and Comments for Facebook Pages?

Do you know that Facebook records your activities?

Your activity log is a place where you can review all your posts and activity, from today back to when you first started using Facebook.

Only you can see your activity log.

Check out the video to learn how to access your Facebook log.

Related posts:

1. Facebook for business – Dummies guide to Facebook Send Button
2. The new and improved Facebook
3. The secret to Facebook Engagement

A popular discussion in the office today has been around Twitter’s new interface design and its move to attract a wider audience.

Twitter yesterday released a new page design that incorporate a friendlier user interface, which offers more opportunities for brands to promote themselves. The new Twitter design offers brands the capabilities for a cleaner and more emotive look and feel, with the potential to appeal to an audience previously intimidated by the Twitter format.

The major layout changes for all users – now consistent across web and mobile – include moving the timeline to the right hand side of the page, and allowing media to be displayed within tweets, rather than confined to an often messy URL and then redirecting users from the timeline.

At first look for brands, the most useful changes seem to be in the ability to promote rich media tweets to the top of the timeline and take advantage of an increased header presenting a banner-style space. The addition of rich media within the tweets, especially the promoted tweet which will fully display the content, allow for a better display of brand personality and presence. Interesting to note, this brings Twitter more in line with current offerings of Facebook and Google+.

The new features for brand pages were released in partnership with 21 brands including Coke and Disney. Twitter state “We will slowly roll out enhanced profile pages to a wider audience of brands in the coming months”. At this stage the changes seem to be only available randomly once the application is downloaded, even with logging in and out.

More info about the changes to the interface:

Twitter services are now arranged intuitively across 4 sections: Home, Connect, Discover, and You. Home is simple and similar to the original design. Connect makes follows, mentions, retweets and favourites more accessible. Discover is a new customised section that ‘learns’ about users search habits: collating content of potential interest to users under hashtag search terms used prior. You is the new profile page, that more clearly displays lists, favourites, follows, interests and rich media.

We’ll keep you updated with further opportunities for brands. For now, download the app (iOS or Android) for your new Twitter, and read more about the standard changes: http://fly.twitter.com/#

Related posts:

1. Sponsored Tweets get a promotion.
2. BP Logo Design Contest. Using User Generated Content for Social Issues
3. What are the 10 Most powerful global Brands?

The Online Circle is growing up fast and great things are happening here at the agency.

We’re now pleased to announce that to keep up with our expanding team, we’re moving to a bigger and brighter home!

Our new address from the 14th November 2011 will be:
Level 2
83 Palmerston Crescent
South Melbourne VIC 3205

Our new phone number will be changing to +61 3 9696 7473, but all our email addresses will stay the same.

Moving day is set for Friday 11th November 2011, so access to phones, emails, Twitter and Facebook might be interrupted in the afternoon.  In case of emergency, call us on the mobile 0423 694 338.

If you have any questions about the move in the meantime, please get in contact with us.

To find us, please see our details on the Google map below.

We look forward to seeing you in our brand spanking new office!

Related posts:

1. 2007 crooked online business previsions for 2008
2. Online Literacture. It was time to make some Noise.
3. Thats What I call Online Reputation Management and Branding

Google has just announced the SSL Search on https://www.google.com will become the default experience for signed in users on google.com. This change will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

What that means?

2 things
Short term – From all users coming to a website using SSL/Google we will NOT be able to track search queries and keywords
LongTerm – I believe Google will be forcing SSL and it will give more value for websites built and hosted under SSL certification. SSl will become one of the hundreds itens Google assess before ranking a website.

Google state it will be less then 1% of the users (I personally can’t believe on this number), and that what got all online community angry.

This article conflicts with information stated on other Google Blogs.

For instance this one says that Analytics will still have the data, however when you then look at that blog analytics.blogspot.com it clearly states that this will not be the case.

(From the post) How will this change impact Google Analytics users?
When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google “cpc”.

So basically all keyword research, targetting and optimisation is gone for 1% of the users

Related posts:

1. Google Instant – Pre-Loading Web Pages in Web Results
2. Changes in Google’s Search by Images & its Significance to the User:
3. Google’s real changes