Mike Mueller

Now you really need to get into Google Plus

Social Search went live this morning on Google. No, not Google Plus – but GOOGLE, the mothership of the internet. They’ve been hinting that social has been influencing the Google algorithm for a while and as of today there’s no more hinting. It’s in your face. Bamm!

Here’s how a search for an Irish Pub in NY looks to me. Remember, I’m in San Francisco. You can see there’s 30 of my friends that have recommendations for me.

Google has placed that right at the top!

I didn’t know I even had 30 friends in NYC, let alone personal recommendations for me.

The truth is, they might be friends, but they might also be friends of friends. That means they might be someone you don’t recognize, don’t know and yet they just influenced your search result! Wow! They might have written a review on Yelp, or uploaded a picture to Posterous, or liked a YouTube video. Those are the rare instances. The majority of what shows up as a ‘recommendation’ in search is either a share to Google Plus or just a simple +1 by them.

That’s why, even though you don’t think you need another social network, you do need to understand what’s happening. Lucky for you, we have help!

January 16th, 2012 1PM Eastern- Understanding The New Google+ with Mike Mueller

Join us with special guest presenter Mike Mueller for an in depth look at the Google+ social network including how to drive traffic back to your website as well as the NEW Business Pages.

In this webinar we’ll discuss:

What is Google+?
Step-by-step walkthrough on how to get started
Current useful Google+ applications for business
How to keep Google+ from becoming a time suck.
Understanding how to use this new Social Search to your advantage

With over 62 million users already on Google+, this is a network to definitely consider in your online marketing plan.

This is a free webinar with limited seating, so sign up now! Register Here

Cheap cameras don’t have to have cheap sound

Video

Experts will tell you…

One of the most important aspects of your video is the sound.

You heard that right. Not the lighting, nor the 1080p, 24 frames per second, yadda yadda yadda.
The Sound. The Audio. That might seem funny as tend to think about video as being a visual medium.

There’s plenty of equipment out there to record sound. Everything from the small pinhole on the camera itself to the Boom Mic Operator with 50lbs of equipment hanging around his neck. There’s a reason the movie industry pays big dollars for ADR Editors, Foley Artists, Re-Recording Mixers and the like – to get the best possible audio into their products.

Each instance has it’s own unique needs and corresponding tool to go with it. Use the right tool for the job and your video will be better. Much better. As in… people will watch it longer, better. That’s what you really want, right?

“Ok, so audio is important, I get it, but I’m shooting video with my Cell Phone”

With the incredible video capabilities that today’s cell phones have – that’s great! The same can be said for pocket camcorders like the Flip or Kodak Playtouch. Their video can be fabulous. Their audio recording? Not so much. Matter of fact, it’s pretty crappy unless you are in a silent enclosed room. Unfortunately it’s hard to pipe in better audio into a cell phone. There are some hacks out there but they are limited. One of the big limitations some cameras have is the lack of a external microphone jack. How can you get better sound if you can’t plug in a microphone?

I purposely shot the video below on the lowest definition camera I had – my very old Flip Ultra II. It has no external microphone jack. Instead of using the audio that the camera caught, I simultaneously recorded the audio on a separate device and then combined the better audio with the video in post production. Links to the equipment shown or used are under the video.

Rode Video Mic
Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone
Zoom H1
Flip Ultra II – I would have given you a link to it but it’s so old it’s been discontinued and couldn’t find an example anywhere!

So there you have it – all you need to start producing better sounding videos!

Better Happy Birthdays

Facebook

I love it when a birthday comes up for one of my online friends. It gives me the opportunity to make their day special AND have a little fun in the process. Sometimes for birthdays I might hack an image together…

Other times I may do a quick video…

My online friend is going to feel great when they see what I did for them. Truth be told, it doesn’t take long to create something that will be special and meaningful.

Sometimes Birthdays pop up unexpected leaving you little time to plan or prepare. The new Facebook doesn’t make it easier to see who’s day is coming up. Like many things that are important to me, I have bookmarked exactly what I want to see. Want to know a secret? It’s now hidden but here’s the upcoming birthdays for your friends http://www.facebook.com/events/birthdays/ click on that, bookmark it and you won’t get surprised again, right?

The Dark Side

I understand the dynamics of social media marketing. I understand by wishing someone “Happy Birthday” you are putting your smiling face in front of all their friends. But birthdays are special to me, they are probably special to them too. That’s why I don’t understand the people who “phone in” their well wishes.

Want Examples?

Posting the exact same status update for every in your sphere’s birthday. I’m not talking about the drive by greeting “Happy Birthday Buddy!” – (everyone who sees that knows just how much effort it took). More like the creative sounding “I hope you enjoy your day! I hope this is the best birthday ever – make it a great one!” which might sound great to them and look great as a stand alone, but anyone who happens by your wall will see you said the exact same thing to the 20 other people. How special does that Birthday Boy feel now? Can you say marketing backfire?

There’s also the video version of this same tactic. While it may be popular to post a YouTube video of the Beatles singing Happy Birthday. That’s fine, but to every single person? Would it kill you to toss in a little Jimmy Buffett every now and then?

Let’s do this better

For your the next friends birthday try this instead. Take a moment and reflect on what that person means to you. Is there an inside joke between the two of you? How about something meaningful that has happened in the past? Need a little help? Go to their wall. On the top right you’ll see a gear. Click on the gear and the dropdown will show you “See Friendship”. Facebook will create a page that shows you exactly the ‘what’ and ‘how’ the two of you have interacted over time. You might even be surprised to see the last time you interacted was a year ago on their birthday!

How easy is that? So now that you have all the tools you need to wish that someone a Better Happy Birthday the question is – will you do it?

Twylah

Twitter Applications

Ok, so you tweet a lot. You have thousands of peeps following you. You share valuable information on a regular basis. Your tweets get retweeted to millions. You think you are really a BIG deal on the twittersphere. That is until you meet Tom.

TOM: I haven’t seen you online lately – are you out of the business?

YOU: No way! I’m mainly on Twitter these days. I tweet every 36.8 seconds on average. Mostly really good stuff too! I’m sending pictures, links, and even videos out to all my followers. Now that I think about it, I also tweet what I’m having for breakfast. Oh, and then occasionally a cool quote I just saw from someone else. Ok, I do that a lot. And yes I do ReTweet almost everything so and so says. But in between all that are some really good stuff.

TOM: Yeah thanks. I tried Twitter once, I didn’t get it. What do I care what people are having for breakfast? Sorry, I don’t have time for Twitter. It’s going to be Facebook or websites only for me. It’s been nice knowing you…

Have you ever run into someone who just doesn’t ‘get’ Twitter? Try hard as you might, they’re never going to either?

What if you could put all the meaningful tweets in a single webpage? That would be something Tom might read, right? What if you could organize them by topics? That would make it easy for people not on twitter to still get the valuable info your tweets contained. Now, what if you could do all this all automatically?

That’s Twylah! Twylah takes all my tweets and sorts them. It sorts the content into categories that it creates. If I start tweeting about a certain topic, Twylah will know and create a category for it. Example: Tweets with a #REBCORL hashtag? Tom doesn’t need to know anything about a hashtag – he can just go to that category on the menu bar. Here’s my Page: http://www.twylah.com/MikeMueller

This will make Tom really happy. It doesn’t include the mind numbing crap about what I had for breakfast. It takes the mess of my Twitter stream, filters it and arranges it beautifully into a single page.

Better yet, I have control. I can hide certain topics and push others. That means my love for tweeting Bieberism’s doesn’t have to stop!

Twylah also has a Power Tweet feature. Essentially, it sends a message out to twitter as you with a link back to Twylah. There the message can contain much more than 140 characters. I’m just starting to experiment with the Power Tweet button. Matter of fact – I’ll use it to promote this post!

Want to get your own? Start here: http://www.twylah.com/ to request an invite.
HINT: It also might help to follow Kelly Kim on Twitter, she’s @Twylah (naturally).

Photo credit: WordRidden