When I am looking for data that rarely changes, I typically use the mighty Google. It’s really great, and with all the search operators and functions built into Google search it’s relatively easy to really dig in and find hard-to-find information.

Breaking News and Time Sensitive Searches

When I am looking for information on a current event or breaking news typically Google doesn’t cut it.

To Google’s credit, blog posts about time sensitive information do bubble up to the top fairly regularly, and Google does a good job of detecting when a search query is about a time sensitive event and displays the latest Google News articles at the top of the search results.

But that still doesn’t do it for me. Instead I consistently rely on Google Blog Search for the latest information. Even if it is from a less than reliable blogger, there are often links to other timely articles within their blog posts so I can click through and find the latest reliable information.

Twitter Search is also a great place to find breaking news, but I’m sure this isn’t news to most. Admittedly, Twitter isn’t always easily reliable. Spammers have figured out how to use the hash tags to spam Twitter feeds. And when the Twitter spam is coupled with URL shorteners it can be a bit precarious clicking through the results. So sometimes it takes a bit of time to weed through the crap, but more often than not, you can find what you need using Twitter search.

Search Tools That Combine The Best of Both Worlds

MIT’s Technology Review has an article today covering a site that is launching later this week called Wowd:

According to CEO Mark Drummond, Wowd is trying to strike a balance between the up-to-date but chaotic results produced by a site like Twitter and the slower-to-change results that come from traditional search engines such as Google. He expects Wowd to be particularly valuable to users who want to know what content is currently popular, and who see search as an additional feature.

It will be interesting to see if Wowd can pull all these disparate search tools together into one useful tool, a central hub for breaking information and rarely changed legacy data.

If it works, I know it’s something I will use religiously.

I’m curious. How do YOU stay abreast of breaking news and information online?

After GMail came back online the debate began over the viability of “cloud computing”.

What Is Cloud Computing?

It essentially works like this:

There are way smarter people who can explain it better. Look around. A good place to start would be Wikipedia.

Those Clouds Look Ominous!

Below are people’s biggest worries when they finally understand the cloud computing concept for the first time:

1. Google is too powerful and could steal my data.
2. Someone could hack into Google and steal my data.
3. Someone could hack into Google and infect my email or documents with a virus or malware.
4. When Google goes down (i.e. GMail) I can’t do ANYTHING!

So let’s take these points one at a time shall we?

“Google is too powerful and could steal my data”

It is entirely in Google’s best interests to keep your data private. They are basically betting the farm they can do this.

Let’s answer a few questions I have heard:

Can they read your data at Google?

Yes they can.

Do they scan the content contained in your emails and documents?

Yes they do.

But bear in mind this is aggregate data.  This means that while they do scan your data, they don’t really know who you are.

Why do they do that?

Google offers a powerful web-based suite of software (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc) and pays for it by selling relevant ad space inside those web applications.

When they search/scan/analyze your data they don’t see

“Don Makoviney has an email conversation about penis enlargement pills”.

Instead, they see

“Anonymous Gmail user has an email conversation in his inbox about penis enlargement pills. So when this email is opened serve him a penis enlargement pill advertisement.”

The exception to this is illegal activities. If Google is served a court order they can drill down and ultimately find out who you are. But this is no different in any organization (public or private) that runs email servers. The same thing happened to Enron, WorldCom, AIG, and even the White House (thanks Scooter Libby!).

If you put it in email, whether it’s a cloud-based service like GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail or whether it’s your local business Exchange Server or local ISP, there are already multiple copies of your email out there floating around entirely out of your control. You need to understand and accept that.

“Someone could hack into Google and steal my data.”

The same point applies here that applied in the previous statement. Google has bet the farm on security, infrastructure, and redundancy.

If you have trust issues I can understand this might not be enough to convince you.

But think about it:

No doubt you have heard about financial institutions like CitiBank, American Express, and others having their data stolen. What happened? Nothing! Even when hundreds of thousands of ACTUAL CREDIT CARD NUMBERS have been stolen the damage was minimal. Often less than minimal! Large batch jobs cancel the cards. More batch jobs are run that generate new credit or debit card numbers, which feed to another batch job that actually creates new cards, which feeds to another huge batch job that mails all those new cards out.

Done. Problem solved.

(Yes, I know I oversimplified with the batch job thingy, but you get the point, no?)

The point is, once you are doling out personal information there are always risks. Whether it’s handing the waiter your credit card and he walks to the back of the restaurant out of sight, or buying a book at Amazon.com, there are always risks.

So choose your cloud computing “partners” wisely. Don’t hand over your personal information to the latest hip Web2.0 start-up just because they ask for it. Do a little research first.

“Someone could hack into Google and infect my email or documents with a virus or malware”

I’m not sure if you are a GMail user reading this or are someone contemplating switching over to GMail. Either way, let me tell you from experience GMail has one of the most up-to-date and aggressive anti-virus and malware detection tools I have ever seen. It’s a mix of good old fashioned algorithmic programming and consensus from the users. Everything that is downloaded via GMail is run through virus scanning detection and even emails with suspicious links are quarantined.

(On a personal note: They still haven’t figured out how to get rid of the fake virus alerts friends forward to me incessantly. Stop it. Please? My hard drive will NOT catch on fire if I open an email)

Additionally I don’t even run virus scanning software on my computer at all. I haven’t for almost 5 years. The biggest risk seems to be from porn sites, torrent sites and warez (illegal software) sites. And if you get a virus from one of those, well, you got what you deserved I guess

The fear mongering by many about “the cloud” has created a mindset that is not just limited to cloud computing.

Several years ago people were freaking out that websites using cookies were stealing their data. CNN/MSNBC/FOX News and network news shows were doing these ominous news segments about privacy concerns with cookies. People were turning off cookies in their browsers. As a result they couldn’t buy books on Amazon.com, save searches on retail sites, or check their bank account balance online anymore. The web was broke for them. It took a lot of education on the part of web retailers and web developers to convince clients and customers the CNN tech reporter was full of crap. Cookies were simply a necessity in maintaining state across web pages.

So you see, this mindset is usually the result of (1) fear of a technology they don’t fully understand, and (2) overblown media hype about online security that preys on the uninformed.

I feel we’re in a similar boat with cloud computing. While there are (and should be) legitimate concerns, we are experiencing a lot of ominous news pieces that aren’t telling the whole story. Mostly this is because the concept is relatively new and people just don’t know all the facts yet.

That’s fine. It’s why people like me are around

Lastly:

“When Google goes down (i.e. GMail) I can’t do ANYTHING!”

“Bullshit!” (Thanks Penn & Teller)

When I hear this I wonder if the person saying it is lazy, or simply uninformed.

Google anticipate this problem long ago with the implementation of Google Gears. Basically, Google Gears synchronizes your data in “the cloud” with your local computer. This way, if Google is down you can still access your data, compose emails or documents, and have these queued and ready-to-go when GMail, Docs, or Calendar comes back online.

This data is kept in a specific folder on your computer, and this location depends on what browser you use. Google has a simple handy guide to help you figure it out in 30 seconds or less.

If you have any sort of programming tendencies, you can even access the data through a handy SQL Query tool Google provides for free. Otherwise, you can just use your local browser and localhost server to access the data.

Sound confusing? Don’t let it worry you.

Basically this means if GMail is down and you go to GMail in your browser it will just show your local synchronized documents and not your data live online. Google Gears syncs up GMail, Docs, and Calendar frequently so chances are your documents aren’t that out of date. If at all.

(Side Note: Project management from your inbox is highly discouraged anyways. If you would like to get away from such an abomination, check out Inbox Zero.)

Yesterday when people were freaking out about not being able to use GMail, I didn’t miss a step. Sure I couldn’t receive new emails and I couldn’t send emails. In fact, I kinda missed an important one.

Noooobody knows, the trouble I’ve seeeeen …

When I think about GMail’s 99.9% uptime and compare it with the many times I have lost EVERYTHING in Outlook/Exchange Server/Thunderbird I look at the big picture and am very thankful that cloud computing is taking off in such an astounding way.

It’s like having backups without really thinking about it. This is the way it should be.

For two years in the late 90’s I worked at a dotcom. On more than one occasion the Sys Admin had to completely rebuild our company mail server from the ground up. When it’s up he says he only last ran a backup two months ago so any email I received over the last two months are lost.

For almost 5 years, I worked at a Global Fortune 1000 software company that was an MSDN Subscriber and early adopter of new products. We were always upgrading our local mail server, spam filters, and add-on services and it wreaked havoc on project communications.

So a free, cloud-based, email system that constantly syncs with my local computer and is up 99.9% of the time is a sweet deal for me.

Better Free Backup Strategies

The point of this article was to help debunk some (what I feel are) unfounded but understandable fears about cloud computing in light of yesterday’s massive GMail outage.

But admittedly, I like solid physical backups too.

Really, you’re only as good as your last backup.

So …

If the risk is still too high in your mind, stay tuned. At the end of the week I’ll show you some pretty nifty backup strategies I use in concert with cloud applications that are (a) free (b) local, and (c) not super technical.

Sweet, right?

I have been noticing an unfortunate trend in Facebook “marketing”.

I’m not talking about Facebook ads, which can be used in a remarkably effective manner.

What I’m talking about is small businesses using Facebook to announce things related to their business.

At any given time I log in to Facebook and receive literally dozens of event invites. Oftentimes it is two or three from the same business. Wine tastings, music festivals, concerts, film viewings, and so forth. It gets to the point where my eyes just glaze over. I hit DELETE or “No I won’t Be Attending” without even looking at the date or show information because now, it’s just annoying.

These announcements are just being shouted. It’s no different than getting spammed with e-mail newsletters. I have been “un-friending” the worst offenders at an increasing rate. And more and more are becoming offensive every day.

The sad part is these are local businesses I want to use and support.

This is one problem with social media that many not familiar with the intricacies are failing to understand. It’s very easy to move back to the traditional one-way conversation marketers have used in the past.

If you run a Facebook page for your company, restaurant, or music venue, use the following simple guidelines:

• When you post an event and someone says “No they will not be attending”, follow up with them and tell them you will miss them and you hope to catch them at the next one.
• When someone comes to an event and you meet them, thank them for showing up. Follow that up afterward with a post to their wall thanking them for attending.
• Monitor your friend stream for mentions of your business. Participate in the conversation.

Doing this ensures that (1) you aren’t giving the impression you are spamming. (2) You develop a relationship with the person which ensures genuine interest.

Where To Find The Time?

You own a business and you are a busy person. You are probably wondering how you can fit even more time into dealing with Facebook. That’s a fair question. If you are already logging in to post events, do it then. It will take all of 10 additional minutes to fire off some quick responses to people not attending or people you met at the last event. It might take even less time.

You can even put together some semi-canned responses that you can tweak for each person you communicate with to shave off a few extra precious minutes of your social marketing time.

Honestly, this is the reason I use Twitter more than Facebook. Twitter almost makes it a prerequisite that you have a two-way conversation. It’s remarkable in it’s simplicity (for now anyways).

I admit it.

It’s not fun having to remember yet ANOTHER username and password to log in.

I admit it.

But …

Here is what small business owners looking for online conversations with potential customers should remember: Some of the most passionate and active people in thousands of niches are talking about your products in forums. If they aren’t talking about your products in your niche, you need to get in those forums and tell people about your business.

Forums are the Original Gangsters (O.G.) of the Social Media world.

Interestingly, the same rules apply in the forums that apply in the most popular social media platforms of the moment.

1. Participate in conversations.
2. Don’t spam your products and pitch people all the time.
3. Fill out your bio and link to your site/products in your profile page.
4. Participate in conversations. (Did I mention that already?)

For instance, I site that I frequent a lot is the Harmony-Central.com forums for songwriting. I like to discuss songwriting in general and as an added plus, if an article I have written applies to a conversation, I will provide a link to my songwriting blog.

There are often forums for every business niche imaginable. Many trade associations, from construction to computing have forums rolled into their yearly memberships. Many local Chamber of Commerce websites often have forums.

Get Local With Forums

Small business owners should also take a look at local options. A simple search in my town revealed the following local forums:

• Jewish Business Community Forum
• CraigsList (of course)
• Two local forums from newspapers with multiple topics (real estate, entertainment, local politics)
• Local college forums (great place to find entry level workers or interns)
• Local holistic and metaphysical forum (health products and naturepath)
• Hiking forum (health and fitness products)
• Cycling forum (health and fitness products)
• Photography forum (electronics, cameras, photography services)
• Freecycle – Over 5000 local members giving away anything and everything imaginable.

All of these forums are active and wonderful places to initiate and participate in conversations.

Do a search in your town, region, state. You’ll be surprised at what you will find.

With pride, I can name countless examples where social media has helped me personally, as well as friends, business associates, and clients. It’s a hot topic everywhere and social media communities are springing up in astounding numbers.

But there are people who over hype it.

Example: If you ask someone like Zappos (the premiere shoe experts online), their success is not based on simply opening a Twitter account.

But there’s many “social media experts” who will take your money and tell you Twitter alone is the key to small business success.

So …

Whether you are a pure internet business promoting oil change coupons, or have a retail shop (i.e. coffee shop, Jamaican restaurant, or carpet cleaning company, etc) these principles apply to you:

Site Design

In almost all cases, your business website should be clean, fast loading, with intuitive navigation. This sounds like a given, but is still an exception with many small businesses. If your website has a “SKIP INTRO” Flash presentation, or large animated clip art gifs, we need to fix that … now!

Your site design plays an important part in the successful execution of every other step listed below:

Landing/Conversion Pages

Conversion pages are what turns a visitor to your website into a customer, or sales lead. These are often also called “call-to-action” pages.

Conversion pages typically are:

Product Page
This could be an individual product page on your website. If you are running a e-commerce site this would be your individual item page. It is important that it is clear what the potential customer must do to purchase the product.

Newsletter or RSS Subscription Page
There is value in getting subscribers to your newsletter, as it gains you a footprint in their inbox, allowing you to “push” specials.

Social Media Follows
Visitors to your site that use social media tools such as Twitter or Facebook should be able to easily click to and follow your company fan page or profile on whatever social media sites work for your business.

Membership Pages
This is where someone signs up for a service on your website. Similar to product pages, membership pages should clearly identify what the visitor receives as a “member” and the signup form should be clear and concise.

Quote Request or Contact Us Page
Many service industries (carpet cleaning, pressure washing, carpentry, etc) will have “quote request” forms or “Contact Us” forms in order to secure leads for jobs. These should focus on capturing contact information more than details about the quote request. Long forms tend to discourage quote requests. Your phone number should also be displayed on this page for those that don’t feel like filling out a form.

All of these pages are crucial for the success of your business, whether it is primarily online or offline. Whether or not these pages are successful can be tracked with very detailed (and free) analytics tools from Google and others.

A great resource for creating great landing pages is Gabriella’s Urban SEO site (Follow on Twitter). Read these articles about on page optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you began at the top of this article with a clean and intuitive design and have spent time building well-crafted landing (conversion pages), the SEO “should” almost be automatic.

The only other suggestion would be to use Google AdWord’s free keyword suggestion tool and make sure your conversion pages, product pages, and information pages are titled and named with keywords of value to Google and other search engines.

We’ll discuss keyword research in future articles in addition to other reputable easy-to-execute SEO tips in future articles.

Social Media

Contrary to what many self-proclaimed “social media experts” may claim, simply opening a Twitter account and tweeting is not enough to garner business. Site owners should make sure the items above are completed first. It’s pointless to engage potential customers and then send them to something that does not exist, or to a poorly implemented shopping cart or website.

Naturally there are exceptions to this. If you are in the middle of implementing your site, or building your business and you wish to begin building your reputation as an expert in your niche or specialty it would be good to secure your social media accounts and begin starting conversations.

A local example in my town of Asheville, NC is the Jamaican restaurant Nine Mile. While they were putting the finishing touches on their restaurant they began posting pics on Facebook and Twitter and Flickr, updated followers regarding their progress, hurdles they had to overcome and so forth. Local Twitterers began connecting with their story, rooting for them to launch successfully, and showed up en masse after opening and tweeted their experiences.

More on this in future articles as well.

Everything Else

There is more that I simply can’t advise. You know your niche and business better than I do. You know your products, who the big players are, and the unique perspective your business brings to the table.

In the pipeline at Makovision are useful articles and screencasts to help you bring that perspective to an infinitely larger audience.

Keep in mind that larger audience might not necessarily be global. If you’re a local carpet cleaning company who cares if someone 2500 miles away finds your website?

Instead, use SEO, social media tools and rock-solid landing/conversion pages together so you can dig deeper into your local or regional market.

Your market may be smaller. And that’s a good thing.

That’s the goal here anyways.

What would you like to see covered on Makovision.com?

Local eateries jump on the Twitter train
“On the surface, we may seem very official, but we’re working as hard as everyone else to figure it out and put it altogether,” says June Thomas, who handles the Twittering duties for Nine Mile [in Asheville NC]. On any given day, Thomas might tweet out the daily specials, bemoan the restaurant’s problems getting its new menu printed and wonder aloud if the real Gordon Ramsay was behind the @RamseyGordo account.

[...]

Nine Mile is widely acknowledged by local foodies as a master of the Twitter form. Thomas, who initiated the account back in March 2008—“I went to Aaron [Thomas’ husband, who co-owns the restaurant and serves as executive chef] and said, ‘This might be kind of nerdy, and I don’t know if it’s going to work”—is an indefatigable tweeter. She routinely runs exhaustive searches for terms like “Asheville,” which might lead to tourists wondering where to eat, which might lead to more customers.

[..]

Thomas’ innate understanding of technology and the restaurant’s commitment to transparency have made for a highly personable, funny and useful feed.

[Full article at MountainX.com]

Chicago Domino’s Owner, @DPZRAMON More Than Gets Social Media … He Breathes It!

Ramon De Leon, owner of several Domino’s pizza restaurants in Chicago not only GETS social media marketing, he lives and breathes it! Who do you know that keeps spare batteries in his pockets (at all times) for his cell phone and video camera to be prepared to take videos of any situation?

A couple of weeks, I met Ramon (@DPZRAMON) at a social media summit where he shared how he utilizes Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to increase exposure for his restaurants and THRIVE in this new economy. Let me tell you, he was the hit of the summit! The whole room was fascinated by his energy, passion and commitment to social media and pizza.

[Full Article at NuReachGlobal.com]

This simple gadget allows webmasters to add customized Google Maps directions to their business locations. With the directions gadget, you no longer need to type and update multiple sets of text directions. Let’s face it: customers are only looking for directions from their specific location.

Any potential customer looking for your retail location can now get text directions from wherever they may be.

This, in conjunction with the Google Local Business Center can provide a tremendous amount of free exposure for your business in Google search results and Google Maps.

A full walkthru of the Google Maps Gadget is available on Google’s LatLong Blog.

Or, you can go straight to the Google Maps Gadget Site.

I’ll be referring to them later in future articles and how-to projects, so it’s important to have them posted here.

Enjoy!

(Poynter.org) Social Web is a ‘Cocktail Party’ That’s Improved the Paper

I describe the social Web as a cocktail party filled with interesting people. You can move from group to group, engaging on different topics, listening quietly when you want to, talking at others. The neat thing is that, like real cocktail parties, you can meet new people, hear great stories, learn valuable things and have a few laughs. You can come and go as you please, and the cocktail party is always going on.

[..]

I hope that the people who connect with me on social networks see me as more than a name on a masthead. I engage with them. I show some personality, to the extent that I have one. I listen to what others are saying and let them know that I am learning from THEM.

[...]

Here’s what people who are skeptical of social networking can’t seem to get past: the trite and trivial musings of people. I entirely agree. But it’s an easy obstacle to avoid. You don’t want to know what someone had for lunch? Cool, don’t follow the people who write those types of things. Follow instead the people who tell you what they think about topics you’re interested in.

Full article at Poynter.org

(24/7 Wall Street) 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business

As Twitter grows it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce, and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter. That transformation will occur at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and to the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.

[..]

While there may be commercial value for the use of Twitter as a way to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting.  Twitter users have set up their own rules for conduct when using the service, not unlike MySpace and Facebook.  These rules were not put together by Twitter itself which only mandates rules of use. Like many social network sites, Twitter is “self governed” by its members and companies must take that into account as they join the service.

(Full article at 24/7 Wall Street)

(Serious Eats) A List of Street Food Vendors Using Twitter

one of the more interesting and truly useful trends sparked by the microblogging service is the way street-food vendors have flocked to it to relay info to customers. This is particularly helpful with vendors who switch up locations from day to day—or hour to hour. In retrospect, it almost seems like Twitter was made for this purpose. What better way for a roving kitchen to publish crucial intel, from the field, without a dedicated internet connection? For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of street vendors on Twitter, divided by region.

Full article at Serious Eats

(DaveMadeThat.com) Small Businesses Using Twitter

I was as excited as my kids when I introduced them to Fleur de Lis Flavors. That’s the incredibly tasty, New Orleans style snowball shop. The kids were ecstatic about the flavored snow they were gobbling down, I was ecstatic about the fact that they are using Twitter.

Full article at DaveMadeThat.com

(AdAge.com) Twitter Proves It’s Worth As A Killer App For Local Business

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that’s hoping to go national — Mark Cuban is a backer — has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day’s business.

Full article at AdAge.com