I’ve been referencing the below graphics at a few conferences I’ve spoken at, and realized that its worth a post.   Being involved in the space intimately, I obviously hear about the challenges related to ROI, the social web’s impact on direct business, actionable data, etc.  And  although I speak, teach, work with social campaigns, I realize that the social web is one of several digital elements that come into play.  Applying a holistic digital marketing campaign helps in addressing direct leads, branding, prospect follow up, etc.  The graphic, which I have already modified twice, is how I view search and social currently, but would imagine this can change in the near future.  Although I could include other media like display, ad networks, affiliate, for simplicity, Im sticking to the elements below.  And yes, the social elements on the left of the marketing funnel in the last 3 labeled graphics are worthy of being considered media or marketing.

In the graphic below (search impact), I would include all search engine optimization efforts, as well as PPC marketing in these engines.  When we research key words for our PPC campaigns and SEO efforts, we evaluate them by keyword intent.  The highly desirable terms are words that will most likely lead to a conversion.  Although key terms can impact any phase of the marketing funnel, I think they primarily impact “consideration” and “intent to purchase”.

Search Impact

Up until a few years ago, the social web has primarily impacted brand awareness.  Although I have worked on campaigns that actually impacted prospects deeper into the marketing funnel, on a whole, most of the social web is not addressing those with the intent to purchase, but rather are impacting conversations and creating brand awareness.

Social Web Impact

When I wrote my first post, and even second post on Groupon, I had no idea that Google would actually offer billions to acquire it earlier this year.   Of course, as we now know, they have gone with plan B, with Google Offers.

Deal sites (Deal Sites below) like Groupon, Tippr, Living social, etc.  have made their mark.  It may not be as impactful as search in the marketing funnel when it comes to a purchasing decision, but with smart email marketing and evaluation of past purchase history, it is obvious why Groupon is making money quicker than any social site in a such a short amount of time.

Just a note, facebook places, facebook’s version of deals is available in five cities and will play a bigger role when it rolls out nationwide.

Deal Sites

Last, but not least, location based services are becoming a formidable competitor to traditional search when it comes to its impact in the marketing funnel.  When you can potentially target someone by their checkin history, or provide a special to someone who has checked in near by, you have a potential to really drive purchases.  Its still early on, but its no surprise that facebook, google, yelp, etc. have all scrambled to provide some checkin feature to their overall offering.

Location Based Services

In conclusion, we are starting to see a shift in some elements of the social web and they are impacting all phases of the marketing funnel.  And although social media is a fraction of overall media spending, it deserves its own piece of the pie, and that slice looks to grow bigger over time.  Still waiting on the updated version on this spend chart that Forrester put out in 2009, it shows the increase up until 2015.

I have been wondering how else Google Wave can really help an individual or a business and there are many interesting accounts of how Google Wave is making gradual but steady inroads into people’s lives.  Read my other post  “3 awesome ways you can use Google Wave for business” for some more ideas.

I stumbled across a short video that shows almost everything Google Wave can do, albeit, a little chaotic.  Its a little out date since it was more of a goodbye to 2009,  but it was the video rather insightful in a short amount of time, and  entertaining.

I could see how audio, video, file-sharing, email and chat could all make collaboration fun and effective to begin with. On top of it, document exchange becomes an easy affair as compared to using different applications to produce documents and then another suite of applications to exchange these documents with your team.
Clearly, Google Wave is still in muscle-training. Added to that, Google still has this “invite” strategy on so the number of accounts opening up is rather limited. It’s just a matter of time when it will be as wide-spread as gmail itself and that should be good news. Have you used Google Wave yet? Could you share some tips, insights, secrets and other ways to use Google Wave?

When people trust your brand, you do better business — especially when you are providing a service, because your services are personal, unique and very critical for your clients.  So, how do you build that brand?  How would you go about getting your customers to start talking about you?  How do you build your brand image and enhance it?

Here are a few things you can do to boost your personal or professional brand image today:

Quality Service, No exceptions to it: All your brand-building efforts are useless if you cannot manage to have a quality service plan in place.  The quality of your service should delight the customer and nothing less.  The experience should be like one he/she has never seen.  It should be something your customers should crave to use again.  Remember this: a brand is a fancy word for a promise you make to your customer that no matter how many times they use your service, they will always be delighted with the ever consistent, excellent and superior service quality.

Go networking and use your brand identity everywhere: You may have a logo and you have a blog.  Now, it’s time to go to the following places and make a professional page of yourself stating clearly what you do, the business you are in and gather some testimonials. Some of the best networking communities you could go to today would be:

• LinkedIn — Free for the most part, but there are pay-up for added features, reaching out to people who are not in your network, etc)
• Naymz — A rather new community website, but has a ton of features and is completely free to use. Put your profile up here, bring all your social media profiles like Linked In, Ryze and others to a single platform and even get your own .name domain name (premium feature) which can be used to point to each of your profiles.

Use Twitter: Sign-up on twitter with your business name and focus on growing your followers.  Twitter is a rage right now and can help leverage your reach across the Internet.  The key to doing well on twitter is not to toot your own horn, but to help others, share valuable information, solve people’s problems, make friends, network and just get popular.   To promote yourself on twitter effectively, I recommend reading this post on Mashable called “Twitter promotion done right: #moonfruit”.  You will then know why I picked this particular example.   Also, brand your Twitter background. You might want to see how Pete Cashmore, owner of mashable.com has his Twitter background branded.

Provide Unbiased Information, even if it hurts you: I have always worked in business development roles.   In past times, when my service was too expensive for the client or perhaps it is not what the client is looking for., can you guess what I did then? I used to ensure that I got to know what their exact requirements are, and  give him ideas about other services (my competition).  That way, I ensured that my clients knew all their options.  Oh yes, I do lose my business there, but clients end up trusting me.  I become a trusted consultant; the go-to person and an expert.  Eventually, I would get business through referrals and word-of-mouth.  Provide unbiased information using your blog.  Just stand by them and see how your brand image increases.

Did Yelp Do The Right Thing?

Last week was feverish, to say the least. Google has been turned down from an advanced negotiation with Yelp.com, which had apparently walked away from the $550 million deal – a gutsy move, I must admit, read the full post here, a contribution to the Path Interactive Blog.

Here is a video from a post I contributed to on the Path Interactive blog, you can read the full post there.

So What exactly is Google Real-time Search?