aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Amy Vernon a.k.a. The Bacon Queen a.k.a. fellow New Jerseian and IRL pal is just about as genuine as they come. With over 20k Twitter followers and the title of “top 15 submitters of all time on Digg.com (and the highest-ranked female ever),” she’s also a powerful social media maven worth paying mind to. VP of Strategy and Alliances at Hasai, Amy’s a familiar face at an array of digital marketing conferences, whether she’s on stage speaking or in the crowd pumping out lightning-fast tweet coverage.

I met Amy at last year’s #140Conf in NYC, and as we “chewed the fat,” so to speak, over U Café grub on the upper East Side, it became apparent why her cult-like following across various social media circles, from Tumblr to Facebook, flocks to her consistently. She works a seriously smooth combo of calculating community manager and super-cool social-savvy friend.

On the advent of #SMX East, I had the pleasure of sharing a candid Q&A with Amy. Topics ranged from “Who are ya, howdidja get here?” to favorite social sharing services, advice for social marketing n00bz and the battle between newsprint & online media. Read on for the full scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

During the summer of 2010, an interesting international client encouraged us to take a look beyond our borders and check out where Facebook was popular in other parts of the world. With Facebook’s 500 million (at the time) users easily eclipsing the total U.S. population, it was clear that the phenomenon was not limited to our country, and we wondered how far it might continue to grow before eventually maxing out. The research project enlightened our team to the massively extending global reach of the still-young social network… and what a difference a year makes, as Facebook approaches 700 million users worldwide, wins a true social search patent, and prepares to launch what may be the definitive cloud-based music service.

While it seems Facebook continues to reign supreme across most of the wired globe, we also got to thinking that it’s not enough to gauge international social media activity by  how much of a population is on Facebook. If you really want to understand, connect with and market to demographics in another country, you have to get familiar with their homegrown channels. What other networks already have a stronghold in each country? Where is Facebook “uncool?”

This post kicks off a series of country-specific social networks overviews, complete with best practices, advertising opportunities, and example demographic targets. Up first under our microscope is the “OG” Google social network, Orkut. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to aimClear’s coverage of #SMX West 2011! Day 1 is officially over and just like the warm, friendly 60-degree weather here in sunny San Jose, it did not disappoint– brimming with great panel discussions & tip-top presentations– among them, Location Services: The New Local Search.

Gib Olander, director of business development with Localeze; Rodney Hess, account associate with Search Influence; Jason Rupp, director of product management at Ask.com; Chris Travers, president and co-founder of UniversalBusinessListing.org and Ken Norton, senior product manager for Google were at the helm for this one. Each took turns exploring  how location services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and/or mobile apps are changing the local search space indefinitely. aimClear live tweeted this session (via MoCR521)… read on for a full write-up. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to the quaint custom of #FollowFriday, I often wish that tweeps’ recommendations came with explanations, speaking to why I should follow their friends.  In that spirit, this post offers my #FollowFriday recommendations for today, Sara Holoubek and Andrew Ecklund, with explanations of why I enjoy their tweets.  Read the rest of this entry »