1,238,584 people had viewed the ad again on YouTube before the Vince Lombardi trophy was even presented to the Saints! This again only reinforces the power of search – over 1 million people to took time away from the Big Game to search online for an ad they had just viewed.

The ad is simple, almost Apple like in production. It shows the progression of different searches and results as a young mans life starts off traveling abroad to eventually settling down with a family. Google did a great job of adding emotion to something as technical and sterile as search. The ad brilliantly illustrates how these days we truly rely on search for so many different aspects of our lives wither we realize it or not.

The ad showcases many different uses Google has – regular search, spell check, language translation,  flight status, and local search. During the 60 second spot they featured local search in 3 of the results.

Cafe’s near the louvre
Chocolate shops paris france
Churches in Paris

Think about it – Google spent millions on this ad and featured local search results 1/4 of the time during their sop. If this doesn’t show how important local search is I don’t know what else would.

What did you think of the ad? Watch the Google ad.

For most business owners it’s been a struggle attempting to leverage social networking sites and an even greater challenge trying to measure their value.  Yes, the potential to reach a massive audience through Twitter and Facebook is undeniable, but are people listening? I can only speak for myself and those I associate with, but in my experience people won’t pay much attention to branded social networking. If a product or service isn’t extremely groundbreaking and VERY specific to someone’s tastes, they’ll  just ignore it.

This could soon change with a new kid on the scene called Foursquare. 

The basic premise of Foursquare is similar to Twitter; updates from a phone are sent out to all your subscribers to let them know what you’re up to.  The key difference is that Foursquare is location based; users ”check in” at various places to let their friends know what they are doing. Foursquare also uses a point system to reward its users with badges irreverently named things like “crunked”  for discovering new places or becoming the most frequent patron of a particular spot. Foursquare will even let you see tips people have left for the locale you’re checking into and suggest nearby spots you might enjoy.  Twitter on the other hand is primarily used to find out what Ashton Kutcher is having for lunch.

Foursquare essentially makes life into a game.

Who cares?

At AgencyWeb we’ve seen some potential in Foursquare. There are ways for business owners to leverage this service and to *gasp* measure its value!

The most obvious use for Foursquare is basically to do the Twitter thing. Start an account for your business, talk your customers into subscribing and then blast them with updates about sales, events, renovations, whatever. You might find that this annoys people however, and besides, it’s boring.

Try this: If someone becomes the most frequent patron of a specific spot on Foursquare they become the “mayor” of that spot. Why not offer a 5% discount to the mayor? Others may start coming through your door more often just to claim the title.

How about instating a “bring a friend” incentive. Perhaps you own a bar. You could have a Monday special where if someone brings five friends through the door with proof of the Foursquare message that got ‘em there, the one-person street team gets a couple of free drinks.

Use tips to your advantage too. Have a “secret” mixed drink. The only way to find out about it is to check in on Foursquare and receive the tip. This type of “game” will keep people coming back.

These are just the tip of the iceberg with Foursquare. Since it is specifically geared towards local communities, there are countless ways businesses can use the service to their advantage. I find myself checking in to spots I wouldn’t have even glanced at on Twitter or Facebook.

I guess my point is to keep an eye on this thing. If you like friends, and you leave your house occasionally, you’ll probably end up using Foursquare.

Just some advice from your friends over at AgencyWeb.

Don’t get me wrong, this thing is very cool.  A nice big display, wireless web browsing, familiar apps: the iPad is a titan among entertainment machines to be sure.  If  one is to use a computer primarily for surfing the web, watching videos and listening to music this thing is great! And the price is tailor made: $500 gets you your own iPad.

Entertainment based industries should definitely be watching this thing. If the iPhone was the catalyst, the iPad very well could be the explosion.  And Kindle watch out! I suspect if the publishing industry embraces Apple’s new baby, there could be a bit of literary revitalization.

But at AgencyWeb, our design-riddled brains are thinking of how WE could make use of something like the iPad.  At the moment, the iPad’s technical specifications don’t lend to any kind of serious design or multimedia work, though the UI absolutely does!

Imagine being able to draw directly onto a project without anything segregating your stylus and the work. Or being able to reposition items by literally picking them up and placing them somewhere else.  This intuitive interface would make creativity far more natural. Perhaps you could give your work to a collaborator simply by “throwing” it to them from across a table or room.

And what about video? Cellphones have cameras exceeding five mega-pixels now, and LG is putting projectors in phones. The ability to shoot high quality video, edit it on the same device and then display it immediately is definitely a reality. Or perhaps a business could project a video on a glass window, and allow customers to visually manipulate it, drawing people off the street and through the door.

Regardless, we’re not quite there. The power of the iPad would have to increase a bit before the creative options would really be viable, but some companies, such as Adobe, seem to be preparing themselves for the future.  Adobe has already begun work on an iPhone packager for flash developers with plans to expand the packager for the iPad’s higher resolution. In my opinion, this is a taste of things to come.

So as it stands, the iPad is pretty much a really big, really cool iPhone that doesn’t make calls. But I foresee its release as a taste of what’s next in the computing world.

To me there are pro’s and con’s of this. On one hand it is a way to deliver real time search and information on what is happening. For some topics that are not really “news worthy” it will be a much easier way to find information and to get a pulse as to what is going on. But on the other hand how credible are these results? Most often times people on Twitter post links to other sites, press releases and sources of information, (like a traditional search engine results page) so it’s kind of an extra step.

Either way it just shows how fast and powerful social media has become and how Google is always working on delivering relevant, up-to-date information to their audience.  It will be interesting to see if they continue to implement this for more results or only try it for a short period of time. So far I have only personally come across these results twice but will keep en eye out for them in the future. Have you seen these yet?

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EDIT

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I just updated our twitter to notify everyone that AgencyWeb would be closed on Monday for Martin Luther King day, and did a search on Google, sure enough they had the Twitter feeds embedded. A few minutes later our post came up. I have to admit I thought that was pretty cool!

The goal of Local Mojo is to allow small businesses to get more customers! Through the brainstorming, the creative process and the implementation of Local Mojo, this was our focus. Local Mojo allows small businesses to create an online presence without breaking the bank. Local Mojo allows small business owners to provide valuable information to its clients such as location with maps, hours of operation, services, payment options, background history and so much more. Small businesses can quickly and easily create a web page that is pushed to over 70 search engines so they will appear when their clients are searching for them. None of these elements just came together over night. It took many months of team meetings, brainstorming sessions, creative-wire-frames, site-maps, and research from different areas to master the needs, wants, and how to implement these elements that would be beneficial to both small business owners and their prospective clients. 

Looking back and examining the process of Local Mojo, the most beneficial tasks as a team that we could have done was the brainstorming sessions, the creative-wire-frames and the usability testing. Although the brainstorming sessions may have lasted hours or even days, the outcome of the sessions were worth it. Sitting in a room and creating the flow of the site, deciding what elements would be most valuable, and how the site can be most beneficial to the user began the outline/skeleton of the site. Then came, the transformation of the outlined information from the brainstorming session into visual creative-wire-frames. The visual wire-frames hung on our office walls allowed AgencyWeb, to examine the flow and the design of the entire site before any programming/coding began. Once the wire-frames went through many revisions, and then approved, the programming/coding began. Once the site reached a certain point, we had usability testing with third-party users. We were happy to see that the users were able to easily and quickly build their site within 20 minutes with no major issues. These users ended the test surprisingly happy with a hassle free web site which was now going to get them more customers. 

As Local Mojo is now live and ready for small business owners to create their Local Mojo Local Website for FREE! Local Mojo also has offers for those small business owners who wish to go beyond the basics. 

So, start getting more customers by visiting LocalMojo.com to sign up for your FREE local web site. 

We have been recommending twitter to our clients as a way to communicate with their client base and potential customers, as well as an easy way to get into blogging. We found that approach works good, if a client can keep up with their simple twitter account we can graduate them to a blog. If they struggle or don’t have any time to put into something simple like twitter then they will never blog.

My favorite part of my Google experience was the Google Cafe. Not only does the Google Cafe face the Bay Bridge with a beautiful view that over looks the water but has a large and healthy selection of foods for its employees. Google Cafe has a wide range of foods from pizza, to Sushi, to sandwiches, to salad bar, to a large variety of hot plates and lets not forget their desserts and home made ice cream. Lunch time is important to re-fuel the brain and body but allows time for interaction between co-workers. The Google Café even goes that step further in helping the environment. Rather than having bottles of water for their employees and using plastic bottles to destroy the environment, they have a reusable glass bottle of water with cups for your drinking pleasure to help make Google green.

-Thank you to Janelle and to AgencyWeb for giving this opportunity to visit Google!

Google Visit to San Francisco Office

Innovation, cool, open sourceesque engagement with the audience, man it just gives anybodies brand a truck load of cache.  You are who you hang with, and Nationwide could do a lot worse than the Apple iPhone.  Smart marketers will  embrace these new mobile opportunities and platforms.  Those that don’t…do so at their own peril.

Tom Carroll

I think this is an interesting strategy to drive traffic. Everyone will know to go to vw.com or vitaminwater.com if they want to look at the official site or find more information about those companies. But driving traffic to a social site like Facebook can help them build another web property and focus their message or campaign around a specific topic that otherwise may not flow with the message of the corporate site.

I guess there are some potential drawbacks though by not having the ability to have your own analytics installed on those pages to measure traffic and conversions. Though you have to assume that Facebook is providing them with some type of metrics and traffic reports on their custom pages. Either way you look at it it’s an innovative way of building our brand and directing traffic to a web site.

Then I hear an airplane, it gets louder and louder until it pops into sight towing a banner for McDonalds that reads “You Deserve a Break Today”.

Are you kidding me! I was enjoying a quiet break in paradise and McDonalds interrupts it with an old, polluting, smoking, noisy plane and sticks their message in the pristine blue sky and tell me I deserve a break!

It made me think about how old school, disruptive marketing tactics are dying because the internet has disinter-mediated itself into the equation. TV, outdoor, and radio advertising is down, newspapers are going bankrupt and people now do not have to buy into the old media of the past. Consumers are in charge now, effective marketing is invited marketing. That is why I am so big on Search Marketing. A customer searches for what they want and you deliver a relevant solution with a good Pay Per Click campaign or SEO strategy right at the time the customer is looking.

By the way McDonalds, I’ll pass on your offer and plan enjoy my breaks at the beach…