Monday, November 7th, 2011
Google has launched Google+ Pages, which allow businesses and brands to join the conversation in Google’s social network.
The application is similar to that of Facebook’s, with a nifty create a page tool and category selection process. (Availability is rolling out, so some users may initially get a “Google+ Pages isn’t ready” error. )
The Pages system also allows for Circles, which is an easy way to organization connections.
Look for Ironpaper’s new Google+ Page.
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
Google+, the search giant’s new social network, is now open to businesses, universities and schools. Up to this point, the social website was applicable to personal accounts only.
In order for Google+ to work with your account, your web apps administrator will need to approve and enable the application from their account management dashboard. Some administrators may not readily allow for access to the social site because corporate policy may restrict employees for engaging with others in the public sphere from an official email. The reasons for this may be as varied as information security and leakage concerns to a broad concern for what employees may say or do while using their official emails in a social network environment.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
There are some steadfast tools for helping to understand website performance and metrics. Google Analytics is a powerful choice for many businesses–as it provides enterprise level functionality at the rock bottom price of free. There is a privacy trade off for using Google Analytics however. There are many other tools to help interpret and gather website analytics, including Omniture, Raven, Urchin, Webtrends, Piwik and more.
Some social media sharing tools create a centralized way to access social analytics, easily and simply. We have used Addthis and found it to be quite a fantastic tool. One complaint is that Addthis will self promote an @addthis shout out in your Twitter posts, which isn’t a great thing.
Twitter is entering the analytics game. They have introduced a new tool, Twitter Web Analytics, which will help website owners and web designers better understand what Twitter does for you.
Many website owners rely on the information social network for content distribution, which ends up becoming a vital part of their online business agenda. The new tool is based on BackType, a social analytics company that Twitter purchased in July.
The tool is free and currently in beta.
Sunday, August 14th, 2011
Google is adding new data to it’s web search results. Public posts from Google Plus will be included in web search–augmenting Google’s expanding social search results. This program of social search results has been added to search results pages as annotations–appearing below normal listings.
Google emphasizes that this introduction only applies to public posts on Google+. Also, you have to be a Google+ user and signed into your account as well.
