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Google’s innovative telecommunications service, Google Voice, allows easy management of multiple phone numbers, blocks telemarketers, makes inexpensive global phone calls and even provides voicemail transcription. However, these conveniences came at a steep price that many people were unwilling to pay: it required users to get a new phone number. In a move to entice more users to the service, Google is offering a less comprehensive version of their services that allows users to keep their existing phone number.

Google says that participants in the new program will be able to use the company’s online voicemail service instead of their cell phone provider’s voicemail. This service is central to the services, as users will be able to read their voicemails online, save them, play them back, forward them to a designated email in-box or receive them as a text message on a mobile device. They will also be able to save these massages, search them and forward messages to others.

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Branding consultancy giant Interbrand released its 2009 list of the best 100 global brands recently. Sysomos, a social media monitoring and analytics firm, looked at Interbrand’s data from the perspective of the top 20 brands’ social media presence on blogs, forums and news sites. This led to some intriguing differences in positioning. For example, Google, which placed seventh on the Top 100 Brands list, ranked first in social media mentions. Coca-Cola, the top brand on the Interbrand list, slipped to eleventh on the Sysomos list.

The Interbrand list put Coca-Cola, IBM and Microsoft as the top three in their list, while Sysomos’ top three included Google, Apple and Microsoft. Sysomos found that the fastest-growing brand this fall was Gillette from a social media standpoint. Sysomos determined that most of the mentions that drove the results for Gillette arose from the marketing campaign for its new Fusion razors. Curiously, 13 of Sysomos’ top 20 brands saw their social media mentions drop over the last two months with BMW down 31%, Honda -25%, and Toyota -24% as the steepest declines. Google registered a 13.45 drop for the same period.

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More and more members of the tech community are “jailbreaking” or hacking their iPhones or iPod Touches to allow the installation of third-party applications. Techies love the increased control over their devices, but jailbreaking also allows users to install free versions of paid applications. Pirated versions of this software or “cracked” apps can be downloaded from numerous file-sharing sites on the Web.

However, many users who jailbreak their devices justify the downloading and installation of pirated apps as a chance to give them a trial run before purchasing. They claim this is a necessary evil since Apple does not offer free trial periods for applications, which forces developers to offer “lighter” versions of their software. While this justification may apply to some users, other pirated apps are downloadable only as premium versions of the software. Since there are more than 85,000 applications to choose from, users say jailbreaking allows them to save money on apps that are not worth purchasing. However, application piracy statistics suggest otherwise.

A mobile analytics company, Pinch Media, shared some if its findings regarding iTunes app store piracy at a conference recently. Without explaining how it gathers information, the company said that it had been tracking jailbroken devices for several months and has begun to get a picture of the jailbreaker community and its habits. According to their research based on studying over 4 million jailbroken devices, 38 percent of users have at least one pirated application installed. The company admits that this figure may be lower than the actual number since pirates take extra measures to avoid detection.

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Not so long ago, small business owners had to be very selective about their advertising with their limited marketing budgets. Google AdWords and Internet marketing have leveled the playing field for small businesses substantially. However, unless owners or their Internet marketing expert plan their AdWords campaign carefully, they can quickly find themselves spending thousands of dollars with little return on investment.

First, determine if a Google AdWords campaign is the right choice for your business. For example, if your company produces a new product with very little name recognition, an AdWords campaign centered on a keyphrase like “organic turkey pastrami” might result in very inexpensive clicks, but little traffic to your site.

Next, establish an affordable budget and stick to it. Regardless how competitive your target keywords and keyphrases might be, unless you set a daily and monthly budget and stick to it, you’re setting yourself up to pay an expensive tab for pay-per-click. Instead of focusing on the quantity of clicks on your ad, concern yourself with the quality of those clicks.

Third, consider modifying your selected keywords and phrases with the names of nearby cities or your county. Also, bear in mind that AdWords will let you select a defined geo-specific area where your ads will reach local customers. If your snow plowing business is in Manchester, New Hampshire and you’re trying to attract qualified traffic with a PPC campaign for “snow removal,” it doesn’t do you much good if a user eighty miles away sees your ad. Select Manchester snow removal, Bedford, NH snow plowing services or another nearby community.

Continue reading " Small Business Guide to Using Google AdWords " »