Renée Revetta

Osama Bin Laden’s Death: Evolving Search Results and Social Media

Renée Revetta — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:27:13 +0000

It was just another Sunday night, checking my personal social networks before heading to bed. Then a tweet came up in my stream about Bin Laden. Then a few more. Switched over to Facebook and saw it in my newsfeed, too. Then saw a tweet “Turn on the TV” — so I did, and immediately a breaking news segment interrupted regular programming. Somewhere in there I also tweeted: “who else found out about Bin Laden on social networks first? me. #breaking“.

At 10:46 – Time to turn to Google during this lightbulb! moment – I should screenshot this. My first Google search displayed a number one result indexed from 3 days ago from Huffington Post, but just below that, realtime results started appearing. Also at this time, @replies and re-tweets in response to my tweet were flooding in. Many others saw this new break first on Twitter, too.

Google Search Results Adapting

At around 10:49 – on the first page of results an unconfirmed news story listing appeared referring to his death.

By 10:55 the engines had adapted ranking a TMZ article first (reminiscent of Michael Jackson death results). Another classic shoutout from Google to blogs.

In case you’re interested, I got my Washington Post breaking news email at 11:03 ET.

At 11:23, ABC News began reading tweets and reactions on air. Paraphrased: Social networks are giving people a voice and a platform to instantly discuss important, breaking issues. My sidenote: these social networks are not just for tweeting about our meal choices or our morning coffee. This is how we learn about HUGE, history-book-quality events.

Writing this and learning about his death is one of those snapshot moments of my life I’ll never forget. As a social media gal, I’ll also never forget how I found out, either. Pause to think about how you found out about 9/11. I’m betting it was by phone or TV.

One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 5.1.11.

_____________

Complete Mashable’s poll “How did you hear about Osama Bin Laden’s Death” and let’s see what the results look like.

Blogville Charlottesville – Tomorrow!

Renée Revetta — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:29:54 +0000

Tomorrow is a big day for Charlottesville – it’s Blogville day! I’m honored and excited to be speaking at Blogville, along with my co-worker and friend, Amanda Chaney. We’re speaking about SEO, social media and tracking your efforts with tools like Google Analytics.

Our session will teach you how to integrate SEO, social media and Google Analytics for your personal blog or professional brand. Beginning with a review of the relationship between blogs and search engines, the session will provide you with the must-have SEO plug-ins for WordPress blogs. You’ll also be taught how to use SEO tactics when brainstorming blog content and learn the importance of sharing your published posts on social media sites. Lastly, in order to make your blog not only useful for readers, but a powerful tool for growing your business, you’ll learn how to analyze and test your blog using Google Analytics tracking.

A quick rundown of our presentation:

1. Blogs Are Critical for SEO

Blogs are different in nature from websites:

More dynamic; updated more frequently
Often content is topical and current

2. SEO plugins for Blogs

All-in-one SEO Plugin (free version)
Google XML Sitemaps Plugin for WordPress

3. SEO tactics for Blogging

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF):

Unique to Google
Part of the algorithm
Determines which topics are hot
Examines news, blog stories
Examines queries in Google
Google Insights vs. Google Analytics

4. Social Media for SEO

Owning your branded results
Real-time search
Social media sharing
Google Analytics referral data

5. Google Analytics and tracking results

Choose what to track ahead of time
Set up goals or custom segments
Analyze what works, what doesn’t
Use data to help make decisions moving forward

Want to learn more? Come hear Amanda and I speak along with Charlottesville’s best and brightest in the social media realm. Your blog and business will be glad you did. To register visit http://blogvilleconference.com/registration/.

Alternatives to Ubertwitter and Twitdroyd

Renée Revetta — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:06:00 +0000

In case you haven’t seen, Twitter has suspended Ubertwitter and Twitdroyd. A few alternatives to the official Twitter app, since it is pretty pitiful:

TweetDeck: iPhone & Android
Echophon: iPhone
HootSuite (iPhone, Android & Blackberry)
Seesmic (iPhone, Android, Blackberry & Windows)
TweetCaster: Andriod

I’ve used TweetDeck for Android before and don’t necessarily love it, but at least it allows you multiple Twitter accounts.

Anyone have any other good finds to share? Please list them below!

UPDATE: UberTwitter is back – as UberSocial: Blackberry and iPhone

Twitdroyd is, too – as Twidroyd

Happy Tweeting

Groundhog Day Prediction: 52 more weeks of World Champions

Renée Revetta — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 22:36:00 +0000

Too cute not to share Go Steelers!

Cue: “Here We Go!” If you’re not familiar…en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_we_go_(Steelers_song)

Dear Facebook: Where are my Page username settings?

Renée Revetta — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:18:00 +0000

A coworker and I this morning attempted to go to the usual www.facebook.com/username to update a Facebook Page username – otherwise known as the custom URL (for example: www.facebook.com/SearchMojo). We both had a strange screen appear about confirming our email.

Facebook – this is a little ridiculous. Since they weren’t planning on updating or telling Facebook Page administrators about this error or the change they made, I will.

Your settings for Business Page usernames is now called “Create Alias”. To access this, go to your Page, and select “Edit Page”, then under the “Marketing” tab, you’ll find “Create Alias”. However, I’m still getting the same email confirmation screen here. This is hopefully a bug that will be fixed shortly, but regardless, Facebook has changed their terminology for Facebook Page usernames – to aliases. Let me note that the alias link is still directing me to the username URL above.

One positive change they did make though, is making all of your Pages easily accessible through your Account dropdown menu on the top right. YAY! We don’t have to search in the search bar for our own pages any more or wade through the left sidebar navigation that changes everyday.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Facebook’s $50B valuation put in perspective [infographic] from Alltop

Renée Revetta — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:19:00 +0000

Created for TNW by @Boris.

Food for Thought

Renée Revetta — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:33:00 +0000

I mentioned @ExerciseTV in a tweet to my coworkers (because Exercise TV tweeted a link about adding protein to brownies…GENIUS!). @ExerciseTV responded.

Seems simple enough. But it really impressed me. Why? Because some companies (and people) don’t take the 2 seconds to respond. Did they make a positive impression? Yes. Can you bet that I’ll pay more attention to @ExerciseTV in the future? You bet. I didn’t even have a question for them, simply mentioned them and they still engaged. Better than when Twitter said they were taking questions to answer and never did…hint @ev…just saying. The Exercise TV account is now on my radar for actual interactions, and I’ll certainly view them in a positive light in the future.

I’m not alone. For small business owners, a recent article from Inc. Magazine says:

Seven out of 10 consumers are more likely to use a local business if it has information available on a social media site, says a new study.

And still only 1/3 of small businesses use social media?! Just some food for thought.

#FollowFriday @Marijean

Renée Revetta — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:40:40 +0000

Reasons to follow Marijean:

She's a great connector
She shares cutting-edge PR & social media content
She's immersed in Cville news, events and everything in between
I hear she bakes a killer pie…

Guest Post on Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook Community Pages – Your Lurking Reputation Nightmare

Renée Revetta — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:40:00 +0000

It’s been over four months since Facebook launched Community Pages, and they’re still a big mess. As users were originally told, Community Pages are NOT completely “dedicated to a topic or experience” but just pages created from everything that users list in their Info tab. Sure that might encompass topics or experiences, but, for example, Community Pages are automatically created for employers, colleges, high schools, interests and activities. With 500 million users on Facebook, those interests, employers and activities quickly add up.

Continue reading this post here

Guest Post on Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook Ads…Instantly

Renée Revetta — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:20:05 +0000

Facebook recently enabled a feature that instantly suggests a dynamically created Facebook ad based on a provided URL. I tested it out to uncover how Facebook set up this feature. As with most things, there are some pros and cons to the dynamic ad creation approach.

Facebook creates the ad by searching the HTML of the provided URL for certain tags. Specifically, it pulls the title tag, meta description, and an image associated with the main content, similar to how it pulls information when Facebook users share a link.

Continue reading my guest post here