Friday Five — Search Engine Wars Edition
Welcome to The Friday Five, curated reads about marketing, advertising and digital media from the team at @MediaWhizLLC.
Bing Offers Own Version of ‘Pepsi Challenge’ Against Google: ‘Bing It On’ | Search Engine Land
Bing is breaking out its own version of the infamous “soda wars” between Coca-Cola at Pepsi in the 1980s. This week, it launched an ad campaign called “Bing It On” in which it asks people on the street to compare search results between its Bing search engine and Google. According to Search Engine Land, Microsoft claim’s that “people prefer Bing by 2:1 over Google.” Unfortunately for Microsoft, the stats on consumer use of Bing don’t reflect that comparison. More than 65 percent of Americans use Google as their regular search engine, according to SmartInsights.com, while Bing comes in third, behind Yahoo! Search, at just under 14 percent.
The Social Media Hype Cycle: Can It Bring Us to Our Socially Happy Place? | MediaWhiz Blog
“Facebook has failed” screamed the headlines all summer long, as Facebook’s stock continued to tumble amid mounting analyst, investor and advertiser concerns over the efficacy of Facebook’s ad platform. For Facebook, the concern present a troubling reality: it must evolve or die. The trick to keeping Facebook relevant to users and brands, according to Ryan Partnership’s Michael Velasco, will be to not only enhance the feeling that users have of the social network being indispensable to their daily lives, to extend that feeling to new areas and features that users find appealing.
[RELATED: Join MediaWhiz on Sept. 28 for a Social Media Week Chicago panel exploring the “Social Media Hype Cycle.” Register here.]
Twitter Helps Advertisers Home In | E-Commerce Times
Twitter is helping advertisers fine-tune their targeting, and it could be a win-win-win proposition. “I, as a consumer, should be able to indicate that I am interested in … digital photography, and that would open a gate for specific information coming to me from relevant brands,” said Steve Goldner of MediaWhiz. “That would be the most powerful accomplishment for social advertising to date.”
How To: Recognize the Power of Brand Advocates | iMedia Connection
For years, public relations professionals have known of the power of brand advocacy. But in the digital age brand advocacy is evolving into the realm and responsibility of nearly every type of digital marketer. Whether you’re working on a search marketing campaign or overseeing a client’s display strategy, every marketer needs to understand and believe in brand advocacy.
Big Data Be Damned, The Web Still Needs a Human Touch | Pando Daily
Everybody and their brother, it seems like, is obsessed over “big data” and its impact on business. As companies and consumers continue to shift their activities to online-only experiences, will the data that flows in from that overwhelm companies or empower them to become more responsive to customers’ needs. Pando Daily’s Erin Griffith writes that the “excitement over big data right now is often just that: excitement.” What is needed to truly harness the power of big data is framing it in a way that utilizes a human element to ensure that nuances and customer insights aren’t lost.
Want to suggest links for next week’s issue? Tweet @MediaWhizLLC with the hashtag #FridayFive, or email ktrivitt@mediawhiz.com.
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