Is Google Turning Into Social Engine?

There are subtle and rumored signs as well as obvious signs that Google is rapidly becoming a social engine. It will be the biggest social engine of all when everything falls into place.

If you are involved in or interested in internet marketing, it’s important for you to read on. If you haven’t read my post Social Engine Optimization-Social Media Search Engine Optimization-SMEO do so now. Then come back here to read about the obvious signs, the subtle and rumored signs of Google going social and get a few tips on internet marketing interaction and a hot Facebook and Google+ course.

Obvious Signs of Google Turning Social

The obvious signs are both fairly old – YouTube and fairly new – Google+. YouTube and Google+ are social platforms. While YouTube has been around for years it has recently started changing it’s look and tens of millions of dollars are going into making it even more social and interconnected with other social media sites. Google+ is still very new but it has already forced Facebook to be more proactive and even a little bit more pro business.

Subtle, Rumored Signs of Google Going Social

The internal and hidden workings of Google have always been kept secret and mysterious and perhaps rightly so. Things like the algorithm keep on changing to make it virtually impossible to fool the system.

But smart people don’t want to fool Google. Smart people want to do what works.

What works is sticking to the rules, honesty, good content and increasingly, this is the rumored part, interaction.

It seems that Google is now placing a lot more value on your interaction with your readers. In the past it had some value in Google’s eyes and it usually meant comments on your site or blog.

The value of comments is now much higher but that’s not all.

It appears that Google now also values highly your interaction through social media like Google+, YouTube and Facebook as they are connected to your site or blog.

Nobody is going to be able to conclusively prove this unless Google goes out of their way and makes a statement confirming it. They may never do that.

When you look at the signs mentioned above and how Google is in the process of integrating things like Google+ and YouTube with it’s new design into the mix you can’t but conclude that things are getting more social.

Update January 11, 2012: Yesterday a blog post appeared on Google’s blog that is announcing Google Search Plus. That is as obvious a sign of Google going social as you can get. It’s now even more important for you to keep on reading and clicking on one of the links that mention Facebook course or Google+ course or Social Media Course or anything similar.

Internet Marketing Interaction Tips

Engaging your readers and your audience has always been a good idea and it has always worked.

Now there are more ways of doing it than ever before.

Comments on your blog are very important and will always be. Don’t let anybody convince you otherwise. The importance of comments is growing steadily. One tip about comments that many ignore is that in order to interact through comments you need to reply to comments your readers post and keep the conversation going.

Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter and other social media interaction is getting more important and valuable each day now.

Have you been resisting using Google+, Facebook etc. ?

If you use them, do you know how to use them fully, taking advantage of everything they can do for you?

I couldn’t believe it when I read a comment somewhere in which a person was astonished that there are actually courses on Facebook and Google+. To them chit chatting needs no instruction.

There’s a lot more that can be done with social media than chit chatting, of course.

Is every possible way of using them for your business, whether you are an internet marketer or a conventional brick and mortar operation, clear to you?

Unless you’ve devoted a lot of your time to figuring everything out for yourself and keep at it to stay up to date, it’s very unlikely that you know how to use Facebook, Google+ and other social media to their maximum potential.

This is why courses are popping up all the time, especially on Facebook, fan pages and so on.

People need help to be able to use them quickly, properly and fully for their businesses.  Most of these courses are helpful but I find that they are usually leaving out some important  things and sometimes too many. Most of the courses aren’t being updated and often are obsolete as soon as they come out.

There is one course on Facebook and Google+ that is complete and ongoing with constant updates. This course covers Facebook completely and Google+ increasingly. I’m taking the course myself and I’m recommending it to everybody. It’s the best  Facebook and Google+ course that I’ve seen so far.

Click on any of the two links just above or click here to check it out.

Are you currently taking a social media course or thinking about doing so?

What’s your opinion about Google turning into a social media engine?

Respond in the comments section and then like this post on Facebook, Google+ it and tweet the post to share it with others. Be social media and social engine friendly.

P.S. I’ve used a different text spacing for the Internet Marketing Interaction Tips part of the post. You are kindly requested to comment about which spacing you prefer after you answer the questions above. Does the larger spacing make it so much easier for you to read the text that you don’t mind having to do the extra scrolling? I listen, read and pay attention to what my readers prefer to see on my blog so please make your preference known.

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Authored by Vance Sova

Which internet browser should you use in general and for internet marketing in particular? Using the best browser available can make a difference in productivity.

Chrome versus Firefox-the Browser Wars

Until not so long ago most people involved in internet marketing in one form or another, including those learning it, were predominantly using the Firefox browser.

It was heavily recommended in different internet gurus courses and it was an undisputed winner.

It worked very well and had a large number of useful plug ins available for it.

When the Chrome came on the scene it seemed like most people didn’t pay that much attention to it at first. I certainly didn’t pay too much attention even though I downloaded and installed it in order to have an idea of what it was like.

But I continued using Firefox most of the time and exclusively for posting new posts on my blog.

Then one day when I was writing a blog post and adding videos to it something strange and weird happened. Without me doing anything to cause it the browser bar from the top of Firefox appeared inside of my new blog post and I couldn’t get rid of it without deleting the whole post. I tried several times to do everything else but the bar kept on reappearing.

So finally I  tried using the Chrome browser, for the first time, to write a post on my blog and it went smoothly. No unwanted bar appeared and my trust in Chrome started growing just as my trust in Firefox was shaken.

As many of you may know a few weeks ago the Google Bar stopped working on Firefox browser because Google won’t support it anymore there.

It looks like a browser war to me. It may or may not be but the fact is that Firefox’s appeal will suffer because of it.

If I were a lone internet marketer who does no live networking I’d be crushed by events like this.

How Live Internet Marketing Networking Helps 

Luckily, doing a lot of live internet marketing networking with local bloggers and marketers I’m able to handle things much better.

You can find out more about the importance of live internet marketing networking in the many posts I wrote about it on this blog starting with 5 Reasons For IM Networking and Meeting People Live.

Another good post to read is Internet Marketing Event Networking that even includes a short interview I did with one of the best known and most successful internet marketers in the UK, Lee McIntyre.

Choosing the Best Internet Marketing Tools is Easier When Discussed Live

As you will see in the video below, it helps to be able to discuss things with fellow marketers. Choosing a browser, for example, is easier when you talk to others and hear what their experience with different browsers is.

Since that discussion shown in the video above, Firefox 4 is no longer the newest version. The browser is already several versions up at Firefox 7.  Update January 11, 2012: Today I updated to Firefox 9.0.1 after strong and repeated urging from them. As usual something is not working as well as it did in the previous version, in my case it was Firefox 8 (one version up from when I first wrote this post). With the newest version, Firefox 9.0.1 the icons in my bookmarks are not showing. Basic stuff. It makes me wonder why they don’t check things are working before pushing it down people’s throats.

Changing versions so frequently is one of the things that I personally don’t like about Firefox. Sometimes the plug ins stop working when you install the newest version.

And when you happen to have an older computer that doesn’t support the newer Firefox version they keep on bugging you to install it anyway for months or even years.

You may be interested to know that John Chow for example doesn’t use Firefox browser at all anymore.

How about you?

What is your favorite browser, is it Firefox or Chrome? Is there a browser other than the two mentioned that you prefer?

Please comment on these things in the comments section and then tweet and bookmark this post to engage others.

How are you doing with social media like Facebook and Google+ ?

You may want to check out my favorite course on Facebook which also has a section on Google+ . All materials are continually being updated as things change so there’s no need to worry that things will become obsolete.

So do check it out.

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Authored by Vance Sova

Would you like to get more comments and build email list? If you even hesitated in answering this question then I guess you are a complete newcomer to the internet marketing and blogging world.

But for the majority of people reading this, you have been wanting to get more comments and build your email list for as long as you’ve been a blogger and internet marketer trying to make money online.

I won’t link to any of my previous posts now but I invite you to get my free list building ebook. You can find the category with links to my posts on email list building in the sidebar to the right.

Recently a nifty tool has made it’s appearance which may revolutionize the way commenting is done and viewed. It will at least encourage it while helping you to build your email list.

What Is the Highlighter for WordPress?

This handy internet marketing and blogging tool is actually a WordPress plugin.

The best part about it is that it’s absolutely free, gratis, costing absolutely nada.

So relax completely. This is one tool that you can get and try without having to  worry about the cost.

I may not be the first person writing about it but I have tried it out when commenting on some of the relatively few blogs that have installed it (about 1500 downloads) so far.

I have also installed it on this blog. To make sure it’s still here look at the left top edge of this page You should see as tag with “Highlighter” written on it.

If you are on the home page it won’t show. You must be viewing a single blog post in order to see it.

This is very important because after I installed it I couldn’t see it. So do click on the headline of any post if you are on the home page that shows more than one post and you’ll see the tag.

It’s still a “Beta version” and some minor bugs are being worked out. The tool is called after what is also does – it highlights – the Highlighter for WordPress.

If you highlight a portion of the text in this post, you can then comment on it right away.

You can also point to an already highlighted portion of the text like this one (again, make sure you have clicked on the headline of this post first in case you are on the home page) and read the comments of previous visitors and respond to their comment or just add your own.

Using this tool on this blog or any blog that has it installed is the best way to see how it works and to determine if you’d like to try it on your own blog.

It’s very important to know that you can highlight only a limited portion of text.

It makes sense because otherwise the whole page would be soon highlighted and yellow.

So what is the limit of the length of text you can highlight?

You can only highlight about 100 letters and spaces or about one and a half lines of text.

This fact is not mentioned anywhere as far as I know but this is what my readers and I have discovered.

I must admit that I was a bit skeptical when I first found out about the release of the Highlighter for Word Press.

Advantages and Possible Drawbacks of Highlighter Plugin

One of the concerns I had was the disadvantage that most plugins bring which is slowing down of the blog and increasing the time it loads.

I have found in comments on for example John Chow’s blog that those who installed the plugin, including John Chow himself, have not experienced any such problem.

I have been visiting John’s blog for a while now and while it does take a long time to load on occasion, it had been doing that way before he installed the Highlighter.

One of the commenters pointed out that this plugin loads after everything else on the blog has loaded and thus it has no bearing on the loading of the blog pages whatsoever.

The second concern I had was that the blog visitors would be distracted by the highlighted text after a lot of people would comment using the highlighting.

For the most part this is addressed by their ability to turn the highlighting off and reading the posts undisturbed by it if they so wish.

To turn off the highlighted text areas anyone can just click on the tab to the left upper edge of the page and check the box inside of the form that appears.

The third concern I had was about how the email list was being built with this plugin.

I always want to be sure that I only use double opt in when growing my email list.

This concern is also addressed. I have gone through the opt in process and it indeed is a double opt in. People have to confirm their subscription.

And if they don’t want to subscribe in the first place they can certainly choose that option too.

So everything is aboveboard and I think that after trying the Highlighter you’ll be pleased with it.

But the only way to make sure is for you is to give it a try

You can download the Highlighter plugin for WordPress anytime by clicking on the link and watch a video about it on that page too. It’s free and I won’t get paid any commission.

Since it’s still in the Beta version stages it’s possible that some problems will need to be ironed out.

I know of some that have already been solved and there is one thing that I hope will be changed. The “like” button covers the gravatar of the commenters.

This was not the case with the earlier versions and I know that the “like” button seems to have changed locations twice already.

There’s one more thing that I hope will be changed too but it’s a minor flaw that doesn’t affect functionality, so I won’t mention it now.

I hope that this was a helpful information for you. This is not a lip service post that you can find anywhere. Besides John Chow I have not actually seen a blog that posted about this topic that has the plugin installed and working and where you can test it by using it.

As of now John Chow seems to have an older (days old) version installed.

What to do now?

Comment in the comment forms below about what you think about the post, about the plug in and if you are going to install it on your blog.

Tweet and bookmark the post to share it with others.

And if you haven’t tried using the Highlighter on my blog yet to comment do that as well.

Update: 01 December 2010, I just realized that there is a contest going on connected with the Highlighter. The rules of the contest are HERE. You can win an iPad.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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