SEO Werkt!

As part of the rollout of its next-generation OS X 10.8, Apple on Wednesday updated a number of first-party iOS apps to take advantage of the tight iCloud integration offered by Mountain Lion.

Top marketing news, articles and tips from the third week of June 2012.

Website Copywriting

We can all relate to the feeling of being spread thin, and trying to concentrate, when there are just too many things to do. To manage, we’ll either try to tackle many things at once (and likely end up with mediocre results), or hone in on one item to make it great.

The same mentality should be applied to website copywriting to successfully sell your brand, service or product. Stop doing so many things. Ankesh Kothari (@ankeshk) offers some advice to ensure that you aren’t trying to do or say too much. Start with the following:

• Listen to your audience. Focus on the topics they like the most, and cut everything else.
• Keep it simple. Don’t try to force people to remember multiple facets about your brand; they’ll likely just remember one.
• Unify your products/solutions. Find a core element that brings them all together in one sentence.

PR Skills

Just as agencies must adapt their services to the social and digital world, PR pros must do the same. Arik Hanson (@arikhanson) lists his thoughts on ten must-have skills for next generation PR pros. While many of them are emerging traits, traditional communication and relationship-building skills still remain at the core of new needs.

For example, media relations will always be part of a PR pro’s repertoire. But, the process for doing it well is changing. Pros must adapt to innovative media outreach best practices, such as building sincere relationships with bloggers and journalists, to be successful and get results, says Gini Dietrich (@ginidietrich).

Apple Updates

Last week, Apple announced some major product updates at the Worldwide Developers Conference, including faster MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks. In addition, the new MacBook Pro boasts a high-resolution Retina Display, which is also found in the iPhone and iPad.

Apple’s iOS 6 is also getting a makeover with new features coming this fall to select iPads and iPhones. Among the many new integrations is integration with Facebook, which will improve ease of use. One thing to note is that the integration may be “too frictionless,” as default privacy settings will likely be public, which could result in sharing without known consent.                                        

Other Headlines

• It’s official—Microsoft will buy the social enterprise startup, Yammer, Inc., for $1.2 billion. Yammer recently raised $85 million in funding, putting its valuation at $500 million. (Did you know that we’re a Yammer affiliate partner?) 
• Google confirmed that it rolled out a Panda refresh last week, specifically impacting sites that were hit by the original Panda update in April. In addition, Google has updated Hot Searches with images, stories and related searches to make for more of a magazine look.
• ICANN revealed its newest list of applications for “generic top-level domains,” or gTLDs, with Google as the most active bidder. Learn more on what marketers need to know about gTLDs, and the branding “gold rush.”
• Twitter made its small-screen debut last week, releasing a TV ad during the NASCAR Pocono 400, along with a corresponding hashtag landing page. This curation and customer evangelism approach allows brands to tap into fan-driven promotion, and focus on getting conversations to surface.

Stats & Studies

• According to recent findings from Searchmetrics, 84% of search marketers say social signals such as likes, tweets and Google +1s will become more important to SEO this year, topping a list of factors correlated to high search rankings. 
• The latest report from the Direct Marketing Association on response rates for direct channels such as snail mail and telephone show that, in many cases, response rates are higher than some digital channels.
• An infographic from Crowdtap sheds light on the true influencers on the web, and how influence spreads more across close-knit networks of actual friends.

What articles made your top list last week? We’d like to hear your opinions.

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WWDC Apple Updates and What They Mean for Social Media

Yesterday, Apple dropped an atomic bomb of updates at WWDC, sending shockwaves throughout the tech world. The MacBook Pro line, OSX and iOS all received much anticipated (and at times surprising) upgrades. Those close to the blast radius are now undoubtedly waxing over apple.com’s newly refreshed product page, basking in the brilliant wired future their new hardware toys will bring. Yes, hardware updates caused most of yesterday’s commotion, but like almost always, it will be the updates to software that will cause the fallout.

OSX Mountain Lion Notification Center
Apple continues to bring some of iOS’s best features over to the Mac, creating a more seamless experience for users across devices. In Mountain Lion, Notification Center will now post app notifications in the top left hand corner of the desktop. What’s interesting is the inclusion of Twitter. Users will have the ability to both Tweet and respond to Twitter notifications directly within the OS, effectively turning the Mac into a lightweight Twitter client in itself.

Facebook
Facebook will now join Twitter as a fully integrated social layer within iOS. Users will have the ability to log into the social network at the system level, sync contacts directly with the iOS address book, “like” apps on the App Store and post updates directly from the iOS Notification Center. Functionality to post updates from the notification center has be extended to cover Twitter as well.

Photo Stream
Photo Stream has gone social. In a move that sees Apple treading on a bit of Instagram’s turf, users will now be able to share, subscribe and comment on a stream of photos taken by friends directly from their iOS device. What makes this move even more disruptive are the endless amounts of apps available for iOS that provide comparable if not superior photo editing features than the ones provided by Instagram.

Apple seems to be moving away from attempting to roll their own social network, rather embracing the rich communities that exist today. A smart move for a company that’s best known for their top notch hardware and software and not the web. Today, social media is vital to the digital experience of users, and Apple is now incorporating the best of breed properties directly into their ecosystem.

Apple introduces next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display, the Mac Pro line gets resurrected, an all-new AirPort Express gets released, and the Last.fm security breach actually happened three months ago. More »

Apple kicked off its 2012 World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) today with a Siri joke. But the Siri integrations into the coming iOS6 are not funny if you’re Google, or anyone else who makes a living delivering information to users.

Siri is integrating with your car, getting a massive language training course, getting integrated into games, and getting a massive dump of sports knowledge.

Integrating with your car: “eyes-free”

Tap a button on your steering wheel, and a wealth of knowledge and data is yours, (mostly) hands-free and completely eyes-free. Apple will be integrating with a large number of automobile manufactures to build in access to all Siri can do.

Getting up-to-date traffic conditions, booking a dinner reservation, settling that nagging question, finding a local business, or calling your spouse … all available in your car, legally.

Manufacturers who are participating include BMW, GM, Mercedes, Land Rover, Jaguar, Audi, Toyota, Chevrolet, and Honda. Conspicuously absent? Ford, which has its own Ford Sync technology co-developed with Microsoft.

New language packs

Everyone wants Siri, not just those who speak English. So Apple is bringing Siri to larger segments of the world’s population.

New languages supported by Siri include Japanese, English/French for Canada, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese. Apple does huge business in China: these new languages will help it continue to grow that market.

German, UK English, Swiss, and Australian English look to be included as well.

Games and apps

Siri will be better integrated into all the apps on your phone. Apple has built in the ability to say things like “Siri, play Temple Run,” and immediately start up the game.

Sports

Apple is adding data access to the sporting world. Users will be able to ask what the score of a particular game is, and get the score and more. In this baseball example, Siri has the box score as well, giving sports fans the ability to quickly get a good understanding of how the game went.

And, of course, the iPad

Perhaps the worst-kept secret prior to WWDC was Siri coming to the iPad. It will, indeed, be available on your iPad as well as your iPhone.

And the joke?

The joke that Apple started WWDC with played off the interwebs topic-du-jour about a month ago: Siri calling the Nokia 900 the best smartphone ever. To start the event, Siri said:

I am excited about the new Samsung. Not the phone: The refrigerator.

Additional reporting by Dean Takahashi, Jolie O’Dell, photos by Heather Kelly/VentureBeat

Filed under: cloud, mobile, VentureBeat

The next generation MacBook Pro is coming, which Phil Schiller called the “most beautiful computer we’ve ever made,” and one of the biggest surprises is that the computer will, indeed, have a Retina Display. (Hooray!) But what good is a Retina Display without a little eye-candy, right? Which is why Apple also announced it’s updating its core applications to work with the new resolution.

The 15.4-inch display has a pixel density of 2880×1800, which is four times the number of pixels in the previous generation of MacBook Pro’s, cementing its status as the world’s highest-resolution notebook computer. The display looks like it’s glossy, but will have a “reduced glare,” Schiller claims.

All of Apple’s stock apps have been updated to support the new display, including Mail, Safari, iMovie and iPhoto. And already, we have jokes:

Wow, the new Macbook Pro has a Retina display. That will make the internet look *terrible*.

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) June 11, 2012

Pro applications like Aperature (4x resolutions on photos!) and Final Cut Pro (1080p video!) are being updated too. And it sounds like there are other third-party app updates in the works, too. Schiller rolled off several notable names, including Adobe (a new version of Photoshop), Autodesk (AutoCAD), and even Diablo III.

UPDATE: And the next-gen MacBook is shipping today!

The MacBook Pro lineup was given a refresh, but not a redesign, on Monday, as Apple unveiled new notebooks featuring Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processors, as well as dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics on the 15-inch model.

Version 1.1 of the Cards iOS app brings new templates and fixes to Apple’s digital-to-physical card sending service.

Apple released a second update to its JavaScript today, which will actually clean up “the most common variants” of the Flashback Trojan affecting Mac computers.

The Java update will not only clean up these variants, but also disables automatic executive of Java applets. You can turn these back on in the preferences tab. If no applets are run in a certain amount of time, however, the Java plug-in will re-disable automatic executive of Java applets. Prior to this update, Apple had patched the hole in its JavaScript, but hadn’t yet released a way to get rid of the virus. Get the update here.

Yesterday security company F-Secure released its own tool for cleaning up the trojan. To use F-Secure’s tool, all you have to do is download a zip file found here, unzip it and follow the instructions. The program will then both identify and quarantine the virus — if it’s present on your machine — into a password protected file. From there, it will give you instructions as to how to remove the trojan. F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen noted his surprise that Apple had not created its own cleaner in a blog post on the tool.

The Flashback Trojan enters people’s computers through infected websites. When a user visits the infected website, they are prompted to download a browser plug-in, such as Flash, in order to see more content. When they download the “plug-in,” the malware accesses a hole in Apple’s customized version of JavaScript and thereby gain access to the computer.

Users are easily tricked into downloading the malware because asking people to download a plug-in is common practice on the Internet. It’s hard to decipher between a legitimate request (especially when a website you trust is infected) and malware.

It has been reported that Flashback has only really hit around 600,000 Mac computers, but the surprise comes from those who believed Macs were impervious to the virus. Indeed, Macs are vulnerable to attack, but given the high proliferation of Windows computers, it is more profitable for the hacker to target that mass market.

hat tip MacRumors; Janitors image via Shutterstock

Filed under: security