SEO Werkt!

It can easily tarnish a brand’s identity when a user brings his or her complain on the social media. But it also goes the same for reaping compliments for your customers. In order to take advantage of social media for your business, it is best that you know how you can properly integrate it to your customer support service

Means of Communication Between You and Your Fans

It may be counterintuitive for your campaign to let users post complains on your page, but it is more ideal than letting them rant elsewhere. You can easily respond to your customers’ issues if you let them post on your page. If you do it right, you can turn their opinions around because of your superb customer service. Just remember to open the floor for complaints with a concrete plan on how you would handle them.

Bring Your Existing Fans to Your Page

Using you current means of reaching out to your customers, bring your existing fans to your social media profiles. Run a contest or a promotion on your Facebook, and include it on your product’s packaging, newsletter, or email. After all, they already “like” your brand in real life.

Connect with Your Customers

People uses social media to connect and be heard. Interact with users who talk about your brand, whether it’s a compliment or complaint. Don’t wait for someone to post on your wall or mention you in his or her tweet. Make them happy by listening to what they have to say.

Give Your Brand Ambassadors a Bonus

Always keep on searching for your brands, and think of ways on how you can rewards them. Turn them into advocates of your products by making them feel special. It can be as simple as pitching new or upcoming products, giving them a free sample, or giving them an office tour.

 Share Compelling Content

It will be difficult for your brand to engage your customers through social media if you don’t have anything special to say. That’s why use your online platform to share useful and relevant content to your customers. Every brand can—and should—create and share quality content.

Be Dynamic

Other than texts, you can also share content in other media form such as images or videos to make it more engaging. Moreover, encourage your customers to participate and share contents on your page. That way, you are making your online presence sound and look human, and your interaction with your precious clients is more personal.

Using various social media for your business can impact your brand big time. So use it to its full extent, but don’t forget to learn how you can handle it properly.

Source: Social Media Magazine by Thomas Hendele | Flickr

The post Taking Advantage of Social Media for Customer Service appeared first on About Social Media.

Posted by randfish

If you've used or considered using the Mozscape API to retrieve link metrics data, we've got something unique to share – a brand new beta of a much faster, more robust API. This beta version currently has just a few testers (and we're seeking more), but thus far, we're seeing remarkable results.

Carin, who manages the big data team here at Moz, helped share the story with me last week:

• The current API is not able to support everyone's use case! Some people need to make a lot of calls in a really short period of time – our API currently can't support more than 10 requests/second (even for paid users). Others have a large list of URLs they want to update metrics on every new index release – our current API doesn't support batching very well and will timeout with batch sizes larger than 50 URLs.
• The beta version has made some serious performance improvements with single URL throughput and can handle 200 requests / second – the beta API is seeing a 400% throughput improvement, although response times will still be the same
• To address batching users we've developed a new batching model – online batching (available in the beta API) and offline batching (coming soon to the beta API)
  • Online batching: the maximum amount of results we can process in a POST without a timeout from S3. This has been improved from 50 URLs to 500 URLs in one batch request
  • Offline batching (still in development): for batch sizes larger than 500 URLs, offline batching will process through the entire list (probably up to a certain limit not yet decided) and return a downloadable CSV link to S3 where all the data will be available. Since this is still in development, it is not clear the SLA on offline batching, but this feature will be also be available for beta testing as soon as it is feature complete!

Mozscape's API is pretty big today – we served 154,352,249 (154 million) requests in the first 10 days of August and returned 1,186,736,774 (1.2 billion) rows of link metrics data.

You can still sign up free or try our paid API, but if you have serious demand for high-volume or large batches of link data, we'd love to have you in the beta for the new API. Just contact Andrew Dumont – andrew@seomoz.org – and he'll get you set up!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

App.net, Dalton Caldwell’s audacious Twitter clone, just reached its $500,000 funding goal on Kickstarter with almost two days to spare. Just a few days ago, it looked unlikely that Caldwell’s user and developer supported ad-free Twitter clone would reach its funding goal. A last-minute push of new sponsors, though, just pushed App.net past its funding goal. The project currently has over 7,500 backers, including almost 6,000 people who used the campaign to pre-pay $50 for an annual App.net membership and just over 50 backers who put down $1,000 for access to the service’s developer tools, phone support and a personal meeting with Caldwell.

While our own MG Siegler is rather skeptical about App.net’s long-term potential, there seems to be a sizable contingent of users and developers who are looking for a viable alternative to Twitter (and who are willing to pay for it).

App.net promises to give its users total control over their data and “to support 3rd-party devs making a living and maintaining a good lifestyle.” Caldwell argues that an ad-supported social network can never put its users and developers first.

You can see App.net’s alpha in action here,

App.net, of course, isn’t the first company trying to disrupt Twitter and/or Facebook. The most prominent recent entrant in this market is probably Diaspora, which also ran a Kickstarter campaign to get started. While it’s still under active development, the project never quite took off.

At the end of July, Amazon updated its Cloud Player to be in fighting form as an iTunes killer, with a load of new audio features like Scan and Match technology and licensing deals with a number of labels. And at the time, Amazon said that Sonos support would be “coming soon.” Today, that functionality has arrived, with the Cloud Player now working on the Sonos Wireless HiFi System.

This will mean that users who store music in Amazon’s Cloud Player will now be able to stream that music over of Sonos’ kit, in addition to the existing ability to stream Cloud Player music over a Kindle Fire, an Android device, any iOS Apple device, Mac or PC. Amazon says it will be adding more support for further devices later this year. Roku is likely to be next in line.

The move gives Amazon the ability to snag in further users, to add to the “millions” it says are already using the Cloud Player.

“Our goal is to enable customers to enjoy all their music, wherever they are, and on any device. Launching on Sonos today is an important part of that strategy, as our customers have been asking us to add Sonos to the list of compatible Cloud Player devices ever since we first launched Cloud Player,” said Steve Boom, vice president of Digital Music for Amazon, said in a statement. “We will continue to add support for more devices and platforms later this year.”

Amazon has been aggressive in its attempt to wrest some market share away from Apple, whose iTunes remains the market leader for digital music sales. The cloud-based Amazon service lets users buy music from its own library of 20 million tracks, as well as import music as well from iTunes and their CDs, but importing comes under Amazon’s freemium model: All Amazon purchases plus the first 250 imported songs are stored for free. However, customers must pay $24.99 a year to import and store up to 250,000 tracks beyond that first 250.

Meanwhile, for Sonos, this is another example of how the wireless HiFi company is building up its own usefulness. The company already allows for streaming of a user’s iTunes library, as well as their Spotify collections and a variety of radio stations, among other music sources.

Google announced plans to discontinue paying AdSense publishers by check in all countries where they officially support paying by electronic funds transfer (EFT).

Google said “EFT payments are free of charge, less error prone, more efficient and the most environmentally-friendly payment method.” In fact, Google has recommended EFT since before 2007, just two years after the EFT option within AdSense went out of beta.

Now, Google is going to require most publishers to receive payment via EFT. For most of you, this is not a big deal. Personally, I’ve always received them via check, but switching to EFT is not a big deal for me.

Google wrote:

With these changes, please note that the new system wonât support check payments in countries where we offer EFT as a form of payment. If youâre located in a country where we offer EFT payments and you currently receive check payments, please be advised that youâll need to complete a few steps once your account is upgraded. However, no immediate action is required on your part at the moment. Once your account is transitioned to the new system, youâll receive an email notification with detailed instructions on setting up EFT payments.

To see if you are effected, see the list of countries on this page.

Here is a video Google made on EFT AdSense payments in 2009:

Is this going to be an issue for you?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

More downsizing and rationalizing from troubled handset maker Nokia. Today, Finnish software company Digia, which bought the Qt commercial licensing operation from Nokia a year ago, announced that it would buy the remainder of Nokia’s Qt business. Qt is an open source development platform that Digia plans to “quickly enable” to be used in Android, iOS and Windows 8 environments. The deal includes the transfer of software, technologies and 125 employees in Oslo, Norway and Berlin, Germany.

The companies are not yet revealing a price at this stage, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. But a report at Reuters notes that it is just a “fraction” of the $150 million that Nokia paid in 2008 for Trolltech, the open source platform where Qt originated. The Qt platform has been used by some 450,000 developers to date, mainly to develop software with a graphical interface. Digia says it is used across 70 industries in addition to mobile, including automotive, medical, and defense.

Nokia and Digia have actually been working together on Qt since 2011, when Digia acquired the Qt commercial licensing and professional services business from Nokia. That division is called Qt Commercial.

Why the offload, exactly? Nokia is making huge cost cuts as it continues to restructure its business — during its Q2 earnings the company noted that restructuring charges for the next two years will be in the region of €1.9 billion ($2.35 billion), so there is that. But in addition to that, the company has made Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform the basis of its smartphone strategy, and that has pulled it away from development platforms like Qt, which was largely used for Symbian development.

When Nokia sold the commercial licensing division last year, it had said it would continue to support Qt’s licensing activities for at least a year during transition, and that’s what it has done. However, as more belt tightening has taken place at Nokia, it seems that it has reversed course on another part of its strategy. In March 2011 Nokia noted: “We want to emphasize our long-term commitment to Qt. Nokia will drive Qt developments in support of our business needs and our investments in community building, marketing and R&D will continue to benefit all members of the Qt community.”

Today’s news more or less removes Nokia from the Qt equation, however: “Nokia is proud of the contributions we’ve made to Qt over the past four years. We are pleased that we’ve been able to work with Digia to secure continued development of Qt by the current core team,” said Sebastian Nyström, head of Nokia Strategy, in a statement. “Digia’s plans to acquire Qt mean that it can continue as a successful open source project and also offer continuing employment for many people in the community.”

A spokesperson tells TechCrunch that from a deal standpoint Nokia will still be responsible for Qt until the deal closes — which should be in Q3, most likely in September. “From that point onwards the main responsibility will be with Digia,” he added.

Nokia still has a lot of legacy handsets in the market, however, running Symbian (and to a much smaller extent MeeGo); so given that apps are developed for Symbian on Qt there will still be some connection between the two. As for the future, Digia says it does not know whether Nokia will continue to support further Symbian handsets on Qt.

Looking ahead, Digia says that it will be investing in R&D for Qt “expanding its reach on many more platforms than ever before” and use it for its own international expansion. Digia notes that the commercial operation it bought over a year ago has “grown substantially” and will have a positive impact on 2012 revenues.

Perhaps most importantly, Digia will continue to keep Qt open source while developing the commercial part of the business and is trying to reach out to developers to do that. Open source activities will be centered around this site; commercial activities here.

“Now is a good time for everyone to revisit their perception of Qt. Digia’s targeted R&D investments will bring back focus on Qt’s desktop and embedded platform support, while widening the support for mobile operating systems,” said Tommi Laitinen, SVP, International Products, Digia, in a statement.

More information will be available shortly on qt.digia.com and qt-project.org which will be the main information-sharing sites for Qt.

As you surely know by now, a gunman entered a Sikh temple Sunday morning in Wisconsin and opened fire, killing six people and wounding three others, including a police officer.

Later Sunday afternoon, two Sikh entrepreneurs, Savneet Singh and Jesse Pujji, started a campaign on the crowd-sourced funding site indiegogo to raise money for the victims.

The response has been overwhelming.

The campaign, which cracked six figures in its first 48 hours, now has $112,466 from 1,218 donors (at the time of publication). Pujji says donors have given as little as $5 and as much as $5,000. The campaign has reached the top of indiegogo’s Community page.

“The whole thing is a tribute to good people and social networks,” Pujji says, downplaying Singh and his role in the campaign.

Pujji says they will evenly divide the funds between the victims and send checks to their families once the campaign ends at the end of August.

“We anticipate that the Milwaukee Sikh community will require substantial financial support as they heal from this senseless tragedy, and therefore graciously seek donations to offer support to the victims of the shooting, the injured police officer, and their families,” the campaign page reads.

Microsoft isn’t making itself any friends in the ad industry, which still isn’t crazy about the company’s Do Not Track ambitions.

On Tuesday Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch confirmed that the Do Not Track (DNT) setting would be on by default in the next version of Internet Explorer, a move the company initially announced in May.

“Do No Track ” is the name given to a proposed web header that tells websites when a web browser doesn’t want to be tracked. While privacy advocates favor the move, those in the ad industry say it will undermine the way they do business.

In the former camp is Microsoft, which says it’s making the move on behalf of the average web user. “We believe consumers should have more control over how data about their online behavior is tracked, shared, and used,” Lynch said, defending the move.

For Microsoft, this means turning the setting on by default, a setting that doesn’t make much sense to those in the digital ad industry.

“Their decision to set DNT by default was an overreach, and this remains an overreach,” Scott Meyer, the CEO of advertising tech company Evidon, told VentureBeat.

Unlike Microsoft, Meyer doesn’t believe Do Not Track is something anyone actually wants — least of all consumers.

“The overwhelming reaction of the industry, government, and well-informed advocates to Microsoft’s announcement illustrates that DNT should remain set to off,” he said.

Instead, Meyer wants Microsoft to leave the advertising regulation to the advertisers (something that his company makes a mint helping out with).

One of the big self-regulation bodies, the Digital Advertising Alliance(DAA), agrees, and argues that Microsoft’s DNT ambitions go against how the web works.

“Microsoft’s continued support of DNT as the default setting in IE8 risks advertising support for free and low-cost internet in products and services,” the DAA said in a statement to VentureBeat.

In the eyes of DAA, Do Not Track is bad news not only for advertisers, but also for the web users that rely on ad-supported services. After all, advertisers are only as effective as the amount of information they have on potential consumers. And if their revenue goes down, it could have big effects on the sites (like this one) that work with them. Or so it goes.

But Microsoft isn’t showing any intention of letting up. While the company will give Windows 8 users the option to turn the Do Not Track features off, it remains to be seen whether those users will actually end up doing so.

Filed under: VentureBeat

Verdere fragmentatie van het Windows Phone ecosysteem zit er zeker aan te komen als we de documentatie van Microsoft’s MSDN portal mogen geloven. Deze vermeldt namelijk dat WP7.8 geen support geeft aan in-app aankopen. Volgens de bron zal Windows……

Realtime, a technology developed by a company which has been around since the Internet’s earliest days with the practically un-Googleable name “Internet Business Technologies,” has just received a massive $100 million investment to help fund its lofty plan to build the real-time web. The company offers a developer framework that now powers 2,000 real-time client applications, but, until now, it has only been available outside the U.S.

However, with the new investment from the three-month old, Såo Paulo-based BRZtech, a firm backed by private investors in Europe and South America, as well as Portuguese investment vehicle The Ongoing Group, Realtime is today launching its developer platform stateside.

“What can I do to be disruptive?,” CEO Andre Parreira asked himself years ago, when thinking about how he could scale his company internationally. “I looked to the Internet, and I saw that the Internet is based on a 30-year old protocol – it’s still request/response – so it’s static. It’s not delivering on the promise that the Internet will give us a true interactive experience,” he said. “So, let’s create the live web,” he thought.

That’s the goal with Realtime, which offers a freemium-based developer framework for building live web applications. However, to be clear, the funding isn’t just for the company itself – it’s also to fund the industry, including everything that would need to spring up around this “live web” ambition in order to make it a success. The company claims to have already signed up over 1,000 developers for its beta and plans further outreach through conferences, hackathons and other competitions.

Nope, no small dreams here. Just “a whole new era of the Internet,” as Parreira calls it.

How It’s Built

The platform can be used without changing the underlying technologies of the web. Instead, it runs on top, creating persistent, bi-directional connections with every user. It’s powered by ORTC (Open Realtime Connectivity) and xRTML (extensive Realtime multiplatform language).

ORTC is a cloud-hosted messaging system for web apps or native apps running on Android, iOS or Windows Phone. It enables applications to push updates from the server to the browser or client without requiring a manual page refresh. It relies on WebSockets, a protocol supported by the current versions of all major browsers except Internet Explorer 9, which requires a plugin. For browsers that don’t support that standard, ORTC will fallback to the next best thing: AJAX, which has long been good enough for applications like Gmail. SSL is available for secure connections.

ORTC has API support for several languages and frameworks, including Node.js, ASP.net, Java and PHP and supports iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Parreira says he began work on the Realtime platform three years ago, and wanted to make sure it was something that would work cross-browser, cross-device, and cross-language, so anyone could use it. “The idea is to create an abstraction layer so you can use the real-time messaging system in a cloud-based environment,” he explains, “then you can develop whatever you want without worrying about what could happen in terms of protocols in the future.”

Use Cases: Publishing, E-Commerce, Ads

Currently, there are three main use cases for such a system. One would be for web publishers, who want to offer more interactivity between users on their website. In this scenario, users could see what each other were doing on the site, including what sections of the site were popular, what comments were being added, etc. The experience would be familiar to any Chartbeat users – it’s that same feeling of live connectivity that would be present here, but it could do more than just highlight clicks and shares. (You can see a publisher who has implemented Realtime here, for example).

Another vertical would be e-commerce, which would allow retailers to watch as customers shop the site, then offer them things like coupons, discounts, or customer support in order to increase conversions. And then there are real-time ads, which is currently the third most popular use case, but one which could finally steer advertisers away from click-based metrics. ”Because you’re connected in real-time with a persistent connection, and it’s bi-directional, you can also see where your audience is in the moment, what they’re doing, and what they’re looking at,” says Parreira. “So, if you have an ad in front of you, our system can note that you’re looking at the ad, and can track the time to the millisecond.”

The company is now entering the U.S. market, so it’s looking to partner with more companies here. However, it already has some deals underway, including several around the social TV space, such as with TVplus and Watchwith, for example, as well as with social marketing company Nobox, and TV channels Univision and the Tennis Channel. Worldwide, there are many other clients, including Sephora and South America’s largest bank, Banco do brasil. Combined, Realtime’s partners now power 120 million user connections across the web.

Parreira says that many people have talked about the real-time web, but generally in abstract terms. “Realtime is the first company building a tangible framework that will make that abstraction a reality. We did not create a product. We created an industry,” he boldly proclaims. “Real-time will be the foundation of the next web, the modern era of the web, or, if you want, ‘web 3.0,’ and I think it’s really going to impact a lot of businesses.”