This app has become very popular.  Right now, it’s in the No. 11 position on Apple’s App Store Top Charts for free downloadable apps and No. 13 in Google Play.  As of April, the site was seeing up to 150 million images shared each day.  The most popular demographic appears to be 13 to 25 year olds, according to the company.

There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Snapchat, mainly from parents who are afraid of their teens sexting. The appeal obviously being that the pictures disappear right after you send them; however, let’s point out the fact that you can easily take a screen shot on any photos or video that you send. Just FYI, if you do take a screenshot, the sender will be notified. Also, the visual content is saved within your phone – it just takes a good amount of time and effort to find them. So, the pictures and video shared are never truly deleted. There’s even Snapgrab, which is an app specifically created to retrieve the visuals from Snapchat.

You’re probably wondering how can brands use this new tool. Last month, Taco Bell became one of the first brands to take to Snapchat, using the app to make a big – and secret – announcement. Taco Bell brilliantly cross-promoted their Snapchat username on Twitter, ensuring they would gain fans on Snapchat.

What did their secret announcement say? That the Beefy Crunch Burrito was back. It was a great way to reintroduce their new burrito and make use of their social media networks. See below of the Snapchat message.

“People are obsessed with Beefy Crunch Burrito so Snapchat seemed like the right platform to make the announcement,” Taco Bell director of social and digital media Tressie Lieberman said to Mashable. “Sharing that story on Snapchat is a fun way to connect with the fans that we are thrilled to have. It’s all about treating them like personal friends and not consumers.”

Make no doubt Taco Bell created buzz about their new burrito.  The downside is that there’s no way to quantify just how many Beefy Crunch Burritos sales were made because of Snapchat.

While Snapchat worked well for Taco Bell, it may not be right for your brand. Here are some questions to ask yourself before joining any new social media network:

-          Is your audience there?

-          Will it help you reach a new audience?

-          Do I have the time to commit to a new social media platform?

-          Do I have relevant content to share? If so, is this content unique from the content I’m currently sharing on other platforms?

-          How will you measure success?

-          How much time and effort is required to be considered successful?

-          Will it help you reach your overall KPIs?

Have a question?  Need help with your digital advertising, marketing, or technology issues? Contact USDM today.  We’re easy to talk to and happy to help.

Cutts has said that this new generation of the Penguin algorithm will be significant and one of the most talked about Google updates this year. So what does that mean for us? First, let’s take a look at the first Penguin update and its impact.

The first Penguin update launched on April 24, 2012, and had two refreshes in May and October. The update primarily affected sites that were using “black-hat SEO” techniques in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. These unethical techniques included participating in link schemes – in particular, people buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed to boost Google rankings. It was said that Penguin only affected about 3% of search queries in English. The refreshes affected less than 1% of searches.

While the new Penguin update has many stressing out, it’s important to remember that the best practices have never changed. As long as you’re following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you should be fine. The updates aren’t meant to hurt those who are practicing white hat SEO – just those who are intentionally trying to manipulate the SERPs in a dishonest way. While we don’t know what Penguin 2.0 has in store for us, we do know that the original Penguin update focused on spammy, low quality links that were not earned from quality traffic. If your site was affected by Penguin last year, then you know that Google sees your site as having unnatural links and you’ve had plenty of time to fix it.

In addition to fixing low quality links on your site, you might want to look out for the following in the next couple of weeks:

-          Keyword stuffing

-          Duplicate content

-          Cloaking

-          Aggressive use of exact match anchor text

While the original Penguin update mainly focuses on link schemes, the aforementioned are important factors that the update also took into account. Penguin 2.0 will probably place more importance on these this go-round.

Here’s a breakdown on some of the changes:

-          Google+ Stream format change: This is the first thing you’ll notice and for you Pinners, a very familiar look and feel. The Stream has changed to a three-column format, that is responsive depending on your device’s orientation and screen size

-          Larger focus on photos: Following in Facebook’s footsteps, Google+ now allows users to add larger cover photos. The photos will now display 16 x 9 when fully expanded, so it’s more important than ever to choose a high quality image that represents your brand

-          Automated & related hashtags: Now, Google+ automatically adds hashtags to posts. You can, however, remove these automated tags. From a hashtagged post, you’ll be able to browse related content without ever leaving the page and also see related hashtags. This will make it a lot easier for users to find your information

-          Reviews tab on business pages: Users will now be able to leave reviews for your brand on Google+

It’s no secret that Google+ has struggled with gaining as much traction as say, Facebook or Pinterest. And even though there are about 500 million users – about 135 million of which are active users – Google+ still isn’t near as successful as its creators have hoped. That’s why we’ve seen Google try to “force” its social networking platform on users recently by integrating search with social.

From the looks of it, Google is borrowing the best elements from other social media platforms – namely Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter – in an attempt to bring in a larger demographic.  Currently, their demographic is predominately single males who are 18 to 24 years of age.

While these changes may help to garner some new fans, I don’t think it will be enough to compete with the likes of Facebook on a serious level.  We’ll see.

Granted, Atlanta is a world-class, modern city with a rich, passionate history and a reputation for southern hospitality.  But this is a huge visitation number that surpasses that achieved by other iconic U.S. destinations that have much larger marketing budgets.

In fact, the city of Atlanta and the 100 year old Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB) increased visitation by 28 percent over the past decade (despite the economy) to reach this impressive tourism landmark achievement.

Some key factors are evident.  Strong city and business vision and leadership; a $5 billion investment in new attractions, restaurants and hotels over the past decade; an inclusive and cooperative community that could bundle valuable packages; a rebranding of the city; and leveraging the internet at its earliest stages — all contributed to the city’s tourism success.

USDM.net is proud to have worked this entire past decade with the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau to leverage digital strategy through www.atlanta.net and other digital assets we architected over the past 10 years.  Remember, the very first web site was created in 1993 and by 2003 many organizations were still hesitant to take much budget away from the long trusted traditional advertising media and commit it to a new, complex, and quickly changing digital media. But, Atlanta did. And in fact, our client has been in lock step with us to stay ahead of the curve and to harness the first mover advantage in areas where other destination brands were slow to move.

Today, we lead a fully integrated marketing program that delivers a seamless, cohesive brand in end-to-end engagement to highly targeted audiences.  Atlanta visitors have become our brand advocates online.  Intelligent leveraging of the digital world can exponentially maximize a brand’s reach, impact and return on investment. And real time analytics create strategy that ensures cost-efficiencies. This is Atlanta’s story. And it doesn’t stop here. It grows and grows and grows as new, emerging technology and marketing opportunities arise, Atlanta will be there ahead of the pack.

Here is our 3 Point checklist for thinking ahead of the curve and harnessing a first-mover advantage:

1. Think Big. The Big Idea. The Big Plan. The Big Results. Don’t be afraid to step out in front.
2. Create a marketing plan at the business layer and develop strategy tied to a priority list of only 3 goals.
3. Harness the power of real time, right now digital advertising and analytics.

Visit www.usdm.net to learn more.

The solution is to analyze the User Experience and your approach to Responsive Design. Both are strong determining factors in consumer engagement and conversions, and repeat traffic.

Above are two of the walls of client sessions led by the USDM User Experience / Information Architecture (UX/IA) team working through User Experience Design for their new website.  It was fun and very exciting for the client’s team and critical to converting leads.

Don’t rely on outdated “best practices “ suffering through numerous web site design iterations.

Rely on these Fresh, New, Smart Moves from USDM’s UX/IA Team

User Experience Design begins with how you want target audiences interacting with your brand.

• What do you want them to believe about your brand, feel about your brand and act upon?
  • What assumptions do you have about your brand?
  • Does “real time” website research support your brand assumptions?
  • Do you know the gritty details of why customers convert to leads on your website?
  • Do you know which types of customers you are losing to competitors?

Are you looking for a better solution? We solve these kinds of problems every day for DMOs large and small.

USDM’s UX/IA team can help. With our deep experience in digital design, we can produce an elegant, purposeful web or mobile experience that will influence your target audience. Take a look at www.usdm.net. Or contact us for a discussion:  headquarters@usdm.net

But in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee we are already celebrating an amazing 15% increase year to date. What marketing led to the increase? Digital strategy, and in particular, Digital Media and the use of Internet TV (IPTV) has played a significant role in the increase in the city’s tourism business.

We used a twist on our strategy in Q4 and engaged some new tracking that would give us “real time” actionable data. Pretty cool stuff resulting in big increases for overnight visitation and city revenues. And that campaign is still running strong.

We have had the pleasure of serving as Digital Agency to Pigeon Forge for the past twelve years. We are very happy to report that our contract was recently renewed for an additional five years. Ye Ha!

To find out more about how we use IPTV for destination marketing, contact us at Headquarters@usdm.net

Before this change, which started April 30, if you did a search for “miami hotels,” the hotel finder results would come up in the shaded area, just above the paid advertising ads and organic results (see below).

Now you’ll see that Hotel Finder appears above the organic results and offers the user a chance to select from 2- to 5-star hotels as well as a “Book hotels” button. Google said the change was made to help users book easily and quickly, but is this a conflict of interest for the search engine giant?

Many seem to think so and allege that Google is blurring the lines between paid advertising and organic search, promoting its products over brands, OTAs and others involved in the online travel industry.

Google says, “We’re changing the design layout of our hotel, flight, credit card and bank account results, which help users complete actions such as booking flights quickly and easily.  We’ve always disclosed that Google may be paid when a user completes such an action; we want to be clear and consistent in how we do that.”

To us it does look like Google is blurring the lines. An average user is more likely to click on the top organic result but now there’s no separation from Hotel Finder and those organic results. There should be some indication that it’s Google’s product as not to mislead the consumer. Already the Google Flight Search results are above the organic, so it’s safe to assume that Google is trying to take over the online travel industry.

Google may not be seeing immediate conversions now but it’s our prediction that volume will increase in no time.

Want to know how to help your brand get the most out of organic search? Call us today at 1-800-208-8661 or email us at consulting@usdm.net

It’s always frustrating to spend time searching online for something. Most times the information you must sift through is tremendous..  Have you ever come across content with scattered phrases and random hyperlinks that have NOTHING to do with your intended topic?  If you have, you’ve been webspamed!

Now Google has an answer for that. On March 24, 2012, Matt Cutts posted a blog that discussed Google’s, “step to reward high-quality sites”.

What this really represents is the newest Google algorithm, which will affect how brand marketers utilize search and how consumers find more relevant content with more effective searches. Think of an algorithm like a metal detector used by the Google Spiders in  a treasure hunt. When you type ‘Augmented Reality’ into the Google search bar the spiders take that request, and crawl down through all the web pages indexed on the Internet to determine which sites best match your needs.

This metal detector, or new algorithm, takes many things into consideration before it confirms that it has found your intended content quality, keywords, good links and title tags. Although the breakdown of it looks like a chemistry equation and it’s as mathematically challenging as it sounds, its purpose is fundamentally good. For the average, every day Google user, the benefits are simple. Better metal detector=more web gold.

And as we predicted for Panda or Farmer updates, many sites will lose rankings when this newer, better algorithm is integrated. For the spam marketer it’s a warning shot fired out to all who use spam or “workaround tactics” to get your site to the first page on Google. Beware the companies who say they can get you there fast and cheap! That usually means keyword stuffing – another “black hat” tactic Google’s algorithm dislikes and punishes Sites that are currently using these tactics are going to quickly lose their page ranking.

It’s amazing to us how many “seminars” are taking in millions of dollars claiming to get around these kinds of real advancements, and in many cases they take the money and run. Nothing replaces knowing how to do it right, and planning the work and then working the plan. There are no shortcuts.

For a site to have excellent search engine optimization it requires a quality content strategy, regular site optimization maintenance, and time. We applaud Google with this latest innovation and know that it will make for a better consumer search experience and a better brand experience for our clients.

We wrote the playbook on digital marketing and branding and would be happy to share some of the winning plays with you. If you are not happy with your current program, contact USDM.net at 1-800-208-8661 or emails us at Headquarters@usdm.net.

When it comes to search engines and user-friendliness, your website has to be on top of its game. One of the most frustrating things to search engine robots and visitors to the site are HTTP status codes.  If you’re coming across these errors, it’s time to fix them.

Common HTTP Status and Error Codes:

(This may get confusing, so we’ll use a TV remote as a metaphor for your site and pages within your site.)

404 Not Found: This is the most common, and most recognized, client error status code. It means that the URL the user is looking for doesn’t exist on the server.
Translation: You’re looking for the TV remote but it cannot be found.
Why This Happened: If you’ve deleted a page and haven’t redirected it this error will pop up. And, it’s the most frustrating for users.
How to fix it: When you delete a page from your site, do a permanent redirect to another page and delete the original page from the server. This can be done by setting up a redirect file on the server.

500 Server Error: This is an internal server error, which means your server can’t do what you’ve asked it to do, like pull up a page.
Translation: You try to use your TV remote but the batteries are dead.
Why this happened: Something is wrong with the logic/programming that puts the page together.
How to fix it: This is most likely a job for programmers/developers, but it wouldn’t hurt to check if there are any problems with the URL, such as a spelling error in the query string.

403 Forbidden Request: A 403 error occurs when the server understands what you’re requesting but refuses to fulfill your request.
Translation: You’re flipping through the channels, come across something you want to watch but you can’t watch because it’s Pay-Per-View.
Why this happened: Usually this means the section/page is password protected, but you’ve attempted to skip the login page.
How to fix it: Generally you shouldn’t be linking to these pages.

408 Request Timeout: A request timeout means that the server timed out waiting for the request that you made or in HTTP speak “The client did not produce a request within the time that the server was prepared to wait.”
Translation: You’ve lost the remove again and can’t find it. But it’s only you who can’t find it. Your wife found it just fine.
Why this happened: This could either be from the server being overworked or the client having an intermittent connection
How to fix it: These will generally be rare, if they begin to happen frequently, contact your System Administrator.

301 Moved Permanently: A 301 status code is a permanent redirect. When you go to a page with a 301 in place, you will be rerouted to another page – a page designated by the site owner.
Translation: Your remove is still AWOL, so you’ve decided to buy a universal remote and use it permanently.
When do I use a 301?  If you’ve deleted a page on your website or changed URLs, a 301 redirect is necessary if you don’t want to lose traffic to your site and cause a 404 error. 301 redirects are also good because any ‘link juice’ from the old page is ported over to the new page.

302 Found: This code indicates that a page has been redirected but only temporarily.
Translation:  Your regular remote is still missing, so you decide to use another remote until the other is found.
When do I use a 302?
302 redirects are good for page that you don’t want visitors to see now, but will be brought back in the future. This works well for things like seasonal content. The main reason for using it is the ‘link juice’ will stay with the original page, so when Hanukkah comes around again, you can bring back the page with Hanukkah decorations and still have good page rank, instead of starting from scratch.

If you need help deciphering “Geek Speak” and fixing your website errors, contact USDM.net at 1-800-208-8661 or emails us at Headquarters@usdm.net

Wish allows users to wish on a variety of products such as home décor, clothing, jewelry and electronics. The website’s layout is almost exactly like Pinterest; it displays images of products but these images are what users have added and “Wished” on.

Making Wishes

People sign up using their Facebook account. This is so Wish can gather information on products you may be interested in via your Interests and Likes on your FB profile. When you “Wish” on a product, you’re basically saying that you’d like to have the item at a discount or for free. If enough people wish for the same item, you could receive a discount or the item for free. You also always have the chance to buy the item from the vendor at any time.

WishWall.me Login Screen

Products are placed on the website by users and wishes are granted from Wish negotiating directly with vendors for deals and discounts, according to the Wish website.

Getting More Wishes

Once signed up you’re instantly given 15 wishes, (that’s 5 times the amount a genie will give you). For every person you invite to the site, you’re granted 15 more wishes. When you recommend a product to a friend and they end up wishing for that product, you gain another wish.

If you happen to use up all of your wishes, the next day you’ll be given 9 wishes to start your day. Now, if you still have wishes from the previous day but your tally is below 9, you’ll be given the amount of wishes needed to have you sitting comfortably with 9 wishes the next day. For example, Saturday night you happen to use up all but 2 wishes, come Sunday you’ll be give 7 more for a total of 9 wishes. However, when your day ends and you still have 9 or more, your wish total will stay the same on the following day.

Granting Wishes

When you wish, you’re essentially entered to win the product or gain a rebated offer. So, you don’t actually win every item you wish for. A winner is chosen when the necessary number of wishes on a product is met – but the required number isn’t always the same. The more expensive something is, the more wishes that are needed. When a product does get the required amount of wishes necessary to fulfill a wish that does not ensure that it will be your wish that is granted. Winners are randomly chosen from the people who have wished on the item, so the more you wish, share and recommend, the more often you could win. However you can only wish on each product once and you can’t undo your wishes – so be careful what you wish for.

Pinning Down Wishes

Since there’s no guarantee that all or any of your wishes will be granted, it’s pretty uncertain as to how the popularity of Wish will be maintained or increased. Since the layout is so similar to Pinterest, we believe that Pinterest will still be more popular with users – Plus, Pinterest has, “Gifts” where there are Pins of products showing their prices and link off so that purchases can be made, just like Wish allows for.

Pinterest Gift Item

Wish Item

If you’re interested in learning about the latest Social Media Platforms and trends call 1-800-208-8661 or email us at HeadQuarters@USDM.net for more information.