Before playing the tutorial video it’s important to understand where Google+ is headed and the major difference between them and Facebook. Even today, I still believe that Facebook is for personal use and Google+ is more of a social discovery network to find great things in any topic of your interest. Their new design is reflective of their philosophy where you have all the updates as singular cards rather than a traditional stream. Some people even call the new design as Google’s version of Pinterest.

One of the most promising additions in Google+ is the brand new photos application that lets you add a ton of effects and ensure that all your pictures look sharp and accurate. As a matter of fact, I tested their new photo features myself and I think that they have worked hard to ensure that each and every effect is existent and you don’t need to tackle with complicated functionalities in order to apply them.

The Card based update system also allows you to explore relevant hash=tags and other interesting content and I loved the way the original post flips over to make room for your discovery and exploration pertaining to a single topic.

Below is the video tutorial that shows you each and every new feature of Google+. Please watch it carefully and if you have any questions feel free to use the comments section below.

Connect with Bloggers

Twitter is a great way to meet other likeminded bloggers that share your interests. One way to increase your online presence is to join Twitter and connect with as many bloggers as you can. You won’t be thanked for bombarding your followers with incessant Tweets about your blog but if you reach out and make the effort to interact with other users, your audience will build itself. Every follower you receive on Twitter has the potential to become a loyal blog reader. Don’t forget to install the Twitter button on your blog to alert your existing readers of your profile.

Connect with Brands

Twitter isn’t just for bloggers. It is also the perfect place to connect with the brands that you have previously worked with and the brands that you wish to work with in the future. You can use Twitter to create a relationship with relevant brands and use it to put your blog in the spotlight.

Return the Favour

When you are getting to grips with a social platform it can be easy to focus on reaching out to new contacts rather than interacting with those followers that you already have. If you want to boost your readership, it is essential that you nurture the relationships that you create on Twitter. Taking the time to respond to a question or simply thanking those who take time out to follow you or comment on your blog will not go unnoticed.

Use Hashtags

Learning what sets apart one social media platform from another and how to use that knowledge to your advantage is the key to success. Twitter is the only platform that uses hashtags to highlight tweets that are about a certain subject. If you want to gain followers, get involved in these Twitter chats and integrate yourself into the conversation by using certain hashtags in your tweets.

Stay Active

If you have been blogging for a while, you will know the importance of being consistent. If you don’t update your blog, your readers will lose interest and this is exactly the same with your Twitter profile. If your profile is inactive for a long period of time you will lose the followers that you worked so hard to gain.

So there you have it, social networking platforms such as Twitter have a lot to offer bloggers and when done right, networking on Twitter can lead to a number of opportunities.

This is a guest post by Georgie Morley who writes for multi-lingual SEO specialists Ingenuity Digital. Follow them on twitter @ingenuitydigi or visit their website at ingenuitydigital.co.uk

The question is how traffic from organic results compensates for the loss of paying ads?

To answer this question, we developed a statistical model to estimate the percentage of clicks attributable to search ads. From the analysis of several hundred of these studies, it appears that 89% of the clicks on ads are incremental in the sense that the visits to the advertiser’s site would not have occurred without the paid campaigns .

These clicks are not then recovered with a corresponding increase in organic clicks, this percentage has been given the name of Incremental Ad Clicks (IAC) and were considered three different scenarios to understand what differences occur in user behavior.

Data is current as of August, 2011, for a total of 5300 cases. In the first scenario, in which the campaigns are off the average value of Incremental Ad Click is of ’85%.

In the scenario where the spending on advertising has decreased by ad but it is not zero , has been verified an average decrease  of 80% of traffic to the sites advertised , so that was not offset by organic clicks.

This value is lower than the previous scenario because the advertisers may have turned off parts of their country that they considered less effective.

In the event that an advertiser decides instead to invest more on search ads , was an average increase of 78% of the incremental traffic . In the latter scenario, however, one in which advertisers were not campaigns earlier and started from scratch, have seen an increase in traffic of 79%.

Considerations

It ‘a very widespread opinion that paid search is a way to go only when a website has little visibility in the organic SERP, wrong!

For some time we argue that SEO and Keyword Advertising activities that are not mutually exclusive , even in a truly effective web marketing strategy, can co-exist and travel in parallel. This study not only confirms our belief, that even in the presence of a website with a good organic ranking, thanks to the pay per click Adwords we can further extend the visibility against a wider pool of target users.

The statistics of this research in this area leave no doubt, clicks incremental obtained through paid search lead many visitors who otherwise would not have been caught thanks to Organic, even if our site was always placed in the top positions of the SERP.

Note:  This is a guest post by Ankur. Ankur is the Digital Media strategist of SEO India Agency. He is also an active blogger and loves to share his experience and knowledge of the SEO India, Internet Marketing and reputation management.

Things to Expect At Google IO 2013

A Music Subscription Service – Google is expected to launch a brand new music subscription service to complete with Spotify. This is the latest rumor that’s making the rounds at IO 2013. Details about the product is pretty much vague and unclear but I am sure we will know a lot by the end of the day.

Babel Chat Service – Traditional Gtalk is not working anymore. We live in a world dominated by WhatsApp, iChat, Viber etc. that provides the same version of their optimized universal chat client for almost all devices on the planet. It is expected that Google will launch a WhatsApp like service called Babel that will utilize your Google account and sync conversations across all devices. You can also expect the launch of Babel apps for Windows 8 Mobile, iOS and of course Android.

A new Google Maps – Last week we saw a brand new image of what’s supposedly being called as the next generation Google Maps. The design is much clearer with lots of information floating about inside the map itself. Expect a long announcement for Maps today.

A new Gmail – Google IO 2013 will witness the launch of a brand new Gmail for their millions of users.  A few weeks back we did see a slight change in the way we compose and create new messages. Today you can expect a major haul that will add lots of new features and a brand new look for Gmail.

Game Center for Android – This is one update that Google is clearly copying after seeing the success of iOS GameCenter. The next Android update will include a full-fledged GameCenter for Android. Although we don’t have any details but there are rumors that the new GameCenter will be deeply integrated with your Google+ account and feature a full gamification mechanism.

Start of IO Conference – 12 PM Eastern Time 15^th May 2013

Google Play Music All Access

Google Just announced Google Play Music that allows you to access millions of song within Google Music using their unique subscription service.

Creative cloud is monthly subscription system that lets you use all of Adobe’s software both online and offline. Since you need to download and sync all your stuff to your personal cloud there is hardly any chance of piracy. As a matter of fact I truly believe that this new approach will not only help shape Adobe’s finances but also define new possibilities with the creative cloud users. A monthly plan is sometimes a hell of a lot better than any packaged bundle software. You don’t need to save cash for the next major Adobe update, spend extra money for new softwares, worry about storing your work and the list goes on.

The only thing that you need for a hassle free experience is a fast internet connection and 50 dollars a month. I know that this amount might not sound reasonable especially people living in countries like India, Singapore, China etc. but the amount of help and service that you are getting with the Creative Cloud is unlike anything you have ever experienced in the Adobe ecosystem.

Adobe announced at their Los Angeles MAX Conference that the introduction of creative could late last year was an astounding success. Over half million users joined the new model of getting the latest software and the number count is rising fast. In 2013 the company is shifting to a whole new business structure aimed at providing all their services to anybody. They will also stop updating their CS series like they used to over the last couple of years. Instead, the updates are going to be small, frequent and often driven by user demands.

It would be interesting to see how the entire creative community responds to such a radical change in Adobe’s consumer model. Feel free to comment your thoughts below and let me know how this new system is going to affect you as a designer/developer.

The new trailers also focus on showing some awesome cut scenes from various missions. I think that GTA 5 will be the best one in the GTA series. The graphics and in-game mechanics are more realistic than ever. You can check out the clips below and share your thoughts on the upcoming game slated for a September 17^th release.

Michael Trailer

 Trevor Trailer

Franklin Trailer

We just got confirmed reports that 2 people are dead and many others are being admitted to nearby hospitals. Below are some snippets of the social media coverage from the Boston incident. Let us know what you guys think, is it just a failure or a deliberate attempt?

What the fuck just happened?#bostonmarathon twitter.com/theoriginalwak…

— Tyler Wakstein (@theoriginalwak) April 15, 2013

 

In this event HTC also announced a brand new smartphone called the HTC First that’s gonna support all the features of Facebook Home. As of now there are selected devices that can use this feature slated for an April 12th release.

Smartphones Supporting Facebook Home

• HTC First
• HTC One X
• HTC One X+
• Samsung Galaxy S3
• Samsung Galaxy S4

[More smartphone support coming real soon]