Paying Attention to Top Tech Trends of the Future

Everything we do in work and life seems to revolve around and depend on technology. It certainly has changed the playing field for small business owners and entrepreneurs alike. With so much happening so fast in the world of technology, it is important to stay on top of the trends and understand what is predicted to change so that you can plan accordingly.

Recently, an article in Smart Company noted some of the top tech trends that are on the horizon for the next five years. Here is a summary of those tech trends and what they might mean for you:


 Good-Bye Desktop, Hello Tablets and Portable Devices
They say the desktop is on life-support soon to be put out of its behemoth misery by tablets, smartphones, and other portable devices. No longer will you need a monitor and keyboard either. It will be increased functionality and portability to work on the go.

Search Technology Goes Social
While you might not think that something so scientific would actually become social, it’s true. Social media platforms are impacting searches on search engines and vice versa. How information is delivered and shared will continue to change and will often become more influenced by peers and colleagues on your social networks. This means that businesses will also need to rethink their search strategies as well as their social media strategies to become more integrated.

High Resolution
Not only will we want a clearer picture when it comes to information, but we will also want it to appear more life-like when we view it on a display. That means technology will have to provide a way to offer high pixel density on every type of device.

Working on a Cloud
The cloud will replace the cubicle so that where and how you work will never be the same. There will be no need for a dedicated workspace when cloud computing allows you to access your files and collaborate anywhere in the world.

Tapping Your Networks
The whole notion that working and interacting online is really an anti-social activity will finally be put to rest. Instead, more people will recognize the importance of engagement and communication online as a valuable social interaction tool. It is a way to get more information and reach out to more people than face-to-face strategies could ever do. Every decision could now be based upon who or what is in your social network.

Stop Typing and Start Talking
The art of knowing the keyboard may soon become a lost art as technology allows for more voice-activated and voice-controlled functionality. Siri is just the beginning. There will be no more need for a keyboard or mouse; we’ll be doing more talking than typing.

Global Media Stream
All content will soon be streamed through your computer, tablet, smartphone or other device, including video and audio content. This could also mean the end to the television set! Time will tell if the future will leave this device behind as well.

What’s to Become of the 9-to-5 Work Schedule?
What was once the given in terms of work hours is not necessarily the common work schedule anymore. With people working on the road and with people all over the world, these hours no longer frame productivity. If anything, people are setting their own hours thanks to technology and working on the fly and as-needed. Whether it is working from home or the plane, work is getting done on a completely new schedule driven by work demands and facilitated by technology.

Custom Home Entertainment
We may no longer say, “There is nothing on.” That’s because we can leverage technology to create our own entertainment and customize what we want to watch and enjoy thanks to streaming media and access to a wider array of content that we can select when desired. This will be further possible through portable devices as well as voice and motion control capabilities.

A Strategic Partner
As business owners, it is good to note these changes and determine how you might leverage them to further interact and attract your key audience. At Flyline Search Marketing, we stay at the forefront of these trends to adapt our Internet Marketing strategies so that our customers are realizing the benefits of today and tomorrow’s technology and communication channels. Find out by contacting us today!

Search-based Marking Trends for 2012

Within the area of search-based marketing, which includes SEO, paid search, performance email and conversion, there are a number of key trends on the horizon for 2012 and beyond. In his recent article, Peter Stewart covers some of the hottest trends to take note of for this year:


Conversion Trends

He identified a number of conversion trends, including source-to-sale reporting, which is focused on measurability and metrics for greater performance management; growth in mobile and tablet apps; more in-depth user experience testing; and greater adoption of HTML5 for more solid user experiences.

Search Engine Optimization Trends

The key SEO trends noted were personalization of search results tied to social signals from major social networking platforms; Google’s launch of Your World social search integration for more customized search engine results; and private content in Web results tied to public knowledge about each user.

Paid Search Trends

Current paid search trends are geared toward strong growth in performance display advertising; a larger slice of the budget pie being spent on Facebook PPC ads; and the advent of high premium ad placements on YouTube.

Performance Email Information Trends

This is a significant area for 2012 due to the rapid increase around the world in the use of mobile messaging. Other areas of importance include qualified data tied to the Consumer Protection Act of 2012 in which more is required in terms of unsolicited messaging the need to opt in to ensure no stiff penalties.

Users want more relevance out of any email communication they receive or they will simply unsubscribe from their relationship with you. Therefore, personalization of communication is a top priority as is relevant and valuable content that they are looking for from a provider. You need to know what that content is and then be the one to deliver it in order to maintain valuable relationships going forward.

There is a movement beyond marketing to the idea of “ongoing, integrated digital conversation.” As the article noted, “With so many marketing channels available to both business/brands and consumers, gone are the days of the ‘silo’ approach.

Integration of profile and behavioral data across different marketing channels such as search, mobile, social, eCommerce, etc. will prove to be the key to understanding your customer and accompanying them through their individual journey with you.”

What This Means for You

Noting these trends is just the first step. From there, you must determine how you can address these trends in your own search marketing and Internet marketing strategies for your business. Whether you incorporate and implement them on your own or you leverage the expertise of a firm like Flyline Search Marketing, it is important to stay on top of these trends and how they can impact your business – both positively and negatively – so that you remain at the forefront of your industry or even earn yourself a spot at the top, replacing competitors that were not attuned to such trends.

Staying Relevant for 2012 in the Social Media Arena

Every business needs a social media strategy. It is as simple as that. A new generation of consumer is upon us and they are engaging with social media in increasing numbers each year. Smartphones and other technologies has become a consumer’s go-to device for information.


Small and large businesses can benefit from a comprehensive social media strategy to engage and inform their customers. Your goal needs to be organizing a clear and compelling marketing strategy to garner a greater market share in 2012. Angela West of PCWorld offered businesses five hot tips for developing and navigating the social media market and how to put your business on the path to social media success.

Develop Clear and Precise Monthly Goals
Businesses need to determine what they want to achieve with social media. Are you strictly looking to drive sales, inform customers of product, or simply increase traffic to your website, or are you seeking to blend all three goals? Once you organize your goals, set about defining the goals and committing resources to achieving them. A well-trained staff can influence and target key goals to advance your campaign.

Name Your Numbers
Ms. West suggests products such as Google Analytics and Hootsuite to determine and measure your results. These products can track visitors and give you detailed page hits and origins for free. Recently, Google Analytics included real-time tracking to increase your ability to offer relevant customer information based on consumer needs. In addition, Klout offers a free suite of analytic tools to provide you with data.

Getting to Know You
A successful campaign requires that you engage and inform your customers with relevant and interesting information. This requires you to look beyond Facebook and Twitter and develop sites on LinkedIn and Google+ to increase your web presence. Directories are available to attach links to drive your website traffic and increase your visibility with search engines.

Time to Hire a Professional
Hiring a professional social media marketing firm might be your best bet. Typically, small and midsize companies have a limited workforce and each employee’s job description and workload is full. Spend the resources to hire a professional and let your current staff maintain their positions promoting sales and providing customer service.

An outsourced social media marketing firm can increase and promote your business to its fullest potential. Ask other business associates or your web designer to recommend a firm. During the interview process, ask them to provide references, to quantify their results, and ask what plan they will put in place for you.

Let’s Get That in Writing
Social media is all about subtle self-promotion, so don’t forget to include your sites on all your printed business material. Add your links to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ on your fliers, business cards, brochures, and any printed material your company uses. Having these links on your printed material will make it easier for consumers to find you on the web.

The Last Line of Social Media Defense: How to Protect Against Online Attacks

The importance of protecting your business against hackers and other technologies which can destroy your business and personal data can not be overstressed. Your social content is vital and you risk losing the investment of hard work as well as money through cyber attacks. Take these important steps to ensure you build a wall that is difficult to breach and begin assembling an arsenal of tools to combat hackers.

Yahoo Finance recently offered six specific tips for countering attacks as well as safeguarding important content. Protect your bottom-line as well as your content with these companies who provide advanced protection against online attacks:   

• SocialSafe.net: SocialSafe.net offers a comprehensive service that backs up your data from a UK-based company, iBundle. It allows you to create an online as well as offline digital journal for photos and entries. Users can trace their social media profile and view changes. There is a free version that offers a limited Facebook back-up, and users can purchase the standard upgrade for $3.49 a year. This is a bargain considering you can transition from your Twitter and Facebook profiles to save messages and photo comments. SocialSafe.net also offers a professional upgrade, which includes Google+ and Viadeo for $6.99 year. If you are interested in backing up all your content, including your Facebook business pages, they offer a $13.99 a year upgrade.  
• My Facebook Account: Businesses looking for a free tool to save their Web pages from Facebook should look to Firefox and their free tool that allows users the ability to download this add-on and save messages, friend lists, photos, events, groups and notes as well as additional Facebook content directly to your hard drive.  
• My Twitter—My Tweets are Safe: Facebook is not the only media site with free backup available. TweetBackup from Triop provides Twitter users with the ability to archive up to 3,200 tweets and store their followers. No password is required so this application offers additional appeal to users who have been compromised before.

• My YouTube: The YouTube Downloader lets users download video from YouTube and convert them to different formats, such as MP3 and MOV files. And, the best part is this program is free.   
• My Blog—Yes, My Words are Important: Another import to the United States from Triop is BlogBackupr, a back-up program for bloggers. This application requires no software installation and automatically restores blogs from Blogger.com and WordPress.
• My Head is the Clouds—But, More Importantly, So is My Content: Backupify.com is a cloud-based service that regularly backs up content stored on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. Users can protect their photo albums, messages as well as online profiles for a cost of $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, depending on how many accounts you hold as well as your data storage needs. Backupify.com also offers users a free version to secure up to one gigabyte of data and three accounts.

Taking the Necessary Steps

Planning a course of action and taking steps to preserve your valuable content will pay large dividends in the future. Don’t run the risk of hackers destroying precious data. Search these sites to find the best program for your unique position. 

On Target: The Advantages of Google Adwords

Many companies are looking for ways to generate revenue. One way companies can increase their Web presence and generate income at the same time is with Google Adwords. Google Adwords is a tool businesses can use to increase the traffic to their website and develop additional sources of income.

Building a Stronger Network

Google developed an online advertising system that uses textual ads within your website to reach customers via research by key words. Typically, ads are placed on the right column or top portion of your website to attract customer attention. As the website owner, you have control of how you want the ads displayed within your site. You can also choose design elements such as destination address, descriptions and titles. For the ads to be displayed, you purchase key words.

As customers punch in key words on a Google search, your ad will be displayed. A bidding system is used to determine who receives the highest rating. The cost of Google Adwords is based on a cost per click method. Each time a person clicks on your ad, you are charged. However, you control the region and language your ad is placed in.

The same is true with cost. You control your budget and determine how much you want to spend daily or by key word. You can also develop a budget strictly on a particular advertising campaign.

Seeing the Fruits of Your Advertising Labor

Here are some tips on maximizing what you get from what you put into your Google Adwords strategy:

• Time: Be prepared to spend a good amount of time personally developing a successful campaign. For individuals, plan on developing 50 similar keywords with 3 to 4 ads linked to the same landing page. Plan to spend anywhere from 4 to 6 hours a week managing your adword account.
• ROI: Keep a cost accounting of your ROI to see which adworks drives your cost per sale. Your cost per action (CPA) information is vital. You can determine if this falls into a lead or a sale and base your future marketing strategies on this information. 
• Click, Click: Be thoughtful when establishing your ads. You want very specific and targeted ads with each keyword. Proper keyword phrasing will increase your click rate and your revenue.

Promoting your website and increasing traffic can lead to higher numbers in revenue. Partnering with a Google Adwork marketing campaign can drive your business and traffic. A focused campaign will increase your web presence and lead to greater sources of revenue.

On target keywords will effectively drive your marketing campaign and bring these into a tightly managed group which will enhance your company profile. Flyline Search Marketing can create the type of campaigns that get you the results you are looking for in terms of reaching your target audience and converting them.

Pam Russom—Back Where She Belongs

Flyline Search Marketing is excited to announce the full-time return of our long-time President, Pam Russom. Pam had left the company briefly to focus on a personal matter and now has returned to Flyline Search Marketing to lead us during a time of tremendous growth and expansion.

We are busy developing inventive ways to help our clients reach their target audience, and Pam’s widespread knowledge of SEO and SEM techniques will increase our delivery time and your revenues.  Pam will focus her tremendous interpersonal and leadership skills to continue to develop our client base and growth as a Google Adwords Certified Partner. Her extensive knowledge of search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media, website design, and brand development and marketing will drive Flyline Search Marketing and continue our role as a leader in Atlanta, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque’s business communities.

Pam will capitalize on her extensive understanding of SEO and SEM to continue building Flyline Search Marketing as a leader in social media marketing strategies. In addition, Pam specializes in multimedia consultation, sales training, and event planning to fully develop your business and maximize your company’s exposure. 

Numerous Capabilities and Deep Experience

Pam brings a varied skilled set defined by professionalism and comprehensive knowledge that defines success. Her business and professional experience is diverse with additional positions held in television and radio, which have led her to a fuller understanding of marketing strategies.

Pam was Marketing Director for American PolySteel Corporation and Marketing Consultant for multiple radio stations. She worked for American General Media as an Internet Sales Director before joining us as President. She also holds a BBA in Small Business Management from Georgia Southern University.

Pam keeps on top of the local business and community activities by being associated with the following groups and organizations:

•  Rio Rancho Regional Chamber of Commerce
• Albuquerque Business Builders
• Christian Business Leaders Network
• Business to Business
• Linked by Albuquerque
• New Mexico 200 Linked
• Synergy Networking
• Women Make a Difference (WMAD)

Each of these organizations strives to build businesses through hard work, communication, and networking. Pam’s affiliation with all of these organizations only serves to increase your considerable knowledge and business connections.

Give Us a Call

Pam is committed to positioning your company for success. Give us a call today at 1.866.258.5511; in Albuquerque, you can contact us at 505.718.4560; and in Atlanta, you can reach us at 678.867.6810 to see how we can position your company to maximize your exposure and increase your revenue with a competitively priced and comprehensive package that delivers results.  

Microblog: The End of Innocence

The Twitter generation has embarked on mission to impart all the tedious details of one’s life to an unsuspecting group of followers. We hear from our friends about the painful bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway or they share adorable pictures of their kids or pets. Whatever the occasion, no idea that passes through some people’s head is to trivial not to post.

This begs the question: When is enough, enough? What are the boundaries we should set, socially and in our business environment, to divulge to our followers in the social media arena? The Examiner raised this same question. 

The “TMI” of Microblogging

Microblogging has become a driving force in the world of social media. Twitter counts 140 characters as your tweet and you can update regularly to your followers. So, tweets like, “Hot sale today. Our sweaters are 30% off while supplies last” become commonplace, which is not a bad thing when you are looking for a beautiful winter sweater, but the problem occurs when you are oversaturated with boring and irrelevant tweets that do not inform, or worse, annoy.

Do we really need to know the CFO of our local company is “At the dentist, that tooth popped right out?” I believe this falls under the over-sharing category. And, this is becoming a slippery-slope for some individuals and businesses.

Where do we draw the line with engaging our customer or follower without boring them, or worse, offending them? There is a fine line to walk when you microblog.

Knowing Where to Draw that Line

You must focus on relevant and informative information that interests your followers and develops a dialogue.  Keep these ideas in mind every time you microblog to constantly check yourself and develop microblogging to its full potential:

• Plan Ahead: Like any good business plan, you should have a solid microblog campaign setup that focuses on upcoming sales, updated product launch dates, new store hours, or the unveiling of a new charity campaign your company supports.
• Be Real: Impart information that is honest and informative. Social media works in real-time and with the power of the internet to research it is easier than ever to spot a fake.
• Edit Yourself: Before you hit send each time you must review and ask yourself these questions:

How does this develop my brand?

Promote my business?

Empower my follower?

Increase my market share?

Create dialogue?

Because this is what you want to happen with each microblogging session. Make this tool work for you and not against you. Use sites like Twitter and Tumblr to your advantage. Great microblogging can do wonders for your business and drive your revenues. Just remember what to say and how much to share when you do.

Your Perspective

Please share your perspective or examples of microblogging in terms of what to say and what not to say. Let us know if you have questions on what makes for good content and we’ll be happy to help you get your points across in a way that leverages the true power of microblogging.