Alex Dumitru / Sandossu

Google has just added a new feature to the Trends tool. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what a lot of us were expecting: the search volume in numbers.

Now it shows how much a keyword is searched, in comparison to the average searches since 2004 until the time you perform the query. For example if today the keyword ‘iPhone’ has been searched two times more than the average times it was searched daily from 2004, Google Trends will show ‘2′.

Along with this, now you also have the possibility to download the trends as a CSV file. All you need is to be logged into your Google account.

via Google Blog

ReadWriteWeb has written a very interesting post about Mixx. Now it’s one year old and traffic seems to grow really fast, but still can’t be a liable competitor for Digg, receiving less than 5% of Digg’s traffic.

Still, it seems to be on the good road and might grow, especially that Digg is full of spam stories, flames and unsatisfied users.

Google made an announcement that they opened the Adsense network to other third-party advertisers. This is good news for both publishers and third-party advertising network. Publishers have more monetization possibilities and advertising networks deliver more traffic to their advertisers.

Currently, this only works for image ads, so you will see no change if you are opted out. If you are currently using or going to use image ads, then you have to update your privacy policy to let your visitors know about the third-party ads you’re serving.

We’re happy to announce that the Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. During this initial release, only ads in English are eligible, although we look forward to offering more options in the future.

By accepting third-party ads, we can attract a greater variety of advertising on the Google content network, which we believe will result over time in increased revenue for publishers and more relevant advertising for end users.

More on Google’s Official Blog

I do have websites with traffic based on social media, others based on search engines and others combined. I have been doing a lot of research and comparisons between all of them. Of course it’s hard because of the niches, but I do have some that are on the same niche that are some based on search engines and some on social media.

I will try to point the advantages and disadvantages of both traffic sources, so we figure what’s the best option. Of course all traffic is good, more or less, but let’s see what should we concentrate more on.

1. Quantity

• Social media traffic is much more easier to get and stumble can bring thousands of visitors from only a few votes on one page. Also a Digg front page is not so hard to reach, if you write quality content and it can bring tens of thousands of visitors. You only need to build strong profiles on social networks and the traffic will come, if you respect the quality guidelines.
• Search engine traffic is usually less favorable to be compared with social media, because you need to have a very well optimized website, with many quality inbound links. The content also must be good, as in social media’s case, but you also need to write it seo-friendly. Also the website needs to be old and established, with many pages and the inbound links need to come on a constant basis.
• Conclusion: Social media can bring more, easy traffic than search engines.

2. Quality

• The visitor that comes from social media usually doesn’t know what he will find on your page, especially on StumbleUpon, so the conversion is really low, because he might not like your page and close it. Also social media users are looking for news, entertainment and don’t intend to buy anything, so it’s hard to convert them into clients. All stats show that the CTR generated from social media is much lower than search engines.
• Search engine visitors are very targeted and the chance to find on your website what they are looking for is higher. The chance for those visitors to buy your product or click your ads is much higher, so monetization chances and possibilities are better.
• Conclusion: Social media doesn’t offer quality traffic and isn’t relevant, search engine traffic is better.

3. Monetization

• There aren’t many ways you can monetize social media traffic as well as search engine traffic. Due to the quantity, the better option is to use CPM ads, that pay for every impression and not for click, sale or lead.
• Search engine traffic can be monetized in a lot of ways. If you have a website targeted on products, like a review blog, you can easily place affiliate ads and get a sale commission. Also chances for the user to click on the CPC ads are much higher.
• Conclusion: social media traffic has more limited monetization options, only working good with CPM ads, while search engine traffic being better on CPC and CPA ads, that pay more.

So search engines bring visitors really interested in your website, while social networks bring visitors that will read a bit and then leave. But you have to use social media, because all traffic can be monetized in one way or another and you have to waste nothing. One more advantage of social media is you get your website noticed and this can bring readers and a lot of inbound links, that will help search engine traffic.

We all know how hard it is to start a new website, when nobody knows who you are. Some are facing this right now and others in the past, when they entered this industry. You have to work on link building, make strong profiles on social media websites and everything is so hard when you are alone and an anonymous name.

Exposure makes everything much easier, because friends can write and talk about you, letting other people know you exist. So try to make as many friends and connections as you can, work hard on this and it will help you on long term.

Most of you who started a company or website are trying hard to promote it and get it in front of the others and that’s not pleasant at all. What if you launched the site and got tons of traffic from the first days ? That’s what known people in the industry do, like Shoemoney with AuctionAds, JasonCalacanis with Mahalo or Danny Sullivan with Sphinn.

I have faced this problem for a long time and now, after I raised a decent number of connections, I feel much comfortable to launch a new site and promote it, with their help.

From my experience I will try to offer you a few tips to make connections and friends faster.

1. Use all major Instant Messaging platforms ( Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN, Skype, AOL ) to interact with people.
2. Build social media profiles and try to keep them updated as soon as possible, but only with interesting stories. Don’t spam, don’t exaggerate, do it naturally. You will raise fans that will help you promote your own stories. Always keep in touch with some of your fans and they might help you more. Choose the ones in the industry.
3. Help others and they will not forget you. Offer to help even if the person doesn’t request it, he will like you more.
4. Act nicely. Don’t argue, don’t start flames, because your reputation will suffer and you don’t want this. At least be sure you are right if you have to fight with someone and the others will agree with you.
5. Make relevant and interesting comments on other blogs, so the blogger and readers to be curious who you are and visit you.
6. Get in touch with your readers, they can prove very useful sometimes, interact with them.
7. Use the better social network of the moment – Twitter. This microblogging platform is great to interact with others and socialize. You can get to everyone and see how they do it, ’steal’ their marketing ideas.
8. Make a brand out of you. Use the same avatar and nickname on every website and messaging platform, so people can find you easier.
9. Link to you and your social network profiles from everywhere you can. And most important, interlink them, because some friends from one social network might also be on other and add you. Every extra connection counts.

If you follow this nine tips, you should start gaining exposure and ease your job. Along with the exposure, you can talk with your connections, exchange tips and tricks, become a better marketer.

Add me on Twitter, Stumble, Sphinn or Digg.

Image Credit: VoicesNow

The following is a guest post by Tibi Puiu, a professional blogger and social media consultant, who can be found writing down at Lost Art of Blogging.

As marketers and bloggers, we should all be very opened minded and inclined to new things. Exploration is the keyword here. If you want to be successful, in any activity you might want to follow, it’s very very important you always look around you, analyze and experiment with your work and surroundings.

In the past the easiest way to get in contact with the latest trends and so on, was to follow as many conventional media institutions as possible, from newspapers, to radio, to TV; but now with the development of the internet the world has become a smaller place and by far the easiest way to stay at top of the game with the latest, in any field, is to be active in social media.

Social media has been around for a long time now, bridging the gab between consumers and establishments (websites), but it’s only been recently that it managed to explode on the mainstream. If you’re a bit unfamiliarized with social media and all it represents, I’d recommend you first start reading my introduction to social media. If you need a few reasons why you should start extensively using social media, then I’ll just lay them down for you bellow. You’ll get converted in no time.

1. Traffic. This is probably the main reason why you should start using social media. It’s widely known that social media has the power to bring obscene amounts of traffic to your blog or website, infinitely easier then waiting years to establish your website and spending thousands on SEO services. A first hand example is the notorious digg effect, which describes the period of time in which an article from a blog or website gets popular on digg. The traffic that digg can send is tremendous, powerful enough to shatter most servers (around 100k uniques). Try building this kind of traffic the old fashion way.

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I have been very stressed lately and worked a lot, now I really need a vacation to relax a bit. Maybe you don’t know, but I love the sun and hot weather, so I will go to Greece and hope I can enjoy a nice weather.

Hopefully I will come back with new ideas and less tired, so I can achieve my goals.

Wordpress 2.5.1 was just released and includes over 70 security fixes. Visit the download page to get it, because it improves security and it’s very important for your blog.

Here is some of what they improved:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

One of the biggest problems when working online is that there are a lot of distractions that will keep you away from working and decrease your productivity. One of my biggest problem is that I get distracted from something and sometimes I forget what I was doing, losing a lot of time.

To prevent this from happening anymore, I made an exact scheduled and imposed me some rules that I will try to follow and see how much this helped me. Here is what I though of:

1. Make a well defined daily schedule and try to respect it. Do exactly what you proposed to, in the exact order. Make sure to make the schedule as reliable as possible.

2. Laziness is keeping a lot of us away from working, but if you really want to achieve your goals, this has to go. Be sure to include enough rest in your schedule, so you won’t be tired and lazy, because this can be an important factor in decreasing productivity.

3. Use instant messaging and emails only when you really need to. I figured that this was keeping me away from working and that I was spending a lot of hours with no sense, chit-chatting. The best option is to keep them closed while working, but if you need to talk with someone, stay invisible for the others or set a ‘Busy’ status. If it happens and someone disturbs you, try to keep the conversation as short as possible and get back to work. Even if you are disturbed for a very short time, it can distract you and you might lose your ideas.

4. You probably won’t want to put your cellphone on ’silent’ mode while working, because there might be someone that really needs to get to you, but like the instant messaging, don’t spend too much time chit-chatting and follow your schedule.

5. Try not to let anything on the other day and do everything as scheduled. If you start doing this, it’s a step back and you won’t reach your target on time.

6. Take short breaks. If you work for too long without a break, you get bored and tired, so take short brakes, but not while working on something. Finish what you currently have to do and relax doing something you like, then get back to work.

7. If you feel tired, take a short nap of a few hours, because it’s very important and could decrease productivity.

Blogging itself is a trend and if you do blog then you have already followed this one. But there a lot more appearing and you have to make use of everything to bring traffic and increase your readership.

Social media is so used those days, that you definitely have to use it to bring more traffic. Unfortunately, it won’t bring quality traffic, but you need all you can get and if you have good skills, then you can also monetize and convert it like organic traffic, just the rates will be lower.

Latest trend now is Twitter and like all social media websites, all you need is a powerful profile and you’ll get a good audience. It’s advantage is that it can bring visitors that are really interesting in your blog and this means a high rate of conversion. It’s not as powerful as the others, but worth.

To follow the trends you only need to do a bit of social media research and see what’s on the buzz at the moment, to make sure you don’t miss it and lose valuable visitors.

Also, you might want to follow me on Twitter to get my latest updates.