We find it much more rewarding to give than to receive, and we’re continuing a holiday tradition by donating all of our “Secret Santa” funds this season to the Stevens-Swan Humane Society of Oneida County. Like many businesses, we traditionally exchanged gifts between co-workers during the holidays. Last year one of our employees, Erinn Riley, suggested we collectively give our gift money to a local cause instead, and offered Stevens-Swan as a natural choice.

We love dogs. In case you couldn’t already tell, check out our employee profiles. Stop by our Agency on any given day, and you’re likely to be greeted by one of our employees’ dogs, regular visitors to the office. We’re like one big family here, and our dogs consider this one of their homes. So when we were looking for a local cause to support, we naturally thought of the Humane Society. (more…)

Our friends over at Sitewire have a really great article on how the deals between Facebook, Twitter and Google are going to change the way your site is indexed, and more importantly how users will get their results.

To make a long story short – everyone’s Google results for a specific term, say the TV show “Lost” will be different when using real-time search. Everyone’s. This is because if you are selecting Latest Results, you’re jumping into the world of real-time which will include updates from Facebook and Twitter that are using those keywords. Check out this sample query for AT&T.

Notice anything? If you guessed that ‘sentiment is now reflected in Google results’ – you win. Who doesn’t win in this situation? AT&T. Regardless of what AT&T does with any of their PPC buys or SEO their search results page now is going to be trumped by sentiment in large part gathered from Social Media networks. And right now, sentiment towards AT&T is at almost an all-time low. If I were someone who was making a purchasing decision regarding a new cell phone, checking Google’s real-time search would certainly have an influence in that choice. And that’s big.

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Earlier today, Bernie Freytag, our creative director asked me if I had watched the President’s speech regarding Afghanistan last night. He noted that none of his friends on Facebook nor followers on Twitter had made any comments on it. I had to admit, though I too had watched it, I hadn’t seen a single word from my friends or followers as well. A few posts by a couple news sources but none of the actual humans I keep in my circle had uttered a word pro or against.

Since both Bernie and I were surprised that there was so little internet chatter about it, I immediately thought again to the liberal nature of Social Media. I assumed then that the President’s speech put liberal minded folks in a hard spot. That the usual banter that would follow a speech about an escalation of war had been stifled, not unlike how the Democrats in Congress have been forced to bite their tongues. On the one hand, many of them are anti-war. But they are also pro-Obama. So like me and many of my social network, we’re stuck. We want to support and believe in our President, but aren’t really sure sending more troops into that war zone is the answer. So we’re silent, or at least that’s what I thought. (more…)