Eric Ritter- Bayshore Solutions Account Manager

By: Eric Ritter – Bayshore Solutions eMarketing Team

Big in 2010

While writing this blog post, I have the 1984 cult classic “Big in Japan” from Alphaville stuck in my head. So, I encourage you to hum the refrain from “Big in Japan” in your head as you read my blog post. I hope all of you have downloaded the white paper from Bayshore Solutions that talks about the top 10 must-haves for 2010 that you need for your website to be big and to bring you customers in 2010. I really want to focus on the three big current trends that we’ve been seeing here in the eMarketing department at Bayshore Solutions: Local, Mobile and Real-Time.

I’ll start off by talking about “Local.” Towards the end of last year, local really started becoming more and more prominent – from the Google Caffeine update that incorporates more and more local results via maps to local social media apps such as foursquare.com. Now when you search for “pizza,” you not only get the results of Papa John’s, Domino’s and Pizza Hut, but also a map with local pizza place results. Then there’s the much talked about and discussed Google algorithm (there are actually three different algorithms): the standard result page algorithm, the Google Maps algorithm, and finally the algorithm for Maps included on the Google Results page.

Next up is “Mobile.” According to some estimates, by 2013 more people will access the Internet via a mobile device than via a desktop. Beyond being portable and always in the pocket of your consumer, this trend is here to stay for good. There are close to 5 billion mobile phones worldwide. There are many different ways to market to mobile – from SMS and display ads to numerous apps. However, the most important thing is to offer your potential customers a mobile-optimized experience, which may be a mobile website or a mobile app via iTunes or the Android Marketplace.

The final of the trends that want to talk about is “Real-Time.” Real-time search is here–it’s not the future anymore. All search engines are pulling in real-time results from all over the place, including press releases and Twitter. Most social media platforms offer real-time search, with Twitter being the most prominent. Just go to search.twitter.com and type in your brand or company and watch the magic happen. Real-time search can be scary.

Below is the dissection of a typical search results page – notice the real-time results in purple.

How big are all of these three trends? Big enough that Google introduced its newest invention, “Google Buzz,” which incorporates all three of these trends into one application. So are Local, Mobile and Real-Time here to stay? If Google Buzz catches on, it will definitetly continue to grow.

In a nutshell, Google Buzz is the newest social network and sharing product built by Google. Buzz offers a stream of status updates, pictures, links and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. Real-time updates from Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader or Twitter can also be automatically imported into a Buzz stream.

All of this can quickly get overwhelming, so don’t hesitate to contact Bayshore Solutions and find out how your online marketing can be “Big in 2010″ just like Alphaville was “Big in Japan” in 1984.

Eric Ritter is an eMarketing Account Manager for Bayshore Solutions.