Greg Finn
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About Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides digital marketing and web development. He is a co-host of Marketing O'Clock and has been in the digital marketing industry for nearly 20 years. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.

Greg Finn's latest articles

SEO

Digg Releases ‘Newswire’ To Help Promote Breaking Stories

A long time favorite news aggregation site of marketers, Digg has released a new service titled ‘Newswire.’ This new service will help users both find and break upcoming news and is the first time that Digg is showing who ‘buried’ an article since the release of Digg Version 4. Newswire will essentially fast-track an article […]

Facebook

Facebook Now Grouping News Feed Stories By Topic

Today Facebook announced that changes have been made to the way that the news feed displays similar updates from friends. Facebook will essentially group posts together in the news feed if they are on the same topic. This will operate very similarly to the grouping that occurs when multiple friends share the same link. The […]

Google

Behind The Numbers Of Google+’s Monumental Rise To 25 Million Visitors

This week comScore released findings on Google+’s monumental surge to 25 million unique global visitors. Launched just over a month ago, Google+ has become the fastest social networking service to reach 25 million unique visitors. This quick ascent outpaced MySpace, Twitter and Facebook: The comScore findings also separate the U.S. unique visitor stats from Global […]

Local

Foursquare Launches ‘Self-Serve’ Pages For Businesses

Business pages on Foursquare have been around for about a year and a half, but today the announcement was made that business pages are becoming self-serve. No longer will businesses have to work with the Foursquare team to create a presence, instead brands and companies will be able to create their own Foursquare page. Foursquare […]

Facebook

Report: Only 15% of Small Business Facebook Fans Are Actually Local

A new study released today by Roost, a technology company that helps companies with social media, determined that: “…only 15 percent of the average local business’ fans are actually in the city where the business is located.” This data was uncovered using proprietary scorecards that analyzes audience distributions and other SMB business metrics. The report […]

Google

Google+ At One Month: A Look At Highlights & Controversies

It’s hard to believe that it was just one month ago today that Google+ launched. So much has happened to the fledgling service in this short time. Here is a look at both the highlights and lowlights of Google’s newest social network! Launch & Usage Google+ came out of the gate swinging, amassing 10 million […]

Google

One Month In, Google+ Sees First Traffic Dip As Total Visits Drop 3%

New numbers released by Experian Hitwise show the first traffic drop for Google’s social networking service, Google+.  The drop occurred on the week of July 23rd as Google+  saw 1.79 million total visits compared to the 1.86 million the previous week.  Google+ had been steadily building traffic and did have a monster week on week of July 16th where total visits […]

Facebook

Facebook Launches In-Depth Guide For Businesses

Late yesterday Facebook announced “Facebook for Businesses” providing users clear and concise directions for properly marketing on Facebook.  This is very similar to last month’s “Twitter for Newsrooms” as both are official resources for entry level participants.  The variety of marketing options on Facebook can be daunting for new marketers, but this guide does a great job explaining […]

Google

Just A Matter Of Time: Google +1’s Being Sold By The Thousands

A report by the Atlantic shined a light on a new “social media service” which allows users to purchase Google +1’s in bulk.  The site in question, Pluseem, has a variety of different Google+ package sizes, from 50 plusses to 2,000, with the prices ranging from $0.18 – $0.38 per plus. Of course this is a […]

Google

Today On Google+: Business Profiles Terminated, Blueprint For Businesses On Google+ Will Be Made Available To All Shortly

Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Businesses Removed From Google+ Google Removes Mashable, Sesame Street & Other Prominent Accounts From Google+ is a post by Matt McGee which highlights some of the recently terminated Google+ accounts.  Mashable, Ford and even […]

Google

Google+ Traffic Growth Continues, Up 283% From Previous Week

Numbers from Experian Hitwise show that Google+ showed big gains again last week.  For the week ending on July 16th Google+ saw over 1.8 million total visits.  This is a 283% increase from the previous week and an increase of 821% from the week of July2nd. The following chart shows the total US visits to Google+: Other pertinent […]

Apple

Today On Google+: Business Profile Updates, What Google+ Is Really About & The First Google+ User?

Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Updates For Business Pages Official Google Update For Businesses from Christian Oestilen, ads manager of Google Plus, covers the current state of businesses on Google+.  Google is currently selecting their chosen set of businesses for […]

Link building

Data Visualization & Infographic Search Engine Visual.ly Launches

Infographics (or data visualizations) are all the rage in content marketing today, and Visual.ly is launching with hopes of becoming “the largest community for sharing, creating and promoting data visualizations.”  The site currently offers a search functionality and a submission feature to help users find & share infographics from across the web. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiVKfNeRbPQ[/youtube] As expected with […]

Facebook

Report: Facebook Like Button Most Used, Google +1 Button Surging

Today BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO platform, released a report on the adoption of social sharing plugins on websites and links to those sites. The findings show that about half of the top 10,000 websites have a link to their Facebook pages from their home page, 40% link to their Twitter pages and when it comes […]

Apple

Facebook Announces Video Calling, Group Chat & Redesigned Chat

Facebook announced three new “awesome” changes to the Facebook platform during a press event today.  A great deal of Facebook information was displayed along with the announcement of three new elements .  The new features and functionality include: Video Calling Facebook’s biggest announcement today was the partnership with Skype which will allow for video calling from within Facebook.  This […]

Google

Google+ Has Been Blocked In China

Just one day after Google offered  invites to Google+, China has blocked access the new social networking site.  This is not surprising at all as China typically blocks all social sites including Twitter and Facebook.  The Chinese censorship system has been dubbed the “Great Firewall” and is currently blocking Google.com. Other notable blocked sites include: YouTube Foursquare IMDB […]

Paid social

Twitter Is Being Investigated By The FTC

Business Insider broke the news today that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Twitter apparently due acquisition tactics of applications. Twitter had begun offering “official” versions of apps by way of acquisition back in 2010 with some notable apps including Tweetie and TweetDeck. Entrepreneur Bill Gross had also started buying Twitter apps under a company named TweetUp. […]

Google

Google Plus: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

When I first logged into Google+ I was a bit underwhelmed, but the more I used and explored the site, the more I liked it.  While it has already been deemed Google’s Facebook competitor, it is quite  different.   I want to share my opinion on the pros and cons of the site to help shine […]

Paid social

Twitter Launches ‘Twitter For Newsrooms’ (#TfN) As A Resource For The Press

Twitter launched Twitter For Newsrooms, a detailed resource to help professionals in news, TV, sports and entertainment use Twitter effectively.   The guide is geared toward the novice to intermediate user and helps to standardize the use of Twitter.  Specific sections include: #Report #Engage #Publish #Extra The guide contains advice including: ways to properly brand yourself, recommended tools, […]

Facebook

Retail Study: 1 Facebook Fan = 20 Visits To Your Website

A UK based study by Hitwise analyzed data from the top 100 retailers to find how much additional web traffic was generated by each Facebook fan.  The metrics showed that each fan of a Facebook page produced an extra 20 visits to the website.  In order to generate this number, Facebook traffic was analyzed and compared […]

Local

Foursquare & American Express Specials Rolled Out Nationwide

Today Foursquare announced that their Austin-based SXSW test with American Express is going national.  The initial Austin-based partnership between Foursquare and American Express gave significant discounts to users who made purchases at local merchants using their Foursquare account tied to an AMEX card.  Many of the initial tests were very lucrative for the user checking in; […]

Content

Report: Only 3% to 7.5% of Fans View Posts From A Facebook Page

Recent findings from PageLever revealed the reach of your Facebook Page may be far less than you think.  The data shows an average of 7.49% of fans view posts on a daily basis. Pages with the largest fan-base are performing the worst while pages with fewer likes are performing the best.  Currently, pages with over one million likes […]

Local

Foursquare Tops Ten Million Members

Foursquare announced today that they reached the mark of 10,000,000 members.  The popular location based check-in app has been growing quickly in both features and members. The release of Foursquare 3.0, enhanced analytics and improved specials have helped to make the free service popular with more than those just checking in. Since inception two years ago over […]

Facebook

Facebook Launching New Features To Enhance ‘Places’

This week Inside Facebook revealed that Facebook was planning on bringing a few new features to their Places product.  Facebook Places launched almost a year ago, a product which has seen decent usage to date.  The new features that are reportedly launching should make it much easier to market places, especially for those with small […]

Facebook

Report: Facebook’s Traffic Down In The U.S. And Canada

Facebook is creeping towards the 700 million user mark, but Inside Facebook reports that Facebook’s U.S. and Canada based traffic and growth dropped in June.  This marks the second straight month of lower growth in these areas for Facebook which is an unusual occurrence. The United States lost nearly 6 million Facebook users (down to 149.4 million […]

Paid social

Twitter Adds Automatic Shortening For URLs

Twitter announced a new feature allowing users to tweet easier and safer.  The official t.co Twitter shortener will now automatically shorten URLs right from the Tweet box when using the web version of Twitter.  The feature shortens links to 19 characters, and shows users a preview of the destination link. When a user’s link will […]

SEO

Where To Use Twitter’s New Follow Button

This week, Twitter launched the instant follow button for websites to make it even easier to connect visitors to Twitter accounts.  This button joins the dynamic Facebook Like button that allows for logged in users to instantly connect to the social site without leaving the website. The main benefit of this new button is that […]

Apple

Why Google Latitude’s Check In Deals Is A Few Degrees Off

In the past month, Google’s +1 has been the most hyped Social feature that Google has launched to date, as it has the potential to compete with Twitter and Facebook. A less noticed launch during this same time included social changes to Google’s Latitude product, which have also been launched to help Google compete with Foursquare. […]

Content

A How To Guide For Submitting Content To Fark

Unlike the 100% voting based social aggregation sites like Digg and Reddit, the website Fark.com (Fark) has articles chosen by editors, not the Fark members. Much like Search Engine Land’s social news site, Sphinn.com, Fark allows for users to submit articles for consideration, and the best submitted are selected. With a monthly traffic ranging between […]

Paid social

How To Optimize For Facebook’s New ‘Like’ Functionality

News was broken this weekend about new Facebook “like” functionality that will replace the traditional Facebook share buttons. The change beefed up the visibility of people’s “likes” by adding thumbnails, and meta data form Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol: This means that getting a page on your website “liked” will now be featured in the stream […]

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