Marketing Pilgrim

If there is one thing that the recent Twitter scandal surrounding NY Rep. Anthony Weiner did it slowed the use of social media by politicians. If there was ever a silver lining in an otherwise pathetic situation this may have been it. PC World reports

The “Weinergate” scandal caused a significant drop in tweeting politicians. According to VentureBeat, after the scandal “the number of tweets by Republican members of Congress dropped by 27 percent, while those of Democrats dropped by 29 percent.”

Of course, the US is gearing up for yet another fun filled presidential election process that promises to be full of promises which in turn usually means its full of something else too but that’s beside the point. President Obama established his ‘mastery’ of the social media arts in the last campaign and possibly won the election with the base of voters he motivated through online channels.

Google keeps trying to make sure that it’s as easy as possible to rate and review a business in Google Places so it can establish this offering as the “go to” in business directories.

The latest effort is the option to award a “Best Ever” medal to your favorite business. You only get 10 of these to play with (which you can update and replace as you go). Below is a video from the Google Places blog where the Goog’s Professor Emoji (I don’t get it either) explains the option.

The internet is full of lurkers, those curious folks who read but don’t join in. (You know who you are.) Social media has them by the ton and Foursquare is determined to involve them one way or the other.

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley spoke at a conference this week where he talked about ways of bringing additional value to Foursquare users. Twitter has a large lurker rate, but many people who don’t Tweet actively use the service to follow friends, celebs and hashtags. But as BetaBeat points out, following people on Foursquare without actually participating is, well. . . tantamount to stalking.

The solution, says Crowley, is to introduce an explore feature and maybe even celebrity squares. With just a little tweaking, Foursquare can position itself as a city guide with top users suggesting the best places to eat, shop and visit.

A new survey by Kantar Media’s Compete shows that one quarter of consumers visits the official Facebook page of a retailer or product at least once a month. Why? I bet you already know the answer. 56% of them said they did it to keep up on sales and promotions.

In addition to stopping by Facebook, 20% of consumers said that what they saw there influenced their decision to make a purchase.

Debra Arbesman, Compete senior associate, retail and consumer products says,

“Savvy retailers are now making Facebook pages part of an integrated online shopping experience, and we expect this model will take the industry by storm in the coming months.”

Week after week one of the most popular features for our readers is our Internet marketing and social media job board.

At just $27 per month per post (with even better pricing for more than one listing) we hear time and again of how well listing your open position for Internet related work on Marketing Pilgrim works. We see this offering as one of the best values in the business so list your Internet marketing job with Marketing Pilgrim today!

Here are a few of the latest job listings we have:

Account Executive – Ark Ideas – Philadelphia, PA

Content and SEO Specialist – Optiem – Cleveland, OH

Internet Marketing Account Manager – Blue Magnet Interactive – Chicago, IL

Sales and Marketing Director – Confidential – Herndon, VA (Nationwide)

There’s a reason why Trackur is calling its latest upgrade “Trackur 3.OMG” and it’s because it’s one of the social media monitoring company’s biggest updates since its 2008 launch.

Trackur Insights is the monitoring company’s take on social media analytics. Focusing on the metrics users are most likely to use–and ignoring all of the useless eye-candy–Trackur Insights lets users quickly see what’s going on across all of their monitored keywords.

The Executive Insights summary provides a snapshot of new results, velocity, sources, activity, keyword discovery and trends. Here’s an example of how it looks:

In addition, Trackur’s Single Search Insights let you quickly see the new results, velocity, sources, and trends for any of the brands/keywords being monitored.