Finance Geek

Today marks the launch of Google’s 2012 developer conference, Google I/O. Wired is here at the Moscone Center for the event, and will be liveblogging the keynote beginning at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time.

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Google’s daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

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At Tuesday’s “Zynga Unleashed” event, the gaming company was out to prove that its mobile business has legs.

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If you’ve got kids or just really like Lego - that pretty much includes everyone, right? Use your Chrome browser to navigate to Build with Chrome and start grabbing a piece of virtual Australia or New Zealand. The rest of the globe will still have to wait.

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Home prices came in better-than-expected in April, possibly signaling that the housing market has finally started its recovery. According to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, home prices rose roughly 0.7 percent from March to April compared to the expected 0.3 percent gain. In March, home prices also increased [...]

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! After a few weeks of positive news, and a stealth recovery in its stock, Facebook (FB) has brought some unwarranted attention to itself again. Over the weekend, the company launched a test of a feature called ‘Find Friends Nearby’, which allows Facebook users to locate friends using the GPS [...]

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Google’s rumored Nexus tablet is expected to debut this week at the Google I/O developer’s conference. If it does, it’ll face stiff competition from Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. But there is a way it can compete: killer specs at a rock-bottom price.

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Somebody recently described Red Bull to me as a media company that happens to sell beverages. I think we will soon be able to say something similar about many of the world’s most successful consumer brands.

For those that don’t know, Red Bull has grown from next to nothing to a global force over the last twenty years in energy drinks -  a category they pretty much created. Their success came partly because they have a great product, millions of people LOVE Red Bull, but partly because they have built their brand with a series of innovative events and amusing adverts. Their flagship FlugTag events around the UK are fun and memorable, as are their ‘Red Bull gives you wings‘ ad campaigns.

Turning to fashion, two British of the more successful British startups over the last five years, Net-a-Porter and ASOS, have built their businesses by blending content with commerce – i.e. a mixed media and retail business model where media offsets traditional marketing spend. ASOS in particular stands out as having achieved significant success (£1.3bn market cap, TTM revenues and pre-tax £495m and 330m) on minimal marketing spend.

Just about every other brand is now headed in the same direction, catalysed by their move into social media. As they seek to engage customers in places where they are hanging out to be entertained rather than transact they are having to balance their sales oriented communications with content that is interesting in its own right, i.e. they are having to become media companies. To get specific, social media marketeers are now offering the following sort of advice:

•  don’t ask, “How can we convert fans into sales?”—instead ask, “How can I provide value to my fans?”.  Then, and only then, will fans actually consider making a purchase as a result of your social marketing efforts.
• —for every 5 posts you make, only ONE post (20%) should be DIRECTLY about your brand/product (i.e. “Buy our product”, “Visit our website”, etc).  The other four posts (80%) should be RELEVENT to your audience and provide VALUE in some form—informational, funny, interesting, etc.—but they should NOT be directly about YOU
• Find 10 blogs (do a simple Google search i.e. “popular food blogs”) relevant to your audience.  Subscribe via RSS and share the most interesting / entertaining posts with your fans
•  you’ll need to differentiate between the ones that perform well and those that perform poorly on your Page.  There are many ways you can do this, but I’d recommend simply running the numbers in a spreadsheet

The advice in these bullets could easily have been directed at a newspaper journalist. Although maybe not at a quality paper

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! David Segal of the New York Times takes an excellent look at what it’s like to work in an Apple Store–an occupation that has become one of the favorite “McJobs” in our economy for hip college graduates. The pay sucks (relatively), the stores are busy and crowded, and there’s [...]

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! The auto bailouts of 2008-09 may seem like a lifetime ago but remain a present-day issue in the Midwest, especially during this election season. One of the few things Presidents Bush and Obama agreed on (at least conceptually), the government’s support for the industry is a major flashpoint between [...]

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From RV spots and strangers’ homes to luxury hotels at motel prices, these helpers will find you a place to sleep. Tonight.

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