Google has begun to allow integration of its +1 button into third-party social media platforms. PowerReviews will be among the first social commerce platforms, along with BazaarVoice, to integrate the button. Jockey is one of the first brands to tap the combined social recommendation engine.

Sociallybuzz integrates Google Places into clients’ social media strategies along with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Why should franchises not overlook Google Places?

Pay per click advertising is a form of marketing with major benefits. It differs from other methods of marketing in its ability to allow advertisers and marketers to measure and analyze the results of their techniques, to refine and optimize them to increase ROI beyond almost anything possible in the offline marketing world. Google AdWords is currently the prominent pay per click resource available today. Learning some of the ways to optimize your AdWords campaigns can cut costs while keeping conversions up in several ways.

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan proposed the idea “that media itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study.” He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.