‘Zigg’ Your Way Up Search Results

• September 30 -
• Analytics,
• Marketing

In our quest to stay informed about the latest and greatest business uses for social media websites, we stumbled upon (no pun intended) Ziggs.com. At first glance, Ziggs appears to be something like a love child between Facebook and LinkedIn – but with some extra perks (like being able to reload your Starbucks card).

In actuality, the Ziggs website (still in beta mode) offers a place for users to control their online presence, as well as act as an organizational tool for both personal and professional use. Creating “the most elegant profile style available on the web,” Ziggs attempts to provide a space for you to enter information that you want to appear in people’s search results. You can use the free service that claims to naturally elevate your profile in search results due to their page rank status, or you can pay $4.95/month for a sponsored profile to increase your visibility.

So what makes it so different from your Facebook or LinkedIn profile?

• The biggest difference (aside from the fact that they offer this paid search engine marketing service), according to Ziggs, is their tracking feature. It sends you email alerts tracking the number of visitors to your profile, where the visitors were located, what keywords they used to find you, and whether they found you thru Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc.
• Ziggs is partnered with PayPal, so users can make payments to the different vendors or contractors that you work with, directly from your profile
• They have an Expedia application that allows you to make travel arrangements using information on the profile
• You can purchase Amazon gift cards and reload your Starbuck’s cards from their website…random, but could be useful in a pinch
• You can import your contacts and organize them into groups – even if they aren’t Ziggs members

Just like most other social networking sites, Ziggs also enables you to upload pictures, chat with others, use their message center, join groups, and post and apply to jobs. Time will tell if their other unique features will help to distinguish them from their competitors or not. In the meantime, you can bet we will be testing it out.