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Thursday, December 15th, 2011
New research has revealed that MySpace might not be the best place to go to host a social media marketing campaign.
The research, carried out by Experian Hitwise, and referenced in an article published by Marketing Magazine, has shown that MySpace has fallen out of the top ten most visited social media sites in the UK.
A former giant in social networking, MySpace has been replaced in the top ten by Stumble Upon; other sites in the top ten retained their previous positions, however Twitter, Gumtree and LinkedIn saw their share of the market drop when compared to October’s results.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s popularity continues to grow – with it now accounting for a huge 53 per cent of visits to social media sites in the UK.
Market research analyst for Experian Hitwise, James Murray commented on the results.
He said: “MySpace traffic has been on the decline for at least three years now but this is the first time the social network has fallen out of the top ten.
“As the social media landscape continues to evolve, brands need to be aware of the fast moving trends and which social sites people are visiting.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Tags: Experian hitwise, facebook, Gumtree, LinkedIn, myspace, Stumble Upon, twitter, youtube
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Having grown in popularity as a platform to carry out social media marketing campaigns, LinkedIn has unveiled its first office in Latin America, according to an article published by Siliconrepublic.com.
The office, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, will act as a headquarters for the region – supporting around 14 million of the site’s users spread across Latin America.
Osvaldo Barbosa de Oliveira has been appointed as manager of the new Brazilian office.
He commented on the opening of the new office, stating: “There is a huge opportunity in Brazil for LinkedIn’s growth, and I’m excited to oversee the opening of our first office and the establishment of a local team.
“This is a great step in the expansion of our presence in Latin America, as I’m looking forward to helping Brazilian professionals become more productive and successful on LinkedIn,” Oliveira added.
LinkedIn first launched a Portuguese version of the site in April 2010 and has since seen the site’s user base reach a figure of just over 6 million people.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: Latin America, LinkedIn, Sao Paulo
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
A popular platform for social media marketing initiatives, LinkedIn’s user base has grown to reach 131.2 million, according an article published by New Media Age.
In excess of 15 million people joined the professional networking site in the third quarter alone.
The data for the third quarter also revealed that the social media site gained a revenue of £88m – however the overall figure displayed a loss of £1.1m for the quarter because of investment in acquisitions such as IndexTank and Connected.
Commenting on the results, LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, stated: “LinkedIn had a strong third quarter, with significant, broad-based growth across all of our revenue streams, member engagement, metrics, geographies, and sales channels.”
He also explained how the company’s investments were now beginning to come to fruition.
Weiner said: “In the past 12 months, the number of students and recent graduates on this site has more than doubled and is growing at more than twice the rate of the overall LinkedIn member base.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn, Social Media
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Friday, July 15th, 2011
Despite the significant emphasis placed on social media, a recent poll has shown almost half of small-business owners don’t utilise social media marketing.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, only four per cent of people surveyed specified that social media was an indispensable tool; whilst 50 per cent instead valued the power of word-of-mouth more.
The survey was carried out by the US insurer Hiscox Insurance Company; 304 business owners and managers were interviewed in May this year.
Those business owners that do use social media did so to improve brand awareness and ultimately generate more sales.
28 per cent said they had a company Facebook page; LinkedIn was also a popular choice with 18 per cent of respondents having a page or group on the site.
Twitter, surprisingly, was a less popular choice amongst small businesses, with just two per cent of companies operating a Twitter feed.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
Tags: facebook, LinkedIn, online marketing, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Friday, June 24th, 2011
Here’s a quick tip for those who collect business cards from events. And a neat idea from a networking event I was at this week.
Firstly, are you on LinkedIn? If not, get an account set up for both yourself and your business. (You will be reminded again at the end of the article!)
LinkedIn is a must for any person serious about doing business, whatever sector you are in, and it is rare these days to not be able to find a business associate on that network.
During conferences and networking events, you will undoubtedly be handed business cards for future contacts. On your return from such events, take 5 minutes to sit down, with those business cards, and look up those contacts on LinkedIn. And connect.
Personalise the message to that person and remind them of your conversation, any action points agreed (eg please send me your price list), and where you met. It is much easier to do this straight after an event than months later. And it will help to begin to build a potentially productive relationship with that person, quickly and easily.
The second idea is courtesy of someone who is trying to save the planet by limiting the number of printed cards and who had had the bright idea of putting a QR code on the back of the card for those of us with QR readers on our Smartphones.
I am using Scan on the iPhone which worked perfectly, simply by pointing the camera at the QR code. The details are saved to my phone; however, I have not discovered (yet) how to easily add these to my address book….but at least I have them accessible.
This is the QR code for this blog 
Simply point a smartphone running a QR scanner at this and you can see what happens!
And try this:
So, check out QR codes for your business cards, which makes them look far more funky than adding URLs for every social network you are on, as well as your three different telephone numbers, email, addresses, websites etc. And, set up your LinkedIn account.
Tags: business cards, essentials, linked in, LinkedIn, networking, qr codes, Social Media
Posted in Blog, Small Business Resources, Social Media, Tips & Tricks
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Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Your Qwerly.com profile looks like this:
That means you should be using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Plancast, Quora, Scribd, Slideshare, iLike, Tumblr, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, Google Profiles, Google Reader, FriendFeed, Technorati, AllTop, Blogger, WordPress, each and every one of your own websites, Fwix, Tweettop, Brightkite, Pandora, Reddit, Vimeo, Qik, blip.fm, picasaweb, github, last.fm, audioboo, lanyrd ………
What have we missed that you are using to socialise online? Do you think this is overkill, or is it wise to join and use as many social sites as possible?
Tags: Digg, expert, facebook, guru, LinkedIn, media, slideshare, social, tumblr, twitter
Posted in Blog, Social Media
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Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
How much is it worth to you if someone tweets about your new product or service, whitepaper or webinar? Enough to give them free access, a discount, or time-limited access?
Think about it. Twitter is fast becoming the place for your potential target audience to pick up on news about you, but maybe your potential customers do not even know you exist. But they may be in the network or following someone who does know about you.
By offering a simple payment option i.e. with just a Tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn mention for free access to a white paper, or to your upcoming webinar, or even for a tool or software that you wish to promote, you could raise awareness very simply.
It’s not always about hard cash…
Tags: facebook, free, LinkedIn, payments, twitter
Posted in Blog, Social Media, Tips & Tricks
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Thursday, June 17th, 2010
For over a decade, websites and email have ruled the roost. Each day now, their overall dominion of the Net is undermined, and it is imperative that any business understands how to capitalise on these changes and new developments.
The most important thing to understand is that any prospect looking for your kind of product or service may well not find you through a search engine. It could be through a link, a tweet, a Facebook status update, a forum signature or post, on an aggregator such as alltop.com, a multimedia press release through pitchengine.com, a video on Youtube.com or metacafe.com, a podcast, an SMS, or much more.
If a prospect is looking for information, for instance, a white paper on search engine optimisation or the latest news on your industry sector, an event in their area, or an expert to ask, you need to be found by whichever channel and means they use to look for what they are seeking. And this means that if the prospect falls over your info on one channel, you need to ensure that the info they are looking for is there and not several more clicks away and a ‘delve into the depths’ search. Or at the very least, there is a clear signpost to the info and an indication they are in the right place or soon will be.
With a proliferation of corporate Facebook pages, there is often a failure to make these pages one of the signposts to further knowledge or information. It is a simple matter to use your Facebook page as an aggregator of all that your company is communicating to the outside world. This allows people who use Facebook as a preferred medium to instantly grasp your raison d’etre and the quality and quantity of information that is now available to them from you.
The majority of outputs from services such as Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, Blogger, WordPress etc are available as RSS feeds. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. And this is what you are doing – “syndicating” your content so that it is available through multiple sources. Whilst there should always be a focus on ensuring that your content is syndicated to external sites to reinforce your linking, branding and content strategies, it is always worth checking that your own content is syndicated within your own properties too – whether these are Facebook pages, Linkedin profiles, YouTube channel etc.
Not only does this offer the chance to have automatically, regularly updated content on each of your properties, it also generates an archive of multiple keywords over time to help your sites be found, and shows any visitor that you are alive and kicking and keeping up with all that is happening in your world. Don’t just link to the information, where possible include it directly on the page using the multiple tools available to do so.
So, take a look now. Is your latest corporate tweet showing on your Facebook page? Are your blog posts showing? Is your most recent press release there? Are your YouTube videos embedded?
Once done, your Facebook page will become infinitely more attractive to visitors, who will then ‘like’ it so it shows on their wall and then the feed which all their friends see, which attracts more visitors, who then ‘Like’ it – see where we are going?!
Tags: facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, Social network, twitter, youtube
Posted in Blog, Link Marketing, Online PR, Small Business Resources, Social Media
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Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Customer acquisition carries a far higher cost than customer retention, so it is vital that you look after your customers once you have found them.
However, it is surprising how many businesses, particularly small business where the resources are often limited, fail to keep in touch with their customers.
There are multiple ways to do this, and it need not be expensive. Here are 5 quick and easy ways to make sure your customers remember you.
1. Have you sent all your existing and past customers a Christmas card yet? It needn’t be at the expense of trees – send a digital Xmas card. It’ll also give you a chance to clean up your e-mail distribution list for 2010.
2. Write a regular newsletter and email it out. When we say “regular”, it may only be monthly, every three months, or even annual, but make it regular so your customers expect it.And don’t forget to archive it on your site as extra content, and include links in your email so people visit your website. It could include news about new products, clients, exhibitions and shows you have attended, or discounts and special offers.
3. Add a blog to your site. This means that you will need to come up with regular content, but that needn’t be difficult. Pick a time schedule you can keep to, eg every Thursday or the first week of every month if you have limited time and resources.
4. Use the social networks and tools that are available. For instance, create a fan page on Facebook, use Twitter to inform your customers about sales or special offers, join Linkedin and add your news to your profile or discussion groups.
5. Send a present. It might just be a pen with your company logo on it, but every little reminder of you is good. Especially when the present is useful. (I love receiving dongles/memory sticks. And I often watch and read the content before deleting it
Tags: business, CRM, facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Social network, twitter, website
Posted in Blog, CRM, Online PR, Small Business Resources, Tips & Tricks
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Friday, June 26th, 2009
It is surprising how many businesses have not yet mastered search, not just within the search engines, but elsewhere too. The benefits of becoming “search literate” are many fold, and will allow you to save time and effort in finding the answers or solutions to a multitude of questions.
Not just who are your competitors, but who are the best suppliers for your product range, where do your customers hang out, what are the best keywords for your website, where in the blog comments is that link I saw earlier, does this document refer to us (or our competitors, industry sector etc) at all, and so on, and so on. The list is endless.
Learning how to become search literate will put you ahead of the competition in a world where being able to find information amongst the noise is paramount. Additionally, when you are struck by that fantastic business idea at 2am, before you take your late night scribbles to the bank manager for a loan you will struggle to repay, reSEARCH. Undoubtedly, someone somewhere has alread tried and failed, or succeeded. In order to win in business you need to find a niche, rather than duplicate an already successful product or service, and searching can frequently prevent you making a disastrous mistake or three!
There are some great articles out there about how to use search in multiple ways, for example:
Business Mind Hacks Blog – Before you do anything else, search
Twitip – 7 Secret Ways to use Twitter Search
LinkedIn – Power searches on LinkedIn
And if you need to find something slightly out of the ordinary, go into the deeper pages of the SERPs here! Whatever your interest, there is undoubtedly a link to a resource you had never imagined would exist.
Tags: business, LinkedIn, search, Web search engine
Posted in Keywords, Social Media, Tips & Tricks
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