SEARCH CLINIC

Online marketing with social media is not just for large companies- any business can prosper.Any small business that invests its time wisely can improve it’s customer or client loyalty and word of mouth marketing with an effective social media strategy.

Social media is useful for almost every type of business. Cafes, retail stores, and even B2B professional services can build their online reputation and increase trust.

By taking advantage of social media, businesses can make themselves more accessible, more personable, and maintain long term connections.

Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the internet, and often the first site that comes to mind when people mention social media.

Establishing your business presence on facebook requires an ongoing effort, but can have some great rewards if done well.

Here’s Dr Search’s advice for getting started with Facebook.

1. Create a business page – Creating a page for your business is really quite simple and gives you an instant presence on facebook to share information about your company.

To get you started visit www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages and click Create a Page. Here’s a few suggestions for populating your page with relevant business information:
* Overview of the business
* Website and contact information
* Your logo and pictures of the business
* Videos
* Press releases and blog posts
* Company news and updates
* Your contact details

2. Interact with your fans – Once you’ve setup a page for your business, the most important step is to interact with your fans!

Try and post updates to your page at least weekly which can include new blog posts, competitions and links to new products or special discounts.

It’s also important that you engage with any customers that leave a comment on your wall or wall posts. Remember that facebook is a public forum so take care with your replies and show potential customers that you provide excellent customer service.

3. Promote your facebook page – The tricky thing about facebook pages is that you can’t friend someone the same way you can from your personal profile. People can elect to become fans of your page, but only if they know about it.

Here’s a few ideas on different ways to promote your page:

* Identify contacts from your personal profile that are business contacts and invite them to become fans of your business
* Include links to your facebook pages in the footer of email communications with customers
* Include a facebook icon on your website or blog and give customers some incentive to become a fan (special discounts, coupons etc.)
* Promote your facebook page using other social networks that you participate in like Twitter and your blog posts.

The Times newspaper has begun charging readers to access its online content by introducing a paywall due to falling advertising income
From now on, access to the Times and Sunday Times website will cost £1 per day, or £2 a week if readers sign up to a subscription.

News International, which owns the papers, announced plans to impose charges earlier this year in response to falling advertising income.

Currently the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are the only major papers to have similar paywalls.

All other national papers offer free access to their sites, but are likely to watch the launch of the Times paywall closely.

Falling readership numbers and advertising revenues have put significant pressure on newspapers in recent years, and devising the best way to make money from content is seen as a major challenge for the industry.
Continue reading the main story

Other papers including the Guardian have vowed to keep content free, pinning their hopes on a recovery in advertising revenues.

Although the Times risks losing readers as a result of the new charges, News International hopes the charge will be low enough to attract sufficient readers.

Robin Goad from Experian Hitwise, which monitors web traffic, told BBC Radio 5 live’s Wake Up To Money programme that traffic to the Times website had fallen “significantly”.

“Since the registration wall has gone live before the full paywall, we’ve seen about a 60% drop in traffic over the last couple of weeks,” he said.

However, “that is probably a little bit less of a drop than a lot of people expected… so this is quite a positive [figure],” he added.

Under an introductory offer, registered readers will be able to access the site for £1 for the first month.

The site has already been restricted to registered users for the last 30 days.

Given Rupert Murdoch’s determination to charge for his content, Dr Search expects that the new regime will continue until at least September or October.

Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is often quick, lazy and expensive. This video shows you Google’s quality score requirements, explaining you how to maximise your online marketing budget and the importance of long term profits.

This is the sixth part of 11 videos on how to promote your website using the most cost effective elements of the marketing mix.

This video series was made from the lecture Simon Dye Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic’s made at the University of Gloucestershire on online marketing to to businesses, professionals including Members of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Chartered Managers and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and students at the 5th annual Gloucestershire Professionals conference in June 2009.

More than 300 people attended the conference with over 60 attending Dr Search’s lecture on Online Marketing Tips, Strategies and how to use the most cost effective tools for your online marketing business.

Of the 12 seminars during the day Dr Search received the top rating with 93% of the attendees saying that he was relevant to their needs and 86% of attendees rated the content as highly rated.

Please have a look at the other videos as they become live on the Search Clinic YouTube Channel

Please let me know what you think of the video. Have you found it useful? Was there anything else that you would like to learn about? Please contact Dr Search by clicking here now.

The third part of Dr Search’s lecture focused on  Website Focus= Customer Focus

The content of the third video explains why brand names aren’t enough, Keyword phrases explained, Tips to find where your customers are, why optimisation is at heart of online marketing,
What’s Good for your customers=good for search engines=good for social media=>profits
Similarities between icebergs and websites and Google’s UK database current key optimisation requirements

Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic’s lecture at the University of Gloucestershire on online marketing to to businesses, professionals and students at the 5th annual Gloucestershire Professionals conference in June 2009.

More than 300 people attended the conference with over 60 attending Dr Search’s lecture on Online Marketing Tips, Strategies and how to use the most cost effective tools for your online marketing business.

Of the 12 seminars during the day Dr Search received the top rating with 93% of the attendees saying that he was relevant to their needs and 86% of attendees rated the content as highly rated.

Please let me know what you think of the video. Have you found it useful? Was there anything else that you would like to learn about? Please contact Dr Search by clicking here now.

Please have a look at the other videos as they become live on the Search Clinic YouTube Channel

New research has found that almost three out of five respondents currently used social media as a communications tool in their daily jobs – up 22% on last year.

A further 17% said that, while they did not employ social media techniques regularly, they were interested in doing so.

But 22.4% pointed out that, although they would like to understand the medium more, they found it difficult to unearth genuine ‘experts’ in the field to help them.

Just under a quarter of marcoms professionals are currently denied access to social networking sites by their IT departments, down from 46% last year, the study showed, which makes campaign execution and monitoring impossible for them.

Among those that are in a position to undertake such monitoring, however, by far the most popular online tool was Google Alerts, which is free (45.5% of those questioned). Some 37% undertake ad hoc monitoring in-house, while Radian 6 is the most popular paid-for tool (14.3%).

Twitter, meanwhile, is the social network of choice, with 61% of respondents saying that they use it regularly as a means of distributing new stories, up from 28% last year.

But about half of those questioned were unsure where ultimate responsibility for social media communications should reside, indicating that it was currently spread between a range of disciplines. Some 23% thought it should be handled by PR staff and 11% by digital experts.

Interestingly, however, about three out of ten respondents also believed there were simply too many social networks around these days, while about 12% thought that they were becoming too commercial.

As more marketing and communications professionals use social media channels for UK brands, new research by McCann Erickson shows that many agencies and consultants are not providing enough guidance to help their clients with social media.Almost half of those surveyed (48%) said they still don’t feel they have adequate knowledge on how best to use social media channels effectively for marketing purposes.

Although this is down by over 16% from 64% last year the figure is still surprisingly high.

Nearly a quarter of respondents (23.4%) admitted that advances in social media are difficult to keep up with and almost the same proportion (22.4%) said they would like to understand social media more but that it is not easy to find genuine ‘experts’ in the field.

Interestingly, in just 12 months since the last survey there has been a marked increase in general social media usage for communications activities.

On average, usage for each of the main social networks (facebook, twitter and LinkedIn) is up by around 22% from last year. Twitter has shown the most increased usage (+28.2% since 2009) with 61% of those surveyed now saying that Twitter is regularly used as a way of distributing news stories.

It seems that IT departments are now more willing to let their marketing teams have access to social networks at work.

Last year’s results showed that 46% of respondents were unable to get access at work and although this figure has come down to 24.3% it still shows that nearly a quarter of UK marketers and communications practitioners are not granted workplace access to social networks, making monitoring and campaign execution impossible.

Social media monitoring for brands is now a key area for marketers who need to demonstrate effectiveness of activity, ROI and target audience usage of social networks. By far the most popular way of brand monitoring online is through Google Alerts with 45.5% using this free tool.

Radian 6 has emerged as the most widely used paid-for tool with 14.3% usage followed by PR Newswire’s monitoring tool Social Media Metrics at 10.4%. 11% of those surveyed said they relied on their retained PR agency to monitor social media brand activity and 37% said they conducted ‘ad hoc’ monitoring in house.

Asked where they think the responsibility for social media communications should reside, 50% said it came under a combination of disciplines; 23% said it was best managed by public relations professionals and 11% said it should sit with digital experts.

Additional results at a glance:
• 59.8% respondents said that social media communications is now part of their day jobs
• 29% think there are now too many social media networks
• 12.1% think social media networks are becoming too commercial
• 16.8% said they are interested in using social media more within their daily role but do not
currently use it

Dr Search reviewed the research from: McCann Erickson Social Media Index 2010

Search Clinic on YouTube talks about the most cost effective way of online marketing

Simon Dye, Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic gave a lecture to businesses, professionals and students at the University of Gloucestershire for the 5th annual Gloucestershire Professionals conference in June 2009.More than 300 people attended the conference with over 60 attending Dr Search’s lecture on Online Marketing Tips, Strategies and plan the most cost effective tools for online marketing business.

Of the 12 seminars during the day Dr Search received the top rating with 93% of the attendees saying that he was relevant to their needs and 86% of attendees rated the content as highly rated.

This is the first of 11 videos on how to promote your website using the most cost effective elements of the marketing mix.

He compared search engine optimisation, pay per click, affiliate marketing, PR, outdoor, direct mail, magazines, newspapers, radio and television elements of the marketing mix.

Dr Search also looks at the search engines and changes that have effected their success on the past decade.

Please let me know what you think of the video. Have you found it useful? Was there anything else that you would like to learn about? Please contact Dr Search by clicking here now.

Please have a look at the other videos as they become live on Dr Search’s Search Clinic YouTube channel.

Dr Search has found that, despite the warnings, some firms are still risking brand damage from cybersquatters by not protecting their Twitter account brand name.
While the social media gold rush continues, there remains a darker side to Web 2.0 that can potentially damage brand reputations through no fault of your business.

Last year a survey of Twitter accounts for 100 big brand advertisers revealed that few had ownership of the Twitter handles that corresponded with the name of their brands.

More worrying still, several big names had fallen victim to cybersquatters, including Mastercard and General Motors.

Several months later and some brands have still yet to heed the warning, as Dr Search discovered when I uncovered a worrying level of brand cybersquatting of one of the UK’s most recognised high street chains.

It all came about following a visit to a Bristol branch of the Costa Coffee last week. I chose that particular chain because I picked up one of the company’s new loyalty cards recently so that particular customer strategy worked. One strategy that didn’t though was a conversation I overheard.

Only last week at the European Customer Experience World, Kip Knight, president of Knight Vision Marketing, warned attendees of the dangers of cybersquatters.

In fact, after a session discusing the value of social media to the customer experience and emphasising how firms not involved in the practice should make it a priority, he chose to conclude his address with a warning about cybersquatting and the damage it can do to your brand.

“If you currently don’t own the brand name on your Twitter account, you’d better go and check that out, because a squatter might be sat on it right now,” he stressed.

You might have people writing things about your brand name that you don’t even know about! Dr Search asks- how pleasing is that for you?

As  Facebook appears immune to the ongoing row over personal data privacy issues, Dr Search today and tomorrow shows you how to delete your Facebook account or how to deactivate your Facebook account.Facebook’s privacy policy is a massive 5,830 words long. As the New York Times recently pointed out, the Constitution of the United Statesof America is just 4,543.

In recent months, Facebook has made a number of revisions to its privacy policy that makes a growing amount of your personal information public by default; you have to opt out if your want to keep your information private, or share it only with a trusted group of friends.

Committing “Facebook suicide”, as it’s known, is a nuclear option- but you do need to plough through 50 different settings and around 170 different options if you want to control every single aspect of your account.

Here, I look at how to deactivate and delete your Facebook account – and the difference between the two – as well as how to lockdown some of the most important privacy settings on your profile:

Deactivating your Facebook account

Deactivating your account simply involves going on a temporary hiatus; it does not permanently delete your personal information. If you deactivate your account, you immediately become invisible to other Facebook users, who will no longer be able to access your profile.

However, Facebook  only “saves” your profile on file, so that if you choose to reactivate your account in future, then all of your friends, photos, lists of interests, games and other preferences, are automatically restored so your account looks just as it did before you deactivated it.

Deactivating an account is fairly simple: when you’re logged in to Facebook, click on the Account tab on the top right-hand side of the page. From the drop-down list, select “Account Settings“. The final option on the page is “Deactivate” – click on the link to be taken through to the deactivation page.

Facebook tries to tempt you in to reconsidering, telling you that your friends “will no longer be able to keep in touch with you”; it also asks you to say why you are deactivating your account.

At the foot of the page is box that allows you to opt out of receiving future emails from Facebook. If you do not tick this box, then you will continue to receive email notifications every time a former Facebook friend tags you in a photo, invites you to an event, or asks you to join a group.

Ticking the box means you will no longer receive these messages.

To reactivate your Facebook account, log in to the site using your usual email address and password. You will then be sent an email to that address containing a link which, when clicked, restores your Facebook profile in its entirety.

Delete permanently your Facebook account

If you’ve had enough of being asked to take part in endless quizzes or are simply concerned about privacy issues, then completely deleting your Facebook account is the nuclear option.

When you delete your account, Facebook promises to discard all “personally identifiable information” associated with that account from its databases – that’s things like names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, instant-messenger screen names etc etc.

However, Facebook says that copies of some material, such as photos, may remain on its servers for “technical reasons”, but that the material is “completely inaccessible” to other Facebook users, and is completely disassociated from any information that makes it possible to link that piece of content back to an individual user.

If you deactivate or delete your account, says Facebook, it will no longer use any content associated with it, either.

Committing Facebook suicide, though, naturally enough is not made easy. It’s not quite as simple as just clicking a few links to eradicate your social networking presence.

Instead, you need to send a message to Facebook, requesting the permanent deletion of your account.

Click or paste the following link into your browser window:

http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12271

It will take you through to a Help page that describes the difference between deactivating and deleting an account. At the bottom of the second paragraph is a button link, which takes you through to a page where you submit your deletion request.

Then click on this link, read the warning entitled “Delete my account”, and then click Submit.

It can take up to 14 days to permanently delete your Facebook account.

Dr Search’s next blog will show you how to adjust your your Facebook privacy settings.

Good Luck!

YouTube has exceeded two billions views a day as it celebrates the fifth anniversary since first launching in beta in 2005.
The Google owned video site, released the statistic to commemorate the occasion and has also launched a new channel called: “YouTube 5 Year Channel” which brings together a group of clips from people around the world talking about how the video-sharing service has affected their lives.

The videos, collectively called the ‘My YouTube Story’, were filmed by the documentary maker Stephen Higgins. YouTube users can also upload their own video stories to the channel too. The new channel is also home to an interactive timeline containing some of the site’s key moments.

Five years ago the first beta version of YouTube went live and 18 months later it was purchased by Google for £883 million in 2006.

Last October, on its third anniversary of being acquired by the search giant, the site hit one billion views a day.

The site is in the process of trying to reposition itself as the home of professional content online – having signed major broadcast deals with the likes of Channel 4 and Five last year.

In a rare interview with the press, Chad Hurley, YouTube’s co-founder and chief executive, outlined his vision exclusively to The Telegraph last month:

“”People think about the world of TV and the world of online video as being different ways to distribute video. But what happens when every TV is connected to wi-fi with a browser? What does that mean for your distribution opportunities? What happens when those worlds collide and it is just one thing? Instead there is just one world, the world of video, and people everywhere are putting ads against everything and there isn’t a difference. There won’t be a difference in the future.”

Hurley said last week that YouTube was increasingly focusing on showing users what their friends had watched on the site – as a way of improving the user’s navigation experience.

YouTube has famously yet to turn a profit, with Google executives having remained tight-lipped about its financial performance during each of their quarterly results’ calls. Its largest costs have been high bandwidth and storage fees.

However, analysts think the site, which has become more popular with advertisers since securing increasing amounts of quality content, could break even for the first time this year.

Dr Search has finally had a lecture edited which was video recorded when I spoke to the University of Gloucestershire at the Gloucestershire Professionals business conference last year and we will be showcasing the eleven snippets whihc will be uploaded to YouTube over the next few days.