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 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

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?

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.

It is a mistake to only focus on the location awareness aspect of mobile as its potential goes much deeper.

Mobile is a very personal device, the PC will often be shared but the mobile phone tends to enjoy a personal and monogamous relationship. It tends to be kept in close proximity at all times. A PC is turned on when needed a mobile phone is typically permanently on.

Whilst the web was about users surfing between brands, mobile offers the opportunity for a tighter, more valuable, relationship.

Search is replaced by one-off selection in an App Store. Organisations can now reach users at their point of need, pushing information outwards, and delivering services that are valuable at that precise time.

But the digital industry appears divided. Some argue that providing a web application tuned for mobile, accessible across many different handsets, is the most efficient and manageable solution. That is correct, it is, for the organisation.

Others understand that the future of mobile web is likely to lie in custom applications that the user chooses to download (thus removing future attention going to your competitors) and, crucially, fits in with the user experience of the handset.

A prerequisite to engaging the mobile consumer, is to provide an experience that is useful to them in their given context and fully meets their expectations in terms of usability.

The key to mobile engagement is to satisfy their needs immediately- by focusing on delivering utility and making life a little easier, better or more enjoyable.

Today we do see some blunt, early attempts at using geo-awareness. Websites and applications that try to combine the popularity of social media with the rudimentary functionality of recording where a user is, through the user checking in. Some, offer the potential for issuing reward vouchers based on location and other criteria.

Perhaps an interesting starting point, but hard to see how such applications really add value to the end user beyond a passing novelty. From an organisation’s perspective there is an intermediate brand now involved in the communication. This is undesirable and largely unnecessary.

So what could be done and what kind of applications really would drive deeper consumer engagement?

A typical application for a restaurant, today, will probably offer the ability to reserve a table combined with a location map and some generic content about the brand. But this does not really drive significant user interaction or show any thought for the end to end process.

Before arriving I would of course want to be able to book a table. But I also want turn by turn navigation to help me find the venue, or better somewhere to park. If I am delayed I would like the restaurant to know, automatically, so they can hold my table.

Once I have arrived at the restaurant I want the same application to become my menu, complete with specials for the specific restaurant that I am in, recommendations from my friends and actually, why not just let me order through it when I am ready?

Perhaps I would like to see what other dinners thought to the different menu choices in real time.

I want all of this through just one application.

That application now goes with me everywhere, and can receive notifications. This opens up a range of new ways for the relationship to develop, which may easily extend to beyond a place I just go to eat at occasionally.

Boarding the train of the future I anticipate my complimentary newspapers to be available online whilst I am on the train (yes they can pay for the subscription as part of my season ticket benefit). Before I board the train I would like to pay for my parking with a single press of one button. Payment can be taken via my pre-registered credit card.

The phone already knows where I am and when I return, so I can just pay for the time I use. Of course the same ‘train’ application is my season ticket, ad-hoc travel ticket, travel information and electronic concierge. One application extends and redefines my relationship with what was once just the train carrier.

Before I even arrive at the train station there are other new relationship opportunities. I may need fuel, a fact that surrounding service stations may find interesting.

The day of a real time reverse auction at individual consumer level is not far away. I would like my travel application to inform me of the best price that it has agreed for me.

Who provides the application? The manufacturer of my car, the petrol company, my mobile phone provider? The answer is who ever wants to own an ongoing relationship with me around supporting my travel. A very different, but viable, model that requires us to think differently about what engaging the consumer through mobile really means.

There are countless other examples; when the consumer is at home, at work, in a shopping centre, playing golf even! It is also important to remember that consumers maintain relationships with local authorities and other public services.

Mobile engagement provides opportunity for the public sector to improve efficiency.

The technology and the consumer are ready and waiting, how will your organisation engage them?

From: http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-experience/engaging-mobile-consumer/107563?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mycustomer%2Fall+%28MyCustomer.com%29

Mobile marketing is now considered to be the 7th largest element of the marketing mix after online, TV,  newspapers, magazines, radio and cinema.

So what’s the best way to approach marketing to users of mobile devices? Today and for the next few posts Dr Search will be outling your best approach.

A brief history of mobile marketing

Marketing to mobile devices is widely believed to have started during the “dotcom” boom in the year 2000 with text message/SMS news services that were free but sponsored by advertising.

This evolved into mass promotion of events and alerts with even recent claims of “more than 100% response rate” by Marc Hyatt of Txtlocal, thanks to the viral effects of users forwarding messages to others.

SMS advertising, like forms of email marketing, can often be obtrusive and annoying, with the added inconvenience of costing users money based on their mobile service’s inbound SMS rates.

As such, it remains more effective as a “pull” medium rather than a “push” one, such as a means for polling or voting for programs like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

Mobile applications also began appearing in 2000 from Handmark. But apps didn’t really become mainstream for in-application advertising until Apple’s App Store for the iPhone arrived in 2008.

Android, Blackberry, Symbian, along with the iPhone and iPad have advanced mobile web browsing to near mainstream use as the Q1 2010 Nielsen Mobile Report found there are now over 72 million mobile web users in the United States.

Next Big Thing or are we there yet?

Mobile has been touted repeatedly at conferences over the past few years as the next big thing for marketing years. However, most predictions were based on traffic charts and pretty graphics with gaudy numbers, while ROI and tangible mobile marketing results were often missing from these chipper forecasts.

So where does this leave marketers in getting any real value with such a limited viewing real estate on mobile devices, often less than 4 inches?

Here are some of the main services a business can use to implement a mobile marketing strategy:

Most popular searches? According to Hitwise the most popular search term at all three search engines for March 2010 was- Facebook.

Amazing, but true. Some web searchers are going to one or more of the search engines to find a very common and well-known URL. Yes, it would make some sense that as more people become Facebook users (they have nearly 400 million these days) they might head to a search engine to find the URL.

Of course, some of those new users likely read an article, watched a television program or heard a radio show where the URL was mentioned but they still go searching for it. Some of the searches likely came from people who know the URL but don’t have Facebook.com as a bookmark or as their homepage and just want to type it into a search engine.

Of the search terms they [Hitwise] tracked on Google, 1.17% of those searches were for Facebook. Bing had more, with 2.6% and Yahoo saw 1.70%.

You might also be interested in knowing that searches for “YouTube” were #2 on Google, while searches for Yahoo and Yahoo.com were #7 and #9 at G.

On Yahoo, Google was #6, ebay #8, and Yahoo Mail #9.

In other words, searchers go to Yahoo and search to get to Yahoo Mail instead of  actually clicking on the Yahoo Mail link that’s on many Yahoo pages.

Bing? Google was #2, YouTube #6, and Yahoo.com #8.

The complete list is available directly from Hitwise.

Overall, Facebook related terms accounted for eight searches across the three top 10 lists.

Yahoo! related terms accounted for six spots while MySpace terms accounted for four searches across the search engines. Other search terms that were among the top 10 searches for all three search engines include youtube, facebook login, craigslist and yahoo mail.

We wouldn’t be at ALL surprised that these and similar terms top the most popular list just about every month.

It does show that there is still a huge role for online marketers to explain, teach, train, demo, (insert your term here) how to be more effective doing something that they likely do 365 days a year.

Plus, we think becoming a better searcher is a marketable skill and can help save you, your employer, etc. time (so precious) and simultaneously become more info literate on related issues like quality, currency, and accuracy of what’s found.

So, like many other areas of the business profession, we have so much to offer and we need to get people to listen. Once again, it’s a marketing issue.

With thanks to: http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/04/29/what-were-the-most-popular-search-terms-at-google-bing-and-yahoo-during-march/

Yahoo has secured the exclusive UK online football highlights rights for the English Premier League from 2010 to 2013.

The 3 season deal, which starts in August, will see Yahoo.co.uk show five minute highlight packages of every Premier League match.

It follows similar video content deals signed by Yahoo.com in the US with basketball and ice hockey.

Virgin has owned the UK internet clip rights for the past three years.

As part of its rights ownership, Yahoo UK says it will be able to offer video advertising packages to leading global brands around its highlights clips.

Yahoo will also own the rights in the UK to syndicate all or part of the Premier League highlights content to third parties.

Rich Riley, Yahoo’s European managing director, said the deal with the Premier League was good news for both its users and advertisers.

Highlights will be available from midnight on Sunday after weekend matches and at midnight the same day for midweek fixtures.

“The way fans access Barclays Premier League action is growing ever more diverse and sophisticated,” said Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League.

“The online highlights package is an important medium for supporters of all our clubs to be able to follow match action.”

As flights in and out of Europe are grounded for the week, smart phones and social media websites are becoming an essential method for stranded passengers searching for ways of getting home.

As travel information websites crashed under the pressure of online inquiries, tens of thousands of stranded travellers turned to Twitter and Facebook.

Television presenter Dan Snow created a Calais Rescue service which he organised via Twitter  to bring home foot passengers from France in a small boat.  Unfortunately french jobsworths closed this service down as it “posed a threat” to their nationalised ferry service. And this was after Brits had struggled to get to Calais during a french train strike.

Twitter users found succour by searching on themes, or “hash tags”.

The most popular were #getmehome, #stranded and, for those who had given up the struggle, #putmeup.

This allowed people to reach potential liftsharers and others in the same boat (or train or car).

Typical of the messages left on #getmehome was this from @LexiProud are “I’ve started a group for #stranded people who need HELP to #getmehome by car sharing etc PLS RT”

US television reported that Jen Stoltenberg, the Norwegian prime minister, was using an Apple iPad mobile device and wireless hotspot in an airport executive lounge to run his country from New York.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, sent tweets about his adventures in trying to get from London to Valencia for the Festival of Media conference, and set off on a 24-hour bus journey.