SEARCH CLINIC

Twitter is to launch geographical tweets and a dashboard to let marketers access data about their followers.Speaking at the Ad Age Digital conference in New York this week, Adam Bain, president of revenue at Twitter, said that: “Geo-relevance for promoted tweets and accounts allows marketers to reach the audience in the right geographic areas.”

He said promoted tweets that target users based on their location, will be available in 21 cities across the US and in more than 100 countries.

Bain also introduced the new ‘Follower Dashboard’, which shows how a brand’s followers have increased over time, breaks down their gender and location, and displays what interest they have shown.

When Amanda Levy, sales director at Twitter, came to the UK last October to discuss ad solutions for the platform with UK advertisers, she discussed the Twitter dashboard, which has now been rolled out.

The announcement comes a year after Twitter rolled out Promoted Tweets in the US, with early advertisers including Starbucks and Virgin America.

Its ad offering, which includes ‘Promoted Accounts’ is based around relevance, real time and resonance.

Twitter, which celebrated its fifth birthday last month , is understood to be considering creating Facebook type branded pages, which would allow advertisers to deliver targeted messages.

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.

Facebook has reached 500 million members – the equivalent of connecting with eight per cent of the world’s population or the third largest country.
The milestone figure comes only five months after the social network signed up its 400th million user. The pace of its growth has accelerated rapidly – Facebook had only 150 million registered users in January 2009.

Facebook, the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg while he was still studying at Harvard University, launched in February 2004.

To mark the half a billion milestone, the site has launched a new application called ‘Facebook Stories’, a website within Facebook, that encourages users to share their experiences of the social network.

These stories, which are limited to 420 characters, (the same number as a Facebook status update) will then be sorted by location and theme. The application will also be hosted on several launch partners’ Facebook fan Pages, such as the X Factor and the White House.

The site has approximately 26 million UK users, which is more than a third of the country’s total population.

Last month, Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, said it was “almost a guarantee” that the site would hit one billion users, while speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He explained: “If we succeed in innovating and remaining relevant there is a good chance of bringing Facebook to a billion people.”

He also revealed that Facebook had just four remaining countries left to conquer: Russia, Japan, China and Korea, according to Zuckerberg. “We are down to just four counties where we aren’t the leading social network.”

Zuckerberg also recently visited the David Cameron in Number 10 Downing Street and praised the British Government’s efforts to open up its data to software developers.

The Social Network, a film about Facebook’s rise to prominence is due for UK release in October 2010. It charts the birth of the site and has the tagline: “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

The site recently faced heavy criticism from both European Information Commissioners and users alike, for over-complicated privacy settings, which users said led them unwittingly to make personal information public.

Concerns about privacy on the site were running so high that 60 per cent of the 1,588 Facebook users questioned by Sophos, a computer security organisation, in May, said that they were considering deleting their accounts on the social networking site.

A further 16 per cent said they had already stopped using Facebook because they felt they had inadequate control over their data.

A football which generates enough electricity to charge a mobile phone or power a light from a brief kick about is undergoing trials in World Cup host country South Africa.
The sOccket power generating football has been designed by four female undergraduate students in their twenties from Harvard University.

The sOccket works on the same principal as the “shake to charge” torch, where a magnetic ball rolls through a coil to create an electric charge.

In just 15 minutes of being kicked around, it can generate enough electricity to power an LED light for three hours and charge virtually any type of mobile telephone.

The undergraduate students wanted to find a solution to the developing world’s chronic power shortages.

“Soccer is something you will find in every African country,” Jessica Lin, one of sOccket’s inventors, said. “People play for hours a day, so we thought, ‘Why not try to get a little more out of that energy?’”

She said the aim was to harness the passion for football particularly among children in Africa’s poorest communities to provide them with reading torches for when the light fades – at present around 5.30pm in South Africa.

Julia Silverman, 21, who also worked on the project has brought the ball to South Africa’s townships for trials to coincide with the World Cup.

“The kids call it ‘the magic ball’,” she said. “Whenever you see a child plug in their ball for the first time and see the torch light up from the energy they’ve created, their eyes light up too – it’s a wonderful feeling.”

“If you think that the energy generated by a 15-minute kick around provides three hours of light, you can read a lot of pages from a textbook in that time.”

The sOccket team hope to have their product available for sale online by the end of the year. They intend to sell them to people in developed countries in a buy-one-give-one scheme that will see the second ball sent to charities working in African townships.

“Obviously, this won’t be a regulation ball,” Miss Lin said. “But it’s a big improvement over some of the makeshift balls the kids create from things like old plastic bags.”