Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Should you use Facebook for your Business?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Everyone is on Facebook these days, so they say. It is thought that in excess of 400 million people use the website, so it could be a great way of reaching a great number of potential customers. Many businesses have set up Facebook Fan Pages that give customers a forum to talk about their favourite products or services. On February 24th 2010 Google announced via Twitter that it was now including public status updates from Facebook Pages in real-time searches. That means if your Facebook page is open to the public Google will pull your status update instantly into it’s latest search engine results. This is indeed an effort by Facebook to compete with Twitter’s ability to be up to the minute relevant on searchable content.

This sounds like a great way to get content about your business immediately onto Google. So should you invest time and effort into promoting your business with a  Facebook Fan Page?

Of course, why wouldn’t you want to use a free service that can reach hundreds or thousands or even millions of potential clients? Many small to medium businesses benefit from having people following them on Facebook. Some usually start off by having the people they know become fans at the start. The friends of these friends can see that they are a fan of that business and the company builds small scale viral recognition.

Provided that a business can give people a reason to become a fan – e.g. a high street boutique may offer exclusive discounts, while a nightclub might announce events, offers, who is DJing at it’s venue each night.  If you can offer information that people might want to have then you could gain potential business.

However there is a lot that  could  go wrong with using Facebook as means of publicising your business.

If you read an article on Outspoken Media you can find out about American reality TV show Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. It followed small salon owner Nikki Mallon of Brownes & Co. portrayed on national TV as a cold hearted boss from hell. Most likely edited to make her look worse than she probably was. It was a PR nightmare. The Brownes and Co. Facebook Fan Page was ransacked with negative comments from outraged viewers of the show. Unfortunately it took  them 12 hours to moderate the damage done and they have garnered some much unneeded notoriety.

Now whilst this is an extreme case, and probably very unlikely to happen to your business, it is worth noting that as fans can comment on your page, you will need to allocate some time and resource to answer any queries your fans might have; take part in discussions and of course in some cases act as a moderator. If you can give people a good reason to “Become a Fan”; by all means use it as a tool to promote your business. Just remember to manage it, as your brand’s reputation could be at stake.

Tags: ,
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

This Week In Search 15-05-2009

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Well, hello there and happy Friday!

Welcome to our new feature. Each week we’ll be bringing you a round up of some of the best blog posts/articles we’ve read relating to Search Marketing – so here goes!

SEO

Stephan Spencer (via Search Engine Land) rants about a site which despite being ‘unfriendly’ to search engines, still ranks well.

Small Business SEO

Sugarrae (Rae Hoffman) wrote an excellent post on how small businesses might increase their online presence. She’s used lawn care to illustrate her example, but the ideas can easily be applied to any business.

Search Engines

Google Searchology 2009, saw the launch of some new developments – Google Search Options, Wonder Wheel, Google Squared and Rich Snippets - see Matt Cutts’ thoughts and Danny Sullivan’s Live Blogging coverage.

Blogging

Preparing to launch your blog? Or maybe just considering your options? Don’t miss Lucy Langdon’s fantastic blog launch checklist on SEOmoz.

Social Media

There’s been a whole lot of noise about Twitter, but I couldn’t agree more with Dr Pete’s post about the real power of Twitter on SEOmoz.

Jennifer Horowitz talks us through the seven deadly sins of social media - check yourselves boys and girls :)

Web Design & Usability

OK, so this post wasn’t written this week, but I think it’s fantastic. Dr Pete’s created a really rather marvellous cheat sheet to designing a usable website. The man’s a genius.

PPC

Joe of PPC Hero wrote a great post about broadening exposure on the Google Content Network - now many advertisers elect not to run on the content network, but for some clients we’ve seen some really good results – if you’re thinking about trying it yourself, it’s a must read.

 

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Well there;’s not much point in doing this if we can’t make you smile. 1000 Awesome Things is a blog – where in, as the name suggests they count down 1000 awesome things. Kinda like a daily reason to be cheerful – enjoy and have a lovely weekend.

 

Is there something I’ve missed? Hit up the comments :)

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, PPC, SEO, Search Engines, Social Media, Web Design, Weekly Round Up | 2 Comments »

Monetisation – The Holy Grail of Social Networking

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Today I read an article in New Media Age wherein Danielle Long suggested that maybe Google has finally found a way to boost revenues from YouTube.

Having struck major content deals with the likes of MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment and CBS, YouTube will offer thousands of TV shows and full-length films for US users. These shows and films will be shown with ad breaks – effectively allowing TV ads to be shown to viewers watching online.

In addition to receiving revenue from advertisers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has also indicated that in the future YouTube may utilise a subscription model saying: “We do expect, over time, to see micro payments and other forms of subscription to come.”

dollars

Monetisation is without a doubt the holy grail of those who own and run social networking sites – but the trouble is, it tends to sit somewhat uneasily with the users of these sites.

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in 2005. The site quickly grew and by July 2006 the site was receiving 100 million views per day. YouTube was acquired by Google in November 2006 for the princely sum of US$1.65 billion in Google stock.

Clearly Google saw revenue opportunities in YouTube, but as yet these have failed to come to fruition. Google does not provide figures for YouTube’s running costs, and YouTube’s revenues in 2007 were noted as ‘not material’ in a regulatory filing. Not surprising when you consider that YoutTube’s bandwidth costs alone were estimated at US$1 million per day in 2008.

The end game is – social networking costs the owners of the sites a great deal of money. However, the owners of these sites feel strongly that with such a large user base, the opportunities to monetise these sites via advertising should be great.

But in reality, it doesn’t seem to work like that. The advertising funded business model struggles as users complain about the ads interrupting their experience, and advertisers have complained that social networking users are not responsive.

As such, perhaps the subscription model which YouTube are considering could be the way forward – particularly if they offer advert-free subscriptions. As Danielle Long points out – the move by Google to introduce subscriptions to YouTube could be the tipping point for subscription models across other sites – which rather puts paid to the ideal of online content, and perhaps indeed social networking being free.

 

Image credit Tracy O

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »