November 9, 2011
*UPDATE* The Google+ Directory has now moved to it’s own site. You can register directly on www.gplusireland.com I’ve closed comments on this post to avoid confusion.
On Monday Google+ finally released the long awaited business and brand pages. It seems to have given the network a much needed boosts with general activity on the site growing significantly amongst my circles.
To create your page click here and follow the instructions. We’ll be making a video or two over the next week or so to help you get started and share tips on how to make the most of it.
Here are some of the Irish business pages we have found so far, if you’d like to be added to this list please leave your page link in the comments section. For now it’s just a list but I’m looking into some tools to make it a stand alone directory.
Write On Track offers a blog coaching and mentoring service. Not sure of where to start with your blog and like a couple of training sessions? Or perhaps you would prefer a couple of months of mentoring until you are confident? We offer blogging services tailored to your needs.
You can also outsource your blog writing to us.
Lorna and Marie have both reached the finals of Blog and Social Media awards in previous years.
Greenside Up shows people how to grow their own food, whether it’s at community gardens, allotments, private gardens or schools we can come to you.
Garrendenny Lane Interiors is an Irish online home, gift and lifestyle store.
Purchase wallpapers for your home, buy your Christmas gifts here, we will giftwrap for free and can send them abroad for you too.
We source from various European companies that are not readily available elsewhere in Ireland and we also stock many new Irish designers too.
Eco Evolution is a highly professional renewable energy company specialising in the consultancy, design, supply and installation of renewable energy technologies such as Wind Turbines, Hydro Turbines, Solar Photovoltaic (PV), Solar Thermal (Hot Water Supply & Space Heating), Heat Pumps, Heat Recovery Ventilation and high efficiency Ecorad aluminium radiators for the domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural markets in Ireland.
CG Online Marketing customises all services to maximise your online endeavours and produce targeted results.
We cover:
- SEO and SEM
- Online marketing strategies + consultation
- Website audits and projects
- Social networking strategies, management + customisation
- Copywriting and content generation
- PPC advertising
- Online promotions
- Competitor analysis
- Analytical reporting for insights + online behaviours
- *NEW* Marketing outsourcing
Wedding & function singer based in Ballincollig, Cork. It has been my privilege to study with renowned Irish sopranos Cara O’Sullivan and Mary Hegarty. I have a B.Mus Hon in Vocal Performance from the Cork School of Music.
PuddleDucks.ie is Ireland’s leading online specialist for ourdoor clothing for children. Our range includes waterproof jackets, dungarees, trousers, hats, gloves and much more. We also sell a fab range of cosy and fun fleeces. In fact everything that is needed to allow kids to have fun and stay warm and dry in the great outdoors – whatever the weather has in store.
The Secret Garden is tucked away in the beautiful countryside of North Cork. Stocking a wide range of plants, trees, shrubs, perennials and gardening sundries, it’s the perfect place to come and find something different for your garden.
With tea, cake and birdsong we are well worth discovering
Luxury Irish Artisan Handmade Bath & Body Products from Dublin, Ireland
I provide a friendly and reasonably priced research service specialising in genealogy, local history research, and related photography in County Sligo, Ireland.
I can undertake searches in the Flax Growers Index, Tithe Applotment Books, Griffith’s Valuation of Tenements, Parish Records, Gravestone and Memorial Inscriptions, 1901 and 1911 Census for County Sligo and I can also obtain Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates for County Sligo.
I hope I shall be of help to you in tracing your ancestors. Meticulous research is assured.
And don’t forget us!
At Spiderworking.com we love social media. We help small business with social media using big business knowledge.
Leave your link below to be added
September 14, 2011
At some moment on Monday night I flipped. I follow Chris Brogan on Twitter and Google+ and a tweet sprung onto my newsfeed.
“Starting to really dislike the 140 character limit after years of advocating it. Conversations are so choppy here.”
Before I give you my reaction a bit of background
I have to admit one of the things I’ve enjoyed about Google+ is watching it evolve, watching early adopters whose opinions I respect discussing the new network, and discovering how it works. Chris Brogan for one hung up his keys at Facebook and moved lock stock and barrel over to G+. These people were finding new ways that Google+ would work and sharing them with their followers.
After a while it became apparent that Google+ was not just a potential Facebook rival but also a Twitter rival, the stream was reminiscent of Twitter and you have the ability of following people who don’t follow you back. There was nothing amazingly different about Google+ but it was taking the best bits of other social networks and improving them. And therein lies G+’s strength.
With a massive user base that grew at a rate that must have struck panic into the heart of Mark Zukerberg I was beginning to think that perhaps it could eclipse Facebook and do so much faster than I’d originally anticipated. However this has yet to happen. There are members all right but few are active and my feed is still dominated by a few power users.
When G+ was launched I avidly created content specifically for it, I routed out my best photos, made specific videos and found links just for sharing there. To me if I was going to be a success with Google+ I’d have to discover what to post and how to differentiate what I was doing there to what I did on other networks. My community and potential target market are very much ensconced on Facebook and Twitter so leaving them like Chris Brogan did wouldn’t work for me.
As time has passed I have posted less and less. I dip in everyday to have a look at what’s going on and sadly I now break my golden rule. “thou shalt not post the same content to Facebook and Google+”.
There are some people on there whose streams I find entertaining. There are some great photographers and seeing photos in the timeline is definitely one thing that G+ has over Twitter. There are also the social media peeps. Chris Brogan, Mari Smith. They post great stuff and I love reading it but I hesitate before commenting. Why? Well firstly the volume of notifications. Yes I can mute a post but really my trips to G+ are swift and stopping to mute stuff on the way seems unnecessary. The notifications that someone else has responded to the post would be fine if there was a conversation going on but each commentator seems to act individually, they are communicating with the original poster but not me and not the others who have left comments. This is how it works on Twitter but surely G+ gives us the platform to converse. I myself am guilty of this. I leave a comment based on the original post and the first few comments I see. Real conversation can spring up on G+ but usually it’s on the content posted by less influential users. I’ve participated in small scale conversations on both my own and other users posts.
I guess part of the reason for this is the curse of celebrity, Twitter has given us unpresidented access to celebrity and this has carried forward to Google+. The problem being that Twitter is filtered so we don’t all see @replies of adoration aimed at high profile users, sadly on Google+ we do.
So with all those users I still see my feed dominated by celebrities or power users, I see some of my contacts struggling with G+ or like me just throwing the odd link up here and there. It’s partly my fault, I’m not leading my community over to G+, I’m not encouraging them the way others there are and unless I, and people like me, make a better effort Google+ can not succeed.
So my reaction to Chris Brogans Tweet was
“@chrisbrogan G+ isn’t ready for the masses yet.. us with smaller communities are finding it harder.”
to which he responded
“@spiderworking – how so?”
As if to endorse the sentiment of his original tweet I’ve had to post over 800 words to explain my thoughts.
I’m not sure I disagree with Chris Brogan’s point of view as such I’m just not there yet and neither is my community. It’s almost as if due to his loyal community base he’s been able to take the express train to Google+ adoption where as I’m still on the steam train, we stop more often on the way though and hopefully we’ll pick up passengers on route.
What are your thoughts on Google+? Will you pledge like me to try harder? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
August 31, 2011
Ruairí Browne is the Managing Director of Kro IT Solutions Limited; a software development company in Dublin. He has over 12 years’ experience working in web technologies and he counts some very well-known companies as his clients. In this guest blog post for Spiderworking,com he examines the part a traditional website has to play in the age of social media.
I have noticed an increasing number of businesses operating from social media only and eschewing a traditional website. It is not something I am against in principle – actually I think a good social media presence is a lot more useful and cost effective than a bad website. It is also technically very feasible – you can sell products directly from Facebook now with no major setup costs. However for serious business owners here are some reasons why I believe you should keep a website as the central hub of your online activity.
1) Watch the T&Cs
Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter all have seemingly daft rules about competitions, promotion, and other aspects of being a respectable user of their site. If you break these rules you will often be banned without warning or any right to state your case. By using social media as a channel to send users back to your website where they can then enter competitions or purchase deals you are ensuring that you do not fall foul of these rules. You may also consider that some websites such as those related to breast feeding or alcohol may fall foul of American prudence on those subjects that would not be applicable in Ireland.
2) Fashions Change
A well-known Irish band that I worked with spent a lot of money on a social media campaign to launch themselves on MySpace and Bebo. They also had a website which could be maintained, managed, and edited by the band themselves. However they never really took to the website and decided to run all their promotions and competitions exclusively through social media. At one point they had a major fan base of over 100,000. I asked them once if they had email addresses for all these fans and they laughed at me and told me email was old school (man). That was all very well until all their fans moved to Facebook and they had to start again back at zero. If they had driven even a proportion of their traffic back to their website they could have captured their fans contact details there and when the band moved to Facebook they would at least have been able to inform people. As it happens the change in fashion more or less finished the band because the second time around they had all left their jobs and could not sustain a second long campaign back to popularity. I am not sure that Facebook is about to follow Bebo down the drain, but if it does (and let’s face it Google Plus would like it to) then are you ready to move with it? Also imagine that one day you wake up and all your followers are gone from your Facebook page due to some glitch. It could happen and if it does Facebook will issue a brief statement saying that some customers were affected and there is nothing we can do about it.
3) Information is Powerful
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Google Plus are all great places to interact with your customers. However your website is owned by you and therefore a “hit” to your website is of great value to you. For starters you are on message right across the screen – you are not sharing your screen space with messages from the social media website or advertisements or anything else. Secondly you are capturing user data such as where they came from, what country they are in, what keywords they used to find you, etc. You essentially have control of the customer and it is up to you to lose them or make the sale. The same cannot be said with Facebook (or similar) where your customer is really Facebook’s customer and you have to compete for their attention. People picture Facebook as like a big shopping mall that attracts millions of visitors and allows you the privilege of selling to them. However remember that reality is that we are attracting millions of visitors to Facebook and then they are the ones that are trying to sell to those visitors. Think of the Arab guy in the market in Morocco. He comes out into the street with a monkey on his shoulder to attract attention and he tries to make you feel special by telling you he is Irish and his wife is Irish and his dog is Irish. All the time he is pushing you into his store. He knows that the market is a dangerous and fickle place where everyone wants a bit of you. If he can get you into his shop he has your undivided attention to try and make a sale. Facebook is like that market and you need to get people back to your website where you can get their undivided attention.
4) Credibility
Users are not stupid. They know a Facebook page takes 3 minutes to create and that you can get 100 fans just by asking your friends. A website shows much more commitment. A website says that if I have a problem this person will still be here in a few months. This may not be accurate but it is going to be a factor in your customers mind. When e-commerce first took off the most successful shops were those with a brick and mortar presence backing them. Nowadays people expect that a social media presence will at least be backed by a website and if that in turn is backed up by a bricks and mortar operation then all the better.
5) Value
Finally a web based business is worth money and can be sold. For all the reasons above and many more a business based solely on social media is of no value to an investor, bank manager, or buyer. Social media is also perceived [appropriately] to be about people. It is very rare that a small business has an effective social media presence that is not in reality based on one or two key personalities. Having a website behind your social media presence gives it a focus and a focal point that will make it easier for other personalities to take your place and continue to run your business.
You don’t have to look too far to see an example of a business run in the way I recommend. Spiderworking.com is a strong brand tied together by a good website. However Amanda is herself a brand on social media but she tends to filter most of her potential customers back to the Spiderworking.com website (after all where are you reading this blog post?). She is embracing social media fully but she is using it to strengthen and nourish her core business rather than as an end in itself.
I always picture a website as the trunk of a big solid oak tree. Social media is like a part of the root and branch system – it brings nourishment to the website and it allows the website to express itself. If a tree loses a branch or a root it will not die, but without many of them it will not live. There are many other roots and branches such as email, cold calling, marketing, advertising, and networking. They are all important but I suspect that right now social media is for a lot of businesses the one to concentrate on. Just don’t forget the basics – you need a good solid place to call home.
July 6, 2011
At the end of last week Google launched it’s brand new shiny social network Google+. I was cynical, after Google Wave and Google Buzz would G+ be good? From the outside I wasn’t impressed. It seemed to be just another Facebook but then I started using it.
When I started looking at what I liked about it I realised that I could learn from G+ . That in some ways I had forgotten the beauty of social networks and I should refresh the way I use Facebook accordingly.
So firstly what did I like?
1. It’s less complex than Facebook – Facebook has some great features but I think they confuse people. When I’m teaching people how to use it it seems like I could run a week long course on the topic and still not get through it all.
2. Content is good – Because it’s new and membership is still limited the content is really good. Mostly self generated and a lot less automated stuff… and even better NO FARMVILLE!
3. Excitement – It’s new and most people are finding their way around and sharing tips. There is huge positivity from the people who are posting and it makes you want to join in.
4. The people - G+ is similar to Twitter, you can follow who you want and they don’t have to follow you back. This means you can follow some of the top people in your industry on G+. For me that’s easy as I’m in social media so my industry influencers were some of the first there.
5. Choose who to share with – At first I couldn’t see how ‘Circles’ differed from ‘Facebook friend lists’. The difference is that you are required to enter who you want to share with on every post. Some posts are public and Twitter style, some you want to keep for friends, family or even individual users. This should stop news-feeds getting cluttered.
So how will this change the way I use Facebook?
1. Keep it simple - Facebook is complex and it’s easy to assume that everyone knows how everything works. Keeping updates simple and showing people exactly how to communicate with you – whether it be telling them exactly what to do to ‘Like’ a page or join a group is important. Never assume someone knows something, don’t use complicated jargon, make it easy to participate. Of course there is a fine line to tread between keeping it simple and being patronising so make sure you are also adding value, be careful not to talk down to people.
2. Provide compelling content – All of us at one time or another post something we may not have thought about properly. Whether it’s talking about having a cup of coffee or a digest of our daily activity we really need to wonder if people are really interested. Since I’ve been using Google+ I’ve gone out of the way to find compelling content to share. I’m carrying my camera with me everywhere again and only posting the best stuff I find on the net to my profile. With this in mind I’m going to be more selective on what I post to my Facebook profile – although I’m sure I’ll still post a bit of nonsense there.
3. Excitment - How can I make what I’m doing with my Facebook pages more exciting and innovative. I for one have fallen into a pretty tight Facebook schedule for Spiderworking.com and I sometimes forget to think of myself as a client. What clever and innovative ideas would I suggest to a client to get the most from their page and how can I make mine more enticing? I feel I also need to be more impulsive with my posting.
4. Am I connected to all the right people? – I have a lot of friends on Facebook but my stream moves so fast I don’t communicate with them as much as I should. I’m going to start using Friend lists again to make sure I’m not missing important posts from great people. I haven’t actively sought out friends on Facebook for ages and this is something I should be doing, who out there is providing great content through their personal or business pages that I should never miss? I need to find these people and pages and make sure I’m connected.
5. Be selective with sharing – Facebook friend lists serve the same purpose as Google circles. With new lists created I’m going to stop clogging peoples news streams and only send relevant content to relevant groups.
All of this should make me a better Facebooker, I know you’ll all be watching now to see if I fulfil my pledge!
Do you agree with these points? Have you used Google+ yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts too – leave me a comment below or join me on Google+ to have a chat.
January 26, 2011
Today’s post is a guest post from Alan Coleman from OnlineAdvertising.ie. Alan is the founder & CEO on OnlineAdvertising.ie, they are specialists in the areas of Google Adwords & SEO. OnlineAdvertising.ie have had numerous campaigns published by Google as Case Studies and are finalists in the upcoming DMA’s in the “Best Digital Marketing Agency” category.
Last year we asked you to submit your social media questions for us to answer,
SM Receivables asked ”what is the difference between tags and meta tags?”
We’ll hand you over to Alan for the answer:
I’m not 100% what the tweeter meant by “tags”, so I will give a give explanations for a few of the possibilities. Websites have 2 audiences, their users and the search engines. I will detail the relevance of each type of “tag” to both parties.
Title Tags
The “title tag” of your webpage is very important for SEO. It helps the search engine understand what your webpage is about. It is also generally the headline of your webpages’ listing on the Google search results so it will influence whether users visit your site or not.
Your “title tag” is also visible to your websites users at the very top of their screen. So it may influence conversions.
Meta Tags
A meta tag (which can be meta description or meta keywords among other things) is not visible to website users and has less (if any) value in SEO. Meta descriptions are important however, because the search engine will generally display the “meta description” in it’s search results. So well written copy in the “meta description” can increase clicks & conversions on your websites.
Alt Tags
An “alt tag” is the labelling of an image on a website. If you hover your icon over the image on a website it’s alt tag will appear. Search engines can’t see pictures so unless you tag them they will not know what the picture is of, and won’t be able to display them to people searching for such images, or attribute the keywords to your web page. So “alt tags” are important for SEO.
Tags
“Tags” also appear on blogs. You can tag words in a blog so if the user clicks on the tagged word they can see a list of all your posts which include this tagged word. This is great for SEO as it tells search engines you have plenty of content on this word(s) and will therefore increase your website’s value for this word(s). It is also great for users as they can easily find all your posts on their subject of choice.
If you have a social media question you would like answered leave a comment below.
August 18, 2010
A big part of my job is to manage our customer user groups. We now have quite a few across the UK and Ireland, meeting somewhere in the region of 150 times a year. The user groups serve a wide range of customers, each with their own unique requirements focusing on their own particular geographies and software solutions. We realised early on, when setting up most of the groups, that we’d have to introduce some degree of consistency of approach otherwise it’d simply be impossible to maintain.
Communication is of course, central to most of what we do (or should do) with our customers. How could we enable and facilitate the necessarily robust, open and hopefully vibrant dialogue required for the company and its multitude of user communities? Email lists? Google or Yahoo Groups? Nope. Whilst these may have been OK a few years back what we needed now was something far more sophisticated and tailored to our needs – what we required was a User Group Portal, (which was interesting, as it the time I wasn’t sure if such a thing even existed!).
We set about google and straight away we started to find examples of customised websites hosting online communities. But what exactly were our requirements and what is the purpose of user groups anyway?
To work with customers to help drive better product development?
To give users a feedback route to the supplier, helping improve service and support delivery?
To nurture and forge improved communications and customer relations? or
To act as a subtle sales mechanism?
Answer – All of the above!
But how you do you start to build a website that has the capabilities to handle this wide array of challenges? Start by identifying your core requirements. Take each high level area and in turn map the website functionality that is necessary in order to help achieve the respective goal. We ran a half day workshop (with customers and internal representatives from the departments mentioned above) and ended up with the following list as being the pre-requisite building blocks for our portal. For each user group community we would need:
A News section
A Calendar function
A Document repository
A Forum or message board facility
A voting or rating ability (specifically on development requests)
A Blogging ability
Next time – how we turned paper based requirements into reality!
This week I’m delighted to feature a guest post written for us by Shaun Fagan of iSoft. I met Shaun earlier this year and am fascinated by the online community he has set up for his customer user groups. I asked him to tell me more about how he set it up. This is part one, Shaun will be back with part two soon.
A big part of my job is to manage our customer user groups. We now have quite a few across the UK and Ireland, meeting somewhere in the region of 150 times a year. The user groups serve a wide range of customers, each with their own unique requirements focusing on their own particular geographies and software solutions. We realised early on, when setting up most of the groups, that we’d have to introduce some degree of consistency of approach otherwise it’d simply be impossible to maintain.
Communication is of course, central to most of what we do (or should do) with our customers. How could we enable and facilitate the necessarily robust, open and hopefully vibrant dialogue required for the company and its multitude of user communities? Email lists? Google or Yahoo Groups? Nope. Whilst these may have been OK a few years back what we needed now was something far more sophisticated and tailored to our needs – what we required was a User Group Portal, (which was interesting, as it the time I wasn’t sure if such a thing even existed!).
We set about google and straight away we started to find examples of customised websites hosting online communities. But what exactly were our requirements and what is the purpose of user groups anyway?
- To work with customers to help drive better product development?
- To give users a feedback route to the supplier, helping improve service and support delivery?
- To nurture and forge improved communications and customer relations? or
- To act as a subtle sales mechanism?
Answer – All of the above!
But how you do you start to build a website that has the capabilities to handle this wide array of challenges? Start by identifying your core requirements. Take each high level area and in turn map the website functionality that is necessary in order to help achieve the respective goal. We ran a half day workshop (with customers and internal representatives from the departments mentioned above) and ended up with the following list as being the pre-requisite building blocks for our portal. For each user group community we would need:
- A News section
- A Calendar function
- A Document repository
- A Forum or message board facility
- A voting or rating ability (specifically on development requests)
- A Blogging ability
Next time – how we turned paper based requirements into reality!
July 28, 2010
This week, we return to the whole area of blogs and blogging. Diarmuid O’Connell from O’Connell Copy and a commercial writer with many years of experience puts forward the argument for getting someone to do the dirty work – the writing!
Ghost-Blog your way to higher sales
There’s nothing spooky about it. Hiring a professional writer to come up with and write blogs for your business brings sparkle to your online presence and a shine to your social media strategy. And from about €60 a blog, you’ll not find better bang for your online buck.
But you may well be thinking … what would I need a blog for? As for writing it yourself, many folk shudder at the thoughts of it. They usually say…..but I hated English in school and cannot stand writing about myself.
I know the feeling – I gladly ask an accountant to handle my tax and a recent technology meltdown was resolved in minutes by my IT guy.
You’ve read other company blogs and you know how powerful they can be. A professionally written blog, optimised for Google and other search engines will ensure your website has a much, much better chance of getting hits. More hits… a bigger audience…more sales.
It’s easier than you think. My clients usually send me a few bullet points by email or just give me a shout. And over the phone, we come up with a few ideas to get you started. I’ve written for over 30 industry sectors from technology to tourism and from finance to politics and everything in between.
If you love writing your own blog, just keep in mind what you want to ‘say’. Sounds obvious but a good blog post makes one point clearly and retains the right characteristics of your personality and that of your business.
But, if you want to have your blogs ghost-written by a professional writer and put the fear of God into your competition – get in touch….today! Log on to www.oconnellcopy.com or email me at diarmuid@oconnellcopy.com.
April 22, 2010
When using social media to market your brand or service it is important to consider the many opportunities to use online video. With websites including YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo and Metacafe to name but a few there is huge potential to get excellent exposure with an online videos for your organisation. When making a video for online use it may be appropriate to make your own production but if you are looking for something a bit more professional we recommend the services of Hedgehog Productions.
I asked Bryan Corden the MD of Hedgehog Productions to tell me a little more about using video for online marketing and here are his comments.
“There has been a huge growth in the use of online video in the last two years as seen by the fact that YouTube now has over one billion visitors every day. Several major corporate organisations are now specifically creating adverts for use online similar to this example by Old Spice “The man you could smell like”. The advantage of a professionally produced video is that it adds creditability to the product or service that you are offering and it can be specifically produced to suit your intended audience.
When making a video the first step is to outline the objectives and goal of the video. Who is the intended audience, what messages do you wish to convey and what action would you like your viewers to take having watched your video. From there you can go on to develop your script and story board before you commence filming. Once your video is created you can host it on your own website and you can host it for free on a huge range of online video sites. You can also optimise your videos so that they are found by Google and other search engine websites.
Once you have produced a video it is worth considering how you will integrate into your existing website. As the home page is normally the most visited page of any website this could be the ideal location or alternative you might create a specific page for your video content. There are a range of players that you can use or you can integrate the videos directly from YouTube and other online video websites. Hedgehog Productions use a TV style player on our website and you can see it in operation here www.hedgehog.ie.
So if you wish to take advantage of video as part of your social medial marketing strategy you can contact Bryan directly by email to bryan@hedgehog.ie.”
April 8, 2010
Running a social media campaign is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your website and to improve your google ranking. But it should not be used alone. For this reason, if we are asked to work with a customer whose website requires SEO (search engine optimisation) we refer them to our expert partners t2. I asked Rita from t2 to tell me more about SEO:
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Simply put Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google. Successful SEO helps a site gain top positioning in for relevant words and phrases. It is not not enough for a website to look good it has to be found on search engines using words related to your business or service and by people in your locality, whether it be on a county, country or international basis. If your website is not being found by search engines like Google you are missing out on valuable sales and enquiries.
t2 can optimise your website for the most relevant keywords and phrases. Through comprehensive keyword research we can find out what words people use to find your business’ product or service. We use best practice techniques in order to enhance your website’s performance and in turn your return on investment. If your website is not performing on Google but you don’t know why talk to t2 today.
“Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Simply put Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google. Successful SEO helps a site gain top positioning in for relevant words and phrases. It is not not enough for a website to look good it has to be found on search engines using words related to your business or service and by people in your locality, whether it be on a county, country or international basis. If your website is not being found by search engines like Google you are missing out on valuable sales and enquiries.
t2 can optimise your website for the most relevant keywords and phrases. Through comprehensive keyword research we can find out what words people use to find your business’ product or service. We use best practice techniques in order to enhance your website’s performance and in turn your return on investment. If your website is not performing on Google but you don’t know why talk to t2 today.”
February 24, 2010
I’ve been asking for your social media question small or large and this weeks one is a biggy!
John Abbot from Abbot Consulting asked:
“would you agree with Gartner’s predictions about Facebook becoming the hub for social network integation by 2012.”
Lets have a closer look at what Gartner predicted:
“By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization. Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.”
There is no doubt that by 2012 Facebook will have continued it’s massive growth, maybe even reaching a billion users worldwide. However there is a danger that more users may result in less interaction with the site. It is possible that with so many friends to keep up with that users will be overwhelmed with the information coming in. There is also the danger that people will begin to feel that Facebook is too commercial, they will become fans of too many pages and find their news feeds full of marketing messages. For this reason it is important that page owners keep their posts interesting and relevant to their target audience.
Certainly Facebook are aware of the possible downside of growth and have been quite innovative in the way that they allow their content to be shared. Facebook Connect for example and the opening up of Facebook chat that puts them in strong competiton with other IM solutions. Mobile apps such as ‘Urban Spoon‘ will make the way we interact with our facebook friends very different and it is this move forward, creating a Facebook Profile allowing you to easily share experiences across both the mobile and standard internet, that could give Facebook the ability to become the ‘hub’ Gartner predicts.
In some ways Google Buzz is already attempting to make use of your Google profile in a similar way. By buying into several platforms such as YouTube and Blogger and by allowing you to syndicate these to your email contacts using Buzz there is the potential for Google to become stiff competition to become the ‘hub’ in the future. Whether Buzz succeeds as a social network will not be clear for quite some time. It may even be beyond 2012 before we see it take off in the way Twitter and Facebook has, but I would imagine that Facebook will be keeping a close eye on it’s progress in order to stay one step ahead.
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