Should Google feel threatened by Facebook’s new strategy…or thanking them?  Differing opinions are sharing their views on how this will affect the search giant.

In the short term, Google is probably thanking Facebook. Google currently controls 60-70% of the search volume and traffic.  Antitrust laws and regulators have been after the search giant… but Facebook’s new opportunity will diffuse some of these numbers.  It may take some time for Facebook to make a big impact in this area but opens the door to competition from an Internet giant with more than 845 million users.

In the long term, Google definitely should feel a bit threatened.  Most of Google’s profits and revenues come from their advertising.  Once Facebook has a solid handle on this and understands the advertising part of this side… this will level the playing field.  Facebook plans to use and combine friend recommendations and user interests in posting more advertisements.  Business Week announced last week that Facebook had hired a former Google engineer, along with 20+ developers, to help develop this search based advertising.

So what exactly could the new Facebook search feature do?  This may combine social search results, along with traditional web results, to provide the most precise search on the web. Facebook would listen to social input signals to help determine search rankings to enhance accuracy. This is something that Google could eventually catch up with but don’t understand their customer base as much as Facebook does.

Are you looking forward to Facebook’s new search engine?

Please let us know what you think on our Facebook and Google+ pages!

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

facebook search, Google search, Google Social Media, social search

In a move that was coming sooner or later, our privacy, has become a little less private.  The UK government has given permission and introducing new laws for the police to monitor “who” is emailing and using social media, according to The Guardian… but not “what” is being said…at least for now.  These laws seem to be easing the transition to the details being seen later down the road.

The reports are sharing the Internet Service Providers will be collecting all the users’ data and at the request of the police, will share and provide this when asked.  UK officials are preparing and using these new laws against the threat of future terrorism threats, etc.  According to a 2010 UK official review, online communications prevented attacks in every major counter-terrorism attempted in the UK that year.   With this being said, citizens of the UK should feel better and safer about what these laws are outlining. A home office spokesperson made these comments, “It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public.”

With this said, there are and will still be many opponents to these bills.  Similar types of laws were stopped in 2009 but were revised this year.  Many members of Parliament are preparing for a tough road ahead for advocates. David Davis, a leading Conservative Member of Parliament, scoffed at the bill in a radio interview on the BBC.  Davis shares, “Our freedom and privacy has been protected by using the courts by saying ‘If you want to intercept, if you want to look at something, fine, if it is a terrorist or a criminal go and ask a magistrate and you’ll get your approval. They don’t need this law to protect us. This is an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary innocent people in vast numbers. Frankly, they shouldn’t have that power.”

It appears these laws will not be a unanimous decision but will need to trust these decisions to be respectful to our privacy.

Please let us know what you think about this on our Facebook page or Google+ pages here!

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

david davis, parliament laws, The Guardian UK, uk email law, uk online privacy laws, uk social media

There are many different social networks on the web today and one of the newest members would be Google+. The network is trying to keep up with all of the other well known networks like Facebook and Twitter. Google + has already accumulated 100 million monthly users but still hasn’t reached the goal that they are wanting.

Google now wants to take on Facebook and Twitter and will be launching an ad campaign in the UK. This is meant to raise awareness for Google + and to get lapsed users to re-engage with the social network. This will be featuring TV and digital marketing activity. Google is trying to attempt to show how their new social network can be used in real life. They really need to find a way to show the world how Google + is relevant to peoples everyday lives. “The best way to educate people about a product is to demonstrate it”, said Obi Felten, a Google EMEA director of consumer marketing. All Google needs to do is grab everyone’s attention and show them what they are really all about.

Studies show that in November of 2011, people spent 5.1 minutes on Google +. Recently, in January 2012, the studies showed that the hype about the new site had gone down to 3.3 minutes. Facebook is still way ahead with 800 million users but Google is determined to get their network up to this level. Rumours are that Google is also trying out a new commenting system that will feed into Google+.  All in all, Google + is trying to dominate and they are starting with this movement in the UK.

Will Google+ ever rise above all the rest of the competition or will they stay at the bottom of the totem pole? Only time will tell with this one!

Please let us know what you think on this movement of Google+ in the UK on our Facebook page here or our Google+ page.

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

digital marketing london, digital marketing uk, Google Social Media, google+ uk, obi felten

London is one of the great digital marketing cities in the world and Google realizes this…and more by opening up this new facility in the high tech area in London.  The Internet accounts for 8% of the UK economy and Google, the social media and internet giant, sees the potential for entrepreneurs and business startups to make an even greater impact in the economy!

Today, Campus London opened and is now at 90% capacity with over 100 people. Google has teamed up with Central Working, Tech Hub, Seedcamp and Springboard. Campus London will host daily events and regular speaker sessions. Also, they will host experts in the field with lectures and mentorship programs with local Google teams.

These are all designed to challenge, encourage, and motivate entrepreneurs and innovators to share in the tools that they need to succeed and create a jumpstart in the online marketing world. Google says that an additional 4,500 people have already signed up online to visit the facility.  Several photos from inside the facility are also available for viewing here.

From entrepreneurs starting their own web design to seo businesses to other digital marketing businesses, Google looks to make a huge impact in the London and UK community!

Great news!  If only they could take in more entrepreneurs and startups.  :)

Are you interested in touring the new facility?  Please let us know what you think about this on our Facebook page or Google+ page.

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media, SEO, Web Design

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Some have questioned whether or not the new Facebook Timeline transition has been good for their Facebook brand pages.  If you’ve been holding back or nervous about the March 30th deadline that all pages will change over…don’t be.  :)  Even though this was only a small sample size of 15 brand pages, the results look very encouraging! Research was performed by a company, Simply Measured, and their results show a 46% increase in fan engagement with the new Timeline.

The study compared companies brand pages for two months prior to the change that pages converted to Timeline for pages and for the last month with the change to the new look and features. The average engagement, per post, is where the big jump increased to 46%.

A deeper look showed that normal posted updates actually dropped in engagement but Timeline posts with photos and videos shot up to 65%!  Hint, hint for marketers.  Also, the larger… the better. Providing updates with links attached showed a small increase but simple, plain posts showed a huge drop in fan engagement.

Surprisingly, one finding showed that even if a company had not posted in about a week, their photo or video post was still picking up views, shares, and comments.  Yet another reason to look for and post pictures and videos to our pages.

Do you see the same type of changes and engagement on your brand’s Facebook Timeline page?

Please let us know on our Facebook page or Google+ page!  We would love to hear your feedback for this.

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media, Web Design

facebook timeline, fan engagement, simply measured

A wife and husband tried to start their own and first social network in the UK, 12 years ago. This was made to help people reconnect with lost school memories and old photos. The site reached its height of popularity in 2003 and was known to have more than 20 million registered users. All was well until the well-known Facebook took an astonishing rise to having more than 850 million members. This made Friends Reunited lose tons of users and popularity, dragging them down to 1.5 million visitors per month.  Some people believed that

Friends Reunited would now just be another footnote in the history of social networking but others began to think that this wasn’t the end. A new and improved Friends United will go live on March 27, 2012. Since the company was bought by a new owner, there will be some very well needed changes.  New privacy settings and access to 350,000 old, historical photos will also be available on the new page. Some would like to call this a “digital scrapbook” where users can find 10 million “memories” in the form of 6 million photos, 2 million events and 2 million places to tag alongside their own content. There are no ideas yet on how the site will make profit besides the usual advertising element.

No one knows yet if the new site will attract more attention or remain on the sidelines because having Facebook as a competitor is a very difficult predicament. Tomorrow we will find out if Friends Reunited makes the comeback that they want!

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Apple has decided to pay out its first dividend since 1995 and the money at Apple’s disposal is in the ballpark of $100 Billion.  The leadership must have a great reason and plans that will help shape the tech and/or social media sphere even more!  There are many rumours, including the purchase of social networking giant, Twitter.

Analysts have been looking at some of the possibilities and one that makes sense and would be a great asset, especially to promote Apple products and applications.  Apple, recently, integrated Twitter completely on their operating systems.  In the past, Apple had been extremely strict in allowing third party applications on to their products.

Twitter is worth an estimated $9 Billion dollars…which would be no problem for Apple to acquire with part of the money that has come in with the dividend, etc.  The holdup to why this hasn’t happened yet is because the leadership at Apple may be wanting to be sure that this is would be a great investment.  Throughout Apple’s tenure, the company has not invested more than $500 million on a single acquisition.  ”Billion” has a different feel to it.

The purchase of Twitter would do a few things instantly that would benefit:

1) Instead of creating their own social network from the ground up, Apple instantly becomes a major player in the social networking industry.

2) They create changes to Ping and can monetize from these changes.

3) By taking ownership, they keep the likes of Microsoft, Google and others from purchasing Twitter first.

4) Begin to implement how they can market more Apple products and apps on Twitter for its 500+ million users.

Do you think this is a great investment for Apple if they decide to do this?

Please let us know what you think on our Facebook page or our Google+ page here.

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

apple dividend, apple rumors, apple social media, apple twitter

Google has just released a new set of social media reports that go into details about the value of traffic hitting their social media pages!  This analytics tool focuses on measuring whether visitors that come to a given site actually engage in a specific action, not just about measuring whether people are showing up. This tool will be unveiled within the next month.

This was shared from Google Analytics blog: “The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about – allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business. We wanted to help you with 3 things:

* Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions.

* Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs).

* Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs.

One of the most fascinating parts to the new system is the user can define a specific goal that they are looking to measure — whether it is video views, visits to the homepage/specific pages or actual purchases. Once this is complete, Google prepares an analysis of how your social media traffic is going through to the specific area you’re looking to track.

Google will allow traffic results from Reddit, Google+, Blogger, Delicious, Meetup and many more lesser known sites. The Google+ reports will obviously share more details about +1′s, which posts are being shared and commented on the most, and how visitors found and landed on their page. Among the biggest names that have yet to commit to this social media data hub are Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.  Phil Mui, the Google Analytics group product Manager would welcome the other social media giants and hope that they join up with the analytics reports.

This is a very exciting step for trying to understand and take a look at the analytics and ROI of social media! Until there is confirmation from the largest social media giants, the reports will help to see where our traffic is coming from.  Until then, it will be great to take a closer look at how our Google+ pages are responding and where we can improve…and put more attention.

Please let us know if you are looking forward to this on our Facebook page or Google+ page here.

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

Google Analytics, phil mui, social media data hub

Chocolate lovers…hurry!  Starting now, at 6:00 PM (GMT), Cadbury UK are welcoming springtime with an “Introduction to Chocolate Tasting” Google Hangout on Air.  Cadbury UK has done a fantastic job of utilizing their Google+ page with now over 696,000 followers!

When Cadbury reached 500,000 followers, the team decided to create a chocolate version of the Google+ page for a hangout and then posted the video to YouTube. On the page are recipes, pictures of chocolate sculptures, and other promotional videos.

Cadbury has a creative way to separate their circles including “Creme Egg,” “Wispa,” “Dairy Milk,” and for all chocolate lovers… “tasters.”  The chocolate tasters hangout will invite members of the “tasters” circle and guests to learn about dark, milk, and white chocolate.

Cadbury is the official treat provider to the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games and have a great team running their social media with the creative games and activities to keep us engaged.

Will let you go…so you can go jump on the Google Hangout now…and enjoy the chocolates!

Please let us know if you played with chocolates…and enjoy Cadbury on our Facebook page here.

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

cadbury chocolate, cadbury google+ hangout, cadbury uk

Not so fast Apple!  At least this is what Dell’s Chief Commercial Officer, Steve Felice, shared with Reuters in London.  Dell attempted to crack the tablet market last year but withdrew their attempt…and continuing the process to market a quality business tablet for consumers.

Dell wants us to believe that it is not too late for them or others to compete in this market.  It would be great for competition but… why the delay?  Maybe it’s not too late as Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and possibly Nokia are also planning Windows 8 tablets.  96% of the tablet market is dominated by the iPad with 84% of businesses planning to buy a tablet looking to the iPad, as well.

Felice said that Dell’s relationships with its thousands of business customers gave it an advantage over Apple, whose gadgets can cause headaches for IT departments because they operate on different systems.

Felice revealed that Dell is testing Windows 8 tablets, and that the company may try again with Android-based devices, despite a lack of success with the Android-driven Streak 5, Streak 7 and Streak 10 tablets. “We’re very encouraged by the touch capability we are seeing in the beta versions of Windows 8,” said Felice. “We have a roadmap for tablets that we haven’t announced yet. You’ll see some announcements for the back half of the year. We don’t think that this market is closed off in any way.”

Felice said that Dell’s relationships with its thousands of business customers gave it an advantage over Apple, whose gadgets can cause headaches for IT departments because they operate on different systems. This is what will give Dell a boost in their initial sales by Dell employees and other business customers that may be ready to take a chance and see how this compares to the iPad, etc.

The key, which is maybe why the long delay, is knowing that if they do not market a top quality tablet at first shot…this will probably affect future tablets that Dell produces and markets.

How do you think Dell tablets will do on the market?

Please let us know on our Facebook page here.

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency UK, Web Design

dell tablet, dell windows 8, steve felice

At Micrositez, we have the privilege of working with some great people…and great partners.  Today, we want to highlight our partnership with Cargo Force.  Cargo Force are specialists in Excess Baggage, Baggage Shipping, Student shipping, Student Storage, Mini Moves, Student Excess Baggage, and Shipping overseas.

Cargo Force is an International Shipping Company based in London England, UK which aim to deal with both the intricate logistics and freight forwarding requirements of major companies and PLC’s as well as smaller companies and household removals.

They specialize in everyone receiving the same High Level of Professional Service – whether using their Express Air services, cheaper Freight Forwarding or Group freight shipping services.

To get a better understanding, we love their mission statement: “The company will provide a worldwide freight solution across land, sea or air to shippers from the UK and abroad. Aspiring to the highest possible standards in delivery of that service to procure new customers and build long term relationships to ensure the stability and growth of the company.”

For any freight shipping and services to send your valuables, worldwide, we suggest our good friends at Cargo Force, based in London, UK. Contact them online here.

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency UK, Clients

cargo shipping UK, express air services, international shipping, shipping company UK

53% of UK companies that were polled in a recent study acknowledged that they use social media for their business or brand.  Of those 53%, only about 50% of these companies have a detailed “strategy” for how to use social media to promote their business and brands.  As both in business and life, we don’t plan to fail but many fail to plan.  Without a plan for including to market for your brands through social media… the brand is losing out on much potential business and for search engine searches, at the very least.  A well-detailed plan, what we include at Micrositez, will create a winning strategy for your brand to win in social media.

Many companies and brands, that have not yet started to use social media, plan to start the creation of social media pages and accounts this year.  A great step in the right direction! When business owners and leaders realize that there is so much more out there than creating a social media brand page and leaving it to collect dust…the potential in business and new customers can skyrocket the company to great unknowns!

Ian Simpson, managing director at Catalogues4Business, who performed the survey, said: “It’s great to see so many companies embracing social media and digital marketing. It can be a very powerful tool, but as with most marketing activities, there must be a strategy in place, and some joined up thinking. This will ensure each marketing activity is working with each other and working to the max. Otherwise you can quickly find you’ve wasted a lot of time, and money, and not got much to show for it.”

What the 47% of UK companies need to understand is that having a social media marketing plan is a great way to start adding to their presence online.  With a minimum presence, businesses and brands can be found when a user types in certain keywords or searches.  But for the half of the companies that use social media pages… and don’t have a plan… they are missing out on the greatest amount of free traffic!  Through keyword optimising and creating a profile that will stand out on SEO searches, the followers and users that can find your page can easily multiply.

Does your company have a detailed social media plan?

If not…why not?

Social media is here to stay and only going to gain in importance for marketing in business!

Let us know what you think about this on our Facebook page here.

Micrositez:  UK Digital Marketing Agency, Social Media, SEO

Catalogues4Business, ian simpson, SEO, social media uk, uk business

Why the buzz?  If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, it might be good to explore what it’s all about. Even Charlie Sheen is “PINNING!”  Ok, maybe not.  Women, actually, are the catalysts of the site with 80% of users.

Early 2012, showed Pinterest having 10.4 million active users with the numbers continuing to grow at great numbers.  These numbers are much higher than Facebook’s and Twitter’s first anniversary…combined(!) and has grown at a 145% rate.  Pinterest is also retaining and engaging more with their users…two to three times greater rates than Twitter did at this point in their history.

Brands and businesses are also using and learning how to market with Pinterest.  Whole Foods already has over 19,000 followers!  Brand pages will also be unveiled this week too.  CEO and Co-founder, Ben Silbermann, “emphasized new discoverability features in the redesign, saying he and his team wanted to make it easier for users to stumble upon other like-minded users, and highlight the people their connections are repinning images from. He also said the team is working on expanding the number of things users can pin, including video. Soon, people will be able to pin from Vimeo, Hulu and Netflix, among others. And, as was revealed earlier this week, an iPad app — as well as a public API — are also in the works.”

Pinterest has accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic while Twitter has a tad over Pinterest with 3.61%! Facebook clearly leads with 26+% referral traffic with Twitter and Pinterest in at #2 and #3. This is in less than a year from launch and the site’s huge growth not accelerating largely until the fall of 2011.

One reason Pinterest’s popularity has grown is because of its simple visual photos and pages and looks of a bulletin board of different topics. Users can then follow, find, pin and re-pin their favorite brands and images.  Users can also search for topics, subjects and themes.  What’s interesting is 80% of “pins” are… “re-pins.”

With the amount of people joining the site, marketers are learning and continuing to learn how to use Pinterest.

Are you one who is learning…or ignoring?

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency UK, Social Media

ben silbermann, pinning, pinterest, social media, whole foods

Social media in business is a very delicate issue.  Not every employee can or should be promoting their employer on social media…on the business side.  On a personal side…go for it!  It’s all good…unless it’s embarrassing, etc. Social media is a science as this is constantly evolving and no one person knows everything…there’s just too much out there.

But one thing that needs to remain a constant is the professionalism, quality, and purpose to what information is being shared and spoken when representing the employer. If the purpose of your page is to be strictly business… make sure there is a purpose and that the article or what is being shared ties in to the company’s overall strategy.  If you’re looking to promote positive things, pictures and interaction with your fans or followers…do it with a purpose.

In this eye-opening statistic, 76% of companies do NOT have a clearly defined social media policy for their employees.  Whether a policy is in place or not, it’s so important for employees to understand that they are representing the company online too.  If posting racy photos on your Facebook page comes back around somehow to a client…this can put the wrong image of the employer.

There are a whole range of people on the social media sphere: Natural Naomi, Savvy Shaun, Reluctant Robin, Opposing Oprah, & Newbie Ned.  For each type of employee, there are certain skill sets and points that your company will want to train them on.  Which one are you?  This GREAT Infographic goes more into details about this and much more regarding the issue.

We also wanted to share about what Australian telecom giant, Telstra, is doing for social media and their employees.  This 40,000+ person company makes social media training mandatory for its employees and created a “Policy of 3 R’s” – Responsibility, Respect and Representation. The company has also published their entire social media training guide online, so that anyone can see what they’re teaching and training.

Social media is not just chatting, posting pictures and playing Farmville.  Social media is also big business and employees need to be trained with this other philosophy in mind too.

Please let us know what you think and share on our Facebook page!

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency, Social Media

business social media training, employee social media, social media training, telstra

It’s interesting to see the amount of active users in a particular social media area and the reasons why it is what it is.  For marketers, though, this determines where to put the most time in along with the most effective use of our time and financial resources.  In this latest infographic, we get a great look at updated numbers and the key reasons people are utilizing the sites.

About 2 out of 3 adults are using social media websites…but who are they? OnlineMba.com took a closer look at the demographics to include education level, income, age and gender of users, and a few other fun facts.

Over the spectrum of these sites, the one constant is that the majority of users are college students or have a range of college backgrounds. Facebook shows that 57% have some college background while 24% have a Bachelors or Masters Degree.  It’s also interesting about gender splits for some of the top social media sites are sorted.  Facebook and Twitter share more female users, 57% and 59%.  Pinterest has a wider range of female users with 82% women.  Google+, though, has more men using the site than women with 71%.  LinkedIn shows about an even percentage of male to female users. Most people use social media to stay in touch with their friends and family.

Facebook: About 200 million of the 845 million Facebook users login everyday to their Timeline from their mobile devices. The average visitor signs in about 40 times per month and has 130 friends on their account.  Average time per visit is 23+ minutes.

Twitter:  127 million active users with 36% sending at least one tweet per day.  54% of users use Twitter by mobile.

Google+:  90 million active users with 44% of users are single.  About 42% are looking for friends.  The most common occupations on the site are engineers, developers and designers.

Pinterest:  With 21 million monthly active users, the average time spent on the site is over 16 minutes.  The top corporate brand is Real Simple, with over 34,500 followers.

LinkedIn: Of the 150 million active users, 3 out of 4 use the site for business purposes.  The average time spent on the site is 8 minutes and boasts over 2 million companies.

Sooooooo much more and a great amount of research can be had within these details, when broken down. Hope this has been helpful for those looking more into demographics for social media sites.

Micrositez:  Digital Marketing Agency, Social Media

facebook, onlinemba.com, pinterest, social media demographics, social media infographic, twitter

The excitement, anticipation and rumors kept building…and at yesterday’s big Apple event, we finally found out the details! They did not disappoint.

The new iPad features a sharper screen, the high-resolution 2048 x 1536 pixel Retina Display, as well as faster wireless connectivity, rapid-response touch-screen control and quad-core graphics, Apple has widened its lead in the tablet market…again!

Other Great Features:

* Device can reach download speeds of up to 72Mbps using 4G LTE and 21Mbps with HSPA+.
* Can function as a personal hotspot if the carrier supports that feature.
* 9.4mm wide and weighs 1.5lbs (slightly heavier than iPad 2).
* Battery lasts 9 hours running on 4G LTE and 10 hours running on Wi-Fi.
* Comes in Black and White.
* Supports voice dictation for English, French, German and Japanese.

Sure, there are the die-hards that were wanting more, but they’ll have to wait. The 4G capabilities and those who love pixels…this is perfect.

Soon, people will be fanatically lining up and some even camping out to be one of the first to have their hands on the new iPad!

Will you be one of them?

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency, Link Building

apple new ipad, apple tablet, iPad retina display

Let the branding begin (or carry on) as Acer has just announced a new tablet with the Olympics image, which will be available sometime in March. If brands haven’t officially started jumping on the marketing bandwagon of the summer 2012 Olympic Games in London… the time has officially begun. Be ready for Coca-Cola bottles & cans, along with many other gadgets and products that will look to make extra money during these next months.

Acer has announced that their quad-core tablet, the Iconia Tab A510, will be released in an Olympics Games edition. Acer has also announced that this is just the first of several products that will be designed with an Olympics image.

The limited edition Acer has the Olympic logos and will come in black or silver colors. The tablet also has a 15-hour battery life (9800 mAh of power) for all day use. Its specs include a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 backed up by 1GB of RAM, 32GB storage, and a 10.1-inch 1280×800 display. The Acer tablet will run the “Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and ships with mobile productivity apps installed including Acer Print for wireless printing, which is compatible with 87% of the brand-name printers on the market.”

Acer has started to prepare us for the buzz to be surrounding Olympic based branding and merchandise!

Let the Games begin!

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency, Link Building

acer tablet, Android 4.0 ice cream, iconia tab a510, london olympics, Nvidia Tegra 3

In the early 1990′s the Internet had only a few ways for social communication, which was typically through America Online (AOL). When AOL was the go to source for the Internet it supplied consumers with e-mail, chat room services, and Instant Messenger. This was the Social Networking in the early 1990’s.  Twenty years later the Internet has become more innovative with advanced applications for Social Networking.  People can post their feelings and thoughts so that millions of people throughout the world can read about it. There are also sites that people can display their favorite webpages and articles so that maybe someone with the same interest can also take a look at it. Also, individuals have the opportunity to add to already existing references like the webpage Wikipedia.  Furthermore, people can now post memories of their greatest moments through Social photos and videos so that everyone can experience it.  Lately the Internet community has been calling this Social Media.

The different types of social media

The best way to describe Social Media is by splitting both words: Social and Media.  Social is defined as, “seeking or enjoying the companionship of others,” and Media is described as, “the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely.” Social Media in turn can be defined to influence others by communicating their thoughts and feelings through the Internet medium.

Social Media has now become a very indispensable marketing asset towards major corporations and independent businesses. With the rise of Social Media marketing many firms are able to apply these new tools to help promote their businesses to the millions of people who are active on these applications.  Just imagine where your company can go if those people were aware of your products and services…Locally and globally!

How we can all connect

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The answer is yes. Since Google’s announcement of Search Plus Your World, two weeks ago. The world of SEO has been up in arms over concerns that this is one more attempt by Google to push themselves to the front of the queue, in the world of social media.

However, #SPYW as it’s known on the twitter feed isn’t just be a matter of concern for SEO experts. The changes will also impact the way Pay per Click campaigns are formed too.  Here are a few areas we should expect to see affected by the new feature, which I have separated into a pros and cons list.

Positives:

• Ability to align Google+ images with PPC ads
• More visuals added to search results means greater need for Product extensions
• PPC being used more to position the latest and greatest

Concerns:

• PPC ads will be overshadowed by eye catching Google+  results
• Brands being overhauled by their celebrity ambassadors
• Recently added extra ad space overshadowed by Search+

Ultimately the biggest battle with SPYW, for PPC strategists, will be the battle for clicks. Now when users conduct a search Google will present them with a mix of social and search information fused together. Despite the backlog of complaints made against Google and this new feature, by unhappy rivals. Both paid search teams, and businesses will have to keep in mind some of the above pointers in moving forward with any PPC strategy.

Micrositez is a digital marketing agency offering PPC.

Google, PPC, search engine optimisation

As 2011 draws to a close, we thought we’d take a brief look at some key events that took place throughout the industry over the last year in social, search, web, and PPC;
From Facebook, to HTML there have been significant movements and achievements particularly amongst social and search as the two continue to merge closer together.

Social
• Facebook attracted over 55% of the world’s online population in October
• Twitter grew by 59% with over 160 million unique users visiting the site every month.
• Linked In grew by 55% this year
• Google+ was unleashed into the world, reaching 65 million users world wide

Search
• Google, Mozilla renew search partnership for a further three years.
• Google’s Caffeine Update impacted 35% of searches, increasing demand for fresher content.
• YouTube attracted more than 1 trillion videos views this year
• Integration of search and social data that enriched our real time search results
• Google Panda Update back in February 2011

Web
• This year saw the arrival of a long awaited CSS3 and HTML 5
• Simple colour schemes proved to be a great success
• With the rise of smartphones, came the rise of mobile web design
• Domain names became that little bit more creative giving people more option than .com or .co.uk, to .me .us .pretty much anything you can think of.

PPC
• Online shopping increased this year. An estimated £15 Billion dollars has already been spent online in the run up to the Christmas period.
• Rich media ads are almost three times more effective in driving purchase intent v basic Flash
• Rich media ads grew 66%
(Sources include: Inside Adwords and ComScore)

May we take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year from everyone at Micrositez Digital.

Micrositez: Social Media and Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing, PPC, search, social media