Despite being described as “the best tool to aid stalking since Facebook,” location-based social media platform Foursquare will prove a massive boon to online marketing companies, one expert has suggested.

Judith Lewis, head of search at media consultancy Beyond, told readers of Marketing Week that in fact Foursquare is the “king of social media marketing.”

After downloading the application, iPhone or other smartphone users can to be located using the phone’s own GPS system. Foursquare then gives them local locations of possible interest and the option to “check in”. Security concerns have been raised because this can be broadcast on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which could give stalkers and other criminals valuable personal information as to a burglary or stalking victim’s whereabouts. However, Foursquare does make available the option to prevent this, so it is up to the user to stay secure while using the app.

Many businesses have already seen its vast potential as an online marketing tool, Ms Lewis pointed out. Famous brands such as Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza, Pho, Hummos Bros, The Breakfast Club, Evans Cycles and many others have added their businesses to the network in order to ensure that their nearest branch is always pointed out to Foursquare users.

But they also use it to do more than that. Ms Evans stressed that such companies have“realised that the future of interaction in “real life” is becoming firmly based within the digital world.”

“For these and other businesses, Foursquare has become a valuable way of interacting with, and rewarding, regulars,” she pointed out.

“While one of the most difficult things to measure is how much online marketing drives purchasers to offline shops, Foursquare is one tool a marketer can use to help measure, as well as engage with, this customer.”

With its seamless integration of online and offline behaviour and the growing popularity of smartphones, Ms Lewis concluded that Foursquare “is set to be the new dominant force.”

Just over a year ago, the Tweetmeme company decided to add another dimension to social networking – and opportunities for online marketing – by providing a single place for retweets.

This gifted content providers with a whole new stream of traffic and soon soared in popularity, leading to this week’s announcement by Twitter that it will officially be taking over operation of the retweet button, known properly as wp-tweet-button.

Tweetmeme’s retweet button currently receives more than 750 million hits a day, and its runaway success has unsurprisingly led to its transferral to an in-house feature on the Twitter site.

The new wp-tweet-button function is little changed from the Tweetmeme original, apart from a new design and colour scheme. Nevertheless, the are some new functions which will help content providers and online marketing experts promote their own brands, sites and services on Twitter.

Once the button is used to retweet, the user will see a list of suggested Twitter accounts to follow, which can be taken up by the website itself for its own promotional purposes, helping to make a retweet the next viral sensation.

Twitter has got a lot of interest going already about the new button, with the likes of YouTube and news outlets such as CNN, USA Today and the Huffington Post all ready to add it to their own sites.

On the company’s blog, Tweetmeme chief executive Nick Halstead revealed that his firm would be assisting Twitter with the switch.

“This will manifest itself in the launch of a number of new products and the first of these is being unveiled today,” he said.

One of these is EDataSift, which will allow website developers to create “streams of data” from the millions of tweets held on Twitter’s database.

Time and time again speaking to new people looking to improve there fortunes online the point of view of the individuals situation is different. Many companies may start from using Google Adwords and progress due to increasing costs to Search Engine Optimisation or Vice Versa. One common situation is companies are either pro SEO or pro Cost per click and it is very rare where you will find a company willing to embrace both mediums. It is without question or doubt the need for both areas to be fully covered accordingly is vitally important if your company is to work to its full potential online.

It is said Google Adwords takes up to 40% of any incoming traffic generated for any keyword and can you really see this changing ? We certainly can’t so straight away by discounting something like adwords you are cutting out 40% of your potential audience. This could be taken from the other perspective and given a SEO bias what we are trying to say to the UK business community is take a step back from your current online marketing plan could you potentially “not see the wood for the trees” due to the unbiased push towards one particular form of online marketing.

We have found that many companies are doing and have been doing this for over a decade at times. Now we have another perspective that of social networking and this can be a real gold mine for many different industries online . Using this in a way to help engage with the audience is a fantastic way of increasing traffic and unlike other forms of advertising online this is a real longterm project.

Take that step back and consider the whole picture  for the future thinking of your presence online. You may well be losing out on a large percentage of your audience online.

Online marketing research company eMarketer has revealed that there will be a 12 per cent increase this year in the amount of money spent on online marketing worldwide.

Analysing international figures on online marketing for the year to date, eMarketer said that it expected the total spend to come to $61.8 million – and to increase to a massive $96.8 billion by 2014.

It said that this would represent a year-on-year increase of 11.9 per cent, in spite of the faltering international economy. In 2009 the internet’s total share of the advertising market was just 11.9 per cent, but by 2014 it will stand at 17.2 per cent, eMarketer added.

Worldwide, there was a 10.5 per cent fall in the amount of advertising spending, to just $465.1 billion last year, but online marketing budgets increased by 2 per cent last year to $55.2 billion.

The company argued that this was down to the excellent value for money and effectiveness of online advertising.

“The recession has propelled online advertising by forcing marketers with limited budgets to make every dollar count,” said eMarketer analyst Jared Jenks.

Internet search giant Google agreed. The company has long insisted that more and more advertisers are opting for online marketing because their impact can be better measured than those in traditional forms of media.

last month, Google said that it was delighted with increased revenue from advertising throughout all commercial sectors, thanks to a growing number of brands embracing SEO advertising and running integrated campaigns across a number of platforms.

New figures have revealed that the UK government is increasing its budget for online marketing and advertising at a time when the rest of its publicity initiatives are facing budget freezes and cuts.

The Central Office of Information (COI) published figures today showing that the year on year spend for government advertising and marketing budget was almost unchanged in the 12 months up to the end of March 2010, at £532 million. The previous year’s total was £540 million.

The COI is responsible for co-ordinating official advertising, marketing and communications, and its figures revealed that the budget for traditional advertising media, such as television, radio and the press dropped by 9.5 per cent to £193 million from £211 million.

However, the spend on online advertising and marketing increased by 9 per cent to £44 million, bringing the total up to 18 per cent of the government’s advertising and marketing budget.

The COI said that it was able to negotiate reduced advertising rates in the media markets because of its financial clout, and as a result had forced some £204 million in discounts – a 48 per cent saving – in comparison with government departments who handled their own campaigns.

It also saved an additional £52 million year on year by cutting spending on publications, PR and events – and by focusing on online marketing rather than the older, more costly and less effective media.

However, the COI faces a budget threat from the government’s austerity programme. Ministers are looking for cuts of up to 50 per cent, and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has already pulled the plug on most funding for the Change4Life anti-obesity campaign, according to the Guardian newspaper.

The alcoholic drinks industry association The Portman Group is offering its members the opportunity to learn how to undertake the responsible online marketing of their products.

The group, which oversees the drinks industry’s code of practice regarding the packaging, promotion and naming of alcoholic beverages, and operates the “Prove It” identity card system, is holding a number of interactive training sessions from the end of the month in London, Manchester and Edinburgh.

The sessions will explore the right and wrong ways to approach an online marketing campaign for drinks using a number of role-play and fictional scenarios dreamt up by marketing firm BD Network.

The Portman Group’s chief executive David Poley commented: “With over 18 million households in the UK now having access to the internet, it is critical that the drinks industry markets its products online in a socially responsible way.”

“The Portman Group provides expert advice in this area and these sessions will provide marketing professionals with vital information on how the code applies to digital marketing.”

The first step was taken last year, when the group published guidelines for drinks companies on responsible online advertising, and the dos and don’ts of promoting alcoholic drinks on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. These guidelines can be found on the Portman Group website.

Any in-house drinks marketing departments or agencies working within the alcoholic beverage industry are welcome to attend the online marketing sessions. The first takes place in London at the offices of the Portman Group on 28 July.

A study eMarketer magazine has found that online advertising has remained strong during the global economic downturn thanks to the high value and “dependable” return on investment (ROI) that it affords.

The online marketing magazine said that although some firms have pulled in the reins on their advertising budgets, the amount of spending on online advertising has actually increased during the recession.

Karin von Abrams, eMarketer senior analyst, commented: “The UK is a mature market for online advertising and the internet is firmly established as an accountable channel that can deliver excellent return on investment.”

“If anything, the recession and the potential for further economic uncertainty make an even stronger case for the online option.”

Ms Von Abrams made her remarks after another report, by media investment company GroupM, indicated that the advertising market could be looking up – at least for online advertising.

The report noted that more and more sectors of UK industry are moving towards online marketing due to its unparalleled strengths when it comes to increasing the visibility of their brand and boosting their profit margins.

Yet another study, this time by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Internet Advertising Bureau, found that online advertising soared above an otherwise depressed advertising sector last year, with a 4.2 per cent increase in spending among companies, compared to 2008.

A report by Forrester Research has also concluded that online marketing can even boost offline sales. Forrester’s study found that almost half of all retail sales are influenced by a customer’s experiences online. Email marketing and special promotions via retailers’ websites are very good at directing customers to the retailer’s stores.

A new study suggests that online advertising in Britain will grow by 7 per cent by the end of the year and will eventually outstrip the amount of cash that companies spend on advertising via such traditional media as print and television.

A report by eMarketer, called UK Online Advertising Spending and Trends, discovered that online marketing had been spared the effects of the recession in a way that other kinds of media advertising had not been able to avoid.

Last year, advertisers in the UK spent a total of £3.54 billion on online advertising, which was 5.7 per cent more than in the previous year. Conversely the amount spent on advertising in other more traditional media plunged by 16 per cent.

eMarketer senior analyst Karin Von Abrams, who wrote the report, commented: “Internet ad spending continued to grow during the economic downturn, online marketers are well placed to capitalize on the recovery, whether this is slow and halting, or steady and more rapid.”

She said that the company expects spending on online advertising to level out next year, before rising yet again because of the enormous marketing opportunities presented by the 2012 London Olympics.

The extent to which online marketing has avoided the worst of the recession was underlined in a separate statement by the bosses of WPP and Publicis, both of who told the Cannes Lions advertising festival over the weekend that the advertising market was improving – in contrast to other sectors.

Mr Sorrell said that there are “no signs whatsoever” that European clients were reducing their marketing spending, although levels had yet to return to the peaks of 2008.

Mobile phone internet services firm dotMobi has recently launched a new application designed to help firms who wish to take their online marketing campaigns to mobile handsets.

The app is aimed at small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and helps them to design and create websites that are specifically designed for smaller mobile phone screens. With online marketing – as with all marketing – it is always necessary to grab a user’s attention and hold it.

The goMobi platform helps SMEs to develop sites which are not only mobile-friendly, they also recognise which sort of device is being used to access them and reconfigure their content for the correct format.

The sites will be hosted in the dotMobi cloud to save SMEs the extra expense of hosting additional sites. The company’s chief executive Trey Harvin said that goMobi “connects SMEs to their customers significantly faster because a goMobi site delivers only the content mobile customers need, while making it easy for businesses to set up and maintain a unique mobile website.”

“Since a goMobi website works on all mobile handsets, it ensures a business is available on the complete range of mobiles available, not just iPhones and Android,” he added.

“Site owners can build a site in minutes and then focus on their business, while their mobile website works to bring in new customers.”

Mr Harvin went on to insist that one of the greatest strengths of goMobi was its simplicity and user-friendliness.

Although goMobi is currently only available in the US via name.com, the parent company is planning an international roll-out within the next few weeks. So UK-based businesses that wish to refine their online marketing will not have to wait long.

Twitter has become more and more popular over the year and as time goes by companies are realising its potential as a way of generating traffic to there companies websites. We have run several different tests on the effectiveness of Twitter and have found a wide range of positive results not just from our own twitter account but many other companies we represent.

On average each twitter post is generating 5 – 15 clicks of course the more followers your twitter account has the larger the chance of generating higher click volumes. Our research over the past 6 months has shown the importance of twitter being automated to a blog this way the account isn’t setup and left idle as many accounts are following the initial setup.

One thing we feel is important is creating the right image on your twitter page. The twitter background is a great place to tell people about your company and promote your company logo and brand. Not just that it looks really professional if you have your own personalised design which conforms to the correct resolution and dimensions.

Our twitter background has been live for the past 4 weeks and has already help generate a better response from twitter traffic and helped to increase followers. If you are serious about improving your presence on twitter then a personalised background is a must.

View our Twitter page – http://twitter.com/onlinemediadltd