Archive for June, 2010
Twitter is a Gift to Companies Thanks to Instant Feedback
A leading online marketing organisation has urged companies to harness the instant feedback possibilities of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
A recent poll found that nearly half of all online consumers demonstrate their support or dislike for certain brands on Twitter or Facebook.
Referring to the study by market analysts ExactTarget, search engine optimisation company SEO Junkies argued that even negative feedback from such social media was very useful when it comes to formulating online marketing strategies.
SEO Junkies director Di Forster insisted that any companies that experience negative feedback online are well place to “turn it around and spin it to a positive.”
“You’re finding out how people are talking about you, whether it’s good or bad. It might be bad, but you need to know about it, then you can change it,” she added.
With the recent introduction by Google addition of an improved real-time search algorithm, which updates the search engine’s databases more swiftly and accurately than ever before, social media such as Twitter has become more important as a marketing device than ever before, Ms Forster insisted.
However, the benefits for companies intent on incorporating Twitter into their marketing strategies will not come without effort. Writing for Official Wire, SEO expert and social media businessman Leon Hill stressed that for social media to be at its most effective, brands have to put work into building up a strong and loyal following.
A company needs to consider what sort of fans it wishes to attract and then concentrate its online marketing efforts into enticing them.
Twitter Opens the Gates to World Cup Fever
Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter is contributing to the excitement surrounding the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup today with a special website set up for football fans around the world.
The social network unveiled http://twitter.com/worldcup, which is dedicated to all things World Cup – giving Twitterers information about the match schedules, flag icons of all the countries participating in the tournament, and of course the promise of live tweets throughout all the World Cup matches.
Writing on the official Twitter blog, its co-founder Biz Stone pointed out its advantages for fans and the potential for online marketing, with the dedicated site giving them a perfect opportunity to link up with teams, players and official sponsoring brands during the World Cup, not least through the medium of Twitter advertising.
He said that the Twitter FIFA World Cup page boast such unique features as live widgets, real-time search facilities and Top Tweets sections. The latter in particular is interesting, as its algorithm seeks out and republishes the most popular and interesting tweets about the tournament. By clicking on the View Match link, Twitterers are able to check out a live stream of all the site’s updates concerning an individual match.
But there is more to the Twitter/World Cup tie-in than that. It has also introduced a facility that causes a football icon to appear next to any tweet concerning the World Cup which features the #WorldCup hashtag, as long as users are viewing them via the Twitter Web interface.
When Twitterers use the hashtags with the first three letters in a participant country’s name, such as #ENG for England, the nation’s flag will appear next to the tweet in question.
The Fifa World Cup effecting Internet Marketing
The build up is nearly over and football fans across the world are ready to follow there countries in front of there televisions as usual. There is however one big difference from the World Cup in 2010 compared to the one 4 years ago in Germany. The biggest advance between this world cup and previous is the advance of the Internet the users in past world cups would read articles following the games. But now people will be online and interacting live on social networking sites such as facebook and twitter.
Just how often will the hashtag #worldcup be used over the next 6 weeks and how are companies taking advantage of this added interest. The obvious contenders have already shown there colours the Supermarkets with there television and Beer offers who have followed that into the online arena. Companies need to embrace the World cup and think about how that can be an advantage to there companies via the internet .
If you are an online shop why not consider providing a special World cup offer how about a special offer for ever goal England score. This is something that can go wrong so do be careful many online betting companies have tried such offers in the past only for it to back fire. A famous Uk bookmaker paid out on all bets before the end of the Premier league only for things to change at the end of the season and leave them out of pocket.
There is no harm in dressing up your website with a St Georges cross if its good enough for 10 downing street then why not. Expect increases in Social networking online and the companies that make the most of this medium will without doubt earn thousands in income for there perspective companies.
Microsoft Steps Up Marketing and Advertising Efforts in Dubai
Computer giant Microsoft has sent a team to Dubai to set up and oversee a new online marketing and advertising division responsible for the region.
Although Microsoft does not have any plans as yet to create or develop specifically Arab content for Dubai or beyond, it wants to be able to be more focused on developments in the region and to develop the ability to tailor its online advertising and marketing to suit computer users across the Arab-speaking world.
Microsoft consumer and online international general manager Aubrey Edwards commented: “We do have the Microsoft office in Dubai Media City, but in terms of advertising, we are adding some people to our Middle East and Africa team to help build the market and work closely with our partners.”
The company’s area general manager for Microsoft Middle East and Africa Ahmet Burak Gokmen confirmed that “we are trying to increase the relevance of MSN Arabia and our MSN business in the region.
“MSN Arabia, as you know, has both English and Arabic sites. For this market, the English site is visited probably twice as much as the Arabic site.”
Mr Gokmen admitted that there was not enough Arabic content across Microsoft’s sites, and suggested that this “might be one of the reasons why search engines are not growing in terms of advertising as much as is expected.”
He said that observing and reacting to the “entrepreneurial activity in the region” would be key to developing and driving more content, as was user-generated content.
“With our tools and new services such as Windows Live, which includes social networking and content-sharing platforms, we enable users to have more local content on the web,” he concluded.
Dubai Facebookers Outnumbering Newspaper Readers
A study by a Dubai-based marketing and communications agency has concluded that there are more Facebook users across the Arab-speaking world than there are newspaper readers.
Research carried out by Spot On Public Relations found that there were over 15 million people across the region who had profiles on the social networking phenomenon.
This compared favourably with the total number of newspaper copies sold in the Arab-speaking world in Arabic, English and French, which stood at just under 14 million – apparently confirming that social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming the number one way for people to communicate and read about new events and products in Dubai and beyond.
Spot On argued that the findings revealed how Facebook, Twitter and the like were starting to redefine how Arab citizens found out about new phenomena, and how they shared the new information.
It said that the largest number of Facebook users could be found in Egypt, at 3.5 million – which far outstripped the circulation of any Egyptian daily paper. Surprisingly the second biggest number could be found in Saudi Arabia, despite its severely conservative government and society.
In the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, a third of the population had a Facebook profile, according to Spot On.
The company said that online marketing firms should take note of the study and recognise the incredible potential that exists throughout the Arab-speaking world for marketing opportunities.
It suggested that companies eager to explore the online marketing potential of sites such as Facebook should consider carefully how their brand would fit in, and decide what tactics would be right for them, such as SEO-orientated marketing or the creation of a Facebook fan page.
Plugins For Your WordPress Blogs (SEO)
Its a fact blogging is here to stay and if you have a blog the chances are it will be using the worlds most popular blog CMS Content Management system WordPress. If you don’t have a blog why wordpress well one of the main reasons we used wordpress was it is so easy to use and second there are so many different plugins and options available so you can customise the blog to your own personal preferences.
One of the most important things needed if your blog is going to work and by saying making your blog work we mean generating visits and traffic is you have to consider the blogs setup from a seo or search engine optimisation point of view.
The best plug in for this is the all in one seo pack this really is a must if you are going to get the best out of your blog. This allows you to add meta titles, descriptions and keyword to each page which is very important in generating listings on google and other search engines. The second selection of plug-ins to consider are the social networking ones now social networking is as we speak becoming more and more popular and providing people the ability to share news or articles with there existing set of friends on followers on facebook or twitter it is a great way of generating free exposure.
Social networking is such a new source that many companies simply don’t understand the full implications of using it to benefit there companies from a marketing point of view. If you are new to blogging and are looking to get your company blogging on a regular basis we would say you would be better using a company that offers a blog setup service. This way you can be ahead of the game and save important time so you can start adding content online.
If you require WordPress Hosting we suggest using – http://hosting.ber-art.nl/
Marketing Professionals Urged to Embrace SEO
Online marketing expert Kevin Gibbons has warned marketing executives that their services will soon become obsolete unless they embrace the phenomenon of SEO.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is fast becoming an indispensable aspect of any company’s online marketing strategy, Mr Gibbons – who is the founder of UK search agency SEOptimise – wrote on the Search Engine Watch website.
He noted that some professionals working in marketing were still not waking up to the immense potential of SEO, regarding it merely as a technical feature of their websites.
Mr Gibbons asked “how many marketing managers have you heard say: ‘Oh, our IT department deals with that,’ when you ask about their SEO campaign?”
“Although this is becoming less common, such short-sighted marketers still exist, but their way of thinking will make them commercially defunct within just a few years.”
His warning was echoed by Idea Taxi’s director of search engine optimisation Sam Tilston, who went on to predict that online marketing experts will see demand for their services surge over the next few years, as SEO-based marketing mushrooms across the globe.
“The SEM industry is consistently experiencing double-digit growth annually,” Mr Tilston pointed out, before adding that the sector is set to grow even further thanks to online advertising systems like pay-per-click, which allow companies to calculate the exact amount of revenue gathered by SEO marketing.
His predictions certainly seem to be coming true in the USA, according to a recent figures published by market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC). These indicated that SEO advertising was on course to deliver the largest increases in revenue across the North American online advertising market over the next five years.
