If you receive either of the following tweets;

ROLF…I’m laughing so hard at this picture of u my friend uploaded

or

Hi. some person is posting very bad rumors about you

Then beware, don’t click the link its just a ruse to drag you to another site and possibly infect your PC as well. If you are unlucky enough to be sending these messages then the solution is quite simple, log in to twitter and change your password.

Most likely cause of getting infected is that the user received a fake email (phishing) instructing them to log into twitter to see a photo or change a password, however the site the user gets sent to isn’t the real twitter site, just a copy that harvests username and password and then forwards you to the correct web address.

Here I’ll show you how to get your tweets onto Facebook.

1. Click the person icon in the top right hand corner of your twitter profile to display the menu. Then click [Settings]

2. On the setting screen click [Profile] on the right hand navigation menu.

3. On the profile page click [Post your Tweets to Facebook]

4. Click [Sign in to Facebook and connect your accounts]

5. In the popup window sign into your facebook account

6. Your accounts are now linked, whatever you tweet will become your facebook status.

If you are spending too much time on running your social media campaign and not enough time working on your business maybe you would benefit from discussing social media management with one of our account managers. Call 0161 833 5405 or fill in our contact form for a no obligation consultation.

But really you shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a huge phenomenon; it’s the thing that’s in right now, and that’s what the internet is about. And with technology being something that only moves forwards there’s no doubt that there are only going to be many more new developments in this here sector of the industry.

More to the Point
- A brief summary of Pinterest

It’s a very visual social platform where members can ‘pin’ images of things that interest them (hence the name) on categorised boards for friends to see, comment on, and ‘repin’. As with many platforms, though, the uses and purposes aren’t set in stone.

For example, a recluse could use it to be a great deal of anti-social and simply have it as their own personal catalogue – or bookmarking system – for keeping track of the different styles of blinds they think would look best keeping the natural light out of their living space. On the other end of the spectrum, a middle-aged man could use it as a means of getting opinions from friends and family on which sports car he should attempt to recapture (or “extend”) his youth with.

But the function essentially remains the same: for the things you’re interested in that you want to keep track of and share, Pinterest gives you platform to do so in a most visual manner. You find pictures that represent your interest or topic of interest, and pin them up.

And now down to business
- How a company like yours could use Pinterest

Now, I don’t yet have an account but I am working on that; you see, you don’t just sign-up, you request an invite. However, I have done some research into how it works, how Mr and Mrs Regular Joe use it, and popular trends surrounding it.

The first thing to note is that there aren’t any business specific functions on the platform. But this isn’t a deal breaker by any means. It just simply means one needs to be creative in their approach.

Luckily for most, if you’ve ever used social media before then this will be quite the breeze to adjust to. The only somewhat new concept a newbie would have to grasp is categorising their boards effectively, but if you’re anywhere near as neurotic as I am this is probably where the most fun will be had. And that’s an important point: fun needs to be had, because like other social media sites it’s seen as bad practice to use it to solely advertise products and services.

The most suggested way to approach it is to not be a business, but to be a human representing a business. Don’t be Johnny Cash Inc., be Johnny Cash @ Johnny Cash Inc. That way, it would be much easier and natural to pin up things that interest you in general, comment on other people’s pins and repin the pins of friends and customers. All the while, having that board or two with pictures of those utterly delectable Vegetarian Lasagnes your top chef just cooked up, or the ongoing refurbishment project of a customer’s home. Bear in mind that these photos are also links so if you have a website, that’s a bit more traffic right there.

But don’t just take my word for it
- Sign up and see how you can utilise Pinterest

Inevitably, not all trades will lend itself to this particular channel of social media, and an approach that works for one may not work for another.

So essentially, most of what I’ve said so far is just ideas. Ideas of someone who’s never used Pinterest. But once my invite comes through I’ll be able to get some real first-hand insight, and report that info to you guys. However, I probably won’t be able to attempt some of the ideas above, you know, because I’m not a vegetarian. So I can only take a perspective from my personal view, and evaluate and assess from that.

Have a hand at signing up to Pinterest and seeing how it works for your business and trade. If you like, you can post your findings and musings on our Facebook page for others to find and muse over. Either way, I’ll be sure to let world know when I’ve got my account and you can take a look at what I’m interested in.

More than anything though, this is a lesson to all those concerned (i.e. anyone who uses Twitter, or any social networking site for that matter): do not leave yourself logged in to anything when in a public place or a place of business. Common sense really.

The only thing I’m a little disappointed at is the lack of creativity or brazenness. I mean if I was in that position I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but as an outsider, I’d have much loved to have seen something a bit more on the controversial side posted. Ah well.

Who knows, maybe it was a stunt. I mean he was giving Rupert Murdoch the business not long ago RE: the hacking scandal. Though I’m not sure what point it would prove.

See it for yourself

Firstly, you don’t need to be signed in to Google. Secondly, conduct a search on Google, any search. Thirdly, click on any result to go through to their page, and then go “Back” in your browser.

Did you see it? The link that highlights itself next to the result you just clicked? It might not show for everyone.

After a little bit more testing, I found that after spending a few minutes or longer on the page and then going back, the link won’t appear. Furthermore, if you follow a link on that page and click back (twice) to go back to the Google page, again, the link won’t appear.

How does this affect you?

Where do I start would be a relevant follow-up question. The fact of the matter is that it’s always been important that you aim to have a relevant, appropriate page behind any link. If I see a link where the anchor text says “quality men’s footwear” and the page I’m taken to shows wedding dresses, it’s very unlikely I’m going to take the time to search that site for what I’m actually looking for. That doesn’t mean, however, that I will take note of your site and consciously avoid it in future.

Which is where Google’s new feature comes in. Google has made it a little too easy for people to block your domain from their search. This means they don’t just block that particular page, they block your entire website. Seems a little harsh to me.

Admittedly, this new feature will be useful for the user. Often, searching for a question can often to lead to results pages chock-a-block with websites trying to make a swift penny. Also, it’s very unlikely to affect big name entities that are easily recognised. It’s the smaller businesses – those lacking in specialist marketing resources and knowledge – that will feel the biggest brunt. Those whose pages aren’t necessarily search engine optimised are the ones likely to be hit the hardest.

Scare-mongering is not the purpose of this article, I should point out. If a website is genuine in its intents then it’s unlikely that there would be many out there who would be spiteful enough to choose to block your site because “I was looking for a cake baker in North Manchester, not South!”

But for those who do have an SEO guy (or team if you’re doing particularly well) you should probably check to make sure they’re aware of this little feature.

A small and relevant note

If you choose to open the link in a separate tab and then close that tab, the link will not show itself.

When done right, it works. The recent Doritos and Pepsi Max joint campaign would be a recent example of cross-marketing. Whether or not it will be a successful example is yet to be seen, although it does look good at this stage.

For smaller businesses, though, such a grand campaign might be a bit of a stretch, admittedly. But there are a plethora of ways you can implement the same concept in a way that is still effective.

Now just to be clear, this isn’t necessarily a case of merging with the nearest business, it just means – in a sense – recycling your customers.

How to go about doing it

Well, more like some ideas that you can use for your inspiration.

But before you do anything, look at your customers and try to find out what other businesses they’re dealing with within your industry. Easier still, if you’re on the social networks you may be able to look at who else they are liking and following and seeing if they are relevant.
Remember, the knowledge you gain from a bit of market research is an invaluable resource.

Like I said, these are just examples. There are many other roads one could go down with this as there are many variables that could come in to play: whether or not your services can be sold together with the services from another business, the platforms on which the joint endeavours will take place (i.e. in store, website, word of mouth), and many other factors.

The truth is, though, that none of this is new. It just seems to be forgotten or overlooked so this is a nice little reminder.
Have a look at your peers, see if they have anything to offer your customers that you don’t, and see if some cross-selling or cross-marketing is viable. You may end up surprised by just how effective it is, not to mention the benefit of circulating business within your industry.

With this in mind we have taken a look at one of our most successful clients of the month, considering whether he would have achieved the same return on investment relying on the traditional forms of advertising which would have been his main option just a decade ago. We are in the process of building a new website for North West Auto Salvage, but in the meantime, he has been marketing his old site on Google AdWords to keep business flowing.

North West Auto Salvage has a daily budget of £5 and this brings 3-9 visitors to his website each day. The campaign statistics show that since his ads started running, 7% of people searching for car salvage in the North West visited his website (Pretty impressive when Google states that a CTR of 1% is good). Positive stats like this are always encouraging when it comes to justifying your marketing spend. However, it is real results that we are interested in and by real results we mean genuine enquiries. In this case, the client assured us that good campaign stats reflect good results; having spoken to the client in the early afternoon, he had already secured 2 jobs that day after only 3 visits to his website! This is not a one off; these results have been consistent since his campaign began.

So why is search engine advertising so effective? Well, the clue is in the name… search. Search engine advertising puts your advert infront of the people who are actively seeking your services at the precise moment they are looking for it. Such direct targeting is not possible in newspaper advertising where businesses have to rely on the chance that people seeking their service happen to buy a paper that day and stumble upon their advert. In the case of North West Auto Salvage, there is no guarantee that someone reading the local paper today will be looking for a car scrapping service, but you don’t need to be a bookie to bet that someone searching “scrap my car” on Google is looking for a company to scrap their car!

As our focus is online marketing, we weren’t too clued up on the costing of newspaper advertising. Having filled out a dummy advert on the Manchester Evening News site, we discovered that a printed ad can cost anywhere from £45-£100 per day depending on format and the amount of content; quite a sharp contrast from the £5 a day that North West Auto Salvage spends on Google.

Now take it a step further… who is your most well-known competitor? How many people try and find them in the search engines? Would you like the opportunity to try and win a potential clients business before they get to your competition?

Even if traditional forms of advertising work for you it doesn’t mean that search engine advertising is something to ignore, one of the major benefits of Search Engine Advertising is that there is no need to commit to anything long term, you can advertise for a year, one day, an hour or one minute! Why not find out how many people are using the internet to browse for your services? Click here to try out Google’s keyword tool.

When using the keyword tool, think about what phrase you would type if you were looking for your service. Chances are, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are searching for your service online. The next step? It’s simple; make sure that your ad gets infront of those people when they are looking for your service. Don’t wait for them to stumble upon you in the back pages of a newspaper.

This summer Ofcom reported that over a quarter of adults and almost half of teenagers now own a smartphone. As the iPhone 4S is due to be launched next week, this number is only going to rise. In recent years, mobile phones have rapidly become more than just a phone; in the last year alone, the number of people who use their mobile to access the internet has risen by 22%.

Smartphones are progressively becoming a part of our daily lives, our phones are constantly at hand wherever we are; be it home, work, on the bus, in a restaurant, sometimes even on the toilet (as 47% of teenage smartphone users admitted).

Businesses have cottoned onto the fact that targeting these phones is an ideal way to reach their customers when they’re on the move. Need a taxi? Need to find the nearest shop? Need a locksmith? When you’re out and about and you need a service, where do you look? Chances are, if you’re a smartphone user, it’s a no brainer to ‘Google it’ on your iPhone, Blackberry, HTC etc.

Google Adwords has functions designed to help businesses target these smartphone users. It is possible to set your ads so that users can simply ‘click to call’; allowing people to find your business and get in touch instantly. Just a few simple steps – client needs service, client uses smartphone to search, client clicks your ad, client’s phone dials your number – all within a matter of seconds.

So you know there is a high chance that people are finding your ads on a smartphone, but do you know how many? The only way to monitor this is to set up a separate campaign targeting mobile devices and compare this to an identical campaign targeting computers. This method also allows you to tailor your adverts to each device.

A client of ours that implemented this method on their campaign has seen a vast difference between their two campaigns. Their mobile campaign has an average position of 1.7 compared to position 4 in the computers only campaign. The click through rate on her mobile campaign is more than double that of the computer campaign, meaning that their mobile ads are proven to be more likely to be clicked. When you consider that people searching on a mobile tend to need a service immediately, it is inevitable that they will be more likely to see one of the first ads they see, unlike users sat at a computer who have time to shop around. Tapping into this sense of urgency can be an effective strategy for particular industries.

Last month, research company IDC predicted that by 2015, more US users will access the internet through a mobile device than a PC. It’s only a matter of time before the UK follows. As smartphone popularity increases and time draws ever closer to 2015, it would be beneficial to analyse your mobile advertising strategy to ensure that you’re not missing out on new business.

“We’ve made this many sales? So why is there only this much money in the bank?”

Where money is involved most of us will always ask questions because where money is directly involved we always want to know exactly what is going on. Yet it always a suprise to us how many do not view their marketing activity in the same way… after all marketing costs money doesn’t it?
You need to keep a rigid eye on marketing progress.
Word of mouth is the best source of business but where did the client who recomended you find you.
The obvious start – is to ask your customers how they came across your business.

“Just a quick one, how did you find out about us?”

It took me no more than 5 seconds to type that so it will be even quicker for you to say it. In my experience no customer has ever objected to answering this question, slot it in amidst the sales pitch, consultation, or quote you’re giving to your customer and record it somewhere; in your diary, on a spreadsheet or even the back of a beer matt, by doing so you’ll be carrying out invaluable market research.

“We’ve had how many people to our website!?”

This is also a good question to ask, but not to the customer because they won’t know. You ask yourself (or whomever deals with your marketing if that’s not you). If you’re unsure of how to find this information for online marketing I’ve got great news, I’m yet to come across a platform used for online marketing that doesn’t have some kind of activity monitoring functionality.

AdWords has an Analytics feature
Twitter has an Analytics feature
Even Facebook has ‘Insights’

The great thing is, these are very much easy to use yet they can provide a wealth of information that any marketing campaign can’t progress without. You can find out how many visitors have come from which search engine, how many shares and likes your recent status posts have had, and how many retweets your tweet got. There’s even software out there that will combine a lot of this information in one place for your convenience, such as BlueReports.

“Can’t I just monitor progress using the sterling in the bank? What’s the point in all this extra stuff?”

When it comes to marketing so many of us are shopping blind. When we first start out to a point we are the mercy of market research and what sales people tell us. The thing to take from this is that if you get to know where your best business comes from (and that includes word of mouth), you can then figure out where to focus your attentions for the future and as importantly where you can afford to STOP spending money. But don’t forget there are times when marketing isn’t directly linked to profit; sometimes its purpose is raising awareness and increasing exposure with a view to expanding business, and so on. Once you have clear visibility spotting trends becomes easy, if in doubt we are always here to help.

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