Women and Social Media Podcast

Social Media College Technology Podcast Series

A new episode in our Podcast series is now available for download, in this episode Mike Andrew looks at new research on the Impact of social media amongst US female internet users and the influence that social networks and blogs have on the purchasing habits of females.

You can also download a copy from here!

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Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009

SEO, social media marketing and keyword research are tops on the list of the 10 best internet marketing strategies of 2009, according to a list released by SEO.com.

In issuing the list, the firm said that the best strategies this year have been the ones that are directly related to establishing credibility, eliciting trust and directly targeting a desired demographic.

Credibility Most Important

Credibility is one of the most important things to establish in an online presence, especially in an economically challenging year, according to Ash Buckles, SEO.com’s director of search engine optimization. “When people are watching their money closely, they will only buy from companies and websites they trust,” he said.

Credibility, Buckles said, depends on how well a site is architected, how many other sites and networks link back to your site, how much social media and buzz surrounds a domain, how often a site goes down, how unique a site’s content is and how fast a site loads.

The top 10 list and commentary from SEO.com:

1. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Websites at the top of the search results are viewed as the leaders of their industry, and more than 80% of web users click on the first listings. Good SEO services will consistently deliver a huge return on investment.

2. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn: Social media marketing engages customers on a personal level, and can rapidly create buzz around a product, brand or business. It can also be more cost effective than traditional forms of advertising and outreach, SEO.com said.

3. Keyword Research: Online, everything revolves around discovering what words and phrases an organization’s customers are searching for online.

4. Video Marketing: This is becoming more important both on-site and off-site. Videos help convert website visitors into sales. In the universal search results, people tend to click on links with videos more than those without -  even if the video link is ranked lower.

5. Online Public Relations: This builds credibility online, in the mainstream media and for potential customers. Online public relations can help create a lot of buzz about your site through bloggers and industry sites, and can boost organic SEO.

6. Link Building: A key element in search engine optimization. Search engines like “popular sites.” From the search engine’s point of view, a credible and popular site will have a lot of links pointing to it.

7. Blogging: Blogs provide additional site content (which search engines like), graphics and other viral content to disseminate information and tie in with social media. Blogs can build credibility by establishing a site as the hub for industry information.

8. Conversion Web Design: A good web design will keep visitors on the site and sell them products or services.

9. Paid Search Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an extremely targeted strategy with measurable, immediate results. This enables a more efficient spending of marketing dollars.

10. Email Marketing: This is important to nurture relationships and retain existing customers. It’s much easier to keep old customers than to get new ones. Send good offers and valuable information that’s customized to their needs.

“Companies want to make sure every penny goes to something that produces results,” said Dave Bascom, chief executive of SEO.com. “For that reason, more and more money is being allocated to internet marketing because it’s measurable and has proven to increase ROI.”

Bascom added that the same 10 strategies will also be important in 2010.

Blogging – Discipline is the key

Social Media College Podcast Series

For those of you who are just starting out blogging, I wish you good luck, and that’s why I’ve recorded a podcast that I believe will help keep you focused and on track. 

I hope you find it helpful. 

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Younger Women Step to Social Beat

Social influence on Gen Y trendsetters   

Generation Y females have redefined the idea of “peer group” to encompass online friends, bloggers and anonymous reviewers, according to the “Why Y Women?” report from PopSugar and Radar Research.

Looking to this expansive group of peers, rather than experts or celebrities, Gen Y women are particularly influenced by social media.

Younger women are nearly twice as likely as their Gen X counterparts to say they had discovered a new brand or product when a friend mentioned it in an online status update. They are also significantly more influenced by blogs, by both professionals and especially by “someone like me.”

Methods Used to Discover New Brands

Telling friends in person or on the phone is still by far the most common way for Gen Y women to spread the word about products or brands they love. But they post about products and brands on social networking sites or online forums nearly twice as much as older women. Gen X women, on the other hand, are more likely than younger females to share information via e-mail.

Methods Used To Share Information

Further, with even two-thirds of Gen X women considering their younger counterparts trendsetters, according to the survey, the potential pop culture influence of social marketing is multiplied.

Mr Youth, which has studied “millennial moms”—mothers around the same age as PopSugar’s Gen Y women—has also found the peer group an important influencer.

“With moms it is even a stronger source, as moms have always found it important to ask other moms before making important decisions that affect their families and kids,” Brandon Evans, managing partner and chief strategy officer at Mr Youth, told Media Life magazine. “With social media, it became much easier for them to seek out advice on a variety of topics from a wider net of people, so it quickly gained in influence.”

Twitter Hacker Strikes Again

Watch out the Twitter DM hacker has struck again, having been a victim myself only last week please make sure you log in to Twitter and change your password. Don”t be tempted to share your Twitter log in details with any third party software program that you don’t trust.

The DM spam attack, presumably being spread by hacked Twitter accounts, contains unknown but dubious content, and we advise you to avoid clicking on anything that appears suspicious. Be on the look for tweets like, “hi, did you do this quiz thingy.”

I lost a few followers last week because of these hacked DM’s so please be warned and be careful. If you’d like to check the latest on these, search “dm spam” on Twitter.

Business Blogging

So why should business blog? now there is a great question, and if you are a business owner and you haven’t yet considered adding a blog to your internet marketing strategy then you should and fast. Why? what is it about blogging that is so important that I would make a statement like that. First of all, one of the reasons you should add a blog is it provides a personal form of communication with your audience, or in your case as a business owner, your customer. It allows you to create the “expert” factor in your marketing and you can run it on your web site or alongside on a separate domain name, plus you’ll benefit from the increase in traffic or searches that you’ll receive. If that wasn’t enough to get you running out and starting up a blog, Google and search engines in general love blogs, this is because they provide frequently updated and valuable content, and for that reason they get indexed faster than a standard web site and will, as long as you publish good quality content, end up ranking on the first page of Google.

I wrote my first article on blogging for business and the importance of adding a blog as a corporate communication tool over 12 months ago, and I’m surprised that the penny hasn’t dropped yet with small business owners.

Blogging is an extension of your business web site and allows you to add a personal touch to your web marketing, blogging also allows you a platform to discuss customer service issues or any issue that you believe relevant to your market. If you start to think where your customers get their information from today, you’d realise the value of a number one ranking on search engines. Think about the Gen X&Y’s, how many of them go to the Yellow Pages to check out business or services? research says none of them do, they “Google” it, so you need to make sure your business web site ranks highly. Blogs allow you to keep the formal and conversational side of your business separate,this is done by running your blog alongside your formal web site. Your blog can be updated daily with information,products or promotions whilst linking to your main web site.

So what are the benefits to a business blog strategy?

• Simple low cost PR – Blogs allow to put information on line quickly.
• Establish your Expertise – Blogs help Position yourself and your company as the experts in your field and can raise your visibility within your target market.
• Customer service & relationships – Blogs are your human face and your voice to the public. Blogs allow you to join customer discussions, respond to concerns, provide tips and insights  or    receive feedback about your services or products.
• Build your online community – Blogs allow you to build a community around your business or product as well as providing an outlet for discussions about you and your business
• Promotional tool – Because blogs can be updated frequently and are indexed very quickly by search engines, you can use them to create promotions around your brand or service and create a buzz for your products.
• Higher search rankings – Search engines love blogs and your company can benefit from higher search rankings

Blogging is not hard, and it has real benefits for your business once you get your blog established. The most important things to remember with a blog once you start, are be consistent with your posting and provide good quality original content.

Are there any businesses that can’t benefit from a blog? No not to my point of view, so what are you waiting for, get started.

Creating A Blogging Discipline

I thought you may be interested in this article which appeared on our sister site Mike Andrew’s Real Estate Tips & Technology blog.

Here’s an excerpt from the original post:

“Today whilst visiting a real estate office we got talking about social media strategies and why as a real estate office they should be working towards implementing a social media strategy, not just to farm new pastures, but also to help them in the optimisation of their web site. During the conversation we got on the subject of blogging, and why creating a blog would help their Internet marketing efforts.”

To read more of the article please click here

A Social Media Strategy – Where To Start?

During my seminar presentations I probably sell the concept of a social media strategy like a salesman, get you on a high and all excited about the potential it brings to you and then leave you on your own to do it.

If you are wanting to start your blog or social media strategy, first thing to do before you set up, is listen. Join Twitter and Facebook and any other social media site you’d like to participate in and listen.

It’s time to create your own masterpiece and dive into the conversation. Once you have decided what you like, then start to engage.

Make sure your information is engaging, challenging and stimulating, continue to listen and join in conversations on other blogs, and you’ll be on your way. Follow the conversations and take note of the way the writer structures the information, more importantly, take note of the content and whether it provides you with really good information or advice that you find useful.

Do this by commenting on blog posts you like, giving a blog writer feedback joins you in the conversation that blog writer is having with his or her readers. Listen to conversations on blogs that are of interest to you and your business or the area you want to enter into.

Now, once you have all the research and are aware of how the conversations take place, is the time to get your hands dirty.

Next, I’ll talk about designing your social media strategy and target market.

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