Oct 09
6
Google SideWiki
Google recently released a new feature to their Web arsenal to assist businesses become more competitive and their customer service more transparent – Google SideWiki.
Google SideWiki http://www.google.com/sidewikiallows users to sign into their Google account and leave unmoderated comments and various other information about your company and staff. In turn your Google search rankings will be affected by the quality of comments.
The negative side to Side Wiki at the moment is the lack of ability to moderate spam and malicious comments in a timely fashion. Users also have the ability to send thier comments via Twitter, FaceBook and email.
Whilst there is a Google Terms and Conditions to make comments, there is no automated manner to see comments in real time. Organisations should check for new comments at least once a day. If your site has heavy traffic then you should adjust the amount of times per day accordingly.
Within days of Side Wiki being released users are making malicious and rude comments on some of the larger more well known brands such as Microsoft, Apple and WalMart.
Our advise is to sign up to the Google Webmaster Tools and make an introduction comment on your SideWiki thus allowing your comment to always be at the top of all the other comments. You should also update your Google Profile and add as many details as possible.
Sep 09
24
2 Twitter tips based on observations
Increasingly organisations are utilising Twitter. Sadly, many organisations and especially NZ companies are doing two fundamental things wrong that will stop people following them.
Worse still with the introduction of a myriad of automated Twitter tools that give statistics on users, these fundamental mistakes will make it look like you are a spammer.
Tip 1 – Don’t ask followers to verify themselves.
Do not ask people to verify that they are a real person when they follow you. Captcha tools are annoying and difficult for many people to read. If a spammer follows you this has no effect on your Twitter account.
For me personally using such tools tells me that you can not be bothered to see if I am worth following and you will have an automated process to follow me back.
Take a moment to follow only those Twitter accounts that you are interested in.
Tip 2 – Don’t make your Organisation Tweets Private.
By making your Tweets private to only your followers it gives the impression that you are hiding illegal, immoral or otherwise objectionable material. It also makes it impossible for potential followers to know if you have interesting information so they can follow you or not.
Posted in Tips and Advice twitter by .
Digital Engagement – Internet Marketing that Captures Customers and Builds Brand Loyalty. Authored by Leland Harden and Bob Heyman. Published 2009.
This is an easy to read book of about 230 pages of text that is well spaced out over 11 chapters. The language is almost conversational and is accompanied by plenty of illustrations to some of the more detailed dialogue the authors create.
It is not a book I would recommend to any competent Internet consultant nor is it a book that will make you a competent Internet consultant. But I do strongly recommend this book for any small business owner that is thinking of creating an online presence or who already has an online presence.
Too often consultants mislead their clients as to what is required or omit to tell their clients of available services as the consultant does not have the necessary skill set to deliver these to you the client. This book gives a brief overview of what you should expect and the available services to market your online presence.
Digital Engagement is a little USA centric at times. But overall the advise is relevant for the New Zealand market but just with different resources, links and organisations.
Chapters cover an array of online marketing topics including; Search Engine Optimisation, Viral marketing, Video, Affiliate marketing, paid advertising and social media.
In summary this is a great book for any small business but you should still carefully choose a Internet consultant.
The book can be purchased from the usual online book stores and is available at the local library.
Posted in Online Branding Tips and Advice seo by .
Today FaceBook announced the ability to tag friends, Fan Pages and groups in your status updates by using the @ then your friends etc name. FaceBook call this new feature status tagging.
Simply type your message and then add the @ symbol. This will put a link to your friend/Fan Page or Groups. At the bottom of your status box will appear a list of your friends, fan pages and groups in a manner similar to the search options in FaceBook.
Apart from the large social benefits, there is an increased opportunity for businesses and brands to be status tagged with both positive and negative comments from happy or unhappy customers. Considering the fast spread of news amongst friends businesses and brand owners will need to keep a watchful eye this new service.
By default WordPress hosted sites offer a unique wp.me url shortner service allowing you to offer shortend URL’s for those long and often hard to remember Blog URL’s. This means that if your blog is hosted at WordPress.org with a url such as http://netmaniaNZ.wordpress.com (live example at this link).
The wp.me service is by default in all of your blog postings. If you already have a large amount of Blogs that you would like to access via the wp.me URL simply follow the instructions below to find what your wp.me url is.
To access the wp.me service you will need to do the following:
1. Exisitng blog posts
(a) Edit your blog and click on the “Get Shortlink” button.
2. New Blog Posts
Upon writing your blog post click the “Get Shortlink” button.
Considering this is a built in feature of WordPress it should be available for as long as WordPress is available. Thus making it more reliable and stable than the other URL shortening services that offer no guarantees of thier exisitence such as http://tr.im announced last week that they were to stop their free services effecting millions of links.
Aug 09
17
Follow Net Mania online
Net Mania FaceBook Fan Page
Aug 09
15
Promoting your online pages
Your own web address/domain name makes it easy for your friends and family to access your FaceBook, Twitter etc. If you are a job seeker then it is equally easy for your potential employer to remember you and to seek out your professional profile.
The default addresses that FaceBook once offered were hard to remember and not intended for human reading. You should at least try to register your own FaceBook name. But for many this is not a reality. Likewise sites such as LinkedIn offer personalised addresses but if you have a common name or are not the first person to register your name then you will be left with a decision to keep the default address or be creative with the default address by using first initial,last name or lastname,firstname etc. The later suggestions are not very effective at all.
Registering your own domain name is cheap and an effective method for people to remember your address and can be used to access all of your online pages. There are many options for personal domains names such as .me , .pro, .com . Choosing the right memorable domain name is important.
Those that do have their own domain often use it ineffectively by:
(a) Use it to go to one of their sites as opposed to all of their sites.
(b) The domain name goes to a social media site but the address shows the social media address and not the domain name.
Effectively use your own domain name.
Firstly ensure that your domain name provider offers redirection and sub domain services freely of charge. If they do not, change your provider.
Single site
If you have one site say at My Sapce then point your domain name to that site and remember to make sure that only your domain name appears in the browser window and not the other complicated address.
Multiple sites
You should use sub domains. A sub domain is any relevant word you think of that is added before the main part of your domain name. Net Mania sub domain for its FaceBook Fan Page is http://FaceBook.NetMania.co.nz. Thus making it relevant by using the word FaceBook and easy to remember. DO this for all of your social networking pages.
Many small businesses in New Zealand tend to advertise their web site address and then their Internet Service Provider (ISP) email address instead of their own email address.
The issues for the small business are:
1. You are promoting your own business as well as your ISP’s business.
2. You will make yourself a hostage to your Internet Provider as if you change providers people will not know how to contact you via email.
3. If you want to change ISP you will need to pay for all of your marketing to be changed.
4. Security. Your email address username is often your account username. This can often be a great way for hackers to gain access to your account.
Myths we often hear as to why businesses are advertising their Internet Service Providers email.
1. Our ISP email is free and our own email will cost us money. MYTH!
2. We will loose all our emails if we change. MYTH!
If you already have your own web site address and a respectable web host company, then you can have unlimited email addresses for free.
If your business wants to gradually make a move from your ISP email to your own email address so you can phase out advertising for your ISP and you already have your own web site address:
1. Set up your email addresses under your own domain
2. Forward all of your domain email to your ISP email or vice versa. This will depend on your technical capabilities.
Include your email and web address in your email signatures.
Aug 09
11
1 million Kiwi’s use FaceBook
FaceBook announced that New Zealand users of FaceBook is at the 1 million users mark or 25% of the population. This is a 150% growth increase in the past year. http://www.insidefacebook.com/facebook-global-market-monitor/
This makes FaceBook the New Zealand’s most popular social media site and a serious consideration for New Zealand businesses to explore advertising opportunities and creating an online presence for thier businesses.
Posted in Online Branding bebo facebook myspace by .
Aug 09
11
Advice for tr.im users
Popular Social Bookmarking service http://tr.im yesterday announced that it was discontinuing to offer its services but would honour those existing shortened links and redirects till at least December 2009 leaving many organisations with broken links.
This has left many businesses without any method for their customers to reach their blogs, websites and ecommerce pages.
If you are one of these businesses that have used the http://tr.im service we recommend that you immediately perform the following tasks to minimise disruption to your business.
1. Register your own short domain. There are many two letter domain names available including <.ie>, <.im> etc.
2. Create your own short URLs using your domain name and forward as required. If your web host does not offer free url redirection then you should reconsider your hosting arrangements.
3. Do a stock take of all instances you have used a tr.im url. This may involve searching your own Blogs and Tweets.
4. Put a notice on all relevant pages from your stocktake giving people the new shortened URL.
5. Get creative with your new URL and promote it with more direct links to your products and services.
Immediate benefits from performing the above is that you are able to create more human memorable names as well as more favourable search engine names.
Posted in Tips and Advice social media by .
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