Local business reviews are a new kind of social media, in which customers review their experiences with brands over the internet. Business directories such as Yelp, Citysearch, and Yellowpages.com allow for customers to post what they think of the businesses that they have dealt with.

These reviews are seen by the customers who visit such sites, and can serve to gauge the public opinion people have of your brand. The ability of customers to do this has caused the business world to react in many different ways, ranging all the way from ignoring it altogether to overreacting and becoming paranoid. The important thing about this type of social media is that it is transparent. It cannot be altered or removed by the businesses that are being reviewed.

These reviews are important because they affect your brand reputation, they allow you to get feedback from your customers, and they get your brand in the search engines. Because of this, as much as is possible, businesses should respond to the negative reviews to the extent that they can. In many cases this can cause the customer to become a bigger fan of your business than if they hadn’t experienced any problems to begin with, which has a tremendous effect on word of mouth regarding your brand.

One way to do this is through the use of several programs that allow you to track these reviews, such as Cymfony, Trackur, and Marchex. In addition to responding to negative reviews, you can also use these tools to publicly thank people who have given you heartfelt, five-star, positive reviews.

Unlike books and magazines, which have never really taken off in the digital world, hard news has been very well received. Reading a novel is an experience to be savored; reading the news is just the absorption of information.

Books will probably never die because the experience of settling down and reading one makes it worth it. But newspapers are merely a delivery format of information. What the iPad and other similar devices have done is create a whole new format which fits nicely with the modern generation. A generation that would rather gets its information digitally than in print.

Regardless of what the delivery format is however, newspaper publishers can’t escape the most critical issue: content. The reason many mainstream publishers are losing subscribers is because consumers are no longer interested in their content. By contrast, the “alternate media” is booming because they are providing what people want. At the end of the day the newspaper industry may change format, but survival depends on figuring out what readers want and giving it to them. iPad or otherwise.

They’re working together to study viewing habits, mobile use, social media adoption and attitudes to sponsorship during the World Cup.

The joint research, undertaken before England’s defeat by Germany at the weekend, was conducted using a panel of 3,300 UK sports fans. It found 44% were likely to watch and share videos, while almost a quarter (24%) were likely to visit dedicated Facebook pages.

Other findings were that a quarter (26%) expect to watch weekday World Cup matches via the internet at work, while a third (33%) said they were more likely to watch games online in 2010 compared to 2006. When asked when they’d be most likely to comment on a World Cup website, 17% said they’d choose to before a game, 21% would afterwards and only 7% would during a game.

Meanwhile, 18% of men planned to listen to podcasts and 18% said they would be downloading World Cup apps to their mobiles.

Mobile has become increasingly important to fans, with 41% of respondents likely to text a friend before the match, 43% during and 45% afterwards. In addition, 27% said they were more likely to follow games on their mobiles in 2010 compared to 2006, and 8% were more likely to watch games on their mobiles.

Just over half (55%) of the panel said they were taking part in World Cup competitions online.

Have you started your social media campaign yet? What have you found to be the most productive way of getting your brand name out there

There is no debating that sites such as Facebook are in-demand for a range of businesses, but a high proportion of their audience is of a young age restricting which businesses can exploit this marketing space.

The analytics firm said traffic to social networks accounted for 11.9% of all UK internet visits during May, while search engines accounted for 11.3%.

Facebook received more than half of the social network visits in the UK (55%), almost triple the number YouTube had. Twitter was in third.

However, Experian Hitwise said Facebook doesn’t yet dominate the UK social network market to the extent that Google dominates the search market.

Together google.co.uk and google.com accounted for nine in every ten web searches carried out in the UK during May. Google UK was the most visited site, accounting for 9.29% of all visits, while Facebook accounted for 7.04%.

The advantage with Google is that you are ‘found’ via a keyword(s) that the user has typed with interest. Therefore you are already of interest to the user compared with social networks sties, where the likelihood is that users want to interact with friends and colleagues.

Robin Goad, Experian Hitwise’s research director, said, “Although social networks and search engines perform different functions, they both act as gateways to the wider internet. This data illustrates the key role that social media now plays in so much online behaviour.
“The majority of online marketing spend is currently diverted towards search, and this is likely to remain the case in the short to medium term,” he added. “Search remains the primary source of traffic for most websites, particularly in sectors that account for the majority of online transactions, such as retail, finance and travel.”

Where do your online marketing efforts go? Does your business concentrate more on SEO rather than social media campaigns?

Samsung ties up with Last.fm for festival launch – Digitalmarketing News – Brand Republic.

Using social media will, undoubtedly increase your website traffic. Will more visitors arriving at your site, the advertising potential can significantly increase. To ensure you know where your traffic is coming from and have the ability to segment your traffic, Google Analytics will provide you with a great insight into the who and where of your users.

Once you have planned your target audience, set up customised goals to keep track of whether the right type of user is arriving and interacting on your website. By identifying where your users are leaving, you can quickly move to optimise the weaker pages.

More for social media use, Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are both free, third-party applications that help you easily manage all your social accounts in one place. You can also set up ‘columns’ that notify you of when your brand name or a requested ‘keyword or phrase’ is mentioned in the social sphere. This immediately offers you an advantage to respond to any comments made by customers about your brand. You can also join in with subjects that are of interest to you, providing you with extended platforms to reach out to your customers.

For companies just strating out in the social world, you would find all the information you initially need from these tools, however, once you start enhance your campaigns and find yourself needing additional data, other subscribed tool will be needed.
Need help starting out in the digital market? Get in touch with a bunch of friendly, hard-working marketers looking for the next social media challenge!