October 29th, 2009 by Bruce

We knew the day would come, even though it arrived with little fanfare, when Twitter would succumb to the advances of Google and Bing or even fall to some real-world pressures to monetize its Online Business. In other announcements, the two primary search engines talked about an agreement with the micro-blogging supergiant, which allows the search engines to reproduce information reflecting real-time “tweets” which are related to specific keyword searches.

In the case of Bing, scoring a touchdown in its much proclaimed war against King Google, its interface went live immediately. Directly accessible through its very own page rather than on the search engine home page, Bing’s interface also provides a list of tweets which match the keywords specified, in some situations underneath the webpage the tweets actually refer to. They also have a very prominent Twitter trends cloud to show you what people think is hot and what’s not.

Google, meanwhile, merely stated on its company blog that it would be including Twitter returns with search engine results in due course and the posting may well have been just a hasty reaction to the emerging news from Microsoft.

For Internet marketers, these announcements may help to make more sense of the Twitter phenomenon and open up opportunities for those who are fleet of foot and can imagine opportunities and scenarios. By being aware of hot topics and how they could affect your operation or by creating twists that could be applied to generate some publicity, you could instantly post some optimized tweets and appear on the first page of Bing’s Twitter engine results.

Twitter has its own search feature of course but it is not widely used. Unlike their own feature the results displayed on the Bing page display the extended URLs and domain names of referenced pages and not the bit links we are used to seeing within Twitter-dom.

It will be interesting to experiment with these new features and to really unravel the repercussions of what are sure to be significant developments in the world of online business and marketing. We need more than 140 characters to understand the full implications!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a cutting edge Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists organisations and enterprising individuals with every detail of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Do you want to peruse some further information on these incredible online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

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October 27th, 2009 by Bruce

A recent investigation by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers has indicated that while overall outlay on advertising is falling, how that expense is being used is altering.

Total advertising spending was down 16% in the first half of 2009 in comparison with the corresponding period in 2008. In itself the amount spent on TV advertising is down 16%. However during this time the amount spent on Online Marketing has now increased to £1.752bn, overtaking that spent on television.

The home use of speedier, lower cost (and frequently free) broadband services is becoming more extensive and this encourages the use of the net and the requirement to advertise in that area. The Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers report notes that the financial crisis has accelerated this alteration in advertising spending.

Online advertising is a overall term that covers a number of processes including direct e-mailing and classified adverts. Banner advertising is probably the most evident but needs careful use and placement. Someone browsing a website will normally ignore banner advertising while concentrating on the content of a site. A more valuable method of online advertising is an approach known as search marketing. The average online user will use a search engine to find specific goods and services, choosing a possible supplier from the search listings.

The best known search engine is doubtless still Google, but Yahoo is presently trying to remind the world of its existence with widespread advertising. Bing is another search tool that will become more noteworthy because of its links with Microsoft. With so many search engines to choose from, it makes sense to make the search for a company site more effective and this can be done using a method known as search engine optimisation.

A potential customer will probably make a selection from the first page of search results. Search engine optimisation methods try to ensure that a business site has a good Search Engine Placement so that it is listed on that first page and that the search result is significant to the customer’s needs.

A SEO Company using these methods will incorporate adjustments to a business website so that search terms entered by a customer are likely to be found around the site. These need to be relevant as a misleading result could discourage a potential customer. It may also entail the creation of supporting documents such as this, which promote the company and its site. References from another website will be helpful in increasing visibility.

Correctly arranged optimisation will lift the profile and reputation of a business with the search engines and raise the chances of being placed on the first page of search results.

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