Google places is another great FREE online tool that helps promote your business. Most of us are already using Google Place pages for our business. If you are not using it as yet maybe it is something you need to consider. If you are using it, are you using it to its full potential?

Google places not only allows you to plot your business location but it also allows you to give a little bit more information about your business or service in order to entice customers!  You can include a business description, photographs, business opening hours, contact information and a link back to your website. You can also categorise your business to aid your chances of being returned on search. If you have YouTube videos associated with your company up to 5 of these may be uploaded to your listing at any time.
Google collects data about your business, such as reviews from various other websites and combines this information with what you enter on your Google Place page.

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Facebook has now launched the Guide to Facebook Ads. This page was set up to give advice and tips for building effective ad campaigns on Facebook. Learn how to make your Facebook advertisement stand out and attract attention, while getting the best results for your money.

Do you know when to schedule your ads in order to reach your target audience? Do you know how to optimise your Facebook campaign? If not visit http://www.facebook.com/adsmarketing/

The guide can also be found by clicking on ‘Learn more’ in the left-hand navigation of your Facebook Ads Manager.

Youtube was hit by a cross site scripting (XSS) attack over the
weekend. I expect some script kiddies were having a boring independence day so decided
to see what mischief they could get up too. It wasn’t a particularly harmful
attack. Mostly it was fans of Justin bieber who were redirected to a site
saying he had died or something.

In any case it is rather surprising to see that
one of the most popular sites on the web – owned by google no less – was vulnerable to
an attack of this sort. They fixed the vulnerability within a couple of hours.
No doubt security types will use the attack for scaremongering – “If it can happen to google” etc..

My colleague was speaking with one of our clients earlier today, Organic Cotton Shop, she had just bought Sophie the Giraffe.  So what’s Sophie the Giraffe I hear you ask?  In short its a Natural Latex Pacifier and Teether for babies and toddlers.

Now I hear you ask, what has this got to do with forums.  Well to make a long story short, someone bought one, mentioned it in Roller Coaster’s forum and since then their sales have increases 10 fold for this particular product and the footfall through the shop has also increases. 

This is a great case study to show how user generated content in forums can help increase your brand/product awareness.  

Be aware that you cannot use forums to promote your self as you will get a slap on the wrists but it is certainly a good idea to keep an eye on whats being said and getting involved in threads that are relevant to your business. Dont forget to read their policies and T&C carefully but most don’t mind you putting your business name and website address in your signature (and don’t forget keyphrases in your post if you want it to help your website optimisation).

“Why bother” “cannot see the point” “takes too much time” just a few quotes I have had from clients recently when I mention using Twitter to help promote their business products and services. So is Twitter loosing the social networking war? The jury is still out on that one but there do appear to be a few jumping ship.

On the other hand there are also a lot of companies using it and quite successfully. The great thing about Twitter is that it is many things to many people. It allows you to keep up with friends and family. Follow local events. Interact with companies and stores where you are already a customer and get questions answered. And even better you don’t have to turn on the lap top every time you want to look at or publish a new tweet. Just set it up on your phone and off you go. So are you using it and how successfully.

I heard this last week and could not believe it, Web 2.0, something I am always talking about has now become an official word in the english language and not just any word but the one millionth. Other words bidding for the position included coddies, chengguan, slumdog, fundoo and Jai Ho, but no, they picked Web 2.0. 

The Global Language Monitor (GLM), based in Austin made it official on 10th June  at 10:22 am GMT.  Web 2.0 is a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services.   Isn’t it funny to think that its only the one millionth, I would have thought that this would have been exceeded a long time ago.