Following our recent acquisitions, we’re very proud to announce our updated and extended social media services!

We’ve expanded our training workshops to include:

Introduction to Social Media – designed for decision makers who need to understand how social fits into their business and how to begin to create a SMART strategy to do so.

I’m on LinkedIn, But… – understand how to take your LinkedIn profile to the next level as a powerful networking tool.

Twitter 101 – learn to make best use of this powerful communication tool for your business.

Better Blogging – covering both technical how-to (using Wordpress) and best practice content creation.

Facebook for Business – designed to enable you to utilise the world’s largest social network for real business benefit.

We’ve also launched 2 new services:

The Online Social Impact Audit provides a reference point to identify areas of improvement and forms the starting point for any social media campaign or strategy development.

Maximise the number of people who hear about and interact with your event, product or brand launch with our Social Media Event Amplification.

Our Social Media Management page has been updated to reflect changes to our offerings also.

We’re offering an Introduction to Social Media breakfast session for only £25+VAT.

Come and join us on the 26th October at 8am (for an 8:30 start) for some breakfast and an overview from our Social Media Strategist, Luke on:

• Why social networking matters to your brand
• An overview of the key sites
• Some future trends to look out for

Call Steve on 01202 888192 to reserve your place.

If you’d like more information on any of our social media services, please call Luke in the office.

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After a long history of Social Media attempts, and their more recent, albeit low radar, endeavours in the form of Google Wave and Google Buzz, has Google finally put forward a contender in the seemingly unattainable competition with Social networking giant, Facebook?

The ‘invitation-only’ launch of Google+ has been widely hyped as the most promising competitor to Facebook for some time. In some ways it seems to have ‘borrowed’ a lot of the key aspects and features of Facebook’s functionality, however, it is hitting out at Facebook’s weaknesses too.

With an estimated 500 million plus users, privacy is an area on which Facebook has been criticised in the past, and Google are grabbing this opportunity to differentiate themselves with both hands. Although this alone will not be enough to sway the dedicated Facebook fans, reviews from the chosen few that were invited to try it, shows that Google+ has potential to, compete with at least, Facebook.

Another of the key differences that could push Google+ is the depth of integration available. At the moment, Google+ is linked to all other aspects of Google; accounts and Gmail for example. This integration will undoubtedly allow users to go about their daily online business without leaving the site, meaning a much longer contact time with the user, attractive to both Google+ and marketers.

Comparisons with Facebook

Opportunities for brands

The main opportunity for brands on the new Google+ network, aside from wanting to be added to people’s circles, the equivalent of being ‘liked’ on Facebook or ‘followed’ on Twitter, is the ‘Sparks’ application. A user will list their likes and interests, and Google feeds them relevant information/products. The priority for brands will be to appear at the tops of these lists, whether this is through SEO linked to Google searches or interest optimization. This could give the opportunity for a new optimization market to develop, giving marketers another channel to consider.

Although business and ‘non-human’ pages are not currently part of Google+ being tested in the trial, it is something that they are looking to provide. Jeff Huber, Google VP of Local and Commerce, has indicated that Google+, at some point in the near future will include the option for business profile page. Here is his comment:
‘And pre-emptively answering a question — yes, we will have (smb) business profile pages on Google+. I can’t announce a launch date yet, but we want to make them *great*, and we’re coding as fast as we can.’
It is surprising that Google+ has not been more prepared for the wave of brands wanting to create profiles, as happened with Facebook and Twitter. Brands want to go where their customers are, and by not trailing the promised specialized business profiles, Google+ may have missed a trick.

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It’s everywhere, inescapable. In every news outlet, in every country of the world (sometimes as a front page story), Facebook privacy settings are changing once again. That fact in itself is practically a landmark in the importance of social networking sites, but that’s a different blog post.

So you may be thinking, as I’m sure quite a lot of Facebook’s almost 500 million registered users are, what exactly is going on?

Not so long ago Facebook changed their privacy settings to allow users granular access to their privacy settings, to control exactly who can see what, when, where and in what context. Personally I thought this was a marvelous idea, and the first thing I did was set everything to private. Job done, straightforward and spelled out for you there in black and white.

Unfortunately this spelled trouble for people who found the level of control to be overwhelming and confusing, and after a few privacy gaffes (including a few choice comments from Mark Zuckerberg himself) and millions of users threatening to delete or abandon their accounts, Facebook have caved to the pressure and are rolling out a simpler, one click approach to privacy controls. But what exactly does this mean?

- There is now the equivalent of a big red flashy button. Facebook explains: “A new simple control makes it easy to share on Facebook with friends, friends of friends or everyone—all with just one click. The corresponding settings are immediately applied and displayed in an easy-to-understand grid.”

So there you have it, to change your privacy levels, one click. Bang, and you’re done.

- Fortunately (at least from my point of view) the granular privacy access controls will remain as an option. These now appear on a single page in your settings panel and any changes apply account wide, from your wall to any applications you might use Facebook connect with. This applies to all your information. Perfect for those that like to control (and don’t mind taking responsibility for) their own privacy settings.

- The amount of information that is available on your profile, such as gender, age, job, relationship status etc will be reduced and is also controllable by the end-user.

- Facebook pages will “have privacy settings that work for both ends of the connection”. Meaning that you can now hide what pages you like from friends and connections, and also on the fan box on the pages themselves.

- You can now opt out of your information sharing on platform applications.

Following the raging debates and heated threats to leave Facebook a ghost town, the much demanded privacy settings are in the here and now. It’s difficult to strike a balance when simplicity and yet total control are your end goals, and time will tell whether this will be enough to calm the storm of angry users. Hopefully they can now go back to Farmville and Mafia Wars safe in the knowledge that their private information remains just that: private.

But then, is anything ever really private on the internet?

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