What Is a Hashtag and What Are They Used For?

Essentially what the hashtags are used for is to create interest around a particular subject or topic and then gets other people to start contributing to the discussion which can spread virally very quickly.

The way the hashtags are used on Twitter is by simply placing the ‘#’ in front of the keyword that you wish to highlight, so for example this could be a sports player, musician, celebrity, or topic. The hash symbol places emphasis to all other Twitterers that you are discussing this particular subject and if they want to engage in this with you then they should also use that hashed keyword in their tweets.

Hashtags then allow you to follow and monitor a particular topic very easily and this can be used effectively to follow your own company and products in Twitter discussions. Some of the most popular hashtag topics are those that many people follow in large numbers such as the Xfactor, football matches or award shows and these can draw large amounts of tweets and hashtags.

Twitter Marketing Campaigns Explained

First of all you need to grow your own social media Twitter following which can take time however it is essential to grow this organically with customers who regularly by your products or use your service. 

One of the main ways Twitter campaigns are used is by tweeting interesting information perhaps about a special offer you are doing and then your followers will re-tweet this to all their followers. The idea behind it is if the offer or information you tweeted is engaging enough, then this tweet could go viral and spread to thousands of people.

The latest trend to hit Twitter is the hashtag trend and by utilising hashtags in the right way can give you huge viral marketing capability.

Developing Your Own Hashtag Campaign

First of all you need to do your research into your target market so that you can start a discussion around a frequently asked question or advice on a subject they would appreciate help on. Basically think of a topic that would get people talking!

Next you need to choose a simple short hashtag name that reflects your product or company and then double check on Twitter search that the name is not already being used. Then you need to schedule your tweets of useful information or whatever subject you have decided to focus upon (remember the more engaging the information, the more likely your hashtag campaign will succeed).

It can take a while to get your hashtag campaign to catch on and it might even take several attempts but if you stick at it and hit the right topic, you are sure to have success with this marketing strategy.

Bloggers have an unprecedented reach to people all over the world by being experts in their market or a particular field. Through being experts in their market they can write engaging pieces of content on their blog and attract thousands of visitors which ultimately can influence buying trends and product successes or product failures.

For this reason brands have to engage with bloggers, as popular bloggers have frontline access to the general public and the target markets. We have seen over recent year’s brands reaching out to relevant bloggers who have large followings to engage them in new products, services or companies that they are looking to promote and it looks like this trend is set to continue as the blogosphere keeps showing growth.

How Should Brands and Companies Go About Reaching Out?

One of the biggest mistakes some companies can make is to try and reach out to bloggers in an ‘email spam’ format and this is where you just submit thousands of email blasts to a big list of untargeted blog owners. While you might get a decent response, the blogs will not be targeted and you will miss the quality bloggers that you are after.

The sensible way to find good bloggers is to research your market and make a shortlist of the top 10 or 20 blogs you can find, then draft a personalised email and contact them that way. Remember they will get lots of emails every day so make sure yours stands out and connects with them as best you can.

Bloggers Don’t Normally Want To Be Bought

Bloggers normally write their blogs out of passion and not for financial gain, so when you ask a blogger to come to review a product or an event for you remember they will want to write it as they see it.

Some companies offer gifts or even financial compensation to essentially get a good promotional review and for top blogs this is a mistake as they will not want to compromise their blogs integrity by writing something they do not believe.

Remember getting a blogger to review your event, product, brand or service is the first step. Delivering a good presentation of it to the blogger is very much essential if you want them to communicate it positively to their large number of readers.

Social media has become a much bigger part in search engine optimisation (SEO) since the huge popularity websites such as Facebook have had over recent years. What businesses can do is have Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts for their companies outlining what they do, products they sell and also update their ‘followers’ or ‘friends’ with any current news or special offers.

What social media has essentially created for companies is a brand new way to directly communicate with your customer base in a way that has never been possible before. As a result of this increase in internet user social media trend, Google has had no choice but to start looking at social media followings of websites to use as a ranking factor in their search results.

Google’s ultimate aim in their search engine service is to return the most relevant and up to date search results for any search query a user submits. With this in mind it makes perfect sense for Google to look at what websites have the biggest social media followings because in theory, the bigger the following, the more popular and therefore relevant the website will be.

Also with the recent release of Google Plus, which is Google’s own social media network, it suggests heavily that they believe social media is an important and growing market. It is worth noting that while social media is definitely a ranking factor in Google’s search results, we do not know how important a ranking factor it is at this stage.

What we can have a reasonable prediction on is that social media as a ranking factor importance will steadily grow in the coming months and years. For this reason it is absolutely essential that you start looking into social media for your company’s website and begin to look at ways to grow your social media followings as this will not only give you some short term benefits, it will also give you long term search engine ranking benefits.

Facebook as a company has such a great start-up story attached to its history, with it literally being created from the student dorm rooms in Harvard, and then just several years later growing to be one of the most popular websites on the internet and leading the social media boom.

One reason Facebook has managed to succeed in its rise to social media stardom is due to its superb ability to innovate effectively, which is vital to long term success in the fast paced online world.

The user interface of Facebook is constantly changing, updating and evolving, all with the motive of making life easier and more enjoyable for the users. Internet users are very unique customers and if a website fails to maintain or improve their service, they can leave in drones very quickly. One notable case was the MySpace social media website which was actually there before Facebook but innovate their site and functionality effectively.

Facebook is always making small changes to their interface and as a result it is hard to see any big changes at any one time; rather you see gradual changes over the course of a year.

One great change they made was the introduction of live chat where you can communicate with people on your friends list directly via a ‘MSN Messenger’ style chat system. Taking this even further over the past few months Facebook introduced video chat where users can simply click on a video button and if you have a webcam, start a live video chat instantly. Their scope for innovation really is phenomenal.

One of the main reasons Facebook has to keep ahead of the pack is because of the increased competition from other social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and most recently Google Plus. All these competitors are looking to take the top spot as the premier social media website and if Facebook fails to continue their innovation of the service, they might just succeed.

At this stage Facebook is very much in the driving seat with most of their innovations being huge success’s and if they continue to be in tuned with the general public, they will continue to hold their seat at the head of the social media table.

Facebook is the social network that most people are members of and pretty much dominates the internet for being the leading social network. As Google is the most popular search engine used by internet users, they are one of the few companies that could actively compete in producing a credible social network rival with the exception of Twitter and LinkedIn.

In many ways Google Plus is quite different from Facebook and there are some really good aspects that they have created into the service. We will look at both the good aspects and also the not so good aspects of Google Plus but it must be said that the best way to figure out what it has to offer is to sign up and see first hand!

Some Google Plus Good Points

• Google Plus’s home page is slightly different than most other social networks as it operates in a three column setup and is quite similar to other Google services. We think this is actually a really good feature because many people are already very familiar with Google services such as Webmasters Tools, Analytics etc and so it creates a nice synergy for all their services.

• Google have developed a system of what they are calling ‘circles’ where you can be added in to or alternatively add other users into relevant circles. These circles can be about anything from content, social issues, specific topic issues, hobbies or anything you might want to discuss with like minded people. They are very easy to create and are great ways to spread discussions and information.

• Privacy is one area that Google Plus has really done very well with by allowing you to specifically see what information from you is shared, who can see your information and you can also see exactly how other users will see your profile. They use a diaspora style of sharing information which is superb as it allows users to keep various areas of their life separate such as work and family.

Some Google Plus Not So Good Points

• Google Plus is quite a complex application and is not quite as simple as many people expected it to be. Simple social media users might have trouble digesting all the fancy features when all they want to do is simply post up information. Rival companies such as Facebook and Twitter really have made their user interface very simple and so Google Plus may want to look at simplifying certain parts as time goes on.

• To sign up to Google Plus you need a Google email address or Google account and while this is quite common for many internet users, there is certainly a high percentage of average internet users that do not have one. This almost makes a simple process of registering a Google Plus account for users a complex problem which is not a very good thing for the launch of a new social network.

As time goes on there will be more developments in the Google Plus service but at this stage it all does look like quite a good social network they have created. So long as you can get past the account setup and spend the time getting used to the features then we think Google Plus has a lot to offer users in the coming months and years.

The term ‘open source’ means that there are hundreds of programmers that contribute to the software which is one of the key reasons why it is such a leading application, furthermore the cost of WordPress code is absolutely free to the user.

Pre-Wordpress

WordPress had a predecessor which was an application called b2 or cafelog which was written in PHP and was used in conjunction with MySQL by a programmer called Michel Valdrighi. WordPress came to fruition in 2003 by 2 developers called Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little when they created a fork of b2/cafelog. A fork for those wondering is a software term where developers will purchase a legal copy of software from a software package (in this case b2/cafelog) and start a new development on it creating a brand new independent piece of software.

Awards and Future

Being one of the leading open source applications WordPress consequently has won many awards such as Packet Open Source Award in 2007, The Best Open Source Award in 2009, Hall of Fame CMS in 2010 Award and most recently in 2011 won the Open Source Web App of the Year Award.

WordPress is now up to version 3.2 and they will be looking to continue to improve and expand the WordPress community through out the rest of the year with an updated version of WordPress expected late 2011.

As a business you need to make the most of social networks as this can be a superb source of business and it also has some good SEO benefits with search engines paying much more attention to social media signals in 2011.

Making the most of LinkedIn is not rocket science and we have outlined a few simple steps to help you improve your LinkedIn presence and profile.

1. Utilise You Profile

When you setup your profile try to make sure that you maximise all the fields available which can take sometime but it really is worth it. When people view your profile this is what they will be reading so it certainly is worth the extra effort.

There is a status field in your LinkedIn profile and this allows you to easily communicate what you and your business are up to which is an excellent way to communicate the goings on within your business on a day by day basis.

2. Contribute A Little & Often

LinkedIn has quite a vibrant online community with questions being asked all the time so it is a very good practice to answer questions and contribute to the community. This will not only improve your reputation on LinkedIn, it will also increase the number of endorsements you get from fellow LinkedIn users.

3. Relevant Connections

Social media profiles can sometimes be judged by the number of followers, likes or connections you have, however this is not the case with LinkedIn. On LinkedIn try to only connect with people that you have had dealings and a genuine relationship with as this will allow you to develop those relationships further. There is no benefit to having thousands of connections that you don’t even know!

4. Recommendations

It is always a good idea to be open to writing recommendations for colleagues on LinkedIn that you know are very good and will offer a great service. By doing this you actually enhance LinkedIn as a quality resource, help out a business colleague and also increase the probability of being recommended yourself.

5. Update Your Company Page

People often forget to keep their companies profile page updated each month which is a mistake. By keeping it up to date with job openings, news, new products etc it will engage people much more effectively and keep them informed of what’s going on.

So there we have a few simple points that will really help you get much more out of LinkedIn that you might have been getting!

“Happy Birthday to us. Happy birthday to us.
Happy birthday Funky Fresh. Happy birthday to us!
HIP HIP HOORAY!!”

That’s right! We’re celebrating our 1st birthday and as a thank you we’d like to share some delicious offers that you’ll want to indulge in!

• 4Networking Forum Signature (www.4networking.biz) – We can create a custom forum signature which shows off your branding and also links to your website and social media accounts for just £25 (Normally £30).
• Blog Articles – We’re offering to write 4 blog articles for just £90. Each article is circa 500 words and content is created from scratch on whatever subject or area you want it on. Whether it be a ‘how to’ article, tips and advice, a news piece or even a random, just for fun article!
• E-mail Marketing – We’ll create a bespoke template design to match your brand, integrate it in to our online management software and test how it looked in various e-mail interfaces for £125 (Normally £200).
• Logo Design – We’ll create four initial logo design concepts for you to choose from and your preferred option can then be developed further in to exactly what you want for just £180 (Normally £250).
• Social Media Set-up – Don’t have your business set up on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? We can do that for you! Just £15 per account. All we need from you is your company profile, your logo, a photo of you and any other marketing information you feel would be relevant!
• Stationery Design – We will create three concept designs for your business cards, letterheads and compliment slips. Your preferred set can then be developed further in to exactly what you want for just £130 (Normally £180).
• Twitter Background – We can design a custom background to match your brand identity for just £30 (normally £40).
• Website re-writes – If you’ve already got content on your website but don’t feel it springs out or captures readers in the way it should we can re-write these for you at £45 per page (normally £90) or for more pages we’re offering the following at discounted rates £250 for 5 pages (normally £400) or £450 for 10 pages (normally £700).

These offers will end on 29 July so take advantage whilst you can!

To find out more on these offers or to simply take advantage just contact us on 08450 181 062 or send us a message and we’ll contact you.

As always we have compiled a little list of what we think will help you keep a good client relationship with your client base.

Developing the relationship

You will more than likely spend a long time discussing the project with your client and so sometimes it is a good to get to know them a bit whether it’s just their hobby or an interest. This can make the working relationship much more successful and enjoyable. You will find developing the relationship to be easy with some clients and harder with others. If you are finding it hard with a client, do not force it, as some people are 100% about the work and are not interested in conversing and trying to force it will just alienate them.

Put a clear contract in place

When we discuss a contract in this context this doesn’t mean a tight legally binding contract but more of a clear contract of what your client is paying you to do. By knowing this right from the start you then have a clear set of responsibilities and tasks that your client expects off you; furthermore your client can’t start moving the ‘goal posts’ or asking you to do extra work that was not agreed upon. Remember a good client relationship works both ways and this means that you need to be happy with the working relationship as well and a clear contract is a good way to ensure this happens.

Communicate well

Good communication is very important for a good relationship with a client, so make sure that you are responsive to emails and phone calls as best you can. When you are busy this can be particularly hard to do but try and take half an hour at the start or the end of the day to respond to emails. There is nothing that can destroy a relationship with a client faster than someone who does not reply to phone calls or emails.

Hopefully you already are implementing the advice above, however if you are not, make sure that you try to improve any areas where you think you are not performing to your best.

When a user logs on to your website the first impression is of course the design so by having a nice smart website you straight away convey a good impression to a website visitor. The next thing they will do is to navigate your website to search for what they are interested in, whether that’s a product or service. If they cannot easily navigate to find the piece of information they want they will leave and look for another website that offers the same product or service but with an easy to navigate website.

Website users are very fickle and they demand simplicity and ease of use, moreover because there is such competition on the internet, it means businesses have to deliver or risk losing out to a competitor. We have outlined a few good ideas to help make sure you don’t lose any potential custom through poor website navigation.

Create two link structures – Having two link structures in your web design means that you can have one that is for your human website visitors and the other you can have for the search engines. This means one link structure can be in a more graphic layout which is visually appealing to attract website visitors to click on, whereas a navigation link structure for the search engines can be across the bottom of the website in the footer in text link format which is preferred by search engines.

Make your logo a link – Logos on a website are excellent for branding and logos are often placed on every single page of a website. Furthermore it is very popular to have the logo act as a way for visitors to find their way easily back to the home page by making the logo a homepage link when clicked. This can make navigating a site easy and convenient rather than having to click the internet browser’s ‘back button’ countless times.

So all in all these are two very good ideas to get a good link structure in place and if you want to succeed in converting traffic and ranking well on the search engines then it definitely is worth spending some time thinking about a site structure that is easy to use for visitors!