Build Your Brand Through Social Media

Everyone’s at it, every pundit and commentator’s telling us that social media is the big thing we all need to be into to succeed in 2010.

But how can your business benefit? Maybe you’re on facebook or twitter yourself, or you’re an early adopter of Google Wave. Chances are though that it’s all about your social and personal life. The old saying about keeping business and pleasure separate applies to social media, for both your privacy and professionalism.

It’s pretty easy to set up a twitter account or facebook page for your company, to post youtube video clips, contribute to or set up discussion boards and run a blog. The hard part is finding ways for them to help your business grow. The whole point of social media is that it’s immediate and up to date, so if you’re not regularly adding content and info, or commenting on current issues, you’re not likely to achieve much.

The trick is to treat these media like any other channel. Get over that feeling that they’re gimmicks, or for teenagers. The research tells a different story. The average age of twitter and facebook users tends to be late 30s. These days, most consumers and professionals are technology savvy to some degree and share the expectation of having info right at their fingertips whenever they want it, and being able to get in touch in the most convenient way at that moment.

So, don’t skimp on skill or planning. Handling your social media is like any campaign: you need to keep your key messages in mind and have interesting angles and approaches to attract attention. Come up with topics to tweet about so you have something new to focus on each day or week, have a program of info, pictures and updates for your facebook page, and get input from all around your business – from the MD to product developers. It’s all about building and cementing your reputation and brand: showing that you’re knowledgeable and up to speed with key topics, being responsive to customers and building up goodwill with current and future customers.

A great way to attract fans and followers is to run competitions or giveaways through your social media channel. Offer to donate a small sum to charity on behalf of the writer of the best caption on a picture, ask for tips in an area of expertise. If there’s an incentive, however small, your followers are more likely to let their associates know about you, so you’ll gain more interest. Make sure you can handle a large response if you do this – take-up rates are not as predictable in social media, and sometimes things can take off in a way you’d never have expected.

Seek views as well as pushing out your own. You can learn about new developments, hear how customers react to your products and take the opportunity to correct misconceptions or turn dissatisfied customers around. On twitter, set up searches so you’ll know whenever your business or product is mentioned, so you can respond to or join in with relevant discussions. Carry out some research amongst your customers and suppliers to find out which discussion boards or forums they use and contribute helpfully to queries and debates.

Take a look at our top social media tips below:

• Set up one or more twitter accounts for your business separately from any personal twitter activity
• Keep a steady but useful flow of comments and info going out through your social media
• Add interest and currency to your website with feeds of your business tweets or status updates
• Seek input as well as putting out your messages
• you are part of a community and the communication is two way
• Competitions and freebies are a great way to attract followers and fans
• Keep an eye out for the next big thing, social media-wise

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Geoff Hocking is Creative Head of Breathe Marketing and has over 30 years experience in marketing and design for companies large and small. Take a look at his FREE paper on Web 2.0 – what does it mean for your business? – go now to http://www.breathe4u.com/web2.html

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Build Your Brand Through Social Media

Free Tools For Your Online Business

Internet marketing is simply exploding on the web and along with that explosion is access to many free products that will help you to succeed online. These tools save time, which in the end translates to making more money…and, isn’t that why we’ve entered this online marketing world in the first place? I’ve included a list of valuable tools that I have used to help you with your online marketing and the best thing about it is they are free!

Google Alerts: You can do so many things with this tool,not he least of which is the ability to “see” who is publishing your material, if anyone is talking about you and which sites have picked up your Ezine articles. If you are targeting certain keywords, you can set it up to show you when something has been posted on a website regarding the keywords you are targeting. Navigate to google.com/alerts and enter the keywords you want to track.

Google Analytics: Another great tool provided by Google. With this tool, you can track the kind of activity your site is receiving such as…who is visiting, where they are from, how long they stayed on your site and the best part…which keywords they used to find you. It is very easy to install…just follow the prompts and paste the code exactly where they tell you to on your website.

Google Adwords: Here’s Google again If you are not already tracking certain keywords for your blog or website, then you should begin doing so. Great search engine optimization requires finding the best keywords and long tail keywords. There is a lot involved with SEO, but learning how to find the right keywords is a must if you want to experience serious success.

CamStudio: There is no question about it…the popularity of video on the Internet has exploded. CamStudio gives you the ability to learn and apply your video making skills before you move on to a paid program such as Camtasia. Obviously with Camtasia you are going to get more features, but CamStudio is a great starting place, and a good place to practice your video skills. Eventually, you will probably move up to a paid program, but you can’t beat free for starters!

FTP: FTP stands for file transport protocol. Simply put, it is what you use to transfer your files from your computer to your host/server. My own personal choice…the that I use is Filezilla. It is open source and free to use, but there are many more available such as Smart FTP. Just do a seach on FTP choices and study your options.

RSS reader: We all have favorite blogs that we like to return to and read the content, but trying to keep up as to when these blogs are updated can be a daunting task at best. An RSS reader will notify you of any new posts on your favorite blogs. Additionally, it will save you valuable time navigating to these blogs only to find out they have nothing new to offer yet. Google Reader is a good one and its free to use. Having access to RSS on your blog or website is equally important to your readers. You want them to have the ability to receive your blog posts when they are new. This tool will save you time and also save your readers time.

Traffic Virus 2.0: Traffic Virus 1.0 was one of the web’s first traffic generating pieces of software designed to launch your own viral advertising campaign. The newer 2.0 version is now available and the best part about it is it remains free…even though it has been improved upon with better features. You can’t beat that deal!

This is just a partial list of the free tools that I have taken advantage of to keep my own Internet marketing business running smoothly. As you can see, there is no shortage of free programs and material out there to get your business up and running on the web in no time. It’s up to you to take action.

For more free tools, just Google “free Internet marketing tools”…you might be surprised at what’s out there!

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Kathy Dobson is a free spirited business owner and entrepreneur dedicated to helping others achieve financial and personal freedom through Internet marketing with an emphasis on membership sites.  For further tips and resources and to get your own free rebrandable report “Membership Sites are Hot” visit: http://www.kathydobson.com

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Free Tools For Your Online Business

Financial IT job market increasing sharply

Dawinderpal Sahota, Computing, Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 16:44:00

Recent findings show promise for the recovery of IT jobs in finance

The number of IT jobs within the financial services sector increased sharply during the first two months of 2010, according to specialist recruiter McGregor Boyall.

The company claims that the skills most demanded during the first quarter of 2010 were those of developers (42 per cent of vacancies) and business analysts (16 per cent).

In terms of product areas, the top three most active hirers have been derivatives (19 per cent), risk (13 per cent) and FX (14 per cent).

The company stated its findings in its Financial Services IT hiring index which tracks vacancies across 16 financial market organisations.

The company said there has also been an increase in available permanent, rather than contract, roles, and that this is promising because it suggests increasing confidence in the sector’s recovery.

“We saw a steady increase in hiring requirements from the beginning of 2009 and this upward trend accelerated significantly during the first two months of 2010,” said Laurie Boyall, managing director at McGregor Boyall.

Salary prospects for IT personnel also look promising, as recruitment firm Acumin Consulting recently claimed that pay for IT security staff, at both end user and channel firms, is once again on the rise.

The news comes just a short while after high-profile job cuts in the sector, with Lloyd’s Banking Group recently announcing plans to axe 5,000 jobs by December 2010. IT staff were thought to be among the worst hit by the cull.

Honda gets homeworkers connected

Dawinderpal Sahota, Computing, Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 16:24:00

Timico moves car maker’s network onto its cloud

Car and motorcycle manufacturer Honda has deployed a new networking solution aimed at promoting home working among its field-based area managers and other key personnel.

The company teamed up with system integrator Timico for the project.

Honda’s new networking solution will allow 160 employees to work more flexibly and securely.

The company said the solution will save money by reducing travel costs for its staff. It has spent about £180,000 on each of two projects and expects a 25 per cent saving in terms of cost over a three-year period, compared with the company’s previous supplier.

Timico has also migrated Honda’s dealer network onto its fully managed secure private wide area network (PWAN), and has provided the car maker with a fully managed ADSL connection and Cisco router at each of its 135 dealer sites.

“Combining our line rental and broadband services as part of Timico’s managed homeworker solution, has helped us significantly reduce our costs,” explained Paul Kidd, infrastructure implementation manager at Honda.

“The new routers mean our teleworkers can connect wirelessly at home – this gives them access to all our systems so they can work as effectively as they do in the office. Another plus point is that Timico has agreed that all our teleworker connections will be automatically migrated to the faster ADSL 2+ service as soon as it becomes available in each area,” he added.

As part of the project, Honda has been provided with a secure customer portal. This helps Honda manage teleworker house moves and dealer changes, and allows the company to track orders and hardware deliveries, as well as allowing it to view invoices and billing data online.

The installation of a single managed PWAN to connect the majority of the company’s dealership sites brings a number of security benefits, such as IP VPN connectivity, centrally hosted and managed resilient firewalls, proactive network monitoring and reporting, Timico said.

In addition, Timico will offer 24/7 technical support and management and configuration of Honda’s existing Cisco hardware.

Honda cites Timico’s ability to take on the management and reconfiguration of its existing Cisco hardware, which has helped with managing costs and limiting the environmental impact of redundant hardware, as the main reason it chose the company.

Each of Honda’s dealership sites has a link to the Timico MPLS cloud, which is kept separate from any general internet traffic.

“There is an element of risk in any migration to a new service provider, however Timico’s project management team and support personnel have made this rollout one of the smoothest we have had,” added Kidd.

Large Hadron Collider scientists celebrate initial success

Computing staff, Computing, Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 16:05:00

Beams of protons collide at greater force than ever before

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) celebrated a major breakthrough as its £5bn Large Hadron Collider (LHC) achieved high-energy collisions of two protons yesterday.

The collisions occurred at energy levels of seven billion electron volts (7TeV), just under the speed of light in the 27km collider tunnel – that is more than three times the force previously achieved, and beats the 2.36TeV recorded by Cern last year.

The aim of the project is to simulate the events taking place one millionth of a millionth of a second after the big bang. This information is revolutionary in terms of understanding the fundamental nature of the universe.

The LHC has seen a number of setbacks since its launch in 2008, including the overheating of a badly soldered electrical splice, which caused extensive damage to parts of the collider and resulted in a £30m bill to fix it.

The massive IT requirements of the project include analysis of vast amounts of data – two petabytes per second – as well as development of grid technologies.

The collider will run almost constantly over the next 18 to 24 months.

“This will bring enough data across all potential discovery areas to firmly establish the LHC as the world’s foremost facility for high-energy particle physics,” Cern said in a statement.