It’s a word I hear a lot. I even use it myself sometimes:

Leverage.

I like the word.

Leverage

Sounds and smells fluid & rubbery. But it actually means to do the opposite. It takes power and muscle to leverage one thing towards the other.

I sometimes hear people say that they want to: “Leverage the power of social media”.

Is that possible?

Well, yes it is.

But certainly not with a Quid Pro Quo attitude. I recommend trying a warm and heartfelt “Are you being served?” instead.

Trust, Relationships, and happy clients: that’s the real stuff you can leverage in social media.

Below a nicely crafted infographic that gives you the lowdown on Google Panda – Google’s latest search engine algorithm update. It has certainly rocked the boat for some websites.

[Read more…]

This week Google started ‘field testing’ it’s new social network called Google Plus with a limited group of users. As a result, the whole internet is now talking about Google Plus.

But getting people talking about their products has never been Google’s problem.

The problem has been in developing ‘social’ products that people actually use. Products like Google Buzz and Google Wave have never been adopted by a mainstream world wide audience.

[Read more…]

As a marketer, I thought the era of putting asterixes behind special offers to your customers was sort of over.

I thought web 2.0, consumer power and customer advocacy kinda put an end to that.

But it seems that Linkedin, a web 2.0 company worth $9 Billion is still in the business of making misleading offers to their own customers.

[Read more…]

At the bottom of this post you’ll find two (me thinks) classic infographics about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). They were made by Search Engine Marketing agency Greenlight in London.

These infographics show you in the glance of an eye what became more and less important in SEO over the years.

Without going into too much detail about all these different factors, I want to highlight one obvious and quite major change: the shift towards trust.

[Read more…]

Just last December Google and Bing confirmed that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings.

In a nutshell, this means that when an article gets retweeted or referenced a lot on e.g. Twitter, Google uses it as a sign of popularity and will rank the article higher in organic and news search.

Just last week Google announced that they have also made new improvements to Social Search.

[Read more…]

Once a year Edelman, the worlds largest independent Public Relations firm, publishes their global Trust Barometer. This global survey gauges attitudes on the state of Trust in business, government, NGO’s and media across 23 countries.

[Read more…]

Tapping into social mediaAs the client guy for we do communications I often talk to new clients. Once we start talking about the social web, I always ask them what their perception is of ‘social media’ and its business value.

In my experience there are two distinct categories of prospects: the ones that want to ‘tap into social media’ and the ones that want social media to tap into them.

Let me explain.

[Read more…]

Reasons to blog

As you know, our mission in life is to turn organisations and people into publishers of valuable, optimised, content to help them reach their marketing, pr and communications goals on the social web.

[Read more…]

Difference between blog and websiteI’m often asked what the difference is between a blog and a website. For many people active in online marketing, the difference between a website and a blog might seem obvious.

But nowadays, everyone – from PRs and communicators to business leaders and customer service managers – should have a clear understanding of the difference.

[Read more…]