Social media are an integral part of the Internet. It is commonly known that every company should be present on social media platforms.

To begin, here are a few figures…

A study carried out by Burson-Marsteller on the 100 biggest companies ranked in the Fortune Global 500 reveals that 65% of them have one or several profiles on Twitter, making of it the most popular social media. The study indicates that these companies use social media not only to spread information but also to participate in discussions by posting messages or comments.

Being on social media is a way of managing efficiently its customer relationship and offering high-quality after-sales service. A blog or a profile on Twitter, Facebook or any other social website is a showcase for a company. It represents an additional sales channel to your website or your store. Still not convinced? Here is a figure that might make you change your mind. Thanks to its Twitter account, Dell’s sales for 2009 amounted to 6.5 million dollars. So, what do you think of that?

Social media have another important advantage. It reinforces closeness and interactivity between the company and its customers. The cascade-system for finding friends enables you to increase brand awareness, convey a modern image of the company and be one length ahead of your competitors. These websites are essential when it comes to competition watch. On the other hand, according to Dix-Katre blog, 90% of Internet users trust friends’ recommendations, 70% trust unknown Internet users and 42% of respondents rely upon advertising. In other words, these stats show how important it is to be on social media.

You have understood that there are plenty of advantages to be on social media. They bring traffic to your website, they convey a young and modern image of your company and they let you know more about your clients’ opinions.

So, which social media do you have to be on? Of course, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube cannot be ignored. But others websites such as Digg, Reddit, LinkedIn and Delicious are worth considering.

I hope you have remembered from this article that it is vital for a company to be present on social media platforms.

See you soon!

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Hello dear web-marketers!

Today I’m going to talk about Google Webmaster Tools which will soon contain three new applications:

SIDEWIKI

Launched in September 2009, this extension enables you, through an icon appearing on the Google Toolbar or on Google Chrome, to publish and share comments about a web page. Shortly, Sidewiki should give the opportunity to broadcast these comments via social media platforms.

The owner of the page will be able to publish a text which will appear above all other comments.

As a result, Sidewiki might change some SEO methods. We’ll see…

FETCH as Googlebot

This tool was launched during the last quarter of 2009 and is already available on Webmaster Tools. It enables you to understand how Google robots work. The new thing is that its mobile version should be available over the next few months. Fetch will give the possibility to designers to optimize web contents in terms of indexation.

MALWARE

Launched at the end of 2009, Malware identifies web pages (HTML, JAVASCRIPT, FLASH) containing viruses and alerts the owner so that they can find a solution to the problem as soon as possible. The harmful source lines of code (SLOC) are clearly identified by this tool.

At the moment, Malware is being tested and will be available to webmasters soon.

See you next week for new spicy information…

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Dear web investors,

As we have already said on this blog, you won’t see any promising results if the traffic on your website is low or inexistent.

Recently, the Electronic Business Group has released the “Internet Marketing 2010” book from the e-marketing red books series.

Of course it won’t be as good as the work SEO, SEM and SMO experts can do, but this book might increase your web marketing knowledge. Here is one of the few tips given in the book:

Create a successful SMO campaign in 12 steps:

1. Get down your pedestal.
2. Concentrate on needs to satisfy, influences, sites on which traffic is important, competitors’ positioning…
3. Imagine a service answering an identified but unfulfilled need.
4. Make sure the Internet user can take part in the construction of your project.
5. Spread information again and again on most suitable social media websites.
6. Adapt your communication to your public: you don’t write the same way on a blog or on Facebook for example.
7. Use well-adapted and long-lasting avatars on social media websites.
8. Leave easy ways of spreading communication to your Internet users.
9. Follow-up regularly with your community by nominating a “community manager”.
10. You can’t control everything. Just admit it!
11. Make sure you have enough energy to implement your project.
12. Build a long-lasting relationship. We know that the ROI in SMO is proportional to the length of the operation. Think of a long-term action and optimize it!

Have a nice week!! Don’t hesitate to leave your comments or suggestions. It will be a pleasure to answer them.

See you next week!

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