A website is a way of communicating what you do to a wider audience. People, sometimes very random people, visit your site, see what you do, how you do it and who you do it with.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they stay around awhile and find out more about you. And sometimes if you’re really lucky they will contact you. They make up their mind quickly whether to pursue further reading about you and your business.

But, of course, you’re website says you are the best in your field, or the cheapest money can buy, or the longest lasting or whatever …. but so does your competitors!

So how do your customers differentiate between you and all your competitors? They take a look at your Social Capital – they ask their friends, colleagues, acquaintances and their family. We all know that our reputation matters but it is becoming increasingly important in the online, as well as the offline, worlds.

Online, your Social Capital equates to what Tara Hunt described in her book ‘The Whuffie Factor’  as the residual outcome, or the currency, of your reputation. I think that sums it up nicely – your ‘standing’ at the Social Capital Bank is a direct consequence of the effort you have put into your community. And the good part is that the more you ‘pay out’ ie the more input you give to your community, then the greater your bank balance.

It is this Social Capital that is becoming increasingly important in helping your customers make an informed decision about whether to buy a product or service from you. Personally, I am using search engines less to find information on the best widget to buy or the best company to get a service from – I use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Social Bookmarking sites to dip into the collective wisdom of my trusted network. The experience is better as I get real reviews, in real time, by real people whom I TRUST.

Of course, WEBSITES ARE STILL REQUIRED – especially transactional sites because currently there really aren’t alternative digital platforms for the buying of selling of goods and services online. There are, however, moves on Facebook and others, to bring ecommerce and Social Media together and that is a VERY interesting space to be in

BUT, I think the emphasis may shift from your website being THE destination to direct all your customers to, to being more a destination that customers can find ways of connecting to you. This is nothing new - word of mouth and personal recommendation have, and always will be, the BEST way of securing new customers, it’s just that word of mouth is rapidly moving online.

I certainly hope that websites are still a valuable asset for at least a few more years but I recommend that, if nothing else, you keep one eye on the future and ensure that your website is built to be fully integrated with current (and future) Social Media platforms.

Mike Georgeson
I’m an online exponent whose 15 years experience of the internet has seen me successfully define, develop, manage and implement projects for both the Private and Public sectors.

Passionate about how the digital world can help businesses succeed, I am the founder and Director of Netdesk.co.uk, a company dedicated to helping clients gain competitive advantage by enhancing your digital presence.
Connect with me:
twitter.com/mgeorgeson |  facebook.com/mgeorgeson

- Just two in five retailers has a social media presence

- Only 10% use more than one social media network

- Only 32% of retailers with a Twitter or Facebook account promote them on their website

The majority of UK retailers are failing to exploit the opportunity to integrate social media marketing into their operation to increase sales and generate loyalty, a new benchmarking study from dotCommerce ecommerce solutions reveals today. The study of 100 UK retailers, available to download at www.dotcommerce.co.uk/social_ecommerce_solutions, reveals that while 42% have some kind of social media presence, just 12% are using more than one social media channel and only 32% of retailers with a Twitter or Facebook account promote these on their website.

The report also uncovers the differences in social media activity between larger and smaller retailers. Larger retailers are more likely to have a Twitter or Facebook account, with 42% on Twitter compared to just 12% of smaller brands. However, when it comes to blogs, smaller companies are leading the way as 10% have a blog, compared to only 6% of bigger ecommerce players.

Other key findings include:

* Twitter is now more popular than Facebook – Although Facebook has a greater user base than Twitter, fewer retailers had a presence there (24% compared to 26% for Twitter). One of the reasons might be the more ‘open’ nature of Twitter, making it easier to enter from a business standpoint
* Twitter used mainly for push marketing – Retailers are largely using Twitter as a broadcasting tool with 73% using it for product updates, 62% for marketing and 58% to promote company news
* Blogging used by few - Only 8% of retailers have a blog on their website, making it the least used of all the main social media channels assessed. Of those who blogged, only 38% posted daily and the blog was mainly used for product updates (50%) or company news (50%).
* Other social networks largely ignored – only 6% of retailers offered links to any other social media channels such as Youtube and Flickr

“We were surprised by the low levels of social media usage amongst the retailers we assessed. For those who had taken the plunge, there was a lack of sophistication and low levels of integration with their other online marketing efforts,” said Simon Bird, Technical Director at dotCommerce. “Lucrative opportunities to engage with target markets and drive business through social media are being overlooked by these retailers”.

“A surprisingly high number of brands with a social media presence on an external channel failed entirely to publicise this on their website. This is a significant missed opportunity for brands who want to adopt a joined up marketing strategy to maximise the effectiveness of their social media presence and deliver return on investment,” he added.

Here are Simon Bird’s top tips on how retailers can make the most of social media:

1. Publicise your social media presence - let your customers know where to find you on social networks by integrating all your web channels
2. Find out where your customers are – not every network will be right for every brand, so do some detective work and see which channel is being used by your customers
3. Quality content is key – social media success depends on creating great content that your followers or fans will want to share
4. Engage with your audience – most of the retailers using social media are just broadcasting information. Initiating conversations and engaging with your audience will help encourage loyalty and retention
5. Track your traffic – if you use a social channel to promote offers , make sure you use trackable tags in the links to your site, or an affiliate, to track the effectiveness of the offer.

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Netdesk can help you make the most of your Social Media presence. Whether it’s a commerce enabled website or getting your message out to existing or potential new customers using online marketing, we can help.

Contact us now on 01244 311517 or email us on enquiries(at)netdesk.co.uk

We’re here to help.

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This is a collection of stats I’ve found recently and I guess they all got to show that if six months ago it wasn’t a compelling case to consider social media in the marketing mix, then it might just be the time now…

• Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
• Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
• LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
• Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
• Flickr now hosts more than 4bn images. A massive jump from the previous 3.6bn I wrote about.
• More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. This is 5m more than towards the end of July, 2009.
• Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
• Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month – this was around a billion last time I covered this.
• There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. Last time around, this was only 50.
• Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
• Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase. (Previously 30m). As before, it’s no secret that users who access Facebook through mobile devices are almost 50% more active than those who don’t.

Okay, so now some new stuff that’s worth considering when looking at social media marketing that I’ve not included in previous posts:

Impressive stuff, but as always, take these stats with a pinch of salt. As before, no single piece of information can be used to base an online strategy upon, or be used as a forecast as to the direction a specific social media channel may take in the future - you need to fully understand your marketing and business objectives before launching off into this apparently vast space.

If you need any help with figuring any of this out, you know where we are - mike@netdesk.co.uk |  01244 311517  |  07779503111

Ever wanted to sync your events in facebook with your Google Calendar - well, it’s not difficult and here’s how…

1. Login to facebook and click on Settings > Application Settings

2. Click on Events

3. Click on Export Events

4. When the pop-up box appears, copy the url

5. Now login to your Google Calendar and on the left hand side select Add and then Add URL

6. On the next screen paste the url you copied from Facebook and click add.

7. That’s it. All done. You’ll never miss another event again

Just reading an interesting article by Mark Evans (Thanks Mark, got me thinking) on what loses out as your time on Social Media increases. I though this was interesting and led me to think about what I do less of now than I used to. The big loser in my life is TV - I guess I used to watch maybe 10 hrs a week a couple of years ago but now that’s probably down to like 2 or 3 hours.

Or is it that I now watch moving images in a different way? I catch up with BBC iPlayer and watch some interesting stuff on YouTube and with both of these I can still be involved in Social Media - I can be watching iPlayer but interacting on Twitter with Tweetdeck.

What do you do less of now because of Social Media?