1. My friend and colleague Samia “Likes” Pop Boutique on Facebook
2. I MSN her excitedly that I am wearing a dress from Pop Boutique today
3. I also “Like” Pop Boutique
4. I visit their website http://www.pop-boutique.com/ from Facebook, browse a bit and add myself to the mailing list
5. Samia has visited the London store and can’t place where the Leeds one is, so I go to Google Maps and use the Streetview to show her where it is.  Samia plans a shopping trip.
6. I write up this piece and post in on our blog
7. I tweet about this
8. I add it to my Facebook
9. Samia and I discuss Pop Boutique some more – we are both planning shopping trips
10. BINGO – Social Media Marketing for fashion definitely works…

PS – We are not connected to Pop Boutique in any way, shape or form – we are just fans.

PPS – We are more than happy to hear from anyone from Pop Boutique if they would like to get in touch

Community Pages are aimed for Facebook users to create pages about topics and interests, themes and ideas they are interested in but which currently do not fit under the more customized Facebook Groups and Fan pages.

The new page was devised as an alternative to a Fan Pages which are developed for businesses, public figures and organisations. However the community pages are also designed to enhance personal pages.

Info pages on personal profiles will be enhanced by these connections such as, hometown, education and work, likes and interests, explains Alex Li from Facebook. In true Wikipedia style each community page, of which 6.5million will be created, will be available on any subject.

To modify pages you can request to add content to pages through a system where Facebook will notify you as to whether you are eligible to make a modification. The pages will include live streaming of relevant Facebook information for example, status updates.

The new initiative has already started to prompt users to amend information on profiles, linking to either Community Pages or Official Pages; a pop up box will recommend pages according to the information which you have included on your profile, you will then select how public you want this information to be, who will see it etc.

Another change is that Facebook are phasing out the link ‘Become a Fan’, instead of clicking on that users will now just click the ‘Like’ link, and to removed the link to fan pages there will now be an ‘Unlike’ link at the bottom of a page, alternatively fan pages can be removed through editing your profile.

Some industry experts believe adding the ‘Community Pages’ was a logical move in order to compete with information sharing sites like Wikipedia, however from a users perspective both socially and for business purposes the move could be a little confusing.

So, what are your initial thoughts and where do you think Facebook will venture next? Your opinions please…

Sources: http://ow.ly/1AEQH & http://www.insidefacebook.com

Unlike traditional search engines, social search engines can take a number of other factors into play other than SEO content, for example:

• How many times people share the link of an article for example, via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook
• How many people use social bookmarks to re-publish the link
• Tagging and connecting articles and posts through blogs/social networks
• Voting on articles posted to certain news wires (like Go Articles, Wikio)

Here is a selection of social search engines:
http://topsy.com/
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://www.whostalkin.com/
http://www.samepoint.com/
http://www.scoopler.com/
http://www.mamma.com/
http://www.gravee.com/

According to Wikipedia micro blogging is a form of blogging but differs as content is typically smaller in mass than a traditional blog – as with Twitter there is a character limit of 140 (like a traditional text message). Twitter is also classed as a social network as the site is designed for people to network and relate to other users.

However, Wikipedia defines a social network to also represent a user, profile and links to activities of the user and the use of instant messages similarly to what Twitter does.

Facebook is one of the most used social networks across the world today and is constantly growing and developing throughout the USA, UK, Europe and beyond….

N.B. it is worth noting that changes, updates and developments are continually happening on Facebook.

Generally, choosing between a Fan page and a Group depends upon the subject matter, whether its personal or for a client, make sure you know the objectives and research first.

You can refer to fan pages using the ‘@’ symbol before the name of the fan page – just like you do when you are referring to a friend e.g.

I have in the image already linked to the SEO-PR-TIPS Facebook fan page (in blue) – and to show you how it works used the @ sign to link to another page.

How SEO links in with Facebook

By using keywords in status updates and naming of groups and pages, when people use the search bar like a search engine – the use of good keywords within helps promote your presence.

On this blog in August 2009, I wrote about how tweeting can get your own way and how the power of Twitter is unbelievable, which is very true and I think people forget this all too often!

The latest article I found was relating to how people forget about social networks being as powerful as they are – a Vodafone employee wrote an offensive and obscene message on a Vodafone customer complaints Twitter account. The Twitter account in question had over 8,000 followers at the time and Vodafone had to apologise to each and everyone who was following them.

Another instance of lack of awareness of how powerful social networks are was just after New Year, when a so called ‘joke’ on micro blogging site Twitter ended up with a Doncaster man being arrested under the terrorism act!

“Robin Hood airport is closed, You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” (Source: The Independent Online)

Another story appeared around a similar time about a questionable picture (a baby with a cigarette in his mouth) on Facebook by a teenage mother, who was subsequently arrested and had social services checking around to ensure the baby was not subjected to any harm.

I think there are some very important lessons to be learnt here;
Think before you speak/act/type!
What enters the web stays on web, search engines index everything!

As I use Twitter for work purposes to gain industry knowledge and promote WebCertain, I decided I should go and get as much information as possible to help build my knowledge on the micro-blogging site, so I put my name down to attend.

The training session lasted 4 hours, split into 3 sessions:
• Session One: The context, History and Background
• Session Two: Your Twitter Presence and Reputation
• Session Three: Expanding the Twitter Remit – 3rd Party Tools and Q&A’s.

We discussed what we all wanted to gain from the training, with the majority of the group having very little or no experience with Twitter so it was great to hear what everyone wanted out of it.

Session One covered: ‘What is Marketing Today’ where we looked at the various popular brands which used marketing effectively between 1950 – 2000 and what is and would be influential from 2000 – 2050. With regards to inbound marketing we looked at; Blogs, SEO and Social Media (which are more likely to generate leads?)and how social networking is a cost effective marketing tool. Also, how using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your website will generate leads and sales.

Twitter’s history was something I hadn’t researched before and was interested to know how this phenomenon began… Back in early 2006 the blogging based company Odea (which was created and owned by Biz Stone and Evan Williams) began a project called Twitter from a brainstorming session and came up with a new type of SMS messaging service, an internal project for employees to share information. Odea thought that the concept could possibly be used on a wider basis and Twitter was launched in July 2006, being launched at the SXSW Festival where the crowd loved it! It went from having 20,000 followers to 60,000 followers in 1 day!

The business model issue:
An important point which Andy raised was about funding. Twitter currently is operated by Venture Capitalists, so what actually will happen when this funding runs out? All (most) social networking, blogging and micro blogging sites are currently free for personal and professional use, so where will the funding come from? Will Twitter limit the amount of corporate accounts and make companies pay for more? Or will companies have to pay to advertise? Will Twitter users have to pay for APIs which are currently free (up to a point)? Do you think sponsored Tweets will be the way forward? We came to the conclusion that as there is no revenue as there is no business model…

Session Two: This section started off by discussing why people use Twitter:

Andy went on to talk through creating an account and the jargon (DM, RT etc). Then we got onto the ‘reputation’, following and followers and how many people do the ‘follow-unfollow’ trick because they think it makes their presence look better than average, but does it really? I think it depends on the following:

The primary objectives of building your online reputation are:
• Supplying interesting facts / views
• Linking to useful content
• Re-Tweeting interesting information
• Asking questions and giving something back of value
• Using keywords in your tweets – people do track them
• Plus a very high volume of tweets does equal success!
‘What not to do’: Don’t over promote yourself!

A good point which was made is that Tweets don’t last for very long, depending of course who your followers are. So automation could be the way forward to ensure your tweet is ‘seen’ especially within the different time zones – therefore not limiting yourself to the zone you are in. Using automated applications by 3rd party organisations is needed (I think) to boost your tweets success which in turn will develop your following.

Section Three: Third party software is something I had briefly used before, mainly Twitrobot for automating tweets and tr.im for shortening URLs. So Andy opened up a whole new world of APIs I had never heard of or used before, here are a few:
• Twhirl – can manage multiple social media accounts like Twitter, FriendFeed and Seesmic Video. Shortening of URLs using, digg.com, bit.ly and twurl, this can be used in an array of languages.
• TweetDeck – links with Facebook and MySpace, can manage multiple accounts and split the people you’re following into categories to make it easier to view .
Other applications we talked about included: Twitrobot, TweetBeep, Tweetlater.com, Trendistic (shows twitter trends) ….

I also discovered that you can track your posts which have links in them, so you can find out how many people RT and viewed the article by using Topsy.com.

To use Twitter successfully and create a good following I think you need a mixture of automated tweets with personal tweets, use interesting information/links and follow people who will be of interest to you.

Micro-blogging certainly gets whatever you write about passed around the world, depending of course what, where, when and how you write it. Current affairs, news stories, etc etc are tweeted about constantly, with Twitter setting up a real-time search for most popular talked about categories. A great example is when the plane crash landed in the Hudson River in New York. The news of this accident spread around the world faster than any news network could report about it live on air.

The power of Twitter is unbelievable.

So when a Los Angeles blogger (Jessica Gottlieb) watched helplessly while her kids were on-board a plane waiting to depart for their destination, she got out her phone and tweeted; “Dear Virgin Air, My children have been on the tarmac for one hour with 90 more minutes to wait. I am at JFK gate b25. Pls RT.” (Which her followers did.)

Ms Gottlieb got a response from Virgin America with the plane taking off 20 minutes after her phone conversation with them. So, can you get your own way by tweeting or using status updates to get what you want?

I think it depends on your audience, who you tweet to, how well your tweets are written and how you come across (are your tweets interesting?) as well as what you tweet about.

The fact that this tweet helped improve customer expectations in this instance doesn’t mean that it will necessarily be the same for other people in this situation, or does it? What are your thoughts on this? Have you experienced something similar with businesses meeting or exceeding expectations when they were dashed to begin with?

What does this mean for marketers of the companies who dash hopes and then exceed expectations? Is it truly possible for this to happen at all? As I have a retail background I have very high expectations of customer service, therefore maybe I would expect more?!

What do you think as a marketer? Is this positive or negative marketing for Virgin Air (America)?

Follow me on Twitter … @J__9

The development of design, content, links, networking and media coverage of social media has improved enormously, it’s well documented and new innovations are continually being introduced. Social networking is a phenomenon I never thought I would get into, never mind checking my profile and searching for friends regularly, this was more so when I first signed up.

Online profiling on such networking sites as, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter or any type of blogging sites will enhance and develop your profile across the web, depending of course on your privacy settings. Content quality and use of keywords all effects how you rank in search engines, such as Google.

The following selection of tips may enhance your visibility and optimization…
1. Include good quality content
2. Utilise any links to other sites you blog on etc
3. Update your blog / social networking site regularly
4. Use keywords to enhance ranking capabilities.

Over the past few months my colleagues have been talking about Twitter, I didn’t really want to join another social network, (having one I thought was enough work for me), and a couple of months ago I decided I had had enough and finally gave in.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I have benefited from joining Twitter – from a work/industry perspective anyway. As I mentioned in an earlier entry I am fairly new to the world of PR and SEO, following people on Twitter who have much experience and sharing links / articles on related topics has helped me immensely.

I often find with social networking some can people become obsessed over it, depending on whether it’s used for social or business purposes…. Is it ok to be obsessed with it? What do you think? Am I alone with this perspective? And have you tried typing your name in Google to see where / if you rank?