I read an article today about a survey, which is reported to be the largest into online traffic, that sadly I whole heartedly disagreed with. The article which appeared in CorpComms Magazine stated the following about the survey: While two thirds of online companies use Facebook to promote their business, less than 30 per cent find the platform remotely effective in driving traffic to their website, according to the world's largest survey of website traffic. Micro-blogging site Twitter fared equally badly with just 27 per cent of online companies attributing any rise in website visitor numbers to their presence on ...

I was reading an interesting post by Patricio Robels this morning on econsultancy entitled: Can brands trust social media platforms? My first thought is not really but does it really matter all that much that they are not 100% reliable. In the post Patricio comments: Upon logging in to Twitter on Monday, I was greeted with the news that I was following nobody and had no followers. So while this was a temporary glitch resolved within a few hours, it wouldn't have been the end of the world if all was indeed lost. Yet for a brand that has invested heavily in Twitter, logging in to see ...

I was presenting at the Wealth Enhancement Forum last week on social media and the business opportunity it presents. I was asked several months back if I would do it and I said I would be happy to share my thoughts with the group. I managed to get about five slides into a presentation before the quick fire round started and the questions started to come thick and fast. I found it extremely interesting to hear this group of wealthy business owners talking about social networks and the varying ways in which they or their staff use them. I will be honest here and say that most of my clients tend to be marketing directors ...

The Everton Footballer Mikel Arteta (of Spanish nationality) is now eligible for a British passport (and so he can commit to any British team of his choosing) because he has been a resident in the UK for five-and-a-half years. He was signed by Everton from Real Sociedad in 2005 and completed a permanent move for just £2 million which was a snip. He was asked at the weekend if he would consider playing for England instead of Spain and he said he would “have to seriously consider it”. There has been ...

Facebook has announced today that due to popular demand it is adding a new button/feature to Facebook pages. Traditionally, users were asked to become fans of a page but that was changed a few months back. Facebook users are now asked to like a particular product or service and when they do this like is then added to their personal profile. This is also what Facebook uses to select which advertisements to display in a user’s account. When a user has liked a product or service they then receive all of the updates from that page within their newsfeed. This is brilliant if you really love that particular brand and want to stay on top of what ...

In December 2009 Facebook made a few adjustments to its formal policy on competitions and promotions which you no doubt will have heard about. The net result was that promotions on Facebook can’t hold: Photo contests which require profile photo manipulation Status updates which require posting updates for entry  Only contest entries once a user has become a fan of your page A couple of my clients have been liaising directly with Facebook over this and we have found out that you can actually hold a competition on your page if you support it will £5,000 worth of Facebook advertising. ...

Dear Facebook, As an administrator on several fan pages for our clients and it has become quite apparent that there is no way to moderate comments on one of your fan pages. Personally I find this a little daft as blogs have had this type of functionality for years and it seems to work just fine in that space. I am aware that administrators can remove comments by deleting each of them manually but we are looking to protect our fans from any negative comments being left on their own images. Basically, ...

This is quite a timely post really, you may have noticed I haven’t been quite as active as I normally am recently, well that is because I have been busy working on several exciting online projects and I thought it was about time I shared one of them with you. During the last couple of months I have been providing some strategic consultancy to an exciting new internet venture which caught my eye a while ago. TheFashionPixie.com aims to reduce the amount of time, hassle and emails that people ...

Revolution magazine reported an interesting story this week that my beloved Liverpool FC is now officially the first English Premier League team to have reached the 1 million fan mark with its Liverpool FC Facebook page. Those of you that know me well, will know that I am a huge fan of the club and now also its Facebook page. The club has used Facebook brilliantly (since May) by engaging in conversation (each post receiving around 900 comments), giving behind the scenes interviews and ...

Are you looking to build up your Facebook friends or overall fan base on one of your pages? If you are, you will be pleased to hear that you don’t have to work hard on building better relationships with people anymore because you can now buy friends instead. Yes you heard me correctly, according to Advertising Age you can buy them in groups of thousands - how wrong is that? So you can now go out and buy yourself, or your client, some friends to become fans of your pages. Advertising Age reports: “The folks at online ad firm uSocial are taking that a step further: Pay them money and they'll make ...