why YOUR business needs to consider twitter

Posted by luke on Nov 7, 2008 in Blog | 1 comment

I’m a geek, I think we established that… as a geek, I like to try new sites and applications when they come out, often discarding them if they don’t offer any real business benefit.

Twitter was one of those. I set up a personal account… I could see how it was useful for certain types of internet users, to share ideas… I got that sometimes it was the best way of rapidly publishing information when you need to share updates with friends/colleagues or customers – like live blogging from a conference to say “this is on at stand so n so in 20mins” – in the US the SMS updates are free – but I didn’t really get how it was useful to most businesses.

I realised something yesterday, and I hold my hand up, I should of pieced it all together sooner..

EVERY status update on twitter (some people call it a “tweet”) gets its own URL – take a recent update from us about GimPhoto for example.

Yes, the link has a “Nofollow” tag… but… there is plenty of discussion about how the different engines actually use nofollow.

I’m also pretty sure that my rapidly rising traffic isn’t just because of my amazing writing style (ahem), I’ll be having a dig in Analytics, but I’m sure Twitter has driven traffic to this site.

Add to this the following post about Twitter and SEO (You should all subscribe to Blogstorm btw)

It makes me think that Twitter is not only a great way to communicate to a wider group of people (it is searchable) but it must help with SEO.

I’m NOT an SEO guru, but I’d love to hear from some of you that are!

LinkedIn enter the social network application space

Posted by tom on Nov 4, 2008 in Blog | 1 comment

I’ve always been mindful of the fact that though Linkedin has great potential as a professional networking tool, it’s never been quite fully-featured enough to take it from a personal showcase hooked up to a directory of contacts.  It’s never been a destination for me, and while I maintain a profile on there, and have had the odd contact from times past, it’s not a resource I check on a daily basis.  Now I get word that LinkedIn are adding application support to their offering- a no brainer seeing as it’s exactly this move which propelled Facebook into the all powerful network it is today.  As you might imagine, the LinkedIn apps are of rather more of a serious nature, and it appears limited right now to selected partners, so we get online file storage courtesy of Box.net, and an app to allow you to share your current reading material via Amazon.  Before Facebook became a marketplace for various useless viral applications (Zombies, Super pokes etc) I had assumed it would do the same- though thinking back I didn’t consider the demographic and the motivation for these apps (ie CPA/CPC ad impressions).  LinkedIn isn’t free, so there’s not the same considerations, and by controlling the apps, LinkedIn will be getting an revenue stream from the Amazon affiliate system and (one assumes) the paid versions of other apps.

I see this as a smart move by LinkedIn.  By maintaining control of the apps, they make sure they remain of a high quality and relevant to their users.  More interaction with the site equals more page impressions, along with a new revenue stream.  It’s certainly something I’ll be looking into in much more detail; if I can inspire others to look at my profile and create genuine new contacts while enjoying the site more than a simple contact manager then I’ll certainly be spending more time on it.  I’ll post with my findings soon

the social web in 10 slides – Nov 13th

Posted by luke on Nov 3, 2008 in Blog | 0 comments

The next date for my talk “The Social Web in 10 Slides” is November the 13th.

I’ve been really inspired by the reaction to this talk, both in person and the webinar version I presented a couple of weeks ago.

What’s in the talk?

I cover all aspects of the social web from a business perspective.

The Social Web in 10 Slides

Why Social Networking matters
Overview of the main players
Taking the social out of social networking
Usage and Users
Monetizing the Social Web
Case study
Interest is not Intent
Do’s n Don’ts
Corporate and Policy considerations
The future of the Social Graph

BONUS

Social Bookmarking – delivering traffic through the social web.

It’s an Intergage client seminar (free if you’re an Intergage client) at the Burley Manor Hotel, there are limited places available to paying attendees – to request a place on the seminar, please use this booking form.

If you’d be interested in me presenting this to your company or business group, please contact me for more details.