Callback
So one minute you’ve got a complete grasp of your social media activity, possibly even your SEO activity. Then the next minute, everything’s changed.
It’s always happening, and like millions of other people around the world you’re left to figure out what’s changed, why it’s changed and how you can use it.
Whether you’re an individual taking responsibility of your company’s online marketing efforts alongside your usual tasks, or a marketeer solely responsible for this and nothing else, you’ll have that moment alongside everyone else, but how to go forward?
The nature of the internet is such that it will be constantly evolving, all you can do is keep up when you can. I find mashable (like most others) to be a fairly reliable source of where online media is going to go, or how to develop once it has been changed. If you’ve not heard of mashable before I’d definitely take a look. (mashable.com)
The changes at the moment are everywhere, usually there’s just one challenge... at the moment I’m facing four!
Facebook Timeline
As March came to an end you were forced to move to timeline as a business page. We decided to take this move as soon as it was announced and have found timeline to be great for our page. Perhaps on a personal level it’s not as appealing, but I really believe that for business use the end result is great. It’s cleaner, stylish and a lot more professional.
I believe the best way to utilise the new timeline layout is to vary your content as much as possible, therefore no matter what is chosen to fill up your timeline visitors will come across a page that’s varied and offers a lot. With the ability to fill in your company history – pre facebook, I would definitely advise it! What a great way of introducing customers and fans to the background and persona of your company. The cover image is not to be overlooked either, where you used to have to go out of your way to create a landing tab for a page, now you just need to make your page as visually appealing as possible, what better way than to select a great image that portrays your company image in a hi-res format, it fills half the screen and if you choose carefully should be a great asset to your page!
www.facebook.com/printMAXuk
Twitter
So not a huge change but the twitter layout has changed...yet again! Leaving us all wondering where things are...again. Not too drastic a change but with preliminary talks of business pages being rolled out to replicate those being used by large brands there could be some big changes in times to come.
@printMAXuk
Pinterest
Maybe not a change but a new route. You’ll have heard a lot about pinterest in recent months... it drives more traffic to your website than so many other means of social media etc.
In my opinion, whether it works for your company will depend on the level of engagement from your target customers. You can create an account pretty easily and it’s probably worth a shot at even if it just adds a few more links to your website, it’s quite a fun site and if it doesn’t work for you on a business level it probably would on a personal basis.
www.pinterest.com/printMAX
Google +
The biggest change, the biggest influencer. If you put any thought into where you place on google you need to be on Google +. If you have a gmail account you will be anyway, so make your presence personal.
There is so much you can do with Google + to enhance your google rankings, if you are able to build up a network of your customers this will make a huge difference. With the introduction of Google + your world, whenever you search for something within google, your google + network will be integrated, results +1’d or discussed within your network will show up first and allow you to search with added credibility and reliability. This role then reverses, if a potential customer is an extension of your network, your results are going to be a lot higher than your competitors.
Google + will take a bit of getting used to, but with all the added benefits it’s surely got to be worth it?!
plus.google.com/104526519871011420932/
Lots of new challenges for 2012 but hopefully they’ll bring rewards to your company in time.
If you’re interested in how printMAX are handling these changes we’d love you to follow us on the above links!
http://www.printmax.co.uk/about-us/social.php
