Mobile has a lot going for it:

But smartphones excel not just in their look, but also in their utility. And the consumerisation of the mobile phone owes a lot to the cloud. For much of the personal computing era, the content that people needed for work or entertainment had to be stored on PCs’ hard disks, or on external drives and USB keys. Now huge amounts of data reside in the cloud, and can be instantly retrieved from almost anywhere in the world.

The rise of the cloud benefits the smartphone user in other ways too. It has manifested itself in a multitude of consumer-focused web services from Facebook, which has over 800m users, to a host of smaller firms such as Foursquare, which was created specifically to let people tell their friends where they are.

Find your SoLoMo

A combination of social networking, location-signalling, and mobile computing (SoLoMo) is changing the way we use web services. It is encouraging to use them more frequently on a smartphone or tablet device, than we would a PC.

The proliferation of broadband connections has also helped catapult this into the mainstream. Fixed-line broadband connections are now commonplace, often with a Wi-Fi link at the end of them to allow people to use their devices wherever they are. You can now stay connected to the internet almost anywhere.

For you as a small business with an online presence, our advice is take a look at m-commerce..and fast.  We have been advising on this blog to take social media seriously for many months now, and fortunately a lot of our customers have responded.

Engaging via social media, alerting potential customers of special offers when they are in your area or searching for relevant information around your products via their smartphones..these are yet more opportunities to make e-commerce and even larger part of your business into the future.

Some are so used to e-commerce, that they are reluctant to embrace f-commerce fully. In fact, that out of most major retailers, there are only 10% or so, that are generating decent sales via Facebook.

But interest is starting to grow both from retailers and users alike. Consumers have more trust in Facebook, and are therefore seen as more likely to use it as a buying channel. Moreover, the introduction of Facebook’s only currency; Facebook credits; and the enthusiasm of Facebook to make it more widespread, is making transactions easier too.

Facebook is already seen as a great source for online discounts and deals. Companies are incentivising their followers in a variety of ways to acquire that all important Facebook endorsement; a “like”!

If you as a retailer, can make the prospect of buying on Facebook attractive, then you will do well. It just simplifies a process by eliminating a funnel or link in the chain. Followers see a deal, and they can click on the Facebook shop page of the relevant retailer and buy more easily. And buyers live simplicity a lot. If you can attract conversions without users having to leave Facebook, your sales and return on investment will go up significantly.

Certainly, in the past 12 months, more and more businesses have jumped on to the Facebook bandwagon. Realising that many of their customers were actively using Facebook, they set up pages for their brand and ruthlessly marketed their product or service. What was the result?

Your target customer knows Facebook better than you:

The result was worse than if you had not bothered at all. Social Media is interaction, loyalty building, patience, collaboration, listening..not aggressive marketing. Indeed, some profiles were even removed by Facebook because they were being used as nothing more than a direct marketing tool.

Any good will customers had towards a brand was quickly destroyed. Brands seemed to be completely out-of-touch by doing it all the wrong way; and previously loyal customers, were quick to disassociate themselves.

Facebook can be  a stand-alone element of your business:

Set-up your Facebook Business Page, and then use applications to pull in content from your blog and Twitter account  to keep your page full of fresh, frequently updated information. Resist the urge to turn your page into a watered-down version of your website. Include some offers, media or conversation on Facebook that does not appear anywhere else.

Individuals have benefited from the viral virtues of social media; Corporations that have disrespected their customers, either in poor actions or simply by shouting marketing messages without regard for consumer demands, are at risk of seeing them take over and reveal the truth about their services, products and identity. More than 80% of marketers have begun using social media to better talk with, rather than to talk at their customers. If you are in business, pressure is on you to articulate a “social media strategy.” You are urged to perfect this new medium and increase the dialogue with customers before they take over your brand and message.

So far, the majority of social media literature has focused on how companies can use it outside the organisation. But, when it comes to using social media inside the organization, little guidance is available. Executives, by and large, have remained sceptical; as of late last year, the majority of chief information officers prohibited the use of social media at work.

Sure, Twitter might have helped millions of victims of natural disasters, from fires to hurricanes to the recent Haiti earthquake, but some executives may ask what that has to do with employees. (Some say that Hurricane Katrina would have ended differently if it hadn’t occurred “BSM” or “Before Social Media.”)

At best, the discussion moves to productivity. While a recent report from Forrester claims that the vast majority of employees polled say social media makes them more productive, executives say the excess chatter that the technology creates and the playful character social media exhibits can present potential risk to their employees’ productivity. What’s more, the potential risk doesn’t just reach those less- experienced Gen-Ys: The average social network user is 37 years old.

Focusing this debate on productivity might do a disservice to executives and social media pundits. In assessing whether social media brings productivity gains, think about the efficiency of other forms of communication, including phone and e-mail conversations. Can you guarantee that all the e-mails you’ve read and all the phone conversations you’ve had make you more productive? Of course not.

As it turns out, social media has the potential to resolve issues other than collaboration or communication. It has helped many solve what has plagued boardrooms for decades, a problem that just 1 company in 10 can effectively solve: strategy execution.

Bad strategy execution originates from communication and engagement failures. The worst symptoms include employees disregarding the strategy and management ignoring employees’ input regarding their strategic decisions.

Communication and engagement failures inside the organization are analogous to those outside the organization. Since social media has been identified as a key tactic to help organizations better talk with, rather than talk at customers, why shouldn’t these organisations use social media similarly with their employees?

SEO insiders have wondered whether this new search innovation would affect placement strategies. And the simple answer is: yes. Yes, there will be changes to the way SEO professionals run their clients’ campaigns. Yes, this will affect the industry as a whole. And yes, we believe SEO professionals will have to adapt to meet ever-evolving needs.

But to think that this development is rocking the SEO world is to misunderstand the realities of the industry. In its roughly 15 years of existence, SEO has grown from being a small wildcat operation run by webmasters and content services to being one of the most dynamic, fast-growing sectors of the tech market. The reason for this rapid growth is because — not in spite –- of the constantly evolving nature of search engines.

Of course, as with any complex question about a dynamically evolving industry, there is a caveat. While the Bing-Facebook agreement and the recent updates to Google will change elements of how we do our business, the fundamentals will remain the same. As much as innovation shapes the day-to-day processes of optimization, the core foundations of the industry remain unchanged. The goal was — and still is — putting clients at the top of results pages, whether this is through organic search, paid search or social media.

Social media is nothing new in the world of online marketing. Facebook alone has 500 million users. We have already seen certain Twitter feeds included in Google search results. Before long, results may integrate other social networking sites, like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and myriad other sites that haven’t even been developed yet. For SEO professionals, this change highlights the need to integrate social networking if they haven’t already.

The Bing-Facebook agreement is indicative of the many changes that have taken SEO from a small-time game to a major, innovative industry. SEO is not about counter-punching, and it’s not about simply reacting to the changing search-engine landscape. Instead, it is about growing alongside search engines. It is about evolving with them to ensure that searchers get the results they need.

For years now, successful SEO firms have not been focusing their efforts strictly on organic search results. They’ve been steadily evolving along with changes in search engines: new Google algorithms, the emergence of Bing, the development of Google Local, instant searches, paid search, and searchable Twitter feeds. To be successful, SEO firms now need to become something more advanced: Digital Media Agencies.

Digital Media Ageniess are about handling the many online representation needs of their clients. While top search engine placement remains the major goal, it is just one aspect of what they seek to do. A Digital Media Agency also seeks to manage a client’s online reputation, create and maintain their social presence, and handle the many other aspects of a client’s online brand.

Will SEO professionals have to change their strategy in reaction to a new social media paradigm? The answer is yes. Their evolution into full-fledged Digital Media Agencies is imperative. And as the social and search industries continue to change, so too will Digital Media Agencies need to innovate.

SEO is the art of making sure your site makes the front page of search results, regardless of the search engine. If you want to be found for computer repair in Birmingham then you need to make sure you’ve done enough small business SEO to be found by Brummies with broken computers. You’re not worried about people in Leicester for example. They’re not going to be your customers, so there’s no reason in trying to reach them. This is where local search becomes more important.

Some small business SEO experts will tell you that keyword advertising and pay-per-click is the best way to go. However, depending on your industry and search terms, that can either be a shot in the dark or an expensive form of marketing. Before you give that a try, there are plenty of affordable search engine optimization strategies that exist for small business people.

Achieving your own small business SEO: When you’re just starting out, you may not have the budget to hire a small business SEO firm. So hopefully you have plenty of time. It’s actually fairly easy to manage the basics. For instance, when you produce your website, make sure you follow proper search engine optimization techniques — using proper keywords in page titles, sub-heads, and throughout body text — and build backlinks by leaving comments on various blogs and websites.

We should be prepared to spend a few hours each day on building backlinks. While many of us don’t have the time to spend a few hours doing this, it’s still important to put some time into it. Even if you only allow yourself enough time to put in three comments a day, you’ll have 100 backlinks within five weeks, which can greatly boost your small business SEO.

When is it time to hire a small business SEO professional? Eventually you will reach the point where you just don’t have time to put into your small business SEO. The time you took to submit those three comments, or the two hours you had been allowing yourself are now being taken up with other marketing, selling, meetings, fulfilling orders, and completing projects. You know your small business SEO is important, but you just haven’t had time for the last several weeks.

This is the time to start looking for a small business SEO professional. Presumably when you’re out of time to do it, you’re also reaching a success plateau which you’ll have a hard time moving off of if you can’t devote the time to your optimization efforts. A small business SEO professional will not only devote the time that you don’t have anymore, but they have been able to keep up with the latest developments in the technology and techniques. They’re reading the latest articles, they’re using the latest tools.

If you try to catch up, you could have a small learning curve you have to overcome before you’re ready to start your small business SEO efforts. And if this is something you continue to put off, you’ll either have a bigger curve later, or you’ll eventually start to slide back off the front page.

Hiring a small business SEO professional allows you to stay focused on those activities that make you money, rather than the ones that will detract from them.

Search engine optimization is going to be crucial if you’re trying to build your online brand, and attract local customers. While you can do most of the work yourself, you ideally want to get to the point in your business growth that you need to hire a professional to handle it for you. Regardless of what you do, small business SEO is going to be important enough to you that don’t want to ignore it.

With 10 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, we can offer affordable solution for you to develop your brand online. We have two Google Adwords professionals in-house, and know how to drive sales through SEO. We have done it for our own sites!

Everybody wins!

First, we have to ask the question, how do you take the seemingly limitless social media conversations and turn them into actionable insights?  Also, how can you understand what is being said and the context of those conversations?

Social media in any context offers incredibly good (and free) feedback on a variety of goods and services.  Online Retailers need to use this information to their advantage.  Using it to your advantage means using both the good and bad comments.  Here are some practical tips we can take a look at.  Most importantly, keep the conversation going and make sure your social media content is relevant and current.  Do remember that the end goal is product sales and customer connections.  Also, rekindle the passion for your brand consistently using social media methods.  For example, if you a leading e-commerce website and you are involved in a social media forum, why not hold weekly or bi-weekly chat sessions about the experiences with ordering product via your site?  You will get invaluable responses from doing something like this.

It is also very important to constantly think about the audience you are trying to go after, consider your age demographics, race, and gender as well.  Who are the most likely people to purchase your products and who do you want to expand to?  These are key points to remember when considering your marketplace.

It is really no surprise that online e-commerce businesses were one of the first groups to use social media to make their brand more social.  They enabled customers to find out what their peers were thinking and provided valuable insight that could be viewed in “real time”.

Building a truly interactive social media community within an e-commerce platform is important as it creates a more efficient retail environment where customer opinions, relevant content and product information are freely distributed. It is only then that “social commerce” can happen.

To accomplish this, retailers must be able to integrate social media elements, such as social networking features and user generated platforms directly into their commerce environments.
As a result of this, online retailers can create and own a unique social experience that would encompass the entire customer lifecycle.  Customers can than enjoy a more integrated shopping experience and retailers will see an increase in unique visitors to their online store that are “predisposed” to their marketing messages.  This will streamline marketing efforts and lead to increased profits and decreased costs.
Social media allows empowering customers by enabling them to establish user profiles that pull in data and relationships to online stores.  At this point customers can interact and provide you (the online retailer) invaluable customer feedback, and bring in potential new customers.

By building and maintaining vibrant communities that address the passion of the retailer’s core audience, and then spreading that passion to the larger social web, retailers will attract loyal and engaged customers, and will achieve better business results.

Social media is absolutely crucial to an online retailer’s success today.  Social media allows you to engage a customer, get new business, and most importantly elicit invaluable customer feedback that will turn into increased sales.

With its Places feature, which it launched on Wednesday, users can broadcast their location to the web, track their friends’ movements and see who else has checked-in to a specific location.

Using Facebook’s website via smartphone, users can check-in to locations from offices to bars to parks. The optional service, available initially in the US, will also allow users to tag their friends in posts, flagging their whereabouts as well.

Places might eventually open new financial opportunities for Facebook through partnerships with retailers and restaurants, and location-specific advertising. But the launch will be scrutinised by privacy advocates concerned that the social networking company is increasingly reckless with user data.

“The prospect of it is pretty interesting from a marketer’s perspective, and pretty scary from a consumer’s perspective,” said Ken Johns, digital strategist at advertising agency Brunner.

Places is hardly a breakthrough. Start-ups, including Foursquare and Gowalla, have made location-based social services among the hottest categories of business development on the web this year.

Users, however, have not signed up to these services en masse, and they remain niche offerings, catering to a few million early adopters. With Places, a large chunk of web users will instantly have the opportunity to share their location online.

“This could be the tipping point for location-based services,” said Dave Marsey, senior vice-president of media at Digitas, the advertising agency. “The real question is what value the consumer is going to get from this.”

To reach that tipping point, Facebook will have to convince users to utilise the service. “They’re going to have to convince users this is something that they want to participate in,” said Josh Martin, analyst at Strategy Analytics. “They will need some kind of incentive programme for this to take hold.”

At launch, Facebook did not include any incentives to users. Places does not involve reward programmes with retailers, “mayorships” or “badges” – all common ways that location-based start-ups have attracted users. Instead, Facebook seems to be betting its users will find inherent social value in sharing their real-time location with one another.

That might be the case. However, Facebook will have to tread carefully as it rolls out Places.  Adding delicate information such as a user’s location to the mix will add a new layer of complexity to the social network’s already dense privacy settings.

“There are definitely going to be privacy concerns,” said Mr Martin. “There [are] hundreds of millions of people that don’t want to share their location, whether it’s because of privacy concerns or because they are of a different generation and don’t care.”

Simon Davies of Privacy International, a campaign group, said that even sharing location data with approved friends created problems, as the site encourages people to create large networks. “Friends are friends on Facebook and that’s the problem,” he said. “I have 600 Facebook friends but there are only 10 people who I would want to know my comings and goings.”

Facebook has looked to head off the debate by stressing that Places was geared towards existing networks of friends. “Places is not about broadcasting your location to the world but about sharing your location with your friends,” said Michael Sharon, Facebook product manager.

“We have a comprehensive set of safeguards and controls to really let users control their privacy on Places,” said Mr Sharon. The product is launching with granular privacy controls similar to those Facebook launched earlier this year, and the default setting will share a user’s location only with their friends.

Marketers are salivating at the prospect of knowing the real-time location of even a fraction of Facebook’s 500m users.

“From a marketer’s perspective, the Holy Grail is to talk to people on an individual basis,” said Mr Johns. “This gives us another piece of information to connect with people in real time.”