Being in the industry – in fact growing up in today’s world of Smartphone’s and tablets, it’s not hard to realise that the Internet, and more specifically, social interaction influences us heavily in everyday life.

From tweeting on the fly, to checking-in at fascinating venues around the world, to liking a video or image that has gone viral, social interaction in here to stay in a big way, and is only get stronger and stronger.  If you are a business owner you want to, and really should, squeeze every opportunity and jump on the social bandwagon.

Here at AsOne, a day doesn’t go by when we’re not discussing social media and integration. In fact earlier on this year we wrote a piece on five reasons to use social media for business, it’s benefits and the many doors it can potentially open in helping market your company.

But a question that rears its head now and then is “Does social interaction help improve page rank to my website?” – i.e. does it help my website climb up the Google ladder.

Yes and No. Confused?

The No 

Without engrossing you too much in the jargon that is SEO and losing you at this point, if you have a website that receives incoming links from other reputable websites, it influences the page-rank (PR) of your website.  Links via social networks like twitter or Facebook do not, because it is automatically tagged up as a no follow (rel=”nofollow”) link. This is to inevitably stop spamdexing.

The Yes

However, observers in the SEO field believe there is a direct correlation between Google ranking your website and the amount of people that communicate on social networks.  Google scans and indexes billions of pages across the Internet, notices trend and will appropriately reward websites that are being mentioned on social networks.

With surrounding content, if people want to appropriately link back to your website via blogs, forums and social networks, Google will see that as being genuine and think – “…well, exampledomain.co.uk is mentioned a lot here, here and here so lets increase their page rank…”

At AsOne, our approach is to set-up a Facebook/twitter account no matter what – something we do very well as part of our Innovation Club. The reason is not primarily for SEO purposes, but to create a community to help interact with your customers and fans which will inevitably divert traffic to your website – which is what you want.

I am not sure if it was the over load on cakes or the volume of questions that pushed the event beyond 5PM but despite running over a little on our agenda, yesterdays seminar was a sucess. We trust our members found the event informative and useful, providing practical guidance on further developing their websites and marketing.

For those Innovation Club Members who were unable to attend on this occasion, we look forward to seeing you at the next event. Remember, your monthly and quarterly reports provide you with detailed ways to improve your ranking, marketing and conversions. These reports are specific to your website and your business therefore the techniques and actions we recommend in the reports and summaries in particular are unique to you; make the best of them and continue to achieve great results for your hard work. 

If you would like more information about innovation club or would like to join take a look at www.innovationclub.co.uk or call us on 0161 368 9100

Looking forward to welcoming our guests for our Innovation Club Seminar at the Tameside Centre For Enterprise today. Expect an afternoon of facts and information to guide you on your way to a more productive online presence.

Making use of keywords is one of the most important and high return activities in the search-marketing field.  Whether this is a hot topic of yours or something that is relatively new, keywords (or key terms) is a must, and is really important in helping you optimise your website either with PPC campaigns or updating webpage content.

Keyword research can help you predict shifts in demand, respond to changing market conditions and produce content that your potential customers are already actively seeking.  So when a customer does a search for a particular brand or service you provide, you want your site to appear – and the ultimate aim is to have your website occupy the #1 spot.

Next time you have a few minutes spare, look at your website or blog and consider tweaking and adjusting your content in ways that may cause it to rank higher.  Have a look at your website and think to yourself – when was the last time I refreshed my web page content? When did I write my last blog article? What phrases do I want my website to be found for? What am I currently being found for? Where do I rank in Google searches if I search using these words?

Would you benefit from having an expert advising you on all of these things and more every month? Talk to us about Innovation Club from AsOne starting at only £39/month.

Think, what can you do in your sleep to earn you money?

Well if you have a ‘real world’ shop, if you make something, import something or in any way have items you can pop in the post; you could be selling online while you lie in your bed.

AsOne can build a fully featured eCommerce solution integrated into your existing social network for under £4000? Be up and running in weeks and capitalising on eCommerce instead of struggling on the high street. You can even spread the cost over 10 months interest free.

Ideal if you are already trading in a shop, by mail order or on a market. Expand your customer base by taking your products online.

Contact the innovative award winning web design team at AsOne for more information.

If you don’t know what to do about Social Networking or you need help to market your brand digitally you need to check out AsOne’s exclusive Innovation Club from only £39/month you can have your domains, hosting and regular guidance on your marketing and results.

Hopefully you got our Christmas email to wish you a merry Christmas and Happy New Year. If not you’re probably not on our mailing list, sorry. Anyway you also missed a shameless plug for our SNOWi app FREE for you to download as a little thank you and to help spread a little winter cheer.

Over the Christmas period our office will be available for emergency technical support only. From today (24th December 2010) until the 4th January 2011 you will be able to contact us thought our support form. 

Normal service will resume in the new year bright and early-ish on the 4th January 2011.

First it was the news that Facebook would become the killer of Gmail earlier this week, now Facebook are in the headlines again as they announce their new partnership with MySpace. It seems we can’t go more than a couple of days without mention of the online behemoth, let alone the hundred odd times we check it a day.

MySpace, who recently under went a radical overhaul of their user interface and branding, now allows users to connect their Facebook and MySpace profiles, in what is being labeled ‘Mash Up with Facebook.’ This new feature now allows users a whole new range of online sharing features, where they will be able to receive updates and follow their favorite unsigned, underground and established artists that MySpace is known for.

Despite being the foremost social network at one time, MySpace has seen a sharp decline in activity, seeing a fall in users of up to 49% in one year, if certain reports are to be believed. However, MySpace has shown it is far more resilient than it’s given credit for. With its new focus as a social network for music, (which it had long been labeled, but never full embraced until earlier this year) it can now benefit from Facebook and its 500 million users, as news feeds continue to play an increasingly big role as a source of website traffic.

This has great benefits for Facebook and their mission to learn everything about you, as it is now able to import even more user data into it’s highly targeted advertising model from the new mash ups and the eventual introduction of the ever present Like button. It’ll be interesting to see how this fits in the recently updated Fan Pages, but no doubt it’ll be in a way which increases user engagement and generates further advertising revenue.

Did you know the computer company Dell announced it made £6.5 million US dollars in revenues from their involvement with Twitter.

Dell uses Twitter to “listen and learn” from their customers directly. The number of customers following Dell online has increased considerably, with “11,844” people following them on Twitter @DellOutLet.

Those “11,844” customers receive special discounted offers exclusively as a reward for following the company on Twitter. This is a clear indication that Twitter and other social media networking sites are a very powerful marketing tool. 

Are you social?

Here at AsOne, we are social. You can find us on, 

http://www.facebook.com/asonedesign
http://twitter.com/asone
http://uk.linkedin.com/companies/asone-design
http://weareasone.com

We tie all online and digital marketing together so it works, AsOne.

Make sure your company gets “social” today.

Give us a call for more information on 0161 368 9100 or email us at: here@asone.co.uk.

We broke a nine year rule today - not that I am complaining because it involved chocolate! OK - I should mention that the nine year rule only came about because when we introduced it, someone, no names mentioned, took the day off just because their birthday landed on a work day! Bah Humbug…. So the rule emerged…… if you are in on your Birthday you get cake… usually a big chocolate cake…. depending on how many years you have passed pretty much determines how big the cake is, well, how many portions you get rather than how many candles! Anyway…so it began, that if your birthday happened to fall on a weekend (I know sounds really mean), …. well, you don’t get cake, not that you have much of a choice given that we are not in the office over the weekend…… you all know we need our rest on a weekend! 

SO… today it all changed…. the growing team reminded me that being a scrouge isnt good for the image! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARTIN - HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND