The London 2012 Olympic Organisers are preparing to bring London and the UK’s reputation back to Dickensian times with a ban on being social.

Have you bought tickets for the London 2012 Games? If you have - have you read the Terms and Conditions? Probably not. Who does?

Take a look at the following extract from the ticket terms and conditions:

19.6.3 Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.

Notice the line that says “[a ticket holder may not] publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally”? 

When the next Olympics come around in Rio in 2016 you can bet they will embrace social networking as a way to bring communities together, share the spirit and the games around the world instantly.

What is the UK thinking?

Shhh, dont tell the world the Olympics are on.

Thankfully most attendees will be blissfully unaware of the ban and will continue to promote the UK and the games using the worlds best communication and marketing tools available.

For businesses equally worried or unsure about Social Marketing AsOne are here to help navigate you though the sea of opportunities and coach your business to a gold medal position. Don’t hide your head in the long jump’s sand pit like the UK’s Olympic Organisers, embrace the power of social networking.

For more details about how you can get ahead with your digital marketing contact AsOne on 0161 368 9100. or visit our Innovation Club website for more information on the ways we can help with your social marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and digital marketing.

(Source: tickets.london2012.com)

We all know social media is an important tool for brand awareness and customer acquisition — but how exactly are you supposed to convert random Twitter and Facebook users into real-life customers?

1. Get your search on — There are 340 million tweets sent per day and odds are that a few of them are referencing your brand, though you may not realise it.  One tip for finding new customers is to see who’s engaging with your competitors.  If someone just started following or tweeted at or checked in at another bakery in the neighbourhood, you could tweet at the person to come check out your cupcakes. They customer will appreciate the shout-out and the fact that you handpicked them to be your customer. Get clever with searches that are relevant to your business and offerings to help you target potential customers — then reel them in by being charming and human, not salesy.
2. Use images to engage — A picture is worth a thousand words. Photos drive twice as much engagement as text posts do on Facebook. So if you’re looking to attract some new fans, start snapping pics. But the pics need not be product-focused. Think outside the box.
3. Host a competition — Nothing gets customers going like some swag, so contests are a great way to boost your followers and engagement. But be strategic about what you’re offering, or else you could attract the wrong followers. First, build in actions that allow the fan to share to their social networks, as this will increase vitality  Second, stay true to your brand. Third, tweak the contest to fit the platform on which you’re running it — On Facebook that means sharing photography, on Twitter it means wordplay hashtags.
4. Make it personal — No one like a mass message. Consumers like to feel as if they’re the only ones being spoken to. You should know your customers and speak to them in personal ways to establish touch-points that build relationships and create loyalty.  While you’re browsing sites for comments to respond to, don’t ignore negative feedback.  Addressing the complaint is an opportunity to convert an unhappy customer into an impressed brand ambassador.

(Source: Mashable)

Social Media is where you want to be when it comes to helping your business expand, as it is a priceless asset in the marketing world. Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin attract so much continual attention from Internet users, it has become a phenomenal and powerful venue for advertisers to create interest and traffic. Here are five reasons to use social media for business.

1. Help Increased Search Engine Rankings:  Social media profiles frequently rank highly with major search engines. Using brand names and keywords in your profiles can help you to generate traffic for your social media sites and company homepage.
2. Generate Site Traffic:  By updating regularly on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with posts that link back to your site, you can create additional traffic to your site.
3. Find New Customers Through a Company Profile:  Your company profile is a great opportunity for you to post regular updates on your activities, but also about important news and trends in your industry. It’s critical to post regularly if you want to increase your followers or fans and convert them to potential leads.
4. Brand Monitoring:  Having a social media presence allows you to better understand what current and potential customers are saying about your product or services.
5. Networking:  Through social media you can quickly build a network of core supporters, which is essential for any up and coming business to keep growing and expanding. It is that group of loyal followers that will keep bringing your company business and referring it to others if they are pleased with what they are finding.

Following on from this, here is a little bit of ‘New News’ - Introducing Tokkster, a new type of chat room.

Tokkster is a new type of Internet chat room, which enables users to chat with other people over the same webpage. Pretty Unique.

All you need to do is sign up with a Tokkster account (and yes, it’s free). And that’s it. Once signed up, you browse websites like usual. What you will notice is a Tokkster Status bar in which you are able to see other peoples faces that are browsing the same page at the same time. Of course, if you don’t feel like chatting, either minimize the app (to become invisible) or don’t log in.

Only available in Internet Explorer version 7.0 and above (other version coming out soon).

Isn’t it funny how every man and his dog is offering seminars on social media in business? How many events must one endure to realise its not for the faint hearted. Yes, in theory everyone is capable of investing such time into engaging in it and yes, most people after sitting through the first event on the benefits come out with an understanding of how to do it. But let’s not kid ourselves, when it comes down to it few can see it through with any real prospects of turning it into business. I’m not suggesting every business should be paying AsOne to engage in social media but I do feel those businesses that embark on social media without a true plan of action based on an understanding of how and why it will work are preparing themselves for a lot of work with little reward.

With so much focus on social media and the need to embrace it to improve and increase business the same hesitation continues to raise its head; “my customers don’t use Facebook”.

You know what? They are probably right, because those potential customers who do use Facebook are shopping somewhere else, Somewhere that does embrace social media. Lets look into who is using social media.

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There has been a lot of talk about the ‘new’ Google Panda update. This is a change to the Google filtering used to rank sites. The update is designed to hurt the sites that try to cheat or use what is called ‘black hat’ techniques to get to the top. The people it is affecting badly are the sites with traditionally high traffic and rankings. If they have used sneaky methods to inflate their position they will suddenly drop and others don’t necessarily rise, they just don’t drop. The net effect is they appear to rise.

However, a lot of SEO companies are advocating changing the sneaky methods to new sneaky methods to compensate. They fail to realise that the practice is the reason Google introduced Panda and when they see people working around it they will just make a new update. Its’ an expensive battle to keep on top of Google’s attempt to normalise results and keep high quality sites at the top. It’s why AsOne believe that Social Networking and Social Marketing using the power of people is a more reliably long term strategy and the foundation on which your Marketing should be based.

Think of this, Business has thrived for thousands of years based on word-of-mouth. You best clients tell their contacts and before you know it you have a good business. Concentrating on Search engines is like advertising in the yellow pages … time, effort and money getting a good advert, good position. Remember people changing their company name to ‘1st widget company’ so they appear first in the book? Google is the modern Yellow Pages. It relies on people ‘picking it up’ and looking for what they need. 

Social Marketing goes back to the beginning, it’s the modern equivalent of word-of-mouth. People will always trust their friends over an advert. Use that power to encourage and assist your customers to advertise for you.

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.