European Commissioner, Viviane Reding announced widely expected proposals last week on the reform of European data protection laws. These new proposals intend to strengthen individual’s rights to data protection and put them in control over what data they allow companies to store.

They will have a significant effect on how businesses operate on the internet and have been met with a mixed reaction as companies tried to assess the implications for their future operations.

One of the aspects of the proposals that generally met with a positive response was the intention to unify data protection legislation across the entire community. Currently, each individual state of the 27 member EU has its own regulations making it expensive and confusing for companies operating across the EU. According to the EU, the imposition of a single law could lead to major cost savings and less red tape for companies operating on the internet.

However, some companies have already expressed concerns that, in general, the legislation will increase obligations on businesses which, in turn, will increase costs. Others have stated that some of the proposals could even be technically impossible to implement.

The proposals will not just affect EU businesses, but also global companies who offer internet services to European consumers. This has drawn harsh criticism from the United States where the proposals were described as being excessively prescriptive.

Future legislation that places too many burdens on internet companies had the potential, critics said, to hinder the development of the internet and restrict its ability to continue as a major driver for economic growth. The implications for internet marketing have yet to befully explored.

The days when optimising websites for Google was a matter of making some text adjustments, adding  meta data and building backlinks are long gone. These traditional methods are not redundant however,  they still have a role to play, but the internet’s constant evolution means that ever more factors need to be taken into account for companies that want to be found on the web.

The increasing rapidity with which Google changes its search algorithm is an indication of how fast things are moving in the world of internet marketing and SEO.

In the past year, Panda, Caffeine, Freshness and Search Plus Your World are all Google updates that have fundamentally altered the way search works. There is no longer a unified search return; different users will get different results dependent on their location and social networks.

The results of these changes are that online ranking is now dependent on many more factors. Today, SEO techniques require a fully diversified approach that takes into account on page optimisation, backlinks, a content strategy, social media and additional factors. The combined use of these practices is necessary to keep ahead of your competitors and maintain a highly visible presence over the whole of the internet.

The internet is evolving at such a rapid pace that staying ahead of the game is no simple matter. Large companies often have the resources for their marketing departments to keep abreast of the changes, however small enterprises do not have this luxury. Therefore, outsourcing to professional companies represents a sensible solution to the increasing complexity of internet marketing.

SMEs are set to benefit from even more benefits from Facebook as the social media giant has just announced plans for expansion.

Last week, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, announced the remarkable new expansion plans from the website’s New York office.

Sandberg said that Facebook would increase its operations, adding a slew of new engineers to make current features even better and to write code to create new features.

The website currently has more than 800 million users – a figure that could increase as the website itself expands.
In order to facilitate the expansion, Facebook will open an engineering centre in New York City early next year. It will be the first such office for Facebook outside of the West Coast.

Sandberg told journalists at a press conference: “We’ll be adding thousands of employees in the next year.”

The social media behemoth currently employs more than 3000 people in California and 100 in New York.

Recruitment for the New York office has already begun, with Michael Bloomberg, the major of New York City, telling reporters: “They’re accepting applications if any of you need a job.”

The website already offers a wealth of benefits to SME internet marketing through fan pages, targeted ad campaigns and other brand awareness initiatives. It is expected that the new engineers who join Facebook will work to create newer offerings for marketers to help them reach even more clients and consumers.

Younger employees are more influenced by the chance to use social media at work than the salary on offer when it comes to choosing where to work.

According to the second annual Cisco Connected World Technology Report, which surveyed more than 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 countries, one in three college students and employees under the age of 30 would prioritise social media freedom over salary in accepting a job offer.

They also prized device flexibility (the ability to use mobile devices at work) and work mobility over their potential pay packet.

More than two of five college students (40%) and employees under 30 (45%) said they would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.

Meanwhile, more than half of college students (56%) said that if they were offered a job by a company that banned access to social media, they would either not accept a job offer or would join and find a way to get around their employer’s IT policy.

The report was commissioned to assess the challenges faced by organisations as they attempt to balance the needs of their business with those of their employees in relation to internet usage, especially in the light of network demands, mobility issues and security risks.

For digital marketers it emphasises yet again the power of social media as a potential marketing tool for a younger demographic.

Facebook is the most popular social media site amongst SMEs wanting to promote themselves online.

According to a new survey of 500 SMEs, more than a quarter of SMEs use the site on a regular basis as part of their marketing campaigns.
YouGov’s SME Omnibus survey shows that LinkedIn, the professional social media website, and microblogging site Twitter, are also popular with the UK’s SMEs. Exactly a quarter (25%) of respondents use LinkedIn for promotional purposes, while just less than that (21%) use Twitter.

YouTube fared less well, with only 10% of those surveyed using it to help them promote their goods or services.

Somewhat alarmingly, more than half of respondents said that they never use social media to promote their company. Furthermore, the usage of social media seems to be split geographically. Just under 40% of businesses in the east of England never use social media, compared with a huge 64% of businesses in the north.

Meanwhile, blogging also seems to be a source of confusion. Although 80% of respondents said that they thought blogging was successful in terms of achieving publicity, only 10% of businesses use a blog to help them generate PR.

Just under 70% of SMEs who use social media say that they do so to promote their products and services, whilst 57% do so to promote their brand. Meanwhile, 21% of SMEs use social media to share discounts and promotional offers with their customers.

Chief marketing officers are struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing volume of customer data on social media sites, according to a new survey.

From Stretched to Strengthened, a report released by professional services and technology firm IBM, has found that only 26% of chief marketing officers (CMO) track blogs and that just 40% of them track any online communications at all.

The survey quizzed 1,734 CMOs around the world to find out more about the future of marketing – with questions on social media being central to the survey.
It found that whilst a few select big-name consumer brands are using high-profile social media campaigns, marketing teams in other businesses are yet to follow suit.

The likes of Coca-Cola and Starbucks are using social media to find out what their customers want and how they want to be communicated with.

However, other CMOs are unsure how to approach the massive numbers of social media users to their best advantage.

One CMO quoted in the survey commented: “The perfect solution is to serve each consumer individually. The problem? There are seven billion of them.”
However, CMOs are determined to push forward with social media despite any current trepidation.

Just over 80% of those surveyed said that they planned to up their use of social media within the next three to five years. They might wish to come to NS design for help.

The new Yahoo!/Bing search collaboration seems to be working.

The latest stats from the USA show that the Microsoft’s search engine is finallly beginning to catch up with Google.

The new combined search site has won a four per cent market share within Stateside search, mostly at the expense of its rival.

Although the change has happened very slowly, it could point towards long-term challenges for Google as it finds itself with a more equal competitor.

According to figures from Experian Hitwise, Bing searches accounted for around 28.99% of all US search enquiries last month – an increase from 28.05% during the previous month.

Hitwise also says that Google’s market share currently stands at around 65%. Just over a year ago in August 2010, just before Yahoo! and Bing merged, Google had a 71.59% market share.

Microsoft have previously commented that they would keep “working and working”  to win their battle with Bing, rather than having expectations of a quick win over the search engine giant.

The news has ramifications for SEO specialists, as they will now need to factor Bing/Yahoo! increasingly into their strategies, rather than solely focusing on optimising search within Google.

Experts are now watching to see whether the trend will be replicated in the UK.

Google will kill off ten of its experimental services as part of what it is calling a “fall spring-clean”.

On its blog, the internet giant wrote: “Technology improves, people’s needs change, some bets pay off and others don’t. Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features.”

Amongst those being scrapped include Aardvark, the social question-and-answer service that allows users to submit questions to people in their social networks.

Google acquired Aardvark for US$50m (￡30m) around 18 months ago. The service was founded by a team of ex-Google employees.

Other services to be closed down include Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Google Pack and Image Labeller.

Meanwhile, Google Maps will no longer support Flash APIs and Google Web Security will cease to be on sale, although it will continue to support existing customers.

Google says that shutting down these services will improve the overall Google experience. All the Googlers working on the soon-to-close projects will be moved over to “higher-impact products”, according to the organisation. These products are expected to include Google+, as well as web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs.

The news follows the shut-down of Google Labs a few months ago.

More than half of all UK holidaymakers use social media to plan their holidays.

New research conducted by online travel agency sunshine.co.uk polled 1102 holidaymakers in the UK and found that exactly 54% of them would use the likes of Facebook and Twitter before making a booking.

Those polled said that they used social media to gather information and reviews about their desired destination, for example requesting personal recommendations from other users.

Just over 60% of respondents said that they used Facebook to research their holidays, contrasted with 17% who said that they used Twitter to do so.

The ease with which people can post comments and photos on Facebook is thought to be a major factor in its popularity with those researching their holidays.

The number of people using social media to research their holidays was second only to those using dedicated review sites such as TripAdvisor, where site members post up and discuss reviews of their holidays.

Chris Brown, co-founder of sunshine.co.uk, said: “Research is a vital part of booking a holiday. It was really interesting to find out that many ask friends, family, or even strangers on social media platforms about where to go on their next holiday.”

The news could spell the death of the printed holiday brochure, and should give the whole travel sector a wake up call about its internet marketing strategy.

Bing announced several weeks back that they were going to incorporate social search into their results. This week the full service launched on the Bing engine, allowing users to search for their friends’ recommendations and information in the same way they would search for news or products. This integration of social media into the search process has a wealth of opportunities for internet marketing.

The service is optional, and to activate it you have to link your Facebook page to Bing. This is only possible by opting in, and will mean all your friends’ profiles will show up in your search results, even those who have privacy settings that would usually prevent their profile being included in search engines. This is possible as the social search results are unique to the user making the query, so only they can see them.

Bing Social Search allows pretty much exactly the same profile access as Facebook does. Bing have commented that they developed this full profile access in response to user reviews, which highlighted ease of profile access as a chief priority of the service.

As well as including profiles in search results, Bing Social Search will also link you directly to your friend’s likes, through its ‘Liked by my Facebook friends’ option. So, if you’re looking for the latest gossip on a new movie or buzz around a restaurant, then you can now access one of your most trusted sources online.

Including social media within search engine results will mean that now, more than ever, a company’s social media campaign and reputation can have a massive impact on marketing and sales. To ensure you’re in the best possible position, contact NS Design for a free no-obligation quotation.