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.

Last week search engine Bing announced a partnership with Facebook to create a social search service. This week Google threw their hat into the ring by integrating social search into their results, providing information on how often articles and pages are shared among web users and information published by people you know.

At present, Google’s work is in the testing stage on Google Labs, but it’s unlikely to stay that way. Although Google is the dominant industry player by miles, owning around two-thirds of the market, Facebook’s massive popularity and its emergence as a market leader in its own field, and the partnerships the social media behemoth is making, including Bing and Skype, could pose a serious threat.

Google’s technology works by studying information on your Google profile, including contacts in Twitter, Facebook etc. They also stream through contact lists for those using Gmail and Gchat to create a set of results published by your social circle. All the content you can see is published publicly and privacy issues have not yet been raised.

Social Search is Google’s latest move, following Instant and Caffeine, in the ongoing web arms-race to stay current, and it’s a good one. The explosion of social media, and the power of ‘personal marketing’ through recommendations and bookmarking has long been noted, and many people now rely as much on this personal touch as they do the scientifically generated results of Google or Bing.

Given this development, the creation of social search can almost be seen as an inevitability; the next logical step on an increasingly competitive road.

Google have recently launched Instant, a new approach to searching which pushes the boundaries of internet search technology as well as altering the playing field for marketing.

This latest advancement is based on research which suggests that users take up to 10x longer to type an enquiry than they do to scan a page of results. Instant responds to this by bringing up results as users type, allowing them to scan simultaneously and click through to their desired web page faster. The user also establishes a dialogue with the system, amending their own search parameters as they go to find their required content quicker.

It’s an impressive new tool which accelerates functionality for users of the system; however, it may not be such good news for businesses, especially those running Adword campaigns. Results for Google Instant searches are almost constantly refreshed, and so too are the PPC ads, allowing no time for an interested party to click through.

There is also the possibility that businesses will end up paying for impressions on irrelevant searches, with results changing as a query becomes more defined.

In response, Google will change their definition of an ad impression.  Unless an ad is on screen for 3 seconds or more, it is not considered an impression. This goes some way to solving the problem, but doesn’t help if the user is distracted half way through typing their query, leaving irrelevant results on screen for a prolonged period.

Google Instant has the potential to revolutionise the way we use search engines and its true impact has yet to be felt. Only time will tell us what effect it has on Adwords.

Google Buzz is the internet giant’s step into the social networking arena, and following the collapse of development on its collaboration-based sister programme Wave last month, it is now Google’s flagship programme in the social media arena.

Strangely for a social media package, it isn’t open to all users, only those with Gmail accounts – although one could argue that as these are freely available it isn’t really a barrier. The plus side is that once you are signed up you can post and receive videos, links, statuses and comments directly from your usual inbox.

One password and log in is all that’s required, creating one of the first fully-integrated email and social media systems.  It also integrates various external social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter for communications, Picasa and Flickr for pictures and YouTube for videos.

But how useful can Google Buzz be to your business?

Google’s aim with Buzz was to bridge the gap between social and business online activity. However, by linking it to what is essentially a personal email account, they’ve placed it firmly in the social sphere. Arguably it is also too insecure for business use, having been at the centre of several privacy rows, as the original system allowed other users to see the full names of your favourite contacts by default. Although Google has worked to counteract these, they’ve yet to solve the issue.

Google are known for releasing products before they’re ready and developing them over time; and Buzz may yet grow into an essential social media tool, but for now, while it is an interesting attempt at email / social media integration, it is not yet fully-tuned to business use.

As social media has become such a large and undefined group of applications, it can be difficult to identify which platforms will work best for your company. Social media is a fantastic way to experiment with marketing ideas, but unless you have clearly delineated, and auditable, targets, you’ll never know how truly successful any given campaign is – so, how do you set and track your social media targets?

Setting your targets is the same as for any other form of marketing – do you want to drive sales or increase engagement with your brand? Are you looking to create links back to your website or position yourself as a market thought-leader? Choosing just one or two clearly defined and focused aims will make selecting your platforms a lot easier; for example, a brand looking to engage will focus heavily on tools such as Twitter and Facebook, while one looking to share knowledge may prefer to utilise a social bookmark site, such as Digg.

Analysis should be undertaken monthly; this is a short enough time that you stay in control of your data, but long enough to hint at developing and emerging trends in your traffic. Many companies have their own form of analytical tool, but Google’s analytics is perfectly adequate if you don’t want to invest. Pick a handful of metrics to compare and focus on these figures month-to-month to see what effect any campaign is having. Possible metrics include bounce rate, source traffic and time on site.

Taking a focused approach will allow you to see where the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign lie, and adjust them accordingly, so that you are constantly improving your results.

In the last couple of years social media has come to dominate digital marketing. It offers new and varied ways to share content, engage consumers and create dialogue. However, the sheer number of sites available and the scope for campaigns can leave even the most hardened marketer feeling overwhelmed.

So this week, NSDesign Social Media Training has a case study to help you pinpoint what makes a successful social media campaign. It’s from a surprising source – traditional brand Marmite, first established in 1902, and now leading the way in social media marketing.

Marmite has always revelled in its ‘controversial’ status and has run several traditional advertising campaigns around the love/ hate aspect of the product. To capitalise on the 2010 general election they conceived a social media equivalent, setting up ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ Facebook groups. Within four weeks they had 350,000 fans across the two groups, the result of a massive multi-media marketing push.

Why were they so successful? Marmite created a debate, which required people to actively think and engage with their brand; this created an online discussion between consumers and the brand, which created an excellent source of rich and original content, helping to boost the product’s online footprint.

They also used various mediums to draw attention and focus it on their social media. The main social media thrust was supported by traditional mediums such as TV and newer avenues like online forums, all of which drove traffic to the Facebook hubs. They even offered hard copy ‘electioneering’ packs to the most energetic fans.

Marmite has a lot of resources behind it, but the lessons can be applied to companies of all sizes, so that your social media campaign becomes all about the ‘Love’.

If you are maintaining a website, you will have come across the term Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This is a fairly complicated and complex process of improving your website ranking (in search engines such as Google) and therefore increasing the number of visitors to your site. SEO may completely overwhelm you at first, but when broken down into sections you will find that the techniques are simple, easy to manage and produce excellent results.

Link building is a very important technique and one which will be sure to improve your ranking. It is the main process when you are looking to attract like-minded visitors in large numbers.  The rewards are tenfold; not only improving your ranking, but also ensuring your site becomes visible, recognised and credible to potential customers.

Basically, link building is a form of internet marketing, whereby you generate inbound links to your own website (from other sites). There are a number of ways to do this with the most popular being:

•    Reciprocal links with other sites, where two webmasters agree to show the other’s link on their website

•    Listing your site in online directories: a task which needs to be completed manually at first, but after a while, you will find that you are automatically listed in many online directories)

•    Placing content on blogs, forums and e-zines (either your own or other people’s)

Remember, that while link building can be time-consuming, it is a very easy technique which is still the most popular and efficient way to improve your website’s traffic and ranking in the search engines.

If you read our blog, you will understand how important blogging is; especially for small businesses. It keeps you in touch with your customer base and allows you to demonstrate your expertise.

If you are setting up a blog, read our recent article about blog domain names before you start and either sign up to a free blogsite using one of the more popular blog sites such as wordpress.com or contact us if you want help integrating a blog into your business website.

It can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially if you are not used to writing; but remember that your blog is there to keep in touch with customers, promote new products, advise your customers, improve your internet marketing and generally show a more social side to your company.

It’s important always to keep the blog relevant to your business and to write regular updates. This will ensure that search engines such as Google pick up on the blog and improve your overall ranking on the internet. The higher ranked your website/blog is, the more people will come across it when running internet searches.

Once you start blogging, you will find that it provides fresh content for your website and keeps customers coming back.  You are providing a free service for them while at the same time enhancing your own business.

Facebook is so ubiquitous that, whatever line of business you’re in, it’s likely many of your customers and potential customers are using the site to socialise and network. There are over 350 million active users of the world’s largest social network and, even though it was originally designed to help students plan their social lives, it has quickly evolved into a powerful internet marketing tool for businesses.

In the same way that individuals can set up profile pages, businesses can set up fan pages. You can upload your logo and company description to the page and post updates, links and photos on your wall. People can indicate they “like” your page, and your updates will then appear in their news feeds. A description of your page will also feature on your fans’ individual profiles. Given that the average Facebook user has 130 friends (according to Facebook’s own calculation), you can theoretically put your business in front of 13,000 people with just 100 fans!

You can also use a Facebook fan page to drive traffic to your website by posting links to your latest blog or news articles on the wall.

It’s easy to set up a Facebook fan page for your business: just click on this link and follow the instructions.