Mobile Twitter use has seen a 62% increase in the four months since Twitter acquired third-party application “Tweetie” and the number of users signing up via a mobile device has increased to 16%. While this percentage may not seem overly impressive, it is important to remember that earlier this year, only 5% of all new users were signing up via a mobile device.
This suggests that however effective third-party apps may be, the very fact that they are third-party makes them less trusted. As Twitter CEO Evan Williams observed:

“Even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called ‘Twitter.’ This kept them from using Twitter at all.”

The rebranding of “Tweetie” as “Twitter for iPhone” coupled with the “OAuthcalypse” would certainly seem to have vastly improved the take-up of mobile Twitter. As the below chart indicates, accessing Twitter from a blackberry or iPhone are two of the most popular ways to access Twitter.

Note: The numbers exceed 100% due to the fact that people often use more than one app.

What do you think of mobile Twitter? Did the lack of official Twitter apps prevent you from using the site on the go? If not, did you switch to the official app when it became available? Has the release of official Twitter apps made you more likely to adopt mobile Twitter usage? We would love to hear from you.

Image source: The official Twitter blog.

Alongside the board advisors, Matt Stannard has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that 4Ps Marketing continues to be a leading developer in the SEM industry. Stannard has worked in a consultancy capacity with 4Ps Marketing over the last 3 years and the team are very excited about this position becoming permanent.

About Nick Ayton

Ayton is a technology entrepreneur and currently sits as an advisor to several large hedge funds and investors in IT Services, Technology and Outsourcing markets. A 28 year veteran of several technology start ups in the 1980’s he has had general management roles at Siemens AG, Capgemini and CSC Computer Sciences managing International sales activities. Ayton has also led and managed a number of successful turnarounds and buyouts and now lives in Surrey with his wife of 23 years and four children.

About Martin Colenutt

Martin Colenutt brings wide ranging business experience, gained during many years of working for a major Corporate Bank, delivering strategic business advice to customers expanding rapidly or looking to re-structure. He has also been chairman of an AIM listed company and actively served on the board of several SME’s across a variety of industry sectors. With a strong financial and operational background Colenutt will be a reference point for sound and well planned growth in the business.

About Matt Stannard

Since graduating from the University of Hertfordshire with a Computer Science degree Stannard has worked for both Small and Multi National businesses in a number of roles covering development, support, mentoring, procurement and strategy. A developer at heart, he is able to grasp and understand most programming languages including SQL, JavaScript, VBA, Perl, PHP, C, C#, C++, Visual Basic, VB.NET and Python.

Stannard is familiar with the responsibilities and challenges faced by an IT department having worked for Willis on their Intranet, Extranet and e-Trading projects (both as a proof of concept and in a live environment). Although Stannard is fascinated by anything to do with technology, when he’s detached from his PC (and Android handset) he is an avid Ipswich Town fan.

Moving forward;

Co-founder and Director Matthew Phelan commented “We are extremely pleased to be able to attract such high calibre people to the senior team at 4Ps Marketing. Nick, Martin and Matt all have very different skills and we feel this diversity of talent can help 4Ps Marketing to continue pushing the boundaries of the online marketing industry.”

Click here for more information on our SEO, PPC and SMO agency.

For further information please contact:

Rachel Kneen, Marketing Executive, 4Ps Marketing Ltd www.4psmarketing.com

Call 020 7607 5650 or Email rachel.kneen@4psmarketing.com

Brief Description:

Social media optimisation is fast becoming a necessity within a business’s online marketing strategy. This course will provide you with all the information that you need to kick-start your social media strategy and give you the knowledge of how to implement it throughout your marketing plan and most importantly how to integrate it with search.

Key areas of Focus

- Creating and increasing brand awareness through social media optimisation
- How to interact with current and potential clients through the different social networking sites
- Engaging with your audience and dealing with negative response to campaigns
- Implementing social media within other online marketing areas
- Understanding the benefits and risks associated with this area of social media optmisation
- How to measure the response to your social media investment
- Overall objective : to increase and maximise online visibility using key SEO tools and techniques

When : Friday 24th September 2010

Where : 4Ps Marketing HQ, United House, 39-41 North Road, Islington, London, N7 9DP
Start : 10.00
Finish : 16.00

Price : £425

Please contact : training@4psmarketing.com

Press & PR Officer at WCRF

“The Social Media Day with 4Ps was informative and full of handy tips to help us improve our social media presence. As someone who has a good understanding of social media on a personal level, it was extremely interesting to learn how to manage a corporate feed. The 4Ps were very supportive and provided lots of helpful advice both during and after the event.”

Marketing Manager at VOS Media

“The Social Media Day at 4Ps was extremely useful. The information had been adapted to our needs and relevant business models. It was intimate and personalised enough to allow us to explore specific issues, and there was an open forum for discussion and problem solving. The presenter used relevant examples and covered all aspects of social media, whilst explaining things in simple enough detail for all of us to understand.”

The latest Facebook privacy issues have arisen as the result of the newly released Facebook Places. This application allows users to check in to a nearby location, thereby letting their friends know where they are going to be. However, under the default settings, it is also possible for users to tag a friend’s location, regardless of whether or not that friend is actually there and all check-ins will be posted in the news feed and activity stream for that location.

Understandably, this has not gone down well and one look at the below infographic will tell you why. Created for Mashable by Lisa Waananen, the infographic demonstrates that concerns about privacy on Facebook are by no means trivial, nor are they isolated incidents.

Personally, I’m not given over to the hysteria that can surround the issue of CCTV but even I must admit that Facebook Places does seem somewhat reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, though admittedly “Facebook is watching you” does not have the same ring to it. Nevertheless, privacy on Facebook is a real issue and perhaps it would be wise for the site owners to think about the default settings whenever they release a new feature. Assuming that users do not want to share everything would show that users’ concerns are being taken seriously and may well earn some much needed goodwill.

The primary focus of linkbait is to increase the number of high-quality, relevant links to a website by producing content that people will talk about on forums, blogs, social media sites etc.  Social media specifically offers huge potential in generating a substantial amount of links to a particular web page. After this naturally comes the ultimate goal of driving more traffic to the site which will hopefully incur increased revenue.

Defined by Matt Cutts as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention”  linkbait comes in many forms and is accomplished through a variety of approaches including articles, blogs, infographics, videos, quizzes, reviews, widgets, information, news, humour, controversy, lists, statistics, shocking and unique content.

With its viral nature linkbait can prove a powerful tool in online marketing and often includes the formulation of a mini PR campaign around the content itself in order to make bloggers and social media users aware of it in order to promote the linkbait.

Ethical linkbait

The term ‘linkbait’ or ‘linkbaiting’ is relatively new, although the practice itself has been endured by webmasters for years. People often react to the practice with suspicion, largely due to the negative connotations that come with the word ‘bait’ or ‘baiting’. There is a lot of debate around linkbaiting with people arguing that the technique, alongside linkbuilding is just glorified spamming. However, more and more SEO agencies are offering linkbaiting services, reflecting its powerful nature.

The differences between spam and effective linkbaiting and linkbuilding lie in the content itself. If a piece of content has been produced purely for linkbait purposes with no real relevance or substance then it can expect to fall under the category of spam. However, if the content has relevance and purpose beyond linkbait, then it is more likely to be successful in generating inbound links as well as lying safely in the ‘white-hat’ category, steering well clear of any spam accusations. Below I have listed a few things to consider for effective linkbaiting:

1 – Relevance – make sure you know the brand, product, industry and target market

2 – Research – when writing any content, linkbait or not you can never conduct enough research, an in-depth knowledge around the subject area is paramount

3 – Fresh content, or failing this, ensure your content is better than what’s already been done – people don’t want to see stuff that’s been done before, particularly if it’s not as entertaining

4 – Layout – consider the layout of your linkbait with relevance to the platform, product, target market and industry

5 – Imagery and videos – visuals stimulate the brain so back up your content with entertaining, relevant visuals wherever possible

Linkbait is not alone with the controversial opinions that are inflicted upon it. A number of other online marketing techniques are viewed in this way due to black-hat webmasters using the practice unethically. Linkbaiting can prove a powerful element of your search engine marketing strategy if used ethically and appropriately.

This process only works if you’ve migrated to the new Asynchronous Analytics JavaScript. Additionally, the code needs to stay in place on the website or the verification will expire. You will also need to remain as an administrator for the Google Analytics account associated with the Asynchronous JavaScript Snippet.

Adding other verified owners to Webmaster Tools has also become quicker with ownership not required to be verified manually.

Even though some have struggled with this, it’s definitely a good feature to have that allows you to save time on the verification process and avoid the hassle of adding a Meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site.

Analytics plays an important role here at 4Ps Marketing  to help our clients with effective SEO campaigns.

Utilising the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a good start in determining which keywords are going to be most effective in your SEO strategy. The next step would be to use a few more keyword tools in order to firstly double check the accuracy of the information provided by the Google keyword tool, and secondly to find additional keywords that weren’t suggested by Google but they may be relevant to your campaign.

The first two keyword analysis tools, reported by Search Engine Journal, are based on data provided by Google

• Keyword Eye

This tool provides a visual representation of keyword alternatives to the one that you type in. The larger the word, the more searches it has. The degree of competition is indicated by the colour, red being a highly competitive keyword. If you hover over any term, you are able to see the estimated number of searched and the competition.

This can be useful in presentations as an alternative to simply stating the number of searches and level of competition . The “advanced search” option allows you to customise the output in terms of broad, phrase or exact match, country specific results, as well as the number and way in which the results are shown.

• Übersuggest

This tool is powered by Google Suggest and provides suggestion based on the term you type in. Again this tool allows you to explore the many more keyword ideas that may drive traffic to your site. Ticking the “expand” box means that each letter of the alphabet is attached after your term, and even more suggestions are generated.

• Keyword Tool from WordStream

An easy to use tool that reflects the “relative frequency” of the suggested keywords (their estimate of how often a particular term is searched on).This can be used again in conjunction with the Google keyword tool to get a more accurate estimate of a keyword’s search volume.

• Keyword Research Tool from Microsoft adCenter Labs

Similar to the previous tool, this keyword analysis tool simply provides suggestions based on the keyword that you enter.

The last two keyword analysis tools provide insight into the keywords, allowing you to identify any trends that may affect your choices, and do not offer any suggestions directly.

• Audience Intelligene from Microsoft adCenter Labs

This tool is useful in that it predicts the demographic distributions of the keywords, as well as the monthly historical trends and impression counts. You are able to compare a number of keywords at once by entering them all into the box, separated by semi-colons.

• Google Insights for Search

The trends associated with the keyword over time are visually represented in a graph. Regional interest and top related search terms are also displayed allowing for ever more insight into the keyword.

These are just a few of the many tools that are available to aid keyword analysis. Most of the tools allow you to export the data into a spreadsheet so that you can use all the results for further research and analysis so that you can refine your keyword selections. It is also important to keep in mind that these tools are often not 100% accurate, and they are often limited when it comes to long-tail keyword research. Used with an open analytical mind and in conjunction with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, these keyword analysis tools can provide the insight that you need to implement a sustainable effective SEO strategy.

Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch told the Sunday Times: “You can basically search for people in any photo. You could search for family members on Flickr, in newspapers, or in videos on YouTube.”

The programme scans the relative positions of a person’s eyes, nose and mouth and is said to be accurate 9 out of 10 times; the same software can then be used to scour the internet for more images of the same person. You can even find untagged photos of the face you’re searching, even yourself – a great way to keep an eye out for those party pictures from the weekend…

This kind of software has only been available to/used by the likes of Governmental organisations, inside social networking platforms and Batman. However with Face.com making the software available to one and all already 5,000 developers are putting it to the test although it’s not clear exactly what for.

While making this kind of software available to developers for testing is the only way to work out it’s kinks and improve the final product it doesn’t dissuade the notion that were someone so inclined, it could be put to use for less than noble causes.

Strong leadership skills are essential for this role as we are looking for an individual who is looking to progress their career into a leadership position within the company.

Do you have excellent skills in communication and experience in identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for search marketing campaigns? If you have and you are interested in working with us in our London office then please get in touch for more information.

Individual Requirements:

• Proven ability in onsite and offsite SEO.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills
• Strong understanding of HTML
• Experience in keyword research/selection and competitive site analysis
• Technical understanding on how search engines crawl web coding
• Advanced Google Analytics and Google Webmasters experience
• Proficient in MS Word and PowerPoint with exceptional Microsoft Excel skills
• Experience of data analysis
• Competent understanding of Joomla, Movable Type, WordPress etc is preferable

About 4Ps Marketing

4Ps Marketing is one of the fastest growing Search Agencies in the United Kingdom and we are currently on the lookout for more highly talented individuals to join our fast paced environment. With an ever widening global portfolio of clients, we are looking to recruit passionate and driven individuals to push themselves, and the agency to the next level. If you feel you could add value to 4Ps Marketing, please send your CV with covering letter on why you would be suitable for the role.

According to a blog post on emarketer, marketers will spend $220 Million on advertisements on social gaming this year. Although advertisements are not the major stream of revenue for the owners of the many social games, it is now seen more and more as a platform for advertisement. The biggest advantage is it enables to implement the principle that averts cannot be generalised, in a way it provides more flexibility to be able to target specific genre of the people resulting in higher return with lower marketing budgets. For example, adverts based on casinos can be targeted for people who love to play poker.

In a way it enables to narrow down the targets available within a broader channel. This contemplates very well with applications that can be mobile and enable stream adverts. There are many gaming applications that exploit this feature as you read this post!

Not only this has created a new arena within the online marketing space, it has encouraged development of dedicated websites intended only for social gaming which may have a wide range of genre for the varied likes of people. This only emphasises the importance of social media and social gaming in today’s world.