The biggest barrier facing social media advocates trying to convince CEOs and senior managers of the benefits to be had from social media is that too many they are preaching too think they ‘get it’, but don’t even know the half of it.

Social media isn’t one person’s role, it isn’t a separate department, it is the way modern people do modern business. That means it needs to be part of each and every role in the business and each and every department in the business too. Just the sheer possibilities and options makes it impossible for even a global company to be covering all bases, that’s how large social media is.

This great infographic from BuddyMedia shows just why covering it all is impossible and why business chiefs should be better educated as to the possibilities social media offers. It’s not just networks; it’s apps, it’s data sorting, targeted advertising, analytics, curation and more.

So this Friday afternoon, bookmark this post. Then next time somebody jokes about the simplicity of social media, or the lack of ‘reality’ you can print this off and show them that social media is more than just some retweets and likes.

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I am sat on a London Underground tube train on my way into London as part of the commuter morning rush-hour. I don’t do this journey often now but 15 years ago it was part of my daily routine. Boy has it changed!

Back in the day, we (myself and fellow commuters) would sit staring into space, out of the window or into each others eyes. Sometimes a few would scan a paperback novel and the odd newspaper but mostly it was a time to reflect about the day ahead – or the heavy night before.

Nowadays WE are all connected! Standing (the overcrowding issue hasn’t really changed) here tapping away on my tablet, I look around and think that an alien landing on earth for the first time seeing this scene may believe us humans are actually powered by electronic devices. All bar three people on this crowded train carriage, from what I can see, are plugged in, absorbed or certainly engaged with an e-reader, a tablet, an mp3 player. I can even see one guy turning contortionist as he attempts to type on a full-size laptop with less arm room than a corpse in a coffin. Even those flicking through the pages of he free commuter newspapers are all plugged in with headsets into another device hidden about their person. Some fight with reception as we dip in and out of tunnels and they optimistically attempt to continue their mobile phone conversation. It’s a modern world!

Then I look further at our surroundings. The adverts in the carriage, the branded clothing worn by my fellow commuters, the bags they carry, the buildings flashing by outside the odd overground bits of our journey, there another wave of technology is becoming day-to-day with few consciously realising. Back in the day, I would probably have been one of a few on that train with a domain portfolio. Many probably hadn’t even used the Internet! Nowadays the domain name is as vital as your formally adopted name – indeed some even think more important! Domain names are everywhere…and quite rightly too.

I am an information junkie and a domainer but I know I am not alone in getting excited when I see a new domain name, perhaps with a catchy ring to it, or an intriguing description built in. One of my domaining regrets is letting a batch of off-the-wall domains expire when I had a domain cull, because nowadays it seems the quirkier the name for a business the better, especially if it includes an animal. So back to my commuter train. You see, full domain integration into our daily lives is not far away. You can already have a full range of personal domain names, some people have even tattooed that onto their physical being in some form or other. On your way to work you will probably ‘see’ tens of domain names but you may not take them all in. Domain names are very close to becoming a commuters norm as the electronic device has, but domains will become more powerful, especially for businesses. They will stand alone, with the catchy, memorable ones becoming etched on the minds of commuters, while many more will also be accessed during the commute via one of the multitude of connected devices the commuters handle.

So there has never been a more important time than now to secure your domain name. Commuters love them, kids love them, even business entrepreneurs love them, so make sure it is your domain they are loving.

A commuter train is not exactly the most obscure location for a domain name to be promoted, but is there anywhere in the modern world yet untouched by domain name fever? We’d love to hear the most unique place you have used or seen a domain name promoted.

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We’ve written before about the best time to post on social media for the biggest engagement but URL shortener experts Bit.ly recently revealed their own findings which are also well worth studying.

The report is based on Eastern Standard Time, so skews any UK data but the premise of what time in day works best, looks a familiar pattern however, that certainly those just starting out would do well to follow. It seems the lunchtime, post lunchtime slot is the best time to catch the Twitter traffic with the highest click count occurring between 1 and 3pm Monday through to Thursday).  So not the full week. Friday it appears is a bit of a lacuna. In fact the weekend starts early as according to bit.ly if you are looking to use Twitter as a way to drive traffic to your content you are wasting your time posting after 3pm Friday until Monday morning.  Facebook is similar but with a bigger window of 1pm to 4pm in the afternoon Monday to Thursday. If you want peak action then Wednesday 3pm for a Facebook post is the ultimate for traffic click through – who’d have thought it?

It’s pretty scientific from Bit.ly – did you know your post has a half-life - but not so it is difficult to understand.

The most interesting revelation from the report is the impact of Tumblr on the world of social networking. Many are looking at it as an option to perhaps bridge the differences between Twitter and Facebook, but as a business tool it is certainly still in its infancy, yet it does appear to interact much differently from it’s two bigger siblings. According to bit.ly. Tumblr traffic hits its peaks between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday. There are similar traffic spikes on Sunday when other click through rates are tiny. Amazingly, against almost every result shown by Twitter and Facebook, Friday evening appears to be the optimal time to post on Tumblr, perhaps reflecting the younger demographic and types of posts (ie social events) make good posts on Tumblr.

Of course, as we have said before, each and every sector and each and every business is unique. What you actually want to be doing is tweeting and posting when your own followers are most likely to be watching, or better still when your would-be followers are most likely to be watching as you also want to be increasing your follow too.

When have you found works best for your business?

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Royal Mail’s recent price increase has left many small businesses fearing that their business may not survive this change. The cost of first class stamps have risen 30%, from 46p to 60p, and second class 38%, from 36p to 50p, a massive burden that many businesses, at least in the short term will have to absorb themselves.

Four in five small businesses in the UK believe this change will affect their business as well as the way they communicate with customers. Recent research conducted by Pitney Bowes revealed that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are concerned that the postal rate increase will have such a negative impact that their business may not be able to recover afterwards. These are businesses that were relying on Royal Mail to send out correspondence and orders to their customers.

Cut costs with electronic mail

The change in postal rates is actually forcing businesses to look for alternative methods to communicate with their customers. Sure, you cannot download a shirt or a bike, but you can try cutting costs by switching to electronic email to keep in touch with customers and send them special offers.

With email, it’s so much easier and a lot cheaper to send e-cards, bills or marketing material. Take our professional email hosting service for instance.  You can create your email address personalised to your domain, such as office@yourbusiness.co.uk, and you can access it anywhere, anytime you want.

With email hosting, you will be able to manage all your emails, calendars and contacts from a single location. Also, you can communicate easier and faster with your customers and ensure your messages get to their inbox and are not lost along the way.

How are you planning to cut costs?

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2011 may have been stressful with the economic downturn but a new Work-Life Balance Index published by workspace provider Regus suggests things were actually an improvement over 2010.

The index based on the views of 2500 UK professionals suggested that while most people are putting in longer hours than before, 60% of the people surveyed are enjoying their jobs more and 58% of them feel they have enough time to balance work with home life or personal pursuits. 69% even suggest they are being more productive at work too.

In all, the Index registered a 20% rise in the UK work-life balance between 2010 and 2012. However, in global terms the UK still lags behind, with an index now of 104 while the global average stands at 124.

The report surrounding the index suggests the findings show an increase in business confidence and people becoming adjusted to the fact that it can’t get much worse. It also suggests that happier staff are more productive, which is a good reason to making sure you treat your employees as your most important asset.

Has your own work-life balance improved?

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Search Engine Optimisation is probably the biggest investment you can make in tweaking your website but if you needed proof that it isn’t a magic wand, take a look at the top search terms using Google Insights for Search.

These are the top 10 searches via Google UK in the last 12 months:

It’s a trend that will take some time to change too, as the search for the top 10 in the last 7 days also shows.

Hardly rocket science searches! The same top 10 searches, pretty consistent for the last 12 months, just in a slightly different order. In each and every case you would have expected those searching for these terms to already have them bookmarked, but what we ‘tech-heads’ need to acknowledge is that the widespread use of the internet now means the majority of those using the tools we take for granted, don’t actually know how to properly use them. People use Google literally as their window on the world. The majority of those using the web don’t actually know how to use even the basic of browser tools, let alone advanced searching.

So what does that mean? Well, interestingly the popularity of ‘How To’ articles on YouTube coupled with its own web popularity means people are filling their knowledge gaps quicker than ever. That also means there is strong SEO value in investing in maybe creating your own How To articles, be they for YouTube, your blog or website. It’s a great way of capturing new traffic and what’s more if they like what they find, psychologically they will be more led to trust you and come to you in the future too.

It also suggests that over complicating your SEO strategy probably won’t help too much either. Certainly if you are looking for a high level of internet understanding or a certain amount of ‘expert’ traffic to come to your site, then specific keywords aimed at that may help, but trying to be clever with too many long-tail keywords to attract general traffic is only likely to waste your time.

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How building a wedding website can help you to save time and money

Summer is right around the corner and with hopefully warmer weather coming it also brings on the wedding season. Getting married is one of the most important and happiest moments in life, but the actual planning can be a hassle. There are so many things to take care of starting from the dress, the band, the flowers, the photographer and so many other details that cannot be ignored.

Back in the day, the bride and groom would get their pens and paper and write down all the details, from budgets, reminders, dates to phone numbers for various vendors. Nowadays it is so much easier to plan a wedding or, as we say, there’s an app for that as well.

The easiest way to plan a wedding is online. Most of your friends and family are already online so what better place to put your wedding together than on the Internet? Your wedding website will provide your guests with the information they need, such as the wedding schedule, directions to the venue, travel arrangements etc.  Furthermore if you have a gift list you can also link to this – making it easier for people to get organized.

So, here are a few simple steps to help you to build your wedding website:

Step 1 – Create a website

Register a domain name personalised to your wedding – so it’s instantly recognized as yours. You can build a site quickly and cheaply – you can even use our easy to use website builder if you don’t have the time or the skills to build it completely from scratch.

Step 2 – Use collaborative tools for planning

You want to have all your wedding information in one place, easy to access no matter where you are. To do that, you can use Google Docs, Dropbox or Google Tasks to manage the things on your to do lists.

Step 3 – Invites

Getting printed paper invitations and save the date cards can be very expensive. So, why not save money, and be eco friendly by saving paper as well.  Create them online , email them out and  then link Google Form to your website to allow people to RSVP.

Step 4- Registries

All major retailers offer gift list services – so it will be very easy to link to them and share your reference details saving your guests time and giving them more time to shop!

Step 5 – Photography

Search online for the photographers you like or go through online portfolios and pick the one you think would fit you perfectly. Once you get your digital wedding photos, you can easily create an album on your site and upload them for anyone to see. You can do the same with the videos taken at your wedding.

Anyone else got any good tips on what to do to help build your perfect wedding website? 

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While much on the internet is about today and instantaneous matters, its biggest asset is probably the immediate reach and accessibility it offers to expert collections, opinions and thoughts.

This week saw the launch of the virtualisation of cult and sadly missed DJ John Peel’s private record archives. Being released in stages, the project aims to share the knowledge, wealth of understanding of popular music that Peel spent years putting together and that millions paid and continue to pay much creedance to. That’s where the internet is so fantastic. You can show things on the internet that are fragile, or that in reality couldn’t be handled or experienced by thousands of people day after day. Using modern animation and filming techniques  you can bring to life the objects on a laptop screen and also go beyond just the object itself.

The Peel archives is just one of many projects set to launch  over the next few months – thanks to increased cultural funding hinging around the Olympics – as people begin to realise that the internet has so much to offer those wanting to set about recording and preserving the past in a much more interactive way than any real museum could offer.

The John Peel Record Collection lets you pluck album covers straight off of Peel’ very own record shelves and view Peel’s re-created record cards. Yet there is more interaction too. There’s the image of the album cover, the ability to listen via Spotify and the now common place social share buttons. You wouldn’t get that in a dusty traditional museum. Elsewhere beyond the collection you can watch Peel in action via online video clips, photos and even listen to the much beloved John Peel Sessions radio archive.

In many ways traditional museums suffering dwindling visitor figures could probably learn a lot from virtual museums like this. The modern world is all about engagement and interaction and a web archive offers all of that and more, if used correctly. Of course the server space may change over time and that is always the danger that these virtual creations could disappear at a click of a button without proper back ups in place by their owners, yet the virtual museum is set to become an ever more common feature in our lives and in our culture as we seek to preserve but provide a legacy for what we once enjoyed and for those memories to continue.

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There are a growing number of bloggers across the globe earning a proper and respectable wage from their online writing projects and understandably more and more bloggers or would be bloggers or content creators are keen to collect their slice too.

Until now that has been a bit difficult. Positive comments are nice but don’t pay the bills and pushing a link towards a paypal donation is never looked upon as the most professional approach to ask for some reward. A number of microdonation services have sprung up in recent years, claiming to hold the answer, some have been and gone, others appear to have more longevity.

One that appears to be getting a foothold is Flattr. A service aimed at all those positive comment leavers to leave a monetary tip for the content creators too. This week they have announced a deal that could at least put there service under the noses of more and more potential users, and they hope, lead to a groundswell and movement towards tipping for online content your have enjoyed. The deal is with Dailymotion, the biggest video portal behind the giant that is YouTube. Those uploading to Dailymotion now have the option to include a Flattr button onto their channels and on the credits of each video, so you can appeal for donations or tips to earn money from your shared content without the need for a pre-roll ad that so often frustrates.

The concept behind Flattr aims to avoid the barrier of constantly re-entering card details or the like, and takes on the strength of the like button of Facebook by tipping from a pre-paid ‘pot’ with a minimum of just 2 Euro investment per month of which Flattr takes a 10% service fee.  A relatively small investment but in the world of social media, becoming known as the person doing good deeds and genuinely rewarding others could have almost unquantifiable long-term benefits.

Whether this latest move by Dailymotion will kickstart the concept remains to be seen, but in a world where the debate over paid-for-content still rages, this may be the next ‘acceptable’ step for many, especially if the correct ‘well-meaning’ spin is put on the regime.

Are you using Flattr or any other micropayment service? Are there enough ‘good-hearted’ people about for the scheme to ever take off?

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The battle of sexes continues in the virtual world and it’s the fairer sex that leads the way according to the latest report from Nielsen.

STATE OF THE MEDIA SPRING 2012 – ADVERTISING & AUDIENCES PART 2: BY DEMOGRAPHIC released today is a US-centric study on who is engaging and where and it throws up some interesting stats, suggesting a big shift in the online audience in recent years. The report shows that women are now significantly more likely to engage with social media than men.

Women are also 8% more likely than the average online adult to build or update a personal blog and 6% more likely to have created at least one social networking profile

If advertisers needed more proof that their target engagers are female not male the report also suggests a lady is 12% more likely than the average adult to purchase a product featured on TV.

A pretty clear definition and pattern that advertisers will no doubt no longer ignore. So don’t be surprised to see more fluffier, pinkier or simply more feminine websites and networks springing up in months to come as the strive for social media returns enters a new chapter.

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