It's been reported that production company Groundswell Productions have bought the rights to last year's Google biopic, Google: The End of the World as We Know It.  Following in the footsteps of the Facebook movie The Social Network scheduled for later this year, it's interesting to see the stories of some of the world's biggest and most important companies told in such a transparent way.  We're used to seeing films about famous people and events, but now we're going to be seeing  a film about.... our favourite search engine.  On the face of it, it sounds dull, but maybe it's symptomatic of our culture of instant gratification that such a thing is held in such high esteem.   Read More...

According to an estimate by eMarketer, advertising on social media networks will bring in $3.3 billion this year.  That's a lot of cash; a 31% increase from 2009.  Facebook, as the leading social media platform, unsurprisingly gets the lion's share of this money, at 39%.   Read More...

Another in a long line of Facebook scams aimed at grabbing your personal data has made itself known today.  It pupports to be the long-awaited 'Dislike' button; a button that compliments Facebook's provision of a 'Like' button on user posts.  However, unsurprisingly, all is not well - attempting to install said button merely hands over personal data to the scammers and does nasty things to your Facebook account. Read More...

Numbers released recently by web analytics firm comScore show that Twitter use is still rising at a pretty ridiculous rate, with an increase of 109% in June this year vs. June last year.  What's interesting is that we're seeing big growth from Asia and Latin America, both increasing by 243% and 305% respectively.  Let's make it clear though that these numbers don't necessarily indicate people who are actually tweeting; it's just visits to Twitter.com, but this is still important because it indicates recognition of Twitter as a worthwhile destination.   Read More...

WSI is conducting a special webinar on how you can drive more business for your company using local search marketing tactics.

Local searchers are ready to buy. They are searching online looking for the product / service they need and a reputable company to purchase from. Much like how advertisers are moving their marketing dollars from the Yellow Pages to the web, consumers are moving their searches from the Yellow Pages to the Web as well. Read More...

The last way your business can use Twitter is simply by listening.  As a mouthpiece for the individual, Twitter is unparalleled.  Use it to keep track of what people are talking about and why.  Use it to find out what's popular and what's not.....use it as a snapshot of your zeitgeist.

It's easy to see what people are talking about on Twitter.  In your account, go to the Home page, and down in the right column is a section called 'Trends'.  You'll see it gives a list of then ten most popular terms on Twitter right now.  You can segment the trends by region or even by city, which is useful if you want to really want to get down to the nitty gritty of stuff.  But Twitter's certainly not the only place to go to see what's happening.  There's a plethora of monitoring services available that can pull a huge amount of data.  Check out the following: Read More...

Some companies use Twitter in a similar vein to a project management or discussion tool.  They'll tweet to employees and employees will tweet back with relevant information about project status, time scales... that kind of thing.  The problem with this is that Twitter is not a private platform.  It's very open, and whilst it does offer some degree of protection for your Tweets (by only allowing followers to see what you've written for example) it's probably not the best way of discussing confidential company matters. Read More...

The second way businesses can use Twitter is the indirect method.  This method involves letting employees tweet as themselves, rather than as the company.  Basically, they can talk about their working lives and the things they're working on.  This gives the employees a sense of freedom and responsibility as a mouthpiece for the company, and it enhances the company's reputation because it's seen to be forward thinking.  The flipside of this is that it can be seriously damaging if a company is treating its employees badly; take a look at this Yahoo employee's Twitter feed: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/twittering-the-yahoo-layoffs-yhoo Read More...

In the past couple of articles, I've given you an introduction to Twitter and given you some tips on how you can use it.  But now we're going to go into some detail and discuss the precise strategies.  We'll be getting down to the real meat of why you should use Twitter and how. Read More...

The strength of Twitter is that it's fast and easy to use.  You post your tweet, and you're away.  There's a bit of syntax to learn (e.g. RT for example - 're-tweet') but really it's so simple a child can use it.  The simplicity means that it's very easy to communicate, and this is why Twitter can be really useful for businesses. Read More...