New Media and You!

The search engine battle is beginning to hot up and businesses need to prepare for what is likely to be a seismic shift in the way that their customers search for them on line. According to the major Internet Guru's the big news is that Facebook are preparing to launch their internet search facility in competition with Google and, if successful, this is going to turn internet advertising upside down.

At present the most used search engine is Google. It accounts for nearly 70% of all on line searches, however it will face serious competition if Facebook is able to develop their internal search engine capability more widely. So far Facebook has only played on the fringes of social search. It has integrated Bing's powered search results into its search engine and co-operated with Bing by providing social data to influence the search results. (Bings owner is Microsoft, a Facebook investor).

Facebook has recently been awarded a patent on "curated search" which links search results to a users social links. If Bing and Facebook are able to get this working and, as experts predict, social search becomes the next big thing, then Google, and by definition any business that relies on Google for customers, is in for a bumpy ride.

Businesses need to plan for this change now. The Facebook search system is likely to rely on the "like" function to push a company's rating up the search engine rankings. (Google are shortly to launch a similar "plus one" button for their ranking engine). It is imperative therefore that businesses start to adopt and understand Facebook as a method for promoting their business.

The first thing of course is to get your business on Facebook – the like buttons are a Facebook feature and if your company doesn't have a Facebook page then Facebook search will not find you. Whilst it's fine to start off with a copy of your home page as a starting point for your Facebook site, you will need to consider how Facebook interacts with its customers and alter your content accordingly to fit the target audience. This should work and integrate with your Twitter, Blog and Internet sites, although be wary of duplicating content – each medium should carry unique material.

The next challenge is to get your customers to sign up to your Facebook page. Not only that you need them to "like" your content as this is what the search engines of the future will be looking for.

So how do you drive traffic to your Facebook site? Mailing Expert can help! Take for example a campaign for a Travel Company. The company is new to Facebook and recognising the importance of Social Searching wants to drive it's rankings on Facebook upwards and quickly. Just putting the site up doesn't immediately drive traffic to it, so what is needed is an integrated communication campaign bringing together current customers and future prospects.

The campaign is built around the new Facebook page which for the purposes of the marketing exercise is designed to carry a competition, the winner of which simply has to choose to "like" the site to enter.

Mailing Expert are able to take the existing customer data and run an email campaign to publicise the competition. In addition they can supply new email prospect data, cross checked against the client database so you aren't buying data you already own, tailored to fit your specific customer profile. The prospect list is also emailed with the competition details.

The campaign can be developed further by using Twitter and your company Blog to communicate the details to your social network. The icing on the cake is a direct mail campaign using personalised colour postcards and flyers with a QR code to take the customer directly to the Facebook competition page.

Nova Direct Mail helps a wide range of customers to come up with innovative communication solutions like this. For further information about how an integrated communication campaign can help you achieve your goals call Mailing Expert on 01825 983 033.