Over time, the concept of social networking evolved, and in the present day scenario, Social Media has become equivalent to an open lottery ticket to boost up the popularity of your online business, blog or website.

This is why people are crazy about tweeting continuously on Twitter, forming communities on Facebook, and running multiple blogs to promote their businesses.

Social Media versus Search Engine Traffic

Sure thing, search engine traffic may be enough to achieve very high conversion rate theoretically, but when you consider practically, the search engine traffic isn’t too focused and doesn’t necessarily result in good conversion rate. For instance, if a person searches for “Apple iPods” and lands on your site after clicking on your advertisement on Google, he/she may not be necessarily interested in buying Apple iPods. There are good chances that such a visitor may have been looking for history of Apple iPods, or features of iPods to compare them with Zune. And, after looking at the info of interest, such a visitor may hit the back button, go to Amazon and buy a Zune! What a waste of your ad click and loss of business, isn’t it?

But, on the other hand, let us consider the traffic from Social Media like a Facebook group dedicated to Apple iPods as well as iPhone. Any visitor from such a Facebook group may definitely give you some business (at least there are higher chances as opposed to search engine traffic), even if it is purchase of a small iPod accessory.

More importantly, such visitors become frequent visitors and give you repeat business, while the search engine traffic is highly unpredictable and disoriented. A person who clicked on Google, landed on your site, bought a black 4GB Apple iPod nano, may not necessarily remember your site. And, next time around when such visitors need to purchase an iPhone, they may not bother to search your site on Google again.

Why Tweet Everyday?

You must have noticed even the best in business tweet everyday – what’s the big idea you ask! Well, tweeting daily has not just become a habit but also the preferred way to give constant updates to the potential customers, and maintain good business relationship with the existing customer-base. Every time when Google comes out with an update, AdSense Blog, AdWords blog and their corresponding Twitter pages are filled up with info, as they’re the best way to convey the info to the public rather than sending out millions of emails daily.

The Bottom-Line

So, if you want high conversion rate and boost up the profitability of your online business, you better realize the importance of social media and try to create your brand on Social Media. Form faithful Facebook groups, Tweet daily, blog daily and get more business – it is now as simple as that!

In an extremely competitive environment, marketing pet care products and differentiating yourself is a bit of a challenge. That being said I am preparing to unveil some amazing partnerships I have been working on, that will effectively take this company to a whole new level. Keep an eye on the MedicAnimal site for things to come.

UI, PPC, Strategy, Partnerships and more … All in a days work and lately my days keep getting longer. If you happen to know a Internet Marketing Ninja let me know, the person should be based in London and needs to be a thinker and a doer (not just a doer).

So enough on that… No one wants to hear about Frontline, Hills Dog Food or Hamburger shaped beds (yes a Hamburger shaped bed).

In the six weeks that I have been here in London, living and working … I have been re energized. The business climate, the people and the lifestyle have caused me great enjoyment. The only problem … My wife is in Canada and I will not see her until I head back to Canada in December for Christmas. Short term issues that have to be dealt with I guess.

Oh and back to what I had originally titled the blog post “Social Media, Strategy, Cats and Dogs ….”. Actually when I originally thought of the title I didn’t take into consideration that I would become so easily distracted and stray from the original. This blog post has now turned into a Business/Random Rambling blog post. Guess I’ll have to do a Part 2 and actually focus on the subject … Till next time, which will be soon, a Social Media post!

For those of you who are unaware of what the Pirate Bay is, it is a search engine for torrents and basically BitTorrent is a peer to peer method for transferring  large amounts of data.

Now somewhere along the lines governments, the recording industry, movie studios etc have taken great offense to these sort of torrent sites that facilitate the locating of files stored in various places on the internet. These numerous organizations have been battling to shut down sites like the Pirate Bay for quite sometime. However at some point one has to wonder why they are not targeting the likes of Google and Yahoo?

Doing a quick search on Google for “Body of Lies torrent” and hundreds of listings appear. Does this mean Google is providing the same service as Pirate Bay?It would seem that way.

The question is: What is the Pirate Bay doing that Google isn’t?

At first count we are seeing more than 10,000 people calling for Harpers resignation, with even so called faithful conservatives calling for a change in leadership.

The social web, social media and the internet as a whole is an important channel for expressing ones opinions, feelings and in cases is more popular than other traditional mediums. The story is always followed, constantly updated and traditional mediums can’t keep up. The conversation is growing and will continue to change as the events unfold.

Curious? Check out some of the conversations at www.beaverfight.ca.  This is an almost real time feed of the political discussion on the popular service Twitter.

If I had to make a guess I would say millions of people are following the current political issues in Canada online, whether they are expats living abroad or a farmer in rural Ontario I would say more people are following and participating online than will watch him address the nation this evening.

This post is a work in progress and will grow as we continue to track with our monitoring solution.

]]> http://www.snell.ca/is-harper-listening/feed/ 2 http://www.snell.ca/is-nova-scotia-broken/ http://www.snell.ca/is-nova-scotia-broken/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:28:05 +0000 Robert Snell http://blog.snell.ca/?p=93 Let’s face it, lets call it out here; Nova Scotia is a Monopsony. OK, yeah big word. What does it mean? It means there are many suppliers but only one buyer. In Nova Scotia, that’d be the government. So if you express an opinion, they can shut you down and you don’t get business. Nice.

I talk to other business owners, they share this view, but everyone is too afraid to say anything thinking they’ll lose business. And then businesses are so afraid to work together, or with a New Brunswick or PEI company here too. What’s with that? Protectionism?

So maybe we should have a new sign at the Provincial border “Welcome to Nova Scotia, please leave your opinion at the door” just so other Provinces and people who would bring innovation would know not to waste their time coming here. I talk to my contacts in the EU, and they say we’re “authoritarian” and not open to working with foreigners. Gee, surprise!

Then you try to bring a government agency in on a project to collaborate but unless you follow their agenda, they go an compete with you and won’t return your calls. Yeah, lets work together. Not.

So when people ask why I would leave here it’s because government doesn’t help business grow, they hold them hostage. Our market is so small and instead of helping each other, we hurt each other. Autocracy 250? Are you brave enough to share your opinion?