Watch the video below in which Matt discusses how your social media channels, networks, content, and reputation can all influence search engine rankings.

“Yes we do use Twitter and Facebook links and rankings as we always have in our web search rankings, but in addition to this we are also trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or creator.”

We strongly advocate developing a vibrant social media engagement strategy around your website, which in turn can create a powerful digital footprint for your brand impacting directly on visibility and rankings.

Global Entrepreneurship Week began life as Enterprise Week in the UK back in 2004. When news of the phenomenal success of Enterprise Week in the UK spread the globe, lots of other countries got excited at the potential of running similar initiatives in their own countries. So in 2008, Enterprise UK and the Kauffman Foundation (the world’s largest entrepreneurship foundation based in the US) founded the very first Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Last year, there were over 32,000 events run in 88 countries, attended by more than 7.5 million people. In the UK, over 529,000 people attended 4,812 events.

The North East event will take place on Tuesday 16 November 2010 at our business centre: Cuthbert House, City Road, All Saints, Newcastle, NE1 2ET.

The day will be made up of helpful seminars and workshops to provide you with invaluable support and advice to help grow your business and take your success to the next level.

Better\’s MD, Mark Easby, will be speaking at the event about how to build your digital footprint and embrace the new brand communication opportunities through social media.

FULL SEMINAR DETAILS:

9.30 – Registration and Refreshments

9.50 – Welcome, Safety Policy and Introductions

10.00 – Will McLean- The Entrepreneurs Forum: What Entrepreneurs do?!

10.30 – Nigel Jones- Herdman Jones: Understanding Marketing Strategy

11.00 – Mark Easby- Better Brand Agency: Building your digital footprint

12.15  - Lunch, networking and time for one to one appointments with our speakers

13.15  - Mark Easby- Better Brand Agency: Social Media in Action

15.00 – David Wilson- NE Money: A to Z of managing money

15.30 - David Cliff- Gedanken: Beyond Survival; Strategies for Effective Business Thinking

16.30 - End of today’s events and an opportunity for further networking and appointments with our speakers

Lunch and refreshments will be provided on the day.

To confirm your attendance, please contact Kristy Giblin on 0191 350 6008 or email kgiblin@cecoffices.com

Service Network are hosting an event that will take you through the step by step process of developing a digital footprint for your business. A digital footprint is a collection of activities and behaviours recorded when an organisation interacts in a digital environment.  It includes the recording of activities such as clicks on e-newsletters, visits to a web-page, tweets and Facebook updates.

Date: Thursday 21st October 2010
Time: 9:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Wynyard Park, Wynyard Avenue, Billingham, Tees Valley, TS22 5TB view map

Mark Easby of brand agency Better will expertly guide you through the key areas you need to understand in today’s digital world:

Why you need to develop your digital footprint.

How to listen to the internet – how to find out where your audience is and what they are talking about.

How to join in – what choices you have to make, how to think strategically and why you have to be committed to the task.

What to do when your audience talks to you – you need to learn how to develop a conversation.

How to measure your channels.

How to drive your audience to your database – how e-mail marketing, search engine optimisation, campaign planning and public relations all link in to your digital footprint.

How to stay ahead of the competition.

After this event, you will go back into your business and start listening, engaging, interacting, recording, sharing and discussing digital information in a very human way.  You will come away with an understanding of how social media can work for your business and will be empowered with the energy to create a successful digital footprint for your organisation.

Better is an agency specialising in brand, design, marketing and social media campaigns.  Mark is heavily involved with clients ranging from start up businesses through to national brands.

Cost: Free to Service Network members, £35 + VAT to non members.

Please contact Sarah Willan on 0191 244 4031 or book online at http://www.service-network.co.uk/events/34

To avoid a cancellation fee of £35 + VAT please inform the Service Network team in writing at least 48 hours before the event if you register but can no longer attend.

The team, which consists of Heather Baxter of GENI, Derek Curtis of Bond Solutions, Mark Easby of Better Brand Agency, Lisa Forster of Angelfysh and Marianne Whitfield of Cobweb, will be swimming 5,000 metres on April 16 to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The group, whose businesses are all based in the North East, met on Twitter and decided to take part in the Swimathon. The swim will take approximately three hours to complete and the team, aptly named the Twimmers, is hoping to raise over £1,000 for the charity.

Derek Curtis said: “We all use Twitter for business purposes and we had been talking for a while previous to agreeing to participate in the Swimathon. We were all discussing getting fit and the idea of participating in the event was mentioned and we all jumped at the chance.

“It just shows how social media is bringing businesses together and can provide a great platform to network with others in the region. I’m really looking forward to the challenge.”

ENDS

Notes:
The team is now busy training for the Swimathon. You can sponsor them at http://my.artezglobal.com/TeamPage.aspx?teamID=33848&langPref=en-CA .

Twitter is now one of the UK’s leading social networking sites with over 58 million members. It is a micro blogging site where users can interact and post ‘tweets’ of up to 140 characters.

We have on average (Dunbar Number) 150 social connections, so for me that represents 4650 potential social connections. There isn’t time to manage all these social connections effectively, we’d be mad to try but some people do and I’m seeing more people dump their profiles all together as they’ve hit social media burnout.

Social connections are important and valuable both to the individual and the communities they are part of. This has been well documented over the last two years and I won’t go over well trodden ground but I am concerned that people have begun to question the benefit of their social connections. This is on the back of feeling their commitment to keeping their social connections open has begun to affect their work and home life. There are lessons we can all learn to ensure we don’t find ourselves in a similar situation.

Chose to lose some social network platforms.

Dumping the social networks that you joined in a rush of enthusiasm but aren’t actually value social networks will free up your time to focus on the connections that really benefit each other. By value social networks I mean those social network that don’t feed you personally in terms of knowledge, learning and connections or you don’t feel contribute to the growth of the community.

Remove overlapping contacts.

If we stick to the principle of one person equals one connection, how many duplicate connections do you have with a person across your social networks? It’s easy to accept a friend and a follower, without giving it a second thought when we connect with them on other networks already. Consider how many people use Twitter to feed their Facebook profile or vice versa? If you follow people on both networks you’ll expose yourself to the same content twice.

Recognise what is social media noise and and then ignore it.

Remember when you were a kid traveling on holiday with your parents. You’d sit in the back of the car watching the cars coming in the other direction. Then you simply started to not see them. They were there, but you didn’t register them any more as they’d become part of the background noise.

Social network noise is the same. We waste a huge amount of time reading stuff that neither requires our input or really warrants it. I skim read quite a lot of content taking time over a few posts, comments and messages. If I can’t answer quickly, I’ll go back to it later in the evening if I have time. Important note here, no one will suffer if you don’t respond or comment. The world and your life continues regardless.

Time to read, time to respond, time to leave it be.

Be regimented about when you log onto your social networks. During work time (Unless your business is online and driven by social networks) focus on work. Keep lunchtime for re-charging the batteries, read comments, posts and messages during your lunch break but leave answering them until later in the evening after you’ve spent time with your family, done chores and have an hour or two spare.

I tend to leave Twitter and Facebook until evening and sometime don’t look at them at all if I don’t have time. If you refresh Twitter and Facebook on your smart phone, laptop etc. every couple of minutes, you’re spending too much time on your social networks and it will impact on your home life. How many of you have heard “Do I have to post a message to your Facebook to get your attention?” Be conscious of the amount of time spent online.

It’s all in the mind.

Ever spent hours and hours thinking about what someone has written on their Facebook or Twitter profile, trying to decipher if a message has more then one meaning or if it is meant for you or not? I have.

A hard lesson, but a useful one is to never take a post personally, it’s not worth giving it mind space. Some people write deliberately cryptic messages designed to attract attention and comments. It’s about control and you could be surrendering your control if your respond to them. Take control back and remember, maybe not everyone you know on your social networks are a real friend.

Do you really need to join?

I get lots of invites from friends and contacts to join them on new social network platforms something which is only going to increase over time. Most of these are automated features of new platforms designed to grow participation quickly.

Ask yourself:

Do you really need to be on this social network platform?
Does it provide the same features and benefits as other networks you’re on?
Are the same people on that platform as are on your existing social networks?
Can you contribute your knowledge and expertise to that network, is it of value?
Can that network provide learning and useful contacts for you?

It’s import that you value the social interactions you have and feel your contribution to them adds value to that community and in doing so you gain learning from them. If you feel burdened by your social media connections I hope these ideas will help you maintain your interest without sacrificing your work or home life.

On Thursday 25 March 2010, people in hundreds of cities around the world, including Newcastle will come together offline to rally around the important cause of Education by hosting local events to have fun and create awareness.  Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good.

All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects. Follow @tynetwestival on Twitter or visit http://newcastle.twestival.com for updates.

About Concern Worldwide.

Concern Worldwide was founded in 1968 to meet the needs of people living in extreme poverty, for whom every day is a fight for survival. Concern is a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organization dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of poverty. Their mission is to help people living in extreme poverty achieve major improvements in their lives – improvements they can sustain without ongoing support. Concern meets the needs of these people in a caring and personalized manner, respecting their human and cultural dignity. They are committed to reaching the most vulnerable, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Concern’s work is informed by a vision for change and their education programs target the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world, with particular emphasis on reaching out-of-school children such as girls, orphans, street children, working children, children affected by conflict, children affected by HIV and AIDS, and children with disabilities. Concern’s education programs currently reach over 700,000 people in 25 countries across the regions of Africa,  Asia, and the Caribbean.  Please follow @concern on Twitter to get a glimpse of their staff tweeting from around the world; including their efforts on the ground in Haiti.

Where the Twestival funds will go.

Each city and school hosting a Twestival will be given the opportunity to select an area of education to support.  This will be recognized with a special icon on their website once they have set a goal.  For as little as $28USD they can provide the uniform, books, pencils, and paper a child needs to attend one year of school.

Concern Worldwide are able to guarantee that 100% of Twestival funds will go direct to project costs.  This means that the money would be used for material purchases (curriculum, desks, pencils) as well as project activities such as construction of schools; rehabilitation of classrooms; teacher/management training; PTAs; HIV/AIDS school clubs; water and sanitation in schools; health education in schools; education advocacy; vocational/life-skills training for youth, farmers and women; and curriculum development for secondary school/university.

Money will not be used for things like administration, overhead, reporting oversight, etc. Concern Worldwide requires all fields that receive money strictly adhere to a six- and 12-month formal reporting protocol in which the field details the specific activities it has undertaken and how the funds were utilized. This system provides a very tangible case studies, evidence and updates, and other detailed information about how programs have progressed and benefited program participants; including the financial allocation in field; the GPS locations of schools in receipt of funds; digital video clips and photos from the schools; and case studies/quotes from people who have benefitted from the projects.  As cities are confirmed and fundraising goals are set, we will work with the team at Concern Worldwide to identify specific projects we will be supporting.

The social networking juice that powers a generation across sprawling vibrant communities has its feed forcibly cut off when the majority of company staff walk into work. All the potential of networked company communities, the opportunity for people to collaborate and and share knowledge is left at home and lost to the company.Is it fear of lost productivity to idle chatter, tighter budgets and a weakening of central control that drives businesses to produce restrictive policies on social media use at work? These are long held arguments against developing a social media strategy, and simply don’t hold water. Devolving central control works. Flat organisational structures dissolves barriers between teams, ideas are generated with the customer and new products and services can be brought online quicker than through the traditional gate process. Vibrant social communities support this open structure and in today’s rapidly changing economy, knowledge and innovation that drives the market can be at the heart of a company’s social community. Businesses have to let go of centralised control.

People who keep close to their customers by empowering their staff to engage directly with them across their internal and external comms channels, to solve problems and find solutions, know what the market’s needs are and can respond faster to changes. In flat organisations, decisions are pushed through faster because the ideas are fed directly into decision makers without having to go through limiting chains of command. It also means the creativity of staff is released, and ideas and innovation blossoms.

Companies who are slow to release the energy of their own staff could have serious repercussions for them when the next generation of employees, the tuned in Millennials who increasingly spend more of their time online being entertained, learning, researching, listening and talking to friends, enter the workplace.

Think of the possibilities of a socially networked business. The ability to nurture new ways of thinking and innovating together is already proving sustainable (Look at the human genome project) and businesses who are tuning onto the opportunity are setting the standard for a new social business model that puts customers inside their products/service development process. These businesses tap into the human processor at the core of it’s workforce and free peoples minds to dream and create better products and services.

The winners and losers in business are borne out by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams who suggest in their seminal book ‘Wikinomics’, when web properties are compared. The difference is the losers build websites, and the winners build vibrant communities i.e wiki beat britannica, Blogger beat CNN, Craigslist beat Monster and Googlemaps beat MapQuest. The losers build walled gardens the winners public squares.

Millennials will form over half the available workforce by 2014, and it is they who will set the bar for their employers.

ndi_analytics_contentreport

With a combination of both inspirational and practical speakers including our very own Marketing Director Declan Metcalfe, Your Marketing Show will provide delegates with worthwhile tips and suggestions on improving their own marketing.

The event will also mark the start to the “80 Days around Marketing” programme to celebrate the 80th birthday of the North East branch of the CIM.

Your Marketing Show will be held at The Radisson SAS Durham in the North East on 3rd March.

If you would like to book for the Your Marketing Show 2010, please book online using the CIM Events Booking System. Alternatively please call The Chartered Institute of Marketing Region and Branch Events team on (0)1628 427340 or by email on cimevents@cim.co.uk.

Everyone and anyone is talking up social media right now. Asking you to “join the conversation”, “engage” with your customers rather than shouting at them. And telling you that if you don’t use these tools you’re at a major disadvantage.
But what’s the truth about social media? Can they really help your business? And how, exactly?

Who’s speaking?
After announcing our first set of speakers, Professor Malcolm Young, Paul Smith and Stephen Davies, last week, here’s who else will be talking:

Jason Brownlee. Prior to launching Dollywagon Media Sciences, Jason was the founder and research director of Other Lines of Enquiry, a successful media research consultancy. He has developed several new media research technologies, including eye-tracking, SMS surveys and online media engagement testing.

Justin Souter. An experienced, customer-facing consultant who recognises the wider context for IT solutions. Justin recently started his own business, Souter Consulting, which offers advisory and consultancy services to customers who want to maximise the return on their technology investments.

Armin Talic. Armin has spent the last seven years as a designer, project manager and new media practitioner, most recently putting his experience to use as the community manager for revolutionary web video specialists Quick.tv.

Declan Metcalfe. Last year Declan started his own company, Better Brand Agency with partners Mark Easby and Peter Jones and works with public and private sector organisations helping them gain fresh customer insight and develop their brands.

Want to be a guinea pig?
Good. Because if you come to October’s Think and a Drink, you won’t really have a choice. During the event we’ll be running an exclusive networking experiment run by Jason Brownlee of Dollwagon Media Sciences. Armed with a Think and a Drink delegate badge, some business cards and your sparkling personality, you’ll be ready to experience 3 genuinely useful 60 second business meetings.

The Think and a Drink delegate badges will have 3 names on the back with 3 highly relevant people you are due to meet (and in what order).  It will also tell you what you are meeting to discuss and where you will meet – the venue will be split into ‘zones’.
Each meeting will last for 60 seconds.  That’s long enough to put a face to a name, break the ice and identify your common interests.  You can then arrange to meet later in the evening, perhaps with a relaxing drink in your hand.
After 60 seconds a bell will ring and you’ll dash off to your next meeting.  At the end of the speed networking session you will have made 3 new contacts with experience of a specific issue or challenge that you stand to learn from.
We will learn all the information we need to from your registration form.

Register today
Places for Think and a Drink events usually run out quickly. So book yours today at www.thinkandadrink.com
If you have any questions please call Ellie Silson on 0191 556 1127 or email ellie.silson@codeworks.net.

P.S. If you’re coming from Middlesbrough you can hop on a free bus we’re running to and from the event. Please indicate so when booking.