Corporate gifts are important

Corporate Gifts  

A corporate gift is a type of gift that is bestowed on a recipient by a business or company. Corporate presents, or gifts, may be given as a means of showing appreciation for efforts made by the recipient that have benefited the corporation. In other applications, a corporate gift is sometimes described as a one-time presentation to a local charity or municipality as part of the company’s community involvement efforts.

• Corporate gifts are important for a company's image and help in building a strong relationship with its clients.
• Corporate gifts have stood the test of time as an effective promotional tool.
• Corporate gifts are suitable for special occasions such as corporate functions or formal   launch of a brand or services. From a marketing perspective, corporate gifts are highly effective as they serve diverse purposes.

Before, corporate gifts would mostly consist of a memento and would serve as a mere display piece. Today however, corporate gifts have come a long way and evolved ever since. People not only seek gifts that are unique, but also something that the receiver would remember for years to come. Corporate gifts convey the sentiments of value, trust and mutual respect.

At In Touch with the World, we realize the importance of building bridges and breaking the ice with your customers, clients and partners. By the effective usage of corporate gifts, we make them feel valued and help give due recognition to your relationship.

Corporate gifts can be sent for any occasion such as sickness, to share an exciting event, offer condolences and also to appreciate.

    

2013-ITWWW

What is Google Penguin & How Do We Survive These Updates

The release of Google's Penguin Update earlier this year sent the SEO Industry into a panic. Penguin is a Google algorithm designed to downgrade websites that violate their "quality guidelines". Penguin not only focusses on hidden text, site redirects and cloaking but also keyword stuffing and link schemes, all the things officially known as the "black-hat SEO techniques". In short, Google Penguin is the Webspam Sheriff.

Officially now known as the Google Penguin Update, and the updates still haven't stopped. 2.0 was released on May 22nd and is said to be a deeper algorithm update with increased focus on flushing out sites that have benefited from link spam.

Previously, Google released Panda in 2011, but how does Panda differ from Penguin? Where Penguin's aim is to penalize the SEO "mistakes" of websites, Panda is an algorithm aimed at downgrading websites with poor user experiences. 

By Google’s estimates, Penguin affects approximately 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in "highly spammed" languages.

The purpose per Google was to catch excessive spammers, but it seems some legitimate sites and SEOs have been caught with this latest algorithm change. Few websites lost search rankings on Google for specific keywords during the Panda and Penguin rollouts. It appears anchor text was to blame in these cases, as the links pointing to these sites concentrated on only one or a few keywords while the content of the websites was satisfactory. As the update focused on the quality of backlinks, so the result varied for different websites. Google specifically mentions that doorway pages, which are only built to attract search engine traffic, are against their webmaster guidelines. Regardless, many people still use this technique.

The point is to keep to Google's Webmaster guidelines to avoid being penalized, but if you were hit by the Penguin update, here is a few ways to get back on track:

• Use high-quality links when creating a plan for link-building
• Have high quality links linking back to your site
• Provide helpful, educational information to users
• Reference well-known sources via links
• Write valuable content
• Avoid spamming users & shady link-building practices.
• Try to get low-quality links and Keyword spamming taken-down
• Post fresh content regularly

    

2013-ITWWW-Odette Nieuwoudt

Why SEO is Not Dead

Neal Cabage is only the most recent writer to use the words "SEO is Dead." in a headline. His article follow a number of blog posts, and even a website seoisdead.net, all dedicated to this topic. This has quickly become one of the oldest clichés on the internet. Any quick search for the term “seo is dead” or “is seo dead” will quickly bring up results from both sides of the argument, though you’ll notice those who argue against this supposed death of SEO populate a larger portion of the top search results. I can’t imagine why…

Let us look at why SEO will never die.

SEO, an acronym for search engine optimization, is broadly defined as including any activity or set of activities designed to get business from the organic or natural search results in a search engine. If you change the title tag on your homepage in the hope it will cause your website to rank better on Google, you’re doing SEO.

There are ways to get business from search engines that are not generally defined as having anything to do with SEO. Adspace on Google is not part of SEO, but can be beneficial to your SEO efforts. 

SEO will only ever die when Search Engines do. Until then, it continues to change and shape it's way around the Search Engines. The key is to stay on trend with the latest developments, and adapt your efforts effectively. So by definition even the word Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means to “game” the Google search engines (and others) to get your valuable content ranked higher than it would be if left alone to the forces of the Web. At the moment, Content is King. Google wants great, shareable content that people care about. 

So, how does Google's changes affect your SEO efforts? 

Simple.

You need to invest in real, valuable, relevant content that your audience wants. Grow your internal thought leaders to where they can add value to your audience and positioning in the market. Follow internal SEO practices to make sure it is found and sees the light of day. Take the time to make it so compelling that people talk about it and share it.

Look to real social media community support, compelling PR, and real content; for that is where true SEO practitioners are turning more and more also.

Common sense, but not common practice.

The bottom line is, SEO is alive, it's a flexible thing that changes more often than not. Bloggers going on and on about how SEO has died, has clearly lost the trend. 

Next week we'll be taking a look at Google's Penguin updates, and how to recover if you were hit.

    

2013-ITWWW-Odette Nieuwoudt

Why Do People Share?

Before you dive in you must first understand one of the basic principals of Social Media: Why do people share?

Word of mouth and Social Media are more effective than traditional advertising. People trust word of mouth more. It’s also more targeted than traditional advertising. Plus it’s cost-effective, if you can get it to work.

It doesn't cost you anything to get people to talk about your brand. However, it requires you to understand why they are talking about some things rather than others.

Jonah Berger gives us the 6 STEPPS on why things catch on:

1. Social currency
2. Triggers
3. Emotion
4. Public
5. Practical value
6. Stories

The main points are:

Social Currency. LinkedIn applied social currency to their users.

LinkedIn sent their users an email that informed them they were one of the top profiles on their site. When people received this email, not only did they feel special, they shared this information with others.

As a marketer, one of the greatest ways to employ social currency is to make people feel like insiders. You need to make them feel like they are part of a special club or have some sort of status that nobody else has. Not only is it good for them, it’s good for the brand too.

Triggers. They are equally if not more important than social currency.

Take the Rebecca Black song, Friday, or Psy's Gangnum Style. Both have become of the most watched videos on YouTube. (Gangnum Style 1,729,149,285 and Friday 54,983,601) yet, both songs were mostly received badly.

The idea is that if it’s top of mind, it will be tip of tongue. The idea of a trigger can include sight, sound, smell or anything in our environment that will activate something else in our mind.

Stories. Stories are the currency of conversation. 

Stories provide a way to convey information in a narrative form that makes everyone lean in because they want to find out how the story ends. We think in terms of stories, not just chunks of information. It’s the standard way to communicate. The key is to have a certain type of story.  

Always keep in mind who your audience is and what will appeal to them. The information must act as a bridge between you and your clients, and breach the opening for conversation.

    

2013-ITWWW-Odette Nieuwoudt

How to Drive More Traffic From Facebook to Your Website

So, you have a Facebook page and you have a Website. Both have important information for your clients, but how do you create a connection between them?

Here are just a few simple ways to achieve it:

Create a Post on Facebook.

Not every post will drive traffic to your website. The content of the post has to have a direct connection to the content of the website, and it is important to paste a link to the website in the post. Remember, the what you share has to be informative, but also urge people to click on the link to read more.

Promote your post to Fans.

Only about 10-16% of fans will see your posts for many different reasons. Promoting your posts will reach more fans, but using the "Boost Post" button is not effective and will only cause you to lose money with very limited results. Instead, use the Power Editor, this way you'll have full control over placement and targeting and fans will see your promoted posts in their News Feed.

Promote your post to non-fans.

When posting a new status, always keep your audience in mind. You'll want to appeal to your fans, as well as prospective fans, and if you are promoting your posts with the Power Editor, make sure to target both your fans and non-fans. This way you can gain new likes and remind the people who care about your posts to read them!

Domain Sponsored Stories.

This is an extremely effective way to generate traffic to your website. Encourage your fans to share stories from your website, to their friends and pages. This will broaden your reach. When this share is turned into an ad, it is known as a Domain Sponsored Story.

Get Insights.

You can now even get Insights from Facebook on the traffic sent from Facebook to your website. 

Insights Dashboard, click the green Insights for your Website button at the top right.

It will bring up a dialogue where you can enter your domain name eg. itwww.co.za (no www) and a meta tag to copy/paste on the root page of your website, under the <head> section, and Facebook will accumulate the result of traffic for you.

    

2013-ITWWW-Odette Nieuwoudt