Employees and social media use is a hot topic for many companies. While some companies have banned staff from using social media in work time, others have wholeheartedly embraced it. To help you to make up your mind about social media, here are some top tips from a couple of experts.

The first top 10 list for employers comes from Megan C. Winter of law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP:

1.  Get familiar with Facebook, LinkedIn or other sites that are popular with your employees.
2. Update current company policies.
3. Consider whether your company environment needs a specific social media policy.
4. Prohibit use of the employee’s company e-mail address.
5. Discourage your managers from “friending” their subordinate employees.
6. Immediately get a copy of any post that is the subject of a complaint.
7. Only use social media for employment screening in a consistent way.
8. Warn managers to follow standard policies for recommendations on LinkedIn or other professional sites.
9. Be aware of possible protected, concerted activity.
10. Above all, use common sense.

Meanwhile, on-line social media giant Mashable gives their social media policies:
1. Introduce the purpose of social media
2. Be responsible for what you write
3. Be authentic
4. Consider your audience
5. Exercise good judgment
6. Understand the concept of community
7. Respect copyrights and fair use
8. Remember to protect confidential & proprietary info
9. Bring value
10. Productivity matters.

WebCreationUK can assist you in not only website design but social media. Take a look at our social media package and come speak to us for more information, you can also find us on Twitter and Facebook!

The analysis from ShareThis could prove really helpful if you’re looking to optimise your social media campaigns. One of the metrics used in ShareThis, which reaches 400 million people a month through social media share buttons across web content worldwide, is the Audience Index.

The Audience Index allows website owners and publishers to compare social audiences against 850,000 other sites and to find out what types of visitors your site attracts

The there’s the “Social Reach” metric, which measures the “true value of shared media across the web by looking at outbound sharing and inbound social traffic”.

This means that you can now get a more accurate measurement of how a piece of content circulates around the world wide web after it’s been shared across any service, rather than just the simple number of shares counted by a single service such as Facebook.

It seems that according to ShareThis, Facebook accounts for 45% of all shared content across its network, followed by email with 34% and Twitter on 12%.

You can see now why ShareThis might just be the tool you’ve been looking for to assess how your content gets around the web.

WebCreationUK can help you bring your Twitter or Facebook page up to date with one of our social media packages, come speak to us for more!

We have come across a great new job title: Network Weaving. A social media company in Glasgow has recently announced the appointment of their first Network Weaver.

So what exactly will this job entail? It seems that a Network Weaver’s job description includes a wide range of social media actions including:

• Sharing resources, links and information about a company

• Building relationships with network members by linking to their blog posts and commenting on blogs, be-friending them on on-line social networks and celebrating their contributions.
• Working with different people on multiple channels such as e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and blogs
• Engaging with an inviting others to join conversations – as well as facilitating those conversations.

And while some of these actions and conversations will be actionable, at other times they are simply to build relationships for the future benefit of a company.

We reckon that the Network Weaver job will become more popular in the next few years as more companies aim to engage in on-line and social media marketing.

WebCreationUK have social media packages available, speak to us for more information on social media and website design.

This could be an interesting piece of research if you are aiming to attract the most potential customers to your ecommerce site. Especially if you use discount vouchers and social media marketing platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

A report, by price comparison website InvisibleHand, has found that traffic to internet shopping sites is 75% higher at 4pm on a Wednesday than at the quietest times. There is a 52% rise in the number of people shopping on-line on a typical workday afternoon compared with mornings. Meanwhile, on-line shopping traffic is 11% higher at 2pm than at midday.

Sunday night is the second most popular time for on-line shopping after Wednesday, with a 27% increase over Saturday night.

Could it be that office workers are turning to on-line shopping when they are most bored? And that Sunday night TV is not good enough to hold the attention of the average person as they switch on their computers instead?
Whatever the conclusion of this report, it does give a few clues for ecommerce businesses.

WebCreationUK currently offer an e-shop summer special. If you are looking to set up your own ecommerce store, speak to us for more information on your web design needs.

A new survey reveals that UK consumers are now spending 45% of their time watching television or using mobiles and other communication gadgets.
The report by government regulator Ofcom also found that:

• We send four times as many texts per day than in 2004.
• We spend nearly a quarter of our time on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
• We spend 3 hours and 45 minutes watching TV each day.

So it seems that media and communications are now very much central to the lives of all Brits. On average we use them for nearly half our waking hours.

Younger people have shown the biggest changes in media use but the divide between the use of technology by youngerand older people is narrowing as a greater number of older people go on-line.

Further facts found in the survey include:

•    Smartphone ownership is up by 81 percent from 7.2 million users in May 2009 to 12.8 million in May this year.
•    In the first quarter of 2010 nearly a quarter of adults accessed content or sent emails on their mobile phones, up from 20% in the first quarter of 2009. Among those aged 15 to 24 the rise was 45%.
•    Surfing the internet on mobile phones is the fastest growing mobile media activity. One million more new users did so in the first quarter of 2010, which sees the total users now at 13.5 million, compared to 9 million in the same quarter last year.

For businesses, one of the clearest messages is to ensure that your website is simple to browse on a mobile handset. If you want to find out more about how to do this then check out leading web design firm WebCreationUK.

Many businesses are now wising up to the benefits of social media marketing. And one of the best platforms for social media is Facebook.

Facebook has more than 500 million members and is still growing. This means that there is a huge potential audience and target market out there worldwide on Facebook.

Here are some interesting facts about Facebook:

▪    More than 85% of women in America have a social network profile, and 95% of these women are on Facebook.

▪    Facebook has been translated into more than 100 languages – and now a third of the world population.

▪    More than 50% of all internet users who shop online are also on Facebook.

▪    In its latest quarterly report, Facebook reported a 25% increase in membership in a total of 47 countries.

When you look at the numbers and facts alone, it ‘s seems clear that if there’s only one social media platform that you decide to embrace for your first social media campaign then Facebook is a good bet.

WebCreationUK can assist you in any of your web design or social media needs, speak to us for more information on our social media packages.