As we wrote a few days ago, Bing and Facebook have partnered for what some are saying to be a new search results era: the integration of social networking from Facebook to organic search results from Bing. It was just a matter of time for Google to strike back and display their search results details from a social sharing “environment”.

Basically, Google seems to test the waters by adding a “Shared by number+” next to number of related articles, in their news section. This move from Google will show how popular a story is on Twitter or other social sites and it seems to perfectly respond to users’ demands, in simple words: if a story is so popular it really is worth clicking and reading it.

For now, the results come only from Twitter but it can become very helpful while trying to see which Twitter users are quoting or making comments on a particular link in their tweets. When clicking on the “shared by” link the user is taken to a window displaying real-time sharing activity from Google Updates.

This experiment showcases a great feature that every Google News’ user might use and we look forward to seeing how this will evolve in time. Latest signs from social networking and search engines world reveal that sharing becomes a very important part of the search engines results, the web designers from WebCreationUK are keeping an eye on this particular subject as it might be a new step forward for the online environment.

Nowadays, many business owners are turning their hands to the online environment, whether they see this as an add-on to their offline store or as a whole movement to selling online. There are a lot of motives for doing this, from lower maintenance costs to higher numbers of people searching to buy products online.

Once an ecommerce website is created, the major barrier encountered is promoting and getting traffic to that website. By getting traffic we, of course, think about targeted traffic, prospects that are willing to spend money on the products/services one promotes. Here are some great methods any ecommerce business owner should use for promoting his products online.

1.      PPC Advertising

Probably the best way for getting highly-targeted traffic to a website. If done correctly, it can become a very profitable tool every business should use. On the other hand, it can be one of the fastest ways of loosing big money in short time so  have a chat with some SEO professionals in order to getting things right.

2.      Email Promotion

This method best works along with another trick, getting people to sign up to your newsletter. Make them an offer: whoever registers to your newsletters until the end of the current month has the chance of winning a gift (it’s best to be a gift related to what you promote). The newsletter should contain tips and tricks related to your niche or industry news, you decide, but make it a weekly one. Once you have setup a big subscribers database plan and an email promotion. It can be a discount or anything that offers more value for the money.

3.      Social Media, forums and blogs

Yet another inexpensive way to promote your online store. Twitter and Facebook should not be left out from your promotion campaign. Search for related forums and blogs, become an authority in your niche and most important, do not spam while this will get you only negative image instead of a positive one. Make connections, answer questions, show your expertise in this field. If done well, this will send you an impressive amount of traffic towards your business.

4.      Affiliate program

Set up an affiliate program. This is a great way to get more customers for your products. Basically, you reward with incentives, the affiliates promoting your products will get your people buying stuff. Very powerful!

These four steps are definitely the best ways for promoting an online store and for getting highly targeted traffic to your business. Keep an eye on our website design blog for more tips and tricks.

A recent CNN study for how news is shared and consumed revealed that “shared news matters more”, in translation, social media is the most frequent way for sharing news online. The study was conducted on 2,300 people and the results were that 43% from the online news sharing piece is through the way of social media, through popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and MySpace. The other 30% shared through emails, 15% to SMS and 12% to Instant Messaging.

Other interesting results from this study show that 65% of shared content is regarding ongoing stories, 19% for breaking news and 16% is related to “funny” content,  however let’s discuss a little more about the news sharing through social media. Why is this the most used method for news sharing?

A simple and logical answer would be that social media is featured nowadays on almost all online sites. Just think about how can you share a story on Facebook? Click on a “Like” button and the story gets on Facebook in a blink of an eye. For Twitter the same patterns apply. By being accessible on each and any news website and being so easy to share stories through a single click, it’s no wonder why people choose to share news through social media instead of logging in to their email accounts, add the people for sending the news, copy/paste link and so on. Sharing through social media is indeed, a no-hassles way for making news popular nowadays.

As top UK website designers, WebCreationUK is also very familiar with the social media wave so you can easily follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Twitter has had an amazing summer with a 33% increase in total tweets since May. According to the social media giant: “Twitter processed 2.64 billion tweets this August, an increase of 33% over May.”

In August, an average of 85 million tweets passed through Twitter every day.

When you look at the statistics for Twitter for the whole of 2010, activity has grown impressively fast. In August there were 115% more tweets than in January.

But will this be a summer time tweeting phenomenon or an indication of what is yet to come in Twittersphere? We’ll be keeping you posted.

Speak to WebCreationUK for information on web design and how to integrate your website with your Twitter page, you can also follow us on Twitter!

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.

While Twitter is a great tool for social media marketing, it doesn’t come without its disadvantages. The social media networks make it very possible for people to have a dig at your company or make a complaint.

So how should you deal with this type of negative tweeting? Here we bring you a guide to dealing with the less favourable tweepers.
Don’t get angry: It’s very easy to get immediately hot-headed and annoyed over someone’s complaint, especially if it hasn’t been your fault. But be careful not to jump in with a frustrated tweet. Remember that Twitter posts can be read by everyone.

Be attentive: It’s important to show you care so make a prompt reply, but one that is thought out. If someone is complaining about a product or service then explain it to them. If they have a genuine complaint then ensure you dealwith it in a mannerly way and make the best amends possible.

Is 140 characters enough? Twitter posts can often seem short and pointed. This is not the best format for an explanation or an apology. Why not reply instead by email or by phone?

Some things are best left: Every business will have its anti-fans. This is just part of life and you can’t please everyone all of the time. If the tweet is unreasonable or impossible, but it’s not a direct complaint about your business or your service, then you could just leave it. There is a difference between a true complaint and someone who has simply decided to diss your company.

If you would like to know more about social media packages and web design, then speak to WebCreationUK, you can also follow us on Twitter.