Facebook launches Facebook for business

And about time too.

Until now Facebook has made life less than easy for businesses. Why? Because it wanted to drive them to its advertising platform. The only problem with that is that advertising is even more peripheral on Facebook than it is on other sites - you go on it to share, comment, socialise and show off - not to buy stuff.

In that case I hear you say, why should businesses bother? Because Facebook provides the opportunity to engage customers, fans, prospects, tyre kickers and saddoes without a life (people like me) in a unique way. Together with Twitter it represents a new way of reaching out and communicating with people individually and in groups.

So why the change of heart at Facebook?

In a word, Google+. Facebook has to defend its position as the global social leader and Google+ might, just might, be a serious threat. Hence Facebook for business.

Social media marketing is new. It’s unproven for many but there are examples of small businesses that are using it smartly and benefiting. Some of them are even in Gloucestershire - lame keyword hint to Google.

If you want help understanding how to use social media within your overall marketing, get in touch - 01453 760271. And be a treasure, follow us on Twitter and please, pretty please, ‘like’ Epicado on Facebook. Shameless I know.

If you’re a Google Adwords advertiser, you’ll know that the challenge is to achieve the highest number of conversions at the lowest possible cost.

Google allows you to set parameters for optimising your pay-per-click campaign to extract the most value from your budget. You can either opt to optimise for click costs or for conversions. Until now, if you were optimising for conversions, you could set a Maximum Cost Per Acquisition (conversion) so that you never paid more for a customer than the amount you set.

Now Google has introduced a new parameter - Target CPA which changes its optimisation system from staying under a maximum figure to achieving an overall average cost of conversion/acquisition.

So how does this help increase leads and conversions? With an average CPA, you’re allowing Google to display your ads in places where hitherto its algorithm would have prevented their display due to the high cost per click and hence cost per conversion.

To see what happened when an advertiser switched to Target CPA, have a look at this article. Gloucestershire advertisers - and others; we’re not picky - could benefit by testing this new pay-per-click feature.

Find out how by getting in touch - 01453 760271.

Those cuddly geeks at Google have revised their guide to the basics of search engine optimisation or SEO as it’s known in the trade.

Why would Google want to help webmasters with the ‘dark arts’ of SEO?

Because good SEO isn’t dark.

Ethical search engine optimisation is about writing, structuring and building your website in such a way that Google and the other search engines can ‘index’ ie, store and categorise your pages correctly. It’s then a case of attracting links from relevant, trusted web pages.

How do you do that? By writing great content. Does that mean you need to be a Nobel Prize winner? No.

Just be your helpful, knowledgeable and fun loving self. Authenticity is what works online - if you can fake that, you’re on your way!

And if you need help with your search engine optimisation, you know where we are - 01453 760271.