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Hi Margaret, I think you are spot on, a marketing campaign should be a blended approach of different techniques.

I suspect Social Media may be more of a message re-inforcement, or touchy feely approach rather than more traditional marketing and generating direct sales. I guess the balance is how much time (and cost) you assign to it.

Loads of stuff on adwords, have a read. First thread has an adwords tutorial. Only you can decide if its any good for your business, depending on your ROI. Personally I think its great
Google Adwords & other PPC - My Local Business Forum

Good plan, see what happens with the big boys.

I notice hotels.com still has position 1 and 2 for the search term hotels

You could argue that's hardly a decent return of search results, with 1 and 2 being the same website thumbsdown

motors.co.uk is still number 1 for motors. mylocalforums still number 1 for mylocalforums

Be interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks. Anyone else seen any exact match domains disappear from Page 1?

Human - The Killers, top song

Thats a good point, there's not exactly been much confidence in company run schemes over the last few years. How many people have been stung from failed pension schemes, and business changing the rules, end of final salary pensions etc.


My understanding is that this is supplemental to a state pension, but my cynical side says this is the beginning of the end, as it's only a matter of time before someone accepts the fact that we won't be able to afford state pensions for all. Just wish they would be a little more honest.

So are you guilty? Paying people to fake reviews for your business?

Running a review site can be quite interesting because we get loads of fake reviews on a daily basis. Some of them are poorly written overseas pigeon English which have to come from sites such as fiverr.com

As with link spam, and fake likes, I've no doubt fake reviews will be the next penalty battleground.

Here's an article about it on marketing land if you want to learn more.
Does Your Company Pay For Social Media Reviews?

Oh dear, Google recently decided to target exact match domains, as these are deemed to be low quality (which a lot are).

Unfortunately it looks like there has been a fair bit of collateral damage again, looking at some of the feedback on Search Engine Land.

If you don't know, an exact match domain is simply a domain name that exactly relates to the product or service you sell. eg pens.com

Traditionally it has been quite an easy way to rank high in Google for a keyword if you have it in your URL. This has led to lots of throw away adsense sites just cashing in on some easy traffic, and Googles attempting to remove these from it's index.

But it looks like it's implementation has been a bit heavy handed... again..

You can see more on the story at Search Engine Land.

So has anybody been affected yet by this?

Two sides to this argument, good news for lower paid people who haven't made any pension provision. But not so good for employers, as the ever rising cost of employees is set to rise further...

"Automatic enrolment into a workplace pension, which starts for some on Monday, will affect millions of people.

The aim is to ensure that low and middle earners are provided with an addition to the state pension... ...Only the largest employers, such as the big supermarkets, will be involved in the first wave of automatic enrolment. Others will then join as the system is rolled out.

The smallest firms will not sign up their staff until June 2015 at the earliest."
BBC News - Pensions auto-enrolment starts for biggest firms

What do people think, with your business owner hat on, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

How does this work elsewhere? Does the US have mandatory employer pensions?

I agree, 99 times out of 100 its a standard response and then ignored, but I guess I got a bit baited this time I actually found the responses quite bizarre and funny which is why I thought I'd share them.

You are right though, it can be quite surprising how some people react to a comment they don't like, which to be fair we very rarely have here, but it can be rife in other forums.

I'm very anti the pack instinct as well which can be a forum curse. A good debate can be one thing, even heated debate, but when it starts turning nasty with multiple people sticking the knives in, it's time to bail.

As you say highly unprofessional, especially on something that is badged as a business forum.

If any members have got the hump or said anything derogatory to any our mods, make sure you let me know! That's not something I will stand for. I'm not that hard to track down if anyone's got an axe to grind

Echoing Dreamraven, "engaging your audience" is the key. A lot of people (I'm also guilty) tend to forget the social side, ie interaction, not just sales messaged or self serving links. Engage with your audience, comment on their services or products. A bit of flattery can work wonders, then all of a sudden, someone has reposted/retwttited,repinned a comment, pic, URL etc.

Your thread title is "how to get rapid traffic..." Maybe thats where you are going wrong. Take it nice and easy, don't look for shortcuts, become known as the photo expert across different channels. It's not quick or easy, but it is sustainable once you get there.

Although this is aimed at FB PPC, I think it highlights some points in how to use FB properly.

http://www.mylocalforums.com/facebook-business/5616-facebook-advertising-measuring-your-roi.html