Phorm, the controversial software company that has been rejected by the UK after much consumer concern, now appears to be doing well in Brazil.

The company was criticised for providing a service that interferes too much with privacy. Their software enables ISP providers to track consumer behaviour which then enables online advertising to be very targeted. Although large companies showed an initial interest, UK backing fell away when the controversy hit the mass media. Even Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the internet’s founders, attacked the business for intruding on privacy too much.

Phorm has managed to gain a strong foothold in Brazil with many companies signing up to their service. There is also speculation that they are in talks with the news and entertainment website Terra which is owned by Spain’s Telefonica which does business across South America and the US.

Consumers fear that Phorm may try to enter the UK again via the back door: Telefonica owns the O2 telecoms business. This is highly unlikely. Even if Phorm were to be exonerated in the UK, PR and marketing departments are unlikely to engage with a company that has been so publicly ousted from the UK marketplace.

Tracking online consumer behaviour is a lucrative and effective way to gather data that allows internet marketers to target audiences with products that are honed to their tastes and needs. What consumers are not aware of is that this is happening all the time when they are online. Amazon, for example uses software that suggests products for you based on your previous choices. Google adapts its response to your search queries depending on your previous online behaviour. Facebook advertises to you based on the analysis of what you do and write on their site.

Last August the Office of Fair Trading said they would be investigating online advertising including software that tracks consumer behaviour. It remains to be seen whether the results of this study will have an impact on how UK marketing can go about their business.

Once you have identified your main keywords then its time to use them. Making sure that your main keywords appear consistently in all your online marketing will help to maximise your campaigns.

Optimising your website
This is a technical area. For some people websites are just attractive windows that consumers will enjoy visiting and hopefully engaging and purchasing from. In reality website construction needs the involvement of people who know about search engine optimisation. Keywords need to be embedded in:

• title tags
• headings
• links
• the website navigation system
• document titles, directory names, file names
• the body text

Optimise all your digital output
Use keywords when labelling your videos, audios and all images. These are all included in many search facilities and are becoming more and more popular with the general public.

Social networking
Use your keywords in all your social networking. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, they all allow you to bookmark tags (your keywords) which make it easier for people to find you. This is particularly important now that search engines are using live search results.  Even posts on online forums have search facilities.

Back Links
Using your keywords in links that go to your site is very important as the search engines take this as one very important indication of the usefulness of your site to the readers. Building up good back links takes time, be patient.

Press releases
Use your keywords in everything you put out there including press releases, emails, articles, bio’s. It all counts because it makes it easier for people to find you.

Documents
Optimise any documents you have online with keyword content: pdf’s and word documents can all be used in search engines.

Think in terms of keyword optimisation for every piece of material you produce and you won’t go far wrong.

With so many forms of online marketing now available to you the key to making the most of everything that you do is to fully harness the potential of each and every piece of material you produce.

Keep in touch – the power of RSS
Make sure that everything you produce has an RSS feed link so that anyone who wants to be kept up to date can get the information they want automatically. This applies to all social media (blogs, social networking sites) as well as your website information. Don’t make people have to find you again. Make it easy for them.

Effective Keywords
Choose the most effective keywords and key phrases to use accross all your online marketing. This will make all your efforts more targeted and effective. Who are you audience? What have you got that they want the most at this moment in time? This is the basis for your keywork search and online marketing campaign.

Social Networking
Are you a member of social networking sites? It is very easy to send information to social networks. For example if you write a blog post you can easily send a link to Twitter and Facebook to let your contacts there know about the new information.

Do you have easy links on all the marketing material that you produce so that people can pass your name on to others in their social networks?

Press release
Announce your press release on your website. Make this the link back target so that when people read about you on other sites they link back to your company website or blog.

All information
When you produce a piece of marketing allow people to follow you in the way that best suits them by having all your contact information available: your website, blog, Twitter, Facebook and site information.

Break it down
Think creatively when using multi-media. Your time and money investment can go further if you look at all the options. For example, if you create an online video, then break it down – use the script as a pdf download, use the audio as a podcast on your site.

Conventional Media
If you use conventional media marketing whether its print, radio or TV advertising, add your online details. People like to look you up.

Blogging is one form of social media marketing that can enhance your company. But why and what is the best way to go about it?

The Why?

A shop window
By providing a platform via which your customers can get to know you and your products and services. Like your website, its another shop window but one that is ever changing and dynamic.

Creating links to you website
Blogs can help you to create inbound links to your website. Search engine’s like inbound links from authoritative and content laden sources. If your blog is rich with useful information for your visitors then the search engines will treat links from there as ‘good’ and they will help you to increase your search engine ranking. Creating inbound links is a big part of search engine optimisation so if you are serious about your ranking in the search engines then a blog will definately help.

Communication
Blogs that allow comments from its readers enable your audience to communicate with you. This can provide useful feedback for your company.

Advertising
Advertising your products on your blog and linking straight to them on your website will provide extra traffic for your shopping cart. A good blog can generate lots of traffic and enable you to increase sales directly.

The How?

Posting often and regularly
It is important to post often and regularly when it comes to blogs. ‘As often as you can’ is probably the best phrase to have in mind when it comes to blogging.  Its also important not to leave large gaps between posts.

Great content
Your blog posts have to be informative or interesting or funny (or all three). But seriously, keeping good content going is the most important thing. When you are writing, just think about your target audience. What would they like to hear about? What would they find interesting? What are their interests?

Keywords
Use your main keywords and keyphrases to enable the search engine robots to search through your writing. Optimising your blog for the search engines is important if you want to rank well.

Write naturally
Search engines are looking for natural patterns of writing. This means no formula’s but natural, informative writing. This can seem like a contradiction: You are told to focus on keywords but then you are told to write naturally. It can be done. Focus mainly on writing naturally but keep the keywords to the forefront of your mind whilst you are doing it.

Natural writing is also varied. So write posts of different lengths and intersperse text posts with photos and video.

Patience
It can take time to build up a following on a blog. Just be patient and keep going.

Currently there are very mixed reports about social media and social networking in particular: how it can be used for online marketing, who is using it and how successful it is. What is certain is that its importance is growing in the lives of everyday people.

Taking a step back from all the reports there are certain facts that are clear:

• It is being used successfully by some companies to enhance their business
• It is still a relatively new media so even experienced marketers are still finding their way and developing new ways to use it
• Some companies are still reluctant to use it and much of this is based on lack of knowledge

Recent statistics contradict themselves. In the latest survey the ‘2009 Tribalization of Business Study’ 94% of respondents say that they will be increasing their social media spend even though high percentages do not think that their efforts so far are helping them to achieve their business objectives.

So what is the problem here? If its not meeting objectives why are businesses happy to increase their spending in this area?

Businesses are happy to increase their spending in this area because it is potentially a lucrative place to be. Its because that is where a high percentage of their customers and potential customers are actively participating.

One of the problems is with measurement. For example the study found that measurements of success for online communities could be misrepresentative. Respondents cited that stats for the number of active users  and how often people post/comment in a community were taken as the measure of success by over a third of the respodents. This is problematic. Firstly inactive users may be just as engaged whilst ‘watching’ what’s going on and secondly other measurements such as increase in search engine rank and citations/links on other sites may be more important but are not used as part of the analytics.

Ed Moran, director of product innovation, Deloitte Services LP (one of the companies that generated the survey) said:

‘To realize the full benefit of social media and online communities, business leaders must move beyond viewing them as “bolt-ons” to their corporations. Companies need to integrate the new information flows associated with the communities with those that already exist within their companies. New management strategies and practices will be critical, including redefining the scope and role of alliances as well as the overall boundary of corporations.’