Government statistics are finally available online from one easy search site. Sir Tim Berner-Lee, a founder of the www, is one of the people responsible for overseeing the government project: www.data.gov.uk.

The site has been available in its beta format since September 09 and has had 2,400 developers working on it. This resource is available for personal or commercial use. It will be invaluable as a business and marketing resource. What is surprising, or perhaps not, , is why this kind of project has not been available before.

Talking to the BBC, Sir Tim said:

‘It’s such an untapped resource. Government data is something we have already spent the money on… and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody’s office it is wasted.’

Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University, helped develop the website. He said:

‘A lot of this is about changing assumptions. If [the data] can be published under an FOI (Freedom of Information) request why not publish it online?’

Of course, as with all statistics, caution needs to be exercised. The very nature of statistics means that you have to understand what is behind the stats. Why was the information gathered? How was it gathered? Who gathered it? Where their methods valid? These are all important questions that need to be answered in order to get the most from the statistics.

For online content managers the new site is a real boon. On the whole government statistics provide a great basis for online content that is valuable and well informed. Search marketing relies of good content more than ever since the implementation of Google Caffeine. Furthermore, the aim is that the site will also host local government data and location based data with collaboration from the Ordinance Survey who plan to provide free location maps.  This will be very important if your target audience is locality specific.

The site encourages business collaboration:

‘We’re very aware that there are more people like you outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative relationship with you.’

Social media is a very important aspect of online marketing at the moment but as with any sector there are downsides that a business must be aware of.

Technical Issues
As reported by Propero Digital, social networking site Facebook has been experiencing technical difficulties in its advertising. Customers have been charged for more click-throughs than they have actually received. As with any business service its important to keep an eye on the figures. Human error is part and parcel of the business world so keeping an eye on things is useful.

Social Conscience
Many early teens sign up to accounts that are intended for older users and recent evidence shows that parents are very uninformed as to what their teenagers get up to on social networking sites. The survey showed that 22% of teens check their networks more than ten times a day, although only 4% of parents thought that they did this.

James Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media who conducted the survey said:

‘In today’s digital environment, parents have less time to supervise their kids’ behavior,” . “Communication and socialization in our kids’ world is increasingly moving from face-to-face to face-to-cyberspace, and parents vastly underestimate the amount of time that kids spend on their networks. That makes it more challenging for parents to actually parent in the crucial areas of social interaction and development, and, in a digital world, parents need to play a more important role than ever in ensuring that kids get the best of these technologies and are using them safely.’

Business needs to have an awareness of these online issues.

Privacy
There have been concerns over online privacy issues where social media is concerned. Facebook for example has received much controversy as it uses the information you write in your profile, messages and infact everywhere on its site, to inform the kind of advertising that users get. Whilst this kind of search marketing is very useful to business some users have complained that this is an intrusion into their privacy.

From a business point of view, how will you keep your privacy and confidentiality issues intact? You need a policy and employees need to be very clear of what the rules are when they participate online.

Reputation
Your online reputation is important so any communication via social media must be well thought through. Its easy for bad as well as good publicity to spread like wild-fire. Also this kind of ‘passing on’ of information is a little bit like Chinese Whispers: the real facts can alter as the info gets passed along.

Time Wasting
In any business activity its important to get a return on your investment and working with social media is no different. Interacting online can take up a lot of time. The most important advice here is to develop a social media strategy. What are your objectives? How will you meet them within the time you have available? A recent US survey found that social networking costs employers 1.5% in lost productivity.

Research from Shape the Future, carried out between September 23rd and October 4th across 1,492 UK businesses, shows that almost 20% of UK businesses surveyed planned to increase their spend on, or investment in website optimisation over the next twelve months. 

36.4% of those surveyed intend to increase overall marketing budgets, while around a fifth planned to increase their direct marketing spend. Almost 20% said that they intended to decrease their expenditure on printed products.

9% were unsure of their future marketing spending plans.

The survey stated that business services companies were the most likely to boost marketing budgets, while property services, retailers and wholesalers were more likely to decrease spending.

25.1% of businesses were intending to increase online promotions, while 11.9% were thinking about increasing PR activities. 

This appears to show a turnaround on historic marketing cuts, which were commonly perceived to be the standard way of cutting costs during a recession. It seems that valuable lessons have been learned, and that many more companies these days have a clearer perception of the increased reach and adaptability conferred by having a robust online presence. 

Peter Martin, managing director and author of the report, commented: “There is a clear message here that companies have really got to grips with the influencing power of the internet.”

Research published at the end of October this year, shows clearly that when consumers are deciding whether to make a purchase, online reviews are incredibly important. They come second only to getting personal word-of-mouth recommendations from friends. However it is a certain sector of web-users who are generating these reviews – the ‘most frequent contributors’ and they – 9 per cent of web users – actually generate 80 per cent of web content.

Key findings about influence in online communities:

• While only a small number might contribute to online discussion and review, many more are reading. ‘Lurkers’ are heavily influenced by what they read online, especially when it comes to reviews and recommendations.
• Marketers should spend more time courting most frequent contributors, if they want their message to be disseminated – however, this should be handled cautiously. Marketers have often chosen to ignore this small group of online enthusiasts, feeling that they are not representative of their average customer. However these most frequent contributors are, in effect, marketing to the consumer and should be seen as a mouthpiece – one which a company does not employ. Therefore, courting them is a great way of reaching the average consumer, even if the other consumers are not talking back.
• Most frequent contributors are different. They often want to persuade, educate or entertain. They might be single, they might be ‘geeks’ and they might well work in the technology sector. Also, they are often democrats, and often very young – half are under 22.

Additional findings about the internet’s influence:

• People would rather look on the web than call the manufacturer, or speak to customer service.  Customer Support Information on the web comes second only to consulting a manual. However the approach varies with age – an older person is likely to look on a company’s website, while younger people rely more on search engines. If you want to cut the costs of running a customer support line – write a very good manual and create an intelligent, well laid-out search-engine-friendly on-line information repository, and remember to use code as well as PDF documents, if you want the search engines to see this content, and thus reach your younger audience.
• The most daily use, after search, occurs within social communities such as Facebook and MySpace, news sites and online banking. 
• Most valued sites in the US are: Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.  The largest number of web-users visit mapping sites, (Mapquest), retail sites (Amazon) and Reference (Wikipedia).
• Young people (age 22 and under) create about half of all online user-generated content.
• Fourteen-year-olds are most satisfied with the social networking sites and then this satisfaction declines with age. 
• Despite extensive publicity, the community sites SecondLife and Twitter reach only a few per cent of US Internet users. Twenty per cent of US users have used dating sites, then twenty-three per cent have visited virtual worlds, such as SecondLife. The number is just slightly higher for multiplayer game sites, at twenty-six per cent, while thirty-six per cent of users admit to visiting pornography sites, with this being split between fifteen per cent of females and 

Communities can be grouped into five categories:

• Proximity: users are geographically close – Craigslist.

• Purpose: users share a common task – eBay and Wikipedia.

• Passion: users have a common interest – YouTube and Dogster.

• Practice: users have a business or learning interest.

• Providence: users discover connections in common Facebook.

To create a successful online community, you need to understand the breakdown and how this affects the type of traffic that you want to generate. Successful sites can:

• Get a lot of daily use from large numbers of people (search and social sites are good examples.)
• Get occasional use from large numbers of people (reference, shopping, etc.)
• Get intense use from small numbers of people and are ignored by everyone else.

Understand your site category and optimise your design for this.

The Economic Intelligence Unit has released a survey that shows that it is increasingly important to understand how to engage with stakeholders across the board, as a result of the growing popularity of interactive applications such as blogs, wikis, mashups and social networking sites – in other words – Web 2.0

The report is called, ‘Future Tense: The Global CMO’, and it charts the way in which interaction with consumers is taking place increasingly at many points, not just the point of purchase, and as a result, it is crucial that marketers engage sensitively and carefully with all their stakeholders at all times.  Increasing interactivity also means that faster responsiveness is key, and that corporate employees must become faster, smarter and more fully informed concerning their company’s aims and operations, in order that communications with consumers and stakeholders are not undermined by a lack of responsiveness, or a lack of intelligence or understanding of their employer.

Two hundred and sixty-three marketing executives were questioned and of these, 56 per cent felt that their companies were already focussing on customer-interactions across the board. Typical engagements to consider nowadays are with: customers, prospective customers, investors, employees, industry experts, researchers and regulators. Consumers themselves are now able to garner information from many places, and have a great sense of what is a genuine message and what is being hyped.

While currently conferences, events, consumer / business & trade magazines and TV are the most important way to reach people, it seems that opinion is that online content will be the way forward, in addition to these. And in terms of measuring effectiveness, current measures are sales and revenue figures, brand-awareness data and conversion rates, although it is felt that ROI and relevance to the business are very hard factors to track. Online media do provide a greater insight in terms of click-throughs, downloads and sign-ups, however it is important not just to measure these data but also to understand their qualitative meaning.

The report recommends:

Balance global brand awareness with local market relevance – it is important to weigh cost-cutting measures such as centralising marketing functions against the increasing importance of understanding the typically much wider spread of audiences and markets. “‘The simple phrase I use to capture our model is thinking local, acting global’ says Rob Malcolm, president of global marketing, sales and innovation for Diageo, the US$15bn UK-based maker of spirits and beer, with global brands including Baileys, Cuervo, Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Smirnoff, Tanqueray and Crown Royal. Diageo’s approach is the inverse of the think globally, act locally mantra cited by other global CMOs. Whereas many companies create branding and global strategies centrally, Diageo allows regional marketers to tailor their strategies to local markets.”

Marketing must be integrated with corporate communications – audiences are no longer segmented and increasingly, transparency means a holistic approach to corporate communications.

Use the new media – set aside some budget for the more interactive marketing technologies.

Develop new skills, capacities and partners. Understand your company in depth and breadth – and make use of white-labelling products and services from partners to get messaging across faster.

Champion innovation and deeper customer understanding. With so much interactivity, consumer focus and new technology available, there are now a plethora of ways to bring your product to market – this means it is now much easier to be innovative.