London, U.K. — Bing users can expect an improvement in their organic search results following the announcement that Microsoft’s search engine will partner with the Encyclopedia Brittanica. The update has been developed as a response to Google’s Knowledge Graph, which has been designed to generate relevant statistic, stories, and general information to improve its search results.

For small businesses and organizations that require search-based information, the Bing update will reward websites that provide factual, informative, interesting, and unique content. Therefore, much like the Panda and Penguin updates from Google, producing original and informative content is essential to ranking highly on Bing.

The Bing and Brittanica update is simply the latest in a series of changes made by competing search engines. Google recently started this arms race by developing “Search Plus Your World” to better integrate search with social media. Bing swiftly responded to this change by displaying Facebook and Twitter results as part of their query results.

So with Bing moving towards providing more facts and figures in its search results, it can be harder for smaller organizations to rank themselves. With this in mind, it may be advisable to get a specialist online marketing agency, such as Search Catalyst, to help improve SEO (search engine optimization) for small businesses.

Having a measured approach to SEO can have a major impact on the success of your company. To begin with, businesses need to understand the source of the traffic to your website. Are your customers, for instance, coming directly from search engines, or are they coming from referral websites? Companies also need to track and understand keyword performance, which means using tools to measure bounce rates and clickthrough rates.

More small businesses are now looking to integrate search engine optimization into their marketing efforts. This strategy has proved very useful in providing companies with greater exposure, while it can offer a significant return on your investment.

So whether your small businesses is new to SEO, or you already have a strategy that will need adopting following the latest updates from Bing and Google, do not hesitate to contact a professional online marketing agency.

Search Catalyst was created by Greenlight Digital, Europe’s largest and fastest growing search marketing agency. Greenlight has worked with a wide range of clients, including Sky, Santander, and HSBC, and has an envied reputation for delivering unparalleled search engine marketing success to all of its clients.

A selection of Greenlight’s most trusted experts now run Search Catalyst, and are focused on delivering results to small and medium sized organisations using their award-winning SEO and PPC strategies.

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Facebook’s new design “Timeline” and Google Plus’ neat organization and visual impact have given it users something to talk about. Twitter has decided to follow its competitors’ strategies and give its users something to talk about as well. The social network has unveiled a new set of changes and modifications in its design.

The new design, dubbed Fly Twitter, proposes a new and fresh design for its users. The slogan, which appears on twitters official site (http://fly.twitter.com/index_en.html), portrays the new design by saying: ”Yours to discover. A faster, simpler way to stay close to everything you care about.” Although not yet publicly available, it will be introduced in the coming weeks to its 300 million users.

The new design will basically consist of four areas: Home, Connect, Discover and Me. According to Twitter, the Discover Page will be one of the most significant since it will expose trending topics and popular discussions that are being discussed around the web. On the other hand, the Connect area will be the platform where everything that users do–such as mentions, retweets and followers–will be placed.

These changes have clearly developed to grant the social media site a place in the market since its competitors have applied new designs too. ”Today we introduce a new version of Twitter. We’ve simplified the design to make it easier than ever to follow what you care about, connect with others and discover something new,” Twitter said in a post on its official blog.

“What we’re announcing today is just the beginning. We now have a framework in place that we will quickly build and iterate upon to help users connect with whatever is meaningful to them.” New apps for iPhone, Android and TweetDeck have been released this Thursday, December 8.

Twitter’s new image will integrate a lot of simplicity and visual impact. The users will be able to count on an easier way to navigate through the the page, and newer applications with different page areas will offer something different.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0qqDy5BmYKE

1000 Words / Shutterstock.com

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Many companies do not see complaints as an opportunity to get free consultation from customers that can solve problems and make their services better for free. It could be that they cannot accept the fact that one unsatisfied customer makes a much greater impact on the image of one brand than the ones who are satisfied and how important it is to have a serious focus in changing these problems.

Companies should be aware about word-of-mouth, but now there is the much more powerful channel: word-of-mouse. Social networks such as Twitter — with more than 100 million active users updating more than 50 million times per day – are the perfect environments to complain and companies should seize this opportunity to gain valuable information about their image.

The advantages of listening and give attention to the complaints are open a channel for a good relationship with customers and increase loyalty, improve the image of the company, use as an assessment regarding performance and quality, study of the market and to be open to what customers want, and to be fast in innovation.

One crucial factor on the complaint management is the time to decrease the amount of dissatisfaction of one customer and turn him as soon as possible to a marketing positive compound. Twitter can became a tool to the companies and help not just in discover what people are talking about as help about the time factor and accelerate the process of a solution.

Companies in Brazil are giving a good example because companies are taking around 5 minutes to 2 hours to answer customers who complains in twitter , much more faster than using the foundation to protect customer – the “faster” way which use to take at least one month.

The US in other hand is wasting their opportunity. Around 70% of companies are ignoring customer complaints on twitter  and consequently losing chances to put their companies and brands to the front of others’ minds in a positive way.

Here are a few tips for companies to use Twitter as an efficient way to develop a good complaint management system:

• Team: The Company must be a team prepared to deal with complaint and with enough power to reach a balance between  company/customer interests and have enough powder to create solutions. Make customers talk and in the end do not have the powder to solve make him talk with one person, after to another, after with the manager, and the director just increase the level of irritation;
• Open the eyes: search who is talking about your company and what they are saying;
• Open the “voice”: contact the person in order to understand the dissatisfaction and open the relationship. Be polite and show empathy. Be aware that there are much more people watching this “conversation”.
• Give possibilities for solutions and show interest. It is also important remember that customers sometimes can abuse and this is not acceptable, but if the company shows their face in environments such as Twitter, others will understand.
• Time: all of this must happen quickly, and it is also related to the quality of the personal responsible for this task.
• 140 characters: remember the power of these characters in both sides: customer to the Companies and Companies to the customers.

The market has changed a lot. Before it was a few companies and a lot of customers with high level of loyalty, nowadays the reality shows a lot of companies and customers with no loyalty that are full of power to impact the network. The complaint management system must reach dissatisfied customers wherever they are, and for sure, a lot of them in Twitter.

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Social Media continues to expand around the world and impact it, in its own way. In Guatemala, e-Marketing didn’t start picking up until about 3 to 4 years ago and it wasn’t only until about a year and a half to two years ago that agencies started to develop social media strategies.

After seeing some of the success from local companies, restaurants started taking advantage of it, to get their share of the market. It continues to expand throughout the years, with Facebook being the biggest social media platform utilized in Guatemala today. With only 2.5 million people with access to the internet in Guatemala, 1.6 million people have a Facebook account.

However, before Facebook, hi5 was considered one of the most popular social networking sites. In 2008 hi5 had 12,831,000 Latin American unique visitors ages 15 and up, while Facebook had only 7,711,000. MySpace became very big 2 years ago. According to comScore, social media has always been huge in Latin American countries. They are heavy internet users and mainly use the internet as a way to communicate with others.

According to Enrique Parros of TPP Emarketing, Twitter is a Social Media platform that is starting to grow in Guatemala and the reason for this growth is that mobile phones are becoming more easily attainable. The demographic segment in Guatemala that is currently active on twitter is mostly made up of kids, but 24- 35 year olds are starting to pick up on Twitter. This is why twitter is still an educational process in Guatemala.

The main social media Platform used for marketing in Guatemala is currently Facebook, due to the high concentration of people logged into Facebook. Facebook, to TPP Emarketing, is a great way for consumers to communicate with a brand. It is also a great way for people to interact with the brand, which will later help them to decide the future of the brand, and where it is heading. Another way Facebook is being used in Guatemala is as a focus group.

One major success story for TPP Emarketing is from the Facebook page Claro, which has 264,196 likes on Facebook. Gallo was also another great example of how successful Facebook was in helping to boost sales. In April of 2011, Gallo had about 90% of the market share in the country.

TPP Emarketing works with so many brands, such as Claro, P & G, and McDonald’s, that it would be hard to manage each account separately. This is why they use Hootsuite. It is a service used to manage social media accounts on one dashboard. With Hootsuite, companies like TPP E-marketing can manage their Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare and myspace accounts at once, and even schedule posts for later dates.

E-marketing is still growing in Guatemala, and for some it is still a learning experience, but digital marketing is always growing and expanding. Agencies are starting to pick up on it and take advantage of the marketing tools that are accessible. Some of the services offered today are SEO marketing, Public Relations, E-Mobile, Social Media and E-Advertising.

Digital marketing may be growing but TPP E-marketing understands the importance of utilizing it in their marketing campaigns and strategies.

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Where are the children who play hide and seek in the streets, fly kites, jump ropes, ride bicycles, play with dolls and cars, spend hours building a Lego’s castle during their childhoods’ golden age? They are no longer easily found in the outside areas around their neighborhoods.

Instead, infants are hiding themselves and replacing their group activities on a sunny day for more and more solitary pleasures under their home roofs. One in four Brazilian children uses the Internet, according to research done by the Comitê Gestor da Internet (CGI), the Internet Manager Committee.

In the same report, the group reported that 90 percent of children surf the web to play video games and do homework. Video games, especially Internet games, are holding children’s attention who stare at a computer screen for hours and hours.

Children are also becoming familiar with modern technologies, such as smartphones that allow users to access the Internet just by touching the screen with a finger. They can download games on their phones, and play for long periods, which can represent a regression in their social activities and developments.

The research showed that 42 percent of the children, from five to nine years old, access internet from their homes, and 29 percent of them usually are by themselves when they use of it. Contradictory to previous studies that showed more children in the 13-18 age group used social media, research shows that one third of the children from five to nine years old are engaged in social media.

The most common websites used in Brazil are Orkut, Facebook, and Twitter. While kids are spending their times in social media, adults are not engaging themselves as much on the same websites. According to the website vagas.com.br, which receives résumés and job applications online, out of the 54,000 resumes registered, 8 percent of 30-34 year olds have a profile on Facebook, 9 percent use Twitter, and 11 percent use LinkedIn.

For people older than that, the estimate is even lower, with only 4 percent that use of Twitter, and 5 percent that use LinkedIn and Facebook. The general social media public is made up of those under 24 years old. Adolescents use Twitter the most at 44 percent, Facebook at 43 percent, and LinkedIn at 25 percent.

Brazilian social media users are not balanced in numbers. Children and teenagers use the technologies because they grew up in an environment surrounded by the innovations. Now adults and the elderly are following online trends by trying to insert themselves in the same environment.

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