Tom Doyle

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Posts Tagged Social media

Web design search volume in decline

Jan 7

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Web Design, Web Development


As the recession hit, most web design companies were busier than they had ever been before. There seemed to be a sudden rush of businesses trying to get online. In the majority of cases it was a knee-jerk reaction to prop up their falling incomes. During the latter half of 2009, this sudden rush seemed to have abated. There are many stories flying around that some of the major web design companies in Ireland are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and offering well below cost websites in order to generate some sort of cash flow.

Although they say that 99% of all statistics are made up, it’s still worth looking at some… :)

Google Trends is a great tool for researching keyphrase search popularity over a number of years of traffic on Google. So I used this tool to run a few searches on terms relating to web design to see if it could paint any sort of picture of what the state of the web design is in.

Web Design Search Stats - Google Trends

As you can see from above graph, the search term “web design” has been on a massive decline since the recording of the statistics began. Interestingly, if you take a close look at the latter quarter of 2009, you can also see a steady decline in searches for “web design”.

December is generally a slow time for new business in web design terms, so there are no surprises when you see the massive dips in searches across all years. Also quite interesting, is the steady performance of the term “website design”. In fact, there’s possibly a slight growth in searches for this term throughout 2009.

Does this mean that the web design industry has finally entered the recession with everyone else?

Only time will tell I guess…

Looking at the other side of our business; online marketing, it appears to be performing quite well. There is an obvious increase in searches for “SEO” – everyone seems to know what it is now or at least know someone that fancies themselves as one. There is a decline in searches for “Internet Marketing” though, maybe a phrase that has been lost to the popularity of “SEO”.

Although it’s hard to see from this graph, there has been a surge in searches for “Social Media Marketing“, which started showing up on the radar in 2007. No surprises there, since it’s the latest and greatest buzz word on the planet!

Online Marketing Search Trends

We’ll never get a true picture of the web design or online marketing industry from statistics like this. For example, the searches for “SEO” are being diluted by people trying to figure out how to market their own websites rather than actually looking for those services. None-the-less it’s interesting reading for anyone in or trying to get into this industry.

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Facebook gets tough on promotions and competitions

Nov 9

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Facebook announced changes to their Facebook Promotion Guidelines last week, which are likely to affect a lot of businesses currently using Facebook to promote their brand. If you’re planning on running a Facebook promotional campaign in the near future – make sure you read the new guidelines thoroughly.

The new rules state that you ;

  • Cannot run a competition without prior consent from Facebook
  • Cannot run a competition where entry is based on becoming a fan of the business’s Facebook page
  • Cannot run a competition where entry is based on posting a message on Facebook. whether status update or comment
  • Cannot notify winners of the competition through a Facebook message, chat or posts
  • Cannot request that people sign up for a Facebook account in order to enter a competition
  • Must include the following note (or similar):
    “This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to [recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used for [disclose any way that you plan to use the user's information].”

This is just a taste of what the new guidelines include, you can see the full set of guidelines here http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php.

From the list above, you can quite clearly see that running a small competition on Facebook isn’t as simple as it used to be. How many businesses that will adhere to these new rules is yet to be seen, but I’m quite sure a lot will have second thoughts about a campaign. In fact most of the business pages I know of, would quite regularly be in breach of these guidelines. It’s hard to see any of these companies adhering to these guidelines, they’d probably just stop using Facebook for running these competitions entirely.

Looking into the guidelines in detail, it looks as though the Facebook are really only trying to protect themselves rather than stiffle the huge surge in businesses using Facebook to promote their brand. I can only imagine what kind of emails they are getting from Facebook fans who wrongly assume that Facebook themselves are in some way related to the running of these competitions and promotions.

It will be interesting to see how many businesses adhere correctly to these new rules and more interestingly, what will happen those that don’t.

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Social Media Marketing – Have you started yet?

Sep 29

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

106922Social Media Marketing is the latest buzzword to enter our “already overflowing with buzzword” brains. It seems that every business you come across nowadays have at least a blog, Twitter account or even a Facebook Fan Page.

In fact, a recent study of online retailers showed that 86% of respondents in the US already have a Facebook Fan page, with 13% more planning to have one within a year or two. 55% of businesses already have a blog and 25% more plan to have one within a year or two.

What’s worrying however, is that most businesses don’t seem to have a clear plan of what they should be doing with their new found fame.I’ve voiced my opinion on blogs in the past, but Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter accounts are another days work altogether.

Social Media Marketing is very much in it’s infancy. To date, there really are no statistics avaiable on how successufl any of these mediums can or could be to your business.  There are some signs that it can work really well for some, but this by no means works across the board.

The biggest problem I see businesses facing, is the time it takes to engage in such activities. The society we live in today, is driven by instant gratification. If we don’t see a quick return, we give up and try something else. We always seem to think the grass is greener on the other side. Most social media marketing campaigns are simply not that straight forward.

There’s no doubting Twitter is a powerful medium, combine that with a Facebook fan page and you have one hell of an application to get your message out. BUT! If you haven’t done all the hard work of building up your network and planning your strategy, in most cases your campaign will fall flat on its face.

There are many examples of how to run a successful social media marketing campaign, but they are not “one type fits all” scenarios. You need to spend time planning your campaign. The worst thing you could do is put your campaign on the long finger. The sooner you get started, the sooner it will become part of your daily working life (maybe even more) – one thing is for sure…. Social Media Marketing is here to stay.

If you haven’t already started work on your Social Media Marketing plan, why not talk to us at 2bscene and see where we can help you get up and running! info@2bscene.ie (or telephone : +353-1-2190223)

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Winner of the FREE Online Marketing Campaign Competition Selected

May 25

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

With great difficulty, 2bscene finally decided on a winner for our first free online marketing campaign competition on Friday last. The process was as much a learning curve for us aswell as an opportunity to let people know how much they could benefit from an online marketing campaign for their website. It was our chance to see how powerful Twitter actually is. And Twitter proved to be one hell of a tool for promoting the competition – we were inundated with entrants to the competition within minutes.

We would have been happy with a handful of people being interested in this competition – it would have given us more time to create reports for all entrants. Unfortunately for the entrants we just got too many entrants to give everyone feedback on their website which we would have loved to have done. So for those that didn’t receive a report on their website, keep in touch with us, because we hope to do this again soon and next time we’ll be a little more prepared!

So what next?

Well I’m hoping to do a case study on the whole process (upon agreement with the winner of course). We already have a clear plan in our heads of what needs to be done, but we need to meet with the Winner first and detail our ideas and see how far they will go. After that, all the hardwork will begin. The process will take at least 6 months to come to fruition – so we will try to keep you posted of the progress on this blog along the way.

For now though, Congratulations to Roseleen McNally! We’re really looking forward to working with you and making a success of your website!!

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