Starting a digital marketing agency wasn’t on the horizon for either when taking part in YES…

Read the  full alumni profile recently published on the YES Alumni website here

The most significant of these been the introduction of a new profile called timeline. The idea behind timeline is that users will manage their entire online life history on a single FB page. Everything you’ve ever done and decided to share all in one place.

I have managed to setup my own timeline up (only available to FB developers at the moment) and I must admit that it does take awhile to get used to the changes. So I fear that the average user is going to be completely disorientated when this is rolled out for real.

Facebook’s reasoning behind the change is that currently you spend so much time creating your content only for it to drop off the end of your wall quick as a flash. To address this, they created timeline, the official mantra of which Zuckerberg repeated several times: “All your stories, all your apps, and a new way to express who you are.Timeline looks quite pretty as its image heavy and is quite easy to navigate as you can just scroll down the page to go back in time. Content appears in chronological order down your wall. The further back you go in time, the more Facebook summarises and collapses your content. Timeline can be sorted according to the type of content a user wants to see. There is also a handy navigation on the top right of the screen so you can easily pick a specific year to view. You can add events to your timeline by clicking in the middle bar so it is easy to update any missing bits of history.

If you are signed up as a Facebook developer you can setup your own timeline by  following these instructions.

It also gives the public the opportunity to subscribe to your own posts (assuming you make them public of course). This is most beneficial for famous people, artists, journalists and public figures. What this means is that you can now share your status updates, photos and links with people you don’t know by publishing to your subscribers.

These changes will become available to everyone over the coming weeks. If your really eager you can activate this feature straight away by visiting http://facebook.com/about/subscriptions. Here you can also find some more information about the new feature and there is some answers to common questions about the change.

Happy Stapling Seb!

* No bananas were harmed during the making of this illustration.

It seems like a smart move on Googles behalf to try and educate the market further. Their are many businesses (especially locally) who could benefit greatly by implementing just a few of the techniques explained on this site.

The site is broken down into three segments. Each segment has lessons inside which are made up of a variety of content types.

The three segments are:

1.Starting a Business Online

2.Marketing a Business Online

3.Running a Business Online

So check it out and let us know what you think!

Other blogs and articles will discuss the basics of SEO, which is a far better place to start. I would give you one piece of very very important advice if you are reading this information – whenever you are given advice, mentally add GOOD to the beginning of it.

For example, the two most common buzz phrases that we hear are that ‘Content is king’, and ‘Links will make you rank’.

Let’s add GOOD, and break it down a little bit:

GOOD Content is king
Entirely true and should not only be used as part of your search marketing campaign, but also used in general ‘good internet’ practice for your website. People don’t want to read rubbish, neither do search engines. The better the content is, the more engaging it will be. Why does a website rank in the #1 position on Google? Because that website is the MOST RELEVANT for that search phrase. And the best way to be the most relevant is to have a plethora of quality content that actually adds value for your readers.

GOOD Links will make you rank
We entered a SEO competition last year and came a commendable 3rd out of 150 websites. We weren’t there to win (who am I kidding, yes we were) but we were trying to prove a point / debunk an age old SEO myth; that the more links you have from other websites pointing to yours, the higher you will be on Google. Here’s a quick run down on the amount of links from the top 4 winners

#1 – 3,500
#2 – 2,900
#3 – 5 (that’s us by the way)
#4 – 2,950

How could this be possible? Well, we got 5, not just good, but AMAZING links from websites that were very well respected / reputable / generally awesome and had content on the pages that related to our website. In short, get good links that are relevant to your website, that will give the people clicking the links actual value.

Basically, many old Search Marketing ‘techniques’ do not work as well as they used to. Start thinking about your viewers and what they want, rather than trying to snuggle up to Google only to find yourself kicked out of bed and having to sleep on the cold wooden floor of rejection.

Advanced custom fields

This is one of the most useful and easy to use plugins out there. I could easily write a whole post on this one. Simply put this allows you to create custom fields such as text areas, images, uploads and much more. ACF has a beautiful interface to boot plus a simple to use API. Definitely a must have.

Fluency admin

Customising the look of your WordPress admin area is a snap with this plugin. Navigating becomes quicker with hover menus and short keys while adding a custom logo and setting a background menu colour is quick and simple.

Admin menu editor

A great plugin for editing the menu in the admin area. Often non tech-savvy clients are a bit bewildered by the many options presented in the default menu. This plugin allows you to switch off those unused items and presented a more refined backend, customized for the clients’ needs. They’ll love you for it!

Option Tree

This plugin is perfect at adding options for those odd tid-bits that just don’t seem to need their own page, post or custom field. It easily enables options for text inputs, check boxes, uploads and more.

Google Analyticator

You can probably guess what this one does; yes it’s a plugin for Google Analytics! Incredibly simple but does a great job of displaying your visits over the past 30 days, top visited pages, top referring sites and top search terms. All conveniently located in the dashboard.

Keyword research is the process of determining which keywords are used in search engines by potential customers. It is a vital first step for successful search engine marketing campaigns.Many SMEs in New Zealand understand the importance of keyword research but are often overwhelmed by the vast array of software and applications they are presented with. Below is list of tools that we use or have been recommended to us for keyword research.