Mediaboss Marketing

LONDON, June 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

-Geordies head to the Spanish Islands in 2012, with Tenerife, Majorca and Gran Canaria topping the list, according to the leading travel retailer-

The top three destinations for people flying from Newcastle Airport in 2012 are Tenerife South, Palma de Mallorca and Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, say Holiday Hypermarket, a UK based holiday comparison community.

The unique Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, with their black beaches, volcanic landscapes and tree-lined cities, are popular among families. Wildlife and theme parks, scuba diving and child-friendly hotels are just some of the attractions that bring visitors from Newcastle to Tenerife and the neighbouring islands, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote.

The four main Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean Sea - Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera - provide seaside holidays that are a traditional treat for British holidaymakers, but with an exotic island twist. They're also popular among Brits seeking celeb-style clubbing, complete with beaches, foam and fiesta parties.

Calum MacDonald, Marketing Manager at Holiday Hypermarket, comments "It's no coincidence that these destinations appeal to Geordies since they can enjoy the relaxed and luxurious pace of life, which gives them a well-earned break from the bustle of the city, as well as immersing themselves in the Spanish and Catalan culture.

"The combination of sun, sea and local cuisine has a unique appeal, and the beautiful environment, filled with fun-packed attractions, is safe for young children."

About Holiday Hypermarket:

Holiday Hypermarket (http://www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/) is a UK based holiday comparison community. We are passionate about helping people in the UK explore, learn and enjoy the world by removing the obstacles that keep them from getting the most out of their holidays. We do this by providing a completely independent travel comparison site that allows you to effortlessly find the best deals with the assistance of a knowledgeable community of fellow travellers who love to share travel advice.

With Holiday Hypermarket you have access to a huge number of travel suppliers which will help you put together flexible, restriction free, itineraries. This, combined with our excellent customer service and vibrant online community, makes Holiday Hypermarket a great place to start exploring the world.

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Holiday Hypermarket Asks: Where Does Newcastle Go On Holiday?

The last year or two has seen a big shift in the infrastructure that SEO agencies and in-house teams have had at their fingertips, as full campaign platforms have finally come of age.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has always been a data heavy enterprise, and any team with any coding ability at all pretty quickly started to hack together tools to deal with it. Pretty quickly, some of those companies realized they could offer those tools to customers directly, and suites such as SEOmoz's and Ontolo's were born, to name but a couple. The next step is obvious: integrate all the keyword and page optimization data for a particular site, along with link graph data and basic task management, and, hey presto, you have an SEO campaign platform.

And, the newest kid on the block is Dutch company SEO Effect.

Like most similar tools, SEO Effect has a lot to it, and a single review can but dip the toe in its water. However, two things impressed straight out of the box: the research tools and the flexibility of the system.

The flexibility starts just with creating an account and adding campaigns. Unlike most platforms, which have fixed packages, each allowing a certain number of campaigns and other resources, SEO Effect allows you to buy credits and then allocate them between campaigns as you need to. If you're an agency managing campaigns for sites both large and small, that's invaluable. There's a free trial as well, of course.

The flexibility also extends to the tools themselves. Many platforms shoehorn you into a certain way of work (that can't really be avoided), which can be a bit of a barrier for uptake amongst SEOs who already have fairly fixed ways of doing things. Whilst SEO Effect can't avoid that completely, they do the best they can, with many of the tools having both "basic" and "expert" mode, the latter offering a lot more options.

Almost all platforms now offer the ability to track trends in your data over time: keyword positions, your link graph, traffic data pulled in via the Google Analytics API. Indeed, some platforms, such as SEOmoz's don't do a lot more than that. Of course, SEO Effect has these basics, but what really impressed me with the ability to do actual research within the platform, and merge resulting data with an existing campaign seamlessly.

The tool is divided into four main areas:

Task management is also promised. Let's dig into the keyword research area a little to explore what the tool can do.

SEO Effect works around the concept of multiple, flexible assets within a campaign. So, for example, instead of limiting a campaign to a fixed number of keywords, you can have as many keyword research lists as you like, each containing as many keywords as you like. You can use these to research keywords for different topic areas, for example, or different products that you sell. Opening a new keyword research list gives you this screen, with options for geographic location and language:

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SEO Effect Keyword Research Tool [Review]

La Crosse, Wisconsin (PRWEB) June 15, 2012

The BL Group Advertising and Marketing (TheBLUGroup.com) is proud to announce the hiring of Liz Johnston, Social Media Maven. Ms. Johnston joined the team on May 21, 2012 and will be serving as the agencys lead social media specialist to help clients strengthen their brand and grow their business through a variety of social networks. In her new position, Ms. Johnston will be responsible for developing social media marketing strategies, creating and enhancing social media pages, program implementation, managing relationships, monitoring all communication, and creating new campaigns for small-medium sized businesses throughout the United States.

Our agency is experienced with managing numerous social media campaigns and we have a team dedicated to running all aspects of our clients' social media programs. said Tony Roberts, President at The BLU Group Advertising and Marketing. With the addition of Liz, we now have a point person for all things social media. said Roberts. To engage our clients base, we need to send out quality information and we need to do it at the right times. Figuring out when, what, and how often to post content, what social media platforms are best for our clients to utilize, who to engage with and how to do it, handling criticism and complaints, and determining what strategies are working to accomplish their goals, are all part of everyday considerations when running a successful social media campaign. This can be extremely overwhelming for people, especially with the numerous responsibilities and tasks associated with running a business. Were here to help.

Social media marketing is not something that can be done successfully if companies do not approach it strategically and only do it when they have time. It requires a dedicated and on-going effort by people that understand a companys brand, know what it takes to develop a strong, integrated inbound marketing program, and have the talent and experience to deliver positive results.

About The BLU Group Advertising and Marketing: The BLU Group is a full-service ad agency that specializes in: Market Research, Marketing Strategies, Corporate Identity, Broadcast and Print Advertising, Graphic Design, Billboard Design, Catalog Design, Direct Marketing, Website Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-Mail Marketing, and Social Media.

For more information, visit TheBLUGroup.com or connect with them on Facebook and Twitter.

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The BLU Group – Advertising and Marketing, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Hires Liz Johnston to Lead Social Media Marketing ...

Social media marketing seems to get more complicated every day. But you can't ignore it. This article, the third in a series, focuses on several categories of social media and explains what they are, what they do, and how you can use them to reach your target audience.

In previous articles, I've touched on Twitter apps and Facebook apps and games. In this article, we're going to move a bit beyond these two social giants. While some of the items I'll discuss will be best known for their use on these networks, you can use them elsewhere as well.

The most obvious of these is URL shorteners. If you're typing on a site that limits the character count of your posts (such as Twitter), these can come in very handy. The best known of these is bit.ly; you can create a free account or just shorten a URL as a one-off. Tinyurl serves the same function. The latter site notes that long URLs can break in email, forcing the recipient to cut and paste it back together. You might want to use shorter URLs in certain advertising to avoid such problems. It's worth noting that some social media control panels (again, I'm getting ahead of myself) include URL shorteners as one of their features.

Use URL shorteners with caution, however; some people are wary of shortened URLs because they can't tell exactly where they're going. Indeed, some malicious hackers have baited users to click on shortened URLs, making the users vulnerable to attack.

Next is a group described as stream platforms. These include UberMedia, TweetDeck, twhirl and AOL Lifestream. All of these are designed to help users manage their social media streams and feeds. They can help users find posts of interest and schedule their own posts. While most of the ones I've listed focus on Twitter, AOL Lifestream covers multiple social networks, and UberMedia has been expanding beyond its Twitter roots. Stream platforms offer multiple tools to help you get a lot done from one place, whether it's your desktop machine, laptop, netbook, or mobile device. Many include alerts, filters, various ways to customize and monitor your feeds, and more.

At this point, I imagine it's pretty obvious how using a stream platform can help you manage your social media marketing. Isn't it simpler to conduct your interactions from one place, even if you're using multiple social sites? Just make sure the stream platform you choose covers the sites in which you're most interested.

I only have room to cover one more social media marketing item in this post, so let's go with social commerce platforms. Examples include Payvment, Moontoast, Shop Tab, Dotbox, and Vendor Shop, but to be honest, Business Insider's infographic on social media marketing includes more of these than I can ever list.

So what, exactly, is a social commerce platform? Judging from these companies, it's a way for businesses to reach out to their fans and customers and reward their loyalty and the fans, in turn, can help promote the business. It's not just loyalty deals, though; these companies will help you set up your shop on Facebook, monitor your social analytics, create special deals and one-of-a-kind offers directly to your fans, create engaging polls, and a whole lot more. A social commerce platform could get you engaging your fans and customers socially in ways you haven't even imagined yet.

A word of warning, though: I know I said that we were going to move beyond Facebook and Twitter in this post, but it looks like most of these services focus specifically on Facebook. They may be great if that's where you want to go to promote your business and there's nothing wrong with that but if you have a wider strategy in mind, make sure you ask the right questions as to what they can and can't do. Given how complicated social media marketing has gotten, however, it may be too much to ask to be able to use any one solution to cover everything.

That's all I have for your this week. Next week, we'll cover several more areas of social media marketing and SMM services. Have you found one that worked particularly well for you? Share it in the comments!

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Social Media Marketing: Beyond Twitter and Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO, June 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --In partnership with several major media companies, enterprise social sales and marketing software company Hearsay Social today launched Content Exchange, a content curation platform that allows marketers and salespeople to easily discover, curate, and post engaging updates to their profiles across all the major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. As part of the launch of Content Exchange, leading media companies have partnered with Hearsay Social to offer its customers the latest in financial news, entertainment news, photos, video, lifestyle articles, and other content.

"With 82% of online users accessing social networking sites, social marketing content has become a critical battleground in the quest for customer mindshare and brand differentiation," said Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih. "We are thrilled to partner with the leading global providers of content to empower marketers to achieve ROI on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+."

Hearsay Social also announced today the release of The Language of Social: A Guide to Content for the Social Business, a free e-book on the best social content marketing practices, in addition to a free social media ROI study by independent researcher Mainstay Salire.

Integrated into the Hearsay Social Content Library starting today, Content Exchange allows brands to easily discover, curate, and publish third-party articles, videos, and blog content designed for social media, as well as:

In particular, Hearsay Social's core user base of relationship-based sales professionals, such as financial advisors, recruiters, insurance agents, and real estate professionals, stand to benefit from investing in a scalable social media content strategy to create client value, trust, and differentiation over time.

"The key to any successful social marketing program is sharing timely, relevant content on a consistent basis," said Marc Zeitlin, Vice President of Marketing at Farmers Insurance Group. "Hearsay Social Content Exchange reduces the amount of time my team spends curating pre-approved content for our Agents while improving the relevancy, timeliness, and therefore effectiveness of their social media efforts."

Hearsay Social Content Exchange: Media Partners

Media leaders Demand Media, Tribune Media Services, and Thomson Reuters have joined in supporting the launch of Hearsay Social Content Exchange by providing Hearsay Social customers with access to content (once customers' appropriate licensing is executed).

Existing Thomson Reuters subscribers to Content Exchange will be able to access and curate premium content and create multiple channels inside of their Hearsay Social Content Library. Through Content Exchange, Hearsay Social customers will also have access to the full selection of award-winning lifestyle content from Demand Media, including eHow.com, LIVESTRONG.com, and Cracked.com.

Additionally, Hearsay Social has entered into a business relationship with Tribune Media Services (TMS), a global content licensing and syndication company, representing a variety of renowned writers and content brands via a suite of custom publishing solutions for media and corporate publishers. Hearsay Social clients who have an interest in adding content from leading experts, brands, and journalistic quality sources will be referred to TMS to work directly with their editorial and marketing professionals to publish content ready to engage their customers through social networks via the Hearsay Social Content Exchange.

Continued here:
Hearsay Social Unveils Content Exchange, Fresh and Relevant Social Media Content for Marketers