Article: “In short, social media is a term that encapsulates a number of online communication platforms that make it easy for people to publish their own news and views, as well as comment on those posted by others.

Why Are Social Media Important? Social media have provided platforms for people to air their opinions, views and grievances with anyone around the world. People who use social media often become highly influential, are seen as experts in their own spheres, and can develop large audiences around their areas of interest.

Communities of like-minded people are forming around common interests on the web, regardless of where they are based in the world, because traditional geographical restrictions no longer apply.

How Can Social Media Help My Business? There are various social media platforms you can use to deliver messages to your readers and followers. But, before embarking on any marketing activity, it is important to know why it is useful. Social media are instant, so your messages are delivered immediately. And, most importantly, they are interactive - you are actually inviting comment and suggestion. Of course, the most important point to remember is that search engines love social media because their content is current and fresh. So, your comments will be picked up by search engine. How exciting that is!

How To Get Involved With Social Media - Blogging A blog allows you post content in the form of text and pictures and engage in a dialogue with people commenting on your posts. You can control which comments actually appear on your pages by approving, deleting or marking them as spam, using your preferred blogging software. Blogs can be written in many styles, from informal and personal, to professional and corporate. As a small business, it is important to inject some personality into your blog, so that your followers get to know you, as well as read your material.

How To Get Involved With Social Media - Twitter Twitter has become increasing popular over the past year or so with everyone who’s anyone tweeting their little hearts out. Twitter is a micro-blogging site that limits the length of the comments you can post to 140 characters. So, it is unsuitable for posting large chunks of content, but ideal for posting links to other sites containing interesting information. Twitter is highly interactive and users often re-post, as well as respond to, other peoples comments (tweets) if they are useful. You choose who you ‘follow’ (ie, whose tweets you read), so it is a great platform for making contacts and establishing relationships.

How to Get Involved With Social Media - Facebook Many of us have used Facebook for personal networking for many years. But did you know that you can also use if for business? Again, it is a great way to connect with people with similar interests, and it is easy to build relationships by interacting with other people in your network. You can also create fan pages for your business and post events to advertise particular product launches.

How to Get Involved With Social Media - LinkedIn LinkedIn is more of a business networking tool than a social one. For example, it is structured in such a way that your occupation and education are featured more than your hobbies and interests. However, it works in much the same way as Facebook in that you can invite people to connect with you and join common interest groups. It also has a feature where you can recommend people, so it is great for asking for testimonials.”

For more inforamtion about social media and how it can work for your business please contact New Wave Media. We are here to help!

Article: “What is Twitter?” they will ask. And when I explain the basics of how Twitter operates, they ask, “Why would anyone use Twitter?”

It’s actually a pretty good question.

Twitter is a Miniature Blog: Micro-blogging is defined as a quick update usually containing a very limited number of characters. It is a popular features of social networks like Facebook where you can update your status, but it has become best known because of Twitter.

In essence, micro-blogging is for people who want a blog but don’t want to blog. A personal blog can keep people informed on what is going on in your life, but not everyone wants to spend an hour crafting a beautiful post about the vibrant colors seen on a butterfly spotted in the front time. Sometimes, you just want to say “went shopping for a new car but didn’t find anything” or “watched Dancing With the Stars and Warren Sapp sure can dance.”

So what is Twitter? It’s a great place for keeping people informed on what you are up to without the need to spend a lot of time crafting an entire post on the subject. You just say what’s up and leave it at that.

Twitter is Social Messaging

While Twitter may have started as a micro-blogging service, it is grown into much more than simply a tool to type in quick status updates. So when asked “What is Twitter?”, I often describe it as a cross between blogging and instant messaging, though even that doesn’t do it justice.

Put simply, Twitter is social messaging. With the ability to follow people and have followers, and the ability to have interact with Twitter on your cell phone, Twitter has become the perfect social messaging tool. Whether you are out on the town and want to coordinate with a group of people as to what hot spot to hit next, or keeping people informed of developments at a company-sponsored event, Twitter is a great tool for quickly communicating a message to a group of people.

Twitter is News Reporting

Turn on CNN, Fox News or any other news-reporting service and you’ll likely see a news ticker streaming across the bottom of the television set. In a digital world that is relying on the Internet more and more for news, that streaming ticker is Twitter.

Outdoor festivals like the South-by-Southwest festival in Austin, TX and major events like the E3 conference have shown what a great resource Twitter can be for quickly reporting news to a huge group of people. Faster and more immediate than a blog, Twitter has been embraced by the “new media” of the blogosphere and has slowly won acceptance among traditional media outlets.

Twitter is Social Media Marketing

Twitter has become a favorite target for social media marketing. This new form of getting the message out has been used effectively by Barak Obama during his Presidential campaign, and is used by everyone from magazines to movie stars as a quick way to connect with an audience.

With utilities like Twitterfeed, it is easy to convert an RSS feed into Twitter updates. This makes it easy to use Twitter as a form of social media marketing.

What is Twitter?

This brings us back to the original question. What is Twitter? It is many different things to many different people. It can be used by a family to keep in touch, or a company to coordinate business, or the media to keep people informed or a writer to build up a fan base.

Twitter is micro-blogging. It is social messaging. It is an event coordinator, a business tool, a news reporting service and a marketing utility.

There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Marketing terms (especially marketing 2.0) and acronyms are a language all on their own. That is most likely why our clients give us blank looks when we use our “marketing speak”. One common acronym that we get asked about is SEM. What is SEM? Well, Laurie McCabe answers that question below in her article What is SEM, and why Should you Care? Happy reading….

“Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and insiders often add to the confusion by over-complicating things. To help add a sense of clarity to the confusion, Laurie McCabe, a partner at Hurwitz & Associates (a business consulting firm), will pick a technology term, explain what it means in plain English, and then discuss why it may be important to you. This time, Laurie takes a look at search engine marketing.

What is Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term that describes the different methods you can use to make your Web site more visible on search engines so that you can drive more traffic to your site. SEM blends organic search engine optimization (SEO) with paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to increase exposure for your Web site.

SEO focuses on designing and optimizing your Web site so that your site will rank higher within the organic search results pages—the list of Web sites that pop up when you conduct a search. Basically, search engines such as Google or Bing look at a page and try to decipher the most important or relevant information on the page. SEO revolves around figuring out what keywords people will use when they are looking for the types of services and/or products you provide, and using these in your Web pages and content so that search engines accurately index your site and people can easily find it. When you use SEO techniques, you are not paying search engines to appear or move up on their site, you are simply optimizing your content so that it will naturally place higher in search results.

In contrast, paid search or PPC advertising, involves paying search engines so that your site appears as a sponsored link in the small text adds that appear on the top and right hand side of a search results page—think Google AdWords. While it is free to display your ad on Google or another search engine, you pay the search engine vendor every time someone clicks on your link. The search engine vendor positions your site on the results page based on a combination of how much you are willing to pay-per-click, and a subjective quality assessment of how important your ad is in relation to others on the page. This quality measurement includes things such as the percentage of clicks on your ad and how many times the search term appears in your ad.

Why Should You Care?
What good is your Web site if youre not driving traffic to it? You invest in a Web site to help educate and promote your products and services to prospects and customers. But, if people cant find it, you will not get the kind of results you want form your Web site.

Both organic and paid search techniques can help you drive traffic, but each method has different plusses and minuses. For instance, cost per click is less for organic SEO than with a PPC approach. While you invest time (and maybe money, in the form of an SEO marketer or a service) to optimize natural search results, you’re not paying the search engine vendor for every click-through. In addition, people click on organic search engine results much more frequently than they click on PPC ads, because of where they appear on the page.

On the other hand, a PPC campaign can typically ramp up traffic to your site much more quickly than organic SEO. So, if time is of the essence—say you need to drive holiday sales—PPC is likely to help you get better results.

Many businesses find it most effective to combine both SEO and PPC approaches. For example, PPC enables to you to quickly test keywords to see which search terms work, and which don’t. As you discover which terms work best in a PPC campaign, you can also incorporate them into your organic SEO approach.

What to Consider
Web searches are becoming the top way for both consumers and businesses to research and shop for products and services. Consequently, small businesses are rapidly shifting their marketing initiatives from traditional media to digital marketing media tools, including SEO and SEM.

These marketing tools are often less expensive to use than traditional marketing options such as print advertising and direct mail. A small investment can help companies significantly boost marketing reach and return. SEO and SEM give small businesses more visibility into whether they’re reaching their target audiences, easier ways to track and measure payback on their efforts, and the ability to rapidly adjust and refine campaigns and outreach as needed.

However, search engine marketing techniques involve both art and a science, and are evolving at a rapid pace. What works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow. To stay ahead of the competition, consider services that are tailored to your specific market and needs. For instance, Lotusjump provides a service to help small businesses optimize organic search results for hundreds or thousands of keywords to generate more qualified leads. The service automates the process of building more qualified leads based on more specific longtail search terms. So if have a retail business, you can create keywords specific to the hundreds or thousands of products that you sell.

Own a bakery or tree service business? If you do, everything is local, and services that help to reach the local market are what you care about. WebVisible, for instance, buys advertising space from multiple media providers and ad networks, and provides many types of online marketing solutions, including fully managed search advertising, banner/display advertising, call tracking solutions, custom landing pages, promotional URLs and more. Using the WebVisible platform, small businesses can target local advertising more effectively. Yodle, meanwhile, focuses on local services businesses, helping them to create a Web site, develop an effective SEO campaign across the Web, and help make the phone ring when the business is found through a Web search.

The Web is becoming our virtual shopping mall. Small businesses that make an investment into understanding different types of organic and paid search approaches and using those most relevant to their business will have a big advantage in bringing in traffic.”

For more information about SEM please contact us at New Wave Media! We would be more than happy to help.

(Originally published in Small Business Computing, November 30, 2009)

“According to Christine, here are some expected changes to PR in 2010:

1. Social media returns the P in PR to “people” – going well beyond “promotion”: It’s an exciting time to see PR going back to people and relationships. Successful PR executives know how to build and maintain quality relationships – today, social media is a core part of making that happen.
2. Great PR professionals become influencers in their own right: If you’re hiring an agency or an executive to handle your PR, make sure they’re talking – whether it’s on Twitter, a blog, video (Seesmic, YouTube, Vimeo etc.), Facebook, BlogTalkRadio, Utterli or others – building a positive community of their own and a reputation as smart, strategic and savvy experts that others listen to and trust.
3. However, the myth that social media makes PR obsolete will be crushed: PR professionals who are good at what they do still have a special knack for understanding psychologies of effective messaging and relationship building, the intricacies of good timing and the difference between effective promotion and positioning and outright spamming. If the marketing activity on Twitter is any indicator, good PR is certainly still needed.
4. Transparency in business communications will weed the great PR executives from the bad: With the advent of transparency, open communication and the integration of social media into everything that we do, our industry can’t help but weed out the good from the bad. It will become very obvious in 2010 who the truly talented communicators and messaging mavens are. The rest will be finding new jobs.
5. Businesses will see more value than ever from PR and marketing: The bottom line – good PR will be easier to identify, meaning businesses such as yours can spend marketing dollars more wisely than ever. It’s easy to see if the PR professionals you hire or work with are respected, listened to and influential, making PR more honest, real and effective for your business”

Source: Small Business Trends

The marketing world has taken over the Internet and with that we have seen the creation of thousands of online platforms that give us (the marketing expert) the ability to send your message right to your target audience’s door (or email inbox).

For a marketing communications plan that works for you and especially your business, please do not hesitate to ask for guidance. We are here to answer any questions you may have and to assist or take on the responsibility of planning your marketing communications strategy for the remainder of 2010! Have no fear, New Wave Media is here to help!

1) Use your brand for your Facebook page name

When naming your Facebook page, you only have one shot at giving it a “name.”  This is what shows up as the title of the page and is created when first setting a page up. This is currently the largest indicator for Facebook search and is make or break for your page being found.

2) Build your following

If the Facebook page name is top criteria for being found in Facebook search, the fan count is second place. If you have the same name as other pages (which is a common occurrence), the page with more followers should show up first. Leverage Facebook Ads to help build a following as advertising your pages can help boost fans of your page. You can also leverage employee profiles or groups that you are a part of to really help boost your group numbers.

3) Create a branded Facebook username

While this may not play a major role in being found within the internal Facebook search, the URL structure can play an important role in getting ranked in the major search engine results pages.  Being found within these pages can clearly help to boost your fan following from those who may be searching outside of Facebook. While we have not seen a direct correlation between usernames and internal Facebook rankings, having a keyword rich username could an indicator in the future and would be considered best practice.

4) Create fresh content regularly

Wall posts, events and “posts by everyone” can now be displayed in Facebook Search. By creating regularly updated content, you will significantly increase your chances for being shown.  Simple wall posts with branded keywords or branded events will give you extra visibility in the new real time Facebook Search.

5) Fill in all information about your brand/company

Whether it be the information boxes, mission statements, website or descriptions these could be indicators down the road. While the information isn’t currently helping your pages show in Facebook results pages, it can also help those pages in external Search Engines as most page content is indexed. The more relevant the content, the better. While these sections might not play a role in internal Facebook ranking, there is evidence that it can help the ranking of groups.  This could be applied to pages in the future (and should IMO).

6) Spend a little time optimizing your site for bing

If you need one reason to pay attention to Bing, it could be for the sole fact that it displays the web results in Facebook Pages. You will always find those web results at the bottom of the Facebook Search, so spend a little time working your site for Bing and you could see a big payoff from the Facebook search platform.

These tips should help your visibility in Facebook search and help to take your fan page to new heights!

Article Source: Search Engine Land - Greg Finn

The idea came to Jason Snydmiller while he was on the island of Borneo. At the time, Snydmiller had learned that the super-major – one of the six largest non-state-owned energy companies – he was under contract to would promptly fine any contractor that left oil in local waters. Although it seemed callous then, the rule was essential, since locals depended on the water for fishing and prawn farming, among other uses.

Unit on the Cascade Water & Wastewater System (CWWS) rig.

“I started thinking about being able to recover the hydrocarbons from water on a location or lease, and re-using or disposing of the water onsite without contaminating the environment,” says Snydmiller. The idea stuck. Today, two-year-old Tangent Environmental Technologies Ltd. offers oil and gas producers a portable wastewater treatment system that allows water to be recycled or disposed of, on- or offsite. Self-contained in a 20-foot sea container, the Cascade Wastewater System is a modular unit that uses a series of filters to scrub hydrocarbons and other contaminants from surface wastewater.

Automation Keypad
The company says the system removes detergents and naturally occurring radioactive materials, while reducing sulphates, nitrates, phosphates, chlorides and such trace metals as calcium, sodium and magnesium. As for removing hydrocarbons, Snydmiller says the Cascade system can achieve 99.8% efficiency, processing up to 110 cubic metres per day (m³/d) of water. When the processing is done, the user is left with filtered water clean enough to safely put into city sewers, he says. Yet, that option won’t be open to most oilpatch users, whose choices for disposing of the treated water will likely come down to two options: onsite disposal or recycling.

Automation Keypad

“But our preference is to reuse the water,” Snydmiller says. “You could put it into the mudtanks for making drilling mud or into the rig tank for other re-use. You could also take it with you to the next [drilling] location, you could re-use it for agricultural purposes.”

On the other hand, there’s an option that avoids having to truck water at all. Described by Tangent as atomization, this mode of onsite disposal involves heating the now-filtered wastewater to about 302°F, converting it to a fine mist and dissipating it onsite, avoiding the need for trucking. With the Cascade system, an operator should be able to dispose of 34-37 m³/d of water through atomization, although local temperature and humidity affect efficiency of the process.

At present, Tangent is working on two major American projects in California’s Bakersfield region, and in Arkansas. In California, the company is currently testing the water quality and ability to process produced water. The objective of the project would be to employ the technology, take the produced water to potable so that it can be used for agricultural purposes. Water has always been an important concern within California’s agricultural scene. According to Jim Beck, Kern County Water Agency general manager, in 2009 California water issues will be more important than ever.

“I can’t emphasize enough that we really are at a turning point for California water,” Beck said. “I think we are currently enduring the worst crisis that water users have ever faced and how we face this crisis over the next two to three years will not only shape agriculture but the whole state’s economy.”

Inside the CWWS trailer

The 400-mile Central Valley is many things: the world’s largest agricultural area; the “salad bowl”, where half of the country’s vegetables are grown. But this year, with water shortages of a severity unseen for decades, many farmers and others are echoing the recent words of U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu that, if current weather patterns continue, Californian agriculture could disappear. “We are confident that the testing of our systems and the employment of our technology in this region will greatly impact and assist the current water issues in California,” stated Snydmiller.

“Water treatment is a severe and dire issue right now in the area, we only hope that we can help.”

The growing oil and gas plays in Arkansas present a different wastewater issue. Concern in this region falls within the volume of water that’s being stored in temporary surface pits until a cost efficient, liability free method of recovery or disposal is accepted, which at the moment, is virtually non-existent. Tangent feels it could implement its current systems’ footprint on a trial basis, to prove the technology, then design the system needed on a larger scale to handle the volumes of water being produced. “The Arkansas State regulations are some of the most progressive in the country at this time, which in turn opens up many opportunities to be able to enter the market and help recycle, reuse and dispose of the water that’s the result of growing drilling programs,” stated Snydmiller.

The Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission’s mission is to prevent waste, encourage conservation and protect the ownership rights associated with the production of oil, natural gas and brine while protecting the environment during the production process. The agency conducts monthly hearings to review and approve proposed rules and regulations; creates drilling and production units and establishes oil and gas production field rules to protect correlative rights, protect the oil- and gas-producing reservoir, prevent waste resulting from overproduction and establish a defined area for the sharing of production proceeds and production costs. Tangents’ technology is currently being assessed by two major operators in the Arkansas area for wastewater issues. Their hope is to be involved in the near future as an equipment provider which will assure new technology and employment in the region.

“There is not an aggressive enough approach to solving wastewater issues’ and there are a lot of existing technologies, including our own that can deal with these problems, in a cost saving manner providing a better world for the next generation,” Snydmiller said. “We know that the pressure that we are putting on our freshwater supplies can be greatly reduced and water that is being disposed of in a very irresponsible manner can be now reused for the benefit of both environment and industry.”

Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank Tangent Environmental Technologies Ltd., of Calgary, Canada, for its assistance on this article, particularly president & CEO Jason Snydmiller. Contact: 403-730-3410 or www.tangentet.com

Author’s Note: Jonathan Molina is a vice president and managing director of New Wave Media Inc., a marketing and public relations company in Calgary, Canada.

To access this Article, go to:
http://www.waterworld.com/WaterWorld/en-us/index/display/article-display.articles.water-wastewater-international.volume-24.Issue_5.Regional_Spotlight.North_America___The_Caribbean.Green_Machine_Takes_New_Tangent_on_Wastewater_Reuse.html

PDF Article Link: green-machine-takes-new-tangent-on-wastewater-reuse

Well, it is not enough just to write press releases and publish them on the web, you must know the correct way of writing a press release to be noticed on the web. There are hundreds of press releases posted on the web on a daily basis and there are chances that the one you write will get lost among the lot. The press release that you write must be just perfect to make you visible on the web.

The first and foremost rule of writing a good press release is that the information that you give throughout the press release must be newsworthy. Who will even read the press release that you have written if the information is not newsworthy? Remember, your press release must not sound like an advertisement. Rather it should be newsworthy information about the product or service you are offering to customers. There is a very thin line between writing about your site and the write up not appearing as advertisement of your business.

Always remember to ask the question how you as a customer will feel while reading your write up. And if you feel that you would not like to read it, then you drastically need to change your press release. If you do not like something chances are no one else will like it either. Put special emphasis on the first paragraph of your press release. Most editors do not go beyond the first paragraph and if you are going to create a first impression then half the work is done. If some one likes to read your first paragraph then they will go through the entire thing.

Press releases have more credibility among all the other publicity methods. While reading a press release readers do not feel that they are reading some other disguised advertisement about a product. Readers and online visitors are more likely to trust credible sources like columnists, editors and reviewers about the authenticity of any write up appearing anywhere. Editors will not publish anything that is not well written.

The buck does not stop here. The next step for you is to submit your press release to the proper places. You need a proper channel to publish your press release be it online or offline. Lots of people must have access to your press release if you are serious about this and want to create an effect. Create very impressive and eye catching headlines for your press release. A catchy headline guarantees that you press release will grab attention and compel people to read it.

Take care that there are no spelling and grammatical errors in your press release. Get someone to proof read it two or three times so that there is no chance for any mistakes. Incorrect spelling and grammar usage is not acceptable. Stick to the facts while giving information to readers and do not try to use fancy language and adjectives in your writing.

Summary: -Press releases are one of the best sources to get authentic backing about your product and service. While writing the press release stick to facts and avoid using any flowery language. Strong headlines are sure to attract attention from prospective customers.”

Source: Conversion Comet

Insure that You Are Giving Them What They Want

exactly what they want from you
precisely when they need it
in a way that is convenient for them
at a price they can afford and are prepared to pay
If you are not convinced that your sales proposition meets all of these criteria, then you’ll need to study the profile of your customers again and revise your offering.

Is it about quality or quantity of prospects?
A precision-driven marketing approach-where you have a high-quality list of prospective clients or leads-will, dollar-for-dollar of marketing spend, prove far more productive and profitable than an untargeted blanket approach to generate sales. Quality of leads, based on your understanding, knowledge, and careful profiling of your customers and their needs, will massively increase your ability to convert them into sales.

Pinpoint what Your Customers and Prospects Need or Want
Having selected your ideal customer groups you’ll now need to be absolutely clear about what they want and need, and exactly what it is that you are going to offer them. This understanding will enable you to develop the specific marketing message and proposition that will most effectively sell the benefits of your product or service to them.

If you get these messages wrong, then it’s almost certain that your marketing efforts will fail, as your customers will buy from your competitors instead. Your product, service, or business proposition will have missed the target completely.

Speak to Target Customers Before Developing Your Marketing Strategy
Before you start to develop or choose your marketing strategy it’s always worthwhile to speak first to a sample from your target audience. By doing this you’ll be able to check that your profile of your intended market has been the right one, and test your assumptions about what you think they want and why they could buy from you. You could do this by speaking directly to a group of people or you could undertake a survey in the form of a questionnaire, which can be mailed to a sample of target customers. Alternatively, you could talk to passers-by in a location that is frequented by your ideal customers.

What to Avoid
Failing to Test
The most common mistakes made when targeting products and services toward specific users or customer groups are caused by not testing the assumptions you have made about your audience. You’ll waste valuable time and marketing budget if you launch a campaign toward an audience when you have not accurately identified who those customers are, and cannot precisely define what they want and why they could buy from you instead of your competitors.

Lack of Focus
Do not buy into a list of unknown prospects, no matter how attractive it seems to get names of thousands of people you can blanket-sell to in the short term.

Find out who they are, where they are located, and test your assumptions about what you believe they want. By testing, you can either confirm that your profiling was right, or you can adjust your offering until you get it right. Being precise will lead to more sales more quickly, and more profit over the longer term.

Source: BNet