twitter – big in New Zealand

A new survey shows the percentage of Kiwis using Twitter apparently outstrips the percentage of Americans doing so.

The survey of 1000 New Zealanders aged between 15 and 65 also shows 58 percent use Facebook, 18 percent use Bebo, 7 percent use MySpace and 3 percent use LinkedIn. And 88 percent said blogs, streaming video, podcasting and social platforms were here to stay.

Find out more here.

yes, we’ve been a bit slack!

No posts here for the past couple of weeks. Not good enough, I know! My energy has pretty much all been absorbed by work, but we have been putting some interesting posts up on our other blog – the Facttactic Journal if you want to read a bit about PR (Public Relations).

Normal service will resume here shortly … we hope … fingers crossed!

twitter – don’t believe the hype but do secure your name

Should your business embrace Twitter and start tweeting? Not always!

Yes, it can have big upsides, but to be effective, you’ll need to set clear guidelines for how and why you’re using it. If you’re a small business and don’t have the time or resources for it, give it a miss, no big deal. Find out why here.

But having said that even if you do not intend to use Twitter, you should definitely register Twitter accounts for your brands to stop other people taking your names and using them for their own purposes. This is becoming a major problem on the Twitter service because anyone can register any name on Twitter.  Registering names on Twitter is free and easy to do — so get in quick and grab your important brand names before some one else does.

tips on how to use new Google Adwords interface

Have you seen the new interface for Google’s Adwords? Google gives lots of goods tips on how to use Adwords in six easy-to-follow videos.

And if you haven’t used Adwords at all, here’s an introduction to the basics.

five tips for effective business website design

1) Use an established web design company that knows what they are doing; 2) There’s no one solution for building an effective website; 3) Don’t let budgets determine quality; 4) Leave budget for ongoing development; 5) Build a site that grabs people’s attention. Find out more here.

nz tourism social media campaign finds success

In December, we told you about a marketing drive from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) to get personal video messages from visitors to New Zealand recorded for them and then posted to social media sites to be played by the tourists’ friends and family back home.

It’s been a successful campaign – the 100,000th viewing on YouTube of the videos was recorded recently. TNZ says more than 1300 videos have been made and uploaded by travellers since its travelling recording studio began touring the country in December.

The campaign, which ends this month, was also chosen by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper as one of “10 most ingenious travel offers” that the travel industry has devised to get bookings.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton is happy. He says the initiative has proven its worth as a cost-effective way to capture the value of personal recommendations.

The videos can be seen here.

know your business niche, give good service – ebusiness tips

Know your business niche and give good service are two tips from Melissa Norfolk, the author of the Australian and New Zealand edition of Starting an Online Business for Dummies.

More tips from Melissa and information about her book are here.

10 tips to consider for your e-commerce cart

Ten tips for a customer-friendly shopping cart here (courtesy of UK web firm Polr), including: don’t have any nasty surprises, get straight to the product, let them know your product.

high-impact, low-budget ideas for marketing in a downturn

Ten high value tips here on effective, low cost marketing: ‘Use all of the buffalo’, ‘Play to your strengths’, ‘Leverage expertise’ and seven other gems.

Tips one to five are here.

Tips six to ten are here.

(Courtesy of U.S marketing communications expert Jonathan Kranz)

open source e-commerce tools – free and online

Looking for an e-commerce solution to help you sell your stuff online? Here’s a web page that highlights 16 open source e-commerce tools — including a popular New Zealand-developed e-commerce tool for WordPress blogs.