Home Archives for Newswire

SES New York 2010 Registration Now Open

11th December 2009

On the heels of record breaking attendance at Search Engine Strategies (SES) Chicago, SES announced today that registration is now open for SES New York (http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/?utm_source=prweb) to be held March 22-26, 2010 at the Hilton New York. The conference and expo will consist of multiple keynotes and more than 70 sessions. SES invites marketing professionals and those working in the search engine optimization industry to submit proposals (http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/forms/ses_speakers.php/?utm_source=prweb) for sessions and presentations.

To register for SES New York, which is expected to draw over 100 exhibitors, go to:

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/registration-details.html

People registering through January 15, 2010 will receive a special pre-agenda discount.

“Mike Grehan, our vice president of global content, and Stewart Quealy, our vice president of content development, are working non-stop to finalize the agenda for SES New York, and they tell me it is shaping up to include more new sessions than we have ever had at a conference,” said Matt McGowan, Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group. “We know it’s a busy time of year, but we want to get the word out that we have great discount pricing through mid January.”

Two keynote speakers have already been announced: David Meerman Scott, author of World Wide Rave, and Avinash Kaushik, author, blogger and Analytics Evangelist at Google. In addition to the keynote sessions, panels and individual presentations, SES New York includes many networking events and parties that give people the opportunity to mingle with their peers and make new contacts.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Marketing News Tags: , ,

Global authority on financial life planning to speak at social media conference

8th December 2009

IFA Life is delighted to announce that ‘Father of Life Planning’ George Kinder will keynote at the Social Media in Financial Services conference in January 2010 and lead a debate on ‘hi touch, hi tech’ financial planning.

Widely acknowledged as a key visionary in the financial planning world, George Kinder’s work is rapidly attracting large numbers of UK financial advisers to his methodologies.

Founder of IFA Life Philip Calvert said today: “George Kinder’s approach to financial planning is the most exciting development in financial services in many years.  Those IFAs combining Life Planning with a strategic approach to using the Internet will have an incredibly compelling proposition.

“Life Planning is the opportunity that IFAs have been looking for, as it helps to make financial planning significantly more approachable and relevant to today’s Internet-savvy consumer.”

George Kinder was a recent speaker at the Personal Finance Society’s annual conference, where it was clear that his focus on the human side of financial planning was hugely popular amongst delegates.

George Kinder said today: “I’m really excited to be speaking at the Social Media in Financial Services conference.  The Internet is going to be central to helping Financial Life Planners to communicate their service offering.  There are already Life Planners in the UK who are successfully using social media to get their message out there and the conference is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and best practice.”

George Kinder concluded: “More than ever before, consumers need financial planners to help them to achieve their deepest and most profound life goals.  The Internet will be the first place they go to find Life Planners – so any IFA who is serious about growing and developing their business needs to understand how to combine hi touch with hi tech.”

IFAs already successfully using social media

As part of the conference debate, attendees will also learn from two Financial Life Planners who are already successfully using social media and the Internet as part of their client and marketing communications.

Tina Weeks of Financial Weeks and Jaime Steele of North Financial Management will be joining George Kinder to discuss how they are using social media in their business, together with pioneering use of video to raise the awareness of their brands and to attract new target clients.  Both Tina Weeks and Jaime Steele are graduates of Kinder’s Advanced Life Planning programmes.

Kinder joins a stellar line-up of speakers and Internet experts from LinkedIn, the BBC, YouTube, Ecademy and BT Tradespace.   Ian Morgan, Google UK’s senior head of financial services will also be speaking on day one of the conference, and Graham Jones a leading Internet psychologist will reveal how consumers are influenced when searching for financial advisers online.

Nick Bamford of Informed Choice will also speak on how the Internet provides IFAs with some of the biggest opportunities in years.

Conference link: http://www.ifalife.com/socialmediaFS

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Social Media News Tags: , , ,

Online Digital PR training course now widely available with government funding

7th December 2009

‘Online Digital PR’, the one-day workshop in digital PR and social media techniques from The PR Training Centre, is now available in-house for as little as £1,500. And Government grants available through the Train To Gain scheme means companies can get £1,000 in funding for the workshop.

According to principal presenter Jacqui Green, “{{Our one-day workshop on ‘How to do online digital PR’, has become our flagship in-house course over the past six months}}. Now clients such as PR agencies can have the course delivered at their own premises for only £1,500. What’s more, many are eligible for government funding of £1,000 under the Train To Gain scheme, which means they can get our workshop delivered in house for a net cost of just £500. Booking this course really is a no-brainer now!”

Full details of the In-house online digital PR workshop are given at http://www.theprtrainingcentre.com/digital-pr-skills-for-pr-…

Further details of the Train To Gain funding scheme are given at
http://www.theprtrainingcentre.com/training-funding-grants.h…

Delegates who have attended the workshop have heaped praise on the course and its joint presenters. Christine King of Make Waves PR said, ‘I applaud the enthusiasm that Jacqui and Richard have for digital PR and the expertise they have worked so hard to build up and deliver back to the industry.‘ Kate Sears of Touch Worldwide said, ‘Very beneficial – learning. Many things that I didn’t know and I picked up some very useful tips. I didn’t realise how much is achievable in terms of PR with little financial investment.’ Monique Lester of London Digital PR said, ‘I think it was pitched very well. Good pace, good content, good practical exercises, very knowledgeable trainers and very engaging.’ Kerry Power of Digital Outlook said, Nice to be taught by people who clearly know what they’re talking about!

Further information on in-house courses from The PR Training Centre can be found on the website at www.theprtrainingcentre.com/in-house_PR_training.html

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Online Business News Tags: , ,

Internet Use at Work

18th November 2009

The study presented by Entensys (www.entensys.com) was completed in April-June, 2009. The results are based on the analysis of websites visited by 41,200 employees in 1,600 enterprises.

In the end of 2008, Entensys released a new version of UserGate Proxy & Firewall that included a content filtering tool. This feature enables the administrator to allow or deny users access to certain categories of websites. We have analyzed information collected over the course of three months. The normal divergence was found to be within the range of 0.1% to 1.5%, depending on the category. Thus, taking into account the specifics of data samples, the results can be considered reliable. The study was devoted solely to the usage of Internet at work. The reliability of the data samples is confirmed by the fact we analyzed information provided by enterprises from different industry sectors. The study revealed several categories of facts that might be of some interest to information security officers, network administrators, managers and business owners.

The first category includes facts associated with Internet abuse at work.

Over 20% of employees visit social network sites, blogs and personal sites daily. Thus, one of five employees spends a portion of time paid for by their employer socializing on the Web. Due to certain characteristics of such resources, these chats take considerably more time than chats over instant messengers (IMs) and, in the majority of cases, are not related to work.

A more discrete assessment of the rating chart shows that if we put together such categories as “Entertainment and Games”, “Video hosting sites”, “Personal online storage”, “Pornography and Adult sites” and others, we get another 26% of employees who visit non-work related sites at work, in addition to those who visit social networks.

In addition, 3.6% of employees visit online gaming resources on a regular basis. While the percentage of such employees is rather small, the magnitude of total business time spent on gaming may be quite considerable.

The second category deals with the costs of Internet traffic.

A relatively small number of employees (3%) who visit video hosting sites may, as a matter of fact, cost their employers a lot in terms of traffic expenses, channel bandwidth and general network performance. The same effects are caused by the employees who use their personal online file storages and buy and download music files at work.

The last category of websites on the rating chart, which is used by only 0.1% of employees surfing peer-to-peer networks, is still a vital threat to employers. In peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, data is constantly downloaded and uploaded, and several connections are kept alive at the same time. This is equivalent to several dozen users who download and send large volumes of data at once. Moreover, the use of P2P networks often implies transfer of data protected by copyright and other rights, which may result in lawsuits against the company from whose computer a P2P application was used. Potential threats to network security constitute the third and the most significant category of facts.

Rating chart available in the report indicates that 3.3% of employees come across websites that contain malicious software. With no virus protection and application filtering, visits to such resources may result in the loss or misappropriation of corporate information, followed by a number of distressing consequences.

Follow the link below to access the full version of the research  http://www.entensys.com/products/productreviews.php?ID=1905.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Online Business News Tags: , ,

New online link creates startling opportunities for IFAs

18th November 2009

A new feature on business social networking site LinkedIn, is giving financial advisers startling new opportunities to raise their profile on the Internet.

Until recently, an IFA or financial planner could use LinkedIn’s ‘status update’ tool to communicate with their network, clients or professional connections on the LinkedIn website.  But a small and important change in the facility is opening up exciting new opportunities for financial advisers who use the site.

The status update tool is now becoming increasingly commonplace as a means for professionals to communicate with, interact, engage and add value to clients and prospects.  It is common to many social networking websites, and most popular amongst users of Facebook and Twitter.  But until recently most IFAs did not see the value of using such a facility as part of their business communication strategy.

li<x>nkedIn have now enabled status updates to not only appear on a user’s LinkedIn profile – but also simultaneously on Twitter, giving advisers significantly greater reach on the Internet.

At the same time – and perhaps of most value to IFAs, those financial advisers who use Twitter, can now have their ‘tweets’ posted simultaneously to their LinkedIn profile – again significantly extending their exposure on the Internet.

Because LinkedIn is viewed very much as a serious business social network, this means that anything a financial adviser posts on Twitter has a strong likelihood of being seen by quality individuals and business professionals who more closely match the target market of most IFAs.

Philip Calvert, social media marketing expert and founder of IFA Life commented today: “This is yet another example of why IFAs and the whole financial services industry needs to take notice of social media.  It is not just a fad for kids – it’s an extremely important marketing and communication facility which the business world now regularly uses to listen to customers and to add value to their lives.”

Philip Calvert continued: “Financial Services is under the spotlight at the moment, and these tools are giving both IFAs and Providers the opportunity to rebuild reputation, image and credibility.”

Many financial advisers resist joining social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter because they see little value in it from a business perspective.  ButLinkedIn’s new facility now makes joining Twitter a very appealing option to IFAs.

At the very least, all IFAs who use the Internet in any way, shape or form should join professional networking websites such as LinkedIn, IFA Life and Ecademy.

Philip Calvert concluded: “There are many social networking websites which IFAs can use in their businesses, but it can all seem a bit confusing at first as to which sites to use and exactly how to use them.  The good news is that all IFAs can benefit by using these sites, and many are attending the Social Media in Financial Services conference in January 2010 to learn exactly how to apply it in their businesses.”

IFAs will learn from industry figures such as Informed Choice’s Nick Bamford, alongside Google, LinkedIn, the BBC and other Internet experts.

Conference link:  http://www.ifalife.com/socialmediaFS

About IFA Life

IFA Life is an award-winning* online business and financial social networking website dedicated to IFAs, Mortgage Brokers and Financial Planners.  IFAs join IFA Life to share best practice, debate industry issues, share resources, get marketing help, provide support to one another and find business development ideas.

In conjunction with MyLocalAdviser.co.uk, consumers use the site to find an IFA in their area.  Journalists use the site to find IFAs who can provide expert comment for articles.

IFA Life’s founder is Philip Calvert – a high-profile IFA marketing expert, consultant, author and speaker.  Photos of Philip Calvert are available.

 

* Best Online Financial Community in the 2008 Online Finance Awards.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Social Media News Tags: , , , , , ,