Calm Mediacentre

I watched last night’s BBC Panorama about the fine line between the privacy law and free speech – the freedom our media has to report [almost] anything.  I wondered if, in the week of the Iran election and an impending review of privacy vs free speech, social media represents a shining hope in keeping this gift alive.

If the many tweets from the likes of @persiankiwi and thousands of other Iranians desperate to let the world know what the government doesn’t, it would seem at first glance that social media has the ability to give us an instant, much clearer, more accurate insight into what is really going on in the world. The people are reporting what they see, instantly. Photos from mobile phones, tweets, uniting others through groups, and updates what they see show  us so that we can see it through their eyes. The BBC is getting its breaking news from these services today – CNN was yesterday criticised for missing the boat. The downside is, as China did with Twitter  in the aftermath of last year’s Earthquake, regimes have the option to simply shut down networks that allow people to propagate information. It’s up to individuals to find innovative ways of plugging into their networks – and they do.

So our privacy report may mean that the BBC and media groups may have to be more mindful of what they broadcast, but if it’s in our interests, I feel very confident that word will get out and find its way into the mass consciousness. As long as we don’t build our own “great firewall of China” that is.

Not quite! But as in most industries, terminology exists to differentiate between types of services-here’s an overview of some of the terms that you might of heard whilst talking to people within the industry…

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Placement (SEP) are terms used to describe the practice of modifying or tuning invisible website content according to the key search terms it is required to be found for. Some parts of this process are on-site: the modifying of the actual website – some work involves establishing external links (link building) from other websites to yours. Careful work with site content that is efficient (and useful for the site visitor), organic and well structured is usually the first step of a long, but well worthwhile journey to becoming a website of authority status.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a natural evolution for SEO, but is more far reaching in terms of using other methods to achieve high numbers of visitors and general exposure. This is a form of on-line marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results through the use of paid inclusion, paid placement or contextual advertising i.e. Google Adwords (PPC).

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is related to SEO, but the main focus of this is on driving traffic from other sources, rather than search engines. i.e. RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, social media sites and other media exposure can contribute extensively to a website popularity.

Conversion Rate Marketing (CRM) is the science of detailed analysis of a website to goal settings and funnelling strategies of all on-line traffic. This procedure often involves highly detailed visitor data for the website (metrics). An in-depth refinement process can be be conducted through multivariate testing, heat maps and other other methods that constantly refine and improve the sites structure, layout and also navigation. All text content, ‘calls to action’, persuasion paths and other elements of design are changed to convert more visitors and massively reduce bounce rates. Raising visitor retention considerably (often in excess of 50 percent) makes interesting reading from the point of view of a Return of Interest on moneys invested.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions or require any further information regarding these or any other terms, please give us a call or check out Calm Digital.