Okay so these are US figures (from Forrester) but it is still pretty compelling: 3 out of 4 adults who use the internet fall into this ’spectator’ social media category - those who consume social media but don’t contribute. How many people do you know who don’t use the internet?

Even if your friends, colleagues, boss claim not to use Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, chances are they fall into this ’spectator’ category (watch videos, read blogs, customer ratings etc) which Shel Holtz looks at in his post, “Less than 20% of online adults don’t use social tools”, so over to him.

ANZ has recently relaunched their dedicated UK website to offer a better service to individuals who are looking to move to Australia. The site - which carries information on transferring money from the UK, applying for an Australian tax file number, Medicare, registering with Centrelink, looking for employment in Australia, renting or buying a home in Australia, schools, and getting an Australian driving licence - is particularly relevant for people looking to open a bank account in Australia.

With detailed information on Australian Bank Accounts and why it makes sense to open an Australian bank account in the UK before you leave, the site is the ideal starting point for anyone planning their big move. There is currently a special offer of no monthly account service fee for three months for ANZ Access Advantage accounts opened in the UK before departure.

Site details: http://www.anz.com/unitedkingdom

Despite studiously (and no doubt to them, ludicrously) trying to avoid mis-pronouncing the company name during our first meeting, we’re delighted to begin working with leading market research recuitment consultancy, Spalding Goobey.

We’ve never worked in the MR sector before (though I once earned £16 from YouGov during a period of enforced inactivity, if that counds), so we’re looking forward to understanding the DNA and drivers in this recruitment sector.

Spalding Goobey: Market Research Jobs and Recruitment

With the Google buyout of YouTube making the front pages in the last few days, ‘web 2.0′ and ’social networking’ are becoming increasingly common subjects of conversation ( indeed, the Guardian ran a DPS on Web2.0 in the main paper a couple of days ago.) Whilst no-one can agree precisely what Web 2.0 stands for (though the wikipedia Web 2.0 entry is a good starting point ) there is no doubting the impact of the social media in our space.

We often talk to organisations about the need to use social media - feeds, podcasts, blogs - to improve engagement with their customers (or candidates). Clearly, facilitating accessible, open dialogue with your audience is a great thing . But another big benefit of building a blog is that it can help significantly improve your natural search engine ranking.

if you searched Google today for Blog relations, PR for HR, Recruitment 2.0, Social Media Marketing or any of the other core areas in which we work, you’ll see that Carve Consulting is ranked in the top 20 results for each of these phrases. On closer inspection you may notice however that it’s atually this blog - http://www.carveconsulting.com/blog - that is achieving these rankings.

Whilst we write about these subjects relatively regularly of course - and the first thing a search engine looks for is relevant, real content - one of the reasons the blog is well ranked is that the Google algorithm (the equation expressed as page rank that determines natural search results) is richly rewarding sites that are regularly updated with fresh / relevant / contextually-rich content: exactly the output of a well maintained blog.

One of our new clients is The CV Clinic who deliver a range of professional CV writing services. As well as managing their search engine marketing via Google AdWords, we are helping the team engage their customers - and improve their search engine positioning - through a blog relations programme. Tom Hackforth, the MD, has graciously agreed for us to follow his progress as a kind of “live case study” if you like, and we’ll be regularly returning to the CV clinic’s brand new blog - http://thecvclinic.blogspot.com - in the next few weeks.

Watch this space.

Social Media Marketing
Carve Consulting