I updated my iPhone 4S to iOS 6 on the weekend and started to explore the new features.

The kids had a great time with the panorama fetaure on the camera.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw Bluetooth had been promoted to the first page of the Settings app.

I even liked the new light background on the phone and iPod apps. But…

Google Maps for iPhone iOS 6

Google Maps is no longer part of iOS.

The new iPhone Maps app takes us one step forward with turn by turn directions, but several steps backwards with unreliable data. On Sunday afternoon I plugged in my destination and tapped “Route”, just like the old Google Maps App so far.  But within a kilometre of my home in the Eastern suburbs of Brisbane, I was directed to take an exit from a roundabout that I know was removed over three years ago!

This isn’t a big deal, the junction is still there and now it’s traffic lights, but if it’s any indication, the data supplied by TomTom is way out of date, and it is likely to be some time before it is as good as the Google Maps data.

So, can you add a Google Maps App to your iPhone running iOS 6? As I write this, the answer is: no, Google hasn’t released an app yet. But you can access Google Maps through Safari or another browser. Just go to http://maps.google.com. You’ll have to turn on location services for Safari if you want to use the “Current location”, and in my opinion the Safari interface isn’t nearly as good as the Google maps app, but you could use this as a backup option to verify the data in the iPhone Maps app is up to date.

YouTube for iPhone iOS 6

Another casualty of the Apple-Google split is the native YouTube app. This has been removed from iOS6 but there is a YouTube App available from the iTunes Store.

Tracking, testing and measuring is the mantra of business coaches and advisers around the world, and it applies as much to your website as it does to every other aspect of your business.

The great thing about the internet and websites is that you can track almost everything your website visitor does. You can tell:

• How they arrived at your site: direct traffic, a Google search or a referral from another site.
• What pages they viewed: did they land on your homepage and then bounce off or did they click through to more pages within your site.
• What was the last page they viewed before exiting?
• Did they click on any external links on your site?

And so much more…

When you have this information it’s easy for you to tell what is working, and what isn’t.  You can split test pages, create conversion funnels, optimise for the most popular terms and more.

How much do you pay for all of this priceless information?

Nothing, that’s right, it’s free.

All this information can be yours, for no outlay other than your time, by using Google Analytics. This is a terrific service that you can access using your Google Account. Just go to http://www.google.com/analytics and click on “Access Analytics” to start using this f.ree service today.

If you have a WordPress site (which I recommend) the easiest way to add Google Analytics is by using a Plugin. If you’re not using WordPress you’ll need to add the tracking code to the header or footer of each page of your site.

Most of my clients get a surprise once they start tracking visitor behaviour. They usually think their website visitors are doing one thing, but Google Analytics often paints a very different (and accurate) picture. So, prepare to be surprised at what you learn once you start tracking visitor behaviour.

Google has plenty of training videos and an excellent FAQ, but if you get stuck call our office on 1300 79 89 09.

You may already have Google Analytics on your site as many web developers will add the code but forget to tell the site owner. To find out if you do, watch the 2 minute video below. If you do have anlytics, but you don’t have access to the reports, you are better off creating a new Google Analytics account and adding a new tracking code.

Google places collects information from around the web and marks businesses on a map. The information comes from a variety of sources: Yellow Pages, Yahoo Business, Truelocal and others. What this means is, if your business has a phone number and address listed with any major online directory, you probably have a Google Places listing already.

But, my experience with the dozens of Google Places listings I have claimed for my clients tells me most of the listings are basic with outdated or inaccurate informatoin.

The Google Places listings are the results often shown at the top of the Google page with a map and red markers like this one.

The listings with the most up to date details are usually at the top of the list. And you can see the map listings appear before the general search engine listings.

Having accurate and up to date information in this prime position can be critical to the results you get.

(Click on the image to view it full size)

To claim and update your Google Places listing -

1. Go to www.google.com/places
2. Select the blue button on the right “Get Started Now”
3. Sign in with your Google Account (or sign up if you don’t have one)
4. Select your country and enter your phone number

The results screen will show any business listed with the phone number you entered. From here you can edit the business listing or add a new listing.

(Here’s a 5m 49s video showing you how easy it is to claim your free Google Places listing)

Your Google Places listing can have photos, videos, email address, link to your website and additional information such as services, opening hours and payment types.

To acivate your updated listing you will need a PIN, sent to you by Google. This can take a couple of weeks to come through but after it’s active you can update it as often as you like and unless you change the primary contact details you won’t need a PIN again.

“If you’re working from a home office and you want to appear to have a professional office suite use your PO Box address, but write it as:

Suite XXX
Your Post Office Street Address
Suburb State Postcode

Your customers will think you have a physical office at this address but your mail will be delivered to your PO Box”

The logic behind this is sound. Customers, especially those shopping online, like to see a physical address. But, I tried it and it doesn’t work. At least not in Queensland.

The letter I sent to:

Suite 711
78 Edith Street
Wynnum QLD 4006

Was returned with “insufficient address” stamped on the front.

So, if you’re working from home and you want to give out a street address other than your home address you may have to look at serviced offices or partnering with another business. If you try to use your PO Box number as a suite number, you’re unlikely to receive any mail.

BTW: My office is at 30 Prospect Street, Fortitude Valley, call in and see me if you want. But ring ahead as I’m not here everyday.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if your customers could tell their friends about the great job you did with just a click of a mouse from your website?

Social media is the new word of mouth and social bookmarking can really help to spread the word. Many Facebook addicts will check their Facebook page before getting out of bed in the morning, last thing at night and many, many times in between. So putting your product or service in people’s Facebook timelines, as a recommendation from a friend is a powerful endorsement. This social bookmark also becomes a backlink to your site, which can help your search engine rankings too, so this type of recommendation is priceless.

Adding a Facebook like button and a Twitter button to your site will cover cover the majority of social media traffic.(You will need to know how to cut and paste HTML to do this, and you’ll need FTP access to your site.)

Shareaholic is a free social bookmarking tool offering you options to share on on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, MySpace and many more social media sites. And, you can offer the option to email or print the page. If your website is built on WordPress, you can add Shareaholic through a plugin.

Your Next Action

If you don’t have social media sharing on your site, add it now. If your site is built on WordPress you can add Shareaholic as a plugin and have it running within minutes. If your site isn’t WordPress you may have to ask your web developer to install social media options.

To your online success!

This smart infographic from PulpMedia unravels some of the mysteries of AdWords.

Infographic by Pulpmedia Online Marketing

When you claim your Google Places listing you will be asked to verify your ownserhip of the business. This is a simple, automated process. Once you’ve been verified you can add to your listing: opening hours, payment methods, detailed description and a range of other items. You will also be able to upload photos and videos and starting recently, you can request a 360-degree panaroma of the interior of your business. This service is provided by Google at no cost to you and it is being rolled out in major cities in Australia, New Zealand, USA and other countries.

After you have claimed you business listing in Google Places, request your 360-degree panorama for your business. According to the FAQs on the Google site the service is available for “restaurants, hotels, retail shops, gyms, salons, repair shops and a variety of other storefront businesses”, so if you think you’ll benefit from this service, apply now and bring your local search listing to life.

Here’s my list of five essentials when using a QR code in marketing for your business.

1. QR codes are read by smartphones or other mobile devices so make sure the page you are directing visitors to is optimised for mobile devices. It’s pointless using a QR code on advertising if the page is inaccessible or hard to navigate on a handheld device. Things to think about are:
   • Shockwave Flash – flash videos don’t work on iPhones, iPads and many other mobile devices.
   • Frames – these can be hard to navigate on a handheld device and may even render your website unreadable.
   • Large images – although data speeds are improving, very large images will take longer to download and if your page isn’t set up correctly the image may display at full size on a mobile. Slow and frustrating!
   • Forms – if you have a form on the page, make sure it works on a mobile.
2. Send the visitor to a landing page for that campaign. One of the greatest advantages to businesses of any size when using the Internet as a marketing medium is the ability to split test and measure results. It is easy and cheap to create separate pages for each campaign, or multiple pages for one campaign, and this gives business owners the tools needed to measure the performance of every piece of advertising. If you have only one QR code and all it does is send visitors to your homepage, you are missing out on extremely valuable information on the effectiveness of your advertising and how well any special offers or promotions are working.
3. Use a unique URL for each piece of marketing. This doesn’t mean you have to create multiple pages of identical content if you are only making one offer.  QR codes are free to generate so you can use a different one for each marketing piece, so if you want to send all your visitors to the same landing page, but still want to track each QR code separately, install Google Analytics on your site (if you haven’t done so already) and use the Google Analytics URL Builder Tool to give the URL a unique tag.
4. Test the QR code before running a campaign. This seems obvious, but if you run off 10,000 door hangers or place an ad in a national paper with a non-functional QR code you not only miss out on potential returns from the campaign, you may even tarnish your business’s reputation with existing customers. When you test your QR code, use the version of the image you will use in the advertising. Things to think about are:
   • Image size – the more information the QR code holds, the bigger the image has to be to be read by a camera;
   • Distribution medium -  a QR code printed on a laser printer in your office may be easier to read than the same image printed in a newspaper, displayed on an advertising screen or on the back of a business card.
5. Make a compelling offer to people who have scanned the QR code. You want people to buy something from you* when they respond to your marketing. Anyone who has taken the time to get out their phone, scan the QR code and go to your website is at least curious. Make it worth their while and make a unique offer to people who come to your site through the QR code. These things are still new and relatively unknown and you can capitalise on the curiosity factor. I have heard of one real estate agent using QR codes on property signs and adding a label “If you don’t know what this black and white box is, give me a call and I’ll explain it to you”. One way of using a QR code to appeal to people who don’t have a  smartphone.

So there you have it. Use this checklist when you’re using QR codes and you’ll get much more bang for you buck.

*Any marketing or advertising Guru who tells you your marketing or advertising is working by “building your brand” is feeding you horsesh*t, most likely in an attempt to sell you more advertising space or to cover up their own ineptitude: marketing is only working if you shift some product!

What am I talking about? The YouTube icon that appears  on the control bar at the bottom of the video when you embed it in your website.

This is also a link to the YouTube site, so it’s potentially an exit link from your site and removing it may encourage visitors to stay around a little longer.

YouTube recently announced an update to the player which will allow you to remove the branding. All you have to do is paste “?modestbranding=1″ at the end of the URL for your video and the icon disappears from the control bar.

I’ve pasted two versions of the same video below to show you the control bar with and without the YouTube icon.

The YouTube name will appear in the upper right hand corner of a paused video when you hover over it, and this links to YouTube, but it’s not nearly as obvious.

And did you know I really love cats?

For full details of all the codes for the YouTube player visit this link.

It’s a business card given to you at a networking meeting or by someone who has done some work for you in your business. The card has a nice glossy coating, with name, rank, serial number of the owner, a photo, so you remember who gave it to you and a website address: www. mybusinessname.com, or something like that.

But when you look below the phone number you see the email address:

(email address hidden, click to reveal), or worse

(email address hidden, click to reveal), or even

(email address hidden, click to reveal).

When I see a business card with a free email address on it, my first thought is “New in business, may not be around for long”.

Is that fair? Probably not.

Is it even true? Mostly it isn’t.

But if I’m thinking it, how many other people think the same thing? And if people are thinking this while you are pitching your product or service, what’s it doing to hurt your business?

The thing is, some of the most unlikely businesses are still doing this sort of thing. I dealt with one today – my accountant.

My accountant is great, he offers top notch service, he knows more about tax than I ever want to and he’s even funny – for an accountant. He has a website with heaps of good information on it, he sends monthly email newsletters to me and all his other clients and he has been in business for at least 15 years.

But when I called today to check his email I was told to send my annual accounts to a Hotmail address!

I’ll do it, because I’ve been working with the same firm for years and I absolutely trust them, but I have to wonder how much business this is costing him.

So, why do businesses continue to do this?

If you’ve got the domain name,  why are you promoting someone else’s business with your email address?

Sometimes it’s ignorance – people just don’t think of it as important.

In other cases it’s fear – of the technical challenge of setting up an email.

But in many cases it’s hosting companies offering second rate service.

If you are paying for hosting of a website, and your hosting company won’t setup email accounts for you, or give you an easy way of doing it yourself, change hosting companies. It’s as simple as that, you don’t need to put up with second rate service.

If you need to change hosting providers, we use and recommend Hostgator.

They have an easy sign up system, great customer service, terrific pricing and they will even move your website across to their servers as part of the service. The basic plan comes with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited email addresses for less than $5 per month.

Diarmuid