The Google Grants programme has just celebrated its 10th birthday. Launched in April 2003, this scheme has evolved over the years and Google works with registered charities, providing them with grants to spend in Adwords. However, the number of charities that are actively using this suggests that the majority of UK charities are either overlooking the benefits of this, or are simply not aware of the scheme’s existence. This additional resource of up to $10,000 per month can make a huge difference to a charity’s marketing budgets and so although it can take several months for a grant application to be approved by Google, if you have not yet applied, it is definitely worth doing so here.

This grant does come with a number of restrictions, such as that the ads must only run on Google UK, links in the ads must only be to the pre-approved domain, the ads must be text only and not commercial, there must be no adverts on your own site such as Adsense and each bid must cost no more than $2.

The last criterion is a reasonably new update as Google increased this limit from $1 per click at the end of January. However, this increase in bids came with the announcement that all Grant funded adverts would now be featured underneath any self-funded company or charity adverts. So while this change may open your organisation up to being able to target keywords that were previously outside of this bid limit, sites are likely to have seen a decrease in traffic due to featuring lower down the listings.

However, with the changes that were announced to Adwords just a couple of weeks after this, PPC account managers have been given the opportunity to better manage these adverts. By upgrading to enhanced campaigns, you are now able to manage all devices in one campaign, manually adjust the bid for mobile ads and show call extensions on these mobile ads. This shift from legacy to enhanced campaigns is going to be enforced automatically by the end of June for any accounts that have not made the change themselves. Google have since released a tool that allows you to change campaigns in an account in bulk.

Beyond that, Grant accounts should largely be run in the same way as normal Adwords campaigns. These accounts should be maintained (if you do not work on your account over a 3 month period then Google will stop your funding), the accounts should be well structured and you will need to optimise the account to ensure that you are getting the most out of your spend. Ensure that the keywords that you target are relevant to your organisation and the pages that you are sending visitors to are also relevant and contain a call to action in order to get the best return from your spend.

If you are running a Google Grant account, we would love to know what impact have you noticed since these changes were implemented.

In conjunction with the launch of FocusON for PPC month, we are giving away a Google Chromebook to one lucky reader. Simply visit the PushON Prizes app over at the PushON Facebook page and follow the three simple steps to be in with a chance of winning. HINT: You may want to read FocusON: An Introduction to PPC Marketing first!

The post Are You Making The Most Out Of Your Google Grants Account? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Of the 52 adverts shown nationally, 26 of them involved Twitter (mostly mentioning hashtags to follow and join in on) while just 4 of these mentioned Facebook, a decline from last year where both platforms were mentioned in 8 adverts. With no mentions for Google+ and only one for YouTube and Instagram (although a very successful advert from quick thinking Oreo), is Twitter emerging as the front runner in social media?

There were over 24million tweets related to the Super Bowl this year, the highest number to date and three times higher than last year’s, it was also more than twice the number of tweets sent across the whole of Euro 2012 which at the time broke the record for the highest number of tweets sent per second during the final.

Although programmes are increasingly using hashtags, TV advertising in the UK tends to encourage viewers to visit their Facebook page. Despite this, a recent report on eConsultancy suggests that while Facebook generates more website traffic, it is Twitter that encourages more leads through sales and enquiries.

Last year it was reported that the USA had over 22million active Twitter users while the UK had almost 7million. This compares to Facebook which claims to have 163million users in America and 32million in the UK. With Twitter users increasing by 40% in the last six months and reports of an increase in users leaving Facebook, is it time that brands in the UK started to follow suit and focus more on Twitter than Facebook?

Our favorite adverts from the Super Bowl:

The post The Social Super Bowl appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The first is that you can now tailor the trending topics section. This displays the topics that are currently being most talked about and up until now, you have been able to alter this to show the most popular topics worldwide, in a particular country, or a limited number of cities. The update means that it is now automatically tailoring the trending topics that you see based on your location and people that you follow, but you can opt to change this to a particular location via www.twitter.com as you could previously.

Perhaps the biggest part of this update which will please many users, is that once you have selected how you want your trending topics to be displayed, this will then follow through to the official Twitter apps that you use on your phone and tablet. Previously, this was set to be worldwide trends only, and although it would be great to be able to change this in app, it can now at least be more relevant to you.

The other change that they have announced is the introduction of Twitter cards. These will effectively allow you to expand your tweets when sharing content from your website and there are three different formats that can be displayed depending on whether you are sharing a summary, image or video/audio. You can use these cards on your site by adding code to the head section of each page. When a link to that page is shared, the card will be displayed according to the options that you select in this code.

As part of this code, you can attribute the content not only to the website, but also to the creator’s Twitter handle, with the follow button being displayed next to both the creator and website’s Twitter IDs. This should help to create more awareness of the brand and author if the content is retweeted and seen by those who do not already follow you, in turn, increasing the number of followers that you have.

This card means that you are also given extra space in which to promote your content as you can add a title of up to 70 characters, while you can also add a description of 200 characters, exceeding the tweet character limit of 140 characters.

Currently, Twitter cards will need to be approved by Twitter as this new tool is still being rolled out to users, so you may not see these cards working on your site straight away. Any page that is blocked by your robots.txt file will also not be displayed.

See the Twitter website for a full list of the mark ups that can be used on your website.

The post Twitter Announces New Updates appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The listings will need updating to make the most out of the new format

Local pages will be accessible in Google Maps as before, as well as the new Local tab in Google+ and Google Search as they will be unique pages.  These pages will therefore be able to be optimised and indexed in their own right, as well as meaning that you will be able to direct people to these Local pages through PPC adverts.

The Local tab on Google+ suggests businesses in your local area to explore. This is based on what is popular and recommendations, so having reviews on your listing could prove to be more important than ever, especially if they are made by people in your circles.

The review system is also being changed from the familiar five star rating to a system developed by Zagat, which was acquired by Google in September 2011 and gives your business a score out of 30. This ranking is to take in to account different aspects of the service that your business offers. For example, it was originally designed to rate restaurants, allowing for a different score for the food, the service, the price, etc, giving a combined score out of 30. This should mean that scores are more spread out and give a better reflection of the service offered.

One impact of this change is that if you are reviewing a business, you can now do this as a business rather than an individual. It will also allow you to filter reviews by those that you have in your circles, making it easier to find reviews from people that you know.

To see how these listings are going to look, check out Pomegranate Cafe (shown below) which was part of the Google+ Local Pilot scheme.

You can’t link this page with your Google+ page just yet, but we would expect this update to be imminent.  For now, you can still edit your listing as before in Google Places For Business. However, it looks as though Google are set to add more features to the Local pages over the coming months, meaning that it will become a much more social platform where businesses will be able to interact with their customers.

In the meantime, we recommend creating your own Google+ business page so that you are ready when this update is made. As updates like this continued to be rolled out, it is looking like Google+ is going to be a very powerful tool for businesses.

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