While many of us are busy building up our professional online networks to advance our careers and business, how many of us have given a thought to who actually owns our connections?

Most of us assume that it’s our network, and we own it, but the law is quite grey around this issue.

There have already been court cases where companies have sued to have their ex employees online contact lists either deleted or handed over to the company.

The courts have ruled favourable on both sides in the handful of cases that have already been tested.

In Britain recruitment firm Hays successfully applied to have an ex employee hand over his Linkedin connections.

While in the US, Microsoft failed in a similar action against an ex employee.

As usual it all comes down to the wording in the contracts and prosecutions.

However, there are much wider issues to consider. Read more....

The term “social media” no longer has any usefulness; in fact it is becoming detrimental to the further development of digital business and marketing.

Social media and online media have already relegated traditional media such as newspapers and TV news to third place.  These once dominant players are now left to following social media to find out what’s going on.

Traditional media’s relegation to news followers rather than news breakers has been clearly demonstrated in events such as the terrible floods in Eastern Australia a few years ago, other natural disasters and even revolutions around the world.

People directly involved in these events were constantly tweeting and posting to Facebook messages, images and video of the events going on as they happened.

Mainstream media was reduced to just rebroadcasting these riveting and harrowing moments, and maybe following up on them later.

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Rather gruesomely they ended up as piles of rotting meat on the forest floor many metres below.

Darwinism at its most brutal: Figure it out or die.

Business, especially Australian online retail, is going through its own painful process of natural selection right now caused by the booming online economy.

They either don’t get or are completely unaware of the need to start swinging in the online business jungle.

And, unfortunately, there’s no doubt that it is a jungle with all sorts of lethal traps for the unwary and strange, exotic beasts that will devour them overnight if they are not quick enough or smart enough.

But into it they must swing, there is no escaping it.

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This post will tell you how to quickly install the application you need and then make the most of Linkedin.

Killer Tip: Customise Your Profile Feed Details

First of all fill in your website, blog and RSS feed details in the Websites section of your main profile information panel.

Click the Edit button next to each and enter the url of the site, blog or rss feed.

Now here’s a killer tip which I don’t see too many people using. Most people just leave the default headings that say “Website” or “Company Blog” in the description field, which is pretty boring and uninviting.

However, what you can do is customise these headings to either use enticing calls to action as I’ve done, or if you really wanted to be clever include some keywords in the headings.

Learn the rest of these tips...

The video is about an hour long and well worth a watch, but the gist of his argument is that the continual changes Google has made over the past two years make many SEO techniques obsolete, and that content marketing is a much better option.

Nor is Karr the only SEO expert to express this view, but more on that later.

There is No Such Thing as Page 1 Ranking Anymore

Google’s localisation and personalisation efforts over the past two years mean no two people see the same search result.

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As is the case with many web services, just because they are free to set up and use, it doesn’t mean they are without considerable cost.

The obvious cost is staff. Ideally you’ll need a marketing strategist to work out the campaigns, a community manager to manage the day to day activity, and then there is the time the rest of your staff may spend promoting your business on social media.

Whether you do it in-house or outsource it, the costs are still going to be significant.

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The report says that 45-49 year olds are the most active online purchasers followed by the 50-64 years olds.

That could well be because they have more disposable income, but nevertheless it proves once again that Australian shoppers have moved wholeheartedly to the online retail space.

Age is neither a factor nor a barrier when it comes to shopping online.

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2012 is already the most frenzied and chaotic time yet for online retailing according to leading research firm the e-tailing group.

In its latest report: Racing on the Technology Treadmill: Confronting the Pace of Change, it says that even experienced online operators are finding the going overwhelming.

The Chicago based research company has been studying online business for 18 years, and for the past 11 has published an annual survey of online merchants’ tactics, practices, strategies and issues.

For those businesses not yet online it must now seem like they are at the point where the train has almost left the station. If they run like hell they might just make the last train; if they hesitate it will be gone forever.

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Co founder of Linkedin Reid Hoffman recently made a great short video of why your network is important.

Hoffman’s perspective is that your network is the key extension of how successful you are as a professional.

And therefore it is essential to keep developing it and yourself in order to succeed.

Learn more of the key points about what he said, and advanced tips for using Linkedin here...

The new social reports in Google Analytics announced over a month ago are now finally available to Australian users.

The graphic design of the Google Analytics interface has also had a minor facelift.

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