More than 40 percent of American adults log in to the site — to share news, personal observations, photos and more — at least once a week. In all, some 900 million people around the world are users. But many of them don’t have a very high opinion of Facebook or trust it to keep their information private.

If Facebook the company were a Facebook user, it would have a lot of virtual friends but not many real ones, the poll suggested.

Users’ distrust limits the value of the site’s ads. Advertisers want to target their messages to the people most likely to respond to them. And the more Facebook knows about us, the better it will be at tailoring those ads to our interests.

Yet in the poll of U.S. adults published Tuesday, only 13 percent said they trust Facebook “completely” or “a lot” when it comes to keeping their personal information private. A maj

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Prof Ross has made a significant contribution to the success of the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, where he engages in research, postgraduate supervision, and other academic activities.

UCC president Michael Murphy said: “The appointment of Paul Ross as research professor strengthens our research links with one of our key partners, Teagasc, and enhances our research capability in the important area of food research.”

Prof Ross has over 300 peer reviewed publications. The National University of Ireland awarded him a DSc in 2009. He was a joint recipient of the prestigious Elie Metchknoff Award in 2010, and he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in May 2010.

Much of Prof Ross’s research in Teagasc is in collaboration with UCC, particularly with the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre. <

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If I could take a pill and instantly be as strong as superman, and avoid having to spend hours working out at the gym each week and could avoid curtailing my urges to eat cookies all day long and still stay svelte and healthy, hey I’d go for it…The same is true with marketing your business. We all want the lazy way to riches.

Which is why almost every small business owner buys into the big lie about SEO and their online marketing.

You read it, or an SEO firm calls you and wants to sign you up, and they tell you that with a top position in the search engines, your business will take off. You’ll be making so much you’ll be paving your driveway with gold bricks.

Right!?

Everyone wants to believe that SEO is the magic pill for your business – that if you could just get a top listing, that’d solve all your problems.

But what happens if you actually get a top ten listing on Google? Does it really translate into more leads, more prospects contacting you and more profits?

Whoops!

Each week, I get a handful of inquiries from smart, hard-working business owners who got sucked in by the big lie about SEO. They’ve often spent a year or more, slaving away to do everything they’ve been told about SEO. Or they’ve paid an SEO firm big bucks to help them get top listings.

Last week, these included a small business consultant in San Diego and an assisted living facility in Connecticut. Both made it to the first page of Google for their keywords only to find that they were hardly getting any more new leads or business than before.

What?

How is it possible? How is it that top rankings don’t equal more business?

The simple truth is that SEO, search engine optimization, is a good idea, but it won’t remedy other more critical marketing problems.

Imagine for a minute, you were trying to sell your house and you lived in a great town, had a great location and that buyers were out there. I know – a bit of a leap of faith in some parts of the country. But just for a second imagine your could attract a steady stream of prospects to at least drive down the street to view your house.

What do you think would happen if your lawn hadn’t been mowed in a few years, or the façade was faded, the doors locked and the shades pulled so no one could see inside?

Obviously traffic alone isn’t going to help you sell your house nor is it going to help you make money with your website, unless… your site is set up to convert traffic into leads.

But whoops! Most small business sites don’t convert traffic to sales for a simple reason.

They haven’t taken the time to clarify their:
– Brand Identity – what differentiates you from the competition
– Value Proposition – the prospects’ needs you meet and the value you provide
– Marketing Message – your client centered promise
– Primary and secondary Headlines that give prospects a reason to learn more.
– Compelling offer that gets people to email you or call you.

And that’s just for starters…

Yes, putting all the above together takes some time and some thought – but who do you think your clients are going to buy from, the business whose marketing isn’t clear, the one that looks like everybody else or the one that makes it obvious as to what they offer and how it can help their clientele?

How about you – did you get sucked in by the big SEO lie, wishing it was the magic pill for your business?

That’s okay, you’ve got lots of company, and it’s spawned a whole industry of SEO services that preys on people like you. But, now that you know the truth – the more important question is what are you going to do about it?

Looking for help growing your business – from getting attention online to getting prospects to getting sales?

To your success,

Charlie

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Disney posted net income of $1.1 billion for the fiscal second quarter, a 21 percent gain from a year earlier.

Function:

The primary function of credit card debt consolidation is to combine all your debts into a single monthly payment. It lowers your interest rates and charges, and also your monthly payments. Thus, it helps you save considerable amount at the end of the process. Credit card debt consolidation also turns your multiple payments into a single one, which means you can write a single check each month to your creditors instead of handling multiple payments. Get full post…

The survey questioned 670 executives from UK businesses of all sizes, the second year the research has been run.

In the West Midlands businesses were positive about the Governments efforts to remove barriers to job creation, with 13 per cent stating that it is having a positive impact compared to just 10 per cent nationally.

Ray ODonoghue, managing director for Midlands Corporate Banking at Barclays, said: There is still a disconnect between public sector workers and private sector employers, with a persistent element of mistrust of the former by latter.

This is something that needs to be challenged directly if we are to have a fluid employment market place that allows people to move between the public and private sector easily, bringing the best of both worlds to their roles.

Nationally job creation confidence among large companies, with turnover of more than 500 million, was down to 70 per cent, compared to 85 per cent in 2011.

Small businesses were more confident, with 51 per cent planning to create new roles compared with 41 per cent last year.

Of companies that plan to create jobs this year 82 per cent said the roles would be middle management/skilled labour, while 59 per cent plan to create unskilled jobs and 21 per cent will create senior management positions.

When asked whether job creation would generate sales, or sales growth would lead job creation, more than three quarters, 77 per cent, said growth needs to come first, although large companies are now much more likely to put investing in jobs before sales growth in 2012 compared with 2011.

Mr ODonoghue added: It is good to see smaller companies in particular more confident around creating new positions than they were last year.

There is also more confidence amongst larger firms around investing in jobs in order to grow sales, rather than waiting for sales to increase before hiring people, a good indicator of increased confidence and hopefully a sign of significant investment within the corporate sector in 2012.

Honeybees fed a dose of thiamethoxam were about twice as likely as untreated bees to die away from the hive, suggesting that the chemical interfered with the insects’ ability to find their way back home, says a study led by Mickael Henry of France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, which was published in the journal Science.

The researchers said they fed bees a non-lethal dose of the insecticide similar to that found in the field.

“If the new scientific data are confirmed, the authorisation to market Cruiser would be withdrawn,” the ministry wrote.

Cruiser has been used on millions of hectares of corn and rapeseed in Europe in the past four years without reported incidents of bee mortality, according to Mark Titterington, a spokesman for Syngenta.
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TweakYourBiz.com contributor Anton McCarthy suggests starting a 7 Day SEO Diet.  Each day of the week youll tackle one aspect of SEO.  But dont quit after only one week, youll need to repeat these actions on a continual basis.  Go to TweakYourBiz.com and start digesting your new SEO diet now.

The Dow .DJI and the S&P 500 .SPX closed out their best first quarter since 1998 and the Nasdaq .IXIC had its best first-quarter performance since 1991, largely on the back of improving domestic economic data.

Economic indicators next week include data on manufacturing and services from the Institute for Supply Management, construction spending, factory orders and domestic car sales as well as several reports on the labor market, culminating in Friday’s payrolls number.

The benchmark S&P 500 index could be vulnerable to a retreat if the data shows a softening of the economy, a possibility many investors have been cautiously eyeing with the index up nearly 30 percent from its October low.

“The remarkable part of the first quarter is you really didn’t have any major piece of economic data in the U.S.

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Over the phone, internet or via video, conference calling no longer means participants need to huddle around one loudspeaker. Up to 40 people can join one call direct from their desks no matter if they’re in the same city, county or country.

Still not enough? Why not try out web conferencing, which lets participants share, view and discuss documents and presentations in real time.

Timely, efficient and more productive than hours in the car, conferencing could be just what your business needs to save money.

That’s not going to happen. It’s probably going to take another week, according to Rancho Viejo general manager Kelly Cuff. But Rancho Viejo’s two 18-hole golf courses continue to beckon, plus the peak tourist season is almost here.

The new management hopes the upgraded pool, golf and other amenities lure a significant portion of the traffic that historically descends on South Padre Island and the Rio Grande Valley this time of year. Cuff noted that improvements to Rancho Viejo are happening at a “fast and furious” pace since the new owners took over in January. The Alberca Grande pool, for instance, which won a national design award in 1974 with its waterfall and swim-up bar, is getting a new walk-in “beach landing,” a new deck and landscaping, and a revamped pool bar menu.

“It’s going to be beautiful,” Cuff said.

Rancho Viejo’s Casa Grande restaurant, which was closed, is also under renovation and should reopen in late spring or early summer, he said. The kitchen has been re

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The goal of hide and seek, if you’re doing the hiding is to make yourself scarce, to bury yourself under a big duffle bag in a closet or climb up onto a shelf and tuck yourself behind a box. That way you’ll be… the last to be found, and win the game.

Now as I’m sure you know if you want clients, if you want to make money, playing hide and seek with your business is the opposite of what you want.

You don’t want to be hidden from view, to make yourself hard to find – but it’s amazing to me that that is exactly what many businesses are doing online – playing hide and seek with prospects, and making it hard for potential buyers to find them.

You probably guessed it. The one thing you need to do, no matter what business you’re in is… get found, make it easy for people to find you.

I’m going to go a step further. Your goal should be to

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She said Athens had a long and arduous road to recovery after being forced to seek two international rescue packages, but it would be a huge political mistake to allow Greece to leave the single European currency.

We have taken the decision to be in a currency union. This is not only a monetary decision it is a political one, Merkel said in a BBC interview, speaking in German through a translator.

It would be catastrophic if we were to say (to) one of those who have decided to be with us, ‘We no longer want you.’

Incidentally the (European Union) treaties don’t allow for that anyway. People all over the world would ask, ‘Who will be next?’ The Euro area would be incredibly weakened.

Asked about the emergence of anti-German sentiment over Berlin’s leading role in dealing with the debt crisis, Merkel said: The European discussion over the euro has become almost domestic politics.

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However, there are still several companies who are not yet aware of the concept of mobile commerce. And even if they are, the concept is not clear enough to boost them to offer mCommerce services.

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