The e-commerce grapevine is alive with talk about on-line business Ocado preparing to go for a stock market flotation as early as May. It’s thought the value of the e-commerce business is around £1 billion, which would make it part of the FTSE 250.

This is big news indeed for the on-line grocery company that was set up 10 years ago by former Goldman Sachs bankers Jonathan Faiman, Tim Steiner and Jason Gissing. Shareholders include the TetraPak billionaire Jon Rausing, the former US vice-president Al Gore, Procter & Gamble and the John Lewis pension fund.

Ocado reported a rise of 30% in underlying sales in December but the company has not yet made a pre-tax profit. During 2009 Ocado reported a pre-tax loss of £32.6 million.
It will be interesting to se how this debut floatation goes.

There are many ways to make social media marketing work for your e-commerce or on-line business. But there are also a number of ways to get it wrong. Here we bring you some dos and 10 don’ts.

DO: Define your goals; target your market to follow the right people; look at what competitors are doing; have an offer and call to action; keep track of results; be original; be engaging; be honest; be active; be open-minded about other points of view; be honest; build a community; make friends; and try to influence people

DON’T: Be too pushy; post news releases; be hurt when people stop following you (it happens a lot!); spam; stalk people; be negative; have multiple profiles for your brand; too self-serving.

If you’ve not heard the story about drinks giant Pepsi and the end of Super Bowl advertising then it’s time you did. Just before Christmas, and after 23 years of traditional advertising placement at the hugely popular US Super Bowl events, Pepsi made the decision to change its marketing drive

Perhaps this seems like a strange move given that the Super Bowl is one of the most watched events in America. Then again, the Super Bowl is a US-only event and has a somewhat limited international audience. Added to this most, Americans are probably already aware of this huge drinks brand, so perhaps someone decided it was time to look at a fresh, more multi-national campaign.

In particular, it’s thought that Asia will be the next big focus for Pepsi. And who are renowned as one of the biggest users of social media? Asia, especially China. It’s also the case that Pepsi’s biggest rival, Coke, is one of the most popular brands in China. So you’re beginning to see how Pepsi is starting to think.

If Pepsi is to break into new markets and to compete against the competitors then social media marketing is likely to be the best way forward. In tough economic times it also makes good financial sense as social media marketing is a great deal cheaper than more traditional forms – and far easier to keep fresh and in the public’s mind.

So if the big brand players are at it – then every business should be taking note, and action. It will definitely pay to get into social media marketing asap.

If you ever wondered why time flies by then you only need to look at the results of a mobile phone industry survey. Apparently the UK spends millions of hours on-line social networking via their mobile phones.

The report, from the GSM Association (GSMA) and taking into account three of the five major mobile phone networks, shows that Brits spent more than 2.2 billion minutes social networking in December alone. It reveals, too, that 16 million Brits people accessed the internet from their mobile phones in the same month.

Together, they viewed a total of 6.7 billion pages and spent more than 4.8 billion minutes (60 million hours) on-line during the month.

It will not surprise you to know that Facebook was top of the favoured social network sites, followed by Google sites and then Microsoft sites.

When it comes to on-line purchasing, the Brits are the biggest spenders. In a survey that looked at on-line spending last year in Europe it was found that our country makes almost a third of total internet purchases.

Buying on-line in the UK added up to a massive £38billion in 2009, accounting for 30% of total European internet sales, according to price comparison site Kelkoo. In second and third place were Germany and France respectively.

And while many people are tightening their purse strings it appears they are increasingly likely to spend on ecommerce and e-retail sites. On-line sales in the UK increased by 12% last year, items bought over the internet make up 9.5% of all retail sales in this country.

It’s thought that this trend is set to continue. The report believes the on-line market will continue to expand this year growing by more than 10%.

Blogging is growing among the over-30s ¬- but on the decrease among younger internet users, a new report has revealed.

The study, which was carried out in America, shows that 12 to 17-year-olds are switching from blogging to simpler, more mobile forms of communication.

While the numbers of over-30s bloggers has risen from 7% in 2007 to 11% in 2009, youngsters who blog has halved to 14% since 2006.

The study also found that more young people – 55% of 18 to 29-year-olds and 27% of 12 to 17-year-olds – are also accessing the internet from their mobile phones, increasing the need for brevity.