Archive for July, 2008

Low cost online marketing for Devon and Cornwall businesses

Jul 31 | by Sam Deeks | SEO, marketing, news
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Ad picGet Found Easy: an affordable online marketing opportunity for businesses in Devon and Cornwall.

For a single fee of £75, you’ll get:

  • a front page ad on our site (see ’sponsored by’ slot opposite)
  • a single-page feature with links to your site (like the page you’re currently reading)

Your ad will stay on the front page for a week but your feature will continue to appear on P1 or P2 of the Google search results for several months for your chosen keywords.

Get Found Easy is aimed at local businesses who want to be found for key phrases that include a region or town – such as “heating installers devon” or “picture framing st.austell”

Here’s the best bit: you only pay for results. If we can’t get your ad a P1 or P2 listing within 48hrs, you don’t pay AND you keep the live feature which will continue to attract Google traffic for your business anyway. Win, win!

Call Sam on 07859 007 060 now!

(Promotion limited to 4 per month)

What happens when you let someone invent their own job title?

Jul 30 | by Sam Deeks | smile
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This :-)
Creative name
I love it!

British gas price increase inversely proportional to customer satisfaction rating.

Jul 30 | by Sam Deeks | ORM, business insight, feedback
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British Gas prices v. customer satisfaction ratingInteresting that.

Plebble.com is one of an increasing number of places where the consumer can rate the service they’ve received from any business they’ve had dealings with.

And if the company you want to comment on isn’t there, simply add it – then rate it.

There are many sites vying for the role of ‘customer feedback central’ but not many put together as many useful features as Plebble.com. Another site that does is GetFeedback.com – a place where social media meets feedback to provide an opportunity for any company to be seen to be listening and responding.

According to customer feedback on Plebble.com, British Gas is already 2nd from bottom of their entire list of businesses for customer satisfaction and a 35% price hike isn’t going to help in the slightest.

It makes me wonder: is there no limit to the fuel and gas price increases that we’ll tolerate as businesses and individuals?

What Cornwall and Devon businesses should consider…

Jul 29 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, marketing
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… if they’re invited to pay for advertising in an online business directory:

1) Is it offering increased Google visibility?

There’s a simple, common-sense way to test whether an online business directory can deliver Google search visibility for your business or not. Find someone already advertising in the directory, note the category they’re in and their location (i.e. ‘web design’ and ‘newquay’).

Then do a search for ‘web design newquay’ in Google. If you don’t find that company’s directory listing in Google’s search results, you can conclude that they’re not getting any Google visibility benefit from their membership – and nor will you.

2) Is it offering lots of traffic from people visiting the directory looking for services?

Ask yourself this question: when was the last time you searched for something you needed by visiting an online business directory? You didn’t. Like everyone else, you used Google.

What’s happened to Twitter (again)?

Jul 29 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, marketing
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It’s conked out, that’s what.

Twitter downer

I wouldn’t mind except that using it as a newsfeed means that every time Twitter dies, so does our site.

So despite having got a client all excited about Twitter this morning, this afternooon I had to remove it and go in search of an alternative that actually works.

Worldwide business networking: a high volume search term?

Jul 29 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, marketing
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Err. No. There aren’t many people searching for ‘worldwide business networking’ according to Google’s keyword generator.

This post was prompted by reading a post by someone in a professional ‘SEO’ capacity celebrating getting to #1 spot in Google for the phrase ‘worldwide business networking’.

It brings to mind a couple of points that anyone thinking about online marketing should understand before paying anyone else to help them:

1) The most searched-for keywords and phrases are the most hotly-contested because there’s money to be made.

2) If you want to get to the top of Google for hotly-contested terms, you’re going to have to:

  • work harder on your site’s search engine optimisation and/or
  • be willing to pay more in a ‘pay-per-click’ advertising campaign such as Google’s Adwords and/or
  • resort to spammy techniques (with potentially disastrous results)

3) It’s how well an SEO professional can help your site perform for hotly-contested terms that matters. :-)

Later note: Hooray, I’ve got my blog near the top of Google for ‘Worldwide Business Networking’. See? It’s not that hard because it’s not that competitive because…. there aren’t many people searching for it. What does that mean?

It means that if you paid me a lot to get you to #1 in Google for that term you’ve wasted your money since it won’t bring you any customers.

All I’m saying is that underneath the complexity and mystery of SEO it’s quite simple and you should remember that when opening your wallet to pay an SEO ‘expert’.

Are there many people searching for your chosen key phrase? Are they buying customers? Are you ready to sell them something? If the answer to all these is yes, prepare to pay to get to the top of Google because a) the competition will be tough and b) that traffic is valuable to you (and your competition).

If the answer is no, then don’t pay. It’s simple. You’ve been warned. Again ;-)

Making sense of online marketing in Devon and Cornwall

Jul 28 | by Sam Deeks | marketing, news
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mu spinToo many people feel left behind when it comes to marketing their businesses online.

If you’re one of them, we’re here to help to you Get Found, Get Talking and Get Talked About!

We specialise in common-sense advice and fast, powerful, practical solutions. From blogs to podcasts to social media, we can show you how to improve your communication and your bottom line – all completely stress-free and with no fear of it all going over your head (for a change!) :-)

Look out for our e-marketing features in the new Business Life magazine due out in August! And if you’d like monthly online marketing tips, then why not sign up for our newsletter using the box over there in the right hand sidebar?

And ask us anything you want to find out about, too. That’s what blogs are for! To leave comments or ask questions, just click in the reply box (below) and type away. Look forward to hearing from you.

Getting your online presence right – the basics

Jul 25 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, feedback
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Before you start contacting people, make sure your online presence covers the basics if you want to inspire confidence.

I got a voicemail cold-call from someone who came across our business in an online forum. Nice sounding chap, came across quite well, not too pushy. In fact, his manner was so effective, I actually tried to call him back today. Result? His 0845 number was ‘not recognised’. His website homepage was a ‘login’ screen. I then looked for background reference to him on Google.

My confidence was already low and a Google search found nothing to improve things.

The lesson? Don’t go into ‘outreach’ mode and start contacting people until you’ve got the basics covered. As a minimum:

• Have a working, professional web site in place

• Check your own online presence (search for your business in Google and ask yourself what impression the things you find add up to)

• Make sure your phone number works

You don’t get a second chance. No matter how nice this chap is or was, it’s unlikely to make me want to do business with him.

What is podcasting?

Jul 25 | by Sam Deeks | podcasting technique
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There are two interpretations of what podcasting is

1) To the podcast producer / purist, a ‘podcast’ is – strictly speaking – regular, episodes of content that are published online via an RSS feed and to which a listener / viewer can subscribe using a piece of software called an ‘aggregator’.

2) To everybody else, podcasting is putting some audio and/or video out on the web so that other people can listen to it / view it / download it when it suits them.

For most businesses, definition 1) is a solution without a problem, but definition 2) makes a lot of sense. In actual fact, our podcasting work consistently falls under that definition.

What then is podcasting?  It’s simply a process to capture useful content and deliver it to the PCs and/or portable media players of people who will benefit from it.

Shift This Newsletter Plugin for Wordpress!

Jul 22 | by Sam Deeks | marketing, news
1 Comment

We’ve got the newsletter plugin working – thanks to a tip from another user on the Shift This support forum!

If you’re getting this as an emailed newsletter, it’s via a brilliant plugin from Shift This. Imagine it: you’ve made a blog, people are visiting your site and you want to build a mailing list and design a newsletter. With this plugin you can do both.

Behind the scenes it’s pretty complicated, but out front visitors to your site are greeted with a neat ’subscribe’ box that puts their email into a list and sends them a confirmation email as a double-check. The end result is an email list that’s very definitely ‘opt-in’.

The part of the plugin where you actually build your newsletters is a bit more complicated. Getting a newsletter out using the basic template is pretty easy. Developing a newsletter to reflect your brand and site is a lot harder. Realistically, unless you’re a bit confident in the graphics and the HTML / Php department you’re going to be stuck with the basic template until someone develops a range of alternatives to choose from.

That said, if you’re willing to experiment and you can ride out a few problems, this looks to be a great plugin for Wordpress.

Whether or not it’s £15 well spent is up to you ;-)

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