So in no official order, below are the top ten most read blog posts of 2011:

Top Email Marketing Checks To Do Before You Hit Send

Email marketing is a very effective way to communicate with your current and prospect customers. It’s quick, inexpensive and can give you instant results. But it’s important that it’s done right. Make sure you make the most of each eblast by making the following email marketing checks: From Name Is your ‘From’ name recognisable? Will [...]

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Google+ For Business

If you’ve been in a coma recently, you might not have heard about Google’s new social media platform, Google+! Even though it’s been around now for a few weeks, there’s still some confusion over how to use it and what it could mean to you both personally and as a business. The service is Google’s [...]

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Building Your Email Marketing List : Research Results

A couple of months ago, MarketingSherpa released the results of a study they had undertaken, into the most effective methods of growing an email marketing list. The researchers asked more than 1100 marketers to indicate the effectiveness of various methods used within their organisation. This is what they found: Although these results are based on [...]

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Top Black Hat SEO Techniques You Must Avoid

Wikipedia describes black hat SEO as “SEO tactics such as spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines’ terms of service and is often considered unethical SEO.” The alternative is white hat SEO, which are the techniques that are approved by the search engines [...]

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Reciprocal Linking – Good or Bad SEO?

If you’ve got a new website and you’re trying to optimise it and improve it’s position in the search engine results for your desired key terms, you may be aware that link building is an important area of SEO that you need to focus on. So it could be tempting to respond positively to an [...]

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Secrets of Successful Blogging

The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase “we blog” in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Ever since then, people have been blogging for business and for [...]

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Top Ten Google AdWord Mistakes – Part Two

Following from our previous post last Thursday, here are the additional five mistakes that we see people make in their Google AdWord Campaigns: 6. Not targetting the right group of searchers: Is your product or services aimed towards a particular demographic or geographical location? Did you know that you can set your AdWord campaigns to target those [...]

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MegaBus Robots.txt File Fail

I am organising a trip up to London with some friends in September. We’ve decided to save some money and use the MegaBus to travel from Southampton. Due to my love of all thing organising, I was put in charge of sorting out the costs etc. So first thing I did was to Google MegaBus. [...]

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Online Promotion: How to promote a new offer, product or service online

Online promotion is a key marketing method for small businesses. If you’re promoting a new offer, product or service, how can you market it online? One of the key benefits of the Internet is that it creates an even platform – allowing smaller businesses to promote themselves at a relatively low cost. But you still need [...]

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Small Business Branding, Logo and Corporate Identity – What’s the Difference?

Okay small business owners, I have some questions for you here: How many of you reading this, know what your logo is? (I’m really hoping you’re nodding along, safe in the knowledge that you know what your logo is! I’ll be scared if  you don’t, unless you’re just starting a new business and haven’t had a [...]

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If you want to start 2012 with a bang, get in touch. We love helping businesses grow through using effective online marketing. So if you want more leads, more sales and more growth in 2012 drop us an email or complete our contact form.

“Also they mentioned that we shouldn’t be putting our press releases on our website as it can be see as duplicate content, is that right? I really don’t want to take them all off….do you have any suggestions or thoughts on that?”

Now I understand the context of this point – Google and the other major search engines do not like duplicate content. They want to provide the highest quality set of results to the searcher, so if 3 of the top items are duplicate, this isn’t going to provide a great experience for said searcher.

However, one thing that I think a lot of people forget is that SEO (search engine optimisation) should never overtake the goal of creating a high quality website for your customers/visitors. It’s all about user experience. Yes you want to make a website that is search engine friendly, but not at the expense of usability.

Most of the time, SEO actually helps to improve the experience for your website visitors – removing broken links, improving navigation and site architecture, pushing website owners to create fresh useful content… but sometimes, just occasionally, it can have the opposite effect and this is where the issue of press releases come in.

Many people (these workshop hosts included) worry that loading a press release onto your site and submitting the same release to news wires runs the risk of being penalised for duplicate content. This blog post isn’t a debate about whether or not that will happen – search engines can be fickle things, 9 out of ten people might get away with such activities, but one (which could be you) could get penalised. Duplicate content is, after all, duplicate content.

This blog post is about whether or not the risk of keeping your press releases on your website is worth the risk of being penalised by Google for having duplicate content. Firstly, I’d like to point out that if you load your press release to your website first and let Google index it and then submit it to the news wires, Google will know that it was on your site first, so your site is the original owner and author of the content – massively reducing any risk of being penalised.

But even if the above didn’t work like that, I would still urge people to host all their press releases on their website. Why?

• Having an archive of press releases gives visitors an understanding of your company’s growth and development over time
• A visitor can access all your relevant news at the point of their interest – i.e. they’re on your site – hit them with your content there and then
• Relevant visitors and prospect customers will be unlikely to be trawling the news wire website, so you run the risk that key people will miss the news item all together
• If a journalist sees a copy of your press release on a news wire, they can visit your site and see an archive of all your previous news items, giving them a greater (and easier) understanding of your company
• Interested parties can register to receive updates of any new press releases via an RSS feed – keeping you fresh in their minds (and in boxes) and bringing them back to your site for more information if they want
• Not all news wires store press releases indefinitely – hosting them on your own site lets you stay in control

There are so many reasons why I would always advise clients to host their own press releases (in addition to sending them out via online news wires) but the bottom line is that it creates a better user experience if you have an archive of all your past news on your own website.

What do you think? Do you disagree? Is this not something you’d be willing to risk?  Let us know in the comments below.

The recommendation from someone else still remains one of the most trusted sources of information in helping people to decide buy a product or service. Many businesses acknowledge that word of mouth is an effective way of attracting new customers and so make an effort to use written testimonials in their websites and marketing materials. But is this enough?

Research has shown that more and more internet users are making and viewing video clips for all sorts of purposes; YouTube is an obvious example. It is important that businesses realise that customers can help to promote a business’s services by using online videos for their testimonials.

So are you capturing the great things your customers say about you and turning them into a sales development tool?

Benefits of using video testimonials

To prospect customers – they feel more reassured that the product or service they intend to buy from you has been rated highly by someone else and they are therefore more likely to buy. Prospects may also have a concern or objection about the service and if the video clip addresses this they will feel much more motivated to buy.

To the business – the main benefits to the business using video testimonials are increased sales and a stronger reputation. They will also find their website more helpful to prospect customers. The process can also be an enjoyable and interesting experience for the customers participating in the testimonial. In addition, it has the added benefit of creating a stronger bond between supplier and customer that can lead to repeat business.

To sales and marketing people – marketing managers have a new source of information with which they can employ to attract new customers. They can use video clips in websites, PowerPoint presentations, videos at conferences and exhibitions.

To sales people – video clip testimonials offer a new sales tool to boast the benefits of the service to prospects. They can be used as part of a presentation made on video conference calls and PowerPoint presentations. When sales people are at the introduction stage with a prospect they can show clips from laptops, mobile phones and iPads. We find that sales teams benefit from short bite size sales training sessions to get the best from video testimonials and to refresh their skills in resolving customer objections therefore reducing the time taken to convert a prospect to a paying customer.

Now on the subject of producing video testimonials there are two approaches. The first is to do it yourself. Select one of your best customers, get their agreement to do a testimonial, clarify the purpose and content of the video clip, grab an HD camera, find an office or other suitable location, set up the camera on a tripod and rig up the microphones; you may need to set up some extra lighting too. Make the customer comfortable - ask them to look at you when they are answering questions and let the camera roll. Then ask the customer prompting questions to get them talking about the positive aspects of buying and using your product or service. Once the filming is complete you need to edit the footage to create a video clip of all the good bits. Editing takes time and effort; as a result you could finish up with a rotten video testimonial or a great one - the difference lies in the editing stage. This is where the effort and skill is needed; it’s where the magic is added.

On the other hand you can employ a specialist like Reputation Selling who will manage the whole project for you and will ensure that the video testimonials do the job that they were designed to do and that is to attract more customers, increase sales and build the business’s reputation. Reputation Selling’s  USP is their blend of talent; from sales and marketing experience gained at the sharp-end to a team of professional videographers; from expertise in website management to a proven capability to create bespoke sales training programmes. For more please visit www.reputation-selling.co.uk and speak with the managing Director, Nick Belcher.

Image by jsawkins

So imagine you have a new offer – promoting 50% of a particular product – what can you do to push this promotion online?

• Create special offer page
  • Explain what the offer is
  • What are the benefits?
  • What are exactly are you offering – what can your customers expect to receive?
  • What is the cost? (free, percentage off, pounds off etc)
  • How to order?
  • Include form on the page to register

Then promote this page using various online platforms:

• If you are using Google AdWords or any other form of pay per click advertising, create a special campaign with dedicated adverts pointing to your promotion web page.
• Create a press release about your offer
  • Upload it to online newswires
  • Might be worth paying £45 or so to put it on a paid newswire
  • Email it to industry journalists and publications (both online and physical)
• Promote on all social media sites
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
• Create a blog post about it
  • Link to the main landing page
• Create an article about it
  • The benefits of your offer and how it can help your customers
• Create an email about it and blast it out to your email marketing list
  • For previous prospects that maybe didn’t convert in the past, try writing a personalised sales letter to the contact and posting it (old school, but still a good-un!). Explain what the offer is and include a link to the page for people to register for it, and a paper form which they can fax/scan/email back.
• Add it to your email signature
• Maybe consider buying some banner ads on relevant event marketing websites
• When you sell one, try and get a customer testimonial which you can add to the promotional page (and other marketing materials)
• See if you can get existing customers to spread the word to their customers/partners etc

So you see, that with a bit of time and effort there really are very effective methods you can use to promote your latest offer.

If you need any help with any of these areas (creating landing pages, Google AdWords, press releases, blogging or article writing), get in touch with us today. We’re passionate about creating optimised content and have helped many of our customers get fantastic results using such methods.

Call 023 8083 7271 or email us on info@SMEketing.com

This excellent 21 step by step guide was taken from ronnestam.com and his post on 21 Steps on How to Monitor Your Brand Online and Keep Track of the Conversation

Follow these 21 steps to take gain some sort of control of where your brand might be mentioned online:

1. First thing. Head over to Google Alerts and enter the keywords you want to monitor. This is the easy one.
2. Then do the same over at Socialmention Alerts. An easy one too. However, these first two ones are a little bit slow so continue reading.
3. Register an account on Netvibes.com and once your done keep that Internet browser window open.
4. Open one more window (press CTRL+N or CMD+N on a Mac)
5. In the new window, go to socialmention.com and perform a search on the keywords (for example the name of your brand) you want to track.
6. Once you have gotten your result. Look for the orange RSS icon in the top right corner.
   Click the RSS Feed icon.
7. Now select the link in your web browser and copy (press CTRL+C or CMD+C on a mac).
8. Switch back to the window where you have your new Netvibes.com page.
9. In the top, press new Tab and name it with the keyword you searched for.
10. In the top left, click the green button ‘Ad Content’ and choose Ad a Feed in the drop down menu.
11. Place your marker in the field that says ‘Enter a feed address or website URL for auto detection’ and paste (CTRL+V or CMD+V on a mac).
12. Press the button Add Feed besides your pasted link.
13. Now press the little green button that says ‘add’ and you search result will be displayed in the bottom field below the Tab that you just named.
14. Switch windows and perform the same search in Socialmention but this time click the tab Microblogs above the search field
15. Redo the entire process and you have added your next search.
16. Once you are done you should have searches in each and every area from the web.
17. Now Switch window back to the one with Social Mention and go to Icerocket.com
18. On Icerocket you will find the RSS results to the left.
19. Now perform the same process except for creating new tabs in Netvibes.
20. Once done, go to Twingly.com and perform the same searches on both Blogs and Microblogs.
21. Last thing to do. Go to the preferences of your internet browser and change your startpage to netvibes.com

Carrying out these steps will ensure you are aware of what is being said about you, where and by whom.

Happy monitoring!

You might think that your business maybe too small and no one talks about you, or maybe you think that you already monitor your website, blog and Twitter and that’s good enough. Well that’s where you are wrong! People are constantly talking online – sometimes they’re talking to you, othertimes about you. You need to make sure you’re monitoring the whole of the world wide web for your keywords (namely your business name). Only then can you respond to people when they mention you. If someone makes a negative comment about your company in a forum shouldhave processes in place that would alerted you to it. Then you’ll be able to instantly respond to it, fix the situation and show them how good your customer service actually is.

So where are people making comments about your business?

• Blogs
• Twitter
• Social Networks (such as Facebook, Mebo and MySpace)
• Social Media Sites (such as the reviews within Amazon)
• Wikipedia
• Blog Comments
• Message Boards
• Forums
• Consumer Websites
• Article sites
• Video Sites (such as YouTube, Moveo)
• Photo Sites (such as Flickr, Google Picasa)

Monitoring your online brand reputation will allow you to gain further understanding of what people think of you and your products and services. You can view trends and find out what is and what isn’t popular, and be made aware of any potential issues.

Our next post on Monday will outline what tools you can use to monitor your online reputation – make sure you don’t miss it. You can be alerted to all our post updates by entering your email in the box to the right.

There are many awards out there you can enter. Awards for enterprising businesses owners, awards specific to your industry, green awards, local involvement awards… with a bit of research you can find a host of awards that your company can enter. Some are free and some involve a small cost.

But why should you take the time (and possible cost) to enter your company into awards? Well there are numerous benefits.

The prize

This could be money, which is always a good thing, along with promotion of your business in press and through the organiser. Depending on the size of the organiser this could be worth more than the prize money. A national award sponsored by national newspapers could mean your name being promoted in editorial pieces throughout the year – an invaluable bit of free advertising that you would not normally be able to receive.

Promotion

As stated above, if the award is sponsored by someone with a bit of clout, you could benefit greatly from winning. However, what happens if you don’t win? Well it doesn’t mean it was a completely wasted exercise. You can create your own press releases announcing your entry into the awards, then if you make the shortlist you can create another press release announcing this. Press releases are a fantastic way to promote your business. If you add the press release to your website, that counts as fresh new content, which Google loves. If you upload it to online newswires, you’ll also get a huge number of new links pointing to your site – again a huge factor in your website’s position in the search engines. And if you send it out to relevant journalists you may also get it printed – which is free advertising! And if you do win.. well, that’s another press release you can create!

Other Benefits

Entering awards also gives you something to work towards. If there’s a particular award you’d like to win, you can set specific annual goals which can help to achieve this.

If you do win your award, it’s a great way of increasing that level of trust between you and your customers and prospects. It also acts as an endorsement, and if the award if from a well known organisation it can have a huge impact on your reputation.

If you make the shortlist you may choose to attend the award ceremony. This is a fantastic way of meeting new industry members and is a great networking opportunity.

And finally, if you win, you’ll have a shiny new trophy to put in your reception/cabinet/desk – and who doesn’t like that!

If you need some assistance drafting the copy for your award entry or would like a press release written announcing your award entry please get in touch with us today!

Apple unveiled the new iPhone 3G S at yesterday’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Rumors of a new iPhone have been whirling around for months and months, so this came as no surprise. As detailed on the Apple website, the new features of the handset are:

• 2x Faster: The fastest iPhone ever. Load web pages, launch apps and more – faster
• Built in video camera: Shoot video, then edit it right on your phone
• Voice control: Use your voice to place a call or play music
• Compass: Let iPhone 3G S point you in the right direction
• Spotlight Search: Search across your iPhone from one place
• Messages: Send text, photos, videos and more

For those of us in the UK, the Carphone Warehouse and O2 will be supplying the phone to consumers from the 19th June 2009. However – anyone who already has an iPhone 3G (like myself) will face a huge charge if we want to upgrade.

There is limited information on the new iPhone 3G S on O2’s homepage; all current communication on the deployment of the new iPhone 3G S has come from their official O2 Twitter feed. From this, they announced that existing customers will have to buy themselves out of their existing contract, then purchase the new iPhone 3G S on a new contract. This is unlike the time of the previous iPhone 3G launch, where in order to make up for the disappointing performance of the first-generation iPhone, O2 allowed customers to break from their existing contract and upgrade for free.

For anyone who has a current iPhone 3G, the minimum their contract can have left is 6 months (for those who bought the iPhone 3G on the day of release, anyone else will have even longer). On a mid-sized contract of £35 a month, this equates to more than a £200 charge. Now many of you may think that this is pretty fair – why should people on an iPhone 3G contract get out of it, just because a new phone has been launched. And in a way you’re right – if I had a Nokia and Nokia released a new phone (which they do often), I would be laughed out of O2 if I demanded to be released from my contract just because I wanted the new version of my existing Nokia phone.

So why are O2 not repeating this offer of getting out of your contract for free – it’s because they know that they’ve got money coming in regardless. By forcing people with the current iPhone 3G to sit out their existing contract, they get a steady £35 (or whatever) a month from them. They can they can then provide new customers with the new iPhone 3G S, so their new stock of iPhone 3G S go on new customers, rather than existing ones. The iPhone is exclusive to O2 so we don’t have a choice. O2 know that even if they make current customers really, really angry – it’s tough. We can’t exactly take our business elsewhere.

But the problem here is that the majority of iPhone users are (or were) fiercely loyal to the iPhone – these are the people you saw on the news queuing up overnight to make sure they got their mitts on a new iPhone 3G on the day of release. And why did they do that?? Because O2 had allowed them to get out of their existing contract with the first-generation iPhone and just pay the money for the new phone alone. These people made the iPhone 3G (and in turn O2) a huge success. These are the people who blog about it, tweet about it and convince their friends that they can’t possibly live without one! But do you think these same people will be queuing round the block in the rain if they have to pay £200+ to get out of their contract, plus the £274.23 to buy the new phone?? We’re in a recession, and even the most avid of iPhone fans are unlikely to be willing to drop that amount of cash just for the prestige of having the latest iPhone (the new features really aren’t worth that much money, and anyone on with an iPhone 3G can get a software upgrade free anyway). And anyone who doesn’t already have an iPhone is unlikely to be mad enough about them to queue like that.

Another problem for O2 is that as well as the rumours of a new iPhone launch, there have also been rumours that other networks will soon be allowed to sell the iPhone. If this happens, O2 will soon find that all these unhappy iPhone 3G customer may well up sticks and leave to a provider that will be more competitive and who treat their customer with a bit more love and care. So by angering their existing iPhone 3G customers, O2 are taking a big risk.

So, watch the news on 19th June – will people be queuing outside (hopefully not in the rain – come on British summer!!) all night long to get their hands on the latest release? I doubt it – and if they are they’re probably actors/O2 employees etc, who’ve been paid to do it! I can just see the new launch being a flop – because O2 are alienating the people they need to make it a success.

The moral of this story? Just because you may have your customers held over a barrel, it doesn’t excuse you treating them badly. This is a lesson that can be applied to all businesses – large and small. If you’re a small business providing a service that no-one else does, or if you’ve got customers locked into a contract – it shouldn’t affect the way you treat them. Never assume that you can ignore them or give them a second rate service just because they have no choice. Customers are king as far as small businesses are concerned and you should treat every single one like gold-dust!