PostsSEO and SEM? 1st November 2013 4:35 PM 2 pieces of the same pie... Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing. One is optimising via on or off page techniques, the other is pro actively marketing via things such as PPC. SEO once done (or ongoing) will generate free (organic) traffic, but unless you are savvy yourself, then there is the cost to have this implemented. Thomson Local has gone bust!!!!! 1st November 2013 4:30 PM Or has too much time on her hands!  BT Openreach - what's your experience? 31st October 2013 2:34 PM Watched BBC Watchdog yesterday, and saw their report on Openreach, and hearing the stories of people being without phones or broadband for months. Must admit, used to have have big probs with BT years ago. They installed a switch in our office and wired it up back to front and inside out. After much yelling, I finally got an engineer who knew what he was doing. and he cracked it. Residential wise, luckily I've not had any problems, and recent issues we had this year with our Openreach business account were sorted out very quickly, and they were pretty slick. I was thinking maybe they had turned the customer service corner from the bad old days, but the watchdog program seemed to suggest otherwise. I suspect business accounts will always get a better service and faster turnround than residential, but whats anyone else's recent experience? Good bad or indifferent? What is the best advertising - on a shoe string budget? 30th October 2013 9:35 AM “You can employ a professional digital marketing team even with a tight budget through outsourcing. Outsourcing is one of the recognized strategies in reducing operational costs without compromising quality.” True to a degree, but as someone who lives on the coal face, and sees outsourcing efforts every day, I'd question quality claims. Having someone who,say lives in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, write or create content for a purely local UK English market rarely works and soon becomes apparent. Worldwide English, or call it Internet English isn't the same as local English, and we see it every day on our directory. The English has got so poor for some entries that we now visually show Country locations from the IP's in our admin panels to help with moderation and approving listings. I'd say 80% of listings generated from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are poor English and have to be edited or simply deleted. These are obviously outsourced low quality SEO companies. That said, prob about 60% of listings that originate with Indian or Pakistan IP's are surprisingly good. Also surprising to see is the origin of a lot of SEO generated listings, which include unlikely places like France, USA and South America. These all tend to be pretty good and are rarely deleted or blocked. But the surprisingly worst offender is the UAE, where it's not just poor English, but random made up UK addresses, irrelevant categories, all in the name of trying to get a web link. I genuinely feel for the small businesses that have been sucked in by these rogue SEO bods, and their awful link building efforts. I may have to do a proper post with pretty graphs on the originator countries of outsourced SEO/Marketing, and quality percentages Maybe even list the IP's and build a hall of shame!News Graphics - what do you think? 30th October 2013 9:04 AM I've never really paid much attention to these, and ones I've seen previously haven't been that impressive, but came across this one and thought wow! A Game of Shark and Minnow - Who Will Win Control of the South China Sea? - NYTimes.com Story aside (which is fascinating itself) it shows the direction that content is going, and the future of more informational sites, versus static pages. Has anyone considered adding content like this or seen any other good examples? 10 years since Concorde retired! 25th October 2013 5:52 PM Doesn't seem possible does it? 10 years since aviation technology started going backwards... Would love to have flown on her, but alas I was destined for cattle class and slow haul flights   How frequent do you send out a newsletter? 25th October 2013 4:20 PM We call it a newsletter but in reality its an upsell, but it's consistent and works spectacularly well. Goes every month without fail, but does best when we send no more than 1 message (not including auto responders or system messages). Tried just about every conceivable combination and split testing over the years. What works for us is a fairly short message, with an image header, and 1 more smaller image in the body. Nice big obvious call to action title, and the subject we just leave as the business name. Personally I don't like it, but every time we tinker with it and sexify it up a bit, conversion rate drops off and we go back to old faithful.  meetings 25th October 2013 4:09 PM “Well the meeting was a unproductive, he didn't tell me anything i didn't know so will go ahead with original plans.” Oh dear, unfortunately an all to often tale But sometimes just talking ideas outloud can help, even if it's no more than reinforcing what you already know, so maybe not completely unproductive?What is a digital business? 24th October 2013 12:53 PM Here's an article from Marketing week that gives a thought provoking question. “But what do we really mean by iPad 'Air' 24th October 2013 12:37 PM “Yes - well soon. I must admit I agreed with you but a work colleague was stating that there were only a couple of things he couldn't do on his iPad that he could do on his laptop. Because there is an app - apparently - for most things, though maybe he doesn't actually do much!  ”I guess it depends on the type of business, or maybe our age? Not seen what accessories you can get for an ipad, as in external port connectors, but I couldn't survive without 2 screens, and the ipad one is too small for work, that's even if you can split screen it at all? I'd also need an external keyboard, which you can get, but I find it much more productive and quicker to use a mouse than dragging my sticky fingers around the screen, and having to clean it every day. No doubt there are compatible alternatives, or maybe an app, but can I run MS office on an ipad and open up my spreadsheets (plus staying secure rather having a 3rd party app open them). Even accessing our own backend admin panel is hardwork without a mouse, as my fat fingers tend to open the wrong button. Could you run your accounts on an ipad? Certainly wouldn't entrust that to a 3rd party app So personally I can't imagine it, unless maybe you run an offline business, and just need an occasional browser access. But always happy to be proven wrong, so anyone running their empire from an ipad or other tablet? |
