Archive for January, 2010

On Friday February the 26th we will be running a Social Media Quick Start training session.

This course will tell you some of the ways you could use social media to help promote yourself and your business. To tell you some things that have worked for us and to give some hints and tips for getting started.

It’s been arranged to follow the 4Networking breakfast at Fareham as #zhq is only a short walk down the bank of the Hamble from the breakfast venue.

For full details and to book in follow the link to the Social Media Quick Start training session.

The first month of 2010 has already nearly passed us by.  To keep a fresh look on your background why not download a February calendar.

Just pick the appropriate size from the list:

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Part three in this little series looks at a different way you could make use of RSS.

Previously we looked at what RSS was and how you could make the best use of it as a visitor to a website. Also we considered how to better “burn” you feed to promote it.

Another use of RSS is to bring content into your website. Fresh and relevant content is key to keeping visitors interested in a website but you probably don’t have the time to keep updating your website 24 hours a day with latest news. This is where you could use a RSS feed to bring fresh content into your site.

Lets say for example you are running a website about home education and you want to keep the readers up to date with the latest relevant news. The good old BBC has a news pages dedicated to education, and that page has a RSS Feed. You could link this feed into your website keeping your visitors informed and keeping your website updated with fresh content. You should take the time to check the terms relating to the use of the feed, but generally as long long as you don’t try to take credit for it and make sure it links back to the original site all should be okay.

Now this doesn’t mean you should not create your own content and create sites entirely made of other peoples RSS feeds.

It means you could use RSS feed to add extra value to your visitors and give them that extra incentive to visit your site on a regular basis.

The Internet is a big giant communication tool. Some communication is passive, for example you might just read this article after seeing a link on Twitter or Facebook. Alternatively this communication could become active as you might leave a comment.

A lot of times businesses expect the Internet to do the magic of creating visitors and that just by having a website their job is done. The problem with that thinking is that unless you give people a pressing reason to visit a website to see new material they won’t bother.

If you look at a list of most popular websites it’s not surprising to see that search engines, social networking and news sites dominate the list. If you want people to visit your site you have to make sure that they find it in one of those popular places and follow a link.

The most direct way that you have most control over is social media – in fact chances are that is why you are reading this post right now. Once it is finished and live on the site I will create a bit.ly short url and then send a notification on Twtter, LinkedIn and Facebook to let the masses know it’s there.

There is another way to let people know about your new content, email newsletters.  Last week we sent out a newsletter for the Jubilee Sailing Trust letting all their supporters know about the latest events with links back to their website.  This ensures their supporters, who probably don’t visit the JST website on a regular basis, are kept informed and encouraged to follow the links.

The email newsletter route is great for letting people (who have expressed an interest) know about your latest news and articles.  Another big advantage is we can track who reads and clicks on the links to know that the message is getting across.

Just having a website is not enough.  To make it successful you need to use the Internet to communicate with clients and prospects.  You need to have updated information and you need to let people know it is there.

The previous article about RSS explained what RSS is and how end users should use the feed.  This time we are looking at how website owners might make better use of their feed.

CMS  and blogging solutions like WordPress generate a feed from the posts and comments automatically.  This website has a feed http://zedoarydesign.co.uk/feed/ and using that is fine and will ‘do the job’.  There are services out there however that can help you make more of the feed.  One of these is Feedburner.

Feedburner is a service that was snapped up by Google in 2007 and provides a range of services including traffic analysis and an advertising system.

This allows you to discover  how many people have subscribed to your feed and with what service/program they subscribed with.

In addition you can link Google AdSense to the feed to choose to include advertising.  This does not put any adverts on your website only in the feed, so when it is being read in Google Reader for example at the end of each article there are a few adverts.  Unless you have a massive readership you are unlikely to get rich from AdSense but as a supermarket says, “Every Little Helps”.

Adding your feed to Feedburner is pretty simple:

1. Find the URL of your feed – normally you can do this just by clicking on the RSS symbol.
2. Go to Feedburner and log in with your Google account.
3. Paste the URL in the box that says “Burn a Feed Right This Instant”, click next and follow the instructions.

Then in Feedburner it give advice and hints on optimising, publicising and monetising the feed.  The final step is to go back to your website and make sure the RSS symbol is changed to point to the Feedburner version of you feed.

If you use a system that generates a RSS feed we recommend you use Feedburner to make it better.  And if you need any help… you know where to ask!

PS – Click on our RSS symbol to see the Feedburner feed.

I have one friend (they will remain nameless for the purposes of this post) who loves joining social media.  Barely a day goes by without a request to join them on Pfuff* or some other network.

There is a list of well over 120 social media sites on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites) and I think they are on a mission to join them all.

Now is this a good idea?  Does joining more and more strengthen your position, will it help make more connections and will it help you find more business?

I personally think the answer is no.  Especially if you just transmit the same info on all the sites.  For me the big three Social Media sites are Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn.  If you use those 3, and use them sensibly, they will provide a good basis for your social media use.  They shouldn’t take up too much of your time and they will let you communicate with a wide range of people.

What do I mean by “sensible use”?  Well I take you back to the comment “transmit the same info on all the sites”.

I know I am not alone in the dislike of the auto tweet and the linking of accounts.  The three sites have three different audiences and show be approached in different ways.  Yes, share links on all three, advertise you services (in moderation) on all three – but don’t treat all three the same.  They are not and you need to know your audience.

In future articles we will look at how to make best use of these sites and the tools you can use to make life easier..

Remember however that the next big thing in social media might be just around the corner…

*Pfuff is not real… yet.

Have you heard of Gravatar?

It’s actually quite easy to see if you have from comments on blogs because what it does, in a nutshell, is recognise your email address when you make a comment and will put an image of your choosing next to the comment.

If you are a good looking person like me you will choose to have your photo but you can choose to have any image.

This video explains it in detail:

So, go on sign up for a Gravatar – http://en.gravatar.com/ and then make a comment on this post to see it in action!

There are two main ways of using Facebook as a Business Marketing Strategy.

The most common way is to create a Facebook page for your business.  Then using this page articles, features and news are pushed to your “fans”.  Feel free to follow our Facebook Fan Page.

The second most common way is to become friends with your customers.  This works well if you the main face of your business – but does have the problem of making sure you mange to professionally represent yourself.  Drunken pictures from your Spanish holiday might be okay for your family and some clients, but not necessarily all.

A much less used approached is to create a Facebook Application.  Obviously this is more tricky and would probably need professional help but a good “viral” application can spread your name to millions of users.

There is documentation to start the process of creating an application that you can read if you are feeling brave.

The main reason for using Facebook of course is to push traffic to your own site – whichever method you choose to use you should make sure that you measure it to make sure it is being effective.

In many ways RSS is the forgotten tool of the Internet – unused and unloved by many people.  The little icons sit on websites, like the one at the bottom of this page, but how are they best used.

This is really the first article of two – the second will deal with how website owners and businesses can make the best use of the RSS feed.  This one however will look at it from the aspect of a visitor to a site with RSS and answer the simple question – “What is it for?”

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and put simply it’s a way of feeding articles from a website.  If you click on the RSS symbol below it will take you to the feed generated by WordPress of the articles.  This feed is in a format called XML which can then be read by other sites.  It all sounds technical and dull and doesn’t really explain why you’d want to use it.

Various sites offer RSS Readers – I personally use Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/) and when I find a website I find interesting I add it to the Reader as a subscription.

If you want to try it’s easy to do:

• Click on the RSS symbol in the footer of this website to view the feed.
• There will be a box on the right of the new page give a list of different readers.
• Pick one, doesn’t have to be Google, that’s my choice but you have free will!
• Choose subscribe to this feed and that’s it – every time you go to the RSS Reader the feed will update with the latest articles.

So, what’s the big advantage?

If you regularly read loads of article sources or blogs it can be a pain having to go to each one to see what, if anything, is new.

By using Google Reader I can see instantly what is new from all the feeds I follow and quickly read them, star favourites and  share interesting articles with people that follow me on Google Reader.

If you want to follow me to see what I’m sharing feel free to add me in Google Reader – admin@zedoary.net is our email.  Just go to shared items and click on the “I’m following 0 people”.  If you would like us to follow you drop us a line.

Facebook can be a useful and free way of extending your Internet Marketing.  It allows you to create pages for your business and (once you get to 25 fans) the ability to choose a SEO friendly name.

Our page is http://www.facebook.com/web.design.internet.marketing.southampton

The reason for this choice is simple – over time as the content on the Facebook page changes Google will start to return that page highly for those keywords.  It’s not instant, and like all aspects of the Internet it takes time and effort but it’s free and easy to use.

In our opinion it’s best to use the business page for business and the personal profile for friends and family.  It’s not mutually exclusive, and some of your business connections might also be friends – but there are also many who are not interested in seeing your Christmas photographs!

If you have not yet got a Facebook page for your business then set one up today – it’s free and it’s easy.  If you need any help then drop us a line.