Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-09-06T16:23:25+0100 2010-09-06T16:23:25+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/do-screaming-bus-stops-sales-367/ From time to time, an annoying advert or jingle can be beneficial for a brand, but it's an extremely fine line between an endearingly irritating, yet catchy song ('we buy any car, we buy any car...') and something so bad it makes everyone hate your product. If anyone's seen the advertisement currently festooned across a certain Cross Street bus stop, just outside Boots, they know what I'm talking about. The advert that seems to periodically scream its brand name; or perhaps it senses when people are looking at it? Either way it's a horrendous idea.Imagine - for this advert to have been approved, several things must (perhaps in some parallel universe where logic is inverted) have happened: An employee of the firm responsible for this monstrosity has come up with the idea, and been sufficiently impressed with their advertising nouse to forward it to their manager. The manager has said to their employee, "You know what, you might be on to something there." The manager and the employee have pitched their idea to the client, who shall remain nameless, and the client has said, "Good idea guys, let's do it!" The whole motley crew has paid ridiculous sums of money to have the advert installed in bus stops. They've all sat back and felt satisfied. And what have they achieved? Everyone (surely) hates the advert, hates the product and will probably avoid it in shops for the rest of their life. Whilst this obnoxious advertisement does make people take notice, it doesn't make them take notice in anything like a good way. Both the brand name and the actual nature of the product have come second to the 'concept', and are subsequently difficult to make out - I am still unsure exactly what the advert is for.This kind of advertising, believe it or not, is actually founded on a sensible idea. Make your advertising slightly annoying, slightly obnoxious, and people will take notice. They may not like it at first, but it will quickly become a talking point (see: this blog post, although I haven't mentioned the brand itself) - it's the adage: "any publicity is good publicity."The problem is, when a company produces a small-minded interpretation of the aforementioned idea, all they achieve is mass annoyance and subsequent brand-death. And if anyone thinks these bus stop adverts are a good idea, please, please explain to me why using the comments box, and I'll try and get my head round it. Internet Marketing 2010-06-29 08:39:18 http://www.i-com.net/blog/do-screaming-bus-stops-sales-367/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/10-reasons-businesses-should-blog-335/ Thanks to everyone who attended my brief SEO training seminar on blogging at the Manchester Growth Show this morning, I think we can all agree the whole event was a great success. Below, as promised, are the main points I made in the seminar. If you have any further questions about business blogging or internet marketing, don't hesitate to contact me at tim.roberts@i-com.net. Why bother to Blog? WIIFM (Whats in it for me?) Well lets start with results. After much consultation, common sense and persuasion on my part the Clinical Negligence Department of Pannone LLP agreed to be the first department to trial our commercial blog platform in 2007. The aim: to increase relevant new content on a weekly basis. Today Pannone LLP has 7 blogs, why? Last month the blogs delivered over 3,000 unique visitors; this led to over 50 people going on to investigate how to get in touch with Pannone! If this is not compelling enough to take action, learn more about creating a commercial blog and take the activity seriously, here are ten more reasons and whats in it for you: It is a great way to convey your business and brand personality It gives you the opportunity to convey your thoughts and expertise over and above your website. You can be more informal, offer opinions, interact with your visitors, and get across your personality and the personality of your brand. You can demonstrate your knowledge, experience or expertise - blogging is a great way to demonstrate the fact that you know what you are talking about. Going into greater depth on a subject allows you to engage with your visitors and demonstrate your knowledge. When we began working with Pannone LLP on their blog strategy, our main aim was to help bring the website alive and keep it up to date Consistently posting new, interesting content gives visitors a reason to come back. It also satisfies the search engine robots, which like to see sites being regularly updated. When was the last time you updated your website? Having a blog gives you the opportunity to create regular and dynamic content that you and your staff can change on a regular basis. Give your customers and visitors added value by blogging regularly, you can give your customers and visitors yet another reason to come back and visit your site, especially if you are using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to send out updates about your recent posts. Help with search engine optimisation and social media population a blog is a great way to build extra visibility with the search engines. It also provides the platform to inform your followers on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. This saves time and helps build your social network. It gives visitors a reason to buy whilst your website will give visitors lots of information about your products or services, your blog will offer a way for you to demonstrate why they are important or valuable. This could be through tips, guidance or possibly even case studies. Become the expert - By blogging on a regular basis, you will build up a following in your industry, improving your brand recognition and publicity far and beyond your traditional customer base. Excellent content for social media channels with so many social media networks out there how many can you manage? Not many! Do you want to run your business or become a social media guru? You want to run your business dont you? The challenge is to ensure you're not sucked in to all the rubbish often spoken by so called Social Media Gurus (by the way they dont exist). With a well developed blog and the RSS feeds set up you can share your expertise, opinions and personality by regularly posting on your blog, providing a vast array of new, fresh content that you can tweet or share to your hearts content! You can show that you care the time and effort that you dedicate to blogging will show to your website visitors that you really care about this business and are happy to go that extra mile. It shows that you embrace the new age of communication however blogging isnt the end of the matter. If you are really going to make it work you need to take advice and develop a cohesive blogging strategy. If you do this, your blog will be better known and your traffic will really start to grow. These ten key points are obviously, a general overview, but I hope that they demonstrate to you the huge potential of blogging as an avenue by which you can grow your business. Once again, if you have any further questions you can contact me direct at tim.roberts@i-com.net. In the meantime, happy blogging! Social Media Marketing 2010-04-14 09:09:20 http://www.i-com.net/blog/10-reasons-businesses-should-blog-335/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/manchester-growth-show-wednesday-april-14th-334/ The good people over at Business Growth Show have asked me to lead a seminar tomorrow on 'Why SMEs Should Blog' at their free event at Ramada Manchester. The day starts at 9am and ends at 3pm, and I'll be leading the first seminar, presenting what I feel are the ten key benefits of blogging from a business perspective. The Manchester Growth Show is a great opportunity for local business leaders to learn more about other industries and potentially grow their businesses as a result. Run by the team at Corkscrew Events, the Business Growth Show has been facilitating networking and new business connections in cities across the UK since 2003. Tomorrow's Manchester event will also feature speed networking, talks on networking and an eclectic collection of exhibitors from a range of industries. Hope to see you all there! I-COM News 2010-04-13 09:20:09 http://www.i-com.net/blog/manchester-growth-show-wednesday-april-14th-334/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/how-to-get-a-job-as-an-seo-copywriter-331/ An SEO copywriter writes all the textual content for a digital marketing agency. This can mean anything from website content to blog posts, press releases to articles on a given subject specific to a client's business. Its a creative position within one of the UK's few boom industries, and is therefore a great opportunity for recent Arts graduates who are unsure of how their degree can be useful to them in the business world. However, if you wish to secure a position as an SEO copywriter, knowledge and experience will prove just as important as your degree. I've put together a list of online resources that are (mostly) free, which, if used to their full potential, will set you apart from the crowd when you start applying for positions. Copyblogger's SEO Copywriting Tutorial: In 2008 Copyblogger was ranked amongst the world's Top 50 most powerful blogs, and it's an accolade that still rings true today. Copyblogger can tell you everything you need to know about writing content for the web, and their SEO Copywriting tutorial is perfect for online content first-timers who are starting from the bottom knowledge-wise. Read through their tutorials and you're already a step ahead of your competitors in the job market. Investigate Google's search tools: If you're going to become an SEO Copywriter, you're going to need to know how to use Google's search tools, chiefly Google Analytics, Google Adwords: Keyword Tool and Google Insights. Basically, these are the tools of the SEO trade; they enable SEO Consultants and copywriters to find out what specific keywords people are searching for, allowing them to target online content accordingly. Read about them, have a play around and see how they work. There's no need to be an expert - a working knowledge of these tools will be enough to impress potential employers, particularly if you have no prior experience of SEO. Engage with your local online community: Bloggers, digital content creators and SEO Consultants like to arrange little get-togethers for themselves. For example, in Manchester there's the annual Blog Awards, a new event for digital content creators like copywriters called THERE WILL BE BLOOD and a monthly SEO meet up organised via the Manchester SEO blog. These events tend to be free to attend, and are a great opportunity to chat with people already working in the industry in which you're hoping to gain employment. Start a blog: Starting a blog through Google's Blogspot service or Wordpress is free and easy, and will demonstrate to potential employers that you are serious about digital content creation. It's also a great way to learn about tools such as Google Analytics, which are easy to install. Just make sure that you have an interesting topic to blog about - perhaps start a blog chronicling your growing relationship with the world of SEO Copywriting. Alternatively, write music reviews, post creative writing, anything you like! Society for Editors and Proofreaders: If you have the time, money and inclination, the SfEP offers a series of training courses which can help you brush up on your language, editing and proofreading skills. Indulge in a little self-promotion: If you haven't already, familiarise yourself with the major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media is steadily growing in importance in the online marketing world, and is currently being integrated in a more complete fashion into the results pages of the major search engines. Advertising your interest in gaining experience of SEO copywriting on your social media accounts might even bring in some enquiries, particularly on LinkedIn. Be prepared to value experience over a hefty wage-packet: Don't be afraid to take a low-paid job if it means gaining experience of your desired profession. Experience is extremely valuable, and could lead to you getting a much better job in the long-run. Sites like Copify offer extremely low rates of pay, but are free to join and could provide you with the experience you require to secure a permanent position as an SEO copywriter with a digital marketing firm. SEO copywriting isn't for everyone; you may find that, after looking at the above links, you realise that it's not the job for you. However, if you are still interested, the above information should provide you with everything you need (bar a degree, a good CV and good interview technique) to secure a job as an SEO copywriter. Good luck! Copywriting 2010-04-06 11:20:40 http://www.i-com.net/blog/how-to-get-a-job-as-an-seo-copywriter-331/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/4networking-business-breakfast-tuesday-260110-premier-inn-trafford-centre-west-304/ I'll be sharing my online marketing secrets with attendees to the 4Networking Business Breakfast on Tuesday 26th January, at Premier Inn, Trafford Centre West. The event will run between 08.00 and 10.00am. Here at I-COM we believe that having a great looking website is useless if no-one ever sees it, which is why we offer all our clients comprehensive SEO strategies, designed to get them into the most relevant SERPs to their business. I'll be sharing my inside knowledge on the ins and outs of search engine marketing, including tips on how you can make the most out of your online presence, turning those casual visitors into paying customers. Attendance to the event costs just 10. Book your place today. If you only attend one business breakfast this year, make it this one. I guarantee you'll be enthused, amazed and inspired! I-COM News 2010-01-25 13:50:39 http://www.i-com.net/blog/4networking-business-breakfast-tuesday-260110-premier-inn-trafford-centre-west-304/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/greggs-the-baker-and-the-under-used-twitter-account-282/ During a recent conversation I was surprised to learn that Greggs the Bakers had a Twitter account. I was even more surprised to see that they had a massive number of followers yet seemed to be doing nothing with it. As you can see the account has remained dormant since July and they have tweeted a grand total of 14 times since joining. It seems to me that the business really is missing out on a huge opportunity. Greggs should use this account as a master account, and should then set up a separate account for each store; for example I-COM's local Greggs would be #GreggsLincolnSquareMCR. The benefit of this would be that each store could tweet directly to its local area, giving a large company a really personal touch. They could easily set up a directory of stock, automated tweets such as Sausage Rolls out of the oven in 5 Mins or all pies now half price which could be tweeted throughout the day. Both would drive sales and help build brand loyalty - we all know how annoying it is when you get a cold sausage roll, imagine if you could pop down to Greggs knowing that they'd just come out of the oven! This strategy would also give Greggs the opportunity to discover and respond to bad customer service through any #fail tags. Overall a win win situation for Greggs as a company and their customers, and also fantastic for branding and PR. Social Media Marketing 2009-12-03 16:22:10 http://www.i-com.net/blog/greggs-the-baker-and-the-under-used-twitter-account-282/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/charging-for-online-content-what-a-man-con-281/ Whilst the internet is an ever-expanding and eclectic resource, it would seem that one particular area is shrinking day by day the world of free, good quality online content. This is an issue rarely out of the papers (on and off line) at the moment, thanks to big names like Rupert Murdoch weighing in and, closer to home, founder of Manchester Confidential Mark Garner. The news that Manchester Confidential are set to begin charging for their online restaurant reviews, articles and offers, as reported in How Do, has caused widespread outrage amongst its readership, yet ManCons top brass seem confident that we're at a stage where the size, loyalty and quality of our readership is such that a significant number will be prepared to pay for the service we provide." Further news today, reported on the BBC website, reveals that Google have struck a deal that will see them limit the number of free news resources appearing in their search results, Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.Falling Circulation; Falling Advertising Revenue These are the two main reasons given for the current push to start charging for online content, with ManCon arguing that they are no longer able to survive by relying solely on advertising revenue, and newspapers suggesting that of course, as people stop buying their hard copy newspapers their revenues will fall; not only will they lose the money generated from the sale price, they will also lose advertisers if no-ones reading the thing then why advertise in it. Thus, as newspapers lose money they will no longer be able to pay good journalists and we will end up with newspapers of a quality resembling the Metro, a hellish dystopian vision if ever Ive heard one.To Charge or not to Charge On the surface the arguments for charging seem sound, at least for big name newspapers like the Guardian and the Telegraph, who already have massive readerships willing to pay every day for their newspaper. ManCon on the other hand, who have a reported readership of 260,000 weekly readers, will no doubt lose a massive proportion of that number the more casual visitor. Samscam, writing in the How Do comments section, suggests that the majority of the content (should be) free but the extra benefits and services cost a little cash - say the best of the offers. What is it really that ManCon offers that a simple blog couldnt? The only thing is the offers anyone can write a review of a restaurant and post that review online, and it doesn't have to be bad quality, look at Taste of Manchester.com. Thus it seems a sound idea that if they are intending to charge for anything it should be for access to the offers and that alone.An Alternative to Paying for Content The internet is free by definition. If you attempt to charge for your content your readers will migrate elsewhere and youll be left with no readers, no money and no advertisers. You see, there are plenty of alternatives out there to both ManCon and the big name newspapers Manchester has a thriving blogging culture, spearheaded by the likes of the Manchizzle and the Creative Tourist, and the internet is also home to a wealth of independent news sources like Media Lens, who have artfully shrugged off the constraints of advertising in favour of a balanced, independent and unbiased take on newsworthy events. These sources priority is quality, nothing else, and it is perhaps in their favour that more and more online readers are desperately seeking high quality alternatives to the commercial and corporate media. Internet 2009-12-02 11:12:57 http://www.i-com.net/blog/charging-for-online-content-what-a-man-con-281/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/business-north-west-2009-harnessing-the-social-media-beast-254/ Over the last few weeks, Tweeters, Bloggers, Facebook and Myspace users have ridden their impossibly tall horses into battle with Jan Moir and Trafigura / Carter-Ruck, and on both occasions have achieved a sort of victory. In both cases the public outcry, largely facilitated by Twitter and other forms of Social Media, resulted in something of an about-turn in policy for Trafigura / Carter-Ruck and a removal of surrounding advertising and a change of headline for Jan Moir's Stephen Gately piece. We couldn't ask for a better example of the power of Social Media to influence vast numbers of people and to effect real change.Business North West 2009 It's this power that more and more businesses are hoping to harness as a method of promoting products, providing real-time customer feedback and pushing related businesses and offers. However, it's an extremely thin tightrope to walk - Social Media is intended as a means of socialising; if your business starts using it to promote itself and push advertising on unwilling recipients, you could be in for a backlash akin to the one experienced by Habitat earlier this year. At this year's Business North West conference, we are hoping to demonstrate how Social Media can be used for your business via an experiment which hopes to take the conference online, creating a medium for conference-goers to upload live comments, images and videos relating to the speakers, exhibitions and events. The following accounts are those which have been set up, whether by I-COM or another individual or business involved in the event, specifically for Business North West: Flickr Twitter Facebook FriendFeed Blogsome Xanga SlideShare Tumblr LiveJournal Wordpress Blog WetPaint Blogspot Scribd Well be inviting attendees and their colleagues back in the office to contribute using extra PCs installed at the I-COM booth, iPhones, Netbooks, Blackberries and Laptops.Growth through Innovation The Business North West conference is now in its third year yet has already established itself as the North Wests most important business networking event. It is this kind of innovation that will see it continue to grow, and will also serve to demonstrate the huge potential of Social Media as a positive force for your business. Business North West 2009 takes place at Manchester Central on the 28th and 29th of October. For more information, visit our events page or the official Business North West website. Social Media Marketing 2009-10-19 16:55:37 http://www.i-com.net/blog/business-north-west-2009-harnessing-the-social-media-beast-254/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/internet-access-makes-jack-a-happy-worker-248/ So it's lunchtime, and I'm online, flitting between the Manchester Evening News and the Times when I recall a conversation I had with a friend a couple of days ago.  Last Tuesday he had gone into work to find that MSN, Yahoo and Facebook had been universally blocked for all - apart from senior management.  He opened his Email inbox to find a company-wide email saying that these sites were now blocked as the staff had been wasting too much time and 'productivity levels' had been decreasing.  On top of this they were going to be monitoring which sites were being accessed and possibly block those as well (my friend has a friend in the IT dept - banks and utility companies are next up for the cyber-guillotine).Now this has got me thinking about using the internet during work hours.  Obviously here at I-COM we spend a fair part of our day surfing the web - it's integral to our job and we would be out of business in a week if we couldn't, but if we need to pay a bill, check an email or read an online paper then that's fine as well.This doesn't mean we all come into work and log onto Facebook, but in this day & age shouldn't employers trust their staff enough to give them access and say "Feel free in your lunch hour or if you're in work early."?The people that have made this decision seem to be remarkably short sighted. Employers will find that it's the little things like this that will keep or even boost productivity in their workforce. Come the time when they need people to come in on a weekend to help out and go the extra mile, removal of perks like this will be strong in the mind of the employees.This leads me to a second thought: with so many of our day-to-day tasks carried out online (everything from ordering pizzas to paying bills) how long will it be before internet access - like a water-cooler or bathroom facilities - will be an employee's right?  I have also spoken to other friends and this seems to be a remarkably common policy, so I'm throwing the question open to you: Are you allowed to use the internet at work for personal use in your lunch hour? Have you had it taken away as a company policy recently, and if you have, what result has it had on morale?Don't worry we'll keep your answers anonymous! Internet 2009-10-09 09:25:02 http://www.i-com.net/blog/internet-access-makes-jack-a-happy-worker-248/