Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-07-30T07:36:55+0100 2010-07-30T07:36:55+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/crains-best-places-to-work-2010-the-results-363/ Congratulations to Crain's, which yesterday put on a fantastic event at the Ramada Hotel Piccadilly. It was really well organised, and everyone from the I-COM team had a great time. Unfortunately I-COM, nominated in the 'Big' category, didn't win, but the fact that we reached the final is a hugely encouraging sign that we're doing something right! The nominations were based on answers to a survey provided by I-COM employees, coupled with answers to a questionnaire posed to directors about methods of rewarding employees, the working environment and work-life balance. I've published the list of winners below, which you can also see on the Crain's site, and wish to extend I-COM's congratulations to each of them:NEARLY BIG categoryWINNER: Adele Carr Financial Recruitment LtdRUNNERS-UP: JLES North West, Peppermint PRBIG categoryWINNER: Imerja LimitedRUNNERS-UP: The ReThink Group Plc, Code ComputerloveBIGGER categoryWINNER: The fresh GroupRUNNERS-UP: Leap29 Limited, JMC ITBIGGEST categoryWINNER: Barclays CorporateRUNNERS-UP: Ralli, The Hut Group  Well done to all the above, just be warned, I-COM is coming for you next year! I-COM News 2010-06-18 10:02:36 http://www.i-com.net/blog/crains-best-places-to-work-2010-the-results-363/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/help-a-good-cause-less-than-one-minute-of-your-time-and-its-free-357/ Longstanding I-COM client and fantastic charity, the Foundation 4 Peace, needs your help! The charity, based in Warrington, has been shortlisted in the Best Education Project category in the National Lottery Good Causes awards for their Survivors for Peace programme.  The programme helps victims of terrorism to deal with the traumas they have faced and create positive experiences out of their devastating stories. To find out a bit more about the charity and scheme, see this short video from one of the charity's supporters, Olympic swimmer Steve Parry All it takes it two clicks of your mouse - simply click here to be taken to the Survivors for Peace Lottery Causes page, and then click Vote Now. You don't even have to leave any personal details to cast your vote. Voting closes at midday on Friday, 18th June - so please show your support by voting and passing the details on to your friends and contacts. To find out more about the work undertaken by the Foundation for Peace and how you can support them, visit www.foundation4peace.org  On behalf of the Foundation 4 Peace and I-COM, many thanks for your support. I-COM News 2010-06-04 14:10:46 http://www.i-com.net/blog/help-a-good-cause-less-than-one-minute-of-your-time-and-its-free-357/ 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/seo-manchester-blog-264/ If you think, SEO Manchester clients come to us at all stages of a sites SEO Manchester life cycle. For example they could have been just built or handed over from a previous SEO Manchester company. Im sure that my James Cognac Roome presence has spurred many of the SEO Manchester companies below me into action. I dropped down to the SEO Manchester No.4 spot earlier today but Im back at SEO Manchester No.3 as I make this post. Does the length of the posts SEO Manchester title affect how many SEO Manchester domains will link to it? The James Curmudgeonly Roome data suggests that SEO Manchester posts with a title length between 10 and 18 words are on average more linked to than those with less or more. The SEO Manchester data also suggests there may be a sweet spot around 14 to 16 SEO Manchester words in length. Finding links pointing to your SEO Manchester non www could be an early or quick win for your SEO Manchester campaign. For those of you who are unfamiliar with SEO Manchester canonicalisation or would like a refresher then you might want to check this SEO Manchester post out from James Pipe Roome. After last week's "Does SEO Manchester = Spam" debate erupted, I had a number of follow-up emails where I explained privately more about why SEO Manchester has such a bad reputation in some SEO Manchester quarters, as well as what SEO Manchester is and SEO Manchester isn't, from James Varg Roome perspective. My initial SEO Manchester aim was simply to try and get on the first page of Google for the search term SEO Manchester. To reach the SEO Manchester number 2 spot was very pleasing but to actually surpass every other SEO Manchester company vying for that SEO Manchester term, including James Kirk Roome, and reach the SEO Manchester No.1 spot on two SEO Manchester occasions was fantastic! Search engines use the SEO Manchester anchor text of a link to categorise a SEO Manchester page. For instance, this link to a previous SEO Manchester blog on important SEO Manchester blogs - uses the text James insatiable Roome. Google and its ilk will relate this SEO Manchester anchor text to the content of the SEO Manchester page. For more information on this post, please see Part 2, Duplicate, Autogenerate, Scrape and Copy Content? Search Engine Optimisation 2009-11-06 15:49:37 http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-manchester-blog-264/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/manchesters-blog-awards-demonstrate-the-real-power-of-blogging-257/ Last night (October 21st) saw the annual Manchester Blog Awards take place at Band on the Wall. The event was part of the Manchester Literature Festival and is always a good night. If the turnout was any indication, blogging is indeed alive and well and taking on a range of subjects. It's my understanding that every year the list of nominations grows, and thus it is becoming increasingly difficult for the judges to choose shortlists for each category.  You can find the list of winners here.What exactly is the appeal of blogging?There is a lot of lip service paid to the idea that bloggers are wannabe journalists presenting inaccurate, badly researched and subjective news stories, but I would contend that the role of blogging is complimentary to that of good journalism, and that any decline in the newspaper is more down to a lack of good journalism and a reluctance to modernise (but that's another subject entirely). Blogging is about opinion, and it's about people. So what bloggers do, if they do it well, is provide a mass of unique voices giving their personal - and often very stilted - take on subjects they feel passionately about.Anyone taught to read critically should understand this, but should also be able to see the value in reading blogs. You can find a blog about anything these days, should you wish to, and the majority of them offer highly alternative views. Blogs can act as a barometer of public opinion for instance, the mainstream news may present a particular story as important or a particular viewpoint as definitive; if bloggers are saying something different then it's a clear indication that the public isn't in complete agreement with the press.Blogs can also be extremely useful from a commercial perspective. If, as a company, you do something very right or you have a product that people are going to want to know about, if you can get bloggers on board you can often make a bigger impact than with traditional marketing methods - because nothing is more powerful than a recommendation from a trusted source.  If you accidentally do something wrong, however, they'll also be the first people to take you to task for it - so it's best to keep the bloggers on-side. Take RyanAir's example - a blogger made a post about their online booking system and they responded by calling bloggers "lunatics." Have a look at the negative PR this has generated - as well as the bad will within the blogosphere: Enlarge image in a new windowIf you really want to do something special, however, you'll join them. Simply write passionately about the things you like and let customers and potential customers get to know you. This gives your customers the impression that not only are you a person who shares their views, but also that you will deliver a top-notch service. Social Media Marketing 2009-10-22 14:11:09 http://www.i-com.net/blog/manchesters-blog-awards-demonstrate-the-real-power-of-blogging-257/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-local-listings-fail-239/ If you're familiar with Google Local listings you'll know that when you add an entry for your business or the business you represent, Google checks its listings to see if they already have your business details registered. If it finds a similar address or company name, it asks you if you want to claim the existing listing in order to verify that you are connected with the business already on Google Maps. This is a great idea and it means that the results pages aren't full of duplicate entries. However, it appears that the comparison engine isn't quite as sophisticated as it should be: I got asked the following question yesterday when I tried to register PSL Hire East Manchester: View image in a new window Google rather inexplicably informed me that "The listing you entered closely matches the following listings already on Google Maps" and asked me if I wanted to claim the listing for the University of Manchester. The only similarities between the two entries are the word "Manchester" at the end of the organisational title and the country "United Kingdom". The street address and postcode are totally different and I can only guess that the categories were different as I'd just categorised PSL Hire as being "tool hire" and "DIY". The map shows that Google understands the locations are about 2 miles from one another which proves that they understand geographically where the addresses are but as the Google algorithm changes to place more emphasis on local listings, it does raise questions about how much Google really understands the relationship between organisations and addresses. Any members of the SEO community reading will be glad to know that I behaved responsibly and clicked "Add Listing" although it was very tempting to claim the University of Manchester for tool hire! Search Engine Optimisation 2009-09-21 08:41:06 http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-local-listings-fail-239/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/manchester-blogging-is-not-dead-241/ Last night Manchester's blogging community got together for a semi-regular meeting of the minds, as organised, once again, by Kate from The Manchizzle, sponsored by Creative Tourist.The timing of the event was chosen because (I presume, as today marks the final day to submit nominations for the Manchester Blog Awards) it was the perfect opportunity to encourage Manchester's bloggers to nominate their favourite blogs, discover some new ones before the closing date and get to know each other before the big night.I've been blogging for long enough to remember the first year of the Blog Awards and the days when 7 people was a good turnout for a Blogmeet and I am happy to say that the number of people blogging locally appears to be growing - despite a number of naysayers suggesting that blogging is on the decline.Although a lot of familiar faces from the local bloggerati were missing last night, it was great to discover some new blogs - some started only within the last few weeks - on ever new and unusual subjects. I was particularly impressed by Liam and Marie from Manchester Zedders and their quest to explore and describe every corner of Manchester, based on grid squares in their A to Z and Kath's Parklover blog which is a guide to the best parks in the greater Manchester area for parents and kids, or people who just like parks. I am always amazed by the diversity and sense of community amongst Manchester's bloggers. This time, even some of the political bloggers made their way down (in the past it was mostly the arts and culture types), including Richard from The Asparagus.I even spoke with another SEO blogger, Tom.To me, this represents the crux of what social media is about - people sharing their thoughts and ideas online and getting feedback from people around them. It's about building relationships and discovering things you didn't know were out there.If you haven't already made your nominations for the Blog Awards this year, then get across to the website and get nominating and then show your support for Manchester's contribution to the blogosphere by coming down to Band on the Wall on 21st October for the awards. Manchester 2009-09-18 09:18:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/manchester-blogging-is-not-dead-241/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/creative-credits-get-your-lottery-ticket-240/ Earlier today I attended the launch of the Creative Credits scheme in Manchester. It was a very well attended event which included an interesting debate organised by Nesta about the important issues facing Manchester in the new economy.Creative Credits are an experimental attempt to engender co-operation and collaboration between businesses. It gives small and medium enterprises the opportunity to get up to 4000 to purchase support from a creative business provided they're willing to invest up to 1,000 themselves.The creative credit could be spent on such things as helping you design a new product or develop an innovative way for your business to address new markets - perhaps through a transactional web-site when you've never done that before.Creative Credits will be allocated on a random basis initially to 75 companies that have simply applied and been judged eligible.It really does seem very simple; to be eligible a business simply has to be a limited company based in one of the Greater Manchester council areas, registered for VAT and employing less than 250 people and not involved in the creative sector itself; to apply it simply needs to complete a simple form on the Creative Credits website www.creative-credits.org.uk, look there for full details and conditions.The form needs to be completed by the 8th of October and the awardees will be announced shortly after.Creative Credits are a gift for businesses wanting to do something different with their business. You don't even need to dream up the project before you put in the application - I'm sure many businesses like I-COM could at that stage provide you some creative input into how you might spend them.Take your chance and try to get your share of the Creative Credit pot now. Manchester 2009-09-17 23:30:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/creative-credits-get-your-lottery-ticket-240/