Instagram & Facebook – Why?


A few hours ago I read that Facebook had acquired Instagram for $1bn… aptly enough, this news came to me via my Facebook feed. There’s also an official release here from Mark Zuckerberg My first thought once I checked the legitimacy Read more

Return On Influence: The New ROI


There is not a single activity in business which is exempted from a query regarding return on investment.  Focused strategic planning and expenditure to optimise your e-commerce mix is known to be an investment worth making for product and Read more

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Web 2.0/3.0

Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 16 – Social Bookmarking

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips, Social Media, Web 2.0/3.0 | Leave a comment

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet. If you’re not currently book marking your online collateral we ask the question why not? It’s free and Social Bookmarking provides you with the opportunity to share your own website content and collateral with the public, through social bookmarking sites. The main one being Delicious.com There are over 15 billion web pages published on the World Wide Web and this is growing daily. People are using sites like del.icio.us every day to bookmark their favourite pages and check out other peoples favourites. So, by bookmarking your own content, making it available to others, increases the opportunity for people to find it. In terms of increasing your Internet Footprint, it is a no-brainer and will help to drive targeted traffic to your site. Why not click on the social media links below and investigate how it can help your business. Alternatively, we’d be very happy to have a conversation with you on 01635 550431.


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 17 – News Feed (RSS)

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Mike in Digital Marketing Tips, Link Building, Web 2.0/3.0, Web News | Leave a comment

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet. Feeds are also known as RSS. There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people opt for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.  News feeds allow the user to see when websites have added new content. The user can receive the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as it’s published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from. The big benefit to RSS is that individuals can opt-in to content of interest and totally control the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion. If you would like to learn more about how RSS feeds can help your business, contact us on 01635 550431,


Online Marketing – The Stats Don’t Lie

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Joe in Business Development, Internet Marketing, Web 2.0/3.0, Web News | 1 Comment

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Excerpt: So now we’re all being told we’re in a deep recession, come on people…..it’s now time to start understanding how to make your budget work harder! Gone are the days when you threw as much as you could at the wall hoping for something to stick or you position your meta data and keywords in their rightful places and hope for the best, let’s start thinking a little bit beyond the stale old marketing techniques and start embracing the new online world. The quicker you do it and understand it the quicker you’ll get to where you need to be. Some might say you’ve already missed the boat? Personally I completely disagree, I speak to many companies daily and 70% of these companies are still nowhere near where they need to be in terms of technology, skills and knowledge so you still have time. We’ve reported in past blogs that online marketing is set to increase dramatically over during 2009 and the reason is ‘The Stats Don’t Lie!’ Let’s look at things in a simplistic manner, would you go out and buy a new Mini without test driving it first? Read a review or two? Listen to a mate who raves about how good his Mini is? No of course not, because you want to know that you’re not wasting your money and let’s be honest there’s obviously a few spare Minis out there at the moment so you’re bound to pick up a bargain. Thinking about the above scenario within the marketing spectrum…


Providing Business Benefits with Twitter

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0/3.0 | 2 Comments

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Excerpt: Due to being a nerd, I like to make a note of when a social media platform starts receiving brand recognition outside of their traditional user base. Usually it is when my mum makes reference to a particular platform or a story is carried in the Sun newspaper, as was the case with Twitter recently. The Sun were following up on famous Twitter users such as Barack Obama (who has the largest number of followers), Britney Spears and our soon to be unsuspended superstar; Jonathan Ross. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. So called because it allows you to send mini updates (about whatever you want) to your followers. You basically set yourself up as a user and woke up and I need coffee” (which begs the question about what is more important; Twitter or coffee) to general chit chat. Is there a business benefit to Twitter? As a digital agency, we’re often asked about the benefits of social media, and it is fair to say that it is not always clear at first glance. However, with Twitter we’ve identified quite a few uses for it. It’s a great way to interact with likeminded people, which is always handy. For example, we were recently let down at the last minute by one of our speakers at a seminar we were running. We posted on Twitter for a replacement and had six companies respond, all of whom would have done a great job. It’s a good way to get a heads up on new…


Increasing your search engine footprint by using blogs

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Mike in Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Web 2.0/3.0 | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox If you’ve been to any of our seminars or met anyone from Generate UK, you’ll know how passionate we are about blogs. Particularly their importance when it comes to increasing your online footprint. If you follow webmaster guidelines, it’s unlikely that you will be able to get your site to top rank for more than a dozen of your key phrases. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but generally a site is pretty static and narrow in its focus. This is where blogs can really help in terms of widening the net. This is fundamental to our approach to digital marketing and it really works for our customers. The blog post below provides some additional information about what it takes to build and maintain a successful blog. The Birth of a Professional Blog The 3 main ingredients needed to build a successful professional blog are the ability to supply quality content, the need to develop and maintain a base of loyal readers, and offering quality products. Working together these 3 components can create a steady and significant online income for the right individual. What does it take to for an aspiring internet marketer to create and maintain a money making blog such as this? Let’s take a look at the 3 key components needed to be a successful professional blogger: Quality Content The origin of any popular blog is the quality of content posted to it. Whether…


10 reasons why UK businesses do not adopt Social Media

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Mike in Business Development, Social Media, Web 2.0/3.0 | 1 Comment

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Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox As a business, we speak about social media and the different facets of social media every day. Sometimes we raise the topic with clients because we see an opportunity for them to use social media to boost their traffic, or because a customer has raised the topic with us and they’re looking to learn more about the subject. What we’ve learned is that many businesses in the UK are completely turned off by the phrase “Social Media”. Despite the phrase being around for a while now, it still has that connection to the consumer market; it’s still thought of as that “Myface” (sic) site where youngsters post their pictures of drunken nights out. So this blog post is about exploring some of the more popular reasons we hear from businesses in the UK about why they are not adopting social media and what we think in return. There’s an opportunity for you to post your comments at the end. The bad press that has surrounded some of the larger social media sites can mean that some businesses are put off from even exploring the possibility for their company. Interestingly, these are the easiest to turn around as it is a case of realigning what social media for business is and where the benefits and the risks lay. The time aspect is often raised in relation to how long it can take to understand the…


How Social Media Optimisation Can Help Your Business

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Seraphim Pictures in Social Media, Web 2.0/3.0 | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: Sometimes we’re so intent on finding “the next big thing” to promote our businesses that we often miss opportunities that are already available.  Sometimes we can find a brand new marketing tool where we’re not looking for it.  Sometimes our social and business lives merge to add a new dimension to our marketing strategies.   Speed-networking and online forums are two classic examples of this. One of the more recent combinations of the personal and professional is the use of online social networking communities. You may be aware of social networking communities already, but do you have any idea of their potential for marketing your business?  Here’s a brief introduction to the concept of Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and how it could work for you… What is social networking? Social networking is the use of online communities such as Myspace, Bebo and Facebook to connect and communicate with people around the world.  Its advantages to businesses include tapping into new markets and generating new business.  Promoting your company across a number of these networks is known as Social Media Optimisation (SMO). How does Social Media Optimisation work? Social Media Optimisation can be thought of as a trail of breadcrumbs that leads visitors to your main website. External profiles introduce your company to the members of these online communities and advertise your products and services. Think of it as the next generation of directory listings: members are attracted to your profile by its content, and then pointed in the direction of your website. Can it help me with…


Stand alone SEO is dead, long live Search Engine Marketing!

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Mike in Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engine Optimisation, Web 2.0/3.0 | 1 Comment

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Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox For a while now, there has been something about search engine optimisation that has been bothering me. It’s not the practise of SEO in general, it’s not even the multitude of companies popping up with their “New SEO services” conveniently added to their portfolio as the hot new thing to talk about. What is bothering me is that there are too many companies out there offering SEO in a market that does not offer an industry quality standard. They are offering a service in a market that has not really been defined. This means that there is potential for customers to get ripped off and for SEO in general to be given a bad name, some will argue that this is already happening. I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for companies who sign up with SEO firms without doing their homework, usually the better SEO firms benefit in the long term as companies who have had their fingers burned understand the true value of what SEO is and will make better decisions next time. The lesson they learn is that SEO should form a portion of their wider marketing objectives, SEO alone is only part of the story. A defined Internet marketing strategy that incorporates SEO and a whole host of other digital marketing techniques is where the magic happens. This view and these comments are not typical of…


What are the business benefits of blogs and blogging?

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Mike in Business Development, Link Building, Search Engine Optimisation, Web 2.0/3.0 | 3 Comments

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Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox The use of blogs as a personal tool to communicate is not new, there are over 100 million blogs in the so called “blogosphere” covering more topics than most of us even know exist. However it is only recently that small, medium and large enterprise customers have began to launch their own blogs. This is because they are starting to realise the value of having a blog. Not all companies have bought into this yet, so we thought it would be useful to explore what we think are the business benefits for owning a blog. We’d like to continue to add to this list below, if you think we have missed something; please add to the debate by using our comments section. Business Benefits of Blogging Search Marketing purposes By nature a blog is usually about a specific topic and is regularly updated. This in turn encourages the search engine spiders to visit your site more frequently, once this happens you are more likely to appear the organic search results, which means free and targeted traffic. The more experienced bloggers will target certain keywords and phrases in order to rank well and manipulate the search engines. Because of the flexibility of a blog, it is very quickly to launch a new post and therefore start to rank for different keywords relating to your business. Direct Contact with people who are interested in you Most blogs provide…


Is WEB 3.0 going to be amazing or is it just a load of semantics?

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Joe in Web 2.0/3.0 | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox I don’t know about you but I was just getting my head around WEB 2.0 and I felt I was becoming pretty knowledgeable to what the meaning of web 2.0 was and what it could deliver for business. Now I hear the rumblings of web 3.0 and feel like a small shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean waiting to be caught up again in a net of fear of the unknown! So I thought that I would investigate those rumblings and try and find out myself if it’s anything to be scared of or something to look forward to? First things first I went straight to my trusted source Mr Wikipedia and sourced a description, it states: the term “Web 3.0? has been introduced to hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation. Views on the next stage of the World Wide Web’s evolution vary greatly, from the concept of emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web transforming the way the Web is used (and leading to new possibilities in artificial intelligence) to the observation that increases in Internet connection speeds, modular web applications, and advances in computer graphics will play the key role in the evolution of the World Wide Web. After reading Wikipedia and many different articles on Web 3.0 I am amazed by the different forms of technology that will go into making up what we’ll all know as Web 3.0…


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