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I did however go to a seminar today on this very subject that did exactly that! No the room wasn’t full of ‘grandmas’, but it did break down the mysterious lore that is social media and online marketing into easily digested nuggets of knowledge.
This seminar was hosted by Generate UK at the spectacular Donnington Grove in their ‘Cloud Suite’. The ‘Cloud Suite’ is a luxurious room lined with lovely old paintings, overshadowed by a fantastic painted ceiling. There was free tea and coffee, there was glorious sunshine and there was a friendly buzz as attendees began to arrive.

We were all seated in some rather fancy chairs and we covered a variety of things from e-marketing myth busting to the fundamentals of the ‘twitterverse’. I already knew some of the basics that were covered but it was nice to see that all the fundamentals were explained so that everyone else understood the more advanced things that were to follow. Overall it was very well presented and it left no one guessing.

Over the course of the morning I mentally noted a number of clever marketing devices for later use. I learned that no more are the days where one could simply post a few thousand identical links all over the Internet to rank their page from ‘unheard of’ to ‘the industry authority’ in a matter of weeks; nor can you purchase links on leading websites to boost your own rankings… Well, not without major repercussions anyway. The emphasis nowadays is on natural link building, quality and content with a hint of tweeting; although the ‘Tweeting’ is optional.

Natural link building is the activity that promotes the recommendation of your online presence by getting other online entities to refer to your site naturally via a link; this could be as a point of interest, or perhaps in the form of a recommendation of your products or services. This is done of their own accord. This is now necessary because the search engines have ‘wizened-up’ to those manipulative chaps that have previously gone out to the marketplace to spam every existing website with their own links and false recommendations; all in a bid to rank higher on the search engine results. The current digital marketing paradigm now dictates that it is better for a company ‘footprint’ to grow gradually over time as more and more web users begin to trust the site in question and recognise it as an authority in the field.  For those of you that didn’t know, an online footprint is the measurement of your own online presence size… Yet another vital thing I learned today that I have lovingly passed on to you.

Now, can you tell me of something currently going on in your life or workplace that you’ve told other people about? I bet you can. Yet, many companies with an online presence clam-up and communicate next to nothing. If you have some experience in a particular field, enough for you to generate money from, it must be worth shouting about surely?
This is where we come on to the subject of quality and content. I learned today that some companies are beginning to embrace this as a guideline for their online activity. Not too many years ago the majority of companies had a static website that was occasionally updated with some generic company news. Nowadays however, the early adopters of new digital marketing methods and technology are beginning to share their knowledge, views and information online. This interactivity allows users to communicate with the company in a dynamic fashion allowing the aforementioned businesses to stay firmly on the industry pulse; this is due to their grass roots interaction with the end consumer, so businesses are more aware of what these consumers are thinking right now.

How is this done? In a surprisingly simple way actually, it’s all a question of sharing targeted, interesting and relevant content with the web surfers you want to attract to your business.  This does require that you embrace some of the new social media platforms that have recently come to power though i.e. Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us etc. So although the process may seem straight forward, there is a significant learning curve involved which puts many companies off.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you and I run a fashion outlet for customised clothing and accessories. We could do our traditional market research, develop prototype designs and then hope that when these items finally go on sale they will indeed, sell. This is admittedly, a very short-sighted example but now imagine this; instead of doing our in-house research with a few participants… We opened up a website listing all of our latest designs. We could then use a platform like Twitter to ‘Tweet’ (post information about) those designs to the masses whilst linking back to the main site. This would then open the door to other ‘Twitterers’ (Twitter users) for them to offer valuable feedback on our designs and to perhaps make some valuable recommendations for change. Not only that, but by engaging with the fashion conscious community on Twitter, we could explore what other people in the field are talking about and then throw in our own ‘two cents’ on the subject. We have just outlined a way to improve our customer interaction, improve our market research and product design process as well as establish ourselves as an authority in the field of fashion by expressing our expert opinion in up-to-the-minute conversations on the subject; all the while building natural links and generating traffic to our sales website, hopefully earning some extra money. Of course such a strategy would require much more thought and planning, but such a scenario is not uncommon where clever individuals have managed to leverage this powerful technology to their own business benefit.

The basics however are centred on sharing relevant, quality content with other users in an engaging way so that these users will interact with your business. Got a new product line? Tweet it. Planning a big PR event? Set up an events page on Facebook. Little things like this as part of a wider marketing plan can really level the playing field when competing for business against larger faceless corporations. Consumers like to know there is a bit of humanity in the business workings somewhere, something they can relate to. This is what makes quality content sharing on these innovative platforms so damned powerful.

We believe that there are definitely good business opportunities for companies to create video content and post snippets of information of their services and products online.

From a business perspective, we believe this channel is underused. For a short time in 2008, You Tube took over the mantle as the second largest search engine, so this is certainly an area worth exploring.  If one Podcast or Video goes viral it could provide your company with the immediate impact and exposure it’s looking for.

From an Off Page Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing purpose and by its 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 in the organic search results, which means free and targeted traffic. The more experienced bloggers will target new keywords and phrases in order to rank well and manipulate the search engines. Because of the flexibility of a blog, it is very quick to launch a new post and therefore start to rank for different keywords relating to your business.

A blog provides you with a tool to form direct contact with people who are interested in your services. Most blogs provide an option for its readers to be able to subscribe to them, meaning that every post you go live with will be sent to your subscriber base. These are people who have proactively giving you and your content the virtual equivalent of the ‘thumbs up’. You should value your subscribers very highly and ensure that you continue to provide them with content and information they are interested in. Conversely, these are the people you can test new products, seek feedback and leverage to help your provide a better service or product.

There are many ways to use a blog to build your brand or even to support an existing brand. In fact a blog is the perfect vehicle to use to interact with your potential customers, advanced bloggers may also use video or viral campaigns to tease their audience into coming back.

A blog allows you to differentiate yourselves from your competitors! There are two questions to ask here; do your competitors have a blog and do they use it? And secondly, can you use your blog to add credibility to your services and solutions? For example, if you’re an IT company would it be good to have an interview with one of your customers on your blog? The answer is yes, as it adds to the credibility of your service. Likewise, you could include your views on new product launches or industry trends, all the time differentiating yourselves with other players in your market.

There’s an old adage in sales and marketing, “people buy from people”.  This has not changed and is probably even more apparent in tough economic times. A blog provides you with an opportunity to create and build relationships with clients and prospects. There is a current trend for large companies to have a “CEO Blog”, this is where the head of the company writes a blog article once a week, which is designed to bring them closer to their target audience. It provides the reader with a feeling of involvement and interaction, especially if they are able to leave comments and respond directly to the company head.

Most of the leading blog sites will have a Social Media aspect to them. They are normally visible via small graphical logos, which can be used by your readers to submit your blog post to other social media networks. The more well known Social Media sites are called Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Sphinn and Digg. However, the list grows by the day and each will be focused on its own niche market or have its own rules. From a blogging perspective, the reason to be aware of the social networks is because if your content is good then it is likely to be picked up by them. If this happens, it can mean a huge increase in targeted traffic.

The Internet has created some amazing opportunities for companies to market their products and services to a wider audience, however you could also argue that it has meant an increase in competition in almost all markets. This is why it is important as we’ve mentioned to differentiate yourself from your competitors; one way to do this is to establish yourself as the de facto expert in your area. If you are an expert, tell the world. Use your blog to communicate and showcase your expertise, in a competitive market, as this will do wonders for your sales.

Depending on your niche and your content, there is every chance that you may be contacted by either local or national press. This is a great position to be in and will help you with brand building, and of course, provide you with some free advertising. Usually this type of contact is born from the understanding that you are an expert in your field or the topic you are discussing is of interest to their publications.

Online reputation management is becoming big news and we advise our clients to be aware of it and proactively manage it. One of the ways to do this is by managing the content and using your blog to control what is being said. It is a little more complicated than just that; however it is better to be in control of the blog then letting someone else manage it for you.

On top of all the great business benefits associated with a blog, creating and maintaining a blog is very simple. Once it is set up and designed, your only challenge is creating the content and keeping it updated regularly. There are sites out there that post every day, whilst others do it once a week. We recommend that you find a happy medium that will result in a good flow of content to keep your readers happy, without it becoming a chore.

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,

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An informed linking strategy for your web site will improve your rankings in the search engines and set you apart from your competitors. Most of the major search engines encourage web site owners to increase the number of back links a site has in order to encourage greater and more targeted traffic. 

In the democratic world of search engines, the more back links you have for a chosen keyword, the higher you will rank in the results. Of course, this implies that the process is very simple, which is certainly not the case. There is a myriad of additional variables to consider, not least the authority of the web site and the link relevance. 

We’re working on the principle that the vast majority of web site owners who are looking to improve the performance of their website care little for the technicalities of search engine algorithms; their interest is in the results. So regarding links; the general rule is that back links are good, as long as you concentrate on creating links to your site in the right places. 

The thought process you should go through when thinking about your back links is very important. For example, the keyword or phrase you would like your site linked with should be well researched. If your business wants to rank well for “Rental properties in Thatcham”, you should use that phrase as your link. 

If you’re an Estate Agent in Thatcham and “Rental properties in Thatcham” is indeed your chosen keyword, your first task would be to understand more about your competitors for this phrase. For example, how many back links do they have, who is utilising the local business results, what keywords are they using in their page titles. 

Once you understand all of this, you can start to build a campaign that takes into account their strategy for ranking for that phrase. You can identify how many links they have, which search engines their links are indexed in; if you know what you are looking for you can identify their whole search engine optimisation strategy. Of course, many companies have a list of targeted phrases, so you can begin to see how complex this task could be. 

This is a very simplistic way of looking and this has been done on purpose. I know we have some experienced SEO people who read this blog and I’ll be in the dog house for trying to simplify this process, however we have a larger number of marketing people, sales people and folk who do not want or need to lift the lid on complex algorithms, and instead just want a broad understanding of how search engines work. 

These are the people that we meet every day as part of our role as a digital marketing agency. They are looking for more information about link building, online PR and SEO because their business is putting them under pressure to ensure their web site is performing. This is where many companies are struggling; there could be 1,001 reasons why the site is not performing, with SEO being a small part of that. 

We believe that search engine optimisation is just a part of the online marketing strategy. It’s an ongoing process, where the rules and the competitive landscape changes almost daily. I don’t know a single senior marketing professional who has the time to monitor all of this. They need enough information to be able to satisfy their business that they are increasing the effectiveness of their online channel.

This is where a close relationship with a digital marketing agency pays dividends. By sharing the goals and objectives of your web site, your agency can come up with a detailed marketing plan that is designed to deliver against your business objectives. The great thing about online marketing is that it is measurable. What a great way to work; goal based objectives, regular analytics and no need to try and become a web guru in order to satisfy the demands of your business. 

What do you think? Please feel free to comment below, are we being fair to marketing professionals? Do you think they do have enough time to become experts in this area as well as experts in their businesses? If you would like to discuss this blog post or what Generate UK could do for you, please do not hesitate to call us on 01635 550431.

1. We don’t understand why we would need a blog, it is just an online diary so how can this help us? This is quite a popular excuse and one that is usually made at the top of the management tree. Once senior management understand that by blogging you are opening the door to an increase in targeted traffic to your website, they usually see the light.
2. I don’t want just anyone within my company making posts on our behalf This is usually said by a business owner or a managing director. It’s still very surprising how many business leaders do not trust or allow their staff to make blog posts. This is strange because it is no different to other forms of marketing. This is easily overcome with an internal blog post approval process or a blogging policy which are being widely adopted. If you’re already working with an agency, perhaps this is something else they can do for you?
3. Your marketing department or PR guys have said that blogging is a bad idea This is a very interesting situation and although it is happening less and less, there are a few PR guys and marketing people out there that are advising against setting up blogs. If this is happening, you need to challenge them and ask them why it would not work for your business. Test their understanding of Internet Marketing, ask them how a blog works. If they can not talk to you about RSS, pings and how important they are from a search engine marketing perspective, then they do not know what they are talking about. As a result, you can be sure that their advice is based upon them protecting your monthly payment to them and not based upon the interests of your business.
4. Controlling quality would be very difficult This should not be a deal breaker. Usually this excuse can be overcome with some training and an internal blog approval policy. All posts should be submitted to an approving editor before they go live, this way you ensure that quality remains high. You should also guide your staff about the topics that you would like covered, if you have a flower business, then you ask your staff to write about something that relates to flowers. If you’re really buying into the whole blog idea, then you will have articles written that relate to keyphrases you have identified as part of your keyword research. Once you’re at this level, you’ll really start to see your blog work for you.
5. We’re waiting for the technical department to sort this out Don’t leave the blog in the hands of the technical department, do some research or talk to people who know about the benefits of blogs and tell the IT guys to just take care of the installation. Your choice of blog software and the type of blog you go with will determine how successful your project is. This is all about understanding your marketing objectives, you’re better placed than your IT guys to do this.
6. We have not got anything to talk or blog about This probably should have been the number one excuse for setting up a blog. All companies have something to write about, it is just working out what it is. If you sell products or services, then you might consider writing guides for their use. If you have happy customers, then you might interview them about why they think you are so good. If there is something important happening within your industry, then the blog is a great place to have your say.
7. There is no one available to spend time writing blog posts So just how many blog posts are you thinking of writing? Even if you wrote one article once a week, you would only require an hour or so. If you prefer to post more, then perhaps you might want to move some of your marketing budget around. The great thing about a blog is that you can measure the success of it from a marketing perspective. At the very worst case, you can hire an English student to write some posts for you in exchange for their Saturday night money.
8. It is difficult to predict the return on investment, until we can be more sure we are not interested This is a tough excuse to overcome because it is used by very risk averse companies. We would look at the other forms of advertising the company may use and ask how they measure the ROI with those campaigns. If there is a performance management culture, we will compare their metrics with what can be achieved with blogs. There is always the intangible benefits of advertising, such as brand awareness, thought leadership and sometimes the expectation that you just have to be there. There is also the feedback you receive from your customers and prospects, this is great for research purposes and can help you identify new markets and opportunities.You will have access to analytics and visitor details on your blog. If you’re using the blog to compliment your SEO strategy, then you will very quickly be able to measure the impact. If your blog is a sales type of blog, your ROI will be measured based upon conversions.
9. Blogging is just some hype, we’re waiting for the next big thing It could be a long wait. Blogging has been around for many years now and continues to grow, it has definitely reached the stage where it is mainstream. Adding a blog to your site just to compliment your search engine optimisation strategies will ensure a return on your time and investment. That’s before you consider the potential to increase your branding, expertise and enquires from local press.
10. It’s just too difficult and we don’t know where to start This is really not a good excuse. Blogs can be set up so that you’re ready to go in an hour. If you’re still not sure, speak to an agency or have some training. You won’t need a lot, once you know you will wonder why you took so long to get onboard.

What to do next? Do you think we are being fair?We’d love to hear from you, post your comments and feedback below. If you would like to speak to Generate UK, please feel free to contact us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact page.

Special Offer: If you have read this post and would like to learn more about launching your own blog, contact us immediately for details of how we can take your blog site from conception to go live. Quote the title of this blog for a 20% discount.

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 our industry, but they are a key mantra for us at Generate UK. This is because if you look at the average SEO key performance indicators, they do not sit pretty with what the company business goals might be. Let’s use keyword ranking as an example; this is a great metric that your SEO company will use to demonstrate to you that they have had a positive impact on your rankings. They have a clear before and after picture that can not be doubted. This is absolutely true, however would you use this metric when measuring the success of your site? If you were a business owner, would you prefer to measure the success of how high you rank for a specific keyword or how many new orders you have received? I know you could argue that the higher you rank the more targeted traffic you receive, but this asumes keyword research. More importantly, it assumes that you have a super landing page that is making the most from your visitors. Put another way, high rankings does not necessarily mean conversations.

Hopefully, this arguement is allowing us to make our point. SEO alone is not enough anymore, the real value from a digital marketing agency is that they should know how to deliver targeted traffic to your site, traffic that converts and is delivered within your budget. SEO absolutely forms a part of that, but it is not the total solution that is being pitched in our market space. Let’s look at another example, SEO firms will point to a growth in traffic via the search engines as a result of their work, it’s a straightforward to measurement and is undeniable. The question is whether or not that increase in traffic meant more sales for you, did it convert, did you receive more sign ups, if the answer is no, then is the increase in traffic worth it?

We maintain that the only way to measure your digital marketing agency, regardless of whether they are providing just SEO or the full spectrum of search marketing services is via conversions. Only then are they adding true value to your business and working in line with your marketing objectives. By understanding your marketing objectives, they fully understand what constitutes success, therefore the SEO companies can then provide you with metrics that actually mean something to you. SEO alone is a tool that might help you towards your goal, a digital marketing strategy will enable you to exceed it.

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 an option for its readers to be able to subscribe to them, meaning that every post you go live with will be sent to your subscriber base. These are people who have proactively giving you and your content the virtual equivalent of the thumbs up. You should value your subscribers very highly and ensure that you continue to provide them with content and information they are interested in. Conversely, these are the people you can test new products, seek feedback and leverage to help your provide a better service or product.

Brand Building

There are many ways to use a blog to build your brand or even to support an existing brand. In fact a blog is the perfect vehicle to use to interact with your potential customers, advanced bloggers may also use video or viral campaigns to tease their audience into coming back.

Dare to be different and differentiate yourselves from your competitors

There’s two questions to ask here; do your competitors have a blog and do they use it? And secondly, can we use our blog to add credibility to our services and solutions? For example, if you’re an IT company would it be good to have an interview with one of your customers on your blog?The answer is yes, as it adds to the credibility of your service. Likewise, you could include your views on new product launches or industry trends, all the time differentiating yourselves with other players in your market.

Build Relationships

There’s an old adage in sales and marketing, “people buy from people”. This has not changed and is probably even more apparent in tough economic times. A blog provides you with an opportunity to create relationships with your clients and prospects. There is a current trend for large companies to have a “CEO Blog”, this is where the head of the company writes a blog article once a week, which is designed to bring them closer to their target audience. It provides the reader with a feeling of involvement and interaction, especially if they are able to leave comments and respond directly to the company head.

Social Media Marketing

Most of the leading blog sites will have a social media aspect to them. They are normally visible via small graphical logos, which can be used by your readers to submit your blog post to other social media networks. The more well known social media sites are called Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Sphinn and Digg, however the list grows by the day and each will be focused on niche or have its own rules. From a blogging perspective, the reason to be aware of the social networks is because if your content is good then it is likely to be picked up by them. If this happens, it can mean a huge increase in targeted traffic.

PR & Media will find you

Depending on your niche and your content, there is every chance that you may be contacted by either local or national press. This is a great position to be in and will help you with brand building and of course provide you with some free advertising. Usually this type of contact is born from the understanding that you are an expert in your field or the topic you are discussing is of interest to their publications.

Thought Leadership and becoming an authority

The Internet has created some amazing opportunities for companies to market their products and services to a wider audience, however you could also argue that it has meant an increase in competition in almost all markets. This is why it is important to differentiate yourself from your competitors, one way to do this is to establish yourself as the de facto expert in your area. If you are an expert, tell the world. Use your blog to communicate and showcase your expertise, in a competitive market this will do wonders for your sales.

Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is becoming big news, we have posted about this before and we advise our clients to be aware of it and proactively manage it. One of the ways to do this is by managing the content and using your blog to control what is being said. It is a little more complicated than just that, however it is better to be in control of the blog then letting someone else do it for you.

It’s really Simple

Creating and maintaining a blog is very simple. Once it is set up and designed, then your only challenge is creating the content and keeping it updated regularly. There are sites out there that post every day, whilst others do it once a week. We recommend that you find a happy medium that results in a good flow of content to keep your readers happy, without it becoming a chore.

Link Baiting

People have different views and ideas about link baiting. Often it is described as a black hat technique, whilst there are examples of blackhat link baiting, in general it is fine. The idea is that a blog post is so controversial or significant that it solicits a response from other members of the blogosphere. In turn they include a link back to your site, and you receive a boost in traffic and a short term buzz on your blog. If you’re lucky, you will keep hold of a number of your readers as well.

We want to keep growing this list, if you have any other business benefits for having a company blog please post in the comments.