Nearly everyone has a Internet able phone these days and especially in business, more and more people can access their emails on their phone. More than half of the UK population have a smart phone, which means your website or blog, at some point, will be summoned on a mobile phone, and you can see how many are looking from a phone in Google analytics or your web server stats. So the time has come for every business to optimise their phone for a mobile application.

Failure to do so will end up in you losing so much business from business people on the go using phones every single day, and more so in the future!

Here’s where all my blogging and harping on about owning your own hosting and web site CMS comes into play. Some will be on to the phone right now to your web developer, if you can reach him, saying:

“This bloke’s blogging on about I must have a mobile phone application for my website!”

I can feel you all reaching to your cheque book, because any savvy web designer will hold some sway to your account so as it’s a constant residual income for him to get paid to do this stuff for you, however my disciples know I tell them all the free stuff and how to do it yourself it really is not that difficult, so are you sitting comfortably?

1. In your admin panel of Word Press click plug ins and search ‘mobile application’
2. When you see wptap download plug in
3. Go to Google and search for Mobius web theme and download through themes
4. Go to the wptap application and add Mobius to all the different phones sets.

Check out what your site looks like online

COOL EH!

This free application and many more will be available to the people that have signed up to a:

Netmediauk online marketing course

A client asked me the other day why does Google prefer blogs and videos over normal sites with all the best placed SEO keywords? Good question I thought, and it’s all stems from which is going to give the the most ‘stick ability’ factor. Google makes it’s money (Or the majority of it) on Google advertisements, the little ads you see down the right hand side of the search page corresponding to what you entered in the search, and also in the slightly pinked out ones at the very top (click on these and the companies pay for the click). Google prices these clicks on the number of people searching from those  keyword terms each month, you can see this clearly in keyword adword tool.

If you, for example, are a farming student and you searched for info on ‘Tomatoes’ and if you were presented with many sites selling tomatoes you are not going to learn much, you are just being sold to, so you will return quickly to the Google search page and try again. Google learned this a while back and this ‘quick return to search’ made the searches for ‘tomatoes’ worth less, so they tightened up their algorithms and now when you search tomatoes; sites that don’t sell and give a lot of information and have videos are more likely to appear higher, meaning the student stays longer and does not return too quickly to search for Tomatoes again, making their click worth more to Google from the sense of giving you the right information you asked for.

From a information giving point of view, vdeos are more likely to have good value, so this is why Google and the other search engines rate this medium higher in content and information, and if you have a video you will rank higher. If you have a blog with at least 20 good well written articles from the heart, full of tips and non selling content, with a video, search engines will love you!

We started doing Interview videos as we found that business people found it easier to just turn up for a couple of hours at our studio on the Wirral (or we have travelled around the North West, after all NWTV stands for North West Television) with a few questions in mind, and then we filmed them, there is no make up team, no canned audience, just me and the company chatting on nwtv.biz, which is the essence of social media, and we can make a video with all on screen logos and then post it to a huge audience on social media along with a press release, and we have had great success, companies appearing first page Google in 24 hours, where they were not seen before. We charge less than £250.00 per video. (at present) Needless to say the people that have appeared on nwtv.biz are delighted.

   

 

NWTV interviews Gordon T Gorilla

To find out how to blog effectively, use social media and how appear on our TV show visit NWTV,BIZ

Press one to ignore us completely

Press two to scream at someone

For class two drugs key hash

Please someone talk to me!!!

Yes the follow up! And customers knowing they can speak to you directly or at least contact you.

Success is often the realm of companies that have a regimented follow up system. IE No business person can argue with :

“Yes Mr Jones I understand you are on death row there in the Borneo Jungle, and your life depends on King Tut being in a good mood next week and sparing you from the cauldron, but if that doesn’t happen, do you mind if I give you a call regarding your stationery order next week. If I don’t hear from you I will send some stock cubes!”

Recent reports tell us that more business is gleaned from the 6-10th contact calls than any other which means that we are all probably guilty of giving up too early and chasing new business, and chasing new business is the most costliest thing we can do!

In the service sector timing is more sensitive than anywhere, the quicker you can get back to someone who has just rung the better. Karen Biddulph owner of Refine beauty attested to this in her interview on our online business TV show nwtv this week. Karen has a very successful Laser tattoo removal and skin care business in 4 concessions on the Wirral and her top tip was.

“Follow up every missed phone call as soon as you possibly can, get back to people on email that day, and be consistent”

Time is a premium in peoples lives and it’s important to remember when people have a list of other people to call, if you are at least there to answer and have time to talk with your client you will at least win the appointment.

Virtual offices are now around £40 per/month to at least have someone answer as your company and take your call for you, then text /email you the details, a real must for builders who are hanging of the end of a rope on the tenth story, and can’t always safely get a pen out of their pockets!

So follow up every single lead, yes it’s annoying when you ring back a number and a mop salesman thinks it’s his birthday, cos you returned his call and now he can sell you some mad cleaning implements and you are paying for the call, but in business you will be well served to remember that it’s not dead till the buyer is turned to soup!

The ICO (Information Commission Office) has brought in a law that will effect almost every single Web designer and Internet surfer in the EU and it happens on May real soon.

The new EU directive comes into affect on May 26th 2012 and has already been given a reprieve of almost one year. It simply means that whenever you open up a website you will be given a choice whether to disable cookies on the site or not. If you disable the cookie it may make that website unreadable. Other times if you try to ignore the pop up it will keep appearing on every page you visit… very annoying!

Website owners who do not add the cookie warning may be subject to stiff monetary fines. so we all need to be aware. I imagine Word Press and Joomla and the other popular blogging platforms will be all over this but best to make sure, perhaps someone from this companies care to comment?

The main downfall will be analytics, analytics have been around forever and it tracks what pages you are visiting, and how you found that website by using a cookie which follows your PC. Keeping a log of who your website visitors are, where they come from, what pages they like and how long they stay on your site is all done by a small innocuous text file called a cookie. Without analytics, web browsing would be a whole lot less effective.

Website cookies?

“The vast majority of cookies are harmless and do a good job but the average web surfer does not know that and will disable cookies at a moments notice, unaware of how important they can be” I was told this week by James Brooksbank from Antikythera systems in our online business tv show nwtv.biz this week.

James a self confessed geek and software developer with many years experience has developed a COOKIE FREE ANALYTICS PROGRAM and is offering it for free. And he also gave us some great advice to help us maximise our online security.

Blogging not working

Here’s probably why and how to fix it:

Separate blog site

You may be adding your blogs to your your existing corporate website, when I have found enormous success from a separate blog website like Word Press, with all links pointing to my main website. If you just can’t afford 20 U.S.D. to get a keyword rich new domain and hosting yourself, at least make sure each of the blogs are on a new page.

SEO your site

Most Word press templates are really well laid out for search engines, however it does not automatically add the title, meta description and keywords in, and it makes a small difference, but it might just be all that matters to get over your competition.

The fix is simple, get the Yoast SEO plug in and then tick use meta keyword tags on the dashboard page and then make sure you add all the titles, description and keywords in on the titles page. then click xml site map and click to send it, then ping yahoo and other search engines, cost of this plug in Sweet FA!   But I must say if you can afford it,  donate to these guys they deserve it for what this plug in can do!

Blog regularly

Blogging regularly! Try to blog at least once a week, Google and the likes just love regular content and links back from other sites especially authority sites, try to blog same time each week and make that a habit, trust me it will work. Again if you really dread having to write a blog, your reader will sense it and you just won’t cut doing it regularly, ask your self why are you in business? and write passionately. If you simply can’t,. find someone who can!

Write with passion first

There are two schools of thought when it comes to business blogging and one school believes you should write for search engines, after all the main point is getting top of Google right? Well I belong to the other school of thought, yes I research what keyword phrases people are looking for and write down the top ones, but when I write, I write for it to be read by people, and impart info and tips my readers will benefit from, and I go off like a bullet and then look back at a thousand typos, but they can all be fixed and the key phrases can be added later. This, I have first hand experience, makes the difference between a company ‘bang’ at the top of Google getting a few leads and someone near the bottom of the first page getting 100% more calls. It ain’t all about getting No 1 spot, any SEO guy can do that, it’s about what they read once you  have clicked the top blog,  and if it’s dross well you know where they are next time and you avoid them, that’s easily done, being first on Google does not mean people ‘have’ to click you!

Use Social Media

Some business have blogs and write it out, publish it, and then the kettles on as they think the jobs done, much like the hapless fruit shop owner whom sets out his stall in his lonely country fruit shop, and then sits and waits for clients and then complains at the end of the day when there is a few coppers in the till to show for sitting there for 12 hours!

Social Media is the salt on Chips, the lemon on fish, they were made to compliment blogs. Smart companies use their social media to send people back to their blogs, you have a Facebook page right? then people liked your business so they want to know about your business, so post all your links back to your blogs on all social media including Pinterest! Try to be human though,don’t just automate everything and be done with it, I automate very little, Sprinkle with questions and competitions to get people talking about your link and you will then start to see some online magic happen with your website conversions!

Last of all don’t be shy, ask for the business, this is called a CTA or call to action a simple little :
“Hey you can contact me for help, I won’t shout,.. I don’t mind honest” or try this:

For any help with social media and to get blogging, not just for your health, but to get more people calling you for business contact me

When a lady asks a man out it is most likely she has done all those clever moves that we dozy men are oblivious to, and she kinda knows you like her (Oh how I wish I has such skills), but the point is; because she has asked you she will place a higher value on the date, than if you had asked her.

first date

Same theory applies to marketing, a cold call and a cold appointment is actually going to be a lot harder to sell at the price you have in mind. so get the client to contact you, it is far more cost effective.

A blog costs: let’s work it out 100 dollars per/annum for hosting, divided by 2 hour to write and post er… around 0.022 cents and your time, v $24 for a person to cold call for 2 hours!

By writing effective blogs on a separate blog site, teaching and imparting information useful to your audience, you will endear your business to your potential marketplace in a way that cold calling will never do, and when a client contacts you you are already 50% of the way to a sale and you can sell at the price you had in mind, making your business more profitable, which is why we all get out of bed in the morning isn’t it?

It is no surprise to leading marketeers that companies that blog receive 55% more leads than companies that don’t, so you need to set up a blog and start giving then as if by magic you start getting!

 For help in setting up a blog or to increase your internet exposure contact us

Put the search ‘blog’ into Google and you are one of 151 million people who have done so in the last month. 5 million in the UK alone. There is an estimated 130 million blogs out there already.

blogsearch

People are suddenly waking up to smell the coffee, to find that you may well be too late, your competitor has already taken your key phrase domain and has been diligently writing about the business and has been branding himself as the expert in your area for months! But it’s always the same in business, you get the pioneers who get laughed at then lauded, then the mainstream, then sadly the rest of you,

“oh I think we should have a blog, let’s spend six months thinking about it”

In that time your competitor has made loads of sales and stolen a huge percentage of your market share through contacts from his blog!

A blog is a web-log it’s basically an article online. Occasionally I read the sports section of newspapers and the inane story of how this football player ‘does not fear this team’, or how that they have ‘settled in’, or whatever drivel that we are meant to believe they said. I believe one poor wretched guy, who once had dreams of Fleet street journalism on the front lines, making a difference, now though, has to sit and write something each week for the back pages, we all know football players can’t string a decent sentence together, never mind read and write, and this one tortured soul writes all this stuff of the top of his head for them every day.

His job is to sell newspapers. Yes they are all selling something. Any publicity is good publicity. How many times do we see the story of the bleeding heart of the musician and their drug shame, just before they release a new album?

But how hard is it to set up a blog? when you know how, you can set one up in 20 minutes and own all your online real estate 100% yet already have an article posted for less than $20! then posted on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, et al in less than an hour, and have it in front of 20 million people, if say 0.01% read it, you are doing better than a full page advertisement in the national newspapers! and you could prove the readership on a blog, something impossible with a tabloid or broadsheet, all in all not a bad return for £15 is it!

Makes a mockery of the £500 average that web designers are charging for a basic website. A blog site has everything a standard website has and more! ‘Dear web designers please stop sending me death threats!’

First steps in setting up a blog:

First research your key phrase that will become your domain name.

Purchase through Namecheap or Go daddy

Purchase your Hosting through Hostgator $9 a month. I have 50 domains and 30 live sites for $9 a month for two years now, excellent communication and sales support.

Change the DNS to your hosting account I prefer a separate domain hosting to site hosting. It feels safer but that’s just me.

Build your site through Word Press in the Fantastico feature in Hostgator.

Once your site is up the Word Press admin panel is idiot proof and the range of free plug ins is mind boggling. Plug ins are add ons you can add to your site to truly personalise it. They even have free merchant tools so you can start selling products and services through paypal and Credit cards immediately, set up a forum, advanced SEO features, add your Facebook pages, the list is endless and you can even purchase dynamic themes for around $15-$100 to give your site a real professional image. One button uploads of images into your blog article from your desktop, makes Word Press as popular as it is today!

All the blogs should point back to the original corporate site you made a while back. I always advocate a separate blog and corporate site. With your blog you can have fun, be creative and think laterally, show the human side of your business, and also engage on social media. then when people like you through your blog enough to want to contact you, they then see your corporate site, your professional side, experience and testimonials. giving the potential client a full view of you and your business. If you don;t have any kind of online presence whatsoever, I can recommend a great funeral director for your business demise!

I help companies start their blog, write effective blogs, and get it out to the Internet community who want to read about your subject matter, I do still talk to people at business networking events and some are still are undecided whether blogs are the way forward, and I can’t help envisage the guy with the Horse laughing at Mr Ford all those years ago.

He who laughs last laughs longest!
GoAnimate.com: Planet+html+V+Planet+Word+press by alsby

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

I see it oh so often, people start doing social media and then grind to a very quick halt at the first real sign of severe resistance.

“I can’t even get people to see the like button let alone click it” I have been told.

Yeah Facebook could do with making the like button a bit bigger, but then again it’s not so hard to make a Facebook welcome tab telling people to ‘like the page’ and giving them an incentive like a competition to win something. Oops did I mention investment!?

Then you get the Linkedaphobes, my term for people who guard their Linkedin contact list like a snarling dog with a bone, would it not be easier to not go online and keep your contacts in a box? somehow, somewhere the law of attraction missed these guys. share whatever you can whenever you can and it will come back to you.

Twitter is still quite an enigma to many I just say follow like minded people and if they want to follow you back they will, be sure to re tweet good links and follow conversations with hash tags, join in the community, it’s the only way to learn, but then again you are going to tell me you have not got the time, but if you knew just how to find real business through Twitter you would make the time!

The very reason we pay money to Accountants and Medical practitioners is because they spent years learning and we just don’t have the time in our lives to master everything.

My social media reach took 5 years of linking up with companies around the world to grow social media groups together and now I am admin of over 20 groups and 7 pages culminating in around 20,000 people and they have other admins who post regularly and my payback for starting these groups is I can post on them whenever I like.

So if you have a UK based company you can fast track your search ranking by making sure you add your company and an article about your business sector (there are many free tips on the site how to blog) for free on biz-find.co.uk because I add each listing to our social media and you will get lots of free clicks and it endears yourself to Google too

biz-find.coscreenshot

The greatest lie Facebook ever convinced you of, was that Facebook is personal, I see it as 100% business! I.E. let’s create a way for people to tell us exactly what they like, and then we will have a perfect targeted audience to present to advertisers. Business people who still believe Facebook is for kids, and are not engaging in social media, are missing the entire point and loosing the race, they will continue to slide into oblivion if they don’t change to the way of web social.

Remember the great Twain’s Tom Sawyer who convinced his friends to paint the fence by making them believe it was their idea. That’s exactly what web social is! letting YOU make the decision, because you believed what your friend told you.

Tom Sawyer a great sales person

Carnegie said ‘A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still’

Sales is not about convincing, it’s about re-direction, an inexperienced parent will yell at a child to stop an naughty action, where an experienced parent will give the child other things to do, which will in turn engage the child a lot longer than simply trying to stop them doing whatever they are doing. Point is: if you believe it you are hook line and sinker SOLD!

Social media is friends telling friends what’s hot and what’s not, like they always did but online, in front of billions of other potential buyers. The companies that are integrating into social media are forward thinking and are tapping into a sales technique that is not only uber-effective but is so cost effective it’s mind boggling. In old school thinking this type of marketing was called ‘word of mouth marketing’ and in small business everyone should know referrals are your main source of income! so don’t tell people what you do, show them, and let them touch your product and service and they in turn (If you are as good as you say you are) will become the most effective free Sales reps you ever had!

Your blog should regularly educate and explain your USP’s in a fun and readable way and your articles should be on a separate blog site to your main page for the best Internet exposure.

My top social tip is get people to comment about your services on your Facebook page with contacts to them so they can contact if need be. Don’t ever be afraid of a negative comment! 50 glowing testimonials can look over compensating , we all have times when we mess up, and we as a society have grown to expect that we are all human, and sometimes we get it wrong. Nothing adds credibility to your testimonials than one bad one , but and a big BUT make sure you write underneath what went wrong, how sorry you are and you agree with your complainer, and how you are fixing it, that comes across as highly flexible!

To find out how to blog and engage in social media to get more leads from the internet :

CONTACT US

•  78% of sales people start with informal information gathering online.
• 59% engaged with peers who searched the same questions.
• 48% followed forums on the subject.
• 37% followed information on Social media. *

*Data from the ISMM (Institute of Sales and Marketing UK)

I was in a restaurant recently and the owner was oblivious to Foursquare, 7 million other people are not though! Foursquare.com is the the geo spatial website where people take photos of the food and post it online on their smart phones through the app, and warn or tempt, depending on how good the service was, about the establishment. Twenty people had posted about lousy service, there was not many people in the place and I only popped in put of the goodness of my heart to tell him.

Added to this the fact that businesses that blog have 55% more visitors that don’t, beggars the belief:  To be ‘seen’ anywhere online you just  have to blog!

Top tips to be seen:

 Videos: Film as many as you can, don’t worry about how good it looks unless you are Spielberg or Cameron, make good content ,fun, aim to make them viral, remember the top watched videos in the world are not always the best edited!

 Web Directories: Add to as many as you can but research the best ones who offer a follow link back to you, some of the directories that charge are worth it, don’t fret over DMOZ, some of the best companies in the world have been waiting years to be approved, I don’t think Google even cares about it any more.

 Whenever you do a talk about your business post your power point to slide share, their SEO is outstanding and how professional are you when you tell people who ask for the slide show

“Oh it’s on slide share”

along with all your other slide shows!

 Write consistent good content blogs, on a separate blog website with a 50% bias on keywords and something you know people will read and remember the heading is pivotal. Do not forget the very reason you write a blog, even if you are a charity, Call to action at the end and a link to where they can pay for the stuff, it still amazes me to this day how people are frightened to ask for the business!

Post your blogs to social media and Bookmarking sites for full effect.

You can grow your social media through:

• Competitions.
• Adding your facebook and Twitter to your business card
• Have a QR code on your card and brochures.
• Engage with other pages and groups and tell them about your Facebook page
• Run a Facebook page party choose a day and encourage people to comment on a post this is massive for SEO!

Online marketing is growing at such a tremendous rate and the detractors will always try to tell you it’s for kids,or it takes too long. Well I say the kids are tomorrows buyers, get them on your side today, and you protect your future. Ask if these detractors are getting 70% of all their leads through social media and you can guess what the answer will be! If you are wondering I get the other 30% through networking clubs. No cold calling for me!

 Want to learn how to engage in social media and find more leads?