February 2015

With so many social media sites out there it is difficult to identify those that are worthwhile spending time on. Pinterest is one of those websites, it first launched in 2010 and has recently started to grow massively in the popularity stakes. It's basically a pinboard where you can collect all of your favourite images, for example if you were getting married you could keep all your favourite wedding dress pictures in one place so that you don't have to keep going from website to website.

Pretty much all internet users have watched a video online, many through YouTube, embedding a video onto your website has become quite a simple process and one that you should consider exploring. Way back when, using video on a website would take so long to load that they were impractical to use and most people would give up and leave the website before the video had even loaded.

Guest blogging is basically when you write for someone else's blog on an issue that is relevant to their business and yours. So for example if I am a Kitchen Designer then writing a blog post to appear on the site of a worktop manufacturer will benefit both sides.

Boost Your Reach

Guest blogging can open up a whole new audience for you it can help you utilise the readers of other peoples blogs and generate more awareness of your business and more importantly of your expertise. People are far more likely to buy from someone they trust and you can help gain this trust by presenting a professional and helpful approach online. This is easy to do via a blog because you are providing useful information for free.

There are so many different social platforms out there and so much to explore that the whole idea of using them to help market your business can seem overwhelming. The biggest mistake I see and one that I see incredibly frequently is where there is a flurry of activity in one of these portals and then nothing sometimes for months as a time.

There are lots of companies out there cold calling businesses at the moment offering packages for £100 per month to manage PPC for them. What people don't realise is that in the majority of cases they bid against keyphrases that have low volume search traffic. This means that your budget doesn't get used up each month and the company managing this for you pocket the difference. They will also often tie you into long term contracts that are then very difficult to get out of. I have come across cases where the management company is earning up to £80 per month whilst only £20 is actually being spent on PPC. Make sure you understand where your money is going and ask for access to your reporting so you can keep an eye on how it is going.

You might have seen one of these around; they are called QR Codes or Quick Response Codes. They work alongside smart phones and more and more businesses are starting to use them. They are a similar concept to a barcode but a little bit more complicated, basically someone scans this code using a smartphone; they can then take one of the following actions: