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Archive for the ‘Hints & Tips’ Category

Promoting your website

Monday, July 12th, 2010

There are many ways to gain a higher number of visits to a website, and knowing just a few things about promoting a website can be important. It is vital that you have at least a little knowledge in how your website visitors arrive at your site. That way if you choose to hire someone to deal with the SEO (search engine optimisation) for your website, you will understand the basics on how it works and how to get visitors and potential customers.

A couple of ideas are below:

Add articles and content on your website that promote your products without over selling them. An article not written to ‘you’, ‘yours’ or about ‘me’, ‘I’ or ‘we’ are general articles that can be anything regarding your product. Updates and adding content to any site keeps it live and fresh, so search engines will keep returning and keep offering up new visitors.

Remember to add links to the website from other directories and relevant websites. Valuable time is wasted by surfers clicking on site links that don’t work, so making sure every link is checked and working can make a big difference.

Any kind of award that allows you to place an award winning logo on a site is worth its own weight in gold. However the best way towards promoting a website is that the award site may offer a link back to a website, currently a good way to increase popularity of any website, provided that website shares a similar kind of content to the one being linked to.

Use pay—per-click, and for anyone that does not want to learn how to use it, ensure the current web designer can offer you this service. If not an SEO expert can offer assistance in this field. Usually a contract fee or paid monthly, a design company whether based in Dundee or Lands End can offer services that can help in this area. Always consider pay-per-click within a budget, however it can be set at a level that suits. This kind of marketing provides paid for advertising within a preferred expenditure, again should be helped by someone experienced.

In summary there are plenty of things that can be done when promoting a website. The next blog will cover some more points that will help when conducting your own marketing on a basic level.

How Blogging Affects Business | Online Communities | Blog

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

How Blogging Affects Your Business

There are tons of reasons that blogging is taken up by business owners, and there are just as many blogging subjects as there are reasons to do it. Traditionally, online communities were built to bring people together, so each community would usually feature a different subject, such examples might be talking small business strategies or coming together to discuss interests in finance. The first weblog was penned around 1994 and the shorter version of the word ‘blog’ was later used as the technology improved. Later, it was able to support basic images and now design firms build blogs into websites of owners that want to move on or expand the business from their basic shop or info site to something much bigger.

Blogs get people involved. Online discussion groups absolutely thrive nowadays; you could find a blog about any kind of subject or interest, so just how does blogging affect your business? We wrote this to bring you some info and to clear up some grey areas concerned with blogging.

So, not everyone likes the idea. Blogging is often seen as a fairly informal way to build online communities, to create an interest with like minded people. Its also a way to announce to people exactly what might be going on within the large or small business, how it is progressing and expanding perhaps.

With a static website, businesses can struggle to update them, often paying and outsourcing updates to companies that can maintain the site and update it as and when required. A blog uses a simple user interface so that anyone can easily update it, great for those that don’t know code and don’t have a similar interface (content management system) on the main website. Whats exciting about blogs is that they are open for comment which can keep a blog looking lively and up to date, with commenting being open for the owner to edit and delete as appropriate.

What to Blog About

Journal

In general everyday life of an individual or business, so not necessarily personal, blogs might be written in form of diaries or journals

News

Extremely popular are new blogs. Those which are kept fresh and concern daily news bulletins are fascinating to most people, blogging allows a business to launch news in real time

Topics

Perhaps an area of a business is of interest to some, specialised areas such as web design are common and allows designers to share information with readers, it can be more informal than a static website

Marketing

Business owners use blogging to their advantage, it’s a way of letting people see another side of a company, keep up with current events and a good way to stay in touch with customers and potential clients

There are so many ways to blog and any business or individual looking to start a blog will no doubt evolve and expend the amount of categories on the blog over time. Blogging has not only become an extension of a business website, but a staple of modern day vibrant business ‘online’ communities.

10 tips for e-mail marketing

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Hints and Tips from Pixels InkE-marketing is a cheap way of reaching your marketplace. However, it is much abused and therefore particular care needs to be given to ensuring informative, useful e-mail which fully complies with legislation. These tips share some best practice to ensure that your campaign is successful and you respect the recipient.

1. Ensure your e-mail address data is accurate to avoid emails bouncing back. Note that even with fully accurate e-mail data around 20% will bounce anyway.

2. Ensure that all email addresses are business addresses and therefore it is permitted to send unsolicited emails on business matters only. It is illegal to send emails to these addresses offering personal goods and services.

3. Spam filters are more likely to block emails that have more images than text. A higher ratio of text will give it more chance of reaching the inbox.

4. Consider carefully the text that is used in the subject line of the email to try and catch the attention of your customer, without ‘spamming’. Take care to avoid words that spam filters will find suspect. A void using CAPS, exclamation marks and words such as ‘Free’, ‘Special Offer’ and ‘Exclusive’.

5. Don’t be tempted to fit too much information in, keep it clear and concise. Use bullet points to help readers. Avoid multiple fonts, font sizes, colours, bold, exclamation marks and other gimmicks which are displeasing to the eye.

6. e-mail campaigns are instant and more cost effective than postal campaigns. Take advantage of this by regularly refreshing the design. Use a professional and high quality design.

7. Ensure a ‘Call for Action’ is included and that it is clearly shown.

8. Make sure your team are fully prepared to deal with the enquiries, particularly if you are having a link to a personal email address.

9. Include links to your website and any other web pages that support your campaign. Check the e-mail links in advance. Take care to think of recipients who have html turned off – give them the chance to see the e-mail in full on your site.

10. All emails must include an option for the data subject to opt out of receiving further emails from your company i.e. a note on how to unsubscribe. If you receive an unsubscribe request, you must remove the data subject from your list and your company must not send them any further emails. This is a central part of the Electronic Communications Act.