Having a good website is one thing, but managing it moving forward needs careful planning and consideration. As we all are aware, a website should never stand still. New content is always good to share, especially as you learn more and grow within your business. Blogging is now accepted as one of the best ways to grow your business, and share knowledge and experience online, which is one of the reasons we have adopted WordPress as the platform of choice for all our websites.Read the rest of this entry »
Author Archive for ‘Alison’
Linked In – 5 fundamental things every small business owner should know
January 16th, 2012 by AlisonWithout stating the obvious, Linked In as many of us are aware, has become the largest professional networking website in the world, and is currently ranked 4th after FB, Twitter and Google.
Interestingly, having done some extensive research on Linked In, I now find myself knowing more than I thought I knew, which is a good thing I guess. I meet many business owners and individuals who struggle to see the benefit of Linked In including some sceptics on my recent workshop. For some reason they just didn’t “get it”. So I thought it would be a great idea to share some of the fundamental tips that even the basic business owner should know on Linked In. Here goes:Read the rest of this entry »
Is Your Website “Visitor-Ready” for 2012? 5 Tips On How To Get It In Shape
January 9th, 2012 by AlisonPart of my job is to help businesses understand the importance of how up to date content can affect their website, in a good way. Frustratingly, when I explain about how the content of their website is paramount to keeping visitors’ interested in them and their business, I do meet with a fair amount of resistance. I think this is because it’s a change! I come across many clients who do their jobs admirably and who are happy doing what they’ve always done. But websites have changed away from being just brochure websites to becoming much more “interactive and engaging”.Read the rest of this entry »
Are you ready for 2012? 5 things to think about for your online marketing strategy in the new year
December 9th, 2011 by AlisonChristmas is coming and we are all, I’m sure, looking forward to it. Time to relax, enjoy and get into the Christmas spirit, but what will you really be doing? Will you switch off from work completely? Or will you be checking your mobile for emails, and tweeting about what you’re up to?
The holidays are often a good time to take the opportunity to re-evaluate your business; where you are at now, where you want your business to be this time next year, and then how are you going to achieve it. So time to put your phone down, here are a few things that you need to include in your marketing strategy:Read the rest of this entry »
How to grow and engage your facebook fanpage
November 25th, 2011 by Alison
Many business owners struggle to understand how to build a following on facebook and make this amazing tool work for them. There is a lot of help and support out there on the internet if you know where to look, so to save you all getting frustrated I will aim to post regular updates here when I come across useful information you all may be interested in.
I stumbled across this blog which is interviewing Amy Porterfield, who has become an expert on Facebook and who is the author of : Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. This interview is engaging and enlightening and I hope you find it useful.
How to grow and engage your facebook fanpage
Trello, a great way to organise and manage your team
October 29th, 2011 by Alison
There seems to be a plethora of new types of social media websites appearing on a more and more frequent basis across the internet. The latest one I have stumbled across looks an amazing piece of software for all you busy people out there who have many balls to juggle at any one time, from managing busy workloads both at work and at home.
Well take a look at Trello. This looks like it could help you solve and organise all these tasks in one place. If you’re working in a team or as part of an organisation where you need to keep up to date with many different people on a project, then this is a great tool to help you do this. Likewise you can integrate this within your personal tasks too, and never lose track of anything ever again.
If you have a Google account, it makes it easier to sign in too. Let me know what you think.
Grab a Perch – great value cheap web design
October 21st, 2011 by Alison
I’ve talked before about good web design and how important it is to have a good structure to your website, along with up to date relevant content. Also the importance of having a content managed site that you can control, update, edit yourself, rather than be completely reliant upon your web designer.
For these, and many more reasons, we have adopted WordPress which covers all of these criteria. It’s an amazing brilliant, versatile CMS and blog all rolled in to one, plus has incredible flexibility that I’ve not seen in any other CMS – and I’ve seen a quite a few! However to get WordPress to work well for you, you do need to have a fair bit of web knowledge to get the most out of it, and it can end up costing you a few dollars more than maybe you had planned to get the right look, layout and functioning as it should.
Well I was quite surprised this week when a like minded professional recommended Perch to me. For you novices out there this is a very cheap WYSIWYG web build. If your web budget really has been stretched beyond just buying your domain name then this might be the answer for you. Perch really is a little content managed system that will help you get your business online, and you can do it all yourself. So why not go grab yourself a perch….
This week’s Internet Tip – Icons
October 13th, 2011 by Alison
I learn a lot from the internet, and this week was no different. I stumble a lot – great pastime, but can also waste a lot of time, but not this week. I stumbled across a website offering free icons to download. From people to houses, from questions to plasters, you name it and you will find the icon here at Icon Finder. These are especially useful to graphic designers and web designers to demonstrate to clients what can be achieved to demonstrate specific services. Icons certainly seem to be images that are widely recognised, unsurprisingly if you think about it – they are all over the Ipads, Ipods, and Iphones!
I thought as it was such a good find, I would share it with you. Let me know if you’ve used this before or if you can recommend any other similar sites.
Don’t let your website become the another book on the shelf…
October 12th, 2011 by AlisonThe function of websites has changed lot, especially since the invention of social media has modernised the way that websites are now used. A lot of websites used to be “brochure” based, a simple this is who I am and this is what I do, and if you like what you see then give me a call. Ooohh, how times have changed.
Websites that are brochures may just as well be like an old book on a bookshelf, just collecting dust. Especially as printed books don’t change their content, so you know exactly what the book contains and therefore will only open it should you feel the need to re-read its content. So why, when there is so much fresh and new content available on the internet would you want to read a dusty, dated, stale website? This is a hard concept for businesses to get on board with, especially as previously yellow pages had done such a good job, beyond their use as a doorstop.
The web is now all about content and up to date content, feeds, and generally being transparent to your customers. People want to do business with businesses who are actively working hard to market themselves and to prove that their product is the next best thing, that they will bend over backwards to look after you as a customer, that they are on top of their game. Think about it, how do you feel about doing business with a customer who’s not bothered with their marketing?
Websites these days need to be clean, clear, fresh, concise and interesting – they need to do the hard work for the visitors and make it easy for the visitor to engage with them. Clear calls to action are paramount to a successful website. So remember these top tips:Read the rest of this entry »
My Wordcamp Experience … just passionate about WordPress
July 18th, 2011 by Alison
WordcampUK 2011
This weekend saw the fourth WordcampUK meet up at Portsmouth University where a bunch of enthusiastic, likeminded people get together over a long weekend sharing knowledge, experience and a whole load of fun all based around the fact that we all use, in some way shape or form, WordPress to build beautiful websites.
As usual it was a great weekend, meeting many other creatives, developers, and all round enthusiasts who just enjoy sharing – which fundamentally is what WordPress is all about – sharing! The idea this year of the stickers worked brilliantly. 5 brightly coloured stickers defining what you do – Developer, Creative, Enthusiast, Theme Developer, Vendor – made it easy to network with people who do what you do, a very big thanks to Harrisment for putting this together.Read the rest of this entry »
