Blog Archives

In this age of context, transparency and relevancy the time is right to come out of your online shell and expose you … for the greater good of your business and even your own personal self.

Your own website doesn’t need to be all-singing, all-dancing, flashy, super whizzy – unless of course you’re selling all-singing, all-dancing, flashy, super whizzy websites.

Today’s online world is all about transparency, about collaboration and trust and to build that up you need to spread yourself about a bit and impregnate as many fertile portals as you can – in context and with relevance.
Authenticity is top key. Trust is the currency, Contextual content is king.

Long gone is it good enough to just have a basic website – About Us, Our Clients, (Mission Statement? … please … don’t). Google has thrown the online dice and broken the house, which means we all have to play along to their rules if we want to be invited to their future baby showers.
To keep your head above the water you need to incorporate established rules of the jungle into everything you do online.

So, you just paid a big West End agency more than the mortgage on your house or you’ve just bought a $40 WordPress theme, spent the weekend writing content, (it’s not all ‘We/ We/ We’ is it?) and launched your own website – great, lovely, super, well done old chap … BUT it certainly doesn’t stop there. In fact you’ve not even scratched the surface.

Being online is the 21st Century equivalent of a fax machine – you know, last century if you didn’t have a fax machine you weren’t a real company, today it’s the same with a comprehensive online presence.

With a few hours positive work you can set your path to becoming the ‘cock of the internet’ so let’s get on with maximising your online presence, kissing Google’s butt and even making friends.

The fastest route to the old chestnut of ‘getting on google page 1’ is PPC but this is only short term as soon as you stop paying, you slip away. There are more beneficial routes to SEO Nirvana that, generally, cost peanuts and will take time but can return maximum benefit.

Establish:
Google+ should be the main focus point for building your audience by using communities and establishing your own authorship credentials.

Despite the pitch forks at dawn regarding governmental spying/ hacking and generally stock-piling your everyday phone calls, locations and general moves, Google basically does the same, except we’re all ok with that … apparently. At a recent announcement concerning Google, part of the chatter was the fact that Google knows where you are at any given time and who is important to you. As for privacy and Facebook … forget it.
Of course, the trick is to turn all of this data hoarding to your advantage.

If reputation was the backbone of doing business in your local village, your online reputation, on a worldwide scale, is the backbone of doing today’s business and we all need to maximise that entity.

Contribute:
Do you blog? Do you write articles? No? Why Not? You should.
Blogging or writing articles equals regular SE food.

Adding a blog facility to your main website is fairly straight forward, obviously depending on how it’s set up initially.
If you cannot use your own CMS, or the posh West End agency want your first born as down payment for adding one there’s many more avenues you can saunter down.
Checkout places like WordPress.com, Tumblr or even Medium.

Consume:
Which also brings us onto micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter.
Twitter is one of those things that you never knew you needed until it smacked you in the face. It’s the global pub where anyone and everyone can stand there shouting to themselves without fear of being locked up – as long as what they’re posting is not illegal of course.

Twitter is also a brilliant way to monitor and deal with customer support and general company/ client communications.
I personally run various accounts including @SupportBot which is only open to my own clients for direct messaging, support enquiries, service updates etc.

Unwritten/ unofficial rules of using Twitter are not to constantly broadcast sales messages and, generally, don’t be a dick.

When you first meet someone on Twitter, don’t act like a horny teenager and go straight for 1st base. Join in, communicate and converse.
You wouldn’t go into a pub, jump up on a table shouting “BUY MY STUFF” over and over again, because, if you did, in no time you’ll be cast aside like a pair of month old Primark knickers.

“Use the search young warrior” – twitter.com/search should be your daily source of news and clients. Use it to seek out local companies looking for your services, do keyword searches to find out what’s happening in your industry and search for your competitors to see what they’re up to.

Context:
LinkedIn – For finding/ making business connections there’s no better general tool than LinkedIn. Again, sign up, complete your profile, join groups or start your own industry specific groups, and communicate, converse and use the search functions.
Another good tip is to join in the conversations in your main industry groups, spread your knowledge and become known as an authority on the given subject.

Set up a company page and fill it to overflowing with all your best/ latest work.

People will be searching for your talent and if you’ve put on a big enough show, they will get in contact.
Ultimately use LinkedIn to build legitimacy in your company and community building.

On the subject of ‘go to guy’ seek out and join in with industry specific forums, again, sign up, use your photo, not a logo, in your fully complete profile and spread your knowledge and become the go to guy.

Where relevant check out additional portals like Pinterest (design, inspiration, arts/ crafts), Snapchat/ Instagram if you’re into short bursts of pics, Medium (short articles/ writing). If you’re a video company you need to be pumping out vines/ youtube/ vimeo media like it’s going out of fashion.

If you’re mainly a B2C outfit you totally need to be on Facebook where you need to work hard to build brand awareness by offering special deals, latest news updates, and very importantly, customer support. Please don’t just ask people to ‘like’ your page, give them a reason to want in.
The secret is to know where your audience live and deliver fresh fish, to their plate regularly.

Conclusion:
By embedding yourself deep into the Google ecosystem, on G+ and it’s associated communities and validation system, you can contribute to your overall results, especially on industry specific or local searches, helps validate you and your company and determines your authorship status.

Making friends is easy when you’re transparent about your real self – some people will hate you, some will love you – concentrate on the positive ones.

By growing a professional online presence, by contributing regularly, by making sure your social profiles are up to date and to a high quality, by being open, honest, and generally yourself, you will grow a crowd that will want to +1, like and retweet you regularly and help you attain the title of ‘cock of the internet’

Finally remember … all the above is easy, but takes a lot of time and hard work.

Have fun.

External links:
LinkedIn
Medium
Twitter / SupportBot

In my last proper job the parent firm decided to shut down the subsidiary where I worked.
On that day I made the probably the best business decision I’ve ever made – shut up and listen.
Because of this decision I managed to secure a fair bit of resources which enabled me to calmly decide what I wanted to do next.

Regularly, usually on Twitter, we hear of people, usually MPs, saying stuff they probably shouldn’t – usually, without thinking, usually without remorse and usually they end up losing their job. Should’ve just shut up.

When I wrote this article, on my Chromebook, while sitting in the garden in 20+ degrees heat – BBC weather said it was going to bucket down all weekend. They should just shut up.
Bonus tip – if you want to know what the weather is going to be like – look out the window.

Out of the gazillions of so called business, marketing and social media gooroos i’ve met over the years not one of them has had an original idea. Not one of them have impressed me, not one has said anything more exotic than simple common sense.
Trouble is, they are having a list education – top 10 business books that you should read if you want to be the next Branson/ Sugar/ Dragons put together – not one of them just have learned from their own mistakes and mixed what they’ve learned with their own real life experiences.
Of course the likes of Branson et al do have some valid points but they don’t have a one fix fits all outlook.

Of course I’m not saying I know everything, i’m not that much of a dick-head and, if I did I wouldn’t have called in the ‘experts’ when needed, what I’m saying is that to learn you need to make your own mistakes – fail fast, fail often, and you need to be open to admitting when you’ve fooked up and ask for help, advice, guidance.

With all these gooroos – if it’s not in the Richard Dragons’ latest book then it’s not the gospel.
Rich celeb wannabes – shut the effigy up.

There’s an old saying – you’ve got one mouth and two ears – use them in that equality and you might actually learn something.

Back to the garden, I’d just set up the BBQ (twice in the same year? Does that make a double dip heatwave?) – I taught myself how to light a BBQ. It takes forever, it’s totally not the text book way of doing it but the process has been honed over the years and the end result means evenly cooked meat which is the desired effect, is it not?

Last year was ‘annus horribilis’ for BlackBerry owner RIM – A worldwide outage went on and on for ages but thankfully, eventually, normal service was resumed. Technology likes to test us, that’s fine, but in this s(h)ituation the issue was with RIMs handling of the fall-out.
I complained and eventually ended-up with an 8gb card which I used in my new Android phone I bought after cancelling my BBerry contract. Now, it seems that RIM might actually be bought out and the company is kaput – simply because they didn’t listen and respond to their customers.

I enjoy failing, I love listening to what people have to say – if nothing else, it sharpens my bullshit detector – I love shutting up and learning.