Web Consultancy UK

Not that I’m one to blow my own trumpet (he says with a knowing smile on his lips), but my recent interview for venues.org.uk is now live on the big old World Wide Web.  You can check it out at Social Network marketing or, if you’d like to read the unedited transcript, please see below.  Love to hear your thoughts

“Adaptation is the key to surviving in a difficult business environment; understanding what your customers want and staying one step ahead of your competitors.  Nowhere is this more important than in a company’s marketing efforts.

In July, Andrew Nicholson, E-Commerce manager for events firm Sodexo Prestige, hailed social networking as the future of the events industry.  Four months on, he stands by that statement.

How has business been recently particularly with Christmas parties?

We’ve actually seen business picking up of late; we’ve had a lot of last minute bookings coming through and overall there’s a strong sense of optimism within the industry. We still have spaces available but we also have quite a few venues which have sold out their Christmas parties and are now moving their focus onto New Year’s Eve and spring.

Which strategies have been working for you recently?

In terms of recent strategies we’ve been finding it challenging selling the higher end party packages, which have had quite a lot of pressure put on them by the recession, so we’ve been adapting and focusing our efforts on more fiscally viable party packages. £30 per person, all inclusive, is the kind of party price that has proven very popular.

What are your plans for the near future?

We’re going to keep going as we are; we’ve already started moving away from more traditional media, and are scaling up our online marketing effort. We’ve started training individual sales staff at venues around the UK to bring out the benefits of social marketing. We’ve a long term strategy in this regard, and we’ve been working of late on a social networking policy to roll out across Sodexo Prestige. It provides guidelines, advice and policy on how to make best use of social networks to attract customers?

Why is social networking so effective?

If I’d claimed 30 years ago that the main form of sales communication would have been over the telephone, people wouldn’t have believed me; countering that face to face will always be the most effective sales channel. Today we’re looking at a similar paradigm shift; where a couple of years ago social networking was a tool to utilise when communicating with friends. Today it has become the tool for communicating with friends, colleagues, business leads and the like. It’s invaluable, as everyone is on a social network. 70 per cent of your customers are on social networks daily, so it makes sense to communicate with them this way. It’s a non intrusive, non aggressive marketing channel, and always keeps you at the front of your customer’s minds, and for most companies it’s essential for generating sales.

What are the risks associated with corporate social networking?

With social networks you’ve got to bear in mind that whatever you put up online is there permanently, embedded in history for all to read.  Even if you delete something straight away, someone could have recorded the information or emailed it. A lot of companies have got into trouble for posting inappropriate information, amending it almost immediately only to find out that people still have access to it.

Imagine you are in a playground back in your school days. This is similar in many ways to a social network. You have the popular kids, who control the dialogue, and ultimately you have little direct control over what is said in these conversations. What you can do however, is act as an influencer, creating social champions to guide conversations on your behalf. When looking at the risks we can extend the playground metaphor – the school ground is a hotbed of germs and virus’s. The social playground is no different, and corporations should be aware of the heightened threat of viral and trojan infections inherent in social networks.

Furthermore, data can get lost and hacked. People put their personal details on social networking sites and that can give prospective bad guys an understanding of what makes you tick as a person. Hackers can even work out your passwords based on your personal information, so you have to be careful about what you make available on line. The golden rule is that if you don’t know a person; do not accept them as a contact or friend. There’s a trading card mentality about social networking, where users try and build up the most friends, or the most LinkedIn contacts. This sets a poor security precedent. In the case of social networks, little is often more. You also have to make sure that you keep your personal life and business life separate. Golden rule number two is you cannot mix the two. On Facebook you see people talking about their companies, and day at work in their personal profiles, or you invariably see users posting pictures of themselves sitting around and chatting like they’re in a pub, with information linking them to a business. Facebook can be used successfully by businesses, but I strongly advise using your company page as your corporate profile, and using your personal profile for your friends and family.

Have Sodexo avoided any problems like this so far?

So far we have avoided them, as far as I am aware, but Sodexo is an awfully large company and people talk about it a lot. Every company will have negative comments online. The trick is to follow online conversations and respond to them. Use tools such as Google Alerts to keep track of online dialogue.  The worst thing you can do is ignore comments and negative groups because it can escalate, and this can potentially be very dangerous. Respond to people fairly and promptly, and respond to them as individuals. You’ll find that normally you can resolve any issues online and more often than not, with a well handled response, you’ll be able to turn dissatisfied users who have been quite negative, into brand advocates.

So, do the risks of social networking increase with the size of your company?

I think it is inevitable that the bigger your company the bigger the risks from social networking. The more interactions companies have with people the more opportunities there are for negativity. A large scale company you has a lot of interactions. 99.9% of the time those interactions will be very positive, but on the occasion that there is a negative interaction, you need to make sure that you jump in there and try the best you can to resolve the issues. There are multiple horror stories of customers that have been ignored (American Airlines, Dell etc.) and negative online dialogues have irrevocably spiralled out of control. From a customer service perspective, I think that social networks are great. In the olden days, people who had a bad experience would go away and grumble; they’d tell their friends and family about bad experiences, but the afflicted company, who most needed to know about the issue, was always the last to know. These days customers can go online and blog their experiences, or they Tweet them, and if they’re really aggrieved, they set up a Facebook group. Yes, it is negative exposure to the wider public, but it also means that we can get immediate feedback from the customer and we can actually react to it in real time. So in many ways social networks are helping us grow as a company.

Does this mean that traditional sales channels are dead?

Traditional sales channels aren’t dead, there is always a place for face to face and there is always space for telephone communication. However what we have found from personal experience is that social networks link in to these channels, and are a great way to compliment them. As a sales person, you attend networking events, and you meet a number of people that you see as potential leads. You used to give them a phone call a couple of days later and that was pretty much it unless they became a customer. Whereas these days you go away, you talk to them, you sign them up on a social network and then you have a long term relationship with them. Even if you’re not talking to them every day they’re still aware of what you’re doing, if you’re promoting an offer, it can take a one time touch point and convert it into a long term relationship.

How do you see the industry doing next year?

I’m a marketer, not an economist; however there has been a lot of optimism in the industry of late about where we’re going financially. Personally, and I’m trying not to sound negative here, I think we’re still in for some tough times. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the recession, and many people who are a lot smarter than me have suggested that what we’re looking at now is the peak of a W shaped recovery. That said, whilst it’s been hard, there have been benefits. The recession has forced a lot of companies to streamline. The event industry has been known in the past for its flamboyance, and whilst this is no bad thing, the economic strain has led to companies re-focusing on their triple bottom line. Cutting back wastage and streamlining purchasing, whilst investing in the development of key staff has resulted in a more efficient, more focussed industry, which I think will reap benefits for all involved in events in the long term.”

I’m going to let you in on a naughty little secret that most developers don’t want you to know about.  It’s called rentacoder.com, and it’s been a lifesaver for many an overworked UK coder over the past few years.

Rentacoder is essentially a middleman between UK developers and coders/designers in developing countries.  It provides a safe, easy to use, and above all cheap, means of outsourcing work to countries where the dollar is still strong enough to hold sway.

Now, if I were to tell you that by using Rentacoder UK developers are able to get quality work done at a fraction of the price it would cost in this country, you might reasonably ask why you too shouldn’t give it a try?  Well, the simple answer is, that actually, you probabaly should.

Rentacoder is a fantastic means of getting a project completed to a  high quality, whilst at the same time actively helping coders in disadvantaged areas generate some much needed income.  I see it very much like Comic relief, but without Lenny Henry in a garish red jacket.  Coder Relief in fact.

But it does come with some pit falls…

1.  To really work on a low budget you have to be prepared to take a chance on a low scoring coder.  This is someone new to Rentacoder who has yet to build up a reputation score (much like Ebay’s Power seller scoring system, based on client feedback) or a network of clients.  This doesn’t work out everytime, so avoid projects with a tight deadline.  If the coder isn’t up to the task, don’t worry.  So long as you’ve set a rigid brief that hasn’t been met, Rentacoder will mediate in your favour and return all escrowed funds.  If however you haven’t briefed the coder correctly with your requirements, or have renaged on your side of the bargain, beware, as you are likely to lose your deposit.  Either way, just re-submit your job, and try another coder.

2.  Using a coder whose first language isn’t English can at times be very tricky.  Using Rentacoder is harder work than using a UK coder, as you will often have to micro-manage the project via email.  This isn’t a problem if you’re technically minded, and know exactly what you require - however, for those that don’t know their HTML from their CSS it can be very tricky.  There are of course Rentacoders on the site that have an excellent understanding of English, and will be every bit as savvy as their UK counterparts, but these are generally the coders than have high reputation score,a nd you will therefore find yourself paying a  premium (it will still be far cheaper than a UK agency however).

3.  There are of course dubious characters on rentacoder, as there are in real lige.  with some 1/2  million coders on the site this is inescapable.  However, Rentacoder.com are very wise to this, and so long as you follow their advice to the letter, you can’t really go wrong.

So go on, give it a go.  I can assure you that once you get the bug you’ll never want to do your coding any other way

I’ve had a very frustrating couple of days dealing with a server hosting company on behalf of one of my clients.  Amazingly, despite finding a rather nasty Trojan sitting on their server, the hosts, www.netbenefit.com initially refused to wipe the site unless my client was able to come up with the original login details.  We produced FTP passwords, user passwords etc, but all to no avail.  Two weeks, and much pleading later, they eventually completed the wipe, and I was able to add a clean version of the site.  Below is an excerpt from my email ping pong

“Dear Shofon/Imran,

As your own investigations have proven, there is a trojan on the site.  The more time we waste with these log in details, the more website users will become infected.  Surely this should take precedence over my client not being able to find the correct log in?  If you do not have authority to wipe the site and remove the threat, then I would ask that you pass this email on to your supervisor, and ask them to contact my client, xxx, directly on xxx  between the hours of 9.00am and 5.00pm tomorrow to get this issue resolved.

Many thanks

Andrew Nicholson”

Their reponse:

“Thank you for emailing NetBenefit.

Unfortunately we will not be able to do your request until we confirm the overall account username and password. We have to follow the procedure laid out by the company and so will not be able to do the change until the correct details are provided.

Shofon Mia
Online Support Advisor”

Whilst I admit being very frustrated by this appalling approach to online security, it is in fact symptomatic of a deeper issue my client is facing.  That of my client not actually owning his site.  Yes he updates it, and manages the content on it.  Yes, all the contact details feed in directly to him.  But the actual owner of the site was a developer way back when who registered the site, built it, and then skipped the country.  This is a historic issue that many website owners are facing today.  Rather than owning their sites, they are in fact merely lodgers.  Way back in the annals of time, when most business owners didn’t know their Dreamweaver from their SEO, web developers regularly volunteered to sort out the URL registrations for the business, applying under their own name for ownership.  This would be fine, up until the point where the business owner and developer went their separate ways.  At which point the real ‘owner’ of the website could demand a large sum of departure money.  This is of course a dreadful practise, and much akin to handing your house keys to the builder after he’s finished building your home, and you’ve moved in.  But it happened non-the-less.

By and large, this unsavoury practise has now petered out (if your developer even suggests registering your URL in their name, run a mile), but there are other more subtle means of extending control over a website.  I came across a company last week who will build you a website for a few hundred pounds.  Bargain, you say!  What they don’t mention is that they continue to own all visual content on the site.  Images, graphics, layouts etc.  So if you want to part from them at any time, you have to “buy out” the images.  Which will cost you a pretty penny!

As with everything in life, you get what you pay for.  If a developer is offering you a ridiculously cheap deal, ask yourself why?  You wouldn’t work for less than minimum wage, and it’s highly unlikely a professional web developer will either.  Make sure you own all the content, and the URL, and don’t expect to get something for nothing.  If you have any doubts, drop me a line, and I’ll look over the contract for you - better that than be stung later on.

I read a book a few months back that I would recommend to all budding marketers and psychologists.  It was by a rather smart gentleman called Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics at MIT, and went into some detail on what us marketers have known for some time.  i.e.  The great global public isn’t nearly as predictable as we’d like to believe.

If you want to read the book, go out and buy it - it’s called Predictably Irrational, and you’ll have spent £15.49 very wisely.  Or go to his website, and save £15.49 even more wisely!

“What is the book about?” I hear you ask.  Well, it’s an in depth explanation of the new social/economic science known as behavioural economics.  If you’re like me, you’ll find this fascinating, because it does away with the old market forces hypothesis of supply and demand - and subtly slides in a good dose of human irrationality, acknowledging that people will not always go for the cheapest offer, nor are they always influenced by rationality.

Dan Ariely explains the whole thing a hundred times better than I ever could, but I’m going to throw one example on benchmarking into the pot that he’s missed out.  and one that I think we can all relate to.

I’m going to lay a bet.  I’m going to bet you that when you go shopping at TK Max, despite being a bargain hunter’s paradise, it’s not actually the price of the clothes that sways your final purchasing decision.  Of course it is, I hear you huff indignantly!

But is it really?

If you’re anything like me, when I first pick up an item of clothing, the first thing I look at isn’t the price it’s being sold at.  Oh no, what i actually look at is the RRP.  Or the price it should be being sold for.  I then do a little mental arithmetic, and work out how much I would be saving if I were to buy this item of clothing.  I then weigh up this cost saving against other items of clothing, and buy the one that I feel is the best bargain.  I even get a warm, fuzzy recession busting sense of achievement in my tummy from the experience.  Yeah, so I just spent £300 on a suit.  But look, it’s a £900 suit.  I’ve just saved myself £600!

And that ladies and gentlemen is an excellent example of benchmarking.  I had no idea what that suit should have cost until I read that RRP, upon which a benchmark is placed in my mind, and from that point on, I use that benchmark to compare all other suits.  No matter that Primark are selling a £150 suit down the road for £100.  That’s a £150 suit.  This is a £900 suit!  All other suits dim in comparison.

Try it next time you’re trying to sell a product. Put a similar product next to the one you’re trying to shift that’s ten times more expensive. Add an extra offer that’s not nearly so enticing and advertise it next to the offer you’re really trying to push. Create benchmarking points that people see first and you’ll be amazed at the results.

Better still, go out and buy Predictably Irrational.

I can sell you a copy for a tenner!

A little while back I attended Brand Republic’s email marketing conference, and very useful it was too.  We had some cracking industry speakers and I have to say I learnt a lot from it.  Now, if I was the greedy sort, I’d keep all that lovely best practise all to myself.  But I’m not.  So here’s a load of best practise video footage Brand republic kindly sent me this morning, that features advice on:

• What is the business case for email in today’s turbulent economy?
• Should email marketers continue mailing non-responsive data?
• What style of content is most effective in generating ultimate sales?

Enjoy

E-marketing conference speaker notes

Oh, and whilst I’m at it, check out for more of the same, but in blog form, by clicking Emarketing best practise.

Wow!  I’m thinking to myself.  That adverts just guessed my age.  How clever.  And it’s telling me I need an IPhone.  Next stop the Apple Shop!

OK, so that’s probably not what what the average punter thinks when they see this advert on their Facebook profile.  And in many ways it’s akin to those dreadful “It’s 12.39am, and you’ve just won a prize” pop ups you see on the kind of website you wouldn’t let your children visit.  But it does provide me with an excellent example of behavioural targeting, and demonstrates aptly how social networks provide a quality platform for the advertiser to utilise some pretty advanced technology, all at a very reasonable price.

Let’s break this advert down into two chunks.  Chunk number one is my age.  Facebook knows I’m thirty, and is quite happy to let the advertiser send this particular advert to anyone of that age.  No doubt the advertiser has a multitude of variations of this advert, each geared around a different year of birth.  Number two chunk is based around my interests.  I’m a big technology geek, and when I signed up to Facebook, I was happy to tell them this.  I could have equally have told them I was into golf, tropical fish, or porcelain figures of the late, great  Sir Winston Churchill.  The point is…  they know!

Facebook.  Youtube.  Myspace.  LinkedIn.  Bebo.  They all know.

And that, frankly, is great.

It’s great because I only get exposed to adverts that I’m genuinely interested in (ok, so I don’t want an iPhone.  I’ve already got a HTC Touch HD which I love like my own child, but I’m sure one day soon they’ll know that too).  And it’s also great because as an advertiser, I’m guaranteeing myself more bang for my buck, ensuring that my paid per click advert is only getting clicked by a customer who genuinely falls within my target audience range.

Home town.  Education.  Salary.  Job title.  Relationship status (this is my particular favourite - change your status from “in a relationship” to “single” and watch the wealth of lonely hearts adverts pop up).  We’re all quite happy to tell the social network powers that be about every aspect of our lives.  And they in turn, are quite happy to act as information brokers, pawning out our info to the highest bidders.

So what are you waiting for?  As a successful website owner, you should be taking advantage of this freely given information.  Setting up targeted advertising campaigns has never been so easy.  Not even Google are this accurate.  Never have you had the opportunity before to intimately understand your customer before you’ve even met them.  For every product, there is a customer.  And for every customer, there’s an advert waiting to be clicked.

Now, anybody got any Winston Churchill miniatures?

It’s about time too.  A recurring theme at yesterday’s TFM&A show (well, apart from recession marketing) was how the big agencies are finally cottoning onto the fact that online copy writing is a marketable (read sellable) tool to have in their box.  In the past, it’s always been Design, SEO, PPC and usability that floated the big boys boats.  Copy writing was never seen as all that glamourous (and let’s be honest, it actually really isn’t) - but the move towards content led SEO has meant they have to play ball.

But how easy is it for a big agency to write online copy.  Actually, how easy is it for any of us?

Well, here are a few tips that you, gallant reader, might find useful if you want to write your own web copy.

• How you speak, isn’t necesserily how your customers speak.  Perfect example.  In my industry, we regularly use the term ‘banqueting’.  the number of customers outside of the industry who use that term?  Zero.  They prefer the term ‘eating out’, or ‘going for a meal’.  Make sure you use language that your customers use and you’re 90% of the way there.
• CSS.  Not just just the name of a successful pop band (Brazilian I think), but also stands for Cascading Style Sheets.  This is a powerful tool that your coders use to make their lives easier when making changes to your site.  They’re a series of rules that, when applied to text, images etc. format them in a particular way, or style, creating a tiered hierarchy to your content.  Change the rule, and all the associated content throughout the site will also change.  They’re a great way for Google to understand what content is important on your site, by reading header tags (H1, H2 etc.) and suchlike.  If you’re really keen on learning CSS, I recommend Dave Raggett, from 3WC’s page.  Alternatively, do what I do, and cheat by using Styliser.
• Use Google’s free tools.  By an amazing coincidence, the tools Google gives you for free for your PPC campaigns are also a great way of understanding your users search trends and behaviour.  Use Google insights to get up to the minute user behaviour on key terms you think people are searching for (also really good for understanding seasonal user behaviour), or use Google adwords key word tool to generate key word ideas for your site,  If you use this version, you don’t even need to have a keywords account!
• Compromise.  Having keyword heavy text is no use if it affects the readability of your page and drives away customers.  There’s been a cultural shift that means your readers will cut you a lot more slack regarding key word placement in your content than they would have five years ago, but remember, the real trick is balancing the demands from Google, with your customers own experiences of the site.

Now, what are you still reading for?  Get out there and write something!

Now this is going to sound cruel, but I was actually quite dissapointed at the poor quality of the Email marketing products I saw at TFM&A yesterday.

The combination of companies being pushed to provide accountable ROI on every marketing campaign, and marketing budgets dropping faster than you can say sub-prime, seems to be driving everyone to E-marketing as the holy grail fix all solution.

Which should be a good thing.  Shouldn’t it?

Well, yes.  After all, we all know that the cost of sending an email is a fraction of the cost of sending a tradional DM piece, and that once an email has left the building, smart marketers embed java script into their websites to enable them to watch the customer journey from start to finish (God bless cookies).  Add the fact that it’s an almost immediate fix that has been proven to work time and time again, and you’ve got one of the strongest channels available.

So, why the sad face?

With so many ways to do email marketing well, it frustrates me to see it being done badly.  The proliferation of email marketing companies and products has resulted in a huge quality divide.  Those companies that provide a decent product , such as Pure or Campaign Master really sting you financially for the added features, more than your average SME can afford (but if you have the cash, I’d still recommend them).  Whilst lower down the scale, the me-too’s are trying to replicate the big guns, but without the customer services or functionality. If you think there’s nothing worse than receiving a poorly built email, think how frustrating it is for the poor marketer who’s trying to communicate with you but who’s stuck using inferior software!

What should you look for in your E-marketing solution?

1.  It needs to be user friendly.  So many HTML solutions are only developed for people that understand HTML.  Give me an FCK WYSIWYG editor anyday, that way anyone in your marketing department can use the system.  Seriously, if you can’t train a colleague on how to use the software within an hour, there’s something wrong!

2.  You need your own clean IP address.  If you then dirty it by sending out spam then I’m afraid you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.  But if you’re sharing a box with the guy who sell Viagra for a living, you’re going to get tarnished with the same brush as him.  Which frankly, ain’t fair!

3.  It needs to have a spam checker.  Most decent providers will link into Apache or an equivelent.  It’s Open source, so there really is no excuse.

4.  It should be feature rich.  Dynamic population, best time of day sending, adaptive subject headers, etc. all  make a difference to read rates.  I regularly see a difference of 15% open rate, just based on subject headers.

5. It needs to have advanced reporting.  Not just who read it, and who didn’t.  But who read it, forwarded it to a frind, clicked on a link, and then went on to buy a £2.99 pair of socks.  If it can’t tell you what your customer’s had for breakfast, then it’s not doing it’s job right.

This would be a great time to plug my own software - but that would be a cheap shot.  So instead I’ll leave you with these top tips for writing quality E-shots that people will read, and a word of warning,  try before you buy.  Most providers worth their salt will let you have a free (or greatly reduced) trial of their software.  Take advantage of this.  If after a week you’re still having difficulties - shop elseware!

Now, I’ve got to be honest here.  I meant to attend the PPC seminars, I really did.  But frankly, I spend at least an hour per day running PPC campaigns, and if I don’t know it all by now, I should be shot.  So, let’s pretend I did attend all the PPC seminars like a good little boy, in which case, this is what I learnt.

Even mother Google cocks up now and again.  Fair play to Dan Cobley, Marketing Director for Google UK for holding his hands up and admitting this.  You’ probably suffered from, or at least heard of the GMail outage that hit Google on Tuesday.

Now, what wasn’t interesting was the cock up itself (we all make mistakes). What was interesting was Google’s competitors, and their PPC response to the situation.  Within minutes of GMail going off line, your search for “GMail failure” would have brought up a flood of email provider adverts boasting reliability, zero downtime and the like.  That’s what’s so great about PPC.  You can respond, literally, in seconds, to millions of people if you want (and you have the budget).  In today’s economic climate, PPC isn’t going to be about throwing large amounts of money at a campaign - it’s about using your smarts to make that campaign work efficently, and in ways your competition hasn’t thought of.

There was a lot of talk about Google insights at the show.  Now, I’ve been using this tool for a few months now, and it really is a wonderful thing.  In essence, it allows you to compare search behaviour on Google (so basically the whole web then) on up to five key terms, all the way back to 2006.  It also highlights terms that are rising in popularity and terms that are ‘breaking out’.  I.e. brand new search terms.

Go on, have a play - it really is quite fun!

So, I’m not the kind to plagarise anothers analogy (lol - blatently this isn’t true.  I’m in marketing after all!), but  just yesterday I read a rather neat one from Tanya Goodwin (Chief Exec at Tamar.com).  She compared PPC and SEO to the difference between a Volvo and a Bugatti Veyron.  One being fast, results driven, and expensive, the other being a slower, but more reliable long term investment.

Now, in a time of economic crisis - which would you rather invest in?

If you answered “Bugatti”, then I’d recomend you flip straight through to my Pay Per Click page.  But if you’re thinking in the same way as most of the other businesses I met at last weeks TFM&A show, you’re thinking that the smart money’s heading down to your local Volvo dealer.

So what is it about SEO that is so appealing to budget marketers?  Well, obviously, it can be a lot cheaper, but this isn’t a golden rule.  If your business serves a niche market, or has a reasonably unique product, you can sponsor relevant key terms at a relatively low cost.  However, the moment you stop paying the piper, the music dies, and you’re left wondering what the long term effects are (hopefully you’ve capitalised on your investment to build on a regular customer base though, so it might not all be bad).

SEO doesn’t work like that.  Initial investment in a well optimised website will pay dividends well beyond the pipers final notes play out.  Admittedly, Google changes it’s algorithms regularly, and a well optimised website is a regularly updated website - but, in the SME world where competition generally isn’t that high, your initial 2k - 5k investment (I give this figure as an example of what you might expect to pay a medium sized agency, not as an example of what I charge for the service) in a considered, content rich and well structured website should see you through a good couple of years.

Also, and this is where I find the anaology starts to run dry, SEO is fun.  No, seriously, this isn’t just my inner geek speaking.  I’m going to talk about quite a few tips for SEO in this blog, and I’m going to suggest as many as possible that can be done either on a low budget, or for free.  And oddly enough, this isn’t just extremely satisfying.  it really can be quite enjoyable too!

For those really looking to capitalise on SEO within a tight budget, one of the most effective ways to achieve a high page ranking is to create yourself a profile within those SEO holy of holys - A social network.

Wow - “what’s a social network?” I hear you say  (If you did really say that then at this point I’m afraid I’m going to have to politely ask you to leave through the back door).  Seriously though, a more sensible question might be “How can I use a social network to leverage my SEO?”.  This would be a good question!

Social networks such as Facebook or Myspace have very high page rankings due to their enormous popularity.  However, you can’t levarage that popularity until you build yourself a profile, and populate it with relevant and interesting content that will appeal to your customers.  Now, this is easy to do if you’re selling an exciting product with lots of advocates (think Nike or the Olympics), but how do you drum up interest if you’re selling car parts, or soap?

Here’s the cincher - be interesting.  And be yourself.  People don’t go onto a social network to build relationships with products, they want to build relationships with other people.  Be a person, update your profile regularly with interesting stories, articles and opinions, and make sure you sign up all your friends.  The more relationships you build, the more people you’ll have linking into your profile sending you valuable link equity.  And so long as you have plenty of outgoing links to your own website built into your profile, this equity is only heading to one place - your product!

Oh, and did I mention that you can do all this for free?

There’s going to be plenty more top credit crunching SEO tips from me in the next few weeks - so stay tuned.

Andrew

P.S.  For a more indepth view on SEO and social networks, click here