A Twitter tail

John Nolan — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:03:00 +0000

It is a wise person who can learn from others mistakes. A tail of putting all ones eggs in one basket read Jessica Swanson twitter tail.

How Many Blog Posts Do I Need in Reserve?

John Nolan — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:52:43 +0000

One of the things I really love about the modern Internet is how easy it has become to find high-quality information on just about any topic. One of the things that really irritates me is how confusing it sometimes gets.

A common source of confusion that I encounter is the same term is used for different things, and "blogging" is an example of this.

The article I linked to below is thought-provoking however it can appear to contradict some of the things that I teach my clients so I need to explain.

The article below is about those of you who are putting large amounts of high-quality content onto the Internet, and it is the quality of that content that is drawing your customers to you.

One of the ways many of my clients work is to use blogging to create lots of short posts, highly related to their business, or their geographical area. The short posts then can be fed out through social media and additionally they give extra hooks for the search engines to find the sites. This short post is an example of this type, I need not spend hours crafting words on a topic, all I do is research what's happening out there and if I find an article that I believe will be beneficial to many of my clients then I put up a short post like this one.

Have a read of the article How Many Blog Posts Do I Need in Reserve?

Most Emails Stink as a Sales Tool. Here’s Why…

John Nolan — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:36:00 +0000

My question today is simple: Are you using existing blog posts and videos in the emails you’re sending out to prospects and clients?

I found this article by Marcus Sheridan on better ways of using email for sales (no not spamming). The article has an 8 minuet video. He shows how to move prospects closer to becoming customers by customising emails and using you exisitng content more effectively.

How to Make Sure Your Blog is Legal

John Nolan — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:27:00 +0000

I am a great believer in the power of regularly adding content to your website. I also teach my clients how to do this quickly and effectively. It can be as simple as short posts like this one that take a few minutes to produce, through to a well structured thought out article with a few hours work.

It is so easy, and so tempting just to copy other people's work and paste it on your own site. This could be content or it can be images and video. The article I connect to below gives you some more thoughts around ensuring your website stays legal. I suggest you take a couple of minutes to read it here.

At the end of the day, blogging is a fantastic medium for sharing both personal and company news quickly and efficiently. This doesn’t have to change – just make sure that the next time you’re about to open up to the rest of the world, it’s not going to end up being the last post you make for a long time.

The New Economy and Small Business

John Nolan — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:27:00 +0000

Today I'm pointing you at an interesting article I found about the new economy. It's coming whether you like it or not.

This article is a quick read, it won't give you the answers however it will help you start to see things differently, and from that difference new ideas will come. So read the article on the new economy and the small business.

“Excellence cost more,” but the other end of that old phrase says that “it pays for itself.” It’s important to create a high quality product, but also to implement high quality marketing. After all, you can only benefit from where you put your energy.

How to put QR codes to work in your business.

John Nolan — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:17:00 +0000

We are starting to see these QR code things appearing everywhere. Are they the next great step forward for businesses? Are they a distraction?

Probably the answer is a bit of both. People are still figuring out how to best use these things for their businesses.

QR codes are easy to produce, there are many websites that will do it for free, and they can be simply printed on any of your business material. The question is what is the best way to make use of them?

Here I link to a slightly lengthy article that goes through some of the possibilities you need to consider.

Google Search Adds Google+

John Nolan — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:19:00 +0000

As you probably know Google is continuously changing how it determines what to return when somebody searches, and in what order to put them.

Now it is adding the Google + button. The evidence is that if a few people +1 a page it will rank higher in the search results.

The linked article below gives you more information. If you want to add a plus button simply to your site then one of the two following should work.

If your site is based on WordPress then you can add a free plug-in such as plus one.

The alternative is to use the code that Google can give to you here, you may need a website developer to add this to your site.

Read the article here.

Social Media why size does not matter.

John Nolan — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:47:00 +0000

With social media it becomes so tempting to focus on how many followers you have, or fans that like you.

Years ago, before we were intelligently using the Internet to find business, advertising effectiveness was about how cheaply we could contact the masses. Size matters then.

Social media has changed the game. Social media is about a connection between you and past or potential customers. You can read a brief article that explores this idea further here.

We’re not talking about the early days of social media where it was ALL about the size; it was ALL about who had the most followers, fans, likes and on and on and on.

Should You Redesign Your Website?

John Nolan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:01:00 +0000

I am far from immune from leaving the website up to long without revisiting it and redesigning it.

Somebody who is actually in the business of helping others get seen on the Internet this is quite a crime!

We put our websites up, and then move on to other aspects of building up businesses. I suggest you have a quick read of the article below and think about whether you need to redesign your website.

Read the full article here.

A blog redesign is all about giving some thought to what your visitor sees the instant they land, what you want them to do next and how you are going to get them to do it.

I don't even login to my site regularly to have a look at it. Articles like this one are published directly from my PC using Windows live writer. Perhaps I should visit my site a little more often.

How to Get Visitors To Your Old Posts

John Nolan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:15:00 +0000

One of the major advantages of having a business website based on a blogging platform like WordPress is how easy it is to manage a sophisticated site.

A minor downside is the assumptions that are built into blogging software. One of these is that posts become dated and will no longer be needed. Certainly this is true for some posts, however others are evergreen, they will be true today and true in years to come. So the question is how do we get visitors to these old posts?

If this concerns you then I suggest you read this brief article here.

A Twitter tail

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