Just For Lookin' Thru

There’s a sense of urgency about getting people to your website in these cash-strapped times. Once you’ve got them there – a tactical and detailed exercise in itself – you have to keep them there, make them buy something, anything. The innocent browser will have little idea of the almost-science behind getting any website to sit at the top of the search engine list. If it’s not there, looking as though it’s the biggest shop in the street, browsers won’t bother to search far for it, will get bored and amble off through cyberspace. Opportunity lost. So how do you get to the top? Like any shop, it’s not enough just to be there, however great your products, your prices, or however smartly you’ve dressed your metaphorical shop window. Reputation counts, having a recognized name, a trusted history. Beyond that it’s necessary to get yourself noticed by the search engines before the customers can find you. There are things the search engines like, such as links from your website to other...

Why bother with social media? Specialize in email marketing, business to business, using mailing lists. email campaigns are: Cost effective, immediate, flexible, interactive, measurable and environmentally friendly. Targetted emails are welcome whereas Spam is a nuisance so it’s important to research your mailing list, discover what the recipients are interested in, either hobbies or products, and narrow down the list so the campaign is more likely to hit interested people – and not be deleted before reading. Some companies opt to supplement email campaigns with occasional high quality postal mailings, ie brochures- their promotional material sending a tangible message of quality and style. This is a sophisticated method. The measurable element includes basic statistics such as how many emails were sent and at what time, then quantifies how many of those were delivered, bounced back, opened, read, how many were ‘clicked through’ to the company website or unsubscribed. Conversio...

Be networking savvy with social media as well as business media. It’s no good using LinkedIn to ask frivolous questions such as ‘Hey, dudes, how’s the surf looking over at Porthtowan?’ You’ll be ticked off, ‘go to facebook’ and quite right. facebook is a place for friends, acquaintances, people you once met on holiday, or spent time with at college – fine for catching up with any news but less about making good business contacts. Linkedin is for AB users, 35-50 years old and wanting to use the site to make those good business connections and promote their own business, and you can manage your company’s reputation by monitoring www.twitter.com – the microblog site for brief updates (facebook also show status updates). Select all comments about your subject, sign up for google.com/alerts and twitter alerts. This way, you can begin new relationships with people who twitter, increase sales, and act fast to respond to postings, engage with complaints, and create opportunities to enhance y...

Firstly, it’s essential to understand the brand. What voice does it have? Is it quirky and funny, elegant and classy, or practical and no messing? Secondly, this message needs to be designed and written in a fitting style and tone. Are the photographs transmitting the same message as the text? Quirky images and funny text or perhaps stylish photography and smooth prose. Thirdly, get the message out. So what’s the best way? Always holding the ‘character’ of the brand in mind, everything has to match; the website, links to Facebook and twitter, brochures and mailing material, flyers and posters. Sound simple? Hardly. Step one means taking the time to thoroughly understand not only the product, but the entire company and the guiding principles of the boss/es. This includes their personal values, such as whether their driving principles are money or perhaps the environment, and what is their behaviour. If this is a green company, do the directors drive low emission cars? Or, if the m...

Loser Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) heads for London to attend his daughter’s marriage to a young man he’s never met. Estranged from his family, and close to being dropped from his jingle writing job, his isolation is flagged up by him being booked into a second rate hotel alone while the rest of the wedding party are all bonding in a rented house. Singleton Kate Walker (Emma Thompson) works at Heathrow and gets set up for a wretched blind date by a work colleague which only reinforces her sense of separation. Harvey flies into London and he and Kate miss each other twice. They meet only at the point when Harvey is sufficiently humiliated to feel the need to offload to a stranger and she’s it. Kate persuades Harvey to return to the evening wedding reception and he takes her along. Buoyed up by her presence, Harvey does the right thing at last, reclaims his dignity, the love of his daughter and some respect from his ex-wife. Billed as a romantic comedy, there are comic ...