Journey Into The Unknown Or Silent Assassin?

When signing up for the Search and Social Media Marketing Course at the Manchester Salford Business School, I had precious little knowledge of how SEO worked – this, despite working as a freelance journalist and therefore attuned to promoting ‘brand awareness’ over the last four years for an industry-leading motorsport website. Journalists and writers tend to chase the next story and are much less concerned with keywords and search rank – rather leaving it to the organisations they are loosely connected with, or represent, to get on with task of improving results within SERPs.

Therein lay the problem – I didn’t understand SEO and how to maximise the opportunities that being creative presents. I enjoy my part-time writing work much more than my regular job, working within the warehousing and logistics sector as a forklift truck driver. At the start of this year my personal life reached a crossroads and this was the perfect time to do something about it. Learning SEO and Social Media marketing seemed a logical step forward and armed with a healthy Twitter following and enthusiasm to learn another skill, I signed up.

Information Superhighway

My eyes would be opened over the next six weeks much more than I could imagine. What became clear very quickly is that with any good business, success begins with planning, research and building the foundations to work from. Studying the competition, keyword research through Google and Google AdWords is a great place to start and can give you so much information in just a few minutes. Without a clear structure and plan of how you want to go about improving search rankings, failure to achieve the maximum is likely. In my case, I had just lost a deal to supply detailed written Formula 1 motor racing weather forecasts to the site I was affiliated with. The choice was either to stop completely and give up what I love doing – or to find another outlet to share my views and knowledge with others.

The #SSMM course – run by Aleksej Heinze – is the perfect educational tool to take your website on the road to major SEO improvements and a better search rank. Citing previous creative examples, students are guided through the do’s and dont’s of planning, keyword research, creating widgets, social media engagement and social media asset management to name but a few topics – all with you in mind. Prominent industry speakers are backing this course and give talks, adding further insight and giving information openly on how you can change things on your own site to help improve visibility and search ranking potential.

The road to success

Many people like myself, prior to enrolling on this course would be entitled to think that 99% of companies and website owners have their systems already optimised to the maximum, and therefore it would impossible to go and work as an SEO, or to create your own site as an independant. After all, SEO has been around for several years. When you actually conduct the research and examine the competition of your chosen field, you may be surprised. I certainly was. The best endorsement that I could give this course, is to demonstrate that in just 15 days from starting my own blog, I took http://f1weather.com to second in Google’s worldwide search for the short-tail keyword ‘F1 Weather’.

What is Pinterest

Pinterest  was named one of Time Magazines best websites of 2011. Quite a feat for a website that had only been in existence for 16 months at this point. Even Barack Obama has now signed up to Pinterest pinning the Obama’s favourite family recipe for chilli resulting in 169 pins.

Pinterest is an online pin board which allows its users to pin and repin ideas, photos, instructions, articles, images, videos and a whole host of other online materials.

Using Google Adplanner to look at the demographics of Pinterest I was able to see that Pinterest already has 20 million daily users in the UK. Whilst this may sound measly compared to Facebook’s 250 estimated users, it is worth remembering that Pinterest is relatively new having only launched in 2010.

How to use Pinterest?  What’s so special about mood boards?

Pinterest is unique thanks to its ability to create pages of ideas that all come under one heading. So for example say I want to decorate a room and I have a few ideas, I’ve seen a few things online but I get to the DIY store and my mind has gone blank I’m sure I liked something pink oh ill have to get my ipad out and look through my favourites I just wish there was a way to see all these ideas on one page to see what works next to each other… Step in Pinterest’s Pinning app.

Downloading this app means that you can grab an image from any website and pin it to one of your mood boards. 

To Repin or not to Repin?

When it comes to what to repin and how to use social ettiquete it is worth remembering that the Pin app allows any user who has downloaded it to  lift an image from a site without any prior warning or notice for the owner of that image/site. This creates a link back to the original site, which can be a good way to create traffic and build links. Furthermore every repin is effectively another chance at getting your site out there.

Pinterest and intellectual Property Theft 

It is also possible to upload an image from your desktop, ipad, smartphone and pin to a board. If a pinner uses an image downloaded and saved to their desktop, the advantage of a  link no longer exists. Effectively the user is taking the credit for that image and additionally those who repin that are themselves allowing this intellectual property theft often without even realising it.

I myself love looking at Pinterest but I am not yet brave enough to repin, especially as Pinterest’s terms and conditions state that if a case is brought against a user for intellectual property theft, the defendant will also have to pay Pinterest’s legal fees. A risk I am not sure im ready to take at the moment.

Did you like this? Feel free to comment below Repin, like and tweet

NiktoriaM

How can I help Neil Spencer Bruce?

This is Neil Spencer Bruce

Neil wants to drive more traffic to his website so he can get more work as a rated session musician and sound designer, or in music production. He also wants more people to go to his website so he gets more money from advertising. Apart from the obvious Musicians Wanted or guitarist wanted adverts, I  had to think of other ideas.

When he found out I was undertaking the Search and Social Media Marketing Course (#SSMM) he asked for some tips. As I was stuck with an idea for my blog, I said I’d make Neil my pet project!

Marketing your website

The first problem is that his website is called www.spencerbruce.com, but everyone knows him as Neil Bruce, so I’ve made sure his full name appears as much as possible in this blog!

Neil can do everything – he’s available as a rated session musician, a sound designer, he works as a freelance photographer, and you can read his blog about all his areas of expertise. Despite all this, somehow Neil still manages to produce a creation a day.

He’s also worked as a recording engineer on sessions with legends including Al Green, Barbara Cooke, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and Channel 4’s White Room.

As well as being an expert in making sound by design, he can also do audio branding (you know when someone says “Intel Inside”, and you go “do-do-do-do”?! ).

Neil also teaches music and sound – his most popular video on YouTube is how to play Jessie J’s Domino

Using Social Media and SEO on your website

Neil is already doing pretty well for SEO and Social Media – he has accounts in all the right places: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, uses testimonials about his work on his website (as you can see from these links though, the URLs need work to be optimised!)

I suggested Neil could maybe do some more online freebies, like this guide to audio branding? I also suggested he look at his competitor’s websites for both music and sound design for tips, and follow similar people on Twitter.

He could make his Facebook posts interactive – friends could rate his piece a day – getting a chance to get involved makes it more likely they will listen to the entries.

I’ve even managed to sneak him on Wikipedia’s page on session musicians (and it’s still there as of 3pm on 28 March!) Of course this is of little use since Wikipedia use our lovely friend the rel=”nofollow”, but I guess someone who might want a session musician might click through and hire him?!

If anyone else has any ideas how I can help Neil Spencer Bruce, please comment below!

If you look carefully, hopefully I’ve AIDA’d you. I made you:

• Aware of Neil and how cool he is
• Interest -you want to know what else he can do.
• Desire – wouldn’t it be great to have Neil working for you?
• Action – bet you’re going to look at more of his awesome solos here

(You can also find Neil on LinkedIn and contact him at mailto:neil@spencerbruce.com or  +44 (07771) 877690. Oh, and if you mention this blog when hiring Neil, you’ll get a 15% discount.)

When looking at the statistical data, Sri Lanka has shown an adult literacy rate of 92%, which is one of the highest in Asia. However, the country is still lagging in internet penetration and usage compared to the rest of the region.

As of 2011 the household access to the Internet is at a mere 11.2%, which is an increase of 35% from the 2010 value of 8.3%. This indicates a positive growth towards internet usage. A possible reason for growth could be a result of the government coming up with an ambitious 5 year plan to increase the household internet access to 75%. The plan was based on the realisation that a failure to acquire the requisite technical knowledge will prevent large segments of the population benefiting from the fruits of the Information Age. Although hitting the 75% mark is very ambitious, looking at the 2010/2011 growth rate it could be stated that a percentage increase of 30.7% is possible by 2015.

In less than 3 years as of today, there could be a figure of 6,030,360 Facebook users in Sri Lanka. This figure is backed up by the statistics, where there are 1,220,100 Facebook users as of 2011; a growth of 191,660 new users in 6 months was seen. According to latest statistics, Sri Lanka is ranked No 75 in the ranking of all Facebook statistics by country. This could be a tremendous opportunity to develop a new product or service online in Sri Lanka using social media marketing.

An obvious fact in the last 6 months has been that more and more companies are visible on Facebook. Most of these companies have identified that online marketing could be the key with regard to been visible to the target market via a social media platform. In addition, it is becoming a lot easier to focus on the target market using Facebook or Google; which would be a reason why most companies have opted for social media marketing. However, according to available statistics there is a big disparity between urban and rural population with regard to computer literacy, where the urban internet user segment is 3 times the rural sector.

This could be a result of simple economics such as per capita income being higher in urban areas or the more complex issue of English literacy rate been lower in rural Sri Lanka. If the English literacy rate is the main reason for people not using the internet then it would be an uphill battle to reach high internet penetration levels. This is because at present there are limited translation software available to translate from English to native Sri Lankan languages. Currently, some brands have started advertising in native Sri Lankan languages by using pictures on Facebook.

By taking into consideration the points discussed above, it could be stated that there is a tremendous potential for growth for online sales and marketing in Sri Lanka. Have a look at the Youtube clip below as I found it very interesting which is about the potential of social media in Sri Lanka.

Are you a small or medium sized business looking to grow and expand to compete with the much larger companies? If so I can bet you every last penny in my pocket that you have tried many different marketing methods to increase productivity but have found most only burn a whole in your pocket. Marketing is all about ROI (Return On Investment) if your aim is to increase sales  and you are not returning on your outgoings here is a little advice, GET RID!

Is Your Small Business On The Internet?

Over the past 12 years Internet marketing has grown rapidly. With over 90 million searches made per day on Google alone and over £6B spent on line in Jan 2012 a small business can take advantage of promoting their products and services on the web using their website as a point of action. No longer do we rely on paper directories, with access to the Internet within our pockets these days search engines have made life much easier by delivering us exactly what we are looking for within a matter of seconds via mobile phones. What are your options to reach out to those searching for your services? Most search engines like Google offer two types of listings for you:

• paid results (sponsored Links) also referred too as pay-per-click PPC
• non paid for listings (organic, natural results)

Some of the latest statistics indicate organic listings reach over 85% of searches leaving sponsored links to cover 15% searches.

Small business Marketing and SEO

What is SEO (search engine optimisation)? SEO is an on-line  marketing strategy which helps you to maximise your exposure on a search engine and identify what people are searching for. Its all about understanding the buying cycle of the consumer and their search terms used  during there journey to purchase. Search engine optimisation is the process of improving  the visibility and the presence of a webpage or blog on a search engine with in the natural, organic search results.

SEO Starter Guide

Before using SEO you need to know that it is not a get rich quick scheme nor is it a speedy process, it takes time skill and patients. For more information enrol on this course or take a look at Google SEO starter Guide.

See introduction to SEO by Dan Taylor – one of many great guest speakers on the Search and Social Media Marketing Course.

Follow Me On Twitter, Google+, FaceBook

At Salford Business School, student placements are offered as part of both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Our links with local, national and international companies means that we can offer students the opportunity to get in touch with prospective employers and get students on the right track to future employment success.

A paid internship can be an IT placement in London or a business management placement in Edinburgh, if you have the passion and commitment to secure a placement, it could be the best thing you ever did.

Paid internships abroad

Working on a placement abroad can be within your reach. One of the great things about doing a placement is, as long as it is relevant and approved by the school, you can go anywhere. Students have been on placements at home in Manchester to as far away as Australia. So if you have ever dreamed of working abroad, this is your chance!

Mentor your way to success

Mentoring other students can be a most rewarding and beneficial experience. Once students have completed their year in industry, students have the opportunity to mentor other students looking to undertake a placement, which also looks great on your CV! Here’s what Salford Business School placement mentors have to say about their mentoring experiences:

So is a placement for you?

Placement students at Salford, upon completion of their sandwich year, have typically performed better in their degree and have much better job prospects after graduating. Many of our placement graduates go on to secure a job with that same organisation.

Alongside these benefits, students become more confident, gain communication and problem solving skills and develop transferable skills that can’t be gained elsewhere.

Go for it

Sandwich year, paid internship, whatever you want to call your placement year, it’s your time to make it happen.
To help you find a placement, keep checking our regularly updated placement website on Blackboard.

Check out our Salford Business School placements website

Come along to one of our placement fairs where you can speak to potential employers from different industries, speak to our placement team and meet other like minded students.

If you have any questions or would just like to chat through your options, pop in to see the placement co-ordinator, Chris Procter or contact the placement team, Sunayna Tailor or Nicola Moss

You can follow us on Twitter for up to date information on placements SBSPlacements

Is a placement the way forward for you? Looking to gain invaluable industry experience and want to share some of your experiences? Please use comments section below!

The SEO companies that wear striped tops and balaclavas!

Working as a Graphic / Web Designer for the past 4 years, has been a very interesting ride. I have learned a lot to do with online marketing and I thought, to develop my skills further I would need to delve into the world of SEO, and become a jack of all trades.

The company that I currently work for, own a number of websites that SEO companies have torn to pieces, tried to glue back together with the wrong glue and left us with a shambling mess!

Within the first 2 weeks of being on the Search and Social Media Marketing course, I knew exactly where our sites were lacking optimisation and had produced a strategic plan of how to save our sites from the plummets of low Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Questioning certain “SEO services”

Here are some things which I noticed on our sites after attending the Foundation SSMM course:

I noticed that the Meta Title tags were duplicated throughout. This is obviously a big NO NO, as every page with-in your site needs to have a unique title.  Also, they were averaging at around 150 characters, which I know I could keep down to, at most 80 characters that include my primary keywords and secondary.

So once I was done with the unique titles throughout the whole of the site, it was time to start working on the descriptions for each of the pages. This I found was the most time consuming of all the on page stuff that I was doing, I remembered what Simon Wharton had told us about ” writing for the user, and NOT the search engine ” and made sure all my descriptions included my keywords for that page and read fluently.

Me Vs. SEO Company, the battle continues…

The next step that I was going to look at was the page structure and content. Now the previous bunch of “apes”, who carried out the SEO services for our sites, must have had literally NO IDEA what they were doing!

All our pages contained no <h1> tags and basically had copied all the content from other sites! Tools like Copyscape had helped me find the original source of all our content! So my mission was to create the <h> tags using the relevant keywords, come to the table with fresh new content that included the keywords for the relevant pages. Again remembering what Simon had said, we made sure the new content for our pages read very fluently, and delivered the message they intended too, without spamming it with random keywords.

Lets wrap this up…

The outcome of the work I have been putting into our sites is really starting to show through now. There are points which I haven’t even covered and I am already starting to see great results! In the next couple of weeks I will be looking more into the internal and external links for our sites and also be pushing towards some Social Media tools.

So unfortunately due to the nature of our business, I am not able to link to any of the sites that I am currently working on, so you can all have my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts instead! 🙂

How to maximise the use of social media, and student placements to grow your business through exports

• Date: – Wednesday 28th March 2012; Time: – 9:15 until 4 p.m.
• Location: Orange Tower, Media City UK, University of Salford
• How to get here: www.salford.ac.uk/MediaCityUK/location

Join us at this FREE workshop organised by the Passport to Trade 2.0 project team from University of Salford, Salford Business School and associated partners – Salford City Council (http://www.visitsalford.info/locate/events-and-networks.htm) and Latitude Digital Marketing Limited. The cost of this session is worth £500 per person but it is free to you as this project is funded by the European Commission.

Is this workshop for you?

It will particularly benefit established Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), who already use social media but are looking to increase their return on investment. The particular focus is on the increase of trade with Europe and how Social Media networks can help in developing business opportunities. Additionally, the seminar is also looking to develop a better understanding of student placements and highlight good practices. Participants will be able to identify ways of offering student placements as a means to increase their growth.

How is the workshop structured?

• 9:15 – 9:30 – arrival and refreshments
• 9:30 – 11:00 – focus group evaluating past experiences with Social Media networks and student placements and the identification of participants’ training needs
• 11:00 – 12:30 – How to use Social Media to identify appropriate business contacts
• 12:30 – 13:15 – Lunch provided
• (The practical sessions will be informed by the findings of the focus group)
• 13:15 – 14:00 – Best practice in the use of Facebook
• 14:00 – 14:45 – Best practice in the use of Twitter
• 14:45 – 15:00 – Refreshments
• 15:00 – 15:45 – Best practice in the use of LinkedIn

How to book?

Places are limited, please book by 12 noon on 23rd March using http://p2t2.eventbrite.com

For more information please contact:

Angela Lowry on 0161 295 6393 A.Lowry@salford.ac.uk
Elena Vasilieva on 0161 295 3510 e.vasilieva@salford.ac.uk

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