Posted by jorbell on October 23, 2009
Regular readers of this blog will remember that my day job involves the production of membership magazine for the London Internet Exchange. The publication in question is called HotLINX and I have been working on it one capacity or another since 2004. It has, in fact, been around a good deal longer with the first edition published as long ago as the Summer of 2000.
The Internet industry at that time was very different to what it is now. Just take a moment to consider your personal circumstances and how much you differently now compared to those early days. For me, I used the Internet for the first time in 1996 at work but I didn’t go online at home until as late as 2002. I had a PC before that but it was used purely as word processor and for games.
One of the reasons I mention early issues of HotLINX today is that for the first time in many years those early editions are back available online. In fact, some have never been available to download or view at all. With LINX celebrating its 15th anniversary in November I wanted to give the people the opportunity to see just how far the Internet has come in the last decade.
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Posted in Business, Design, Internet, Online, Personal Blog | Tagged: Business, Internet, newsletters | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jorbell on September 10, 2009
By Mack Collier, Search Engine Guide
A recent study by Hubspot found that among their small business customers, those that blogged had 55% more traffic and 97% more incoming links than non-blogging small businesses.
The study confirms what most of us that are active in the social media space have known for a while. Blogs generate more traffic and links than static websites, on average.
Which is great, but more traffic and links alone does not make your blog successful, right? And neither does more comments.
What your business needs to do is correlate these metrics back to larger business goals for your blog. For example, if you are wanting to use your blog as a tool to increase sales on your website, does sending more traffic to your site from your blog really matter, if sales don’t increase?
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Posted in Blogging, Business, External Blogs, Internet, Online, Research | Tagged: Blogging, Business, communication, small business | 2 Comments »
Posted by jorbell on September 4, 2009
If you or your organisation has something to say getting your message across is very important but in financially difficult times many are taking the decision that the cost of distributing that message is too great. This is understandable if you stick only to traditional methods of promotion such as PR agencies but more and more ways of promoting a business are available now than ever before for little or no cost.
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Posted in Advice from the Web, Business, External Blogs, Marketing, Online, Publicity, Writing, branding, social networking | Tagged: advertising, Business, communication, Facebook, Marketing, newsletters, press releases, Publicity, raising awareness, social networking, Twitter | 8 Comments »
Posted by jorbell on July 18, 2009
Article source: www.businessstrata.com
Growing businesses have been encouraged to embrace online advertising by the economic downturn, according to an expert.
Eva Berg-Winters, senior manager and new media specialist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said her “gut feeling” was that the downturn has “enhanced” the movement from traditional direct marketing to web-based solutions.
However, she added that firms should not necessarily believe that the internet is immune from the effects of the economic climate.
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Posted in Internet, Marketing, News, Online, Research | Tagged: advertising, Business, Marketing, online marketing | 1 Comment »
Posted by jorbell on January 19, 2009
From 
Adfero Ltd
Growing businesses in the UK are set to use email marketing “more intelligently” over the next 12 months, according to an expert.
Matt Ramsey, chief executive of digital agency Inbox, has claimed that data on consumers is expected to play a key role in many firms’ efforts to improve the success of their campaigns.
In an interview with Precision Marketing, he explained why he feels information on consumers will be increasingly important to firms in the current financial climate.
He said: “Using data more effectively in email marketing will mean getting more value out of the customer base.
“Looking at customer behaviour will result in emails becoming more relevant and ultimately more effective.”
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Posted in Marketing, Online | Tagged: email marketing, Marketing, small business | 1 Comment »
Posted by jorbell on December 9, 2008
Can I just mention about the use of the word ‘here’ when linking? I have seen this doing the rounds a lot lately so thought it would be an idea to mention it now.
If you are adding a link to specific content, you need to highlight the words of your supplementary information and not worry where it is located. Readers only want to see what the additional material is called and using ‘here’ simply does not do that. Apart from anything else, highlighting the title in a URL makes it much easier to spot and removes the need to re-read the previous sentence.
An example of the wrong way to write a sentence including a link would be:
Free Shipping is a great service and search term to use in run up to Christmas. Read why here.
You simply do not need the ‘read why’ line. People are clever enough now to know what a hyperlink is so a better way of presenting this phrase would be :
Free Shipping is a great service and search term to use in run up to Christmas.
Clear and straightforward…and uses less words.
As I said, people know what the purpose of a hyperlink is so if they really want to know more, they can follow that option.
Incidentally, you want to find out more you can contact me here.
[That was a joke by the way]
Posted in Marketing, Online | Tagged: hyperlinks | Leave a Comment »
