Category: Uncategorized

Most SEO ‘consultants’ are dodgy as hell – they’ll take your money and do you damage. But if you’ve already gone down that dark hole, consider the following:

1. SEO (search engine optimisation) is driven by solid content, not the sprinkling of keywords. One does not ‘do’ SEO,  one creates volumes of great market aligned content. Is your consultant helping you with content creation? Would your SEO guy know the first thing about the informational needs of your target audiences? Probably not.

2. SEO is not about optimising your website for the 50 most popular keywords. Read ‘The Long Tail’ by Chris Anderson if you want insight to the thinking process of the remaining 98% of any given market segment.

3. SEO is not a set-and-forget thing. Quality content creation and online publishing is an ongoing business imperative (no-one said this would be easy, but then again if it were easy everyone would be doing it well).

4. SEO trickery is dangerous. Contrived back-links, repetitive anchor-text, keyword density formulas and other mumbo-jumbo will be sooner or later be caught out in a search engine algorithm update and your website will be slapped back to the last century.

5. SEO ‘maintenance  plans’ are a RORT. Maintaining what!?

6. SEO without conversion reporting is meaningless. Who cares how many people arrived to your website via organic search – for most of us that’s only a mean to some business end. See if you can find a SEO consultant who will take payment based on measurable conversion performance (good luck).

7. Many so-called SEO consultants have the worst websites – crap copy, cheesy stock images, unsubstantiated claims – they’re not very good marketers. And you want to let them loose on your business…?

 

Your website: the truck which must support everything else you have online.

Email: an outbound marketing channel without equal; always be inviting visitors to your website to opt into your comms loop, and then invite them back to the site from within the newsletter.  Social media: your community… eventually they’ll end up back at the website (hopefully). Search engine optimisation: a website without wide and varied market-aligned content is like a guitar without strings… you won’t be able to play the informational tunes your target audiences are hungry for. Analytics: track website conversions and value via your most valuable referral sources: email, social and organic search.

Respect the trunk.

 

Hey, we were wondering if you could like us?

We’re a likeable business, you probably know that already – we’re just asking you to formalise the obvious by making it publicly known. It’s no big deal, we know it doesn’t mean anything that important, but still, it would really help us out. We could like you back if that makes your decision easier? We could go first as a sign of good faith? We’re more than happy to do that because we like you, and if you go ahead and like us that would just cement things. Amigos forever. We could even like some of your friends if that would help them out – you see, that’s what I’m talking about, the sort of thing friends do for one another without being asked. No probs! Haha, yes of course it’s all just a silly game – we know that, and we know that you know that we know that – but still it would help us a million if you could.  So how about it? Like us that is.

Dear Little Miss Social

I subscribe to well over a dozen newsletters – I love the ease at which businesses are able to freely correspond with me via my inbox. But I am a subscriber to one fortnightly missive which I find unsettling, and I am desperate for your advice. The newsletter I refer to often arrives with a provocative subject line and opens with a ‘racy’ image of some sort – recent examples include a woman wearing fishnet stockings, a frozen fish in a bowl, and on one occasion, a cat wearing sunglasses. There is often little content related to actual products or services, instead there are curious little stories – most of which I suspect have just been made up to make some obtuse point.

Surely this is no way to market a business. I don’t want to unsubscribe because I want to see what’s coming next, but can I – should I – make a formal complaint to someone? Is there a government department that has oversee for the maintenance of standards in this area?

Gladis Mulberny
Perplexed Newsletter Subscriber,
Sydney, Australia

 

Dear Gentle Reader

Little Miss Social demands propriety in all manner of social discourse, including within the electronic formats of blogs, newsletters and social media. But adherence to propriety is hardly as excuse to become a slave to beige. Or as they say in Russia, “The man who lives on borsch believes all food is purple.”

If a newsletter you have subscribed to has caused alarm or offence it has served a purpose beyond its original intent – it is an indication that it is time for you, Gentle Reader, to UNSUBSCRIBE. Confident electronic newsletters do not pander to the lowest common denominators of sensibility as mainstream media do. The rise of narrowcasting has made organisational communications much more fun for everybody – people who like a particular sort of thing tend to stay tuned to that sort of thing. And those who don’t, won’t. Self-managing filters such as the unsubscribe button are a boon for everybody – readers and publishers. A newsletter worth opening should serve to inform, educate or entertain in ways that must marginalise the few in order to delight the rest.

Little Miss Social can recommend some wonderfully bland newsletters to subscribe to if you are looking to make up your numbers.

Yours in Social,
Little Miss Social

Postscript. Little Miss Social is curious to read the newsletter you were referring to – it sounds just like her cup of tea. Please send the subscription details at your earliest convenience.

Would you turn up to a business meeting with a honking great food stain down the front of your shirt?

You’re welcome of course to present anywhere in any which way you choose, and granted, you’d still be the same cool individual underneath regardless of your appearance. But why force yourself to push uphill against the weight of a negative first impression? That dance-step we know as the initial business introduction can usually be reduced to one inner-thought in the mind of the person opposite: demonstrate why I should trust you.

Nobody wantonly sabotages their professionalism, yet a shit website will cruelly and silently undermine the credibility of the brand and people sitting behind it. For many of us the organisational website will be our first touch-point when undertaking pre-selection research: decisions on who we will select for a purchase, for an interview, for an invitation to speak, to partner with, to fund, or to work for. The website is a brand’s 24/7 reception area – make it a solid visitor experience… nay, make it bloody amazing. You’re only setting the scene for all future engagement after all.

So why do so many business-owners and brand guardians let themselves down by presenting an ugly, confused, piece-of-rubbish website to the world? The very same people who wouldn’t be caught dead walking into a business meeting with tomato sauce down their shirt-front? Here’s why: people will readily check themselves in a mirror before entering an important room, but rarely ever do they look at their own website. Business owners and executives are often shocked when somebody holds up a mirror to their primary online branded asset, finally getting to see what the rest of us have been painfully labouring through for years.

The underlying truth is that a website needs constant grooming – left on its own for an extended period it starts to take on a deranged, even menacing appearance… parents can be seen protectively turning the heads of their children away, and decent folk will cross to the other side of the street to avoid making eye contact. And to think it all started with one lousy little food stain.

Dear Miss Social

I’ve been doing social media for almost three years. A close friend suggested I try it out after the sudden death of our family cat, Dugs. I was only looking for a short-term distraction but have since adopted social media as part of my weekly routine and enjoy it very much. But here’s my issue: some of the people that I am following on Twitter are not following me back. I consider myself to be an outgoing person with a pleasant disposition, and can see no reason for these slights. In one instance I know the offender personally, which is doubly hurtful… should I say something to her? I would hardly know where to start.

Yours Sincerely,
Upset Tweeter
Hobart, Australia

 

Dear Gentle Reader

Miss Social must correct you on a point: one does not “do” social media, one engages in it. Social intercourse of any nature is a participatory activity between two or more consenting parties. Miss Social does not approve of broadcasting into a vacuum.

Your current predicament with Twitter is understandable, but eminently avoidable. Miss Social is reminded of dogs who harbour simple notions of social reciprocity such as ‘you can smell my bottom, and I get to smell yours’ (usually a simultaneous exchange when the breeds are of a similar size). Such a compact, so to speak, does not exist within social media. Twitter is a network – it scarcely matters who is following whom, as long as all participants are able to derive value from the collective. If we all do our very best and concentrate on making Twitter an interesting place to be, the connecting threads of value will form quite naturally. “It all evens out in the wash” as Miss Social’s dear Granny Mayfield was very fond of saying.

As to your non-following acquaintance, Miss social recommends this course: lift your credibility in her eyes by adding her to a public Twitter list called ‘Interesting and Beautiful Individuals’ – few people could stop themselves from taking an enquiring sniff or two of something as intriguing as that.

Yours in Social,
Miss Social

Following on from our popular ‘Photocopying for Success’ workshop we bring you the next in our Office Technology series.

97% of Australian consumers use, or would consider using, the telephone as a way to contact their preferred businesses – yet many organisations have not confidently embraced the technology. This workshop will provide a roadmap for the introduction and adoption of the telephone in your business. Can you afford not to talk with your customers – even if they’re not in the room? This full-day session is presented in a practical learning format: real telephones will be used in an interactive class setting limited to 22 people. A Certificate of Training is provided.

NB: A series discount applies: if you book this workshop in conjunction with the ‘Photocopying for Success’ and ‘Printer Mastery’ workshops, you will receive a 20% discount. Please contact us for the promo code before registering. Have any questions? View our FAQ’s or call us.

 

 

PROGRAM

Building the Business Case Internally
It may not be fully understood by senior management what the business benefits of a telephone are. We will present compelling case-studies from the commercial, government and NFP sectors where telephones has been successfully introduced.

Calculating Telephone Return on Investment (ROI)
Counter the common objection to installing a telephone in your workplace: “But how will we quantify the return?” While there is no fixed ROI formula there are ways to calculate demonstrated value by tracking ‘assisted business conversions’ using an analogue notation ledger (pad and pen).

Setting Your Telephone Objectives
Introducing a telephone into your organisation without management buy-in and objective setting can be risky. Utilise our 4-point framework to identify, then articulate the objectives to others: customer relations, crisis management, sales and recruitment.

Telephone Etiquette
Knowing how to interact with and speak on the telephone can be baffling, even for seasoned operators – we will build your confidence when dealing with situations such as: receiving calls from people you’ve never met in person, answering a call without knowing who’s calling, working out the order in which two people should talk, what to do if you need to go to the toilet in the middle of a call, and how to terminate a conversation without causing offence.

The Telephone as an Outbound Communications Channel
It’s not widely known that the telephone can also be used to initiate calls, not just receive them. While the business need for this may not be immediately obvious it’s an important option to keep open.

Telephone Terminology
Learn new telephone terms and use them with confidence. We will demystify expressions such as “Hello?”, “Who shall I say is calling?” and “How do you spell that?”

Building a Multi-Telephone Strategy (Group Exercise)
Is your business advanced to the point that more than one telephone might be necessary? We will run a mapping exercise to determine whether your organisation is positioned to take full advantage of a second (or even third) telephone.

Physical Placement
A telephone must be carefully positioned within your workplace for maximum effectiveness. Find out which rooms are ideal for telephones and which are not.

Telephone Number Registration
Identifying authorised providers to secure your unique 8 digit telephone number.

Telephone Trouble-Shooting & Maintenance
Learn how to increase or decrease ring volume, deal with cord tangles, and maintain a high standard of mouth and ear-piece hygiene.