Did King Charles I really invent the iPhone? The art to Successful Business Networking

On the 18th January 2012 Cravenplan Computers Ltd held one of their free monthly seminars focusing on how to get the most out of business networking. This animated 3 hour workshop was attended by a variety of local companies who were all interested in getting more business from networking.

 

There was plenty of opportunity for the delegates to acquaint themselves, putting into practice what they had observed from the entertaining demonstrations given by Angus Bramwell and Mark James of Codford’s Woolstore Country Theatre. What’s more prizes were dished out to those who illustrated good networking etiquette, such as dressing to impress, good preparation and making the most of their time there, by exchanging business cards and making meeting arrangements. 

 

Did King Charles I really invent the iPhone? The answer is no, it is just an example of how distorted information can get when you speak to a number of people, leading to fabrication. At the seminar everyone created a famous friend with an interesting fact, the task was to introduce and pass the famous friends around the room, explaining how Charles I was eventually introduced as the inventor of the iPhone. Therefore emphasising the importance of preparation in order to make a success out of networking and furthermore why it is beneficial to invest in supporting tools such as your web site by making it more visible in search engines.

 

02 February – Google Analytics and Web trends
20 February – Digital Photography (lunch or evening) – Salisbury Playhouse
08 March – E-Bay (lunch or evening) – Salisbury Playhouse
15 March – Digital Photography (lunch or evening)
20 April – Search Engine Optimisation
18 May – What Makes a Web Site Successful? 3hr Workshop
14 June – Using Video on the Web
10 July – E-Bay (lunch or evening
03 August – E-mail Marketing
07 September – Law and the Internet
26 September – Facebook for Businesses 3hr Workshop
11 October – Psychology of the Web
01 November – 101 Ways to Promote your Website
21 November – Conversion Rate Optimisation
06 December – Writing for the Web

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Free SEO Seminar Sucsess

Cravenplan computers the web designers in Salisbury held another of the seminars that they are so well known for last Tuesday.

 

The seminar that was free to attend was on the topic of Search engine Optimisation UK audiences in Wiltshire were able to learn about the different aspects of SEO and what they could do to help Google find their sites in the search engines.

 

Topics covered during the 1 hour seminar included

 

  • What is a search engine
  • How does a search engine work
  • Why position is not everything
  • Pay Per Click
  • Local search
  • and much more

The attendees helped the hope and homes for Children charity as money was donated by Cravenplan for every person who was at the seminar.

 

There was also a prise draw and one lucky winner received £50 for replying to the seminar invitation email when it was sent to them.

 

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Who else wants a free website audit?

Is a free website audit right for you?
Do you know if the search engines like your website, do the search engines know what your website is about?
This is something you need to be concerned with as a well built and targeted webpage can attract visitors that you can convert into customers, but a non targeted page will not and it may turn people away from your website and stop them becoming your customers.
Cravenplan are offering a free audit to websites who are looking for ways to improve the number of visitors to the website and improve the number of sales you get from the website.
All you need to do is complete the form on the right hand side of this page and I will get the free audit to you.
I hope to hear from you soon
Sean
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The best place for Royalty free stock Photos

Bloggers have voted Shutterstock the Best Royalty Free Stock Photos Site, this was from a survey carried out by the readers of Online Marketing Blog.
With an impressive 38% of the vote Shutterstock was a clear winner, the only other site to get more than 30% was iStockphoto with 31% no other site got above 10%.
I am not a great user of stock photos as I think a personal touch can bring better results but if you are looking for royalty free images then checking out Shutterstock and iStockphoto would not be a bad place to start.
Just a quick word of warning check the small print to ensure you have the right to use the images the way you wish, royalty free does not mean that they do not have copyright issues – always read and understand the terms of use.
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Local marketing pages added

If you would like any specific on-line marketing or SEO questions answered please let us know and we will add them to the blog.

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Free email marketing seminar a great success

Cravenplan held another of their excellent seminars yesterday, this one was on email marketing, it looked at

  • What software to use for the email marketing
  • How to set it up
  • How to create a subscriber list
  • How to us Subject lines to grab attention
  • What to include in the email
  • How to avoid being labeled as a spammer
  • How to measure success
  • And a whole lot more.

    The seminar was well attended and the feedback after was excellent. This was the latest in the schedule of free seminars run by Cravenplan, the next is on 15th April and is entitled the law and the internet.

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    Does your mum use social media more than you?

    A new report at emarketer.com reviles what many of us have long suspected, the baby boomer generation have embraced new media and social networking on a scale that puts their children to shame.

     

    This may not be so surprising as we are talking about the children of the 50′s and the young adults of the 70′s who were the first to have telephones as a standard in their homes growing up, communicating and sharing ideas and values has always been an important and integral part of their lives and the growth of their use of social media is just an extension of that.

     

    The reports author Lisa E. Phillips said that “Creating and renewing personal connections online is the biggest draw for these boomers,” “About 47% of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network, according to several sources. Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages.” she went on to explain.

     

    More detail on the report can be seen at emarketer.com, but it would be good to hear from you on this topic, post your comments below and share your thoughts with the rest of us.

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    Get links over time not all at once

    Getting to many links all at the same time can harm rather than help you in the search engines, not only does it not look natural to Google to have a ton of new links suddenly appear to a site that the month before was not getting any links or whose link acquisition has been steady for a period.

    There can be legitimate reasons for a sudden increase in links such as the launch of a new site or new product or something that has been picked up by the news media or bloggers sphere that has been discussed a lot and commented on.

    This needs to be taken advantage of and the link spike needs to be continued so that the level of links coming into the site remains high but the spike flattens off.

    If this is done properly with links pointing deep into the site the number of pages that Google will list in the index for your site will increase and not drop as pages fall out of the Google listings.

    The more pages you have in the listings the more chances you have of ranking well for a variety of key words related to your business and there for the more chances you have of  attracting visitors to your site.

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    Not all links are created equal

    You may all ready know that in search engine optimisation and on-line marketing one of the most important things is to to have links pointing back to your site.

    These are seen as votes by the search engines and one website should only link to another if the information on that website is going to be of interest or value to the visitor.

    As a website owner you want to promote your website and get it found in the search engines so you need to make other website owners aware that you have great content on your site that their visitors will find useful.

    So you now have the whole internet to choose from to get links from, the problem is that there are so many websites and you just do not have time to contact them all and tell them about your site, so reducing the number of sites you need to talk to is vital.

    The first thing to do is look at relevancy, you can dismiss large numbers of sites as not relevant to the topic you are discussing, the next is quality, would you recommend this site to a friend of yours? If not do not get a link from them.

    The links that are going to be of most value when you are working on your search engine optimisation strategy plan are the ones you find relevant and from sites that you would recommend to others.

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    How you can learn from your competition

    When it comes to marketing there are very few new ideas and this is the same in internet marketing and website promotion as with any other form of business promotion.

     

    So when you see another website above yours in the rankings what can you do about it?

     

    The first thing is to prepare a Search Engine Optimisation strategy plan and one of the best places to start this is to identify your competitors and see how they are outranking you at the moment, you need to analyse the structure of there site, what keywords have they targeted, how have they used the keywords on the page what links to they have coming back to them and which of these links is producing the most benefit for them.

     

    You then need to prioritise the work that needs doing so you can get the most benefit from it in the shortest time.

     

    The keyword research is the key to this and once you have this solid base you can more forward from there to take advantage of the other things you have learned about your competitors site.

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