If you’ve got a presence on Facebook for your start-up or small business, it could prove to be a valuable marketing tool.

The trouble is, too many business owners are still using it as a broadcasting platform rather than engaging with their current and potential customers.

In this post I’ll share some useful Facebook rules of engagement with you. Read the rest of this entry »

Jumping on the bandwagon of a current event is often referred to as piggyback marketing. In this article, I’ll explain why I’m not a fan, and how it could potentially damage your business.

If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably seen the piggyback marketing blog posts such as “What Every Sales Person Can Learn from the Wimbledon Championships” or “How Business Owners can recover from a Setback like Adam Scott’s” (British Open Golf).

Below are some reasons why I believe this kind of marketing isn’t a good idea: Read the rest of this entry »

There are lots of small business websites around that are fine. In other words, they look okay, are fairly well written and bring in some orders/enquiries every month.

However, there are fewer websites around using the power of perceived value to better engage with customers and get great conversion rates.

Keep reading to discover how you can use perceived value as a hook to win more clients via your website. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve got Google Analytics installed on your website, one of the main things to look at is the length of time people are spending on your pages.

For example, if you discover the average amount of time spent on your homepage is just a few seconds and people are then leaving, there’s obviously a problem you need to sort out.

In this article I’ll look at some ideas that will encourage people to stay on your website for longer. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve decided to use WordPress as the platform for your small business website, there are a number of things you should consider.

As you read through this article, you’ll discover some of the main points to think about to make sure you choose the right WordPress theme for your business. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress started out as an open source blogging platform and has grown into an incredibly popular and flexible content management system.

Many small business owners choose WordPress for their online presence, but it’s not just a case of making your site live and doing nothing. You can enhance your site with Plugins which have a wide range of functionality. In this article, I’ll share five I’d recommend for beginners. Read the rest of this entry »

I know a lot of people in the creative industries; designers and copywriters.

One of the things that devalues the industry is people asking for work for free, and newcomers to the industry accepting it in order to boost their portfolio.

This article looks at why you shouldn’t commission any creative work for free, even if your budget is limited. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great things about Twitter is you can use its power to spread your blog posts and gain a wider audience.

In this article I’ll look at five easy ways to get more retweets. The points below assume you have good content and a relevant follower base. Read the rest of this entry »

With so much information available online on such a wide range of topics, content stealing has become an inevitable issue.

Many blog and website owners can’t write very well. They get round this issue by just copying and pasting text from another source.

In the rest of this article I’ll look at how you can check if your content has been stolen, and if so, what to do about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Good testimonials on your website can make a big difference in creating trust. This trust can then help you gain more enquiries and sales.

But how do you make sure your testimonials are powerful enough to influence others? Read the rest of this entry »