HINTS AND TIPS

Small Business Saturday is coming! Is your business ready? If you own a small business, it's not too late for you to blow your own trumpet and generate some extra PR for Small Business Saturday on 2nd December 2017. This year it seems that social media is the way...

I was scrolling through a Facebook marketing group recently and came across a thread of marketing tips for an electrical contractor who was just starting out in business. I thought one of my electrical contractor clients.  Although not new to business, he is...

Whatever business you are in – you need sales.
You need income – not just any old sales, you need profitable, sustainable, repeatable or recurring sales.

In this article, we will show you how to use a Fabulous Freebie to get people on your list and generate new sales.

A way of maximising your sales and revenue now is through the online market. There are hundreds of companies like yourselves putting all their knowledge online and selling what they know and helping people by creating an online course specific to the market and...

Any real business owner and any good marketer knows that a call to action is one of the most important keys to building and establishing a business relationship with potential and current customers. But why is a call to action so important to your business? A call to...

Uploading your podcast Put your RSS podcast feed on the internet Go to feedrunner and type in the URL of your blog and click I am a podcaster on the next screen, configure the elements for your podcast. These are the elements that directly relate to the podcast. Your...

Creating, promoting and distributing your podcast to reach an online audience of possibly millions is relatively easy. Podcasting is becoming more popular as many bloggers turn to internet radio shows to get their music/message out.

Marketing your blog Brainstorm keywords for each blog post Keywords are the important words that relate to the topic of your blog, and specifically the new subtopic you cover each time you post. Choosing relevant keywords that people search for frequently will...

Making money through blogging requires a carefully thought out topic. If you have an existing blog with a small audience, be honest when considering whether the topic has broad appeal and that it isn't already being covered by other established bloggers. If it does,...

Groupon is an online deal website that provides printable or digital vouchers for daily deals offered by local businesses, and some international businesses, depending on what type of product you're looking for. The site itself allows you to advertise a physical...

Youtube is one of the biggest providers of an online platform for anyone to make money, all you need is a youtube channel, a personality, and content, simple. There are of course steps to building a following and getting the views on your video to monetize this as a...

Every day we hear of newer ways to make money. The newest, and probably the best way at the moment is through online platforms; these are things such as: YouTube Groupon Blogging Podcasting Affiliate Marketing Social Media Writing E-books There's a whole world of...

E-books are just book-format publications that are distributed electronically, rather than printed on paper. There's basically no cost to publish an e-book, pretty much anybody with an idea can do it. Take it easy on yourself. Unlike a paper-and-ink book, your e-book...

Affiliate programs provide you with a unique ID and marketing materials and then pays you a commission based on how much business you generate so trying to find a good affiliate marketing website is key. Most big websites you've heard of offer such a program. Since...

Use your profile as self-promotion tool Use a professional and appropriate profile image and remember to keep all information relevant and up to date. This is essential, If not the most important thing on this list! Imagine connecting with someone you see as a...

Why should you use LinkedIn? It's simple really; LinkedIn is a social media platform created by professionals for professionals. It enables you to show off your skills, your work history, and any experiences you may have had through volunteering, or through life....

Google+, although it may be a newcomer to the social media world, has really taken off as a service. However, it does already have its fair share of taboo's or what not to do's, so today, we're going to have a look at 7 of these: Forgetting to Mention people - When...

Maximise your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Now being on Google+ will allow you to do this anyway (as it is Googles own product). However for this to work and become fully optimized for you, you will need to create communities and active discussions via your page....

Believe it or not, the powerhouse in the world of search engines and the internet itself that is Google didn't have its own social network, until now, with the inception of its own product Google+. But why use it? Simple, as explained in the Introduction to Social...

Twitter, in a nutshell, is the busiest social media site available. This is what makes it so good because although it may be busy, if your content is good enough, and works well enough, it will show in the ‘moments’ tab to other users. Any stories you miss will show under ‘what you may have missed’ on a mobile device when the site is left. But there are more reasons than this, so listed below are six reasons why you should use Twitter in your marketing strategy:

Twitter is the second largest social media platform behind Facebook, so what better than to try and market your company using both? Now we've already been and done an introduction to Facebook, so now it's Twitters turn! How to use Twitter as an active marketing tool:...

So in the previous article we covered how to use Twitter effectively to market your company, now let us have a look at how not to use Twitter to market your business:

As we all know, paid advertising is becoming the way forward, long gone are the days of getting several thousand/million people to like your page and everyone who liked your page seeing your content. In the latest update of the Facebook news feed algorithm, It's been...

Don't leave company's about section blank A preview of your 'about' section is shown underneath your businesses profile picture, and it's one of the first places people will look when they're scanning your page. Make sure you're about section displays relevant...

Facebook Why should you use it? Well, The main reason you should use Facebook is that it has 1.4 Billion active users And that was before 2016 rolled around, so imagine that growing by another 100-200 million, and think of the impact that could have on your business....

Customer Service Customer service? On a post about social media? Madness! But it is very much relevant, as the majority of people who will see your page are either existing customers or prospects, so you still need to represent and uphold the company's ethos, just via...

People often query why you would use more than one social media platform to promote your business, and there is a good argument as to why, or why you should stick to just the one platform. Below are five good reasons as to why you should be using multiple platforms to promote your business and products:

Choosing Which Social Media Networks you use: Social media is a valuable tool that allows you to open yourself up to a much wider and more varied audience than you would've been able to than with traditional marketing. There is a dilemma to doing this, though, which...

Social media is now becoming one of the biggest ways of companies advertising and putting their products out there for everyone to see. In times like these, following the crowd is okay, but to make sure you stand out from the crowd, use as many positive keywords as...

Lists are the most important thing you as a business owner will need to utilise to maintain and run an efficient marketing campaign. There are four different lifts that you will need to build and monitor and these are as follows: Cold List Warm/Prospect List Existing...

Although having already touched on email Marketing briefly in the Making The Most Of Your Online Presence Is Key article, There is more to it than the brief description given. However, I believe this little gem deserves more than a paragraph to describe it as it is so...

Reviews and Testimonials may sound the same, but are very very different in how they look and come across in language…

A review is given on an individual product that your company offers where changes can be made, whereas a Testimonial documents any qualifications or particular qualities the company has…

So, we touched on this briefly in The Three M's - Now for an explanation, Who is your who? Your who is the person/people or business you are targeting with your marketing campaign. These are the people you've followed on Twitter, liked on Facebook, and connected with...

Digital Marketing, What is it and how does it work?

Digital marketing is, in plain English, the use of online, and interactive technology to push your business and products into the customers eye, there are three main ways to do this:

Social Media
Google Ad Words
E-mail Marketing

So in the previous article, we looked at how to use LinkedIn as an effective marketing tool, so now let's take a look at 5 ways not to use LinkedIn as a marketing tool and get you those new connections: Don't blanket connect Do your research, make sure you have a...

Staff payslips – what are the rules? The Employment Rights Act of 1996 states that an employee has the right to a written pay statement. Our article will help you with the do’s and don’ts of issuing payslips to staff.

Many of you will be networking and giving business cards to contacts and potential clients. How do you stand out from the crowd?

Choosing Which Social Media Networks you use: Social media is a valuable tool that allows you to open yourself up to a much wider and more varied audience than you would've been able to than with traditional marketing. There is a dilemma to doing this, though, which...

Digital Marketing, What is it and how does it work?

Digital marketing is, in plain English, the use of online, and interactive technology to push your business and products into the customers eye, there are three main ways to do this:

Social Media
Google Ad Words
E-mail Marketing

Icons can make or break your website. If the icons look good it enhances the professionalism and sales appeal of your website, as with anything there's a tonne of icon websites that showcase different styles of icons, some allow full customization, others are basic...

There are hundreds of free imagery resource sites across the internet, but for me, the 16 below were ones that took my eye especially because of the quality of the content.

Colour pickers are easily one of the best tools available to web designers and business owners on the internet, as they give you the choice and control over what colour scheme you use for your business, The feature image for this article is a screenshot taken from Coolors showing the way they let you identify which colours you need, Coolors is just one of the 7 resources covered in this article, but for me is the best, but don’t let me do all the hard work for you, get colour matching and see which colour match resource brings you your ideal colour scheme…

Image formatting resources will really save your life when it comes to web page or e-mail loading times, as the size of the image determines how many extra seconds it’ll take to load, one way to reduce these is to use the resources below, which will really give you and edge on your competition when it comes to people visiting your sites, so take a thorough look and have a play around with them and see how you get on best with them and which ones work for you

Design communities, yes they’re a thing, a very good thing, I’d say 75% of people who are involved with design communities are professional artists or art critics,

Youtube is for more than watching hilarious cat videos and learning how to talk to giraffes... It also has a very good design tutorial side to it that diversifies itself across several topics of design, from cartoons to serious blueprint designing, so it offers a lot...

Did you know that one of the first things someone will judge you on is which font your articles are written in?

Vectors are a simplistic and flat 2-dimensional image created using polygons to maximise the use of shapes, which in itself will allow your website to load quicker as shaped images are read quicker then block photo images, whereas if you combine the two the website reader will load the vectors followed by the blocks and will speed up the block scan speed. SO following on from that point, below are the best 8 vector image and illustration sites to get yourself started to a simplistic easy business based project.

Background images can do one of two things, they can either entice the prospect in, or drive them away, and unfortunately, it’s entirely by chance as to whether they like it or not, but there are ways of telling what images will bring the customers in and what’s driving them away, and that’s using specifically built resource sites which will show what kinds of backgrounds are trending and which ones aren’t so these are definitely something worth looking at and paying attention to.

Textures and patterns are used as an alternative to a background image, This can help extensively if you have plenty of text, or information and infographics to use as having a background pattern or texture will keep you focused on what information is in front of your...