BoxStuff

Anticipating a better future....

Stark warnings about the cuts that will be required to reduce the enormous budget deficit may seem scary, but I can’t help feeling optimistic. At last we are being presented with an honest appraisal of the situation and a realistic assessment of what needs to be done. Great, lets get on with it!

There’s no easy solution to this and waiting and hoping that someone else will magically resolve the situation so we can carry on as before is what lead us here in the first place.

Time to knuckle down, get creative and work hard… and enjoy the satisfaction of making things better for ourselves.

Plus, there’s also the prospect of some new Apple products to look forward to later today!

Looking ahead to what's next

The announcement of the iPad, Apple’s new device for accessing media and information has caused a lot of interest and excitement. I believe it will be a very popular product and herald a significant change in the way we consume content and even the way we work. I’m really looking forward to the change’s that will follow this and I’m excited to think about what we should be doing next…

For anyone who isn’t so sure yet, this ‘take’ from the MDN website may be painful but is also insightful if not a little amusing!:

“Here’s to the dull ones. The luddites. The tedious. The non-achievers. The square pegs in the square holes. The ones who refuse to see things differently. They’re extremely fond of rules. And they’ll do anything to maintain the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t help but do is to ignore them. Because they never change things. They don’t invent. They don’t imagine. They don’t heal. They don’t explore. They don’t create. They don’t inspire. They retard the progress of the human race. Maybe they have to be boring, unimaginative, a-holes. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see nothing whatsoever? Or sit in silence and hear nothing at all? Or gaze at a red planet and not even see it? While some see them as the dull ones, we see criminals. Because the people who are uninspired enough to think they can never change a thing, are the ones who hold us all back.”

How To Create A Website That Attracts Large Numbers of Targeted Visitors.....

…. without breaking the bank.

Creating a website that attracts loads of targeted visitors does not have to cost you a small fortune. In fact, it’s possible to create a highly successful website for very little if you follow these simple steps…

Offline

Make sure you include your website address in all communications and on all your business stationery. If you do advertise in print or via direct mail, promote your website and feature its URL.

Get your own domain name and make sure it’s easy to spell and remember.

Online

Design
Ensure your website appeals to your target audience. Research what type of websites they visit most frequently. Take note of the design, layout, and content of the most popular websites and make sure your website delivers similar (but superior) features and content.

Content
Provide free content – free reports, downloads, tips, newsletters – that will be useful and relevant to your target audience. Present it in a format that most appeals to your target audience. Update the content frequently to give your visitors a compelling reason to return. Remember to ask them to bookmark your website too! Better still, provide RSS feeds, integrate with Twitter and Facebook to push updates to your fans and customers.

Search Engines
Careful use of paid advertising campaigns such as Google Adwords can ensure you show up in search results. A cheaper way of achieving a high ranking is to ensure that each page of your site has a unique page title, page description and keyword meta tags and coordinate it with the content on each page. Submit the page to search engines.

Email
Create a signature that is carried at the end of every email that you send out. (You can set this up using your email programme).

Ensure that your website has a way of capturing the email addresses of all visitors.

Create an email newsletter that features useful and relevant content. Make sure you offer all of the readers an ‘opt-out’ choice. Invite readers to forward the newsletter to colleagues and/or friends. Remember to ask them to ‘white list’ your email address so that it doesn’t get blocked by spam filters.

Get Networking

Create a Facebook app and use the viral marketing power of the world’s most popular social network.

Regular Checkups

That’s just the start. Too many business owners leave their websites to languish, unaware that as with every other aspect of business, they need constant attention.

You must monitor your website frequently and ensure that:

• It is capturing the details of the people who visit and that those details are added to your database
• There is an automated system in place for following-up leads the website has generated
• The content is updated frequently so that visitors have a compelling reason to return
• There is a system in place to notify previous visitors that the content has changed on the website
• The website is easy to navigate
• The website provides content that visitors want and need
• The sales procedure is simple and easy to understand and use
• The site features prominently on Search Engines.

Do this and your website will be the powerful marketing tool it should be.

Call us now for a chat about how BoxStuff can help you improve your online (and offline) marketing activities.

Find Me, Join Me, Follow Me

Recently, i’ve come across the following 3 lines, in a spam message and in the email signature of the chairman of Ecademy:

Web 1.0 – Find Me
Web 2.0 – Join Me
Web 3.0 – Follow Me

Without analysing it too much it does appear to sum up the evolution of the web and the popular trends over the last few years.

Could almost be:

Web 1.0 – Google
Web 2.0 – Facebook
Web 3.0 – Twitter

Whilst it hasn’t reached the entire population of the planet, for those with reliable high speed internet access it’s now a hyper connected world. And these three ‘versions’ of the web offer 3 slightly different but very useful ways to filter the vast amounts of content available to all:

Web 1.0 – Search driven
Web 2.0 – The social web and RSS
Web 3.0 – Conversational and peer filtered

There’s one other significant factor that’s changing the way we access and use information and that is the mobile web or arguably the iPhone.

So what should you do to make sure you are communicating with your customers or target audience?

Talk to us about a updating or building your website. We offer as standard:

- Search Engine Optimised page design

- Facebook integration and/or Facebook applications

- built in RSS feeds and Twitter integration

- iPhone optimised version of your site