Posts

Tried to go to your poll but it took so long to load I exited. Could be my computer not the poll set up.

I prefer emails and articles on the web, ie things I can respond to if they interest me, at a time of my own choosing.

I don't mind mailshots (they're not as convenient as emails because the paper has to be recycled and if I want to keep the info, I've got to go through the secondary process of putting it on computer).

I hate sales 'phone calls - I can't get back on track for a while after the 'phone call's ended if I was middle of anything requiring deep thinking. I'm particularly annoyed by sales 'phone calls which don't get to the point quickly.

I only attend conferences, networking meetings and training / briefing sessions if they're very high value to me .... usually they have also to be local and free!! I'd enjoy high value virtual training and conferences.

Hope this helps.

I've doubts about the viability of this too.

My gut feel is the "party" idea is a bit outdated. There are very few Mums who don't work part-time (from home or elsewhere) and they'd generally earn far more per hour from their employment than they could expect to earn from party sales.

There are people who need to buy at home / very locally and who can't get to Tesco's etc (eg because they live out in the villages and have no private transport during the working day or are housebound and / or disabled). Sadly most of them don't have any real buying power so wouldn't happily attend parties where they'd feel pressurised to buy more than they could afford. They might like the idea of becoming a party organiser but many of them are socially isolated too.

Many of the better off people in their position (people able to be your customers) rely on buying online and having their goods posted / couriered to them.

My sister was a "stay at home Mum" of the sort you might be trying to recruit as a party organiser (socially well connected, very active and living in an affluent village). People like her though wouldn't be interested in the job.

Would suggest a rethink. Would it be profitable to offer a more bespoke online sales service, recruiting online Mums to provide one to one help with buying queries (eg Q: "My daughter doesn't fit the standard sizes ... what can I get her that will actually fit?" A: "What you need is ....")?

Dear All

Firstly a big thank you to Tomsk and others who've helped me a lot with my various SEO woes and pointed out tools like SEOmoz that I'm finding very useful.

A few more quick questions plse ....

1. I'm trying for some keywords which are very competitive -eg career planning and career plan. The SEOmoz tool says my term targeting for both keywords on the relevant page is B+.

On a scale of 1 to 10 -
(1= pigs will fly before you get onto Google pge 1 &
10= just wait a little and all will be well)

- how likely is it that with a B+ rating I'll be able to get onto Google pge 1 for a highly competitive key word, plse?

I've a PR of 5 on my home page but the rest of the site is under development / needs a lot of work so there are lots of zero ranked pages. I've got onto Google pge 1 with a highly competitive keyword for which my SEO term targeting was B but don't know whether that result's indicative or not.

2. Please could someone explain what one of the basic Google webmaster tools is telling me? It's laid out as follows:-

Query impressions clicks
career counselling 320 <10

The impressions data (320 in this instance) I think relate to the number of local searches per month for the key word (career counselling).

Does the <10 clicks data mean that more than 10 visitors clicked on my site or fewer than 10 visitors clicked, plse?

Also, a more precise figure than <10 would be helpful - is there any way of obtaining it as a free tool?

Would be grateful for any input plse.

Thanks in advance, best wishes Linda

I blog for SEO purposes but find it a time-consuming once-weekly chore.

If the blog item doesn't pay off in a Google pge 1 rating - at least for a short while - I really resent the amount of time I've spent writing it. It's also difficult - for career advice sites at least - to build a "community".

Being less negative for a moment, I've also found that blogging leads to you making potentially valuable contacts you might not otherwise have had. The contacts may come from comments on the blog or the writers of other blogs you stumbled across when trying to find out how well your own item performed in the search engines.

Contributing to other sites' blogs can be useful publicity, I think. As CareersPartnershipUK I contribute to many much bigger career, job search and general readers forums (eg the Guardian, Prospects, GraduateFog, etc). Using your company name as your screen name makes it easy for readers interested in what you've said to look you up - and they do. Obviously you do have to be careful to stay within the rules and not tout too obviously for business.

You need to be able to control / edit comments to your blog. I've had loads of incoming spam (some of it appearing as harmless generic statements along the lines of "great article -keep it up"). My bugbear at the moment is huge lumps of spam appearing in what seems to be one of the Eastern European languages.

Otherwise, I "approve" anything which seems relevant to the blog item itself, including those comments with links back to other sites (though I check those other sites first!!).

It's an interesting Budget but the more I look at it, the more dangerous it seems to be.

There was a slow, fragile, insecurely based recovery of confidence underway. I think that'll halt now, until the next change of course.

Perhaps we wouldn't upset Google if we played "musical chairs" with our commenting and restricted ourselves to a "one off" offering. Crislis has kindly placed a good comment on my blog, maybe Steve could place his comment on Crislis's site instead of me ... and so on????

Best wishes

Linda

Hi Crislis

So get in touch with me when you next need a suitable blog comment! I'd probably be able to add a chatty comment helpful for SEO purposes tho I've no experience of alternative therapies (so I couldn't advocate any).

Linda

Having a small group of collaborators adding relevant comments to each others' blogs is so obviously sensible and so undemanding I can't see any problem in going ahead. Can I ask plse that anyone willing to join in with this email me (lw@careers-partnership-uk.com)? Also plse feel free to pass the idea - and my email address - to non mlf members if you think they'd be interested.
Usual rules apply - only (respectable and ethical) business / social blogs to be included in the scheme.

Hoping to get a flood of emails now!

site: Welcome to Careers Partnership (UK) | Careers Partnership (UK)
blog: Blog | Careers Partnership (UK)

Suggest you talk to Companies House and / or your local Business Link on this one. They're both helpful. Remember to keep notes of your conversation and their guidance - preferably get the advisor(s) to confirm their guidance in writing.

As far as I know, once you've formally stated in writing to the relevant Directors that you're resigning from the Company Secretary post as from a specific date, then you've resigned and are free from any subsequent obligations. This is only an opnion, however, which you'd need to check with the experts.

site: Welcome to Careers Partnership (UK) | Careers Partnership (UK)
blog: Blog | Careers Partnership (UK)