Posts

Well it looks like the CIA are giving the marketing benefits of social media a try

I suspect it will descend into abuse or mickey taking, but if you fancy following in your finest James Bond fashion, the addresses are:

https://twitter.com/CIA

www.facebook.com/Central.Intelligence.Agency

I did like their first tweet 

The government has decided to name and shame 25 businesses who pay their workers less than the minimum wage.

What's interesting is they are targeting what looks like small businesses, and some of the sums of money are pretty low, so it's an obvious shot across the bows for all employers.

Here's some of those quoted:

HSS Hire Service Group Ltd, Manchester, which failed to pay £149.00 to 15 workers.

Dakal Ltd, Northampton, which failed to pay £252.00 to two workers.

CPS SW Ltd, Exmouth, which failed to pay £261.29 to a worker.

Full article from the BBC

Just filled up in sunny Devon, £1.34 at Morrisons. Definitely cheaper down here than it is in Stratford

Personally I never use it, as Google it quite capable of indexing your site by itself via it's web crawlers. But it can be useful if you have made a change and want to tell Google about it straight away.

Site maps are another way of automatically telling Google about new changes.

I don't know about being classed as spam, but I would be cautious about over using it imho.

Blimey 70%! You do realise we need to see a picture now 

So do you think it's like an addiction? I remember having my first tat and then feeling unbalanced and having to get one on my other arm to even things out. But that's prob just my OCD 

Hmm sounds like your analytics isn't configured correctly. Easy way to prove it, click the link to your website via your forum signature. you'll then know exactly when it was clicked and you should see the corresponding activity in your analytics. If you don't, it's not working!

Before this turns into a general directory bashing thread, (as we are a directory) that's not strictly true, as I can see you have had some click throughs from us.

You are displaying a Google Analytics code in the clear (for some reason) UA-50151694-1. So assume you are looking at your analytics's, and this will tell you exactly where your traffic is coming from. Search Engines, referrals, social media, websites, forums etc. 

You will also be able to see your bounce rates, see the user journey and get an idea what does and doesn't work. Don't just pursue one method of marketing and sit back. It's a continual process across a broad range of channels. Be selective, you don't want to be listed on a whole range of low value directories, but you do want to be listed on a number of directories.

These will give you something called "citations", Name, address and phone number. ie pointers to Google that you are who you say you are, regardless if you have a link or not.

But the main thing is make sure your landing page is the best it can possibly be, and you will get all this data from your analytics. If you don't understand or can't make any sense of it, then learn. It's one of the most important marketing tools you have, and it's free

If people land on your home page, and then bounce away, then the reality is people don't like it. If you have a low bounce, lots of pageviews and time on site, but people still aren't buying your products, then they like the home page, but something on the product page is turning them off.

Likewise look at the quality of traffic coming from different sources. If all the traffic from a particular medium just bounces and does nothing, but traffic from another source converts well, then you know where to concentrate. 

Generating and reacting to this kind of data is how you will move forward imho.

And that's 10 you should stay well clear of

It's an old tactic to build up a large linking profile. Directories by their very nature attract lots of businesses signing up. Some offer a reciprocal link, you link to me and I'll link to you, which even now, in the land of google penalties and ropey linking profiles,  plenty of sites still do it. Some simply demand a link back in order for you to have a free listing.

End of the day, the choice is up to you, it's your business.

I am a total self confessed military history bore, but I thought it was quite poignant and sad that the Normandy Veterans Association will disband this year. There will still be 600 or so veterans, but it's not deemed enough to be worthwhile. 

Imagine not only surviving D Day, but outliving the veterans association created to commemorate it!

Some of the media coverage makes me smile, historically inaccurate fluff reporting, obviously using Google and Wikipedia as references 

But it's nice to see some of the last surviving veterans attending the ceremonies, before it all passes out of living memory. Was privileged to go to Normandy a few years ago with some D Day veterans, and some of their stories made your hair stand on end, along with their humour.

Even some of their complaints about dodgy kit, radios and rations will be familiar to anyone who has served from 70 years ago up to the present day 

Originally Posted by Kempres

“You just said a whole lot of stuff there I don't understand!.”

The meta data is just information search engines and social media sites use to read and understand your website.

If you rightclick your mouse and view page source (or similar words depending on browser) you will see a lot of gibberish and code.

In there will be a few meta tags such as below:

<title>KemPres Retro </title>

<meta name="title" content="KemPres Retro "/>

<meta name="description" content="Officially Licensed Retro T-Shirts"/>

This just tells search engines your website is called KemPres Retro and the description of your website. 

For some reason, Facebook is reading the description of your website from another source. If it was your own website, you could put some tags in your code telling Facebook what to display. Unfortunately this is one of the realities of using free or cheap and cheerful solutions. There's no substitute for having and being in control of your own website.

But would genuinely be interested if anyone could explain where Facebook is pulling that description from?