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Tech Crunch have done a great piece on Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales.

If you have been to wikipedia recently, you'll see what they are talking about!
A Personal Appeal TO Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales | TechCrunch

We've touched on this before, how we are all self taught online marketeers, but I reckon in the future it will simply be marketing, either offline or online. Any SEO, Social, SEM will all be lumped together.

So online marketers will have to know and understand optimisation, and purely SEO folk will have to understand and appreciate marketing and promotion. SEO, Social and general marketing are getting so intertwined, it's hard to separate. I can see old school SEO firms dying out as we move into the next stage of the internet.

At the design stage, SEO used to be a bolted on afterthought, now most people understand you have to optimise as you design a site, but I think the same approach is now starting to happen with social media, and new sites will be optimised both for SEO, Social and whatever new online marketing tool is waiting round the corner.

Hmm will be very interesting. Could this be the future of the high street? No tills, less staff, lower overhead?

I had an email this morning, that there is a PAT tester in the area who wants to come in and check all of our electrical appliances for 90p per device, including computers, which will be a visual check and won't need to be switched off.

For anyone that doesn't know, PAT testing (Portable Appliance Testing) is something that's done in the UK and a couple of other countries, and no doubt there are variations of this in other countries, where inspections are done periodically into a businesses electrical appliances.

I must admit, I don't know very much about it, and we do seem to get a lot of people wanting to come and tell us if our laptops are safe or not, but had no idea if it was some kind of legal requirement.

Had a dig around, and found an article on the UK Health & Safety Executive website, and the way I read it, we just need to make sure we check for obvious signs of damage or problems, rather than having a formal inspection?

"HSE’s advice is that for most office electrical equipment, visual checks for obvious signs of damage and perhaps simple tests by a competent member of staff are quite sufficient."
Myth: All office equipment must be tested anually

So as long as I'm happy all of our appliances are ok, then I assume I don't need a PAT tester to come in and tell me the same thing?

Or is there a legal requirement depending on a type of business?

At a recent search marketing conference, a speaker made a claim that SEO will be dead in 6 months, and Googles dominance coming to an end.

All exciting stuff, obviously Google didn't agree, and Matt Cutts, head of Googles webspam team, and unofficial SEO champion had plenty to say on the matter.

"He likens SEO to coaching rather than strictly marketing. The job of an SEO is to ensure that website owners put their best face forward and present themselves in the best possible light. Since people will always need this type of service, SEO will always be in demand."

Will SEO be Dead in 6 Months? | Site-Reference

One for the UK members, has anyone been (or going to) the Earls Court Business Start Up show and the Great British Business Show?

We exhibited at the Biz Start Up show a couple of years ago, and thinking of doing it next year, so wondered down to Earls Court today for a bit of a recce and to get some ideas.

The shows definitely grown since we were last there, and seems to have incorporated the Great British Business Show. A very busy event, and certainly packed out. Visitor numbers seemed to have overwhelmed the organizers, with long queues outside the event, even though we had already pre-registered online! In the end, security just simply opened all the doors and waved us all in

Catering facilities were pretty poor for the volume of people as well, I remember the Birmingham NEC show a few years ago seemed a much better organised event.

Anyone taking their car down, set off early as the carparks will be full before dinnertime.

But a good show and certainly worth a visit. If you are looking to capture a UK small business or start up audience, then it could well be worth considering a stand for next year.

The Great British Business Show, 17/18 November 2011
Starting a Business | Visit the Business Startup Show in London

All very good points, appreciated, and certainly need factoring in.

It is interesting though, I would have thought somewhere, someone would have come up with a baseline formula, which you could apply when looking at potential opportunities.

Maybe between us all, we need to create one and offer it as a standard to the world

Biz Value = 18 months revenue (-) debt (-) overheads (x) fluffy magic number which includes traffic, exposure, and potential

To be honest, if you find any published lists you are probably better off staying clear as they will have been spammed to death and won't do you any favours.

Just research industries relevant to you, there are multitudes of opportunities. Joining in conversations, blogs, forums, guest authoring, articles etc.

Something sounds fishy, as you say you would see traffic from FB to your site, and it would clearly show in your Google analytics.

I only had a brief play with FB adverts a while ago, and I can't remember if you get any analytics, such as facebook insights, like you do with FB fan pages.

If there is insights, then this will clearly show clickthroughs to your site (or not). I'd be surprised if FB didn't provide any stats for their adverts

Just checked the insights analytics for our FB fan page, and compared it to google analytics, for traffic from FB to our site, and they are pretty close, so I cant see why Google Analytics wouldn't reliably track traffic from a FB ad.

You seem pretty marketing savvy Lina, I don't know why just don't run a campaign yourself.

ahh I see, its a fund, had assumed it was some sort of gadget