Pinterest has been around for a couple of years, a place with a largely female and American audience, where people share ideas on design, fashion, travel, books – or anything else you can think of – by “pinning” photos to their various online boards. Effectively Pinterest provides multiple mood boards that you can either start yourself, collaborate, comment or contribute an image. Unusually the early adopters appear not to be the usual geeks, with mainstream subjects as fashion, design and travel being some of the first popular topics.

The website was the third fastest growing in the US in January 2012 and is starting to attract the interest of corporates and retailers. Like other social networks that have come and gone, it’s difficult to predict what will succeed long-term but Pinterest seems to tick a lot of boxes on what makes a social network succeed.

See BBC’s Rory Cellen-Jones’ view here:  Pinterest – hot new network or another Quora?

• Free .co.uk domain and hosting for a year
• £50 of Google AdWords vouchers
• Starter SEO package worth £75 (Keyword research, Tag editing and website submission to Google and Bing)

Possible features include the following:

• Web design and logo / branding design
• Content Management by you using Word Press or Joomla
• Website copywriting
• E-commerce and advice on selling online successfully
• Forums, blogs and galleries
• Bespoke software development
• Email marketing
• Google Analytics for web traffic monitoring
• Contact forms, live chat
• Online booking
• Online Calendars / booking
• Online CRM
• …and much, much more!

Please call us Dinesh 01788 844014 or use our enquiry form to tell us more about what  you need for your business.

While these two examples are genuine personal videos that happened to have gone viral, companies are getting in on the act by capitalising on the number of views for a particular video. For example the ‘Debbie loves cats’ video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTwcCVajAc – gave dating website eHarmony a lot of free publicity even though ‘Debbie’ was probably just doing a personal spoof and not originally connected with the company in any way.

It’s almost impossible to predict what will and won’t go viral however, from a business point of view, that shouldn’t be the only intention behind uploading videos to YouTube. For the right business, YouTube presents a great opportunity to promote products and services as it provides an opportunity for sharing and comment plus links back to your main website.

If you have an unusual product or service then a simple YouTube video could do a more efficient job of explaining than multiple web pages. If your business is all about gaining personal trust such as finance, PR or marketing, then a well-produced video involving key personnel could be a great way of gaining credibility.

Here are some good links for more advice on using YouTube for business. Please get in touch with Dinesh on 01788 844014 for more information or fill out our Contact form.

http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/index.php/2011/01/13/12-tips-for-using-youtube-to-promote-your-business/

http://sellitontheweb.com/blog/8-simple-ideas-to-market-your-small-business-with-youtube/

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/34-ways-to-use-youtube-for-business/

Richard O’Dyer ran a very successful website TVshack which hosted a searchable link directory to websites where people could download pirated films and TV series. The website was very popular, netting him over £150,000 in advertising income. However without any warning the US authorities obtained a warrant and seized the domain name in June 2010.

I can be sympathetic with his predicament up to a point: he received no prior warning, his website contained only links to pirated content and extradition will not be a pleasant experience. However, he was effectively acting as an accessory to the crime of copyright infringement and doing it very successfully. Anyone harbouring romantic notions of the little guy hitting back against profiteering big film studios and record companies should think about TVshack in terms of providing links to stolen goods. The proposed US legislation as drafted is probably bad law, but the problem is real and needs to be addressed.

Domino’s attributes a lot its success to online ordering through different devices such as PC, mobile and tablets like the iPad. Customer’s can simply type their post code to locate the nearest store, order online and expect a delivery within the usual time limits. The company now gets over 40% of its orders online.

While Domino’s is a national chain with the budget to match, all SME’s should seriously consider how bricks AND clicks could enhance their business. These days, adding e-commerce to your web presence is much cheaper and quicker than even two years ago – talk to Dinesh for more details on 01788 844014 or fill out our contact form.

From the user’s perspective, using IE6 to browse the web leaves a computer vulnerable to viruses and malware that steal personal data etc. From a web developer’s point of view, IE6 often interprets a web page coded to industry  standards differently from other browsers which means a lot of messy additional layout code and extra testing to ensure a web page displays correctly.

The only country bucking this trend is China where usage levels are falling but still around 25%.

Unlike only a few years ago when IE was dominant, there are now three main browsers that your websites should be compatible:

• Internet Explorer (versions 7, 8 and 9)
• FireFox
• Google Chrome

The market is moving to a position where no one browser is dominant, however the good news is that, apart from a few quirks with IE7, they tend to work the same way and no major  adjustments are needed to get proper cross-browser compatibility for a website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16408850

Visit the website here: http://www.bobcheshire.co.uk/

Potentially it’s a massive subject, but we have boiled the process down into the key steps:

1. Research
2. Action
3. Check

Step 1 – Research

We’re not advocating months of exhaustive analysis of market trends and positioning but whatever your business size, you should be able to answer these questions:

1. How many visitors does my website get?
2. How many orders or enquiries does my website generate?
3. What keywords should people use to find my website, are there more popular alternatives?
4. What are my competitors doing regarding their website, social media, email newsletter and other advertising?
5. Where am I looking for new customers, are they local, national, international, do they enquire or look for your services at certain times e.g. office hours, evenings, weekends etc?

Google provides a number of free tools such Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Keyword selector tool to help analyse your own website. You should also look closely at what your competitors are up to: what they are doing well, how they are ranking for certain key phrases, are they using Google AdWords, other advertising etc.

This vital first step helps you prioritise and identify what to do next – Action!

Step 2 – Action

The Actions you take should be informed and shaped by what you find out in the Research step, but could include the following:

• Revising the website copy, meta tags on your website
• Seeking links back to your website from partners, complementary services, friends, directories etc
• Adding new features to your website to keep the content fresh and growing e.g. blogs, importing social media content, news updates etc
• Generating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google
•  If you sell products online, generate and submit a product list to Google at least every 30 days
• Setting up social media to direct people to your website.

The final choice of Actions will be dependent on your business, your budget and time.

Step 3 – Check

Is what you’ve done working? Check all your available data, website traffic, number of orders, number of enquiries, website position in SERPS etc. Use that information to adjust your actions and research further relevant options for boosting your website.

Get in touch with Dinesh on 01788 844014 or Contact us form to discuss how to boost your website on Google.

AdWords Express helps potential customers find your website or Place page and gives you a quick and straightforward way to connect with them and grow your business. You simply provide some basic business information, choose some wording for your text ad, select a monthly budget and your campaign is ready to go.

After you sign up, the campaign will be automatically managed for you. AdWords Express will figure out which searches should trigger your ad to appear and displays it when these searches happen. Your ad will be shown in the Ads section of search results pages—on the top or right hand side—and in Google Maps with a distinctive blue pin. Customers can see your ad whether they’re searching on laptops or mobile phones.

You pay only when a customer clicks on your ad. To make things even easier, AdWords Express optimizes your ads to get the most out of your advertising campaign and budget.

We have £50 vouchers to get you started. Please get in touch and we’ll get your account setup up for free, call Dinesh on 07941 686113 or 01788 844014.

These new features make it much more cost effective for Small Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s) to target specific areas and get a better return for their investment.

We are now part of the Google Engage program for Google AdWords so can offer £50 vouchers to get you going. Contact Dinesh for more information on 01788 844014 or dinesh@webgrowth.co.uk