Posts Tagged ‘Business’

Do you reckon that no-one gets business from social networking? Do you think it doesn’t matter if your website isn’t iPhone friendly? Do you believe that the look of a website is more important than its usability?

Then read on…..

I’ve just got back from a week away in Somerset, where we stayed in a converted barn in the middle of nowhere. Thanks to the thick walls of the former barn, we had no mobile signal at all inside the building, which was great for getting a bit of peace and quiet.

Outside, we just about managed to get a signal if we stood in the right place. As for data – well, if the wind was blowing the right way we could sometimes get a 3G signal but most of the time the only option was a painfully slow 2G connection.

But modern habits die hard, so when @MrsJaneMiles and I decided we wanted to find a nice pub for dinner one night, I did the obvious thing and put a message out on Twitter asking for a recommendation. One of my Bristol based followers picked up on this and got the word out to a number of his Twitter contacts in the Glastonbury area and within a few hours I had received recommendations for three local pubs.

Excellent! One lucky landlord was going to get a bit of extra business thanks to the power of social media.

Because @MrsJaneMiles is allergic to dairy products, I wanted to check the pubs’ food menus to see where she had the best chance of being able to eat something.

I went to the website of the first pub – The King’s Head in Wells – and was confronted with a screen that simply said “Loading: 0%”. After a not inconsiderable wait (I’m on a mobile phone with a 2G connection here, don’t forget) it crept up to 5%. Then another long wait and it was up to 10%. After about five minutes it had struggled up to about 20% – at which point I gave up.

I’ve since seen the site on a laptop with a 3G connection and it’s a very nice looking site and the pub looks great. But they didn’t get our business because they didn’t make any allowance for the fact that some potential customers might not have been able to handle the highly graphical nature of the website.

Lesson 1: As I discovered when doing the research for ‘Fusion’, the use of mobile phones for accessing web sites is growing at a phenomenal rate. So if you are going to have a very visual, graphic heavy website (especially if it uses Flash), then you really should ensure you’ve also got a mobile-friendly version of the site which loads automatically if it detects that someone is accessing it from an iPhone or other mobile device.

The next pub I looked at was The Apple Tree Inn. Their website is much more basic, but I was able to navigate around it easily on my phone (even with a slow connection) and check out the restaurant menu. We would have gone there but, despite trying them at various times of the day over a 24 hour period, I couldn’t get through on the phone. It just rang and rang with no answer.

Lesson 2: Just because someone finds you via the web, it doesn’t mean they won’t want to talk to you. Buy an answering machine or, better still, use a call answering service so as your calls get answered by a real person even when you’re not around.

And so it was that we ended up going to The Who’d A Thought It in Glastonbury – an excellent pub with a range of beers, quality food, helpful and friendly staff, and a website that works!

What do you think? Should businesses be making more effort to ensure that their websites can be accessed quickly and easily by people on the move? Do pubs/restaurants really need to bother about this kind of thing, or would most people have checked them out from home on a wi-fi connection before going on holiday? Feel free to comment below!

For the past few months, David Miles from Divadani has been hard at work writing a book in conjunction with David Taylor of 2010media.

The book is called ‘Fusion: the new way of marketing’ and it’s all about how businesses can market themselves and communicate with their customers in the new social media age using a combination of websites, search engine marketing, and social networks.

Earlier this week, the final manuscript went to the publishers and the past few days have been spent deciding on the format of the book and working up some ideas for the cover design.

So what’s in the book?

‘Fusion’ is about effective business communications in the social media age and covers:

• Why you should do business online
• The background to the modern media landscape
• Use of websites and social media
• Establishing your brand online
• Networking face-to-face and online
• Creating a social media culture
• Protecting and managing your brand online
• Using AdWords – the modern face of advertising – to drive traffic

Who’s it for?

The book is aimed at any kind of business or other organisation that wants to communicate with as wide an audience as possible and wants to market itself efficiently and cost effectively.

How will it help?

The development of modern websites, the appearance of social networking sites, and the emergence of pay-per-click as the modern face of advertising, have completely revolutionised the way we all communicate with the world around us.

Fusion will help you understand this new world order, explain why the old rules of marketing and PR are being broken, and present you with innovative and cost effective ways to reach your customers and improve the profitability of your business.

When and how will it be available?

We hope that ‘Fusion’ will be published sometime in late June. It will be available as a standard paperback book from Amazon and traditional bookshops, and there will also be an eBook version so you can read it on your Kindle, iPad, or other eBook reader.

Where can I find out more?

The authors have set up both a Twitter account and a Facebook page to keep people informed about progress of the book and to share snippets from it in the run up to publication. Please do use the links above to follow us or ‘like’ us on your favourite social network.

Also, the authors currently run regular training seminars that cover some of the topics from the book. More details are available at the Business Training Made Simple website.

When it comes to digital marketing, there are many different ways to try and reach out to a target market, with two of the most common forms of digital marketing being Adwords and Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO).

Whilst both definitely offer a way to positively boost the online presence of any business, we have come up with 5 reasons as to why Adwords is better than SEO.

1. Firstly, Adwords offers instant results. From the day an Adwords campaign is set up, any business or client can see instant results, whereas it takes time for the use of SEO to kick in and produce results.

2. Again, Adwords offers instantaneous tracking, so you are able to view the results and how well your Adwords campaign is working from the word go. The ease in which you can investigate the effectiveness of Adwords is one of its greatest benefits, offering detailed and precise reports to identify your ROI (return on investment).

3. Any amendments to your Adwords campaign are quick, easy and instant. This means that, should you find your selected Adwords aren’t performing to the standard to which they were expected, you can change them to try some other words and phrases.

4. This leads us onto the next point, which is that it is really easy to see which key words and phrases are or are not working. Whereas with SEO it is more difficult to pin point what is and isn’t working, the Adwords tracking offers precise reports on how your words and phrases are performing.

5. Finally, with Adwords you can set a budget and stick to it. With SEO, there are often other digital marketing strategies and campaigns needed to enhance the results, but with Adwords you can keep on top of the finances. It also means that you never really have to spend more on the Adwords than what they are generating in new business.

Not sure whether Adwords is for you? Drop us a line to david [at] divadani [dot] com and we’ll let you know!