I’ve found it hard to do videos for my blog, even though I know they are a good idea. In fact, I did a blog post about the benefits of video marketing two years ago!

Video blogging has never been my thing.

Today I’ve been inspired by some of my online marketing friends who do use video, and I’ve removed some of the barriers and had a go (hopefully the first of many!).

In this video I tell you about some of the things that have been stopping me from using video.

I’ve realised that I missed one out. One of the problems with using my camera for the videos, was that I’d have to keep bobbing up and down and checking that the angle was right and that it was recording right before I started. And that was a right pain in the proverbial.

My Key to Video Blogging!

The main thing that has got me doing these videos is my new HD webcam – and of course, no bobbing required – I can see myself as it is recording – so I know the angle and lighting is ok. Much more convenient.

Next job is to get a lavalier mic – using the mic on my headset out of shot doesn’t sound great and really didn’t work when I knocked it in the middle of the video by mistake!

Still, the message is that I did it and so can you.

So please leave links to your videos in the comments so that we know you are taking advantage of this marketing opportunity too!

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In the next in our series of guest blogs, Robin Adams of The Local Web Design Company tells us about the latest happenings in the world of local mobile optimisation

As a self confessed gadget-boy, I like to keep myself updated on what’s going on in the world of tech – and in many instances it has an impact on what I’m doing in the day job when I advise small businesses how to get found on the internet to generate business. In the last few months there have been a number of developments which I feel will not only impact the way we use technology moving forward, but will have a profound impact on the way small businesses can use the internet to get customers – specifically ones that are accessing on mobile devices.

Improve your mobile optimisation

The rise of the mobile is almost unimpeded and with smart phones continually taking market share and tablets becoming much more the norm, the oft quoted statistic that more people will access the internet via mobile device than desktop by 2014 is well on the way to becoming a reality. Consequently, small businesses who aren’t geared up for the ‘mobile revolution’ are likely to be missing out on a valuable stream of customers. As if you needed further persuading – here are a few recent developments that continue to shout – ‘improve your mobile optimisation!’

4G – it’s like 3G, but ‘one’ larger

Firstly, something that hopefully will satisfy all you ‘it’s not quick enough to be that big’ naysayers. I’ve learnt that no matter what piece of technology you have, once you are used to it, it never works as fast as you do – and a mobile phone is a classic example – just when you want to download that important email, it takes forever because someone stupidly attached a big image to it. However, there are plans to change this for the future – Late last year, the mobile operator O2, started a new trial of a 4G network in central London.

For those of you who don’t follow the mobile market, 4G is the next level of mobile data transmission (you probably know of 3G, or at least see it on your phone screen), and it offers download speeds of up to 100Mbs (a lot of data!). As things like 4G start moving from trial to reality, it will only encourage more and more people to use the internet on their mobile devices (and not just phones – tablets will be a major beneficiary as well).

There are differing views as to when the 4G network will really take off and to what extent the coverage will be, but the bottom line is that with the insatiable desire for faster, quicker, easier, access to the internet the chances are it will be sooner rather than later. All this means that one of the perceived barriers for mobile internet usage (speed) will be removed and so there is less of an excuse to get yourself mobile optimised.

iPad has its independence day

The rise of the iPad and all the other tablet devices is something that even 3 years ago would have been hard to forecast. Even I, a hardened gadget boy had my doubts, but in the 10 months I’ve had my iPad it’s fundamentally changed the way I work, relax and play.

One problem I did have with the iPad was the need to tether it to a PC so I could download software updates and the like. Or at least I did until the new update to the Apple mobile operating system (IOS 5.0) came out and did away with the need to have a computer linked to the tablet for it to receive firmware updates and the like. The update allows for tablets to work independently from the PC and thus they are now a truly standalone item. So why does this matter?

If people don’t need to hook a tablet up to a PC for any specific reason now, it means that people may not even need a PC anymore. The apron strings that linked the two formats have been cut and the tablet can now stand alone on its own two feet. Changes to the market won’t happen overnight, but the long term impact could see a shift from PCs (and their smaller cousins the netbook) to Tablets – and so making sure you focus on mobile optimisation in your web design for those devices is key. I’m proof of this change as since I’ve had my iPad, my netbook has been collecting dust in the cupboard, and now there is even less reason for me to get it out.

Siri is here – shout about it!

The last development I’ve recently seen which could have huge implications in the ‘mobile website’ market is Apple’s new voice recognition software – Siri. The idea is simple – press a button, speak your query and the phone will do the typing for you. Voice recognition is still at its early stages, but with Siri (along with Google’s Voice Search) it will be easier for you to interact with your mobile device (still need that mini keyboard on the Blackberry?). If it’s easier to interact with your mobile phone, you’ll probably use it more – and thus the need for mobile optimisation is proved again.

One interesting aside is the impact that Siri will have on the local search marketing arena. At the moment, Siri can’t work for local businesses as it’s not set up in the UK (As an aside, it’s quite interesting to see the difference between the US and UK adverts… the UK ones focus on the ‘assistant’ angle, whereas the US ones have several ‘find me a local…’ elements), but in the USA people are regularly asking for local services through Siri.

Interestingly, Apple use Yelp to drive their local recommendations, and it is anticipated that this will be the same when the local search function is launched in the UK (although there are lots of other ‘business listings’ that currently have more traction this side of the pond). This is in sharp contrast to Google who are pushing for Google Places to be the ‘go to’ local listing engine worldwide. It’s unlikely that Apple will use Google for their local search data if they can help it (they’re not exactly best buddies) and so for those involved in helping local businesses (and everyone else with a physical location), the need to know what’s driving the ‘local search’ function ranking pages becomes very interesting indeed.

Mobile Optimisation – Need More Convincing?

The need for decent mobile optimisation for all business big and small is not going to go away, and in fact every day the need grows stronger. Developments such as 4G, Siri and the iPad continue to shout to small businesses that they need an online mobile presence – it could be the difference between success and failure for many businesses. Whatever your plans for online development in the coming months, make sure that mobile optimisation is part of it.

The Local Web Design Company offers excellence in a variety of areas. Our focus is 100% on getting customers for you and we do this by utilising our skills in the areas of search engine optimisation, web development, local marketing, social media marketing and video marketing. We specialise in helping businesses either get themselves established or working with those who’ve already dipped their toe into the water and as yet remain to be convinced. http://www.thelocalwebdesigncompany.co.uk

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Before you start thinking about ‘off page’ optimisation of your website, you need to ensure that your ‘on page’ optimisation is good. This is an area that many people find confusing and either do half heartedly or not at all. And if you have a WordPress website you may be blogging and creating pages for yourself without too much knowledge about how best to optimise them.

Aside from learning the key actions to take, if you’re anything like me, you are probably looking for something that will take away the time and hassle involved in optimising the content.

Well, I use a WordPress plugin called SEOPressor to enable me to much better optimise my pages and posts with the least effort as some of it becomes automatic. In fact I originally found this plugin when a friend of mine blogged that his Aunt in her 60s was doing his SEO for him without evening understanding how to do it manually.

I’m going to tell you a bit about SEOPressor, what it can do to help your website become more effective as far as the search engines are concerned and I will explain how easy the plugin makes the whole process. By the end of my review you’ll want to know how you can get it to start using it yourself!

So what is SEOPressor?

You can upload SEOPressor to any WordPress website to enable you to easily complete the on page optimisation in the course of creating the page/post.

It was created by Dan Tan, who is apparently known as the ‘SEO Guy’ and he certainly seems to know his stuff. He provides SEO services himself and had the plugin developed to aid him in his own SEO for clients. And of course he is also selling a license to it so that we can benefit too!

How does SEOPressor Work?

SEOPressor works by analysing the content and structure of a page or post against a keyword phrase that you need to enter.

It then takes some action on your behalf, e.g. by bolding and underlining the keyword phrase in the text where it is mentioned often enough and adding the keyword phrase as part of the alt tag for any images (Search engines can’t read images as such, they can only read text).

SEOPressor also suggests some other changes that you should considering making manually e.g. to include the keyword phrase in your h2 and h3 tagged headers (that in itself can make a big difference as in my experience many WordPress sites aren’t using the SEO opportunity of the header tags – they are an indication to search engines that the wording within the tags are headers, and hence important to the page). You can do this in the Visual editor by selecting the heading and then the ‘Paragraph drop down.

SEOPressor then calculates an SEO score, which is dynamic as you make and save changes. And it also shows the keyword density on the post or page.

There are also options to look at a list of all your posts or all your pages with your SEOPressor scores included. There is a suggestion button for each that gives instructions for other actions you can take to improve your ratings. This is useful to give you an overview of where you are and which posts and pages you could spend some time tweaking.

How to Install SEOPressor

The plugin is easy to install in the usual way through ‘Plugins – Install Plugins’ and then using the ‘Upload’ option. The plugin adds a new section in the left hand dropdowns entiteld SEOPressor. Go to Settings and complete it as in this image, then you’re off.

How good is SEOPressor?

Whilst preparing for this post I thought I’d check a keyword phrase that I was targeting with one of my blog posts a while ago.

The image on this post (top right of the page) shows the results I got from www.google.co.uk for the search term ‘social media social proof’ using a website called hidemyass.com, which I used to avoid the Google personal search results kicking in. My blog post about social proof comes up in position 9 on the first page of Google. Ok, I’d prefer it to be higher but it was only published three months ago so I’m pretty chuffed!

I had a look around some forums to get some thoughts on the effectiveness of SEOPressor (most of the blog reviews of it are from affiliates…as is mine… I’m not saying they’re not fair representations – if they have integrity then they probably are – but it’s always good to find reviews without an affiliate link at the bottom isn’t it!).

I found this post on the Socrates Theme Forum from someone ‘called’ NoodlePoodle:

Since starting to use SEOpressor about three months ago, maybe for I can’t remember, my traffic has increased by at least 2000 unique per day. I know this sounds crazy and the plug-in is really fantastic!

By the way, my traffic just keeps growing and the bad thing is that I exceeded my bandwidth last month and might need new Web hosting!

Of course these sort of results are only as good as the keywords that you choose in the first place, but that is a different post – Search Engine Optimisation with or without SEOPressor!

If you want to find out more about the SEOPressor plugin you can go to the official website here SEOPressor. You can buy it there too. They offer a “100% Iron-Clad 60 Day Money Back Guarantee”, which is always comforting when parting with your hard earned cash!

Let me know if you have any questions about using SEOPressor – you can use the comments below.

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If you’ve been around my community for a while and/or are on my mailing list you will know that ‘Little Doddsy’, my daughter, makes a regular appearance within my business whether that be in my newsletter, on my website or even on the radio show that I co-present http://www.kentbusinessradio.co.uk.

Well, Hayley is one of my team and her one year old is getting into practise to follow in Little Doddsy’s footsteps. We thought you might like to see him at work!

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When you are blogging for business, you want to ensure that you are aiming your writing at your target market. There
are two main reasons for blogging for business:

1. to get traffic to your website
2. to position yourself as an ‘expert in your niche’.

As part of that, you are probably also trying to convert and attract potential customers (or suppliers or joint venture partners).

In any event you need to be clear about who you are trying to attract and then ensure that your blog reflects that.

When Blogging for Business, Choose your Blog url Carefully

The first thing to think about is the name of your blog. If you are blogging on your existing business website then you may not have much choice about the name – your blog may just end up being www.yourbusinessdomain.com/blog or www.yourbusinessdomain.com/news. But if you are starting from scratch or setting up your blog on a separate domain then it’s much better if you can choose a domain that uses your keywords.

But do remember that you will need to be able to tell people the url so try not to go for anything that’s too complicated to say or spell. If you do want to have a strong keyword rich domain you could consider also having a more simple url that is forwarded to the keyword rich version. E.g. I have my website (and blog) hosted on www.jododdssocialmedia.com but I give out the url www.jododds.com, which forwards to there. If you choose to do something similar, just remember to use the keyword rich version when linking to your website online to get the full SEO benefit.

Use the Google Keyword Tool to see what people are searching for in your niche and try to find a phrase that gets a good number of searches a month (preferably 20,000 or more but don’t worry if the searches are lower – you will be targeting a number of other keyword phrases throughout your site too and using means other than SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to get traffic as well. Targeting keywords is important but not the be all and end all of your website marketing).

Stay on Message When Blogging for Business

Then when you are writing your blog posts, ensure that you keep ‘on message’ with them. You can deviate occasionally to add some interest or maybe some more personal information, but in the main, stick with your main topic and hence your main keywords.

It will really help you in getting more traffic by being seen by Google and the other search engines as an ‘authority site’ when blogging for business or for other purposes and part of doing this is by keeping what you write very much ‘on topic’. And once a visitor comes to your site you then stand more chance of keeping them on your site for a reasonable length of time (important for your Google rankings) if you are providing information that all relates to their search (that is also helpful and readable, of course!).

Be Clear About Who You Are Speaking to

When you are writing your blog posts, have in mind who you are speaking to. You might even want to go as far as writing down the demographics and characteristics of your ideal client and then ensuring that what you write will be relevant to them. Social media and marketing in general is all about building relationships with your leads, prospects and customers and one way to do that is to create content that is useful and timely for those people.

If you’ve bothered to read this far I imagine that you are a business person who is fairly new to online marketing and to blogging for business specifically. You should be able to tell that this post is written for you.

To find out more about business blogging, download my free report: Blogging for Business

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Happy New Year!

I hope you had a restful and enjoyable time over Christmas and New Year.

I took advantage of the quiet to work on my membership site relaunch plan and to ‘cleanse’ my emails and sort out a new way of managing my projects. I don’t make new year’s resolutions but I do like to ‘clear the decks’ to start the new year afresh. And one of the things that I always try to do is work out how I can save time in my day to day business.

So, during the downtime I put together a free report for you to download as my New Year gift to you.

FREE REPORT: 10 Ways Small Businesses Can Use Social Media to Save Time

Here are just three of the list (to give you an idea of what’s in the 12 page report):

1. Connect with Customers
2. Get Answers to Your Burning Questions
3. Get Fast Feedback

Your can download the report here. No opt-in required. I hope you find it useful. Please feel free to share it with your friends and contacts.

10 Ways Small Businesses Can Use Social Media to Save Time

And here’s mine and Little Doddsy’s New Year message to you!

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Each month I run a monthly webinar with an expert speaker. The expert speaker is chosen because of their knowledge but also their ability to explain that knowledge and impart those strategies and tips in an easy to understand way – especially when they are talking about the more technical bits of online marketing!

Our expert speaker webinars are on the 1st Wednesday of the month and the LIVE webinars are FREE.

If you miss it, members of my ‘Everything you need to manage your own online marketing’ website get access to the recordings. You can join right now for just £1 for 7 days’ trial so that you can start to benefit from all of the detailed step by step instructions on the site that lead you through my ’7 Simple Steps to Online Marketing SUCCESS’ as well as from the recordings of previous webinars.

Guest Expert Speaker for November 2011:

It’s me!

I’ve been talking about membership sites for the last few weeks and I now have a free download report ‘Membership Site Success Tips’. People are downloading the report every day so it seems like a topic that you will be interested in hearing more about.

I’ll also open up the lines for a general Q&A about membership sites or online marketing/social media in general. So, if you have a burning question go and register now!

In this webinar I will share:

• The importance of building your membership site today
• The different types of membership programme to use
• The 6 characteristics all successful membership site owners have
• Which tools to use to set up your membership site

Webinars are recorded and hosted within our membership site for members only, so if you have come across this after event you can still get access by joining the membership site using our £1 for 7 days trial.

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You may not have heard the term social proof until recent years with the advent of social media, but this is not an internet phenomenon. Social proof exists in the offline world too. You know all about it – it influences you all the time in your day to day life. If you have ever gone to see a restaurant or a film because a friend has recommended it then you have experienced social proof. If other people show that they recommend something we are much more likely to give it a try. Clearly if it is someone who we trust then that makes the recommendation all the more powerful but even if we don’t know the referrers we often take note, particularly if there are a number of people ‘saying’ that something is worth a look at.

And there is a ‘tipping point’ with it too. In this video (not great quality and very strange dancing but it makes the point!) there is a guy dancing on his own for quite a while and even when a second one joins nothing much happens. But as soon as the third guy joins them there is an exponential effect and then people flock to join them.

Social Proof

What is Social Proof?

So, what other examples are there of how social proof works? This blog post explains:

How to Increase Social Proof of Your Expertise | Personal Branding …

As it applies to everyday life, an example of social proof is when a man who walks into a party with several friends and/or a beautiful woman. He attracts more people—especially more women—to him throughout the evening. …

Social Proof – it’s not about the numbers

This blog talks about follower numbers on Twitter and how they’re not always what they seem!

Social Proof or Social Spoof? by @orbiteers | Spin Sucks

Social proof is the phenomenon where people are affected by the actions of people around us. Twitter is a great example of this kind of psychology at work.

Here’s how you can use Social Proof as a business owner to help you to get customers

Here, Zeke Camusio, talks about how you can use social proof as a business owner to get your potential clients to hear and read good things about you, which as you can imagine is much more powerful than just telling them yourself how good you think you are!

Social Proof: The Most Powerful Persuasion Tactic | The Customer …

Social proof is showing your potential clients that other people think that what you want them to do is smart. When you say something, what you say is obviously biased. But, if someone else is saying it, it’s much more credible.

What can you do to facilitate the creation of social proof for you and your business?

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By popular demand, Little Doddsy is in this video sharing her wisdom about how to build friendships, which I think translates nicely into the business world when we are looking at using social media to develop relationships.

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In your business blogging you need to bear in mind that consistency is going to be the key to driving steady traffic to your website, but also as a way of engaging with your readers. People will come to expect a certain style from you from your writing and even down to the font and colours that you are using (although with WordPress that will be pretty much set and consistent for you already).

Business Blogging ‘Look and Feel’

Hopefully your website will be created using WordPress and so your blog will have the same look and feel already as your website. If that isn’t the case – and it’s not the end of the world – make sure that your blog reflects the impression that you want to give for your business and of that which you are ‘putting out’ with your website design.

I recommend to my clients who don’t already have a blog that adding one in as a standalone WordPress installation is fine with links back to the main website, and I also recommend a link on the navigation bar of the main website that says something like ‘blog’ or ‘news’. That way visitors to your website will also have an easy way of getting to your blog (and vice versa).

On that basis, although the design of your blog doesn’t have to be a perfect match to your website, it helps if you can have something that is consistent with what the reader will be expecting. And the same would apply for those people who find your blog first and then click through to your website.

I’m not a branding expert so you won’t be finding any technical or psychological reasons on here from me! It’s common sense though isn’t it, to have a consistent image wherever people find you so that they can link your profiles and activity straightaway.

Ensure your Voice is Consistent in your Business Blogging and other Social Media

The same applies to your writing and to what you are putting out on the social media platforms. You may already know that I talk a lot about authenticity within your marketing. I am pleased when I meet people for the first time and they say that I am exactly as they were expecting from everything they have seen and heard from me online. That’s the way it should be.

There is some debate about how focused your business blogging should be to make it effective. Business blogging is all about getting traffic to your blog/website (via the search engines, social media and direct) and then engaging with those visitors once they read your blog.

On that basis you should always be writing for both audiences, getting a balance between a search engine optimized piece of writing (deliberate american spelling of optimised there for that reason!) and an entertaining or educational one (preferably both!). And to do that you need to be writing ‘on message’ for the majority of the time.

Business Blogging is often ineffective

The search engines won’t see your site and blogs as authority web pages if you are all over the place, and your visitors won’t key in to what you are talking about either if your blogs are completely random! Obviously I’m exaggerating for effect but much of the business blogging that I see, whilst entertaining in many cases, isn’t working for those businesses in getting visitors or customers. And on that basis should be viewed as a waste of time – unless the business owner just likes writing and wants to indulge themselves (and has the time to do so!).

So it’s ok to add some personal flair, but do remember that your business blogging needs to be ‘on message’ in the main.

If you are using other writers on your blog – e.g. I invite guest bloggers on here – make sure you have some editorial guidelines that explain what you are trying to achieve and how you want the writing to be presented. Obviously you don’t want to be too prescriptive as that would stifle the writers but some parameters for them to work within ensures that your business blogging stays consistent, whilst offering value to your readers.

Consistency and authenticity in your business blogging promotes trust in you and your business, which can only be of benefit to you.

If you have a ‘quiet’ blog or are thinking about starting one, you may be interested in my 40 page ebook ‘The Business Blogger’s Manual – How to Increase your Business Income with a Blog’.

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