How Important is Internet Anonymity?

First, let's split this into two areas: public anonymity and internet anonymity.

Public anonymity is for people who don't want the world to know who they are. Don't judge them for not wanting to be 'famous' as there will be thousands of people with different legitimate reasons, perhaps not wanting to be bullied for their opinions or not wanting to openly discuss something they can't come to terms with from their past e.g. they may have been abused and want to give support to other abused people without public admission of their own embarrassing secret.

Internet anonymity is where people sign up for a service, such as email, and don't want to register all their irrelevant personal details as this could be open to exploitation. It's bad enough that large service providers, such as google and facebook, monitor browsing habits and feed through adverts from the browsed pages or similar.

Yes it's important for people to remain anonymous, for hundreds of reasons. But it's also important to protect users from idiots (a collective term for anyone who persistently uses the internet for illegal, immoral, uncivil or just plain nasty abuse). I say persistently because anyone can make a mistake or two and such errors of judgement should be treated accordingly, with an apology and good behaviour forever after being a suitable means of punishment.

I'm not a god or the brainiest person on the planet so I don't have an answer for how to sort it all out. There are even levels of acceptable behaviour from one person to the next: some people are offended by swearing, others by bad grammar. Tips: on social media, choose contacts wisely, and where there is an opportunity of moderating content, use it.

Whatever the answer is, let's try to work it out without 'Big Brother' restricting what little freedom an ordinary person has.

re-thinking SEO support

I've read so much advice from Google and global SEO experts that there is no more storage capacity in my brain and some of the stuff has probably fizz-popped with overload, never to be recovered. So what have I discovered?

Here is some of the conflicting data:

• websites with lots of in-links are riding high in the Google charts
• websites with lots of in-links are being black-holed by Google
• Google values websites with several pages, several words on each page, unique content
• Google is starting to say that in-links are not so important
• websites with good content but very few in-links are nowhere to be seen
• Google values websites that have been around a long time
• many older websites contain irritating out-of-date information

...and so on.

I've always tried to follow Google's guidelines but sometimes they are ambiguous and sometimes errors and misunderstandings occur. But... there are many small-business owners that are encouraged to use a range of tools from social media and blogging to reach as wide an audience as possible - companies that cannot afford to hire a Google guru; people who are enthusiastic about their products or services; ordinary non-technical people who will completely innocently raise the wrath of the mighty omnipotent one.

Plus, there are ordinary bloggers who genuinely stuff their posts with links to pages they like - not all links are created for commercial purposes. For example, if you find a fashion or travel website with pages that you love and want to share, you may create a whole list of links, e.g.

• Google black T-shirt
• Google black T-shirt
• Google red T-shirt
• Google grey T-shirt
• Google black T-shirt
• Google blue graduated T-shirt
• Google maps blue T-shirt
• Android T-shirt
• YouTube white T-shirt
• YouTube black T-shirt
• Chrome white-blue baseball T-shirt

• Many more styles and colours available at www.googlestore.com

The foregoing list of [links removed] was not in line with Google's guidelines because (a) there are too many links to a single site and (b) this post is not about clothing.

What I could do, of course, is use rel=nofollow for each of those links.

I digressed a little there, so what conclusions have I reached regarding the support I offer to clients? None really. Not yet. I still know more about the internet, websites and SEO than a typical business owner so I shall continue to offer best advice but I may re-think the content of my monthly SEO services packages.

I've streamlined the SEO services over the years and no longer focus on link building via third party article submissions. In order of importance, I optimise website content, write a few blogs (both on-site and off-site) and set up / manage social media.

We also help clients manage their domain names, hosting and emails and, of course, website design and build for clients takes up the rest of the time.

Well, glad to have got that off my chest!

Last Minute Christmas Gifts to get you out of trouble!!

Instead of going to Amazon, why not choose a different kind of gift voucher this year. Here are a few ideas to start with and maybe I'll add some more as I discover them...

Lampshade Craft Course & Soft Furnishings Gift Voucher

more about
Gift vouchers for craft courses and soft furnishings

more about Lampshade making course

Make a 30cm drum lampshade at a 3 hour workshop which guides each person through the process of creating a lampshade from the fabric selection or using materials from home. The course includes:
- placing & cutting fabric
- attaching lampshade laminate
- finishing the inside of the lampshade.

All materials & refreshments are included for £35:
- lampshade kit
- a choice of fabrics & selection of trimmings
plus tea or coffee & cake.

For more details, to order a voucher or to book a course, call Mrs Steed on 01371 872697

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Makeover and Photoshoot from £19

Book by 24th December - £38 for TWO people to experience up to 4 hours with trained make-up artists and stylists.Included for each person is an individual print for to from the photoshoot.

An enjoyable gift for friends, sisters or mother-and-daughter to share.

For more information on this and the following gift ideas, call 01923 44 0000


Paintball for 4 (Nationwide sites)

Half price if you book this offer by 24th December.

Only £20 per person (for 4 people)

Includes all equipment andlunch.

Over 50 locations available nationwide


Also...

EyeSkate in London from £8 to £13 per person, until 5th January.
Full details: Eyeskate London

B&B North London, £18 per person per night, 10 minutes walk from Camden Market.
Book by 29th December for dates up to 30th April.
More details: B&B London

Best wishes for Christmas and a Happy 2014 

To F/up or Not to F/up?

We've just been given the go-ahead to build a website for a new client. The original contact was made in November 2012 - I found the email in the 'referrals' folder. While I was there, I looked through some other referrals that haven't (yet) developed into new clients.

These are examples of genuine un-converted referrals from happy clients who have recommended The BPc:

July - a website client recommended us to a local village pub. We contacted them once and followed up once. Nothing heard at all from them.

June - we had a meeting with a local accountancy firm following a recommendation from a social media client. They are currently very busy and advised that it may be quite some time before they have time to re-vamp their website for a properly optimised site. We keep in touch every few weeks.

April - initial discussion (on-going) with local hairdresser who has no website, following a recommendation from another of our clients. We keep in touch every couple of months.

Between September and November last year, we had three referrals that have never gone further, there are many others prior to those. We are pleased that our clients continue to recommend us and, in fact, some clients have sent a number of people our way. We've never paid to promote our services since the company was formed, over 20 years ago.

We write blogs quite a lot, though ;-)

The question is - how often should they be followed up? We reckon that unless we are encouraged to keep in touch, twice is about right. Feel free to comment...

Twitter. Why do you want more followers?

A tweet appeared on my timeline recently "I need more followers" and I wondered why. I guess that tweeting away if nobody is reading is akin to talking to oneself but surely the followers will follow if there is a reason to do so.

So, why do you need or want more followers? Perhaps the ones you have don't interact - do you interact with them?

To find tweeters with some common ground, search for your local town or the football club you support, look at their profiles or follow them for a while (you can always un-follow - and don't worry if you lose some followers along the way).

Why do you need more followers? For business marketing purposes, this is understandable - it's a measure of the popularity of your brand and an opportunity to market to a wider audience. It's also an opportunity to interact with your customers and potential customers or provide them with a service. You may be interested in How to Increase Your Twitter Followers.

Some people are obsessed with increasing their number of followers on a personal level. In order to do this, many who are not wittily original or otherwise interesting (or famous) often use the strategy of following as many people as possible in the hope that they will be followed back. What's the point? These are value-less followers because people who are following numerous accounts are clearly not interested in reading all the tweets.

Of course, the canny ones who follow thousands will create a list or lists of tweeters that they are really interested in so that they can easily be read, and the other tweets ignored.

Whenever someone follows my twitter account, I do them the courtesy of checking them out and deciding whether I want to follow them back. Usually, if I find their tweets interesting, informative, relative, I'll follow back but I will un-follow if they tweet too many times a day or just keep plugging the same thing: boring! There are several people who followed me then stopped following me, reasons unknown, but it doesn't matter - in the same way that not everyone I meet becomes a friend.

I like to feel some connection with people I follow and therefore my main disappointment is that I don't get much interaction. For example, if I'm interesting enough to follow, why not respond or retweet?

You can follow The BPc at twitter.com/BPcUK.

Comments/responses are welcome ... 

Is Branding More Important than Customers' Needs?

During the process of designing and creating a Brand for products, many other factors take priority over what the customer would like.

For example, if a global company sells a range of beauty products, they would have to put specific information on the packaging for various countries, which means that the packaging may be larger and incur additional costs when multiplied by millions - what normally happens is that the font size used is as small as they can realistically manage. This makes choosing a new product off the shelf a very difficult task for people over middle-age, unless they are used to wearing their glasses on shopping trips.

Additionally, a super-chic brand likes to keep packaging uniform so that the brand is identifiable at a glance. If branding dictates that a box should be pink with red, white and blue polka-dots, customers can easily spot it amongst all the other brands.

However, when you take home your spotty boxes and throw them away, you are often left with identical product containers inside, with just the 8pt font to indicate whether it is night cream or day cream, eye make up remover or nail varnish remover.

Some companies get it right and consider the more mature client who uses the bathroom sans reading glasses - a dark blue label for night cream and a sunny yellow label for day cream with SPF 75 (possibly lobster red labelling for day cream with a low SPF? Haha!) These companies probably have a staff with mature ladies in positions of influence - even if it is the boss's wife!

0845 'phone numbers

I have long avoided calling 0845 numbers. They are a total rip-off and it makes me angry that we are forced to PAY to WAIT for service - it's like paying for every second we queue for tellers at a bank or check-outs at a supermarket! You can't help wondering if revenue-generating waiting times are deliberately longer.

Even the government's HMRC condones, in fact uses, 0845 numbers. I can see that the original concept was to cover costs of the service but it is an unfair system when there is no alternative. With no choice, the caller has no control over the amount he/she will spend - how long in the queue, the quality of the response at the call centre, etc. - or if it will be value-for-money and time well spent.

So... a plea to businesses: don't sign up for these services because you will lose customers. Dave Millet of the Branduin Business Support team seems to be the person who can help small businesses with their telecoms decisions (no, he's not paying me for this but he has helped a couple of our clients).