Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog

At Generate UK we like to continually research and investigate marketing and web based software.  Content Management has been a hot topic for quite a while now for companies looking to continually manage and develop their website.  What CMS should you use?  How much should I invest? What features should I look for?  We like to think that we have researched quite a few systems within the market place built using .net, php and other open source platforms and therefore can provide a good recommendation when choosing a CMS system. 

A good CMS system is not just about having all the bells and whistles as this is not necessarily going to always be the best option for your business. It boils down to your business needs vs. requirements vs. cost.  We believe that the investment in web technology, as with any business investment, must produce a strong financial return for the owner or otherwise we perceive it to be a bad investment.

The two key components to choosing a good CMS is usability and functionality, you must feel comfortable using the system and it must contain the functionality needed to operate your website.

There are many cheap and nasty CMS systems in the market place so be careful and request a full specification and a demonstration. http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ is a good place to start as you read about different CMS and compare functionality against cost. Generally speaking you would expect to either pay a one off cost and a yearly maintenance fee or a yearly/monthly license fee. 

A good CMS should allow for: 

• Non-technical users are able to manage the content of their site without the need for external specialists.
• Low cost of support and continuous version upgrades.
• The ability to manage your site from anywhere in the world.
• Allow for excellent search engine listings.
• Should satisfies all known international accessibility and compliance standards
• Seamless integration into existing IT systems protecting previous investment.
• Integration into other software applications such as e-commerce and e-booking systems to provide streamlined e-business.
• Reducing costs in print and promotion.
• The ability to generate sales leads through forms and download areas.
• Rapid deployment of new designs and content

Established back in 1995, Sitekit has been at the forefront of web content management systems development in the UK.

The Sitekit software empowers website designers and website managers by removing the technical barriers to creativity, and delivering online excellence through technology, training , support and like with many technologies the older it gets the more reliable it becomes and far less buggy!

The Sitekit CMS is used by some very high profiled clients including the likes of BT, The Times and ADT and operates across a number markets including Health Care, Travel, Media and the Public Sector to name a few.

Sitekit has many features to its software which includes all of the above points of what you should look for in a quality CMS, plus many more.

Sitekit offer two license variants:

CMS Corporate
CMS Advanced

The main difference between the two licenses is that if you’re looking at publishing multi websites or portals with a different URL’s then the advanced option would be the option you need.  The corporate site comes with the same level of functionality however just one license for one website is. 

For a list of features go to http://www.sitekit.net/Product-Overview.html

From a technical perspective the latest version of Sitekit CMS, version 8 requires; a .net application server; MSSQL database; Windows Server 2003 operating system; using programming languages, ASP,.NET, NET2 extendable via web services. 

I hope this posting has been useful for those looking for a feature rich, flexible and easy to use CMS.  

What do you think? Was this blog post useful? Please comment below or add to the debate. Please do not hesitate to contact Generate UK for more information and ideas about how to we can help you with content management systems.

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One part of SEO that is often hard to explain to people not familiar with search engine optimisation parlance is the importance of Nofollow and Dofollow links. Anyway, I was going to write an article on this, however after reading the one below by Kevin John Lewis, it’s pretty hard to top. So have a read and see what you think.

No Nofollow Here - Join the Anti Nofollow Movement

Many people aren’t actually aware of this, but many of the backlinks you’re creating to your website by replying to relevant blog posts, are completely pointless, thanks to the use of Nofollow tags.

(When I say this, I am assuming that you create good, valuable content in blog comments - rather than just blog spam comments - but the very fact you’re reading this says you’re probably not the blog spamming type, if blog spammers spent time reading about what they’re doing, they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing - as most of it is completely pointless)

Nofollow tags simple tell search engine spiders not to follow links on a page - and they were introduced in order to help stop the motivation for spammers to plague blogs & forums with pointless, valueless spam comments just in order to get backlinks.

Personally I think it was a bit of a strange movement that most of the web marketing community have followed. The real value of spending time & effort creating valuable content by replying to blog posts, and other forms of content, has been taken away just to deter spammers!

If there is a link on your website that you don’t want there - you don’t want it there because it has no value to your reader, so you’ll want it deleting, not making nofollow. If you just make it nofollow & don’t spend the time to make sure that your visitors time isn’t wasted by following spam links, but you do spend the time making sure that these links aren’t followed by the search engines, what you’re saying is that you’re making your website for the search engines, not for your visitors!

So - what is the point of nofollow? In my opinion there’s absolutely no need for it, spam links should be deleted, or prevented from appearing in the first place with the use of anti spam tools - of which there are many, especially for the more popular blog packages - just setting all comments to nofollow so that spam links don’t effect your website negatively in terms of SEO, is saying that you don’t care as much about your visitors than you do about search engine ranking.

So why is everyone still using nofollow? Well, firstly not everyone is using nofollow, there is now a strong movement away from nofollow, there are growing numbers of people who share this same opinion as I do.

Having said that, the vast majority of blogs use nofollow and many large websites, including wikipedia.

Most of this is due to the fact that most blogs are set to nofollow as standard, and most people don’t realise there is a need to change this.

The easiest way to see if links are set to nofollow, is to use the seobook SEO for Firefox addon, which is a simple plug in for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Just download the plug in, go to options, and select for nofollow links to be highlighted - you’ll then be opened to a whole new world of nofollow links - and you may notice some interesting things.

Firstly, check if your own blog is set to nofollow the comments - if it is, then I encourage you to join the movement, bring the value back to blogs by saying no to nofollow. You can do this by downloading add ons for your blog package.  If you use wordpress, as I do, there are a number of nofollow remover plugins you can use.

Personally I use two plugins - one called Nofollow case-by-case which allows you to be selective in your use of Nofollow, rather than setting is as default, and another plugin called Nofollow Reciprocity, a very clever plugin which allows you to automatically nofollow links to those larger websites who are known to be using the nofollow attribute in order to help them to sculpt their pagerank.

You see, although most people use the nofollow attribute now because it’s set as standard in blog packages, there are a number of people who’re using it in order to help them to get a better link popularity.

The idea many people have is that the link popularity coming in to any page of your site, known as “link juice” is set out through links, so by getting as many links as possible into your site, and letting out as few as possible - your juice will rise, and your Google page rank will increase.

The truth is that it doesn’t quite work like that, you don’t “lose” link juice by linking to other pages, it’s simply that the amount of link juice that goes to the page you’re linking to is divided by the number of links on the page. Yes, if you only have three links from a page then each of these links are going to do a lot better off from the link than they would if you linked to 100 pages from the same page - but it wouldn’t do your site any harm either way.

The link juice you share with other sites isn’t lost.

Many people have the idea that if you keep all your links in your blog pages internal links, you’ll keep all the link juice passing back in a loop through your own site, instead of sharing. In practice however this isn’t the case, and link juice hoarding isn’t a great long-term strategy - for many reasons.

Firstly -  Google and all other search engines, do not like tricks, cheats & shortcuts - anything that they feel is being abused, will be changed so it can no longer be abused - and may even be reversed so that sites that were benefiting from such a strategy may be penalized for continuing to use it. We’ve seen this happen with many strategies in the past.

The use of the nofollow attribute to hoard pagerank, is now basically being used to show visitors one thing, and show another thing to the search engines - to the point that entire websites are full of links to websites that they are not allowing the search engines to follow. Google are very clever, they employ a lot of very clever people - they will already be onto the fact that the nofollow attribute is being abused in this way, and they will already be finding a way to filter out the effects of this strategy.

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to start to see websites with very low numbers of outbound links, being penalized for hoarding link juice in this way - at the very least the effectiveness of this kind of strategy will diminish, as do all strategies of increasing results without increasing value to the visitor.

Secondly - outbound links are important! A website with good content will always include links to interesting & relevant websites. Google do not recognize nofollow links as outbound links at all, so if you show google a site with virtually no outbound links, you’re showing them a website which isn’t giving as much value to the visitor as a site that does have outbound links.  Outbound links to relevant, quality websites, using anchor text (link text) relevant to your topic or industry, are good for your website. Yes, we do need to be careful not to allow spam links to bad neighbourhoods, and we do this with the use of good housekeeping & clever antispam tools, but we don’t need to make every link nofollow.

There are many other reasons not to attempt to hoard link juice in this way.

·         You risk making enemies of past & future allies.

Many people are not aware of nofollow links, and give content in forms of blog content, forum posts, and other forms of content, thinking that they’re gaining something in return - give & take. If you’re using the nofollow attribute to get without giving, while allowing contributors to believe that they were actually getting something in return, you’ll find that people stop giving you content.

As more & more people are becoming aware of nofollow, many people are checking this before giving content, in the form of blog replies, forum posts, whatever it may be - so you will probably find as time goes on, less & less people will be visiting your blog who do actually have the ability to add good content. Think about it, if someone can spend their time contributing somewhere that does give something back by allowing a backlink which does count - or they can spend their time contributing to somewhere that will not allow backlinks which count, where are you going to contribute?

·         You risk your reputation

More & more people are becoming aware of - and annoyed by, the use of the nofollow attribute. There is even an uprising against large websites such as Wikipedia, who now use the nofollow attribute on all outbound links - and with tools such as Nofollow Reciprocity which publish the details of all of the larger websites which use nofollow for outbound links, and with a growing movement away from nofollow, wesbites which use nofollow for all outbound links are going to start being seen as lesser quality websites, and their reputation may be at risk over the next few years.

This is certainly the case for large websites - but for smaller websites in niche markets, the damage to a websites reputation could happen a lot quicker, as news travels a lot quicker in smaller niche markets.  It only takes a few people within a market to start talking about a particular website that was well respected in that particular market, to start to be seen in a dimmer light once people realise that the indiscriminate use of nofollow tags is being used in order to selfishly hoard link juice.

SO - in conclusion, I recommend that you do not use the nofollow attribute in blog comments in order to hoard link juice. If there is a link on your blog that you do not think adds valuable content that you would like to link to - then why allow your visitors to waste their time visiting the link?  If you think it’s a link to a lousy site, delete it all together.

Visit my SEO Blog, as long as you’re contributing to my blog posts with decent replies, and your website appears to be a genuine website with unique content, that is relevant to web marketing, SEO, online business, then it will be left where it is - spam posts won’t even get on thanks to the use of decent anti spam tools. Based in Cheshire, UK (Close to Manchester) - SEO Consultant Kevin John Lewis delivers effective SEO services, and SEO web design and Re-design and prides himself on the increases in the quantity & quality of search engine traffic that he achieves for his clients. What do you think? Was this blog post useful? Please comment below or add to the debate. Please do not hesitate to contact Generate UK for more information and ideas about how Dofollow and Nofollow links affect your business.

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Recently we were approached by a journalist and asked a number of questions that relate to digital marketing, in particular how it can help drive business for small, medium and large enterprises in the UK. It’s always nice to be asked for an opinion on the market and our views on different technologies; as a result we thought it might be useful to post the full interview on the blog.

[1] What would your key advice be to any SME that is taking its first steps with online marketing?

Don’t be afraid to become a Geek! Unlike traditional above the line marketing, online marketing is measurable and provides you with a wealth of stats, information and measurements. So our advice to any client in this situation is to analyse the data as much as possible. Identify trends and customer behaviours, drop what does not work and do more of what does work. For example, if you are using Search Marketing and have a high click through rate but low conversion rate, you know you need to work on making your landing page more compelling. The stats help you to make more informed decisions about your Internet marketing.
No SME should consider using online marketing unless they have access to statistics to analyse.
 
[2] Search marketing seems to have come of age over the last few years. How can even micro businesses take advantage of this kind of online marketing?

Search marketing is a great way to level the competitive playing field. By bidding on keywords that are relevant to your business, you have the same opportunity as any other business to drive highly targeted and qualified prospects to your site. For any micro business this is great news as it means the road to their prospects is significantly reduced, allowing them to create significant revenue streams quicker than would previously had been possible. The reverse side to Search Marketing is that it can also be an expensive waste of time if not done correctly, which often leads to micro businesses being burned and never using Search Marketing again, which is a shame because as a marketing tool it is awesome if used right. In our opinion, it is vital to the success of any campaign that you research your keyword/keyphrases thoroughly and have landing pages that help to deliver your campaign objectives.
 
[3] How can SMEs integrate their offline promotional activity and their online marketing?

This question largely depends on the market the SME is in. For example, if you’re an ecommerce store you could drive people to your web site with traditional flyers and brochures, using discount codes or coupons. We would advise consistent branding for both online and offline promotion activity, we would also advise any client to leverage their website traffic by collecting email information, which can be used in the future to send offers, newsletters etc to.
 
[4] Do you think the future of online marketing is mobile via smartphones? Will it become the mobile Internet that everyone is predicting, or a different kind of commercial platform that SMEs can use for promotion and advertising?

Smartphones are an additional channel, another way to reach your target market. I don’t think it is a replacement technology; instead it is something that you would use or cater to as part of your marketing objectives. If you’re building a new website now, you make sure that it can be viewed properly via a smartphone. So to answer the question, I don’t think the future of online marketing is mobile via smartphones exclusively, I think it is just another platform that people need to get used to. This is a great opportunity for innovative advertisers and there may be small niches where exclusive smartphone advertising works, for the majority it will be part of the digital mix.
 
[5] As consumers have become more Internet savvy how can SMEs position their enterprises to take advantage of this massive commercial channel?

Firstly, they should have an Internet Marketing Strategy. It’s amazing how many companies still do not have such a strategy in place, only by taking the time to understand the potential market available to the SME, will senior stakeholders make the necessary investments in terms of skills and technology. Next they need to identify which technologies will suit their business, for example can they streamline their ordering process by offering ecommerce? Following this they need to look at Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging and social media and understand why they should be taking advantage of these channels in order to increase their revenues, branding, leadership and online conversations.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies who are still not considering the Internet as a viable channel for increasing their sales opportunities. This is usually because of fear of the unknown or because of lack of skills, it’s a real shame as if they do not act soon, their competitors definitely will.
 
[6] No business can ignore the social networking space that has rapidly developed with Web 2.0 technologies. But marketing to this sector has proven very difficult. How or even should SMEs place social networking within their digital marketing? Or is it still too early to commercialise this space?

Web 2.0 and social networking should play a large part all SMEs digital marketing strategy. However, first they need to understand what Web 2.0 and Social Media actually are and what it could mean to their business. This is a major hot topic for us at the moment; we have covered it in the past on the blog. You might find these previous posts useful as a way to answer this question.

10 Reasons why companies do not adopt social media

10 most popular excuses UK businesses use for not having a blog

Business benefits of social media

This post defines (in our opinion) what social media is and how it can help businesses:

How social media can help your business

[7] Email marketing is the digital equivalent of direct mail but with spam still the scourge of the Internet, how can SMEs use this marketing channel effectively?

 

 

Generate UK email marketing tips

[8] With masses of press display advertising moving online, the website banner ad seems to be the advertising channel of the day – at least at the moment. What are the key skills that SMEs need to master in order to get good ROI from their banner/display advertising?

Good ROI from banner advertising is dependent on your ad being clicked and the page that is clicked to being strong enough to convert the visitor. We advise our clients to think along the following lines:

Objective – What is it? Traffic, sales, special offer email signups? If you’re paying for a banner ad, what is it that you’re encouraging people to do?
Banner – Is it compelling enough to make people click, is it appropriate to the site it is being shown on, is it in a good position.
Landing Page – Will your landing page convert? Does it include a call to action? Is it easily understood what it is that you want your visitor to do?
Test – Move your banners, try different messages, try different sites, sizes, colours etc
Analyse – Analyse the data, which banners were more affective? Which sites were better for you? Most click throughs?
Repeat – If something works well, do it again.
 
[9] Viral advertising has seen some of the most successful online advertising of recent years. But as with social networking promotions, viral seems to need a special understanding of the target market to be successful. How can SMEs exploit viral marketing in their enterprises?

Yes viral advertising requires an understanding of the target market; however we would argue that this is the same for any marketing venture to be successful. Some of the greatest viral campaigns have been incredibly simple and no one would have predicted how successful they would be. There is no special ingredient or secret sauce to make something go “viral”, it happens because it is something engaging that is released to the right audience at the right time. You could argue that the skill is in knowing where to release your content and to which audience, which again would come back to knowing your target market. Once you go viral, hold on to your coat tails as it will be a roller coaster ride for a few days.

 
[10] Successful online marketing is all well and good, but how can SMEs effectively track their campaigns to analyze if they are giving the expected ROI?

There are many great tools out there that will help SMEs track campaigns and analyse their visitor data. Most email marketing systems come built in with their own tracking tools, which allow the user to measure open rates, click through rates etc. The same is available for your web site via technology such as Google Analytics.
In order to measure ROI, one must first understand a campaign objective and what it is that the SME is trying to achieve. We would argue that having access to the metrics and the data is the number one reason for taking part in online marketing.
 
[11] As the publishing phenomenon of the last few years, the blog has taken the Internet by storm. How can SMEs use the power of the business blog as a marketing channel?

We’ve made a few blog posts about this very topic. What are the benefits of blogging?

What now? Do you have any comments about this interview? Would you have answered any of the questions differently? Please feel free to add your comments below or contact us.

 

 

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As a business, we speak about social media and the different facets of social media every day. Sometimes we raise the topic with clients because we see an opportunity for them to use social media to boost their traffic, or because a customer has raised the topic with us and they’re looking to learn more about the subject.

What we’ve learned is that many businesses in the UK are completely turned off by the phrase “Social Media”. Despite the phrase being around for a while now, it still has that connection to the consumer market; it’s still thought of as that “Myface” (sic) site where youngsters post their pictures of drunken nights out.

So this blog post is about exploring some of the more popular reasons we hear from businesses in the UK about why they are not adopting social media and what we think in return. There’s an opportunity for you to post your comments at the end.

• The bad press that has surrounded some of the larger social media sites can mean that some businesses are put off from even exploring the possibility for their company. Interestingly, these are the easiest to turn around as it is a case of realigning what social media for business is and where the benefits and the risks lay.
• The time aspect is often raised in relation to how long it can take to understand the different elements of social media, how long it takes to create content or indeed the time it takes just to take part in a community. In our opinion, this is not a good reason for not exploring social media. You should look at which facets have more resonance with your business, stick to these and do these well. The end game is to create more online discussions which will lead to more qualified customers knowing your brand and visiting your site, which hopefully will lead to more business, so it’s worth the effort.
• It’s not secure is something that we hear quite regularly. This is interesting as when you dig deeper into this subject, it’s obvious that this is a perception challenge. There have been some very alarming news stories about identity theft; however it comes down to using best practices and never giving more information away than is necessary.
• We’re worried about our brand is one of the concerns about social media that we agree with. It is absolutely paramount that you’re in control of the messaging and content that is being used and being associated with your business. This is why many of the larger US brands have adopted social media strategies that mean that all content and information they release is approved by them. The thought process here is that social media and online PR is not going to go away, therefore it is better to control what is being used rather than be controlled by it.
• It’s just a fad, is something that we hear quite a lot. In some ways, we can understand this; the hot new social media site of yesterday is often a baron waste land tomorrow. So why bother taking the time trying to keep up with what’s hot and what’s not? The trick here is to use the sites that are relevant to your market and your message. Try to use sites where a community already exists, if you prefer to build your own community be in it for the long haul.
• I just don’t get it and have no idea what social media actually is. Let us try to simplify it for you; Social Media is about online communications. Internet users have been communicating online since the mid nineties; it just was not called social media then. Social media for businesses is about using social media to enhance your brand, increase the number of conversations about your business and to drive targeted visitors to your site. This is in exchange for your business adding value and sharing their experience via a social media platform such as blogging or forums.
• What’s the value for us as a business? This is a great conversation to be involved with as this what it is all about. If someone could demonstrate the business benefits of taking part in social media, would you do it? If someone could walk you through a social media strategy and show you how to build your brand awareness, would you do it? The answer is probably yes if that new business is worth more than the cost of learning. The great thing about Internet marketing is that it is very measurable, so you should quickly be able to measure your return on investment.
• It’s just something for the youngsters, is something that we hear a lot. It’s probably a fair conclusion as well, however social media is a platform that the youngsters choose to communicate and receive their information on. Therefore, if this is a market that you want to sell to or take part in, then you must take the time to understand the medium. The ways that we communicate changes, 20 years ago there were no Internet and no mobile phones (barely) and look at how these two technologies have changed the way we do business.
• How do we manage the content? This is a concern usually raised by companies that are concerned with employees publishing rude, racist or abusive comments and are worried that posts of this nature will reflect on the business. This is a very important concern, however not one that should put you off moving forward with social media. Internal policies and guidelines are very important and making sure your staff are aware of their responsibilities will help you.
• The boss won’t allow us to use it is a very popular reason we hear from companies. This is about perception and probably one or two of the reasons we have already discussed. In our experience, a well articulated business plan that covers the benefits as well as how you plan to cope with the concerns is a good way to changes people’s minds. Most bosses are keen to increase their profits and revenues, if you can align your social media objectives with this, you should be ok. 

What do you think? Is our list accurate or are we doing UK businesses a disservice? We’d be keen to hear your feedback and comments, either use the form below or you can visit our contact us form. If you would like to discuss your social media requirements with Generate UK, quote the title of this post to lock in a 20% discount against your first purchase.

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This blog post is about Enterprise Email Marketing and the 9 steps that you need to understand in order to really begin to improve your email campaigns. The basic premise is that everyone already knows about email marketing and how to do it, so therefore there is nothing left to learn.

Not surprisingly, we believe that there is a lot to learn. We also believe that for the 9 steps of Enterprise Email Marketing to add value to your campaigns, you need to learn and understand email marketing processes.

The 9 Steps 

1.       The Data. This success of your email campaign largely depends on the quality of your data. You should also have a strategy for your existing data and look at how you will add to your data.  Think about the format of your data and how easy it is to manipulate so that it can be used for your campaigns.

2.       Objective. If we work on the basis that you have great data, then the email objective should be not to waste that data. This means that you should take the time to plan your email campaigns as you would any other marketing activity. Before you move on from this step, establish whether your email falls into one of the following categories: awareness, sales, leadership, information or events.

3.       Roles. This is about understanding the roles of your team. Specifically, who is writing the content, who is responsible for the campaign objectives, who edits, who sends and who tests. In a large team environment, it is very important to have this part of the process documented so that ownership is never an issue.

4.       Process. The process is a collection of the two previous steps. It is usually documented and becomes a way to check progress. It is also about the process of testing your email campaign; during your objective stage you may well have come up with a number of good ideas. Email allows you to test different ideas, plan for this during your process and you will begin to see which campaigns and ideas work best.

5.       Template. The template is always an emotive stage and you may find that you are restricted in what you can do. In our experience, the simpler the template the better. Remember that this is an email, which most often will open in a program like Outlook.

6.       Delivery. The great thing about email is that you can plan ahead and schedule your emails. You should really take advantage of this. If you are an experienced user, then consider the use of triggers to take your email campaigns to the next level.

7.       Compose/Send. We advise that if you’re sending a branded newsletter then you should be consistent and send roughly at the same time each month. Before you send any email, test it. Send it to as many as ten different people and check to see how it is presented.

8.       Analyse the data. In our opinion, analysing an email campaign is as almost important as your data. Take advantage of the fact that email ma