Using online directories to attract customers

Online directories can be a low cost method of driving potential customers to your site. There is a real opportunity to reach an audience within a particular index and to enhance your search engine rankings on the internet.  Read on to find out how online directories can help your company to attract customers.

Where to advertise online

Until recently, online directories such as yell.com or the yahoo directory have been index based, allowing companies to list their name and contact details. Costs can be smaller and more reasonable compared to other marketing techniques. For local based directories it can often be free to list your company, whereas national sites are likely to charge you a couple hundred pounds a year. Inevitably bigger visible adverts will cost extra, as will having your company listed under multiple categories.

Directories can be great for boosting your SEO, however advertising using this approach will not guarantee custom, considering that your business will be amongst hundreds of others on a page. Therefore it can highly competitive and make it difficult for your company to standout when taking the directory route.

If the directory is free, there is no gamble and your company has nothing to lose out on. Nethertheless, depending on your target market it may be more worthwhile to optimise your marketing potential on your own site and spending money on targeted adverting via Google ad words for instance.

Customer directory reviews

An increasing number of directories are offering simple rating systems and customers the chance to post business reviews. It’s evident that users are moving towards social based websites, combining business listings with reviews allowing people to share their experiences. Free index is an example of a directory that has customer reviews.

The target audience that you select can be of great importance when choosing where to advertise. If you trying to target a nationwide or global audience, it’s unlikely that a local directory will be of much use other than to increase your link value and the position that your company achieves within search engines.  However, if your company is trying to attract local clientele, submitting a website to a local directory can be worthwhile in generating positive results.  Picking a sector specific directory site can also be useful in order to drive more targeted results.

Writing a listing

It’s important to communicate as much as possible about your business when writing a listing for a directory. Some directory sites only require your business name and contact details, while others may provide more space to write about the services that you provide.

When writing a listing put yourselves in your customers shoes and try to include your unique selling feature. For example if your company provides a 24 hour service, promote this clearly within your listing.

Finally, track your traffic to measure the effectiveness of your listing. Do not solely rely on directory figures, especially when your company is paying to marketing their services. Google Analytics is a free and useful service, allowing you to track where your traffic is coming from and whether it’s worthwhile to carry on down that avenue.

To get you started, free directories that your company may wish to try out other than those already mentioned could be Thomson Local or the UK Business to Business Directory.  
 

Tips for Spring Cleaning Your Computer

• Get rid of all the clutter and start with the most obvious items.
• Remove old programs, if they're not in use, what's the point in keeping them?
• Defrag your computer to find files faster and load programs quicker.
• Clear your cache; it's full of temporary internet files which aren't always necessary.
• Run Disk-Cleanup to remove unnecessary files from your computer.
• make sure the RAM you have is the same or more than the recommended amount your operating system requires.

Quick guide to developing an e-marketing plan

Developing an e-marketing plan:

• Identify your target audience - rank them in order of importance so that you can allocate resources accordingly.
• Set your objectives - possible objectives could include raising awareness, entering new markets, launching a new product, focusing on sales, or internal efficiency.
• Integrate with existing marketing - select e-marketing activities that will help you achieve your objectives and to fit with any existing traditional marketing activities you already use.
• Establish a budget - careful budgeting allows you to prevent costs spiralling out of control.
• Measure your campaign - build in feedback mechanisms and regular reviews to enable you to assess the success of your e-marketing activities.

Will the JT saga opens the floodgates to a free press in the UK?

John Terry has received plenty of criticism over the past couple of weeks and rightly so, but I’m not going to drag on about how wrong he was and that he should speak out rather than remain silent because I’m sure everyone has heard enough about it! But one of the most notable developments that has come about from the John Terry episode is the landmark ruling by Mr Justice Tugendhat that swung the pendulum back in favour of freedom of speech, when he revoked an injunction granted to John Terry, the Chelsea and England captain, which had blocked reporting of his extra-marital affair. Mr Justice Tugendhat commented that while “freedom to live as one chooses” was a valuable principle, “so is the freedom to criticise – within the limits of the law – the conduct of other members of society as being socially harmful or wrong”.

Since then Portsmouth manager, Avram Grant, has been named as the Premiership manager that last year was seen visiting a Thai brothel. At the time, the newspaper blamed “creeping privacy laws” for preventing it from publishing further details. For too long the rich and famous have been using the law in ways that are not open to the rest of us. Super injunctions appear to be used by celebrities to invoke a privacy law by the back door. A privacy law that was designed to help those who are weak and vulnerable rather than rich selfish footballers such as John Terry who was more concerned about losing his sponsorship deals than anything else.

However, it remains to be seen whether Mr Justice Tugendhat's ruling marks a sea change, or a fleeting zigzag.

Drowning in your manifesto?

Here is the link to a blog entry I wrote for the Independent Network, whilst on work placement with Parker, Wayne & Kent.

Katie Price...the ultimate money making machine!?

Katie Price (a.k.a Jordon) married Alex Reid in Las Vegas yesterday. The pair, who’ve been dating for seven months, tied the knot in a “simple, private” ceremony and surprisingly enough, there was no magazine deal involved! A spokesman for the couple stated “Their decision to marry has not been made with any pre-conceived commercial plan or media deal in place, and their reason for getting married is purely down to their love for each other”, which is fair enough, but how long will it be until Price and her PR team sit down and start putting their commercial and media plan in to place, if they haven’t already done so!

Reid was voted the winner of Celebrity Big Brother last Friday. When entering the Big Brother house he was booed, but came out to a rapturous reception after winning the show, having turning around the public’s negative depiction of him. But what if he didn’t win and he came out of the experience still portrayed in a bad light, would Price have married him, would she still be with him! Personally, somehow I don’t think so...she is a very clever character at grabbing any opportunity and trying to put a positive spin on it, though she still seems to be faltering since her high profile divorce with former husband Peter Andre last year. When I say faltering, by no means on the financial side of things, more in terms of her public image.

In November, Price, 31, revealed during a live interview on reality TV show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! (Cha-Ching £££) that she had split up with Reid. She said at the time: "It's best that I'm on my own. I don't want a relationship... I'm not with him, no."
Price went onto to apologise for her behaviour since her break-up with Andre, saying she had "acted like a right twit". Does acting like a “right twit” include getting together with Reid! The reason she went onto I’m A Celebrity was to regain her popularity (whilst earning a few bob!) after breaking up with Andre, however after that failed she went on to dump Reid live on national television as a last resort to try and somewhat salvage her way back into the public’s good books.

Yet, more or less two months down the line the pair have wedded. In a magazine interview last week (Cha-Ching £££) Price revealed that "This year I will marry Alex and I'm going to have his kids" and no doubt she will be laughing all the way to the bank with the commercial and media deals heading their way after Reid’s new found fame.

I’m not knocking the girl as I know for sure that she can’t be as bad a person the media makes her out to be, but she certainly knows how to make the most of a money seizing opportunity when it comes her way and as a result at times doesn’t do herself any favours. After Price and Reid’s “quickie” wedding, bookies are already setting odds on when they split. William Hill is taking bets at 10/1 that the happy couple will officially announce their separation by the end of the month and if they make it to March, the odds lengthen to 12/1.

Oh... and have I mentioned that I wish the newlywed couple all the best for the future!

Work placement...done!

On Friday last week, I completed my work placement at Parker, Wayne & Kent (pwkpr) in North London. It was an enjoyable experience, where I learnt a great deal about the everyday INS and OUTS of working for a PR firm.

I worked on various projects that required:
• conducting research
• conducting vox pops
• editing the company website
• e-mailing and phoning potential clients
• writing blogs
• writing news releases
• writing press releases &
• writing a photo-call

I was constantly busy and never had time to take it easy, demonstrating the busy nature of working for a PR firm and furthermore I didn’t have to make a single cup of tea whilst I was there! The area in which I most improved in was my writing ability, as I improved considerably in writing news and press releases compared to before, where I was prone to writing in a university essay style format.

One of the more exciting assignments I undertook was conducting vox pops, which is carrying out interviews with the general public, engaging spontaneous opinions in a chance encounter. A work colleague and I hit the streets of North and Central London equipped with a microphone and video camera to find out the public’s thoughts on independent politics for the Independent Network (IN) - a loose association that provides support to political candidates that are not members of traditional political parties or organised factions. We got a good range of opinions from all ages and backgrounds and it was fun to get out of the office and gather an outlook of different people’s views. You can view one of the vox pops that we did on the IN's Youtube page, by clicking here.

Overall, the experience at Parker, Wayne & Kent has been a tremendous and memorable one.

Is social media a negative form of communication for sports professionals?

A couple of weeks ago, Liverpool player Ryan Babel hit the headlines for complaining that he had been left out of the squad for his team's match against Stoke City on social networking site Twitter. "The Boss left me out," Babel told his Twitter feed, "No explanation." At the start of the season, Sunderland striker Darren Bent also complained on the social networking site about his previous club Tottenham Hotspur. The pair of them were reprimanded for their use of Twitter. Last week, the Manchester Evening News went on to claim that Manchester City and Manchester United had placed a ban on social media, which since has been denied.

On a personal level as a Liverpool FC fan, I believe that it was wrong for Ryan Babel to publicly criticise the club and manager for being left out the squad. The reason for this is that firstly, I believe that he did not do himself any favours by posting his opinions on Twitter. Secondly, it was wrong for him to openly be disrespectful to his employers in the public eye, considering that they are the ones who pay his wages.

However, on the grander scale of it all, websites such as Twitter give millions of sports fans the chance to debate, discuss and interact with their sporting idols every day. If sports clubs were to ban players from using social media, it would put up a brick wall between the two. Social Media is a gateway for sports clubs and professionals to better engage with their supporters, wherever they may be.

A better way to encourage the use of social media such as Twitter, would be to draw up a series strict guidelines, so for example, players cannot talk about internal matters or team selection like Ryan Babel did for instance. As a result, sporting professionals would be able to communicate with their supporters, whilst minimising the risk of sensitive information being leaked.

Is Twitter pointless?

Ricky Gervais has quit Twitter, branding the network site as pointless and the adults that use it as "undignified". Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows users to send and receive messages called "tweets". Since its creation in 2006, the website has gained plaudits and popularity worldwide as an information network keeping everyone up to date with what is happening in the world.

The reason for the famous British comedian quitting Twitter is that he just didn’t "get it". He understood it being used as a fun networking device for teenagers, but felt that it was a bit undignified for adults to be using it, in particular celebrities who seem to be showing off using the networking site. He is the latest in a long line of celebrities who have stopped tweeting, including the likes of Miley Cyrus who exclaimed that Twitter should be "banned from the universe".

I do agree to a certain extent with Ricky Gervais that Twitter can be pointless, in terms of people, famous or otherwise posting updates on what they have been doing. I mean who really cares if Jonathan Ross for instance posts a tweet saying that he’s just had breakfast and a cup of coffee, I certainly don’t! However the point that the likes of Ricky Gervais and Miley Cyrus seem to be missing is that Twitter is much more than just that and the networking site can be used in a greater breadth than just tweeting lifestyle updates.

Twitter has actively played a part in campaigning, education, emergencies, politics and many more fields. During the 2008 Mumbai attacks eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every 5 seconds. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured. Furthermore, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and locations of hospital needing blood donations. CNN went as far to call this "the day that social media appeared to come of age" since many different groups made significant use of Twitter to gather news and coordinate responses. In June 2009, following allegations of fraud in the Iranian presidential election, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool and as a method of communication with the outside world after the government blocked several other modes of communication.

These examples show Twitter‘s vital contribution in everyday life, as a vital information networking tool. In Public Relations, Twitter is becoming an ever important communication device for businesses and government to promote their work effectively. Democratic president Barrack Obama effectively used the site for publicity in the 2008 US presidential campaign to his advantage, showing that Twitter is an essential PR tool in reaching a wider audience.

So, is Twitter pointless...no it isn’t!