We’ve all read the articles about how you can use your own blog to market your business, but how about using other peoples’ blogs to market it too?
SMEs have a growing challenge to embrace social media, get heard above the noise and be transparent with any communication with consumers. Most of us will have understood the need to claim our voices on twitter and facebook. This is all good and grand but it sits in a very closed environment.
Consumers are increasingly checking google in order to get extra background on businesses before making a buying decision, this is especially true for newly launched e-commerce websites and lesser known brands, they want the reassurance that the site is trustworthy, that other customers have bought from it and that most importantly there is help in need of assistance.
Embrace the bloggers
There are millions of people blogging daily or weekly about all manor of issues. They blog about their favourite technology, cars, food and some even blog about what they wear every day. These bloggers have an online voice, in an open environment, their findings can influence the buying decisions of their readers and the rich content of their blogs is like honey to a bear for Google and Bing. Search engines value blog content highly and the long term benefits are SEO related needless to say that you should start embracing the bloggers with your brand.
Bloggers should been seen as potential customers, they should be treated like a member of the press. They are probably more influential than many of the press. Fuelmywebsite was recently featured online in The Sun and The Guardian – collectively we received 150 visitors, from traditional mainstream press.. A quality blog review can deliver more visits but importantly, there are many quality blog reviewers to approach, many many more than mainstream press.
So how does it look for a new customer? In this digital age, people will always firstly buy from recommendations from friends or family, failing that they look to google and will search for a brand. If your business has no-one talking about, how will the new customer be able to determine that you are what you say you are. In their eyes, you could be anyone. Having bloggers talk about you not only enables initial coverage to their readers, it also helps Google position the reviews alongside your website, new customers can even leave a comment on the blog review and actually ask for that recommendation, why, how or what. This also helps remove off some spurious comments that may have been written by your competitors..
Fuelmywebsite.com helps small businesses connect with bloggers through their blogger community of over 40,000 bloggers, Fuelmyblog. Businesses decide on a product they are willing to put in the hands of bloggers in return for a full review. This not only highlights SMEs products and services but it also generates fresh content from a customer perspective.
Bloggers only apply to campaigns if they are interested in the service or product in the first place and if it is relevant to their lifestyle. They receive no money and will blog in their own words their experience with the merchant and the quality of the service they receive.
Many SMEs are using our service to incorporate the reviews in their testimonial pages, they use this opportunity to engage with the blogger on twitter and use the link of the review on their facebook page. The service is both a powerful validation and SEO tool. While it may not generate a huge surge of traffic or instant sales a campaign is a fast track ticket to the blogosphere and online branding communication.
And that is why the UK Government are going to be using Fuelmywebsite to help UK companies export out of the UK and reach farther afield.
Kevin Dixie is Managing Director of Fuelmywebsite and can be contacted by email kevin {@} fuelmyblog.com (remove the {}’s) and found on Twitter @kevindixie
Has your Wordpress been hacked? Removed the scripts and cleaned your blog following these Wordpress Hacked instructions? It happened to me. I also found a couple of php files uploaded in sneaky places like in the uploads/ folder. I also found a “new” admin user, the username was a script. TIP: Click on edit the user, delete the script, change the role to subscriber, save, then delete the user.
Once I had carried out checks on every folder, updated wordpress and plugins etc, I still had a problem. Hidden admin users.
When you return to your user admin panel do you see more Admin users than are showing? HINT: look at the number in brackets versus the number of admin users listed.
The invisible or hidden users need removing. The only way is to go to your PHPMyAdmin and remove them, here is a quick step by step guide:-
1. Firstly, while on the user page in the admin panel on Wordpress, right click on ‘view source’ – find the following:-
<tbody id="the-list" class='list:user'>
Under this will be the users, jot down the numbers of the users you know are correct – which should be all those showing, the number of the user is (for example, 2):-
tr id='user-2'
2 . Go in PHPMyAdmin.
3. On SQL tab, query this:
select * from wp_usermeta where meta_value LIKE ‘%administrator%’;
and delete the row(s) that don’t match the ID# you wrote down as per step 1
4. On SQL tab, query this
select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key=’wp_user_level’ AND meta_value=’10′
and delete the row(s) that don’t match your ID# you wrote down.
5. In your WordPress site, refresh the Users page, and the invisible Admin should have disappeared.
I hope this saves you a bit of time and searching..
This really is the FAQ page on Take A Break Website…
Those outside the UK, this is a magazine with 830k+ readers weekly, it is sold in most shops and superstores – it seems they are not too worried about their site and online users, why should they, their latest ABC magazine reader stats show they are only down 7%..
So this post has been written to record the thought process, i’d appreciate any feedback and thoughts. It is rushed, there are stacks of errors – it is a quick thought snapshot.
I have been observing my teenage daughter recently and have stumbled upon something very strange. They crave low tech.
Why?
Imagine this, you are 13 and want to take pics of yourself with your friends, all posing covered in make-up (or the boys have hairwax etc), final destination of that picture – Facebook..
So all the adults merrily produce technology that enables the teens to digitally produce images that can easily be sent to Facebook via camera on a phone. What the adults forget is that the teens also want to go to sleep staring at their pics..staring at the ceiling, wall or bedside cabinet.. just as we did in the 70’s (replace decade with your own). They have iPad’s, mobile phones etc but these gadgets require power (teens forget to charge) and they make young eyes very sore. This is a big omission.
Solution – a Polaroid camera that prints instantly and cheaply – think inkjet tech (the teens are not interested in quality – just speed) and at the same time a small button can be pressed that sends the image to Facebook/Twitter etc via wifi connection. If the photo costs under 30p per print, the teens would love it.
I tend to distance myself from conferences and networking with people that claim to be experts at this that and the other. If you have never created anything, you can not judge a start-up or an idea. A start-up is just that, the probability is that it will change totally, yet week in, week out, we see panels of people all working for SME’s or corporates, having never taken a risk before, telling what it takes for your business to be a success.
What does work, is hard work. A lot of it. And the ability to think, react and keep changing direction.
To be a success while starting up, you have to work so hard you cannot catch your breath, you have to stop watching TV all night, you have to forget long lunches and going down the pub, you have to work like a freak. But be careful, it is addictive.
I was told this week that our business that guarantees SME’s online conversations is right place right time and very lucky. Bullshit, that luck is four years of ball busting and hard work. Walking away from a six figure salary and solid career after my 30th birthday, with a comfortable family, lovely house, sports car and stability was my first step towards becoming something I could finally be proud of.
To create a business that never existed before and then make money from it is the most satisfying feeling I have ever had. It has not been easy and I imagine most people would have given up during some of the dark times we have been through. But my biggest problem, I have never ever walked away from anything I have started.
Hardly anyone knows what the business is doing or where it is going. I like that. The people that pay to use our service love it and keep coming back month after month. My target is to pick up 5,000 brand new paying customers this year in our first year of aggressive customer acquisition. That represents a huge amount of money, but more so, it represents a whole shift in the way SME’s do marketing.
I signed a few Joint Ventures in the past few weeks in the UK and we will be the first platform doing what we do covering the entire Middle East with a team secured out there within three months (and have commitment from a Government in the UAE). I have also pitched my vision at cabinet level with the UK Government, which is being discussed and am told there will be some kind of progression.
Why I am saying all this. Because to get here has been very very hard work, with loads more highs and lows to come. And everytime I feel alone, I watch the following video. Morten Lund had everything and lost it, the speech he gave just after this happened at Le Web ‘08 remains the most inspirational ten mins of my life. Watch it, be patient during the clumsy start, and let me know how this made you feel.
