I am not sure if it was the over load on cakes or the volume of questions that pushed the event beyond 5PM but despite running over a little on our agenda, yesterdays seminar was a sucess. We trust our members found the event informative and useful, providing practical guidance on further developing their websites and marketing.

For those Innovation Club Members who were unable to attend on this occasion, we look forward to seeing you at the next event. Remember, your monthly and quarterly reports provide you with detailed ways to improve your ranking, marketing and conversions. These reports are specific to your website and your business therefore the techniques and actions we recommend in the reports and summaries in particular are unique to you; make the best of them and continue to achieve great results for your hard work. 

If you would like more information about innovation club or would like to join take a look at www.innovationclub.co.uk or call us on 0161 368 9100

Looking forward to welcoming our guests for our Innovation Club Seminar at the Tameside Centre For Enterprise today. Expect an afternoon of facts and information to guide you on your way to a more productive online presence.

The London 2012 Olympic Organisers are preparing to bring London and the UK’s reputation back to Dickensian times with a ban on being social.

Have you bought tickets for the London 2012 Games? If you have - have you read the Terms and Conditions? Probably not. Who does?

Take a look at the following extract from the ticket terms and conditions:

19.6.3 Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.

Notice the line that says “[a ticket holder may not] publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally”? 

When the next Olympics come around in Rio in 2016 you can bet they will embrace social networking as a way to bring communities together, share the spirit and the games around the world instantly.

What is the UK thinking?

Shhh, dont tell the world the Olympics are on.

Thankfully most attendees will be blissfully unaware of the ban and will continue to promote the UK and the games using the worlds best communication and marketing tools available.

For businesses equally worried or unsure about Social Marketing AsOne are here to help navigate you though the sea of opportunities and coach your business to a gold medal position. Don’t hide your head in the long jump’s sand pit like the UK’s Olympic Organisers, embrace the power of social networking.

For more details about how you can get ahead with your digital marketing contact AsOne on 0161 368 9100. or visit our Innovation Club website for more information on the ways we can help with your social marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and digital marketing.

(Source: tickets.london2012.com)

Being connected socially with either Facebook or twitter has now become second nature to us, and is as regular as brushing your teeth or putting your shoes on. And when you think, I wonder how social interaction can go further – welcome Pinterest!

Pinterest is the latest fad in social interaction and is one of the fastest growing social services in the world, connecting millions of people through their common interests! Not only can you share your own work or ideas, but you can browse other ‘pinboards’ for inspiration.

Recent reports suggest that Pinterest drives more traffic to blogs than twitter. 

Could you be increasing your product or service’s visibility by using Pinterest? 

To make blogging or any social media interaction second nature the key is to devise a trigger event. This trigger event will help you to create content regularly, with good reason and usually results in more relevant and interesting content too.

There is no single rule for what a trigger event may be, it is different for every business because of the nature of a companies services and the way they deliver them.

All you need to do it think of what could be a trigger event for you. What changes daily or regulary that would could share or wish people knew about? Do any of these happen to you?

• Down to last 100 green shirts
• New shipment of frisbees due in 4 days
• Just delivered stunt kite in 3 colours
• Project Completed Today
• Our client said this …
• Swimming Pool closed for cleaning
• Baked 100th pie today
• Opening late tonight
• Service half price today

Some things will happen regularly at your company and you probably don’t even realise it because you deal with the events on a daily basis. Think about what your team say to customers regularly or wish they could have said to prevent the customer from having to ask in the first place.

If you can find your trigger event you can start to create meaningful and timely content ready for immediate distribution to your blog, website, or social networks.

Regular relevant updates will help to keep your existing customers engaged and new customers aware that you care.

If you need help identifying your trigger events or you want advice on how to engage your audience contact AsOne.

Making use of keywords is one of the most important and high return activities in the search-marketing field.  Whether this is a hot topic of yours or something that is relatively new, keywords (or key terms) is a must, and is really important in helping you optimise your website either with PPC campaigns or updating webpage content.

Keyword research can help you predict shifts in demand, respond to changing market conditions and produce content that your potential customers are already actively seeking.  So when a customer does a search for a particular brand or service you provide, you want your site to appear – and the ultimate aim is to have your website occupy the #1 spot.

Next time you have a few minutes spare, look at your website or blog and consider tweaking and adjusting your content in ways that may cause it to rank higher.  Have a look at your website and think to yourself – when was the last time I refreshed my web page content? When did I write my last blog article? What phrases do I want my website to be found for? What am I currently being found for? Where do I rank in Google searches if I search using these words?

Would you benefit from having an expert advising you on all of these things and more every month? Talk to us about Innovation Club from AsOne starting at only £39/month.

A Reading (UK) cake baker potentially lost up to £25,500 from its profits this year because of a poorly conceived collaboration with a discount voucher website Groupon.

Need a Cake in Woodley is run by Rachel Brown and has made a loss on over 100,000 cupcakes they made to fulfil a Groupon voucher deal. The US based Groupon is a ‘crowd deal’ website offering vouchers to subscribers on anything from restaurant meals to spa treatments. The deals are only available if a minimum number of people sign up. And the minimum number did sign up to buy 12 custom cupcakes for only £6.50, a massive 75% discount on the normal price of £26. The problem was there was no upper limit on how many vouchers could be offered.

8,500 users signed up to buy the cupcakes which meant the bakery lost between £2.50 and £3 on every batch it sold.

The owner had to employ 25 agency staff at a cost of £12,500 to help the 8-stron team with demand and fund the extra distribution costs.

Steve Consalvez, partner and spokesperson for Need a Cake, said: “The business has been going for 25 years and following the Groupon discount offer, the company has realised it isn’t the way to go forward as it has wiped out profits for this year. However, it will be continuing to build on its successes in 2012.”

A stark lesson in the importance of good deal planning and also the power of internet marketing. Perhaps Need a Cake expected like so many to use the offer as a marketing tool and was prepared to sell a few boxes of cupcakes at break even or below cost but the demand was far more then they expected. Its a small business version of the infamous Hoover flights offer from the early ’90s and a warning to other business to look at the business merits of any offers conceived. 

For safer, more reliable business marketing advice talk to us at AsOne. With over 10 years experience and over 300 business going from strength to strength AsOne can guide you through the digital marketing minefield.

(Source: bakeryinfo.co.uk)

Let AsOne look after you with [link innovationclub site] Innovation Club [/link], our proactive members only club that gives you confidence and support for your business and your website.

What is Innovation Club?

Innovation Club is piece of mind.  Piece of mind that your website, product or service is in good hands with the attention and expertise only 10 years of success can bring. Innovation Club is an exclusive membership, which supports and consults you in this ever-changing digital world. 

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You have seen the adverts, had the emails and will probably have been told that you can get cheaper websites online than going to a website design agency … well its all true, with one big BUT!

You will no doubt want to appear in the search results on Google? You probably want the best chance of a high position? Well if you go down the template route from the large suppliers your website will likely be penalised according to respected professionals in the SEO world who test and monitor Google’s search engine algorithms. In recent updates to it’s search algorithm, Google has devalued websites that duplicate content. Fair enough, who needs 27 websites all saying the same thing about the same company … but it now goes further.

Google now devalues websites that duplicate code as well. That’s essentially what a template site is, duplicated code. Nobody knows what percentage of code Google classes as duplicate content, its a well guarded secret.

So, if you want your new website to rank on search engines your first step is to avoid template, automatic or build your own websites. If you have your website built properly, from scratch and individually your foundation is solid. If you choose to use a template site you will be facing an uphill struggle to compete for position now and in the future … and who needs that?

Talk to AsOne on 0161 368 9100 before committing to a template project that you may later come to regret.

Did you know the computer company Dell announced it made £6.5 million US dollars in revenues from their involvement with Twitter.

Dell uses Twitter to “listen and learn” from their customers directly. The number of customers following Dell online has increased considerably, with “11,844” people following them on Twitter @DellOutLet.

Those “11,844” customers receive special discounted offers exclusively as a reward for following the company on Twitter. This is a clear indication that Twitter and other social media networking sites are a very powerful marketing tool. 

Are you social?

Here at AsOne, we are social. You can find us on, 

http://www.facebook.com/asonedesign
http://twitter.com/asone
http://uk.linkedin.com/companies/asone-design
http://weareasone.com

We tie all online and digital marketing together so it works, AsOne.

Make sure your company gets “social” today.

Give us a call for more information on 0161 368 9100 or email us at: here@asone.co.uk.