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3 Top Tips For Marketing Via Your Blog

bgt — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:20:14 +0000

In response to a number of inquiries about How to boost your Search position on Google, here are the three
Top Tips For Marketing Via Your Blog which we cover on our Low Cost Marketing Using WordPress one day seminar.

Chose a Compelling Title
Keep It Simple and To The Point
Tell Your Readers What They Want To Know

In order to boost your search engine rating on Google, Yahoo! and Bing, and make the most of your marketing effort, make sure that your blog posts take account of the advice they give about SEO. SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”, and describes the techniques of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the natural or un-paid search results.

In the context of marketing your business, using your WordPress Blog to tell people about your goods and services is a great idea, so you want the most people to see it. This is the way to make Blogging help your business for very little cost, and so get the word out to as many people as possible. A good Blogger grabs the attention of their readers, and holds it long enough to establish an emotional connection, so that they will want to return.

Compelling Title
First of all chose a Compelling Title to grab the reader’s interest and attract them to visit your site. This may be repeated in the content, which will help the search engine spiders correctly rank your site. On Google, the PageRank will determine how close to the top of the search results your site or page appears in the list returned to the user. Make sure your title is relevant to your content and brings visitors who want to know more about your subject.

Keep Content Simple
Once your visitor has arrived, you have only a few seconds to give them enough information so that they can chose that they want to read on. Keep your content simple and to the point to hold their attention, and if possible provide a bullet pointed list near the start to aid comprehension. This will allow them to confirm that they are on the right site for their needs without wasting time reading the detail. It is better to have someone decide that they do not want your content and leave quickly, than have them read to the bottom and leave disappointed.

Give Them What They Want
Finally, tell your readers what they want to know, rather than what you want them to know. That means you have to write to satisfy your readers’ need for information, rather than for your need to tell people about your new Widget making process! Tell them what they will find immediately useful, so that they will feel grateful and want to visit you another time. A happy reader is more likely to buy from you than a resentful one who has had to wade through all your marketing copy to find the nuggets.

A word of caution about taking the optimization too far: some SEO experts will claim to get you to the top of Google using secret techniques known only to a few, for which you will pay a premium. As Google will tell you, deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site.

So in summary

Chose a Compelling Title to grab the reader’s interest
Keep your content simple and to the point to hold their attention
Tell your readers what they want to know, so they will visit you another time

To maximize the potential of your visitors, without spending a lot of money on marketing, apply the three tips listed above and you will satisfy your readers’ needs, help them to feel good enough to want to come again, while aiding the search engines put you it the correct place in the rankings. That has got to be a good deal,and a win for everybody.

Other Resources:

LCD Screens Ruled Hazardous Waste By Environment Agency

bgt — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:19:14 +0000

The Environment Agency has now ruled that LCD screens contain hazardous components, which will have an impact on businesses that have been using flat screens for some time and may now be considering replacing them. The liquid crystal substances themselves is not hazardous, but the back lighting fluorescent tubes are, as they contain mercury.

According to the Environment Agency website (which will not be winning any awards for accessibility or functionality in the near future):

On the evidence we currently have, all electrical equipment containing cathode ray tubes and most LCD televisions should be classified as hazardous once they have been designated waste. Waste Plasma displays and televisions do not appear to contain hazardous components and at the present time we do not consider these hazardous.

If the hazardous components referenced above are removed from the waste electric or electronic equipment, and there are no other hazardous components present, the equipment will not be classified as hazardous.

For more informationm on the subject, see the Hazardous Waste Links below:
Environment Agency Website
Environment Agency PDF

More on Internet Explorer 6

bgt — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:20:16 +0000

As most people who visit this site will be aware, TechCo Support have been patient voices calling for the scrapping of Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), and a move to newer standards based applications which support tabbed browsing. With a large number of web developers in our stables, the persistence of IE6 and its numerous bugs, odd interpretation of standards and peculiarities is a consistent drain on resources and a barrier to progress.

We came across this resource for dealing with the persistent bugs in IE6 which contains lots of usefull information and further links to IE6 nuggets:

Ultimate IE6 Cheatsheet: How To Fix 25+ Internet Explorer 6 Bugs

Other Usefull Links and our earlier rants about IE6 may be found below:

Finally, if you missed our posting on IE6 and SEO, see:

IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice and SEO

The Spending Challenge Featured Blog

bgt — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:22:40 +0000

The featured WordPress blog this week is actually a UK government site called The Spending Challenge.

It uses a Theme in a directory called Coalitiondocdg, which may be a custom solution, with Contact Form 7 plugin by Takayuki Miyoshi to capture your feedback. It also uses Recent Posts with Excerpts plugin by Stephanie Leary, which lists your most recent posts with excerpts, optionally limited to a category.

According to the home page, The Spending Challenge is your chance to shape the way the UK government works, and help us get more for less as we try to bring down the deficit. It seems to be open initially to people who work in the public sector, but after 8th July the process will be opened up to the wider public. It is easy to make a suggestion via the site, and the email address is optional, so there is a level of anonymity.

For what it is worth, my suggestion was to allow (or even ecourage) organisations to save money by using open source web applications like Apache, MySQL and WordPress on the national infrastructure to provide a low-cost generic platform for non-critical applications.

To visit the site and see an example of WordPress in action in government click here to visit The Spending Challenge.

If you are interested in adding either of the plugins to your WordPress site, see the links below:

You can download the plugins from the links above, or alternatively, if you are in the Install Plugins section of your site Dashboard, search for Recent Posts with Excerpts or Contact Form 7, and the when you have found the right one, click on Install Now.

If you are interested in those plugins, you may also be interested in the Contact Form 7 Widget by Stephanie Wells which allows you to use Contact Form 7 Forms in your sidebars.

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) In Force

bgt — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:21:30 +0000

The European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive was first ratified by European ministers in 2003, and was eventually meant to pass into UK law in August 2006 although, delays by the Department for Trade and Industry held it back.

As of 1 July, the new Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations are intended to ensure that major producers, rebranders and importers of household electrical and electronic equipment are signed up to pay for the responsible disposal and recycling of their goods. The WEEE legislation finally came into effect 2 January, although those affected have had until July to ensure they’re fully compliant.

If you have an interest in the disposal of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, the Government Guidance Notes on the WEEE Regulations are well worth a read:
Click here to read the WEEE regulations: Government guidance notes (PDF)

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/tna/+/http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file38209.pdf

Code of Practice for collection of WEEE from Designated Collection Facilities

http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file37922.pdf

For a cautionary tale, see the fine handed out to Plymouth City Council for WEEE breach

Three Million iPads in 80 Days

bgt — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:21:58 +0000

Apple® today announced that it sold its three millionth iPad™ yesterday, just 80 days after its introduction in the US. They claimed they hit the two million mark in less than 60 days from launch on 3 April 2010. They only began shipping the iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK at the end of May.

It is estimated that developers have created over 11,000 new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch™ user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. Apple claim that iPad will run almost all of the more than 225,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for the iPhone® or iPod touch®.

To find out more, click here to visit Apple website.

Government Action Plan on Open Source Awry

bgt — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:46:43 +0000

A colleague recently invited me to comment on a proposal they have been reviewing before a major government department undertakes a technology update in the near future. I was reminded of our post back in April last year optimistically titled UK Government Encompasses Open Source. I wonder if I might have been breaking out the champagne bottles a little early, as it seems that little has changed in the glacial world of government IT thinking. Obviously my colleague, the government department involved and the suppliers involved will not be named for legal reasons.

It appears that it might take the closed world of government procurement and suppliers a few more decades before the radical concepts of open standards and best value impinge on the practices and closed thinking. After all, Open Source would mean we could use WordPress, PHP and MySQL on Apache for non critical applications such as Intranet sites, for example, or the Joomla portal engine and content management system.

However, the proposed technical solution in the, soon to be rolled out, upgrade is likely to exclude Open Source (presumably on grounds of security!) and any operating system except Microsoft Windows. I will not stoop to comment again on the browser version, as you can read previous musings in A Few More Nails in the Coffin of IE6

In a touch of spookiness reminiscent of the best spy movies, since starting this post, the source material has disappeared from the Cabinet Office web site! At the start of writing it was at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/transformational_government/open_source.aspx, but the link now returns a Page/Document not found! It is not just us who are pointing to the missing link, as writetoreply.org also carry the broken link at writetoreply.org/ukgovoss/, along with some of the details.

For those who did not dig into the content of the paper before it disappeared, the document outlined the expected expansion in the use of Open Source and Open Standards, with the main action points as follows:

Clarity in procurement
Increasing capability within Government
Reuse as a practical principle
Maturity and sustainability
Supplier Challenge
International examples and policies, and keeping up to date with developments
Industry/Government joint working
Open Standards
Open Source techniques and reuse within Government, and appropriate release of code
Communication, Consultation and Review

Government Action Plan on Open Source Awry
If only someone had a copy in their cache, we could read the whole thing. If you are linking to this post or referring to it or it’s source, please use the tag #ukgovOSS to enable interest in the subject to be tracked.

TechCo Management Back From Hong Kong

bgt — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:55:45 +0000

TechCo Management are pleased to announce their return to UK from Hong Kong after crewing and supporting Success Resources, Asia’s largest seminar company, promoting the Platform Skills Intensive from Christopher Howard Training. While there we made lots of new contacts from Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, while renewing friendships with crew from the USA.

While in the deep immersion environment, we were able to compare, contrast and debate the difference between Associative and Linear thinking, and what it might mean for the future of project management and the creative process. While Western culture ignores or marginalizes non-linear conclusions, Asian thinking encompasses and encourages Associative ideas in order to preserve harmony. For more on this topic, see Coaching and Facilitating Associative Thinking

A Few More Nails in the Coffin of IE6

bgt — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:19:25 +0000

A number of well connected people have been asking about the article we wrote back in January about the persistent use of Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6) in Government circles (click here to read). This is particularly relevant as Microsoft are working on IE9, while some IT Suppliers, who can not be named for legal reasons, are busily planning to deploy whole new infrastructures including IE6.

A few bolder people in Government IT have asked us, off the record, for links and references to some of the criticism of IE6 on the web. Although they are clearly concerned about using an obsolete browser, they wisely do not want to raise their heads over the parapet! After very little searching, we have come up with the following links on the subject:

For a quick sample of IE6 Vulnerabilities check out:

It is also worth a visit to Ed Bott’s blog, to check out It’s time to stop using IE6, which contains the immortal line that
“Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice“.

Finally, for anyone in the development community who is interested in the direction Microsoft is going with the next browser release, or any senior manager wanting to make a strategic decision on which browser version their next infrastructure upgrade will deliver, take a look at the comment from Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer on The Windows Internet Explorer Weblog..

If you are wondering about the direction to take with your next browser release, and policy, dogma or contract clauses prevent you from considering Chrome, Firefox or Opera, then you should consider An Early Look At IE9 for Developers when making your decision. If you find that the detail there is incomprehensible, or that you can’t see the reason why it makes any difference, then maybe the questions you should really be asking yourself are: “Am I qualified to make such a decision?”, and “Where do I get my advice? “.

If you want partisan advice about your choice of browser, on which to build you next corporate infrastructure, you can click here to contact Bruce Thompson

How Long Should A Blog Post Be?

bgt — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:06:54 +0000

Our post last Thursday has sparked some debate around the office about how long a blog post should be. I mean honestly, a blog post should be as long as it needs to be, and no more!

It is a bit like the instruction I was given all those years ago when as a newbie mechanic I asked how far should I tighten a bolt. My mentor, a wily old veteran who had probably been around at the retreat from Dunkirk (or is that Dunquerke?), nodded sagely and then told me (with a straight face) to tighten it until it snapped, and then back off a bit…

As a rule, I always finish a blog post off and then leave it for a few hours before going back to edit down a bit. Usually it just needs to have a few superfluous words removed, and the odd repetition corrected. That is really the same thing, as my old mentor would have advised; write until it is just too long, and then back off a bit!
A quick random sample of a few blogs gives a sample (admittedly unscientific!) of post length as a general guide. The following are average word count per post:

Techco Support average 368
Bruce Thompson Coaching average 438
Guardian Technology Blogs average 665

However if you average up posts from one of the more prolific bloggers, the word count can be a lot higher. Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist averages about 1500 words a post, with some as high as 1856.

Now if you think about it, the length of you article reflects the content. For a helpdesk how-to, you really only need to know the problem and solution, so a low word count is appropriate. For a coaching article, more wordage is required, because there is likely some scene setting, to give people the vision, sounds and feelings that they might experience. If you are a worldly wise uber-blogger like Penelope Trunk you probably have a lot more to say.

The advice we give to trainee bloggers who ask the question “How long should a blog post be?” is simple and gradual:

Aim for 200-300 word to start with
When confident aim for 400-800 words on a specific topic
Once you are a veteran blogger, make your post as long as it needs to be!

To check out the blogs we have sampled here, click on the links below to take your own word count: