This all depends on what caught your eye out of the usual selection of brown or white envelopes.

An internet spider is a robot that crawls around the world wide web. They are also sometimes called crawlers. They use an algorithmic programme that follows links throughout the net searching for new content. This then fetches the new webpages and adds them to the search engine indexes. Google is a crawler-based search engine, as it relies on spiders to automatically create its listings.

Some spiders have even been given names, such as Mozilla for Netscape, Scooter for Alta Vista and Slurp for Hotbot. They leave evidence of their visits just like human surfers in analytics, code and stats.

Spiders enter and leave websites through links, which act as portals throughout the net. That’s why it’s important to have lots of incoming links to your website to encourage spider activity. If you provide lots of new content for spiders to feed on, they will remember to visit your site more frequently.

Spiders only see text on the webpages, therefore pictures and Flash programmes are invisible to them. You can add alt tags to your pictures which are written descriptions behind them, enabling spiders to understand your images.

Spiders are programmed to look for new content with links, tags and keywords. They particularly relish appropriately selected keywords combined with extremely relevant links and their destinations.  They don’t like hidden or invisible keywords, as they think they’re being fooled. If your site’s navigation is complete, spiders will visit every page, indexing anything that’s new. If you treat spiders well, they are more likely to return.

Spider top tips

• provide lots of new content for spiders to feed on
• remember to put alt tags behind your pictures
• gather as many relevant inbound links as you can for spiders to enter
• remember to add your tags within your blog posts
• create contextual links (linked key-phrases) for maximum effect
• make sure your links go to relevant destinations
• blogs are visited hourly by spiders, unlike websites who may not be visited for several weeks

How does your online marketing hold up? Even if you have a system in place, are you sure its actions are focused on the correct direction?

I gave a health check at a networking meeting to a HR specialist. There were a number of subjects we touched on that she could expand from her existing systems in place.

First, I assessed she wished to change her newsletter provider and was considering ConstantContact.com and Aweber. We discussed the merits of both, but further probing revealed that she could combine Paypal with Aweber to provide a shopping cart that collects the details of her purchasers. These details can be used for promoting further products or events, as well as setting up a series of automated emails to further educate her subscribers to the remainder of her business.

Of course her newsletter will also do this function, but with a different slant. Don’t forget the call to action and purpose focus, or your communication will be ineffectual. Even if your message is purely educational, link back to the relevant pages on your website for further knowledge.

We discussed her series of online adverts she had in place. They had been suitably placed by an Adwords expert, but I felt there was more that could be done at the website end. The main consideration of this kind of advertising is a correct focus, for example, line it up with a squeeze page that collects the visitor’s details in exchange for a ‘prize’ or special report. These details can be used through Aweber with the automated emails directing to relevant webpages and the newsletter. Alternatively, the adwords ad could be directed to a squeeze page relevant to the words, where the visitor can make a selection for purchase or perform one action to satisfy their needs, again providing their details in the process.

We also touched on the power of blogging and how RSS can spread her expertise around social media and the web, and how followers could subscribe to her newly published blog posts. These posts could be expanded into articles and posted around the web in article directories, and by asking her followers to retweet or forward her posts to other potentially interested parties, especially if they liked what they have read, she could expand her audience appropriately.

We then discussed her recent website performance. She had recently updated it (very good for SEO reasons) but was confused that her rate of conversions had declined since doing so. I asked whether her index page may have become more confusing, as she had added more facilities and information to it.

My suggestion was that she needed to concentrate on the pain of her potential customers by investigating into what problems she should focus on in order to provide the appropriate solutions. Customers only surf for their problems on the web as they don’t yet know the answers. Carry out research through questionnaires and the Q & A section on LinkedIn, of which she was a member.

Combine these problems into three main ones and present them on the index page. The visitor will see the company fully acknowledges their pain, and combined with promises of the solutions if they click on the appropriate links, will get the visitor further into her website, which is an action she wanted to promote.

On the next page relevant to that particular problem then she could start to elaborate and provide the solutions. As long as this continues to be clear and understandable, the visitor can click to other more succinct pages on particular solutions and then make contact through a strategically placed contact form to discuss the subject further with the company.

I expect that took longer than half an hour, but I forgot about the time. If you would like such a health check, then go ask Alice!

How sad it is when you see examples of online marketing failing to work, and sigh when you think of how much money is wasted.

Yesterday Chrissie Slade of Gorgeous Guineas came to see me for a half hour health check (but as always with me she got a bit more than just half an hour!).

Chrissie makes aromatherapy skin products for guinea pigs, and claims she’s the only one in the world doing this. It’s a fascinating little business, and Chrissie spends her time looking after her own five piggies, plus any that are holidaying with her, and cooking up various lotions and potions to cure skin problems in guinea pigs.

But having created her range of products, she wanted to know how to market them better. I took a look at her website www.gorgeousguineas.com and its accompanying shop, and was suitably impressed. Chrissie certainly knows her stuff, and she was keen to write more articles about her products to educate the world. I suggested selected articles could be linked into a the shopping pages that presented the relevant product, acting as testimonials, examples or recommendations.

She already has a blog (hosted WordPress attached to her website) which needs more content, even though what is on there is good. It is lacking various elements such as a RSS feed and a sign-up form to her newsletter, plus better regulation of her categories and tags, and more encouragement for comments, but once accomplished this can become a useful prop towards getting more traffic to her website and shop.

Chrissie also has a newsletter that regularly goes out to several hundred subscribers, each with a defined purpose and special deals, and Chrissie informed me the response rate was good, not only opening and reading it, but reacting to her offers as well.

She had recently moved her newsletter to another provider that offered her an autoresponder as well, so we discussed ways of how she could use that to her advantage, such as creating e-courses on how to care for guineas with particular problems, spacing out the emails over a series of days to correspond with the various stages of the treatment, watching out for signs of improvement and providing gentle reminders. Chrissie could see other ways how this could be used to educate her followers.

We discussed how articles could be transformed into various guises, such as blog posts, newsletter articles, pdfs for downloading, posted onto article directory sites such as EzineArticles.com, and also ‘fed’ into other areas on the web, such as her Facebook fanpage and Twitter, through the power of RSS. Chrissie was impressed that one action could result in several reactionary performances to spread her word around a wider area on the net.

Chrissie had set up a Facebook fanpage but had done very little with it. Once I had explained how she could fill its pages with different details and information about her business and her piggies, such as ‘before and after’ pictures of treated guineas, encourage responses and similar stories from her 117 fans, visit other like-minded groups and comment on their walls, feed in her blog posts and Twitterings, publicise her new products or successful treatments, she soon saw the page’s value. Like all social networking it should not be neglected, only warranting regular small attention now and again.

Whew, all that in half an hour! The next question is: how much are you doing to market your business?

Watching the ads on telly, the Dulux paint one caught my attention.  It was very short, and it consisted of a sad girl with a green background, and then her emotions were reversed as the green changed to a cheery yellow.

Dulux were playing with how the girl felt towards her newly decorated walls. It didn’t need to say which paint to use, as it’s logo is universally recognised (very useful) but it was working on the result of her choosing a better, happier colour. It was a method which was understood by all, didn’t require too many words to cloud over the issue, and played with feelings rather than the hard sell.

That is the way to go during a recession, reverting to how are your customers going to feel if they buy your product or use your services. What tangible thing will they have in their paws they can appreciate, understand, feel good about, show others and talk about?

Word of mouth is an inexpensive and extremely powerful form of advertising, and gathering testimonials as well as warranting good comments and reports will serve you no end. Spruce up your customer relations, provide a tip top service and ask for referrals! Use the social side of your business without getting bogged down with paperwork or selling scripts!

Oh, and another good technique is to produce case studies that will explain your business – if customers can see how you’ve improved the lives of others, then they will want a piece of the pie too!

While visiting Nottingham we decided to go for a Chinese meal. Just down from our hotel was an restaurant called ‘Big Wok’, which looked enticing at £10 for all you could eat.

Now normally these ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ establishments skimp on quality for the sake of price, but we were pleasantly surprised. For the nominal price you could go up several times with your plate to a buffet section in the middle of the restaurant to help yourself to a variety of well presented Chinese food. And that also included a ’sweet’ section for afters.

So how did they make their money, being so cheap yet good quality? Well, they probably made a bit on the drinks, which were not included in the main price, and the place was absolutely buzzing, with all the tables occupied. We worked out that at least 200 people at £10 a head per weekday (and more at the weekends) would soon result in very respectable profits, certainly compared to other places that charged more but had less covers each night.

I had seen this phenomenon around the corner at a local restaurant chain which offered main courses for as little as £5, but then you knew they were making up for it on the drinks and other courses. They were also packed during prime hours, being a very popular haunt for taking the family out for Sunday lunch.

What’s the verdict on this? Can you afford to reduce your prices down during this economic downturn to get the punters in? If what you offer continues to be exceptional value, not tainted or reduced in quality to accommodate the cheaper prices, then you will maintain your status and keep your clientelle who will stand by and support you, and will still be there once everything starts to improve.

Both these businesses are working on their customers’ greed, understanding the state of their wallets, and providing a solution which is plentiful food at very good prices in convenient surroundings at suitable times.

Now – can your company adapt to this mind-set? Hmmm, not all of us are in such a position to accommodate this practice, but we can all be aware that offering a few good quality products at low prices can act as a lost-leader towards gaining more in up-selling or by increasing the ‘bums on seats’ capacity. Both seem to win in the end.

All copywriting, whether for web or paper, should be biased towards one thing: the customer.

Blabbing on about the company is a total waste of time, customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about the business, they only care about “what’s in it for them”, how will they benefit from the product or services offered, will it make them feel better, look good, improve their life, or whatever.

So much promotional material uses the wrong slant; if they were to adapt the way their descriptions were written into the customers’ point of view, talking about how the customers will benefit, then they will achieve more sales.

Analyse the successful ads on TV: the one’s that work don’t even mention the product, they go on about the effect it will have on their customers, how their hair is thicker and glossier, how much the decor of their house has changed, how soft their skin has become, how good their feet now look, what a fantastic two weeks their children will have on holiday, etc.

Stop being selfish and start thinking about who you are actually selling to. The customer is king, not the content.

Following on from my visible networking material idea I came across this business card from Jill Wigmore-Welsh. I wanted to share it with you because it stood out from all the other business cards at this networking meeting I went to.

Why? Because the first thing it said is what she does, but in a way that was beneficial to the customer. There isn’t much room, and she even managed a rhyme, but the aim of her business was the most visible element on the card, whereas her details took a back seat.

I like this idea, because the customer should always come first. Why should our networking material bang on about ourselves? The customer cares only about themselves and what they can get out of you and your business, not actually your business. Use the fact that we’re all naturally self-centered, so by turning the tables we can take advantage of this fact and steal a march on our competitors.

What do you think of this idea – your comments are always welcome!

Twitter is also called micro-blogging, because it is an opportunity for you to express yourself and tell the world all the facts about you and your business you are unable to fit into your website. It’s micro-blogging because it is confined to only 140 characters per ‘tweet’, which means you have to be concise with your message. (If you reduce it down to 120 characters that will leave room for any retweets.)

Just go ahead and join up, but make sure you’re careful with your username. Does it truly reflect you or your business? And if you were to change direction, would it continue to be useful? And is it memberable, easy to spell, universal to understand? If you can squeeze in a keyword, so much the better.

Communicate with your followers, don’t just post endless bits about yourself. Also don’t tweet rubbish or uninteresting material. Find out others within your target market and ask them questions, engage them in conversation, just like networking. People react to a lively commentary, and if you want to know something, tweet it in general – some people say Twitter is better than search engines for finding out what you want.

Find all the gurus and experts in your field through Twellow.com. Ask them questions and try and get to know them, but don’t bombard them – they also have a life. It’s best to watch and read their tweets first to learn how to tweet effectively and what line they are taking. Look at their followers and see if there are any you would like to follow too.

Post up some valuable information for your followers to read, and if you’re stuck for content, use Google Alerts to send you material on your chosen subjects, then trawl through and post up the interesting stuff using tinyurls for the links (this facility is incorporated into applications like TweetDeck). But usually the advice that comes direct from you is best because it shows off who you are, unlike those people who tweet endless quotations.

Get fodder for your tweets from the stuff you have already written – any articles, blogs, e-books, old emails or whatever. You’d be surprised what you have already, and it will be all your own material. Feed your new posts from your blog into your Twitter stream, and get retweet widgets for your blog so people can retweet your posts if they like them, and you can also feed your e-newsletters through Aweber.com and articles from EzineArticles.com into Twitter through their automation.

And finally, get a following to follow you, which you can achieve if you continue to post up valuable information, strike up intellectual and humorous conversations, provide relevant input to discussions, regularly retweet stuff you like and acknowledge kind gestures towards you. Then you’ll get to be known as an expert in your field, and can start to achieve more business through your other business media.

In a previous post ‘How visible is your networking?’ I explored the idea of putting a photograph on your business card. I have found four examples of people who have done just that!

This is done solely to show who the cards belong to.  How many times have you got home, looked at the business cards you collected, and wondered what the owners looked like? Only the ones that made the most impression probably stuck in your memory. Ironically, it is the most rememberable ones that do put portraits on their networking material.

Mary Flavell is a flamoyant lady who takes over networking events by storm (she is not called the Queen of Networking for nothing). She always looks immaculate and her gushing friendliness emphasises her willingness to get to know what you do, and to see how she can help you. It seems only right that she should have a photograph of herself on her card, although once you’ve met Mary, it would be very difficult to forget her.

Graham Jones is well known as The Internet Pyschologist, and all his media includes a photograph of him, so it’s not surprising there is one on his business card. He has rigidly stuck to this branding, so much so that you only need to see the colours and his portrait at a distance to recognise his company. That’s why its a good thing to choose a particular photograph you are happy with and be consistent with its distribution, both on- and off-line, to enable instant recognition – all good marketing ploys.

Ophelia Messer is a lady who I’m sure was reluctant to put her photo on her business card, but I’m very glad she has. Another rememberable networker, recognition plays a major role if she is to be successful in recruiting for her business. Her invitation for ‘call me now for an informal chat’ is made much easier because of her welcoming grin; such call for actions are more personable if you can see your contact.

And finally John Cassidy, who for a photographer of the rich and famous (he does capture ordinary mortals to make them look fabulous too) it would be strange if he didn’t have a self-portrait on his card. It does, of course, make him look georgous, yet he has chosen a more down-to-earth representation of himself in his social networking. It’s always a good thing to get a chance to show off your expertise through your networking material, and John’s picture has done just that.

One young entrepreneur was asking for advice on her babies’ clothes business on a women’s business forum. She had decided to call it ‘Blackberry Babes’ and wondered if it was a good name or not. This is my response:

I’m still a little confused why you need to use ‘blackberry’ – is there some underlying reason for this? I immediately thought of the hand-held electronic system. I certainly agree that ‘babies’ is better than ‘babes’.

I should take a good luck at the USP of your product. What is special about it? What does it have that your competitors haven’t? Does it use special fabrics, are the colours significant, does it cater for specific kinds of babies’ requirements, or what?

Then I would think about how it change the lives of the babies, or their mothers. Concentrate on that phenomenon when you do your marketing. For example, an ironing service shouldn’t talk about what they do, ie your ironing, but what their customers can do if their ironing is done by the company, ie free time with the family, weekends free from household chores, no more ironing piles towering on your washingmachine! You should be describing ‘what’s in it for them’, not your product, because customers couldn’t care a tinker’s toot about you or your business, they only care about how it affects themselves.

What is so special about your babies clothes that marks it out as different from all the others, has a special element that makes the recipients lives better, and offers excellent value? Take these facts, work out your ‘keywords’ and create a name using them. For example, a courier service called ‘Fetch it now!’ – says exactly what’s on the tin.

Why this and not ‘blackberry’? ‘Blackberry’ doesn’t suggest to me baby clothing, it suggests to me more of food, or blackberry stains on sticky babies. If you are going to have a website for your company (hopefully an e-commerce one where mothers can buy on-line) by having a keyword rich name will not only make it easier for the search engine spiders to find your company, but easier for search engine users who type in those ‘keywords’ in their searches for baby clothes, not to mention the mothers who will understand exactly what you can do for them.

The result may be a little more boring than ‘Blackberry babes’ but if you want to survive on the internet, being cute and pretty won’t cut the chase.

When you choose a present for a friend, I hope you don’t choose it because you really like it?

When you choose the colour, you don’t choose your favourite and not your friend’s?

When you choose the size, you don’t see if it fits yourself, do you?

Think about these facts and compare them to how you treat your customers.

Long ago, when I was creating my totally unsuccessful wedding stationery, I was making stuff that I liked – what I would have chosen for my wedding stationery. Unfortunately I did not think whether it was anything that anybody else would have preferred. OK, I thought about the kind of card it was on, the matching envelopes, the accompanying reception stationery like place cards and favour-boxes, I even tried to consider what colours where fashionable and how much brides were prepared to pay (grossly undervalued as I was not creating them in bulk [thankfully] so I made a BIG loss), but I didn’t understand the way brides thought, where they got their ideas from, what really was in fashion, what their friends were using, what was already in the shops and catalogues.

The moral of this blog is: you must truely understand your customer. Get inside their heads, find out what makes them tick, look at the world through their eyes – and the way to do this is by asking questions. Only your customers know what they want. You must get outside of this naturally selfish trait we humans have, and start being Mother Theresas in the marketing world – consider others before yourself. Strip away any preconceptions you have, and reform your marketing strategy totally from your customers’ point of view.

Then do something about it. Action the reactions – change and adapt your business, products or services according to your market research. I met a market researcher who told me she had saved one particular company tens of thousands of pounds because she had found out what their customers were really thinking, and it was totally the opposite of their new advertising campaign. A big shock, but also a big wake-up call – and now their new adverts are spot on, with the inevitable results.

Ask questions > analyse the results > action the reaction = success in business!

If you’re mad about the arts, then got to this event called MAD (which stands for Music, Arts and Dance) which is happening this weekend (27 & 28 June) at Waddesdon Manor near Oxford (UK). For more details, click on the MAD logo on the left.

Bring the family to experience the talent, energy and creativity of Buckinghamshire’s schools and community, through music, dance, drama, poetry, story telling, film, photography and much more (if that isn’t already enough), all in the wonderful grounds of Waddesdon Manor.

The idea of this weekend was to form closer working relationships with local, multicultural community by using Waddesdon Manor as a suitable cultural resource. Multicultural events such as African and Japanese drumming, samba workshops, photography competititions, collaborative art projects, conducting workshops, urban dance, ballet, digital art and music & drama performances of all kinds will be happening, so there is always something for all ages and interests.

The Stables have been transformed into a lively performance and education space, in response to the ‘Find Your Talent’ and ‘Creative Partnerships’ schemes promoted by the government, and indeed these initiatives are fully acknowledged by the Department of Media, Culture and Sport and the Department of Children, Schools and Families, as a chance to enable young people and schools to experience high quality arts and culture with creative professionals, artists, writers and actors.

MAD has been a major local cultural event since 2006, and last year 15,000 people thoroughly enjoyed themselves watching over 3,000 children perform in various events, workshops, projects and many other activities during the weekend.  Partnerships with such emiment establishments as The English National Ballet, Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Art, Bucks New University and many others have been the key to the success of the festival, and the organisers hope for their continued support in the future.

At my first networking meeting for a month (since I had got Bell’s Palsy) I met an interesting lady who taught golf, at home as well as at the golf course.

I asked her how she marketed her business. (It’s wise to do that to see if they know what they are talking about – there’s nothing worse than trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.) She mentioned that she did do advertising in magazines in the past, but had given it up because it was a waste of money.

Probing a little further I found out that the magazines that fared the worst were the national golfing magazines, whereas the adverts that did achieve a result were from the monthlies that are pushed through letterboxes. I asked her what did the ads say, and found that the contents was generally publicising the business and what it offered to customers.

I asked her if her ads had a purpose, an aim or an end goal. I explained that general adverts weren’t going to do as well as ones with a focus, something that led towards an event, a special course or whatever, and that there should also be an incentive, like 10% off when you present this advert or coupon, and a time to achieve this by, for example the actual day of the event or advance bookings to get £5 off the price.

Three simple things to include in your advertising: a purpose, an incentive and a time to achieve it by. General ads don’t grab the customers’ attention, don’t play with their wants or needs, don’t pander to their greed, and don’t command an action to ‘get something for nothing’ by a certain date. Think about these phenomena the next time you write your ads or leaflets…

My mother publishes books about Brighton, and her company is a non-profit organisation which she trades from her home. As a self-taught publisher, she relies on her many years of art and design techniques, and yet with her advancing years she produces excellent books as well as managing her own website and blog.

One thing she has to be aware of is the current economic situation. In the past she could price her books according to its content, and there were no restrictions in size, length or capacity. Nowadays she has had to plan her books from the finished product, that is, work backwards so that she starts with the end in mind, making sure there are the correct number of pages, photographs, chapters, etc on the correct size of page to fit in with the printer’s requirements, who are also cutting back on costs to achieve the desired result. People won’t spend abundantly any more, so a fixed retail price of under £10 is set, and the contents, paper quality, presentation and final finish have to be budgeted accordingly to fit.

As a result my poor mother was greeted with a last minute request from her printers to reduce the sizes of her pages so that they would fit ’six up’, a term which means how he lays out the pages within his large pieces of paper to reduce costs. Now my mother, being self-taught on QuarkXPress only a couple of years ago, didn’t relish a massive change to her book layout in less than 24 hours, so had to call on technical support to help her sort out this problem. She did it with five minutes to spare – goodness knows what her blood pressure was like!

Do you work with the end in mind? It is certainly I will have to do when I restart my business in the autumn. Previously I have been winging it, and it has certainly contributed to my increased stress levels resulting in my Bell’s Palsy. Now I will concentrate on one project at a time, planning it to the enth degree, totally completing every stage and transferring it to full automation on the net. That is a sure-fire way to cope with any project to make it both successful and profitable.