Archive for the ‘Promoting your site’ Category

6 steps to writing a newsletter that people will read

6 steps to writing a newsletter that people will read

Posted by Jonathan on August 26th, 2010

A couple of years ago we re-launched the Heart Internet customer newsletter to great success. All the metrics we use to benchmark newsletters went through the roof; open rates, click through rate, conversions and revenue. Here’s the approach we took to make this happen.

Before we get on to the ‘how’, I’d like to quickly touch on the ‘why’. Customer newsletters, in my opinion, should be a no brainer. A good newsletter that is sent regularly will increase sales and revenue for immediate purchases, keep you in contact ready for future purchases and provide customers something to pass on and share.

1. Segment your customer base
If you sell multiple products which are targeted at different audiences don’t group them all in to one mailing list. Each audience has different levels of knowledge, different motivators and varying degrees of interest in a subject. A newsletter that goes to all your customers is only partially relevant to each segment.

2. Content that benefits them
A newsletter is not an excuse to copy and paste your press releases, write about the MD’s thoughts on the industry or provide a detailed explanation of widget X’s specifications. Give your customers content they want to read and keep these two questions in mind; “Is it interesting?” and “Is it useful?” This could be promotional prices, articles to help them improve an aspect of their business/ life, competitions/ prizes, new products/ services/ features they can use etc.

3. Take your time
The customer newsletter should be given the same care and attention as any other marcomms. You wouldn’t quickly knock up a magazine advert in 10 minutes and send it out, and you shouldn’t do the same with your newsletter. I receive newsletters from design agencies that have clearly only been written and built minutes before they are sent (or at least they look like it). At Heart Internet it takes a week from starting the first draft through to it being sent out.

4. Keep it short
No matter how long you spend on it and how ground breaking the content is, no one will read an email that rivals War & Peace. Short punchy paragraph are the order of the day with links taking people to a full article hosted on your site if they want to read more. Get straight to the point and skip the introductory paragraph about your company, they are your customers, they know who you are.

5. Clear calls to action
Research has found your newsletter has only got 51 seconds before the reader loses interest and only 19% of recipients will fully read a newsletter, the rest will scan the page. With such a short time and general lack of involvement, make your calls to action (e.g. click here to buy) prominent using buttons, highlighted text, arrows and any other disturber that fits in with your design.

6. Cross reference across all channels
Rather than duplicating our efforts writing content just for the blog and just for the newsletter, we regularly run blog articles through the newsletter. This catches customers who don’t read the blog and raises the awareness of our blog. After each newsletter we see a clear increase in visits to our blog.

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Name:Jonathan Brealey
About:As a Director and Co-founder of Heart Internet, Jonathan developed the company based around innovative features, user-friendly functionality and excellent customer support. Jonathan has been a key player in shaping the UK web hosting industry since 1997, having co-founded WebFusion with Tim Beresford.
What makes a cool brand?

What makes a cool brand?

Posted by Matthew on August 19th, 2010

In many cases, what is and isn’t cool can be quite subjective, with not everyone agreeing on the answer. However, there are many brands and websites where the large majority would agree “Yeah, that’s cool”. Brands falling in to this category that spring to mind at the time of writing are Bose, Apple (yeah, Apple), Dribbble, Tag Heur and HBO. These brands, and all ‘cool’ brands, share common characteristics that can be applied to any website, product or service. These are; Premium Price, aesthetics, originality, exclusivity, targeted advertising.

Premium price
I can’t think of one cool brand that doesn’t charge a premium within its category. Cheap brands can become what I’d describe as “ironically cool”, i.e. so crap people pretend the brand is somehow cool because of it.  However, any brand that is genuinely cool is to a certain degree aspirational. Either we want one or we want to be like one. If your website is informational and/ or free to consume you can still feel expense through an exclusive web design and high quality content e.g. www.webdesignerwall.com. The conundrum is, is a brand cool because it is expensive or is it expensive because it is cool?

Aesthetics
People like to look at beautiful things, be it other people, products, websites, paintings etc. It keeps our attention and makes us desire it. I find myself navigating around my iPhone with no real purpose but just because it’s a joy to use. That’s cool! Glossy, high res, non fussy, consistent designs backed up by confident copy combine to create products, services and websites that make us want to interact with the brand.

Originality
The cool brands are original in what the offer or in the way they offer it. They aren’t necessarily the first to market, but the way they package and present what they offering instinctively draws people towards them. For example, web design showcases are nothing new and the market is pretty much saturated, but dribbble.com is making a big splash through its original approach to showcasing work. There use of invites to become a member leads us nicely to…

Exclusivity
A brand feels special when we feel like we are a member of an exclusive club. This can be through a high price (e.g. Rolex), an invitation only model (dribble.com) or a limited number available (e.g. iPhone at launch). Creating a critical mass of followers waiting to get their hands on your brand is a tried and tested marketing technique to generate both buzz and demand and one Apple plays very well. The downside to this approach is when the product becomes available to everyone and the exclusivity diminishes e.g. Twitter.

Targeted advertising
Essentially branding by association, you can utilize the coolness of an existing website by being seen to advertise on it. Mailchimp.com does this through advertising on the likes of smashingmagazine.com and other leading web design blogs. On the flip side, if you are seen on poor quality sites, you will as equally be associated with them.

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Name:Matthew Telfer
About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.
6 examples of link bait to draw inspiration from

6 examples of link bait to draw inspiration from

Posted by Matthew on August 18th, 2010

Getting ranked on the first page of Google is the holy grail for many a website. Some are lucky enough to be in an industry with little competition and onsite SEO is enough to be ranked well. For many, they are one of a million websites jostling for attention. In these circumstances off site SEO, which is primarily incoming links, is the boost you need to rise to the top.

People like linking to sites, but sometimes this just happens too slowly for our tastes or the pool of natural linkers is too small to have an impact. In these circumstances you can give your website a lift up by creating content purely to generate more links. This is what we call ‘link bait’.

What is link bait?
“Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website” Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_bait

Types of link bait
Popular types of link bait that websites fall back on time and time again are the mega list, unique resources, and in depth resource and humour. Here are a handful of examples to draw inspiration from…

Examples of link bait
100 Excellent Free WordPress themes
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/

  • Link bait type: Mega list
  • Yahoo Page Links: 14k
  • Delicious bookmarks:  7308
  • Comments: 376

Google website optimizer 101
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/101-google-website-optimizer-tips/

  • Link bait type: Unique resource
  • Yahoo Page Links: 731
  • Delicious bookmarks:  2372
  • Comments: N/A

Google Wave: A complete guide
http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/

  • Link bait type: In depth resource
  • Yahoo Page Links: 6k
  • Delicious bookmarks:  3030
  • Comments: N/A

Compare The Meerkat
http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/home

  • Link bait type: Humour
  • Yahoo Page Links: 6k
  • Delicious bookmarks:  99
  • Comments: N/A

101 ways to build link popularity
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

  • Link bait type: Mega list
  • Yahoo Page Links: 6k
  • Delicious bookmarks:  2676
  • Comments: 181

Search engine ranking factors
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

  • Link bait type: Unique resource
  • Yahoo Page Links: 11k
  • Delicious bookmarks:  4057
  • Comments: N/A
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Name:Matthew Telfer
About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.
Why you should use case studies on your website

Why you should use case studies on your website

Posted by Matthew on August 17th, 2010

When it comes to using any kind of service or buying any kind of product that costs money, no one (ideally) wants to take the risk that they are wasting their money. When deciding whether to buy, a potential customer will use a variety of different variables to evaluate how much risk is involved in the purchase. This may include analysing the brand itself, recalling known reviews, researching new reviews, comments from peers, past and present advertising, pricing and countless others. One way for you to help reduce the level of risk is to provide evidence of existing and happy customers that the potential customer can relate to. For smaller, less considered purchases, you should consider publishing positive feedback, for example http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/web-hosting/heart-internet-reviews.html. These are fine for lower value products, but for products that charge a higher price, and therefore carry greater risk, it may be necessary to provide more in depth information. This is where case studies come in.

A case study provides you with these benefits:

  • Offers first hand evidence of a satisfied customer
  • Clearly demonstrates who your target audience are
  • Provides downloadable information for prospects to keep and share
  • Gives you control over the feedback/ review

The structure of a case study
A case study is more than just a description of what a customer has bought from you. Case studies should be written in such a way that the reader follows a journey from the identification of the problem, to how it was solved (with you) and then through to the positive impact of this change. The amount of information to provide in each case study will depend on your product and target audience, however, a general structure to follow is to divide it in to these parts….

  • Customer: Who is the case study about, what do they do, how big are they etc
  • Challenge: What was happening within their business/ industry?
  • Problem: Why did something need to change or be bought?
  • Journey: What research did they do, how did they hear about you etc?
  • Discovery: What made them go with you?
  • Solution: What did they buy from you and why?
  • Implementation: How was this integrated in to their business?
  • Results: What positive impact did you have on their business?

Who to approach?
When a brand or product develops a core group of advocates these people are worth their weight in gold. They spread positive word of mouth amongst their peers, become actively involved in your social media activities (blog, twitter etc) and more often than not buy exclusively from you. If you are lucky enough to have brand advocates, these are your first port of call for a case study. If you are unsure who they are, a more systematic approach may be needed. List your top customers by revenue, length of time as a customer and number of items bought. The customers at the top of these lists are your power users and the ones most likely to be happy enough with you to go on record.

How to approach them?
This obviously depends on your existing relationship with them. If you have regular face to face or telephone contact, asking them asking them is pretty straight forward. If your services are all managed online with minimal or no contact then you’ll have to introduce yourself first. Send a simple email explaining who you are, what you want from them plus the benefits to them of taking part (incoming link, exposure to your site visitors etc). That last part is important, the marketer in them will see an opportunity to advertise themselves to your customer base as well as helping out a trusted brand (that’s you).

More than just a case study
Once you have all this fantastic information you should also look at how you can use it in other formats. For example you could adapt the case study in to press releases, direct mail pieces, in newsletters, developed in to a leaflet/ hand out for trade shows and used in presentations.

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Name:Matthew Telfer
About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.
7 Tips on Blogging for Value

7 Tips on Blogging for Value

Posted by Jenni on July 7th, 2010

Blogs are just as much about the reader as the author – if no one’s reading them, then they have no value outside SEO. So it’s essential to write with your reader in mind, and the best way to keep visitors coming back is to spark ideas, discussion and provide insight or knowledge of some kind.

We’ve put together a series of golden rules so you can ensure you’re blogging for value – and success!

1.    Make sure you have a clear idea of what your visitors are interested in by frequently using your site statistics (e.g. Google Analytics) and the information in the WordPress admin panel. You may well find that the posts with the highest number of comments may not share the highest number of views, so decide which is most important to you and work from there. Writing follow-up posts on popular topics is also a great way to boost reads.

  • Start by installing a statistics plugin such as WP Stats.

2.    Aim to tell your readers something they didn’t know before. There are lots of ways to do this, including offering advice, providing valuable links, collating useful resources and providing a fresh opinion on your chosen subject.

  • Check out SEOmoz for examples of value-adding posts.

3.    Stick to topics that you’re interested in and are relevant to your site content. There’s nothing worse than a half-hearted blog entry that serves no real purpose. Don’t write about something because you have to, write because you want to. Come across as interested, knowledgeable (or preferably both), and you’ll be adding value.

4.    Encourage discussion by taking the focus off yourself; make sure you refer to the reader directly and avoid overuse of ‘I’. Remember visitors are reading for their own benefit, not yours! People like to voice their opinions and talk about their personal perspective, so present direct questions in your blog to make it easy for them.

5.    Even if your ideas aren’t unique, make sure your view is.  If you’re stuck for ideas, one of the worst things to do is to browse similar blogs for inspiration as you’ll almost inevitably end up directly repeating the concept/content or excessively quoting from it. Instead, search for simple blog ideas and brainstorm your own thoughts before settling down in front of a keyboard. It’s worth checking a few sites after to see what else is out there, but don’t do it beforehand.

6.    Use social media sites such as Twitter to help analyse the value of your blog entries as well as a tool to get visitors to your posts. Take a look at the topics and links your followers are tweeting and retweeting to find out what phrases are used and what’s most likely to get passed on. A catchy or intriguing title always helps, particularly if it hints at a valuable blog post. Remember that the amount of retweets doesn’t necessarily signal page popularity as many users tend to automatically parrot things, so always back up your findings with site stats where possible.

7.    Avoid the hard sell. It might be tempting, but building a blog entry around a strong sales message will leave Google and your visitors shaking their heads in disgust. Rather than trying to mould content to fit your sales pitch, start with a valuable blog idea and focus on that, perhaps subtly referring to just one or two of your products or services where relevant.

  • Find out more about alternatives to hard selling here.

Blogs are an extremely useful way to present a personable aspect to your website and also give visitors a reason to come back, so always write with that in mind. Providing regular, valuable blog entries over time will aid you in developing your brand or personal site and help build your reputation as a trusted source.

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Name:Jenni Brown
About:One of the newest members of the team, Jenni is Heart Internet's SEO & Social Media Marketing Executive. Responsible for Heart Internet's Twitter and Facebook engagement, Jenni is a social network enthusiast and has been blogging for almost a decade.
Understanding and Exploring the Social Media Jungle: Best Practices

Understanding and Exploring the Social Media Jungle: Best Practices

Posted by Jenni on June 25th, 2010

With more and more social media sites popping up everywhere, the craze to have the next Facebook or Twitter continues to be relentless. Wikipedia lists ‘some notable, well-known’ active social media sites  – ‘some’ being 190 – and even has a separate page for defunct websites, showing that this competitive trend shows no mercy.

So with almost two hundred ‘notable’ options out there, how do you know which to use for your site and how? Facebook and Twitter are the most obvious choices, but it’s essential to take time to create a strategy and see what works best for your particular needs.

Take time to find the sites relevant to you
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Investigate what’s out there, and make two lists of potentials – one for pages that require very little maintenance (e.g. a StumbleUpon link), and one for sites that require frequent updates and monitoring (e.g. Facebook).

When choosing sites, make sure they have an active following
Having active members is usually more important than having a large number of members, particularly as small sites give you the opportunity to gain prominence, enjoy less competition and let you take advantage of a more targeted audience.

Check the terms and conditions of each site carefully
If you have a design or photography site (for example) and you want to upload images to a networking site for exposure, clarify the copyright and ownership policies of the site first to avoid upsetting clients or losing ownership of your work.

Don’t be afraid of trial and error
When it comes to choosing the right social media sites don’t be afraid to have a go, but if something’s not working despite your best efforts then it’s time to move on. Make sure you don’t leave any blank pages behind you – ‘saving the name’ can be useful but at least include a link and a logo so people can identify you. This is something to watch out for especially when you’re signing up with multiple usernames that may become useful in future. Try to provide a redirect link to your main account or user page where possible to help people get to the right place.

Make sure you decide and allocate resource effectively
Spreading your time too thinly means that profiles will get neglected, so do a test over a set period and cut out the less successful ones. An abandoned page gives the impression that you don’t care or even that you’ve gone out of business, and spam and inappropriate discussions can run riot. Having a bad presence can easily be worse than none at all, so opt for consistency, and don’t promise scheduled content you can’t deliver on.

Keep up to date
Sign up for newsletters and regularly read the official blogs of the social networking sites you’ve joined. That way you can keep on top of any new features and implement them before your competitors, and also be aware of upcoming changes which may affect the way you operate.

Think about the purpose of your social media
Are you developing your brand, using it as a direct sales tool, improving traffic or communicating with customers? This handy infographic from cmo.com explores the strengths and weaknesses of ten common social networking sites.

The most effective campaigns are original
If you have an idea that’s different to everyone else’s, don’t be scared to try it out; it could lead to a publicity explosion. If it doesn’t work, then take the time to analyse it and figure out why it wasn’t successful or come up with potential improvements. If you’re using social media to host contests, try getting some feedback from participants about what they enjoyed and what problems they faced (if any)  to gain more insight into user experience.

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Name:Jenni Brown
About:One of the newest members of the team, Jenni is Heart Internet's SEO & Social Media Marketing Executive. Responsible for Heart Internet's Twitter and Facebook engagement, Jenni is a social network enthusiast and has been blogging for almost a decade.
Jumping off the World Cup bandwagon

Jumping off the World Cup bandwagon

Posted by Matthew on June 3rd, 2010

For non football fans, the next month or so is going to be painful! The coverage of the build up and the tournament itself is going to be 24/7. As well as wall to wall in the media we are also starting to see marketing campaigns based around the World Cup trickle out and it is only a matter of time until that turns in to a flood. Every industry imaginable, no matter how tenuous the link to football (if any link at all) will have at least one company running a World Cup themed campaign.

It is a massive global event with major national interest and provides marketers with a readymade angle to play with. Awesome!  But this totally ignores one of the key aspects of any successful marketing campaign; relevance.  Trying to associate a business with a sporting event when you have no previous relationship makes little sense, but because everyone else seems to be jumping on the band wagon, companies are worried they will miss out and rush to stake their claim.

As a web hosting company we wouldn’t run a promotion offering discounted hosting during Crufts (“Our offers are barking mad!”), so why would we do it during a football tournament? When planning and researching any marketing activities the keywords I always have in my mind are:

  • Relevancy
  • Reach
  • Cost
  • ROI

If I apply that to Heart Internet/ Web Hosting and the World Cup, there is no relevancy between my industry and the event, the space will be insanely crowded which reduces the reach. If I choose to really push the campaign that will increase costs, and due to the minimal relevancy and increased costs, conversions will be low thus pushing up ROI. Awesome!

Note: This isn’t isn’t an anti-football post, I am personally a big football fan and follow Huddersfield Town (Terriers!). It’s an anti-bad marketing campaigns post.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163139101/

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Name:Matthew Telfer
About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.
A handful of link building ideas for web hosting resellers

A handful of link building ideas for web hosting resellers

Posted by Matthew on May 27th, 2010

Selling web hosting is a very lucrative business and the ROI for a successful reseller is an attractive proposition for many entrepreneurs. For only £29.99 a month (with us:)) anyone can resell web hosting packages at prices and specifications of their own choosing. If a reseller creates a package priced at £4.99 per month (which is cheap) they only need 6 customers to break even each month, and then each new customer beyond that becomes a profit.

But this all relies on a reseller being able to attract traffic to convert in to customers, and that is the tricky bit. Search engines are most sites’ primary source of traffic, and one of the most important ranking factors for a high position is the quantity and quality of links pointing to a domain name. If you have aspirations of setting up a dedicated web hosting business your marketing strategy must include search and link building. Here are a few ideas to apply, some are quick wins and others are medium to long term commitments.

Quick wins
CSS gallery submissions
CSS and web design galleries are a great source of traffic and incoming links but there are literally thousands of them to consider. There is a solution with CSS gallery submission services which will do it all for you (for a fee). The three I am aware of that have a good depth and breadth of sites on their list are http://www.thecssgallerylist.com/, http://galleryrush.com/ and http://www.cssgallerysubmission.com/.

Online press release
Announce your launch, promotion or new product through an online press release to raise both awareness and build incoming links from web hosting news resources. Generic PR distributions services such as prweb.com ($200) are picked up by web hosting news publishers and http://www.pressadvance.com/ specialises in distributing web hosting news ($85) and will even write it for you ($135).

Free resources
People love free things and a lot of companies have used this to create link bait by giving things away with no catches. Areas to look at as a web host to attract relevant incoming links are free icon sets, a WordPress theme, CSS template etc. If you do go down the free web template path add your URL in to the footer as well.

Get involved with the forums

Research the relevant web hosting and domain name forums that do not add “nofollow” to links or signatures and get involved in discussions. In no way are we recommending creating spammy posts, in fact they will backfire on you from a branding perspective. Become a genuine part of the conversation but use your domain name in your signature.

Write an article for a high PR site
There are more web design blogs that anyone man could count, many of them with a high PageRank and quite a few open to contributors writing for them as long as it is original and useful content. As part of the deal the author will often get a small biog and a link back to their site.

Directory submission
As with anything when it comes to SEO, directory relevance is key here. Generic directories that will take anyone for a fee will pass next to no link juice but niche/ industry specific directories who care about creating a genuine resource are definitely worth submitting to.

Long term link building
Write a blog
Blogs with useful and insightful articles are a fantastic source of building links, blogs with dry content, nothing new to say or full of press releases are a waste of time. If you have the time and the drive to commit to writing regular content, go for it, if you don’t, stay clear.

“Hosted by…” buttons

If you provide a great service some customers will be happy to associate themselves with you and carry a “hosted by…” button or link to you in their footer. Not all customers will go for this, but if you don’t make it available then none definitely will.

Being known as an expert and/ or leader

You would be amazed how many sites will link to a service recommending them or using them in a “top x” list having never used them themselves. The old saying “success breeds success” is true for link building. If you become well known enough within your niche people will link to you because you are perceived to be a market leader.

Are there any glaring over sights or tips you would like to share? Leave a comment below.

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Name:Matthew Telfer
About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.
7 useful articles to read if you want to use Twitter for marketing

7 useful articles to read if you want to use Twitter for marketing

Posted by Stu on May 13th, 2010

These days it seems everyone is an expert in using Twitter to drive traffic, increase sales or increase positive branding.  Until the market matures, this will continue, however here are some genuinely useful articles to read if you are looking to jump in to Twitter or you are still swimming in the shallow end…

How to use Twitter – Tips for bloggers


Website: http://www.problogger.net
URL: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/25/how-to-use-twitter-tips-for-bloggers/
Quote: “The more you Twitter the more chance you’ll get others find you through others replying to you. I’ve noticed the days that I Tweet more than others are the days I get most followers.”

Harness the power of Twitter for local marketing

Website: http://searchengineland.com
URL: http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-twitter-for-local-marketing-16809
Quote: “Probably, there’s a dividing line between being too aggressive/intrusive and cooperatively engaging with the community, so, be conservative.”

How to use Twitter for customer service

Website: http://mashable.com
URL: http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-customer-service/
Quote: “The key to great customer service is the speed and quality of your response. When you find someone complaining about an issue, @reply them asking if you can help. Don’t take an arrogant tone and don’t tell them they screwed up. Ask them if they’d like you to intervene and provide them the information they need.”

Twitter 101 for business

Website: http://business.twitter.com
URL: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/best_practices
Quote: “Instead of approaching Twitter as a place to broadcast information about your company, think of it as a place to build relationships.”

20 must read beginner Twitter tips for small business owners

Website: http://www.twitip.com/
URL: http://www.twitip.com/20-must-read-beginner-twitter-tips-for-small-business-owners/
Quote:  “Use Twitter Search with keywords to find information and conversations that are relevant to your business. It’s also a good way to find out if anyone is talking about you or your company.”

How to fail at using Twitter to drum up business

Website:  http://www.bkmacdaddy.com
URL:  http://www.bkmacdaddy.com/blog/how-to-fail-at-using-twitter-to-drum-up-business
Quote:  “A great way to drive potential clients away is make sure they are aware that you only see them as a potential client. Hitting them with an attempt to sell something on your very first contact with them makes the statement loud and clear. It’s akin to a door-to-door salesman trying to work their way into your house. Does anyone ever let those guys in or buy anything from them?”

5 unique ways to use Twitter for business

Website: http://mashable.com/
URL:  http://mashable.com/2010/04/20/twitter-for-business
Quote: “Your audience will only respect your Twitter presence if you demonstrate that your ultimate goal is to serve their needs (and not your own). If used wisely, targeting niche audiences with Promoted Tweets could be a powerful way to use Twitter for business on a whole new level.”

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Name:Stuart Gilbert
About:One of the key members of the Heart Internet Developer team, Stu joined the company in 2008 and has various responsibilities including the development of customer tools, HostPay, and the maintenance of the blog.

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7 quick tips to instantly speed up your WordPress site

7 quick tips to instantly speed up your WordPress site

Posted by Matthew on May 6th, 2010

A couple of weeks ago we looked in to Google’s announcement that they are using a page’s load time to rank a sample of sites (1%) and what it meant for your website (you can read that post here).

One of the most resource hungry ways of creating a website is WordPress. With its multiple CSS, JavaScript and PHP files and a heavy reliance on calls to databases a WordPress site can easily become bloated and slow. Web masters who use WordPress need to look at how they can decrease their website‘s page load speeds. Here is how.

How do I find out how fast my website is the first place?
To see how your site is performing and to get a list of recommended changes I would start with looking at “Site Performance” within the Labs section of your Google Webmaster Tools.
To check out your site on spec you can also install Google’s page speed plug-in for FireFox here http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html. This site within Firebug (also required) and gives a page a score out of 100 along with what you need to improve.

Before we get started, a word of warning.  If you decide to make any changes to your site you must make a back up to cover yourself in case anything collapses. It literally takes a couple of minutes to do and will save you some serious heart ache!

Bring multiple files in to one
Every single item on a page generates a separate request to the web server, this includes the HTML page, the CSS page(s), JavaScript, image etc. For example, every plug-in has a PHP file, and a lot have their own CSS and JavaScript files and each one must then be called before the page can be loaded. To reduce the number of requests look at collating all the CSS in to one CSS file and all the JS in to a single file as well.

Install WP Super cache
This plug-in will create a HTML cache of your pages so repeat visits don’t require WordPress to call the server for the PHP files WordPress is built around. In their own words “This plug-in generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.” The plug-in can be downloaded here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Disable or delete unused plug-ins
Some plug-ins can have a ton of scripts and code so if you’re not using a plug-in disable it and consider deleting it. Decide which plug-ins are necessary for your site and then do-away with the ones that aren’t needed. You’ll see the benefit very quickly.

Remove dynamic social media icons
Do you really need that dynamic social media icon that shows the number of time it has been shared, bookmarked or forwarded? Every time your page loads the icon calls home to update the figure often noticeably slowing down the page. Your best approach is to use static images that allow people to share your ideas but don’t have to call home.

Use excerpts on your home page
Rather than showing all the content of your 10 most recent blog posts on the home page with all the text and images (and the load times that come with that), display snippets to make sure only a small amount text is shown and no graphics. This will noticeably speed up your home page’s time instantly. To display an excerpt on your home page, edit the index.php replacing…

<?php the_content(__('(more…)')); ?>

With…

<?php the_excerpt(__('(more…)')); ?>

Optimise your database
Like your home PC’s hard drive, as your database grows it can start to become a bit messy and need the equivalent of a defrag. You can choose to do this manually using phpMyAdmin using the ‘Optimise tables’ option or install this plug-in to do it for you http://yoast.com/wordpress/optimize-db/

Reduce the size of your image files
The web works fine at 72dpi you don’t need to push it up to print quality 300dpi. Super glossy hi-res images are lovely to look at but they can take an age to load, especially if you have a lot on one page. The reality is you don’t need eye bleedingly hi-res images on a website and lower res images are just as effective.

If there are any you use on your site and you’d like to share them leave a comment below and we will get them added to the list.

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Name:Matthew Telfer
About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.