New digital marketing series from yours truly

UPDATE - 2022: These articles are now offline, but since they are still very popular, I updated them and shared them in a new blog post, read it here 

Hello, long time, no see... That's because I was working on a full-time publishing project inhouse while doing all my freelance writing in the wee hours of the morning. I wrote a few online travel guides for a tour operator - a bit surreal since I was waxing lyrical about sunny, unspoilt beaches while sitting by a hot radiator - and keyed in a few articles on digital marketing for SMEs for the Digital Response's blog (pictured above - link to articles at the bottom of this post).

So far I have written four guest posts, which you might be interested in browsing - you might find themes I have touched upon in previous posts on this blog, but it's all new, improved stuff, honest! Here they are in chronological order:

1. 8 steps to digital domination: how to start a digital marketing campaign from scratch
2. Creative content to capture customers: content is king!
3. What is SEO? Search engine optimization for SMEs: SEO made simple
4. Social media: your launch pad for interactive engagement: SM for B2C & B2B

Web wonders, networking, time management & SEO review

21 Ways to Manage the Stuff that Sucks up your Time

Making the most of the web & networking 
I spent the evening of my birthday giving a talk entitled The internet doesn't byte: from virtual reality to practicality (click on the title to download it). This talk is general in scope to accommodate a wide audience, but you will find some business stuff thrown in, here and there. And there is a section on social media with the tagline: addictive but full of goodness.

I'm online seven days a week, so why make an exception on my big day? Prior to the talk I went to Camjelly to hear business mentor Ann Hawkins discuss social media and networking, so I could say that I gave myself the gift of the web and shared it.

Time management: Grace's way
A while ago I signed up to receive Grace's motivating newsletters, so I was delighted to hear that she has condensed and refined her wisdom into a book called 21 Ways to Manage the Stuff that Sucks up your Time. Available from Amazon at $5.97, it offers, as the title suggests, 21 practical tips to organise your time, which is particularly tricky if you have family and/or other commitments. 

There is a "curious" section on how to beat perfectionism, not usually considered a flaw in business, but for a nit-picker like me (born pedant and graduated with honours from the pedant school of subeditors), it could yield several handy tips. The same goes for procrastination - I'm not a natural procrastinator with my troubleshooting and problem-solving nature, but there are chores that get pushed down the list of priorities because of their innate tediousness. 

According to Amazon, customers who ordered this book also bought a guide on recruiting, one on making money speaking and the Barefoot Executive.

SEO article reviews
I went for a two-week holiday in August and due to an Italian pesky hill, our dongle failed to pick up any signal. I had internet access only on the road at various hotels offering wifi, on the way to and back from Italy, but zilch in Italy. So it was with trepidation that I logged into my work email account and found over 600 emails. As I got back, my clients "pounced on me" so I didn't have much time to read all the very useful articles I was sent, which I usually share on Twitter. So here is a selected bunch published from August to early September:

• Getting Google to revisit your website
• Harmonise PPC and SEO strategies
• Metrics you won't find in Google Analytics
• Build a loyal following with clever content
• Tips to manage multi-authored blogs
• How behaviour impacts social media marketing
• Writing an SEO case study that converts into leads

I'm off to deal with my mountain of emails - I'm still far from the top! If you want to recommend any interesting article you have come across, please leave a comment alongside the link.

Finding new clients: Mountain Comes to Mohammad Moments

 Creative Commons

Yesterday I found a discussion on LinkedIn on how to approach potential clients. Some commenters believed in cold calling, others in networking, others again in "business stalking" (you find out where your "target" is going and then show up at the event/conference) while most used their little black book to engineer introductions.

I'm sure most of us tried them all (except perhaps for the business stalking), but have you ever experienced business serendipity? Forget the romcom, I'm talking about having a goal, deploying all your business wiles, failing and then an unconnected opportunity comes out of the blue to work for that client or in that sector. 

I call it business karma or the Mountain Comes to Mohammad Moment. It is a nirvana moment, pure business bliss... Of course some degree of work is entailed, you need an optimized website, a decent social media strategy - nobody comes to a desert to drink, you need to build that oasis first. 

Reflecting on my 18 years plus' career, I have experienced many of these moments. As I commented in that online discussion, fate must have a sense of humour because I'm the most anal, perfectionist and organised person - going with the flow is not in my genetic make-up. Fate is definitely having a laugh at my expenses, so I have decided that I should stop trying too hard. I do the preparatory work and have faith. I won't stop slaving over my website and devise new social media strategies, but I will certainly go with the flow. I won't beat myself up if I lose a pitch for whatever reason, I will accept the unthinkable for somebody like me: "When a door closes, a window opens." 

But let's move on from this flowery language to rational business logic. Out of curiosity I did a search on Google and the concept "business karma" does exist. It is used in the realm of corporate social responsibility, which for me is a must for any business, big or small. I'm only a sole trader but I do dedicate time to local charity causes. I enjoy the feeling of being helpful, I experience an internal glow, a great personal satisfaction in making even a tiny difference. This voluntary work has however helped me out professionally in many ways, from confidence building for public speaking to expertise gained in a variety of fields. 

Moving from the individual (moi) to the general, recent research shows that enterprises engaging in corporate social responsibility do have a competitive advantage. So while it's skills and new experiences for me, the payoff for corporations is higher sales. 

What do you think? Feel free to diss, tut, nod and share. If you are interested in the CSR angle, click here for an interesting article about karma capitalism.

What is blogging?

The Prince Charles Cinema, London (still standing),
featured on my London Cheapskate site (RIP)

What is a blog?

Let's kick this post with the usual Wikipedia quote: A blog (a portmanteau of the term web log) is a discussion or information site published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often were themed on a single subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed...

I started blogging in 2005 for professional rather than personal reasons. The internet was transforming the magazine publishing industry and I needed online experience. It wasn’t my first online writing experience as I had started a listing website called London Cheapskate in 2001 to share my knowledge of free/cheap leisure and entertainment in the capital. In its first year, it won a web award for its content, despite being a very basic site (you guessed, I was the designer too). It’s still listed on some London sites, although it closed down in 2009 when Geocities was scrapped.

My first blog (of five and half, since having an account on Twitter is classed as microblogging) was in the same vein and was originally called London Cheapskate. It was still London Cheapskate when I moved to Rugby and it changed to Cambridge Ecothrifter (we’re a bit posher and more eco friendly around here) in 2009. I blogged about my interests and posted mini features nobody would commission me to write. As I got enough digital writing experience to switch to web copywriting/journalism, the blogs became a more personal outlet, yet still a place for features nobody would commission me to write. This is the case of my 1930s house blog, where I tackle interiors, gardening and DIY. I haven’t got as many makeovers as I’d like there, but give me time... It's not my day job and it doesn't pay the mortgage.

Moving away from the personal to the general, blogging is a different thing to different people. It could be a personal diary to share with family and friends, a place to showcase visual creativity (from hobbies through crafts to fine art), a writer’s treasury (fiction, non fiction, journalism, random witty rants), an activist weapon (campaigning, highlighting injustice, criticising the powers-that-be), an education instrument (edublogs) and a business/marketing tool.

The beauty of blogs is that they are interactive as they allow readers to leave a comment. So it's not surprising to read in various ebooks that blogging is an effective form of social media and a strong promotion tool for brands (big and small). Plus, it's seotastic: ask any SEO practitioner and they will tell you that having a blog helps to achieve good ranking for your website. 

A blog works its magic even if it's light on words: it can be just images, a curated list of web links, music/audio files (think mp3 and podcast) and even videos (in which case you can call it a vlog). A blog can showcase expertise and talent in a powerful way so it's a great inexpensive marketing gimmick for any budding artist. You can embed those youtube videos, show pictures of your art, post a poem or two. 

Businesswise, a blog is an inexpensive way to achieve online authority, if you can write, that is. If you can't write, you can outsource to a professional writer and if you can't edit it yourself, do hire a copyeditor. Using cheap talent to run a business blog is a bad idea, a blog is like your business card, you wouldn't design it yourself and print it on photocopy paper using an inkjet printer, would you? Yet some businesses head for peanutsforhour (thanks Sookio for that moniker) and hope to find the hidden gem (a poorly paid genius writer). Good luck and goodbye, we don't champion cheap labour here. 

Blogging in numbers

I can imagine the bean counters are now thinking: "Hey, less rambling and more figures, please."  According to Royal Pingdom, here is a snapshot of blogging in numbers:

·  39 million – The number of Tumblr blogs by the end of 2011.

·  70 million – Total number of WordPress blogs by the end of 2011

    ??million  –  total number of Blogger blogs (no idea, they are not mentioned). If you know, feel free to leave a comment and enlighten me.

Last but not least, Wikipedia states that by February 2011 “there were over 156 million public blogs in existence”. 

Have a mull and leave a comment if you wish. If you are interested in some blogging infographics for 2012, visit Jeff Bullas's blog. I will talk about blogging in future posts. At present I'm getting my head round a public talk I'm giving about the weird and wonderful (and useful) world of the web.

Silent Sunday: Creative Commons infographic

by Shihaam Donnelly

What is internet marketing?

Weird & wonderful  world wide web

Let's kick off with a brilliant definition from Wikipedia: "Internet marketing, also known as web marketing, online marketing, webvertising, or e-marketing, is referred to as the marketing (generally promotion) of products or services over the Internet. Internet marketing is considered to be broad in scope because it not only refers to marketing on the Internet, but also includes marketing done via e-mail and wireless media." 

If I might add to this clear definition, I'd also mention inbound marketing, which includes blogs, podcasts, videos, e-newsletters, free ebooks and social media strategies. However - now standing on a soapbox - it doesn't include irritating sales pitches on LinkedIn masquerading as conversations. 

I monitor Twitter like a hawk and lately there has been a flurry of tweets about 8 top marketing strategies. (Why not 10? With my copywriting hat on, it seems a tad unfair as I've always had to sweat out 10 items for each list I have ever been commissioned to write). 

Step 1: Create a keyword strategy

Step 2: Optimize your website

Step 3: Create blog and other content               

Step 4: Promote content & participate in social media

Step 5: Convert site traffic into leads

Step 6: Nurture leads with email marketing

Step 7: Be mobile friendly

Step 8: Analyze and refine strategies.

I lost count of how many marketing professionals have incorporated these steps in various ebooks and white papers, If somebody knows who invented these, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment below.  In the meantime I will go through them as fast as we can both get our quick fix. 


Step 1: I covered keywords in What is SEO?, but since it was a whistle-stop tour, I'm sure I will be covering keywords again. It's bound to happen, with Google constantly preening its algorithms.


Step 2 and Step 3, I'd do a swap here. I'd create the quality content first, using the keywords (sparingly), then inserting a few selected keywords in the source, as explained here. Re blogging, I will soon talk about it in my next post, so watch this space!


Step 4 is straightforward enough; take your website and hit the social media trail. It really depends what you are selling. If you haven't time to read heaps of ebooks, this is the usual advice: Facebook is best for B2C, LinkedIn and Twitter for B2B. The difference between LinkedIn and Twitter is immediacy - Twitter disseminates knowledge at the speed of light while LinkedIn is more useful to build relationships/authority while ruminating at leisure on a variety of topics. What about Pinterest? Well, it's definitely covering more bases than when it started as some firms are now pinning infographics - so it's only about pretty pics then.


Step 5 Ah, here is the challenge. Even if you are top cat in Google, it doesn't necessarily follow that visitors will buy your wares... I'm afraid here old-fashioned sales and marketing principles still stand. There are companies who sell this kind of service if you have a budget for this, but if you don't then it's all hands to the social media pump. Don't spread yourself too thinly, engage with potential customers and solve their problems. Many companies start by offering free advice, free ebooks, free consultations, the choice is yours!


Step 6 Let's be honest here, email marketing is the 21st century equivalent of junk mail. The challenge is to give your potential customers something they trust and/or are happy to get for free, whether information or a product sample. Well-targeted information does work - for instance, in the baby market, registered users get emails about child development, child nutrition, child health, anything really that put a commercial product into a parenting contest. And when your customer loves receiving your informative emails, you know you have hit the right note and sales will hopefully follow.


Step 7 If you are worried about how your website displays on mobiles, Google Analytics can give you a helping hand. Mobile is huge, but again it depends who your customers are, so if your target market doesn't dig smartphones, you are wasting your time.


Step 8 Sounds like an add-on to make a round number, does it? A bit like the number 10 in many top 10s, when it's obvious the writer couldn't think of yet another catchy point. However, scratch below the cliche' and you will find that analyzing your website at regular intervals makes sense. There are plenty of free analytical and organizational products for websites and social media tools. Subscribe to geeky/techy newsletters and you will know them all in a jiffy. Or follow me on Twitter, I post  DIY and free web tools nearly every day under my moniker @simonecas.


Here I sign off. Have a mull. Next post will be about blogging.

What is copywriting?

Mashup lyrics for challenging copywriting: Words don't come
easy + You can't get blood from a stone 

How I got to know SEO (Hello, is it you I'm looking for?) 

My background is in print journalism. When the recession hit the UK, I was just out of maternity leave and out of London, where my all media clients were based (and still are). In order to work remote, I built on my blogging and web editing experience to reinvent myself as a digital writer. At first I was writing articles for content site Suite 101 and testing products for Made for Mums. 

So why was I moonlighting there and subsequently on Brighthub (which pays a modest fee)? I was learning SEO copywriting. I don’t know what the situation is for these sites post Panda, but back then all articles were reviewed by an editor, who also provided SEO guidance. This came in very useful in my day job as product tester and digital feature writer. 

A call out of the blue in 2009 catapulted me into agency copywriting. A digital agency found my website and I ended up copywriting three campaigns for Danone Ireland. While writing thousands of words of static copy and tons of emails for registered users, I learnt about marketing SEO and how to tag videos. All this work was remote, save for one face-to-face meeting. Don’t you love the internet? I do and seeing that nearly all advertised opportunities demand inhouse freelancers makes me angry. I love remote technology.

Rant over, what is SEO copywriting for marketing? (Come gather 'round people wherever you sell aka the marketing song)

When you think of SEO, you might visualise page rankings, incoming links, keywords and social media strategies. Building a community is especially important to brands that sell, say children’s products - if you want to sell something to a parent, you’d better have a website with informative static content, a forum, useful videos, engaging emails for registered users, a helpline and the killer: a good cause. Corporate social responsibility is part of corporate identity and has a competitive advantage – business research has proved this over and over. Global brands know this so well and you will find a good cause advertised aside most branded products.

And if you are selling even a remotely health-related product (a smoothie for kids falls in this category for the anxious parent) you need high-quality content and some experts at hands to take those calls on the helpline and front the videos on the website. Contentwise, you engage a copywriter with knowledge in that market and off you go. But what is quality content? Rules have changed since Panda and Penguin came along. Pundits think it’s all for the better as content is king. It’s back to basics really, there is nothing more off-putting than a badly written website.

Writers have known this all along and I did have to argue with an agency about using different spelling of a word on their client's website. With my SEO hat on, I know that you need to cover all the search bases, but I’d have that in the keywords section, which is not visible (unless you do a source view), not in crossheads or in the copy. Having good content and different spelling of a word throughout an article is not on. Think of copywriting: you can have copy writing, copy-writing, copywriting.... people key in all sorts of spellings when they search for something, correct or not. You can’t have those peppered in the copy, it looks stupid.

Good content (I'm picking up good vibrations)

Perhaps we are now less constrained as writers to produce good content - repeating that a keyword every two sentences doesn’t make for quality copy. Yes, you need to include some keywords, but you can reach your quota using photo captions, tags for videos, crossheads (still unwisely underestimated), infographics, you name it. However, let’s not obsess too much about keywords. We need to spend time on the writing, prioritising quality, originality and clarity. So no stuffing, please, unless you are thinking turkey.

And while you are at it, you have to find that magic voice that speaks to the potential customer while driving home the concept that you are giving him/her value for money, which is far trickier for expensive products. But wait, is there a health benefit to highlight? Yes, there is.... then you need more copy to nail it. 

Presence, feedback and engagement (Bound to ascend + Country feedback)

For maximum exposure, you need to integrate all channels: TV, print, social media... so you need copy targeted for each of them. It’s a long list: scripts, press releases, blog posts, targeted tweets... Yet some companies think that one piece of copy will fit all. Saving on content is a false economy, a website with great design but poor copy is a dead duck.

Word-of-mouth is a good selling tool. So are critiques and reviews. Even negative ones can help, if the company addresses the issue and solves the customer’s problem there and then. Bring on all the social media tools, don’t skimp. It might be time consuming, but it works wonder. 

Usability (Use me)

All of this is fine and dandy, but if the website is difficult to navigate, then you spilled good copy for nothing. A clean design without hundreds of side panels to click is best. Yet some clients don’t want the surfer to miss a thing, so their websites end up as an overwhelming mess. Web readers have a short attention span. You want them to stock up their virtual cart and finalise that purchase, not bore them so they click away.

Have a mull and feel free to chip in your top tips...

P.S. I found a great article on how journalists make for good marketers.  If I might direct a personal dig to recruiters who rejected my CV as not relevant to marketing jobs (where writing was mentioned in the job description), this article is for you.