It’s not often that I take a long hard look at my own marketing. I’m usually so busy working on promoting my clients’ businesses that I just don’t have the time. And, to be honest – but without wanting to brag – I don’t really ever need to promote myself; I always have more enquiries than I can handle

But, despite that, I’ve long realised that what I write in this blog is not right for the type of client that I work for. I typically work for businesses and organisations with a turnover in excess of £1 million. They’re large enough to need some co-ordinated marketing, but too small to be able to afford a full-time marketing director.

This blog covers topics that would help someone who cannot afford someone like me and who wants to do their own marketing. My initial thinking was that this blog could therefore act as a nurturer of those readers, who, should they grow, might recall my advice and come to me for my services.

But I recognise that I shouldn’t be writing for potential future clients, especially when it seems I always have plenty of new business enquiries.

On the other hand, this type of content is ideal for smaller businesses, the self-employed, freelancers, people just starting up, and anyone who perhaps is taking on more marketing responsibility in their role. And that audience is precisely what would be right for my Marketing in One Day courses that I run.

So, I’m abandoning this blog, as many a business has done before me! I may move over some of the more general content that isn’t out of date, but otherwise the posts will stay.

If you subscribe to this blog and find it useful, please consider visiting my new Marketing in One Day blog and subscribing to that. If you receive my blog roundup email updates, you will still do so, as I will just transfer the email list over.

Thanks for reading until now – and I hope to still be in touch via the new blog.

LinkedIn is launching a new feature today that it has – until now – been testing with a limited number of companies.

It allows companies to engage with a more relevant audience than previously, enabling more relevant and therefore more productive conversations.

In a survey they undertook, LinkedIn asked why users follow a company. They found that:

• 67% of users follow a company to gain industry insights;
• 61% follow for company news; and
• 49% are attracted by the peer community.

The targeted status updates feature will help companies to engage with their followers and deliver them insights such as company news, industry trends, blog posts and job opportunities. From the trial, LinkedIn report that Philips saw a 106% increase in engagement with their followers.

The following video tells you all you need to know.

OK, so the day is finally here.

What have you done to comply – or at least show that you are attempting to comply – with the EU Directive on cookies?

For my own part, I’ve been back and forth over the last few weeks, and have looked at the law in detail and what solutions are available.

I’ve implemented several solutions – only to be disappointed by them.

My latest solution is what you can see now on this page. It’s a top bar (a WordPress plugin called Easy Heads Up Bar) that I have linked to my all-new cookie policy, which I created thanks to a great (free) tool from Attacat.

I’m sure the ICO won’t be out to get little old me for non-compliance, but as a marketer, I feel I must set an example. I think the extra pop-ups and notifications will do nothing for the user experience – and that irks me as a marketer and as a surfer. But, I have complied. My solution doesn’t adhere to the strict letter of the (original) law, but now that the law has been relaxed so that it talks about “implied consent”, I think what I’ve done is OK. And my solution is similar to that on the BBC and McDonald’s sites, so if it’s good enough for them, it certainly is good enough for me and for my clients.

Photo credit: Superfloss / Kasey Albano

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”.

I like to think I am a bit of an exception to the rule.  I can, and do (do marketing, that is). But I also teach it to others.

I run one-day marketing training workshops in London, aimed at helping small-business owners, self-employed people and those looking to set up in business how to run their own marketing.

The one-day course follows the stages of the marketing planning process – from SWOT analysis and objective-setting, through the multitude of marketing tactics, to budget setting and measurement.  As we go along, the delegates get to build their own plan, using a planning template I created and which is given to each delegate on USB.

Most of the marketing tactics discussed are free or inexpensive (except for the investment of some time), which is ideal for small businesses and startups.  A business can get great returns these days using social media, content marketing, email marketing and so on, as long as they plan their activity carefully, have a consistent approach and are sure about what they want to achieve.

Delegates go away from the course armed with the beginnings of a plan, lots of ideas about which marketing tactics might be right for them, and the knowledge they need to deploy their new marketing plan within their business.

With my ongoing clients and the odd piece of ad hoc consultancy work, I don’t have the time to be aggressively marketing the workshops, so I’ve priced the courses very competitively at just £99, to attract a large number of delegates without having to spend too much time promoting them.  My strategy seems to be working thus far.  The last course got a good uptake and the feedback was excellent.

I’ve just scheduled in the next course – for Thursday 31^st May 2012.  If you’d like to attend, you can book online. Or if you know someone who is self-employed or who runs their own small business, please share the details with them.

It’s not often that I get around to doing my own marketing, so I’ve been trying to proactively schedule in the time once a week to work on it.

Last week I wrote a couple of new blog posts for publishing at some stage in the future, and this week I’ve written up some case studies, two of which I have published on this site:

• Margolis – business blogging
  Margolis is a great company that I work with on an ongoing basis. I mainly do copywriting and content management for them, including managing their blogging.
• Bromley Common Golf Society – website development
  BCGS isn’t technically a client. My husband is one of the co-founders, so he has little choice about where he sources his marketing services! But I have recently redeveloped their website, so I thought I’d write up a small case study about it and let you see the before and after images.

I often write case studies for my clients to showcase their experience or expertise within certain industries. They are perfect as a way of really demonstrating what a company does and how it benefits its clients. Once written, they can be:

• added to your website as a blog post or separate page
• designed and printed for:
  - leaving with prospective clients
  - use as takeaways from exhibitions and events
  - direct mailshots to prospects
• emailed to clients as part of a regular newsletter
• emailed to prospects as part of a campaign to similar vertical market companies
• designed as PDFs and added to document-sharing sites like issuu or scribd
• promoted (with a link to your website) using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest (if you have a great photo as part of the case study)
• sent to your target media as a press release

Just one word of caution: before you publish, don’t forget to get your client’s authorisation for what you’ve written about them. If you need any help with the entire process, Kerrmunications can help you by researching, writing, designing, printing and promoting your case studies. Just get in touch and we’ll be happy to give you a detailed quote. If you just want a fairly straightforward case study written, prices are from £125.

It’s not long now until the EU cookie law, the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, comes into effect.

On 26^th May 2012, all UK websites will need to comply with the new directive. According to a report by consultancy KPMG, issued this week, 95% of UK companies have yet to comply.

That’s a pretty poor show really, seeing as the directive came into force in May 2011 (even if the Information Commissioner’s Office did give us all a year’s grace to sort things out!)

But it’s more worrying when you realise that these companies are therefore risking fines of up to £500,000.

What do you need to do?

For you to comply, it’s no longer enough to just state whether or not your site uses cookies and how you use the information you collect – if indeed you are even doing that anyway – many websites aren’t and didn’t even have a privacy policy!

So now, to ensure that you’re compliant, you need to:

• Undertake an audit of the cookies that your site places on your users’ computers – you can do this for free using Attacat’s free Chrome toolbar extension; and
• Find out what information is taken from users of your website and decide whether it falls within or without the directive.

If you’re using cookies that are affected by the directive, you will then need to:

• Tell people that the cookies are there;
• Explain what the cookies are doing – this is the hard bit, but I love Attacat’s cookie policy wording, which they say you can use; and
• Obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device.

Some solutions for your website

If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, then your site will almost certainly be using a number of plugins or modules that will be storing cookies on your users’ computers.

Here are some solutions for you to consider:

• CookieCert Cookie Consent Tag: this comes as a WordPress plugin or as some code you can add to your site.  It places a consent bar at the top of your site and also provides a link to your site’s unique page on CookieCert.com which details the cookies found during a cookie audit of your site, which in turn allows you to demonstrate your compliance. It looks good so I tried the plugin, but it wouldn’t work for me. Configuring the code-only option is simple, but I didn’t add it to my site because I couldn’t find any instructions about exactly where to put it. I wasn’t sure if it had to be on each page, or if it should go in header.php or footer.php, or somewhere else. And I couldn’t be bothered to faff around testing it or trying to figure it out.  I also couldn’t find any contact details for this company, and they offer “certification” for $195, so all things considered, I decided to steer clear.
• Cookie Control is a neat little icon device that sits on your site – at bottom left or bottom right – and then pops up to ask the user for consent, along with giving links to your privacy policy and to details about how a user can change their browser settings.  You can download some code, and there’s also a WordPress plugin, a Drupal module (and a Magento plugin “coming soon”).  I have installed the WordPress plugin on a couple of my sites (including this one – did you spot it?) and it works well. [Edit: 24th May 2012 - I've since removed it after two of my clients complained they didn't like it popping up! Not sure what I will do now. And only two days to go!!] [Another edit: 26th May 2012 - The deadline day is here, so I had to do something! I have added a top bar to explain that the site uses cookies, and have linked it to a comprehensive cookie policy that now sits outside of my previous privacy policy. It it's good enough for the BBC and for McDonald's, then it's good enough for me!]
• EU Cookie Directive is a simple WordPress plugin that displays a banner at the top of your website. You can configure it with your own message (and colours too if you know some CSS and how to edit it).  I tested it on a couple of sites and it works well, but I don’t like it as much as the nifty Cookie Control plugin.
• The EU Cookie Law WP Plugin is also a WordPress plugin, but it costs £10 – or £25 for a multisite license – and I really can’t see the point in paying for something you can get elsewhere for free!

Further reading:

• ICO’s guidance the rules on use of cookies

Photo credit: Gary Tamin

Today, Twitter turns 6.  Happy birthday, Twitter!

I can’t claim to have been there for  the first couple of  years of its life, but I like to think I have supported the child since it was a toddler!

With the news of its birthday, Twitter announced some new figures:

• It has more than 140 million active users (up from 50 million a day/100 million a month a year ago)
• There are 340 million tweets a day (up from 140 million a year ago)

That’s a lot of people saying a lot of things!

I was really interested to see the sketch Jack Dorsey made of how he thought it would look, and that he called it “stat.us” and then later “twttr”.

Image purchased from: Can Stock Photo ©

Facebook has announced that it is rolling out its “Timeline” view to all company and brand pages. You can activate it right now if you want, but in case you want to spend some time designing your page and getting it right, you have until 30th March to do that before your page is automatically updated.

So, what’s new?

Add a “cover photo”

The page layout is basically the same as for personal pages, so you have the opportunity now to add a large image that runs across the top of your page. I’ve seen a few awful ones where companies have just used their logo here. And while that’s not particularly creative, what’s worse is that the logos were pixellated. You need to be a bit more clever than that and choose an image that reflects your company. Or, even better, have a new custom image created by a graphic designer. You’re not allowed to include calls to action or contact information in the image, so you’ll need to think carefully about this. Think about how you can capture the essence of your company or how you can incorporate some personality for your page.  For example, if you offer creative services or products, you could showcase these (as has my photographer friend Stephanie).

Red Bull – whose previous Facebook pages were lauded for their creativity – have a nice new cover photo:

Yesterday I was playing around with the timeline to get myself up to speed for my clients, and was experimenting with what needs to be done. I ended up with an almighty great big image of me on my Kerrmunications page. Hopefully, by the time you read this, I will have had a chance to change that to something more appropriate!

Change your profile photo

You may only have to change the size of your image for this. However, many pages have previously created customised, tall images that explain a bit more about what they do. These are no good for the new profile photos which are now square.

Highlight your apps

You can choose up to four apps to appear at the top of your page, so choose the ones that you think are best for your audience. It may be your photos, or you may have created some custom pages. You can also now add custom images for the apps and custom page appear at 810 pixels wide instead of 520 pixels.

Customise your content

• You can highlight posts – this makes them stretch across the whole page, and so makes them more noticeable.
• You can also pin a story to the top of your page. Perhaps each day or each week you might want to highlight something new, and this is a good way to do that.
• Finally, you can populate your timeline with milestones. These can be stories or notes, accompanied by photos or images if you wish, that perhaps demonstrate the history of your brand or company.

Fast facts

Here’s what you need to know to change your page:

LinkedIn has today added a new button that companies can add to their websites and which their users can click to quickly and easily follow them on LinkedIn.

How does it work for the user?

If you’re logged in to LinkedIn and you click on the button, you will automatically follow that company.  If  you’re not logged in, you will be redirected and asked to sign in first, and once signed in, you will start following that company. Really easy!

There are more than 2 million company pages on LinkedIn now, and following a company allows you to stay up to date with their news, products and services. It’s also a great way for job-seekers to keep up to date with companies they’re interested in working for.

Also, according to a recent HubSpot study of more than 5,000 businesses, it was found that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%; almost 3 times higher (277%) than both Twitter (0.69%) and Facebook (0.77%). That’s some powerful conversion rate to be taking advantage of any way you can!

How do I add it to my website?

Adding the button is really simple.

1. First, go to the developers’ page.
2. Then type in the name of your company – it will automatically be listed if you’ve added it as a company page.
3. Just select which button you want (with or without follower numbers).
4. Click to get the code.
5. Add the code to your website.

So, without further ado, if you’re on LinkedIn, please follow Kerrmunications by clicking the button below:

I built a new website at the weekend. It only took one day.  It’s for my sideline business where I train small business owners, freelancers and self-employed people how to do their own marketing, called Marketing in One Day.

In just one day I attempt to convey to the delegates my 20+ years’ of marketing experience and knowledge. And I’m pleased to say that in just one day, I managed to build a brand new website for it.

The old website was beginning to look dated. I wanted to revamp the styling, incorporate some social media elements and also optimise it for the search engines (SEO). All these needs led in one direction only: WordPress.

I’m quite proficient in HTML and CSS, skills I gained when working at an internet consultancy during the dotcom boom (and then bust!). But things have moved on since then. Before I rebuilt this website in June 2010, I went on a WordPress training course, which was great. It taught me the basics of setting up a site and adding pages and posts. Since then, I’ve learned even more and I can now create a new website in just one day. Of course, this isn’t always the case for many businesses, but I already had all the images and text I needed. Both needed tweaks here and there, of course – reformatting the image sizes, changing some of the copy – but that didn’t take too long at all.

What took the time was getting the layout how I wanted it and choosing colours and styles. But I was amazed that I could manage to do it all in one day.

Here’s the steps to follow if you want to do the same:

1. Set up your domain name and hosting – preferably do this before you launch a new site as it can take up to 24 hours for the domain name to resolve.
2. Load WordPress onto your server and set up the database. This is easily done on most hosts, as they have a one-click install process. My own host has just introduced one-click install, but as I’d moved my domain to them less thatn 24 hours before I wanted to load WordPress, it wasn’t possible and I had to manually install it. It took a little longer than their fêted “5 minutes” !
3. Choose, purchase, download and add a theme. I chose Theme Blvd’s Barely Corporate.
4. Set up the structure of your site by adding pages and building the menu. Make sure permalinks are optimised for SEO.
5. Format the footer and add in your widgets for things like a Twitter feed, social media links or your contact details.
6. Format the look of your different pages. My own site has three page styles – one for the front page; a page with a right hand sidebar; and a full-width page. This took me the longest, trying to decide how my homepage would look, whether to use a slider or not, what to include on the slider, what colours to use, and so on.
7. Add all your content: your images and text. Make sure to proofread it all very carefully.
8. Add any plugins you want. I added things like: Mailchimp (I want to add a sign-up box later); Google and Mailchimp Analytics; duplicate post creation; and Googlecards to add my Google+ details. But you may want to add some social sharing widgets, SEO-boosting plugins, and others.
9. Test your site. Make sure all the links work, that the site renders well in different browsers and also on different devices. I deliberately chose a “responsive” theme for my site, because it’s already optimised for viewing on computers, tablets and mobiles and doesn’t need me to change anything at all.
10. Promote the site. Using Google and Bing’s webmaster tools, verify your site and upload a sitemap.
11. Backup the site and make sure you have future backup plans in place.
12. Put your site live – the exciting bit!

Well, that’s it. Never mind Marketing in One Day – this was WordPress in one day! Here are the before and after shots: