All posts by Ian

Random, Social Marketing

12 Great Tips to Improve Your Business Networking Skills and Get More From Business Networking Events

I’ve gained an awful lot from meeting people at industry events and informal get-togethers. I’ve met new clients, hired staff, learnt a lot, made some great friends and had a lot of fun, all through business networking.

Here’s some tips on how you can improving your business networking skills. Take a good look at The Advanced Guide to Cheap Van Leasing that can help your business get closer to customers far away.

1. Make a great first impression

Smile, make eye contact, have a confident handshake and show a genuine interest in the people you meet. These are some of the things you can do to make a good first impression. Remember you have exactly one chance to make a good impression!

2. Don’t Be “The Salesman”

Networking events, parties and conferences are not the ideal place for the hard sell. Trying to sell can make you look desperate and is not the way to build successful business relationships

3. Always follow up

Timely, relevant follow-ups are one of the keys to successful business networking. Just meeting someone once will rarely bring you business. You have to repeat the contact, by email, face to face, pick up the phone, just make sure that you follow up and keep contact.

Continue reading 12 Great Tips to Improve Your Business Networking Skills and Get More From Business Networking Events →

ecommerce

Hackers Hit Cotton Traders And Take Credit Card Details

You may have heard in the news that dirty hackers have stolen 1000’s of credit card numbers, along with addresses from the Cotton Traders website. As many as 38000 customers of Cotton Traders had their information stolen when the clothing company’s website was hacked into.

I did a quick search on Google for Cotton Traders to see if they had placed any information on their website about the security breach. In the Google SERPS I noticed their meta description which touts “shop in safety online”. Hmm not quite true is it…

Here’s a screen grab from Google this morning:

Cotton Traders Hacked

You can read more about this story here and here.

Social Marketing

18 Super Useful Ways To Use Twitter

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Twitter is a micro-blogging platform and social networking tool. The micro bit comes from the fact that you can only post updates, or “tweets” as they are affectionately called, that are 140 characters long. You can follow people which ads them to your network and shows you their updates, you can also send personal messages to people you follow. Wisdom teeth removal is a surgical procedure to remove one or more wisdom teeth

One the great things about Twitter is that you can “tweet” from a mobile device, Instant Messenger and many other websites including Facebook.

It’s easy to laugh at Twitter and call it out as a faddy piece of nonsense. But it does have a use both for business and personal use.

Continue reading 18 Super Useful Ways To Use Twitter →

Marketing

3 Simple Steps to Increasing Your Ads Click Through Rate

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Writing ad copy that makes people take action is a skill. An overlooked skill. It can take time, creativity and testing to come up with the perfect call to action. But a Call To Action, or CTA as it gets called in our office, is only half the story. If you want to rocket CTRs, that’s “Click Through Rates”, on your ads you’re going to need to read this post. OK enough of the acronyms, let the tips begin! Continue reading 3 Simple Steps to Increasing Your Ads Click Through Rate →

Marketing

34 Incredibly Strong Calls To Action To Make Your Visitors Click, Phone Or Buy

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Does you website strongly motivate people to do something? Or do your visitors simply visit and leave?

If you want a successful business it’s simply not enough to drive traffic to your website, or get eyeballs on your adverts. You need them to do something, to act!

A call to action is words or phrases which encourage your audience to take action. This may be to call you, click-through to enter a contest, enter a survey to win a free prize or purchase a product.

Too many websites and adverts forget to ask for an action. Don’t let yours be one of them. Use the list below as inspiration to create your own call to action.

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What’s your best call to action?