A guest post by Matt Chatterley of MattchedIT Ltd – thanks Matt

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Over the last few years (or perhaps more accurately, months), we’ve watched the way we interact with each other online change drastically through facebook, twitter and various other less-known services and tools. But how many of us have really sat down and studied the impact these changes could have on our businesses?

Once upon a time it was hard to set up an online shop. They were few and far between and they were major undertakings. That certainly isn’t the case now – we have the technology, you might say.

It’s probably harder to choose the solution you want to use – or to find a reputable developer amongst the masses – than it is to actually go through the motions of planning, implementing and opening your store.

Sadly, many would-be virtual shop-keepers learn a hard lesson shortly after they open – although laying the foundations and opening a shop is pretty simple, making sales is something else entirely.

Marketing is a serious business

You’re reading my scribblings on Nikki Pilkington’s blog – so you must already know that she is well known in Internet Marketing circles, for all the right reasons. I’m sure she and I will agree on this point – the toughest job which lays before you with your shiny new online shop is going to be bringing in customers and making sales.

I don’t mean to gloss over the importance of making sure your website is going to make sales – that’s clearly critical too, but you need an audience before you can even find out if it’s laid out in a manner which will tempt them to buy.

Instead of telling you about the importance of a marketing plan or about all the things you should be doing, I’m going to suggest some ideas for your site itself – some of the things which we are busy incorporating into the in-house eCommerce framework which we use to build sites.

Three ways to engage customers, get referrals and to save those sales!

Engage Customers – There is so much you can do to increase the level of customer engagement your site permits.

Sure, it might make recommendations for similar products – thats nothing new. But how about sending an existing customer a quick tweet when you add a new product the system thinks they’d like, based on their past purchases?

“Hi @you! A new book has been published by @your_favourite_author..”

Get Referrals – If you can get your customers to recommend you to their friends, particular over social media, you’ll be tapping into one of the most powerful and effective marketing resources in the world. Perhaps you could offer a discount code if they perform enough “social shares” – or you could issue them with an affiliate code and hand out a share of the cash if one of their friends makes a purchase.

A recommendation from a friend is always going to be stronger than any advertisement you can issue yourself!

Save those Sales – don’t you hate it when the product you want is out of stock? Particularly if it’s a high demand item – by the time an email notification of new stock arrives, the odds are it’ll be sold out again. So why not return to twitter, facebook and other “instant gratification” messaging services?

Get it right and not only will you be able to make your customer feel important with their notification – you might draw in a few of their followers, too!

Social Networking is for life, not just for this year

Perhaps I should say “Social Marketing” rather than “Social Networking”. It’s not going anywhere – and it’s only going to get more important. Sure, like anything online, it’s going to change quickly and we’re all going to have to run to keep up at times, but fortune favours the brave!

That’s why as we push ahead with our development schedule, finding new ways to integrate with and get the most out of social networks is going to remain high on our list of priorities. Is it on yours yet? And if not, why not?

Matt Chatterley is an experienced software developer and one of the directors of Mattched IT Ltd, a web development company based in Hampshire which specialises in providing tailor-made web and software solutions to the business market.

I saw an interesting post in a forum the other day – the original poster was complaining that one of his suppliers hadn’t been able to complete his work, but was blogging every day, was posting on Facebook, tweeting etc, so they couldn’t be too busy, could they?

The reason I found the post interesting, even amusing, was because the person being complained about is one of my clients, and I know how busy she is. So busy that she pays me to do her blogging, tweeting and Facebooking while she gets on with the work in hand. She also hires a VA to deal with her email, and accounts, so she’s not ‘wasting time’ there either.

I think it’s easy to look at someone’s Facebook page or blog and presume that they’re wasting all their time on their own business and perhaps not supplying your service quickly enough, and of course there are extremes, but don’t presume that because you’re seeing activity from someone, they’re wasting time.

For example, I wrote this blog while I was on holiday – I had no internet connection, so I saved it and a few others as there was nothing else workwise I could do with my time. I scheduled it when I got back, so I’m not actually in front of my PC while you read it – I’m probably on a conference call or working on someone’s site.

I schedule a lot of tweets too (@nikkipilkington) – so just because you see me on Twitter doesn’t mean I’m there right at that moment.

Our NikkiPilkington Facebook page is administered by 3 different people, as is my personal account on occasion.

Of course, I keep a check on things and any replies or interactions you see are from me personally, but I don’t spend my life hovering over FB, Twitter and my blog, and neither does my client – something worth thinking about when you see someone Tweet and wonder why they haven’t yet replied to an email you sent yesterday

Lots of the questions I get on Twitter and Facebook relate to blogging and SEO, and as I was typing up a quick and dirty guide to SEO Blogging for a client, I mentioned it to someone else and they asked for a copy. Then I mentioned it on Twitter and others asked. So I tidied it up a (little) bit, put it in PDF format and here it is

It covers:

• Thinking of what to write
• What not to blog
• How much should I write?
• How do I get people to comment?
• Should I tweet and facebook my blogs?
• Blogging for SEO – a quick and dirty guide
• Making sure Google knows about your blogs

It's not an advanced guide, it's not rocket science and hopefully it's not full of jargon.

I'm offering it free – no sign up, no cash, nothing – all I ask is that if you like it, you drop me a line in one of the many places you can find me, and then direct someone else to this page by either Tweeting about it, Facebooking it, mentioning it on Linked in, writing a blog post about it, or shouting on the High Street with a megaphone (special kudos to those of you who do the latter!).

Anyway, please click on the link to get 67 SEO Pointer for Blogging Beginners – a free guide

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photo credit: lumaxart

I get asked this question a lot. “If I want to be on the front page of Google for ‘widgets in Barnet’ then I need to buy www.widgetsinbarnet.com , don’t I?”

Now, there’s a lot of disagreement on the truths and lies about domain weighting – does Google give a higher position to someone with the right domain name? Will you be penalised if you don’t have keywords in your domain name?

All I can tell you is that in my experience:

1) If 2 sites are exactly the same in every way looks wise, same optimisation, same links in etc, and one of them has a keyword rich domain name, then yes, the chances are that Google will prefer them over the site with no keyword rich domain name.

2) If 2 sites looked exactly the same, but only one was optimised, and the other one had the keyword rich domain, 9 times out of 10 in my experience, the properly optimised site would get higher listings.

3) Having a keyword rich domain is only one part of the SEO ‘jigsaw’ – if you don’t have one, don’t worry about it – work on the optimisation of the site that is on the domain name that you DO have, and capitalise on the fact that your domain has been around a while.

I'd love to hear your thoughts below!

We love a good top ten post here at NP, and as we've recently found a fab social media t-shirt for Baby O (see if you can guess which one it is!) were inspired to bring you:

10 Facebook, Twitter & Social Media Tshirts for Kids & Adults

1) I'm not a blogger, I just Tweet a lot

Perfect to make a point – not everyone is a blogger, of course. Available from Twitter's Threadless page

2) They're not my parents, we met on Facebook

A great statement for kids, can we have another that says 'They're not my kids, I found them on eBay' please? Available in ages 4-9 from Little Sunflowers

3) You 'Like' this

Using the Facebook thumbs up to promote an air of narcissism – nice… Found over at NerdyShirts

4) 140 is the new 420

Subtle – we like this one – either people will get it or they won't, but it won't be 'in your face'. Another one from the Twitter Threadless store.

5) Digg & Reddit & Stumbleupon & Delicious

Perfect for all you Social Bookmarking addicts out there. Another one from Nerdy Shirts.

6) Twittering blue bird for kids

A variation on the Twitter bird, this can be customised to include a Twitter name. Found over at Spreadshirt

7) There's a Facebook group for people like you

The ultimate insult from Facebook tshirts?

Connect with me … Linkedin

Even Linked in are jumping on the apparel bandwagon – quite subtle though! Available direct from Linkedin

9) YouTwittFace

Maybe this says it all?!? From CafePress

10) Social Networking Killed My Social Life

I know how the designer of this one feels Another Cafepress find.

So there you have it, ten Facebook, Twitter and Social Media T-shiorts for kids and adults alike – if you've found any other Social Media tshirts, let me know in the comments below!

Since we posted our guide to installing Wordpress Plugins we’ve had a lot of emails asking for help.

Not everyone wants to, or indeed can, install their plugins themselves and get them running, but it seems that lots of you want to install plugins on your blogs and don’t know where to turn.

So we’re offering Wordpress plugin installation help on a first come, first served basis for a nominal fee (much as we would like to do this for nothing, the amount of requests we’ve had would have meant we’d do no paying work for at least a week!)

If you have seen a plugin on another Wordpress blog and want it on yours, or have a specific plugin you want to install, then we’ll do it for you for just £5 per plugin.

This includes uploading / FTPing the plugin, activating it and amending any settings, as well as testing.

All we need from you is your Wordpress login details and / or your FTP details.

Use the Paypal button below to book this service. The payment will trigger an email to you that will ask all the questions we need answers to, and we’ll install your plugin within 48 hours.

It’s all very well frantically beavering away: Facebooking this, Tweeting that, Blogging here, Commenting there, updating your YouTube Channel and spending an age answering questions on LinkedIn – but  are you tracking and measuring the results of all this activity?

I know that if you do all of this work yourself, in theory it costs you nothing, but your time still has a value, right? Even if you don’t always charge your hourly rate, you must have one in mind, so for every hour you spend on your Social Media and Internet Marketing efforts, that’s how much it’s cost you. OK not in cold hard cash, but that’s an hour / a day / a week you haven’t billed out your time, so for the sake of this example let’s say that’s what you’re spending on your online marketing.

So, what’s your ROI? Are you measuring it? Are you tracking leads that come in because of your efforts, working out how many of them convert to sales, looking at the lifetime value of the client and working out whether your efforts are well spent?

If your time is worth £65 an hour, and you spend 10 hours a week on your online marketing efforts, then you need to be making a profit of MORE THAN £650 a week FROM YOUR EFFORTS ALONE for it to be worthwhile.

10 hours sounds a lot, doesn’t it? But it’s not really – it’s easy to spend an hour or so a day messing around on Twitter, chatting to people and answering queries. Then half an hour a day updating the Facebook fan page and replying to people on there (ooh, don’t forget to tend to your Farm and Cafe while you’re there!). Then an hour or so a week blogging, ten minutes a day replying to other people’s blogs. It all adds up.

Don’t believe me? Download and install RescueTime - it tracks the amount of time you spend on each website or activity. It’s a fab piece of software as it tracks without you having to do anything, and gives you a lovely report at the end. Find out EXACTLY how much time you spend on Facebook / Twitter et al.

Then look at the leads and clients that you can track back to your online marketing efforts – ask everyone who contacts you where they heard of you, whether they get in touch by email, phone, or call by your shop / office.

For a month, keep a log of all of this info – and at the end of it work out whether your efforts are well spent or not.

Because let’s face it, it’s easy to let Internet Marketing and Social Media descend into the realms of ego – how many times you’re retweeted, where you’re mentioned, whether someone replies to your blogs. But at the end of the day we’re all here for the same thing – we want to promote our businesses and make money. It’s great if my latest Tweet is retweeted 56 times – but if I’ve spent 15 hours promoting my company in the last week and had no sales or leads, then those retweets aren’t going to put food in the mouths of my kids.

Leave the ego behind and find the facts – are YOUR efforts online paying off?

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photo credit: Doublep1

Although the main purpose of a Facebook fan page isn’t for SEO, there’s no point ignoring SEO completely, so it was nice to come across this article on SEO for your Facebook Fan page on the SaveDelete blog.

Please go and read it over there, but in the interests of this post being more than 5 lines, I’ve summarised the bullet points below.

• Use your brand name as your Fan Page name
• Select the best Facebook username for your fanpage
• Install static FBML and create additional tabs and boxes
• Use the ‘about’ text box for optimisation of your fanpage
• Use the ‘info’ tab for high density keywords and text
• Create fresh content regularly
• Attach YouTube videos
• Post direct links and relevant sites on your wall
• Include photos with captions and events with descriptions
• Get more inbound links to your fan page

While I think that people may go a little overboard on the ‘about’ and ‘info’ boxes, I agree with the rest of the advice, and think it’s a great article, so please do read it if you’re interested in using your Facebook fan page to enhance your SEO.

We’ve had quite a few enquiries recently saying “I want to install such and such a plugin on my Wordpress blog, how do I do it?” so I thought a blog post was in order.

There are 2 ways to install plugins – through your admin panel and ‘manually’ – below are Wordpress’s own instructions regarding how to do both.

Through the admin panel is easiest – log in and then:

From the Administration Panels, click on the Plugin tab. Once you have uploaded a plugin to your WordPress plugin directory, activate it from the Plugins Management page, and sit back and watch your plugin work.

To be honest, this does work well for most of the plugins – and if you have a little time, searching for plugins to install from the admin panel can while away a few hours, and result in you installing and playing with oodles of plugins – it’s very addictive!

If you have to manually install  plugin it’s a little more complicated – you’ll need FTP software and your FTP logins (an address, username and password – if you don’t know them, your web designer/host can probably give them to you).

So, once you have this, follow these instructions:

Read through the “readme” file thoroughly that usually accompanies a plugin, or the website article from where you found the plugin. It is often helpful to print out the instructions so you can check off the installation steps as you complete them.

Upload the plugin to the wp-content/plugins folder in your WordPress directory online.

Make any changes to templates or files as required by the Plugin instructions including adding Plugin template tags.

Activate the Plugin:

1. Access the Plugin Panel in your Administration Panels
2. Scroll down through the list of Plugins to find the newly installed Plugin (if not visible, start from the beginning to check to see if you followed the instructions properly and uploaded the file correctly).
3. Click on the Activate link to turn the Plugin on.

Continue making any modifications necessary from the “readme” file instructions to make the plugin’s actions meet your needs.

They make it sound very easy, and if you know what you’re doing, it is. However, we do realise that the above 5 steps may sound like gobbledygook to some people, so maybe the video below will help:

If you’re still struggling to add a plugin to your blog, or to get it to work properly,  please see our Wordpress Plugin Installation Help service.

We get asked this a lot – when people look into our Article Marketing services, one of the first questions they ask is “But won’t I be penalised for having duplicate content online?”

The simple answer is no. The web thrives on the sharing of information, and duplicate content is a part of this.

I was going to write  huge post about the different types of duplicate content, and then I noticed in my Twitter stream a message from @clairejarrett, pointing to this post from High Ranking.

As it says:

If your own bylined articles are getting published elsewhere, that’s a good thing. You don’t need to provide a different version to other sites or not allow them to be republished at all. The more sites that host your article, the more chances you have to build your credibility as well as to gain links back to your site through a short bio at the end of the article. In many cases, Google doesn’t even filter out duplicate articles in searches, but even if they eventually show only one version, it’s still okay.

It’s a well thought out article, and I agree with every word, so rather than reinventing the wheel over here, I’m urging you to go and read it over there.

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photo credit: where are the joneses