We had a fantastic family holiday recently in Fife’s East Neuk (the Scottish Riviera allegedly) and stayed at absolutely fantastic self catering accommodation in Elie called Belcote Cottage.

I got talking to the owners about how to market themselves and their website and one of the best ways I thought of being able to show off the size and quality of the 10 berth self catering house would be to use the power of Youtube.

Just before we left I did a quick walkthrough with my digital camera and then added some music (King Creosote) via I-movie.  Took about an hour to do in total and everyone is happy with the results.  Since the clip was added at the end of June it’s had nearly 400 views which for a niche market isn’t bad at all…

I also wanted to demonstrate how close to the beach the property was (60 seconds away) so  I created a clip that demonstrated that.  This clip has had over 200 views.

My point is that these are so easy to do.  Anyone can do them.  I went a bit fancy by adding titles and music, but that’s just because I could and I’m a bit of a frustrated creative.

I’m currently working on some similar video content for my Loch Lomond Self Catering Accommodation client up at Ardlui – they’ve got so many great selling points and amazing scenery so it’s a no-brainer for that property to use video.

Toward the end of 2009 I realised that Ubisan Management’s unique recession-savvy approach to web design was the perfect response to the current economic climate and I started attending various business networking groups in and around the Glasgow area to widen my network and increase my clientbase.

The truth is you could spend practically ALL of your working week attending business networking events and following up on conversations you had at them…often with little or no return.  By far and away the most effective business networking group I’ve been attending has been the BNI Glasgow Trailblazers group.

BNI isn’t for everyone.  On the face of it, BNI does seem a bit rigid and structured but I wouldn’t be dragging myself out of bed at 6am for a 6.45am meetup every Thursday morning if it wasn’t working out for me.

There’s a bit of a push on for more members of our great business networking group so to help out with that and because I’m an all-round good guy, I knocked up a quick WordPress install so we have a web presence in advance of the impending big push.

Do you need a clean, distinctive web presence in a hurry? Contact us today to find out how we can help.

In the business breakfast networking world a fair number of business cards get chucked around. Getting yours noticed is a battle in itself so it’s best to avoid accompanying it with some of these gems:

“Here’s my card. Don’t look at my website it’s awful.”

“My website address is on there but it doesn’t work, so don’t bother looking.”

“Take a look at my website. It doesn’t work properly but you’ll get the idea”

“Don’t bother checking out my website as the info is really out of date”

Remember that your website is a showroom open to potential customers 24 hours a day. What is effectively your online sales brochure should be turning these interested visitors into paying customers.

A card with no web address on it isn’t such a bad thing after all.

If your website is on the least bit shaky ground contextually or cosmetically, scrub it from your business card.  Think about some of the other places you can send breakfast meeting prospects to instead when you follow up your encounter via email.  Here’s a couple of non-industry-specific nuggets to kick off with:

Linkedin profile:  What do you mean you don’t have one?  It’s a great resource for showing how well connected you are and how well regarded you are through the recommendations system.  Here’s mine.

Google Places listing: Search Google Maps for your business.  Find your listing then verify and add to it.  Encourage happy customers to leave reviews. Here’s ours.

Got thousands of business cards left?

Sure, there’s plenty of creative uses for old business cards out there. But what if you care about the environment and don’t quite have the time or energy to make cool business card cubes?

Why not just stick a forward on your domain name to your recently verified Google Places listing?

No embarrassment in that!

The latest business from the hotel, bar and leisure industry to benefit from our extensive web design and marketing experience is Ardlui Retreat; a premium self catering holiday park located on the North-westerly shores of Loch Lomond.

It’s a quality location for a holiday and we really wanted to transmit that sense of that  quality through the website design and I think we’ve done that pretty successfully.

We’ve also integrated the Supercontrol booking system into the site to enable the owners to take online bookings directly.  With third party organisations such as Hoseasons and Visit Scotland taking upwards of a 20% share of any booking, it really makes sense to try to capture bookings independently and the Supercontrol system offered the flexibility and speed of implementation that the client really needed.

Ardlui Retreat has already seen a 150% year-on-year increase in website visitors since our involvement and this has also translated into a  similar rise in occupancy rates.

Over the coming months we’ll be working hard at further increases to traffic via SEO and more traditional forms of marketing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how SEO specialists market themselves and try to attract new business. Truth is that most decent SEOs don’t!. They never need to advertise their services, never mind solicit new clients, so it surprises me as much as it irks me whenever I hear of people I know being sold a bit of an SEO dummy.

I’m not interested in outing anybody so for the purposes of this article, let’s change the name to something suitably Glaswegian…BAWBAGSEO. This list just serves as an example of stuff I’ve discovered going on that I believe no decent web or SEO professional would ever involve themselves in. Furthermore, if you are a business and considering outlaying for some SEO on your site, steer clear of any of these scenarios…

1. BAWBAGSEO carries out SEO work for Client A and gets Client A good results. BAWBAGSEO then approaches client B, who is a competitor of client A and offers to optimise client B’s site for a long tail search term that Client A hasn’t optimised his for. You read that right…SEO’s offering out sloppy long tail seconds to client competitors. Very poor.How to avoid: Ask your SEO if they have any other clients in a similar sector to yours and what their policy is relating to this.
2. Aside from providing SEO services, BAWBAGSEO also runs 3 day “all you can eat” SEO courses at a £1000 a pop so participants can then carry out SEO successfully themselves (alongside running their day to day business)
3. Scaring client B into SEO expenditure (preferably supplied by BAWBAGSEO) by showing them their site’s W3C validation error report when BAWBAGSEO‘s validation report has twice as many errors as client B
4. Guaranteeing page one results for long-tail, traffic-light, highly specific search terms. A recent post on the consistently excellent Hoboweb blog titled How many clicks does a no 1 ranking in Google get compared to No 2, 3, 4 & 5 threw up some pretty interesing data that shows how much potential traffic can diminish past the first few results. Of course, using the Google Keyword tool, you can find out roughly how many searches across the Google network there have been for a specific search term. I reckon it’s even tougher now because the first page of search results is getting so clagged up with Google Places, Adwords and other Google bolt-ons.  Remember folks..technically, a page one result could be position 10 and you’ve got to ask yourself how much of a return on your SEO investment will this get you?
5. Beware the one month contract.  Any SEO relationship needs to be set up for the long haul.  If an SEO tells you they can achieve everything they need to achieve in one month they are lying.

I guess we all know companies similar to BAWBAGSEO. Has anyone uncovered any other unsavoury SEO practices they’d like to share?

As part of the ongoing website optimisation service we’ve been providing for Loch Lomond Wakeboard (which is already bearing some pretty good first page results) we’ve implemented a WordPress blog into LLWB’s static website to enable them to communicate more directly with their clientbase potential and existing.

The blogging engine has been souped up to include featured post controls as well as some pretty nifty image management for story thumbnails.  It’s launched just in time for the official start to Loch Lomond Wakeboard’s new season, which kicks off tomorrow (Friday 2nd April) from their new location at Sallochy Bay on Loch Lomond.

We’re all looking forward to a bit of wakeboarding action this summer and Loch Lomond Wakeboard hopefully marks the first of several new clients we’re getting in and around this beautiful location.