Fifty Essential Business Tips

• Write everything down. That’s the basis of where this article originally comes from.
• The very first things you do should be:
- Get a name and a logo.
- Get business cards.
- Get  a web presence. 

Ideally, this presence should be a full web page but you need some kind of professional-looking point of contact on the internet, even if it’s only a Facebook page with your phone number on it.

• Look the part. You know you’re the best. Other people might not.
• Be punctual. It’s about respect, dammit!
• Traffic is always bad - I'm not interested in your excuses.
• Be prepared. The issue might be other than the client described it so what are the likely scenarios?
• Appear professional - be professional. Don’t be an empty shell of a business but even the best won’t sell if no-one believes it.
• Deliver. Deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver. No-one will pay for what they don’t get.
• Consistency is everything. It doesn’t mean a thing if you can't promise it.
• God is in the details. Your email address is really yourcompany@hotmail.com? Domain names cost a couple of pounds per year.
• Organisation creates time and can substitute for a bad memory.
• Get in to good habits. Practice makes things easier and you'll wonder how you ever found it difficult.
• Network where you can and always follow up.
• Get ideas where you can. You can get them anywhere, at any time and they’re free. Not all of them are good, however.
• Steal. If someone else has a good idea, make it work for you.
• Adapt. More can work for you than you think at first.
• Date-stamp everything you do.  Put the ‘Timed’ into SMART goals.
• Always communicate by email, where you can. People lie and forget, email doesn't. Also, it's free!
• Make everything IT based. If your premises burned down tomorrow, how much of your business would you be able to salvage? Now imagine if everything was on a hard drive, at a secure location.
• Take control. IT can be a time saver and improve your business and your life but no-one promised that you would get that benefit for free. It takes investment and management and working smarter, rather than harder. If you’re on the cloud, make sure you can back up everything offline.
• Redo your answering machine message - All your points of contact should appear professional.
• Write it up in full – and then blog it. It works for me!
• People only care about what's in it for them. You’re too busy to do people favours, right? Why would you assume anyone else is any different?
• Add value wherever you can. That’s kind of what this article is all about.
• Under promise, over-deliver.  “The customer will remember the quality long after they've forgotten the price,” - Gucci. As a rule of thumb, people will complain five times more often than they will compliment so give a mediocre service and, like as not, you'll be bad-mouthed. Only if you give an outstanding service will you be advertised for free.
• Sell benefits, not features but most of all, sell stories. We’re social animals. We want to tell people how clever we are, about the great deal we made, about the fantastic service we were given. Be part of that story.
• Ask for favours. People want to boast about how generous they are and, if they mention your name, it’s a win-win-win.
• Flip complainers. Never brush people off. Someone you turn around with great service is worth twice a normal customer. They’ll love you and they’ll talk about you.
• Charge more than you think you're worth. If your customers aren't complaining, then charge a little more. Go on, you deserve it.
• Only pay for what you can't do yourself, more cheaply. But always remember to value your own time appropriately.
• Expand your skills base - learn where you can. The more you’re able to do, the more you can charge for and the less you have to pay someone else to do.
• Listen. You like to be heard, right? But, equally, how can you deliver without knowing what’s wanted and needed?
• Teach. Being able to teach a process well is proof that you understand it. See below.
• Automate where you can, organise where you can't. Automation is work you don’t have to do. The more you can analyse a process, the more clearly you can understand it and the more likely it is that you can automate it, improve it and teach it.
• Think in terms of processes and trigger points. Optimise all the things.
• Be what you need. Need a mentor? Mentor someone else. Need a trained expert? Train a novice.
• Never say no - always have an alternative suggestion.
• Never negotiate on price or quality. Any idiot can drop their price or do a worse job. Only negotiate on the service you will actually provide but never lower your value.
• Intelligent, educated clients are the best. Again, any fool can sell to stupid or undiscerning customers so why compete more than you need to?
• If someone says something is impossible, listen. Check it out. You might be able to surprise them.
• Someone will listen or they won’t. If they will, sell to them. If they won't, sell to their customers.
• By default, assume what you need already exists on the internet. If you can't find it in twenty minutes, it doesn't. If someone tells you it does, get them to write it down.
• 'Free' is a four letter word. 'Cheap' is worse. You are 'good value'. People don't value what they don't pay for, even if it is only a token amount.
• Always make it easy for people to buy and to pay. Because, you know, why wouldn’t you?
• Create Calls To Action. Both for the above but also for all of your other sales touches. Remember,  CTAs aren’t just for the web but for traditional media as well.
• Create multiple revenue streams. Money may not be everything but having more of it certainly helps.
• If you're selling on the web, it's money while you sleep.
• Is your website working? All of it? How could it work better?
• Take responsibility. If it’s someone else’s fault, it’s not under your control. If it’s actually not under your control, taking responsibility for it helps no-one, least of all yourself. Learn the difference.
• Assess the quality of everything –in particular, your own performance. Don’t be satisfied with making a profit, how can you do better? Get feedback and use objective, like-to-like measurements. You can’t know how well you’re doing if you’re not checking.

You can download the Fifty Essential Business Tips article as a printable PDF file.

Minimum Wage – Maximum Benefit

The overall intent of a minimum wage is combat the economic imbalances in society and raise the standard of living, in particular for the lowest income sections of the population. A further proposed benefit is re-dressing the potential to financially exploit staff in an employer's market. Many business owners, corporate policies and individuals oppose this, on the basis of maximising profits and minimising governmental interference. They argue that not only is having a minimum wage ineffective in its stated ends but that it can actually harm the less well-off, in terms of their incomes and employment prospects. But is this top level approach short-sighted? Can a government-mandated minimum wage for individual staff members actually help business? I would argue that, yes, a minimum wage not only can help business but does, as well as being socially beneficial in general.

My thesis is that impoverished people don't spend. If you enrich people at the lowest incomes, they will consume more, enlarge the economy and create more demand for goods and services, which in turn drives business and provides employment. 

Many online articles make use of a graph similar to that below. I don't fully accept the assumptions on which this graph is based. Specifically, the 'demand' shown is the demand of business for employees. In this context, businesses are a middle tier between the goods and services created by the employees and the consumers. It is consumer demand that is the important factor here and this is referred to in some of these articles when they talk about 'elastic demand'. Consumer demand will drop, for some products, if the price is too high but, as I say, enriching the worse off will increase demand overall. Even decreases in employer demand have their limits. Ultimately, goods and services are created by employees. If a company sheds staff, it decreases its profits, potentially creating a downward spiral which ends in the business ceasing to exist at all.

Some frequently given objections to having a minimum wage:

"Raising the minimum wage makes it harder for these inexperienced workers to find a job, because businesses will either eliminate positions or choose to hire someone with more experience at the higher mandated wage." If a business can afford to pay a decent wage, naturally they will choose to hire the more talented worker, regardless of whether a minimum wage is in place.  In addition, this thinking doesn't take into the existence of a skills gap. These "experienced workers" often don't exist, not for the wages that the companies want to pay. Corporate employment policies have to reflect the job market as it actually is, not as they would wish it to be. Of course, you can educate to fill a skills gap. But at some level that education has to be paid for. If it is state funded, the state has to tax business in order to fund it. If it is funded by the individual, only the well-off can afford it, and it doesn't benefit those on a lower income. There are other solutions, such as corporate training schemes, for example, but in essence, the funding has to come from somewhere in the economy. That basically comes down to either the individual or the private sector, or a combination of both.

"'When I was a kid and you ordered a soda, a person had to stand with their finger on the button til the glass filled up, ' he said. 'And now in many of the fast food restaurants of course they've completely eliminated any labour involved with pouring the soda.'" ... "He argues that if a company has to pay people more, they'll find ways to pay fewer people." This is short-sighted, on the face of it. Any corporation above a certain level will always try to innovate in order to reduce costs. The existence of a minimum wage makes no more impact on this desire than any other cost of doing business.

"A minimum wage cannot defeat supply and demand." The market is, to a degree, an evolutionary environment. As far as business is concerned, government legislation is part of that environment. (Lobbying aside.) Those companies which are able to adapt to the change and accept a minimum wage as a necessary cost of doing business will survive and indeed prosper in the absence of those which cannot. Either way, the labour force won't die with the failed companies, they'll still have the ability to be employed by the companies that do survive. Any company which requires legislation to be set in stone in order to survive might as well be wearing a t-shirt saying 'I'm a dinosaur. Please meteor me.'

 There is also an argument that setting a minimum wage drives labour to the black market. These arguments neglect to mention that, in circumstances of low wages and welfare provision (such as in the United States), there is already a large shift towards illegal work, particularly in the drugs trade. If you can't survive on welfare or even if there is employment to be had but it doesn't provide enough for a basic minimum, your alternatives are crime or starvation. Faced with that choice, it's little wonder that the States has the gun crime problem it does, with the laissez-faire economics of the black market allowing murder as a tactic for reducing competition. The alternative that is being suggested is that, rather than run the risk that employers may turn to crime in order to pay a sub-standard wage to their workers, we should allow them to legally pay a wage that cannot support a basic standard of living. The same arguments could be, and are, used to propose the abolition of health and safety legislation and all forms of corporate responsibility, both to the employee and to society. Of course, no form of truly free market economy, ungoverned by any legislation, has ever historically existed, and there is no realistic prospect of one being created in the foreseeable future.

A minimum wage provides an incentive to get off welfare and into paid employment. This is not so apparent when welfare is also at a low level. If you raise the minimum wage, you can then raise welfare proportionately, thus raising the general standard of living and allowing a greater proportion of society to contribute to the economy.

Imposing a minimum wage may make it less profitable for an individual company to employ someone. However, it won't make the demand for that person's labour go away. Indeed, what a healthy economy absolutely cannot afford to have is a large pool of disenfranchised people who can't afford goods and services. So mandating a living wage for everyone will increase consumption and boost the economy. Even if one company is forced to lay off staff, the increase in demand for labour overall should mean that they should be able to find employment elsewhere, and thus still be able to contribute economically.

You can download the Minimum Wage – Maximum Benefit article as a printable PDF file.

Linking Together - How To Use LinkedIn Initially and More Effectively

In my last post I talked about the business reasons for having a presence on LinkedIn. This time I'm going to give a point-by-point how-to on creating that presence.

Step one is to establish a credible presence on the site. To do this, basically enter all your Curriculum Vitae details on your profile. Use the Edit Profile section for this. You can upload an existing CV but this process is not perfect so make sure you go back and check your profile afterwards and correct any errors. LinkedIn rates your profile on a percentage scale so get it up to 100%. This is not particularly difficult to do and the site itself will make suggestions as to what sections of your profile you should work on next.

Step two is to upload your existing contact details and C.R.M. into LinkedIn. You can import your existing web mail contacts from the Network / Add Connections option and you can also upload a spreadsheet of contacts by going from there to the Any Email option and entering details under the More Ways to Connect / Upload Contacts File heading. The spreadsheet must be in one of a number of specific formats. I suggest the format that is exported by Microsoft Outlook. Once you have done this, you can instruct LinkedIn to contact these people and request to connect with them. Tip: Never use the standard LinkedIn connection request message as it looks lazy. You can use a fairly generic message, just make it original to you.

Step three: Join groups. There are three main types of groups you should join initially:

1. Specialised groups that relate to your industry or interests.
2. General business related groups where the people in your community do or are likely to congregate. Groups related to networking, events and link-building are good examples of these.
3. Groups that specific leads, people you are interested in connecting with and existing connections have already joined. You should only join groups that you have at least a passing interest in. In the case of the first two, to do anything else is rather blatant pandering and in the case of the last you are only using your existing contacts as a source of interesting or useful groups.

Remember that you are limited to a total membership of fifty groups so choose which ones you join wisely. Don't worry about this too much initially as you can leave groups and churning your group membership should be part of your strategy anyway, as we shall see later.

Step four: Engage and converse with other LinkedIn members. You will probably be mostly doing this via groups but you can also privately message people you meet through groups, your connections, people you follow individually and those you search for. In groups, you can take on a number of roles. You can be relatively passive, only responding to points in which you have a direct interest, you can start conversations or topics, you can ask for or provide advice, you can form mentor and/or protégée relationships or you can simply be a general source of information or conversationalist. You can take on any or all of these roles in different groups or in the same ones.

Step five: Moving outside. You can link to or from your LinkedIn in profile or other activity via your website, blog or other social media or forum. You can promote your events, white papers, e-books and other publications as well as your products and services. These can also reference your LinkedIn presence, if appropriate. Caution should obviously be used when promoting yourself, as always. The administrators of some forums have a lower tolerance for self-promotion and overt marketing than others, as do users of those venues. You should also reference your LinkedIn presence as part of your conventional networking and check to see if people have a LinkedIn presence as part of your follow-up. Tip: use Google for this rather than LinkedIn's built in search as this will give you a more general picture of a lead's online presence. The LinkedIn search is biased towards those with whom you have an existing connection, which is not always helpful.

Step six:  Have a policy for who you connect with. It is very tempting to connect with anyone who is willing but you will soon lose track of their significance, if any. Have some form of sensible limitation on who you are willing to connect with. I personally only connect with people that I have met at least once or have a specific interest in. Tip: Many recruitment agents use LinkedIn as a general pool of potential candidates. If someone you don't know asks to connect with you, check their profile. If they work for a recruitment company or have over 500 connections, be cautious about accepting their request.

Step seven: Use your LinkedIn presence as a social media platform. Use SEO terms in your profile and posts. Link back to specific sections of your website and blog, using those terms, where appropriate.

Finally: Rinse, wash, repeat. Add more detail to your profile, increasingly use LinkedIn for C.R.M., join more groups, converse more, engage in and reference more activities, and refine your connection policy. Refinement is the key here. Always remember: it is very important to remove those profile details, online and real world activities, groups, connections and policies which are not helping you, either on LinkedIn or outside of it. Some activities may have a positive effect outside of LinkedIn but may not be appropriate to refer to in that context. LinkedIn has become the de facto site for publishing your professional credentials, so make sure that every action you take leads back into step one; establishing and enhancing your professional credibility. Also remember that refining your LinkedIn presence is a constant and ongoing process, to be performed organically, and you will achieve the best results from the site, both for your business and for whatever other purpose you choose to use it.

[Edit 19/07/2013]
You can now download the Linking Together - How To Use LinkedIn article as a printable PDF file.

Linking Together – LinkedIn is for Everyone with a Business Interest

Just over ten years ago, LinkedIn launched with the purpose of allowing professionals to build up  networks of online contacts. Today it has over two hundred million members worldwide. I first joined in 2009, perceiving and using it primarily as a place to store an online CV, for which purpose it served me tolerably well. I connected with many of my personal contacts, via its email upload facility, but more as a matter of course rather than seeing any immediate value in it. 

Over the next two years, I kept my profile updated, in the same way as I kept my conventional CV up-to-date, and added other information in odd moments of spare time. It was only when I started my own business, in 2011, that I came back to LinkedIn in order to see what potential it had to further my new status.

I was impressed. The first feature to attract my attention was Groups. I immediately saw that being able to effectively set up your own specific interest forums and news groups was an ideal way of contacting like-minded people and fellow professionals. (Who were conveniently already connected and searchable, requiring only an invitation.) It had also clearly become a great tool for researching and distributing information, including marketing material.

Since that time, the tools and features available on LinkedIn have become still more powerful and useful (including the facility to link to external tools and applications, in a similar way to Facebook) and the extent to which I employ these facilities has only grown. However, I have realised that not everyone utilises this capability as much as me. Indeed some people don't see much benefit in being registered on LinkedIn at all. It is for this reason, as well as to clarify my own thinking on the topic, that I have decided to create a point-by-point argument for why anyone who is serious about business networking should be on LinkedIn.

Many of your standard business functions can be usefully organised through LinkedIn:

·         Customer Relations Management. Your first-degree Connections allow you to see all the information that person has entered about themselves. As well as standard identity and employment details, this will usually contain additional information such as prior employment, recommendations (both for and by),  group memberships, website and social media. You will be able to see a lesser, but still considerable, amount of detail about your second-degree connections but virtually nothing about those of the third degree, other than their identity and some possibilities as to people who might know someone, who knows someone, as it were. This situation can be improved using the methods below.

·         Leads Generation. Of course the true beauty of LinkedIn is that it allows you to convert second-degree connections into primary leads by contacting them on the site. You can do this in a number of ways, for example through shared first-degree connections, groups or by knowing their preferred email address.  When and if the contactee acknowledges the shared connection, you improve the degree of all of their connections to you, by one, and vice versa.  So now all of their first-degree connections are at worst second-degree connections of yours and are now contactable in the same way.

·         Marketing. Groups are a particularly powerful LinkedIn tool for a variety of business-related purposes. Aside for each post having a section specifically for promotions, you can indirectly market yourself or your organisations through added value in various forms. For example, you can publish articles and whitepapers, publicise events, start discussions, offer mentoring or question-and-answer services or otherwise provide free content that can relate back to your business. This can be done through existing groups (subject to the permissions of the administrators) or those you set up yourself.

·         Sales. While LinkedIn is not and should not be used as a direct sales channel, methods like the above are fair game. In addition to this, making an initial contact with someone and messaging through the site will both count as 'soft sales touches' for the purposes of eventually getting that contract signed.

·         Research. One of the primary purposes that members use LinkedIn for is to research potential leads and contacts. However it can be used for much more than just this. Again, groups become invaluable here. Because many groups are set-up for specialised interests, you can usually find a group whose purpose is to discuss pretty much any topic in which you are interested. Not only that but, because the Groups section is essentially a portal site for setting up forums, even if you can't find the information you want already listed, you can post up a question and quite possibly receive an answer to it within hours or days. Naturally, as LinkedIn is specifically designed to be used by professionals, in all likelihood the answer will be given by someone who is well-versed in that particular subject.

·         Creating Credibility. As a professional, it has always been useful to have credible positive opinions from one or several people, eg. employers, clients or peer or professional groups. What hasn't always been easy is checking those references. LinkedIn has become the de facto reference point for potential clients and employers to ensure that their contacts' claims of quality are, in fact, based on genuine third-party statements. As it is online, these statements can easily be linked to from your own or other internet sites.

·         Search Engine Optimisation. As has already been mentioned, LinkedIn has over 200,000,000 members, as well as significant numbers browsing open profiles and groups. Many people link to various sections of LinkedIn and it links to thousands of pages, both from the core site and through user-generated content. In short, it is a huge site and linking from it to your own page, in a purpose-designed manner, bestows significant benefits in terms of being found by search engines. It is also set up to facilitate this as SEO benefits are a deliberate added-value service it provides for its members.

·         Establish a Social Media Presence. You don't have to think of it this way but it helps if you recognise that LinkedIn is a social media platform. You connect, you store personal details, you choose who that information is available to, you send messages and you create content within the site. These are the most important attributes of social media. The primary difference between LinkedIn and (other) social media is not one of function but rather of psychology. It is aimed at professionals. The initial content you provide are your professional details. You don't 'friend' someone, you connect with them. You don't 'like' a page, you recommend a person. If you dislike the informality or requirements of other social media, LinkedIn may be the ideal platform for you to engage with your potential online client base. With these points in mind, it may even acclimatise you to the idea of social media in general and eventually allow you to expand your presence onto other sites.

·         Enhance Your Existing Social Media Presence. LinkedIn groups are a great source of connections to online material, for example; whitepapers, statistics, special offers, events, articles, advice and the like. Much of the material is of questionable value but that creates an opportunity. Because LinkedIn attracts a different audience to other social media, most of its content is aimed specifically at that audience. This means that you can filter out the material that you think will be of benefit to your audience and re-distribute it via your other online channels. This process is called 'curating' and it is a useful starting or supplementary strategy to producing your own online content. 

It is my opinion that LinkedIn is not only a great internet site but an essential tool for any modern business or professional organisation to function today. I sincerely hope that this belief, as well as the above points, will influence many more people to get on it, start connecting and realise the benefit that LinkedIn can give to them. 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/edinburghwebdeveloper

Download the Linking Together - LinkedIn is for Everyone with any Business Interest article as a printable PDF file. 

Being Open–Minded – The Advantages of Using Open Source Software and Dispelling Some Myths About Its Downsides

Open Source is a widely used buzzword and there are many myths and misconceptions surrounding what it is and is not and under what circumstances it should be used. In this article, I aim to clarify the concept of open source and to dispel some of the lack of understanding surrounding it.

Firstly, it is important to make one distinction about what open source is not – open source software is not freeware. While open source products are free, there exist many proprietary products which are marketed on zero-outlay business models, such as loss leader, advertising-based, limited feature, thirty day trial etc. Software released under these and similar models is collectively known as freeware and it is not open source. Ultimately, the companies releasing these products will seek to profit from them in some fashion and, more importantly, you as a user do not have access to the code behind them. This is the difference that distinguishes open source from other software licensing models and it is a vital one for your business, as we shall see later.

There are many positive reasons why open source software is a good model on which to base the IT strategy of your business. Among these are:

Breaking the supply chain – When you start buying products and services from a private company, they will commonly try to encourage you to use them as a sole supplier. There are numerous methods by which they do this; certification, special offers, bulk purchasing, support agreements, partnership models, etc. The end results is that, even if prices rise or quality decreases, it can often be very difficult to switch from a now inferior supplier as it might mean changing the whole basis of your IT structure.

Reduce Costs - With open source software, there is no profit motive involved. This means there is no incentive to hook you into an aggressive and competitive sales model that is ultimately created to benefit a third party. By removing the marketing element from the supply chain, you cut out the cost of the middle-man, receiving a high quality product, without the cost of proprietary software and services. This is of particular value to organisations with typically low budgets, such as public sector departments, charities and social enterprises.

Transparency - Not only is there a financial incentive for freeing yourself a from single vendor but you are no longer reliant on their word for the quality of the products you use. Open source software is based on an open and independent development model, meaning that any qualified person is free to look at the processes and content used to create the software and assess its quality and suitability for purpose for themselves.

Customisable – An off-the-peg IT solution may very well not be suitable for your organisational needs. If this is the case, the open source model allows your in-house or third-party IT developers to alter the software so that it meets your requirements. The structure of the software and its licensing is designed to make re-designing the products both practical and legal. Not only is there existing official documentation to help you do this but there is also a wealth of freely available information from people who are likely to have already performed similar tasks as well as from the developers of the software itself.

Faster turnaround and greater market flexibility - The infrastructure and documentation for open source software is easily available from the internet. There is no need to source it from suppliers. You can install only what you need and freely expand later in order to match any change in requirements. You are not tied to any sales packages which exist solely to benefit third parties. You can even trial exactly what you require, on test hardware, with no financial commitment or negotiation. Again, the documentation to do all of this is freely available.

Some misconceptions about open source technology dispelled

·         I can't use open source with my existing technology
Many businesses on a Windows platform believe that they can only use open source software if they install Linux. This is untrue. Open source development platforms such as PHP and MySQL have had stable versions on contemporary versions of Windows for over fifteen years, almost as long as they have existed.

·         You can't trust open source development as there is no certification available
This is not the case. Redhat, for example, provide a range of open source certification, for most levels of IT professionals. O'Reilly, the well-known publishers of IT manuals, also provide certification for open source professionals, among other organisations.

·         No blue-chip companies use open source software
While some large organisations are understandably discreet about what technology their systems are based on, there are many companies that base their IT strategy on open source software. These include Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Google and Android, among others.

·         Open source software is of a lower quality than its paid-for equivalent
Apart from the fact that it would be a false economy for the above large organisations to use low quality software, proprietary software is often sold on the perception of quality, rather than the reality. Because there is no profit motive in the distribution of open source software and their code is open to inspection by their peers and user base, developers usually work to a quality standard, rather than a production timeline.

·         Only proprietary software can meet my security needs
This is essentially a sub-phenomenon of the above. Producing robust and well-secured products is one of the most challenging aspects of creating high quality software and open source developers are often highly challenge-motivated. Even if, in some cases, their ambitions might exceed their ability, the quality of their work is peer reviewed by hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow programmers and potential users. This is opposed to proprietary software, where code is tested by a team that is limited by secrecy, budget and time constraints.

·         There is no incentive for third-party companies to support open source
Again, this is not the case. While there is no profit motive in supplying open source software, as it is freely available, there is certainly value to be added in the development, installation and support of products built on open source technologies. This means that, while third-party companies cannot tie a customer to a particular set of products, they can nevertheless build a valid and profit-motivated business model around these services. Organisations implementing an open source based IT strategy need not worry that their setup will be 'orphaned' as their very need for support guarantees that there is a continuing profit motive for catering to them.

Links to research material

Reasons to use open source software in your organisation:

·         10 Reasons Open Source Is Good for Business

·         10 Reasons to Use Open Source in Business

·         Using Open Source in Business

·         Why big companies are embracing open source

·         Big Companies Open Up to Open Source Software

·         Benefits of Using Open Source Software

Open source training and certification

·         Curriculum and Training - Drupal Groups

·         Joomla, Drupal and WordPress Training

·         Open Source Software Training Classes and Workshops

·         Webmaster Certificate Program Open Source Developer

Download the The Advantages of Using Open Source Software article as a printable PDF file.

How to Generate and Refine Search Engine Keywords Using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool

So you've got a website or a blog. It's well designed and it's got good content. Job done, right? Now you can just sit back and let customers come to you. Sadly, this is not the case. Now comes the difficult part: Customers can't read your excellent content or admire your superb design unless they can first find your site. This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in. In broad terms, search engine optimisation is how to get your site well placed in Google, and other online search engines, so that it can be found easily by potential customers looking for your products and services.

Search engine optimisation is divided into two main types, off-site and on-site. Both are mid- to long-term strategies and are an art rather than a science. This article focusses on one type of on-site optimisation; keyword refinement.

What are keywords?

Primarily, keywords are the words and phrases that your site is most likely to be found on. Their first purpose is to be embedded in the header of your website, which is visible to search engines rather than customers. However, modern search engines not only search headers and visible text but also compare them, looking for correlations. Sites where the content matches the search terms in a natural way tend to rank higher on search engines.

Note that keywords are not always the terms that you might want your site to be found on. For example if you selling sports jackets, simply using the term 'sports jackets' is probably a bad idea, as Nike and Adidas are likely to be way ahead of you.

What makes a good search term?

The trick here is specialisation. Rather than have clients search on generic terms, which many people are looking for but many other businesses are targeting, use specific language which refers to your business in particular. Fewer people may be looking for it but it is much more likely that they will find you rather than one of your competitors.

Have a key phrase or phrases that you are specifically targeting. The Adwords instructions below will help you come up with a coherent phrase that your customers may well be searching for, that addresses their particular needs. A good phrase might be one of your core services, combined with a one or two word summary of your USP or location. Mine is 'convert access databases edinburgh', for example. You should have at least one key phrase that you are specifically targeting but unless you have a large product or service base and possibly multiple sites, you shouldn't aim for more than about two or three phrases, in general.

Incorporate a unique selling point into your search terms. A USP helps to differentiate you from other similar businesses. This is more important than ever on the internet, where clients have access to potentially thousands of competitors. Remember that this competition is distributed globally and this may not be useful to all customers. Therefore, for more local businesses, your geographical position can be a useful way of distinguishing yourself.

Consider addressing a need rather than providing a solution. This addresses the 'benefits vs. features' approach to marketing. You know that you sell excellent quality sports jackets. The customer knows that they are cold or that they need a fashion item for the new season. Make sure that your keywords and content match your customers' requirements.

Be brief. The average user types in four or less words into a search engine for each query. Any phrases you use that are longer than that are probably wasted.

How to use Google Adwords to refine your Search Terms

• Create a Gmail account, if you don't already have one. Google requires you to have a profile with them in order to use their internet tools.
• Go to http://adwords.google.com
• On the top menu bar, click on Tools and Analysis / Keyword Tool.
• In the 'Word or phrase' box, type in the terms that you want your site to be found on. Bear in mind that some phrases will have heavy competition and not all phrases will be as sought after as you might think. The best option is to aim for the 'low hanging fruit', ie. the terms with low competition but high search frequencies.
  Ten or fifteen search terms is a reasonable amount. Remember that each separate word or phrase should be on a new line.
• Click on 'Search'. Click on the 'Keyword ideas' above the 'Search terms' box. Scroll down to the 'Keyword ideas' results box below.
• Click on the ' Global Monthly Searches' heading to sort by the most frequently sought after terms. Do this for both the 'Search terms' and 'Keyword ideas' results. Disregard any results that have less than a million searches.
• Look down the 'Competition' column. Competition is divided into three categories, 'High', 'Medium' and 'Low'. Ideally, you want all of your keywords to have 'Low' competition but this may not always be practical.
• Using the checkboxes on the left, select the relevant keywords, with the most searches and the lowest competition, from both the 'Search terms' and 'Keyword ideas' results. Click on the 'View as text' / 'My keyword ideas' option, above the 'Search terms' result set. This will bring up a list of your refined keywords. You can now stop here or use these terms to repeat the process and refine them further.

How to use Keywords

As mentioned above, the first thing to do with your refined keyword list is to make sure that it is embedded in the header of your web page or blog. It should be in the following format:

<meta name="keywords" content="[Comma separated list of keywords and phrases]">

Each page of your site should contain this element and there should be only one list per page. It is also good SEO practice to use these words and phrases in the title and content of your pages, in an organic fashion, especially in the headings and links. It is also a good idea to vary your keywords between pages, in order to relate better to each page's content, while keeping an overall theme.


Download the How To Generate Search Engine Keywords using Google Adwords article as a printable PDF file.

A Skeleton Social Media Strategy

Social media can be an invaluable tool for companies to gain new business and to maintain existing clients as well as to search for information and to communicate with other operators. Primarily, its function is to engage in two-way dialogue with customers and other contacts but different social media perform better at different tasks and not all social media are useful for all organisations. For example, Facebook and Twitter, the two main social media channels, are not necessarily that useful for businesses that mainly survive on pass-through trade, such as cafés and local shops. On the other hand, I would recommend Linked In to anyone who has an interest in an industrial or professional career. 

It is also now worth noting that a web page can be very useful for directing different sections of your contact base to the appropriate sections of your social media network, as well as for more traditional purposes, such as marketing, or getting in contact. However, an increasing number of organisations, particularly those on a low budget, find it sufficient to establish a web presence, ie. having a site exclusive to them as part of an existing social media portal, such as a Facebook page or YouTube channel. This can be a very cost-effective strategy for many organisations, especially those with a strong marketing component or niche product and service providers.

The following is a bare-bones, step-by-step guide to establishing a broad-based social media presence, based off the strategy I have evolved for my own use.

·         Create a site on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In as a general minimum. Observe the distinctions between a Facebook group and page but a page is probably better in most cases. I will talk about the background to this elsewhere. Do not use a Facebook profile for your business. Apart from the many other reasons why this is a bad idea, it is specifically against Facebook's own terms and conditions.

·         Consider establishing a business presence on Pinterest, YouTube, Wordpress, Blogspot, Digg, Reddit, EventBrite, Skype etc., depending on the nature of your business and how many hours you have available to invest in a social media strategy. It may be worth establishing your brand on these channels, regardless of whether you intend to use them initially. You may change your mind later and it's a good idea to prevent others from doing so and potentially damaging your brand.

·         Choose a primary social medium and at least partly focus your efforts on directing traffic here. Your website may well be a good choice for this as you have greater content control and can thus target attention more appropriately.

·         Leverage your existing Facebook  contacts, personal or otherwise, to get thirty likes. This will gain you your 'vanity' address and Facebook analytics.

·         In the first instance, curate content. That is to say, find articles that others have posted and link to them with a (short) introduction of your own. I find Linked In groups to be a good source of these. Remember that you are adding value here, so only link to articles that are of genuine interest to your potential clients or that illustrate your own expertise. Build up to producing your own content and blogging. Consistency is a key element to all parts of your social media plan and once you choose a strategy, you must commit to it. Therefore, start off with what you know you can manage. If you feel confident in consistently producing your own content from the start, then feel free to skip this stage.

·         Schedule posts. Most people don't recommend this but, as a sole trader, I find it invaluable. Scheduling my posts allows me to to manage the bulk of my social media strategy on a weekly rather than a daily basis. I schedule posts to Twitter which are then cross-posted to Facebook. This leads us to:

·         Be wary of cross posting. It is also not generally recommended. I recognise that it is fairly bad practice so I would advise using it sparingly (two or three media at most) and formatting your posts so that they look professional on all the sites they appear on. This means short posts for Twitter and no tags appearing on Facebook. Links are good, as they function on Twitter and bring back images for Facebook, but test them before scheduling. If you have one or more staff who have social media as a major part of their job, you can move away from cross posting and build up a separate identity for each medium you are using.

·         If blogging, choose a single blog host carefully and stick with it. Consider how you will integrate this with your website or if the blog itself will be your main site.

·         Build up a database of contacts from business cards and your existing CRM and contact them on social media. Like and follow them on at least one medium, preferably your medium of choice.

·         Find 'like' exchange groups on Linked In and elsewhere. Be generous and honest with your follows.

·         Check, follow, like, join and, very importantly, delete your targets' and contacts' relevant interests on at least a monthly basis. If you don't regularly cull your low value groups and follows you will very quickly find your inbox inundated with more rubbish than you can manage. Your web presence will also be diluted as no-one wants to follow someone whose  second-hand content is indiscriminate nonsense. This strategy is particularly useful for Linked In as the content here will be general business contacts, not just those with an interest in social media. You can also make distinctions on Linked In between your leads, contacts and fellow group members.

As I say, not all of this advice will be useful or relevant for all professionals but it is a plan that I evolved in the course of using social media for my own business and one that I hope other business or non-private sector operators can benefit from.

[Edit 29/03/2013]
You can now download the Skeleton Social Media Strategy article as a printable PDF file.