Building Links to Success

Best Rising Star 07

2007-05-25T14:27:00.000+01:00

Well its official - at last nights Big Chip Awards I took home the award from Best Rising Star.

It was a great night for the whole team and I was thrilled to see some fantastic awards going to some real talent in the North West's New Media Industry.

Thanks guys for making the Evening a night to remember!

Rolling Out The Content...

2007-05-24T14:04:00.001+01:00

As with many large digital industry conferences and awards, the geeks like to get the content out of the venue before they have managed to leave themselves! The race is on from the time the keynote speaker gets to his feet - and a critique of what he is saying is circulating around the blogosphere before he has finished introducing himself!

Well tonight is the Big Chip Awards, Manchester's Industry awards, by the industry, for the industry! And the boys (and girl) over at PushON have been searching hard to see what Web 2.0 has to offer in terms of social interaction.

So how do you juggle content distribution and a fun night of drinking and eating?

Well we think we've found the answer, in the form of twitter and ShoZu.

Twitter - Twitter is a blog-like site that allows users to "twit" about what they are doing at the moment. What makes this service more interactive then others is that it allows users to post messages via standard sms messaging.

ShoZu - is a Media distribution service that allows users to harness the power of their mobile phone to upload images and videos straight to their Flickr feeds.

So with the above installed and ready to go, all we have to do now is wait out and get ready for the awards. Oh - and remember to "Roll Out The Content..."

See what Katrina is saying on the PushON Blog for more.

Easter Project...

2007-04-15T23:33:00.000+01:00

I've spent a bit of my Easter Break having a look over the AglowHealth website for a friend.

He asked me to help him bring his website up to W3C standards and to show him some optimisation techniques. There were some real common faults that I found in the Internal Linking and Navigation of his website. This in itself makes it difficult for search engine spiders to 'crawl' and 'index' his site. To overcome this I've helped him implement a standards safe navigation system, HTML Sitemap, XML Sitemap and submitted them to Yahoo, Google and Ask.

We also had a play with the layout of the site making it a bit more friendly on the eye and incorporated the Wealth & Wellness News Section into the main site.

Rob is offering a great business opportunity for anyone that would love a new and exciting way to make some extra money. So if you'd like to make some extra cash or are just interested in the great weight loss products on offer at Aglow Health then drop by and say hi.

Big Chip Nominations

2007-04-04T12:48:00.000+01:00

The first week of April means only one thing to the North West’s New Media Industry… who has successfully been short listed for the Big Chip Awards?

Well I am pleased to say that Virtuaffinity and PushON have followed on from last years success at the awards with not just one but two nominations.

In the category of Best Commercial Website Virtuaffinity has been short listed for their work on the Didsbury Magazine Online. And in the category of Best Rising Star I have been nominated for my work over the last year with PushON.

As you can imagine we are really excited by the news that we have been short listed for these awards and that a body of the industries finest has continued to like our work. The future is looking bright for both PushON and Virtuaffinity – and nominations at such high profile events as this will continue to help us show the North West that for a small firm we can compete and succeed against the big boys.

Read all the Big Chip Shortlists here.

Say Goodbye to ISDN

2007-04-03T12:18:00.000+01:00

BT have announced the "Withdrawing of consumer ISDN, as the demand for it has dived with the availability of cheap, fast broadband." the withdrawal will take place later this year.

So where does that leave consumer ISDN users?

As everyone knows broadband can be one faster and cheaper solution, but for those that don't want to go over to net-based alternatives that use the IP protocol what else is there?

As the bigger players start to drop out of the market, for being unable to deliver goods and services competitively, it has left a void for smaller niche ISP's to break into.

One such contender is FreeUKisp, a UK based ISP offering ISDN Alternatives. Simon Wharton, Managing Director of FreeUKisp said "It's allowed our market share to grow as we start to supply where big players no longer can."

For those concerned by the drop in connection speeds, FreeUKisp recommends the Netfury Accelerator, a state of the art internet accelerator that boosts the connection speed of any standard dial up connection.

So many consumers are now left having to look for new ISDN Providers as BT concentrate on making more money and forgeting about there loyal ISDN customers. But where will they go?

1 Year Today

2007-04-02T13:58:00.000+01:00

Yes – as we break into the new tax year it can only mean one thing… I’ve been here a year! So what have I been doing in the last year you ask? Well I’m not sure. Looking back over my past blog posts it would appear that I have:

Continued with My Degree

Attended the Big Chip Awards

Attended some Networking4Business Events

Developed some Blog Optimisation Techniques

Discovered Social Media Marketing

Worked on some great campaigns – Manchester NTI

Helped Implement a Viral Marketing Campaign

So all in all I have been quite busy! One thing I can say for certain is that PushON have allowed me the chance to grow. I’m am really grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given to help develop the my professional and technical skill set and help make a difference to the way we do business.

Cheers Guys.

Viral Marketing gets Exposure

2007-02-24T00:38:00.000+00:00

The Viral Marketing Campaign we're working on at PushON is getting international exposure!! Today it reached the top post on Web Pro World and making their weekly mail out to all members.

So far we’ve had mixed comments, but love it or hate it, it’s proving to be a viral success. I am surprised by many of the comments/criticisms; most are about length, language (both swearing and English colloquialisms) and the use of women to sell the video!

If you’ve not already seen it, take a look at our Viral Marketing Video; but be warned, it’s not for the faint hearted!

PushON launches Viral Marketing Campaign

2007-02-23T01:40:00.000+00:00

The PushON video has gone live, and it’s pretty funny if you’re into Online Marketing.

It's interesting to see the how a simple idea can explode, thanks to some Viral Marketing Strategy. I'm going to blog further on some of things we've all discovered while playing with this project but here is what the final video looks like...

...And if you'd like to see it on the PushON site; have a look at Viral Marketing in Action.

Naughty SEO

2007-02-13T16:05:00.000+00:00

Now before I go any further I have to say that I fully support White Hat SEO techniques. But sometimes its worth knowing about the techniques that others implement in order to cheat the system.

Katrina, has been busy putting together a list of Naughty SEO tricks and bad practices and she discusses the pros and cons of using them.

As I've often mentioned in previous posts; Black Hat techniques do not pay off in the long run. The search engines are becoming wise to such techniques and anybody using such tricks could find their website being penalised from search results.

So check out what Katrina has to say, and make sure your website isn't implementing any Naughty SEO.

Why Architecture Matters?

2007-01-30T15:39:00.000+00:00

The following photo is of The Winchester ‘Mystery’ House. This grand and quite unique house was built back in 1884 and took 147 builders 38 years to build.

Here are some quite unique facts about the house, it has:

160 rooms
40 bedrooms
6 kitchens
2 basements
950 doors

However, there was NO Architect involved in the designing, planning and building of this house and as a result there are:

65 doors to blank walls
13 staircases abandoned
24 skylights in floors
And – No architectural blueprints (although some rough drawings have been found on table clothes!)

At PushON we regularly receive requests for Website MOTs. It is a service we offer because so many websites on the internet have been built like The Winchester ‘Mystery’ House; they look good but have little or no functionality. Here are many of the things we find wrong with websites:

No inbound links to your website – Blank Doors
Poor navigation structures – Abandoned Staircases
Duplicate content on older sites - Skylights in Floors

An MOT is free and will give you a good overview of both your websites structure and online presence, along with some suggestions for improvement.

So if you’d like us to MOT Your Webiste drop by and let us help you make your website work for you.

Mobile Web

2007-01-14T23:06:00.000+00:00

I was having a play on my PDA the other day and I thought I'd have a look to see if websites geared up for mobiles/PDA were better the when I last checked.

I have to be honest and say that I was slightly disheartened by the lack of sites showing good quality content that was changing quick enough for me to bother having a look on the move.

I've previously written about Time Magazine developing a mobile friendly website and I was pleased to see that the BBC have followed suit with:

But after struggling to find any good sites I went to the place where all search marketers begin... yes Google! Google have launched Google Mobile Services.

As you can see from the layout of the search engine it has been stripped to purely functional elements with a new option for Mobile Web (Beta).

I'm undecided by its usage at the moment but as I look around at the new mobiles for sale today, its clear that the devices to support mobile web are selling everywhere and its not going to be long before companies are going to have to take their 'Mobile Web Presence' seriously.

FeedBurner FeedFlare

2007-01-13T16:06:00.000+00:00

FeedBurner's FeedFlare Services allows feed publishers to add content to the bottom of their syndicated post with more information about their content. It gives your subscribers an easy way to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish.

FeedFlare places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content. This really is where Feed Optimisation meets Web 2.0
To see FeedFlare in action check out My Feed.

Blogger Upgrade

2007-01-10T02:15:00.000+00:00

As like many fellow bloggers on Blogger I've 'upgraded' to NEW Blogger! After having a look at the tour the following functionality seems to have been implemented:

Customising Your Template Tool
Create a Private Blog Function
Extension of the Feed Options (Including RSS Support)
and An Updated Dashboard Layout

Some other bits I've noticed include the introduction of category tags to posts and the removal of the option to publish the entire blog or just index (which won't be missed!)

I'm quite impressed with the new upgrade, although I'm still wondering why I now log on using my Google Account details?

I'd be interested to hear how other people have found the upgrade... Drop me a comment and let me know.

Update: Keep an eye on the 'Official Blogger Buzz' as it happens.

Update: I've introduced a range of social bookmarking badges into the full page version of my blog posts.
I found the script for the buttons on badged.net.

The Team is Growing

2007-01-10T01:19:00.000+00:00

Great News...

Yes we finally found someone to fill the positions advertised back in October.

At PushOn, Katrina has joined us from Code Computerlove in Manchester and brings some real marketing brains to our team. Check out Katrina's Blog to see what she has been up to and how she is getting on.

The guys at Virtuaffinity are growing too. Jim has joined them and brings a wealth of web development know-how to the team. You can have a read of all the clever things Jim gets up to at JimNeath.com

So it looks to be an exciting start to the new year. I look forward to updating you on how we're all getting on.

Building a Wiki

2006-12-29T18:22:00.000+00:00

I've spent the day building a wiki for one of our clients Restore Foam.

Well actually that's not the whole story - I've spent two days attempting to build a wiki and then I accidentally killed it during a routine update! So after a change of wiki software and a few hours sleep I started again.

I was surprised to see all the wiki software available. But after some thought we went for the wiki that powers Wikipedia.

I've spent the day playing with the MediaWiki and I have to say that I'm a big fan already. It's stable, reliable and pretty straight forward (once you've got your head round the syntax.)

If you fancy a look at what I've been up to have a look at the Orthopaedic Wiki.

Event Marketing

2006-12-27T14:01:00.000+00:00

When is online marketing not just about marketing online? Well in the last week or so I have been busy helping The Manchester New Technologies Institute to market a number of their successful corporate training courses.

The problem I faced was not knowing how to advertise a course? An event that has a specific start and an end date. The usual linking, blog posts and article submissions were all well and good but I wanted to create a solution that would be removed from the web once the course had finished. The last thing I wanted to do was create duplicate content that would be penalised by search engines having a negative effect to the client’s online presence.

The answer has come in the shape of eventful an online events search engine. This site allows users to add information about a range of courses, events and gigs. Affiliated to ping-o-matic the site updates a number of resources with newly updated content taking the legwork out of distributing your event information across the web.

Its early days for this site but I’ll be keen to see how it develops and to see what new sites appear on the back of this great idea.

Networking Guru Takes Networking Online!

2006-11-28T18:31:00.000+00:00

Will Kintish, Manchester's Leading Business Networking Guru, has taken his networking skills online.

Will chose the ever-growing myspace to start his Social Networking Adventure, Check out what Will has to say on his new profile.

PubCon

2006-11-12T14:28:00.000+00:00

Simon and Roy (The MD's of PushOn) are over in Vegas this week at PubCon attempting to grow professionally.

I'm quite envious because some of the keynote speakers include:

John Battelle - Author of The Search, Chairman of Federated Media Publishing, and editor of the well known and highly respected Search Blog.

And

Danny Sullivan - Founder and Editor of SearchEngineWatch,
Director of Programming - SearchEngineStrategies Conferences.

It looks like they'll have a great time. No doubt they'll be blogging throughout the event so follow what they have to say on the PushOn Blog.

The PushOn blog has moved!!

2006-11-12T14:27:00.000+00:00

Yes that’s right. Whilst we have nothing but praise for Blogger and the service it offers we have decided to move our Blog to http://blog.pushon.co.uk and use wordpress instead.

No Doubt I’ll be blogging about the functionality benefits soon enough!

The Battle of the Browsers

2006-10-24T10:27:00.000+01:00

Well its a week of Internet browser launches. Microsoft launch its much awaited Internet Explorer 7 last week and hot on their heels is Mozila with its latest release of Firefox 2.0.

I haven't actually tested either of these browsers yet but from the outlook they seem to have taken the middle ground and developed many of the same features:

RSS Feeds
Tabbed Browsing
Improved Security Features (anti-phishing)
Print Previews

One feature that really stood out for me in the new Firefox release is the introduction of a spell checker. It claims to spell check anything typed into your browser; including webmail and even when blogging!

If anybody has had chance to test these new browsers I'd be interested to know what you thought about them.

It Could Be You!

2006-10-15T13:54:00.000+01:00

No, this isn't a post on the national lottery (otherwise I'd probably have titled this post "It probably won't be you!")

As you may have realised by recent posts, work is going very well. It’s going so well in fact that PushON and Virtuaffinity are looking for new staff. There are some exciting work opportunities available the right applicants to work for one of North West's leading Web Design or Search Marketing Agencies.

If you think that could be you then check out the following:

Online Marketing Business Development Consultant or
Web Designer / Developer

Good Luck!!

PushOn gets a facelift...

2006-10-11T13:56:00.000+01:00

The PushOn website has had a bit of a facelift. The boys over at Virtuaffinity have been working hard to give the site a new look.

The facelifted site is boasting a load of new Online Marketing Articles too so drop by and let the guys know what you think of the changes.

Free Web Word Processor for your Blog

2006-10-07T17:49:00.000+01:00

I've just created this post testing out WriteToMyBlog.com ... A new tool that allows you to write blog posts in rich text format, with LOADS of functionality and post them to your blog. I've had a quick look over it and I really like it. I can see me recommending this to a few of our clients. It even has a tag creator built in, Simon will be pleased!

Tags: Blog, Posts, WriteToMyBlog

The PageRank Guessing Game...

2006-10-02T22:26:00.000+01:00

Well I'm not sure if its just me but I seem to have got a PageRank of 3... Thats not bad for only 36 post work!
As Google put it:

PageRank is a function of Google that measures the quality of a website on a scale of 0 to10. The theory is that high quality sites receive a higher PageRank based on visitors and traffic your site receives. PageRank is a “vote”, by all the other pages on the internet.

For more information on PageRank try checking out the Google Technology Page.

A tag too far...

2006-09-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

Some people will tag anything... But this has to be too far!!