Counterpoint Matters

Socialnomics – Video showing Social Media Statistics

Jo Dodds — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:53:11 +0000

I have been doing quite a bit of speaking recently about social media and I often show videos that I have picked up from YouTube to highlight key points. This video was updated recently to show the state of the world in relation to social media. There are some amazing statistics in there.

And I love the quote about the ROI of Social Media being that your business will still exist in five years’ time! That’s a paraphrase of one of my favourite lines about small businesses and the importance of engaging with social media.

Enjoy…and then if you know you need help to get your social media strategy created and implemented make sure you sign up to get my free reports and join my mailing list (and follow me on Twitter and Facebook!).

Archbishop Vincent Nichols on Social Media – Right or Wrong? In an article in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, Vincent...
Presentation on Social Media at FSB South Kent I had the pleasure of speaking at the FSB...
Social Networking for Small Business – Video Interview I thought I’d already blogged this but now I...

Social Networking for Small Business – Video Interview

Jo Dodds — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:21:19 +0000

I thought I’d already blogged this but now I look I guess I must have shared it direct through social media like Facebook and Twitter, so thought I’d better come back and update it here too!

I was recently interviewed by the www.businesswings.co.uk website about social media for small businesses.

If you thought this was interesting, you may also like to see the other interview we did about having a home based business.

Home Based Business Video Interview Recently I was interviewed by the www.businesswings.co.uk website about...
Presentation on Social Media at FSB South Kent I had the pleasure of speaking at the FSB...
Small business websites and how to build one in a weekend – Interview I was interviewed this week by Rob Wilson of...

Home Based Business Video Interview

Jo Dodds — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:15:57 +0000

Recently I was interviewed by the www.businesswings.co.uk website about running a home based business. I started working from home in 2005 and now wouldn’t have it any other way!

If you like it you may also be interested in the other interview we did on social media for small businesses.

Small business websites and how to build one in a weekend – Interview I was interviewed this week by Rob Wilson of...
You Have Done it! You will now find Day 1 of your 5-day mini...

18 Reasons to Tweet about Your Business

Jo Dodds — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:16:43 +0000

If you know anything about Twitter marketing, you probably realise that tweeting can be an effective, cost-free or low-cost solution for marketing your business. The first question I get when I have this conversation with small business owners is – what should we be tweeting about? Many are concerned that they have nothing worth sharing!

What does a good tweet do?

A good tweet can inform your followers about news or developments in your company or niche, and it can also educate, inform, or entertain them, so that they will want to continue to hear from you and follow your success.

Once you have people following you and paying attention to what you’re saying, both your company profile, your website traffic, and your list of potential customers will rise. The word of mouth that can come from a particularly intelligent tweet or series of tweets can result in hundreds or thousands of pounds or dollars in free advertising.

Use Twitter to give value to your followers

If you provide tweets that appeal to your followers and give them some value, you will gain credibility and be on your way to forming a valuable relationship. And please do remember that building relationships is what social networking is all about. People buy from people they ‘know, like and trust’ so this can be very powerful from a marketing point of view.

If you’re looking for things to tweet about in relation to your business, consider some of these ideas. This is a list of 18 reasons to tweet about your business and help you get started today in using this great promotional tool for your business.

Tweet when you:

Start a new business
Celebrate a company anniversary
Publish a new article or series of articles
Publish a new blog post on your website
Publish a book or ebook
Receive a business award
Create a new product or service
Announce a new business partnership or joint venture
Promote a specific product, service, event, contest or fundraiser
Promote a product or service that is linked to a theme e.g. Mother’s Day, Christmas
Promote a sale or special offer
Support a charity
Announce that you’re available to speak on particular subjects of interest
Promote a public appearance on television, radio or in person
Launch a website or blog
Reach a website or blog anniversary
Announce that free information or resources are available
Are due to run a workshop, seminar, conference or teleseminar

While there are many other reasons to tweet, these ideas should help you to get started.

Do let me know if you can add to this list. You can add other ideas in the comments. And you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/jododds

11 Twitter Tools to Help You to Follow on Twitter Knowing who to follow on Twitter is an important...
What should you be tweeting about? Twitter really took off in 2009 with many people...
Are Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn useful for local business? More and more local business people are asking us...

Presentation on Social Media at FSB South Kent

Jo Dodds — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:06:50 +0000

I had the pleasure of speaking at the FSB South Kent meeting last night in Folkestone. The members were really interested in the whole concept of social media and how it can be used to promote small businesses.

Some of the group had preconceived ideas that social media wasn’t really for them and couldn’t see the relevance for their own business but I think I may have changed their views somewhat! There was great energy in the room and much discussion and questions.

I promised to post the slides, so thought they might be useful on here for others too. I decided to upload them to Slideshare, a tool that I hadn’t used before. What is interesting is that one of the discussion threads was about using social media to dominate search results in Google and, having opened an account on Slideshare this morning, if you search for my company name my Slideshare account is on the first page of Google. Now, by searching for a specific company name you would hope to dominate the front page of Google anyway (usually there isn’t much keyword competition for your business name!). But what I found interesting is that although there are many other references to Counterpoint Matters online, my new Slideshare account was one of the first 10 when I did the search. The ‘take away’ from that? If you have any presentations and don’t yet have a Slideshare account, get one now!

Anyway, here is the presentation from last night with thanks to the YouTube video providers – Socialnomics and Upside down Iceberg.

Seminar Fsb Social Media

View more presentations from Counterpoint Matters Ltd.

Socialnomics – Video showing Social Media Statistics I have been doing quite a bit of speaking...
Archbishop Vincent Nichols on Social Media – Right or Wrong? In an article in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, Vincent...
Social Networking for Small Business – Video Interview I thought I’d already blogged this but now I...

11 Twitter Tools to Help You to Follow on Twitter

Jo Dodds — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:43:09 +0000

Knowing who to follow on Twitter is an important marketing skill. You want to follow those who are of interest to you and you want to follow those who may be of use to you and your business. Your hope is that they will in turn follow you back, if they aren’t already following you, opening up the lines of communication between your business and your audience.

There are several tools that can be used to make using Twitter easier and more effective for your business

Mr. Tweet – Shows you the influencers and followers you should follow and suggests you to enthusiastic users relevant to you.
Just Tweet It – A user directory for Twitter organised by genre to allow users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with.
Retweet Rank – Retweetrank lets you find the rank of any twitter user. It also shows the latest retweets of the user and an RSS feed can also be grabbed at the same time.
Twellow – A directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.
TwitteRel – By using Twitterel.com you can make your life a lot more interesting – a way to connect to other twitter users who share the same interests as you.
Friend or Follow – Who are you following that’s not following you back? Who’s following you that you’re not following back?
Twitoria – Twitoria is a web app that tidies up your Twitter friends list by revealing inactive friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can unfollow them.
Topify – Twitter application that improves Twitter’s email notification and allows you to follow people and reply to direct messages by email.
Tweepler – A Twitter application that allows you to organize followers.
Twimailer – Tired of shallow e-mails from Twitter when someone follows you? Want to know more about the people who are following you? Twimailer is a free service that delivers that information right to your inbox!
TweeterTags – Get the most out of Twitter by finding the right people to share the conversation: Tweeter Tags makes it easy to declare your interests and find new, like-minded friends. Have a question you need answering? Find relevant people on Twitter to ask.

Marketing with Twitter is inexpensive and effective if you know what you’re doing. You can instantly become a Twitter Pro with my free report giving easy to use tips on tweeting effectively. Get your copy today!

I hope you have found this list useful – what other applications do you use to make your Twitter efforts more effective?

Photo Credit

What should you be tweeting about? Twitter really took off in 2009 with many people...
Using Facebook to promote your local business I’m speaking at a couple of events this month...
Are Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn useful for local business? More and more local business people are asking us...

What should you be tweeting about?

Jo Dodds — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:26:52 +0000

Twitter really took off in 2009 with many people signing up for accounts because they heard it might be a good idea or because Stephen Fry was quoted talking about Twitter being the next big thing. Many of those people have since stared blankly at their Twitter account wondering what the heck to tweet about!

My followers and those who I follow are across the whole spectrum. Some hardly ever tweet, some tweet random daily happenings, some only tweet links to their products (they don’t always stay on my list!), a few seem to spend their whole day on their deep in conversation with hundreds of people all at once!

So, what to tweet about?

We have 140 characters to work with. Initially that sounds easy enough, but once you get into putting tweets together it can prove more difficult to provide a valuable post in 140 characters or less. I seem to spend more time editing to the 140 characters than actually writing the tweets! We want to engage our audience, but the question then becomes how.

What should you be sharing with your followers? What do they want to see from you?

Networking is networking whether online or offline. People want great conversation, they want to connect with you, they want to share a joke or a meaningful comment with you, they want to ask questions (and get them answered), they’re looking for help, advice and information. And in some cases they are even looking to buy something!

When you’re connecting with people on Twitter, remember that they want to get to know the person behind the tweets. Give them the opportunity to get to know you and your personality, as well as your company and services.

Peope want to see useful and intersting links to great sites, videos and information. If you find it relevant and useful, chances are someone else will appreciate the resource as well. It’s a great way to build your follower list. Retweeted information and useful links often encourage people to choose to follow you looking for more of the same in the future.

They want a tweet worthy of sharing with their own followers. Whether that comes in the form of a particularly humorous quip or a great article you have read, give them something they can retweet.

Join in on the conversations, share information that adds to the discussion. Thank people for sharing a resource you found helpful and then, if you aren’t already, follow them. Retweet interesting posts. Use #ff (Follow Friday) on a Friday to recommend people for your followers to follow.

In any good relationship there is balance, give and take. Don’t ask anything of your audience that you are unwilling to give yourself. Give them what they want and what you will get in turn will be invaluable to you and your business.

Twitter: Using Hootsuite to Manage Your Account I love using Hootsuite to manage my Twitter activity....

Small business websites and how to build one in a weekend – Interview

Jo Dodds — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:36:52 +0000

I was interviewed this week by Rob Wilson of
www.r-plus.co.uk.

We talk about small business websites, why they don’t work, why WordPress is a good choice for a small business owner, how to make your website search engine friendly.

We finish with some more detailed information about our new Website Bootcamp Weekend taking place on 13/14 March in Canterbury, UK.

The recording is here, kindly supplied by Rob.

R-Plus provides small and medium size business with access to one off or part time IT Director support. You can find out more and get the 10 free videos about boosting your business online that Rob mentions at
www.r-plus.co.uk/10ways

Do let me know what you think of the interview and if you have any questions you would like an answer to!

Photo Credit

Website Bootcamp Weekend: some questions you might have We launched our Website Bootcamp Weekend this week and...
Webinar Replay: How to get a website earning its keep in your business Many small business owners tell me that the internet...
Most web designers know very little about online marketing What do you think is more important: an attractively...

Online Marketing Q&A from my recent survey

Jo Dodds — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:14:46 +0000

A couple of weeks ago when preparing for our webinar ‘How to get a webinar earning its keep in your business’, I asked those people on our mailing list what their biggest challenge is that is stopping them getting more business through the internet. I answered many of the questions in the webinar and you can see the replay using the link above but here are some more of the questions and my answers.
Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

Photo Credit

Webinar: 7 Simple Steps to Better Local Online Marketing [ September 16 2009; 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. ]...
How to Get a Website Earning Its Keep in Your Business – Free Webinar [ February 11 2010; 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. ]...
Webinar – How to get a search engine friendly website for free using WordPress [ September 17 2009; 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. ]...

Website Bootcamp Weekend: some questions you might have

Jo Dodds — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:28:31 +0000

We launched our Website Bootcamp Weekend this week and we’ve had a few questions come through, so I thought it would be useful to post them here (with our answers, of course!).

Our payment plans go away at close of play this Friday (26 March).

If you want to find out more then you can read all about it here.

Setting up a website sounds complicated and I’m not very technical, how hard is it?

If you know how to type (one fingered and slowly is fine!) and can use a mouse, you have enough skills to set up your website! WordPress is a content management system, which means that it is already written to provide a framework for you to use to manage your site. You really just have to add the content / fill in the gaps and we will be there to help you to do that.

As you know we have limited spaces on this weekend; we only have 5 places. We have 3 other people (all small business owners with existing WordPress websites) coming along to provide support on the day as well as me, so for this first weekend there is almost a teacher / student ratio of 1:1. So even if you are a tad nervous about getting to grips with the behind the scenes part of your website, there will be someone available to guide you through it as I demonstrate what you need to do on the screen.

What will the weekend entail?

On the Friday evening we will meet and introduce the weekend with an overview of what we need to achieve at each stage (then we’ll have dinner, and maybe a glass or two of wine, but not too much – you will be working hard the next day!). Saturday will be all about determining the keywords for your website and planning and writing the content and then on Sunday we will get your website online, add in the content and ensure that it is optimised for your keywords. The last thing we will do is ‘press the button’ to launch your site online to the world!

At each stage I will be teaching you what you need to know in theory and also showing you using my laptop and screen. When we’re setting up your website, you will be able to follow along and copy me so that we are all in the same place. And remember there will be 3 other people, all who have WordPress websites, hovering around ready to jump in and help you at the same time.

I haven’t got any content together for my website yet, and I won’t be able to before the weekend as it’s not far away. Is that a problem?

That is one of the main benefits of this weekend. You don’t need your content to be written beforehand and in fact that could be detrimental to the process as the first thing we will be doing is explaining what content you should have and how it should be written to ensure the best chance of being found by search engines and to be able to convert visitors into leads and/or customers.

If you have some ideas and maybe some photos you should bring them along but if you haven’t got anything yet then that won’t be a problem either. The only thing we will need to do before the weekend is to get a domain name and some hosting for you, which I will talk you through as part of our pre-weekend call.

Why is it better to set up my own website?

I wouldn’t say it is better per se but it certainly has some advantages, which we have talked about before like not being held to ransom by your web designer once the website is up and running, i.e. you won’t need to pay anyone to make any changes. Obviously there also won’t be any delays in getting the website set up, as we will be doing it there and then! I also think that having your own website gives you the opportunity to connect more with your potential customers as there is more opportunity for almost real time discussion through your site especially if you use it in conjunction with social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And you can post up-to-the minute information on your site that would take a few days if you needed to get someone else to do it.

Another key advantage is understanding how well your website is working for you and why. Many websites that are set up by web designers have little or no search engine optimisation capabilities but the small business owner doesn’t know that and just assumes that the internet doesn’t work for them. With your own website you will be able to see the metrics from from your site, such as numbers of visitors and how they found you, and know what you need to do to make it work better, and you can implement those changes immediately.

Isn’t WordPress just for blogging websites?

That is a myth that I think is often precipitated by web designers who don’t use WordPress! WordPress started as a blogging content management system but it has the functionality to create static web pages too. In fact you could create your whole website without using the blog function, but that wouldn’t be a great strategy as the search engines want fresh content and the blog facility is a great way to provide it. Don’t think that if you have a blog you need to ‘become a blogger’, using your website like an online diary. You can do that but you can also just use the blog functionality to add an ‘article’ to your site every so often providing useful information to your visitors and sharing your expertise: both strategies that will help your potential customers to ‘know like and trust you’, which will hopefully bring in some sales.

WordPress is free, why would I need to pay to come on this weekend?

You’re absolutely right that WordPress is free but remember that this is just for the software and some technical instructions. What you will be getting on our weekend is easy to follow steps showing you how to use WordPress to set up your website there and then (as well as ongoing membership to our WordPress support site). And then there is also all the stuff (technical term!) around keyword optimisation and conversion and how to write your content to maximise both. Without getting those bits right you won’t end up with a website that increases sales in your business, and if that’s the case, then what’s the point of wasting your time?

Imagine how long it would take you to do all this on your own. You most definitely can, but I would suggest that it would take you a lot longer than one weekend. I have some personal coaching students who are going down that route but want some help from me along the way. They will get there eventually but it’s taking a while. Can you afford to wait months or maybe even over a year to get your website done?!

Oh, yes, and did I remember to mention the laptop that you will be taking home with you at the end of the weekend…

Can it really all be done in a weekend?

Yes, of course, we wouldn’t be offering this otherwise! Having said that as you already know, you do need to continue to add fresh content to your site on a regular basis to ensure that the search engines continue to find it so this weekend won’t be the end, just the beginning!

We are, of course, also influenced by how long it will take you to get the content together but the whole of Saturday will be about pulling that together and we will show you some short cuts to make getting it planned and written easier and quicker than just staring at a blank page for ages before you start! And remember you will have other small business owners there (both teachers and students) who will be able to help you to shape what you are writing. Not to mention a lovely, calm atmosphere to create your content in – you can even have a wander round the cathedral for inspiration if that would help

What about support after the weekend, does it all just end there?

You get access to our WordPress membership site where there are step by step videos and instructions for you to follow to help you to manage and further develop your new website. As part of the membership site we have a forum where you can ask (and answer!) questions and you do have access to me by email. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am very helpful! I want your website to be a success for your business and I will support you to ensure that is the case.

Website Bootcamp Weekend Payment Plans Thanks for coming to this page to find out...
Small business websites and how to build one in a weekend – Interview I was interviewed this week by Rob Wilson of...
Updating your own website is so easy when you use WordPress While everyone else is posting ‘happy new year, what...