Here are the essential facts:

• 60% of the UK online audience read blogs
• 29.4 million people in the UK visit a social networking site every single month
• 78% of internet users are online to look for products or services
• 70% of people trust online recommendations (testimonials and reviews) from total strangers
• 90% trust recommendations from people we know

But here’s the kicker…

Here’s what you should do right now

Getting started in social media is no where near as complicated and time consuming as you might think. Sure – there’s a little bit of a learning curve, but that’s no different to anything else in life.

All you have to ask yourself, is how would you like to massively increase your site traffic, search rankings, and number of customers generated through your website?

To find out more about social media marketing, and how to tie it all together with your website, send an email to contact@additivesolutions.co.uk to arrange an appointment. If you would rather act immediately, then call us on 01603 762232.

Corporate and promotional website videos help you to:

• Grab your visitor’s attention
• Get your whole message across
• Use the ‘people buy from people’ rule
• Give your site the professional edge that your visitors expect these days

1. Video will grab your visitor’s attention

Having video on your website will grab your visitors attention. People like to watch video, because it is easier, and more entertaining than reading through text – all they have to do is click the play button, then sit back and listen.

2. Promotional website videos transmit the message you want your visitors to hear

If left to their own devices, people will wander all over your website and might leave without understanding exactly what you offer. With a promotional video on your website, you are able to give your visitors exactly the right message, with exactly the right emphasis.

3. Even online, people still buy from people

When someone is talking, we tend to pay attention and listen. We’re listening to the message, but we’re also deciding whether we like them, trust them, and whether or not we will buy from them. A website promotional video will enable this process to happen with all of your website visitors, and increasing the number of visitors who decide to contact you.

4. People assume the quality of a website represents the quality of the company

When was the last time you saw a rubbish looking website? Did you buy from them, or did you return to Google and continue looking for another option? The fact is, that we all judge a book by its cover online. Video is fast becoming a ‘must-have’ on websites. Pretty soon, websites without video will begin to be overlooked by people looking for service providers.

Don’t let another technological revolution pass you by

A bit dramatic, but you get the point! Video is by far the best way to get your message across. It’s growing at a phenomenal rate. Video is on the list for all of our current clients, and is one of the first things that new prospects ask us about.

Getting your new video up and running is easy

We deliver a complete – end to end service; you don’t need to know or do anything. We will help you to decide the best way of communicating with your online audience. Once we’ve made your video and you’ve had a chance to ‘tweak it’, we will go ahead and build it right into your website for you.

Every day that goes by is a fresh set of website visitors who fail to call or contact you.

You need a new way of grabbing their attention. Your new video could be up an running in less than 48 hours.

So what are you waiting for? Call 01603 762 232, or send an email right now to blair.keen@additivesolutions.co.uk.

• Facebook has over 400 million members
• This number is on track to exceed 500 million members this year
• At any one time, over 200 million Facebook members are actively online

Facebook fan pages are a great way to create your own community

A facebook fan page allows you to separate your personal social profile, from your business or brand. It’s a great way to gather together a community of customers, suppliers, or people interested in what you have to offer.

A fan page creates trust and encourages communication

Fan pages are a way to communicate in a more relaxed fashion with your target audience. They can be used as a tool to build trust over time, without being too ’salesy’. You can create discussions on niche topics, invite comments and participation from your fans, and generally fuel the buzz around your industry or service.

Does most of your business come through Word Of Mouth?

Most of our clients report that word of mouth is the best form of marketing for their business. The great thing about a Facebook fan page is, that it helps people who know about you, to recommend and promote you to others.

Every time somebody ‘likes’ your fan page, all of their friends will notice

This it what is known as ‘viral spread’. Each time a new fan joins your fan page by clicking on the ‘like’ button, a message appears on their wall stating ‘[their name] likes [your business fan page]‘. This creates a link to your fan page which all of their friends can click on.

We all want to know what other people like

Social proof is a powerful mechanism which works in your favour with a Facebook fan page. Whenever you see that one of your friends has become a fan of something, we all take notice. Over 50% of people will actually click the link to see for themselves. Now you have a chance of persuading them to join as well.

Fan Pages allow you to market over time

Sometimes, the reason why people don’t buy from you is because the time isn’t quite right for them. This might be true for a number of your fans. However, when the time is right, they’ve already been receiving your messages for a long time, so you’ll probably be their provider of choice straight away.

For example, you can:

• Remove unwanted tabs that don’t apply to your business
• Include new tabs like ‘Services’, ‘Products’, or maybe even a ‘Menu’
• Include embedded video. Having video play from youTube, right inside your fan page is far better than exporting people off your fan page into youTube itself.
• Appoint officers to your fan page
• Start, moderate, and fuel relevant discussions amongst your members

Best of all, you can listen to your audience

Asking people questions, to better understand their values and what they want from you, is a great way of creating ‘targeted marketing’. You can start discussions on your Facebook fan page that encourage people to discuss certain products, or issues in your industry. This way, you can gauge what people really think, and what they really value.

Here’s what to do now

If you would like to know more about Facebook fan pages and how they can help you to generate more business, then send an email to blair.keen@additivesolutions.co.uk or call now on 01603 762232.

How Good Signal can help you

Good Signal is all about helping business owners to get more business from their websites. It’s about making sure your website communicate in a way that compels your audience to take action.

Why you need more than just a website

So often people treat their websites like a business startup ‘checklist item’. It’s just another thing they need to ‘get done’. Unfortunately, to enjoy the benefits of a website that actually converts traffic into business requires so much more.  Consider the following:

• What do your visitors really want?
• Why will they visit your website?
• What key tasks will they need/want to perform on your website?
• How clearly does your site communicate the benefit of your offering?
• How easy is it for your visitors to take action on your website?

Do you believe that the customer is always right?

If you agree with that statement, then it follows that understanding what your customers wants is key to the success of your website. Once you know what their problems, needs and goals are, you can set about building an online presence that works.

You have the power to be successful

All it takes is a little bit of motivation and the right advice. The motivation is easy – ignore the importance of communicating effectively with your audience, and your business will fail. As for the advice, check out my blog at www.GoodSignal.com.

What you will find on Good Signal

I’ve tried to include a mixture of information including:

• Video blog tutorials
• Screen cast reviews of other people’s landing pages
• Tutorial posts about how to understand your audience
• In-depth posts about Web Copywriting (how to produce good web content)

So head across now and take a look for yourself at www.GoodSignal.com

Blogs are important and effective

Amongst a lot of other information, the report said that over 85% of the 230 businesses surveyed, reported that their company blog was ‘a useful part of their marketing strategy’. More interesting was the fact that over 60% described their blog as ‘important’, while 25% described it as being ‘critical’!

Search Engine Optimised Blogging will attract new customers

Overall, this means that the use of blogs to communicate with customers, continues to bring success to businesses who do it properly. But how does it work? There are two competing factors when writing blog posts:

• SEO blogging to rank highly in the search engines for relevant keywords and phrases, and
• Writing for your readers in a way that is easily understood

SEO and blogging are both easy once you know how

The whole point of writing a blog post is to attract people to your website who have a need for niche information. By keeping your posts rich with useful information that is restricted to a narrow topic, your blog will be recognised by Google as having specialist content. This will be rewarded with a high search ranking.

DIY guide for SEO Blogging

The best guide we’ve found for helping new bloggers to write Search Engine Optimised blog posts is Glenn Murray’s ‘SEO Copywriting – A Practical Guide’. This ebook clearly lays out all of the factors that you need to be aware of when blogging for business. It describes the battle between SEO for Google, and persuasive copywriting for your readers.

Each SEO focussed blog post is another ‘hook in the Google stream’

With a blog based website framework such as Wordpress, you have the potential to drop an unlimited number of SEO hooks into the Google stream. Every blog post is an opportunity to attract new visitors looking for solutions to their problems. The solution you give them will be a blog post that leads them to your products or services.

Two examples of how blogging will increase your site traffic

As an experiment, we decided to write two blog posts designed to attract two separate customer groups to this website. We applied some basic SEO techniques, and a few advanced ones as described in Glenn’s SEO ebook, and produced the following results:

1. Targeting the phrase ‘SEO Agencies Norwich’ (Page 1)

2. Targeting the phrase ‘Fixed Price Website Packages’ (Page 1)

Not only did both of these posts achieve page 1 on Google, but they also (and more importantly!) resulted in an increase of visitors to our website. You can see that our targeted keywords were responsible for the majority of traffic the following week:

You can do it!

Writing effective SEO blog posts is achievable providing you follow a set of basic rules and principles. The best place to start is with ‘SEO Copywriting – A Practical Guide’ by Glenn Murray. He’s probably the best in the world at writing web content that gets noticed by Google, while still compelling visitors to become customers. This is a specialist skill, and you could learn a lot from him.

For more information, check out our blog post title ‘SEO Copywriting’. Lastly, let us help you to become a better business blogger.

Leave a comment below with your biggest concern or frustration about blogging, and we’ll help you out!

That said, you still need your posts to arrive on page 1 of Google. Statistics still show that less than 8% of people ever go past page 1, so if your post isn’t there, you might as well have never even written it. Here are a few tips that we believe will help you to produce SEO friendly web content.

Write first for your readers, then for Google

I’m sure you’ve heard this before – Google loves content. The more niche, specific, and dedicated your post is to a certain topic, the more favourably it will be viewed by Google, and the higher it is likely to rank for relevant keywords and phrases. The good news is, this is exactly what your readers want as well!

Unlike your readers however, Google takes particular note of how frequently you use the same words and phrases. Google uses this frequency to help determine what your post is all about, and how to rank this page in relation to a user’s search term.

You can see then just how tempting it is to litter your blog posts with keywords and phrases. The problem with doing this however, is that it will make your posts less readable and dilute the effect of your message. After all, once you’ve got the reader to your site, it’s your message that will make the sale.

Think about your title, headings and use of emphasis

This is the most important part of creating SEO copywriting that performs well on Google. Your page title is the most important feature of your entire post. It tells both your readers as well as Google exactly what to expect from that point forward. The words you use in your post title are vital to the search keywords and phrases you are trying to target.

With these words in mind, try to position them at the start of the post title. For example, with this blog post we’re specifically interested in people searching for advice on SEO copywriting. You can see that we’ve used these words at the start of the title.

A less ‘SEO friendly’ way of writing this title would have been ‘A practical guide to SEO Copywriting’. The problem with this version is that Google tends to rank the title words in order of importance from left to right. You can see then, that by writing it the way we have, the keywords we are targeting will be noticed more prominently by Google.

But most importantly, have a plan

Whilst the idea of sharing our ideas and expertise with the world is initially appealing, the reality can become something else altogether! Take it from someone who knows – maintaining a high quality blog is hard work and can become very time consuming. The only reason any of us do it, is because the results can be astounding.

Like any task, the only way to ensure your efforts are not going to waste is to have a plan and a set of objectives. In business terms, the only reason you are producing SEO focussed web content in the first place is to attract more people to your site. Once they’re there, you want to keep them interested with high quality content.

Plan your target keywords and phrases before you start typing

You should be keeping an eye on your visitor statistics (and even Google Traffic estimator if you know how) to keep up to date with the sort of keywords and phrases your visitors are using to find you already, and which ones are being searched for but not finding your website.

Better still, get in touch with your current customers if you can, and ask them a few questions about the sort of keywords and phrases they might use to find your services. Also, try to find out what sort of information interests them most in relation to your products or services, and what would they like to see on your website.

Learn more about SEO copywriting to rank on page 1 of Google

Writing SEO web content is something which everyone is capable of producing. With only a little amount of effort you will find that you are able to publish posts which arrive on page 1 of Google. All it takes, is a little bit of reading.

The best resource we can recommend to learn about SEO copywriting in a quick and easy format, is Glenn Murray’s ebook titled ‘Practical SEO Copywriting – the DIY guide to writing copy for visitors’. This is by far the best resource for business owners who need to know the basic steps that will create results, without all the fluff.

Glenn is regarded as one of the worlds best web content SEO copywriters. His site ‘Divine Write’ ranks on page 1 of Google for dozens of keywords and phrases related to copywriting and Search Engine Optimisation.

Somewhere on that list will be your website. What we tend to find is, that this is one of the few areas where people aren’t really sure what to expect in terms of price, and are very wary of what they will get in return for their money.

If this sounds like you, then keep reading to learn how a fixed price website package can help you to control your budget while ensuring that you end up with everything you need to launch a successful website.

Website packages help you to control your budget

Some web design agencies will give you a ‘ballpark quote’ for their services. This is because quite often there are new ideas or requirements which seem to crop up midway through the design process, which weren’t included in the initial specification. The easiest way for the designer to make a profit while remaining accommodating is to bill by the hour.

We’ve found that the vast majority of clients prefer to establish their website requirements more specifically at the beginning which allows for a fixed price package deal that doesn’t expand over time.

With a fixed price package, your website will be built at a price which is clear from the start. This enables you to plan confidently with other areas of your startup budget knowing that your website costs are stable.

Fixed price website packages help you to choose the right balance between time and money

Some people lack time, others lack money (ok, so the really unfortunate amongst us probably lack both, but the point still stands!).

The choice we all have to make at times is whether or not it is more cost-effective to pay someone else to do it, or learn how to do it ourselves. When it comes to building a website, there are many different component parts:

• Building the structure
• Designing a logo and brand
• Writing website content
• Finding suitable photography

These are just a few ‘core tasks’ that only scratch the surface on what is required to make a website successful. Having said that though, the point is that you might find that you are able to fulfil some of these tasks yourself.

With a fixed price website package, you are able to decide for yourself which elements you would like us to do, and which you would like to save money on and do yourself. This gives you the power to control your own time and budget.

Website packages give you a tangible, foreseeable result

When you select a website package, you are able to see exactly what you get for your money. It’s a bit like buying a new car insomuch as you choose the base model, then work your way through the extras list to make sure your particular model is tailormade to your exact specification.

This way, you are able to exactly what you will get for your money before you sign any agreements. You have complete control over which components are included, and which ones you will handle yourself.

Hopefully this post has helped you to better understand our reasons for offering website packages that come with a fixed price. Click here to see examples of the website packages we offer >>

Help us to deliver a better product

By constantly evolving our fixed price website packages to better suit your needs, we hope to deliver an even better level of service as time goes on. You could really help us by leaving a comment below telling us what you think is the most important part of a website package.

Please leave us a comment below.  Thanks!

I came across this little advert card while at my local gym recently and thought it would make for an interesting blog post. For those of you who like video, simply click on the play button, sit back and enjoy. Don’t worry – I’ve included the key points below in text form as well for easy reference later.

Enjoy the video:

For those of you who prefer to read…

The whole focus of this video was to demonstrate that you don’t need to be a marketing expert to produce persuasive marketing collateral. All you have to do, is ask yourself ‘what are the benefits of my product/service, and what are the real reasons that people will buy from me?’

Check out the front cover of Claire’s advert:

At a guess, I reckon it would be fairly easy to describe the services of a gym or personal trainer in terms of features. You could mention the type and number of machines, hours of business, and maybe even things like the sort of audio/visual equipment they have!

Notice that Claire’s advert doesn’t contain anything of the sort. In fact, the whole front cover is laden with an understanding of her customers. Things like, “Need extra help to get your body toned and trim?” are great for connecting with the problems, needs and goals of her target audience.

But here’s the really cool part… just before the call to action Claire states:

Bare your body with confidence!

This statement demonstrates exactly what this post is all about:

• It’s focussed on the customer
• It describes a realistic ‘want/desire’ that her customers probably have
• It uses emotional rewards like ‘confidence’

Emotional Rewards – the things we really want, are the triggers for any purchasing decision.

This is the other side of the card. Once again – no features in sight! Instead, Claire continues her delivery of emotive benefits:

Feel great and look fabulous!

Brilliant. Well-being and self image are two great emotional motivators. These are both benefits of Claire’s services, but they have the added advantage of connecting with her customers on that deeper level of ‘want and desire’. Let’s face it – who wouldn’t want to feel great and look fabulous?!

Dig deep to find the emotional reward

It’s probably fair enough to suggest that wearing sleeveless clothes and skinny jeans are benefits of using a Personal Trainer. However, being worry free and having greater confidence are the emotional rewards that truly motivate us towards a purchasing decision.

Notice that there’s not even a mention of price, yet you’ve probably already decided that you want it, right?

It’s all about the benefits

We can help you to understand your own business in terms of features, benefits, and emotional rewards. If you want to try this yourself, then start with a feature of your business and keep asking yourself “so what?” If you keep saying “so what?” to ever answer you give yourself, you’ll eventually distil the feature down into the real reasons why this will benefit your customers.

Understanding your business in terms of the benefits it affords your customers, and then being able to communicate these benefits is the key to writing persuasive web content. If you would like to know more, then get in touch. Otherwise, leave us a comment below!

Occasionally however, it’s worth checking out what’s in your own backyard to make sure the weeds haven’t taken over! While doing just that, we came across a new stream of traffic entering our site using the phrase ‘SEO agency Norwich’. Here’s the reason why…

We’re on page 1 for the phrase SEO Agencies Norwich!

Search results for 'SEO agencies Norwich'

Why being on page one is such a big deal

It’s a fact that Google commands over 70% of the global search engine market. We have all come to trust and rely upon the results we’re given, with many of us using Google search as our starting point for most of our online activities.

How often do you ever go past the first page of search results? If you’re like the statistical average user, then the answer will be less than 8% of the time!! You can see then, that if your website doesn’t appear on page one, then over 90% of your potential customers will never see it.

So how did we do it?

The purpose of this post is not to give you a practical DIY guide of how to optimise your pages for search engine performance. If you want an easy to read (and understand!) guide to the things that Google looks for in terms of SEO, then check out “Practical SEO Copywriting” by Glenn Murray – one of the global leaders in the field of SEO copywriting.

Here’s what Glenn has to say about page Titles:

Title tags are very important to Google. They’re judged to be very representative of your page’s subject matter. And within the Title tag, the first two to three words are given the most weight. So for SEO, you should definitely include your keywords in your Title tags. And if possible, put those keywords up front.

Suffice to say, we’ve used specific keywords in our page title which are being heavily searched for by our target audience. We’ve used these keywords in order of importance, but we’ve also made sure that the title itself is attractive to people – after all, it’s people that decide whether or not to click on something.

Hopefully this post has helped you to see that by applying some simple guidelines to the design and optimisation of your web pages, you can significantly increase the chances of getting your site onto page 1, and getting noticed by your customers.

If you have an SEO related question, please leave us a comment below and we’ll answer you straight away.

The next step towards a successful website is turning these new visitors into customers. This post will give you a working understanding of how blogging can boost your business by supporting your conversion rate.

Make the click worthwhile

The first thing we all try to do when clicking through to a new website, is to quickly confirm that we’re in the right place. We want to know that this website stands a chance of giving us the information or service we’re searching for. We’re all subconsciously thinking “was that a good click?”.

In part 1 of this post we talked about how blogging will increase your SEO and provide web users with multiple entry points into your website. The great thing about a blog post is, that you are able to reward the new visitor with a page of information that is exactly what they were hoping for when clicking on the link, rather than a generic ’services’ page or home page that contains an array of subject material.

Blogging lets your true voice be heard

This is a really important point. In traditional, static websites that have pages such as home, about us, services, etc, we often tend to write quite conservatively. We want people to take us seriously and to know that we are a professional organisation.

Too often however, we take this too far. We become staid, conservative – and even boring! How quickly we forget that ‘people buy from people’. Blogging allows your true voice to sing through. It’s your opportunity to show people what’s important to you, what your values are, and even what your sense of humour is like!

Use your blog to describe certain aspects of your business

All customers have questions. The problem is however, that not all customers have the same questions! It’s very difficult to describe your products and services in a way that is succinct, compelling, and suitable for all of your customer groups. Indeed, sometimes a lack of specific, quality information can be reason why people use the back button and return to their search results page.

Blogging is your opportunity to describe in detail some of the more unique or interesting aspects of your offering. Perhaps there are a few questions which people always seem to ask? Maybe you use the same analogies time and time again to explain a certain point? Well your blog is the perfect place for such information.

Blogging creates warm leads

New visitors have arrived on your website by clicking on a link in response to their unique search query. They are pleasantly surprised to find that the information they receive is specific, relevant, and valuable. This visitor remains on your website and continues to consume more and more information. They get to know you and begin to develop a pretty good understanding of what you can do for them.

Summary

The purpose of this two part blog post was to show you a few reasons why blogging will boost your business. For those of you who really like lists, here’s what we came up with:

• Blogging is great for improving SEO.
• Blogging creates multiple entry points into your website.
• Blogging will spread your digital footprint far further than most other forms of marketing.
• A blog post can satisfy your visitors deeply by providing valuable, relevant, and niche information.
• Blogging allows people to get to know you better.
• Blogging is an opportunity to describe your products and services in more detail without coming across as ’salesey’.
• Blogging can generate warm leads who are much closer to committing by the time they contact you.

I realise this was a quick canter through a subject which is quite vast and complex. Please add your comments or questions below so we can help you.