This week I heard anecdotally of a manager who asked his team to create a Wikipedia page about their business. His plan was to use the page to announce special offers, while, he hoped, also benefiting from the strong inbound links that such a high-ranking site would provide.

Fortunately, the plan went no further than his team, and he suffered nothing more than their ridicule. Those who have ever contributed to Wikipedia will know that its basic guidelines forbid its use for promotional purposes – which is how it retains its integrity. Another fundamental rule prohibits people from writing about themselves (or indeed those who have interest in a company from writing about it), for fear that the required level of objectivity is impossible to achieve under such circumstances.

As for those inbound links, well, it’s not that easy, I’m afraid. Since January 2007, Wikipedia has used ‘no follow’ link code, meaning that sites linked to from a Wikipedia page will not gain any benefit to their search engine rankings. Again, this is clearly a move to protect Wikipedia’s integrity: if every business-owner tried to boost his ratings by linking from relevant – or worse, irrelevant – Wikipedia pages, the user would lose the benefit of the carefully-curated and highly targeted links which accompany articles.

This particular manager was saved from himself to some degree: those who ignore Wikipedia’s basic precepts may find that their contributions do them more harm than good. A page found to have broken the site’s clearly-stated rules will soon have a banner placed across the top of it announcing that it appears to be a piece of self-promotion; Wikipedia’s ‘discussion’ page also leaves a permanent record of any perceived wrongdoings. Transgress enough, and your mistakes may make their way into the blogosphere, or, worse, the mainstream press, where ridiculing companies who got social media ‘wrong’ seems to have become a whole new strand of journalism.

As with all online marketing, my advice for those hoping to leverage the big sites for the good of their business is very simple: become an active participant before you even think about marketing. Dive into the world of Facebook, Twitter, and blogging; contribute a few articles to Wikipedia on your favourite hobby, if you like. That way you will understand which platforms encourage business use (and yes, that would be Facebook and Twitter, and a good many of the blog software providers) and which emphatically don’t (that would be Wikipedia). While you’re at it, you’ll pick up the ‘local’ etiquette. If ‘poking’, ‘tweeting’, ‘retweeting’ and ‘hashtags’ mean nothing to you now, they soon will – and they need to, if you are hoping to leverage these platforms for your own use.

Finally, crucially, be a consumer before you become a provider. There’s no better way to understand how your strategy is going to go down than to have been on the receiving end of something similar. Once you’ve seen twenty emails in your inbox from a Facebook page you joined in a moment of madness, or opened your Twitter page to see nothing but the same message repeated fifty times from a single business you are following, you’ll never make those mistakes yourself. In fact, you’ll understand the power of the ‘unfollow’ button better than most – and that is a very valuable lesson.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been mentioning the best uses we’ve seen of Twitter for small businesses, from bakers who announce their latest batch of fresh goods, to newspaper journalists who put out tweets to find out more about breaking stories.

Now, Twitter has shown how much it recognises and appreciates the many and varied ways that businesses are finding to use its platform. This week they published a free and simple guide to Twitter for Business.

Six short sections explain all you want to know in a format that is ideal for sliding in front of your less tech-savvy colleagues (you can even print it out on paper for them). The reader is taken through the initially confusing terminology the site uses, and then given some case studies of innovative use. Read how Dell, Jetblue, Pepsi and American Apparel all found ways to use Twitter to boost sales and increase customer loyalty – and then, perhaps have some innovative ideas of your own.

No doubt, in part, they also want to stamp out dubious and irritating business practices by explaining in clear language just how best to put Twitter to use for your company. The ‘best practice’ page also highlights some of the worst practices out there – practices that will have your customers scrambling for the ‘unfollow’ button. Well, it’s better to read about them than to make the same mistakes yourself.

You can find the Twitter 101 guide for business here.

buzz monitoring

Have you heard of “buzz monitoring”? That’s what some social media specialist firms will sell you: effectively, they promise to keep an eye on what customers are saying about your company in all social corners of the web, from Twitter to Facebook to customer forums. It’s certainly valuable knowledge, and who in this day and age can afford to ignore that ‘buzz’?

For the smaller business, however, the cost of this sort of exercise is prohibitive – and if your customer base is small, it may not be worthwhile sweeping the vastness of the web to find just a few mentions here and there.

If you have the time, though, there’s a certain amount of low-tech buzz monitoring you can do for yourself. Let’s look at Twitter for starters.

Now, Twitter comes with its own search bar, and a once- or twice-daily search for your brand name or URL takes almost no time. Practically speaking, for the small business, twice a day is a good interval, because the search results delivered only go back a few hours. That goes some way towards indicating how basic the inbuilt Twitter search tool is, and it certainly does have its limitations, which is why a number of other Twitter search platforms have sprung up in recent months.

Three of the many are Twitscoop, Monitter, and Tweetscan; you may also have heard of Summize, which was obviously prime amongst the bunch, as Twitter chose to buy it and replace its own search with its superior functionality. The rest of the bunch tend to offer pretty similar search results, but each has features of its own which you may or may not appreciate. Twitscoop features a hypnotic ‘tag cloud’ which changes as you watch it. Monitter’s homepage offers ready-made monitoring of interesting words and phrases; it also allows you to search by geographical location, which could be invaluable if your business services a very local area. Tweetscan is the most pared-down of the three, but tends to be fairly highly-regarded, perhaps amongst those who aren’t interested in bells and whistles.

Any of these will do a serviceable job for you, although some business names are easier to search for in this way than others. For example, I have done work for a company named ‘Embassy’. Searching for the brand name alone will bring hundreds of results, but few of them are relevant to that company – most are talking about visas or country entry requirements. Sometimes you have to get a little more creative and start combining keywords. Embassy sells English courses, so a search for ‘Embassy school’, ‘Embassy course’ or ‘Embassy English’ will often yield better results.

If none of this appeals, then a ‘back to basics’ way to monitor your buzz may be to scrutinise your site’s visitor logs, particularly your inbound links (always an instructive exercise). You may find that several of them are from Twitter, and if so, you will be able to go back and find out just what was being said. Life’s never simple, though. Bear in mind that because of the character restrictions on Twitter, many people use a url shortening service like Tinyurl.cc. In these cases, your inbound links won’t be from Twitter, but from Tinyurl, Bit.ly, snipurl, or one of the myriad other similar services.

For many, then, the solution will be to use a careful blend of both search, and visitor logs. It’s easy to get obsessed, though, so don’t spend too much time trying to trace those inbound links! Once you do find them, however, it <I>is</I> worth getting a little obsessed: obsessed by engaging with your customers. Don’t be afraid to reply – Twitter is a public forum. Put right misconceptions, address any mention of poor customer service, and thank people for positive mentions (Richer Sounds, I have heard, even give vouchers to those who they find singing their praises). That’s how you’ll really find out the value of buzz monitoring.

Have you ever watched a mechanic tune up a bicycle? The changes he makes are generally small: some oil, an adjustment to the brakes, perhaps, and a good pump to the tyres – and yet, when you get back on, everything runs so much more smoothly than before.

In a way, we do something similar to websites: small changes that make them work to the best of their capacity.

What we find fascinating about our business is that sometimes, it only take a few alterations to make a world of difference to your visitor numbers, conversions, or sales. Sometimes those changes are based on a knowledge of typical customer behaviour; sometimes they are based on best practice. It’s always fun to weave some design changes in with some solid SEO work, and stand back to watch the website come into its own.

From the customer’s point of view, the best thing about this is that minor alterations, by their very nature, cost very little.

Today, I’m going to describe some of the small changes we suggested to a client: it’s a perfect example of how a few basic modifications can make an enormous difference to a website.

londonrelocationservices.com – A case study

Screenshot of londonrelocationservices.com

London Relocation Services is the business of Anthony Gallo, who specialises in finding rental properties for Americans moving to the capital. Clearly, when you are based on one side of the Atlantic and your entire customer base is on the other, a website is absolutely crucial. Not only will it help you source your customers, but it must also engender trust. Moving house is a fraught experience, and if you are going to solicit help, you need to be sure that you are going to someone both genuine and competent.

Anthony came to us with an existing website which was performing adequately, in the belief that it could be working harder for him. We agreed.

Assessing the website

After a chat with Anthony, we identified several major issues:

• Architecture: Navigation through the site was not intuitive: like many sites which have grown organically, londonrelocationservices.com had started to break the basic laws of usability.
• Ease of contact: As a general rule, we never underestimate the desire of a web user to find everything on a plate. In the old iteration of the site, the user had to click to the ‘contact’ page before they could submit an enquiry.
• Impetus: Similarly, nothing was impelling a customer to make contact. The facts were there, but it was left to the customer to make a decision to use Anthony’s services.
• Knowledge of the customer: While Anthony was getting customers, he had no real insight into where they were coming from, and no way of discerning which sectors of his traffic were converting the most.
• Trust: As we have already seen, trust is vital in this business. We decided to look at ways in which we could increase the site’s credibility.
• Design: Good design will help to address the trust issue, of course (and shoddy design downgrades one’s opinion of a site within seconds). While there was nothing terrible about the site’s look, we knew that we could provide something more suited to this business.

Our solutions

It’s always best to start with a clean slate, rather than try to tinker with existing labyrinthine architecture. By applying fresh eyes to the business, we were able, after asking Anthony what his basic needs and aims were, to suggest a very simple site structure that adheres to the principles that have evolved since the internet’s inception.

We built the site around it, and the result is a site structure which anyone can navigate. Anthony’s customers might well be web-savvy students who have practically grown up online, or they might be elderly travellers who still find the web a daunting place. Good usability benefits both groups: it’s what the first expect, and what the second need.

Our solution was simple but effective: we put a form on every page. This allows the user to browse through the pages, find the information he needs – and when he has, fill in the form. If Anthony wants to get clever, he can monitor which page of the site most of his enquiries come from, and thus gain insight into what specific information impels the user to make contact. He can then use this knowledge in other, offline media, or in his subsequent calls.

At the foot of every piece of text, a link suggests the next page the user should visit, making sure that they are not left to make decisions for themselves – one of which may be to leave the site!

Those who use relocation services can broadly be broken down into professionals, students, and corporate clients. Clearly, marketing for each of these groups will be markedly different. By providing a category on the site for each group, we were able to optimise each page individually.

What’s more, Anthony can examine his site’s log to find out which page is drawing in the most users via search engines and thus find out where there is the most need for relocation services. He can use this knowledge to control his spends on marketing such as Google Adwords, and concentrate on the sector or sectors which display the highest level of demand.

A small headshot of Anthony, and suddenly the site was transformed: no longer could London Relocation Services have been an unanchored firm, possibly run by any fly-by-night. No, this company has a founder who is not afraid to put his face as well as his name to it. Suddenly, you are dealing with a person.

Our second suggestion in this area was that Anthony start a blog. We always think that speaking directly to the customer, sharing stories of the business’ triumphs and set-backs, and offering frequently-refreshed content, adds immeasurably to the human side of a website. Quite apart from the many SEO benefits which a blog will bring, it will bring you regular readers, some of whom you may even build up an online relationship with. As such, it’s one of the most valuable tools in a small business’ armoury.

We design hundreds of websites every year, and we have a lot of experience in matching the right tone to a range of different businesses. After enlarging Anthony’s entire site from 800 pixels wide to 1024, to take advantage of the average user’s wider monitor screen, we applied a subtle range of colours and an elegant backdrop of a London map, immediately matching the site’s theme to its subject-matter.

When customers are anticipating a new life abroad, they want to be able to visualise it, and no site suffers from the addition of attractive photographs. We encouraged Anthony to source photographs of real properties in which he had placed clients.

It’s hard to imagine living abroad before you have even been there, but photographs allow the user to place themselves in a physical environment, and as such are absolutely invaluable.

So: what were the results?

Anthony’s enquiry numbers increased greatly on the very day the new version of the site was launched. The few simple changes we made turned an adequate online business into one that is performing to the best of its capacity.

Would it benefit your business to be receiving many more enquiries than you currently do?

As you can see, there’s nothing revolutionary or even terribly surprising about the changes we made to the site. As ever, we are happy to share our knowledge, and wouldn’t mind at all if you apply the same precepts to your own site. At Notting Hill Internet Services we like to operate in complete transparency: if you do not feel confident making changes like this yourself, you may hire us to do it for you, and we will do so quickly, efficiently, and at a price you may find hard to believe.

Just how much did this all cost?

Like I say, you may find this incredible. All the changes detailed above cost Anthony only £350.00 – possibly the best £350.00 he ever spent.

One of our favourite websites will be featuring in a BBC1 TV debate this Sunday 5th July on The Big Questions.  There will be a debate on the science, religion, and the physical aspects of what happens when we die.

Horizon Research Foundation’s Dr Sam Parnia will be on the panel specifically discussing the issue of what happens when we die. Interesting stuff!

One of the most pleasurable things about working with the internet is the constant innovation. Every day brings new surprises, some of a distinctly novel kind – and most of them seem to be happening around social media, as more and more people look at the basic tools provided by services like Twitter, Facebook and Google, and design new ways to use them. As more and more of the population subscribe to one or another – or all – of these online communities, so the opportunities for reaching your customers increase.

Here’s a way of using Twitter that certainly falls into the ‘novelty’ category. In fact, when I first saw it, I had to double check that it wasn’t a joke.

Imagine you run a small local bakery. Your customers are mainly office workers who pop out for a bite at lunchtime. How best to alert them when your goods are freshly out of the oven? Why, via the power of Twitter, of course: an ideal medium for reaching those deskbound office drones.

But bakers work to a tight schedule. Their hands are often covered in dough; they need to keep an eye on the oven and make sure their pastries don’t burn, rather than be sitting and typing at a keyboard. Plus, the messages they need to tweet are really pretty much the same ones over and over again: the croissants are ready, the buns are ready, the loaves are ready…

Baker Tweet solves all of these problems by allowing bakers to quickly turn a dial which will send one of a preset number of tweets. Subscribe to their Twitter feed, and you can be at the shop within minutes, first in the queue to sink your teeth into the freshest of the fresh bakery products.

As we’ve mentioned before, Twitter is ideal for small businesses such as bakeries and cafes. Customers may have momentarily forgotten you, but who can resist a message that fresh hot bread rolls are available?

There’s another advantage to all this. Baker Tweet is the first of its kind, and it’s unusual enough for the press to pick it up and want to cover it. It gets people talking – people like me, indeed. So, as well as the actual tweets that are going out to regular customers, the Albion Cafe in Shoreditch, London is getting an awful lot of online publicity and inbound links.

A word to the wise, though: it would be best to update more frequently. The most recent tweet is currently showing as 16 days ago and counting… just one more reminder that with social media, you have to keep updating, or you lose your advantage.

Page sculpting: it sounds like an artistic pursuit, doesn’t it? This is the term used to describe the act of modifying your HTML links to dictate whether or not you will ‘reward’ the sites you link to.

This is done not with a chisel and mallet, but with the use of the ‘no follow’ link, a piece of code that tells the search engines that even though you are linking to a site, you don’t want your link to be considered a ‘vote’ towards its popularity.

Imagine, for example, that you are blogging about a company whose service you consider to be particularly bad. If you exercise a particularly aggressive form of marketing, you may even be pointing out a competitor’s higher prices (not something we’d recommend, by the way). Under those circumstances, you are very unlikely to want to boost their Google ranking.

The ‘no follow’ link has gained its own momentum: when it was originally conceived (by a rare coming together of the major search engines), its purpose was to help combat ‘comment spam’. If your code automatically puts a ‘no follow’ tag in any links inserted by commenters, there is very little point in them bombarding your site with comments containing links to their site.

Thus, if you examine the source code of many of the big newspaper websites and other popular forums, you’ll see the ‘no follow’ links in action.

These days, the most diligent SEO practitioners have even been experimenting with ‘no follow’ links within their own site, in an attempt to guide Google and other search engines to the pages they consider most important, at the expense of the rest.

Why am I thrashing over this fairly esoteric point? Well, because this week the SEO community have been mulling over the words of Matt Cutts, the famous blogging Google engineer, at SMX, an SEO event. Talking over some of the problems of including ‘no follow’ links on your website, he said:

“The first-order things to pay attention to are making great content that will attract links in the first place and choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.”

Good words, Cutts. Personally, I take this as a reminder that you can tinker with the fine points of SEO all you like, and see minor benefits, but the really big gains are made by always making the (human) reader your first priority. If you make your content worthwhile, you’ll gain links – and the higher rankings will follow.

Cutts has an agenda of course: for Google to be of use, its results do have to reflect honest user opinion. Its basic algorithm is based on an inbound link being a vote for quality. Much as we SEO professionals might hate to admit it, when SEO ‘outsmarts’ Google , Google becomes a little bit less useful. That is why, at Notting Hill Internet Services, we’ll always advise you to make your content as good as it can be, before you look at the finer points of SEO.