Category: Online Promotion


Video Marketing & Promotion

With YouTube the second most popular search engine after Google, use of video to push your message should be part of your general marketing plan. It’s not that difficult to do, there are plenty of online guides or talk to us about creating something for you.

We recently commissioned this video to promote our local Swindon Directory at www.OpenSwindon.co.uk, and it already appears top of YouTube for search terms like – swindon websites.

Video is an easy way to promote your business and it’s great for getting a message across.

See also Tips for Professional Video Podcasting.

 

Empire Avenue & Mashable Awards

Empire Avenue has had a huge impact on how we use and understand social media marketing, and so in appreciation we ask you to vote for them in the Mashable Awards as best up & coming social media service.

Mashable Awards Empire Avenue

Top tips for growing your Flickr Score on EA.

I love to take photographs so setting up a Flickr account after joining Empire Avenue seemed like a good way to go. Empire Avenue is a social networking game where credits are earned from activity at social media websites like Flickr.

Flickr is a free online photo gallery and photo sharing community with over 6 billion images and over a million members, the features are cool and it’s easy to use, but getting a high Flickr score isn’t that easy on Empire Avenue, and when my score failed to move I decided to investigate why and have a look at what some other users are doing.

It can take a few weeks to get the Flickr score moving, but once you have a network of contacts, good quality popular images and link backs from other sources you should be able to grow your score quite easily.

Of my 50 shareholders surveyed only 32 had Flickr accounts connected, so 64%. About half of those had scores of 2 or less, so a lot of people are missing out on a high Flickr score.

 

What Determines Flickr Score?

Flickr Score on Empire Avenue is determined by a mix of number of photos uploaded, views, comments, favourites and contacts.

The score for (e)RUBBERDRAGON moved when we had the following Flickr values:

Flickr score = 2 when we had 194 uploads, 242 views, 17 favourites, 15 comments and 208 contacts and 48 people who call us a contact.

Flickr score = 3 when we had 202 uploads, 358 views, 54 favourites, 35 comments and 321 contacts and 87 people who call us a contact.

Flickr score = 4 when we had 202 uploads, 408 views, 61 favourites, 43 comments, 342 contacts and 103 people who call us a contact. It’s worth noting that the score jumped from 3 to 4 in just 11 days and during that period we added no new photos and spent almost no time at all networking on Flickr. Have gone for a Pro upgrade.

Flikcr score = 5 when on Flickr Pro and with 218 uploads, 462 views, 50 comments, 64 favourites.

 

Empire Avenue Flickr Score from Leonard the EA Advisor

Screen shot from September 2011.

flickr score on empire avenue

How to Grow Your Flickr Score

The key is to get lot’s of views, comments and favourites, so upload your best work, not just a picture of your backgarden. Choose photos which are interesting, catch the eye and look good at thumbnail size.

Go through this list of daily tasks which should take no longer than 20 minutes.

1. Upload 4 images each day, include titles, descriptions and tags.

2. Connect with other people, either from EA or from your field.

3. Add some photos to groups, in particular the EA group.

4. Favourite, comment and tag other peoples photos.

5. Create a link back to your Flickr url from other locations.

Flickr isn’t a popular channel on Empire Avenue, just over half the accounts we surveyed had Flickr connected, but it can be a great way to earn credits if you have good quality image content to share, it’s free, account setup is easy and you can start adding photos in minutes.

 

Flickr Account Suspended?

It should go without saying, but only upload your own photographs to Flickr, your account could be suspended if you upload other peoples photographs.

 

Flickr Pro Account

According to Leonard, the EA Flickr Advisor, data obtained from Flickr is different and more accurate if you have a Flickr Pro account. We haven’t upgraded yet, but will update you when we have.

 

Checking Your Flickr Values

Easiest to use EA stats, go to Advisors and employ Leonard, he gives you a break down of photos added, total views, comments and faves.

On Flickr, go to your Photostream, click on Popular in the main navigation, you’ll see some tabs appear, Views and Favourites, looking through those should give you a rough idea of numbers.

Contacts information can be found in Contacts – click on Contact List or Who calls you a Contact?

 

Where to Promote Your Flickr Photostream

There is a Flickr group for EA members at add one photo, comment on 2 and tag 3

xBar Members on Facebook, add your Flickr link to the list in documents.

 

Case Studies – Actual Flickr Scores

(e)MICHAELQTODD has a Flickr score of 17, posting just 30 photos but had 531 contacts. Clearly there is no need to upload a lot of photos to get a good Flickr score, Michael has a lot of comments next to his photos, and presumeably a lot of views.

(e)THEWORLD365 beautiful photographs but low score of one. Only 107 photos posted and just 100 contacts.

(e)RGAGE just 33 uploads, but already had score higher than one, contacts here seem important – has 404.

(e)UIX over 3790 uploads and 16032 views, but only a score of 3, lacking Favourites, Comments and Contacts.

(e)MABER no favourites and only 2 comments, but already had a Flickr score of 3! In this case it looks like the 349 uploads that are adding to the score.

(e)JSTSWEETANGL already on a score of 3 with just 20 uploads and only 14 favourites!

(e)MISSM Flickr score 36, 83 uploads but with almost 5000 views and over 200 favourites and lots of comments.

Please get in touch if you’d like to have your Flickr score featured here! (e)RUBBERDRAGON.

 

References

Thomas Hawk has tips on what gets attention on Flickr.

Improve Photography have some great tips for getting on the Flickr Explore page,

Thanks also to anyone missed out of here!

Related EA resources take a look at EA Luxury Items calculations.

 

Advertising Rate Calculator for Swindon Link

We have recently completed an advertising rate calculator for Swindon Link magazine, allowing advertisers to calculate the cost of both online advertising and magazine advertising in Swindon’s most popular free monthly news magazine.

Since launch, a number of new advertisers have come on board.

Online calculator tools can be used effectively to encourage user interaction, to provide users with useful information, to collect data and to initiate first contact with potential customers. We have a couple of new calculators on the drawing board, if you’d like to have one for your website, do get in touch.

VTE Voice to Ear Technology

A security review undertaken by Rubber Dragon sees VTE (voice to ear) technology as the most secure information exchange mechanism currently available.

voice to ear vte technologyIn light of recent security breaches in the UK, including phone hacking, infiltration of organisations by the secret police and document leakages, VTE provides an easy, low tech, secure and affordable method of communication.

The added benefit of VTE is that it brings people closer together, in addition to message content transmission, use of VTE by it’s very nature includes additional sensory perceptions such as sight, atmosphere, touch and smell, all these senses add to the strength and power of the message, enabling users to transmit far more information than they could normally send through use of digital technologies.

Rubber Dragon are comfortable with continued use of the mobile phone and internet communications, “we are an open organisation, we don’t really deal with secret information, we generally work on small local projects” claims Chris the Managing Director, but for big corporates running dodgy deals such as BAE Systems who recently accepted guilt in a multi billion bribary scandal, VTE presents obvious benefits – no paper trail and no digital copies.

VTE a Solution to Document Leaks

VTE overcomes document leaks such as the recent release of the US Embassy Cables by Wikileaks and The Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera, because with VTE there are no documents. If you have information that you really don’t want anyone else to know about, if it’s really secret, don’t use email and don’t use mobile, it’s as simple as that.

Of course there are significant downsides, VTE doesn’t work over large distances, even a few feet between voice and ear can result in security breaches. Voice to ear is best performed close up, added security measures include covering the lips (to prevent lip reading from distance) and implementation of background sound, dance music like the new hit from Miley Cyrus, Who Owns My Heart, is it Love or is it Art?

Voice to Ear Market Opportunities

Let’s face it, VTE is free for everyone to use and doesn’t offer any market opportunities for the big players in the security industry, indeed they’d prefer and can continue to expect the digital communications market to keep on expanding.

Meanwhile, at Rubber Dragon our services include social networking, guerilla marketing and online promotion services.

Website Design Awards

website design awardsLooking for inspiration to improve your website?

Take a look at some of the industry front runners, there are lots web awards websites illustrating use of new features and functionality, mouthwatering design and profit making business accumen.

Interactive Media Awards, run by the Interactive Media Council, Inc. (IMC), a nonprofit organization of leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals.

The Webby Awards, established 1996, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Favourite Website Awards, established in England in 2000, showcasing websites who use cutting edge technology together with inspirational ideas. Features awards for site of the day, site of the month; and user participation.

See more on web design awards from Wikipedia, not to be confused with Wikileaks!

Seo Software

SEO PowerSuite launches Big Heart WWW Cruise

This is software for link building and general seo tasks, we are testing it out at the moment and will report back.

To get a 60% discount off this software, click here.

How to Get Traffic from Back Linking

Clients ask us how they can get more traffic? Of course there are lots of ways to get traffic, but my first recommendation is always – generate more quality back links!

link back websiteAssuming you already have some genuine content and basic seo tasks completed, back linking is the most effective low cost method of generating traffic to your website and there a few good reasons why.

1. Back Links Improve Positioning

The primary benefit of back linking. When search engines see back links from good websites to your website, they see that as a plus. When they see lots of back links, pointers to your website, they take that as a recommendation that your website is worth visiting and in turn they raise your positioning in search results.

2. Back Links are Low Cost

Low cost because you can get back links for free and once they are live, they tend to stay live for relatively long time.

3. Back Links Generate their Own Traffic Too!

Expect to get additional visitors when you get good back links from popular websites in your target topic.

4. Back Links Focus on Keywords from Keyword Rich Locations

Use your key phrase as the link and link only from target topic related websites. That way your link and your website will gain association with the key phrase.

5. Back Links are Trackable

Monitor traffic from back links via your website statistics and check to see that back links agreed are live.

Disadvantages of Back Links

Time, back links can be time consuming to create, setting up one back link can take up to an hour if it involves protracted search, communication, negotiation, setup, editing and amends. Manage the back link generation process to reduce time overhead and keep track of link backs that have been setup.

Example of How Back Linking Impacts Search Positioning

Searching for swindon electrician at Google.co.uk, top of the results is Amalia Electrical Services, they have 9 back links according to data from Yahoo (search for link:web address to check yours), meanwhile on the second page of results are Everest Electrical, their number of back links? Just one. It’s not a scientific survey, but just to illustrate the point, the more back links going to your website, the better your positioning will be and top position in search results equals lots of free traffic.

back link special offer

Special Back Link Offer

As you seem to be keen to promote your website, let us create some back links for you. We have prepared a package for generating 20 backlinks over 2 months and we are giving a 50% discount.

Simply complete your details, we will send full details and let’s start talking : )

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How to Get More Back Links

Here are a few simple steps to generating more back links.

1. Start with identifying your target key phrase, for example Swindon Car Audio, then write a short description which will go with the back link.

2. Choose where to point the back link to,  make sure it’s a page with lots of content related to your key phrase.

3. Now search for websites using your target key phrase and write to all the websites that may be willing to link to you (often as link exchange). Request back links only from related websites, as links from unrelated content can be useless or even damaging to your positioning.

4. Negotiate linking details, setup the links and hey presto.

Back Link Special Offer

Are you busy managing your business? Let us create a few back links for you and monitor the results. Contact us via rubberdragon.com.

Having trouble keeping track of back links? We are developing a back link management system and will likely be launching a beta version early 2011.

An Alternative to Back Linking is Advertising

Of course if there is a large budget then you can generate huge volumes of traffic through advertising via sponsored listings and placement at related web portals and news sites, but unless you can bank on repeat visits, it’s temporary traffic and long term it’s more expensive than back linking.

Back Link Definition and Alternative Names

A back link is a link from another website to yours.

Back links are also referred to as inlinks, backlinks, link backs, text links, link swaps, link exchanges and reciprocal links.

Well, perhaps they have no time to think about a website if they are growing fast, either way they are missing out on potential business and the benefits a website can bring by streamlining business processes and generating new sales.

The research by BT Business analysed the websites of the Real Business Hot 100 and found that almost half of businesses are losing potential customers through missing webpages 404 errors.

Overall less than 4% of the firms had optimised their website for search – seo, and over 40% had poor use of meta tags (title, description, keywords), if so few high growth firms have optimised their website, this might give you some idea of the opportunity available. Use optimisation to get top listings and trump competitors. A relatively small monthly investment in optimisation and social networking can pay very good returns and increase web traffic significantly.

Rubber Dragon offer a selection of search optimisation packages for businesses including keyword and traffic analysis, copywriting for search, domain setup, meta tag amends, social networking, online promotion and link building. We can pretty much guarantee to increase traffic to your website based on previous experience and track record, checkout some of our other posts about online promotion to see case studies.

The research was carried out for BT Business by Latitude and covered the websites of the Real Business Hot 100, a list of the UK’s fastest growing private companies from realbusiness.co.uk.

swindon brunelTop Ten Swindon websites you should register with to improve your local online presence.

Whatever you might be looking for the chances are you are looking locally, and connecting with local customers is key for most businesses too, which is why local online advertising is so important.
With a thriving economy, Swindon has more than it’s fair share of online news websites and directories offering a host of online advertising opportunities for local webmasters. It’s also worth remembering that the big search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing all display local search results and allow website managers to add listings for free.

The Swindon Advertiser includes a trade directory but the free listing includes only a company name and telephone number. Weblink (together with description, address and service listing) is available for £156.

Swindon Link Magazine, offers free text link ads and placement in their business directory to advertisers, banner adverts currently available for £20 per month.

OpenSwindon.co.uk offers free weblinks, banner advertising starts at £50 for one year.

Swindon Web, £180 a year for a link in the A-Z directory, banner advertising from £420 a year or £35 a month.

Swindon Business News, targets business users in particular, banner placement available.

Swindon Directory at swindon-directory.com offers free links and free banner advertising for a short time and The Swindon Directory at theswindondirectory.co.uk also offers free listings, though the interface is a bit clunky.

Gumtree Swindon, probably the best place for local classifieds, and is also handy for link building.

Touch Local and The Best of Swindon are really nationwide websites with a focus on local search.

So, off to work now, prepare your website details and try to visit as many of the above websites as possible to start improving your search traffic. Oh, any websites we’ve missed? Do please let us know!
Photo at the top features Brunel who helped put Swindon on the map when the town featured as a major junction between Bristol and London along the Great Western Railway.

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