Web-attractiveness isn’t necessarily good design

Reading through the LinkedIn Groups a question grabbed my attention. It was a lady who was obsessed with setting up a series of fancy designed monetized blogs. As well as wavering on which kind of blogging platform to use, she was very concerned about the design, as well as keen to start making money. Unfortunately [...]

What sort of thing can you write about in your newsletter?

In my spare time I read all sort of things, and one of them is the National Trust magazine. It has recently been redesigned, bright, colourful and modern, but the thing that struck me this morning was how informative it was about what the National Trust is doing. There is also a broadsheet-style newsletter-featurette for [...]

The importance of a personal email list

None of us like receiving spam. So considering we all hate spam so much, why do businesses still pursue buying lists of contacts to sell their wares? Why is it that they cannot wait to build up a personal communications list – is it because it takes too long, it is too much hard work [...]

Don’t waste your time writing that newsletter!

I’ve just spent an hour catching up on reading newsletters. I often don’t have time to read them as they arrive, so put them somewhere safe and then read them when I have time. I copied a bunch of these newsletters onto my laptop, so that I could read them, while I sat in a [...]

Why boring adverts don’t work

Advertising is having a difficult time at the moment, as there is a ‘rumour’ going about that it doesn’t work. Well, that is true if your advert is rubbish, and believe me, there are plenty of rubbish adverts out there! Chantal gave me one to comment on yesterday, which was particularly bad. For starters it [...]

Are you stuck for something to blog about?

Finding enough content to write is always a troubling problem for bloggers. I constantly read on forums bloggers asking for inspiration about what to put into their blogs, especially since there is that constant nagging in their minds that they need to be consistent and frequent in their postings. This is particularly prominent if you [...]

Can blogs and newsletters exist side by side?

I’m often asked if blogs and e-newsletters can exist side by side. In my mind it is imperative, because to me visibility on the internet is paramount, and the more places you can publish your message the better. Worries about overlapping should be waved aside, as different people read different forms of media, so if [...]

How to cope with new tech-words!

I saw this on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12182714 and I’ve copied it here because I thought it might amuse you! Hundreds of readers have shared their own linguistic creations after reading a recent Magazine feature lamenting the way the popularity of technology is changing the way we speak. In a backlash against the growing use of alienating [...]

Why SEO is untouchable

I was talking to someone the other day about SEO (search engine optimisation) and they asked me to send them some examples. Of course I instinctively said ‘Yes’, but then I stopped and thought about it. SEO is intangible, it is not a solid item I can ‘put in the post’, you cannot hold it [...]

Ineffectual landing pages are a waste of time

This sweeping statement has arisen because I see so many examples! In fact this covers two kinds of landing pages, since it refers to the webpage the visitor first lands on when visiting a website.  This can actually be any page on your website, not necessarily the index or homepage. This is because it may [...]