A new report out this week from online casino, RoxyPalace, suggests that the average Brit is planning on using Social Media to share the festive traditions such as opening presents, the festive dinner, the Queen’s speech and the family knee’s up. [More]

Developing a Content Strategy for Start Up BusinessesLaunching your own business is an exciting time; long nights mulling over business plans, developing your brand and tweaking it to the nth degree, and prospect of being part of the start of something big.In theory there is nothing to stop you making a large impact with your new business. You may have a genuinely life-changing proposition, but success ultimately relies on getting the attention of people likely to benefit from your site, and hopefully compelling them to spread the word far and wide.Arguably, therefore, one of the most important considerations for your website must be content. Developing a content strategy for start-ups differs massively from an established organisation. You don’t have legacy content to consider revising or retiring, you don’t have multiple layers of management to deal with to make decisions, you don’t have reams of data to trawl through and analyse, and you don’t have time to be sat around in meeting rooms discussing how a content feature might impact your PR activities.Here are 7 tips to get you on your way1.    Have Conviction in Your MessageThis isn’t a time to be timid or apologetic. If you don’t have faith in your business, nobody else will give you the time of day. Communicate factual benefits that you’ve identified, researched, tested and verified, not ones that you’ve plucked out of thin air. Use these messages to create a memorable message that you can relate to in subsequent communications. 2.    Develop a Tagline and Use ItOnly use a tagline if it is going to genuinely add benefit to the brand, product or service. The overall mission of your business should be neatly wrapped up in a concise statement to re-emphasise people’s perception of your business. You may chose to add this, in conjunction with a relevant search friendly term, within your meta data to help aid the natural search.3.    Be SMART with Social MediaSocial Media is undoubtedly a brilliant tool to engage with your customer base. However, as with any other marketing channel you need to be SMART (specific, measured achievable, realistic, timely). You are likely to have performed the obligatory social sweep, setting up Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube accounts to sit alongside your blog. This isn’t necessarily the best strategy. Make sure that the social media channels are relevant. If you are B2B then the likes of facebook may not necessarily be the best channel for you, similarly with Twitter and B2C.Social Media Channels take time to build, and even more time to manage.  Snapping up the usernames early on is a must, but you don’t necessarily have to use and publicise the platforms just because you own them; focus on one area in particular to begin with, then expand as you learn about your audience and discover what resonates with them. 4.    Make Your Content ScalableMany start-ups create masses of content from the get-go. Invariably, things quickly tail off as other business priorities, development needs or marketing ventures take precedence, meaning the river of content becomes a trickle. A sustainable and scalable approach to content takes into account the dedicated resources required for creation, and puts emphasis on continued learning of what works and what doesn’t. There are also benefits to be had from an SEO point of view by maintaining fresh content on a regular basis on the site. 5.    Create Content to Re-Engage Users Try to develop something that is going to re-engage your users on a regular basis. This doesn’t need to be anything too fancy, but if you can produce something of use, value or interest at manageable intervals, you’ll start to develop real affinity with your customers. Whether it’s a weekly quiz or a quarterly ‘state of the industry’ infographic, build it, brand it and persist with it.6.    Plan, Plan, PlanDuring your launch period you’ll hopefully be very busy; managing your inventory, fulfilling orders, supporting other marketing channels and inevitably ironing out the bugs in your website. This shouldn’t stop you consistently creating good content though during this period. A good idea whilst you are in the start up phase of your business is to create a 12 month content plan and develop as much additional content, based on your research and marketing plan as possible. This can be linked to blogs, emails and additional website content (possibly for services that you are launching later in the year). Plan in advance and get ahead of the game!  7.    Share The WorkloadWe have a policy here where we try to encourage every member of the team to write a blog once a month on the basis that it really helps to generate fresh content with a different perspective on each article. Why not try the same in your business? Each member of staff has a unique story to tell, and giving them an outlet is good practice. Make content development everybody’s responsibility as part of their job spec, with the necessary quality checks in place of course.

If you are looking to take your business to the next level, than you should consider hiring a digital marketing agency. If your brick and mortar business does not have an online presence, than you risk being left behind by your competitors. An online marketing agency will ensure that you remain relevant to your consumers. This is especially important if you hope to cater to young consumers. What You Should Look For: When you hire someone to establish your presence online, you need to find a company that is familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google has more than a billion unique visitors using it each month, far more than other search engines such as Microsoft's Bing or Yahoo. A seo agency will help make the necessary on site and off site optimizations to ensure that you rank highly on Google for your desired search terms. Before you contact an agency, you should have a good idea of the services you need. The most common services that most business owners need are: Design of Website On Site & Off Site Optimization Content Creation Monthly Maintenance Search Engine Ranking These are all common services that a well established SEO Agency should provide.  When contacting them, you also need to set an appropriate budget that you are willing to spend. Most agencies charge an upfront cost to create your website and rank it on Google, and a monthly fee to maintain it.  You should also ask your agency whether they provide support for PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing. Ranking your website on the different search engines can take time. Paid advertising represents a quick, cost effective way to drive targeted leads to your business. The great thing is that advertising online is much cheaper than conventional forms of advertising. Besides that, the leads that you generate are much more targeted as they are already searching for your services. Final Thoughts: Maintaining an online presence is essential if you want to your business to succeed. It can mean the difference between success and failure. Make sure that you budget the right amount of money to hiring a good digital marketing agency. It will definitely help your business in the long run.

As a forward thinking and ever expanding company, we have been looking at taking on a number of new team members over the last couple of months, both for EAOM and the parent company Exact Abacus. Prior to this latest drive we have prided ourselves on using our own networks, traditional channels and social media to get applications for positions in either side of the business. However, for whatever reason, this time the market seems to have dried up from these channels and we have been left looking at using recruitment agencies for the first time. In my experience recruitment agencies within this industry are very much like the creative agencies themselves. Some can really talk the talk, but very few can actually walk the walk. Thankfully, I have made some great connections over the last few years and trust the agencies that we are using to deliver the right sort of person with the right sort of quality for interviews. Without taking anything away from the agencies, I find it astonishing that for a forward thinking industry with so many employees with their finger on the pulse of all things digital, the get up and go of people looking to move positions within the industry is next to none. For those involved in the social media marketing on a day to day basis, you would think that they would be keen to avoid agencies in order to benefit from better salaries... this obviously isn’t the case and it leads into another question, if those marketing social strategy on a day to day basis aren’t using it for their own gains, then who is??? If you feel that you have got something that you can add to our ever growing team and have the get up and go about you to be proactive for yourself then why not drop us a line or pop in for a brew. 01772 455052 or email careers[at]eaonlinemarketing.co.uk

For many SEO's your background like myself may not be in online marketing, whether that's a degree in a different discipline or having worked in a different industry previously, so the SEO education process can seem daunting and complicated to those new to the industry. Having worked in a few different online marketing firms I like to think that I have picked up a few bits of wise wisdom from those I have worked with along the way. The one bit of advice that has stuck with me the most was when a previous MD of mine told me that he reads about online marketing for at least one to two hours per a day, a very simple mantra but it reflects one of the best ways to self-educate within the SEO industry. Since that point I feel I have a clear understanding of how within SEO you self-educate, so if you are new to SEO and looking to gain a better understanding of the industry here are my tips for progressing your learning. Read, Read, Read! As stated earlier reading is a key part of a SEO's self-education which often means reading blog posts such as these. Now I'm not about to start preaching about which blogs are worth reading as it depends on which areas of SEO interest you, but here are a few of the blogs which I read the most, segmented by their main focus. Conversion Rate Analysis: KISSmetrics Conversion Rate Experts Industry Opinion: Holistic Search Explicitly.Me (Rishi Lakhani) Best Practice: SEOmoz Distilled Industry News: Search Engine Land Search Engine Roundtable Search Engine Watch Technical SEO: SEO Gadget Yoast Don't Just Read, Experiment! Reading blogs is all well and good, but if you went trying to put it to practise what you learn it's pointless. Experiments allow you to learn what works and what doesn't and apply the results to your clients. The best place to experiment is normally on your own websites, whether that's your own personal blog, affiliate sites or in some instances it could be your own company website. Share What You Learn Part of the learning process is sharing what you have learned, this is because it helps you consolidate your thoughts and question what you've learned. You can do this in a number of different ways although the most common is writing blog posts such as these. When is your SEO education complete? The simple answer is never, this is the first lesson you learn and will remain the case while search engines keep evolving and user behaviour changes.

When it comes to reaching the maximum potential client base for your business there are few more effective ways than through social media. It offers the opportunity to address your target market directly and with minimal cost. One of the easiest ways to implement an integrated social media strategy is through the use of plug-ins. [More]

It seems that everywhere you go these days people and business are talking about twitter and it’s potential. I do believe there is a distinct divide between people switching over to using twitter hence the ‘you either love it or hate it’. Many people question its concept, or the procedure behind doing it, people even feel pressured into having to tweet and others simply ‘don’t get it!?’. For a digital agency such as EAOM twitter has proved to be an excellent concept in terms of driving the agency forward. For any business not using twitter, I have had first-hand experience into using twitter within an agency and have understood the benefits behind regular tweeting. I will try to put in simple terms why as an organisation you should start to consider twitter as a way to improve your social media marketing First and for most importantly your customer are tweeting. If you are to market your material to your customers you have to be where your customers are. Twitter is a great way to get your brand spoken about; engaging with your customers is the best way to start this process. Socialising and engaging is key. If you have previous interaction people will join in, even if it’s just to be nosey. It’s a known fact that people go where other people are, you then interact and a conversation has started. This could be pointing them at a recent blog post or relevant pages on your website either or you have a ‘real’ lead. No Cost. Obviously taking the time you spend out of the equation there is no cost in using twitter. When you look at it as a whole…… how many other tools allow you to interact with potentially hundreds of new customers? Allow for personal contact? And has no direct costs to the company? You will have to set aside time to do your tweeting, you may even setup scheduled tweets to entice new customers but most importantly keep it simple!!! Increasing traffic to your site. Setting up scheduled tweets to recent blogs will potentially increase the audience interacting with you on twitter. So why write a blog? It may sound stupid but so that people read it, they get a feel for the personality within the organisation, find the blog interesting, thus over time see you as an expert within your field and eventually make that purchase from your site. The more exposure to the blog the better!! Local?. If you want to keep your twitter to a local audience you can but also it could be spread more a field, this tends to depend of your target audience. The only reason I mention keeping it local is because you don’t really want to be speaking to the whole world and some people could be put off by this. So in essence getting the word out about your business is as local, national or international as you want it to be. From my experience it’s about following the right people in the right places and the starting meaningful conversations with them. Twitter and social media in general are part of your business landscape, whether you choose to get involved or not. You may decide that it’s not for you, and not have any online activity in social media and this is a perfectly acceptable. However, this won’t stop other people talking about you online, or your competitors talking to your customers online, you just won’t hear or see what’s happening around you. Twitter is a communication channel. If you’re going to get the best out of it, you need to have a plan.

TweetDeck has slowly become an indispensable part of my everyday life for tracking real life conversations about any topic on twitter, but most importantly it is a good way to keep track changes in other agencies and organisation which I have a key interest in. [More]

Recent reports from eConsultancy suggest that a growing number of B2B companies are following the paths of their B2C peers by finally investing in social media. As a company, we have worked hard to integrate our own social media strategy into or digital communications offering.

Having previously worked on larger scale B2C social media campaigns before joining Exact in 2010, we sat down as a team and made sure that we all knew what we wanted to achieve from our social media and laid out a plan of how we were going to achieve it. [More]

So Christmas is now officially over, and so is the EAOM 12 Days of Christmas. We have had a great uptake on the giveaways, but just in case you missed any, here is a quick summary of what we gave away and where to find it. [More]