SpeedieConsulting

Do you have pages on your website that you wish you could add links so that readers can easily share your content?  Now on blog platforms this is real easy to do, most come with some kind of module or plugin.  But what is you are running a old style html site?

Well here are few links that you can use to get set up on the main social networking sites.  You can find the graphic icons in most places, we tend to use some of these:

http://jwloh.deviantart.com/art/Aquaticus-Social-91014249
http://naldzgraphics.net/freebies/22-sets-of-the-best-social-bookmark-icons/

The actual html link code you need to get the icons to share the page is here:

Replace URL with the address of the page you want to have shared.

Delicious

http://del.icio.us/post?url=URL

Digg

http://digg.com/submit?url=URL

Reddit

http://reddit.com/submit?url=URL

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=URL

Stumbleupon

http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=URL

Here are a couple of Finance and Insurance specific bookmarking services

Tipd
These guys let you use several linking options here:

http://tipd.com/bloggers

PFBuzz
These guys let you use several linking options here:

http://pfbuzz.com/content/bookmarklet

Do you know of any Finance or Insurance specific bookmarking sites? Why not share them below?  Send us a comment.

Build a niche website around one of your main products. In this way you can drive as second site up the rankings. Using Wordpress as a Content Management system allows you to deploy a good quality, low cost website that is easy to manage and update.

Also being a focussed site allows the search engines to easily rank for one particular product. Maybe it is a small niche insurance product such as 4×4 Insurance or Modified cars.

Using Wordpress gives you lots of flexibility and allows you to create a site that is search engine friendly, can allow visitors to leave comments and allows you to syndicate your site content via RSS.

Wordpress also has lots of free or low cost “plugins” that allow you to build a sitemap to automatically update the major search engines when you publish content, you can add social marketing functionality to allow users to hare your content on the major social sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

It also comes with a huge community of designers who have built free and low cost templates so you can have a design made for you or pull a free version off the shelf.

This technique can allow you in the short to medium term to divert some of your marketing spend or reduce your advertising costs in order to build activity that works for you continually not just on a one off basis.

With mini niche sites, you are building Internet assets for your business.

We now offer a fully hands free solution to create and manage mini sites for your business. Find out more here: Mini Sites

They would be able to handle your customer product enquiries, deal with any website information requests, send out free reports or guides, and even send out product literature.

Well you don’t need a physical person to do these tasks, you can set them up to run automatically using either an autoresponder service or using your own Microsoft Outlook.

An autoresponder is not just a message system that lets people know when you are on holiday!

An autoresponder is a piece of software that sits on the Internet and it acts as a response tool. When someone sends a note to it, it automatically replies with a prewritten response. An autoresponder is a bit cleverer than that, it can also drop people into a queue of prescheduled responses so they can receive four or five emails from you over the course of a week or two. You can even set these up to manage a whole marketing campaign spanning 10 or 20 messages. You do the configuring once and it takes over automatically dealing with any enquiries to that specific address.

The beauty of this is that an autoresponder sits on the Internet and never sleeps, so it can be dealing with requests on your behalf at 3am. This improves your customer response times and improves service. You are giving them what they want when they want it.

These are usually paid for services. But if used correctly, you will save yourself a lot of time, effort and an extra salary.

Our recommended Autoresponder software is GetResponse

Using Microsoft Outlook can help you too, if you decide not to go the autoresponder route. While to as clever and complex as an autoresponder service, using Email Rules in Outlook, will allow you to set up one time responses that go out as soon as the email comes into your mail box. There is slightly more work in setting this up as you could have to setup secondary email addresses or have rules that pick out “keywords” in the message subject line.

The only downsides to this are that firstly you can use sequential messages such as marketing campaign and secondly it only works when your PC is switched on and your Outlook is open. Now being “green” I would say do not leave your PC on all the time but it could automate responses for you during working hours.

Let give you some examples that you could use autoresponders for.

• Deliver a free multi part email course to a site visitor.
• Deliver a monthly newsletter – You could write a newsletter in advance and automatically send it out
• Book in Client meetings – They complete an online appointment form and your system sends you a note with the details and sends them a note with any forms you need completing and any other information you want to send them.
• Information Requests – These could be company literature or product brochures via PDF.

There are probably lots more small requests that you could automate and free up lots more of your time to focus working on your business, and not just in it.

These tools are great for the large company as well as small one man bands.

In our final instalment we look at the last few issues that could be holding your site back. I suggest a quick run through to check if these issues relate to you could release a bottle neck that is stalling the effectiveness of your website…

13. Text built as images not used as simple text
The only way a Search Engine can determine what your site is about is to read the text. Without this ability, the Search Engine cannot read your site nor can it decide what it is about. Having your text in a nice font built as an image is okay from an image point of view but can be costing you a huge amount in lost business. This is because Google and the other Search Engines cannot read this text and therefore cannot accredit it to your site. Text is the life blood of any Search Engine and removing it will only penalise you and your business. Change these images to real text.

14. Quote systems go to third party with no explanation of where customer is going.
Some websites we visited offered third party solutions to provide quote engines. In the main this was fine as the website stated clearly what was happening and where the user was going. In a few cases however, the user was not told anything and when they clicked on a link they were transported to somewhere completely different. Different brand, different site and sometimes even a different product.

The first thing a user is likely to do is to close down the window and go elsewhere. You need to make sure you explain to the customer where they will be going. If you have a third party link, tell them they are being passed to your Specialist provider X who will assist with their requirements.

This only needs to be done by adding some text underneath the links or make it prominent that they will be passed elsewhere when clicking on these links.

15. Page titles are all the same across the site. Normally “Welcome to (company name)”.
The page title at the top of each page is used by the Search Engines to build their Search Engine listings. They are also used to determine what a page is about. Having your company name on every page of the site is not the best way of using these titles.

Make sure each page has a unique title that reflects what is actually on that page.

16. Not using title and page tags correctly – if at all.
Lots of sites are not using the basic tenants of HTML correctly.
Titling pages correctly, adding ALT text to images and using Header tags are some of the basic coding techniques that will help your site get ranked within the Search Engines. The will also focus the page and help users navigate your site.

17. Navigation issues – No text based navigation
Finally, we noticed lots of sites that only had one form of navigation and that was either Image based or Javascript based. Lots of visitors now have the ability to turn these things off when browsing the internet. If this is the case, then your navigation will not work for your visitors and they will leave your site thinking it is broken. Add a simple second text based navigation system so visitors and Search Engines can move around your website freely.

In Summary
Now is a good a time as any to make sure that your website is not being neglected and causing your brokerage any potential problems. With internet revenues growing each year, it is simply not enough to have a website and hope that potential clients will use your services.

Addressing some or all of the aforementioned issues will take you a huge step in the right direction. If your website is not a priority for the future, we would suggest you visit it anyway and make sure it is compliant or, at the very least, pull it offline to stop any potential problems with the regulatory bodies.

The latest research from Elance, the outsourcing website, which released its latest figures relating to what the top 10 work requests where for April 2009, shows that articles and content were the big gainers.

While dominated by programmers and coders (Numbers 1 and 2), there was a startling increase in the amount of content being requested.

“Article Writing” jumped up 2 places to Number 3

“Online Writing” jumped 12 places to Number 5

“Web Content” dropped 3 places to Number 10

You can see the full list here if you are interested:

http://www.elance.com/p/blog/2009/04/may_elance_online_work_index_cash_is_king.html

But that said it just goes to show that content and articles are growing in popularity as more and more companies turn to content to offset their reduced ad budgets and are starting to see the real long term benefits of a content strategy. They are also using it to boost their virtual real estate and increase the number of potential entry points for visitors online.

If you want to take advantage of this trend and outsource your insurance or finance website’s content strategy why not fill in our contact form and arrange a free 20 minute phone consultation with us and we can explain how we work and how we can help your business.

We are looking for a dynamic, creative, wordsmith and general organised all-rounder who wants to make a real impact on our business!

Is that person you?

The ideal candidate will have:

• a background in the financial services sector
• first class copy writing and editing skills – journalistic experience will be a real advantage
• copy editing and proofing reading experience
• excellent organisational and communication skills (verbal and written)
• a good understanding of the internet (eg: SEO and how your copy can affect it)
• a true commitment – you will need to be someone who is reliable and always meets deadlines. You will always keep us up to date on what you are doing – we will never need to chase you

The role will include:

• writing articles, new stories, guides, newsletters and reports (mainly relating to insurance and personal finance) that we provide to our clients
• submitting press releases online and handling enquiries
• researching our industry and feeding us with ideas for our newsletters and blog
• providing a weekly update of all the news impacting on our marketplace

To enquire more about this role please contact jason@speediepr.co.uk

We are looking for a dynamic, creative, self sufficient person who wants to make a real impact on our business! We are looking for someone to come in and really help us drive the business to new dizzy heights.

We have lots of great ideas and plans and we need someone to help us realise those plans.

Is that person you?

We are looking for someone to help us:

• Manage link building campaigns for our clients which would involve finding quality link partners and contacting them to either exchange links, publish content or attract links back to our client sites
• Carry out Research both for our business and potentially our clients business too
• Copy edit and proof read articles, guides, newsletters and reports (mainly relating to insurance and personal finance) that we provide to our clients
• Find strategic partners who we can work with to increase our revenues
• Provide a weekly update of all the news impacting on our marketplace

The skills we think this person will need include:

• First class copy writing and editing skills – journalistic experience will be a real advantage
• An interest in Personal Finance – experience working in the Finance sector would be a bonus
• Some basic HTML skills
• Being organised
• A true commitment – you will need to be someone who is reliable and always meets deadlines. You will always keep us up to date on what you are doing – we will never need to chase you!

Ongoing training will be provided and you will learn a lot about how to successful market a business online.

We are looking for a freelancer who has their own business and commit to several hours work per week with us.

To enquire more about this role please contact jason@speediepr.co.uk

Most of us at some point will try and promote affiliate products and earn an income as it is portrayed as easy. Just cut and paste some link code or banners, add them to your site and sit back and wait for the cash to roll in. Sorry but real, successful affiliates will put a bit more work in than that. Here are 4 tips to really improve your Affiliate Income.

1. Write Your Own Adverts For Affiliate Products

There could be thousands of other people promoting the same product as you. Most of them will be lazy and use the copy given to them by the product owner. While this is a quick and easy way to add links to promote the product, you could be leaving lots of money on the table. Spend a short amount of time writing your own adverts.

BE WARNED : If you are promoting a finance or Insurance product – you will need to have this checked and signed off to ensure it is compliant!

2. Multiple Promotion Strategies!

Just adding banner to your website or adding a text link on your site to promote an affiliate program is really not going to cut the mustard. You need to think wider. Here are some thoughts:

• Write an article and submit it to the article directories about the product
• Write a product review and post it on your website
• Write a blog post and submit it
• Write a press release about the fact you now offer this srervice and submit it online
• Submit Classified Ads around the product on Craigslist, Gumtree.com, and Vivastreet
• Post a Marketplace listing on social networking sites
• Write about it in your Newsletter
• Send out a special mailing to your mailing list about the product
• Endorse the product
• Use Pay Per Click Advertising

3. Bundle It!

Lots of super affiliates (Professional Affiliates to you and me) add EXTRA vlule to a product by offering additional incentives that, if you by a product via them, they will give you extras. These can be in the form of Reports, Videos, Audio, a free membership or a discount voucher. Just think about offering something complementary. This could set you apart from your competition.

4. Buy The Product Or Service Yourself!

In this way you can write a REAL honest review of the product and then recommend it, safe in the knowledge that you are providing a valuable review. Provide proof of what you have done with it. “Product X made me £250 extra commission this month” sounds a bit cheesy but back it up with maybe a whole story of how you used the product. Really provide some detail so your site visitors will want to do what you have done.

Everyone loves to buy into a proven, tried and tested model. If the product owner doesn’t provide one then provide your own! If it is an expensive product that you have bought and want to promote it then have your photo taken holding it or using it! Then use that in your adverts, on on your Review.

Good luck! Just adding one or two of these techniques will boost your click through rates and then sales. Yes there is more work involved but it is definately worthwhile spending an extra bit of time to add these techniques to set you apart from the herd.

We are opening up the site to offer IFAs, mortgage brokers, insurance brokers and in fact just about anyone who is relevant to the finance or insurance world the opportunity to have a post on this website (with keyword links).

Once a week, we want to profile a business that uses the web effectively to drive their business forward.  We are sure you are fed up just hearing about it from us so we want others to get involved too!

So what do you need to do?

Simply answer the questions below and pop then on the contact form. We will then chose one each week.  These can include logos, photos and any other images.

Here are the questions

• Company Name
• Company Website Address
• What do you do?
• Who do you do it for?
• How long has your business been online?
• Share some of your experiences with marketing your business online. (What works for you and what doesn’t)
• Give us one thing you would suggest other site owners do.

As we said, we will use one profile per week and we will market these as our own posts so you can be assured you will receive a lot of benefit from sending us your profile and experiences.

So just get something together and complete the contact form.  In terms of images and photos please just send us the URL of where these are hosted and we will pick them up from there.

Thanks..

“Virtual Real Estate” was a term I first heard John Reese use and it really sums up a growing strategy for companies to have multiple websites focussed on separate product offerings and services.  In this way they are getting more chance of multiple listings. On top of this they are able to rank for very different search terms without compromising a parent website.

Using Wordpress allows us to not only deliver a CMS operated website we can:

• Prepoluate it with content
• Submit it to Social Media
• Submit some of it to Article Directories
• Run a stand alone site newsletter from it
• Create valid industry news services
• Build niche directory websites

Here is a quick presentation of what we can help you to create.  In a economic climate where costs are paramount of everyone’s mind, investing in more virtual real estate is a great way to invest in the future of your business.

Like what you see?  Why not give us a call or book in a free consultation with us.