Business Blogs – Should You Have One?

A business blog has a number of benefits. Through communicating and interacting with customers it can build loyalty as well as attract new customers because it’s an excellent way to illustrate your expertise in a certain industry, thereby establishing your credibility.

However, quotes such as creating a business blog will ‘turbo-boost your sales’ or ‘bring in huge amounts of additional income’ are extremely misleading. Building an insightful, interesting and ultimately a business enhancing blog is a long time-consuming process. Rarely updated business blogs can do more harm than good, as can blogs with incorrect or poorly researched posts.

The amount of time required to research and write each blog post should not be underestimated, and is the downfall of many new bloggers. If possible, dedicate the job to a member of staff with excellent writing skills; otherwise decide if you have a number of hours each week that you set aside to update your blog.

There is no doubt that when done properly blogs are excellent marketing tools. They foster relationships, enhance loyalty, and can become ranked highly in search engines, but think long term - instant results will not be forthcoming.

The fundamentals of social networking differ to other forms of online marketing. Social networking isn’t about spending money to create visibility for your business. It's about participation, being part of a community and contributing to it – in essence the fundamentals of social networking are:

1. Creating Awareness – especially in the early days you must be an extremely active user
2. Developing Relationships – make contact and develop relationships with influential users
3. Creating Something of Value – only content which is fun, interesting or useful will gain visibility
4. Building your Reputation – be active, contribute to the community and avoid overly promoting your content

There are a number of different types of social networks – social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace), social news websites (Digg, Mixx), social bookmarking websites (Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us), and niche sites such as Twitter.

Each type of social network requires a slightly different marketing approach, although they all require the four fundamentals – creating awareness, developing relationships, creating something of value, and building your reputation.

The one aspect of social networking which is important to consider is that it does require effort and a huge amount of time. To create awareness and build up a good level of trust on social media websites means that you must actively seek high quality content which can be submitted, as well as reading and tagging those articles which are of high quality.

10 Websites for Local Marketing

Do you own a business targeting the local community? Are you looking to increase your online presence but you're not sure where to start? For marketing ideas check out 10 types of websites which are ideal for local marketing:

1. Classified Advertising Websites
Examples: Gumtree, Vivastreet
Description: Many classified advertising websites allow you to post ads in a particular local target area, and cover all types of products and services, from property rentals to plumbing.

2. Pay per Click Advertising
Examples: Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Description: One of the reasons why pay per click advertising is so popular is that ads can be highly targeted. You can choose to only have your ads displayed to those people searching within a specified area.

3. Online Directories
Examples: Yell.com, Thomson Local, Touch Local
Description: Using an online directory is one of the most popular ways to search for businesses and is ideal for advertising a local business.

4. Shopping Comparison Websites
Examples: PriceGrabber, Kelkoo, Google Product Search
Description: Not technically just for local marketing but you can list your products for free, with customers often able to search and compare products by location.

5. Online Marketplaces
Examples: eBay
Description: Users can search for goods close to where they live – ideal for putting your products in the shop window for local people.

6. Local Area Guides
Examples: Up My Street, The Best Of Buy Local
Description: There are a wide range of local area guides offering free listings for your business and highly targeted advertising.

7. Local Services Websites
Examples: My Local Services
Description: Similar to online directories except with an extra emphasis on everything being local.

8. Local Newspaper Websites
Examples: Type ‘AREA local newspaper’ into Google
Description: Traditionally the local marketing has centred advertising in your local newspaper. Today it’s no longer essential but many local newspapers also have popular websites which may be worth advertising on.

9. Pay per Lead
Examples: Approved Index
Description: If you have a business service pay per lead advertising can be a highly effective way of generating quality leads. The most popular sites also allow you to advertise and therefore only generate leads from customers in a specific geographical area.

10. Maps
Examples: Google Maps
Description: Millions of people search on Google Maps every day, so if you offer a localised service a free listing on Google Maps can help raise your profile amongst your local community.

All-About-Business NCFC

We are very excited to be exhibiting at the All-About-Business networking exhibition at the Norwich City Football ground at Carrow Road on 22nd October, organised by Norfolk business people for Norfolk business people.

The exhibition itself is open from 12 noon to 6pm. There are also two free seminars all about social marketing; at 11.30am, and again at 3.30pm; feel free to attend at which-ever time is most suitable to you.

The speaker is the renowned expert on social marketing, Ian McKendrick. If you’re puzzled about whether you should be “tweeting” or wondering what’s all the fuss about facebook, then Ian’s insights will be invaluable to you.

So please, do come and visit us on our stand and then enjoy the relaxed networking opportunities which will be there for you to make some new local business contacts.

You can just turn up on the day though it would help us (and the organisers) greatly if you could register your interest at http://www.all-about-business.co.uk/

CELEBRATING TWENTY YEAR’S

Jonathan White has been involved with the Courier and Express parcels market for twenty years, working with Securicor, DHL and Parcelnet. Now Jonathan runs his own Sales and Marketing company (TWO Marketing) and is a Director of Oracle Logistics Consultancy.

The Courier and Express Parcels Market have seen some huge changes over the past twenty years. In this report I have focused in on a couple of areas, Home Delivery, Sameday and technology.

One of the key areas of change in the domestic market has been the switch on volume from the high street to the residential home. Today the biggest influence in the developing parcels sector has been the growth of the internet. The B2C, and C2C parcels sectors have therefore in recent times displayed significant growth with retailers still responding to internet growth and online auction sites such as eBay. We now have more solutions aimed at the consumer and small business with a number of online parcel portals open to everyone, following the successful footprint of Parcels2Go. I can now count many more with the key ones being: Interparcel, myHermes, Interlink Direct and DHLitNow.

We all know that one of the key failings of home delivery was (and in some cases still is) the ‘No one in to receive’, it’s good to see that improvements have been made with new innovations in technology, carrier products and process improvement. In this changing world, the carriers who were firmly placed in mail order, such as Hermes and Home Delivery Network (HDNL), came into their own, Hermes had their lifestyle courier network and the safe place delivery service, whilst HDNL had their vast network of employed drivers. The carriers who were more focused on B2B had to find solutions for the demand of this enormous growth area in home delivery. DHL Express launched their life style courier service and other forged partnerships such as DPD and Parcelnet (now Hermes). Drop and collect services were being introduced such as DHL ServicePoint and the new brand of CollectPlus launched recently with HDNL and PayPoint. I am all in favour of these solutions as it gives the consumer choice and an easy solution for returning goods. It’s pretty good too for the carrier as they have a consolidated collection and drop rather than many different addresses.

Europe still grows with more retailers starting to set up across the water, virtually or with bricks and mortar. Hermes declared earlier this year that the European Home Delivery market is forecasted to almost double in value to €10.5bn by 2016.

Despite seeing a consolidation of courier and distribution companies, this is still a very competitive industry and it’s the complete package that companies have to focus on. The number one focus point must be the customer, get that right and customers will remain loyal for many years. Communication is critical for customer survival. Letting parties now when parcels are going to be delayed and when they are delivered or expected is still a priority on their checklist. Managing data so customer service staff can advise people what is happening is critical. This all leads to best practice in the field. Data has to be captured accurately and timely and available as fast as possible to give out the required answers. My point is that customers will still be satisfied if issues are resolved quickly and if they are advised in a timely manner.

Technology Drives Satisfaction......... Customer satisfaction and expectation has dramatically increased with different enablers coming into the marketplace over the past few years, such as real time track and trace with the introduction of hand held technology, home delivery lifestyle couriers and the collection and drop off points for customer ease of use. Companies like Skillweb are experts in the field when it comes to kitting out couriers with hand-held devices.

When I first started out in the courier and parcels market, technology was virtually non-existent, everyone worked with pen and paper and scanning PODs to microfiche. Today there have been huge improvements and introductions of some stunning technology. I have already mentioned the real time track and trace via hand held technology, but we must also thank the telecommunications world in bringing us SMS messaging, so we can advise even the consumer with information on delivery “Your parcel is out for delivery” or “Your parcel is ready for collection”. Customer Relation Management (CRM) systems have advanced and these tools strengthen the relationship with records of all customer service cases, identification of sales opportunities and threats. Best of all you do not need to build your own, costing thousands as you can join up with a service on demand company and enjoy the benefit of a cost per user scheme. For retailers there are also choices available now for multi carrier selection with software selecting the best carrier for their product and delivery location.

Another area of change is where customers are now much more cost aware, gone are the days where people just send a shipment on a Sameday motorcycle without any thought process, now questions are being asked why! Can it wait for an early morning delivery? In the Sameday market many new services have been introduced including technical courier, swap outs, small parts warehousing and fulfilment. There will always be a need for a traditional Sameday service and many operators lead the field with new innovation. As an example of what I call innovation is the partnership that CitySprint, MetaPack and ASOS.com has recently created to have ability to offer ASOS.COM customers a Sameday delivery within a 50 miles radius of Hemel Hemstead.
So in the last twenty years the market has definitely changed, many improvements and innovations have been introduced, lots of challenges have been faced, especially in the shift from high street to the home and the new technology enablers to drive customer satisfaction. Will the next twenty years see as much change?