Twitter, SEO & online marketing

[brown sugar]

Originally Posted by lordlancaster

Hey Brown Sugar,

It sounds like you're already doing a great deal to promote your directory, but it's always hard driving traffic onto a new site - but word of mouth / referrals are definitely the most likely ways that people will get to hear about you.

Nikki's new training course sounds very good, but it's a long way for you to travel from London and so I'd suggest going to speak to the good people at the British Library & IP Centre @ St Pancras (http://www.bl.uk/bipc/) who can give you lots of free advice and up to 3hrs free market research for your business (London-based businesses only).

They're also running a 'Search Engine Optimisation for Small Businesses' course on Tuesday 2nd November, 10am-2pm for just £39+VAT (see http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workevents/seosmall.html).

Also, whatever you decide to do, I highly recommend that you (and anyone reading this) buys a copy of the book ''50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website' by Steve Johnston and Liam McGee (currently just £5.74 on Amazon) as it tells you everything you need to know to get started with SEO and save yourself a bundle of money by doing stuff yourself, without the need to call in 'the experts'.

Hi lordlancaster,

Thanks for all your advice, I will try these other options regarding the SEO training and I will also buy the above book by Steve Johnston.


Kind Regards

Brown Sugar

[brown sugar]

Hi lordlancaster,

Thanks for all your advice and also thanks for making me member of the month.

Kind Regards

Brown Sugar

[missfituk]

Originally Posted by brown sugar

Hi missfituk,

The one day course in SEO sounds great, only thing it is not untill next year and I really would like to start a course asap.

How often will you be running these courses?

Kind Regards

Brown Sugar

They will probably run every 6 weeks, but January is the first one

In the meantime, concentrate on backward links, blogs, that sort of thing - maybe Pay Per Click, or Facebook Advertising (we have a course on this too, on how to fully set up, manage and test a PPC campiagn on Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising)

[leightymms]

Brown Sugar,

In terms of getting people on board, there are a few things that I would be inclined to try:

-Partner campaigns: try to sign up a couple of partners who have a lot of the sorts of customers you are after, ask to run a campaign to them in return for adding a lot of value to their customers (e.g. a particular special offer on another product you have signed up) and try to capture them into a mailing list.

-Nationwide networking - there is a group called 4Networking that has really taken off in the UK. Given your offering I think it would be a very good place for you to sign up masses of local businesses but also meet a lot of women who could use and potentially spread the word about your site.

There may also be events that a lot of your target demographic attend, good places to give out information and a chance to sign people up for mailings etc.

In terms of SEO, in the sort of market place that you are competing, I think you would probably need to invest an awful lot of time to see much throughput to your site - I believe it is probably a competitive area of the market.

Hope that helps.
Best of luck,

Leigh

[thecolourinbetween]

Really, really interesting thread with lots of valuable and kind advice. Similar boat but I've only just left the harbour.