The key to success in more troubling times is to work hard to attract a larger share of the market followed by aggressive retention strategies to ensure that you retain those new customers.

With the rise of digital marketing, and the growth of online tools such as social media and social networking sites, there are now many opportunities for businesses to promote their business without breaking the bank.

Areas covered in this section include:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• The Rise of the Blog
• Email Marketing
• Social Networking including Facebook Pages, Advertising and Networking

A weblog, or blog for short, is a website with regular posts or entries offering commentary, descriptions of events, advice or other materials on a regular basis. They can work for a business on a number of levels.

Firstly, they provide companies with an area to post regularly updated information as it becomes available in a way that traditional static websites just wouldn’t allow. This can be extremely helpful in building a dialogue with your market and will help optimise your site by proving to Google that you are keeping your site up to date and using lots of those lovely keywords and phrases you identified earlier. What’s more, many blog systems are geared up for anyone to use, thus you won’t need the help of your web developer every time you need to make an update.

Secondly, blogs become a means to open up conversation with your customers or potential customers. Many allow for comments to be made by the people accessing them, enabling them to interact with you and your organisation on a whole new level; posing questions, offering up testimonials or adding insight to your post.
If you don’t fancy writing or managing your own blog it maybe worth considering bringing in a professional blog writer, copywriter or marketing agency to help. If you want to have a go yourself why not try WordPress, a simple, free package available here.

While I have sat around wondering what the next blog should be I have learnt a couple of things that I thought justified maybe just a quick intermission blog to show I hadn’t fallen off that amazing balcony into the sea. (see ‘about uknetweb’)

The importance of regular new content

Without regular new content on your blog reader figures start to dwindle and before you know it you’re on here speaking to the word processor. I make regular visits to my stats page and have witnessed any figures I was developing disappeared (hopefully momentarily) in the time I have been absent.

If you’re starting on a blog my advice would be that you try and plan your next blog, or at least have an idea about what it might be about, some days in advance.

Don’t just fill the blog with any old junk

I could have probably filled the void in my blogs by ranting on about something, or talking about something else; however, I didn’t want to take my new blog off in strange directions. Why you might ask? Well for a couple of reasons I suppose (are you beginning to see a trend here?): this blog is my chance to share with others my ideas on a particular area and invite interesting discussion from it. If I start to ‘fill in’ with stuff that’s off the mark then the audience I was looking to attract might get bored and run away.

Secondly, I started off as a journalist and realise the importance of the reader. As a writer we have a responsibility to write to that audience. A responsibility to inform, entertain or educate them with content they are likely to appreciate. If we start writing badly or about stuff of no interest to anyone but ourselves are we being fair on that audience?

It’s quite possible that I might be on the wrong track here. Maybe blogs are different and I am needlessly ‘filling in’ just like I said I wouldn’t. I welcome any comments you have on that one.

While I have been away I found the following useful directory of Web 2.0 sites – check it out, you might find something new. click here

A dedicated user of the Mozilla Firefox system, I had my reservations of moving to yet another browser and all the issues in cross browser compatibility on badly developed sites I was sure to have.

On download, I found a browser well beyond my expectations and one that I believe enhances my online experience and my efficiency in carrying out research and networking online. Using the same image rendering as Firefox (according to my techie friends in the office), I don’t need to worry about any new browser compatibility issues at all.

So why do I recommend Flock?

Flock is, to use their words, ‘The Social Web Browser’. It has built in functions to make your social networking, blogging, RSS feed experience the best it can be.

When I want to see what’s happening on Facebook or Flickr, its all one click away with a simple bar down the side showing my friends pics and status. Notifications of waiting group requests, messages etc are shown at the top of the bar too.

When I want to blog I push the little quill and up pops a little window (I am writing this there now), write my blog and press publish to automatically upload to which ever site I have registered.

Through ‘My World’, a personal home screen a little like the iGoogle set up, I see my favorite sites and RSS feeds all in one place.

I could go on listing all the functions but I will leave you to find out the rest by downloading it and testing it. I am sure it has it’s downfalls too, I just haven’t found them yet. If you want to leave me a comment with positive or negative comments about Flock feel free. Happy Flocking!

Never one to miss an opportunity to test a new web application, I created a group for members of the network and referral organisation, the BNI, and joined a local business network created by friend, Alan Jones, for business people in the South West (UK).

So will sites such as Ning lead to the creation of ‘nethoods’, a trend prediction from Trend Watchers extraordinaire – Trendwatching.com, where smaller networks are likely to focus on small real life suburbs, villages or even streets as people search to merge life on and offline?

If you have your own social network why not include it in a comment on this blog? I have.
Visit BNI

My role within the company is to research emerging technologies, liaise with clients and potential clients, and manage some of the projects coming in.

I have started this blog to share some of our work with the world and help businesses locally or further afield tap into the many new tools emerging on the web. I will post as often as I can with links to great sites, information or tools for those interested in the internet, other emerging technologies or growing their business.I want to start by adding the following slideshow (available for download) which was a presentation we prepared for our local Chamber of Commerce featuring hundreds of embedded links to more info.

I am keen to hear any thoughts you have and welcome anyone to get in touch. You can find me on Skype, Facebook or Plaxo. (Click here for links through ‘About Aren’)

Aren