Heritage Polish - get more from your blog

With my B2B Centre hat on today I worked with Mark Bonnett to help Jim Reah, from Heritage Polish, get more from his blog, Heritage Polish & Green Angel Skincare.

The key seemed to be to help Jim uncover all of the interesting things he knows about his wood and leather care products. And once we got him going there seemed to be no end to the tips, applications and mini-case studies that he could come up with.

What Jim has got now is a list of topics that he can plan to blog about. The tip format means that each post can be relatively short and they are much easier to write. It also helps with SEO because Jim can focus the page titles to, for instances, ask questions about different aspects of wood and leather care. For instance "I have just bought some wood garden furniture - how do I look after it?"

Good luck Jim

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

John Austin & Partners website launched

A friend of mine works for John Austin & Partners, a firm of Chartered Quantity Surveyors, who have just launched their first website - http://www.jaustin.co.uk/about_us.html.

The site highlights some of the sites that they have worked on, which includes some of the finest historic buildings in the country.

The site has a lovely look and feel and some nice pics. I will reserve judgement about the optimisation on the site and its lead generation effectiveness after I have had a chat to my mate.

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

eMarketing guest lecture - Warwick Uni

Did a guest lecturer spot on "marketing and advertising in the 21st Century" to a group of University of Warwick MSc students yesterday.

I think they were expecting a full on web blitz and may have been slightly surprised by my stance which is that you use the channel (online or offline) that gets the best response from the people you are targeting.

What I did learn from them was the degree to which they use review sites and other people's web-based comments to help them choose or accept suppliers. I guess that means that we should all be aware of what's written about us and how we can counter act bad publicity.

Gareth


Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Innovista Launch - innovation, R&D and IP

Mike Sharpe, who helped set up WMITA, has highlighted the launch of Innovista a group set up to promote innovation, R&D and Intellectual Property.

The inaugural event is on June 11th in Birmingham.

http://innovista.eventbrite.com

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Small Business Competition

Former B2B Centre marketing manager Liz Rowe has launched a competition for small businesses to win a laptop. Liz, who works for a division of Insurantz, has launched the comp on the smallbusiness.co.uk website. Good luck Liz.


Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Building inbound links

Interesting tips on building inbound links.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/03/link-building-tips-new-websites/

I would add developing content to the list. Newsletter editors (I know because it happens to me) can struggle to get original content and provided you stick to sounding like an expert rather than doing a sales pitch they may welcome a contribution. And they will be pleased to credit you!

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

You can't touch me I'm part of the union - well the FSB anyway

You have to be quite old now to remember the Strawbs singing "Union Man" I suspect.
Anyhow FSB membership seemed like a good thing. You get the immediate benefit of coverage against Inland Revenue investigations as well lots of help in other areas.

Wonder if the logo adds credibility or not?

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Gareth makes the headlines - well a story in the Birmingham Post anyway

B2B Centre coverage of the forthcoming CRM event.

http://twurl.nl/ddtmas


Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Tips and Tricks of Fundraising - Attract Marketing

Nick Booker of Attract Marketing has just released some interesting new material for people to have a look at.

Entitled "Professional Tips and Tricks of Fundraising" the powerpoint presentation was used by Nick at the recent Tourism Management Institute Hot Topic 2009 event in Birmingham, in partnership with Bridget Rennie from the City of London Festival.

You need to provide a name an email address for this one but it is worth it. There is also a lot of other material available without restriction.


Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

B2B Centre - "Success with Social Media" seminar

The National B2B Centre is holding a seminar on "Success with Social Media" on Wednesday 9th June at the University of Warwick.

I'll be presenting, with my B2B Centre hat on, and we are getting some interesting guest speakers in too.

Great opportunity to learn more about this topic and how it could make a difference to your business. And there's a free lunch too.

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

New Mission Statement for Arrowsmith?

In preparing for the social media presentation at Aston University recently we came up with a real-world mission statement that seems to sum up what Arrowsmith does;

"Our aim with clients is to help them discover all of the great things they have done but didn't realise and tell the people who should know, but don't."

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Downing Dunmore Public Relations Launch

Nice to be invited to the launch party for Downing Dunmore Public Relations last Thursday.

Carol Downing was Arrowsmith Marketing's first client back in 2005 and it is great to see that she has been able to continue the growth of the business. The expanded firm looks to set to buck the recession in part, I think, because of the quality of the service they offer.

It was also good to see a few familiar faces at The Vaults. Nigel Harper of FAB IT Rescue was there as was Anne Corstorphine of City Spirit and the Corporate Pod, virtual office facilities in Birmingham City Centre .

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Waterra launches blog-to-website newsfeed

Hats off to Stephen Wallice at Waterra UK! Stephen has sorted out the Javascript on the website which dynamically pulls in the RSS feed from the Waterra blog.

This means that Waterra can continue to use the easy editing features of the blog to enter news items while getting automatically updated content on their home page.

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

B2B Conference September 08

B2B Conference
Originally uploaded by Gareth Edwards

Just sorting out my Flickr photos and found this one. I had the great pleasure of meeting Michael Acton-Smith (CEO of Firebox) and Dr David Chaffey (from Marketing Insights). Really interesting people.