Thirsty Thursday

OK thnx Chris Evans (BBC Radio2) for name, but on Twitter we have followfriday – suggest follow:

What if you didn’t know who to follow on Twitter (Twitter reviews)? Would you randomly start following people? Would you follow people you see mentioned by those you already follow? Most likely you would ask your friends for recommendations since you can trust that your friends will suggest people who are worth following. Which is exactly how FollowFriday began.

Now how about having ThirstyThursday where we actually talk to our followers and discover how you can help them

This is what Twitter is all about . networking – let me know

Economic woes deepen ……

As the economic woes deepen, there will be a lot of endings, a lot of new beginnings and plenty of opportunities.

Some folks will have given up, while a whole new batch starts up. If 2009 is the demise of Big Business, it may well also be the year for Small Business Start Up’s.

Daily we see web design activity from start up companies. Not all big, mainly small. Employees of companies that have folded are now branching out and taking the plunge – starting their own business. The number of ‘corporate lawyers’ that are becoming town practices or specialist 1 or 2 man practices is enormous.

Long may this continue.

Small businesses have a reputation for supporting the big business – some even grow into big businesses. More often it is the small business that is the most innovative. Big boys have the money to pay for research and development, they may even have an R&D department, but the small don’t. They rely on intuition and perseverance and many find that product or service that is missing.

The more businesses that start the quicker the economy will turn round as small businesses will drive the recovery. They will also drive future development of business to business on the web.

In the past three months we have seen an increase in our work load from geographic areas outside ours. We are based in Europe, but now a large percentage of our work comes from the USA and Australia.

Part of the reason for this is our ability to alter our working schedules to meet the demands of our new clients. Yesterday we had a MySQL database to repair. The client was based in the US, at 17.30 (their time) they had a problem, called us (24.30). The problem was sorted before they opened for work the next day. – Actually 3 hours later.

That client could concentrate on their work schedule and leave the rest to us in the knowledge that when they needed the database again (the next morning) it would be ready and waiting for them.

By creating strategic alliances using the web small businesses can now offer a true 24/7 service therefore offer greater customer service.

A web designer in the US can send a design for coding to Europe overnight (and depending on size) have the files back ready for the next day. This means that the designer can concentrate on design (what they really do) day in day out without having to worry about when to do the coding.

Long may this continue

A thought on SEO

Having suggested why you might need SEO – again optimisation for the Brits out there and not optimization – a thought occured to me at about 5.00 this morning. OK I don’t claim ‘ownership’ as an original thought in SEO terms but .. I haven’t yet seen this as an example on other SEO pages, so try it out – and let me know if I may have an original!

In business we all have customers, simply put external and internal. If you haven’t heard that before here is an explanation:

Internal ‘customers’ are the people in your company or perhaps a partner / company that you provide your services too in order to deliver your company’s products or services.

while

External customers are those people that actually buy your company’s products or services.

So – how does that relate to my web site and SEO

Quite simple – if I use the fruit and veg shop analogy again. Now you have a web site you are ’selling’ another product – your web site and the information it contains. Just a little different from selling apples and pears, but the principle is still the same – a product is a product.

OK, so now we have to deal with that new product.

Dealing with the old ones is now virtually second nature. Someone comes into your shop and buys a product (hopefully more), pays for them and with good customer service comes back and becomes a regular customer.

But who is the customer for this new product? Firstly it’s the search engines, and then the people who visit your web site from them. A search engine has become your customer – the product they want from you is information.

Yes, a search engine is an external customer of yours and like all customers requires customer care. The only difference is that in ‘internet jargon’ the customer care a search engine needs is called Search Engine Optimisation (optimization for those who want to relace s with z).

Not convinced? Try treating your customers badly, see how many come back, how quickly your turnover falls.

No the search engines do not pay you money for your new product – well at least not directly, but indirectly …….. every visitor to your web site could be a physical customer who may spend money with you.

SEO is good customer care for search engines. Treat them well and they will treat you well.