Running a company blog can be time consuming and you might think it’s a waste of your time, but there are many benefits to having a regularly updated blog. You can create a more enhanced user experience, add a personal side to your website, as well your business and improve your rankings in the search engines.

We have pulled together our top 5 tips to help you in your blogging journey Continue reading ‘Top 5 Blogging Tips’ »

So the world is becoming Twitter fanatics (including myself), following their favourite celebrities (I have to admit that I do this…@OllyOfficial), brands, latest news trends and of course tweeting for a response back, but how do you get so many followers?

It is obvious that celebrities or well established brands and individuals will gain a staggering amount of followers. We can all admit to watching X Factor at the weekend and in last night’s vote off show, Take That singer and the new ‘Simon Cowell’ X FACTOR judge, Gary Barlow sent out his first tweet in during the xtra Factor show and gained over 2000 new followers within seconds.

Gary’s tweet was sent out around 10pm last night (9^th October) and now has 287, 514 followers, in which I would like to contribute to!

Now, obviously, we can’t all achieve this in such a short space of time, but here are a few tips to help you get started!

• Share relevant information to your followers – who are trying to target? If you’re a business, tweet messages that are key to what you do.
• Tweet interesting messages and information that can gain a response and not pointless posts –

People don’t want to know this!

• Post fresh content including videos, images,  blogs, press releases etc… This can gain a response and will appear on the respondents Twitter feed, therefore give you more attention.
• Join in with conversations. You would in a normal everyday setting, why not online too? Getting yourself known is a good way to gain followers!
• Re-tweet relevant/ interesting articles, blogs and put a reply with it.

• Tell the world what you think about what has been said whether its industry news or any latest news.
• Get involved with #FollowFriday (#ff) and respond back to those who mention you in a #ff.
• Be witty and humorous with your tweets, keep your followers interested. They are more likely to respond back to you or re-tweet to their followers.
• Try keep the number of people you’re following below how many followers you have (shows you’re not too keen or desperate for followers).

Hope this helps to kick start your Twitter followers numbers!



Social Media is becoming more and more a part of day to day life. This is true for Social Media within business. Businesses are now finding more and more ways to make social media work for them.

Over the next 10 blog posts we will outline what we believe are the top 10 social media networks for businesses (in no particular order).
For any questions about how you can use social media for your business feel free to get in touch with us- marketing@11outof10.com

1. WordPress

2. Twitter

3. Technorati

4. Skype

5. LinkedIn

6. Foursquare

7. Flickr

8. Facebook

9. Delicious

10. Digg

Should footballers be allowed on Twitter?

Twitter is one of the most used social media platforms around at the moment and because of this it has attracted the highest calibre of user in the form of some of Britain’s highest paid professional footballers. The likes of Rio Ferdinand, Cesc Fabregas and Robbie Savage are all frequent users and ‘tweeters’ on the site and have amassed thousands of followers each. Now not only do they have to manage their on the pitch behaviour they also have to be careful with what they say online. This was brought abruptly home to Ryan Babel in recent news.

After the 1-0 defeat to Manchester United the Liverpool player was obviously frustrated and posted an image of referee Howard Webb wearing a Man United shirt. This was the reaction to the loss of the game which, had it been done by any fan would have been seen as a joke and nothing more would of been thought of it. However due to the public position that footballers have on Twitter and in general, the FA felt the only suitable thing to do would be to fine Babel a £1,000 and warn him on his future conduct.

Twitter has however also been used to show the lighter side of some footballers. Rio Ferdinand often tweets about his family and jokes showing another side to the stereotypical playboy footballer.

It must be said that this problem is not just confined to footballers. Anybody can ‘misuse’ twitter, for instance some companies have been caught using inappropriate hashtags in order to get more exposure for their brand. The difference is that footballers are often seen as role models to younger people and need to carry themselves as such, something that is often forgotten when using social media.

This problem of footballers using social media and twitter in order to vent anger or frustration is something managers are struggling to contain. Managers are keen to control this problem as when a footballer speaks out it can often impact the image of the club. This is something Steve Cotteril is trying to combat at Portsmouth, where he has told players that he will fine them £1,000 every word they Tweet. This is excessive treatment perhaps but it may keep the players in line.

It is important to remember these things when using Twitter for anyone, as an impression you give on Twitter can have a huge impact on many things therefore it is key to think about any repercussions that your tweet could have for you and your employer.

Pick that one out of the net!

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, share and watch videos all for free. YouTube is mostly made up of individuals posting their own personal videos such as video blogging, short original films and self made music videos. However YouTube also has a big market to advertise on with millions of visitors from around the world visiting each day, this makes it a great stage to advertise on and get coverage for your business. This coverage comes from uploading videos that help to advertise what your business is about whilst being interesting to users.

When uploading a video to YouTube it is important to optimise the video so that it can be easily found, without this optimisation your video won’t gain as much traffic as it should and will become lost within the millions of videos within YouTube.  The best way to think of this optimisation is like standard SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for a website. When optimising a website a number of factors contribute to how high the page appears for in the search rankings, this is the same when optimising a YouTube video.

To upload a video, navigate to the Upload page when logged into your YouTube account. When on the upload page you will be faced with this -

In order to upload your video either press the upload video button and browse to the video on your computer or drag the video file onto the page. When you have done this the video will start to upload onto the page and process so that it can be watched on the website.

The picture below shows the screen when the video has been uploaded. As you can see in the image there is a number of text fields to be filled in, all of which help to contribute to the optimisation of the video.

Title- It is important to name the video relevantly and use keywords that are a related to your video.  This must use correct spelling and punctuation as it is the main link that the user will click use to access the video.

Description - Try and use the same keywords that were used in the title to show that the video related to it. It is also a good habit to have a link going to the website that the video is advertising.

Tags - Tags are other keywords that that are related to the video. These tend to be single words that have an association with the video and will help the video be shown for searches that contain these words. Examples of this could be for a video about cars could contain tags such as ‘car’ ‘cars’ ‘engines’ ‘ford’ ‘renault’ ‘vauxhall’ ‘motor’. That means that if a user searches with the term ‘fast renault motor cars’ the video will be displayed towards the top of the listings because it contains a lot of the search tags.

Category - It is important to put the video in the correct category to get your video found. This again makes it easier for a user to search for the video as they can search within a more specific group of videos.

Privacy - Finally the privacy must be set as public so that the video can be searched for and watched by everyone. Without this the video will not get as much exposure as it should.

When all of this has been completed it is important to get the video as much coverage as possible. On YouTube there is a feature to connect social media accounts to your YouTube account. This means that whenever you post a video on YouTube it automatically posts it to your social media, whether it be Facebook, Twitter or Myspace making YouTube a great, free way to get more exposure for your business.

Growing trends in Social Media have prompted businesses to actively join social networks in an attempt to reach their customers and increase sales. As many companies have found it isn’t easy to make money from social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube if you don’t have a strong foundation and clear strategy. Most companies have joined the social media revolution without a clear strategy and goals for their campaigns.

A development in social media marketing will allow brands to market their products effectively on social media platforms with tangible results, this is called Social Commerce.
Social Commerce is the adaption of e-commerce functionality to social media platforms that encourages social interactions and sharing of online products or services.

The main benefits of making your products available on social media platforms are:

• Revenue generation – customer acquisition and customer retention.
• Product Development – develop your brand, products and services to your customers needs.
• Relative low cost – there is a relative low cost attached to social networking compared to the more conventional marketing methods.
• Gain Feedback – evaluate the success of services, marketing campaigns and promotions through poll’s and surveys.
• Identify brand advocates – find people who promote your brand or products online and reward them.
• Reputation management – protect and develop your brand reputation.
• Create a community – you can gather people who are interested in your brand, industry, etc.
• Sharing is caring – if customers are happy with your product or service they can share them with their own social network across many platforms.

Facebook is the strongest platform for social commerce growth at this stage due to its popularity and flexibility for developers. 11 Out Of 10 have developed a new innovation with e-commerce clients called a “Facebook Shop” that has proved popular for brands such as Faith in Nature. As you can see below the products are clearly displayed for the user to buy and share products with their network.

As technology continues to advance at an accelerated rate and social media platforms become more flexible and popular social commerce will undoubtedly grow as non threatening purchasing environment for on line consumers.

Introduction to LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, much like Facebook but the primary target is for businesses. It allows businesses to keep in contact with other businesses that they may find useful or keep up to date with other companies in their field of work.

Useful Features of LinkedIn

Linked in allows the user to create and maintain a list of contact details from people they know and trust in business.

These people are then called “Connections”.

A user can also build up through connections by using “second degree connections” and also “third degree connections” which are connections of a connection. This allows the user to meet more people using mutual connections.

Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification of the businesses.

The more connections you have the more people will be able to see you and this will increase your businesses visibility.

LinkedIn can be used as an online profile for your business and allows customers to get an impression of your business.

LinkedIn can also be used to check up on competitors, to ensure that you are keeping up to date and that you can maintain the upper hand on them.

The LinkedIn groups feature allows users to establish new business relationships by joining alumni, industry, or professional groups. For example a group could be joined that allows all businesses in the decorating industry to join and they would be able to share and discuss ideas about decorating in this group.

Status updates are a good way to keep the visibility of your profile high.

LinkedIn also has the ability to provide recommendations. This means that if you have done a good piece of work for a connection they are able to provide a comment and feedback about it.

Ask a question on LinkedIn Answers and tap into the experts you’re connected to and the entire LinkedIn network.

Creating your profile

List current and past jobs along with educational history. This helps people to find you if they wish to make a connection.

Adding a profile picture allows you to give yourself a face. This can allow people who may not know your name but recognise you to find you.

Use the summary paragraph to pitch your business to potential clients. Use a webmail import to see potential connections that are already on LinkedIn as this will allow you to make connections straight away.

Useful LinkedIn Tips

Make full use of your profile by filling it out completely.
Use widgets to integrate other social media tools such as Twitter.
Use polls to gain market research.
Share the results of these with your connections.
Use Questions and Answers to show your Expertise.
Use Questions and Answers to gain feedback from customers.
Promote your LinkedIn profile to allow clients to find out more about you
Use groups to meet new connections and make your business grow.
Use status updates to show clients recent works.
Use other social media to display your LinkedIn status updates e.g Facebook.
Combine your social media approach: when someone asks a question in Twitter, respond in detail on LinkedIn and link to it from Twitter.
Use the search feature to find people by company, industry and city.
Start and manage a group or fan page for your product, brand or business.
Use LinkedIn to research a business before you have a meeting with them.
Share information that clients may find useful.
Don’t turn off your contacts: avoid hard-sell tactics.
Write honest and valuable recommendations for your contacts.
Get testimonials from satisfied customers and post them to your LinkedIn page.
Post your presentations on your profile using a presentation application.
Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.

Particularly with someone who is new to the concept, Pay Per Click or PPC, as an internet marketing advertising model can be confusing. Trying to get your head around the way it all works is hard enough without having to keep stopping and finding out what particular words and abbreviations actually mean.

This is why we have put together our PPC Jargon Buster, to provide beginners or even those that just aren’t quite experts yet, with a quick reference guide that will help you to easily get a grasp on some of the fundamental areas of PPC advertising.

So whether you are just starting out running your own PPC advertising campaign or even outsourcing a marketing agency/individual, this guide will explain some of the main points of reference that you will begin to encounter and ensure that the wool isn’t being pulled over your eyes by a slick talking, jargon wielding, PPC cowboy…… (careful, there are a lot of them out there.)

Why not add this page to your favourites so you can quickly refer back to it when you need to?

PPC: Pay Per Click

The Internet marketing model which allows advertisers to show adverts to users of search engines through the use of an auction based bidding system. When a user conducts a search using keywords that an advertiser has bid on, their advert will enter the auction and be shown to the user in the sponsored links section of the search results. The advertiser only pays if their ad is clicked.

SERP: Search Engine Results Page

The page that is shown when you conduct a search on a search engine.

Keywords:

The word or phrase that a user types into the search engine. An advertiser chooses which keywords their potential customers are most likely to search for and place a bid on them for their advert to be shown in that users search results. Keywords in other context can also be referred to as the Search Query.

CPC: Cost Per Click

The amount that an advertiser pays for one click on their advert. An advertiser sets their Maximum CPC for each keyword that they are bidding on, to define the highest amount they would be willing to pay for one click on their advert, when it is triggered by a search for that keyword. The auction based system means that advertisers don’t always have to pay the Max CPC so often the Average CPC is referred to as a way of identifying the average actual cost per click that they have been paying.

Impressions:

An impression means that your advert has been shown as a result of a user searching for a keyword that you are bidding on. Your Ad gets shown 20 times…you’ve had 20 impressions.

Clicks:

If your Ad gets shown in the search results and a user clicks on it, that’s one click. A well written Ad shown for a search on a relevant keyword is more likely to get a click (send a user to your website).

CTR: Click Through Rate

This is the ratio of how many clicks have been received compared to how many times an Ad has been shown, expressed as a percentage. A CTR of 100% means that every time your Ad has been shown, it has been clicked on and is virtually impossible to achieve.

Conversion:

A conversion is when a user completes the ultimate action that you want them to take. If you sell products from your website, a conversion would be when a user is shown your Ad, clicks on it to go through to your site and then completes a transaction to purchase one of your products. In that example 1 conversion equals 1 sale. A conversion could equal 1 sign up to your newsletter, 1 visit to a specified page on your site or whatever you want it to be.

Cost Per Conversion:

Sometimes referred to as CPA (Cost Per Acquisition), this is the average cost that you have had to spend on PPC advertising per each conversion that you have managed to generate.

Quality Score:

Quality Score is a value that Google attributes to every single individual keyword that an advertiser is bidding on and is indicative of how relevant a keyword is to a) the Ad that it is linked to and b) the web page that the Ad is linked to. A score of 1 – 10 can be assigned with 10 being the best. Quality Score can affect your position in the search results and the amount you have to pay. The main metric that affects your quality score for an individual keyword is its CTR. The higher the CTR, the higher the quality score (generally speaking).

Ad Rank:

The metric that Google uses to determine each advertisers position in the search results, the advertiser with the highest Ad Rank, appears in the highest position in the search results. Calculated by Quality Score x Max CPC, ultimately means that the higher your quality score, the less your Max CPC would have to be to appear in the same position as you would with a lower Quality Score.

For more assistance with PPC visit the 11 out of 10 PPC Management Page.