Hi all,
Andrew Diver from the Beatons Group was at SIMS to tell about "Tax on Company Vehicles". The Beatons Group is one of our sponsors for SIMS who have continually supported our cause of helping small and local businesses by providing our attendees with the latest accountancy advice.
Access Andrew Diver's presentation.
When you create a Twitter Ads campaign, whether it’s for encouraging app installs, promoting tweet engagement or attracting new followers, you have to option to set a maximum budget for the campaign as well as a maximum daily budget.
However, you also have two further options for pacing your daily budget; Standard and Accelerated Delivery.
What do these options mean and how can they be used to further customise your Twitter Ads campaigns?
Selecting Standard Delivery lets Twitter know that you want your daily budget to be distributed evenly every day. This is the default setting for every Twitter Ads campaign.
Standard Delivery is particularly useful when you have a longer, ongoing campaign that isn’t tied to any time-sensitive events.
This option tells Twitter to spend your daily budget as soon as possible, from a specified time.
This is great for when you’re running a time-sensitive campaign, for example if you want to run it at the same time as an industry conference or live event, when lots of potential customers will be online discussing your industry.
Although customisation in Twitter Ads goes much deeper, your campaign delivery is a simple thing that can lead to extra success, depending on what your campaign requires.
So, you’ve decided to start your own website?
Great!
You’ve been online to register your domain name, or you have used a local web development company to handle it all for you, but will you actually end up owning (with full control over what happens with) ‘your’ domain?
Unfortunately, and quite worryingly, the answer to this simple question is quite often no.
The internet is littered with stories of companies who have fallen into that trap. Less reputable domain sellers have been known to transfer legal ownership of domains registered on behalf of their clients into their own name, maintaining registrar access for themselves and blocking their clients from control over its use.
This can lead to situations where a company can unknowingly continue using domain names they never actually had any legal ownership of, or control over. In many cases, this causes no issues. The registrant will simply continue to bill you your £X annual fee for use of the domain and the use of your domain goes unchallenged. In some cases however, lacking the necessary domain registrar access will result in companies being held to ransom by the actual owner of the domain further down the line and/or being charged hefty ‘release’ fees to continue with its use.
Domain name registration can be a minefield, but there are a number of simple steps you can take to protect yourself, and your business from encountering issues:
You will be asked to provide details of an email account you will always have access to. This is crucial in allowing you to control the setup of your domain name in the future.
Once this is done, change your password.
You will be required to pay an annual fee to maintain ownership of your domain. Failure to renew your registration will result in your domain being placed back onto the open market where it can easily be snapped up by someone else.
Reasserting your control over your domain is possible, however the process can be complex. If your relationship with the owner of the domain is amicable, it may be possible to simply transfer the ownership rights across after reaching mutual consent. This will usually cost a ‘registrant transfer fee’ of around £10 and will require the domain to be ‘unlocked’ for a short period before the transfer can take place.
If your relationship with the owner of your domain becomes damaged however, this process becomes very tricky - and in worst case scenario may result in having to change your website’s domain altogether.
Imagine how damaging this could be to a company who has worked so hard to establish a reputation built upon that web identity which has to be forfeited.
There are a number of free online sources for further information regarding domain registration, such as whois.is and icann.org - but the best way to protect yourself, and your business, is to come to us.
At Measured Brilliance, we fully protect you and your business from day one, transferring all ownership over to you once your project is complete.
Have you ever seen your business listed on Google, on Google Maps for example, and thought ‘they have the wrong address for my business’?
Did you know that you can access and change that information yourself?
So many businesses stick with irrelevant, or simply wrong, information listed on Google, not knowing that it can easily be changed.
By signing up to Google My Business you can provide crucial information for your business such as location, website, contact information, operating hours, photos and more.
This information allows potential customers to find exactly what they need when it comes to your business. Think about it, if a potential customer is searching for businesses like yours on Google which listing are they more likely to favour, the one with missing, patchy information, or the one that’s chock-full of the info they need?
It doesn’t take a social media expert to see how this can be beneficial to businesses in any sector. However, if it still sounds a bit daunting, we can help you get set up on Google My Business with one of our Social Media Training Packages.
We tailor our training packages to include exactly what you need to grow your online audience and create engaging social media content.
Entries are now open for the Playable City Award!
They're looking for bright ideas that will change the future and make a difference. Your idea can become the next big thing!
What do you win?
£30,000 commission
Practical support in designing, testing and communicating the idea
Residency at the Pervasive Media Studio in Watershed, Bristol
Development of touring and future opportunities
Film and photographic documentation of your idea
Who should join?
They are looking for artists, designers, architects, urbanists, interaction designers, technologists and creative practitioners from anywhere in the world, who can demonstrate a history of delivering high quality, innovative ideas and projects. Individuals or teams can apply.
Deadline: 31 August 2016, 17:00 (GMT).
Sam joined Etholle George on her BBC Radio Suffolk morning show today to speak a little about the prospect of young women losing confidence at certain ages.
This is following a recent report from Girlguiding which suggests that young women are becoming less confident as they grow older and reach the world of work. As part of her work with the SyncDevelopHER Awards, this is a subject close to Sam's heart.
Listen now. Sam’s interview begins at around 1:39:08
Hi all,
As SIMS approaches, Laura Morrison from Your Telemarketing has given us a special offer to share to all SIMS attendees. Click on images below to see what's on offer from one of our speakers for July's SIMS. We hope to see you at SIMS!
Click for Laura's offer for SIMS.
Click for Your Telemarketing's Training offer.
The government has recently released their digital economy report, detailing the recent growth in the digital industry thanks to businesses large and small.
As the team behind SIMS, we are really interested in this report and are keen to see the digital economy develop, especially in the South East.
In light of the recent events in Felixstowe, where a seafront kiosk owner wrote a post on Facebook advising parents to discipline their children if they are being too noisy, we thought we’d weigh in on keeping your cool on social media.
Chill out!
It can be all-too-easy to have a negative experience, or see a negative review, and fly off the handle on social media.
However, we would advise that it’s much better to take a step back, look at the situation objectively and decide whether posting about those situations on social media is really a good idea.
The problem with social media and the internet in general is that your tone of voice is lost in the transition from the words in your head, to the words you type and the words that your customers read on the screen.
Each customer will read the post differently, interpreting different meaning.
What one customer might read as good-will, another might read as malicious sarcasm.
Our advice to the kiosk owner in Felixstowe would have been to, at the very least, run the post by someone else first, whether it’s a colleague, friend or even a customer.
It’s best to keep your social media accounts positive, even in the face of unfair criticism or insults. Standing up for yourself and your business can be very valid, but you need to use a writing tone that won’t shine a negative light on your brand or insult your customers.
So proud to see everyone and the wonderful SIMS community featured in both the Ipswich Star paper and on the website.
Once again, a huge congratulations to Donna from Konjo Photography for winning the SIMS SEO Search for Success competition.
Hi all,
Beatons Group's monthly accountancy advice is back for June's SIMS with Andrew Driver's presentation on "Tax on Business Premises". Beatons is one of our sponsors for SIMS providing our attendees with the latest accountancy advice.
Join us for July's SIMS
Click to access Andrew's presentation.
Max's round-up this June of all things new in the industry.
Every month at SIMS, Max provides a brief run-down of just some of the tech-related news that may affect small businesses, and agencies that work with small businesses and we post the links here. If any of these catch your interest, but you're not sure how they would affect you, feel free to get in touch and ask!
There were lots of updates within one month but luckily Max has summarised it for the SIMS audience (as he always does!). Which ones do you think will affect your business? Learn more below:
https://adwords.googleblog.com/2016/06/introducing-youtube-director-suite-of.html
Google have produced an app that helps you make video ads for your business. It tells you what to do and sorts everything out for you. It's currently US & Canada only, but I can only assume it will be coming to the UK soon. Either way, the video explainer is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufI7su3KXng&feature=youtu.be
https://adwords.googleblog.com/2016/05/ads-and-analytics-innovations-for-a-mobile-first-world.html
This is a link that we couldn't squeeze in for the last SIMS, but AdWords releases a range of updates for their display network and other ad types all heavily based around mobile. If that's something you use, it's worth going through their post with an overview of the updates.
http://searchengineland.com/google-clarifies-keyword-planner-doesnt-require-active-campaign-252767
There is a temporary issue where some people are unable to use the keyword planner tool without an active ad campaign. Google have confirmed this is a bug. More information at the link above, and if you're not aware of, or using the Keyword Planner tool you probably should be.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/local/guides/
You might not know that Google has a local guides scheme. How do you find out about local businesses and places that don't, won't or can't update their own details? You get the public to do it by starting a ‘Local Guides’ scheme.
One of the perks of using it is early access to new Google Maps and Google Local features, so if you use those for your business. Why not sign up and see what it's all about?
http://searchengineland.com/official-google-green-ad-label-global-251958
Ads now have green labels. No, it's not major news, but it's something you can say to let everyone know that you're keeping up-to-date with the search engine results page!
http://searchengineland.com/key-takeaways-google-ama-rankbrain-panda-penguin-bots-252506
From the horse's mouth, a round-up of notes from Google's AMA at a recent conference. Some key takeaways are the continued commitment to a ‘mobile-only’ index and a significant change to Search Console:
“It looks like after three years since Google promised more data and longer history of data in the Google Search Console, it may be coming. Gary said that the team is working on it and that the lead of the Google Search Console team was very “direct” with his team about making sure to give webmasters more history with their search analytics and other data in the Google Search Console.”
http://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-new-mobile-usability-report-tested-252313
Another day, another usability tool from Google. This time, it's baked right into Search Console.
http://www.thesempost.com/googles-search-analytics-now-allows-keyword-comparisons/
You can now compare two queries in Google Search Console. Google are slowly and quietly making Search Console a powerful SEO tool (albeit with the caveat that you have to trust the sampled data they give you).
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ignores-content-in-tlds-22236.html
Google have confirmed they don't look for words in your TLD (which is the last part of your website address, usually .com or .co.uk). There are ads telling you to get ‘.lawyer’ or ‘.yourindustry’ but these won't make an SEO difference, so don't risk a domain-name move unless you really know what you're doing.
Apple opened up Apple Maps to external developers. This means if you're a local business then apps you use in other ways may suddenly be available in a new way, for example, restaurants using OpenTable may be able to take bookings directly from the Maps app on your phone.
Apple announced changes in ads in the app store and subscription pricing for (seemingly) all types of apps. If you'd held off looking at apps as you couldn't make the one-off payment model work, this is worth looking at.
Here's a link to the official documentation for it: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/search-ads/
June's SIMS featured six social media experts in Kim Morrison, Sam Brook, Caron Peirson, Angel Rubia, Daniel Coughlan and Max Shelley at SIMS' very first panel event. Each speaker was given the opportunity to give out their expert opinion for every question asked by the SIMS audience. There were many raise of hands and interaction between the audience and the speakers which was an engaging sight to see. It was a great turnout despite the weather and another useful and educational night for SIMS attendees!
The SIMS "Ask the Experts" Panel Event
Like every month, Andrew Diver from the Beatons Group gave his "What you need to know in 5 minutes" accountancy advice roundup this time, about "Tax on Business Premises". The Beatons Group are one of the proud sponsors of SIMS.
The winner of SIMS' Search for Success Competition was also announced and she is Donna Reid from Konjo Photography! Donna has won £1000 of SEO Services sponsored by the Ipswich Borough Council. Congratulations from us at Measured Brilliance!
One of the topics the panelists covered was social media scheduling & management platforms. Our panelists recommended the following:
Buffer - buffer.com
Hootsuite - hootsuite.com
Sprout Social - sproutsocial.com
Tweetdeck (Twitter manager)- tweetdeck.com
It's best to always remember that social media scheduling may suit others differently. Different businesses have different circumstances such as business owners who may have time to do these things and others who don't. If you've just started on social media, posting to Facebook yourself can give you a better idea of how people engage with your product and your brand. For those who are short of time, social media scheduling tools can definitely help you manage your social media.
Thank you to all who came to June's SIMS. We hope to see you all in the next one!
Max's round-up: http://bit.ly/295o55G
Beaton's slides: http://bit.ly/293qiwZ
Give the panelists a visit!
Some photos from last night:
Want the chance to solve all of your website’s optimisation problems without spending a penny? SIMS has just the opportunity for you.
SIMS and Measured Brilliance have teamed up with Ipswich Borough Council to grant one lucky winner the chance to fully optimise their online presence for free, offering £1000 of SEO services.
Entering our Search for Success competition is effortless and completely free. All you need to do is sign up with your business name and email address and you’ll be entered into the competition. That’s all, we promise.
Registration closes on 27th June with the winner being drawn at SIMS on 28th June, sign up and RSVP here.
Good luck!
Hello everyone,
Join SIMS as they host an “Ask the Expert” Panel Event for small businesses. For the month of June, SIMS will focusing on teaching small businesses on how to use social media with the help of local social media experts. This is a free-for-all event for all types of businesses. 28th June, Tuesday 7pm at the UCS Waterfront Building Ipswich.
What's an "Ask the Experts" Panel event?
The SIMS "Ask the Experts" Panel Event is Q&A session that gives small businesses a chance to ask social media experts for free advice. The SIMS speakers will cover a range social media platforms from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat. Whether you're a beginner in social media or looking for ways to utilise your exiting social media page, come to SIMS and get the best expert advice for free. June's SIMS is the best place to answer your business' questions about social media and SEO.
Here are SIMS panelists for June:
We also have Andrew Diver from the Beatons Group who'll be giving us a "What you need to know in 5 minutes" roundup to help you get a better grip of finance for your business.
Beatons is one of the sponsors for SIMS
We hope to see you there.
Hello everyone,
Last night was another great and educational night for our SIMS businesses. Our speakers, Sally Ormond and Paul Johnstone covered a lot of questions about writing content and expressing yourself through your website.
If you missed last night's SIMS, we have our speakers' presentations for everyone to access. Simply click on their pictures below.
We hope to see you all next month.
Max's round-up this May of all things new in the industry.
Every month at SIMS, Max provides a brief run-down of just some of the tech-related news that may affect small businesses, and agencies that work with small businesses and we post the links here. If any of these catch your interest, but you're not sure how they would affect you, feel free to get in touch and ask!
It's announcement season for all things new in the digital industry. Luckily for our SIMS audience, we have Max to keep us all up-to-date with the latest news:
http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/deeper-integration-of-search-console-in.html
Search Console and Google Analytics:
Here's a quote from their blog post announcing the feature:
http://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-now-lets-group-sites-together-property-sets-250168
For those of you that use Search Console a lot, this has been a long requested feature. Google treats each subdomain as a different website, which means your URL with the 'www' prefix and without are two different sites. They can now be combined, and reported on, as a “set”.
http://searchengineland.com/google-bringing-featured-snippets-rich-results-filters-search-analytics-report-250080
Google are adding “rich snippets” in their Search Console, so you can know how many people are seeing your site in those results. If you're technical and you're interested in how this impacts local search, you can find out more at http://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-updated-search-analytics-report-adds-knowledge-graph-local-rich-snippets-249179
http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-new-mobile-friendly-testing-tool-249734
The mobile-friendly test from Google has been updated, if you didn't know this existed, it's important that you use it and make sure your website is mobile-friendly.
https://blog.bufferapp.com/f8-facebook-features?utm_source=moztop10&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=moztop10
Some things we didn't get time to cover in last month's roundup from Facebook's F8 conference.
http://periscope.tv/periscopetv/1ynJOmpngRXKR
Periscope now let you save the videos you create using their real-time video service. This is one of the largest competitors to Facebook Live video, instead owned by Twitter and this makes the service far more useful.
http://www.thesempost.com/new-title-description-lengths-for-google-seo/
Big news (well, in the SEO world). Google have increased the width of some search results, meaning you get more characters to tell everyone about your page. Make the most of it in your page titles and META descriptions.
http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/announcing-data-studio-our-free-new.html
Google Announce Data Studio which lets you report on a huge set of data, including your Analytics and Adwords data. It's not fully available in the UK yet, although there's enough to play with if you're interested.
http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/ga360suite-product-announcement.html
Google are “unifying” their analytics and AdWords products. If you're in any way interested, then this is the blog post for you.
http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/app-first-analytics-with-firebase.html
If you're an app developer, there's an improved version of Firebase, the app from Google for you to use for your app-specific analytics.
http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/efficient-campaign-tagging.html
We sometimes mention “tagging” your links, although it can be a little technical. It's a way to help you know where your traffic is coming from, with more details than just “social”. And, better yet, you get to set the labels that get applied. There's an official Chrome extension that will help you manage your tags in Google Sheets, which is something we do.
Thank you and we hope to see you all in the next SIMS.
Hello everyone,
May’s SIMS featured Sally Ormond from Briar Copywriting as she debunked myths about copywriting and suggested useful tricks when writing content and appealing to business audiences. Our second speaker, Paul Johnstone from Paradigm Shakers talked about best practices of telling the story for businesses along with common bad practices businesses do and don’t realise. We definitely saw lots of note-taking and and a few raise of hands in the Q&A section where our speakers answered burning questions about copywriting and telling your story through your business.
Similar to last month, we got a "What you need to know in 5 minutes" accountancy advice roundup from Beatons Group one of the proud sponsors of SIMS, brought to us by Andrew Diver.
The best thing about this month’s talk was its relevance to any industry, since all businesses have to write content. Fortunately for our SIMS audience, we have got the best experts to speak for us at SIMS. Here are some points they covered throughout their talks.
Main points from Sally’s Talk:
Main points from Paul’s Talk:
As Sam mentioned at the end of May’s SIMS, we will be having an “Ask the Experts” Panel Event where you can get free expert advice one-to-one. It’s a SIMS meetup worth looking forward to.
Thank you all for coming.
For more details from May's SIMS see Max’s May Round-up and May’s SIMS Presentations.
Some photos from last night:
Our friends at New Anglia Growth Hubhave asked us to tell you about a competition the Guardian are running to help businesses grow using digital technology.
Prizes to be won:
Just answer a simple question in under 150 words:
“Increasing the use of digital technology can help small businesses become more efficient and boost their turnover. How are you planning to use digital technology to grow your business this year?”
When: 11th May Wednesday, 16:00 (4pm)
Where: UCS
Sign up: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ict-digital-skills-accelerator-tickets-24399533662
Whether your business is to provide ICT products and services or your core business is in Digital Creative, Tourism, Financial Services, Engineering & Manufacturing or Health and Social Care; ICT and Digital Technologies will continue to play a key factor in your business growth and success. With the UK government investing in degree apprenticeship as a key priority area to boost high-tech skills in Britain, there’s never been a better time to hire an apprentice.
We would like to invite you to our “ICT Digital Skills Accelerator Event” on 11th May at University Campus Suffolk from 4pm until 8pm. The event is for businesses, parents/carers, schools, and students at secondary school, Further and Higher education and is being run by Suffolk County Council, Suffolk New College and University Campus Suffolk.
There will be an opportunity to browse apprenticeship and other training providers' stands and talk to people directly.
We will have a keynote speaker as well as workshops on:
This event is made possible by funding from the Skills Funding Agency.
