M & A Rainmaker

or to put it slightly differently – the number of visitors to your website, the number of those visitors that participate in a call to action ( do something ) and the number of those people that become customers – THAT is the mantra of hubspot.com.

They say that last year they had something like 2 million visitors to thier website of whom 160,000 participated in a call to action and of those about 1,000 became hubspot customers.

It’s a mantra that ALL businesses could do with keeping in mind.

Let’s have a look at this a bit more closely….

Getting Found/Getting Visitors

Hopefully most people now understand that being found by Google when someone types in your company name or a variation of it is a given – if that does not happen then you have not even left first base !! However your objective should be to be found for the products and services that you offer. Ideally you want to be on page 1 when someone searches for your key products and services. How easy or hard this is to do depends entirely on the competitiveness of the keywords and phrases that relate to your products and services.

 Getting found for what you have to offer is absolutely key.

Recently I have been having two in depth discussions with people that I am helping:

1.  Tell me the most important products and services that you want to sell ( List them all and then put them in order of priority ).

2. Tell me what keywords and phrases you think people will type in ( to Google ) to find your main products and services.

I don’t expect them to know every variation of keyword or phrase nor do I expect them to know how competitive ( how hard to rank high for ) those keywords and phrases are. I can find that out myself or with the assistance of my team.

The next thing that I tell them to do is to

3. Get Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools installed on thier website and to get access to it ( for which they will need a Googlemail email address ).

The reason for this is that we need a baseline ( a starting point ) to see the effect that we have on things like visitors, keywords, referrals, links etc etc

Understanding  what you want to promote and the keywords and phrases that relate to it  is the foundation of everything that you will do on the Internet to promote yourself and get more visitors to your website.

The basic key to a high ranking website is on page SEO ( keywords, titles,metatags – related to your keywords and phrases ) , frequently changing and updated, relevant content and lots of ( good ) inbound links.

In thier ” Getting Found ” section Hubspot highlight SEO, Blogs and Social Media. These are the basic areas to address to improve the visibility and ranking of your website:

– SEO your website ( titles,tags,content etc ) in accordance with your keywords and phrases.

– Establish ( seperate ) blogs

– Establish pages in social media ( Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg etc etc etc )

In doing so you will establish an ” ecosystem ” of related online media. You will establish a network of friends/followers/etc for your blog(s) and for each of your social networks and you will also connect them to your website and to you ( they may come to you about business direct from your blog or social media page or they may come to you via your website ).

It is difficult to describe just how powerful this set of interconnected networks is. Facilities like ” share ” and ” join ” enable you to share information posted in one place to all the other places and to invite your friends from one place to another place.

Anyway, by now it will be time to look at your analytics to see where the traffic and links are coming from and how many visitors you are getting now.

Once you have got visitor to your website you have got to get them to do something.

Convert

On the hubspot home page ( thier main landing page ) you will see a number of ” calls to action ” e.g. ” Try Hubspot free for 7 days ” or ” Download a free Inbound Marketing Kit “. To do this you will need to provide them with information about yourself . This might range from a name and email address to a more comprehensive list of details about you and your requirements.

Each one of these is a ” lead “. You have converted a visit to a lead. ( Well done ).

As Hubspot mention – you need to track and manage these leads – then you need to analyse them –  so many referrals to the website came from ?? and they eg downloaded a white paper and then they did ??

Analyse

Analysis would include online and offline analysis. You want to analyse how well your marketing is doing; look at your competitive analysis ( how well are you doing relative to your competitors ) and also look at the quality of the leads. You should ensure that everyone in the company asks where leads came from – and not just ” from the Internet ” – you want to know whereabouts on the Internet !

Poundbury Systems is in the Cisco mentor programme and receives a regular monthly mentoring session from Cisco mentoring partner Channel Intellect.

The bad weather in January and various issues in December meant that the Channel Intellect representative John Shannon could not get down from the Wirral to Dorset.

In December the mentoring session was carried out using the telephone. During the session a number of critical areas were discussed such as the order forecast and the commitment to those orders being received and personal coaching. The mentor came off of the December update feeling that he had heard the words but needed to see the facial reactions and other body language that accompanied those words.

Given the appalling weather conditions in January it was decided that another remote review was required but this time Cisco Webex video conferencing would be used.

Cisco Webex is a low cost video conferencing solution that is suitable for small and medium sized businesses to use. ( ie suitable for Poundbury, Channel Intellect and Poundbury’s customers ).

When John came off the January remote review he was convinced that messages  were received, understood and committed to.

Cisco Webex video conferencing makes business sense for a  number of reasons: Reduced travel time and cost; reduced carbon emissions; business continuity and the ability to see the whites of peoples’ eyes !

http://redeye.firstround.com/2009/12/finding-the-dreamers.html

They can’t sing but I like it !!

If you are looking for Pest Control Services in Derby,Derbyshire and the East Midlands then give GB Pest Control a call on 0800 135 7270 and ask for Gary Bullock.

I would like to introduce you to Gary Bullock from GB Pest Control based in South Derbyshire who is prepared to travel to service his clients.

Gary is a very active member of the local BNI chapter and I would like to recommend him to corporate establishments who require ongoing maintenance contracts to control vermin.

The types of businesses that Gary deals with are food processing plants, retail outlets, restaurant chains, in fact anywhere there’s people there are also rats!

If you are a business in the Derby area, particularly a business on Pride Park eg TCH HARRISON, FRANKIE AND BENNY’S, SUBWAY, EGG, EDWARD GELDARDS, AG SOFTWARE, NOTTS and DERBY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, S&A FOODS, HAZLEWOOD FOODS CHESTERFIELD, FRESH FOOD SYSTEMS IN CASTLE DONNINGTON then please consider GB Pest Control.

For more information please go to:

www.gbpestcontrol.co.uk

or call 0800 135 7270.

In February the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics Games will run video over Cisco Networks. In 2012 Poundbury hopes to do the same in Dorset.

Cisco Systems will be providing the video and all-media network that will allow NBC to broadcast the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

See the official Cisco Systems Press Releases here:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_010610.html

http://blogs.cisco.com/sp/comments/nbc_leverages_cisco_video_network_at_2010_olympic_winter_games/

Poundbury Systems is already promoting the use of Cisco Systems for communications during the sailing section of the 2012 Olympics based in the U.K.

The company is also developing video conferencing and remote networking
technology, to reduce the need for local businesses to travel during the Games.
‘We see video conferencing as the next big thing for businesses,
especially those outside London. We’d be developing it even if the
Games weren’t happening, but the event gives everyone an extra
push. I think it will be a catalyst for Dorset in many ways.
‘It has already given Dorset a short-term motivational boost. In the
long-term, the benefits of improving the area’s infrastructure will be
enormous.
‘Team Dorset is not about opting for a quick fix; it’s about building
long-term business relationships and improving the environment.
We all stand to benefit from the exciting and demanding challenges
the Games will bring. Dorset is a wonderful place to live and work
and we want it to remain so for many more generations”

Team Dorset is the lead agency in Dorset for promoting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Weymouth and Portland. Thier website is here:

http://www.teamdorset.org.uk/

Poundbury Systems Limited, Dorchester
Poundbury Systems Limited (PSL) is an award-winning computer
and telephone systems integrator based in Poundbury, Dorchester, which provides
forward-looking technology solutions for SMEs across all sectors.

Since starting out 2001, PSL has enjoyed rapid growth and won numerous
awards including the British Chamber of Commerce’s South West Business
of the Year in 2007.

Director Clare Jenkins is in no doubt about what makes PSL special: ‘Our staff
are exceptional. They are highly skilled, but able to translate a technical issue
into everyday business terms.’

PSL runs an active community relations programme and gives time and
resources to local education establishments, including The Thomas Hardye
School and Weymouth College, as well as donating to Dorset charities.
As the 2012 Games approach, Clare and her team are aware they’ll need
extra staff and are increasing their interaction with schools as part of a futureproofing
recruitment drive.

For todays report please go here
http://www.megabuyte.com/newsletter/&id=1825

The Birmingham post reports that M&A activity is looking positive for 2010 in this article:

http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/financial-business-news/2010/01/08/optimism-for-midlands-m-a-market-despite-22-per-cent-activity-drop-65233-25557722/

In Part 2 I mentioned that Penny and Thomas had ( quite rightly in my view ) adopted a very open attitude towards other social networks.

Thomas Power was in fact one of the people who encouraged me to join Facebook ( as he  encouraged me to join many other networks aswell ) and while I was dragged kicking and screaming on to Facebook it became for me the most intuitive of the networks that I joined. Whilst Ecademy was easy to use Facebook was easy to use and also easy to mix media – text, pictures and video’s.

The use of Facebook by bars and clubs also opened my eyes to the massive potential for interaction with customers.

New Birmingham Nightclub Gatecrasher was perhaps one of the biggest examples of this

http://www.facebook.com/chris.windley?ref=name#/gatecrasher.birmingham1?ref=ts

http://www.gatecrasher.com/crasher   ( Hey – listen to the music here and think of me !! ) 

Gatecrasher has multiple Facebook pages ( because it keeps outgrowing it’s pages ) and operates globally.

I think ( but I am not certain ) that Gatecrasher first used MySpace to promote it’s events but then added Facebook as it became more popular.

If you have any doubt about the power of Facebook and MySpace for Gatecrasher then take a look at it’s pages and the way that it promotes events to it’s group members, offers incentives and provides photo’s and video’s of the events afterwards. Gatecrasher communicated with it’s ( young ) audience brilliantly. You should probably take more than a bit of notice that Gatecrasher is communicating with young people…… the businessmen and women of the future.

So, this led me to developing a Facebook page for The Glan yr Afon Inn

http://www.facebook.com/chris.windley?ref=name#/group.php?gid=25701627254&ref=ts

Of course it had nowhere near the membership that Gatecrasher has but we did our bit to try and communicate with our customers – those that had heard of Facebook anyway.

I ignored that fact that Facebook was a social site and used it to make business connections. I eschewed the many applications telling people to message me if they wanted to talk to me rather than throwing stuff at me – even kisses 🙂

I don’t know if it was just me but it looked to me as though Facebook took on a more business orientated approach as time went on.

Next on my Google is LinkedIn – THE internet social network for business people particularly those in the High Tech world. I developed a considerable network on LinkedIn but it never felt intuitive to me. I just could not put my finger on why. As for adding pictures and videos – it’s probably easy but was not easy enough for me.

Of course both big but closed ( to the Internet ) communities. Whilst some of the content that you posted appeared outside of these networks and on Google you could not do what you could with Ecademy – i.e. to post information that you knew would find it’s way out to Google. 

Again – had I lived longer I would have put more effort into learning more about and using LinkedIn.

Aside from Bill Gates I used to look at other ” Digital Citizens ” Googles to see how they came across, for example:

Mark Zuckerberg , the founder of Facebook

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mark+zuckerberg&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Thomas Power, the co-founder of Ecademy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=thomas+power&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Lucas Wyrsch, a highly connected friend of mine who I first met on Ecademy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=lucas+wyrsch&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Penny Power, the other co-founder of Ecademy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=penny+power&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Maria Sipka, of Xing and Linqia

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=maria+sipka&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Jet Rotmans – an Internet Artist I met on Ecademy and Founder of The Faith Factory

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=jet+rotmans&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Of course I have thousands of digital friends ( no, Mark Zuckerberg is not a friend, to my knowledge )

These people have many more connections/friends/tweeps etc than me and I suspect that thier digital memorials will be bigger than mine.

So, returning to my own Google my top listing is from PRFire, the Internet Press Release company. Now of course the message it gives, that I added marketing and  salesforce management advice to this M&A Rainmaker blogsite is relevant but there is a hidden story of the realisation of the  power of Internet Press Releases behind this announcement. As if to underline this power before I died I became the victim of a ” boiler room scam ” ( which of course you can Google if you don’t know what that is ) . Anderson Munro

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=anderson+munro+scam&meta=&aq=1&oq=anderson+munro

ripped me off by using Internet PR to support thier credibility. Of course once revealed as scammers I and other victims used the power of the Internet to ensure that other people searching on Anderson Munro ( and similar scam companies ) found out that they were scam. Nevertheless originally they used Internet PR sites to support thier own website and the power of Internet PR was considerable. Press Releases were once just about getting yourself into papers and magazines and onto TV and radio. Today Internet PR sites are amazing tools for getting over targeted Internet messages and you will find them distributed throughout my Google – touring the U.S. , adding another Nelson sculpture by Suzie Marsh to The Glan Yr Afon Inn, launching an ESM solutions club and talking about eBay buying Skype.

Increasing the power of the Internet Press Release is the ” Internet Share button ” enabling a Press Release to be shared to all sorts of social networking and aggregation sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Stumbleapon.

I don’t know how long it will last for but this Google here

 http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=microsoft+small+business+server+dorset&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

brings up another PRFire Press Release

http://www.prfire.co.uk/press-release/dorsets-global-production-defies-snow-with-asterisk-phone-system-5426.html

that helped Poundbury Systems be found for some great work that they had done in providing one of thier customers with remote working facilities that allowed them to carry on production despite the snow of January 2010.

Once again we are onto a subject that a book could be written about because there is great art in writing Press Releases and there is even greater art in writing Press Releases that appear in Google for words and phrases that you want them to.

The MyBlogLog result for my Google search is interesting. It was the first blogsite that I joined but I did not actually do anything with it very much. Then Yahoo bought MyBlogLog

http://mashable.com/2007/01/08/yahoo-mybloglog/

in 2007 and since then it has started aggregating ( picking up my posts from elsewhere and presenting them on MyBlogLog ) information that I put out.

Really, this blog and The Glan Yr Afon Inn blog, set up for me by Nikki

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nikki+pilkington&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

were my first real experiences of blogging. Had I lived longer I would have got much better at integrating graphics into my blogs because I was very aware that they were text dominated.

Once I got a friend of mine, Peter Herridge, to start running. He became a much more dedicated runner than me and ended up running 24 hour, 100 mile races. I bowed out at about 80 miles over 2 days. More recently I introduced my friend Richard Spooner

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=richard+spooner&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

( He’s the Whole Brain Thinking one !! )

to blogging and with Howard of Seventh Wave Media

http://www.seventhwavemedia.co.uk/home

he has gone on to produce

http://zeststreet.wordpress.com/

and

http://smeworldinfo.wordpress.com/

which are full of lovely graphics !!!

After MyBlogLog we have entries on my Google from Ecademy. Ecademy was the first ” Social Network ” that I joined in 2005. Actually Ecademy is a ” Business and Social Network ” . At one time LinkedIn was ( to me ) the de facto ” internet business network ” and Facebook was the ” social network ” . Ecademy was a hybrid of the two.

Ecademy is also very open to the Internet and posts on Ecademy can be used to promote specific things on Google as you may have seen from the earlier Google on Microsoft Small Business Server for Poundbury Systems.  

Ecademy was a very formative part of my Digital Citizenship. Prior to it I had really only known about websites and email – to put it simply.

It is so nice that part of a testimonial from my digital friend Victor Marques 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=victor+marques&meta=&aq=0&oq=victor+marq

comes up.

” After a week…i think today how great it is to have such a friend and adviser as Chris Windley…He is a master ,,, a true and passionated man about his … “

How nice is that ??????

Ecademy has evolved considerably over the last 5 years, offering many new features. In particular it has made good use of the share facility allowing Ecademy content to be shared easily to Facebook, Twitter etc etc

Penny and Thomas Power also have a very ” open ” attitude to other social networks promoting them aswell as Ecademy and promoting the whole Social Media space. 

I died at 5.21 and 50 seconds on Sunday 17th January 2010. I was born on the 18th June 1956. My mum knows the time. You can work out my age – it’s still a matter of some sensitivity to me.

Don’t grieve for me because I had a great life, I died quickly and painlessly and I was ready to go.

Of course when I put my old Captain’s wife’s picture up on Facebook last year telling them that she will ” live forever in cyberspace ” I knew that I would also live forever in cyberspace too.

I have a permanent digital imprint – I am – or was – a Digital Citizen.

If you don’t know what a Digital Citizen is you can look at this link here

http://mcdn.hubspot.com/Hiring_In_The_DARC_Ages_HubSpot_eBook.pdf

which I came across only recently and explains what a Digital Citizen is. I am not sure where having been a Digital Citizen is in the ranking of all the things that I did but it’s way up there.

As anyone knows who is 50 ish we lived from a time of black and white TV to the Facebook generation. We experienced the digital revolution. For us things happened at the rate of Moores Law. Man, we are talking serious progress here.

Of course you are your Google. I have known this from the day a salesperson that I was interviewing said ” Well actually I know quite a lot about you because I Googled you “. At the time I thought that it was rather unfair to come at me with a statement like that when I was just trying to ” put him at ease ” by telling him a bit about myself. I mean as soon as he said that I just wanted to get him out of the room so that I could Google myself and find out who I ( digitally ) was. What DID he know about me ????

It’s also true that it’s now too late to start that company that I always wanted to – the one that delved deeply into people and company’s secrets via the Internet. A digital detective agency. No, I never did that one but I did become a bit of a geek at using Google – not like super good – just pretty handy.

Anyway – you are your Google eh ?

Well here’s mine http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=chris+windley&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= , well it was at the time of my death anyway – I don’t know what it will be like in 1 hour, 1 year, 10 years or 100 years. Only you will know that.

So, I hope that my Google of me bears at least some resemblance to yours or else this is not going to make much sense is it ?? ( Of course it might be even more interesting !! )

See, we already know that a Google depends on who you are, when you did it, where you are, what your preferences are and anything else that Google decides to introduce between the time that I died and the time that you actually read this and look at the Google. It’s looking like I could write a book about this point alone so I had better leave that one for another life.

Now, how many pages of Google search results describe your life adequately ???  I don’t know about you but I got bored at the 140th result.  No doubt ” the long tail ” stretches into infinity or something but at the time of my death I understood that people only really looked at the first couple of pages. Well – we were so busy we did not have time to click on the next arrow too many times did we ??

I thought I would Google ” Bill Gates ” just to see what his Google looked like ( sorry Bill I was not trying to rub in the fact that Google sort of eclipses Microsoft ) and discovered that he was dead aswell – well at least on page 2 of my Google of him there is a website called ” Bill Gates is Dead “. Bit weird really.

Anyway – I reckon that you will get the essential me in the first few pages – certainly by the 140th result you will know a lot about me. Having said that you may not find out much about my family – my parents, my wife and my children – and my pets. Of course Dave ( son ) and Claire ( daughter ) and even Pam ( my wife ) are now on Facebook. Oh yes and some of my old friends have recently ” friended ” me.

Now, lets get this one out of the way shall we. A whole load of experience has taught me that it’s actually not that beneficial to come up on Google for your name. ok – so there’s a few ( thousand ) people out there who know the ” Chris Windley brand ” but really I have been trying to come up on Google for what I offer rather than who I am. I doubt if you are going to find me by searching for ” salesperson ” or ” business angel ” or ” marketing person ” or ” Digital Citizen ” but you will find me for ” M&A Rainmaker ” and ” Condor Bermuda ” for example.

Had I lived longer I probably would have addressed some of these things. I could make myself come up on Google for at least some of these terms you know. Of course you can’t guarantee anything in the search rankings world but I am confident that I could have firstly defined the essence of myself better and then ensured that you would find it if you Googled it. If I had had more life I would have worked harder on this.

There will be some really random things that I will come up on Google for aswell.  Here’s one

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mikuni+carburetors+harley+upgrade&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Now you are going to think I was a biking freak aren’t you ??? Well I wasn’t but I did make a film of upgrading a Harley Davison bike with Mikuni Carburetors with Mark ( my sister’s husband ) and some other guys. It’s on a social network that I started called ” The Bike Channel “.