My blog needs a good f***ing sort out !!

Posted by Chris on July 8th, 2012

I get loads of comments on my M & A Rainmaker blog. ( ok lots of them are just link spammers – I know ). I read them all and I value them all ( well except the link spammers that write horrible, incomprehensible, inane things and then expect me to approve them ! ).

It has gone way beyond being a place where I wanted to write down my experiences of starting, building and selling companies. In the main it has become a place where my journey through Internet Marketing has been documented. This was a journey that started in the early 2000’s. It was a journey that was driven by a desire to understand how to get found on the Internet. My firm belief was that people would search for information about nearly everything on the Internet – and then, sometimes, they would actually buy. In other words whatever you sold you needed to have a presence on the Internet and you needed to be found for the services and products that you supplied.

Now there are many blogs posts on this website that are meant to be found for certain ( Google ) searches. For example if you search on
” Internet Marketing Strategy Lichfield ” you will find that a couple of blog posts from here rank at at the top and that further down there is a Pinterest link, a Digg link and then a Twylah link. Yes, some social networks will give you search results aswell !!

But I digress, this post was supposed to be about my blog needing a really good sort out.

Actually I think it is a mother beautiful blog. It was designed for me by Nikki Pilkington and I love the colour and the ” clean lines “. It is uncluttered by, well anything really.

What does it need though ??

Well there are a few things that I plan to add sometime:

1. I need links to all my Social Network pages. ( At the moment these are just on the ” Contact Page ” ).

2. I need you to be able to share all my blogs easily on your Social Network pages.

3. I need to put ” Call to Actions ” on my blog posts e.g. at the bottom of this one.

4. I need an email sign-up section ( but this assumes that I am then going to start emailing my email database ).

5. I am thinking about adding ” Skimlinks ” and have actually signed up for it and been approved.

I could put adverts on my blogsite – not sure if I will but I could.

6. I should have some sort of comment spam filter – at the moment I just approve or not comments.

Actually that’s about all I am thinking about.

( Maybe – mobile friendly ?? )

Yeah , I know I should have some pictures here aswell !!

If you have any thoughts then please let me know 🙂

Oh No ! Another social network ! Open to the world

Posted by Chris on September 21st, 2011

You may have missed it but yesterday Google opened up it’s new social network, Google +, to everyone in the U.K.  – oh and the rest of the world too !

G+ or g+ has been on ” a very limited field trial ” since June 2011 and I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in this limited field trial ( by some kind people in my network ) and so can count myself as a first generation G+ user.

I am not sure that I had any room at all for another social network in my life but I certainly do have an interest in search, internet marketing and Google and therefore really felt that I had to take a look at G+.

Depending on whether a social networks content is ” open ” to search engines or
” closed ” to them ( Facebook’s content is mostly closed to the world outside of Facebook but e.g. Ecademy’s content is quite open ) social networks are powerful e.g. blogging platforms.

If content on G+ was linked to Google search results then there would be at least one very powerful reason for participating in the production and sharing of content on that platform.

There were some interesting aspects to the time that I spent in the G+ ” field
trial “.  i.e. from June to date.

Since G+ had essentially emanated from Silicon Valley on the West Coast of America my first connections ( On G+ you ” circle ” the people that you want to follow and those that want to follow you back circle you ) were U.S. West Coasters. Unsurprisingly many of these were involved in the High Tech. industry but perhaps more surprising was that there were many artists and photographers – who produced and posted some interesting and even stunning work.

There were also lots of marketing people and quite a few Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, business angels and venture capitalists. ( It may not be well known but Silicon Valley has been booming with new start-ups and slightly older ones getting more funding ).

So, from a social point of view I felt right at home in G+.

G+ rolled out across the U.S. and the Western world – but I should mention that there were a lot of Chinese and Far Eastern members of G+ in the early days aswell.

One of my tests for any software and certainly any social network is that it is easy and intuitive to use – which G+ certainly is.

I also found the people on there amazingly polite ( they had definately been trained in ” netiquette ” ! ). How long this will last now that it has been opened to “the masses” has yet to be seen. Certainly there are a number of 1st Generation G+ users who are dreading a massive decline in the quality of the content and the friendliness of the members.

Opening up G+ to everyone in the U.K. and the world is regarded as G+’s 100th ” new feature ” and the demarcation point between ” field trial ” and ” beta trial ” – yes – even though everyone can now join G+ it is still in
” beta “.

Another thing that I noticed with G+ was that the G+ Community Managers were very good at telling us all about new features and plans.

Recently a feature was launched whereby if you clicked on the G+ symbol on a piece of content ( one not on G+ as far as you knew )  not only were you ” voting ” on this content but also you were able to ” share ” it on G+.

It seems very likely that content that comes up high in a Google search in the future will be influenced by those that G+ and share that content.


Copyright © 2007 M & A Rainmaker. All rights reserved.