M & A Rainmaker

I was just watching the tv program about the Cutty Sark which will reopen this year ( in time for the Olympics ! ) which is great, great news. The Cutty Sark - named after a witch called Nannie who wore short skirts, was afraid of water and was disturbed partying with her fellow witches and warlocks by Tam O’Shanter  - has a significant place in my life.

As the tv program stated no one has quite worked out why someone would name a ship after a witch that was afraid of water - short skirt or no !!

http://www.thesmalls.com/cuttysark/the-clipper/index.html

Cutty Sark was a ” racing ship ” built to race from China to England with tea and beat another ” tea clipper ship ” called Thermopylae. Her most famous race against Thermopylae started on the 18th June ( my birthday ) in 1872. She lost this race due to losing her rudder.

Later she became a  ” wool clipper ” bringing wool from Australia to England and clocking up a record time of 67 days ( and some hours ) beating the fastest steamship of the time in doing so.

This time of 67 days stood until a yacht that I sailed on, Great Britain II , beat it in 1975/6 in ” The Clipper Race”.

http://www.sail-world.com/USA/Volvo-Legends:-Great-Britain-II—Her-builders-story/90648

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_II

GB2 was built for the first Whitbread Round-the-World Race in 1973/4 and was crewed at that time by Royal Marines. In the ” Clipper Race ” she was crewed by a combination of soldiers, sailors and airmen. Interestingly GB2’s main competitor Kriter 2 lost her rudder in the Tasman Sea on the Sydney to London leg of the Clipper Race. I can still remember looking across the stormy sea from GB2 to Kriter as the crew tried to work out what they were going to with no rudder ( which we had actually seen floating away on the waves but could not reach ). We sailed on and they rigged a jury rudder with a spinnaker pole or something. The French have some great sailors. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_de_Kersauson was the skipper )

I had joined the Royal Navy in 1975 and managed to get into the crew of GB2 - at 19 the youngest crew member. Although I didn’t think much of it at the time it was quite strange that a boy who learnt to sail and race boats on ” ponds ” in the Midlands got to race one of the most famous yachts in the world in a race against the time set by one of the most famous sailing ships in the world.

Even stranger to think that a year or so earlier I had been sailing on The ” Hellship Captain Scott ” ( now known as the Shabab Oman )

probably the closest thing that you could get to a Tea Clipper in modern days.

My trip around Cape Horn in Great Britain II gained me entry into a rather exclusive club

The International Association of Cape Horners ( I.A.C.H. ).  http://www.capehorners.org/history2.html

A club that once consisted mainly of officers and crew of ” tall ships ” or ” windjammers ” that had sailed around the Horn

but has been widened to include yachtsmen who have sailed around the Horn.

The Cape Horners usually had their Annual General Meeting aboard the Cutty Sark until it’s refurbishment began. Owing to the fire that broke out on the Cutty Sark it has been closed to the Cape Horners for the last 6 years and I don’t know if or when they will return to her.

In 2006 I took the family and my old Captain and his wife ( Admiral Geoff and Mary Marsh ) aboard the Cutty Sark for dinner. Amongst my family members was my Uncle Les who had rebuilt a Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter called Marguerite T. See here for more on Les and Marguerite

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/14/les-windley-of-marguerite-t-dies/

It’s interesting to wonder if Marguerite ever met the Cutty Sark at sea….

Lichfield in Staffordshire has a very Internet aware local government ( e.g. Lichfield District Council uses Twitter for Planning Applications ) and local business population. I thought it would be interesting to use HubSpot’s Marketing Grader software to grade the Internet Marketing Performance of a random selection of Lichfield based businesses.

I chose my random selection not so randomly, mainly from HubSpot’s Twitter Grader for Lichfield on the basis that if people were on Twitter then they were likely to be pretty Internet savvy and social media aware. Hence my selection was ( in order of best performing ) Lichfield Live  , Lichfield District Council , Executives on the Web ( our ” web ” company ) , InterVallum ( Paul Hooper-Keeley has the most Twitter followers in the area ) Hellmann ( Logistics ) and finally Framework Gallery ( who I spoke about in an earlier blog and who performed well in a local search on ” oil paintings “.

http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/staritems

I wanted to get a bit of a ” spread ” of results i.e. from high end results like Lichfield Live ( who you would sort of expect to have a comprehensive Internet presence ) , through Lichfield D.C. ( who probably have a team of website specialists and as mentioned before are very pro. social media and the Internet ) to Executives on the Web ( who again, as a web based business, you would expect to be pretty high ranking )  to Hellmann’s ( who arguably don’t need a particularly strong web presence ? ) to Framework Gallery who, as I say performed well in some earlier searches.

I don’t propose to go into any detail on each of the reports ( they are all listed below if you want to take a look at them ) but you probably need to understand that these grades are relative to thousands of other websites around the world i.e. 78/100 means that the Lichfield Live website in conjunction with it’s associated blog and social media memberships  has a better internet marketing performance than 78% of the web presences reviewed by HubSpot. That’s pretty good !!

You also need to understand that HubSpot takes a pretty ” salesy ” view of life. Terms like Top of the Funnel and Middle of the Funnel may not mean much to some business people but they will be familiar to most salespeople. HubSpot’s mantra is ” Get Found ( on the Internet ), Convert ( Visitors to leads ) and Analyse ( how you did it and how you could do it better ).

To achieve this HubSpot recommends the establishment of what I call an ” Internet Ecosystem ” i.e. a combination of a website, a blogsite and various social media memberships and other sites that essentially drive visitors back to your website. ”

Marketing Grader Reports

http://marketing.grader.com/site/lichfieldlive.co.uk  - 78/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.lichfielddc.gov.uk - 68/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.executivesontheweb.com - 60/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.hellmann.net - 39/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.intervallum.co.uk  - 31/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.framework-gallery.co.uk - 12/100

If you are interested in Social Media and live in Lichfield, Home of the Cathedral the Saxon Hoard  the intersection of Watling Street and Icknield Street and all sorts of other interesting things then this post may be of interest to you.

In an ideal world it is going to sit near the top of a Google search on this topic and make a point ……..

If you want to be found for the products and services that you offer then you had better understand that Social Media alone will not achieve your objective. It does not matter whether you live in Lichfield, Staffs or anywhere else.

Largely speaking social media networks are closed communities ( they might be huge closed communities !! ) in relation to Google and other searches  and they are subject to their own particular connectivity quirks. Stuff you post on e.g. Facebook stays ( largely) on Facebook.

That is you will NOT create effective networks ( effective being ones that enable you to sell more of your products and services ) on Social Media networks alone - no matter how large your social media networks  are.

Examine your own behavior when it comes to searching for information, products and services. I will bet money that you still rely considerably on word of mouth ( WoM )  recommendations and then use search engines like Google. You might, having shifted communications with your friends from mobile/text to e.g. Twitter or Facebook, ask them what they think about something via Twitter or Facebook but you are still looking for what is essentially a WoM recommendation - just at light speed.

In reality we are, whether we like it or not, a generation of Googlers. If you want information on something; want to find something or want to buy something you Google it. You rarely used any of the advanced search options ( Those are for people in the know ). If you are like my 20 something children then you Google the exact question e.g. ” How do you fit a rear quarter light to a Peugeot ?? ” ( Try it !! ) and back comes the answer ( s ) - typically in the case of car repairs etc from forums of various kinds.

You want to “ buy an oil painting in Lichfield ” ?? Google it and you will find

http://www.framework-gallery.co.uk/ a couple of results down.

Do a Facebook search ?? ( Bing gives you Framework Gallery aswell ). Try Twitter, YouTube ?? Nothing much.

( Well done Framework Gallery by the way ! )

Being found ( via search engines ) is the key. Social Media does have a role in this. How do you get found ??

Well first, critically but not necessarily obviously you have to work out what you want to be found for ???

In Search Engine Optimisation ( S.E.O. ) speak this means what are the key words ( keywords ) and phrases that you want to be found for ?

Unsurprisingly if you want to be found for ” Social Media in Lichfield Staffordshire ” then those words and phrases need to be appearing in your website and ” content ” -  basically in everything you post online.

There are basically 3 important things in a website being found:

1. That the pages reflect the things that you want to be found for.

2. That you keep posting new, fresh relevant content ( e.g. using a blog like this one ).

3. That by doing so people will create links to your website and blogsite.  ( You become an authority in this area ).

Once the website has been found then it needs to convert ” interest ” to ” action ” e.g. sign up for a free trial offer; join a mailing list; ring a number etc ( In the trade this is known as a Call to Action ).

You also need to able to analyse what’s working - so you need the capability to do so. ( Some ” analytics ” software ).

Social Media enables you to create contacts and awareness of what you do. It is VERY time consuming but it will help to encourage visitors to your website and begin the process of them becoming customers. In some cases this can happen very quickly, in others it can take some time.

For more on this subject search on ” Marketing Newsletters ” on this blogsite.

I have recently been using Hubspot’s Marketing Grader to assess how well some of my clients Internet Marketing efforts are working. It is a fantastic tool and looks at not only a company’s website effectiveness but also the supporting Internet ecosystem.

A tool like HubSpot Marketing Grader is vital when trying to work out how easily a person or companies website is being found on the major search engines for relevant search terms and also how well visitors to that website are being converted into prospects and customers.

HubSpot has always looked at Internet Marketing in simple terms: How well are you found ? How effectively do you convert ? What are the statistics that support that process and how can they be improved ?

What I find so often is that people don’t understand what a website is there for. It is there as part of your overall marketing efforts to create leads and convert them to orders.

As a salesperson I completely identify with this view of the world and I say to people ” Treat your website like another salesperson or sales team ” and look at it’s effectiveness in the same way that you would look at the effectiveness of your sales team.

If, as I have done, you were running a salesforce ( in a fairly advanced way ) you would measure things like Activity, Skill and Knowledge and collect information like “How many prospects they have ? ”  ”How many proposals they have written ? ” and other data that would give you some indication of the effectiveness of your investment into a salesperson or salesforce.

It is somewhat interesting that HubSpot eschews some of the “old ways ” of prospecting and selling ( broadly lumped into Push Selling or Marketing or Outbound Selling/Marketing e.g. telemarketing, mailshotting etc etc ) whilst utilising many of the same methods of analysing the effectiveness of the ” Pull ” or ” Inbound Marketing ” approach.

Internet Marketing is not just about an effective website it is also about traffic being driven to that website from blogsites and social media and about the effectiveness of e.g. your Facebook campaigns and presence in their own right.

HubSpot’s Marketing Grader gives you a comprehensive checklist to work through but you do have to understand the overall strategy.

Get your Internet Marketing Grade here:

http://marketing.grader.com/

If you need help understanding what to do please contact me.

Here are a couple of links to videos about Marketing Grader

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj80vTmJp4Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlAA18xjKE0

I recently watched the Twylah video referred to in Jim Connolly’s Marketing Blog here:

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/05/30/get-everybody-talking-about-you-with-this-1-simple-idea/

( See also the video at the end of this blog for more about Twylah )

and aside from what Jim had said and the fact that I agreed with him that Twylah had a great story there were a couple of things that resonated with me:

Internet Monetisation

I noted that Eric Kim, the co-founder of Twylah had been involved in Internet Monetisation ( that’s like ” Show me the money ” in amongst all this Internet stuff ! ) for around 11 years and that he had founded Twylah because there was no obvious monetisation strategy emerging for Twitter. I also noted that he carried around in his head an ” Internet Monetisation Hierarchy ” ( I was going to call it a Pyramid but Pyramids have such bad press in recent years ! ) which went something like - an email address has the highest monetary value ( he actually put a value on a 1000 email addresses being emailed as ranging between $5 and $100 ) and then said that email has a higher value than e.g. a Facebook ” like ” which in turn has a higher value than a Twitter ” follow “.

He said that ” email is STILL the number one mechanism for communicating. People check their email first ( typically ) before checking social media “. A point which I will come back to.

I am sure that Eric has a whole load more ” valuations ” in his head and they range from the obvious like ” the number of visitors to your website ”  and ” the number of transactions through your website and the value of those transactions ” to the less obvious like ” the number of favourites and retweets  on Twitter “.  Everything has a ( micro ? ) value.

Recently I have been using HubSpot’s ( Internet ) Marketing Grader to see how well some companies Internet Marketing ” System ” is working. Since HubSpot is basically trying to see how easily you get found on the Internet, how well you convert visitors into ” leads ” ( which might mean getting their email address and permission to email ) and how well the being found and converting process works it is broadly speaking helping to measure the ” value ” of your Internet Marketing system.

It looks at your website, your blogs and your social networks and how one element provides support to the other elements.

Included within the HubSpot Marketing Grade is your Klout Score  ( arguably, a valuation of your Internet presence ) and offers you incentives based on your Klout score e.g. a £50 credit to AirBnB .

Twylah is another piece of the Internet Marketing ecosystem jigsaw - automatically converting your Tweets to what looks something like a blog page ( Mine is here ) and also analysing the effectiveness of your Tweets in achieving micro-value via follows, favourites, retweets etc etc.

2 of HubSpot’s favourite elements are ( or can be )  included within a Twylah page - an email sign up and/or another ” Call to Action ” ( e.g. Click here and buy and download  Lady GaGa’s latest single ).

The Importance of email

As Eric says ( and many people agree with him ) email is still very important.

This blog

Email Marketing is down but not out !

is spot-on. There are challenges with email marketing but it is probably the highest value item that you can attain and therefore it is your OBJECTIVE to get it !!

Platforms

I am constantly reminded of the value of ” platform websites ” . This blog is on Wordpress which is becoming hugely powerful. ( It has an Alexa ranking of 18th in the world ).  N.B. HubSpot’s Alexa ranking is 691 and Twylah’s 14,504.

Ecademy.com ( Alexa 9,377 ) was one of the first sites where I noticed the effect of ” Platform Power ” some 10 years ago.

Content posted on these websites becomes very visible to search engines like Google and ranks highly. ( I highly recommend Wordpress and HubSpot based websites !! ) Over time Twylah will also become very powerful ( it’s Alexa ranking grew 35% over the last 3 months ).

So, in summary keep in mind platforms and the Monetisation Hierarchy and keep trying to get those email addresses and use them !!

Another great video about Twylah  below

http://foundville.com/2012/01/09/twylah-interview/

Well I do - but then again I don’t - according to the applications that tell you who has the most Twitter followers in e.g. Lichfield or Birmingham or London or the World  -  like Twitter Elite

http://tweet.grader.com/location/?Location=lichfield%2Cstaffs%2CUK

and Twitaholic

http://twitaholic.com/top100/followers/bylocation/Lichfield,+Staffordshire,+West/

I do, in that if you look here

http://tweet.grader.com/@cwindley

I have a Tweet Grade of 97.4 and ( currently ) 2,278 followers but I don’t appear on the list ( at the time of writing ) produced by Tweet Grader in the first link that I detailed above.  Philip John has that honour currently. (  philipjohn )

Out of interest the person who has the most followers in Birmingham

http://tweet.grader.com/location/?Location=birmingham%2CUK

is an 18 year old Economics student called Aluna Sagita Gutawa with over 1.1 Million followers !!!! ( How ?? Why ?? )

Philip and I have never met ( to my knowledge ) but he and I do have a common interest in Wordpress blogs it seems. ( Where I am writing this ).

Does it matter ????

Well actually the number of followers ( like e.g. the number of Facebook likes or the number of email addresses ) does actually have a monetary value, small though it may be. ( For example I recently heard the co-founder of U.S. based start-up Twylah talk about a dollar value for the number of email addresses something was emailed to ).

What does matter is visibility on the Internet and being found on the Internet via search engines like Google.

Tweets are also being turned into website pages that can attract ” traffic ” ( visitors and users ) and rank on Google. Here is my Twylah page for example:

http://www.twylah.com/cwindley

( Twylah is in beta at the moment so you have to request a Twylah page )

If you don’t think being a Tweep is very interesting then you might find being a ” Twyp ” of more value

You might not think very much of Lady GaGa either but she is a ” Twyp ”

http://www.twylah.com/ladygaga

along with a whole host of other celebrities

http://www.twylah.com/featured.

GaGa’s ephemeral Tweets have been turned into a much longer lasting web page ( with the invitation to download her music ).

Translated into something that might interest the average Lichfieldian ?? well it’s another way of getting ( global ) visibility for your Lichfield based business.

Connecting with and communicating with people is important and so is being found.

When I researched what advice and guidance was being offered in Birmingham in respect of Internet Marketing Strategy I realised that it was sadly lacking in all respects. It was massively outdated when compared with the views of the worlds leading Internet Marketers who I spoke to on a regular basis. My experience in the high technology world over the last 20 odd years has taught me that to be up to date you HAVE to be aware of what is going on in the U.S. ( Note that most of the major influencers in the Internet and High Technology world - Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, eBay etc etc - have come from the U.S. ).

However not only was it outdated but it was over complicated ( probably because those people who were talking about Internet Marketing Strategies did not actually understand what was going on ) and not put in terms that could easily be understood by the senior management of Birmingham based business’s.

How difficult can it be to understand that building a website that cannot be found on the Internet ( for the things that you want it to be found for ) is a total waste of time and money ??

Is it really that hard to come to the conclusion that you need to understand what is happening to your existing website ( how often it is found; what people do when they find it etc etc ) so that you can judge whether the time, effort and money spent on Internet Marketing is actually producing a return ??

Whilst there are a lot of technical elements involved you don’t want to talk ” technically ” as a senior manager of a Birmingham based business you want to talk in simple, strategic terms about how you can drive the business forward.

I produced a series of  ” Letters from Marketing ” for some of the senior management of the companies that I was helping

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/22/letter-from-marketing-no-1/

but have become convinced that Birmingham based businesses need more, up to date information and guidance on this topic of Internet Marketing Strategy and so I will be looking at additional ways of getting the message across in the near future.

Peter MacLean, who sometimes refers to himself as a Director and other times as a Non-executive Chairman of 365iT plc, has called a General Meeting for Ordinary Shareholders on the 12th December 2011 at 10.00 in the company’s offices’s at 4 Cartel Business Centre, Stroudley Road, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG24 8FW.

This is to change the name of 365iT plc to Fox IT Holding plc and to re-register as a limited company.

Now, 365iT and Impera plc shareholders must be asking themselves how it is that they are invited to discuss and approve a change of name and company status but they didn’t get to vote on the sale of most of the companies that 365iT plc owned to LMS Capital; didn’t get to vote on who got their loan notes paid off and who didn’t and also didn’t get to vote on the fact that the name of the company would need to be changed to keep LMS Capital happy.

They were also not informed that these companies were being sold to LMS Capital at a time when approximately 37% of the shareholders ( known as the Raynes Party ) were asking that no further investments be made and the company split up. ( There will be a blog on what has happened at LMS Capital shortly ).

We can assume that MacLean thinks that he was acting within company law, the articles of association etc etc when he made all these decisions. Time will tell about that.

One of the good things about this General Meeting is that it gives oridinary shareholders the opportunity to meet one another and to discuss the recent events orchestrated by MacLean.

Business Health Warning !!

My advice to you for the future is:

Don’t invest in any company run by Peter MacLean.

Don’t sell your company to any company that MacLean is involved in.

The other ” Directors ” ( albeit non-executive ) of 365iT plc at the moment are Derek King ( also a Director of North West Equity and South East Growth Fund Managers Limited ) and Pieter Hooft ( also a Director of 365 ITMS Limited and others ). Presumably Mr Gourlay of Sussex Place  ( and others ) has resigned ??

Presumably Hooft was the contact at LMS Capital that was agreeing to buy the 365iT companies that were sold whilst LMS Capital itself was being asked to stop investing and split itself up and sell each company. ( In fact this is now the agreed strategy for LMS Capital - no further investments and a split up asap ).

More as we get it ……

You may be thinking that you are talking to that famous pop star that you adore or reading his or her pearls of wisdom but the likelihood is that you are talking to or hearing from a trusted stand-in.

As the use and importance of social media communication grows so will the number of people and businesses that have to make a decision as to whether they spend the time personally communicating or whether they outsource this responsibility to someone that they can trust. ( That’s twice I have said the ” trust ” word in so many sentences ! ).

As this blog post says

http://socialmediatoday.com/alexisbonari/283796/pros-and-cons-using-alias-your-online-persona

people have been using pseudonyms for hundreds of years. Personally I have no problem with people ghosting, aliasing or using pseudonyms and it is naive to think that this does not happen.

People and businesses are rapidly arriving at this decision point for many reasons:

- Social media membership and participation is now regarded as a necessary way of communicating for individuals and businesses wishing to promote themselves and interact with their customers, potential customers ( prospects ) and supporters.

- It is becoming more and more important for individuals and businesses to continuously generate content ( new pages, articles and posts ) for their websites, blogs and social media pages.   Not only is this a task that is time consuming it also requires writing and Search Engine Optimisation ( S,E.O. ) skills. The content has to be relevant to be effective.

- Many individuals and businesses do NOT have the skills or the time to communicate effectively using websites, blogs and social media.

When you make the decision to outsource ( i.e. to employ a ghost writer or alias ) it is very hard to find the right person to represent you or your business.

It is also very hard to be the person that is doing the ghosting or aliasing.

It is especially difficult because to do the job effectively you have to be trusted completely or it will not work.

You have to understand enough about that person or business to represent them effectively and to act and respond, pretty well, as they would.

Website pages are typically written by the internal or external website specialists and usually they are approved by the person or business representatives before posting.

Blog posts may also be treated the same way although excessive approval process’s may affect the spontaneity of these blog posts. Also blog posts may get comments which need to be responded to in a reasonable timeframe and in an appropriate manner.

Social Media posts are potentially much more interactive than website updates or blog posts. I say potentially because a lot of social media posts are not commented on or require a response.  However when you do get a comment or response then they MUST be responded to in a timely and appropriate manner.

With responses to blog comments and social media comments and questions the way that you respond is crucial. These are LEADS for the person or business that is being represented. They may be opportunities to build the follower base or they may be comments about the person or business or they could be actual expressions of interest in the person or businesses products or services.

Every comment needs to be nurtured as far as it can be. By this I mean that opportunities can only be taken so far or there is a danger that you turn a potential supporter or customer into a person that is unhappy with the person or company being represented.

The importance and value of the people who alias or ghost for other people or companies should now be clearer.

It is also a hugely difficult task because many people and business owners do not understand what they have to do and what information they need to provide to allow the ghost or alias to be successful. For example people and businesses ideally need to share business strategy and objectives and also keep their representatives up to date with events, case studies, supplier initiatives and things that interest them.

The recent launch of 365 ITMS’s website ( and limited company ) takes me back to the blogs that I did a while ago on the Boiler room scammers. ( I will try and remember to put some links to these articles about share fraud and boiler rooms at the bottom of this article.)

The old company, 365iT plc, never had much idea about Internet marketing ( which always made me wonder how much the company really understood about what was going on in the modern world of high technology ). I think it was a case of the old boys network that had really got - well - one foot in the grave ??

What’s the best we can say about this launch of a new company and website/Internet presence ??

Well - they have a website and they did some press releases. This is actually about the sum total of the Internet repetoire of 365iT’s and 365 ITMS’s Internet marketing team.

Oh - and if you “view source” there’s a few ( hopefully ) relevant keywords in the tags and titles.

If you remember the share fraud scammers blogs then this is about what they did - create a relevant website, makes sure that it’s got the right content and relevant titles and tags and then stick a press release out to ( mostly ) free press release sites that syndicate to others.

If you are a bit of a blagger then you can say to your client - there you go - a fully SEO’d website with full traditional ( if you send it to the
” traditional ” media ) and internet media PR.

What’s the fundamental problem here ??

Well a new website has no ” authority “. It is new to Google ( if it has been submitted that is ) and has relatively low amounts of relevant content. It will not have backlinks. Getting it to attain ” authority ” is going to take time and effort.

The Internet Press Release sites are typically SEO friendly and since PR sites are always getting new content they will probably get Google’s attention. Of course they are filled up with content that is not necessarily relevant to you and over time most of these Press Releases will fade in their authority.

If we  Google ” Web Design Basingstoke ” then we begin to see the problem.

Actually the real problem is this:

Marketing has moved on light years from the old traditional ways and Internet Marketing has really got a bit beyond ” brochure websites ” ! If the only social media site that you understand is Linkedin then ( much though I love Linkedin ) you are really in trouble.

Arguably the failure of 365iT plc has a lot to do with the failure to understand the shift in buyer mentality and the way that customers find you ( particularly using the Internet ).

One of the great lessons to understand is the use of what I call ” Internet platforms ” - more on this in a later article - but Wordpress is one of them.