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….

My network has been subjected to all sorts of questions at all times of the day from interviewers that can only be described as rude and beyond sceptical.

We have the capacity to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions,behavior, opinions, etc., of others.

This does not mean that as defined by Klout or any of those similar websites that any of us have the highest rank - although some do; it does not mean that we have the biggest network nor does it mean that we have the highest quality network.

No! However, OUR network makes people take action; it changes behaviour and opinions.

Our network starts revolutions; takes brands from zero to hero; solves intractable problems; helps people in need; cheers people up; makes people laugh; does the impossible straight away and miracles a little bit later. There is nothing that we can’t do.

People are always trying to find out what makes us so effective; how we achieve such amazing things; why we are so loyal to one another; why we care about one another; what brought us together; why we are so different and yet so in tune. Mostly we don’t know so these questions are easily avoided.

They want to interview us but we don’t have a spokesperson: we never even discussed it. We don’t want anything - money, fame, popularity we only want to be infuential. For us that is enough.

Some of us have met but most of us have not. We have some idea of where everyone is but we don’t really try to find out exactly because we have no intention of visiting.  It’s not that we don’t want to meet it’s just that we are unlikely to put much effort into doing so.

We are content to be the most influential network in the world.

We don’t know how we got to be the way we are.

People do leave. We don’t ask why. They don’t try and change us or say why they left - they just disappear. We miss them but we don’t try and get them to come back.

We don’t have a name. We don’t know how many we are.

Typically young people in their late teens or early Twenties will have used Bebo, Facebook and some sort of Instant Messaging service to communicate with their friends. Fewer will be familiar with website design, Search Engine Optimisation ( S.E.O. ), blogging, social media networks other than Facebook e.g. Twitter, Linkedin and Google + and the concept of Inbound Marketing.

Inbound Marketing is a Digital Marketing strategy that, in simple terms, means - Be Found ( on the Internet using a website supported by blogs and social media ) for relevant search terms, Convert ( visitors to your website to leads e.g. get them to sign up to your email database ) and Analyse how effective you were in doing this and how you could improve going forward.

http://blog.sironaconsulting.com/sironasays/2010/03/dont-forget-about-your-social-media-mothership-your-blog.html

Blogs and Social media posts are some of the ways that you might ” drive ” visitors to your website where you will try and convert them ( to prospects and then customers ) through well designed landing pages and ” Call to Action ” buttons ( e.g. call us now and get a free internet marketing assessment and report ).

Your online presence is essentially your virtual marketing and salesforce and therefore it is appropriate to use similar techniques to manage your virtual team as you would do managing your physical team. ( Well, you would if you were running it properly ! )

So, the challenge with young people is to get them to understand that social media and instant messaging is not just for communicating with friends ( young people are often very strict and careful about who they connect with on social media - rightly - and so the concept of the ” Open Networker ” or someone who connects with everyone is somewhat alien to them ).

Digital Marketing also has to be placed in context with what ” older people ” are going to be familiar with in terms of marketing and they need some convincing that all this ” Internet stuff ” is actually going to work ( and produce a Return on Investment ).

Many U.S. based Digital Marketing companies are seeking a base in Europe and the typical options tend to be Southern Ireland ( Dublin area ), London Area and Belgium or Luxembourg. Inward Investment agencies like e.g. IDA Ireland are long established and have been set up ( with full government backing ) to attract foreign direct investment.

Lichfield’s establishment of a ” Silicon Crossroads ” in the Midlands area is therefore a considerable challenge. However Lichfield has many aspects in it’s favour in addition to the skills of it’s people. For example, it’s location is superb. The road, rail and air transport facilities are second to none. The creation of ( relevant ) content is one of the key requirements of the Inbound Digital Marketer and Lichfield has a rich heritage in this respect.

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

Let’s start with Klout which is a company ( one of a few that are doing this ) that essentially grades your Internet influence. Here is Klout about Klout:

http://klout.com/#/understand

” Klout was founded in 2008 to help you measure and leverage your influence. We believe influence is the ability to drive action. For example, Oprah’s opinion on literature has inspired millions to read titles from her book club. But you don’t have to be Oprah to have influence. You influence your friend when she listens to a song you recommend on Facebook. You influence your coworker when he checks out an article you posted on LinkedIn and shares it with someone else. Social actions like these are a reflection of influence. ”

Klout uses a ” secret algorithm ” to measure people and brand influence.

A few month’s ago this algorithm was ” modified ” and a lot of people’s ” Klout score ” changed ( many for the worse ) generating considerable reaction from Klout ” members “.

A lot of people say ” Who are Klout and what right do they have to rank my influence ? ” I have my own issues with Klout including the fact that they have a lot of technical bugs that impact people’s scores.

Anyway - let’s get on to Wahooly. Wahooly is a start-up that aims to help start-ups by recruiting ” influential ” people to promote start-ups that they wish to support. In return the influencers get equity ( shares ) in the start-up. So, this is like hiring an Internet Marketing Expert ( Social Media Marketer ) and PR person and paying them in equity rather than hard cash.

Will it work ?? We shall see.

To be a member of Wahooly you needed to have a Klout score of 45 or above ( mine was at the time of selection but has fallen slightly since. I have been as high as 67 in the past ).

More on Wahooly’s use of Klout here:

http://www.launch.is/blog/wahooly-uses-klout-to-add-400-influencers-daily-who-earn-equ.html

I am therefore a founder member of Wahooly and a Wahooligan ( as they call it ).

Given that it has been very hard to raise start-up capital in the last few years there have been many new initiatives to help start-ups get going. Equity for influence is just the latest of them. There have, for example , been a whole host of crowd financing ( investing small amounts of money for small amounts of equity ) initiatives.

Obviously Wahooly has a presence on the main social media platforms:

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/wahooly?ref=ts&sk=wall

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Wahooligans/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/#!/TeamWahooly

Google +

https://plus.google.com/u/0/105465481469156419624/posts

Linkedin

etc

It is going to be an interesting experiment !!

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.

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

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/

I have been an Information Technology professional since leaving the Navy in the 80’s and have experience of sales, marketing and business strategy.

Terry Herbert with some of the Saxon Hoard.

Internet Marketing has been a passion of mine for the last 10 years or so since I realised just how many people were using search engines like Google to find information, products and services.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that we tend to lag 6-12 months behind what the U.S. is doing ( although not everything is invented in the U.S.  !! ) and so I have deliberately made and developed contacts in the U.S. so that I could keep up to date with the real cutting edge of Internet Marketing. So, for example I was a beta member of Google + which grew out of the West coast of the U.S. This means that I feel connected to Silicon Valley even though I have not lived there ( I have visited on a couple of occasions ). I guess I am missing out on some of the Silicon Valley action but I love Lichfield and Staffordshire.

Other companies which typify what I regard as the leading edge in global Internet Marketing include Boston based  HubSpot and more recently San Francisco based Twylah.

There are a number of Marketing and Internet Marketing posts on this blogsite that might help you ( Try searching for Marketing Newsletters as a start ) and I am very happy to discuss specific thoughts, issues and challenges directly.

Social Network Links

https://plus.google.com/100770362378770488768/posts

https://www.facebook.com/chris.windley

https://twitter.com/#!/cwindley

http://www.twylah.com/cwindley

http://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswindley

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.