M & A Rainmaker

This morning I woke up thinking about the ” share ” facility that you see on so many websites and blogs now. ( Who invented this ??? ). It’s a really powerful thing to be able to share your content so quickly and easily.

This got me wondering about how Synnd and Traffic Geyser were doing. I will explain more about them shortly. As you know we are working with HubSpot on the FutureLine website attracting and converting traffic and monitoring how we are doing over time.

As we know you have to be found on the Internet – for relevant searches. Google is always trying to give people what they want when they type something into the search box.

Yesterday I was sitting in a car service reception waiting for my son’s car to get some new wheels and also they were investigating a problem with the windscreen washers. One of the service managers had a Mini whose keys were not being recognised so he had to get it over to the Mini garage in Derby. We all ( I was eavesdropping and contributing! ) thought that Mini had seperated from BMW and although it was on the same road it was a different garage. So, the receptionist was Googling for the Mini garage NOT the BMW garage. The answers coming back were not clear but the phone number for the garage was found anyway. This led the receptionist and I to a discussion about when Mini was taken over by BMW; who Mini was originally built and owned by and who owned Mini now ?? Googling did not produce all the answers.

We want the best answer to our question or the best result for our search and Google tries hard to give us that.

In our HubSpot trial we have been thinking hard about what people will search for when they want more information on small business phone systems and the we have been trying to ensure that our content, titles, metatags etc are all aligned with those search terms.

When I have produced content e.g. a blog I will share it and post it on various websites e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit etc etc because I know that 1. People that are on those sites and connected to me will see it and 2. That I may gain some benefit to my blog and blogsite by linking back from very highly ranked sites to my own. ( there’s a lot of deep techie debate around this area that I will not bore you with ).

The ” Share ” and ” Like ” facilities are getting easier and I can ” Share ” and ” Like ” to many different sites.

Essentially though what I am doing is a manual process.

Synnd ( see  video on http://www.charlesheflin.com/ or go to http://synnd.com/ ) and Traffic Geyser (     http://mikekoenigs.com/about/ or                http://www.trafficgeyser.com/ )    are about automating this process and creating massive distribution of content or ” Content Syndication ” as it is known.

Mike’s Traffic Geyser is predominantly about the content syndication of videos. Charles’s Synnd covers all content – e.g. blog posts, web pages, pdf’s and video’s .

Traffic Geyser’s focus on video’s derives ( basically ) from the fact that ” a picture or a video tells a thousand words ” and that Google is treating well tagged videos very favourably in search results.

I recommend that you explore all of these facilities and websites – ” Share “,  HubSpot  , Synnd and Traffic Geyser – and watch the videos.

I have subscribed to all of these facilities although I don’t necessarily use them all the time.

One of the things to remember is that once you understand the requirement to distribute content, url’s through ” sharing ” you can automate and scale this up massively if required.

Avid followers ( are there any ? ) of this blog will have noticed the recent blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/01/31/dog-friendly-pubs-in-holywell-flintshire/

On Monday morning I decided to post this blog with the objective of getting exposure for The Glan to those people who were Googling for a ” dog friendly pub near Holywell, in Flintshire, North Wales “.

Between us ( you and me ) we have made this blogsite pretty authoratitive and known to Google. Quite frankly I am sometimes amazed at the speed that Googles spiders find new blogs that I post and how well they rank in Google searches.

I can only guess that the reporters at the Daily Post were thinking about ” Dog Friendly Pubs ” that morning because, I promise you, 2 hours after the post went live the phone rang at The Glan and a Daily Post reporter said that she wanted to send a photographer around.

The photographer wanted dogs in the picture and so a mad rush ensued – phoning customers and asking ones that were in to bring in their dogs.

Photos taken the photographer stated that the article would be in The Daily Post the following day – sure enough

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2011/02/01/north-wales-most-dog-friendly-pub-is-in-flintshire-55578-28090242/

there it was.

The TV and radio stations obviously trawl the papers websites so it was not a huge surprise when Radio Cymru

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiocymru/index.shtml

called and asked Cerys if she could do an interview ( in Welsh ) around 4 p.m.

This also happened and so in 2 days we had gone from Dog to Superstar !!

Are you a 365iT or Impera plc shareholder ?? If so then this post is for you.

I would be interested to connect with any current or proposed 365iT Plc shareholder. I have been a 365iT plc shareholder since the sale of 5i Limited to 365iT a couple of years ago.

I was the main investor in 5i Limited when it was founded having previously been a founding Director of Voyager Networks and Internet Limited.

Shareholders might be original shareholders in 365iT plc ( formerly Impera plc ) or shareholders in companies acquired by 365iT or investing in 365iT or shareholders in companies being acquired by 365iT.

Please email me on : chris@mandarainmaker.co.uk or telephone +447881 500002.