http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog top marketing and copywriting tips Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:57:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Research plurals and singulars Some people search Google and co for goods and services using plurals, others use singular words and phrases. Here's an example. Say you sell bathrooms. One of your most popular search terms might be bathroom suites. But it's also worth finding out how many potential customers search for bathroom suite. If your main competitors are ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/choosing-effective-keywords/580/ If you're neck deep in DIY SEO and want to find out your latest positions in Google's search results, don't forget to disable the personalised search option first! What are personalised search results? In the interests of improving your search experience, unless you tell Google not to it'll return results based on your previous searches and the sites ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/how-to-stop-google-personalising-your-search-results/573/ Thanks to Drayton Bird for these two small but perfectly formed little gems: The golden rule of marketing is - give your customers what they want The golden rule of targeting is - go where your customers go Perfect. If you'd like to get a regular email from Drayton, each packed to the rafters with ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/marketing-and-targeting-in-a-nutshell/569/ Research by http://growsmartbusiness.com/ indicates a recent increase in social media marketing by small businesses: one in five of the 500 US small business owners questioned confirmed they use social media for marketing 69% post status updates, news and links on social networks 61% claim they use social media to find and attract new prospects and customers 57% have built a network of new prospects via social media ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/more-small-businesses-test-social-media-marketing/561/ I flounced out of Facebook at the weekend.   Why? Because recently, Facebook has delivered more pain than gain. I've always enjoyed it but the last two interface relaunches have found me struggling to find stuff, people, messages...  As a rule when I encounter something new it only takes a couple of goes to get it. But for some reason the latest ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/facebook-more-pain-than-gain/537/ Do you need a straightforward, plain language guide to DIY SEO?  I'm lucky to have strong personal connections in the UK SEO industry. So I know a good SEO guide when I see one. Too few SEO ebooks are written in plain English. And too many authors blind their readers with science. This ebook is different. It is well written, in logical order, set ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/win-googles-love-an-excellent-seo-ebook/555/ Test them! This sounds blindingly obvious but it's a really good idea to check your website every time you make even the tiniest change, just to make sure you haven't broken it. It's horribly easy, especially when you're busy or distracted, to forget to close a tag, make a spelling mistake or even delete chunks of code ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/making-changes-to-your-website/540/ Conversion is the percentage of website visitors who ultimately buy from you.  For example if you get 1000 site visitors a day and 19 of them buy something, that's a 1.9% conversion rate.   Attracting people to your site is one thing. Getting them to buy is another. Here's eleven common sense ways to increase sales conversion: create clear, compelling, inspirational sales copy, targeted directly to your core ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/11-straightforward-ways-to-improve-sales-conversion/532/ If you're emailing B2B  you don't need to ask people to opt in. But it's best practice to include an opt out. Email opt outs are usually negative, which is probably why most marketers prefer to make them as unobtrusive as possible. Because people tend to respond very well to honesty and transparency, I prefer to give email opt out text fair prominence. And I like to make it positive. That ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/make-the-most-of-your-email-opt-out/518/ Last night I got an email from a friend saying they'd left me a private message at flixter.com. Because I trust my friend, I followed the link.  And opened up a whole world of shady marketing practices. Clicking the link took me to a registration screen. Fair enough. Ronnie had left me a private message ... http://www.helpinthecity.com/blog/toxic-marketing-avoid-flixter-com/522/