For Your Own Safety

How to get started with online - for beginners, mostly free

CS Thompson — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:52:00 GMT

If you're reading a blog, you probably don't need this information, but you probably know someone that does.

A great post from Seth Godin about building an online presence from scratch, even if you have completely missed the boat so far.

The great thing is, most of it is free or very inexpensive to do.

No excuses

The 7 Most Costly Mistakes Sales Managers Make

CS Thompson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:49:00 GMT

A free report from Sales Coach Ian Segail launches today - the 7 most costly mistakes sales leaders make. Its a free 53 page report that is practically focussed and will really help any sales leader, sales manager or business owner take action today to turn their sales and revenue around.

You can find out more about the secrets to hitting your sales targets here

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Full disclosure: Ian Segail and the Bulletproof Your Sales Team System are clients of Thompson Marketing Consultants. They do fantastic work with sales management and I only endorse things I believe provides real value.

The Curse of the Blog with a Half-Decent Page Rank

CS Thompson — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:52:00 GMT

Some of the posts on this blog have reached the lofty heights of a PR5. Hooray! That seems to have qualified me to get spammed from all corners of the internet, and by other internet marketing companies.

As there is actually very little real conversation happening in the comment areas, but rather people using it to link back to irrelevant materials, all comments will now be moderated.

I make no promises to look at them each week, or each month, and I will only be allowing those through that actually add to the conversation. I don't mind criticise, and love compliments, but only if its real and has a purpose.

So spammers, BUGGER OFF!

How important are domain names for SEO?

CS Thompson — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:15:00 GMT

It would seem that the actual words in a URL play a part in search engine ranking. I have no problem ranking in a search for my own company name and blog name.

It helps if your website is actually about the topic that you are trying to get ranking for, and what better way to show that than to have your keywords in the domain name.

I'm experimenting the importance of this factor at the moment, and have registered a few domains on behalf of a client, setting up mini websites at each.

Some of the sites and keywords I am going for include:

Professional Sales Coaching - www.professionalsalescoaching.info

Coaching for Sales Leaders and Managers - www.coachingforsales.info

Sales Coaching Blog - www.salescoachingblog.com

What are your experiences with domain names and search engine rankings? Feel free to leave comments below.

Building a website with Weebly - The New South Wales Society for Crippled Children

CS Thompson — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:04:00 GMT

I recently discovered another free content management/website building website - www.weebly.com

It is a really clean interface and is easy to setup with some nice templates to work from. You can use a subdomain or can bring your own domain along for free (2 websites). There are also various levels of paid updates that you can use as well.

I tried it out while building some pages for the Northcott Society. Northcott was originally called the NSW Society for Crippled Children. They were concerned that some people might still look for them under their old name, so hopefully they will get picked up for their old name too. This should give me an indicator of how SEO friendly the platform is too.

If you want to check it out visit www.crippledchildrenssociety.com

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In follow up to this post, it turns out that weebly is VERY SEO friendly. I had a first page ranking for one of these landing pages in five days. Domain names are so important for SEO.

Social Media Monitoring - What is being said about you online?

CS Thompson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:54:00 GMT

Social media stuff ups have hit the headlines again this week, with reports of more staff being fired from U.S. companies for publishing stupid and compromising pictures of themselves on the web.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that some large firms are hiring local companies to monitor their online reputation, and have raised questions about the ethics of such activities, like investigating staff profiles.

Right or wrong, personal life or business, whatever you put up on the web is there for the world to see, the web is a permanent record, it is not anonymous! If you put something up in a public forum like facebook, myspace, tweet about it or post a video to flickr, its there for good. Search engines like google will cache webpages, so your information will be out there, long after any given webpage is taken down. For more on this, read Seth's article

This could be great for raising the standards of personal accountability - maybe if we know we're being watched all the time, we might act like it, and society's behaviour might get adjusted accordingly.

Then again, maybe we will just get used to lower standards...

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If your business needs to monitor your online reputation, or what is being said about you in social media and networks, you might like to view our latest offer for social media monitoring.

Why Barack is president... he "gets" social networking!

CS Thompson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:19:00 GMT

I was doing some work on my LinkedIn profile this week http://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronthompson and saw a link to Barack Obama's profile, amongst others.

Obama's campaign made brilliant use of social media and online networking tools. But he hasn't stopped there - updating the U.S. people from YouTube on a weekly basis, trying to build a more open democracy and developing new platforms for people to communicat with his government.

Whatever you think about him and the political views he represents, social media is truly a part of what he is about, as opposed to his competitors for the presidency. All of their profiles still list them as candidates!

If the President of the U.S.A. thinks its worthwhile to develop their social media profile, that's good enough for me!

You think you deserve number 1 on Google... really?

CS Thompson — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:50:00 GMT

How many people want to be number 1 in search results on Google!

Almost every client, present and future, actually every person that owns a website, that I talk to wants to know how to feature in the top natural search results on the search engines.

But does your website deserve that position?

Google's mission is to deliver searcher's the most relevant and up to date results, not to serve your business interests. If you want to be that, then you need to make sure that the content on your website is the most relevant (to the keywords you are going for) and up to date (continue to produce and refresh great content).

This requires a whole lot of work, but if you generate great content, your reputation will spread, people will link to your website. Great content, and inbound links to your website will help you on the way to great search results.

A lot of time and effort is spend on meta tags and keywords, on seo friendly codes and URLs, and other measures. These things are important, but there are just small ingredients in the overall optimisation recipe.

Time would be better spent making your website attractive with great content and information, attractive first for humans, then for search engines...

not the other way around

43 Things - a cool life list tool

CS Thompson — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:18:00 GMT

I've been having for for a couple of years with 43 Things - a life list management tool.

They have created a little personality poll recently, here are my results. You should take a look too!

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Self-Knowing Money Managing Extrovert

One of my goals was to achieve a PR 5, and I have! Sometimes, just recording a goal is enough to get you moving forwards towards it. PR 6 here I come!

Introducing Sales Tutor with Ian Segail

CS Thompson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:58:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that Thompson Marketing Consultants has commenced working with Ian Segail of McKenzie Consulting's sales management coaching program, sales tutor.

Meet Ian Segail - the Sales Coach

Strategic and innovative, Ian Segail boasts 22 years experience as a generalist HR Practitioner, Corporate Trainer and Executive Coach. Working previously as the General Manager – HR & Training for Rebel Sport, Ian was responsible for the motivation, management and sales of over 2000 employees. Under his guidance in 2001, Rebel Sport won the AHRI ‘Online Training Strategy’ award.

Since joining McKenzie Consulting as General Manager, HR & Training, the focus of Ian’s work has been to help his clients generate greater profitability by optimizing productivity and maximizing the performance of people within their organization. Results focused and a highly engaging and dynamic facilitator, Ian delivers HR solutions that have real world application, and that translate into measurable outcomes for each client.

With a valuable mix of hands-on management experience and in-depth commercial understanding, Ian’s approach is practical and relevant. He has a proven track record in assisting his clients to create a high performance operating culture that centres on execution – making things happen. Having trained under the wing of one of the leading sales trainers in the United States for 6 years, Ian’s model reflects the understanding that ‘knowledge is only powerful when applied’. His goal in the training room or during one-on-one interactions with clients is to ensure applicability, transference to the workplace and ease of implementation.

Ian has worked across a range of industries including retail, wholesale, industrial, finance and travel.

Ian is blogging and podcasting about sales management and coaching at www.salestutor.com.au. If you are in sales, I would advise you to check it out!

Podcast:The Sales Coach, Ian Segail, being interviewed by MYLYFE Coaching. Listen to the podcast.
Download a transcript of the podcast

What businesses want from their website

CS Thompson — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:35:00 GMT

A recent survey from Aussie online giant MelbourneIT has highlighted the three things that Australian business and website owners want from their website.

It should not cost you big money to be able to do these things:

Top three things small businesses want to achieve online:

Improve their current web site - ok, so this one is a bit generic. I bet what they really mean is improve the ROI on their current website. Simple to do with a free google analytics account and CMS. Difficult to do if you need to pay a design $300 an hour to make updates.

Improve rankings on search engines - who doesn't want to promote their business to a targetted hungry audience for free? Of course they want to improve their SEO, but are they willing to put in the work to be worthy of that top ten placement?

Manage their costs by use of email marketing - ditto the above. Building a permission based list takes time and effort, but with the right systems in place, it shouldn't cost much. Building a permission list means more targeted campaigns and more responsive recipients and a better return overall.

These things are so simple they almost seem stupid. But how many businesses get caught up with having flashy flash sites? Or spend thousands or tens of thousands on a design, without thinking about usability and findability? Or hear buzz words about web 2.0 and social media and want a bespoke solution when ning or facebook will do just fine?

Online, business want to be found, they want to reach out, and they want people to respond. How is your site going with this?

Warning - you must engage! Start-up businesses look online

CS Thompson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:00:00 GMT

The bleak economic outlook could be set to precipitate the start-up of a whole lot of new businesses. A recent story in the SMH reports that many of those who may lose their jobs in the fallout will turn to starting their own businesses.

''We're also seeing an increased number of sole traders starting up businesses in areas they are already skilled or experienced in. We believe these (people) are often connected to firms laying off employees.''

Many of these will not just have an online outlet for their businesses, but will start businesses that run only online.

The story also came with a warning:

Spending heaps on brochure ware (that is, an information-based site) may be hard to justify if you're not able to quantify the conversion rate.

In fact, 61% of those with sites surveyed by Melbourne IT last year have information-only content.

That means, for the most part, 61% of business websites don't have a two way conversation through online mediums. They are putting their information out there like it is a broadcast medium, which it isn't.

Your website needs to be a medium for you to engage with clients, for them to feedback to you, to tell you want they want and need. With other brands out there providing engaging, level and social experiences, you need to move forward from web 1.0 brochure ware websites (so year 2000) and start playing in the web 2.0 space.

Product Review - BlackBerry Storm

CS Thompson — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:18:00 GMT

Vodafone got me...

They had me signed up on the preorder list, they had me in the store the day before the release date, hoping to get one early. I had the storm on the first day that they were released. Very exciting.

But the actual use of the item has been underwhelming. Responsiveness is slow and has a noticeable lag, especially with the gyro. Sometimes it just claps out altogether and refuses to play. Sometime the screen just switches off, and refuses to turn on again.

They are going to replace it, which is to be expected, which will take care of all of these issues. I would rather not have the issues at all.

Upsides - comes with mobile apps for just about everything I want, maps, facebook, flickr. I can read documents on the go, email is integrated with the browser. Applications are easy to download and install, the general user experience is pretty easy.

I thought product would end my envious glances and my collegue's iphones, it hasn't.

Reflections on a year in business

CS Thompson — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:29:00 GMT

The end of September brought up the anniversary of our first year in business at Thompson Marketing Consultants. I would like to share some of the insights that I have gathered this year with you.

Its your business, you make the rules!

A fellow thought leader, Taki Moore, shared this one with me recently. We were having a discussion about clients who want lots of time and support but are not willing to pay for it. Clearly, this is an unsustainable business position.

If you're in your own business, then you make the rules about who you're going to play with and on what grounds. Sometimes it takes a lot of confidence and courage to stand your ground when a client is demanding unfavourable terms. A person in a position of power, knowing their strengths and value won't cave into this pressure.

This is something that I'm still coming to grips with. But it is a powerful position when you are prepared to walk away from a client if the terms are not to your liking.

"Every dollar is a good dollar" is not true

Business sustainability (not the ecological kind, although its equally important) means that you can't afford to lose money on clients. Sometimes this is not so easy to see upfront, but the real cost of acquiring, servicing and keeping a client needs to be understood BEFORE dealing with them. Knowing this one from the start would have saved me a lot of time, money and pain.

If a client is a pain to acquire they will be a pain to service

A simple principal I have discovered - the best clients are easier to sell to, will be less demanding and will have no issues paying. Its the one that you really have to work hard to convince that will complain and demand more of your time and destroy your profitability.

Apologies to any clients who might be reading this and thinking its you, I promise its not!

Having fun

If you're not having fun, you're no fun to deal with. Who wants to spend time, build relationship, or do business with a boring person or company?

Early on, I thought that being professional meant being formal, serious, and kinda boring. The more of my own personality and story that I have allowed to show through with clients, the more success this has brought in.

Don't wait to do something great

I have a vision for social enterprise and action that I expect to take several lifetimes to fulfill. I was putting off getting started in this until we had achieved a greater measure of success, and more capital. Why? I thought I had too.

Upon re-examination, I realised that I could build social enterprise into every step of the business from right where I was. What I had been putting off was not going to tie up nearly as much capital as I had expected. We could get started making a global impact from as little as $10 a week!

Just a few insights, there were plenty more but I'm keeping some to myself. Have a great 2009!

Beware "too good to be true" - its just as bad online as off

CS Thompson — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:40:00 GMT

Seth Godin wrote the post below recently. Its stating the obvious, but there are so many get rich quick schemes online, I thought it was worth a mention.

Too good to be true (the overnight millionaire scam)

You probably don't need to read this, but I bet you know people who do. Please feel free to repost or forward:

Times are tough, and many say they are going to be tougher. That makes some people more focused, it turns others desperate.

You may be tempted at some point to try to make a million dollars. To do it without a lot of effort or skill or risk. Using a system, some shortcut perhaps, or mortgaging something you already own.

There are countless infomercials and programs and systems that promise to help you do this. There are financial instruments and investments and documents you can sign that promise similar relief from financial stress.

Resist.

There are four ways to make a million dollars. Luck. Patient effort. Skill. Risk.

(Five if you count inheritance, and six if you count starting with two million dollars).

Conspicuously missing from this list are effortless 1-2-3 systems that involve buying an expensive book or series of tapes. Also missing are complicated tax shelters or other 'proven' systems. The harder someone tries to sell you this solution, the more certain you should be that it is a scam. If no skill or effort is required, then why doesn't the promoter just hire a bunch of people at minimum wage and keep the profits?

There are literally a million ways to make a good living online, ten million ways to start and thrive with your own business offline. But all of these require effort, and none of them are likely to make you a million dollars.

Short version of my opinion: If someone offers to sell you the secret system, don't buy it. If you need to invest in a system before you use it, walk away. If you are promised big returns with no risk and little effort, you know the person is lying to you. Every time

New Media enters the War

CS Thompson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:51:00 GMT

Now here's thinking - it takes more than weaponary to win a war. The BBC reported this week that they will be employing a new media tactic in Afghanistan to combat Taleban propaganda.

Whichever way you swing politically, you have to give them credit for being innovative in their approach here. According to the BBC report

"The programme involves using new media like mobile phones and the internet to empower ordinary Afghans to contradict the prevailing Taleban message.

Non-governmental organisations would distribute mobile phones to Afghans for them to make their own video diaries.

Anti-Western films already circulate on Afghanistan's estimated 6m mobiles.

These films are also distributed among the country's half a million internet users. "

Obviously, the low-tech, but resourceful Taleban have taken to using a new media strategy to win the war in the hearts of the people. When faced with a lack of resources, people use whatever they have at hand, and it seems that it has been working. They have had an audience of 6.5 million, and it probably costs them nothing to distribute.

Think you can beat that? Of course you can, with blogs, podcasts, youtube, and a myriad of other opportunities. How much does it cost to bluetooth some video you took to your friend's mobile? How much does it cost to throw together a mash up on windows movie maker and upload it to youtube.

What are you waiting for?

The Irresistible Offer by Mark Joyner - Get it today free!

CS Thompson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:38:00 GMT

This is a great marketing read, which you can buy as a hardcopy. For some reason, they're giving it away (well actually, they want to grab your email address and market to you.) If you can put up with the few webpage hoops you have to through to get it, and resist the "irresistible offers" that they author makes, then click here to download.

Analyse This!

CS Thompson — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:17:00 GMT

Analyse This – Getting Analytical with Google and your website

What do you know about the behaviour of the visitors to your website? Do you know where they come from, how long they stay, what pages they look at, what engages them and what makes them bounce. Google has a phrase about their free analytics software “Even if its not good news, its news that good to know”.

Initially, upon examining the statistics of your website, the results may be downright dismal. But Google are right, it is information that you need to know, otherwise, the money that you have spent on building and running your site, is wasted. Good news, anything that is measured improves. Once you can see where your site is doing well, and where its falling down, you are empowered to do something about it.

Here’s ten important features of the Analytics software:

1. How people find your site – analytics is going to show you the source of the traffic on your website, whether it was direct, they were referred from another site, or through a search engine. When the traffic results from a search, it will show you which keywords the visitor search for that brought them to your site.

2. How they navigate through it – this will show you which pages of your site the visitor entered from, where they moved to and where they left your site. Are they going where you’re trying to take them?

3. How they become your customers – set up conversion measures and goals, enabling you to track the efficiency of your pages in converting site visitors to customers.

4. Bounce rate – how many people get to your site, and click straight back off it because its not relevant to what they were looking for. This is often one of the most disturbing pieces of information that you’ll get about your site, but will allow you to change your content to be more engaging and relevant.

5. Absolute unique visitors – “hits” as a measure of website traffic is totally irrelevant. You need to know how many unique people have visited your site. Analytics will allow you to see this.

6. Returning vs. new visitors – another great feature is the ability to compare how much of your traffic comes from returning vs. new visitors. If people are not returning to your site, then something is probably wrong.

7. Schedule automated reports – don’t have time to be checking the stats everyday? Schedule periodical summary reports to be sent to you. Don’t rely on these only though, use them to highlight important issues, then start digging deeper.

8. Adwords integration – analytics can automatically integrate with any Adwords campaigns you’re running, allowing you to easily track your most successful ads and maximise your returns.

9. Target the best markets – analytics allows you to view where your traffic is coming from, by country and city. This can show you where you are being most effective, and

10. Share data with others in your company – you can create multiple accounts to manage and track the performance of your website.

There’s plenty more features, and the data gets very detailed, right down to what language, operating system and browsers your visitors are using. But don’t get caught up with too much of the fancy stuff. Start with a simple measure, like reducing the bounce rate of your homepage, and work from there. The improvement to the quality of traffic to your site, and the conversion of this traffic to customers will be worth it.

Beware the power of search - Episode 4 of For Your Own Safety

CS Thompson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:40:00 GMT

Everyone wants their website to be number one on Google. But is your website really ready to maximise the visitors it will receive when this happens? Do you have conversion strategies in place, and the means to measure your success. Make sure you do, otherwise all your time and money spent optimising your site will not convert into cash.

I onIy just found a new toy - Google Website Optimiser

CS Thompson — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:30:00 GMT

I just stumbled across a new tool from Google - Google Website Optimiser. Released publicly on April 4, 2007, I feel like I've been living under a rock or something not to have heard about this. I'm not yet sure on it's full features, but as I've explored it, it allows you to create split A/B and multivariate testing of your website content. The point? Testing to see which pages, and which content is going to deliver you the best conversion and ROI.

According to the Google press release:

"As part of our continued commitment to help advertisers make smart business decisions, we are happy to announce that the Google Website Optimizer™ application is now available to AdWords advertisers worldwide. Google Website Optimizer is designed to help website owners increase conversions such as sales, sign-ups or downloads. This multivariate landing page optimization tool enables marketers to test different ideas for web page content such as different headlines, promotional copy, or images. The application provides easy-to-read reports that enable advertisers to see which variation resonated best with their site visitor. It is a self-service application that enables website owners to set-up and run multivariate landing page experiments."

Press release dated 4th April 2007

If a website has any sort of website statistics installed on it, this sort of activity is nothing new, a day to day part of online marketing, conversion and optimisation. It will be interesting to see if Google has broken this down for those of a less geeky vein, and what it offers that Analytics doesn't.

Either way, for anyone serious about success on the web, when Google talks, listen!

I'll keep you posted on my experiments...