Not everyone is aware but the word “blog” is actually a shortened form of “web log” and it stands for a website that keeps a log of people’s thoughts, their actions, and their reactions to other people’s thoughts and actions.

Business blogs enable companies to create powerful personal relationships, with their existing and future customers. Blogs not only add a personal and human face to your business but also serves several purposes like providing required and important information about the company to your clients, highlighting your businesses products, services and activities and also attracts new visitors to the website. Many business blogs also keep their readers up to date on industry news and happenings in their specific business sector.

Not only this, a blog can also enhance the website rankings on search engines since search engines love fresh content and lots of incoming links.This means that blogs and search engines complement each other very nicely!

Setting up the blog and structuring it properly is important too, contact James Blake Internet team to assist you on this.

For professional SEO services, please visit our website www.jamesblakeinternet.com. If you have any questions regarding this blog, feel free to post a comment.

As part of our monthly features, we caught up with Peter Sumner owner of SP education Educational services Ltd (www.speducationalservices.com)to discuss his business and web experience.

SP Educational Services work in the education sector and James Blake Internet developed them a new on-line ecommerce site to help sell their products to a wide community.

Hi Peter

1) Can you tell us a little about your business?
The business was started in the year 2000 by myself and my sister, Laura Pooles. Laura and I are both practising headteachers of primary schools. All our materials are written by teachers who are still working as teachers (many companies use ex-teachers who very quickly lose touch with current educational practice).

SP of SP Educational Services stands for Sumner/ Pooles.

We started the business because Laura noticed a gap in the education market - the need for assessments to accompany the original Maths Numeracy Framework. The assessments were updated in 2008 because the Numeracy Framework was redesigned into what is called the Renewed Framework for mathematics. We also now have mental maths tests on CD and in book format to accompany the delivery of the renewed framework for maths.

2) Who should buy your products?
Our biggest market is primary school teachers and teaching assistants. We do however sell to an increasing number of parents who use our materials to help their children with maths. The materials are simple to use and really help diagnose children’s maths strengths and weaknesses. Parents our real future target market as this market is obviously much greater than our teacher market.

3) What are your objectives and plans for your new website?
The objectives for the new website are to present a much more attractive and professional ‘front’ to our business. We also want the site to act as an online shop. So far the feedback has been excellent and several customers have commented on the quality of the website.
Several have also given us feedback on some ways to improve the site and we will be working with James Blake on making these improvements.
We plan to incorporate all our new products into the website. Our next products are a set of Word Problem maths books for Years 1 - 6 in the primary school.

4) How do you use the internet to help your business
The internet has become a great source of advertising for us. We send email mailshots to schools in England and we include a link to our web site. Traffic has increased greatly since we have had the new site.

5) Have you got any tips for people who are considering setting up their own business on-line?
My tip would be to invest in a reputable company to design the website. It is very important that the web designer is patient and will work with the customer until the customer is happy with the site. James Blake were excellent in this respect.

6) Finally for our own records, how was working with the James Blake Team
I was extremely impressed with the James Blake team. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted the site to look like but because of my lack of IT knowledge, I found it difficult to verbalise. David Gelb of James Blake was very helpful and patient and we were both delighted with the end result. The site has really helped our business grow. I would recommend James Blake in terms of the professionalism of the team and in terms of value for money.

Interview with gdtalent director Gordon Milne

Recently James Blake Internet completed a new website for gdtalent and we thought it would be interesting to hear his thoughts about his business, building a new website and of course online marketing.

1) Can you tell us a little about your business?
gdtalent is a consultancy specialising in recruitment solutions for international businesses and candidates. More specifically, our expertise is in assisting companies recruit the very best, internationally experienced, Chinese speaking managers and professionals. As well as recruitment/search type services we also run career briefing seminars for candidates who want to know more about the job market in China.

2) How did you get into the Chinese market?
gdtalent is owned and managed by Gordon Milne who recently worked in Shanghai for 4.5 years as an expat for major recruitment businesses. During that time clients frequently commented on the following:
a) how difficult it is/was to hire good people given the finite talent pool;
b) how difficult it is to access Chinese experienced hires whilst they are studying or working overseas and
c) how poor sister companies are at supporting China recruitment. E.g. Company X in US, UK etc rarely properly support Company X’s hiring activities in China.

Some of gdtalent’s services are designed to specifically address the above.

3) What are your objectives and plans for your new website?
The web site was designed to be a reference point where clients and candidates alike can establish what we do and evaluate/verify our service offering. We decided to try to make the web site crisp, clean, professional, un-cluttered, easy to navigate and not too “hip” so it would not date so easily.

4) Will you be doing any on-line campaigns to help your business
Probably. So far we’ve only used Google’s AdWords with very limited success. Still early days though.

5) If our customers want to enter into the Chinese market can you help recruit the right people?
Certainly hope so! We have a good understanding of the Chinese recruitment/labour market as well as a database and network of candidates. Finally, our ability to conduct a direct or “headhunt” search means that our fulfilment ratios will always be high.

6) Have you got any tips for people who are considering setting up their own business on-line?
Planning and Patience come to mind. Quite a bit of work has to go in before you engage any service providers to design your web site. If you don’t know what you want, they certainly won’t know what you mean. And no matter how fast you want things done, allow for an overrun.

7) Finally for our own records, how was working with the James Blake Team
Good. I always felt confident that I would get what I wanted and I did. I have no hesitation in recommending the James Blake Team.

My marketing manager said SEO doesn’t achieve instant results?

Your marketing manager is correct to a certain degree in that SEO will not have instant results, i.e. if we start a campaign tomorrow your inbox will not be flooded with new leads. SEO is a medium term strategy to make you an on-line leader in certain areas. Generally we at James Blake Internet say we can make a difference within 3-6 months.

If you do need instant results then we would suggest mixing an SEO campaign with a pay per click campaign (PPC). This will help you get the benefits in both the short and medium term.

However we believe that internet marketing needs to be looked at in conjunction with other aspects of your business such as your offline marketing in order to maximise the potential of any campaign.

a) Establish a brand – what does your business really offer? By this we don’t mean fancy design and new logos etc, Is there an area you specialise in within your field and want to tell the World (on-line and off-line). Once this is established then there is a message to spread (online and offline)

b) Once you have established the brand and the message we suggest you look at all your marketing to see if this reflects your message. If you have a current website its vital you look at the design and structure to see if it’s in line with your brand and message. When people hear about your business they often go on-line to see who they will be visiting (even if referred). Does your website convey the message that your marketing (again both on-line and off-line) is saying. Otherwise you will not be maximising the potential of your spend.

c) I would then look at how people will get to hear about your business e.g. How many people will search on-line to find your business or how many people will use the yellow pages etc. If you feel that most of your business comes from referrals then that’s where you should now spend your money. If you think there is a strong percentage that search for your business on-line, i.e. Google, yahoo, Yell etc then this is the market that SEO can capture.

James Blake believe that online advertising should be done in conjunction with offline and not separately. Both need to have the same message as they complement each other.