A successful business must be accessible to its clients and found easily by search engines. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the most powerful forms of digital marketing, as you can serve your message in front of as many people as possible in the hopes that users who are searching for services or products that your business offers are able to find you on search engines results pages. We are going to talk more about how you can leverage SEO and what quick fixes you can implement on your website to maximise its performance.  SEO should be a part of your marketing strategy as it is inexpensive and profitable when done correctly. SEO can also be used as a brand awareness tool and help build relationships with potential clients. Positioning yourself at the top of a search engine shows your business as being a trustworthy entity and SEO is vital into getting you there. Let’s talk about the crucial elements of SEO and what aspects you need to address in order to have success with your SEO strategy. Keywords Having the right keyword strategy for your website is the first step of a successful SEO strategy, you need to get into the mind of your ideal client and by utilising different tools you can create a keyword strategy that prospects users to find businesses like yours. That keyword strategy will be widely used across your website and every aspect of this will be focused on that. Content Content is king as everyone says and this is actually quite accurate in terms of helping you rank on different search engines based on your keyword strategy. Content is a vital part of every SEO strategy and it is the medium which will help you reach and engage with your target audience. My advice is that your content should be educational and interesting, it can come in a variety of forms from blog posts to a simple PDF or a video hosted on your website. Backlinks Backlinks are referred to an external website that has URLs leading users to your website, those can be achieved by guest blogging, influencer marketing, utilising social media networks to post your content and drive people to your website or PR outreach. It is another major ranking factor for your website as it will give you authority and make you a trustworthy source of information. Local SEO (where applicable) Local SEO might not always be applicable for every business but if your products or services are offered to specific geographical areas you might consider investing in local SEO.  These are just a few elements that you need to consider when you are thinking of SEO and having an SEO strategy for your business. If you want to learn more sign up to our webinar where I will be talking about SEO and how you can utilise it to get you business in front of your target audience for free. By signing up you will also get a

Some would say that the events that have taken place in the first half of 2020 have been cataclysmic. Dramatic as the statement may be, there is no denying that events like Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement have uncovered, or even shifted public priorities quite significantly.  While there have been businesses that have effortlessly voiced their allegiance to a cause, there are stories of others that have stumbled hard in the eyes of the public. In fact, a handful of businesses have found themselves a target of backlash when they have decidedly kept mum amidst these seismic events. So, the question is, how do businesses communicate during sensitive times?  As all businesses are unique, there isn’t a cookie-cutter format for communicating to target audiences. However, there are aspects to consider when communicating during these times. Here are some things to remember as the world catches the momentum of a social reformation. Silence can be heard Modern consumers are discerning and they often view the products that they use as an extension of their identity. This is the power of market competition and conscientious branding. Many discerning consumers have access to a blinding variety of quality products like no other time before. The next step to this evolution is how these products measure up against social and ethical causes. With that, it is no surprise that social movements will reverberate through consumer attitudes and perceptions.  Many companies have instinctively elected to remain tightlipped on opinions and their allegiance during sensitive times. While it is the right move for some, others not so much. A handful of businesses have recently discovered that their silence has been perceived as being complicit towards systematic prejudice.  While it is wise to not react to every hashtag on social media, it is important to keep them in view. After all, businesses that tend to do well are the ones that serve the needs of the people.  Stay true to facts and objectives Business operations are often motivated by facts, figures and objectives. Communicating to the audience should not deviate too far from this either. While communication humanises your business, it is important for the messaging to jive with the core values of the business.  When doing that, business leaders are able to navigate between their personal social stance  with what is important for the business, its employees and customers. One simple way to tackle this is to answer the three key questions before releasing any statement; How can my business be helpful in this situation? OR, What can I do to help improve this situation for my team and customers? What is the key message and why is this important? Does what I want to say measure up to my business objectives and values? This provides a steer towards any statements that need to be made whilst communicating during a sensitive time. This brings us to the next statement. Read the room When the appropriate key message has been developed, it is important

From multinational corporations with staff in their thousands, to local startups with just a few employees, CSR is often an important part of their business aims. It can be something built into the bedrock of a business, and something that reflects their values and aims. So you can see why this is important. What is CSR anyway? CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility. Basically, it’s a set of rules you give your own business on the contributions you aim to make, be they charitable donations, activism, philanthropy or ethical causes. There are many reasons businesses may want to have a CSR plan in place, be that aligning strongly with your business values – showing you do what you say you do, wanting to give back to a community, or simply because you have a cause that means something either to you, or to your employees. Using CSR to bring people together One strong benefit from having a charitable aim, is that the fundraising portion of this can often be used as a way to unite your employees and effectively work as team building exercises. Who out there isn’t familiar with a bake sale or a fun run done in aid of a charity? The options out there for having fun in the name of charity are endless. But the common theme amongst these is that they are often done as a team, or group activity. This of course starts to become a problem when people are no longer able to spend time together as they once were. With ways of working drastically changing, remote working becoming the norm, and social distancing here to stay, businesses are having to rethink their approach to CSR and charitable donations. So how do you meet both your CSR goals and engage your employees in activities? A ‘donate now’ button definitely isn’t going to cut it! An online fundraising alternative There are now more and more ways that people and businesses can utilise online systems to create a fundraising experience that’s tailored to them. There are a whole range of platforms that allow for fundraising using a combination of app integration and different donation methods to create a more personalised and exciting fundraising experience for everyone. These platforms give you the ability to connect to apps such as Strava, Fitbit, Spotify, and Twitch to name but a few, allowing for a truly integrated experience. Bespoke fundraising landing pages Even when apart, you can bring your teams together by building a bespoke fundraising experience. No matter what it is you’d like to do, from distance-baking (it’s a thing, I promise), to running and walking challenges, it can be built and integrated into a seamless experience. Your business can have their own landing pages built, designed using your company branding, or how about a fun new brand just for this? This could cover a whole range of exciting challenges from running, to gaming and even playlist creation (I particularly like this one, as team DG have a

Over the past seven years, Digital Glue has grown from a business run out of a spare bedroom, a garden office and into our third office expansion as the business and team has grown. We’re proud to work with local, national and international clients across a wide range of marketing disciplines. We’re focussed on helping our clients’ get a return on investment from their marketing. In the time since founding the business, it’s been a steep learning curve. As the leader of the business I’ve made plenty of good decisions and plenty of bad decisions.  To be honest, as I thought about this blog I realised I could probably write a book about it, so picking just a few key lessons was harder than I thought it would be. So I’ve picked out what I think are some of the key lessons I’ve learnt; some feel positive – like they’ve come from good decisions, validated by the results. Others feel negative, like painful lessons. The truth is they are all the same really, just things to remember for the future as we grow, and advice I would give others if anyone was asking.  Trust your team Over the past seven years, one of the consistent things we’ve seen at Digital Glue is that when people are trusted, when they are given ownership on a project and asked to deliver, they do two things. Firstly, they very often go beyond what you believed they could or would do, and secondly, their development was accelerated hugely. In any professional services environment, trusting new team members can be a leap of faith, but with the right processes in place to ‘catch them succeeding’ rather than trying to catch them out, it’s a leap of faith you can’t afford NOT to make.  Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made have been waiting too long to give people responsibility, it’s cost me time, and it’s slowed down people’s development. Develop your own team This is an interesting one, and I know many people will feel differently about getting in more experienced team members from the start. However, in my time running Digital Glue over the last seven years I look at the growth and development of team members who have joined us early in their career and who have flourished. Either they have grown into leadership roles in the business or they’ve grown into leadership and senior positions elsewhere. Those would be on my list of my most significant achievements. I also think it’s crucial to company culture. In my experience you need a core team of ‘Digital Gluers’ (replace with your company name), in your business to be the example of how things are done and the standards we set for each other. Culture of course needs to start with leadership, but when culture is lived and reinforced by the whole team, it really sticks. Get advice and be held accountable However you do it, and whatever platform you choose to do it through,