About the application:

Xlvets, a group of 40+ top veterinary practices in the UK, were looking for a new way to organise the whole group’s placement system into something more useful.

The system allows students and vets to register and create a profile. For the student, the system provides a simple automated route to the best and most forward thinking practices in the UK. It gives them practice profiles including star ratings and references from other students.

This allows them to choose the most appropriate practices. Students can view practices by geographic location, accommodation or by species bias and once settled on a particular practice can then request a placement through the calendar and internal mail system.

For the veterinary practices logged onto the system it provides a profile of the students that have registered, allowing them to choose the best possible candidates.

This online facility will replace a largely paper and practice-based method with a well-designed, user-friendly online application with a centrally based database.

www.vetems.co.uk

A bit of information about Ellie:

Ellie is now entering the 2009/10 Olympic season, which she has trained extensively for. The required Olympic qualification standards set by the IOC are for a top 30th finish in a World Cup Event and attaining over 100 FIS points. Ellie has fulfilled both of these criteria with a 4th place finish in the Australian New Zealand Cup, gaining her 250 FIS points. Fingers crossed for a spot in TeamGB, and the opportunity to compete for her Country in her first Winter Olympics Games!!

www.elliekoyander.com

“conversation is no longer limited to social cul-de-sacs like the phone”

// Hat tip to @ev and original quote from “Here Comes Everybody”, by Clay Shirky //

Now, we don’t hang our “Social Media Consultants” sign on the door just because it is cool, we’re a full service Communications agency, but this is a sure reminder of why conversation and storytelling across the full set of mediums is an important, and telling part of our clients activity.
Viewers eyeballs are fast-moving and keeping your presence in their field of attention is becoming a key point of interaction. As your story builds, and trust evolves, your call to action will start to reach the audience, resulting in your campaign achieving it’s goals.

Does it matter if each of these viewers comes to your actual website? Of course not, talking to each one within their comfort zone is going to build more trust and involvment than forcing them to change direction and re-focus.

As we build client programs we are ensuring energy is spent in building and educating users in the correct program of Social Media usage. What are you doing?

Check out the post here, and download ‘Doodletober’ for yourself!

For a business whose website is an integral, or sole, piece of the marketing plan, this isn’t good enough. Clients ask us how they should run their site, what they should be doing and how they should measure success. There is a long answer to this, for another day, but we can keep it simple for our clients by remembering one simple mantra:

“Are you better than yesterday?”

Being better than yesterday is important for so many reasons. It ensures growth, it keeps one eye on the metrics (can you tell me your unique visitors for yesterday?), it promotes review of your site, and asks the question of how to make it better.

This process needn’t take long – it’s a case of setting up a repeatable process and set of tools to ensure your seeing, and acting on the most important pieces.

Here’s three top tips for keeping yourself on the ball:

1. Use an anlytics app for your phone or dashboard that makes it easy to get a snapshot of data. We use ego for the iPhone, and it’s great for a once a day look at the key numbers.

2. Limit yourself to 5 key measures; this could be uniques visits, twitter followers, adwords performance, sales conversions, diggs, or anything that is a KPI of your business, the key thing is don’t get lost in too many numbers, and make sure they are easy to see. If you have an online business, make sure you add some developer time in to make a tool that allows you to see signup growth across your plans, and to monitor usage.

3. Do it, and do it often. It’s amazing how seeing these numbers EVERY DAY can inspire you to new marketing ideas. You will be in touch with your online marketing, and your ideas for promoting your business or service will flow much more readily. You will probably increase the growth of the things you are measuring just by being on top of things.

Each of these things can take no more than 10mins a day – if you see something that needs more time, add it to your to-do list and act on it as part of your daily tasks, but set aside this time every day to review, measure, understand and maybe you will be better than yesterday.

Got a great tool for tracking and reporting your performance, or a neat trick? Drop a comment in and let us know…

When you are asked the question “How do you deal with SEO on your site” – how do you answer.

Do you have an SEO agency monitoring your site? Do you think about it at all?

There are lot’s of urban myths about how best to SEO your site to win great Google placement, but here’s on fact – SEO starts at home, and the best SEO is simply good content. Not only will this improve your sites Google Juice, but done well it should also be improving the readers (your customers!) experience.

Here are my top 5 tips to growing your own great SEO, and improving the readability of your posts:

1. Think about what you are writing, and not how many keywords there are in the first paragraph, write well and not only will Google like you, but your readers will too!

2. Write something definitive, and be the best. If your subject is ‘Growing a Cactus’ aim to be the best post on the internet about Cactus Growing, and think about the things to include that would make people read AND link to your post.

3. Think about your post title, and keep the title tight. This will mean when other writers describe, and link to, your post, they will be using the same or similar keywords as your title. Google will like the relevance of this.

4. Write, edit, re-write. Write your post and then take some time to edit it (maybe print it and edit by hand, or get someone else to read it). Check for relevance and distraction – stay on topic and conclude or close your post well. There’s nothing worse that losing your track in a post that rambles…

5. Make it easy to read. If your post is long – pages long, remember to make it easy for the reader to pick out the key points. The average person can read approx 250 words a minute (that’s about a normal page) so think about the length of the post and how long you expect the reader to spend. For long posts, bold the key facts, and provide section titles, so it’s easier for readers to scan, and still come to the same conclusion as someone who has read in detail.

SEO can start at home – follow some golden rules to ensure you can deliver great posts.

A bit of information about Geoff:

In the winter of 2009, quadriplegic yachtsman Geoff Holt will set sail in a 60ft, purpose-built, wheelchair-accessible catamaran on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The 3,000 mile journey will take him up to a month to complete, across some of the most hostile waters in the world.

In completing his Challenge, Geoff Holt will become the first quadriplegic to make the journey, unassisted in every aspect of the sailing.

Geoffholt.com

openweb.slipstreamstudio.com

Here is a selection of three great books, must reads for any Digital focused business or start-up:

Four Hour Work Week: I was lucky enough to meet Tim Ferriss at the launch of the book in the UK, and he’s an inspirational character. The book is just like the man! Sure there are some way out ideas, and some outsourcing concepts that you might not ever use, but take away one or two gems and you will have made it worthwhile.

Boo Hoo: Who remembers Boo? You’re probably remembering it for all the wrong reasons – massive burn rate, bad management, product choice. It was the biggest web failure of the dot com boom, and it’s demise is documented well by it’s founders. I can’t imagine anyone making these mistakes again but its enjoyable and interesting to recap the story that shaped the dot com world we work in today.

Purple Cow: Seth Godin books are a must read for any marketeer, and for anyone involved in shaping a web product Purple Cow is a stand out book and a ‘read and read again’ must. Purple Cow asks the questions of your marketing strategy that you should be thinking of before taking any product to market. Great cover too!

(NB – one for the bloggers – a great video on blog strategies from Tim Ferris over at his blog fourhourblog.com)

No Amazon links here – these books are easy to get hold of, so no excuses!

What’s on the shelves of your office / workspace?

To enter head on over to this post and follow the simple instructions.

You can win a free Business plan for a yr (worth $588), or runners up prizes of T-Shirts and Stickers.