Brainstorm Design Blog

With London 2012 less than six months away, do you have a strategy to exploit the likely business opportunities? Here are just a few random examples of services that spectators will be looking for:

• Tours of London
• Accommodation near the venues
• Umbrellas for spectators
• Food for spectators that have special dietary needs e.g. Kosher or Halal food

For several years, I was a BNI member. I was given a business card folder with the business cards of all the people in my chapter. If I had a meeting with a client, I would present the client with my folder and ask them if they needed the services of anyone listed there.

Now I do the same thing, but using my iPhone. Typically, I will have one to one meeting with a client and they will list a particular problem e.g. they are unhappy with their accountant, they are looking for a courier, they need legal advice. All I need to do is get my iPhone out, switch on my LinkedIn app and look up the details of trusted suppliers who can help them.

We are excited to announce an important change in our company. From now on, Brainstorm Design is going to be known as Brainstorm Digital.

This reflects the new and exciting direction in which we have evolved over the past few years. From a beginning purely designing websites, we now focus on helping clients with a broader online strategy, showing them how to use digital marketing to bring in new business.  We have become experts in search engine optimisation, pay-per-click campaigns, email campaigns, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And of course, the websites that we build are designed with one purpose in mind: converting visitors into paying clients. 

Dear Danny,

I would like to promote my business on LinkedIn. I am a member of a number of LinkedIn groups that include people I would like to do business with. Is it ok to promote my services on LinkedIn group discussions?

Best regards,

Brian

When your marketing budget is tight, it's tempting to consider having your SEO done by an offshore company. But if you have to go down this route, at least take the trouble to ensure your SEO consultant has a good command of English.

A major part of SEO involves writing copy on other websites that will link back to you. E.g. If you run a website about outdoor sports and someone has written a blog about Skiing, you can comment on that blog and also include a link back to your website. Blog comments have high credibility on Google, but if they're not well written, the blogger won't publish them.

Over the last year, I have attended a number of networking meetings hosted by various organisations and have noticed a similar pattern with all of them in that I build better contacts at lunchtime meetings compared to early morning breakfast meetings.

I think there is a very good reason for this. Lunchtime meetings usually take up the best part of an afternoon and anyone who is willing to give up this amount of time is serious about networking. In contrast, the early morning meetings (where everything is over by 9) feel rushed. Everyone is in a hurry to get to work. No one has time to talk. But that is the wrong attitude. You can't rush networking. You need time to talk to people. 

Do you go to breakfast or lunchtime networking meetings? What works for you?

Brainstorm Design will be closed between Christmas Eve and New Years Day. We close on Friday 23rd December at 2.30pm and re-open on Tuesday 3rd January at 9am.

In the event of an urgent enquiry, please call our out of hours emergency number, 07958 358793.

We wish our customers a Merry Christmas and a successful new year.

Are you running a competition or special offer? How do you remind your audience on Twitter without boring them?

Well the good news is that tweets have a very short shelf life, so anything you tweeted about yesterday has probably been forgotten.  Nevertheless, some members of your audience will be inquisitive and will read through all the recent tweets on your timeline. You don't want them to see that you're repeating yourself.

They way to deal with this is to rewrite the tweet so it appears that you are saying something slightly different each time.

Is it me or does the Christmas shutdown get longer each year?

Christmas day is still ten days away and it has already gone quiet. The phone has stopped ringing. The deluge of emails has gone down to a trickle. People have either gone on holiday or are in party mode. 

I can understand people taking the week off between Christmas and new year, but many businesses have effectively shut down till the 9th January as many employees won't be getting back from their holidays till the week following new year.

Even in supposedly "lazy" France, they work between Christmas and New Year. I remember visiting Paris for the Millenium and was surprised to discover that most people spent new year's eve at work.

I love this time of the year, and I'm looking forward to putting my feet up for a few days, but with the UK facing the worst economic conditions since the war, can the UK really afford to close down for the best part of a month?!