I’m looking for a freelance PR person or small PR company to help to spread the word about the services we provide, the results we achieve and the good we can do.

What I DO want:

• someone who can write press releases, and will only do so when there’s a story / angle, no matter what I think
• someone with good relationships with journalists who will write good things about the Internet Marketing industry
• someone who can get me interviews with relevant publications, on and offline
• someone who can ensure that when an ‘Internet Marketing Expert’ is quote, that ‘expert’ is me
• someone who can be as passionate about the NikkiPilkington.com name as I am, and spot opportunities I may not see

What I don’t want:

• press releases that have no angle or story
• online press release submissions with no follow up / reasoning
• someone to send out random spam emails to publications on my behalf

A few things to consider:

• I live my life by email and instant message, so you need to communicate with me in this way – I’m not a phone person
• I don’t want to have to chase you up for every little thing, I need to know what is going on at all times
• I’m not buying purely on price
• I don’t care if you’ve not worked for a company similar to mine before, I do care that you show that you understand what I want and can tell me how you’re going to achieve it
• I want an open and honest billing structure, with details of what I’ll get for my money, and how you intend to report those things back to me

If you think you’d like to be a part of this ‘project’ (which I am sure will change and become bigger as we get to know eachother more), and can bring a few ideas of your own to the table then please feel free to drop me a line to nikki@nikkipilkington.com. (And of course, please email me if you have any questions)

BE AWARE: I will not take phone calls on this matter – whether to ask initial questions, or to follow up proposals. Everyone who submits a proposal will get a reply and will be considered. It’s up to you how detailed or short you make your proposal; just make it stand out!

Also please know that this process could take a couple of weeks due to other things going on in my life right now – I won’t be making an instant decision, but neither will I waste anyone’s time.

EDITED TO ADD:

This page has had a fair bit of interest, and a few responses – I just want to clarify a few things:

• When I said no phone calls, I really did mean it ….
• That includes emails saying ‘give me a call today and we’ll chat’
• If you want to come and ’see me in my office’ you haven’t done your research
• Those telling me that they can help ‘get my name out on the internet’ – you haven’t done yours either
• I’m not looking for SEO or Social Media help (sensing a theme here?)
  
• If you’ve sent me a price, and not asked any question or shown that you know anything about me, then I’m probably not going to be interested
• Much as I appreciate barter offers, I want to pay someone cold hard cash for this, so there are no grey areas. If you wnt to return that cash to me for my services, that’s up to you!

I’m not asking for all your ideas, which I will then steal and take to the lowest bidder, I’m asking for someone who can show that they know who I am, what I want, and can come up with some thoughts of their own.

I’m easy to find out about – even my mum knows what I’m up to through the powers of Facebook, Google and Twitter!

To find out more, I turned to one of my favourite sources of news, Mashable - who seem to be saying that it’s not so much the app itself that has a virus, but the emails and sites claiming to be able to fix it. Confused yet?

All I know is that until I removed the app, de-fanned it and detagged myself from all photos I was in, my Facebook friends feed was back to normal. Prior to that it was only showing old updates, and people were in the wrong categories.

So, I would suggest that if your feed is going screwy, you:

• Block the Facebook Fan Check application – you should be able to find it by searching for ‘fan check’ in the search box on your profile (or use this link http://www.facebook.com/fancheck?v=feed&story_fbid=231758205581&ref=mf )
• Remove yourself from the page’s fans list
• Visit any pictures that have tagged you and detag yourself
• Log out of Facebook
• Log back in

This worked for us, and the handful of clients who have asked for our help.

So, does the Facebook Fan Check application contain a virus? I honestly don’t know – I can’t see that it would have been accepted by Facebook if it had, but I guess stranger things have happened. All I know is that it does seem to affect the feed of people using it (unless the timing is a massive coincidence!) and removing it fixes that problem.

I’ll err on the safe side and stay away from it

UPDATE: It appears that people who have had nothing to do with Fan Check have had Facebook feed problems too, so the plot thickens – I’m keeping it blocked though

UPDATE 2: Here’s Snopes’ take on it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2009/09/14/about-that-alleged-fan-check-application-virus-on-facebook.htm

Mike from Flantoons exceeeded our expectations again with this fab cartoon – we hope you like it as much as we did!

Today I’ll share with you my ‘newsletter signup strategy’.

I get about 20-30 newsletter signups per day. They all get a lovely little ‘thanks’ message from the Aweber system that I use, which is clearly automated. In 4 years or so of using Aweber, I’ve never yet had one person come back to one of those automated thank yous with a response.

So, over the last couple of months I’ve set aside a little time to email new subscribers and thank them for signing up. I also ask if there’s anything I can help with. It takes me little time (yes it’s a cut and paste email, but personalised with their name) and has proved well worth it.

In that time I’ve had about 30 emails back that have resulted in dialogue, 6 people asking for more info on specifics of my service, and 2 people have become clients. When I asked the clients what tipped it for them, both said that the fact I’d bothered to email them when they signed up to my newsletter led them to believe I was more interested in them, and led them to finding out more bout me rather than just waiting for my newsletter.

So, why not pay more attention to your newsletter subscribers? It only takes a little time, but you could be reaping the rewards.

I used Freemind, which is .. er, free, so if you want the mindmap and don’t have software to read it, download it and you can!

The MM has the steps from the original checklist included, as well as a couple of miscellaneous ones that weren’t on the original. It also has links included where you see the red arrows.

If anyone wants to tidy it up and make it look better, I’m happy to cobrand it with them

Click here for the mindmap

THE PDF DOWNLOAD IS HERE

Please feel free to share this list, as long as you give it away for free and keep both mine and Chris’s details intact.

You can download the social-media-marketing-checklist if you’re impatient – the rather long blog post below simply explains my reasonings behind each item. (Please note, these are MY thoughts, not Chris’s, so we might not 100% agree on the whys, even if we agree on some of the whats…)

Daily Social Media Marketing Checklist

Twitter

1. Retweet 7 things – to my mind, retweeting is the life blood of Twitter, and sharing of information is key. But let’s not forget, retweeting someone’s tweets instils a sense of loyalty too, and they’re more likely to retweet your items in return. DON’T retweet willy nilly – before doing so think “Are my followers going to be interested in this?”
2. Reply to at least 5 people, with FULL replies – Twitter should be a 2 way thing – use it to build relationships, not as a broadcast medium. Don’t just reply with a ‘I agree’ or ‘Thanks’ – take the time to reply with a full message, a thought, a question.
3. Recommend 1 person you admire – bring their tweets to the attention of your followers – you’ve found your followers someone new to follow, and you never know, it might catch on and you’ll be the focus of the next recommendation. People like to be appreciated – if someone’s done something good for you, let the Twitterverse know!
4. Follow back at least 10 people - not following for the sake of following, but check out your new followers and see who’s worth following back. Chris and I both use an autofollow system (I cull the spammers, broadcasters and people of no interest to me regularly), but you could do this by hand if you have the time.
5. 10 minutes of polite chit chat goes far – it’s easy to ignore people who send you messages if you don’t know them, but spending a few minutes chatting might be the difference between them remembering and recommending you or just dumping you for being rude
6. Tweet 3 business related Tweets – these could be related to your industry, or links to your own blogs or products / services – people seeing your tweets will begin to align you with that industry in their mind. After all, a lot of us are using Twitter to promote our business.
7. Tweet 2 personally related Tweets – let people see the person behind the Twitter account. I’m not talking about ‘I had a cheese sandwich for lunch’, but the more people feel they know about you, the more they feel they’ve built up a relationship with you.
8. Ask at least one question that requires answers - asking questions and discussing the answers moves Twitter back into that 2 way medium, and who knows what nuggets of info you’ll find out? My favourite is to ask people what 3 words they think of when they see my name – the answers are illuminating (and sometimes a little bit odd!)

Facebook

1. Check in on Birthdays on the homepage - it takes 2 seconds to post a Happy Birthday message on someone’s wall, or drop them a Facebook message. Posting on someone’s wall means that all their friends get to see your message too. Chris recommends sending the Birthday Wishes by email for the surprise factor, which is also cool and maybe a little more personal!
2. Respond to any comments on your wall - it’s polite to respond to any comments on your wall, if they warrant a reply, so get into the habit of doing so before you forget!
3. Post at least one status message daily – keep people updated and keep you in their minds – don’t get over eager though and post all of your Twitter updates (including retweets and @ messages) into your Facebook status feed – it’s one of the quickest ways to find yourself ‘hidden’! Use the different parts of the status update – make a comment, share a video, share a link – promote conversation where possible!
4. Share at least 3 interesting updates you find - if someone posts an update you like, use the ’share’ button to post it to your profile – much like retweeting on Twitter it promotes the originator and allows you to share new things with your contacts.
5. Comment on at least 7 updates or status messages – it doesn’t take long to put a quick comment or ‘like’ on the status updates on your feed page – and people like to have comments; who knows, they may reciprocate Also remember that comments you post on people’s links or updates are available for all of their contacts to view.
6. Leave a message on 2 fan pages – spend a few seconds posting on a fan page – not only will you help the page out, you’ll reach people you’re not connected to
7. Leave a message on the walls of 2 people – not been in touch with someone for a while? A simple ‘hey, how are you doing’ message on their wall shows them you’re thinking of them and keeps you in touch without taking up loads of yours or their time.
8. Respond to event invitations – I respond to all event invitations by posting on their wall, whether I can attend or not. If I can’t I wish them well and apologise for not being able to make it. A link to my website mens they can find my details if they want to, and I’ve made many new contacts this way.
9. Recommend at least one person to your contacts – OK, you might not want to do this every day, but in the same way as you’d recommend someone on twitter, why not do the same on Facebook  you can do this in your status update and it doesn’t take long. I sometimes post details of pages I’ve become a fan of here.
10. Add at least one update to your group / fan page - I’m as guilty as anyone of not always doing this, but the worst thing you can do with a group / fan page / business page is leave it stagnant – update it daily even if you think no-one is reading!

LinkedIn

1. Accept any invitations it makes sense to accept – a minute or so each day accepting invitations means they don’t pile up and become unmanageable. If you don’t think it’s sensible to be connected, then by all means don’t accept.
2. Enter any business cards to invite them to LinkedIn – if you network offline it makes sense to connect to the people you’ve met on LinkedIn (and any other online networks they’re a part of)
3. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer answers - showcase your expertise with a quick answer or two – I’ve gained business from this, and you neverknow what opportunities may arise.
4. Provide 1 recommendation every few days – if you’ve worked with someone or are happy to recommend them, then write an honest recommendation -  people like to be appreciated, and you’ll find that you get honest recommendations in return.
5. Update your status at least once a day – people seem to forget that there’s a status update facility on LinkedIn too, and it feeds into an ‘activity feed’ that is shown on your contacts’ LinkedIn home page.
6. Make at least one introduction - again this doesn’t need to be every day, but if you see someone needs or wants something and you know someone who can help – introduce them – it makes sense and makes all three of you happy!

Blogs

1. Reply to at least 5 comments on your blogs – if people have taken the time to comment on your blog, it’s polite to reply to at least a few of them where possible. It makes them more likely to reply again in future, and stimulates conversation on your blog.
2. Comment on a couple of your commentators’ blogs – follow the links your commentators leave, and have a quick read of their blogs. Repay their comments by leaving a few of your own. You get to make them happy and leave a link to your site. Win/win I say!
3. Stumble or Socially Bookmark your commenters’ blogs – if you like what they write, give them a bit of a traffic boost by Stumbling them – they might do the same for you.
4. Write the occasional blog post promoting another blog – not only is it an easy blog post to write, new content foryour blog / site, but it helps your readers find new blogs (so they love you) and the owner of the blog you’ve recommended will love you for ever more. (This may be a slight exaggeration).
5. Email a synopsis of recent posts at least once a month – I have to admit I’m a bit lax on this, but when I have done it regularly (to members of an opt in list of course) it has resulted inmore traffic, more comments, and ultimately more enquiries.
6. Find 2 new blogs to comment on every day – it’s easy to stick with the blogs you know, but new blogs are cropping up all the time – take a few minutes to find them and leave a couple of comments. You get to read new things, leave your ‘brand’ in new places, and help out a blog that might need comments.

Forums

I’ve generalised here as you could be a member of many forums, and they’re not all the same.

1. Reply to at least 2 threads every day – it’s easy to let your forums go when you’rebusy, but it really takes no time at all to scan through recent threads and drop in a couple of replies. You’re helping to keep the forum going, making sure people don’t forget about you, and people love people who reply to their threads.
2. Post one new thread – I admit this one sounds easier than it is, and it’s not great t post for posting’s sake – but if you have news, have read something in the news, or simply want to raise an issue, don’t wait for someone else to do it – start a thread yourself!
3. Make a point of thanking people who reply to you – a takes seconds to drop someone a line to say thanks – they’ll appreciate it more than you imagine.
4. Accept any connections that make sense – lots of forums allow you to ‘connect’ with other members – it’s worth accepting any connections that make sense to you, and maybe initiating a few too.
5. Recommend a member’s blog or website and say why – in the same way as you’d recommend someone on Twitter etc, a quick post saying why you like someone’s blog or website, especially if they’ve done work for you, goes a long way. Some forums have specific groups for this, so make sure you’re witin the rules. And granted, you wouldn’t do this every day, but there’s nothing to stop you from replying to someone’s posts on a thread with a quick ‘love your blog’ message.

I’ve left the Misc space for you to fill in yourselves – you’ll probably have your own ideas, and places that you go to that I haven’t mentioned, so feel free to mention anything you add in the comments below!

DID YOU MISS THE PDF CHECKLIST DOWNLOAD?

If you’ve read this far, award yourself a fun sized Mars Bar, and take with you my thanks

Also, a massive thank you to Chris Brogan for kicking me into finally putting this checklist together – it’s been on my to do list for months and without his blog post I wouldn’t have gotten around to it at all!

And don’t panic that all of the stuff on the checklist will take ages – you’ll soon have it down to the time it takes you to have a coffee and file your email on a morning!

But every so often someone sends me something that makes my blood boil. Well yesterday I had 2 emails from 2 separate people, who I’d given some advice to on public forums.

I won’t name them here, but I will cover the downright lies they’ve been told, and the bad service they’ve received from their SEO consultants.

To clarify: SEO Consultant 1 is a web designer specialising in SEO & Social media, SEO Consultant 2 is a company using dubious telesales tactics and mentioned in several places elsewhere for ripping customers off.

SEO Consultant 1 told his client that:

• Google no longer uses title tags
• The META description isn’t important
• Link exchange is the way to good listings
• No-one searches for your search phrase anyway

This was blatantly to cover up the fact that he’d done no work on the site and achieved nothing.

Well, let’s put those lies to bed:

• Google DOES use the title tag – in fact it’s one of the most important parts of onsite SEO. Granted, it’s not the be all and end all of SEO, but it is a major part, and without it, you may as well not bother. If every page of your website simply has your company name as it’s title tag, then you’re not going to be found for anything else. And don’t get me started on the dreaded “Home Page” title tag. The simple fact was, the SEO had done no title tag work and was claiming that they’re not used any more by Google in order to dupe his client. That’s wrong.
• The META description IS important – it’s the description that Google shows when your site shows up in the results, and can be the difference between someone clicking on your listing or not. Of course, if you don’t have any listings anyway because your SEO hasn’t done the work they’re supposed to, then I guess the description tag doesn’t really matter after all…
• Link exchange CAN be a good way to help your listings if everything else is in place, but the link exchange page that this client was given was a FFA (Free For All) links page where anyone could sign up and no checks were made. This meant that the site could be linking to unrelated sites, and there was no check in place to ensure that reciprocal links were given. I’m not a big fan of reciprocal links, and it’s been proven that one way links from well respected sites work far better to enhance your SEO, so although this cold be said to help, I think the client was misled.
• “No-one searches for your search phrase anyway” – well, I’m sorry, but this makes me REALLY angry! In the first instance, why wasn’t proper keyword research done to find out whether the phrase chosen was a) suitable, b) achievable and c) worth optimising for in the first place. If hardly anyone is searching for it (which, as it happens, was a blatant lie – it’s one o the most competitive searches on the web), why on earth bother optimising for it in the first place?

The client involved had paid for a year’s SEO up front and from what I could tell, received very little. The site had 9 backlinks showing in Google, of which 6 were internal links from the site itself, there was no Webmaster Tools account, and in 5 months there had been no reporting, no help and advice, no status checks – nothing.

SEO Consultant 2 promised his client:

• Full website optimisation
• In 6 languages
• Keyword research
• Ongoing reporting

For just £295 up front and then £50 a month.

As the £50 was due to come out of his bank acount, the client asked what had been done so far. He was presented with a 3 page word document telling him what to change the title and META tags on 3 pages of his site to read. As he said to me:

It can’t have taken them more than 30 minutes to produce, and I could have done it myself!

So, far from the ‘full website optimisation’ of his 100+ pages, he got given (bad) advice on how to change 3 of his pages. No content advice. No Webmaster Tools account. No offsite optimisation advice. No page structure advice. Nothing. Just 3 badly formatted pages of a Word document that to be honest my 9 year old stepdaughter couldprobably have written better, and her first language is French!

No mention of the 6 languages optimisation he was promised (which is impossible anyway as the site was only in English), or keyword research.

When he queried this, he was told that he can’t have been promised what he was, and all calls are recorded. He asked to hear his recording and this was rapidly altered to ’some calls are recorded’.

Now, I’m going to put the ‘you get what you pay for’ argument to one side – the guy involved feels a bit stupid, but he was promised a lot, and most of it was blatant lies.

Is it any wonder that this industry has such a bad rep?

I will hold my hands up and say i’m not perfect. I’m not the best SEO in the world (there’s always something to learn from someone). And do you know what, I’m scatty as hell! But because of that I’ve put systems in place that mean that every site we optimise goes through a number of checks, and a whole process from start to finish. Once a site is ‘finished’ it goes into another process line that makes sure that ongoing recommendations and reports are sent. I like to think we keep in touch with our clients, and that goes some way towards the many people who come to us because they’re been recommended to by current clients.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Everyone forgets, misplaces something, or has software / hardware issues that mean things don’t go quite to plan. But to blatantly lie to your clients, tell them things that are clearly untrue and provide them with substandard work? That’s scumbaggery of the highest standard.

When I speak with people like the two companies being ripped off above (and no, I didn’t pitch them for work) I feel ashamed to be in the industry I’m in.

Yet again I receive a template email from someone who clearly uses an automated program to send them out, asking me to put their link on my site in return for having my link on their site (still with me?).

The email itself raises a few points, which I’d like to go in to, and then establish this post as my official link exchange policy.

My name is Oxxxxx Pxxxx. I’ve just visited your website nikkipilkington.com

Erm, I don’t believe you.

I was wondering if you’d be interested in exchanging links with my website. I can offer you a HOME PAGE link back
from my Web marketing and SEO guide website which is xxxxxxxx.

I’m sure this exchange would be benefitial for both of our sites,
helping towards increasing our visibility in search engines.

If you are interested, please add the following information to your
website and kindly let me know when it’s ready. I’ll do the same for
you in less than 24 hours, otherwise you can delete my link from your
site.

Title: SEO & Internet Marketing
URL:  removed
Description:  SEO & Internet Marketing for small business websites

If you had indeed looked at my website, you would have noticed a couple of things:

1. I don’t have links to any other sites on there, unless they are contextual and part of something I am writing
2. My site promotes my company’s SEO & Internet Marketing Services

Now, I freely admit that I’m not among the world’s most intelligent people, but I like to think I have a pretty sane head on my shoulders, so WHY ON EARTH do you think I would like to offer a link on my well promoted site to someone who purports to be one of my competitors? And if I, in some moment of deranged madness, agreed to do this, what makes you think that all I would want in return is a link on a page on your site which contains many of my other competitors, and isn’t even in your main navigation?

You finish your email with:

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A SPAM OR AUTOMATED EMAIL, IT’S ONLY A REQUEST FOR A LINK EXCHANGE. YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS NOT BEEN ADDED TO ANY LISTS, AND YOU WILL NOT BE CONTACTED AGAIN. IF YOU’D LIKE TO MAKE SURE WE DON’T CONTACT YOU AGAIN, PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM: (web address removed) OR WRITE AN EMAIL TO (email address removed)

Well, Ms P., I beg to differ. It’s unsolicited and it’s commercial – and I suspect sent out in bulk with an automated program -  that makes it spam. And that’s before we get to your outrageous ‘you will not be contacted again’ rubbish – this is the 3rd such email from you in 2 days, albeit promoting different sites (I don’t want to link to an Indian web hosting company or a watchmaker site either, thanks awfully).

And if I ‘will not be contacted again’, why do I then have to visit some site to fill in a form to ‘be sure’ you don’t contact me again? The same form, by the way, that I have filled in 3 times already.

PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES FOR CONTACTING YOU.

No, no, please accept MY apologies for:

1. Thinking you clearly have no idea how to do your job
2. Writing a blog post about how bloody useless you are, and
3. Pointing out your faults to the lovely people that read my blog

The above is a moronic and useless way to ask for link exchange. The full email also claimed that having my link on their site would ‘benefit me in the search engines’ – having looked at their spammy site I can assure you it wouldn’t.

So, what is my linking policy? Simple – I don’t exchange links. With ANYONE. If a link is on my site it’s because it’s part of a post I’m writing, or it’s relevant to the page it’s on. I dont want to exchange links with holiday sites, hosting sites, watch sites, viagra sites, porn sites – I don’t want to exchange links with any sites at all.

Why? Because exchanging links with unrelated sites does nothing to help your Google listings, despite what people will tell you. Links from sites that are relevant and related to yours may help – but why would I want to advertise my competitors on my own website for the sake of a non-guaranteed ‘boost’ in Google? Even if I didn’t have the listings I wanted (I do) then that would be madness.

I’ll continue link building in the way I always have – slowly and surely, getting one way links from well thought of sites, and not seeing it as the be all and end all of SEO. Because it’s not.

I’ll leave the closing comment to Oxxxxx Pxxxx:

I hope you have a nice day and thank you for your time.

Part of what I love about my job is that no single day is the same as any other – because we have a good range of related services, I can be working on quite a few things throughout the day, and chatting with many different customers and associates, as well as trying to keep order in the offices both here in France and in the UK!

Today, among other things, I’ve been working on:

• Article Marketing for a company providing a solution to cellulite – we’re all going to get it girls, so it’s nice to know how to get rid of it. And I know where I’ll be going for cellulite reduction!
• Article and Blog Marketing for an eco friendly toy company – can’t say much more about this one at the moment but it’s certainly been eye opening!
• Constructing a Wordpress blog site for a client who specialises in software used in Accounting – I really love how Wordpress gives control to the client, in that they can update as and when they want, and there’sa plug in for every eventuality! (I really should get around to putting the blog design packages on the website!)

We’re also restructuring social media marketng services at the mo, and that’s coming along nicely, so I’m quite excited about it.

It’s nice to see the Twitter interview requests coming in – 3 so far this week, which I’m looking forward to doing and will definitely talk about more in the near future!

So it was lovely to wake up on Sunday morning to a stream of emails about the web marketing feature in the Sunday Times. It’s already resulted in business, and we think we’re going to be in the second part next Sunday too!

An extract from the article, which you can read in full here:

A common mistake many firms make is creating a website and expecting visitors to come to it, said web-marketing expert Nikki Pilkington. “A lot of people still expect visitors just to find their website. Making your site visible to search engines is vital if you want to attract traffic.”

Before you spend money paying search-engine-optimisation (SEO) experts to get your site high on search-engine listings, there are simple things you can do yourself, free of charge, said Pilkington.