Chromebook diaries – Should you buy a Chromebook?

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Dell Chromebook, a viable Windows alternativeIn July 2014 I bought a new laptop. It wasn’t a Windows device, nor an Apple Macbook- it was a Chromebook. Having been a business/power user of Windows since the mid-90s it was a major leap. Although it was less of a leap than it might seem because I  still kept my main PC in the office for most of my work, my laptop being used for working away from the office, making presentations, delivering coaching and use at home.

I wrote a number of posts on the subject,

So, as the end of 2018 approaches, and my Chromebook is 4.5 years old – how has it been?

Well, 1st off, it’s the longest time I’ve ever kept a laptop.

From a software perspective, it’s totally up to date, still receiving automatic updates from Google central and, what’s more, unlike every one of my previous Windows laptops, performance has not fallen off. I can still open more than 10 tabs in my browser without any slowing down. I can access all of the Google Docs suite for word-processing, spreadsheeting and presenting, I can use Office 365 in the cloud for MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint, still read the news, play a few games and do whatever I need to do.

The only thing that has slipped is battery life. I reckon it’s down to about 4.5 to 5 hours now so I cant go a full day anymore. However, that’s a battery issue, endemic to all devices and a simple battery swap would soon restore the status quo

Do I need a new laptop yet?
No.

Would I like a new laptop?
Of course, I’m a techie and a geek and we thrive on new stuff but it’s not a priority.

When it comes to a change, what would I do?
Now, that’s a tough question. I still use Windows in the office and still have a need to work when out and about so nothing has changed in that respect. There are many more lightweight Windows laptops around with long battery lives but to get any decent performance the price is still too high. Way beyond any value that I would obtain so, when it’s time it’ll be another Chromebook although I would go for one with a higher resolution screen. And that’s it – that’s all that I’d ask for.

And if you need any help with technology, websites, SEO or marketing all you have to do is pick up the phone and give me a call on 01793 238020 or send andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk an email for a free, zero obligation chat about your needs.

How many words is enough?

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A lot of you will know that I keep my finger on the pulse of SEO. SEO is what I do 60% of the time, after all.

I always push the need for “fresh content” on website because it’s well known that it really helps with your SEO. However, I am often asked how long a blog post or web page should be.

Graph showing Total Word Count Vs Google PositionIf you search on Google for the answer, you’ll find that people are recommending 1,000 to 2,000 words as the minimum for “optimum SEO” and in a recent post Backlinko quote research that indicates that the average piece of content that ranks on Page 1 of Google contains 1,890 words.

However, just because you can write the magic amount of words doesn’t mean your post will gain a P1 ranking and here’s why.

There are over 440m blogs across the internet but if you take Medium and Tumblr in to account then there must be over 1 billion blogs and with billions of searches conducted every day, and thousands of new updates posted everyday, there’s an awful lot of competition so, how do you win the content war?

First off, throw away the word count target.
Why?

Because if I tell you to write 1,890 words you’ll aim to do precisely that and a short update will be padded and padded with unnecessary filler which means that even if it does rank – people just won’t read it. On the other hand if you need 3,000 words to do a subject justice you’ll edit it so heavily that it just won’t wont make sense. So here’s my first tip.

Tip 1 – make your content as long as it needs to be
Obviously, from an SEO perspective, the longer it is, but you also need to write really well to maintain reader engagement.

Tip 2 – Be Original & Ride The Wave
Sounds contradictory I know but If you piggyback on a news article you’ll simply be one of many “me too” writers, so use your knowledge, skill and experience to approach a topic from a different angle. Tools such as UberSuggest, BuzzSumo and Google Trends will help you find popular topics to use your skills and experience on.

Tip 3 – Ask your readers
You could use Social Media and Survey Monkey to actually ask your readers what they would like to know about. I know, daring isn’t it!

Tip 4 – get writing
Remember, once you have written something, find some relevant images to illustrate your message and then re-read what you have written to make sure it makes sense. Use tools such as the Hemmingway App and Read Able to ensure readability (aim for a reading age of around 12-13) and then, finally, read it out loud to yourself. If you read in your head, you’ll read what you think yo have written but by reading out loud your brain has to analyse every word and translate the visual signal in to an audio signal and you’ll frequently find yourself thinking “I’d never say things like that” and every time to reach that point then go back to the edit screen and revise.

All that I would like to add is a hearty “good luck and good writing” and if you need any help with your content just get in touch – andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or 01793 238020 for a no-fee, obligation free chat.

Oh, and how long is this article? It’s just 568 words

And if you need any help with technology, websites, SEO or marketing all you have to do is pick up the phone and give me a call on 01793 238020 or send andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk an email for a free, zero obligation chat about your needs.

What information do I have to publish on my website?

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Andy, checking out websites as part of his workAs you might imagine, I spend quite a lot of time looking at websites. I look at client sites to see what can be improved, I look at potential client sites to put bids and proposals together and I look for sites that I can prospect to. I also look at other sites to keep my knowledge up to date – and that’s just during the working day.

I see good sites, OK sites, indifferent sites and some real shockers but it does not matter how good (or how poor) the site, whether pennies, pounds or thousands was spent on the development loads miss out on the provision of basic information. A lot of which is a legal requirement when a business is using a website to promote themselves.

As an example, a lot of businesses provide a web form as a means of communication despite the fact that a lot of people don’t like forms – especially ones that ask for too much information. Part of the dislike is due to the fact that sending a form leaves no record of what was sent, nor when it was sent, unless it automatically forwards a copy to the senders email address but there’s no way to know this – until you’ve sent the form (unless the form actually informs you of this)

Gavel - representing a legal requirementThere was a piece of legislation passed in 2002 called the eCommerce Regulations that applied to ALL companies using the internet, not just those selling online and perhaps that’s why a lot of businesses don’t comply. Either that or it’s simply a lack of knowledge either within the organisation or by the web developer. Either way, ignorance of the law is no excuse – as the law says.

So, what does the law require you to publish in an “easily, permanently and directly available location” on your website?

Minimum information to be provided on your website

  • The name of your business, which might be different from the trading name and any difference MUST be explained. For example, ABC.co, is the trading name of ABC Enterprises Ltd.
  • The geographic address of the business must be provided
  • Your email address. A “Contact us” form without providing an email address is not sufficient
  • Your Company Registration Number, if yours is a Registered business, together with the place of registration
  • Your VAT Registration Number, if you are VAT registered
  • If you are subject to an overseeing body, such as the FCA, then you need to provide the governing agency AND your registration number.
  • Prices – if you are quoting prices (or selling) online your pricing should be clear, unambiguous and state whether prices are inclusive of tax and delivery costs, or not.

If you need help with compliance, or with anything else relating to your website or marketing activities then give me a call for an initial, free and zero obligation chat on 01793 238020 or email andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk

How much should you budget for SEO services?

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How much does SEO cost?

Person looking confusedThe real answer is “how long is a piece of string” but you don’t want to hear that, you want to nail down your costs so that you can shop around and get the best deal for your business – note that I did not say “cheapest”

The first problem is that every SEO requirement is different, there are many variables that impact on the amount of work required and here’s a small selection;

    • How up to date is your website?
    • How SEO “friendly” is your web design?
    • How fast do you need SEO to take effect?
    • How does your site compare to the competition?
    • How many competitors do you have?
    • How well optimised are their sites?
    • What’s their likely budget?

This latter is not about understanding their absolute spend, more about an overview based on the simple fact that the larger the competitor the more likely that they will have a greater budget than you.

Good, Cheap, Fast. Yoou can have any 2 but not all 3Looking at the Quality, Fast, Cheap Venn, you’ll see that you can have

  • Cheap & Fast
  • Fast & Good
  • Cheap & Good

but you can’t have Cheap, Fast AND Good, it’s just not possible

In reality, it’s not about how “good” your SEO is, it just has to be better than the competition. I’ve worked with a couple of businesses where the competition was clueless about SEO so it was a relatively simple task to push them higher in the rankings but most businesses these days are aware of SEO so the task is tougher.

Expectations & Reality

A recent survey reported that less than half of all small businesses have an SEO budget. Of those with one the majority (71 percent) spent less than £100/month. That’s right – 71 percent of small businesses budget £0 – £99/month for SEO.

This is further supported by the inquiries I receive from prospective clients. Here’s the breakdown for a pretty typical quarter in 2017

Monthly SEO enquiries/budget

This is why your in-box is spammed with promises of “guaranteed first-page results” for £99. SEO spammers know the market. Their promise of first page results is hard to resist and, in my experience, most business owners have no idea how SEO works, they are far too busy running their businesses to spend time learning SEO and so may very well opt for the least expensive quote.

Most businesses are process driven, to get from A to B you follow certain process to get there. A lot of people assume SEO works in a similar way, they tend to treat it as a commodity and, as a consequence select their SEO on price, frequently choosing the least expensive [cheapest]

The Cost of Cheap SEO

I’ve been doing SEO since 2001 and over the years I been a member of many internet marketing groups on Linkedin and I never cease to be amazed by the number of people with a little knowledge who pose as SEO professionals and take on clients. How do I know they lack experience? It’s questions like “I have just taken on a client that wants to rank for “keyword x” – how do I do it?” that tends to give the game away.

A close second to asking “how” is the use of link schemes, specifically private blog networks (PBNs), without ever explaining the risk to clients. If you were to simply throw your money away by hiring an incompetent to carry out your SEO that would be bad enough. The problem is that the damage does not stop at the waste of money – it’s far more serious than that. The damage that someone who does not know what they are doing can go much deeper. It could attract a Google penalty and virtually wipe out a website’s visibility on the web.

As a consequence, even if you don’t choose EOMS to conduct your SEO I would encourage you to insist on using tactics that comply with Google Webmaster Guidelines, as I do.

Managing Your Resources

With Google using more than 200 ranking factors it’s easy to become intimidated and paralysed. However, there are some key areas that, if properly managed, will go along way towards great SEO results. Your site should 

    • be easily accessible to search engines.
    • follow Google Webmaster Guidelines for SEO best practices.
    • perform quickly (pages opening in 3 seconds or faster).
    • work well on all devices, mobile, tablet, and desktop.
    • feature content that is unique,interesting and of value
    • have regular fresh content added

Set Goals

As with everything in business, Goals are good. They help focus the mind and ensure that everybody knows what’s expected.

When setting goals, it’s important to keep a few things in mind.

  • Your goals need to be SMART
      • Specific
      • Measurable
      • Achievable
      • Realistic – Stretch goals are fine, but pie in the sky benchmarks can actually work as a disincentive.
      • Timed – You need to give the campaign time to work. According to Google, “in most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit.”

    At one time, success was measured solely by where your website would be featured on the Search Results Pages. While this remains an important metric, it’s no longer the most important metric. The most important are those that deliver real value, such as:

    • Improving organic sessions by x percent.
    • Increasing conversions by y per month.
    • Increasing revenues by z percent.

Developing a Budget

And here we get to the nub of the matter. Your goals will define the strategy required needed to succeed. This will then provide the information required to develop an action/implementation plan which defines the work required and, consequently, the budget necessary to achieve the desired goals.

Remember though, that the budget needs to take account of the time to properly plan, implement and tweak a campaign in order to evaluate its success.

That said, the right budget is one you can afford, without losing sleep, for a minimum of four (and ideally 12) months and the lower the budget, the longer the journey

How much should you spend on your SEO?

Well, £99/month just isn’t enough to do it properly. If you are hiring an SEO company expect to pay from £200-300 per month.

If you can’t afford to retain a top level SEO, there are some options. The most common being a one-time website SEO audit with actionable recommendations that you could implement yourself.

Just fixing your website will often lead to a meaningful boost in organic traffic. Content development and keyword analysis are other areas where you can get help from a pro for a one time fixed rate. Another option is to become an expert and do it yourself.

SEO Cost Calculator: Measuring Organic Search (SEO) ROI

Following is a calculator commonly used (incorrectly) for measuring return on investment for SEO.Best Widget Ever - ROI calculator


Of course, the above calculation has a major flaw, it fails to take into consideration the lifetime value of a new customer.

Online businesses need repeat orders/sales in order to grow. By not calculating the lifetime value of a new customer the true ROI is grossly understated.

The right way to calculate ROI is to build lifetime value into the calculator as seen here:

Best Widget Ever - ROI over a customer lifetime

The Takeaway

Unlike Pay Per Click – (Google/Bing Ads etc) an organic search campaign won’t yield immediate results and, even when executed to perfection, it takes time for Google to recognise and reward these efforts.

That said, the traffic earned from these efforts is often the most consistent and best converting among all channels.

And if you need help with your SEO then please get in touch. Give me a call on 01793 238020 or send an email to andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk for a free, obligation free chat about your SEO and/or anything else to do with your website and digital footprint

To Carousel or not to Carousel, that is the question.

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Carousels, (aka Image Sliders) the name given to those annoying sliding images that seem to feature on most websites these days. As you might have gathered, I’m not a fan but is my dislike subjective (taste) or objective (they don’t add anything).

It’s objective and here’s why

1/ the human eye doesn’t respond well to movement – or maybe it responds too well.
We may not live in the jungle anymore, but we did once. Our brains are wired to react to sudden movement, and this movement is called a saccade. It’s our retina’s uncontrollable response to movement, and the speed of movement during each saccade can’t be controlled. The eyes move as fast as they are able.

This might have been great when hunting prey in prehistoric times whilst trying to make sure the odd sabre toothed tiger can’t creep up on us, but today, it’s your slider fighting for your attention.

2/ They take control away from the visitor
Visitors like to be in control when they arrive on your website. They don’t want to see something they have no use for, and frankly, the whole point of your website should be to give your visitor what they came for.

When you put an auto-rotating image slider on your homepage you take control out of your user’s hands and give it to the slider. You know what follows? Disaster. Image sliders keep rotating, attention keeps being grabbed and web visitors loose patience. This is not only frustrating, but is terrible for usability according to UX Movement.

3/ They take up Space and hardly get clicked?
How many times have you watched a slider waiting for something useful to appear? If it’s more than once then you’re in the minority.

You already know image sliders are so fast and distracting, visitors tend to ignore them. Erik Runyon ran a study at Notre Dame University  to test and measure the number of clicks made on the sliders in comparison to homepage visits and you know what?

The study revealed a mere 1% of visitors clicked on a feature on the slider. That’s like the unicorn of bad conversions.

4/ They reduce visibility
The Neilson Norman group (founded by Jakob Nielsen, “the Guru of website usability” New York Times) group ran a usability study, where a user was attempting to search special deals on Siemens washing machines. The user arrived on the Siemens homepage that looked like this with a deal on a washing machine at the top of the page.

  • The user didn’t spot the deal
  • She ignored the offer placed in a small box in the left-hand corner.
  • Then she ignored the big banner splattered on the page, even though it had an image of a washing machine on it.

Because the image slider looked so much like an ad, she left the website without buying the machine, costing Siemens an easy sale.

Jakob Nielson also pointed out that international users and users with low literacy get easily distracted and frustrated by the image sliders, as they are unable to read through one offer before another slides into place.

The bottom line is image sliders are ineffective. And to reinforce this idea, here’s a slider by WebAIM. [If you only follow one link, you should follow this one]

Why you should not use an image carousel

And if you need help with your SEO and/or anything else to do with your website and digital footprint then please get in touch. Give me a call on 01793 238020 or send an email to andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk for a free, zero obligation chat.

Why you should be sending letters

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Bank Robber Willie SuttonWillie Sutton is a well known American bank robber (bio on Wiki). Although always taking a pistol or Thompson sub-machine gun he never killed anyone, in fact he never even fired his weapon. When captured, his gun was always found to be empty and when asked about this he simply replied “I never carry a loaded gun because somebody may get hurt”. In fact if a woman screamed or a baby cried he stopped the robbery and left.

Why are we talking about Willie?
Simple, he made a statement that has ramifications on your marketing even today, when asked why he robbed banks Willie replied “Because that’s where the money is”

So, how does that reflect on marketing? Simple – when you are marketing your business, you should always look where the money (your customers) is.

Where is the money?
According to marketing expert Drayton Bird, Millennials may not be the ideal target, they are buried in debt, apparently 40% of 18-34 year olds live with their parents and struggle to find well paying jobs.

Baby boomers, on the other hand are less stressed about money having enjoyed decades of cheap housing, safe jobs (some guaranteed for life), solid pensions and huge stock market gains. So, perhaps that’s who your marketing should be focussing on.

A recent survey has also turned up some very interesting statistics about Baby Boomers. Apparently they respond better to offline advertising

  • Less than 10% prefer hearing from a new company through email
  • 73% prefer getting new product/service offers by mail
  • Only 31% say they discard unopened commercial mail

So, what’s the message?
Don’t ignore “snail mail” – take a look at what arrives in your letterbox. Mine’s almost empty for most of the week so a well targeted piece of direct mail is likely to be opened, and that’s half the battle. After that, it’s down to the quality of your letter, the words, the pictures AND ensuring that there’s a positive call to action (CTA) and whilst on the topic of CTAs, every page of your website should have one and every email you send.

What’s next?
If you need help with any aspect of your marketing, get in touch. Give me a call on 01793 238020, drop me an email to andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or link up on LinkedIn or Twitter.


That’s my CTA, btw.

Do you use a .EU domain?

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Brexit was always going to have problems and issues for businesses but none expected it to have an impact on business domain names.

Well, until Easter 2018 anyway, which was when a major problem for businesses was announced in well known and respected technology news site, The Register.

You probably chose your .EU domain for a really good reason, you want the world to know that either you are an EU-based business or your market is the EU, for example.

However, as a result of Brexit, the EU has announced that all .EU domains registered by UK businesses (and individuals) will be revoked on B-Day (Brexit Day) 31st March 2018

What this means is that if you are one of the 300,000 UK organisations or individuals who has registered a .EU domain you might well see your website disappear overnight.

Obviously, continental domain registrars may well take advantage of this, offering to take on your domain and “fix” the problem for a (presumably large) fee, but that also has issues. The European Commission has hinted it is unhappy with that arrangement too; they will no longer allow you to own an .eu domain (that’s their whole point), so you are putting yourself at some commercial risk (similar to not owning IP in any products you make), and the EU is legally bound to prefer “the good of the EU” in any contractual dispute. Thankfully though, there are alternatives:

What’s in a (domain) name?

It’s not just your web site that could be affected, your email system, security certificates for encryption and e-commerce, and possibly even remote access to company assets for sales staff might be impacted too.

It will vary, obviously, depending on how you are set up, but checking this now is very sensible.

Perhaps the best approach is to do two things

  1. Immediately register a suitable .UK domain, and
  2. Point your .EU web traffic to it as soon as possible.

You have a choice of .uk domain name, and you can still represent your EU connection in it, if that’s crucial. For example,

bloggs-transport.eu

might change to,

bloggs-transport-eu.uk

We realise this isn’t ideal, but the second name is safe as it can’t be affected by any disruption the EU Commission might cause. You would have normal rights to the name, under English law, and, if it’s done right, there’s almost a whole year for your clients to get used to your new URL. Thus the risk is minimised, and it becomes one aspect of Brexit that can’t hurt you further commercially.

If this change goes ahead—and this is much more likely than unlikely in our opinion—you have less than a year for clients to become used to the change. This isn’t something to hesitate over: the implication is that no redirection will be possible after 31st March 2019, so at that point your site will simply vanish off the internet. People may even think you’ve gone bust!

Right now, you have enough time for this NOT to become an expensive issue. The longer you leave this one, the more electronic business disruption is likely to cost you come Brexit day.

If you have a .eu domain and you are worried, please get in touch: 01793 238020 andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk, the fixes are mostly straightforward and inexpensive to implement (without disruption, if you act quickly enough).

Digital Leadership

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Digital Leaders

What do these three people have in common?

Alan Turing

Alan Turing

Tommy Flowers

Tommy Flowers

Dorothy Vaughan

Dorothy Vaughan

All 3 were very early digital leaders, Turing for his “Turing Machine”, an early general purpose computer, Flowers for “Colossus – the first programmable computer used to decrypt German military messages at Bletchley Park and Vaughan for spotting the potential of NASA’s first IBM mainframe and leading the way in programming the device to compute spaceship trajectories.

Closer to today

Pierre Morad Omidyer

Pierre Omidyer

Elon Musk

Martha Lane Fox

Martha Lane Fox

All of the above are Digital Leaders who founded exciting, new and very disruptive tech companies in the early naughties. Omidyer founded e-Bay, Musk founded PayPal and Lane Fox founded LastMinute.com.

But what is Digital Leadership?

Digital Leadership is the strategic use of digital to achieve business goals and  uses technology to gain competitive advantage in both internal and external operations.

Companies and individuals can be Digital Leaders.

Benefits of Digital Leadership

Although the people mentioned above were disruptive, introducing new concepts, thoughts and technology, a business doesn’t have to be disruptive to be a digital leader.

When a company looks to make maximum use of technology and IT solutions across their business – striving for Digital Leadership, they stand to make gains across many areas, including

  • Process Simplification
  • Automation
    • Reducing costs
    • Minimising errors
  • Increased Speed to Market
  • Improved Competitiveness
  • Market Advantage
  • Increased Profit

Just look at the evolution in milking technology to see evolution in action. Think back to a time when cows were milked by hand and the revolution that an automated milking machine brought to the market, enabling a herd of cows to be milked at the same time, requiring far fewer people.

Now, the introduction of fully robotized milking parlours mean that the cows can get themselves milked at a time that suits them, rather than just at dawn and dusk.  Apparently, cows are happiest when they are milked between 3 and 4 times a day, alleviating the discomfort of full udders as required and happier cows lead to improved milk yield and the robotized process significantly reduces workforce costs.

Transforming your business

If you want to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the digital and technological revolution, take a step back from the day-to-day running of your business and analyse EVERYTHING. Look at everything you do, ask who does what, why, when, how and invite others to contribute to your research. In other words, stop working IN and start working ON your business.

You could use Post-It notes on a wall and capture the completed research using your phone
Process Mapping

You could Post-It notes on a wall and capture the completed research using your phone

Next, look at ways of making everything “better”. The goal being to work Smarter not Harder so you’ll be looking to – 

  • Simplify
  • Automate
  • Improve

And you can investigate off-the-shelf solution or have bespoke solutions developed. The former will normally deliver a quicker fix but with compromises which mean you may not gain maximum advantage. A bespoke solution will take longer to develop and implement and will probably cost more in the short term. However, the benefits will be far greater in the medium to long term because the solution will be precisely tailored to meet your exact requirements.

When to start Digital Transformation

There’s no time like the present, you might already be lagging behind your competition!

Just get in touch to make a start. 01793 238020 or andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk for a free chat

How much is a Page 1 result in Google actually worth?

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Elements of Search Engine OptimisationAlmost every week I am approached by clients who need their site to be found higher up in the Google Search Results Pages (SERPs). Quite often they have been approached by (or have approached) consultants offering to this but have balked at the fees.

Now, I know that the fundamentals are pretty easy to achieve if you have the knowledge, experience, inclination and time but many small businesses rarely have any of these and yet many still believe that good search engine optimisation [SEO] can be delivered quickly and cheaply.

If you’re confused by the SEO jargon, have a look at my SEO Glossary of Terms for clarification.

Is this possible and what’s the real value of good SEO?

Let’s take a look at the numbers. In the UK about 85% of the population use the internet. With a population of 65.64m (Worldometers) and this equates to around 56m individuals who are online. Of these, 80% use search engines to find what they are looking for, that’s about 45m people and at least 95% of them use Google as their search engine of choice, 42.75m people.

Now, let me ask the question “how much is it worth to expose your brand to a potential audience of this size?”

TV Advertising

Lets look at TV first. There is the cost associated with the production of the advert, script writing, casting, production, filming and editing.

According to the Televisual magazine, the average cost of producing a 30 second advert for TV is around £201,000.

Clock - how much does a 30 second TV ad costThen there is the cost of your slot. This will vary based on a number of factors

  • your target channel
  • whether you want a regional or national ad
  • the time of day, the product to be advertised
  • the show (s) that are on either side of the ad break targeted
  • etc

So, putting your ad on screen at peak viewing, 9pm, is going to cost much much more than a slot at 2am when the audiences will be far lower

As a very rough guide, an evening slot on ITV will cost around between £60,000 and £75,000 and this is likely to reach between 5m and 9m viewers depending on the popularity of the show.

However if you want your ad to go during something like the X-Factor then a 30 second slot cost will set you back a cool £200,000.

Radio and Print Advertising

So, you may look at radio or the print media, both of which have lower costs (production and media costs) but also have significantly lower audience figures.

In all of these cases, the costs will be for a one-off and most people with any experience of advertising know that one-off adverts simply do not work, so you have to pay for a campaign.

All of a sudden fees quoted by Search Engine Optimisers actually begin to actually look like pretty good value for money bearing in mind that if they succeed your site will be in front of the largest possible audience 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

What’s next and a Shameless Plug

Are you happy with the place your site has reached in Google? If not, get in touch today – call me on 01793 238020 or drop me an email to andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk

My SEO rates start at £150.00 + VAT per month, peanuts compared to TV, radio and most forms of print advertising.

007 in ‘For your GDPR Only’

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MI6 headquartersWhen “M” has finished spymastering for the day, or pops out for a cheeky Nandos, we always see M locking the “Top Secret” files away in the office  safe. We know that’s so that no secrets will be discovered, even if an enemy spy (or the tea person) manages to gain access to the empty office.

In business, we need to be like “M”.

In a previous post I looked at Data Protection and the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). However, I didn’t make it clear that the regulations don’t just apply to digital data stored on your IT systems and network but also apply to paper records too.

Anything that contains personal data, whether paper or digital, falls under the auspices of the Act, including the recordings from your CCTV cameras, phone systems (think “this call may be recorded for training purposes”) and biometric data – such as fingerprint or iris recognition systems used to unlock systems or grant access.

Keyboard with the word 'Privacy' overlaid

This means the files on your desk, the files in your filing cabinet, your paper archives as well as your electronic records, anything that includes personal data.

To start with, you need to ask yourself

  • Who has overall responsibility for the data you have and/or use?
  • What data are you holding, why are you holding it and where is it held?
  • Are your Privacy and Data Use Policies as good as they need to be?
  • How long do you need to keep data & how will you securely destroy it when you no longer need to keep it?
  • Who has legitimate access to it and who else can access it?
  • How secure is your building, your paper records and IT systems?
  • What happens out of normal business hours?
  • Can data be exported and removed without authorisation (to a USB key for example)?
  • Is your network connected to the internet and how secure is your connection?
  • Can your network be accessed remotely – is this secure?
  • Is your electronic data encrypted so, in the event of a breach, data cannot be accessed and used?
  • Can your network prevent unauthorised intrusion (hacking)?
  • How do you manage Subject Access Requests, (when someone requests to see the data you hold about them)?
  • How will you manage a data breach, whether it’s a hack, unauthorised file copy or unauthorised removal of paper records?

So, how can I help?

I can put you in touch with reliable IT companies and trusted partners 

  • Blob figure staring, "James Bond like" down the barrel of a gunthat will be able to inventory all of your IT and data assets.
  • who’ll test your network to see how secure it is and whether hackers are likely to be able to gain access
  • who will secure your network from external threats (hacking) and ensure that your remote access requirements are reliable, easy to use and secure.
  • who will help you secure your data inside the organisation and set things up so that only appropriately authorised employees can access the data they need to do their job and no more.
  • who will secure your network so that it’s almost impossible for data to be copied onto a USB key or external hard drive and removed from the organisation
  • who will put transparent encryption in place which means that it doesn’t slow anything down but is so strong that only GCHQ or the NSA would be likely to crack it.

Take the first step now, by giving me a call on 01793 238020 or emailing andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk to find out how I can help mitigate data security risks and start preparing for GDPR guidelines.