One of the best ways to improve your website’s SEO is therefore to keep it regularly updated with keyword-rich content.

Content is anything relevant about a company and its industry:

• Press releases
• Technical articles and white papers
• Blog posts (general company news, industry issues, etc)
• Contributions by external experts
• Photos (company events, happy customers, products in use, etc)
• Videos (instructional, product demonstrations, etc)

Regularly updated content on your company’s website, shared via social networks with links back to the website, will not only help with SEO – it will also drive more traffic to the website.

A content-rich website is also important for your customers. Giving them interesting information about their industry will keep them coming back.

Are you ready to incorporate content marketing and social media into your marketing strategy? It’s not as time-consuming as you might think.

We can get you started, so please don’t hesitate to contact your press officer if you want to find out more.

The post Content Marketing and Social Media appeared first on Halma PR Services.

Unsure which social media platform is best for you? Then look no further. Here is a brief, no-nonsense summary of each platform and what it’s best used for.

Blog – Blogging is perhaps the most effective social media channel. Not only does a blog allow you to position your company as an expert in its field, it can also do wonders for your website’s search ranking. A blog is a must for any B2B company these days.

Twitter – Twitter is uber-networking. Don’t expect to sell products on Twitter; that’s not what people sign up for. But do expect to find interesting people to follow and interact with – experts in your industry, competitors and, yes, potential customers. It’s also great for market intelligence. But keep it personal.

Facebook – You can sell on Facebook but, like Twitter, people don’t really sign up to be sold to. What you can do, though, is talk about your products in an interesting way: post case studies, customer endorsements or videos. You can also run competitions and offer special discounts for people who ‘like’ your page or share a story with their friends. Think of it as the personal side of your company – a nice counterpoint to your corporate website.

LinkedIn – The ‘boring’ social network. Boring it may be, but for any business person it’s essential that you have a LinkedIn profile. There’s also a lot more to LinkedIn than meets the eye. There are literally thousands of special interest groups – there’s sure to be one for your industry. Join up and start a conversation – it’s another fantastic way to network. You should also set up a company page and populate it with as much information as you can. Professionals use LinkedIn, so make use of it.

YouTube – Does your company have a YouTube channel yet? If not, why not? Making informative, instructional videos has never been easier. And don’t forget that YouTube is the web’s second largest search engine after Google.

Google+ – As a social network Google+ took a while to catch on, but catch on it has, especially with techy people. Google’s search engines also place a lot of emphasis on Google+ posts and ‘+1s’ (the equivalent of Facebook ‘likes’). So get yourself and your company on there and just re-post what you’re already doing on Facebook and Twitter.

Forum – Is a forum social media? I believe it is. Most businesses can benefit from having a forum open to their customers, installers and distributors. It’s a great way to control the conversation in a secure, password-protected environment. Companies that use forums successfully can quickly position themselves as real experts in their industry.

I hope this helps to clarify the benefits of each platform. Pick and choose what you want – and don’t be afraid to experiment and mix things up a bit!

The post The Main Social Media Platforms In A Nutshell appeared first on Halma PR Services.

I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Joshua Shi as our new China PR Manager. He started on Monday, October 8 and is based in Halma’s Shanghai Representative Office.

Joshua has extensive PR and journalism experience. He spent four years as a reporter for China Daily (China’s national English-language newspaper) and has held several PR and communications positions, most recently as an Account Executive at Grebstad Hicks Communications, a leading Asian PR agency handling foreign multinational clients.

He has a BA in International Journalism from the China School of Journalism and a BA in English Education from the Suzhou University of Science and Technology. He is fluent in English, Mandarin and the Shanghai dialect and also speaks some French and Russian.

Joshua will work closely with Kevin Xu, the China Marketing Manager based in the Shanghai Representative Office, and Damian Corbet, Senior Press Officer based at Halma’s UK head office.

Please join me in welcoming Joshua to the PR team and wishing him great success in his new role. Joshua’s email is joshua.shi@halma.cn.

Regards

David Waller
Group Public Relations Manager
Halma PR Services
Misbourne Court, Rectory Way
Amersham HP7 0DE
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1494 789150, Fax: +44 (0)1494 728032
Email: dwaller@halmapr.com
Web: www.halma.com

The post China PR Manager Appointed appeared first on Halma PR Services.

Before you switch off, let me clarify what I mean by a blog.

A blog isn’t an essay. It’s not even a paragraph. It can be just a few sentences. It’s also free.

Reassured?

OK, let’s continue.

There are four simple reasons why you should have a company blog:

1.    It’s an inbound world. We’re no longer in the old world of ‘outbound’ marketing (direct mail, trade shows, etc). Sure, you still need to do those things, but there are newer ‘inbound’ marketing methods that are cheaper and more effective at attracting customers, especially for smaller businesses with limited marketing budgets.

Inbound marketing simply means things like blogging, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and social media.

This recent report (PDF) from HubSpot sums things up nicely (don’t read the whole thing – just the first part).

2.    Potential customers are searching for your product or service online. It’s your job to help them find you.

By blogging about your expertise and offering useful advice, you’re giving people what they need. OK, that’s YOUR time given away for free – so where’s the payback for you? That takes us to the third point.

3.    SEO, SEO, SEO… Blogging adds keyword-rich content to your website.  This in turn improves your SEO and helps potential customers find your blog and your website on Google.  It’s not complicated.

4.    Web traffic. Improved SEO means more visitors to your website and more potential customers. It’s that simple.

You can then ask your techie people (or us) to make it easy for people to share what they find on your blog and website with others (via Twitter and Facebook for example). You’d be surprised how many people like to share what they find.

Did I forget to mention that blogging is free? Well, it’s worth mentioning again!

To summarise: you can now bring in more customers to your website simply by putting aside a few minutes a day (or week) to write something interesting and useful about your company. You don’t need to pay someone to do it.

So, if you think blogging can help your company then please get in touch with Halma PR and we’ll be happy to offer you more advice and help you get started.

The post 4 Reasons Why You Should Have A Company Blog appeared first on Halma PR Services.

“If your business has any kind of content it wishes to share with the world, Twitter’s virtually a necessity for getting it out there.” (Chris Bucholtz, editor-in-chief of the CRM Outsiders blog).

“My company can trace about 75% of its business back to relationships that initially began on social media, and the vast majority of those relationships began on Twitter. That’s a pretty compelling business case for me.” (Heather Whaling, founder of Geben Communication).

Twitter is a deceptively simple application with remarkably powerful uses. People are only just beginning to tap into its potential as a business tool.

So why do so many companies still have a problem with Twitter?

The main reason is that Twitter still has a reputation as a repository of inane chatter. There is inane chatter on Twitter, but as a business user you don’t need to see any of it. You choose who you wish to follow and who you want to interact with. If you’re in the water treatment business, you can follow and be followed by people in the same industry. If you’re involved in investor relations, then you follow analysts and relevant companies.

What all this means for business is an open, global forum for discussion, idea-sharing, pitching, questioning, brainstorming and, if you’re subtle about it, selling.

Good reasons to use Twitter

• Twitter allows one-to-one (or one-to-many) communication with people who have opted in. This means you can contact people who are normally ‘off the radar’ in e-mail and phone terms. People (and companies) join Twitter because they want to communicate.
• Twitter is networking on a massive scale. It’s ideal for busy business people who don’t have the time to attend long lunches or boring seminars. It’s something you can do on your laptop or you Blackberry or you iPhone. You can do it in the office or at home, in the airport or the train. It’s immediate.
• Twitter is now a mainstream business communications tool.
• Tweets are valuable. A paid for promotion costs around US$120,000 a day.
• Most Twitter users are over 30 and many are college graduates – it’s the domain of mature, well informed and often well off ABC1s. It’s not where spotty teenagers spend their time, they are on Facebook.
• Twitter is now being used to predict the movement of stock markets – this shows its potential and its reach.

Some statistics

• 88 of the companies on the Fortune Global 100 list update their Twitter accounts at least daily.
• 66 percent of questions asked on twitter have some commercial intent.
• 80 percent of customer service tweets are negative or critical. It’s therefore essential to monitor mentions of your company and respond to any criticism immediately.
• 85 percent of companies are now using twitter as part of their recruitment process.

Some companies, news outlets, organisations and conferences actively using Twitter

• ARM Holdings, Honeywell, ITT, Siemens (all with multiple accounts)
• Financial Times
• WSJ Market News
• NYT Business
• US Securities & Exchange Commission
• Economist Business & Finance
• Forbes
• World Economic Forum
• Twitter is also used by many financial analysts and investor relations specialists

What about measurement/ROI?
There are many benefits to Twitter besides direct sales. You can gain information, competitive intelligence, insight, a new supplier or partner, publicity, brand awareness, an idea, customer insights, and yes, even a potential customer. Most of these benefits are intangible and difficult to display in an Excel spreadsheet.

One may as well ask how we measure the impact of having a conversation at a business conference. Will you get a deal as a result? Perhaps, perhaps not, but you’re networking. That’s all Twitter is – it’s a new way to network where the entire world is at your disposal.

Some Twitter success stories

• When Cisco launched a new router, it decided to use only social media to market it. This allowed the company to effectively measure the results.  The campaign was one of the top five most successful campaigns in the company’s history, and it saved Cisco a six figure sum.
• Comcast started a ‘Comcast Cares’ Twitter customer service centre and attracted 2,700 followers. Many were initially critics of the company but were converted to ardent fans.
• Dell used Twitter to create ‘Dell Outlet’, which generated US$3 million revenue in one year from Twitter postings.
• JetBlue set up a Twitter account to have more direct relationships with customers and potential customers, to listen to their complaints, and to understand how to serve them better. They now have over 1.5 million followers.
• Oracle added social networks to its existing communication channels and trained 25,000 partners while reducing costs, boosting satisfaction and increasing PR.
• Team TurboTax launched a Twitter campaign to answer questions during the key tax season and found its customers were 71% more likely to recommend TurboTax because of their interactions with the company through Twitter.

1. http://www.touchagency.com/free-twitter-infographic/ / http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/17/data-is-making-the-business-case-for-twitter/
2. http://barnraisersllc.com/?p=2460

The post What is Twitter? appeared first on Halma PR Services.

As before, throughout the guide code is coloured brown for tags, red for attributes, blue for values and green for comments.

This is a link to part one, just in case you missed it before.

Commonly Used and Useful HTML tags and attributes

Make it work, and make it look good

1. <html>…</html>
   This lets the browser know you are using HTML, and that it should look at the code as such.  The open <html> tag should be at the very beginning of any HTML document, and closing </html> at the very end.

2. <head>…</head>
   The head element is where information about the page goes, but not content.  It is where you mark the page title (that appears in a web browser as the window title) and meta-data that search engines can looks at.  It is not used for HTML emails.

3. <body>…</body>
   The body element is where all your content goes, and all on-page content should be within it.

4. <p>…</p>
   This is the paragraph tag, and is usually what any text you want to be displayed on the web page will be directly inside.  Paragraph tags often, especially with HTML email, will use the style attribute to make sure all the text is the right size, font, colour and so on.  In current versions of Word, it’s like pressing [Enter] and gives extra spacing below before the next line begins.

5. <br />
   The line break tag ends the current line, meaning anything after will be on a new line.  It’s a bit like pressing [Shift]+[Enter], starting a new line but with no additional spacing.  Break tags are often used without attributes, but using multiple breaks in succession and <br style=”line-height: 12px” />can occasionally solve some line spacing issues when avoiding paragraphs.

6. <table>…</table>
   The table element should in theory only be used for tabular data – except in HTML emails, where it is necessary for display design to keep things in their rightful place.  This element uses sub-elements to format it properly, and acts as an enclosure for them:

   1. <tr>…</tr>
      This is the table row tag, and marks the start of a new row in the table.  Rows are the horizontal elements, and form the foundation structural elements inside the table.
   2. <td>…</td>
      This is the table data tag, and marks the start of a new ‘cell’ (vertical column cell) inside a table row.  However many <td> you have inside a single row in your table is the number of columns the whole table has.
   3. To cope with having different numbers of cells or columns in different rows, we use the colspan attribute: <td colspan=”2″>…</td> would mean that that data cell spans two columns.  The rowspan attribute works similarly to colspan, but obviously spans rows instead.  In practice, it might look like this:
      <table>
      <tr>
      <td>single column cell 1</td> <td>single column cell 2</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
      <td>single column cell 3</td> <td rowspan=”2″>cell spanning two rows</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
      <td>single column cell 4</td>
      <tr>
      <td colspan=”2″>cell spanning both columns</td>
      </tr>
      </table>
      
      This exact code would be shown by the browser as:

      single column cell 1	single column cell 2
      single column cell 3	cell spanning two rows
      single column cell 4
      cell spanning both columns

      Note how each sub-element is contained in the one larger – so a data cell goes inside a row, and the rows go inside the table as a whole.

   4. The border attribute in the table tag is very useful.  Whilst you will usually want the final version to have <table border=”0″> for no lines between the rows and cells, having <table border=”1″> is useful for figuring out how the table elements fit together – especially if something doesn’t look like you expected.

7. <a>…</a>
   This is the hyperlink tag, so everything inside it will be a link.  This will usually be in the format: <a href=http://www.yourlinkhere.com>…</a>
   
   The <a> tag can encompass text or images.

8. <img src=”…” />
   The image tag lets you put an image in. It is a self-contained tag, and you put the address for the image source in place of the … in the above.  For severe headache reduction, you may want to use a local address on your PC when creating the email and images, but an online address for the uploaded final image when distributing or publishing the content to the web:

   1. <img src=”C:\Users\my.name\Documents\my-pic.jpg” />
      would let you edit the image on your PC and instantly see the updated result in the web page, but won’t work for anyone on another PC.
   2. <img src=”http://myawesomewebsite.com/images/my-pic.jpg” />
      is how the final distribution version should be instead, remembering to upload the finished image there beforehand.

9. The width and height attributes are fairly self-explanatory, and have most use for making sure images display at the intended size.  Some browsers or email clients can have trouble displaying images correctly if not given these fundamental instructions, so it’s best practice to use them where possible.  They can also be used to show a pulled-through image smaller than its original size; just make sure you remember to get the aspect ratio correct to avoid distortion.
   

10. The style attribute is the usual way of choosing how anything within an element will be displayed.  There are simply loads of different sub-attributes possible within style, so here I’ll go through a few of the most useful and common.

    1. <tag style=”margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px”>…</tag>
       Margins add white space to the edges of the element, useful for aligning text or images nicely.  Usually you want to use a number of pixels (px) for fixed sizes.  Padding is similar to margins, but works on the other side of the element.
    2. <tag style=”color: #000000; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif”>…</tag>
       This determines font colour, size and the font itself.  We use font-family as best practice in case the user doesn’t have the actual font, and can list several in order of preference.  Serif or sans-serif is the most basic determination for having feet on the characters or not.

11. <ul>…</ul>
    This is an unordered (i.e. not numbered) list, and encloses the list item elements within it:

    1. <li>…</li>
       This is your list item, which astonishingly marks each item (new line/bullet point) in the list.
    2. In practice therefore, you want something like:<ul>
       <li>List item one</li><li>List item two</li>
       </ul>

12. <h1>…</h1>
    This is a Heading 1 tag, and works a bit like a <p> tag but specifically for your most important heading.  There are also <h2> <h3> and so on for less important headings.  Headings are considered important for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes and should match the content of the page for maximum impact.

13. <!–  …  –>
    Everything inside this tag is a comment.  It will not be read by the web browser, and is only visible by looking at the page code.  It is usually used for instructional comments, aides-memoires or commonly used data that you may want to hand when coding.  You may find it useful to add your own comments to help you in future as well.
     

The post Introduction to HTML Basics – guide part 2 appeared first on Halma PR Services.

Throughout the guide, code is coloured brown for tags, red for attributes, blue for values and green for comments.

How HTML Works

What are ‘tags’, ‘attributes’ and ‘values’, and how they fit together

1. All HTML is managed by tags.  These are what tell a browser how to read what’s inside the tag, and usually come in the format:
   <tag>…</tag>

2. The <tag> opens the tag, and </tag> closes it; everything inside is a part of that element.  You can have ‘nested’ elements, i.e. entire elements inside another element.  Some, such as table rows and data, need to be inside other ‘parent’ elements (the table itself) to work properly.

3. Some elements are self-contained, and these can be opened and closed in the same tag – this is done in this format: <tag />.  For example, a line break does not ‘contain’ any text inside it, and looks like: <br />

4. Tags are modified and controlled by attributes.  These are what tell the browser how to interpret or display the tag, and usually go inside the opening tag, so it looks like:
   <tag attribute>…</tag>

5. Often attributes need values, which are demarked with an equals sign and quote marks in the following format: 
   <tag attribute=”value”>…</tag>

6. The style attribute that controls how something is displayed is a more complex beast, and often has multiple sub-attributes.  These go within the quote marks, use a colon instead of an equals sign, and are separated as a list by semi-colons to look like:
   <tag style=”subattribute: value; subattribute: value”>…</tag>

7. Comments are pieces of HTML that are only visible when you look at the code, not when you or others view the web page normally – great for helping you keep track of parts of your web page, as notes to other coders, or to temporarily disable some of your code. To ‘comment out’ some text, it goes between <!‑‑ and ‑‑>, so everything in there will be ignored by a browser when displaying a web page but can still be seen if you view the source code.

In part two of this guide, we’ll look at some of the most common and useful tags and attributes for coding HTML – click here to view now.

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This list gives an overview of what PR can help you achieve and how Halma PR can help you. If you want more information about anything please contact your Press Officer.

What’s the point of PR?

• Increased visibility and credibility with prospects
• Generation of sales leads
• Raising your company profile via repeated exposure in your trade press

Opportunities to see marketing messages?

• Trade shows – once or twice a year?
• Adverts – quarterly, or even less?
• Mailers – twice a year maybe?
• Sales staff – not as often as they’d like?
• Editorial – potentially every day.

How to look like the market leader?

• More coverage than competitors
• Articles on legislation and issues
• Raise visibility of company experts
• Prestigious project news

How to generate more sales leads?

• More news releases = more leads

Which news stories work?

Stories that are relevant to customers

• Application stories relevant to the target market
• Educational articles or expert commentary on market trends or new regulations
• New products which use technological innovation
• ‘People’ stories and ‘company news’ have their place as awareness-builders

What can Halma PR do for you?

• Write press releases
• Provide photos
• Issue press releases and track subsequent coverage

What can you do to make this happen?

• Provide genuine and interesting news stories and ideas
• Give us details needed to turn the idea into an interesting story
• Provide on-site photos or let us take them
• Generate the leads you want
• Tell your story to customers

Perfect PR Briefs:

• Plan photography – in-studio or on-site? Product or ‘people’?
• Features that relate to customer benefits
• Unique benefits
• Why customers need it
• Why customers need yours, not your competitors’
• Who are the customers?
• Which publications are important?

How to make your PR work more effectively

• Focus on news and applications
• Make sure the story is relevant to the customer, and that we know how
• Provide a good quality briefing – you will know more about the story, your customers and your aims than we will, so help us achieve what you want to achieve
• Invest in photography – be it an agency for catalogue shots, sending products to us, or even furnishing sales staff with decent cameras and some training to take photos at the site of sale
• Keep up a steady flow of news – unlike direct mail or adverts, PR works best as a continual presence to raise a company’s profile and prestige

The post PR and you … a brief introduction appeared first on Halma PR Services.