Saturday - A Good Day for Business

Local businesses will get a timely boost on Saturday when we give away seven of the eight books we've published this year! The other one will cost you less than a pound - but only for one day, Saturday 11 Feb. Here's our news release explaining everything:

Although our part of the country has fared better than most regions during the recession, there are still a lot of anxious business owners who will be grateful for some free help to alleviate their business worries.

That’s why local marketing firm Cinnamon Edge has pulled out all the stops and published not one, but eight business books online in the last few weeks – and why they’re making most of them available for free this Saturday.

The books cover business topics ranging from basic search engine optimisation for your website, to email marketing, how to start a small practice from scratch and even how to run workshops and seminars. All the books have been written by Cinnamon Edge partners Jacqui Carrel and Roy Everitt.

“The books are available from our website now,” says Roy, “and they’re not expensive anyway, but we decided we can reach more people by making them free for a day.”

Only the seminar and workshops one won’t be free – but it will cost less than a pound!

Six of the books are available via Amazon for Kindle (and you don’t even need a Kindle to read them, just a free app that you download easily for your computer or tablet). The other two books are PDFs published by Bookboon, who specialise in free ebooks for businesses and professionals. These can be read on any computer.

You can find links and descriptions for all the books on a special page on Cinnamon Edge’s website, at http://www.CinnamonEdge.co.uk/publications

Remember, they’ll only be free for a day!

Roy adds, “I hope people will take full advantage of the chance to download our books while they can.”

With experts telling us the economy is likely to be sluggish for some time, anything that can help a business do better while saving them money has to be a good idea.

 We're hoping the local press will pick up on our offer and spread the word, but feel free to pass it on yourself - there's a Tweet button on the right of this page!

Roy

We've Always Been in the 'Offline Niche'

Hello again.

If you have a business of any kind at all the chances are you have been contacted a lot recently by ‘marketing consultants’ or 'online marketing experts’ offering to help you update your marketing, save on your advertising and market your business more effectively online.

These people are mainly Internet marketers looking to employ their skills and knowledge to help you and your business – and most of them are totally genuine.

However, an awful lot of Internet marketers are moving to what has become known as the ‘offline niche’ (that’s businesses like yours) because making money online is not quite as easy as they were led to believe. It’s certainly not as easy as it used to be. They've been led to believe that life is easier in the offline world and they've probably bought information products telling them exactly how easy it is...

Not that that’s your problem, of course – until you start being pestered by ‘offline marketers’ you’ve never heard of and barraged with emails and phone calls you didn’t want.

As I say, most of these people are totally genuine. Some of them could actually help your business. A few of them have real-world experience, too.

But most of them are primarily Internet marketers and most of the help they can give your business comes with the assumption that Internet marketing, websites and emails are the best thing for your business – before they even know what your business is about.

At Cinnamon Edge, however, we’ve always been in the ‘offline niche’ – or ‘business marketing and promotion’ as we prefer to call it. We’ve always worked with ‘offline’ businesses (businesses not unlike yours) and we’ve always asked questions first before we offered any suggestions or advice, let alone offered our services.

That’s why, if your business needs better marketing or promotion, or you just want to find out if it could, Cinnamon Edge is the place to come first.

Yes, we do build websites, do search engine optimisation (SEO), write web copy and conduct email marketing campaigns and write newsletters, articles and online news releases, build links, create videos and optimise your Google Places page. We’ll even run your social media campaigns for you – but ONLY if any of those are actually going to help your business.

We also write press ads and printed articles, brochure copy and press releases – in fact, whatever your business needs to do or needs to do better.  

But first, we find out exactly what you do need – just as we always have.

Roy

PS. There ARE people out there who can help you - especially if the ones who have had real world experience or the kind of training that teaches them everything that really could help your business.

Very soon I'll tell you how you can tell the difference between them and the rest!

Meanwhile, you're safe with marketing help from Cinnamon Edge.

PPS. We also run training courses and workshops, as well as in house training.

This SEO Stuff Works

Hello,

Proof, if proof were needed, that SEO really works was the page one listing I got for this blog, thanks to the previous post. Within hours, if you'd Googled 'Lucid SEO', you'd have seen RoyEveritt.com at number five.

I've always said that blogs are by far the easiest sites to optimise, and when you pay some more informed attention to key words and related words and phrases, it's even easier. Of course, I wouldn't have done so well if I hadn't paid attention to David Congreave's report, Lucid SEO on Trial.

Google loves Blogger blogs, and it loves fresh, readable and relevant comment. As long as you can string some reasonably intelligent sentences between the keywords, it's got to be the easiest way to grab a front page place!

Roy

PS. The labels help, too, so always have the keywords in there as well.

Proving SEO is Easy...

...When You Know How!

Hello again,

Recently, I've been asked by a few people to help them get more traffic to their websites, and I've come up with a few tailor-made recommendations for how we can do this.

Most people want quick results and don't have the time to do much work themselves, so I often recommend buying targeted traffic, using PPC. What I tend NOT to recommend is spending too much time on Search Engine Optimisation, because it's not usually so quick and it's something of a 'black art'.

David Congreave would beg to differ, I think, and he's convinced me that SEO is something we should always consider for every website we have a hand in.

To prove his point, David has published a free report 'Lucid SEO on Trial', detailing his campaign to win the SEO ranking contest for the recent Focus Marketing Seminar in London. And win it he did, handsomely, despite being banned by Google almost as soon as he'd started!

The report gives you a very good overview of how Mr Congreave's Lucid SEO system works, and it's worth grabbing, just for that. Plus, he nails a few misconceptions about optimisation (and he helped me modify my recommendations) with this well-written report.

I met David again at the Focus Seminar, and he was looking pretty pleased with himself, as well he might - he even beat the official Focus Marketing Seminars website on almost every major search engine - including Google.

Oh, here's Lucid SEO itself: http://www.lucid-seo.com/?rid=1713

Congratulations, David Congreave and Lucid SEO, and congratulations to you if you take a few of David's optimisation tips and transform your website's rankings.

Roy

So Much to Choose From...

... and so little time!

Hello again,

I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that we each have just one lifetime.

I'll also take it as read that you're having as much trouble cramming everything into yours as I am squeezing it all into mine.

And that you'd like your life to be fulfilled and successful, financially secure and interesting. Well, that about sums up my ambitions, anyway.

But there is so much to do, so much to read and listen to and watch, so much to learn and just a finite amount of time. We have to make choices. Specifically, we have to make decisions about what will move us towards our goals and what will just distract us.

So I'm pleased to be able to point you towards a nifty little decision-making tool that could save you hour upon hour of wasted time and effort and speed you towards your goals, whatever they may be. It's free, takes just moments to apply and fills one side of a piece of paper when you print it out.

It's been created by David Congreave (Lucid SEO, The Nettle, Networking Nightmares...), and you'll find it on his website, right here: http://www.thenettle.com/HypeProtector/

Hype Protector, eh? Cool name.

David knows a thing or two about making wise choices. He's made plenty already, although I'm not the only one who's told him he could have chosen to charge for this!

Meanwhile, do you ever get the impression that the Internet has been hijacked? Well now you can take the Internet back, right here.

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

PS Talking of avoiding hype - if you don't want to be buried under the hype for (whisper it) MI.7, you need to sign up for Roy Everitt dotcom. That way you can get in first, ahead of the rush, and be profiting from the furore that's bond to ensue when (shhh...) MI.7 is opened to the general public. Just visit the sign up box top right on this page and you'll be first to hear.

PPS Did I mention the Hype Protector is free? Well it is. Go here: http://www.thenettle.com/HypeProtector/