Insights & News
Read the latest marketing news & industry advice from our team of experts
7 tips to help get your business started on social media
Promoting your business on the web and new social media platforms can be an overwhelming task. Things have moved on a long way since a simple advert in the local paper would suffice; the internet...
5 online security tips in the post ‘heartbleed bug’ world
Staying safe online is often something the we overlook. Our usual offline security tips are just part of our lives, locking the front door and setting the home alarm is routine, making sure laptops...
Top 10 New Year Resolutions
With 2014 drawing to a close and the thought of starting work again in 2015, many small businesses struggle with setting resolutions for a new year. This doesn't have to be a daunting prospect and...
​10 reasons why social media is important for your business
When you have a million and one things to do in the day to day running of your business, we know it can be hard to keep your social media presence up to date, check out these top 10 reasons why you...
Beware of Chinese domain name scam emails
The reason that you have landed here is likely due to an email in your inbox from an Asian named domain name registrar such as China Domain Name Registration Center Asian Domain Registration Service...
Google announces the cancellation of authorship photos in search results
In June 2014, Google announced it would no longer be displaying author photographs. These photographs were previously displayed alongside search results of content from Google+ authors. Anybody with...
Our top 6 tips for maintaining concentration in the office or at work
One of the worst things about daily distractions is the fact that you may, or may not know you are even being distracted by them! We have so much going on in our daily lives that is hard to balance,...
Building and maintaining the presence for your business online – a manageable balancing act?
Building and maintaining an active presence for your business online - top tips using social media When you run a small to medium size business, you often carry out the roles of several employees...
Online Security: The Heartbleed Bug and your password security across the internet
A newly identified bug named the Heartbleed Bug has made nearly 70% of all websites on the Internet insecure - over 600 million, to put this in context. The Heart bleed Bug makes the secret "keys"...
SME marketing budget calculator
The core calculation here looks at your last 12 months turnover and your growth goals, then calculates your projected marketing budget for the year ahead. Those figures provide the base amounts,...
Benefits of blogging about your local business
Small businesses serving local customers have a lot to gain from regularly posting about their business. Blogging not only reassures and informs potential customers that the company is active, but...
Latest news and projects completed this month
An unbroken week of sunshine and clear blue skies - the summer is off to a great start and here at Alloy it's heating up. Regretfully, we haven't had much time for sunbathing but another busy...
Top Tips for Local Business Outreach using Facebook
Just like using Twitter to promote your local business, Facebook is a vital source of advertisement for your business. Channelling followers to your website is the main goal. Please read the...
Top Tips for Local Business Outreach using Twitter
Twitter is a key tool to drive traffic to your website, but it is also about interacting with people. Take a look at our essential tips to get to grips with the power of those 140 characters......
How do you recover rankings after your site has been down?
Great tips for news sites and blogs with topical content
Google’s web spam top recommendation from 2012
Matt Cutts, formerly of the the Google webspam team, explains his top observation from the world of search engine marketing in 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2H_Y7h1roQ Find out more about...
Is SEO seen as a spammy marketing tactic by Google?
Many clients seem to have heard horror stories recently about companies with (supposedly) legitimate online marketing strategies being penalised by the Google algorithm...
How the top agencies are spending their biggest client’s marketing budgets – infographic
This is a fantastic infographic from Mashable, and really does answer many questions about general industry spending behaviours. Source: Mashable
Instructions: How to do a mail merge for a customer newsletter
Many small businesses are keen to begin mailing their customers and mail merge is an essential part of the process. Mail merge enables you to dynamically create documents such as letters or labels,...
Teambox project management software
Highly recommend project management tool called teambox which is an online service in the cloud (you can access it anywhere including mobile) for managing all kinds of marketing projects / content...
Online accounting & invoicing software
After several months testdriving some of the best online accounting and invoicing software solutions available to small businesses, here are some of the best options Spanning several months of...
Updates to Google search
Learn more about Google's historic changes, including a left-hand panel with powerful tools that will make it easier to find what you are looking for. http://youtu.be/C-rnxNFRAQA
How do pagerank updates work?
A video from Matt Cutts, formerly of Google's search quality team. He explains how frequently page rank updates occur and how often you will see updated values in the pagerank toolbar. An older...