FASTSMS

NS-Mailer - cost effective email broadcasting from NetSecrets

Finding new ways of finding potential customers has never been more important, you need to target the right audience with the right message. Email has been a viable point of contact for some time now; however it has been overworked to the point where more things than not are considered SPAM. This means that in order to reach your audience you must first traverse the world of SPAM filters, and then you have to really get their attention – and keep it. How can this be done?

By taking a closer look at permission-based email marketing we can see that is an extraordinarily cost-effective and powerful tool – used correctly and one can see ROIs never before possible with traditional direct mail.

Now you may be asking yourself why I am telling you about Email when I normally talk about SMS, well they have lots in common, but it is their differences that make them both so effective in certain scenarios. They are both communication tools for both individually and to the masses; however where anyone can sculpt an effective text message with NetMessenger and be sure it will get to the receiver, not everyone can be sure their email campaign is going to get to its destination and have the desired effect – not with normal email tools and clients anyway.

So what else does Email Marketing and SMS have in common – Well, they’re both available through the NetSecrets Group…

The team behind FASTSMS is now able to offer you professional Email Marketing tools in the form of their newly crafted NS-Mailer system. Choose to work with NetSecrets on your email marketing and you will have access to the entire spectrum of internet services on offer as well as an unrivalled level of support from their team of advisors.

A Professional looking HTML email is essential to grab and hold interest, maximise response, and maintain your brand presence. With over 100 generic email templates to choose from you will find these quick and easy to create.

In order for a successful email marketing campaign you need to know your broadcast is reaching your target audience - this is dependent on the reputation and authenticity of the sender. By sending through the NS-Mailer system you will gain the credibility that we hold via proxy - giving you the highest possible delivery rate.

Detailed reporting is essential for you to know how your audience is responding to your message allowing you to increase your success - NS-Mailer offers multiple tracking and reporting methods for you to get the most out of future campaigns.

You will receive a level of support second to none from our dedicated campaign team as well as the opportunity to benefit from our copywriting service. Our experts will be on hand to advise you at every step and at every level - whether you are running a direct marketing promotion campaign or broadcasting monthly newsletters. We will aim to exalt the same high standards within your messages that we insist upon for our own.

To find out more about NS-Mailer and the other services available through NetSecrets, contact one of our experts on 01386 792972 or click here

 

HitsLink - keeping score for your website

Why do people visit your website, but more importantly why do they leave?

HitsLink is a service available through our parent company, NetSecrets. It is a great tool for analysing the traffic your site gets. In the early years of the web, as commercial websites started to appear it was all about ‘hits’ – how many visitors you got to your homepage, this was usually measured using a simple page counter which showed how many times that page was viewed. The drawback of this was that it didn’t really tell you anything else, you couldn’t tell where the visitors came from, what they did while they were on your site or at what point they left, or even if they came back again.

Luckily, things have changed a bit since then – enter HitsLink...

HitsLink is a statistical utility that generates data, graphs and reports on who is visiting your site, what they do while they're there and more importantly at what point they leave your site. It gives businesses the opportunity to boost their marketing knowledge around their customers by understanding them, tracking new and repeat visitors to see what they like. It also helps to identify weak pages – you can find out if there are a lot of visitors leaving your site at a specific point, and then fix it! If you happen to be using Sponsored Links on search engines such as Google you can track the success of Pay-per-Click campaigns, see if visitors are they finding what they're looking for?

Click here to find out more about HitsLink and how it can be used to make a site all it can be.

The NetSecrets Website Success Plan

When you venture into the fast-paced world of the Internet with your website you will face the challenges that come with it. Keeping your site up to date, not only with content but with the surrounding mechanisms that will make it a success is one such challenge. If you choose to do this yourself then it will either take away much needed time from your business or it simply won't get done.

The NetSecrets team hold a great deal of experience in making a website a success - and understand that this is a constant process. As time goes by things change - and it isn't long before your site can become obsolete. NetSecrets operate at the heart of the industry and are constantly learning new ways to optimise sites and stay ahead of the competition. The NetSecrets Success Plan means that strategic action is taken on a regular basis ensuring a site doesn't get left behind by prevailing trends or simply lack of maintenance.

Our experience comes from the fact that we don't just build websites, we build businesses and understand that the creation of such a tool as a website is not a one off job, it is something that needs constant attention if it is to be a worthwhile investment.

To find out more about the NetSecrets Success Plan and other Web Development and Promotion Services click here, email info@NetSecrets.co.uk or give us a call on 01386 792 972

Corporate Blogs - If you're reading this, then they work...

There are now over 600 million blogs in existence. Although the majority are still of a personal nature an increasing number of businesses are utilising this exciting medium to promote themselves and to communicate with clients, employees and other stakeholders.

These business are able to promote themselves in a way never before possible by building brand image and awareness, releasing news quickly and most importantly boosting traffic to their main website through increased search engine exposure.

Big businesses easily find the resource to utilise blogging at a level that yields noticeable results, however SME's can find it difficult to put the time in whilst simultaneously running a business.

NetSecrets' corporate blogging service makes this possible. We'll set up your blog, make it match your site's current branding and configure it to make it look good and easy to use so to attract visitors. You can post to it as frequently or as infrequently as you want or can manage, and it'll still work wonders!

Our content delivery team can also advise you on how you should post, how often and what about making sure you get the most out of it.

You can have your own blog, hosted by NetSecrets for the equivalent of just £8 a month - so if you think that could work for you, give us a ring on 01386 792 972 and we'll talk you through your options.

Alternatively click here to find out more.

Video SEO: PlanetStream guide and best practices

As the world of online video has grown it has become a necessity for business, an expectation for visitors and a challenge to website promoters. The question is raised - how can you and your business utilise the power of online video to drive organic traffic to your site? The answer, Video Search Engine Optimisation (Video SEO / vSEO).

Video SEO at its core is about the discoverability of your video content through search engines such as Google Video (or any of the other 1000's of video search engines out there). The ultimate goal is to get your video content to the top of the relevant search engine rankings - within the standard search results page and video search results page. This guide attempts to cover both areas, and it should also be noted that while Video SEO is still in its infancy what actually works and what doesn't work is still being developed.

Each of the items discussed are tailored for video, and just as with standard SEO, Video SEO is all about driving organic traffic to your site - each of the below methods focus on these core elements...

Page Content

As with standard SEO it is important to have relevant and keyword rich text surrounding the video content in order to highlight the subject. The content should be descriptive of what the video contains - it is crucial to understand that this content should be written for the visitor and not for search engines. Outside of the pure text the page should also link to content that is relevant to the video such as photos, audio and news - this not only helps with your Video SEO strategy but enriches the user experience.

Linking

Inbound and internal linking are fundamental to SEO and how search engines determine relevancy and rankings. The best way to get good relevant links is to have good content - having good content will always launch a link building campaign as people will always want to share / post / link to content they find interesting. For the purpose of this guide Video SEO linking can be broken into inbound, internal and anchor text...

- Inbound links: There are many ways to get inbound links when it comes to Video SEO, too many to go into in this brief guide. However the most immediate and beneficial way for getting inbound links (outside of the content itself) is to allow visitors to embed your videos into their websites, blogs, profiles and social networks. Giving the option to embed videos allows anyone to copy a few lines of code into their chosen environment. The real benefit, beyond branding and traffic, is that you can provide a HTML wrapper which enables you to utilise SEO optimised anchor text, linking back to your website.

- Internal links: This is the navigation within your website. Even though internal links are not as valuable when it comes to rankings they still have their part to play - they help determine relevancy and they help search engine spiders crawl / find your content. Spiderable links like video playlists, related links and breadcrumbs not only help search engines build a good picture of your websites infrastructure but can aid your visitors with content discovery.

- Anchor Text: Simply put, anchor text is the clickable part of a link and search engines use this to help determine the relevancy of a website. Regardless of where the link is coming from, the anchor text helps search engines determine what the link contains (more relevancy). Ideally all inbound links will have optimised anchor text related to the content on the page it is linking to.

Social Media

The promotion tool many websites overlook is the phenomenon of social media. Allowing visitors to share, bookmark, rate and comment on your videos allows visitors to engage with your content on a whole new level and can have major Video SEO benefits. Adding the sharing component is easy, most sites will offer a button to be added to your video page template - let your visitors be your viral marketing team and spread your content across websites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Facebook and MySpace. The most important component of Social Media Strategy for Video SEO are blogs - creating blogs revolving around a specific topic will not only generate additional traffic and brand awareness but give a website more opportunities for cross linking.

Feeds

There are two types of feeds when video is concerned, RSS and mRSS - both are similar and easy to create with the right tools. RSS feeds allow a visitor to subscribe to the content on your site and updates them whenever there is new content. There is not direct relationship between Video SEO and RSS feeds, but should be implemented in an overall traffic building strategy. mRSS feeds however directly impact Video SEO by allowing video search engines to have direct access to your websites video content. mRSS feed components contain the standard RSS elements like meta data, URL to content and thumbnails - but the key differences are ones that can impact rankings. These elements that include video ratings, play count and tags should be included whenever possible. Each of the video search engines that accept mRSS feeds have different requirements, but the best example is from Yahoo and can be viewed at http://search.yahoo.com/mrss

Video Sitemaps

The importance of sitemaps in standard SEO is still up for debate, however when it comes to Video SEO and video sitemaps - Google does not accept mRSS feeds, but they do accept video sitemaps through their webmaster interface. Video sitemaps use the standard sitemap protocol but contain video specific tags - Google's video sitemap guidelines can be viewed at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=10079

Title and Meta Tags

As with standard SEO practice meta data should be used to its fullest extent. For video pages the focus should be entirely on the video content. The title should contain the name of the video and video specific keyword sets. The meta description should be a brief summary of the video that occupies that page, as standard it is important to keep the meta data as unique and descriptive as possible for each video page. Header tags should be used to call out the importance of page content

Navigation

Your navigation should have two purposes, to make sure spiders can easily crawl your website discovering all your content and you want your visitors to find it easy not only to find your content but discover new content. When videos are concerned a simple video playlist can accomplish both of these - the key thing to remember is that you want them to be crawlable and relevant to the content on the page. As previously stated when discussing linking this is also a great opportunity to bring in related content, including: articles, photos and audio. All of these contribute to relevancy as well as enhance the overall user experience.

Page URL

Another core SEO component is a static, and therefore SEO friendly URL - The URL for a video should have limited dynamic parameters, contain relevant keywords and have a succinct file structure.

Video File Nomenclature

As with all aspects of Rich Media, how you name a file can have a positive impact on your SEO efforts - wherever possible you should name your video file in a keyword descriptive manner instead of a random database / CMS generated name. Video File Nomenclature is just another way to help video search engines define your page relevance.

Measuring the success or failure of your digital efforts and the impact Video SEO has on your website's traffic is as important as everything else. PlanetStream offers NetTracker at just £20 a month to all packages to better measure how well your video content is doing.

As with standard SEO, Video SEO is not about setting it up and then forgetting about it, it is a continuous process involving constant reporting and analysis.

For monitoring your standard website traffic we highly recommend the HitsLink application which is available through our parent company, . Start benefiting from all and PlanetStream has to offer by calling us on 01386 792972 or email info@planetstream.net

NetTracker: In depth statistical analysis from PlanetStream

There is no doubt in this world that numbers and statistics aren't everyones cup of tea, and admitedly I'm included in that. However we can all appreciate how important it is in business and especially any kind of marketing or promotion to be able to measure the succes of our various ventures - how else do we know whats working for us and whats costing us money!

In the case of streaming online audio and video (discussed in a previous post) in steps NetTracker, from PlanetStream. NetTracker gives you the opportunity to receive reports in greater detail than before - so much so that you can identify each individual stream that has been delivered to a specific IP of a computer connected to the Internet.

All past, present and future PlanetStream customers have been provided with standard analysis tool, AWStats - which is ok for a low level user. But now if you want to really get stuck in with analytics and figures to find out just how well your media content is performing, or whats going wrong NetTracker is for you...

I may have hinted that facts and figures aren't my forté but I've found it really easy to delve into the world of streaming analysis with NetTracker, making our videos all they can be. By concentrating on some simple figures that are clearly presented you can really boost your marketing knowledge around your intended audience. You will grow to understand them by tracking new and repeat visitors to measure their behaviour.

If you're running marketing campaigns such as Google AdWords or any of the numerous alternatives then the tools in NetTracker can track their success by showing you where your visitors are coming from and how they are reacting upon viewing the video, identifying any problems in the path to a definate call to action.

> Statistic Dashboards allow you to analyse your streaming projects focussing on the quality of the connection, traffic, content and visitor information.

> In depth Visitor Analysis lets you see where your audience is coming from, including their country, sector and even individual IP.

> Traffic Analysis shows you when your streams are being viewed and how long for, showing your peak times in your choice of tables and graphs.

> The Technical Analysis tool lets you also see what platform and player people are actually using to view your streams.

> Use Content Analysis to see which streams are being viewed in what order, showing you what is most popular, identifying what type of content to increase, remove or replace in line with your visitor's preferences.

As your broadcasts are analysed you will learn how effective they really are, to support this PlanetStream can provide you with advice on the best practices of vSEO (Video Search Engine Optimisation) in order to drive organic traffic to your site.

All this is available for just £20 + VAT a month for any level of streaming account, you will also receive the highest level of support by our trained technical advisors.

To find out more about NetTracker and PlanetStream in general click here or call us on 01386 792972

PlanetStream: Audio and Video Streaming Services

As you may be aware FASTSMS is part of NetSecrets Ltd where we do lots of stuff to do with the Internet, save listing them I'll dive straight into telling you a little bit about PlanetStream and how you can benefit from the services being offered. To put it in context, here some figures released earlier this year...

Statistics from comScore Inc. have shown a radical shift in browser behaviour - more people are actually watching video online than are conducting searches. October 2008 saw a total of 12.6 billion searches made, compared to 13.5 billion videos being viewed.

Senior analyst for the Kelsey Group, Michael Boland, presented the data at the Search Engine Strategies conference, Chicago and noted, "Video is now a standard, an expectation."

This trend complements the findings of a separate survey by PermissionTV, which concluded that 2 out of 3 business owners regard online video as a primary focus of their 2009 digital marketing campaigns - higher than every other category, including social media and search. These two trends, coupled with Google's recent integration of video thumbnails to general search results, have created a strong argument that companies should produce even more video content in 2009.

Video is changing the rules of both website marketing and SEO. Because of the spidering nature of Google's new algorithms, the company that moves quickly to load their website with high quality videos has a chance to dominate their local search marketing efforts and their competitors for months or years to come.

But how can you take advantage of this? With PlanetStream you will get the same high level of support as you do with FASTSMS, we will always strive to help you get the most out of the service and give you a pricing plan that works for you.

So you may be thinking to yourself "yeah, maybe streaming is a good idea, but why pay for it when things like YouTube are free?". I am always suspicious of things that appear free, and this is why...

There are three main issues:

1. Unlike PlanetStream, YouTube give no guarantee of service or the quality of playback and it can deteriorate quite badly at busy times. So for professional users there is always the risk that a key visitor to your website could receive a poor impression of you.

2. Because YouTube is free they add their branding and their advertising to your video. This detracts from your image and dilutes your message. It's a bit like finding a professional person with an AOL email address. It makes you look amateurish and even cheap-skate.

3. Most importantly at the end of your video they add links to "similar" content. At worst this could be links to your competitors but even if it's complementary content it can distract your visitor away from your message

To read more about this Click Here

With PlanetStream you will be able to choose how your video appears and how it is used. With options such as On Demand, Live Event, and 24 Hour Streaming your business can benefit from creating a really unique visitor experience on your site.

Call us on 01386 792972 or email info@planetstream.net if you have any questions about how streaming can work for you.

Bespoke Development for SMS Integration

The team who develop the FastSMS NetMessenger platform and desktop products such as the desktop sender and the up and coming SMSLook Outlook Plugin are part of the NetSecrets development team who operate in a wide range of fields including IP network development, online database development using MySQL &/or SequelServer and pHP/ASP scripting.

Consequently FastSMS can pull together multi-discipline teams to develop bespoke solutions including SMS and MMS.

Tasks undertaken have included gaming and tipster sites where premium information is delivered by text; retail distribution where order progress is notified by SMS and much more.

So if you have a bespoke requirement where you need top technical skills married with the best SMS platform in the UK contact sales@fastsms.co.uk or call 01386 791880.