So where would you use Dropbox?well suppose you had a great day out with friends and wanted to share the photos you took with them, simple open a Dropbox account and invite them into the shared folder.  If you own or run a business and you need to share large files between your sales team for example or maybe a potential customer wants pictures now of that great car you’re selling.  All this can be accomplished through Dropbox I cant recommend it enough, and what is more the service is FREE.

You heard it correct Dropbox works on a freemium basis so they offer a free account of 2GB and of course you could have a paid account of upto 1TB, everytime someone joins through a referral link you gain an additional 250Gb of space on your account, thus encouraging users to share – as I have done here.

You can visit the Dropbox site clicking on this link here as I said I cannot recommend it highly enough so go on try it out, its FREE!

We are delighted to be able to confirm a new GrowMyCharity.com is on the way in early 2012, as you can see from the YouTube video we made below.

If you want to know more then please add you email details to our newsletter signup and we’ll let you know more about it in early 2012.

3 eMail marketing top tips.

Use a decent email marketing system – my consultancy business GleaveMedia run and operate a very cost effective system with lots of inbuilt functionality included for FREE.  Does your email marketing system offer you a fully functioning solution and includes reports, who clicked what link, a to b split testing and custom integration to name but a few?

If the system you use doesn’t include all this or if the web agency you use charge you for all these addons it is definitely time to look elsewhere..

Do you know your subscribers? - categorizing of your data is so important, you need to have customers split from prospects for example, and if you can drill down into what those prospects are interested in and the same for customers. You basically want to send an email about something that the customer wants to receive, if not what is the point?

Be consistent – so if you send a regular email once a month, then send it once a month.  If you send from the email address of john@yourcompany dot com then do that – what i am trying to get across is that you need to keep the timing and information you send from the same or similar.

You may also want to read a post I wrote for my business blog titled – How to write great email subject lines - http://www.gleavemedia.co.uk/2011/08/02/how-to-write-great-email-marketing-subject-lines/

And while I am at it why not sign up to my regular email you can do this using the form below…

In an increasingly busy and competitive world, hiring an independent web professional for your company’s website build and development surely is just good common sense.

The key difference between an Independent Internet Project Manager (myself) and a web company’s own account manager is how they prioritise your business needs. I work exclusively for the YOU the customer, whereas a web company’s own account manager works for that Internet Development Company.

I am delighted to offer a service where i can work for your business using all my experience to ensure you get a website built that is delivered on time, within budget and exceeding your expectation, removing all the pain and hassle from dealing with technology company’s covering stuff you may not understand or being sold stuff you just dont need or even simply have time to deal with – I remove the hassle, manage the trouble and deliver what you want.

As for experience well I have been in the web industry since 1999 and I pretty much know all the tricks of the trade, having worked in my time for two leading Exeter Web Design Companies, KMS Internet and Optix Solutions.

You can find my LinkedIn Profile here http://www.linkedin.com/in/alistairg and a couple of quote from satisfied customers are taken from this profile.

“I can sum this up in very few words: “Alistair REALLY knows his stuff.” You want a few more? OK – He’s a focused and realistic marketing professional. If you want a no-nonsense, down-to-earth and plain English approach, you really should be speaking with Alistair.”

Sue Haswell – Big Results Marketing

“Al is a very detail processed individual which has managed the business link between our two companies for the last 3 years. He has at all times provided excellent support and direction in difficult times. His ability to see through the issues and resolve the route has always been an inspiration to me.”

Aboo Cattran – Sportsman Gun Centre.

You can find our more on my blog here http://www.alistairgleave.co.uk/website-project-management/ or contact me here .

Alistair Gleave & Danny Frayne, originally uploaded by alistair gleave.

Today i was kindly invited into the Corporate box of Exeter printers Quickprint South West. I am pictured here with owner Danny Frayne prior to the start of the game.

The match was between Exeter and MK Dons and finished 1-1 with a goal in either half, it was a good game and Exeter had a number of great chances to take all three points, they will just have to make do with the draw and 1 point.

Thank you Danny for the invite…. @quickprintSW a great local printer.

I am still a newbie in the blogging world so I was delighted when established blogger Alistair Gleave invited me to write as a guest for his own site. Once the feeling of pride had worn off I was struck by the “what to write” dilemma. My blog strategy is not generally very strategic. I tend to wait for an idea to pop into my head, usually sparked off by a conversation with someone, and then write a blog post around it. I do, however, tend to stick to my area of “expertise” ie Devon Marketing Agency or Devon business development and write things which I think will be useful/of interest to my target audience.

So, when Alistair suggested to me yesterday that I write about “my year” as my guest blog I was a little hesitant. Writing about myself is slightly off patch for me and it feels a little uncomfortable so I hope this is the sort of thing he had in mind…

It has been an interesting and challenging year for me.

Just over twelve months ago I was made redundant from my very demanding, full-time, well-paid, senior marketing job and one week later my dad was diagnosed with cancer. The New Year didn’t bring the happiness we glibly invite on each other with our “Happy New Years” but brought new stress in the form of worry over money, personal insecurity and frequent trips to the RD&E.

After several months of unsuccessfully searching for jobs and spending an incredible amount of time with my family I made the bold decision to set up my own business. I have always fancied the idea of being a “Devon Marketing Consultant” but never thought I would be strong enough to create my own business. However, with my dad on the mend and no job on the horizon it seemed like the obvious decision.

Devon Marketing Agency Straight Marketing is born

Straight Marketing (to reflect my straightforward, plain-speaking and honest approach) was born in June and with my new corporate identity and business cards in hand I went off to my first networking event in early July.

Five months on I am still here and feeling quite positive about the future. I have a website I am proud of (thanks to Optix Solutions), I have learned lots of new things and engaged in new activities (social media being one of them!), I have met and made friends with lots of Exeter business people and best of all, I now have clients who have paid me for my marketing expertise and been happy with the work I have done for them! Yesterday I received a fabulous testimonial from a client that I did a marketing plan for which really makes it feel worthwhile.

In terms of my own marketing I have to admit I have been pretty useless and failed to practice what I preach. However, it does mean there is plenty of scope to develop my business, as I have by no means explored all avenues. So far my marketing has focused on networking (which I have found very effective) and some online marketing (my website, social networking, blogging).

My plans for 2011 and beyond

I have recently teamed up with a Devon PR Consultant (someone I met through networking) and we are going to trade skills to help boost each other’s business. In the New Year I plan to start targeting companies direct and build on the clients and contacts I have already made.

As for 2011, who knows how my year will pan out? At the very least I hope my dad will continue to receive the all clear at the dreaded monthly visits to the hospital and that my business will continue to grow.

About the author

Alison Jobson set up Straight Marketing following over 13 years’ experience of working with service-led businesses on the planning, coordination and implementation of business development strategies and marketing communications programmes.

In addition to Alison’s marketing experience she holds the Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing, is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is a Chartered Marketer.

Straight Marketing, based in Exmouth in Devon, operates as your out-sourced marketing department. You gain all the skills and experience of an in-house marketing professional without all the associated costs of employing a permanent member of staff.  Straight Marketing can also provide clarity and an external perspective, which is sometimes difficult to achieve when you are entrenched in the business.

Alison blogs regularly on marketing topics at www.straightmarketing.co.uk

There are more and more companies using Twitter to further their brand or develop customer service, in fact every day I come across companies using not just Twitter but other Social Media tools to support their business and their customers in what they do.

As such it is all the more surprising that one of the largest companies in the South West the Pennon Group (HQ in Exeter) owner of South West Water and it should be added a member of the FTSE 250 with revenue of nearly £1billion (09) is not on Twitter.

It is therefore no great surprise that the twitter account @southwestwater is being run by what can be best described as a disgruntled customer.  Go see for yourself you will find a multitude of derogatory statements about the service this customer (?) has received, and it all started with the Tweet below;

‘South West Water really suck!!. The water has been undrinkable again for over 30 hours’ 1:18 PM May 6th via web

So I guess the question has to be why haven’t South West Water claimed it? Within Twitter there is a tool as a brand to claim what is yours and more importantly stop someone abusing you also a great little tool called KnowEm which allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 400 popular and emerging social media websites.

No excuse to get your name and secure your brand before someone else does, anyone got some other great examples of brands getting it wrong?

Myself with a hard painted cow advertising a local cheese i believe. This is in the departure lounge of Terminal 3 at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

I went there to speak at the Urban Planters 2010 Annual conference to speak on the usuage, benefits and implementation of Social Media.

If you have an event that you want to invite a group of people to then the ‘olde school‘ method is ringing them up or even sending an email and following up to get a Y or N – you could even use snail mail if you wanted to really go way back…

Help is at hand with event management software called Eventbrite this offers you a simple tool to manage, promote and take online booking for your event and best of all it is free to sign up, you can do this here….

So what do you get out of it? Well Eventbrite event management system software sells itself on four main areas,

• Publish – You can use the FREE Eventbrite software to build your own online event and sign up page, it really is that simple.
• Promote – They have a number of inbuilt tools to enable you to promote your event ot the widest possible audience using social media and just straight emails.
• Manage – All these tools allow you to track the event, attendees, bookings etc, giving you a wealth of stats – you can see for example on an email invitation that has been sent whether it has been opened, clicked or then booked on – a very powerful tool.
• Sell – Through Eventbrite you can actually sell tickets to your event and they handle all the online payments so you need do nothing…. Within this you can also create time sensitive events, i.e. book before x date to pay y…

So whats the catch I hear you say? well i havent found one yet. The cost to you for a free event is nothing, that’s right nothing. You only pay when you want to charge for an event and then you pay a % of every sale you make. For any event management the use of Eventbrite surely is a no brainer?

Find out more you can visit Eventbrite here and see for yourself or if you need help planning an event why not use Event Planning Perfection to find out more Click Here!

Knowing what you customers think about you and your business has to be a very powerful sales tool. Having the information on how you are perceived and what motivates a purchaser to take that all important decision should drive your business strategy. This used to be an expensive and time consuming, and by paper or canvasser pretty much a no go for lots of companies, in particular for SME’s who’s perception of customers is often gained from what they voluntary tell the business NOT what is asked of them.

There is help at hand; a site called Survey Monkey which sells itself as the world’s leading provider of web-based survey solutions give YOU the business user control and the ability to ask the questions and have the responses collated for you.

With Survey Monkey you have 3 sign up options;

· FREE – 10 questions and maximum 100 Reponses per survey – 15 pre-built templates

· PRO – unlimited questions, unlimited custom – 1000 per month

· Unlimited – as it says unlimited

Choose the option best applicable get asking the questions, you can choose how you want people to respond be it a simple yes or no, maybe a multiple choice or even choose 3 of the 10 etc etc.

So why not give it a try with the free option as a starting point? I have used Survey Monkey for numerous online surveys and love its ability to do the work for you, from sending out the requests to collating the responses into neat little graphs….

Anyone else got any top survey tips?