We’ve been working on a lot of really great stuff behind the scenes the last few weeks, so I thought it would be a good time to share some of this with you.
So I thought I’d write a quick email to explain…

1) Who are Quaturo?

We are a leading content marketing agency – specialising in producing outstanding content to get brands noticed online. We have a strong background in SEO and social media – and have found that most website’s have one thing in common, they all need high-quality content and natural links. So we are using our experience in the areas that we have found to get the best results for our clients search campaigns; great content!

Our key services include:

• Content Strategy – analysing, auditing and research to find any gaps in content and the best angles to use for marketing your content online.
• Content Development – generating social media buzz and great links via blogging, guest blogging and infographic design.
• Blogger Outreach – social promotion to connect with key bloggers in order to generate coverage and high-quality links.
• Training – we can work with your in-house content team to ensure that the content they are developing has maximum impact online.

For more information please visit our content marketing services or get in touch.

2) Content Marketing Events

We plan on running a number of content marketing events later in the year. These are likely to be in the format of both online and offline (London) events, including:

• Google+ Hangouts
• Webinars
• Blogger meetups
• Roundtables & Knowledge Shares
• Seminars & Mini-Conferences

Keep up-to-date with our latest events. The first one is a Google+ Hangout this Friday!

3) A Bit of Footballing Fun!

Finally, I’ve setup a five-a-side football event in London on Thursday evenings. This event is running every week in Camden at 8.30pm – there’s still time to play this week too – just signup here!

We can hire a pitch easily enough – and if we can get 10-12 regulars who are up for a game, I’m sure we can get people to cover (as obviously not everyone will be able to make it every week). So we can rope in workmates, people from Twitter etc last minute if we need to.

Anyway, if you’re interested in playing, can you drop a comment below with preferred dates/days of the week and locations (see here) - and I’ll send an email round and look to get something setup as a one-off game and then see if we’ve got enough of us to do something more regularly afterwards.

But recently I’ve tested a few out – they’re relatively inexpensive so I thought I’d see for myself if they were worth it. Here’s what I found:

1) LinkedIn Premium

To be honest, I’ve always viewed paid LinkedIn accounts as tools for recruiters. And to a large extent that is true. But from a business owner perspective, recruitment is vital – and LinkedIn is the best site out there for this, so if for £12.95 a month (sales basic) it can help you find the right people to push your business forward, then it’s money well spent in my opinion!

2) SlideShare Pro

I’ve spoken at quite a few industry events during the last couple of years – and the ability to promote your content online after a presentation is extremely valuable in my opinion. Firstly, it gives an opportunity to share these with people who were at the event – but it also allows you to share this with people who weren’t there too. Of course you can do this for free anyway, but if you can spread the reach of this even further with a pro account – at £19 per month I would say it’s worth it if you’re speaking regularly. My last 4 or 5 presentations have all made it onto the SlideShare homepage and the Pro account definitely helps towards this – as it often gets you listed as featured pro content quite easily:

Another tip would be when you’re promoting the content via social media, link directly to SlideShare – that way it helps you to become hot on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn which is also shared on the homepage!

3) TripIt Pro

I really like TripIt – it’s a great travel organisation tool, just forward your booking emails to them and it keeps track of all travel details (where/when you’re going etc). Plus, personally having turned up for a flight 24 hours early in the past, it’s a useful tool to have! At least I wasn’t late though

If I’m honest the real reason I signed up, was the fact that it gets you a free gold membership to use Regus offices/meeting rooms, which is very useful in London! This normally costs £35 per month – TripIt Pro costs $49 a year! No brainer?

What do you think of the above sites? And are there any other paid social media sites you subscribe to?

There were a couple of questions around this – which in answering, of course I can only speculate on where I think Google are going with this. But the news of Google+ Local being launched has confirmed in some ways where I thought things were heading.

The questions were:

1) Will it be possible for you to -1/dislike brands, as well as +1 votes?

I hadn’t really considered this concept before – but thought it was an interesting idea. Obviously the current way of doing this is if you don’t like something – you just don’t like it (or +1 of course). But that’s not the same as a negative vote.

The main way I could see Google making something like this work would be to make Google+ brand pages more of a one-stop shop – so integrating reviews, in an almost TripAdvisor style into pages. Google definitely aren’t there yet – and it’s unclear if that’s where they want to be, but they’ve rolled out Google+ Local this week – which suggests they’re taking a step closer and are looking to encourage more customer interaction in this way.

It isn’t just for restaurants either – you can search any type of businesses – here’s what the listings look like:

2) How do small businesses market themselves on Google+? 

For small businesses, online and search marketing advice is generally based around local – at least initially. Of course it’s easier to rank for local terms within your industry than it is to rank for generic terms nationally. And I think this advice applies to social media too – target your local audience, find where your customers are and then look to build a community-feel around your Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages.

So in this instance, my advice was to keep an eye on what Google+ are doing with local – because that’s been such a huge push from Google during the last 12-months. And if they do roll something out, similar to the TripAdvisor style review pages mentioned above – then there’s a big opportunity to capitalise on it!

And looking at the recent Google+ local changes, that’s exactly what they’ve done! See this screenshot for my hometown, Abingdon:

So if you’re a small business targeting a local audience – now’s definitely the time to get these pages optimised and promoted!

So during a spare 5 minutes, I thought I’d test out how good these were – here’s the result:

1) Twitter Showdown – Danny Sullivan vs Rand Fishkin

2) Facebook Insider – SEOptimise fan page

3) Life of a Hashtag – #SMX

4) Dr. Visually’s Automagical Facebook Monsterizer – my profile

5) Twitterize Yourself – @kevgibbo

Personally I’m not sure you’re going to get any great promotional success – due the fact it’s not unique/specific enough. But I thought they were pretty good considering the minimal amount of effort it took on my part to put them together. Genius bit of linkbait from the guys at Visua.ly too! What do you think?

Is anyone seeing this? I’m assuming this is new?

Sadly my dad, Jim Gibbons, died on 11th April 2012 following such a brave battle with cancer for the last year.

He was incredibly proud of my career and paid a huge interest in everything I did, even starting his own affiliate marketing site after reading SEO and web design books that I recommended to him.

So in my own little way, I wanted to remember him online too. I’m hoping that this post will rank for Jim Gibbons in Google so that anyone who is searching about him can find this.

I also want to share the words that I read at his funeral, as I think these sum up just what a great man he really was to so many people.

My Dad – Jim Gibbons:

During the last week, we’ve received so many nice messages, cards and flowers from people who knew and loved my Dad.

I’m sure when someone’s died people always say something similar, things like:
– he was such a nice, caring man
– he never had a bad word to say about anyone
– no-one ever had a bad word to say about him
– family meant the world to him
– he had great friends who meant a huge amount to him, as equally he did to them
– he always had time for everyone and always put them first above himself
– he always had a smile on his face, was a happy person to be around and had a great sense of humour

But in the case of my dad, there really has never been a truer word spoken.

The last week has been incredibly tough for everyone who knew him – he was a fantastic dad, husband, son, brother, uncle, brother-in-law, son-in-law and friend to so many people. And one of the things I thought was great, was that it didn’t sink in just how much he loved us or how proud of us he was of us once he died. It didn’t need to. We knew already. He showed it every day.

I just hope that he knew how much we all loved him too – even if he did joke that he must have won the lottery when everyone was gathered around him in hospital! Whether it was watching me play football, or Laura swimming, taking us for days out, planning holidays down to the very last detail or getting to know Todd and Chelsea – both of whom he was extremely fond of. Dad was always there – and he wouldn’t miss a single moment.

We’re all going to miss you massively dad – but we’re also very happy that we got to share such a great life with you and have amazing memories that will last forever.

So hopefully if you’re searching for Jim Gibbons, from Abingdon, Oxfordshire – you’ll now find my Dad!

So these are the business books, most of which I’ve read during the last year which I’ve found to be very useful to improve my learning:

1. The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss – excellent book, I actually read this about 3 years ago – but a great way of looking at things and well worth a read!
2. Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins – I’ve only read this recently, but instantly agreed with all of the principles behind level 5 leadership, how to achieve success through understanding data and the importance of building a great team. Very good book!
3. ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – these are the guys from 37 Signals (company behind BaseCamp). It’s such a simple way of looking at things – but that’s what it’s all about, simplifying rather than over-complicating to get results!
4. Naked Finance: Business Finance Pure and Simple by David Meckin – Finance is one of those areas I haven’t got a huge amount of experience in, but it’s vitally important to get right. This book was very useful to make sure I’m looking at the most valuable and actionable information which relates to running an agency – such as profit per employee/client.
5. How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie – got to admit, I’ve only just started reading this, but it’s very good so far. Just a really good way at looking at how to positive reaction from people.
6. The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume by Josh Kaufman – another excellent book for all-round business advice – especially if you can’t afford an MBA!
7. Net Profit: How to Succeed in Digital Business by David Sokin – great book if you run an online business, written by the owner of CheapFlights.com with a real digital angle which highlights the importance of search marketing.
8. Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur by Richard Branson – I’ve read all of Richard Bransons books and this is the best one in my opinion for business strategy advice.
9. Getting Things Done: How to achieve stress-free productivity: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen – a must read. Great for anyone interested in productivity, become more organised/strategic and to breakdown big projects into achievable goals. I actually wrote a post on how I use this for SEO projects – the embedded video presentation he gave to Google is definitely worth a look too.
10. The Power of Less by Leo Babauta – Zen Habits is probably my favourite blog to read. I read this book a couple of years ago too, but the concepts Leo describes makes things sound so simple and straightforward which is just what you need to focus on achieving that goal!

Hopefully that helps for anyone else with similar interests in business and productivity books as me. Would be great to hear your recommendations on what you think I should read next too!

Seeing that I’ve now presented a few times at various events – I thought it would be useful to publish the slides from these:

1. LinkedIn
2. Twitter
3. Google+
4. Facebook
5. Lanyrd
6. Slideshare
7. Flickr
8. Quora
9. TripIt

And you can find my writing and guest blogging on these sites:

1. SEOptimise
2. Econsultancy
3. Search Engine Watch
4. Search Engine Land
5. Search Engine Journal

Plus I have presented at the following conferences and events:

1. SMX Advanced London (2010 & 2011)
2. a4uexpo London (2010 & 2011)
3. a4uexpo Europe (2011)
4. BrightonSEO (2010 & 2011)
5. SMX Israel (2011)
6. SAScon Manchester (2011)
7. Social Media Week – London (2011)

I’ll keep this list updated too, as I’ve already got four presentations lined up in early 2012 – including SES London and BrightonSEO.