We recognize that our work has the potential to affect the environment. The good news is that there are a number of things that we can do to minimize this impact without compromising on quality and cost effectiveness.

Here are a few of the things Positive K is doing to become a greener business…

Saving Energy and Recycling.
To become more energy efficient we are:
• Using low-energy light bulbs.
• Recycling all paper, plastic and glass.
• Re-filling ink cartridges
• Turning off printers, computers and other electrical equipment when not in use.

Transport.
• We do not commute long distances to work.
• Investment in technology allows us to minimize long distance business journeys.
Print Specification and Suppliers.
• We are forming partnerships with print companies who show an active awareness of environmental issues.
• Paper specification for print work is based on chlorine free, sustainable forests or recycled pulp whenever possible.

We are keen to establish working relationships with people who share our values.
If you are a supplier or potential client with a similar approach get in touch here

Designing Demand is an initiative run by the Design Council in association with Business Link.

The workshops are run to help businesses understand the value of good design and how to maximise their own opportunities through innovation and planning.

More details here

What Every Business Should Know about Keywords and Internet Marketing
by Janet Helft.

Using the right keywords in your internet marketing is vitally important. If you want to get more visitors to your website, and more importantly, if you want those visitors to turn into customers, the keywords you choose must be popular with your target market and must be highly relevant to your products and services.

The important element of any marketing plan is to get inside the minds of your target market and understand what they are looking for and what motivates them. This is true whether you are looking at an online (internet) or an offline (traditional media) marketing campaign.

These days, when people are looking for a product or service, the first place they go to is the internet and the most popular place they use to search for information is Google. The search term that they enter in Google is made up of keywords and keyword phrases.

Your potential customer will use keywords and keyword phrases to:

• Find a solution to their problem
• Find information about a product or service they are looking for
  
• Find a supplier of the product or service they need

The trick is to second guess the keywords they will use and then optimise your website so that it is listed at the top of the search engine results page when that keyword or keyword phrase is entered. (Sounds easy doesn’t it??!!)

The first thing to do when you’re developing your internet marketing strategy is to come up with some phrases that people might use if they are looking for your product or service. IMPORTANT: Don’t just focus on single words as these will be too general, will have the greatest competition and it will be very difficult to get your website to rank highly for them. Instead, think of phrases that incorporate the keyword – about three words in the phrase will make it more specific and accurate, so the visitor that is using that search term is most likely to find what they need when they arrive at your website.

So how do you optimise your website for these keywords?

Search engine optimisation is a specialist area involving many different techniques and changes all the time. Google changes the way it ranks websites on a regular basis and the terms that people use to search on the internet changes too. So it isn’t a one-off exercise; search engine optimisation, or SEO, must be done on a regular basis to make it effective in keeping your site highly ranked for your chosen keywords.

One way of optimising your website is to write content for your website that includes these keywords but in a format that will appeal to your market. Don’t just repeat keywords for the sake of the search engines, your website copy MUST appeal to your human visitors as well! Otherwise, you may get lots of visitors, but if you don’t engage your visitors when they arrive at your site they will leave VERY QUICKLY. If you choose your keywords carefully and make your content interesting and engaging, you should achieve a return on the investment in your website in the form of more leads and ultimately more sales.

Janet Helft is an experienced internet marketing consultant having worked for more than 20 years in business and IT consultancy and project management. For more information on what internet marketing can do to boost your business email janet@positivek.co.uk

A great event for anybody interested in social enterprise.

Find out more here…