Tsohost Review

June 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Tsohost Web Hosting Review

A web host is a provider that keeps all the files from your sites on its servers, making them available when people type in the URL eg. http://www.thinkgenial.com.

I currently have 8 sites hosted with Tsohost who I have been with for around 18 months. Here’s a quick review:

Overview

  • Founded 2003
  • Uptime guarantee 99.9%
  • Prices start £14.99/yr
  • UK based hosting
  • Linux or Windows
  • UK based customer service
  • Email/ email forwarding
  • 1 click WordPress installation

Promo code, 10% off hosting: JWTG10

UK Based

Tsohost are a UK based hosting company with servers and customer service based in the UK. The location of your servers is important for search engine optimisation so if you are targeting customers in the UK you want UK based hosting.

The location of the customer service is important if you need to contact them. An American call centre may be closed when you want to call and that call may cost you a bit from the UK too.

Customer Service

The customer service from Tsohost is excellent. Their call centre is open 9am – 11pm and their staff are very technically knowledgeable.

The usual route if you have an issue is to submit a ticket and in my experience their reported average response time of 12 minutes is accurate. If I have ever had a problem it has been quickly and efficiently dealt with.

Products

The first domains I bought were from 123reg.com. However I looked into getting them from Tsohost and found them to be cheaper so have bought my last few domains with Tsohost. There is less messing around too if you buy hosting and domains from one place.

For one site I needed an SSL Certificate. This makes the site more secure and is standard for e-commerce sites. I looked around for the best deal and found that was with Tsohost too….

That brings us on to the pricing which starts at £14.99 for 2 sites. I am on the PRO package which gets you 6 sites for £49.99/ yr with a free domain worth £8.99. My other 2 sites I bought through a Tsohost reseller. If you need to add any more sites to the PRO package its an extra £25 for 5.

Promo code, 10% off hosting: JWTG10

Summary

For a small business owner like myself or a blogger I can’t recommend Tsohost highly enough. You get a handful of sites hosted for next to nothing and the customer support is first class. Reviews of their high end packages seem to be favourable too.

If you are looking for hosting in the UK I would definitely consider Tsohost. Use the promotional code JWTG10 to get 10% off any hosting package for life. Good for one per customer.

Visit Tsohost

I hope you found this review useful. Have you used Tsohost or another hosing company? What was your experience? Feel free to leave a comment.

Joe

Disclosure: The link to Tsohost above is an affiliate. If you click through and decide to buy, I earn a small commission.

Filed Under: Blog, Review, Slider, Web Hosting Tagged With: , , , ,

Who Is Your Blog For?

November 1, 2011 By 5 Comments

Blogging Strategies – Who is your blog written for?

1. Your Customers

One classic company blogging strategy is to draw in potential customers with useful content and over time some will become buyers.  Typically a wide variety of topics are covered using this strategy.

This works well if your company is an established brand or if you have leading experts to impart information. The experts don’t necessarily have to work for your company, they could write guest posts for you.

If you are using this content marketing strategy, it is useful to have calls to action and use landing pages to move prospective customers along the sales funnel.

2. A Segment of Your Customers

The trouble with audience 1 is that unless your company is an established brand or you have leading experts contributing to the blog it can be hard to stand out from the crowd.

If you are a small company you might not have the resources to allow you to compete with larger companies pursuing a similar strategy.

Once way round this is to focus in on some niche content which appeals to your customers. If you are a local business it could be that you relate your content to the local area, or it could be that what you write about is highly focused on one specific topic that appeals to a section of your target market.

If you were a garden centre using this strategy for example, you could write all about Lillies: the different species, where they grow best, how you look after them, what animals they encourage etc.

That way you may soon have one of the top blogs on Lillies! The chances of you quickly developing a top blog on general gardening on the other hand are next to none.

3. Your Peers

If you are seen as a leader in your field there could be a case for focusing on content for your peers.

If you manage to build an audience amongst your peers with great content you will find they will link to you from their own websites and share your stuff.

If you are seen as an industry leader you are more likely to be asked to comment on industry news. This gives you access to a much greater audience, drives traffic to your website and generates more quality links.

4. Other Bloggers’ Audiences

Writing guest blog posts can be a great way to grow your audience. If you can find another blogger in your niche who needs content they may well be willing to have you write a guest post.

This gives you access to their audience and some of their readers might well like your stuff and become regular readers of your blog. Having links from other blogs can drive traffic to your blog and help your site climb the Google rankings.

5. Your Customers (pt 2)

Rather than producing useful content for your customers you could focus your company blog on connecting with your customers.

This strategy has been used to great effect by large corporations such as Microsoft and General Motors, maybe it can work for you too.

Using this strategy it would be typical for the head of your company and other company leaders to blog about their interests. They may also give their view on industry goings on and new products (like with 3).

As always, feel free to comment :)

 

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Business Blogging, Social Media Management Tagged With: , , ,

9 Ways To Cheat At Social Media

September 14, 2011 By 6 Comments

Game Social Media

1. Buy likes/ followers/views

There are websites where, for a fee, you can get likes on your Facebook Page, buy Twitter followers or buy views on your Youtube video.

There could be benefit in doing this. Your accounts look more popular and with a phenomenon known as social proof, people are ironically more likely to trust you, gaining you more real followers and influence.

2. Buy plus ones

There are packages where you can now buy Google +1s for your website. Though the effects of buying +1s are largely unknown, it is possible your website might gain a higher ranking the more +1s you have. Google +1s from others in your online network are certainly a ranking factor in Google.

3. Mass follow/ unfollow

Either manually or using automated churn scripts like Tweet Adder you can follow and unfollow hundreds of people on your Twitter account.

The follow back rate for Twitter is around 50%, so if you follow and unfollow enough people you can amass quite a following without looking like you are following half the planet!

4. Automate updates

To ensure there is substantial content coming from your Twitter account, you can go to any website with a blog and copy and paste the RSS feed into Twitterfeed. That way every time there is a new post it will be automatically tweeted out to your followers. Social Oomph is another tool you can use to automate your Twitter updates.

5. Game Klout

Klout is a measure of social media influence. The algorithm measures follow-follower ratio, as well as number of tweet, retweets, etc. You can game Klout though. For instance just Tweeting a lot can get you a Klout score of 50 (I do mean a lot ;) ) and here’s another post about gaming Klout.

6. #ff lots of people

Follow Friday (#FF) is a practice used to by Twitter users to recommend people they follow. One way to get visibility with your followers is to #FF many blocks of your followers on a Friday. This is also likely to get you mentions if they thank you (think Klout score) ;)

7. Use a personal account for your business on Facebook and friend people

You can open a personal Facebook account for your business and attempt to ‘friend’ prospective customers. You can then convert to a Facebook Page once you have built a fanbase! You might get slapped with a temporary ban if too many people report you for attempting to ‘friend’ them though.

8. Steal blog content

At the darker end of the spectrum, you can put up a website, ‘scrape’ content from other websites and use it on your own :( . If your content gets ‘crawled’ before the stolen content, Google may recognise your content as the original!

You can prevent this from happening to you for example by using this free plugin on your WordPress site http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pubsubhubbub/

9. Spam blog comments

To try to get traffic to your blog and backlinks you can find and comment on as many blogs as possible that your customers and prospects are reading and add comments with no value; you don’t even need to read the blog to do this.

The most traffic generally comes from comments near the top. Be warned readers may think it unlikely you are ‘adding to the conversation.’

Some of these tactics mentioned here are more effective than others, some are also more unethical than others too! Just remember, the reputation of your business is at stake.

Do you know of any tactics people use to try and cheat at social media?

 

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Things Your Company Needs To Do To Stay Relevant

September 13, 2011 By 5 Comments

Happy Customers

1. Follow Industry Leaders On Twitter

Who do you look up to in your industry? Who are the experts? Who are the leaders? Who is at the bleeding edge when it comes to industry trends? Make a list of at least 10 of these people who are active on Twitter and follow them (I follow many more).

If they tweet something out and you have something to add then tweet them back, hell tweet them back anyway – that way your followers will think you’re an industry leader too ;)

2. Ask Customers

What do your customers want? Why not ask them through social media channels! Which is their favourite product? What do they want to see improved in your service? Ask them and act on it, your customers will appreciate it :)

3. Testing

The technology world is constantly testing. They run beta tests on selected groups of experts on new technologies, they split test the text, graphics and layout of their websites. Then they make iterative changes and test again.

Can you use this kind of testing? For example split testing a new menu at your restaurant or split testing the standard telephone response at your business?

4. Monitor Competition

Are your competitors innovating? Maybe they have spotted a trend in the market that you have not latched on to yet? Maybe they are doing a product launch? Maybe they have a new service?

Simply set up your social media listening station, monitor and stay more relevant than your competitors :)

5. Go Off Topic

If you are a local business, try thinking about what your customers are interested in and what is relevant to them, then use that for your online marketing content.

It may have nothing to do with your industry but is relevant to your customers. For example if you are an estate agent maybe you could do reviews of local restaurants on your blog.

Mmm Food

I hope this post has given you some food for thought.

Stay relevant people, and keep this blog relevant by posting in the comments :)

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Are You Producing Quality Content?

August 23, 2011 By 4 Comments

Quality Content

There are nearly 100 million domains registered….. and that’s just .com domains! so…

..What Makes You Stand Out?

What makes people come to your website and want to keep coming back and engage with your company?

Simple – its quality content.

What The Gurus Say

SEO Gurus have recently been pointing out producing quality content means outsized results whilst mediocre or even good content, well as I said earlier: 100,000,000 domains….

A Great Example

As an example, this post with infographic the Noob Guide to Internet Marketing took (the writer) 3 months start to finish.

The post has been shared over 4000 times on Twitter, has 818 Facebook ‘Likes’ and has generated 222 comments since it was posted in February (plus many more shares of the infographic on it own).

Quality Content Test:

1. Can the reader/ content consumer find this info anywhere else?

2. If it is a blog article, would it make it to print?

3. Are you demonstrating your expertise?

4. If it is news, have you added your perspective?

5. Does the content look professional? – Well edited etc.

Weigh Up The Competition

Take a look around, you might have tons of knowledge which isn’t covered anywhere – bingo! If not, you might have a bit more work to do.

Don’t Panick

I am not saying you have to hit it out of the park with every blog post, but bear in mind the questions I have outlined above when producing content.

Over To You

What do you think makes quality content? Do you have a quality content test?

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

How To Make Your Website More Social

August 2, 2011 By 3 Comments

Social Media Website

Its a great idea in 2011 to make your website as social as possible.

Here are a few things you can do to make your website a more social experience! (If you’re a WordPress user :) )

Comments – enabled

Use the Disqus plugin to allow peoples’ comments to be updated immediately.

This encourages people to comment and you are notified immediately by email when they do :) .

Share buttons – everywhere

Use the Tweet Meme button and the Facebook Like button at the top of your posts.

Use the Share and Follow plugin at the bottom of each post to encourage sharing on: Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Twitter (and more)

(I just use the share part of this plugin.)

Encourage Connection

Use the Social Profiles plugin  to encourage people to subscribe to you posts and connect with you :)

Tweets

Import your latest tweets using the Twitter Tools plugin. This plugin also automatically syndicates your blog posts directly to Twitter, saving you time.

Facebook Connect

Use the Facebook Like Box for social proof and to encourage people to like your Facebook Page. Facebook generates some code for you then you pop it into a text box and put it in the sidebar.

Overkill

The Twitter follow button

Googleplus/ LinkedIn

I have tried the Googlecards plugin but haven’t got it to work yet (give it a try to build your circles :) )

I do have a +1 button at the bottom of each post though.

Its probably a good idea to use a LinkedIn share button if you are a professional too.

Your Site?

Do you use any of these plugins? Which plugins do you find best?

 

I hope this helps.

Joe

 

If you would like to get the edge on your competitors fill in the form below and I’ll help you win with social media :)

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Filed Under: Blog, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Social Media Profile Branding

July 13, 2011 By 4 Comments

Social Media Profile Branding

When it comes to social media profile branding it is important to be consistent.

Name

You will want to use your company name across the social media platforms or if not at least grab the name so no one else can use it :) .

Use this tool to check the availability of your company name across many social media platforms.

As an alternative you may wish to use your own name, a version of your company name or a combination of your company name and your name (like I am have on Twitter).

Design

Another element which needs to be consistent is the design. If you have the resources it is advisable (if possible!) to customise the design of your social media profiles.

Avatar

Social media is all about connections between people. One way to increase the level of connection with your profiles is by using photos of people (headshots) rather than the company logo as your avatar.

Mari Smith suggests having several shots taken by a professional photographer and using those across the various social media platforms.

Content

It is important that your content is consistent, for example that you post regularly and maintain the same ‘voice’ for your company.

Larger companies with many people contributing may wish to draw up guidelines to help with consistency.

 

I hope you find this post useful!

Any branding experts want to chip in :) ?

Have you thought about the branding of your social media profiles?

 

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Low Hanging, Raving Fans

May 19, 2011 By 7 Comments

In conducting social media research I have come across some really fantastic examples of social media marketing. Some companies are coming up with all sorts of ways to connect with and entertain customers and turn them into raving fans.

Once all the hard work is done and the raving fans reach out through social media they are being warmly thanked for their comments and contributions :)

The simple act of thanking raving fans on social media means they think better of your company and are more likely to talk about you. Then word spreads, from person to person, on review sites, on social networks. Voila, more customers.

Then there are companies who are paying no attention to their advocates. I have seen some poorly maintained Facebook Pages but there are Pages out there which are being regularly updated but the companies are not acknowledging people on their Page – even if they are raving fans!

People need validation and thanks to social media you don’t have to send a hand written letter to your raving fans, just a few taps on a keyboard and bobs your uncle :)

So if you are reading this and are guilty of this social media sin say three hail marys, head on over to your Facebook Page/ Twitter account/ blog and send some cyber kisses to your raving fans.

They won’t forget it :)

Feel free to use the comments section below.

 

Joe

PS. I may have overused the expression raving fans in this article ;)

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , ,