Posts Tagged Severn Internet
Does blogging work? – showing a client it does!!!
Posted by David Harrison in Client News, Social Media on May 11th, 2010
As you know we at Severn Internet are big fans of blogging. One of our favourite clients Burgoynes is starting out on this social media road so we are providing a degree of training today.
By the way if you need a wedding marquee then they are really good at that!!
Please talk to us – we hate being lonely!
Posted by David Harrison in World News on April 27th, 2010
We are not really that lonely! But we would like to get more of a two way dialogue going please – that is after all the whole point of this social media mallarky is it not?
You can “engage” with us via the routes you would expect:
Blog Feed, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.
Ask us questions, give us a hard time – whatever you like except for a shed load of spam obviously!
We look forward to hearing from you!
11 Killer Social Media Presentations Worth Watching
Posted by David Harrison in Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Useful Stuff on April 27th, 2010
You have probably noticed that we at Severn Internet are cranking up our output on the blog at present! It has been too much a case of “Do as we say, not as we do” of late so hopefully we are addressing that now and trust you are finding some useful information contained within the posts. Please subscribe to the RSS feed so we can keep you up to date even easier!
On the subject of RSS, more and more people are no longer visiting the actual site where news is posted – they are viewing it in a reader and then going there if they want to. It is highly likely that any story is just one of many in a news reader so do try and write a catchy, attention gathering headline!
This post is really a link and also a plug for the people I am sending you to. Hubspot is a great company and it’s founders have also written a great book called Inbound Marketing. I would recommend you think about buying their book and you should also subscribe to their site – it has loads of excellent material.
The link to their article headlined above is http://bit.ly/bEMLwe
Let me know if you think it is worthwhile. We are always on the look out for new sources of info so do let us know if you have anything good we should be looking at too.
Watch what people say about you! You may not like it!
Posted by David Harrison in Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions, Useful Stuff on April 9th, 2010
Online reputation management (ORM) is one of the big things in the digital space at present and will only get more important – in my humble opinion!
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, whilst all the Web 2.0 stuff is great for consumer comments, those comments can be both good and bad. When you look at Tripadvisor, it is highly unlikely that all the comments are 100% positive … if there is a negative comment though, how have the hotel dealt with it – did they just ignore it, or comment back and explain the issues?
How did you react in that scenario – personally, if the hotel ignores the bad comment I would consider that a bad comment on the hotel itself – if it can’t be bothered to reply then how will they be at looking after me?!!
These days of course, there are multiple routes available for people to praise your service, or slag you off too. Either way you should be checking what people are saying about you.
This all came to the fore yesterday when a client of mine showed me his own experience. I think it would be safe to say that when this chap became a client he was less than convinced by my evangelism on the benefits of social media! How he has changed! Not only is he now blogging and tweeting away like a good un, he is now going to add Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube to the mix too … and part of the sources for his articles etc will come from what he reads via the alerts he has set up in Google Reader (personally I use Feedly as I think it is more user friendly).
One of his alerts is his company name of course, so when a particular client started something of a rant in a forum, he was alerted to the comments and was able to go back and respond. He may not be able to stop her saying things, but at least he can balance the view.
I would therefore suggest you go do three things right now if you have not done so already.
- Set up Google Reader
- Set up Google Alerts
- Set up Feedly
Of course you may want to add your competitors to your alert list so you can see what they are up to aswell!!
If you have had any experiences yourself, please let me know, or if you use any other tools I’d like to hear about them too please.
Mobile on the up
Posted by David Harrison in Useful Stuff on April 7th, 2010
There is an ever increasing use of mobile devices for interacting with the web these days.
I can now update our blog, send tweets and update fb and Linkedin – all from my phone!
Modern smartphones are pretty much a small computer these days and will only get more powerful in my opinion.
Make sure your site is visible on a phone!
Waypoint Systems clients to move to Severn Internet
Posted by David Harrison in Company News, New Contracts, Severn Internet News, Web Design, Web Development on November 16th, 2009
Further to the unfortunate voluntary liquidation announced last week by Waypoint Systems, Severn Internet are pleased to announce they have reached agreement with Waypoint to take over the management of Waypoint’s sites.
David Harrison, MD, said “It is always unfortunate when a company has to follow this course of action but our intention is to create as seamless a transfer as possible for clients of Waypoint. As a company we pride ourselves on our customer service and trust we will be able to build long term mutually beneficial relationships with our new clients. We will be contacting all the new clients over the next couple of days with the further intention of moving sites to our own servers as fast as possible. Any Waypoint clients we have not yet spoken to who have any questions should not hesitate to contact us on 01694 724899, where we are available to assist.”
The addition of Waypoint’s clients brings the total number of sites under our control to well in excess of 200. We are able to build and market a broad range of sites from basic content managed sites through to fully bespoke builds that integrate with your in house systems. If you would like to talk to us about developing your own site please do not hesitate to contact us.
Radio 5 shows the way … for the social media doubters!
Posted by David Harrison in Thoughts & Opinions on August 25th, 2009
Having had a great day out yesterday at Chester Zoo, which I can really recommend by the way, it was a somewhat tired David who woke up this morning to the usual Radio 5 alarm call!
So what I hear you say – what is he on about today? There is a point actually. When Radio 5 kicks off in the morning you get the usual “Welcome to … blah … blah …” stuff that you get on all radio shows, but they then proceed to list their blog address, facebook page, twitter address and remind you that broadcasts are available though both the BBC I Player and podcasts … given that the BBC website is probably one of the best , and most expensive if reports are true, websites in the world I would suggest they know a little bit when it comes to using online media … if they told me to stick my head in a gas oven I doubt I would but their heavy promotion of online channels surely suggests there is some mileage in these channels.
As things stand I think that Twitter is probably the most useful – first job gained through it last week! – but that is simply because it feels more immediate in my opinion. Looking at my stats I can see that there are more people visiting our blog regularly which in turn is leading to increased traffic to the website, which over time will lead to enquiries I am sure.
If you want any help in setting these channels up and learning how to use them for your own business please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here at Severn internet!
Three Tuns Brewery goes from strength to strength
Posted by David Harrison in Client News, Company News, Facebook, Thoughts & Opinions, Twitter on August 19th, 2009
I make no bones about the fact that John from the Three Tuns Brewery is one of my best mates, but that doesn’t guarantee you a mention on this blog! Even if you are the oldest licenced brewery in the UK!
I thought I should write up a little post about how well the brewery are doing. I played golf with John last Friday and he tells me that they are even getting business from Twitter now – which of course I will claim full credit for putting him onto! The Shropshire Star wrote a good article on his tweets last week – click here to read what they said.
In my opinion a brewery, like any other business, needs to have excellent customer service. Having a number of John’s clients as clients myself I know that they are really good, but it is the fact that certain things others fall down on are considered “de rigeur” that sets them apart – if I was running a pub I would want to know that my beer would arrive on time – apparently this is not a given in the licenced trade, but it is with The Three Tuns Brewery who have never been late with a delivery since John and Bill took it over.
They are really busy and approaching capacity again – John even suggested there might be a waiting list soon! My advice therefore is get in touch with them sooner rather than later – my personal recommendations would be the XXX and Clerics Cure beers – excellent, if a tad too moreish!
I’m sure John would also agree that their website, designed and built by Severn Internet of course, has not done them any harm either!
Congratulations Matthew … and Pippa!
Posted by David Harrison in Company News, Facebook, Severn Internet News, Twitter on August 19th, 2009
Everyone here at Severn Internet would like to extend our congratulations to Matthew and Pippa on the birth of their baby girl Elsie, who we understand weighed in at just under 7lb. Mother and baby are doing well. We look forward to wetting the baby’s head Matt!!
Server upgrade commences next week …
Posted by David Harrison in Company News, Facebook, Managed Hosting, Twitter on August 5th, 2009
It is easy to forget that if your website crashes, your business is also affected. You probably won’t receive any emails either unless you run your own Exchange server.
At Severn Internet we recognise this and that is why we have always hosted our client sites on a quality dedicated server. For those of you who wonder why hosting costs can vary so much it is more than likely that you are not comparing like with like. When we say a “dedicated” server we mean exactly that – our server only has our sites on it. This means that you are not potentially sharing your site with some dodgy porn site that could end up getting your own site blacklisted by Google through no fault of your own!
As a company, Severn Internet uses Rackspace to look after our server. They are by no means the cheapest, but as with most things in life you get what you pay for. A server is just like any other computer – it will occasionally develop some sort of glitch – what one needs is a company that fixes those glitches quickly – that is why we use Rackspace and also recommend them to those clients who need their own server too.
After a couple of years happily living in one box, we are going to be moving our sites to a new server over the next few weeks. For those of a technical nature, this is the spec of the new machine:
Dell 2970
OS : Red Hat 5 (64 bit)
PLESK 8 (unlimited domains with Spam Assassin and Dr Web)
Processor: Single Quad Core AMD Opteron 2347 processor
RAM: 4 GB RAM
Hard drive: 4 x 146 GB SAS Hard drives
RAID: – Hardware RAID 5
Hot swappable drives
Dual power supplies, Nics, Fans
Fanatical support,
Rackwatch Platinum
Managed Backup Agent + MySQL Agent
It is rather a good machine and has all the usual security, firewalls and back up you would expect. We look forward to improving our client’s hosting environment over the next few weeks.
If you are unhappy with your current hosts, please give us a call and we will be more than happy to give you a quote on our managed hosting services.
