Computer specialist and online marketing professional

On February 1, 2012 in Business, Development, General, Internet, marketing, Off Topic, Website Design.
0

It’s never too long between business card iterations for me; I’ve just designed my fourth version. However, this time round I’ve mixed things up a bit, working from the ground up with new key points and a different overall message.

Replicated on this website, I’ve moved away from the dated strapline (‘computer scientist and IT professional’) in order to better reflect my career path, hobbies and passion. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to present:

John Alexander Rowley – Computer specialist and online marketing professional’.

So maybe a strap-line launch party would be a bit much, but I thought I’d take this time to go through the new lines added to the new cards – coming to a wallet near you soon.

computer and technology specialism

Ok, number one. I think the first few words are pretty obvious (especially to those reading articles on this site). The vast subject of computing and even broader area of technology is fundamental to my education, career and hobbies.

My grandfather used to say “There’s no such thing as a specialist”, and I tend to agree. However, the definition for ‘specialist’ over at ‘the free dictionary’ is pretty accurate to what I’m trying to convey. ‘One who is devoted to a particular occupation or branch of study or research’. Add something about pastime into the mix, and we’re just about there.

online marketing strategy development

This is much more accurate to my career path than the previous ‘IT Professional’. Whilst I hope I remain professional, I definitely don’t work in IT. I’m sure there is thousands of online marketers across the country that get as wound up as I do when approached with the line “Oh, you’re in IT then, right?”.

Online marketing is another massive and complex area, covering campaign analysis, brand promotion and online presence management, to name but a few. Add email & social marketing, search engine optimization and Pay-Per-Click analysis and you’ll hopefully have an overview of what this sentence is attempting to define.

website production and analysis

Half way through now. Phew. The keyword ‘production’ caused some concern. Attempting to summarise ‘design and development’ (as per previous business cards), website production covers the whole journey of a website: initial graphical mock-ups, structure design, coding, maintenance, updating and migration. Not to mention database management and server setup / migration.

The ‘analysis’ postfix was added to identify the overlap between online marketing and website production. As mentioned SEO and PPC, as well as SERP supervision and keyword investigation are all integral to producing a successful website.

business information management

My final point relates to my final year and experience in the industry in an effort to depict my business comprehension. With one third of my final university year being business orientated (as well as a twelve month placement the previous year) I feel this is justified as I continue to develop my personal credentials.

Studying and actively engaging in elements such as project management, KPI production and business analysis assists me in fine-tuning my knowledge of organisation’s critical information. Handling and analysing this data is defined as the process of ‘business information management’.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Real-Time Google Analytics – What, Where, and Why?

On November 4, 2011 in #60SecondShout, Internet, New Technology.
0

Have you seen the new feature Google Analytics is featuring? It’s pretty amazing. Useful too. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s definitely worth checking out! What’s that, you don’t know what I’m on about?! It’s Google Analytics… Real-Time!

What?

For those of you that don’t know, Google Analytics lets you track traffic, keywords, campaigns and other interesting stuff that basically makes a successful website (page hits, visitors, demographics, traffic… The list goes on!). So, you used to have a 24 hour wait to see useful results, but now you can track website traffic down to the second (or minute, or hour). It’s a great dashboard layout (as is all of the Analytics pages… AdWords should take a leaf!) and is simple to understand. Wondering why you need to know who’s on your website at any specific time? Well you’ll have to wait until the ‘Why?’ paragraph, I’m afraid!

Where?

To get there is easy! Just log into your Google Analytics account (If you don’t have one, why not!) and make sure you’re using the new version. (You can switch to the new layout in the top right). Done that? Good! Now, go to the Home tab (top left) and then select “Real-Time” from the left most column! Hay presto, you’re done!

Why?

For some, knowing who’s on your site at a specific time is well useful! For example, say you just sent out a new email campaign. Gone are the days of waiting 24 hours to see conversion rates via Google Analytics, now you can see your page views increase as it happens. You can also get a better idea of how web behaviour changes throughout the day (for example peeking / dropping at lunch?) and lots of other cool stuff, too! I could watch it all day!

So there you have it

So there you have it, a very (very!) brief overview of Google Analytics Real-Time! It (could) change everything. At the very least, it’s a cool, and long awaited for some, feature from Google.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Start-Up Businesses use of Social Media

On July 17, 2011 in Business, Internet, marketing.
1

According to a recent survey, performed by Market Research company ‘Opimium Research LLP’, less than half of small businesses use any form of Social Media. The broken-down stats go something like this;

  • 28% of small businesses said they used a corporate Facebook page
  • 18% own a LinkedIn Profile
  • 8% have a company blog
  • 6% use YouTube or similar video-streaming service
  • 2% own a corporate Twitter account

With over 2 million enterprises in the UK alone (according to the governments ‘Office for National Statistics’) that’s over 1.4 million businesses which don’t utilize Facebook, the world’s largest social media / networking website (with over 750 million users!).

Seems crazy, given the focus and publicity of these potential market avenues! Sure some businesses wouldn’t find all of the options necessary, but with such a high volume of service based business in the UK I can’t help but think some of the 1,000,000 businesses with no social media avenues are missing out.

Ultimate Hairdressing, Wolverhampton Case Study. Read More »

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

404 on all links from homepage

On June 1, 2011 in #60SecondShout, Development, Website Design.
0

Getting 404 pages on all the links from your homepage? I was too… After about a decade of trying to convey the issue to a USELESS ‘live chat’ support person with my hosts, I found the answer for myself.

WordPress changes the .htaccess file depending on the permalink style you choose. There are two ways to solve the 404 error problem;

Option A – Change your permalink style to the default, and then back again.

Option B - For the more webDev savy, go to your .htacess and add the following code;

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

That should fix it!

Tagged with: • • • • • • •
 

Don’t believe everything you read online

On May 8, 2011 in General, Internet.
2

You may be reading this after clicking on a bit.ly link supposedly regarding scientist’s latest discovery into reversing the effects of gravity. Point and case, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Iv’e had debates time and time again. More often than not, these seem to conclude with facts, figures, claims and so-called evidence based on “something [someone] read online”. The fact is, however, that almost any argument can be justified by something found on the internet. As a higher-education academic on a computer science orientated degree for four years, I have heard countless times the strategy of “only citing respectable sources”. This, it seems, is often focused on NOT citing Wikipedia. That said, Wiki pages do appear to becoming more and more creditable by academic institutions, backed up by a number of interesting reports regarding said credibility. (I wonder if those journals cited Wiki?).

Either way, it’s frustrating to come to dead-end debates based on something found online, with quotes usually being either out of context, cited in the wrong scope, or in some cases completely fictional. You’d (probably) take articles from weekly magazines with a pinch of salt, so why do we so regularly cite online content?

Take for example the Fukushima Nuclear Incident; One of my peers commented that the exact reason was known for the meltdown very quickly after the incident. Now, without going into too much detail, I had reliable sources that told me this wasn’t the case. News papers, online journals and other media was claiming to know the full story, quoting extracts of Japanese interviews, but this, for the most part, wasn’t the full story.

Basically, it’s just a case of summing up how likely something is to be true, and taking things with a pinch of salt. If the source is more reliable, reduce to a few grains of salt. Unfortunately, due to some content/rubbish posted on the internet (no comments on this website, please!) it is often necessary to use a full spoon of salt!

P.s. I took down the PlayStation Network, single handedly, using my sonic screwdriver.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • •
 

A Blogger’s Pride and Botheringly Bad Blogs

On April 26, 2011 in Internet, Website Design.
0

Usually I wouldn’t write about this sort of thing; Its not like I’m directly effected, and it really shouldn’t bother me. But bad blogs have recently really got on my nerves!

Blogger's PrideNow, I’m not saying that I write the perfect content – Far from it – But I like to think I put a degree of effort into my articles and have a style of writing which people can at least relate to. Now, talking about ‘computer things’ (as my mom would put it) doesn’t require a specifically sophisticated level of vocabulary. Technical, yes. But not sophisticated.

On the other hand talking about some subjects (namely food and film) are two which are generally associated with understandable, well constructed English.

Why the rant, you may be asking yourself?
Well, because recently one of my house-mates has decided to take it upon himself to ‘review’ (and I use that term loosely) both aforementioned topics. His self-confessed “not good at English” approach makes reading anything hard, and is particularly annoying when coupled with a lack of basic knowledge to base his ‘reviews’ upon. I’m talking more about food than film, as he does visit the cinema quite regularly.

But food!? It’s something I have a genuine passion about. I buy British, in season top quality foods. Comparatively, said house-mate buys cheap, fake, processed battered ‘food’ from god-knows-where. Is this OK? Can his food articles be justified with any sort of background knowledge? Sure, go ahead and review KFC, but not the best sandwich shop in the city!?

Blog WritingSo, yes I’m laying into one particular a little bit – But it’s really quite frustrating when I spend so much time trying to get an article, blog and general website looking/reading well, only to have some badly worded, unjustified, poorly designed excuse of a blog knocked up in 10 minutes.

Again, I don’t know why its bothered me so much; bloggers pride, perhaps?

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • •
 

What makes a good blog?

On February 24, 2011 in Internet, Website Design.
2

Blog EntryFor me, a good blog consists of several elements which combine to produce a great archive of articles which the reader wants to read more about! It’s all about the content, which is usually the blog article! I’m hearing the infamous words of my placement year boss; “Content is King!”. It’s very, very true!

So, what elements should one strive to patch into a website to get the most out of their efforts? Well, it’s just that which makes a good blog; Effort. If you put a lot of effort into your blogs, being thoughtful in what you do (or sometimes don’t) say, provoking the reader to fire up a conversation via comments, then mission accomplished.

There are no magic rules for creating a good blog, but personally I like to read from a page which has a professional looking interface; Not specifically corporate, but looks like it’s been done by someone who gives a damn. If the aim is to look amateur with a sense of cartography, make it look that way, but lets see a degree of effort in the design to make it look like that!

Effort shouldn’t stop with design though. Each article should be clear and as mentioned, provoke a response from the reader. The style here doesn’t matter that much, but how it’s wrote does! No body will read something that’s been hashed together in 5 minutes with little thought, bad grammar, spelling mistakes and general lack of attention to detail. Adding images (fit for the style of the blog) can do wonders too; breaking up text blocks and adding a thousand words!

Of cause, it’s just my opinion, but if your reading this odds on you read the whole article, so I must be on the right lines, aren’t I?

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 

What to do if website gets hacked

On December 17, 2010 in #60SecondShout, General.
0

Grr! As if all the university work I have to do over Christmas wasn’t enough, Iv’e found myself spending the last few hours wondering how to fix my broken (hacked!) website.

Symptom: Every link on the website redirects to a foreign page which hosts malware, which in turn redirects to an adverts page for medical equipment.

Now, I’m certainly no expert in cyberhacking, so it took some Googleing. The problem I had (and often have when fixing virus’) is that there are often various solutions to the same symptoms. In this case I found a couple of good ideas and started there.

Move forward an hour or two and I had the problem semi-fixed. The issues lay in the ‘.HTACCESS’ file, which had two lines of text injected into them. The first was a rewriteRule line which had the foreign website (‘googlle.in’) link in full. (Select line, delete!). There was also an ‘ERROR404′ line which had the same link (Select line, delete!).

So, problem semi-solved. The issue then was that Google had reviewed the website recently and recognised the hazard, meaning when entering the website a lovely red page would appear stating that the website was known to host malware and wasn’t safe! Great!

Fix: A trip over to WebMaster Tools to request a review for the website and 24 hours later the pre-page warning was gone. Horay!

Now, back to university work!

Tagged with: • • • • •
 

Website Updates 2010

On May 1, 2010 in #60SecondShout, Website Design.
0

The web is changing. The bang of 2.0 a few years ago has shifted the old style robotic and impersonal websites aside to adopt a much more personal and engaging website, imagery and most importantly content!

I was reading through my blogs the other day, as well as some of the pages, and it all seemed a little dry. Change with the times. So, that night, after a can of red-bull, I started re-typing the content to a lot of my pages, particularly the personal profile pages, as this is where readers should go to get to know the person behind the silhouette.

Hopefully now the site not only reads better, but is also more engaging to the customers?! After all, you’ve read to the end of this blog, haven’t you?!

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 

New Website now in testing

On December 19, 2009 in Development, General, Internet, Website Design.
0

So the new site is finally up and running. It’s already been optimized for IE and Firefox, but the menu is still causing problems on certain browser versions.

Please fill in the poll, it only takes two clicks and will help me loads! Feel free to comment too if you have time! I can add you to the Blogroll in return if you wish?

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

Thanks guys, and a merry Christmas.

Tagged with: • • • •