December 22nd, 2009
We’d like to wish all our customers, friends, partners, suppliers and anyone we’ve met in our 5 year journey a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year!
We’re closed now from December 23rd 2009 but we’ll back and ready for action on January 4th 2010!
Watch out for our new product range for 2010 with a special January offer to kick things off.
And that’s not all…there’s a couple of new members to the team and some great new software packages we’re launching, so watch this space!
But for now, Niall, Jason, Garth, Sabra, Jason M, Alex, Yoana, Faisal, Katerina and Nigel wish you all the best for the Christmas holiday and look forward to helping you in the new year!
The FL1 team.
Posted in FL1, General | No Comments »
December 15th, 2009
Last night the winners of the FL1 Website of the Year Awards were announced at the St Albans Networking Co-operative (SNC).
Over 3,000 businesses were asked to vote on 6 nominated websites designed and built by FL1 Group in 2009, with those voting receiving a Virtual Goody bag of special offers and promotions from 21 local businesses.
300 people voted, and here are the results:
Eureka (www.eurekaschools.co.uk) – 600 points
Lime Interiors (www.limeinteriors.com) – 576 points
Juice Resource Solutions (www.juiceresourcesolutions.com) – 560 points
Dyrham Park Country Club (www.dyrhampark.com) – 515 points
Sweet Temptations (www.sweettemptations.com) – 515 points
i-spin 360 (www.i-spin.co.uk) – 479 points
We’d just to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to vote, and would like to say a special thank you to our sponsors:
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December 9th, 2009
The festive season is upon is and exciting times are here!
Only 2 more voting days in the FL1 Group Website of year competition.
We could tell you who’s in the lead….but that would be telling wouldn’t it!
So far, over 200 people have voted and received their Free Virtual Goody bag.
The Virtual Goody bag contains special offers and promotions from over 20 businesses around Hertfordshire including Wharton Goldsmith the Jewellers, The Digital Frame Company, St Albans Office Space and Printing.com.
The winners will be announced at 7.30 pm on Monday 14th December at The Buon Amici, St Albans at the St Albans Networking Co-operative Christmas event.
On a slightly sadder note, our longest standing employee Jason Margolin leaves us at the end of the year to head to the big city. Jason’s been an instrumental part of the team for 3 years and will be sadly missed.
He never was much good at washing up, but all the same we wish him the best of luck in his new role.
Finally, we had a great time at Blogs, Pods and Wikis with our brand new Seminar series.
There are also brand new Mastering Google AdWords and SEO, and Online PR and Social Media seminars in January.
For more details visit www.blogspodsandwikis.com/
Have a wonderful Christmas and see you in the new year!
Posted in Competitions, FL1, General, Seminars | No Comments »
December 8th, 2009
You’re a natural blogger and can always think of lots of engaging articles to write, not only that you’ve always got time to blog.
Is that you?
It’s certainly not me, and it’s certainly not most people who have a blog, so how can life be made easier?
Make a series
You’ve probably thought of at least one great article in your time and spent hours writing pages worth of content and feel really proud of yourself.
How about break it in to smaller posts, in fact a series, maybe 4 or 5 individual posts, maybe more?
Suddenly you’ve got a number of smaller bite size articles, and your reader has a reason to want to read the next.
Not only that, if you’ve split your post in to 5 posts, you’ve got the next 5 days/weeks/months covered in one creative spurt of inspiration!
Hints and tips
10 top tips, 5 top tips, 10 ways to improve, 10 ways to avoid, get the idea?
If your customer asked you for 10 reasons why they should use your product or service, or how to purchase, I bet you could answer the question easily.
Hints and tips are often, concise, interesting and useful and above all show the world that you really do know what you’re talking about, hence build trust and credibility.
Answer questions
In our businesses we get asked questions, and guess what, these are likely to be the same questions people type in to a search engine.
If people often ask you “how do I know if an accountant is right for me”, write an article about it. You may already have an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your website, so why not elaborate on that in
your blog?
Keep it simple
Keep it short, keep it interesting, keep it simple!
Bear in mind that anyone might be reading your blog from anywhere in the world and at any time, and they may not know you at all.
Never assume any previous knowledge, always explain and fully qualify acronyms and jargon, but keep it short and to the point.
If you’re looking to generate interest, a phone call, a question or a comment, keep that in mind and always leave the reader wanting more, otherwise why would they contact you?
Schedule your posts
That’s right, schedule your posts.
In reality, many small business owners often write 2 or 3 posts at a time and often out of hours.
Avoid posting all your articles at the same time and at times of the day when people aren’t likely to want to read them.
Schedule them for times of the day you think they’re most likely to read them, and schedule them for different days.
Sometimes this will need that little bit of extra planning, but trust me, it’s worth it!
As always, drop us a line or give us a call on 0845 890 2992 if you need any help or would like to know more.
Posted in FL1, Marketing, Technology | No Comments »
December 7th, 2009
If you’re a regular Windows Vista or Windows 7 user, or even new to these platforms, you may have noticed the Desktop Gadgets.
These are the little programs that sit on the right-hand side of your desktop in the Windows Side-bar.
Typically there’s a calendar, clock and a picture viewer to name a few.
You may have thought that they’re a bit gimmicky or even switched them off, however think again!
There are hundreds of these small applications called “Gadgets” and many of them are really useful.
For example, we use Google Calendars extensively, and there’s a Google Calendar Widget that show’s a task list of the day’s events at a glance without needing to log in to Google.
Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn user? No problem, there are Widgets that show your latest updates, connections and news feeds.
You can even preview blog posts of blogs you are following.
If you’re not a big Social Media user, you almost certainly use email.
There are a number of good POP3 email previewing Gadgets that show you at a glance what you’re inbox contains.
If you want to keep in touch with what’s going on quickly, without logging in and out of all the tools you use, Gadgets are worth a look.
For more information on gadgets and a complete list of all gadgets available, visit:
http://vista.gallery.microsoft.com/vista/SideBar.aspx?mkt=en-gb
Of course, if you’re stuck and need a little help or advice, you could always call us on 0845 890 2992.
Posted in FL1, Technology | 1 Comment »