Caroline joins us who will be taking care of our marketing and administration. She will also be dealing with all the seminar and workshop bookings.

Some other bits of exciting news, following on from the success of our workshops last year we have added lots of new dates for 2012 – check out our Workshops page for more details. Amongst our old favourites we have a couple of newbies including our workshop run by Paul Simister from Paul Simister Photography, that will provide you with simple and effective tips on taking pictures for your website.

We kickstart our run of workshops with our popular Search Engine Essentials workshop. This is running on Tuesday 14th February 10.30am to 12.30pm and is almost fully booked so if you are interested in learning the techniques to get your business to the top of Google ranking then hurry and book your place now.

For a list of all our free workshops please click here.

After much demand we have decided to write a NEW Social Media Seminar. This is in a different format to our workshops in that it is longer, and more detailed. It will give you a greater understanding of Social Media and explain the different technologies involved. The cost of this seminar is £50 plus VAT and includes refreshments and networking opportunities. Places are limited so please book early.

Search Engine Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 19th July)
Social Media Essentials Workshop (Thursday 21st July)
SEO Copywriting Workshop (Tuesday 26th July)
Facebook Essentials Workshop (Thursday 28th July)
WordPress Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 2nd August)
Google Analytics Essentials Workshop (Thursday 4th August)
E-commerce Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 9th August)
Planning and Creating a website (Thursday 11th August)

All Workshops are free of charge, all you need is to book online, call us on 01727 739812 or email client@fl1group.com
For more details visit:
www.fl1group.com/workshops.asp

To give you some assistance in determining what tools and strategies you could be implementing to build your customer base, your social media growth and your brand image, here’s a tip: automation.

By automating parts of your social media campaign, you can save yourself a large amount of time and money.

This useful article describes just a few time-saving techniques for streamlining your Social Media marketing efforts:

http://tinyurl.com/6atacym

If you need any help or assistance, or want to learn more about using Social Media to generate more business, call us on 01727 739812 or book one of our free Workshops.

• Social Media Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 23rd November)
• Search Engine Optimisation Essentials Workshop (Wednesday 24th November)
• Copy Writing Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 30th November)
• E-commerce Essentials Workshop (Wednesday 1st December)
• Word Press Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 7th December)
• Google Analytics Essentials Workshop (Thursday 9th December)

All Workshops are free of charge, all you need is to book online, call us on 01727 739812 or email client@fl1group.com

For more details visit:
http://www.fl1group.com/workshops.asp

It surprised us how well it’s been working and how well it’s been received.
All we’ll say is; if you’ve been thinking a Facebook page is a waste of time…think again!

www.facebook.com/fl1group

Garth also tied the knot this month to lovely Emma and has been showing us boys in the office the virtues of healthy eating brought on by married life.

We also welcome Pako to the team (Alex’s brother) to help out on the design and sales team. Pako will be working initially on launching our new e-commerce and ebay platform which will be announced next week.

Finally, following the feedback we received from the recent Google Analytics Workshops, we’ve decided to make them a regular thing and add a few more while we’re at it, including:

• Social Media Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 23rd November)
• Search Engine Optimisation Essentials Workshop (Wednesday 24th November)
• Copy Writing Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 30th November)
• Word Press Essentials Workshop (Tuesday 7th December)
• Google Analytics Essentials Workshop (Thursday 9th December)
• ECommerce Essentials Workshop (Wednesday 1st December)

The workshops are completely FREE, all we ask is that you reserve a place in advance.

See you next month!

More about Macintosh data recovery

Jason did an interview with BBC online this week about Business Resilience in the recession along with writing off his motorbike (he wasn’t hurt at all thankfully!).

We’ve only just launched our new Facebook page a few weeks ago and already have 93 followers.
It surprised us how well it’s been working and how well it’s been received.
All we’ll say is; if you’ve been thinking a Facebook page is a waste of time…think again!
http://www.facebook.com/fl1group

The free Google Analytics sessions we ran throughout August have been so well received, we’ve decided to continue running them on a monthly basis. For more details on these sessions visit http://www.fl1group.com/google-analytics.asp

So what next?
Well, we’ve got a new series of seminars being planned, a whole new e-commerce platform launching that includes an eBay integration and direct links to Amazon, PriceRunner and Kelkoo.

See you next month!

As well as building blogs, shops and content managed websites, we’ve been involved with securing a company’s website that wasn’t PCI/DSS compliant. The website stored credit card details in a database that was hacked into and the credit card details were retrieved. Two of them were used fraudulently, and that’s where the story began. The banks got involved with fines and costs to recover the costs of the fraud. Added to this the company has been forced to go through a programme of becoming fully compliant. To-date, adding the costs of consultants, website changes, fines, costs to re-issue cards, and significant amount of off-line processing changes and new equipment, the cost to the business at this current time runs in excess of £170,000!

This particular business is lucky enough to be owned by a much larger parent company that could absorb these costs, but these sorts of costs would easily put most small companies out of business.
It’s been an eye opening project that’s for sure, and based on what we’re learning from it, we’ll certainly be putting together a seminar to help more business understand what PCI/DSS is all about and how to stay on the right side of the banks.

It’s not all been about “the dark side” of the internet though…honest!

Ali’s been settling back in and taking to his new role as designer and project manager like a duck to water.
We’ve also teamed up with some a partner that will help our online stores excel using the shopping and affiliate portals, which has to be a good thing in these challenging times.

More on that next month!

As Google’s superb Analytics package gets better and better, we’re proud to announce some free workshops we’re running throughout the summer holidays. We install it on every single website we build, so if you’d like to know how to see how your website is really working, let us know.

The most important thing to consider, is tools like Google Analytics allow you to discover what’s working, but more importantly what’s not!

If you’d like to book a Google Analytics workshop or want to know more about PCI/DSS, drop us a line or call 01727 739812.

See you next month!

A fun and rewarding half-day seminar presented by Jason Sammon of FL1 Group and June Cory of My Mustard.

This is a relaxed and non-techie seminar that is aimed at businesspeople with a
preliminary knowledge of Google AdWords and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but
who want to know more and how to apply the techniques to their business for greater
profitability.

Delegates will leave with a thorough understanding of the key tools for SEO, many of
which are free, and techniques to improve the results of their AdWords campaigns.
This is a practical, half-day seminar that will deliver real information and easy to follow
techniques.

Thinking of attending? If you are a director, manager or owner of a start-up, expanding
small business or a medium-sized enterprise without a large marketing department this
seminar is for you!

Unlike many courses, this interesting half-day seminar will quickly pay for itself – and
be highly enjoyable!

Click here to book now.

This is a relaxed and non-technical seminar that is aimed at businesspeople with a preliminary
knowledge of Public Relations but who want to know how to raise the profile of their business online,
with online PR.

Delegates will leave with a thorough understanding of the key tools for online PR, many of which are
free, and techniques to improve the results of their existing campaigns.

Delegates will also learn how online PR works alongside, and improves, organic Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO) results.

This is a practical, half-day seminar that will deliver real information and easy to follow techniques.
Thinking of attending? If you are a director, manager or owner of a start-up, expanding small
business or a medium-sized enterprise without a large marketing department this seminar is for you!
Unlike many courses, this interesting half-day seminar one will quickly pay for itself – and be highly
enjoyable!

Presenters:
Sabra Swinson of Cerco Communications and Jason Sammon of FL1 Group

Click here to book now!

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!