Communication is the Key

One of our clients, Dream Clean does office cleaning and I was doing an SEO review on the page the other day.

When I created the content for the page with the client we fell into a trap that is common place unless you are very careful. I assumed that I knew what the cleaning company did and they assumed that I knew.

Let’s face it, an office cleaning company cleans offices. We have a company cleaning our office so I know what they do and there in lies the rub. Our cleaning company comes in once a week and so I assumed that every cleaning company cleans once a week. If someone else has their office cleaned daily then they would assume that all offices are cleaned daily.

Of course that’s not the case. Dream Clean clean offices daily, bi-weekly, weekly, monthly and so on but I didn’t know that.  As it happens it’s not a big deal but when writing content for them I wrote it thinking weekly cleans instead of a variety of schedules and that will now make a difference to what and how I write.

The take away from this tale is this: Never assume you know what your client does. Ask and ask again.  If possible go and visit them in their workplace so you can see for yourself what they are doing.  If nothing else you will get a feel for the company and be able to write in a tone that reflects their image.

By the way, if you are in the Huntingdon area and are looking for office cleaning I would really recommend Dream Clean.  They really are very good.

Being Careful

Some times you have got be careful about what you write, or more importantly, how you write it.

To give you an example, I was writing about Depression in Trowbridge and wanted to give the example of two people and their feelings about the town.

What I had to be careful about not doing was giving the impression that I didn’t like Trowbridge or that it wasn’t a nice place.  The danger of course is unintentionally upsetting Trowbridge residents which in it’s self would be bad but more importantly might make the stop reading the post before taking on board the message that I wanted to get across.

Hopefully I achieved that aim but it is always important to remember that I’m writing on behalf of clients and to ensure that I’m always careful in the way I use my words.

Anyway. I’m sure you are wondering how the Movember went.

Wonder no further!

Click for Full Effect

The Mustache Look I’m Working On!

For those of you who don’t know, Movember is where men around the world grow a mustache in order to raise money and awareness for men’s health.  Particularly prostate and testicular cancer.

So anyway, all of us guys at work decided we would support such a noble cause.

In September all seven of us said we would go for it.

In October, we all reaffirmed our belief in the cause.

Then came Movember.

Now I’m not going to name anyone here but I want to talk about men and mustaches and have a story to tell so I’m going to have to call my colleagues something.  Let us call them Dipstick 1, Dipstick 2, Dipstick 3, Tim, Ed, Dan and Mike.

Dipsticks 1 and 2  for reasons still not clear decided they wouldn’t bother.  Dipstick 1 wasn’t too fussed about it in the first place and to be honest could stop shaving for three days and build a mustache of epic proportions.  Dipstick 2 probably felt he would look ridiculous with a mustache and bottled out.  (For the record he’s right but that’s not the point).

Dipstick 3, the instigator of the idea in the first place, was told by his fiancé to forget sex for a month if he grew a mustache and so bottled out too.  On hearing that I asked “What’s more important for a month? Sex or getting rid of prostate cancer?”  I got my answer apparently.  There is an ironic postscript to Dipstick 3′s part in this tale but it would be wrong of me to divulge it.  (He didn’t get prostate cancer I should point out – life isn’t always that ironic).

Now we come to the real men.

Dan had his stag do last weekend, as the groom, and is still growing his mustache.

Tim has had two stag dos, one as best man and next week is standing up in church next to the groom and is still growing his mustache.

Ed, who had a beard to start with and who hates himself without it, clean shaved on Movember 1st and is still growing his mustache.  I personally am most proud of Ed because he really, really doesn’t like not having his beard.

And me?  Well by the tone of this post you know I’m growing a mustache too.

The thing I noticed though was this:  Men without mustaches seemed to have problems with the thought of growing one.  We all started off by saying “I can’t grow one” or “There won’t be much to see after a month”.

It seems as if the ability to grow facial hair, quickly, is directly related to a self image of masculinity or virility.

This is of course bullshit but seems to be ingrained into the male psyche so the will to grow a mustache for charity, one that is aimed at eradicating male problems, shows a big pair of balls and I’m proud to be working with three other grossly testicular challenged guys.

Sorry.

Watch this space.

Apart from the roads.

The roads here really suck.

photo credit: net_efekt via photo pin cc

It’s not just the congestion that sucks – you’d expect that from a small country with a high percentage of car ownership – and it’s not just the ridiculous speed limits everywhere; it’s the actual quality of the roads.

Spain was given a lot of European money to improve their infrastructure and boy did they spend it on their roads.  New roads are everywhere.  Big, wide, straight and smooth.  Even roads that are not on the map make some of the roads here look like dirt tracks.

That’s because a lot of them are.

I travelled on the A342 between Devizes and Andover and parts of that road were in a terrible condition – potholed, uneven, dangerously narrow.  Not fun to drive on at all.

I think that there are a couple of things that could be done:  Firstly improve the roads – start a major road surface improvement scheme and force any utility company that digs holes to make it “as new” when they’ve finished.  Secondly add a classification based on road quality to the road lettering system (“A” roads are lettered A because they are considered major routes, “B” roads less important).  Thus the A342 would become the A342(f) cos it’s awful.  This would help the motorist plan their route based on how good the road is (safer, easier to drive, less tiring) and hopefully embarrass local councils into making sure the roads in their area are better.

It’s never going to happen I know but the roads here really are bad and compared with other European countries it really doesn’t make us look good.

Rant over.

I was pleased with because it had text and photos as you would expect but also a YouTube video that I made (my first ever attempt at iMovie) and a SlideShare show I incorporated.  A lot of work went in to this blog, not least going to Cardiff and getting the images and video – on a bank holiday too!

I posted it on my work blog Google Search Features and as it’s a YouTube video I’ll embed it here too.

I made it using Camtasia for Mac and hopefully it will be the first of many.  I hope you like it but more importantly, I hope you find it useful.

Omni Media (where I work) have a number of clients who are in the events industry and we’ve been lucky enough to be given weekend tickets and a tent to stay in.

All of us, except Tim whose on holiday and Dan whose got family commitments, are going up tomorrow afternoon and coming back Monday morning.

This is the camping field I’ll be staying in (click for larger image):

Note the fencing in the bottom left.  Between the fencing and the first tent on the edge of the photo is where mine and Nick’s tent is:

We’ve been given the only blue tents on the field – pre-pitched with air-bed, pillow and sleeping bag.

Now you know where I’ll be if you are up at WOMAD and you want to visit.  You’ll just have to get past security first.

Thank you Greenfields Camping for being so kind in providing the tents and thank you Omni Events and WOMAD for the tickets.

I can’t wait!

Here is my first work post (in my name, I write most the blogs under Admin too) all about duplicate content and canonical urls.  I found it difficult to balance between writing for potential clients without any knowledge of SEO and still get all the detail in.  I’m not too sure I succeeded.