Free Training Resources

If you are using your website to sell a service then you want to make it as easy as possible for potential clients to contact you. Our SEO and PPC courses will help you get visitors onto your site but you then need to turn them into customers. The easier it is for your clients to get in contact with you via their preferred method, the more likely you are to be able to sell to them.

Even if you have e-commerce on your site, many people prefer to ask questions before spending their money. This week’s Free Resource is from WordPress expert Ada. If you use WordPress to manage your content then there are a wide range of contact form plugins to make your life easier. But you still need to make the decision as to what your contact form should include. The tips in this post should help you make those decisions…

A contact form is your communication channel with your readers and customers. If your contact form is poor, this seriously hurts your image. What is worse, it can lead directly to lost sales.

While a contact form in itself isn’t rocket science, a good contact form does require some thinking. In order to save you the hassle to think on your own, here are some tips how to make your contact form a better one.

List All Available Ways to Contact You

If you want to be reached, you must be available. While there is nothing wrong to include only an email address as the way to contact you, this is usually a good idea for personal blogs only.

For business sites, listing an email only isn’t enough. Of course, almost everybody has an email address, so if your clients really want to reach you, an email is enough but if you want to make it easier for them, list all available ways to contact you – email, phone, fax, Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc. Also, if you have a preferred way to be contacted, (i.e. email or phone is best), don’t forget to mention it. Read the rest of "Tips for Better Contact Forms"

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Posted by Guest Author in Internet Marketing Training, SEO Training, Social Media Training, Web Design Training, Wordpress Training on May 18th, 2012 | No Comments »

Too much work?

Managers often have the heaviest workload in the department, especially when their management responsibilities are as well as another job role. Because the demands of being a manager can ebb and flow, it’s especially important for managers to be aware of how they manage their time.

In particular, those who’ve recently been promoted to management may find themselves struggling with their new responsibilities on top of their old job. Promoting internally is a tricky business – so we’ve written a separate blog post especially on the subject of tips for promoting from within your organisation!

Of everyone in the organisation, it’s most likely that a manager finds themselves with shifting priorities and unexpected demands through the working day – dealing with issues from the team can mean other work is left to pile up.

Here are our Top Ten Time Management Tips for Managers:

1. Plan – take time to make time

Time spent planning is not time wasted at the expense of doing. A bit of time spent in understanding what needs to be done, and planning how to achieve it, will have a massive return on investment. Training and coaching staff can seem like an interruption to other work, but will pay off in the long run.

Try not to plan for every moment of your day; leave time for dealing with unexpected tasts and for adapting to interruptions and changing priorities. Read the rest of "10 Time Management Tips for Managers"

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Posted by Andy Trainer in Management Skills Training, Time Management Training on May 11th, 2012 | 1 Comment »

If you’ve been keeping track of Google’s latest updates you will be aware that around two weeks ago (April 24th 2012) they rolled out the latest algorithm update: Google Penguin.

Follow that link for more information on the update but in brief it was designed to crack down on webspam. It was originally called ‘Google Webspam Algorithm Update’ but we think you’ll agree that Penguin has a better ring to it.

This isn’t the first black and white critter that Google has deployed to help combat webspam, you should be very familiar with Panda, which shook up the SEO industry in 2011.

In this post we take a look at the reaction to the update and what you should do if you’ve been hit.

Google Penguin: The Backlash

Reaction to Google Penguin has been similar to last year’s Panda update. Angry SEOs have flocked to message boards and blog comments to declare that ‘Google hates SEO’ and how the Penguin update has cost them their livelihood.

Skim through the comments on the official Google Penguin announcement and three complaints keep popping up:

“Google have made search worse”

There have been some strange results appearing recently, but it is hard to tell if these are caused by the update. One thing we have definitely noticed is that Wikipedia dominates SERPs, ranking #1 for very weakly related searches. The jury is out on whether this update has resulted in worse results, we think that Search Plus Your World and the Venice update have had a bigger role in making results less user-friendly.

If, as Google claim, this update is explicitly designed to remove sites that use spam tactics from search results then that can only make search better.

If you really can’t cope with Google search results, then use another search engine! Read the rest of "Google Penguin Algorithm Update: Recover Your Rankings"

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Posted by Craig Charley in SEO Training on May 4th, 2012 | No Comments »

HTML Emails are one of the most powerful marketing tools at a business’s disposal. Our HTML Emails course is designed to save you time and the cost of paying someone else to do something you can easily do in-house.

Effective use of HTML in marketing emails ensures the attention of the reader – and brings them back to your website. A bit of knowledge about how to design and save templates, and how and why to test your emails, will ensures your brand is engaging and perceived as trustworthy.

Below we have our Top 5 Tips for Designing HTML Emails. Don’t forget the importance of quality content – something we teach in our Email Marketing training course.

1. Use nested layout tables

Web design has long since moved on from the use of tables, so it can come as a surprise to some that tables are necessary to lay out emails. Blame the email clients’ backwards technology if you will, but you do need to accept it.

Nest your tables. This will help you get around the tendency of some email clients to get confused over margins and padding. Because nesting can get messy, stay organised and make proper use of indentations. Some people fear nesting, but most HTML email designs won’t have enough tables in a nest for the organisation to get out of control.

2. Stick to block colour for backgrounds

Some email clients don’t support background images, and others allow the option – but have the default setting as off. By all means, use images (otherwise what’s the point of using HTML emails?), but keep backgrounds as block colour. Read the rest of "5 Top Tips for HTML Emails"

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Posted by Aaron Charlie in Internet Marketing Training, Sales Resources on April 27th, 2012 | 1 Comment »

As taught on our PRINCE2 Training course, PRINCE2 is a methodology that can be tailored to any project. Therefore it is necessary for there to be a project management structure that can also be tailored to any project.

Using this structure allows us to identify who does what on a project without knowing anything about its size or complexity. The team structure is divided into roles, not jobs and so can be allocated individually or even combined.

Here is our flexible project management team structure:

Here at Silicon Beach Training we pride ourselves on our successful PRINCE2 Foundation training having a 99% pass rate. It must be something to do with the Brighton air, or maybe it’s the quality of our training!

Defining the project management team structure

The corporate/ programme management site at the top but pass the decision making down to the Project Board. If you want to sit at this level you need MSP training, which is the next step after completing your PRINCE2 Practitioner training.

The Project Board are also busy on roles outside of the project and so delegate the day-to-day running of the project to the Project Manager. They are there to make the key decisions but if they believe they don’t have the time or the right skills then they can appoint somebody to Project Assurance to monitor the project for them. Read the rest of "PRINCE2 Project Management Team Structure"

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Posted by Andy Trainer in MSP Training, PRINCE2 Training, Project management on April 20th, 2012 | No Comments »

One of the great things about PDFs is that they work with assistive technology like screen readers to allow people with disabilities to access your documents. Those with blindness, low vision or limited mobility do not always have the same access to the web that general users take for granted.

Using Adobe InDesign CS5.5 you can create and format your documents so that they are machine-readable for screen readers and assistive devices.

Not only does this make your documents accessible to more people but it also helps search engines successfully index your content – something you SEOs should be fully aware of!

Adobe InDesign is the industry standard document creation tool. However, it isn’t the easiest to get to grips with. That’s why our InDesign Training course is popular with those who wish to move away from basic Word documents to creating professional looking PDFs and eBooks. In fact, InDesign is steadily replacing Word as the de facto program for creating documents in businesses, therefore it is essential to upgrade your skills to meed demands. We also offer courses in other Adobe Creative Suite products including Photoshop Training, Illustrator Training and Premiere Elements Training.

Think of this guide as SEO (search engine optimisation) and AO (accessibility optimisation) for your documents.

As more people come online it is important to make documents accessible

Creating accessible documents is something that rarely comes into consideration these days, but if you think of it as a web page then you may be alarmed by how little thought goes into accessibility.

When building websites, developers think carefully about assigning tags and marking up the page for readers, and this is something we should start to do for PDF documents also. After all, if you want Google to index them you need to make it easy.

Here is how Adobe describes the workflow from InDesign to Acrobat:

Here is the step-by-step to creating accessible PDFs with Adobe InDesign CS5.5: Read the rest of "Creating Accessible PDFs with Adobe InDesign"

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Posted by Aaron Charlie in InDesign Training on April 5th, 2012 | No Comments »

Effective project management is not as straightforward as many people think: project management training such as a PRINCE2 training course can teach you the skills you need for success. No matter the scale of your project, there are many things to remember to get right – and also traps to watch out for that might cause your project to fail.

Failure costs time, money and reputation and is usually caused by one of four things: trying to manage the wrong problem, working for the wrong person, choosing the wrong people to work on it, and following the wrong process.

Follow these four tips to avoid ending up in the real life version of the Apprentice’s Bridge Cafe, where the losing team goes to work out what went wrong. Also, find out how the Young Apprentice candidates could have benefited from Agile project management.

1. Trying to Solve the Wrong Problem

Avoid failure by choosing the right project in the first place. Even when the commissioned goal was achieved, many projects are seen as ineffective because they do not make the desired impact – usually because they were not the most suitable undertaking in the first place.

Like an eCommerce site frantically adding new products because others are not selling, always question the reason behind the changes in the first place. Are there any other relevant changes that could be made instead? Before you start considering how to complete a project, ask why the project is needed – and don’t be afraid to challenge any assumptions made in the reply. The business in the example above needs to consider the other options of reducing the prices of their existing products or change their marketing practices. Read the rest of "Four Reasons Projects Fail"

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Posted by Liza Baron in PRINCE2 Training, Project management on March 30th, 2012 | 3 Comments »

New technology develops at an alarming rate. Business gets more competitive by the day; demands for speed and quality require new thinking and revised processes. Here we list some current trends and challenges for project managers.

Today’s project managers need to update their processes in line with business, customer and stakeholder expectations. Collaboration is a common theme.

Programme Management Skills

As projects and processes become more complex there is an increasing demand for programme management.  Programme management requires a different set of skills to traditional project management like PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments). More companies are starting to invest in training to bridge the gap, focusing on implementation of new methodologies like MSP (Managing Successful Programmes).

We offer APMG accredited PRINCE2 Training and MSP Training courses at our training centre in Brighton, but we can also come to your premises for training. Call us on 01273 622272 for a quote.

Adoption of Collaborative Software Solutions

The use of collaborative technologies is on the rise. The use of Google Docs and SharePoint is becoming more commonplace. Virtual workers and projects require efficient ways of communication and collaboration.

Automatic and central distribution and control of documents has never been easier.

Agile Project Management

As projects become increasingly complex, project managers need to be increasingly flexible. Businesses and organisations are beginning to adopt Agile Project Management practices and combining them with traditional project management. Many are using Agile to inform and develop a new set of strategies for coping with projects, adapting methods for team collaboration and communication.

Agile Project Management Training enables you to gain Agile Practitioner Certification, enabling you to successfully manage Agile projects. Read the rest of "The Future of Project Management"

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Posted by Andy Trainer in MSP Training, PRINCE2 Training, Project management on March 23rd, 2012 | 1 Comment »