We had a little bit of trouble on Facebook this week. Nothing personal just a post on Suffolk Business Stars group. It was someone questioning the benefits of SEO and asking what SIMS does. As we're fans of the phase "Question everything!' I had to credit the person who questioned us!
Image courtesy of ANDREA UNI
The chap who asked is a developer who has had some bad experiences with an SEO expert giving advice which wasn't helping his client. I understand his negative attitude to the industry, too many times we hear stories of people getting bad advice.
Neither Ruth, Sam or Max are SEOs, but rather, we all work designing and building websites so understand how helping our clients use search engines can be good for business.
What we are all acutely aware of is how hard it can be for laypeople to cut through the jargon to understand the services they are buying, be it hosting, website, SEO or social media services, tracking or content delivery tools. There's so much available and every week the industry launch more. And that's why we started SIMS!
We wanted to give Suffolk businesses the chance to learn more. To become skilled online so they have an edge and can simply do better! Our monthly Meetup provides a friendly environment for learning, sharing and development. We ask the group what they want to know more about and we give them access to experts who can answer questions and cut through the jargon.
Every month we have a different topic you can see what we've covered so far here. In 2015 we have talks on vlogging, email marketing, SEO and advice about website design. Also every month we have a 10 minute take away where we explain a handy tip, so far we have covered URL tagging and sitemaps. If you have a question, let us know.
Going back to the Facebook post, it proved to me the adage that 'Any publicity is good publicity" and I was touched by the comments which appeared in response to the post.
Many SIMS attendees jumped on the thread to explain who we are and what we do. We're always grateful for the support we've had from the business community.
SIMS may not be for everyone, but if you want to learn more digital skills to benefits your business it could be for you!