While the concept is simple, the practice is a bit more complex. Your emails need to be interesting or enticing enough to make customers want to read them. They need to change over time – if you send the same thing over and over, they’ll lose interest, and you’ll lose customers. Also, there are laws around what counts as a genuine contact. If you don’t follow these, your business could be weighted with substantial penalties.

The following are six things to consider before your business gets started with email marketing.

1. What’s your objective?

The basic function of email marketing is to distribute information about what your business does or will be doing in the future.

“Sometimes it could just be for the promotion of a new product or an event,” says Brent Chandler, founder of Zwift. “It’s all about communication – building up awareness for whatever it is that the restaurant’s trying to promote.”

This might be as simple as a loyalty system that rewards return customers, or an ongoing series of e-books that educates recipients in a way that relates to your industry. The key with email is to offer something that customers past, present and future will value in some way. If a curious visitor signs up because they can see an obvious benefit, then your business has one more potential customer.

Before you get started, decide what you want to achieve with email marketing, and consider what you have to offer your customers to help make that happen. Then, think about how you can sustain their interest over time with different messages that play into the main goal.

For a retail business, the simplest method is to offer discounts and promotions on a variety of different products, for the purpose of driving more sales. A service-based business might not gain as much traction from sending out offers. Instead, a series of emails that offered free advice might be a more enticing incentive for people to sign up.

“One of the key things for businesses to understand when they’re creating an email marketing strategy is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer,” says Linda Delphin managing director of Marketing Space. “I always come back to what’s needed for the customer to find that valuable information. Actually taking customers along the journey of why they should be excited about a product or a service definitely has a role to play in email marketing.”

2. What’s your strategy?

Once you’ve identified what it is you want to achieve, you need to set about putting together a strategy.

If you approach email marketing as a series of one-off messages, you’re missing the point. It’s best to think of it as an ongoing campaign that’s going to keep recipients’ attention from week to week. If your messaging lacks focus or is too varied, you’ll lose subscribers.

Email marketing isn’t the kind of activity that sees immediate results. Often recipients will stay dormant on a list for a long time before acting on their interest. This is why it’s a bad idea to decide what’s going into an email marketing campaign the day you send it out. If you take time to consider what your audience is interested in, and draw up a plan for content that will hold their attention over a longer period of time, you will be much more likely to get queries and new sales.

“From the perspective of content, it’s really as simple as really understanding who your target market is and drilling down as far as you can into that, so you know what keeps them awake at night, you know what they’re bitching about at barbecues, you know what their biggest dream is, and you can talk to that,” says Victoria Judge, owner of Expert Agency. “When you make that emotional connection, and you feel that you understand them, that’s when they’ll become your customer.”

The emotional connection she’s referring to needn’t be something as complex as a beautifully written blog post. There can be a basic emotional pull to a message like “50% off”, provided you send it to the right people.

“Typically, you’d be looking at things like what sort of special you’ve got or what discount – something that’s actually going to gel with customers.” says Marketing Space’s Delphin. “Just saying ‘we’ve got these products, here you go’ is not the purpose of email marketing. It’s really to drive something so customers feel like there’s something to entice them into buying or responding.”

3. Do you have a database?

The most crucial part of any email marketing effort is the database of contacts you have to send to.

“Email marketing is primarily about having a database – a list of contacts of people that have expressed an interest in what you do,” says Expert Agency’s Judge.

The quality of a database is also important in email marketing. A quality database is one that’s already aware of your business and what it does. Its contacts are more likely to open emails and investigate their contents than ignore or delete them, or unsubscribe altogether. If the contacts aren’t expecting emails from your business, they’re not likely to respond positively. If they are expecting them, then you can assume that they’re interested in your business in some way.

“We have a saying in the industry that you keep communicating with your database through your email marketing until they either buy or they unsubscribe,” says Judge. “Either of those is a good result, because you don’t want people sitting on your database that are never going to buy what you’ve got.”

Typically, the main part of your database should be made up of existing customer’s emails. Pre-existing customers already know what your business does and how it’s relevant to them, so they have a way of relating to and categorising any marketing material that your business sends them.

The real goal of email marketing is to gain new customers, though. To do this, you need new contacts. How you go about finding these is very important when it comes to maintaining a quality list.

One good way to get new subscribers is to have a sign up form on your website. Content management systems like WordPress often have plugins (add-ons) that help you do this easily.

“You need a web designer who’s going to understand that email marketing software, and he can put the form on your website and on your social media, so that you can start collecting,” says Judge.

To make signing up attractive to new subscribers, you need to show them that the email will be valuable to them in some way. Usually, free educational information or product discounts are incentive enough.

It is possible to buy lists of contacts that are relevant to your business, but doing so compromises the quality of your database. Bought contacts are never explicitly interested in your business, which means they’re likely to be cold, unresponsive leads. It’s also difficult to tell how relevant a bought list is to your particular business, or even how many of the email addresses are still active.

4. What time should you send?

It might not seem like it, but the time of day, and day of the week, which you choose to send your email is very important.

“At Zwift, we promote restaurants,” says Zwift’s Chandler. “Targeting someone at 9pm at night [is unwise] because the customers have already eaten, and are maybe not too willing to absorb more food information after a big meal. We try and target people at three and four in the afternoon when three-thirty-itis comes around. If it’s before dinner, they might be thinking about what they’re going to be ordering later on in the day.”

People also respond differently to different sorts of information depending on whether they’re at work or at home. The contents of the email should determine the time of send.

“It’s important to make sure that you’ve got enough time for the customer to not just read the email, but to absorb the information and decide how they’re going to act on it without being stressed that they’re going to run out of time,” continues Chandler, “unless that’s the kind of campaign you’re going for.”

5. Do you have their consent?

It’s essential that every contact in your email database has given you permission to market to them via email. This is relevant to the legality of your campaign, but also to how successful it’s going to be.

It’s illegal to send email marketing campaigns to people that haven’t given you permission to do so. Legally, permission is defined in two ways. Implied consent is when you receive a person’s details for any form of business-related communication. It’s less preferable to use implied contacts for marketing – they might not want sales messages, and so may be much less responsive to them. The other form of permission is express or explicit consent, which means the recipient has indicated they would like to receive marketing information from your business.

Express consent is much better for email marketing than implied consent. If a list is full of people who haven’t given express consent, they’re going to be much less responsive to marketing messages. This means that you’ll get a much lower rate of response, and effectively waste more of your time putting emails together.

The worst-case scenario in sending unsolicited emails is that your business will be penalised by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

“Make sure that everybody that goes into that database has given you permission to contact them in that way,” says Chandler. “It’s the most important thing. A reputation can disappear overnight with one email that you didn’t get permission for.”

6. How will you send campaigns?

Once you have the beginnings of a database, it’s time to investigate tools for actually sending emails to its contacts. It’s really important not to think of things like MacMail, Outlook or Gmail as adequate email marketing tools. As soon as your database is larger than 30 contacts, you need something more comprehensive.

“Some people still use spreadsheets,” says Expert Agency’s Judge. “It scares me. If you start emailing from a spreadsheet, you’re laying yourself open to get sued.”

Systems like Mailchimp, AWeber and Campaign Monitor all offer simple, effective ways of sending email out to substantial databases. These systems can also tell you how well your emails are received – how many of them were opened, how many people clicked through to your website, where in the email they clicked, and how many people unsubscribed altogether. This information is vitally important for the ongoing success of a campaign. If a particular product offer or blog post topic is well received, then you can alter your future emails to cater to that interest.

While these systems usually offer a series of templates on which to base the design of your email, it’s best if you pay the money and get a designer to create a good-looking template for you to use. This will make your business appear appropriately professional, which will lessen unsubscriptions.

Finally, remember that things like Mailchimp, although they are rewarding to play with and have lots of features, are not going to make your emails good. If you create a strong database of receptive contacts, and give them things they value and expect from your business, you’re likely to find success with email marketing.

If you have a good knowledge and understanding of your profession or industry, then you have the opportunity to become an expert that a journalist will interview.

Here are some PR strategies to help you position yourself as an expert.

Speak at conferences and events

You can share your industry knowledge with others by speaking at conferences and events that relate to your industry. Think about a particular topic that you know extremely well and create a presentation around it. Make sure the presentation is informative and interesting to other people.

If you’re not a confident speaker, then get coaching before you start presenting.

You should also adapt your presentation to suit your audience. For example, do not use technical language when your audience has no knowledge of your topic. Start by attending small conferences, and establish yourself as an authority on a particular topic.

Opportunities for comment

Many magazines, newspapers and online publications plan the special reports or features that they will write about for the entire year in advance. You can look for a publication’s features list on their website or call them and ask for a copy of their media kit.

When you look at a features list, you can find upcoming topics that relate to your business. You can then email that publication and suggest yourself as an expert to discuss particular topics.

Make sure you include a media angle or story idea, and outline why you are an expert. Remember to send your information to a journalist with enough time for them to write the article before it needs to be published.

Write a blog

Blogs are a great way of sharing your expert knowledge and positioning yourself as an expert on a particular topic.

The key is to pick a topic and stick to it. You should post regularly on your blog and aim to spark discussion and share experiences, ideas and relevant information.

To build traffic, read other blogs and comment so that it links back to your own blog. You can also offer to be a guest blogger on other websites to increase your exposure.

Write an article

You can write an article about an important issue in your industry or write about helpful tips and advice. You can then send this article to relevant publications in your industry and explain why it’s a great fit for their publication.

Make sure the article is useful, interesting and easy for others to understand. You should also make sure the article is written in the correct style and format for the publication.

By sharing your professional knowledge, you can build up your status as an expert in your industry. This is a great strategy to build your brand, gain media coverage and increase your exposure to the people that matter.

Catriona Pollard is director of specialist PR and social media strategy firm CP Communications.

The ‘Our Mobile Planet’ report was part of a global study, with the local leg talking to 1,000 smartphone owners in Australia aged 18 and over.

Of those surveyed, 65% said they use their smartphone to access the internet at least once per day, with 14% using their device to watch a video on the internet every day.

The report showed that 48% of respondents search for local business information at least once a week, with 18% doing it daily.

Once smartphone searchers have found the business, 28% of them made a purchase in-store, while 26% made a purchase online. After the transaction is complete, 13% recommended the business to someone else.

According to the research, 24% of those interviewed use their smartphone in-store to compare prices and inform themselves about products.

In addition, the survey found that 33% of those that searched for something would then go on to buy it via their computer, with 29% going on to buy it in-store.

The basic idea behind email marketing is very simple.

“Rather than the one-on-one communication that you might use email for on a personal level, email marketing is sending information to groups of customers to promote what you’re doing,” says Linda Delphin, managing director at Marketing Space. “It might be that you’ve launched a new product or it might be you’ve got an offer. Generally, the purpose of email marketing is to drive demand for products and services.”

Using email to turn curious contacts into customers is considerably more complicated in practice. To begin with, you need to have a database – a list of email contacts – to send to, and the owners of these addresses need to have agreed to receive what you’re sending.

Secondly, it’s unwise to use everyday email methods for marketing. Instead, find an online service that gives you something to build on with respect to the design of the email, and that can co-ordinate its actual send.

Finally, you need to have thought about what sort of information will go in the email. What would your current customers want to see when they open their inboxes? What is likely to convince someone who’s interested in your business to cross the line and spend some money?

This may sound like a lot of effort, but it’s worth it. There’s a good reason people still use email marketing.

Why is it important?

Before you start, it’s important to understand why email is such an essential tool in your marketing arsenal.

For one, it is the most widely used and basic method of communication on the internet. Almost everyone who is online uses email. Unlike Twitter or Instagram, most people already know how to use it.

Email is also a personal medium. A person’s inbox is a space they’re intimately familiar with. Most use it to receive personal messages every day. The mere sight of your email sitting in a space usually reserved for personally addressed mail lends it a weight of relevancy to them that’s still tough to achieve with an advertisement in search results.

Database quality

If you have taken the right approach to email marketing, and built a database with consensual contacts, then you will be sending to people that already know about your business.

The quality of this contact database is crucial for getting results from email marketing. Provided you haven’t made the unwise move of purchasing a collection of contacts, the people you send to will either be existing customers or interested enough in your business to have willingly signed up for more information. The fact that they’ve already started thinking about your products is key: a quality database is a collection of warm leads.

“Picture drawing a line from A to B,” says Victoria Judge, owner of Expert Agency. “The people at A are just starting to think about solving their problem. Maybe it’s weight loss – they were trying to get into their jeans that morning and couldn’t – but they haven’t made a decision to buy anything yet, or hire a personal trainer. They’re just thinking about it. The people over at B made the decision – they’re going to pick up the phone, they’re going to buy.”

With email marketing, she explains, you’re working with all the people in between these two points. The idea that every opted-in lead is warm isn’t an overstatement either. Judge notes that the longest gestation time for a customer in her business – from newsletter signup to sale – was 18 months.

“You just want to keep working with the people that aren’t ready now, because they will be ready one day, and you want them to choose you, not your competitor,” she says.

Given that people check their email every day – usually more than once – it also raises the possibility of an ongoing series of touch points between your brand and its future customers. This is largely why email is still being used as a marketing tool.

For more on email, read Getting started with email marketing.

Image credit: Thinkstock

LAFHA changes spur rising employment costs

With the Government concerned by the escalation in the number of claims made under the Living Away From Home Allowance (LAFHA), under proposed reforms, access to this tax exemption for temporary residents will be limited. From July 1, expatriate employees who do not have a residence in Australia will lose out.

At this time, the LAFHA will be included in the taxable income of the employee rather than being taxed in the hands of the employer through the fringe benefits tax system. The employee will be required to substantiate their actual expenses on accommodation and food in order to claim deductions for these expenses.

Curtailing the LAFHA will impact many industries, especially those gripped in severe skills shortages that need to attract talent from overseas. With the new reforms, the after-tax salaries of expatriate employees are expected to drop significantly, in which case employers may need to increase gross salaries in order to compensate for the extra tax payable. This, of course, will lead to a substantial increase in employment costs that employers will have to shoulder. Alternatively, many businesses may choose to offshore some of the work.

ATO crackdown on family/discretionary trusts

Family and discretionary trust structures are popular for family investment vehicles and most small business owners have one. They provide a level of risk management by separating the business from your personal assets, and they are also tax efficient.

As the trustee or director of the trustee company, you can distribute income in the most tax efficient way. Now, I know this sounds technical, but many trust deeds, which are the governing rules for a trust, state that the income of the trust must be distributed to beneficiaries before the end of the financial year. Accordingly, trustees will need to document trust distributions before June 30. With this new ATO crackdown, selected trustees will be required to provide the trustee’s resolution for 2012, the trust deed, and any amendments made to the deed to the ATO in early July 2012 to prove compliance.

So if you have a family or discretionary trust, it’s critical to have your trust deed reviewed. Interim results need to be prepared before the end of each financial year and a resolution drawn up before June 30 to distribute the income of the trust.

Income testing the 30% private health insurance rebate starts soon

For higher income Australians, private health insurance premiums are set to rise significantly from July 1 this year, as the 30% rebate becomes subject to means testing.

While this will come as an unpleasant shock for many, Treasury modelling estimates that 99.7% of policy holders will keep their private health insurance despite the increases. Their confidence in this stems from the fact that the Government is also lifting the Medicare levy surcharge to dissuade higher income earning Australians from abandoning their private health insurance cover at this time. So from July 1 this year, the Medicare levy surcharge will also become means tested.

Means testing the health insurance rebate will kick in for individuals earning more than $83,000 and families earning more $166,000. Individuals and families earning less than these amounts will not be affected at this time.

However, singles on taxable incomes of more than $83,000 can expect their health insurance premiums to jump by between $150 and $500 a year, depending on their income, and families will face increases of between $300 and $1000 on their health cover once their combined incomes amount to more than $166,000. The rebate will disappear entirely for singles earning $129,000 and couples earning more than $258,000.

Without wanting to be political, I think this is just another example of the Government censuring successful, hard-working, small business owners who work round the clock to sow their business and income success.

Tell us what you think of the changes in the comments section, below.

Ashleigh Swayn is CEO of Countplus mbt, a leading chartered accountancy practice offering accounting, financial planning and finance expertise.

Is it just a place for brides to gush over and compare dresses, flowers and cakes or does it have tangible benefits for your business? This is the multi-million-dollar question.

The answer is both. And if you’re lucky enough to have brides as your target market, you’ve hit the jackpot! Although it appears this site has popped up overnight, it actually launched 2 years ago. So they’ve had some time to figure out what works and, since being thrust into the spotlight, they are making changes at a rapid rate. Many of these changes are to create appeal for businesses to use the site.

Pinterest is still in invite-only stage. This is a common strategy to remain exclusive and build hype, whilst also making sure you can cope with volume. It seems to be working!

Once you request an invite, it can take a couple of weeks depending on their volume, or you can find someone who is already using Pinterest.

With eCommerce providers like Big Commerce integrating Pinterest into their platforms, it is clear that this one is here to stay.

What can it do for your business?

I liken Pinterest to window-shopping. You have the opportunity to browse through attractive images that have been curated by others. It’s just like strolling down the street and looking in windows. If your business can be attractive to window shoppers then it is likely to be relatively easy to find some success on Pinterest. For those with not much to shove in a shop window, the task may require a little more work.

Social curation at its best

This really is the ultimate in social curation. I am fascinated at the Boards that people create and how they group visual images together. It is the ultimate scrapbook where users can include your images on their boards and, in the process, help to shape how others perceive and share your products, services and brand.

Easy endorsement

We all know by know that what others say about you on social media is far more important than what you say about yourself. People re-pin and share content on Pinterest based on their emotive response to an image. People are often unaware of the brand they are sharing or the website links attached to the image. By using attractive images, you can have your message shared far and wide, regardless of the message you are trying to share. It is a soft endorsement, but an endorsement none-the-less.

Convert browsing to sales

Unlike many other social platforms, Pinterest makes it easy and seamless to convert window shoppers to customers. If you include a price with a dollar symbol in your pins description, Pinterest identifies it as a product for sale. You can link the image directly through to the page for purchase. Pins that have a dollar value in them are automatically added to the ‘Gifts’ section on Pinterest. This is a great way to get your products seen by people looking to buy.

You might consider grouping your products by audience type. If all your products aimed at Mums or Dads (for example) are grouped together, it makes it easier for them to stay focused on your brand and find what they are looking for.

Showcase your services

Pinterest isn’t just for products. You can use it like a visual resumé of the services you provide. If you are a landscape gardener, showcase your best work. If you are a web designer, highlight your best designs. If you are an accountant… well, you’ll need to get creative! You could show images that represent financial success and then link them back to services on your website.

We show things like the Cover Images of our clients Facebook Pages or share images from our blog posts. You may just need to think outside the square. Every business should be able to create a visual display of their work.

Copyright caution

A word of caution: copyright is a big issue and a major concern for many using Pinterest. The responsibility for copyright breach lies with you, not Pinterest. So always make sure you acknowledge sources.

Happy Pinning! I hope to see you browsing through Pinterest soon.

Kate is a social media specialist and the founder and CEO of Social Mediology. She is passionate about using online technologies to connect businesses with the customers, communities and causes they care about. Social Mediology specialises in ‘from the ground up’ social media strategy, implementation and training for small and medium sized business and the not-for-profit sector.

The move saves the government a projected $4.8 billion over the next four years, and has freed it up to make a number of sweeping changes such as beefing up the cash handouts as part of the Family Tax Benefit. Under the new system, those qualifying for the benefit will receive a ‘Schoolkids Bonus’, where families will receive $410 for each child in primary school and $820 for each child in high school in a one off payment.

This year’s budget also saw $714 million allocated to a loss carry-back tax scheme, where businesses can claim any losses made, against tax, up to a total of $1 million. In order to take this offer up, a small business would have to incur a loss in the 2012-2013 tax year, and then claim against it after that.

Under the existing rules, tax losses can be carried forward into future years (offsetting future earnings). The new system will allow businesses to claim a loss against tax from the previous two financial years in their current tax return.

The government coughed up a further $27.5 million in funding for the Small Business Advisory service, which funds a number of Business Enterprise Centres and helps establish local support services.

Swan also earmarked $8.3 million over four years to establish an Australian Small Business Commissioner. The role has the lofty aim of representing and advocating small business interests to the government and is expected to work closely with the Small Business Ministry.

Andrew Conway, ceo of the Institute of Public Accountants, reacted to the news by claiming the government has failed to meet its own small business benchmarks.

“New reforms are being funded by previously announced reforms which are now being cancelled. On balance, many small businesses may not be better off.”

“The announcement that businesses will be able to carry back up to $1 million worth of losses and offset it against the previous profits was a welcome relief,” he said “However, this measure doesn’t go far enough – it doesn’t benefit profitable businesses or provide immediate relief. Unincorporated small businesses which make up over 66% will receive no relief.”

Roger Gillespie, president of the Australian Retailers Association (ARA), claimed that the scrapping of the company tax cut was penalising businesses to fund the budget surplus.

“Retailers will benefit from inclusions such as small business being able to immediately deduct asset costs under $6,500, and the extension of the Small Business Advisory Service, which will ensure more retailers receive timely assistance,” he said. “Retailers will also benefit from the relief provided to low to middle income households through Family Tax A and the Schoolkids bonus, but the ARA would also like to have seen these as tax cuts as well as provide a real difference in consumer confidence by putting more money put into the pockets of upper and middle income earners.

“The ARA is disappointed retailers will suffer from the abandonment of an important promised tax cut from 30% to 29% and shows small to medium businesses aren’t sharing in the benefits of the mining boom.”

But sometimes a little bit of conflict can help maintain a healthy and strong relationship. Conflict can allow people to vent frustrations, share problems and create solutions.

Although conflict can be seen as a necessary part of a dynamic business relationship, being aware of what causes some conflicts is the key to being better equipped to handle rising tensions and smooth issues over in more efficient and effective ways.

Below are five causes of franchise conflict, and what both parties can do in order to help them handle or, in some cases, avoid the situation.

1. Communication

It’s an obvious yet main cause of conflict in many relationships. The lack of communication between two business partners can be the catalyst for many issues that arise during their time as partners.

Although franchisors may have the final say when it comes to overall business decisions, franchisees should be included in at least some of the decision making processes.

Franchises that have balanced communication systems between franchisor and franchisee run much more smoothly, have less resistance to change and overall see less conflicting situations.

2. Ethics in franchise recruitment

When recruiting franchisees, it’s important that franchisors take the time to find the right people to do the job. When a franchisor does not follow through with the correct training, provides access to unsuitable advisors or decides to take on unsuitable franchisees for their own monetary gain – that is where franchises begin to see and feel the impact of conflict.

Franchisors must be accountable for getting their recruitment message across in an effective way to minimise confusion and financial issues, and promote growth in each franchisee. A lot of franchisees are first time business owners and need to be supported by their team.

3. No support

In some cases, franchisees feel that the support they actually receive from a franchisor does not meet the levels that they expected when they agreed to become a franchisee.

In some cases, it comes down to false information provided by a franchisor – claiming to have levels of support that actually don’t exist. Other times, it comes down to there being a lack of communication on the franchisees part about the support they expected to receive.

Either way, both parties should always communicate their expectations before a contract is signed. The franchisor should pay attention to the skill levels of their franchisees and provide more training if necessary. On the other hand, if a franchisee feels as though they are not yet qualified enough for the job, they need to voice their concerns.

4. Unrealistic expectations

Many a conflict arises when unrealistic expectations are set but then never met.

Franchisors must be clear about what exactly a prospective franchisee will be getting when they buy into the franchise. A prospective franchisee should be provided with relevant information that explains exactly what they need to do in order to run their franchise successfully.

Not only does it ensure that the franchisor is recruiting the right people, but it also creates a positive and trustworthy relationship from the very beginning.

5. A lack of care and responsibility

Both franchisors and franchisees need to understand what their responsibilities are to one another and be mindful of these when issues arise.

Both parties, before any contracts are signed, need to be aware of, and completely understand, what the others’ expectations are and whether or not they can be met.

A franchisor should always advise a prospective franchisee about what is expected of them, what responsibilities they will have and what really is required to run the franchise successfully. In turn, the prospective franchisee needs to explain what their limitations and expectations are.

Negotiation and communication will always be the best way to solve small conflicts that arise. However, if a conflict does arise that seems to be a serious issue or can’t be solved by both parties communicating, the best course of action would be to seek out help from a professional advisor.

Raffael Fernandes is the sales manager at FranchiseBusiness.com.au, the official online business directory of the Franchise Council of Australia.

Along with things like Twitter and web design, search is also something of an unknown quantity for many business owners. Given that Google is constantly changing the way it matches queries with results, you could be forgiven for not knowing much about the processes and the work involved in getting a business on the front page for its chosen keyword. What many don’t know that there are good and bad ways of optimising a site for search. There are ‘white hat’ techniques, which are approved by Google. There are ‘grey hat’ techniques which don’t get penalised, but walk the line of ethical use. And there are ‘black hat’ techniques, which aim to subvert the way the search engine works to get your site higher than your competitors’.

The problem with black hat is that search engines like Google don’t much like being tricked. The penalty for using these methods is removal from the engine’s index, either temporarily or permanently. Imagine if your site just disappeared from Google, one day. Not a pleasant thought.

This is why it’s important to know whether or not the internet marketer you’re using is employing questionable tactics to get you the results you want.  The following is a list of four ways to tell if the company you’re using for SEO employs black hat techniques

1. Look at their clients

When you’re considering an agency to market your business online, the first step is to look at its current clients.

“The best thing to do for people that don’t want to get burnt by black hat, is to use a reputable agency that has a well-known client base,” suggests James Norquay, senior SEO consultant at Columbus Search.

While this is by no means a comprehensive way of vetting an agency, it does give you an idea of the calibre and success rate of clients. Ask for a list of current clients. Observe how well they rank in search across a range of relevant keyword terms. Most importantly, get in contact with a couple of clients and ask about the services offered.

It’s important to learn how transparent an agency is with its processes. They should be able to clearly describe what they do and how it’s done – vagueness means ‘steer clear’. Also, each and every stage of the search optimisation process is easy to document, so make sure that the agency is able to give you reports on their processes. Don’t trust those that are reluctant to do so.

“I always recommend that people go with companies that measure all the results. So they get some kind of monthly reporting to show that their ranking’s increasing, that their amount of pages are increasing, the unique visitors are increasing, the bounce rates are coming down – all the factors that your website’s improving,” says Simon Eder, managing director at OolyBooly. “You need to be able to monitor monthly or even fortnightly. The company needs to demonstrate that they’re actually making a difference.”

2. No guarantees

By setting out to optimise a page to rank higher in search, you’re immediately going against the grain of what Google is trying to do. The search engine’s first priority is to give the searcher the most relevant result; yours is to give them the result for your business.

This is largely why companies like Google are so protective of the algorithms that drive their search engines. Very little is known about the details of how they index and rank pages. Accordingly, it’s wise to avoid agencies that promise the world, as it’s not something that either party can be sure of.

“I’d hire an SEO consultant who doesn’t offer a guarantee, who just assesses what you do, and can tell you what’s going on,” says Andrew Gloyns, an independent SEO consultant.

3. No buying links

Incoming links are one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation. If a website has lots of links coming from reputable sources, it’s much more likely to do well in search.

There are many ways of gaining links, but it’s essential not to buy them. If Google catches wind of a bought link, it will penalise your site with a temporary lockout until the problem has been addressed.

“If any SEO company is saying they’re buying backlinks, then technically, that’s a big warning sign,” says Eder.

Similarly, if an agency tells you they’re using software to automate the link building process, it’s best to steer clear. Links built by software like Xrumer or Senuke are often of a poor quality. Also, these programs can be used to increase your incoming links by hundreds of times. Any unusual jump in the number of links to your site like that is likely to result in a penalty from Google.

Unfortunately, there are a number of grey areas when it comes to defining what a paid link actually is.  For example, it’s difficult to prove that the purchase of a listing in an online directory goes against Google’s guidelines, but some directories engage in some questionable tactics to provide traffic for their clients.

“The problem is that I can also go to a directory, and pay a certain amount of money a year to be in that directory, but that’s not technically buying backlinks,” says Eder. “Google just banned a whole network of thousands and thousands of blogs. It was called Build My Rank. They were renting links, basically, and they’ve just knocked that entire network out of the index, because of what they were doing. If any SEO company is saying they’re buying backlinks, that’s a big warning sign.”

4. Independent research

One of the best ways of finding out about an SEO consultancy is to audit its backlinks yourself. Search optimisation community SEO Moz has a free tool for this called Open Site Explorer. Enter the URL of a site you’d like to research, and it will give you a list of the major links pointing to that site, along with an indication of how strong those links are.

“It tells you, from their own index, where they believe they have links, and it gives those a score out of a hundred, so you can determine the value of each link,” says Gloyns. “If it’s got a score of 60 or 70, that’s seen as quite high. If you’ve got some of those, you can go through and see what links they are.”

If the site is getting a lot of bad links – from irrelevant or unusual sources, like free directories – it’s likely that something is amiss.

“You come to notice the types of links that software builds – you’d notice paid links, you’d notice links that are from irrelevant niches,” says Norquay. “Say, for example, you’re trying to build links for car insurance. If you see a link profile with links from acne websites, you know something’s up.”

Examining the agency’s own site is a good start, but it’s also worth having a look at their clients’ link profiles, as well, to see the work that’s been done for them. Once your own site starts to build a link profile of its own, it’s also worthwhile checking to see where your links are coming from. You never know when you might become the victim of a negative SEO attack.

At the end of the day, your intuition will serve you best when choosing someone to look after your business’ SEO. If something seems strange about a particular agency, probe to find out more, and avoid any mention of automation, link building or purchased links.

The trouble is that when you are busy creating and developing your online persona, it can be easy to forget that real life is totally different.

Lately, I’m seeing a lot of mistakes being made when business owners speak at networking events or conferences. Speaking gigs can be much sought after among entrepreneurs. I’ve written about this before.

These gigs are particularly valuable because you can showcase your expertise in front of a captive audience, and if you wow them enough they will tweet salient points from your speech to their collective armies of followers, thus promoting you in the process. In addition, you (and your business) are featured on the event organiser’s website, sometime for months before an event. It’s powerful free advertising.

However, this can all come undone if you don’t actually deliver. This happens when business owners accept speaking engagements that they simply aren’t ready for. So what should you be aware of?

Have you got the goods?

I’m a big believer in getting out of your comfort zone and stretching yourself. So if you’re scared of public speaking then you should definitely scare yourself from time to time and accept speaking engagements that challenge you. But when you say yes to a speaking gig, you need to deliver. Sure, challenge yourself – but work damn hard to be good at it.

If you don’t, you simply do incredible damage to your reputation. Remember, you don’t want to be the speaker that everyone’s talking about the next day – for all the wrong reasons.

So how can you leave a good impression on your audience?

1. Provide useful information, don’t sell

Obviously, one of the key reasons for you to take on a speaking gig is to get exposure for your business. However, no one wants a sales pitch – especially if they are paying to attend the event. They want useful, practical information, so make sure that your speech is full of tips and ideas they can use. If you spend half of it showing the audience a bunch of slides of the various products and services offered by your business, this is a sure-fire way of losing their interest.

2. Don’t read your speech

I don’t know how else to say this. If you’re going to read your speech, don’t accept the speaking gig. It’s a speaking gig, not a reading gig.

It’s perfectly fine to have notes. And it’s equally fine to refer to them when you’re on stage. This is totally normal. But if you’re going to have your eyes downcast for 30 minutes while you’re reading word for word, then just don’t accept the gig.

You might have the best content in the world. But most people won’t remember it. They’ll just remember that you as “that speaker who read from her notes the whole time”.

If you’re too nervous to do a speech without reading word for word – which is normal if you’re a total newbie – then practice until you can. If you don’t have time to practice, then don’t accept speaking gigs. I don’t say that to be harsh. I’m saving you from embarrassment.

3. Respect your audience

Where possible, tailor your message to your audience. Find out as much as you can about your audience beforehand so that you can tailor your message accordingly. This is your chance to connect with people in the audience, so make the most of it.

Also, ensure that you respect your audience in terms of the time you take. If the audience expects that you’re speaking for 20 minutes, don’t disrespect them by speaking for 40 minutes.

4. What if you are really nervous?

I don’t want to scare you off speaking, particularly if you are a total newbie. And your first few gigs are bound to suffer from some challenges especially if you’re nervous. That’s totally ok. But then you should seek out smaller events, with nurturing and forgiving crowds. Think friends and family, service clubs, local chambers of commerce, local libraries, small lunches.

Once you get some practice, you’ll have more confidence and be able hone your skills so that you can really connect with your audience. You don’t want your very first gig to be a crowd of 100 influential people who will be left with a bad impression of you.

Speaking at events can be a wonderful opportunity for your business. But just make sure that you serve your audience and deliver the goods – or you’ll end up doing untold damage to the reputation you’ve worked so hard to build.

Valerie Khoo is Managing Director of the Sydney Writers’ Centre in Milsons Point, Sydney. As one of Australia’s leading centres for writing training, the centre runs short courses to help people write with confidence and improve their business communication skills. Valerie blogs about storytelling and small business at www.ValerieKhoo.com.