Taking James & Co. to the Top

James & Co Stocktakers, a trusted name in stocktaking services in Belfast, came to us with a clear goal: to increase their online visibility and ensure that potential clients could find them effortlessly on Google. Through a combination of strategic keyword research, content optimisation, and technical SEO improvements, we propelled them to the #1 ranking on Google for ‘stocktakers in Belfast’. This prime positioning ensures they are seen first by businesses in need of expert stocktaking services, driving more enquiries and conversions.

Building on Past Success: Abacus Valuers

This isn’t the first time we’ve achieved outstanding results within the stocktaking industry. Having previously worked with Abacus Valuers, we successfully secured national rankings for their stocktaking services. By leveraging our expertise in the sector and applying a tailored SEO approach, we helped them gain visibility across the UK, demonstrating our ability to drive digital success on both a local and national scale.

Why MiHi Digital?

Our work with James & Co and Abacus Valuers is just one example of the consistent results we deliver. It’s no surprise that the MiHi Digital team has been named the best website and SEO agency in the South West multiple times. Our award-winning approach combines in-depth industry knowledge with cutting-edge SEO strategies to help businesses outperform their competitors, attract more customers, and maximise their online potential.

If you’re looking to boost your online visibility and dominate search rankings in your industry, get in touch with the MiHi Digital team today. Whether you’re a local business or a national brand, we have the expertise to take your website to the top.

Find out more about how we can help your business succeed by calling us on 01566 232323.

To find out more about James and Co. please visit jcstocktakers.co.uk

The post How we led James & Co. Stocktakers to the top of Google appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Located only 4 minutes away from the stunning Widemouth Bay in North Cornwall, Monster Slip and Slide is a four-lane 360ft-long waterslide, guaranteed to get your blood pumping with its super-fast bodyboards, inflatable doughnut rings and ultra-long water slide to ride the waves on! So when the team behind Monster Slip & Slide approached us to work alongside them, we knew this would be a fun one!

If you’re looking for a mega-fun experience for the whole family this summer, you can visit for as little as £13.50 per person per hour – or even hire out the whole thing exclusively to yourselves for an epic waterpark party! Better still, if all that slipping and sliding has got you working up an appetite, there’s the Monster Munch Team on hand to fuel you back up with plenty of tasty treats, food and drink. Head on over to their new website and discover the awesome Monster Slip & Slide for yourself, here.

The post MiHi Team up with Cornwalls most Epic Attraction – The Monster Slip & Slide appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Join us for an exciting discussion on the current state and future of tourism in the region. This in-person event will be held at Strawberry Fields Lifton, Lifton, UK. We’ll explore the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities facing the South West tourism industry.

Wanting to understand current booking and traffic trends and where you stand against them? Which legislation is coming up and how that will affect your business? How the industry is likely to evolve over the next few years? How about fire regulations, compulsory registration, and those things you’ve been wondering about but not had a chance to ask?

We’ve brought together a range of experts to answer your questions and outline where they see our region’s tourism industry going over the next few years; the challenges we are facing as well as the opportunities for your business to take advantage of.

Event Speakers / Q&A Panel:

Malcolm Bell MBE – Visit Cornwall

Sally Everton – Visit Devon

Alistair Handyside MBE – Professional Association of Self Catering (PASC)

Mark Worden – MiHi Digital

Event topics and questions

We will be covering all the major aspects of tourism within the region and there will be opportunities to ask questions in advance of the day, as well as at the event itself.

Who is the event for?

This event is suitable for all tourism businesses from across Devon and Cornwall.

You can book your tickets to attend this event here.

The post Tourism Trends Q&A with MiHi Mark: Where do we stand and what does the future hold? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

What actually is ChatGPT?

Launched in November 2022 by OpenAI, ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. To you and me, this basically means it’s a bot that has been fed mountains and mountains of data. It then uses this data to provide answers to… well, pretty much anything. It can answer questions, summarise information, generate copy, write code, and so much more – and will attempt to do as authentically as possible, mimicking a human conversation.

ChatGPT can be a lot of fun. But while asking it to cook up nursery rhymes about WWE fighters might be an amusing way to pass the time (probably for a minority that one!), is ChatGPT equally worth using to create highly effective, targeted content for your business? Let’s discuss.

What are the key benefits of using ChatGPT?

• It’s quick and easy to use – this can make your work much more efficient. For instance, rather than spending hours putting together a blog, ChatGPT will create you one in seconds (we did write this one though!).
• If you have an internet connection, ChatGPT is accessible to all.
• It can help with idea generation when you’re battling creator’s block.

Sounds incredible, right? Not so fast…

The danger of cutting corners

The thing is, just because you can use something, doesn’t always mean you should, or at least not all the time. Sure, you can use ChatGPT to write your new landing page copy, or to quickly whip up an email you need to send out within the next 10 minutes, but what’s the cost? Quality: that’s the cost. And if the quality drops? So could your traffic, sales, revenue, reputation… and so on…

That might sound terribly pessimistic, but let’s dig deeper into this.

You’re one the greatest assets your business has (if not the greatest asset). You understand your brand, its values, and its mission better than any bot ever could. And by getting ChatGPT to create your content, you are at risk of losing the very things that make your brand stand out. You may well start to sound just a bit more like everyone else does.

Let’s say you’re a holiday cottage based in the South West and you want to write a social media post about the best nearby beaches. ChatGPT will sort that out for you. But it will sort it out for anyone else too. And so, if we’re all using the same bot to cook up the same fun, snappy content, you’re going to lose your brand’s tone of voice.

While you can train ChatGPT to learn more and more about your brand and the writing style you’re after, this does take time and a lot of steering. And let’s be honest, regardless of the tone of voice you’re after, ChatGPT always leans towards relatively cheesy, sales-heavy copy. That might not be what you’re after.

No original content

Let’s reflect again on how ChatGPT works. In simple terms, it’s fed masses and masses of information and learns how to imitate this information as best as possible. In other words, it’s regurgitating existing content. No new ideas. No fresh opinions. Just copy and paste in a thousand different ways. So, if you’re looking to create original content with original ideas, you can’t leave it all to ChatGPT.

Will Google penalise content created by ChatGPT?

Google hasn’t stated that it’s outright against ChatGPT. In fact, their opinions concerning AI have been fairly inconsistent over the past years. On the one hand, Google’s Managing Director Sundar Pichai has described AI as the key ingredient to making people “more productive than we have ever imagined.” Google even has its own rival to ChatGPT called Bard. On the other hand, Google claims it will penalise content generated by AI.

While there are certainly ways that Google can detect whether content has been AI-generated, they haven’t officially confirmed whether they are actively tracking this.

But one thing we do know is that Google is against content that doesn’t make sense or add value. Any content that Google considers spammy will certainly be ranked lower.

In Google’s guidelines, they talk about “Spammy automatically-generated content” which they define as: “content that’s been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it’s been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.” They give examples such as text translated by an automated tool without human review, or text generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience.

The thing is that ChatGPT is notorious for producing this type of content – blogs stuffed with keywords but that don’t actually provide any substance. And so, you cannot rely solely on ChatGPT to help you climb the ranks of Google. Instead, you should be focussing on creating valuable content that your target audience will genuinely engage with.

Thinking practically

ChatGPT is good, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes it slips up and creates copy that simply doesn’t make sense, or is full of false information, or is just repeating the same sentences again and again. That means you have to go through your work with a fine-tooth comb and edit it. And that’s fine – to an extent. If you’re spending too much time cutting and snipping away at your ChatGPT-generated content, all it’s doing is giving you a false sense of efficiency.

So, is ChatGPT not worth it?

Is this to say that ChatGPT is worth ignoring? Not necessarily. Firstly, ChatGPT isn’t going to be the end of AI – not even close. And as systems evolve, they are going to offer a lot more potential. So, knowing what’s out there will only help you and your business to remain agile.

And yes, we know we said ChatGPT isn’t the best place for creating original content, but nevertheless, it’s still a useful tool for idea generation. If you can’t think of any new blog ideas, for instance, ChatGPT will happily give you some inspiration. By all means take it, but be prepared to bring your own ideas to the table too.

The key with ChatGPT is that the more specific you can be, the better. If you ask it to create an entire marketing strategy for you, it’ll be generic and relatively useless. If you ask if to recommend 5 free tools for social media content creation, however, you’ll get a much more defined answer.

The more you use ChatGPT, the more you’ll understand its strengths and weaknesses. And the better you’ll become at delegating tasks to it.

If you would like more digital marketing advice, get in touch with the MiHi team on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Should you be using ChatGPT for your business and how should you be using it? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

But if that isn’t enough, here are a few more reasons why you should be taking full advantage of social media for small businesses…

·      It gives you the potential to reach and attract new customers.

·      You get to know your customers.

·      You get a better understanding of your competitors.

·      You will build your brands awareness.

·      You can connect with your customers and build trustworthy relationships.

That being said, it’s a huge task if you’re not that way inclined, so we’ve pulled together a few top tips to get you started:

Top tip number one: Plan ahead!

We often hear that business owners and employees just don’t have time to be posting on social media every day, which let’s face it is completely understandable. Or they say it’s easier to spend a little bit of time every day, making something up on the spot and posting for the sake of posting. But trust us when we say that’s not doing you or your business any favours, and often ends up being more time-consuming and stressful in the long run.

Having a calendar gives you the time to find out what your customers really want from your social media, and what’s valuable to them. Just test out some different messaging in your calendar, this is called A/B testing and shows what messages work best with your particular audience, find what works and build from that! 

So, avoid the last-minute scrambling and plan ahead with a social media calendar. We’ve written a whole blog about why and how to start your own social media calendar here – Top Tips for Creating Your Social Media Calendar

Top tip number two: Schedule your posts!

Now that you’ve got your plans in your calendar, get ahead of the game and get scheduling. Not only does this free up your time by scheduling a block of social media content all at once but it also means that you can focus on the other important tasks in your week, without having to worry about what picture to post later.

There are lots of free and paid scheduling tools online to help you, including our personal favourite, the Mata Planner for Instagram and Facebook. Most of these tools make your life easier and show you when to post when your followers are online too! But if you use a tool without this feature, it’s always a good start to aim for 7pm in the evening when everyone has settled down into their socials, or 7am in the morning when people are having a morning scroll. But remember to keep an eye out when planning ahead, things change quickly in the world of business and you need to make sure your content is still relevant.

Top tip number three: Keep track of what’s working!

There’s only one way to tell if you’re getting results and that’s by checking your analytics. Even for small businesses, knowing what works and what doesn’t will be super valuable for when you’re working on your next set of content.

All social media will show some form of analytics, so take the time to understand it and try to replicate the content they’re loving! – repurpose it for other platforms e.g.

Top tip number four: Pay attention to trends!

Trends are trends for reason, so give the people what they want and get involved with a few if they are appropriate for your brand.

Although be wary, don’t just jump on every bandwagon you see on Tik Tok, if you’re a serious health brand your customers probably won’t want to see you risking damage doing the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, for example.

Top tip number five: Be social!

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, social media is meant to be social! So, once you’re done planning your content, make sure you’re spending time replying to comments as timely as possible, reacting, commenting, and sharing other relevant posts. Take half an hour out of your day every day and you’ll see the extra engagement for your accounts too, it’s a great way to get to know your customers, plus you can have a quick nosey at your competitors to see what they’re up to – Win, win!

And one last extra tip! Be consistent! The more you drop in and out, the fewer people will see your posts, so take the time to get ahead with your scheduling and watch your reach boom! 

If you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow on social media, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post 5 Tips to Successfully Use Social Media for Small Businesses appeared first on MiHiDigital.

But what if we told you that less could actually be more? That you could reach further by posting less? Whilst that’s a slight simplification, the key word we wanted to focus on in this post is ‘momentum’. Without it your social media can struggle; with it, you will undoubtedly thrive. 

Let’s explain…..

The quality vs quantity conundrum

Social media should be about quality and not about quantity. 

Whilst you will ideally be posting on a regular basis (3 – 4 posts per week – if you have enough content – is often considered the sweet spot), you should never *ever* be posting merely for the sake of posting. 

If you’ve sat down and felt like you’re putting something out there just because it’s been a while, or you always do on a Sunday, then step away from the keyboard, plug the mouse in to charge for a moment and have a think….about ‘momentum’.

How do you get momentum?

When it comes to social media, ‘momentum’ is the stringing together of several posts that perform well. Sounds easy, right? In fact, many social accounts struggle to achieve it as they don’t actively monitor, understand, or make the most of what works well for them. 

Two factors largely dictate the performance of a post; content and timing. When the timing is right it puts your post immediately in front of your followers. It’s then down to the content; Is it interesting to them? Does it cause them to engage?

Getting the two right gives you a post that works well…. But then what happens?

Do you keep the momentum up or do you squash it?

The timing was right, the content was right…. Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got a good post and it’s got a lot of engagement. That right there immediately puts you on the front foot for your next post as people that engaged will see the next post earlier in their feeds.

Get the timing and content right again…. Your momentum continues further.

Get either of those wrong, then it squashes that momentum like a brick wall.

So what do you need to do?

Remember when we said at the start that you could post less and reach more? Here’s how you do it… 

Have a review of your previous content – perhaps your last 50 posts.

Make a list of what has worked well – both in terms of content and when it was posted.

Do the same with what didn’t.

The two will usually give you a correlation – the post content and timing that works well, and those that cause the proverbial tumbleweed to make its way silently across the screen. 

From there you’re going to post more of what has worked and less of what hasn’t. The more effective posts that you string together, the better the results you will gain.

So, there you have it – by dropping those posts that aren’t working but are taking time out of your day, you can actually build better momentum and spend less time.

That sounds pretty good to us….

If that sounds like something you need support with, give us a call on 01566 232323 or email Mark at hello@mihidigital.co.uk and we will help build and guide your business through it’s online marketing.

The post The importance of building momentum in your social media posting appeared first on MiHiDigital.

We know that this is a difficult time for many of the great businesses that surround us here in the South West, so we’re trying our best to point you in the right direction with some free digital tips and guide you on your way.

Here are four things you can do which will stand you in good stead for months to come…

Start adding content to your website

The more content you have, the more key phrases your website will rank for.  Whilst that’s probably an over-simplification, the essence of that statement does stand true.  If you think of your website going through an imaginary Google mangle – just like clothes used to before washing machines – the more pages that are in your site, the more key phrases Google is able to eek out of it.

So what you ideally need to be doing is adding to your blog / news section on a regular basis. Each time you do this you need to think of two things:

1. Is this going to be interesting to someone visiting my site? If the answer to this is no, then re-think your subject!
2. What is that person going to be searching for in order to find it?

Once we have these two things we write our blog. When we’re writing we forget about Google for a moment – this is for the person that is going to read it. Keep it nice and snappy, not too long – think at every stage, ‘does this paragraph add anything’.

Once you’re done we’re going to fill the ‘SEO Title’ box in with what you think they’re going to search for (if you use WordPress there should be a field labelled ‘SEO Title’ in your admin – any other CMS it is usually called this or ‘Meta Title’!).

An example of doing this

It’s easy to tell you – but is it easy to do? A year or so ago we decided we’d show how easy this really is. With that in mind we wrote an article on ‘dog friendly walks in rural Devon’.

If we have a Google of this phrase we are ranked one:

This brings 1,000 visitors a year to our website. Not necessarily our target market, but a good example of this working!

Clear out your email database with disengaged emails

GDPR! Remember that? It doesn’t seem long ago that email inboxes were all about data compliance does it! One positive that did come from this is that the majority of businesses cut down their email databases. Why do I think that’s a positive? Because the average open rate on emails is around 30% at best. This means that you pay 100% to engage with 30%.

Put it this way – if I told you that anyone that hasn’t engaged with an email for a 18 months is highly unlikely to going forward, would you believe me? If you don’t, the the statistics back me up – those that don’t engage with 5 or more emails in a row very rarely engage with any in the future. They are dormant.

This means that they make up part of the 70% you pay for every time you spend.  So what I suggest is that you take some time to have a look at who hasn’t opened one of your emails in the past year (depending on the frequency which which you send).

Take that list and then stop sending to them.

You’ll save money and you’ll increase your engagement figures at the same time.

While you’re in there – add a menu and link your images

Whilst I’m on the subject of emails, it might be time to update your template! If you receive our email newsletters, you’ll notice that they include a menu at the top and that all of the images are linked to an article. Coincidence? Absolutely not – these two things usually make up in the region of 40% of the clicks in our e-shots.

So if you don’t have either, how does a lot more clicks the next time you send sound?

Sounds pretty good to us too! Add them in and see!

Increase engagement on Facebook

The initial reaction to social media at a time like this is to cut it back or stop it all together. This is going one of two ways for businesses; the ones that are actively driving their social media are expanding their presence, reach and effectiveness – they’re getting stronger for the come-back. Those that have paused all together aren’t standing still, they’re actually going backwards in logical comparison.

So the first thing to say is that you should still have some social presence – if you’re not sure on tone of voice or content then feel free to ask me.

The second thing, and you’ll have definitely have heard me say this if you’ve been to an event I’ve spoken at is, add more than five images to your Facebook posts. On every single account we’ve ever managed, this does significantly increase the amount of engagement a post gets. The reason for this is that more than five photos turns your post into a gallery.  We’re all human and we all like clicking things – call it curiosity if you like!

So if you’re not already, start adding more photos to your Facebook post. It not only works from a clickable standpoint, it also works from the angle that different people like different images, so you’re also catering for everybody!

Winner, winner!

That’s it for now – stay happy, healthy and positive! We’ll get there!

Mark

The post Four things you can be doing online now – and they’re completely free! appeared first on MiHiDigital.

We’ll be talking at this workshop hosted by North Devon +. If you are a registered business with a website, come along  to our free workshop and make sure yours is doing its best for you!

This free workshop will be covering:

•  What is a website and the key things you need
•  What makes a good website
•  Setting your online strategy
•  Basic design, layouts and templates
•  Analytics, statistics and monitoring
•  Developing and improving your website
•  Your market, niches and keywords
•  How Google works and the importance of content
•  Basic Search Engine Optimisation
•  Branding, values, colours and functionality

Who’s the event for?

The event is aimed at any business in North Devon that wants to know all the do’s and don’t’s of websites. You’ll go away with some simple actions to implement which will improve your results over the coming months.

The Speaker

Mark Worden, Director here at MiHi Digital will be speaking. Mark has been specialising in digital marketing for more than a decade, and having set up his own business four years ago, has worked with more than 200 across a wide range of industries and generated more than £1 million in client enquiries.

The Venue

The event will be held at 9:30am – 12:30pm on Tuesday 18th of February 2020 at the North Devon Plus offices – Caddsdown Business Support Centre, Caddsdown Industrial Park, Bideford EX39 3DX

Booking your Place

To book your place please give Vicky Fether a call from North Devon Plus a call on 01237 426 426 or email her at VFether@northdevonplus.co.uk

The post Websites: everything you need to know as a new business – Event with North Devon + on 18th of February 2020 appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Who’s the event for?

The event is aimed at any business in North Devon wanting to understand how they can increase the performance of their online presence. You’ll go away with some simple actions to implement which will improve your results over the coming months.

The Speaker

Mark Worden, Director here at MiHi Digital will be speaking. Mark has been specialising in digital marketing for more than a decade, and having set up his own business four years ago, has worked with more than 200 across a wide range of industries and generated more than £1 million in client enquiries.

The Venue

The event will be held at 9:30am – 12:30pm on Tuesday 10th of December 2019 at the North Devon Plus offices – Caddsdown Business Support Centre, Caddsdown Industrial Park, Bideford EX39 3DX

Booking your Place

To book your place please give Vicky Fether a call from North Devon Plus a call on 01237 426 426 or email her at VFether@northdevonplus.co.uk

The post Building Traffic to your Website – Event with North Devon + on 10th of December 2019 appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Who’s the event for?

The event is aimed at any business in North Devon wanting to understand how they can increase the performance of their online presence. You’ll go away with some simple actions to implement which will improve your results over the coming months.

The Speaker

Mark Worden, Director here at MiHi Digital will be speaking. Mark has been specialising in digital marketing for more than a decade, and having set up his own business four years ago, has worked with more than 200 across a wide range of industries and generated more than £1 million in client enquiries.

The Venue

The event will be held at 9:30am – 12:30pm on Thursday 14th of November 2019 at the North Devon Plus offices – Caddsdown Business Support Centre, Caddsdown Industrial Park, Bideford EX39 3DX

Booking your Place

To book your place please give Vicky Fether a call from North Devon Plus a call on 01237 426 426 or email her at VFether@northdevonplus.co.uk

The post Introduction to online marketing and social media – Event with North Devon + on 14th of November 2019 appeared first on MiHiDigital.