Tax Returns are just one of those things you have to deal with – a bit like dentists – but unlike your dentist, there are serious penalties for missing your appointment and this year they are more draconian than ever.

Thank you to Peter Hayes from Newland Hayes Accountants for this timely reminder.

Penalties for missing your Tax Return deadline

Note: These penalties relate to filing your Tax Return, NOT paying any tax you may owe. All penalties are CUMULATIVE!

1 Day Late

A fixed penalty of £100. This applies even if you have no tax to pay!

3 Months Late

£10 per day for each day late after the first day up to a 90 day maximum – £900

12 Months Late

£300 or 5% of the tax due whichever is higher. In serious cases you may have to pay up to 100% of the tax due.

All of the above penalties are cumulative.

Here is an example:

Mrs A’s tax return is due on 31st January 2012 but HMRC don’t receive it until 5th August 2012
Mrs A’s return is over 6 months late so she will have to pay the following penalties:
£100 fixed penalty PLUS
£900 penalty – i.e. £10 per day for the 90 days from 1st May 2012 to 29th July 2012 PLUS
£300 or 5% of the tax due whichever is higher

A total of AT LEAST £1300 – and this is even if she had paid her tax on time!

You have been warned!

If you need any help with your Tax Return do get in touch with Peter who will be able to help.

This is a subject we have covered in the past, but a situation that arose this week and this post on the e-consultancy Blog made me think it is a subject worth revisiting!

If you are serious about using the web as part of your marketing then your domain name is key. If you are starting out in business, the availability of a .com or .co.uk domain name (and yes, I would HIGHLY recommend that you go for at least one or prefereably both of these domains) that fits with your company name is vital. The availability of a suitable domain should be a significant factor in naming your business. If neither .co.uk nor .com for your preferred domain are available, I would recommend you seriously consider a different name, or at least a different trading name.

If, as is more common, you already have a business and own the domain name, then make sure that you hang on to it. Domains need to be renewed on a regular basis, and if they are not websites & email will go off line and the domain will become available to other web users & once taken, it is virtually impossible get it back without their consent. Some domains can be renewed for up to 10 years and there is a view that a domain registerd for a longer time can perform better in search rankings.

We take the issue of domain retention seriously. We ALWAYS set clients domains to autorenew so by default domains will renew until we are requested to cancel them. This can occasionally mean we end up with a domain that a client no longer wants. Even so, we are happy to stand the cost of this to ensure that domains are NEVER lost by mistake.

It may seem obvious but think of where your domain is the primary route by which people can contact you:

• Letterheads
• Websites
• Business cards
• Advertising
• Leaflets & Fliers
• Sign written vehicles

And the effort you may have taken in developing a presence for the domain across the web:

• Registration with web directories
• email addresses
• Search engine listings
• Your website

Lose your domain name and you will need to start from scratch and potentially someone else can pick up the benefit of all your hard work.

Here are key points to make sure your domain is safe:

1. Make sure you own the domain – A simple Whois search using the free tool on www.dnsstuff.com will tell you the name of the registered owner. If this is not you then you need to get it changed. We and any good Internet company should be happy to register the domain in your name. Then  if the worst happens & you fall out or loose contact with the company hosting the domain, you can always retrieve it via the registrar. This will be nominet for .co.uk domains. A Whois search on www.dnsstuff.com will tell you the registrar for .com domains
2. Make sure that your key domains are set to auto renew – Again any good Internet company should be happy to do this, and even if it means you have to pay for an extra year should you no longer need the domain, the cost of this is insignificant compared to the cost of losing your primary domain name.

Follow those 2 simple steps & you should never be in the position where you lose control of your domain.

If you are concerned about the security of your domain, give us a call and we would be happy to talk things through.

Share your blog posts on Google+

Google+  still has a long way to go to prove its usefulness in  social media marketing and although the signs are positive, one big downside is the lack of support for integration into other areas of the social media mix.

Unlike Twitter & Facebook with their tweet & follow buttons, if you want to add blog posts to your Google+ stream, there are no such tools…

..until now (If you are using WordPress to power your blog at at least).

If your blog is ‘powered by WordPress’, all you need to do is add the following code to the relevant place in your WordPress template.

(If you don’t know how to do this, we would be happy to assist)

<a href=”https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content=<?php the_title(); ?> – <?php the_permalink(); ?>” onclick=”window.open(‘https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content=<?php the_title(); ?> – <?php the_permalink(); ?>’,'gplusshare’,'width=450,height=300,left=’+(screen.availWidth/2-225)+’,top=’+(screen.availHeight/2-150)+”);return false;”><img  style=”float:left; margin-right:10px;” src=”http://i52.tinypic.com/xfohg4.png” width=”55″ height=”22″ alt=”Share <?php the_title(); ?> on Google+” title=”Share <?php the_title(); ?> on Google+”></a>

Once installed, a button will display against your post. When clicked, the button will add the post to your Google+ stream.

Although it is a little technical at the moment, my thanks to Alex at AVItricks.info.

I am certain it won’t be long before someone offers a plugin to simplify this process, and when they do, we will be sure to post it here.

Adding images to email, is obviously very desirable from a marketing perspective, as they add significant impact to newsletters. However, with an increasing number of email clients blocking images by default, their inclusion has always meant the battle to get them seen in your recipients inbox.

This is a battle that gets ever harder as more and more clients block images by default, so we thought it would be worth revisiting the issue.

First of all, we though it would be good to give an up to date picture of the situation, and to this end, have found an interesting post on the Campaign Monitor website:

Image Blocking in Email clients

Of Particular interest is that fact that they list the current status re-image blocking for all the major email clients.

The post does go on to give some innovative (if slightly extreme) ways to get around this, including converting your images to a matrix of  HTML color blocks (Think 80′s video games and you will get the idea of what’s possible!).

More realistically, this issue need not cause too many sleepless nights if you follow the following simple rules:

1. Don’t use image only emails as all your recipient will see is an empty box.
2. Make sure the message is clear even without the pictures (Use the pictures to enhance rather than deliver the message).
3. Make sure you fill in the ‘alt tags’, as these will display instead of the images until the images are downloaded.
4. Use cascading style sheets (css) to style alt tags to give them more impact. (There is more on this in the Campaign Monitor post.)
5. Encourage people to add you to their address book, as many clients, including outlook will display images by default if the sender is in the address book.

Most importantly, make sure your recipients value your messages by keeping them relevant & interesting, that way they are more likely to click the “download images” button, and get the full benefits of your design efforts.

I recently reviewed a book looking at Social Media and, in follow up to this, I was reminded of a freely downloadable ebook which gives a great introduction to Twitter.

There is no question that there are a lot of people on Twitter who spend their time telling us thing we really aren’t that bothered about  – a classic example of focusing on what you want to say rather than what people might be interested to hear – but it can’t be denied that Twitter can be an incredibly powerful communication tool which can really help you to get your business message out to your market. Never forget though, Twitter is simply a medium….

….You are responsible for the message.

If you are new to Twitter, this ebook will show you:

• Why Twitter has become such big news
• What Twitter is and how it works
• How Twitter can help your business
• How to set up your profile
• Who to follow
• Etiquette on Twitter

Whether you decide Twitter is right for you and your business or not, this ebook can give you the insight and knowledge to help you make that decision.

The ebook is available on www.smarta.com and can be downloaded from the link here

If you decide to take the plunge, you will be helped to take your first Twitter steps through to learning more advanced strategies such as:

• How to super-engage with your community
• Using search to find new customers
• Using Twitter for customer service
• Becoming an indispensible resource for your industry
• Getting your employees on Twitter
• Measuring your success and developing a strategy
• Determining whether you need a social media agency

SMARTA.COM

Smarta.com is a collaberative business information portal which, in its own words:

• Is the ultimate advice and networking resource for anyone starting and running a small business.
• Provides independent, entrepreneur-led support and is backed by some of the UK’s top entrepreneurs.

The site can be a bit overwhelming as there is just so much ‘stuff’ in it! Inevitably there is the ‘…even more information – for a small fee…’ but there is a great deal that is available for free.

If you have a few minutes to spare it is worth a look.

One of the biggest issues we come across with SME businesses looking to use online marketing is the difficulty many people experience in actively engaging with the technology they are wanting to use i.e. knowing how to make it do what they want!

There is no doubt that technology has made things interesting for marketers, and has certainly opened up a whole new set of options, especially for those on a limited budget. But how should we handle the constant barrage of “next big things”. With head counts getting squeezed, it can be a real struggle to keep up in the fast paced world of Internet marketing.

With this in mind, I thought this item on the e-consultancy blog might be of interest.

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7843-how-marketing-teams-should-think-about-technology

Don’t be put off by references to ‘Marketing Teams’ and £100 million being a small business, the core message applies just the same to you and me.

Intuitively, the answer to this would seem to be yes, absolutely! However I would suggest that in some cases a negative review can actually re-enforce your brand position. This is a view shared by the writer of a recent post on the e-consultancy blog:

Why a negative review may not be so bad after all

Assuming that you have identified your target market and are focusing you efforts on serving that market, (if you are not taking this approach, it is something you should probably consider) when taken in context, negative reviews can strengthen that brand position.

Take the example given in the post

I am running a hotel in France that prides itself in being very French, and giving the “non tourist” experience. Someone stays at that hotel, and then leaves this review:

“An awful stay at this hotel. The staff at reception only speak French, the bars on the street outside our room were noisy in the early evening and the bathroom was small.”

Looking at this we would clearly say that this review was negative. However, let’s think about the impact it might have on me (someone who is in the hotel’s target market), looking for that authentic French experience.

I would probably rather go somewhere that wasn’t just full of people speaking English, and I speak a little french so should be able to get by, I am more likely to be in the bars in the early evening than being in the hotel room disturbed by the noise; and the size of the bathroom really doesn’t bother me.

So as a piece of information, the impact this would have on me is neutral at worst, it may even help me make a decision about where to stay.

In other words, that negative review has re-enforced the hotels brand position as an authentic French hotel.

The moral of the story; Know your target market, be honest about what you are (and what you are not) serve your target customers well, and don’t be too worried when someone outside that market doesn’t like what you do.

Business link have produced a useful introduction to Social Network Marketing which includes a brief description of the 3 main networks (LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook), along with tips on how to (and not to!) use them to market your business.

You can download the pdf from the Business Link website here.

My thanks to Richard Nash at the Tameside Business Family for bringing this to my attention.

We are increasingly using WordPress as a web publishing tool, as it allows the creation of highly featured, flexible websites, which are fully content managed.

One question we are regularly asked is “How well do WordPress sites perform on Search Engines?”. The simple answer is “very well”. WordPress has been recognised as an SEO friendly platform right from its inception.

However rather than taking my word for it, here is a presentation by Matt Cutts (SEO Guru at Google), where he talks about SEO and Why Google Loves Wordpress.

If you would like to investigate converting your site to WordPress, get in touch, we would be happy to discuss the possibilities.

Knowing when to send emails to best effect is an eternal question, and the decision is usually based on a gut feeling. However there is a way to make this a little more scientific using Google analytics.

This post on the e-consultancy website shows you how to analyse conversions by time of day, and by days of the week. Once you have this information,  you can make an informed decision as to the best time to send your emails.

How to use Google Analytics to find the best time to send emails

Using this type of analysis has caused us to re-think the scheduling of a number of our email campaigns