We love social media optimisation. And it seems the legendary social media expert Tamar Weinberg loves our Social Media Optimisation work too, calling our latest project the “best viral marketing strategy of 2008″.

We recently created a Flash game for sister company Language Trainers. Users are played a clip of someone with an interesting accent reading a line of Rudyard Kipling’s iconic “If” and asked to guess where the reader is from.

Have a go at the accent game here. A word of warning… it’s hard!

Tamar interviewed project leader Dave Khayat and posted it on her great Techipedia blog. You can read the whole transcript here. It’s an honour to receive such high praise from an expert like Tamar - she is acknowledged as one of the main authorities on Social Media and her opinions are sought after by experts around the world.

Social media projects like the accent game are becoming a much larger part of our work at Upstream Connections. The reaction to the Accent Game shows that social media can be successful in industries that don’t obviously lend themselves to viral marketing. If you’re interested in finding out more about how we can promote your site through social media, click here to get in touch.

Many happy returns to our boss and SEO guru Jose Mendez, who has added yet another year to his impressive tally. Without his leadership, frenetic bordering-on-obsessive-compulsive keyword checking and stress ball bouncing antics around the office, Upstream would not be the awesome SEO force we are today!

We hope you’ll all join us in wishing Jose a good one! No doubt that the best birthday present for him would be getting another major keyword to #1, which is a slightly worrying preference, but at least a decent indication of where his priorities lie.

Happy birthday jefe, from all the team! See you on Monday - no doubt slightly the worse for wear…

Homer Simpson’s email address has been hacked!

In an episode from the 14th Series (bless you Wikipedia), Homer is seen chatting on AIM with the email address chunkylover53@aol.com. One of the show’s writers registered the email address and set about replying to the thousands of emails that inevitably flooded in.

The email address was allowed to lapse into inactivity but was recently hacked by some naughty types who used it to direct Homer’s many new friends to nasty, botware breeding grounds.

Check out the full story here: http://blog.spywareguide.com/2008/07/who-hacked-homer.html

Stumbled upon this site on StumbleUpon today:

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

A simple idea, well executed.

Bravo.

Choosing a Search Engine Optimisation company is a big decision. Especially for smaller businesses, making the right choice at the first time of asking is important. As more and more options become available, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get it right first time.The biggest problem that business owners face when looking for an SEO partner is the number of voices shouting “I can do SEO!”

But can they really “do” SEO?

To find out if an SEO is singing to your tune, here are the Top Five questions you should ask:

Are you experienced?

Even in a young industry like internet marketing, there are companies with a proven track record of success. A good SEO should be able to show you case studies from clients relevant to your business.

There is a huge amount of information on the internet about how to optimise your site. Have a look through some of the sites listed in our Blogroll (on the right hand side of this page) and you will find a wealth of tips and advice on SEO. The downside to having all of this advice available is that someone can read a few forum posts and declare themselves an “SEO expert”. They will certainly have picked up a few industry buzzwords ready to dazzle you with, but can they show you genuine proof of their expertise?

Everyone has to start somewhere and you may well get a cheaper deal with an SEO newbie, but do you want someone learning their trade at your expense? The choice is yours.

How deep is your love?

Will existing clients give a reference? A good SEO company will have clients happy to tell you about their work.

Do they provide good service? Are they available when you need to speak to them? Do they understand the different needs of different sized companies? Are they a good long term partner?

So many questions!

Will you still love me tomorrow?

A good SEO company gives great service on an ongoing basis.

It is all too easy to dazzle new clients with the red carpet treatment and then gradually let service levels drop as new clients come along. Will the SEO provide regular reports? Will they be available to answer your questions? Do they have a proven track record of innovation with evidence to back up any claims?

Are you gonna go my way?

Your Search Engine Optimisation company should be focused on the results that will drive your business.

Sadly, it is all too common for a company to promise great results for a list of barely relevant keywords. A good SEO will be clear about targets and will give you an honest assessment of what you can hope to achieve, how long it will take and the costs involved before starting the project.

Make sure that your SEO is focused on your needs.

Can I kick it?

Beware of anyone who wants to tie you into a long contract where they have no incentive to keep working hard for you.

Would I lie to you?

Charles and Eddie wouldn’t, and neither should your SEO. A reputable company will be clear about what they will do for you. They will stick to the guidelines laid down by the search engines and not risk getting your site banned. They will be clear about what you can expect and when.

Dishonest practises include gateway pages, link spam, keyword stuffing and dodgy redirects. Ask your next SEO where they stand on these techniques.

The truth is that website optimisation is not a quick fix and anyone promising too much too soon may well be risking your reputation and business for their own ends.

To avoid getting the blues at a later date, make sure that your SEO can answer all of these questions before you agree to make beautiful music together!

We are very pleased to announce a new Upstream Connections client: Extreme Cred.

Extreme Cred is a prepaid Maestro card perfect for gnarly chicks and dudes everywhere. It looks like any other credit or debit card but the Extreme Cred card is different. Like a prepaid mobile phone, you can only spend money that has been put on the card in advance…. a perfect deal for parents who want to give their children an allowance and teach them about managing a budget.

Extreme Cred is a part of the Extreme Group of companies, which is probably best known for its Extreme sports television channel.

We are really looking forward to getting our teeth into this one, so keep your eyes peeled for Extreme Cred at the right end of search results very soon.

With all the talk of SEO, SMO, SEM and the like, it can be easy to lose focus on methods of marketing that have worked for generations.

Newsletters are a great way of letting existing clients know you are still innovating and introducing new services. It is all too easy to get into a cycle of “business as usual” with your loyal clients and newsletters offer the chance to generate some interest in what you can offer now as opposed to when the contract was signed all those years ago.

If you have the pleasure of working in sales, you will know that those leads that once seem hot can quickly cool off and eventually fall off the radar entirely. A regular newsletter arriving in your contact’s inbox will remind them of your existence (even if only for a minute in the whole month!).

A catchy title will encourage recipients to actually open the newsletter. Gossip website Popbitch is very good at this. Recent Popbitch newsletters have been titled:

“obamallama!”
“Look at the size of my fish”
“Mama Lolo’s Gender Bar and Butchery”

and so on. Seemingly random titles like these make a popbitch newsletter stand out when it arrives in your inbox alongside dozens of emails titled “great savings on…”, “Amazing deals on…” and the like. Of course, Popbitch-esque titles are not right for everyone.

How often do you receive a newsletter from a website and it goes straight in the bin?

Probably quite often, if you are anything like me. This is because there is often no incentive to read the content.

One way to ensure your newsletters get opened is to include regular special offers. There is an old saying in advertising that the most powerful words in the English language are “free” and “new”. If you are in a position to run competitions or give away freebies, this is a great way of opening a dialogue with your readers, whether they are existing customers, pondering prospects or just those interested in who you are and what your about (that’d be your rivals then). A genuine special offer in the newsletter’s title encourages more people to read the content. Regular offers encourage regular readers!

Also, be sure that your newsletters contain stories and offers that the readership will be interested in. There is nothing more annoying than receiving daily mailshots with no substance from some website you once bought something from after an evening at the pub.  Grrrrrrr!

We often find that the most clicked links in newsletters are those that are off theme. From a writer’s  point of view this is great news as it shows that people are paying attention. Using a site like Pure for deliveries makes it easy to see what people are responding to in your newsletter.

As with all marketing, good newsletters reflect well on your business, bad newsletters don’t.

If you want to recieve our own newsletter, click here and fill in your email address. We won’t do anything naughty with your details and won’t pass them to anyone else. You’ll be the first to know of any special offers and new Upstream services. Better be quick though as our next newsletter will be out this week!