This week saw myself and Stu Bowker presenting on behalf of Propellernet at the MDHub 100 SEO & Google tools seminar, at the Sussex County Cricket ground. Our presentation gave a basic overview of SEO, exploring some link building tactics and the role good online PR can play. We also touched upon the power of conversion optimisation and detailed lots of free tools available to get you started. One of the key themes that came out of the session was that Google wants to provide the most relevant search results to users, offering the best user experience possible, encouraging searchers to come back time and time again. So how does Google decide who gets the top spot and ensure results stay relevant...? Well Google's search algorithm looks at a host of factors, but particularly important ones include good and relevant on page content mentioning the keywords you are targeting, as well as relevant and authoritative external links to that content. Read the rest of this entry...

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Topping off a fantastic month of award entries and wins, we were victorious at the Sussex Sports Awards! Following on from our Healthiest Workplace award win at the Sussex Business Awards, we were selected as winners for the Active & Healthy Workplace Initiative award (sponsored by Wave Leisure). The other finalists included Nibbles of Worthing Ltd and Wellbeing at Work (Brighton & Hove City Council). To find out about some of the healthy workplace activities and initiatives we have in place here at Propellernet, check out Annelies' recent blog post: Is Propellernet the healthiest workplace? Read the rest of this entry...

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Friday night saw some of the best of the Brighton and Sussex business community turn up for a night of glitz and glamour at the Sussex Business Awards. A fantastic evening was had by all and it was a particularly triumphant night for the Propellernet team! We were shortlisted for three award categories on the night: Healthiest Workplace, Best Employer and the Innovation in Business award. Despite some very stiff competition from some great Sussex businesses, we are pleased to have walked away with the award for the Healthiest Workplace (sponsored by the NHS West Sussex), as well as the Innovation in Business award (sponsored by the University of Brighton). As regular readers to the blog have probably seen, we're keen believers of a healthy body = a healthy mind and have put in place a 'wellbeing team' to drive forward continual improvements in this area. So it was fantastic to win an award for our wellbeing efforts and we've got plans to continue investing and improving employee...

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I’m writing this blog post on the day that my six-week internship as an online PR assistant at Propellernet comes to an end. I’ve enjoyed the experience so much and learnt a great deal in a relatively short amount of time, which I’m certain is a testament to all the great people here! I was offered the internship as part of the Sussex Internship Programme, run by Wired Sussex. It’s one of the best schemes of its kind in the country, giving graduates not only the opportunity but also the funding to get real, valuable work experience in media companies in Sussex. I was lucky enough to be selected by Propellernet! Rather than spending six weeks just watching what everyone’s been up to, I’ve actually been involved in a huge range of projects and have completed high-responsibility tasks- I’ve interviewed case studies, sold-in press releases to journalists and written copy and press releases myself. It’s given me the opportunity to boost my CV and gain further...

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By 2050 almost 60% of the UK population could be obese... now there's a scary fact. Regular readers of our blog and newsletter will know that we are an active and healthy bunch of people here at Propellernet. We regularly take part in events such as the Brighton half marathon, Tough Guy and we reached the semi finals of the Brighton Business Volleyball tournament. We've even launched our own 'wellbeing' team focused on continually improving employee wellbeing, which has seen us receive nominations for 'the healthiest workplace' and 'best employer' at the BAHBAs, The Sussex Business Awards and the Sussex Sports Awards. So we can definitely vouch for the concept of health body = healthy mind. All this brings me neatly onto the purpose of this blog post, to highlight a couple of great offers being promoted in the Brighton & Hove and Worthing areas, in association with National Obesity Week (2nd - 8th Nov 2009): Read the rest of this entry...

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At the start of the summer I wake-boarded to work. My friend has a boat, we left at 7.15 am from the Marina, I shot past the two piers at 7.30 am and waded to shore still in my wetsuit with my office clothes in a waterproof bag on my back, James Bond style. When I got to work my PR colleague Stella said I looked different. No, it wasn’t the fact that my hair was wet, no it wasn’t that I didn’t have any make up on, I just looked ... chilled.  I was feeling like a Sunday morning on a Thursday and I’m still talking about it! This type of activity sparked our idea to start a wellbeing team with the sole aim to make everyone here happier and healthier and our results are paying off. We’ve just been shortlisted for the BAHBA Healthiest Workplace Award, which makes us one of the total 37 finalists of some of the best companies Brighton has to offer. So how did we do it?  By injecting a healthy dose of ‘life’ into our ‘work’ with fun activities, providing healthy...

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Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, whatever you or your clients subscribe to or depend upon, there is an increasing use of social networks for successful PR campaigns. Here at Propellernet, we manage social media campaigns to build relationships with the media and strengthen the overall communication strategy for clients. We recommend that your target market is identified first and then a strategy put in place to communicate with them. Over the past 18 months we noticed the media were often  writing about tweets they had seen and even having real-time debates on social networks that would appear in the press the next day. Also a whole new concept of writing was born when travel writer, Benji Lanyado, piloted the first TwiTrip – a travel adventure powered simply by twitter users recommendations. We already have clients with pages on Facebook and we use the likes of twitter for our own PR, but some clients have been fearful of joining social communities. They had seen...

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