Free Online Marketing Techniques

Each week in our BNI lunchtime meeting, I am expected to get up and tell other members and visitors a little bit about my work in a sixty second snapshot.

If you want to find out a bit more about our weekly meetings, skip to the bottom of this page.

Here's what I had to say this week:

"My name is Jon Ewing and I am a website designer from Reading.

"You should refer people to me because I can help them to use the internet to get more business and enhance their reputation.

"This morning I've been having a look at some of the online techniques the election campaigners in my constituency are using.

"The Conservative Party's Alok Sharma is trailing behind - he doesn't appear to be using Twitter and his Facebook page has only got 137 supporters so far.

"Labour's Naz Sarkar is Tweeting about his campaign and has 125 followers. His group Naz Sarkar for Reading West currently has 185 members.

"But screaming into the lead is the Lib Dem candidate, Daisy Benson, who is active on Twitter with 1,382 followers, has a regularly-updated campaign blog, and has a Facebook page with 499 members.

"So what can we glean from all this?

"Simply that these people feel there may be something to gain – possibly a seat in the Houses of Commons – from making use of these free tools provided for marketing themselves and their ideas. So this week my ideal referral would be a company that wants to be doing the same and doesn't know where to start.

"To find out how good your website could be, look into inframes."

What's BNI?

I am part of a growing new chapter of the BNI business networking group and we're looking for other Reading-based small business professionals to refer business to.

We meet between 12.15pm and 1.45pm on Wednesdays. If you'd like to come along to a lunch, please drop me a line or give me a call and I'll put you in touch with our organiser.

There's absolutely no commitment required – you just pay a tenner, which covers the cost of lunch at the Strada on the Oracle Riverside - and you'll have a chance to meet existing members and other visitors, introduce your business and of course hand out business cards.

Protecting Your Site From Hackers

Each week in our BNI lunchtime meeting, I am expected to get up and tell other members and visitors a little bit about my work in a sixty second snapshot.

If you want to find out a bit more about our weekly meetings, skip to the bottom of this page.

Here's what I had to say this week:

"My name is Jon Ewing and I am from inframes.com ltd, a website design company from Reading.

"One of the reasons my customers stick with me is that they know I'll be there for them in a crisis.

"A lot of my customers rely solely on their website for their income, so you can imagine how horrified they might have been one morning last week to come into the office and find their homepage had been replaced by this:



"Now I take the security of my sites very seriously, but there are limits to what one can do. In a shared hosting environment, your website can be one of maybe a hundred occupying the same server. In this instance it appears the security of all the sites was compromised by a single piece of script uploaded to one of the neighbouring sites.

"But thanks to the speedy reaction of the hosting company – to whom I have been referring business for ten years now – this malicious code was erased completely within minutes and the security breach permanently purged.

"So this week I'd like you to refer me to anyone who has ever had their website hacked and wants to talk about how to ensure it never happens again.

"To find out how good your website could be, look into inframes."

More on this Subject - What Can You Do?

Protect Against SQL Injection

One of the most common methods of hacking a site is via its database using a "SQL Injection". This technique can give hackers complete control over your database. It can be avoided by careful programming and there's a useful free Firefox add-on called SQL Inject Me from Security Compass which allows you to test any page for common vulnerabilities.

Protect Your Passwords

Keep your passwords secret and don't use the same one for everything. You know it makes sense.

Host Your Site on a Dedicated Server

If you're currently paying twenty or thirty quid a month for your web hosting, this is a relatively costly solution that you will have to think hard over, but if your site is in a shared hosting environment (see above), you run the risk of it being scuppered by one of your neighbours. If your business depends on your website, you should seriously consider a dedicated server or Virtual Private Server (where multiple operating systems effectively run side-by-side on the same machine).

What's BNI?

I am part of a growing new chapter of the BNI business networking group and we're looking for other Reading-based small business professionals to refer business to.

We meet between 12.15pm and 1.45pm on Wednesdays. If you'd like to come along to a lunch, please drop me a line or give me a call and I'll put you in touch with our organiser.

There's absolutely no commitment required – you just pay a tenner, which covers the cost of lunch at the Strada on the Oracle Riverside - and you'll have a chance to meet existing members and other visitors, introduce your business and of course hand out business cards.

Another Testimonial

Each week in our BNI lunchtime meeting, I am expected to get up and tell other members and visitors a little bit about my work in a sixty second snapshot.

If you want to find out a bit more about our weekly meetings, skip to the bottom of this page.

Here's what I had to say this week:

"My name is Jon Ewing and I am from inframes.com ltd, a website design company from Reading.

"You should refer business to me because I can give you pretty much anything you see on someone else's website.

"Last week I had a call asking me to do exactly that. I look after the website for the actor and entertainer Allan Stewart and he told me to go and look at a banner ad for Littlewoods he'd seen on the AOL homepage.

"In the ad, there was a little carousel showing photos of models and you could place your cursor over one of the photos to slow down the animation, find out more about the outfit and of course click to make a purchase. Allan asked if I could replicate this effect to create a moving menu for his video page. I did and he was delighted with the results.

"In fact he emailed me to say 'I love it. You're very clever' and told me he'd be sending me a DVD of even more video to include on the site just to make the most of his new toy.

"So this week I'd like you to refer me to anyone who'd like to add a video or animation to their website and doesn't know where to begin.

"To find out how good your website could be, look into inframes."

What's BNI?

I am part of a growing new chapter of the BNI business networking group and we're looking for other Reading-based small business professionals to refer business to.

We meet between 12.15pm and 1.45pm on Wednesdays. If you'd like to come along to a lunch, please drop me a line or give me a call and I'll put you in touch with our organiser.

There's absolutely no commitment required – you just pay a tenner, which covers the cost of lunch at the Strada on the Oracle Riverside - and you'll have a chance to meet existing members and other visitors, introduce your business and of course hand out business cards.

Vehicle Tracking Made Easy

Each week in our BNI lunchtime meeting, I am expected to get up and tell other members and visitors a little bit about my work in a sixty second snapshot.

If you want to find out a bit more about our weekly meetings, skip to the bottom of this page.

Here's what I had to say this week:

"My name is Jon Ewing and I am from inframes.com ltd, a website design company from Reading.

"You should refer business to me because I do far more than just design websites – I build applications that are a vital part of my clients' businesses.

"This week I've been working with the Sherpa Van Project, which has a fleet of vans based in Yorkshire. Using software from a company called gtrack and maps supplied by Google, we operate a website that allows the coordinator to pinpoint the location of vans on the road at any given time and thus predict the likely arrival time at their next stop.

"To track a vehicle in this way you need a hard-wired box costing around £200 or a mobile 'phone that never leaves the vehicle. And you'll need a data-only SIM card for each box which should set you back less than a tenner a month. Setting up the website and configuring the SIM cards is less than a day's work and after that you can log in to check on your vehicles from any web browser.

"So the referral I'd like this week is from anyone with a fleet of vehicles who would like to know where they are at any time and for that matter precisely where they have been at any given minute on any given day.

"To find out how good your website could be, look into inframes."

What's BNI?

I am part of a growing new chapter of the BNI business networking group and we're looking for other Reading-based small business professionals to refer business to.

We meet between 12.15pm and 1.45pm on Wednesdays. If you'd like to come along to a lunch, please drop me a line or give me a call and I'll put you in touch with our organiser.

There's absolutely no commitment required – you just pay a tenner, which covers the cost of lunch at the Strada on the Oracle Riverside - and you'll have a chance to meet existing members and other visitors, introduce your business and of course hand out business cards.