A lot of Silkmoth's business is generated by referrals. These come from existing customers, from partner companies (graphic design, marketing, advertising, accountants, solicitors, etc) and other contacts made and developed by networking. On average I probably spend 20 hours every month at networking meetings.
This activity isn't usually captured for posterity. However, on the 4th August, I went to one of my regular events, Business Network South Manchester which this time was held at Stanneylands Hotel (remember Silkmoth Day last year?). John Cooper from Ikon Partnership was on hand to photograph the event and one of the photographs I felt captured my wild staring eyes and belief in invisible teddy bears quite well.
On a serious note, I'd like to promote the Business Network, it's an excellent event. Secondly, we had a presentation by Fiona Reed from East Cheshire Hospice which was inspiring and made it clear that just to keep providing the excellent service that they offer costs £6,000 per day.
I personally support the hospice and would recommend that you do too - they do great work. Their regular midnight walk (which Lynn and I have done for the last two years) is on 11th September 2010 and is great fun.
We are very pleased to announce the start of a programme of monthly web surgeries where customers can come to our offices and learn about the web's hot topics.
The programme starts with Search Engine Optimisation in July, moves on to Google Analytics in August and continues with Adwords and PPC in September.
Don't worry if you can't book a place, these three surgeries will be re-run later in the year.
Details of all events can be found here.
Silkmoth are proud to annouce their sponsorship of Hayfield Junior Football Club's Under 11s team for the 2010/2011 and subsequent seasons.
The juniors will be playing in the Stockport Metropolitan Junior Football League next season and we'll be keeping a close eye on their progress.
Hayfield Junior Football Club
We've now moved to our new offices in Macclesfield. You'll find us at:
Charter House 1-3 Charter Way Macclesfield SK10 2NG
You can get directions from our contact page.
There have been a few hiccups along the way. We've lost all but one incoming line until Thursday 17th June so if you get the engaged tone please be patient and try again later. Alternatively use our mobile number, they're on our business cards.
There's been a lot of hype and publicity in the last few weeks about the .CO domain. Just about every domain name registration company is pushing it as the latest must have accessory for your website! In fact one such company is pushing it as a "new era"!
In reality the .CO top-level domain has been around for as long as .COM or .UK. It's actually the top-level domain for Colombia and as such is treated in a similar manner to .UK. For instance there are Colombian government websites on .GOV.CO domains. Sadly, they went for .COM.CO for businesses instead of .CO.CO!
Previously, there were strict rules on who could and who couldn't buy a .CO domain. However, these have now been relaxed and the inevitable bun-fight will soon begin. Here's the timetable:
April 1, 2010 - April 20, 2010: Sunrise A will allow registered Colombian trademarks to apply for exact match domains.
April 26, 2010 - June 10, 2010: Sunrise B will allow trademarks of national effect to apply for exact match domains.
June 21, 2010 - July 13, 2010: Landrush will allow anyone to apply for domain names of high commercial value.
July 20, 2010: .CO domains will become generally available.
In a sane and sensible world the answer is "probably not". The likes of Microsoft and BP will be buying .CO domains to protect their international trademarks but for most SMEs there's unlikely to be a compelling reason.
However, the web is still very much like the wild west. You can bet that there will be instances where unscrupulous developers are building websites that are abusing the .CO domain and building websites to compete with their .CO.UK counterparts. We've seen this before and we'll see it again.
My feeling is that the presence of the .CO domain in the UK market will confuse people. I think that major brands are likely to register the domain to protect their interest and then forget about it.
Keith's out spreading the Silkmoth message and getting professionally shot (photography-wise) by John Cooper