John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

My altitude, orbiting over the Green party: 17 October 2009: There's a marketing rule, maybe not a rule, maybe a 'saying', that you have to be where the people are. If they're on Facebook, you'd better be on Facebook. And when they move, you move too. Because they're talking about you, and you need to be there to hear it.; I'm a mild mannered guy. Really. I've lost my temper on average once per decade. Right now though, if someone Green came to my door I fear I'd lose it. I mean really axe attack -> prison lose it.; Just as when communism fell almost exactly twenty years ago, free market capitalism fell recently, but we don't want to acknowledge it.; On Wednesday a GM report is due out that will probably say we need GM to feed the earth's population in the face of global warming. That'll be the global warming to which large companies, hegemony and monoculture have contributed. Population control anyone?; I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling rage about politics and business. We are ripe for a Bastille moment. There is so much wrong I'd be surprised if more people come out to vote next year than turn up underneath parliament with gunpowder.; And what does my local Green party do? They write to ask for my help, and to talk about the great success they've had with allotments.; Well, I offered my Internet marketing expertise at one gathering and no-one took me up on it. Fair enough. Bit weird that they preferred to print leaflets. But hey, that's my personal thing, the point is not "I was rejected", the point is they are asking the same question again which I've already answered. They are not listening.; It was the allotments thing that got me though. Look, I know local food is important. I know growing our own is pleasurable and important .. I've had four allotments in my time. But there's a general election coming.; I think it might have been Thatcher who started talking about the importance of a party's manifesto. Perhaps before her, parties didn't keep too well to their promises. And by the way she argued, successfully in my case, that with our current system you can elect a party and that party will implement the manifesto the majority voted for. With proportional representation, you elect people and they bargain in leather-chaired rooms and you never get anything you voted for. So she definitely had a strong manifesto thing going.; And I also think it was her who wanted to talk about 'the things people are bothered about': schools, the NHS, whatever that list is (but it doesn't include allotments).; Now, I like the Green party in principle. I've been a Green voter on and off my whole life. But I am simultaneously repelled and attracted by them and the balance of those forces holds me in orbit around them. I don't get too close, yet I'm also always aware.; I believe in Green politics, as much as I know about them. Well OK there are nagging doubts .. like what would the Greens do if the Germans invaded and I'm a long way from rejecting free market economics .. I need to be guided slowly.; I'm repelled by the idea that if I turned up at a Green meeting I would be 1) judged by the car I turned up in, the clothes I wore, and whether I'd got a brick in my cistern (I haven't), and 2) they would want something from me .. like shoe leather (ha ha) delivering leaflets. I'd turn up to a meeting to find out about Green politics and be expected to chip in. So I don't turn up.; Here's another. Imagine a room full of Greens. Do you like them?; "No", I think is the answer you're searching for.; For one thing, they are mostly fringe dwellers. These are not normal people. It's OK, they'll never read this, they're down the allotment. And I think I'm a fringe dweller too, I don't mean it as a bad thing. I just mean if you're a political party you've got to occupy the top of the hill in the middle of the playground or it's all just chinwag.; Greens need more 'normal' people around to dilute the repulsion effect. Then I (and thousands like me) will orbit closer.; But here's the key thing. This is really important. I think Greens favour the environment over people.; And if you do that, you'll never get into government because it's people who vote and "no, you can't" isn't a very good slogan.; So what is the point?; And I really, really don't want to feel that way. I want to feel the hope that Green politics could provide.; I said some of these things on Facebook one day when it got to me and I got more than the usual response. Almost all agreed and had followed very similar paths. The one person in defence said in support of the letter "but local food is important". Yes. Very. But in the face of it all, it doesn't speak to me.; Who was missing from that discussion? My local Green party member who I've voted for and who is one of my Facebook friends. Also missing was our local Green party councillor who doesn't seem to be on Facebook at all.; So I wrote to the Green party about my frustrations and got a nice note back from their press officer asking what I'd do differently. So I've been pondering.; He was happy about the Green Party Facebook Page that now has 3,283 fans. It doesn't feel like a huge achievement to me but .. The Conservatives don't seem to have one at all, and Labour have 3,675 so maybe it is.; So here's what's coming out of the Green Party Facebook page:; I haven't clicked any. They don't grab me. I'm a satellite, remember, equally repelled and attracted by the Green party. I don't want to invest time in Green politics (yet). I just want to know what Greens want to do and I'll make a judgment when I come to vote.; These stories are aimed at existing Green voters and members. Their votes are already in the bag.; One way or another, Green policies have to reach out in a way that makes people go "oh, thank goodness someone's got their head screwed on". It rests on a single sentence and everyone's magic sentence is different: "them, I voted for them, they're for British jobs", "what, the BNP?", "was it? Oh, well anyone who stands for British jobs, that's what I believe in".; There is a beautiful place Green politics is trying to get to. An Eden where children can play, sweet fruit ripens in the garden, we chat to our neighbours, where craft and skill and experience are respected. An African friend told me how hard it was to come to England where no-one says hello, no-one smiles at each other, no-one talks. There is a world within our grasp where we don't dump minority world toxic oil waste on a weak majority world country poisoning 10,000 people and then try to gag the resulting investigative report, where, instead, we all actually like each other, we trade nicely and everyone takes on board their own consequences.; That's my Green dream anyway. My problem is, that's a people dream that suits my personality. I worry the Greens are not people people. And that not everyone is like me. I imagine Rupert Murdoch might see things differently.; So Green politics has to have a dream, and have the power to take us there. Not just give us the option .. to take us there. That's why it's called being in power.; Anyway, I've no clue what the Greens would have done on that weekend when Brown knew if he did nothing, the cash machines would be turned off on Monday. I've no idea what the Greens would have done after 9/11. I've no idea what the Greens would do with the NHS. Or with the road outside my house.; Through this whole crisis of capitalism, the Greens haven't reached me with a single message. Yet I have an eye for them. So. It. Is. Not. Working.; My own personal contribution to the solution is this. Firstly, it's unforgiveable that key local Green party members are not actively on Facebook. Here in Scarborough there's a local person bringing local news to Facebook and stimulating debate every day. We have the 'threat' of a supermarket development within earshot of my home in the middle of town just a year after all the road disruption and expense of a park and ride scheme development aimed at cutting traffic into town. Local businesses are up in arms. Others are baying "ASDA! ASDA! ASDA!" Greens? Nowhere.; I guess it's a hard slog to convince a Green candidate to spend time updating Facebook. But simply .. you have to go where the conversation is. This isn't a choice. It's an imperative, we've a world to save for chrissakes. Talking to people down the allotments, on marches, at meetings .. those are already converted. Carry on, and the Tories will be in this time next year. This at the moment Green politics should be providing the emergency lighting from our crashed system.; And the conversation is on Twitter too. I would expect Green candidates to be on Twitter. Really.; The deal is .. both of those systems part the beards and peek out into the real world where people commute and have big TVs. Also, the people on Facebook and Twitter are tech-savvy. They know how to re-Tweet, how to blog. They spread the word. The messages that reach out need to pose the possibility of a different, better life. I don't give a hoot about the details of politics. I care about me. I want to hear, over Twitter and Facebook, stuff from the Greens that gives me hope and makes me happier without feeling like I have to write a letter of complaint, march to Trafalgar square, or wear three jumpers.; And there's part of the problem too. I fear if Greens get on Facebook and Twitter, their messages would be somehow cold, maybe preachy. It needs to be done right.; Green Party. I don't care about you. I don't care about your members or your candidates. I just want you to do your job, make this fucked up system better, and do it fast before the Tory's get in and we all slip off into hell together.; If you want my help, you know where I am.; Having said that, I'm still smarting that when the Green Party held their conference in Scarborough Spa my partner and I were in Scarborough Against Genetic Engineering (SAGE) and we had a stall in the foyer and my g/f hand-made chocolates (she's very good at that) from the best organic ingredients and her friend, who was staying, turned coloured card into presentation sandbuckets. We packed them with chocolates, she calligraphed a message on each and we presented them as take-home gifts from Scarborough to the delegates' loved ones.; We sold none over the whole weekend.; Fine. Might have been wrong in a number of ways (in assuming they mostly had a loving partner and a job so they could afford anything to accompany their chick peas, perchance?) But none! Where was the warmth, the humour, the love, the embrace, the thank-you, the recognition of our locally produced efforts .. the support of SAGE. What were they going to take home from Scarborough?; Yet when it comes to candidate time, there's always someone knocking on my door when I'm in the middle of something wanting a quorum of signatures.; Yes Green Party, we have a history. Look out one starry night and you might if you have good vision see me orbiting. Am I friend or foe? I'm potentially both. It's up to you. Please, please, please get it together before I really do get annoyed.
Here's someone who hates SEO: 14 October 2009: Here's someone who hates SEO. Interesting. I don't know anything much about the darker side of things he talks about, and in my 10 principles of web success one of the points is "be interesting". In other words, I'm kinda with him.; I have to say, though, I've never met anyone from the dark side he describes. For background, there are said to be (from cowboy films of old) white hat practices which are all good, and black hat practices which aim to get a quick gain by finding holes in the system they can exploit.; I don't really use any automated systems for what I do. I don't even link my Tweets to my Facebook status because I think they are different sorts of audience.; Most SEO practitioners think they are doing good, not just for their clients, but for their clients clients too. It's basic marketing. If you have a cure for something, you really should be making an effort to find the people you can help .. do you not have a moral obligation? If you sat with your cure and said "I won't use marketing", wouldn't people be sickened by your lack of humanity? And economics stops you from employing people to doorstep everyone.; Internet marketers help make their websites clear. Basically we watch how people arrive on our websites and what they do. If we find people like something we offer, we try to find more people who would like it too. That, in all honesty, seems like a recipe for improving happiness to me.; I know ads are a pain in the arse. But .. well there are two sides to this. There's push marketing .. ads between your telly programs. You were sat watching Hollyoaks and now you want a McDonalds. You didn't start out looking for food, but now someone's planted the idea in your head, Derren Brown stylee. Then there's pull marketing, which is most of the Internet. You go looking for something you want, a few clicks and boomshanka it's on its way. Most of the time Internet marketing helps make that happen. Actually, it makes us powerful. In control. Able to organise services to make our lives what we want them to be.; So I like pull marketing. I like SEO and Internet marketing. I think most people are good people. And I think there's a whole bunch of people out there trying to do good.; We didn't create this system. Stuff grows in fertile soil.; There's something else too. SEO is dying. The web is becoming something you contribute to, not something you receive. Every time you review something, link to something, comment on something, vote for something, you're giving it a positive vote. Systems are listening, watching, taking note.; The sum of those 'votes' will overtake anything SEO can do. So in the end, the only real thing we can do to have a better business is to build a better mousetrap and tell our friends and colleagues about what we've done. The rest will happen naturally.; Of course, that depends how good your networking and relationship building skills are. Have I mentioned Twitter yet?
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: 10 October 2009: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a long term condition where the sufferer has fatigue that isn't relieved by sleep. It can be mild, allowing the person to sustain a job. It can be severe, leaving the person bedridden and requiring care for everything. My partner has CFS. There was a time when she was almost bedridden, but she is slightly improved now.; Without wishing to make comparisons, it is a particularly cruel condition. Alright, many CFS sufferers aren't in constant pain (but some are), it's not too disfiguring, and you retain most of your faculties, but it strikes a particular sort of character - people who care, hold themselves to very high standards, and who work hard for the good of everyone.; The fatigue isn't just physical. Your heart can't get up the energy to pump blood fast enough for you to get up a hill, and your brain can't summon what it needs to remember or form a sentence.; So a life that was ambitious, vibrant, caring and good turns inward. Can we go for a coffee? Well, how far is it? We can't go if there's music on because music and coffee is too much to handle.; And the narrowboat living, countryside gardening, Girona conversation loving life turns to a sort of limbo where the thing that really makes a difference is a bath seat so you can shower while seated.; It's an impotent life. No-one sees you day to day. And when you complain to the council about the noise from the traffic outside the house you're trapped in as they drive on an unmaintained road, they ignore you because you're just one and you're weak. "It would help your case if you got up a campaign with local residents". If we could get up a campaign, my friend, you'd know about it.; There isn't really a cure for CFS, but the NHS considers it to be a mental illness and thanks to the work of Simon Wessely offers mainly graded activity which is basically: 1) stop boom and bust with your energy usage, 2) establish an activity level you can maintain each day, 3) gradually increase it. There are plenty of people for whom that simply doesn't work, the maintenance level is the level, and that's that.; The CFS community has issues with Simon Wessely. He's the nearest thing we have to a hate figure. If he ever found himself within a crowd of CFS sufferers he'd be slept on until he was very sorry.; It doesn't feel like a mental illness. It feels like something is wrong with the mitochondria throughout the body.; So that's sort of that. In limbo, with no-one listening.; But last night we opened the laptop to do our crossword and there was a news story: "Has science found the cause of ME?" Well, CFS is an umbrella term for the symptoms. There would appear to be multiple triggers and multiple causes and it feels like, over time, researchers will gradually identify specific mechanisms at work and they'll be split out into individual syndromes until there's just one left under CFS. One promising possibility is that there's something wrong with the metabolism of vitamin B12. Anyway, ME is one such specifically identifiable, physical cause.; But as we read the article, the senior author of the study, Judy Mikovits, director of research at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, says ".. With those numbers, I would say, yes we've found the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome."; I don't know if I can tell you what that feels like. We certainly weren't expecting it. It's a turmoil of emotion and an eyes wide open for information. It's incredibly important that the article is accurate and the journalist has done a good job because .. we're hanging on every word.; At the same time, nothing's really changed. Until it turns into a cure we can get from the doctor, it provides hope (which is important) but nothing more.; The upside? Well the best upside is that, with luck, the NHS will stop thinking of CFS as a mental illness and more researchers will work on finding biological causes and cures, after all, 250,000 sufferers in the UK alone isn't a small market and many of them are go-getting people wanting to do great things for the good of all.; And yes, this might directly lead to a cure.; The downside? They are saying CFS is caused by a retrovirus (HIV is a retrovirus too) and might be treated by the same drugs. Well those aren't healthy, organic, lickable and nice drugs. That's serious stuff. And if the companies marketing those drugs start thinking of CFS as a market, then we have to be careful of being sold to and .. someone's got to be the first guinea pig.; What's a retrovirus? Well as I understand it .. all viruses inject their DNA into their host and use the cell's reproduction process to create more viruses. Many viruses cause sneezing as a means of distributing themselves and if they happen to kill the host or the host's immune system learns to recognise and destroy that virus that's OK from the virus' point of view so long as it's infected at least one other host.; Retroviruses establish a stable relationship with their host and stick around as long as the host sticks around. They become integrated into the hosts' DNA without triggering an immune response. Infected cells can sit there spilling viruses for weeks or years before the cell dies. It sounds scary but I realised when battling against GM foods that actually, DNA isn't anything like as locked down as we might wish it was. Everything we eat has DNA in it: "you are what you eat" is probably truer than it seemed when the phrase was coined. After all, gene therapy is based on the idea of using a virus to replace our cellular DNA with improved DNA. That's what makes a virus a virus, that's its defining mechanism.; Because a retrovirus establishes a long relationship with the host, it doesn't have to be virulent. So long as it infects at least one other host over the hosts' lifetime, that's enough for it to propagate. HIV, again, isn't triffically easy to catch.; And the CFS retrovirus isn't just in a small club with HIV, there's a whole cosmos of them and historically the 'retrovirus' mechanism goes back to the beginning of cellular life. "Waiter, there's a retrovirus in my primordial soup".; And btw, there are lots of people on the CFS groups saying if they caught it, it wasn't through sexual transmission. That feels like our brains making a connection between it and HIV - more of a tabloid thing than reality.; There are three types of retrovirus. Oncornaviruses are usually benign but some cause disease including cancer. Lentiviruses (HIV is one) affect the immune system. And spumaviruses are benign. Here's ours.; So, there's plenty more to do in working this one out. And guess what? Excitement and stress is tiring. So after the excitement last night for everyone with CFS, expect them to be in bed for a few days.
The Tap and Spile, and the New Tavern: 8 October 2009: I just heard this morning that Matt, landlord of both these Falsgrave pubs, was declared bankrupt on Tuesday and is, in his words unemployed and homeless.; That's really sad. Matt is one of the good guys. He's supported music in both pubs in Scarborough for as long as I can remember, always paid fairly and took chances with bands and artists.; The British pub is in serious decline not least in Scarborough where it seems many pubs are either available for lease or have closed. Sure, many are a little less salubrious than they might be, but they were ticking along OK. It's not the government's fault or the smoking ban's fault or Tesco's fault. Whatever we want in our lives, we have to use it. Spend our money there. Support it. So, no moaning. Matt's pubs' demise is our fault.; I was talking to the owner of a music shop yesterday and his first words to me were "what's happened to the local music scene, we're selling fewer strings, fewer drumsticks, people aren't playing". At the start of the recession there was an upsurge in pub band gigs as pubs tried to keep their beer flowing. I didn't think it would last. People aren't in a knees-up kinda mood.; And if the worst pubs get shaken out so we're left with the good ones and in those gather the socially minded people of Scarborough, maybe we'll get back to the days when you could get yourself a social scene by turning up at the Hole in the Wall.; But times change. The student intake at the uni aren't going to spend their nights in the Alma, they'll be in a bar drinking things multicoloured.; Along similar lines, I met a very nice local retailer the other day. Far from being a money grabbing businessman he was a nice guy trying to make a living at what he does best .. finding great products and presenting them well to his customers, and he's been doing that for a long time. If he makes loads of money, great. But right now, he's just ticking along.; And on Facebook, what I can only describe as a baying hoard gathered to press the idea that the waste ground on Dean Road should be turned into a big Asda. Honestly .. "ASDA! ASDA! ASDA!" was the sort of comment.; No matter that we've just spent a load of money trying to stop traffic driving into Scarborough. No matter that we have four supermarkets already. No matter that we've spent years developing Scarborough only to give away the benefits to a multinational. No. "Asda provides the best value". Which in one sense is fine, but it seems to me we're going to end up with no pubs and no independent retailers, and we will lose some of what makes Scarborough a great attraction to people.; I came from a city with no wet fish shop to a town with three. We have so many butchers they have to specialise (pies, lamb). It's a joy to shop in Scarborough because it's like a shopping centre used to be. We are in danger of becoming what everyone else is coming to us to escape: a rubber stamp town.; If everyone just simply wants an Asda, then we have a deeper problem than I thought.; Having said that .. Barry the coffee man looks like he's opening another place. So I guess we just have to bend with the wind.
Energy Performance Certificates: 6 October 2009: Some new legislation has come into force recently (well, maybe in the last year) that says before you market a rented property (here in the UK), you must first have an energy performance certificate that gives the property an energy rating from A (fab) to G (less than fab).; The idea is that the purchaser will get a hint about their future energy bills and how much they personally are about to commit to contribute to the destruction of the planet and everyone on it, and given that G rated properties will attract lower rents than A rated ones, encourage the landlord to lag the boiler.; Sounds like a good plan, actually. Except that all additional costs of business are eventually born by the customer. But then, that's a shortsighted way of looking at it. Doesn't the money the landlord pay to the EPC provider then go to the EPC provider's staff's wages which they then spend, perhaps on whatever it is the person renting does for a living? It's all the same money spinning around. It blows my mind, like trying to think of a colour we haven't seen before.; Anyway, I have a new client who will, upon request, provide you with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in Scarborough, Yorkshire, or Humberside or maybe further.; It's not my website, I've inherited it.
20% increase in traffic: 3 October 2009: Marketing by numbers: Remember this blog about how increasing the functionality on your website can improve your search engine position and traffic on particular keyphrases?; Well the result, looking back over the month, was a 20% increase in traffic, and a 67% improvement in search engine position on the phrases I'm tracking.; Interestingly, whereas previously 51% of traffic landed on the home page, now only 34% does. That's good. We want people to enter a search query and land on the page that best answers their question. We don't want to intermediate with the home page if we can help it. The most popular pages after the home pages are now the ones I created that collect together art of different types, for instance this collection of Whitby paintings.
The Fall: 3 October 2009: I went to see The Fall yesterday at the O2 Academy in Leeds and it was a very lovely experience. Unlike The Rezillos where drunk people ended up urinating in the sinks, my path merged with a young lady on the stairs outside the loos and she stopped and said perfectly clearly "after you", to which I replied "oh no, after you" and she relented.; A short lady in the audience slightly behind me kept catching me with her bag and I was conscious of not blocking her view (I'm 6'6" tall) until in the end she beckoned me down and said "I notice you've brought your stack heels tonight".; I met a friend of a friend for the first time, and two people from a local Scarborough band and good conversations ensued with lots of handshaking at the start and end.; This was a polite gig. Perhaps The Fall are for thinking people who see through the bullshit.; We even got a wry smile and an eye twinkle from Mark E Smith himself who comes across as a cross between Bernard Manning and a fairground owner, prowling the stage tweaking the amp settings of his musicians, one time stopping the bass by putting his hand on the strings and I'm sure at one stage he turned off the guitarists' amp completely. The musicians remained professional throughout.; A sound-man's nightmare, he also passed the mic to the audience, hit cymbals with his mic and when he left the stage simply dropped his mic to the floor with a clear thunk through the PA.; By their third encore the venue management had had enough. They turned the PA off and the house lights on, leaving us listening to The Fall drummer on his own and ending with a Smith smile as they strolled off to a huge audience cheer.; They played for all of 50 minutes from 21:50 to 22:40 on this Friday night. I'm told they were booked for an hour and a half. For this venue, there can be no licence issue at that time on that day. I hear, too, that The Fall wanted to start later, and that there was an issue with the pre-gig preparations so it seems The Fall and The Management did not see eye to eye. I'm left with bad feelings about the O2 Academy, since they denied us all that final song especially since the encores were oldies, "Psykick Dancehall" and "Pat-Trip Dispenser" .. for the fans.; I remember Peel playing Bingo Master's Breakout, their first single in 1977. I probably have it on tape somewhere. In fact the only time the band I was in, Splat!, got covered in one of the music papers the headline was "Biscuit Master's Breakout" due to the fact that our singer worked in a biscuit factory.; The Fall are important. Difficult, tuneless and sometimes very, very challenging though the vocal style might be (I have previously paid to stand through an entire gig where Smith's vocal seemed to concentrate on a high pitched squeal that seemed to act like triangulated radiotherapy on the core of my brain) you have to give Smith full marks for originality, perception and diarising our changing times, giving us new insights into the hall of mirrors we inhabit. You would need the lyric sheet, though.; I seemed to be the experienced one who had seen The Fall numerous times. That's good, that The Fall are still catching new fans. I told people that The Fall were always a huge disappointment when I saw them 'live'. That is how I remember it. But today was different.; Nowadays Smith employs musicians with a professional attitude. Powerful (I'll probably buy the album as a playalong to build my drumming stamina) and rock solid, they support the undoubted star of the show. It's a little different from the time of Mark Riley (yep, that Mark Riley) and Craig Scanlon's famously cheap guitars, fights on stage and general bad feeling.; I think Smith has found his own happiness. He's not fighting for recognition any more. He is, according to Wikipedia, married to the Fall's keyboard player Elena Poulou. It is, actually, nice to see. Awwwww.