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An enormous thank you to the team at the Anstruther Lifeboat Station and the crew of the Anstruther lifeboat. Photos and videos are at the end of this post. Please make a donation to RNLI by clicking this link .

I recently purchased a second hand RIB, an Avon Searider 5.4m with a Yamaha 75hp outboard.  The boat had been stood for a while so I spent some time going through it and sorting out a few minor problems with the help of Jim and Val at Upper Largo Chandlery. In hindsight perhaps I should have asked Jim to have a look at the engine…

The weather was looking good last Sunday so I took the RIB over to Anstruther and paid my £13 to the Harbourmaster Tom Fyall for my launch fee.  I was a bit early for the tide and two close friends, Andrew Forgan and Bruce Anderson, were already there working on Andrews boat the Barracuda, so we had a bacon roll and talked boats for half an hour or so.

We got the RIB into the water after watching the Cupar Sub Aqua Club launch the 6 meter RIB Kracken and getting some good advice from Nick Fleming, the club’s Boat Officer.

Once in the water we fired everything up, did all our pre leaving checks and tested the 2.5 Mercury axillary engine.

The 5 mile trip over to the Isle of May was brilliant, the boat performed far better than I had anticipated, perfect weather and great scenery.  We decided to pop into the Isle of May harbour to stretch our legs (see the Google Map satellite view here).  It’s a fairly narrow entry, more a haven than a harbour, and just as we got inside the outer reach the main engine died.  We couldn’t restart so we used the oars to get into the safety of the harbour quay.

After exploring all the possibilities with the engine for 2 hours we had to agree that we weren’t going to be able to restart the main engine to get us back to Anstruther.  Although it was a fine day, there was a fair swell running and we weren’t confident that our auxiliary engine would get us back to Anstruther safely so we had to call the Coastguard.

In my many years of boating this was a first for me and I was extremely embarrassed. I spoke to the Coastguard on 999 and explained our situation. We were in no danger and comfortable to wait as long as it took.

The Anstruther Lifeboat turned up less than an hour later with their full crew.  Luckily we were at close to high tide so the lifeboat could get into the harbour.  To add slightly to the complexity the Isle of May Ferry had just arrived and the lifeboat crew had to manoeuvre our rib around the ferry.

The lifeboat crew were wonderful and did a great job of reassuring us that they’d rather come out than us risk the trip back on the axillary engine.  I want to thank all the crew on behalf of Bruce, Andrew and myself, for their fantastic assistance, cheery attitude and reassurance, oh yes and the drinks, crisps and chocolate bars, just brilliant.

Please make a donation to RNLI by clicking this link . There were all volunteers and we must have ruined a few Sunday lunches.

When we got back to Anstruther the even picked up my trailer, took the RIB out of the water, and put it on the pier waiting for us to hitch up.  Thanks again to everyone both on the lifeboat and the shore crew, we owe you big time!

For the record it was a fuel pump diaphragm failure so lots of new parts are on order.

Copyright 2012 © Photographs and videos by Bruce Anderson.

Awaiting assistance on the Isle of May

The May Princess ferry arriving

Awaiting for the lifeboat with the May Princess docked

The lifeboat standing off waiting for the RIB to be manoeuvred with RIB Kracken from the Cupar Diving Club in the background.

Getting our tow

On our way home

Follow my leader

Getting the lifeboat back into the station

Getting ready to head home

Aboard the lifeboat

Recovering the Anstruther lifeboat

The Anstruther lifeboat tilting on it’s trailer

Your content, whether it’s text, video or audio, is the foundation of any web property. After years of creating websites and building traffic to them, I’ve seen the difference great quality content makes over superficial, keyword-stuffed fluff. It’s the difference between one-time visitors who may click a few ads and a loyal fan club of readers who buy or engage again and again. Following a few simple guidelines can help make sure the content you put on your website, blog or other web property is top notch.

Here are my 4 top tips to create compelling content.

Provide a Benefit

Your readers come to your site because they get some valuable benefit every time they visit. If they don’t, they’ll stop coming. I’ve found publishing practical information in the form of how-tos and tutorials is one of the easiest ways to benefit readers, but there are other ways. You could provide up-to-date news and information that helps your readers keep up on the latest developments in your niche. Content that entertains or inspires also gives your readers a reason to keep coming back.

Do Your Research

Filling your web properties with solidly researched, reliable information establishes you as an authority and builds trust in your visitors. If you expect your visitors to hand over their hard-earned cash for your services or products, this is vital. If you buy content, it’s well worth investing in content from a company you can trust to do in-depth research for every piece of content you order.

When you create your own content, instead of rummaging around Google for ideas, try conducting your own research so you’ll have something fresh and unique to offer your visitors. This could be anything ranging from a long-term case study to a quick experiment to test out a theory you have. Truly unique content like this wins repeat visitors and attracts links naturally, giving you an improved Google ranking.

Create User-Friendly Content

Writing that engages your readers is the first key to user-friendly content. It needs to be well written, but you’ll also want to use a tone that matches the image you want to present. Few people are willing to slog through pages of complex sentences and obscure technical terms. Writing in a conversation tone not only makes your writing more enjoyable to read, but it also lets your true voice and personality shine through. When your readers feel like they can almost hear you talking to them, they’ll be a lot more likely to trust you and want to interact with you. In fact, I’ve noticed my more casual blog posts get more comments than my longer, more techincal posts.

Conversational doesn’t mean sloppy, though. You’ll still need to make sure your main ideas are clearly presented, easy to understand and flow logically. If your readers have to struggle to get your point, chances are they won’t bother. Flow is especially important with any content you expect to convert into sign-ups or sales. This is where truly high quality content wins hands down over keyword articles. It’s nearly impossible to tell a compelling, sales-pulling story when you’re worried about fitting in a certain number of keywords.

Good formatting is another essential part of creating user-friendly content. Readers aren’t going to stick around a site that gives them a headache. To make your content easier on the eye, use paragraphs of no more than three or four lines and keep your main column widths between 40 to 75 characters wide. Go for traditional, easy-to-read fonts like Verdana, Ariel, and Georgia in a medium text size.

Make it Worth Sharing

These days a strong social media presence is vital for gaining new readers. Social sites Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest people have gotten accustomed to sharing whatever interesting finds they come across with dozens if not hundreds of people at a time.

It’s pretty obvious no one’s going to share a keyword-stuffed pile of word salad, but mediocre content won’t fare much better. To really benefit from social media, you must provide content that’s unique, highly useful or in some other way remarkable. Your content has to stand out from the dozens of other webpages your readers scan during their day. Before you publish, think about whether or not what you’re offering is something you yourself would take the time share.

Keywords and other on-page SEO factors will always be important. After all, text is the only way the search engines know what a webpage is about. Ultimately, though, keywords take a back seat to great quality content that attracts links, gets shared, builds trust and wins sales. Stock your web properties with unique, quality content and you won’t have to struggle for an improved Google ranking or repeat visitors.

What Next?

Great content takes time and effort to create. If you don’t have time to create your own then we can help.  We have a team of copywriters waiting to research and deliver your content. We will ensure you’re  happy with any copy before it’s published and we will always adhere to the principles above. Please get in touch if we can help.

In the old days, well just 15 years ago actually, if as a business you alienated a customer the damage was limited to their social and business circle. Now in 2012 one person can talk to millions and customer service has never been so important!

I just had two experiences, one good and one bad, so I thought I’d relay these to you as examples of how simple and fairly small actions can affect your business.

THE GOOD EXPERIENCE

Lorraine and I have booked a holiday in May and while looking at overwhelming number of options we found a Virgin holiday that looked good.  A few years ago I have a bad experience flying with Virgin and was adamant we’d find something else but after searching for days, literally, I agreed to book this holiday.

In the booking confirmation Virgin gave us a lot of useful bits of information, one of which was all their resorts have a “Concierge” service.  I had previously emailed our hotel to ask about WiFi/internet access (yes I will be working but just for an hour a day) and had received no response, not good, so I emailed the concierge. Within 24 hours she had emailed me back and confirmed the answer to my question.  I asked a couple of more questions and true enough back came the answers.

This was just brilliant and has rally lifted my feelings towards Virgin to the point I’m telling you about this. It’s also meant I can look forward to my holiday knowing I’ll be able to get stuff done if I have to.

THE BAD EXPERIENCE

I’ve been using  Karcher products in my garage for many years, vacuums and pressure washers.  18 months ago my 10 year old Karcher pressure washer died so I replaced it with a new Karcher pressure washer.  All was well until several weeks ago the new unit started spraying water out from inside the casing and was clearly broken.  I stripped it down and it looked like the pump casing was cracked.  I went onto the internet and found that Karcher don’t seem to use social media at all, so I found an email address on their site. On the 26^th March I took photos of the problem and sent an email off to enquiries@karcher.co.uk asking if it was repairable.

It’s now the 8^th April and I’ve not even had a “thank you for your email” in return.

So here’s the result.  I’ve just ordered a Nilfisk C120 3-6 pressure washer, NOT a Karcher, to replace my 18 month old broken Karcher. So Karcher  WHY HAVE AN EMAIL ON YOUR SITE IF YOU IGNORE INCOMING EMAILS!

Now of course I’m telling you, and potentially hundreds of millions of other people about my experience.  This is the power of the internet and any business not delivering good customer service should seriously reconsider its business model. As the cliché goes:

IF YOU THINK CHANGE IS HARD YOU’RE GOING TO HATE EXTINCTION

As Karcher don’t have any real internet presence there’s a  strong chance they aren’t even monitoring online for their name. If they were they would be notified and would be able to connect with me to at least do some damage limitation.  Are you there Karcher?

So you want to get more authority in your industry and you’ve been advised that writing a good blog is the way to go (good advice by the way!).

Is your first thought “Me! Write an article! I haven’t written anything since I was at school. Or how could I write a blog post, nobody’s going to want to hear my ramblings, I just don’t have anything to say”.

For many people, the simple fear of sitting down and writing means many ideas remain behind closed minds.

So how easy is it for someone who’s never written down their thoughts to start writing a blog post or an article?

The secret is a system and it’s that system I want to share with you today.

• Firstly get the first couple of thoughts down on paper, this is the key. I carry a Dictaphone with me always and if I see something inspirational or hear something in a podcast or on the radio in the car I make a note on my Dictaphone.  You will probably have one of these on your phone already, use it.
• Write something, even if it’s just your name. Just pick away at your keyboard until the letters begin to form words. Before you know it, a story will begin to appear.
• It doesn’t matter if the grammar is rubbish, it doesn’t matter if the spelling is way off.
• Get the ideas down on paper. Then go back and tidy it up.
• A word of warning. You may have the idea, now you need to get some facts to reinforce it. Use the internet as a research tool. But don’t use it to plagiarise other people’s work.

But what will I write about I hear you cry? Back to the Dictaphone, or what about a story?

We all have stories in our head and one Saturday morning in a shopping centre I watched as a steady stream of people sat in front of a TV camera and recorded their stories.

They all felt the urge to talk about their interests, their passions, hobbies, favourite holidays and why they think the world is in danger, or the price of sausages, which has doubled over the past year apparently.

All of them had a story to tell. All of them could have written an article or a blog entry about what interests them.

Out of curiosity I went down to speak to some of them. Talk about niche marketing… this was as personal as it gets. There was a lady with the Morris Minor car that she’d driven for the past 20 years. The same car she passed her test in. A young lad who loved a particular series of horror books. A retired scientist who now writes sonnets. A beautician who also drives stock cars. A man who specialised in photographing the British Royal family. And an entertainer who has his own small cinema in a shed in the back garden.

All of them with a story to tell, but up until now probably thought it wasn’t worth telling.

So just remember, when doubts stop you from writing, somewhere in the world there are people just like you. People with the same interests and passions and who would love to hear from you.

• Make your blog personal and start a relationship with your readers.
• Make them want to follow your ups and downs, your experiences.

So what are you waiting for?

Start a love affair with your keyboard and start writing.

You can find out more about writing a blog here.

Good luck, and please let me know how you get on.