To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to head this, my first ever blog post, as!  So I googled ‘techie’ and found the following definition:  “a person who is very knowledgeable or enthusiastic about technology and especially high technology”.   Well I definitely don’t fit into the very knowledgeable bracket – and don’t think I ever will!  But I have to admit that my enthusiasm has grown in leaps and bounds over the last 12 months.

A combination of being a technophobe and the wrong side of 40, I was one of those people who said I didn’t have enough time for twitter, couldn’t be fussed with facebook and hadn’t a clue about the business benefits of SEO (search engine optimisation).  But over the last year I’ve learnt so much…

This time last year, Liam Jones owner of Opiyo introduced me to twitter and in 12 months we’ve got almost 700 followers.  In simple terms, I see this as a great way of keeping in touch tweeting about our menu, weekly specials, any offers etc.  It’s a good to hear what our clients have to say about us too.  The Pepper Crescent facebook page still requires more time and effort being invested into posts, polls etc on our part – something for 2012!  Our brand new website, redesigned by Opiyo, (now we’re almost 3 years down the line) has now been launched with new and revised info as well as a better capability in terms of online marketing through social media and search engines.

The most interesting thing I’ve learnt is about the relevance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and how important it is that the website copy contains keywords and language that’s searched for by our customers (as well as a lot other techie stuff!)…

We were recently asked to cater for a large corporate event to celebrate the opening of a company’s new premises.  The reason they asked us was simple – they googled ‘cheltenham caterers’ and up we popped; they had never heard of Pepper Crescent and didn’t know we existed as a café/eaterie just a stone’s throw away! Since we started engaging in SEO, 6 months ago, we’ve had visits from customers searching for over 400 different keywords (not including ‘pepper crescent’)!

If you’re reading this and you are a techie, a wannabee techie or simply want to learn more about all things social media then come along to meet like minded people at the Cheltenham Social Media Club which meets here from 6-8pm on the last Thursday of each month.  Its organised by Jonathan Pollinger of Intranet Future.