[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

I am going to try to establish a blog which will become a public resource and hopefully lead to work for us.

Link is http://www.carpetcleaningworld.co.uk/blog

Please add your details and lets others know. If we also link websites we will hopefully find it ranking high enough to generate enquiries.

To join please send me your name and business name, plus website or email .

There will be no charge to join.

Cheers

Doug

[wynne jones]

Good idea Doug, hope it goes well.

[Doug Holloway]

Thanks Wynne.

It will be as good as we make it.

If we all make a little effort to join and create a useful resource we may find it creates quite a lot of enquiries.

[garyj]

How about making it place that can also be used to talk about the Rug Doctor, Vax and other domestic appliances and the claims the manufacturers make!

There are plenty of review sites and the bad reviews can be freely used. It must be a huge market as there always seems to be a household super cleaner advertising somewhere on tele at the moment. The results these companies claim go unchallenged and once you've bought a Vax etc you're hardly likely to then fork out for a professional carpet cleaner and admit the machine you've just bought is rubbish! 

[Carpet Dawg]

There are plenty of review sites and the bad reviews can be freely used. It must be a huge market as there always seems to be a household super cleaner advertising somewhere on tele at the moment. The results these companies claim go unchallenged and once you've bought a Vax etc you're hardly likely to then fork out for a professional carpet cleaner and admit the machine you've just bought is rubbish!  

Alot of my clients are ex Vax/Bissle/Rug Doctor users   I see alot of Vax's in peoples homes when i'm cleaning.

A review site about off-the-shelf cleaning products and carpet machines etc is a good idea though.

Doug, great way to generate more pages   wink wink

[from edge2edge]

count me in doug        alan(swindon.....centre of the unknown universe)

[richy27]

great idea du sent you mail 

regards

Rich

[Neil Williams]

e-mail sent

[Simon Gerrard]

Hi Doug,

That's a very good idea. Could you flesh out exactly what you envisage the content of the blog to be to be. It has been suggested that it be used to counter the claims made by RD and Vanish etc, but wouldn't it be better to point it at the really central issue that confronts the carpet cleaning industry, why do 80% of the population never have their carpets cleaned by a professional? People use Rug Doctors in their droves, (they must do to justufy the cost on the TV ads) likewise Vanish Foam, so carpet cleaning is pretty much in the face of the British public, so why are they turning their backs on us? We need to address that issue and your Blog could be used for that purpose.
Just a thought.

Simon

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

I have adjusted the settings so that once you have had a comment approved you should then be able to post freely.

I have also remove the Aspinet key.

I want this to be a blog which contains useful info for the consumer and answers those questions we all get asked on a frequent basis.

If we can promote CC as a professoinal industry all the better.

I do not want it to be a forum, it is aimed at the consumer but will probably allow suppliers to make genuine offers to members, not greatest product ever type of comments.

I hope we can all help to build a useful resource for those seeking a professional clean and influence those who have not considered there is more to cleaning that spraying on a proprietry chemical.

Cheers

Doug

[Mike Halliday]

whats the main reason for this blog?  does anyone really care about consumer education. or is this blog a way to get our website ranked higher on google? linking and posting content is what people say is needed to got noticed by google

I've nothing against blogs or educating the public but if the  aim of this website is  seo of websites then let be honest so we can all work on it being the best blog going

[Peter Sweeney]

I think its a great idea and google will be very favourable in its rankings of it in time and who better to police it than doug? Well done Doug.

Pete

[Mike Halliday]

I've got to say I'm not that blog savvy, how does it work??

if we find interesting information that could be useful to consumers do we post a link to it Eg; Whichs' report on consumer vacuum cleaners,( which really showed that Dysons are a load of crap)

or do we write our own information about subjects that we think consumers should know, then post it on the blog?

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

A good blog will help convey the message that top quality carpet cleaners can achieve an awful lot more than most of the public are aware of.

We have many good people who if they pull together can put forward a mine of useful info.

I would rather we wrote our own stuff although obviously links to other sites/articles could be useful.

I would also want it to be positive rather than saying a Rug Doctor is crap, say why a top end porty or TM with a high quality CC will give much better results.

Seo is not the main aim but if the blog was to rank well it would benefit all.

There are others who know more about this sort of thing than me, epecially Facebook etc and I am open to all constructive suggestions/assistance.

Cheers

Doug

[Peter Sweeney]

will still need some tough policing Doug. There will be a fine line between sales pitches and what is right for the consumer and i think that ensuring the consumer feels the latter then they will come back. As you say, social media will be the vehicle to drive viewing which is where you will need to get CCs on board to put on their walls on fb etc.

Pete

[garyj]

Could I suggest the write up on Page 4 'Why use a professional carpet cleaner' would be better off on the front page!

We've heard loads of stories over the years about how carpets have been trashed by products such as Vanish, is this the place to tell the public? Or is that too negative?

Also if you carry on in its form at the moment an endless list of carpet cleaners plying there trade all over the country isn't going to work is it, who is going to read that?

If done properly it could be a useful resource, carry on as it is and its dead by the end of the week.

What is going to bring Joe Public to the Blog, how are they going to find it and what use is it to them when they get there?

Can anyone think of an interesting free download that can be put on the site, if there was an offer then at least we would have something to advertise on our FB rather than come and have a look at a blog on carpet cleaning!  

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

I hope it works well for all associated with it.

However, if you are going to go to the trouble of writing blogs, then surely they would be more beneficial added to your own sites, rather than adding them to a site with no seo, containing dozens of other carpet cleaners details, in the hope that it may generate enquiries.

I'm all for educating the public but the end result should be that it benefits my own business.

Not a criticism, just my observation.

[Adam P]

i see this blog idea going no where unfortunately. educating the public with a random blog? can't see it happening. if people have a good idea for a post they should put it up on their website and not someone else's as there is no gain for them. blogging is like those get rich quick ideas a few years back where people thought doing hardly anything would some how give great results. just putting up a free blog using a free template and getting some people to write a free article wont now get you more work.

customer read about 5 seconds of your website. you can write pages of content they just don't care. they'll choose if they want you or not in a few seconds and ring to book a clean. i can't see them being bothered to read about the wonderfully interesting world of carpet cleaning and why buying a £200 machine from comet wont do as good job as a £3k machine used by a professional or how your day.

[Len Gribble]

Thick as s.h.it what a blog will it generate me more revenue than Google

[Ian Gourlay]

As I understand it for bloging to work you need to post new articles linking your  own website on a regular basis.

If I just post once its not going to help my site

If you are prolific like Ian Harper and already have a stock pile you could be well away

The argument ill arise if I post on a subject there may already be similar articles all probably lifted from other places on the net

So to be honest all though I welcome all ideas of help I cannot see how it will help my own site

By being used daily it might help the mother site