The uneducated half wits that the people of North Ayrshire have been fooled into voting for in the last round of local elections have decided that they want 50% of the profits of the Homecoming Festival, 50% dear god are they having a laugh.

The festival is now canceled, do they realize what this festival would have contributed to local over the next 4 years, job,  business grow, prosperity, the chance to get back on the tourist map. All gone!

No wonder the area is going down the drain, time to get these half wits out and get some young business minded people into the mix.

Not so long ago these morons also lost council tax payers money when the Icelandic banks collapsed, why was the money in a high risk banking zone that had no assets? Greed! Pure Greed!

Get a grip you half wits enough is enough.

The offical statement:

It is with great regret that organisers of the Homecoming festival have announced that this year’s event has been cancelled.

This is due to new demands from the council requesting 50% of the profits and a £60,000 bond on the land.

All ticket holders will be entitled to a full refund, and arrangements are currently being made to organize new venues and dates for some of the artists that were scheduled to perform at Homecoming 09.

More details will be revealed as soon as possible.

But it seems to me that they’ve all forgot to do one thing, which is to tell people about it.

A few days ago I received an email to my browseayrshire.com from an OAP in Springside looking for a menu. I responded to the email mentioning that this site was only a review site and had no connection to any restaurants, but I thought I would get the details and try to help her out. Now she wants to book the Gables Restaurant for 18 people. Not a small request by any means, this would nearly fill the place and I’m sure the owners of the Gables would be grateful for the business.
So off I pop back onto Google to search for “Gables Restaurant Irvine” first up is my browsayrshire.com site which I expect to see as I’ve been doing SEO and online marketing for a while. After searching around I couldn’t find any website directly related to the Gables Restaurant. Having lived in Irvine I know that the Gables Restaurant is at the back of the Kings Arms Hotel, so I do a search for “Kings Arms Irvine” great I’ve found a website, but wait a second, it has message “no longer being hosted, If you are the owner, please contact us.” Great they don’t have a website.

So now I’m left with phoning them and trying to pass a fairly obsure email address over the phone so they can send the OAP from Springside the menu.

I then decide to have another look about for the other pubs and clubs in Irvine to see what the other websites look like.

Firstly the newly opened Pitchers Nightclub

So I search “Pitchers Nightclub Irvine” again no website

Then “The Clubhouse Irvine“, again no website

Same for:
“Viva Nightclub Irvine”
“The Harbour Lights Irvine”
“The Porthead Tavern Irvine”

No wonder tourist numbers are down if nobody can find any information about the place, I wonder how many of the above bars and restaurants think to themselves why is the Ship Inn and the Gailes doing so well, do you think it’s due to them having a website maybe.

Last week I went to the Solway coast for the weekend, after a quick search we had a list of pubs and restaurants for the weekend, we even found a mountain bike rental company and horse riding and our entertainment was sorted.

This summer there is going to be thousands of people visiting Irvine for the homecoming festival and yet still there’s no Irvine based website to tell people where to stay, how to get there, where to eat and drink, all it would take is for all the bars and restaurant owners to get together and put something together for this, I could do it in my sleep and it wouldn’t even cost each bar owner the price of a beer each day to get it up and running.

The Irvine bay regeneration company are working hard to get things started but it seems local businesses aren’t moving with the times and creating simple website to promote there business.

Think how many other bookings must be missed.

On another note the homecoming festival website doesn’t appear on Google when you search for “homecoming festival” maybe it’s the Irvine internet curse. Maybe next year the local councils and Visit Scotland should spent every penny they have in online marketing, after all that’s where the people are.

With the Local Business Center you can add the following information
pertaining to you business to Google Maps:

- Name
- Address
- Phone Number
- Descriptions
- Photos and more.

Here are the steps for getting set up:

1. Go to Google Maps

2. Click “put you business on Google Maps”

3. Sign in or Create an Account

4. Click “Add New Business”

5. Enter your business information

6. Click “Next”

7. If it shows your business is already on there, click
“claim listing”

8. If it’s not there, click “add listing”

9. Then you can enter additional details such as business
category, opening hours, photos, payment options, etc.

10. Click submit

11. At this point, you will need to verify you business by phone
or postcard. After you are verified, your info will appear
on Google Maps.

12. Later on, you can go back to Local Business Center to edit
your information, see how many people went to your listing, o
r create coupons.

Bench Clothing have in the past few days launched a new website and online store.

The brand site at http://www.bench.co.uk looks fantastic while complimenting the online store.

Bench plan to contain their full range of men’s and woman’s clothing and the new online store contains the new Autumn/Winter range.

Bench Men’s Clothing includes:

Bench Jeans, Bench T-Shirts, Bench Sweaters, Bench Hoodies, Bench Knitwear, Bench Tops, Bench Jackets and Bench Trousers

Bench Women’s Clothing includes:

Bench Jeans, Bench T-Shirts, Bench Sweaters, Bench Hoodies, Bench Knitwear, Bench Tops, Bench Jackets and Bench Trousers

So I decided to have a look at used cars.

First I looked at the top down view, UK, Scotland, West Scotland, Ayrshire then Ayr.
Now where is the best place to find your target market?

I’m sure there’d be more competition for “Used cars for sale in Ayr” but there isn’t “Used cars for sale in Ayrshire” has more businesses targeting the wider area. Interesting, but on closer inspection alot of the national car sales websites like fish4car and autotrader appear for the Ayrshire search and not the Ayr search.

Within the top 20 position for any of these terms there is not a Ayr or Ayrshire based company. Arnold Clark are listed and are local but there part of a national chain and ranking due to the links heading in to the homepage. David Bryson is the only used car sales company that appears within the top 100 that is located in Ayrshire and as this blog was setup to provide Ayrshire business with a guide to marketing online I’ll help David Bryson out, Used Cars for Sale in Ayrshire, there you go.

A freebie, wow I feel better now.

Many people that know me will be curious as to the nature of this blog post and will think that David Bryson are one of my clients but there not. It’s half time in the Rangers V Florentina game and I’m bored and for some reason I couldn’t think of anything else to write about and I wanted to update my blog.

The second halves started…

So, I sent them a message via there website and I await there reply.

The full message I sent is below

(more…)

Then I was reading a post on Seth Godin’s blog  about exactly the same problem, do I need facebook, myspace, bebo etc if I have my own blog?

Here’s an example, just change the category id, found in Admin,Manage,Categories of your wordpress blog.

http://www.compareall.co.uk/travelodge/?feed=rss2&cat=3

Have you seen the TV ad for California, can you image Ayrshire doing the same, Kris Boyd, Eddy Reeder and Sidney Devine trying to convince people to move to Dalry and get a job in the mushroom factory or Roche.  Spend your weekends watching junior football and eating kille pies.

Anyhoo, tonight I roasted my own coffee for the very first time, Brazilan Santos green beans, and the result was fantastic. Although the coffee might have been a little too strong, drinking 3 cups probably won’t help with the sleeping tonight.

So now I’m wide awake and blog surfing around the usual places and I found a wee competition, If I win it I’ll tell you more and that’ll explain why this blog post has a strange title.