As reported in the Liverpool Echo, Laura Worthington, from Laura's Little Bakery was asked to produce a free cake for a contestant on UK tv show Love Island .

Laura received a message from a member of Malin Andersson’s management team requesting a FREE cake in exchange for social media exposure.

The message from Touch Management to Laura, reads: “Hey! I hope you’re well and having a great week.

“Sorry for the random DM but my client, Love Island’s Malin Andersson, was wondering whether you might have time to make a cake for her boyfriend’s birthday this weekend?

“She was after a chocolate cake, bigger the better with 26 on it?

“In exchange she will post a few pics on her social media tagging your brand - she had a combined following of about 630,000 followers on Instagram and twitter so it’s brilliant promo.

“Let me know if you can help?”

Laura politely replied that Malin would have to pay just like everyone else.

I’m a bit miffed at freebies. At least, this kind of freebie.

On the show, I discuss why you should be very careful about giving away your services in exchange for things like brand awareness.

Laura’s right to turn down the “offer”. After all, how many people in iverpool are likely to purchase a cake from her just because they saw it on a B-list celebrity’s Instagram account. The ROI of google search, content marketing and even pay-per-click is surely higher.

Your thoughts ?

Plugins

After several small businesses who we’ve created websites for had problems recently because they haven’t updated plugins and core Wordpress files (since the dawn of time, it seems), I point out that it’s imperative you have a strategy in place or dealing with updates. Either you need a maintenance package from an external wordpress developer like Moondog or put money aside to pay ad hoc for fixes when things go wrong. Often, there’s no problem updating. Especially if you’ve got a working backup with a service like Blogvault, which makes restoring your site very easy.

Bottom line: Keep your Wordpress and plugins up to date.

Pop UPs

Finally, I reached out to a blogger this week who uses a pop-up to get sign-ups to his newsletter. I’ve been a subscriber for a long, long time and I am sick o seeing the pop-up. Make sure that, if you’re using a pop up, you’ve configured things so subscribers don’t see the pop up.

For feedback, please contact @jonbuscall on Twitter or send a message via our contact form.

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