SEO-Focused Web Content Writers
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The Significant Effects of Social Media Today
Dec 25th
The Social Media Effect ~
How have social networks and the short bursts of information affect today’s typical user? Some would say in a potentially negative way. The average attention span is now down to 5 seconds (!), which means that some of you will quit reading right about…..NOW. That’s a pretty unbelievable number, especially when considering that 10 years ago that number was a full 12 minutes, according to the recently published infographic down below. What do the think the quality of understanding and depth of thought can be conveyed in 5 seconds?
Mult-tasking is also increasing greatly. The average white collar (computer) worker checks their email 30-40 times AN HOUR. That is another staggering number. How do you think this constant stream of information is affecting today’s worker? Do you think this multi-tasking is helpful…or distracting?
Young people are also becoming alarmingly self centered. A recent survey found that 57% of young people feel that social media is primarily used for self promotion and to generate attention to one’s self.
Even though we do actually help companies with their social media when appropriate, these are all reasons (are more described below) that we at Hat Trick Associates advocate using SEO – your More >
SEO & Web Content Marketing vs. Other Options
Dec 16th
Click here to see a very interesting chart showing where companies spend their online marketing dollars, on average, in 2011..
As expected, Business to Consumer (think “retail” companies for the most part) spend more on Pay per Click (PPC). The ROI numbers may absolutely justify this, but they should remember…PPC ends the minute you stop paying for it, SEO based on quality web content lasts forever!
But a couple other questions arise:
1) Who are the 16.3% and 8% of companies that spend nothing on any of these categories? (It does make sense for a number of companies, such as small one-man shops, or folks who get gov’t contract work, etc.)
2) Is social media a productive use of dollars for all of these companies? For some products, services and industries, spending $$ on social network marketing is more about ego than it is about real ROI…there are just some companies that no one wants to connect to, regardless (think “funeral homes”, HA).
The takeaway is that for most companies – regardless of what they sell or service they provide – should be allocating some of their marketing dollars on building up their website, writing and sharing articles on their industry, and distributing other quality web More >
3 Mistakes Web Programmers Need to Stop Making
Nov 22nd
Sometimes as programmers, we forget that 99.9% of the population doesn’t care how a piece of text, a button, an image or a video ends up onscreen. Most people just care that it’s fast, easy to use and gives them the content they want. Otherwise, they get upset — and rightfully so. Here are three common mistakes we programmers make, and what we can do to fix them.
1. Forgetting About Conventions Ever since they started using the Internet, users have been trained how to interact with a website. Therefore, they often get frustrated when websites don’t meet their expectations. Here are some examples.
- They hover over an object they think is clickable, but become confused when they see an arrow instead of a hand pointer. - They click on blue, underlined text, but find it’s not a link. - They click on the logo in the top left, believing it will return them to the homepage, only to find it takes them nowhere.
Web design doesn’t always meet our expectations. However, developers and designers should always maintain certain rules to avoid user confusion. Here are three.
Clickable Elements Should Have the Pointer on Rollover Everything clickable should switch to the hand pointer when a More >