Posts tagged web content. online communication

Maximize Your Web Content

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We’ve made the case several times that a challenging economy is probably the worst time to slash your online marketing efforts.

And for those following this sound advice, it also makes sense to optimize every piece of web content that you produce and publish, both from a sales conversion and SEO standpoint.

Though it may seem like common sense, many authors forget to figure out what they’re trying to say before they start writing, and thus waste resources creating content that doesn’t achieve its potential or goals. Here are some tips to maximize your web writing:

Tip #1 – Create an Outline

Outlines are useful tools for giving your article or webpage structure, but if you’re not a big fan of outlining, at least answer the following questions before you start writing:

Who am I writing for? What’s my ideal audience?

What do I want my readers to learn from this article?

How will I explain/prove my point?

Tip #2 – Be Informative

Readers seek informative content, so provide the “give” in your article body and leave the “take” for your Resource Box or website. The quality of your information should make a good impression by providing value to the reader, not leaving them wanting more. Resist the temptation to sell in your articles.

Tip #3 – Share Your Experience…

You’re an expert in your field or niche, your readers are not. Don’t worry about making your writing sound smart, just think of some questions your readers will have and then answer them. Use article templates to help you structure the information in your article and generate new ideas.

Tip #4 – …But Not All At Once

You have a lot of knowledge, so you’re understandably excited to share it. But be careful not to overwhelm your readers. Break up large topics into smaller components, in separate articles. This gives you more articles to write and won’t scare readers with extremely long articles.

Tip #5 – Consider Hiring a Ghostwriter

Weigh your options. Is your business better served if you outsource the article writing (or blogging, newsletter or web content writing) and focus on other aspects of your business instead? Return on Investment is all about taking your available resources and using them in the most effective way. This is especially true during tough economic times, when the reduced overhead of freelance partners has the biggest financial impact.

It doesn’t matter how big your business is, or if you’re from New York, Boston and Washington DC to Los Angeles, San Fransisco and Vancouver, Hat Trick Associates can help you build your web content online. (If you happen to be from one of these cities, the fact that I included your hometown might be a reason you found this page, for example!) Contact us to learn more about how your website content / text can help your customers find you, too.

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Increasing The SEO Visibility Of Your Blog – Part I

A keyword focused and well written, keyword rich blog can naturally attract search engine traffic to your site for a variety of reasons.

Most blogs already have an “optimized” site architecture for the search engines, and have clear navigation options and links that go back to the homepage and other main pages of your site. They are also a simple way to keep your website content updated with fresh and relevant information for your readers, as thousands of readers of our Hat Trick Associates blog already know – increasing not only your search traffic, but you conversions and sales revenue, too.

So what are some of the other ways you can the SEO value and effectiveness of your blog?

Blog Directories

Links that “aim” back to your site  can be very valuable to you in the eyes of Google and the other search engines, since they help prove that your content is valuable and relevant to readers. “One way” links, or non reciprocal, are the most valuable…the premise being that “two way” links (from two sites linked to each other) could simply be part of an agreement to boost each other’s SEO score.

One great way to provide some of these great one-way links back to your website is through blog directories. There are thousands of relevant blog directories online, of many different sizes and specialties or importance.

Adding your own blog to the right ones can be a fantastic way to share your web content while raising the search engine visibility score of your website.

Knowing which ones can be difficult for many folks, however, and without the right subscription software, the process of submitting your own blog to each directory can be quite time-intensive.

But not only do we write blogs and write web and social content here at Hat Trick Associates, we also have the automated tools needed to easily submit your blog to the hundreds and thousands of blog and web directories out there that matter, and which can really boost the SEO of your website content.

If you would like to find out more about using this valuable, convenient service for your own website and professional blog, please contact us here at Hat Trick Associates.

But before you head out to start submitting your website, there are steps you should take to optimize your blog even before you promote it. You want your site to get the best keyword placement in the major search engines, but for the right keywords…the ones that not only bring in but convert traffic.

Blogs Keywords

With blog content keywords, you can choose to target a generalized, high-traffic keyword, but you often have little chance of ranking well for this keyword, and might not receive much in the way of additional traffic. The better option is to shoot for a keyword that gets a more moderate level of traffic – targeted traffic – which can result in more subscribers and sales.

These more lucrative keywords are important not because they bring the most eyeballs to your site, but because they bring the most profit to your organization.

You might even be surprised to learn that there often is NOT a great correlation between high traffic and high sales.

Many of the most profitable Internet sites on the globe actually get more modest traffic – but their lucrative keywords result in a much higher ratio of Visitors to Buyers, i.e. they rank for the right terms and keywords for the right subset of people who are suitable customers.

A good example of this phenomenon can be found right here on the Hat Trick Associates website.

We have a particular post on How Many Blogs Are There? This post has become a favorite of Google, Bing and Yahoo search, with thousands of visitors a month who find and read it.

However, much of this traffic comes from educational institutions or from other places in the world. In other words students conducting research or folks on the other side of the globe. High traffic, low conversions.

We are happy to share this information with whoever can use it, but this popularity and web traffic don’t actually bring in business. So focusing on the right, most lucrative keywords is critical for your organization.

If you don’t know what the best keywords for your organization’s website, that is another area that we can help with here at HTA.

Up next: Part II – Length of Search Query and Keyword Placement

Want to learn more? Contact us to ask any questions you may have, or to discuss your current web and social content programs and how we might be able to work together!

The Social Media Wildfire Effect

It’s a businesses greatest fear, but may very well be their most powerful tool: viral content. Over the past couple of years, the term “viral” has reared its head exponentially more and some have yet to understand the full meaning of the term when it’s applied to marketing and the digital atmosphere. Allow us to raise the curtain for you with wikipedia’s definition of viral marketing:

“Viral marketing and viral advertising are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of virus or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.”

The most important take-away of the definition: self-replicating viral processes. Next time you’re in a marketing meeting and someone blurts out “hey, let’s just make a viral video!” don’t succumb to the concept of sending it to your friends and family and expect them to send it to their associates. It is never the company or business that “makes” anything viral, it’s the audience that spreads the message. For your message to even have a fleeting chance at going viral, regardless of form, there are three requirements:

1.      Make it genuine

2.      Make it enjoyable

3.      Make it memorable

From that point on, you are on your own, for the force is powerful and may turn against you. Social media and the closely connected internet has made it possible for negative comments to appear quicker than ever and spread like wildfire, sometimes forcing the hand of executives to act quickly and creatively for a (hopefully) appropriate response. Here are a handful of cases showing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Old Spice Guy

If you have children between the ages of 12 and 24, there’s little doubt that they have heard of “the old spice guy.” Weiden + Kennedy, the ad agency for Old Spice, simply stuck a guy (well, a quite ridiculously handsome man) wearing a towel in a bathroom armed with a camera, some props, and a computer and wound up snagging the most prized Grand Prix award at the prestigious Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June 2010 as well as a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial in July 2010. Users online were given the opportunity to ask the Old Spice Guy a question and a response would quickly be posted. The message was direct, enjoyable, and comical thanks to intuitive writing, making it irresistible for people to share the videos. The Old Sprice brand was not shoved down viewer’s throats, but the videos were enjoyable, genuine, and definitely memorable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqoc6wTNotI&feature=relmfu

Domino’s Pizza Fiasco

In the spring of 2009, a video of two Domino’s employees surfaced and tainted the brand’s image with sights of the workers sneezing on ready-to-serve meals and even stuffing cheese up their nose and returning it to its proper place on the dish, of course with some extra “personal” ingredients. Within several days, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites helped this image-destroying video rise to over a million views, putting hot pressure on Domino’s executives to take action. Eventually, an apology was posted on the company website and current employees were even asked to spread the link through their own personal social media accounts. While the decision on whether to fan the flames or let it fizzle naturally is a tough slice to swallow, the company gained high marks for taking action and playing on the customer’s side of the field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-Z2x4SClaE

Taco Bell’s Mystery Meat

In January, 2011, a concerned California woman filed suit against Taco Bell with false advertising claims, stating that the advertised “beef” was actually more of a “filling” and didn’t fit regulated standards for considering the substance beef. As the news media caught wind of the story and began to air segments, Taco Bell was already hard at work getting to a viable solution. The first release was to an Alabama television station (WSFA) in a written statement: “Taco Bell prides itself on serving high quality Mexican inspired food with great value. We’re happy that the millions of customers we serve every week agree. We deny our advertising is misleading in any way and we intend to vigorously defend the suit.” Well that sounds great, but if someone did a simple Google search for “Taco Bell” what would they find? At first, the results were flooded about the lawsuit, but as the Mexican fast-food giant created online content through blogs, twitter, facebook, and other accounts, the sharing of positive content overpowered the negative, drastically reducing the lawsuit-related pages coming first in a search result list. To round out an aggressive stance on their passion for real beef, Taco Bell purchased a full page ad in the Friday, January 28th edition of the Wall Street Journal headlining “Thank you for suing us” followed by a full ingredient disclosure of their product.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/28/taco-bell-beef-meat-lawsuit-ads_n_815303.html

If you decide to try making a viral campaign, make sure the resources used have the characteristics to naturally spread and be shared and if your brand ever encounters an emotional upset by someone who has access to a computer or a lawyer, be prepared to fight back with content—and quickly.

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