Online Marketing for Local Business
Posts tagged web content. online communication
How Social Media Is Changing Everything – Chatting With The Photo Comment Feature On Facebook
13 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
As I thought of a topic for this week’s blog, I was immediately drawn to an experience I recently had online between myself and my Mom on Facebook. She is still fairly new to Facebook, like so many others, but has made lots of connections since joining, and is beginning to use the network more frequently. (This makes perfect sense, since the fastest growing segment of Facebook is women aged 55 and older!) And the interaction that I had with her showed me the huge, growing potential of social networks.
I had posted a few photos of myself and friends on my FB page from the previous night, of us and the guys from Jackopierce, a great two-man band that we like to check out whenever they come to town. Shortly thereafter, my Mom posted a Comment on one of the photos, which I then instantly was alerted to and read. So I wrote back. And before we knew it, we were having a back and forth discussion on the Photo Comment section of Facebook! (She invited me over for dinner, which was delicious by the way…)
Now why do I bring this up? Because it is a perfect example of the utility of social media, and how it is fundamentally changing the way that people communicate. Did the designers of this Facebook function plan on people using the Comment section in this way? Maybe, but maybe not. But the fact is that each of these capabilities and options, not just in Facebook but also the unique features contained within Twitter, LinkedIn, various Google platforms, social bookmarking services, even MySpace and Friendster at the beginning of the social media revolution – are giving us all communication options that we’ve never had before.
And that’s the real story – the fact that interactive, instant communication is now becoming the norm, across all platforms.
It’s an exciting time to be in my business, as the many social as well as business applications and functions of these networks are just being discovered and utilized.
Who knows where they will go next, and what impact they will have on how business, marketing and promotions are done…not to mention how they are shaping our global society and culture?
If you would like more information on how you and your company can take advantage of the tremendous business opportunities within social media, please visit our Social Media Services page.
5 Steps To Create Content That Converts…& Increases Your SEO
13 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
Getting “found” online is the end goal of your content and SEO initiatives, in addition to the conversion of your web visitors into customers too, of course.
And it really wasn’t all that long ago that you could effectively grow your business or share your ideas online by “interrupting” prospective customers with Push methods such as banner advertising, unsolicited email messages, or other off-line (and old school!) methods like cold calling. But business people grew weary of being targeted by outbound marketing and promotions long ago, and the technologies in use today have become far better at blocking these methods.
Businesses and people in general have also changed the way that they shop and learn, primarily utilizing search engines, social networking sites and blogs to find the information that they need. “Pull” or inbound marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts by helping them get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn. Here are five tips that you can use to help yourself “get found” online:
1. Start with an extraordinary idea
The days of needing a huge advertising budget to spend on marketing and PR to promote your ideas are long gone. Today, truly unique or extraordinary ideas can find many ways to spread like wildfire on their own online, without any significant expenditure. And by comparison, those ideas that are not extraordinary usually languish unfound – regardless of how much advertising or public relations that you do. Make sure you have a unique, remarkable offering and it will spread like wildfire online, if it’s truly unique and innovative.
2. Create LOTS of content
Once you have found an extraordinary service or product, you need to create lots (and lots) of quality content about it. There are many ways to distribute your content – social media accounts, blogs, article marketing, tweets, videos, podcasts. Great content about a great product or service will attract the links you need from other sites. These links generate traffic, which in turn tells Google and every other search engine that YOU should be ranked more highly.
(Need some writing help to keep up with your publishing schedule or additional resources to help you distribute what you are creating? Contact us for your many cost-effective options!)
3. Optimize your content
All of your content should be “keyword optimized,” both for search engines like Google and also for users of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr etc. who will be spreading it.
Be sure to include some of the most important keywords within the title (or Title Tag) of your piece so it will be easy for the engines to find and identify it. But you also need to make the titles enticing for human eyes as well, with a subject line that will elicit responses. Something that arouses the curiosity of readers such as” “Everything you need to know about…” or statements that can only be answered by reading all of the content, such as “How to”, “What can” or “Why do”.
Lists are very popular as well, like “10 things you must do on your website” or “5 easy steps to…” Provocative titles such as “7 things your bank doesn’t want you to know” or other even more sensationalized titles such as “5 financial decisions that could RUIN your retirement” or “8 Mistakes that cost you money, every month” also often work well.
People often respond as well to avoiding negative consequences as they do to potential positive outcomes.
4. Share your content
After you have created a remarkable piece of content and optimized it, now you need to spread the word. Email it to your E-Newsletter subscribers, post the content on your blog, tweet it to your followers, update your Facebook page and LinkedIn profile with it, then share it with article directories.
If your content is truly extraordinary, others will share it online for you. And as your content spreads, you will have more people subscribe to you or Follow you, so that the subsequent content you publish in the future will have an even greater audience.
5. Measure the results
If you cannot measure your results, you’ll never truly know which methods or channels work best for you. For example, you should compare your results for Google organic search (both branded and non-branded), Google paid, your E-Newsletter and Twitter feed, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media, Forum postings, and any of the myriad campaigns you could be conducting right now.
You should track visitors, leads and customers over time, for every campaign. Then increase resources spent on campaigns that are working, and discontinue or scale back the ones that aren’t.
Get The Balance Right
14 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
Which is more important for content, the ability to communicate directly with visitors… or the search engine rankings it creates?
On the one extreme, imagine a website (or blog post, etc.) that is complete nonsense gibberish. Maybe envision something written in Chinese characters, assuming that’s a language you don’t understand. Now let’s say these random bits of code or symbols somehow rank quite well with the search engines, the very first organic result in fact.
What have you accomplished as a business or organization in this case?
Sure, loads of people may stumble upon your website, but once they get there what do you think will happen? Do you think they will “convert” to customers?
On the other end of the spectrum, imagine a block of written text that is so eloquent, so persuasive… that once a visitor reads it, they instantly want to become a customer, or donor, volunteer, etc.
However, because of the way it is written, it actually has zero SEO value. As such, it is invisible to the search engines, and no one who doesn’t already know your website exists will ever find it.
What has your business accomplished here? This example is marginally better than the first one; at least you could tell folks about your site!
Now yes, both scenarios are on the extremes, and unlikely. But they illustrate an important point. A typical business should NEVER just design or write solely for SEO, because the whole purpose of (most) sites is NOT to simply get visitors, but to have them DO something once they are there.
And the reverse is also true, you should never completely forget about SEO, either. This means following some basic guidelines in your web design and structure, and making sure to include the right keywords within your content, among other things.
Get the balance between SEO and readability/functionality correct, and you have a website that can help you accomplish your organization’s goals now, and in the future.