Internet Marketing

Online Marketing isn’t the only marketing you need.

Online marketing is great to promote your website or online presence through internet advertising or search engine marketing. For small businesses, especially those ran from home or single offices, the lack of different departments can affect roles and focus. Those who wear many hats in start-ups for example might be so busy with tasks that they don’t see the larger picture other than the desired end result. You can ask yourself just three simple questions to come up with a definition to give

I used to work at a technical recruiting office. Our clients needed people to interview and so we also needed candidates and clients. The owner would office say, “focus” aloud to us or to himself but focus needs direction. You and your office, even if it is just two, can get this by defining what you do, for whom and how — outside of the daily tasks or the weekly goals.

If you sell t-shirts, who’s your target market, and don’t just answer, “anyone who wears clothing”. Really think about who would buy your shirts and why. What makes you different than the other t-shirt company? This is easily with services but can get tricky if you stay too general.

Ask yourself these three questions and come up with a statement that defines what your office does outside of the tactical and create more office focus for the strategy you’d like to achieve.

• What do you do or sell, specifically?
• Who do you sell or provide services for, exactly?
• What makes you different from other similar companies or products?

Use this paragraph to remind your team what they should be focusing on in the long-term. Only together can you all reach the goals of the office. Share this also with your vendors, suppliers and external staff or agencies so that they can also better understand what you need to succeed. In some cases they can offer more insight, products or services to help you outside of just what you asked for during partnership increasing your productivity and drive towards your business’ best outcome.

What and when to post on Facebook

Knowing what and when to post on Facebook (or any other social media website for that matter) can help you understand how to get the most out of each posting. You’ll be able to get more likes, shares and comments which help to further promote not just the post, but also your page/profile by having more engagement from users. This engagement is also seen by the user’s friends and subscribers having an even larger impact.

This data is nothing new,  and has been rehashed many times over. So, it’s been proven many times and can therefor truly help you out in your social marketing campaign. Post when the most people are online, post items that engage the user to share, like or comment. Even asking questions or telling them to like something works. It’s all about interacting with them and not just talking TO them.

Which of these are you trying now that work for you? What other ways do you see works great for your social marketing?

• Photos receive the most engagement followed by text and then video
• Posting links to news receive the least numbers of likes, shares or comments
• Visual Content works very well on Facebook
• Text posts will bring in the most comment engagement
• You’ll get more shares and likes if you post later in the day
• You’ll get more likes if your post is either very short or very long
• You’ll get more shares if the post is long (sharing value)
• Using “I” and “me” in your post get more likes
• Posts with a “neutral” tone go unnoticed
• You’ll get more comments with negative post than positive
• Weekend posts receive higher like percentage compare to weekday posts
• Most active users are found very early such as 5am or at lunch time

Making your content marketable to humans

Not everything must be marketing. There’s still operations to tend to, design, writing, editing, (which seem to be a large part of marketing these days) and of course reading. May was a month of discovery. From what was thought to be a crazy shift here from PCs to Macs to the mundane such as “how to remove the dot from the letter “i” in Photoshop (highlight the “i” and press SHIFT OPTION B on a mac). But one thing we’ve learned is that there is still much to learn and share about marketing no matter which aspect — design or content.

Wait! There’s a pop quiz at the end of this short article.

Infographic by Ivan Cash

For small businesses, marketing online is a full-time job including both design and content. But as hard as that is for some, it’s actually getting more difficult. Design needs to be fresher and articles need to be well written to address busier users, those on mobile devices who seek easy to digest articles along with easy takeaway information while at the same time satisfying the search engines with their own criteria.

Quick thoughts about making your content work for you, not against you:

• Stay away from “information overload” and focus on what is key.

• Make your points and finish the article.

• It’s not a book, don’t repeat yourself.

• Write for humans first.

• If something is difficult to say, put it in pictures.

• Offer easy takeaways such as lists or questions.

• Add graphics so that users are likely to stay and read.

• Real photos, not stock, help to humanize corporate sites.

Think of the websites you use regularly, the ones you engage with, not the big boys you think you want to be and then see what they are doing to grab your attention. Ask yourself, “why do I continue to come to this website?” Then, review your website, ask yourself, friends, family what it lacks, what feels heavy and what is a bore.

Don’t jump to any one thing but work on a strategy to fix or add to the site changes that might help reduct your bounce rate, increase user’s returning and most important their trust to purchase. Make content sticky too so that readers want to share it socially. You’ll see a huge impact on your site’s traffic and return visits.

This article has both flaws and good practices. Can you see them? Comment or share below!

Quick Points about Fixing Google Penguin Issues

How can I fix my site after the Google Penguin update?

If your site was indeed affected and needs fixes, look at the keywords that dropped. Did you over optimize those words, are there pages that are affected more than others? Was the over optimization over zealous links externally pointing to your site? If it’s links you will need to remove the spammy links if you can or call and ask site owners to remove them for you. If this isn’t possible you’ll just have to over time have quality links added to your site. I say have added since Google is looking for you adding links. Read more →

Google Penguin Insight Using Google’s Webmaster’s Tools

Out of all of our clients only one site was hit by Google’s latest update called Penguin so I needed to do a little digging. A drop in traffic according to Google Analytics is not fun to see. Especially for me, I’m the SEO guy, right? Plus, I am highly competitive so I next want to know why this happened, was it us or something prior to our work, and most importantly is it something that can be fixed.

If you’ve come to this post because you too see a site that has lost traffic and are worried about what this means and are looking for answers you may be at the right place. I say “may” since this post is more about finding answers than just handing out the general do’s and don’ts of Google and their best practices guide. Google Penguin is more than just finding sites that are over optimized or seo spammed. Think of what Google is trying to accomplish. They are trying to get better results, especially the right results for the right people matched with the best website. Read more →