Overcoming an all too Common Content Development Block

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Why is it so hard to sit down in front of a blank screen and write an article to upload to the website? Your heart rate speeds up, your palms get sweaty, you can think of a million other things to do at that moment instead of sitting there feeling this way. Yet, we can discuss and debate the benefits of our service till the person we’re talking to has to fake a heart attack just to excuse them from the conversation. It a hard thing to brainstorm ideas. To write, speak, or perform in front of a computer or camera is unproductive and time-consuming.

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Using Long Tail and Short Tail Keywords when Blogging

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When writing your posts around predetermined keywords and phrases, remember to use long-tail keywords for better search traffic to your website or post. For example, on a post about IT content relating to “Data Recovery,” instead of using “Data Recovery” for the title of the post, since you have an opportunity to use a valuable local search phrase in a title and file name, “Oklahoma Computer Data Recovery” would be ideal and more likely to become a search term by a consumer than the shorter keyword.

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Online Video to Promote Your Site

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Video is the fastest-growing online advertising format with estimates of about a 40-percent growth rate through 2010. And the marketers that have taken part in its growth are resoundingly satisfied, according to a recent study from video ad network BrightRoll. More than 50 percent of the agency executives who participated in the study indicated that online video was the most effective form of advertising, and 83 percent said they were getting more value for their video advertising spend in early 2010 than the previous year.

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Paid Search Vs. Organic Search Results

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What’s the difference?  I think many web content developers and SEO (search engine optimization) professionals assume that our clients know what the difference between paid and organic / natural search results are. You know what paid search results are….they are the ones that no one clicks on LOL! I do sometimes, like maybe 2 times a year, and everything I do I pretty much do in a web browser. Soooo, that leaves the rest of the search results…the ones that are there naturally simply because of the content of the website that is being listed.

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Social Media Marketing Tulsa

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I must admit that I was slow to jump into social media. A large part of me didn’t want to reconnect with my past – I knew that if I did get into it, I would purposefully use it as a tool and not a time waster. It wasn’t long before it proved to be a very effective way for me to be in front of thousands of people that would probably never Google us or go to our website. Social media marketing is all about finding ways to bring content directly to the end user instead of finding ways to get them to search for it or solely relying upon people that would look for you anyway.

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More Businesses Going Digital in 2010?

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Business Makeover

The next trend in corporate marketing is going to be relying less on traditional advertising and marketing agencies, according to the latest State of Marketing Report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council. Continuing to build online awareness and generating higher digital demand were the top initiatives reported for 2010 by the global affinity network of senior marketers.

Nearly half of the members surveyed (46%) reported that their companies are presently undergoing a “digital marketing makeover” or will be sometime in 2010. Fifty-eight percent said they were going to train and develop existing staff specifically in this area, and 36 percent expect to hire new talent with digital marketing skills. Forty percent of corporate marketers will be adding or expanding their support from agencies that specialize in digital marketing while an all-time low eight percent plan to conduct advertising agency reviews. Read more

Smart Business Owners are Marketing Online

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Online MarketingI’m currently reading a book entitled The New Rules of Marketing and PR that my friend and local business owner Brad Johnson of Lawn America loaned to me.  It’s quite good!  I came across a story about a company that we all know and can identify with, and I found it relevant to many of the business owners that I speak to every week.  So, I thought I’d share…

Century 21 Real Estate LLC is the franchisor of the world’s largest residential real estate sales organization, an industry giant comprising approx. 8,000 offices in 45 countries.  You’ve seen Century 21’s TV ads before, but you haven’t seen them lately.  In 2009, the company pulled its national TV advertising and invested those resources into online marketing.  That’s a huge move considering the amount of TV they were doing. Read more

The Power of the Online Review

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online reviewsHow important is someone reviewing your business or organization online?  I don’t know, because there is no way to put a number to it…but I’ll try.  I do know this:  I’ll listen to another consumer about a company rather than some form of one-directional advertising trying to get my business for the same company.  Not that I don’t pay attention to advertising, but is that just because I look at it to critique it and draw ideas from it?  Some advertising has turned into a form of entertainment, I think.

I look at it this way: the consumer was once in my shoes, performed a similar search for a local company that provided a service that they need(ed), and they made a decision.

How is their experience with that company captured?  How can we, the other consumers, learn from their decision to choose one company over another? Well, (drumroll…..), enter the online review. Read more

Your Homepage No Longer Does the Heavy Lifting

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Gone are the days of the homepage. True, every website has one, but the days when website owners expect their homepage to do all the heavy lifting are gone.

Thanks to the evolving science of search, the search engines have made our lives easier by providing the consumer with relevant search results for specific keyword queries. Visitors now stream directly into websites via side doors and back doors. They can magically teleport into a website without ever seeing the homepage; they are practically flying through the windows to land directly where they want to be.

For a consumer looking for a specific product or service, this is fantastic, but for site owners and operators, the importance of optimizing each and every individual page you would potentially want a searcher to visit is magnified considerably. When visitors can enter a site and land anywhere, there are brand implications. If it’s not immediately apparent where they are, and why, they might not stick around. The same thought and energy you put into the homepage of the site to brand the product or company must be put into each page that you intend to be searchable for the consumers that you want to be on your site. Read more

Social Media Replacing E-Mail?

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Social media has its place, but does that place include replacing our most beloved forms of digital communication: e-mail?

1. Never underestimate the power of the hand-written note or letter. Test this in your work place.  Put up a memo in your office, and write something in your own handwriting in red that says, “the power of the hand-written note reaches more people than a typed letter with the most impressive grammar.”  I promise they will glance down at the bottom to read the handwriting before the read the first word of the memo. They’ll get the point.

2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address. Some are starting to integrate social media into this process (such as Facebook Connect), but that is still a very small fraction, and they typically still allow for email information as well. Read more