General

How to Write Great Web Content if You’re Not a Writer

May 13, 2012 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

We’ve all heard it before: Content is King. And your website needs it. Your site’s content is what tells your customers who you are, what you’re offering and why your business is better than the rest. It tells them where to go, who to call and what the next step is. It drives traffic to your site from Google. Your business cannot afford poorly-written content, but unfortunately, not everyone can afford a professional copywriter to convey their message for them.
There’s good news: Writing great Web content, even if you’re not a great writer, is not impossible. Here are several tips to get you started.
Less really is more.
Yes, your business is awesome, and you want everyone to know it. Yet there’s also something to be said about the guy who talks way too much about himself. Be brief with your website content. This can be tough when there’s a lot to say, so the first step involves understanding what your audience needs and giving it to them. No more, no less. If your company offers credit card processing for non-profits, outline the best services for accepting donations, but don’t go into too much detail. Long chunks of text that are loaded with jargon can get confusing and turn customers off.
Use call to actions.
A call to action gives your visitors direction and encourages them to take that next step to connect with your company:

Call now to speak with a representative.

Download our PDF to learn more about vehicle tracking using GPS.

Make an appointment to start improving your smile today!

Call to action text is usually linked to another page that brings visitors to a contact form, or it can be a single-word phrase within a button that downloads a program or PDF. Don’t hide your call to actions within the copy – make them clear and easy to see so your visitors know exactly what to do next.
Subheads and bullet points are your best friends.
While content is king, your website visitors probably aren’t spending too much time reading every single word. Instead, they’re scanning the copy to find what they’re looking for – benefits, product details, services, rates. Make it easy for them by breaking up your content into short paragraphs with clear subheads, as well as bullets that outline key points.
Add keywords with caution.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial to helping your website get ranked and found through search engines. Optimizing your content with relevant keywords will help drive users to your site as they search Google for certain products and services.
However, it’s not as simple as stuffing your headlines and body copy with keywords and calling it a day. Your visitors can tell when you’re adding keywords just to add them, especially when you put no thought into how the keywords affect the flow of copy. More importantly, Google values quality content and penalizes keyword stuffing. Your site will rank higher when your content provides truly valuable information to your visitors.
Do you have any tips for writing great Web content?
Author:
Jacqui MacKenzie is a writer for Straight North, one of the leading Chicago Web design companies specializing in Internet marketing, social media and SEO. She writes for a wide range of clients, including providers of vehicle tracking using GPS and credit card processing for non-profits. Check out the Straight North blog! @ straightnorth
Sources:

How To Write Great Website Content

Five Tips For Writing Great Web Content

Steps to Writing Great Website Content

Turning Downloads into Leads

May 9, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

A download symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you have an eBook, whitepaper, or newsletter available as a download online? If so, you may want to consider that many business owners have been able to turn those downloads into direct leads and even clients. Downloads can be a great source of lead generation for several reasons.

At any given moment, tons of people from virtually every industry are on the hunt for educational material for themselves, their businesses, their employees.
Providing free material can help to build your business’s brand and reach by getting your name, and your link, in various places around the net.
Often those who use your material will credit you on their site, generating an even wider coverage for your business, possibly in areas even you may have not considered relevant previously.

What are You Offering?

Make sure before you begin trying to generate leads that you have a strategic foundation in place. Will you be sharing a Whitepaper, eBook, Newsletter as a download? All of those are great ideas, but implementing the plan requires great thought combined with aggressive action.

Choose the industry in which you plan to focus your marketing efforts.
Develop your marketing message that includes the answer to the problem you are solving with your offered content.
Get visible.

Whether you plan to offer your material on your own site or to branch out and have it added on any accepting format online you can find, may determine the speed at which your content can spread across the web. There are just as many reasons to promote content aggregation regardless of the content as long as viewers will be brought to a landing page where they can sign up for your free download and grab it via instant download, or even in an auto-email attachment.

Gather an Email List for Future Efforts

These days you can always combine your offered download strategy with your own need to generate a customer list for email campaigns, newsletters, and more. To do so you simply need to require users, whether on a website, a social network page, or even a blog, to enter their email to proceed to the download.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

Optimizing Content Creation for Conversions

May 8, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Content can mean everything to a small business that is based online. While having a high search ranking may bring in more traffic, it doesn’t always equal more sales. However, marketers who make a focused effort on creating only the highest quality content can not only improve their positions on search engine rankings, but also obtain more conversions than those who go with more mass produced, lesser quality content.

Putting Your Content to Work for You

Creating content isn’t just a simple matter of tossing up blog post about your products or services and hoping it promotes or sells itself. In a time where businesses of any size are swiftly becoming media outlets in their own right by publishing their own original insights related to their industries, companies should not ignore the opportunity to be a part of the conversation on their own with high-quality and original content marketing.

However, it is important to remember that just publishing high-quality content is still not enough. It is important to focus on how you can put that content to work to help you attain your personal business goals online, covering everything from attracting relevant site traffic to helping direct your visitors to your most valuable conversion or ecommerce pages. The right content marketing campaign will involve strategic planning and a constant and consistent execution if a business intends to increase online conversions. Optimizing your content

How to Accelerate Lead Quality and Conversion

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZzF4qzP7vo]

What is Content?

By now you likely know that content can be any number of things. Everything from eBooks, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, case studies and more can be very educational, relevant, high-quality content that brings audiences back to your site and with each return, closer to your valuable conversion pages or links. Make sure that your content supports your own business goals and the educational needs or wants of your target audience.

Content Marketing Strategies

There are a few optimal thoughts to keep in mind and keep your websites content focused on.

Content should speak to the content audience
Identify the goals you expect your content to achieve
Create your audience profile
Do your keyword research

As with any type of content, anytime, it is incredibly vital to have a content writer who can engage your readers effectively. We have covered some of the best ways to fit a content writer to your specific needs on DBMEi with several of our professional freelance authors and guest contributors content. Take the time to check them out.

Author:

Sources:

Using Social Media for Brand Awareness

May 7, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Cost-effective and powerful, social media is changing the way companies network. That’s because many businesses today are finding that connections made on sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs are allowing them to better communicate with customers, more effectively draw in new leads and, over all else according to a July 2010 survey, increase customer awareness of their brand.
How does this work? How can you leverage the power of social networks to expand your brand’s influence and reach? Check out these five practical ideas!

Know Your Brand. Before you can promote your brand, you need to have a solid understanding of what it is. Ask yourself what distinguishes you company from others, what you offer that no one else does, what makes you valuable. Then, find a way to promote those benefits across all your marketing materials, from your logo to your website to your Twitter profile, in order to communicate a strong sense of your brand.
Establish a Solid, Branded Web Presence. Your website is your single most important online branding tool, the place where all your other marketing tools will direct. With a strong Web presence, your company has a resource that means better search rankings for increased traffic, increased leads and higher conversion rates.
Go Where Your Audience Is. A big part of being able to effectively reach your audience is understanding who they are. Is your audience active on Pinterest? Instagram? Facebook? Go where they are and join their conversations in order to expose them to your brand—and to enhance your scope of influence, offer something that meets their needs, whether tips, answers or links to helpful resources.
Connect with Online Influencers. Identify the people in your industry who are most influential and work to build relationships with them. Follow them on Twitter, respond to their posts on blogs and Facebook, email them when you have something valuable to say. By connecting with these influencers, you help expand your company’s reach.
Keep at It. A strong social media presence isn’t built overnight—in order to develop a loyal following, you have to earn it. Be consistent about posting on your social profiles so that users come to trust and respect your contributions; if you don’t, you run the risk of harming your reputation rather than helping it. If you can’t keep up with a profile, it’s better not to start it.

What do you think—could social media be a game changer for your brand? Take advantage of these tips to watch your presence expand!
Author:
Shanna Mallon is a writer for Straight North, a leader among Chicago marketing firms. She writes for clients in various B2B industries, from merchant processing solutions to Kevlar welding gloves. Check out the Straight North blog! @straightnorth
Sources:

What Can Business Owners Expect from Email Marketing?

May 3, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

If used effectively, Email marketing is never spam. It can be invaluable for small business owners by helping them attract new customers and generate sales quicker. It is also more affordable than other forms of direct marketing campaigns.

The success of a business’s email marketing campaign lies in a handful of factors. Among them, what you are offering, the quality of your email lists, your audience, your message, and more. Response to any efforts can also vary by industry. Get familiar with your own industries data and success rates but also understand that individual results may vary as well. As with other forms of marketing, it has its benefits in immediate as well as longer term effects.

Email Marketing Statistics

MarketingSherpa‘s recent email marketing benchmark guide reported some interesting statistics.

Business-to-Consumer emails achieve an average open rate of 20% and a click-through rate of 8%.
Business-to-Business had a slightly better response with average open rate of 20% and a click-through of 12%.

It is helpful to track your opens and click-throughs on each campaign individually and from month to month. Once you have gained a better understanding of the trends in your email responses, you can begin to establish more measurable results and goals, as well as exercising the ability to begin testing different subjects and content.

The common goal of course, is to persuade email recipients to open the email and check out your products and services. Some great ways to encourage your recipients to click into those emails are:

Get Your Brand Name in Your From Line

Make sure your brand name will be in the From line. This will help to ensure that recipients will recognize the source of the email. 64% of email respondents describe the From line as the most important factor motivating them to open the permission-based emails.

Impressive Subject Line

Just as important as the From line, the Subject line must convince the viewer to become a respondent. Be honest and avoid anything misleading in your subject line. Keep it short and simple.

Send Emails at the Correct Time

How will you know what time is best for you to send out your email campaigns? Test it. Do not assume you have some data that tells you the optimal time. Check for yourself by sending them out at different time periods and monitoring the results.

How Do I Improve Click-Through Rates?

Use a simple message. You only have a few short seconds to get a viewers attention. The best way to do this is with a short, powerful message that explains exactly what you have to offer and a short list of great benefits.

A great deal can also be very compelling. Are you offering a good coupon deal? A 2-for-1 rate? Add something to your email offer that will trigger a purchase now. Feel free to use free trial offers as long as you are aware of the expenditure and how it could affect your budget.

Author:

Sources:

Wrapp Your Friends: Social Gift Giving & Promotions

April 30, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

With so many new interactive activities taking place on Facebook, it seems that one more company has caught onto the social media frenzy and is taking advantage of new ways to interact with your social network. A Swedish Social Gifting service, Wrapp just debuted in the U.S. that will allow Facebook users to purchase gift cards for those in their social network. Wrapp currently has partnerships with more than 25 retailers. Some of those retailers include:

Fab
Gap
The Wall Street Journal
H & M

Wrapp launched in Sweden in November, and has since added Norway and the U.K. Wrapp also has established satellite offices in Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, France, Taiwan, and Australia.

How to Wrapp

To get started with Wrapp users need to either install the Android or iPhone app or head to the Wrapp website. Once Wrapp is integrated with your Facebook account, birthdays and other occasions will be twice as easy to take care of with just a few clicks. Even better, Wrapps algorithm will match social profiles of targeted friends with their available partners as well as the users demographics. You can then purchase one of their preselected gift cards or add onto the amount manually. With Wrapps integration with Facebook, news feeds will also be posted when the cards are gifted, as well as when they are redeemed by the cards receivers. Physical gift cards are not always necessary. On the mobile apps for smartphones and tablets, they can actually be redeemed through the bar codes that display on the Wrapp site after confirmation that the location accepts that gift card. Codes can also be used while shopping online.

According to Wrapp, over 1.4 million gift cards have been sent out via their service in the last four months. Chief Executive Officer Hjalmar Winbladh adds,

“Wrapp is the ultimate win, win, win app. You and I get to give our friends free gift cards to great retailers. The cards we give are stored in our friends’ phones so they’re always with them when they want to buy something they really want. And the merchants get a proven customer-acquisition and retention platform built on Wrapp’s friend-to-friend marketing for conducting performance-based campaigns.”

Wrapp combines three very hot industries in gift cards, social networking, and mobile shopping.
Author:

Sources:

Boosting Revenue with Social Media

April 29, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

For many marketing companies, management of corporate or small business level social media has become a full-time endeavor. For this reason it can be vital to learn what impact your efforts are actually having on your brand awareness. Gaining this knowledge will help you to understand what it may take to boost your business’s bottom line.

The Noisy Social Media Environment

Social media networks are busy places. Once a user has built up a large friend or fan following, the information can stream by at light speed. There are plenty of opportunities to place ads to garner that extra attention from those who may not be able to meticulously pick through their social media networks information, but still scan it for an overall idea of what the internet world had to offer today.

In a recent release of a study by the Adobe Digital Marketing Team, some statistics may have shown why consumers and businesses may not be benefiting from social media like they could.

36% of tweets with valuable content are swallowed by a more boring majority.
37% of those who do use social media networks say that the ads they see are not very useful.
63% of social community managers spend more than 30 hours per week.
26% spent 41 to 50 hours on their community administration and management.

Account proliferation seems to contribute to the overload currently experienced on social media networks. The Adobe study showed that many companies with over 1,000 employees, had an average of 178 social media network accounts. Not only can this clog up the networks, but it can also make full brand analytics rather difficult to test in some cases. Many social marketers also report that they feel they lack resources. Many of those also reporting that they often struggle to measure ROI, which ironically, does not help for getting new resources.

Measuring Social Success

There are obviously many business, large and small who are utilizing their Facebook fan pages to great benefit for their businesses and brands. Facebook and YouTube both have emerged as leaders in social marketing successes. These two market leaders dwarf their competition with an unparalleled critical difference in terms of time spent by users on those sites.

The study also showed that recommendations from other social users can affect the level of enjoyment a possible consumer may feel about a video. When it comes to websites and content, the study also showed that users tend to stay logged in more than twice as long when doing so with social plug-ins.

Many other social networking and social media statistics found in the study can also be vital to understanding how to implement

Social sharing increases email click-throughs

CTR without sharing shows up around 26%.

Twitter – 5.0%
Facebook – 5.4%
LinkedIn – 9.6%

People use social networks to find local business

In 2008 4% of consumers reported they used social networking sites to find local business.

2009 – 7%
2010 – 9%
2011 – 15%

Social Drives Sales but Faces Perception Challenges

During a self-assessment of women’s marketplace influence, 73% of young adult women described themselves as influential information sources. It also showed that orders that come in via social media networks are commonly larger than those through more traditional digital means such s email, search engines, or even ad displays. In the same realm, the study showed that social sharing can actually trickle down to orders. A quarter of online shoppers who shop at least quarterly, and log into their Facebook accounts at least once a month have made purchases based on a social recommendation.

Author:

Sources:

Measuring Social Influence – Klout, PeerIndex, SocialIQ and Kred

April 26, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Nowadays, when a business wants to gauge how the general public feels about their brands, products or services, they are using tools for measuring their social influence on the web. In many cases, some even use them to take a measurement of their competitors. Staying on top of important industry trends, changes in algorithms, and social influence measurement tools can keep you and your business afloat on the web and learning how to make those trends, changes and tools work for you can assist your business in increasing growth, brand visibility, and even your business’s social media ‘voice.’

If you need a reminder of how important those things can be to your social media campaigns, take a look back to the blog, 4 important lessons on brand marketing via Twitter, where we shared the successes that JetBlue, Hilton and more were having from the social media voices they created for themselves. We covered the spread of social influence tools in another past blog titled Klout vs PeerIndex vs SocialIQ at the end of last summer, but how are those tools developing now?

Klout

Klout is still as powerful a force in social influence as ever. Recent updates include some fairly impressive leaps ahead in keeping up with business technology and its impact in the realm of social influence. Just this month Klout announced they would be offering dedicated pages for brands where Klout users will be able to see lists of top influencers for each brand as well as observe social media conversations, monitor brand developments and even earn access to some special perks. This new update, codenamed “Brand Squad” is launched in a partner venture with Red Bull.

For some more information on where Klout may be headed, don’t forget to check out the video from #SMWSMAC where we had a full panel including Michelle Ross of Klout to explain where we can expect social influence measurement tools to take us in the coming year. Klout still has its naysayers as well. However, it has also begun to be an item of reference now asked for in some job interviews as well. For those working in the social media industry, it may soon become a vital tool on your own list of portfolio and reference links.

PeerIndex

PeerIndex has found itself in continual growth since we delved into it last August. Reebok has just offered the top 100 most influential PeerIndex users, as identified by their own PeerPerks service, a free pair of Reebox’s RealFlex trainers. In promoting their own, “The Sport of Fitness Has Arrived” marketing campaign. The PeerPerks system, hosted on its own microsite, allows users to sign in just as they do on PeerIndex, by using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Although this particular marketing campaign will focus on those who have influence in fitness, athletics or sports, it seems that a few more brand offers from big names like Reebok may push PeerIndex and their competitive reward system into more growth for their social media influencer user base.

SocialIQ

SocialIQ was just breaking out of the start-up phase when we last covered them. Since then they too have grown into an impressively notable competitor on the social influence circuit. Early on, they had enacted their own series of perks for those who were influential in a variety of industries and the developers at SocialIQ are still continually looking to improve and perfect their relationship with users. Just this past Tuesday they met with a customer service special interest group at Intuit to ask for some feedback on the SocialIQ experience design.

SocialIQ has an aesthetically pleasing and easy to manage user interface in their one click social media network integration with Twitter and Facebook. Developed by Soovox, the algorithm SocialIQ uses seems to be working and measures influence based on the same idea as the others. However, I have noticed that SocialIQ has done some pretty impressive improvements on their site’s look as well as their feedback to users complete with an influence level analysis that tells you which brands you may have the closest affinity with.

Kred

A month ago we covered Kred and what it had to offer as a newer social influence measurement tool on the net in Monitoring Your Social Reputation with Kred. Just this month Kred has added Facebook to their options for users wanting to measure their social influence scores. Everything seems to be working well so far and with Kred making a major showing at SXSW this year, the company is slowly starting to gain more ground. Kred scores do break down a bit differently as users actually receive points for interactions, tweets, mentions and more, so I would definitely encourage those who have not tried it to do so. It may offer the last piece to the puzzle of your business’s social influence analytics.

Author:

Sources:

Display Ads and Tumblr [News]

April 25, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Technically, display advertising, or banner ads, are graphical advertisements on the web that pop up next to, above, blended into or under content on emails, web sites, or even IM applications. This video is very short but provides a great overall understanding of what display ads are and how they work.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUT5H723Ii4]

What Benefits Will Display Ad Networks Have on Your Business?

Just like magazines or newspaper ads, you can expect to receive the same type of benefit from display ads in exposure for your business and hopefully in an obviously increasing customer base. However, unlike magazines and newspaper ads, the flexibility of the internet lets us advertise to a worldwide community, expanding a business’s horizons endlessly. Display advertising also has distinct advantages over the more traditional formats.

Businesses can target specific options such as behavioral targeting options or direct choices in demographics allowing them to expertly direct ads only to their most vital audiences.
Performance of your ads can be tracked as part of your daily marketing campaign to allow you to measure metrics such as clicks, conversions, and impressions which will allow you to calculate your ROI.

Top Display Ad Networks

Although the list is constantly changing, some of the top display ad networks in the country include:

Yahoo Network
Google Ad Network
ValueClick Networks
Turn Media Platform
27/7 Real Media
Adbrite

News in Ad Display – Tumblr

A couple of years ago, CEO David Karp of Tumblr was asked what his feelings were on display ads. At that time he shared that they turned his stomach. Not something he wanted for his blogging platform. Very recent news shared that he may have found himself eating those words a bit when he shared that Tumblr plans to begin selling ad display units to advertisers. So far, the platform has survived without any ads but users will soon begin to see them displayed on their Tumblr “Featured” section of the dashboard.

Advertisers should be able to pay for ad space beginning May 2^nd. Tumblr currently hosts over 52 million blogs with a growth rate of approximately 50 million posts per day.

Author:

Sources:

Obama Signs Bill for Crowd Funding [News]

April 24, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

President Obama recently signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups or JOBS Act. Noted as a game-changing bill, the JOBS Act is a bipartisan bill that aims to make it easier for start-up businesses to expand and hire more employees to help aid further the so far, very sluggish, US economic recovery.

This new bill will classify start-up businesses as emerging growth companies, allowing those business owners to rely on online investors who can help raise the vital start-up capital required. Sites like Kickstart offer a very similar format currently. Companies like this that allow users to raise money for start-up ventures will be able to sell up to $50 million in their own shares before being required to register with the SEC. The new bill also doubles their current limitation to now allow up to 1,000 shareholders.

During the bill signing ceremony, President Obama stated that “One of the great things about America is that we’re a nation of doers. We think big, take risks and believe that anyone with a solid plan and a willingness to work hard can take even the most improbable idea and turn it into a solid business.” Obama signed into law the JOBS Act while flanked on both sides by Congress members as well as some of our nation’s top entrepreneurs. Many have taken this as an act proving that our politicians are beginning to better understand the role that entrepreneurs have to play in American economics.

How will this effect start-ups?

The JOBS Act is only an initial step in a much larger battle to make it easier for business entrepreneurs to create vital new business, expand their growth, hire work workers and create the economic growth our country is desperate for. It will help to increase capital formation as well as pave the way for other smaller businesses to gain more public visibility.

Start-ups will now be able to gain financing via crowd funding allowing those who participate to raise up to $1 million a year without having to do public offerings. That step currently requires state-by-state registrations that can cost business owners thousands of dollars. The hope is that this type of funding will begin to open up many more opportunities for necessary capital to begin flowing into our nation’s start-up businesses. In turn, new companies that can now create jobs will help to steer our economic perils back onto the right path that benefits each and every one of us.

Author:

Sources: