Bob Peterson, Certified Internet Consultant| WSI Internet Consulting |1.866.539.7150
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You are here: Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing
Find the latest information about Digital Marketing, Web Site design and development, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media from Bob Peterson, a WSI Consultant in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Many home pages are filled with attractive graphics, but don't have much in the way of content. A Home Page is more than a navigation screen to the rest of the site.
Here are some tips to determine what type of content should be on the Home Page...
NOTE:
When prompted to specify the name of the WSI Consultant who invited you
to this webinar, please enter my name, Bob Peterson, to complete your
registration.
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We've been browsing the new MarketingSherpa 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark Report this week. One of the first charts that struck us was a bubble chart on social marketing tactics.
This chart graphs the effectiveness, difficulty and popularity of each social media marketing tactic. You'll notice a clear positive correlation between a tactic's level of difficulty and its level of effectiveness.
If you want your website to be a success online, you will need to think and plan strategically about your website visitors and what action you want them to take. Most websites don’t do this. This is what will set you apart from the rest. Your website is your business image to the world open for everyone to see.
Do you want your website visitors’ first impression about your business to be good? If you answered yes, find some tips below to incorporate into your digital marketing strategy and to help you make your website stand out from the rest.
Business website tips
Customer:Always focus first on your customer. When a new visitor arrives on your website for the first time, they are usually looking for something or answers to help solve a need that they might have. This could be anything from buying specific products or solving a problem. It is vital that you must understand what your best customers are looking for and then make sure you can address them clearly on the specific page that they arrive on.
Image:Design your website around your customer and the services or products that you offer. If you are selling to Generation Y, use a trendier look that integrates social media elements and if you are selling to Baby Boomers, design your website with a high contrast with larger font sizes. Your website design should about be consistent with your industry and branding. If you are selling to corporate customers, then you will need a polished and professional look.
Action:What do you want your websites visitors to do when they arrive on your website? Contact you? Sign-up for a newsletter? Your website pages should always have a clear path to action. Keep it short and simple with clear call to actions (CTA). Too many possible actions and your visitors will leave instantly. Make the decisions that they have to make on your website easy. Make it visible and clear for your arriving visitors. Design a single primary action into your website pages.
Trust: People have always been cautious of buying online. Write the content of your website to address the needs of your visitors in a language that they will understand (no technical jargon). Also, make it easy to contact you with a phone number and an actual street address. You can include a shipping procedure, privacy policy and a refund policy on your website. Include a trust building “About us” page that includes more in-depth information about your company and what you do.
Websites that get good results are focusing on the needs of their visitors. Always remember that it’s not about you but about your visitors!
When we start to blog, our minds are full of great ideas. We are keen and enthusiastic. As we go further down the line, and we know we should be blogging on a regular basis, we come up against “writers block” or in our case “bloggers block”.
So where do we start to look for ideas?
Here are a few more suggestions that could help you, but please remember, this should only spark an idea for content that is your own work, do not blatantly copy someone else’s efforts.
8. Scribnia can help you find authors and bloggers based on certain niches, and this can really help you target your content.
9. Technorati has hundreds of millions of blogs registered with them. Use the categories or top topics for inspiration.
10. Alltop also offers a huge variety of topics to help you when you are stuck.
11. Junta 42 offers really good content marketing tips.
12. If you’re on Twitter search #blogchat. This is where bloggers discuss blogs!
13. On Facebook there is an application called “Networked Blogs”. This shares content from Facebook users with blogs, and the Networked Blogs directory. Yet another good free tool.
14. Look at the Q&A section of Linked In. Look at the questions that are being asked right now, and answer them in your blog.
15. Slideshare has great presentations that are full of ideas for you to take away and build your blog posts from.
16. YouTube is full of hints and tips videos, you never know what you might find if you search. You can also embed a video from YouTube and expand on the content, adding additional hints and tips if you can. Remember you may need permission before you do this.
When we start to blog, our minds are full of great ideas. We are keen and enthusiastic. As we go further down the line, and we know we should be blogging on a regular basis, we come up against “writers block” or in our case “bloggers block”.
So where do we start to look for ideas?
Here are a few suggestions that could help you, but please remember, this should only spark an idea for content that is your own work; do NOT blatantly copy someone else’s efforts.
Think about when you blog: do you use categories to enable your followers to find what they are looking for more easily? Well, other bloggers will do the same. Take a look at blogs from people who inspire you, and see if a category sparks an idea.
Look at people’s top ten lists or top ten hints and tips. Again, this may get your juices running a little. Use this to build your content.
If a blogger has a list of the most popular posts, take a look and see what made them so popular. See if you can take inspiration from them.
Delicious is great for finding content ideas. Simply type in your subject and see what others have written about. You are almost guaranteed an “oh yes, of course!” moment.
Similarly, Stumbleupon is also useful. It’s a browser add-on that allows you to browse websites at random. You never know where you may land, and this could lead to some unusual ideas.
Look at the most popular posts on Digg.
Try looking at BizSugar. This concentrates on small business news and you can get some really good ideas from here.
For more useful tips for your digital marketing strategy, subscribe to our blog now!
WSI now can deliver WSICast, a social media management program which helps businesses improve their search engine visibility. Businesses can effectively manage their content on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs using a single, easy to use platform. Also included is the ability to monitor social network "chatter" about your business and your competitors in order to respond and manage your social presence.
Consumers are searching for and engaging with local businesses on many sites across the Web. So how can you make sure they’re finding you? Introducing WSICast: everything you need to optimize your Web Presence and get discovered in more places online.
WSICast is a powerful combination of proprietary technology and expert service that manages your entire Web Presence – so you can focus on running your business. Armed with experience in SEO, social media marketing, and reputation management, your dedicated Web Presence Professional (WPP) consults with you to create and execute the perfect Web Presence strategy.
Yesterday WSI facilitated two outstanding free webinars sessions on how an effective blogging campaign can significantly enhance your business’ online reputation. Conducted by Eric Cook, a WSI Consultant based out of Michigan, USA, the webinar revealed blogging best practices, tools and techniques that businesses of all sizes can leverage to promote your brand and build online credibility.
Our webinar attendees were undeniably in good hands, as Eric is actually an avid blogger himself and has leveraged blogs in his overall digital marketing strategy to promote his own franchise. He has a distinct understanding of just how to launch a company blog and to take it to the next level to promote a brand.
A few webinar highlights included:
How to engage your readers
How to generate conversation
Ways to incorporate other social media elements
WSI is continuously striving to stay at the forefront of today’s digital evolution and, in effect, we work to educate businesses on emerging digital trends and how to best leverage those tools. With that said, we are very pleased with the turn-out of attendees at yesterday’s webinar and a special thanks goes to Eric. Eric did an excellent job in demonstrating how to achieve meaningful results with a professional blogging strategy.
In case you missed yesterday’s webinar “Blogging to Build a Reputation,” we have a recording of the sessions as well as a complimentary whitepaper written by Eric. And the next free webinar featuring another digital marketing element to incorporate into your online marketing mix will be announced soon!
We all know that the mobile Web is experiencing an explosive growth spurt right now, but few actually predicted these kinds of fireworks.
The 2010 Mobile Web Progress report from dotMobi found that there are more than 3 million mobile-ready websites today – that’s a 2,000-percent increase from the 150,000 sites revealed in the 2008 study. To compare it to the meteoric rise of the desktop Web, the number of websites grew from 150,000 to 2 million between 1996 and 1998 – a growth of only 1,333 percent.
And, most experts agree that this is just the tip of the mobile iceberg.
In its report, dotMobi broke down the mobile-readiness of the world’s top 500,000 websites as ranked by intelligence firm Alexa. Just over 40 percent of the top 1,000 sites are mobile-optimized, while 29.7 percent of the top 10,000 sites fall into that category, as do 19.3 percent of the top 500,000.
Is your website mobile-ready? More importantly, does it need to be?
Judging from the statistics above and the overwhelming growth of the mobile Web, the answer is eventually going to be yes. But the best way to determine the urgency of that transition can be found in your analytics.
Determine the percentage of traffic that presently visits your site through mobile devices, and find out what are the most common results of that traffic. It is from there that you should be able to draw conclusions about the immediacy of a more mobile-friendly platform for your website.
Networking is a long term relationship building activity. We like to trust in the people we buy from. Traditionally networking is face-to-face.
Online, as with offline networking, there are many places that we can meet people. Social media groups such as Facebook, blogs and Twitter are great examples. Here you must understand the “rules of engagement”, but generally they are the same as offline; you must always be seen as professional, but authentic too.
Sometimes this is a difficult balance to achieve online, when everything is written down or recorded for playback.Digital marketing opens you up to public scrutiny. Forums, blogs and social sites have been the ruin of many a reputation online. It is important, therefore, to teach yourself and your staff the importance of acting responsibly online so as not to engage in any controversy.
After all, it’s the people who make a company, and it is also the people who can let it down. It is also important to monitor what is being said about your business online.
Although we would never suggest you stop meeting with people face-to-face, online networking does have its advantages and these are detailed below:
Time: travelling to and from an event can take up time in your day that could be used for working on or in your business.
Costs:networking groups often charge a fee. Online networking is generally free, and there are no travelling expenses to be incurred.
Fear:some people are a little nervous about meeting people for the first time, and online networking eliminates that completely.
Speed: you may be able to respond fairly quickly to a question online, because you are more likely to have all your resources at hand.
Professional Online Networking
LinkedIn is the professionals’ choice of social media, and is something that you should consider using in your business if you do not already do so. All the Fortune 500 Companies are there, and they are there for a reason. LinkedIn can be optimized for the search engines and is a great place to get introduced to people through their site. It is also a great place to pitch yourself as the expert that you are, by simply asking and answering questions. Furthermore, LinkedIn is a great place where you can showcase your testimonials; add videos, share files and more.
We all know that the mobile Web is experiencing an explosive growth spurt right now, but few actually predicted these kinds of fireworks.
Sometimes this is a difficult balance to achieve online, when everything is written down or recorded for playback.
LinkedIn is the professionals’ choice of 
