The number one key to your business growth is crafting a message that speaks to your audience. Having the right message builds up your strengths and helps you overcome any deficiencies you might have.
McDonald’s doesn’t make the best hamburgers in the world, but they do have a great bit of messaging that speaks to their target audience. It’s that message, not the hamburgers, that makes Micky D’s the number one fast food restaurant in America.
While substance is important in order to have a great message, the message itself helps establish the perception of your substance. Much to my chagrin, my kids would rather go to McDonald’s over Burger King or Wendy’s. They don’t love the food as much as the box the food comes in, and not even close to as much as that toy inside the box.
McDonald’s has the right message for my kids. But I’m the wrong audience for that message, though I’m a sucker at giving my kids a fast-food treat of their choice! So, McDonald’s has a different message for me. Primarily, it’s a message to give my kids a fast-food treat of their choice!
Continue Reading »
There has been a lot of buzz around Pinterest in the last few months. The reviews have been mixed, but mostly they have been positive. This study, Pinterest Drives More Traffic Than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn Combined [STUDY], offers the stats to back that Pinterest is the up-and-coming social site. It’s a great way for certain niches to share their more visual content. Artists, photographers and DIYers are flocking to Pinterest. So, if the site satiates your appetite…pin away. After all, who doesn’t need another social network to keep up with?
Continue Reading »
With the meteoric rise of social media marketing, it only makes sense that tools to monitor those marketing efforts would proliferate. Paid tools run the gamut, from blessedly affordable (for solopreneurs and small businesses) to outrageously expensive (only the big guys can even hope to afford them).
Just like Web analytics tools, social media reporting systems can provide a wealth of data. But, is all that data necessary? How much of it is even useful? For most small and even medium-sized organizations, I would argue that only a small slice of what most reporting tools spit out is actionable.
Continue Reading »
One of the complaints I hear most frequently from new and prospective clients is that they have no idea what their previous SEO was doing for them. As the owner of a Web marketing firm, I quickly realized that even if a client
is getting results, communicating those successes to them is as important as the results themselves.
One of the great things about working in an online industry is that you don’t need to exclusively have local clients. In fact, most SEO firms such as mine get contracts from all over the country and even overseas. However, because of the distance, I don’t often get to meet clients in person; however, because it’s good communication, I find that doing so helps a great deal.
Being distant from clients has disadvantages. Because you can’t “swing by” the client’s office, or easily schedule time to get together, it creates an additional burden in the communication process. We have to double our efforts to make sure efficient methods of communication are in place.
Continue Reading »
Successful SEO is all about leveraging the right amount of motivation. There are a lot of technical aspects of SEO. But really, take all the techno-mumbo-jumbo away and what you’re left with is concepts of how to motivate search engines to pay attention to your site and apply the right amount of “value” to it so that you rank better for your keywords.
SEO is almost that simple. Just apply the right amount of persuasion and you get the results you want. But like most things, persuasion is an art that relies on timing, concern and demonstrating the value in the desired action to the persuadee.
In short, if you want to motivate a search engine to rank your website, focus on persuading your customers. Search engines only want to give their searchers what they want, and if they want you, then you’ve done your job!
Continue Reading »
Two posts ago, I talked about the importance of laying a web analytics foundation for your company by measuring, valuing and analyzing the critical few visitor behaviors on your site that have an impact on your bottom line. In my last post, I talked about the step after that, which is determine why the data you’ve collected is the way it is (the why?). Once you’ve listened to why your customers couldn’t complete whatever tasks they were trying to accomplish on your site, you should have a bunch of ideas on how to fix it.
Continue Reading »
Engaging in proper site SEO isn’t about pulling out a checklist that you can run through in a month, check them all off and say all done! A good optimization strategy consists of a variety of moving parts. Check one issue off your task list today and two more problems show up on your radar. Good SEO is kind of like an engine: There are many working parts, any of which can (and should) be improved, repaired or replaced to boost your vehicle’s performance. The more your engine is used, the more work there is to do to keep the engine in top shape.
With that said, there are some basic components of every SEO campaign (not to mention a really big checklist) that form the foundation of a successful campaign. Anyone who’s been around SEO for any length of time already knows these “basics,” but they bear repeating for anyone who is unfamiliar as to where to begin with their SEO effort:
Continue Reading »
How much link value does a tweet or Facebook like have? It just depends. White hat link builders know that, in most cases, high quality links take time to obtain. The same holds true in using social media to build links. Here are three things to consider.
Have Content Worthy Of Linking To
If you’ve been listening to or engaging in conversations regarding web marketing, you’ve probably heard this mentioned as often as the Pittsburgh Steelers have been to the Super Bowl: you’ve got to have great content to build links.
Having just one piece of content won’t be enough to sustain value over time. It’s vital to have a content strategy. By having a strategy, you’re able to build a following that generally consists of your target audience. If you create well-researched and well-written content around their needs, you’ll naturally build links and become a source of authority. Blogs can be a great platform for sharing content, but there are many other innovative content types.
Continue Reading »
In my last post I discussed using personas to create content that targets your potential customer. In that post I defined the differences between personalities and personas:
Persona = motivation (what the visitor needs, why they are on your site)
Personality = temperament (how they navigate, what they need to see or read to find what they want)
Using both personalities and personas is important when writing great content that is both user- and search-engine friendly.
Continue Reading »
