Blogs have increasingly become valuable multimedia hubs where personal bloggers and companies provide information through all types of media in various categories of interest. When bloggers write posts and get them published, they expect readers to find them. The fact, however, is that your blog is one among millions of others – probably even hundreds of millions – existing in the Web universe. Instead of waiting to be discovered, you need to find a way of telling the world that you exist. The best way of doing this is to promote your blog to social media sites. Once your post is published at your ‘hub’, you should let your followers and fans find the post where they hang out. With more than 200 million Twitter users and about 800 million on Facebook, having your post promoted through social media is crucial in giving your blog much needed exposure. There are several major platforms where you can publish and enable people – Read the full article
According to Email Marketing Reports, there are 1.4 billion online users today, and “according to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, E-mail marketing was expected to generate an ROI of $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs.” If this is appealing to you, it’s time to begin this money-making process known as E-mail marketing. A large part of email marketing is finding the right software. If you know what different softwares have to offer in terms of features and installment, then you will be able to make the right decision for your company. There are three types of software you can choose from: Hosted software: The company you purchase the software from will host the software for you. In other words, all you have to do is login on their website and manage your email lists from there. Self-hosted software: You are – Read the full article
Small business owners often rely on leads in order for them to keep their business afloat. The only problem is that online lead generation can be a very difficult thing to master, especially when the goal is not just simply to come up with a huge list. The quality of the leads is something that owners need to consider as well. Trying to hit both goals can be very tricky. Most people assume that the numbers are all the matter in online lead generation. But what is the use of a big list if it consists mostly of unqualified leads which cost not just money but time as well? Online lead generation is a tool that allows business owners to make attractive offers to prospective buyers. In order to keep you from engaging unqualified leads, wasting both time and effort, here are a few tips. 1. Conversion Mechanisms Should Be Consistent with Purchase This is a very simple concept which – Read the full article
So you’ve e-Commerce’d your site up. (Hopefully with Magento, our favorite.) And you’re ready to roll. The homepage is ready. The product shots have been Photoshopped to perfection. The design and the color schemes look very cool (ahem, an aesthetic term) and you’ve set up your checkout process with a secure third-party payment gateway. That’s it, right? Well – not if you haven’t dedicated as much effort as you already have to your product pages. Here’s a list of awesome tips for turning your product pages into awesome sales magnets: Optimize it. This, really, is a given, since you want the search engines to find you as easily and as often as the human visitors do. Great ways to make your product page SEO-friendly include: avoiding duplicate content and duplicate URLs; writing up unique and compelling text descriptions for each product (don’t just copy the manufacturers’ descriptions); and editing this content in a way that makes it relevant to your – Read the full article
It’s great to drive traffic – online and offline – from all corners of the world. But if you’re a smart marketer, you’ll realize you don’t have to be so international – at least not when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Thanks to local search, businesses don’t have to squander resources on attracting customers and visitors that are beyond their geographic reach anyway. One can instead focus on catering to the heart of the locals. Want to find out how? Here’s a list of 17 great local SEO and local search tips, tricks, and tools to help you get started. Claim. Claim your local listing on Google Places. While you’re at it, go to Bing Local and Yahoo Local and claim your listings there, too. Apply best practices. Read our guide on Google Places to put yourself closer to the center of the map. Submit your info to the online yellow pages. Sign up in online directories and – Read the full article
Facebook is all about building relationships – and so is your blog. So are they a match made in heaven? Should you shell out some of your hard-earned cash to buy advertising for your blog on Facebook? It could be a smart move. Statistics show that Facebook advertising is more effective at relationship marketing than it is at direct selling. Besides, compared to many other forms of advertising, Facebook is low-cost, but any money you spend needs to be cost-effective. That means creating ads that stand out from the crowd, that reaches your target audience, and that drives traffic to your blog. Sound like a big order? When you’re creating your Facebook ad, remember these 3 tips and you’ll increase your chances of success. Know Who You Want to Reach One key to successful online marketing is getting your message to the right people and Facebook lets you choose your target audience. Even before creating your Facebook ad, decide who – Read the full article
The following are some simple web marketing integration ideas that can accelerate your campaign efforts – and business. Share messages on several channels The first step in integrating all your Internet marketing efforts is to tell a message repeatedly across various channels. Let’s say you have a new product to announce. Make sure the news is on your website’s news page as a link to media coverage or as a press release. Re-communicate the message in your blog (in a conversational tone) and have it posted on your Facebook page, tweeted on Twitter, and E-mailed to the opt-in e-mail / subscriber list. In addition, you might want to showcase the news in your website’s home page, as a form of attention-catching headline or ticker. The truth is that customers will not get access to your information in the same way. They all have their own preferences, after all. By amplifying your message on several online marketing channels, it makes it – Read the full article
Do you know that it takes just 24 seconds to improve your SEO ranking performance? Well, not really. We made that number up because the number catches attention. But catch your attention we certainly hope we did, because this SEO tip we’re about to give you can definitely go a long way in getting you more – and more relevant – search engine traffic. And yeah, they might take about 24 seconds or less to complete. What are title tags? To put it simply, title tags are the document titles required in all HTML/ XHTML documents. The term “documents” includes your website or blog. Ideally, your title tags will be used to help identify the contents of the pages of your website or blog. The HTML code that defines the title of your HTML documents follows a certain format. Let’s take the Lakeshore Branding blog – http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog – as an example. <head> <title>Chicago Marketing Blog | Internet Marketng | SEO – Read the full article
