Tools & Tips for Web Savvy Marketing Strategies
This infographic gives a very succinct description of how to organize your blog posts. Thanks to socialtriggers.com for creating and posting it and for Chris Amorosino for sharing it on LinkedIn.
Like this? Learn how to use psychology to get more traffic and sales with Social Triggers.
Off topic or not, an occasional fish story makes it into this blog. Humor me. I like to fish.
Last Saturday, my husband Brent and I took the kayaks out to Mansfield Hollow for our first outing of the season. It was a beautiful day. As Brent parked the truck I headed out thinking I could catch the first fish of the season.
It was a slow start. I was casting a blue rooster tail spinner–still tied to the line from last fall. After a few casts I looked around at the spring colors of the landscape and realized it was more of a lime green yellow day, so I changed the lure to match the landscape. Fish can be very color sensitive.
The lure change worked. I caught a nice bass. He was hefty. I quickly released him to enjoy the spring colors. Then I caught two more fish. Were they crappies? I think so, but later when I met up with Brent I wasn’t really sure. I could have dug out my phone and snapped a photo before I released them. But you know, it’s hard to take a photo of a fish with a phone while you’re holding a rod and a fish with a hook in a kayak! There’s the hand shortage issue and the fear of losing your paddle. And fish slime on the phone.
Later, when Brent and I were discussing our catches over adult beverages, I said I should find a way to fashion a camera to my glasses so I could ID my fish later.
He said, “Google Glasses.”
And I’m the techno-geek in the family. I hadn’t heard much about Google Glasses. But seriously is it a cool idea or what?!
Sign me up Google. Once I load my Fish ID app and fish finder, I’ll be all set.
"Rockin" Kacee Erhard
We’re excited to have Rockin’ Kacee Erhard blogging for us. Kacee will be blogging about any web related applications, marketing news and information that we think may benefit our client base. If you have any questions or topics you would like Kacee to research and write about, please leave a comment below. Kacee will write about anything you ask her to write about (within reason–she’s already covered pygmy giraffes).
It’s a writing thing. And it’s dogged me like any hungry animal will do until it’s fed. So, I compose in my head the events of the day, words strewn in my mind’s eye in an almost obsessive compulsion. These crumbs, along with journaling, have kept the beasts at bay while raising a family, but the cracks in my exterior were beginning to grow. When my friend, Beth, suggested a writing proposition for Web Savvy Marketers, I instinctively turned to the hounds and offered myself up.
I’m Kacee Erhard, and I’m a compulsive writer. May these blogs be a source of information and good cheer.
For the past two years, Web Savvy Marketers has worked with the Connecticut Women’s Alliance to plan and sponsor their events. On April 25, the CWA will present it’s premier event, the Connecticut Women’s Conference.
With our guiding theme, “Imagine…”, we’ve planned a day to inspire and empower your imagination at the conference this year. We have workshops designed to quench your thirst for knowledge in finance, spirituality, business, wellness, and global awareness. We’re excited to have Deborah Rodriguez, author of “A Cup of Friendship” and “The Kabul Beauty School” as our keynote speaker. Kay Wilson and her expert panel plan to discuss Spiritual, Physical and Mental empowerment. Jaclyn Vocell, a nationally recognized women’s life coach, motivational speaker, business and sports team life coach and leader, who empowers women and teams across the United States to live in victory, will keep the program going as our Master of Ceremonies.
Like last year, we’ve put together an eclectic and interesting group of vendors and exhibitors. Plus we’ll have some perennial favorites (Ben & Jerry’s) and some new surprises (Laugh Yoga) to make the day fun and festive.
Beth and I are pleased to work for and sponsor the CWA and we’re excited to be a part of this event and hope that many of you will join us at the conference. Today is the final day for Early Bird pricing ($119), so register today to save $30.
We hope to see you there!
For several years now, I’ve rebelled against SEO Voodoo.What I mean by SEO Voodoo is the process of hyper-focusing on optimizing your website to the detriment of building a good website. Folks get so caught up in the SEO hype—keywords, link building and so on that they forget that good content will cause people to naturally link to your website and will include the keywords that apply to your material.
Instead, I’ve promoted the concept that a well-designed website with well-crafted, informative content is a far better investment than spending time and money on voodoo search engine optimization. At times, I’ve had clients look at me as if I had two heads. Sadly, in some cases they’ve gone out and hired someone else to do the voodoo.
That’s not to say that I dismiss SEO concepts. I employ practical SEO principles as I build and maintain websites. I believe in classic html SEO practices like creating relevant unique page titles, using heading tags to highlight topics of the website, and I believe in cross-promoting your business and website online with social media sites and e-mail marketing. As a practice I create 301 redirects if I redesign a site and the urls change.
But I’ve never bought into the practices of “guaranteed” SEO tactics — you know — things like cramming keywords into your content, artificially creating links and some of the other crazy ideas the SEO specialists recommend to my clients.
I guess I figured the search engines were smarter than that or maybe I just figured it was more important to create a website that focused on your user’s experience. You know, spend time to create useful content that might actually sell your product or service?
It seems, Google and Bing might agree with me. Last week, Matt Cutts from Google and Duane Forrester from Bing had a conversation at SXSW about SEO. You can listen to to their conversation here. Among some of their points (paraphrased):
So take the advise of some of the search engine pros and focus on creating good content for your website; it may serve you better than SEO voodoo.
Related blog posts:
Cruising through my Twitter feed last night and I came across this inspiring infographic – 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content.
Who doesn’t need inspiration occasionally? I know I do. It’s been some time since I posted any content let alone compelling content to my blog. Lacking time to nurture inspiration this week, I decided to simply post @copybloggers infographic for now so I can refer to it for inspiration when time allows. I believe that makes this post a combination of #1 (using content from other blogs), #2 (group brainstorming via Twitter) and #5 (guest post).
Thank you @copyblogger for allowing me to use this infographic on my blog and to @MichelleShaeffr for retweeting it so I came across it in the feed.
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.
Just because you can search Google Images or other photography sites and find images online that might look good on your website, doesn’t mean you have the rights to use them on your website.
I’ve run into clients and prospects who are under the misguided assumption that images on the web are free for the taking. Not so. In fact, if the stock photography companies find that your site is using pirated images you could be fined hundreds or thousands of dollars. And they will find you. I’ve had clients who have loaded images onto their website (that were unknowingly pirated from an online source) and eventually they get a call from Comstock or some other Stock photo house demanding payment for the use of their image.
Always make sure that you have the right to use images that you place on your website (or any marketing materials). There are many royalty free stock photos you can purchase for use on your website for fairly low cost. IStockphoto.com is one that we use frequently to purchase stock photography.
Music is another component that people like to pirate. It is not legal to use a song you’ve purchased and downloaded onto your IPod as background music for a video you post to YouTube. Sorry. SoundDogs.com is a good source for music and sound effects.
I don’t have to tell anyone that it’s plagiarism to copy text from another site. Do I?
The holiday shopping season kicked off with some distasteful Black Friday incidents last week. Hearing about these unsavory incidents makes me glad I’ve never bothered with Black Friday, I’m more of a Cyber Monday kind of gal, and I support Small Business Saturday. I think it’s important to support your local small businesses including brick and mortar and online stores.
Although the big kick-off shopping weekend is over, I’m sure there’s more shopping to be done. If you prefer to avoid the mall hubbub and feel like staying home in your jammies and doing some on-line shopping this holiday season, here’s a list of clients who are small business owners that sell or show products online. They’re all reputable honest people with great products. The * indicates you may need to call to purchase.
Today I had a unusual call from a long-time client. (I promised not to reveal her name). She apologized for calling me because the problem had nothing to do with her website or her online marketing but she was extremely disoriented because her computer screen had flipped upside down.
I laughed.
“How did that happen?” I asked and then I chuckled some more.
Apparently my client had accidentally hit the combination of keys that’s the shortcut for flipping your display. Yeah, that’s a handy shortcut. Thank you Microsoft.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “Not only is the screen upside down, but the mouse is backwards”.
I laughed again. “Did you try turning the mouse upside down?” I asked.
Meanwhile, while poking fun at my client I did a quick Google search for “upside down display screen” and I quickly found a forum where others had run into the problem. Scanning the forum I saw one that began with “I’m 13 years old and I have the answer to the problem…”
The 13-year old recommended going to the display settings where you will find the option to flip your screen. Who knew? I’m 53 years old and I didn’t know that option existed, but Google and the 13-year old kid made me look like a hero. Thank you Google and unknown 13-year old (you little smartie-pants).
This morning I came across a post offering the top things not to do when optimizing your site for Google search. See “Search engine optimization Elite Review On Google Prime ten NoNo’s“ The points are all valid and a well optimized site should follow all the rules if they want to have their site rank as high as possible. The problem I see with many customers is their laser-sharp focus on getting a good search engine rank while neglecting other marketing and possibly even the website itself.
This hyper-focus may have been enhanced by the glut of SEO experts telling people how vital SEO is to their success. But, web site owners would be wise to remember that the only thing good SEO will do is have your site show up in a site search. It’s not a silver bullet to sales. It will only improve the odds or bringing customers to your website. After that it’s up to you and your website to impress potential customers with amazing content–content that’s current, clear, accurate, informative, and attractively designed.
So while you’re reviewing SEO strategies (because I’m not discounting the effectiveness of a well-optimized site at getting people to the door) don’t forget to review your website. The stuff that customer’s actually see is as important as a good SEO strategy. Here’s a brief checklist of things you should be looking at:
Always focus on building a website that benefits your clients and potential clients. If you keep that in mind as you optimize your site and your content you may find that customers are not only finding you, but they’re also buying from you. And that’s really the ultimate goal isn’t it?
