Tips for Staying on Target

cstover — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:25:52 +0000

Tip #1 – Response Marketing
While image branding should be included in your marketing strategy it is important that you plan marketing efforts that solicit an immediate response from your potential customers. To create a strong call-to-action utilize elements such as coupons, gift with purchase, or “mention this ad” to provide you with tangible results and to determine which campaigns worked and which didn’t.

Tip #2 – Use a Marketing Events Calendar
A marketing events calendar is a simple and visual tool to chart your business’s marketing efforts and results. Your calendar can show promotions and campaigns spanning one month, six months or even up to a year in advance. By using a calendar you can adjust your promotions around holidays or position your product or service as the perfect “must-have” for a special occasion. A marketing events calendar can be indispensable when organizing the day-to-day marketing efforts surrounding campaigns and promotions.

Tip #3 – Don’t Get Set in Your Ways
Avoid being “set in your ways” and remember just because you’ve always done something a certain way doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it that way. By tracking and measuring the results of your marketing efforts you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Keep yourself open to test changes in your marketing efforts. When you see the fruits of your labor you’ll be glad did!

Let RSS do the Heavy Lifting

cstover — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:39:37 +0000

When we started this blog only 5 days ago, it was mainly an exercise to learn, first-hand, the mechanics of rss feeds and to discover the benefits for our clients. We had always been encouraging our client’s to link a blog to their static sites, but until we tried it ourselves we were just passing on second-hand information.

So we started this blog, inserted an RSS feed into the front page of our website, and sat back to see what would happen. We only sent out about 5 emails to tell our closest friends about the blog because we didn’t want them to skew the analytics (much). The results are in. Within 5 days 3.58% of our website visitors were click-throughs from the blog. Within 3 hours one of our articles were picked up by 4 other blogs. Within 4 days another article was picked up by 2 more blogs. What this means is that, as I write this article, which will take less than 1/2 hour to write and edit, I can count on the keywords contained here will be picked up by other blogs and carried into the ethernet. Perhaps other will find value in taking a moment to read this, and others will find enough value to explore our website.

There are thousands of website developers out there – we just want our share of the market. We won’t do that by sitting in our little corner of the world and hoping someone will discover us. So we’re taking charge of our future by letting RSS feeds do our heavy lifting.

To see how this can work for you, visit our website and scroll down to the bottom of our home page. You’ll see this article in action as it keeps our website content fresh and creates keywords that are SEO friendly. (More on that in another article.)

When should I pronounce my site “Finished?”

cstover — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:37:42 +0000

Establishing a successful website with a bright future requires more than simply publishing content; you need to constantly refresh and update your website in order to generate traffic, attract links and appeal to new readers. Most search engines recommend updating your website on a fairly regularly basis, but many site owners fail to realize the simple power of these updates. Five reasons why you should constantly update your site:

Fresh content improves your search rankings
Updated material appeals to readers
New information offers an edge over the competition
Fresh content helps your marketing efforts
Updates inspire other websites to link to your content

In other words … you should never consider your site finished!

Tip: Watch your Load Time

cstover — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:29:59 +0000

There are over 40 browsers and operating systems in use today, which may mean that your page will not load quickly, efficiently, or maybe not load at all in some browsers. With so many different ways to view your site you should make sure visitors will never miss your message with a slow-loading site. Remember, there are still some internet users with dial-up service (I know it’s hard to believe!) and load times are a critical matter for them.

TIP: Always optimize your photos for faster loading and avoid very large pdf files. Try to save photos at about 72-90 dpi (dots per inch) and size them about 700 pixels wide. This is a good rule of thumb for most website needs.

Adding “texture” to your Web pages

cstover — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:31:28 +0000

Sans serif fonts are often used to convey a contemporary, minimalist feeling to a website. Serif fonts are considered more traditional and may convey “confidence” in your message.

Mixing font styles adds texture to your site keeps your pages interesting. Pages with texture are more likely to engage viewers – but choose your type carefully or you’ll wind up with a hodge-podge that nobody wants to look at. You have invested a lot of time writing clear and concise content, and if you really want viewers to read it – don’t make their life more difficult with poorly-chosen type faces. Don’t forget that choosing the right color and size is just as important. But I’ll leave that subject for another article.

TIP: Always test your site in all the major browsers since type and page design looks different depending upon the browser.