Social Media – 5 Things To Consider Before Taking The Plunge

Posted on March 17, 2012 by High Arte

While “Social Media” in all of its forms is now a fact of life for anyone using the Internet and has become an important aspect of B2C marketing, this is not the case in B2B marketing. In fact, many businesses have no clear idea how to use theses myriad networks or if they can play any part in helping them market their products or services.

Here are five things to consider when contemplating using Social Media as a business-marketing tool:

Social Media is Just That – Social

Unlike advertising where a business communicates what it does or sells to the consumer and hopes the consumer will purchase it, which is very much a one-way street (business > consumer), social media flows in both directions. The consumer is, in varying degrees, an active participant on social media networks – from choosing to be connected to actively liking, commenting and recommending. If, as a business, you aren’t interested spending the time and energy it takes to engage in a dialogue and communicate publicly with consumers, social media is not for you.

Strategic Planning Is Essential

In order for any form of Social Media to be successful, it requires both time and resources to set up and to maintain. In addition, you need to have a clear understanding of what the Social Media network’s dynamic does and does not do and how it relates to your overall marketing strategy.

It makes no sense to have a Facebook page unless you understand how Facebook works in relationship to marketing your business. Once you understand a network’s dynamic, it’s essential to come up with a clearly defined marketing strategy – only then should time and resources be allocated.

Know Your Network

Knowledge is power and research is key to deciding which Social Media network is right for you. Do you have the contacts for Facebook, the time for Twitter, the business associates for LinkedIn or will a smaller, more focused “niche” network be better for your needs? What your product or service is will have a great deal to do with the Social Media network you choose. So learn what’s out there and how the networks work before making a commitment.

Content Is King

A blog, newsletter, article, interview, video or podcast are ways of communicating who you are and what you do. Since the essence of Social Media is content sharing, it is essential that if a business wants to be in the Social Media game they have to come up with content, and they have to come up with it on a regular basis.

If you want people and search engines to be interested in what it is you do, you have to create content that shares the who, what, where, when and why of you with the world. Content creation takes a lot of time and time is money so either you have do it or you have to turn your content generating over to a third party.

The Road is Long But Can Be Rewarding

Social Media and Internet Marketing is a process not a product. The process involves engaging people and allowing them to learn about who you are and what you do. The object is to have the consumer develop a trust in you and be willing – even eager – to share that trust – that recommendation – with others. This takes time and consistency and if you aren’t prepared to provide the necessary content over a prolonged period of time, you would probably be better off not engaging in Social Media rather than gaining followers and then dropping or ignoring them.

Social Media is just as effective in hurting a reputation as it is in building one.

15 Gramatical Toe Stubbers

Posted on March 6, 2012 by High Arte

Here are 15 excellent grammatical tips that can help improve both your writing and speech. As great as spell check may be, it can’t always catch these gramatical stumbles and these mistakes could really make you look dumb.

I’m particularly guilty of typing “it’s” for “its” and “complement” for “compliment”. There’s no reason to make these mistakes now because Coppyblogger has provided a clear explanation of the 15 gramatical errors most often made and Blue Grass has created a terrific infographic to communicate them.

The Art of the Blog

Posted on March 4, 2012 by High Arte

Business blogging can be extremely beneficial, not only in terms of maintaining or improving your company’s search engine optimization, but also in helping to develop a following and/or client base. However, the secret is to not to hawk your wares or services but to provide interesting and pertinent content that readers find worthwhile. So, if you’re investing time and money in a bog, but aren’t seeing any ROI, before you ditch your blog, check and see if you’re guilty of any of the following:

Writing Extended Sales Pitches

People take the time and energy to read a blog when they believe the content adds to their knowledge base. If the content you provide is nothing more than an overly long promotion flogging your wares, you can rest assured what readers you have will stop reading.

The Snooze Factor

The larger the net the more fish you can catch. In other words, look at the larger picture and post different kinds of content on your blog to pull in a wider audience. The same couple of notes played over and over again will get boring so, think out of the box. This is particularly true when it comes to writing titles. Be aware of what’s going on in the world, what everyone is talking about and hook into the hear and now.

The Art of Doing It

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Well blogging is much the same, but instead of practice, it’s writing. If you don’t blog on a regular basis (at least once a week) you’re kidding yourself that it will have any impact or that you will develop a following. Business blogging is not personal, it’s business and it can’t be done in your spare time. If you expect people to want to read and follow your blog you have to spend as much time and energy writing your blog as your readers spend reading it.

Optimization and Tags.

As previously mentioned, one of the most important aspects of blogging is helping to optimize you website. That is, if you blog is part of your website. Optimization is crucial if you want your website to rank with the search engines. Keywords and key phrases (i.e., specific content) are what the search engines are searching for. Therefore, when considering what to write on your blog, it’s essential to consider SEO and incorporate keywords. The thoughtful optimization of blog posts improves the chances that they will be found organically in the search engines and continue to deliver traffic over time.

Not Promoting

It takes awhile for a blog post to achieve organic traffic. In order to get it noticed it’s important to promote it. Include a link on your website homepage, submit the site to blog directories, utilize social media, and contribute guest posts to other blogs to increase awareness and generate traffic to your own blog.

And remember, content marketing of any kind, including blogging, is a long term strategy. The key once you start it is to stick with it. It’s about establishing trust with target audience members over time.

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have A Clue

Posted on February 22, 2012 by High Arte

It’s Kismet! I write a blog about the importance of blogging and what happens, Copyblogger, a blog I read about blogging, sends out a blog about 22 ways to create compelling content on a blog when you don’t have a clue.

So now if you really want to blog, check out the infographic below and see how you can come up with content. And if you want to know more about blogging or any aspect of on-line marketing Contact Us and we’ll set up an appointment.

To blog or not to blog, that is their question.

Posted on February 21, 2012 by High Arte

At least that’s the question most of my clients pose when discussing the design or re-design of their website. “Is blogging really necessary?” they’ll ask. “I mean … is anyone going to read it and, also, who has time to write a blog and … what am I supposed to write about?”

There are several answers to these questions:

The point of blogging is to communicate to the public or to your client base pertinent information about what it is you do, or about yourself or your company.
It’s a significan ingredient in a marketing campaign and essential in search engine optimization (SEO). If you want your website to be considered relevant by the search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) and be ranked by them, a blog is a critical component of most successful SEO strategies.

For those of you who want to know more about the why’s and wherefore’s of blogging, here’s a straightforward explanation of why it’s important — and a few thoughts on how to go about it.

Content Is King

There are millions upon millions of websites on the Internet – far too many for search engines to monitor in real-time. Therefore, how often they visit or “crawl” a given website depends in large part on how often content is added. A search engines only purpose is to provide content to those who “search” for information.

For example, Google might crawl a website after an absence of three weeks. If new content is added, it will be more likely to return after only two weeks. And if new content is continually being added, it indicates to Google that this website is a font of new information and it will crawl it even more often.

However, if Google never finds any new content, their spiders might not return for a month or even longer, which will mean that site will do poorly in search results.

So adding new content to a site is a significant way of promoting your search rankings, and the easiest place on a website to add new content is … a blog.

What To Write About?

Writing anything is not easy, but writing a blog on a regular basis requires not only dedication to the act of writing, but an ongoing commitment to developing topics to write about. Keeping a list of ideas as they come up or you come across them is a great way to start.

And don’t edit your thoughts at this time. You need to feel free to write down anything you think might be of interest regardless of how mundane or silly it may seem. The is the first step in the creative writing process and you don’t want to short-circuit that process by being judgmental. Here are some general topics to help kick-start the process:

Client problems and the solutions you provided
New developments within the company — new employees, a new office
Developments within the industry — Is there a new product available? What technology is pushing your industry to change?
Fun topics — company parties, company pets, a particularly interesting project
Writing specifically for keyword phrases. For example, a client of ours is a landscape designer and contractor. She and I decide on topics and write a bi-monthly blog that deals with the many aspects of landscape design and it’s construction, linking back to those pages in her website that relate to each topic.

A Final Thought

In addition to what I’ve mentioned, blogging does two other things that are essential in building a business and establishing a client base.

It establishes you as an authority in your field and provides you with both visibility and credibility.
By providing information about who you are and what you do, you help establish a relationship with those who are interested in what you do.

Blogging can be fun, informative and genuinely help in promoting your business. But you should do it because you want to and not because you feel you must. If you think of it as sharing information about something you love with people you care about, it will be a lot easier to begin and a whole lot easier to continue.

The “Who” and the “What” of Web Design

Posted on February 13, 2012 by High Arte

Content Is What It’s About

Like the essential 5 “Ws” of a news story (who, what, where, when and why), the 2 “Ws” (who and what) are essential in order for a business-to-business (B2B) website to successfully do its job. Content is the reason a potential client comes to your site and it’s your job (actually it’s mine) to make sure that they clearly understand who you or your company is and the product or the service you or it provides. Content should drive the site but many times, this is not the case.

Too often a client’s focus is on the visual aspect of their site and what it should look like, with not nearly enough thought given to clearly communicating who they are and what they do. As a designer, I certainly appreciate the importance of the visual, but it’s information and the need to know that drives a person to a website. The design should be the vessel that clearly conveys the content.

In addition, the search engines’ singular purposes is to gather information and provide it to anyone who expresses an interest.

Design At The Service of the Idea.

When I hear someone say, “it’s not pretty” or “the colors I like are …” or “my favorite colors are …” when very little has been said about what they are trying to communicate or the purpose of the website, I suspect that a great deal more thought has gone into the look of the website rather than its content.

People want to know who you are and what you do and businesses that don’t provide much content or where the design overpowers or dominates the content run the risk of being ignored or dismissed.

In the following excerpt from Nick Stamboulis’s excellent “Brick Marketing Blog” he deals with the importance of content.

Content Is King
The search engines (and your target audience members) like content. It helps determine your relevancy and a B2B website with lots of good content is viewed more favorably than B2B websites with little to no content or poor content. Take the time to get inside the customer’s head and provide them with all of the information that they may need

Optimize It
Any content that you create online, whether on your own website or on other web properties, should be created with SEO in mind. Include keywords throughout the content of the page naturally. FAQ pages are great places to target some long tail keywords since someone looking for answers has something very specific in mind.

Include Meta Tags
Far too many websites optimize and write meta tags for only some of their web pages. They focus on the homepage and other primary pages but don’t worry about doing it for deep inner pages. This is the wrong approach. Every page of a B2B website should be optimized. Remember, the search engines rank web pages, not just the homepage. If you do a good job of optimizing the page and writing custom meta tags, it’s another page that could bring in traffic.”

The essence of modern design is that “form follows function.” The function of a website is to communicate the “who” and the “what” of the client. The website’s form (it’s design) is successful when it illuminates that function.

Welcome Aboard

Posted on February 10, 2012 by High Arte

We live in a world of information overload. And in as much as I’m being constantly bombarded with news and information on the ever-changing world of the Internet and how one should or should not go about marketing one’s self, I would suspect you are as well.

Therefore, I’ve decided the best way for me to keep up with what’s going on is to review the news, decided what’s important and what isn’t, and then share that information, along with my thoughts, with you – hence the name, “News & Views.” In addition, I’ll do my best to keep it short and to the point and do it on a regular basis.

Should you have any questions or comments about what I’ve written or anything concerning the rather general topic of “marketing and the Internet,” don’t hesitate post a comment or send me an email at info@higharte.com and I’ll do my best to respond.

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