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Recap: Seven Tidbits from an EMarketing Techniques Workshop

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

lakecomm

Lakenetwork was pleased to attend May’s eMarketing Techniques Workshop presented by Brad Kleinman of WorkSmart Integrated Marketing for Lake Communicators.

We brought away some useful nuggets that Lake Communicators members may wish to employ in their online marketing strategies:

1. Cross Promotion
Place URLs to your social media pages and websites on physical, paper items your organization or business prints.

2. eNewsletters
Kleinman recommended MailChimp over Constant Contact, as Mailchimp allows you to test alternate subject lines. This allows you to see which subject lines have a higher click-through rate.

3. Convey Your Expertise
Today’s successful businesses need to be content publishers. We agree with this entirely, that businesses need to convey “thought leadership” in their field in order to be taken credibly. We recommend the book,  “Trust Agents” by Chris Brogan for people who want more inspiration on this topic.

4. SEO
Kleinman gave a rough overview of two key considerations for SEO–title tags and incoming links.

We’d like to add that by making your content Web 2.0-friendly (so that it can tie in with Facebook or be shared, etc.), you create a larger web footprint for your site. When people share your content, it helps with incoming links and SEO.

5. Social Plugins
In mid-April, Facebook released Open Graph, which enables you to make your website or blog plug in to Facebook. One easy feature: you can place a “Like” button on your blog post, and when a user clicks “Like,” a link to your page shows up in their activity stream. We plan to post more on OpenGraph soon.

> Facebook for Websites

We’ve added the “Like” button to all of our customers’ Wordpress blogs and plan to investigate more features soon.

> Like for Wordpress

6. Marketing Gimmick
Another useful tidbit Kleinman shared: users like to read quantified, enumerated content, i.e. for your subject line of an eNewsletter, you could say “Five Tips for Better SEO.”

7. LinkedIn
One of the better uses of LinkedIn is to make your topical expertise known by answering questions on the Q&A section of LinkedIn. Also, if you use Microsoft Outlook, you can obtain contextual information about someone by installing a LinkedIn toolbar for Microsoft Outlook.

Lakenetwork

We will be offering an series of free tutorial sessions in our office for common business problems on the Internet. In our first session, we plan to help businesses create Facebook pages. Please contact us at 440-975-9580 for more information, or email contact@lakenetwork.net.

Stay tuned…

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Posted in E-mail Marketing, E-mail Marketing Strategies, Promoting Your Website, Selling with your Website | No Comments »

 

Social Media Norms–Promoting Your Business with Social Media

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Promoting your business on Facebook: what’s appropriate? Should you post resources on your “personal” wall or your business’s fan page wall? Is talking about business from your Facebook profile too pushy?

Non-profit organizations have an easier job navigating social media norms than for-profit businesses. It’s acceptable, expected, and desired of non-profit organizations that they promote events and products.

The utility of the information you present is key to the way your message is perceived. We try to present useful information to our business’s Facebook fans rather than advertisements for services. We believe that a business should find an educational mission. Information that helps this educational mission is good material for a Facebook fan page.

A Facebook profile is more personal than a business fan page. Even if most of your Facebook friends are business contacts, it is not typical practice to advocate one’s own business on a Facebook profile, although this depends on your business. Artists are expected to promote shows; writers to promote blogs. Applicability of content to your audience’s day to day wants and needs is key to judging whether it is suitable material for posting.

Authenticity, engagement, and conscientious professionalism are desirable characteristics in professional use of Facebook profiles.

Social media is very new, though, and the norms for behavior are evolving. And we live in a world of individuals–individuality is our “brand.” So norms for business professionals are subjective.

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Posted in Promoting Your Website, Selling with your Website, Social Media | No Comments »

 

Web Site Pet Peeves

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

This month we asked our staff for their pet peeves regarding Web sites they’ve visited. Here are some of their suggestions:

Sometimes it is hard to figure out how to reach someone in a company, according to marketing manager Laura Freeman. Make sure your contact information is clearly visible. Put contact information on every page, traditionally in the footer (bottom of the page). Or, have a “Contact Us” page. Preferably do both.

Resize your photographs before you put them on the Internet rather than relying on your browser to resize them, says developer Corey Green. Large photos dramatically increase the time it takes for a site to load. Also, the photos look jagged.

Organization is important, especially for larger sites, according to developer Kathy Smith. “I’ve gotten totally lost on sites that don’t have links presented in logical ways. A site should be easy to navigate, and easily expandable without compromising the navigation.”

She added that making a Web site as informative as possible is the best thing one can do. “Put resources online. Give your customers a reason to visit, bookmark, and come back.“

It’s important to not overwhelm your visitors with needlessly long pages or over-elaborate navigation systems, says developer Alex Roys. The more concise you can be, the more effective in getting your point across–rather than burying the visitor under a mountain of information that they can’t use.

Keep these suggestions in mind, and half the battle is won in giving your company or organization an attractive and useful presence on the Internet.

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Posted in Determining Website Requirements, Ease of Use, Selling with your Website, Website Content | No Comments »

 

Web Sites That Work

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

p>Businesses could be faced with lackluster sales during these challenging economic times. It’s always important to ensure your Web site is working to increase your profits and productivity, but it’s doubly important now. How can your Web site build profits and increase productivity with limited resources?

Here are some ideas:

Make sure your pricing is competitive. Is there any way you can shave costs in your pricing structure?

Tell the viewer how essential your product or service is. For example:
Now, more than ever, you need to look your absolute best to get the sale, so come to our salon.

Offer extra value that saves your customers money as they gear up for the holidays.

  • Point out to the visitors to your site that with today’s gas prices, shopping online saves not only time, but gas money as well.
  • Post a downloadable holiday budget planner on your site – your customers will thank you for helping them track their spending.
  • Offer buy one, get one specials, or discounts for those who make a holiday purchase to use next year. This will bring them back in January.

None of these ideas will matter if you’re not getting the traffic you want to your site. Here’s where search engine optimization (SEO) is important. How do you know if you are getting the right traffic? Get statistics from your Web site host on what search terms people are using to find you.

How do you do that? Have your Web maintenance team add Google Analytics to your site. A lot of people think backwards about this – they think SEO is when someone plugs in the name of their company and it comes up. No! SEO is for when someone doesn’t know the name of your company or maybe doesn’t even know you exist! Find Google Analytics at www.google.com/analytics to be able to learn where your visitors come from – and how they interact with your site. Not to mention that it’s FREE to all Internet advertisers and Web site owners.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Selling with your Website | No Comments »

 

 
 
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Willoughby, Ohio 44096
(440) 975-9580
 


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