Things to Keep in Mind When Developing Your Mobile Site – By now you’ve probably noticed that mobile browsing is the next big thing, and in fact even now mobile computing is of the most popular ways to access the internet. This means that every business owner at some point needs to have a site that is mobile-friendly and optimized accordingly. It may seem like a [...] http://ow.ly/2xHkHS
Things to Keep in Mind When Developing Y
June 18, 2013
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You Never Get a Second Chance at a First Impression
June 12, 2013It’s true. And it’s true whether it’s showing up for a blind date, doing a presentation in front of a new client, or meeting your future in-laws.
What about meeting a BNI visitor? The same holds true; you never get a second chance at a first impression.
Is your meeting place a professional venue? If you’re meeting in a hotel, where in the hotel is the meeting? Do you have someone stationed in the lobby to let visitors know that you meet in the restaurant on the second floor? Does the hotel staff know when and where you met? The same criterion holds true for meeting in an office building. Make the meeting place easy to reach.
How often has the Visitor Host/Welcoming Committee arrived at your meeting to set up and there’s already a visitor there? Visitors don’t know how long it’s going to take them to get there, so they leave early. While the visitor is happy to see that you have arrived, what impression did you leave? The solution is to have one of the Visitor Host team arrive 20-30 minutes before the meeting to welcome visitors.
When the visitor arrives, is the Visitor Host table set up? Does it look professional? Do you have a table for your brochures, fliers and testimonial book?
When the visitor signs in and gets their name tag, what next? Does your chapter “comp” the visitors 1st visit or do they need to pay the room fee? Let them know the procedure immediately and if there is any confusion, suggest they wait until the person who invited them arrives. When that person arrives let them know that their visitor is here and explain any confusion for them to handle.
Ask the visitor if this is their first BNI meeting? If so, briefly tell them about the meeting and that they will have 30-45 seconds to introduce themselves to the group after the members do so.
Does someone on the Visitor Host/Welcoming Committee take them into your meeting room and introduce them to a member? After they have spoken, does that member introduce the visitor to another member and then another? We call that the hot potato game.
After the meeting the Visitor Host/ Welcoming Committee should contact the visitors and ask if they have any questions and what they think of BNI. The President should contact them with a phone call or email, as should the person who invited them. A request for a 1-2-1 with someone on their potential team is a good touch.
When asking new members why they joined their chapter, the most common responses are that they felt welcomed and were impressed with the business-like meeting.
How’s your chapter’s first impression?
Karen McKinney is the BNI Director Consultant for Cluster 106. She is also the founder and President of Baskets-n-Bag Inc, a corporate gift basket company in Vienna, VA. Baskets-n-Baskets help their customers thank those people who keep them in business, their clients, their referral sources and their employees. They specialize in creating custom baskets to fit any occasion, any reason and any season. Baskets-n-Bags – Gifts that keep you in mind. www.baskets-n-bags.biz
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How Guest Posting Can Help Your Business
June 12, 2013
When you’re trying to market your business online, the goal is to create a web presence that is popular and far-reaching, with regular site traffic and a community of engaged social media followers. Of course, this can be easier said than done, especially when it comes to creating awareness beyond your company’s existing circle of contacts. Guest posting is an effective way to quickly build your presence, as well as boosting brand recognition, and it’s pretty easy to get started, even if your blog or site is new.
Guest posting can work in a variety of ways, but usually you’ll want to search Google for your top keywords, and find blogs that rank fairly highly. You’re not looking for direct competitors, but rather blogs where the focus is complementary or supplementary to what your site offers. The best way forward is to contact the blog owner and send them a guest posting proposal. Introduce yourself, explain that you’d like to write a guest post for their blog, and suggest a couple of topics that would appeal both to their readers and to your own audience.
The benefits of this approach are numerous. One, you’re building relationships with other people in your niche, whom you may later partner with on any number of projects or campaigns. They may also mention you on their social media accounts, or you may mention them on yours.
Two, as far as the actual post goes, the idea is that you can link back to your own site within the post, as well as introducing yourself in a little “about the author” paragraph at the bottom. This helps build backlinks to your site, and in addition helps build a reputation of expertise. The more sites in your niche that you can post on with varying topics, the more you will start to be seen as someone who is knowledgeable, available, and helpful.
In addition, having unique content on various sites that are relevant to you helps boost your SEO. Google loves to see an author posting in numerous places, and by associating your name not only with your own site but with other similar sites, you can help spread your brand far and wide. It also helps the site where you guest post, as they can use your expertise to help strengthen their own reputation.
Do you have any previous experience with guest posting? What sort of changes have you seen in your traffic from posting on other people’s blogs?
Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert, Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Peg is the founder and president of COGO Interactive, an innovative Internet Marketing firm specializing in helping small to mid-sized businesses increase revenue and awareness by leveraging Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. She can be found on Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and thecogoblog.com.
Leave a Comment » | Blogging | Tagged: Blogging, marketing strategy, Website | Permalink
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The Importance of Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Devices
May 29, 2013
Even just a few years ago, it was unusual to see people browsing the web on a phone or mobile device. Tablets hadn’t really become popular yet, and smartphone browsers weren’t quite up to the task. These days, the technology for truly mobile browsing is catching up with user needs; what is still lagging, however, is web design.
Although most major brands now have mobile-optimized sites, many smaller business sites and personal sites still aren’t ready for the mobile revolution. If you haven’t had a site redesign in a while, it’s safe to say that people who are viewing your site on a tablet or phone are not having a great time. Considering that tablet sales are now starting to surpass PC sales, if you don’t have a mobile-optimized site, you are alienating a growing sector of visitors who are potential customers.
If you have put off a site redesign because of the cost, consider the cost of not doing so. If a user cannot view your site easily and correctly on their device, this can be a huge setback to any brand development strategy you have, not to mention the damage that can be done when people start talking over social media about how your site lets your company down. In addition, if you have an ecommerce site, not having it optimized for mobile means shoppers will turn to other sites that better meet their needs.
The ecommerce impact is often underestimated. If you think that people don’t really shop from their phones, think again – the numbers increase dramatically every year, and experts are predicting that by 2016, mobile shopping will top over $30 billion per year. These are some serious numbers, and if you’re not taking advantage by being ready for visitors, your competition will.
In short, a mobile-optimized site means that you’ll be inviting more traffic, increasing your sales potential, and engaging with your audience in a friendlier way. This is turn will be good news for your brand, and good news for your sales numbers. Talk to your web designer about mobile optimization now, so that a strategy can be put in place that will allow for easy updates in the future.
Is your site mobile-ready? If so, have you noticed a difference in numbers yet?
Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert, Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Peg is the founder and president of COGO Interactive, an innovative Internet Marketing firm specializing in helping small to mid-sized businesses increase revenue and awareness by leveraging Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. She can be found on Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and thecogoblog.com.
Leave a Comment » | Business Networking | Tagged: Mobile Marketing, Website | Permalink
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5 Steps to Create a Compelling “About Us” Page
May 24, 2013
When people visit your website, one of the first things they’re going to want to know is what your company is about. While the home page of your site will certainly give them the general idea, the “About Us” page gives you an opportunity to go into a little more detail about who you are, what you stand for, and what your business aims to accomplish. Here are five ways to make an About Us page that people will remember.
1. Bolster credibility. Nowhere is it more appropriate to toot your own horn than on your About Us page. If you have special credentials, have won some awards, or belong to some professional organizations, this is the place to mention that. You may also want to include a short history of the company, especially if there’s some prestige there.
2. Remember your company tone. When talking about your company, it’s important to stay consistent with the tone you’ve chosen for all your communications. Whether that’s formal and professional, relaxed and casual, or somewhere in between, keep your About Us page in line with that to avoid confusing the reader.
3. Decide on an appropriate point of view. Do you want to introduce each member of your team individually, or do you want to do a general overview of the staff instead? Again, this may depend on tone, as well as how many people you have in your office. If it’s a casual environment and there are only a few staff members, you might do individual introductions; if it’s a larger office or a more formal environment, an overview might be better.
4. Be honest. This goes hand-in-hand with credibility. It can be tempting to pad out your About Us page in the same way that people sometimes pad out their résumés, being a bit creative with the truth to make things sound grander than they really are. There’s no need to do this, and in fact it can end up hurting you when visitors start to smell something fishy (and they will!). Simply keep it real – people will appreciate that a lot more.
5. Make yourself readily available. There’s nothing more frustrating than a business website that doesn’t have easy-to-use contact information in an obvious place. Don’t make people have to dig for your email address or contact form; displaying it prominently on your About Us page lets people know you’re focused on good customer service.
Does your site have an appropriate About Us page? How long has it been since you updated the information there?
Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert, Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Peg is the founder and president of COGO Interactive, an innovative Internet Marketing firm specializing in helping small to mid-sized businesses increase revenue and awareness by leveraging Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. She can be found on Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and thecogoblog.com.
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How Important Is Branding Synergy to Your Marketing Strategy?
May 15, 2013
In the days when a company website was the only aspect of a business’ online presence, controlling brand consistency was pretty simple. With everything all in one place, you only had one shot at getting your audience’s attention, but once you had it, there was only one set of branding you had to manage.These days, online branding is much more complex. On one hand, you have many opportunities to attract an audience – your site, social media, and search, to name a few. On the other hand, it’s now essential to make sure that your branding is consistent across all these channels, in order to keep your brand at the forefront of your audience’s awareness.
This means that now more than ever, you have to be conscious of how you are portraying your brand, and keep the brand continuity seamless regardless of where your audience may find you. This sounds simple on the surface, but achieving and maintaining brand synergy is a skill that requires perpetual monitoring and diligence.That said, it doesn’t have to be difficult; it’s simply a matter of being aware of the content of your communications in terms of visual branding and tone, and making sure that both are carried across all channels to ensure that the same overall message is broadcast everywhere, and in the same way. For example, if you have set up your brand style to be youthful, playful, and fun, and your website matches up to this tone, it won’t make sense to your audience if the content on your social media accounts is written in a more serious tone. You don’t want any question in the reader’s mind when they come across one of your social media accounts, that the brand represented on your site is the same brand as the one they encounter on social media.
This reinforcement of a consistent message across all channels is at the heart of a strong branding strategy, and is the key to keeping your brand in the minds of your audience. If your company has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest page, or any number of other social media accounts, the number one priority in your social media management should be to maintain this brand synergy across all channels. Doing so could make the difference in whether people remember who you are and what you do.
How does branding synergy factor into your social media strategy? Do you pay close attention to how consistently your brand comes across?
Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert, Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Peg is the founder and president of COGO Interactive, an innovative Internet Marketing firm specializing in helping small to mid-sized businesses increase revenue and awareness by leveraging Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. She can be found on Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and thecogoblog.com.
Leave a Comment » | Online Marketing | Tagged: marketing strategy | Permalink
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Online Marketing: How It All Fits Together
May 1, 2013
In the traditional, offline marketing models, often things were compartmentalized and kept completely separate. Your newspaper ads probably had little to do with your mailing list, except that the overall goal was to bring more business in. These days, the online marketing model is a little bit different, with every aspect contributing to the overall goal of gathering an audience so that everyone can join in on the conversation, in the expectation that some of those audience members will become and remain customers.
The interesting thing is, it’s the actual building of the audience that helps you build the audience. In other words, if you can get a few people interested enough to share and tell their online networks, that in turn attracts more people. This generally happens in three different ways that all work together.
Quality Content – Without content, you have nothing. Your content is how you create value, offering information that will be of interest to your target audience. You should spend most of your time, effort, and budget on creating the best content you possibly can, because it’ll be the backbone of your online marketing strategy.
SEO – When people see your quality content, they link to it. They share it on their blogs. Links build, and search engines notice. In turn, your site ranks higher for the keywords that are associated with you and your business. Never underestimate the power of search engines, especially Google – they are indispensable in bringing the right people to you.
Social Media – There’s nothing like a business growing by word of mouth. People trust each other’s opinions where they won’t trust advertising, and this is where social media really comes into its own. When people share your content on Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks, it’s like having really fast and broad word-of-mouth chain, and the potential for explosive growth is great.
It’s important not to think of any of these branches as being separate from the others. They all work in conjunction with each other, and you have to consider them as such. The most effective online marketers spend time creating good content, and then encourage others to curate and share it. If you can balance high quality content with a high level of enthusiasm for sharing your expertise with the world, you have a good chance of growing an audience who will convent to customers.
How are your integrated marketing efforts going? How do you balance your time between content creation, SEO, and social media?
Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert, Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Peg is the founder and president of COGO Interactive, an innovative Internet Marketing firm specializing in helping small to mid-sized businesses increase revenue and awareness by leveraging Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. She can be found on Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and thecogoblog.com.
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