June 16th, 2010
We’ve established that SEO [Search Engine Optimization] can effectively pull traffic to your website through the use of strategically planted “seeds” within your site. Search engines continually send out “spiders” or web crawlers, looking for those keywords that you’ve carefully embedded within your site as metatags, alt tags, page titles, page names and links – each of which is seen and recognized differently by the spiders.
Search Engine Marketing [SEM] pushes traffic to your website. SEM refers to the practice of increasing traffic to your website through the use of paid placements [advertisements, pay-per-click listings] and external directories [trade and business membership listings – Chamber of Commerce and similar networks, for example]. Blogs and social media are essential tools in today’s marketing world.
Search engines like links – both incoming and outgoing. Links from your site to other sites, articles, and resources are easy to add to your site, but the search engines know that. Incoming links carry a little more weight with the crawlers, but finding those opportunities might present more of a challenge.
There’s good news here: you can create your own incoming link opportunity with a blog or e-newsletter for your business. The beauty of these media formats is that they work double time for your business. Done correctly, they will literally push traffic to your site: the reader reads and then clicks – beautiful! But they’re also virtually pushing traffic via the search engines. Not only is your link from your blog to your website [incoming link] attractive to the crawlers, but so is the content of your blog. Search engines love fresh, keyword-rich content, so keep feeding them with regular blog posts [like this one].
Lastly, don’t discount the importance any Internet mention of your business: Has your business been in the news recently? Has it been recognized by a trade organization or received an award? There may be a listing [incoming link] as a result, and if you make mention of it on your site you can create a reciprocating [outgoing] link.
Ready to get pushy with your marketing? Call us, we’d love to help!
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April 21st, 2010
Now that you have clearly defined the purpose of your blog, you need to identify who your audience is going to be. In the same way that you focus on who will be using your products and/or services, you need to figure out for whom you are writing this blog. This will dictate the content of your posts as well as the tone in which you write them, two elements which will influence how you are perceived by your readers. Your objective may be to demonstrate the expertise of your niche to prospective partners, or to create an interactive relationship with clients, or even to motivate your internal staff. No matter what objective you decide to focus on, each one will require a different approach to both what you write and how you present it.
In order to help you define who your target audience will be, ask yourself these questions:
1) Are you writing this blog to inform existing customers about the full range of your products and/or services?
2) Are you trying to reach new customers or markets and introduce them to your products or services?
3) Are you using your blog to demonstrate your expertise in a certain area?
4) Are you using your blog to promote better or more efficient customer service?
These are just a few of the questions that you can ask yourself in order to define your market.
For more details or help with identifying your audience/target market, contact the team at Graphic Matter!
posted by admin | 1 Comment
April 7th, 2010
A successful blog needs to have a PURPOSE. Why, you ask? Think about the blogs you follow. Chances are, you are benefitting in some way, correct? Perhaps you like a particular blog because it increases your general knowledge base. Or perhaps it provides entertainment. Or even specific information about a product or service, or upcoming events.
Ask yourself, “What purpose do I want my blog to serve?”
It is crucial to clearly identify WHY you want to start a business blog.
• Will it serve as a focal point for a network of contacts for your company?
• Will it help to position you as an expert in your field?
• Is it to promote a particular service or product – and perhaps in the process, create a group of evangelists for your product or service?
• Perhaps the focus will be internal communications, either for the company as a whole, or for a specific business unit?
While these are ALL great reasons to start a blog, it is important to identify and focus on ONE objective in order to maximize your blog’s potential. Keep in mind though, that you may need to adjust your blog’s focus down the road to adapt to evolving business and audience needs.
Come back next week to find out how to define your target audience. Can’t wait? Assistance from the Graphic Matter Team is always just a phone call away!
posted by admin | 1 Comment
February 17th, 2010
In our last blog post we discussed two quick and easy ways you can follow a blog. While either of them will work just fine, they do put you in the position of seeking out updates yourself. Wouldn’t you prefer to have the information come right to you? In this post we will show you how to configure your email application to receive blog posts directly into a folder in your email. How great is that?
Configuring your email application to accept RSS feeds will allow you to effortlessly keep up with your favorite blogs. Each time an update is published to a blog you follow, it will also be automatically sent to the RSS feed folder in your email application. You will know immediately when the blog is updated and it will be there for you to read when you are ready. Although each email application is slightly different, the basic concept and process is the same: Open your email application and look for an RSS link [or email inbox] like this one pictured below.
Click on it and follow the instructions provided by your email application. It’s so simple, and will save you time each day, and allow you to effortlessly keep up with the blog posts as they happen—without going to multiple sites.
Did you find this tip helpful? Share your feedback in the comments section of our blog – we’d love to hear from you!
Next week is part 3 of our series, How I Love to Follow A Blog, Let Me Count the Ways: How to set-up a Feed Reader Page in your internet browser. See you next post!
posted by admin | 6 Comments
February 11th, 2010
Now that you are reading our blog, or any other blog for that matter, you are going to want to know when there is a new post to read on that blog. So how do you know when there is a new post on your favorite blog? In our previous post, 4 Fabulous Ways to Follow Our 2¢, we identified 4 different ways to follow our blog. In this post we are going to explain how to set an internet browser bookmark and how to subscribe to and RSS feed.
1) Internet Browser Bookmarks:
Simply bookmark your favorite blog or blogs in your browser (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer etc) by using the Bookmark Tab in the menu bar. This will add the blog address in your bookmarks panel and make it easy for you to get back to that blog. You can pick one day a week to check out each blog to see what’s new and what’s been posted. This is an easy, low tech way to mark the blogs you like, however, it is somewhat cumbersome and it puts the burden on you to remember to go back and check those sites regularly for any new posts.
2) Subscribe to an RSS feed:
Before we tell you how to subscribe to an RSS feed, let’s make sure we define what an RSS feed is. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. But what does that mean? I spent some time poking around the Web for the most complete, yet simple, description of RSS to share with you. Seth Godin describes RSS as this: “ RSS is just a little peep, a signal, a ping that comes from a favorite blogger site, telling your computer that it has been updated.”
Most blogs have a little orange button that say RSS and look like this:
Subscribing to an RSS feed is simple and easy, you just click on the orange RSS icon on the blog you are interested in and add that RSS feed to your internet toolbar. This will put a notification in your browser tool bar that this blog has a new posting, and a link to read the post.
Next week read about how to configure your email application to accept RSS feeds in Part 2 of How I Love to Follow a Blog, Let Me Count the Ways!
posted by admin | 9 Comments
We’ve established that SEO [Search Engine Optimization] can effectively pull traffic to your website through the use of strategically planted “seeds” within your site. Search engines continually send out “spiders” or web crawlers, looking for those keywords that you’ve carefully embedded within your site as metatags, alt tags, page titles, page names and links – each of which is seen and recognized differently by the spiders.
