Why? Because a good web writer is hard to find. And they are essential to any business that wants to drive more revenue without spending a lot in traditional marketing channels. The top two things that make a great web writer are, in my view, style and process. Starting with style, many people think it’s [...]

A client recently asked us to help them use LinkedIn to build company awareness. They asked us to start, facilitate and maintain a discussion group. We said we’d be happy to do this, but asked them to consider another approach. We proposed to start by building a strong and active presence for key employees on [...]

In my last blog, I gave an overview of Google’s answer to Facebook, Google+. So now that the two internet giants are facing off, what are the differences and advantages of each? The first thing that jumps out is privacy. Facebook works on what is essentially a one-to-all sharing model, and while you can manage [...]

Marketers are already having a hard time finding their way through the social media maze. And now Google has added another pathway that is certainly worth exploring. Google+ is Google’s social media project that, they say, is not intended to compete with Facebook but is designed to make the entire Google experience more social. But [...]

If you are a LinkedIn user, have you taken a look at “LinkedIn Today”? http://www.linkedin.com/today/. Launched in March, this site is a “Digg” imitator that has quickly become a valuable resource for LinkedIn users. It aggregates news from your connections, peers and online providers of content that interests you. The concept is simple: by tracking [...]

What is an SLA? And why is it important? During a website development project for a local client, this came up as we conducted a search for the right hosting company. While technical people understand SLA’s, marketers usually don’t. An SLA is a “Service Level Agreement” that defines the responsibilities of a vendor to provide [...]

While starting to develop keywords for a new client, we realized that they had placed their current website at 2 different URLs. The content was exactly the same for each. Unknowingly, they had committed a huge SEO (search engine optimization) mistake. Here’s why. As soon as people realized that one way Google derived organic ranking [...]

What do you say when you meet someone for the first time and they ask you about your company? Do you have a 30 second “elevator pitch?” And if you do, would your colleagues give the same pitch? For many companies, this basic messaging boilerplate either doesn’t exist or is not clearly defined. Even if [...]

Many people I talk to say “how can I do a blog when I’m so busy.” I usually answer, outsource it OR give your followers interesting links to information that will help them do their job better (or at least enjoy it more). So, as I’m leaving soon for a short vacation, I don’t have [...]

As most of you know, a website content management system allows users to update content without needing to know programming languages or HTML. This puts you in control of your website and means you don’t need to pay a webmaster or web agency to change content. What you may not now is that a CMS [...]

QR codes are being used by companies and marketers in many creative ways. You’ve probably seen them before, but I bet not many of you have a QR reader installed on your cell phone. After reading this, you might get one. It’s free and easy to download. You can get it, for example, from the [...]

Business websites vary in quality, but good and bad sites often have one thing in common: there is no compelling way to capture leads. We use the term “call to action” to describe an offer that is of sufficient value to prompt a viewer to give you their name and email address. I am quite [...]

An astonishing figure was just announced by eMarketer.com: over ½ of the internet users in the U.S. will redeem an online coupon in 2011. This means 88.2 million people will click and save! So what about Europe? It’s not quite the opportunity as in the U.S. – yet, but at the end of 2010 sites [...]

In my last blog, I talked about how to find interesting, relevant content that helps the people who follow your blog work better and live happier. This is information people want to receive, but they won’t dig through marketing messages and sales hype to find it. So how does good blog content writing generate business? [...]

How do you get people to follow your blog? By following this simple rule: always deliver ideas that help your audience do their job better and live happier. If you don’t have insights that accomplish this, you shouldn’t blog. The worst thing you can do is regurgitate commonplace information. So how do you develop unique [...]