Importance of having the correct domain name

December 30th, 2013

When trying to get noticed online it is very important to choose the right domain name
and the domain extension that will get your project noticed by the search engines.

Take the next step in growing your business. Join the millions of businesses that have
found success on a .com.

.com means business.
.com is the standard for doing business online. Give your business the recognition
that comes along with a .com,to help connect with new customers and partners.
.com means credibility.
Your name says a lot about your business so why associate it with a less credible domain?
Customers know .com, and that’s why every Fortune 500 company and the world’s 100
fastest-growing companies have a .com.
Align yourself with the domain more businesses rely on to grow online.
.com means confidence.
Every business can benefit from an online identity customers know and trust.
Thanks to over 15 years of reliability, security and availability, .com enables you
and your customers to confidently connect online.

.com by Verisign, a name you can trust for many years to come!

>com by Verisign

Search Engine Optimisation

October 9th, 2010

The Effects Of Correct SEO Practices

Search Engine Optimising a website or webpages for searches involves editing the actual content of the site as well as modifying the coding of the site (such as HTML) in such a way that its relevance to certain keywords is increased. Barriers to the effective search engine indexing are also altered or removed. Optimising your website also involves are variety of other techniques to increase its search ranking. Pages within your website may be cross-linked (one page links to another in the same site) to give prominence to the main page. The meta-tags of a page, those descriptors that exist in the code but are not seen, are also altered to advantage.        Search Engine Optimisation can help your local business to grow quickly.

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Effective Email Marketing Part 3

October 9th, 2010

Email marketing is a type of direct marketing; it involves transmitting advertising messages to a target audience via email. Email marketing  is a great way to communicate directly with your customers. In fact, more buyers prefer to receive an advertisement or sales message via email than any other form of direct marketing, including by telephone or mail. In addition, email marketing is extremely cost-effective.

Email marketing is also green and it can even be automated to save you time. However, proceed with caution. When email marketing is not designed professionally, it can be difficult for buyers, and email filters, to distinguish between legitimate email marketing and spam messages. To make sure that your email marketing campaign will not wind up in a junk mail folder somewhere, consider hiring a professional to make email marketing work for you.

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The Free Exposure That Social Media Can Bring To Your Business

October 3rd, 2010

Be Seen By The People Who Need Your Services

-              Exposure

Having an active presence in social media also affords your business exposure. If your business is involved in social media, it makes it easier for someone to post a comment. While people can do this with or without your business having an online presence, if you are involved in social media, you can respond to the comment, start a conversation, or develop a poll for the issue.

Local

Lastly, social media for your business should have a local element. You can connect and build professional relationships with other businesses in your area, be they complimentary products/services, businesses with the same demographic, or businesses with similar offerings. The connections you make can serve to create a micro-network with the other businesses. Not only will it serve to increase awareness of your business, but it can also lead to promotional events and other mutually beneficial opportunities.

By and large, social media is free to individuals and businesses to use. It can be tempting to read whatever article about how Facebook saved this business or Twitter revitalized that business. You may be so inspired that you start a Facebook page or Twitter account for your business and start posting and promoting your business right away, but think again. Social media for business is light years away from the way you use your social account. If you try to approach social media like you do your friends, you will likely be unsuccessful. Additionally, if you try to make social media into a sales vehicle, it will simply not work. Remember, when you use social media, you are putting a great deal of power in your consumers; while the rewards can be great, so can failure. To make sure this des not happen to your business, make sure that you are using social media properly.

The Social Media Phenomena

October 3rd, 2010

Social Media- Making It Count

Social media is a great tool for a business, but only if used correctly. Social media puts your message into the hands of the consumers; they can post bad reviews, trash your product, and advise their friends to never come to your establishment. Consumers can list what’s great that you offer and what could use some redesign. They can also provide rave reviews that result in your sales going up exponentially. Quite simply, that is a lot of power to put in the hands of a consumer – use it wisely.

There are three key elements that you should keep in mind.

Relationships

-Many businesses make the mistake of trying to use social media as a platform for sales pitches. If you do this, at best you will be ignored; at worse, trashed for trying a cheap ploy to make a sale. Either way, you are wasting a great tool for your business. Instead, focus on making connections with people and developing professional relationships.

When you post acknowledgements, such as a consultant posting “Congrats to XYZ Company for getting the ABC project” or a restaurant posting about an event it is hosting, you promote your product or service while making a personal connection. Those types of posting draw to mind questions to the reader, such as “How did XYZ Company get the ABC project?” The answer is, of course, through the work of the consultant. In the same token, why is the event being hosted by the restaurant? Maybe it was a prize won in a monthly promotion or it could be because the restaurant has a belly dancer the first Monday of every month. In this manner, your business is promoted subliminally while a relationship is built with your clientele.

Additionally in the next post, I will have some examples to demonstrate how a professional posting would read. You want to establish a professional relationship with your customers, not a social one. By and large, they do not care about your personal life – remember that.

Effective Email Marketing 2

October 3rd, 2010

Seven Secrets to a Successful Campaign Part 2

The Final 3 important pieces of the email puzzle:

-               Transparency

Never try to conceal or disguise your identity or your purpose. Email recipients are twice as likely to open an email from a name they recognize than from one they do not. Regarding your purpose, the important part is to be specific. You should never have an subject line that reads “refinance today”; instead, it should read “interest rates are now under 4% for qualified buyers”.

-              Brevity

Keep it short and sweet. Your email ad should be smaller than 55k and viewable on a small screen in its entirety. The ad should have value and substance, not your whole product line. Offer links but keep it brief. Send HTML emails only on rare occasions as most people have their computer set to not open this type of email.

Engage

By using “click here” buttons or including surveys and other interactive elements, you have the opportunity to engage your consumer dynamically. This makes it more convenient for the customer to act on your message. If you neglect to include this, you force your customer to enter your website address or perform a search, which could lead them to a competitor.

In closing, remember these are YOUR customers so try to keep them with YOU and not straying to other businesses!


Effective Email Marketing

September 30th, 2010

Seven Secrets to a Successful Campaign  Part 1

Email is a brilliant marketing tool. Useful for product and service oriented businesses alike, email marketing is “green”, cost-effective, and easy to implement. In addition, email is the primary form of business communication (as opposed to social media). Email marketing is also very effective, netting almost $45 ROI per every dollar spent.

However, it is also very easy to get wrong. The average consumer receives 110 marketing emails per week in his inbox (so, not counting spam or messages that end up in the spam folder). Out of those emails, the average consumer will only open approximately 33 of them and will only actually “click-through” on three offers.

In order to make your email marketing stand out and up to the challenge, keep these seven simple tricks in mind.

Service

Email marketing is not expensive and it does not require many resources to implement. As such, use it to add valuable services rather than push a sale. A good example of this is when banks send balance alerts or when travel websites send fare alerts to consumers.

Customize

Customize your content as much as possible to the recipient. Spend time looking at research on your demographic and studying trends and preferences. Different programs even offer the ability to isolate specific recipients on the basis of their IP location – allowing a national or international company to send messages tailored to locations, such as making sure that the email ad that announces 20% off sub-zero coats only reaches those consumers that live in areas that experience that type of weather.

Control

As much as possible, let the recipient have the reigns on what he receives. When consumers can customize their own content, you can be sure that they will receive information that appeals to them, that information will be read, and you can gain valuable insight on what your consumers are looking for.

Value

-Email marketing can add value and it needs to if you want your message to stand out and be effective. For instance, consider offering tips on how a product can be used instead of simply including a button to “click for more information”.

I will have more on this topic soon….