Nov 02 2011
An interview with Ileane Smith of Basic Blog Tips.
Many people get started blogging with lots of enthusiasm only to give it up a few months later because no one seems to know about it or show any interest in the discussion.
Continue reading “How to Blog Successfully – Tips From Ileane Smith”
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Oct 24 2011
Many businesses have a blog but don’t use it because its time consuming to write a good article that they would want to publish. I’ve heard lots of different excuses about not producing good content for the company blog.
But, here’s the fact: a blog that publishes useful content regularly draws more and more attention even to the point that it generates business development leads, including b2b lead generation.
Last year HubSpot published “101 Marketing Charts and Graphs” from a survey of numerous businesses and in it was a chart entitled “Leads by Indexed Web Pages” which clearly demonstrated the ratio of search engine indexed web pages to leads generated. It climbed from 60 pages indexed to 120 pages to 200 and so on. The most dramatic increase in lead generation came when a site moved from 200 or so pages indexed to over 311 pages indexed. The number of leads jumped by well over 200%! So adding quality content to your site or blog can produce real business development leads if your target audience uses the Internet to find solutions to problems related to your business.
Continue reading “Generate Business Leads By Producing Useful Content”
Oct 05 2011
photo credit: Bev Lloyd-Roberts
Do you want your blog to succeed? Well, you can’t just expect it to do so without putting in any hard work or effort, can you? So, here are the 6 steps of blogging that you need to follow in order for your blog to succeed. Continue reading “6 Blogging Steps to Success”
Aug 17 2011
1. Make Your Blog Sticky
Continue reading “20 Things You Can Do To Make Your Blog Stand Out”
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Jul 21 2011
So you finally decided to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon
and get yourself a Facebook Fan Page. You’ve linked your store front, filled it full of merchandise and ways to make shopping and checkout easier. All that’s left to do is sit back and wait for the customers to find their way over. You’re full of high hopes, based on the old saying, “If you build it, they will come.” While that’s a nice thought, the reality is you’re going to have to bring those clients in yourself. Attracting fans and turning them into customers can be a challenge, especially if you don’t know how. Here are four steps to follow to achieve that goal:
*Acquire fans
Continue reading “Facebook Page: How to Acquire, Educate and Engage Fans”
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Jul 11 2011
Have you noticed how important prospect motivation is to your 
landing page’s conversion rate?
c = 4m + 3v + 2(i – f) – 2a
Continue reading “Landing Page Conversion: The Power of Prospect Motivation”
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Jul 07 2011
Blogging is a fantastic way to grow your reputation as an individual or a 
business owner. Blogs have become many people’s preferred information and entertainment source and having a blogging presence is a wonderful way to disseminate information, increase traffic to your website and gain credibility both as a writer and as an expert in your field. If your blog lacks engaging content, however, readers will not be impressed and blogging will do little for you or your business. These five alternative ways to add interesting content to your site will help you ensure that your blog will constantly pique your readers’ interest and keep your readers coming back to your site.
Continue reading “Five Creative Ways to Add Content to Your Blog”
Jun 29 2011
$$$ = [Desire Based Tension] + (Decision)
“If you are not relevant enough in the mind of your [prospects and] customers to get them to make a decision, then they will never ever buy.”
“Your job as a marketer… is to be relevant enough to get people to make a decision about you… one way or another. The purpose of good marketing is to get people to make a decision about you… to be a fork in the road.”
These are quotes from Clay Collins which are spot on, watch the short video below to get the full force of these statements.
Continue reading “Get a Decision or Get Out of Marketing”
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Jun 14 2011
So what exactly makes content “sticky?” Are we talking some 
type of adhesive or is it more of a gel? In the online world, sticky means good things…particularly when you’re talking about content. When it comes to the Internet, “people go online for hard facts and information,” says Enzo Cesario, Chief Creative Officer of Brandsplat. “But if you can make those hard facts and information entertaining in some way, you’re one step ahead.” Sounds simple enough, but as Enzo goes on to discuss in his recent Capture Commerce interview, creating pass-along content is much easier said than done.
There isn’t much of a difference between “sticky content” and “infotainment” – both do the same job. Infotainment requires that you “start with the premise that nobody really cares about a product or service…and [if you] approach your marketing efforts as such, you will soon see that your main goal is pretty simple; to just get people to like you/your brand/your product/your service.” This is very literally true in the cases of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter that allow your clients to tangibly express affection for your product by Liking or Following your brand.
Continue reading “What is “Sticky” Content?”
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Jun 07 2011
Capture Commerce recently had the pleasure of speaking 
with Enzo Cesario, resident online brand expert and Chief Creative Officer at So Cal’s Brandsplat. Enzo had some interesting thoughts concerning brand marketing in the digital age, and he pulled no punches when addressing Twitter as a marketing component. As it turns out, Twitter is a lousy sales tool. Here are a few ways you can maximize your online branding strategy without Tweeting until your fingers fall off…
Remember that Twitter alone won’t sell: As Enzo puts it, “From snake oil salesmen of the wild west, and even as far back as the Senate of ancient Rome, people have always pitched their wares in a public space.” This means that Twitter is in no way a sensational information dispenser, just a new medium. It’s hard not to feel like you’re doing some good by constantly talking about your brand on Twitter, but remember that essentially yelling about your product won’t get it done. Enzo hates when clients ask him “how to get more followers on Twitter,” as getting followers is such a small part of a bigger issue. The real money comes in engaging customers, not just beating them over the head with the same message.
Continue reading “Twitter is a Lousy Sales Tool”
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Jan 04 2011
AttentionWizard
Models the first few seconds of scene analysis by the brain of your landing page. It doesn’t require actual people to interact with your page and you get results instantly! Basically, it’s an instant heat map of your landing page without having to do expensive eye tracking studies or time consuming mouse tracking data analysis.
I created a free account to get a heat map for one of my client’s sites; it was easy: capture a screen shot of the page, then upload it to my account. You can wait a minute or log in later to get a downloadable pdf of the heat map and an offer with it. It shows you where most eyeballs look first, second, third… within a few seconds of loading the page. All web designers should know about this tool.
Fivesecondtest
Five second tests help you easily identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces. I did this by registering for a free account and creating a new test. I simply took a screen shot of one of my web pages, uploaded it to my account and let it run. Within a few hours I had several responses. Most people remembered “Capture Commerce” and “SEO”; hmm, I think they got it for a five second glimpse. It’s a great tool for verifying brand messages and getting instant feedback.
Continue reading “4 Tools To Engage Your Online Audience”
Apr 30 2009
Why more traffic just isn’t good enough anymore
With more complex algorithms that factor in local, personal and universal search features, search rankings are not always consistent. Today’s results often depend on a user’s location, their search history and their behavior with the search results – sometimes you can see different search results for the same search terms, even on two different computers in the same location.
One question many businesses have when hunting for a search engine optimization (SEO) company is, “Will this company know us and our audience well enough to turn our web business into something profitable, worthy of our investment?” Unfortunately, it’s not easy to discern the answer before you are three months into an agreement.
Continue reading “Using SEO To Build Audience Engagement”
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