Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

Another year is ending which means a new one is beginning. I thought it would be fun to take a look back in our Analytics and see what topics that we wrote about that you seemed to find the most interesting. It is always fun looking back at a year with some data behind it.

Below is our list of the 10 most popular blogs of 2011. See if you think it all lines up right with how the year went in the internet marketing world and take a look back on a few you may have missed!

10. How and Why to Create Google Alerts

Google Alerts are a great way to keep an ear to the pavement on your brand, your industry or even your own name. In this post, Jenika tells us why they are important and how to set them up.

9. Find What Facebook Pages Like Your Facebook Business Page

This year Facebook added the functionality to participate on Facebook as your brand or business. In this post I talked about finding what businesses and pages like your company page on Facebook.

8. Referring Sites, Search Engines, Direct Traffic – How Do You Get More?

Using Google Analytics you can see how people are getting to your website (referral, direct or search). All three are important pieces of your web marketing pie. In this post I talked about what each referral is about and how to get more of each.

7. 5 Reasons the New Facebook Pages are a Big Deal for Businesses

As previously mentioned, early this year Facebook made major changes to Facebook Business Pages. This post recaps what those changes were and how the were a blessing for many of us maintaining company pages.

6. Stock Image BINGO

One of my personal favorites of the year. Headed to a conference? Take stock (oooh I had to do it) of our Stock Image BINGO sheet and see how many familiar faces, places and icons you see!

5. Learn Something New – View Site Traffic by Hour

One of the best parts about our job is that we are constantly learning (the internet waits for no one). Jenika learned that in the new Google Analytics interface you can view your site traffic by the hour

4. What’s the deal with Groupon and other sites like it?

This year was definitley the rise of the coupon sites. Whether you buy into it or not, they were tough to miss. In this post Jenika helped learn more about what they are and what they could mean for your business.

3. What is Siri? What Does it Mean for How We Search?

Alas, no iPhone 5 this year. Instead we were teased with the iPhone 4S. Other than a better camera, the biggest addition to the new iPhone was Siri a magical personal assistant that talks to you and can perform simple tasks. In this post we talked about what Siri is and how I think it will effect searches in the future.

2. What is the Best Time of Day to Tweet?

This is a popular questions that I get a lot so I took a few minutes to talk about it.

1. What is a QR Code?

This post was actually from 2010! We are sooooo hip! QR codes popped up all over the place this year. In this post I explained what a QR code is. We also got to talk about them with Mainebiz this Fall too.

Happy New Year!
Cheers to a fantastic 2012

Photo credit: nigelhowe

One of the easiest ways to improve your content marketing/social media marketing is to share the load. Instead of being responsible for everything yourself you could share posting, tweeting and writing with other people. Not only will this help you out but it will add different voices to your messaging, which is great for your readers.

You could bring in other staff members to help you create content. You could also take a page from Guiding Stars and use your community to write for you.

If you are going to hand over the keys and use WordPress for your blog, you should set up a User for anyone that will be logging into your blog. As you set them up, you need to choose which Role they will have. This is a very important step and will determine how they can interact with the Admin section of your blog.

Here is a breakdown of the different kinds of Users and what the capability of each level is:

• Subscriber – A Subscriber to your blog does just that – they subscribe to get your content. They are able to manage their profile but they cannot post content to your blog or read draft posts. The largest benefit of being a Subscriber is if you want to leave a comment on the blog, you won’t have to add your information to the form each time.
• Contributor – A blog Contributor can log in and create a post. They cannot publish their post. Someone with a higher WordPress Clearance level has to come in, review the post and can then publish it. This is great for handing over some content to staff or your community but you want to review each piece before it goes live.
• Author – An Author is able to log in, create posts and they can publish them. An Author cannot approve a post written by anyone other than themselves.
• Editor – An Editor can log in, write and publish their own posts. They can also access other people’s posts and drafts. They also have the ability to publish anyone’s posts.
• Administrator – An Administrator has access to everything on the site, including the HTML, CSS and all plugins of the blog. They can add and edit anyone’s posts and they can edit the look and feel of your blog.

So if you are looking to lighten your load for 2012 and want some help coming up with blog entries, try using WordPress User levels to get other voices to your blog but still be in control of what is posted and by whom.

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

I don’t know about you but I’ve been cooking up a storm since November! Cookies, pies, and casseroles, OH MY! This is the time of year when we join our friends and family and share tasty treats from each others’ kitchens. There’s something so important about the way food brings people together. Is there something special that you always bring to your holiday events or something you look forward to that someone else will bring?

In the past year I learned of a recipe that I keep bringing to event after event because it’s such a big hit and so easy to make! I’ll leave you with the recipe at the bottom. But first, let’s talk about blogging. I’ve been blogging for Hall’s Vision Blog for almost 2 years. I don’t really consider myself a pro blogger or anything, but I have learned a lot about what readers like and important features to include in a blog. It’s really similar to when you bring a food to share at an event. It has to intrigue others to try it and of course you’ll want people to enjoy it!

Here are a few features that I think make a good recipe for blogging success:

• Keyword-Rich Title – You want a title that intrigues people to read the contents of the blog. But you also want to balance that with a title that is descriptive to search engines about what the blog is actually about. Here’s a great referral about writing headlines that I like to use; it’s an 11-part series put together by Copyblogger to help write better headlines.
• Blog Content – It’s hard to say what the most important feature of your blog is, but if I had to pick one – this is it. It’s the actual content you write about and share. This is make or break for the success of your blog. It has to be insightful, helpful, entertaining, etc. Here are a few blog posts to check out that show you how to find out what content people on your site enjoy and some tips on how to bring your personality to your web content.
• Multimedia – Support the text on the page with an eye-grabbing image or corresponding video. I’ve found that images are so important not only to break up the text on the actual blog but to intrigue users to read the blog post. For example, if you share your blog on Facebook, the post on Facebook will attach the image from the blog. If you just have a linked title to promote the blog, people may pass it over, but the image grabs people’s attention and gives it more of a chance of getting someone to click.
• Sharing Options – Make sure you offer ways for people to share your content. This gets new visitors to your website and also helps validate that popular content to search engines. You should also make sure you’re including the +1 button on your content too.
• Subscription – Include an option for people to subscribe to your blog. If they like the content they’ll want more of it, plus its a great metric to monitor. Not only is it important to look at your site analytics to see how engaged people are with your content but you can also look at how many people subscribe to your blog. Watch how that number grows over time. You want there to be steady growth; it shows that more and more people are interested in what you have to say.

There are so many important features that will help boost your blog not mentioned here like organizing posts into categories and creating both inbound and outbound links. Like any recipe, there are ways to make it your own, whether it’s a secret ingredient or the way it is presented. Whatever works best for you – own it and sell that as its unique value.

If you want more information about blogging here are some great archived webinars:

Beginner 101: Get Your Business Blogging
Beginner 102: Get More Return by Blogging Better
Intermediate: Audience, Analytics, and Online PR: Strategies for Better Blogging

We also have a section in our blog about blogging!

Ok, here it is; my top secret, super yummy, easy to make, favorite recipe to bring to parties…

Spinach Artichoke Dip

1 can quartered artichokes, drained and cut up a bit smaller
1 pkg. Frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 jar alfredo sauce
½ – 1 pkg. Cream cheese softened
¾ cup mozzarella

Combine artichokes, spinach, alfredo sauce, cream cheese, and ½ cup mozzarella into bowl. Put in a casserole dish (sprayed with non stick cooking spray for an easy clean up). Sprinkle remaining ¼ cup of mozzarella on the top. Bake in oven at 350°F for 20-30 minutes or until top is golden brown. Serve with tortilla or pita chips. Enjoy!

Flickr Photo Credit: Youssef Abdelaal

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Yesterday I completed my 2011 New Year’s Resolution!

Did you have a resolution this year? Did you complete it? Are you thinking about a new resolution for next year?

Last year, right around this time, I resolved that in 2011 I would start running again. I had gotten out of my normal work out routine and I knew I needed to do something that would be more of a long-term solution, so I committed to completing one 5k each month for the entire year.

I was nervous about this resolution because it was a year-long commitment; it felt big. But I started sharing my resolution with my friends and my family and most everyone seemed supportive. There were a few people who thought I was crazy and I am sure thought I would do it for a couple of months and then just stop. But it was also those people who gave me a little extra fire, like I had something to prove.

I quickly signed up for my first 5k in January so I couldn’t change my mind. I showed up and I finished. I felt good about that because I knew that I had already started reaching my goal. My time wasn’t the best and I walked a lot of it, but I had completed a 5k!

It’s like starting anything, whether you want to start using social media or start a blog, sometimes you just have to start. Then once you’ve started you can assess what you need to do to get better.

If you’re going to set some goals next year here are some things I that I learned that might be helpful:

• You need support. You need to have other people know what your goals are and believe in you. It’s hard to do it alone. If it weren’t for the familiar faces at the finish line or my running buddies I may not have pushed myself as hard. If you are setting goals for you and your team; make sure everyone is all on the same page.
• You need milestones. This particular resolution made it a bit easier to have milestones; I counted each month as a milestone. You can’t set a general goal, it needs to be specific and you need to understand when you’ll check in to assess where you are in accordance to the finish line. So if your goal is to have more revenue in 2012, decide how much more money you want to make and what dates you will check in to review whether you are on your mark or not.
• It’s a mental game. Just like most goals, it does require work to get there, but what I realized is that your head can sometimes be your biggest downfall. Maybe you’re not getting where you want fast enough or have had a fallback and then your brain does this, “Well, you’re failing or have already failed, so what’s the point with carrying on?” Most of the time this is when our New Year’s Resolutions fizzle out. But this is when you need to fight back and remember why you made that goal in the first place. Just like the end of a year marks a fresh start, remember that so does the end of a day. Sometimes I would get down on myself for not having the time to run between each monthly race and even during races sometimes I just wanted to stop and walk. But I remembered that I made this goal for a reason and that I had people that believed in me and it pushed me to carry on.
• Be proud of each step. Yesterday wasn’t the first time this year that I allowed myself to be proud of what I accomplished. I allowed myself to be proud every time I finished a race and completed a milestone. I was proud of myself the first time I ran the entire race without walking or when I beat my best time. It’s the small victories that led me to finishing my last race yesterday. Don’t wait until you have “succeeded” to be proud of yourself; be proud each time you make better decisions that will help you get closer to reaching your goal.
• You have to believe. There’s no point in making a goal for something that you don’t believe will be accomplished. You have to believe in yourself or, if you’re setting goals for your team, you have to believe in them. At the end of the day, I didn’t make the resolution for anyone else but myself, I needed to be my biggest supporter and I needed to believe that I could do it.

Are you thinking about your new year’s resolutions? What goals do you want to accomplish next year? Whatever they are, whether they are in business or personal goals, take into account the tips I noted above; stay committed and determined and be assured that you will complete your resolution. Good luck!

Enjoy more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!