Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

Photo credit: Portland Ballet

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

I recently had a very interesting conversation with my mother-in-law about social networking. She is the creative director for Portland Ballet, who is probably best known locally for their traditional Victorian Nutcracker performance each year. She is feeling the pressure to be more active on social networking sites but she has a major dilemma she is working through – almost all of their ‘content’ is protected under creative content licensing. The music, images, how a ballerina points her toe a certain way is all protected. She cannot run the risk of a guest at one of her shows shooting video with their Flip cam and uploading it to YouTube or photos to Flickr etc. I am fortunate to not have the same legal concerns she does but it got me to thinking about how we decide whether or not to protect our content online.

Protecting Your Content

We in the B2B world love to hide our content, behind long forms to capture data, through opt-in only lists, password protected sites etc. Why do we do that? If your content is hidden behind a form yes, you will get the reader’s information for them to download but you lose a lot of people at that form as well. Would you rather the 3 forms filled out or your content to be free and seen by hundreds of eyes? That is a choice you and your organization have to make.

Spread your information

Seth Godin recently wrote a post How to protect your ideas in the digital age where he talked about this same topic. Seth’s take is to spread your good ideas. Let people know what a resource you are and then they will come to you when they are ready to start a business relationship. What is your take on protecting your online content?

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 9 – Don’t Forget the Milk & Cookies (Good Content)
• Dec. 8 – Google Makes it (Even More) Personal
• Dec. 7 – Customer Service and Marketing
• Dec. 6 – Social Media Didn’t Invent Criticism
• Dec. 5 – Email is the frosting to your gingerbread house
• Dec. 4 – Is Google Caffeine on Your Holiday Wish List?
• Dec. 3 – Don’t Forget to Make Your Title Tags and Check ‘Em Twice
• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

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

You can rank #1 for all your keywords by having a well-optimized site, but what’s the point if the content on your site, well…stinks? It’s not enough just to have a lot of traffic. You need to leave your visitors some milk and cookies (read: good content) in order to encourage them to stick around (and keep coming back).

It’s Not About You

It’s natural to want to go into great detail about your company on your website. If you’re not telling people how your product/service is going solve their problem/fulfill their need, however, you will practically be able to hear your bounce rate go up (boing!). What I’m trying to say is that it’s not all about you. Your content needs to be written in a way that is focused specifically on how you are going to help the person who is visiting your site. Make it all about your target market.

Keep it Up-to-Date

Quality content is key, but if it’s old, it loses its effectiveness. When I visit a site that has information about sales that have expired, sign-ups for trainings that have already passed, or a blog that hasn’t had an entry in 4 months, I figure that the company is not interested in investing time in their site.  So why should I?  Your website, much like my sweet little shar pei, needs constant love and attention.  Be sure to keep current on your offerings, look over and freshen up your web copy every so often, and make regular blog posts a must (if you can’t commit to the blog, you might as well ditch it).

Want more?  Check out this post about how important content is for B2B sites.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 8 – Google Makes it (Even More) Personal
• Dec. 7 – Customer Service and Marketing
• Dec. 6 – Social Media Didn’t Invent Criticism
• Dec. 5 – Email is the frosting to your gingerbread house
• Dec. 4 – Is Google Caffeine on Your Holiday Wish List?
• Dec. 3 – Don’t Forget to Make Your Title Tags and Check ‘Em Twice
• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

In the wild and crazy world of the web, you may have heard various adages like “content is king” or “write for people, not for search engines”.   For an SEO like me, my stance is that you must have text on your website – end of story.  So for any of you Curious Georges out there that are asking “why?”, get yourselves cozy and read on, my friends!

It’s Good for SEO

I really enjoy learning about clients’ businesses and coming up with an organic search marketing campaign for their websites.  During the keyword research phase when I’m gathering information about words and phrases that my clients value, I’ll perform my normal keyword testing but I also need to check on the content available for these keywords.  If there is little-to-no content regarding these keywords, I’m quick to advise that we need to get that content in place.  There are various on-page SEO practices that can be implemented to emphasize keywords, but if there isn’t any content to support them- fuhgeddaboudit! 

Search engines check the titles and h1 tags but they also index the text on the page.  Keywords aren’t relevant if they’re not in a page’s content. This also goes for websites that are image-heavy and text-light.  These websites might look pretty, but they’re not going to perform well from a search perspective.  This does not mean that all you have to do is write your keywords repeatedly on your page.  The text needs to make sense to the humans who will be reading it and the keywords should be used only where they sound natural in the passage.

Search engines also like it when your site has inbound links from other quality websites.  As an added bonus, if you’ve got good content that is interesting and informational, other site owners will be more likely to accept your link requests during your link building campaign.

It’s Good for Conversion

There should always be a goal for your website.  Are you an online retailer?  Then your goal is to get people to put your products in the shopping cart and buy them.  Do you provide a service?  Then you want to be able to collect quality leads from people who are interested in what you do.  Unfortunately, if you’re not telling people how your product and service is going solve their problem or fulfill their need, you will probably be able to hear the sound of the bounces from the people leaving your site.  You can’t accomplish this without words.  Let’s not forget , however, that not just any ‘ole type of ad copy will do.  Your content needs to be written in a way that is focused specifically on how you are going to help the person who is visiting your site. Make it all about your target market, not you.

It’s Good for Your Grandma

Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Generations Online in 2009 report found that “older generations use the internet less for socializing and entertainment and more as a tool for information searches, emailing, and buying products.”  Take a look at your website.  Do you have a bunch of flash animation, videos, and other various widgets?  It’s not wrong if you do, as all of these things can have their place on a website.  Just remember that the goal is to make sure that you’re balancing it out with clear and concise content to make it easy for people to understand what your business is about and how to get what they are looking for.  People over the age of 55 are becoming even more active on the Internet, but according to Pew, the percentage of them that download videos is less than half.  Make sure you’ve got your information available in content form as well.

Do It!

Now that I’ve convinced you just how important content is for your site, what are you waiting for?  Go beef up those product descriptions, write those blog posts, and tweak that website copy!  Please don’t make me send my Grandma after you.

photo credit: Listener42

In addition to my life here at Hall as internet marketer, I’m an avid fan of audiobooks and a creative writer.  This weekend I was listening to an interview with a writer who was asked the question that all published writers must get really sick of answering — “What is your advice for beginning writers?” This guy, without missing a beat and with candor, said, “Get your butt in the chair and write.”

That answer summarizes a whole philosophy about work ethic and creativity that I think bears repeating.  Too often, we (myself included!) come up with excuses for not being able to write.  If we just stopped saying the excuses and spent that time writing, we would probably be a lot further along than we are.  No writer has it easy.  You never have so much time that you just can’t find anything else to do but write.

You need to make time to write.  Make it a priority.

Is writing a priority for you?  I hope it is.  Whether it’s a blog, an article, ideas for a new ebook, or a way of revisioning your company’s “about us” page, every business needs more content on the web.  And even if you don’t think of yourself as a very good writer, your ideas are good and original, and with a little bit of feedback and editing, your writing will work on the web.  It certainly will be authentic.

Of course, this philosophy applies to numerous other things you should be doing for your business that you might be putting off.  Do you have a sticky note reminding you that you still need to learn a bit about SEO?  That you still haven’t made a solid step towards your website redesign?  That your viral video idea is still sitting there on a scratchpad but yet to be produced?

Make time, because no one else will make it for you.  Get writing!

For some time saving/time management ideas, see Amanda’s post on social media time management, and for tips on creating good content, see my webinar at 2PM EST today.