To Tweet or Not to Tweet …

6:30 pm4:55 amM. Shifley Leave a comment

that is indeed a question some of you may have been asking yourself since it seems like everyone and their third cousin from their Mother’s side is on Twitter. But is this social networking phenomenon right for you? Well ultimately it is up to you and how you want to leverage Twitter. Do you want to meet new people? Follow businesses or columnists? Increase the exposure of your business? Or just want to be part of the in crowd? Whatever you decide here are some reasons that a lot of the experts think Twitter should matter to you and can be an effective online marking tool:

1. Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable.

2. Get Feedback. Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you’ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.

3. Hire People. Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.

4. Direct traffic. Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.

5. Read News. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. You can also subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows you to receive and view content quickly. This is very useful for active social news participants.

6. Make New Friends. Like any other social network, Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is an easy way for you connect with people outside of your usual circle. Make an effort to add active users you find interesting. A Twitter acquaintance can be developed into a long lasting friendship.

7. Network for benefits. Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.

8. Business Management. Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Workers can liaise with each other when working on group projects. Particularly useful when certain workers go out often in the field. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.

9. Notify Your Customers. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in. Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification. Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one clients.

10. Event Updates. Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don’t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience

11. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications. Discretion and skill is needed in this area.

12. Provide Live coverage. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.

13. Set Up Meetings. Twitter can help you organize impromptu meetups. For example, you can twitter a message while at a cafe, event or art gallery and arrange to meet fellow users at a specific spot. It’s an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Create Content to Improve Search Engine Rankings

6:08 amM. Shifley Leave a comment

Content is one of the most important pieces. Without it, you are just showing off a graphic composition, even if done amazingly well, you are missing the necessary information your customers need to purchase what you offer. For online marketing reasons content helps you rank top on search engines.

How? When you constantly post information on your site web spiders establish that you are a constant content generator, therefore you will be visited with more frequency than pages that don’t post with the regularity you do. This way you become a more important and useful website people consult regularly.

Keywords are very important in this process, especially on titles or headlines. Also on the first paragraph of your content, keywords are added with the intention of becoming the main words on your site, the way you are going to be found online. So, when your potential customers enter those words on search engines, your site appears on the first places without having to pay for words or place bids on them, like PPC campaigns.

You will have a natural ranking on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines depending on how frequent you add information on your website. There are many ways of having different sections on your website to post information: news, blogs, press releases, audio content, video content, etc.

Although written content is useful for web crawlers to improve your search engine positioning, other information sources will also generate more traffic on your site. Remember, you are creating a site to be positioned online and a spot where people can find the products/services you offer, also a place where web surfers can find useful information and tools they search for online.

Social Networking Strategies

4:28 am4:32 amM. Shifley 1 Comment

The purpose of creating social networks basically began as places where people could have access to other known members and share information, thoughts and experiences on different subjects. For online marketing strategies, social networks are great sites to promote products, services or brands, approaching customers in a direct way, without any intervention of thirds in the process. Directly hitting the market segment your company is aiming at.

Its constant mutation has generated new features and ways of operating, making usability on these communities necessary for personal and work related issues, increasing the number of online social users significantly. Entering a network where you know your potential market segment is present may radically increase the chances of reaching a broader, more specific segment in the same market place. If used wisely you may have an army of followers that are faithful to your products and name brand.

Know how to operate among these communities. Depending on your target audience choose where your marketing efforts will be present. Research, know where your audience is logging in and be a part of that community too. Begin by knowing what the social network you are working with offers, what features and characteristic are available to work with. Know how to use them in your favor to attract potential customers. Know the communication channels available in social networks such as:

• E-mail for marketing campaigns
• Instant message boards
• Multimedia availability
• Ways of promotion available in the social network

Have a marketing strategy for your social communities ready. Know how you are going to reach your potential customers. How are you going to be known in that specific network and what are the options to reach a broader audience. Be constant; work on your communities and build a relation with your members. Answer questions if asked, support people in any way possible, and add value to your corporate concept by attending people’s needs.

Alright Five More SEO Tips …

4:14 am4:15 amM. Shifley Leave a comment

1. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

2. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

3. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It will not work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, this will count against you rather than for you.

4. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text and use those keywords.

5. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings and that would be most unsavory.

How about 5 more Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing Tips?

3:14 am3:17 amM. Shifley 1 Comment

1. Check for canonization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to your preferred website.

2. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html. Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

3. Frames, flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use frames at all and use flash and AJAX sparingly for best search engine optimization (SEO) results. If you are determined to go with Flash, make sure you have an awesome blog so your content can be found by the spiders.

4. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

5. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

Five more Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing Tips

3:09 am3:18 amM. Shifley Leave a comment

1. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness such as a blog adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

2. Be sure the links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrases. In other words, if your target is “fat bassets” then link to “fat bassets” instead of a “Click here” link.

3. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Boise store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

4. Don’t design your website without considering search engine optimization (SEO). Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

5. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even in your domain name.

Five Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing Tips

3:48 am3:19 amM. Shifley Leave a comment

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality back links using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

Copywriting & online marketing services for the greater Boise metropolitan area

11:01 am5:48 amM. Shifley 1 Comment

After graduating from the University of Idaho in 1999 I embarked on my professional career. First stop – Roseburg, Oregon as a sports writer for the Roseburg News-Review. Not a bad gig but my heart belonged in Idaho as I missed my future wife who was still there. So after giving Roseburg the old college try – I think 6 months is the standard duration these days – I moved back to Boise and landed a job with The Idaho Statesman as a copy editor. I spent nearly 5 years there and learned a lot and met some great folks. I was in charge of the Life and Scene sections and wrote video game reviews but it became clear that I needed to work a day shift if the love of my life and I were going to share our lives together. I worked nights and we were ready to get married and I thought it would be nice to spend some time with her. So job #3 was with FOR 1031 – a national commercial real estate company – as a copywriter. Another solid gig with great people and after nearly 5 years there my job title had changed to online marketing mananger. The economy also changed and in October 2008 I was laid off. For the first time since I was 18 I was without work and it was kinda scary. I looked at my options and decided to take control of my destiny by becoming a freelance writer and online marketing consultant.

So I am here to help you. What you would like to order today?

My skills include:

• Extensive, award-winning writing and editing experience of more than 10 years
• More than four years experience creating and managing successful online marketing initiatives for a leading national commercial real estate company
• Proven ability to create, manage, and implement multiple projects while adapting to changes in time lines, deadlines, and project goals
• Online marketing skills include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), email marketing, viral advertising, keyword development, social networking, and competitive research
• Proven track record of driving sales through online marketing

Give me a call at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information.

Matt Shifley: Marketing Specialist

Services include copywriting, copy editing, graphic design, SEO, SEM, PPC and much more.

Online Marketing