We love our web design and marketing articles! This week is yet another great group of articles which remind us why we love being a digital marketing agency: learning!
This week, a quick overview of visitor preferences for a mobile app versus a mobile website, a bunch of great information about email marketing, a high-level overview of current SEO information (subject to debate), a couple of nice management articles, and we finish it off with some thoughts on typography. » Read more: Learn about Digital Marketing from others: email marketing, mobile apps
This week we have a doozy of a collection of web resources being shared at the Synotac offices! These are primarily resources around digital marketing, and are relevant to folks doing in-house marketing, as well as interactive agencies and web design firms. Of course, we tossed a few curve balls in a well on the history of computers and other fun stuff.
Next week we’ll start adding names to each resource so you can see which Synotacker is suggesting each article.
When putting together a marketing plan, ask yourself 1) How well do you really know your target client group? d) Do you have a clear and compelling message that sets you apart from competitors? 3) Are you putting your best foot forward online? Three Questions for Marketing Plan Success, Hinge Marketing, 1.16.2012
The plans are in this R2 unit...Well, they were. We put them in a podcast for you, just click! Turn your website into your own secret weapon!
Below are blueprints of sorts, the beginning of how exactly to turn your website into your secret weapon. Now you probably think, hey, they will give us a little snippet of something good and then make us pay to get to the good stuff. No way, you’re getting everything. Below is a little bit from Synotac’s podcast done for E-Myth Worldwide, but it’s just the beginning!
Check out the 5 steps to turning your website from zero to hero and then click to the podcast for the details, in-depth information, free tools to help you accomplish these things, and practical advice from an industry expert.
Define Success: What does it mean for your website to be successful? What is it that you want people to do once they get to your site? Is it signing up for a newsletter? Selling a product? Filling out a contact form? Whatever it is, define it clearly and be ready to measure it.
Know your visitors: Do whatever it takes to get in the mind of your visitors. Think how they think, use the site as they do. Talk to your frequent visitors and find out how you can make their experience better. A website built around your visitors is a huge key to better conversions! You don’t want people leaving because they can’t find what they want or had an issue navigating it.
Give them something of value: If you provide something useful to your potential clients even when they aren’t actively searching for your services, you are still building your reputation, potential for word of mouth and referrals, and keeping your site on the minds of potential customers that look to you for things they need online. What can you provide, exactly?
Use many roads to get traffic: Building a site, even an awesome one isn’t enough to get people to come to it anymore. The sheer number of sites is astounding and your potential clients are bombarded with all kinds of links, offers, and ads constantly. To get to them effectively, you’ll have to explore multiple ways of capturing their attention.
Track: What is working? What isn’t? Where are people coming from? Where should you focus your efforts? What kind of people are you succeeding with? Who is ignoring you? This one is all about analytics; numbers, numbers, numbers.
Site looking a little haggard? Maybe a little 90′s chic? Think it might be time to bring it in to the 21st Century? Here are 5 signs you (definitely) need a redesign:
You have a template website. You probably picked up this beauty when the internetbegan because everyone had to have one. Things have happened since the 90′s though, like Facebook and all of Web 2.0. A newer website will play nice with all the latest social media and marketing tools out there these days.
Lots of visitors but no conversions. Maybe you want people to sign up for your newsletter or fill in a form for more information. Maybe you sell directly from your site. Whatever a conversion means to you, a low percentage is bad. If you are getting the visitors, but not the cash, it’s time to find out why and redesign.
Your SEO sucks. A site should be optimized for search engines from the ground up. Lot’s of things contribute to good SEO, but a solid foundation is key.
Your entire site is flash-based. Flash may or may not be going by the wayside, but even worse, Google doesn’t see any of that pretty stuff. To Google, your site is just one big abyss and that’s not good for SEO. On top of that, most mobile devices don’t play nice with flash.
Your site isn’t optimized for mobile browsers. More and more people are using their mobile devices to go online. If your site is frustrating or doesn’t work at all for them, they are going to leave.
Therefore, it is going to be increasingly important to monitor your own relative influence online and in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter so you can work to improve it and be a more valuable proponent for your links. Thankfully there are some great services out there for doing this already and we’re going to look at 3 that measure the influence of your Twitter handle. (Keep an eye out for when we look at how to measure Facebook influence)
Klout:Klout is a great site that is simple to use. All you have to do is enter your Twitter handle and away it goes. It scores on a bunch of different things, but the main report includes the True Reach, Amplification, and Network Score. True Reach looks at how many of your followers are actually real and active people vs. bots or dead accounts. Amplification is the likelihood a tweet will spark a conversation and Network Score is based on how engaged your most influential followers are. (Klout also now scores Facebook as well, but is still developing that algorithm)
TweetReach: This is a sweet little site that quickly looks up the last 50 tweets you posted and measures how many people they eventually reached through your network. It also calculates a number of impressions and gives you the top people in your network that contributed to reaching people.
Twittergrader:Twittergrader is made by Hubspot, the same people who made the website SEO grader. Twittergrader returns a score out of 100 that takes into account the number of followers, number you follow, and tweets and retweets. The higher your score, the more influential your Twitter account is.
Keep an eye on influence, it is only going to become more important in terms of SEO and overall success of your content, links, and ultimately, your website.
We love our web design and marketing articles! This week is yet another great group of articles which remind us why we love being a digital marketing agency: learning!
Site looking a little haggard? Maybe a little 90′s chic? Think it might be time to bring it in to the 21st Century? Here are 5 signs you (definitely) need a redesign: