SEO Presentation For The Glenview Jewish Woman’s Networking Group

June 23, 2010

Yesterday, I did a presentation covering the basics of  inbound marketing for the Glenview Jewish Woman’s Networking Group ( GJW)  in one of the conference rooms at the Glenview public library.

Pamela Pearl a business partner and client, invited me to speak to her networking group because of the increase in leads she experienced from a small campaign that we worked on together for IntelliClick Software. IntelliClick is a GoldMine CRM email tracking solution developed by Pamela and her husband Steven Pearl . IntelliClick Software is a Division of Business Automation Solutions, a GoldMine CRM consulting firm, based in the Chicagoland area. Their website is IntelliClickSoftware.com and their focus is on Goldmine CRM eMarketing utilizing email marketing hyperlink tracking and personalized website navigation.

12 women from the group attended and most were small business owners covering many  areas  including eldercare marketing, financial services, and a nanny agency. They each had a variety of experience levels with internet marketing.  Some were already experts in their field, so it was nice to get fresh input and suggestions on what is working for them related to inbound marking in the Chicago area.

After some initial networking I kicked off the meeting with this video –> Did You Know -V 2009

Here is the presentation in PDF format that started from a PowerPoint template that was graciously provided by HubSpot –> Inbound-Marketing-101

I thought that it might be fun to watch this video You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing after we were done with the serious stuff and it did get a few laughs.

After the presentation we did a Q&A session and took a look at a few of the members websites including First Class Care and Focus On Aging

One of the things I realized that could be valuable to GJW would be an itemized punch list of things that a website owner could do to help with their own inbound marketing efforts.  Here is a quick list I came up with that entails all the steps that would help to get your website found online and convert leads into customers using search engine optimization.  Here is the list –> Step-By-Step-Inbound-Marketing

I’m looking forward to being a helpful resource for the Glenview Jewish Woman’s networking Group and am happy to present something similar to the other members of your group.

Just contact me for details on how I can help members of GJW succeed in inbound marketing.

Social Media Mistakes For Chicago Businesses To Avoid Part 2

October 29, 2009

In our last post, we discussed some ways that companies frequently make mistakes while using social media for their business, resulting in a passive approach and eventually a failing social media campaign. The following tips will help you and your company avoid making the opposite types of mistakes, being too aggressive with social media:

Creating Pages On Too Many Sites: Since social media for business is a time consuming endeavor, it is impossible to reach everyone and be involved on every social media website, all while running a successful business. Devote some time to research your industry on different social media sites and identify which ones will benefit your company the most. You need to find the place that will allow you to interact the most with your potential customers, and that is going to be different for every company.

Abusing The Rules: Social media users are a group of intelligent people that don’t want to be manipulated. If your organization uses certain techniques, for example, posting multiple spam-like messages in Facebook or Twitter to try and attract more fans, people will get upset with your company and stop following you. The majority of companies that make this mistake are just starting their efforts in social media and want to try and get their message out to the highest number of people as fast as possible. However, the better approach is to sign up, read what other people are talking about and get a good feeling about the overall conversation on that social media site, and then slowly join in with valuable information.

Obvious Selling: Companies that go on social media and try the usual hard sell tactics in business will find that followers/fans don’t respond positively to it. The whole social media culture is based on people communicating with others in order to help everyone. It is not about businesses selling their products to consumers in the social media realm, so don’t treat your followers like they are just there to buy your product. Remember, you have to contribute to the conversation before you can expect anyone to buy what you’re offering.

Deliberate SEO: It is not a secret that social media has become an important part of search engine optimization. This shouldn’t mean that the only reason why you’re on social media sites is to get more links to your website. Your success on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else depends on how much you offer other people. They aren’t just search engine robots scanning your page and looking for keywords, so don’t expect them to stay your follower if all you’re looking for are keywords and backlinks.

The Important Differences Between SEO and SEM

October 15, 2009

Just about everyone knows that search engines are a powerful tool to reach potential customers. You want your company to be on the top of the search engine results page for as many of your most important keywords that you have. There are, however, many different ways to go about this undertaking. Two of the most commonly expressed services in the web design/internet marketing industry are search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). These can be confusing to differentiate sometimes, as they are both related to very similar goals.

These two terms are commonly thrown around when dealing with ways to increase a website’s exposure, and often the different aspects of each will be viewed as SEO by one person but as SEM by another. For example, if a company says they will build links for you by submitting your site to multiple directories, they could consider that service part of their SEM package because it is an external effort, but they might also consider it SEO because it doesn’t necessarily involve paying for anything.

There are some general rules that almost all companies will accept. First, SEO is considered a part of your SEM efforts, because the search engine marketing will encompass a larger range of tasks. Second, any enhancements a company makes to their organic search results fall under SEO, because you are optimizing your website by creating meta tags and titles and so on. Finally, if a company is directly paying for their search engine results by using Google AdWords or other forms of paid advertising, this will be part of SEM, because you are paying for each time your link is clicked on.

As you can see, there are different benefits for using each. Search engine optimization will take longer to accomplish, but the results can be very beneficial and the traffic cost will always be zero. With online advertisements, a company will have to pay a large amount of money to keep their instant exposure, and the clicks or impressions their ad receives doesn’t always turn into sales for them. Don’t forget, if the marketing budget for online ads runs out, your company will lose the link exposure at the top of Google immediately, and your SEO will still be stuck in the same place.

View our complete list of Chicago SEO services

Social Media Benefits For Retail Stores And Malls

September 12, 2009

We recently did a post on The Steps For Creating A Facebook Page For Your Business to show you how to setup Facebook for your personal or business use, and some tips on how to use it. This article is going to focus on the importance of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for retail stores and malls.

General Benefits for Using Social Media

One of the greatest things about social media sites are cost benefits. Most of the social networking sites out there that you can setup a business account for are free, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can add as many things to your account as you want and watch the number of followers grow without having to pay any fees. Social media also helps get more traffic to your website, so instead of spending a lot of money on online advertisements that may or may not turn into revenue, you can direct people to your company through free links.

Another unique reason for using social media marketing to grow your business is because you are instantly entered into a world where you can directly communicate with customers and fans of whatever it is that you offer. Instead of just trying to create new ways to find business, you can actually talk to the people who are interested in your company and have a one to one dialogue with them, which is beneficial to you both. You will be able to understand them more, offer them customer service faster and more efficiently, and also be able to stay current on all the latest trends in your industry.

Social Networking Usage for Stores

Companies on Facebook and Twitter are using social media to connect with customers by notifying them about special promotions, coupons, seasonal promotions and new website or store openings. Not only will a larger number of people be aware of these offers, but they will learn about them faster than any other form of marketing. With the use of Web-enabled mobile devices, customers of any age can know about your promotions as soon as you send them out.

Even whole shopping malls are creating Facebook and Twitter accounts so that they can connect with shoppers going to a variety of stores. By using social networking, malls are telling people about special events and in store promotions that are going on. Usually stores within a mall will have seasonal promotions, so social media is perfect for the whole mall to tell customers about annual promotions and events.

Challenges Businesses Face in Social Media

The main reason why so many companies struggle to succeed with social media is that it takes a lot of time to maintain a worthy campaign. There are too many sites out there to use, so it is important to choose the right ones for your specific industry. Also, if one area of social networking is very time consuming but not producing the right results, it is wasting a lot of your time to keep up.

You must also be aware that the mere number of posts or offers you have means nothing unless they are useful to the people looking at them. It’s important to make sure what you’re putting out there is interesting and valuable, while being eye-catching and user friendly at the same time. The popular example within the Facebook community is Wal-Mart, who made a page that had a corporate feel and didn’t fit in the Facebook world.

Visit our Facebook page: Design & Promote Facebook Page

We’ve Partnered With Constant Contact To Help Local Businesses Send Out Their First Newsletter

September 1, 2009

We recently added Constant Contact’s Business Partner Program to our list of effective and affordable tools to help clients build strong, lasting customer relationships. This program enables our clients to use effective E-mail Marketing and online survey products.

We are also offering a value added service to help businesses that want to send out monthly newsletters but need a little help getting started. We will work with you to design a newsletter template that matches your website or brand and send out your first marketing piece while coaching you along the way, all for the low price of $500.

“E-mail marketing and online surveys are proven tools that help small businesses connect with their customers and build successful customer relationships,” said Len Bruskiewitz, senior director, Partner Programs, Constant Contact.

As a Constant Contact Business Partner, we are able to provide our clients e-mail marketing and online survey capabilities. With SpeakUp! E-mail Marketing, Constant Contact’s e-mail marketing product, our clients can create professional-looking e-mails, manage contact e-mail lists, measure e-mail campaign results from clicks to open rates, and review who joins e-mail lists.

With ListenUp! Survey, Constant Contact’s online survey product, our clients have a tool to gain insight that will help them meet customer needs, generate new ideas, and grow their businesses or organizations. ListenUp! Survey also helps our clients analyze responses quickly; create targeted e-mail lists based on survey responses, take action, and follow-up with relevant e-mail communications.

“Our customers are always looking for effective ways to grow their businesses,” Stacy Jones, president of Design & Promote, said in a news release. “Constant Contact’s customer communication tools give our clients a valuable addition to our core services of web design and search engine optimization. Constant Contact’s ease-of-use and affordability made the partner program a great solution to meet our clients’ email marketing needs.”

You can get more information, view a live demo or sign up for a 60 day trial at our Constant Contact business partner portal below.
Design & Promote Newsletter Marketing

How To Effectively Optimize A Local Business Profile

July 9, 2009

A small and local business profile can also attain a high ranking in the local searches if they keep in mind certain key things. This need not involve link building and online advertising. Sometimes merely updating the website’s business profile can be of immense help in positively influencing the ranking of the website in local searches. If your’s is a local business house with just a small website, then you should funnel your energies towards luring local clients only. That is why it is quintessential to harp on your local identity. Each page of the website should have a section mentioning the physical location of your business.

You should act prudently in describing the physical location. For example if your carpet cleaning business is in Oswego  Illinois, the title of your website shouldn’t proclaim “Carpet Cleaners Oswego, Illinois”, because many people have hardly heard of this relatively obscure place called Oswego. However, since Oswego lies in Chicago’s geographical area, which is quite well known, you should rather tout your business location as “Carpet Cleaners Chicago, Illinois”.

However, stressing your physical location in webpage is only half the job done. Now you should also add proper contact information which can also help your business in local searches. If you think that is improbable then you can’t be more wrong. You should always get your business enrolled with Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. This is quite an easy task when you go to these Google or Yahoo Maps website and search for your physical address when you find that you can link that page to your website with the “link this page” option. Then you can paste that link in the contact information section of your website. This would also help your customers not only to find your business but also post reviews about your business in Google and Yahoo through that particular link.

If you provide some driving directions in your contact information section of your website with some relevant local keywords and key phrases even, that can to some extent help in your website climb up the index in local searches. Thus, not only through keywords and link building, but by effectively tweaking your business profile you can help yourself get noticed in local search engines of Google and Yahoo. The Meta description or keywords used to describe your business in local search engines should also contain the most effective part of your location to help you get noticed in local search engines.

These tips of optimizing your business profile can also be used when you advertise your business in free local directories. Enlisting your business in good local directories with an optimized business profile is also a great way to augment your chances in local Chicago area SEO.

Design & Promote Helps Naperville Area Not-For-Profits

May 15, 2009

Yes it’s true! Websites can be very costly but they are a necessary marketing tool for every business.

In this economic downturn, marketing and advertising budgets are being slashed and everyone is feeling the cyclical effect of tough times without the means of marketing dollars to push their name into the consumers’ eyes.

Design & Promote would like to help fellow Naperville Area Not-For-Profits by offering them an advertising medium to market themselves without breaking their budgets, a new website! For only $500, Design & Promote will build a 5 page  website which includes an integrated blog, on board search engine optimization, and reporting capabilities.* This is really not a gimmick, we will build your professional website for only $500. We feel it is a way to give back to the groups that do so much for the community with no strings attached.

What is the importance of having a website? Listed below are some compelling reasons.

You website can be an effective way to communicate your message to people. You can compare it to an expanded, full color, informational brochure that are at people’s fingertips 24 hours a day/7 days a week. You can also add a “contact us” feature to your website to make it convenient for anyone to reach you.

By having a web presence you can expand your market share significantly. You are not limited to your local trade area, now you will be making your organization and it’s message available globally. By having a well presented website, information about your services will be available for everyone to see. People will be able to get a much better idea about your organization because you can feature multiple pages on your site with greater details.

With a website you can revamp your marketing plan and begin to advertise via your website for only a fraction of the cost of expensive mailings and print advertising. Internet advertising is more targeted to a specific audience. People who visit your website are there because they have an interest in your service. People can sign up for newsletters through your website then you can send it to them via e-mail. By collecting e-mail addresses from willing visitors to your website, you can stay in contact with them without having to pay for printing or postage. You also have the capabilities of tracking your website visitors and how they have reached your website.

In the end every business and organization needs a website. People are now turning to the Internet to find information, and if you do not have a presence on the Internet you are limiting yourself significantly. Having web presence makes it so much easier to send your not-for-profit’s message, program and events to the public.

Give us call and help your Naperville Not-For-Profit Organization get a new home online – 630-995-7109

* Offer expires 7.31.2009, sites are WordPress themes only, each additional website page offered at $150 per page, customer to provide ALL content, graphics and photos, extra search engine optimization separate charge if interested, subject to cancellation at anytime.

Chicago Web Design Online Marketing Tips

May 9, 2009

With over 223 million internet users in the USA, having a web presence for your Chicago area business is a must if you want to stay on top of your competition!

Are you currently thinking of designing a new website? Tips to keep in mind that make your website successful and attract new customers.

Your website is the face of your company online therefore it is crucial to catch your customers’ attention when they find it. Don’t clutter your site with too much text and photos. Make your site eye catching, clean and powerful.

Your website should reflect your brand campaign. Your brand is your company’s identity and keeping it consistent in everything you do, including your website, is what makes people remember who you are.

Search Engine Optimize your website! What does that mean? Are people finding your website on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN when looking for your product? Did you know that 70% of customers do not look beyond the first page of search engines when looking for a product or service. You could be losing thousands of potential customers by not having your website search engine optimized! Test it yourself, search for your product or service online and what page will your website be found on?
Your website is an investment in your company that should be taken seriously. Use it to your advantage and you will see an increase in your bottom line.

At Design & Promote we specialize in building websites and getting many Chicago businesses to the top of the search engines without breaking their budget! Call us for a professional consultation today.