New Arts & Crafts Redesign Website Delivery
KatieOchicago.com
Design & Promote has completed a new Chicago Web Design for Katie Overgard, owner of katieOchicago. She motivates people on how they can take items they already own and transform them into new and attractive products. KatieOchicago was looking for a site that would showcase how to be green, save money, and have fun while creating some great redesigned products, like clothing, accessories and even mural painting.
KatieOchicago wanted to be able to show items that were for sale online, and have a place for people to ask questions about their own redesign projects. Design & Promote included a “featured project” page where katieOchicago can blog about the latest projects, and also a shop page for the newest sale items.
About katieOchicago
By using the art of redesign, katieOchicago provides inspiration and instruction on how people can use items they already own and make them fresh and appealing. Step by step instruction on projects help customers save money, save the environment and have fun with art. Beautiful art is not always surrounded by a frame and placed on a wall…it is all around you. Katie wants to show you how to LIVE your art.
The Steps For Creating A Facebook Page For Your Business
It is easy to make your own Facebook page for your business
Many of you may have a business website, but may not be able to generate proper traffic for the site, from which you can earn revenue. There are many ways of ensuring that your site gets enough traffic to keep your business running in a profitable manner. One of the very simple ways is to create a Facebook page for your own business.
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world which is being used by millions of people all over the world. It is very simple to open a Facebook page for your business and start drawing traffic into your site.
To start you need to visit the Advertising Page of Facebook where you will find four tabs. The tabs are titled Advertising, Pages, Connect and Facebook Share.
- The Advertising tab is used to create advertisements that will be displayed on Facebook.
- The Pages tab will allow you to create a page for your business on Facebook, where people will be able to join in.
- The Connect tab will allow the users to connect to your business site, thus giving you valuable traffic.
- The Facebook Share tab allows you to design a button for your site, with the help of which people can join your Facebook Public profile.
You need to choose one or all of the above mentioned options in order to open up your business page under Facebook.
Then you need to create a page for your business under Facebook. It is not very difficult. If you already have a personal profile under Facebook, then it will be easy for you.
The step-by-step form makes it simple even for the new users. You need to add the images and the information regarding your business in the page under Facebook. Add as much detail about your business as possible, as that will help you in attracting maximum traffic to your site.
You also need to choose a category for your business. Facebook gives you many options to choose from. Be careful to choose the right option, as that will attract the right kind of traffic that you are looking for.
Facebook also gives you options to include some useful applications in your business page. Some of the popular options are Discussion Boards, Events, Information, Notes, Photos, Reviews, Video, Wall, etc. You can choose all or any of these applications that suits the requirements of your business. You can even hire Design & Promote to create a Facebook page for your business or sign up for a professional social marketing package that would include that and more.
Visit the Design & Promote Facebook Page
Using Linkedin To Help Promote Your Business
Most people manage to open a website of their own and stack it up with products and services. At the end of the day, the thing that most websites lack is the required traffic that ultimately generates revenues for the site. There are many ways of increasing traffic in your site. Some of the methods are very expensive, while others are relatively cheaper. There are some other methods which do not require any money at all. If they are used properly, they will help you create traffic for your site.
One such method is by using the Linkedin. This is very easy to use and gives brilliant results if you can follow some simple steps. The most basic step to utilize the capability of the Linkedin is by providing the name and link of your business website in the Website Section of Linkedin. This will ensure that people visiting your profile will end up visiting your site too.
Always keep your status message in Linkedin updated, this is visible to your connections so the more often it is updated the more views it will get. There you can write a few words about the things you are working on or about the products and services that you are offering. This will help you generate a lot of traffic for your website if you put in a link.
Use the blog link widget to the maximum effect. The blog link widget can be easily added to your Linkedin profile. This blog link automatically displays the latest blog updates and Twitter that has been posted by you. The people visiting your profile will be attracted to your twitter or blog and may end up visiting your site.
You must avoid being a silent member of Linkedin. You need to be active and visit the site regularly and update your profile too. You also need to join various groups which are relevant to your field of work. In this way you will increase the visibility of your site and also draw traffic into your site. Generally you will be required to apply to a group in order to join it. But try to select those groups only which have many members, as that will serve your purpose well.
Try to answer some of the questions that have been put forward in Linkedin. This is a very easy way to draw traffic into your site if you provide a link to it as a resource.
There are many more ways to use Linkedin to help promote your business. You can discover them on your own, or use Design & Promote as your mentor on using Linkedin to help you gain more customers.
Why Buying A Domain Name That Includes Your Keyword Is Important
We have become so used to the online world that websites have become a source of information and knowledge for most of us. So, the naming of a site becomes very important, as that is the identity of the site and that is the way people will get to know the site.
There are many theories regarding the naming of the site. Some people believe that it is better to choose a domain name which is similar to that of the name of the company. In this way, the company and its site will share the identity and will benefit each other.
Another more popular and much acceptable theory is that, it is better to include the keywords in the domain name. This theory has found a lot of followers, as people genuinely believe that if the domain name of the site has one or more keywords, then the site will be optimized in a far better way.
The search engines have many techniques of listing a site in their search pages. One of the important factors is the presence of keywords that are being chosen. You need to choose the keywords and ensure that those words are present in the content of the site. The keywords also need to be marked separately so that the search engines can track them easily. So, this is how, the keywords are related to the search engine page listings.
It is considered better to have one or more keywords in the domain name, as it will be easily spotted by the search engine and it will be easier to get a better ranking for your site. The search engines go by searching the domain names first and then looking into the contents of the site. So, if the keywords are present in the domain name itself the search engines will track it down and then go on to search the content of the site. Once both the domain name and the content share some common keywords, the search engines tend to give a higher ranking to those sites.
So, while registering the domain name for your site, take care to include at least one keyword in it. The more keywords you include in the domain name, the better it will be for your search page rankings. The higher the search page rankings, the better revenue it will generate.
Design & Promote Domain Names – Check Available Domain Names
What Does Having A Web 2.0 Website Really Mean?
The term “Web 2.0” refers to the second generation of web designing and development. The whole concept has taken a big leap in the last decade and the result of extensive research and development is the Web 2.0. The new generation web is capable of handling communication and sharing in a far better way, than its predecessor. Incidentally, the term “Web 2.0” has been coined by Darcy DiNucci way back in 1999. In her article titled “Fragmented Future”, she had mentioned this term and from then on, it has become very popular.
The Web 2.0 is expected to make the World Wide Web more user friendly by making it more secure. The new development is also expected to improve the sharing capability and the interoperability of the World Wide Web.
With the Web 2.0, the users can actually own the data present in the site and exercise complete control over it. With the help of the new technology, the users can also create a far more feature rich, content rich and user-friendly website, with the help of the Ajax interface. The Web 2.0 aims at changing the whole concept of the World Wide Web. The Web 2.0 aims at creating the concept of Web-as-participation-platform, which may change the way we use and look at the internet and the World Wide Web.
User participation is the central part of the whole concept of Web 2.0. The developers have tried to ensure that people from all walks of life are able to participate in this concept and each one has something to derive from the new technology. The other important features that are unique to the Web 2.0 are the concept of metadata, dynamic contents, and of course scalability. The Web 2.0 also introduces a totally new concept to us. The new concept is called the collective intelligence, which will be achieved by the maximized participation of various users at the same time.
The Web 2.0 uses the server software, content syndication, messaging protocols, standards oriented browsers with plug-ins and extensions facilities, various client applications and many more advanced technologies. The Web 2.0 also has advanced information storage systems, and the scope for creation and dissemination which goes much beyond the capacity of the Web 1.0.
The Web 2.0 is a technological marvel which is expected to change the way we surf the net and access the information over the World Wide Web. It promises to open up a new world in front of us, where we, the users are the most important part of the whole system.
Having a Web2.0 designed website means that you share your information with other sites and in turn reference material on websites other than your own.
Using the RSS feed function of WordPress makes this syndication easy and you can set up a system where your blog posts to Facebook, directories and many other sites giving your business all the more exposure quickly, easily and with no management other than initial setup.
Let Design & Promote design a web 2.0 website for you!
How To Use Newsletter Marketing Effectively
Newsletters are growing increasingly popular as a marketing tool for any business these days. A marketing newsletter is a document that notifies, reminds, advises, communicates and advertises about a business to its target audience and customer base. If used effectively, a newsletter can create immense interest and awareness about an organization and its business activities. That is why it is quite judicious to make effective use of a newsletter to promote a business.
In comparison to other PR tools like targeted sales calls or television advertisements, newsletter are quite cost effective. Since Marketing newsletters don’t require any heavy duty investment, unlike affiliate marketing or television advertisements, even a small-scale business owner can try out his or her hand at writing effectual marketing newsletters. You can simply send these new letters to your existing and prospective client base through e-mails in order to delineate the key details about your products and business. These marketing newsletters would thus help you to increase public visibility and enhance the customer base for your business, just as product advertisement would do.
However, if you want to use a newsletter to promote your business or product, you must keep in mind certain key things. When you send newsletters to your customer, you should remember that newsletters are intrinsically different from advertisements. Advertisements can contain fabricated words or too much self appreciation. However, newsletters should always have a factual basis. Even if the aim of a newsletter is to entice the customer about your products or services it should always be grounded in reality and be quite informational. Thus, the content of a good marketing newsletter, apart from being attractive for the target audience, should always be factual and impartial, otherwise it would lose its credibility towards the customers.
A perfectly written newsletter should always aspire to lure more and more people in to glean more information about the organization. If you send regular newsletters to your existing customer base depicting the details about your latest products and services this would help familiarize them with your business activities. This can, in turn, help to build an allegiance or brand loyalty towards your business. That is why an ideal marketing newsletter should always harp on your USP or unique selling point or your business. In this phase of global economic depression when everyone is clamoring after low hanging fruit, a well written newsletter can help you to achieve that golden target, and without much of an investment.
There are many online newsletter program out there from iContact, Aweber, Subscribermail and many more. The leader we feel after using all of the above and more is Constant Contact.
They are not the cheapest but the way their templates are set up is very nice, can be modified easily and can get you out of the gate with a nice looking personalized looking newsletter in the quickest time we feel.
Design & Promote is a business partner with Constant Contact and have developed dozens of newsletters and currently manage clients with email lists larger than 25,000.
Sign up for a free 60 day trial with Constant Contact and see how you like it, just click here.
If you would like some help in getting your first newsletter program off the ground we can design a great template that reflets your brand, import your initial list of names and train you on all aspects of newsletter marketing, Prices start at $500. Contact Us for more details
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How To Effectively Optimize A Local Business Profile
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.
How to Use Facebook and Twitter to Attract Clients For Your Chicago Area Small Business
Some Chicago area service businesses have now figured out that social networking and web 2.0 will help them make more sales and connect with more clients. It is surprising that more small businesses have not already jumped on the bandwagon to get the word out about their business and what they do.
It is the perfect way to market, especially if you are on a budget. Plumbers, handymen, and insurance agents are all incorporating web 2.0 into their marketing plans.
Blogging allows you to open up a conversation with people who want to learn more about your services. They can read your posts and then leave comments to give you feedback on each topic you write about. If your industry has made some recent changes, your blog is the best place to let people know. Be sure to use your keywords, including the city you do business in, in the titles of your blog posts. Search engines will also reward you for posting regularly to your blog.
Facebook is one way to connect with prospects and clients in a more personal way. You can import your blog into your homepage on Facebook, giving greater exposure to all of your posts and other information. You can also create a group or a page on Facebook, where prospects can connect with you on an even more personal basis. You can provide advice, discount coupons, and anything else that your clientele may want from you. You are the expert, and it is another way for you to position yourself as an expert in your field to attract new clients.
Twitter is another social networking site that is proving to be good for small businesses. You can include the name of your business and a link back to your company blog or website. In your bio be sure to tell people where you are located if you do business in a specific geographical area. Send a tweet a couple of times a day to let people know what aspect of your business you are engaged in at that time, and use a service like tweet later to send automatic tweets every time you post to your blog.
The idea is for all of this to be less time consuming so that you can focus more time and energy on your business, while still marketing yourself on the internet. If you need help learning how to do all of these things, or with online writing in general, look for someone who offers weekly teleseminars where you can easily get answers to your questions.
I invite you to join me for free weekly teleseminars that will teach you how to blog, use social networking, and write, market, and sell your articles and ebook to increase your visibility, credibility and passive income by visiting http://www.EbookWritingandMarketingSecrets.com and also learn the technology needed to run an online business.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Connie_Ragen_Green
Design & Promote Helps Naperville Area Not-For-Profits
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
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.
