In this Ski-lift Soliloquy by David Scott, VP of Business Development at PureDriven you will learn:
Three reasons you should use video and pictures as part of your online content marketing mix:
1. It helps your business get ranked higher in Google – part of search engine optimization
2. It gets the attention of your clients better than just text, and helps hold their attention
3. It allows your business to stand out from your competition more effectively
For today’s Productivity Friday Post, I want to point you to some great, free videos if you’re a business that wants to start blogging.
Here’s the link for all the videos, if you want to see everything.
Here’s the opening keynote address, from a bunch of bloggers on the topic of why they blog, which isn’t as easy a question to answer as you might think. Take particular note however, of Teresa Boardman who writes the St. Paul Real Estate blog. She routinely RECEIVES LEADS thanks to her blog. No matter how many times I say money can be made online, it’s critical that I show off people like Teresa, because she’s living proof of it. (a blog post on Realtors in Minnesota who blog is coming down the pike).
Meanwhile St. Paul Pioneer Press technology critic Julio Ojeda-Zapata and others talked in this video about how easy some of the blogging platforms are. I haven’t used it yet, but I recommend businesses who want to blog on their own domains, but don’t have a tech person on their team, may want to try Square Space. I haven’t used it yet, but the buzz on it is that it’s a lot less hassle than Wordpress even. And based on the tutorials, I can believe it. No longer do you have to find a separate company to host your blog. And it’s only $8 a month!
A huge part of blogging is studying your traffic. Which posts were popular? Who is coming to your blog? It ought to be called online trafficology, instead it’s called analytics.
And finally, there was a great session on optimizing your blog for search engine optimization value.
Let me know what you think about these videos. And have a great weekend!
I just wanted to share how easy it was for me to get a Facebook page for a new class I’m offering on not just page one of Google’s search results, but the top slot of page one of Google. It’s not as hard as you think, and it should always work, so long as a little thought is put into what you’re naming your Facebook page.
Big a welcome to those who attended our Search Engine Optimization and Analytics sessions at the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce August 2. As promised, here are the notes on our class on getting started with analytics and search engine optimization. If anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me via e-mail. You can send a message to me via the link to your right, or on Twitter @Garmoe.
Search Engine Optimization
To learn more about the basics of SEO, visit http://www.seomoz.com
At a Duluth Chamber of Commerce mixer last week, I overheard a four people discussing a recent letter they received from the Minnesota Department of Revenue. What caught my attention was a statement the person who received the letter made. “At the bottom, it had a notice saying ‘Follow us on Twitter,’” the attendee said, and the whole group broke out in laughter. “‘Why on earth would I ever want to follow them on Twitter?’”
Why indeed.
I completely understand why this made for a great joke among friends. Yet, there’s something deeper that I think many businesses don’t yet grasp about sites like Twitter, and even the Internet as a whole, when it comes to marketing.
While many people will find it silly to “follow” tweets from the Minnesota Department of Revenue, others – people like tax attorneys, accountants, and those who do their taxes themselves – might want to keep up on the latest changes in tax law, and hear about general hints and tricks that may help them during tax time. Twitter is an excellent, free way, to get that kind of data out. A quick glance at the Twitter stream from the Minnesota Department of Revenue reveals that they’re sending out Tweets of exactly that sort.
This brings up an important point that businesses need to grasp when it comes to the Internet as a whole – whether it’s search engine optimization – or social media sites like Twitter. It’s not about the total amount of friends you have on Facebook, the number of followers on Twitter, or the number of hits on your website. It’s instead all about whether those people are relevant to your business. So while the internal revenue service might like the notion of having one million followers on Twitter, they are far better off with 100 people who actually care about what they are saying. And your business likewise is far better off with 100 hits on your website from people actually interested in buying your product, than 1,000 hits from people who have no interest in buying what you have, but accidentally stumbled on your website, just because you paid someone to post your content in a lot of different places across the web. So keep that in mind. It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the relevant numbers.
