Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

You Can Make the Most of Your Website With Advance Planning

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

One of the most difficult, but key components of the Internet marketing process is to design your website to achieve the goals you have set for your business.  Yet, most people completely bypass this important step or, worse, just turn the whole project over to a website designer to handle. 

The process of carefully planning the outline of a new website or upgrade to an existing website will secure for you not only a vehicle to show off your business in the best light, but also one that you are able to control the process of updating content, and, most importantly, achieve your business goals.  Below are a number of steps to follow while planning your new website:

1.  Write down on a piece of paper everything you think the visitors to your web site might want to know about your product or service.  Using the website for a school, for an example, you would probably discover that visitors would be looking for information on the staff at the school, classroom size, attendance numbers, and sports programs.  Try to list every possible topic about your industry, service or product that a visitor to your new website might be interested in knowing.

2.  Take on the role of your website visitor.  Surf the Internet and visit various sites offering similar services, then review them as a potential customer would.  As a visitor, what do you like and dislike about each site?  Are you inspired to take action from the website?  How easily can you find what you are looking for? How many different pages do you have to click through to find what you want?  Note all this data down with the intent of making your new website as easy for your visitors to use as possible.

3.  Research to find out what keywords your visitors might search for. Google has a free keyword research tool that will work fine for this purpose.  Enter a general phrase related to your product or service, such as “coffee filters” and other related keywords will appear.  These are the things your visitors already have questions about.  Knowing this, you can plan your website content to answer their questions up front. 

4.  When planning your new website, make sure to keep in room to grow.  Don’t be lured into a website format that won’t let you expand easily to add new content pages or products.  A website is not static, but rather should change constantly to meet your customer needs. 

5.  Plan a website that you can control, rather than be at the mercy of a web designer to make even small changes to your website.   Successful Internet marketing today relies on a dynamic website with fresh content added often, and having an antiquated website that only your designer can change will just not work anymore.  You need a website platform that will allow you to add website content fast and simply.

The investment by your business into a new website is a large part of your marketing budget.  Make the most of your investment with a new website that supports the goals you have set for your business. 

Marty Dickinson is the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for over 10 years. His specialty is Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.

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Advance Planning Is the Key to a Successful Website

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

One of the most difficult, but key components of the Internet marketing process is to design your website to achieve the goals you have set for your business.  Yet, most people completely bypass this important step or, worse, just turn the whole project over to a website designer to handle. 

When you take the time to strategically plan the outline of your new website or an upgrade of your current one, not only will you achieve a website that will show off your business in the best way, but one you will be able to add and edit content easily, and probably most important will help to achieve your overall business goals.  Here are a number of important steps to take in the website planning process:

1.  List all the information about your product or service that a visitor to your website might be interested in knowing.  For example, visitors to a school’s website would probably want to know the attendance levels, size of the classrooms, information on staff members and what sports they can participate in.  Take the time to brainstorm as many areas related to your product, service or industry that someone might be interested in when visiting the website.

2.  Take on the role of your website visitor.  Visit some websites and review them as if you are in the market for the services those sites have to offer.  As a visitor, what do you like and dislike about each site?  Are you inspired to take action from the website?  Can you find what you are looking for fast? How many different pages do you have to click through to find what you want?  Note all this data down with the intent of making your new website as easy for your visitors to use as possible.

3.  Do keyword research to find out what visitors will be searching for. There are free keyword search tools through Google that are completely adequate for this type of research.  Type in a general phrase such as “high school” and see what other keywords come up.  These are the things your visitors already have questions about.  With this information in hand, you can plan your website to feature content that answers people’s questions. 

4.  When planning your new website, make sure to keep in room to grow.  Avoid websites that can’t be easily expanded to add more pages or products.  A good website is a constant work in process. 

5.  The final thing to keep in mind is that you want to be able to control your new website, rather than be at the mercy of your web designer to make even the simplest of changes.   Old fashioned websites that only a web developer can change do not work in today’s dynamic Internet marketing environment that demands new content added regularly.  It is to your advantage to plan a website platform that will allow you to add content quickly and simply.

The investment by your business into a new website is a large part of your marketing budget.  It is critical to take the time to plan a new website that is compatible with your business goals. 

Marty Dickinson is the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for over 10 years. His specialty is Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.

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Using Mind Mapping Software to Organize Meeting Notes

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

http://clk.bz/note-taking

Mind Mapping software has been thought to be instrumental in helping people to organize their thoughts around a variety of topics. One area in which Mind Mapping software is useful is in organizing notes for meeting presentations. Whether it is a business or personal meeting, presenting the notes for the meeting in an organized manner that everyone can understand is essential. Using a Mind Mapping software tool to help with this organization can make any process much simpler, through the use of its various “mapping” components. Meeting presenters, thus, have the advantage of using Mind Mapping software to create a visually stimulating, intuitive, meeting presentation.

What is Mind Mapping Software?

Mind Mapping software is any software that is used to create diagrams, pictures, and other graphic visuals in order to show the relationship between ideas or other types of information.1 With Mind Maps, the key concept or main idea of the information being presented is represented by a central image, located in the center of the map. Any themes surrounding the main topic are shown on “branches” that are attached to the central image, with subsequent themes of less importance attached by “twigs”. The resulting diagram is a “map” of the ideas and information shown in a spatial, rather than linear, format. Moreover, along with the ideas shown on the map are visual graphics, images and colors that the constructor of the “map” associates with each of the themes and ideas. Mapping out information in this manner is believed to allow the brain to process the information in a manner more consistent with its natural functioning.

Using a Mind Map to Organize Notes for a Meeting

Suppose that your advertising team is having its weekly meeting to discuss advertising projects. The organizer of the meeting has made handouts for the meeting so that everyone can follow along as she covers each topic. Using a traditional meeting outline to organize these notes would likely look like this:

Weekly Advertising Meeting

I.Report on the Status of Advertising Accounts Already Underway

A.Movieflix In-Home Rentals Account

B.Teenage Blog Commercial Account

C.On-line Dating Site Account

II.Discussion of Upcoming Advertising Accounts

A.Nationwide Gym Account

B.Local Library Account

III.Suggestions From the Team Regarding Possible Future Accounts

IV.Overview of This Week’s Schedule

A.Team Assignments for New Accounts

B.Finalize Deadlines for New Accounts

V.Questions

Contrast this outline with the attached Mind Map diagram of these same meeting notes. On the Mind Map, the topics to be covered are presented in a spatial, colorful, graphically stimulating manner. In addition, the colors and pictures on the Mind Map relate to the topics and the topic sub-points. The information shown in the outline and on the Mind Map is the same, however, the information on the Mind Map is much easier to process.

Giving the Meeting Presentation Using the Mind Map

The attached Mind Map not only exemplifies the inherent creativity and visual ease that it has over a traditional outline, it also exemplifies a more intuitive form of organizing information. This intuitive form makes it easier to present information, because the information can be quickly processed and recalled. For example, the meeting’s presenter may not immediately recall the topic for point two and, therefore, needs to consult her notes to jog her memory. With the traditional outline shown above, she would have to scan the list of words to attempt to find the point she is supposed to talk about. However, with the Mind Map, the presenter can easily spot the second topic on the map, as well as the associated picture. She can regain her place with just a glance at the Map, versus the more tedious search of the outline, facilitating an easier presentation.

 

 

  1. Farrand, Paul; Hussain, Fearzana and Hennessy, Enid (May 2002). “The efficacy of the ‘mind map’ study technique”. Medical Education 36 (5): 426–431.

 

 

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Your Online Business Can Grow With SEO

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Selling and promoting a product or service in today’s realm will not only reserve itself to actual store presence and sales. In nowadays, putting in place an on-line storefront is an innovative add-on to and actual store presence, and most likely more cost-effective and a lot of valuable than ever, as a lot of and more individuals get relaxed shopping on-line

Putting up an on-line storefront is an innovative method of starting a business or generating sales by expanding the reach of your current business, and whether you are opening your look online for the primary time or have already started down the path, you’ll boost your online sales through techniques that are serving to today’s online businesses thrive. All or any, or some of these methods will be integrated to assist increase traffic, and drive a lot of people to your website and make it additional attractive to prospective customers.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a web site’s relevance, An SEO considers how search algorithms work and understand what folks are lookingfor. An SEO’s efforts might involve a website’s coding, presentation, and structure, also fixing problems that would stop search engine indexing programs from totally spidering a site. Different, a lot of helpful stuff may embrace adding unique content to a web site,and making sure {that the} content is well indexed by search engine robots, enabling the positioning to seem more appealing to users.

SEO’s Will Help Generate Additional Sales

An SEO might help generate a come on investment. But, search engines aren’t bought organic search traffic, thus their algorithms may amendment, and there would be no guarantees of continued referrals. However, due to the present portent for the dearth of guarantees and certainty, an organization that relies abundant on search engine traffic might suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending or attracting web visitors. According to notable web analysts, operators ought to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic. A prime ranked SEO blog, Seomoz.org, has analyzed that “Search marketers, in an exceedingly twist of irony, receive a very little share of their traffic from search engines.” Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from different websites.

Keywords Are Crucial In The Web

Search terms are important. Even one’s most frequent and dependable customers are doubtless to get your site by searching. Having relevant keywords in your page titles, product titles and links may create all the distinction when one tries to steer customers to your site. For those with established sites, it’s imperative to not t forget that keeping your keywords current and relevant is an everyday thing. Guarantee that you check your Web logs frequently to determine what visitors hunt for on your website, and establish pages and product appropriately.

Relevant Content Matters

Adding as abundant relevant content as you’ll to your site improves your customers’ appreciation an expertise, also because the positioning of your web site on the search engines. The important term here is relevant. Content that isn’t related to your product might work against you, because it might confuse the potential customers and offers search bots the impression that you’re tricking them. A better technique to feature relevant content to your website is to add descriptive paragraphs about every of your products, which are placed next to your photos. Use as a lot of detail as potential and necessary, and be certain to use the terms individuals are presumably to enter when searching.

To learn how to increase your website traffic, visit: seo reports. You can use our seo reports to increase website’s rank on search engines and boost your business as well. Get seo reports now!

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