Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

Some Basic Website Fundamentals

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
The Flash may not be a hero for your website.

The Flash may not be a hero for your website.

With all the talk about SEO, PPC, Twitter, Flash and other web technologies, sometimes we overlook what is *really* important in a website.  Don’t forget the fundamentals!  Here is a quick list of things you should do that will help your online visitors once they find you:

  1. You need an “elevator speech” – a short paragraph summarizing your organization. Imagine that you were in an elevator with someone and had only 1 minute to explain your company to them. It should be short, sweet and memorable  – and right in a user’s siteline above the fold.
  2. Your site needs to inspire an action of some sort. What is your goal? Is it to have a visitor contact you? If so, make it easy for them to do so, but also give them a clear reason to contact you – Inspire them!
  3. Have an “About Us” page. People like to know more about your company. The “About Us” page is consistently one of my most visited pages on my website. This is your best opportunity to build trust – why should someone trust your organization? Experience? Knowledge? What is it?
  4. Most often, people on the web are hunting for specific information, and they want it QUICK. Waiting to see if that information is in a video or buried on a subpage is usually not an option – they will click on to the next site. Concentrate on making the key information available quickly and easily. Navigation at the top will help, and adding relevant textual info.  Don’t get too wordy – get to the point.
  5. Don’t try to dazzle with Flashy intros, or moving graphics.  A) It is distracting, and B) it isn’t search engine friendly.  If it doesn’t help deliver information faster, don’t bother.  Depending on your brand, the days of cool Flash animations are over for most companies.  Information delivery is key.

Posted in Online Marketing, Website Design |

 

Get Your Brand Right

Friday, January 29th, 2010

My partner Jodi and I had a great meeting with BRANDSWAG yesterday. It seems there might be some web development opportunites there – we’ll see.

BRANDSWAG provides several important services to its customers.  A big part of what they do is using social networking to build your client base.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – they are important tools in today’s digital age because they easily push information to customers.  They enhance communication and build relationships.  Good stuff.

Another part of what they do is establish “brand”, which is a more technical term for defining what is unique and marketable about your business.

The Seven1 Group is still in its infancy.  We are defining ourselves and networking, networking, networking.  I believe we are at a point now where our brand can finally come out.  I was busy redesigning our website last night to match our brand: Professional, web smart, and an emphasis on web application development. 

As it stands now, our website is geared more towards web design and marketing.  That is part of what we do – but a brand is about marketing what we do *best*.  And I truly believe our strength is in building robust web applications. 

That’s how we got in the same room with Brandswag – they need what we do best.

So think about your brand, and make sure it is communicates your strengths to your potential customers.

Posted in Online Marketing, Web Development, Website Design |

 

Getting Started

Friday, September 4th, 2009

It started with many a lunch and dinner meeting, and many months later we are ready to take our show on the road.  The Seven1 Group will have its “grand opening” soon.

For a new company, it is important to draw up a marketing campaign to get your name out on the streets. Since we are a web development and internet marketing company, it would make sense to “demo” our services through our “grand opening” campaign.  We have some ideas, and Jodi is busy drawing up our plan as we speak.  On thing is for certain, it will probably include the following:

  • Twitter campaign – create an account and start getting followers. Not sure how we will use it – we recommend to clients that they should offer exclusive deals for Twitter followers.  We may do that, or we may come up with something more creative.  More to come.
  • Facebook campaign – we will create a “group” and encourage our friends and family to follow us.  We’ll keep track of our success here on the blog and let you know what is working.  Our hope is that Facebook can work as a strong referral tool for us.
  • Print campaign – people don’t think about marketing to friends and family, but this is actually a great way to get your name out.  Send out a letter and business card to the people close to you. One thing our company specializes in is a personal url campaign. This involves creating a personal website for each recipient of a print or email marketing campaign.  We’ll talk more on this in the future, but we believe this to be an exciting new way to market products.
  • Link campaign – even if you have done a great job optimizing your site for search engine visibility (and if you haven’t, you need to!), you can’t ignore the importance of getting links out on the web that point back to your site.  Managing a links campaign is critical to search engine optimization.  Your search engine rankings are directly influenced by referrals from other sites.

So there is still a lot to do to get ready.  We are actually juggling a few project proposals right now, so it would be great to have a few work examples to show off when we “pull back the curtain.”

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization |