Here are some simple steps you can follow to write awesome website content for your site.

1.    Write for your audience

It is important to determine who your audience and target market is before sitting down to write the content for your website. You need to know whom are you trying to reach and how you think it is best to reach them.

2.    Write useful and interesting content

You don’t want to bore your potential customers or clients with dull content on your website. It is important to make sure your content is pertinent and useful for what your website visitors will be looking for, but it is also important to make it interesting to read. Website content is like any other advertising message – you don’t have very long to catch the readers’ attention. You want them to be able to get what they need from the content while keeping them entertained by what you are saying.  You are selling your business through your words, so choose them wisely. Ask yourself if you would want to read what you wrote and put yourself in the clients shoes.

3.    Short and sweet

The first paragraph of any article is critical. You will either catch your reader’s attention or you won’t. In general, people comprehend and remember shorter messages that include bullet points and main headings for sections. Keep this in mind when writing your content and break it up in to sections if possible. Make sure you can deliver your information without dragging it out.

4.    Use SEO

Search Engine Optimization is important to remember when writing the content for your website. You don’t have to put hours of research into it to make your site more SEO friendly. Make a list of a few keywords you would like to rank for in search engines and include those in your text. Your keywords should be words that people actually search for so that your site will show up in search results. You also want to include links in your content to other pages on your site using keywords as your link text. This serves two purposes: it is good SEO, and it is more user friendly. We can help you develop your SEO plan further for your site, but it is important to include basic SEO principles when writing your content yourself.

5.    Structure and flow

You want to have a focus for your content and an overall flow to the text between pages. Make sure that your message remains clear throughout your site. What are you trying to accomplish with your website content? Do you want your visitors to act on something? Are you trying to inform them about a certain product, service, or event? You need an overall marketing message that you can carry throughout your site to keep your content organized and well thought out.

You have to play by the rules.

Promotions and giveaways are great ways to interact with your fans and gain more visibility for your business on Facebook and other social networks. But if you are going to do a contest, it is important to play by the rules.  Developing a social media promotion takes some research and planning before you can share publicly that you are giving something away.

Before you launch a Facebook promotion, check out Facebook’s rules and guidelines https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php. There are certain things you are and are not allowed to do on Facebook. For example, you are not allowed to collect entries through Facebook comments or photo uploads, but you can use an official Facebook app to announce and run your contest. As the admin of a page, it is your responsibility to read and understand these rules before starting a contest or giveaway on your page. Facebook has the right to reject or remove any page that does not follow their guidelines.

5 Tips to Create a Successful Contest:

1.    Define your goal
2.    Come up with a creative and interesting idea
3.    Utilize other social networks
4.    Keep the length of the contest in mind (typically 2-4 weeks)
5.    Measure the results

By taking the time to prepare your contest and make sure that you have followed the guidelines set by Facebook, your contest or giveaway may be a successful promotion for your business or company. You could gain valuable interaction and feedback from your current customers and even gain some new customers and fans.

For more on this topic, see this article posted by Mashable http://mashable.com/2012/03/05/facebook-promotion-guide/

"Rachel has a love for all things creative. She is passionate about what she does and loves to create new things."

Social networking has gained tremendous ground as a significant element in any business’ branding and marketing strategy in recent years.  Did you know, though, that the benefits to social networking on your business may actually reach further than you realize?  In fact, your Klout Score can tell you a lot about the impact you currently have, and may help drive you towards goals you wish to reach, in your own social networking.

“The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action.  Every time you create content or engage you influence others.” (www.klout.com/corp/kscore)

So, what are the benefits to uncovering and studying your Klout Score?  The Klout Score is based off of information from social networks and gauges 3 basic trends:

• True Reach (the number of people you influence)
• Amplification (to what degree you influence these people)
• Network Impact (the influence of those in your True Reach—how often they share and respond to you). 

The Klout Score itself is based on a scale from 1 to 100. 
An individual Klout Score is determined by a business’ ability to drive action.  The scoring does not come from follower totals or counts taken from friends and likes.  It focuses solely on the ability of your social networking strategy to drive action. 
To sign-up to use Klout, you must connect through a social network—currently Twitter and Facebook are the primary methods available on the Klout website (www.klout.com).  Once you have signed-up and begin using this scoring method, you will be eligible for Klout Perks, Klout information, and even Klout widgets and badges to share your Klout Score. 

For anyone looking to capitalize on their business impact through social networks, Klout is at least worth a second glance.  Klout is a great way to rate your business on your ability to drive action and influence rather than numbers of followers, friends, or likes you may have.  To gauge the true impact your social networking has for your business, as far as leads, interaction, and maintaining your customer base, you may get a lot from just a little Klout.

Google is a king among search engine optimization.  As far as SEO goes, the power that Google holds is great.  That is why the regular changes and updates to the Google Algorithm’s can be frustrating and sometimes a stumbling block in many SEO strategies.  In a recent announcement, Google shared 40 search algorithm changes made in February 2012. 

Among the many changes and updates shared, the underlying motion behind each is targeted towards refreshing data in the Panda system currently used by Google for searches.  The goal with this is to make Panda more accurate and more sensitive to online activity. 

Some of the changes are geared towards increased related-search results, data refresh for related searches in succession, and expanded image indexing.  What do these mean for you?

•    More search results to be listed per search
•    Smarter adjustments to searches with related terms that are searched back-to-back
•    A focus on more images (keep this one in mind for new updates to your own SEO marketing campaigns and strategies!)

In a recent edition of website magazine more details and coverage on these algorithm updates is shared here.

With all of the regular updates and changes that occur month-to-month and year-to-year in the SEO game, we understand how confusing and difficult it may be to stay abreast the most recent round of changes.  Part of our job in better serving you is to make sure we stay up-to-date with these things—because you cannot be expected to!  We have dedicated professionals who study and research SEO and Google algorithm updates so you don’t have to---just contact us today to see how we can help you get a handle on your SEO strategy.

Now you may be familiar with the most recent Facebook change to the Timeline profiles, but it is time to switch over your business pages to the same look. Facebook launched their Timeline for businesses this morning, giving business page owners the opportunity to preview the new look or make the switch for themselves.

The new business page will look like the profile pages, and is designed to give business owners more flexibility to show off their brand and identity.  This new layout allows you to choose a cover photo that can display your logo, products, or personalities. The timeline also allows you to feature your company history, highlights, and milestones.

In addition, there have been some added benefits for page admins as well. There is a new admin panel that will display at the top of your page if you are an admin and can be hidden or expanded. This panel will show you notifications of activities, stats, and messages.

The Timeline layout will make your pages more social and engaging, giving you a better opportunity to utilize this as a marketing outlet.  We have updated our page to the new look. Have you? It will be to your advantage to preview your page now and be ahead of the trend. All pages will automatically change by March 30th.  If you think you are ready to learn more about the change, check it out here.

"Rachel has a love for all things creative. She is passionate about what she does and loves to create new things."