Revamping Websites

The only real reasons to redesign your company’s website is if you want to get found by more prospects, convert more prospects into leads and customers, and possibly, for branding purposes, but only IF it drives those first two goals.
A business website should generate leads and drive conversions. So how do you do that?

• Create great content, with a strong call to action
• Optimize that content for search (using SEO)
• Promote that content using social media

If you decide to go ahead with your website redesign, be careful to avoid these pitfalls:

• Removing valuable content
• Losing value of inbound links
• Losing keyword rankings
• Changing good conversion tools

Before you start redesigning, take a look at your current content. Make sure you don’t take away anything that is useful, keyword-rich, and converting visitors into leads.  Take advantage of some web tools that are available such as websitegrader.com from Hubspot. This site will help you evaluate your website for traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also offers advice on how to improve your website from a marketing perspective.

Let’s face it, if you destroy your content and lose keyword rankings all for the sake of a “fresh-looking website,” you’re liable to get a drop in traffic and leads, and that means you’ve wasted a lot of time, effort and money for nothing.

Can Google+ Compete with Facebook?

Have you seen a new black menu bar at the top of Google? It’s apparently part of a new social project the search engine is launching called Google+. The project is still in the testing phase and only a handful of people have been able to take it for a test-drive, but it’s clearly designed as a direct response to Facebook. Google+ will have sections for profile information, photos, videos and the equivalent of the Facebook wall, known as the “Stream.”

One feature of Google+ is known as Circles, where you can drag and drop your friends and family into different lists, like on Facebook or Twitter.

Another feature, called Hangouts, enables you to start a video chat with up to 10 people, as well as traditional instant messaging.

It will be interesting to see if this project is more successful than Google Buzz. If Google can handle the privacy issues better than Facebook, it could give the social networking giant a run for its money. If youwant to try, click here to request an invitation,or view a Google+ demo here .

6 Places to Add Keywords to Your LinkedIn Profile

Ask someone in business today what social networking tool they use, and you will probably hear Facebook or Twitter.  LinkedIn is the number one social networking site on the planet today. And it’s the number one site for anyone looking to build their business or career.


Export LinkedIn Contacts
One reason LinkedIn is so powerful is that it makes it easy for you to export your database. That’s the reason we use networking tools, right? To connect with people. You can’t do that easily on Facebook – you can only download your friends’ email addresses, not the people who like your business page, and you can’t get any email addresses from your Twitter followers.

Why Use LinkedIn?
LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to connect with 70 million professionals in over 200 countries. Plus executives from all the Fortune 500 companies are members – so you’re keeping pretty good company!

Create a Keyword-Rich Profile
The first thing you need to do to get started on LinkedIn is to create a profile. This is your opportunity to tell the rest of the community who you are, what you do and what makes your business unique.  It may be tempting to post your resume here, as many people did when LinkedIn first began. But if you want to reach particular contacts through LinkedIn’s search feature, you need to optimize your profile with keywords.

Here are 6 places to add keywords to your LinkedIn Profile:

1. Professional Headline – located underneath your name; include keywords here to emphasize your skills as a copywriter, and your niche as well.
2. Current Occupation
3. Past Occupation
4. Websites – LinkedIn’s default choices are “My Website,” “My Company,” and “My Blog.” But, when you edit your profile, you can choose “Other” and replace those headings with keywords that describe your website, company, blog, or other social networking site, like Facebook, for example.
5. Summary – This is the area where you can advertise your services to your target market. A lot of people list their resume here, but as a copywriter, this is your opportunity to use the persuasive sales-writing skills you’ve learned to market your own services.
6. Specialties – A list of keywords related to your business.

Google vs. Facebook

No wonder Google wants to get into social networking in a big way. Facebook is beating Google at its own game.

This week that Facebook has passed Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites. Web measurement firm Compete Inc. found that during December, 15 percent of traffic to major Web portals like Yahoo, MSN & AOL came from Facebook and MySpace. Of that traffic total, 13 percent came from Facebook.  Google came in third with 7 percent, just behind E-Bay.

Facebook’s growth is incredible. The social networking site recently said it now has 400 million active members (including about 225 million added in the past 12 months). Compete said its size now rivals that of the major Web portals, and its demographics mirror those of the Internet in general.

Google isn’t giving up without a fight. Last week, it purchased Aardvark, a social-media search engine for questions and answers, and unveiled Google Buzz, which allows Gmail users to post updates, videos, photos and links in the “Facebook” style.

Google Buzz – A new social web

So what exactly is Google Buzz? Used on a PC or mobile, Buzz reminds us of an RSS combined with all of your social networking—all within the existing Gmail and Google.com infrastructure.

 Buzz's five key features include:

• Automatic friends lists (friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail)
• "Rich fast sharing" combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing
• Public and private sharing (swap between family and friends)
• Inbox integration (instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook might, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content, like the photo viewer we mentioned above)
• "Recommended Buzz" puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you're not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.

Google Buzz is available, and it should come up as a new tab in Gmail anytime now.

Ipad : A Suitable Mobile Ads Platform?

Whether you think the iPad is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or just another over-hyped product, Apple’s new device is sure to please the mobile advertising industry.  They’ve been laboring to optimize their ads and websites for the tiny screen sizes of smart phones. But the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen should make it much easier to see traditional display ads, such as those seen on magazines or TV episodes.  Plus, the iPad offers the personalization and geo-locational features of a smart-phone.

However, one downside of the iPad is its inability to support Adobe Flash, the software many online ads rely on. As a result, mobile marketers who use Flash won’t be able to adapt their existing ads. They will have to develop new kinds of ads to reach iPad users.

On the other hand, users will be able to download applications for the iPad, creating similar advertising opportunities to those found with the iPhone.  Apple had recently announced plans to buy Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising platform. Analysts say that deal makes much more sense for Apple now due to the increased market for mobile ads for the iPad.

Is Social Media relevant to Business?

“Social media is great for keeping in touch with people, but it takes too much time, and I’m not sure how it benefits my business.”

How many times have you heard that comment? I personally hear it quite frequently. And a recent informal inquiry of my clients and business associates showed the majority of them feel the same way.  Although, most of them do like the fact that social media is a quick, easy and free way to reach a big audience, and maintain a personal connection.

Business owners and executives are interested in learning more about social networking sites, particularly how to use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to grow their business. Not knowing how to use social media is probably the main reason why a majority of my respondents said they spend less than 30 minutes a week on social media.

Another reason a lot of people are unsure about how to use social networking sites for their business is the fact that they don’t know how to measure ROI.  There are tools out there to help you do this such as Addictomatic and Tweetalyzer, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post.