Results Professional Marketing Blog

Social media marketing is a very valuable tool you should have in your marketing tool belt. Being on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. is good for your business as it increases your visibility and gives you the ability to interact with your 'followers' on a more personal level. You may already have a corporate Facebook and Twitter page which is great! But, have you considered Instagram?

What is Instagram and Why Should I Care?

You've probably heard of Instagram either through family or friends. Instagram is a photo sharing app which is available exclusively to mobile users, including smart phones and tablets. You basically take pictures to Instagram with your smart phone or tablet, apply filters and then upload them. If you have existing pictures on your phone or tablet, you can also use those. You have the option to share the picture to other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and even email it to someone.

Some of these website marketing tips may seem obvious, and yet we all run into what should not be done everyday on the internet:

• Too much sound or music can drive people away fast. Think with the type of site you have. if you are a musician, then music can be expected. If the type of business is selling financial advice - don't have music.
• Hard to find information: If someone has to search through a site to find something that has been advertised, that's not good. It must be easy to find through menus; or site specific search software; or visible linking. Make everything EASY for your viewer.
• Hard to read pages: there are multiple ways to make a page hard to read unfortunately. Page is too busy; wrong font style; font not big enough; font color on background color a bad match (like red font on dark blue background; images that are too big and load too slow, etc. etc.

SEO ... search engine optimization, increases the prominence of a website or web page. Simply said, the more often a particular site shows up in the search results list on the first page, the more visitors it gets from the search engine's users. More specifically, this applies to the natural or organic (unpaid) results of a search engine.

For the term on page vs off page SEO, there really is no "against" each other. Both are important to any website.

SEO can be geared toward various kinds of searches, such as image, local or video, for example, but regardless of the category, websites that use good SEO practices will stand out, as opposed to ones that do not.

To clarify the differences between two of the main elements for SEO, on page and off page optimization, let's look at the basics for both, with the following distinction in mind:

Many people spend hours on the internet looking for information or suppliers or they want to save time by purchasing on the web. But, it's important to understand that the web has its own specific marketing rules and many businesses have not considered the following issues on their websites: You must keep your readers interests in mind when you write content or design a site. "Content is King" is said over and over and over.

Well, it is the most important thing, both to a visitor as well as the search engines. But, too much content on one page is not good. The screen is small. People are busy. Make sure your information is in compact pieces. Make your most important information show "above the fold" (bottom of the visible screen).

You can link within the site to full content pages with lots of data. Search engines will "like" a website because it has a lot of relevant information. Relevance is key to good search engine optimization; but more importantly it is key to your reader! The first time someone sees content on a page it should be short and catchy; using the marketing concept of "features and benefits".

These days, it's essential that you and your business have a social media presence. You may be asking yourself, "Well, I have a great website, isn't that enough?" Sorry, but the answer is no.

Or maybe you don't have a website at all.

We're not referring to paid advertising; we are talking about being part of the social media community.

Before someone even considers your services or products, most people do thorough research on the company. They want to find out as much as they can about the company, such as who they are, what others think, etc. and what better place to look than the internet. When you are on these social networks, as well as being engaging, you are establishing a bit of trust with your potential customers.