No, we aren't trying to just tell you why you should have a blog, although you should, but are people blogging about you?
While some companies are desperately trying to make link backs to their website to improve their overall PageRank with Google, we love stories like these where our clients are praised by a real client – with a reputation. What made this customer feel that they needed to blog about their experience? Here is a list of items, just to name a few:
Credibility: Finding the same company on the top of Google Search no matter how many variations of they searched.
Simplicity: Navigating through a site where the user is valued as top priority, and helping them find what they want.
Offering: Being able to find what they are looking for quickly, and being enticed to submit their information for it. (If you are looking for teleconferencing, you don't want to read through pages about video-conferencing)
No Flash: Strangely enough, this particular customer loved the fact that the page didn't have to load some type graphic to tell them what they need.
Automated Email Follow-up: The fact that a personalized message sent back immediately from a real person's email account (even thought it was automated) was a warm touch after they submitted their information.
Thanks to Gyft.to for such a great review of one of our favorite customers, Vesta Networks.
We never thought we'd see it, but today Google.ca crashed (and is still down).
At 4:49pmEST, Google.ca, Google.com, Google.co.ukcrashed and is returning a 502 error. Even their other services such as Gmail (http://mail.google.com/) and Documents all went down with a bang everyone is still clicking Function F5.
Will people finally turn to Yahoo, or even worse, Bing.com to try and find what they are looking for?
Here at Candybox Marketing, we will be in the lineup of users simply clicking F5, until our page returns. For all of our Adwords Advertising customers, there may be a little blip in leads today. If you want to complain, please feel free to give us a call, since we have nothing to do at the moment… F5, F5, F5
One of the most common questions we get here at Candybox Marketing is 'How do you compare against all of the other SEO companies?' Great question. Instead of listing all of our compeitive advantages, we decided to make a quick presentation on choosing an SEO company. You be the judge.
Candybox Marketing is committed to transforming old, stagnant and irrelevant 'websites' into a living, updated, exciting 'web-presence.' We know that Google prefers sites that are updated and will give new content favorable results. That is exactly why we want to empower users to update it without a designer!
Today we launched www.Audience-Response.ca as a new Web Presence for Global Interactive Events. As a Corporate Events / Training company, they desired to communicate to their audience on an on going basis explaining new technologies, methods and software they are producing. We enabled them to do this through a new website with an integrated blog which helps them communicate without any hassles.
Now Global is able to upload video, post images of events and offer an online quoting tool so their customers can interact with them without picking up a phone.
Contact us for us to show you how to turn your dusty site into an experience.
Over the past few months, I have suffered from chronic headaches by surfing through Real Estate Websites on Google. The majority of sites are confusing, cheap, full of hundreds of links and littered with pictures of real estate agents.
Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of one of our very own sites that offers visitors the ability to select the area of interest and obtain a free (Toronto) loft report without users having to go through meaningless clickthroughs and confusion.
So you have a blog; great start! Now you are looking at an empty page and wondering how your blogs could possibly attract a following. Here are the four pillars of writings a blog posting that will attract the multitudes:
1. It's all in the Title.
No one reads a blog without first being drawn in by the title. Your title should either be funny, or intriguing. Here are some examples that have had huge success on CandyboxMarketing.com:
Visitors to your site should be able to come away with something. Insight, offerings, ideas or information that assists them in their search etc. Useful sites will be bookmarked, Digged and will be visited again and again.
3. Make your post Scannable.
Don't write a novel on your site that has your clients digging to find important information. If your post is messy or overloaded, you will lose your viewers in seconds. Simply by bolding text, breaking paragraphs and using less words to say more, your readers will find it worth their time.
4. Use simple, relevant words
Avoid the use of confusing words that stop a reader in his / her tracks. Use terminology that you would use in common speech, and relevant to your topic for SEO results. Search engines will serve you in their search results if your title is somewhere in your text. If you can't generate the content yourself, use a professional copywriting service to enhance your blog content.
Selling bricks in Canada. Sounds terribly exciting doesn't it? How about making a website about the bricks that you sell; now that is a barrel of fun!
Take a look at what this company did to overcome this boring (yet EXCITING) service. With a local online video producer, they made a few videos and integrated it with their website, and bingo, higher conversion rates on their website.
Is your business offering something that can't be described with a few images and text on a webpage? We can help.
Website Widgets are gaining popularity online as fast as they are becoming annoying. Building out a multi-function site use to be a costly procedure, but can now be accomplished in minutes by an Administrator using 'Do-it-yourself' web tools.
A common real estate agent can now have a mortgage calculator, Stock ticker, Weather bug, Tell a Friend link, Email Newsletter signup (that never gets used) and egg timer all within minutes! Widgets have been cluttering up what could be a good offering and repelling visitors. This could result in a low conversion rate on a website and waste precious marketing dollars and exposure.
Make sure when considering your next Widget if your target market really needs that service on your site. A mortgage broker may want a mortgage calculator, but them installing a weather report on the other hand could potentially make the entire website look cheap!
If you want to check out some funny examples of site that have gone Widget-Crazy, check out these:
The Marketer's whiteboard has a new advertising medium on it this year; online video advertisements. A 'nice-to-have' of two years ago has taken the centre stage as video advertisements have brought in the most success stories of 2008 within the online space.
eMarketer.com polled marketing managers on what their focus was going to be for 2009, and video ads brought in an overwhelming 66.8%. Notably, this doesn't mean that budgets have shifted this drastically, but an increased focus will begin a new breed of online marketers.
As Marketers realize this new vehicle has lots of new gadgets, tricks and hurdles, there will be an increased demand for Video Ad Implementations and Video Campaign Management. In response to this growing trend, Candybox Marketing has setup local Videographers in cities including Toronto, Vancouver and New York to quickly launch new ad programs. Contact us for more information on this service.
There is too much data accessible today that we ignore, but we all know how important it is to our business.
Google Analytics, Omniture, Campaigner are all tools that measure your SEO results and have the ability to break it down by behavior, geographic region, unique visits, campaigns, products and the list goes on and on, and on… Installing Google Analytics on your website is a great first step in understanding your online traffic, but there two more steps to go!
Step two is to understand how it works, and although it has an intuitive interface, terms suchas 'Bounce Rate' are critical to know for your SEO long-term. CandyBox Marketing takes the time with our customers to walk them through important reports and show them trends / results that are important for ongoing business. Unless you understand the results, there will be no way to benchmark your success and marketing dollars at work.
CandyBox Marketing will work with your organization to compile a template for weekly / monthly reports that can be sent to key stakeholders that need to understand your successes and difficulties of Marketing Online. The best way to learn how to use these tools is hands on, not by watching 20 different home-made movies on YouTube.
Finally, step three is to take action on the results and monitize successful strategies, and more importantly drop ineffective campaigns. This is easier said then done in the real world, since we don't always have time to review / understand / implement, but we can help…
