Monday, December 31, 2012

2013 Predictions – Insurance Agency Marketing

In 2012, ITC continued our pledge of helping insurance agents grow and succeed with their agencies through constant upgrades to our products: Insurance Website Builder, AgencyBuzz, TurboRater, and InsurancePro. Now, the New Year is upon us, and I am looking forward to the great things we can accomplish together in 2013. Let’s explore my predictions regarding insurance agency marketing in 2013.

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Friday, December 28, 2012

AgencyBuzz, Creating More Buzz for Your Agency in 2012

The AgencyBuzz online marketing system saw some phenomenal new features get released in 2012. These features are helping AgencyBuzz become the central online marketing tool for agents nationwide. Let’s take a look at the great features that were added to AgencyBuzz in 2012 and what you have to look forward to in 2013.

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Looking Back at Insurance Website Builder in 2012

One of the advantages of using the Insurance Website Builder online marketing system is the fact that our users receive new features and upgrades automatically. This is done in the background without requiring agents to modify or re-upload their website files to their hosts. In addition to the introduction of new features, Insurance Website Builder automatically updates the sitemap.xml file that notifies the search engines. With this automatic update, we normally see that Insurance Website Builder websites are re-indexed almost daily by the search bots.
So let us take a look at what we have added in 2012. 


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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

5 Website Mistakes to Avoid

If you're thinking about updating your current insurance website, or getting your first website, in the new year, there are some mistakes you definitely want to avoid.

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Friday, December 14, 2012

Creating a Partner Page the Right Way

Over the years, I have seen multiple interpretations of partner or trusted professional pages. Most of them get the point across but they are more often than not just a list of partners and some contact information. While this satisfies the need, simple lists do not draw people in, and providing only basic contact info does not build a measurable partnership between an agency and their partners.
So when I set out to design partner pages for the Insurance Website Builder system, I had a few goals in mind. Here we go:


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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

4 Tips for Building Relationships on Social Media

Social media has many uses: driving traffic to your website, promoting your agency and services, sharing insurance information and knowledge, and increasing your online visibility. However, my favorite use for social media is building relationships.

Getting more followers can be exciting. But if you're not having meaningful conversations with your followers and building relationships, your posts will be seen by very few followers. Try these four tips to make your social media efforts meaningful and start building relationships.


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Monday, December 3, 2012

How to Write a Great Blog Post

Last week I talked about finding the time to blog. Now that you've found the time, let's continue talking about blogging with how to write a great blog post.

The first step is to decide what to write about. This is an easy step if you follow my suggestion from last week to keep a list of possible topics to blog about. Determining the subject of your next blog post can easily take up much of the time you allow yourself to write. Save yourself that time so that it can be spent actually writing. Here are some quick ideas on where to look for content for your blog:


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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

How to Find Time to Blog

We hear it all the time: I'm too busy to blog. If you're serious about your digital agency marketing and competing online, how can you not find the time to blog?

Blogging has so many great benefits for your website and your agency. It helps with SEO, brands you as an insurance expert and gives readers a look inside what makes your agency special and different from your competition.


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Monday, November 26, 2012

Don’t Chase Google’s Algorithm

In September 2012, Google stopped up-ranking Exact Match Domains (EMDs). EMDs are domain names that include keyword phrases such as commercial insurance in the domain name getcommercialinsuranceintexas.com. People would snatch these up by the hundreds in the hope of capturing the traffic. This worked for a while, but then Google caught on. Overnight, they downplayed the importance in their algorithm of EMDs. Webmasters that relied heavily on this tactic instantly lost rankings. In fact, it affected 0.6% of all U.S English search queries to a “noticeable degree.”

In the previous years, I had recommended that you not use EMDs and instead focus all of your SEO time and energy on a single domain. You could (and sometimes should) use an EMD if you are pointing a specific marketing campaign from television, radio or print to a landing page geared for capturing and keeping that exact traffic.


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Monday, November 19, 2012

Getting Photos for your Website

 The title says it all. I tried to think of something catchy for this entry, but alas, it is what it is. No matter how straightforward the title is, the subject is a bit more complex. If images are obtained improperly, you could be facing hefty legal fees.

For example, a few of our customers have gone to Google Images, searched for an image they liked, saved it to their computer, and then added it to a blog entry. A few months later, each of them received a letter from a law firm demanding thousands in fees for the unauthorized image. Unfortunately, there are little options for these users. You can fight it in court, or pay the fee. The image providers know that the latter is usually cheaper.


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Thursday, November 15, 2012

Why Do-It-Yourself Marketing Doesn't Always Work

Agency owners often have to wear many hats relying on their do-it-yourself entrepreneurial spirit to accomplish the tasks required of running an agency. That spirit can help agencies in many ways, but there is one area to be cautious of doing it all yourself... marketing.

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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Tips for Jump-Starting Your Website

Most of the time, success of a website is focused on Search Engine Optimization efforts. There’s plenty of tips and tricks for SEO that are constantly changing and being updated. But every once in a while, you should feel free to switch gears and just focus on having a website. Consider it your responsibility to the loyal visitor who has found your site by way of a search engine. Here’s a few tips to remember have absolutely nothing to do with SEO.

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Monday, November 12, 2012

How the Layout of Your Website Can Affect Google Rankings

I often discuss how a well-designed website will draw visitors and keep them viewing your pages. Did you know that the layout of your website could affect your Google ranking as well? That’s right, not only does Google look at the content of your website, it now looks at the website’s design, navigation and usability.

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Friday, November 9, 2012

5 Simple Steps to Effective Digital Agency Marketing

Why is online marketing so important? Because consumers rely on the Internet to research anything and everything, including insurance. Not sure you believe it? Check out what the direct writers are spending on PPC advertising. And that's only a portion of their budgets.

If the direct writers are spending that much money to market to consumers online, you know it's not only important, it's effective.


But there are certainly things to avoid.


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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Search Engine Marketing for the Everyday Insurance Agent - Part 2

Previously, we discussed pay per click for the insurance industry and the basics to getting started. Now we will discuss how to improve your ad’s click through performance.

Converting Clicks into Leads


The industry average of converting clicks into leads is 4-7 percent. This means roughly one out of 20 people who click your ad will convert into a lead. For auto insurance dallas texas you would need to spend $35 to acquire the lead. Note that this is just to acquire the lead. Only if you had a perfect closing ratio would the lead only cost you $35. Should you have a 50% closing ratio that lead would cost you $70. A 25% closing ratio would cost you $140. Notice how quickly this turned into a losing proposition? So what can you do to increase the closing ratio of PPC leads?



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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Search Engine Marketing for the Everyday Insurance Agent - Part 1

I speak to many agents about Internet marketing. One subject that always rises to the top is paid search marketing (SEM) or pay per click (PPC). These paid ads show up at the top and right of most search results. These are above the organic free listings targeted by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services. 

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Thursday, November 1, 2012

Generating Insurance Leads Through Your Chamber of Commerce Membership

There are perks to being a member of your local chamber of commerce. For one, research has shown that a majority of consumers prefer to work with businesses who are chamber members.

Besides the prestige of being a chamber member, many small business owners, including insurance agents, join their local chamber of commerce to network and get leads.


Want to make the most out of your membership? Here's how you can generate leads by being a member of your chamber of commerce:


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Monday, October 29, 2012

Earning Backlinks vs. Building Them

The goal of any SEO strategy is to get your website noticed. One of the more important aspects of most SEO strategies is developing backlinks. Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your site. These links tell the search engines, “Hey, this site has some good info, and I link to it!” Most search engines use this to determine how popular a website is on the Internet. Let us first look at why search engines use this as a primary metric in determining where your website shows within the organic search results.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

How Social Media Can Hurt Your Agency's Brand

The insurance industry has begun to embrace social media. It's even become the norm to have more than one social media account. (Heck, we have five Twitter accounts, four Facebook Pages, two Google+ accounts and one LinkedIn business page.)

Social media moves quickly. Poorly managed social media accounts could backfire and instead of building relationships and raising your awareness online you could be hurting your agency. How? Here are six things to watch for and take care of immediately.


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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

10 Common Mistakes that are Hurting your SEO

Search engine optimization can be overwhelming and confusing. There are a few key tips to always remember when optimizing your site, but there are also a few key things to always watch out for. Make sure you’re not letting your hard work be undone by any of these common mistakes.

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Monday, October 22, 2012

Throttling It Up to 110%

From my dad to coaches and everyone in between would tell me to give 110%. Being rooted in logic and mathematical numbers, I always thought how can you give more than 100% when 100% is all you have?

I was a huge Space Shuttle fan. I watched every launch, knew every detail, and even tried to become an astronaut until they told me that being 6’5” tall pretty much ruled that out. One of the things that has continued to intrigue me about the Space Shuttle was that it normally operated at 104.5% power and even as high as 111% in emergencies. How could these super smart rocket scientists get it wrong and allow something to do more than what it could do? Was I missing something?


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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Insurance Website Builder Introduces Site Search

When creating a website you might think of everything, the best graphics, the nicest layout, and the friendliest navigation. This all works well in the beginning, however, once you site begins to grow and change over time you start to develop a lot of content that is nested deep within your site.

Using best navigation practices it is impractical (and not recommended) to link to every piece of content that you have ever created. Therefore, it is imperative that you have a utility that allows users the ability to easily search your site for the content they need.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Easy List of How to Fully Benefit from Your Website

  1. Site Title & Description
    This is what search engines read and display, so make it concise, but descriptive. (For example, ‘Auto, Home, Life Insurance – Dallas, Plano, Richardson TX’ for the title and ‘Example Insurance Agency specializes in auto, home and life insurance in Dallas, Plano, Richardson and the surrounding areas of Texas.’ for the description ) Limit your title to 65 characters and description to 150 characters. Search engines will not index characters beyond this limit. Use this Javascript Kit webpage to count your characters.
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9 Ways to Destroy Your Agency's Brand

Many insurance agencies don't have an employee dedicated to their agency's marketing. Those employees who do their agency's marketing often have other duties and responsibilities that take time and focus away from the agency's brand. And that's fine.

However, there are things that could hurt or destroy your brand if you're not careful. Here are 9 marketing moves to avoid.


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Monday, October 15, 2012

Selling Value Insurance with Price-based Marketing

The holidays are approaching. The time for sales, door busters, and insane pricing is upon us. It reminds me of last year when I wanted a new TV. Holiday discounted prices finally caused me to act and get rid of my old TV.

I ventured down to my local electronics store and started checking out the deeply discounted TV mentioned in an ad. Right next to it was an even better TV for just a few dollars more. The salesperson helpfully explained to me why it was better than the cheaper TV: better picture, better sound and able to connect to the Internet. “Wrap it up,” I tell him. He continues to tell me that if I want that awesome picture I would need the gold plated HDMI cables. Fine; throw it in the cart. 


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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Where to Look for Great Content Ideas for Your Blog

We talk a lot about blogging here on the ITC Marketing Blog. For good reason as it plays an important role in adding fresh content to your website, which search engines love, and promoting your agency and your knowledge as an insurance expert, which your clients appreciate.

Blogging can easily become a daunting task. Especially if you struggle with what to write about. There are several places to look for ideas on what to blog about. But the best place to look are your customers.


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Tuesday, October 2, 2012

16 Questions Your Insurance Website Must Answer

You only have three seconds to convince website visitors to stay on your website. If you don't make a good first impression, they will not hesitate to leave and never come back.

When consumers come to your
insurance website for the first time, they have questions. Questions you should answer. We look for subconscious clues on a new website to determine if that website is going to give us what we want. Prove your website is trustworthy and that it has the answers consumers seek, and they'll stick around longer.

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Masters of Marketing: How to Create Effective Landing Pages

Our latest Masters of Marketing webinar talks about when and how to use landing pages. Click below to see the presentation.  If you would like to join us on the last Thursday of every month at 12:00 p.m. CST when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.




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Monday, September 17, 2012

8 Reasons Why Social Media Isn't Working For You

Social media has been talked about a lot these past few years as the marketing strategy you must be using. If you're not seeing the results you would like, you're not alone.

Here are 8 reasons why social media may not be working for you.

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Monday, September 10, 2012

How to Build a Following for your Email and Social Media

A growing number of consumers prefer electronic communication over phone calls or face-to-face. Do you know what your customers prefer? If you are not communicating with them via the methods they prefer, you customers will at some point leave you for your competition who will email instead of call or tweet instead of email.

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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

How to Use Facebook Scheduled Posts

The benefit of using third-party social media tools like HootSuite is that you can schedule your posts ahead of time so you're not spending time every day updating Facebook.

Unfortunately, Facebook's algorithm for determining which updates to show in a user's newsfeed favors those updates that are posted manually on Facebook over those using third-party tools. Meaning your update has a better chance for being seen by more people when you use Facebook to post it instead of a tool like HootSuite.


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Monday, August 27, 2012

5 Tips to Turn Your Insurance Website Into a Favorite Online Destination

What makes your website great? If you don’t know, you have some work to do. Consumers have an incredible amount of choices for where to research and buy their insurance policies online. You need to give them a reason to visit you over all those other websites. Your website needs to be the place people love to go for insurance information.

But how do you do that? We’ve got five ways you can turn your website into a favorite insurance destination.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

7 Tips for Marketing an Insurance Agency Online on a Limited Budget

There are many reasons to focus on online marketing. For one, consumers are relying more and more on the Internet and use it to get the majority of information about products and services before they buy, including insurance. It’s easier to monitor your online marketing campaigns and determine their success.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Blogging Consistently

Here's another presentation in  our Masters of Marketing webinar. This presentation discusses tips for blogging consistently, using a content calendar, so that you can develop customer loyalty and satisfy the need for fresh and relevant content on your website. If you would like to join us every fourth Thursday of the month at 12:00 p.m. CST when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.


View more of our presentations

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

After You Blog

Even though we stress the importance of blogging, it's still important to remember that your work is not over once you click 'Publish'.

This lovely infogrpahic checklist will come in handy to remember a few key tips like Optimizing Your Post, Using Your Social Networks to Spread the Word, or Adding Your Blog Post to a Newsletter.

In reality, the only people who know your blog post exists could be you and any subscribers you might have. So be sure you spend enough time spreading the good news!


source: divvyhq.com

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Gaining Followers

Here's another presentation in  our Masters of Marketing webinar. This presentation discusses how to use social media marketing to gain followers for your brand. If you would like to join us every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. CST when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Don't Know What to Tweet? 11 Ideas For When You Have Writer's Block

One of my biggest pet peeves about businesses on Twitter is when they make it all about themselves. The beauty of Twitter is how easy it is to have conversations with brands as consumers that we couldn’t have before. Twitter is not a broadcast medium and shouldn’t be treated as such. Otherwise, you will be spinning your wheels instead of gaining traction as you try to build relationships and position yourself as an insurance expert.

A good rule of thumb for brands on Twitter is the 1:10 ratio. Meaning for every one tweet  you share about your agency, you need to have 10 that are about other topics. 

So what do you tweet  about if you aren't supposed to tweet about yourself? Read more

Friday, June 8, 2012

Masters of Marketing: Backlinks


Here's another presentation in  our Masters of Marketing webinar. This presentation discusses backlinks. (how they enhance your SEO and how to build them) If you would like to join us every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. Central when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.
ITC Backlinks Presentation
View more presentations from Darmini Kara

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

How to Blog: Step by Step

Let’s go through creating the perfect blog entry.
  • Step 1: The easiest, simplest, most important thing to do is to have catchy, attention-grabbing, click-worthy titles. Make your title easy enough to figure out what the blog post will be about. Show the reader that they will somehow benefit by reading your blog. Use words to evoke an emotional response, like awesome, crazy, stupid, free. Set expectations, there's nothing worse than clicking on a blog post and reading content that is completely unrelated to the title, or doesn't give what reader expects. Don't mislead your readers by posting catchy, but an ultimately empty title.
  • Step 2: Writing your own, original content is highly advantageous. Your present your own opinions, as well as satisfying Google’s duplicate content rules, that is you’re not adding duplicate content. However if you don’t have time to write an original post, then you can take articles from other sources, like Trusted Choice, Insurance Journal, local newspapers, community newspapers. Just remember to cite the source at the end.
  • Step 3: Add Anchor text to your post. Anchor text is the link label or link title that is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. For example link the words Dallas auto insurance, instead of Click here or www.ABCAgency.com. You can link to other lines of business pages, quote forms, customers service forms, other blog entries and other websites. Make sure your blogs are not always entirely self-serving. Providing information rich content, rather than sales-heavy content will result in more visitors returning to the site.
  • Step 4: Add pictures to your post. This helps to make your entries more interesting, as well giving your audience a clue as to what your blog will be about. If you take pictures from other websites, don’t forget to cite the source at the bottom.
  • Step 5: Guide your reader, they’ve stuck with you by reading the whole post, so tell them what to do once they’ve finished. Fill in a quote form, join our newsletter, subscribe to our blog feed, like us on Facebook, prepare a disaster kit.
  • Step 6: Get your readers to interact with you by asking questions. All blogging platforms allow reader comments, so get some feedback from by asking for comments, or say something controversial to get a reaction.
  • Step 7: Don’t forget to tell people about your latest blog. You can do this by sharing the link on Facebook and Twitter, you can send out an email out with all the posts on a certain topic to show your expertise in that area. You could even submit your post to sites like Technorati.com or a social bookmarking site like Stumbleupon.com or Delicious.com.
Now get blogging!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Masters of Marketing: Website Content

Here's another presentation in  our Masters of Marketing webinar. This presentation discusses content on your website, how to do it, when to do it and why you should add content. If you would like to join us every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. Central when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.


Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Follow Their Rules or You Might Lose Your Facebook Page

You created a Facebook page for your agency. Looks great. It would be a waste if it disappeared suddenly...

Sound intimidating? It should. If your page violates the Terms of Service, your agency's page could get kicked off Facebook. It would be absurd to lose all of your hard work and time you put into building a following and engaging with your audience.

Facebook means business when it comes to their Terms of Service. If your agency's page is removed for ignoring or or not understanding the policies for business use, the consequences are substantial and permanent. You will no longer be allowed to use that email address to create another page.

Now that the social media giant is public, it is quite possible that Facebook will be taking a closer look and checking for compliance. If you're not sure if your agency's page follows the guidelines, check it now before it's too late.

These are three of the most common Terms of Service violations that could cost your agency your Facebook page and your audience.

1. Profile vs. Page

Profiles are for individual people to use as their personal space. Pages are for businesses to create a Facebook presence for the company and/or individual products. What Facebook has to say about Pages: "By leveraging the real connections between friends on Facebook, a Page lets Fans become brand advocates. Posts by the Page will start to appear in News Feed, giving Pages a stronger voice to reach their Fans.” Basically, the activity from your agency page will appear in the news feeds of people who have liked your page just as if you were posting from your personal profile. But using your personal profile for business purposes violates the rules. There are more reasons why you want to create a page for your agency and not a profile:
  • A page can have an unlimited number of followers, while personal profiles are limited to 5,000 friends.
  • You can customize tabs and apps for special marketing campaigns.
  • Analytical tools are available to help you determine the effectiveness of your Facebook activities.
  • You can connect your page with your other social media profiles.
2. Timeline Cover Photos

With the roll out of Timeline to business pages, came the cover photo (that large photo at the top of your page right above your profile picture). But there are rules regarding what you cannot include in this image. Did you know you are not allowed to put contact information, URLs or any kind of marketing promotion in your cover photo? Also forbidden: calls to action and any effort to get people to like or share your page. (Our blog post about setting up Timeline included these rules.)

3. Promotions Based on Facebook Features

Contests and promotions that include sharing or liking are not allowed. It’s okay to build likes and shares by offering fantastic content. You can also have contests, drawings and other promotional games. They just can’t be based on actions that involve Facebook’s proprietary functions, such as Like and Share. Next to using a personal profile for your agency, this is possibly the easiest way to lose your agency's page.

Facebook can be a fun way to engage with your customers and build awareness for your agency online. But to avoid losing all that time and effort, check to see if your agency page complies with the Terms of Service.

And if you haven't already, Like our Facebook Page for Insurance Website Builder for the latest news from ITC and Insurance Website Builder, marketing tips and an occasional look behind the scenes here at ITC.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Monday, May 14, 2012

The Recipe for Insurance Agency Social Media Success

Social media is an important part of any online marketing plan. Why? Because more than 80% of all Americans use social media. Consumers use social media as part of their research process and to ask for recommendations on products and services. Including insurance. Here are some tweets I found in a Twitter search for "recommend insurance" last week:




As you can see, people really do use social media to find insurance.

Social media is not difficult. Once you start using it, you quickly figure out what kind of information your audience wants, and you can adapt your posts accordingly. Here's our recipe for Social Media Success to get you started.

Recipe for Insurance Agency Social Media Success
Total time: Consistent Use | Serves: One insurance agency | Level: Easy

An Awesome Social Media Profile
Ingredients:
   Basic information - the who, what, where
   Website URL and other contact information
   Pictures and graphics

Directions:
  1. Pick which social networks to join. There are so many that it would be impossible to be successful on them all. So decide which few make the most sense for you and your agency, and concentrate your social media efforts on that handful.
  2. Fill in your profile as much as possible. Use every character, every field that is available to you to describe your agency and what you do. It is also a good idea to tell prospective followers what kind of information they can expect to see if they follow you whether it's promotions, educational information or a combination of both. Use keywords where possible.
  3. Add as many pictures and graphics as you can. 

Insurance Agency Social Media Success
Ingredients:
   One Awesome Social Media Profile
   Interesting Content
   Audience Engagement
   Promotion
   Fun

Directions:
  1. Once your Awesome Social Media Profile is complete, start sharing content daily. There are many different kinds of content. You can share general posts about insurance meant to encourage your audience to contact you for more information. For example, "Every season has its own liability risks for homeowners, drivers and businesses. Contact us to find out how you can be ready for each season." You can also share your blog posts if you're blogging or different pages of your insurance website that provide information and tips like your free reports, customer service forms or insurance glossary. And there's also content curation, which is sharing content you didn't write, and community news and events.
  2. After you find daily routine of posting and sharing, start engaging with your audience. Thank people who follow you. When someone shares good news, congratulate them. If someone asks a question, if you know the answer or can provide a recommendation, do so. Even if it's not about insurance. This is where your skills in customer service and building relationships can come in handy. Just as you would engage with someone in the real world to start a relationship, so you should online. Ask questions, talk to people, join in the discussion. Remember our examples from above? If they were in your target area, answering their questions would be a perfect example of an opportunity to engage with someone through social media.
  3. Add just a pinch of promotion to season your social media efforts. The hard sell does not work on social media. People are immediately turned off when you try to sell them. Keep a good ratio of promotional posts with non-promotional posts. A good rule of thumb for social networks where posting several times throughout the day is common, like Twitter, would be for every 1 promotional post, you should share 9 that are non-promotional. For social networks where posting once a day is more common, like Facebook or LinkedIn, the ratio is more like 1 in 4. Don't forget to add social media buttons to your email signature, your website, brochures, etc. to make it easy for your customers and prospects to follow you.
  4. Sprinkle some fun into your social media efforts. Share funny videos, pictures or jokes. Show you and your staff having fun with what you do. Social media is an ideal place to let your hair down, not be so serious and share why you love what you do.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Masters of Marketing: How to Write an Effective Email

Presentation slides from the April 5th Masters of Marketing webinar from Insurance Technologies Corporation, presented by Jennifer Fitzsimmons, AgencyBuzz Coordinator. Get more information on Insurance Agency Email Marketing. If you would like to join us every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. Central when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.



Masters of Marketing: Effective Blogging

Here's the presentation from yesterday's Masters of Marketing webinar on Effective Blogging. If you would like to join us every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. Central when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.

Tip of the Iceberg

This is your Fun Friday posting, but it's actually a very honest depiction:


Be sure you let this one sink in!

Friday, May 4, 2012

Secret to Success

Here's a little tip that Google probably doesn't want you to know...


Happy Friday!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Let's Talk Expiration Dates

You've heard it time and time again. Content is King.

To show how your content is a reflection of your site to Google, let's consider expiration dates.

Somewhere, either sitting in your refrigerator, on your kitchen counter, under the seat in your car, or at your desk, you probably have food that will one day go bad. It will eventually sit there too long, start to grow mold, eventually stink up everything, and you will finally throw it out. Imagine if Google viewed your site the way you view that food.

Well it does. Kinda.

Google wants to expose its users to fresh sites. That means it will take note of sites that are updated often and updated with meanigful changes. Sites that are left too long and become stale will be tossed aside and may never be served up as a search result. So if it hasn't been stressed enough already, keep your site fresh.

How often should a site be updated? Often. Weekly, if possible.

How much should a site be updated? A lot. More should be changed than just the date, navigation, or advertisement.

What kind of content should be added to the site? New Pages. Not just new content on existing pages. Google wants to provide new value, so it wants to find new pages.

As a bonus, here's an infographic from bitrebels to further breakdown how to make your content King.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Anatomy of a Social Consumer [Infographic]

58% of consumers connect with brands on social media because they are a customer. When one follower shares information about you or something you've posted or written on social media, on average 77 people are reached. This can have a profound impact on increasing your agency's awareness. This infographic has more information and stats on how consumers are interacting with brands on social media.

SocialConsumer
Source:truaxis.com