Social Networking

If you haven’t been keeping your blog up to date and focused more in favor of faster and simpler social media outlet like Twitter, you might want to rethink that strategy. Finding out what types of search terms and phrases you need to be targeting your listings in the search engines is dire. Putting together some content for your blog and then going to those social sites like Twitter, Facebook to help generate links and traffic back to those posts will be greatly beneficial to your company, because you want potential clients. A simple “tweet” can potentially generate buzz, but a blog can offer much more in the end. Numbers help show the potential growth, up to 55% more visitors to the website, 67% increase in leads. Here are some tips to how blogs can help a business grow:

                                                          

#1: Link Building

A blog can generate an average 97% increase in inbound links as to posting a “tweet” with a link and some added commentary may not get any response. Well written blogs rarely lack inbound links thus lending information to each page making it easier for visitors to find, web sites tend to point back to the primary URL.

#2: Outbound Links

Blogs will tend to link to external resources, information and sites. Business web sites will restrict their outbound links due to the concerns about distracting visitors from a potential sale. The ability to link freely to other sites is an important key in establishing the blog as a true resource and generating additional inbound links down the road.

#3: Keyword Potential

Websites have limits to how many pages can stream content before you begin to overwhelm the visitor and detract from sales. This usually leads to being very streamlined where only bits of information are given, limiting the number of keywords that can targeted. Adding new content allows a greater focus in order to target as many searches as possible.

#4: Freshness of Content

One major difference of blogs and standard web sites is through availability of updates to the content. Blogs will tend to be updated frequently as opposed to corporate sites being more stagnant. Using frequent content additions, blogs quite attractive to search engines and integrating your blog into your primary domain can help increase visitors to the main site as well.

#5: Credibility

Corporate websites will tend to be very conversion process driven; therefore limiting how comfortable a consumer can feel learning about a purchase. Blogs can allow a business to gain a wider range in a search by offering multiple opportunities to connect with the target audience increasing the likeliness they'll link head back to your site, bookmarking for a future purchase.

 

If you still think blogging isn’t worth the time investment, think again. Here at Integrated Webworks, we develop the blog straight into the website’s domain to give the client the best usage of their website in order to help get their name out and make a mark. Sites like Facebook and Twitter only offer a little value due to their high number of users, but a blog will give a chance to help  focus on what the company can offer to potential clients in a more professional way than just a post on a wall.

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. The term is usually used to refer to sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business, as well as adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers.

Traditional direct marketing has the 40/40/20 rule, 40% of your success is dependent on the audience, 40% on the offer and 20% on everything else. Email marketing has the 90/10 rule where 90% of your success is dependent on the subject line and 10% on everything else. When a promotion or newsletter pulls in unexpected results, the first thought is to point the finger in the direction of the subject.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to using e-mail marketing in comparison to traditional advertising mail.

Advantages

An exact return on investment can be tracked and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic. Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them. Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day. E-mail is popular with digital marketers allowing them to reach out to consumers with personalized, relevant, dynamic messages.

Disadvantages

E-mail services companies face problems that e-mail deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. Legitimate e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages are rejected, and eight percent are filtered.

Companies considering the use of an e-mail marketing program must make sure that they do not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy.

Opt-In

Opt-in e-mail advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of advertising where the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. This method is one of several developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of mass e-mail marketing.

A common example of opt-in marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter. Ideally, opt-in e-mail advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer.

Social Networking

One example is incorporating Facebook into e-mail marketing campaigns to marry e-mail with word-of-mouth marketing. Social media is becoming a focus of e-mail marketing strategies. Recently, companies have been setting up a social sharing program to allow their clients — small and midsize businesses, nonprofits and agencies — to incorporate Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn into their e-mail newsletters and campaigns. The goal is to provide a platform for engaged supporters to discuss the film and issues it raises, as well as to encourage support as the document is released across the country. Incorporating a Facebook “like” button directly in the e-mail, as opposed to driving people to its Facebook fan page in the near future is a great way of an aspect of social media into emails.

Email marketing can bring you closer to your clients letting you connect better with them. At Integrated Webworks, we can help establish a strategic plan to implementing an email marketing campaign from planning and designing all the way to monitoring the progress on our own in-house software for different mailing platforms.