We tweet @UCTweets, and you can see our new design here:

Twitter continues to be one of the most popular social media outlets used today, and if you do any type of social media, especially as an online or digital marketing solution, then you should update your Twitter profile design with a new header. To get you started, you can download a free Twitter Header template from TheBlogLaunch.com! Keep in mind that this is a zip file containing a Photoshop PSD file which you can use to start designing your own Twitter header. (Links open in a new windows/tab.)

Once you’ve designed your new header, you’ll need to be logged into your Twitter account, then go to Settings » Design. From there, scroll down, and you’ll notice the new options available, specifically the header option. Your Twitter profile will remain as it was until you upload a new header image, and once you save it, your Twitter profile page will be updated to the new Twitter design!

The recommended Twitter design specs for the new header image are as follows:

• dimensions of 1200×600 pixels, and a maximum file size of 5MB.

I personally love the new Twitter design, and I think it definitely makes it a lot easier to brand one’s Twitter page. What do you think? Have you uploaded your new Twitter header already? Do you like the change? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

Designed by UC Web Creations.

BeanExtra.ca is based in Toronto, Ontario. If you’ve always wanted to be in the movies, then you might want to consider being an extra! It can be a fun and challenging career choice, and Toronto is always being used as a set for major films, TV shows, and commercials. If you’d like to find out more, visit BeanExtra.ca!

Designed by UC Web Creations.

Gregg’s Flooring is based in Ottawa, Ontario. It’s a well established, fully bilingual family business providing home renovation services to the Ottawa Valley region since 1926. They specialize in refinishing, restoring, sanding and staining hardwood floors, as well as installing laminate and ceramic floors, and even staircase refacing. If you’d like to find out more, visit GreggsFlooring.ca!

Designed by UC Web Creations.

Larabie is a specialized transportation and logistics company that has been established since 1975. They provide a variety of services, including Transportation & Logistics of heavy equipment (or anything else you may need to transport), camp services for remote work bases such as mining areas, and they specialize in working where no one like to go: The Great North! They have also built lasting relationships with the people of the First Nations, and if you’d like to find out more, visit Larabie.ca!

What Is an Edgerank Score and How Do You Know what your Facebook Page’s score is?

Let’s define what Edgerank is first so that we can better understand it. This definition is taken from EdgeRank Checker:

EdgeRank is an algorithm that ranks objects in the Facebook News Feed. Pages with high EdgeRank Scores will be more likely to show up in the news feed, than Pages with low EdgeRank Scores.

EdgeRank is made up of 3 variables: Affinity, Weight, and Time Decay. Affinity is dependent on a user’s relationship with an object in the news feed. Weight is determined by the type of object, such as a photo/video/link/etc. The last variable is Time Decay, as an object gets older, the lower the value.

Anything you post on Facebbok is basically an “object”, and Facebook assigns an Edgerank score to every object. Just like Google holds its search algorithm secrets close to their chests, Facebook does the same, but the Edegerank Checker is a great tool that gives you a good idea of whether or not your Facebook posts are being seen. Pages with less than 100 fans might have a higher score due to a small sample size, and may not be as accurate, but I believe it’s better to have some information and knowledge about Edgerank than none at all.

Now, you also need to be aware that not all of your friends’ posts appear in your Facebook newsfeed. Facebook chooses what you see in your feed based on Edgerank, and here three factors they use to decide, but keep in mind there are many more:

• How many times you interact with that person or page
• How many comments that post has received (making it more “important”)
• How recent the post is

These factors affect both personal profile posts as well as Facebook Fan Page posts. Because of this, manual posts have a higher Edgerank than ones posted by another application because they’re more likely to be placed on your friends’ and fans’ Facebook newsfeeds.

If you’re looking to improve your Facebook Page Edgerank, here are two tips that can help you:

Facebook Page Updates Should be Posted Manually

Don’t use services or applications to automatically post to your Facebook profile or Facebook page. Edgerank Checker did a study that proved that using a third party API to automatically post your tweets or blogs posts to Facebook will not get as much engagement from your fans, thereby decreasing your Edgerank. Part of the reason for this is because your posts won’t show up as often on people’s feeds than if they were manually posted, and this is Facebook‘s doing. Facebook also collapses posts from third-party applications. If you a link that says something like “See 30 more posts from NetworkedBlogs” or “See 15 more posts from Twitter” on your Facebook feed, how likely are you to click on it? Not very likely, right? How much more true is this for your friends and fans on Facebook?

Posting manually means you’ll have a much better chance of having your post syndicated on peoples’ Facebook feeds, which means you have a better chance to get more interaction, which will then increase your Edgerank!

Facebook Page Posting Frequency

Posting too frequently can negatively affect your Facebook fans – don’t overdo it on the posts – balance is the key. Using a third party application to help you post to Facebook may mean that you’re posting too much.

• People are primarily on Facebook to connect with their family and friends, not necessarily business-related posts
• An average Facebook user has about 130 friends, so delivering your tweets automatically to your Facebook page means you might be clogging up their feed
• If you annoy your fans, they’re more likely to dislike your page, or hide your posts permanently

Encourage Interaction on Your Facebook Page

Edgerank directly relates to user engagement, so you’ll want to encourage interaction by responding to comments on your posts, asking questions using the Questions feature, and when linking to things such as your blog posts, or other links and media you want to share, be sure to write a personalized comment so that people know it’s really you posting it and not a robot.

Additional Thoughts

I don’t recommend posting all of your tweets automatically to your Facebook because of this. Twitter works differently than Facebook does, so they should be approached differently.

I used to use Networked Blogs to automatically post my blog articles to my Facebook Page, and as of today, I will no longer be doing this. I want to encourage more interaction, and if the price is a little extra time spent on Facebook doing things manually, so be it. I can easily live with that, given that Facebook has so much potential. Did you know that there are over 800 million active users on Facebook? It’s not a tool you’d want to pass up on when it comes to its potential in reaching people – whether they be new friends, new fans, or new customers.

What do you think? Do you use these automated services? After reading this post, will you continue to do so? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment below!

10. Have a blog, not just a static website.

A blog is one of the most important online marketing tools you can have for driving traffic to your website. It helps you to build your brand, your credibility, and trust in you or your business being an authority in your niche. It’s also super important for search engines because it keeps the site “alive” from their perspective, not to mention providing more content to be indexed, which means your site will be more likely to be found in people’s search results.

9. Write at least once a week.

If you want to attract more traffic to your site, you need to engage your readers with quality content. I’m preaching to myself when I mention this important factor. It may seem difficult, but really, it just takes some discipline to get into a regular habit of writing at least one post per week. It’s important to write regularly because, as mentioned above, that’s how you’re going to get found: the more articles you have on your blog, the more content (and keywords) will be indexed by the search engines, which will then snowball into more traffic because your site is more likely to come up in search results with all that quality content available for visitors to find!

8. Make sure your website and/or blog has a nice design and is pleasing to the eye – think of “eye candy”.

Remember that the traffic you want on your website are human beings, not robots. This is why it’s important to have your website redesigned, updated, and “freshened up” at least once every few years. Design is always evolving, always becoming more “modern”, and what was beautiful yesterday isn’t necessarily beautiful today. Let’s face it: it’s human nature to want to look upon beauty, and turn away from something that isn’t pleasing to the eye. You have to implement a bit of psychology when it comes to your website, after all, it’s geared to human visitors, so you must ensure your site is inviting and welcoming. Websites are a visual tool, and if a picture can tell a thousand tales, how much more (or less) so does your website tell your visitors? If not kept clean and pleasing to the eye, you’ll give the impression that you’re neglecting your image and appearance – your brand, and if people feel that (perhaps even only on a sub-conscious level), then they’ll be turned off by your site and move on to something else much more quickly because your site is simply not attractive. Think of it as courting your visitors – you always want to look your best!

7. Avoid having broken links on your site.

Broken links are a surefire way to drive traffic away from your website! They are a warning sign to visitors – if they click on a link on your blog and/or website and it leads to a “page not found” page, then you’re going to lose credibility, and fast! If you have a WordPress site, there’s an awesome free plugin available to help you with this issue. It will regularly monitor your pages and/or posts, and even comments and custom fields for broken links and will let you know if any are found. You can read more about it and download it by clicking here.

6. Use keywords related to your niche in your content.

If you want to drive traffic to your site and not away form it, you don’t want to sound like a mindless automaton who repeatedly spews out the same keywords over and over. Your goal is to be mindful of the word choices you make when writing your content. Remember that it’s this content that will be indexed by the search engines and show up in search results, so if you want people to find your website if they search for a specific word, you’ll have to use that word in your content at least a few times so that the search engines know that page has relevant content.

5. Comment on other blogs.

Another method of driving traffic to your own blog is to comment on others’ blogs. The more you network with others in your niche online, the more people will become interested in your content, and the more people will find your content to be of good quality and go a step further and either share your content with others or link back to your content. Again, it’s all about creating a snowball effect in different ways!

4. Participate in forums related to your niche.

What better way to drive traffic to your site than to participate in forums relating to your niche where other interested in that niche go to discuss different things, ask questions, answer others’ questions, etc. This is another way to build credibility and trust as an authority in your niche – and the more people trust you and your thoughts and opinions, the more interested they become in hearing more from you! If you’re not sure how you would go about finding forums within your niche, just do a search on Google with the words “forum” and one or more keywords relating to your niche – there are literally millions of forums online!

3. Encourage interaction on your blog by asking people to leave comments.

A blog’s purpose is not to be a one-way conversation, but rather a two-way conversation between you and your visitors. This is why having a blog is so important for building your website or blog traffic – having that two-way conversation is what will catch people’s interest and help them to keep coming back to your website and/or blog. I make it a point to always try to ask a question at the end of my posts (you’ll see below that I at least attempt to practice what I preach). There’s absolutely no harm in asking for feedback because, after all, if you don’t ask, you really can’t expect people to participate. Everyone seems to be lacking time these days, so visitors are more likely to leave your website or blog without commenting in order to move on to the next bit of content they want to read about online, unless you ask them a question so that they might feel compelled enough to answer.

2. Use social media regularly to share your content with others.

Social media is an extremely important tool to make use of when it comes to building your site’s traffic – there are so many different social media solutions out there, but you want to make sure you’re using the major players at the very least: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. Again, online marketing takes time and effort, and as you can probably tell by now, it’s a very big job for one person alone. Consider hiring a virtual assistant to help you with these types of tasks so that you can concentrate on more important things, such as your products, services, perhaps your content, etc. (if applicable).

1. Don’t give up on your blog.

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again! Don’t give up on your blog or website. If you come to a point where you literally (or almost literally) see tumbleweeds blowing in the virtual online wind at your website and/or blog’s address, then maybe you’re not doing enough of the steps described in this article. Analyze what your strategy is, what steps you’ve taken at this point, and if you’ve been diligent in setting aside time to devote to your online marketing plan. Be brutally honest with yourself – if you’re not doing these steps on a regular basis, the results will be disappointing. Your website isn’t just an informational gateway to you and/or your brand; you must view it as a marketing tool and treat it as such. It takes patience and hard work to earn regular visitors, and once you have them, it’s very rewarding to see your hard work pay off!

Bonus Tip: don’t be afraid of a little controversy!

One way to encourage interaction and gain more visitors is to post content on controversial topics. If applicable to your niche, it can do wonders for the traffic to your website and/or blog. The more people feel passionate about their opinions towards a subject, the more likely they will be to leave a comment and keep coming back for more! You can catch your visitors’ attention more easily with this approach, but don’t go overboard – if you offend your visitors, you’ll be driving them away instead!

*edited October 5th, 2011 – new tip added*

Extra-bonus tip, as mentioned by a visitor: Build an Email List

This is probably the most important tip, and an area where I’ve fallen short myself in the past few years of having my blog. I’ve only recently started to build my list by making a free ebook available for download when a reader subscribes to my email list. That’s the key: having a visitor on your site or blog is only the first step, but getting them to keep coming back involves being able to remind them of your blog, send info on new content or posts, etc., and to do that, you need to be able to email them. Now, because of the spam issue we have these days, people will not easily give up their email addresses, but they can be enticed to do so. If you have quality content on your website, and you earn their trust with your content, and offer them some form of bonus to sign up to your email list and they’ll be more than happy to sign up! This should be done early on if you want to get further a head sooner rather than later, because as my visitor mentioned, you’ll be “on a massive hamster-wheel-of-doom” if you don’t follow through with this super important step! When you start building your list, it’s important to service it regularly, even if you have a small number of subscribers. This is advice is something I follow as well, and it’s not always easy, especially with the time constraints that life often places on you, but it’s well worth the effort in the long run!

If you’re at all interested in inquiring about UC Web Creations’ monthly website and/or blog marketing services, don’t hesitate to contact us!

What steps do you take to help drive more traffic to your website and/or blog? I’d love to know, so please be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject!

WordPress is here to stay.

It’s an opensource CMS (Content Management System) that has taken the world by storm – as of August 2011, “14.7% of the top million websites in the world” are powered by WordPress. Most web designers, web developers, and users praise WordPress for its ease-of-use, hence why it’s become so popular, and its growth just keeps on accelerating. Just to give you an idea, last year, WordPress was used by approximately 8.5 of the top million websites in the world, so to jump from 8.5% to 14.7% in one year alone speaks volumes for how popular WordPress is becoming, and how much people love this platform!

Here’s my favorite statistic:

August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites.
- Rao, Leena (19 August 2011). “WordPress Now Powers 22 Percent Of New Active Websites In The U.S.”. TechCrunch

WordPress is no longer just for blogging.

WordPress used to be known primarily as a blogging platform, and it remains the best solution to use for blog, however it has come a long way and has become a very comprehensive Content Management Suite used to power many different types of websites, including business sites, job boards, sites featuring classified ads, etc. WordPress is extremely very flexible, adaptable, and if a specific feature or features that are not built-in are needed by a user, there are literally thousands of plugins available to enhance WordPress’ functionality, so there is likely solution already developed for that need – the possibilities are literally limitless!

On the other hand, it definitely does make it easy to have a blog on your website, which is highly recommended as part of your online marketing strategy. Search engines such as Google love WordPress because it uses well-written code, and keeping an active blog tells search engines that your site is alive and well, thereby increasing your website’s rank and your chances of being found via organic searches. If you’re looking to get a head start with Search Engine Optimization, WordPress is the way to go for your website and/or blog.

WordPress is cost-effective and flexible.

A great thing about WordPress is that it’s completely open source – which means that the source code used to run WordPress is available to the general public. This means that anyone on the planet can modify the code if necessary and customize WordPress even further to be what they need. Often, this isn’t necessary, but it also means that any plugins and themes (templates) created for the WordPress platform must also be open source. Plugins are basically add-ons that can be easily installed in the WordPress dashboard area to add features that are not part of the core code, and themes are what provide a blog or website based on WordPress its design. Imagine a world-wide community working together to add more features and functionality to WordPress – you’re not limited to only being able to use specific employees or developers to produce customizations, which means it’s a powerful CMS system ready to do what you need it to, it’s flexible, and easy to customize.

WordPress is supported by worldwide community.

Because WordPress is open-source, it is freely available to be downloaded, installed, and used on your own servers. This makes it extremely cost-effective. It would cost a lot of money to have a custom CMS developed that could do the same thing that WordPress does, but why spend that much? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel with WordPress being freely available, customizable, and very actively supported by a worldwide community of WordPress developers, users, and supporters! WordPress is updated regularly, with new functionality, bug fixes, and security fixes.

Also, because there is such a large community surrounding WordPress, any developer can work on a WordPress-based site to update it, make changes, etc., so you can never be held ransom by any one designer or developer.

WordPress is easy to use!

You don’t have to be a technical genius to learn how to use WordPress. I always tell my clients: if you know how to edit a Microsoft Word document, then you’ll be able to easily update the content on your WordPress site. Updating pages and/or blog posts on WordPress is literally as easy as editing a Word document – you don’t have to be a web designer to update your content. That is the magic of WordPress!

WordPress offers a backend administrator interface that’s visually easy to navigate and very effective. Everything is organized in a logical manner, so it’s easy to find the are your looking for, such as editing a page (located in the “Pages” section), editing a blog post/article (in the “Posts” section), uploading images (located in the “Media” section), managing users (in the “Users” section), etc.

WordPress is the best Content Management System to use to build your website!

It is for these reasons and more that UC Web Creations works exclusively with WordPress. If you’d like to have your own WordPress-based website and/or blog, please contact us – we’d be happy to help!

July 4th, 2011 update: WordPress 3.2 has now been released! Always be sure to backup your WordPress site/blog as well as your database before upgrading, just in case something goes wrong (rare, but it can happen)!

Original post:

WordPress 3.2 is being released soon, and if you have a self-hosted WordPress website or blog, then you should be aware that it’s super important to keep your WordPress installation up-to-date, both for security reasons as well as to keep everything functioning properly, and also to have access to the new options. If you don’t have time to keep up with these updated, UC Web Creations does offer Maintenance Plans that you can subscribe to. There are several plans available, and they are very affordable – the lowest plan costs only $25/month, and it will give you peace of mind to know that your site is being kept up-to-date every month so that you can just worry about your content.

There are some important updates being made to WordPress 3.2 – the most important being that you will need to ensure your hosting server is up-to-date with the following minimum version of PHP and MySQL:

WordPress 3.2 Requirements

• PHP 5.2.4
• MySQL 5.0.15

If you’re not sure how to check this, here’s a quick online tool provided by iThemes that you can use to at least verify your server’s PHP version:

http://php5ready.ithemes.com/

You can also install the following plugin to do a health check on your server – it will tell you both the PHP and MySQL versions:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/health-check/

Web developers and designers will also be ECSTATIC to know that Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be supported! Yay!!! Some of the design and developing nightmares will finally be at an end!! Even Microsoft is counting down the days when IE6 is no longer used! WordPress 3.2 will also start the process of ending support for IE7, so its accompanying nightmares are soon to be no more!

One of the updates I’m personally looking forward to is the fact that WordPress 3.2 will be faster than ever before! Among other improvements, you’ll have faster page loads and faster upgrades! There are many more updates being made to this release of WordPress, but I wanted to highlight that there is a technical requirement now for your hosting server, hence why I wrote this post. Again, you must ensure you are using PHP version 5.2.4 and MySQL version 5.0.15 for WordPress 3.2 to work correctly. If you don’t have these versions on your web hosting server, you will risk losing your site! Always always always ensure you backup your site or blog before applying any upgrades! I have had to revert back to an older version many times and try upgrading again, and if I hadn’t backed up my site or my clients’ sites, I would’ve been facing an unpleasant (not to mention frustration) situation.

WordPress 3.2 – more info

For more information on version 3.2 and its new features and enhancements, check out the official WordPress.org site info here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.2

*Update* There are now 3 versions of the affordable Marketing Graphics Toolkit, each unique in what graphics they offer. I purchased all three for myself, and recommend all three!

Marketing Graphics Toolkit – Version 1

For less than $10, you can get your hands on the ultimate marketing graphics resource that will save you time and money – it’s literally called the Marketing Graphics Toolkit.

If you struggle with designing awesome graphics, need some attention-grabbing buttons, or even need to make an ebook cover without paying an arm and a leg to get it done, this this kit is worthwhile for these features alone – that’s without even mentioning everything else it includes! Here’s a quick run-down of what you get:

If you want more information, click below to get instant access to a detailed explanation of what you get for only $9.95 in the Marketing Graphics Toolkit – I’m certain you’ll be just as impressed as I was at the amount of great looking image designs, photoshop files and templates, and extremely useful marketing graphics for such a low price!

Enjoy this awesome marketing tool – you may not even need it right away, and could perhaps use it down the road – don’t miss it at this price, though – it’s worth much more based on what you get!

Marketing Graphics Toolkit – Version 2

If you don’t have photoshop, the 2nd version of this package is now available:

Marketing Graphics Toolkit – Version 3

And yet another version of the awesome and affordable Marketing Graphics Toolkit (version 3) is now available:

1. Publishing content online via a blog, a video, an eBook, etc.
2. Optimizing that content for search engines (SEO) to increase the rank of the content and ensure it is more easily accessible.
3. Using social media outlets (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) to continue to spread the content and make it more easily found.

Traditional forms of Outbound Marketing are fast becoming outdated, and viewed as a nuisance. For example: how many people enjoy telemarketing calls? I don’t think those have EVER been pleasant to deal with, and having been a telemarketer myself (many moons ago), I speak from experience on both ends of the phone. I disliked making those calls, and people really disliked receiving the calls! These days, every time I receive a telemarketing call, I ask to have them remove our number from their list. It’s obvious this method of marketing just doesn’t work anymore. Another form of outbound marketing is in the form of ads – online ads, ads on TV, newspapers, etc. – any type of ads! Let’s see – when I watch TV, I usually record the shows I like to watch on my PVR (Personal Video Recorder, or DVR – Digital Video Recorder) specifically so that I can watch it whenever I want with the convenience of being able to fast forward through commercials. If I happen to be watching a show on live TV, then I mute my television during commercials so I don’t have to listen to them. Online ads are also becoming outdated because we’ve become desensitized to them. How many people really look at the “paid” Google ads when you’re searching for something? Did you know that most people click the organic search results, not the paid advertisements (such as Google Adwords ads)? Organic search results (gathered by search engine “web crawlers” and ranked according to the relevance of the search terms) also provide more traffic, more relevant traffic, and smarter traffic (ie. people who are truly interested in your content).

These days, there are certain marketing initiatives that can be viewed as mistakes being made on a daily basis, especially for small businesses: traditional methods of marketing are just not effective anymore. You need to think about how people shop these days, or learn new things to gain more knowledge. Do you ever use the Yellow Pages? I know I don’t – it ends up being recycled every year our household gets one. My first stop is Google if I’m searching for anything – whether it be more information on a topic, a product, a service – just about anything you can think of.

Think of Outbound Marketing as “interruptions” in one’s day. If you’re interrupted by something – a telemarketing call, an advertisement of any form, such as a commercial or even an online ad, what do you do? I can tell you that I personally tend to ignore them. There are still some online ads that catch my eye, but 90% of the time, I don’t even look at them – I tune them out. Maybe I’m the extreme, but I don’t even read the newspaper. If I want to know what’s going on in the news, I go to CNN.com, or perhaps my local news provider’s website. If I want updates on a subject I want to learn more about, or keep up-to-date on, I subscribe to blog feeds. In fact, blogs are replacing newspapers in the 21st century.

Inbound Marketing is basically a strategy that you use to draw pople in and optimize your web presence – getting found by search engings, through blogging, social mdia, etc., and from there, you convert your traffic to leads, and leads to customers, and finally you analyze where your customers are coming from. To continue running successful marketing campaigns, you have to evolve and change with the times.

I see your point. How do I get started with Inbound Marketing?

There are many things you can do, but the four main methods I recommend are:

Publish quality, unique content regularly.

Having a web presence is extremely important, but having a static website isn’t going to help you much when it comes to attracting visitors from searches they do on search engines. Keeping your site “alive” through blogging is the key. A blog is not a scary thing; it is simply a medium used to publish articles online, usually articles that relate to your niche, whatever it may be. Remember that there are literally millions of websites available on the internet, so getting found can seem like a tedious undertaking as it can be equivalent to finding a needle in a haystack. With quality content, and the right keywords, though, it can be done and your site can start coming up within the first pages of relevant search results.

Remember: the more content you publish, the more content is indexed by the search engines, and the higher your chances are of getting found by potential clients, especially if the next step is done.

Optimize your content with relevant keywords (think of search terms).

Many websites make this mistake: not having the proper keyword phrases on their homepage, let along their inner pages. It is extremely important to optimize each and every page of your website, especially the title tags of your pages. The title tags are what appear in the title bar of a web browser, so if you look up at the very top of your web browser, not the webpage itself but the actual browser, it’ll show you the title of the page you’re on. This title is driven by the “title tag” of a web page. One of the reasons I love building website with WordPress is because it makes it very simple to update these title tags, as well as optimizing the rest of the page, especially with the proper SEO plugins available. Personally, I recommend Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. I’ve seen firsthand the effect this plugin can have on web content, and in my opinion, it is the best WordPress SEO plugin available.

If you don’t fully understand why keywords and title tags are important when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, consider this: how does your site show up in the search results of a search engine such as Google or Bing? They basically have “robots” (not actual walking/talking robots, but little online programs that run through your site’s content and pages) that crawl through your website and index your content within their databases. From there, when a user types their search terms and clicks on the “search” button, the search engine will analyze the terms and provide results that best match the terms that were searched. This means that it is extremely important to keep these keyword phrases optimized on your website – so that your site will be within the top results for the terms that are relevant to your content. Each page of your website needs to have its own separate set of keywords, including blog posts and articles. When you have a blog, you’re dynamically adding pages to your site with more content and more keywords, thereby increasing your chances of being found.

Finding the right keywords involves a bit of keyword research – there are free tools online to use, such as Google’s Keyword Search Tool. You also don’t want the keywords for a page to be very long, and you definitely want to mix up your keywords, so you may have pages with related content, but one page may concentrate more on one topic while the other page covers another.

Have a blog on your own domain.

So you understand the importance of a blog now, and want to start your own. Great! If it’s just a personal blog and a personal website, then this point isn’t going to be too important, but if you’re a business selling products or a service provider, having a blog on blogger.com or wordpress.com or even blogspot.com isn’t going to help you much. One of the main reasons for having a blog at all is to attract traffic to your website, so if your blog is sitting on someone else’s domain (ie. blogger.com, or wordpress.com, or blogspot.com, etc.), then all that traffic is not being led to your site, but rather to theirs. If you have a blog on one of their sites, the online address to that blog will be something like “yourblog.wordpress.com”, or “yourblog.blogspot.com”, not “yourdomain.com/blog”, or “yourdomain.com/articles”, or anything that is directly associated with your domain.

If you’re afraid of blogging, let me clear up a few things: blogging is not something to be ignored – each new article you write is a new page that gets indexed by the search engines. Remember – the more pages indexed, the more chances you have of attracting traffic that could potentially be converted to leads! There is a direct correlation between how many blog articles you have that are properly optimized with relevant keywords and the traffic you’ll get from search engines. Studies have shown that there definitely is a return on investment (ROI) on blogging – very often, monthly leads are drawn via blogs.

Finding topics for blog articles isn’t really difficult – it just takes a little time and dedication.

Tip: 5 Rules for Creating Blog Content

1. Answer industry questions (such as answering frequently asked questions)
2. Comment on relevant industry news and articles
3. Provide how-to based content (such as tutorials), whether in written or video format, or both
4. Encourage readers to comment on your content
5. Post articles as consistently as possible

Use Social Media to have more one-on-one interaction with potential clients.

Question: if two people were standing side-by-side, both selling the same thing (let’s keep this example simple: selling popcorn, or even chocolate), and you could only choose to buy from one, who would you buy it from – the stranger, or your friend? I know I’d get my chocolate from my friend – it’s someone I know, someone I trust, someone’s opinoin I value. That’s what social media is all about – allowing your clients to get to know you, to build a relationship with you, and eventually to come to trust you. Inbound Marketing is all about the trust factor – building people’s trust in your niche, your area of expertise, and eventually (whether it be sooner or later) converting those leads into customers. Outbound Marketing is a cold method of marketing, while inbound marketing is warm – it helps you to build relationships that last, and it helps to keep your customers coming back to you as opposed to someone else that provides the same services. Think of it as a form of customer service – your blog provides information that you could probably answer via email or phone calls, but it conveniently located on your website. Your social marketing tools allow you to spread the word about your content, as well as allowing you to share helpful sites, information, tips, and interact with your audience. Both your blog and the social media outlets (such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.) allow people to interact with you directly, via comments or replies to content you post. This is how you build a relationship with someone – via two-way communication, not one-way communication. You can’t have a conversation with yourself! Outbound Marketing methods are literally one-way conversations, while Inbound Marketing methods are two-way conversations.

Another key is being able to easily update your own content – whether it be your website, blog, or social media tools. This is why WordPress has become so popular – it is an excellent platform to use for building websites – you automatically get a built-in, easy-to-work-with blog, and you can easily update your content yourself. For social media, there are tools such as Hootsuite available that make it easy and efficient for you to update various social media sites (such as Twitter and Facebook), and basically leave you in the driver’s seat of your own marketing campaigns. Gone are the days of needing to contact your webmaster every time you want to make a slight change to your site’s content. You’ll still need your webmaster to make design changes, and perhaps other tweaks, such as keeping WordPress itself and/or plugins up-to-date, but when it comes to YOUR content, WordPress gives you the freedom to do it yourself!

Are you starting to see the importance of Inbound Marketing? Do you have a blog yet? What inbound marketing methods do you use?

Are you perhaps looking to update your website? I offer various services – fill out my Services Form if you’re interested in refreshing your website, building in a blog, or setting up some social media strategies. I can help!