A business blog today is much more than an online journal for companies to share news and views. Yes, it’s true that blogs can transform your business but more than that, an effective blog can change the way your customers, employees and associates perceive your business. As thought leadership becomes the leading objective of your blog, a growing audience starts to recognize the distinctive value your company brings to the table.

Your business blog can truly transform the way the world sees you—and the best part is, you are in control to shape and nurture this image for greater profitability, steady growth and dominant leadership in the competitive landscape.             

What a Blog Can Do For Your Business

Business blogs are an excellent corporate tool to share a company's expertise, offer a perspective on the industry, i.e. trends and developments, build additional web traffic, and connect with potential customers. Blogs are popular with online audiences because they offer fresh new voices and opinions. Business blogs can increase SEO ranking by on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and internal linking.

• A blog lets you reach a bigger audience
• With a blog, you can establish yourself as an expert in your industry 
• Gives you free publicity through search engine results pages
• Can bring more traffic to your website
• It’s another way to interact with your customers
• Makes your website look more active and content rich (great for SEO)
• A blog shows the human side of your business, and that you aren’t just an anonymous Internet entity.

Gives you a medium to promote new products and offers feedback / reactions quicker than other methods. If you would like to find out more about how blogging can help your business to spread the word please contact WSI South East.

Do’s and Don’ts for business blogging

Ultimately, even though to build organic traffic is important, for a blog to succeed and last long, it is more important to write clear, compelling content for human readers.

Here are some do’s and don’ts for effective business blogging:

Do’s

• Add links within your blog posts pointing back to other important pages that will help your rankings.

• Make sure the information you provide on your business blog is meaningful to customers and updated frequently, so they have a reason to return.

• Engage visitors in a dialogue. Filter out spam and profanity, but encourage comments, views and opinions without moderating them too much.

• Every blog article and post is an SEO opportunity. You can’t realistically optimize your site for every long tail search term, but you can certainly target niche keyword phrases. Each keyword or phrase should be within the first sentence or two of your blog.

Don’ts

• Blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. Don’t just talk about your products; instead offer useful, free information that people can use. Blog articles garner links because they are interesting, informative, and not overly corporate or sales-focused.

• Don’t keep using corporate rhetoric, acronyms and jargon that only a few will comprehend. Use common terms, keep the sentences grammatically simple, short and concise.

• Don’t put off regular posts and updates. Search engines will periodically crawl websites looking for new and updated content, so blogging consistently ensures fresh content on your site.

• Don’t try to micro-manage your brand image or keep consumers in the dark. Be confident that transparency is the best policy, and customers will reward your candor.

Online and offline businesses alike can benefit from starting a blog to offer their products and services to a wider audience, increase their traffic, and generate more leads and sales. Contact WSI South East to leverage the opportunity and start your business blog today.

If you have your own website or online business, an efficient social profile Page using  Google+ will let you explore a whole new world of social media marketing, that is not only fun, but easy and profitable.

• Google+ posts sent to “public” rank fairly well in Google search results. Merging Google properties into Google+ and integrating it with the search engines has a tremendous impact on where your company appears in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• You can manage circles—distribute clients into specific categories and share different posts, news or deals with different circles accordingly. This is a great way to connect with fans and share information with clients.
• “Hangouts” is another great way to engage your customers and colleagues. It’s a high quality video chat that allows you to interact with your fans face to face. This interaction will allow you to get to know them, answer questions as well as get live product/service feedback. Businesses can also use “Hangouts” for video conferencing, to push live events and seminars to customers.
• Use the Google+ badge to promote your site and your Google+ page. Google+ badge links your website with your Google+ page and lets others know you’re here. When a visitor likes your site and clicks the icon they will be taken directly to your Google+ page and will be able to share and follow your posts.
• Google+ Direct allows people to simply enter a ‘+’ before your company name when searching on Google and get directly to your Google+ page.
• The +1 button on Google+ is an ideal way to have customers spread the word about your business and its presence on Google+.  You can also connect your +1’s from your website to your +1’s on your Google+ page. People tend to trust recommendations from people they already know.
• “Ripples” is a Google+ tool that allows you to watch your posts and information as they travel across social networks.  You can easily determine who is sharing your content and who is paying attention to it.
• With “analytics”, you can get information about your page’s followers, visitors, and the general traffic and social activity around your business.

Google+ for business is unique in that it has blurred the lines between personal social networks such as Facebook, and business networks like LinkedIn.

Businesses are beginning to see the value of Google+ with the new Pages feature. The new Google+ brand Pages look similar to Google+ Profiles, except for the little square icon that indicates that it’s a Page rather than a Profile. Users can add brands to their circles, check out their information, and browse their photos. When users add a brand to their circles, it helps increase that brand’s follower count. 

So what are you waiting for? Create a Page for your business and take advantage of Google +:

• Before you can create a Google+ Page for your business, you need a Google+ Profile. The ‘You+’ link on your Gmail dashboard will direct you to the Profile creation page.

• Choose a category to begin. Local businesses is good for smaller, less well-known businesses. Product or brand would work for companies and larger known businesses. Company, institution, or organization is mainly for businesses that don’t directly sell something, mostly not-for-profits.

• Personalize your page with a photo/logo and tagline. You can continue with an introduction, information, and contact information, and finish with a photo strip of five different photos.

• It’s time to start engaging with the Google+ community. For your business Page, you can create circles (networks), start posting information and news through your feed. You can also add your Google+ Page details to your existing website and share it via other networks.

The official slogan for Google+ is “real-life sharing—rethought for the web”. Google+, is a social network operated by Google Inc, with integration across a number of Google products, including Google Buzz and Google Profiles. Started in June 2011 as a test version, its popularity has grown by leaps and bounds. Google+ notices are posted inside users’ Gmail inbox, so it’s 100% real-time Gmail deliverability. When you write about a subject on Google+ and your circle friends Google that subject, your comments and links are displayed automatically on page one of Google. No back-linking, no on-site optimization, just free traffic. All these factors make it a social media platform that is likely to stay on the scene and gain increased favour.

 What’s So Special About Google Plus?

• One key element of Google+ is a focus on targeted sharing within subsets of a social group (or what Google calls ‘Circles’).

• Also within Google+ is a section specifically for viewing, managing and editing multimedia. Google+ includes an image editor, privacy options and sharing features.

• ‘Hangouts’ is Google’s new group chat feature. Instead of directly asking a friend to join a group chat, users instead click ‘start a hangout’ and they’re instantly in a video chat-room alone. At the same time, a message goes out to their social circles, letting them know that their friend is ‘hanging out’ and that they are invited to join.

Get ready to integrate Google+ into your Internet marketing strategy.

As the web usage grows so the focus becomes more local. If your services are limited geographically, you need to pay attention to local search marketing opportunities. A number of networking sites like Foursquare and services such as Google Places exist to help connect local web traffic with businesses in their area.

If a search marketer offers the earth, be very wary, achieving top search result places should not be guaranteed. Instead, following genuine tried and tested techniques in identifying your business as local and relevant to searches will always be the best approach.

This article reviews a five step plan using some of the best practice techniques that will enable your business to win new customers locally.

1. Determine Your Locality
The first step in the plan is to identify your target audience; what is your geographic reach for example? Who is your ideal customer? If you are not sure where to start, you might like to see what you can learn from your competitors. In what way, if any, are they choosing to appeal to local internet users? Once completed, this step sets the foundation for your successful local search campaign.

2. Changing the Channels
Now you know where your target audience is, the next step is to identify the best channels – or websites – to attract them from. As well as obvious channels such as the search engines, this may also include banner advertisements, social networking (with increasing opportunities for local search), videos and more. At the same time as helping drive more website traffic, each channel will also increase your search engine visibility.

3. Get Personal
Take care that your marketing messages reflect something of your locality. The more relevant, or personal, the shopper feels you are being to them, the more likely you are to attract their attention – and their business.

This will also enable the search engines to successfully identify not only the relevancy of your services – but also your geography in relation to local searches.

4. It Was the Tortoise That Won
Be consistent and patient. Enough of the right techniques in the right places will win you the marketing ‘race’. Make sure your marketing plan incorporates a schedule of activities that matches your budget. A steady consistent approach will bear more long term search traffic than a short burst of misguided web marketing activity.

5. Test, Monitor, Tweak and Repeat
The last step in the plan is the testing and monitoring phase. It is only by monitoring the success of your results that you are able to improve and build on what you have accomplished. Identify how and when you will evaluate your local search marketing activities and re-tweak your plans accordingly.

Local search marketing does require an investment of time and money, but when done right, it will return your investment many times over. If you would like to get local search working for your business, please call 0845 345 2592

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so when it comes to your website, hiring the right web developer is one of the most important decisions you will make.

A good web developer will not only deliver the mechanics of building a usable website but also help increase your business’s chances of being successful online, identifying real opportunities to find new customers, improve your service to existing customers, reduce your costs and improve communications with customers and staff.

Understanding Your Business
Make sure your developer knows your business well. A good web developer will ask a lot of questions to determine your short term and long term goals; then be proactive about making suggestions for attracting and engaging your customers.

If your web developer doesn’t really understand the nature of your business, he or she isn’t going to be able to create the best possible website for your customers.

A sign of an excellent web developer is a thorough analysis of your business’s website needs, followed up with an in-depth interview to nail down any specific requirements. You should have the feeling that your web developer is responsive and engaged in your website design.

Can Provide References
It’s a good idea to ask for references in the form of other websites designed by the web developer. Try out the websites and make sure that you like the way they are designed, that they load quickly and are easy to navigate, and that the information is presented in a logical manner.

Helps With Marketing
Online marketing is vital to the success of any website; your web developer should have a good grasp of the most effective ways to attract traffic to your website. Knowing how to incorporate email, search and social media marketing activities into your website will give your online business a great head start.

Understands Usability and Accessibility Issues
A good web developer will know how to make sure your website content is easy to navigate, is engrossing and – as much as possible – adheres to the most basic accessibility standards that allow your site to be used successfully by the sight-impaired or people using assistive technologies.

Speaks Your Language
While a web developer should keep abreast of the latest and greatest web technologies available for improving your web presence, this shouldn’t equate to advising you to deploy the latest gizmo just because you can. A good web developer will provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision without blinding you with science.

Is Approachable
Remember, it’s your website and your business. While your web developer can make recommendations and offer good advice, you should never be made to feel you are imposing on their project. A good web developer acts as a consultant, not a dictator, working effectively with you as an integral part of your team to achieve the best results for your web presence.

If you would like to know more please call 0845 345 2592

Landing pages have long been the primary tool of the web-savvy marketer. Whether the visitor has arrived there through an advertisement, offer or search-engine link, your landing page is your first and best chance at making that conversion.

The following article is by no means a comprehensive guide to success, however it does provide some tried-and-tested techniques. Feel free to use them either as a starting point or, if your current landing pages aren't performing to expectation, as part of a strategy review.

Make Your Headline Clear and Concise
The headline is (or should be) the first thing a visitor sees on arrival. It's your chance to make an impression and will, more often than not, give them a reason to stay or leave. Think about what you're trying to achieve – does the headline summarise this intent? The headline should provide the bridge between the link the user has clicked and their desired goal.

Make it Snappy
We've all seen them, endless web pages usually linked to some miracle earnings scheme or weight loss method. This is the worst kind of marketing – in your face, crass and highly repetitive. Much as your headline should draw the reader in, your value proposition should be summarised in short, concise bullet points. In other words, make it easy for the reader to understand the benefits of what you're selling.

Pre-Call to Action
You've no doubt heard of the much heralded 'call to action', however remember that everything you have written to this point is aimed at persuading the visitor to either sign-up or buy. Before your sign off, end the main body of copy with a persuasive message that leads into the call to action – effectively bridging the gap and preparing the reader for the close.

You Guessed It – Call to action
When crafting your call to action, consider what stage your visitors may be at in the purchasing cycle; problem recognition – information search – evaluation – decision – purchase. If your message is meant to be formative only, an aggressive or dynamic call to action may not be appropriate.

Many marketers still make the common mistake of being too aggressive with the close. Using terms such as 'Buy Now' or 'Sign Up Now' signify a commitment that could turn some visitors off and impact your conversion rate. When appropriate, try a softer, more encouraging tone using words such as 'Try' to coax the reader into that all important click.

A well prepared landing page is a highly effective internet marketing tactic that will let your site visitors hone in on the information they need, increasing the time visitors spend on your website and spiking your conversion rates. If you would like help to improve your Internet marketing effectiveness, please call us on 0845 345 2592

Thanks mainly to the meteoric rise of Youtube, online video is now the single most powerful medium for just about anyone looking to make an impact on the web – whether you're hoping to be discovered as the 'next big thing' or are looking to make a splash with the next viral sensation. To understand the unprecedented impact of Youtube, consider the following statistics:

• Youtube exceeds 2 billion views per day, which is nearly double the prime-time audience of all 3 major U.S. networks
• 24hrs of video are uploaded each minute
• The average person spends 15 minutes a day on Youtube
• 70% of traffic comes from outside of the U.S. (Source: website-monitoring.com)

Understandably, online marketers have been quick to recognise the potential of the platform. A video presents the perfect opportunity to capture attention in a dynamic, creative and high-impact fashion. In this article, we'll look at four ways to make the most of online video in your own marketing campaigns.

1. Start With Your Own Website
Embedding video on your own website is a great way to launch your online video strategy. Youtube is the obvious choice, providing ready-made code which can be embedded easily on your website or blog. Make it easy to share by adding social media 'share' buttons for added replay value.

2. A Picture Paints a Thousand Words
Using a video on your landing page is a great way to introduce or demo your product or service in a dynamic, attention-grabbing manner. A short demonstration of key features and benefits is likely to sway the undecided visitor far more than any amount of persuasive copy. Interactivity is the key here – giving visitors a more engaging experience using video will provide a greater incentive for visitors to stay rather than go.

3. Online Advertising
The same principal applies to online advertising. Video ads are known to be amongst the highest-converting in the internet marketing world. During 2010 search engine giant Google captured 43% of the online video market share, offering nearly 13 billion downloads each month. Facebook has over 600 million members, each capable of sharing online videos to their network of friends. There's no getting away from it, the consumer has spoken.

4. Mobile Platforms
Apple's iPhone has forever changed the way we view media, and the age of the smartphone means that more of us than ever before are regularly viewing video via a mobile device. With this in mind, make sure your video player will provide compatibility across multiple platforms.

Video is here to stay – but it doesn't have to come with prohibitive production costs, creativity will win the day. If you would like help in developing a video marketing strategy for your business, call 0845 345 2592

Often ignored by the novice internet marketer, website analytics have a key role to play in any successful marketing strategy. Careful analysis of even the most rudimentary statistics will often highlight areas for improvement that can make or break the average campaign.

In this article we'll take a look at some simple steps to ensure you're getting some sort of tangible return on your marketing efforts, and why using analytics might not be such a scary proposition after all...

Step 1: Define the Sales Process
However you refer to the sales process, the first step is identifying each stage of the journey and understanding what is expected of your customer. Consider the following questions:

• How is the visitor incentivised to engage with your sales process?
• How does each phase of the process relate to your overall sales strategy?
• How is the customer guided through the process?

For example, you may be offering a free ebook or whitepaper to capture their information before initiating a classic upsell strategy, culminating with your primary product or service.

Step 2: Create a Measure
A marketing strategy means little unless you have something to measure your success against. These parameters should form a natural extension to your sales process – for example conversion rates, new monthly subscriptions, white paper downloads, webcast attendance and so on. Here's a quick look at some key measurements:

• Current opt in rate per website visitor
• Email conversion rate
• Average membership shelf life
• Upsell conversion rate

Identifying your key measurements will enable you to start sharpening your game, beginning with targeted content you can use in your marketing activities.

Step 3: Time to Figure Cost Per Visitor
You are now ready to begin your analysis in order to assess your cost per visitor. Think of it as a funnel effect, with each phase of the sales process channelling your customers to the desired end result.

By working out your conversion rate for each phase of the process and identifying the associated value attached to your average customer, you can calculate your cost per visitor.

Step 4: Set the Right Budget
Now you know your cost per visitor, you are in a position to set an appropriate budget for each of your marketing activities. In simple terms, if you are paying in excess of your cost per visitor, your strategy is not sustainable – unless of course your web analytics are sophisticated enough to identify the source for each online sale you make.

In either case, intelligent use of your website visitor statistics will enable you to set an appropriate budget and – more importantly – stay within it.

Of course every product, service or market fluctuates significantly in terms of customer profile, so try not to focus on what you consider to be 'good' or 'bad' conversion rates, but rather how these compare month on month. By definition a 'good' result will, of course, be growth rather than decline.