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Lure Traffic to your Website with a Content Strategy

Posted by iJoe on Feb 1, 2012 in Uncategorized

Most websites are like a dead body on the internet – static with no movement whatsoever. This statement from a WordPress developer got me started in the creation of open source Content Management System (CMS) websites for a living.

It is also the statement that got me thinking about how a blog generates traffic to your website. By creating content on a regular schedule you perk up the ears of Google and begin opening your doors to website traffic.

WordPress makes it easy for anyone to implement a content strategy. After building a solid website infrastructure on an open source CMS platform like WordPress, most marketers then try to find ways to generate traffic. Think of the content strategy as your maintenance plan.

A customized content strategy can enhance any website, transforming it into a lively searchable website. Many clients ask, how often do I blog, vlog, tweet, facebook, google+ and/or email? Below is a sample content strategy.

IJoe.us Sample Content Plan

The primary components of the content strategy are media and frequency. Typically, the top performing Social Media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) are used. The content should be customized to the business and reflect the sales cycle. The frequency should be consistent.

For example, one of my clients that sells beer preferred their tweets, blog posts and emails released later in the week. This practice enhances the weekend buying cycle of beer purchases. Tweeting food pairings with the beer brands further enhanced the effort! The key to success is creating content that is interesting to your fans. Be creative!

Fans subscribe to brands and products they love. Don’t be afraid to share good content often. Emails need to be well spaced apart and not be repetitive. Read the top reasons as to why fans unsubscribe. Bottom line: people unsubscribe because emails come too often and are chock full of junk.

Think of social media like the flash on a camera. Fans may miss your post. Most fans aren’t camping on Facebook and/or Twitter reading all your posts 24/7. Support your blog and emails with social media.

A consistent schedule of posts could potentially increase your business. For example, your customers will get used to hearing about sales/specials on specific days of the week. Now you’ve begun to cultivate a captive audience.

The content plan above is a model for a small business just beginning to execute an internet marketing strategy, but this plan could be tweaked to fit any sized business. For example, frequency should increase as you build your fan base.

Analytics will assist you in seeing what your fans are eating up and what they are ignoring. Employing a creative and flexible content strategy will keep you on top.

Learn more about business blogging below.

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Inbound Marketing: Create a Blueprint Before You Build the House

Posted by iJoe on Dec 19, 2011 in Uncategorized

Building a website takes a great deal of time and money mostly spent in design and development. Much of the preparation and strategy can be done offline. In fact many of the IMU teachings guide you in creating a state-of-the-art and searchable website.

Market ready websites is the concept of employing much of the effort offline, thereby saving you a bundle in design and development hours.

Businesses know how important it is to have a user-friendly website that presents a product, their brands and their services well. And, most importantly, getting found online should be a priority. The goal is to have your website appear as the first business in Google search results. Getting found online organically could save you thousands of dollars in pay per click advertising.

Each page is built to get Google’s attention. In fact, the whole website strategy is built around getting found by Google, Yahoo and Bing. iJoe applies the newest information about search algorithms. In addition, all the time tested methods are employed along with the newest algorithm research.

IJoe creates a complete blueprint for the designer/developer to execute. No detail is left out. All the search strategies are built right into the infrastructure of the website before a designer even touches it. Even the best method of including keywords in the name of images (photos) is pre-planned and consistent with optimizing each website page. Watch this IMU video, Developing a Keyword Strategy, to learn more about keyword importance.

“I’ve found iJoe’s website building strategy to be both cost efficient and powerful,” said Kris K. “Our website was built with Google in mind and we didn’t spend a lot of money on design/developement because much of the website was constructed offline.”

To built a market-ready website, there are several best methods that are used to provide the best result. Without a well-defined plan, you could end up hiring professionals to re-work the infrastructure to be search friendly. Most people start with the design of a website rather than search methodology. Learn more about web design blunders here.

This method can be compared to planning to build a house from the ground up. Lots of planning is necessary before decorating a house.

The architect hired for building a house is much like hiring an Inbound Marketing Strategist. Hiring a skilled marketing architect (strategist) is a good first step. iJoe is a seasoned marketer and certified Inbound Marketer by Hubspot. Hiring a designer first may be much like hiring a painter first. Think of your navigation bar much like the rooms of your house. Like your house, you want an enticing floor plan that makes sense and fits well with the entire business strategy.

Inbound marketing is essential to the life of a website and influences the success of it. Designers are delighted to receive a roadmap for a website. They can focus on applying the necessary creativity to completing a masterful work of art. And, designers finds it refreshing to do what they were hired for – execute a well-conceived plan.

Search engine optimization can be likened to the extensive wiring and plumbing of a house, which allows for functions to occur at a rapid and successful rate.

When planning the creation and promotion your website, it is important to consider the audience. This offline process will walk you through creating personas to clearly define the target customer and imbed that research into the website.

A well thought out plan and strategy is the lesson here. Hiring new media and/or Inbound Marketing trained professionals is the place to start. Seek all-encompassing web skills that include technical, social, marketing and creative disciplines.

In addition, you should find a designer/developer who subscribes to the inbound marketing methodologies. Review this slide show, 25 Must-Haves for a Remarkable Website, as a checklist for your current and/or new website.

Building the Marketing Plan: A Blueprint for Start-ups

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing

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Optimizing Your Title Tags for Impact

Posted by iJoe on Nov 1, 2011 in Uncategorized

There are a number of best practices to optimize your website. This blog article will focus on one very impactful method known as the title tag. Focus your energy on the title tags to get found online. This is a powerful and intimate exercise. Its a great first step in improving your website’s findability by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Title tags are text that appear in the top line of a user’s web browser. Safari is a great browser to see these tags visually displayed (see screen shot). They appear in every browser but Safari displays a nice clean view across the very top. These are the keywords describing the content related to your web page.

Think about crafting these keywords as advertising text. The url, title tag and alt text (naming graphics/images) correlate very well with high search performance.

Many search pros believe the title tags are the only HTML meta tags on our website that search engines crawl to find your website online. There are 3 main tags but for purposes of this blog, we will focus on title tags. HTML title tags are not a meta tag, but it’s worth discussing in relation to them.

For impact, lets focus on what Google practices in search.

Title tags can only display up to 70 characters in your browser. It is recommended to keep your title tags under 70 characters. In addition, much of the research points to placing your most descriptive keyword/phrase to describe your page as far forward in the string of 70 characters as possible. If your page is touting ‘website results,’ make sure it’s the first phrase in the 70-character string.

Page titles tell visitors what a page is about. From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, it is good to keep your page titles concise. If your page title is too long, it will dilute the importance of each term in the title. This might prevent you from ranking well on any of the words in your page title.

Come up with a concise but keyword-rich description of your page. Make that your page title. Choosing long-tail phrases are an effective solution. Long-tail keywords are more specific and target less competitive niche markets instead of highly competitive broad keywords. Long-tail phrases containing commonly used words may significantly improve a website’s search ranking.

Your company name should not be the start of the page title. The first few words in a page title are the most influential in search engine results. You want people that don’t know about your brand to be able to find you, so using more general industry keywords is important.

Use three methods to understand your customers’ perception of your products or services: web analytics, customer survey, and competitors’ content.

After compiling a keyword glossary from research, narrow your selection based on four criteria: category, popularity, competition, and relevance.

Now, find the middle. It is important to find words that both uniquely describe your company’s services and are commonly used.

If I had to start in one place to increase my presence online, it would be with my website’s title tags.

There are two online training videos available to successfully walk you through this process. Navigate to Crash Course in SEO and Advanced SEO Tactics.

Example of Title Tags from iJoe.us About Page.

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Getting the Max out your Google (gmail) Account

Posted by iJoe on Oct 19, 2011 in Uncategorized

Online inbound marketing is the primary way to get customers these days. So what handy tools are there to up your inbound marketing game?

Well, here’s a tip from us at Ijoe Inbound Marketing: try Google!

Here are a few of their free online marketing tools:

* Feedburner: This is handy popular free online tool. Have you ever seen an RSS (rich site summary) feed icon? Chances are you have, and it basically indicates that a user on any site, blog, newscast or otherwise, can choose to subscribe to that page (usually by clicking on the above icon). Subscribers then receive an automatic feed on whatever device or site they choose when the content is updated. Use an RSS feed to keep your clients up-to-date and to spread your service around on the web!
* Webmaster Tools: This tool will, in a manner of speaking, educate you on how well your site is performing against other sites. If you submit your site to Google, they will run several ‘tests’ to look at basic things like if your site is ranking on search engines, if your site is being linked properly, monitor your site’s performance and gives you tips on how to create a successful site. It offers you the 101 on SEO for your site, and this is especially handy for those of you that are the real webmasters of your site/product.
* Google Analytics: This is by and far the most popular tool for inbound marketing strategies. It will tell you everything you need to know about how successful your current marketing strategies are. It tracks sales and conversions, how marketing campaigns are related to content and keywords, what kind of traffic you are generating on your site, and whether it is all giving you the results you want!
* Product Search: It’s online shopping gone viral. Add your product or figure out who else is selling a similar product, and market it right there on Google, for free.
* Google Alerts & Google Trends: Use these to keep tabs on the competition or monitor a new developing story. They keep you up-to-date on new content on the web, and can give you fresh content ideas on what is “trending” right now, in your area!

Be sure to check out some of their other handy gadgets at Google Products.

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Traditional Media vs New Media

Posted by iJoe on Sep 26, 2011 in Uncategorized

Traditionally, marketing strategies have always revolved strongly around what is often called, ‘outbound lead generation’. This involves using cold calls, snail mail, and more recently email, as the media by which to sell your product or information. Other traditional media used for outbound marketing have of course also been television commercials, radio, and –let us not forget- the myriad of billboards seen lining our highways.

Everything imaginable is blocking Traditional Media.

However, as quickly as outbound marketing media strategies have grown in the last 60+ years, technology to block this ‘traditional’ media has outpaced it. So we have had caller I.D., spam blockers, satellite (no ads) radio and TV (SKIP FWD), and now even our billboards are blocked by trees and given little regard. The point? Our traditional media forms used as outbound marketing are increasingly ineffective, and so we must turn to new media and new strategies.

New Media and iJoe Inbound Marketing

To successfully market our products these days, we make use primarily of the internet. More specifically, we draw the client in as they search for product and services -79% of all adult Americans use the internet. This is called ‘inbound marketing’. At iJoe Inbound Marketing we will create a strong web presence by creating CMS websites, blogs, optimizing social media, strengthening email subscriptions, demonstrating products through webinars, videos, podcasts, whitepapers and more. The client doesn’t waste time on a content management systems or SEO that doesn’t work, iJoe measures and analyzes all efforts. We track which effort will be most effective for drawing in your target audience. No webmaster needed. We will introduce easy to use platforms that are easily managed by you or someone on your team. And, at a much lower cost than the old, traditional forms of media.

Gone are the days of traditional media! They are no longer capturing the audience as they used to, easily controlled and turned-off by anyone. The customer now has more power to filter what they see and hear, and so we must reach them as they start searching for you.

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Lusso Receives Certification in Inbound Marketing

Posted by iJoe on Aug 29, 2011 in Uncategorized

Certification Awarded by HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University Training Program

Minneapolis – August 2011– Inbound Marketing University awards the Inbound Marketing Certification to Joe Lusso as part of its comprehensive Internet marketing training program (http://inboundmarketing.com).

This certification acknowledges Lusso’s proficiency in inbound marketing principles and best practices. These principles include: blogging, search engine optimization, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Lusso joins an elite group of Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals. Over 2,000 individuals have successfully passed the IMU program.

To complete the Inbound Marketing Certification, Lusso completed 16 in-depth classes covering each facet of inbound marketing and passed a comprehensive certification exam. (View the full list of classes: http://inboundmarketing.com/university/classes)

The courses are taught by a knowledgeable faculty of professors, including New York Times’ best-selling author Chris Brogan, Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk, best-selling author and international speaker David Meerman Scott, and more. (View all professors: http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university/professors)

This certification is administered by HubSpot.

About InboundMarketing.com

InboundMarketing.com is an online community and certification program for marketers. The site’s content teaches a new style of marketing that emphasizes business uses of social media, content creation and search engine optimization for marketing. InboundMarketing.com is hosted and moderated by HubSpot, Inc. Register for InboundMarketing.com at http://inboundmarketing.com/user/register.

About HubSpot

HubSpot, Inc. provides Internet marketing software that helps businesses get found online, generate more inbound leads and convert a higher percentage of those leads into paying customers. HubSpot’s software platform includes tools that allow professional marketers and business owners to manage search engine optimization, blogging and social media, as well as landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics. Based in Cambridge, MA, HubSpot can be found at http://www.hubspot.com. HubSpot’s free marketing tools can be found at http://grader.com.

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