I believe that a lot of this has to do with poor design and development choices in building the website. Sure, it’s possible that the reason could be a poor marketing strategy (we can help with that!) but a lot of time it’s because of minor (or major!) design and development mistakes. To help you out, I have listed five of them for your benefit.

The Website’s Width is Too Wide
I have a larger than average monitor, and possibly you do too, but to design for these larger monitors only is a common mistake. The most common monitor resolution is 1024×768. Adding in the vertical scroll bar, a website should not be designed to more than 1000px. Keeping it under this size will prevent the dreaded horizontal scroll bar and will increase user-friendliness within your website. People don’t mind scrolling, but that’s when they can actually use their scroll wheel. I know that a Mac can scroll left and right, but most people have a PC. Design your site so anyone can view it without too much hassle.

Using Underlined Text
Why is having underlined text within your content a no-no? Even if your site’s style doesn’t have links underlined, people still have it embedded into their minds that any underlined text is a link. Clear up some confusion for your visitor by using a different way to emphasize something… How about the <em> tag!?

Using Harsh Colors
Please don’t take this the wrong way. You can use any color in a website and be fine, but some are harsher than others. These bright accent colors will stand out great, but if your background’s color is too bright and your visitor has just had a seizure by spending five minutes on your site, I can almost guarantee that you will not profit with that website. Save your visitors eyes and brain by using colors correctly.

Incorrect Speling Spelling
Nothing screams amateur more than having incorrect spelling. Some people will say, “I am just a bad speller,” but this is ridiculous. If you want people to think of you and your company as legit, then take the time to have someone else look over your content. We’ve all been spelling since elementary school. It’s not that hard, it just may take a little more effort, but that effort will go a long way.

Too Much Content
Once someone has entered a page, they check certain areas of the page. One of those places is the right side so that they can see the size of the scroll bar. If your site appears too long and the visitor doesn’t have enough interest in the topic of the page, they could leave. Sometimes this can be caused by having a sidebar that is too long or just text that should have been split into more pages. People value their time and don’t want to read too much. If the page has too much content, it will be harder to scan and it’s possible to lose that visitor.

Obviously there are many more mistakes and these are just a few of them, but for the sake of keeping the content short, I have decided to limit myself to only five mistakes. It is easy to spot mistakes on other websites, but what about your own? Give your website an honest review. If your site has any of the problems mentioned above, contact Trademark and let us help your website. We can give your site the love it needs not only for design purposes, but for Google rankings as well.

That leads me into the now, where it seems another start-up pops up every 12 minutes with some random, nonsensical name that makes me scratch my head and wonder “How? Why?”. Names like previously mentioned Orkut, eBay, Xanga, Plurk, Ning, etc. Notice how a lot of these just so happen to be “Web 2.0″ companies (or the case of eBay, web 1.5)?

Next we have examples such as Amazon, Yahoo, Apple, Fox, and many more. These are companies that are far beyond successful, and yet the name of their company makes absolutely no sense. What the hell does a computer have to do with a fruit? Why would I immediately think of “an uncultivated, boorish person, a yokel” when I think of “Searching the internet to find relevant content that interests me”? I don’t know either. Amazon? I could think of a very far-fetched way that Amazon COULD potentially make sense, but it’s really reaching and I’m not even going to bother. Buying stuff online does not make me think of a big giant rain-forest.

Even Trademark Productions doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you think about it. We’re a web development company, at our core. Sure we do Marketing and other things, but primarily, we build awesome websites. Trademark? Nothing to do with websites (technically it does, sure, but that’s not the context we’re talking about). Productions? Ok, we…produce websites! Yeah!

So why is this? Why do we have these two separate categories of company names, yet they are both equally silly? Well, not many people are going to remember your company called “Search Engine and Data Mining, Inc.”, or “Online Marketplace of Buyers and Sellers, LLC”. It’s short, it’s catchy, and it’s, dare I say, hip?

Sure, “Kleenex” makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but we all know it now. What needs to happen is a considerable amount of balance between “Completely off the wall, making no sense whatsoever” and “Catchy and memorable”. Google, for example, is short and to the point, has a reason behind it (slightly, taking into consideration the intentional misspelling of googol), same goes for Microsoft (still please don’t sue us), and others like Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, even Digg.

But why Yammer? Ning? Xanga? What’s the purpose? Perhaps a lack of creativity? I’m half tempted to write my own “Web 2.0 Company Name Generator” using some simple English language syntax rules for placement of consonants and vowels (some companies don’t even pay attention to this, like “iWiW or ibibo”), and just randomly grab any letter in our dictionary. I have more pressing things to do, and plenty of these already exist, and some are quite comical.

So my point is this: If you’re starting a new company, or just trying to come up with a name for your new social media website, or just bored and think about stuff like this all the time, the key is balance. Balance catchy and memorable while somewhat making sense, and most importantly, pronounceable without having to ask a few different people how THEY pronounce it.

Testing can save you time and money.

If you are thinking about building a site that gives away a free e-book some simple testing could go a long way and it could only cost a few hundred dollars. If you want to launch a blog in a specific marketplace you would benefit a ton before hand by researching and connecting with bloggers before your launch. While this seems like common sense you would be surprised on how many people overlook these simple research methods.

Know what your customers are looking for.

An older man cares about losing weight and feeling better about himself. A twenty-something young man wants to look good so he can attract the opposite sex. The same product could have an entirely different appeal and meaning to consumers depending on the age group.

A lot of time you can figure this out by doing a simple survey. We use specific software here for TM, but other services like SurveyMonkey will suffice. Also, reading between the lines when you speak with customers is imperative. What I have learned is that people will be honest with you most of the time and tell you why at twenty years old they really want to get in to shape. However there is also probably an underlying motivating factor that is similar, which will push them in to action. This factor is usually an irrational reason, but as a potential sale this is what you are looking for.

Finding this irrational reason is not easy but it is worth the research. Knowing it can help you connect with your customers internal ideals and make selling to them much easier.

Speak your customer’s language.

Since I’m using weight loss as an example we will continue on this. If you are selling your product promising six-pack abs to a woman it probably has a very small audience. Like the 1% that compete in national bodybuilding contents. You need to take a look at the covers of women fitness magazines and browse the articles. See how those authors are speaking to their demographic.

The women fitness magazines will use terms like “lose belly fat” while a men’s magazine will state “get rock-hard six-pack abs”.

These are things that just a few hours of research can tell you. And it’s the difference between a profitable project and one that does nothing but keep you wondering “what went wrong?”.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

In hindsight whether you’re launching a new company website, selling an e-book or selling your own product and services, you need to make sure you do your research. Studying and understanding everything you can about your potential customers allows you to directly position your message with them. Even if you cannot afford a full study a few simple hours of research in blogs, forums and a fast survey can do you wonders when launching your next site or campaign.

Check out the transcript of TM’s conversation with Greg Boser.

As the term SEO becomes a more prominent force in internet marketing, the TM Web Radio Show got to sit down with one of the industry’s pioneers, Greg Boser. Greg has been a part of the SEM/SEO industry since the beginning. His experience has transformed him into someone who knows all angles of the industry. One of the most honest voices in search, Greg served as the President of Web Guerilla for 10 years and now operates 3 Dog Media.

3 Dog Media provides a fresh new look at how to maximize Web 2.0 in any vertical, while grasping every SEO opportunity. All while specializing in SEO, SMM, reputation management, and Wordpress development. Greg is also a former moderator at Web Master World, former host of SEO Rockstar radio show, and frequent speaker at conferences since 1999.

Well, why don’t we let Greg tell you for himself what it is he exactly does? “I consider myself a web marketer whose primary focus is search but that encompasses anything that has to do with getting people to type something into a little white box” explained Greg. The interesting thing is like most SEO’s he sort of stumble upon this career. He originally started out by selling fire protection services and realized if they had a website they could increase their sales. So he built it, but no one was coming, quite the opposite of The Field of Dreams. “Then search became the primary way that initial site got found. And once that started we started getting leads from really all over the world”, said Greg. He then moved on to where he was doing more brokering deals for the company than doing the actual physical work.

“Then it was kind of at that point that I went wow this Internet thing might be pretty cool and I might want to figure out how to do this full-time as a career. So I just kind of stumbled into it.”

He then started to want to make money using the internet in 1995. From there it turned into a job and he started to make a little money around 1998. By 2000 it was a really good job kind of thing and Greg found his calling. From here he became fully engulfed in the SEO world. Even to the point where he admittedly stalked Danny Sullivan. After getting involved with people like Danny and really pushing this idea of internet marketing, the conferences started to come up. It’s safe to say that Greg Boser is a pioneer in the SEM conference world. “Then the first pub-con was actually in a pub and we did one in Irvine called the bar-con and it just kind of grew out of there” said Greg. From there he has been an avid speaker at well known conferences since.

Working with Web Guerilla, Greg handled a lot of corporate clients and shared his views of the corporate SEM/SEO world with us. “In the early 2000’s I did a lot of that kind of stuff and I subcontracted to a lot of large agencies where I was kind of like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain doing all the strategy. I charged them a ton of money and then they’d mark it up and go out and pretend like they were a genius”, says Greg. The whole corporate world and the long process can be painful. This prompted Greg to strictly remain a consultant. He didn’t want to work to be a Yes-Man. Being a part of the old days of SEO Greg has been through it all and has remained in the industry adapting and utilizing all the changes that have came.

“A lot of us old timers, we feel partially responsibility for Google getting better because we did exploit the holes and you know if we didn’t we’d still look like Alta-Vista 2000.”

The “old timers” can be credited for transforming search to what it is today. They are the ones picking at Google trying to manipulate the logarithm, which then prompts Google to go back and fix what they missed. It used to be easy to exploit something in search for a large volume of money, but that takes a lot longer now. This is where the black hat SEO VS. white hat SEO battle started to begin. According to Greg, “My personal take is the term ‘white hat SEO’ is a code name for an SEO with no game.” Greg believes by regularly doing R and D and pushing the envelope ultimately makes a better SEO. By knowing what works and what doesn’t you are available to provide your clients with better results. This isn’t seen much in the SEO industry because of the Google Webmaster Central, which is regulating what goes on. This instills fear in people, because they don’t want to get in the wrong side of Google and ultimately lose any clients. “The tough thing is basically what I’ve already said is that 99% of Google’s quality is handled not by the algorithm but by fear”, explained Greg. The webmaster guideline is the core mechanism behind Google that keeps things clean.

Google continues to grow both in size and influence. Recently Google rolled out Caffeine to its search engine. There are notions that this could come with some pretty big changes when it comes to ranking. Still there is speculation over whether it is good for search or not. “Whether it’s good for search depends on whether my stuff goes up or down,” said Greg. There is still some confusion surrounding Caffeine as not too many people know where exactly Google is at in the rollout process. Perhaps it isn’t totally implemented yet, but there still has been some shake up. “We saw a couple spaces where we had stuff in the top 4 but it’s now sitting at 12. Now once it fits in, gets stable, it stays that way for a while, and we’re confident that that’s what it’s going to be. Then we can take the time to kind of dissect why those sites replaced us and what factors are different,” explained Greg. People are still going to see some changes from Google in the next 3 to 6 months. A few particularly are the integration of real time search and social media into search results.

“Google’s gotten to where they just throw crap out and it’s never quite what we expected. Really the big picture, if you guys remember back 2001, 2002, you know they had the fresh spot.”

Fresh spot was a separate component that interjected content in the search results that wasn’t being analyzed by all the data points everything else was. It was like on page factors that shot in real quick because it was fresh and new. “Now with Twitter and all these new kind of signals they’re going to see that, but on a much bigger scale,” stated Greg. The testing with distributing tweets and re-tweets can already be seen in packing a blog post and then seeing where Google ranks it based on the signals found in Twitter.

It is no secret that Google dominates the search industry, but is that really a good thing for search? Greg doesn’t seem to think so, “We’re best off as an industry having three equal players with a third market share each.” Back when there were multiple search engines to rank in your projects are really spread around between four or five places. You could mess up in one and still be OK. Now if you hit the bottom with Google, it is a code-red emergency. Still Google continues to grow and it doesn’t look like it is stopping anytime soon. Now making it is way to mobile software, mobile search, Google Chrome OS, Google Buzz, and there are even rumors now they are providing SEO services.

“Our big focus right now is I’ve never been a big fan of local search just because that’s not been the area that I’ve competed in. We’ve always preferred clients that had global kind of terms that generate a ton of traffic.”

It is helpful to spend some time doing global things at a local level. Google is now returning a lot of local results for generic terms that don’t have geo-qualified areas tied to them. These are terms that in the past that were money terms that if you got ranked for you would show up everywhere. “Paying attention to how that’s evolving and what kind of phrases Google is deciding, should show local results I think is real important.” This opens up the path for a lot of lead generating by building localized sites and getting them listed in that market.

With the internet always evolving it is important to stay on top of the latest trends and new applications. Greg has been doing this since the beginning and continues to strive in the SEM/SEO industry. We would like to send a big thanks to Greg Boser of 3 Dog Media for taking time out of his day and sharing a great amount of information with us.

Podcasts can be a great asset for your business to not only update your website with new information on a regular basis, but also help you build and maintain relationships with your community and potential customers.

Today I am going to review some of the benefits of podcasting and why businesses should consider starting one.

Reach a New Audience

A podcast is a great way to tap into a new audience. Even though most people might think that podcasts attract young, technologically advanced listeners, research has shown that a considerable amount of older people (ages 35 – 50) are also listening to them. Podcasts are accessible from anyone at any time which means you have the potential to reach people in a completely new way. People can listen to your podcast in their car, on their computer or on a walk around their neighborhood. This expands your reach and builds more awareness of you and your business.

Build Relationships with Listeners

Podcasts are also an excellent way to build relationships with your listeners. You could use your podcast to address frequently asked questions your customers might have or share information related to your industry to show your authority. If you are not providing any value to your listeners, then you shouldn’t start a podcast. If you are planning to use your podcast as just an advertisement or infomercial, then you will not receive many subscribers and your podcast will be a waste of time. The most successful podcasts are ones that offer advice or insight on the industry you are in.

Advertising Potential

Once your podcast becomes a hit, you might even be able to start selling ad slots. This is a great way to also attract more listeners and create more revenue. This makes your podcast even more worthwhile for your business.

Easy to Produce

Podcasts are easy to produce. All that is required is a microphone and some audio software for recording and editing. Once you have recorded your podcast, you can easily submit it to iTunes after you have created an rss feed. On iTunes you can create a channel for your podcast that is accessible by anyone. On this channel you can include any information you want listeners to know. New episodes will be automatically uploaded to iTunes once you have updated your rss feed. Learn more about what is required to submit your podcast here.

The main objective for creating a podcast is to attract subscribers who will listen to it on a regular basis. For this reason it is important to plan a schedule of when you will produce new podcasts. The more frequently you add more episodes to your podcasts, the better chance you have of increasing your subscribers and fan base. To learn the different ways to track your subscriptions please check out this website.

TM started a podcast series “TM Web Talk Radio Show” in the summer of 2009, talking to industry professionals about a variety of topics such as SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Link Building and more. Our objective was to provide listeners with more information about these topics and not only build awareness of TM, but develop us as a valuable resource. So far it has proven to be successful for us, which is why we recommend others looking into developing their own.

Contact TM if you would like help learning more about podcasts and how you can get started!

With the deal between Yahoo and Micorsoft in the books does Mr. Ballmer’s appearance foreshadow a commitment to keep up with Google in algorithmic transparency and support for SEOs? Timing would indicate so, considering the CEO is personally delivering his message to internet marketing community through one of the most recognizable SEM conferences just as the Yahoo to Microhoo alliance begins. It makes sense considering when completed, Microhoo could account a 30% share of searches. This is still a long way from Google’s current 65.7%, but it without a doubt accounts for a big slice of the pie in search.

There is still this mystery behind why exactly Mr. Ballmer will be attending and speaking at SMX West. Perhaps this is some sort of courteous gesture by Ballmer to reach out the SEO community or perhaps this could lead into Microsoft partnering up with the SEO community. With the dominance of Google and them reminding us that we aren’t included when it comes to any other search marketing activity other than AdWords. In a snap of the finger the Google maps team has previously removed Web Designers and now SEO from the local One Pack in search results. This raises a flag as it would appear human commerce is more important to Google than the SEO and Web Design industry. Perhaps Mr. Ballmer will address this and how he plans to change the future of search.

Ultimately, what is Mr. Ballmer going to say next week that has prompted him to make such an appearance? You can guarantee one thing, this keynote sections is going to be packed with the who’s-who in the SEM/SEO industries. Mr. Ballmer is coming to directly speak to the search engine marketing community, just as his influence in search increase. What this signifies at this point is left to speculation, but come next week the whole industry will be glued in on what it is he has to say.

Well, when lunchtime came around I walked outside and headed to one of the nearby restaurants. Midway through my journey, I realized that I wasn’t in the mood for a sandwich, but I wanted something else instead. I pulled out my phone, did a quick search for Royal Oak restaurants, and saw some places that looked like they might have potential. Once I clicked on one of the pages, I found out that most of the site was done in Flash. I backed up and checked another site, which too, was developed with Adobe Flash. If anyone has an Android phone, they will know that currently Flash is not supported (although the future looks promising!) For anyone who has an iPhone, well, from the sounds of it, you will always be out of luck. (Sorry Dwight!)

But this brings me to my point. Should someone develop a website in Flash? Here I will list some of the Advantages and Disadvantages of using Flash.

Advantages of a Website Built with Adobe Flash

• Strong Visual Effects
• It Looks Cool

Well, that was a short list. Let’s move on to the disadvantages.

Disadvantages of a Website Built with Adobe Flash

• Longer Load Times
• Static Photos Appear at Lower Quality
• Not Search Engine Friendly
• Flash Movies Become Obsolete
• Limitations to Those Who Do not have Flash Support

Now, I am not saying to never use flash. For certain websites, especially anything involved in the multimedia industry, flash is almost a necessity nowadays. But, for other websites, such as small restaurants in a walker-friendly area of town where people might just happen to possibly use their phone to visit your site, I would highly recommend not using Flash.

I am also not saying that Flash will ruin your SEO completely. Obviously, I found a flash website on Google, but it did have some regular text and content as well. Your content will highly improve your search ranking, yet if the spiders can’t read it, then your site will get lost.

All in all, my opinion is that you use not what you like most, but what is best for your company. For most companies, that would be to have a site built without Flash, but if it is a necessity for your business, then use it.

For a quality, non-Flash website, contact TM today to begin your process.

Today’s post will be to talk about software. Settle down, let’s not get too excited! Specifically, this post will be about what started out as good, useful software, and then became the bane of many developers’ existence, how it came to be, and what steps can be taken to make sure you’re not producing something of similar napalm-worthy hatred by developers worldwide.

There are two major components to software development, good software design, and good UI design. This is true for any type of software, whether it’s web-based, an executable desktop application, mobile application, software running a 400 million dollar airplane, whatever the case may be. By software design, I mean the structure of the code that makes everything work, the code itself, and how it is written with future changes being kept in mind. UI is the user interface, specifically how a person is able to tell your software what to do, and how the person see’s the response from the software.

In my decades upon decades of experience as a software user, and even longer as a software developer, I have seen all sorts of combinations failing to maintain a good level of both software architecture and the UI, hell, I’ve even created a few myself. Nobody’s perfect! Sometimes a piece of software will be an absolute nightmare to maintain, but it will have the prettiest, easiest, nicest user interface anybody has or ever will see. Sometimes a program looks like it was drawn in crayon on cardboard, but the code is actually very elegant, well commented, easy to work with, and generally does what it’s supposed to do, how it’s supposed to do it.

Then we come across the monumental failures that are a combination of the above two scenarios. Terrible, unusable UI, and code that gives you a headache even thinking about it. Code that declares a global as a global. Code that could very easily turn itself into an infinite loop and crash the universe, if the user made one single input mistake. Code that should have just never been written. Code that was written “just to make it work and move on”. These are the things developers have to deal with, making sense out of this type of software, tearing it down and building it correctly.

So how does this happen? Are the programmers lazy? Incompetent? Evil geniuses who understand job security? Some of the time, sure, but I’d like to think that the majority of the time it is just poor planning. Imagine it like a building. At first it might seem like a really cool idea to have your sink on the ceiling, but once you have put all the pipes in, and forgot that you plan on having your sink on the ceiling, what are your options? You can scrap the idea of having your sink on the ceiling. You can rework the plumbing correctly so that it is able to service your ceiling-sink. Or you can just toss a garden hose on the roof, cut a big hole through the roof down to the sink, and have it “just work”. That’s definitely the easiest solution.

Perhaps I went a little crazy with this analogy, but it gets my point across to laypeople. What it all boils down to is planning. It’s your fault that you’re in this scenario, because you weren’t thinking of where the plumbing was going to end up in order to service the ceiling-sink. So now we have to completely redo the plumbing, or hack it in.

Of course we can never plan every possible outcome to every possible scenario that may or may not ever happen, but a lot of the time these software blunders happen because of things that could most definitely been foreseen if the developer had taken the time to think it through for just a few minutes. What happens to our program when we plan for exactly 3 buttons that are 200 pixels wide each, with exactly 50 pixels of space in between each, in an area that spans 800 pixels wide. Perfect, exactly enough space! 2 months later, you realize you need a 4th button. What do you do? You can’t change the width of the buttons, or the spacing in between each, because that would break this, that, and the other thing. So you put the 4th button on the ceiling. And now your application starts to look crayon’ish. That is when the cascade of failure begins. That is when you know that you have failed to plan accordingly.

So the moral of the story is to plan. If you are on a deadline, it’d be much better to take a day or two to plan everything out. To think about possible obstacles, or future changes to the project, and figure out a sensible way around them before it’s too late, rather than realizing when you have 1 week left in your deadline that you need to scrap half of the project, and start all over again with a different approach, because you failed to plan.

That’s my rant for this week. Plan, Plan, Plan!

If you don’t have time to read the full article, then skip to the area that interests you the most:

• Website Content Writing – General Tips
• Finding & Writing Content for a Personal Website or Blog
• Finding & Writing Web Content for a Service Based Business
• Finding & Writing Web Content for a Product Based Business

Website Content Writing – General Tips

• Know your target audience - Are you writing for high school students, soccer moms, lawyers or scientists?  Use a vocabulary that is appropriate for your readers.
• Use a common voice – Determine whether your message should be in the first person (I, we, etc.) or third person (Bob’s Tax Service, Sally’s Taxidermy, etc.).  Use the same voice throughout your website with the exception of blog postings or other personal pieces which can switch to first person.
• Write for people, not search engines – A long time ago, in the 90’s days of Alta Vista and Dog Pile, websites and web pages were given relevance and ranking based on the “keyword saturation” of their content.  For example, if your page was about “coffee cups”, the more you said “coffee cups” in your content, the better you would rank.  There was even a 9-1 ratio as a “magic number”.  This is no longer the case and in fact, you can (and probably will) be penalized by search engines for trying too hard. Search engines like unique, topic specific, human targeted content. Try to trick them and the pie will be on your proverbial face!
• Have someone proofread for you – For whatever reason, the brain plays tricks on us.  Even if we think our content is perfect, chances are that it’s not.  Once you’ve written all of your website content have someone, besides you, proofread and edit for you.  Hint: This doesn’t mean Microsoft Word…it’s usually wrong too!
• Make sure you have the right amount of content – If you’re describing your company’s history, one paragraph is probably too short.  If you’re writing a short product description for an e-commerce site, 4,000 words is probably too long to get to the point.  Keep in mind the average attention span of your target audience and be as concise (or detailed) as you need to be for the topic.
• Don’t steal (or imitate)! – In case your parents didn’t tell you, stealing is bad.  And in case your English teacher didn’t tell you, using someone else’s words or ideas is plagiarism…which is also stealing.  Google and other search engines hate stealing or even “re-purposing” content and they will punch you right in your face for it.  Want to get banned from search engines, this is a good way to do it!  Even if a product manufacturer gives you permission to use their content and product descriptions, there is a good chance that 954 other people are using it too.  Be unique and you’ll get much more lovin’ from “The Google” (and the other search engines that don’t matter as much).

Finding & Writing Content for a Personal Website or Blog

This is a pretty easy one, so I’ll keep it short and sweet.  If you’re running a personal website or blog just make sure that you:

• Follow the general writing tips above and organize your content like I said in Succeed Online – Web Content and Structure
• Set a schedule for yourself! The biggest mistake I see in the success of personal websites is being too stagnant.  A website is a living, breathing animal and has to be fed and watered regularly.  We all get super busy but a website is a commitment.  Wake up a little earlier than your spouse or kids and write when the house is quiet, write on your lunch break, whatever it takes.  Search engines and people like to see new stuff every time they come to your website.
• Plan your topics in advance – We all run into writer’s block.  Whenever you think of a new topic to write about write it down on a list somewhere.  Maybe even write a paragraph or two about it so that you can remember what you were thinking.  Then, next Tuesday, when you can’t think of anything to write you can go back to your handy list and already have a topic.
• Get your facts right - The goal of any website is to become an expert or voice on your topic.  If you’re writing about other people, things or technical stuff do a couple minutes (or hours depending on your topic) of research and make sure you’ve got your facts straight.  People will call you out if you’re wrong.  Be an expert, keep and grow your readers and hopefully increase your revenue too!

That’s about all you need to know!  Good luck!

Finding & Writing Web Content for a Service Based Business

You would think writing content for your service based business would be easy!  How hard could it be to write about yourself?  In my experience, if you’re writing content for a service based website you are typically one of two people;  either you’re the business owner/manager with very little time or you’re an employee of the business that got the task of writing content for the new website dropped into your lap.  In either instance, finding and writing content for your website can be a daunting task.  Here are some pointers to make it a little less painful:

• Schedule interviews – If you’re having difficulty describing your services, the company’s history or other information for your website, schedule interviews with other people in your company that may be able to fill in the blanks.  The company history can probably be answered by the owner of the company.  Services can be described by people in your company that perform those services.  Schedule a 30 minute interview with each of them and send them some questions that you’ll be asking about the topic a few days in advance.
• Make it a team effort – Similar to the suggestion above, assign different pages of the website to different people in the office that can write the content for you.  Give them guidelines and deadlines such as “Bob, I need 300 words on our company’s history by next Tuesday” or “Sue, I need you to explain Debt Collection to me in customer friendly way by the end of the week”.  Once you’ve gathered everyone’s input, rewrite it so that it has a common voice/message.
• Look at examples – Visit some of your competitors’ websites or the websites of companies that perform the same services in a different part of the country. Do not copy or rewrite their content, but get an idea of what other people are saying.  Also, you can do a search in Google for the service you are trying to describe and look at the top 5-10 results.  What are they saying that’s making them show up as an “expert” on the service?  How can you be similar or better?
• Don’t get too “industry” - It’s great that your company calls it a “debt consolidation and remuneration”, but what are your customers going to call it?  If your customers are going to call the service “debt assistance” or “debt help”, then you need to use varying names and K.I.S.S. You may have to convince your boss some on this one.  Remember the tip from above to write for your audience.
• Don’t be too ambitious - As I mentioned before, start smaller and grow regularly!  If you have twenty-four computer networking services that you can perform, maybe you don’t need a page on each of them to start with?  That’s twenty-four pages of content you’ll need to write!  Maybe break them into logical groups and summarize them into four or five pages to make things easier.  Then when you have time, make a page for each and turn your original page into a category page.

Out of all the websites you could be writing for, a service based business can definitely be the hardest business to write for.  I hope that these tips will help you some and good luck!

Finding & Writing Web Content for a Product Based Business

Finding and writing content for a product based website or e-commerce store is the easiest of all!  The amount of information available for any of your products is huge and I’m willing to bet that you haven’t considered some of the alternative sources of website content for your products or are doing it completely wrong right now.  Here are some tips for finding and gathering web content for your product based website:

• Don’t use their content! – This is the big mistake that most of you are probably making!  If you sell products made by another company, chances are that other companies are selling that manufacturer’s products online too.  Why does this matter to you?  Because chances are that all of you are using the same product descriptions and wording for your products and categories.  Remember the point above about not “stealing” or “imitating”?  This is exactly what it looks like you’re doing. If you manufacture your own products, but other people are selling them for you online, you’re going to have the same issue because they will most likely be using your product descriptions!  Hint: Take a sentence from one of your product descriptions, copy it, paste it in the search box on Google and put quotes on both sides of the sentence.  Click search.  How many other people are using the same content?
• Other sources for product content, part 1 – Look at the product packaging and other marketing/sales material and utilize the wording from there or even rework it some.  You can also look at the user manuals if the product has one.  You’ll find that the wording and product descriptions should be somewhat different than the “generic” description that the product manufacturer released.
• Other sources of product content, part 2 - Every time you talk to one of your colleagues, sales people, spouse, friends, whomever about one of your products or product lines…record it!  Take that digital recording of your discussion and send it off to a transcribing service.  For a very small investment, you’ll receive several hundred words about your product.
• Other sources of product content, part 3 – Content doesn’t mean just the words.  Have someone use your product and take pictures while they use it.  Have them shoot a video of them using the product and end with them giving a description of how easy it was to use, how beneficial it was, how nice it is, etc.  Post these on the website with your products.
• Other sources of product content, part 4 - Customer reviews of your product will provide a lot of valuable feedback and content for your products.  Allow your website users to submit feedback or testimonials about how great the “x-14 super widget” is and post those to your site.

The list of alternative sources of content for your product based website could go on and on.  Use some of the suggestions that I’ve provided or come up with some creative ideas of your own.  Keep in mind the general tips from above and avoid the big no-no that I pointed out in the first bullet and you’ll do great!

I hope that this article on finding and writing content for your website helps you succeed online!  If you have any questions about something, please contact me on my profile page or comment on this article below and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

My next How to Succeed Online articles will cover keyword selection, competitive analysis and internal site SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  Thanks for reading!

The question ‘Where were you when…” may now not be as easy to answer as it has been in the past. Everyone, for the most part, remembers where they were for certain events, but with the rise of the internet, social media and mobile devices, the possibility of you remembering exactly where you were may become more difficult. Not everyone has to cram around a TV to watch breaking news, you can simply listen or watch the news over your phone or on your computer. You could be anywhere at any time and receive news instantly.

Over the past year, YouTube has started experimenting with live video, showing not only the Tiger Woods news conference, but showing political debates, Obama’s inauguration and other live interviews. The ability to view live videos online will make it easier than ever before for people to hear or watch the news. If enough people tuned into YouTube to watch Tiger Woods today, it could definitely shake up other news networks and give them something to worry about.

YouTube videos have proven to be very beneficial for businesses looking to increase their website traffic and performance. While your business may not be able to utilize live video streams, you should consider creating  a channel to showcase videos on your website. YouTube has become enormously popular over the past couple of years, based on the fact that most people enjoy informative or entertaining visuals. If your business is able to bring that to your customers, you have a better chance of converting your traffic into sales. Here at TM, we recommend to most of our clients that they start a YouTube channel because it is an excellent way to form better relationships with your customers and your community.

One of our clients, FLAME Furnace, has successfully utilized online videos to not only educate the community about heating and cooling topics, but also improve awareness of their overall brand. Their videos have established FLAME as a resource that customers can depend on for information, which is something all businesses should strive to achieve. And now with recent developments with mobile phones, you can access these videos pretty much anywhere, which makes YouTube even more appealing for businesses to utilize.

If YouTube is able to successfully deliver live videos, I believe it will definitely become a real game changer in the news industry and possibly for your business in the future. It will be exciting to see how this develops down the road.

If you’d like to learn more about how YouTube can help your business, contact TM today.