We all know what the end of a year means … New Year’s Resolutions! I recall my personal resolution last year was to drink more water. I succeeded in my quest and am now a happy water drinker. A happy, happy water drinker.

But my challenge to you this year is to not only make resolutions for yourself, but make them for your business. After all, our business is our livelihood. We need to make sure that it is just as “healthy” and “happy” as it can be.

So, here are some ideas to start 2010 with gusto!

A. Get that website redesign that you’ve been thinking about! It’s time and it really does make a difference.

B. Try Social Media Marketing. That’s right … Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr. It cannot be denied that Social Media is a powerful tool in marketing your brand. Start slowly by creating one account. Get used to how it works and how you can use it for marketing purposes. Put it on your daily schedule for updating and work on building your fan base and followers. Once you are comfortable with the one account, you are ready to add another.

Make sure that you are maximizing your opportunities with social marketing. The conversation starts online, but the conversion happens in the real world.

C. Embrace one new “function” on your website. Try adding something new and creative to your website. After all, your website is your vehicle to promote your business. Explore videos. Add a Newsletter Sign up and try Email Marketing. Try blogging. Add related articles or expand your content by adding a new section altogether. Keep your website moving forward!

D. Set marketing goals. With all these new marketing strategies, make sure you track your efforts. You’ll easily be able to see the difference your new strategies are making by analyzing your statistics. Continue doing whichever avenues have made a positive impact.

E. Get involved. Read related blogs and leave comments. Become fans of Facebook pages. Send Direct Messages on Twitter. In a word … participate. Your effort will be rewarded.

F. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s. Make sure your online profiles are fully complete. If you can add 10 pictures, add 10 pictures. Fill out all descriptions and added info sections. Don’t forget about the reviews! Make sure you have enough reviews by soliciting happy clients for them. It’s a good idea to go and check all accounts. You may have thought you would go back to finish one or more of them but forgot about it.

G. Manage your reputation. With the introduction to real time search, it is more important than ever to be aware of what is being said. Use Twitter Search to track any mention of your name, your keywords, your location and your competitors’ name. Use Google Alerts to have an email update sent directly to your inbox. Based on your choice of query or topic, Google will send an email of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.). This is very handy indeed.

Above all, have a happy and healthy New Year!

When marketers get a job with a new company, they tend to know at least a little bit about the new employer, but not everything. They may know who the VPs are, but they may not know which ones can get things done. They may know the local restaurants, but they may not know which ones have the best happy hour. They may know the products and services offered, but they may not know which ones make the most profit for the company.

And of course, they probably have seen the website and have half an idea of what they think about it. But what they may not know until they get involved with it, is what shape the website is in (specifically with regards to the search engines). And some times what they find isn’t pretty. (more…)

We all know the value of word-of-mouth recommendations in promoting our business, whether you are in the hospitality industry, work as a car mechanic, own a restaurant, or have a company looking to attract superior talent to join their ranks. Enter online reviews.

Online reviews can come from a host of sources – if you have a business and you aren’t checking for these reviews onine periodically, you should be!  The stats for online reviews are impressive: 86% of consumers read them before making purchasing decisions, making reputation management a must for businesses of all sizes. With the introduction of travel review sites such as TripAdvisor, regional dining reviews , potential customers and clients are savvy. Why risk going out for an expensive dinner, stay at a hotel or resort, or do some retail shopping without first seeing what others have to say? Not surprisingly, online reviews have become an integral part of any successful SEO and SMO campaign.  (more…)

Are you running out of optimization ideas for your website? Looking for a little bit of inspiration to get you back on track? (we know you’re not, but just in case there’s a brain freeze today we thought we’d ask)

Then we’d like to recommend that you take a look at the PDFs on your site to make sure that they are optimized. One of the items we find when looking at websites is that the PDFs have been completely ignored. Now to be fair, some of this is probably because up until a few years ago many people were told that PDFs couldn’t or shouldn’t be optimized; that any work done to them would not help the page’s or the website’s ranking. Let’s put this argument to bed right now: (more…)

The 404 error page. What is it and how can you maximize it as an opportunity to promote your business?

A 404 error (”Page Not Found”) occurs when a page no longer exists on your website … or never existed. This could be a result of restructuring your website, renaming or deleting pages without a 301 redirect (naughty) or it could be due to a searcher’s typo. Basically, you are trying to retrieve something from the server that does not exist. When this happens, if a custom page is not created, the following default page shows up:

Default 404 Error Page

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