Perplexed, I probed my mathematical son to further explain what he meant.  “Too little jelly and the sandwich seems dry. Too much jelly and it oozes out the bread becomes soggy by lunch time” was his response.

As I made the sandwich, my mind wandered to marketing plans that I have under development. Just like the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you have to have the right marketing mix. Marketing is a delicate balance, pulling in all the ingredients to get the best results. If you have too little peanut butter in your program, then desired result may not come to fruition, a dry, unsatisfying campaign. Too much in another, like the jelly, your effort becomes soggy and doesn’t blend in a way that covers the overall package.

1.) Don’t copy content from other sites or press releases.

2.) Use good quality photographs. If you don’t have an eye for it, buyquality stock images.

3.) Spell and grammar check.

4.) Proof-read.

5.) Don’t overbold

6.) Don’t repeat the post title as the first line of the blog post.

7.) If you like to write long posts, use the “more” tag to shorten the look of the post on the main page.

These points make a blog more pleasant to read. After all, there is so much quality content out there, who wants to spend time on the crappy content?

For the small business, it means that having a website is not enough to ensure traffic and online sales. For enterprise level companies, the strength of the brand plays a key role. Online success requires a solid e-marketing strategy and focused effort. The first step in developing your e-marketing strategy is to evaluate the following:

What type of site do you have?

Do you have an e-commerce site, an informational site, a networking site, aggregate site,  or something else?

Who are your customers?

How much do you know about your customers? What motivates them to buy online or visit various websites? Do you know what other sites they might be likely to visit? The more you know about your target audience, the better you can optimize your site’s content and your marketing efforts to reach them.

What are your goals for the site?

The reasons that visitors come to each type of site varies. While you may want a lot of visitors to an informational or networking site, you want visitors that value and purchase your products on an e-commerce site.

Are there similar sites or services to yours? What makes your site unique from competitors’ sites?

You can get ideas from sites that offer similar services, and do market research. Knowing what the competition is doing allows you to assess your strengths and weaknesses and further define opportunities for your business.

Are you presenting yourself professionally?

Most Internet users have become fairly sophisticated within a short amount of time. If your website is not easy to navigate, is poorly written, or has poor design most users will leave the site quickly. Provide enough information about your products/services to inform consumers, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming.

Is your content static or dynamic?

Most websites have static information that doesn’t change very often. The web has evolved to include tools that allow more relationship building and sharing of ideas such as individual blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and a wide assortment of other social networks. These new online tools are dynamic, with content that changes frequently. What I like about dynamic content is that it provides a reason for viewers to come back to receive new information from your site.

After you have completed the preliminary analysis of your site, you will have a better idea of the strategy you would like to employ. There are now a wide variety of tools available which are helpful to marketing your online presence. Options range from more traditional forms of advertising such as banner ads and paid searches to social media optimization (SMO), which leverages social networking as a promotional vehicle. SMO is a very powerful way to reach many people that have common interests. Be careful not to spread yourself too thin. Using a few tools for marketing consistently is much more effective than using a lot of tools occassionally. As you develop your e-marketing strategy, keep in mind that time commitments vary from After you have completed the preliminary analysis of your site, you will have a better idea of the strategy you would like to employ. There are now a wide variety of tools available which are helpful to marketing your online presence. Options range from more traditional forms of advertising such as banner ads and paid searches to social media optimization (SMO), which leverages social networking as a promotional vehicle. SMO is a very powerful way to reach many people that have common interests. Be careful not to spread yourself too thin. Using a few tools for marketing consistently is much more effective than using a lot of tools occassionally. As you develop your e-marketing strategy, keep in mind that time commitments vary from tool to tool. No matter which tools you choose, it is extremely important that you set aside time each week for online marketing.

Do you use online advertising like Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Facebook Ads, or any other online advertising platform?  If you are, you should be using A/B testing as part of your advertising process.  A/B testing also known as split testing is the process of creating multiple copies of the same ad, then making slight changes to see if one variation is more effective than others to get viewers to click the ad.  For example, you might change the headline in one variation, or change the ad copy in another.

The beauty of paid advertising is that you can make copies and changes to your ads quickly, which facilitates A/B testing. In this tough economy, businesses are trying to maximize their advertising dollars. Adequately testing online ad effectiveness, ensures the most bang for the buck. For example, when I run Facebook Ads for clients, I start with several variations of the ad, where the only thing I change is the picture.  After I find which image is grabbing the most attention, I make copies of that ad to further test changes to the headline and copy.

As the campaign runs, I monitor the performance of each ad, looking carefully at click through rate percentages. These online metrics make it easy to see which ads are performing and which ones should be discontinued. By using A/B testing you are not only improving your ads, traffic to your site, and sales potential, but also wisely managing your advertising budget.

Screen Caffeen specializes in helping small and medium sized businesses increase their online effectiveness. If  you need help managing your PPC campaigns.  Contact Monique at 650-740-1491.

In the prehistoric days of Twitter, tweets were not searchable by search engines like Google and Bing. The marketing potential of 140 character microblog postings had not been realized.  Initially, Twitter was seen as a tool that allowed friends and family to keep up with each other, a new way to send text messages. There was much more conversation going on. Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has grown to over 200,000,000 users. At one time it seemed like there was an unspoken understanding of how to interact in Twitter. Now some of these “DOs and DON’Ts” seem to have been forgotten. 

Happy Tweeting!

Monique
@MoeneekH

1. Visual Appeal

2. Well Written Content

3. Easy to Navigate

4. Give Perspective

Fast forward a few years… Blogging was recognized as a great method for improving SEO; allowing the average online user to quickly add new content to their websites. I helped clients set up self-hosted blogs and gave them tutorials to get the blogging. We’d chat over coffee about different ideas that would help differentiate their companies from the competition, via content marketing.  Makes sense, right?

Fast forward again… Some of my clients have been blogging regularly for their businesses, others not so regularly (myself included how busy I am working on clients’ projects). After doing a few site reviews and analysis of the content, it became very clear to me that an editorial calendar truly is a blogger’s best friend.  Lesson Learned.  An editorial calendar allows site owners/editors to:

• Get a big picture view of the blog

• Allows for planning

• Avoid repetitive subject matter

• Improve content creation continuity

• Stay on track developing content

• Keep the content focused

• Give readers a reason to return to the site

• Open up advertising opportunities