Internet Marketing Blog

Not only do people consider the distribution of Yellow Pages phone books obsolete. So does the law.

Last week, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed the first vote towards banning the delivery of Yellow Pages. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco is the first city in the nation to restrict the distribution of the book.

If the bill passes its second vote this week, the new legislation will launch a three-year pilot program, starting on October 1, 2011. That program will ensure that Yellow Pages are prohibited from being delivered to private residences and businesses in San Francisco unless they have been specifically requested. Otherwise, the distributor will be subject to administrative penalties.

What does this ban mean?

This bill indicates the government’s determination to protect both the interest of its citizens and the environment. Consumers increasingly consider online services before Yellow Pages as they make purchase decision. They are not interested in unsolicited mail. If they need some product or service, they can search for it in search engines or ask friends on social media.

How should you prepare for such developments?

You should keep building your online presence. Educate your target audience about your industry and how it connects to their day-to-day lives. As we have previously discussed, if you are ahead of the curve and following closely the shift in consumer behavior, you can own this new space and become a trusted advisor online.

Should we expect other governments to follow suit? Probably. In any case, act before your city does.

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Your website layout and navigation play a critical role in capturing attention and pulling visitors deeper into your site. If your navigation comfortably guides the visitor through your website or landing page, it will be natural for them to stick around. On the flip side, if your layout is distracting or confusing to the visitor, they will probably leave in a hurry.

To test your website navigation and layout, pretend you are a new prospect and ask yourself the following questions. (Or better yet, find someone who has never seen your site and ask them to answer these questions.)

  -  Where do your eyes go first?
  -  What is the most important thing on the page?
  -  Where do you think you are supposed to go next?
  -  Are there any distracting or confusing menu items or links that are tempting you to click on them?

A slight increase in your conversion rate can have a huge impact on your sales.  Stay tuned for more Proven Strategies to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate.

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Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you’re likely to put into promoting it.

A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help build your client base.

1 – Set Your Goals Early

In just about every guide you ever read it says “set your goals”; it might be a cliché but it’s true. With a business blog your most likely goal is to incréase sales but other worthy goals can include:

    • Communicating with your existing or potential clients
    • Relaying company news
    • Answering queries and questions
    • Providing guides for current customers
    • Providing a portal to everything useful related to your industry

The design of your site, type of content to include, whether or not to include ads, and numerous other decisions will be governed by the reason that you start blogging. The sooner you realize what it is that you want to achieve, the sooner you’ll achieve it.

2 – Use SEO Friendly URLs and SEO Plugins

WordPress is an invaluable SEO tool. It is a dedicated Content Management System but, more than that, it has a team of frighteningly dedicated users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and more and then provide them free of charge to other users. Among these tools are a great number of SEO related tools that can be used to determine your meta description and title tags.

A simple but potentially effective SEO fix is to change the format of permalinks or URLs so that they dispense with the default page id to be replaced with an easier to read and keyword optimized page URL. You can do this through the Wordpress dashboard.

3 – Consider Your Media Placement

Adding photos and illustrations, logos, videos, and other forms of media are great for reader engagement, but you should consider each of your blog assets and place the most valuable and useful in the most prominent position. The quicker you can grab a reader’s attention, the more likely you will be to keep it for longer.

Certain themes allow you to easily embed video and slideshows into the sidebar of your blog and this can be a very useful tool to make your pages appear more attractive while relaying genuinely useful information.

4 – Consider Your Ad Placement

The primary target of a business blog is not usually to make money directly through the blog itself. Therefore, the placing of third party ads is not necessarily a good choice. However, you can add ads for your company or service as well as associate websites. You can even add banners to specific categories, tags, or pages in your blog. Don’t overdo the number of banner ads and other distracting advertisements though and try to keep the interface clean and professional.

5 – Offer Your Readers the Chance to Pass You Around

Add me, share this, retweet, and email this functions should be provided to your users. When you post something useful and one of your readers shares it, it has the potential to go viral and create a lot of exposure for your blog and therefore your website and your business. This works especially well with highly unique content and can be text, audio, video…

Some themes have these functionalities built into them, but do ensure that they’re enabled. Alternatively find a sidebar widget or a social bookmarking plug-in that offers the same features and install this. Many blog readers read a number of blogs regularly and by enabling them to add you to social bookmarking and social networking sites you may well develop a long term relationship with them while also letting them inform others of what you provide.

6 – Keep Quality Content Coming

Try to set yourself a regular schedule but remember that it can be broken and it can be added to when necessary. If news breaks, then post your commentary on it. If you intersperse product reviews and articles that relate to your business then try to schedule these. Make sure you post regularly, at the very least once a week, and spend some time getting involved in the community that builds up around your blog.

7 – Not Every Post Need Be an Advert

As long as you fill your blog with relevant, interesting, and well written posts then visitors will take the time to look around, read a few posts, and even clíck the ads to your site in order to see exactly what you have to offér. Not every single post needs to include multiple links to your website pages.

You can download plugins that further the likelihood of users reading more posts. Some add a list of related posts to the bottom of each entry while many themes provide the chance to show “most popular” and “most commented” posts to further direct the flow of traffic around your blog.

8 – Respond Where Responses are Expected or Deserved

Managing a blog is more than posting a missive of the week’s news every Friday. No matter how often you post you should spend some time interacting with the community that develops around your blog. Answer questions and queries, provide insight, and give a response where one is requested.

A business blog should always be professional, which means keeping posts and messages that are too personal away. Similarly, spam comments can prove extremely damaging for your SEO as well as the trust your readers place in your business. There’s decent spam settings in Wordpress and you can further extend these.

9 – Stuck for Inspiration? Immerse Yourself in Web 2.0

More specifically read forums and blogs, wikis and news sites related to your industry. Look for those news stories, articles, and videos that you like the most and are relevant to your blog and write about them. Read the comments in your blog and look through your analytics to determine the pages that are most popular with readers.

Look at emerging keywords and news topics and try to act quickly. Slant the resulting article in favor of your business, if possible, and then post this to your blog too. There’s plenty of online portals and sites for news in your industry and you can use email updates, RSS readers, and browser or home page plugins to display them regularly and in an orderly and comprehensible way.

10 – Blogging is Great for Business But Business is Also Great for Business

Getting stuck into a blog and truly developing your blog community can be a great way to build traffic to your website and develop clients for your business. Reading related blogs and becoming an active member in social networks can help you find out what your readers want and deliver it frequently.

Blogging and Web 2.0 in general can quickly become addictive. It should be treated as a tool to assist in managing your online business, which means that you need to concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Outsource your blog development and content creation if necessary and enjoy the results.

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Almost every social networking site offers a feature called a “profile” that allows members to include their picture, a biography, live links to their websites and other detailed information. Most of us have multiple online profiles that are empty or only partially completed. It is this profile that helps other users decide if they want to work with you. Another perk of online profiles is that the live links pointing to your website may impact your search engine ranking.

It is very important that you think of these profiles as your own “Public Relations Department or Media Room”, specifically designed to sell you and your business. Imagine that you only have a few seconds to sell a new prospect on why they should want to get to know you and possibly do business with you. What is said and offered during these few seconds can make all the difference in the world. This is EXACTLY why your online profiles need to be completed to capture the attention of anyone who visits these sites.

Let’s look at the different aspects of social networking profiles and what information and content you should include to ensure that you get the maximum results. The following information may or may not be included in every profile, but the majority of it is standard:

Your Picture – Your photo is the first thing people will see upon visiting your profile or when reading your posts. How does it represent you? Wearing a tank top while giving the peace sign with a beer in your hand is not the way to impress potential clients. If you are looking for clients, then professionalism is a must. You can show SOME personality in your photograph but try to strive for conservative whenever possible.

Your Biography – This is your chance to tell others more about you, such as interesting aspects of your life and what makes you, YOU. Take your time here, as this area is the equivalent of sitting down with a prospect and telling them exactly why they should do business with you. Include specifics about your expertise, your business, how you have helped others and even your personal philosophies. You want others to be excited about connecting with you and this is YOUR time to shine.

Links – Make sure to include helpful links in order to allow others to find you online. A link to your website, your blog and additional information about your business is crucial. However, some people make the mistake of including each and every link that points to a profile of theirs online. If you have 25 social networking memberships, it is NOT advisable to include them all here. A good idea would be to vary these links on every website where you have a profile.

Contact Information – You have to include contact information if you want people to have the ability to contact you. Do not try to hide at this point. Many people have the wrong opinion that they should NOT put contact information in their profile, assuming that people contacting you for business purposes is a bad thing. Would you include your contact information in a yellow pages ad? Then why not provide it online? Please only include information you want to be made public.

Interests – Do you like to play golf, workout, volunteer or build model airplanes? You might be surprised that many people would be interested in connecting with you just based upon similar hobbies and interests. This connection can lead to a deepening friendship that may lead to business and even referrals down the road.

Education – While some people may or may not care about your schooling, including specifics about your education can do two things to help you add to the number of responses. First of all, those who went to school where you did may want to connect. Secondly, by offering details about your education, it will help others to see your experience and expertise in various areas.
Favorite Movies or Books – While you may not see the correlation between your favorite movie and a potential new client, trust me, it exists. Just like much of the information above, the information in your profile is designed to help you connect with potential clients and to build business relationships. Sometimes, simply sharing your favorite movie can be the start of a beautiful business relationship.

Testimonials from Past Clients – One of the best ways to demonstrate your ability to help others is by including testimonials from past or current satisfied clients. These testimonials will help others to get a snapshot of some of the work you have done in the past and help to build a foundation of a great business relationship.

Looking at the líst above, there is a lot of information that should be included in each and every social networking profile. Because of this, many people decide to skimp and their profile winds up being about 3 or 4 sentences long. This is a mistake. It is better to leave a profile blank than to create such a lackluster one. If you need inspiration, visit some of the most popular social networking sites and read a few profiles to get some idea of how to get started.

If filling out multiple social networking profiles is too much for your busy day, you might look at getting help from a virtual assistant. Many of them have experience in this area and can create a compelling COMPLETE profile that will best represent you AND your business. We live in a world of social networking … making it a part of your business marketing simply makes sense. Take the time to do it right or hire someone who can do it for you.

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Steve Jobs was recently quoted as saying “No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5″ igniting interest in HTML5 and sparking numerous debates online in blogs and forums.

Jobs’ prediction that flash is dead invokes memories of the famous Mark Twain quote “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. While the debate rages on over the future of Flash, HTML5’s destiny is assured.

It’s not just Apple pointing to HTML5 as an internet revolution, Microsoft, Google, Opera, Mozilla, W3C and even Adobe themselves agree. In fact HTML5 may become historic for that very reason. It is arguably the only time Google, Microsoft and Apple have ever agreed on anything.

How HTML5 evolved was largely due to a disagreement with the W3C over Error Handling and the failure to embrace modern Internet applications. In 1997, W3C announced it would no longer extend HTML4 and saw XML and XHTML as the future. Draconian Error Handling, (Draco was the Greek leader that issued death penalties for minor offences), instructed that browsers were to treat all errors in XML as fatal. With 99% of web pages showing minor errors, and the lack of new features in XML, many webmasters ignored the new standard or continued to serve their websites as HTML, even when adopting XHTML.

In 2004, a group of developers and browser vendors including Apple, Opera and Mozilla gave a presentation to the W3C on evolving HTML4 to include new features for modern web applications. The W3C rejected their proposal of extending HTML and CSS. Those interested in evolving HTML4 rebelled and broke away from the W3C, forming their own working group called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group). At the core of the WHATWG beliefs was backwards compatibility and forgiving error handling. WHATWG’s vision was to extend HTML features including form handling while ensuring that it would degrade gracefully in older browsers. While the W3C wanted the world to move to a new standard XML, WHATWG planned to evolve existing HTML to support a modern Internet.

In 2006, Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the W3C, recognized that the rebels at WHATWG had gained momentum and announced that the W3C would work together with WHATWG to evolve HTML. The W3C HTML Working Group was formed, working with HTML in conjunction with XHTML. HTML5 was officially born. In October 2009, W3C shut down XHTML2 making HTML5 the future of the Internet. The pirates had taken over the ship.

HTML5 marks a change in attitude from the W3C and seeks to support the diversity of HTML rather than just enforcement of web standards. It is an incredible achievement that HTML5 is backward compatible, meaning most of HTML5 can be used straight away albeit with some JavaScript hacks on semantics for IE. Ideas from W3C, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Opera and many other experts combine to pull the best bits out of HTML and browsers past into an exciting upgrade of the HTML language that promotes inclusion not exclusion.

In many ways HTML5 simplifies web pages, taking laborious tasks such as form validation away from web authoring and into the browser. The idea of making the browser do the work probably stems back to IE3, where Microsoft provided the first browser to build in CSS support. HTML5 introduces new tags for page structure and semantics of documents.

New markets in Typography are opening up with the implementation of “@font-face”, meaning designers at last can transfer the visual appeal of print to the web thanks to advances in CSS and HTML5. Large JavaScript libraries such as MooTools and JQuery can be slimmed down as HTML5 transfers many common tasks directly into the browser. Client side storage, session storage and client side posting are set to change how we communicate on the web. Web applications such as video are embedded by HTML without the need of JavaScript. Sites will begin to move away from Flash to deliver their video and onto HTML5, especially when current codec concerns with Mozilla Firefox are resolved.

New HTML5 API’s, such as drag and drop, are reverse engineered from Microsoft, ensuring that they are supported from the start by IE. What developers of HTML5 such as Ian Hickson (Opera) have done is to view the modern web and say, “OK that’s what people are trying to do, how can HTML5 support that”.

Unlike previous web standards based releases such as XHTML 1.1 and the never finished XHTML 2.0, HTML5 is backward compatible and is here to stay. With the involvement of people that have been critical of the W3C, HTML5 brings a standard based upgrade of HTML that is fully supported throughout the industry. HTML5 will genuinely future proof your site without the danger of your markup depreciating in a couple of years.

HTML5 timetable for completion is in 2022, which has left many webmasters confused as to its relevance now. However, any website can begin using the new specification immediately by simply changing the doc type to “<!DOCTYPE html>”, the lowest number of characters required to trigger standards mode in IE. Currently, only beta versions of browsers IE9, Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera support advanced HTML5 elements. However, typography “@font-face” is fully supported in current browsers. For more information have a look at Ethan Dunham’s “FontSquirrel.com” and Jeffrey Veen’s “Typekit.com”. Other HTML5 features such as “Drag and Drop” and “ContentEditable” are also currently supported. You can follow the implementation of HTML5 in modern browsers at “HTML5Readiness.com” and “Caniuse.com”.

Further information:

     http://www.whatwg.org

     http://diveintohtml5.org

     http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

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LinkedIn has just released some major upgrades to its link-sharing capabilities, including the addition of image and article excerpts, link re-sharing, and a new short URL: lnkd.in.

In total, there are eight new features related to the sharing of links and articles on LinkedIn, many of which you’ll be familiar with if you’re a Facebook user. The biggest changes focus around status updates. Now when you copy and paste links into the status update box and click “attach a link,” it will automatically pull an image and an article excerpt, just like the Facebook Publisher:

That’s not the only addition, though: You now have the ability to delete and edit posts. You also have control over who sees your shared links by selecting which connections or groups you’d like to receive your status update or shared link.

The business social network has also introduced re-sharing — it’s exactly like the “Share” button you’ll find on Facebook posts with links. Just click the “Share” button and you can re-share a link you find on LinkedIn with the rest of your network. There’s even attribution, which will credit the person who originally shared the link:

LinkedIn is repositioning itself as a hub for sharing articles and information with your business contacts. The new sharing features take a ton of obvious cues from Facebook and its share infrastructure. It is even launching lnkd.in today, which ties directly in with its Twitter integration.

The big question we have is this: Are LinkedIn users really link sharers? Will people choose to share articles with their LinkedIn networks instead of on their Twitter or Facebook feeds? Can LinkedIn truly become a hub for information-sharing? We’ll find out soon enough.

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