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WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 | 10 Simple Steps To Creating Effective Web Video

March 18, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Ready to create your own Web Video?

WebsiteMagazine.com offer 10 SIMPLE steps:

Step One: Decide on primary purpose and objective of the video. Do you want to sell a product or service? Is it to educate the audience about a commonly misunderstood topic? It is a product demonstration? The video must have a single overriding purpose — otherwise, the audience gets confused. Try to state your objective clearly in one sentence.

Step Two: Who is your target audience? What are their backgrounds, languages and abilities to comprehend the topic? Are they naturally interested in the topic?

Step Three: Decide how you will present the topic. Will you use a documentary style? Will it be dramatic or humorous, sensitive or factual or light-hearted and lively? There are other considerations too. Should there be a presenter on screen, or an unseen narrator? Also, try to achieve a balance of information and persuasion. Do you want to appeal mainly to intellect or emotion? At one end of the spectrum you could present the information like an instruction manual — purely factual. The other extreme is to persuade the viewer by feelings, emotion, and entertainment. A balance of the two is usually best.

Step Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten @ WebsiteMagazine.com –> February 2010

Steps to Effective Web Video
Video is booming. Are you delivering quality?


Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Publicity Tagged With: ,

WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 | “Building and Maintaining an Online Brand”

March 16, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Check out the steps from WebsiteMagazine.com, February 2010, “Building and Maintaining an Online Brand”:

Phase One -> Create a Brand

Step One: Identify the brand.

Step Two: Find the values.

Step Three: Identify the benefits.

Step Four: Establish.

Step Five: Create a slogan.

Step Six: Develop artistic appearance of the brand.

Phase Two -> Maintaining Your Brand

Questions to ask yourself:

  • Is your color scheme or logo unique?
  • Do you have a competitor or another company that might be confused with?
  • How consistent is the branding throughout all marketing channels?
  • How memorable is your “Look” and it is in line for your business?
  • Is your brand clear and understandable and presented?
  • Is your brand honest and truthful, making genuine representations with promises of brand?
  • Is your material (such as the product literature or advertising of web or print) professional, yet personal and express the values and benefits of the brand?

So where are you at? Do you need to step back and go through Phase One? How are you doing with Phase Two questions?

Keep me updated!

Filed Under: Publicity Tagged With:

WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 | TwitVid

March 14, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Have you heard of TwitVid.com?

WebsiteMagazine has a side column that states, “It is a service that enables Twitter users to upload and share videos on the mico-blogging service, launched a real-time search engine that shows the most popular videos, along with an analytics tool to show “tweeted” videos. Information gathered from page 36, WebsiteMagazine.com, February 2010 issue.

YouTube and TwitVid are integrated to show video links.

So are you ready to upload your video? Try TwitVid.com.

Filed Under: Web 2.0 Tagged With: , ,

WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 | “Website Seals of Approval”

March 12, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Does your online commerce have a SEAL of Approval?

If not, I think you might want to read more about what you could do today.

BBBOnLine Reliability Seal

Thawte

TRUSTe

ValidatedSite

BuySafe

Of course most of us have heard of BBB and I am sure I could locate a website that is using one of these other ones. But how familiar are you with each? If you want to learn more…

WebsiteMagazine.com full article is available here:

Differentiating Seals of Approval
Buyers seek confidence in your business; website approval seals can help.

Helping you to stay on top of your business!

Filed Under: Web 2.0 Tagged With:

WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 | “Google Social Search”

March 10, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Continuing to read WebsiteMagazine.com on page 16 with Dante A. Monteverde. He mentions that Google is taking your “public social graph” – the social media that you use and integrate it into their main search results for you to see.

He states that Google is taking everything they know about you from your Google profile, your connections with people and websites from social networks and then creating personalized search results.

To be a part of Google’s experiment you need to access this through your Google account – http://google.com/experimental.

Once you are a part of Google’s experiment you can see the Social Search results 2 ways:

1. at the bottom of any regular results – “Results from people in your social circle for” you will see 2 Google Social Search results

2. perform a search on Google and then select “Show options” feature and choose “Social” you will see the full Google Social Search results

And then you will begin to see how everything ties together. Once you begin to find more connections and friends – you will see how they can help you with what you are searching for. Dante gives more great information – SEO Corner: Google Social Search

Happy “Google”-ing!

Filed Under: Web 2.0 Tagged With: ,

WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 | Top 50 Social Media Resources

March 8, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

WebsiteMagazine.com‘s February 2010 article, Top 50 Social Media Resources goes on to mention that the Top 50 is all based upon website’s popularity.

What site do you spend most of your day at?

  1. Facebook
  2. YouTube
  3. MySpace
  4. Twitter
  5. Flickr
  6. Photobucket
  7. Linkedin
  8. Digg
  9. Ning
  10. Yelp
  11. Tagged
  12. Squidoo
  13. Scribd
  14. Stumbleupon
  15. Hi5
  16. Bebo
  17. Reddit
  18. Myyearbook
  19. Technorati
  20. Kaboodle
  21. Friendster
  22. Flixster
  23. Xanga
  24. Epinions
  25. Plaxo
  26. Mybloglog
  27. Yuku
  28. Metafilter
  29. Blackplanet
  30. Care2
  31. Getsatisfaction
  32. Friendfeed
  33. Clipmarks
  34. Cafemom
  35. Newsvine
  36. Omgili
  37. Gigya
  38. Ballhype
  39. Current
  40. Revver
  41. Ping.fm
  42. Tribe.net
  43. Magnify.net
  44. Diigo
  45. Dzone
  46. Xing
  47. Faves
  48. Tweetdeck
  49. Ecademy
  50. Twine

So what are you doing with Social Media and how involved are you?

Keep in touch!

Filed Under: Web 2.0 Tagged With: ,

WebsiteMagazine.com | February 2010 – “WordPress Plugins To Rock The Party”

March 4, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Reviewing through WebsiteMagazine.com and looking at page 9 of the February 2010 article, “WordPress Plugins To Rock The Party” … I just have to share this with you. Plugins – I sure love using Plugins on my website. There is so many out there I know I have just began using some of the coolest ones – but always looking for the best of the best!

Peter Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief mentions:

WP-Cumulus – he explains this as a 3D rotating your tags, categories or both.

Sexy Bookmarks – Share this with the world by using sexy bookmarks

ExplanatoryDictionary – great way to provide users with information without overwhelming them with click here for this and click here for that

Custom Login Page – change the background image of your login page, the background image and color of your login form, the main image of your login page and even add custom CSS

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam – Just a must for additional anti-spam component

Also I would advise you to visit your dashboard of your site and click on Add New under the Plugins menu and search for each of these so you are obtaining the most up-to-date plugin!

Best of luck!

Filed Under: From the Desk of Staci Tagged With: , ,

WebsiteMagazine.com | November 2009 | Know Thy Competitor

February 11, 2010 By Staci 1 Comment

Continuing to read through WebsiteMagazine.com — I stumbled upon this article that Heather Lutze wrote – Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it: Know Thy Competitor, printed issue November 2009.

Heather mentions that as a website owner you wear many hats

Webmaster

Content Writer

E-mail Manager

Marketing Guru

and Many More!

Heather wants to let us know about “how to “spy” on your competitors, as well as highlight some competitive tools to help position your company for ultimate findability.”

1. Seek out your competitors through Google results

2. As a business owner, know who your REAL competition is

3. Review through these competitors and find what they websites are doing better, equal or worse

Heather recommends for More Information: Want to know your Findability Score – visit FindabilityFormula.com to see the criteria for Findability Score assessments.

The company that Heather was reviewing, she noticed a poor PPC Campaign, bad SEO design, lack of a blog and social media efforts.

Action Plan – Heather suggests:

Gather Competitive Intelligence

  • Tool #1: SEOmoz.org – measures strength of pages, blogs and entire domains based on factors inherent to popularity, influence and ranking ability – measures your impact compared against others in your industry
    • SEO Domain Strength Tool (SEOmoz’s Trifecta)
  • Tool #2: WebsiteGrader.com – FREE SEO tool from HubSpot – score that incorporates website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors – provides some basic advice on how a website can be improved from a marketing perspective
    • Website Grader Tool – organic findability
  • Tool #3: SpyFu.com – FREE PPC tool gives great intelligence on how competitive certain keywords are in Google – gives insight on CPC and average number of clicks per day, and displays ad text for competitors
    • Competitors offer special incentives to click on their ad – tells you what ads your competitors are running and the keywords’ competitive level
    • Seek out your keyphrase with the less amount of competiton and try to differentiate your business from your competitors
      • Example: They offer low prices – you state Best Quality or Free Shipping

Continue reading… This article is quite interesting isn’t it!

The Solution?

Heather brings these solutions to the table:

  • Tip #1: Blog as if your company depended on it
    • If you have a blog that is off-site you receive no search engine credit for it – put a blog on your website so it is included in the sitemap and use core keywords in blog posts
    • Use del.icio.us bookmarks too!
  • Tip #2: Have the best pick-up lines for your PPC
    • One of the keys to running a successful PPC campaign, Heather mentions – having solid ad text – use the four-line entry that will display on the results page in the area of the page called Sponsored Links
  • Tip #3: Selecting Your Spy Team
    • Do you have Google News Mentions? If you rank lower than your competitors – get a Press Release distributed about your company and the products or services you offer. [You can use the SEOmoz tool to determine your Google News Mentions ranking]

WHAT IS IN YOUR SPY KIT?

Request for updates to be sent to you regarding keywords from the following:

Google.com/Alerts – from Google

Alerts.Yahoo.com – from Yahoo!

Alerts.Live.com – from Windows Live

Heather concludes with… Remember, for successful findability you must understand the findability of your competitors and adjust your campaigns accordingly. By matching and beating PPC, SEO and social media offerings of your competitors, you are setting yourself up to succeed on your Internet marketing mission.

Heather Lutze is the author of “The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing.” You can visit FindabilityFormula.com for tools and resources to increase your site’s findability.


Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With:

WebsiteMagazine.com | November 2009 | GOOGLE Analytics Tips!

February 10, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

Reading through Tips to Better GOOGLE ANALYTICS with Bryan Eisenberg with WebsiteMagazine.com in the November 2009 printed issue.

He brings up some very good points and I want to summarize my findings for you…

  • If Google Analytics does not bring in the complete analytic solution for you check out HitBox or Omniture
  • Google Analytics lack one thing – HUMAN SUPPORT
  • THE BASICS: For Google Analytics to work you must add a code (tag) to any page you need to track [to learn more about Google Analytics – Bryan’s suggests http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity
    • Once you complete the basics you can use several other tools that will test to ensure proper set up –
    • Setting up Goals of how you use what Google Analytics can report to you
    • Track goals for your customers
    • Tracking of conversion rates
    • Bryan suggest ZenCartOptimization.com blog – there is a series titled Google Analytics Demystified – Part 5 deals with goals and he highly recommends reading it. (ZenCartOptimization.com provides helpful information – check this out if you wish http://www.zencartoptimization.com/category/website-analytics)
  • Tracking
    • Log in to see your Analytics and on the home page – bottom right is a link called Filter Manager
    • This is where you can focus on your internal traffic and exclude internal traffic as well as traffic from any other domain
    • Here you can choose to exclude your competitor’s domains, especially since these are usually your competitor’s checking up on your improvements and new developments on your site
    • If you have a membership site you should filter your member’s out as well
    • Once you filter out the “unqualified visitors” as Bryan calls them, this will help you to get a handle on exactly how well you are converting your QUALIFIED visitors
    • Another important Google Analytics feature is — the analysis of visitors by defined segments
    • You may run into a similar experience that Bryan did with a client that he was helping… he realized that the client received lots of traffic from a recent partnership but only saw a small increase in sales
    • Bryan helped the client helping them build a specific landing page for this partner traffic and focused on increasing that segment’s conversion rate — after providing content on that page specific to the partner traffic SALES INCREASED!
    • Google Adwords can also work with Google Analytics – visit http://www.google.comsupport/conversionuniversity to learn more!
  • And ACTION!
    • If you see the same boring results month after month, report after report – CHANGE something on your website. Bryan suggests that if you don’t walk away with something to-do, change, make better than you are likely missing valuable opportunities
  • Get Started NOW! Tips and Action Steps from Bryan

    • Start your action list – look at your top entry and exit pages and OPTIMIZE those with a 40 percent plus exit rate
    • Look at your top referring keywords and optimize landing pages — again we are looking at those with a 40 percent plus exit rate
    • Look at your goal conversion funnels and start optimizing the step that has the highest exit/drop rate from one step to the next
    • Review your website for yourself and think why someone may read this page for 5 minutes but the next page look at it and leave within seconds…
    • Bryan mentions to Never Forget… when runing reports and starting at averages in Google Analytics or any other analytics program – those clicks are REAL people making DECISIONS

To read more from Bryan, visit his blog at http://GrokDotCom.com/GoogleAnalytics

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: ,

SiteScan By EpikOne | http://StaciJansma.com results

February 10, 2010 By Staci Leave a Comment

I typed in http://StaciJansma.com and my email address. Clicked SUBMIT.

Immediately the website gave me this message:

Your Scan has been Queued Up!

We have found 80 pages for your site http://stacijansma.com. A confirmation email has been sent and you will receive another when the scan is complete.

Note: SiteScan™ will only scan the first 100 pages of your site. If you need more, sign up for AnalyticsView Pro to receive access to our SiteScan™ Premium queue, which scans up to 30,000 pages per site.

Completion of your SiteScan™ can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on the number of other currently-running scans and the size of the submitted website.

Thank you for your patience.

Once I receive the next results … I will post them for you to view.

Filed Under: From the Desk of Staci Tagged With: , ,
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