“Going organic” has become important for many people’s diets in recent years. But going organic in the internet world is becoming more important than ever when it comes to winning the search engine battle.
The internet is quickly replacing phone books and directories when we are looking to find information on a company or product. It is important that your web site can be easily found. With the massive amounts of information that can be found on the internet these days, it can be easy to be lost in the shuffle.
One way to get your company’s information on the “results page one” of a search engine is by paying for an advertisement. But many companies are finding that they can get the same results using Search Engine Optimization, while saving some money at the same time.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) promotes a web site through increased visibility on a search engine. By correctly managing the components of SEO which include accurate key word lists, ad groups and compelling ad copy, you can make it easier for Google to match your site with the search being conducted. Search engines such as Google and Bing index billions of websites each day based on their content. When all of these variables work together, you can get a measurable conversion, ending up on the first results page.
The goal in SEO is to end up in the the top, unpaid listings in the search results page, also known as the organic results. Most people do not take the time to click through the results pages, so if your web site doesn’t land in the top 10, chances are you missed a chance to get people to your web site.
Getting lost in the shuffle in search engine results is easy. But with SEO, small and large businesses can place themselves right in front of their customers or prospects.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
From Gobal to Local, Social Media is Everywhere.
A recent survey of the Global 100 companies by Burson-Marsteller found that eight out of 10 world’s largest companies are taking part and being active on social media sites. 79% of these companies are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms- Twitter, Facebook and Youtube- for business.
You don’t need a Global 100 company’s budget to get the same benefits of social media for your own business, big or small. Social media started as a way individuals could communicate and share amongst others, but businesses are seeing the power of communicating directly with their markets and are incorporating social media as a key part of many campaigns. A study done by Cone Inc. in 2008 found that 93% of consumers believe that companies they purchase from should have a social media presence. Businesses of any budget and any size can use the popular social media sites to communicate on a more personal and intimate level with their consumers.
When starting a social media campaign, you need to keep in mind several important factors. Having a successful social media presence is a commitment and requires attention and time. Without regular updates and monitoring, your social media campaigns will not be as effective. You also need to keep in mind what target market you are trying to reach. Diverse business industries need to be addressed in different ways, just like any offline campaign. Use your target market’s analytics to determine which social media sites to use what and the content to make available.
Finally, you should not use your social media sites to ostensibly pitch your business and make sales. Although that is your real goal, social media users can be easily turned off to this approach. Instead, use your social media sites to make connections, build relationships and promote the bigger issues. These relationships are what will lead ultimately to consumer satisfaction, loyalty and in turn the business and sales you desire.
Sarah Maxwell, SBC Account Coordinator
You don’t need a Global 100 company’s budget to get the same benefits of social media for your own business, big or small. Social media started as a way individuals could communicate and share amongst others, but businesses are seeing the power of communicating directly with their markets and are incorporating social media as a key part of many campaigns. A study done by Cone Inc. in 2008 found that 93% of consumers believe that companies they purchase from should have a social media presence. Businesses of any budget and any size can use the popular social media sites to communicate on a more personal and intimate level with their consumers.
When starting a social media campaign, you need to keep in mind several important factors. Having a successful social media presence is a commitment and requires attention and time. Without regular updates and monitoring, your social media campaigns will not be as effective. You also need to keep in mind what target market you are trying to reach. Diverse business industries need to be addressed in different ways, just like any offline campaign. Use your target market’s analytics to determine which social media sites to use what and the content to make available.
Finally, you should not use your social media sites to ostensibly pitch your business and make sales. Although that is your real goal, social media users can be easily turned off to this approach. Instead, use your social media sites to make connections, build relationships and promote the bigger issues. These relationships are what will lead ultimately to consumer satisfaction, loyalty and in turn the business and sales you desire.
Sarah Maxwell, SBC Account Coordinator
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Blogging Effectively for Business Part 2
Why are many companies, especially those among the Fortune 500, blogging today? Creating a blog gives you the ability to ‘humanize’ your company and interact with your customers and prospects.
Adopting a blogging strategy may seem counter culture to some companies, where communications is tightly controlled. However, openness, sharing ideas and welcoming feedback is gradually becoming a successful communications format with corporate America.
Just getting a blog started is the biggest challenge. It is important to determine the type of content your audience is searching for and how the blog brings something of value to your readers.
Establish your expertise in a subject that is appealing to your audience without an overt sales message for your product or service. A hotel chain, for example, could start a blog on ‘best places to travel’ and garner reader comments. The blog’s sidebar could contain a blogroll (links to other travel resources), photo gallery of hot vacation spots submitted by readers and—by the way—a link to the hotel chain’s Web site.
Welcome comments to your blog even if they may be negative. A negative comment gives you the chance to solve a customer’s problem and leave a positive impression on others readers. Sometimes, comments provide you information that is important to improving customer service.
You don’t need to assign just one person to write your blogs; rather create a team of bloggers to diffuse the workload. Just make sure your bloggers have a passion for the subject matter, they enjoy interacting with readers, they know how to write and they know what they are writing about. Should your CEO blog? It’s OK if he or she meets the above criteria and is willing to devote some time to this initiative; otherwise, don’t do it.
Jim DiFrangia, SBC Social Consciousness AE
Adopting a blogging strategy may seem counter culture to some companies, where communications is tightly controlled. However, openness, sharing ideas and welcoming feedback is gradually becoming a successful communications format with corporate America.
Just getting a blog started is the biggest challenge. It is important to determine the type of content your audience is searching for and how the blog brings something of value to your readers.
Establish your expertise in a subject that is appealing to your audience without an overt sales message for your product or service. A hotel chain, for example, could start a blog on ‘best places to travel’ and garner reader comments. The blog’s sidebar could contain a blogroll (links to other travel resources), photo gallery of hot vacation spots submitted by readers and—by the way—a link to the hotel chain’s Web site.
Welcome comments to your blog even if they may be negative. A negative comment gives you the chance to solve a customer’s problem and leave a positive impression on others readers. Sometimes, comments provide you information that is important to improving customer service.
You don’t need to assign just one person to write your blogs; rather create a team of bloggers to diffuse the workload. Just make sure your bloggers have a passion for the subject matter, they enjoy interacting with readers, they know how to write and they know what they are writing about. Should your CEO blog? It’s OK if he or she meets the above criteria and is willing to devote some time to this initiative; otherwise, don’t do it.
Jim DiFrangia, SBC Social Consciousness AE
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Online Crisis Management
How do you use your web site newsroom to handle a major crisis?
As part of your crisis communication planning, you must acknowledge that one day someone may use the internet to create a problem for your company or organization. Often, a small problem can escalate into a PR nightmare if your organization looks weak or bullheaded in response to the “crisis.”
Your junior staff will not be in a position to handle these crises, so senior public relations counsel should be immediately engaged. However, by using a generic e-address such as news@yourfirm.com, messages can be easily reported to the assigned senior professional agency handling the crisis by your junior staff.
Entire crisis web sites are created by some companies. Others design a direct link on their homepage. Our advice is not to bury “the crisis” but rather make it easy for reporters and others to read your side of the story.
Remember, every crisis has a victim, a villain and a vindicator. Your role needs to be identified early in the process, and you must stand up to honest criticism. On the other hand, you need to refute unabashedly the misconceptions about your organization that need to be refuted– placing guilt on the true villain, if there is one.
Make sure that your online crisis presence must also make routine information available–photographs of senior management, biographical sketches, your news releases relating to the crisis, frequently asked questions and the like.
The more detailed online information about your organization’s crisis the better. The easier the information is to find the better. E-Crises are no fun, but the effort you take to tell the truth –the whole truth– and your side of the story will serve you well indeed. Finally, be sure to act quickly.
As part of your crisis communication planning, you must acknowledge that one day someone may use the internet to create a problem for your company or organization. Often, a small problem can escalate into a PR nightmare if your organization looks weak or bullheaded in response to the “crisis.”
Your junior staff will not be in a position to handle these crises, so senior public relations counsel should be immediately engaged. However, by using a generic e-address such as news@yourfirm.com, messages can be easily reported to the assigned senior professional agency handling the crisis by your junior staff.
Entire crisis web sites are created by some companies. Others design a direct link on their homepage. Our advice is not to bury “the crisis” but rather make it easy for reporters and others to read your side of the story.
Remember, every crisis has a victim, a villain and a vindicator. Your role needs to be identified early in the process, and you must stand up to honest criticism. On the other hand, you need to refute unabashedly the misconceptions about your organization that need to be refuted– placing guilt on the true villain, if there is one.
Make sure that your online crisis presence must also make routine information available–photographs of senior management, biographical sketches, your news releases relating to the crisis, frequently asked questions and the like.
The more detailed online information about your organization’s crisis the better. The easier the information is to find the better. E-Crises are no fun, but the effort you take to tell the truth –the whole truth– and your side of the story will serve you well indeed. Finally, be sure to act quickly.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Blogging Effectively for Business Part 1
Do you know what it takes to get found in today’s world of social media? Setting up and maintaining a blog is one way to engage your customers and prospects without an overt selling message.
According to E-Marketer, by 2013, 58% of the U.S. Internet population (128 million people) will be reading blogs regularly while 17% (38 million) will have their own blogs. Getting people to read and react to your blog requires some upfront planning and long-term commitment.
You can quickly create and publish new content through a blog and allow your readers to leave comments on your content as well as garner other feedback from those reading both your post and reader comments, thus creating a vibrant loop with all parties.
Creating a blog also gives your company another chance to be found via search engines. For example, you can raise your search ranking in Google just by adding content to your blog on a regular basis. Rather than a static website where content rarely changes, adding fresh content to your blog multiplies the number of keyword phrases ultimately picked up by the major search engines.
Before you leap into blogging, remember that a blog has no expiration date. You can’t start a blog and decide after two months to stop it, because you will stop talking to your customers. Put some planning into your blog by answering these questions:
• Who is your intended audience and what topics are of most interest to them?
• Do you have the time and people to blog?
• Do you host the blog on your website or have a separate domain?
• Do you use a free blogging platform (a popular one is WordPress) or pay a monthly fee?
• Are you comfortable editing the blog templates or should you get IT or an outside firm involved?
Coming soon: How to create content and how to measure your blog’s effectiveness.
Jim DiFrangia, SBC Social Consciousness AE
According to E-Marketer, by 2013, 58% of the U.S. Internet population (128 million people) will be reading blogs regularly while 17% (38 million) will have their own blogs. Getting people to read and react to your blog requires some upfront planning and long-term commitment.
You can quickly create and publish new content through a blog and allow your readers to leave comments on your content as well as garner other feedback from those reading both your post and reader comments, thus creating a vibrant loop with all parties.
Creating a blog also gives your company another chance to be found via search engines. For example, you can raise your search ranking in Google just by adding content to your blog on a regular basis. Rather than a static website where content rarely changes, adding fresh content to your blog multiplies the number of keyword phrases ultimately picked up by the major search engines.
Before you leap into blogging, remember that a blog has no expiration date. You can’t start a blog and decide after two months to stop it, because you will stop talking to your customers. Put some planning into your blog by answering these questions:
• Who is your intended audience and what topics are of most interest to them?
• Do you have the time and people to blog?
• Do you host the blog on your website or have a separate domain?
• Do you use a free blogging platform (a popular one is WordPress) or pay a monthly fee?
• Are you comfortable editing the blog templates or should you get IT or an outside firm involved?
Coming soon: How to create content and how to measure your blog’s effectiveness.
Jim DiFrangia, SBC Social Consciousness AE
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Stevens Baron Receives “Best of Show” At Seventh Annual PRSA Cleveland Rocks Award Luncheon
Stevens Baron Communications took home the coveted “Best of Show” award for its crisis communications campaign for King Nut Companies. The firm also received three other awards for Marketing Public Relations, Community Relations and Crisis Communications.
“This is wonderful recognition from our peers for a classic crisis communications effort that was designed to save a company’s reputation,” said Edward Stevens, Stevens Baron President. “It did just that.”
The Greater Cleveland Chapter honored a total of 75 entries with Cleveland Rocks Awards at the ceremony.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Green 3: Ohio ‘green’ jobs could hit 2.1M by 2030
I came across a report showing that as many as 1 out of 4 workers in the U.S. will be working in the environmental, renewable energy or energy efficiency industries by 2030…and many of these jobs will be right here in Ohio.
Under an advanced scenario, by 2030, the renewable energy (RE) sector could generate $18 billion in revenue and 175,000 jobs in Ohio and the energy efficiency (EE) sector could produce $200 billion in revenues and more than 2 million jobs in our state.
Ohio is poised to recruit many RE and EE companies because of its manufacturing workforce. Our workforce can be trained for jobs in wind turbines, biofuels, waste management, HVAC systems among others, according to the report.
Ohio must recognize that it is in fierce competition for the RE and EE jobs with traditional high-tech metropolitan areas like San Jose, Colorado Springs, and Washington, D.C.
The state must also compete with university-centered research areas including Palo Alto (Stanford), Ann Arbor (Michigan), Boulder (Colorado), Trenton (Princeton) and Albany (SUNY-Albany).
Ohio needs to market its strengths in manufacturing, research, education, construction and operation, according to the report.
The report was compiled by the American Solar Society with assistance from the Ohio Department of Development and Green Energy Ohio.
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