Marketing Your Business Online – February 2020 Link Roundup

Marketing Your Business Online – February 2020 Link Roundup

by | Feb 13, 2020 | Blog, SEO, Social Media, Tech Tips, Website Design

Welcome to February 2020! What the what? 2020 sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? But… here it is, so LET’S GO!

So… what changes and new ideas can you expect for online marketing and improving your website traffic in 2020? Here are a few tips and article links to help you make 2020 your best year ever!

Blogging and Website Traffic:

“What’s the point of blogging, nobody ever reads it!”… sound familiar? I’ve said it! Breath life back into your blog and increase traffic to your website… read “How Social Media Can Be Magic For Your Blog” – https://pegfitzpatrick.com/how-social-media-can-be-magic-for-your-blog/ by Peg Fitzpatrick

Are you reading this on your phone? Looks good, right?! Responsive website design is THE most important thing you can do for your website… right now! Check out this easy-to-read article, The Importance of Responsive Design and help the 2 billion smartphone users view your website with ease and interest.

Education and Growth:

January/February are typically bleak months for me… I suffer from holiday burnout, the weather in Seattle is dark & dreary (a maj issue for this sun worshiper) yearly goals are looming and I just want to crawl under a blanket and binge Netflix. To help me get new biz ideas and get motivated to set goals, I choose a new book to read or a podcast to listen to.

I freaking LOVE Mel Robbins... her advice, her no-nonsense attitude, her voice, AND… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, f’ing works, man! Check out KICK ASS, TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE, and Mel’s Daytime TV Show and more. Listen to Mel’s books on Audible and watch her on Video, she’s got an awesome delivery and voice… I’m obsessed!

My other business guru is Marie Forleo. If you haven’t heard of Marie… get ready to enjoy the hell outta yoself! She’s a hip-hop dancer, an entrepreneur, a teacher, a mentor and the real-deal!  I am reading her new book Everything is Figureoutable, I get her weekly emails that include a new MarieTV interview with a great guest, she has B-School for entrepreneurs, a Podcast and so much more! Check out all of Marie’s great content here: Queen Marie.

Social Media Marketing:

What will the trend be in 2020? While TikTok is cool and showed a huge surge when it first started… it is showing a slight decline in brand marketing. What should you concentrate on? Take a look at Social Media Today’s article “20 Predictions for Social Media Marketing in 2020”.

Video… Video… Video… Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. With 3 billion searches per month, YouTube’s search volume is larger than that of Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com combined. Do you have a YouTube channel? Launch your channel today and start creating and uploading videos for your business, NOW!

Obtaining New Clients and Networking:

It’s hard out there for an entrepreneur! Finding and retaining clients is NOT easy… I have relied on referrals for new business most of the 10 years I’ve been in business, however… I recently transitioned away from social media marketing services and I am now only offering website design, re-design, updates and maintenance and I need to add clients. I’m going to visit my local Chamber of Commerce this month and see of it’s a good fit. In the past I have joined different groups and stayed with them for 2-5 years, but I think it’s good to mix it up and try new sources of business building. What networking group or system works best for you? Leave a comment below.

Happy marketing!

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Marketing Your Business Online – November Link Roundup

Marketing Your Business Online – November Link Roundup

by | Nov 10, 2019 | Blog, Tech Tips

Where the heck has 2019 gone? It’s fall and I don’t even remember having a summer… do you? The days, weeks and months fly by and you wonder “How will I ever get it all done?”. This post will hopefully help.

Going into 2020 (that sounds bananas) using CMS software, posting dashboards, an online calendar scheduler and other automated and organizational tools… you CAN get it all done! Here are some tools I use, plus some that I don’t need, but encourage you to consider on the recommendation of clients and pro’s.

 

Social Media Marketing Posting:

Hootsuite – Manage multiple social media business accounts through one awesome dashboard. Create posts, schedule, interact and comment all in one place. My team has been using Hootsuite for 10+ years and we love it! I created a “team” account, added all of our clients sm pages, set up streams showing; my posts, scheduled posts, mentions, retweets and more… and all of us can view, edit and interact with all of the accounts and content. Check-out Hootsuite!

 

CMS (Content Management Sysytem):

monday.com – Plan. Organize. Track. In one visual, collaborative space. monday.com helps you manage your marketing campaigns, advertising, projects, deadlines, calendar, employee time-off, expenses, invoices, revenue and much more! Check-out monday.com!

 

Online Calendar Scheduler:

Calendly – Schedule meetings without the back and forth emails and phone calls. Calendly is my jam! It makes scheduling client calls, screen-share meetings and in-person meetings so easy… and it’s FREE! Build-out your meeting types, set days & times and then post your personalized calendar link on your contact us page and send out via email. Check-out mine; https://calendly.com/katie-kay and then build your own… on Calendly.com.

 

Graphic Design Creator:

Canva – Create beautiful graphics for social media, invitations, business cards, announcements and more, with Canva’s easy to use drag-and-drop feature and templates. Finding and using Canva has been awesome for me and my team! We can upload logos and photos, choose fonts and create branded graphics to use for clients and VS. Check-out Canva!
 

Cloudbased Collaboration:

Google Apps – An integrated suite of secure, cloud-native collaboration and productivity apps powered by Google. Includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, My Business and more.I mean… if you’re not using Google Drive, Docs, My Business and for most, gMail… well, I don’t even know what you’re doing! Haha, jk… but seriously, you and your team can access all your business goodies from absolutely anywhere! I have the apps on my iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, literally every screen I use. Check-out Google Apps!

Remember… procrastination is the enemy, start using one of these tools today. Keep moving forward, you are awesome!

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Marketing Your Business Online – August Link Roundup

Marketing Your Business Online – August Link Roundup

by | Aug 27, 2019 | Blog, Social Media, Tech Tips

How’s your digital marketing and website presence looking? I know there’s a lot to keep-up with, so here’s some tips and helpful information I’ve come across to help you focus on some specific tasks to further your progress in positioning your business online for great success!

It’s all about the photo! Visual is very important when it comes to web presence, but did you know that search engines do not see images, they read the text added to your images? (title, alt and description) Now we learn that there’s even more you can do! Check out this easy to follow infographic and use the 19 actionable image SEO tips to optimize your images for search – https://seosherpa.com/image-seo/ by SEO Sherpa

Remember vision boards? Maybe some of you still create them… visual goals and written goal lists will never go out of style, they work! Take a look at Rebekah Radice’s article, 5 Simple Ways to Make Your Social Media Goals Stick – https://rebekahradice.com/social-media-goals/

I’ve talked about claiming your Google business listing before, and making sure you post on it regularly to boost your business in search… here’s an article that talks about using it for “Google Maps Marketing” to boost your businesses local shopping in search – https://pixelcutlabs.com/blog/google-maps-marketing/ from Pixel Cut Labs

Get more traffic to your blog posts! Sounds simple, but it’s not, it’s hard work. Take a look at this article featuring a unique method to increase reads and shares on your posts – https://growthbadger.com/double-survey-technique/ from GrowthBadger

Most importantly… make sure your blog posts look great on mobile! I have seen some really good looking websites, and then checked them out on mobile and UGH! what the what? Their web developer forgot that mobile is now in the high 60% for browsing.

Keep up the great work perfecting your online presence!

 

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Google Search Results and Website Ranking

Google Search Results and Website Ranking

by | Jun 25, 2019 | Blog, SEO, Tech Tips

Good search results… everybody wants them, every business and website needs them. You ask your web developer “why isn’t my website at the top of Google?” and “how do I get there?”.  Some know, some don’t! Here’s what I have learned on the subject.

– Begin by evaluating your SEO efforts.

– Are you consistently adding new content to your website?

– Does your website reflect the topics you are known for?

– How effectively are you marketing your content and website and getting quality backlinks?

– Are reputable sites mentioning and linking to your website?

Sounds simple enough, huh? Not really, Katie! Ok… so here’s my pep-talk on getting going.

Adding content by writing about what you know and what you do, should not be that hard. You talk about it all the time; like when you propose your services to a client, or when you tell someone how you can help them, how about when you explain what you do at a dinner party. Now you just need to write it out in a blog post!  Not a confidant writer? Ask a friend or reliable source to edit it or at least give it a once over and provide feed back. It doesn’t have to be a novel, at least 300 words or three paragraphs should do it, and always add an appropriate photo (visual is important).

Now you need to market that content. Post it on all your social media platforms (more than once) add it as an article on your LinkedIn profile, and above all, market your content to any relevant sites that have visitors that could benefit from your content. That’s called building backlinks.

Start by creating a list of sites that would be a good fit for your content. Reach out; ask if they would consider a guest blog post, or consider linking to your website, maybe posting an excerpt of your blog post with “read more” with a backlink to your site. Don’t just reach out once… consistently contact these relevant sites and offer your posts or website as content for their website. Don’t just trade links to get your website link on another site, if each sites visitors will benefit from the other link/content, that’s a good fit. Resource pages or “my favorite sites” pages are good way to go, but above all, a link to a blog post or relevant content page, is the best.

Now go, get out there and get your website to the top of your relevant search results… you can do it!

 

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Marketing Your Business Online – April 2019 Roundup

Marketing Your Business Online – April 2019 Roundup

by | Apr 22, 2019 | Blog, Social Media, Tech Tips

Marketing your business online is pretty much a second job for most entrepreneurs… I hope this roundup of marketing tip links from the experts help!

Hashtags! am I right? Which ones? How many? Where do I use them? Well… for sure use them on Instagram, duh! Here’s help – Bullet Journal Hashtags: My Complete Instagram Guide (2019) – https://lifebywhitney.com/bullet-journal-hashtags/ by Whitney

Facebook Ads… mo money, mo money, mo money, UGH! I struggle with getting them to perform… do you? Here’s help – 5 Rookie Facebook Ads Mistakes to Avoid – https://kimgarst.com/5-rookie-facebook-ads-mistakes-to-avoid/ by Kim Garst

Don’t have the swipe-up feature? CURSES Instagram! (well really… curses ZUCK!) You can still sell on Insta… here’s help – How Small Businesses Can Use Instagram to Sell Your Services – http://ow.ly/XJHm50r0yCH by Mari Smith

LinkedIn… it’s not just for the unemployed anymore! Download your – 5 Best Practices for Your LinkedIn Page https://hootsuite.com/resources/five-steps-to-a-winning-linkedin-strategy from Hootsuite

And now for my tip! Are you selling products or have a visual business? USE PINTEREST! Pinterest is the one platform that allows you to link your photos back to your website… by pinning photos from your your website and blog. Even if you’ve already pinned all your website photos, not possible if you’re blogging regularly (sarcasm), go through and pin them again. Pin a few a week, please don’t pin them all in one sitting, UGH, your photos need to pop-up in the pinfeed randomly and often.  Use hashtags, and plenty, just like you do on Instagram. Have fun pinning!

 

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