Alyssa Ast

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

We all know social media is great for marketing, building your brand, and increasing profits, but only if you remain consistent with your efforts. Social media is less beneficial if you don't dedicate a set time to update and maintain your social media accounts. These aren't the only areas that must remain consistent with social media. Your tone, brand identity, and much more needs to remain consistent if you hope to gain any benefits from social media marketing. Don't underestimate the importance of social media consistency. Posting One aspect of social media consistency involves regularly updating your accounts with fresh posts. Also, you need to update your profiles regularly to maintain consistency as well. When posting, you can't just post once or twice a month. You need to make it a daily habit to update your social media accounts at various times throughout the day. Interacting Social media consistency involves interacting with your followers frequently a

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. - - Courtesy of Content Marketing Institute A content marketing strategy allows you to connect with potential customers without having to spend money. Content marketing is very effective for marketing in general and for building your brand. The idea behind content marketing is to provide quality and valuable information to a targeted audience to encourage brand loyalty-- thus, producing higher profits. Your content marketing strategy is also a large aspect of your social media strategy as content marketing involves various types of content (IE- blogs, videos and images.) Content marketing differs from traditional marketing because you aren't trying to sell anything. Instead, your providing information, which will encourage audience engag

Branded keywords are different than ordinary keywords; although, though they serve the same purpose-- to allow internet users to find information about a topic they are seeking. Basically, branded keywords are part of a company brand, such as the company's name. Using Pepsi as an example, here are a few branded keywords the company may use on their website: Pepsi Products Pepsi Reviews Pepsi Careers The purpose of using branded keywords is to allow internet users who have already heard of your company to find your website with ease. When they want to contact a company or learn more about a company, they will type in the name of the company and another keyword to find the information they need. For example, a person who wants to know more about the latest pair of Nike shoes may type "new Nike shoes" into a search engine to find what they need. It's important to use both branded and non-branded keywords on your website. You don't want to only use branded k

Not sure how to use branded keywords? Here are a few of the best tips and articles on using branded keywords: Are You Really Standing Out?: Brand Keywords in PPC If there’s one PPC practice that should be instilled among all advertisers, it’s to make your brand stand out: not just physically or visually, but behind the scenes as well. Of course, advertisers want their brands to stand out above the rest, that is a given; but it’s important to keep this same methodology in place when compiling your PPC campaigns (and I’m not just talking about writing an eye-catching ad). Introducing Branded Keyword Rules and Metrics Looking at your site’s aggregate organic search traffic is a bit like docking a boat without a depth sounder: Sure, you can gauge where you need to go, but you’d be wise to have more details before you head in. On that same tack, we should have more detail about our overall search traffic before we use it to make decisions. First and foremost, this bucket of atten

When you think of content marketing, you most often think of blogs, articles and email newsletters, but online videos are also included in content marketing. In fact, online videos are becoming very powerful marketing tools when you know how to distribute them properly. As this is a digital day and age, marketing online videos will quickly produce favorable results as research indicates a website with a video is ranked 50% higher on Google when compared to sites lacking videos. Online videos will boost your SEO efforts, lead to higher conversion rates and increase your profit potential, especially if your video goes viral. To maximize the benefits of marketing online videos, make sure you're doing everything you can to promote the videos, not just distributing on YouTube and your website. Here are some simple tips for marketing online videos that will produce positive results. Utilize Social Networks Social networks provide the ideal opportunity to distribute your online video

Google designed the Google Penguin algorithm to penalize websites for containing unnatural links as an attempt to weed out the low quality sites to promote the browsing experience for internet users. Many websites, including eCommerce websites, suffered from the Penguin update. Even though it happened a while back, many sites have yet to recover from a Penguin attack. No matter if you've received an email from Google saying your site isn't abiding by the new requirements or you've watched your traffic and ranking decline over the past few months, it's never too late to begin surviving a Penguin attack on your eCommerce website. Surviving a Penguin Attack To begin surviving a Penguin attack on your eCommerce website, you need to identify any unnatural links on your site to take action to remove them. Often, unnatural links are deceptive or manipulative links that have been used to try to gain traffic quickly, such as those that have been purchased or false reviews

Google's push for quality content is increasing rapidly. Gone are the days of just throwing up a website with basic information and content. Now, if you want your business to succeed, you need to have well written content on your website. Not only must it be well written, but it must also be engaging and informative. This goes for any content you produce online, whether it's a webpage, newsletter, blog post or social media updates. But, what can you do if you aren't that great of a writer? Maybe you don't have the budget to hire a writer? You can still create great content to help your business succeed. There are many tools available that can help you out. The content you create for your website and marketing strategies are essential for your business's very success. With well written content, you increase your credibility in your business's niche. Plus, you provide your audience and customers with the information they desire, putting you ahead of your compe

SEO tips for a successful eCommerce website When you transfer information across the internet, whether for business or commercial purposes, you need an electronic commerce website, or an eCommerce website. With an eCommerce website you're able to electronically exchange services and goods despite time or distance. No matter if your site is used for B2B or B2C, you need to utilize SEO tips to make your eCommerce website as successful as possible. With SEO tips for eCommerce websites, your site will rank higher than your competitors and attract an appropriate audience to increase your profit potential. When you develop an eCommerce website, you need to ensure every page of your website contains informative and unique content that hasn't been duplicated elsewhere. Quality content reigns king, and it's the number one aspect of SEO that will set your eCommerce website apart from others. It doesn't matter how many pages of content you have if every page lacks quality.

Tips for your eCommerce Content Marketing Campaign! To bring in the right customers to build your business, you need to develop a content marketing strategy for your eCommerce website. By creating an eCommerce content marketing strategy, your website will stand out from your competitors as it will contain quality content to attract the interest of your customers. Plus, it will also help your SEO efforts as your site will rank higher on search engines. When developing a content marketing campaign, you can't just create anything you'd like. You need to add in strategy to ensure your content has quality, is engaging and information. You must also correctly distribute your content to reach your intended audience. With these tips for eCommerce content marketing, you'll be well on your way to increased profits. Creating Your Content Before you can begin creating content for your eCommerce website, you need to understand your targeted audience and how you'll reach them

There's a common misconception among website owners regarding the amount of traffic they receive. Many believe the more traffic their site receives the better; however, this isn't necessarily true. Yes, you want to have as much traffic as possible as each visit is potential profit, but if the visits your site receives aren't relevant to your business, the visits are essentially pointless. But, if you target a local audience, you'll increase your profit potential and reach your SEO goals even if you don't receive thousands of page views. By targeting a specific audience with your optimization efforts, the views to your site will be quality views that will result in more potential sales. Along with the added benefits of a specific audience, you'll reach your SEO goals easier as you'll have less competition. Benefits of Targeting a Specific Audience When narrowing your focus on a particular audience, you'll find it's easier to create and implement

LinkedIn is a well known networking site to connect with like-minded professionals for various reasons, whether for personal connections or increased business prospects. LinkedIn is also a great place to promote your marketing strategy, especially when involved with B2B. As the majority of the LinkedIn users are there for a direct reason, you'll easily connect with the right people to further your business's success. A great way to promote your B2B social media marketing marketing strategy is to take advantage of LinkedIn groups as you're able to connect with people who will further your business. By joining niche specific LinkedIn groups, you're able to establish connections to easily communicate with the professionals you need to take your business to the next level. Plus, the people you connect with won't just be local connections. You'll establish global connections that will expand the reach of your business. Sure, you may be directly connect to 50 peo

A great website contains an abundance of relevant and quality information. Overtime, that information begins to accumulate and may be difficult for your website visitors to find. This is where a site search feature comes in handy on your website. Users can easily search your site for the information they need, which encourages them to come back to your site time and time again. It makes your website more appealing to your visitors as they feel your website is for them and not just a marketing tool. Not only is the search feature a great tool to promote the user experience while on your site, but it also helps you with your marketing efforts in a number of ways. You can gain a lot of useful information from the site search feature to aid you with your marketing. By analyzing the terms people use on your site, you are better able to find a diversity of relevant keywords to use. Not to mention, the terms used may give you new ideas for products or services to offer. A site search fe

The Benefits of Blogging Will Help Your Small Business Succeed Small business owners often have a very small budget to spend on marketing and advertising. As a result, it can be difficult to determine which marketing methods should be a priority and what can wait until there's more of a budget. Often, small business owners put blogging on the back-burner because they aren't fully aware of the benefits of blogging. Or, in some cases, they feel blogging isn't necessary for their business niche. However, this misconception may actually be harming your business. No matter if you're B2B or B2C your small business will benefit from blogging, and it's fairly cost effective given the results. The benefits of blogging are diverse and vary depending on your content marketing strategy. However, the main benefits a small business will generate from blogging include an increased online presence and a stronger brand identity. Both of these will equal a higher profit potent

Increase Your Employment Prospects with a Great LinkedIn Profile Nowadays, social networking plays a huge role in employment opportunities as the days of searching the classifieds are slowly fading into the past. More and more job seekers are now turning to social media sites to market their skills for their perfect career. Employers are equally turning to social networking sites to find the ideal candidates to fill their positions. LinkedIn reigns king when it comes to employment prospects. LinkedIn is set apart from other social networking sites because it's all about professionals. The site is a great place to display your talents and skills to seek out career positions and to allow potential employers to find you. However, your chances of finding employment on LinkedIn are only as good as your profile. If your profile lacks quality, your chances of getting hired are going to decrease. When creating your LinkedIn profile, simple mistakes can really hurt your employment

Technology is changing our lives in more ways than one. It's more than just extra computer functions, better medical equipment, and top notch cell phones. Technology is even changing the way businesses run. This is good and bad. As technology expands, businesses are able to provide their customers with more services and better customer care. However, this often means bad news for some employee positions. Technology is causing many former jobs to go extinct. As technology continues to grow, more and more people will be replaced by a computer, which raises the questions-- will your job become obsolete? Retail Cashiers You've probably already noticed many jobs are dwindling in certain areas. When you walk through Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and even some fast food restaurants, you have the option to use the self checkout stands. Sure, these are convenient and easy to use. But, for every self checkout lane that appears, that's one retail cashier that is now out of a job--