Archive for September, 2008

Eric Brantner
SEO Content Writer

As many of you may know, Directory One is located in Houston. As you’re well aware, Hurricane Ike recently dropped by for a visit. Since the whole city is in cleanup mode, I thought it’d be a good time to discuss ways to cleanup the image of your brand.

 
When did you last step back and take a look at your brand as a whole? Many times, we get so caught up in promoting our brand that we forget to think about the bigger picture. What exactly are we promoting? What do potential consumers see when they take a look at our brand?

 
Here are a few tips for cleaning up your brand.

 
• Update Your Content- I really hate the saying, but it’s true—Content is King. If you’re cleaning up your brand’s image, content might be the most important place to start. Is your website full of boring, static content from years ago? Give your content a facelift. Create new, relevant content that is consistent with the image you’re trying to build. You’ll be surprised at how effective quality copywriting is at restoring your image.

 
• Build Unified Image- One thing many brands need to pay attention to is the visual aspects of their brand. It’s simply not enough to have a cool design. You need to build a cohesive theme that runs throughout all of your marketing collateral. Everything from your website design to the packaging of your products should present a unified image that sets you apart from other companies. Something that consumers can immediately identify with your brand.

 
• Update Social Networks- Too many brands get in the habit of opening social networking accounts and then forgetting about them. Remember, these profiles are direct representations of your brand. If people see you disregard them, they could start to think your company is slacking off. Put a consistent effort into building a strong presence on these sites, and you brand will be better off because of it.

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By Herb Firestone
Marketing Coordinator

Back on August 14th, I began a series of social media marketing video posts with the CommonCraft video, “Social Media In Plain English.”

Well CommonCraft seems to be a great company with a plethora of videos - all in plain English, of course.

While it’s a little puzzling that they would choose to stop accepting new clients and move away from a business model that obviously works, once you understand their new business model, namely to license presentation quality versions of their existing videos, it becomes much easier to see why.

In any event, here’s another CommonCraft Video, “Twitter In Plain English” , along with a link to the Commoncraft website where you can watch them all - including “Electing a U.S. President in Plain English.”

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Eric Brantner

SEO Content Writer

Marketing your company on the Internet can be a complicated assignment. Potential customers come in contact with you through many different online avenues: social networks, articles directories, press releases, blogs, PPC ads, and your website.

Consistency is one of the most overlooked facets of Internet marketing. Many companies are so focused on getting their name out as often as possible they forget about building a consistent brand image.

Here are a few benefits of Internet marketing consistency.

• Creates Trust- Even though an ever increasing number of consumers are using the Internet for shopping, it’s still difficult for companies to earn their customers trust through a computer screen. People tend to be a bit more cautious when dealing with a brand online—especially one they’ve never heard of. By having a consistent marketing platform, customers will begin to trust your company because consistency breeds legitimacy.

• Establishes Relationships- Through consistency, you can also build relationships with potential customers. These users begin to learn your message, and over time, they identify with it. Consistent themes help visitors feel as if they’re speaking with one person from your company. In a way, it’s as if the two of you are having a conversation.

• Builds Brands- Most importantly, consistency builds successful brands. If your online visitors are constantly exposed to the same themes and messages, they’ll begin to associate those with your company. It’s the same technique companies have used for years. Take Target for instance. All of Target’s commercials employ the same type of backdrops and music. That way, you know it’s a Target commercial within the first seconds of it hitting the air. Using consistency for your business can create the same type of brand recognition.

So, we’ve identified what consistency can do for your brand, but how do you create it?

Follow these tips to build a strong, consistent brand.

• Copywriting- Consistent copywriting might be the most effective way to build a strong brand online. Nearly all of your Internet marketing efforts boil down to copywriting. Whether it’s on your website, blog, social network, or articles, you need to create a consistent style throughout. As I mentioned earlier, consistent copywriting establishes relationships with potential customers. They’ll feel comfortable knowing they’re dealing with the same person at all times.

• Design- By taking a consistent approach to your website layout and design, your visitors will feel more comfortable navigating throughout your website. Comfort is essential to converting visitors. If a website visitor isn’t comfortable when they land on your site, they’ll leave immediately for another page. Make them stick around by using a consistent web design.

• Avatars- The benefits of social networking are limitless. One of these is you can build a strong brand through them. One way to do this is to use the same avatar throughout all the social networks- Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Digg, etc. This way, people will instantly associate the avatar with your brand. Switching it up between several avatars won’t allow consumers to recognize you as easily.

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Eric Brantner
SEO Content Writer
There’s no doubt blogging has taken over as one of the most effective ways for communicating news and opinions with one another. When done properly, blogging can be a great way to increase your exposure and to build your authority. For this reason, I’ve come up with this list of the 5 P’s of successful blogging.

 
• Personality- Personality is one of the most important aspects of blogging. Unfortunately, it’s one of the most overlooked facets. Blogging is a social activity, and it’s important you have a unique personality that people want to communicate with. With so many blogs on the internet, the best way you can separate yourself from the competition is to display your unique traits to your readers.

• Purpose- The best blogs are those with a strong focus on a particular niche. You need to have a clear purpose for your blog. This will attract targeted visitors who are more likely to become loyal readers. If you’re constantly bouncing around from topic to topic, no one will want to read your blog because most of the topics won’t appeal to them.

• Participation- As I mentioned earlier, blogging is a social activity. This means you have to be willing to participate in discussions on both your blog and other blogs in the industry. First, you should always respond thoughtfully to comments on your blog. Engage your commentators, and they’ll be likelier to keep returning. Additionally, you should comment regularly on other blogs in your field. This will build connections, attract new readers, and establish your authority.

• Persistence- Successful blogs aren’t built overnight. Persistence is necessary for growing your blog. This means you need to post regularly. If you wait too long between posts, readers will become disinterested, and they’ll move onto another blog. Be consistent, and you’ll give yourself the best chance for success.

• Probe- With so many blogs on the internet, readers crave something fresh. Too many blogs are just repeats of others. Everyone seems to have the same opinions, making the blogs indistinguishable from each other. I’m not saying you have to disagree with what everyone is saying, but don’t be a “me too” blogger.  Be willing to probe to dig deeper on the important topics everyone is discussing. By giving your unique insight, you’ll separate yourself from your competitors.

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Eric Brantner

SEO Content Writer

Note: My apologies for posting this so late. Please enjoy.

Although I provide this internet marketing roundup every Friday, I’d like to encourage you all to further your SEM education by reading more blogs. Whenever I link out to another blog, take the time to look through some of their other posts. There are some great bloggers out there, and you can really receive a well rounded internet marketing education by reading several of them.

On the Directory One Blog

• On Labor Day, I wrote a post explaining the common ways bloggers over-market their content. Promoting your blog is a tricky task. You want people to be aware of your presence, but if you’re constantly pitching your content, you’ll experience a backlash. People will start to ignore you. Give your content promoting efforts a sense of balance, and always place providing quality content at the top of your list of priorities.

• Have you ever had someone leave a negative comment on your blog? Did you not know how to respond to it? Here are a few different ways you can handle negative blog comments. Every situation is different, but you can get a good idea of what approach you should take by reading this post.

Around the Web

• It seems that not a week goes by without someone posting an article on link building. By now, you certainly know the importance of having quality links pointing to your website. Here are 30 easy ways you can get inbound links. Start building those links!

• Last week, I talked about how to use Twitter for your business. Still not sold? Well, read this post about 10 reasons you should join Twitter. I think you’ll be Tweeting in no time after reading this blog. The bottom line is there are a lot of benefits to joining this social network, and once you join, you’ll be hooked like everyone else.

• Undoubtedly, you heard something about Google launching a new web browser this week. If you aren’t sure whether or not you should download it yet, read through this blog on everything you need to know about Google Chrome.  This will help catch you up to speed on everything you should know about the browser before downloading it.

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By Herb Firestone
Marketing Coordinator

Starting today I’ve added two content analysis tests to the Directory One SEO client website analysis process.

Customer Focus Test

The first is a customer focus test created by Bryan Eisenberg, a leading conversion optimization expert. Eisenberg’s test analyzes whether your content emphasizes customer benefits and needs versus emphasizing you and your company. It accomplishes this by comparing the number of customer focused words in your text, such as you, your company, or your business with self-focused words, for example, I, my, me, our, us and your company name.

Originally I was planning to run the tests on the Directory One home page, but I quickly realized that would have been a perfect example of exactly what I’m advising clients not to do, namely company focused content. So instead I randomly chose two sites from Technorati’s top 100 blog list: #2 Techcrunch and #10 Mashable.

The following are the Customer Focus test results for the Techcrunch homepage today:

Customer Focus Rate: 53.57%
Instances of customer-focused words: 15
Self Focus Rate: 46.43%
Instances of self-focused words: 13
Instances of the Company Name: 0

Apparently they write about themselves almost as often as they write about their readers.

And the Customer Focus test results for Mashable:
Customer Focus Rate: 49.47%
Instances of customer-focused words: 47
Self Focus Rate: 50.53%
Instances of self-focused words: 33
Instances of the Company Name: 15

Mashable also writes about themselves almost as often as they write about their readers.

Readability Test

The second test is a readability test, created by Juicy Studio.

The test provides a Gunning-Fog Index, “a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand their content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to their visitors.”

It also provides a Flesch Reading Ease Number that “rates your text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. Writers are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70.”

And last but not least, the test provides a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which, like the Gunning-Fox index, is “a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand their content.”

The following are the reading level results for TechCrunch:

Gunning Fog Index: 10.24
Flesch Reading Ease: 58.45
Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 7.45

And the reading level results for Mashable:
Gunning Fog Index: 9.98
Flesch Reading Ease: 58.55
Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 6.70

Maybe these aren’t the best sites to illustrate either of the tests, simply because both sites report tech news made by other companies and both home pages change daily.

Even with that in mind, however, Mashable managed to slip15 instances of their company name onto their home page. Suprisingly, the readability levels for both are pretty reasonable.

Feel free to try either or both tests on your homepage or blog or suggest any others you are familiar with in the comments.

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