There might be some disagreement about the origin of that statement, but not about its truth. Often, getting to the solutions we need is a matter of switching our perspective. And that begins with figuring out what we really need to know.

This is certainly true in the world of internet marketing. That’s because lots of business owners and managers try to do everything all at once. They either don’t know better or think that’s what their competitors are up to. Either way, it ends in frustration.

To help you avoid the same kinds of mistakes, let’s look at the questions you really need to be asking…

The Key Questions That Make a Difference

Obviously, there are lots of questions you could ask yourself (or someone else) about internet marketing. In our experience, though, the big issues really come down to three different things:

Question #1: What Outcome Are You Trying to Create?

Too many business owners spend time trying to “succeed” with online marketing. You have to get more specific. Decide what success would look like for you in the real world… and when measured in real numbers. Then you can work backward to create a plan.

Question #2: What Time or Resources Can You Devote?

Time, money, and creativity are the currencies that matter here. You can lean on any one or two when they are all you have available, but you do have to devote something to your campaigns if you want to see real and sustained results.

Question #3: Where Do You Need the Most Help?

Answer the first two questions and you’ll have some direction for the third. Maybe you don’t know how to get web traffic, or how to convert visitors into leads (as examples). If so, you can use your creative or marketing partner to fill in gaps and help you generate profits.

Need a Marketing Partner Who Can Give You Real Answers?

It’s important to ask the right questions if you want to win at online marketing. It’s even better to have a partner who can give you real, actionable answers.

Contact Nashville Interactive today to schedule a free consultation and see how we can help!

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When it comes to artificial intelligence, however, we are seeing business owners repeat a couple of errors again and again. That’s because they misunderstand the current capabilities that AI tools bring. So, they use it in ways they shouldn’t while ignoring other applications that could make them substantially more profitable.

To help clear things up, let’s look at the right and wrong ways to use artificial intelligence in online marketing…

The Wrong Way: Trying to Replace Human Input

It might be due to the media hype around the new technology, but somehow business owners seem to have gotten the idea that they can sit back and let AI just “do marketing” for them. It doesn’t really work that way.

AI programs can generate content and campaigns in the same way that self-driving cars can operate on their own. They work under the strictest, most clinical settings while failing to replicate human performance. In the same way that the cars tend to crash, the algorithms spit out articles and videos that don’t really generate views or credibility.

The bottom line? You still need humans to conceive and create content for you.

The Right Way: Leveraging Technology to Increase and Improve Output

Just because you can’t use AI to generate all your content doesn’t mean you can’t use it at all. Existing apps can help you enhance or optimize what you are making, and spread it to a wider audience.

Likewise, you can use artificial intelligence to mimic your editing touch. So, if you have a specific way you like to tweak your product photos, or want to speed up the process of removing verbal pauses in your videos (as examples), then the tools are there.

By using AI in this better way you can speed up the content creation process and end up with a better final result.

Want Help Making Sense of AI?

The great thing about artificial intelligence is that business owners don’t have to know everything about it. You simply have to recognize the opportunity and then have the right vendor working on your side. That’s where we come in. Contact Nashville Interactive today to schedule a free consultation and learn more about what we can do to help you integrate AI – and other cost- and time-saving tools – into your business for a brighter future.

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Additionally, apps like ChatGPT can help you put together text content within seconds. It also has the potential to be faster and more convenient than a human copywriter would be.

That leads us to a very natural question: should you use AI to design and/or write your website?

The short answer is “no,” with the caveat that things might change in the future. They may even change in the near future. But for the time being, you still want to work with real creative teams who can get to know your business, your customers, and your message.

That might not be the answer you want, but there are a few good reasons why…

With AI You’ll Be Using Duplicated Design and Messaging

Current iterations of AI technology aren’t capable of generating concepts, texts, or images out of thin air. Instead, they have to crawl the web, just like search engines do, and then aggregate the results. That means you can get something that’s roughly passable, but ends up being a copy of a copy.

There are a few problems with this, but the biggest one is that your website won’t be original in any way. It could also leave you with copyright violation issues.

Your New AI-Created Website Might Have Errors

It’s not great to copy other companies in the best of circumstances. If they happen to have erroneous information on their website, then things get even worse. That’s because your website will duplicate those errors while also being less focused and original.

This is one of the biggest reasons to avoid AI content creation tools at the moment.

Searchers and Engines Could Punish You for Using AI

Google and the other search engines really don’t like AI-generated content on websites. That’s mostly because they don’t make for good search results.

How likely would you be to visit a page if you thought it was just a rehash of some other already published – and potentially incorrect – webpage that hadn’t been vetted? Google knows human searchers don’t want that, so it’s using algorithmic tools to weed out AI-generated pages from its results.

Want the Best of Both Worlds?

Savvy marketers are using artificial intelligence and human creative teams together. Want to know how we do it? Contact Nashville Interactive today to schedule a free consultation and see what we can do to help your business grow in a way that’s both sustainable and cost-effective.

The post Should You Use AI to Design or Write Your Website? appeared first on Nashville Interactive.

An easy example of this can be found with content creation. Expecting an AI program to generate articles or videos for your business isn’t likely to help your marketing results. In this short post we’ll explain why, before giving you a better strategy to work with…

AI Content Is Reductive and Error-Filled

Right now, AI tools “create” content by scanning the internet and duplicating information from multiple sources. That means none of it is original, and some will inevitably be pulled from material that is incorrect or misleading.

The result is content that fails to impress search engines and actual buyers. Not what you need for your marketing plan.

Keywords Are No Longer Primary Search Signals

While AI isn’t great at creating content, it can be used very effectively to optimize for search and social viewership. It’s a poor driver, though, in that keyword optimization isn’t really a primary search signal anymore. That is, Google and its many peers don’t pay attention to text patterns like they used to.

These days, it’s all about engagement. You need live humans to interact with your content. That means human-generated pieces are still more effective.

AI Can’t Offer a First-Person Perspective

The most valuable and engaging pieces of content are those that are based on a first-person point of view. Obviously, AI can’t offer that. It can imitate what is seen, but not add new knowledge or perspectives.

Until that changes (if it ever does), AI-created content just won’t be that strong for marketing purposes.

The Good News on AI Content

Actually, there are two pieces of good news when it comes to AI-generated content. The first is that the tools are getting better all the time. You might not be able to use artificial intelligence to create articles and videos today, but that doesn’t mean you won’t take advantage of that in the future.

The second piece of good news is that AI software definitely has a place in the content creation process. That’s because existing apps are fantastic at optimizing your work for searchability. They can also help you fill in gaps by creating hashtags and descriptions, which are tedious but important jobs.

To get a sense of how you could be using AI to help move your marketing plans forward, contact Nashville Interactive today. We’ll be happy to walk you through your options and create a customized strategy for your specific business.

The post Why AI-Generated Content Falls Flat With Google and Customers appeared first on Nashville Interactive.

It’s enough that AI can help us automate routine marketing tasks, optimize our content, and generate interesting topics and connections. But one of its biggest benefits is easy to overlook: AI marketing tools tend to be very affordable.

In the past, trying new marketing ideas meant shelling out tons of money for expensive software suites or new workstations. Artificial intelligence hasn’t been like that so far. Let’s look at a few of the reasons why…

Most AI Tools Run on Cloud Software

The pricing model for software packages has changed a lot in recent years. Instead of buying CDs and licenses, you can now get cloud memberships that are available for relatively low fees. That means you can offer AI tools to employees who need them without huge upfront costs.

These lower fees can let you try different applications, or even start profiting from them, before you have to make a big commitment.

Many AI Apps Are Built on Open-Source Engines

Open-source platforms make it easy for vendors to generate add-on products quickly and affordably. Think about how many WordPress apps are out there, and how much less they cost than ecommerce tools or a software product like Magento.

It’s always possible things will change, but the AI market seems competitive enough to guarantee that prices should stay relatively low for the foreseeable future.

Using AI Doesn’t Require Hardware Upgrades

We touched on this before, but it’s important to note that AI technology runs on super computers that live on the provider’s side of the ledger. In other words, you don’t have to buy anything special to use them – you are essentially “renting” that computer space as part of your subscription fee.

This keeps AI technology affordable to business owners at every level, from garage startups to better-funded ventures.

Want to Make AI More Accessible to Your Business?

Not only can you afford to integrate AI into your business, but you can get a team of online marketing experts to help. Contact Nashville Interactive today to schedule a free consultation. We’ll show you how we can make AI affordable and effective for your business.

The post Another Reason to Get Excited About AI Marketing Tools appeared first on Nashville Interactive.

We see this all the time with regard to pay-per-click (PPC) internet advertising. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who say they need it, and others who think it’s a waste of time and money.

Neither group is absolutely correct, of course. It’s all about situational effectiveness. For example, let’s look at a more unconventional PPC strategy that could be highly profitable for the right company:

First, a growing business uses PPC ads to attract website visitors, build a following, and find out what kind of messaging works with their target market.

As their audience and influence grow, the company transitions from PPC ads to organic lead generation methods like search engine optimization (SEO) and unpaid social media promotion.

Later, once they know exactly which messages and offers are profitable, the business adds PPC ads back into the mix to maximize closing rates and improve their ROI.

This kind of nuanced approach lets a business owner avoid the trap of thinking about PPC in all-or-nothing terms. Then, they can focus on what makes sense in the moment and work to generate returns that grow over time.

Is this the kind of advice you’re getting for your business? If not, contact Nashville Interactive today to see how we can help your business grow into 2022 and beyond!

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Since The Wofford Terriers and App State (my alma mater) were in the same conference, I was already familiar with the school (and a great football rivalry) but if you’re not familiar, here’s a little snippet from the wofford.edu website:

Wofford College, established in 1854, is an independent liberal arts college located in Spartanburg, S.C. It offers bachelor’s degrees in 26 major fields of study and is well known for its programs leading to graduate and professional studies (medicine and other health professions, law, commerce and advanced graduate study across academic disciplines). The college is committed to providing superior students an undergraduate education defined by excellence, engagement, and transformation. 

Needless to say, it was with great excitement and humbleness that we took on the project of handling the front-end website development for the new website. Wofford has an excellent team of designers on staff and they provided mock ups of the layouts, passed those off to us and we built a beautiful website together. Check out Wofford.edu to see the final results.

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I just realized that it’s been almost one full year since there’s been any new blog posts on nashvilleinteractive.com and we have one great excuse: we’re too busy with client work to update our own site! I know it may look like a stagnant site and that there’s nothing going on at one of Nashville’s premiere web design companies but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that over the last year or so we’ve cranked out some of our best and most complex projects and the queue is as full as it’s ever been. Check back in the coming weeks and months for new portfolio work and news about what we’ve been doing over the last year and Follow Nashville Interactive on Facebook to get the latest updates.

And it should be noted that even though we have a full queue, Nashville Interactive is still taking on new projects so please call or email for a free quote and to get the most up-to-date timelines. 615.521.1890 / Contact Us

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We also launched a redesigned site for We Are Building Lives, another non-profit organization that helps our struggling and homeless veterans get back on their feet. The organization helps through job assistance, affordable housing, apartment furnishings, a vehicle program and general guidance. Visit WeAreBuildingLives.org if you’d like to get involved.

The new site that launched was for Controlled Efficiencies, a company that offers innovative solutions that simplify the intricacies of compliance, specifically designed for government-regulated industries. Check out CEsimplify.com to learn more. A special thanks goes out to Wait & Co. for letting us help out on this project.

And now we celebrate.

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