LeapGo Website Development Blog

4 Forward-Thinking Ways To Move Your Social Strategy Past Likes And Followers

Desiree Lowe — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:25:00 GMT

The job of a marketing director is to attract new customers who will embrace the company brand. Social media marketing is a great way to expose people to who your company is and what they provide. The old social media strategy was to get as many people as possible to follow you on Twitter or like you on Facebook. However, most businesses these days realize that merely having someone follow you is not enough.

Social Media Should Produce A Buzz Around Your Brand

The number of Twitter followers your company has is just a number. Marketing directors need to find ways to convert followers into customers who spend money. What you need to do is provide a positive customer experience. Customers who have a good experience will tell their friends about it.

Imagine how powerful your brand would be if all 127,562 of your Twitter followers gave your product a glowing review. Wouldn't you want to try a product that thousands of people were buzzing about? Your product could become the next big thing in America. Who says you can't turn your product into the next Coke or Facebook?

Understand That People Are Influenced By Their Friends And Family

A good marketing campaign can increase sales all on its own. However, your customers are more likely to be influenced by people they know. Someone may buy a car because their friend bought it and liked it. A brand of clothing may become popular because everyone at school is wearing it.

Advertisers need to understand that most consumers are influenced by those around them. It doesn't matter to an individual consumer if 1,000 people like a certain brand of shoe on Facebook. What matters to an individual is if their best friend likes that brand of shoe. What do their parents think about those shoes?

A teenager may like something simply because they know their parents don't approve. Someone in their 60's may buy an apple because their grandchild said it was a good investment. Marketers should hone in on these relationships when marketing through social channels.

Ask Your Customers To Market For You

It is important to ask your customers what they think about a certain marketing effort. In fact, you can let your customers design an advertisement themselves. Marketing directors should take advantage of the fact that customers want to be involved in this aspect of the company.

They will provide valuable input and focus testing without having to be paid for it. People always want to be connected to something. Helping out with a new advertisement allows people to do this. A company can then identify its most devoted customers. One idea is to ask people to submit a video highlighting an idea for a new jingle. Videos can be uploaded to YouTube where other people can vote and critique the entries.

Starting an affiliate marketing program for your company is another great way to get your customers to market for you. They will be motivated to tell their friends about your products if they get paid to do so. Paying customers to be affiliates saves money in the long run while increasing sales. You don't have to pay for advertising and more sales equals more revenue.

Look For Trends And Patterns

Use Social Media Management Tools to analyze what people are saying about your company. Figure out what words and phrases draw the most likes and followers to your social media page. This will help you understand what your customers are thinking and feeling about your company at any given moment. Understanding how customers think will help your marketing team fine tune their advertising pitch.

Tools can also help determine when your social media traffic is highest. This is important because you want to put out messages when more people can see them. Announcing a shoe sale on Saturday isn't going to be effective if you put out the message during a slow traffic time. There are also fewer people to pass on the message.

Your social media strategy needs to be focused on your customers. What do they want? How can the marketing team identify and exploit personal relationships between customers? Allow the customer to use the social media platform to feel involved when it comes to marketing strategy. Including your customers allows them to take ownership in the brand. They will become loyal customers who will influence others to buy that brand as well.

Are you ready to take your social strategy to the next level?

Link Building Strategies After Google Panda Update: What To Do Now

Jason Corgiat — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:25:00 GMT

Google’s recent search algorithm update has dramatically altered the search engine optimization landscape. High volume, low-quality link building strategies are no longer effective when it comes to improving your site’s ranking in the search engines. Now, SEO marketers need to focus on quality over quantity and rethink the way they build links for their sites.

Good Content

Google is now placing a huge emphasis on quality content. Both the content on your site and the content that is linking to your site need to be of high quality if you hope to see positive results out of your link building campaigns. Google is looking for more visitor interaction with your own website that demonstrates someone is interested in your content. Making changes to your website to increase visitor time on site, page views, and visits will allow your website to appear of high quality in the eyes of Google’s search algorithm.

Also, taking the time to find back link opportunities from high quality sites around the Internet will provide much better results than many links from low quality sites. Whether your link comes from a moderated blog comment, link within an article, or a site wide link does not matter in the eyes of Google so long as that link is coming from a respected website, with a high PR, that is relevant to your niche.

Guest Posting

Writing guest posts for other blogs is an excellent way to get new links for your site in a post Panda world. Blog owners are always starving for new content for their sites. Reaching out to these blog owners and offering to write a guest post for them will be welcomed with open arms. When you write the guest post, make sure to include a back link for your site.

While it is preferred to write a guest post for a blog that is within your site’s niche, this is not a requirement. As long as you can write your post so that it ties in to your site’s niche, you will see the benefits of that back link reflected in your site’s rankings. If you can creatively incorporate your site’s niche into your guest post, you could pull off a successful linkbait campaign. Writing an extremely compelling article for a blog that receives a large amount of traffic increases your chances of having your post go viral. This could provide a large number of back links for your site, which would undoubtedly help your rankings.

Create your own Authority Site

One effective back linking strategy you can employ that is Panda safe is to create your own authority site. On this site, you will post nothing but high quality content that is directly related to the content on your money site, which you are trying to rank for a specific term. After you have created this high quality content authority site, you can create several smaller sites – free web 2.0 sites with high PR will work for this – with blog posts that point to your new authority site. Mix in some other links from social media websites that point to your new web 2.0 blogs and authority site and you will surely see some improvements in the SERPS.

When creating these new blogs and authority sites, it is vital that you use the best content possible. The high quality content will ensure that your sites stay around for a long time and pass the most link juice possible.

What to Avoid

While making changes to their algorithm, Google added new penalties for certain SEO tricks that used to be very effective. No longer can you create back links with just one anchor text. If Google sees a bunch of links to your site using the same anchor text, you are sure to receive some type of penalty. Your anchor text needs to look natural in the eyes of Google which is why you need to diversify the terms you use for your anchor text. Do not be afraid to mix in terms like “click here” or “visit now” as this is how non-SEO Internet users would link to your site on the web.

There is no doubt that the recent Panda update released by Google has had a major impact on the search engine optimization world. However, it does not signal the end of SEO as we know it. There are still some SEO strategiesthat are highly effective. Placing good content on your website, obtaining links from high quality, relevant sites through guest posting, and creating your own authority site are just some of the smart ways you can build links for your website in a post Panda world.

Get a FREE SEO Audit at seotool.leapgo.com

5 Awesome Google Plus Updates That Will Benefit Your Business

Desiree Lowe — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Many speculated that Google Plus would flop because it could not be the new Facebook. Christian Oestlien, a Google Plus product manager, did not silence the fanfare when he told companies “to hold off” from using Google Plus because, in his own words, “frankly we know our product as it stands is not optimally suited to their needs...How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands, and we want to create an optimal experience for both.”* It seems that the engineers that were working to optimize Google Plus for brands have been hard at work, as the newest updates are well suited to businesses looking to connect with current customers and reach new ones.

Related article: Top Reasons To Invest In Social Media Marketing

Header Images and Profile Photos

Google Plus recently introduced new header images and profile photo updates. The profile image is now positioned on the top right of a profile for increased visibility, and it also appears larger. Instead of having five photos on the top of the profile, users can now choose to have a header image as their template. This image is similar to the banner on the new Facebook Timeline. The images can be entirely promotional or informational. For instance, brands can have images of their new products and are welcome to promote a campaign or call to action. None of the restrictions that apply to Facebook cover images apply to Google Plus. Some brands are opting to differentiate their profile image, where the brand's logo will usually go, from their header image. Other brands are connecting the images by having the same background. For instance, Bravo has the same color background in its profile photo and header, which makes the images appear seamless, and connected. Since Google Plus is a social and engaged community, there are many ways to get creative; some brands have opted to highlight a follower in their header image every week.

Trending

Taking its cue from Twitter, Google Plus' trending feature is now on the right-hand sidebar of a user's home screen. It can be found on the “Explore” icon. The more prominently positioned feature means that more Google users will see it. This is a golden opportunity for companies to showcase their content, and should be a part of a brand's content marketing strategy. According to Brian Clark from Copyblogger, the success of content marketing is because “people love to share content on social networks.”** Clark goes on to say that Google Plus will likely go on to be bigger than Facebook and Twitter because “it's been more accurately called a 'sharing' platform.” The trend upgrade will exponentially increase the sharing of content on Google Plus. Not only is it an opportunity to create and promote greater content, but it is also an opportunity to be part of the conversation and the community.

Hangouts

Unlike other social media platforms, creating and sharing content is not the only way to engage followers on Google Plus. Similar to the offline corporate world, Brian Clark explains that an audience must also “know, like and trust”*** an online brand's personality. Google Plus Hangouts can literally put a face to a company. This personal and intimate interaction is a key way to building an online following that knows, likes and trusts a brand. Instead of scripted Hangouts, Google Plus' update allows users to join Hangouts that are going on live and in real time, on the new Hangouts page; these live Hangouts are similar to the ones that occur on YouTube. Companies should choose to interact in Hangouts where their target audience frequents. It is a unique opportunity to promote without having to sell anything. Brands should also consider hosting a Hangout, be it a Q&A session, product or informational webinar etc. This is an amazing networking opportunity, an easy way to become an authority in the industry and an organic way of interacting with prospects and customers.

Related article: Google Search Plus Your World: Strategies To Improve Your SEO

Photo Albums and Videos

A picture is still worth a thousand words. What else could explain the popularity of Pinterest or YouTube? Google Plus has enhanced its photo and video features. There are no more borders around photos and videos, and the new layout allows for larger images and screens. When a user scrolls over an album, all of the photos in the album will appear in an image box over the photo. Companies can create interesting photo album presentations, share YouTube videos that are relevant to the industry and even share recorded self-hosted Hangouts.

Checking Engagement

Engagement on Google Plus means sharing or +1'ing the content. Instead of having to navigate several pages, companies can now see who is sharing their content with one click. Brands can go to any self-published posts and click the plus sign (“+”) or “Share” icons. Clicking one of these icons will display the name and image of everyone who has engaged with the post in some way.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, Google Plus is not the new Facebook. Google Plus is the best of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest and Google. As these updates demonstrate, Google Plus is here to stay by making good on its promise to make Google Plus more useful for businesses. Plus, it has the power of Google behind it. Google Plus is quickly emerging as a social media heavyweight. Brands should expect many more updates that are focused on helping brands better connect with their target audience.

So what do you think of the Google Plus updates? Will your company be using Google Plus to more effectively reach current and potential customers? Did you know that having an active Google + account can improve your website's SEO?

*Source: http://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6nskaX
**Source: http://www.copyblogger.com/google-plus-content-marketing/
*** Source: http://www.copyblogger.com/know-like-trust/

7 Major Signs Your Company Needs A Professional Website Redesign

Jason Corgiat — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Companies are often so busy with the day-to-day tasks of taking care of clients and providing actual services that they often overlook one very important part of their company’s image: their website. Websites that don’t work, appear outdated or aren’t user-friendly will exasperate users looking for the products or services that businesses have to offer.

In many major cities, you’ll often see advertisements for long-established businesses that haven’t changed their television advertisement or logo since the seventies. The haircuts, clothing, logos and graphics all make the company seem obsolete and untrustworthy. The following are the online equivalent of relying on obsolete advertising. Take a look at some of the biggest customer complaints that might draw users away from your website.

Not Mobile-Friendly

Since more people are accessing the web via their smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices than ever before, the most proactive companies are ready to serve them with easy-to-use, mobile-friendly interfaces. Companies that have barely-viewable websites when accessed on mobile devices, or worse, sites that crash the mobile browser, are going to lose potential customers quickly. Providing a mobile version gives the message that you take care of details and want to make things as convenient as possible for potential customers.

800 Pixel Width Site

With more than 98 percent of all monitors using high resolution, narrow 800 pixel websites should be a complete thing of the past. However, some sites have never bothered to update their site’s design to the much more common 1,024 or 1,680 pixel size. This makes their pages look lopsided and unprofessional.

Lack Of Fresh Content

When some companies start out, they create a simple, placeholder website that their hosting company automatically generates. When business takes off, however, the owners are often so busy growing and expanding, that they don’t take the time to update their web page. This gives the impression that their company is much smaller than it actually is.

If the last new item on your site is more than a few months old, this is not a good sign. Interaction with users is what Web 2.0 is all about. If your site isn’t constantly adding new content and providing ways to communicate with your visitors, your competitors will quickly take advantage of your lack of web savvy. Contact information should always be current, as well as “about us” pages. Adding a company blog and utilising professional blog writing services is a great way to improve your reputation within your industry and, more importantly, with your customers.

Poor Navigation and Cumbersome Interfaces

Well-built, intuitive websites have made users expect a system that gets them quickly to what they’re looking for. If your website uses an overly complicated graphical interface that adversely affects load times or has a disorganized navigational flow, impatient visitors will go elsewhere. If you sell widgets, your site should make it easy for users to find the widget sales page, information about widget repair and other topics they’re obviously looking for. For ecommerce sites, the checkout process is one of the most important aspects of the site. An irritating or confusing check out process could lose you a sale at the last minute.

Website Doesn’t Show Up In Search Results

If you use relevant keywords to search for your website in Google or Bing and your website doesn't show up, you probably have a search engine optimization problem. Up-to-date search engine optimization is required to get the highest ranking possible. This is, after all, how potential clients would find your company online. A professional SEO marketing firm can help you quickly get your website’s content and structure up to the latest SEO standards.

Website’s Content Is Hardcoded

Older websites were often hardcoded, meaning the content was embedded in the code of each page. Business owners might have gotten used to living with typos, errors or out of date contact information or statistics because their site had hardcoded text on each page.

Thanks to content management systems, changing data on a webpage is easier than ever. If your site is not using one of these systems, there are likely numerous SEO and style benefits that make it worth upgrading. Since most CMS programs are free, there is really no reason not to update your existing website to one of these powerful solutions.

Broken Links and Script Errors

Nothing looks worse than a website that pops open a bunch of error messages as soon as it starts up. If your site utilizes Javascript or PHP code, you’ll want to make sure it works with modern browsers and also older ones. For example when users fill out your contact form and click send, are they getting error messages? Web services that break and display error messages or code to the user give an impression of disregard for the customer experience, and will send users elsewhere. Additionally, these types of errors can even expose your site to hackers who can exploit these bugs to gain access to your data. Use any of the free website testing tools available online to see what users experience when arriving at your site.

Staying Competitive

These are just a few of the symptoms of a website desperately in need of a professional website redesign. Users expect modern companies to stay current and provide them with easy to use, intuitive websites and businesses need to turn site visitors into customers. This can’t occur if the website is poorly designed. A professional web design company like LeapGo can take an audit of your existing website to determine whether a redesign is what you need.

Conversion Optimization: Turning Website Visitors Into Customers

Jason Corgiat — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Conversion optimization is a powerful technique that all online businesses could benefit from. Most businesses realize that they need to have a website and some type of Internet presence in order to be successful in today’s technological world. But, if you are not optimizing your website, you are missing out on the opportunity to grow your business and gain more customers or clients. Conversion optimization will help increase your revenue without simultaneously increasing your marketing expenses.

What is Conversion Optimization?

Conversion optimization is the process of making changes to your website in order to get more of your website’s visitors to take the action you desire. Every website should serve a specific purpose such as getting someone to pick up the phone and call your business, fill out a contact form, or purchase a product on your website. Your company's website design should keep this end goal in mind so that you can encourage your visitors to complete the desired action.

Why is Conversion Optimization Important?

The biggest reason why conversion optimization is important is that it helps increase the effectiveness of your website. Simply having a website on the internet is not enough to increase the amount of business you do. When you focus on what your visitors are doing on your website, you are able to steer them in a direction that gets your visitors to complete whatever goal you have set out for your website.

Websites can be a terrific business development tool if used properly. By taking the time to analyze your website’s traffic and their interaction with your site, you will be able to see where changes can be made on your site that will dramatically increase your conversion rate, and ultimately increase your revenue stream.

How to Perform Conversion Optimization

A major aspect of conversion optimization is dealing with the conversion funnel. When thinking about your website’s goal, it helps to picture it as a funnel where your site’s visitors enter through the top and slowly move towards the end goal, with some visitors leaving your site along the way. Your website’s main goal is made up of smaller micro conversions that can also be optimized. When you optimize each of these conversions along the path to your main goal, you will see the entire process become much more efficient.

The conversion funnel through the eyes of a prospect can be summed up by four questions directed at your business:

- What do you do?*
- Why should I care?*
- How do you do it?*
- Where do we begin?*

Adequately answering each of these questions posed by your prospects will enable you to improve your conversion rate.

When a prospect comes to your website, they may ask the question, “What do you do?” This is the part of the conversion funnel where you introduce your business and exactly what it is you do. You can list all of your services you offer or all of the products you sell. If a prospect is interested in learning more about your business, they will move onto the next stage of the funnel by asking, “Why should I care?” This is where you need to sell your prospect on your industry knowledge and expertise. Being able to present yourself as an expert in your field will create trust with your prospect and move them further along the conversion funnel.

The third stage of the conversion funnel is when a prospect asks, “How do you do it?” This is where you would explain thoroughly how your business can help solve your prospect’s problems. Listing all of the products or services you offer that will benefit your prospect will help them see exactly why they should use your business to solve their problems.

The fourth and final stage of the conversion funnel is when the prospect asks, “Where do we begin?” Once a prospect has made up his/her mind and wants to hire your company or make a purchase through your website, you need to make it as easy as possible for your website’s visitor to do that. If your sign up form or checkout process is too complicated, you may lose your prospect who was willing to become a paying customer.

Conversion optimization is a great way to increase the amount of business that your company does without increasing your advertising expenses. Taking the time to analyze and optimize landing pages, shopping carts, and signup forms can play a huge role in the success of your website as a business development tool. If your company's website is losing valuable leads and potential customers due to poor design or other glaring website issues, it's time for a professional website redesign.

*Source: www.searchengineland.com

Blogging Frequency Directly Impacts Customer Acquisition

Jason Corgiat — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:35:00 GMT

Blogging more often will result in more leads and customers, according to a recent marketing industry report by Hubspot. The study found that companies with higher blogging frequencies were able to acquire significantly more customers than firms that aren’t blogging.

The “2012 State of Inbound Marketing” *report revealed that a whopping 92% of blog posters who published frequently were able to get a customer directly from their blog. This number dropped by a third for bloggers posting once per month. For those posting less than once a month, only 43% were successful in acquiring a customer with their blog. Just over 60% of respondents reported that they blogged at least once a week. On the high end, 10% were putting up posts every day. In contrast, 30% stated they were only posting once a month or less.

How often should you produce blog articles?

Your blogging frequency will be influenced by a number of factors.

Industry activity. If you are in a very active industry with plenty of new products, prominent personalities, important legislation, technological advances and more, you will need to post several times of day to cover these items of interest. On the other hand, if you are in a staid business sector without a lot going on every day, once a week or less will be enough.

Personal time. Consistently researching, aggregating and creating good content takes time. Make sure your has enough time to commit to the blogging frequency you choose. If dedicating yourself or your staff to a content development strategy isn’t an option right now you’re not alone. It’s for that reason that many of our clients choose us for professional blog writing services.

Promotional support. It’s increasingly important to follow up blog posts by promoting them to social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you are handling this internally, you need to integrate this promotional time into your team’s schedule. Again, if time and resources are an issue don’t hesitate to contact us for social media management or blog writing. We can also do both as an integrated service. Remember that search engines now factor in social media to determine how high your website will rank.

How can you stick to a consistent schedule?

There are several tactics we use internally and recommend to post more often without burning out of topics or inspiration.

Use an editorial calendar. Determine what topics will be influencing your intended audience, and prepare your content to address those concerns. Is your “busy season” coming up? What industry conferences will affect your readers? Are there recurring themes that arise the same time each year? By planning ahead, you’ll find it easier to develop background material, schedule interviews, and create more interesting posts.

Write now, publish later. Utilize the ability of your software to schedule posts ahead of time. You can write several posts now while things are slow and set them to publish in the future. Later, you can spend your time offering updates and collateral material to compliment your original postings.

Get new ideas from twitter. By following the right people and brands as well as conducting some keyword searches on twitter you can get a ton of ideas for blog posts rather quickly. It’s an easy way to jump-start the brainstorming topics for your next meeting about blog writing topics.

Blogging for Success

Increasing blogging activity (or starting if you aren’t already) is proven to be an effective way to reach more prospects and convert them to customers. The challenge is to find the time to devote to a concerted, ongoing blogging effort. Whether you handle the blogging duties internally, or call on a professional blog writing service like LeapGo to help, maintaining a healthy posting frequency of great content is a proven way to add to the bottom line.

Has your business been reaping good results from its blog writing efforts?

Content by Jason Corgiat

Image source: MarketingCharts.com

*Statistical resource: www.hubspot.com

Top Reasons To Invest In Social Media Marketing

Desiree Lowe — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

An increasing number of companies, including small businesses, are intent on investing a larger percentage of their marketing budgets into social media.

According to research by Forrester Consulting, some 59 percent of senior marketers believe that their companies need to utilize social media marketing fully in order to survive. About 71 percent of these marketing professionals feel that their companies can push ahead of competitors by using social media more effectively.

Only 37 percent of those surveyed said that their companies had fully embraced social media as an integral part of their marketing campaigns and only 3 in 10 senior marketers said that their companies have long-term social media strategies.

The available evidence, though, supports the senior marketers' belief that social media can dramatically improve their company's marketing performance. Here are some of the most important reasons for businesses to invest in the social networking area.

- According to the Synapse Local Trac Report 2011, Facebook fans spend an average of $71.84 annually on products that they “like” on that social media platform. A fan is 41 percent more likely than the general population to recommend products or services that they like to their social media friends. Facebook fans are 28 percent more likely to be loyal users.

- A Harris Poll suggests that about a third of social media consumers utilize these platforms to tell their friends about companies that they really like. Through sharing, liking, recommending and similar actions, social media sites have become integral to the way many of us make consumer decisions.

- Social media marketing is perfect for establishing your brand. Once you have loyal friends, fans, followers and other community members on social networking platforms, you can turn many of them into dedicated brand advocates. Studies show that about one in 10 consumers act as free brand promoters online and the number goes up to 90 percent for “millennials.” The younger generation uses social media for nearly everything and future success will mean having a presence on the platforms that they use.

- Market research suggests that businesses plan to invest higher shares of their marketing budget into social media in the future. Companies that miss fully embracing this trend will be left at a competitive disadvantage. With the expansion of Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G/4G mobile broadband networks, an increasing number of people are using their laptops, smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices to access the Internet from practically any location. What this means is that companies using social media effectively will be able to reach these people at nearly any time of the day. Those organizations that are not fully present and active on these platforms will surely fall behind in the marketing race.

- Social media provides a free and simple platform for surveying and testing public opinion. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook make it easy to search for consumers' impressions on products and services. For example, if a company introduces a new product, it can use social media management tools to scan Twitter for public “tweets” that contain the product’s name. Software applications can analyze these tweets automatically not only by keyword, but even by commonly used social media symbols like ":)" and ":(" to assess whether the public reaction is positive or negative. Companies can also post questions or surveys on their social media profile pages to see how their online communities feel about certain issues, products or services.

- Social media can act as a customer service and support network. An increasing number of companies use these sites to provide product updates and news, and even to respond to customer help requests. For example, by responding to a query on a common problem with a product, all members of the online community will be able to read the solution. This can be much more efficient than responding to the same problem for large numbers of clients individually. Social media lets customers provide instant feedback, which allows companies to respond in a timelier manner to important issues.

- More consumers consult social media before buying products online. Research from the E-Tailing Group suggests that one in three consumers check with their social media communities before deciding on purchases. An Inc Magazine study found that about seven out of 10 online shoppers is more likely to do business with companies that have active social media profile pages.

- Social media helps with search engine optimization (SEO). This factor can be especially important for businesses that sell products and services from their own websites. SEO is key to keeping a steady flow of traffic to your sites that can in turn lead to more conversions (sales). Changes to search engine algorithms recently place great emphasis on social media presence. In particular, websites can realize higher placements in search engine results pages when the site has recommendations from the user’s social media friends.

Bottom Line: If you're not already investing in Social Media Marketing and maintaining an active presence with a clear goal in mind, you are basically setting your business up to get left behind, and possibly lose existing customers to your socially savvy competition. The good news is that it's not too late to get a jumpstart!

Image source: Make Money In Life

Desiree on Google +

E-Commerce Website Design: BigCommerce vs Shopify

Jason Corgiat — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:52:00 GMT

Getting started on your first e-commerce website can be a frightening prospect for the uninitiated, but it needn't be if you do your homework. While one could conceivably craft their own e-commerce platform from scratch, there's no reason to take this route. That's because hosted e-commerce storefronts do the job just as well with a minimum of configuration and setup time. The two most popular hosted e-commerce programs currently in use are BigCommerce and Shopify. Each solution has its own unique benefits and drawbacks, which is why an in-depth look at both is necessary before making a decision on either.

Features and Benefits

The most important criteria by which any e-commerce shop should be judged are product management and extensibility. BigCommerce is a heavy hitter in both departments, offering the ability to manage inventory conveniently and add extra features at will. One big advantage of BigCommmerce is its ability to accept pre-orders from customers. On top of that, BigCommerce allows the store owner to create customized order pages quickly and easily. If there's a specific functionality that you need that's not found in the default installation, BigCommerce also supports tons of apps for grafting on any feature required.

Shopify is fairly adept as well when it comes to dealing with inventory, managing featured products and extending the basic functionality of the storefront. Though it's not as comprehensive as BigCommerce in those areas, it'll get the job done for the most part. On the third-party software front, Shopify is easily the equal of BigCommerce in terms of extensions. They have a dedicated App Store that allows developers to submit their own custom add-ons for free and even sell them for a reasonable rate. Whatever extra functionality you need to tack on, Shopify has got an app for it.

Marketing & Design

Any e-commerce veteran knows that a poorly laid-out e-commerce store can seriously impact the conversion rates of even the best online shop. When it comes to SEO and marketing, BigCommerce boasts all the usual features you'd expect like sitemapping, social media integration and comparison shopping. In addition, BigCommerce features unparalleled back-end analytics and tracking. As for design, the default template of BigCommerce is getting a bit long in the tooth. In other words, it requires a bit of tweaking to look modern. Fortunately, there are hundreds of themes available that can be easily installed to make it look however you'd like.

In terms of aesthetics and marketing, Shopify is more attractive out of the gate and provides a sleek and appealing interface for a basic e-commerce shopping cart. It also features the ability to theme the storefront as you see fit, much like BigCommerce. Furthermore, Shopify boasts sitemapping, social media features and the ability to support coupons and discounts. As for the back-end details, Shopify isn't as full-featured as BigCommerce when it comes to tracking, analytics and reporting. That makes Shopify a bit more difficult to fine-tune, although it's usually not an issue for smaller sites.

Cost and Value Considerations

The price of a BigCommerce installation starts at a mere $24.95 per month and provides the customer with 2 GB worth of bandwidth by default. They'll charge you 0.5 cents for every megabyte of traffic above that limit, which isn't going to really affect your bottom line unless you're in a very low-margin business to begin with. One of the nice things about BigCommerce is the fact that they don't charge commissions on sales, which makes their metered bandwidth approach a lot more sensible. Like practically every hosted service on the web, your account comes with bonus Google Adwords credit.

Shopify has a similar starting price of $29 per month, and doesn't feature a bandwidth limit like BigCommerce. Of course, there's a significant caveat to this deal, as you may have expected. Shopify charges a 2% commission on every sale, so it's not quite the bargain you might think. Again, your profit margin will determine which one is a better deal. In a high-margin business, the 2% commission might not matter to you. But it's still food for thought and you'll have to do some calculations based on your expected traffic and sales to figure out which service will ultimately be a better deal.

The Verdict

Overall, both BigCommerce and Shopify offer tremendous bargains to anyone looking to start up an e-commerce store. Shopify is slightly easier to set up, but ultimately less full-featured. Over the long haul, BigCommerce is basically the better deal. If you're serious about making your e-commerce shop succeed, BigCommerce is really the best option at present. Whichever solution you choose, keep in mind that it's always a good idea to have an e-commerce specialist who's knowledgeable in designing online storefronts do the initial setup and ongoing maintenance for you. A little money spent on professional web development in the short-term can save you loads of headache later on.

Google Algorithm Update: 10 Great Ways To Deal With Duplicate Content

Jason Corgiat — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Recent Google updates to its search engine algorithm will have a significant impact on search results especially with reference to duplicate content.

The most important changes to the algorithm in the latest update are:

Link evaluation – The evaluation techniques used for some time now are changing although no details are available yet.

Fresher images – Search results for images will show fresher content with the option to filter by “Past Week.”

Higher position for local results – Local search results will appear higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Panda 3.3 – The Panda update involves a data refresh and apparently it will not have any impact on ranking.

Panda and Duplicate Content

Google’s Panda updates changed the way the search engine deals with duplicate content. Bad content not only hurts pages now, but also it can bring down an entire website.

Panda’s purpose is to penalize sites with too much duplicate content whereas before the search engine omitted these pages or included them as supplemental results.

Here are 10 great ways to help you deal with duplicate content and avoid penalties due to the Google Panda update.

1. Use the canonical tag -- Once you track down duplicate content with Google Webmaster Tools or similar applications, you can implement the rel=canonical tag to handle domain and cross-domain issues.

2. 301 Redirect – Another way to handle duplication is to use a 301 redirect that informs visitors that the page has moved to another address. This may be a better option than implementing 404 pages, which may end up disappointing human visitors and could have some impact on your overall site juice. A 301 redirect is especially good for duplicate content with incoming links.

3. Consolidating pages – Google Panda recognizes pages with similar but not identical content as a form of duplication. Therefore, if you have articles split into many pages with thin content, you may want to consider consolidating these into fewer pages if not just a single page.

4. Templated content – Instead of using templated content, find ways to create new content without breaking the bank. Many freelance contractor websites allow you to ask for bids on projects from writers all over the world. In many cases, you can save substantial money by outsourcing to skilled writers with English language skills in the developing world. Another possibility is to hire a professional to create fresh original content.

5. Robots.txt – You can use the robots.txt to keep crawlers from indexing the duplicates without having to remove them from your site. The robots.txt file in the root directory tells search bots which files to crawl when they reach your domain. Simply add lines like “Disallow: /duplicate.htm” or “Disallow: /duplicate-folder” to prevent bots from crawling specific pages or folders respectively.

6. Meta Robots tag – Web bots also check header tags before crawling through the page’s content. The meta robots tag goes between the and tags prior to the main body of the page with the following format: . The tag tells the web crawler not to index the content of the page or to follow links included on the page. If you do want the search bot to follow the links but not to index the page content, use the tag “NOINDEX, FOLLOW” instead.

7. Google URL removal – An option that addresses the problem of duplicate content on Google alone is to use the “Remove URL” option at Google Webmaster Tools. You can find this tool by going to “Site configuration” at Google Webmaster Tools and then clicking through to “Crawler access.” On the latter page, there are three tabs with the last one giving the option “Remove URL.” Click on this tab and enter the URL to remove the duplicate page.

8. Internal links – Be careful to set your internal links to the canonical or 301 redirect page rather than to the duplicate content! If you make changes like a 301 redirect or add a rel=canonical link, take the time to check your old links and ensure that they point to the correct page.

9. Setting Google crawl parameters – At Google Webmaster Tools, you can block the search bot from indexing pages based on URL parameters. Click through to “Site Configuration” and then to “URL parameters.” Google will display the URL parameters for your site along with the current settings for those parameters. Select “No: Doesn’t affect page content (ex: tracks usage)” for those parameters that you do not want the search bot to crawl.

10. Improve content quality – Generally, you can reduce the possibility of Google sensing near-duplication by creating original high quality content with significant depth. Thin pages can easily categorize as near-duplicates, so increase the amount of text, but make sure that the style and quality are great. Adding rich media will help set your pages apart.

Summary

As you can see, with the recent Google Algorithm Update website owners really can't afford to ignore duplicate content anymore. A complete website audit would be beneficial in determining the best method to fix the problem, especially during a website redesign.

Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest: Who's King?

Desiree Lowe — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In today's fast-paced business world, it can sometimes be hard to tap into your niche and really make a name for your business. Thankfully, one of the most cost effective ways to reach your target audience and raise awareness of your product is through social networks.

Accounting for 16.6% of time spent online in 2011, social networks capture the attention of many different ages and walks of life. The landscape of social networking is changing from people trying to gain popularity to people trying to find ways to make their lives easier. This is being done through businesses offering online exclusive deals that consumers cannot find anywhere else besides their official social network pages. Social networks such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest all offer ways to interact with people and increase awareness of your brand. But what exactly is the difference between each network? Why not just choose one and stick to it?

Facebook is one of the most popular social networks in the world having over 500 million people signed up for the service as of 2011. Additionally, over half of the 500 million that are registered log on and check the website at least once a day. One of the top reasons Facebook can be helpful to your business is the ability to buy ad space. By purchasing ad space, your advertisement will appear to the audience that you want to target. For example, say your business is a guitar repair center; you can have your ad shown to users between ages 13–30, who "like" playing guitar and live in a location that you specify. It is a simple and effective way to advertise to your target audience. For a broader and cheaper approach, your company can also create a Facebook page for your business. By doing this, people can "like" your page and see updates from your company such as deals and sales that they might not find anywhere else, giving them a reason to continuously check your company's page. Facebook has helped many companies gain more exposure and get more business, and your business could potentially be next.

Google+ is a new social network, but it has already begun showing how it can be a benefit to businesses. While it may not yet have the large number of users that Facebook does, it has something that no other network has, Google. The search engine Goliath created this network, which is similar to Facebook in that it lets businesses create "pages" to engage with followers. But the killer feature that this social network has that no others do is that it links Google+ to Google Search Plus Your World, making it an integral part of Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization. This means that any business that wants to improve its online presence through SEO must create a Google+ page and be an active user.

Twitter burst onto the social networking scene a few years ago and has continued to grow and expand ever since. In December 2011 alone, Twitter drew 37.5 million unique visitors. Twitter allows users to send out 140 character "tweets" to say what they want. What makes Twitter different from other websites, is that it offers businesses the ability to interact with customers in real-time, and stay up to date with the latest industry news and opinions. Through the use of hash tags businesses can create chat forums, or run contests or reach a wider audience. For example, if you own "Chester's Cheeses," you could send out the tweet, "We will randomly pick someone to win a wheel of our finest cheese. All you need to do is use the hash tag '#chesterscheeses.' What this could do is make "#chesterscheeses" a trending topic on Twitter. Even if it doesn’t, each user that sees the tag may click on it to learn more, giving your brand a wider reach and, potentially bringing in new customers.

Related Article: This is Why Your Tweets Are Boring

The newest out of all of the social networks discussed is Pinterest. However this doesn’t make it any less powerful, Pinterest is already making a name for itself. Users create their own personal bulletin boards onto which they “pin” images they find interesting while surfing the Internet. It has exploded in popularity and is the newest way for companies to promote their products by ‘pinning’ captivating images. Users can then ‘re-pin’ those images thousands or millions of times, thus furthering the product’s exposure for free. For example, if you own a clothing boutique, you can create a "board," (similar to a personal page) featuring pictures of your latest clothing available. Users can then comment on, like, or re-pin those images onto their own boards. When a user clicks on those images it will take them directly to your website, potentially increasing traffic and sales. It is estimated that Pinterest has already been generating more referral traffic to websites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined!

As you can see, all of these social networks have their own unique way that they can help you promote your business and engage with your audience. While there is no clear "king" of social networks, you can become the king of your business by effectively using these networks to reach new customers and gain more business.

Not sure how to use these networks to grow your business? Check out LeapGo's Jumpstart Package today.

What's your preferred social network? Why? Tell us by commenting below...

Professional Blog Writing: Give Your Blog Readers What They Want

Jason Corgiat — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:00:00 GMT

A big part of being successful at professional blog writing is giving your audience what they want. While you can come up with endless amounts of content that you like writing about, it will not be successful if it doesn’t address what your readers are looking for. When it comes to writing for your blog, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your readers and understand how to capture their attention.

Know Your Audience

If you are going to have a realistic shot at providing the content that your visitors want, you're going to need to find out who is your audience (or if you’re just starting out, who you want to target). You can't simply guess at what your visitors want or who is reading your blog. This part of the process is going to require some real research on your part.

In most cases, you can check out your website’s traffic statistics with your hosting company or Google Analytics. Most hosting companies provide you with detailed statistics about where your traffic is coming from and who is visiting your site. Try to look at as much detailed demographics information as possible. For example, look at how old your visitors are, what sex they are and where they're coming from.

If the vast majority of your website visitors are 25-year old females from China, you will need to write content that caters to that demographic as opposed to content that would appeal to an older demographic eg. 50 year old men from the United States. While you want your blog to have a general theme, you may have to tailor the content to your visitors as much as possible. Focus on what your target market needs and then provide it to them.

Related article: Top 10 Professional Blog Writing Mistakes To Avoid

Relate to Your Audience

Once you know the type of visitors your blog has, it's your job to relate to them. During this part of the process, you should try to tell a story, if at all possible. Some of the most successful movies and books of all time use a template that is referred to as the "hero's journey." With this technique, the story revolves around a hero. When writing a blog post, try to make your reader feel like the hero in the story. In most stories, the hero is introduced and then has to overcome some kind of adversity before eventually solving a major problem. For example, when writing a blog post about buying a vacation package, your hero is the shopper and the obstacle that must be overcome is finding an affordable vacation package. If your blog is about sports training strategies, the hero is an athlete and the goal might be to dunk a basketball or shoot a two under par.

Throughout this process of telling a story, you should also strive to answer as many burning questions as you can. Every reader has some questions in mind that they go out in search of answers for. This is probably how they ended up on your blog in the first place. Ask yourself what your reader wants to know and then provide that information.

If you approach professional blog writing by giving dry explanations, your visitors will not be able to relate to it effectively. Instead of using this approach, try using vibrant stories to get your message across. This will make a big difference in how satisfied your visitors are over the long-term.

You can also include a personal story from your life in the article or a point of view. Many readers like the idea of being able to relate to someone else who has the same problem. Even if you don't have the exact same problem as one of your visitors, you can usually find some common themes. People relate to stories much better than they do with other methods. If it's a true story, the visitor will relate to it even better and be much more receptive to the solution that you provide. If you can show that you've been through the same problem in the past and got through it or that you understand the problem they are experiencing and have a solution, your website visitors will appreciate your honesty and be willing to accept your recommendations.

How to Address Visitors

When it comes to providing an answer to a problem, be as specific as possible. Avoid using vague generalities and theory to answer specific questions. In addition to giving specific answers, you should also provide tools that your readers can use to solve their problems.

Throughout the process, address your visitors with confidence as if you are the expert in the field. You are offering guidance on how to solve a problem. While giving guidance, offer some specific tools to help your visitors. These tools could be a software program, an e-book, a service or some other resource that can help them take action.

Putting it All Together

When writing content for your blog, your goal is to capture the attention of your audience and provide them with the information that they are searching for. Where relevant, take your visitor through a story and then lead them to the finish line by offering a specific recommendation or action item that takes them even further. This will help you build authority with your audience and at the same time give them what they want.

Facebook Interest Lists Get Brands More Exposure

Desiree Lowe — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT

With the recent announcement of new "Interest Lists" Facebook hopes to whittle down previously overwhelming user newsfeeds by allowing Facebook users to determine their ideal content and items of interest. This will functionally allow every person who accesses Facebook to create their own newspapers, streaming live news that only appeals to their personal interests. By allowing this sort of "self-marketing" to begin with more specificity than it already has in the internet battle for ad space, Facebook opens a plethora of possibilities to its users. However, these possibilities pale in comparison to the revenue increasing opportunities of brands who manage to put themselves in millions of individually tailored spotlights.

Because this new development allows users to be more choosy with their content, it also forces businesses to be increasingly fresh and appealing in their social media marketing. Instead of make their way to the top of the pile with the right combination of keywords that appeal to consumers' search engines, businesses must prove themselves "list worthy" by appealing consistently to the needs of their demographic and creating persistently new and intriguing content. No new battle for businesses, but there are, as always, new social media tricks to be learned.

Related article: Facebook: How To Use The New Timeline For Business Pages

For Facebook users, subscribing to lists will be beneficial: to do so----assuming you're one of the lucky ones already allowed the up and coming, gradually released feature--navigate to the left side of your news feed. Click "Add Interests." This option is sometimes hidden, and you may have to click "more" for this to appear. The next screen displays your bazillion (or close to) list options, ranging from topics like "parenting" and "relationships" to media sites specific to subjects like "March Madness" or "The New York Times: Op Eds."

As Facebook competes with big business muscle like Google and Yahoo, this allows them to prove their ad dollars more efficient; users can even make lists about entrepreneurs, social media marketing, tech news, economic information from specific perspectives and product information in their areas of expertise or interest.

This move makes sense for Facebook as they attempt to make good on their promises of greater reach. One of Facebook's biggest potential moneymakers is it's tremendous impact on the daily life of it's hundreds of millions of users; we all know this, but as the market fills up, the standards for being heard must be made somehow. After all, there are no requirements for appearing on the internet, only market-driven results determine the worthwhile content.

Exciting for businesses because of the potential to stand out in a previously flooded arena, the new addition requires fast action on behalf of your brand. If it can increase Facebook's trading value it can increase yours, and the process is simple: as soon as your brand gets added to new interest lists, your reach is immediately extended beyond your current fan base.

At this point, many of Facebook's most prominent Interest Lists are managed and created by Facebook employees. Getting added to them may not currently be an option, though in the future, networking amongst list creators and pitching reasons for membership may be a possibility. For now, your first priority as a brand remains creating the most engaging content and therefore a more interested fan base most likely to add you to their lists. It's also ideal to create your own list, one that may feature other brands or opinions that coincide with yours without functioning as direct competition.

To create a list, navigate to the "subscribe" Interest List page where you can browse and choose lists of interest. This page allows you the option to "Create List." You can add any or every page you "like" on Facebook, especially the page for your own brand. To up the ante of interest, you can make your status updates about the brand visible, or stream trending topics that relate to your business. For instance, if you want to create an Interest List for "Michigan Education Products" to advertise your educational supplies company, add breaking news about Michigan education and opinion articles from educators about what school systems need from their suppliers. Tweak your lists as you realize which topics are likely to create the most buzz, or create new lists for each topic to stay specific and still meet the needs of multiple demographics.

How do you feel about Facebook Interest lists? Have you already created or subscribed to any lists?

How To Combat Poor Ecommerce Website Performance

Jason Corgiat — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:09:00 GMT

Poor website performance can be the kiss of death when it comes to running a successful e-commerce site, and a recent survey confirmed it. According to a recent Compuware survey, 22 percent of respondents stated that they would move along to a different website if they experienced just a single problem while attempting to make an online purchase. More alarming is the fact that 86% said they were less likely to return to a company's website after a poor experience. You can't expect visitors to your site to be understanding about errors, either. According to the survey, 59 percent of users expect websites to work at all times. If your site has issues, this could be costing you dearly.

What the Survey Means for Online Retailers

As an online retailer, your number-one priority is to keep your customers happy. Competition is fierce in general, but it's especially heated on the Internet. After all, a person can click their way over to another site at any given moment. The Compuware survey highlights the fact that online consumers are intolerant of website glitches, errors and problems. It also shows that they are becoming less and less tolerant over time. In 2009, 10 percent of them said that a single problem would make them shop elsewhere; that number has more than doubled since then.

A Lot is at Stake

After going through all the work that is involved in getting people over to your site in the first place, the last thing you want to do is give them a reason to go away. There are plenty of sites out there that work flawlessly. If yours doesn't, why should anyone stick around? Why give your competition an edge? It is well worth it to invest extra time and money into monitoring your site and ensuring that it is functioning properly at all times. There are several ways to do so. Learn about a few of the best options below.

Website Monitoring Software

The first thing on your list should be website monitoring software. There are many different programs available, so you should browse around and try a few different ones. In many cases, it's possible to get a free trial to determine whether or not a particular program is right for you. Once you find the perfect fit, make sure to put it to use.

Website monitoring programs perform a wide variety of worthwhile functions. The best ones for e-commerce sites are designed to measure and monitor the end user experience. They allow you to know, at a glance, the responsiveness and availability of your website. They also continually monitor your site to ensure that it is free of errors. As an added bonus, some of today's most popular website monitoring programs send you alerts the second a problem is detected. In turn, you'll be able to respond quickly and correct the problem before it puts a serious dent in your profitability.

Google Analytics Real-Time Statistics

Google Analytics has been around for some time. Even if you opt for proper website monitoring software, you should take advantage of the great features and benefits that go along with this free service. For a long time, Google Analytics strictly provided day-old website statistics. Real-time statistics are now available, however, and they allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of the overall health and well-being of your website. The service is totally free, so there's no good reason not to put it to use.

One of the best thing about the real-time statistics that you can monitor through Google Analytics is that they display information like page views per minute and per second. By checking in periodically, you can get a feel for your site's usual traffic patterns. When sudden spikes occur, you can often trace them back to exact social media campaigns and other marketing efforts. When sudden drops happen, on the other hand, you can get right to work to determine what is wrong. Dramatic plunges in traffic are often caused by website errors and problems, so it's important to respond quickly when they occur.

Google Webmaster Tools

Another great free Google service is Google Webmaster Tools, and it provides several additional ways to ensure that your site is functioning as optimally as possible. It doesn't take a lot of time or effort to check in with Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools is a complete suite of website optimization and enhancement tools. Many people primarily use it to optimize the visibility of their websites, but it's chock full of additional tools that keep you apprised of whether or not your site is functioning well.

Through the Google Webmaster Tools interface, you can check your site for errors. When Google crawls your site, it keeps track of things like broken links and dead ends. Those are the types of things that can send visitors packing, so they should be avoided at all costs. With a few clicks of the mouse button, you can generate error reports that let you know if any issues exist. Information includes sites that link to yours as well as links to other pages within your site. You can also check and change the crawl rate of the Google web crawler. This is especially smart to do immediately following major changes to your site.

UserTesting.com

Reports and graphs are great, but understanding how real people view and interact with your site is important too. That's where UserTesting.com comes into play. This site gives you instant access to real people who visit your site, put it to use and let you know how they feel about it. In addition to writing summaries about any problems or issues that they encounter, the visitors are recorded while they are actually visiting your website. As they click around, they make comments about what works, what doesn't and their overall impression. You can select visitors based on demographic information, which is especially valuable.

Website Audit and Redesign through LeapGo

After putting the preceding tools to work, you may discover that serious errors exist on your site. Whether you can pinpoint the problem to precise errors, or if your site is just not user-friendly in general, the next step is getting to work on fixing it. A great way to get the ball rolling is by hiring LeapGo to perform an audit of your site. When setting up the audit, you can let LeapGo know about what you've discovered through the tools that are listed above. LeapGo will then perform its own audit of your site to zero in on what's working and what isn't.

When the audit is complete, LeapGo will present you with a detailed report of its findings. You can make the necessary changes yourself, or you can hire LeapGo to redesign your site. The latter option is definitely more convenient, and the LeapGo team will redesign your site with user-friendliness in mind. The Compuware survey is just the latest example of why it pays to have an error-free website. A single error can cost you untold amounts of business. What works today could fail tomorrow, so ongoing monitoring is critical. It also pays to have a talented website development team on your side, and you will get that when you hire LeapGo. Check out the tools that are highlighted above and contact LeapGo when you're ready to take your site to a whole new level.

Facebook: How To Use The New Timeline For Business Pages

Desiree Lowe — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:29:00 GMT

Facebook’s new Timeline format offers businesses more flexibility in arranging their business page layout than did the previous model. With the new setup, users can highlight and feature postings and items more effectively, and they can tell their story with a wide array of useful features.

The primary advantages of Facebook Timeline for business are the following:

Cover photo
Feature and Pin options
Arrange various page elements
Insert stories anywhere in the Timeline
About section
Admin Panel

As the name suggests, Timeline is about telling your story, the story of your business, via a composite chronological graphic layout. The feature allows businesses to provide more information about themselves in a way that builds relationships and trust.

Cover photo

The cover photo is the first thing that visitors to your page will notice. The old profile photo still exists overlapping the cover near the latter’s bottom left-hand corner. The profile photo retains its old size, but the new cover stretches across the Timeline at the top of the page measuring 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.

Facebook makes it simple to change the cover by hovering your mouse over the photo and then selecting from the Change Cover menu. Many creative Timeline users create composite images that combine the cover and profile photos. Businesses can use the cover photo to showcase their services, customers, products, or team while retaining the profile photo for their main logo.

Note that Facebook has guidelines on the cover photo that prevent you from including items like prices, website URL or calls to action. You can read the full cover rules when you create your Timeline.

Feature and Pin options

The Timeline divides two columns with stories appearing in each column. However, if you wish to feature a particular story, you can hover your mouse over the article and then click the “star” graphic in the upper right-hand corner.

When you feature a story, it spans across both columns just like the cover photo. By featuring a story, you can draw visitors’ attention more quickly to this item.

Another option for stories known as “pinning” is available when you click the pencil icon in the upper right-hand corner of a story. When you pin a story it stays at the top of the Timeline for up to seven days. Since Facebook does not restrict stories in the same way it does the cover photo, you can use the pinning option for more direct soliciting and for calls to action on your page.

Arrange page elements

Unlike the old format, in which everything stayed in the same place, you have more options to organize page elements with Timeline. Facebook uses the term “Views” for these items and they include your photos, friends, likes and apps. You also can change the photo displayed with each app and rename the app on your Timeline. Here's another opportunity to create great Call To Actions for your fans and customers.

Use this capability to highlight views and apps that you think fans will find most interesting and useful.

Insert stories anywhere in the Timeline

With the old Facebook, all stories automatically appeared at the top your profile page newsfeed. With the new format, you can select where stories will appear on your Timeline.

When you post a story, select the clock icon on the bottom menu bar to set the date for the item. When you post the story, it will automatically appear in correct chronological order. Facebook still notifies your fans that you have posted a story, so they do not need to search for the new item.

You can also use Composer to create stories based on Milestones in your company’s history.

About section

The About section is the similar to the Info page on the old Facebook format, but with different layout and options.

In this section, you can include your business address and contact info along with your website URL. The description segment allows you to describe what your company offers along with the company’s overall mission values.

Admin Panel

The new Admin Panel appears as a drop down menu when you click on the Timeline. The interface allows you to manage your layout and has a “Build Audience” menu that provides “Invite Friends,” “Share Page” and “Create and Ad” options.

By clicking on “Page Insights,” you can view Facebook Analytics including information on who visits your Timeline and on which content is most popular.

To activate the new Timeline format, check for the “Welcome to Your Page Preview” message when you visit your page. Click on “Start Tour” to learn more about how Timeline works. You will then have the option to start designing your page without any changes appearing until you select the “Publish Now” option. You can preview your page changes until you get the format just right for publishing.

Need help redesigning or managing your Facebook page? Check out our social media marketing services!

Have you switched over to the new timeline yet? Let us know what you think of it by commenting below.

What To Do When Your Website Has Traffic But No Conversions

Jason Corgiat — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:00:00 GMT

One of the most puzzling problems in managing a professional website is when your site has plenty of traffic, but no conversions to customers as the result of user visits. If your site is seeing plenty of traffic, but few conversions, there are a few steps to take to increase your conversion rate and create customers from visiting users.

The Landing Page

1.) Make sure the landing page is functional and accessible. This means you need to check each link on the site to make sure that no links are broken and they retrieve the page they are designed to retrieve when the link is clicked. Check the load time for your landing page.

2.) Does the page load quickly in the browser? If you are testing the landing page on a broadband connection, and the page loads slowly, the page will be painfully slow for users on a dial-up connection. Figuring out why the page loads slowly may take some analytic thought. Are you loading large images or multimedia on the landing page? If so, eliminate these bandwidth limiting items and redesign the page to quickly load in a browser.

3.) Is the landing page easy to navigate? Do potential customers have a hard time figuring out how to get to your shopping cart? If you have an ecommerce site, you should always make the process of viewing the shopping cart an easy one. Make the landing page easy to navigate and simple to understand.

4.) Is the landing page compatible with all standard browsers? In order to know how your landing page looks in the various web browsers, perform some testing with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome. Unfortunately, different browsers may render the page differently. If the page looks different in various browser, attempt to redesign the page to look similar across all browser types.

Related article: Top Landing Page Trends for 2012: What's Good?

Call to Action Buttons and Links

1.) Does your site provide Call to Action buttons and/or links? Are they prominently displayed? One thing that potential customers will find annoying is when they want to access your service or product, but they cannot find a way to do so. Make sure your Call to Action button or link is prominently displayed throughout the site.

2.) Are your Call to Action buttons or graphics attractive and easy to read? Make sure to check your Call to Action buttons and graphics in all standard web browsers to make sure they display properly to the majority of users.

Ads on the Site

1.) Does your site overuse third-party or sponsor ads? Google Ads are great but if you display them on all of the free real estate on your page, not only will the page load slowly, but it will also annoy visitors. Place ads sparingly and strategically throughout the site.

2.) Are your ads distracting visitors from your product? Blinking text, ads with sound and multimedia commercials often annoy potential customers. If you have a video that you wish to share on your website, allow the user the opportunity to choose to load and view the video. Some potential customers may be accessing your site from prepaid broadband accounts. Unwanted multimedia will drain their bandwidth and undoubtedly make them dislike your site.

Website Content

1.) Is the content on your site relevant and interesting? Do you simply state over and over again how great your product or service may be? It is much more beneficial to include interesting articles, blog posts and other web content on your site, than to just rave about your product or service. Users do not want to be “oversold” on a product or service. Create interest in your product by including interesting web content on the site.

2.) Is the content on your site fresh and new? If users visit your site on a regular basis, do they see the same content over and over again? One way to generate new content on your site is to add feeds from other sites, such as news sites. Headline feeds and RSS feeds are freely available. For example, Yahoo! News (and other Yahoo! channels) will provide instant, relevant content without you hiring writers or sitting down to write a blog post every day.

3.) Does your web content establish you as an expert in your area? One of the best ways to generate customers is to be knowledgeable about the area in which you work. For example, if you own a site that sells rugs, become an expert on the history, styles and variations of rugs. Write blog posts on your site to educate potential consumers, and be sure to tell them how your product fits into the larger scheme.

Converting visitors to customers is not a magic act. Simply making your site functional, accessible and interesting will bring visitors to your site and keep them there long enough to become customers.

Social Media Management: How We Use Sprout Social

Desiree Lowe — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

As a Social Media Manager for LeapGo, I am responsible for the daily maintenance of the company’s numerous social accounts. Without proper planning, time management and solid communication, things could very easily get out of control. Fortunately, as a result of the recent boom in social media usage, a number of software companies have created powerful social media management tools, and LeapGo selected Sprout Social as one of our primary tools to manage multiple social media marketing initiatives.

Sprout Social’s software supports complete management of LeapGo’s multiple social network identities, simultaneously, from a single interface. Fully integrated with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare and Gowalla, this management tool lets me keep the LeapGo brand top of mind as I engage with our customers and allows me to monitor our brand mentions across major media channels. I track conversations and engage with our customers without having to change programs or sign into/out of other applications. This saves me a tremendous amount of time! In addition, Sprout Social offers contact management, detailed analytics and lead‑generation tools, and the ability for me to track how we’re faring against our competition.

When I log into Sprout Social, the first thing I see is the Dashboard, which gives me an overall snapshot of our new followers and their demographics, the number of clicks and our current engagement and influence scores:
With Sprout’s team application I can designate users and control their levels of access. Assigning tasks, adding notes and instant communication with the team is a breeze, and each of us has the ability to see exactly where we are in LeapGo’s campaign. This instant communication eliminates the possibility of a “forgotten” thought or task – notes or projects are entered as soon as they come up, keeping all team members current.

Sprout’s social media analytics are also impressive. With a moment’s notice I can generate customizable, detailed reports that illustrate our fan and follower demographics, identify our most popular Tweets and posts (clicks, re-Tweets) and track the most influential social referrals to our website. With just a few clicks, I can see how LeapGo is stacking up against the competition, and easy integration of Google Analytics illustrates the affect of our efforts on current traffic to LeapGo’s website and delivers that report to key members of management and sales. This ensures we’re all on the same page.

Lead generation is a snap with Sprout Social. By entering specific keywords and geographical locations, I can locate and review Twitter profiles that are relevant to LeapGo, “follow” or start a conversation with them, and add them to our business development contact lists. I then refer these leads to various members of my team (assigning a “Task” to each) asking them to initiate contact.

The Social Media Inbox is another feature we use in Sprout Social. My Inbox contains a chronological stream of conversations taking place on the various networks and allows me to respond immediately, right from within the program. I then search within these conversations, using specific keywords, to learn if we are following a particular user or not.

The effectiveness of our campaign is measured from my Sent Messages folder, which reports not only the reach results for each message sent, but also the number of clicks, the responses and any re-Tweets. This information shows me what is working and what might need a little fine tuning.

Related Link: Jumpstart your Social Media Marketing!

Posting messages (including links and photos) to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is done simultaneously from one message composer. In the interest of time management, I often schedule these messages in advance for delivery on a specific date and a predetermined, optimal time for maximum visibility and effectiveness. By connecting LeapGo’s RSS feeds, our new blog content is automatically sent throughout our social networks, another big timesaver for me.

Sprout Social takes CRM to the next level. Each of LeapGo’s social contacts has a detailed profile, containing not only the typical contact information, but also direct links to their social media profiles. In addition – and a huge plus for me – every communication exchanged with a potential new client is automatically captured and added to their profile. This chronological “journal,” visible to everyone on my team, is invaluable for accurate tracking of our campaign efforts. I utilize the supplemental notes section regularly, adding comments, afterthoughts or next action steps. All of this activity is recorded in one place, saving me the time it would normally take to update multiple contact lists.

As a social media manager, effective time management is crucial to the success of each online marketing campaign I support. Having used a number of social media tools in the past, I find Sprout Social’s software to be the most user-friendly. The intuitive dashboard clearly illustrates where to go to do what. Helpful online videos, quick guides and webinars encourage even “first-timers” to jump in and get up to speed quickly. From shared team communication and tasks, two-way customer interaction, detailed analytics, scheduled posts across multiple social sites, lead generation and CRM tools, Sprout Social keeps me on task, on time and on target.

However, it’s important to note that a social media marketing campaign does not become hands-free following the implementation of a social software tool. Far from it! Keeping content fresh and appealing and adjusting it quickly in order to meet customer needs still requires the “human touch.” While Sprout Social guides and supports a number of my tasks, it does not replace the most important (and most rewarding) component of a campaign – engaging with people!

Conclusion

Social media marketing is now regarded by most as a mandatory component of any business campaign. A successful social marketing effort requires not only a solid strategy with well-defined goals, but also a knowledgeable team that respects the time and effort required to build and maintain a powerful online presence and strong reputation. Because doing it alone is intimidating to most, many companies are retaining outside services to manage this important aspect of their business.

With all of this attention being paid to social media marketing, it should come as no surprise that one of LeapGo’s most popular offerings is our “Social Media Jumpstart Package.” This complete service kicks off with the creation of customized Facebook and Twitter Pages, followed by daily maintenance of the Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, as well as scheduled blog updates. In addition, clients receive personalized reports detailing their reach, generated traffic and overall ROI impact. Clients are contacted weekly to review the latest campaign results, revisit goals and objectives, and discuss any necessary adjustments for the continued success of their social campaign.

Click here for more information on LeapGo’s “Social Media Jumpstart Package”.

How do you manage your social media marketing?

This Is Why Your Tweets Are Boring

Desiree Lowe — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:54:00 GMT

With more than 300 million active users, Twitter has a lot of people who are regularly engaged that may want what your company has to offer. However, unless you know how to effectively get your message out there, you will not be able to take advantage of the free marketing opportunity that Twitter has to offer.

The majority of Tweets that people read on Twitter are not interesting and pretty much pointless. In fact, according to a recent survey by Carnegie Mellon University, only about 36 percent of Tweets were considered "worth reading" by Twitter users. This means that the overwhelming majority of Tweets simply are not worth wasting time on. Let's apply this figure to your tweets alone: if only 36 percent of your Tweets are being read or are appreciated, then there is definitely a lot of room for improvement. If you could simply improve this to 50 percent of your Tweets being considered interesting, it could result in a big difference for your profitability.

The types of tweets declared the most boring by users include tweets about current mood, or activities. If you want to make your Tweets more enjoyable for the average follower and spark more interest in your Twitter feed, there are some basic steps you can take. By remembering a few important things before you Tweet, you can significantly improve the reception of your Tweets.

Timing

The timing of Tweets plays a role in how they are received. The active life of a Tweet is about 10 minutes. During this time, it will be at the top of follower's time lines and can be responded to. The time of day and day of the week that a Tweet is sent will also have an impact on its effectiveness. Research has shown that tweets late in the day tend to be more effective than tweets early in the day (ET) and tweets on weekends have higher CTRs.

Provide Something of Value

When you're trying to craft a message that other people will enjoy, try to think about how that message will be perceived by others. The key is to provide something of value to your followers. If you are randomly musing on an obscure topic, you may not provide any true value for your followers. Create tweets that provide useful information on topics that matter to your business and your followers. For example, if you're talking about a particular type of commercial that you hate, do a little research and find some statistics that show it doesn't work. For example, you could tweet something like, "Acme Research says screaming infomercials are only 15 percent as effective as other advertisements." This would be much more valuable to followers than something like, "Man I hate screaming infomercials."

Related article: 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Social Media Management

Don't Be Like Everyone Else

One of the biggest problems on Twitter and other social networking sites is that many are trying others. If you are not unique, and simply copy the style or phrasing of your Tweets from others, chances are that your audience will start to tune you out. Try to be your own person and emit your own style. If you get in the habit of trying to be just like everyone else on Twitter, most of your followers won't really have a reason to follow you anymore. Let your personality or your business' personality shine through. You can decide whether that is a unique sense of humor, biting wit, randomness or something else. For example, if you mention something that you don't like and then you put "#Fail" after it, you'll be just like everyone else on Twitter. Instead, try to be more specific about why you didn't like it or come up with your own joke about the subject matter. Even more you can ask your followers if they feel the same way you do.

Shoot for Interesting

Besides providing something of value and doing it in your own way, try to share information in various ways. People like to respond to interesting tweets much more than they do the average, run-of-the-mill Tweets. For example, in addition to article links, mix in some quotes, pictures or video links with your Tweets so that your followers get some other content that they can enjoy. You should even try retweeting other people's content. People like a good mix of content instead of always seeing the same old things in Tweets.

Related article: Engage, Inform and Retweet!

Include Occasional Promotions

If you're tweeting so that you can grow your business or product sales, don't hesitate to include some promotions occasionally. This does not mean that you should promote your product or service in every single message that you tweet. Instead, try to mix up your tweets with interesting content and promotional content as much as possible.

For example, you may want to tweet a link to a coupon or coupon code for one of your products or services to your followers. You may even consider running a contest where followers have to tweet something for a chance to win. As long as your promotional Tweets are spread out enough, your followers may truly appreciate the discount for your products or services.

Regardless of what methods you use to come up with content for your Tweets, just remember to stop and think before you tweet. In many cases, you can eliminate most of the problems with boring Tweets by just doing that. If you’re not practicing the above strategies with your tweets, chances are that your followers think you’re just plain boring!

What do you do to make your tweets interesting?

7 Ways To Ease The Pain Of High PPC Costs

Jason Corgiat — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:00:00 GMT

PPC is perhaps one of the best ways to gain traffic, especially if your website does not have a very good search engine ranking. However, the price you have to pay for PPC traffic can be very expensive, sometimes to the tune of $30 per click or more. Reducing the cost of PPC traffic is incredibly important, especially if your profit margin isn’t too big. If you are tired of paying a huge amount of money for clicks, then this article will help you out.

Low Cost Keywords

Do your best to look for low cost keywords. This may be impossible for some niches, because they have very high PPC costs. For example, “car insurance in NJ” is about $40 per click, and most insurance ads are around $30 to $50.

However, if you look in the AdWords Keyword Tool, you can see the common costs per click, which will help you discover low cost keywords. When finding the price of a keyword, make sure you are not spending more than your profit. If you just make $1 per sale, then getting clicks for $1 or up is impractical.

Find keywords that have a modest or high search volume, but with costs that are less than your profit margin.

Related article: Choosing the right keywords for your business

Avoid High Competition

Competitive keywords are bad for PPC costs, because there are many people bidding on the same keyword. This causes the price to inflate, and it reduces your exposure. For example, if there are 10,000 people bidding for one keyword, and there are only 1,000 relevant websites, then it is going to be difficult for anyone to see your ad unless you pay for top spots.

Instead, focus on medium and low competition keywords. However, make sure the keyword is searched enough to be viable. If the keyword is only searched 100 times a month, then that doesn’t give you many opportunities to make a sale.

No Sensationalism

When you write your PPC ad, don’t say, “Get car insurance for $1!” if you don’t offer that. A lot of businesses, especially new ones, like to write sensationalized ad copy, thinking it will entice more clicks. Usually this works, but for the opposite effect.

You will probably get a lot of clicks, but very few sales. Most people will probably leave immediately when they find out that your website doesn’t have what the ad promised. Make sure all of your ads are upfront and tell the truth.

Related Article: Keywords: Tactics That Can Kill Your Website

Negative Keywords

When you setup your PPC ad, you are able to select negative keywords. For example, if your ad is for the keyword “new silver car,” then it might also show up when people search, “old silver car,” “silver car insurance” or “silver car models.”

Perform a keyword search with the Google Keyword Tool and see what similar matches come up. Then, set your negative keywords. In this example, you would write old, insurance and models. This ensures that only a relevant audience sees your ad, which creates higher conversions.

See What Works

Your competition can be your best asset when trying to lower your PPC costs. Search your keyword in a search engine, and see what ads come up. What do they say, and how are they performing? Use this as a basis for creating your own ad.

After looking at what type of ad copy works best for your competitors, you will know how to frame your own ad. This will help attract customers that you can easily convert.

Focus on Savings

If you are advertising in a niche with price-sensitive customers, which is nearly any niche, then your copy should focus on savings. People like saying messages like “75% off” or “promo” in your copy, and their eyes will be attracted to it. Not only does it attract clicks, but if your website is really offering these discounts, then it will be easier to convert these people into paying customers.

Don’t Bid for First

Most businesses want to be on top when they run PPC campaigns, so they pay the highest possible price to secure good exposure. While being on the top is great, it also costs a lot. Not only that, but studies suggest that many people look at the first result, but end up clicking on the second or third ad.

By bidding for a slightly lower position, you can decrease your costs while still retaining good exposure.

Key Takeaways

Reducing the cost of your PPC campaign is essential to a good marketing plan, because you want to make more money than you spend. Choosing the right keywords is essential to reducing costs while still increasing your conversion rates and garnering the right amount of exposure. Whether or not you're just starting out, PPC marketing is one of the best ways to secure traffic, but it doesn't have to break the bank.

Is your PPC campaign hurting your pockets and low in ROI? Click here to learn more about our proven 3 step cycle approach.

10 Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Blog's Visibility

Desiree Lowe — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:00:00 GMT

Your blog is an online hub for your business. As Chris Brogan pointed out, it's not all that difficult to get a blog up and running, but it does take some effort to promote and maintain it. Struggling with obtaining that most valuable of resources: the audience. Here are ten things you can do right now to ensure that your professional blog gets maximum visibility.

1. Use the Right Keywords

Do some keyword research right now to find the words and phrases that are more likely to draw more traffic to your site. Go to Google Insights for Search to get started. Make a list of subjects that your site covers, and perform a search for each of these words or phrases.

The results will tell you how many people are searching for your keyword, and tell you how interest is changing in the keyword over time. Even better, it will suggest other keywords that are similar. It will list the keywords with the highest overall traffic on the left, and the keywords that are showing the most dramatic growth on the right. Spend some time sifting through these keywords and pick one really strong one as the basis of your next article.

2. Get Inspiration

Choose topics that readers are interested in. Don't ask yourself if it's interesting, go to your audience. Browse through comments on your site and similar blogs for inspiration. Look through trending topics on Twitter, Yahoo, and the new Google+ trending topics search. Pay attention to which posts are getting the most attention, and get your inspiration from there.

Related Article: Blogging with a purpose

3. Pick Your Title

Put your keyword in the title. There is no question about this one. Ideally, the keyword should be close to the beginning of your title. Keep your title shorter than 66 characters, since this is the maximum amount of characters that will show in a Google search result.

Choose a title that draws attention. Titles that are funny, incite curiosity, and catch the user off guard are best. Try to think of a title that you wouldn't be able to resist clicking on if you came across it.

4. Stick to One Keyword

Make sure that your article focuses on ranking for just one keyword. This doesn't mean stuffing the article with excessive copies of the keyword, it just means that the article should be focused on this subject. All too often, bloggers will try to stick together a bunch of loosely related keywords into one post. This will dilute your success. Save the other keywords for your next post.

Related article: Choosing the right keywords for your business

5. Link to Old Blog Posts

Use Google insights to find good keywords that describe your old blog posts. Try to mention those keywords and link them to your old posts. This lets Google know what those posts were about. If you keep doing this with every new article, it will soon become very clear to Google what each post is about. Make sure that the keywords are truly descriptive, however.

6. Fill out the Meta Data

If you aren't using WordPress, make sure that your titles are wrapped in h1 tags to let Google know that they are titles. Also be sure to fill out the meta description tag. This doesn't affect your rankings, but it will be displayed as the snippet of text below your title in the search results. Fill this tag with something that will convince the user that it is relevant to their search and make them want to click on the result.

7. Use Subheadings and Lists

These are easy for both humans and Google to read, which makes this one a no brainer. If you can find very closely related keywords in Google insights to put into these subheadings, make an effort to do so. Try to include your main keyword in at least one subheading or bullet point.

8. Add Social Share Buttons

Make it easy to share your new article on social networks. Plenty of plugins are available that make it simple to add sharing buttons to your site. If you've done a good job choosing a topic, digging up information, and presenting it in an entertaining way, people will naturally want to share the content.

9. Write Something That Will Age Well

Before you write your post, make sure that you pick a topic that will age well. There's a good chance that if you focus entirely on topics that will be dead in a week, you won't bring in much traffic by the time Google even indexes the new article. Ideally, you should write a post that will continue to attract traffic for years to come.

10. Encourage Interaction

Make sure to ask your readers a question at the end of the article. Now you're ready to post your article and start a conversation. Get out there and start talking to people in your field and grow your social network. Don't put it off. Get started now!

What's your greatest blogging challenge?

Google Search Plus Your World: Strategies to Improve Your SEO

Desiree Lowe — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:59:00 GMT

Google has implemented a major search change that is certain to radically change how companies approach search engine optimization. Google Search Plus Your World personalizes results based on the Google+ profile of the person that is logged in. While Google touts this new algorithm as an improvement that will lead to more personal results, critics say it sacrifices true SERP relevance for social media integration and promotion of Google+.

Regardless of opinion, we can all see how this changes SEO. Rather than the standard old SEO practices, Google Search Plus Your World merges SEO with the practice of social media optimization. Companies need to fully comprehend this major change and alter their SEO strategies to stay relevant and continue achieving those high rankings. Here are some tips for keeping up in this new “World.”

You Need a Google+ Page

Google+ is the major driver of the changeover to Google Search Plus Your World. Since Google+ related results are given higher priority in the new system for logged-in users, some say that Google only changed their search algorithm to promote their fledgling social network and get more people to sign up. True or not, Google Search Plus Your World is making Google+ an integral part of SEO and SMO. It is now imperative for businesses looking to improve SEO in this new world to sign up for a Google+ page right away.

Use your Google+ Page Like it’s your Site

Since logged-in users will see results from a company’s Google+ page before their actual site is returned in the SERP, it’s crucial for companies to get in the habit of using their Google+ page and to understand that the old SEO rules still apply. Old SEO practices like keyword usage are still very important to SEO, it’s just that they have migrated to Google+ pages. Businesses need to get help from their SEO firm when creating and managing their Google+ pages in order to maintain adequate usage of keywords and associated terms. It’s also important to remember that Google’s penalization of sites that employ “keyword stuffing” is still in effect, so those keywords must be used naturally and not forced or overdone.

Generate Content

Google’s ranking system changed recently to give priority to pages that generate fresh content regularly. That rule still applies with Google Search Plus Your World, but that frequent new content needs to be on the business’ Google+ page. Company Google+ pages should add information, articles and posts as often as possible to improve their SEO with this new system.

Participate in Discussions

A web site is a one-way communication like TV or radio and businesses are comfortable with that. They have gotten used to the practice of broadcasting their message and constantly promoting. Social media has changed this and companies with Google+ pages need to change, too. Instead of constant shilling and promotion, companies need to emphasize the “social” aspect of social media. This will ingratiate them with clients, but that’s not the sole aim of this tactic. Google Search Plus Your World gives SERP priority to pages that are active in discussions. This means that being social by commenting on non-page items and participating in conversations will do more for a company than just making friends. It will generate traffic.

Grow your Circles

Companies need to do all they can to increase the number of people and companies in their circles. In SEO terms, circle membership is akin to backlinks. Just like more quality backlinks leads to higher SEO for a company website, being in more circles generates much higher SEO with Google Search Plus Your World. Also, the more people a company has in its circles, the bigger the audience will be for its message.

Google Plus Search Your World is a major change whose impact will be felt in larger degrees as more people sign up with Google+. Since it refines search results based on Google+ data, it is vital for businesses to establish relevant, active Google+ profiles. From there, standard SEO strategies should be diligently practiced, but on the Google+ page in addition to a company’s site. These tactics will help ensure continued effective SEO in this new Google “world.”

Did you know? Leapgo specializes in regional and localized search engine optimization for all kinds of local businesses. Click here for more information.

Top Landing Page Trends For 2012 - What's Good?

Jason Corgiat — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:00:00 GMT

With the arrival of a new year, many website owners are starting to reevaluate their Internet marketing strategies, especially with respect to the design and implementation of their landing pages. Landing pages, which are simply the pages that Web surfers see when they click on one of your advertisements, need to be well-designed if they are to convert new visitors to your site into leads and increase sales.

Sadly, though many designers will devote hours to the creation of an advertisement, the landing page often times receives scant attention. Since a landing page is essentially just an extension of the advertisement, used to give interested visitors more information about your site, the failure to develop an effective landing page can result in a lot of wasted money as many people who were initially interested in what you had to say become turned off when they give you a larger platform on which to sell your product or service.

If you have found your traditional landing pages to be inadequate to the task of boosting your site's traffic and conversion rates, it may be time to consider a redesign. Although this may seem like an arduous task, the benefits can be immense for those who put in the effort to create landing pages that implement sound layout principles and clearly communicate the advertiser's message.

Of course, redesigning a landing page is easier said than done for many website owners who may not have any ideas about proper page design. If that describes you, you may wish to consider some of the most popular trends that many top companies have adopted for their own landing pages. These companies devote vast amounts of resources to market research in the attempt to entice curious visitors to visit their website, join an email list or purchase a product/service; you could do a lot worse than simply adopting some of their strategies as your own.

Simplicity

If there has been one design trend that has really been embraced by internet marketers in recent years, it has been the idea of simplicity. In earlier times, website owners would attempt to cram as much information as possible on their landing pages, afraid of the possibility that they would leave out a critical piece of information. Even worse, many website designers would become enchanted with all of the latest Internet technologies and use them indiscriminately on landing pages regardless of whether those technologies actually served a purpose for the website in question.

The resulting mess would be a landing page that lacked a clear, consistent message. Even if they could decode your rambling advertising copy, that message was likely hidden by the needless Flash animations, pointless graphics and distracting color schemes. All of the elements of a landing page need to work together in order to focus the user's attention on your overriding message, the one thing you must get across to visitors when they visit your landing page.

The beauty of simplicity is that it eliminates all extraneous elements of a website so that your message can stand out all the more in relief. Without all the distractions, visitors will immediately understand your message and be able to act on it. As such, you must carefully consider everything on a landing page, such as the navigation scheme, the graphics and the typography. You must ask yourself if each of these elements contribute to the overall layout of the landing page. If it doesn't, then you must either redesign it or eliminate it. The result of all this work is a more elegant landing page that can convert more website visitors.

Mobile Design

It was hard enough to design landing pages when desktop computers dominated the technology landscape. Among other things, a Web designer had to worry about varying monitor sizes, differing screen resolutions and numerous Web browsers that all seemed to implement the same standard piece of code in widely divergent ways. As much as you would want to ignore such issues, you know you couldn't unless you were willing to alienate a large portion of your audience.

Today the rise of smartphones and table devices make the web designers' job even more complicated. In addition to desktop and laptop computers, they now have to create landing pages for mobile devices, which only multiplies the number of platforms for which a website designer must optimize. As if things were not complicated enough already, now designers have to make additional choices between designing native apps for specific devices or HTML5 Web apps that presumably are compatible across devices.

However, given the importance of mobile devices in modern Web surfing, landing pages must be optimized for mobile devices if you are to target the widest audience possible. Although this may seem like additional work, it does come with the auxiliary benefit of forcing webpage designers to focus on simplicity; with such a small screen size, you can only incorporate a few key elements into a design without overwhelming your users.

The Social Web

There is no denying the fact that the Web 2.0 era has fully arrived. Facebook now has over 800 million users, and Twitter has well over 100 million users of its own. With the seemingly exponential growth of these social media sites, there is no place on the Internet that hasn't been touched by these networks. If you have failed to use these platforms as a central component of your marketing strategy, you are missing out on the most powerful way to communicate with your audience and spread your message to others.

You should attempt to connect with your audience as soon as possible by incorporating social media icons right on your landing pages. This will give new visitors an easy way to follow your website through Facebook updates and your Twitter feed, which helps to solidify a strong relationship with your audience. In addition, those new followers will automatically give you free publicity to all of their friends and followers, giving your website a chance to permeate through the entire social network in a way that simply isn't possible with traditional advertising.

Interactivity

Static webpages were fine back in the 1980s when the only people on the Internet were scientists sharing academic papers, but this is 2012. People expect a lot more out of the Internet today, and if you do not provide the user an engaging experience, they will go elsewhere to find it. Given the many technologies that exist today to make a website interactive, including tools like Ajax, Flash, and now HTML5, there is really no excuse for failing to provide your users with an entertaining way to interact with your website.

This commitment to interactivity should extend all the way to your landing pages since most users will only give you one chance to impress them; if you fail to do so on the landing page, you may never get the chance to do it on the actual website. Of course, there are many possible ways to add interactive elements to your landing page: it could be as simple as a navigation system to help new visitors understand the website or as advanced as a full-featured game to promote a product or service. As with all design elements on a landing page, the key is to make sure that your interactive elements add to the message you wish to promote; otherwise, they are just a self-defeating distraction.

Customization

Everyone wants to feel unique, but many websites treat all their users as if they were the same. A one-size-fits-all approach may have worked in the past, but the Internet has become far too personalized to treat people homogeneously. Thanks to the trends in social media, the Internet has now become a place where people feel comfortable sharing information about many details of their lives, something that was unimaginable just a few short years ago.

Detailed analytical information can be obtained from cookies stored on the users' computers and from stat-tracking software on your own servers. As such, there is more information available to advertisers than ever before, and this information can be used profitably by websites who know how to access it and use it on their landing pages. This information can be used to customize those landing pages for individual users based on their search queries, past browsing history or location. This will give people more relevant information that may make them more likely to purchase a product or service and become a regular visitor of your website.

Conclusion

Every day, additional websites are created and compete for the scarce time of visitors; in such a competitive environment, it is more important than ever to design a proper landing page that encourages users to stay on your page and not wander elsewhere. Otherwise, you risk sabotaging your own Internet marketing strategy. Fortunately, by following some of the design tips above, you can create more interesting landing pages that increase your website's conversion rates.

Image: arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Leapgo Blogging Client Featured in Industry-Leading National Magazine

Jason Corgiat — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:09:00 GMT

RANDOM LAKE, Wis. - LeapGo, a leading web development and website design company, recently completed a project that piqued the interest of an industry-leading national magazine. The project in question was highlighted in a recent article that appeared in Outdoor Power Equipment, whose website can be found at www.outdoorpowerequipment.com. The client, Buchalla Small Engine, needed a blog that would enhance its online visibility, improve its online marketing strategy and strengthen communication with existing customers and prospective customers. LeapGo’s experienced team came up with a design that far exceeded the expectations of the client.

“When we found out that the blog was being featured in OPE, we were tickled,” says Lead Business Consultant at LeapGo, Don Engelhardt. “While the bread and butter of our business is website design and development, what we actually do goes a lot deeper than that. We strive to truly understand what makes a company tick, and we respond with designs that will appeal to its target audience.” In the case of Buchalla Small Engine, LeapGo recognized that the company needed to establish itself as an authority on very specific types of parts and outdoor power equipment. “What better way to show the world what you know than with a blog?” adds Leapgo Project Manager, Cairyn Orido.

The people who make up the LeapGo team are no strangers to the concept of running a business. In fact, the company’s founder and Lead Business Strategist, Jason Corgiat, founded LeapGo in response to his frustrating experiences in finding web development firms that understand his needs as a small online business owner. Since founding LeapGo, Corgiat has placed a strong emphasis on hiring people who have been on the other side of the fence. “Do I want experienced web developers, designers and marketers? Of course. I also want people who understand the nuances of running a small business or online business, and our team is entirely made up of such people,” says Corgiat.

The blog that LeapGo developed for Buchalla Small Engine Parts was featured on the OPE website on December 14, 2011. It is titled “Generating leads starts with a powerful website,” and it highlights three examples of superior website development and design for online businesses. The article emphasizes the importance of not just having an online presence, but of using that presence to bolster and strengthen a company’s overall marketing efforts. “Putting together a quick, basic, bare-bones website just isn’t good enough anymore,” says Lead Social Media Consultant, Desiree Lowe. “To achieve exceptional results, a company’s site has to draw customers in and offer real value.”

In the past, business websites were treated as little more than online catalogs. The OPE article zeroes in on the fact that interactive, compelling websites aren’t just reserved for media and marketing companies anymore. “There’s been a persistent idea out there that certain types of companies just can’t benefit from having compelling websites and blogs,” says Don Engelhardt. “That simply isn’t true. Whether you sell snazzy electronics, spa services or small engine parts, it definitely pays to have a site that appeals to your target audience.”

The LeapGo team is flattered and gratified by the attention that its work on the Buchalla Small Engine blog has received. “Since the article debuted, we’ve received a ton of emails and phone calls about it,” says Corgiat. “Our goal is to meet and exceed our clients’ expectations, and I really think our team hit the ball out of the park on this one.”

LeapGo is based in Random Lake, Wisconsin and has been providing website design, website development and Internet marketing services since 2001.

BigCommerce vs Volusion - An E-Commerce Shopping Cart Comparison

Jason Corgiat — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:40:00 GMT

With e-commerce growing at an incredible rate and becoming increasingly vital to modern-day businesses, hosted shopping cart solutions play a major role for online vendors and their customers. The two largest and most popular e-commerce platforms, BigCommerce and Volusion, offer a wide range of features as well as highly-rated customer support, and are well matched in many areas. But which one is right for your business?

SEO

Both Volusion and BigCommerce allow you freedom over your Title, Keywords and Descriptions fields. However, Volusion's SEO makes use of unwieldy Product IDs and query strings and the interface is more difficult to work with. Meanwhile, BigCommerce gains plus points for offering neat URLs which generate the page from the product name, interspersed with underscores, and will only produce strange results if you employ punctuation. As an added bonus, it integrates nicely with Google Website Optimizer, giving you smart and responsive testing, analysis and feedback on your site.

Admin Tools

Both services successfully separate the core functionality of the e-commerce shopping cart from its design and aesthetics, making it easy to navigate the interfaces and apply changes where needed. Customization is made as simple as possible: neither service requires knowledge of ASP or PHP code, nor users will require only rudimentary knowledge of HTML and CSS to customize every aspect of the store. Users are not given extensive access to the service server for modifications, and scripting is limited to Javascript and HTML/CSS. While more advanced users may find this limitation frustrating, for those who want to get started with a store immediately it is ideal. Both BigCommerce and Volusion provide users with a wide range of tools. One advantage of Volusion is the option to send email newsletters to customers; BigCommerce only permits you to export email addresses for sending with a separate email marketing platform. While the two services are both easy to use and customize, BigCommerce sets itself apart by its feedback tools. For example, it generates reports on abandoned shopping carts which outlines when, where and how frequently customers abandon their items before purchasing is complete, enabling you to get in contact or provide an incentive to complete the transaction.

Design Tools

The beauty of e-commerce shopping cart services is that, using only basic coding, users can quickly and easily create a store with a decent interface without having to put in hours of programming. If you have enlisted a designer who will handle customization for you, you will not need to make use of the ecommerce design templates offered by both Volusion and BigCommerce. However, if you require a template for your ecommerce website, BigCommerce should be your first choice for your shopping cart service. The templates offered by Volusion are out-dated, unattractive and sometimes bizarre, with poor optimization and badly designed toolkits which make them challenging to work with. While the templates are free and therefore attractive to businesses with a low budget, they are generally not fit for purpose. For BigCommerce web design is one of the service's strengths. The service offers the option of contacting one of its many promoted design affiliates and getting a quote for your specific requirements, or to make use of the free, pre-packaged templates. BigCommerce templates show that the service has invested significant time and resources into creating clean, usable and attractive templates which can be customized in a matter of minutes. BigCommerce offers more templates than Volusion, with some truly eye-catching and vibrant designs that will enhance any site. BigCommerce also offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface which enables you to move the important shopping cart elements using only the mouse.

Third-Party Integration and Additional Features

Both services offer users extensive online support areas for integrating the shopping cart with third-party software. Both offer electronic and downloadable products and gift certificates. BigCommerce also offers social media toolbars for quick integration with websites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as easy integration of YouTube videos. Furthermore, in the next release BigCommerce will offer drop shipping, support for iPhone and iPad, integration with MailChimp and eBay, and multiple warehouse, making it the clear winner here.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Some clients report that, having tried both services, Volusion offer a slightly more extensive range of customer support options, including free live support via phone, instant chat or email, 24/7. Volusion is the more well-established of the two, and has built up a vast library of tutorials, FAQs and user videos to guide you through the process. However, BigCommerce also provide round-the-clock support through a number of channels.

While Volusion and BigCommerce are both excellent services that are well matched in many aspects, BigCommerce has the edge on its competitor thanks to a more user-friendly interface, better design templates and a greater range of features.

The Right Way To Measure ROI on Social Media Marketing

Desiree Lowe — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:07:00 GMT

If your company is looking for ways to expand its business and reach new customers, social media marketing is the way to go. However, there is no way of knowing how your social media strategy is working unless you have some way to measure the return on your investment. How does a company know if its social media strategy is working out well? Here are some factors to consider when determining the effectiveness of your strategies.

Your Followers Are No Good If They Don't Take Action

Having 4,649 followers on Twitter is great, but if they don't take any action, or make any purchases, it won't matter. The bottom line is that your following isn't doing your company any good if they aren't tuned in and engaged with what you are sharing, telling friends about the company, or taking measures to spend money on your company. The best way to see how well your social media efforts are working out is to see how it translates into the actions you have set as goals.

Let's say for example, your goal is to increase brand exposure. In this case the number of followers/fans etc you have is a key metric to measure. But it doesn't stop there. You will also want to measure how many of those fans/followers are tuned in to what you say (ie retweets, likes, responses, comments, shares etc). There are quite a few great social media marketing tools that can help you track, measure and analyse this data. The number you get will be those who you have successfully attracted to your brand and you can measure this growth over time. The next step will then be to turn them into customers.

Sometimes Money Isn't Everything Though

One of the great things about social media is that your customers get to talk to you directly. Listening to them is going to be a key way to determining how well your social media efforts are working. Do you take the time to really listen to what customers are saying? If you do, you will find that the customers can help you gain invaluable insight into what they want from you and how you can market your company, what products to introduce and how to allay concerns and do better with customer service. Down the line, these suggestions/insights can help you save money and boost sales, making your time online worth it.

A case in point, I recently saw a popular retail store throw out the question to their fans on Facebook whether they would prefer to have free shipping all year, more coupons throughout the year etc. The overwhelming response was more coupons! The company can now use this information to increase sales as they now know what their fan base wants.

What's The Point?

Why is your company using social media marketing? Do you want to gain new followers and convert those people into sales? Is your Facebook page a customer service outlet for customers online? Perhaps you are online simply to do market research. It could be that different departments within your company are out to do different things with the same platform. The goal is to allow each department in your company to come up with its own goals for social media usage. The sales team wants to make money, the service team wants to help customers and the marketing team wants to advertise well. If each department can meet its own goals, then your social media strategy is working.

Determine Success In Your Own Way

The easiest way to measure ROI is to simply figure out what you need social media to do for you and then use the right tools to determine whether the goal is being reached. Maybe you just want more exposure, so having a highly engaged, large Twitter following is all you needed. Perhaps the goal was simply to expand online operations and advertise in another venue. If what you are doing online is helping your company reach a goal that you set, then your time online is being used in the right way. Don't worry about all the possible metrics, or what other people say your social media experience should be. Just figure out what your company needs and go in a direction that your company will benefit from. This is what the most successful social media marketers do.

Get Yourself a Partner

If social media marketing isn't your thing, that's ok. We're here to help. The only thing worse than not having a social media presence is having a poor one. Partner with LeapGo and we can help you create and maintain a social media strategy that contributes to your overall business goals. Contact us to find out how or check out our social media marketing plans.