Pinterest has slowly been staking a solid spot in the social media world. Although it’s best suited for personal use, a business may benefit from it as well.

Remember your locker in high school or the bulletin board in your dorm room? It had pictures, ticket stubs and other neat tidbits you hoped others would see – and comment on. Take that idea and spin it in a web-friendly way – and you have Pinterest.

See a photo on the web you like? “Pin it”. Comment on other interesting “pins”. The important part is to get involved in the Pinterest community.  Like all social media, Pinterest’s main goal is sharing, making it mostly a personal, social experience. However, just by thinking a little outside the box, we can see how easily it would be to fit this into a digital marketing plan with great success.

Here is a beginner’s look at Pinterest possibilities for your business:

About.
Warning: Not every business should add Pinterest to their list. By the visual nature of the site, it works best for services that may benefit from others seeing pictures of what you have to offer. Think restaurants, home decor, general retail, the wedding industry and travel.

Benefits.
There are a few benefits of Pinterest. Number one is that each image is automatically imbedded with a link back to the source. If that source is you, your site will see an increase in traffic as more people click on the image. Another benefit is that Pinterest images are easily shared, so the potential reach could be quite high if the picture is interesting.

Go the Extra Step.
Once you get the hang of Pinterest and start to get comfortable with it, try experimenting and thinking outside of the box. Try getting creative with contest ideas that get people to pin your images or consider adding a “Pin It” button to your blog.

Have you tried Pinterest yet? What are your thoughts?

Pinterest is one of many tools you can use to optimize your digital marketing plan. Get on the right path today by contacting a knowledgeable WSI Internet Consultant to assist with your strategy.

In most cases, the biggest obstacle to winning the new customer for your company, once they have visited your website, is in your products, your prices, or even your competitors. It's the trust and confidence that your new potential customer doesn't have yet.

In other words, it's hard for them to know whether you are going to do everything your website promises you will, and whether or not they will still feel good about their decision to buy from you later. If there were some way that you could ease their minds and reduce these fears, your online leads and sales would dramatically go up.

Luckily, there is something you can do to give customers more confidence in your business – you can let other buyers post online reviews of their purchases.

Having reviews on your site works wonders because customers trust each other more than they do you or the manufacturers, at least when they are first deciding whether or not to place an order. And so, if they see lots of four and five star reviews all over your site, they feel confident that they are dealing with a reputable company and are much more likely to do business with you.

In addition, there are other benefits to having online reviews:

Adding online reviews to your website could help your search engine positioning. Google and the other major search engines love customer-generated content like online reviews, and tend to index quickly. That means that your great reviews help you show up on search engines more often, and may even appear in search results themselves, leading to more sales.

Online reviews are great for Facebook fan pages and other social media marketing. Since the essence of social media marketing is getting other people to tell their friends and colleagues about what you do, it only makes sense to integrate your online reviews into your Facebook business fan page and other profiles. If customers love you, why not let everyone see it?

Online reviews lead to more sales and faster sales. When a potential buyer sees that so many other people are happy with your work, or your products, they generally do less comparison-shopping, make quicker buying decisions, and decide to place larger orders. For that reason, encouraging satisfied buyers to leave their impressions on your website doesn't just build your credibility – it directly increases the profits you can make from your business website.

If you haven't tried a review system on your business website yet, get in touch with us today to find out how easy it is to use one to grow your sales.

Owners of all size businesses should have an internet marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the digital marketing environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies since the mid-90's.

If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

 Following is a list of the hot trends going on in the digital marketing industry which business's are subscribing to today. WSI is a full-service provider of digital marketing tools and techniques, and can help businesses of all sizes with any of these opportunities: 

1. Mobile Websites. With the growth of the smart phone technology, all businesses should have a mobile version of their website and it needs to be optimized like a regular website so that it is highly visible to the search engines for your important keywords.


2. Mobile Advertising. Same as paid marketing or pay-per-click, only these textual ads are only displayed when the searcher is using a mobile device, and are linked to specific pages on your mobile website.


3. Mobile Text Messaging. Similar to sending out email newsletters, people are able to “opt-in” to your mobile text messaging campaign to receive information from you about special product promotions, event notifications, coupon downloads, and other opportunities that are only available via their mobile device. You have complete control of your campaigns through the broadcasting tool that we provide.
     
4. 5-star Online Customer Reviews. Putting these on a website and integrating them on to your business Facebook page is a great way to increase conversions. Site visitors are able to visually see how well a company is servicing their customers, and then more quickly make a decision to become a new customer. According to a study, 88% of all online reviews in the U.S. are positive ones, and 70% of consumers trust other consumers opinions, while only 27% trust what the experts have to say.
    
5. Blog posting, article and press release syndication. Integrating a blog with a business’s website does two things. First, it is a great way to communicate with existing or potential customers. Second, the search engines consider it fresh content, and will visit and index more areas of your website because of that. Many of my clients use our professional copywriting service, letting us write the blog posts, post them to the business blog, and then submit them to several online article or press release directories where they will also be picked up by other websites and search engines, and syndicated across the internet. We also hook up the business blog with your Facebook business page if one exists where the post can also syndicate across the social networks.
     
6. Search Engine Marketing. Paid search or pay-per-click advertising and organic search engine optimization is still the number one technique for drawing geo-targeted traffic to a business’s website:
   
   
   1. Organic search engine optimization includes on-page and off-page techniques. Detailed documents that explain what is all included will be provided upon request.
   
   
   2. Pay-per-click targeted search engine advertising is the largest advertising mechanism in the world. Advertising can be locally, regionally or nationally targeted.
             
   
   
7. Display Advertising & Remarketing – A “push” form of advertising also known as “banner” advertising. Your banner ad is displayed on other websites who have opted in to Google’s (or other search engine’s) affiliate program. You pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. Remarketing is a technique where your ads are displayed when people who have previously visited your website through your pay per click campaign visit an affiliate’s website. These ads can be static photo images, or include audio and video.


8. Microsites – small 2-3 page websites organically optimized for specific geographical areas. Great method for local targeting. For example, an auto repair shop may want to target people living in Madison, Fitchburg, Middleton, and Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. It is very difficult to optimize the main website for each of those locations, so the best method is to optimize the main site for the primary target area, and then create microsites and optimize those for the other locations.


9. Click to Call – Conversion tactic used successfully to convert website visitors into leads. Visitors simply click on an image displayed on your website, and the system then connects them to your business. Call lists can be set up so that calls follow the list, and then go to a recorded voice mail if nobody answers.


10. Groupon – Discount online selling to specific geographically targeted audiences, Groupon is the fastest growing company in the world. You negotiate a discounted price with Groupon who then sells your product via broadcast emails they send to their subscribers on a daily basis, and then they collect payment, keep their fee, and then write you a check for the balance.
    
    
11. Email Marketing – Monthly or quarterly newsletters, event notifications, special promotions, etc. This is a great way to stay in touch and nurture existing customers, as well as market to potential clients who subscribe to the newsletter through the business’s website. We offer a full-service option through WSI Integrated Ad Solutions (Inbox 360) as well as services through our partnership with Constant Contact.
    
    
12. Social Media Marketing. This is used in two ways. First, it is a great way to stay or get in touch with existing or potential customers, to monitor what they might be saying about your business, and be a part of that conversation. Second, the social media networks are a good place to market to potential customers without trying to sell them on your business. Use of Facebook and LinkedIn ads, additional pay-per-click advertising methods, are growing quickly. We offer social media services including the very basic setup to a fully managed social marketing strategy.
    

Owners of all size businesses should have an online marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the online environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities or have us review your existing online plan, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies for many years. If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

As you've probably already figured out by now, ignoring social media sites won't make them go away. Facebook alone now boasts more than 500 million members, with Twitter and LinkedIn catching up very quickly. The men and women who log onto them – often daily – aren't just looking to chat with friends and see photos from summer vacations. They are also checking up on potential vendors, asking for product recommendations, and otherwise using them like search engines that can help them decide what and where to buy.

And if your company isn't participating, then it's probably already costing you a lot of money in the form of sales you will never see.

With that in mind, one of the things we like to remind business owners of is the need to actively play the game; you can't afford to ignore these sites, and the potential customers they represent. But as strong as those reasons, and the numbers behind them, actually are, there is actually one thing that's much worse than neglecting to try social media marketing in the first place: only giving it half an effort.

You can always tell the companies and owners who are phoning it in when it comes to social media. They have half-completed profiles, make posts that have all the spice and appeal of soggy bread, and use every available opportunity to bring the conversation back around to what they sell.

You don't want to be one of those people, and your customers don't want you to be one, either. To really make your mark on Twitter and Facebook, you need to create custom pages that reinforce your company's brand and personality.

Post consistently, but not for the sake of posting consistently. Yes, it's important to update your social profiles on a regular basis, but don't use that as an excuse to post something just for the sake of posting it. Take the extra time and creativity to find something that interests you and your customers. Otherwise, you are only wasting everyone's time.

Show off a bit of personality now and then. Not everything has to be about your company or industry. Mention your pets, your kids, or how that marathon training is going. Anything that makes you seem like more of a person and less of a faceless organization can only help your customer relationships.

Ask yourself the one key question that matters most. Following the golden rule of social media marketing is a simple as asking yourself, "Would I take the time to look at this?" If you would, then what you’ve written has value; if you wouldn't, then go back to the drawing board and start over again.

Work to develop friends and contacts first, customers second. For most parts of your online marketing plan, few things are as important as the metrics. Study the numbers closely enough, and you can be sure the new business will start flowing in. Social media marketing is a little bit different; while you can monitor how many friends or followers you have, what really matters is attention, not web traffic. Do what you can to be interesting and engaging, and you can be sure that the bottom-line business results will catch up later.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

At first glance, having another company manage your social media marketing might seem like a strange idea; after all, isn't the point to get more up close and personal with your customers? Maybe, but a trained creative team – one that knows your company's online and offline marketing goals as well as you do – might be able to take your campaigns to places you couldn't.

In a nutshell, that's why so many business owners are turning to professional web design and online marketing companies to handle their social communications. It isn't that they couldn't do it themselves, but that they couldn't do it as well, or simply don't have time. Often, that's a pretty good trade-off when you consider that using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you to bring in hundreds of new customers every year… but only if you manage them the right way.

Here are three good reasons to consider outsourcing your social media marketing, and make more money for your business in the process:

A good social media marketing team can keep you posting more frequently. If you were to trace the path of a typical small business social media marketing campaign, it would go something like this: Business owner reads about the hundreds of millions of people who are using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to find customers, and decides to start some profiles and participate. This goes well for a couple of weeks, until they discover that they still have too many other time commitments, and the whole thing falls apart.

It's no good trying to find customers on Facebook if you only have time to log in once every other month or so. Leave it to the professionals who have time to write and post – social media marketing is one of those areas where consistency counts for a lot.

A writer who knows your business and customers can keep you on topic. In the same way, too many otherwise professional men and women fall into the trap of constantly telling the world about their personal thoughts and feelings, when they should be finding interesting things to say about their products and industry. Because a good social media copywriter can get to know you and your business, but not everything that's going on in your personal life, they can help you keep your posts and content on message and with the right tone.

You might end up with better social media content, and a much more effective campaign. In the end, your success in finding customers through social media sites is going to depend very largely on your ability to spread interesting articles, photos, and videos, and to do it consistently. With quality content, readers and potential customers always have a reason to come back to your website or social profile; without them, you're just another vendor trying to sell something online. If you don't have the time or creative ambition to come up with attention-grabbing content, then do yourself and your business a favor and delegate the project to someone who does.

Social media is a great way to express your thoughts and feelings, not to mention keep up with friends and acquaintances. But if your Madison area business decides to outsource your social media marketing, it can be an even better way to generate leads and find new business.
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Years ago, the FDA established a pyramid of foods to remind Americans that they should be eating a mix of fruits, vegetables, grains, etc. And although much of that seems like plain old common sense today, there are times when it's good to be reminded that we all need a little bit of variety if we're going to keep performing at our best

In today's Internet marketing environment, the same could be said of your website. Your website needs a healthy diet if it's going to grow and become more profitable. Here are a few of the things you need to be feeding it on a regular basis:

Interesting, search engine friendly content to attract links and traffic. When it comes to web marketing, there just aren't any substitutes for fresh, interesting content. Why do you think it is that we offer so much free advice on this blog? Besides the fact that it lets us do a good deed and help out business owners in need now and again, it's also a great way to show the major search engines – not to mention our clients – that we've got lots of new ideas to share. Do that often enough, and you're bound to earn a better ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Pay per click advertising to occupy sponsored listing slots. Numerous studies have shown that potential customers who are serious about buying tend to click on search engine advertisements much more frequently than other users do. In fact, they often look to those listings first, since they know they are likely to link directly to the products and information they're trying to find. For that reason, it's a good idea to feed your website a steady helping of paid traffic. Move some of that print ad budget over to online advertising for a few months and try it out. It's not always as cost-effective as organic search engine optimization is in the long-term, but it can keep serious buyers visiting your site every day, and it is much more cost effective than direct mail, newspaper and magazine ads, Yellow Pages, and other traditional advertising.

Social media posts to deepen customer relationships. Not everything on the Internet is about finding new customers; you can often do pretty well just by taking care of the ones you have now. Remember that as you establish and develop networks on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While you may not be able to sell to them as aggressively as you would if you were to sell to one on your company's product pages, you can go a long way toward deepening the relationship you have with them, with the aim of turning them into even better customers over time.
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Looking For A Turn-Key Solution To Manage Your Online Reputation & Leverage Social Media?

 

There are two things business owners and marketing managers need to know about promoting their companies over the Internet: First, that it's now the number one place that customers look for products, recommendations, and even business-to-business vendors. The second thing they have to understand is that there isn't any single way to reach those potential buyers.

For years, companies could find a steady source of new revenue simply by optimizing their sites for the major search engines, executing and refining a profitable pay per click advertising campaign, or circulating articles and press releases that brought attention to their websites. Those are all still good ideas, of course, but none of them is strong enough, on its own, to succeed anymore. The web has simply become too competitive.

That's easy enough to understand, but it doesn't make your job any simpler. There was hardly enough time to add regular posts to the company blog before, and now with trends like social media, online video marketing and  mobile marketing taking up more attention, the whole task of promoting your company online can seem like too much work to even attempt.

There are other alternatives to burying your head in the sand, however. With WSI's ReachCast service, it's becoming easier than ever for organizations of any size to add new, high-quality content every week, and in all the areas that matter most. By solidifying your marketing message and spreading it in a variety of ways, we have found a simple and efficient solution for the business that wants to do it all but doesn't have the time or budget.

Here are just a few of the things you get with WSI ReachCast:

• Submissions and updates to a specialized blog created just for your business, plus to all the major search engines, social media sites and local business directories. No more filling out forms or going through complicated verification checks. We will take care of all of that for you, ensuring that your company gets listed everywhere it needs to.

• Content that's more than keywords. Anyone can generate a set of boring articles, social updates, and online videos. ReachCast gives you access to top tier creative teams that devise the kind of content that puts your business in the right light to get spread around your industry on its own. In fact, our base package includes professional copy writing and syndication of 8 articles per month.

• Online reputation monitoring and management. What are customers, competitors, and vendors saying about you? Watching the web for any accurate and fraudulent information is important in this day and age when a single bad review, showing up in search engine results, can cost you hundreds of future sales. And guess what, with the WSI ReachCast service, we not only monitor your online customer reputation, we also make you aware of any negative comments, and we re-promote the positive ones!

• Comprehensive social media marketing. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube already have hundreds of millions of members, and they are gaining steam every day. There's never been a better time to start creating and strengthening relationships via social media sites. With WSI Reach Cast, we create and help you manage your presence on these social media sites.

If you're tired of watching opportunities to take advantage of Internet marketing go by, try WSI's ReachCast today. It's a great way to make sure that new customers can find you online, and that they hear the right things when they do find you.

Call us today at (866) 531-1686, or submit our request form.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

What Comes First, Web Design or an Online Marketing Plan?

Very frequently, we have new clients come to us because – usually after studying a competitor's website – they have decided that it's time for their company to have a new website. There aren't many things the new website can't do for your company, and dozens of ways it can boost your profits, online or off. Still, a lot of these folks have it all backward...

That's because your online marketing plan is the most important piece of your Internet success. You should have one in place even before you start the design of your company's new website.

Although that's not the way a lot of people handle things, it makes sense when you stop to think about it. Ultimately, the goal of your company's website should be to attract more customers. Sometimes, as part of that process, you find that a new or upgraded design makes sense, but why begin with anything other than the aim of finding more business? By focusing your efforts on what matters most to your company, it becomes much easier to decide what kind of website you need, which features you should pay for, etc.

Here are a few ideas you should keep in mind while you start this process:

Even great websites need customers. In order to turn visitors into customers, you have to have a steady flow of visitors to start with. Make sure that search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing are all integrated in your online vision. Otherwise, you could end up with the masterpiece that's never seen by anyone.

What works for some other business may or may not work as well for you. Trying to copy a competitor can be dangerous, and taking advice from a well-meaning friend or colleague can sometimes be just as bad. Think of each idea you hear as it relates to your own company. Different strategies work differently across industries, so take what works for you and discard the rest.

There's one question that matters for every tool, feature, and application you consider. That question is: "How will this help me earn more money, or pay less than I'm paying now?" If it can’t do one of those two things, then why is it worth anything to your company? There might be very rare situations where you'd consider investing in something that won't show a clear return on investment, but throw in too many of them and you have the prescription for a few headaches, a lot of lost profits, and more than a little bit of regret.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Thanks once again to Chuck Bankoff, a highly successful and respected WSI business associate of mine with a WSI office in the southern California area, for putting this clip together.

Once again Betty (a composite of several of WSI's actual clients) has a mistaken impression of what digital marketing is all about. She thinks that just having a Facebook page is “doing” social media marketing.

It is true that social media and search technologies are currently the most powerful advertising options that are available to all business equally today.  However like anything else, it doesn’t just happen without a strategy.

Betty’s online strategy is a little weak…

For some expert social media guidance in the Madison Wisconsin area, visit our website

 

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

WSI Franchisee and Internet Marketing Consultant Andre Savoie recently offered his digital marketing know-how to an honorable cause. Collaborating with the Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition (LTCC), Andre put his social media savvy to good use in an effort to increase tourism after the terrible BP oil spill of April 2010.

We all remember the disastrous oil spill and the horrible effects it had on several coastal communities in the United States. In effect, the LTCC aimed to rebuild the reputation of the fishing and tourism industries affected by the disaster. And for Andre, who is based out of New Orleans, the initiative hit close to home and collaborating on the project was a no-brainer.

Launching an Online Campaign

The LTCC already had a web presence – www.visitlouisianacoast.com – but along with WSI and a newly launched integrated digital marketing campaign, their online visibility soared to a whole new level. The launch included:

• Social media consulting
• Split A/B message testing
• Creation of custom social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr
• Ongoing management on their company blog (blog.visitlouisianacoast.com)

Boosting Online Visibility

By launching an integrated social media marketing strategy for the non-profit organization, Andre’s efforts have generated terrific results. The Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition has gone from having no social media presence to developing increasingly stronger visibility. Some social media successes so far include:

• Building a Facebook network of over 500 friends
• Building a Twitter following of over 400 followers
• 1,000 views on their YouTube channel
• Soaring blog traffic
• A Pay Per Click campaign that has generated triple the traffic they received in the last month

And amazingly, all of this was accomplished within only 3 months!

This is an outstanding accomplishment. It’s a great testament to WSI’s commitment to incorporating online expertise to our social responsibilities around the world.

To read more about the ways your local Madison and Mount Horeb-based WSI Consultant can transform your business, Visit Our Website

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255