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Posted:
February 9, 2012
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Generating Business Online is More Than a Website

I deal with a lot of one-person and small businesses and I’ve noticed a big misunderstanding when it comes to online marketing. Becoming successful online takes hard work, a little luck and an ever-changing strategy that trends with the rest of the changing business and technology world.

So many people and small businesses think that you can build a new website and let the good times roll. If it were that easy, we’d all be retired! The reality is that you need to get your hands dirty, have a solid plan in place and be extremely good at adjusting that plan as your business evolves and the business landscape changes.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to implement every online marketing trick in the book. There are WAY to many areas of online marketing and even the largest of organizations have difficulty doing this. Depending on your resources (money and time), choose tactics that fit into a workable plan for YOUR business. Don’t overwhelm yourself as it’s easy to do when dealing with the web and online marketing. Every business is different and have different goals so create your strategy around those specific goals.

Here’s a good example of people wanting to do to much. There are tons and tons of social media sites out there: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and many, many, many more. To manage them all, even with a team of worker bees, it’s difficult. So, don’t try to take them all on at once. Pick one platform and work on building that up first. Once you create a good presence, start working on another one. One tip when it comes to social media: go where your users are. So many people think that they need to be on all social media sites. Not the case. If your users and target audience are not on Facebook, stay away from Facebook. You’ll only be spinning your wheels. Find out where your audience is, and set up shop there. Make sure you ENGAGE them. Don’t just set up a profile and hope magic will happen. It won’t!

Important takeaway from this post: online marketing is hard. It takes time to find a plan that works for your business. There will be frustration, trial and error and minor successes. When you find those minor successes, learn to build them into larger successes.

We’ll have more articles about how to create an online marketing strategy that works for your business so stay tuned. Just realize that many moving pieces have to be happening to really generate business online.

Posted:
February 2, 2012
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Measuring Your Success & Failures With Google Analytics

How do you know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been? As with anything in life, you need to measure things and look at the underlying numbers to make improvements and make sure you are keeping on track with your goals and objectives.

As an example, let’s say you want to lose 25 pounds. There is no way to tell when you hit that 25 pound mark unless you measure your progress. You need a starting point, right? So, you weigh in at 200 pounds. You know that you need to get down to 175 to hit your goal. That’s called measurement. You work towards that goal by constantly looking at the data to make sure you are on track. You set smaller goals and milestones in between the large goals as stepping stones. When you hit your big goal of losing 25 pounds, you re-assess your situation and create new goals. It’s a constant cycle of measuring improvements.

The same goes for your business and your online existence. Whether it be your website, email campaigns, Facebook page, paid advertising campaigns or anything else you are doing online, you need to constantly measure to be sure you are working towards your goals and not away from them.

Fortunately, Google Analytics easily lets you do this and best of all it’s free. You can easily implement Google Analytics in your site and there are some simple ways if you are using a CMS such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. If you have questions about how to get Google Analytics up and running, send me an email at mike@logicburst.com. I’m happy to help.

So, What Should You Be Measuring?

It all depends. If you are currently measuring or tracking nothing, just start tracking something such as:

  • Unique Visitors
  • Page Views
  • Average Time on Site
  • Top Landing Pages
  • Top Exit Pages
  • Top Content
  • Referring Traffic
  • Organic Traffic & Keywords

There is MUCH, MUCH more that you can track but start here and build your reports. Your reports and measurements can evolve over time. This will give you a chance to get use to Google Analytics, learn how it’s set up and check out some of the cool features it provides. From here, you can create customized reports and dashboards, set goals and really take hold of what you are doing on the web.

This should get you started. There are many more areas we can dig into once you get going. Analytics is one area that many businesses fail to do properly. Don’t be one of those businesses. Measure your progress, make improvements and pass right by your competition with the valuable data you get from analyzing your online presence.

Posted:
January 13, 2012
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Friday Tip: Do More Online in 2012

So, you’ve been thinking about expanding your digital and online efforts in 2012. Great! Now is truly the time to get on top of it and go for it. Digital marketing is so cost efficient it really doesn’t hurt for you to take some risks. Here are a few simple things you can do to branch out this year to try and generate some new business:

  • Don’t have a Facebook page? Set one up. You can do this on your own for $0! It just takes a little time and effort but the benefits could be huge. Social is where success lies.
  • Make more of an effort. Don’t just throw up a website for your business and hope people will magically come. Most people that I work with, initially think that a website will bring in traffic and customers. No, the website is your first impression. You have to do some grunt work (a.k.a. marketing) in order to drive traffic to your website. So, create a marketing plan, even if it’s very simple to start.
  • Network more. You never know when you are going to run into someone who can help take your business to the next level with mentoring, investments, partnerships. So, get yourself out more and start meeting like-minded people. Start with local meetups and industry conferences and events.

Now is definitely the time to branch out. Competition is always steep but with all of the changes in technology and how the web operates, it’s essential to take advantage of everything you can. Your business will be better off for it.

Posted:
January 11, 2012
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Let the Logicburst Blog Begin!

It’s time I start writing a bit so hopefully I’ll be able to post at least one useful article each week about something that can help your business from a digital standpoint. If you ever have any topics you’d like me to write about, please send me a note at mike@logicburst.com and I’m happy to write up a post.

Also, should you need any help or have questions that relate to digital marketing and web development, please shoot those over to me as well and I can help you out.

Welcome to the Logicburst blog!