BroadVision Marketing Blog

SEO services come in all shapes and sizes, it seems. And finding the balance between quality results and reasonable fees is a challenge. 

Every business owner wants to save money. And every small business owner functioning as their own marketer really wants to save money! While saving money on your marketing efforts is a good thing (a great thing really!) going for the cheap SEO services can turn out to be an expensive option.

Topics: content marketing, Web search engine, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Marketing strategy, inbound marketing local

Social media has come to mean an array of activities from your website to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and beyond. But the foundation of all social media is your website and your blog.

With the infinitely vast ways your website can stand out which you can do yourself or spend anywhere from a small amount of money to the big bucks, there is no excuse to not to have the best website you can afford. WordPress is the going concern for the bottom layer of the site. On top of a basic WordPress foundation, you can add different skins that will change the look without changing the computer language at the foundation.

Furthermore, when the foundation gets a makeover, you can safely download the new version without losing what is on the skin above. This way you can keep up with the latest and greatest improvements.

Topics: Using Different Media, Petaluma California, Web search engine, WordPress foundation, WordPress, Marketing in Petaluma CA, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

Business blogging is a powerful low-cost marketing tool when you look at all the other marketing tools available. Its power is in the fact that you are writing about what you know. While it takes time, your knowledge is the value added if you have taken the time to learn how to use blogging properly. There is a big caveat here. Do not expect your blog to get you instant clients, customers or even readers. Expect little and you will be surprised when things work out. Expect instant success and you will be disappointed.

Topics: marketing, Web search engine, Business Blogging, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Marketing strategy

When it comes to business blogging (or any blogging for that matter), content is king of social media. You can save money by writing from your own experience and you can build your business at the same time.

You want to create original content full of your sage advice. You also need to keep your blog fresh with more and more of this original content. Of course, it is always great to have a guest blogger who has a different approach to add to the originality of your site. All these are clues in how to reach your audience.

What you want is to create posts that are not only original, but also give in-depth answers to your clients’ questions. Here are some suggestions on how to do this:

• Be sure you use your keywords constantly. If you want clients to find your answers, you have to improve your blog’s search-engine-optimizationability (yes, I just made that up). If you are writing about eye care, be sure you talk about eye care. If you are focusing on homecare services, house cleaning or Rolex watches, you want to use key words as often as possible without sounding silly.

• If you are a local brick and mortar business or if you are a national chain, it is always best to blog to a particular region. Talking about clients or using testimonials with a particular area mentioned is always a good way to tag your community. In doing this, if a person in Fort Worth is looking for a house cleaning service, your site will come up in the search.

• What you don’t want to be is a blogging commercial. People don’t watch television to see nothing but commercials. No one will read your blog if it is one long commercial for you. You don’t want to promote a product, service or your business in every post.  One source I read suggested that you use a mixture of 75% information and 25% promotion.  It’s worth an experiment. You can always tweak your percentages depending on the success of the experiment.

• Along those lines you want to vary your posts. You can embed videos from YouTube or link to cartoons and comics. There are always occasional funny stories or cool illustrations, maybe even with one of your clients as long as you don’t violate privacy. Guest blog posts are a super addition and so are graphics or charts. Info graphics are becoming a popular item.

Blogging is one of those bread-and-butter items of social media that will keep you in front of your clients, prospects and search engine.  Yes, content is king.

What do you think is the most important aspect of business blogging? How are your blogging efforts working for you?

For more information please refer to our new guide: An Introduction to Business Blogging.

Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

Related articles

• What is a business blog anyway? (marketing.yell.com)

• What's stopping you writing a business blog? (marketing.yell.com)

Topics: Google, YouTube, Web search engine, Rolex, User-generated content, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging

Keywords—you know you can buy lists of them or buy help sorting out what yours are—but what are keywords really, what‘s the deal with them,  and how can you figure out which ones to use?

Defining keywords, keywords define search

People use keywords all the time. When you put what you are searching for in Google or the other search engines, you are using keywords. Search engines go through enormous data bases and send you results by listing sites that apply to the words you “googled”.

Topics: Google, Web search engine, WordPress, Uniform Resource Locator, Keywords, Kevin Sinclair, website, Marketing Plan, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles