Inbound Marketing Blog

Why Franchise’s Should have a Network of Websites Franchise businesses have a unique opportunity to leverage the power of online marketing (SEO) at both the franchisor and franchisee level. As search results become more localized and focused on the searcher, branching out into a network of websites can open up exceptional results from search and brand recognition. Often the corporate franchise website will represent the entire entity as well as a page or two for each location. All of the information visitors find in search will be from the corporate prospective and lead them to a location page where the visitor can find a little bit about the franchise in their area. Search engines see this as only one website. A network of franchise websites, meaning each location has its own website, will deliver more opportunity to be found in search. Local websites will also allow each franchisee to tell their story, share local images, testimonials and more information geared for their area than could ever be included on a single corporate site.more

I recently met with a B2B firm who is hoping to dramatically grow sales as quickly as possible. Their dilemma is how to make this happen with the most return on their investment. They feel that hiring an outside salesperson to pound the pavement and the phones is the surest way. Sooner or later, someone is bound to be in the market for what they’re selling and they’ll be in the right place at the right time to make a sale. It could take 10 cold calls to get a meeting or it could take 50. Once they get a meeting, how much time will it take to convince the prospect that they need the service? And then, that they’re the best company to offer it?more

I received a cryptic message from Eric Patterson, one of our Software Engineers today. He pointed me to a javascript error report that he noticed while trolling through them and eating lunch.more

You’ve probably heard this phrase before…people leave managers, not companies. Let’s explore this idea a bit. I can find all kinds of surveys that ask people why they quit their jobs. And I can find a variety of answers that give further insight. There are differences of course, just like there are differences in people. One thing stands out, however, and that is the health of the relationship between a Contributing Team Member (CTM) and his/her manager relates directly to overall satisfaction with a company. Why is this relationship so critical? Because for the most part, your manager is the daily “face” or “voice” of your employment brand (I’ve talked about this concept in a previous post). Your organization doesn’t greet you in the morning, provide you with challenging work or give you feedback on your performance. But, your manager does. And how this person handles those roles and communication opportunities is how you largely measure your satisfaction with your organization.more

I respect people who work with their hands. I have some small idea about what it takes to change my car’s oil, or put in a new pond in the back yard. But I don’t know what it takes to rebuild a car’s engine or design the landscape for a new shopping complex. I have some small idea what it takes to put a laminate floor in a living room, but no real idea of what it takes to organize multiple companies to complete the renovation of an old theatre. I don’t have any desire to muddle around in those sorts of professions. It seems difficult and time consuming to me and I acknowledge that much of my perceived difficulty lies in my lack of knowledge for that industry. I’m alright with that, because I work in an industry that people have an idea about, but may not know all that goes into building a full project. Computer programming, and the web specifically, is my industry. And like me and changing my car’s oil, you know how to open a browser and navigate to your favorite website. But do you know what it takes to build that website? Well, that’s quite a large question, and involves gathering technical requirements, architecting the data structures, designing the look and feel of the site, programming the site, testing, deployment, scope changes, and analyzing the data once the site is live.more

Big brands and little brands work really hard clarify their message; what makes them different or better than the others. They spend hours identifying how they want to be perceived in the market, who they want to emulate or personify as a brand. What brands stand out in your mind? What thoughts come to mind when you hear Ford, Chevy, Starbucks, BP? Think about those brands for a minute. Now, what’s your personal brand? Who are you? What do you stand for?more

This post was originally published on creativewebbusiness.com. There's been a bit of a kerfuffle lately in the Facebook marketing community regarding the changes the platform has been making to its newsfeed algorithms. Late in September, business pages began to notice engagement rates with their posts dropping through the floor. The reason is that REACH - the number of people seeing the company's posts - has plummeted as a direct result of Facebook's latest newsfeed algorithm changes. This has been going on slowly for many months, but this month it reached a head. Facebook's official statement regarding the algorithm changes is as follows: "We're continuing to optimize News Feed to show the posts that people are most likely to engage with, ensuring they see the most interesting stories. This aligns with our vision that all content should be as engaging as the posts you see from friends and family." Huh. So that's how they're going to play it.more

Let's face it, SEO (search engine optimization), or SEM (search engine marketing), can be elusive terminology. What is it? What does it mean? Who can do it? How hard is it to learn? Can I do it myself? In an age where information is just a Google search away, we can learn about anything, anytime, from nearly anywhere. SEO/SEM is no different - anyone can learn how to do it, much like you can learn how to do lots of new things by researching online. You can learn how to repair a clothes dryer, install a door, build a website and much, much more. Not that you’d want to take those things on yourself. But, how does the quality of the work compare with professionals? The role of an SEO "professional" changes constantly. While your company may be interested in SEO for your website, you're really interested in online success. Marketing the site, or optimizing it for the search engines, includes a lot of different elements like content, page structure, inbound links, social media connections and much more. Search engine algorithms have nearly or over 200 different elements.more

While there are a lot of different answers to that question, it's probably safest to say that link building is evolving. Certainly the lawless days of buying links, spinning unintelligible articles, and spamming endless blogs with bogus comments are over.more

How would we recognize your confidence in the workplace? This is one of my favorite interview questions and I have to say, one that is memorable to most people. I can remember the first interview I performed. Not as a job seeker, but as a company representative. My manager was supposed to be the interviewer, but something came up last minute that pulled him into another activity. So, he asked me to fill in. I was nervous! And it did not go very well. I wasn’t sure how or what to ask, and I think I resorted to pretty typical interview questions with very little insight about the person as a result. Now, I can say I have interviewed hundreds of people for a wide variety of roles in several different industries. And I love it…it is the best part of my job!more

Hi, my name is Marjorie. I'm a relatively new addition to the Mindscape team - I accepted a position here in June (although I've been working with Mindscape as a contractor for close to a year). My background in creative writing, search engine optimization (SEO) and both B2B and B2C marketing have given me a unique skill set which I'm excited to add to Mindscape's arsenal: digital copywriting. So let's talk about digital content, for a minute.more

I have the opportunity to work with a really amazing team within Mindscape. Our team focuses on helping our clients use the power of the web to further their businesses. A part of this is online branding, making sure the content present in the digital realms drives customers to the right places. In the world of HR and Contributing Team Members (CTM’s), we can take this same basic concept and apply it differently. I’m talking about employment branding. There are two perspectives to employment branding: how current CTM’s view/value what their employer provides them and how prospective CTM’s view/value the possibilities of working for an employer. Both of them play a significant role in the ability of employers to first attract and recruit great team members and secondly to create an environment that retains and keeps the team members motivated to be great.more

How are you measuring against your goals for 2012? We’re all in this together. Time goes by faster and faster, everyone is “busy.” Like many professionals and businesses, we took time in late 2011 and earlier this year to identify our goals for 2012. As we begin the planning process for next year, it is a good time to look back on those objectives and see how we’re doing. Why? Well, looking back at what you set out to do can be energizing as we head into the home stretch of the year. Remember all the planning, conversations and excitement when you set those goals? Rekindle that excitement and go for it. You still have over three months left in the year.more

Database seems to be one of those magical words that everyone can use and understand the main concept. “It’s where my stuff is stored,” is the most basic definition of a database, and most people don’t look too far beyond that. But, for those of you that are curious, here is a basic overview of how a Database works: First, let’s break down the hierarchy for a database. A database server contains many (dozens, hundreds, thousands) databases. A database contains many tables. Each table can consist of a few or lots of columns. Rows populate a database, giving a value to each column in the respective table. This is really much simpler than it sounds. Essentially, each table in a database is just a large Excel-like spreadsheet. Here is a visual representation to help you out: http://screencast.com/t/3yKOrVn0lmore

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Most people recognize this as the 5th Habit of Stephan Covey in his infamous book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This habit is the most difficult for me and I would guess for most others too. How often we rush into sharing our thoughts just to get them out there: to impress, to meet our agenda or to challenge. I’m guessing this is a bit more perplexing for those of us with extroverted personalities, or the ones who like to “think out loud.” What do we miss in this process when we don’t try to understand our audience first? Do we share something that has no value? Do we miss an opportunity to really connect and further a relationship with someone? Or do we just waste our time?more

Staying up-to-date on the latest online developments is extremely important if you want your business to do well. The fundamentals of search engine optimization don’t change often (although the panda update requires more relevant content). These tried and true rules can help you be extremely successful online. If you address each of the following eight elements when new content is added to your site, your search positioning will consistently improve along with the quality of visitors coming to your site. You don’t just want traffic, you want relevant traffic that is looking to buy. 1 | Page title Your page title is one of the first things the search engine spiders view (the page title for this page is 8 Key Elements to Get to the Top of Google). This title tells the search engines what your page is about. You should not simply repeat the keywords over and over in this title. You should limit this title to eight to ten words and it should make sense to the visitor. Don’t just write anything for the spiders - this will lead to a bad user experience and a non-return visitor. 2 | URL The URL that displays in the address bar of your browser should contain the keyword focus of the page. The best way to include keywords is to separate them with hyphens (-). If this doesn't happen, search engine spiders will view all the words as one big word. As an example, this page URL is http://www.mindscapesolutions.com/blog/2012/09/26/8-key-elements-to-get-to-the-top-of-google/. So we're telling Google this page is about eight key elements to get to to the top of Google. 3 | Meta data: keywords & descriptions The meta keywords and meta description are not given as much importance by the search engines as they used to, but you should still take the time to include your keywords for each individual page. Make sure the description makes sense and contains at least one use of the keyword phrase you are focusing on. Also include your keyword phrase in the meta keywords but don’t repeat over and over; limit your meta keywords to 8-10 keywords, no more than 847 characters total. Description should be limited to no more than 150 characters. 4 | Headings & sub-headings Headings and sub headings are very similar to chapters of a book. They describe what the reader should expect in the coming pages. With your website you should use H1 tags with your keyword of focus on the page. If there are multiple related keywords of focus for that page, you can use additional H2, H3, and H4 tags as sub headings. Remember, your visitors will be reading these headings so they need to make sense while still including your keywords. 5 | Text-based navigation Avoid calling a link just articles. Why? What kind of articles are they going to be? How about Web Marketing Articles? Do you have any question as to what the page is going to be about? You know it's going to be about web marketing articles, and even better, so will the search engines! 6 | Alt text for images Search engines cannot read images, but they can read the alternative text in your images. If you add this, the spiders will know what your image is about. If you include the keywords you are focusing on as alternative text for your images, you’ll let the spiders know what relevance the image has. It will be one more instance of proper keyword usage and be that much easier for search engines to find your content. Many companies skip this, so pay attention and you’ll be further ahead of your competition. 7 | Body copy When writing the copy for your page it's important to include keywords in the body. Each page of your website should contain between 250 and 600 words. You should include your keyword phrase at least four to five times. Your objective should be to create an excellent user experience and provide value to your visitor, so you don't have to insert it that often unless it truly makes sense. 8 | Build links The phrase from the movie Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come,” unfortunately doesn’t apply to the Web. Once your site is built and you have all the elements above, generate awareness and gain inbound links. Search engines look at these inbound links as “votes of confidence” for your site. If those links are coming from sites which have high page rank, they will be viewed as highly credible “votes” by the search engine algorithms and you should see an increase in your position. If you use these eight steps as a template when creating each page on your website, you should rapidly move up through the ranks of search results and quality of traffic will soar. This will lead to higher conversion rates and increases in your online revenue. If this article has left you with any questions, you can simply reach out to us for a free, no-obligation web marketing consultation by clicking here. If you liked this article, you may also like: Learn the 6 Guaranteed Steps to Successful Website Developmentmore

As I’m sure everyone knows by now, computers run on good ol’ 1’s and 0’s. An easy statement to make, but a difficult one to truly grasp in reality and scope. I mean think about it: that shiny new game you just bought, with its whizzing bullets, roaring monsters, vast landscapes, online connectivity letting you frag your friends… that ALL gets crunched down into simple 1’s and 0’s. Pretty staggering that that amount of interaction can be reduced to microscopic electrons flying through a miniature universe the size of your cell phone (or even smaller). So how does it work? Well you’ll need about a dozen years of college and a Masters Degree in computer engineering, to find out! But I can at least give you a small taste of how those 1’s and 0’s form information.more

Let’s face it, in todays world we all what we want when we want it. Those who can deliver are those we choose to do business with. Still, those who are able to address our needs, and provide answers that are helpful are those we can turn to and trust time and time again. There are so many other ways to say no to customer, prospect, co-worker, friend, anyone and avoid saying “no,” “I can’t,” “it’s not possible,” etc. Finding ways to avoid saying no will make you a valuable resource for those you interact with. I’m not saying you need to agree or say yes to everything, simply that there is a better way to say no. When it comes to customers or prospective customers they may want something done immediately, but you’re team, you’re staff or your schedules simply won’t allow for it. What do you say to them, rather than, “No, we can’t do that today, sorry.” How about, “I wish I could do that for you today; we’ll do everything we can, but it’s most likely we’ll get it taken care of for you tomorrow. Would that be acceptable?”more

Customers. They’re our oxygen in business. Without them we don’t make it. Often, our focus on customers are the ones outside of our business. What if we spent the same amount of energy on our internal customers as our external customers? What would our results look like? In human resources, my internal customers are my customers. Yes, I have some outside of our organization as well, but the ones I spend the most time with are in my daily work world. How about you? Are you as thoughtful or responsive to your team members when they have a request as a demanding client. Do you focus on what your team members would say about your performance to your manager? Or are you more concerned about what your clients would say about you?more

I found myself sitting at my desk the other day, and knew that I had to get some work done. The problem was that every time I started, something else distracted me. Each instance I was distracted, it took time to remember what I was doing, build up the context that I had my brain set in before I was interrupted, and get back in the Zone. Interruptions today are easier than ever. Here’s a small list of the interruptions that can find me from where I sit: Email notification Instant messenger for chatting with co-workers Desk phone Cell phone Internet! Facebook Google Reader ESPN CNN USA Today Detroit Free Press Research for my next vacation Meetings A window A grumbly stomachmore