How to Dazzle Your Webinar Audience

Do you host webinars for your business? Ever found yourself wondering why your attendance is low or whether you could do
a better job with your presentations? Webinars are a great way to get your message out to the right audience, promote interaction with customers, create buzz about your business or product, and increase sales. With just a little finesse, you can make your online events work even harder for your business.

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Filtered Fiber Facts – The Nice to Know for Google Fiber

Where is It?

As of May 2013, two cities offer Google Fiber and two other cities are being networked:
1. Kansas City, Missouri (Already Active, See Map)
2. Kansas City, Kansas (Already Active, See Map)
3. Provo, Utah (Quarter 4 of 2013)
4. Austin, Texas (Quarter 2 of 2014)

What is It?

Free Internet? What will Google think of next? If you’re even slightly tied to the Austin area, you’ve seen the billboards and heard the news. By spring 2014 our automobile traffic will be even slower; however, Austin’s Internet connections will be among the fastest in the country!
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The Importance of Having a (Good) Web Presence

As ubiquitous as the Internet is, there are still many people who do local SEO company marketing that don’t realize how important having a good web presence really is. Or a website at that. When was the last time you searched in the Yellow Pages for a plumber or that new restaurant your friends are talking about…’99? I thought so. But nowadays, having the courage to just start a website isn’t good enough – anyone can have that since it’s not 2004 either. The key is to have, as the title says, a good web presence.

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Creating a Personal Brand (People are Brands, Too)

What comes to mind when you think of brands? Probably your favorite one—whether it’s Starbucks, Apple jailbreak iPhone 4 , Nike or something else, we each have personal brand preferences that we identify with.  The aforementioned brands are highly recognized not just because they produce great products, but also because they exemplify stellar branding. There’s a reason why when someone says, “Just do it,” most people think of Nike.

Interning for an Austin, Texas based creative agency with a solid repertoire of branding experience, I can attest to the value of having a strong brand. What many of us don’t realize, though, is that people are brands, too. It’s crucial to establish a personal brand for yourself so that you stand out in an increasingly competitive environment. Here are some tips I’ve compiled to help you get started on creating your own personal brand.

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The 7 Tips to Building Relationships, Not Barriers.

In a sales-driven world, it can be hard to remember that the majority of salespersons are not the run-of-the-mill wheeling and dealing sharks you may have heard of. In fact, the best salespersons are the complete opposite. They have mastered what the stereotypical salespeople have not: listening. Yes, you read that right- listening is the cornerstone to building a business relationship. Hell, it’s probably the foundation for any type of relationship but I’ll leave that for a future post.

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Maintaining an Online Social Media Presence

Maybe you stumbled upon this post because you check the HMG blog regularly (if so, kudos!). But most likely, you saw one of our posts on either our Facebook or our Twitter linking you here directly—the effects of social media are everywhere. A couple of months ago, we posted a blog post about the importance of having a good web presence. To expand on this, having an online presence across a multitude of social media platforms enables us to have greater reach, interaction and overall engagement. Here are a few brief tips to consider when establishing and maintaining your online social media presence:

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Tips for Prepping your eCommerce Website for the Holiday Season

Black Friday is less than two weeks away, and if you haven’t prepped your website for the influx of visitors and sales, now is the time. It’s just not enough to post your deals and special offers and then wait for the dollars to roll in. Your website itself is going to need a little extra TLC to make sure it can give shoppers a smooth, frictionless experience. Let’s take a look at six ways to un-suck your eCommerce website for the holidays:

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What We’ve Learned From Running a Digital Agency for a Decade

We’ve been operating in the digital marketplace for ten years now, and things have changed a lot in that time. New technologies, new online marketing solutions, and new best practices are always clamoring for attention, and that sometimes makes it difficult to stay on track as a company. For more info visit http://titantransline.com . To think that there was no such thing as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter when we opened our agency. Can you even remember what life was like before these CPA Affiliate Networks forever changed how we engage and communicate with friends, family and brands throughout the world? We’ve also seen the rise and fall of MySpace from the front seat. But some things don’t change. Businesses that succeed in the lightning-paced world of digital marketing do so by staying true to some universal guiding principles. Here are three of the things we’ve learned during our decade-long adventure.

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Marketing Fail: Three Big Business Web Design Disasters

The world of web design can seem pretty intimidating at times. After all, the success of your business rises and falls on whether your website successfully engages your site visitors and conveniences them to take the next step. We know you’re kickin’ it with awesome web page design, but just in case you need some inspiration, take a look at these big business web design disasters and take some notes on what NOT to do:

Zulily

Plenty of “deal-of-the-day” websites require you to register before you can see the actual deals, but Zulily’s home page gives you next to no information about what the site does. Here are the biggest design problems:

  • You can find a bit of information about how the site works, but it’s buried at the bottom of the page under a banner that looks like advertising, making the viewer ignore everything below it.
  • Links to “How Zulily Works,” “Brands We Love,” and “FAQ” appear in tiny type that doesn’t stand out from surrounding content.
  • No secondary call to action if the visitor isn’t ready to register.

Bottom Line:  It’s too hard for non-registered users to learn about the site.

Carol House Furniture

Carol House makes visitors jump through multiple hoops in order to view their website—a surefire way to send customers scrambling for the back button. For starters:

  • Gray type on white background = hard to read.
  • After reaching the home page, you have to click an additional button to see any actual content.
  • The home page has a long list of obsolete requirements you must meet before you can see their content (high speed internet, Flash player, disable pop-up blocker). Really? Who has to remind people they need high speed internet these days?

After clicking the Enter button, a new page opens where all browser controls have been disabled, a cheesy Flash video plays, music automatically starts, and the talking heads at the top of the page point out interesting links we might want to click (wait, I thought we were here to look at furniture…).

We also see lots of wasted space on either side with no clear call to action anywhere on the page.

Bottom Line: After making your visitors enter an alternate universe in order to see your site, don’t handcuff them in a desperate attempt to make them stick around.

Pure Ecommerce

I’ll keep this one short and sweet (which is opposite of Pure Ecommerce’s site).

We have to read through lengthy blocks of copy just to find out what the company offers. Once we click on the call to action, we’re directed to more copy. Not exactly a one-click, ready-to-go experience as promised.

Bottom Line: Too much copy and weak call to actions.

So, what’s the point?

Big business web design disasters keep us all humble.  If they can experience huge marketing fails, so can we.  Keep testing, keep tweaking, and keep converting!  Would you consider your online web presence a “disaster”?   If so, we’d love to chat with you… after all we’re only a phone call away.

Responsive Design & Mobile SEO

The digital environment is constantly changing. Consumers are consistently taking in information through various channels, which include: laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, and even smart TV’s. Smartphones especially, have become so indispensable to our daily lives that 80% never leave home without their phones in hand. Given this shift in devices and usage, organizations need to adopt websites that are functional, searchable, and provide a great user experience to visitors in all aspects. There are SEO’s for all types of businesses such as plastic surgeon SEO. This is where responsive design comes into play. Responsive design refers to having a website that is designed and programmed specifically so that the design layout is universal across all platforms. The chief benefit of having a responsive design is that you don’t need to have separate mobile, tablet, and PC versions of your site. Responsive design is a shift in how we view websites across all devices. However, most don’t realize that a responsive design layout is a little different from a mobile design layout. A mobile website refers to designing a website that will appear on smartphones and tablets in the most user friendly way possible for those screen sizes and the correlating style of interaction. Design layouts for mobile websites aren’t usually the same or largely congruent to the desktop version of the site.

Although design layouts and aesthetics for responsive sites are meant to span across all devices, optimization is still an important aspect of any website. Let’s take into consideration the following statistics:

  • 50% of mobile searches lead to purchase
  • 95% of smartphone users have searched for local information
  • 61% of users call a business after searching and 59% visit the location
  • 90% of these people act within 24 hours

Given that more and more people are searching for information through mobile devices, search engine optimization is an important piece of the puzzle that may sometimes get looked over. According to Google, responsive design and seo hamilton go hand in hand, more specifically mobile SEO. Mobile SEO consists of numerous best practices that should be implemented for optimal mobile usage, but here are a few key things to remember:

  • Fully optimize all local listings on both Google and Bing. Most mobile cenaless comprar search results are largely influenced by geo-location.
  • Target shorter keywords in order to show up in mobile search results. Most users searching through mobile devices tend to use shorter keywords, which indicates that these searches are usually fast or quick in nature.
  • Enable mobile web analytics in order to make data driven improvements to your mobile SEO efforts.
  • Focus on usability and ease of use.  Users are more likely to bounce from a mobile site if they can’t (1) easily find the information they’re looking for, (2) the load time of the mobile site is slow, or (3) the website isn’t optimized for mobile use. These among other things will deter a mobile user form your site.

It’s easy to see that responsive design and fully optimized mobile websites are a sign of the next frontier of the digital landscape and should be adopted by any organization that doesn’t want to be left behind.

Need a hand establishing your company’s online presence, specifically in the mobile space? Give us a call or shoot us an email today. Over the years, we have established a proven method to help our clients achieve their marketing goals. We have also built lasting relationships with strategic partners such as Apogee Results. Together, we can help your business be a dominant player on and off the field.