Blogging is a terrific way to establish yourself as an expert and drive business to your company.

If you are already blogging on your personal or company website, you are putting a human face on both yourself and your company. Your blog allows you to demonstrate your personal expertise, provide practical advice and provide your visitors with a reason to become clients or customers.

While it is terrific to provide this information to your website/blog’s audience, wouldn’t it be even better if you were able to broadcast your blog to a far greater audience? You can.

Extending Your Reach

There are thousands of websites that not only have their own blogs, but also welcome guest expert bloggers and guest columnists. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s sad to say, but some of our best clients are those who come to us immediately after they had a disappointing experience with another company.

Almost invariably, they tell us the same story: They chose their previous company because they gave them the lower bid on the project or the fancier sales pitch. They thought they were saving money, or getting something more but ended up having to spend far more in the end than if they had gone with quality to begin with.

I’d love to say that we close the deal on every client we pitch. That’s just not the case. Frequently we are under-bid by companies making promises they have neither the talent nor resources to deliver on.

More than a few times, we’ve had the same clients back in our offices, months later, asking us to fix the mess their previous company got them into.

As we preach: For every dollar you spend on a site that brings your business no value, you lost far more than those dollars and your time. You lost out on missed opportunities. On the other hand, if you spend $1,000,000 and it brings you three times that amount in new revenue, then you have made a very smart investment.

A lot of time times, small businesses make the mistake of focusing exclusively on price, rather than return. One lesson they can learn from larger corporations, is they ask – what will be my return on this investment?

It’s not a question of “how much am I spending?” It’s “what am I getting for my investment?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have to be told what companies/organizations are associated with these tag lines? Unless you’ve been living in a cave, then you know that those famous tag lines belong to Burger King, Energizer Batteries, the Marines, and FedEx.

From these examples, you can see just how a great tag line can help establish a brand, maintain a brand, and allow a brand to distinguish itself from competitors.

What makes a great tag line?

The object of a tag line, obviously, is to make your brand more memorable. There is no single avenue to success. Some companies try:

• Humor (Electrolux- “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”)
• Visceral reaction (Kay Jewelers- “Every kiss begins with K”)
• Puns (John Deere- “Nothing runs like a Deere”)
• Direct business sell (Smith Barney “We make money the old fashioned way- we earn it”)

Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows how hard it is to attract visitors to your site. In previous Business Learning Center articles, we’ve discussed how to get visitors through search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (pay per click).

But getting visitors to come to your site is only the first step. Once they’ve arrived, it is your job to keep them on the site for as long as possible and then to encourage visitors to keep coming back again and again. This is the essence of what is called stickiness.

What are the key elements of a sticky website?

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to technological advances, business has been transformed forever. Websites, e-commerce, online marketing, online communities and web-based content can all serve to enhance a company’s bottom line.

Web marketing has become such an effective tool for businesses that many businesses have forgotten the importance of face-to-face human interaction.

While a great website or a well-written blog have the ability to put a human face on a company, there is still much to be said for the importance of face-to-face human interaction.

Read the rest of this entry »

E-commerce websites offer a tremendous opportunity for both new businesses and established “Brick and Mortar” businesses. Utilizing the web gives your business a power and scope that no retail outlets can match.

Many companies, though, fail miserably when trying to turn their traditional businesses into e-businesses. What works in the traditional business world does not always work online.

In years of developing e-commerce websites for our clients, we have learned what works and what doesn’t. While many factors go into the success or failure of an e-commerce site, we have distilled the process to four key elements:

• Clear and straightforward messaging
• Strategically targeted Landing Pages
• Personalized/Engaging Features
• Using Credibility to Build Trust Read the rest of this entry »

Your website development agreement (WDA) – sometime’s called a service level agreement or a detailed spec sheet- is an absolutely critical document. Just by reading the agreement, you can learn a great deal about the web developer you may be working with. Ask yourself: Read the rest of this entry »

When potential clients come to Blue Fountain Media either for a new website or a website redesign, the first questions we ask are:

• What is the purpose of your site?
• What are the goals for your site?

The most common answers to the first question are:

• “Because we feel we should have a web presence.”
• “Because our competitors are taking away business with their websites.”
• “Because everybody else seems to have one.” Read the rest of this entry »

It has taken a while, but most major brands have made the decision to invest time, effort and manpower into social media efforts. When it comes to social media, some of the biggest brands have adapted impressively, while others have failed miserably.

Social media has grown exponentially in recent years and there is no sign that the growth is slowing down. As of the end of 2009, there were a combined 142 million social networkers on the top 10 social media sites. There are over 100 million users on Facebook alone!

What can social media do for established brands and for a new brand just trying to make a name for itself? Social media can: Read the rest of this entry »

A high placement in a search engine query result can mean a huge jump in targeted traffic for a business.

When someone goes to Google looking for a specific product or service, they are likely to review the first few results that come up in the results and ignore results that are not featured on the first page of results.

For example, when people are searching for a “website design company” on Google, this is the result that comes up: Read the rest of this entry »