Web Visibility Archives | Page 5 of 9

November 12, 2014November 7, 2014

What I’m Watching and Testing for My Own Business Right Now

Two women — Bobbie and Nancy after a Try It Friday video session.

You can never stand still when your living is made from the Internet! So you can know what I think has use for business, here’s my short list of things that I am using and testing for my own business to see if using the service works to grow a web presence and if it is meaningful and marketable to clients as a service.

1. Simple cheeky, yet fun videos.
Check out my Try It Friday videos on YouTube, this blog or my website. I am still trying to find my footing with this one, but I think that there may be value. My concept is to take something fun and show it on video. This week we will be doing the app called Smule which is a karaoke-like music app.

2. Instagram for consultants and small businesses.
Instagram and visual media is all the rage, but how can you use it for your business when you are selling services not products. I am testing how and what to do on my own account. You can follow me at http://www.instagram.com/nancy_mccord. Right now I am working on graphics for every Monday and then other images occasionally. You will not see selfies or images of food I’m eating unless I get feedback otherwise. 🙂

3. Improved time management to save time to be creative.
As a busy and in-demand consultant and Google AdWords account manager, my big problem is time. It may be yours too. How can you grow your business if you never have time to be strategic? I am now blocking off Monday morning and Friday morning to regroup, check my strategies, plan ahead, and test new things. Don’t try to phone me during these times as they are blocked off, calendared, strategic, thinking outside the box times. Many big business want their employees to have creative time, but as a small business owner, we typically cheat ourselves in this area. With so many new apps, services, and online features surfacing monthly I felt I needed time to stay on top of my game for my clients. I take time to make sure that I evaluate new things to be able to make the best recommendations possible of what can be done and used to promote a client’s business and brand online.

What are you doing to strategically plan ahead for your business or are testing yourself? Leave me a comment and share it here.

October 13, 2014October 12, 2014

Five Things You Can Do to Promote Your Bed and Breakfast Inn

I have just returned from a fall leaf trip in New York along the Hudson River valley. The leaf colors were beautiful and the area is a wonderful place to visit. While on travel, I stayed at two bed and breakfasts and had a chance to chat with two innkeepers about their business promotion. Here’s a few things I learned and a few things I’d like to share with their community.

1. Social Media is a Must Do.

If you are running a bed and breakfast, you’ve just got to bite the bullet and be active on social media. Particularly this means Facebook for you. You should be posting pics of happy guests, group shots, snaps of the food you serve in the morning and pics of places guests can visit when they stay with you.

2. TripAdvisor Can Make or Break Your Business.

If you are not watching TripAdvisor daily, you’d better be making that a website to check daily. Make sure your listing is up-to-date, that you have good quality images of your inn, and that you respond to reviews in a professional way. Make sure to ask your guests to write a review for TripAdvisor. We actually chose the bed and breakfasts we stayed at based on the reviews on TripAdvisor. One had over 200 reviews and had set a personal goal to get 300 in a month.

3. Blogging Can Be Good for Your Business.

Sounds like just one more thing to do that you don’t have time for when you run a busy inn, right? Think again, blogging can be very, very good for your business. As you will act as a concierge when your guests come to stay with you, you’d better be showing you know the area and are the local expert on food, places to visit, and things to do. Blogging is a great way to show your expertise as well as to beef up the content on your website for Google and Bing. Plus these posts will provide value when people visit your website from TripAdvisor.

Come by and visit on Wednesday for the rest of my promotion tips.

August 21, 2014August 16, 2014

Budget Tight? Where Can You Cut Back without Hurting Your Web Visibility?

The month of July has been tough for a number of businesses and August is not looking too hot either. Your company President is asking all departments to start trimming. Where can you trim without seriously affecting online visibility?

1. Take a careful look at social media. You may be able to move from three updates a day to two or from two to one.

2. Look at where your customers are. If you are paying to post to LinkedIn but have never gotten a customer from LinkedIn, use HootSuite to auto feed your blog posts to LinkedIn and drop daily status updates there. How about Google+ can you drop your frequency back?

3. Consider trimming your AdWords pay per click budget back 10%. You may not suffer significantly from this action but don’t just do it automatically. If AdWords has really been a strong lead driver for you, it may be more beneficial to boost your budget there instead of cutting.

4. Consider asking your blog post supplier to move from three days a week to two or from two to one. I do not recommend less than one day a week posting as there are simply too many benefits you receive from great blog content, but it may be time to review your spend in this area.

Although not every business will want to cut back when times are tough you have options to help trim the budget by taking a careful look at what has been working to drive leads and what can simply be trimmed in service level for the time being to trim costs until things turn around financially.

July 3, 2014June 29, 2014

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Image showing how a responsive site resizes to fill the device screen.

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