moonlitecreative.com

I frequently find it surprising how many people spend a considerable amount of time and money building, maintaining, and optimizing their website and then do nothing about actually tracking and analyzing just how effective their strategies are. In order to have a strong website that generates solid leads for your business or organization, I highly suggest spending some time analyzing your traffic and this is very easy to do using Google’s free application, Google Analytics. Read more »

I posted an article awhile ago about how Twitter could be used as a successful marketing tool for small businesses. Several clients have asked me to write a follow up post about the steps they need to take to get started on Twitter. So even though there are many great resources already available on this subject, I’ve decided to re-invent the wheel a bit and come up with my own “How to get Started on Twitter” post upon request. Read more »

Both commercial and open source (free, community supported) CMS (Content Management Systems) have been around for several years. However, over the past few years, they have really evolved, worked out a lot of their bugs, and are slowly beginning to dominate the web more and more. Website owners and developers alike frequently sing the praises of CMS since sites using these systems are often (but not always) easier for developers to build, can be less costly for the site owner, and also provide the opportunity for website owners to make their own updates or expand their sites with dynamic features themselves instead of having to hire a programmer to create them. Read more »

When I started doing freelance design 15 years ago, most new clients requests were: “I need a logo, business card, and brochure.” These days, the initial requests I get from clients are typically more along the lines of, “I need a logo and a website set up.” Half the time printed materials are a complete after thought – if they are requested for development at all.

My how times have changed! Or have they?

The fact is, as wonderful as the web is, sometimes you still need to get good, quality, printed marketing pieces in front of your clients. But in these tough economic times, many of the small businesses and non-profit clients I work with think they can’t afford to do printing projects. However, with a little leg work and/or a better understanding about how printing processes work, there are ways to make printing more affordable. Read more »

In addition to the images and text you see when you visit a site there are many other bits of code behind the scenes that search engines review when they “crawl” (visit) a site. Keywords are one of the “head” or “meta” tags that appear near the very top of a page’s code and are not visible on your actual page. These are terms that you can choose to code into your site because you speculate that someone will use these terms to search for a site like yours. The page “title” appears at the top of your screen on each page and the “description” shows up under your page title in the search engine’s results but is otherwise not viewable to the average site visitor. Read more »

If you ask just about any reputable SEO expert what their #1 SEO “secret” is for getting a site indexed and referred highly by search engines for key terms, you will undoubtably get this answer: “Content is King”.

I know… Not exactly the cool, sexy, techy SEO tip you were looking for, is it? However, this is a very legitimate answer. Every other SEO tactic you may try to incorporate within your site to improve your search engines rankings ultimately will need tied into your site’s content to be beneficial to you. So before skipping ahead in this series to read more about all the SEO “tricks,” I highly recommend that you take a few moments to really consider your site’s content first.

Search engines and visitors both love a good, content-driven site. Sites that simply have general marketing fluff in them with no real “meat,” are not updated regularly, and do not include many key terms within the site’s readable text do not tend to come up in search results as well as more developed sites. Therefore, as you develop or refine your website, here are some things to take into consideration with your content: Read more »

A Twitter Success Story

When former retailer and current small business consultant, Cinda Baxter, saw the toll that the recession was taking on small businesses across the country she came up with a simple, yet powerful concept that spiraled into a national marketing campaign called, “The 3/50 Project” which asks consumers to spend $50 a month at three independently-owned stores to help them stay in business and stimulate the economy.

While her concept is very inspiring in itself, her successful marketing campaign is also worth noting as Baxter credits much of her campaign’s success to bloggers and subscribers of free social networking sites such as Twitter who “tweeted” and “re-tweeted” links to her blog. “Twitter played an important role in the rapid growth of The 3/50 Project, building off the momentum created by my blog, unsolicited third party endorsements, and a couple of trade publications who loved the concept,” Baxter explains. “From there, things took off like a rocket.” Her project is now experiencing the Twitter phenomenon known now as the “viral effect” (aka Twitter’s ability to widely spread information incredibly quickly over its worldwide network). The 3/50 Project website just went live on March 30, and as of midnight April 6 had already received 8,658 visits from 7,524 absolute unique visitors! Read more »

You and/or your web developer spent a great deal of time creating your website or blog. The big day comes and your site is finally live on the web. But wait? Where is it? You can type in the web address and find it, but every time you try to “google” it, it doesn’t appear…Now what? Is that important?

Search engine ranking is very important for almost every website or blog, although the degree of importance may depend on your type of business and/or your site. For example, if you sell your products or services exclusively online, or if you are trying to reach a national or world-wide audience your search engine ranking is, of course, absolutely critical. Read more »

Today I had planned to share some tips on e-mail marketing. However, after I received an e-mail (vs a mailed piece) from the US Postal Service promoting a series of webinars on how to, ironically, create successful mail campaigns, I decided to post-pone my post about e-mails and discuss this question instead: If even the struggling USPS has had to embrace the era of e-mail marketing in their attempt to get people to mail more, should this officially signify the end of snail mail marketing campaigns for small businesses and organizations? My answer would be yes…and no.

As our society becomes more and more “plugged-in,” any small business or organization not incorporating some type of e-mail campaign into their marketing plan is definitely missing out. E-mailing is significantly less expensive, “greener,” faster, less labor intensive, and provides more information/tracking capabilities with links. However, just as you should diversify your financial portfolio, your marketing “portfolio” should be just as diversified, and a strategically employed snail mail campaign may still be a very beneficial asset for your portfolio. Read more »

When I meet with a new client for their initial website or blog consultation, I typically find that most clients’ main objectives are to quickly find out how much their site will cost and how soon it will be live. However, in order for me to accurately answer those questions, meet their business goals, make their site as SEO-friendly as possible, and have their site be cost effective for them I normally need to assist most clients with some additional planning first. That planning generally includes helping them work through these 10 steps: Read more »