Web Marketing and SEO Blog

Business and Social networking: You can mix the two

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:49 PM PST

Business networking is an important aspect for any existing and new business to grow. Networking can range from virtual online networking tools like blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter to face to face meetings.

Which form works the best? I have found that a mix of real and virtual networking (social networking) is best.

An important aspect to consider when networking is to research the age of your targeted customer. Once done, you can determine which way is best. Always match the preferences of your targeted customer with the networking strategies that you feel most comfortable with.

Determine the age group of your target customer that you would like to network with.

Baby Boomers

These are people in their 50’s and 60’s and will always prefer face to face meetings. They usually tend to be less comfortable with computer communication and they like to interact verbally and when possible, always in person.

Generation X

These are people in their 30’s and 40’s and they tend to be more comfortable with technology. They usually prefer keeping it simple and will most likely use LinkedIn and other business social networking tools to network with other people sharing the same interests.

Generation Y

These are people in their teens and 20’s and they are most comfortable in using all forms of technology. This is due to the fact that they have been exposed to technology most of their lives. They know what they want and they will find you. They usually have a good presence on Twitter and Facebook.

Targeting your message to your readers (business or social networking) is the key to growing your audience and reaching interested people. It may sound like a contradiction, but directing your message (sales pitch) to the people most interested will greatly increase the number of interested readers that will actually read your website or blog and respond.

How are you going to network?

Face to face networking

Face to face networking can include lead groups that meets your industry and niche. If you want to connect with senior level readers, attending a pricey plate dinner may be a better investment than attending a dozen networking breakfasts.

Many professional associations have terrific opportunities for face to face business networking.

Virtual Networking

There is thousands of good social networking tools and websites found online with new ones created every day. The best ones with some research, are those that can get you in front of your targeted customer. LinkedIn is a professional networking tool and it seems to be the most accepted internationally. Other popular tools includes Twitter and Facebook.

Leave a comment below or contact us if you require more information regarding business and social networking.

SEO and blogging, they do go hand in hand

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 03:24 AM PST

To have a business blog is very different than a personal blog. A business blog is done with a purpose. The marketing of this can be used as a powerful tool to improve website search engine rankings and increase targeted website traffic. More targeted traffic could only mean more business or sales leads

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is all about improving the rankings of your website in popular search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. You can also SEO optimize your blog to bring more traffic to it. This is easy to do by using targeted keywords and key phrases in your blog titles, blog categories and in the first paragraph of your blog text.

Blogging

Some believe the online social media phenomena started with the birth of blogs. You can use your blog to raise the rankings of your business website. This is particularly effective if your blog is situated on the same domain as your website eg http://blog.opencircle.co.za/.

Even though it could also have benefits by hosting your blog on a separate domain, I have noticed that by combining the two on the same domain, you are indeed pushing the rankings up for the whole domain.

Blogging involves writing keyword rich content that is creative, compelling and original. Keywords are still used in the blog titles and categories and this also helps distinguishing if your content is relevant.

By using keyword phrases in the link text of your blog post and linking back to your website that is the most relevant is a very effective SEO method that can produce SEO results fast.

How many links should you include in a blog post? 3-5 links is a typical number of links. Be sure to include the occasional links to high PR authority websites such as Wikipedia. This could speed up the process of crawling your blog posts by the search engines.

Blogs traditionally have a large number of postings focused on a particular topic. The page code is often text rich HTML, and very clean. Blogs are usually written in a simple, easy to spider format making them an excellent natural SEO tool that cannot be ignored.

Leave a comment below or contact us if you require more information regarding Search Engine Optimization and Blog Development.