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Author: Sam Ryan

“Sam is an entrepreneur with a strong technical background and a bachelors degree in web development. His personal mantra includes a firm belief in the power of teamwork, the wisdom of taking risks, and that there’s nothing better than bacon. Sam has been a part of the launch of several companies, including Hatchwise, where he is the CTO and all-around guru.”

Paid Search And Social For Advertising

When it comes to your website you want to use the best way of advertising that you can. But what is exactly the best way to advertise your business? If you are one of the many people that ask that question then I think this post is for you!

There are so many options for advertising your business that it can be hard to choose just one, am I right? Well, I know that I have talked about ways to advertise with SEO, social media and a few other ways. So, let’s have a talk about a couple of different ones.

Okay so let’s start with paid search! Paid search is a great way to get your business out there.

Paid search is helpful because you can watch and see how much business you actually bring in from ads. So that way if it’s not working then you can try and find out what you have to change to get better results. Pretty nice, right?

Take a minute and think about how great that would be for your business! And to make it even better you can use SEO, social media, and any other way of advertising with this if you want! In my opinion, the more ways that you are advertising the better. All that it does is get your business known faster and your website or blog will have a better chance of showing up more in top search results.

Now another great way to advertise is with paid social.  I know I have talked a lot about how great the free advertisement is and all when using social media platforms, but hey, let’s face it, sometimes you just have to put the money in it if you want the best for your company. And if you are going to pay to advertise your business then paid social is going to be one of the best investments you will make.

Over five million people use Instagram a year, now that means if you put an ad on Instagram over five million people see that ad. Granted not everyone is going to want to go check out your site, however, even if just 15% of that check it out that’s still a lot of potential customers right there!

Paid search and paid social are yet two more great ways to get your business out there and we totally recommend that you use them both for your business as you look for more ways to advertise. I could say a lot more on both these subjects, but I will have to wait for another post to talk more about how paid search and social work and how they can work together.

Benefits Of Crowdsourcing

You’re in the market for a new logo. Or maybe you just want to update your old one, either way, there are so many options out there sometimes it’s hard to know what is the direction you should move in to obtain said new logo. The choices can seem endless and sometimes very overwhelming.
If you have already decided to go to a local designer and have your logo created than this post is not for you. However, if you are browsing around online and still undecided, then you’ve come to the right place!
I’m going to give you five reasons that crowdsourcing is the way to go:
1. You have the opportunity to work with hundreds, and sometimes thousands of graphic artists. Instead of working with just one artist, you get to see the work of many.
2. An affordable price. When you work with one designer they name the price, you agree upon it and then you go from there. Often since they are putting in so much time and effort the price that you’ll agree upon is rather high (it can range anywhere from $150 to $1000). When you work with a logo design site the price is much lower.
3. You can speed up the process. When you work with logo designers such as Design Pickle, Hatchwise, and 99 Designs you are able to select how soon you want the design. This can range from 10 days to 48 hours. If you are in need of a quality logo basically overnight you can have it.
4.  You have the input from artists worldwide. If you work with one designer you are only getting their personal experience and their take on logo design. But if you work with many designers then you get lots of different designs and you can decide what type you like best. Designs vary worldwide, so wouldn’t you want to see logos that reflect that?
5. Eliminate management. Let someone else do all the work. You simply let the designers know what you are looking for, leave some feedback on the designs, select one, and receive your final files. That’s it! So easy and simple. Crowdsourcing takes away all the complications.

The Good And The Bad About SEO

I know I have talked a lot about how social media is so great for your business and that I have talked quite a bit about how great SEO is. SEO is what I want to talk about in this post because I really want you to know everything there is to know about SEO, the good, the bad, all of it.

First off, I would say that the good outweighs the bad by a good amount and there are just so many reasons to use SEO to bring your website up in the top search results by using keywords, social media, and so many other ways.

I always like to hear the good before the bad, so let’s talk about some reasons why you need SEO for your business and then we can move on to talking about why it might not be so good. This way you can know everything and then know if you think SEO is right for your business or if you don’t really need it!

It seems to be that 50% of the time when people look up something on Google they will click on one of the top five results. So SEO can help you to get your website or blog up in the five top search results.

SEO is an investment in the future of your business and even if you don’t see results right away later on in the game you will, and that is what really counts, right?

Now for a little bit of the bad of SEO:

One reason that you might not want to use SEO is that the competition is too strong if you are a small business and can’t afford to put tons of money into making SEO work. If you are not able to put your all into making SEO work then it will probably end badly for you and in you spending a lot of money with no results.

Being in the top results is not always best, there IS a negative and positive. Yes, people click on the top results, but sometimes they simply read reviews and then make a decision. Basically always keeping the quality over quantity in mind with SEO.

The use of SEO for your business is good but should be used wisely and taken slow. If you see good results (more traffic, increased sales) keep at it. If there is a decline slow things up.

Three Tips On How To Use SEO

 

 

So I was thinking since we have talked about what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a few posts ago, that we could talk about ways to get results from SEO! This is the post for you if you are looking for ways to get your SEO ranking up there and want to learn a bit more of ways to use SEO for your business.

Here are few tips on how to improve your SEO rankings down below.

Keywords:  I’m going to talk about this one first because it’s an important one. Find on Google keywords that people search. Then take them and put them in your writing.  But remember that you don’t want to use them too much, so only put them in about four times for every post.

Other content than text: It’s good to have more than just text on your website or in your blog posts. So go ahead and add some videos and photos. This can help people to engage more and be more tempted to keep scrolling.

Social media: So let me start by saying that if you don’t have a social media account for your business then you need to go and make one right now. Anyway, social media is great for improving your SEO ranking when people share links to your website on it. 
 
SEO is great for your business and these are a few ways that you can use it. I hope that they were helpful to you in  learning a little bit of how to use SEO and make it work for your business

Search Engine Optimization

 

Did you know that Google has more than 3.5 billion searches made on it- per a day? That means that someone must be searching for something every second of every minute of every day. That’s a lot of searches.

But let’s get to talking about what we’re here to talk about, which is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how it can help your business.

SEO is a form of marketing that can be very helpful when trying to get your business up in the top search results when people search for content on google and yahoo that relates to your blog or website.

There are a few different ways that you can use this and one of those are to build backlinks. By building backlinks you can get your business known and they are popular when it comes to using SEO.

We are beginning to see that as time goes on it’s looking a lot more like people are interested in a more organic way of marketing and not the normal “paid ads” that most businesses are using right now.

SEO is a great organic way for you to get your website or blog out there and known.

But we don’t really know, maybe in 2019 it will all change and this form of marketing won’t really progress any further then it already has, or it could only start to get used more and more as we go into 2019.

At least I can say for us, that we hope that it will only continue to grow, and people will start using SEO more and more for organic outreach and growth. I guess all we can do for now though is sit back and see what happens

If you don’t already use SEO as a  form of marketing, then you should start looking into it right away. Who knows, you may just see an increase in web traffic, and generate more leads sales while paying less in advertising.

 

Social Media For Your Business

 

Are you looking for new and better ways to advertise your business? Maybe you’ve tried the traditional billboards and ads and they didn’t really work out.

How is your social media game? Are you advertising there too? And if so, exactly HOW are you?  Are you taking advantage of the free (and paid) advertising available on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest?

Let’s talk a little bit about using social media for advertising your products and/or services.

When trying to get your business out there (and I know it can sometimes be hard),  advertising is not an easy thing to do. However, if you have a social media account it can be just a little bit easier.

Okay, so I know you’re now probably wondering, “how can Instagram or Facebook help with my advertising?”.

Well, probably one of best answers I can give you is that IT IS FREE (yes, you can run paid ads, but that’s not what I’m talking about here)!  What I’m talking about is the stuff where you post about your company on your social site and it’s no more work or cost than hitting that “Publish” button. If you post and don’t get sales, then it is okay. It’s not like you just spent tons of money on it and then didn’t have any results from it. But if you do get results from it then that would be a nice bonus that comes without a cost.

Using social media for advertising makes it so you can interact with other accounts that are like yours and by doing that people beginning to see what your business has to offer and they want to learn more about what you do. It’s great for networking, reaching potential leads, talking about sales, and just gaining overall visibility online. You’ve spread your reach and promoted your company without paying a dime.

So if you don’t already use social media for advertising, then you should get out there right now and create the account that is going to help your business!

How To Increase Your Instagram Following

 

Are you having trouble gaining Instagram followers? Do you want more followers, but just don’t know how to get them? Here are five of the best ways to increase your Instagram following:

1. Create a cohesive, attractive account. Instagram is all about the images, therefore you want your page to look nice. Sure, everyone wants to post “real” stuff, but that’s what Facebook is for, am I right? So if you are looking to increase your following and move past having less than 200, then save that stuff for other social accounts and only post attractive pictures.

2. Don’t try to gain followers through the oh so popular loops. This is a huge turn off and keeps real, authentic followers at bay. You want to create a genuine following, not just people trying to have a high follower count.

3. Be original. Don’t copy and repost all the time. Try to only post your own photos, and especially steer clear of memes. People like to know that what you see is what you get. So make sure you post only your own content, don’t take photos off the internet and post them just so you have a post for the day.

4. Interact is the name of the game. Comment, like, follow, and interact with all of your followers and with new accounts. If someone starts following you it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to start following them back, but be sure to go and leave a comment and like some of their photos.

5. Finally, remember, a successful account is not measured by how many followers that you have but rather by the interaction that you have from the followers that you DO have. With Instagram’s new algorithm, the more people like and comment on your posts the more they will see them in their feed.

What is Elementor?

Elementor is the new, up and coming, game-changing plugin for WordPress based websites. With its easy drag-and-drop and strong code, it gives you complete control over your site design. And what’s more important, it’s that easy. No bells and whistles, not complicated.

Elementor is the first free, front end plugin. You simply download, open and use. There’s no need for all the complicated code, researching, and/or hiring someone to design your site. With Elementor you can do it all yourself.

Many, many companies are successfully building and using their site with Elementor and seeing incredible results. Literally, everything is now available to you to design your site with a few easy clicks. Adjust widths, changes to a new theme, position content, realign headers, create new pages and then drop into place, it’s all right there. Including specific stylings to fonts, color, size, and images. It also includes with it all the widgets that you could possibly ever need that are all free and instantly available.

And as you make these changes you can see the live preview. No wondering, “how will this turn out?” and that stressful moment of hitting the “save” button on hours of code, only to find your site a disaster.

If you are looking to create and build your own site, Elementor is the way to go. With it, website design has never been easier!