6 Important Basics Of SEO
When thinking about the important basics of SEO, search engine optimization, the Yoast website is a great place to start! In fact, their recent article 'Timeless SEO tips: 6 universal SEO tactics that never go out of fashion' by Willemien Hallebeek offers excellent...
Why You Need A Website For Your Business
It Used To Be The (Print) Yellow Pages, Now It’s Your Business Website It wasn’t that long ago that the first place consumers went for general information about a business or its products was the Yellow Pages. Consumers couldn’t find detailed information and pricing...
Building Your Brand: It’s About Much More Than Your Logo
The importance of our customers' experience with our business, when building a successful brand shouldn't be underestimated. The customer experience has always been important. But it is even more important today. Because consumers can so easily share online their good...
The Power of First Impressions and Branding
“Buyers make most decisions by relying on their two-second first impressions based on stored memories, images and feelings.”
-Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Most of us know intuitively, and through our parent’s instructions to us as children, that first impressions are important. We don’t like to think that we judge a book by its cover or a person by what they are wearing, but the reality is that we often do. It’s second nature.
6 Ways To Make It Easy For People To Find You Online
Building an online presence for your business is hard work. It takes time and financial commitment to do so. For these reasons and many others, it's important to make it as easy as possible for people to find and connect with you and/or your business online. Here are...
4 Free Online Tools To Help Market Your Business
These four free online tools and resources can help you manage and grow your business. Each offers a premium (paid) version as well as a free one. The free version offers most everything a needed to get started. For some, the premium or paid version may be needed....
How Important Is Branding To Your Business?
Have you ever wondered what branding is, and how important branding is to your business? For many businesses, when they hear the term branding, they think of logos, taglines, key images and business colours. But branding is so much more! The term 'branding' is talked...
Title Case to Help Your Name Standout – Online & In Print
Title case your words to help your target audience, consciously and subconsciously, easily recognize your brand or name in print or online. What is Title Casing? Title casing, for the purpose of this article, is capitalizing the first letter of each word (small or...
Do You Need To Remove The Woo Commerce “Process your orders on the go. Get the app.” Notice?
Woo Commerce recently added a link to merchant emails, not customer emails, encouraging Woo Commerce store managers to use their mobile app. This was to let store managers and site admins know that they are able to manage their store from anywhere simply by using the...
A Few Things To Watch For When Paying To Boost Facebook Posts
Facebook Automatic Placement Option - Make Sure YOU Choose The Option Best For You If you want to ensure Facebook is only showing your ads on Facebook, it's not enough to deselect Automatic Placement. You must also deselect any other platforms Facebook has...
Want To Delete Your Facebook Profile? Here’s How.
Time to Delete Your Facebook Profile, or Deactivate It For a Period of Time? A client of mine recently discovered she had two personal Facebook profiles and wanted to delete one of them. She wasn't sure who, or whether she, had set up the account but since she had...
So You Want To Be A Social Media Manager?
If the question "So You Want To Be A Social Manager?" resonates with you, listen up! Understanding the social media networks you want to manage for your customers and how they work is important. In fact, there are literally tons of articles written on topics related...
Clockify or TSheets: Free Time Tracker & Timesheet Apps
In November 2020 I switched to Clockify to track time spent on projects for billing purposes. And also to simply track my time spent generally on work for my business. Prior to that I had been using TSheets. I had been quite happy with TSheets' performance. But...
Naming Your Facebook Page For Facebook Search
How your 'Name' appears on your business Facebook Page is important! And we're not talking about your 'Username' often referred to as your distinct URL. Although your distinct URL is important too. Your Facebook 'Name' is what appears at the top of your Facebook Page...
The Impact of Blogging on Your Website
Blogging can play an important role in driving search engine traffic and social media traffic to your website. According to a Hubspot resource on blogging ... An Introduction to Business Blogging (click to download) ... those that blog have: 55% more...
Where Do I Find And Accept An Invitation To Be A Facebook Page Admin Or Editor?
If you are waiting to receive an invitation to be a Facebook Page Admin or Editor, you may be waiting a long time. Facebook doesn't always make these things easy! One way to find an invitation that has been sent out but you have not yet received through email or...
How To Create Quote Pictures For Sharing On Social Media
Quote pictures or images are popular on social media. In particular, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and, believe it or not, even LinkedIn. Why Are Quote Pictures So Likeable And Shareable On Social Media? One reason quote pictures are so likable and shareable...
Customer Service: What A Difference A Voice Makes
After several conversations with the support department at Superion this week, I was reminded of what a difference a person's tone of voice makes when speaking with people and customers by phone. (The tone of voice in our emails matters too but that's a...
8 SEO Tactics You Should Abandon Forever
SEO Tactics To Abandon Forever To an extent, SEO and SEO tactics are an arms race between search engines and the people who are trying to rank as highly as they can (even if they don’t actually deserve it). Google regularly updates how they rank websites and what...
How To Respond To Negative Patient Reviews
"How To Respond To Negative Patient Reviews" is written by Phase 5 Analytic's Founder and CEO, Andrew Epprecht. It originally appeared as "How to Respond to Patient Reviews" on Phase 5's website and is reproduced here with permission. Scroll to the bottom of the...
Bad Online Customer Reviews And How To Handle Them
One of the best ways to handle bad online customer reviews is to have lots of good online reviews to significantly outweigh any negative. The more 5-star reviews and recommendations you have, the less importance will be attributed to a few less than stellar reviews...
When Building Customer Loyalty, Pay Attention
An article on Nimble about building customer loyalty got my attention a while back. The article, written by Ross Keating, was titled "How To Build Customer Loyalty And Increase Revenue". Is How You Care Building Customer Loyalty? In particular, this statistic caught...
10 Things To Know About Pinterest Secret Boards
Pinterest Secret Boards have lots to offer individuals and businesses! As the name says, they're secret! You can choose to be the only one who ever sees your Pinterest Secret Board content, or you can invite others to view and add more pins to the board. Including...
How To Build A Social Media Following That’s More Likely To Convert
An email arrived today with tips on how to build a social media following that's more likely to convert. The email came from ShortStack CEO Jim Belosic, an online platform that "makes it easy to create social contests, giveaways and landing pages your customers will...
Employee Engagement: Is Being Satisfied Enough?
The Chairman and CEO of Gallup, Jim Clifton, wrote an interesting article in 2014 titled, "Employee Satisfaction Doesn't Matter". The title alone may cause some to cringe and gasp, especially if one doesn't read the article in its entirety. I won't dwell on the...
Is Paying For Facebook Really Necessary To Reach People?
At one time getting into the News Feed of your Facebook Page fans was free. Most Business Pages expected to have to pay to grow the number of people (fans) who liked their Page. But paying for Facebook to share their content with people who were already fans was not...
The Key To Building Strong Customer Relationships
“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.” – Jim Rohn Savvy business people understand the role excellent customer service plays in the success of their business. They understand that...
Why You May Want To Pay For Facebook
n Jeff Bullas' highly popular 2014 article "Why You Should Forget Facebook" he asked the following questions: "Are you chasing likes for your brand page? Paying for fans?" He then noted "Maybe it’s time to stop." I agree with Jeff when it comes to buying likes. After...
Facebook Page Web Address: How To Get One & Why It’s Important
In a few steps create a custom Facebook web address that is branded for your business and simple to share with others. A Facebook web address is another name for the Facebook Username. People often confuse the Facebook 'Username' with the Facebook Page 'Name'. But...
10 Ways To Make Your Lead Generation Website Convert On The First Visit
First impressions can be make-or-break your business, especially when it comes to Internet marketing. Here at Straight North we’ve reviewed more than 350,000 website conversions and discovered that 83 percent of the time, website visitors convert on their first visit....
Should You Use Free Stock Photos For Your Business?
At one time any business serious about their image and branding pretty much had to purchase stock photos for some if not all of their...