Tag Archives: Website

It’s Time to Take an Integrated Marketing Approach

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IntegratedMarketingIn 2013, if you aren’t already, you should take an integrated marketing and communications approach, using a mix of offline and online activities. If your marketing and communications plan has not shifted toward more online communications and integrated programs, you are not fully connecting with your customers.

To sell more products and services, your company should consistently connect with and speak to your customers and stakeholders on a regular basis. You should always maintain and further strengthen the relationships you’ve built with your customers. Keeping visible in your marketplace is also vital to catching the eye of new prospects.

Taking an integrated marketing and communications approach means integrating your offline channels (print advertising, direct mail, public relations, outdoor and broadcast) with online channels (e-marketing campaigns, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, banner ads, social media, blogs, RSS). Integrate the various elements of the mix to maximize competitive advantage for your brand.

Proper integration of online media adds depth and measurability to your programs. It makes you more accessible to your customers. And, accessibility is an important key to marketing in today’s business environment.

You should devote a good portion of your communications budget to public relations, which includes search engine optimization and social-media-optimized press releases, which increase exposure and potential ROI. It’s important to repeatedly let people know why your brand is worth its price by maintaining regular communications and focusing on the advantages of your products and services. A great way to accomplish this is to distribute press releases at regular intervals.

You must also invest in a strong web presence. You have to make sure that you understand how your products are researched and found, and serve as a resource to people who are in search of information. Your website should be responsive to mobile devices. Think of ways to drive people to your website, such as dedicated landing pages, and using an easy-to-remember URL with your promotions. This strategy makes it very simple to track your promotions. Offer a free newsletter, coupons or some other information of value to your target market.

Why not consider integrating a blog with your website? Blogs are conversations. You can speak in your everyday voice, which your stakeholders will often find more friendly and approachable.

Consider doing a video. There are lots of ways to get prospects excited about your business, but very few are as attention grabbing and emotionally evocative as a well-done video. If you’ve never taken this angle for your business, this is an excellent time to do one,  get it up on your website and a clip up on YouTube.

Start doing a monthly e-mail marketing campaign. Use segmented lists and personalized messages with very specific information for each contact. Permission-based tools can make your marketing and public relations dollars work for you. Sending regular messages to your target audience is one of the best ways to market your products and services, and to drive traffic to your website.

Social media is everywhere. You should have a company Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn page, at the very least. With everyone more and more connected via mobile, these are great tools to stay connected with your customers. Your communications need to be relationship-based, taking advantage of search marketing, social media, lead nurturing and online communities.

You should also develop direct-mail pieces using variable digital printing and customized mailing with information directly targeted to each individual. Digital printing can save you money as you print on demand.

And, don’t forget to include print advertising, especially in your industry’s trade publications. Consider using a quarter-page ad in trade publications rather than a half page, or a half page instead of a full page. Many times they work just as well, as long as your copy hooks in your target audience.

Energizing your customers – getting them charged up and talking about your products – should be done consistently. Determine what your customers are looking for and focus your attention there. Learn which channels and mediums provide maximum exposure for your messages and deliver the most for the dollars you are spending.

Successful marketing and communication efforts result from careful strategic and comprehensive planning. Look for ways to promote your company, its products and services in an integrated approach.

Make Use of Open Source Fonts!

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Open source fonts are certainly not new, but as support for open source fonts continues to grow, the days of being limited to using only Arial and Verdana on the Internet are finally disappearing! The same goes for Times New Roman, Courier New, Trebuchet, and Tahoma. There are now hundreds of free fonts available, from various sources, for use on your website with new ones being continuously added to the mix.

Why Use Open Source Fonts?

One, for SEO; you can now use search-engine-friendly fonts instead of creating images of those typefaces. Two, for speed; using searchable fonts is not only better for SEO, but downloading fonts is quicker than downloading images. And finally, for the obvious reason, for visual interest; who isn’t ready for better looking websites?

How is it Done?

With the use of open source fonts such as Google Web Fonts, you can now add beautiful web fonts to any website by simply using a specific stylesheet link in your HTML document, then referring to that font in a CSS style. Below is an example of how to use the Tangerine web font.

An Example of an Open Source Font!


Coding Example:

To use the web font, first add a stylesheet link:
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=” http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine“>

Then either use a css class:
.yourclassname {“font-family: ‘Tangerine‘, serif;”}

Or an inline style to call your font:
<div style=”font-family: ‘Tangerine‘;”>An Example of an Open Source Font!</div>

Does it Work in All Browsers?

Not all browsers support open source fonts yet, but their support is growing. Only older browsers, such as Internet Explorer 5, as an example, will not work.

Therefore, until there is full support in all browsers, it may still be a good idea to use “graceful degradation.” This means, that if a browser cannot display your desired font, then it will present the font you declare to use as a backup. And if consistency is important, then by picking fonts that are similar in looks, visual size, or spacing, your website will “degrade gracefully.” In other words, viewers in unsupported browsers will never know what they are missing, but your website will still display correctly in its formatting of the layout even though it may not be your preferred look.

Where Do I Get Open Source Fonts?

Here are some of the leading developers in open source fonts and links on where to get them:
Google Web Fonts:    http://www.google.com/webfonts
The League:    http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
Open Font Library:    http://openfontlibrary.org/
Free Font Manifesto:    http://www.designwritingresearch.org/free_fonts.html
Vitaly Friedman’s Font List:   http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/20-best-license-free-official-fonts

Endless Possibilities, but Please, Be Mindful!

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, is the answer to “can I use as many fonts as I want?” Please, still use good design techniques and do not overload the viewer’s visual experience with too many fonts! Too busy is still too busy!

The good news is that with each typeface having a personality of its own, this resource adds yet another avenue to complement and enhance your website. And with so many fonts now available, endless possibilities continue to grow in creating a unique and enriching visual experience for the Internet.

Is Your Website Secure?

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Is your website secure?With the recent GoDaddy outage in the news, it seems like a good time to think about website security. Although hackers, as initially reported, did not cause GoDaddy’s outage, news stories of computer-related crimes are becoming a daily occurrence.

Whether for business or personal use, computers have become a part of our daily lives. A company’s website has become its most important marketing and communication tool. Given a website’s importance, you may be surprised how often little or no thought is put into site security. Recent research shows businesses just don’t take website security seriously enough.

There are many ways in which a website can be hacked and for a number of different purposes. Sometimes hackers just want to deface your site. Sometimes they want to disable it, take it down or redirect the traffic from your site. Other times they attempt to lurk undetected, trying to capture personal or financial information from your customers.

No matter what the purpose, an attack can result in lost sales, costs associated with the restoration of your website, data loss, and a blow to your business’s reputation.

The following are a few tips you can use to thwart the efforts of hackers. While not a complete website security plan, these tips can help make you less vulnerable to exploit.

1. Update your software. This is one of the easiest ways to protect yourself. Keep your software up to date. Your website’s content management system, your computer’s operating system and your internet browser all play an important part in the security of your website.
2. Use strong passwords. We’ve all seen the unbelievably insecure list of the most used passwords. Ones like passw0rd, 123456, letmein, monkey, football, etc. If this is you – change your passwords right now. A strong password should be random, include upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
3. Don’t share login credentials. Each user should have their own login credentials that can be deleted when no longer needed.
4. Encrypt your login pages. So often the pages after the login are encrypted (protected by an SSL certificate). However, it’s the login form itself that is often most vulnerable.
5. Consider upgrading your shared hosting account. Even if you are careful and have adopted good security on your website, don’t count on all the website owners on your shared server having done the same. A VPS, or virtual private server, is inherently more secure due to the separation from the other sites. If you have a business critical website, it belongs on a VPS or dedicated server.
6. Back up. Back up. Back up. The only thing worse than being hacked is not having any clean website files to go back to. If you don’t have a current backup of your website, it will significantly add to the cost of restoring it after being exploited.