1. If you haven’t already done so, establish a Company page on LinkedIn for your business. Fill out the overview and products & services pages for it and keep the them updated. If you need to hire new talent, post a job on the Careers section of your company page. And periodically, check out the Page Statistics so you know what kind of traffic is looking at your company on LinkedIn. For a quick tutorial on the Company page see this “how-to” video on the Linked In site.

2. Of course, you should already have completed your personal LinkedIn profile. Now’s the time to personalize the LinkedIn url for it so that folks looking for you online can find you more easily. Business Insider has this to say:   “By default, LinkedIn gives your profile a wonky URL with a bunch of numbers and letters. To help clean it up, you can choose a custom URL for your public profile. This will help Google bring your name up in search, plus it makes you look more reputable to people searching for someone with your skill set. To change your URL, go to your edit profile page and scroll to the “Public Profile” section. Click “Edit” next to the URL to choose a new one.” 

Go to Business Insider for their complete set of LinkedIn tips.

Blog post courtesy of Anita Hamilton

Hint: A sure clue that’s it’s time for an updated web design is if your website is right or left-justified in appearance….even if it’s only a few years old, this was a style that went out of date years ago and tells viewers that you’re not keeping up with the times online.

In the web design world, 2 years is like a decade…no self-respecting store owner would go 10 years without updating their store layout & design, in order to keep things current & appealing and draw in more clients.

The same goes for a web site, your online store / marketing platform. If your current web site design is more than 2 years old, it’s probably time to take a fresh look at it. You may not need an entirely new website / web design, perhaps a fresh take on what’s already working and a re-jig of what isn’t, is all that’s required.

Contact us for a FREE Zebra Quest™ consultation and we’ll review your website with you – no obligation. Best of all, to celebrate our own newly re-designed website, until April 30 2012 we’re offering a FREE business card design with a new custom web design project. Full details on our Promotional Offers page.

CMS stands for “content management system”, meaning, the type of website that can have the content (written text and images) on it easily “managed” (meaning, edited – ), without requiring a programmer.

Traditional static (non-cms) websites require a programmer to make even minor updates to the website. Programming code is not for the faint of heart or uninitiated…many different languages (PHP, XHTML, etc.) and databases are used in the web design & development world today.  Training and experience in a specific language may be required to do so much as change a date on a website.

Hence, the huge advantage of CMS web design & development. With a CMS website, non-programmers can usually make most updates or changes that are desired to the written content or images, by themselves. Typically minimal training or orientation to a specific CMS takes all of 10-30 minutes and away you go.

There are many CMS on the market these days, not all are created equal though. Some CMS are proprietary, meaning the web design & development company that designed a website using that particular CMS, does not allow other web design & development companies to make any changes to it. They may charge a fee for it as well. Other CMS’ are open source (free), meaning all web developers are welcome to develop new functionality for the CMS. WordPress CMS is a great example of an open source CMS (and the CMS we specialize in here at The Write Imprint).

So when shopping around for a new web design or completely new website, unless you are a web developer / programmer, you should have an open-source CMS at the top of your website wish list.

Blog post courtesy of Anita Hamilton

I guess it’s kind of like that, but what a webmaster does is pretty much open to interpretation by whomever is calling themselves the “webmaster”. The term “webmaster” is, like most internet terms, pretty new to the English language and therefore doesn’t have centuries of guild membership to clearly define what is & isn’t considered a “webmaster” task.

Therefore, in Hamilton Ontario anyway, a webmaster could specialize in certain tasks, such as

• web hosting and domain registration
• web development, ie programming in specific languages such as PHP or xhtml, etc.
• CMS (content management system) web development with platforms such as WordPress
• “website maintenance”

Often folks think of “website maintenance” as tasks they’d want a webmaster to perform for them. Website maintenance is another loose term that means different things to different people, but typically it refers to adding new content to websites, (but not creating the content), providing website reports such as Google Analytics, and perhaps even offering SEO & PPC services.

Alternatively a webmaster could be a generalist that offers all the above types of services (and more) associated with websites.

For most of the types of “webmaster” tasks commonly associated with that term, in Hamilton if you choose The Write Imprint you’ll find that we provide the kind of support you’d want to have in a good webmaster.

Blog post courtesy of Anita Hamilton

Why is a logo design not the same thing as a business card design?

Well, because a logo is either a standalone graphic image and/or logotype (font) that can be transferred to multi-media projects. Seen all by itself, or included as part of the message in a large communication vehicle, the company logo should convey a distinct brand image and trigger instant company recognition.

A good business card design on the other hand, while including/incorporating a company’s logo, can also attractively and professionally convey additional messaging (images, wording) that is extraneous to the company brand/logo.

Why is this distinction important? Typically royalty-free images that are purchased and used when designing business cards, brochures, websites, etc. are subject to restrictions strictly prohibiting the use of the image as part of a logo. Therefore, use of these images in a logo leaves the company open to legal prosecution for copyright infringement.

If you’re looking for a logo design to represent your company/brand visually across all different types of media, then don’t make a business card design your first marketing stop. Start at the beginning with a professional, custom logo design.

Blog post courtesy of Anita Hamilton

Here’s the top 3 reasons why The Write Imprint has chosen to specialize in building WordPress CMS websites for our clients:

1. Easy to use – you don’t have to be a programmer to update a WordPress CMS website or blog.Which leads to the next point:

2. Cost effective - once the WordPress website or blog is built, you don’t need to pay a programmer for minor or even major updates

3. SEO friendly - there are CMS’s out there that just don’t compute with SEO at all. By contrast, the basic WordPress CMS website or blog is SEO friendly off the shelf. Then, there are additional, free SEO plug-ins that can further boost the SEO of your WordPress website.

Bonus Point: There’s a huge web developer community contributing to ongoing WordPress enhancements. Sure there are other CMS’ out there….but very few of them can keep up with the pace of growth that WordPress enjoys, because of the volume of developers that are working on new plug-ins, tweaks, etc.

I’d love to hear if anyone knows of another CMS that can match these critical 3+ reasons to choose a WordPress CMS website for your business.

Blog post courtesy of Anita Hamilton

2. The second rule of thumb for SEO copy writing or copy writing for the web, is: “use keywords”. Keywords, for those who are uninitiated in SEO, are the words which your target audience may use in the search field of a search engine such as google, when looking for information, products, services etc.

If you’re selling lemons, tell people how many lemons they need & why, example:  3 Reasons You’ll Love Our Lemons (yes I love alliteration in titles too). For goodness sake, don’t talk about grapefruit in the title when your blog or article is about a fruit of a different matter entirely!

Good luck with practicing these top 2 copy writing title tips on your web site or blog.

Blog post courtesy of Anita Hamilton

Well, since your marketing communications are likely to and should encompass the following components, I think you’ll agree that it’s critical:

• advertising
• branding
• graphic design
• sales promotion
• online marketing

A typical pitfall for many folks when creating marketing communications is too much “noise”. You know what it’s like when you’re watching a t.v. show or movie and someone in the room asks a question….your concentration or focus is broken and maybe you miss a crucial moment in the show that comes back to haunt you later. Yikes!

In marketing communications, noise is anything that prevents your intended audience from receiving the complete, clear and brand-consistent message you intended to impart.This can come from within the communication itself, during message delivery, or from noise (competition) in the marketplace.

Do you sometimes use different versions of your company name, tag line, or logo, depending on whether it’s printed on your business card or website, or if you’re talking to people, sending emails, or advertising in print?

Are too many visitors coming to your website and leaving immediately (website stats show a high bounce rate)?

If you answered yes to either of those questions, you could use some branding and copywriting help, both important components in a good marketing communications strategy.

You can’t be all things to all people. Who do you know that is an expert chef, plumber, politician, dancer, and doctor? So why try to manage your business (which you’re an expert in, by the way) and also try to create all your marketing communications materials yourself? Leave it to the folks that specialize in marketing communications, and focus on your core dancing (or plumbing, etc.) business.

2. Affordable (not free) Web Hosting: For the few companies that are truly based in Hamilton and offer web hosting services – many of them have yearly hosting & set-up fees that top the $300/year mark, putting their web hosting service out of reach for many small businesses.  And for the alternative hosting issue that crops up – “free hosting”. Definitively, there is no such thing as “free web hosting”. Everything comes at a price – usually “free web hosting” means, you’ll have advertising on your website. This is not something that looks attractive or professional on a business website.

3. Web Hosting Provider Accessibility: Another very common trend with “online only” web hosting providers, is the way they are set up to minimize human interaction with their clients. In fact when checking out their websites, you’ll find that many of them don’t even list a telephone number that you can call. And you may have an experience similar to one I recently had…I tried to use their online contact form to make an inquiry….actually, 3 different online forms on their website….and none of them worked! And of the 2 of the local Hamilton web hosting companies that I was able to get a working email address for, neither of them responded to my inquiry email! How’s that for customer service? And that was when they didn’t even have my web hosting business…what would it be like if they were my hosting service provider already and there was a problem? No number to call….online forms don’t work….no response to emails – Help!

If you live in the greater Hamilton / Burlington / Toronto area and would prefer to deal with a local, affordable & accessible web hosting service provider then we’d love to talk to you about your web hosting needs.