Sundeep Kapur hosted a session that gave us some great insights on how to create content that is worth reading.

*Create content you can use for interaction.
Publishing content with no intent to create conversation will leave your online presence stale.

* Keep it authentic.
Your computer is a machine, you’re not – the interaction should be real.

* Only push your content to channels that are relevant to your target market.
Don’t just throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks; place your message where your target market is.

* Give your readers simple nuggets of information that they can share.
A tweet is 140 characters, make sure your information is re-tweetable.

*Do not tell people to “Follow You” or “Like You”
Give them a reason to want to.

*When creating print collateral, think of sending readers on an online scavenger hunt.
Direct them to your “hub” with an offer.

*When posting content on Facebook, consider what you would share with your friends.
If you wouldn’t – don’t post it.

Stay tuned for more updates on SES Chicago 2010!

What effective tactics has your company used when creating and posting content?

Like waistlines, websites can get rather soft if you do not keep working on them…  

So here are a few tips on how to whip your website into shape for the new year! (No scale involved) 

1) Blog. Having a blog marketing campaign is a great way to offer your Internet audience a more intimate view into your business. You can share your ideas almost as fast as you can think them up. And, unlike your website, your blog can be a two-way conversation with your visitors! 

2) Add new, relevant content. A stale website is about as inviting as stale bread. Adding fresh content not only gives users a reason to visit your site more frequently but can increase your search engine rankings too. If your site isn’t easy to update, talk to us about installing a content management system, like Auctori.

3) Reach out to your users. This year consider sending an email newsletter. This is a simple way to position yourself as an expert in your field and stay in touch with clients. Email Marketing less expensive than most traditional marketing campaigns.

4) Become a social butterfly. Today it is simply not enough to just have your website optimized; you also need to ensure your company has a strong presence on social media networks. By incorporating social media features into a marketing campaign, companies can create their own brand-focused community that allows for user-generated content.

5) Pump up that SEO! Make sure your keywords and descriptions for all your pages are optimized to their fullest so that search engines and, most importantly, potential clients will be able to find your site.

Why wait any longer to start working on your website’s image?

Contact The Net Impact to learn how we can get your website in the best shape it can be to hit the ground running in 2010!

Wandering what The Net Impact team has been up to? Check out our January Newsletter to find out!

Years ago, on an Internet that barely resembles ours today, “search engine optimization” was new and represented a genuine advantage to those leading edge firms that utilized their website as an essential piece of a marketing strategy.  Today, an optimized site is no longer an advantage, it is the basic commodity required to even play in the search game.

In the early SEO years, you could divide most businesses with an online presence into two camps.  There were those early adopters that “got it” and aggressively pursued positioning themselves with SERP through keyword analysis and an optimization strategy and there were those that didn’t really think the web was that important to their business. (Of course many firms did not even have websites but that’s a different story.)

The got-it firms knew that search was getting stronger and that online marketing would replace or at the minimum greatly impact a significant amount of the offline marketing currently in place.  Other firms typically didn’t put much credit into using the web for lead generation or sales production.  The goal for the not-yet-getting-its was simply to HAVE a website.  In their mind, if they were online they were doing just fine. Just like having a business phone number, having a URL became another element on their business card.  The got-its had the URL on their card too, but they wanted their URL, like their business phone, to be constantly ringing with leads and sales.

Today’s got-its battling for page one rankings of course have gone well beyond search engine optimization and on-site SEO efforts.  The leading edge is further and further out there.  For most competitive search terms, every site you compete with not only has a well optimized on-site plan but also has active and engaging campaigns off site as well.  These campaigns, whether through microsites, blogs, videos or other viral efforts create significant and powerful user traffic that completes the cycle of great page with great content to great links from a supportive community to great on-site traffic to great authority which creates great serp.

What has SEO become? An optimized site is now commonplace, basic and ubiquitous.   The ability to compete for traffic today relies more upon how well you know your marketplace, how well you compete webpage by webpage and how well you develop an audience or community that supports your cause.

So, if you have a classic SEO strategy in place, today, that means you are… average.  But hey, that’s not a bad place to start.  Recognize that there are clear and established pathways regarding what to do next.  Just look at the got-its of today.  They’re easy to find.