There are a lot of resources out on the web and it takes some time to sort through them all and decide which are most relevant to your business. We have a few websites that we follow for professional reasons and thought that we’d share these.

For Social Media

Mashable: This is a great site for quick overviews of anything going on related to social media. It contains short articles with tips for using social media channels and more.

For Public Relations

Help a Reporter Out: As a PR professional you can sign up to receive leads from reporters looking for sources. It is a lot to sort through, so for business may be best left to your PR agency, but interesting none the less.

Pitch Engine: This is a great site for getting your press releases out to bloggers.

For Marketing

Seth Godin’s Blog: These are Seth Godin’s thoughts on marketing related topics. We find it interesting and relevant.

For Article Publication:

Ezine Articles: This is a good site for publishing articles. We write articles and then submit them here for both our business and our clients’ businesses.

For E-Mail Marketing

iContact: We like iContact for e-mail marketing because it is affordable and offers the ability for us to design and program branded templates for our customers. They can then manage their e-mail marketing campaigns once we set up their template.

For Short URLs
bit.ly: If you use Twitter, you know you need to shorten websites urls when positing links. This is our favorite though there are several others with similar capabilities.

Enjoy!

There are many reasons for companies to consider adding a bog to their website. These reasons may include encouraging conversations with customers, positioning yourself as an expert in your field, a way to drive more traffic to your website, and for search engine optimization purposes. A blog must be authentic and provide useful information, and most importantly it must be updated regularly. This is where many companies fail at blogs. Kaleidos Marketing manages several business and personal blogs and provides blog writing services for clients. Our expertise is in the area of travel, tourism, children, business and more. Our services start as low as $40 per post for a 100-250 word article depending on the contracted number of posts. Do you have something to communicate to your clients but need help in putting it into words, or keeping up with it? Contact us at info@kaleidosmarketing.com for help.

Looking for more tips on writing a better blog yourself, check out this recent article at mashable.com.

Internet users continue to spend a majority of their time with Content sites, up from 34 percent of total time spent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2009, a 24 percent increase, according to the Online Publishers Association (OPA). While it is important to keep abreast of online trends, having a site with quality content has always been and will continue to be very important. Quality content that is regularly updated and expanded upon can help in search engine results and communications. This study also shows that people are spending less time searching, so being at the top of search engine results and other communications is more important than ever.

View the Online Publishers Association Internet Activity Index

When we build a website we look at it as a whole:

• Graphic Design: Is it appealing visually?
• Site Architecture: Is it easy to navigate and makes sense to the end user?
• Content: Is your content valuable to your end user?
• Programming: Does the programming infrastructure meet the client’s needs? Do they need to be able to update content themselves, or does a static site work?
• Search Engine Optimization: Have we included a site map? If we incorporate flash for visual reasons, is the content in html? Does each page have the appropriate meta tags?

To build a website that meets clients’ goals and is effective for their business it is best to address each of these things, including search engine optimization up front in the planning stage. Here is a basic check list of what should be incorporated into a website for the beginning for search optimization:

• Flash should only be used to showcase photos or graphics. All content should be contained in the html for search engine readability.
• Meta tags for title, description and keywords should be unique and relevant to each page.
• Include a site map, particularly if your site is run from any kind of a database.
• Add a blog to which you regularly make relevant posts.
• Add a tracking software such as Google Analytics so that you can measure the usage your website is getting, as well as the keywords being searched to find it.
• Add your website to any appropriate directories and ask clients and vendors to link to your site.
• Make sure that the content on your site is relevant and useful to customers and prospective customers.
• Submit your website to all of the major search engines to make sure that it is found and indexed.

For questions or a consultation please feel free to contact us at info@kaleidosmarketing.com.