3.5.09 Power Networking event

Spring is around the corner and it’s time to turn a new leaf. Time to renew past relationships and begin to cultivate new ones. Find new life in those networking events that you may have sworn off during the cold winter months. Do you have a game plan , are you making productive connections, do you know the treasure you are hunting for ?

Join us as Beth Bullock, Community Director of Legacy Connections, shares some ideas for making connections that last and lead us to the treasure we all are in search of… new business and lasting relationships that grow and prosper.

Thursday, March 5th
6-8pm
Hosted @ Neal’s Remodeling Showroom
7770 East Kemper Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45249
refreshment provided

Feel free to bring a friend and don’t forget your business cards.
Please RSVP to RSVP@TheWomensCircuit.com

7 Tips of How to Write Good Blog Titles

Every blog post has a title. It doesn’t matter how good or how bad you are creating the title of your article in the end you’ll end up with something. What I’m trying to stress out in this article is the importance of a well written title and it’s big role in obtaining better Google ranking and also being the main element that could make the readers click on your article. That’s right : the title is the most important element of an article. Learn how to create a good one and you solved the biggest part of the equation and that is getting people to click on your content.

Why the title of an article plays such a big role
Now days many blog readers don’t even go to the blogs they like : they simply have RSS readers and receive the titles and a snippet from the latest articles on every blog they are tracking.

What is the purpose of the title
Simply put, a title should determine the reader to click on the article and read the first paragraph. This first paragraph is also called the introductory paragraph in which you basically create a small summary of the entire article. So in essence what you express in the title should be also found in your first paragraph.

7 Rules of thumb for great titles

You can create the most extraordinary article in the world containing the secret of the holly grail. If you can’t create a proper title for your article that would rise people’s curiosity your article will just be one of the millions that appear every day.

1. Promise some kind of benefit( State clearly what you offer)

2. If possible begin with a number : starting with a number will transmit a clear thing about how many things you can learn if you read the article.

3.Your titles should transmit something different : in some way you’ll have to create an interesting title

4. A call to action title : if you ask people to take an action , to do something and you also promise a benefit

5. Use the words that get readers click : there are certain words that will increase your chances of getting your title to be clicked.

6. If possible use the name of a well known person that is in some way related to the theme of the article: that is something that can get your article to be read.

7. How to or How not to articles : using both the positive as well the negative form of this type of articles can let you explore different angles and sometimes a how not to … could be more interesting.

Read full article >

Improve email marketing ROI

Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing used today.

• Deploys quickly
• Offers immediate and highly measurable results
• Enables advanced customer segmentation and personalization
• Delivers high ROI

But achieving optimal results from your email marketing programs requires experience, planning and advanced technology. Key factors to ensure success:

• Reviewing past programs
• Planning
• Re-engaging customers
• Building your list
• Increasing deliverability
• Analyzing metrics

If you want to know more about how email marketing can work for you, contact us >

When Calculating Twitter’s ROI, Don’t Forget Its Change on Organizations

Social Media Isn’t Just a Marketing Tool but an Efficiency Driver

What’s the bigger idea: social media as marketing stimulus or social media as a way to innovate business processes?

Every brand manager or CMO should recognize that it’s both — and in a disruptive economy, you need to take advantage of both outcomes. And when the potential dividends of a marketing effort include changes to a company’s process, we need to rethink the entire notion of ROI.

This isn’t an easy task, as marketers typically leave things such as organizational strategy and technology implementation to other stakeholders — keeping lines cleaner and allowing marketers to focus on, well, their areas of focus. You let technology folks do technology, quality folks do quality and service folks do service.

But social media softens the silos. It’s hard to turn over a rock in social media, dip your toe into Twitter or comment on someone’s blog without rethinking the fundamentals of a firm’s organization, product development and even listening infrastructure. Such firsthand experience begets inspiration. Inspiration powers change. And change is needed more than ever before as we’re asked to contract our resources.

Social media and communication
Social media, at the end of the day, is about reinventing communication. Executed wisely, it’s a new covenant of interaction between consumer and consumers, and, more recently, consumers and business.

Across the social-media airways there’s no shortage of inspired thinking about what’s possible. At a time when organizations are under intense pressure to reinvent themselves — to take lemons and make lemonade — it might be the right time to focus our efforts, even for a moment, on the overall “business process” equation. That’s probably the easiest and most obvious way to demonstrate ROI around all of these efforts.

Read entire article by Pete Blackshaw >

79% of blogs are scanned, not read

Blog writing must address short interest spans and writing machine readable copy to scale.

Nielsen Norman Group ’s research found that 79 percent of their test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

For your website to be effective your text must be scannable. Jacob Nielsen offers this advice:

• highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
• meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
• bulleted lists
• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

Read full article >

Build a Small Powerful Network on Twitter

So, what if you had the templates to building a small but powerful network? Here’s some ideas on this:

1. First, think about your goals in 2009. Build the network with two purposes on mind: how you can achieve your goals, and how you can help others achieve theirs.

2. You need authentication in a network. Start with a blog as a home base. Make it such that your about page tells people lots about you.

3. It doesn’t hurt to have a picture of YOU on the blog, as this will deal with building a trusted network.

4. Start a Google Doc spreadsheet with the following fields: name, twitter ID, cell, capabilities, notes. Think of this as your routing table, your database of records of where resources reside.

5. Ask some probing questions on Twitter. If no one responds, ask again. See if there’s interest out there. What you’re doing at this point is sending out a signal that you’re looking for resources.

6. Use Twitter Search to find some like-minded people. Work at this. Try all different kinds of queries until you find the right response.

8. Send @ messages to these types of people. Ask them if they want to talk about collaborating.

9. Invite them to your document, if you want. Let them share the resources. Get them into the mix.

10. From here, collaborate. Figure out how you can helpful. Understand each other’s needs, and share the resources. Try to build your goals and businesses together.

In 2009, you need your networks. It is not a solo act.

Read full article >

Create a Twitter Following

There are implications beyond vanity to having a large Twitter fan base.

This illustrates the practical implications of a large following on Twitter. Here’s how to get it:

1. Follow the “smores,” or social media whores.
2. Send @ messages to the smores.
3. Create an effective avatar.
4. Follow everyone who follows you.
5. Always link to interesting stories and pictures.
6. Establish yourself as a subject expert.
7. Incorporate pictures and other media.
8. Use the right tools.
9. Repeat your tweets.

Ask people to follow. That’s right: Just come right out and ask them.

Read full article >

SEO: 63 % of people look only at the first page of results

According to Marketing Sherpa, almost 134 million people in the U.S. regularly use search engines when looking for information online. Of that number, 63 percent look only at the first page of results--at most. Search engine marketing includes search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising–to work for your business.

Search Engine Optimization
SEO encompasses the strategies for earning top rankings in free search engines. The goal is to optimize your site so search engines will consider it relevant.

• Find the hottest keywords for your market
• Plug keywords into the right locations in your copy and code.
• Use keywords that relate directly to your content.
• Keep the spiders coming back with frequent new content
• Integrate your keywords as naturally as possible into your copy.
• Collect links from other sites that are considered reputable and relevant.
• Use a site map to boost your ranking in Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live Search

SEO should be at the core of your overall internet marketing strategy. It’s one of the most inexpensive and effective approaches available.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click ads that appear when people search using the keywords in the ads and you pay when people actually click on your link.

• You only pay for results
• PPC ads show up immediately.

With a combination of PPC and SEO you can make sure your target market will find you. No other set of strategies offers you so much scope as search marketing.

Contact Us to find out how you can leverage SEO in your strategic marketing plan >

Top 5 Tips for Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is used in the same way that you would book mark your favorite web site, instead users store a catalog of bookmarks via a Social Bookmarking service. This allows other individuals with like-minded interests to connect, browse and comment on bookmarks creating a basic but powerful platform.

The most interesting thing about Social Bookmarking is that it generates traffic from users actively looking for a particular product, service or a solution. The addition of several key techniques ensures your web site gains the optimum amount of visits, reinforcing your business brand and ultimately generate new sales.

Here are the top 5 tips in optimizing social bookmarking to generate more traffic to your web site

1. Marketing strategy to promote your site. Bookmarking links to your web site will steer more traffic to your site from your target market.

2. Creating and maintaining interest. You need to make the right connection with your target demographic in order to sustain their interest.

3. Search Engine Optimization such as using highly searched key words, are crucial in allowing search engines to acknowledge your links when it hunts for specific phrases.

4. Well written web copy. It can make a dramatic difference in generating traffic to your web site.

5. The type of bookmarking service you chose can ultimately increase the odds of your web site being sighted. Links to and from popular bookmarking sites and the use of highly efficient bookmarking tools can make a dramatic different in your online traffic.

Social Bookmarking is one of the many ways that people can connect your brand with an online community.

Engaging With Facebook Ads

You may be underestimating the power of this Facebook feature. Facebook targets its advertising to users based on the information in their profiles. Facebook’s data miners know much more about us because we tell them a whole lot more. Facebook knows my birthday, my relationship status and which book I’m reading, among other personal tidbits.

First, as an advertiser, you can select very targeted demographics for your ad campaign, much as you can with Google Adwords. Location, age, interests and more can be specified.

Second, as a business owner utilizing Facebook to grow your brand and network, engaging with ads is a powerful way to increase your visibility.

Types of Facebook Ads:
1. Event Ad
2. Video Ad
3. Gifts Ad
4. Page Ad
5. Website Ad
6. House Ad
Facebook quietly added the ability for users to vote up or down on ads in June 2008. Initially we thought this would be an ineffective effort, but the more we looked at terrible ads on Facebook and thought about how happy we’d be to vote them down – the more sense it made. Brand ads are intended to build brand association with audiences and in those cases voting from audiences could make sense.

Facebook ads, are a powerful way to further your brand and gain name awareness.