Posts By: Chris Wielinski

3 Social Media Sites and How to Leverage Them for Marketing

social media marketingSocial media could have been dreamed up by marketers as the ultimate source of leads. Millions of consumers all centralize in one place to share things that relate to their lives. Not only does this give marketing firms a lot of data to better target their audience, it also gives them a place to advertise. With a number of excellent social media platforms to choose from, which should your company use, and how should you use them?

  1. LinkedIn
    Nearly all business to business marketers (94%) use LinkedIn as a component of their content strategy. A great strategy for marketing on LinkedIn involves providing valuable information in articles. This demonstrates intelligence and knowledge about your field to an action-oriented professional audience. Bonus points if you can keyword optimize your content according to search engine optimization best practices.
  2. Facebook
    When you think about leveraging social media, it pays to consider the typical successful post on that site. For Facebook, videos and viral content are the go-to power posts. Try to tailor your marketing strategy in a way that’s conducive to likes and shares in order to get your ads in front of as many people as possible.
  3. Twitter
    Twitter is a bit sassy. Pay attention to some of the more regularly retweeted posts. You might notice the ones going viral having a hint of sarcasm involved. This is easy to overdo, so be mindful of the line in the sand between playfully humorous and rude. Another twitter strategy for the long term is to use the platform for announcements and major company news. Just learn how to keep your character count below the limit. Twitter is about brevity and wit.

 
All of these social media marketing platforms are all but essential for growing your business. If you are in the process of choosing a digital marketing firm, make sure to ask about their various social media marketing strategies in more depth. Social media can be a marketers dream when used correctly, or a total nightmare if your company isn’t up to speed. If your goal is to leverage these sites for leads, do so prudently and with a deeper understanding of the popular media on the platform.

How Search Engine Optimization Experts Use Blog Posts

seo companies near meIn digital marketing circles, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a pretty big deal. It even gets some press outside of the marketing world, and it’s been piquing the interest of budding businesses everywhere. The questions on everyone’s mind are: what is SEO and how can I use it to help my small business grow?

What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the process of utilizing knowledge about search engine ranking algorithms to place content as close to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as possible. Before any optimization or content creation takes place, your business needs to know which keywords to try and rank on. Find specific phrases that potential customers of your business would search on Google. When they search those words, the goal is to have the first result they see be a link to your website.

Of course, it is much more complicated than this, but keyword selection and research is the ultimate starting point.

How Can I Use It?
Practically everyone uses Google for research and making purchase decisions. If you want people to visit your website, you need to somehow make it visible. There are other strategies to accomplish this goal, but SEO is among the most cost-effective.

There’s a reason roughly 53% of marketers cite creating blog content as their top inbound marketing priority. Posting blogs regularly is a great way to integrate your chosen keywords and create linkable content. This strategy is a staple for ranking improvement, traffic generation, and becoming a more visible website. These blogs will also play another important role.

Which SEO Companies Near Me Should I Use?
You might be wondering do I even need to look for SEO companies near me? If you are, the answer is both yes and no. You can certainly create and post basic blog posts on your own, but getting links from other websites is another story entirely.

Great SEO companies are able to use your linkable content as the source for other factual articles written on sites that rank better than yours. Links from high-quality sites give your site more credibility. Backlinks and offsite SEO are important ranking factors that cannot be easily done by individuals without a large network.

All in all, SEO is much more layered and complicated than simply writing a huge volume of articles. That is, however, the best place to start for any SEO beginners.

4 Must-Have Service Areas of the Best Digital Marketing Firms

marketing firms near meWhen choosing a digital marketing firm, there are a number of services you need to consider. Not only do you want to spread the word about your company, but you want to do so in an impactful and positive way. That’s why, when looking for ‘marketing firms near me‘, you must find an agency that has capacities not just geared toward generating leads, but towards creating a desirable identity for your business.

Criteria for Choosing Marketing Firms Near Me

When picking the right digital marketing agency, there are four key service areas you should look for:

  1. Branding
    It all starts here. Branding is identity. It is your public appearance. Your image. And when it comes to branding, graphic design is key. Think of any brand in the world. The first thing that pops into your head will likely not be the exact product they sell, but the design of their logo and what the company stands for. Any major player in a market will have a huge branding presence that helps them achieve further visibility and greater customer interaction.
  2. Web Design, Web App Design, and Web Development
    You need an online presence even if your business is not based on the internet, but for e-commerce companies, custom web development is essential. Having a nicely designed, mobile-friendly website can also make a massive difference in earning the trust of potential customers. Like with branding, before you start marketing your products, you want to make sure people will like what they see.
  3. Social Media
    Now that you’ve built your brand, it is time to go for leads that will convert. Social media marketing is a great source of both lead generation and community cultivation. Get people invested in the outcome of your business by socializing your brand and you will find communities that are supportive and helpful.
  4. Search Engine Optimization
    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) leads are a type of inbound lead. This type of lead has an average 14.6% close rate, whereas outbound leads like print advertising only have a 1.7% close rate. SEO also tends to be less expensive and can continue building your brand’s reputation through rigorously written content.

Digital marketing, and indeed marketing as a whole, is all about creating an image for your business, then delivering upon that image within a certain market. Once you can do that, there’s no telling how far your business may go.

Think Cre8tive Receives Best Advertising Agency 3 Consecutive Years

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Think Cre8tive Receives 2018 Best of Keller Award

Keller Award Program Honors the Achievement

KELLER March 30, 2018 — Think Cre8tive has been selected for the 2018 Best of Keller Award in the Advertising Agency category by the Keller Award Program.

Each year, the Keller Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Keller area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2018 Keller Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Keller Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About Keller Award Program

The Keller Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Keller area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The Keller Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: Keller Award Program

CONTACT:
Keller Award Program
Email: PublicRelations@awards-online.org
URL: httpss://www.awards-online.org

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Copied from original release: httpss://keller.keller.awards-online.org/PressReleaseub.aspx?cc=DKL3-UBF7-S755

What’s the Difference Between SEO and SEM?

A while back Search Engine Marketing (SEM) was used as an all-encompassing term that included both paid search marketing and Search Engine Optimization. Today, more and more search marketing experts are referring to the two terms with an increasing degree of separation. So, what does SEM mean now?

Search Engine Marketing

Today, experts in the field have adopted SEM as shorthand for ‘paid search’. This encompasses the following advertising terminology:

Pay Per Click (PPC): This is a type of advertisement that charges the company placing the ad based on the total number of clicks on that ad. Each click costs a pre-ordained amount of money.

CPM: Also known as cost per thousand impressions, relies on a slightly different strategy. Instead of paying per click, companies pay the search engine a set rate based on how many people (measured in thousands) have seen the ad.

Google AdWords: This is a platform that allows advertisers to access Google real estate with their ads. Marketers decide which keywords to target their ads for, then Google places them in the appropriate results pages.

How does this differ from SEO?

Search Engine Optimization

This category involves an organic marketing approach. When people think of SEO, they tend to gravitate toward the following ideas:

Content: Companies publishing 16 or more articles to their blog each month receive 3.5 the amount of traffic as companies that post zero to four blogs each month. Content marketing is a staple of SEO.

Keywords: The content also needs to indicate what the website is about. There’s a lot more than meets the eye involved with choosing keywords for an online business, but suffice it to say that keywords are integrated into content to point Google toward a website.

Links: Links also point to web pages, indicating how relevant they are. A link to your site from another reputable site will tell Google that your site is probably important.

The difference between SEO and SEM is different than what it was in the past, yet they share a close relationship. Both tactics, paid and organic, are executed on the same platform. The goal for a digital marketing company is to capitalize on the vast amount of search engine traffic that occurs every day.

Top 5 Characteristics To Look For When Choosing An SEO Firm

choosing an seo firmAs always, there are a number of different online marketing strategies that can help generate leads. One of the most important of all, however, is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Over half (53%) of marketers say content creation for blogs is the most important inbound marketing priority. When choosing an SEO firm for your business’s blog, you should make sure they can do the following.

  1. Keyword Research
    A good SEO company will do thorough research to identify the most effective keywords for their client’s product. While ‘fast cars’ might be what your company sells, that keyword is highly competitive. Keyword research will reveal the intersection of what your company sells and what keywords are more accessible to rank on. This could include local SEO terminology like ‘fast cars near me’ or particular brands or specification.
  2. Backlinks
    One of the biggest ranking factors for a website on Google is the number of other websites that link back to it. When choosing an SEO firm, you must make sure they have a strategy to generate these links. A while back this was fairly easy to accomplish by building a bunch of dummy websites and spam linking to clients. Today, Google’s algorithm is much more sophisticated, making this technique obsolete. Backlinks need to come from trusted, well-ranked websites to be helpful.
  3. Data Tracking
    In order to know if the content marketing is effective, the SEO firm you choose must provide data tracking tools. This can include organic clicks per week, backlinks generated, conversion metrics, and specific keyword efficacy.
  4. Frequency
    Any good SEO firm knows that you must consistently and frequently update a blog for these strategies to be effective. Make sure to choose one that is capable of regular posting at a volume commensurate with your SEO goals.
  5. Content Length
    Studies have shown that long-form content consistently ranks higher than short form content. You can test this by simply Googling anything at all. Open the first three links on the results page, and do a visual assessment of their length. Then go to page two and do the same thing. You will more than likely find that top page rankings are much longer than those on page two.

 
These are not the only things to look for when choosing an SEO firm, but they certainly make up a huge chunk of the important ranking factors. Search Engine Optimization is far from an exact science since it is an ever-changing landscape. Perhaps after you know that an SEO firm is capable of the above practices, the next most important quality is adaptability. Google changes its algorithm so frequently that the ability to adapt in the SEO space is the x-factor that can give one digital marketing company the edge.

5 Biggest Web Design Mistakes You MUST Avoid This Year

web designThe 2017/18 Global Digital Outlook Study found that 43% of marketers across the world are upping their investment in digital marketing. Almost half are spending 50% or more of their marketing budget on digital marketing alone. The importance companies place on having a solid online marketing game is huge. Everything from search engine optimization to pay per click advertising plays a pivotal role in a successful marketing campaign, but one thing needs to happen first.

Website design can be likened to how a physical store looks. Is it clean? Are things where you’d expect them to be? Do people like being there? These are all important questions for store owners, and now website owners must ask them as wel. Sometimes, however, a website is a total mess. In fact, this is fairly common. So, here are some common web design mistakes to avoid at all costs.

  1. Unresponsive Design
    A responsive web design is a site designed so that its presentation adapts to the size of screen that it is being accessed from. If, say, a visitor is using a phone to access your site, but when it loads they are only able to see the top left corner of your site, they will likely find another website to browse.
  2. Under or Over Designing
    Too little design being put into a page is one way to make your website look like everyone else’s’. Too much design and your website could end up looking cluttered, distracted, and all over the place.
  3. Missing Leads
    If you employ Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, and other lead generation techniques, but fail to capture user emails and contact information when they are directed to your site, you will lose those people as leads. Not every visitor will convert on their first visit, which is why remarketing campaigns, contact forms, and email lists are such valuable lead capture tools.
  4. Buried Essential Information
    If potential customers have to click through 17 different pages of nonsense to find the product information they’re after… Well, they won’t click through that many pages, will they? Make any important information relating to purchases readily available and easy to locate, or risk losing lots of leads.
  5. 404s
    Error: List item not found.

 
If you wish to avoid these issues and make a masterful website, contact a professional website design company that offers a wide array of web design services. Building a beautiful and high functioning website is no small chore. If you need a hand, contact us today.

5 SEO Trends To Watch In 2018

seoThe world of digital marketing is wild, new and has fantastic potential to transform the way people market both their companies and themselves. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is on the front lines of this new marketing landscape, but to stay there, it has to be agile. Google, the search engine overlord, knows all about SEO strategies. All they had to do was google it. Due to SEO, there are many updates to Google’s search algorithms every year. So, SEO experts need to change tactics all of the time. Here are some trends you should expect to see early on in 2018.

  1. RankBrain
    This is Google’s most advanced deep learning algorithm to date, and it has become the third most important ranking factor in the interconnected web of wonder that is the Google ranking algorithm. Among other data, the primary focus of this almost-AI is on measuring the duration a person spends on a website (Dwell Time), and the percent of people clicking on your page(Click Through Rate).
  2. The Knowledge Graph
    This can make or break your page’s CTR. The knowledge graph, or answer box, or featured snippet, or any of Google’s clean-cut boxes of information that come up with generic or broad searches could preclude people from clicking your link. Either you make a website so attractive that you can overcome the knowledge graph, or you become the knowledge graph.
  3. Content
    The more you factor in Dwell Time to the decision-making process that Google’s algorithms must undertake, the more you will see why long-form content reigns supreme. Most top-ranked links on any Search Engine Results Page (SERP) will be in the thousands for their word count. Not only that, but they will be good.
  4. Image Search
    Google image searches are an ever-improving enterprise. Using picture keywords in content might become an emerging strategy in the upcoming months. Images will be especially useful in social media marketing campaigns.
  5. Alternative Search Markets
    For a long time now, Google has been the only relevant platform to do SEO, and in the broad sense it still is. Specific search engine optimization can be done on the engines used on Amazon’s internal search engine by writing reviews in much the same way articles are written for Google. Likewise, Yelp, Siri, and other widely used platforms with internal search functions could be optimized.

Google gets more than 100 billion searches every month. They have some of the most brilliant minds and complicated algorithms in the world working to provide a platform for people to find knowledge. SEO experts are the silent infantry of online marketing. They work tirelessly behind the scenes to make your business visible to consumers worldwide. On the bleeding edge of digital marketing stands search engine optimization, ready for whatever algorithm Google decides to make next.

4 Pillars of Social Media Marketing

social mediaSocial media marketing is becoming bigger by the second. In fact, Animoto’s State of Social Video report in 2017 revealed that 64% of consumers stated they made a purchase as a result of watching a marketing video on Facebook within the last month. This just goes to show that social media networks like Facebook are becoming ever more relevant to the modern marketer. Here are some strategies that a great digital marketing company should use.

  1. Consistency
    One of the key precepts of social media marketing is having a consistent posting routine. People following your company on social media will come to expect a regular posting pattern. To keep their attention and to bring in other individuals who will follow in their footsteps, make sure to maintain consistent posting times.
  2. Diversity
    Having all of your eggs in the Twitter basket isn’t the best way to go about growing your social media presence. Make an account with a number of major social media platforms and spread your efforts out across each, to begin with.
  3. Optimization
    Making content for LinkedIn will be quite different than making content for Facebook. Tailor your ideas to the platform you’re using. Twitter will obviously include more short-form content with pictures. Facebook might be better served with videos. LinkedIn would consume more long-form articles.

    Part of optimizing your content is finding which platform is gaining traction. The more one social media platform gains, the more it should become your focus. This way you’ll be able to spend more time on the people who are responding most positively.

  4. Social Pay Per Click
    Unlike search engine marketing pay per click (PPC) advertising where a consumer entering a keyword triggers an ad showing up at the top of the results, social PPC advertisements are shown to consumers of a predetermined demographic. Social media companies gather data about their users, and this information is then used by advertisers to create targeted ads based on the demographics certain individuals fit into. This is how Facebook ads originate and how they tend to be so successful.

 
There are many social media marketing strategies. Some of the most important of which simply involve consistency and persistence. An online marketing strategy should be approached on all fronts. If you would like to kick-start your social media presence, give us a call.

The 3 Similarities Between Digital And Traditional Marketing

choosing a digital marketing firmThe importance of familiarizing yourself with digital marketing has never been more significant than it is today. In fact, the Global Digital Outlook Study for 2017/2018 found that 43% of worldwide marketers are increasing their investment in online marketing. Almost half of these marketers are already spending 50% or more of their marketing budget on the digital frontier. Since much of this brave new marketing world is uncertain, many people will need a simple way to explain it. One way to take some of the mystery out of online marketing is by comparing it to traditional marketing concepts. This can be very helpful when choosing a digital marketing firm. These are those concepts and how they apply today.

  1. BillboardsMuch has changed in marketing, but perhaps the easiest way to recognize some similarities is by looking at a billboard, then looking at banner ads. They are exactly the same, save for one being written in pixels and the other in ink. Online banner ads, like billboards, also cost more in certain locations. If you want to place a big billboard with your brand in Times Square it will cost your company an arm and a leg. Just the same for landing an ad on the New York Times website. If you want a billboard in a town outside of a small suburb in southern Alabama, you will pay proportionally less, like you would when placing a banner ad in a much lesser known online publication.
  2. Mail BrochuresMany people still get pamphlets in the mail for local restaurants, department stores, and holiday deals. The same exact thing happens online, but using email instead of physical mail. Websites ask potential customers to sign up for their mailing list, which they then use to send offers and discounts. This is to help cultivate a following and brand loyalty.
  3. Critical ReviewsWhile the internet has certainly decentralized the product and media reviewing process, marketers still use it to their advantage. Reviews used to be done by paid food, music, movie, or product reviewers. They controlled who believed what about a product being sold. Now, the power is back in the hands of the masses. While once the critics controlled the review industry in a transparent way, their dominion has now been relegated to the dark corners of the internet. That said, online reviews and the critics of old share much in common.

 

If you are in the process of choosing a digital marketing firm and feel a bit overwhelmed by all the new terminology and concepts, don’t worry, it is mostly the same concepts as before, but they’ve been adapted to fit a new platform. Use similar criteria as you have in the past when choosing a digital marketing firm today. Trust, versatility, professionalism, and knowledge are all important to help your marketing campaign succeed. Whether you need web design services, social media marketing, or anything in between, call today and get your name out there.