Content Marketing – PR, marketing, and media production | Alchemy On Demand

Six Reasons Your Website Needs Video

Admin — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 05:51:07 +0000

Sorry about that, my Luddite friend.

I too, am a reader, not a watcher, but times have changed. Today’s websites need video and here are the top six reasons why:

#1. Search engines love video.

For the last few years, Google has rewarded sites that include video, presumably because videos are “content-rich.” When a video is optimized to include relevant keywords, it has a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of Google results than any static text page. And as if to emphasize the importance of video with web users, YouTube has become the second-largest search engine on the web. That means web users are nearly as likely to search for their keywords (your website) on YouTube as Google. If you don’t have video on your website, YouTube won’t find you.

#2. Videos are more engaging than text.

Just as it’s easier to get caught up in television or a movie, than in a book, well-crafted videos pull people into the storyline. And why not? Videos combine words, images, and music to create more compelling storytelling than words and images alone. For that reason:

#3. Videos are shared more often than text.

Because they are more engaging and compelling than static text pages, videos are shared—on Facebook and other social media, as well as emailed—far more often than static web pages. Moreover, a video thumbnail— embedded on a Facebook page, for example–attracts more attention and garners more “Likes” and comments than a static text page.

#4. Videos convert visitors to customers more frequently than text.

Videos are able to imitate the bricks-and-mortar shopping experience more readily than words and still images, giving prospective customers a “you are there” experience that can overcome any hesitation a shopper may feel about purchasing online. A video can also convey your company’s brand—the look and feel you want customers to associate with your company—far more than a static website. Moreover, once a website visitor has clicked on the PLAY button, he or she is in your control. A well-produced video can provide a “one-stop shopping” experience for the user, answering his or her questions, showing the product from various angles, offering appropriate calls to action (and the links to make them a click away), and even guiding visitors to the shopping cart.

#5. Videos can be shared on multiple channels

—thus maximizing the bang for your buck. By loading videos to multiple sites—YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, Facebook Video, and more—in addition to your own website, you reach far more prospective customers than through your website alone. Moreover, videos can be optimized to play equally well on mobile devices, televisions, and in-store monitors, further maximizing the return on your video investment.

# 6 Best of all, Alchemy On Demand can create your videos

From animated shorts and two-minute sales pieces to full-length corporate documentaries, our team of award-winning producers, directors, and writers are masters of the craft of video storytelling to meet any budget. When you’re ready to go video, contact us.

-Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand

How To Write Killer Copy (For Reals)

Admin — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 08:35:27 +0000

Copywriting has long been the black sheep of the marketing world. It’s a crucial part of the marketing process, but it’s tricky, and therefore many overlook copywriting as something that will take care of itself.

Big mistake.

Numerous studies have shown that small tweaks to your copy result in huge returns.

Still, most don’t want to pay to have it done professionally, so how can you get away with writing copy that sells?

Easy. Like this:

Know your target customer
Focus on benefits
Know yourself
Keep it simple, Keep it on point, and Be specific
Yell at them, Build trust, & Dissuade fear
Make them like you
Show them that others have already jumped aboard (Social Trust)
Universalize your tone
And finally – follow through

BAM – There you have it. 9 steps to write killer copy. Remember, practice makes perfect, but armed with this knowledge you’ll be well on your way to writing killer copy that converts traffic.

And it all starts with…

Know your target customer

The goal of any marketing campaign is to guide your customers through the Buying Funnel:

Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction – that’s the name of the game.

5 steps to customer (and business) happiness. You’re going to use your copywriting to guide your customers through these steps, and all of your marketing copy should be unified in this goal. Thus, your landing page copy should per tailored to where your customer is in that process.

Optimize your landing pages accordingly.

Example: Let’s say you sell shoes. You’ve designed a landing page to target those who search for “Santa Barbara Shoes.”

Your landing page copy should be geared toward conversions, yes, but you should also recognize that at this point in the buying phase, those that are searching for something as generic as “Santa Barbara Shoes” are likely in the first stage of the buying process, and that’s Attention.

Your potential clients aren’t not sure what they want, or even what’s out there. So your first step for these keyword searches should be creating a landing page that captures their attention, engages interest, and stimulates awareness and desire.

Pro-tip: Use emotion – it’s the strongest stimulant.

Therefore, the landing page shouldn’t be geared to raising awareness, but more about getting the customer to take that action. This is where things like coupons, free shipping, ease of returns, customer service, and social trust metrics like “# of satisfied customers” comes into play. The desire is there, you just have to get the customer to convert:

Now, the amount of space you have to accomplish these goals differs with your target task. If you’re writing PPC Copy, you’ve got precious few words in order to attract your potential traffic.

But ultimately, for any of your copywriting, what you’re trying to do is offer meat, in the language of the dog, directed to the dog.

Let me explain:

Remember Pavlov’s dogs? It’s a classic experiment about classical conditioning.

Good ol’ Pavlov proved that he could stimulate a physiological response by conditioning dogs to know that when a bell sounded they would be fed. In this case, when Pavlov sounded the bell, the dogs knew (or thought) that they were going to be fed, and that stimulated the response to salivate.

Great response, no?

But imagine if Pavlov hadn’t used meat to stimulate the dogs. What if, instead of steak, Pavlov used… lentils.

Lentils don’t get dogs going like meat.

Nothing does, in fact.

So if you don’t present meat for your customers, they aren’t going to salivate. Period. End of story. They won’t be hungry. They’ll go elsewhere for the meat they desire.

Take-Home: Know your customers, and present them what they want (give them meat).

Keep it Simple

Additionally, if Pavlov hadn’t rung a bell, but had used a whistle beyond the range of their hearing, the dogs wouldn’t know it was dinner time.

Take-Home: The language you use matters. Don’t over-sell something, don’t use ostentatious language. All big words do is isolate people. If you can use a simpler word, do so. Or, as a student of mine pointed out, if you can use an Anglo-Saxon word instead of the Latin, use the Anglo. That requires you to know the difference between Anglo-Saxon and Latin words, however….

Alright, now you’re ready to start writing some copy. But before you do, you must…

Know Yourself

It might sound silly, but many small businesses, especially those early on in the growth phase, suffer from an identity crisis.

Before you write a lick of script, you’ve got to know who you are, what you offer, and what makes you unique. These are the things that your potential clients are going to be looking for, and they’re going to want those things quickly.

If you can’t define yourself and your service in a sentence or two, your first priority is to learn how to be able to.

Define. Your. Mission.

Learn what sets you apart.

Seth Godin called this the “Purple Cow,” and Santa Barbara-based Zeeblu spins this into a blue zebra:

The point is, you’ve got to know what sets you apart and highlight it. Level of customer service, cost, quality, whatever – you’ve got to know what that is and promote that so that you stand out from the crowd.

When you find your purple cow/zebra, whatever, you’re ready to put pen to paper.

When you do, be sure to…

Focus on benefits (not features)

I’m a big believer in the selfish nature of people and their time.

It stands to reason.

People want to know if you’re worth your salt before they waste any time listening to you. It’s the same with the guy handing you the flier in the street, and the message is simple:

DO NOT WASTE MY TIME.

When people are on your site, it’s all about them. Make sure that they know that. Don’t fall into the mistake of talking about you.

Example:
Check out this website from the Santa Barbara Small Business Entrepreneurship Center. This is cut from their homepage, and before I know anything about them, or what they do, I’m hit with a wall of text about who they are.

Right. Got it. No offense, but What’s in it for me?

A better design choice would have been one that speaks to the target customer’s needs:

“Get your business off the ground and running.” OR “What’s your goal? Here’s your solution.”

Or something thereabouts.

Take home: Make your copy about your customers, and they will thank you.

This brings us to…

Yell at them, Build Trust, & Dissuade Fear

Seems counter-intuitive, no? But it’s the truth. Well… sorta.

Talking firmly projects confidence, and people respect others with confidence. Many times people don’t know what they want – they want you to tell them what they want. So tell them. Use action verbs:

Just do it.

Act Now.

Subscribe.

Check this out: You tell me which one reads better:

A: “They may not even be hungry. They’ll probably go elsewhere for the meat they desire.”

B: “They won’t be hungry. They’ll go elsewhere for the meat they desire.”

If you guessed B, cheerio.

Remove doubt from your copy, and your readers will thank you.

*Caveat* Confidence isn’t enough. You actually have to know what you’re talking about. But before you do so, you’ve got to build up your reader’s trust. To do that, you’ve got to form a relationship with them.

Think about it. When you compose an argument, you start by getting the people to like you. This is why speakers start off with a joke. Bust up the crowd a little bit. Use conversational tones. Use “you” and “I”. Tell a story. Use your own picture:

Me hogging the spotlight at Christmas.

In short, get them to know you (and hopefully like you). Then, once you’ve established a firm relationship, you can speak directly, but don’t come out of the pulpit all fire and brimstone, or you risk alienating your readers.

Make them like you.

Humans aren’t such tricky animals. Ultimately, we’re social creatures and generally pretty predictable. It’s upon this premise that an ancient martial arts trick rests.

Ask any 3+ degree blackbelt what they would do to stop a fight from happening, and they’ll respond: “Smile.”

Yep. Smile. That’s it. Ten years of kung-fu knowledge distilled into a single word. And marketers use it daily.

Why?

Because it’s a lot harder to hurt someone you like, and as humans, we’re hard-wired to respond positively to smiles.

It’s called reciprocity, and it’s a powerful marketing tool.

Don’t believe me? Ask yourself what happens when someone you don’t know follows you on Twitter. Chances are, your innate response is to follow them back. Take and receive. That’s our social instinct kicking in again there.

So when writing your copy, go ahead and yuk it up. Put some funny images in there. Lighten the mood.

Look at Groupon, they’re champs of the sly-quirky just to make you smile:

Yep. They’re the masters of quirky. And I should know, I used to work for them.

Show them that others have jumped aboard the bandwagon

This is another one of our innate human characteristics. We’re social creatures. Additionally, if someone else does it, it reinforces the feeling that if we do it too, we’ll be doing a good thing, and that will release a small amount of dopamine (happiness chemical) into the brain.

Predictable, see?

The rub is that if someone did jump off a bridge, you might not, but you’d want to know why, and if it was a good idea, and if you were missing out on anything.

Your copywriting can exploit this.

“Scientists in California don’t want you to know this amazing secret to dieting.”

“These celebrities do things just like us.”

“1000s of satisfied customers”

…and so forth. Use some social trust indicators on your website with logos and testimonials, and use it in your copy to slam home the trust instinct.

Universalize your tone

All of your web copy is going to be setting a tone. Is it funny or serious? Flippant or stern? Direct or vague? You have to make these choices and stick to them. Obviously, if you’re in the business of selling caskets, you’ll want to take things a bit more seriously than Groupon. But they have the luxury of selling fun times and fun things, so they can get away with a little playfulness. This is where knowing your audience is key. Figure out what you can get away with and then tailor all-out copy to suit.

Additionally, make sure that your tone is the same across platforms. You’re building relationships with people whether you’re aware of it or not. If you’re Joe Happy one day and then Stern Moe the next, people won’t know what to think. And if they don’t know what to think, then they can’t count on you, and if they can’t count on you, then they can’t trust you with their money, can they?

Follow Through

This is the end of the AIDAS marketing funnel. You want your customers to be your biggest proponents. Follow up with them. Thank them for their business. Make sure they’re satisfied. It goes a long way to repeat business and referrals.

Use the same tone in your follow-up copy as the rest of your marketing efforts and you’ll be A-OK when it comes to quarterly profit reporting time.

And there you have it. 9 steps to copywriting mastery. So what do you think? Have you got any copywriting tips that I missed? Care to share? Drop me a line in the comments and I’ll holler back!

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Why Social Media is Important for Small Businesses

Admin — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 10:53:27 +0000

I hear this one often: you’ve got a small business, so why even bother with social media?

As much as we might like to ignore it, social media has become a major player in today’s internet. As a business owner, it’s not something we can ignore, and with Facebook’s Two Billion+ reach, why would we? Lamenting your lack of business shouldn’t be an excuse if you’ve got a decent product. How many times have you said to yourself “I know that people will want what I have to offer if I could only reach them.” Well, writing a killer blog and correctly utilizing SEO is essentially free advertising – as is maintaining a social presence.

Generating some quality content is a great way to let these people know what your business is about. Keep in mind, however, that it’s imperative that your social presence be a quality social presence, as this Neil Patel blog will tell you. It’s also important that you don’t hard sell your customers, at least not right off the bat – do this and you risk losing your fan base. What you want to do is engage them, build a rapport with them, and then link them to your services.

Start things off slowly, and give people some quality information. Think of this process as making the web the best possible experience and you’ll do just fine. A sort of “Give the people what they want” ethos for the long run.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How Socrates and Science Can Make You a Better Marketer

Admin — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 07:32:29 +0000

Here’s how you can take the teachings of a guy who’s been dead for centuries, combine that with some modern-day science, and walk away with a foundation for marketing mastery.

Check it out:

As a marketer and blogger, your visuals and your text are going to matter a lot. You have, on average, 8 seconds to persuade your audience to take some course of action. When it comes to your website or blog copy, that 8 seconds is trying to get the visitor to either read more, click on something, or enter some of their information.

Seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

That depends on how you look at it.

See, human beings aren’t as complex as we make them out to be. At our base, we’re really just predictable little nuggets running around in fancy clothes.

Marketers have known for a long time what stimulates customer responses. They’ve had several hundred years to test it, so they darn well should, if you ask me.

What takes over our brains when we look at stuff:

First off, the brain uses what’s called heuristics to scan and learn new information. It’s not a perfect system (it can lead to errors in judgment), but it evolved from us needing to process information quickly and easily and to make snap decisions.

This, in essence, is what people are doing when they scan your site, display ad, copy, etc. They’re making snap judgments about YOUR QUALITY, my friend.

They want to know, and they want to know quickly, if they’re wasting their time being there.

All of this boils down to a very simple, long-held tenet: What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?

WIIFM is the radio station the world tunes into. WIIFM is what everyone on two feet wants to know the second they land on your site. WIIFM is what Hubspot proved with this graph:

BOOM.

You’d better get your ducks in a row about what you want that message to be.

Here’s how to do that:

Luckily, Socrates and Google have done much of the legwork for you.

First up, Socrates decided all those centuries ago that he needed a way to make his speeches superlative, top-notch, something to be remembered for well… centuries. He wanted to maximize his ROI, if you will. What he came up with is still taught in schools today.

(Guess he succeeded, no?)

What Socrates developed was the idea of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. He concluded that in order to convince someone of an argument, you have to touch upon these three things.

Ethos, pathos, and logos – the three-headed dog of marketing

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are the three cornerstones of an effective argument, be it spoken, written, or visual.

When you’re writing your marketing copy, when you’re designing your website, you need to know what will convince people of what you’re trying to sell them (what your argument is, so to speak). Advertising is too expensive to get wrong, (amiright, America???) so your punches have to count.

Here’s what’s what:

Ethos

Ethos is the credibility factor. It’s things like social trust, celebrity endorsement, jump-on-the-bandwagon approaches, that sort of thing. For a marketer, it’s our brain rationalizing the decision to buy certain things because it’s safe and acceptable to do so (Ex: “Beyonce is doing it, so I can too!”)

Logos

Logos is the logical part of the argument. Logos, for a marketer, is the cherry on top. It’s the “Now 25% off!” banner hanging outside your local mattress warehouse. Logos tries to win over the inner critic in you by quieting the voice that says: “Hmm… it might not be wise to purchase that dress right now,” by providing evidence to the contrary.

Now, Ethos and Logos are powerful and convincing methods of persuasion. But Socrates learned that they don’t hold a candle to Pathos.

Pathos – god of passion (don’t quote me on that)

If Ethos is all about credibility, and Logos is all Spock-like logic, Pathos is all about emotional response. Pathos is why you paid extra for the red sports car instead of the yellow sedan. Pathos is why you can’t commit to forking over $300 for a phone that, though better on paper than an iPhone, just doesn’t impress you with the way it looks and feels.

Logos says budget is best. Pathos says sexy is supreme. Guess who wins?

Why ethos and logos aren’t as powerful as Pathos:

Take a look at this magazine ad:

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this ad is primarily geared towards men (it was taken from an issue of FHM (For Him Magazine)).

But riddle me this: why is this ad effective at all?

It does nothing to espouse the wonderful taste of the Silver Bullet. (I come away knowing nothing about what the product does, or what, even, it is.)

But what the ad does do is make me feel something. Specifically, it makes me feel an association with three things.

Three very powerful things:

1.) lust – sex is a very primal (and therefore powerful) motivator.

2.) fun – this goes hand in hand with lust – it’s a great time, and that’s something that a company might want a potential customer to associate with their brand.

3.) strength – this one isn’t as abundantly apparent, but notice the black and white color schemes, which are a classically powerful color pattern. The black bottom with a hard red font in all caps, the mountains in the background, the women on their knees in an overtly sexual post, the snowman behind the blond, grinning wildly as if he’s been outfitted with two carrots (sorry, but… c’mon) – all these lend themselves to the idea of strength and dominance.

So there we have lust, strength, and dominance. All from drinking a beer!

But do you notice a pattern here?

None of these things have anything to do with credibility (ethos) or logic (logos), do they? Nope, it’s all passionate, emotive forces at play.

Does that strike you as odd? It shouldn’t.

Here’s why:

Human beings are emotional creatures. Our decisions are based on our emotional reactions and little else. We’re SO emotional, in fact, that in a study done by Antonio Damasio at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, has shown that humans whose emotional parts of the brain have been damaged are physically incapable of making a decision – even for something as mundane as whether or not to fasten your seatbelt.

As in, these poor souls just sit there trying to decide whether or not to fasten their seatbelts. Without an emotive response, they’re literally paralyzed.

Take-Home: EVERY decision is emotionally based.

Crazy, no?

It gets deeper, my friends.

But before we go there, let’s bring it back-to-home by pointing out that these marketers knew that they had one shot with their magazine ad, and they knew that they wanted to convey strong emotive connections between their brand and these feel-good emotions.

Ethos and Logos are important, but depending on your budget, and depending upon the size of your campaign, you should always be sure that your potential customers are leaving with a positive emotion, and preferably the emotional association you want to link to your brand.

The Coors Light marketers went over the top with their message, but they were successful in their goal because they stopped the reader long enough to associate their product with three emotions they were targeting.

When you’re designing your ads, you’ve got to think about the goal of your campaign. If you get just one shot, you want it to count.

Know your target customer, and know what moves them to action, then put the hardest-hitting message you can in front of their face.

What you and lions have in common (*spoiler alert*: it ain’t your heart)

James Clear recently wrote a great post on Buffer (a great social media tool, btw) about how to tame lions by presenting them too many options.

Have you ever seen the lion tamer in the ring with a whip and a chair, bravely warding off three hungry lions? It turns out that the reason this is successful isn’t because of the whip; it’s because of that seemingly-stupid little chair.

But that’s not just some object chosen by random. The chair, positioned correctly, offers the lion four potential focal points.

The chair, along with the whip and the man wielding them, presents the lion with too many things to focus on, and the options immediately capture the lion’s attention (the whip and the chair, that is) it can’t eat.

The lion, after having its stimulus (food) taken away, becomes preoccupied with the clutter of other things in its face, can’t decide on which one to attack, and so instead decides it isn’t hungry after all.

Score one for the lion tamer, but human beings are little different: if we are presented with too many choices we stall and walk away.

The same is true with web design. If a design is too cluttered, it becomes confusing. We’re not ready to take on too much information. We see a wall of text and our first instinct is to balk and run away:

Too much.

Visitor: What is this?

You: It’s a site about nonprofit governance.

Visitor: Oh. Why’d I have to ask? [walks away]

Instead, aim for a clean design that strips away all but your primary objective. Airbnb does a great job of this:

AirBnb. Well played, sir.

Why is this good web design?

1.) Because it uses larger-than-life cool images of travel that entice but don’t overwhelm.

2.) Because all extraneous elements are stripped away and you don’t have to waste time wondering what the hell it is you need to do; the call to action is large and in charge, front and center.

3.) Because it’s simple, it loads fast, and there’s additional information pushed to the background, there only should someone need/request it.

In short, it’s successful because it remembers WIIFM – Your website isn’t about you and what you do. It’s about serving your clients and giving them what they need.

The take-home? Three parts:

1.) We need an emotional response to make a decision.

2.) Don’t present your visitors with too many options (cleanliness is next to godliness).

3.) Remember WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)

Now, back to the Coors Light Ad.

These marketers got rid of the now-metaphorical chair and dangled what they were selling in front of their target audience – that is, they’re selling the idea of sex, fun, and power. Coors Light will give you that. This is the meat of their message, so to speak.

They could have used other factors: “9 out of 10 doctors recommend Coors Light,” or “Now 25% off!” but that would cloud their message.

Don’t get me wrong. The “9 out of 10 doctors recommend Coors Light” and “Now 25% off!” are good marketing tactics in their own right, but given the one-shot opportunity that this magazine ad had with its intended audience, these marketers decided (and rightly so) that the main message should be meat, so to speak.

These emotional engagements people have with your product/brand ARE HUGE. They’re so important, in fact, that big brands spend $millions$ every year in order to make sure that they remain in their client’s good graces.

Come fly the friendly skies.

Relax, it’s FedEx.

We’ll leave the light on for you.

People want to have a sense of what they’re getting into before they get into it. Therefore, your first marketing message should be an effort to convey trust and confidence. Additionally, you want your customers to come away feeling good about your brand.

Bonus: More Science to Blow Your Mind: Surprise and Conquer

The nucleus accumbens is the part of the brain associated with pleasure. Studies show that it gets more excited (read: that people have a better experience) when it is surprised.

Surprise, therefore, can help put your brand in your audience’s good graces.

Check out these creatives:

Pretty clever, no? All of them are clean, uncluttered messages that make you pause, think, and smirk. All get you excited about their brands, and all of them link a target emotion to their brand.

Use surprise wisely and you’ll have your customers all:

How this makes you a better marketer

1.) If you’re trying to sell something, push passion to the forefront. Let Logos and Ethos be Robin to the Batman of passion.

2.) If you’re trying to sell something, don’t give your customers too many options. It stalls them. There’s been a great deal said about this by others like this amazing post by Peep Laja.

3.) Surprise your audience to give them maximum pleasure.

In Sum:

If you’re trying to sell something, if you’re trying to dangle, say, a steak in front of your visitors, keep it simple, keep it passionate, keep it fresh.

Got it? Great.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Free Images To Use On Your Blog

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 08:55:33 +0000

As a newbie blogger it can be hard to get some good images without spending a fortune. Stock photography adds up quickly and though you’d love to pay a photographer for his/her work, you can hardly justify the price – just for a blog, right? And we all know that blogging and content marketing is important, so with that in mind, here are some great sites that allow you to use their photos 100% free.

By far our favorite is Unsplash.com. Thousands of high-quality photos can be downloaded and used for commercial purposes absolutely free.

Be sure to read the Terms of Service for all of these though, and give credit where credit is due!

Free Pixels
A Digital Dreamer
Free Range Stock
Vecteezy
Free Images
Morguefile
Pixabay

Or, you can check out this amazing resource, which lists many of the above, and more:
Blue Vertigo

Got any others that you like to use? Do us a favor and name-drop them in the comments!

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How to Optimize for Local SEO (6 Quick Fixes)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:07:17 +0000

Before we jump into the search engine optimization waters, there’s something that should be clear: there are two types of search engine optimization: There’s Organic Search and Local Search.

Organic Search is all about how people find your site in the search engine rankings.

Local Search is all about getting your business to rank better in the Google Places listings.

It’s an important distinction if you’re a local business because many small businesses get caught up trying to rank for big keywords and overshoot the moon.

Let’s face it – as a startup, you can’t compete with the big dogs that are throwing gobs of cash to optimize their online presence.

So how do you compete? You target a smaller pond.

Optimize your local SEO

Here are 6 quick local SEO fixes that will put you on the fast track to local SEO success:

Local search is all about how to rank better on Google Places. Aside from organizing your site well, there are really five main things you can do to optimize your site locally:

1.) Get a Google Business Page

2.) Put your business’s name, address, and phone number in the footer of your site

*Use microdata markup for that info

3.) Submit your business to local directories like the ones I’ve listed below

* Get Reviews on those sites

4.) Add testimonials to your site and use schema.org microdata markup

5.) Add images to the profiles you make on those directories and to your site

*Geo-tag your images *Add service & location ALT text to those images

6.) Get links.

It’s really that simple. And while the first five items are relatively easy to implement, the sixth takes a bit of effort to get moving. Link building is a process that can be simplified but just takes time. It’s something I’ll write about in a future post, but for now, let’s take a look at getting your site listed in the main local directories.

1.) Get Listed Locally

When you search for a business, oftentimes you’ll see a listing of the closest places in your region. Typically, Google will give you the top three or four results, then a listing of business places.

Something like this:

To get your business listed in these Google “Places” listings, you’ve got to have a Google Business Page.

*IMPORTANT: The categories that you select in Google Business are very important for how you appear in the listing results. Choose them wisely.*

Once you’ve set up your Google Business page, you’ve got to verify your business’s location with Google (typically they’ll mail you a postcard at your business’s location). After that, how you rank is in these Google Places listings is determined by a number of factors, which we’ll take a look at now.

2.) Put Your Business’s Name, Address, and Phone on Every Page of Your Site

First and foremost, you have to be sure that your Name, Address, and Phone are placed on every page of your site that you want to be associated with your business location.

The footer of your site (at the bottom) is typically a good place to do this.

You also want to be sure that your business information is placed correctly with the Google Business page you just made. What you’re doing here is listing your location information on your site so that the search engine bots can associate your Google Business page with your site. Google’s bots are smart, but they’re essentially just counting 0s and 1s. Different numbers and listings appear different to them, and you’ll need them to be as accurate as possible to help boost your rankings.

Bonus Points

Additionally, you can use a bit of html code that will further help the search engines. The Search Engine Journal did a great write-up on its implementation here. You can use these markups to add reviews to your site as well.

This microdata markup is a bit complex for newbie web designers. Google knows this, and so made a structured data highlighter tool in Google Webmaster Tools to help you out. It’s really just highlight and select – that simple.

3.) Get Citations

Which means, essentially, try to disseminate your business’s Name, Address, and Phone number (what’s called the “citation”) to other sites that the Google bots can crawl. Having your business’s “citation” listed on other sites (like local directories) exactly as they’re listed on your site helps Google link those addresses to your site.

This is why you should avoid using inconsistent abbreviations (St. for Street; Apt. for Apartment, 800 for 1-800, etc). Additionally, you’re going to want to add pertinent markup to your Title Tags, Meta-description, and website content. Don’t stuff keywords in there, but if you’re a business based in say, Ojai, California, you can usually find a way to insert the info organically.

As for local directory submission, here’s a list of the most commonly used directories to which you can add your information:

Yellowbook.com

Citysearch.com

Google

Yahoo (Verizon) Small Business

Additionally, here is a Spreadsheet example that will assist you in keeping your login info and notes organized:

Alternatively, you can use a service like Yext, Moz Local, or to do a power-listing for you, and though this is something of a pricey option, you can assure that your Name, Address, and Phone are listed correctly across a wide variety of local directories.

You can also use a site like Upwork to hire someone overseas to fill out your various information, but ultimately, take it from someone who has done this personally and who knows – it’s best to do it yourself. It’s unfortunate and time-consuming, but really the only way to ensure accuracy is to either hire a service with access to all of your information or to do it yourself. Sites like Synup.com know this, and so offer an affordable hands-on solution that covers 175 sites.

When creating these listings, be aware that some listings like Yelp require a phone call to verify business ownership, so whoever is doing your listing should be by your business’s phone line.

Ok! I hope this helps.

Do you have any other tips for me? Share them in the comments!

–Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Grow Your Readership

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:00:45 +0000

“At the ‘Tools of Change’ publishing conference in New York, Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler revealed a remarkably simple, effortless way for authors to sell more eBooks on Amazon… or in fact anywhere eBooks are sold online.

In a survey of Goodreads’ 15 million-strong membership, he found that the main driver of eBook purchases was, unsurprisingly, ‘referral by a friend’.”
–BESTSELLER Labs

How To Build Your Audience and Grow Your Readership

A sticky situation to be sure – you’ve got this great business and you’ve been growing, expanding, tackling great hurdles, overcoming every darn obstacle, but still… only 50 of your closest friends like you on Facebook! What to do?

Though it may seem hard, growing your readership is something that is doable. Clearly defined goals and sticking to a game-plan are key – but then again, you know this – you’ve got your own business, for crying out loud! So the discipline I leave up to you, but here are the beginnings of a successful strategy for building your readership.

Let me say first, however, that Content Marketing, as well as PR, SEO, and Social Media Campaigns, are all interconnected, and though the following proposal will suggest methods to increase readership, it will also inherently work to increase your Search Engine Results Placement (SERP) as well as establish your prominence in your field. The best approach to any marketing campaign is to achieve individual goals but act with them as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Take these tips to heart, and you should see a dramatic increase in traffic to your site.

I’d also like to outline the need for differentiation of social media and an on-site blog. Your on-site blog should be about pertinent information that other experts in your industry will find valuable. Think of it as a keynote presentation with “room for questions/comments” at the end. Your social media presence (Facebook, specifically) is the place for links to what you’re doing in the industry – a way for your fans to follow your progress and “like” your latest projects. Each fulfills a need, and the info between the two will sometimes cross over, but your blog should be about expanding your notoriety in your field.

First things first: Get some good blog posts (at least 5 [Why 5?]) on your site.

But before you do, read on.

What makes a good blog post?

Rough overview:

Find a topic you’re passionate about. It doesn’t have to be exactly what your website is about – make it some derivation. For example, if your site is about homeland security, you could write about security, weapons, technological advancements in the field, home security, foreign policy… you get the idea.

Content over 1000 words. Tests indicate that the longer, more in-depth content ranks better on search engines than shorter posts. They do better with social circles, and they tend to be linked more frequently.

Relate Relevant Content – use your spreadsheets to see what posts in your field are being discussed most frequently, then use that information to draft content and research on your own.

Use graphics and examples when possible. It’s important to include at least one attributable image to your blog post as it breaks up the flow of the words and looks better on the page (not as intimidating). Examples prove your point with specifics.

Create a catchy headline. Many posts have been written about how important it is to use keywords in your headline and to assure that it grabs your reader’s attention.

Promote content

Now that you’ve got some blog posts under your belt, it’s time to promote them. It’s not enough to just have social media outlets. As you may know, it’s hard to grow your readership. Not everyone will care about children’s eBooks, but many people care about parenting, technology, what their children are reading, and how to entertain/educate them. You can use these categories to start a list of potential network connections.

Create a long list (200+) of blogs, websites, and Twitter users that are active (tweeted in the past week, the website is regularly updated, etc.)

Make sure that no one on this list sells products or services (you are not, at this point, in the business of selling. You are in the business of establishing yourself as a presence, and if you come out of the gates with an obvious agenda, people will be reluctant to heed your advice).

Get the full name, email address, website URL, and name of their website.

List potential guest blogging opportunities and then email them and request to write a guest blog for them.

Be sure to solicit successful sites, but not industry giants. Alltop.com will give you a list of bloggers in various fields, and you can then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings to see what their traffic is like. (Aim for blogs with 30,000 – 300,000 readership hits.)

Consider linking to an internal page (not just your homepage). This encourages site click-through and promotes traffic and exposure.
Follow a template along the lines of:

Subject: you should blog about [insert your guest blog post topic]

[insert their first name], as an avid reader of [insert their site name]I would love to read about [insert guest blog post topic]… and I think your other readers would as well.

Your content on [insert existing post from their website #1, insert existing post from their website #2, and insert existing post from their website #3] are great, but I think you can tie it all together by blogging on [insert guest blog post topic].

I know you are probably busy, so how about I write it for you? Don’t worry, I’m a great blogger and have written posts such as [insert blog post URL #1] and [insert blog post URL #2].

Let me know if you are interested, I already know your blogging style, plus I understand what your readers love… as I am one.

Look forward to hearing from you,
[insert your name]

Create a list of all of the popular blogs in your target space. You can easily do this by searching Technorati (a blog and post search engine) and looking for target blogs on a specific topic. If there aren’t too many popular blogs in your space, list out all of the blogs that are somewhat in your space and are popular.

Now that you have a list of all of the popular blogs, make sure you browse them frequently (at least once a week). When browsing them, look out for social buttons on each post that shows how many people either “tweeted” or “liked” the post. The higher the number the better.

Take the posts that have over 50 or 100 social shares and list them out in a spreadsheet. These will become a resource to draw from when trying to write effective blog posts in the future and to see what your potential audience is responding to.

Spin the title. Don’t just regurgitate old information. Spin it. Outline the main points you want to touch upon, fill in the details, then revise and publish. Get a good licensed image, post, then share.

Comment – This cannot be stressed enough. It is tedious and time-consuming, but it shows your presence in your field, helps to establish notoriety and expertise and helps your SEO.

Use your real name and blog URL (not your website’s homepage). This helps give the impression that you’re “for real” and not just promoting your own agenda/business and it separates blog topics from immediate selling. In addition, Google is currently in the process of de-anonymizing the web, linking personal sites to business sites, Youtube profiles, Facebook etc. The goal of this is to increase accountability, and so it helps to establish YOU as an industry expert. Alternatively, you can create another author for your site, but keep in mind it will be this person who will be linked to the bulk of this content aggrandizement.

Respond to comments on your own blog, create a conversation, ask questions. (Pete Cashmore followed this strategy at Mashable, and successfully built it as a Mecca for Social Networking knowledge.) Social media indicators play a big role in SEO, and your readership grows when people see that this is a discussion, not a one-way lecture.

Get Reviews – Reviews are a large determinate of what sells products. Once your readership is up you can solicit other bloggers for reviews and assure them a link to their site, thus enabling cross-marketing efforts. If you have hard copies that you can offer as an incentive – a signed copy, for example – you can use this as payment for their review.

The Great Blog Post – Once a few guest posts have been written, begin writing posts on your blog that link to these sites. Write quality content, use metrics and examples when possible, and then whenever you have a particularly good blog with links to other blog owners’ sites, email them and ask them to share it in their social circles.

Make it memorable and keep business out of it… at first. You’ve got to begin, work on, and promote content that doesn’t sell your business at all. Just for a while. Nobody likes a hard sell and building readership is the same. If you begin to comment, share, and promote quality information that people genuinely care about, you begin to win what they call the long-tail game. SEO and circulation gains aren’t made overnight. Play the game as if you’re sticking around for a while.

You can really crank this up with StumbleUpon Paid Discovery. $100 here and they’ll direct over 1000 visitors to your post. The other blogs you linked to within your post will then see you as a referrer in their analytics reports and your notoriety in the field will grow.

Create a Reciprocal Tweet System – Every once in a while, with that really great blog post, you can solicit tweets directly. Using your list of email addresses, you can send them a short and sweet solicitation for a tweet. For Ex: “I would love it if you could tweet about [insert link]. Let me know if you need a tweet.” This direct approach is roughly 8% effective according to industry giant Neil Patel, so the longer the list of your potential network, the better.

Consider making a badge. Have a web designer make a badge something along the lines of “Top 100 Ebook Retailer”. Create an embed code. This not only creates perceived credibility, but you can now email out the embed code and create something of an inner circle for those that promote you and share content (and audience) with you.

Create/make images that would be useful to other bloggers. Images rank well in search engine indexing, so almost every blog has at least one. Still, it can be hard to find royalty-free images that relate to your topic. Creating infographics, photos, and Memes:

Use tools like Photoshop, Meme Generator, and Quick Meme to create your own meme like this one:

Once you have your own meme, you can start spreading the content using social sites where your target audience would most likely be on – such as targeted Facebook Groups, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Pinterest, 9gag, Tumblr, and Subreddits on Reddit. (This makes great Social Media fodder.) Using your memes on your other external content distribution campaigns (like guest blogs, slide presentations, ebooks, etc. is good practice as well.)

If you’ve seen improvements in traffic, links and brand mentions through this technique, you can start using Reverse Image Search to find sites that have used your memes but haven’t provided a link to your site. Reach out to them for easier link acquisition.

List potential website owners and make some suggestions for their site.
For example: “Dear Sir or Miss, I’m an avid reader of your blog and, being in the blogging field myself, couldn’t help but notice that you did [X] this when really you mean [Y].” OR “… did you ever think of [X]?”

Ask only for a link to your site as potential remuneration.

If All Else Fails – Buy followers. It sounds dubious, but you can solicit companies directly and pay them to write blogs about you. Many successful blogs make good revenue from this, but it should be a last resort unless you’re in a full-blown, no reservations marketing blast.

The above is an overview of the beginnings of a successful Content Marketing strategy. Social Media strategies are closely tied, but are beyond the scope of this document, though some themes like Meme generation would work well on crossover to Pinterest which, as several studies have proven, drive more sales than Facebook.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Harness Social Media to Boost Your Business

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 04:42:59 +0000

You constantly hear that social media is the way to build business, attract friends, fans, and followers, and “go viral” overnight. But as anyone who has waded into the web has quickly discovered, you can easily spend hours caught in this “web” with very little to show for your effort.

If only it were as easy as creating a Facebook page.

Don’t lose heart, however. As you’ve heard us say elsewhere on these pages, PR and marketing efforts are cumulative. They build over time. And over time, your investments will pay off.

Here are some bangarang ways to get readers interested in your business, whatever it may be.

Solicit Your Friends

Perhaps the hardest part about starting any new business is this: Owning It. Tell your friends and contacts about your new venture. Don’t be shy – they’re your friends and they support you. Twitter is built upon the reciprocal tweet system. Friend/follow someone and with about a 10% rate, they’ll follow/friend you.

Time your posts

Becoming something of an authority in your industry takes time and effort, but it’s what you want to do in order to assure your clients and customers that your product or service is coming from the best source. The key is consistency. Like the gym, gains aren’t made overnight but by sticking to a planned schedule. Time your posts and social media listings to publish at a set time 2-5 times every week, at least.

And when specifically should you publish your blog posts? Typically, the best time to publish your blogs is between 9:30am and 11am USA East Coast time. Testing has shown that this is the time when most Americans are up and running, but this data constantly changes. For Facebook, you can use their analytics tool to find out what time best suits your audience.

Now that you’ve got the basics covered, let’s look at ways you can go about drumming up that business.

Create Interesting Content

This is the hardest thing of all, right? I mean, if creating interesting content was so easy, we wouldn’t spend hours trolling the web looking for it. Well here’s the golden rule: do what your customers are too lazy to do. It takes work, but it isn’t necessarily hard. Once you know your business (and you do, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business) then all you have to do is tell your industry the best things about their business.

Take, for instance, flashlights. Now my girlfriend goes crazy over this, but I recently developed a thing for flashlights. Not a pervy thing, just an interest. So I poke about looking for which flashlight has the best throw, flood, spill, this and that, you know, whatever. Anyway, these people over at candlepowerforums have done more testing than you would’ve ever thought possible about flashlights, their lumen output, their lux output, their ANSI ratings, mods, you get the picture.

Still, if you’re looking into purchasing a light hand cannon, well then you’ve come to the right place. The font of information inspires you, engages you, and they sell flashlights.

Now back to your business:

Find interesting content that pertains to your field: this can be anything from ANSI ratings to the brilliance of radiant cut diamonds. Share this with your readers. It will boost your SERP (Social Engine Results Page) and help to define you as an authority in your field.
Make it new – Below, I encourage you to make a spreadsheet–a list–of others in your field. (That’s right, even your competitors.) Read their posts and spin their content. Take their nugget and add your own value to it. (It’s not stealing; all of society is built off a handful of great people and their work. We all pitch in incrementally, but we all had to learn something from someone.) See what’s happening in the field, what your customers are responding to (by checking out which blog posts receive the most shares) and see how you can add your own creative twist.
Give Away Free Stuff – I know that it’s hard to do this as a budding business, but here’s perhaps the most valuable thing you can give: information. (That’s what Alchemy On Demand is doing here, see?) Use that interesting content and create an eBook or better yet, a training course. Offer a service and have your audience pay with a tweet. Or with, say, a Facebook “like” or email address. The more creative you get here the better.

Get a list of others in your field

What? This is about me, not them, right? I know, I know. But if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that I’m a big fan of lists–for a reason: editors, readers, and customers love lists – and you should too. For our present purposes, your list enables you to find out what others in your field are doing and spark ideas about what you could be doing to create interest. You identify opportunities to comment to their blog or Facebook posts, thereby alerting their friends, followers, and fans, that you’re a valuable resource too. You might even approach one of these businesses or social media sites with a request to author a guest blog on their site. And offer them the same on yours. Now you’re gaining access to their customers.

Google Alerts is another great way to stay up-to-date about what is going on in your field, but generally speaking, might not be focused enough to be pertinent in your niche. If you’re selling a product or service related to spiritual healing, for example, then you may have a hard time finding other blogs and industry professionals that are keeping you updated with breaking news. But you will probably find a wealth of information regarding healing, spirituality, holistic health, general health, Western vs. Eastern Medicine, etc., in general. Use Technorati to get a good list of 200+ blogs that pertain to your field and then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings and order them in order of their readership.

Something like so:

This will give you the contacts you need in order to stay up to date on what is happening in your industry. If you don’t like doing this yourself (after all, you’ve got a company to run), I’ve found some great help using Upwork in the past.

Well, there you have it. Some good info about the beginning stages of drumming up your business. I’ll conclude here with the firm advice to begin conversations with people, like them, follow them, +1 them, Link them, whatever it takes at this point. It’s hard to get your readership off the ground, but once you get rolling, you get rolling in customers, and ooh boy – what a feeling.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Why Write a Killer Blogpost

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:59:48 +0000

Sure, it seems easy enough – all your friends seem to have started one, so why shouldn’t you? But with the advent of the internet and weblogging, it seems that everyone has become an expert and so it’s hard to separate the good content from dross, the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. There are plenty of articles out there from a great many web authors, but the question remains – what’s in a blog post?

Blog posts can be written for a variety of reasons – a blog about your new hobby baking cupcakes is one thing, but if you’re looking to generate some quality content for your business, then that’s a whole other bag. Businesses that maintain a web presence (and who doesn’t nowadays?) will benefit to have a blog that maintains a quality line of content. This not only shows your prospective customers that you are staying informed (as well as informing them) about current trends in your industry, but it also helps to make your site competitive on search engines like Bing and Google.

People are paying thousands of dollars nowadays to talk to search engine optimizers (SEOs), and it only makes good business sense – the better your site does on a Google ranking, the more potential customers will see it and the more business you’ll generate. And so getting back to our point, writing a great blog post not only generates visitors to your site helping to validate it, but it also allows you to add keyword-rich content that helps make your site better “known” to Google for these particular keywords. But writing a great blog post does more than this, it also allows you to establish a community and a relationship with that community.

According to SEO gurus like Neil Patel and SEOmoz, companies see a far better Return On Investment (ROI) when they have loyal, return viewers of their site. Thus, quality content establishes a rapport, builds a fan base, and imbues a sense of your competency in those who would visit your site. With the latest Google Algorithm updates, gone are the days of generating countless backlinks and keyword-rich nonsense content.

And thank heavens for that, eh? Let’s make the web better for all involved. Here’s to generating some quality content and keeping the BlackHats out of it.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

The Better Way To Blog

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:36:28 +0000

Blogging is tough! The hours are long, the information is difficult to come by, and your work isn’t panning out like you’ve hoped.

Still, blogging is important.

You probably already know that Google and other search engines rank longer, in-depth content higher than others. This study done by Neil Patel shows that the content length for a web page, plus coverage and in-depth content on your focused topic (keyword) plays a big part in how high the site ranks. And the higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page contains.

What this study and others show is that there’s a strong correlation between longer content and good quality information. And this is what both Google and your prospective clients are looking for – good quality information.

Does this mean that every blog you write should have at least 2000 words? No, but it does mean that people (and Google) recognize the value of longer posts and that you should strive to get the best content out to your clients.

In the old days, if you were looking at getting some content built for your site, here’s a little breakdown of what you might expect:

Traditional Blogging

Sites like textbroker.com offer copy services at a range of skill levels. They’re relatively cheap, but as in most things, you get what you pay for. Here’s what a typical article from one of these services looks like:

Here you’ll see copy that was contracted for target keywords that would be pertinent for a Santa Barbara-based business. The first issue you see is the immediate need for formatting help. There’s no plug-and-play here.
Now let’s take a look at the actual content of the article.

If you bother to read this article, you’ll notice the generic copy that’s provided. In addition to the vague generalities and questionable advice, there is no real value in this article. If you read it, all you would get is a common-sense approach to being careful about hiring somebody. This isn’t what your clients are looking for.

Why This Is Bad

Google is actively updating its search algorithms in order to demote sites with this sort of superfluous and redundant content. It’s all about providing the end-user (your client) with better content. Search Engine Optimizing is rarely a cut-and-dry case, but bloating your website with undesirable, irrelevant, redundant content, especially keyword-stuffed bad content is a sure-fire way to frustrate your users and disappear in search results.

Look again at the article. The next thing you’ll notice is that it’s far too general – it’s not specific to any one industry, even if it does allow multiple uses of various client-oriented keywords. This article is unlikely to be shared among social networks and therefore does nothing to promote your business or the article’s author as a source of information that’s relevant to your customers. In short, it’s filler content, and keyword-rich – running the risk of being demoted by the search engines.

The last thing I’d like to point out is the inclusion of potentially undesirable information. Generating content from people unfamiliar with your industry, your customers, or your business ethos can lead to problems. Trust us, we’ve seen people go this route and the results are the expenditure of a lot of money with a lot of headache and little customer return.

Blogging Services The Alchemy On Demand Way

Here’s the better way to do it. Custom-tailor your content to your client’s needs. Read up on your industry’s trends, see what’s getting the most social shares, and write content that answers your reader’s questions. Use tools like Technorati to see who else is blogging in your market, and then see what their readers are responding to.

Use Google Trends to cross-reference this information with what’s trending in your industry to see what your potential customers are interested in and reading about. Then custom-tailor blogs with all the SEO-relevant info.

Then utilize a content plan to target your chosen keywords. Get at least one copyright-free image to use on your blog. There’s plenty of info that suggests visually-heavy info is much more effective than text alone.

If you’d like help with your blogging efforts, feel free to reach out. It’s a service we here at Alchemy On Demand happily provide. Please drop us a line!

Thanks for looking and happy blogging!

–Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand