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  1. Customer Feedback: Are You Listening?

    Businesses of all sizes have a valuable resource right at hand for improving the success rate of their products and services — yet many often never tap into it. What is it? Customer feedback.

    Recently, Website Magazine featured an article by Kevin Dunne entitled, “Check Your Ego: How to Avoid Killing Customer Feedback,” which addresses the importance of hearing from and listening to your customers.

    “To succeed in a fast-paced world with increasing customer expectations, development teams need agility. Agility means adapting product to customer, and that agility can only come from visibility into what the customer really wants,” writes Dunne.

  2. Mobile-friendly websites, Google, Raleigh

    More Mobile-Friendly Google Search Coming April 21

    Have you typed a term into Google search on your phone recently? If so, you’re in good company – as some estimates say more than six out of every 10 Google searches are mobile. If you’ve been in the six or seven, did you find what you were looking for? Did your search results provide a link to a relevant, mobile-friendly site, one that could be viewed easily on your phone?

    Google wants to ensure its mobile users are getting “friendly” results. Consequently, in 10 days the company will institute a significant change in how it ranks pages in mobile searches.

  3. Work Smarter on Social Media

    Ready to work smarter when it comes to social media involvement in 2015? There’s no shortage of research on making the best use of your “social” time online. For this post, we’ve pulled statistics from reputable sites such as FastCompany.com, SocialMediaExaminer.com, Mashable.com and Facebook to help you plan for making the greatest impact.

  4. content marketing, Raleigh, NC

    Content Marketing: Making It Work for You

    Think “blog post” when you hear the term content marketing? Blogging was one of the earliest content forms and can be a significant element of content marketing — but it’s rarely the only one. Potential elements are numerous and can include email campaigns, an active social media presence, downloadable white papers or e-books, even in-person events.

    Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “the strategic approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” Key aspects of the approach are providing information (content) that educates, entertains and engages members of the target audience, establishing the content provider as an accessible authority on the matter at hand, and developing a relationship of trust and loyalty with audience members.

  5. Visual Web Content: Is Seeing Really Believing?

    Reading recent statistics about the value of visual content on a website brings to mind this centuries-old adage: “Seeing is believing.” Consider these stats reported on wishpond.com, for example:

    • Sites that use infographics get 12 percent more traffic than sites that do not.
    • 67 percent of consumers consider clear, detailed images to carry more weight than product information or customer ratings.
    • 60 percent of consumers are more likely to click on a business with images appearing in search results.
    • 90 percent of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Visuals are processed by the brain 60,000x faster than text.
    • Posts with visuals receive 94 percent more page visits and engagement than those without images.

  6. How To Manage Your Online Reputation

    Have you searched for your name and business on Google and reviewed the results lately? Are you monitoring and managing your online reputation? What others are saying about you online can have a great impact on your business. In fact, it could have more impact than anything you have posted yourself (on your website, ads, social media, etc.)

  7. 10 Ways to Get Noticed with Google Plus

    The way sites are found on the Web has changed significantly in recent years. Search engine optimization or “SEO,” a term that refers to how sites are found in online searches, is now more socially driven and is likely to become moreso thanks to Google Plus (Google+). We recommend building a following on Google+ as an integral part of your online strategy as we expect it will play an increasingly important role in internet marketing going forward.

    Since using Google+ to its full potential can be game changer for business, we are providing this post as an orientation to the social platform. Here are 10 things you need to know:

  8. 10 Ways to Prepare for a Successful Year in 2014

    A brand new year is just around the corner. Are you prepared to make the most of the 365 days it offers? We’ve collected advice from around the web and compiled it here for your consideration as you finalize plans for 2014.

    • 1. Review your 2013 goals. Which ones did you meet? Which ones did you fail to meet despite your best intentions? What will you carry over to 2014, and what will you leave behind? Set action-based goals for the new year, assigning start-by and finish-by dates to each of them.

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