Latest Posts

Your PR Department is Your New SEO Team

We all know that Public Relations traditionally centers around strong personal relationships with editors, the ability to astutely pitch time-sensitive and trendy story ideas and orchestrate newsworthy events. What you may not know is the amount of writing that is involved in Public Relations — from press releases and media alerts to website copy and online articles. If that writing is not optimized for search engines, there’s a huge hole in your marketing strategy.
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9 Ways to Create Exclusivity

Most businesses that are online have a unique je ne sais quoi that makes them special. Successful business websites can be broken down into nine succinct components:

Your look & brand essence
Is the look of your website, social media and traditional print materials consistent? Do they express your voice? Are they working in harmony or are they all different, cluttered and confusing your goals and objectives? Remember that your design is the first thing people see even before they’ve read a word.
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Add closed captioning to your YouTube videos and increase SEO traffic

In a previous eTip we mentioned that you should setup a YouTube Channel and optimize your video descriptions and tags for search engine optimization. Afterall, YouTube is the #2 search engine by number of searches, so you want to be found there too. But for people hard of hearing or deaf, they only get half the YouTube experience. That’s where closed captioning comes in. (more…)

Branding Today Cheat Sheet

In an age where attention is gained or lost with the click of a mouse, branding is more important than ever. Not only is it the key differentiator between you and your competitors, it’s also your source of promise to your customers — reassuring them that your product or service is worth their time and money. The good news is, in today’s globalized business environment, the opportunity for companies to have a world-class brand, whether they are large or small, is huge.

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How to do Vanity URLs Right

In the good old days of print direct response, marketers would print different phone numbers on different pieces of collateral and then track the responses to each phone number to know which piece was working better. A vanity URL is applying that same exact principle to the web. (more…)

Are you dead on my iPad?

I love my iPad. It is so lightweight, lightning quick and I take it everywhere. Since purchasing the cover that allows me to prop it up as a wedge on my lap, I have left my laptop in its case.

sad-ipad

But because I spend most of my time on my iPad instead of my laptop, company websites programmed in Flash are essentially useless to me and the millions of people who own iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches and any mobile device based on the iOS platform. I certainly don’t want the hassle of that and will happily move on to the next company whose developers had the foresight to create their website in HTML (or HTML5!) to reach people like me. (more…)

Free Tools to Use in Search Engine Optimized Public Relations

Historically reporters are overworked, time starved and always on deadline. As a PR professional, it is my job to effectively package my clients’ stories in a compelling way that helps the journalists efficiently do their job, which they appreciate. Here are some tips for you to lay a PR foundation for your company:
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Can you go Green and be profitable too?

On Earth Day, Starmark posts its annual blog post about how many tons of CO2 the company and the staff has committed to reducing each year. This voluntarily program has been going on for a few years now, but questions always come up. What does it mean? Does this cost or save money? One person can’t possibly make that much of an impact, can they?
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‘Hot’ new technology for A/B testing and analytics

Example Heat Map

Example Heat Map

A Heat Map is like pseudo-eye tracking on your site. It outputs a visual representation of where users are clicking on a page on your site. The more clicks in a certain area, the brighter that area of the page glows in a warmer color, hence the term “heat map.”
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Fort Lauderdale: A Brief History (100 Years)

Learn about the history of Fort Lauderdale as the city celebrates its Centennial with a great pictorial slideshow presented by the Fort Lauderdale Centennial Speaker’s Bureau. You can view a list of all the centennial events planned in 2011 at sunny.org/centennial