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January 20, 2012 by rbrawley
Posted in Internet Marketing, Tools & Tips

Tips For Optimizing Press Releases

Marketing methods come and go, but in this digital age the traditional press release seems to be here to stay.  There’s a good reason for this: If you’re able to rank well on popular online news websites and in search for your optimized keywords, press releases can offer attractive benefits at a reasonable cost.

To ensure that your press release gets the best possible search engine results, it’s a good idea to review the following questions.

What’s the Best Word Count for a Press Release?

Even if you have a perfect headline and the best keywords, the length of your press release can make or break its optimization. If the press release is too long, search engines can’t index it as specifically. If this happens, your press release may drop out of the top search results, making it less likely to be found online.

The optimum press release length for SEO is 400 to 600 words. A press release should be concise and easy for readers to comprehend but long enough to include some relevant details with color — the information that readers find interesting and which search engines latch onto.

How Do I Optimize a Press Release Headline?

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December 7, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Blogs, Inspiration, Travel Websites, Web Design, Web Development

Synerge-marketing Launches Bump Agent for Travelers

Bump Agent CT Web Design - Synerge-marketing

Bump Agent Website

Bump Agent, a website designed and developed by Synerge-marketing,  launched this week.   Bump Agent is a new concept targeted to flexible travelers.   People that sign up are notified more than a day in advance if their flight is overbooked and receive valuable travel incentives to rebook on an alternate flight.   It’s bumping with benefits.  The system helps the airlines keep passengers (and flight crew) happy,  and it helps passengers by providing rewards and convenience for rebooking.  Smart Idea!

The challenge was to create a new brand that appealed to business and leisure travelers, college students and empty nesters.    We needed to design a website that brought the visitor through the concept, benefits and sign up without any effort.   The goals were to make the brand distinctive, deliver the message clearly, and engage vistitors to sign up for free.

For this challenge, we decided to take the visitor through the bump agent story and benefits, and invite visitors to “get onboard” all within a single web page.   An airplane and flight path lead the visitor down the page and to the call to action.  Our web designer, Kim, combined old fashioned airport icons and nostalgic graphics with bold colors and modern background scenes.   The forms were designed as a “ticket”.

Our developer, Garry, made the functionality elegant and effortless.   He was able to integrate the forms, rotating surveys and refer a friend  all within a single process and without leaving the page.  The forms were programmed to rotate so that the client would receive a variety of feedback from visitors relating to the service.  All this was custom programmed without using any 3rd party software.  Not an easy feat.

The Synerge-marketing team of  web designers and developers worked together to come up with a website that was original, compelling, intuitive and fun.    Untraditional in both design and function, we’ll be interested to see how it is received and look forward to the phase 2 version including “My bump agent” profile and full registration.  Check it out:  http://www.bumpagent.com/ And Stay Tuned.

November 2, 2011 by Raymond
Posted in Social Media, Tools & Tips

A New Frontier: The Google Plus Experience

Why is Google+ better suited for my new professional career and social life? First, let me explain how I came about pursuing a new social media platform like Google+.

As a recent college graduate, navigating my way through the business world, I had been worrying about how my social profiles might affect my chances of landing a new job. Facebook and Twitter were my main streams of communication, but with employers investigating facebook and twitter accounts, I find myself with the new challenge of separating my professional life from my social one. This is a topic that often arises when grassing at the local bar with acquaintances that have parallel feelings. Read more

October 16, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Blogs, Free Internet Marketing Strategies, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Tools & Tips

Building a Business Blog for Your Company

Blogging 101: How to Get Started with WordPress

As a business owner, you may not be convinced that starting a blog is the best use of your resources. You don’t know if you have the time, you are concerned about the return, and you might not even know where to start. Yet you’re considering a blog because, despite your reservations, you hear more and more from your peers that a blog has benefits. You hear that a blog can bring you new business. Read more

September 10, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Free Internet Marketing Strategies, Internet Marketing, LinkedIn, Social Media

Creating a LinkedIn Profile for You and Your Business

LinkedIn LogoLinkedIn is a powerful social networking site that will yield results if you take the time to engage with this community. Like the other online strategies we’ve discussed in this series of posts on how to grow your business online for FREE, LinkedIn can bring you repeat business and referral business if you work it right.

Understanding LinkedIn and Getting Started

LinkedIn, established in 2003, was one of the first social networking sites. Originally designed to connect professional peers, almost like an online rolodex of sorts, LinkedIn has grown to encompass more—a robust Q&A section, group memberships, advertising, job searches, status updates, and more.

To get started, you’ll need to visit http://www.linkedin.com/ to create a personal profile that mimics your resume. Understand that unlike Facebook or Twitter where you may reveal personal information and several pictures, LinkedIn is meant to be your professional front. When you are creating your profile, remember that an investor or potential customer could someday view what you share.

Once you have a personal profile on LinkedIn, visit http://www.linkedin.com/companies and select “Add a Company” (on the right) to create your business page. This page will not talk about you in detail, but rather, it will describe your business.

How LinkedIn Will Grow Your Business

Professional credibility – Prove to customers and prospects that you have what it takes to do the job right. Take the time to answer questions within the Q&A section to really set you apart.

Search engine presence – LinkedIn profiles and business pages come up at the top of search engine results pages, helping to manage your personal and business reputation online. LinkedIn also allows you to add links to your website(s), and every link helps. In fact, the search engine optimization benefits of creating a professional profile and business page on LinkedIn are reason enough to do it! Note: You need to set your profiles settings to “public” in order to get the full search engine benefit.

Stay in touch with your peers – The best way to market your business is through relationships. LinkedIn allows you to stay in touch with your network in a non-obtrusive and “non-salesy” way. Foster your relationships, provide testimonials, and make it easy for others to refer you. A LinkedIn account will help you do all that.

Proof that LinkedIn WILL Grow Your Business

Yes, creating and maintaining your LinkedIn profiles may feel like more work you have to do, but it’s not a wasted effort. Smartly, LinkedIn has a page dedicated to LinkedIn success stories that prove it.

LinkedIn press proves it too. In a recent Fast Company article, it was reported that LinkedIn has more than 90 million users and earned $120.13 million in the first nine months of 2010. All this shows that LinkedIn is here to stay. It’s time for you to jump on board.

Synerge Marketing can give you more detailed advice or handle to the job of creating your LinkedIn profiles for you. Contact Synerge-marketing to learn more.

If you’re just tuning in, check out our other posts in this series including How to Create a Google Places Profile for Your Business and Using Facebook to Grow Your Business Online.

August 10, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Facebook Business Pages, Free Internet Marketing Strategies, Internet Marketing, Uncategorized

Using Facebook to Grow Your Business Online

In a previous post we talked about some of the ways you can grow your business online without spending money. Today, we’re going to cover how to setup a Facebook page and how to use the page to grow your business.

What Facebook Business Pages Are All About

Unlike your personal Facebook profile, your business will not make “friends” through Facebook. Rather, your business will gather “Likes.” Depending on how you setup your Facebook business page, you can create an open forum or you can exert complete control over what is published to your Facebook business page.

These are the essential elements of a Facebook business page:

  1. The wall where you post updates and where fans can post comments (if you enable this feature).
  2. The info section where you post contact information and a brief description of your business.
  3. The photos and videos sections where you share information and promote your business.
  4. The reviews area presents an opportunity for your fans to comment on your business.
  5. The notes section can be used for relevant discussions or to feature your blog posts.

In addition to what’s listed here, Facebook also allows for custom applications, custom tab designs, and advertising. We recommend these additional features to businesses that are serious about branding their Facebook presence and/or advanced Facebook users who have demonstrated a return. We’ll talk more about these topics in future posts.

How a Facebook Business Page Will Help You

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August 5, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Blogs, Free Internet Marketing Strategies, Social Media, Tools & Tips

Tips for Developing Your Blogging Voice

Defining your professional blogging voice takes time and practice—a lot of both, actually. If you are getting your business blogging feet wet, consider these tips to help develop  a blogging voice for your business that your readers and, hopefully, your customers appreciate.

Research the blogosphere in your industry.

Using keyword phrases specific to your industry, do a Google Blog search to see how your competitors blog. Notice which blogs provide valuable information for the reader and which blogs only write fluffy content to promote themselves. The larger companies most likely use professional writers to blog, so take note of their content as well (outsourcing blog writing is an option for you too, of course.). By assessing your vertical online, you can make a conscious decision on the style of writing you would like publish online.

Decide on a handful of blog topic themes.

Yes, planning can be a drag, but planning will help you refine your blogging voice.

How? Read more

July 20, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Blogs, Free Internet Marketing Strategies, Images, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Tools & Tips, Web Design, Web Development

Free Images for Blogging

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

You have heard it a million times: A picture is worth a thousand words. In blogging, this old adage remains true.

Your blogging goal should be to inform your readers without being overly promotional, so that they come to trust you and return to your blog again and again. A photograph or graphic will help you to both inform and engage. Other benefits include:

  • Highlight your products/services and your people. Show your readers who you are and what you do.
  • Support headlines that evoke an image – try using metaphors. For example, a headline that references the beginning of something within your business might be complemented well with a sunrise image.
  • Entice visitors to spend time with the post. Few blog visitors will read your blog post word for word. By adding images to your post you make it easier for the reader to scan and hopefully tune into more of the details.

Of course, it’d be great if you had a staff photographer or graphic designer who had time to produce all your blog post images, but that’s not exactly realistic. So, online image resources are the second best thing.

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July 15, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Free Internet Marketing Strategies, Google Places, Internet Marketing

Online Marketing Strategies on a Shoestring

Building Your Business Online Without Spending a Dime

So you’ve got yourself a business and you know you need to be on the Internet.  Even if you don’t have a website, there are several ways to start building your business online that are relatively easy and inexpensive (or free). A few of those ways include:

  1. Create a Google Places profile for you business
  2. Create a Facebook business page for your business
  3. Create a LinkedIn profile for yourself and your business
  4. Create  a self-hosted blog (using WordPress) for your business
  5. Submit your business to online directories
  6. Create a Google Plus One Profile

In  today’s post, we’re going to cover the importance of a Google Places profile for your business.

Google Places – Boost Your Search Traffic in a Half an Hour or Less…. For FREE

Often times it is possible to be at the top of a search engine query for your local business category without having a website and without spending a dime. How?  Google Places offers a free profile for business owners. On Google.com, these profiles are often positioned at the top of the search results, so if you have a Places page for your business, you have a chance at being in the top results.

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July 3, 2011 by rbrawley
Posted in Inspiration, Internet Marketing, Print Design, Social Media, Tools & Tips, Uncategorized, Web Design, Web Development

On Internet Marketing

It’s not about knocking on doors, it’s about having customers come knocking on yours

drive traffic to your websiteI hate sales.  Put me in front of a cold call list and I cower.  I’m not the nagging type and am uncomfortable staying in someone’s face, which is generally what it takes to close a sale in the traditional way.

Ah, but if someone calls me with a specific need,  I jump at the opportunity to help solve their problem.  As an internet marketing consultant and a partner at Synerge-marketing, I pour myself into research by asking  questions, looking at their business, consulting with my team, and thinking of ways to meet their business goals.

I think one of the things I love most about this job is that I get to help decision makers acquire customers without having to sell.   That’s what this business is all about—getting in front of people at exactly the time they need you (when they search for your services on the web), and showing them – through your website – how  you can help solve their problem.  And if that website does its job – the introduction will be precipated by the customer instead of the other way around.

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