Do you ever wonder if all of this hoopla about blogging is worthwhile? Have you been thinking about blogging, but in reality you just can’t quite answer the “Why Blog” question with enough conviction to move you from theory to action? Well, I just want to take a few short moments to encourage you the best way I know how…with our story.

Marketing guru Peter Drucker once said that “the purpose of a business is to create a customer.” Seems like a pretty obvious statement but it is amazing how often we get so busy doing the work that we forget that lead generation, that hallowed search for new customers, is something that we cannot afford to ignore for very long.

Are dogs or landing pages part of your internet marketing strategy? Our dog Backup became part of our office “staff” in December 2010 when she was just 8 weeks old. It’s true…she’s on the website as part of the team and everything. (www.halfabubbleout.com/about-us/our-team).

Do you believe social media matters for your business? A lot of you don’t. How do I know this? Just two days ago I heard a dear friend who is an accomplished business woman refer to social media as “that place where people tell me what they are having for dinner….and I don’t want to know!” She went on to say that she saw very little value in social media for business, with the possible exception of LinkedIn for building a personal resume. While I agree that social media has been used for a lot of personal revelations that I would rather avoid, I absolutely disagree with this assessment. If you don’t know the answer to the question “why is social media important” for your business, I would like to help you take a step forward in answering this.

If you haven’t heard of this before, I really recommend that you go out and purchase a copy of a book called Pendulum by Roy H. Williams and Michael Drew, which was published late last year. Pendulum outlines an 80 year cycle over the last 3000 years in western civilization swinging back and forth between what they call a “Me” generation, and a “We” generation.

If you are like me, you get a ton of emails every day that you simply delete without ever opening. You wish they never made it past your spam filter if you're honest.  I get about five emails a day from folks who are offering to redesign my website for me, make my website show up on page one of Google, or provide email marketing consultant services.  Thanks, but I’ve got that taken care of! It is clear that they have never bothered to look at who we are and what we do, so their credibility is shot from the beginning with me. Delete.

Today we want to talk about something straightforward; how to add keywords to a website. I read a blog this past week by a great company I follow, SEOMoz. They are on top of things and they do a great job of informing the world about changes and trends in the internet world. Last week Google released its most recent update Penguin 2.0, also known as Penguin 4 and SEOMoz wrote about it in an article called Penguin 2.0/4 - Were You Jarred and/or Jolted? 

There is a new movie coming out this month called After Earth starring Will Smith and his son Jaden. If you are a fan of post-apocalyptic movies it will likely be a hit in your house. It’s right up my family’s alley but I am impacted by the trailer on this one. Hollywood spews out a lot of nonsense along the way, but every once in a while they happen upon something so deep and profound I have to stand back in wonder and awe.

Some days I feel like the queen of the elementary concept, and today is no different.

As I was thinking about how to increase website conversion as part of an internet marketing strategy I kept thinking about websites I visit that simply bore me. Beyond the look and feel, I am a word person, a content person.

I am writing this blog on my 20^th anniversary “get-away” weekend from beautiful Lake Tahoe, California so it will be short and sweet! The topic today is “what makes a good website?” As with most marketing questions, there are a lot of ways to answer this question. A couple of weeks ago, we blogged about the importance of being able to be found by local searches, and how you can get better at that. If you didn’t read that, check it out here. Clearly if we are asking what makes a good website, having it found is a good first step!

Page one of Google in a week! 1,000 new visitors to your site tomorrow! These are promises that some companies make about their SEO services. When you are asking about ways to increase your website presence you will hear the term SEO over and over again. SEO means Search Engine Optimization and it is big business out there. If you’re a big business then you have “people” to deal with this for you, but if you are not and you are looking for SEO services for small business, then you need some “people” of your own or you might feel pulled in a hundred different directions. What do you do as a small business to grow your online presence amidst a world of internet marketing options?