In Part 1   of this blog post, I talked about why setting specific goals is important to the success of your blog. The second part of this article will help you determine what those goals are.

A Brainstorming Session Is a Great Place to Begin

Gather everyone together who will be involved in the blogging process and throw your ideas around to see what emerges.

Ask relevant questions  to help determine your goals and establish your reasons for wanting to begin a blog.

• Do you want your blog to attract visitors who might become future clients to your site? Who are they?
• Are you trying to connect to other businesses in your industry? Who are they?
• Is it important that your blog increase your presence on the Web in your industry? Why?
• How often can you post a blog article and can you be consistent? This is an important goal. Start with at least one blog post each week and then re-establish this goal as you can increase the number consistently.
• Who is the best person (or the best people) to represent your company in your blog? Start with one or two and then try to include others in writing, which can also increase your weekly number of blog posts.
• How will you track your success? Setting a goal is one thing, knowing when you reach it is just as important.

Watch The Future of Your Blog Come to Life

As your group brainstorms, you will begin to see the future of your blog materialize and you will have a definite starting point – very important! As the weeks roll by and your blog becomes more and more a part of your company’s presence on the Internet, hopefully your ideas will continue to emerge. Keep setting new goals as you grow your blog.

If you can gain interaction with others in your industry, your blog will not only be helpful to your business, you will be helpful to others as well – this is called community and it is one of the most rewarding elements of blogging. 

So you’ve decided you want to create a company blog. Fantastic! The next step is to figure out exactly how to get your blog going to make it worthwhile and valuable for your company.

Initially, it is important to evaluate what blogging can do for your business and determine how you want to approach the whole idea of your blog.

Specific Goals Are Important for Successful Blog

Sometimes I think we have goals (or ideas) in our minds when we start a new project or task, but, for me, unless I make a tangible plan, I don’t always realize whether I am accomplishing enough. Fleshing out our ideas can turn into quality goals and help guide our way into any new adventure.

The more I’ve learned about blogging and the more I read what others have to say about blogging, the more I realize you need to have very specific goals for your blogs if you want them to be successful. Without understanding what you want to accomplish, it will be very hard to determine what to write about in a blog.

Visit us again on Thursday to learn more about setting goals for your company blog in Part 2 .

If you haven’t fine-tuned your PPC ad groups, it’s likely that your ad campaign is doing its best impersonation of a leaky faucet even as you’re reading this.  Drip… drip… drip…  That is your ad budget slipping away.

There is good news though!  Implementing these key PPC strategies can stop the leak and give you an edge on your competition.

Step 1: Themed Ad Groups
The first step is to create tightly themed ad groups with closely-related keyphrases. This will enable you to target your customers with precision, leading to a higher response rate.

Step 2: Ads Should Match Keyphrases
Once you’ve created your tightly-themed ad groups, you are ready to re-write your ads so that they closely match your keyphrases. You should be able to make them more specific by making sure they contain the keyphrases in the ad group as much as possible. It doesn’t hurt to create two or three ads and let the strongest one survive.

Step 3: Targeted Landing Pages
Now that you have implemented steps one and two, it’s time to look at your landing pages. Because your ad groups, keyphrases and ads are all more specific to the audience of searchers looking for your products or services, you likely have the opportunity to adjust your landing pages so that they are more highly targeted.

You should be on your way to higher click-through rates (CTR), which eventually will earn you a lower average cost-per-click (CPC). You will likely see improvements in your quality score as well. Most importantly, you should see more conversions at a lower cost than what you are getting now.

We all love pictures. Some of us would rather take them than be in them, but I think we could all agree that the world would be duller without images. 

Today, the internet makes it so easy to share photos. From social media applications like Facebook and Twitter, to personal and corporate websites and blogs, the use of images is commonplace. Often times what’s a little trickier is finding creative ways to make them really shine.

Many times our images are not ready to be used as is, and some level of editing is required before uploading them to a web page. They may need to be resized, cropped, rotated, or you may even want to fancy them up a bit by adding a nice border, text or color effect.

There are tons of fantastic programs available to achieve all ranges of editing. Of course, many of them come with an equally hefty price tag too. If you don’t have the resources or need to invest in a full blown professional application like Adobe Photoshop there are other options out there and many that are free.

Today I’m going to introduce you to Picnik.com.

What is Picnik?

Picnik is a snazzy and easy, yet powerful tool to fix up and edit photographs. It’s free to use (although Premium accounts are also available) and best of all it’s done entirely online in your web browser. That means there isn’t any large program that you have to download to your computer and figure out how to set up. You pretty much just upload your picture and start getting creative!

You can upload from your computer, test drive a demo image from their site, or you can open an image you already have uploaded from several social networking sites such as Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, and more!

Here are some of the features Picnik boasts:

• Fix your photos in just one click
• Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
• Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
• Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
• Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
• Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
• Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
• Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
• No download required, nothing to install

Whether you just want to crop an image, or make an entire collage for the web or to print, Picnik makes it easy and fun to do. Tweaking your photos will help ensure your images are looking their best. Then all you have to do is share your creative masterpiece with the world by adding them to your website.

If you’ve been looking for a way to spice up some old photos, I’d encourage you to check Picnik out. It truly is photo editing awesomeness!

What if this country was not in a recession? Would you still be on a budget?

What if healthy food was affordable? Would you still eat off of the value menu?

What if life was about choosing door #1 or door #2?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

In every decision of your life, you will come to a crossroad where you are presented with various options - some are good and some are bad. And with every decision comes consequences that shape your future decisions and ultimately the path in life you’ll take. My Dad always told me that “A bad decision is better than no decision” because you can learn from bad decisions. I try to keep the bad decisions to a minimum.

Just as in life, your business is the cumulative efforts of the decisions you made and how much effort you put into it. What kind of decision have you made about advertising your company? Are you getting any online exposure? 

Find the Right Internet Marketing Path for Your Business

I’m not going to bore you with statistics about what percentage of consumers start the buying process online nowadays but, what if you decided you wanted to increase revenue and get a piece of the online business pie? Wouldn’t you want to know the best way to get it done?

You’ve worked hard to build a quality reputation in your community over the years. Is it worth trusting a novice to build your company’s website for pennies on the dollar only to need it fixed a few weeks later? I think not!

Just as your company is composed of people with diverse talents that have kept your company thriving since its inception, you need the right people in your corner to market your business online. 

Xcellimark works with all clients on an individual basis to provide custom web-based solutions  that will fit your needs and goals.  Contact us  today to see how we can help you make the right decisions for your business.