Duplicating Online Content: Always A Bad Idea 

By Steve Hoag

duplicating online content

Copying online content is just as bad as plagiarism in books. You may not get in nearly as much legal trouble, but there are huge potential repercussions. The point is, you should never copy content. Look at other articles for inspiration, but hitting Control + C and Control + V is the laziest and most ineffective way to build traffic and sales. Here’s why:

Search engines will filter out websites that copy content.

Search engines will actively filter out search results that have duplicate content. This means being lazy and copying from other websites won’t help improve your visibility or traffic. It will help your competitor’s though.

The number of undifferentiated competitors and content will increase, making life more difficult for sales and marketing.

Imagine this: Every best-seller in the world was copied word for word by competing authors. How do people pick between authors if they know that the will just end up reading the same exact book? At random? If all other factors are kept the same it means each author has essentially the same probability of selling their book. This means lower sales for everybody. The same thing can happen when it comes to copying online content. Not having a unique take on a subject doesn’t give a consumer any more incentive to look at your site over other options. In turn, this can impact the sales and marketing team’s ability to create compelling reasons to purchase your products. Copying content removes differentiators, making the most exciting company extremely mundane, and a hard sell.

Dramatically lowers the use of search engines for everyone.

The whole point of search engines is to display the best array of information available on a given topic. This can include different points of view, writing styles, source types, etc. Duplicating content reduces the usefulness of search engines by reducing variety. A fully informed consumer is one that has access to all views and sources, not one that can only see 500 duplicate articles.

 

View User Profile for Steve Hoag Steve is a recent graduate from UW, and the Marketing Coordinator at Fast Track. He primarily has experience in the tech and start-up industries. When he's not busy promoting Fast Track, he's watching Huskies or Green Bay Packers football. You can find him on Twitter @steven_hoag .
Posted by Steve Hoag Friday, December 27, 2013 12:37:00 AM Categories: B2B B2C blogging enterprise SEO SMB website

3 Must-Haves for The Ultimate Business Website 

By Steve Hoag

business website must-haves

There are a bunch of things that comprise a great website. Intuitive navigation, a good color scheme, and clean design are staples of design right now. But there are other must-haves that some businesses sometimes ignore like:

Responsive Design

With the growing popularity of using mobile devices to access the web, responsive design is becoming much more of a necessity. Responsive design basically means designing your website in a way that adapts to the screen of the device accessing it. A modern business website should be able to ensure that anyone can access and view it properly from any device. Responsive design will become a staple in the upcoming year, so get on the bandwagon while there’s still room. Otherwise people will view your site as backwards and you may lose out on valuable traffic.

Dynamic Content

Long gone are the days where websites were just images and text. Now every business website needs a variety of content that is consistently updated. Try to include media like videos, showcases, and blogs to keep visitors engaged when they visit your site. The longer a user is on your website, the more likely they are to turn into a sale.

Social Media Integration

Social media is essentially a must for any organization. Place social media badges at the header and footer of every page to ensure that users can connect with you quickly. Also, call to actions are great if you have enough room for them. ‘Like us on Facebook’ generates more engagement than a simple Facebook icon. Many users take to social media to find information on products and ask for purchasing advice. That’s why it’s important to make it easy for them to interact with you on a more personal level on social media.

View User Profile for Steve Hoag Steve is a recent graduate from UW, and the Marketing Coordinator at Fast Track. He primarily has experience in the tech and start-up industries. When he's not busy promoting Fast Track, he's watching Huskies or Green Bay Packers football. You can find him on Twitter @steven_hoag .
Posted by Steve Hoag Tuesday, December 17, 2013 7:33:00 PM Categories: B2B B2C blogging enterprise SMB social media social media marketing web design web trends website

3 Common Social Media Mistakes Businesses Make 

By Steve Hoag

common social media mistakes

A social media presence is pretty much mandatory for most businesses at this stage. A lot of businesses still haven’t quite figured out how to use social media just yet though. They stumble into common pitfalls that are easily avoided. So what should you not do on social media? Read on!

Spam their followers

Businesses occasionally fail to realize that spam doesn’t just mean what you get in your junk email or mail. It can occur in other channels like social media. It’s good to consistently post on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It’s not good to constantly post without giving you followers a little bit of a breather. Try to space out your posts and not barrage users with your content. Otherwise you may find that they will soon begin to ignore you.

Focus on selling themselves and ignoring engagement

No one likes a person who only cares about themselves. Likewise, businesses should not only focus on sharing their content, but also on actively engaging their community. Reach out to individual followers and share their content as long as it’s relevant to your business. People love it when someone shares what they have to say. A happy user is an engaged one. No one likes to feel like they don’t matter. Especially on SOCIAL media.

Forget to acknowledge people who interact with them

If a user interacts with one of your accounts don’t ignore them! Make sure to acknowledge what they have to say. Answer questions people have, and respond to comments. Don’t make followers feel like they are talking to a brick wall. It’s nice to know there’s a person on the other side and not just an automated account.

View User Profile for Steve Hoag Steve is a recent graduate from UW, and the Marketing Coordinator at Fast Track. He primarily has experience in the tech and start-up industries. When he's not busy promoting Fast Track, he's watching Huskies or Green Bay Packers football. You can find him on Twitter @steven_hoag .
Posted by Steve Hoag Tuesday, December 10, 2013 8:02:00 PM Categories: B2B B2C blogging enterprise SMB social media social media marketing

How to Leverage Pinterest for Your Web Design Business 

By Steve Hoag

how to leverage pinterest for your web design

Pinterest has been gaining popularity among designers for its innovative visual features. This platform allows its users to pin images from other websites onto a board. This can help to increase traffic to these sites, as well as serve as a virtual portfolio for designers. So how can you use Pinterest for your design business?

Building your brand

Pinterest is just as useful as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn at building your own unique online brand. There are some great ‘About Me’ sections to communicate just who you are and what you do. You can also link to your Twitter, Facebook, and website.

Finding design inspiration

Inspiration is critical for designers. You can get design block just like writers do. Pinterest is great because you can pin any cool websites to your board that you come across. When you need inspiration all you need to do is come back to your board. Make sure to use keywords like ‘web design’ in each pin board’s name so that people looking for web design can view your profile.

Creating a unique portfolio

Pinterest is awesome for showcasing your portfolio. You can create separate boards for different market segments, or different skills you have. Another thing you can do is post images from projects to your website, and then pin these images to your board. If anyone shares your images on Pinterest they will still link back to your website. This is a great way of turning Pinterest into a traffic source for your business. You can also just upload screenshots of your work, but this won’t link back to your portfolio.          

View User Profile for Steve Hoag Steve is a recent graduate from UW, and the Marketing Coordinator at Fast Track. He primarily has experience in the tech and start-up industries. When he's not busy promoting Fast Track, he's watching Huskies or Green Bay Packers football. You can find him on Twitter @steven_hoag .
Posted by Steve Hoag Friday, December 6, 2013 7:40:00 PM Categories: B2B B2C blogging SMB social media social media marketing web design website

What is a De-Coupled CMS? 

By Steve Hoag

de-coupled content management system

Choosing the right CMS is important to every website. While there are many options out there, there is also a dichotomy to be aware of.

One thing you'll need to determine is whether or not to choose between a coupled or de-coupled CMS. A coupled CMS is like a blog engine where the underlying store for your content is used for both authoring and delivering. Authoring is part of your live delivery system, and only certain users with permissions can create content.

On the flip side, a de-coupled system separates authoring and delivery into two different applications. You use a publishing application to push content from the authoring app to the content delivery platform.

If you decide to choose a de-coupled system, you need to make sure it fits your business goals, processes, and requirements. Here is a quick breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of a de-coupled system:

Advantages:

- De-coupled systems scale better with high traffic websites, and managing multiple websites.

- SLAs are de-coupled. The authoring app can be down while the delivery platform is running and content will still go through.

- Content migration and sharing with other systems is easier.

- De-coupled systems have better multi-channel support, allowing you to publish content to social media, mobile apps, etc.

- Content sharing and syndication are supported better.

- Code complexity is isolated in the two different platforms, allowing you to make code as complex or simple in either app without affecting the other.-

- It is easy to develop awesome features for users when coding is isolated and scaling is easy.

Weaknesses:

- Set up of the system is more complex because of more components and moving parts.

- If not managed properly, all the different components can create more complexity and negatively impact the user experience.

 

View User Profile for Steve Hoag Steve is a recent graduate from UW, and the Marketing Coordinator at Fast Track. He primarily has experience in the tech and start-up industries. When he's not busy promoting Fast Track, he's watching Huskies or Green Bay Packers football. You can find him on Twitter @steven_hoag .
Posted by Steve Hoag Tuesday, November 19, 2013 6:11:00 PM Categories: B2B B2C blogging enterprise SMB web design web development website
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