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Howie is the resident when&how blog wizard. He brings all the digital marketing resources into one place to educate our audience and empower business owners with valuable knowledge, insights and industry resources.
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How to get customer feedback: 3 best practices for collecting online reviews
Do customers like your clients’ businesses? Are they telling other people about those businesses on social media or across various review platforms? The goal is to have answered yes to both of those questions. If you didn’t—no worries—you’re in the right place to...
How to Outsource PPC and Always Stay on Positive ROI
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most accessible forms of marketing for startups, agencies, and small businesses. But while almost anyone can set it up, if you want to do it well and maximize your return on investment, it does require a highly-developed set of...
8 ways to protect your business from cybersecurity risks
With the Coronavirus raging across the United States, small businesses must be extra vigilant with regards to cybersecurity risk. Cybercriminals are using COVID-19 themed phishing schemes to trick employees into opening malicious malware links and attachments. Hastily...
5 Steps to Tidy Up Your Enterprise Tech Stack
What is Vendor Consolidation? Vendor consolidation is the act of reducing the number of software vendors that you work with as a means to cut costs and drive efficiencies. It’s a lot like supplier consolidation in the supply chain management world, where producers may...
How to start selling online in 60 minutes or less
Small businesses are built on the capacity for personal interaction and relationship-building between owners and their customers. When that’s no longer possible in the traditional sense, small businesses essentially lose the one superpower that enabled them to survive...
What is the New Google Algorithm Update and How Does It Affect Your Business
So, we have yet another Google algorithm update called the May 2020 Core Update, which to some could seem surprising considering that they just came out with one in January. However, for those who really understand how Google functions, especially the folks heavily...
How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy for Beginners in 10 Steps
Digital marketing is online marketing for websites. Simple, right? Turns out, there are at least seven main ways to market a website online. And that's where digital marketing strategy comes into play. These are the big guys -- like search engine optimization (SEO),...
How To Setup An Online Store
Selling your products and services online rather than in-store means that you need a website with the capability to handle an online store. But while setting up an online store might seem complicated and time-consuming, it’s actually not as difficult as it seems!...
Why Your Website Needs an SSL Certificate – Particularly NOW.
Have you ever noticed that some website URLs start with HTTP while others start with HTTPS? Maybe you’ve noticed a tiny lock icon in the top left corner of your browser? What exactly does it all mean? Websites that are HTTPS have an SSL certificate. SS-what? SSL...
Google Suspending Review and Q&A Functionality
Updated 2 days ago During the unprecedented COVID-19 situation, Google may have temporarily suspended some functionality: “New reviews, review replies, and new Q&A will be unavailable during this time”. For Google’s complete Help article on the issue, click here....
Review Management Best Practices
Why your business needs to stop removing reviews 1) People can tell your business is filtering the reviews. 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores (Econsultancy, 2012). Customers are more review savvy and can spot when things look...
Top 10 Review Websites to Get More Customer Reviews On
In the table below, U.S. Ranking, % U.S. Traffic and Average Monthly U.S. Traffic (unique visitors) data are sourced from Alexa. Businesses should strive to get business reviews on business review websites that are going concerns, review sites that people know about...
What Is SEO And Why Does It Matter?
Search Engine Optimization—or SEO—is a term that may sound scary at first, but is simple when you break it down. It’s the process of optimizing your online content (website, blog or otherwise) for search engine algorithms like Google’s. Search engine algorithms are...
Business Website Essentials
Telling a small business owner to “assume the perspective of your customer” is one of those classic easier said than done problems. It’s not for lack of trying, but owning a small business isn’t just a job, it’s a lifestyle. And when you put that level of passion and...
What Is Online Reputation Management?
A business’s reputation used to be what they said about themselves in their advertising and the reach their customers had via word of mouth. Now, consumers are pushing out a company’s reputation and image collectively by providing real-time feedback online through...
How to Avoid Having an Ugly Website
Websites are important for every business. In today’s digital age, having accessible online information is crucial for success. Just having a website isn’t enough, though. What matters is what’s on your website. Website content needs to be geared toward making the...
5 Reasons SEO is Essential for Website Success
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a term you’ve most likely heard before. As digital marketing continues to rise, so does the contest for web visibility. If potential customers can’t find you online, you’re missing out on a huge demographic. That’s why we’ve...
How To Use Paid Ads To Grow Your Facebook Follows
So, you’ve got your Facebook Business page setup and you’re posting regularly. You’ve even got some likes and shares. That’s great! But why stop there? With over 1.79 billion users active on the platform every day, there’s a lot of real estate to cover, and your...
What is Content Marketing and Why Does It Matter?
In the heyday of traditional marketing, attracting and retaining customers was an intimidating task for local business owners to accomplish, especially when the inflated budgets of larger businesses made it difficult to compete. Today, there are many different avenues...
Digital Customer Service: the 10 Cornerstones
Customer service is about solving the problems of your customers. Now, companies have to manage customer service across multiple channels. When people have a negative experience online, they blame the company. Not responding to customers on review sites and social...
What is Digital Advertising and Why Does It Matter?
Digital advertising is the process of using internet technology to deliver promotional advertising to consumers. Digital advertising encompasses promotional ads and messages that are delivered through social media, email, search engine ads, mobile banner ads,...
7 Social Media Tactics for Businesses That Struggle With Social
A strong social media presence is one of the best ways to be heard, and businesses are no exception to this rule. Forget the doorstep; there’s a whole world of potential customers and fans at your fingertips who are actively looking for brands that they can identify...
How to #Hashtag
How hashtags can help you reach the out-crowd and engage the in-crowd The facts are in: if you are not using hashtags, you are missing out! With a tweet with hashtags being 33% more likely to get retweeted, these handy hashtags can make the difference between...
Copyright Online and Fair Use in Social Media
With the online world being dominated by images, what do you need to know as a business owner when it comes to copyright laws? Sharing Images on Social Visuals are huge in the social media world, particularly for businesses. Here’s a quick run-down. On average,...
Why Your Business Should Want More Reviews on Review Sites
The importance of responding to customers online could not be more prevalent as reviews continue to grow more than ever before. Aside from the fact that reviews from customers help others decide whether they should visit a business or not, reviews are now more...
16 Website SEO Musts for a Higher Search Ranking
Search engines strive to create the best user experience possible, providing the most relevant, useful information based on the user’s search terms. If they didn’t, users would no longer rely on them for information. This is good news: the more relevant, informative...
How to Reach Your Audience With Digital Advertising
Digital advertising comes in many different varieties, including display advertising (those web banners next to your favorite Youtube videos), sponsored ads (such as those on Google and Facebook), and of course, search ads—just to name a few! So where do you start?...
5 Steps To Becoming an Instagram Sensation
300 million—the number of people on Instagram every single day. Businesses are taking advantage of Instagram by using it as a resource to gain popularity and increase their customer base. In fact, top brands like Nike and National Geographic have over 60...
55 Stellar Statistics For Websites
Welcome to the most comprehensive collection of design, functionality and content stats for websites. Imagine a world where a single, gigantic shopping mall hosted a store for every business across the globe. It’s easy to imagine that any business that doesn’t have a...
Improving Your Local Search Ranking With Data Aggregators
Data aggregators run the world. The world of local search, any way. Data aggregators supply information to major search engines like Google, which means that having good business listing info on data aggregators can help it get right on Google. These aggregators have...
Blogging for Fun and Profit: How to Build your Business Blogging Skills
Have you heard that improving your SEO will help you get found online more easily? You’ve probably heard that implementing keywords into the content on your website, blog, and URL are key strategies for improving your SEO ranking. However, including the wrong keywords...
The Complete WordPress SEO Plugin Mastery
SEO is the key to conquering the internet, and as the digital climate becomes increasingly saturated, it is becoming more important than ever to make sure that you are making every effort to get seen on the web. One of the easiest ways to give your sites a little...
How To Engage Your Audience Through Social Media
Is your social media falling flat? Don’t sweat it; many hours have gone into perfecting the use of this not-so-secret weapon. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram strategies are outlined in detail below. Once you understand how they all work and which...
The Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Service
Everyone can recall a time when they’ve received excellent customer service. Whether it was the clerk who was extra helpful or the hotel staff who went above and beyond, we’ve all experienced it. Unfortunately though, the bad customer service is almost always recalled...
What Social Media Monitoring Can Teach You About Your Business
Intro to Social Media Monitoring Have you ever been at a party and caught a person or a group glancing at you while whispering covertly? What’s up with that? Is your fly open? Does someone have a crush on you? Does someone want to throw a drink in your face? You’d...
Critical Data For Online Business Listings
Listings for local SEO If you want to rank well in local search, you need consistent NAP data, website, hours, and more across all major listing directories. This is essential for search engines to validate you as a credible local business. The more accurate and...
Howie’s Wizardry Watch List
Understand how the customer journey has changed and why you need to empower yourself with these digital marketing tools. Watch these quick videos in as little as 7-minutes to be quickly familiarized with important insights and empower yourself to take control of your business’ online digital presence once and for all!
> Important stats about responsive web design and optimization
> Business listings and why they are important to get found
> Reputation Management – Your presence speaks volumes before your customer ever walks in.
> Social Media Management – Why you need to not only join the convo, but also be a part of it.
…And SO much more.
