There are so many businesses that advertise on the Internet that it’s practically impossible to understand how they do it. Some use paid advertisements, others use social media networks and even more make videos that tie into third-party sales sites. Unless you’re an internet marketing specialist with years of experience under your belt and an eye for analytic analysis, you’re going to be better off hiring someone who has those skills. Besides, you’ve got a business to run and who has time to get up to speed on all that gobbledygook?

How to Create Website Content For A Local Business

Many local business owners have difficulty coming up with ideas about what to put on the website for content. Blogs, vlogs, articles, and other content can be hard to create for many folks.

One simple thing to do is look at other websites in your field and see what they’ve included for content on their sites. Certainly don’t copy their articles, but you’ll get an idea of the topics they are covering and how they cover them.

If you regularly interact with your customers, start a list of the questions they ask on the phone or in person.  If any of those questions come up regularly, those make good blog posts.  There is an excellent article in the New York Times about a business that spent their blog answering the major questions in their industry and had a great outcome doing so.  You can also do this trick by starting to enter questions into Google about your industry and seeing what the auto-complete suggests.  There are tools that offer this same service like AnswerThePublic.

Another way is to think about content subjects that indirectly tie into your product or service. For example, if the website is about a floral shop selling flowers, consider blogs about growing plants or creating office designs with plants as the focus. Ideas happen all the time and it’s important to capture the idea and convert it into content.

Keeping a small note pad handy, using your phones voice recording app or a device’s to-do app will help generate blogs and content much more easily.  Transfer these ideas to a spreadsheet to keep track of them.

How frequently should I post a blog update?

Anything more than 0 is good.  It depends on your workload and how comfortable you are with writing, but if a blog post a month is feasible, start there and see if you can add a few more throughout the year if a topic comes up in the news or you see a very useful Ted Talk.

Divide the work

If you have a few people in your company, maybe consider dividing the writing and editing tasks up, so that each person is responsible for 2 blogs for the year.  The rest of the team can then be the proofreaders.  This can help make the work seem less burdensome and involves your whole team.  If

Keywords Make the Difference

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the keywords used in website content can make or break the marketing effort. Internet searches start with keywords and incorporating the right keywords brings viewers to the website and gets the website rated higher because of that traffic. Discovering the best keywords is part science and part art.

Advertisers tend to focus on industry-specific wording but there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to important keywords that gain attention. An auto shop will want to have keywords like “auto repair” and “accident” in them, but they can also include words like “affordable” or “trusted” or “local” which bring a searcher to their website in addition to the main keywords. By incorporating keywords in blogs, vlogs, descriptions, and other content, a website can gain a significant number of added viewers and that means more business.

Hot buttons Everyone Wants to Push

Small business is as much an art form as it is an economic enterprise. Finding customers and then getting them to buy your product or service can be like pulling teeth sometimes. Everyone knows 90% of the world looks to the internet before going out and buying anything, but how do you get your business the benefits of being on the internet?

Buyers know what they want; they’re looking for the place to buy it. If you don’t have some kind of advertising or marketing program online, you’re missing out on the opportunity to gain some of this valuable search traffic. Gone are the days of radio ads, billboards, and yellow pages as the only option for getting the word out. Those things all still exist, but they aren’t worth much if you don’t have some kind of presence on the Internet.

Caution! Dangerous Curves Ahead

Lots of businesses let family members handle their web presence with the occasional blog post or photo paste. Others pay someone else to take care of it but don’t really understand what’s happening or why. They just hope the phone starts ringing and the door chime fires off more frequently. Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s expensive. Ignorance also wastes a lot of time and creates added frustration unnecessarily. The Internet isn’t a wild west show with folks blindly firing bullets off in all directions. The Internet is a highly sophisticated communication tool that requires specific knowledge of algorithms, keyword search tools, analytical data results, and a whole bunch of other terms that make the average layman roll their eyes up into their skull.

Too Much Is Riding On This To Ignore It

Small business has plenty of competition from the big boxes, national chains, and regional powerhouses to deal with. Restaurants, mom-and-pop’s, printers, HVAC installers, contractors, and a million other small businesses work their butts off every day trying to scratch out a living. How can a small business owner or manager ever go up against the big advertising and marketing budgets they have to spend? Easy, you go online with a focused campaign to get your business listed near or at the top of the search engine results for your industry in your area. It takes some smarts and a little creativity but it is doable. What you need is a partner that can handle all the details and that’s what The Research Department does for their clients. They handle it all with an eye toward watching the results improve business for their clients.

All Over Connecticut, Across North America, and Around the World

The fact is The Research Department provides internet and marketing services to companies across Connecticut and into Massachusetts and the surrounding states. The truth is any business anywhere can take advantage of the skills and professional services available from The Research Department.

All it takes is a telephone, tablet, or internet-connected computer and you’ve got access to the kind of talent you want to make your website sing.

The Research Department Has You Covered

There is a resource that takes care of all the gobbledygook as well as many other aspects of promoting and marketing a business. The Research Department, with offices in West Hartford, Connecticut, has the background, training, understanding, and ability to handle any company’s web presence. Flower shops and auto repair shops spend the day doing what they do to put money in the till. Taking the time to produce web pages, blogs, videos, and other important ingredients for successful internet results just isn’t in the picture. That’s where The Research Department can step in and take care of it all in a seamless, logical, and profitable way.

One-Stop Shopping

Why deal with four or five different marketing and/or advertising groups to get the job done when you can go to one place? Unless you have a lot of time on your hands and nothing to do with it there’s a lot of logic to this way of thinking. The Research Department handles any company’s marketing and advertising efforts online and offline. Here are a few of The Research Departments strong suits:

• Internet Campaign Strategy
• Internet Content – Blogs, emails, newsletters, videos
• SEO and Pay Per View (PPV) Campaign Strategy
• Website Creation and Maintenance
• Internet Analytics Reports
• Graphic Design – Brochures, business cards, marketing materials
• Advertising Campaign Strategy
• Sales and Marketing Support Pieces

Let The Research Department Do Their Job While You Do Yours

The folks at The Research Department don’t want to turn their customers into Internet gurus. They want to make their customers succeed using the Internet to its best advantages. Some companies need websites with videos, blogs, keyword frames, and other buttons that get lookers out of the “searching” mode and into the “bought” mode. It’s a science, really. But it’s also a form of artwork as well. Choosing the right images and combining those images with the right text content and then making the whole thing work mechanically takes creativity, skill, and talent. Color, motion, and, most of all, a process that captures sales, isn’t something you can whip up in 15 or 20 minutes. Skip the frustration. Avoid the embarrassment. Get The Research department on it and get back to making money.

You can go online to our website and submit any questions you may have using the inquiry form on the contact page. Or you can call 860-561-1156 and speak to a real live, honest-to-goodness person.