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6 Things You Don’t Know About Online Video Marketing – A SPN Exclusive Article

Make no mistake – online video marketing is the “next big thing.” However, there are a ton of misconceptions about it floating around out there. The end result is business owners that are hesitant to jump onboard and who don’t think they have what it takes to use online videos as a marketing tool. Chances are you don’t know these 6 things about online video marketing. And, until you understand them backwards and forwards, you’re really missing out! 1. YouTube is the World’s Second-Largest Search Engine How much time do you spend making your website “Google-friendly”? Why do you work so hard on it? Because Google has a tremendous reach. Heck, the word “Google” has turned into a verb that’s used day in and day out, all over the world

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6 Things You Don’t Know About Online Video Marketing – A SPN Exclusive Article

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Buying CRM: A 10-Step Guide

Since customer relationship management (CRM) connects to all aspects of an organization, purchasers must know the intricacies of their own businesses as well as the products and vendors available to them. That’s why we divided this guide in two parts: Know Yourself and Know Your Requirements. I. Know Yourself Buying CRM starts with the question, “Why do I need a CRM solution?” Many CRM projects fail because that question is never asked. With that in mind, here are four steps that will help you provide an answer and prepare your organization to evaluate CRM solutions

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Buying CRM: A 10-Step Guide

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Seven Tips for Better Business Writing – A SPN Exclusive Article

In the fast-moving environment we live in these days, those who jump to the top have fantastic communication skills, and that means superior business writing than the competition. You’ve heard the saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Well, in business, you’d better be able to flourish a pen or else you might just fall on your sword. In the Information Age in which we reside, it’s a foregone conclusion that your capacity to communicate is one of the most vital skills you can master. In business, you’ve got to communicate with prospects, employees, suppliers, attorneys, consultants, maybe even legislators. In many cases you can express yourself orally and do just fine; however, you are dead in the water in business if you can’t get your point across in writing. So why is business writing so necessary? Come on, you didn’t know

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Seven Tips for Better Business Writing – A SPN Exclusive Article

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3 Reasons Why Viewers Hate Your Online Videos – A SPN Exclusive Article

Online video marketing – it’s the latest and greatest addition to internet marketing. If you create your online videos the right way, viewers will get excited about your products and services – and, more importantly, they’ll think of you as an expert in your niche. But if you create your online videos the wrong way, they’ll do the exact opposite! Sadly, far too many of the online videos out there fall into the second category. So, why do viewers hate your online videos? And what can you do to make them better? 1. Because the Background is Distracting No one wants to see the clutter on your desk, the drawing your kid made in school (no matter how cute it may be!), or sunlight streaming through the window that’s blinding everyone who’s trying to look at you.

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3 Reasons Why Viewers Hate Your Online Videos – A SPN Exclusive Article

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SOPA Spells Loss — A SPN Exclusive Article

Every business with an online presence – no matter the size – is going to be affected by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which is set to be voted on when Congress resumes later this month. Companies like Google that provide a gateway to diverse content on the web will be hit directly, but even smaller businesses – from online payroll providers to ecommerce sites – could be affected, even if they don’t at first appear to have a direct link with anything SOPA was created to fight. Every user of the Internet, whether a business owner or not, needs to understand why SOPA exists and what the unintended consequences of this poorly considered piece of legislation will really be, both for small companies and the nation as a whole. After educating yourself, take action! If you disagree with SOPA and want to help stop it before it causes any damage, there are things you can do, both through your company and as an individual. What is SOPA? SOPA was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives last October by Republican Representative Lamar Smith and 12 co-sponsors. It was created as part of an effort to combat online piracy on behalf of copyright holders by requiring that any site that links to or does business with an offending party be held legally responsible for any illegal acts the offender might commit, whether or not the site contacted is engaging in any illicit activities. What Does This Mean For Small Business?

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SOPA Spells Loss — A SPN Exclusive Article

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Getting Noticed on the Web

Website Engagement Techniques: The Caricature Effect Marketing is all about getting noticed, getting remembered, and motivating people to action. Whether it’s a website, display ad, or video, it must first grab people’s attention, it must stop the viewer from going onto the next website, turning the magazine page, or clicking the stop button. In order to accomplish that increasingly difficult task, you must understand the Caricature Effect. The Caricature Effect The Caricature Effect simply stated says that what we notice is variation from the norm. Caricature artists exaggerate reality because that is how we visually distinguish one person from another. Human beings are preprogrammed to look for patterns and variations in those patterns, it’s how we recognize who people are, and it is a basic survival mechanism that helps us recognize danger and distinguish friend from foe. By distorting an individual’s prominent facial features the caricature artist mimics the human brain’s way of remembering who’s who. Our brains are not cameras that take pictures and file them away for future reference

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Getting Noticed on the Web

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Holiday Tales: 10 SEO Search-Ranking Myths

SEO myths become larger every year. Some are based partially in reality, and others have spread because it’s often difficult to prove what particular SEO action caused a resulting search engine reaction. For example, you might make a change to something on a page of your site, and a few days later notice that your ranking in Google for a particular keyword phrase has changed. You might naturally assume that your page change is what caused the ranking change. But that’s not necessarily so. There are numerous reasons why your ranking may have changed, and in many cases they actually have nothing to do with anything that you did. Mixing up cause and effect is one of the most common things new SEOs do. If it were affecting only their own work, it wouldn’t be so bad, but unfortunately, the clueless often spread their misinformation to other unsuspecting newbies on forums and blogs, which in turn creates new myths.

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Holiday Tales: 10 SEO Search-Ranking Myths

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8 Video Marketing Strategies for Small Business – A SPN Exclusive Article

There are a zillion ways to use video for business, varying from stylish, high-priced ad crusade commercials to complex landing page pieces designed to pull someone into a purchase. What are the greatest types of video for Small Business owners that can be created cost-effectively and published quickly and produce leads? Here are the Elite Eight. Introductory Clip Well-known and regularly underused, the video Intro to the Business is a brief, 5 minute or less (2-3 works well) homepage introduction that tells who you are, what you do and why customers should care. This can be done using a narrative in a commercial replete with lots of motion shots of the shop floor, the office, and merchandise; a talking head of the CEO to a blank camera; or use the 3rd party perspective of an authentic Video interview (see below) Business FAQ. Development costs can range from free (CEO riffing into a webcam) through a few hundred dollars to thousands for a videographer shot commercial.

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8 Video Marketing Strategies for Small Business – A SPN Exclusive Article

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How to Become Panda Proof – Safeguard Your SEO

If you’re reading this, you probably appreciate that I’m not talking about the cuddly bear type creatures, but the algorithm updates by Google that are reputedly designed to increase the quality of the sites ranking near the top of the results pages. There have been 2 major ones this year and they have stricken fear into the hearts of Internet Marketers the world over. People have lost rankings left, right and center and there has been widespread panic. First of all, a disclaimer. I don’t know precisely how Google works.

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How to Become Panda Proof – Safeguard Your SEO

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10 Questions for New SEO Clients

Hello Jill, If you could only ask 10 general (non-industry-specific) questions of your new SEO customers, what would they be and why would their answers help you help them? Thank you, Andrew ++Jill’s Response++ Hi Andrew, Great question! I have a variety of different questionnaires that I send to clients, depending on the type of SEO consulting that I’ll be doing with them. For any SEO service, the more information I get from the client about their business and website, the better I can help them with their SEO. Here’s a selection of some of the questions I ask and why they’re important to the overall SEO process: 1. What Web Analytics Program Do You Use, and Can We Have Access to It? Web analytics are the key to measuring the current level of SEO success (or lack thereof). They’re also the key to determining whether any future SEO implementation is helping to bring more targeted traffic. Therefore, it’s critical for me to have access to this information regardless of the level of SEO service I’m providing.

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10 Questions for New SEO Clients

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