Are You Thinking About Building Your Google Glass Application? We are.

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Nikki

By now, I’m sure you have heard at least some of the recent hype about Google’s latest prodigy project – Google Glass.

A head-mounted augmented reality system, Google Glass is a pair of glasses with the power of a hands-free smartphone built into it. In essence, Google Glass interacts with the Internet through spoken voice commands and displays real-time information slightly above your line of vision.

There is a lot of speculation out there as to how Google Glass will change the internet landscape if it catches on to the masses. One thing is for sure. Developers and Internet marketing firms are watching and preparing for changes.

At the moment, Google Glass rests in the hands of a small number of select people, but developers everywhere are already dreaming up apps and innovative uses for the new technology.

What do you think about Google Glass? Are you as excited as we are about the endless possibilities?

Website Design Firm Refreshes Website for Sustainability Consultants

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Alyssa

The website design firm, World Synergy, recently finished a website design project for The Legacy Initiative.

The new website design speaks to building owners and managers who are looking for sustainable solutions and high performance buildings.

Sustainability management and green building construction is a competitive industry. It’s important to have a professional website that serves as a reference to potential clients.

Internet Marketing Specialist | 3 Tips to Use Social Media for Customer Retention

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Kimberly

Recently I was interviewed for the National Strategic YouTube series, Evolve to Grow, aimed at educating business owners of the many tools available to acquire and retain more customers. This series installment was specifically about using content as a form of customer retention, and of course I was thrilled. As the Internet Marketing Specialist for World Synergy I have the great pleasure of being on a team that creates countless campaigns accomplishing this very task.

Over the past few years many businesses have jumped into social media marketing as a way to acquire new clients, forgetting about the value social media brings to customer retention. Let’s look at 3 simple tips to use social media for customer retention:

1. Gain respect as an expert in your field. Using social media to provide your customers with industry knowledge earns you respect as an expert in your field. Create content that your customers would appreciate. Ideas include different ways of using your product or service, relevant health and/or safety information, tips for choosing providers, things to look out for, etc, etc.

2. Post content to encourage your customer engagement with. By posting questions, trivia, quizzes and asking opinions, you’re staying in communication with clients without soliciting them. This natural social behavior will keep your business in the front of their mind.

3. Encourage feedback on your social media sites. Resist the urge to delete negative comments. Instead encourage your customers to use social media platforms in order to speak truthfully about their experience with your business. In the interview, Roman Jacubowycz quoted a statistic saying “56-70% of customers who complain to you, will do business with you again if you resolve their complaint.” Communication plays a crucial role in retaining customers, so view negative comments as opportunities to resolve complaints in order to retain customers.

Want more internet marketing specialist tips for growing and retaining your customer base? Consider signing up for our new webinar, “Online Marketing Success Strategies for 2012,” at 1 p.m. (EST), April 19, 2012.

Watch the interview here for more tips and statistics regarding using content to retain customers.

FREE Webinar: “Online Marketing Success Strategies for 2012″

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Mike Murray

Check out our new webinar, “Online Marketing Success Strategies for 2012,” at 1 p.m. (EST), April 19, 2012 that will help marketers boost their ROI while navigating Internet marketing options.

As World Synergy’s web strategy thought leader, I’ll be sharing the latest tips, trends and insights on SEO, paid search, social media and more. I will take a detailed look at online marketing challenges and opportunities that B2B and B2C business executives face every day.

Social media tactics that work
Advice on how to leverage search engine optimization (SEO)
Paid search best practices
Fresh ideas for permission e-mail marketing

With a focus on ROI, the webinar will include real-life examples of tactics and strategies that companies use to generate more leads and sales while reinforcing their brands.

Web Site Design for Charlotte Home Builder

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Kimberly

World Synergy recently had the opportunity to work with The Ullman Group on several fronts.

We finished the web site design project not long ago which included the completion of a new corporate identity for the custom home builder in North Carolina and a new web site

design. Having a professional web site serves as a great reference for potential customers who want to connect with the business.

Learn more about the value of an eStrategy. Contact us today for a complimentary web marketing solutions consultation.

Does Your Business Support its Own Social Media Marketing Efforts?

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Kimberly

Too many businesses are not supporting their own social media marketing efforts while wondering why they can’t seem to capitalize on social media marketing trends. If your business has a social media presence, ask yourself these questions:

Do you display social media icons on your web site? This may seem like an obvious place to market your own social media profiles, but our recent small business SEO study revealed that 78% of small businesses have no mention of social media profiles on their web sites.
Are you using your packaging to send current customers to your social media sites? If your business has a product, your social icons should be on all packaging. Packaging your product without social icons is a way to miss out on customer feedback and increasing your fan base. Pictured here is my inspiration for today’s post, a pack of my Orbit gum and it’s no wonder Orbit gum has almost 2 million Facebook fans at the time of this post.
Does all your print advertising have a reference to your social media presence? Print advertising can include catalogs, fliers, brochures, business cards, coupons, Christmas cards and everything you order from your printer – business checks, invoices, everything. The next time you flip through coupons or your local junk mail, see how many are using their print advertisements to enhance their social marketing efforts. Pictured to the left is a coupon for Cheer detergent working together with their Facebook marketing campaign. It’s no surprise Cheer detergent has almost 70,000 Facebook fans at the time of this post.
Are you using your other forms of advertising, like television and radio, to generate a larger social media audience? Or are all your marketing efforts going in their own direction? Don’t be your own worst enemy when it comes to online marketing. Use your other advertising campaigns to help market your online presence and capture fans to engage with your brand. Read more about integrating your permission marketing email campaigns with social media in our post “Email + Social Media = Big Impact.“

To get the most out of all your advertising dollars, make sure you have properly integrated all print, packaging, email marketing, radio advertising, television commercials and your web site with your social media marketing efforts.

25 Tips for Social Media Success

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Kimberly

: 25 Tips for Social Media Success

Social media marketing can be an effective way for your business to increase web site traffic, target prospective clients, listen to real-time feedback from a community and convert activity to sales. Unfortunately, for many businesses implementing a strategy to produce results can be challenging and time consuming.

Our new guide, “25 Tips for Social Media Success,” delivers twenty-five simple, but often overlooked, techniques to effectively manage a social media strategy for your business.

Get your FREE copy of “25 Tips for Social Media Success” and start learning how to:

Take advantage of the Google Plus “Recommended links” from your G+ profile.
Save time by integrating your social media platforms.
Attract followers by incorporating keywords in specific profiles.
Use hashtags to send Twitter traffic to your web site.
And convert web site activity to web site sales!

At World Synergy, our internet marketing team can help you develop a social media strategy to help your business succeed online. Would you like to know more? Contact us today or call 440.349.4940.

Internet Marketing with Hashtags: Are You Missing Out? Part 2

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Kimberly

In “Internet Marketing with Hashtags: Are You Missing Out? Part 1,” we introduced the hashtag, who’s using it, how it’s used and promised to reveal ways you can be incorporating hashtags into your internet marketing strategy for more web site traffic and internet leads. As promised, enjoy these 5 techniques to increase your conversions using hashtags:

1) Find your prospects with the hashtag. Whether you’re a manufacturer, a supplier, a cosmetics company, a holistic health coach or a medical device company, you have prospects on twitter and they are using hashtags. Find your prospects by finding the hash-tags used in their industry. For example, industrial lubrication suppliers sell to manufacturers. Enter #manufacturing and #mfg in the twitter search to find them. Selling medical devices? Many health care providers use the hash-tags #hospitals #surgery #radiology #hcsm (Healthcare Communications and Social Media) #HealthIT, etc… Pick your specialty and find the hashtags.

2) Monitor conversations with the hashtag. Scheduled conversations, called Tweet Chats, occur on twitter with the use of hashtags. They’re open to everyone and can be an effective tool for getting the pulse of a community. For example, do you sell equipment to solar energy providers? Wednesdays at 6PM search for #solarenergychat to listen in on a weekly chat for the entire solar energy industry. Do you target small businesses and want to get a pulse on their community? Every Wednesday at 8pm EST, search twitter for #SmallBizChat to find advice and questions for small business startups and businesses started less than five years ago.

3)Build a targeted audience with the hashtag. By adding targeted hash-tags to tweets, you’ll be found, followed and added to twitter lists. For example, let’s say you sell a gluten free, all natural, wine-based pasta sauce. Your target market is a health conscious consumer willing to pay more for all natural ingredients, a gourmet flavor, and a gluten-free product. Find a wine connoisseur, a gluten-free blogger and a health conscious cook to see what hashtags they use. Here’s what you’ll find: #HFCS = high fructose corn syrup, and saying #HFCS free in your tweets tells people your sauce doesn’t contain corn syrup while joining conversations with people about the corn syrup vs. sugar debate. #Foodie is someone who prides themselves in having a taste for quality flavor, #wine is a widely used hashtag that will get you noticed by wine lovers and add a #gf to be found by the twitter community looking to buy gluten free products.

4)Increase exposure with the hashtag. Increasing exposure using a hashtag in your tweets is a similar concept to building a targeted audience with a hashtag from above. The difference is, if it’s just exposure you’re after, and you don’t expect for people to follow you, using a trending hashtag will get you in front of a larger audience. From your Twitter home page you can see what hashtags are the most popular in real time based on city, country or global. Currently, #ThingsBlamedOnLeBron is trending in Cleveland. By adding that to a tweet, you will get exposure among the hundreds of twitter users paying attention to that topic in Cleveland right now. It’s also a way to engage with other locals on Twitter and show off your tweeting skills.

5) Send traffic to your website with the hashtag. Using a hash-tag to increase exposure, join in conversations and get added to Twitter lists will not convert to business alone. An effective way to convert tweets into leads, is by sending twitter traffic to where they can convert. If your web site has visible calls to actions that will capture emails and contact information, send twitter traffic to your web site by adding a link, with the appropriate hashtags.

In this example, Clark Howard tweets: “There is a way to cut expenses of #healthcare by banding with others to significantly reduce the cost of premiums.http://bit.ly/Ag3PZQ” This tweet sends traffic to his web site while gaining the attention of people who may be looking for health care related information with an effective use of the hashtag #healthcare.

In another example North American Tool tweets: “ Absorb excessive shock & minimize carbide breaking or chipping with carbide-inserted taps. Carb-i-Sert: http://bitly.com/mClcb5.#mfg.” North American Tools effectively uses the #mfg hash-tag to get the attention of manufacturers while sending traffic to this product on their web site.

After effectively implementing these 5 ways to increase your internet traffic and web site leads using the hashtag, if you are not getting conversions, consider reading our “25 Ways to Succeed with Online Marketing” or call us anytime at 440-349-4940 to get your free web audit and eStrategy report.

Internet Marketing with Hashtags: Are You Missing Out? Part 1

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Kimberly

Hash tags are like corn-on-the-cob holders. It’s as if one goes from not knowing of their existence to having their eyes opened to a new world in an instant. In the case of corn-on-the-cob holders, an exclusive society of handy kitchen ware and gadget owners unfold as you’re entitled instantaneous membership. The same thing is true of hash tags (also known as hash-tags, hashtags, #hashtags and #), and not referred to as a “pound” sign.

Once you start to look, you’ll see hash tags everywhere. Television shows like The Voice and Fringe encourage viewers to engage on twitter by displaying their hash tags (#thevoice and #fringe) on the television screen. This past January 24th, the President gave his State of the Union address in the same manner – with a static #SOTU in the bottom right hand corner of the television screen.

Going to any major trade-shows or conventions soon? Start noticing the hash-tag on your badge, your handouts and the registration information. The Cattle Industry Convention is in the throws of a hashtag controversy over the use of #CIC12 when CIC members, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), American National CattleWomen (ANCW) and Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) all have their own hash-tag agenda. You can follow the New Jersey Education Association convention updates every November with hashtag #njeaconvention, and find an entire glossary of more than 30 education hashtags on their web site.

Now that it’s clear hashtags (like corn-on-the-cob holders) have planted a firm hold on our society without you knowing, it’s time for enlightenment. What are they? Why are they useful? And are you missing out on potential business if you’re not using them?

A hash-tag is the character added to the beginning of a word in twitter to turn that word into a link. Once you click on that link, you will see other twitter users that are using the same hashtag. Try it. Click this link #medicare to see a stream of tweets that contain the hashtag medicare.

In “Internet Marketing with Hashtags: Are You Missing Out? Part 2,” we’ll discuss how using hashtags can convert into web site traffic and leads for your business.

World Synergy, an online search marketing firm specializes in providing business with custom web design and web marketing solutions. Contact us today to learn how your business can be more effective with internet marketing at 440-349-4940.

We shape integrated online marketing and technology strategies to increase clients' sales and improve their ROI.

Category Archives: Web Marketing

Are You Thinking About Building Your Google Glass Application? We are.

Website Design Firm Refreshes Website for Sustainability Consultants

Web Site Design for Charlotte Home Builder