Publishing a post is just the beginning. Once a post is live, the content promotion work begins. Most marketers use email marketing and social media to get the word out. After a few days, they've moved on to the next piece of content. But great marketers don't stop there.
You've been in the kitchen cooking up a brand new website or even tweaking a current site with some new flavors, and it's almost time to dig in. It has everything you want; you have been involved in every step of its creation, and you are ready to show the world just how tantalizing it is...but ...
I love Mexican food. If I could eat it every day, I would. I used to try to limit it to once a month, but I decided a couple of years ago, I exercise enough, I can eat it once a week.
When a website works, visitors take action. They become leads, buy products, and subscribe to newsletters. It's called a conversion, and every conversion triggers a series of events: The website owner gets an email. The visitor gets a thank you email. Their information is stored in a ...
Every so often, we Orbiteers get out. This time it was to WordCamp Chicago, a WordPress-centric conference that is organized by locals in cities around the country and open to all users and lovers of WordPress. (I don't often admit to my nerdy loves in public, but WordPress is up there with my ...
Writing is hard work. It can take hours (or more!) to write a good piece of content. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to turn that article into a hundred articles with little extra effort? There is it's called content spinning. And it's gross. Author's note: this post begins ...
Since about the early part of this decade, it's been all about personalization, right? How can we personalize the user experience for the visitor? If they are a returning customer, can we greet them by name? But while business owners and web designers have long touted the importance of ...
We recently wrote a post for one of our favorite websites, Spin Sucks, called If Your Blog Were A Beer. It's a way to look at what you have on tap in you blog. It caught the attention of the designers at Visual.ly, and they were generous enough to make it into an infographic!
I love guest blogging, but the problem with guest posts is that your usual audience doesn't see those posts. People often ask us where they can read more of our articles, so we've decided to do a twice yearly round-up. So here, at the halfway mark of 2013, we're sharing five of our most ...
Thursday evening, the doors of Orbit stayed open late for the first annual Design Brew. The networking event brought together clients, members of the design community, and design admirers for the purpose of creating a dialogue around design in a casual, friendly setting. Did I mention there was ...
I've seen many posts recently about SEO and content marketing, and they all agree on one thing: quality is the key to ranking high. But I haven't seen a good explanation on how and why this works. It's true that it's the good stuff that that people link to, and it's those links that ...
If Jean Claude Van Damme (JCVD for short) were a web designer who applied techniques often portrayed in his movies, he would be pretty successful. I found that applying these web design techniques to your workflow may help achieve more consistent success as a web designer. Ready, set, spin ...
There are thousands of tools available to web marketers, many of which are so popular, you're probably using them already. So rather than rounding up the usual suspects, here are nine tools of which you may not have heard. These marketing tools take only seconds to use. Although many of ...
Let's start with a shameless plug before sharing our website design idea. Buy your running shoes at Fleet Feet Chicago. They are not only one of our favorite clients, but they are really good at what they do. They work with you to evaluate your individual needs and natural biomechanics to ...
Some web design tips are supported by actual brain science. Research into the brain reveals tendencies. These tendencies translate into tips for designing websites. In fact, specific parts of the brain relate to specific marketing methods. The Frontal Lobe (planning, logic, motivation) The frontal lobe is associated with "executive functions" such as motivation, planning, attention, and short-term memory.
You're ready to send out your newsletter. Your main goal is to drive traffic back to your site, convert that traffic into leads, and those leads into customers. So, how do you tell which email marketing campaigns were successful?Easy. Use the Google Analytics URL builder to track your ...
Different websites have different kinds of visitors. Some visitors stay only a short time, others stay longer. There are visitors who tend to view lots of pages, while others read very few. Sites tend to have a profile of visitor with its own character...a bit like characters from classic ...
The SEO industry is at an inflection point. The last two years have brought an incredible amount of change to the industry, and the next two years are going to bring even more. Some of the recent changes are very exciting for those of us who are in the SEO industry.
Have you ever gotten a couple proposals for having work done, and the prices are wildly different? We all have at one time or another. Many times we are at the mercy of those presenting the proposals to decipher the difference. When they explain it, everything they tell us makes sense yet ...
Google considers more than 200 factors when ranking websites, but none are more important than links. When many websites link to a page, that page is more likely to rank in search engines. Link popularity matters. A lot. But not all links are created equal. Keep reading, and in 5 minutes, ...
There are many options to creating a mobile presence for your business. I've identified the top four. If you intend to have an informed conversation, here is a mobile website guide to help you out. 1. Separate Mobile Website What is it? A specific standalone website optimized for mobile ...
The date is set. The venue is booked. Now you just need to get people to show up. Worried? Maybe a little? Don't be. If you're not sure how to market an event, here's a list of 50 event marketing tips.You don't need a big advertising budget or celebrity endorsements to make this work.
It's very clever. Google Analytics combines Javascript with cookies to track all kinds of data about visitors. You don't need to install anything on your server, and they don't need to look at your log files. It's brilliant, but it has its issues. Here are 21 ways in which Google ...
When I am not designing stellar websites for clients, I spend my time writing a food blog, and every now and then, I give talks to other bloggers about improving their blogging. I had the opportunity to give a talk recently in San Francisco to a group of new and veteran food bloggers about ten ...
The main sources of website traffic are email, social media, pay-per-click and search engine optimization, and direct traffic. The activities behind each are distinct. Imagine your site weighing anchor and pushing off from the dock, headed out to sea for a fishing trip. The farther you go, the ...