Last week, we had the pleasure of attending the Internet Retailer Show in Chicago. As a company, we haven’t really been big into trade shows. We prefer to stay fairly quiet and let our work speak for itself: Triangle Direct has more of a lunch pale mentality, rather than the self aggrandizing you tend to see in our industry. But I have to say, the show was great. We ran into a lot of past and current clients, and had some great conversations about what we do. We were running demos of SEOTool, and the interest level was very high. Despite being stuck in what looked like “SEO alley”, everyone seemed excited about generating organic search traffic and looking to do something in time for the holidays. We will certainly be attending next year in San Diego. So thanks to current clients for dropping by, and thanks to anyone who didn’t know us, but took some time to learn about our company and services. It also didn’t hurt that the Hawks won the Stanley Cup while we were there, so congrats to them and to the city of Chicago.
In order to show the world our SEO Tool technology, we have for the past few months been running individual and group webinars for interested parties. We run them through Go to Meeting, and they last approximately 45 minutes. We have one coming up tomorrow:
http://www.triangledirectmedia.com/webinar/webinarsign-emc13.html
We strongly encourage companies who are committed to increasing natural search traffic to take a look at the technology. You will have an opportunity to see the tool in action and pose questions to the moderator. Find the issues that are holding your site back, and let Triangle Direct Media help increase your organic search traffic for Q4.
Triangle Direct announced today that we will be attending the Internet Retailer conference and exhibition in Chicago June 8th through the 11th. We will be in booth 114 in the McCormick exhibition hall and look forward to meeting many of our current clients. We also anticipate a lot of interest from companies wanting to see SEOTool, and will be running demos from dawn til dusk. If you are interested in more information on our services, or just want to chat, drop by the booth and see what Triangle Direct Media can do for your business.
SEO Tool will parse fetch and analyze thousands of pages of a clients site. Emulating a search engine bot, it picks out all the absolute architectural issues that hold back rankings, issues that it could take a team of engineers months to identify, if indeed they did identify those problems. Every SEO Tool subscription comes with consulting time with our in house SEO engineers to enable clients to prioritize action issues and formulate an appropriate implementation strategy. It is a web based platform which gives clients 24/7 access to the data. It also has a built in knowledge base and an export and tasking feature making it easy to delegate work once the issues have been identified. For any client who ever wondered why they just couldn’t crack into the first page of SERPS, or break into the top five, it is an essential member of a successful marketing department, brought to you by Triangle Direct.
Back in 2008, Triangle Direct Media took the step of providing on page services to our clients. This was done to fill a hole in our clients’ marketing mix. We were seeing great successes with our blog linking and Social Media link building services, but there were still great deficiencies in terms of their on page work. Obviously this is a very crowded field, but given all the options available it was surprising how little attention was being paid to the basics. There were several third party tools that could help us identify on page problems and inconsistencies, but none of them gave us the depth we were looking for to really get to the core issues. That is why we developed SEOTool, a game changing technology that enabled us to dig deeper.
In terms of online marketing, obviously one of the core competencies of Triangle Direct is to leverage the power of blogging to increase natural search rankings for clients. That is done through link building, whether it be from a company’s own corporate blog, and through our growing network of established blogs. We have however added a whole suite of services over the last four years that contribute to our clients traffic and revenues. One of the things we noticed with some clients, was that they were making great strides on the engines, but they were being held back by deficiencies in their on page optimization. Their rankings in the SERPS had a ceiling that they were unaware of. Search is all about the ABC’s: Architecture, Content and Back links. It was now time for us to take a more detailed look at those issues that were slowing clients down.
It has been a long time since I have posted in this blog, but I was one of the original authors when we launched this site back in ‘07. And it has been an interesting three years to say the least. Back then, no-one knew what a blog was, and companies struggled with the concept of using a blog to help drive organic search rankings. Now everyone is self publishing, and blogs are part of the common vernacular. We saw the rise of Twitter and the continued decline of print and TV advertising. We saw social media being used for political movements, disaster relief and mobile entertainment. Over the coming months I will be giving my insight on the industry in general and Triangle Direct in particular.
So what is all the rage of retail blogging and what are you losing as a business if you don’t blog? The answer is a lot! Blogging has become a popular form of online marketing and is saving businesses money that less effective, traditional marketing absorbs. Businesses are starting to make a change in their marketing and advertising expenses as everything is seemingly shifting to online. The return on traditional marketing techniques is not worth the ineffective results they produce. Why not do what works and costs less?
Social media networks and blogs are changing the way traditional ads affect and “sell” customers. Online consumers are more receptive to “word of mouth” advertising which in turn influences their buying decisions. In 2008, there were 184 million people on the Internet who have started their own blog and 346 million people read blogs, noted by Technorati, many of whom discuss their thoughts on particular brands and products. Why not get online with them and increase your chance of positive brand reputation and feedback. Promote what you want about your brand, establish yourself as an expert in your industry, incorporate authoritative backlinks to product promotions on your site, and get those online influencers talking to you, with you and about you.
Why would you miss out on blogging when its a great way to talk to your customers and out maneuver your competitors? If your company is not blogging and your competition is, you are quickly losing the game and are not cognizant of consumer expectations. As a retailer you know there are several types of customers, some like to know everything about the product or brand and have a sense of trust before buying. Others just want to read what others say about a product (aka “people like me”) so they know they’re making the right purchase.
Give your brand a “voice” through blogging and you will see a change — plus you can measure it through web analytics!
Even though in-store sales are plummeting, the e-commerce industry is seeing a continued growth in online sales. Forrester forecasts online sales to grow from 11 percent to 13 percent in 2009, increasing $156.1 billion. One might question how online retail is one of the only industries not falling during our tough economic situation.
Online retail platforms are serving as a convenient, easy way for customers to shop, saving them gas from driving store to store. Cutting down on transportation costs, online retail also benefits retailers by eliminating the use of paper for shopping bags as well as customer service capital expenses. Today, much attention is being placed on going “green” and online retail platforms help support these practices. As traditional advertising budgets continues to fade, the costs saved on paper materials and printing are now being put toward online advertising. With the accurate measurements Web analytics provide online marketers, retailers are able to analyze conversion rates, improve customer retention and validate ROI which is harder to do in-stores.
So with the increased efforts by online retailers, having high organic search rankings is key to stay ahead through the economic downtime. Triangle Direct Media helps online retailers effectively cut costs and stay on top through new media marketing and social media strategies. With high value techniques to increase online exposure, clients begin to see improvement in search engine visibility and are able to compete more effectively being a step ahead in their given industry.
Responsible for most household purchases, it is a beneficial investment for your retail store to target marketing efforts toward moms. Blog marketing has become a popular, inexpensive marketing strategy that reaches moms through a fast and effective approach. According to consumer data gathered by Forrester, moms are 50% more likely to create social media content and participate in online communities than the average online user.
Moms today are blogging by the thousands and they do so through user-generated conversations on their own individual blog. Reaching these moms on a personal level is important and can be done by sharing content about relevant products tailored toward families. Moms want information about household products before they buy them and today they are turning to the internet to find those like-minded peer reviews. Always looking to get the most for her money, posting coupons online is an effective way to get moms to buy your product over another. Not “pitching” your brand is important, as you want to keep your blog in a conversational, participatory tone. After all, moms want to be comfortable with the products that they are purchasing and know that they can consistently trust and rely on a particular brand.
If you are considering blog marketing or other social marketing strategies to reach and engage moms, please do not hesitate to contact a Triangle Direct Media account executive to learn more about our custom solutions.
