Congratulations to everyone in the Artisan Cheese industry for their outstanding 2012 American Cheese Society competition held last week in Raleigh NC! We are pleased to tell you how well some of our clients placed.
Carr Valley Cheese, LaValle, Wisconsin won a total of 14 ribbons including four 1st place awards for Billy Blue Goat Cheese, Canaria Sheep Cheese, Sharp Cheddar Spread and Horseradish Spread. Carr Valley also received seven 2nd place awards and three 3rd place awards.
Uplands Cheese won 2 ribbons including a 1st place award for their Pleasant Ridge Reserve and a 3rd place award for their Extra-Aged Pleasant Ridge Reserve.
Edelweiss Creamery, Monroe, brought home two 2nd place ribbons for their Muenster and for their Vegetable Havarti.
The 2012 competition was the largest ACS contest ever. The judges graded 1,711 different products from 254 companies. What a remarkable accomplishment for these master artisan cheesemakers!
We are privileged and proud to work with several of Wisconsin’s finest cheesemakers providing them an online presence that befits their status. Congratulations to Sid Cook and his team at Carr Valley Cheese, Mike Gingrich and Andy Hatch at Uplands Cheese, and Bruce Workman and his team at Edelweiss Creamery.
As a part of the UW-Extension-led “Building Community Capacity through Broadband” program, and their efforts to demonstrate the importance of affordable, high-speed, rural broadband access, WebWise Design & Marketing and Carr Valley Cheese were recently featured in this video.
So, who are you trying to benefit from those changes you just made, or are contemplating making, to your website? What, or who, is driving those website updates? Are they being made because of any of the following?
You, your boss, relative, or friend, saw or read about, what they feel, is a cool feature on another website.
Your ___________ (fill in the blank) took a class on web design, and the instructor said __________(fill in the blank).
Several businesses similar to yours have large photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
Several businesses similar to yours have small photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
Several businesses similar to yours have no photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
Several businesses similar to yours have videos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
You read on Facebook that you should __________(fill in the blank).
You read on a blog with SEO tips that you should __________(fill in the blank).
You saw a Tweet that said you should __________(fill in the blank).
@@@@@@@ (Celebrity name withheld) had a guy on her TV show talking about having a YouTube video on all your main pages helping in Google rankings.
What often is forgotten is your target audience. Ask yourself, will the changes make your site more attractive and/or more user-friendly for your target audience? Is your website better because of the changes? Do those changes better describe the benefits of your services, or the quality of your products? How will your audience perceive you, your company, or what you offer?
When reviewing our client’s websites and prospective changes, we sometimes have to remind them, they are not the users, nor are we. We are changing their website for their target audience, not us, or the boss, relative, friend, or someone on TV. It is the website visitor we should be considering.
Are you making changes to your website for yourself, or for your target audience? There is only one correct answer.
It may be time for you to seriously consider advertising on Facebook. Now, I know many of you will say, “I don’t use Facebook,” or, “I don’t like Facebook.” You certainly have the right to feel that way. There are many things I don’t like about Facebook, but it is undeniable that many, many people do use and like it. Many of them are, or could be, your customers or prospects. According to CheckFacebook.com, as of April 16, 2011 there are 653,150,280 Facebook users globally. The number of users where it could impact most of our readers, here in the United States, is a healthy 154,869,960. Yes, you read it correctly. There are nearly 155 million Facebook users in the U.S. Now, not all of those users are active, but it is simply a market that should not be ignored.
Aside from the sheer number of people, what makes Facebook so attractive to advertisers? Facebook has a near plethora of statistics related to users, including demographics some marketers salivate over. They include age groups, birthdays, likes, interests, relationship, sex, education, occupation, connections (even friends of those connected with your page), and many more.
Ad targeting can be as simple or detailed as you want it. For example you could create an ad offering a 50% discount for anyone with a May birthday, and display that ad to any Facebook user that is female, between 18 – 35, and lives within 30 miles of your business. You may choose the days and times your ads display.
So, what does it cost? Well, that is entirely up to you. Facebook charges per click in a manner similar to Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. You may set a daily budget, and maximum cost per click. Our experience is that they noticeably try to get you to increase that budget, with increasingly higher suggested bids. Accordingly it takes some monitoring and tweaking to get the most clicks for your money. That seems to be especially true with small budgets. The bottom line on cost is that you can control it. You won’t spend more than you decide to budget.
I feel compelled to say, it is extremely important that you not only look at the reports Facebook Advertising provides, but you look closely at your website analytics. You will want to check the reports for “referring sites,” “bounce rate,” “navigation path,” and “time on site” results. If you are not seeing results there, or getting phone calls about your Facebook ad, you need to review why you are not reaching the goals you set for the ad campaign.
Creating the ads is relatively simple, but a bit challenging as you try to write an ad that conveys your message. You have some restrictions. The “Title” will be bold and blue, and can contain no more than 25 characters. Your ad must also include a working destination URL to a website (e.g.,www.examplewebsite.com) or a destination on Facebook like a Page or an Application. Your ad can have maximum size of 110 x 80 pixels. If you upload one larger, it will be automatically resized, but if it is not the same ratio as 110 x 80 it will be distorted. The body text may contain a maximum of 135 characters. You will find yourself rewriting several times to squeeze in what you want to convey. Facebook recommends you create multiple ads (that will not affect your cost) to find the one that works best.
So let’s recap to see if you should try Facebook Advertising.
Do you want your advertising in front of large numbers of self-qualified, very targeted, visitors to a specific page on your website?
Do you want to be able to control your monthly budget?
Do you want to choose which days and hours your ads display?
Do you want to quantify the amount you spend by seeing detailed reports?
My guess is the answer is yes to those questions.
The only caveat I’ll offer is that, as in all good things, it takes an investment of your time or that of a professional with experience. If you or your marketing professional, has experience, a proven track record using Google AdWords and other Pay-Per-Click platforms, and understand analytics, you will likely reach the goals you set for your Facebook advertising campaign. Of course, if you have time to learn, and put in the effort you may be successful as well.
Is Facebook Advertising a good fit for you?
Only you can make that decision. Of course, we are always happy to help. Call us! 1-800-281-9993
It is no great revelation that keywords are essential in getting your website to rank higher in Google search results. That said, too often not enough attention is paid to keyword research. Knowing the queries people actually use, is integral in getting the visitors you want to your website
Now, the folks at Google are going to tell you to just write good copy that your potential visitors find compelling, and your rankings will take care of themselves. While that is true in a perfect world, it isn’t quite that simple.
Of course there are may factors (Google’s Matt Cutts says 200+ “signals”) that dictate where your listing shows up on Google’s search results pages, and the keywords on your web pages are only part of it. The fact is, they play a very big role.
Why is keyword research important? Well, your visitors won’t get to your website so they can read your “compelling copy” unless it contains the keywords your potential visitors use when they do a search on Google, or other search engine. Your web pages may have “compelling copy” as far as you are concerned, but are you thinking about the same keywords as your potential visitors? Keyword research can help you figure that out.
Where to start? Write your compelling copy, and then read it out loud. How does it sound? Did you or your audience hear keywords you believe potential visitors would use to find your products or services?
Make a list of keywords you believe identify your products or services. Ask for input from co-workers, customers, friends, your barber, or hair dresser.
Take a good look at the list. Are all or some of those keywords on your website? Remember, Google sells relevance. Your pages should be product or service-specific, as should your keywords. The wrong keywords may get visitors to your website, but those visitors may not stay, because they were looking for something you don’t offer. Your goal should be to attract self-qualified visitors (leads, prospects) that want or need what you offer.
Okay, let’s see if anyone actually searches for your keywords. Google has a good free tool (Google Keyword Tool) for you to use. It is geared toward those who are using, or may use, Google AdWords. You do not have to have an AdWords account to use the keyword tool. It will show how much competition there is for your keywords, global monthly searches, local monthly searches, and more. You may do a simple search, or they’ll give you more options than you will care to deal with. Keep it simple. You just want to see if people really are searching using your keywords.
If your keywords have a lot of search volume, you should use Google Trends, where you can search for two terms, e.g. lake property, lakefront property, and you’ll see charts showing the relative search volume (more people search for lake property). You can filter the results by date, regions, cities, etc.
There is a great deal more to say about keywords, and we’ll discuss them again. Hopefully, this will give you an understanding of the importance of choosing the right keywords. One of America’s favorite authors knew something about choosing the right words when he said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Oh, that author if you are wondering, was Mark Twain.
Go to work and make that keyword list today! Edit that compelling copy to contain your researched keywords, and get results!
Carr Valley Cheese, LaValle, Wisconsin won a total of 14 ribbons including four 1st place awards for Billy Blue Goat Cheese, Canaria Sheep Cheese, Sharp Cheddar Spread and Horseradish Spread. Carr Valley also received seven 2nd place awards and three 3rd place awards.
Uplands Cheese won 2 ribbons including a 1st place award for their Pleasant Ridge Reserve and a 3rd place award for their Extra-Aged Pleasant Ridge Reserve.
Edelweiss Creamery, Monroe, brought home two 2nd place ribbons for their Muenster and for their Vegetable Havarti.
So, who are you trying to benefit from those changes you just made, or are contemplating making, to your website? What, or who, is driving those website updates? Are they being made because of any of the following?
