WebManna » Blog

Blogging that Works

WebManna — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:35:49 +0000

It’s no secret to our clients that we are huge advocates of blogging. That’s why we focus on wordpress for our clients. You get a website and a blog and you have control over all the content. Not all of our clients love blogging. We totally understand that for some people it is too much work and no fun generating content. Whether you love it or not, blogging is a powerful tool for growing your business on the web. Here are a few blog posting tips that could improve your effectiveness and help blow up your business on the web.

Write about what you know and love. (DiscDogblog.com)

Use an authentic voice. (Be Yourself)

Research related forums and blogs for hot topics.

Use a custom blogging platform not a generic one.

Create google alerts on keywords related to your business services to help with topics.

Use the AllinOneSEO Plugin

Use interesting headlines and great content when creating your post.

Oh and did I mention Google loves WordPress?

Matt Cutts the Google Guy Speaks!

Loves Flower Shop

WebManna — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:50:06 +0000

In the process of designing a site for clients, we often go through a couple psd versions until we hit on just the look the client wants. For Loves, they did not love this first version, preferring a 3 window look on the front and a less is more approach. We’ll show you the finished version of their e-commerce site in a few weeks. Here is the first draft of their site.

Arnoff Moving and Storage Website

WebManna — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:15:46 +0000

A family moving and storage business with locations on the east coast, Arnoff Moving and Storage knew exactly what they wanted for their website. Now they have a site they can manage, update and grow whenever they want. And it looks great! We’ll deliver their custom tutorials on managing the site today. Next up for Arnoff is creating a marketing plan for the website that combines popular social media tools with SEO.

6 Minutes of Posting Tips

WebManna — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:20:49 +0000

Ok a lot to cover in 6 minutes so let’s jump right in. First watch the video. Then read below.

Quick Posting Tips

Recap:

Start with an interesting title using keywords.
Make a bold statement – back it up and then say more about it with bullet points.
A link to a page or post on your site and a link to a 3rd party site (opens in a new window).
add pictures

More Posting tips:

If the post is more than 2 paragraphs use another pic on the page

format the pics to be an appropriate size

Start and finish whatever you write with your keywords.

Bonus tips:

There are plugins you can add to help with SEO of your blog
You can have your blog update your facebook fan page

Closing Zinger:

Include an offer or a call to action in your posts – for example a post about pricing for shirts – show a picture of a recent shirt design – make an offer like every 4th shirt free – and tell them to call or contact you and mention that post to take advantage of the offer.

Get the reader involved. Ask them to tell their friends, to comment on your post, to check you out on Facebook, etc.

Want some more specific tips for your posting? I can help! Shoot me an email or call me with a question or two and let’s work on it together.

Ok so that was more like 8 minutes of posting tips. Now go write a post!

Palm Beach Printing and Mailing

WebManna — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:51:31 +0000

Our friend and American Fulfillment vendor Tony finally made the jump into the WWW and we were honored to create his website for him. A printer and mailing house for many years in Palm Beach county, Tony has added quite a few other services including providing mailing lists and design work. Tony did not want a site he needed to update regularly and he did not want to be writing blog posts. So he gets a site designed to showcase his services and help visitors get in touch with him. We love his colors, very patriotic. Tony’s heart is in Boston and he loves the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics and the Bruins.

Tony’s heart also goes into every project for every customer. Tony has a hard working staff and that allows him to make time to meet with and personally oversee the results for his clients. Tony does great work for us. Go ahead and give his new website a visit.

Palm Beach Direct Mail

Smell My Car Lame

WebManna — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:57:04 +0000

As a once enthusiastic and now bored to sleep Nascar fan, I forced myself to watch the Bristol race where I saw SmellMyCar.com on a car. I was just awake enough to catch it and just bored enough to check it out online. Checking out the site I was immediately annoyed and wanted to know who to blame. I was annoyed because I took the time to check the site out and it was a busy vomitous blur.

Selling unique car smelly thingies is not exactly a glamorous job. This site takes that seriously by avoiding glamorous and going straight for blech. It’s not all terrible to be fair, just mostly. Rather than pick out all the elements and explain them I will just list a few and move on to my real annoyance.

No clear call to action
Too many colors are distracting
Lack of info on the product that would compel me to purchase
Why would I sign up for their newsletter?
I do not understand the product images
Why list diffusers if you have none?

Anyway, that’s enough of that. What really bugs me is that this site was not set up to make the most of the potential traffic arriving from the advertising. That bugs me because businesses spend a lot of money for advertising to have it be poorly executed is frustrating. I really feel for the clients who tell us their horror stories of past experiences, money wasted. So they come to us skeptical and maybe a little jaded and I don’t blame them.

So who’s to blame? .speedwaymarketingsolutions dot com I’m not even going to give them a link. What really fires me up? Their own site is incomplete! Lorem Ipsum my friends! Or did you mean to have latin hyperlink son your website?

I am probably being to hard on the speedwaymarketing company. I’m sure they are very busy, hopefully they did their best, maybe they are just getting started… I can only imagine what a creative and thorough team could have done with that campaign. Some effective design work and calls to action, some attention to selling and not just trying to “look cool”.

Every business deserves a site that can effectively convert visitors who are potential clients for the products and services offered.

Tag Lines and Elevator Pitches Quickie

WebManna — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:38:38 +0000

There are a million resources on creating taglines, elevator pitches and unique selling propositions. Our clients in Palm Beach are no different than our clients in Detroit. Some have great tag lines and some are absolutely terrible. On another day I might spend some time reviewing the good bad and ugly. For now I am just going to point at a few words to consider.

Use:

Largest
Results
Guaranteed
Best

Avoid:

Help
Safe
Friendly
Professional

WebManna – Our business is growing your business

Smell My Car Lame

Adding a FaceBook Fan Page

WebManna — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:34:44 +0000

Our neighbors in West Palm Beach, our family around the country and our friends around the world are all using Facebook. Once just a great social tool for friends and family has become a powerful resource for businesses. And now that Google is indexing updates on pages, there is more reason than ever to get your business a page. At a recent BNI meeting in Palm Beach Gardens (shout out to GoTo Group), one of the members mentioned they did not have a page yet for their business. I promised a quick and easy tutorial for creating the fan page and you can watch it below. (make sure to push the full screen button on bottom right of player). You could also use this link to the Facebook Fan Page Tutorial.

Here is a brief summary of the video:

Go to your profile
Click on Pages -> Create Page
Fan yourself, add a picture, edit info
Add some status updates
Share with your friends
Get 25 fans so you can create a custom URL (Go to Facebook.com/username)

We’d love to have you as friends and fans! You can become a fan of WebManna by visiting http://www.facebook.com/webmanna Of course you need to have a Facebook account/profile to become a fan.

Lake Park Chiropractor

WebManna — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:15:07 +0000

When Dr. Buonadonna contacted us regarding a website, he knew he wanted a simple clean site to help local clients in Lake Park find his chiropractic services on the web. Dr. B. is intense when he speaks about helping his patients manage and eliminate pain, restore movement and live better lives. We were proud to build him a site that meets his needs and helps his patients get their needs met as well. We’ve also supported Dr. B with an SEO campaign which has him top 10 and rising on all the major search engines for his targeted keywords.

Lady Bug Organic Pest Control

WebManna — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:39:22 +0000

Ok so we live in Florida and Florida is pretty famous for its pests. We’ve got them. And we use pest control services to protect our home and lawn and more importantly our kids and pets. We are crazy about our disc dogs and we are careful what kind of chemicals they are exposed to. So when Lady Bug contacted us regarding a new branch in Florida we were very interested. Why? Their methods are environmentally friendly. They make every attempt to manage and remove pests without chemicals, and when chemicals are the best solution, they use environmentally friendly pest control chemicals.

The Florida branch is OLadyBug and they are right now setting up in South Florida. We’re part of their marketing team, providing support and direction for their internet and print marketing in Palm Beach county. And once they set up we expect to be customers.