4 Critical Areas of Business Investment for 2017

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The technology landscape is constantly evolving, clouding which choices are the best to focus on when it comes to your business.  Organizations of all sizes spend a lot of cash to keep pace with changing technology in an effort to stay ahead of their competition and ultimately grow. Whether you’re a startup trying to succeed or a Fortune 500 business, knowing the right areas of your business to invest in is just as important as knowing which tools to implement.

Take a look at these 5 critical investments every business should consider in 2017.

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Should Your Website Have Seasonal Features?

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There are two main types of features and content on the web, at least when it comes to relevance: seasonal and evergreen. Evergreen content, as the name suggests, is content that’s available and relevant no matter what time of year it is or what’s going on. Seasonal content, on the other hand, is only relevant for a limited time—usually, it’s a part of a cycle that comes back around, so it may only be available during certain months of the year.

On the surface, it appears that evergreen content is a strictly more effective strategy than seasonal content; if it takes you three hours to build a page of your site, one page is active and effective for 12 months out of the year, while the other page is active for 3 months out of the year, the 12-month evergreen page would bring you a higher overall ROI. However, there are some advantages to seasonal features that make it worth considering for your brand.

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5 Ways to Get Free PR for Your Small Business

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It’s no secret that getting your small business noticed can be difficult without the right tools, especially when cash flow is limited, But it doesn’t have to be impossible. Whether you’re starting a new business from scratch or adding a fresh feature to an existing product, there are several effective ways you can gain free PR without compromising on quality. Here are some ideas:

Targeted communication

PR is all about building relationships. This doesn’t mean sending bulk emails and press releases to just about anyone you come across.

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When It Comes To Blogging, Paid Hosting Is Worth The Price Tag

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When you first look into launching a blog, whether for personal or business pursuits, you’re immediately confronted with two types of blog hosting: free and paid.

On the surface, it seems like an obvious choice. Why wouldn’t you take the free option? However, when you really begin to study the differences between free and paid, a new reality begins to emerge.

Five reasons to pay for hosting 

There are times in life where free is good. Generally speaking, free food, free parking, and free admission are good things. But there are also times when the price you pay equals the quality of the product you receive. This is one of those times. Paid hosting yields a much higher return and there are five specific reasons why you should consider it:

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Should Restaurants Use Content Marketing?

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Restaurants offer some unique challenges when it comes to marketing and advertising. Spending too much money on promotions can take away from your bottom line, and it’s a big investment to have a dedicated sales team to drive new revenue directly.

Content marketing presents a suitable alternative. It’s a relatively inexpensive strategy to pursue, it can grow your traffic exponentially over time, and it drives new visitors to your site while building your reputation. However, content marketing isn’t a magic solution, devoid of challenges for restaurants.

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Stories That Sell: Drawing More Attention To Your Site’s Blog

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Maintaining an active blog is an important part of running a business today; it provides an SEO advantage, offers a deeper look at your company’s commitments, and helps build an ongoing relationship between brands and their clients. Many companies, however, make an error when developing content for their sites. While there’s certainly a place for instructional posts and internal company news on your site, these types of posts – especially when they seem to outright brag about your brand – aren’t the sort of content that wins new customers.

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Small Biz Success: The Essentials of Social Media

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It’s the beginning of a new year, which means a fresh start and endless possibilities! For small businesses, a new year brings opportunities to explore different avenues for growth and success. A major consideration for many small businesses is investing in social media, but it can be overwhelming. Social media is a continually evolving landscape, but understanding the essentials removes the complications and makes it easy for anyone to seamlessly use social media marketing.

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3 Ways to Spread Holiday Cheer in a Digital World

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Digital marketing channels are the bee’s knees for spreading seasonal cheer throughout the holiday season. From your small business website to social media to email campaigns and blog posts, your business has ample opportunity to impart merriment to its audiences. The best part about using digital marketing is that you can do it all for free! If you have the systems in place, special holiday campaigns require only a bit of pre-planning and time. By successfully sharing festive sentiments over digital channels, your business can build brand awareness and customer conversions. Who wouldn’t want to give it a whirl?

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Should Your Company Go Virtual? Here are 3 Considerations

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When we think about servers, a few things may come to mind. In the past, the first image was often of stuffy server rooms that constantly needed to be kept cool and dry, and where a small problem could send a business into free fall for hours or days until the system could be repaired.

Today, however, many companies have never even seen their servers, because server virtualization is rapidly becoming the dominant model. Physical servers have proven to be too great a problem from an infrastructural upkeep standpoint.

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Craft Excellent Email Copy in 5 Easy Steps

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Email marketing is central to many small business’s marketing strategies. It is a fantastic way to send out branded messages to potential clients as well as longstanding, loyal customers. However, writing emails that inspire conversions and sales isn’t super intuitive to most people. Today, we’re going to break down the five essential components for successful email copy.

Let’s get right to it.

Keep It Short and Sweet (KISS)

As we’ve discussed, people’s attention spans are very short, as in you have eight seconds to hook someone into reading your email and continue reading your email copy. In order to position your emails for optimal open, read, and click-through rates, limit your word count. This applies to your subject lines and your email content.

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