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Your Second Career As A Writer: Advice On Blogging And Articles
You didn’t know you had another job, did you?
It might actually not be your second job, but your fifth or sixth, and while this writing gig may not generate direct income, it can help you bolster your marketing for your main career, and pay big dividends!
How to Deal With A Bad Review
Some unpleasant things, like death and taxes, are certain. Others are less certain, but still more common than we’d like. One of these are bad reviews.
I Really Could Use A NAP
Admittedly, I would enjoy the standard use of the term ‘nap’ right about now, but here I refer to some industry jargon; a company’s NAP is…
What’s In A Name?
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”– even if you called it a daisy, “that swirly pink thing on the plant over there,” ros, rosa, roos or, in Indonesian, “bunga mawar.” However, if you were searching online for a dozen roses, it would really help if you knew you to call roses by name. Likewise, if you wanted to sell roses, it would really help if you advertised them by name.
Since you’re not promoting rose bouquets, but a service-oriented business, it helps to have a name. Since many of our customers are single-practitioner offices, many use their given name as their business name, but this may still lead to complications. For many of us, we get a name, we stick to it, and maybe we add some titles to it afterwards. But sometimes there are complexities and subtleties to consider.
Your (Google) Place In History
Update: Since the original posting of this article in 2011, Google has dramatically changed their process for creating listings for businesses. As a result of these changes, we are now unable to create listings for our customers in the Google Places directory. We still strongly urge all business owners to create listings in Google Places (or claim existing ones), and are here to assist you in that process!
Quiet, Please! (Why We Discourage Autoplay Sounds On Websites)
Like photos, contact forms and maps, music and videos on your site can be great “enhancer” features. When placing music on a site, you have the option as to whether to have the website automatically play the music, or play the music only when the user clicks the “play” button.
While you should always be looking for ways to make your site more dynamic and engaging, it’s important to be mindful of changes that might provoke a negative reaction. Sometimes, what seems like a good idea at first turns out to be counterproductive. Consider, for instance, some arguments against autoplaying music…
Questioning Your Website Content: Getting Back to Basics
I’ve noticed on a few occasions that the customers who don’t have basic contact information on their websites are often the ones pointing out that they don’t get contacted very much.
When put that way, this problem might seem self-explanatory, but often we find ourselves reminding our customers the importance of starting from the basic and most important information.
What Email Address Are You Using?
I remember when Gmail first came out. In addition to having a free, web-based email with a huge amount of storage, there was something else that marked a huge change in how email worked, at least for people around my age.
Pondering Personal Pictures
A longer-than average blog with Rich, our Directory Listings Specialist
(who happens to have a BFA in fine art, and has won national awards as an advertising copywriter, so listen to him!).
I’m not even going to start with a clever lead in, I’m just going to say outright: you probably should have a photo of yourself on your website. A few of our customers have might have specific reasons, privacy-related or otherwise, in which they specifically don’t want their likeness, but if you can’t immediately think of a good reason not to, I suggest you get a good photo of yourself on your website.