Ann Siegle

January 1st is the annual Setting of the New Year’s Resolutions. All across the world, people are vowing to work out more, eat more fruits and vegetables, get more work done, take the Facebook app off their smartphone and be nicer to everyone they see. Resolutions almost always get broken, why? They didn’t follow the S.M.A.R.T goal setting model. Specific Measureable Attainable Realistic Time-Bound The S.M.A.R.T framework for goal setting works because it frees you up from the nebulous “I will…

How can content development, lead capture tools, Facebook and Twitter can generate 30 new leads a week for your retail e-commerce store?  Lead generation tools, plus social media marketing and blogging are a powerful small business and retail e-commerce combination that works for e-commerce retailers. Let’s look at the combination that is working so well for a client that they’re generating more than 30 qualified leads a week, on average, and have boosted sales 500% in one quarter. We’ll first…

How to write a business blog post in 3 easy steps? Steps even your average first grader knows? Indeed, writing itself is one of the biggest hurdles that business bloggers face. Here are three easy steps to get your writing mojo going. Why learn to write better? The biggest downfall many business bloggers make is not blogging enough – 3-5 times a week is optimal to drive traffic. Yet many would-be writers are not comfortable with the process of concepting,…

Did you know Google changed their search algorithms last year? That flew under the radar of most business owners and a few marketing directors. They are heavily emphasizing new, quality content on web sites over things like meta tags and keywords, and other ‘behind-the-scenes’ coding. If you want your company to rank under a particular long tail keyword search (such as engravable awards Lansing, Michigan, or insurance agent west Lansing or East Lansing chiropractor) you have to have fresh, new content…

13 steps to, 7 top tips for, 9 ways to get more…. Why do we gravitate to lists in business blog posts? There are a lot of scientific reasons. But the clearest reason is this: While googling “how to make a bow and arrow, ”  a woman and her seven-year old child  selected the one titled “How to make a bow and arrow in 13 steps.” When asked why she selected that out of the top ten results, she said it was that…

Have you ever stumbled across a tweet that had an interesting topic that you wanted to read? I did, recently. It was about how large manufacturers in a particular industry listen to customers to influence business decisions. Who wouldn’t want to read that, right? In particular, they mentioned a brand that I love.  I was using my phone to read the tweet, which led to a teaser, not a blog, so I didn’t download it at that time. So I went…

Developing content for your company’s blog is critical for generating traffic and nurturing leads. This is especially true for health care products and services, IT and software companies, as prospects have a lot of questions,  the time from their consideration to purchase is lengthy and product investment may be quite high.  How to interview and develop technical blog content for when you’re not a technical expert?  It’s not rocket science (usually.) As a marketer, however, you may not be the…

All institutions of higher education need to be competitive with communications, just like any other organization that seeks to sell products and services. Despite unique features of each individual institution of higher education the following key communications concepts should make up the core of any higher education marketing plan. 1. A champion to lead the effort – Someone in upper management or from the board of governors should assume the leadership role for the higher education communications effort and build up support among…

           In the first part of this series, How Much Does a Web Site cost?(Spoke8, New Link?) You could seesurface that complexity drives up cost, and simplicity lowers it. But that’s not always the case. Simplicity in style, architecture and user interface is often incredibly complex under the hood, so to speak, and as mysterious as what goes on under the hood of your car, it can be expensive to build. In the case of the car example, for…