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We live in a society that places an incredibly high level of importance on image. In this image-conscious, hyper-competitive business world we live and work in, using web design to effectively convey your company’s brand, corporate culture and values is essential for setting your business apart from your competitors. This makes your business’ website incredibly important, considering it’s the first place people go to learn about your company.

Is the design of your company’s website getting people excited about your products and services? If your website looks outdated, what message is being sent? Is the image your website is presenting accurate? When your potential customers, future employees or prospective investors visit your website, what is the design telling them about your brand?

Web design impacts not only your brand and how outsiders perceive your company, it also impacts how effectively your search engine optimization efforts will perform. You might be asking yourself what web design has to do with SEO. Well, Yahoo, Bing and the guys over at Google track how much time people spend visiting your site. So, when visitors land on your site and aren’t instantly engaged, they’ll hit the back button before they’ve even read a line of copy. Websites that can’t hold the attention of visitors, can’t hold the attention of search engines, either.

While the “love at first sight” factor is important, like any good relationship, you need to be engaging as well. Good design should have the end user in mind. A beautifully designed website that is easy to navigate and effortlessly promotes your brand attracts new customers and keeps them coming back. Quality web design could be the difference between building a new relationship and getting dumped.

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One of our clients asked for advice on approaching different types of social media. She knew in theory that creating new content is good, but she wasn’t sure what content to put where.

“I have a blog, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account,” she asked us. “Should they all have different types of content? How often should I post on each one? Is there an easy way to replicate posts across different media?”

Starting from short content (Twitter) to longer content (blog posts), here’s our answer.

  • Twitter. There’s no real limit to how often you should post on Twitter. Things move quickly there, and it’s easy to miss people’s tweets, so posting frequently will give you a better chance of being seen and heard. In fact, it’s expected. If you’re not interacting pretty much every day, people will lose interest.Also, Twitter is supposed to be for socializing, so keep your posts conversational – people get pissed if you’re salesy. If you write business-related tweets, do it some 20% of the time, and make your tweets as un-pushy as possible.Because you want to tweet frequently, it’s fine to “push” your Facebook posts to Twitter (i.e., every comment you make on Facebook will show up on your Twitter account). However, it’s not a good idea to push your tweets to your Facebook page, because theoretically, you’ll have way too many posts. People get annoyed if you update your Facebook status 10 times a day – it’ll do you more
    harm than good.
  • Facebook. What you’re trying to do with Facebook is build a community around your brand. You want to start a conversation with your followers in the hopes that they’ll eventually use your page as a forum to talk about your company.To get the community started, about once a day, you can post thoughts, questions, polls, surveys, or anything that might get discussions started. If you can get to the point where you just monitor the page and chime in when questions are asked or problems arise, that’s ideal.
  • Blogs. Blogs are a great place to promote yourself and your company. The blog is on your site, and readers are expecting you to write about yourself. So you can be a little more salesy here.You should blog regularly –at least once a month, and ideally once every two weeks. Once a week is great if you have the time and content.Blogs can be used to answer FAQs, to talk about industry trends, or to announce new products, employees, or clients. Most importantly, blogs are great for letting your visitors and Google know that fresh content regularly appears on your site. If you have certain keyword phrases you’re going after, you can write entire articles about them, linking the phrases in the blog to the appropriate
    pages on your site.

    Pushing your blog articles to Facebook is a good idea. The content should be tied to the discussions on your Facebook page anyway, and the posts will sit on your page long enough to let multiple people see them. Pushing blog articles to Twitter is pretty much a waste of time –a one-time mention of a lengthy article will often be lost on Twitter users.

Overall, think of the different mediums as having different communication purposes. You can use Twitter and Facebook to interact with customers on a day-to-day basis, and then use your blog to talk less frequently, but more in depth, about issues that are important to them. With a good strategy in place and a little luck, you should soon have a strong following in each medium.

Atomic Interactive, A Dayton, Ohio website design agency is seeking a Search Engine Ninja to join our marketing team. We’re a fast growing, energetic team who loves to develop powerful online business tools, applications and strategies for our wide range of fun clientele. We work in a casual environment located Downtown in the Firefly building. If your passionite about your craft, love a collaboritive team, and can appreciate a good game of ping pong we’d love to talk more.

The Search Engine Ninja will work with the Search Engine Marketing Manager and Internet Marketing Team to create and implement creative search strategies and track the effectiveness of new and existing campaigns.

The successful candidate will have strong analytic capabilities with specific knowledge of online marketing analytics. The Search Engine Ninja is expected to produce daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting; assigned analytic projects; and produce independent analysis to help search engine strategy.

Essential Functions:

Provide support and analysis for the Search Engine marketing team including:

  • Monitor, track, and report on paid search metrics, including trend analysis.
  • Provide support for search engine optimization recommendations.
  • Interact with copywriter and web service manager to optimize copy and landing pages for Search Engine Marketing.
  • Provide ad-hoc support for the Search Engine Marketing team including:
    1. Set up of new campaigns
    2. QA creative
    3. Assist in Keyword discovery and expansion
    4. Top keywords raking by category
    5. ROI by Campaign, Site, and Category
    6. Research and analyze competitor advertising links
    7. Back link strategy and implementation
    8. Directory submissions and revisions
    9. Internal link optimization
    10. SEO technical analysis and evaluation
    11. Website remediation
    12. Key phrase research
    13. META optimization
    14. Stay up to date on the latest industry developments

Job Qualifications:

  • 1+ years previous online marketing experience. Ad agency or online direct marketing background a plus.
  • Self motivated, detail oriented and able to prioritize daily work efficiently.
  • Exceptional communication skills. Show superior judgment and professionalism when corresponding with partners and team members.
  • Demonstrate a proactive work ethic when managing numerous competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
  • Proven ability to accommodate evolving responsibilities and last minute changes.
  • Able to analyze metric data and convey recommendations appropriately to supervisors.
  • Proficient in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Please email your resume to [email protected]. No phone calls please.