Content Marketing 3 - Old City Web Services

Holiday Marketing Tip Challenge

November 20, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

FACT: St. Augustine attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each holiday season.

Whether a visitor stays for one night or all month, it is widely known that during the holidays, tourism in the nation's oldest city is thriving. If you own a B&B, restaurant or tour company, you're probably busy answering the phone and responding to email inquires this time of year.

Even though you're busy, don't forget to engage your customers with holiday marketing initiatives! This season, Old City Web Services challenges you to try at least one of these three marketing tips. Test it out and then shoot us an email or give us a call to let us know if it was a success!

1. Dress-up your Facebook page

As you dress your turkey for Thanksgiving, why not dress-up your Facebook and Twitter pages while you're at it! Create a holiday-themed cover photo that includes one incentive to customers--a promotion, discount or giveaway. What better way to engage customers while getting into the holiday spirit at the same time.

Not sure what a Facebook cover photo is? Old City Web Services specializes not only in custom design, but in Social Media too! Contact Us for more info.

2. Invite your website to the party!

Is your website holiday-ready? Make sure your site is updated with holiday flare, such as photos from Nights of Lights, a video featuring how to make a delicious holiday treat or a new Christmas package/special. Add a minimum of one piece of holiday flare to your website that will let customers know you're the go-to business to visit during their stay in St. Augustine.

Do you have the flare, but not the web expertise? Contact Us for a quote on giving your site that extra holiday glitz you need!

3. Give thanks to your customers

This is the perfect time of year to give thanks to those who love and support, not only you, but your business too! Send out an email to your past and present customers, letting them know you appreciate their brand loyalty. It's almost guaranteed this will bring back at least one new sale or prospect. After all, what harm can it do? If anything, you will put smiles on your customers faces...what more could you ask for?

No way of getting the message out? Old City Web Services can design an e-mail template using your photos, logo and colors & text, upload your contact list(s) and send out a mass e-mail blast to all your customers for you! Contact Us for more info.

Need help updating your site

October 23, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Nobody likes to see outdated / false information on a company or organization's website. If your site currently has inaccurate information, such as dates, prices or ancient photos, it's time to think about an easier way to maintain this valuable investment of yours.

Setting aside time to update your site is often difficult for small business owners, especially when many already exceed 40+ hours a week running their business. Sometimes it's much easier (and more efficient) to let the professional manage it for you...and that's where we come in! Old City Web Services offers a monthly or quarterly update service for Content Management System websites. Let us spend a few hours each month or a little more each quarter, freshening up your site with new photos, updated pricing sheets, specials, media, links and more. These updates will help ensure customers keep coming back to your site. There is no better way to get repeat visitors than by making sure your site presents a new or different experience for users.

How does this work you may ask? First, we'll take a look at your website and then come up with a customized, viable and affordable plan that will suit your needs and schedule best. All you have to do is shoot us a quick email to: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com with the subject line "Help me update my site" and include your website URL and the best way/time to reach you. Our Project Manager will be in touch shortly to discuss!

Expand your reach via email marketing

August 7, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Want to know one of the best ways to stay in touch with your customers? Email marketing is an easy way to produce a message and get it to your audience within seconds. It's cost effective and, if done properly, can help build brand awareness and loyalty. This form of marketing can cost as little as a few cents per message and generally speaking, the response rates remain strong when it comes to opens and clicks. Because email is alive and kicking, email marketing is still a central channel for most businesses. With this being said, it has become increasingly important for small businesses to utilize email marketing properly. Below are 3 tactics to increasing your email marketing reach.

1. List Management

Collect, manage and send messages to segmented groups of customers by creating customized contact lists. Let a professional help you organize and manage your contacts in one place. Old City Web Services helps clients by quickly exporting contacts into an email marketing system, then grouping them accordingly (i.e. general interest, repeat guests, brides, etc). We will keep your lists current and manage both new subscribers and those who wish to unsubscribe.

2. Social Share

Not only are you reaching hundreds or thousands of customers via email, but you can increase the volume of people exposed to your messages by sharing your email campaigns with the company's social media followers. This creates potential to spread your message through the viral channels of social media.

3. Tracking

How many people opened your email? Of those people, how many forwarded your message to others? Did you gain or lose subscribers? All of these questions should be asked and analyzed to determine what's working and what's not in order to maximize the Return on Investment (ROI).

Let the professionals help! Old City Web Services offers email marketing campaigns catered to small businesses. Expand your reach today and start targeting your customers by giving us a call: 904.829.2772 or emailing us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com.

3 tips on advertising your business online

July 10, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Making room in your marketing mix for online advertising does not always have to burn a hole in your wallet. There are numerous inexpensive ways to advertise your business online that can have just as big of a return as some of the more costly ways. Below are 3 cost-effective tips on advertising your business online:

1. Get local

First, make sure your business is claimed on local listings such as Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Places for Business. Take advantage of these free tools that will increase your search result rankings for locals or visitors searching online in your area. Also, don't forget to utilize community sites that have a proven track record of high volume visitors. If you are a local shop, restaurant, B&B or other St. Augustine business that is not taking advantage of advertising on OldCity.com, you should seriously consider it! Advertising or having your business listed (and back-linked to your website) is the most cost-effectively way to get the word out about your business to a more targeted group. It's this simple: Our traffic becomes your traffic.

2.Try Facebook Ads

We've said it before and we'll say it again -- but this time with some stats! In 2010, the total Florida population was 18,732,783 and 42% or7,839,520 people were Facebook users!(www.internetworldstats.com). Furthermore, you can expect the number of Facebook users has nearly doubled in the last 3 years. Why choose Facebook? For the simple fact that it allows you to create several ads and target them based on location, demographics and interests. It's directed, effective and most importantly - affordable.

3. Publish Yourself

It's not nearly as difficult to get published these days as we see many more credible online publications forming. How does it work? Submit articles, PSA's, press releases, news releases, etc. to various reputable and local websites. In return for your content, many of these websites will offer back-links to your website providing you with potential traffic and leads for your business. This will also help you become established as an expert in your field or industry.

Want to start advertising your business online today, but would rather let an expert help? Contact Old City Web Services today! We'll take the stress off your shoulders by determining the online advertising outlet(s) that's best suited for your business needs. Give us a call: 904.829.2772 or email us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com for more information.

What is RSS and is it still important?

June 26, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

What does RSS stand for? It stands for Really Simple Syndication. Now you're probably saying to yourself, "Okay, but what is it?" Here's our simple answer: RSS feeds gives readers a method to keep up with their favorite blogs, online news and any other favorite websites. Anyone can choose the sites they wish to subscribe to and then receive updates in one centralized location. In essence, RSS allows content to come to you. Pretty neat idea huh?

How can RSS feeds help your business? Simple-- If you're a website owner or blogger, RSS is a means to gain a loyal following of internet users. It helps grow your website by keeping you in the forefront of readers mind while they're browsing their feed. As a small business, you may not update your web content as often as you should or you may choose not maintain a blog, however RSS just gives you more of a reason to do just that. You can track how many users subscribe to your feeds and focus your messages on what they want to hear.

If you sell products online, RSS will allow consumers to stay up-to-date on your newest items and specials. Who knows--these subscribers may likely be your next in-store customer! If you are a travel blogger, RSS will allow people to subscribe to your posts and increase your number of readers. If you post upcoming events, news or press releases on your site, RSS feeds will allow subscribers to view this content every time you update it.

Users can sign-up for your feeds using multiple platforms such as Google Reader, My Yahoo and various mobile apps.

Need help setting up RSS feeds on your website or blog? Old City Web Services offers training services that will teach you how to set up your very own RSS feed system to best suit your business. Contact us today to help you get started! Give us a call: 904.829.2772 or email us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com for more information.

Want to stay up-to-date on happenings around our Nation's Oldest City? Become a subscriber to our Calendar of Events that's updated daily! Click on the icon below to subscribe for free:

The Importance of Ongoing Optimization

April 12, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

A common question we often hear is: When is my site optimized? The best answer: It's an ongoing process. With this being said, constant SEO and SEM modification will lead you to a more optimized site. It is important to invest in ongoing Optimization in order to reach your ultimate goal of the moment where every page, text, image and call-to-action is perfectly aligned with the wants and needs of your audience.

Here is a list of SEO/SEM services we recommend be a part of your ongoing optimization process:

Fluctuations in keyword/key-phrase demand: Say your website is 5 years old, key words and key-phrases that were rarely used in 2008 may be highly used across the web today. For example, the exact phrase 'content marketing' was unknown to many 5 years ago, but now can be found on over 4 million web pages, including over 2 million blog posts. This validates the importance of constantly researching and updating your keyword glossary based on new keywords and search trends.

Modified user preferences: Frequently reviewing your Google Analytics and being able to fully understand the stats will help narrow down where on your site people tend to go and what they are doing once they are there. Try plugging in a key-phrase into Google, Bing and Yahoo....what type of content do you see? Maybe there are lots of videos at the top of the results or info-graphics and visuals. This would indicate that video and images are resonating with your audience.

Social Updates: From Facebook to Pinterest to Google+, one thing is guaranteed-- there will always be a new social network. With every social update comes an opportunity to reevaluate your content. After determining where your target audience is socializing online, you can create a compelling user experience within that network.

So, how often do you need ongoing optimization? The simple answer is, it all depends. Whether it's monthly, semi-monthly or quarterly, you should first have a professional do the preliminary research. Our SEO/SEM team always completes an initial analysis of your site prior to giving recommendations. This will determine your specific needs and establish an ongoing optimization schedule that's suited best for your business.

Let Old City Web Services help you improve your site's optimization by conducting an Initial Analysis and Evaluation to determine your specific business needs. Give us a call: 904.829.2772 or email us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com to set up your free consultation!