What’s The Real Cost of Creative Content?
When you think about working with a creative content professional to boost your brand or business, there are probably two things that immediately come to mind: First: “I’m going to get a personalized product that perfectly fits my business and brand!” And: “Holy crap! This is expensive!” If you were to order something like a customized ceramic pet food bowl from an artisan potter, you expect to pay more than you would for a similar product from, say, Walmart or PetSmart. You might pay three or four times more for a bowl that’s made without toxic chemicals or has a color scheme that you picked and your pet’s name etched into the side. The same rule applies when you are in the market for intangible creative products, like photos, design work or custom content. It’s hard to value creative intangibles when you’ve never shopped the market for them before. Often, people imagine that creative work should only cost them a little more than an out of the box product, like a subscription to a drag-and-drop web builder (Weebly, Wix, Squarespace), for example. And unfortunately, the internet – which connects businesses and individuals to any type of creative professional we could ever imagine – does a lot to devalue the hard work that creatives put into the products that they offer. This is a huge problem. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] What Happens When Businesses Devalue Creative Work? As a writer, I spend a small portion of my time browsing writing job postings to stay on top of emerging niches and content types that companies…
12 Ways to Use Value Added Content to Generate (and Nurture) Leads
Value added content is exclusive content that your audience cannot get anywhere else.Perhaps you have a blog and you've even been expanding into other forms of value added content. Yet you still are not generating the leads you want with that content.Value added content is the core of any robust inbound marketing strategy but you still need to leverage it. Merely publishing your content won't (usually) earn you customers.So here are 12 ways to use your value added content to generate leads: 1. Genuinely Help Your Readers Your content is not "value added" unless it is adding value to your readers. Your first goal with every piece of content you publish should be to help your readers - add value to their lives and businesses. Your potential customers can usually sense self-serving and useless content within seconds of loading your page. And when they sense this they "bounce" to another website. Keep your bounce rate low and generate more leads by genuinely helping your readers. 2. Build Trust in Your Brand Trust is an important part of any sales process. A purchase is an act of trust. Your customer is trusting that your service or product is going to solve a problem, improve his life, or help him reach his goals. A purchase is an act of faith in you, your business, and what you offer your customer. You need to build this trust early. Value added content is the perfect vehicle for building that trust. As you genuinely help your readers you build trust with them. Help them whether they buy from you or not and, paradoxically, they will be more likely to buy. 3. Invite Subscribers Email marketing…
How to Use Business Reviews to Boost Your Organic Search Results
Your business is awesome. You know it, we know it, but do your potential customers know how great you are? Having a wealth of happy customers may be the best word of mouth strategy but it does little to boost your organic search results online. When you transfer this word of mouth power to the Web great things happen! This is why many businesses are including online business reviews as part of their overall search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. You can use business reviews to boost your organic search results and drive additional traffic to your website. Online business reviews may be just the confidence boost your potential customers need before clicking on your link. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Searchers Rely on Business Reviews Many of your ideal customers do not know who you are yet. They need to be introduced to you and your great product or service. Unfortunately, too many people think of online marketing as tricking the-great-Google-list-making-robot into including you near the top of its list. To the contrary, successful online marketing is about building relationships - not lists. Someone needs to introduce your ideal customer to you - their ideal solution. That someone is often Google. Yet Google listing you doesn't carry much emotional weight. Searchers tend to trust you more if you are on page one but there is still little emotional connection. Relational marketing happens often on social media. Yet it can happen on Google, Yelp, and industry specific websites as well! Business reviews are one of the most effective means of having your business introduced to…
Why Reliable Web Hosting Matters for Your Business
Your business needs reliable web hosting so that you (and your visitors) can depend on your website today (and tomorrow). Every website is hosted somewhere. Hosting is the service that gives your website a location in the Web. Every website has hosting - including yours. Minimal web hosting provides your business with server space for your website's files. Yet hosting can also include additional features and services that increases available memory to handle spikes in traffic, protects your website from possible security breaches, backs up your website when changes are made, and more. It is these additional features and services that can make some web hosting services more reliable than others. Your business needs reliable web hosting so that your contact information, listed services, menu, or e-commerce portal is always available to your visitors. So what makes web hosting reliable? Look for these factors when shopping for web hosting and if you have had a poor web hosting experience so far, consider moving to a more reliable host. Reliable web hosting is... Dependable Nearly every web host today reports "100% uptime" - meaning that the websites they host are never down unexpectedly. Yet such claims do not mean that your website will always be online. These claims do not include "scheduled downtime" that may occur due to server maintenance. They also do not include downtime that may be accidentally caused by your developer or yourself. Sometimes... web hosts just lie. One of our WordPress maintenance and support clients host their website through a small upstart hosting company. They claim 100% uptime. Yet during our first two months with this client we submitted multiple tickets for unschedule and unexplained downtime that…
The Most Important Factor in Successful Business
There are many important factors that make up a successful business. Motivated employees, technology usage (hey, we can help with that), financial investment, marketing strategy, and more. Yet I think there is a single most important factor in successful business. Your committed diligence in accomplishing what you love is the most important factor in a successful business. Perhaps this principle could be broken down into two factors: hard work and passion. Yet I think they go together. If your passion doesn't motivate you to work hard you may not be as passionate as you think you are! This successful business factor, this passionate diligence, is actually one of the most important factors for a successful life. A successful king of the 10th century B.C. once wrote: "Keep thine heart with all diligence: for thereout cometh life" and "A slothful hand maketh poor: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich." According to this successful man the contents of one's life springs up from one's heart (one's passion). Furthermore, diligent work leads to success. What worked three millennia ago still works today. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Growing a Successful Business and a Thriving Family I wear a lot of hats (perhaps you do as well). The most important role I have is as husband and father. I have a growing family (our third child is due soon) and love every moment of it. I am passionate about my wife and my children and that drives me to work hard. If I didn't love these people as much as I do I wouldn't expend nearly…
The Mobile Trend
Online browsing habits have changed greatly over the last decade. No longer are users relying on their PCs for opening your emails, searching for your services, or purchasing your products. The majority of hours spent, search queries made, and emails opened are now from mobile devices. The smartphone trend has changed and will continue to change the Web. A slew of new smartphones are expected in 2018 including new iPhones (likely a total of three new handsets), new Google Pixels, and the LG G7. Innovation in mobile has slowed but not stopped with manufacturers now releasing handsets with always listening voice assistants, multiple cameras to detect depth, facial recognition, and processors faster than most office PCs. Thankfully your website can look beautiful on these mobile devices. You may not even need to completely rebuild your website to accomplish this. There are multiple solutions to mobile optimize your website including separate mobile URLs, adaptive design, and responsive design. Regardless of which method you choose to optimize your site the statistics show that your website must be mobile optimized to continue to generate traffic and convert visitors. An outstanding website is mobile optimized. Sales In 2016 the CEO of Intel, Brian Krzanich, stated that the upgrade cycle for PCs was slowing from an average of four years to an average of five to six years. He stated that "Right now, it's easier to move your phone to a new phone than your PC to a new PC". This comparison is telling. Buyers are using their phones to replace some of what their PCs do and PC sales are suffering. At the close of 2016 smartphone buyers were upgrading their devices at an…
How Your Business Can Leverage Google’s Longer Search Snippets
What is a search snippet? A search snippet is a description of or an excerpt from a webpage. The descriptions you see in search engine result pages (SERPs) are search snippets. What is a meta-description? A meta-description is a description of a webpage set by the site itself using structured metadata. Many search snippets you see in SERPs are set by the pages' meta-descriptions. What did Google change? Google has doubled the maximum length of search snippets from 160 characters to 320 characters. It is important to note that Google has not expanded all search snippets. So some web pages will show longer search snippets and some will continue to show shorter snippets depending on the meta-descriptions set and the search queries made. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Will your existing links show longer search snippets? Your existing links may or may not show longer search snippets. Whether they do or not depends on what is searched for, the content you have written on your page, and the meta description you have set. There are two types of search snippets that show in SERPs: 1. Search snippets generated from your page's content Most of the longer search snippets Google is showing are excepts from webpages. This allows them to better show the context of keywords within the body of a webpage. When someone searches for something on Google - like a "free coloring page" (hey, I print stuff for my toddlers, alright?) - Google will return results relevant to those keywords. Some of these results will show longer snippets lifted from the webpage. 2.…
7 Tips to Plan and Maintain an Editorial Schedule Like a Pro
Creating great content means spending time well, creating content. If you’ve got a blog (you should), your audience is likely expecting multiple new pieces of content from you each week. And that’s on top of your other job functions! Chances are, you’re not going to have something insightful to say every time you sit down at your computer. So if you want to stay on top of your content creation strategy, it’s essential to maintain an editorial schedule to help you stay on track. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] How to Maintain an Editorial Schedule to Improve Your Blogging Strategy Editorial schedules are essential for bloggers who want to stay on top of their content offerings. Whether you’re blogging once a week or multiple times a day, when you maintain an editorial schedule, you can keep your content on track and own your blogging strategy. When you use an editorial schedule to manage your blog offerings, you can ensure that you rotate through different post types on a regular basis - this keeps your audience engaged and increases the likelihood that one or more of your posts goes viral. If you haven’t established an editorial schedule yet, there are a few things you’re going to want to keep in mind to give your blogging strategy a boost: 1. Get a planner. Whether you prefer to use a physical planner or an app, you need a central location to keep track of your dates and your actual editorial schedule itself (whether or not it's a physical reality). I personally prefer physical planners and notebooks to keep…
How to Create a Search Engine Optimized Company Timeline Using HTML and CSS
In this post we are going to demo how to create a search engine optimized company timeline using HTML and CSS. Company timelines are a common feature of business website about pages. Some visitors want to know where your organization has come from (and where it is going). And, let's be honest, most businesses like to show their growth over the years. Some companies design their timelines as a simple list - like Starbucks: Other companies design interactive timelines with accompanying media - like Ford: In this post you will learn how to create a company timeline using HTML and CSS that looks beautiful but stays simple. This method also maintains proper HTML heading structure so that search engines can easily index your timeline. You can use this method yourself on nearly any website. Our timeline will be stylized but simple. When we are finished we will have something that looks like this: [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Step 1: Write Your Timeline's Content Before you get to any HTML or CSS go ahead and write up your timeline. Here's ours: Rystedt Creative Origins Timeline 1994 - Gabrielle picks up a blue crayon and writes her name - a writer is born. 2002 - Joshua builds a PC and checks out some books on HTML from the library. 2005 - Joshua begins regular web maintenance for a display product retailer. 2007 - Joshua begins offering web-development consultation to organizations as a young word of mouth freelancer. 2013 - Gabrielle graduates college with a BS in business administration. Joshua and Gabrielle get married but don't…
Happy Holidays from Rystedt Creative: Kickstart Your Website in 2018 with These Resources
A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all our readers! Read on for resources to help you kickstart your website in 2018. We hope you have been enjoying some much needed time with your families this holiday season. Because without a break it becomes too easy to crash and burn (like my two-year-old daughter on Christmas Eve). A new year is nearly upon us and with a new year come new goals. I (Joshua) have set some new marketing goals for the firm in 2018 and my wife and our Chief Creative Office (Gabrielle) has some new writing goals to reach for. We're going to be helping more clients reach more customers with better content in the best year we've had yet! What are your organization's goals for 2018? (Let us know in the comments below!) We want to help you reach those goals - even if you're only ever a Rystedt Creative reader or subscriber. Have you taken advantage of our free initial consultation call or 15-20 page website evaluation yet? Just contact us and we will point your website in the right direction. Free tools to help you determine your 2018 website goals The Outstanding Website Quiz and Checklist There are currently over one billion websites online but few of them stand out from the crowd. Use our quiz and checklist to see if you stand out online. Website Self-Evaluation Questionnaire To complement our evaluations and consultations we have developed this website self-evaluation. So you don’t need to just take our word for it – evaluate your own website! Free articles to help you kickstart your website in 2018 The Mobile Trend Your website must be mobile…