5 digital content marketing trends to watch in 2023
From economic storms ahead, to AI content on the rise – here’s what you need to know for successful digital content marketing trends in 2023.
What Moms Want from Your Website – an Interview with Gabrielle Rystedt
Does your business market to moms? Mom’s just need to get stuff done. Yet too often businesses that market to parents make it unnecessarily difficult for busy moms to make a purchase. Moms are laser focused on what they need to do to keep their home running - your website needs to be laser focused on their behalf. We interviewed R Creative Co-Founder and former Chief Creative Officer Gabrielle Rystedt - a busy mom of five children - about online shopping as a mom.
How Do You Increase Brick and Mortar Sales?
Digital marketing is not just for virtual companies or online shops. A digital marketing presence is essential for all businesses, especially local, brick and mortar ones.
Keep Selling During a COVID Lock-down with a Virtual Storefront
Have coronavirus fears kept people from coming to your company’s physical location? Are you concerned that CDC recommendations for people to avoid crowds and maintain safe distance from one another will impact your ability to survive this national crisis? Maintaining a thriving business during a time of national panic is the emergency scenario that no business owner or manager ever wants to have to navigate. And while the ideal time for creating an emergency business plan has come and gone, the next best time to enact an emergency business plan is now. We can help!
4 Ways Updating to WordPress 5’s Gutenberg Will Affect Your Business’ Aging Website
WordPress has changed forever. WordPress' update to version 5 released on December 6, 2018 and brought with it a whole new way to compose blog posts and pages. The WordPress team is calling the new post editor "Gutenberg" (you know, after the guy who invented the printing press and changed media forever).If your business or nonprofit has an aging WordPress website you should know what you're in for and how to prepare before clicking the "update" button to WordPress 5.x. [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 is Gutenberg? Gutenberg is WordPress' attempt to keep up with the growth of popular DIY site builders like Weebly, Squarespace, and Wix. The classic WordPress editor is showing its age. It isn't drag and drop, it gets cluttered by plugin features, and it requires authors to keep clicking "preview" to see what their post will look like. Gutenberg aims to solve all of this. With WordPress 5 Gutenberg replaced the classic editor completely. WordPress users are now composing blog posts using rearrangeable content "blocks" instead of a single giant block of text, interacting more intuitively with plugins, and previewing their posts as they compose them rather than toggling between the editor and preview. Gutenberg has been a polarizing release for WordPress (just check out the comments below). But regardless of whether you think Gutenberg is an instant success or a slow burn it will affect how your business or nonprofit uses its website. WordPress 5's Gutenberg update will affect your business or nonprofit by... 1. Forcing you to develop a new workflow Have you ever tried to use…
How to Get Your Business Blog Noticed – An Interview with Professional Copywriter Gabrielle Rystedt
What if, for free, you could sit down with a professional who writes effective content for businesses and pick her brain about how to blog right? Well this interview is the next best thing.
J.R. Snider Plumbing
J.R. Snider, Ltd has been providing professional plumbing services to the Northern Virginia region for more than three decades. From general plumbing to water heater replacement, J.R. Snider does it all. J.R. Snider has been working with an area social media expert, Michelle of Loud Mouth Social, to grow and improve their online presence. But they were in need of a couple tweaks to their WordPress website that required some professional WordPress Maintenance and Support. We’re thrilled that Michelle contacted us to help out. We’ve enjoyed collaborating on this project with J.R. Snider and Loud Mouth Social. We assisted J.R. Snider by… Changing Colors Consistent branding is important for every business to effectively reach its market across various media. J.R. Snider’s logo is primarily blue and red but their website utilized orange often as an accent color. It was natural for their website’s design to match the atmosphere of their logo. Their original developer hard coded those colors in the home page template. They could not be easily changed using additional CSS or by editing the page in the WordPress admin panel. The theme template itself needed to be edited. We carefully replaced the orange elements of their homepage with blue and red colors from their logo in order to lend greater consistency to their homepage. Adding a Page for Requesting a Quote When we began working with J.R. Snider their website lacked a dedicated form for requesting a quote. Using their criteria we designed a form for them, styled it to match their site, published a new web-page with this form, added it to their menus, and tested the form for reliability. Now J.R. Snider can receive detailed quote…
Get Your Time Back and Reduce Your Stress with a Web Maintenance and Support Retainer
Maintaining a website is no easy task. From security to backups and software updates to new content, a website can consume a lot of your time. Worse, if you aren’t a web professional, maintaining your website may become yet another stressor. No wonder so many small businesses and nonprofits leave their websites unattended for months (or even years). Your website isn’t a billboard or a Yellow Pages listing - it doesn’t perform well if it is just created and then left behind. Your website is more like a digital storefront or office. It doesn’t only exist to be seen. As a digital location for your business your website also needs to maintained, secured, visited, and shopped. But are you the guy or girl to do it? If you haven’t been maintaining your website it’s about time to leverage it and get noticed. If you have been maintaining your site but it’s taking too much out of you it’s about time to delegate. A web maintenance and support retainer with a web professional may be just the thing you need to get the most out of both your website and your time. [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] Why Did You Launch Your Website? Perhaps you launched your website to drive more leads to your business. Maybe it was to invite more foot traffic to your storefront. Or maybe it was just so you would be perceived more professionally when people searched for you. (Why did you launch your website? Let us know in the comments below.) Regardless of the reason, you need to get back…
Reflections on our First Year in Business
What have you loved about your first year in business? Joshua A few weeks after quitting my full time office job to run Rystedt Creative I remarked to Gabrielle that this was the best decision of our marriage. Why? The time with my family means the world to me and I'm now pursuing one of my passions full time (my previous job didn't have a very positive or creative environment). I love that I can answer client questions any time they have them. I love the people I have worked with so far - especially Farm Market iD, Lady Environmental, and Holy Cross Lutheran Church. I love the combination of creativity and organization that running a business like this requires. Gabrielle I guess to answer this I need to back up a few months before we actually started Rystedt Creative. You could say it’s the “inception moment”, when Josh and I sat down to talk about our future and decided to actually do this crazy thing and start a business. I say crazy because, well, it was crazy. It still is. And I love that about this whole thing. We said “yes” to an off-the-wall idea (okay, not that off the wall – we’re both first born INTJs – there’s no true off-the-wall here) and went forth and did the dang thing. Together. I love that Rystedt Creative is truly a family business. Sometimes our three-year-old will want to “play client”, and we have to answer phone calls and talk about copywriting or blog posts. The whole thing is awesome to me. What have you not loved about your first year in business? Joshua Let's face it, running a new…
Stand Out From the Crowd and Stay One Step Ahead of Copycat Competitors
Copycats. Just when you thought you’d left these middle school nuisances behind, you see something come across your Instagram feed that looks shockingly familiar. A little too familiar… You overhear a newcomer to a networking event with an elevator pitch that you’ve heard before. That you’ve delivered before… Copycat competitors are lurking everywhere, regardless of what industry you work in. And with the proliferation of online content and widely shared ideas, it’s easier than ever for someone to pick up your trail and start mimicking your every move. If you haven’t experienced copycat competition yet, chances are, you will at some point down the road. Since getting off the Internet and conducting business by smoke signal isn’t exactly a viable option, how can you set yourself apart and stay one step ahead of your copycat competition? And are there any ways that copycats can actually help you stand out from the crowd? Read on to learn more about how you can stay ahead of your copycats and mute their impact. Step One: Own Your Niche Chances are, if you have a business of any sort, you also have a niche. Whether you cater to Colorado newlyweds seeking unique honeymoon itineraries or repair air conditioners in government buildings, you know your market and how to reach them. When you work your niche, you gain visibility in and develop strong relationships with others in that niche. Typically, you don’t have a lot of competition within that niche, and you stand out from the crowd simply because it’s such a specialized portion of the market. When copycats try to enter the scene, they may be watching your moves and try to gain an…