For most of our clients we handle their email marketing. While each customer has a different approach it seems offering your customer a baseline of information about what you do is more valuable than trying to sell your services.

For example one of our customers is Tingley Electric Services. Vinny Tingley is a local electrician who provides tips to his customers on a monthly basis. Last month he offered a link to a rebate from Energy Star on changing the electric thermostats. He has had tremendous results. I encourage you to visit his site and see what Tingley’s Tips has to offer.

Blogging has become an extremely popular trend for both the personal and business community, many still don’t realize the importance of having a company blog. Company blogs can attract thousands of viewers through search engines, social networking and social media websites and lead them back to your main company website. Blogs are also a great way to build the brand of your organization !

One of the most beneficial reasons for starting a company blog is that it can alert potential clients of new products or ideas that you may be offering, and, can be an extremely useful tool in generating leads for your organization. It can also be used for obtaining product feedback. Doing this however, is easier said than done, so here a few tips on how to use your company blog to effectively generate leads.

1.Quality: While it seems to make sense that the more content you publish on your blog will generate more leads, the opposite seems to be true. Too much content will overwhelm your viewers, and will end up deterring them from following through. The most important thing about a blog is to generate readers, so focus on well-written, interesting posts that keep the reader in mind. More readers mean more potential leads, so focus on quality, rather than quantity.

2. Engage your reader: Once you have created a following of readers, it is useful to use offers to entice people with something in exchange for their contact information. This is so that viewers can get to know your organization better, and in time, become a potential lead.

3. Develop an offering: After you’ve come up with a smart idea for an offer, the final process is to inform the viewers about the offer through a Call to Action. This is what the reader will physically click on to receive the offer, and acts as a substitute sales pitch. It’s extremely important that this link is able to grab viewer’s attentions.

The purpose of blogging to drive sales

I have been redesigning a few websites recently. On each of the sites I have been adding a 404 page. ( see example at my website http://www.bostonwebcreative.com. If the site had pages previously and you have moved them so they do not exist it is a good idea to create a error 404 page. This way if someone has booked marked your page they will not go to a blank page with a stale error 404 code, they will still be on your website.

Here are the easy steps to create and install a error 404 page.

Step 1

On your root folder create an .htaccess file and place this code on that page.
ErrorDocument 404 /error.html

Step 2

Create a blank page with the name error.html

Step 3

HTML/ CSS out your error.html page to look like the rest of your site.

Step 4

add some sort of graphic or text to show that it is a 404 error.

Step 5

FTP up to the server.

I recently read the book titled Accidental Billionaire:The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, from the author of the book ” Bringing Down the House,” Ben Mezrich. I am not sure if just because both of these ideas started in the heart of Boston but these two stories I find to be very intriguing.

I wanted to touch on the founding story of Facebook and recommend it as an interesting read for all of you who are interested in understanding social media and how it was started. The concept and idea is so simple, which is one of the reasons why social networking and media have changed lives and companies today.

If you are interested and have some time, I would recommend reading this book.

Accidental Billionaire