Philippines Marketing Blog

5 Pinteresting Tips for Local Brands

Angela — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:51:10 +0000

It is undeniable that Pinterest has become the latest social media craze. It recently joined the likes of Facebook and Twitter as one of the most visited social networking sites in 2012. For those who haven’t used Pinterest yet, think of it as a virtual pinboard where one can pin and repin images in themed pinboards. Pinterest is practically an online cork board where users can post pictures, articles and videos that interest or inspire them. The simplicity of its features makes it easy for people to fall in love with it at first try.

Besides an excellent place to find and collect wedding gowns and design ideas, Pinterest has evolved into a powerful tool for businesses. According to a recent study conducted by Shareaholic, Pinterest now surpasses Twitter in terms of driving traffic. Big brands such as Nordstorm, Whole Foods, Minted, Real Simple and The Travel Channel easily found their way through Pinterest and made the popular photo sharing site work for their businesses. Question is will Pinterest also work for small, local brands like yours? You might be surprised how local businesses can do research and gain an edge with Pinterest using its search feature. Below are simple and effective ideas on how to use Pinterest for your brand effectively.

#1 Link your Pinterest to Facebook and Twitter

Every time you make a pin, it will appear on your Facebook and Twitter feed too. This way, your fans and followers on the other social networking sites will see your activity on Pinterest. Some of them might even follow you on Pinterest.

#2 Pinterest is not all about promotion

It is a place to show off your company culture and show your audience different ideas that can correlate with your products and services. For example, a Cake store should not only create boards with pictures of their products and prices, but also showcase event themes to go along with their cake variants so that people can get ideas on how to make everything come together nicely.

#3 Give people a reason to follow you back

Create a few boards first before encouraging people to follow you. Title your boards properly and keep them organized by arranging them thematically.

#4 Find local pinners

In order to find local users, click the search bar at the top left and enter the town you are targeting and click search. Pinterest will automatically show boards associated with the place you entered. The trick here is to filter it with People. You will then see Pinners from the town you entered. After that, you can follow them, like and comment on their boards. You can also make a dedicated board for repins and name it “Awesome Repins” or “Best (City or Town) Pinners.” Pinterest gives you the power of engagement. It keeps you updated with the things your target audience seeks for.

#5 Use Pinterest as a research tool

Find out what your target audience loves the most by looking through their pinboards. Take notes on what kind of products they like and the styles that interest them. People go to Pinterest to discover and be inspired by things — which makes it perfect for businesses. Pinterest will help you get a feel for the interests, desires and inspirations of your target market. Take advantage of this benefit to position your brand effectively and to align your products and services along with the needs of your customers.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing can help you maximize the power of social media to drive significant traffic to your website. TNO is an independent marketing consultancy firm in the Philippines with clients based in Europe, North America and Asia. For more information, visit www.thenorthernoffice.com or call 045 499 1082 for a free quote.

4 Technical SEO Ideas for Greater Online Visibility

Angela — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:03:28 +0000

There are various ways on how to improve your search engine rankings. These days, online marketers are big on quality content and social media marketing. But at the end of the day, visibility boils down to one thing – Technical SEO. It is about ensuring the search engines can easily find and categorize every page of your site.

Here are four, helpful tips you can use to achieve higher online visibility.

Check for proper server response codes. Higher site ranking means knowing a little bit about server response codes. There is a long list of server response codes but you just have to know a few. You just have to make sure that your server is delivering a 404 for a broken link, a 200 for a page that’s fine, and a 301 for a redirect. Server response codes show the process of finding and sending the file to the user went every time a page is requested. The same codes are sent back to crawlers so it is really important to learn to know these.

Get rid of duplicate content. Duplicate content negatively affects site quality and crawl efficiency that might eventually result to decrease in site rankings. You simply need to get rid of it. Duplicate content include multiple URLs pointing to the same page or very similar pages, printer friendly versions of content and session IDs. There are a few ways to correct this. Like for example, whenever a content on a website can be found at multiple URLs, it should be canonicalized (rel=canonical) for search engines.

Look for unreachable pages. You need to find pages that were not properly removed. This is to prevent people from stumbling on pages that you have already detached from the website. Yes, this is a tedious task that you must do. One thing you can do is to search the server log files for every unique URL loaded over a 6-month period. Pages that you have blocked might show up in your log file even if they’re blocked.

Find spider traps. A spider trap is basically a series of links or pages on a website which cause search engine spiders to get caught in a loop creating an infinite number of pages which don’t exist on the site. This can cause you a problem on the indexing of your site. Such issue may happen when you have dynamic content on your website such as calendar or a dynamically generated web structure. Getting rid of spider traps is not only allowing search engines to index your site easily but also prevent GoogleBot from hitting files that has issues that may eventually crash your server.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing is an independent marketing consultancy firm that helps businesses build and maintain high search engine rankings. Using our web development services, we can help you build remarkable online brands. Call us at (045) 499 1082 to schedule a free consultation or visit our website www.thenorthernoffice.com to know more about us.

Online Surveys: 5 Benefits of Knowing Your Audience

Angela — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:14:39 +0000

When was the last time you actually asked your customers what they really wanted? If you’re running a business, knowing what your customers want is very important. Conducting surveys with your target audience is often overlooked, but it is clear that surveys are something every business should be doing because having a vague picture of your audience can definitely break your business and your brand.

Basically, online surveys let you find out the interests of your prospects, what your customers really want, and acquire unique market insights that you need to run your business smarter and eventually ensure success.

#1 Establish Business Focus

Surveys allow you to get a better understanding of what your audience needs and wants. This will let you focus more of your efforts on improving your products or services that your audience prefers the most. Knowing your audience through feedback and comments towards your offerings can not only save you time and resources but also give you some clues on the direction you want to take and feel more confident about the services you offer.

#2 Create Stronger Customer Relationships

Letting your customers know that their opinions matter to you makes them feel empowered and important. This gives them a sense of your business philosophy and dedication to providing excellent products and services. This process makes them more interested and eager to work with you. This is how “loyal following” begins.

#3 Real-Time Data Results

Compared to traditional surveys, online surveys allow you to achieve real-time results. This instant data gathering gives marketers the information they need, when they need it. Old data can become irrelevant in today’s fast paced world where people’s needs and wants evolve quickly. Timely information on the other hand is KEY to a relevant and successful marketing campaign.

#4 Automated reporting

Gone are the days of waiting hours to summarize critical survey feedback. Another major benefit of online survey is automated reporting. Same as with real-time data, this helps with real-time statistics accompanied by detailed reporting that can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Marketers that are on-the-go can greatly benefit from this because this leads to improved work efficiency.

#5 Accurate and reliable data

The risk for human error is minimized by online surveys. Automatically generated feedback reports ensure more reliable results and more specific information for use in marketing campaigns. No need for manual insertions. With online surveys, you can achieve more accurate and dependable data that helps you work on your business core and do away with the clutter.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing is an independent marketing consultancy firm that helps businesses generates more profit by leveraging their marketing efforts to a whole new level. TNO utilizes online surveys to get a clear picture of your target audience and their needs. We can create effective online surveys to help create better or improve existing marketing campaigns. Call us today at 045 499 1082 for a free consultation. Visit www.thenorthernoffice.com for more information.

New Google Link Algorithm: How to Know If You’ve Been Hit?

Angela — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:18:53 +0000

Google announced a major algorithmic update that primarily focuses on links recently. The new Google link algorithm, just like the previous updates, is very important to webmasters and search marketers because it can help explain the latest changes in rankings and organic website traffic.

Knowing and understanding the new Google link algorithm allows you to identify the adjustments you need to apply to your search engine optimization practices to be able to stay away from penalty and keep up with the competition.

Basically, the Unnatural Link update of March 2012 is the biggest update so far compared to the previous huge updates such as Vince in 2009, Florida in 2003 and Panda in 2011. The previous updates focused more on certain types of websites, the Unnatural Link update on the other hand is all about penalizing websites purely based on the link strategy.

As expected, it has caused huge problems for the sites that are affected. Over 700, 000 websites have received a message from Google or popularly known as the Unnatural Link Notice.

Branded3.Com, a Digital and SEO Agency in the UK, analyzed over 50 reputable websites who have been hit by Google’s latest update. In the course of their study, they have observed the following:

Once you receive the Unnatural Link Notice in your Webmaster Tools account, a penalty will arrive within weeks
Branded3.Com noticed some instances where violators received the penalty exactly 21 days after they get the link notice
In most cases, the penalty is phrased based. This means that sites lose rankings for all keywords related to the ones used in the anchor text of the links Google considers as being “unnatural”
The Unnatural Link penalty is observed too sharp to be purely link devaluation. Most of the cases show that the landing pages being hit fall lower than they would rank with no links at all.
Penalty for the worst offenders can be sitewide

Today, Google is asking people to clean up unnatural links. One of the best ways is to contact the person who placed the links to get them removed. If not possible, you can manually email the sites and request for links removal. Removing bad links is a tough job that everybody must follow to be able to maintain and improve site rankings.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing helps you by staying up to date to Google updates. This gives you clues on how to improve your rankings and maintain high online visibility. If you need help or advice on search engine marketing issues, please get in touch with us. TNO is an independent marketing consultancy firm based in the Philippines with clients based in Europe, America and Asia. Call us at (045) 499-1082 today or visit our website www.thenorthernoffice.com.

source: www.branded3.com

Killer Content Marketing Techniques

Angela — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:27:27 +0000

Capturing an audience is to stand out from all the clutter in the World Wide Web. Effective content marketing is a major key in capturing people’s attention. It helps you earn a distinctive brand, a loyal fan base and increase in sales.

Good content marketing is the single best way to beat bigger competitors online that do not require a big budget to succeed. Content Marketing used to be about customer magazines and mailed newsletters. Now it spans to blog, email newsletters, eBooks, white papers, articles, videos and more. Below are a few content marketing techniques that you can apply to your business to get the online visibility you need.

Prepare

The first three important steps towards creating killer content are as follows:

Tone and Style. Prior to writing your web content, your brand needs to have a defined voice to prevent inconsistencies in the future.

Picking Content Creators. Choose the right person to create you content so you have to pick diligently.

Workflow. Having a well-staffed company to take part in researching, writing and publishing is better than the ‘one person does everything’ workflow. Allowing a number of heads to take part in the process helps you catch mistakes and bring more ideas for a better output.

Persuade

Create persuasive content. Take precaution on how you speak and what you say.

Use Simple Language. Studies show that most people respond best to advertisements that contain no scientific language. Keep your words plain and simple.

Have Opinions. Brand that have opinions are seen to be interesting. Be bold and popular but remember not be hostile towards your competitors. Refrain from mentioning names.

Sell the Benefits. Informing your audience about the benefits of your products or services helps your audience makes purchase decisions. Focus content on the benefits rather than promoting the product directly. Using ‘benefit-focused’ copy quickly tells the reader what’s in it for them.

Teach

It is important to remember that people want to hear answers and discover something new. In simpler words, think and give what your audience wants.

Give Answers. Remember that most people surf the web to look for answers. Content marketing has to offer practical advice that people can benefit from.

Say or Do Something New. Stay away from the boring and unoriginal content. Do something new or present existing topic in a new way. Don’t settle for block of texts. Use images, create infographics or shoot a video.

Captivate

Draw your audience by giving your content more personality. Captivate by telling stories and characters to draw them in and leave them wanting more.

Tell a story. Base on a number of studies conducted at Swinburne University of Technology, telling stories can be useful in corporate communication. It is a great way to connect with your readers.

Use Real People. To be able to bring people close to your brands, use real people. Let your audience see your employees by using pictures, audio and video. People choose to get involved with a company with which they feel a personal connection.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing makes use of engaging copies and informative content to attract its target audience. TNO is an independent marketing consultancy firm based in the Philippines with clients based in Europe, America and Asia. We develop killer web marketing content with the client’s goals and target audience in mind. For more information, go to www.thenorthernoffice.com.

Why Should Your Brand Be Using Twitter?

Angela — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 07:00:28 +0000

Last year, Twitter successfully emerged as the closest competitor of Facebook. It garnered its own niche and gained its own millions of users. Twitter’s sleek and user-friendly interface has all the good things that a social media user is looking for. It has instant messaging, social networking and all other micro blogging features which other sites have.

As it gained popularity, Twitter has evolved into a business marketing medium. Professional marketers, business professionals and bloggers are now using Twitter to promote businesses, brands, products and services online. Twitter is now a necessity for businesses with consumers that has access to the internet.

Here are six main reasons why you should stop ignoring Twitter.

Make connections and expand your network. Similar to popular networking sites, Twitter helps you stay updated and connected with your family and friends. Same as with business owners, connecting with your existing and previous clients are just a few clicks of a mouse. You can announce new things about your business such as launch of new products, promos, discounts or events that are yet to take place.

Be updated with the latest happenings. Twitter gets you real time information. You can use this marketing opportunity by tweeting a sale in your store, giveaways, opening of a new branch and more!

Create concise messages with 140 characters Tweet. This favorite Twitter feature is considered as a rapid response communication tool. Short 140-character tweets allow users to communicate rapidly and informally. Readers find conciseness in these messages that’s why many prefer Twitter in this sense.

Spread the word with the re-tweeting Feature. This feature is helpful in expanding your network. Your tweets can be retweeted boundlessly by your followers. By this, you can grow your network of followers exponentially.

Achieve targeted traffic with Twitter tools. There are tools that you can use to find your target audience. TweepSearch helps in specific search among your followers. Twellow helps find people related to your industry. Twitter Local can get you updates from people based on geographic location. TwitterSearch lists all tweets based on your search term.

Effective promotion tool. Twitter is helpful in driving traffic to your website. Promote your blog whenever you have a new post by leaving a link on your tweet. Using hashtags (#) properly also adds visibility to your tweet in the Twitter stream. Do you have new products or promotions coming up? Tweet it!

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing recognizes the value of Twitter Marketing for businesses. With proper Twitter account management, you can acquire a massive Twitter following and be able to build a social media presence. For more information on Twitter Marketing, call us today or visit our website at www.thenorthernoffice.com!

Google Panda Recovery 101: Quality Content

Angela — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 05:45:04 +0000

First released in February 2011, Google Panda has affected websites and their content around the world with its new way of grading websites. Google Panda is basically a change to Google’s search results algorithm. In simpler words, the Panda update acts as a quality filter on search results, utilizing survey data to determine desirable and undesirable site characteristics.

Adapting to Panda updates require adjustments on your search engine optimization practices. Most of it heavily involves the quality of the content.

How can you recover if you’ve been hit?

Improving your content is a great start if you are planning a comeback. According to Google, “high quality content” comprises a large portion of the search engine ranking criteria. Below are actionable pointers for improving content quality.

Content Authority. Users take into consideration the qualifications of the author because content authority improves the perceived value of content in the minds of the readers.
Site Credibility. Establishing content authority extends to building site credibility. Credible websites are characterized by high percentage of up-time, are easy to use, easy to navigate and have high page speed.
Content Purpose. Every web page needs to fulfill a unique purpose, otherwise it may be considered as a low quality website by Google.
Content Scope. You have to make sure that every page on your website aligns with the scope of the site as a whole.
Content Reliability. Webmasters should closely monitor site uptime, accessibility and functionality because these are quality indicators. Site outages, lack of functionality, 404 error and slow speed add up to poor quality content.
Content Relevancy. One of the most important steps in site ranking is to ensure that your website contains plenty of rich content that should be relevant to the user’s query.
Content Recency. Keeping your site updated, relevant and engaging encourages people to return.
Content Format. Your website design must enhance your website’s purpose and not interfere with content or user interaction.
Content Arrangement. Themed and organized content always appeal to readers. Present your pages in an orderly fashion with appropriate navigational elements to keep your users engaged.
Content Treatment. Always bear in mind that content should be original, factual, objective, and uses proper spelling and grammar.

It is important to follow all the items mentioned to get the online visibility you need. With professional help, you can achieve high quality content that can improve your traffic and increase customer reach.

The Northern Office Innovative Marketing is an independent marketing consultancy firm based in the Philippines with clients in Europe, America and Asia. We can create high quality content that can get your website on top of search engines’ results. For more information, call us at (0)45 499 1082 or visit www.thenorthernoffice.com today!

Google Updates Search Toolbar

gino — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 03:31:36 +0000

Article from Official Google Blog

Two months ago, we announced our plans to roll out a new design for the Google bar. Our goal was to create a beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. Based on your feedback, we realized there were some elements of the new bar that we could improve, and with that in mind, we’re introducing an updated version that we believe will provide a better experience.

The new design retains many of the feature changes we made in November that proved popular, including a unified search box and Google+ sharing and notifications across Google. The biggest change is that we’ve replaced the drop-down Google menu with a consistent and expanded set of links running across the top of the page.

We’ll be rolling out this new version of the Google bar over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we invite you to read about the new design in our Help Center, and send us your feedback.

Annette Helbig, CEO & President of Springboard Foundation, Says Thank You To The Northern Office

Angela — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:31:26 +0000

Springboard Foundation was established in November 2002 with the mission of helping children by raising funds to render quality education, proper nutrition health care and career opportunities. The non-profit organization works with various local charity groups such as Give a Life, Hope Worldwide Foundation, Kinderhilfe Philippinen, and Jesus Loves the Little Children Foundation. For more information, visit http://www.springboard-foundation.org/.

The Northern Office donated its web development services to Springboard Foundation. TNO created a contemporary designed website that features Springboard’s latest projects with an emphasis on how others can help and contribute to its cause.

The website’s latest overhaul will have a positive impact on search engine rankings and visibility as well. Key features include improved navigation for easy user access, enhanced information display, organized and updated project list, and detailed info on how to sponsor chosen projects.

“Springboard Foundation is grateful for the immense work that The Northern Office has done for the Springboard website. The new design is modern and easy to navigate. We have received a lot of positive feedback from those who visited our website about the new look.

With this up-to-date, bright and informative website it is easy for Springboard to attract new donors and supporters. It is done so professionally that it impresses anyone who visits the site. We are truly thankful for the generous donation of time and talent that has made our website a great tool to inform our supporters as well as attract new ones.

Springboard Foundation’s work among the poor children in the Philippines is vital to ensure better lives for them and the support of the Northern Office is a tremendous bonus to us, the work we do and ultimately to the children we serve. We look forward to the continued teamwork with The Northern Office to keep our website information current, promote our website and increase the distribution of our weekly newsletter.”

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing is an independent marketing consultancy firm in the Philippines with clients based worldwide. We specialize in web development for various types of businesses and organizations. Our innovative web development team can create and optimize your website using proven online marketing strategies. Call us today for a free quote (045) 499.1082 or visit us at www.thenorthernoffice.com for more information.

Content Management System: 3 Reasons Why You Need Joomla Today

Angela — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:44:35 +0000

Big or small, veteran or startup, any business would probably agree that when it comes to maintaining a business website, a good Content Management System or CMS like Joomla is very important.

Joomla is basically a “framework” for building websites. It is an open source CMS (which means multiple users can log in and manipulate the system) that helps you organize and manage your content easily.

There are other CMS available on the internet. Some are free, some can be very expensive. Question is, why choose Joomla? And why use it now?

#1 Organized and convenient

A static web page becomes unruly once the content starts to add up. Updating and adding content are also often difficult to apply. Digging up content has become a headache since typical static sites doesn’t have a search function. Navigation is also a big problem for whenever you need to add another navigation button to include a new category to your website, you have to rebuild the whole navigation system to be able to add a new section. In such circumstances, Joomla makes more sense to use.

A Joomla website is recommended for a growing business’s infrastructure. Unlimited content can be added continuously with its user-friendly interface and formatting features. Finding specific pages is made easy as Joomla’s hierarchal structure keeps content organized and easy to search.

#2 Unlimited possibilities

No matter what business you are in, Joomla makes it simple to customize your website according to your requirements. For example, business owners can set up an online store using Joomla in a breeze as it only needs to install VirtueMart — a plugin created for online merchants. From there, setting up a professional online shop with full order management capability is not a problem.

You can pretty much create any type of corporate site using Joomla. International companies like Yamaha, Vodafone, Times Square, Porsche, Olympus, Linux Foundation and Burger King use it. Different businesses build their websites on Joomla. This proves that the system is highly flexible and customizable.

For small businesses, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin nowadays are much needed. Joomla easily integrates with preferred social media platforms to able to expand customer reach.

#3 Online presence at no cost

Joomla is freely available to anyone who has internet access. With Joomla, gaining online presence is free yet effective! Take advantage of this convenience and increase productivity. But remember that although Joomla allows non-technical authors or publishers to quickly publish content on the website, navigating the interface can be quite difficult especially when articles start to pile up.

It is advisable to seek professional help to manage the different components and maximize its use. The average web user may find it hard managing complex and complicated Joomla features. For enhanced website functionality, you need to hire a professional to implement or monitor security, content backups, additional components, extensions and other necessary plug-ins.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing is an independent internet marketing consultancy firm in the Philippines with a wide clientele based worldwide. We specialize in web development and customer support for ecommerce businesses. Our dynamic web development team can help you build a profitable website using effective marketing strategies that will fit your budget. For more information, visit www.thenorthernoffice.com or call (045) 499.1082.

Philippines Marketing Blog

5 Pinteresting Tips for Local Brands

More From The Northern Office

4 Technical SEO Ideas for Greater Online Visibility

More From The Northern Office

Online Surveys: 5 Benefits of Knowing Your Audience

More From The Northern Office

New Google Link Algorithm: How to Know If You’ve Been Hit?

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Killer Content Marketing Techniques

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Why Should Your Brand Be Using Twitter?

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Google Panda Recovery 101: Quality Content

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Google Updates Search Toolbar

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Annette Helbig, CEO & President of Springboard Foundation, Says Thank You To The Northern Office

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Content Management System: 3 Reasons Why You Need Joomla Today

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