Tech News (5)

Simple Answers: Technology

Every physical devices and I.T. networks have greatly influenced our personal lives, our economy and most especially, the world of business.  

Since the birth of new technology, businesses needed to adapt on the transformation and learn the new ways of transmission.  While new technology may have many probable drawbacks, we cannot deny the fact that it mostly brought development and faster transactions.

As technological innovation reshapes market preferences, businesses strive to meet the ever changing consumer demands.  New technological goods are driven by market demands and businesses needed to keep pace with innovation and adopt new technologies. Technology constantly changes and new products and techniques will be introduced. As the digital world develops, consumers’ expectations are rising quickly. The bar is high for consumers’ satisfaction in the modern digital world and it is inevitable for some to question its ability, quality and reliability. Some issues and questions about new technological goods are:

  • Can it help?
  • Will it save time?
  • Will it improve user experience?
  • Will it help me gain revenue?
  • Is it worth the investment?
  • How efficient is it?
  • What about risks?
  • Why there is a need for constant update?
  • What about my security?
  • How will it change competition in our industry?
  • Will it help us reach our business goals?

Despite of the beneficial factors that technological advancement brought, many are in doubt of its competence. There is always two sides to everything: Good and Bad. Technology can have a positive and negative effect. Yet, do we need technologies? Yes, because they are making almost every aspect of our lives easier and comfortable. It’s just a matter of knowing how to balance everything so we won’t be living our lives that solely depends on technology alone. Digital technology is likely to become a predominant sales channel. Many industries are starting to develop their IT and/or online technology in order to improve productivity and keep pace with the competitive market.

The Northern Office Innovative Marketing makes use of online marketing technologies, social marketing technologies and web-based technologies to help companies reinvent consumer experience and enter new markets. For more information on how TNO can help with your IT strategies, call (045) 499 1082 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   Posted by John Joe Morgan  

Thursday, 05 January 2012 16:16

12 Ways to Build Trust Online

Low conversion rates means you’re not closing on your leads. That’s bad for business. Maybe, the reason why your visitors refuse to buy your products is because they don’t trust you yet.

Proving your website as a trustworthy source is critical for any online business. Without trust, it’s hard to convert potential customers to positive leads. Visitors will just leave your site and not make a purchase if they feel like your products and your site is unreliable. Not to worry, there are proven ways to resolve these trust issues. Though, others may require a little more work, below are effective ways to help you build trust with your visitors.

1. Make your website attractive and engaging. Your website should display professionalism and detailed. If it looks like your website is rushed, then will view your site as amateurish and careless.

2. Create flawless navigation. Navigation should be simple. Avoid too many links or your visitors might get overwhelmed.  Use drop down lists, scroll bars and so on. Choose whatever is appropriate for your website. Don’t make it any harder for your visitors to see your products.

3. Add a bit of personality. Web visitors feel more comfortable with sites that have a human element to them. Add your own pictures, writing styles to add a personal touch. 4. Add new content regularly. Don’t make your readers find sources elsewhere. Update your website regularly with relevant, timely and informative content.

5. Build a community. Building your own community of loyal readers is the heart and core of your website. Your community helps you build trust and authority in your niche.

6. Add an About Us Page. Let your visitors know that you are a real human with real goals and philosophies. This will make them trust you more. Your About Us page does not need to be very detailed. You can tell a short a story of how you started and what you have achieved so far.

7. Create a Contact Us Page. Not only it is easy to create, a contact page allows you to receive feedback and promotional ideas.

8. Be honest. Lying is probably the worst thing you can do to your site. It’s an instant kill. Readers are smart enough to research your claims or ask people about you.

9. Include Creditable Certificates. This is critical for e-commerce websites. If you own one, adding BBB or McAfee hacker Safe will help your buyers feel more secure in purchasing.

10. Connect using social networking profiles. Let your visitors know more about you. Add social media buttons on your website and let users interact with you. This is also helpful in gaining more readers and retaining regular readers.

11. Comment on readers’ comments. Readers like to feel appreciated. Do this by commenting on their comments. Start fun and meaningful conversations to keep them engaged and wanting for more.

12. Include testimonials, case studies or reviews. Readers won’t trust you at first glance. Back your claims with customer testimonials or reviews to help potential customers decide to purchase your products or services. Is your website trustworthy enough? This comparison chart/checklist below will help you evaluate you trust scale.  

Source: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog (www.seomoz.org)  

The Northern Office Innovative Marketing is an independent sales and marketing consultancy firm in the Philippines with clients based worldwide. TNO’s dynamic web development team can help improve your website trust by implementing appropriate and effective strategies. Services include sales support, online marketing, content design, social media management, content development, back office support, e-mail campaigns, and marketing consultancy. For inquiries, email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

If you know that your specialty is writing blogs, then you can also be great on writing press releases. Blogs and press releases share the same characteristics: strong headlines, top-down format, etc. Press releases are one of the best ways to promote a blog. They are also one of the effective ways to publish your message without duplicating any content. Here are some tips to re-write your blog post and turn them into press releases. The easiest way to start is to:

1. Take a blog post from any news. Unlike blog posts, a press release always announces something. It is not commentary, a how-to guide or numbered list. Blog post topics can be perfectly worked for press release.

  • Launch of a new company
  • Clients successful stories
  • Innovation of products, new services or future events
  • Careers
  • Achievements
  • Milestones

You can also promote your own ideas such as predictions and opinions from current news.

2. Convert it to the third person’s voice It is important to convert the headline and the body of blog into a third person for press release. It is relevant not to use “I”, “we”, or “you” instead use the company name, clients, or customers.

3. Revise the headline Keywords must be in the first few words of the headline of the blog and press release. Press releases have a subhead which highlight the headline’s point-of-difference or provides factual backup for the headline. Way to format the headline and subhead:

  • Press release headline must be in all CAPS
  • Subhead in Title Case, Except the Little, Non-Important Words

4. Rearrange the post to contain these press release elements

  • Dateline: Writing a press release on your own, the right format is to use all caps on address and date.
  • Lead: Be creative at you first sentence by adding what, where, why and how. Your headline must contain keywords.
  • Quote: By adding a quote, even if it’s not necessary, this helps you to illuminate and gives your press release a personality.
  • Boilerplate: Website and phone number at the end, also add a short paragraph about the company, in a third person view.

5. Review AP style or the basics

  “The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, usually called the AP Stylebook, is a style and usage guide used by newspapers and in the news industry in the United States.” – http://www.wikipedia.org/   You can start by checking the AP (Associated Press) Style AP stylebook. This can check your grammar, punctuation, and answer any questions you need.

6. Check out other writer’s press releases PR Newswire and PR Web are websites that has press release that can be checked out. Some may be useful and some may not be great. Most writers don not follow the “third person” and “AP Style”. These are visible and can be spotted right away because they look like blog posts. Professionalism and expertise can reflect from your image, so you must be very careful on how you format your press release.

The Northern Office is a marketing and sales consultancy firm in the Philippines that caters to small and medium sized enterprises that do not have their own marketing department, but are big enough to need it. The Northern Office makes use of creative, original and effective marketing plans and activities that suit each and every client depending on their industry, offering and requirements.

As part of online marketing and content development efforts, The Northern Office produces regular blog posts and press releases for various clients from different industries. Visit our website for more details. http://www.thenorthernoffice.com  

Tuesday, 15 February 2011 14:44

Top 10 Online Marketing Acronyms

Are you new to online marketing? You might have hired someone to do it for you and you get confused by the language used? You do not have to be an Internet geek to understand the ‘language’.  Here are the top ten acronyms used in online marketing explained in a simple way.

HTML HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.  This is the standard language behind most websites and what the search engines read when they look at/crawl your site.  It is made up of hundreds of tags which has all the content on your website and tell the search engines exactly what is in that content.  

You can easily see this by going to any website and view the page source by hitting ctrl+u on your keyboard.  Each tag opens with an angle bracket and the tag closes with an angle bracket followed by a forward slash and another end bracket (i.e.

).

CSS CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and dictates the way the HTML code looks and is presented.

XML XML stands for Extensible Markup Language.  This language is more generic and is one that is read by a computer.    In online marketing, you most likely need to have a XML sitemap, which means having a map of all the content on your site because search engines specifically prefer to read this format.

CRM CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager.  This is great at making sure that your sales team can see what revenues have increased.  It also helps identify things like who are your loyal customers and what aspect of your business is not doing too well.

CMS CMS is a Content Management System commonly used to manage the content of your website.  Examples of this are Joomla and Wordpress.  They allow you to access a private admin area where you can either add, edit or delete pages of your website.

URL Uniform Resource Locator states exactly where your content is located on the Internet.  Example: http://www.thenorthernoffice.com

SERPs SERP’s stands for Search Engine Results Pages.  If you hear your SEO telling you that your site is at position 20 in the SERP’s, this means your site is appearing around the middle of page 3.  Its best to have  you site appear to a closer position.

SEM SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and can encompass just about anything that involves publicising your website on the Internet.  In includes things like SEO and PPC, social media, and Online PR.

SEO You would probably hear this one more, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.  The purpose of this is to improve your websites visibility in the organic search engine results pages.

PPC PPC stands for Pay Per Click.  These are the results that appear in the paid results in the right hand side under the heading ‘Ads’.  You only pay when someone actually clicks on your ads. There are still other acronyms and marketing jargon that you might encounter later, but this should give you an idea about the basics of online marketing.

 Need help with your business’ Online Marketing? The Northern Office is a marketing consultancy firm specializing in innovative marketing support for SME’s.  The Northern Office  can provide you a complete range of online marketing strategies that will help you get concrete results out of your investment. Contact us for more details.

 
With the boom of Internet commercial activity,  Online marketing is now the ‘big thing’, in any marketing plan.  Any business would want to improve their online marketing performance - in particular enhancing your ROI and efficiency.  As the year 2010 ends, now is the perfect time to prepare for next year’s crucial marketing activities, and hopefully get better results.
Here are some tips to get you started:
1.  Start doing your online marketing plan, it would be better if you finish it before 2011 comes.
What to do:
*  First, you must be able to identify your target market.  Look at your existing customers.  You should be able to distinguish which customers are profitable, loyal to your products, easy to talk to with, give out good referrals and more.  You must look into who your products or services are really applicable to.
 You can not say that your product or service is for everyone, you must concentrate on those that really matter.
*Second, determine your goals. It must be SMART.  Specific, Measurable,Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
*Third,  Make a schedule for your day to day and 12 month plans.  Make sure that you follow it.
 
*Lastly, Make sure that your site’s content,social media channels and other online marketing efforts are uniformed.  Consider good and bad feedback.  Use them to improve your marketing efforts.
 
2. Ensure that your website’s content and information is relevant to your target market.What to do:
 
* Design your website according to your target market’s preferences.  Make it attractive to them.  Use the same ‘language’ they use.  Show different versions to  people with different languages. *Make your site fully functional via mobile phones etc.
 
3.  Make your site accessible to search engines.  You should have key phrases and Fast download speeds.
 
4.  Set up Website Analytics
What to do:
* Set goals so that later on you can check if you are meeting them and you would know how your progress is.
*  Integrate your site or set values to see your actual ROI for online activities.
 
5.  Be sure that your data is always organized.
 
What to do:
* Have all important data like your customers or prospects, proposals, sales, inquiries, campaigns, referrals in a spreadsheet so you can find and use it easily.
 
In the crowded and competitive environment of the online market, websites must stand out and reach the right audiences.
 
The Northern Office is an innovative marketing support company in the Philippines that provides a complete range of online marketing services and strategies that can address all your requirements from a new website launch to a complete company re-branding. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation and get your marketing plan on the right track!