Changing SEO Several years ago, back when I was extremely active working with a digital marketing agency and picking up clients on the side through that, networking regularly, conducting digital marketing workshops on weekends and evenings, teaching WordPress...
In this episode of Rebooting Business with Digital Marketing expert David M. Somerfleck, we talk with cybersecurity consultant and educator Daniel Ford. Some of the topics and questions Daniel and I discuss include: His own background and experience. What Daniel...
A Lawyer with a Typical Digital Marketing Dilemma To say it was a stressful day was an understatement. My wife had just been diagnosed with cancer days earlier, and here I was now waiting in the doctor’s office for her to come out following an MRI so we could...
Social media marketing has become a vital part of any organization’s customer outreach in this day and age. This applies to almost every industry, and law is certainly no exception. If anything, solo practice lawyers and newer law firms require greater and more...
Digital Marketing’s Role in Business Growth When COVID-19 began spreading across Wuhan, China, I vividly recall finding out about it just as we happened to be shopping for groceries at a local area Costco. I told my wife that something about this felt different...
How Google Ads Can Bridge the Divide Advertising, (or essentially prospecting for new clients, however put) has always been an important aspect for law firms, and the methods of marketing have been changing quite drastically in recent years. Gone are the days...
So Just What Is SEO? When business owners want their company website to reach the top of local Google search results, they know that increased visibility at the very top of the first page of search results pages (called SERPs for short) will result in more phone calls...
In this episode of Rebooting Business, I talk with holistic healder and coach Savannah Blake to discuss overcoming shyness, finding your strength and unique voice, speaking it, and getting to the core of who you are and what sets you apart from a seemingly-endless sea...
There’s no denying that as of January 2024 Google is the world’s single most dominant search engine and that’s unlikely to change any time soon. While we still have Yahoo and Bing, they make up only a tiny portion of daily searches on the internet, and whoever...
Are You an Ideal Fit for Digital Marketing & What It Does? How do you know one way or the other? What does it mean if you are, or aren’t? How important is it to know before you hire a web developer or SEO expert or graphic artist to make a logo for your...
The Broken RFP System When it comes to earning the business of many nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and larger, enterprise-level companies (those with offices across multiple cities or states), quite often the RFP process is used in soliciting...
The Five Roadblocks to Business Growth I was interviewed on the “Winning Tactics” podcast (here are the audio and video links) and asked to discuss five roadblocks business owners need to avoid in their marketing if they’re going to be able to achieve their...
Introduction In a past episode of Rebooting Business I interviewed corporate team building consultant David Goldstein about what team building is, and how his company has adapted to changing times. Included in Our Discussion of Corporate Team Building Some of...
Free Consultations Blues Many years ago, let’s say approximately 20 to 25 years ago, when I was first starting out in digital marketing (which for the uninitiated means promoting a business online through the use of deliberate, planned, and applied use of...
The Lure of Free Websites and Templates For many new business owners, setting priorities that can effectively manage expectations is often the most important step they’ll take, especially at the beginning of a business’s development. However, if you’re new to the...
Reviving Marketing Passion In a respite from client work and studying the latest digital marketing trends, I decided to peruse Amazon Prime’s list of thousands (?) of obscure, lesser-known, or otherwise “B side” offerings you’d have to search in order to find....
The Brain Responds Certain Ways to Certain Colors While that can be understandable, it is important to keep in mind that colors do convey often subconscious messages and research has shown that certain colors work better in terms of marketing a particular type...
Color Psychology We all love color. Our favorite colors are often determined by our personal life experiences. When it comes to web design, clients may want to create their website using a palette of their personal favorite colors. However, it is important to keep in...
Knowing Your Customer Acquisition Costs When it comes to growing a business and reaching more of your ideal customers, it’s very difficult to do that consistently and repeatedly without investing in some form of marketing, whether that’s traditional marketing...
The Lure of DIY Marketing Many business owners, whether non-profit in structure or for-profit business enterprises, often take an unintentionally haphazard approach to marketing, and more specifically online marketing, not knowing how (or if) their efforts could...
Ghosts and Lead Generation Ghosting, a relatively new slang colloquialism referring to the act of not showing up for scheduled business meetings, jobs, (and more commonly, dates), often intersects (however faded membranal gray it may be) with attempted lead...
Why businesses race to begin rather than begin to race. After working with hundreds if not thousands of small-to-medium businesses over the course of (well over) twenty years, many of which included nonprofits and institutions such as private colleges, manufacturers,...
Your Voice, Mine, or Someone Else’s? When we communicate with others, whatever our personal preferences and professional aptitudes and Unique Selling Proposition (a marketing term used to denote the area in which our idiosyncratic predispositions, what a given...
Dark Personalities Narcissists from a clinical perspective are people who lack empathy while bolstering inflated perceptions of importance and combine that with an overwhelming need for adoration. They can be charming, charismatic, and in business, exceedingly...
Finding Your Unique Selling Proposition Matters Theodore Levitt, a German economist and professor at Harvard Business School who wrote “Creativity Is Not Enough” and a course textbook on marketing is famous for opining that “differentiation is one of the most...
A Facebook Page Is Not the Same As a Website Most business owners and entrepreneurs new to digital marketing will often consider having a Facebook page as the equivalent of an actual business website. While having a Facebook page is good, and obviously you’d want to...
What is Gravity Forms? Many people (mostly other WordPress developers) know about Gravity Forms. What is Gravity Forms? It’s essentially a plugin (think “app for WordPress websites”) that allows WordPress website developers (and it may work for other types of Content...
Ethics in Web Design? Really? To the average business owner (or for that matter the average website developer), the topic of ethics can be a new concept because we are surrounded by get rich quick schemes, Do-It- Yourself freebie template builder services that promise...
Design Standards in Website Development Often when discussing project development with programmers and designers who are new to working with clients, I’ll hear stories of clients requesting seemingly arbitrary design changes based on hunches or feelings, such...
Landing Page Vs. Funnel Page When it comes to taking advantage of landing pages and funnel pages, it’s imperative that we first know the differences between the two, how each is used and for what circumstances, and what’s required to use each one so we don’t waste...
Website Conversions In digital marketing, website conversions are instances in which someone visits a website and as a result of what they experience in that company website decide to then interact with you as a business owner. Business owners who want more...
How SEO Works Search engines like Google and Bing use complex algorithms to rank websites based on relevance and authority, which is called Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short). These algorithms search engines use analyze various factors such as...
Business Website Pages A business website is responsible for both promoting a business online as well as attracting potential new customers, so the content that business website carries is pretty important if we’re going to take full advantage of digital...
Small Business Failure Reality Most of the time small businesses stay small or simply go out of business unless they last beyond a set period of years (typically five in my experience) or are very organized and can effectively reach their target market. In fact,...
Introduction Meetup.com is a service that allows people of all types, whether they are business owners, entrepreneurs, or average people, to organize or attend online and in-person events with others of similar interest through their website. In a previous blog post,...
Pros and Cons of Using Meetup.com The following are some of my opinions based on having used Meetup as a event organizer and participant for years. I have nothing against the company itself and as of this writing don’t currently have any active Meetup groups. Reasons...
What is Digital Marketing Success? The four key factors to determining digital marketing success are essentially those elements that confirm you’re someone who can benefit directly from using digital marketing. Of course if you can’t directly benefit from digital...
Defining the Three Types of Marketing Content In content marketing there is an established practice of putting types of content into sections or categories that are also referred to as “silos.” Just as Kanban exists as a way to help developers and digital...
Introduction A few years ago, I was contacted by a fairly large nonprofit organization, specifically their founder. She is an older woman in her late sixties to early seventies, very proud, nice enough in demeanor over the phone, with her chief issue being that she...
Most business websites do not have SEO. If we take that small percentage of business websites that do use SEO, most have incorrect SEO (where they use terms such as “Home” or a business name to try to attract customers). This inhibits or holds back the...
The 8 Types of Digital Marketing Clients Meet eight types of digital marketing clients who can derail any project, sink their own businesses, and make the best digital marketing pointless. These types of potential clients range from the (understandably) confused or...
Digital Marketing Budgets Digital marketing budgets are often associated with competitive negotiations or parsing out individual tools, or aspects of digital marketing (such as websites, SEO, PPC, social media, marketing videos, content marketing, content...
Getting Stuck in the Digital Marketing Budget Swamp When business owners get stuck in the muck and mire of the digital marketing quagmire, it’s usually for the first time; having not had any direct experience or education in what digital marketing really is, how it...
Pitching to Podcasts Podcasts have become an increasingly popular medium for spreading information and ideas, and as a result, appearing as a guest on a podcast can be an excellent way to increase your online exposure. However, with so many podcasts out there, it can...
Introduction As the world becomes more and more digitized, realtors are turning to digital marketing to reach a wider audience of home buyers and home sellers. Digital marketing allows real estate agents to connect with potential clients through various online...
Forums Forums are online platforms that are very similar in function to webiste such as Facebook or Reddit, where users can engage in discussions, share their ideas, and exchange information. Many businesses have found forums to be a valuable addition to their...
Design Matters Creating a website is an essential part of any business and a vital component (the beating heart of digital marketing), and professional website development agencies and developers work hard to create an appealing and engaging online presence for their...
The Top Three When it comes to Content Management Systems (CMS), WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are three of the most popular options available for experienced, professional digital marketing and web design work. A CMS is important to use as a digital marketer, but...
Transforming Your Business: Why a Business Coach is the Key to Growth and Success As a business owner, you may feel that you have all the answers to the challenges that arise in running your business. However, the truth is that even the most successful...
What’s a CRM? Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has become increasingly popular among businesses of all sizes in recent years as more and more businesses realize the vast, (still) largely untapped potential of a fully robust online presence that...
