If so, you’re taking a major step in the right direction. The digital marketing software sphere alone will skyrocket to $105.28 billion by 2028, signaling that more business leaders than ever before plan to invest in the tools and technologies required to put their company top of mind.
Today, we’re taking a look at the importance of digital marketing from a competitive and performance standpoint to grow your business. Why does it matter and what does it mean for the future of your enterprise?
Let’s get started!
Boosting Your Online Visibility
In the past, the only way to drive traffic to your store was to create physical signage. You’d spend the money, do the work, and hope that passersby would notice and direct their foot traffic your way.
Now, both e-commerce retailers and brick-and-mortar retailers alike are turning to the internet to deliver outreach messages right to the customers they need.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, online sales outpaced general merchandise stores for the first time this year. What’s driving this shift in market share?
Today’s buyers are hopping online to buy everything from their weekly groceries to their Friday night movie rental. In fact, even if they’re determined to buy an item in-store, 82% will still conduct online research, first!
Simply put, having an active internet presence is necessary to survive in today’s competitive business market. If you bring all of your core functions, including your marketing campaigns, into the digital sphere, the number of eyes you can get on your content jumps from your local patrons to a global online community.
Create Customer Connections
Did you know that 70% of shoppers who feel a connection to your brand will spend twice as much on your business? One of the major digital marketing benefits is that it allows you to create personal connections with your online followers.
This is especially true if your digital marketing efforts stretch across the major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Here, you can share blog posts, advertise upcoming promotions and product releases, and spark conversations with your target audience.
Another benefit of staying active on these channels?
They give you a direct link to the opinions and preferences of the buyers your business wants. When you connect in this way, you establish an organic and natural connection that feels more authentic than gimmicky sales tactics.
As only 52% of consumers around the globe trust businesses, these genuine networking opportunities are gold.
Establish Thought Leadership
Want to boost your brand credibility, grow your online following and improve your bottom line? In today’s competitive marketplace, this kind of growth requires thought leadership.
You might be the best in your industry niche, with state-of-the-art products, services, and ideas. However, unless you’re sharing this knowledge with the people who need to hear it, your efforts could fall flat.
This is where digital marketing comes in.
The top way to establish your company as a thought leader in its space is to create digital content that meets the following criteria:
Relevant
Helpful
Interesting
Timely
Shareable
Actionable
Regardless of your sector, you have something valuable and new to bring to the conversation, so it’s time to say it!
Create a blog, record a podcast, write an e-book or develop an entire online course around the knowledge that you want to share. Some material, such as blogs, can be free while you might charge customers a fee to download longer-form content.
Appeal to Mobile Users
An effective digital marketing strategy incorporates website optimization tactics to ensure that all content looks as great on a smartphone as it does on a laptop. When you take into account load time, typography, image size, touchability and more, you can help deliver a seamless user experience across any device.
Research shows that 72% of people will access the internet using only their smartphone by 2025. If your marketing collateral is responsive, quick to load, and visually dynamic across any screen, you’ll capture their attention, even when they’re on-the-go.
Create a Brand Presence
Digital marketing allows you to carve out your own corner of the internet. For your brand, this means that you can create cohesive touchpoints all around the web that tie your story together. At the same time, you also offer your customers the opportunity to add their own pages to the tale.
From your social media accounts and blog posts to your virtual checkouts and web pages, every online element can tie back to your brand, showcasing your logo, font, verbiage, and more.
In this way, you can create a memorable, unified brand image that’s critical for customer recall. Then, when someone uses your service or buys your product, they can hop online and tell others about it.
From the glowing reviews to the negative ones, all kinds of client feedback can help fuel your business forward. Studies show that 84% of people actually trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family members, so it’s important to give your audience a voice. This is free advertising you couldn’t get without the power of digital marketing.
Leverage SEO to Improve Rank
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a major facet of digital marketing. In short, this is the collection of tools and best practices that help your website rank as high as possible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
In years past, adding a couple of keywords to your site was the extent of a successful SEO strategy. Now, however, SEO requirements are more complex than ever before, and forward-thinking companies require sophisticated tools and technologies to keep them on track.
While valuable content and keywords are still relevant, a modern SEO strategy takes into account other factors, including:
Your audience and industry
User intent
Reporting and analytics
Crawling
Mobile SEO
Technical SEO
Indexing
Linking
Knowledge of SEO can make a major difference in the success of your digital marketing efforts. This is why it pays to partner with an SEO expert who can show you where your website currently stands and help you get it where it needs to be.
Expand Through E-mail Marketing
In a world of flashier and more tech-savvy measures, e-mail marketing still holds incredible power. However, sticking with the old method of blasting your latest blog post to your list of subscribers won’t cut it anymore.
Advanced digital marketing platforms allow you to customize this outreach approach to improve conversion rates and draw more traffic to your site. Some strategies you can implement include:
Personalizing your messages
Segmenting your subscribers
Sending mobile-friendly emails
Automating campaigns
Testing copy, buttons, and designs
Email subscriber management tools and services can help you transition from your current email marketing system onto a more effective and modern platform, such as MailChimp, without interrupting your subscribers.
Analyze Your Campaign Efforts
Do you want to measure how successful your last marketing campaign was? Do you need metrics to track and patterns to analyze so you can make sure your next one is the most effective yet? Paper-based modeling methods are antiquated and limited in scope, which can hinder and stall decision-making efforts.
Digital marketing software, on the other hand, allows you a valuable and in-depth look at key performance metrics.
Regardless of whether you’re running an email marketing campaign, analyzing website visits, measuring site traffic or tracking customer service response times, you need insight into the numbers that matter. And, it’s smart to have these numbers as soon as possible. This way, you can take action before your cart abandonment rates skyrocket or your SERP position dips.
Leverage the Power and Importance of Digital Marketing To Grow Your Business
You’ve put the hours into growing your business, developing your projects and fine-tuning your management approach. Now, it’s time to make sure everyone else knows your name.
Traditional marketing strategies that worked years ago could render your company irrelevant or even obsolete today. That’s why you can’t overlook or overemphasize the importance of digital marketing to grow your business. From email marketing lists to SEO strategies and social media campaigns, there is no limit to the steps you can implement.
Want a little help as you unroll your new outreach plan? That’s where we come in.
We’re experts in this space, with years of experience helping clients make the most of their media strategies. From website development and email subscriber management to social media analysis and publishing services, we do it all.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business grow. In the meantime, check out our free e-book on marketing strategies for business success!
A woman approached me as I was preparing for my lessons for the day. I was in Kairi, a rural village in Kenya, teaching some basic business skills classes to members of a microfinance group.
She introduced herself as Alice.
In our class the day before, I taught a lesson on managing money in a small business. I used a fictional business owner named Alice to illustrate the importance of keeping business money and personal money separate.
Alice was her real name, and she told me that today she is a “new Alice” after my lesson. She continued, “No more will I be the old Alice who is not wise with her money!”
And that’s why I’ve made it an initiative of ours to support microfinance projects this year. Our goal is to help provide opportunities for small business owners, especially in underserved areas.
We’re working through Kiva, a top-rated charity who bridges the gap between people and entrepreneurs around the world. Kiva’s mission is “to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.”
After six months of working on this project, this is our first Kiva Impact Report.
Empowering Entrepreneurs Globally
The best thing about microfinance is that it isn’t about donating free money to people. These are small loans designed to enable an entrepreneur to grow their business. This allows small business owners to not only provide for their families, but many of them also create jobs in their communities.
In our efforts this year, we’ve supported microloans for people like:
Osterman in Columbia (pictured above) – As a farmer, he used the loan to hire local laborers to help him build drainage canals for better irrigation for his crops. His loan is currently 13% repaid.
Shoyra in Tajikistan (below, left) – Her loan was used to buy a sewing machine and start a new business sewing women’s clothing. Her loan is currently 21% repaid.
Wilmer in Ecuador (below, right) – He owns a taxi, and his loan helped him do maintenance and change the tires on his taxi. He also got additional business training to go with the loan. His loan is already 73% repaid.
Each of these entrepreneurs has dreams, not unlike my own, to grow a business so they can better support their families. Many are working to improve their homes and pay for education for their children (something often taken for granted in a country where we have free public education).
Every one of these microloans gets them one step closer to fulfilling their goals and dreams.
Using Kiva as a Tool To Support Microfinance
The best way I can describe what Kiva does is that it’s kind of like a Kickstarter for microloans to entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken areas around the world. (Kiva is actually older, but I know the reference would make sense.)
Their website allows you to search for borrowers by region, business sector, and/or other attributes you may want to target.
Each borrower has a profile page telling you about the loan, the story of the borrower, why the loan is special, and several other details. A loan can be for any amount, and lenders can chip in for as little as $25.
The idea is that many of us can throw in what we can to fund that entrepreneur. Together we fund the loan, and repayments are distributed back to each of us when the borrower makes their payments each month.
When that money is repaid, we can then turn it around and lend it to another entrepreneur. That means $100 initial investment can end up having a far greater impact over time as it continues to get reinvested.
Business Supporting Business
At the beginning of 2019, we started allocating $100 from each new qualified small business client who started working with us towards a microloan. So for each business client starting a new website development project or using us for our ongoing SEO services, we would make the contribution toward a business through Kiva.
As a growing business, our heart is to leverage some of our profits to support other growing businesses around the world.
Once we’ve selected an entrepreneur to fund through Kiva, we also notify the new client about what we’ve done in honor of them. Some have also joined our team on Kiva to further support a borrower (the same one, or another one they find on their own).
Focus on Poverty-Stricken Areas
While there is need everywhere, our focus so far has been on places where the communities are under-served, families are often displaced, and where poverty means that there simply isn’t an opportunity to provide the basics.
So far this year, out of 12 loans funded by Team Fistbump, all 12 are in different countries across South/Central America, Africa, and Asia.
While we may fund additional loans in countries we’ve already supported, our goal is to spread the love as much as we can around the world.
The Importance of Social Responsibility (and Gratitude)
There are two main reasons this is an important initiative for us this year, social responsibility and gratitude.
First, we’re driven by a desire to care for our fellow human being. This desire is rooted in our faith in God, and the Bible’s call for us to help those who have a need. As I’ve been out on missions trips around the world, I see lots of need.
So we’re using what we have to help others… not with a handout, but a hand-up.
Second, it’s about gratitude. As the founder of Fistbump Media, I’ve directly experienced what running a small business can do to provide for my family. I have a great deal of respect for others around the world who are chasing their dreams with a desire to provide well for their families.
And we’re grateful to all of the clients who have been there for us. So this is one way we can say thank you and pay forward what we’ve been given.
Our Kiva Impact Report for the First Half of 2019
In the first six months of 2019, we’ve added 8 new small business clients who have met the qualifying threshold. So that’s $800 that we’ve invested into loans so far.
With a few other small loans from team members and clients, plus a little repayment money reinvested in new loans, our total impact is $1,000 worth of microloans.
We expect the impact to grow more rapidly through the rest of the year as we continue to reinvest repayments and bring on more new small business clients. Additionally, we’d love to invite you to join the team and help us help even more people…
Final Thoughts (and an Invitation)
The impact so far has been exciting to watch! I look forward to every opportunity I get to send over another $100, or reinvest repayments from existing loans. It reminds me of conversations I’ve had with business owners on some of my missions trips when they share what kind of impact the loans have for them. It’s life-changing.
And while we’ll continue to invest as the opportunities arise, you can join us in this work too! It’s super easy…
Getting the SEO rockin’ for your small business website can be tricky (and frustrating). Especially, if you’re trying to do it on your own. The good news is that there are a number of common issues you can easily resolve, with a little direction. Focus on these strategies, and your website will be taking a giant leap in the right direction.
I’ve completed hundreds of small business website SEO audits over the past couple of months. I’ve tracked the data from these audits and ran some statistical analysis on it. There are definitely some noticeable trends.
The first thing I noticed is something many owners/managers may not realize about their small business website…
Lots of people can put together a nice looking website these days. But from what I saw, many of the most amazing looking websites were some of the worst performing ones. A primary purpose for any small business website is to drive sales. So all the pretty in the world doesn’t mean a thing.
Aside from that, there are eight key observations I’ve been able to make from looking at the data. Each of these has a significant impact on your website’s ability to do its job well.
This first observation simply blows me away. After all, this is the foundation of all other strategies for your website. It’s about domain name selection. One thing you need to understand is that the first thing people and search engines see is your domain name. And first impressions matter, to both people and search engines.
No pressure. But don’t mess this up.
Here’s what I’m talking about. Let’s say your company, Southern State Roofing Company, launches a new website. The worst thing you can do is to abbreviate the main identifying keywords into something like ssrcompany.com. That doesn’t tell anyone anything about who you are and what you do.
You’ll miss out on any kind of name recognition with people. You’ll also miss the opportunity to get the business keyword of “roofing” in there.
A domain name like southernstateroofing.com, while longer, will be easier to remember and will help your chances on search engines.
Better yet, try using one of the many not-com names that are gaining popularity. If the .com isn’t available, then a great option in this example could be southernstateroofing.contractors (yep, .contractors is an option). This can help a great deal when people search for terms like. “[your city] roofing contractors.”
TIP #1: It’s important to use a name that’s not only memorable but also one that sets you up well with the search engines.
If you don’t know already, security is a huge deal on the Internet these days. It’s such a big deal that Google is impacting search engine rankings based on how seriously you take this. And Chrome, the leading web browser, is starting to show “Not Secure” warnings for websites that don’t run an SSL (encryption) certificate.
Of the websites I reviewed, fewer than 30% of them currently do not have a security certificate.
Using an SSL certificate on your website means that it will run as an HTTPS website instead of the regular HTTP version. It will encrypt user information when delivered over the web. For example, when someone fills out a contact form on your website, their information could be exposed on a non-HTTPS website.
Taking care of security and encryption on your website with an SSL certificate will have two main benefits:
It’ll protect you from the security-mageddon happening now with search engines and web browsers.
Your visitors (potential customers) will have more confidence in doing business with you when they see the big green “Secure” indicator in their browser.
TIP #2: Get an SSL certificate for your website now. Standard Domain Validation (DV) certificates are inexpensive and are sometimes included in hosting plans.
Build a Portfolio of Quality Links Back to Your Website
There’s no doubt about it, the Internet is built on links. That’s why it’s called the web. That’s all Google is doing. At their core, they’re providing you with some links that should answer your questions. Google’s mission statement is to, “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Google not only provides links to answer your questions, but they also evaluate links to your site to determine usefulness.
Their goal is to always provide the best answers they can to your questions. If they start providing non-relevant information, then they know we’ll leave to find answers elsewhere. So the quality of the links they provide is of utmost importance.
One of the ways they evaluate the value and authority of your content is to look at the links to your website. The idea is that if a higher authority website links to you for an answer on something, then you must be valuable.
That’s where MozRank comes in as a measurement (for us, not necessarily for Google). It’s a way to measure link popularity of a website. A website is scored on a scale from 0-10, with 10 being the highest.
The average MozRank of the website evaluated in this study was 3.79. That’s not a horrible number but still shows that most sites have a great deal of room for improvement as it relates to link building.
The average website you’ll visit when surfing the web will likely be around 3-4.
TIP #3: Make sure you have a strategy for building strong links back to your website. This can be done with SEO link-building services (like ours), guest posting on other websites, and developing local citations for your business.
Establish Your Authority
Like MozRank, the Domain Authority (DA) score has to do with how authoritative your website it. But it takes into consideration more than just the MozRank factors. It’s a score that measures a site’s authority through measuring links (internal and external), mobile-friendliness, on-page content, and site structure.
In my experience, I’ve seen DA scores go up and down just based on the page structure of a website. Specifically, as it relates to the topic(s) your website is supposed to be about.
Using the Southern States Roofing Company example from earlier, that domain name is one of the factors considered in the DA score. Choose your name wisely, and it’ll help you out quite a bit.
In addition to that, it should be clear to search engines (and visitors) what your website is about. If your main pages and menu structure include more generic About, What We Do, Testimonials, Gallery, Contact pages, then you’re making it more difficult for search engines to figure out what you’re really about. None of your keywords are showing there.
Instead, consider main navigation pages like About, Roof Replacement, Roof Repair, Roof Inspections, etc. This will make it more clear what you are an authority on.
And for a bonus, create subpages to build more depth and structure. So under Roof Replacement, consider adding subpages for Tile Roof Replacement, Shingle Roof Replacement, Metal Roof Replacement, etc. Additionally, blog posts can be another way to add depth to the website and pass authority up to other cornerstone content pages.
The average DA score for the websites we evaluated was 15.25. That’s on a scale of 1-100. Getting your DA score more into the 30-40 range can result in great improvements in rankings. Get yourself over 50, and you’ll almost be able to write your own ticket on the search engines.
TIP #4: Consider how well your website is built from an authority perspective (check out this case study on website structure). And develop some depth with strong content to establish your authority.
Work on Page Speed for a Better User Experience
One really important ranking factor that seems to be often missed is PageSpeed. From Google’s perspective, if you’re too slow, then you’re not a good answer for them to present. They want to minimize the impatient-factor in the results they present.
Too often, website owners and developers go for the super flashy and pretty design, but don’t do it in a way that keeps the site running smooth. Too many large images and videos and scripts can knock you way down on this score.
The average PageSpeed score of the websites I evaluated was 60, well below the 85 (on a scale of 1-100) that Google gives a green light to. And the greatest offenders were the people who likely thought they have an amazing new website that looks incredible but had scores in the 30s.
In WordPress, there are plenty of great tools to help you optimize images, minify scripts, and leverage caching. All of these are crucial in maintaining quicker page load speeds.
TIP #5: If you’re on WordPress, then consider some optimization plugins to clean things up right away. If you’re on other site builders like Wix or Weebly, consider moving to WordPress. Our managed WordPress hosting will include plenty of these tools, and we’ll even help take care of it for you.
Optimize for Mobile First
Whats worse than scoring a 60 for Google PageSpeed on your website? How about scoring a 51 for PageSpeed on mobile for your website? Unfortunately, that’s the average mobile PageSpeed score for the evaluated websites.
During a time when Google is focusing so much on mobile-first indexing, you need your website to perform well on mobile.
There are two ways you can do this:
Get your web pages running on AMP. This is Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project. Basically, the idea is to push your page content into a more mobile format that Google serves up really quickly through their results pages on mobile devices. The downside is that it technically doesn’t get the traffic ON your website, so you may lose some of the experience as pages are stripped down for speed.
Focus more on the mobile version of your website’s design. All websites these days should be mobile responsive. But mobile responsive doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s mobile optimized.
With the typical website getting around 50% (and constantly increasing) of their traffic through mobile now, you cannot afford to skimp on this.
TIP #6: There are advantages and disadvantages to each of the methods of mobile optimization. The important thing is that you spend some time doing this optimization. Do take a desktop-only approach to design. And don’t just think about converting the design to mobile optimized, consider mobile-first content too.
Clean Up the On-Page Elements
One of the biggest on-page factors for your content is the metadata, image alt tags, and header text. Your keywords should be built into each of these elements on every page. Too many websites fail to optimize this for their keywords, or simply miss it altogether. In our experience, cleaning this stuff up across the website is one of the easiest ways to get some big wins with your SEO.
And don’t optimize every page on your site to the same keywords. That feels unnatural because not every page is about the same exact thing. Using our roofing company example, consider optimizing pages like this:
Homepage –> “roofing contractor” as the keyword focus
Using a plugin like Yoast SEO, the metadata can be updated in the “snippet” settings for the page. That’s the information that shows up in the search engine results for your page. (Can you guess what keyword terms the page shown below is optimized for?)
Many websites also contain generic text in header text on most website pages. For example, the header text for a section on the page might be “Our Services,” which doesn’t contain keywords. Instead, consider using something like “Roofing Services” instead.
TIP #7: Review the metadata settings for each page on your website, and make sure they contain your keywords and look enticing for searchers to click on. Also review all header formatted text to make sure it’s specific, and check all images to ensure the “alternative text” contains your keywords.
Step Up Your Professional Brand Image
This last item isn’t necessarily a performance or SEO metric. It’s more of a branding issue. Many (a large many) of the websites analyzed used a non-domain based email address for their contact email.
For example, our southernstateroofing.contractors should be using joe@southernstateroofing.contractors for email instead of southernstateroofing@hotmail.com (or worse, ssrcompany@hotmail.com).
Honestly, Gmail is not as bad because of how widely used it is. But using a domain name based email address that matches your company’s website address provides a much more professional image. And people will judge you based on little things like this.
TIP #8: Just get the email addresses set up. If you prefer, you can set up your Gmail to send/receive that email for you. So you can continue to use the Gmail interface, but with a much more professional image.
Conclusion
If you want your online marketing efforts to be successful, then getting your small business website design done properly is of great importance. And it involves more than throwing up some cool photos or some drone video. You’ll need to get these website design fundamentals done right if you’re going to have a chance of succeeding.
But if you get these elements right, you’ll set yourself up far ahead of the competition. If you already have a small business website in place, then let us run a free, no-obligation website SEO analysis report for you. You can use the information to improve your website on your own. Or hit us up to talk about how we can help take care of issues or just build you a well-designed website.
Regardless, it’s important to know where your website stands and to take steps to improve its ability to drive results for you.
With a greater reliance on using technology to manage our personal information, there is a greater emphasis on cybersecurity for protecting that information. It seems like reports of large-scale breaches come out every few news cycles. Some of the big ones, just this year, include the likes of Verizon, Equifax, Yahoo!, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Even Chipotle fell victim to a hack.
It’s enough to make even the most confident people feel vulnerable.
And if you have an online presence you’re trying to develop through your website, email, and/or social media, then you need to be extra careful. No matter how big or how small, your digital presence could easily become a target.
Search engines and web browsers are even getting more into the security game. Site security and encryption is now a ranking factor for search engines. And browsers are starting to kick out “Not Secure” warnings on websites without an SSL certificate.
Why Being Proactive About Cybersecurity is Important
One of the bigger security concerns has to do with protecting your website from malware and phishing. Poor website security leads to cracks for malicious users who get in and leave things like viruses and other malicious tools. Sometimes these activities can even lead to using your site (even unbeknownst to you) for phishing activity to capture sensitive information. A hack on your website can damage your reputation with your visitors, search engines, and other web services.
Another major area of concern has to do with protecting your email from hacks. A hacked email account can expose more of your personal information contained in various emails. It can also result in someone using your account to send out malicious spam emails. Those emails are often used for phishing purposes or delivering viruses to unsuspecting recipients. A compromised email account could be dangerous for you and for many others.
A third, and potentially greater, area of concern has to do with protecting your other personal information and accounts. Chances are, the password you use for your website and email accounts are the same or very similar to the passwords you use for other online accounts. If a hacker can figure out your email password, and see that you do your online banking at a certain bank, then they may have everything they need to log into your bank account. Basically, getting into one of your accounts may provide easy access to everything else you do. And that could be bad news for you.
What We Do For You To Maintain Website Security
Maintenance is everything. One of the reasons our BASIC (and higher) Hosting plans are so popular is because the maintenance we do keeps websites running smooth and secure. We run WordPress, theme, and plugin updates on each site several times throughout the week. And we perform database cleanup and optimization. Many of the updates include regular bug fixes and security patches.
Server-level security monitoring. Our data center team monitors potential issues 24/7/365. Aside from maintaining server uptime, we constantly monitor any malicious activity. If/when something is spotted, we take corrective action almost immediately. This level of monitoring minimizes the impact in the event a user account gets compromised.
Site-level security monitoring. Also as part of our BASIC (and higher) Hosting, we monitor potential in-site security issues. Using tools like Wordfence Security, we regularly scan for any malicious and unusual files on the website. We take immediate corrective action and remove any potential threat we find.
Security-Related Services You Should Consider
Domain name privacy. Most people don’t realize that your ownership information on your domain name registration is public. That means anyone can look up a website owner’s name, address, and phone number. That is unless you have Domain Privacy on your domain name. It’s well worth the $7.99/yr cost to hide your personal registration information. This not only limits the volume of spam coming your way, but it also limits the amount of information people can find on you.
SSL certificates. Security certificates encrypt information when passed between visitors and your website. Without this kind of encryption, even simple contact form information can be intercepted and read by people with malicious intent. Visitors can have confidence that their personal information is safe on a website when they see the HTTPS (the “s” for secure) and the green padlock in their browser address bar. A basic SSL Certificate can be purchased for as little as $27/yr, and is even included in some hosting plans.
Your Responsibility for Protecting Your Website
Change your password regularly. The more often you can change your passwords, the better. Ideally, you should change them (at least) every 60-90 days. If a password does get compromised, then it won’t be effective for very long. But if you use the same passwords for everything for years, then it opens you up to other attacks. Getting comfortable with a password is one of the worst things you can do.
Use strong password formats. The best format for a strong password is a random string of unrelated letters, numbers, and characters. But that doesn’t usually help your ability to remember your password. Alternatively, you can try using a combination of two unrelated words, a number, and throw in a special character or two. Your goal is to provide as much of an unknown scramble as possible.
Use different passwords for your various accounts. Do you use the same password for everything? If so, then one compromised password means that you’ve opened the door to all of your accounts. At minimum use different passwords for the accounts you most need to protect (like your banking, etc).
Final Thoughts…
Website security is bigger than just keeping hackers out of your website. You need a cybersecurity plan to protect your website, email, and all of your other online accounts. Taking a few simple steps and having the right tools in place can protect you and your website visitors from all kinds of malicious activity. And you will be able to sleep well at night not worrying about all of the latest cybersecurity craziness in the news.
Anyone can start a blog, but most don’t make money from blogging. In fact, many people don’t realize it’s possible to make money with a blog.
Before you can think about making money, you need to focus on writing useful content. Until you do this, you cannot move forward and bring in even a little extra income. It’s your content that keeps people coming back.
Your blog must also have followers, as they are the ones who will help bring money in. You can start with only a handful of followers. But monetizing a blog is a numbers game. The more followers you can gather, the more likely you are to increase your earnings.
Suggested Resource: Learn how to build a strategy that reaches the audience you want in 31 Days to #BlogAwesomeness.
Once you’ve done these things it’s time to begin monetizing your blog. Here are five ways you can start creating income with your blog right now.
Advertising On Your Blog
In the past, companies would advertise where their target audience spends their time. Often, that would be in magazines, newspapers, or on TV. Today, it’s much easier to reach a target audience by advertising on websites where they spend time. Through better targeting, companies generate more leads and boost conversion rates. Thus advertisers are willing to pay the site owner to help share their message.
You can host an event (online or in-person) and charge attendees for participation. This trend isn’t very common among bloggers yet. But it is gaining popularity as writers see how much income they can generate by putting together events for their readers. For example, a blog dedicated to scrapbooking can organize a scrap-a-thon or a class.
Bloggers often have a marketable skill set they can share with others. After all, that’s why you write and share with the world, right? You already offer basic information about these skills through your blog. Once you’ve established yourself as an expert, you can develop and sell products on more advanced topics. Also, you can create new (exclusive) material to sell. A blog written by someone who loves to crochet could teach the basic crochet skills at no charge. As followers become more proficient, they can buy advanced classes or unique patterns.
Digital materials fall under this category and remain in high demand. You can sell an e-course, an ebook, or another kind of digital download. Podcasts are another option to consider. Many are free, but you can also create premium content to sell. Think outside the box and offer something others in the industry aren’t. Bloggers who do so will find their following expands and they generate more income as a result.
A large majority of bloggers turn to affiliate programs to generate income. This involves linking to a product that is being sold on another site. When a visitor clicks on this link and purchases the product, you earn a commission. The site providing the commission supplies you with a unique affiliate code to track sales. Some sites offer a commission if the person clicking the link purchases anything on their site, as opposed to only the advertised item.
With an established blog following, you might find that your opportunities will expand. If you position yourself appropriately, you may be offered public speaking gigs. Or you might receive a request to consult on a project. Teaching opportunities also have arisen for some bloggers. These are only a few examples of how you can generate income through outside engagements.
Blogging is fun for many individuals as they share their thoughts and feelings with friends. Others blog to share the special knowledge they have with others and have a great opportunity to make some money. For those who fall into the second category, there are many ways to achieve this goal. With the right combination of methods, anyone can make money and turn their hobby into a full-time job.
Start with one method, become confident and add a second. If something doesn’t work, drop it and move on to the next. There is no one combination that works for all. Making money with a blog won’t happen overnight. Stick with it and you’ll find your hard work will pay off in the end. The solid foundation you created before you attempt to make money with a blog helps to ensure your success.
