What Firing A Comedian For Old Jokes Is Like

Graphic Design Memes

This will make you laugh, cry and just hate your clients!

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Stock images – do you want cheese with that?

The quality of stock images just sucks more and more and more and more!!!!!

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How to boost your online store to the top: 5 methods

Venturing into the world of e-commerce? If you’re looking to become a driving force within your chosen market, it’s important you know how to do it. With so many people fighting to claim the top spot, these five tried and tested tips will ensure you’re ahead of the pack and growing exponentially and continuously, ensuring success for the future.

Have a good level of customer service

One of the best ways to attract new customers whilst keeping existing ones around is by ensuring you upkeep a great level of customer service. It’s the most important part of any business – if you’re offering constant communication and customer service, you’ll be ensuring you build those valuable consumer relationships which will keep your business thriving.

Ensure you have an easy, straightforward way for customers to get in touch in regard to products and services they may have queries about. A phone call is regularly said to be the most effective form of communication, building trust and relationships between businesses and customers – but an email is a good choice if a phone line isn’t feasible. So long as you’re able to communicate clearly with customers and establish yourselves as a reliable company, you’ll keep people coming back.

Ensure you’ve got the right hosting

First things first – you need to make sure you’re choosing the right level of hosting to suit your future goals. Are you looking to remain relatively niche, with a limited outreach that remains consistent? Or, do you want to keep getting bigger and bigger, with no limit in sight? If you’re reading this post, it’s likely the latter.

And so, with that being said, you need to consider which hosting provider to opt for. There are plenty out there to choose from, and it all comes down to your personal desires – should you want to grow exponentially, a dedicated server may be your best bet. Although it’s more expensive than a shared server, having your very own dedicated platform reduces the risk of overloading due to increased traffic, which could end up with significant downtime upon your site and effectively making customers look elsewhere.

Design your site to look appealing

Another way to grow your site and establish yourself as a worthwhile company is by ensuring your design is forward-thinking and easy to navigate, whilst also being visually appealing. Consider the appearance of your competitors and the frontrunners in your market – although it’s good to stand alone and excel from the crowd, you need to understand just what makes your neighbours so successful.

Flat, clean designs are all the rage on the internet currently, so consider stripping it back and letting your products do the talking – you’ll be sure to reap the benefits. Minimalism is in, and combined with responsive design you’ll undoubtedly get the best results.

Also be sure to remove any elements of your design that could harm your ranking—everything from the wrong header tags to intrusive pop-ups could lead to penalisation.

Employ “niche marketing”

There’s a difference between a niche market and niche marketing, and you need to be aiming for the latter. Where a niche market will limit you in terms of potential customers, as there’s less of a demand for the products you’ll be selling, niche marketing will have a completely opposite effect.

Niche marketing basically means you’ll be finding your own space in a market that is perhaps oversaturated with the same own. Stand out from the crowd and offer something new, and you’ll attract customers who are looking for the next big thing.

Make sure your site is secure

Another way to ensure your store doesn’t suffer any setbacks is by having a sufficient level of security to protect it. Attacks such as SQL injections are common upon online stores, and with the risk of things such as sensitive information being leaked, it’s important you’re doing all you can to prevent it.

If you do suffer any security breaches or attacks, it’s likely your customers will begin to look elsewhere as a result. Be sure to prevent anything that could prove to be detrimental to your success.

4 Elements Your Website Needs so You Can Land High-Paying Clients

There are elements that make the best websites tick.

“How do they acquire and convert high-paying clients consistently?”

“What do these websites have that we don’t?”

These are the questions those who barely get any sales out of their website often ask.

In this article, we aim to uncover some of those reasons.

Surprisingly, some of them are easily overlooked and are just considered normal elements of a website when in fact they can be the difference between a successful sale and lost one.

The Basics

Before we talk about the elements, we must make sure that the basics are in place. By basics, we mean good on-page search engine optimization (SEO).

To name a few, good-on page SEO consists of good site architecture, a good keyword strategy, and a better than normal website loading speed.

Out of the three, a lot have hiccups on the site speed factor, especially on mobile. According to Google, the benchmark for website loading speed on mobile is three seconds.

If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, you might want to consider optimizing your loading speed.

Using a CDN can help speed up the delivery of your webpage content to your users.

You can also minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes.

Good on-page SEO equals a usable and reliable website for your visitors to use. A usable and reliable website is the foundation that goes hand-in-hand with the elements below.

1. Social Proof

Robert Cialdini, the author of the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, said that when people are uncertain, they tend to look at the actions and behaviors of others to determine their own.

We are more complacent to purchase something if it is used or endorsed by an influencer or accepted by society.

In a nutshell, social proof is something like this – “others say that this brand is awesome, so… this brand must be awesome”.

Think about it. We would be compelled to buy something from Amazon if it is rated five stars and has a lot of positive reviews.

There are different kinds of social proof depending on your industry and website. Moreover, some are more applicable for Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies while some are leaning towards Business-to-Business (B2B) ones.

For those in the B2C space, social proof you can use on your website can be social media in the form of Facebook posts or tweets from customers.

On the other hand, B2B companies can leverage on testimonials from past and current clients to persuade future ones.

(Zoho, a CRM platform shows testimonials from brands that use their platform.)

Showcasing your client’s logos or media publications where you are mentioned in on your homepage is another good social proof for B2Bs. These are also known as trust icons.

(Salesforce, another CRM platform, showcases the brands that use their platform.)

2. Blog Platform

A blog can help build your brand’s thought leadership and expertise in the industry by providing relevant, informative, and useful content to your customers or clients.

When we see a brand publish noteworthy content on their blog, we consider them authoritative and competent on what they’re doing.

The content you publish in blogs helps nurture your customers as they go through the customer journey.

For example, you can publish blog posts aimed at generating awareness for your product or service.

On the other hand, you can also craft content that aims to remove doubt and last-minute questions to help your customers reach a purchasing decision.

Other than building thought leadership and lead nurturing, a blog is also a useful repository where you can store content that can help your website get found easier with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

3. Consistent Call-to-action

The best websites are designed to have one end-goal or conversion in mind. Those conversions can be a sale or a sign-up on a lead generation form. These conversions depend on your industry, website, and whether you’re B2B or B2C.

For example, if you are a B2B website, your conversion can be a lead. Of course, the occasional inquiries that directly lead to a sale is good. But most of these big-ticket clients needs some nurturing before they buy.

If your aim is to generate leads, your website’s call-to-action and the copy must be consistent all throughout. Every page must be designed to lead to that end-goal.

(Ahrefs, a tool for marketers, communicates one call-to-action on their homepage.)

Some websites forget about these end-goals and add other call-to-actions or generate copy that makes the visitor ask “what do you want me to do?” or “where do you want me to click?”.

Or even worse, some websites even forget to add a call-to-action that often leads to a visitor leaving with no meaningful interactions with the website.

4. Lead Generation Mechanism

If a visitor lands on your website, lucky you! He or she chose your website instead of the countless others. But the challenge now is how to transform the visitor from a visitor to a paying consumer or client.

Not all visitors will convert on the spot, and this applies to both B2C and B2B companies. That’s a reality we all have to accept.

The visitor is interested in your product or service but there are a lot of factors that can influence his or her purchase like lack of money or lack of time to make the purchase itself.

You don’t want that interest to die down now that he or she is aware of your product or service, don’t you? Remember, awareness is hard to come by nowadays.

A useful element to add to a website that helps keep leads interested are lead generation forms. These forms are where visitors can opt-in in exchange for something of value like an ebook or a free trial of a software.

(FreshBooks provides a lead gen form where visitors can opt-in in exchange for a free trial.)

A lead generation form typically subscribes the visitor to an email newsletter. Email newsletters help your visitors navigate through the consumer journey by sending our targeted and well-timed emails depending on where they are on the journey.

For B2B companies, programmed emails help prospective clients learn more about the product or service on the awareness phase. This also helps them keep interested in the product or service.

On the flip side, sending an email that encourages your clients to renew a trial or consult with you if you are offering a service is effective in the consideration phase.

Conclusion

The four elements, when done and integrated right, can be powerful tools to increase and retain your customers and client base.

Found this article helpful? Help others learn more about these four elements by sharing this article.

B2B Digital Marketing: What New Trends Can We Expect?

B2B digital marketing isn’t easy. Marketers are expected to be fully in sync with the sales team to understand both branding and performance, stick to a comprehensive data-driven approach, as well as run reliable tests using a range of tools and technologies. Still, the B2B digital marketing space is a lot more exciting today than ever before.

With the rise of technology, there are even more possibilities for engagements between B2B businesses and their potential prospects. Therefore, the best way to prepare is to anticipate upcoming trends and incorporate them into new, more effective strategies.

Awareness of the latest trends means that B2B businesses can embrace changes early, stay ahead of the competition and reap the attached benefits. Here are some of the new trends we can expect in B2B digital marketing.

Account-Based Marketing and Sales Strategies

For the past few years, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has generated a lot of interest in B2B marketing, growing steadily all the while. Studies show that the value of ABM is recognised by 92% of firms as a ‘must have’ in B2B marketing. ABM represents a more effective way to generate new business, instead of relying only on ‘inbound’ methods of lead generation. This is especially true for B2B companies with lengthy, complex cycles that often involve different transactions and stakeholders that are generally high-value in nature.

Account-Based Marketing requires a close collaboration and alignment with business development, but companies are also beginning to see the importance of a transfer to an account-centric model for marketing and sales purposes.

Marketing Automation

As a consequence of the simplicity and affordability of the web/cloud based marketing automation platforms, the B2B industry is seeing a fast-paced growth in the adoption of marketing automation. It’s therefore the perfect time to understand customer needs, break down and classify the customer database, and prepare need-based or seasonal email marketing campaigns.

Such campaigns target a highly customised audience and use trigger-behaviour-based emails / drip email marketing methods. To achieve a seamless outcome, businesses need to integrate email marketing with their content marketing strategy.

The full potential of marketing automation systems (to create comprehensive customer engagement throughout the purchase process) is yet to be realised. Still, more businesses can be expected to adopt automation, with email marketing being the easiest place to start.

LinkedIn Marketing

If your B2B business is yet to invest in LinkedIn marketing, you still have a lot to do. Social selling has grown to become a lot more than an experimental marketing strategy. It is the new standard as far as B2B sales is concerned.

Generally, social media was regarded as a better fit for B2C lead generation and marketing, with B2B marketers choosing trusted hosting companies to handle Domain Names space and other online advertising methods.

However, more B2B marketers are changing their focus to social media as a means to communicate with and educate their potential prospects. In addition, LinkedIn – once regarded as a hub hosting sketchy recruiters and hungry job applicants – is now one of the most widely recognised advertising giants for B2B marketers.

Following their 2016 acquisition by Microsoft, LinkedIn has released a number of features, all working towards cementing the site as the most cost-effective and efficient platform companies can use to reach a B2B audience. Now, targeting for ads using this network are incomparable for reaching specific subsectors of potential customers in a range of industries and job roles. Therefore, just as in the previous years, the platform can be expected to outshine other social channels for B2B businesses.

We can therefore expect to see an increase in the use of LinkedIn’s social lead generation forms – InMail Analytics. This is one of the recently released features that works to improve the performance of your entire team, and help attract greater response. B2B marketers are making use of LinkedIn to make more data-driven decisions than ever before, and this trend is expected to continue in the future.

Improved Thought Leadership

Well-written content will always have a place online – despite the rise of video and other types of media content. B2B content marketing therefore needs more focus placed on genuine thought leadership, instead of concentrating solely on sales and self-promotion. There is an important role which thought leadership generated content (with valuable insight) plays throughout the buying process.

Such content follows the buyer from awareness of the product to consideration and then selection. We can expect content marketing to return to its original form, where the main aim was to create and share relevant, valuable and consistent content to attract and hold on to a specific audience. We can also expect an increasing demand for thought leaders creating their own content on LinkedIn and other social networks.

The new trend in B2B digital marketing calls for content that looks to inform, educate and demonstrate the thought process and expertise of a company to a prospective buyer. Such content will be characterised by less focus on sheer quantity, and more emphasis on quality thought leadership.

How can B2B businesses take advantage of this trend to improve marketing?

More demand should be placed on business leaders’ experience to create insightful pieces that can be accessed on the network. If a network shows interest and connects with you, it’s an opportunity to further showcase your expertise, creating content that provides a window into the level of thinking your company is positioned to deliver. A more obvious benefit is that prospects will have a more personalised channel to engage with your business.

In addition, alternative content formats should also be explored. Different forms such as infographics, whitepapers, videos and whitepapers should be used appropriately across the network. Backlinks can also be created to give your intended B2B audience (researchers and decision makers) the impression that your brand’s products and/or services are everywhere.

10 web design mistakes hurting your Google search ranking

For established websites with ample traffic and fantastic search engine rankings, the major challenge is updating site design to meet the latest algorithm without losing visitors. Google is now on a mission to rid the internet of poor content and design. Therefore, it’s essential your website displays content from the finest writers and incorporates SEO savvy designers if you want to avoid a Google penalty.

Regardless of niche, your website design should be stunning and visually appealing to online users. Google tweaks its’ algorithm on an almost daily basis, so it’s hard to keep up with SEO best practices when designing a website. Sadly, these mistakes will cost you traffic, site authority, page ranking, conversion and revenue.

Which web design mistake is affecting your site performance and ranking?

• Poor technical SEO

The first step to conversion is attracting traffic to your website. Next, your site performance should be excellent if you want visitors to enjoy a positive user experience. This involves testing your site for mobile-friendliness, ease of navigation, page load speed and removal of all broken links. Your SEO will suffer if your site isn’t optimised for these features.

• 404 pages and missing H1 tags

Imagine taking the time to build a sumptuous website even the best designers would be impressed with. There’s a beautiful background, user-friendly font and colour scheme. Meanwhile, the browsing is simple and it all looks great , except that it’s not showing up
on search engines.

Somehow, you’ve forgotten about H1 tags, a vital element for SEO. Google bots use the H1 tag to understand a webpage. Include this tag on your homepage and across your website if you want higher rankings. In addition to the H1 tag, add a target keyword for better clarity.

• Using too much flash or frames on your site

Flash is attractive on a website, but not SEO friendly. Creating a homepage based on flash is a huge SEO blunder, as search engines index them poorly. When people see flash content, they can read the text within, but the only thing search engines see is a headline and nothing more.

Results from a recent poll show that 78% of respondents don’t like flash either, so why do you need to flood your site with flash ads? Chrome no longer auto-plays flash ads after finding it had a negative impact on users’ browsing experience.

• Failing to optimise on-page elements and including important text in images

The most easily understood content for search engines is text. Videos, infographics and podcasts might gain more engagement, but when search engine spiders crawl your site, they’re looking for specific keywords in key locations.

Google’s official webmaster advises site owners to use text instead of images when displaying essential content, names or links. Google crawlers can’t identify text-in-images. This factor accounts for about 15% of Google’s Ranking algorithm. Where images are absolutely necessary, use ALT to add few words of descriptive text.

• Infinite scroll

When incorrectly implemented, infinite scroll can hurt SEO performance.  Content keeps loading as the user scrolls to the end of the page. Set up your pagination correctly or search engines can’t crawl your web pages.

For example, you have 200 pages on your blog, which is enabled for infinite scrolling. By default, if you only display 20 recent posts, that’s all search engines bots will see. They crawl links, so there’s no way to see past the top 20 articles. Thankfully, Google’s Webmaster Blog offers a few insights for making infinite scroll pages more search-friendly.

• Intrusive and irrelevant pop-up ads

Pop-ups aren’t indexed by search engines, nor should they be part of your web design. In fact, Chrome blocks them from appearing. Most online users also find pop-ups annoying. If one appears on the screen while you’re browsing, you’ll probably close it before reading the content. However, digital marketers say they’re great tools for increasing subscriber base and email lists.

It’s possible to display popups, increase sales and followers without hurting your SEO. Dan Zarrella and Entrepreneur.com are two successful examples. The key is to ensure the popup is relevant and unobstructed. Offer your visitor a mouth-watering offer that makes them forget the intrusion. Don’t be pushy, but always provide value to the user when displaying pop-ups. Examples include a product discount or free ebook.

• Thin content

Your product and service pages are the most essential on your site. You’ll drive more business sales if you rank higher for keywords from your services and product pages. A few mistakes web owners make include:

• No product or service page on their website: when you fail to include these pages, you lose the unique opportunity for organic ranking, related to your target keywords.

• One-page listing for multiple products: as a thumb of SEO rule, only have one keyword on each page. This helps search engines properly understand the page and how to rank it. Your website becomes confusing when you pack several services or products on the same page, which causes you to lose ranking points.
• Small text on your product/service pages: When you’ve chosen product/services pages to include on your site, create content or copies to accompany them. Descriptive content that highlights the benefits of buying the product from you helps the pages to rank higher and increases the chances of visitors shopping from your online store.

Other SEO factors that cause Google to penalise you include:

• Keyword domains: domain names aren’t risky on their own, but using keywords in your domain name might be dangerous. If you repeatedly link to the anchor text, Google sees it as a manipulation.  To prevent this, ensure you have quality content on your site when using exact match domains. There are sites like Domain Names NZ offering services that won’t cost you SEO points.
• Neglecting Hreflang: This is a tool designed to notify Google when you intentionally publish duplicate content for different languages.
• Renting links
• Overpopulating your web page with every design element you can find
• Redesigning you site without updating SEO
• Failing to upgrade to HTTPS

Conclusion

Your web development, design and SEO experts should work together to create an outstanding experience for the user, because that’s all Google really wants. When upgrading your site or performing a major redesign, don’t focus on deadlines, but think about how to maintain your engagement levels, traffic and site rankings.

Von Glitschka of Glitschka Studios | Audio Interview

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Why You Need to Build a Business Blog

Whether you are running a restaurant, an eBay shop or are a freelance creative, running a successful business blog could raise the profile of your organization or enterprise significantly. It might seem like a whole lot of work, writing posts then sharing them, and maybe you are not a natural writer, or you think that you don’t have anything to say. Whatever your hesitation, it’s time to move on. A blog alongside your website could be the difference between your business getting by and thriving. Read these top reasons to start blogging, and get yourself ready for the world of interacting with other people in the written form.

Raise your Personal Profile

Making yourself more visible and occupying a public position may seem intimidating, but establishing yourself as somebody who is engaged in their particular field is only going to help you further grow your business. In the age of social media, the individual has more of a status than ever before, and personality sells products and services. If you are able to write a blog each week, ensure your content is relevant and insightful: write about industry tips, demonstrate a good working knowledge of the business environment, and engage with your clients and customers. Make it readable, and you are guaranteed to inspire confidence in potential customers.

Promote the Right Kind of Sharing

Each blog post you produce will be read by some person or people, therefore, the chances of your post being shared are quite high. Although it may not go viral, a few shares of a single post means it’s working, and you should continue writing or blog post. Improving your number of shares, however, will take time. It’s a slow game, and not one you can rush. Of course, when your traffic starts to increase, you need to ensure your blog is able to withstand a large amount of people, all at ones. Consider using a service like Best Web Hosting that offers affordable packages.

Establish Your Business as a Part of a Community

Blogging is a means of creating and nurturing a group of people who are interested in what you have to say and write about. You can build a network of like-minded individuals, and watch your blog thrive as people start to conversate with one another. Not only does this increase your Google ranking and your success, but it also means you’re a reliable, reputable business who people turn to when they need support.

Develop Your Business Brand

One of the main benefits that blogging could have on your business is the discoverability of your brand. With catchy, field specific titles you could direct traffic to your website from different fields and even countries. This is where having a strong brand which is distinguishable becomes incredibly important; therefore, make sure whoever reads your blog also sees your branding.

Even if they don’t click on your business page right away, they might remember you or feel familiar with your aesthetic when it comes to choosing a service or product you offer down the line. Chances are, if they are reading a blog on your page, then they are interested in the industry you operate within.

4 Essential Website Design Tips for Piano Teachers

The piano is one of the most versatile instruments in music, spanning several genres from classical to jazz and contemporary pop music. If you are a piano teacher, this diversity of styles should guarantee a steady flow of students, but without a good website, they simply won’t know who you are and how to get in touch. To help you establish a successful studio, we’ve put together four essential website design tips for piano teachers. Let’s begin our journey.

1. Embrace the Internet

The first step that many piano teachers need to take has less to do with domain names and javascript and more to do with their way of working. There was a time when piano teachers thrived through word of mouth referrals. You may still attract some students this way, but with increased competition and a highly mobile and selective generation of students (and their parents), one of the best ways to make yourself known is by using the internet.

The internet has also become an excellent medium for piano teachers who wish to further their education. Excellent programs like the online master of music in music education can be completed from any location thanks to the internet and Rutgers Online. You could even become a well-known authority on music just by publishing your views online or boost your reputation by posting videos of your performances, lessons, and masterclasses.

2. Get the Right Design – at an Affordable Budget

To harness the internet’s huge potential, you need the right website. You’ll want to use the services of a professional web designer, but don’t pay too much when you’re first starting out. With a budget of $500-$1,000, you should be able to get your website up and running with the right design and functionality to attract visitors and secure new students.

3. Don’t Promote Yourself – Sell the Experience You Offer

Today’s customer is wary of self-promoting teachers who fill their websites with information about their own achievements and fail to mention the true benefit of becoming a student: the enriching process of learning an instrument. While it’s important to mention your qualifications, awards, and achievements, it’s equally important to describe your teaching philosophy, the approach you take to students, and the things you do to develop students musically, spiritually and psychologically.

4. Answer Students’ Questions Before They Ask them

Students and parents searching for a new piano teacher usually have a few common questions in mind: has the teacher completed a college degree or online MMME Program? Do they take beginners? How much do they charge? Do they train students for enjoyment, prepare them for exams and competitions, or both?

What musical styles do they specialize in and can they teach across genres? Do they give lessons at their studio, at students’ homes, or via Skype? If your website answers these questions, you’re more likely to get queries from students who are a good fit for your studio.

Conclusion

With a well-designed, comprehensive website that introduces your skills, methodology and teaching philosophy to prospective students, you’ll be well on your way to building a successful piano teaching studio. The more time, patience, and effort you put into your website, the more successful you will be.