Daly Communications Group's Weekly Blog is your source for web marketing tips and articles to help you grow your business and take advantage of everything the web has to offer. We appreciate comments/questions and feel free to suggest topic ideas you would like us to talk about.

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Useful Web Tools for Every Business PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 17 September 2009 13:52

There are thousands of tools available on the Web today. With so many to sift through and choose from, it is difficult to determine which ones are right for your business and more importantly, which ones are right for your business and FREE. Whether you are looking for business management tools, website management tools or great web information sources, here are a few tried and true sources that we turn to regularly and would recommend that others try:

Campfire. Campfire is similar to instant messaging, but designed exclusively for groups. Share text, files, images, and code in real-time. There is a free plan available for up to 4 simultaneous chatters. There is no time limit on the free plan, so you can access it for as long as you’d like whenever you’d like. There are other plans available for a monthly fee, with a 30-day free trial available.

Basecamp. Basecamp is the leading web-based project management and collaboration tool. It allows you to management projects with other colleagues and clients and easily upload any messages, files, etc. They offer a free plan which allows you to manage 1 project with unlimited users, but without any file-sharing. Other plans start at $24/month and come with a 30-day free trial.

WhoIs?. This is a standard tool that provides you with information about any domain available on the web. Whether you are looking for registration data for domains, searching for available domain names, you can find previously registered domains names that are now available for sale, or you can research and protect trademarks, WhoIs? is the best free source for domain-based research.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This is a great tool to find keywords’ competition rate and search popularity, which are the two best measurements for choosing keywords. Keyword selection is an important component in both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. This free tool allows you to search any combination of keywords and phrases to help you choose the right keywords for your business.

Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a web analytics solution that gives you insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. It offers powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features that let you see and analyze your site traffic data and improve conversion rates. Analytics requires a small snippet of code to be inserted into every page you want monitored. Google then provides traffic/linking/usage measurements for those pages which you can access and analyze as needed.

PrimoPDF. This is the only true, effective, and FREE PDF creator on the web. PrimoPDF lets you create PDFs from over 300 file types including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. PDF files are optimized for print, screen, ebook, or prepress.

Xinu. Xinu is an SEO site statistics tool that provides detailed information about your website. This is a great tool that collects information about a domain from social sites, backlinking, ranking, indexed pages and more.

Wordpress. Wordpress is a free, open-source blogging platform which allows you to create a blog in seconds without any technical knowledge. Almost everything available on the site is free, and features that are currently free will remain free in the future. Wordpress does offer some paid a la carte upgrades for things like CSS editing and custom domains as well.

Nvu. Nvu is a free web authoring system that allows you to edit website pages. It is designed to be easy for novice users to use and does not require any knowledge of HTML or CSS. Nvu is a WYSIWYG HTML editor that is intended to be an open source equivalent to proprietary software like Adobe Dreamweaver.

These are just a few of the great tools that the Web has to offer. There are more free web tools available on the Daly Communications Group site when you become a registered user. Please feel free to share any free web tools that you use as well.
 
Establish Lasting Relationships with Recession-Friendly Marketing PDF Print E-mail
Friday, 28 August 2009 19:09

Adapting your marketing message to become more recession-relevant

If someone asked you how your business has changed over the last year, my guess is that the economic recession forced most businesses to struggle and to make hard choices. With an increasing number of layoffs and reduced spending, businesses have been cutting back their marketing budgets and have been forced to become more resourceful.

While some businesses have not fared so well, others have used this as an opportunity to adapt their marketing messages to become more “recession-relevant,” and are focused on taking care of customers and building lasting relationships for the long run. For example, the jetBlue Promise Program gives customers confidence when booking a flight by guaranteeing a refund if you lose your job in the meantime. Other companies, like Walgreens, are following suit and offering customers who lost their job and health insurance free in-store clinic visits.
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5 Easy Ways to Create Backlinks PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 19:02

In today’s economy, it is more important than ever that your company ranks well in search engines, like Google, to drive traffic to your website and generate new business leads. An increasing number of companies are realizing the value of search engine optimization (SEO). In a 2009 study of advertising effectiveness by Forbes Magazine, search engine optimization was ranked as the most effective marketing tool among other advertising channels.

With approximately 68% to 85% of online searchers never looking beyond the first or second page of search results (the top 10-20 sites), you can’t afford not to rank well for your focus keywords. One way that you can help improve your website’s ranking is by creating backlinks. Backlinks are sites that search engines recognize as linking to your site. Think of backlinks as another site casting a vote for your site, so the more backlinks (votes) you have the higher your site will rank.
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The Future of Social Networking: Will Users Move on to the Next Best Thing? PDF Print E-mail
Monday, 20 July 2009 15:16

What does the future hold for social networking? By definition, social networking is the interaction between a group of people who share a common interest. Before the internet evolved, we still participated in some form of social networking. It is human nature to want to connect with others whom we share something in common with.

The Rise of Social Networking

The early beginnings of online social networking began in the late 1990’s. In 2002, social networking started to gain momentum with the launch of Friendster and followed by MySpace and LinkedIn in 2003. Facebook launched in 2004 and remained a university-only network for two years until it opened to the general public in 2006. Twitter also launched its micro-blogging platform in 2006.

In the last few years, social networking has become a global phenomenon with millions of people logging on everyday to engage in social networks. With approximately 1.5 billion members worldwide, social networking has become more popular than e-mail according to Nielsen Online’s latest research.
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