Blog

Published on March 1, 2022

It’s hard to overstate the importance of having a website for your brand. Today, your next customers are connecting with businesses and doing their product research online, via search engines, review platforms, and social media networks - which can all help funnel users directly to your personalized landing page. 

Having a unique, handcrafted website that is functional, responsive, and optimized for search engines can go a long way in helping your business stand out from the crowd. Your brand website is also a powerful marketing tool. It’s your calling card, your elevator pitch, and your sales funnel, all rolled into one. Your website can help your brand reach new audiences on search engines like Google, and help convert curious visitors into lifelong customers. 

If you’re nearing the end of your website design and development process, you’ve probably been over all this - and then some! You’ve talked about design. You’ve discussed creating compelling calls to action and functional conversion tools. You’ve thought long and hard about the importance of UX. 

Now, it’s time to move into the last phase, and start fine-tuning your site so it’s ready to launch. It’s time to look over the little details, to make sure your website is going to appeal to audiences, and rank highly with search engines. Before your site goes live, it’s also important to start planning for the future, and develop a strategy for all of the maintenance, performance, and security tasks to come. 

Published on February 8, 2022

Most business professionals have at least a peripheral understanding of how to market their products or services on social media sites Facebook and Twitter. (If not, Geek Chicago is here to help with those, too.)

LinkedIn, however, is often vastly misused or misunderstood, by businesses and professionals alike.

On the one hand, LinkedIn is the preferred social media network for B2B marketers, it’s able to call itself one of the leading job search sites in the world, and Microsoft valued the company enough to acquire it for more than $26 billion.

On the other side of things, plenty of would-be LinkedIn users have been left scratching their head after creating a profile. Others have told us that they’ve long avoided the process altogether.

Whatever the case may be, LinkedIn remains one of the key social media networking and content marketing opportunities for businesses and individuals, and if you aren't an active part of this community yet, there’s no time like the present to get started.

Here's our 101 crash course on learning the basics of LinkedIn.

Published on February 4, 2022

If you're using Instagram to share your content and promote your business, you probably already know the importance of hashtags. But the real question is, how do you make them work for you? Which hashtags should you choose? How many hashtags is too many?

Knowing why hashtags are on Instagram in the first place, and how to use them effectively to promote your content, is one major key to your success on the platform. 

While “the ‘gram” is widely known to make frequent changes to optimize its organic search algorithm, there are truisms about good hashtag use that are seemingly timeless. Regardless of whether these precedents are timeless, here is the latest on how to use hashtags to their fullest potential when working with Meta’s golden child. 

Let’s start by dispelling some myths about Instagram hashtags. Hashtags are not on-platform advertising mechanisms. They are “a tool that provides context about your post” and its content. In other words, they’re there so the algorithm promoting organic reach can do its job better.

Hashtags are also not a “more the merrier” type of deal. Stuffing hashtags into your content won’t do it any favors, and you run the risk of choosing an irrelevant hashtag that someone may have intentionally muted. Let’s illustrate with some examples. Say you’re a tech influencer who’s made a post about the recent Tesla recall, and CES is chugging along as it does in early January (these events coincided earlier this month). Adding #CES to the bottom of your post about the Tesla news can be harmful if it has nothing to do with the annual Consumer Electronics Show. In fact, many tech news consumers may be so inundated with nonstop CES news (or morally opposed to the convention being held during a wave of viral infections) that they mute the hashtag. 

Published on January 6, 2022

“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison

Widely regarded as the father of modern electricity, Thomas Edison was a relentlessly prolific inventor, and is considered to be one of the most important engineers in American history. So it’s a little bit reassuring to read that such a significant figure sometimes struggled with his productivity and creative output.

We know how it feels to be burnt out, tired, or otherwise unproductive – and we’re willing to bet that you sometimes feel the same way. Like there aren’t enough hours in the day? That no matter how much you accomplish, you’ll never actually manage to polish off your “to-do” list?

Whenever feelings like these creep up, it can be easy to retreat from what needs to be done, and instead fall back on that old, reliable stand-by – procrastination.

“Why force it, if the creative juices just aren’t flowing?” you ask.

“Isn’t it better to wait,” you may well reason, “until I feel that big, creative second wind?”

These feelings are completely natural. But when it comes to your content marketing efforts, they could be dangerous.

The Importance of a Consistent Content Marketing Strategy

Published on December 30, 2021

The average person will spend more than five years of their life on social media, and most users spend roughly two hours every day on some social platform or another. Social media accounts for as much as 30% of total time spent online, and up to 80% of social media usage takes place on mobile devices – meaning that, in many cases, we literally can’t get away from that next tweetstorm or Instagram notification.

Two hours a day is a huge chunk of time to be spent doing anything – let alone using services with known links to negative health effects, ranging from increased feelings of loneliness to sleep deprivation. For many, social media is a stressor, and it can be a trigger for anxiety and frustration – yet it can be hard to connect with friends and family without it.

And for many, social media isn’t just a habit, but a cornerstone of their daily life. That’s particularly true for people in our chosen field; working as we do in digital marketing, we’re even more plugged in than the average user, and large portions of our day are spent checking in on social media analytics, monitoring posts and comments, scrolling through feeds on Buffer, SocialPilot, or Hootsuite, and creating content for Twitter and Facebook.

What this means is that we sometimes have to check in and set hard limits on our social media usage – for the sake of our own mental and physical health. Looking for some help getting started with a digital detox plan? Just want to be more mindful when it comes to your social media consumption?

Here are a few strategies that we’ve found can be quite helpful, whether you’re just taking a temporary breather from social media or trying to set more productive habits for your future:

1.) Set Technology-Free Windows of Time

Published on December 23, 2021

In the fields of real estate, architecture, and interior design, appearances and aesthetics play a big part in the final product. Whether it's an entire building or just one room, you only get one chance to make a lasting first impression.

The same goes for digital marketing!

Putting a digital marketing strategy in place is one way to enhance and share the appearance of yourself or your firm in the minds of your next clients.

By producing content that speaks to specific audiences, bringing in visual media that represents the unique view of your firm, and building an engaging website, real estate agents, architects, and interior designers can use digital marketing to secure leads and demonstrate their professional finesse.

Ready to build your brand’s digital home – and reach your next batch of paying clients? Here’s what home professionals need to know:

1.) Handcraft a Dynamic Website

Published on December 21, 2021

As recently as a few years ago, we had a better grasp on what “content” meant online. It referred to individual posts – blogs, vlogs, infographics – typically stored on your site and discovered or shared through different channels, including search engine rankings, social media, and email.

But today’s internet works differently. There are more social channels, more types of media to pick from, more content creators than ever before. And as a result, users’ preferences have changed over the years. The ways in which we consume content have changed fundamentally, for example; we multi-task more than ever, and are more likely to “skim” articles than read them in their entirety.

More broadly speaking, even the ways we think about content have changed fundamentally in recent years. It’s no longer discrete, but omnipresent, built into the very fabric of the way that we use the internet now. Readers and searchers have grown more savvy and media literate, and your approach to content creation needs to be as sophisticated as they are – crafted in a way that consumers find appealing and made accessible on the channels that your audience is already using.

Published on December 20, 2021

Have you heard of Google Panda? No, it's not a mascot. In fact, Panda was a change made to Google's search results algorithm all the way back in 2011, with the goal of helping to eliminate low-quality sites from searches, while having higher-quality sites appear at the top of the search.

Ever heard of it? You’re not alone if you haven’t.

The fact is, Google and its peers in the search engine sector are consistently updating and refining their algorithms and web crawlers, helping redefine the ways in which users search the internet for e-commerce options and content – and how they find their way to your brand.

Whether that means factoring in mobile devices, updating search engine ranking pages (SERPs) with Knowledge Graphs and Featured Snippets, or taking aim against “blackhat” tactics like keyword stuffing, Google has long been a vital gatekeeper for businesses, either helping to guide internet users to your site – or send them into the arms of your competitors.

Published on December 16, 2021

Ho, ho, ho!

It’s that time of year again. The air has turned cold, sleigh bells are jingling, presents are being put into stockings with care… We could go on, but you probably get it!

It’s the holiday season, which means that the man in the big red coat will soon be flying around the world with his trusty reindeer, delivering presents (and a few lumps of coal) to kids everywhere.

And while some of our adult readers may have stopped believing in Santa Claus, there’s still something about his spirit that’s downright infectious – particularly for digital marketers! Don’t believe us? Well, it’s true!

Published on December 9, 2021

You've heard it all before (probably from this very website): Having an active and engaged online presence is a surefire way to boost the image of your business - and generate new leads via inbound marketing.

But here's the thing. In today's digital landscape, what it means to be "active" is a little different than ever before. Social media platforms, for instance, have changed and adapted with the times, and users are more sophisticated than ever before.

But still, we're willing to bet you're at least keeping up with the basics. You know you're supposed to create original content, post on Facebook, tweet, and maintain a super awesome website that keeps bringing customers back for more.

But all of that - the creation and sharing of content - is just one piece of the puzzle. 

Your social media voice has been active - but how much have you really been listening?