Panoptic Online Marketing celebrates a very special anniversary this month: it’s been one year since we teamed up with Kathy Estadt of Fresh Focus Group, our sales and marketing partner agency based in Daphne, Alabama. With a background in strategic planning, new product development, brand management and advertising, Kathy rounded out Panoptic’s capabilities nicely, providing insights that give our technical SEO and PPC staff a richer, more informed foundation on which to build online marketing strategies and execute plans for Kathy’s local clients. [Read more…]
Website Redesign and SEO Starter Package for Shoreline Pixels
Panoptic Online Marketing has been working with business owners along the beautiful Connecticut coastal towns that make up the Shoreline area. It’s a joy for our client account managers to get away from the grit and hustle of NYC to spend a few days meeting with clients, prospects and colleagues in Westbrook, Old Saybrook, Madison, Clinton and Guilford. The scenery is gorgeous; farms and forests, the beaches of the Long Island Sound. And local business owners that actively help each other — and the larger community– grow and thrive through their local Chambers of Commerce.
We’ve joined two of these: the Old Saybrook Chamber of Commerce and the Shoreline Chamber of Commerce; it’s through the latter that I met Peter Sikes of Shoreline Pixels, a Google Street View Trusted Photographer. Peter has been providing 360-degree virtual tours for a variety of businesses from New Haven to New London, and we are now teaming up to round out each of our respective business’s capabilities, share leads and deliver great results for our clients!
In getting started, we decided to work with Shoreline on the redesign of its website and make sure the new site was properly optimized for both visitors (hopefully potential customers) and search engines.
The new site provides for better responsiveness to mobile devices and provides Peter with an easy way to add new Virtual Tours to his portfolio, new Testimonials from business clients who have taken advantage of his expert service, and blog/news items for stuff that doesn’t fall naturally into other categories, for example, beautiful shots of moonrise over the Madison Surf Club. We also provided him with an intake form to collect more information from potential customers who may be looking for specific types of digital imaging services.
If you run a business with a physical location — could be a shop, restaurant or bar, hotel or even your manufacturing plant — you should consider a Google Street View for your website. Let us know if you’d like us to introduce you to Peter at Shoreline Pixels.
The Beginner’s Guide to Visual Content
In 2015, visual content creation became one of the hottest trends in online marketing, especially with the rise in popularity of visually-inclined social networks such as Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat and Vine. Popular social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) have also started putting visuals in the center stage and all for a good reason: visual content, if done correctly, helps increase brand awareness, engagement and website traffic.
Why Visual Content?
You might have heard it a hundred times: 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. And not just that, studies and data have shown how effective visual content in grabbing your audience’s attention. [Read more…]
Three Reasons to Outsource Your SEO and Online Marketing
From time to time I offer SEO tutorials to clients or speak at events where small business owners come for a do-it-yourself SEO overview. I’m always happy to educate people around search engine optimization and all the techniques we employ in our daily work at the marketing agency. Somebody once asked me if I wasn’t afraid of “giving away” my expertise, but I love what I do and I enjoy educating others on how to leverage their websites to meet their business goals – that’s why I’m in business!
I’ve never worried about giving away expertise – the expertise is out there for anyone and everyone to find and study for themselves. The thing is, even when armed with the necessary knowledge not everyone has the time to work on their own SEO and content marketing – especially not the small to medium-sized business owners we work with. And if there is a single lesson I try to impart during my talks and tutorials, it’s that SEO and online marketing requires commitment and consistency. In almost every case I recommend that businesses – even those with in-house webmasters, design teams and marketing departments – outsource their SEO. Here are the three main reasons why
Case Study: Blogging & Social Media for Apparel Network
One thing we never fail to tell our prospective clients: online marketing isn’t for those seeking instant gratification. It takes a substantial investment of time and effort to identify and reach your target audience; it takes focus and persistence to reap real bottom-line benefits. So when we launched the Apparel Network website back in August 2014, the principals knew they had only taken the first step on their journey into the world of Internet marketing.
In order to grow and sustain a robust and engaging online presence, B2B businesses must offer more than basic brochure-type content on their website — and Apparel Network is no exception. They signed Panoptic to build and manage their business blog and get them started with social media marketing. [Read more…]
Thanks and Wishes for the New Year
February 2016 will mark the five-year anniversary of Panoptic. Anyone that runs a small business will appreciate the tremendous effort involved in keeping things growing and moving in the right direction, and as a New York City-based online marketing agency we have the extra challenge of making sure our clients’ businesses are moving in the right direction, too — at least as it pertains to their online presence.
The work we undertake is time-consuming and requires highly skilled people that are dedicated to this mission. As the owner of Panoptic, I want to close out the year by thanking the amazing people that make up our core team – and a few of the individuals we partner with regularly in the service of our clients. [Read more…]
SEO and Online Marketing for the Small Business (Part 2)
Panoptic is a New York City-based small business; most of our clients are small businesses, too!
Website Review
After having defined a client’s brand and objectives, and carefully studied the competitive environment, Panoptic generally moves on to the next step in crafting an online marketing plan: the website review. It goes without saying that a company website should be clean, clear and user friendly, but it also needs to contain the useful, informative and engaging content that the business’ potential customers are searching for. [Read more…]
SEO and Online Marketing for the Small Business (Part 1)
Panoptic is a New York City-based small business; most of our clients are small businesses, too. Small businesses need to understand how to leverage SEO and online marketing more than larger companies, because they don’t have the resources to spend on traditional media channels. Print media and television are costly undertakings! But for online marketing to be successful, a clear and long-term strategy needs to be defined – this is where many small businesses fall short and why so many of them end up on Panoptic’s doorstep.
While onsite SEO is fundamental for every website regardless of the size of the company, it’s only the first step on the road to establishing the kind of visibility that leads to a strong and long-lasting online presence. Scattered, unfocused efforts get poor results at best (and can even damage your online credibility). But when you run a small business you’re time is monopolized by overseeing daily operations and leaving you with little energy to focus on any marketing, much less formulating a comprehensive strategy. [Read more…]
Case Study: Apparel Network
The Challenge:
Based in Rome, Italy, Apparel Network, S.r.l. provides end-to-end services to companies seeking to off-shore their manufacturing operations, particularly to China. Within the country they’ve had considerable success working with some big name fashion brands, especially in the “street wear” sector. Due to an increasingly difficult Italian market brought on by years of economic crisis, the company was seeking to expand their operations to the United States.
Linkedin Showcase Pages – Should You Have One?
LinkedIn Showcase Pages have been around since late 2013, but even after LinkedIn announced the removal of the Product and Services section from Company Pages back in April, many companies are still unsure about creating one for their business. If you’re still unsure about creating a LinkedIn Showcase Page, then this article might help you.
What is a Linkedin Showcase Page?
The Showcase Page is a sub-page or niche page of your LinkedIn Company Page, designed to highlight a brand, business unit, or initiative. It allows you to create a page that targets audiences who are only interested in a specific aspect of your business. This could be a flagship product or service; a branch or subsidiary; an annual or regular event that your company hosts; or the executives and/or key staff of your company. [Read more…]