By Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk

by Kelly Lucas, marketing and social media manager

Last week, Atlanta was the site of the inaugural Digital Summit. The event played host to digital enthusiasts of all levels, such as bloggers, execs and marketers looking to hone their online skills, as well as developers and techies. I met many interesting people and met some great new Twitter friends, and also received a very stylish knit cap from MailChimp.

I’ve put together a list of some of the better ideas I gleaned from the Summit. I hope you’ll find them useful as well.

Long Tail Keywords: Everyone wants to improve their search ranking. Most know to use topical keywords in their copy in order to rank for those words. More and more, searches are done using ‘long tail’ keywords. This means that instead of just applying the keyword ‘marketing,’ you should also use ‘professional services marketing.’ It’s more targeted and specific. People who search with long tail keywords and phrases are typically those that are ready to buy, so these usually have a better conversion rate. Think of all the different ways that your target audience may input a search for your product or service, and then apply that to your Website. Or better yet, ask a few of them what keywords they’d use to find you and add those. The words you think may not be the ones they would use.

Mobile Marketing: Mobile marketing is gaining ground rapidly. Research shows a steady increase in the number of search queries being  made via a mobile device. If your website does not have a mobile version, it’s time to set one up now! Since mobile searches are usually done on the fly with little time to spare, your site must be designed for thumbs. This mean having large buttons and easily accessed links, so that the user does not have to keep maneuvering and zooming in or out to get to the needed information. Don’t worry too much with the minutia of your primary Website and instead put in just the pertinent info. Usually mobile searches are made for directions or phone numbers, so make those the priority when setting up your mobile site. Also, many mobile devices don’t support Flash. So while you should be creative, don’t be too fancy, because most will not be able to view it.

Use Videos: Videos are fast becoming the new standard for marketing, and with good reason. Videos can express ideas in a quicker manner than reading through copy on a Website and since everyone seems to be in a hurry these days, the faster you can get your message across clearly, the better. Videos can also improve your search ranking. The speaker who presented on this topic said it was better that you host the video on your own site versus submitting to a site like YouTube. YouTube videos that are linked are still a good idea in terms of helping your messaging, so if this is the best way for you, by all means do it! However, by hosting the video yourself, you receive the benefit of having the video content indexed in Google’s search results for your site. If you choose to host videos directly, be sure to follow the video sitemap format suggested by Google and also allow others to link to or embed your video on their sites, which increases incoming links and visits for better search engine optimization. One thing to keep in mind: search engines cannot read Flash reliably. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use Flash (it can do some pretty amazing interactive things), but it does mean that the content within the video might not be indexed as easily as other formats, so don’t rely on it as your only means of video search engine optimization.

I hope you find these tips and tricks helpful in your marketing. If you’ve recently learned something new, please feel free to share to with all the readers in the comments section below.