By Virteom
August 09, 2018 Category: Content

Forget the sales pitch, people want content. Eighty-four percent of consumers expect content creation from brands, even from emails. Millennials distrust ads and ad blockers are the norm. This data means you need a content style guide to maximize your results. What is a Content Style Guide? If content is king, a content style guide is its chief advisor. For any and all content you publish or post as a company, this key document defines the Voice: Rhythm and language of your brands personality. Tone: Adaptation of your voice to different platforms. Style: What your content looks like i.e. formatting, grammar, etc. It clearly explains what your brand is and how to best express it through copy. It offers both an overview and detailed direction to writers, video producers and all other content creators. The foundation of quality content starts with a well-researched content style guide. How Does a Content Style Guide Help? Your brand consists of visuals and content both equally important

By Admin
September 05, 2017 Category: Blogging, Marketing, SEO, Content

With a lot on your mind, you pour your heart and soul into blog post after blog post. You post all the new events, awards and recognition your company gets. Isnt that quality? No fluff topics. No sales pitchy posts. Just trustworthy, heartfelt content. Unfortunately, even this noble foundation leaves many blogs unread. To create an A+ blog that ranks high in search engines, your content needs to provide value and speak to readers by doing the following. Feed Your Audience What It Wants Great content means little if it only has meaning to you. To draw readers in, you need to give audiences what they want to read. Look for trending topics, provide solutions to reader problems and answer their questions with your blog posts. Become a resource for your current customers and readers and future ones! To accomplish this, you need to do your research. Use Google Trends to find up-to-date topics based on search volume. Look to Quora, LinkedIn Answers and other such sites to identify

By Admin
June 21, 2017 Category: Think Tank, Marketing101, Online Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing, Content

Set Your Pride Aside! There are certain mistakes that instantly kill the purpose of a marketing campaign and excessive boasting is one of them. A boastful and self-centric online presence highlights a lack of understanding of what customers want. So, while marketing may be all about putting a word about who you are, what you do and how well you do it, too much boasting can destroy your online image altogether. How do you get customers to choose you without talking about your capabilities and accomplishments? Bragging Ends up Costing More Than Youre Getting Businesses need to understand that the purpose of branding is to highlight the value their service/product holds for the customer. It should be about What You Will Get rather than What We Do? A simple change of subject can make a world of difference. Blowing your own horn is a sign of ego and customers arent attracted to big-headed brands anymore. One of the worst mistakes companies can make is putting no focus on building a connection

By Dan Carbone
September 24, 2012 Category: Content, Marketing, Social Networking, Think Tank

In case you were not aware the next big buzz phrase is Original Content. In fact some have come forward and claimed this to be a bigger moment than SEO. So what does it all really mean to you? Lets take a closer look at what is meant by owning your own content. Most of this movement stems from Google. Google is basically dinging websites if it finds duplicate content on the web. So if you are just borrowing someone elses content and placing it on your website you may not be doing yourself any favors. Try and place your content within a domain that YOU own and with hyperlinks that YOU control. Are you the Owner? Why did I underline and stress YOU? There is this trend or should I say movement where persons and organizations are utilizing third party blogging services to store their original content. In some cases persons or organizations are spending hundreds and even thousands a month to store this newly created content on the web. The issue with this model is the content owner

By Virteom
September 13, 2018 Category: Branding

When you start your own business, the planning phase requires you to focus on many different things at one time. One of the most important aspects of building your new business is having an effective marketing strategy and the branding of your business. Your branding is a key factor in helping your company get recognized so you can achieve success. For the branding of your business to be successful, it must carry through all of your materials. The themes need to clearly run through your website, printed materials, and social media accounts. To accomplish this continuity and have your brand be recognized, the colors, logos, fonts and other important features need to be consistent throughout everything. Why is Branding Important to Your Website? In our technology-driven society, a business website is often the first exposure potential customers have to a business. It is also quite often the first place people go to learn about a company or to make purchases. So, it is crucial that the

By Virteom
August 30, 2018 Category: Hybrid Blogging, Marketing

When you promote your business, it is imperative to set yourself apart from the competition. Developing an effective marketing strategy is vital to the success of your business, and doing something different will help increase interest in your company and improve the likelihood of conversions. There are many different ways that you can promote your business, and it can be difficult to know where to start. Working with a skilled marketing partner can help you use all your outlets efficiently and direct you in different ways that will set you apart from your competition. One way to do this is with a term coined by Virteom hybrid blogging. What is Hybrid Blogging? Blogs are essential for todays businesses. If you think about it, majority of the pages you land on after Googling something is a blog. If youre a current Virteom customer, then youve probably heard CEO Dan Carbone talk about blogs and SEO in terms of frogs andlily pads. (You know, he gives you his whole spiel to think of your

By Olivia Justice
August 24, 2018 Category: Launches

This month has been a very productive month here at Virteom. Weve had 4 websites go live! The first of the August website launches was Ingot Metallurgy Forum (IMF) (ingotmetallurgyforum.org) -- IMF is a forum for technical discussions on producing steel and alloy ingots. IMF is headquartered here in Lorain, OH, but its reach is nationwide. The case of the MILK-CARTON DEVELOPER IMF came to us in need of routine website maintenance. The developers they were previously working with were not as responsive as they needed. Since the organization has two events each year, they need to keep the website up-to-date with information regarding their meetings. They reached out to Virteom for assistance! Since we are a full-time web development firm, were able to respond to inquiries quickly, and keep their members in the loop. GIVING YOUR SITE A FRESH LOOK In taking on the maintenance of their WordPress website, we found that they would do better working within our custom-built content management

By Virteom
August 09, 2018 Category: Content

Forget the sales pitch, people want content. Eighty-four percent of consumers expect content creation from brands, even from emails. Millennials distrust ads and ad blockers are the norm. This data means you need a content style guide to maximize your results. What is a Content Style Guide? If content is king, a content style guide is its chief advisor. For any and all content you publish or post as a company, this key document defines the Voice: Rhythm and language of your brands personality. Tone: Adaptation of your voice to different platforms. Style: What your content looks like i.e. formatting, grammar, etc. It clearly explains what your brand is and how to best express it through copy. It offers both an overview and detailed direction to writers, video producers and all other content creators. The foundation of quality content starts with a well-researched content style guide. How Does a Content Style Guide Help? Your brand consists of visuals and content both equally important

By Virteom
July 26, 2018 Category: Content Creation, Content Marketing

Is content development holding your website back from launching? Did one look at the site map for your new website strike fear in your heart because of the content that was required? The good news is, help is available. A copywriter can come to your rescue. Here are some great reasons to hire someone else to write your content: You Do Not Have Time to write content As a business owner, your calendar, schedule and to-do list are likely maxed out. Adding content writing to your to-do list will only stress you out and leave you less time to get everything else done. But, content is vital to any business to engage with your target audience, increase conversions and communicate about your company effectively. You Lack Content writing Skills Expressing your thoughts with proper spelling and grammar is the foundation of writing. But, so much more goes into content creation. To publish quality content, you need to have knowledge of the following: Grammar, spelling and punctuation. Search

By Virteom
July 04, 2018 Category: Blog

Its no secret that blogging, or content marketing as its also called, is a great way to grow your business and authority. The challenge is coming up with fresh blog ideas on a consistent basis. There are a lot of great resources and tools to help you come up with blog content ideas, but you can also use the list below to start crafting great content for your business blog. Frequently Asked Questions Your blog allows you to speak directly to your customers. It iis the perfect platform to help educate your customers. Take an inventory of the questions you get asked the most from your customers. Take the top five questions and create a blog post for each of them that goes into depth on the answer. This approach not only is targeted to the needs of your customer, but its also a way to provide value and add credibility to your brand. It shows you listen and you care about your customers needs. Case Studies Find a few customers who have had great success with your product or service and

By Virteom
July 04, 2018 Category: General

For decades, Adobe Flash has been a cornerstone of the web, with the player plug-in doing everything from helping you watch videos to playing computer games. But Flash is on its way out as a technology. Adobe made the decision to phase out the software by the end of 2020. Some browsers are already making the transition, leaving Flash behind in favor of migration to open web technologies. Why Adobe Flash Is No Longer Working Hopefully you wont notice much difference, as browsers try to seamlessly migrate without disrupting your user experience. However, there are some hiccups. For example, at Virteom, we have had to make alterations to some modules (or plug-ins) that we use in our content management system (CMS); they no longer work because Chrome and Firefox are no longer supporting Flash. How Are Browsers Transitioning Away From Flash? Browsers have always been the primary delivery mechanism for Flash-enabled content, but today, popular browsers are definitely migrating away from

By Olivia Justice
June 13, 2018 Category: Launches

Virteom Launches Brolex Builders and Findlay Roofers! Virteom is excited to announce the launch of two new websites: Brolex Builders and Findlay Roofers. Brolex Builders is a roofing and general contracting company located in Findlay, OH. Their roofing business, Findlay Roofers, services all of Northern and Central Ohio. Virteom was brought on to help establish a better presence online for both of these companies. We begun our relationship as we encourage all, through discovery:cross analysis, persona development and site mapping. Through our discovery process we were able to put together a guided strategy to allow their website to connect better with their customers on a more personal level -- ultimately compelling them to convert. Findlay Roofers started as a one-page scrollable website. We encouraged this buisness owner to spread his content across many pages, giving users ample opportunity to land on their website. Visit Brolexs Live Site| Visit Findlay Roofers Live Site Why We

By Virteom
June 05, 2018 Category: Buyer Personas

When youre building a business, its imperative that you know who your target audience is. In order to develop your marketing campaign and even design your website, you need to understand the people that would have interest in your product or service. This will help you better market to and interact with them. A great way to figure out this information is through identifying buyer personas. Each buyer has a persona which is based on specifics needs, emotions and demographics. These buyer types will have a personality that can direct your online market strategy to help facilitate the production of leads and conversions through your website. Why take the time to identify your companys buyer personas? Because it helps identify the objectives, problems, and questions your potential customers may have when visiting your website. Thus, providing a clear and direct path for them to take when visiting your site. It also helps you map out what their steps of engagement may look like. How will

By Virteom
May 29, 2018 Category: SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a term is that is used a lot in our online business world. But what does it really mean? There is a heavy emphasis on using SEO to improve our search engine rankings and increase our website traffic, but there is an element to SEO that is often overlooked --the emotional element. Emotions are what really motivates a customer to click, read or purchase. This is where many SEO strategies miss the mark. Most SEO strategies are technical in nature; pick the keywords, place the keyword a certain number of times within the content, etc. What really motivates a customer to take an action, such as reading an article or clicking a buy button, is the emotion behind the words they are reading. This is where the magic happens. Businesses who recognize this are at a huge advantage. The truth is, SEO should not be looked at only from a technical aspect of keywords and meta tags. Emotional SEO is creating content that helps your customer answer a question, solve