Blogs can provide a valuable, cost efficient and effective way to market your products and services and to keep customers informed and coming back for more.

What exactly is a Blog?

Put basically, a blog is a website (or section on a website) where an individual or group of people record information, opinions, articles of interest, news items etc. on a semi-regular basis.

A blog could read like a journal of daily or weekly activities, such as a travel journal telling stories of someone's travel adventures or it could be a collection of articles and news items.

How can a Blog help your business?

• Communication and customer service. Blogs provide a way to communicate with your customers, sharing information about your business, your products and services.
• Keeps customers up to date and encourages traffic to your website and return of sales.
• Builds a community following.Some blogs can enable commenting from visitors to the site to respond to blog articles, provide input and feedback.
• Get found on more searches in Google. Keeping content on your website unique, fresh and full of relevant key terms plays an important role in improving the search engine ranking of your website.

What could you write about in your business blog?

• When it comes to your business, no-one knows it better than you - writing articles of your knowledge and experience is often the easiest content to put together and provides a friendly personable approach for your readers.
• Provide tips and tricks of your trade (without giving away too many secrets of course!) encourage your readers to contact your business for more information.
• Write articles on your latest companies developments, products and services this will help to keep customers informed and encourage sales.
• Write articles on local news or relevant industry news this will help to incorporate key terms to assist in the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of your website.
• Blogs can also contain other media like videos or links to your presence on social media networking sites (such as facebook or twitter).

So why not start blogging today and see how it can help your business grow.

GemStar Interactive can implement a blog component into your new business website, enabling you to easily add new articles, images and content.

Contact GemStar Interactive today to discuss your website needs.

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

After hitting the 'Search' button in search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing, for any particular keywords you are taken to the search engine results page (or SERP) where you can see a list of results matching the terms you typed.

The 'organic' search results are the results for websites that are ranking on particular keywords without paid advertising for their SERP placement.

Sitting to the right-hand side of the organic results, and sometimes above them are paid advertisements or PPC (Pay per click) ads. The paid search results are bid on in an auction system, and the position of each ad is determined by a combination of relevance, the amount the advertiser bid, and the ad copy used.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) such as Google Adword campaigns can be a very effective way to gain more traffic to your website and for your business to get found on relevant searches.

Google Adword Campaigns

Google Adwords are the pay-per-click advertisements you see for businesses when you do a search on Google.

Every time someone clicks on one of those ads a small fee is charged to the ad holder’s adwords account. The more competition a keyword has the more the pay-per-click rate is.
In order for Google Adwords to be effective, keyword research and analysis is required with on-going monitoring of the ads to make appropriate changes to ensure campaigns are successfully hitting target markets.

For any SEM campaign it is essential to start with thorough keyword research and analysis to find out what terms you should focus on, what your competition is and how your campaign ads should be written. Selecting the right keywords significantly influences the results of SEM campaigns.

Can I do keyword research myself?

Sure, there are loads of great tools available to get you started such as Google's free keyword tool   https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal, this tool is essentially created for Google Adword campainging so you can enter a list of key terms and compare the competition and cost per click rate to build up your Adword campaigns. You can also use this tool as part of your keyword research for developing copy on your website to increase organic search results.

Note: the competition results you see using the Google Adword keyword tool is the competition in Google Adword campaigs itself - not the direct competition for organic search results - this requires further investigation and analysis.

However I must warn sometimes it is really worth investing in the services of a professional, unless you really know what you are doing or have the time learn, you may not achieve the results you were after.

GemStar Interactive takes an integrated approach to Search Engine Optimisation - offering our clients a complete SEO solution - a combination of best Organic SEO practices to ensure your website is search engine friendly and othe option of PPC (Paid Per Click) advertising campaigns to significantly improve their online presence. You may like to ask about our 'Ultimate grow your business online' packaged bundle.

Contact GemStar Interactive today to talk through the web and SEO needs of your business.

Email Campaigns are a cost-efficient and effective method to promote your products and services and are a great way to stay in touch with customers as well as expanding on sales.

When sending email campaigns there are some essential factors to keep in mind to make sure your message is received.

Tip 1: Plan your campaigns

Start by identifying the purpose of your campaign - will the email be in the form of a newsletter, an advertisement or a singular article?

Think about what you would like to write about in your email campaign. Here are some example campaign topics to get your started:

• Share your expertise with how-to tips, this is usually the easiest content to write and can be a friendly and personal way to engage with your customers.
• Company news - promoting recent business developments and launching of new products or services, keeps your loyal customers up to date and also encourages sales from new and existing contacts. Put yourself in the recipients place and ask ‘what would I want to know about this product or service that would make me buy it?’.
• Business feedback - occasional feedback surveys are a great way to gain input from your customers and to promote a sense of community.
• Testimonials - by including testimonials in your mailouts, helps to build repour with your customers.
• Special promotions - everyone likes a freebie! send discount coupons, promo codes, and other offers to encourage sales of your products or services. Holiday periods are a great time to send these campaigns as people are always looking for bargains to buy or pressies to send to loved ones.

Tip 2 - Email Content - Getting it right

Subject Heading

The most important part of the message is the subject heading.

The first thing a recipient sees when they receive an email is the subject heading, so you want it to be short, descriptive and eye catching to draw in attention and provide the reader with a reason to open and read your email.

Best practices in writing email subject lines:

• Summarise exactly what the message is about.
• Avoid using the terms - Free, Percent Off, Help and Reminder in your subject headings as they often trigger a spam filter resulting in your email going straight to the junk folder.
• Use a Standard Heading Style – meaning that the first letter of each word in a phrase is capitalised. Stay away from using “all lower case” or “ALL CAPITALS“.
• Do not overuse the same heading – email newsletters tend to start with a high open rate, experiencing some reduction over time. Try not to repeat the exact same subject for each newsletter as this will quickly reduce interest.
• Subject Line Length – keep the subject short and punchy within 50 characters or less.
• For promotional or informative emails, avoid using exclamation marks or splashy phrases in the subject heading.

Email copy

When writing effective email copy, use a conversational and informal tone to make the message friendly, open and intimate. Keep the message short and sweet, if the content is boring readers will quickly lose interest.

Evn tho many mod day ppl use short term to txt or sms it is best avoided with emails as it can come across as unprofessional. Resaerch shws that most poeple are albe to read mispselld text as lng as the first and last characters are correct such as used in this example, however you should always read and re-read your email before sending to check for spelling mistakes.

Before hitting the send button, take a 10 minute break away from your computer and then come back and read your email again before sending. You may be surprised how many mistakes you missed on the first check!

Personalise your message

The more you personalise your message the better the response will be from your subscribers which will result in more sales and more enquiries.

Dear Scarlet,

We thought you might like to know our Brisbane store is having a clearance sale on all ladies shoes. Scarlet, did you know you can save up to 70% off...

The self-hosted GemStar DIY mailer enables you to create an unlimted amount of custom fields to store information about your subscribers such as first name, age, gender, location etc. This allows you to make a single email message look like you have personally addressed your email to each individual recipient. Read more on the GemStar DIY Email Campaign system here.

Tip 3 - Using Images in your campaigns

Depending on your recipient’s computer settings and choice of email program, they will not all see the images automatically when they first receive the email.

Many email programs show the email in a preview window not fully displaying the email – usually only the top half or part of the header section. If the recipient has the email showing in a preview window and the top of the email is a graphic which does not automatically display - what is going to make the recipient open and read the email?

The above example shows a typical example of a html email in a preview window. Although the header graphic is not automatically displayed, you can see descriptive text informing you on what the email is about.

This is called the alt attribute which is alternative text, to be displayed if the image has failed to load or if the email program has images turned off.

A clear summarised subject heading combined with descriptive alt tags on all images in your email will help your readers to identify who the email is from and what it will be about, encouraging them to open and read the email.

The above tips come from the DIY Email Campaign Tips N Tricks ebook written by GemStar Interactive to help customers receive results with their email campaigns - regardless of which campaign system you use.

This ebook guides you through the stages of setting up your email campaigns, from planning your objectives, creating your mailing lists to sending and reviewing the outcomes, as well as providing practical marketing advice and suggestions to ensure the success of your campaigns.

If you would like a copy of the complete ebook - please contact us and we will email it to you for Free.

Branding is all about creating a business identity - something recognisable to your customers.

One of the most important questions to consider when it comes to your brand is -

What does your brand tell your customers about your business?

Anything available for the public eye contributes to the brand of your business -  from logo placement e.g. on stationary, merchandise, uniforms etc, signage, all forms of marketing collateral, advertising and of course your business website.

It is all about providing consistency of identity.

How to avoid branding embarrassment

Let me start this article by telling you a short story about a website domain that could have caused all kinds of problems for a business...

Simon one of the web developer's of the GemStar Interactive network, worked many moons ago on a sheep farm. There was another farm nearby called Mole Station - as it was located on the Mole river. Several years later when he was working in web design he came across a blog article about domain names gone wrong - and one of them was www.molestation.com - don't read it out aloud.

Fortunately this business eventually picked up on how their domain could certainly be misinterpreted, attract the wrong type of traffic and possibly even deter potential customers from their site - unfortunately too late before the world wide web had marked it's history.

Always, always have someone else outside of your business read through your marketing material and provide feedback before it is published.

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Now let's talk about Logo design ...

The same principle applies - always have someone else outside of your business review your logo - ask them - what does it portray? - how does it make them feel?

THINK about how your potential customers and the general public will perceive your logo.

Here are some examples of logos where alternate connotations were not thoroughly considered:

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Remember your branding is your identiy - how do you want people to identify and remember you?

I am writing this article to address some fundametal principles of marketing that apply to any type of design material - printed and online.

Here is a photo I took on my iphone a while back that I wanted to share with you to discuss portraying your message clearly.

Meaning no offense to the owner of this business - but this sign is missing the fundamental essense required to effectively receive new customers.

The details "SHOP ONLINE" - followed by a mobile phone number - where is the web address?

When you are considering signage or any other marketing collateral - always consider your customer's perspective.

Here are some questions to keep in mind:

What information would a new customer need to know about your business?

• Business Name

• Contact Details, business address, phone number/s, web address, email address - perhaps even a contact name. If you are limited in size for the marketing material - think about what contact details are absolutely essential for your customers.

• What types of products and services are on offer?

What makes your products or services attractive to a potential new customer?

Consider any points of difference that makes your  business stand out - it might be in relation to customer service, business location or any other demographics, years or level of experience, customer loyalty, price or quality comparison. By providing your potential customers with a point of difference gives them a reason to choose your business over your competitors.

Once you have prepared the information for your marketing material - always read it over - think about whether it would make sense to someone who is new to your business - get a fresh pair of eyes to check it over - all too often we can miss fundamental details as we are so involved in our own businesses.

I hope these tips are useful to you and your business marketing practices.

And of course GemStar Interactive's marketing and design professionals are always just an email or phone call away if you need any marketing material developed and printed.