Assessment of social media,
search engine optimization, content 
and other inbound marketing trends.

My Guest Post on FirePoleMarketing: Mastering Differentiation

May 8th, 2012 by

We all want our businesses to be successful. All of our hard work, sleepless nights, truly caring about customers, demanding high standards from the team…

People say “If you build it, they will come.”  Well they did, they came. But once the novelty wore off, what keeps customers from coming again? Coming often?

You do all the right things – great customer service, high quality products/services, friendly environment, decent location… But there are only a handful of customers who would really miss you if you go out of business tomorrow.

How did this happen?

You Need To Standout from Others!

If you haven’t heard of the hotel searching site Oyster.com, you need to check it out. Unlike many other sites in the industry, Oyster does not promote sales. The goal of the site is to help you pick the best hotel for your needs, unbiased by “limited time only” sales or other gimmicks… CONTINUE READING on FirePoleMarketing.com >

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How I Adjusted My Site to Implement Responsive Web Design

Apr 30th, 2012 by

You’ve probably heard about responsive web design. Briefly, it is a technique which uses fluid layouts in addition to CSS @media queries to make your site fit virtually any device with a browser: smartphones, iPad + other tablets, even TVs. It doesn’t matter that Galaxy Tab’s resolution is different from a Nexus S phone — your site will render beautifully, as long as you’ve implemented responsive design correctly.

Responsive Web Design Example

There are many tools and frameworks out there to help make your website responsive, but the point of this post is to outline the steps I took to convert my own site, VolinskyConsulting.com, to become responsive.

I Chose “320 and Up” boiletplate as a base for my Responsive Design. Continue Reading »

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Posted in Mobile, Technology, Web Design | 2 Comments »

Marketing Tool: Quickly Separate Branded Keywords in Google Analytics

Mar 22nd, 2012 by

Just wanted to quickly post an update on a marketing tool I’ve created for use in Google Analytics to separate branded keywords (and misspellings) from non-branded.

A tool, which I recommend bookmarking, will quickly generate a Regular Expression (RegExp) for use in Google Analytics to analyze your branded/nonbranded traffic.

Separate Branded Keywords in GA with Regular Expression

Let me know if you have any feedback!

Thanks, Slavik Volinsky

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO, Web Analytics | No Comments »

Quick Tip: Tweet from your Chrome Browser

Mar 16th, 2012 by

I find it annoying to go to twitter.com to compose a tweet. Or to launch TweetDeck.

I’m sure there’re add-ons to the browser out there, but the more add-ons/extensions you use, the slower Chrome gets.

Solution: quick hack to setup Twitter as search engine within Chrome.

 

1. Right-click on the address/search bar in Chrome, click on “Edit search engines…”

Right click on address/search bar in Chrome

 

2. Scroll all the way down, and type in Twitter for search engine; “tweet” for keyword; and the following URL for the third field:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=%s

Tweet from Chrome

 

3. Close the ‘Options – Search Engines’ tab and try it out!

Simply type in “tweet [your tweet here]” in the address bar to compose a tweet!

This “search” redirect to the following page where you can edit/submit the tweet:

Tweet from Chrome

 

Hope this was helpful!

Follow me on twitter by clicking “follow @svolinsky” button below.

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Posted in Marketing Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

1 Secret to Creating More Effective Content

Feb 24th, 2012 by

Over the past few months, I’ve started blogging more. Not here (as you can tell), but on the other websites, aka “guest blogging.”
Because this blog is not wildly popular, I find that I provide more value if my post is published somewhere else, like SEOmoz or MarketingProfs. (See links to all my guest posts.)

While publishing a guest post on a more popular site doesn’t automatically make it successful, your post gets a bigger audience.

How can you truly engage the audience and make them share it? Have you written blog posts which barely get any tweets or comments?

I haven’t written much, but I did learn something important worth sharing.

 

Know Who You’re Writing For.

When creating any type of content, e.g. a blog post, marketing copy, subject line or presentation, have a clear customer persona in mind. This ‘persona’ might be imaginary, but she/he will be consuming your content, so clearly address her/his needs. Does your content addresses her/his problems and adds value?

My most popular post to date, “Four Easy Tactics for Becoming a Must-Follow Account on Twitter” (published on MarketingProfs.com), didn’t start as a guest post. I wrote it for my friend, Juan, who provides tennis lessons for kids in New York. My goal was to show Juan (@TennisInnovator) how he can leverage Twitter. That’s all.

It resonated with the MarketingProfs audience and got over 600 shares because many readers do this every day: explain Twitter to those they work with. With a more detailed post available, they now can send it to their clients/coworkers who are just starting with Twitter.

From Vanessa Fox's presentation. Click image to view.

Below are some great resources to get you started in developing customer personas:

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Posted in Content Marketing | No Comments »

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