Blog Articles from Fawkes Digital Marketing

There are five levels of strength of a LinkedIn profile. These are (1) Beginner, (2) Intermediate, (3) Advanced, (4) Expert and the one we're working to achieve is the (5) "All-Star" profile strength. To achieving the All-Star level is what everyone strives to achieve and many will hit the expert level and miss the All-Star because they don't know what it takes to achieve this level. Below we will cover what it takes to become an All-Star so that you can become one yourself.

The first item to cover as an All-star is that the circle doesn't fill 100%. We feel that this isn't 100% full as, like a website, your profile should never be considered complete. You should be constantly improving yourself to be better.

To achieve the All-Star status you need to achieve the following items which we will also cover in complete detail below. We don't cover the other four as if you're at those levels we believe that your ultimate goal is to reach All-Star. By knowing what is required to be an All-Star you can set your goal to achieve that. As you progress through LinkedIn you will reach the other four stages. Some you may even skip as you fill out the information that we outline below.

With all the push and media pointing at Facebook with around 900 million active monthly users why would anyone consider being on any other network? The quick answer is when it comes to a professional business network LinkedIn is king even with its 255 million active monthly users. You won't find any games on LinkedIn but individuals that are focused on growing their business network. Whether this information is for personal growth, searching for a job, looking to hire or get answers from peers to a current business problem. LinkedIn is the place to get answers related to your personal persona.

When you start creating your professional LinkedIn profile a key area that is seen by everyone is your professional headline. Some will put owner, sales representative, or technical support as their professional headline. These do define your job but do not tell anyone who you are. Many contend, and we strongly agree, that the professional headline property within LinkedIn is the most important part of your professional LinkedIn profile. Your headline will determine whether someone will take the effort to continue to learn more about you.

Whether your business is a large corporate group with millions in marketing dollars or a brand new business just getting off of the ground there are several items you can do to achieve big results without a large outlay of capital. If this sounds appealing to you, and we hope it does, then this article will shed some insights of how, and why, these techniques can help your business succeed without having a huge budget. You don't need to spend hundreds, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars for every marketing campaign. The big marketing companies live for the big marketing pitches and who can blame them? Those campaigns make them tons of money in help you define your brand, generating radio, print, and video ads. Small gains grow to those big gains that will help your business grow.

Your website is the way that you sell your products and services through your brand on the Internet. Many companies have chosen a Facebook only approach which makes your brand Facebook and not your own. Having a Facebook, or other social media outlet is definitely beneficial but that is not what defines your brand. A successful website will also meet the objectives that you have set forth. This could be for increased visibility of your company, generating sales, handling customer service, generate leads, or a combination of these items.

When it comes to updating your existing website the first thought is to focus on a new and stunning graphic design. This will definitely get you noticed when people come to your site as being a truly beautiful work of art. What needs to happen more than a beautiful visual aspect is making certain it works the way your site visitors want it to work. This will cover working on desktop, tablet and mobile devices, increasing the content effectiveness and having an effective "call to action" for what you're currently promoting through your brand. When doing any website redesign we work on covering the following core elements so that your site is a true success.

Most blog posts are frozen in time after being written. This one we will be updating on an as-needed basis so that you know you will always have the latest information available to you.

A major part of social media is communicating with images. When it comes to the cover photos, profile photos and images within social media everyone seems to have their own sizes and recommended specifications. We have always kept a list of the current sizes but what good is that if we don't share it? As such, below you will find the most recent sizes. As items change we will be updating the "Last Modified Date" so that you know if the size you have is the most recent size.

User experience (UX) is how a person feels when interacting with your website or your employees feel when they interact with your business applications. UX encompasses a lot of factors, some that are controllable by designers and developers and some that are environmental or just user preference. These factors include usability, accessibility, performance, design/aesthetics, utility, ergonomics, overall human interaction and marketing.

But UX is not exactly the same thing as usability, although they are closely related. UX is the experience, emotion, intuition and connection a user feels when using a site or product. Usability is more about the effectiveness of a site design and how user-friendly it is. Usability is a key component of the overall user experience. When working with and designing your user experience the usability aspects should be equally thought of during the process.

The core revenue of our business is on helping company's better use Digital Marketing to get people interested in their company's unique brand. There are huge benefits to doing digital marketing for any size business. Digital marketing ranges from social media, web logs (blogs), search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and mobile applications to name just a few. The core of all of these items though is they all should not only interact with your target audience but drive traffic to your website.

Every business initially sees Facebook as a must have which is certainly true for many companies starting off as they are currently the biggest of the social networks. The problem with Facebook, or any social media outlet, is that they dictate what your brand is. They mandate the colors, placement, and what is shown about your brand. You company brand should be an extension of your company and not based off of another's brand. This is where a very blurry line can come into play. We all want as many followers as possible on social media but we want to market as ourselves. We want more for those followers to be engaged and working on helping promote our brand.

I just had a nice unexpected phone call this morning from someone asking advice (yes at 6:30 in the morning we are at work -- actually we start between 5-6am). They currently have 9 social media sites (I was glad I was sitting). They are spending over five hours per day on social media for all 9 social media sites seven days a week (yes 7 days!). They have one person dedicated to social media alone and also have a social media manager helping them.

After getting the initial details I found that they wanted to know if they were doing the right thing as they are not getting the results they want and are about ready to "quit". They wanted a second opinion. They have no digital marketing plan, no goals and no content calendar. All major mistakes; especially since they have a manager helping them which also makes gauging "success" virtually impossible.