Blog articles written by Fawkes Digital Marketing

Twitter for Beginners

By John Marx on 7/23/2015

When we get that urge to start using Twitter it can seem overwhelming. With it's limitation of 140 characters per post (tweet), the unique vocabulary, searching, etiquette, or the difference in posting frequency Twitter is something that can be confusing to even the most technically savvy online user. It's not that Twitter is overtly complicated as there is a lot less options than on Facebook when you look at the entire picture. The problem is that it looks and works completely differently than the Facebook we've all learned. From our Valparaiso office we have created this article designed to help you better understand Twitter and hit the ground running with it.

Scholarship Essay Lessons Learned

By John Marx on 7/14/2015

This year marks the third year that the JM2 Webdesigners Jump Start Scholarship exists. The scholarship started as a $1,000 scholarship in the fall of 2013 at just Purdue North Central (PNC) in Westville, Indiana. The second year we added another $1,000 scholarship for a total of two. The scholarship stayed solely at PNC as we didn't have enough time to do two schools. Starting with this third year we now having the scholarship available at PNC at $1,000 to a single student and Ivy Tech will give $500 to two students Ivy Tech students. That isn't all that's changing this year. Being that our Valparaiso office has hired a graphic designer we're extending the scholarship from being solely for Information Technology (IT) students to also those students in marketing and graphical design. With two years now behind us we thought it would be good to have a "Lessons Learned" to help students from previous year mistakes.

Staying Focused

By John Marx on 7/10/2015

As an entrepreneur it can become easy to get "off task". Staying focused is sometimes one of the hardest things for myself to do and can only imagine how it is for others. In this article I am going to talk about some of my major trials and tribulations of keeping on task between employees, clients, emails, and phone calls that need my attention on a daily basis. Learning what does, and doesn't, work for me has been a true blessing and something I continue to evaluate each and every day.

The Anatomy of a #Hashtag

By John Marx on 7/2/2015

Hashtags started on Twitter in August 2007. Hashtags though are no longer just part of twitter but almost every social media outlet. A hashtag is a single word or a combination of words (with no space) that is preceded by a pound (#) symbol and used by the micro-blogging community to create a thread of conversations around a specific theme or topic.

Bakers Dozen Common SEO Mistakes

By John Marx on 6/25/2015

Here at JM2 Webdesigners each and every day we work on search engine optimization from our Valparaiso office for clients. When we do we also help out prospective clients who want to truly rock the search engines. They want to do it low cost and with quick results. The first item we cover with any client is that SEO is a marathon and definitely not a short sprint. Like your business SEO is something that you need to train, mentor and continually work on. There are techniques (which we will not talk about as they are considered "black hat" (first topic we'll cover) that will hurt your business in the long run of this marathon and all too often we see people come to us wanting to "fix" this mistake that they've been doing for years.

What makes quality content?

By John Marx on 6/18/2015

Today we tweeted about how content is king. Why is content king when it comes to a website? Is this related to an ego thing to make kings feel grand? Not really. It's truly because without quality content on your site if all you have is a pretty site then you don't have a site that Google or the other search engines will feel is quality.

A Beginners Guide to 301 Redirects

By John Marx on 6/9/2015

As we've been migrating one to two sites per week to new domains or under more logical structures (moved) you need to think about all of the old content that existed. Many that create new pages, remove old pages, or do a complete web site overhaul to be more logically structured often forget about the old structure until people start complaining. To the search engine those pages still exist until they learn otherwise. They learn by redirects or by failing several times when looking for your website. Imagine a user doing a search and the first result they choose is from the old site that no longer exists. You've just created a bad experience for your visitor. When this happens many click the back button and go to another site. Can you say lost opportunity? This is where 301 redirects come into play.

How can a business use a wiki page?

By John Marx on 6/1/2015

Wikipedia was officially launched on Monday, January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. There is controversy over using Wikipedia though. Most schools from grade school through college inform their students to not use Wikipedia. The reason for this is due to the fact that there is truly no central authority governing Wikipedia. This can also be seen as a pro to many individuals as well. Rather than one person, or company, controlling the content the entire Internet of billions of people are allowed to contribute, enhance and validate each and every article.

Setting up a LinkedIn Company Page

By John Marx on 5/29/2015

We have been doing a lot of talking about creating great personal LinkedIn profile pages. This is all well and good but what if you have a business you want to have on LinkedIn as well? If you want a LinkedIn company page then this article is written for you. A company page helps others learn more about your business, brand, products and services, and job opportunities.

Blog Articles from Fawkes Digital Marketing