Hello friends of the studio!
Well, it’s that time again! This has been an annual holiday tradition for the past 12 years and those of you who have followed my blog posts and social media posts know what’s coming. For those of you who may be new to my postings… I’ll apologize ahead of time 🙂 I have a quirky, whimsical and somewhat dark sense of humor at times. It helps with creativity and design but, as I mentioned in the original post 12 years ago…
“This is one of those things that defines a person’s character to others. Either you “get” the humor or you will come away, head askew with a “tsk tsk” look on your face, wondering where my parents went wrong.
And so, without further ado, here is Shadowbend Studios’ annual holiday “gift”…
Please feel free to let us know how you like the video in the comments section! And, don’t hold it against us, we’re just made that way 🙂
Search engines and search engine results are a major source of traffic for your website. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the best strategy for positive, effective search engine results! One of the best things you can do to start you search engine optimization campaign is to install plugins on your site to help you with on-site optimization. It may come as no surprise that there is no shortage of SEO and SMM plugins available, however here at Shadowbend Studios we have been using a handful of the industry leading offerings to great effect and would like to share them with you!
Yoast SEO
If you have only one plugin on your site, this should be the one. From Yoast’s website:
“Since 2008 Yoast SEO has helped millions of websites worldwide to rank higher in search engines. This WordPress SEO plugin helps you with your search engine optimization. Are you not entirely convinced? Yoast SEO is the favorite WordPress SEO plugin of millions of users worldwide! As Yoast’s mission is SEO for Everyone, the plugin’s users range from the bakery around the corner to some of the most popular sites on the planet.”
Yoast SEO is easy to use, intuitive and very very effective!
Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets
In my opinion, this is a fantastic and terribly underrated plugin! Snippets are the portion of a website that Google displays in search engine results. Under normal conditions, Google just takes a slice of text from the top portion of a web page and displays it. With Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets YOU create and control the text that is displayed. The plugin also works well with Yoast SEO for a great one-two SEO punch!
As I said, there are many more but these two are the heavy hitters that no WordPress website should be without. If you’d like more information, more recommendations or you’d like help installing and configuring these plugins on your site, contact Shadowbend Studios today!
Hello there friends of Shadowbend Studios! It’s a cozy winter weekday afternoon here at the studio, so while I’m sipping my peppermint coffee I thought I’d show you some photos of our decorations! The winter holidays are our favorites here at Shadowbend and we tend to go all out!
Do you decorate your business? And if so, show us some photos in the comments section!
Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, Web Marketing. There are so many phrases used to describe what essentially is utilizing the internet, social media, websites etc. to market you business and bring in new customers. This is a huge field full of a massive amount of information and we will be covering different aspects in future posts. Today however, let’s cover a handful of basic concepts that will get you started on the road to marketing your business online.
Really get to know your customers and potential customers. With the internet and social media giving you so many ways to segment and specify your marketing tools, it really helps to know what drives your current and potential customers and clients. What will make them stop and take a look at one of your ads or one of your blog / social media posts.
Write engaging topics, not just hard sell. This is SO VERY IMPORTANT! I see failures around this tip all the time. People are burned out on hard sell all the time. Your potential new customers and clients want to get to know you. They want a peek inside your business, your life, your interests etc. As we have mentioned in previous posts, a good rule of thumb is to make your content about 10% – 20% selling and 80% – 90% engagement. This doesn’t sharing what you had for breakfast with your audience but perhaps you visited an industry related event over the weekend or purchased a new piece of equipment for your business. This may make for an interesting blog or social media post for your followers and they may also appreciate a look at the “personal” side of your office or studio!
Make sure you include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services into your campaign and understand that you should be in this for the long haul. Any authentic, organic online marketing campaign will take time to bring you back sustainable results. Search Engine Optimzation (SEO) is a fantastic, solid way to help bring your business and your website more visitors, which translates to more potential customers and clients. SEO is a long term prospect and you need to know that going in. Any company that claims they can guarantee you front page results on Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in days or weeks is either using an unsustainable, artificial means to boost your presence or is just flat out lying to you. SEO takes time, but it is very much worth it.
Keep your brand consistent. Sure you want to create eye catching ad campaigns with lots of engaging visuals, but make sure to keep your brand visible and consistence so that your viewers know immediately who the content is coming from. We have all had those instances where we see a visually stunning ad campaign only to realize we have no idea who or what is being marketed!
Don’t be afraid to try new things! As I have told my clients, online marketing is different from designing and printing 10,000 direct mail pieces. Once they are printed, that’s it! With online marketing you can try something and if it doesn’t work, just adjust it and try again!
That should be a good jumping off place. As always, if you have any questions or would like more information, just contact us at any time
Equals in most things, Sandy and I collaborate on all of the projects we develop here at Shadowbend Studios. We share a perfect balance of strengths to form a great partnership for creating and problem solving.
My primary skill set lies in layout, architecture and coding (backend) and Sandy’s in visual and graphic design (frontend). We can (and usually do!) attack the same problem from opposite ends and come up with great solutions for any client issue.
Having worked in Office Management for years before going back to school for an Arts degree, Sandy is able to take over the day-to-day administrative office duties for Shadowbend Studios. Our clients will be seeing and hearing more and more of her in person and on the phone! Ensuring daily office responsibilities are up to date will make it easier for me to concentrate on building new websites and serving all my clients needs.
A perfect balance!
Sandy studied Graphic Design, Art History and Dance in college. She also spent several years as President of the Board for the West Africa Cultural Arts Institute in Eugene Oregon.
Sandy has spent most of her life expressing herself through dance, creating custom jewelry (which can be seen on her awesome new site, Dancing Goddess Designs!), handmade artist books and more recently not-so-fine art. She also loves refinishing furniture too. Sandy is a true Renaissance Woman!
In her younger days, she worked as a sailmaker and proudly sailed across the Pacific Ocean with two crew mates during Hurricane Iniki and lived to tell about it.
Sandy and I are looking forward to celebrating the upcoming 15 year business anniversary of Shadowbend Studios and taking our company in to 2020 stronger and more creative than ever!
Contact Shadowbend Studios today and let’s discuss the ways we can help bring your business to the World Wide Web!
Either you “get” the humor or you will come away, head askew with a “tsk tsk” look on your face, wondering where my parents went wrong.
Shadow
Equals in most things, Sandy and I collaborate on all of the projects we develop here at Shadowbend Studios. We share a perfect balance of strengths to form a great partnership for creating and problem solving.