Appealing to Latinos Online

As the Latino population in America continues to grow, companies around South Florida and the entire United States are clamoring to find the best way to reach this market and many companies are now devising strategies to reach Latinos online. According to November 2007 figures from comScore’s Media Metrix, 18.1 million or 41% of Hispanics are online.

The biggest question that arises when marketing to Hispanics is what language to use – English or Spanish? The answer to that question depends on what socio-economic class of Hispanics you are trying to reach. According to Grokdotcom – “ The mostly acculturated Hispanics are achievement oriented. 74% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 4% in both languages, and 22% don’t have any preference. Partially acculturated are more into social and fan oriented. 34% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 12% in Spanish , 27% in both languages, and 22% don’t have any preference. The relatively unacculturated are mostly oriented to family and home. 9% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 31% in Spanish, 41% in both languages, and 19% don’t have any preference. “

While many experts in the past have advised that Latinos respond to advertising in the Spanish language, the opposite is beginning to become true as more of the Latin market is America born as opposed to immigrants. Today the US Latin community is predominantly English speaking. While the Spanish language is still an important part of the Hispanic culture, trends are showing that this market is searching online in English more than Spanish. Even websites that cater specifically to the Latin market are beginning to develop bilingual content in order to appeal to the segment of the Latin community that prefers to search online in English.

As with all types of internet marketing, online marketing for Hispanics is changing rapidly. The safest bet to reach a broad range of the Hispanic market is to develop bilingual content. To learn more about how Deep Blue can help you best position your website for whatever market you are in, visit our website today and get a free analysis of your website.

Free Offers = Increased Website Conversions

In today’s world of internet marketing, users are becoming accustomed to getting things for FREE. Google has set the standard by offering services such as free email with practically unlimited storage, free analytics packages, free API’s that you can incorporate into your website, and much more. Companies are following Google’s lead and offering free products or services on their websites in order to entice users to give up their contact information.

In order to continually market to your potential customers you need to develop a database of people that have visited your website by enticing them to give you their contact information. These days, users are savvy and only give up this information in exchange for something that has value to them. In the real estate market it is common practice to provide users with access to listings after they provide their contact information which is a good start.

To take it a step above what all of the other websites are doing I would suggest giving the users more! You could, for example, provide a survey on your website of the key property features the client is looking for and offer to email them the top 10 properties that match up with those features. Then, on a weekly basis, email them any properties that come on the market that match their criteria. This will not only be seen as a valuable free service to the client, but you will remain visible to the client until they are ready to purchase a property.

This is just one example, the important part is that you come up with an idea that appeals to your customer base and entices them to give you their contact information.

For help with developing a free offer to give your clients that will you increase your website conversions contact Deep Blue Computers for a free analysis of your website today.

How to Setup a Blog

Blogger has a blog template that is provided as a free software solution for its users and is recommended by Google. Through a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor users can customize the design of the blog and easily add content.

Blogger provides an easy to use tutorial on setting up your blog that you can watch on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnploFsS_tY

This video is a great step by step guide to setting up your blog but there are some important things you need to know that they don’t tell you. Here are some advanced tips you need to know that you won’t find in the Blogger Tutorial:

· Blog Hosting - The one component of the setup that you may need technical help with is moving the blog to be hosted under your company’s domain. This is a very important step though if you want to get the SEO benefits from your blog.

o Example - When you first setup your blog through Blogger they will give you a subdomain within the blogspot network such as www.mycompany.blogspot.com, you will want to move your blog to be hosted under your own domain so that the url is www.mycompany.com/blog

· Analytics – You should install Google Analytics on your blog to track visitor stats, traffic source stats and much more. Statistics tracking is key to the optimization of the blog as it allows for tracking of how visitor’s actions vary according to each blog posted (which topics they prefer, what titles gauge their interest, etc).

· Content Updates – The most important component of the blog is the content! Content should be updated on a regular basis so that people that are interested in following your blog know when to check in for new blogs. Before posting your first blog determine a reasonable timetable for blog creation dependent on your schedule.

o Example – At Deep Blue Computers we are able to write 2 blogs per week and we post them every Sunday and Wednesday. As we continue to grow we will increase this schedule to include a daily blog post.

For more information on setting up a blog and blog best practices contact Deep Blue Computers today. At Deep Blue Computers we provide complete blogging solutions that include all setup and maintenance components.

Why Add a Blog to your Website

Corporate Blogs are a powerful medium for company news and communication. This keyword rich content can be optimized to rank well within Search Engines and Blog Search Engines. A commitment to quality blogging can provide a new stream of visitors to your Website.

Benefits of Blogging include:

· Build a Knowledge Resource - Blogging gives companies the chance to build a community through the development of a knowledge resource. As claims adjusters begin to know your blog as a great resource they can go to regularly to get industry knowledge, CVI will develop a regular following that they can advertise their services to.

· Search Engine Optimization - SEO benefits include additional content as well as regular updates. Additional content will give CVI the ability to increase the density of their keywords on their website. Search engines also respond well when regular updates are made to the website as it demonstrates the need for the search engine robots to regularly visit the website regularly in order to cache new content.

· RSS Feeds - The blog developed for CVI will have an RSS component built in, allowing for claims adjusters to get the regular content updates easily. RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator". Users will be able to subscribe to CVI’s feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking the RSS icon built into the CVI blog that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

· Easy Setup – Blogger provides an easy to use blog template. Through a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor users can customize the design of the blog and easily add content.
For assistance in setting up your blog or for a complete blog solution, contact Deep Blue Computers today. Deep Blue Computers has blogging packages that incorporate all blog setup and maintenance components at an affordable price.

Internet Marketing Trends: Gadgets and Widgets

Another hot internet marketing trend is the customization of your own homepage. Google has released iGoogle, Yahoo! has MyYahoo! and there is another website that is dedicated specifically to personalized startpages – Netvibes (my personal favorite). All of these websites that allow you to customize your own homepage provide modules such as calendars, email, instant messaging, news feeds, and more to help users organize their life. Google calls these modules gadgets, netvibes calls them widgets.

As more users are starting to customize and personalize their start pages, companies are starting to design their own gadgets and widgets so that they can be on their client’s homepage. This does two things for companies:

1. If a client has your company’s module on their homepage you have the opportunity to constantly be in the front of your client’s mind and give them the latest news about your company, enticing them to use your service or buy your product

2. For every client that uses your module you will get an inbound link to your website (inbound links are a key component to search engine optimization)

As the competition to get on everybody’s homepage increases by the day, companies are working to create the most innovative gadgets and widgets in order to get this key real estate. You can either provide your clients with customized functionality, or an rss feed to your blog. Examples of customized functionality that are currently being developed include: American Airlines has one that allows you to quickly search for flights, PixieLabs has developed a mini tv that allows you to watch television from all across the world, and Overstock has developed a slideshow of interesting pictures to accompany their search tool.

If you want to move to the front of the internet marketing class, contact Deep Blue Computers today to start brainstorming about a Google Gadget or Widget that you can design for your clients to put on their homepage. At Deep Blue we can help you come up with an innovative idea and design the module for you.

Internet Marketing Trends: Social Bookmarking

A great way to drive traffic to your website is through social bookmarking. Social bookmarking allows users to store links to their favorite websites and organize them using metadata. Metadata are keywords used to describe the website and can then be used by other people to find websites that fit their search criteria. Because of the human component which allows users to rank websites based on their usefulness, social bookmarking is seen as a valuable addition/alternative to search engine spiders.

Social bookmarking companies started as far back as 1996 but the original companies did not survive the burst of the dot com era bubble. In 2003 del.icio.us was founded and pioneered the term “social bookmarking” as well as the process of tagging the websites with metadata. Now the internet industry is rampant with social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Simpy, Furl, Diigo, Ma.gnolia, and many more. Even big companies such as IBM, Yahoo, and Google are getting into the social bookmarking game.

The advantages of social bookmarking are mainly attributed to the human element which allows for people to tag websites due to their usefulness as opposed to classification software such as search engine spiders which algorithmically attempts to gauge the usefulness of a website. As more users tag a website a ranking and classification system is built based on the popularity of the website and the number of users that are using the website.

There is no doubt that promoting social bookmarking of your website is a valuable addition as it is a great way to increase your website’s visibility and draw more traffic to your website. To encourage your users to bookmark your site you can place links of the most popular social bookmarking sites with their associated logo on your website so that users can easily add your website to their social bookmarking forum of choice. To see an example of how to do this visit our website at www.deepbluecomputers.com and scroll to the bottom of the page where you will find the logos of the most popular social bookmarking websites. If you click on any of these logos you are immediately adding Deep Blue Computers website to your list of bookmarks on that website. While you are there, add our website to your favorite social bookmarking website so you can easily get back there for more advice on the latest internet marketing trends.

Redesign vs. Multivariate Testing

Many websites that are already very good make the mistake of redesigning their entire website to increase their conversion percentages when they should really focus on multivariate testing. So, how does one know when their website needs a complete overhaul versus a few minor changes? Here are a few rules of thumb to guide your decision:

Redesign if:
· Visitors stay on your website less than 30 seconds before leaving the homepage
· Nobody ventures into secondary pages of your website, they leave directly after viewing the homepage
· You want to change the entire brand image that is represented on your website

If your website does not fit any of these descriptions, it is likely a candidate for multivariate testing. Multivariate testing allows you to change a single portion of your website such as the main picture, the headline, or the navigation bar and then test it against the previous version by splitting your traffic between the old version of the website and the new.

This type of functionality used to only be available to companies with expensive, high end analytics packages but Google now offers it for FREE! After performing multivariate tests you will then have data on how users truly react to changes to your website instead of making changes based on your guess of how they will react to the changes.

To start multivariate testing of the components of your website to optimize it for conversion and make more money call Deep Blue Computers today!