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What we have been thinking and doing

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Top 7 Things to Do Now to Maximize Website Value

What do I mean by “maximize website value?” I mean now is a good time to look at how to maximize the business value of your website. I recently needed to shop for new homeowner’s insurance on my home island of Kauai. Being a digital marketing guy I started searching with Google for who might

Jan 14, 2016 Ted

Did Your Facebook Ads Not Produce Results?

Many small businesses have tried Facebook ads that did not produce results. Others are using them to drive significant business results. What is different? Facebook generates $4B. in ad revenue and over 1 million small businesses use Facebook ads. When I speak with people about online marketing, I often highlight the opportunities to use Facebook

Dec 04, 2015 Ted Faigle

Exciting Opportunities to Drive Growth with Instagram for Business

Social Media for business continues to evolve and mature. It’s now official. Instagram is bigger than Twitter! And with recent announcements there are exciting opportunities to exploit Instagram for business growth that exceed those of using Twitter. And they may even exceed Facebook marketing opportunities for the foreseeable future, depending on your business audience. If

Oct 02, 2015 Ted Faigle

Will Your Facebook Page Replace Your Small Business Website?

Facebook is making it easier for your small business to engage with customers on mobile devices. They recently announced some interesting new features for Facebook business pages. As they begin to roll out, some people think they could eventually replace your small business website. Others think that they are just a more effective way to

Sep 16, 2015 Ted Faigle

Easy Steps to Create Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

The way we look for information continues to evolve quickly. A few years ago a mobile marketing strategy was nice-to-have. Now it is a must-have. In fact, it should be your marketing strategy, not an addition to it. Customers are on the go and inundated with possible sources of information. To succeed now and into

Sep 03, 2015 Ted Faigle

Responsive Web Design Critical to Your Bottom Line

Have you re-designed your web site in the past couple of years? If not,  you are likely in urgent need to update it to a responsive web design. If you’re a digital marketing person, you already know what that is. If you’re not, you may be wondering what I’m talking about and why I say

Aug 13, 2015 Ted Faigle

Kauai Business: Using Kauai Marketing Talent?

I have been blessed to meet many wonderful and talented people on my home island of Kauai. One of the things that has also frustrated me is that I have also met business people who went off-island or to the mainland to hire marketing projects and services rather than use Kauai marketing resources. One of

Aug 06, 2015 Ted Faigle

Simple Reasons Why Your Social Media Marketing Fails

I heard from a business person last week telling me she has done social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and listed her products on a very large eCommerce site, but has seen no results. She said, “I’ve tried lots of things, but nothing is working.” You may be like her or you may

Jul 30, 2015 Ted Faigle

Top 5 Instagram Marketing Best Practices

Instagram is a social media platform that continues to grow in importance to marketers. Especially if your target audience includes 18-40 year olds on mobile devices, this is a place you want to be. But to be effective and generate a return on your marketing investment, there are some Instagram marketing best practices to follow.

Jul 09, 2015 Ted Faigle

Create Engaging Social Media Photos in Less Than Two Minutes

I want to share with you one of my favorite social media tools for adding cool typography to social media photos.  It’s quick and easy and inexpensive. Within two minutes you can add beautiful text to a photo and share it across multiple social media platforms. It’s also a mobile app that you can use

Jun 23, 2015 Ted Faigle

Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Half Are Losing Out

I was surprised when I read a recent research report done by Clutch. They surveyed small businesses about their usage of Social Media marketing. The data indicate that around half of them are ignoring prospective customers by not using Social Media marketing for small business. And more than half are not investing in work on

Jun 05, 2015 Ted Faigle

Who Owns Your Kauai Web Design?

I have been in business a long time now. I have seen and heard a lot of different situations and worked through many challenges. But I was shocked by a couple of stories in the past month from business people located here on Kauai. In both cases, they had learned that their domain name registration

Jun 04, 2015 Ted Faigle

Drive More Business with Mobile Local Search Marketing

As some of you know I live on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands.  Our largest industry is tourism. Every day we have more than 23,000 visitors with mobile devices looking for local business information.  On top of that we have daily visitors streaming off cruise ships with their mobile devices.  And we

May 08, 2015 Ted Faigle

10 Tips for Social Media Marketing Success

When I speak with small and mid-sized business owners I frequently hear objections and questions about the business return from investing in social media marketing. Well, hiring college students to post things for you probably won’t drive results. They are very familiar with social media platforms, but it’s the marketing strategy and content that drive

Apr 23, 2015 Ted Faigle

How to Avoid Mobile Website Meltdown on April 21…and Beyond

It’s almost here! I’m calling it Mobile Meltdown Day. April 21 is the date that Google will lower your web page rankings if your site is not deemed by them to be mobile friendly.  Some big brands and lots of smaller businesses may wake up to a surprise on April 22 unless you take action

Apr 16, 2015 Ted Faigle

7 Key Success Factors for Social Media for Business

I recently got back from the Social Media Marketing World conference. Marketers from 49 countries gathered to network and learn from each other about best practices for social media for business. Some of the information was confirmation of things I am already doing and posting about. But there were also some new tips, tools, and

Apr 10, 2015 Ted Faigle

Periscope App for Business: Opportunities and Threats

New tools have come into the market that make it easy for anyone to be a mobile broadcaster. Now anyone can “show” in real-time, not just “tell.” This changes the landscape for broadcasting and social media engagement and also opens up new opportunities and threats for all types of businesses. The Meerkat app was all

Mar 31, 2015 Ted Faigle

Aspiring Women: 14 Pinterest Marketing Best Practices

Pinterest recently completed another round of funding that values the company at $11B.  This is a hefty valuation for a startup that only began selling display ads in January. But growth and demographics have been very attractive. It had been a U.S. growth story, but the number of users outside the U.S. grew more than

Mar 19, 2015 Ted Faigle

Social Media Ads: Why, Where, and How Much?

Why think about social media ads? Isn’t social media marketing free and easy? Most of the business people I speak with still think so. After all, it doesn’t require any special training to use Facebook or Instagram. All you do is throw up some posts to engage your target audience with company products, photos, and

Mar 10, 2015 Ted Faigle

Your Blog Drives More Business Than Social Media

Does that equation surprise you? Of course, it is a gross simplification. But it illustrates a point. When I speak with other small business owners like myself, I hear them talk about a website and social media posts, but a blog and email marketing are usually missing ingredients. Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is also usually missing,

Mar 03, 2015 Ted Faigle

2015 The Year of Social Media Marketing Video

2015 is the year of social media marketing video. If you look at the statistics of organic reach and engagement, I should be doing this blog post as a video. Video is taking off in 2015. Marketers are jumping on the bandwagon to gain organic reach and to cut through social media clutter to engage

Feb 26, 2015 Ted Faigle

Is Your Web Designer Good or Great?

I’ve seen multiple presentations on what defines a great web designer. These presentations will tell you that there are specific things that define a great website and a good website. They mention–sometimes quite emphatically– that great websites are never created from templates and that a good website design and a great website design are vastly

Feb 05, 2015 Ted Faigle

You Know Your Web Site Design is Outdated if. . .

Is your web site design outdated? In the old days, we “Let our fingers do the walking.” The phone book was the go-to place for finding what we wanted so far as goods and services. Today customers don’t normally opt for the phone book when they are looking for goods and services. If you’re like

Feb 05, 2015 Ted Faigle

How to Hire the Right Web Design Company for Your Business

Hiring a web design company that fits you and your business is key to your success. You’ve heard the old saying, “you only get one chance to make a good first impression.” That stodgy old proverb is as true in the internet age as it was before the advent of computers. So far as the

Feb 03, 2015 Ted Faigle

The Facebook Ads Mafia Shakedown: Pay or Suffer the Consequences

Facebook ads can be a very effective way to gain awareness of potential customers and to engage customers and prospects over time.  It is a critical digital marketing tool for most businesses to establish and nurture profitable customer relationships over time (there’s that definition of marketing again!).  Facebook used to be the village square where

Jan 28, 2015 Ted Faigle

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

You’re a business owner or executive looking for ways to grow your business.  How do you come up with an effective marketing strategy?  What is the role of advertising as part of your marketing strategy?  Should it be traditional marketing?  Should it be online, digital marketing?  Or should it be some combination of the two?

Jan 16, 2015 Ted Faigle

Web Design Top 10 Trends for 2015

Why should you care about web design trends for 2015 if you are not a web designer?  If you have a website that has not been updated for a few years, you not only may look stodgy and out of date but also may be poorly positioned by Google in search results. If you don’t

Jan 08, 2015 Ted Faigle

There ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Many small businesses looking at web design on Kauai or anywhere else in Hawaii or around the world are finding free website alternatives online.  But what does free really mean?  Are you being smart and economical or are you locking into something with other implications and challenges?  Over 6 million people and businesses have joined

Dec 19, 2014 Ted Faigle

Kauai Chamber of Commerce Case Study

I was honored last evening to be featured as a new member at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce Annual General Membership Meeting.  I am so pleased to be a part of these talented business professionals, to get acquainted, and to become part of the community.  There is so much entrepreneurial spirit here across a number

Dec 12, 2014 Ted Faigle

Mobile First!

Today it is about being mobile first!  If people cannot access your content easily and clearly on mobile devices, you are missing the boat!  This is true all over, but on the island of Kauai, this can be a literal statement.  I was recently chatting with the owner of a rental shop near the port

Dec 02, 2014 Ted Faigle

Does a Kauai small business need social media marketing?

I have heard the question of whether a Kauai small business needs social media marketing.  On the island of Kauai we have a small town culture.  People take time to talk story with each other.  People know people who know people.  There are a lot of word of mouth business referrals.  But there are also

Nov 18, 2014 Ted Faigle

Want 10 Ideas for Compelling Content?

A lot of people doing online, digital marketing are focused on the tools and channels.  But it’s compelling content that causes someone to look at and engage with you.  As you are faced with hundreds of blogs, Facebook posts, and tweets some catch your eye and some don’t.  Here are 10 ways you can catch

Nov 11, 2014 Ted Faigle

Couldn’t I do social media marketing and a web site myself?

You may be looking at our site and wondering if you could do all this yourself.  Can’t anyone do online and social media marketing?  The answer is yes.  There is nothing magic here.  It is not rocket science.  But will you or should you do it yourself?  It’s time consuming requires learning new skills needs

Nov 04, 2014 Ted Faigle

Contact page worst practices: I sent an email, but never heard back……

One of my pet peeves of web sites is the Contact Us page.  Most companies have a form on the Contact page for a customer or prospect to submit an email.  I wish I had a dollar for every time I submitted an email from a web site and never got a reply.  Here’s a

Oct 30, 2014 Ted Faigle

SEO: Do I care and how do I get it?

We see a lot of web design and other digital marketing sites highlighting that they offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services.  We have intentionally not labeled it as a separate service that we offer.  We have done that for a couple of reasons: As a small or mid-sized business owner you may not know what

Oct 30, 2014 Ted Faigle

What is Online Marketing? Inbound? Digital? Content?

When I moved from the mainland to Kauai, I needed to find new resources to assist me.  I didn’t listen to broadcast ads or read a newspaper.  I went online and searched for information.  In the process of searching for information, I formed impressions of service providers based on what I was learning from them.

Oct 24, 2014 Ted Faigle
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