Our program featured Bill Benz who is the Owner and Chief Digital Officer of the marketing firm Carnegie Agency in Phillipsburg. Bill describes himself as a life-long learner and he furthered our education with some practical tips and advice for exploring the world wide web.
Computers have enabled us to have access to previously unthinkable amounts of information. Finding information is easy with any number of search engines, but finding the information that you actually need can be tricky. Bill offered some tips on how to fine tune our searches to yield results that are more useful. Searches with quotes around your subject will yield only results that have those exact words. A plus sign between subjects will ensure the results include both subjects. A minus sign will eliminate results with the subject that follows. Using SITE: targets the search engine at a specific website.
The advent and explosion of social media has resulted in a new set of challenges. How can you determine whether the information is accurate or even real? Social media postings often use photos that may or may not actually represent the subject of that post. You can use a Google reverse image search to find the original source of those photos. Individuals often share a scary amount of personal information.
Businesses are struggling to determine the best way to reach their customers through these new platforms. The average business professional is sending and receiving 121 emails a day. Tweets with images get 35% more retweets than those without. 78% of marketers believe that custom content is where the industry is headed, which suggests that one-to-one customer experiences are preferable. Those who choose to have an electronic presence such as a website need to consider the ongoing responsibility. The digital quality matters. Potential customers will be turned off by a poorly constructed website. Sites that are not up-to-date are another big problem. Newsletters can be a great form of communication but pay attention to grammar and avoid typos.