Shari Voigt

My name is Shari Voigt & my specialty is creating elegant, highly functional WordPress websites. Not just run-of-the-mill websites that function as a virtual brochure, but websites that earn their keep. Your website can and should be the hub of all your marketing efforts.

As a holistic marketing strategist, I help business owners pull all the pieces together so that your website and social media efforts work hand-in-hand with your offline advertising and P.R.

My mission is to make you look good, both online and off.

Small Business Marketing: It’s Not About You!

October 12, 2009 by Shari Voigt Leave a Comment

It’s so easy and dangerous to get caught up in and pulled into a small, confining box by the thing you sell. Your product, your service, your place. Easy to forget how little anybody cares about that, when you care about it so much.” ~ No B.S. Insider’s Connection, September 2009 Edition

It’s no secret that we no longer do business the same way. Price comparisons are easy on the Internet. It’s where we do our research before making the purchase. Price drives customer choice, making yesteryear’s value proposition irrelevant. Yes, thanks to the Internet and intense competition from previous non-contenders, many products and services have become commodities. This changes everything. [Read more…] about Small Business Marketing: It’s Not About You!

Have You Claimed Your Google Local Business Listing?

September 22, 2009 by Shari Voigt Leave a Comment

Does your business location show up on Google Maps? If so, are you fully taking advantage of it?

First, let’s find out if you have an accurate listing. Go to http://maps.google.com and search using your business name. Not there? Just add your business directly through the Local Business Center.

If you find your business, review your listing. Clicking on the name of your business will bring up a white information bubble with a “Claim your business” link or if you’ve already taken that step, an “edit” link.

Once you’ve claimed your business listing, Google will verify that you’re the business owner by phone (immediately – an automated call) or you can choose to have them mail you a postcard. We’ve done it both ways, but the phone call route allows you to get it done all in one sitting. Once this step is complete, you’ll be able to log-in and optimize your local business listing. [Read more…] about Have You Claimed Your Google Local Business Listing?

Staycation – Have Fun and Boost Your Local Economy

September 15, 2009 by Shari Voigt 1 Comment

This past week my husband and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. We had hoped to “go someplace special” and we did … we did the tourist thing from home. Nearly every day had a new destination within driving distance and every evening we were back in our comfortable bed. Our staycation was inexpensive, educational, quite relaxing and a lot of fun. [Read more…] about Staycation – Have Fun and Boost Your Local Economy

Does Your SEO Expert Know What He’s Talking About?

June 22, 2009 by Shari Voigt 6 Comments

Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably one of the most misunderstood terms by small business owners. It’s a huge topic; many things go into optimizing a website for search. Unfortunately, nearly anyone can pass himself off as an SEO expert, and many small business owners are taken in by “experts,” only later to discover that there were some serious holes in the actual expertise.

SEO is an easy upsell for the web developer. When the benefits of SEO are spelled out clearly, no business owner in his right mind will say they don’t care about a search engine optimized website. Clearly, there’s a financial incentive to the developer to sell SEO services, but not every website developer has enough of a grasp on the basics for it to be of any real benefit to you.

Likewise and for the same reasons, SEO on existing websites is an easy sell for the search engine marketing firm. Either way, you want your website to be found prominently online, not as #106 in the search results. You’d think a firm that specializes in SEO would know what they’re doing, right? Many do, but others engage in practices that will actually hurt your website’s rankings … and it can be hard for the untrained eye to know the difference.

Secrets of Successful Small Business Websites

April 23, 2009 by Shari Voigt 4 Comments

If you build a better website, will the world beat a path to your door? I hate to disappoint anyone, but it’s not likely.

A great website will cause your visitors to hang around to see what you have to say, but on its own, will do little to draw new customers.

Now, if that great website is search engine optimized, contains fresh and interesting content, and has relevant links pointing to it from other sites … well, that’s a completely different story. Note that this isn’t an even / or proposition. Highly visible websites are search engine optimized, have a continual infusion of fresh, interesting content, AND hundreds of inbound links. If your site can’t be found, it’s missing one or more pieces of this puzzle.

Why Twitter?

March 22, 2009 by Shari Voigt 1 Comment

Everywhere you look these days, someone’s talking about Twitter. Last month (February ’09), over 7,000,000 people logged in with some answer to the now famous question, “What are you doing?” It’s grown by 1382% since the same time last year, making it the fastest-grown community site in the U.S., according to Nielsen. Now, with widespread adoption of the news media, Twitter is bound to grow even faster.

Detractors are quick to point out that Twitter is noisy, a distraction, and they really don’t care what some stranger had for breakfast. All true; you can’t argue with the obvious. But, there are ways to filter out the noise, turn it off when you need to focus, and select folks to follow with more interesting things to talk about.

So what’s Twitter all about from a business perspective, and why should you care? Honestly, that’s a huge question, one that will take more than a single post to answer. We’ll get a start on that answer this week from Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter: [Read more…] about Why Twitter?