Many of our clients, friends, and even local competitors we’ve been talking to over the past several weeks and they say we seem to be busy. We are and we know why and are going to tell you how we’re doing in one area. That area is search engine optimization and social media. It’s actually technology that gives us our edge. As software developers we think analytically to grow business. We have spent tens of thousands of dollars on tools to help our small business clients rock it. We get tools that work together that give us insights into what the internet is doing. With that information we can dig deeper than most and spot trends months before others start reacting.

We have never been fans of sliders as we found them distracting, not helping with your call to action or sales funnel. We won’t deny that having a slider can “look cool” but a website is more than just looking cool. You want to bring people into your sales funnel and buy from you. I will take a sale any day of the week over being the cool kid on the block. There’s more though than just your sales funnel to think about when it comes to a slider on your homepage (or any page for that matter). Let’s look at some of the drawbacks of sliders as well as how you can still have that cool kid wow factor and get rid of those drawbacks.

We always see our clients that either we write blog posts for or write their own that they routinely perform better than sites that don’t do any blog posts. There is a secret formula we have used over the years that have allowed us to get all of our clients to the first page almost always. There never is a “magic bullet” that will guarantee you page one results but following best practices, industry trends, and avoiding bad techniques you stand a better chance of being on page one. So, let’s stop the talking and get to some actionable results with Google, Bing, and other search engines.

The world is bigger than we are or is it? That is a question I have pondered for many years. Like many, I have had more setbacks than I care to count. More than some while be less than others. Each set back has set me to a place that has put me where I am today. I have done not only good with my life but continue to strive for greatness. It has been, and continues to be, a personal struggle with the only competition I have; myself.

Email is centralized to a user where information is in a silo that only the one user can truly see. This creates speed bumps, roadblocks, and chaos within an organization. There are ways to fix this chaos by centralizing everything and making these tasks available to the entire team. Not only does this bring visibility into the eyes of everyone within the company but also brings in collaborative teamwork. When workloads for some are less they can step up and tackle items in the work queue and speed the entire process and eliminate one person from slowly down items within the system. This not only helps get projects completed more efficiently but lists start shrinking rather than growing.

The EU on May 22, 2017, past a new law called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This law goes into effect in May of 2018. Many companies, like JM2, have already taken measures to comply with this law. Hopefully, you have been diligent in meeting these upcoming needs so that you don't get hit with fines. The EU is very much behind peoples privacy and this affects anyone that maintains any personal data about individuals. This law also affects companies in the United States! The internet is big and there are no physical boundaries for commerce. The United States is often behind when it comes to laws of personal protection and this one is very aggressive. By being in compliance today you are a lot closer to be ready for when the United States catches up to protecting consumers more.

Political candidates face a daunting task, they must engage and convince a sizable population of their intentions and motivate them to get to polls. In a nutshell, they need to win elections. Campaign time and labor is scarce, so every activity needs to be geared towards that goal in some way. Many voters may vote based on party affiliation, or perhaps on some news that they have read but a sizable population vote based on the way that influencers in their social circle vote. The Digital Campaign has three purposes, ranging from the obvious, to the technical, and to the overall goal of the Digital Campaign.

eCommerce for many businesses is their lifeblood and their sole source of income. For others, it is a value-added service to their loyal following and those too far away to come into a physical store. We all know companies like Amazon, Target, and Walmart that sell their products online so we all know what the purpose of what eCommerce has. What many don’t realize is an eCommerce is not the same as a regular website. All the items of a regular website matter but in different ways. A third of all our clients doing online sales it’s time to truly look at what works for eCommerce.

Back before 2010, and even today some people have too much social media. One might wonder how you can have too much social as social is getting out there, talking, and getting your good word out to the masses. Well, it can happen to everyone, including you. You can have too much social and when you do you will actually set your social media back. Social media is as important to have a website with great content and optimized for not only your readers but the search engines.

Over the past 30-days, I challenged myself to write some very short (500-1,000 words or less) blog articles. This goes against many that say you should make your articles from 2,000-3,000 words for optimal search engine optimization. This 30-blog article exercise had a challenge and two hidden objectives that I didn’t tell anyone. The challenge was the topics were chosen by others and randomly selected by one of our computer programs. The second was what would happen search engine optimization wise writing 30 blog articles in 30-days. The final and third reason was to stress test some blog functionality being we now have several influencers in multiple industries using our blogging system specifically for increased SEO. Let’s take a look at what happened, what worked, what was improved, and talk about a few gems that were not expected during this entire process.