Comfortable Marketing

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Four Different Leaflet Distribution Flavours - Which One Are You?

For years the advertising and marketing industry have been selling their wares and getting their messages across through leaflet distribution.It's a simple and cost effective way of raising a profile and selling a product, but there is a lot more to it than a piece of paper with text and graphics printed on it.There are several other factors at play; location, amount, coverage and even what type of leaflet.

The type of leaflet used in a leaflet distribution campaign can say a lot about the product or service you are advertising.It can convey humour or seriousness, the quality of your product and the availability.The choice of what type of medium you choose in your leaflet distribution campaign should be one of the first decisions you make.Making the wrong decision could completely negate any positive effects that the rest of your campaign has.

The word leaflet is widely used to encompass all forms of printed material that can be used in leaflet distribution but also has a more specific meaning.There are in fact four different types of printed material that can be used in a campaign of which a leaflet is just one.

Leaflet - A leaflet is a single printed piece of paper which is usually folded.These leaflets are also known as flyers.They are the easiest to produce, both logistically and economically, and can be used to promote everything from businesses to products and services.They are commonly posted through letter boxes, handed out in the street or inserted into newspapers.Flyers come in many sizes and can be very plain or given a glossy finish to convey a certain image.

Their widespread use has been complimented by the increase in desktop publishing and the ability to combine text and images on home computers.The finished products can be printed at home or sent to a commercial printer.In both instances the images, the message is printed on just one side although this is not always so and leaflets with print on both sides are increasingly common.

Pamphlet - A pamphlet is an unbound series of printed sheets.For businesses or products that have more to advertise or say using a pamphlet in a leaflet distribution campaign is preferable to a leaflet in that it has more space and scope to explain sometimes complicated or list several products or services and any variations on those products or services as well.The fact that it is unbound also means that it is still an affordable option for most businesses.

Pamphlets are often used by businesses that offer a more bespoke service or to sell products that are more exclusive or high end.The look of a pamphlet conveys more of a degree of quality and that can be important depending on what is being advertised.

Poster - Posters can come in all sorts of sizes, usually from A4 onwards.Although posters are more suited to site specific campaigns and are associated with billboards they are becoming increasingly popular in leaflet distribution.They are not as disposable as pamphlets and leaflets and so the thought is that they will be kept longer and displayed in places that it is not easy to get a message displayed.They also convey added quality.

Brochure - A brochure is a step up from a pamphlet in that it is often bound and printed on higher quality material.A brochure is designed to be kept a lot longer than pamphlets and leaflets, often as long as a year.Brochures go into more detail and contain more information and are used in leaflet distribution to advertise top end services and products.


About the Author

Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the leaflet distribution industry.


Find out more about leaflet distribution and marketing and advertising.

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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

3 Ways To Keep MS Word From Killing Your SEO Strategy

Most of us type our content in Microsoft Word before publishing our articles, blog posts, and web content.But did you know that Microsoft Word can actually hurt the seo strategy of your site?

If Microsoft Word is set up incorrectly, it can cause major issues when transferring the content to the web.Before writing any document, it is important to make a few changes to your Word settings to eliminate these issues.

Smart Quotes, Apostrophes, and Dashes


Microsoft Word automatically converts straight quotation marks and apostrophes into "smart" quotes and apostrophes for a more pleasant look.

It will also automatically convert single and double dashes into an elongated dash.While these might look nice on the Microsoft Word document, these modified characters cause a lot of trouble on the web.If you've ever seen something on the web with "??" where quotes should be or strange jargon in place of a dash, you've seen the embarrassment these can cause.

The good news is that it only takes changing a few settings once to eliminate this problem for every future document you write.This is important because your SEO strategy is only good if your content is good as well.

1.Go the "Tools" menu and select "Auto Correct"
2.
Select the "Format as You Type" Tab.
3.Under the "Replace As You Type" heading uncheck: "Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes" and "Symbol Characters (--) with symbols"


Style Formatting


The style formatting toolbar looks innocent enough - but choosing certain settings here can cause hours of additional work over time for the person who is converting your text to the web.

Always choose NORMAL when using Word!

I've noticed that many freelance writers choose something other than normal - or add additional spaces after lines, or double spaces after single returns.While this might look good in Word, all of that formatting disappears once it is put into an HTML editor and then must be completely reformatted in order for your SEO strategy to be effective.If you highlight the text and see extra spaces around the line breaks, then there is something off with the settings.

To ensure that your document does not have any extra Word Doc formatting:
1.
Select "Format" and "Paragraph" from your toolbar:
2.
The "Indents and Spacing" tab should be set to single spacing with 0 spacing before and after lines.
3.The "Line and Page Breaks" tab should have nothing checked other than "window/orphan control"


Pasting Content into Your website Software from Word


When pasting content into your website software such as Wordpress, Joomla, or other type of website software with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, it's important to paste the content into the HTML tab - NOT the visual editor.

The reason is that Microsoft Word adds a ton of HTML code "behind the scenes" when you paste directly into the editor.

Pasting into the HTML tab eliminates all of this sloppy extra code that can severely dilute your keyword density and make it more difficult for search engine spiders to crawl your content and decipher the primary topic of the article.And if the search engines cannot determine the focus of your content, your SEO strategy is not efficient.

Taking these few extra steps before you start typing, can eliminate hours of reformatting and ensure that your content is properly read and ranked by search engines.Creating an effective SEO marketing campaign means that you sometimes have to take into consideration all of the small changes you can make as well as the big ones -- every bit counts towards higher rankings!


About the Author

Christine O'Kelly is co-owner of SEO Content Solutions, a leading SEO copywriting firm.

The company provides SEO press releases, articles, blog content and web content to resellers and end users alike.

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