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LinkedIn, the popular business networking social media site, boasts over 1 billion users worldwide. An estimated 300 million people log in daily. With such exponential reach, business owners would be wise to make the most of the powerful platform. Yet many are making simple mistakes that limit their visibility and appeal to fellow businesspeople. In this article, we’ll share with you five simple tips to improve your LinkedIn profile. Plus, Dashboard’s social media expert, Robyn, will share her special tips to get more from your LinkedIn presence.

Five LinkedIn Tips to Get More Visibility, Connections, and Leads

First, the obvious: If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, it’s time to set one up. Vist LinkedIn to sign up for the service.

A LinkedIn profile is unique to a person. They are similar to an online resume, with a headline, listing of employment history, education history, and highlights. Users can upload a professional photo of themselves as well as a custom banner to personalize their page messaging.

Businesses set up LinkedIn pages, which offer more features such as About pages, product pages, and help wanted pages that enable them to tailor their communications better to their customers.

This article will focus specifically on personal pages. Why? Personal pages are the easiest and best way to connect and network on LinkedIn. And, they can be optimized for LinkedIn’s search so that customers and connections can find you quickly and easily.

Tip #1: Complete Your Profile

This sounds obvious, but too many people make a half-hearted attempt at completing their LinkedIn profiles. Make sure that every section of your profile is completed, including the headline, the short bio, the about you section, your background, education, and certifications.

Pay special attention to the headline section of your profile. This is what anyone casually browsing your LinkedIn page will see, and it is what will grab their attention. Like the headline of a news article, you want it to stop people in mid-scroll and get them to click on it.

Our very own social media expert, Robyn, provided her tips below:

• Photo: Use a professional-looking photo that accurately represents you, and LinkedIn recommends that about 60% of the image is focused on your headshot.
• Headline: While you technically have 220 characters to work with, it will display best if you keep it concise and under 120 characters. Use keywords relevant to your industry, but avoid buzzwords and jargon. Use action-centered phrasing that highlights what you do and your achievements, for example, “Marketing director helping small businesses increase sales using LinkedIn.”
• About: Don’t leave this blank, we’ll outline more on this below.
• Experience: Link your current and prior job experience to the correct business pages.
• Accomplishments/Skills:
  • Show off your credentials, licenses, certifications, achievements, and awards.
  • Share publications, notable projects, and whitepapers.
  • List at least five of your most relevant skills. These skills should be relevant to those you are looking to build your network with.

Tip #2: Optimize Your Profile for Search

People search LinkedIn for others with whom to connect. They also look for consultants and service providers and may search by industry, service need, or skills. Optimize your LinkedIn profile for such searches. Use keyword phrases in the About section of your profile, including terms related to your skills and industry.

Our tips:

• People looking at your profile will read your About section, use it to tell your story. 
• Tie your skills and accomplishments together with why they’d matter to those in the industries you are looking to network with. 
• Spend time crafting and revising your profile until you are confident with the final product. 
• Have others read it to see if it accurately reflects you. 
• Remember, you have 2,600 characters to work with in this section. 

Tip #3: Post Regularly

You’d be surprised at how many people have a profile and lament the lack of connections and interactions, yet they never publish a post! It’s like going to a party and standing with your back to the crowd and then wondering why they aren’t speaking to you. 

Determine a posting schedule that you can live with, whether that is once a day, once every other day, or so on. Then, decide what to post. A good rule of thumb is that 80% of posts should be about other people—news stories you share, congratulating team members, etc.—and 20% (or less) about yourself. Think about what your customers ask you about. Answers to such questions make great starting posts. 

Avoid posting personal updates and content about sensitive or controversial topics. LinkedIn is for business. You’re guaranteed to alienate someone if you post about sensitive or controversial issues such as politics or religion, unless you’re involved in politics or affiliated with a religious organization. Instead, focus on your industry, your business, and your customers, and what they want and need to know. 

A regular posting schedule is more important than one dazzling post dropped infrequently. Schedule time on your calendar for daily LinkedIn interactions. Daily 15-30 minute sessions are more than sufficient to begin building your credibility on the platform. 

Dashboard recommendations: 

• Use LinkedIn’s scheduling feature to preschedule posts with original content about yourself or your business, freeing up your daily time for interaction and connection. One caveat to scheduling posts—make sure you have notifications turned on so you can quickly reply to any comments that others make on your posts within the first few minutes of their comment when possible. LinkedIn algorithms reward quick interaction with comments. 
• Test various types of posts to see what content gets the best response from your network. Content types include text-only posts, a graphic with text accompanying it, and a video with text accompanying it. All of these can be scheduled. Be mindful that the types of content the LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes serving are adjusted from time to time. 
• Posts can be long and information rich, but have a character limit of 3,000. Make the first few sentences really count. Only the first 200 characters are shown, and a viewer will need to click ‘read more‘ to view the rest of it. 
• Test the times you are posting. Although LinkedIn is a business platform, businesses are made up of people, and people spend time on platforms that work in their situation. Test morning versus evening, and weekdays versus weekends. Think about the times you use LinkedIn. Do you look at it while in line at the grocery store, or when relaxing in the evening? Chances are, your network does too. 
• Be patient as you build your profile with your content. It can take time for you to find the right rhythm and types of content that resonate with your ideal network. 

Tip #4: Interact with Others (But Don’t Spam Them)

Remember the party analogy? It’s vital to interact with people on LinkedIn. That means:

• Sharing their content if it resonates with you and your audience.
• Congratulating them on promotions, work events, or other successes.
• Giving a like or another reaction to their posts.
• Wishing them a happy birthday or congratulating them on a work anniversary.

Whatever you do, don’t spam them. That means do not message people with sales pitches as soon as you connect. That’s like meeting someone at the aforementioned party and offering them an engagement ring before you’ve even asked their name—it’s rushing to a point in the relationship that’s not yet appropriate. Instead, take the time to get to know people first. 

There is an old adage in marketing: people need to know, like, and then trust you before they wish to do business with you. Your goal on LinkedIn is for them to know you and then like you. Knowing who you are means building your profile, and liking you comes from liking what you post. Trust is built from consistency over time. 

Spending time daily reading and interacting with others’ posts is equally as valuable as posting your original content. 

Three types of interactions and their visibility:

Tip #5: Always Personalize Connection Requests

This last tip comes from experience. When building your network and clicking the ‘connection request’ button on LinkedIn, take a few moments to add a personal note. Share why you want to connect. This will help you break through the clutter of connection requests, increasing the likelihood that you will get a ‘yes’ and an acceptance of the request. 

Before sending a connection message: 

• Look at their profile for shared interests, work experience, skills, activities, or events they attended, as well as mutual connections. 
• Review their posts and articles—is there one that particularly resonated with you?
• Be brief—connection request messages are currently limited to 300 characters. 
• Use a professional but authentic tone, as if you were speaking to them in person. 
• Never sell your product or services in a connection request, it could result in being treated as spam. 

Dashboard Interactive Marketing Social Media Services

We hope that you found these LinkedIn tips helpful. Dashboard offers complete social media services, including profile optimization, strategy, advertising, and support. We also create exciting content that will help you stand out on social media and beyond, including videos, blog posts, case studies, and more. Let us know how we can help. Call us at 763-242-2454. 

It’s a new world shaping up in the realm of customer acquisition. The ways in which businesses reach new customers online is changing rapidly, especially in the world of search engine marketing. AI is now ever-present, shaping every search tool. Customers are slowly being trained to find answers in the little box at the top of the search results page. And that’s why we recommend “thinking outside the search box” when it comes to acquiring new customers. As AI begins to dominate search and gradually takes away organic search traffic from our websites, we must find new and innovative ways to reach customers online. 

Paid Search Remains a Strong Lead Generation Channel

Paid search ads, such as Google Ads and other online search ads, continue to be a viable lead generation channel. They do a good job of showing customers your products and services at the time when customers are looking for them by matching search queries and intent with advertisements.

Social media ads also offer a reliable lead generation platform, although social media users often find them disruptive, and the algorithms less reliable than Google or Bing. Much of one’s success using social media advertisements depends on matching your ad details with the platform’s methods of segmenting the audience or reaching the target customer.

YouTube Is a Search Engine

YouTube is another great way to “think outside the search box” and reach customers. You don’t have to produce George Lucas-quality films to garner an audience, either. 

Think of the video giant’s platform as one big search engine. Customers are looking for information, whether it’s where to find the battery in a Buick Le Sabre (under the back seat, of all places!) or how to change the thermistor on a GE washing machine (it’s complicated). Because they have a problem with their car battery or their washing machine, they are searching for answers. And if they are searching for answers, they may also search for a reliable mechanic, an auto parts store, or a place online to purchase a thermistor. And that can lead them right to your website!

Consider how you can share videos with your customers. A day in the life at your auto shop, recipes from your restaurant, or a tour behind the scenes of your manufacturing facility are all great ways to engage with your audience. Once videos are shared on YouTube, they can easily be shared across other social media platforms, embedded in your website, or incorporated in Google Ads Performance Max campaigns, adding another dimension to your new, multichannel customer acquisition approach. 

Email Lists

Your email list is a golden ticket now, like Charlie Bucket’s golden ticket to the Wonka Chocolate Factory. It gives you admission to your customers’ inboxes, and brings you right to their doorstep via a personal message. Even with all the changes to search engines, if you have permission to email your customers, you have permission to market to them directly. Just be careful you don’t send too many messages, or you may find them opting out and unsubscribing. Informative newsletters are a great way to keep your company top of mind with customers without bombarding them with sales pitches. 

Direct Mail

Who said direct mail is dead? It’s still very much alive—and a great way to reach customers. You can rent mailing lists (they are rented, not purchased), and you can mail to your existing customers. Direct mail offers several advantages, including the ability to market ‘under the radar’ where your competitors cannot track your marketing campaigns. Postcard marketing is a popular way to mail at the least possible cost. Consider your options for personalization as well, which can go a long way towards generating responses from direct mail. 

Much, Much, More

We’ve listed a few ways to reach prospects and customers, but there are many, many more. All good marketing begins with a strategy and a plan, and we can help you with both. Knowing who you want to reach is the key; we can then dive into where to find them online, what to say to them, and more. It’s also important to establish success metrics.

There are many other ways to attract people to your website—perhaps press releases might be effective, or guest posts and articles in trade publications. Other ideas include public relations (PR), trade shows, conferences, podcasting, videos…the sky’s the limit! It all starts with a plan, and Dashboard Interactive Marketing can help get you started.

It’s a New World of Marketing—Using Some Old School Tactics

For companies that relied solely on organic search traffic for the majority of their site visits and leads, this is an unsettling time. In many cases, organic visits are declining as customers find answers to their search queries using AI tools. 

With any loss, however, there is a gain. As the old saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. We believe that this new era will bring opportunities, we just need to “think outside of the search box” and remember the core definition of marketing when choosing tactics: match your customers’ needs with your products and services. To do that, we have to meet our customers where they are, whether that is on social media, at their homes, opening their mail, or checking their inboxes. 

If you’d like to explore any of these marketing tactics, please call us at 763-242-2454.

Hat tip to our very own Robyn Flach, Dashboard’s social media expert, for coining the term “Happy Change Your Password Again” Day.

Robyn sent us the following article, and by the next day, it was top of the headlines: a massive data breach exposed 16 billion login credentials. No, that’s not a typo.

If you wonder if your information was exposed, chances are good it was.

Here is a list of the companies whose login credentials were exposed. This list may grow as more information is reported:

• Apple
• Facebook
• Google
• Netflix
• Government database
• Many others

Change Passwords Immediately

It’s imperative that you change your passwords immediately. Choose strong passwords that include random letters, numbers, and symbols. Do not use words commonly found in the dictionary due to the risk of what is called a ‘dictionary attack’.

Set up two-factor authentication, including stronger authentication protocols such as authenticator apps. New technology that includes biometrics can also help secure accounts.

Secure Your Customer Data

Businesses that handle customer data, including but not limited to user names, passwords, names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and credit card information, must take extra precautions. Speak with your managed services provider or IT support on the steps you need to take to store such data safely.

Zendesk offers 10 tips to keep customer data safe. These tips include limiting data access and maintaining a record of employees who have access to sensitive data. Another tip is to use encryption methods. Encryption is a security method that allows only authorized users to read the data – it is illegible to unauthorized users.

Another tip that we think is invaluable is keeping your software (and your website) updated. This means updating software, including operating systems and web browsers, when prompted to do so. It also means updating plugins and themes on WordPress websites and performing similar updates on sites hosted on other platforms.

Companies routinely issue security patches via updates to compensate for vulnerabilities exposed after the initial software launch. Even though it may seem like a lot of updates to do, if you keep up to date with them, not only will it be less work, but it will also better protect your systems.

Lastly, train your staff on how to recognize phishing attacks and similar cybercriminal activities. Criminals have become more clever, using psychological techniques as well as old-fashioned tricks to get your employees to divulge usernames and passwords.

Many criminals create fake emails called spoofs that look nearly identical to emails you receive from your bank, big retailers, utility companies, or other trusted vendors.
Never click on links sent via email or text from even companies that you know if you aren’t expecting an email from them; prompts to reset your password or log in because of a problem with an order should be treated with suspicion. Close the email, open a new browser, and log in to check on the situation if you feel it’s necessary.

We hope that these tips are helpful. We aren’t cybersecurity experts. We are business owners just like you. But we know that sharing even a simple tip may help someone, and we care about your business success!

Google recently announced an update to its search engine quality guidelines. These guidelines aren’t hard and fast rules about how to create your website and other online content to win Google’s heart. Instead, it’s more of a general guideline reflecting what Google’s search engine looks for in order to rank a site well. 

The search engine giant uses the acronym E-E-A-T to sum up this approach. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. While it is not considered a ranking factor, improving your website’s E-E-A-T can help it gain in search rank over time and this is even more important in today’s AI search world. 

Here’s what that looks like for a website, and how you can approach E-E-A-T holistically to win Google’s heart—and a better search engine results position.

Experience, Newly Added to the Formula

Google recently added experience to the formula. It means firsthand involvement in the topic. Real experiences in the age of AI now carry more weight with the search engines. These demonstrate actual firsthand knowledge and insight that visitors won’t get from generic search engine results or AI-created responses. The more you can demonstrate your experience on your website through case studies, firsthand stories, and similar content, the better.

Expertise Means Deep Knowledge

Another important factor in the quality score is expertise, which means deep knowledge and skill in a particular subject. Again, the purpose here is to distinguish between general content and expert content, with emphasis given to experts who consistently demonstrate that they have deep subject matter expertise in a topic. Signs of deep expertise can be found in biographies and bylines—a veterinarian writing about dog and cat health, for example, will probably be scored higher than someone without veterinary credentials writing about the same topic. Demonstrate your expertise by adding credentials to your bio and an author box whenever you publish content. 

Authoritativeness or Credibility

The “A” in the formula stands for authoritativeness, otherwise known as credibility. How widely respected is your company or the author of the piece published on your website? Establishing credibility and authoritativeness takes time and effort, and often requires publishing on reputable websites outside of one’s own company, developing a strong backlink profile, and generally demonstrating a high degree of involvement in an industry, trade, or skill related to the website. 

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness means just what you think it means: you are transparent, accurate, and credible. You cite good sources if you link to external content, such as published research reports, university studies, and similar reputable third-party sites. Include “trust indicators” on your website, such as badges from professional affiliations, customer logos, and awards won by your company. Your website includes disclaimers, privacy policies, and terms and conditions. Although Google does not state that it considers its reviews online and other review sites (such as the Better Business Bureau, TrustPilot, and other third-party review websites), published customer reviews add to the overall trustworthiness of your company.

The Bottom Line: Establish Your Expertise, Trustworthiness, and Credentials Through a Sound Website Strategy

The bottom line is that shifting Google’s perception of your company to gain a favorable E-E-A-T score is not something you can do overnight. It takes time to develop all aspects of the formula. However, it is time well spent.

Over the years, Google has adjusted its criteria, but it has never deviated from the basics of this formula. If you focus on honest, transparent dealings, gaining a good reputation in your industry, and sharing signals on your website to both customers and search engines that you are a great company to do business with, you are positioning yourself for success. Combine good technical SEO, an appealing customer-focused website, great content, and social media, and you’ve got the makings of a site that can rank well in search engine results.

Digital marketing is constantly changing. Whether it’s search engines like Google adjusting their algorithms or introducing AI into online search, there’s always something new entering the online marketing landscape. 

As a business owner, you’re wearing many hats. Maybe you have an internal marketing resource or a small marketing team; even then it’s tough to find and have the budget to pay for the expertise for the various specialty areas that comprise today’s digital marketing landscape. 

Outsourcing is definitely an option, but even if you do outsource all of your online promotions, you should still understand the current state of digital marketing, online search advertising, and social media. An informed business owner is in a much better position to make wise choices with their marketing and to work with the key marketing resources to refine campaigns for optimal lead generation. 

AI-Powered Search

AI-powered search is the latest change to search engine optimization (SEO). Due to the rise of AI, some businesses are seeing dramatic shifts in their search engine traffic. 

Platforms such as Microsoft Copilot cite sources, so when it returns answers to a user’s questions, it includes a link to the source document. If the source document is on your website, this link may send traffic your way. This turns AI platforms into secondary search engines and a potential traffic source. 

As AI-powered search evolves, one thing remains clear—companies must focus on the basics. This includes branding. No AI tool can adequately capture your brand. When customers search for you by name, your company should be at the top of the search engine results. Adding a well-written about page, search-engine-optimized frequently asked questions, biographies of the founders or leaders of your company, and similar content to your website can help you remain at the top of the search engines in this new age of AI-powered search. 

Social Media Changes

This past year has seen a whirlwind of changes in social media. Depending on the platform you frequent, you may have noticed these changes or merely heard about them in the news, like the threatened TikTok ban. 

Social media platforms should be thought of similarly to search engines. They rely upon algorithms to find and serve specific content such as videos, pages, or friend feeds. And that algorithm is constantly changing, too. Just as Google or Bing tweaks its algorithm regularly, so too does Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (to name just a few). 

What works on one platform doesn’t necessarily work on another, and you must be willing to either invest the time to learn what works on your audience’s favorite platforms or work with a knowledgeable social media manager to ensure that your social media advertising is working to generate leads.

WordPress and Other Content Management Systems (Websites)

We use WordPress and similar content management systems to build websites. Like the previously mentioned digital marketing tools, these systems also change frequently. Whether it’s the overall aesthetics of a website or how it serves its content to the visitors, the parameters of what makes an effective website change over time, too. 

Digital Advertising

Lastly, the world of digital advertising is also evolving. Now, more people than ever search the web from their mobile devices. Ads must display quickly and clearly on mobile phones and tablets. Companies such as Google, Bing, and social media platforms that earn revenue by displaying ads are also constantly updating their policies, changing their algorithms, and looking for new ways to get consumers to respond to ads. They’re developing new products and tools all the time, too. 

Feeling Overwhelmed? Leave It To Us

If all of this sounds and feels overwhelming, we understand. That’s why companies like Dashboard have specialists on the team. Each of us specializes in a specific aspect of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization, Google ads, social media, content marketing, videos, and so on. This allows us to keep up to date on what’s new in our industry, share it with the team, and then make recommendations to our clients. 

Sites such as MarketingProfs, Social Media Today, The Tilt, and many others are also good places to learn more about the evolving marketing landscape. The best way to stay informed, however, is to stay close to your team at Dashboard Internet Marketing. Read our blog and newsletter, meet with us, and let’s dive into this brave new world together!

Search engine optimization has changed significantly in the age of AI. Those ubiquitous results boxes generated by artificial intelligence at the top of the search results page can answer commons questions quickly and succinctly. How can you top machine learning that scours the web in seconds and delivers a packaged response?

You can do it through innovative branded search content. Branding is the future of content marketing, especially regarding local search engine optimization.

But what is branding, and what is branded content?

The Definition of Branding

Many small-business owners think ‘branding’ means having a logo and perhaps a few dedicated colors for their business. Branding is much more than a logo.

In marketing, branding refers to creating and managing a distinct identity for a company, product, or service. This includes developing a name, logo, design, voice, and overall image that distinguishes it from competitors and leaves a lasting impression on customers. Branding encompasses people’s emotional, visual, and cultural associations with a brand, aiming to build recognition, loyalty, and trust over time.

It’s not just about appearances—it’s about the story and values you convey to your audience.

Stories and Values Add Personalization and Build A Memorable Impression

Branding builds a memorable impression in your customers’ minds when initiated from a place of authenticity. The stories and values at the heart of the brand, even more so than the colors and logo, are what truly matters.

This is where good content marketing and local search work hand-in-hand to build memorable online brands that beat AI search to the punch.

Here are a few stats about the interaction between brands and search marketing that will make you think:

• Brand Trust and Loyalty: Around 81% of consumers state that they need to trust a brand before purchasing from it, and 86% believe authenticity is crucial when deciding which brands to support.
• Increased Visibility: Strong brand knowledge ensures your brand is more likely to appear in AI-driven search results and zero-click discovery scenarios.
• Consumer Behavior: Over 60% of customers are willing to pay more for products from brands they are loyal to, and 36% of U.S. shoppers feel loyal to brands they frequently buy from.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Branding plays a critical role in SEO, as well-known brands are prioritized in search engine algorithms, making them more discoverable.

These statistics highlight how a strong brand can significantly influence consumer trust, loyalty, and online visibility.

Creating Content That Builds Online Brands

According to AI and search marketing expert Ann Smarty, the wave of the future will be fueld by online content that builds strong brands. She recommends that companies have a good strategy to create, promote, and maximize branded content.

Branded content at its most basic should include:

• A robust About page that provides the company’s background, history, mission, vision, and other important stories that set it apart from local competitors
• Other pages that support the brand story include but are not limited to: awards, news (press releases), bios, and activities essential to the company, such as charitable events
• Frequently Asked Questions

These pages can be added easily to your website to build the brand story. Dashboard Interactive Marketing can find effective ways to create, share, and boost your brand to improve search visibility.

In addition to adding brand story pages to your company website, consider how your story can unfold across other platforms and channels. Social media, especially short form videos, are a great way to tell and retell your brand story. Press releases create a more ‘official’ online story since they are shared on multiple news platforms simultaneously. Guest articles add credibility to a brand as well as raise awareness for the brand among potential new customers.

Many small-business owners are concerned that AI-enabled search will take away valuable traffic. Building a strong online brand is one of many things you can do to ensure that customers who want and need your services can find you quickly!

Dashboard Interactive Marketing provides local search consulting and services, content marketing and writing, social media marketing, and more. Call us at 763-242-2454 and let’s discuss how to build a memorable online brand.

This week we’ve seen a flurry of business news related to marketing. TikTok remains in flux with no clear path forward in sight. The WordPress eruption continues to escalate with no resolution. What’s a business owner to do?

First, please be assured that the Dashboard Interactive Marketing team is keeping up to date on these issues (and others) that can impact your business’ marketing activities. We help you navigate the ever-changing sea of information related to SEO, social media, digital advertising, and more.

Next, we’ve put together three time-tested recommendations that all small business owners should do to protect the valuable marketing assets they have built over the years.

With these tips and our expert guidance, you should be in a good position to continue your promotional and lead generation activities this year.

Three Tips to Protect Your Marketing Assets

1. Back up social media assets.

Many small business owners leverage social media to share images and videos with their audiences. However, as we have seen from the recent back and forth regarding the availability of TikTok in the United States, keeping these valuable assets on any external platform (a website or place that you do not own) is dangerous. Any social media or third-party website host can shut down at a moment’s notice, whether due to business changes, regulation, or technical issues, taking all your assets with it in one big gulp. Be sure to back up and save valuable assets such as videos, reels, and images, on your own computers, secure external hard drives, or secure cloud files. In the event that one platform disappears, you can reuse the assets on another one without having to go through the time, trouble, and expense of recreating them.

2. Develop your email list.

Depending on your business’ social media platforms, reaching new customers is tricky. Organic reach has declined in recent years:

• Facebook: The average engagement rate of an organic Facebook post ranged from 2.58% down to just 1.52% in 2023. This decline continued into 2024, with organic reach becoming increasingly challenging due to the platform’s pay-to-play model.
• Instagram: Organic reach on Instagram saw an 18% year-over-year decrease in 2024. This decline is attributed to changes in the algorithm and the increasing voluem of content being posted.

That doesn’t mean you should stop leveraging organic social media posts. What it means is that you should recognize that just using organic posts isn’t going to make as big of an impact as it once did. 

And, added to the declining reach is the constant risk of being deplatformed, meaning having your account shut down. Whether by accident or on purpose, this has happened to people and businesses over the years, and social media companies can and do limit exposure to your content or take accounts offline without warning. If that happens, your organic reach could evaporate instantly.

To avoid losing the momentum you have so carefully built up over the years, encourage your followers to join your email list. Offer an incentive for them to sig up, such as content they cannot get elsewhere, like a special video, a unique report, checklist, or another value item. This list then becomes your own proprietary list, which you can use to reach your followers at any time. (Of course, we want you to follow email marketing laws and best practices, too!) We can help you encourage social media followers to join your email list. Please speak with an expert at Dashboard if you’d like asssitance with this idea.

3. Have a backup plan.

It is heartbreaking to read posts today online from TikTok consultants or contractors who specialize in creating short TikTok videos and marketing plans. These people are genuinely afraid that in the space of a few days their entire business model could grind to a halt. Many small business owners who relied upon TikTok as a marketing channel are also upset at losing what they perceive as a valuable lead generation tool.

Every business owner should have a backup plan, not just for business continuity, but for marketing continuity, too. If one thing doesn’t work, we must be able to quickly shift to another. If short videos can no longer be displayed on TikTok because the app shuts down, we must look at other platforms and decide where, how, and why we want to leverage them. Consider your marketing channels and discuss with your internal staff and the Dashboard team what potential continuity plans should be in place for your marketing.

Plan Ahead, Do Your Best, and Keep Promoting Your Business

The world is uncertain, and that includes the marketing world, too. As a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate. While we cannot control the actions of others that impact our marketing – the social media platforms of this world, the website hosts, the digital advertising services, the algorithm changes – we can prepare for it. We can be smart about it and set up ways to speak directly with our customers that will not be impacted by third party platform changes. We can enact continuity plans. Together with the team at Dashboard to support you, let’s plan ahead, do our best, and keep promoting your business!

If you are new to working with a professional marketing agency, you may also be new to working with a professional web designer or graphic designer. Part of the process of working with a team that handles your marketing is the review cycle. The team receives your inputs and their assignments, then shares designs for your review. The creative team – the people who work on your website, flyers, social media graphics, videos, and so on – will provide you with their best designs based on evaluating your brand, target audience, and their experience.

Clients are sometimes shocked when they see “white space” in the design. “But can’t we have a pretty picture here?” “Can we fit more text in?” “Why is there a big space at the top of the page?” These are all common questions we hear during the review cycle.

Today, we’d like to dispel the myth of white space and talk about why it is an essential component of good design. If you’re new to the graphic design process, read on.

What Is White Space?

White space, properly called ‘negative space,’ is the area without text or images surrounding the words and images on the page.

An example you’re probably very familiar with is the margins on a document. Books would be very difficult to read if the text ran into the center binding or to the very edges of the page. Negative space, or blank space, is used to create margins around the text blocks inside a book to make it easier to read.

Important Uses of Negative or White Space in Marketing Designs

White space, or negative space, is considered one of the foundational elements of good design. It can be used for many purposes in a marketing document. Like the previously mentioned book example, a graphic designer may use negative space in a marketing document to:

• Balance design elements
• Draw attention to important text (such as the headline or sale information)
• Enhance readability
• Prioritize content
• Create a visual hierarchy to enhance understanding

You probably agree with this list of priorities and recognize their importance.

However, often when business owners see new designs for the first time, they are surprised by the amount of white space designers leave around images and text. Their first instinct is to include as much information as possible into the design.

But consider this: if you own a retail store, you don’t pack items into every square foot. You leave open space around the displays so that customers can see the items. While you fill the shelves with products, you may leave space above them for signage – with the negative space around the sign drawing attention to it so customers can see it. Even in your own home, you naturally leave ‘negative space’ around framed photos on the wall so that they stand out, and you center pictures on a wall so that nothing distracts from your favorite artwork. These are yet more examples of how white space or negative space is used in almost every aspect of design – and how you naturally gravitate towards it!

So don’t fear the white space, business owners. When designers send you documents that leave space around the message, recognize it as an integral part of the design process. It’s more important for your customers to see and remember the messages on the page than it is to include as much information as possible, and white space accomplishes this goal.

Dashboard Interactive Marketing

Dashboard Interactive Marketing has almost 20 years of digital marketing experience working with business owners just like you to achieve outstanding results. We provide website development and design services, search engine optimization, local search marketing, digital advertising and marketing, social media management, content marketing, and much more to small and mid-sized businesses. We welcome your call and are happy to discuss your marketing needs. Call us at 763-242-2454.