Month: December 2015

One of the most rewarding parts of being a Google Partner is all the events we get to host where we can reach out into the community and interact with other local businesses. Here at Skynet Solutions, we love being a part of the small business community and using our knowledge and skills to help other local enterprises succeed as well. All throughout the fall, we held a series of “GYBO” seminars throughout the region to help small businesses get online. Thanks to our partners at Google, REI Oklahoma and area chambers of commerce, we were able to help many local business—like yours—improve their online presence in a variety of ways! At the various workshops we hosted, we covered topics ranging from how to use Google Analytics effectively to what S.E.O. is and how you can use it to boost your online presence. We also discussed how to get your business listed on Google Maps and other maps listing services, like Bing and Apple and other effective tactics to make sure that potential customers are able to easily find your business online. We have found maps listings to be one of the most effective ways to help a small, local business grow. The importance of an online presence for your business cannot be overstated; 50 percent of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61 percent of those searches result in a purchase, according to Search Engine Watch. In addition, 56 percent of mobile searches are from users seeking local information, like business hours, directions, and a physical address—which is why maps listings are so critical. If your business can’t be easily found online, customers are going to go elsewhere. We are planning on hosting more of these events in the new year, so keep an eye out for more information! In the meantime, you can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for all of your marketing needs. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2016 your businesses’ best year yet. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

We’re now mid-way through December, the New Year is knocking at our door and it’s tempting to want to stop for a breather and take a break. But don’t stop now! Kicking off 2016 with strong marketing strategies that focus on trends for next year can set the stage for your continued success. Small business marketing in the upcoming year looks promising, especially for those who already have a decent referral network in place and an established social media presence to build on. With the coming of the New Year, businesses need to take a more active approach to gain full advantage of all the potential lying ahead. Over the next several weeks, Skynet Solutions will dig deeper with an in-depth look into what’s trending for 2016 and what small businesses can do to improve their marketing strategies, and  to see skyrocketing growth and success next year. Here are some of the things we recommend you do in the coming months to turbo-charge your business for the best year ever.

1. Get to Know Your Audience Even Better The 2016 marketing landscape will be more customer-centric than ever. Strive to learn more about your customers and what they want. Engage with them across multiple outlets and study your analytics. Email marketing may seem outdated, but its importance will continue as it remains one of the best ways to drive traffic and directly communicate with customers. Collect email addresses from your customers and utilize them in your strategy for the coming year.
2. Get On Board with Mobile The explosion of mobile devices and smartphone usage will greatly impact marketing in 2016. There are now officially more online searches from mobile devices than desktops and search engines have responded accordingly. Make sure your online presence is mobile-friendly and start thinking like an on-the-go consumer.
3. Get Up to Date with Social Media Trends The wave of social media is quickly becoming the standard operating procedure for how companies do business and it hasn’t even begun to crest. Social video is huge and looks like it will continue to grow into 2016. Utilizing tools, like Facebook Ads, with geo-precise target marketing to focus efforts on specific consumer areas will greatly enhance your social media marketing strategy.
4. Get Your Marketing Organized Modern marketing continues to evolve at a neck-snapping pace. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when every day we need to identify, evaluate and deploy new strategies to keep up with the latest trends and innovations. We cannot overstate the importance of getting your marketing strategy organized in the New Year.

Try to stick to your 2016 plan, but remain flexible in this ever-changing environment. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we break down each of these four trends for 2016 and remember your New Year’s marketing resolution: Be more active!

Local businesses come in all shapes and sizes, from regional chains and fast-growing startups to mom-and-pop shops and family owned services. At Skynet Solutions, we work with all kinds of businesses, small and large. We also work with lots of local entrepreneurs and artists. As a company with such a widespread array of talents, we have the tool kit needed to help with any creative project you or your business might have. Our design team recently worked with local hip-hop artist JaMoe The Great in conceptualizing and designing the cover for his new album, “The Book of 9Eighteen”. The project was a breath of fresh air for our design team, who spend the majority of their time on projects such as business websites and logo designs. While website and logo designs are the bread and butter of a marketing firm like Skynet Solutions, it is always fun for the design team to get an opportunity to flex their creative muscles and really let their passion for design shine through. One of the most exciting parts of this process for us was that we were able to make ourselves known not only to a wide array of local businesses, but to local talent as well. We hope this will allow us to continue to collaborate with artists and entrepreneurs in our community and beyond on projects such as this one. “The Book of 9Eighteen” by JaMoe The Great is available on Amazon Digital Music, so go check it out! And let us know what you think of the cover art. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If you are a local artist looking for design talent—or if you know of any—feel free to reach out to us. We enjoyed our collaboration with JaMoe The Great and would love to work with more Tulsa-area talent, music or otherwise.

Website Analysis Before the Holiday Rush   Tis the season for online shopping! As a customer, there’s nothing worse than clicking on a website’s link, only to discover a 404 error page, rather than the product you were itching to buy. As a retailer, this is likely to cost you a sale and impact your revenue. Is your website ready for the increased holiday traffic? Unsure? Then you definitely need a website analysis to make sure it’s up and running properly before all those shoppers pay a visit. Regular checkups are vital in today’s world. Most people visit a doctor’s office to check their health or take their car to a shop for regular maintenance. In the online world of ecommerce sites, a website analysis is like a regular health checkup, but for your website. After all, what worked yesterday may not necessarily work today. Even minor mistakes and errors on your website could be costing you. Skynet Solutions uses a few helpful tools that allow us to dig deeper into a website and paint a picture to what’s actually happening. One of those tools uses a bot that crawls a website and acts like Google. It provides us with any issues that Google usually looks for when deciding what shows up in search results. After all of the site is scanned and the reports are up, we can then see if any problems, inaccuracies, or errors are uncovered that need to be fixed in order to ensure that the website is functioning properly. A thorough website analysis can even uncover hidden opportunities that might help generate more traffic to your website or could show how you stack up to the competition. We recommend that our clients perform a regular website analysis at least once per quarter, but most certainly before peak times, like the holiday shopping season. Skynet Solutions offers everything from a free site analysis that will find the top 3 things wrong with a website, to a more in-depth analysis that will show additional statistics, visual aides, and provides more information on the problems found so that we can fix them. Search engines like Google and Bing change rules and tweak things with their regular updates. With each update comes the possibility that something on your website will not perform as originally anticipated. Skynet Solutions also offers a site health monitoring system that can notify our development team of issues the moment they arise. Once notified we prioritize the issue and jump into action. Contact the website health experts at Skynet Solutions for more details and pricing.