Since we are all about proactive communication at the agency, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the “WHY” of our name.

The true nature of our name Web Marketing Therapy stems from our deeply rooted belief in the power of helping professionals and organizations help themselves.  Our name was a result of years of listening to client feedback.  We were told things like:
We feel like you just did therapy on our marketing! You just took all the overwhelm out of my marketing management.  I want to get on your marketing therapy couch.  You (Lorrie Thomas Ross, WMT’s founder) are like my marketing therapist!

So in 2009, we changed our name to Web Marketing Therapy to embrace our mission to be advisors, supportive marketing managers and help take the stress and overwhelm out of marketing!  The definition of therapy, as provided by dictionary.com is as follows:

For us, it’s all about providing a therapeutic approach to marketing for our clients. Let’s break it down:

1. The treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process: speech therapy.

We aren’t treating diseases of the body or mind, we are treating dis-ease of marketing. Dis, meaning apart or out and ease meaning a freedom from pain, discomfort, labor or difficulty. Our three pronged approach is based on the concepts of diagnosing the marketing problems, prescribing the appropriate cure or treatment and guiding our clients to a healthy marketing way of life.

2. A curative power or quality.

Web Marketing Therapy isn’t about duct taping your shoddy marketing plan to take you into next week. Real marketing breakthroughs happen when you start curing deep seeded marketing problems to establish a healthy marketing foundation. We wouldn’t go to a real therapist with the hopes of getting well in a day, and the same applies to our approach to web marketing. We think about marketing from a holistic perspective to provide an all-encompassing healing approach for our clients.

3. Psychotherapy; It’s about communicating issues and finding insight into problems with the goal of personal growth and behavior modification.

We want our clients to learn to assess marketing problems on their own and to understand why their old approach to marketing isn’t working for them. With training and advisory we want our clients to learn how to tackle the issues before they arise and learn to modify their marketing behavior!

4. Any act, hobby, task, program, etc., that relieves tension.

We know lots about this and encourage our clients to do what they do best, and what makes them happy, and letting us handle the parts that bog them down! If you thrive at writing blog posts, but want to cry when faced with a Tweet, don’t fret! We want to support you in the things that make you happy and relive tension, not create it!

The Wild Web Women also know that having a passion or hobby is so very important to a healthy marketing way of life. That is why we use our blog to encourage our team members and readers to take a break and have a great time. The About page on your website is the most looked at page there is and clients want to know the fun, exciting things that people in an organization do that make them unique. So take the time to go for a run, paint, play your guitar, dance your heart out… it’s good for your health, your marketing and your business!

So, as you can see, Web Marketing Therapy isn’t just for therapists. On the whole our approach can easily be applied to any type of business. To learn more about what we do and how we do it I encourage our readers to subscribe to our Healthy Marketing Advice blog and to check out our book by CEO Lorrie Thomas Ross (aka The Marketing Therapist); The 36-Hour Guide to Online Marketing and her course on lynda.com called Online Marketing Fundamentals!

Mobile specific sites support your overall internet marketing efforts.

In the article Mobile Sites Design Best Practices, the top three mobile design best practices are:

1. Choose Critical Components such as your logo, clarification of WHAT you do, link to your site pages, a click-to-call phone number and a link to your full site
2. Remember Mobile Site Users SCAN vs. READ and does not need to have all the pages that your web site has, only the most important ones and keep text to a minimum by using bullet points or short sentences
3. What Action do you Want Users to Take – design elements that make it easy for the user to know what is clickable are extremely helpful

An increase in mobile device usage means it’s more important than ever to consider having a mobile presence with an effective mobile site. If you are still on the fence about the importance of having a mobile site, read Lorrie’s Introduction to Mobile-Friendly Websites, where she addresses the important points to understand before heading down the mobile path.

The 12 chapter course featured exclusively on lynda.com outlines the fundamentals of online marketing in easy to understand and informational video tutorials. Lorrie rocks the tutorial socks off of me in this super smart and fun course. And just a little FYI: Lorrie was a whopping 8 months pregnant during the filming!

Online Marketing Fundamentals introduces web marketers, web designers, business owners and executives to the world of online marketing, and reviews how the different aspects of a business’ web site can support its marketing goals. Course highlights include information on:

• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Online Public relations
• Business Branding
• Marketing with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
• Email Marketing
• Social Shopping Marketing with Yelp, Groupon, and Living Social
• User Experience Optimization
• Paid Search/Paid Advertising
• Online Advertising
• Blogging
• Web Marketing Strategy and more!

For those of you who do not know yet, lynda.com is a subscription based, online, video tutorial website chock full of amazing education. The lynda.com service is an exceptional value of only $25 a month and features a plethora of fun, easy to learn, video tutorials to help you in many aspects of your techy life!

If you aren’t a lynda.com  member yet you can still get a sneak peak of Lorrie’s course introduction and some other snippets from Online Marketing Fundamentals.

The Wild Web Women love lynda.com: Mary Sandor, Lorrie Thomas, Jennie Jacobs, Darla Bea Smith

As a designer,  I love all of the great InDesign and Illustrator tutorials on lynda.com for helping me to quickly learn an underutilized tool or tip in the programs. Another great feature: the Creative Inspirations documentaries on the site. The entertaining series allows you to get insight into the worlds of your favorite artists, photographers and more.

Basically, Web Marketing Therapy loves lynda.com and we think you will too! Check out the course today and let us know what you think about it below in our comments section!

So, when I saw that Mari was involved in a magazine project that covers the four big social media platforms, Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, I was EXCITED, to say the very least!  I haven’t had a chance to read them cover to cover, but Mari describes each of them as original content offering “great tips, ideas, and strategies from thought leaders, industry specialists, and bloggers from all walks of life!”   I don’t know how I missed these before today, but didn’t want to wait to read them before I passed on the great news to you!  I have skimmed the Facebook mag and it look s FAB!

Choose your “weapon” and dive right in to the following magazines and file this one under “Self Help!”!  Thanks Mari!

Let me know what you think-Which one is your favorite?  Which article has the best tips?  Which article inspired you to jump online and make immediate changes?

HAPPY READING!

Jump the shark is now a term that is used for anything that is past its prime!  Which brings me to my question-has your website  ”jumped the shark?”  Your website or blog has to serve your clients/readers/visitors.  You need to keep content current, relevant, trustworthy and interesting and if you do need to make changes, they need to make sense!

Lorrie Thomas Ross, our fearless leader, started off with her own consulting business in 2005, under the name of Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing.  As our agency grew and we morphed into what is now Web Marketing Therapy, Lorrie realized that her old site was in need of change!  She did what we have advised many clients to do – updated her old site to be on brand and on purpose!  We optimized her site with a complete overhaul!  Check out the results.

Is it time for you to rethink how you are presenting yourself online?  Has your site or content turned stale or mediocre?  Perhaps it’s time to take a close look to ensure that you are avoiding following in The Fonz footsteps (or shall we say water ski’s) and remain current and interesting and ensure you are serving your target market!

BTW:  I disagree with my friend – I’m still enjoying Glee  and don’t think they have jumped the shark…YET!