Do You Suddenly Find Yourself Working from Home? Let Us Help You Ease the Transition

In 2020, many employers find themselves quickly shifting the majority of their workforce to the online realm in order to maintain social distancing — keeping staff and clients at least 6 feet apart in the interest of public health. There may be a few bumps along the way with this quick shift to working from home, but luckily there are many companies before yours that have made the switch and you can glean helpful tips from them, so you don’t have to make the same blunders.

At One Firefly, we’ve run a virtual-based team for the last five years with employees distributed in Mexico and across the U.S. During that time, we’ve tried a variety of tools, and we’ve come to a few standards that work exceptionally for us.

In this blog we’ll share some of our favorite remote working tips, and we hope they help ease the transition to remote work for yourself and your organization.

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With over 660 million users in over 200 countries and territories globally, LinkedIn has become one of the top social platforms to engage other professionals and educate your audience. But just like all social media channels – there are some best-practice guidelines to adhere to when deciding what type of content to utilize.

Here are few basic recommendations on how you can get the most out of LinkedIn when trying to educate your audience and grow your presence.

SEE ALSO: 3 Simple Tips to Expand Your Business’ Reach Online

Here at One Firefly, our goal is to help technology professionals successfully grow their businesses. On a surface level, we provide marketing support, but beyond that we really aim to provide solutions to challenges that our clients face on a daily basis.

The emergence of COVID-19 is perhaps the greatest challenge our industry and communities have faced in recent memory. And while we may not have all the answers, I and One Firefly remain committed to finding and implementing solutions to help each other succeed.

I’d like to provide you with an update on how we plan to address these challenges:

 When One Firefly announced Lead Concierge, a manned live chat service for Integrators, it was roundly recognized by the industry as one of the most innovative and best services for Custom Integrators, winning the CEPro Best Award and Residential Systems's Best of Show. The One Firefly staffed live chat service engages website visitors with real-time support and answers to their pressing questions from rigorously trained professionals ready to turn your website visitors into real customers. The service is designed to capture leads, speed-up customer service, and increase your bottom line. So how do they do it? What are visitors most curious about? How do we move them from curious to ready to do business? Get the inside scoop from our Lead Concierge team and see what experiences are happening on Integrator's websites around the United States, and what you might learn from this inside look.

Ask A Content Writer

"Content is king!" There, we said it. It's a mantra echoed in every corner of the marketing universe, from freelance professionals to large marketing agencies alike; it's earned its cliché. Content's rise to the throne as King was swift, but you'd have to go back over a decade to understand how it came to rule organic search strategy. That's another blog all to itself, but here's a clue from an old Google Webmaster Blog post that explains Google's pivot away from using keyword meta tags as a ranking factor. What that meant for website owners was simple; don't tell us your content is worthy, prove it. The bar was set. It's a measure that continues to tower over content creators today. In part three of this series, we give technology professionals an inside look at what it takes to create content that dominates online search by interviewing our team of professional Content Writers.

Fact:  All staff Writers at One Firefly are rigorously trained on all manners of the Residential Custom Integration channel, and only write for this industry. They have mastered the delicate craft of writing content that is all together technically accurate yet easy to read, persuasive, and, most importantly, effective. Every month, our writing team regularly cranks out over 400 uniquely tailored articles on behalf of Custom Integrators throughout North America. That's a nice setup to say; their insight is priceless (in our slightly humbled opinion). Read on to get the inside scoop.

SEE ALSO: Working With A Marketing Agency: Interview Part 1

Peek Inside Our Thrilling Few Days Of Learning, Growing And Making Lasting Memories

At One Firefly, we take pride in our remote workforce. The ability to work from home on flexible schedules encourages maximized productivity while allowing us to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Plus, having a globally dispersed team makes our annual team training events that much more exciting!

Each year, we band together in one location for an action-packed team training event, where we get out of our everyday routines to learn, connect and ultimately return to work with our fires reignited. Get a glimpse of the adventures from our most recent three-day team event that took place earlier this month in New York City by exploring the highlights below.

SEE ALSO: Why Work with a Marketing Team? Here Are 3 Important Benefits

In 2019, One Firefly saw the need to bring technology-centric lifestyle video to our clients. An ambitious endeavor, One Firefly dove in headfirst and as of November, had completed our third video shoot. We are excited to share a unique, behind-the-scenes look at how it all came together.

How Google Maps Pinpoints Your Ideal Customers and Lets Them Find You

For decades, the question marketers and growth-minded businesses have asked themselves is, “How do I get to the top of Google?” Because of the influx of algorithm updates and the elusive hacks it takes to work your way to that enviable position, the answer to this question has been a moving target since it was first pondered. And now, Google Maps is becoming a bigger piece of marketer’s objective than before. As you’ll find later, one of the new goals might be, more specifically, “Why should I show up in Google Maps?”

Part of the reason for this is because the way we use the internet, and what we use it for, have evolved. In 2010, just 5% of the world’s web traffic was attributed to mobile. Today, the number is tenfold -- more than half of all traffic comes from a mobile device. As mobile use exploded, Google responded by changing the way the search engine results page is organized.

SEE ALSO: 3 Benefits to Working With Our Full-Service Marketing Team

Backlinks are an essential part of any well-planned Search Engine Optimization strategy.  When one website links back to yours, you have gained a backlink. Often called inbound links, they are a signal to search engines that other websites trust you as a resource on a certain topic. The more quality backlinks you have to your website, the more search engines will be willing to show your website in search results.

If you are aiming to increase your website’s visibility on Google and other search engines in 2020, we at One Firefly recommend increasing the number of high-quality backlinks to your website. Backlinks from reputable domains that have demonstrated themselves as resources to web users will deliver more value to your website than others, so keep in mind that quality matters.

So, where do you begin?

In this blog, we are going to highlight three easy opportunities for you to add quality backlinks to your website. Just keep reading below to find out more!

SEE ALSO: Are You Hurting Your Search Results With Outdated Practices?