Insights - Bozell - Integrated Marketing Services with Offices in Omaha and Kansas City » Tips

Play Well With Email Filters

Brian Wetjen — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:32:45 +0000

When planning your email marketing and communications strategy, use a different email address for each different type of communications you send to a customer/subscriber/prospect.

With the increased use of advanced email filters, user want control over how they receive communications. As the sender, you have less and less control over how the message appears in someone’s inbox. By segmenting your email communications out to different addresses, you give the end user more control over how they filter your communications. And if they don’t filter things, they don’t need to perceive any difference.

For example, if you send a newsletter, order notifications, sales and discount info, account info and official business, and general marketing and promotional messages, you could segment out the messages so each come from a different email address:

Newsletter = newsletter@your-company.com
Order Notifications = orders@your-company.com
Sales and Discounts = sales@your-company.com
Account Info and Official Business = notices@your-company.com
General Marketing = updates@your-company.com

This might seem like overkill, but for the small amount of time it takes to set up a communications strategy in the beginning, your end user will have a lot more control over how to handle your messages, and you reduce the possibility of someone unsubscribing from everything you send simply because they don’t want to receive your newsletter.

By breaking up the addresses that your distinct messages come from, the customer has the option to easily filter out messages they don’t want based on email address while keeping the ones they do. Email addresses are a very easy way to consistently apply a filter. Text content and subject lines can easily change over time.

Good Clients Make Good Friends

Kim Mickelsen — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:04:07 +0000

I ran across this post today and really like it. Sometimes in the day-to-day stress of the job we need a little reminder.

Treat clients like friends:

Understand they have bad days, good days, days they need you and days they need to be left alone
Give them a second chance if they make a mistake
Give them a hand when you can
They have different levels of knowledge (sometimes you have to walk them through things)
Show them something new, something they’ve never seen before
You can keep in touch with friends via email—have a little face to face from time to time
Let them know when you can’t do something
Show respect and be honest
Talk to them—never at them

Via 3c32

Your Resume is not a Sheet of Paper

Brian Wetjen — Fri, 20 May 2011 18:25:37 +0000

When you’re applying for a job – in any field, but especially in the highly competitive field of marketing/advertising/interactive – be sure you go beyond simply sending in a resume when you’re applying for a job. These days, with the job market being highly competitive both for available positions and talent, it’s more important than ever that you really pay attention to how you present yourself as a candidate for a job.

Here are a few tips that can help you make a good impression on whoever is making hiring decisions and stand out from the basic resume-submitting applicants that you will be measured against.

Read the complete job description for any position you are applying for, and clearly indicate which position you are interested in when applying.
Do your own research on the firm you are applying with. Learn something about them and the work they are doing. Have a basic understanding of their business and what people do there.
Research people in the company and especially who you might meet or be interviewed by. Get a sense of their background, and be familiar with their work.
Tell your story in relation to the job position. Describe how and why you are a great candidate. Find what there is about the position and your interest or skills that make a great match, and describe that relationship to your potential employer.
Be interested and passionate. Nothing is less attractive than a potential hire that doesn’t seem to care whether they get hired or not.
Make sure that when you get “Googled” – which you WILL – that the information returned is what you’d like to have seen by others. It’s almost guaranteed that part of the hiring process is searching for your name online. If a personal blog or website with current information that matches everything else you’re telling as part of your story, you look like a more serious professional than if it’s out of date or just a bunch of photos of when you partied too hard in college. And if you don’t have a blog or site, make sure that you have your LinkedIn profile up to date at the very least. Which leads to…
Have a current and up to date LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is, in many ways, the new resume. Just about everything you can put on a resume can be added to LinkedIn. The additional benefit is that you can be seen in context with the rest of your colleagues. Plus – it’s a lot easier to keep LinkedIn up to date than a paper resume.
Lastly, be excited. Taking a new job is an exciting opportunity for everyone. Help your potential employer be excited to hire you by being excited to work for them.

There’s a good article on the99percent.com about the resume being dead. Lots of great resources on that site. Enjoy reading.

Are you missing mobile clicks?

Scott Rowe — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:24:32 +0000

You have to admit that Google Analytics has become a major force in the world of web based analytics reporting tools. We have been using the service here at Bozell for quite some time as one more arrow in our quiver of tools. It is a great tool in that it is free, robust and integrates in with your pay-per-click advertising programs.

There has been a change over the past few years that not all have properly adapted for. With the explosion of mobile devices with web browsing capabilities, a potential issue has arisen for those using client based web analytics systems like Google Analytics.

It comes down to how these systems work by default. When you use a standard embed code for Google Analytics it creates a link to a JavaScript function file on Google’s servers. When a web page is loaded your web browser calls that file and executes a JavaScript function in order for the action to be logged. The problem is, if the mobile device is incapable of running JavaScript then the users actions will never be logged and no analytics for those visitors will be available.

The solution is to embed the mobile specific version of the Google Analytics embed code. This code variation runs on the server side and therefore doesn’t require the web browser to make a call to Google.

For more information on Google’s Mobile Analytics click the link below.

http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/web/

Tips for Managing Change

Kim Mickelsen — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:09:58 +0000

It’s certainly no surprise that people don’t like change. So any change from what we’ve come to know, or are comfortable with, can, and often does, create resistance and fear — fear of the unknown or an expectation that we’ll lose something.

But change is important for ourselves, our businesses and our cities. Standing still isn’t an option. The world moves too fast. We need to constantly push ourselves, seek new opportunities, and stay on top of our game.

The key to managing and guiding the positive change you seek is in understanding that you can’t avoid resistance, but you can manage it.

Kurt Lewin, regarded as one of the founders of modern psychology and perhaps best known for developing the Force Field Analysis, viewed organizations as systems in which the present situation was not a static pattern, but rather a dynamic balance of driving forces (those seeking to promote change) and restraining forces (those attempting to maintain the status quo) and that in order for any change to occur, the driving force must exceed the restraining force, thereby shifting the equilibrium.

Force field analysis is a management technique developed by Lewin for diagnosing situations and can be useful in team building and when attempting to overcome resistance to change.

The analysis is a method to:

investigate and understand the balance of power involved in an issue
identify important stakeholders and target groups
identify opponents and allies
identify how to influence each target group

Conducting the analysis is an easy process. Here are the typical steps.

Describe the current situation.
Describe the desired situation.
Identify where the current situation will go if no action is taken.
List all the forces driving change toward the desired situation.
List all the forces resisting change toward the desired situation.
Discuss and understand all the forces: are they valid? Can they be changed? Which are the critical ones?
Allocate a score to each of the forces using a numerical scale (i.e. 1 = extremely weak and 10 = extremely strong). Chart the forces. Use three columns on a piece of paper with the desired change in the middle, the driving forces on the left and restraining forces on the right.
Add the point scores of each side to understand the situation. This will help you determine how viable the change is and which of the forces have some flexibility for change or which can be influenced. How can you raise the scores of the driving forces or lower the scores of the restraining forces, or both?
Create a strategy to strengthen the driving forces or weaken the restraining forces, or both. Then prioritize action steps based on which will have the greatest impact.
Identify the resources you’ll need and decide how to implement the action steps.

We all experience change in personal ways. Understanding that and addressing people’s values when you encounter resistance can reduce any negative impact of resistance and help move things in the direction you desire.

How to Play Nice With Spam

Scott Rowe — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:30:34 +0000

We’ve all been there. Sitting in front of our computers and watching the stream of new emails inundating our inboxes. Then you spend minutes trying to sift through them. This one is a client, this one is a marketing email and this one is “spam”.

The question is how do you respond to messages you deem as spam? It is important to understand why you have received the message to begin with. Not all messages you deem as spam were random advertisements sent by fraudulent companies. Here are some possible reasons you may have received the message:

You signed up on the company’s website to receive email messages.
You registered for a webinar the company put on.
Your information is part of a marketing database within your category.
Your information was shared with partner companies based on a previous registration.
You met an individual with the company at a tradeshow and gave him or her your business card.

The next step you make with this message is very important. You can keep the message, delete the message, unsubscribe from future campaigns or mark it as spam. It is important to understand that unsubscribing from email campaigns and marking them as spam are two different things.

When you unsubscribe from an email list, the sending company is required to remove you from future mailings. Any reputable company that participates in email marketing will leverage a sophisticated email marketing tool that will automatically disable or remove your information from their email contacts database.

Marking something as spam will also remove you from future mailings but it can also damage the company’s reputation with the main email service providers and Internet service providers. If there are enough complaints, all email being sent from that company will begin to be rejected as spam. This is commonly referred to as blacklisting.

Why is this important to you? Simple, if you have registered to receive email marketing from a company and then decide against receiving future mailings, you can damage the business’s marketing operations by marking their messages as spam. If you received the message completely unsolicited then by all means mark them as “spam”. If not however, it is best to use the standard unsubscribe methods to ensure you have made your wishes aware to the marketer but at the same time have not damaged their reputation unintentionally.

Write for Humans Not Bots

Kim Mickelsen — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:55:49 +0000

We all know that SEO is critically important. People make billions of unique searches each month. So search engines drive a lot of traffic. But the content on your site must, first and foremost, be compelling (and readable) to the people who are reading it or you’re wasting your time.

Use your keywords, in context, within the text of your page. Repeat the keyword, in context, throughout the text. But don’t simply repeat the keyword over and over again because it makes you sound like an idiot or a sufferer of some kind of obscure tourettes syndrome and it sends people running for the hills.

Many people go way too far and drop in keywords between every other sentence.

Via Line25

So, some level of keyword frequency is good, but too much is not. The only way to tell if your repetition of keywords is super or spammy is to measure that frequency against the overall length of the content. A keyword density greater than 5.5% could find you guilty of what’s called keyword stuffing, which tends to make Google think you’re trying to trick them.

For best results, your content should…
•    Be roughly 500 to 1,500 words
•    Include images, titles, and well-structured paragraphs
•    Be relevant to the keywords
•    Include links to other pages within your site, or to other sites

Google Analytics Hacks

Brian Wetjen — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:20:31 +0000

SEOmoz has posted a great list of a few things to do with Google Analytics in order to get more out of the tool. Some of the tips are basic and some are advanced, but all help you to better understand what’s happening with your site and the visitors to it. And that’s very important to your digital marketing efforts.

Topics covered include:

Use regular expressions for fine-tuning your traffic analysis
Make sure your analytics code is installed correctly
Segment your funnels
Track SEO variables
Track form abandonment

Read the full article here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-quick-google-analytics-hacks

Four ways you can leverage email to strengthen other marketing channels

Scott Rowe — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:49:35 +0000

Link to Social Media Sites - If you company is already utilizing social networking sites for marketing then you are in good shape. Creating icons and linking to your social networking sites is quick and simple. Before you go down this road however, consider the customers thought process. Is there a strong value for them to engage with you in social media? You may need to consider offering social media exclusive content and offers to get your email users to convert.

Drive in store traffic and sales – Whether you are a traditional brick and mortar or online store, all retailers want to drive traffic to their stores. Using email to send your customers in store only sales is a powerful way to engage with them and drive traffic.

Event Promotion – Since email messages are generally sent in standard intervals, it is the perfect channel to communicate both pre and post event information. Email is also important since you will most likely not have the opportunity to personally connect with each of your customers leading up to an important company event.

Link to online content – If you are currently running a blog or have other powerful forms of online content such as video or photography, direct your customers to it. Don’t let organic search be the only means of getting your customers and prospects to this key form of communication.

10 Email Etiquette Tips

Kim Mickelsen — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:45:49 +0000

Email is the lifeblood of many organizations, yet it is amazing how poorly so many people use email.

There are hundreds of etiquette books and guides out there and rules vary by industry, but here are some basics that apply across the board.

Answer swiftly
Be concise and to the point
Use short sentences
Use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation
Don’t leave out the message thread
Don’t write in CAPITALS
Don’t overuse Reply to All
Don’t overuse the high priority option
Take care with abbreviations and emoticons
Use cc: field sparingly

And lastly: Read and reread the email before you send it!

A Simple Way to Improve Your Writing

Robin Donovan — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:48:43 +0000

Most people use three different sentence formats when they write. With only these three variations your writing can get monotonous. If you expand your repertoire to include six additional sentence formats your writing will automatically seem more sophisticated and be more appealing to the reader. Don’t let the “grammar” scare you, once you read the examples it all starts to make sense. Here are the different formats that can transform your writing and they’re very simple to master if you use these guidelines:

Main clause: subject + verb + completers

Jeremiah walked home.

Subordinate clause: subordinator + subject + verb + completers

After Jeremiah walked home,
Because Jeremiah walked home,
Until Jeremiah walked home,
Unless Jeremiah walked home,

NOTE: Subordinators can give information about: time, place, manner, cause, condition, concession (if)

Phrase: contains subject or verb, but not both (sometimes has neither one).

The kinds of phrases are: participial, prepositional, infinitive and subordinate, such as:

1. Participial phrase: participle + object

Delivering the food,
Watching the game,
Sensing danger,
Worked up,
Having fun,
Avoiding all the difficult tasks,

2. Prepositional phrase: preposition + object

Under investigation,
In big trouble,
To bed,
At home,
Between friends,
Of each person,
Of no certain address,
Up front,
On time,
Down home,

3. Infinitive phrase: infinitive + Object

To classify the material,
To struggle mightily,
To be silly,
To have big ideas,
To pretend sickness,
To sense danger,
To drive fast,
To classify the material,
To have no ideas,

4. Subordinate phrase: subordinator + phrase

Participial construction:
After watching the game,
Before delivering the food,
Completely worked up,
Hardly avoiding the difficult tasks,

5. Prepositional construction: subordinate + participle + prepositional phrase

After being under investigation,
Now having been in big trouble,
Almost on time,
Now under investigation,
Never on time,
Next to bed,
Then of no certain address,

6. Infinitive construction: subordinate + participle + infinitive phrase

Unless wanting to classify the material,
If trying to drive too fast,

Now, after all that, here are the sample sentence patterns that will release the Hemingway in you:

Main Clause

Writing graceful sentences is really tough.

Subordinate Clause + Main Clause

When I try too hard, writing graceful sentences is really tough.

Main Clause + Subordinate Clause

Writing graceful sentences is really tough unless I give it total concentration.

Main Clause + Main Clause

Writing graceful sentences is really tough, but graceful sentences make up graceful paragraphs.

Subordinate Clause + Main Clause + Main Clause

If I am not completely involved, writing graceful sentences is really tough, so I have learned how to get involved.

Main Clause + Main Clause + Subordinate Clause

Writing graceful sentences is really tough, and I could really use a day off after spending a full day with the kids.

Main Clause + Subordinate Clause + Main Clause

Writing graceful sentences is really tough after I’ve spent a full day with the kids, and I could really use a day off right about now.

Subordinate Phrase + Main Clause

After a day’s work, writing graceful sentences is really tough.

Main Clause + Subordinate Phrase

Writing graceful sentences is really tough after playing with the kids all day.

Get Automatic Website Crawl Error Alerts from Google Webmaster Tools

Brian Wetjen — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:22:39 +0000

Google just announced today that within their Webmaster Tools utility you can now receive automatic alerts when the Googlebot experiences a jump in Crawl Errors. You can read the whole post on the Google Webmaster Central blog.

There are many reasons that a search engine bot might get a crawl error on a site. It’s actually pretty common. The significance of this update from Google is that they will alert you to an unexpected increase in crawl errors. Maybe something went wrong with your database. Maybe there’s a typo in a bunch of new pages you posted. Maybe a site you link to heavily is down or changed their URLs. No matter the reason, this is good info for a site owner to know.

Additional tip: Google Webmaster Tools is something you should be using already!

Stop Trying to Be Everything to Everyone

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:38:28 +0000

Or you end up being nothing to no one.

You’ll never get to a point where everyone loves you. Give that thought up. It’s an impossible dream. Instead stand for something, be real and you could be loved by some.

As the Grateful Dead’s late lead guitarist/vocalist Jerry Garcia said, “Grateful Dead fans are like people who like licorice. Not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like licorice REALLY like licorice.”

I read a great post recently on Media Buyer/Planner and it really stuck with me, maybe because I’m a big fan of the Grateful Dead, or maybe because it was just so pragmatic.

Four key lessons marketers can learn from The Dead:
1) Give Away the Experience, Sell the Ancillaries
2) Obtain a Unique Position
3) Create Action and Get Out of the Way
4) Get the Payoff

Read entire post>

Tips on Dealing with Irate Individuals

Robin Donovan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:32:11 +0000

We’re in a creative business so emotions can sometimes run high. On occasion we’re subjected to an angry outburst which is generally counterproductive to any project it impacts.

So how do you diffuse that rogue outburst and regain control of the situation? It’s often more simple than you might think.

First and foremost – don’t raise your voice to match the emoting individual. A raised voice signals your lack of control. Start with silence and wait for an opportunity to interject your comment slowly and in a deep voice. The slower and deeper your voice the more you will appear in control.

Your comments should be designed to diffuse the situation and not to incite additional anger. Comments such as “this may not be the problem that you think” or some such remark fitting the issue at hand should be employed. Be careful not to patronize your subject or underestimate their intelligence – that will undoubtedly backfire.

Initially you may feel that your attempts to diffuse the situation are going unnoticed. Give your subject a few seconds to focus in on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Once that happens you will begin to see a softening in tone and force. At that point just keep doing what you’re doing until the outburst comes to an end.

The great thing about diffusing an emotionally charged outburst in this way is that it will enable you to help your subject save face. That will be critical to their ability to succeed on the team as your project progresses.

Should you find yourself in the rare situation where the subject is too far gone to reel themselves back, and your attempts fall on deaf ears, announce quietly that you are leaving and that the discussion can be continued when things are not as volatile. And then just walk away.

Online Hispanic Media

Karissa Tomsen — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:38:15 +0000

Remember that if you run an SEM (pay-per-click) or online display advertising campaign in Spanish your landing page also needs to be in Spanish.

Read Up When Applying for a Job

Brian Wetjen — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:11:45 +0000

We’ve had some Insights posts that talk about getting jobs in the creative field. You should read them.

Job applicants should also read the job description for the position they are applying for.

So this tip is really for everyone out there who is applying for a job, based on what I’ve seen over the 10+ years I’ve been hiring people. I know this type of advice is all over the place, but if you’re really interested in even getting that interview, start with making sure you’ve paid attention from the very beginning.

Read the full job description for the position you are applying for
Match your personal qualifications with that within the job description
If you feel you are qualified or just really want the job, apply for it!
Explain any differences between the job description and yourself if necessary
Tell the prospective employer why you’d be a great match for the company
Tell the prospective employer why you’d be the perfect person for the job
Tailor your resume to the position you are applying for
Do some research on the company you are applying to and the type of work they do
Evaluate how your work compares with that the company does, and take that into consideration in your cover letter
Spell everything correctly
If you REALLY want the job, follow up via phone after a week to ask questions or find out whether you just aren’t going to get it – and then move on if you don’t get an interview

It’s a competitive job market out there. Make sure you put your best foot forward and really showcase yourself.

Tips for Marketing a Product or Service in an Avoidance Category

Robin Donovan — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:26:27 +0000

Don’t get so close to the avoidance product or service you’re marketing that you forget it’s not a subject welcomed with open arms. You may come up with a “kick ass” new promotion for adult diapers, but if you wave it openly in the face of your target audience – especially if it’s open enough to be observed by others close to them – you might find yourself permanently banned from their considered set. No one wants to come home to a flyer waving from their doorknob suggesting that their almost certain incontinence can be solved at a discount!

Try reaching out in a quiet and sympathetic way – and make sure it’s low key. Keeping their cover will get you rewarded. No sixteen year old girl wants a glaring ad for acne medication plastered to the back of her favorite fashion magazine so she’s uncomfortable carrying it around. But she will be needing those acne products. Don’t alienate your low hanging fruit!

One organization that needs to keep this in mind is the AARP. They bombard the poor, naïve 49 year old with mailer after mailer on dealing with old age. Don’t you know we’re NOT old at 49 – and we don’t want you waving your flag around us in an open and blatant way. It’s time to wake up guys – this problem isn’t going to get any better as the masses of forever young boomers get angrier at you by the day!

Tips for Getting Started in Social Media

Kim Mickelsen — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 04:11:46 +0000

Social media marketing has become a a fairly standard part of marketing programs today for lot of companies and of course everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. If you haven’t made the leap yet, here are some very basic tips to get started.

No Social-Media-for-Social-Media’s Sake

If your motive for adding social media is because everyone else is doing it, think long and hard before you leap. Social media endeavors should always be in service of clear business goals, not merely an abstract notion of user engagement. Only do it if you can commit the time to it and develop a social media plan that supports your business plan.

Start Slow

Just because there are 100s of options doesn’t mean you have use them all. Someday you may want to create a presence on more than one social media site, but you don’t have dive into all of them at once. It will quickly become overwhelming and too hard to maintain. Instead pick one site that you are most comfortable with or that is the most relevant to your company and/or products or customers, and create an account and a public profile.

Watch and Learn

Check out how others in your industry, including your competition, are doing and how they are participating on the social media platform you’ve chosen. Write down what seems to work and what does not, and what you like and don’t like. Watch how people interact. Is it a monologue or a dialogue? What’s the tone of the conversation?

Develop a Plan

It’s one thing to participate in social media but to do so without a plan can be frustrating and even damaging to your business. Think through your goals – what are you hoping to gain from your social media interactions? Then work backwards to create a plan that will accomplish your goals.

Monitor Your Brand

Part of an effective social media campaign is keeping track of what is being said about your company, who is saying it, and how others are reacting to it. Using a set of social media monitoring tools will help you stay on top of this and may even help you find new business opportunities.

Be Authentic and Human

Even though you are representing a business, don’t ignore the importance of the social element. Be yourself. Be authentic. Allow your interactions to retain the human side that will facilitate genuine connections. And don’t think you need to be all business, all the time. Giving a personal feel to your presence will make your business more approachable.

Engage and Be Responsive

Despite the far-reaching power of social media networks, these services are not bullhorns. Use them to engage in dialogue with potential and current customers, not merely to push information out to them. While social media can be a great place to share information, promote a service, and so on, it is even more important to listen and be responsive. Once you commit to a social media marketing effort, you need commit to responding to questions, complaints and other input from your customers.

Ask for Feedback

Instead of waiting for a customer to air a complaint, use social media as a way to engage and interact with your audience. Ask for feedback, reviews and insight to help you reach your target more effectively. And be sure to thank everyone who chimes in individually.

Be Consistent

Your profiles, comments, posts and conversations should stay true to your company’s overall mission and values. If more than one person is posting on behalf of your company, it’s vital to have a standard tone and guidelines for consistency. Once you expand your reach to more than one social media site, consistency is even more important.

Track, evaluate, and adapt

Many services offer analytics tools so you can monitor your traffic levels and engagement. Be sure to check these regularly to evaluate the ROI of a platform. And as the field of social media is ever changing, be prepared to adapt. For example, just because a service like Foursquare is popular now does not mean that you should be forever wedded to location-based marketing.

Be Kind. Don’t Flame.

Kim Mickelsen — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:19:41 +0000

Have you ever found yourself responding to an email in anger? I know sometimes I’m tempted to send off a little terse response. But with email it’s tough enough to communicate an approachable tone even on a good day, that a little terse-ness, even sarcasm, can make you sound like a total jerk. So think before you click send…save a draft, go get a cup of coffee, walk around, and imagine that tomorrow morning someone has taped your e-mail outside your door. Would your associates and friends be shocked by your language or attitude?

Or would they be impressed by how you kept your cool, how you ignored the bait when your correspondent stooped to personal attacks, and how you carefully explained your position (or admitted your error, or asked for a reconsideration, etc.).

Don’t pour gasoline on a fire without carefully weighing the consequences. It’s a small world you may have to work with the person again and again. Do you want a copy of your bitter screed to surface years from now, when you want a letter of recommendation or you’re up for promotion?

Do this instead:

Go ahead and write it — make it snarky, biting, and vicious
Then revise it — liven it up with traditional Lithuanian curses or translate it to Vulcan if that’s your preference
Then print it out, throw darts at it, and scribble on it with crayon, take the paper cutter to it
Do whatever it takes to make yourself feel better and get it out of your system. Just don’t hit “Send” while you’re still angry.

Be Polite

Karissa Tomsen — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:20:58 +0000

Always ask your guest (or associate) if they would like a glass of water or a cup of coffee before your meeting begins. Set the tone and make them comfortable.

You Get What You Pay For

Karissa Tomsen — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:54:50 +0000

I love a great bargin just as much as you do BUT often times in advertising there is a reason why it’s a bargain. Read the fine print, ask questions and most importantly go with your gut!

Act Like You Want It

Brian Wetjen — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:10:12 +0000

Attitude and perception are an amazing thing. If you want something, act like it. Think like it. Believe it. Your enthusiasm means a lot and shows you care.

Watch the people around you. I’d bet that the people with a positive outlook and enthusiastic approach are making more progress toward goals than the people whose bleak outlook prevents others from wanting to get on board.

Tips for Blog Contributors on Commercial Web Sites

Robin Donovan — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:51:31 +0000

If you’re in a rotation of last entered/first seen, don’t road block the other bloggers by posting multiple submissions one after another – give the other contributing bloggers a chance to be in the rotation
Be careful not to repeat what other bloggers on your site are saying
Read the other bloggers on your site and comment on their blogs – support the team
Read the other bloggers, and the comments on their posts, to find out which topics are of most interest to the site’s audience
Ask your host for tips to maximize your experience on their site and their experience having you as a contributor. Things such as providing links to the posts of other contributors when you reference their commentary or links to products that you mention might be useful

Robin is a contributing blogger and part of the blog circle at Vibrant Nation.

Stick to One Message in Your Email Blasts

Kim Mickelsen — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:47:54 +0000

Unless you are sending out an email newsletter, stick to one primary message in each email blast. Don’t try to pack ten pounds worth of stuff into a one pound bag. The more information you shove into an email, the higher the possibility the recipient will hit delete. Or worse; unsubscribe.

Keep it focused and to the point. Short sentences and short paragraphs make it easier for your readers and skimmers to absorb. And be sure and use the subject line as the key message grabber.

Readers expect email newsletters to have more content and cover several messages. But you should still keep your messages short and to the point.

Spruce Up Your Email Usage Habits

Brian Wetjen — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:03:33 +0000

Today’s post on Seth Godin’s blog had me agreeing very quickly. Everyone uses email, but a lot of people don’t quite know all the little nuances that can make your email usage appear more professional, if not make you look more email savvy.

Here’s my interpretation of a few items from Seth’s post and some of what I think are top tips for using email well:

Add your first and last name to your email settings so that your message doesn’t arrive “from” your email address. It should arrive from you, and you have a name.
Make sure when you reply to a message, the message is included below your reply. This helps people remember what the reply is referencing without having to go find the old message.
Always have a subject that helps identify the nature of the email
If you use “reply all” just make sure you really need to include everyone on what you’re saying.
Use the Vacation Message or Out of Office feature when you are not going to be checking or replying email for more than 12 hours or within a given workday.
Don’t reply just to add additional banter. Everyone can use one less email in their inbox.
Only use the “read receipt” feature on an individual message basis if you have to use it at all.
Don’t send people an email from one address and ask them to reply to another address. Change your “reply-to” settings if you have to manage things that way.
Don’t ask people to send you emails at two or more addresses. Change your account settings on one primary address to automatically forward a copy to the other address. You’re more in charge and it requires less of every single person who emails you.

Happy Emailing!

Job Hunting Tips for New Graduates

Robin Donovan — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:34:48 +0000

Send your cover letter and resume with clear direction as to which department you are interested in joining. When letters come in saying the writer wants a job “anywhere” in an ad agency it is clear that they don’t know the business well enough to know where they fit in. Do your research and know the departments and the department heads. Send your information primarily to the appropriate department head and secondarily to the HR person.

Do not write a cover letter telling the agency contact person why it would be great for your career to work in their company. Tell them why their company is a place in which you aspire to work.

Do not immediately invite the contact person at the agency to be LinkedIn to you. It’s too presumptuous. Reserve that invitation for after you’ve spoken to that person if you’re confident that a strong enough bond has been established.

Do not call the contact person at the agency and leave messages asking them to update you or tell you if they have received your information. They receive hundreds, even thousands, of resumes and will not look favorably on potential candidates who waste their time with requests that do not benefit them.

Do not inconvenience the agency contact person in any way. Make it easy for them to contact you, interview you and hire you.

Do not ask them to supply information – find it yourself!

Do call the agency contact person to introduce yourself and spend a minute (do NOT waste their time on the phone) to tell them a little about yourself and how you are passionate about becoming part of their company.

Do ask for an informational interview so that you can get in and meet with various people within the agency. It may help them to decide that you’re someone they should consider for the opening in question.

Do not show up early for your interview. Show up exactly on time. If you arrive 15 minutes early – stay outside and walk in right on time. When you arrive 20 minutes early the person you’re scheduled to see will get interrupted in what they’re trying to accomplish for the next 20 minutes as people keep telling them “someone is here to see you.” You will throw their schedule off and they will not appreciate it.

Business Cards Should be Used as a Marketing Opportunity

Jill Rizzo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:00:48 +0000

Make sure your card says something about you. There are a lot of boring business cards out there. Why? Probably because someone started a business, and “Get business cards” was one of the items on their “to-do” list. But don’t just slap it together – put some thought into it. Make it unique, creative, and indicative of the special qualities you bring to your business.

Five Non-Technical Tips for SEO

Scott Rowe — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:03:34 +0000

There are potentially hundreds of factors search engines use when indexing and ranking a website. This can quickly become overwhelming for both organizations and web professionals. When it really comes down to it however, content is and always will be king. With that in mind here are five important things to know about search engine optimization.

1) The total number of pages in your website
The amount of content you make available via your website is critical for SEO. It is important to have content that is relevant to your target audience and specifically the terms they will use to find information. The number of pages you will need to create depend on how tough your industry is and how strong you competitors are online.

2) The number of total indexed pages targeting a specific keyword
Luckily you can use a simple technique in Google to determine the number of pages any website has indexed for a specific keyword. Simply go to Google.com and type site:thewebsiteyouwant.com and the add the keyword you are looking for in quotes. For example (site:apple.com “iPod”). This will return the total number of pages apple has indexed under the iPod keyword.

3) The number of internal links, linking to related content within your website
Every page in your website will be indexed and ranked for one or more keywords. Each page in your site that is indexed under a certain keyword could bring value to other of like content by inter linking between them. Look for these opportunities and link only when there will also be value to the human user.

4) How many visitors your website receives from referral sites
This is commonly referred to as deep linking. For optimal search engine performance it is commonly accepted that you should have at least 10 inbound links to your top priority pages from websites outside of your own. This will help these pages in their rankings by proving the authority of the content that exists within them.

5) How frequently the content on your website updated
Most SEO professionals believe that it is very important to continually add new relevant content to your website. This will help to enhance the authority of your domain name. Add new pages whether the be blog posts, white papers or some other form of content will not only create more content to be indexed but also allow you to better target new industry keywords as they become priorities.

Testing Your Website for Mobile Devices

Scott Rowe — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:30:26 +0000

Have you ever wanted to know how well your website performs on mobile browsers? Luckily there are a few services that allow you to perform basic tests to determine load time and even a visual representation of how your website will look on certain devices. This can give you some key insights on whether or not you need to make structural modifications to your website if you are trying to appeal to a more mobile audience.

mobiReady.com

dotMobi Emulator

iPhone 3G Tester

Google Android SDK (Requires Installation)

Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK (Requires Installation)

Choose Dashes Over Underscores

Brian Wetjen — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:46:05 +0000

When naming files and links in your website, use dashes to separate words instead of underscores. Most search engines, like Google, will read dash-separated words as individual keywords where they look at underscore-separated ones as one unit.

Respect

Karissa Tomsen — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:28:49 +0000

Treat our clients with the respect we want them to show us.

Things to Consider When Designing Your Logo – Number Three in a Series

Jill Rizzo — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:59:26 +0000

Sensible and smart use of color will help strengthen your brand. Humans naturally associate universal meanings to specific colors. For example, red is often associated with strength and power, while blue is associated with serenity and peace. Choosing the wrong colors for your logo could cause potential clients to have misconceptions about your brand. Sometimes companies feel the need to use too many colors in their logo and their brand ends up visually confusing and ultimately, unattractive. Keep things simple and with intention.

Stay on Top of the Trends

Karissa Tomsen — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:21:22 +0000

Most traditional TV viewing continues to happen in the evening hours (M-SU 8-11pm) while “primetime” for online video viewing lasts from noon to 6pm, peaking at 4pm.

People watch network TV programs online to catch up with programming. This is not a replacement for TV viewing. Simply the addition of another screen. We are “adding to” not “taking away” mediums.

TV viewing is increasing, partly because of a better viewing environment that includes DVR’s, high definition programming and flat screen TV’s.

DVR’s are now in 35% of American homes (up 25% from last year)

Things to Consider When Designing Your Logo – Number Two in a Series

Jill Rizzo — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:39:18 +0000

Stay Focused on Your Values: Oftentimes companies and business owners try to create an image that communicates their ENTIRE business concept. This is asking an awful lot! Instead of focusing on the big picture, zero in on the values and ideas that your company stands for. As customers come to know your business and what it means while interacting with your brand, they’ll quickly learn to associate your logo with these principles.

Things to Consider When Designing Your Logo – Number One in a Series

Jill Rizzo — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:18:33 +0000

Know your target market: Even though you may be tempted to go for a logo design that is pleasing to you, it’s important to remember that your logo is for your customer and not you. Focus on your market segment, design for that demographic, and your brand will be successful.

Don’t Overlook the Basics

Kim Mickelsen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:50:37 +0000

Feeling data rich and insight poor? We’re inundated with data. It’s everywhere. We have performance data from our marketing efforts. We can slice and dice it every which way. Drill down into minuet detail. Yet, the sheer volume can sometimes be more confusing than helpful. Making it easy to overlook the obvious.

I was talking to a marketer today who was struggling to glean some insights from a mass of campaign data. He had an impressive amount of data on every imaginable part of the campaign, but he simply didn’t know what the data told him that was of value in moving to the next step of a comprehensive rollout plan. After a few minutes I asked him about the overall CPA (cost-per-acquisition) of the campaign versus that of various segments within the campaign. I could literally hear him slap his head and sigh. Because of all the rich data he had at his fingertips and could mine, he overlooked a basic metric that could provide a simple insight into ROI.

Make sure you look at the basics first, before you do the data deep dive. Looking at cost-per-acquisition is a great place to start. CPA, also referred to as cost-per-action or cost-per-sale, is a metric used to measure your spend rate per conversion and answer the question “How much do I have to spend to get a sale?”

CPA is a metric that matters because you need to know if the cost to get a new customer is within your margin or if you are investment spending. Plus it’s a quick and simple way to look at the effectiveness of a campaign and its parts. And it’s one of the easiest to measure. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) = Cost of campaign/Number of sales.

So let’s say you spend a total of $20k and you get 250 sales. Your overall CPA is 20,000/250 = $80. And if your margin per sale is $99, then you are making more than you are spending on the overall campaign. You can then dissect each part of the campaign in the same way to see the effective CPA of each piece. Below is an example of a CPA on a PPC campaign.

In this instance we see that the PPC campaign had a lower CPA than the campaign overall. You can look at each piece of your campaign to see how each stacks up and deep dive into the other metrics to see if there tactics you should cut or can optimize in some way.

If you start from this simple premise, you may save yourself from spending too much time looking at data that simply doesn’t matter.

Here’s a nifty little CPA calculator from ClickZ to calculate your CPA from your search campaigns (with cost-per-click [CPC] pricing) versus your display campaigns (often priced by cost-per-thousand [CPM]).

For more on turning data into intelligence, check out this article from our quarterly newsletter.

Republishing your Blog

Robin Donovan — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:43:27 +0000

So you’ve been publishing your blog in order to get some helpful information out there into the hands of those who might need it. Then a commercial web site decides that they like your voice and are interested in republishing your blog. That’s great. But beware of one critical thing. The tendency to want to increase your frequency of posting is understandable. You want to keep up with their other bloggers and add as much value as possible. Just be careful that you don’t lose your voice. The reason they’re republishing you in the first place. And make absolutely sure that your posts are relevant – don’t force it. Try ramping up slowly and don’t post anything that is not true to your original blog “brand”.

How to Handle Blog Hogs

Robin Donovan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:33:32 +0000

Your blog is finally becoming established and you’ve started to notice that one individual is making comments fairly regularly. Perhaps you’ve scored your first fan. But how engaged is this contributor if the main purpose of these frequent comments on your blog is really a thinly disguised opportunity to site that individual’s own blog. That contributor is what I refer to as a Blog Hog. They don’t really care about what you said – they want your readers to read what they’ve said.

So what do you do about a Blog Hog? Well if the blogs compete directly for commercial dollars that’s a battle in the making. But if they’re both informational blogs hoping to help folks in general – oh well. If you feel that it somehow compromises your content you can always contact the other blogger and ask them to back off. Or maybe you should just hawk your own blog in comments on theirs. Either way you should feel flattered that someone thinks your blog is the way to help them capture readers of their own.

Communication Beyond the Keyboard

Scott Rowe — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:39:47 +0000

With the advent of the Internet and social networking sites, we have all become more comfortable and complacent in communicating with clients and colleagues online. What we forget is that for thousands of years before the digital revolution, our primary form of communication has always been face-to-face conversation. It is important for us to step away from our keyboards from time to time and have a real conversation with someone.

META Keywords Are a Thing of the Past

Brian Wetjen — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:11:37 +0000

Don’t worry about filling out your page’s META keywords tag unless you’re running local search or a search appliance that takes advantage of them. The major search engines, like Google, ignore that tag these days. Focus on your content!

Sticky Footer Using CSS

Brian Wetjen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:50:26 +0000

If you’re having problems constructing a nice footer on your website using only CSS, you should check out this implementation. Very nicely done:

http://www.cssstickyfooter.com/

The Art of Negotiation

Karissa Tomsen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:48:26 +0000

Know what you want. Sit down and work out exactly what you want to achieve.
Find out what’s available. Do your homework.
Re-evaluate your goals: If you had seriously underestimated the price, you may need to re-think.
‘Arm’ yourself. Knowledge is power, so make sure you understand everything doing into the proposal or contract.
Remember who’s the customer
Admit what you don’t know. If you need something explained, ask.
Don’t let them ‘blind you with science’ or fancy bells and whistles. Any good salesman can use technical terms to gloss over drawbacks – or to sell ‘benefits’ you don’t really want or need. Make them repeat themselves in layman’s terms, then take a good look at what they’ve just said.
It’s a give and take process. Don’t be too inflexible.

If You’re a Small Business, Here’s 3 Things to Put on Your TO DO List

Kim Mickelsen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:21:26 +0000

It’s tough out there. The competition is fierce. So if you are a small business owner, you need to leverage everything you can to get a leg up. If you are not currently leveraging technology to get the word out about your business, it’s time to start. It doesn’t require a lot of money and doesn’t take a lot of effort to get stared if you take it one step at a time. Here are three steps to get you started.

1. Build your Online Network by Connecting to Everyone you Know
Friend old acquaintances and everyone you know on Facebook. Follow people on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn. Each of these networks provides a different way to communicate with your connections and you’ll find different acquaintances on each.

If you are overwhelmed by the idea of publishing to each of these, there are many social publishing tools that will allow you to easily create one update and publish to multiple accounts, which can save you a lot of time. One example is Ping.fm where you can update your social networking universe by simply sending one message to your Ping.fm account via an email, a text message, or a Web form.

So why is building your network so important for your business? We all know that it’s often about who you know. And who you know that knows someone you want to get to know. Think about Six Degrees of Separation. Which brings me to connection tools like MashedIn, which was launched in late January. It’s an application that allows you to identify mutual connections across multiple social networks. Here’s my MashedIn profile.

2. Monitor Online Mentions
Someone comes into your business, they love your product and send out a tweet. More and more, people are sharing their experiences online with their networks via posts, tweets and more. You need to know what’s being said. And the only way you know is to monitor. Plus, it’s good karma to thank people for nice comments and they’ll be impressed you’re listening.

You also need to know about negative comments so that you can respond. A positive, helpful and humble response will go a long way to turning a potential negative into a positive in the eyes of other readers. There are a lot of tools out there for monitoring. Some are free. And some are paid services. Just this week, Trackur launched a free version of its service, which is a good fit for small businesses. Trackur is a two year old tool, pretty well established and used by thousands of companies. It was previously only available as a paid option.

3. Ask for Recommendations
If you are like a lot of business owners, you may be hesitant to ask directly for recommendations. And to some degree the old “testimonial” format issued by the company meets with skepticism from consumers. But consumer generated reviews provide another opportunity. In a late 2008 study of 2,445 US online consumers (by NATRO), 82% considered user-generated reviews “extremely valuable or valuable”. Further, EConsultancy showed that 90% of people trust recommendations from people they know. So reviews and recommendations from places like Facebook Fan pages, LinkedIn or even Twitter are hugely valuable. And it’s a bit easier to ask your own network.

Go for it.

5 Tips for Creating and Using Passwords

Scott Rowe — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:30:49 +0000

Don’t use words that exist in the dictionary.
Don’t use simple number substitutes such as “0”s for “o”s or “1”s for “I”s.
Don’t user obvious words for people or places you may know.
Don’t use the same password for longer than two years.
Use different passwords for public and private online services. For example, don’t use the same password for social media services as you would use for online banking. Financial institutions are known for their heightened security practices. There is no way to know what processes and security a startup social media site may have implemented and if their servers are truly secure.

Don’t Over Design your Navigation

Scott Rowe — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:19:56 +0000

When designing website navigation it is important to remember user expectations and familiarity. Users are finicky and you only have a few seconds to keep their attention. If you are tempted to design something the user has never seen before, don’t. Imagine if every car designer moved the placement of the steering wheel and gauges for the sole sake of aesthetics.

Bookmark Sync with Google Chrome

Brian Wetjen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:22:43 +0000

Everyone knows I’m a huge fan of Google’s Chrome browser. I started using it as soon as it came out and it’s been my primary browser ever since. With the introduction of extensions, it has become even more useful.

One of my favorite new features is Bookmark Sync. Simply by using Google Chrome and having a Google Account, you can enable Bookmark Sync. Your bookmarks are then automatically synchronized between every computer you use Google Chrome on when you’re logged into your Google Account.

I’ve really enjoyed being at work, at home, or on my laptop and having access to every bookmark no matter where I’m at. There are many ways to do this with FireFox and other extensions, but Chrome has made it elegant and simple, with things I’m already using.

Don’t Forget the Print Style Sheet

Scott Rowe — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:14:35 +0000

When developing a website it is very common for people to forget about the print style sheet. A normal website should have two style sheets developed for it. One is designed to tell the web browser how to display content and structure. This includes things such as logos, headers, content, promotional modules, etc. What some people often forget is that while users will always display the website in a browser, they may also choose to print the page. If a print style sheet isn’t developed for this purpose, the quality of the printout may be lacking and the integrity of the website experience diminished.

http://www.onextrapixel.com/2009/05/05/how-to-create-a-simple-print-css-for-your-site/

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/css/print-stylesheet.shtml

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=PrintStylesheets

http://line25.com/tutorials/handy-tips-for-creating-a-print-css-stylesheet

http://www.cssnewbie.com/7-tips-print-style-sheets/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/01/10-tips-for-better-print-style-sheets/

Selecting a Content Management System

Scott Rowe — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:06:01 +0000

There are several basic things to consider when selecting a content management system for your organization’s website. Here are three key things to consider before making you decision.

Budget
Have you allocated a budget for the system? Depending on the scale of your needs and desired support, your organization may select a paid license CMS. If you do not have a specific budget allocated for your CMS you may want to consider a free open source option.

Platform
Does your organization have a current hosting platform you wish to run your new website on? Four of the most common platforms for development are Microsoft’s .NET, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP), ColdFusion and Java. There are many full-featured options available for each option.

Flexibility
Does the CMS you are considering provide you with the functionality you need today as well as what you need tomorrow. The beauty about most modern content management systems is that they are very flexible and extensible. You may not need all of the power it can provide, but you may want it in the future. It is best to select an option that can grow with you.

If you are just beginning your search here is a list of options to help get you started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

How to Apply RFM Segmentation to Your Email Database

Kim Mickelsen — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:17:41 +0000

RFM is a behavioral marketing segmentation technique that direct marketers have been using for years to identify their best customers in order send them special, tailored offers.

RFM stands for Recency (when the customer placed the last order), Frequency (how many orders the customer placed in a period of time) and Monetary (how much money the customer spent). It relies on the premise that someone who recently bought something, who shopped often and who spent a lot is more likely to respond to your next campaign than someone who bought something a long time ago, shopped infrequently and spent next to nothing.

Because RFM has been a direct-marketing staple for so many years, there are a great number of data-mining and statistical analysis tools that generate ready-made RFM-classification reports. However, if you don’t have access to or don’t use statistical analysis tools, fear not. Unlike other predictive-modeling techniques, RFM is based on past customer behavior and does not require heavy statistics-driven analysis or special tools, and you can actually create your own model fairly easily.

First you need to determine the parameters to use in your analysis. Email marketing allows you to measure customer interaction and engagement in many more ways than other direct marketing/mailing could ever do. Depending on your email database and marketing strategy, other metrics can be used in place of the traditional RFM parameters, giving you many different ways to perform an RFM analysis:

Once you’ve decided which metrics make the most sense for your business, you’ll need to tie your email database to the system that contains purchase or conversion history, such as your CRM or Web-analytics tool.

Now you are ready to perform RFM segmentation.

One way to perform RFM segmentation is to simply sort your list for recency, in order of highest to lowest. You then divide the list into five equal segments, giving the top 20% a recency score of 5, the next 20% a score of 4 and so on.

Each recency segment is then sorted and scored for frequency – from the most to least frequent, coding the top 20% as 5, and the less frequent quintiles as 4, 3, 2, and 1. This resuls in 25 recency plus frequency segments.

Each of these segments is then sorted for monetary and divided into five equal segments again with each segment being scored — the big spenders score a 5, and the others, 4, 3, 2, and 1. You now have 125 segments that have RFM scores ranging from 555 to 111. This is your RFM index.

Using the quintile system explained above, all customers end up with three digits in their database records. They are either 555, 554, 553, 552, 551, 545,…down to 111.

Of course, depending on the size of your database, you could divide it into deciles or other n-tiles, instead of quintiles. Or if you are very familiar with your database, you could simply use intuitive groupings, such as “purchased in last month, last three months, last six months or greater than six months,” as the basis for your RFM classifications.

As you can see, RFM is very adaptable, and with some experimentation, you will be able to obtain dramatic lift gains.

Winning Hearts with Your Brand

Jill Rizzo — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:54:20 +0000

You can compromise your brand and try to appeal to everyone, which only creates a cloudy brand promise and hides your story. Don’t be afraid to appeal to a specific audience. You will be noticed and win more hearts in the end.

Duration of an Online Campaign

Karissa Tomsen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:06:46 +0000

When you launch an online campaign, try and make sure that you can run it for at least one-month (at a minimum) in order to get maximum effectiveness. This is true with both SEM and display campaigns.

The beauty of online is that you can test different creative messages to different audiences and have results in real-time. But don’t make rash judgments as you view your analytics. It is beneficial to allow a campaign to run for at least 2-weeks before recommending any major optimizations. Sometimes a campaign just needs a little time to gain speed.

Use Google Reader to Keep Tabs on Competitor Web Sites

Kim Mickelsen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:41:09 +0000

Recently Google announced a new feature in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don’t have their own feed.

You can use this new feature to simplify your competitive intelligence gathering. Just identify the most important/central pages on your competitors’ sites and create feeds for them in Google Reader. Then every time your competition makes an update, adds content, links to a new site or page, rewrites something, updates a price, an image or offering etc, you’ll be pinged – and the change is tracked.

And because Google marks each update with the date/time they detected the change, you have the ability to track how often your competitor updates the pages. Of course, it’ll depend on how often Googlebot returns to the page which is a function of how “valuable” and frequently-updated the page is overall.

This feature has a lot of great implications for SEO, particularly for tracking link building efforts by your competitors, however this feature tracks changes to content, not the page code itself.

If you’re thinking “wait a minute, I don’t want my competitors to be able to track me”, there is a way you can “opt out” of this feature. You can block the creation of feeds for any page by doing the following:

Adding to the page head. Adding the noarchive meta tag will prevent Google from caching your page.
Or by using Robots.txt to block Googlebot (though this option means your page is removed from Google’s index)
Moving content into an iFrame (this renders the content invisible to Googlebot)

White Space is Your Friend

Jill Rizzo — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:18:09 +0000

A design that is to be appealing must also be easy on the eyes. Without the right amount of white space, text would be unreadable, graphics would lose their emphasis, and there would be no balance between the elements on a page.

Don’t fill the space just because it is there.

Beware of Online Creative Burnout

Karissa Tomsen — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:10:02 +0000

If you run an online display campaign for more than 2-months, you definitely want to consider rotating in fresh creative to prevent burnout. In this day and age, consumers demand fresh content and will side step your product if the message gets stale.

Use Behavioral Targeting to Hit Prospects with a Message They Care About

Karissa Tomsen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:49:04 +0000

Behavioral targeting gives you the ability to show ads online only to those people most likely to be interested in them based on learning and insights relative to their past behaviors. How does it work?

You have the ability to hit consumers with the right message, a message that they care about. For example, if a customer registers with an e-commerce site to make a purchase, those sales along with the user’s site navigation history are often stored and analyzed to make targeted offers the next time. Even without registration, the site might place that information in a cookie, which is saved on the customer’s hard disk. When the user revisits the site, the cookie is sent to the web server.

Simplify Your Landing Page to Improve Conversion

Kim Mickelsen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:15:49 +0000

Chances are that if you are advertising in order to drive clicks to your web site, you’re probably using landing pages as a campaign component.

A few companies see nice double digit conversion rates, but many companies see only about 3% to 5% of paid clicks convert, which is a lot of conversions left on the table. So if you are like most marketers, you’d like to improve your conversion rate in order to maximize your ROI. A good place to start is to take a hard look at your landing pages.

When users click on your ad, they are reacting to a simple ad message. Something in the ad caught their attention and they wanted to know more. Or maybe they were searching for something specific and your ad seemed like it might lead somewhere relevant.

Yet too often when they land on the page they’ve been directed to, they quickly leave. Part of the abandonment may be due to overload. Too many landing pages have been developed using the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach. And when we dump those ad respondents onto a landing page with a ton of copy, links, choices, or a long form, we break the rhythm and expect them to do all the work.

It may be really tempting to dump all sorts of tidbits of info on your landing pages to try to convince web visitors to fill out your web forms or make an order. But his approach to building landing pages often backfires.

Instead create an experience that keeps them in the “split second” flow that they are in when they click on the ad. Keep them moving forward by presenting them with simple, relevant choices and letting them flow through a conversion path to the point of actually converting.

Weed out all but the most essential points. Don’t waste your visitor’s time with tons and tons of unnecessary information to the task at hand. Determine what the most pertinent, relevant questions are and focus only on those.

A landing page need not be a single page. If your product or service is complex, you can provide more pages or links for those prospects who may want more information. Just keep each piece of info simple and to the point. Edit, edit, edit.

Simplify each part of the experience. Get rid of all the distractions.

When we simplify the page—including the message, the copy, and the choices—users will ultimately flow through at a much higher rate of conversion.

SEM is a Beautiful Thing

Karissa Tomsen — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:59:45 +0000

We all know people use search engines — a ton. Google is commonly used as a verb and “just Google it” has become the easiest way to find about anything. Search Engine Marketing (PPC) is beautiful because it is highly qualified traffic based upon users actively searching for YOU or your product/service category.

Active vs passive. This is the major difference between SEM and online display advertising. And, because you only pay if someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website, you don’t pay for waste.

Tips for Online Readability

Kim Mickelsen — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:53:04 +0000

A good interface design will grab the users’ attention, but users have to able to easily read the text in order to grasp the information they desire. That seems like such a basic premise, but it’s surprising how often I encounter sites where the content seems completely disregarded. Here are some basic 101 tips to provide users a good reading experience on your website.

Avoid too many font sizes

Font sizes are signals to a reader and like other means of visually differentiating elements, there needs to be a sufficient level of visual difference for text size to work. Make sure that your headings and subheadings stand out from the rest of the text. Doing so allows for easy scanning of articles.

Best practice is use no more than 3 different main font sizes to render your main content (i.e. main header, sub-header, body). This only applies to the main body content. Other screen elements may use alternative sizes (such as superscript/subscript, labels, ads, separate nav links, footer nav etc.)

Don’t use too many typefaces

Different fonts project their own personalities, which can be helpful for branding, but too many different typefaces is counter-productive. As a rule, don’t use more than 3 different typefaces throughout a single web page design.

Take care with serif vs. sans-serif fonts

Different types of fonts have different innate levels of readability.

Text block size

A screen full of text is likely to scare readers off. Come up with interesting ways to break up multiple paragraphs. Use graphs or images to help keep things lively.

Blocks of text should not be too long or too wide. When paragraphs get long, they’re harder to read because there’s less whitespace. Whitespace gives paragraphs shape, which acts like visual bearings, making it easier to find your place, and to find the start of the next line.

Using more, smaller paragraphs suits web content particularly, because it lets you subtly highlight more useful phrases, by putting them in their own paragraph, or starting a new paragraph.

Use emphasis judiciously

If you want to emphasize a particular word in a block of text, it’s best to leave the font color alone. When readers see a change in color they expect it to be a link.

Instead create emphasis through using bold, italics and underlines, but use them sparingly. Lots of bold text doesn’t draw attention, it competes for attention, creates extra noise and decreases readability.

Italics should not be used for large blocks of text, because it can have a similar effect to serif fonts at small resolutions, reducing readability.

Underlining text can serve to emphasize certain words or short phrases, but be careful that underlining is not mistakable for hyperlinks (perhaps by having hyperlinks in blue without underlines in normal state, exhibiting the underline on hover).

To draw attention to a whole line or paragraph, consider using a colored background or other style element which is less detrimental to readability.

Stick with left-aligned text

Left-aligned text is easier to read than right-aligned text. Full justification (where words are stretched so that they meet both the left and right margin) is only effective with pretty long lines of text. And because on-screen text is easier to read in narrower columns, it makes it hard to justify full justification.

Provide contrast in text

It’s very important to have sufficient contrast between text and its background.

Don’t overuse capitalization

Capital letters are useful because they announce the start of a piece of text (sentence) or an important piece of information such as a name. But they lose their effectiveness when over-used. DON’T USE ALL CAPS FOR BODY TEXT, BECAUSE IT DECREASES THE CONTRAST BETWEEN LETTERS WHEN THEY ALL TAKE UP THE SAME SIZED BOX.

Know Your Online Advertising Share of Voice

Karissa Tomsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:38:27 +0000

When running an online campaign always know what your SOV (share of voice) is.SOV is the percentage of advertising for one brand in a particular product category as compared to other brands in the same category.

For example, if five different brand names advertise in one product category and the percentage of advertising for one of them is 60% of the total volume of advertising in that product category, that brand will have the greatest share of voice (in that product category).

Assessing Your Personal Brand

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:11:31 +0000

In the past few years there has been a great deal of talk about personal branding. The difference between now and when Tom Peters first broached this topic, is the rise of social technologies that have made branding not only more personal, but within reach.

Personal branding, by definition, is the process by which we market ourselves to others. As a brand, we can leverage the same strategies that make celebrities or corporate brands appeal to others. We can build brand equity in our personal brand the same way.

Your personal brand is about making this equation equal: Your self-impression = How people perceive you.

A quick way to get a feel for your equation scale, is to Google your name to view your digital footprint as others would see it. Here are a couple tools you can use to do some quick research.

Onlin e ID Calculator

The Online ID Calculator has a little assessment that will give you a basic understanding of your current online ID. If you use it before and after a major online personal-branding campaign, you can see how the campaign affected your score.

Addictomatic

This is a useful tool that provides a comprehensive snapshot of how your brand shows up across many online search engines, including video search engines. Type your name in quotes (e.g., “Kim Mickelsen”) and see a custom page created just for you, with input from Google, Twitter, Bing, FriendFeed, Twingly, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Delicious, Bloglines, Truveo, Wikio, Yahoo, Technorati, etc. You can also use Addictomatic to get a picture of what’s happening on the Web in your area of expertise.

Translating PR Results Into the Language of Business

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:19:42 +0000

If you doubt the importance of measurement and metrics, consider the results of a recent Gallup Poll, which showed that executives spend 24% of their time on “plan measurement and monitoring,” second only to “strategic thinking/planning.”

Here are some surefire ways to help you measure the right activities and then translate your results—so that everyone gets the message.

Be proactive
Don’t wait to be asked, take control of the measurement process.

Speak the language of business
Measurement starts with the company’s overall business objectives and determination of key performance indicators (KPIs), which in turn should be used to define PR metrics.

Use several angles
Measuring just one form of PR activity, such as print-media mentions, doesn’t offer a comprehensive view of your PR strategy. Use multifaceted metrics so you can start to identify trends in coverage, sentiment, and favorability. Armed with such analysis, you can begin to anticipate the outcome and consequences of your organization’s next move.

Offer strategic advice
With metrics in hand, your mission becomes identifying the opportunities and risks facing the company. You need to understand the key business issues and any “cause and effect” relationships that may result from your communications strategy.

Opinions + observation + viewpoints = perception
PR is all about managing perception. Perception defines the environment in which the company operates and is often a leading indicator of the company’s performance.

Measure the quality of media relationships
Behind the scenes, your team works hard to educate the media about your organization and the issues it’s concerned with. That constant effort not only ensures good coverage but also prevents you from being linked to unfavorable issues that have little to do with your company. So in addition to providing a balanced view of your coverage, consider developing a way to measure the process of educating the media.

Assess the competition
Competitive benchmarking can be done for almost any type of measurement, but it should be based on your company’s objectives. surveys and media analysis can be structured to assess your organization’s results against those of your competitors.

Build and measure strategic relationships
Since PR is primarily concerned with managing perception and building strategic relationships, this should be one of the key metrics that you report to senior leadership. Relationships can be effectively measured through surveys or focus groups.

Presentation is important
Recognize that the presentation of your measurement report is important. You must understand your audience and the type of metrics it needs.

Don’t Overlook the Benefit of Negative Keywords

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:32:59 +0000

Negative keywords is a tool you can’t afford to ignore in your Google AdWords campaign. Negative keywords cause an ad to not be shown if any of the keywords are in the search phrase.

This is important for a few reasons. First, because the ad will not be shown for keyword phrases that are not relevant, there will be fewer click throughs that do not convert to sales. Second, the overall CTR (click through rate) will be higher because there will be fewer instances of searchers viewing the ad but not clicking. The higher CTR will cause the ad to attain a higher position without requiring a higher CPC (cost per click).

Out of the 4 keyword matching options, broad matching can be used in conjunction with a few negative keywords in most cases for the desired effect. Thinking about what keywords need to be avoided requires a bit of thought and creativity. You can start with no negative keywords and later on add them looking at the “Search Query Report” of the campaign.

Writing Better Email Subject Lines

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:27:15 +0000

One of the most important parts of email marketing is writing effective subject lines. You only have about 50 characters to work with if you want to make sure most of your message displays in the subject line of the recipient’s email client. Here are some tips for developing more compelling subject lines.

Use Motivating Verbs
You should start with the most important words that will make the reader act. Some verbs you may want to try out include: focus, boost, improve, discover and launch.

Answer What’s In It For Me
Put yourself in the recipient’s position and write a subject that focuses on the benefits…what would make you take time to open a message right now?

Change It Up
If you’re sending a monthly newsletter or other series of related messages, it can be tempting to stick with the same subject for every mailing. But you may get better open rates if you change the subject for each issue.

Avoid the Spam Triggers
Every ISP has spam filters in place to catch unwanted messages before they reach your inbox. There are some words that tend to get caught in various spam filters, so avoid these words in your subject line to bypass the trap:

Sale
Free
50% Off
Click Here
Call Now
Act Now
Order Now
Guaranteed
Subscribe
Opportunity

Don’t use ALL CAPS or excessive punctuation in your subject line.

Test and Test
Test your campaigns by changing up your subject format for every mailing (and even try split-testing each mailing by segmenting your list), and checking your stats to see how the subjects perform. Then tweak and modify until you find a formula that works for your audience.

Skip the Personalization
It may seem that including the recipient’s first name in the subject line will add a personal factor that simply can’t be ignored, but the opposite may be true. In fact, adding this type of personalization may only scream “mass mailing.”

Don’t Rely on SITE: Command

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:04:26 +0000

How many pages has Google indexed? That basic question and the problems surrounding it run rampant through the SEO world.

If you’ve ever used the SITE: command function on Google you may have noticed some big variances when you run the queries. More and more people are complaining about just how inaccurate SITE: command actually is. People report either sudden drop in the number of results returned for site:domain.com command (with no change reported in Google Webmaster Tools) or inconsistent data (again, compared to verified Webmaster Tools account data).

Here are a few tools that will help you to check SITE: results for any of your sites to compare to regular Google:

WebRankInfo Data Centers Tool (17 Google data centers at once);
SEOchat “Multiple Datacenters Search” (12 data centers at once, 3 ranges of data centers are available);
LinksAndTraffic Datacenters Search (10 Google data centers at once);
IWebTool Google Data Center Search (10 Google data centers at once, 4 ranges of data centers are available).

Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz wrote a great post: “Fortunately, there’s an easy way to get much, much better data than what the search engines provide through “site:” queries and this post is here to walk you through that process step-by-step.”

Twitter Validation Service

Kim Mickelsen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:13:52 +0000

If you really like Twitter but get tired of the spam. Check out TrueTwit validation service. It validates each user that follows you by sending an email for verification with a captcha.

TrueTwit is designed to help you:
• Verify people from robots
• Avoid Twitter spam
• Save time managing your followers