Author: Stacey Schall

Stacey is the head of inbound marketing at Schall Creative. She has a passion for communicating and believes that her left brain and right brain can work together in harmony. You can find her on Twitter @staceyschall.

What are GIFs? A Medium of Communication

Social Media • Posted on October 14, 2015

GIFs (which stands for Graphics Interchange Format) have become a major way to communicate. Twitter announced in June of 2014 that GIFs are now supported by their social network. What are GIFs? Although they are just now starting to pick up steam, GIFs have been used on the internet for years.

Tumblr, a microblogging site popular with teens and young adults, rules the social media arena in GIF usage. Other sites like Facebook and Twitter have been playing catch-up to Tumblr, but since employing the usage of GIFs, have seen quite the success. But why are they popular all of a sudden?

People see GIFs as an easy way to respond. Twitter has a 140 character limit. Why finagle your response when it can be said in one image? The saying goes that pictures speak 1,000 words. GIFs speak volumes because they’re that line between still images and videos.

GIFs aren’t just used by teens and young adults. Major brands are joining them.

Starbucks

🍁 🍂 🍁🍂………………..🏃 #FallisComing #PSL pic.twitter.com/27DDokr68o

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) September 19, 2015

NASA

Look up! Check out our @Tumblr post to find out what can you see in the sky this month: http://t.co/tUbDyMvLAG pic.twitter.com/m0o9quEnVN

— NASA (@NASA) October 2, 2015

Pixar

All walks of life welcome. #WalkToSchoolDay pic.twitter.com/70LnkOCfLt

— Disney•Pixar (@DisneyPixar) October 7, 2015

GIFs have evolved into more than just flames or waving flags. They’ve become a complete art form. Even the NY Times have written about its sudden prevalence in social media by a growing number of brands, not just consumers.

Use GIFs to show off a new product, or use it to promote science, or film, or art. But be careful about your usage. Don’t just use GIFs to use them. Make sure they’re relevant to what you’re posting. Like this elephant waving goodbye. See you next time!

5 Social Media Hacks to Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder

Social Media • Posted on October 9, 2015

Being on social media is all about working smarter, not harder. I’ve written about different tools for analytics, hashtags, and posting tools. Let’s look at 5 social media hacks to make your job even easier.

1. IFTTT

If This Then That is an app based on recipes to make your life easier. These recipes are connections between apps. For example, I use a recipe that will check the weather app each morning and tell me to bring a jacket. Talk about having a great personal assistant right in your pocket!

There are two kinds of recipes, IF and DO. IF recipes will connect apps like: IF I posted an image to Instagram, THEN save the images to Dropbox. See? IF _________, THEN ________. DO recipes are even cooler.

Have HUE lights that you want to turn down? There’s a DO recipe for that. These recipes are more direct. With the touch of a button, it’ll do what the recipe says and dim your lights from your phone.

They have plenty of social media related recipes to make your life easier, so don’t just use IFTTT for changing your lights from the couch. Explore and create your own recipes!

2. Grammarly

If you write blogs or any kind of online content in a browser, you don’t usually have access to a grammar check. Most browsers these days will check for spelling errors, but grammar isn’t part of that package. Grammarly has your back.

Grammarly is a free browser extension for Chrome and Safari will check for 150 different types of errors. If Grammarly finds errors in your writing, it will flag them and make suggestions for grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

3. Canva.com

Ever want to create a beautiful graphic, but you’re not a graphic designer, or don’t have one in your organization? Never fear, here’s a way to get you started with the basics!

Canva is easy to learn, and provides you with templates for whatever type of graphic you’ll need to make. Need a new Facebook cover photo? Don’t worry, Canva has a template that even includes where your profile picture is.

There are plenty of free elements to Canva, including fonts, backgrounds, images, and templates. And there are some paid pieces too – but they are $1. You don’t even have to use the paid items unless you really want to. Its easy to find the free objects, or import your own for your nonprofit or small business.

4. TED Talks

Ever need inspiration? Or maybe you want a video on a specific topic? TED Talks are the best source for great videos about a wide variety of subjects. They make great pieces to share and engage with your audience.

My favorite is “The danger of a single story,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Some of the videos are long, but often times, they’re worth the watch. And there’s a few quick stories that are excellent conversation starters.

5. Personality

Social media is all about relationships and interaction with people. Don’t focus on promoting your product, or your company all the time. Its okay to use social media to express your company’s culture and personality. You’ll have a more genuine image.

Share that beautiful sunset photo from last night, or the office pet napping under your desk. People want to know that your organization is run by humans, not robots.

Life hacks are here to make your life easier. And these are some easy ways to help with your productivity and inspiration. Sit back and get hacking.

You Need a Social Media Content Calendar. Here’s Why.

Social Media • Posted on October 8, 2015

Remember those analytics tools I wrote about? Hopefully you have some statistics from your social media networks that have pointed at some posts that have performed well. Based on those numbers, now is a great time to create a social media content calendar if you haven’t already.

Not sure you need a social media content calendar? Here’s a few reasons as to why they are the most useful tool to your social media strategy.

1. You’ll know what needs to be posted

You don’t need to post every day of the week, but say there are days you want to post but don’t always have the time? Social media is about working smarter, not harder.

It’s Monday morning, and you need to post on your social media accounts for your organization. But what do you post? If you have a calendar, all you need to do is check out what’s on the schedule and get to posting.

If you have an upcoming event, this gives you an easy way to have reminder tweets scheduled in the days or weeks leading up to the event. And then the thank you posts scheduled for after everything is finished.

2. Going on vacation?

If you’re stepping out of the office for a few days (and don’t want to post on the road) your coworker can pick up the slack. By having a social media calendar, this gives your colleague a guideline to your social media. They can check the calendar you’ve set up and easily make their own post.

3. Hashtag Days

Every day of the week there’s a hashtag or two that people post to. Mondays are #musicmonday or #motivationmonday. Thursdays are #tbt or #throwbackthursday.

Daily hashtags are a great way to help structure your calendar if you post a lot on Instagram or Twitter.

Pick two or three hashtags for the week, and use those as a base structure. Maybe every week you’ll post to: music Monday (#musicmonday), women crush Wednesday (#wcw), and Caturday (#caturday). On these days you can easily do a photo to Instagram. And then on the off days, you can share articles, or have a blog post scheduled.

4. Advanced Scheduling

Don’t want to worry about some of your social media posts for a while? Content calendars make it easy to schedule content well in advance. After that, its just a matter of checking on the analytics to tweak posts based on those numbers.

Social media calendars make it easy to manage the variety of content you could post for your organization. Maybe women crush Wednesday outperforms music Monday by a landslide. Then you could adjust your calendar to highlight people instead of music.

Managing social media for a small business or nonprofit isn’t as scary as it might seem. These tips will take a huge burden off your shoulders. We’ve got your back.

HubSpot has a social media content calendar template available as a free download. Check it out here.

Tips for Choosing the Perfect Hashtag

Social Media • Posted on October 2, 2015

Twitter and Instagram thrive on hashtags. They make searching for specific content easy, whether its a tweet, image, blog, video, or to make commentary on a specific event. But how do you go about choosing the perfect hashtag? Here are some tools and tips to make it easy.

As you create your hashtag, here’s three great tips to keep in mind:

Keep it short – you want people to remember what it is.

Check if its in use – make sure there isn’t any offensive content tied to it!

Be unique – easy to tie back to your nonprofit or small business.

During the summer, I would live tweet games during the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and used #FIFAWWC, which was created by FIFA. This was an easy hashtag to remember, and keep up with the conversation.

But how do you know you’re picking the right one?

Here’s some free tools you can use to research hashtags so you can optimize your engagement.

1) Tagboard

This website tracks hashtags from the Big 3 social media platforms. Type in a hashtag and you’ll get Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram images. On the right hand side, you’ll see a few graphs. One is a line graph on how many posts a hashtag receives by the minute or hour (depends on how active it is). It will also give users an easy to read pie chart about what the content is like: Is it positive, neutral or negative?

2) Rite Tag

Are you a more visual person who likes a lot of color? Rite Tag analyzes hashtags for your accounts and divides the hashtags into four colors:

Green – Hot now
Blue – Long life
Red – Overused
Grey – Underused

The different colors are a great guidance between all of the posts to determine what will expand your reach.

Rite Tag connects to Buffer, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Facebook, and Twitter.

Do you struggle with finding related hashtags or determining which hashtag is more popular? The Coach bar located at the bottom of the page will analyze multiple hashtags together and break down the numbers for you. For each unique hashtag, you’ll get the number of unique tweets or retweets per hour, the number of views per hour, and the number of tweets with images, videos, links, or mentions. You’ll get a whole page of stats, or all related hashtags via a colorful spiderweb.

3) Iconosquare Tag Cloud

I’ve mentioned this enough times for Instagram, that you’ve probably figured out this little site has a lot of useful features.

In the optimization section, you can view a Tag Cloud. This is a collection of your most used hashtags for Instagram, compared to the app’s Top 100 most popular. Use more of the hashtags in the Top 100 cloud when they’re relevant to your Instagram in order to expand your reach.

Hashtags can be confusing. But they’re one of the most useful search tools on social media that increase visibility and engagement. Grab a piece of blank paper and start brainstorming.

Social Media Analytics: Tools to Get You Started

Social Media • Posted on September 25, 2015

Social media success lies in doing more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. So, how do you know what’s hit or miss?

Take a look at your social media analytics. These numbers are more than just likes or retweets. They’re the quantitative facts to help direct your social media content.

Once again, let’s assume you’re using the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

1) Facebook Pages Insights

This nifty feature is the most useful for anyone promoting their nonprofit or small business via a Facebook Page. The overview will give you some quick facts: Page Likes, Post Reach, Engagement, and then some stats on your five most recent posts.

Explore beyond just the Overview section under the Insights tab. You’ll find a lot of helpful numbers.

Out of any sections under the Insights tab, the three most useful are Reach, Posts, and People. Reach gives you a graph about post shares, likes, and comments, along with your organic post performance. In the Posts section, you’ll find a useful graph that tells you when your consumers are most active online by day and time, and what posts have the most engagement. And when you click on People, this is all of your demographic information.

It’s a good idea to take a look at the Posts section on a regular basis, and take note of which posts people are engaging with. Since it lets you know how many clicks something gets, you can understand your audience’s behavior even if they don’t hit the like button. You’ll notice that a post with lots of clicks has a reach that is higher. Take note of the posts that get more clicks and have a higher reach, and think about why it got those numbers. It could be the type of content, the subject matter or even the time of day it was posted. Then think about how you can do more successful posts, and less of the posts that get nothing.

2) Twitter Analytics

Ever want some numbers to go alongside your retweet notifications? Twitter Analytics has all of the information you could ever want. Updated daily, you can always check with how you’re doing at the top of the Analytics page by skimming the line graphs at the top.

With a month to month analysis, Twitter Analytics pulls up Tweet Highlights and a summary. You’ll be able to see your Top Tweet, Top Mention, and Top Media Tweet (which had a photo, video, or gif). The monthly summary will be your Tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions and new or lost followers.

3) Iconosquare

I mentioned this tool last time, but its so useful, I had to bring it up again. Iconosquare analyzes your Instagram account engagement. Look under the Engagement and Optimization sections to make the most of your stats.

Engagement is an overview of your most liked posts, where your likes come from, and the posts that receive the most comments.

In Optimization, you’ll find a graph on your posting habits, which filters have the best impact on your likes or comments, and a hashtag cloud.

We’ll talk about engaging hashtags in the future, so stay tuned!

Numbers are only as scary as you make them to be, even just starting out. Its okay to be nervous. Make some tea. We’ve got your back.

How Do You Measure the Success of a Website?

Web Strategy • Posted on September 24, 2015

What does it mean to have a successful website? In the past, having a website that worked and looked good may have been all a company was really looking for. But in 2015 a website can and should do much more. A company needs to set standards for what their website strategy will do and how it will affect their business.

The success of a website depends on your measurement for that success. This means you need to set some goals. These goals should be Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. You need to set some SMART Goals.

Of course, you can set some more specific goals for things like organic traffic, social media reach, or average visit duration, but the three main metrics you want to look at when setting SMART Goals are traffic, leads and sales.

Start by looking at your current position. What’s your website’s current traffic? How many inbound leads are you getting right now? How many sales are you closing from inbound leads?

HubSpot has a great tool where you can set your SMART goals right on your dashboard. When you input your numbers, it compares your goals to the median and top 25% of HubSpot users.

Here are a few more helpful statistics you may want to take a look at to help you in this process. Of course these stats were gathered from a wide range of businesses and industries, so be sure to take that into account.

• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal)
• Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric)
• Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Gleanster Research)

If you haven’t been collecting data up until this point, you’ll need to make sure your goals make sense when compared to how you currently bring in business. Once you have a few months of analytics, you can make some changes to your goals.

Your SMART Goals can and will change over time, but it’s important to always have them and to keep improving. Successful inbound marketing takes a lot of work, and it does take time. Having and hitting your SMART goals will help keep you motivated.

3 Social Media Tools to Help Get You Started

Social Media • Posted on September 18, 2015

Social media is all about participating in the conversation. Initially, managing social media will be time consuming. But if you put in the hard work early – get organized and plan ahead – managing the wide variety of accounts will be a cup of tea.

Ultimately the social media tools you use will depend on the sites you’re using. However, let’s assume you’re using the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Each has a range of demographics, and can help you target a different audience.

Here’s some social media tools to help you manage each like a pro:

1) Buffer

With the smallest learning curve, Buffer is a robust post scheduler for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Linked In. If you’re trying to promote your nonprofit or small business through a Facebook Page and Twitter, its easy to hook them both up and get to adding articles, images, or posts to your queue. Set the number of posts or tweets you want to publish per day, and Buffer will handle the rest. The browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, make filling your queue easy with a click.

We’ll talk about analytic tools in a later post, so for now let’s just focus on management.

2) Tweetdeck

This tool is ideal for those that want to manage Twitter, but aren’t quite sure where to start. Tweetdeck uses a column system that is easy to customize and view all the information you could ever want, all in one window. After your home column, a simple set up is a column for notifications, scheduled posts, follower lists, and trends. Try out what layout works best for you!

Tweetdeck doesn’t have a limit to scheduled posts, so feel free to schedule some tweets well in advance. I once had a whole semester’s worth of posts queued! That was a huge relief off my plate.

3) Iconosquare

Ever want to know which filter you use that gets the most likes? What about most popular tags in your posts? This tool is ideal for managing Instagram.

Iconosquare analyzes your Instagram account’s content, engagement, community and optimization to provide important facts to guide your posts. Find out which filter or hashtag impacts your engagement the most in the optimization section. Respond to comments, or like posts from your followers.

To a nonprofit or a small business, the social media pool seems daunting to dive into. Its okay. Take a deep breath. We’ve got your back.

Blogs We Read for Content Marketing Inspiration

Blog Writing • Posted on September 15, 2015

Sometimes there is nothing more intimidating than a blank piece of paper. When you know you need to have a blog written and you don’t come to the computer with the topic in mind, you can risk wasting a lot of time looking for inspiration in the wrong places. Whenever I start writing for a client, I start by researching and looking for blogs to bookmark for inspiration. I’m not out to copy what’s already out there. But by taking a look at what’s working, I can try a different spin or angle and add to the conversation in a positive way.

Keeping up with industry specific blogs also just keeps you up to date on what’s out there. It’s easier to spot a trend if you keep your eye out, and reading more often simply makes you a better writer.

Here are some blogs I bookmark for content marketing inspiration.

HubSpot
There is always something new on the HubSpot blogs. They have a large number of qualified people writing on everything inbound. The type of content ranges from infographics to longer, research based posts.

Our favorite recent post: Compounding Posts Generate 38% of Your Blog’s Traffic: Here’s What HubSpot’s Look Like

Moz
Moz most definitely leans toward the longer, more in depth posts. When I read a headline I’m really interested in I tend to set some time aside and read through it thoroughly. Another great place for inspiration is their comment section. A lot of really smart marketers and SEOs put in their 2 cents in the comment section and it can really spark something worth writing about.

Our favorite recent post: How to Get Content into the Hands of Influencers Who Can Help Amplify It

Contently – The Content Strategist

The Content Strategist has a lot of examples of how brands are achieving success with content marketing. They have some great statistics and figures of how it’s done, and every piece is extremely engaging.

Our favorite recent post: How The New York Times Gets 70% Email Open Rates

Creator by WeWork
WeWork publishes content for business owners and freelancers as well as employees working in creative industries. I especially like scrolling through their newsletter and finding an article that looks interesting. Their website itself has a great layout and an awesome animation that shows you how far into an article you are.

Our favorite recent post: 6 Lessons from Football — Even If You Can’t Stand Sports Analogies

Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur has tons of writers and publishes a lot of content at a wide range. The articles are short and they have a nice feature that tells you how long an article is in minutes before you click on it. This is often where I’ll go for the quickest inspiration. And if I don’t find something that sparks a blog topic, I always find something great for sharing on social media.

Our favorite recent post: How to Save at Least 2 Hours Per Week on Social-Media Marketing

Title Capitalization Rules for the Busy Blogger

Blog Writing • Posted on September 1, 2015

It’s no secret that titles are important. They are the first impression a reader has of our content. It’s important for a title to be descriptive and to garner attention, and that takes work. You don’t want all your hard work to go to waste because of title capitalization errors.

Let’s be honest, which words are capitalized in a title shouldn’t really matter if the content is great. But people on the web love to pick out spelling and grammar mistakes.

The excitement you get from writing and publishing some great content can go to zero very quick when a blog commenter points out that you forgot to capitalize the last word in your title.

To avoid worrying about this, there are a bunch of really simple title capitalization tools out there.

Capitalize My Title is one that will automatically capitalize your title for you. You can even choose a few different style variations of which it spells out the rules.

Most websites I’ve seen use the AP style of title capitalization. Here’s the rules.

Capitalize the first word of the title, the last word of the title, and all “principal” words (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions) and all words longer than three letters. Lowercase articles coordinating conjunctions and prepositions, and lowercase the word “to” in an infinitive (to do, to make etc.)

The Chicago Manual of Style has similar rules, except it does not have you capitalize words based on length.

Wow guys, that’s a lot to remember.

Of course you can choose to not follow the rules and do whatever you want.

You Can Capitalize Every Word In A Title

You can write your title just like you would write a sentence, period and all.

Just be aware that to people who read a lot of content online, that different style could be distracting, especially if it’s not consistent throughout all of your content.

If you decide to follow the rules, make it easy and bookmark this page so you don’t make yourself go crazy.

The Dangers of Small Business Blogging

Blog Writing • Posted on August 20, 2015

According to HubSpot, companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.

While this data is true and valuable, it doesn’t speak to the quality of blog posts and how that affects inbound marketing.

Writing is hard. Grammar and punctuation aside, it takes a lot of work to create something from nothing. And it takes even more work to create something that other people find valuable.

Small business blogging has changed that a little bit. Now, we have data that can give writers a bit of how-to when they are writing for a brand. Keep your headline under so many characters, split up your paragraphs, use lists etc.

These are great statistics for a marketer to spout off to prove how great they are at marketing, but creating content needs to be more than that.

Now, it’s not SO much more that it becomes this mountain of a task, only attainable by the big brands and their highly paid professionals.

What are the dangers of small business blogging?

1. You basically become a robot, pumping out content every single day that follows all the rules but has no personality whatsoever.
2. You try really hard to follow what Rand Fishkin calls the “10X” rule, end up crying in the corner and never hitting “publish.”

Small business blogging can work somewhere in the middle. You can’t be afraid to put out content because you don’t think it’s good enough. Just like in business, you can’t be afraid to fail.

That being said, you shouldn’t be publishing 10 posts per month that get hardly any views, either. Even if your content is bringing in traffic, if it’s not bringing in leads or business you need to rethink your strategy. Publishing lots of the same kind of content isn’t doing anyone any favors.

So what should you do? When I blog for my business, I try my best to focus on improving. Every time I write, I am trying to improve my process as well as my end product. I also focus on improving the content that is already on my site. If I have a post that has been there for a while, gets a good amount of views but no one is converting, I’ll go back in and try to make it better.

Set Attainable Goals

Knowing that the odds of your blog post going viral are slim, it’s important to set attainable goals. Take a look at your traffic and leads today and aim to increase those numbers. If you can’t see the impact of your blog on your website and your business, it’s harder to keep it going on a regular basis.

Above all, you need to have patience. Creating content that people love takes a lot of time and energy. I’m trying not to get all philosophical here, but it’s really hard not to. Just take solace in the fact that no one really knows the perfect formula for creating great content. Keep learning, keep practicing, and always hit publish.

Why target= “_blank” is your friend. External links should open in a new tab!

Web Strategy • Posted on August 7, 2015

Attention online publishers! If you are linking to a source within your content you need to make sure said source opens in a new tab. No excuses. Here’s why:

Think about the experience of a reader. They are really into reading your article when you reference a video you watched that has another example of what you’re writing about. Now, they’re really into this topic, so of course they want to watch that same video that helped inspire you to write about it. So they click, and they watch the video. Three minutes later, the video is over and they’re satisfied. They close the tab and think about getting back to your original article. But the article is gone. Now, if they want to get it back they can go into their history and look for “recently closed tabs.” But this adds another step to the process, and they are a tiny bit frustrated that you didn’t make sure that link opened in a new tab. So they go back to twitter and carry on with their procrastination.

Unless the main goal of your article was to get people to view the video you linked to, you’ve failed.

If you made sure the link opened in a new tab, the user would have watched the video, hit ctrl-W to close the tab, and finished your article. At the bottom of your article a place for them to convert into a subscriber, and they do. If this is your goal, then you’ve succeeded. You did a great job paying attention to the details.

If you are adding a link through the code view of your website, you need to add target=“_blank” to your code. After your link, and before the tag closes. If will look something like this:

<a href=”thisisalinkyouwanttoreference.com” target=”blank”>This is your link text.</a>

If you’re adding a link in WordPress, they have a handy dandy check box that says, “Open link in a new window/tab.” Just check that off and you’re all set.

I tend to have a link open in a new tab about 85% of the time. If it’s a link that is the next step of the journey I want to take them on, like a call to action, then I’ll have it open in the same tab. If the link is inside your content (like a word in a paragraph) it should ALWAYS open in a new tab. If it’s a button or a graphic that you want them to click on once they are ready, and they will have no reason of returning, then you can just have it replace that page.

It’s all about paying attention to how the user will consume your content, and making sure all the details work towards your goal.

6 Tips for an effective Call to Action (CTA)

Inbound Marketing • Posted on July 30, 2015

An effective Call to Action (CTA) guides your visitors take the next step

While some symbols and design elements have become intuitive for users, your visitor does not always know what to do next. It’s up to you to tell them what to do, and why they should do it. A key piece of your inbound marketing strategy is an effective Call to Action.

An effective Call to Action should be in clear sight on a webpage. They should be bigger and bolder that the other elements on your page without it taking over completely. Don’t compromise good design to make your CTA stand out.

1. Consider the colors of your CTA.

It should be a color that stands out and stimulates action, but still looks like it belongs there.

2. Tell them what they’re getting with clear and concise copy.

A thorough CTA that leads to an offer should be descriptive. Make the messaging about them and why they will benefit by clicking.

3. Make it look clickable.

Create a hover effect for your CTA so your visitors understand it’s a button that should be clicked.

4. Test it out.

Try some A/B testing with different colors, copy and position on the page. The data could provide some insight on how your audience behaves.

5. Place them where it makes sense.

You don’t want CTAs everywhere on your website. Take a step back and act like a website visitor. When will they be most interested in your offer? After they read a blog? Once they’ve gone over your services?

6. Understand which CTAs should go on which pages.

Segment your offers into Top of the Funnel (eBooks, free downloads), Middle of the Funnel offers (request a quote, free trial). Your Top of the Funnel offer CTAs should go on top level pages that have a lot of page views, while the Middle of the Funnel offer CTAs should appear on pages the user has to do a little bit of digging to find.

Take a look at your website from the user’s perspective and find some places where a CTA is needed. By adding an effective Call to Action, you could see your lead generation results improve right away.

An Email Marketing Strategy Can Be So Much More than a Newsletter

Email Marketing • Posted on July 14, 2015

Sometimes it seems as though email marketing gained most of its reputation before the days of social media. For a lot of business owners, the term “email marketing” conjures visions of bad clipart and awkwardly placed images, alongside blurbs of content outlining everything that happened in their business that month. But the ways in which we use email marketing have evolved quite a bit in the past 15 years, and it is still one of the best ways to reach your contacts.

Your email marketing strategy does not have to revolve around monthly e-newsletters. As long as the people on your list have opted in and want to hear from you, then you are free to get creative and have a little fun with your communication. Here are a few points about email marketing that you should practice, and some that you really don’t have to practice.

Make Sure it’s Email-worthy

What is email-worthy, other than an awkward hyphenated phrase I just coined? If something noteworthy happens or you have some information that you would shout to a room full of people on your list—that’s email-worthy. This information would be something they appreciate hearing and are glad to have heard it from you. Before you compose your email, have this email-worthy communication in mind.

Have a goal

This is the most important piece to every email you send out. You need to have a purpose and a goal. It could be to get more traffic to your site, or to get a certain amount of people to fill out a form or redeem an offer. No matter what, you can’t measure the success of an email campaign without having a bar set somewhere first.

They don’t have to be timed out

You don’t have to write and send an email every second Tuesday of the month. If deadlines help you complete your tasks, then by all means set a deadline. But don’t let that deadline sabotage the authenticity of your communication. If you get it done before then, or need to push back an email, you can rest assured that no one will notice.

You don’t have to include everything

Try your best to keep your emails short and sweet. If your subscribers can read and act on your email in less than a minute then there’s a much better chance of them following through. Really think about it from their perspective and only include what they would love to hear, instead of all the things that you would love to tell them.

Get Creative

Especially with your subject line. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I get an email with a subject line that reads “August 2015 Newsletter: blah blah blah.” It doesn’t really say blah blah blah but that’s what I hear in my head after such a giant lack of creativity. Research shows that subject lines that are 5 words or less, are questions, or are just really funny and creative get opened. Boring stuff doesn’t.

Listen to your audience

If you can manage it, go through your replies or even encourage people’s thoughts on your email campaign. The email is for them after all, it would be worth it to hear what they think in their own words. Also, I find that once I hear from my subscribers, whether it’s in a comment or in an email reply, it’s easier to write for them. They are no longer just an email address, but an actual person that I’m speaking to.

Above all, you need to understand that the world of email marketing, and inbound marketing in general, is a marathon and not a sprint. With every piece of great content you put out there, you are building up your reach and your connections, and building a solid foundation of communication for your business. So, keep at it, and have some fun!

Why Inbound Marketing is Like Dating

Inbound Marketing • Posted on July 8, 2015

A while back (pre-HubSpot) we developed a series of landing pages for a client. The offers that were featured with these pages were aligned with a direct mail campaign they had been sending out over the past several months. These offers were geared towards trying to get people in the door, or what I like to call “finish line” offers. While they worked well in print format because they were sent to the same house multiple times, they gave us some problems in their inbound marketing strategy.

The biggest problem

Prospects would fill out the form, and never respond to any further interaction. People on social media would see the word “Free” and instinctively go through the steps that were needed to get that free thing. They didn’t realize that they needed to come into the office to get that free thing. They just weren’t ready for that kind of commitment.

The offer was a free consultation for a potentially life changing procedure. A good number people who saw the offer on social media liked the idea of getting a free consultation, but they weren’t quite ready to drive their butts to the practice, or even pick up the phone when they called.

What Would You Do?

When you’re creating your inbound marketing funnel, think about your own behaviors. You fill out a form so you can download something for free. A day later, someone calls or emails you about it. How do you react? It sort of seems like someone you just met is asking you to marry them, and you probably can’t run away fast enough.

If you’re selling a big ticket item, or anything that requires research before people buy, their first touch with your brand should be just an introduction. Then, you can keep in touch with some charming information—but not every day. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. But don’t disappear. Don’t ask them to take the next step until they’ve given you the right signals. And make sure to listen to them. —See how confusing this is? This is why inbound marketing is a lot like dating.

If you want to find the right partner, or customer, you’re going to have to put the time in and build your inbound marketing funnel the right way. Don’t get discouraged. Focus on yourself for once. When it’s ready, the right customers will just drop into your lap.

How to resize images using WordPress

Website Design • Posted on June 25, 2015

Have you ever uploaded an awesome photo to your WordPress website or blog, and then have it take 12 seconds to load on the page? Or maybe you’ve wanted an image to take up more or less space on the page. You can do these types of edits right in the backend of WordPress. So here’s how to resize images using WordPress.

First, here are some basics. When we talk about image size, that means the space the image takes up on the screen. This is measured in pixels. Although they range, a common width of a website is 1000 pixels. So if you’re creating a banner image that needs to go across the entire width of your text, you might make something that is 1000×300 pixels.

The image file size is how much the image weighs. This is measured in bytes. Specifically in web design, you’ll be measuring Kilobytes or KB. If you upload an image and the weight of that image is being measured in Megabytes or MB, then the image is much too large.

So how do you know what size your images should be?

A large image, like a banner or something that takes up the entire width of your text, should be between 60K and 120K. A small image that is within your text should be 50KB or less.

Pro Tip: If you’re using Firefox, when browsing the internet, right click on any image and go to “view image info.” A window will pop up that shows you the dimensions and the weight of that image.

You can quickly check the size of your own images using this trick to make sure they’re how you want them, without having to log in to WordPress.

So, now how do you edit an image to make it your desired size and weight? You don’t have to have access to photoshop to get this done if you’re using WordPress.

1. Upload your new media.

In the Media section, simply drag and drop or select a file from your computer. Once it’s there, click “Edit.” The image I chose is over 1 MB. Way too big.

2. Scale the image.

Click Edit Image and scale the image to your desired width. In this case, I made it 1000 x 667 pixels.

3. Crop the image.

I also want to make sure it’s only 300 pixels high, so I’ll use the crop tool. I click and drag the section of the photo that I want to keep. It will tell me the size of my selection in the image crop box. Click the crop tool to make this happen.

Then hit save and then update. You’ll notice that my file size changed dramatically when I made these updates. It’s now 109KB, a perfect size for a banner on my blog post. If yours still weighs too much after it’s cropped, you may have to compress the image using a third party software.

4. Insert the image.

Now, when you go back to your post, you can insert the updated image.

And that, my friends is how you resize images using WordPress.

Google Trends as a Keyword Research Tool

SEO • Posted on June 18, 2015

You don’t need a bunch of paid fancy tools to do basic keyword research for your website or blog. Google Trends is a great introductory keyword research tool for any business owner that is producing and posting their own content.

When you’re creating a blog post, you want to make sure the terms you are using match the terms that people are searching for. Since sometimes you can present yourself using a number of different terms, it’s a good idea to use a keyword research tool. For example, when we became HubSpot certified partners, we thought about changing the wording on our home page from “Digital Marketing Agency” to “Inbound Marketing Agency.”

Within Google trends, we went to the Explore Tool. Here is what we found:

While the Explore Tool doesn’t give us hard number as to how many people searched for these terms, it can push us in one way or the other when we can’t decide which term to use. In this case, the clear winner is “digital marketing agency,” so we kept our main page titles as they were.

The “inbound marketing agency” traffic is growing and it’s not a term we will ignore, we just will focus on it with our blog content rather than the home page of our website.

The tool also points out major news headlines that could have contributed to a rise in traffic for that term. Other interesting features are how much regional interest there are in those terms and what some related search terms are.

Google trends can also just be used if you’re curious about what people are searching for. It gives real time information about the top searches. It’s pretty easy to get lost down the rabbit hole when using this tool, so be careful of that if you’re on work time.

Developing a Marketing Budget when Outsourcing Marketing

Web Strategy • Posted on June 15, 2015

When it comes to marketing, there are no one-size-fits-all strategies. Every strategy needs to be customized depending on the goals and needs of the company. Just like the strategy, a company’s marketing budget also needs to be highly customized.

Marketing budgets tend to be somewhere between 2% and 20% of gross annual revenue. That’s a big range. How does a company decide on their number? Here are some things to take into account when developing a marketing budget.

Organize and Analyze

First, you want to take a look at your efforts so far. Figure out what percentage you spent on marketing in the past few years. Has that number stayed steady, increased or decreased? What has been the outcome and how does it correlate with your sales numbers? If you’re able to track the performance of specific campaigns, that’s great. If not, then start tracking. The best data you can look at when planning is your own.

Time

You also want to take into account how much time you and your staff has spent on marketing. You may only be paying a couple bucks a month on email marketing, but maybe it takes a staff person 10 hours to create and send an email campaign, and another 2 to analyze and report on it. If that’s something you would like to take off of your staff’s plate and outsource, make sure you take that into account when developing a marketing budget.

Goals

Make sure you have clear, time oriented goals. If you just want to grow, that’s not enough. Everyone wants to grow. How much are you going to grow by? What does your growth plan look like for the next 12 months, and how much money and time are you going to put in to get there? What is your ideal return on investment?

Once you have your numbers set, the next step is to find a marketing company that you can trust, and share these numbers with them. If they are the ones coming up with the marketing plan, they need to know your goals and your budget. This isn’t only so they can come up with the best plan, but also so they can measure their efforts effectively. When you outsource your marketing, the relationship should be transparent on both sides. You will need to share your vision with your marketing team, so make sure you are comfortable with them at the get-go.

One time SEO vs. ongoing SEO

SEO • Posted on June 11, 2015

Just like everything on the web, SEO is changing. What used to be reserved for developers and programmers is now the job of a great content writer and a content management system.

What’s the difference between one time SEO and ongoing SEO?

One-Time SEO
SEO done one time is usually done at the launch of a website. Using keyword research, you can find out which keywords you’d like to rank for and make sure each page of your site is optimized appropriately.

Depending on your market at the keywords you want to be found for, it can be effective to let a site simmer for a few months after these initial SEO efforts. However, in most cases, you’ll need to hit the ground running and start with some ongoing SEO.

Ongoing SEO
In the past, ongoing SEO has been more technical. It also used to be what we now consider spammy. Your webmaster would keep up with Google algorithm updates, and build links. The more links you had pointing to your website, the better your site would rank. SEOs would list their sites on directories and link lists wherever they could find them. Some would even build complex networks of websites, all linking to each other to try to outsmart Google.

Create Great Content
Now, the way to practice ongoing SEO is through creating great content. It’s done by knowing your customers, knowing their problems, and offering up solutions on your site. The more great content you have, the more potential search terms you can be found for.

The more focused your content is, the better chance you have of ranking. Nowadays, a common human behavior is to ask Google anything and everything. So, if you get to know your audience, and understand their problems, you have a starting point to figure out what they’re searching for.

The Technical Side
There is still a technical side to ongoing SEO. You want to make sure you are using all the best SEO practices when you publish your content. You start with the key phrase you want to be found for, and place it in the URL, title, content and alt tags. Then, you want to monitor its performance. By taking a look at your traffic you can decide if you need to update a post.

Other forms of ongoing SEO involve taking an audit of your site. We use a tool called Raven here at Schall. Their site auditor tool crawls our sites once a month and comes back with all the things we can do to improve their performance. Moz also has a great blog post with instructions to perform your own site audit.

Stop Spamming: How to grow your email list the right way

Email Marketing • Posted on June 2, 2015

How awful is it when you go to a networking event, hand out a few business cards, and get an impersonal html email in your inbox the next morning? It’s only been a few hours since you met this new contact, and they’ve already added you to their email list without your permission. When this has happened to me, I’ve hit the “mark as spam” button a few times. All the other times, I’ve promptly unsubscribed and made a mental note to avoid this person at the next event. And I’m not the exception; people do not like being spammed.

By sending that email out without the person’s permission, you are no longer that person they met at that networking event. You may have lost your chance to become a thought leader in this person’s eyes. That’s right, your emails are now one of those that they ignore, delete, and/or groan about when they see it. You, my friend, are now a spammer.

So how should you grow your email list? Here are a few ideas.

Set a goal.
Every marketing activity you pursue should be tied to a goal. As an example, let’s say you’d like to grow your list from 500 to 600 quality subscribers over the next three months. If you maintain your 5% click rate, this should drive about 30 visitors to your site each time you send an email, up from 25. This is your goal: a 20% subscriber increase within the next 3 months.

Ask your contacts.
If you have existing contacts that could benefit to subscribing to your email list, tell them why and ask them to. Be human. Write an email and pretend like you’re speaking to them face to face. Give them an example of what you include in your emails, and have a link so they can subscribe themselves. Don’t make them feel obligated, just be real.

Ask your website visitors.
Add calls to action to your website pages and blog posts that prompt people to subscribe. Tell them what’s inside or link to your latest email so they can see what it’s like.

Create great content.
Create the type of content that people love. Do your research, and give your visitors what they want. If they love it, they’ll want more. The call to action you already put on your blog pages will give them a place to ask for more.

Capture emails at in-person events.
Going to a trade show? Make sure you bring a way to capture the email addresses of the people you meet.

Tap into your online communities.
Post your content to the online communities you’re a part of. Ask for feedback, and ask your peers to subscribe if they enjoyed it.

Target, target, target.
With all of these tactics to grow your email list, you want to make sure they’re highly targeted. You always want to think quality of quantity when it comes to your subscribers. Once you really hammer down who it is you’re looking for, and where and how to reach them, you’ll hit your goals quicker and easier.

There are so many places you can tap into potential subscribers. At the end of the day, you want to make sure you’re adding value to their inbox with each send. Adding numbers to your list at the expense of opens and click-throughs will end up becoming a headache with no real positive outcome.

Digital marketing takes a lot of planning and analyzing. If you’re doing things right and staying diligent, the results will come.

The Simplest Keyword Research Tool

SEO • Posted on May 12, 2015

When writing content for your website or blog, your first step is to think about your user and what they might be searching for. What are their challenges, and how can you help them? It’s a good idea to do some keyword research to ensure the term your optimizing the page for matches up with the term people are searching.

If you don’t have the time or resources to conduct thorough keyword research, try just using google itself.

Based on the search data in your area, Google give you options to auto fill your search query. It also takes into account what you’ve searched for in the past, so it’s best to use this tactic in a private browser.

Here’s what it will look like:

If you’re unsure of how people are searching for your service, just type a few of the key words into the search bar and take a note of what comes up.

To take it a step further, try Google trends. The explore tool lets you see the trends over time for any keywords. It also shows you the regional interest, and even compares them to other similar terms. Of course, neither of these tools give you real numbers of how many people searched for these terms, but it can help point you to the right direction in your keyword strategy.

Here’s an example:

If you’re looking for a more in depth way to plan your keyword strategy, I recommend taking a look at the resources on moz.com, especially their beginner’s guide to SEO. You can find the chapter on keyword research here.

Writing Website Content – Ask Yourself These 4 Questions

User Experience • Posted on May 1, 2015

Are you having trouble writing website content? Ask yourself these four questions.

Will people know what I do within seconds?
Will they understand what page they’re on and what it’s about?
Will they know what to do next?
Why should they buy/subscribe/download from this site instead of from someone else?

When writing website content, try to put yourself in the users shoes. If that’s difficult, ask someone else to be the user and ask them if they can answer those four questions.

As marketers, the best thing you can do for your product is to start by forgetting about your product and focusing on the user and what they are looking for when they land on your website. It’s tempting to talk about all the features of your product, but you need to resist. Because, guess what? It’s not all about you. That sounded harsh, but let me explain.

Mint is an application that helps people manage their money. Here is a look at their home page today:

I spotted the word “you” or “your” about a dozen time. There is no mention of “we” or “our product” anywhere. This is because it’s not about them.

This website also does a great job with what would be my next two suggestions.

Create a few headlines and sub-headline ideas for your most important pages.

To combat question #4, (why should I buy from you?) use a powerful value proposition and steer clear from generic cliches, gobbledygook terms and corporate speak.

Make sure to include clear call-to-actions and next steps.

Include links in your body copy, next step links at the end of the copy and calls-to-action wherever appropriate. Include a little direction and you’ll be glad you did.

My Facebook Link Image is Not Showing–How to Fix it!

Facebook • Posted on April 29, 2015

**Updated 1/19**

Have you ever posted a link to Facebook, wanting it to look like this:

But instead, it looked like this?:

If your Facebook link image is not showing, it can be pretty frustrating. That’s why I’m here to help you to make sure that every link you post looks professional every single time.

The first step was done perfectly in my example. Simply copy and paste the URL of your link into your status. The link should automatically appear. If the image from the webpage you’re posting doesn’t automatically appear, go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. You’ll see this:

Paste in the URL and hit debug.

You’ll get lots of information including when and how the URL was scraped, meta tags, and images. At the bottom, you’ll see what it will look like when it is shared. As long as there is an image within the page for Facebook to pick up, it should look the way you want it to. If it still doesn’t look right, try refreshing the page.

A few years back Facebook allowed you to upload your image right then and there if you wanted it to be something other than what was on the post. They also allowed you to change the title and description on the post, but that feature is no longer available. There are tools you can use within your website to set the image. If you’re using WordPress, Yoast allows you to set your share settings on your post or page before you share it to social media.

Tricks like this can save you a lot of time and frustration if you’re managing your own Facebook business page. Be sure to like us on Facebook for more tips like this one and feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Happy Facebooking!

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing • Posted on April 23, 2015

According to Wikipedia, Inbound Marketing refers to “marketing activities that bring visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects’ attention. Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company easy to be found, and draws customers to the website by producing interesting content.”

People are smart

Consumers have become savvy to the sales process, and they don’t like the idea of being sold to. It’s become easier and easier to hang up on a cold caller, and businesses that butt into their daily routines are deemed annoying before they have a chance to even look into what that business is offering.

People want to make a decision to purchase your product or service based on their own due diligence. They want to do the research about your brand and feel confident that they are making the decision to enter the buyer’s process with you.

The sales role is changing

The rise of inbound marketing doesn’t mean that sales is going away. It simply means that the sales activities have changed. Instead of making a cold call and leading a potential customer down the sales funnel within a few minutes, we’re using inbound marketing tactics for them to make their way into the sales funnel themselves. In many cases, there is a point where the sales team takes over and closes the deal, but this time they’re not cold calling because the potential customer is already well acquainted with their brand.

Content is (still) king

The above statistic is from HubSpot’s state of marketing report in 2014. Content is the oil that makes the inbound engine run. Inbound marketing is about creating content that is useful to your potential customers, and to put that content where they can find it. In return for great content, the marketer asks for information about the prospect which will help them to deliver even more great content to them. This process builds trust and also qualifies leads, making sure that both parties involved (the buyer and the seller) are where they want to be. The bottom line is; statistics have shown that the average cost per lead sourced through inbound practices are consistently less expensive than outbound leads. So if your company is still relying solely on outbound sales, there is a big opportunity to get more return on your marketing and sales budget.

How to run an Inbound Marketing Campaign

Content Creation doesn’t have to be hard

Blog Writing, Inbound Marketing • Posted on April 8, 2015

Content creation has become one of the most important avenues for driving traffic to your website. According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound report, companies that blog have 55% more website visitors, and generate 88% more leads than those companies that don’t.

Here are some reasons why you really need a blog:

It creates fresh content and more pages of content, which is great for SEO.
It helps establish you as an industry authority and thought leader.
It helps drive more traffic and leads back to your website.
It’s a great channel to converse and engage with your audience and customers.
It’s a great way to get valuable inbound links!

Most people have trouble with content creation because their topics are too broad, and they’re not thinking about their audience. They want to start with what they offer, when they should start with feedback they get from customers or potential customers.

You have a business that installs flooring for residential customers. It’s not a good idea to write a blog post about carpet, even though that’s a big part of your offerings. You’ll need to think smaller. Think back to your last customer and what led them to the decision they made to go with a specific brand or type of carpet. Maybe they wanted a carpet that doesn’t stain easily because they have small children. What did you recommend and why? There’s a blog post. Maybe there was no option for what they were looking for but you educated them on the best ways to keep their new carpet clean. There’s another blog post.

When it comes to content creation, thinking about specific interactions with your clients is a great place to start. And whenever you hit a road block and the task of blogging becomes a monster, you probably need a more specific topic.

Questions about blogging? Free free to follow Stacey for more content creation tips, or contact us.

SEO tactics to keep in mind when building your website

SEO • Posted on April 3, 2015

You can’t trick a search engine, so don’t even try. The days of over-stuffing keywords, and cloaking to get found online are long gone. If you’re serious about getting relevant organic search engine traffic, you need proper on-page SEO tactics in place.

On-page SEO tactics consist of placing your most important keywords within the content elements of your actual pages. These on-page elements include Headlines, Sub-headlines, Body Content, Image Tags, and Links. Often times on-page SEO is referred to as “keyword density.” While it’s important to include your keyword as many times as necessary within a page, you don’t want to go overboard with it either. For on-page SEO tactics done right:

Pick a keyword

Pick a primary keyword for each page and focus on optimizing that page for that word. If you oversaturate a page with too many keywords on one page, the page will lose its importance and authority because search engines won’t have a clear idea of what the page is about. This is very common on homepages in particular, where too many keywords are used.
Place it wisely

Place your primary keywords in your headline and sub-headline. These areas of content have greater weight to search engines. The closer your keyword is to the beginning of the post, the better. A good SEO tactic to use if you’re trying to rank for a question someone may ask is to repeat a form of that question in your headline or h2. Just be sure you don’t seem too redundant.
Keep it relevant

Include the keywords in the body content but don’t use them out of context. Make sure they are relevant with the rest of your content. If your keyword doesn’t match your content, users will get frustrated quickly and hit the back button. That’s not good for rankings, and it’s not good for business.
Remember the images

Include keywords in the file name of images (e.g. mykeyword.jpg) or use them in the ALT tag. This will help on a regular SERP (Search Engine Results Page), and also in the case that someone searches for your keyword via Google images.
Keep it clean (the URL that is)

Include the keywords in the page URL and keep the URL clean. Keeping your URLs clean will make them easier to share, but more importantly it will help with organizing your analytics. We don’t want to see a URL that is as long as the blog post. It should be descriptive and clean enough that you can recall which blog it is.
Write for humans

Write for humans first, search engines second. Humans can recognize copy that was written for a robot, but a robot doesn’t know if that content was written for a human (ha, those silly robots). Always prepare your content for your audience and then look to optimize it for search. Content that is pleasant to read will keep your users on the page longer, another factor that helps with your SEO.

Just like you can’t trick a search engine, you can’t trick your users either. So make sure you’re thinking about them first. Your content should match up with what they’ve searched for. Don’t optimize a page for a keyword that has nothing to do with what you’re offering just because you think it’s being searched for more often.

Website Strategy tip: Offering value to your website visitors

Web Strategy • Posted on March 27, 2015

Not only is it important to have a nice looking and informative website, but you need to have an effective website strategy to go with it. In this series of blog posts I’ll be going over what a great website strategy looks like with some tips and tactics that will get you there.

Digital Marketing: Got Strategy?

Inbound Marketing, Web Strategy • Posted on September 19, 2014

Most of the digital marketing blogs I read are broken down by discipline and channel. One section for SEO, one for PPC, one for social media. This may be an organized way of writing about digital marketing, but when a brand executes their plan, all of these pieces need to be working together to achieve common goals.

In the past, I’ve had marketing directors and CEOs of businesses ask me, “Why isn’t my social media campaign producing an ROI?” or, “Now that my website is on the first page of the search results and getting more visitors, why haven’t I seen more inquiries or sales?”

A lot of times, the brands that ask these questions have a different agency for each digital marketing channel, each with their own strategy. This disjointed method often results in a lack of alignment and communication between the vendors and the client. It’s not unlikely to see one agency dropped and another hired into the mix with the expectation that results will improve, when in reality it’s the overall strategy that needs to be looked at. Remember the old adage “Too many cooks…”?
By working with one single full service agency and having one single cohesive digital marketing strategy, the brand will have a backbone for all campaigns to follow, whether they be SEO, social, PPC, mobile etc.

Your digital strategy should come before your campaign strategy!

I’ve worked with clients in the past who don’t seem to have a single digital strategy. What they do have is multiple channel specific, campaign strategies, each one with different goals and KPIs. The brand’s messaging and tone of voice were all over the place and the results were a mess. Cue the angry emails and finger pointing. The real problem here was that there was no overall digital strategy to provide a benchmark, highlight purpose and give direction for meeting goals and KPIs. If you don’t have one of these documents then how do you judge success or even failure?

Have one single strategy that supports and connects all future campaign plans. Your first question when forming your digital strategy should be what is the end goal? Increasing brand exposure and awareness? Generating new leads? Communicating with existing customers? Knowing the answer to these questions will help you to understand which channels are best at achieving these goals and how multiple channels can work together to achieve them more efficiently.

Why have one single strategy?

A single strategy will not only ensure consistency in brand tone of voice and messaging, but it will also assist in creating a seamless user journey and experience. Having isolated, channel specific campaign plans without an overall digital strategy is a recipe for confusion among your website’s users. Your users are the reason why you are creating this strategy, so keep them in mind at all times. In my experience, it is also easier to adhere to the strategy if you limit the number of agencies and vendors that are involved.

Who should be involved in developing it?

The short answer is as few agencies and vendors as possible. Too many outside perspectives and egos can confuse the direction of the strategy. I believe wholeheartedly, after working on some disastrous campaigns in the past, that using one single agency or vendor who provides solutions across all digital channels makes it easier to reach the strategy goals and KPIs. Once again, “too many cooks…”. If a brand does decide to use multiple agencies, having the overall strategy in writing will provide direction for the individual campaigns and keep the plan on track.

How can the strategy be used going forward?

Use it as a benchmark. This will enable you to refine and tweak certain elements to improve performance. If the goals aren’t met, dive in and find out why. Is it because your brand messages are hitting your target audiences at the wrong stage in their buying cycle? Is your messaging and tone on your social media campaigns different to your content marketing campaigns? Is your brand reputation reflected consistently across all channels?

Summary

Before investing time into each digital channel to communicate your message, think about how communication across these channels joins up. Think about why you are using these channels in the first place. Think about who your users are as living, breathing people. What are their motivations and requirements? Address this in your strategy before you start using social media, advertising online, or producing content for your audience.

It’s a risk to start using each channel in isolation just because you feel you have to. Having an overall digital strategy first will make your campaigns work more effectively together and ultimately lead you to achieve the marketing and business goals you set.

Signs You Follow Too Many on Twitter

Twitter • Posted on April 1, 2014

How many people do you follow on twitter? And how many of those people do you really follow? Do their tweets matter to you or are you constantly scrolling past looking for something else? There are no rules for who, or how many you follow but setting some guidelines for yourself can make your entire twitter experience better. So how do you know you follow too many people on twitter?

1. There’s never anything good on your feed.

If you can’t easily find great content on your feed, it’s probably because there’s too much on it. You should be able to log on to twitter at any time of day and see people tweeting about things that matter to you. If you find yourself giving up after scrolling too long then that’s a sign that it’s not working for you.

2. You don’t recognize most avatars.

You shouldn’t have to click on someone’s profile and read their bio to remember who they are. That’s sort of like asking, “..and who are you again?” every time you converse with someone. If they haven’t stuck out in your mind, odds are they’re not worth the follow.

3. You’ve never interacted with most of the people you follow.

Of course you should follow a few large brands, celebrities and influencers, but your feed shouldn’t be full of them. Choose the ones that really make you laugh, think, or act and cut the rest. Put more focus into the friends and colleagues that you can have real, spur of the moment, interactions with—that’s where the magic happens on twitter.

4. You follow everyone back.

Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean you have to reciprocate. Check them out, visit their profile and see if it’s something that interests you. There is no rule that says you have to follow them back.

The purpose of your twitter feed should be to bring great content into your life, and when there are too many people it makes it hard to find. People also look at users who follow too many people as not being credible, and it can be a turn off for potential followers. Cut the inactive users, shameless self promoters, and anyone who doesn’t add any value to your feed.

8 Benefits of Email Marketing

Email Marketing • Posted on April 1, 2014

Email marketing is an effective piece of a marketing plan. It is convenient and extremely cost effective. By sending an email, you are putting more emphasis on the message’s content and less on how it’s delivered, helping you become more memorable to your loyal or prospective clients. Here are 8 benefits of email marketing along with reasons to consider it for your marketing efforts.

1. Allows you to organize connections
The days of the Rolodex are long gone. Organize your contacts in your email marketing software. Put them into lists like “current clients” and “prospective clients,” or according to their interests, how you met them, and if they signed up for a specific promotion.

2. Targetable
If you know your target market why not market to them directly? Instead of hoping your target market sees your message though an advertisement or social media post, deliver that message instantly to their inbox.

3. Reduces time, cost and effort.
Replace your paper newsletter with an email and cut your costs dramatically. Now you can put your newly acquired time and effort into what matters; the content.

4. Allows you to conduct your own research.
Email marketing gives you relevant, real time results, based on behavioral data. Data generated by email marketing allows you to, for example, test which day you get the most opens. Send your email to half of your list on one day and half on another, then review the results, or you can test out which calls to action get more clicks. The possibilities for research are endless.

5. It’s completely customizable.
Your brand is unique, your email marketing campaign should be too. Easily tailor your campaigns subject lines, content, and design to meet your needs, through email marketing management.

6. Directly links to your website, blog, or social media.
A great way to get traffic to your website or blog is to provide buttons within an email. You can suggest readers to visit and explore your social media outlets, building your presence and creating interest.

7. Reinforces personal connections.
Word of mouth networking is extremely valuable, you want to make those connections worth it. Email marketing helps you keep track of and build upon connections in between face to face interaction.

8. Gives a method for follow ups.
Turn your email marketing into a tool for following up. Discover your contacts’ priorities by staying connected. Gain valuable feedback about yourself and your brand by asking contacts for their opinions and perspectives. Follow up emails allow for open and honest faceless communication.

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