Click Rain Blog

We’re Hiring Twice: Developer and Strategist

2013-06-04T13:51:56+00:00

Click Rain is looking to grow, and we're hiring for two positions: Web Developer and Online Marketing Strategist.

Web Developer

Click Rain developers are multitalented-- they're comfortable with both front-end and back-end development, understand SEO best practices, know how IE is going to break a website before firing up the browser, and often bike to work.

Here are some of the qualities that we want to see in a Web Developer candidate:

You've been around. You have four plus years of development experience, and a portfolio (or Git repository) to prove it.
You know your letters. You'll be expected to build sites in PHP, HTML, CSS, and jQuery. Experience with Expression Engine will give you a major leg-up as well.
You're comfortable seeing a site through to completion. You can take a PSD file from a designer, slice it into HTML, build it onto a CMS framework, and update the DNS to launch it a few weeks later.
You test your sites before they go live.
You understand responsive web design and development. You understand that the mobile web is the *only* web for many.
You bring a strategy to your web projects. Your sites are more than just a digitalized brochure-- they are a marketing tool used to achieve a business objective. And you feel comfortable bringing that strategy to clients.

Online Marketing Strategist

Development isn't the only area in which Click Rain is growing. We're also looking to add to our stable of uber-talented Online Marketing Strategists. Our OMS team is responsible for bringing and executing the strategies to help our clients meet their business goals on the web. This can and will include using tools like Google Analytics, paid search advertising, retargeting, several email marketing platforms, and probably some that haven't even been invented yet.

These are a few of the characteristics we'll look for in a strategist candidate:

You have digital marketing experience. You've spent two or more years in the world of online marketing, either for an agency, your current company, or even on your own.
You know your way around Google Analytics. Beyond just visitors and bounce rates, you understand advanced segments, profile filters, and custom variables. Google Analytics Individual Qualification is not a requirement, but certified candidates will be given top preference.
You know the difference between PPC and SEO, and have had measurable experience in both. You can manage keywords, campaigns, budgets, and know who Matt Cutts is.
You have experience with goal-driven social media. You've made a Facebook page before? Great-- but everyone has done that. You've been responsible for using that Facebook page to drive trackable conversions on a website, and you have data to back up your success? Now we're talking.
You've been in MailChimp, Constant Contact, iContact, or another email marketing program. Send me a link to subscribe to your newsletter-- I'm curious about what you have to say.
You can communicate effectively, and succinctly, and have the ability to make complex concepts sound simple. Professional written and verbal communication is a must. We strategists are often translators, bringing nerd-world insights to a real-world audience.
You are comfortable being uncomfortable. You will never have two days that look the same. You need to be very willing to adapt to different clients, different platforms, and different workloads.

About Click Rain

We have the benefits you should expect from a small tech company. The good stuff like health, dental, matching 401k, company paid service projects, etc. But we also rock the free soda, casual dress, an AirWolf machine in the conference room, and conversations that are as nerdy as our T-shirts.
We work 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday, but sporadically have needs that fall beyond those hours. Sometimes those extra hours involve travel.
Our client list extends from local to national firms, across several different industries, including hospitality, education, healthcare, politics, finance, and more.
We push our clients forward. It's not enough to "keep doing the same old thing"-- that's not fair to our clients, and frankly, we'd get bored pretty quickly. We take pride in bringing new insights, new ideas, new trends to our clients, to make sure that they-- and we-- are always thinking about the future.

How to Apply

To apply for our Web Developer position, email eric [at] clickrain [dot] com with your resume and portfolio. To apply for our Online Marketing Strategist position, email chris [at] clickrain [dot] com with your resume and social links.

We're growing quickly, so don't wait to apply. Let's do this!

Penguin 2.0 Is Here

2013-05-29T20:38:58+00:00

Ever since the first release of the Penguin update last April, the folks at Google have made it clear that they're trying to make their search results more accurate.

Updates to the algorithm were inevitable—too many sites were delving into what we call Black Hat SEO— trying to game the system to improve their rankings. Essentially, these sites were paying other websites to point links at their own site, creating a paid back-linking strategy.

Google knew that improvements had to be made, and created the Penguin update in response. Now, more than a year later, Penguin 2.0 has been released and once again is going after sites that use Black Hat SEO methods.

Already, sites are being penalized for using paid links, and no doubt many more instances will surface. Overall, this new Penguin update was supposed to affect 2.3% of all searches. While that may seem like a small percentage, 2.3% is actually a vast amount of searches.

The main takeaway from all of this is: Do not try to game Google’s system. What once may have been a quick fix has turned into a quick penalty.

Here at Click Rain, we improve site ranking without having to pay for links. We realize that improving rankings within Google is a more of a marathon (even if the results are quicker than expected) than just a sprint, and have created a series of SEO best practices that are both good for your website and Google's efforts to make the internet a better place.

Because the truth is that Google will continue to make updates throughout the summer, weeding out sites with spam and paid back-links.

So when it comes to your site, don't just focus on ranking in the short term. Rather, think about the longevity of your SEO strategy, because Google will only continue to get smarter.

Memorial or Graveyard: The Death of a Surfer

2013-05-24T13:14:15+00:00

Recently, Google announced a new feature called “Inactive Account Manager” that has been nicknamed the Google Death Manager by many as it deals with what happens to your account if it is left inactive for a pre-determined amount of time.

At first thought, this feature does seem sort of strange. But as the Internet grows and ages, more of these types of features will probably appear. In the early days, the Internet was viewed more like a library. One surfed around the web learning about whatever one could find. Today, the Internet is more about two-way communication. Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Gmail, and other tools contain a ton of recorded personalized communication that the average person would never have had if the Internet didn’t exist.

I originally half-scoffed at the idea of an Inactive Account Manager. Who cares about the data once you are gone? In the end, once I am gone, all that data certainly isn’t doing me any good, so why should I care?

Then a couple weeks ago my stupid, selfish little brain realized it’s not about me, but everyone else.

It took a personal wake-up call to fully understand. In my spare time, I run a little fan-oriented Hardy Boys website that has a forum (i.e., message board, bulletin board—those things people used before WordPress and Facebook became popular). One of the members of the forum who had several hundred posts died. It dawned on me that I now have a digital footprint of this person who can no longer add or change what is on my website. This account is sort of frozen in time.

As a whole new generation of Internet users grows older and begins to pass away, we will start to have huge chunks of the Internet filled with data that becomes “frozen in time”. For most of the data, this is not an issue. But unlike most printed materials of the past, a portion of the personalized data on the Internet was meant to be updated on a regular basis. That isn’t going to happen if you are six feet under the server that contains the information that needs updated.

Thus, we get Google’s Inactive Account Manager.

But you can’t (and I suggest you probably don’t want to) just delete your entire digital existence. Just because we now have a digital footprint of our lives, and in some cases can now delete part of this footprint, doesn’t change the fact that other people will remember or talk about us once we are gone.

I could go back and delete all the posts and information by the member on the forum of my Hardy Boys web site, but why? That content has touched a lot of people and it has the potential to touch a lot more people going forward. Sure, the account itself may not be used anymore and we can always take actions to help facilitate the proper future of such accounts, but the content created by that person is for everyone’s enjoyment and use. If they didn’t want it to touch others, they wouldn’t have put it there in the first place.

The bigger lesson here though is not about a new feature by Google and how best to use it, but rather, next time you find yourself surfing the web and adding some of your own thoughts and content to the Internet, think twice and ask yourself if this will help others in the future. It’s the same question we ask when we create a new website and are deciding what content should go on the site. We just need to apply it to our own lives as we ride another wave into the ocean of social media and the World Wide Web.

Are you creating a proper memorial that others can look to after you are gone, or are you just leaving a worn-out tombstone in the growing graveyard of dead web surfers?

When and Why You Shouldn’t Host Videos On YouTube

2013-05-15T19:37:51+00:00

So, here's the deal. YouTube is free. While technically mis-labeled as the second largest search engine behind Google itself, YouTube still gets a TON of searches. It's fairly easy to create a channel and upload videos. Why in the world would you want to use something else? And why would you pay for it?

Here are five reasons why you shouldn't care about the video-sharing monster and why you should take your video somewhere else (teaser: we'll look at why you should care at the end):

1. Most people aren't searching for what you're selling on YouTube.

Let's do some keyword research.

Jumping over to YouTube's little known keyword tool (beta), and entering the term "video" (generic, so we can get some broad suggestions of what people are looking for) shows us these results:

Notice the monthly search volume on:

"music video" - 10 million
"lil wayne" - 11 million
Drake - 12 million

Now, if you're Lil Wayne or Drake, you're very happy with this. But what if you're an office furniture company who wants to show a video to people of how convenient and useful your new personal desk cabinets are? Let's search for office furniture:

Pretty much no one is searching for office furniture on YouTube, according to their own keyword placement tool. Huh.

What if we head to Google's keyword research tool?

Whoa. There are 1,500,000 global monthly searches for "office furniture". Okay, we probably will have a hard time penetrating that. But what about "office furniture cabinets?"

Ah. 14,800 results. Now that's a manageable result to get into, and 14,800 more opportunities here than "not enough data" on YouTube.

2. Not many people are using video in the first place. Even fewer are sending people directly to their website.

Let's take a look at what happens when we search video results for "office furniture cabinets".

We're seeing seven video results, all of them sending people to off-site video sharing platforms. Looking at the top results from homefuniture2day.com, it's nice that they're there, and they were at least savvy enough to include a link to their site in the description of their video, but I still have to watch the video and like it enough to actually click the link to their site.

Wouldn't it be better for me to go straight to their site, and perhaps, even if the video isn't stellar, I'll be interested in browsing through their other products?

Using a self-hosted video platform can allow us to include our video in what's called a video site map, which gets indexed by Google just like any other page of a website, effectively allowing our video to show up not only in video results but, with the right tactics, in the first page of the general search results!

3. YouTube statistics are only so great.

We base our success on the fact that if we can't measure it, we don't do it. So, we want to be sure we can successfully measure video. When looking at analytics for a video on YouTube, we can see these things:

"Performance" - Number of views.
"Estimated Minutes Watched" - Yes, only estimated.
Audience Retention - This one is good, and very, very helpful.
Traffic Sources - Great, except for when it's not, and tells you "unknown sources".

While this information is incredibly important, especially "audience retention," a statistic anyone with any video that's important to them should be paying attention to, it only goes so deep.

With a third-party self-hosted video platform like Wistia (we LOVE Wistia) you can get everything above, and even better:

Actual minutes watched
Actual engagement rate (percentage of people who watched 100%)
Detailed heatmaps per viewer (where they watched, rewatched, or didn't watch)
Individual viewer anonymous IP information
Individual viewer information based on an email address tied to features in the platform
All of the specific places the video was viewed (including on site and off-site)

4. YouTube will un-brand you.

Uploading a video to YouTube alone will cause your video to automatically have the YouTube brand skinned on to it. It's red and black with a YouTube logo no matter what. Secondly, unless the video is embedded on your own site and you leave the "show suggested videos" box unchecked, you WILL get recommended videos at the end of a video that you have no control over. This can be particularly concerning if your videos have even a tiny bit of potential to be related to something inappropriate for your business or audience.

A video hosting service will offer everything opposite of the above, such as:

Complete branding of the player (button colors, logos, etc.)
Completely custom thumbnails, based on a screenshot of the timestamp or even a nicely-designed jpeg
No related videos or advertisements on any videos

5. YouTube lacks important business features.

Wistia and other platforms allow you to integrate some amazing business tactics right into embedded videos:

Email capture (before or after a video, even required to watch, if you like)
Calls to action after videos (text, image, or custom html)
Built-in event tracking that passes through to Google Analytics
Responsive embedded video
Email marketing integration with most of the major email service providers

Another very important feature is that you get to choose how your video is shared (email, FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and when it is shared. If someone clicks back to the original video, they head to your website, not to YouTube.

Why You SHOULD Care About YouTube

In my opinion, everyone who owns a business and wants to actually drive traffic to their site through video, wants more control over their branding, and wants more business features should not be using YouTube for their main video strategy. After all, most business video is likely not going to get millions or even thousands of views. And Wistia offers their platform completely free for the first three videos.

However, there is one major reason to use YouTube for the right videos: advertising.

Google's new model for video advertising using TrueView is that you only pay if someone watches 100% of a 15- or 30-second video. So, even if someone watches 75% of your video and clicks over to your site, that watch and click is completely free. Plus, Google has a wealth of demographic information that can be used for targeting as well as a large network of sites that can show video. While you could spend hours and hours using an outreach program to find places to embed your videos, Google's Display Network can put your video in the right spot and in front of the right viewership very quickly.

When Hosting Your Own Video Can Cause You To Move It To YouTube

One other reason to use YouTube is to encourage the spread of a "viral" video. You can't predict that your video will go viral. You could use various formulas to create viral video that are out there, but you just can't force those things without a whole lot of positive variables working to your advantage. However, if a video you host yourself through a third-party hosting platform starts to go crazy with viewership and embeds, it might not be a bad idea to put a copy on YouTube, make sure it's optimized and linked back to your site, and let it go.

Welcome, Rohn!

2013-05-10T20:09:00+00:00

We're excited to welcome a new member to the Click Rain team: Rohn Gibson, who will be serving as VP of Client Strategy.

Most recently, Rohn was the VP of Sales & Marketing at Glynlyon, where he oversaw a staff of 75 (in addition to a multi-million dollar sales and marketing budget). He is also the founder of Equip Interactive, the premier faith-based digital marketing agency in Christian education. Color us impressed.

Here at Click Rain, Rohn will be overseeing client strategy and service as well as our own staff development. He'll also be leading national business development efforts and client relations that have continued to grow over recent years.

And Rohn seems to be excited to work with us, too. In his own words:

I love people—it's not just work for me. The people I work with are like family. Click Rain has a crazy cool culture, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

Join us in extending a heartfelt welcome to Rohn!

The Spirit of Volunteerism 2013

2013-05-09T19:59:03+00:00

We were surprised and pleased to have been nominated for the Helpline Center's 2013 Spirit of Volunteerism Award - Corporate Humanitarian.

And we were even more surprised and pleased to have won.

Thank you to Junior Achievement of South Dakota for the nomination, and to all of our clients, partners, and friends for their unfaltering support of everything we do.

In addition to our work with Junior Achievement and a number of other community organizations, we are also involved with the Dispatch Project, which takes our service work overseas.

Tyler Evans: Man With A Plan

2013-05-07T19:50:34+00:00

Account Manager Tyler Evans, already an individual of admirable strength and spirit, demonstrated his smarts this weekend as he dominated the Google Analytics IQ exam.

The data gleaned from Google Analytics informs everything we do here at Click Rain, from web design and development to digital strategies. But you don't have to take my word for it.

In Tyler's own words: "Becoming Google Analytics Certified was an important goal of mine. With this certification, I can better serve our clients by providing deep insights and targeted strategies based not only on the client's needs but my knowledge of the digital marketing space."

The Click Rain brainpile welcomes and applauds its newest inductee, and hopes that he plans to bring in some sort of breakfast pastry to celebrate his awesomeness.

Snapchat for Business

2013-05-02T21:33:13+00:00

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Would you like to be a part of the 150,000,000? That is the number of “snaps” or self-destructing videos and photos shared each day through Snapchat—over 4.5 BILLION per month! To contrast that number, Instagram says that an average of 40,000,000 photos are shared through their platform each month.

Demographic
The largest demographic that is utilizing this platform is between 13-25 years old, but the use of this app is growing and expanding outside of its core demographic.

Getting started
If the 13-25 year old demographic is your target group, then you may want to find a way to incorporate this into your marketing plan. There is not an official platform which facilitates use for businesses, yet the opportunity for your business to sign up for an account is there. Use a Snapchat profile name that represents your brand well and start pushing this to your clients/customers through other forms of media to let them know how they can connect with you on Snapchat.

Have a strategy
Are you trying to drive online sales? Increase foot traffic to your store? Think thoroughly and creatively on how you can capitalize on this. For example Taco Bell recently did this to promote their Beefy Crunch Burrito and they were "blown away" by the results.

Most importantly, you'll want to track your sales and monitor your analytics to measure impact. Make sure that you force your clients/customers to use redemption codes or other means of tracking so that you can measure your success.

Example of how this can work
Picture this: Company XYZ sends out a snap — “50% off all products online: code: SNAP5113$.” Forget blue light special—this is the type of thing that creates massive urgency and will hopefully drive results. Weary of cheats? What if people screenshot and share the coupon or code? You have two choices: A) Who cares? Let it go because people are sharing your content and expanding your brand's footprint on your behalf. B) Use a date and a code specific to that snap, limiting the fraud potential. If it is for an in-store redemption like this, train your staff on what to look for. The youth of today want to be engaged on the social media platforms they use.

Fish where the fish are biting
Snapchat may be a flash in the pan, but it is a large flash at the moment, and with it you have a chance to connect with your customers in a unique way. In my opinion, this form of communication is not going anywhere anytime soon. This demographic is craving this self-destructing form of communication and you need to be thinking of how it could fit in your plan. Snap to it!

Capture Little Milestones with Notabli

2013-05-01T16:53:36+00:00

The newest app on the block, joining other private network apps (see 23snaps and Everyme to name a few) for parents, is called Notabli. Its clean and simple user interface makes it easy for parents to track all those important milestone’s in their child’s life.

So here’s how it works
Notabli is a free app currently only available for iOS that allows you to share the story of your kids in one central location with select, close friends and family that you personally invite to have access to your updates. There is no option to “search for friends”. This means that nobody has access your kids’ information unless you, the parent, has invited them.

Life moves incredibly fast, so Notabli has created a quick, easy-to-use app with five moment types including: photos, videos, audio recordings, quotes and text. Photos can be taken right within the app or uploaded directly from your phone with additional editing options that rival those of Instagram.

The app conveniently allows for two parents to post for the same child. Friends and family are then able to view the updates, leave a comment, or “heart” a particular post - similar to how the news feed and “like” function works on Facebook.

If you still choose to share updates on Facebook and Twitter, Notabli seamlessly allows you to share posts on both of those social networks. Although, one might feel that defeats the purpose of a private network.

All-in-all, if you are a proud parent who loves to document and overshare all those cute, endearing moments with your little one (me too!) but prefers to have full control over your audience in a more private setting, this is a great app to try!

I Have Content—Now What?

2013-04-25T16:27:40+00:00

I recently enjoyed the privilege of attending Blend Interactive's Now What? 2013 conference, created to help website owners answer the question, "We have a website—how do we keep it useful and relevant?"

Maybe it's just because I'm a content strategist (and/or incredibly narcissistic), but as each speaker addressed the above question, I only heard one answer, over and over: content.

I've said it before: your content is what makes your website worth visiting. And it is what will make your website worth returning to.

"Fine," you say. "Content. I have content. Now what?"

My answer? Make it better. Here's how—via the Now What speakers.

Better content means better planning.

Seth Gottleib spoke about the importance of aligning your marketing team with your IT and content creation teams, and noted that we're dreaming big when it comes to web content—but not following through.

It's good to be realistic, especially early on. Be sure that the strategy behind your content is attainable within your budget, and that priorities and expectations are clearly communicated to everyone who will have a hand in the content creation (or revision) process.

Designing a practical and thoughtful plan for your content creation, implementation, marketing, and governance is the first step to better content. And remember, it's never too late to wrangle your existing content into a plan—or content strategy (see what I did there?).

Better content means better copywriting.

We don't talk a lot about web writing because the internet has been around for a while, so shouldn't we know all that stuff already?

No. And because of this assumption, there are a ton of websites out there with truly crappy content. Molly Malsam spoke to this issue, noting that marketing teams are still churning out content for print (notably, the dreaded brochure) into the webspace.

In a nutshell? Focus on your users' needs, not your business'. Improve your link text. Shorten your sentences. Address readers as "you". Remember that most people are just going to skim it anyway. And remind yourself that it's OK.

Better content means better usability.

Cathy McKnight hammered home the point that better usability means a shift in focus from your company to your users/customers. The goal here is to engage (and adapt to) your users.

And how do you do that? Baby steps. Realize that each interaction with a customer—every time a customer visits your website, for instance—is a chance to turn a plain old internet user into a passionate advocate for your brand. Consumers have undeniable power—let them use their power for your brand.

To that end, McKnight noted, content should be customer-focused—both highly usable and useful. Ask: Who are our customers? What do they need to do? How can we help them do it? And then use your web content to deliver and engage.

Better content means better governance.

It's a given, Lisa Welchman noted, that people have trouble managing websites. And conflicted, chaotic content on a company website often indicates conflict and chaos within that company's organization. Scary stuff—but telling.

Once you have content out on your website, it is essential that you govern it. Figure out who owns what, and when they need to update it. Assign responsibilities. Be intentional about managing your website before it gets out of control.

Welchman laid out four steps to content governance: create goals, manage risk, enable collaboration, and work together. You can do it. You just need to be intentional about it.

Better content means devoting the resources to investing in a full content strategy.

Leverage your content's full potential by combining all of those content pieces above into one big delicious content pie. (Or, you know, content strategy, as it's often called.)

Melissa Rach talked about content strategy as more than just a strategy—it must be a long-term vision, a deeply rooted belief system. It must be taken seriously and implemented confidently.

Because times are changing. Businesses are changing. When we talk about web content, we're not talking about brochures or sales tools—we're talking about a conversation. We're talking, as Melissa noted, P2P, not B2B or B2C. We can't stay tied to our old habits or we'll fail. We need web content that is adaptive, flexible, and measurable. We need to invest in content that is better. And only when that happens will we be able to say that our websites are truly successful.