Thermal Creative

Stella Orange

Bill Edmonson — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:46:13 +0000

I'm always going on and on about relationships. I try to look people in the eye, tell them the truth, over deliver and "own-up to it" when I screw up. I don't always hit the mark but I am always trying.

Isn't that the way we want friends and acquaintancess to act as well? If we can't get it together with someone, we usually end up moving on without them. When we find relationships that work, we continue to re-visit and strengthen them. I believe that's the philosophy we should use in all our business relationships as well.

Stella Orange is saying the same thing. And better. Stella is a web copywriter. She teaches quality first, then quantity. I've had occasion to work with her and I've been watching her work. Her philosophy is that it takes time and hard work to make progress with online marketing. How refreshing! There are no shortcuts and no magic applications. It's about building relationships, speaking with a consistant and real voice and using your tools.

Want to know more? Attend her Free "Truth Call". At the Stella Orange Website.

By the way, Stella Orange didn't ask me to support her, so there is nothing in it for me except seeing you get ahead! :)

Bill Edmonson

Thermal Creative is a website development company in Bozeman Montana that specializes in helping businesses enhance their website performance through beautiful data driven design, superlative programming, user friendly content management systems (CMS), website marketing consulting (SEO and SEM) and email marketing.

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You Tube is a Search Engine too: Should you be there?

Bill Edmonson — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:35:20 +0000

Behind Google itself, YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Web. As a matter of fact YouTube receives around 800 million individual visits per month. The bulk of the users have a product research or brand support intent. Unlike Google however, you won't be in YouTube's search results unless you have submitted video material. That video material is where users are initially being directed. The next step goals of course is to then insentive-ise the user to visit you on your website, or opt in to a promotion or whatever you are campaigning.

A few more facts about YouTube's impact on online marketing for those that use it:

Businesses that have a video and website based online presence have about a 1.5x better brand recall than those with only a website
20% increase in website Traffic
5% increase in search queries

So what's the best way to get the most out of YouTube as an inBound marketing tool? Well if your business is already developing video content for television or education in some way, it's a no brainer to make your company a video channel/page on YouTube page and just post the videos. Other's have actually developed a series of "webisodes" and a seperate site just for the videos.

You can also use your video content as ads.

Video AdWords works just like normal AdWords. You set your budget.
True View Ads: These appear in front of other video content with a "skip advertisement" option
Column Ads: These appear in the side column and appear based on the relevance to the video being watched at the time
Google Display Network

Of course it's not for everyone and it does require some extra work, however moving pictures are worth a thousand words in text right?

More Info about Google AdWords.

Of course if you need help with AdWords and Video For Adwords We do that!

Bill Edmonson

Pinterest : New Tool On the Block

Bill Edmonson — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:19:45 +0000

"Sigh.... yet another social networking tool?"

These days I hear more and more complaints about the amount of effort it takes to keep up with producing social networking content. I'll admit that I myself have trouble maintaining a steady flow of pertinent and useful content. Well, being a full time columnist is not why most of us went into business right?

I think that's why the Blog and eMail marketing as the daily outreach tool has waned for those of us that aren't consultants or coaches of some sort, while shorter forms have become more popular for short targeted messages. Effective eMail marketing is arguably the most effective method of getting your words in front of your tribe but it doesn't develop new leads as well as a "liked" or "tweeted" blog article. So both Blogs and eMail marketing methods are useful but only for the occasional long form message.

Facebook's popularity is an example of effective short form online marketing in a social setting. You can say what you need to say in 250 words or so, link to your product or service back on the site and move on with your day. However even those snippets require a bit of word crafting and precision that may cause even the best wordsmith to miss the mark with more visual subject matter like a design, tool, or experiential product.

So What is Pinterest?

It's fair (IMO) to say that pinterest is like visual tweeting. It uses the cork board of pinned photos metaphor to allow you to very quickly collect and "pin" images from anywhere on the internet. So for example let's say you want to show your chefs preparing tonights special? or a beautiful new makeover in your hair salon or examples of your new furniture, photos from your magazine's upcoming issue, progress in a building project, etc. Anything that speaks for itself as an image. Well pinterest lets you create "boards" for topics then send images from across the internet to those boards. Then anyone following your boards will get an update when you add new images.

Is it easy to use?

Yep. I figured it out in a bout ten minutes, downloaded the "Pin It" tool for my browser and set up a board that shows off items from the Thermal Creative portfolio. I also added some personal boards and have been sending them images as I come across interesting images throughout the day.

Is it effective?

Some data from sources who know better than yours truly..

Driving more referral traffic than Google+ | Reference: Search Engine Watch
Who's using it in Business? | Reference: Mashable list of articles
Is it worth the effort? | Reference: Hubspot

A few words of advice

Keep pinterest in mind throughout the day as you come accross pertinent content that supports your brand
If you like to share things you love, like I do, be careful it's addictive!
A corporate account in Pinterest may seem a little too obvious for now. I suggest creating a board about your business on your personal pinterest account and keep that clean
You need to remember to "pin" things other than just your company, otherwise your audience will feel "marketed to"
Don't pin things you would be embarrassed to reveal as interests in a new client meeting
Use it for a few weeks and look for results in your Google Analytics

Give it a try and let me know how it goes! I'm keeping an eye on pinterest for sure.

My personal/business boards...

Bill Edmonson

Finding new clients in the Fringe

Bill Edmonson — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:02:44 +0000

Thermal Creative is often asked to help increase online relevancy, online traffic, and therefore inbound sales and leads to our client's websites. Often times we find that our clients have identified a demographic and are doing a "not too shabby" job of speaking to that demographic on their website. There is always room for improvement which often times includes identifying ways to engage that demographic in the most effective and efficient way considering the client's available resources. But once we've helped our client improve their website and inbound paths in traditional channels, what's next?

Experiment in the Fringes.
What do I mean by that? Here's an example. We have a client who takes people on fantastic Culinary tours of Poland's restaurants and kitchens. Her clients get to cook with the pro's and take mini courses on fine Polish food preparation while enjoying Poland. She long ago identified her client demographic and has dutifully been filling her classes with that group. Tried and true. But how can we find more customers for her beyond just capturing more of the same demographic?

While we were setting up her AdWords campaign, we looked for keyword terms that were close to her industry that had high search numbers. Among many was "Polish Recipes". We included that term and others, in our ad groups and discovered that although the bounce rate was a little high, the term was generating a healthy amount of traffic. It makes sense that we can lower that bounce rate by including more recipes and recipe links in the site and hopefully convert people who are initially just interested in "Polish Recipes" into people who are interested in "Culinary Tours of Poland". That content is readily available and easy to implement for our client. Now we are creating clients beyond the traditional demographic.

This makes sense.
How many times have you personally gone shopping for item "A" and realized that although you are still interested in "A" you purchased item "B" which you learned about while looking at "A" because "B" was in the same department, or because a salesperson made you aware of it? Happens to me all the time. It works on an impulse buy as well as on large ticket items like "Culinary Tours of Poland".

What fringe areas can be experimented with in your business?

Bill Edmonson

Google Tools: Google Reader

Bill Edmonson — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:41:12 +0000

Google has a plethora of free tools specifically designed to work together to help us communicate, engage and do well in business. They are not all perfect, but they have their advantages and are integrated. One log-in, and everything playing nice in the same sandbox is the idea.

Google Reader:
If you are marketing your site via a Blog, it's important to build your readership. One very useful way to do that is to follow other blogs and add your qualified comments and learn from others. If your comments are insightful and informative, users will follow you home so to speak. Google Reader is there to allow you to subscribe to multiple Blogs with an RSS feed. It helps you then fish through the myriad content items flowing in to find those useful nuggets and opportunities to make connections. Google Reader is not super hard to figure out but a lot of the features won't really be useful to you until you become a super user so-to-speak. To start with make sure you are logged in with your Google account then navigate to any sites you know you want to follow by finding the little RSS icon which will take you to a page with a "feed:" address. Copy that address then paste it into the window you get after clicking "subscribe" back at Google Reader. You can also use the "Browse for Stuff" link which will let you search under keywords and build or implement bundles of pre existing feeds. Play with it, refine it, use it. This tool saves me hours per week looking for pertinent content. http://www.google.com/reader/view

Bill Edmonson

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Google Tools: Google+ and Google Pages

Bill Edmonson — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:47:24 +0000

From the website development industry perspective, it appears as though soon the internet may just be called the Googlenet. Google is all over the internet and, in some ways, is actually it; but so far, Google is a benevolent ruler in many ways. Luckily for us, it's in Google's best interest that your website and your business thrive online. This is good. :)

As I mentioned in my previous website blog, I'll be walking through eight Google offerings, but Google+ in itself is enough for today's article.

Google+
For most intents and purposes, this is Google's answer to Facebook. It represents the core of its social networking platform. Google is in the enviable position to look closely at Facebook's triumphs and losses and can learn from its own mistakes with Google Buzz. The idea is to make every Google product socially compatible. In other words, if you're using Gmail, Google Maps, Google Analytics, or Adwords you can sign in once to access them all, and they're all integrated.

Google+ and Google Pages: Social networking pages specifically engineered for Brands and Businesses. Your clients and potential clients can comment on and share company posts, get involved in running conversation threads and you can get creative with all the other Google+ tools at your disposal.
Circles: Here is where you can organize your contacts into groups. These circles of people are separate and exclusive. It's a nice way to avoid sharing personal things with potential clients and boring your friends with your sales efforts.
Hangouts: Invite individuals or whole circles to face-to-face video chat. Anyone in the chat can invite their friends as well. Not quite ready for the large corporate conference, but quite handy for one-on-one conversations with clients, co-workers and relatives. Good bandwidth required.
Huddle: This is a group chat that integrates with your phone chat network. It does require an iPhone or Android app download. Huddle allows you to keep track of those complex discussions and choreograph lunch meetings by getting ahold of colleagues as they are on the go, all through your established Google+ circles. You can also speak with up to 9 participants at a time.
Sparks: This is for browser time when you just want to catch up on a topic, or get the quick info on a subject. Type in your interest topic in the search window at your Google+ home page then click Sparks to filter to Sparks only results. Google offers up all there is happening on the web concerning that topic within its network. Images, blogs, articles, events, and the like. I use this for researching my Blog topics and on Sunday Morning while enjoying a leisurely breakfast. Also, try out "What do you love": http://www.wdyl.com. This is what Sparks used to look like and is more broad spectrum. I'm not sure if this is to be shelved or still getting developed, but it's useful (although Google is not currently promoting it very much).

Is it something I should involve the company in?

Well it's off to a good start, has some interesting features, and has a long way to go to eclipse Facebook. Keep in mind, though, that with the millions of Google account users adopting and integrating, it's a good idea to get involved and add Google+ to your social networking efforts -- at the minimum with a Google Page for your business.

Bill Edmonson

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Google Tools

Bill Edmonson — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:59:13 +0000

The great thing about marketing on the internet is that we can know when users stumble across our website or search for it directly. This is a fantastic advantage that no other advertising medium can boast about or take advantage of. Internet marketers can focus on efforts to attract users who are actively searching for specific products and services online. This is called Inbound Marketing, and there is a family of tools available that are specifically designed to help internet marketers.

Although everyone knows that Google is the most popular search engine online, those of us that make a living online do not always avail ourselves of all the free online business enhancement "tools" that Google provides. Some of these may not seem like Marketing Tools but even though that may not be their chief function, they are helpful if you use them with your website marketing strategies in mind.

Google's Inbound Marketing Tools:

Google+ & Google Pages
Google Reader
Google Places
Google News
Google Keyword Tool
Google Alerts
Google Docs
Google AdWords

Next I'll start talking about the basic in's and out's of these tools and how they may help you with your website!

We'll start with;

Google+

Stay tuned!

Bill Edmonson

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The Cookie Conspiracy: part two

Bill Edmonson — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:10:04 +0000

In part one, we talked about defining cookies based on their mission in websites. I tried to decriminalize them in reaction to the common misconception that cookies are like little spy devices feeding personal information about you to would-be spammers and terrorists.

We discussed the reality that most cookies are only tracking website traffic trends in order to get an overall idea about what pages are popular on a website and how the average user experiences the website. Cookies in this sense are used to track the tribe movements, not the individual peasants. First party cookies are the most commonly used type of cookie and they don't know your name and credit card number.

Let's continue by identifying the most common categories of cookies, what they are used for and when you might pick them up in your merry website travels.

First Party Cookies

If someone is running Google Analytics or some other traffic analyzation tool on their website, this is what they are using in 99.9% of cases. Google Analytics uses these exclusively.

First-party cookies are cookies that are associated with the host domain. That means that the website you are looking at sends you these upon visiting. These cookies are uniquely assigned to your user profile and can be read only by the host domain that issued it to you.

These types of cookies typically track;

The length of the visit
Whether this is a first or return visit
What pages were visited
What buttons were clicked

Anatomy of a typical Visitor Identification first party cookie issued by a website using Google Analytics;

Cookie guts = [domain that set the cookie] - [a random unique ID number for your computer] - [the time of the initial visit] - [the beginning time of a previous visit] - [the beginning time of the current session]

Third Party Cookies

It's possible that upon visiting a website an advertiser or partner in business with the website owner will give you a cookie. It's likely that they are just tracking the same things that the first party cookie is tracking relative to their needs. For example they may have a banner ad campaign running and they want to see what websites their banner ad is getting people's attention on. For example; an ad running on a website that has fantastic amounts of traffic but only generates 10 clicks on the banner ad is less valuable than a website with relatively less traffic but is generating 50 clicks in the same period of time for that ad campaign.

Persistent vs. Session Cookies

First and third party cookies can be either persistent or session cookies. Session cookies live only in memory and persistant cookies live on your hard drive. Those session cookies no disappear as soon as you end the visiting session. Persistent cookies stay put in your browser's cookie library until they delete themselves based on a preset time hard coded into them or you delete them.

Cookie Warning

If you choose to fill out a form that asks personal questions or if you share personal information include yourself in an unsecured chat room, or give your banking information to an online service that does not have a reputable privacy policy and secure checkout page, you will likely still get a cookie of the same innocuous type but it can now be matched up with real personal information. Basically don't say anything in an unsecured website that you wouldn't say at a cocktail party before you start drinking.

Managing Cookies

Modern browsers have pretty good cookie management these days. You can block certain domains from giving you cookies, you can control how often they are deleted, and you can delete them whenever you want. I recommend you play around a bit with these features. It's fair to warn you though that after deleting your cookies, shopping carts may not recognize you and in some cases you may need to re-register your computer with your banking websites after you've deleted your cookies.

How to use Cookies for Good and Not Evil

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that cookies are great for website owners who need to track traffic trends. That's what Google Analytics is for. Without cookies it's entirely a guessing game when you are trying to design a website that works best for users. Your users are still going to have to make that decision about whether to buy or click all on their own, but it's up to your website to get them to that product or information they seek as quickly and pleasantly as possible.

Bill Edmonson

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The Cookie Conspiracy: part one

Bill Edmonson — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:32:43 +0000

The folks who get paid to write scary stories about online privacy and information rights were at it again today. I was the weirdo eating a sandwich in his car yelling at the radio again during lunch.

Let me explain myself. There was a reporter on NPR today talking about cookies and all the ways that they are used to gather information about you. She didn't go into much detail about how cookies work except to say that they track your activities so that "they" know what your doing. That kind of statement really leaves much to the imagination and can quickly make even the most reserved listener begin to cook up conspiracies. Pun intended. I'll admit I'm a little biased towards the friendly web developer so it's only fair that I back up my statements with actual facts.

So my parking lot tirade has prompted a new blog series on cookies!

What's a cookie?

Microsoft says,

"A cookie is a text string that is included with Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and responses. Cookies are used to maintain state information as you navigate different pages on a Web site or return to the Web site at a later time."

There are first party cookies, third party cookies, and other types I'll get into next time but for the most part when you visit a website that is using cookies, your computer will receive a one that in essence is nothing more than an identifier of your computer. The analytics software the website developer is using keeps track of what gets clicked on, how long each page visit was, how often the visit was repeated etc. and it does that by identifying the cookie on your computer it gave you upon your arrival. That's it. The cookie contains a specific individual little blurb of code that is meaningful only in the sense that it separates this computer from all the others.

Website owners use that information for tracking trends (trending) in order to help make design and content decisions. So for example as visits occur on my website I can see over time what the visitors do on average when they are there. I do not know specifically that Margaret Jones who lives at 1234 Somewhere street in Ekalaka Montana likes patina collectibles, still watches Murder She Wrote, owns her home, just quit smoking, will be out of the house Tuesday night for Bridge Club, has a credit card and here's the number, and she loves cats. I do know however that the Home Page at my website is my most popular location for people to enter the website, the blog is 20% more popular now than it was last month, and that no-one is able to find the link to my t-shirt printing website.

Wikipedia says,

"Cookies are not software. They cannot be programmed, cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer. However, they can be used by spyware to track user's browsing activities – a major privacy concern that prompted European and US law makers to take action. Cookies could also be stolen by hackers to gain access to a victim's web account."

Okay how is it possible that a cookie could give away my web account information? If your computer get’s hacked, the hacker can now change preferences you’ve chosen like a personal Google start page or your Yahoo home page, if they also know your passwords to log on to those services. Now the hacker can change your settings and send nasty chats to your friends, but they probably also have access to your entire computer which is not the fault of the cookie, but more likely your faulty firewall or easy to guess system password.

Do you have passwords to your banking accounts on your computer? Make sure your computer is password protected at the login and if it get’s stolen have those phone numbers somewhere so that you can call the banks etc. Still no-one can drill into your computer through a cookie.

Next in the series I will talk about;

each common type of cookie
how they are generally used
how to manage them
how to use them for your own website

Bill Edmonson

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Welcome to Acronym Land: SEO, SEM, AI, UX, UI

Bill Edmonson — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:29:31 +0000

People such as myself and colleagues are always throwing "SEO, SEM, IA, UX, UI" around like everyone else knows what we mean. Terms like "Trending", "Conversion", and "Taxonomy" get thrown into the pile as well.

It's easy to forget that not everyone knows (or wants to know) what we are talking about. Keep in mind though that if you are spending money on your website, and intend to make money with your website, it is a good idea to be up to speed with the lingo. Below are bare bones definitions to get you through those mystifying meetings.

After reading this article you should be able to get the gist of....

"Once we worked out an IA that reflected expected trending metrics, we were able to more clearly pinpoint conversion funnels which of course didn't effect SEO but it gave our UX staff something to chew on and made us feel better about that new taxonomy."

SEO = "Search Engine Optimization"
It covers a pretty broad range of topics but it is not a term you should envoke as a blanket term meaning "anything that makes my website better". Over "SEO-ing" is a quick way to let everyone know that you are just skimming the surface. In fact the term should only be used in reference to the process of improving how search engines (namely Google and the other biggies) list your website in search results relevant to certain search terms. Having appropriate copy theme and amount, easy to index pages, inbound links to your website from other websites that are relevant and popular and page addresses wth no search query strings in them are all ways to improve SEO. Colors, button sizes, ad verbage, and well thought out shopping carts are not relevant to SEO directly.

SEM = "Search Engine Marketing"
This covers a larger scope than SEO does. SEO is actualy an SEM component. SEM refers to the process of marketing your website for position amongst the search engines. It includes SEO friendly website construction, payperclick campaigns, and any search related process that increases your website's exposure to search engines specifically.

IA = "Information Architecture"
The way you arrange your information and how you organize it is your Information Architecture. So for example, do you have the "contact us" form on the home page, or bury it nine levels deep in the "about us" section? Are you inteterested in teaching people about your organization, or getting them right to the items for sale? When users come to you do they meet the mad scientist right away and then get to see the spaceship, or are they instantly on the moon at first click?

UX = "User Experience"
This is about the way people feel, and how they are impressed or not impressed with the aesthetics and mood of the website. Those opinions are based on how easy or hard your interface is to figure out, what colors and textures you are using, the tone of the content and the general personality of your website. UX is not only interested in pallate and button styles but also navigation and labeling in reference to how they effect the mood and tone of the website.

UI = "User Interface"
How do people interface with your website? Do they know how to get around? Are they clicking on the buttons you want them to click on? Are your forms intuitive? Is the type face legible? Can they move around with ease? How many clicks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of the tootsie pop? UI is a function of UX.

Trending
This is pretty easy to figure out but it's usually used in reference to traffic in the website or traffic on search engines. When certain ad campaigns happen how is traffic effected? As time goes by what pages are becoming less popular? Is the website in general getting longer visits? Is our Newsletter actually increasing website visits? If so, are the visits coming to the shopping area? What's hot on Google right now?

Conversion
Typically a conversion is reference to the magical moment when a website visitor takes some action the site is designed to facilitate. Often that is a purchase but it can also be filling out a form, submitting an opinion, or downloading a brochure. If I go to Gibson Guitar's website and just read the home page then leave, no converson happens. However if I click on the "Dump 2 Grand on a Guitar here" button, a conversion has happened as far as Gibson is concerened. Conversions are also often considered to be any action a user takes that moves them forward in a process. Someone may convert into the shopping cart, but if they do not actually commit to a purchase they are not a purchase conversion; they are a pre checkout conversion. Conversions are often the virtual "cha ching" sound in eCommerce.

Taxonomy
This term gets used in our content management platform quite often. It refers to the style and method by which content is named and therefore organized. A website map is usually the visual manifestation of the taxonomy. Taxonomy may get abused on occasion in situations where buttons and links don't match. Contact Us, Reach Out, Find Us, Let's Connect, Just Ask, might all be referring to the same contact form on the website but are each using a different title and therefore do not represent a cohesive taxonomy. A solid taxonomy is very important in the administration of the website when you may have multiple content authors. Well organized and consistant use of taxonomy fosters good UI snd therefore good UX. :)

Bill Edmonson

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