Studies show that as of October 2011 there were 95.8 million smartphone users in the US alone. Studies also show that more and more people are spending time online on their smart phones rather than their computers.  The trend shows that more people are preferring to use their smart phones for what they once used their computers for. What does this mean? Well as marketers, you need to make sure that you’re connecting with your clients customers in the areas where they are spending their time.

What’s an extremely visual and fun way to do this? Instagram.

For those who may be unfamiliar, Instagram is an app for iPhone users that allows them to take pictures and transform them into instant works of art.  This app features 16 vintage filters for users to chose from, and once finished, the user can then upload their image to any social network.

What the app can do for users doesn’t stop there. With some creativity businesses, brands and marketers can use the app to engage with existing and potential customers. And the best part of all - its totally free.

Through Instagram, brands and marketers can:

1. Create a Unique Industry View

Businesses can uniquely position themselves in their market by using this photo sharing app.  It will shape their position in the market place with an edge.

2. Create a Unique Visual Sense for Themselves

Through the images a business uploads, they will be displaying what makes them unique and they can further flex their creative muscles.  You can display your passion for your product to others

3. Engage Customers with a Story

For as long as cameras have been around, the photos we take are used for the purpose of story telling. Seeing as more and more people are utilizing smart phones and the apps that are available to them, it only seems fitting to go where the people are going.  Companies such as Starbucks and Red Bull do a great job of brand story telling through the app.

Here, you can see how both display visually interesting photos. These brands use their uploaded images to further solidify their identities. It’s definitely a great way to elevate their presence in their respective markets.

4. Capture Exclusive and Interesting Brand Images

Brands can capture insider information for their customers through the photos they take. This will give existing customers a reason to stick around as they are constantly being engaged with their beloved brand.  By providing exclusive brand images you can also entice potential customers to further check out what you’re all about.

Some think that using Instagram for any marketing purposes devalues what the app was intended for. Personally, I love seeing the exclusive images that you just wouldn’t find on any website.  I think it’s a great way to ensure you’re connecting with customers in the areas they are spending their time.  It’s just a little something extra that when done correctly, can add value to your social media marketing.

Thoughts/Comments? Leave them below or Tweet us @brunelloinc!

On page SEO is the process in which you optimize the content on your site through various steps. Proper on page SEO includes the usage of text, images and links.  Here we provide you with 5 simple but effective ways in which you can optimize your on page SEO!

1. Add Title, Keywords and Meta Descriptions.

• Keywords exist in content and internal text links.
• Use Keywords in: Title tags which are short descriptions of what a user can expect to find on a page. Most important keywords should be located to left to right and be within the first 8-10 words of title and of post.
• Meta description should be a 20-25 word elaboration including 1-2 of your keyword phrases.  Here’s a tool to help you come up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html.

2. Build your Social Media Community

• Listen to and acknowledge your audience/community.
• Equip followers with information tailored to your business. Leave out hard selling them on a product or service through social media.
• You’ll come to learn that the ROI of the community is actually extremely valuable. With the right amount of nurturing your community will aid in several parts of the sales cycle: lead generation, post-sale education and support.
• Make sure to utilize a sharebar. Make customizations for your audience so that they have an easy way to share your content via social media.

Don’t miss out on how you can optimize your social media marketing tactics!

3. Internal Linking of Blog Posts

• Internal linking plays an important role in on page SEO.  You can achieve this in two ways:- Linking some keywords within the blog post to other relevant blog posts (Refer to tip number two for an example of how we did this!)- Include links to related articles within a particular keyword theme or phrase in your posts.

4. Create Unique Content

• Make sure content on all your pages is unique. You also want to be sure that the content you create is sharable and that others will instantly want to tweet, share, or link to it. You can ensure content is unique by going through a duplicate content removal process….which brings us to #5…

5.  Remove Duplicate Content

• Remove all duplicate content on your WordPress blog for SEO.  You can download the All in One SEO pack for wordpress here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/.  Duplicate content will be penalized by Google spiders that crawl your site!

By implementing even just one of these points you will better your on page SEO strategy and results!

Facebook:

1. Keep your Facebook Business Page inviting - put time into creating an engaging environment for your fans.

2. Go through apps. Clean out the unused and determine which apps and activities would best supplement your brand. What worked in 2008 may no longer be relevant.

3. Browse through your page as if you were your own customer.  Take down anything you wouldn’t want to see on your favorite companies site.

Twitter:

1. Accurately Fill out Bio and use non-diminutive words such as “expert” or “guru”.

2. Make sure you’ve established a casual atmosphere on your Twitter account.  Delete any tweets that aren’t personable or informal.

3. Tweet links to your landing pages, blog posts and start promoting new tools and apps.

For both Twitter and Facebook, look to see what you have done and find something you haven’t already tried. Switch up the look of your Facebook page by making new custom tabs. Make sure your Twitter bio is still accurate and unfollow any irrelevant Tweeple!

Questions or comments? Leave them here or you can connect with us via twitter @BrunelloInc!

The most effective all to action buttons grab the visitors attention via design and text.  Don’t overly design the button.  Often times colors such as green and orange are used in the design of CTA buttons.  They evoke a certain click now and “go ahead” feel to the button.  Many times when there is a free sign up or free download the button will be green.  When it’s an “Add to Shopping Cart” or “Try it Now” button, you’ll tend to see the usage of orange.  Also its important to use a language the visitor will understand.  The context should be concise and clear on what action the visitor will be taking once they click the button. Here are few examples of some CTA Buttons with simple design and text:

An important part of designing CTA buttons that also goes along with the language of the button, is to consider what you’re offering the visitor. Some good examples of how to phrase CTA buttons are:

Consistency in design is important all around, even with call to action buttons. Make sure you’re always placing the button in the same spot of a page if it appears on more than one page.  When ordering a product on Amazon.com, no matter what the item is, the shopping cart call to action button always appears in the same spot.

Here’s an example:

When designing your call to action buttons for your site it’s good to keep in mind a few things: the language, design, and consistency of your buttons!

1. +/- of Linked Pages: If the number of sites linking to your own site changes, this will factor in determining what sites are indexed by Google. Should the number go down, you can assume the same will happen to your page rank.  Think of sites linking to your own as a vote.  The more votes you get, the better!

2. Google Personalization. ( http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54048) Google watches what you click on in the search results page.  From this, Google is learning what your site preferences are. For example, if you preform several searches, with almost all ending with a click on a search result from ebay, Google learns or assumes that you really like ebay.  This gives ebay a boost in ranks and you’ll start seeing more listings from ebay. This will hold true to the search results of your site.

If you prefer to, you can turn off Google’s personalization feature. Here’s how: http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2410479. This will help in yielding results that aren’t based on personal content.

3. Data Center Accessed: Google uses thousands upon thousands of data centers and the data center you accessed today will probably be different than the one you accessed yesterday.  This is due to load balancing efforts.

4. Localization: Say you happen to be accessing the same data center as someone who lives 4 states away from you, your search results could STILL vary from this persons results due to localization.  This is Google trying to further “personalize” your search results.

And with Google page ranks, and general SEO, you should always keep in mind these two things:

• Frequency of Keywords: If a keyword only appears once on a page, it will receive a low score.
• Number of sites that link to the page: Google determines relevance of a site based on how many web pages are linked to the page in question.

The top three reasons Google loves blogs:

1.  Consistency. Google loves consistency, therefore any blog that content is regularly being curated for is going to be rewarded.  Consistency happens to build trust with people, and with that some trust with Google too.  Blogs offer up to date information for clients and readers. These readers and potential clients are likely to come back should the blog be updated regularly with new information.

2.  Comments.  Comments are valued by Google because they offer a sense of community. In the Best Practices post previously mentioned, we state that negative comments are just as valuable as positive comments as they allow for the owner of the blog to solve a problem.  The ability to problem solve is a crucial skill in any job, even in blogging! Open discussions around your dinner table may be frightful, but in your online community they can help boost Google ranks.

3.  Indexing.  According to studies from Google, more than one trillion unique world wide URLS were indexed alone in 2010 and it just so happens that blogs are among the easier URLS to index.  Crawling is the process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. Also keep in mind that people search online for information that is relative to themselves, and blogs offer this specific/niche information.  So when you tie all these facts in together, blogs have a boosted favor with Google than a static website that may never be updated or only semi-regularly.

So without further adieu, here are the three best blogging practices for beginners:

1. Stay active. You always want to be publishing new content.  New content means new links going in and new links going out.  Blogs give your website the opportunity to be more active. And just a little SEO tip - Google loves blogs because they are active!

2. Leverage Side Bars. In your blog sidebars you can put a twitter feed, poll, blog subscription, or even video. This adds to the dynamic of your blog and further connects potential customers and your readers to your other platforms.

3. Don’t ignore comments! And don’t just let the comments pile up. Just as your readers are giving feedback, you should be responsive as well! When you give readers a say and respond back, you’re helping to give interest to the blog. When someone leaves a comment, comment back on a first name basis. This makes the reader feel more welcomed. Worried about negative comments? Don’t be! Negative comments are a great problem solving tool.

Just like anything else, the more you do it, the more comfortable you become.  This will certainly be true of your blogging efforts. Don’t give up if you don’t immediately see the results you’re looking for.  Just stay active and respond to any feedback and you’ll be a pro in no time!

To do this, you need to understand mobile users. Be aware of the different types of mobile users and how they spend time on their phones.  The majority of smartphone usage takes place at home, however just under that, people use their smartphones most often on the go.  Smartphone usage has become an extension of the desktop experience and if your site continues to lack mobile capabilities, you will surely fall behind.

This graph illustrates the internet usage between smartphone and desktop users. As you can see, daily online sessions on smartphones isn’t very far behind that of desktops.

Studies show:

• 81% of smartphone users access the internet on their mobile devices
• 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent
  • Furthermore smartphone users in particular are the local information seekers who take action after looking up local content.
• In Japan, 45% of smartphone users have made a purchase on their phone versus the 29% of US smartphone users.
  • This illustrates that in Japan, they are very active smartphone users and they also represent a window in to the future of smartphone use in other countries.

And yet with these numbers, of which are continually on the rise, upwards of 80% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile optimized website.  Therein lies the reason that YOUR site should be mobile friendly.  You will stand out in the market and be ahead of the competition.

Studies also show the breakdown of the top reasons for building mobile ready sites:

• Get New customers (33%)
• Increase Branding Presence (17%)
• Increase Traffic to mobile Website (12%)
• Stimulate users during the pre-purchase and research phase (37%)
• Increase traffic on stationary website. (43%)

As customers regularly use their phones to find and act on information, you want to be found via mobile search. Being mobile will allow you to take advantage of mobile specific characteristics such as location awareness other functionalities such as touch screen usage. Think about how mobile can change your business and build campaigns around reaching new customers.

Cyber Monday is a relatively new concept and may be unknown to the average consumer and those outside of the marketing world. The term “Cyber Monday” was invented by Shop.org and was first used during the 2005 holiday season.   The term was coined after seeing a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004.  This increase in sales is believed to be the result of the millions of Americans who returned to work that Monday to faster internet connections, being able to make their online purchases.

Seeing this huge spike in ecommerce, marketers took advantage of what happened in 2004 and created a buzz for online shopping and what would become Cyber Monday in 2005. Since then, online retailers have been offering all kinds of special deals, many of which are available only for the Monday following Black Friday.

The term “Cyber Monday” and what happens on this day, has become so popular that even online retailers in countries such as Canada, the UK, Portugal and Germany use this marketing term and participate in special deals.

So if you missed out on that big screen TV on Black Friday, there’s always Monday!

First let’s start with a little Black Friday background history:
•    As early as the 19th century Thanksgiving has been marked as the start of the Holiday Shopping season. Department stores used this notion to market themselves with the first waves of Christmas advertisements, starting with the most notable; The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which has been running since 1924. The parade enticed people to shop once it was over.
•    In the late 1960’s, Newspapers officially appropriated the phrase “Black Friday” using it to describe the rush of crowds at stores and the ink by pens used to track sales.
•    Since then, many people see Black Friday as the day retailers show a profit for the first time in a given year and by 1990 Black Friday became a nationwide unofficial retail holiday

While these points are true, it wasn’t until 2002 that Black Friday was statistically shown to be the one of the biggest shopping day of the year.  Up until that point it would rarely reach the top 5. So how does that add up?

With more and more people exploring the possibilities of the internet, online retailers began to capitalize on the people who would rather stay at home the day after Thanksgiving by giving them ways to still get at deals and bargains.Fast forward to almost a decade later and Black Friday, and more specifically, retailers, should give thanks to the web and what it has allowed them to do. Thanks should be given not for the additional profits it has allowed retailers to gain, but rather for giving the consumer the ability to shop in the comfort of their home, leaving out the competition with large crowds, possible product shortages, and still enjoy in achieving that great sale.

That is the best customer service anyone could ask for.

We hope everyone has a happy and joyful Holiday Season!

- From the Team at Brunello Creative.