Fresh Tilled Soil Blog

Social Analyzer: What Social Media Websites Are Your Visitors Using?

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:58:25 CDT

Social Analyzer (www.social-analyzer.com) is a web marketers go-to tool, answering the age old question every website owner wants to know: Of the total amount of online traffic my website receives, what types of individuals are represented among this traffic? Social Analyzer (S.A.) allows additional insight into the types of visitors your website obtains, based on pre-existing websites your visitors have already viewed. All you have to do is sign-up for an account by entering your email, domain, and established password and your done... badda-bing, badda-boom... AND do you know what the best part is? It’s Free. Once you set-up your free account you will be able to choose from a variety of social media sites you would like to monitor, or even add additional sites to your own personalized list. After choosing all applicable social media sites, you will then be given a code (much like that of Google Analytics) that can be installed directly on all webpages of your site. The presence of this code, will in-turn give you the ability to monitor which social media sites your website visitors have viewed. Simply log into your own personal dashboard, that displays your very own "easy to read and follow" website visitor statistics. So, What’s the overall benefit of Social Analyzer, you might ask? It gives web marketers the tools to gain additional insight into what types of individuals are viewing their website. Allowing you to access, and possibly re-evaluate, your current social media campaign strengths and weaknesses, in order to gain additional business, leads and increase your overall profit through social media marketing. To sign up for your free account and/or learn more about Social Analyzer, please visit the following link: Social Media Analyzer Tool

Three Simple Business Lessons

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:09:24 CDT

Existing Clients Rule: Your existing clients are by far the best source of new business and revenue. The amount of time it takes to attract and close a new client is huge in comparison with the immediate opportunities existing clients bring to you. All you have to do is listen and engage them in regular conversations. They really want to hear from you. They expect you to call them and discuss new ideas and potential projects. Planning Is a Mental Exercise not Real Life: There is no amount of planning that can prepare you for the future. Plans are nothing more than just very well thought out estimates of the future. A good guess at the most. Regardless, planning is essential to getting your head in the game. Just talking through a budget or project plan is very helpful for the team to get on the same page. We recommend planning but don't get distracted by it and be prepared to change and adapt when things don't go the way you expected. It's The People Stupid: If you are running a business or managing a team you need to spend at least 30% of your time talking, teaching, coaching and supporting your people. Everybody, no matter how smart or self-motivated, needs help and support from the people around them. Get up off your butt and walk around the office. If you have lots of remote workers get on the phone and fly them in from time to time. It's worth it. Each moment invested in your team will pay you back ten fold.

Study Finds Social Marketing Has a Direct Return on Investment

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:32:44 CDT

The smart folks at WetPaint,partnering with Charlene Li, have completed an amazing study on the benefits of social marketing. Their findings are confirmation that marketing investments in social marketing best practices (blogs, twitter, customer rankings, etc.) return a significant financial reward for the companies that participate. From the report, "A surprising conclusion: While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful."

How to Turn Your Site into a Lead Generating Machine

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:46:16 CDT

Last week I delivered a webinar on making your site into a serious lead generating channel. The webinar was hosted by Glance Networks and the full presentation and audio can be found here. We picked several websites from the audience ahead of the presentation and did a detailed critique of the design and search marketing elements of each. I had a really good time figuring out how each site could be improved without spenind a fortune.

The Power of Social Media and its Negative Impact on United Airlines

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:33:36 CDT

Today it seems like many of us are using some form of social media to share our personal lives with friends/family and/or help spread the word about our growing business. Dave Carroll is one of the many individuals using social media and the web to share is thoughts, feelings and life experiences. However, this story isn’t a positive reflection of Dave’s experience, but rather a very public bashing of the unsatisfactory service he (and his guitar) had on United Airlines. Dave Carroll has used the social media video website YouTube.com as a tool to distribute his thoughts about United Airlines. Check out his video on YouTube: United Breaks Guitars. It is a very funny video explaining how United handles the situation and wouldn’t take responsibility for Dave’s broken guitar, even after Dave witnessed baggage handlers tossing his guitar around. The video is even ranking on the first page of Google, position #4 for the keyword “United Airlines.” What does this mean for businesses? It means you have to take care of your customers now more than ever, especially if you want to remain in the customers good graces. Businesses are no longer able to take advantage of their customers, because customers are now fighting back more publicly than before. This public exposure helps keep businesses honest.

On Winning and Losing

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:19:09 CDT

"You'll come to see that a man learns nothing from winning. The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom. Not least of which is, uh... how much more enjoyable it is to win. It's inevitable to lose now and again. The trick is not to make a habit of it." - Albert Finney in The Good Year

An Interactive Webinar: Turn Your Website Into A Lead-Generating Machine!

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:01:50 CDT

We've teamed up with the folks at Glance for a webinar event entitled "Turn Your Website Into A Lead-Generating Machine!" The webinar is this week Thursday, July 16, 2009, 1pm ET (10am PT). I will present web design principles that work, techniques to maximize sales, and case studies that show the wisdom in action. We'll also be analyzing a handful of listener's websites that were submitted to us for review last week. You can register here.

Sales and Marketing: Get involved in Design!

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:49:57 CDT

I'd like to appeal to marketing and sales people to be more involved in their website design and development. There is no comparison to learning a new skill than actually doing it yourself. No amount of reading or listening can compare to the real thing. This is also fundamentally true of building and managing websites. The more you understand about the creation of the site the more you understand about the business it serves. If you're sitting on the sidelines or throwing ideas over the fence don't expect to get good results. Sales people need to be at the design meetings from the very beginning. Don't leave the design and development of the website to the desk jockeys that know nothing about the front lines. If you're relying on your website to generate leads and interest in your product or service you owe it to yourself to be involved. Deeply involved. You can't just leave the work to others and expect the end product to meet your needs. Working closely with your web design team will give you the opportunity to move the needle in the direction you want it to go. Share your ideas and you can make them into reality instead of just handing them off to somebody and hoping that something will happen.

How To Deal With Floating Elements

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:25:30 CDT

I came across this article earlier today about dealing with floating elements in CSS. I asked around the studio and it seems we have some different approaches. Alex is a big fan of Tip #3, since it renders correctly in the WYSIWYG view of Dreamweaver, which allows me to prototype faster. Apparently Kevin and Kristine use the clearfix method, which uses less divs. I'm wondering if there are other opinions or suggestions out there?

Why Everyone Needs A Digital Media Strategy

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:03:08 CDT

Whether you are selling umbrellas out of your home or medical equipment to every major hospital in the country, the failure of some businesses and the success of others relates directly to a company’s ability to adapt to a web-based world. It’s not presumptive to suggest that without a comprehensive digital strategy all businesses face an uphill battle. Harnessing the advantages of this tech tidal wave while understanding why and how it is superior to the way your business used to function, could be difference between bankruptcy and booming business. Traditionally, companies followed a systematic, one-dimensional approach to establish a marketing campaign. This has been referred to by some authors as directional innovation and refers to the incremental changes to an existing strategy. Put simply, until the web came along ad agencies followed a typical path to delivering a strategy. First they developed a creative strategy to brand and position a company and then they located a media outlet with which to distribute the campaign. In the age of the web this approach is fundamentally backwards. The old approach assumes to many things. It assumes that the creative approach will work and that their choice of media channels will succeed. There are too many variables at play that can ultimately be detrimental to the paying client. What’s really scary is that this approach gives the client no other option than to trust in, and rely on, several intermediary agencies and proxy companies to promote their business and measure the outcome. In the old world of advertising direct relationships between the client and the media channels are non-existent. Marketing companies develop relationships with public media outlets, and traditionally receive a cut of the funds a client pays to advertise their business. In this model, businesses must trust that the media source chosen by a marketing company is the best possible way to publicize their services or product. The business man is essentially at the mercy of the marketing man, since he selects the media source that will offer the largest profit cut, instead of the source that might best benefit the client’s sales objective. These relationships established between marketing firms and media outlets complicate this business model, and can ultimately compromise the client’s best interest. The media sources in this traditional methodology are strictly one-way outlets—print and television ads, billboards, and the like. These forms of media don’t reveal whether a marketing technique is actually effective or just a waste of company cash. Though the business can measure the number of sales that occurred when the campaign was launched, there is no way to confirm that one necessarily caused the other. One-way media outlets can estimate the degree of exposure a particular campaign receives, but can’t measure how much of it actually influenced consumer sales. This lack of data lets marketing and advertising agencies evade responsibility for failed campaigns. What’s worse, the client’s financial loss is still always the marketing and advertising agency’s gain. Today, the emergence of digital media companies offers clients recourse; new technology has disrupted the traditionally linear relationship between the client, marketing agency, advertising firm, and media outlet. Two-way media has changed the face of consumer marketing, contributing new resources that have restructured the balance of power between each of the traditional players. As a result, the current business model is now a dynamic, overlapping web with digital media rapidly coalescing at its core. To put it simply, the internet has had a serious impact on how companies approach marketing today. In an age where the web is more highly trafficked than any non-virtual location, older media sources such as print, billboards, and even television ads are becoming increasingly obsolete. We turn to the internet for shopping, research, business and socializing; it’s no great surprise that advertising in this arena will achieve the most exposure for your business. Beyond the sheer volume of the consumer audience that exists on the web, digital media companies have the technology and know-how to provide clients with extremely valuable information about how effectively your campaign has attracted consumers, who these consumers are, and if this attention has directly resulted in an increase in sales. Digital media companies not only impart this invaluable consumer data to businesses, but are also held accountable for the measurable outcome of their services on product sales and consumer response. The services and skills of individuals working in digital media are in increasingly high demand; marketing agencies are struggling to maintain clients as digital media companies are becoming full-service agencies, streamlining the traditional marketing process to a one-stop shop for clients. Companies still relying on the traditional marketing process cannot sustain the pace established by competitors working under the digitalized system, who are developing closer relationships with other companies and online media sources, resulting in increased efficiency in terms of the speed of each transaction and the overall market outcome. It’s been projected that by 2010, company expenditures on 2-way media sources will be at an all time high, (while one-way media will experience serious budget cuts,) with digital media leading the way at a one hundred percent increase in funding. Within the past few years, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In have become a cultural phenomenon; online networks have provided a wealth of information to companies regarding consumer preferences and feedback. Essentially, the opportunity for businesses to interact so closely with consumers has provided a window for companies to find out what consumers want and then give it to them. Social networking sites give consumers an interactive forum to discuss products and voice opinions, stimulating a self sustaining form of product promotion on a whole new scale. Studies have revealed that product referral and reliability is by far more important to consumers than advertising appeal; social networking has fostered a virtual environment that has given consumers a locale to discuss likes and dislikes. For companies, this chatter is all good, (even a portion of the consumer dialogue is negative,) because it continually provides them with a wealth of knowledge regarding how to improve products to encourage consumer brand loyalty and sustained enterprise. Opposed to the old model wherein an advertising agency devises a slogan, digital media companies can create customize product branding that is rooted in analytic data gathered from each specific client; they collect information that ensures that the placement and branding of each product is aligned with a distinct target audience. The popularity of certain brandings with specific consumers as well as the desirability of certain products with a particular audience—all of this information, gathered and interpreted via media gurus, is what has located digital media at the core of current and future business models. An entire new spectrum of improvement is at work as analytics are attained and marketing techniques are concurrently revised; this allows companies to continue to hone in on precisely the best way to maximize product exposure and sales.

The perfect way to use Twitter to launch a campaign

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:50:58 CDT

This is an example of how to build and manage the perfect digital campaign. Our friends at Campaign Monitor have created a website advocating for Microsoft to fix Outlook. Here is the context of their site... Microsoft have confirmed they plan on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position, no background images and lots more. Want proof? Here’s the same email in Outlook 2000 & 2010. Outlook 2010 is still in beta and Microsoft wants your feedback. It’s time to rally together and encourage Microsoft to embrace web standards before it’s too late. Let’s use Twitter to send a clear message to Microsoft. Join 8,863 others asking Microsoft to improve standards support and make sure you include fixoutlook.org in your tweet. We’ll pull together every tweet that includes the link here to give Microsoft a unified message from the community The site was launched this morning and within a few hours had close to 9,000 tweets. Initially they only used their email distribution list and Twitter. Soon after they hit 6,000 tweet they attracted enough attention to be mentioned on TechCrunch. The reason this campaign works so well for Campaign Monitor is that it uses a bigger social issue to build empathy and action to bring attention to its own services. This is a smart way to push an agenda without doing heavy sales.

Creating an Effective Keyword List is an Essential SEO Tool

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:14:57 CDT

At the start of any SEO campaign we ask our clients to send us a list of keywords they would like to target throughout the campaign and hopefully rank well for in search engine results. We then review these outlined keywords, adding additional keywords to the mix so that we can have a variety of interrelated terms to use. Keyword research is a very important task and it’s crucial to spend the time developing a strong keyword list. There is one common mistake that most individuals make when they do keyword research and that’s creating a keyword list that is far too short. Spending the time developing an extensive keyword list will help you open up the search engine ranking doors and expose you to areas that your competition may not be utilizing and/or have realized. Of course this post isn’t meant to explain every detail of keyword research, but I would love to outline the basic steps to get you started. A good place to start is always with the Google Keyword Tool. This tool will help you establish a strong base; offering suggestions of similarly related keywords to use. Many individuals may only input one keyword and call it a day, but that’s not enough. Let me build upon the last example I used in my previous post entitled, “The Power of A Long Tail Keyword Strategy.” If you are a small rental car company in Boston you may only search for the term “rental car,” but there is a problem with this approach. First, if you are using only one keyword or one keyword combination the keyword you are researching may be far too competitive for your website (Think how hard it would be to compete using the keyword, “car rental” with Hertz, Enterprise and/or Avis). Secondly, you are limiting the amount of possible directions you could be building using specific, less competitive keywords. There is a better way to conduct keyword research in terms of SEO. First, do a little brainstorming and figure out a variety of similar inter-related keywords that are less competitive, such as vehicle rentals, vehicle rental, rent a vehicle, cars for rent. Then focus specifically on your industry and geographic location to develop a set of very specific keywords: boston rental vehicles, boston car rental, boston vehicle rental, boston car for rent and so on. Find synonyms of the words you are trying to target, to develop a broad range of keywords. Use the Google keyword tool to find additional keyword recommendations. Spy of your competitors by viewing their title and description tags to see what keywords they are ranking well for. Add keywords that are specific to particular services/products you provide because customers may be searching for these exact terms. Remember that it’s very important to develop a broad keyword list, but remember it should also be focused. Do not choose keywords that are not relevant to your site. Overtime you will be able to re-evaluate your keyword list and access what terms you want to continue to use and what additional terms you would like to add to the list.

The Power of a Long Tail Keyword Strategy

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:32:39 CDT

It’s always a great idea to formulate a list and/or a variety of keywords you want to rank well for in organic search. Remember to generate keywords that are relevant to the content on your site. Remember that these keywords will eventually be the driving force behind your sites ability to index organically well for particular terms, so take your time with this process. Although you may want to optimize for one particular keyword/term, the online market may already be saturated with that term. This is when it’s appropriate to develop a long tail keyword strategy. In its simplest form a long tail keyword strategy includes keywords that are still specific to your business, but longer in length. Individuals using these terms within their search are usually already aware of what they are looking for. The benefit to this is that long tail keywords/terms are usually easier to rank well for and individuals searching for these terms are more likely to be converted to buyers/leads. Let’s say you are a small rental car company in Boston. (Yes, a sexy topic/business I know... but for this example it works perfectly). Of course you want to go after the keywords, “rental cars” “car rental” but this market is already saturated with the well known car rental companies such as Avis, Enterprise and Hertz. Try getting past these big dogs in Google search results. So it’s essential that you devise a strategy of long tail keywords. You will want to create a combination of longer, more specific and geographically targeted terms, which could include “affordable car rental,” affordable car rental boston,” “car rental agency,” “car rental deal” and a variety of other combinations. These terms will give you more opportunity to rank well in search engines and help build -up your online organic search presence.

Using Your Company Blog to Attract More Leads

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:58:22 CDT

While blogging has become an extremely popular trend, in both the personal and business community, many still don’t realize the importance of having a company blog. Company blogs can attract thousands of viewers through search engines and social media websites and lead them back to your main company website. Blogs are also a great way to build the brand of your organization. One of the most beneficial reasons for starting a company blog is that it can alert potential clients of new products that you may be offering, and, can be an extremely useful tool in generating leads for your organization. Doing this however, is easier said than done, so here a few tips on how to use your company blog to effectively generate leads. Think Quality Not Quantity: While it seems to make sense that the more content you publish on your blog will generate more leads, the opposite seems to be true. Too much content will overwhelm your viewers, and will end up deterring them from following through. The most important thing about a blog is to generate readers, so focus on well-written, interesting posts that keep the reader in mind. More readers mean more potential leads, so by focusing on quality, rather than quantity, you will see an increase of leads in no time. Entice Readers with Persuasive Offers: Once you have gained a following of readers, it is important to use offers to entice people with something in exchange for their contact information. This is so that viewers can get to know your organization better, and in time, become a potential lead. Instead of just having one offer to entice readers, it is recommended that you tie your offer to the content of a specific blog post. Grab the Viewer’s Attention: After you’ve come up with a smart idea for an offer, the final “step” is to inform the viewers about the offer through a Call to Action. This is what the reader will physically click on to receive the offer, and acts as a substitute sales pitch. It’s extremely important that this link is able to grab viewer’s attentions, so feel free to play around with sizes, fonts and colors to create the most visually attractive link. It’s also important to think about where the link will go on your blog, so make sure to experiment with different placements. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll be on your way to gaining more leads in no time. Have fun!

Incorporating Multimedia into your Small Business SEO Strategy

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:02:40 CDT

It’s becoming increasingly important, from a search engine optimization (SEO) stand-point, to create a wide variety of dynamic content on the web. An effective strategy used to be based solely on text-based results, but this is no longer the case. Although it is still important to create good quality, text-based content there are a variety of other platforms that can be utilized to help your organization rank well within the search engines. Google has changed the name of the game (among many other search engines) and has started incorporating a variety of other platforms into search results. This allows for a more “blended” type of search. It is now estimated that roughly 1 in 4 Google search results incorporates this type of “blended” search result. This means it’s time to re-evaluate current SEO strategies and create not only quality text but additional video, images and news content. Now that search results are moving on the direction of a “blended” approach there is less real estate within the first page of Google for text-based content. This means its time to start creating your YouTube and Flickr profiles, tagging these videos and images with a good quality title, description and set of keywords. These videos and images are also visually appealing with will increase the likelihood that individuals click on your link. It’s important to create a wide variety of content (text, video and image based) on the web. How do we use this content to not only drive traffic to our site, but attract and establish credible leads/customers? Adding links from the YouTube videos and Flickr images to your website, or to a useful blog post will definitely be beneficial. It’s really about connecting your audience to your brand/business through a variety of platforms and engaging these customers in a creative/useful way.

Mastering CSS Hierarchies

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:26:01 CDT

When designing on the web, we often tend to write so many style rules in CSS for div tags that sometimes conflicts arise. Here's a great tutorial that one of our senior designers, Kristine, found on how CSS weights style elements based on the hierarchy of the way it's written and relationship to tags and containers: http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/advanced_conflict.htm Happy reading... and debugging!

Murdoch still doesn't get how media is changing

Thu, 07 May 2009 06:49:09 CDT

The Guardian reports that Rupert Murdoch is planning the release of an ebook reader. Here's his comment when asked about the Kindle... "I can assure you, we will not be sending our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle," he said. "We will control the prices for our content, and we will control the relationship with our customers." Control? Seriously? Doesn't he read his own newspapers? Big corporations are so worried about losing control over their brands and content. They try to control the delivery and interaction while at the very same time consumers are becoming more invested in brands that reward participation. Murdoch says, "The current days of the internet will soon be over" and yet he's still making the same noises the dying newspaper industry has been making for years. Their conventional wisdom is to create a single blockbuster story and distribute it to millions of people. The web no longer works like that. We're all participating in millions of separate and unique conversations that are not blockbusters but rather a series micro-exchanges. Now that's a story worth writing about. Some of my best friends are newspaper men/women but if they continue to sing this tune they are all headed the way of the Dodo.

Creating Quality Content for Your Business

Tue, 05 May 2009 14:08:24 CDT

It’s always important to generate and create strong quality content. Distributing distinct and thoughtful content is pivotal in increasing the likelihood that you will be found online. Even with that said, many businesses drop the ball when it comes to the content creation game. For many, creating content is an overwhelming process and just another tedious task to complete (among many others). Some people even cringe at the thought of someone else reading their writing. It’s important to not think this way. Now don’t be fooled, producing dynamic and entertaining content for your audience is challenging, but the hard work is definitely worth the reward. When it comes to “winning” the SEO game it’s really all about content, content, content. The more distributed content you have the more likely you will be found online. There are some pretty useful strategies that can help you generate strong content in less time and effort, by taking what you already do (probably on a daily basis) and turning it into content. Think “Blog Post”: Anytime someone asks you a question tell them you will answer them in written format. This way you not only answer their question, but then have the ability to turn this answer into a blog post. Written format gives you the time to develop a thoughtful answer. Put your Thoughts on Paper: Anytime you develop a presentation or have an idea write it down. This not only helps organize your thoughts, but also allows you to use these ideas to create blog posts that are based on a particular topic you are researching. Interview others in your Field: Take the time to get to know other individuals in your field and ask them relevant questions you would love answers to. You can then post these answers on a public platform for others to review. It’s a win-win situation for not only you, but other individuals reading your post. Share what you Learn: I am constantly learning new strategies and techniques in the field of SEO/SEM. I’m always blogging about what I have learned and trying to help others understand. Remember that the best advise is always free and it’s not only beneficial to others but yourself. It’s a great way to document what you have learned and you can even pull from it when you need to. It’s about combining processes, so that you are able to create relevant and strong content in much less time and effort.

Using Custom Templates in Wordpress

Fri, 01 May 2009 16:10:50 CDT

Recently, we were configuring a site with both a Blog as well as Pages with the content being managed through Wordpress. The odd thing is there didn't seem to be clear documentation in Wordpress about how to save a template (for ex: page.php or index.php) and then hook it up simply into Wordpress to be able to tie a Page to the new template. Then I stumbled across this post: http://www.binarymoon.co.uk/2007/06/wordpress-tips-and-tricks-custom-templates/ Looks like it's as easy as saving an existing template like page.php as a new template (ex: custom.php). Then you would open custom.php and paste the following PHP tag at the top of the page: <?php /* Template Name: Name of template here */ ?> Lastly, you go into Wordpress, click Pages, select the page you want to manage and your new template should now appear as an option to choose.

How to Easily Monitor Your Online Reputation

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:52:12 CDT

There are some great tools you can use to monitor your online reputation. Online reputation management is an effective way to see what information is out there in cyber-land about you/your company. The first tool to use is Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts). All you have to do is type in the keyword (in this case your name/company name) you want to monitor, select the "comprehensive" list feature, choose how often you want to get email updates AND enter your email address. Search results will be emailed directly to you... very easy to use and the best part is it’s free. It’s also important to check what people are saying about you/your company in the mini-blogosphere, such as Twitter. Check out Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/). Type in the keyword(s) you want to search for and this Twitter Search will show all “posts” that relate to that particular keyword. The best way to manage your online reputation is to be proactive and create original, quality content yourself (refer to my blog post, “Build a Strong Online Presence with Social Media in 2009”). This will help you build a strong, positive image... and will definitely make monitoring your online reputation a whole lot easier.

Cannibalizing your own business

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:50:20 CDT

If your business is designing logos and websites you're in for a shock. Dozens of sites like CrowdSpring and 99Designs are about to eat your lunch. That means us too. Companies like ours make a good deal of our revenue from providing unique and thoughtful design. If online crowd sourced sites can offer the same thing for less then there is bound to be a problem for anyone offering premium design services. Good design is being commoditized and democratized, which is great for consumers but not so great for design companies. That's the bad news. The good news is that design is only a fraction of the real value of a good designer. Great design is a strategic relationship. Crowd sourced designers don't have the opportunity to really get to know the client's business. If you're sitting in Argentina or Croatia designing logo for a Boston based startup you'll find it really hard to understand their real positioning. In an attempt to understanding the difference between crowd sourcing and premium design services we decided to put them to the test. We offered a prize to the best logo design for our own company. Of the 153 designs submitted we chose 2. Those two designs met our criteria and answered the brief fairly well but still failed to meet our expectations. Our conclusion is that there seems to be a trade off between quality and quantity when using a crowd sourced service. You can get more designs but they tend to be low quality. That's not to say we might not use them to help generate fresh ideas but we'd be very cautious not to hitch our hopes to the output.

Build a Strong Online Presence with Social Media in 2009

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:21:49 CDT

It’s becoming increasingly important to build a strong online presence, whether you are an individual or an organization. This is essentially your online “image” and it’s important to maintain a positive one. Have you ever Googled your name to see what comes up in the search results? You might want to, because if you haven’t you may be in for a surprise... could there be late night party pics you don’t want your boss to see? a report or website that slanders your company name? Possibly... so go and Google your own name and/or company name right now... (I’ll wait). Ok, now that you Googled your name/company name what comes up? if anything. Hopefully if there are in fact a variety of search results that do appear in correspondence with your name/keyword they are all good. If not, don’t panic this post will help you address these issues too. Now that you know where your name/company name stands, in relation to the all mighty and powerful Google you can get started. It’s important to create informational pages about yourself or your company that will rank well in Google. For all you marketers out there, think of this as brand management. The first results page on google is essentially your brand image and/or first impression. I’ve listed some great websites that generally rank very well in Google and will help you build a strong, positive online presence... and in the case (hopefully not) that there are negative pages about you or your company the quality pages you create will hopefully push the negative pages down the ranking. Below are websites that, if optimized correctly, rank very well in Google and can help you build a strong “identity”... Facebook: This is a great website, where you can create either a page for yourself or your company. It’s a great way to connect with individuals with the same interests and old friends. Flickr: This is a photo-sharing website and is a great way to share images of your organization, employees or even yourself and your life. It’s a great way to control what information/images individuals see. Make sure you optimize your images and your account name with relevant titles & tags that relate to the keyword your are trying to rank well for in Google. LinkedIn: This is a professional networking website. It allows you to upload useful information about your education, work experience and make connections with individuals in your industry. You can even create company profiles in LinkedIn, which is another added benefit. Myspace: This is a social networking website for everyone. The creation of a webpage on this site will allow you or your company to manage content, information and create networks of friends who share in common interests. Scribd: This is an online book, presentation and document sharing website. You can easily upload original documents of your own. Remember to optimize your document and add your name/company name to your profile and documents so Google indexes these terms. Twitter: This is a social blogging website, allowing users to create real-time updates. You can follow individuals that you like and have friends that can follow you. Create an account for yourself or your company and optimize it around keywords that you are trying to rank well for in Google. Now it’s time to create these pages. Remember it can take time for Google to index these sites. Some sites index more frequently than others. Scribd and Twitter accounts are typically indexed by Google in a matter of days and other may take longer. Have fun building and maintaining your strong online presence for 2009!!!

Keeping Community Fresh

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:16:54 CDT

Tons of companies and websites are leveraging social media such as Twitter Accounts and Facebook Groups to add community to their brand without spending a fortune replicating all the technology on their own sites. As many know, at this point chances are you aren\'t the destination so you have to join conversations about your industry where they\'re already occuring on the web. My question to our readers out there - what are the ways that you keep your groups, communities and broadcasts fresh? Announce events in real life? Start conversations and let them grow on their own? Introduce members to one another? You tell us!

How leapfrogging keeps you on your toes

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:01:18 CDT

Growing up in South Africa in the 80's was an exciting time for political change but behind the global media frenzy was a technological revolution that allowed South Africa to leapfrog ahead of many western nations, including the US. Because SA never had an analog cell phone network or cable TV infrastructure we were able to leapfrog developed countries that had invested billions into analog cell phone and cable networks. As a SA consumer that meant that by 1998 we were already doing secure 2G cell phone banking while US consumers were still dropping calls. Now the NYT reports the same is happening in the auto industry in China. Having never really been a player in the international auto market they can leapfrog the rest of the world and become the leaders in electric and hybrid car production. This will be a game changing experience for all car makers around the world and could have a dramatic effect on the pollutants produced by gas-driven cars. Leapfrogging is a powerful market force that affects highly capitalized industries. If you are an investor or entrepreneur in a highly capitalized industry make sure you build a long term plan of new tech cannibalization into your strategy, or someone might do it for you. Note: Be cautious not to buy into the power plant argument that this article presents. The article suggests that the reduction in car emissions will do little to offset the increase in coal power plant emissions but fails to mention that China intends to spend $50 billion to build 32 nuclear plants by 2020. Some analysts say the country will build 300 more by the middle of the century. That's not much less than the generating power of all the nuclear plants in the world today.

How Social Media makes me smarter

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:45:22 CDT

Apparently social media is making us less sociable and stupid. In several books, articles and posts I have read recently there is a lot of concern about how social media allows us to be lazy social beings and shuts us off from the 'real world'. Because we have online access to a multitude of strangers we now don't need to connect to our real-life friends in real-world situations. And if that wasn't bad enough we are apparently reading less books so we're also getting dumber. According to the authors we're headed for a world where we have no privacy, no friends and a mental state equivalent to a chocolate sundae. These opinions, and they are opinions, couldn't be further from the truth. They are nothing more than fear based reactions to new technology and ideas. Here's why you should be cautious of these doom and gloom scenarios: Reading fewer books does not equal a lower intelligence or performance. There is no correlation between the number of book read and being smart. What the web offers is the opportunity to access written information far quicker and more efficiently than books alone could. The point is not how many books we read but how much information we have access to. Having 100 books in my bookcase is less useful to my kids than having a couple of laptops with access to the web. My 11 year old can quickly look up performances of Macbeth so he can practice for the lead in the upcoming school play while my 6 yr old searches dinosaur images for the best one to reference while building his latest play-doe sculpture. My own battle with dyslexia as a kid drove me away from reading but that still didn't stop me from passing the Mensa exam after I escaped from the structure of the classroom. Having immediate and free access to information and the people that create that information makes me smarter. Mobile technology makes that even faster so inherently makes my brain better equipped to get the information I need. Access to book reviews helps me pick the best books to read and which to avoid. That saves me having to read popular crap and focus in on what's really going to help me smarter. Social connections with friends on Facebook and Twitter doesn't make me less social, it makes me me more social. Just because the medium or channel is different doesn't make it less social. Humans are wired to be social. In a recent article by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker, Gawande points to several studies that prove we are fundamentally attracted to situations which connect us to other people. Solitary confinement or even self-imposed "cocooning" is a detrimental to your brain as physical brain trauma. Social media allows us to make connections, however small, to remind ourselves we're part of a much bigger society. We can solve bigger problems by connections even when they are only "tweets" or comments on a blog. These micro-social engagements also lead to more old fashioned socializing. Through Twitter I have discovered several local web innovation events that I'll be attending in the company of other real people. I've also been connected to dozens of new clients and business partners. Twitter now accounts for most of the new traffic to our website. Connections make us smarter. Privacy is the biggest distraction ever concocted by web critics. If two thirds of our brain is dedicated to making social connections to other humans then why is there such a concern with privacy? Who are we trying to protect? Breaking down barriers to information helps us make smarter. We make better decisions when we know more about the people we meet. Googling a potential client or a new friend helps me get a deeper understanding of their backgrounds and their personalities. I don't buy the argument that a lack of privacy endangers our children either. There have been far more crimes against children before the web, the only difference is that now we can see what what's been going on behind closed doors. If you teach your children to "do their homework" and Google their friends and new connections they'll learn to make better decisions. Hiding away behind the privacy argument is ostrich mentality. This is not to say you shouldn't use parental controls to avoid your 6 yr old stumbling on a porn site. That's a no brainer but we also need to stop pretending that this is something that we can control. The privacy horse bolted a long time ago and our job is to understand how to make it a positive force. Not avoiding the truth but rather focusing that energy of abundant information makes us the smart ones. Your brain wouldn't have evolved it's huge socializing frontal cortex if connecting to other human beings wasn't a primary driver of successful evolution. Connecting is what we do. The great social experiment is not in the details of how we connect but rather that we are connecting more than we have ever before. Connections make us smarter. At a neurological level and at an ecological level. I really don't need to have another scientific study to know that connecting to more people is better. It's written in my genes and my anatomy. I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for the fundamental evolutionary drive to connect. My entire existence is about socializing with or without the web. I'm just very fortunate that I live in a time when connecting is so much faster and easier. I'm smarter because of the social web and I look forward to getting smarter.

Shareholder Profits is Not a Strategy

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:36:43 CDT

The other day while on the treadmill at the gym near our office, they were dissecting the financial crisis yet again and getting famous business personalities to offer up their take on this big mess. The most interesting and enlightening opinion, in my view, came from Jack Welch, when he said 'Shareholder Profits is not a strategy or a tactic worth focusing on to get us out of this mess - it's a result. A result of doing good work and caring about what you do.' I felt like he offered a little bit of clarity to a culture so recently obsessed with watching stock prices plummetting.

100 Books in 2009

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:56:30 CDT

I'm trying to read 100 new books this year. I'll be cheating a little because I will also be listening to several books on my iPod. Below is the list of books that I've already read or have started to read this year. I'm looking for more suggestions (please). Business Stripped Bare - Richard Branson How to get rich - Felix Dennis The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation - Frans Johansson Deep Survival - Laurence Gonzales Talent Is Overrated - Geoff Colvin The Invention of Air - Steven Johnson Force of Nature - Laird Hamilton Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious - Gerd Gigerenzer Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies - Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis

Desired GMail Contacts Feature

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:09:19 CDT

I'm a loyal Gmail user and Fresh Tilled Soil uses the GMail exchange server and we all love the service.. Well, except the ads, but that's another conversation. In my contacts folder I have 1000+ contacts and numerous duplicates. It would take hours and days to merge all the duplicate contacts I have. A simple solution to this problem would be to add a merge button next to the left of two of the same contacts. Clicking this button would merge the two and then the user would be responsible for cleaning up any of the information within single contact. Does anyone else have this type of problem? Have you figured out how to fix it? Update: I was able to find the solution.. Click on one client and then hold down shift and click the duplicated client and the merge feature will come up in the clients contact area.

Wufoo - Brilliant Web Usability and Information

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:47:10 CDT

When Richard and I logged into our Wufoo account the other day we were happy to find out about all the changes which were made since the last time we logged in. Every web application should take note of this strategy. Companies can't expect every user to stay updated with on-site changes and updates. A clean message box with the latest and greatest is the best way to keep people informed. Great Job Wufoo.

Garmin Gets UI Right

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:22:01 CDT

Today I registered my 1-year old Garmin GPS device in hopes of getting a free map upgrade. No such luck - it costs $69.95 but you get 10% off when registering the device online. Regardless, I was really impressed by not only their public website (http://www.garmin.com) but their myGarmin section - essentially the My Account area of the site. The dashboard was very clean and intuitive and once you register your device and click on the myMaps section, the product you own appears with available upgrades in a clean, straightforward and highly intuitive design. Kudos to them on making a super-clean and user friendly interface for their customers.

Intuit QuickBooks Online Redesign Review

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:15:00 CDT

Whenever I look at a website or web application the first impression I receive always leaves a lasting mark. If the site has a funky color scheme or if I found the site using a search engine and the page it directs me to does not have the information easily findable, it can get annoying. Working with web design and web usability on a daily basis it comes becomes almost second nature for me to analyze and pass judgement on a site. Of course when a website does a great job of creating an easily navigated and visually appealing site, I'm one of the first people to recommend it and use it on a regular basis. Even Seth Godin mentioned the potential benefitts on his blog... Which is why I'm completely astounded by what is happening at Intuit with their QuickBooks online version. Fresh Tilled Soil has been using QuickBooks Online since the company was founded in 2006. We have been periodically sending feedback and questions about new features and capabilities for the program during these past years. The consistent response has been, "we are working on updates, please stay tuned for new changes and features." Last Monday when we logged into the dashboard for Intuits' QuickBooks Online I was surprised to see a complete new color scheme, tabs and icons. What I did not see was any functionality changes, new reporting capabilities, or the ability to use the program on an Apple computer. (A quick side note, we also use the Intuit Merchant Center to manage credit card processing.. I'm happy to note we are able to use this product on an Apple computer for some reason.) We chose the online version of QuickBooks because we are a web based company and don't want to be locked down to any one computer. This is helpful if we are traveling or do not have our personal computer available. Unfortunately, every accounting and Quickbooks expert we have worked with, four and counting, complain about the the lack of functionality and features of the program compared to the desktop version. Hopefully the "lipstick on the pig" routine Intuit pulled is only going to be temporary. We hope that the next release is going to have many more features available like the desktop version. If that doesn't happen, Fresh Tilled Soil is going to be in the market for a new business accounting tool if you know anyone who has an online version.

GoDaddy design gets an overhaul

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:21:48 CDT

Making sense of the craziness that is GoDaddy's home page wasn't easy. I'm not even sure I captured the simplicity I was aiming for. I'll let you be the judge of whether this design is any better than the current mess.

My Redux of the FedEx Home Page

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:56:35 CDT

This is my version of the FedEx home page without all the clutter and distraction. Give me the thing that I want - pick up or tracking. What else is there?

Door to Door Sales = Fail

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:30:49 CDT

We were enjoying our day yesterday when a person came in to sell some artwork at discount prices. The type you get at malls or art stores like Corners. When he came in he had two pictures him and I was not particularly interested in either of them. I asked him if they had a website so I could check their stock and maybe pick out a few for the office... They had one but never updated it because they were moving their inventory so fast. I asked for a business card so I could give him a ring after discussing the options with people at the office. He didn't have one. The real lesson here... Find out the location of the truck where they are pulling the pictures out of and skip the middle man altogether.

We're official sponsors of TEDMED 2009

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:30:09 CST

I'm very excited that Fresh Tilled Soil will be an official sponsor of this year's TEDMED 2009 conference. Marc Hodosh, who we have been working with at Boston First for three years now, is the executive director of TEDMED and will be putting on the best conference yet. The speaker line-up is extraordinary to say the least. Big names like Craig Venter, Dean Kamen and John Abele will be joined with some exciting and popular speakers like Goldie Hawn and Anne Wojcicki of 23andme.

SEO Campaign Tips for Beginners

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:00:49 CST

Stephanie Leffler, Senior VP of Network Solutions really nails SEO right on the head. This video is a great representation of just how effective SEO/SEM can be. A Quick Overview: (some great tips and ideas that increase the effectiveness of your SEO/SEM campaign) - Add Good Content: Provide a lot of good/quality content to your site, through relevant articles and blogs. Increase Relevant Links to Site: Increase the amount of incoming links to your site. This is seen as "votes" for your website. Title/Meta Tags: Create focused title/meta tags with relevant keywords for your site. Enjoy!

Kristine's Famous!

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:38:52 CST

This week we discovered that one of our designer's portfolio sites was featured in "The Web Designer's Idea Book." Check out here site here: www.kristinejanssen.com In fact, this same site was also featured on CSS Remix which is how we discovered her and added her to the team back in the summer of 2007.

'Free-Design' Exercise

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:05:41 CST

This week we had the luxury of being between some large projects and having a few minutes to sit down and get back to the "art" of designing. In addition to that, one of our star designers Kristine Jubeck was out from Iowa working with us in person all week. So we called a quick meeting and basically set up a design exercise around a very loose construct - virtually no rules. It lasted about 40 minutes and we can up with the following pieces.

Renting Your Home on CBS Nightly News

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:33:24 CST

Our client, and business partner, Jeff Takle and his business Renting Your Home was featured on the CBS Nightly News last night (at about minute 17 on the segment). Take a look at what Jeff had to say about the opportunities for some companies during the recession.

Twitter tips for beginners

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:27:58 CST

This is a cool list of things to get you started on Twitter. I'd add to this that you should look through Twitter's suggested people to follow in your settings to further explore your network.

Winners in Global Warming?

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:53:51 CST

The Port of Churchill in Canada is an ice bound habor open for only a month a year. Not anymore. Global warming has caused the ice to melt enough that the port is open for 2 - 3 months a year now. Rumored to have been bought recently for $1, the port is the best place to access the Artic circle. It seems like somebody is thinking ahead to what the world will offer up when it's warmer and wetter. I wonder what opportunity the warming weather will bring to your business?

Objectified

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:28:29 CST

Gary Hustwit has done it again with the follow up to the fabulous Helvetica. Objectified is a movie, or maybe it's a documentary, about product design. The trailer is available on the blog.

Web Marketing Strategy

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:51:04 CST

A small service company contacted me a few weeks ago. The owner wanted to discuss updating his online business presence and marketing strategy. We had a few lengthy discussions about his service offering, current marketing strategy and long term business goals. He also explained how he developed his current site and mentioned that he had been speaking with a few other web firms. One of his problems with finding a firm to work with was he wanted to keep pieces and design themes of the current site within the re-design. Each of the designers he spoke with said they would only work with their code. Designers and developers prefer to use their own code. It's more difficult and causes a longer development time to use one piece of code they are unfamiliar with than to start over and use their own code. Another problem, it handcuffs the ability for the designer to be creative when using design within marketing a company. He's trying to find a designer who will do what he wants to do and not what is best for his company. The question comes up.. If you are a small business owner, which daily activities should be the focus of your time? If you are an expert fly fisherman and are a fabulous teacher of that, with full classes on a fairly regular basis you are doing something right. If that same person has little to no experience marketing and developing new business, it seems clear where their time could be spent. Is it important to shoe string a potentially vital aspect of growing your company where you have no experience? Or should you work with a professional web marketing firm to develop a strategy based on experience, data and analytics. Investors want to know that the CEO is going to make the best business decision. CEO's need to do what's best for the company to succeed.

Brand Reputation Management: Superpages Success

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:59:23 CST

I'm pleased to announce my previous blog post attracted the attention of Sean at Superpages. She was kind enough to contact me by phone and update the Fresh Tilled Soil Superpages account for free. We are now offically a Web Design and Marketing firm and no longer sell "top soil" or any other soil for that matter. Thanks Sean for making it happen.

Advent of the Blog Based Site

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:00:04 CST

There's an undeniable trend in cropping up on the world wide web these days. The blog-based site is gaining momentum - I found articles which present some strong arguments in favor of the blog-based site over a traditional site.

How not to do customer care online - enter eBay

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:48:45 CST

I have an old eBay account which I haven't used in some time. In an effort to make my contribution to economic stability I decided to log into my account and cancel it. Here's the problem, it's been some time since I used the account so need to hit the "lost my password" button. The wall I run up against first is the zip code needed to confirm my identity is not the same as my current zip code. That's eBay's first mistake - never use a unique identifier that changes over time or could be misunderstood if your customer's move. Not to be beaten I looked up my old zip code and plug it in. Still wrong. Hhmm, ok, I'll try the "still need more help?" link at the bottom of the page. This prompts me for my birth date. Guess what? Apparently I wasn't born when I thought I was. Here we are at mistake number two - if you're going to use people's unique information to identify them then you need to get it right. Finally, out of frustration I click on the "Live Help" button. I'm prompted to enter in more information but when I click on "Send" to start the live chat, I get the useless 'unavailable' screen. Why did they ask me to fill out the information when they were unavailable. Nevermind the horrible UI of the 'unavailable' page which is clearly being served from a third-party. In case you're wondering I have also used the "forgotten" password and "forgotten username" options which apparently will email me the information I need. It's been over an hour and still no emails. This is such a basic thing to get right from the start. It's the little things that make people happy, or unhappy. Please don't ever treat customer service is an after thought. With the power of online reviews you don't have any other option than being amazingly good at every part of customer service.

What junk mail really costs

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:25:51 CST

Not that you need another reason to hate junk mail but if you're a direct marketer then you're part of the problem too. This shot from the Design Can Change site illustrates the crazy amount of useless junk mail we produce each year - and for what?

Choosing the Right Keywords for Your SEO Campaign

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:30:30 CST

Post #2 of “SEO: Back to the Basics and Beyond…” Pop Quiz Thursday-z: Do you remember what SEO stands for and its definition? (if not, refer back to my “SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Beginners” post). Yesterday we talked about the fundamental elements to any good SEO strategy/campaign. Now it’s time to get a little bit more specific as we start to address exactly what we need to do to make this effort a successful one. It’s all about coming up with the most successful strategy (refer to step 1 in part #1 of “SEO for Beginners” post) that’s going to drive traffic and hopefully leads to your website. Today we are going to specifically address how to choose the most effective keywords. There is no exact science and you will have to play with keywords to see which ones work best, but there are some really great tools to help you with this. First, sit down and come up with 20-25 keywords that you think effectively “explain” your website. This will get your wheels turning. After you have done this it’s time to use some online keyword tools to get a better picture of what keywords are going to be the best for you to use. Google has a great Google keyword tool and the best part it’s free. It lists various keyword combinations, sorts each keyword by relevance and outlines the approximate search volume for each keyword (very cool). It’s also a good idea to check what keywords your competition is ranking for as well and seodigger is a good tool for that. Ok, now you have a list of essential keywords you know are going to really help with your SEO efforts…but what do you do with them? These keywords are going to be used within the context of your webpage’s, within the title/description/keyword tags of your page and help with link building strategies. If I lost you somewhere in the last sentence not to worry, I’m going to explain each strategy as we go. Remember, we are taking this one step at a time. Check out the tools I linked to in this article and start generating your keyword list. More to come…

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Beginners

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:42:59 CST

Post #1 of "SEO: Back to the Basics and Beyond..." I’ve learned that it’s always important to understand the basics before you jump full force into something you don’t really know how to do. (I know from experience…after a brush with death trying to learn how to swim as a small child). I’ve realized that many of my posts are geared toward readers who already have a fundamental knowledge and understanding of search marketing, but what about all of you who are “beginners”, trying to wrap your head around this crazy little SEO idea? Well, you are in luck. I’ve decided to start a series of posts that will build off each other. We will start with the basics of SEO and build up from there. Sound good? The first question that always arises is, what exactly is search engine optimization (commonly referred to as SEO)? In its simplest form, SEO is improving the amount of quality traffic your website gets from search engines through search results. (That’s all you need to know right now…remember, we are learning the basics. As time goes on we will continue to add to this definition). Ok, so you have your website. Now you have to get traffic to that website using SEO, what are your first steps… 1) Outline a strategy: This is really a compilation of all the items listed below, but you need a clear SEO strategy. This means addressing a variety of questions concerning who your target audience is, what’s your budget, goals, establishing an SEO team and committing to the process. 2) Find your target audience: Who are you trying to reach? What are the best ways of doing this? Identifying your audience will give you a clearer picture of the SEO strategies you need to implement to be successful. 3) Establish a budget for the project: How much money do you have to spend and how much SEO needs to be done to help improve site traffic? Your budget has to be realistic in generate results. One hour of SEO per month probably isn’t going to have any added benefit. The more traffic you want to your site, the more SEO you will have to do. 4) Set measurable goals: The keyword here is “measurable.” Yes, we all want to improve website traffic, but by how much? 1,000 new visitors per month, 2,000…? Setting a clear, measurable goal will help you determine if the strategies you have chosen are effective. 5) Establish an SEO team: Put together a team of individuals who are committed to constantly learning new strategies, so they can continue to re-evaluate your existing strategies and adjust your SEO campaign as needed. 6) Learn: In order to be good or even great at SEO you have to commit to the fact that it’s a constant learning process. Every day I am learning something new. You have to remember to keep up with industry news and adjust your strategies to meet the new industry demands. Ok, so you have a couple of beginning steps. Hopefully this will give you a little better understand of what SEO is and how to get started. Now that we understand the basics we will start to build on this and in my next post we will address “keywords” and how to use them to build a strong SEO campaign. More to come…

Considerations for any new web marketing strategy

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:55:53 CST

My kids and I were talking about doing our favorite things. My youngest would prefer to play Lego all day while my older son likes to loose himself in a "great book of adventure". I got to thinking about what it is I like to do the most. The good news, while equally disturbing, is that I'm already doing it every day. Apart from the obvious web design and marketing stuff, our real thing is that we build businesses. Specifically we build web businesses or businesses with a strong web presence. That's my thing. That's what I want to do with my time. Yesterday I had the opportunity to do my thing. I got to talk to another prospective client about their online business. They've come to the realization that their site is more than just a brochure and the world is moving past them at a terrific speed. I was a little shocked at how little they had thought about the basics but then that's not their thing. It's mine. If strategizing over the best web marketing ideas is not your thing then take a look at the list of things to consider for almost any web business. Have business and marketing objectives for your website that are measurable. I'm floored by the number of businesses that have not linked their business goals to their website design and marketing efforts. If you have metrics you'll be able to see how far you have come and how much further you need to go. Even if you're a non-profit this rule applies. Be specific and detailed. Consider all elements of your strategy: web design, search engine optimization (SEO), email campaigns, landing page optimization, content development, social media, and web analytics. How will each of these be measured? Your existing customers are the fuel to any new growth or profitability. There are really only three ways to grow your business: get new customers, have your existing customers spend more per transaction and have you existing customers buy more frequently. That puts two out of three growth opportunities in the hands of your existing customers. Existing customers already trust you and have a relationship with you. They are cheaper to communicate with and cheaper to serve. Start any business strategy asking questions about your existing customers. Don't be tempted to go after the elusive new customer when you have diamonds in your own backyard. Listen to what these customers and associated communities are saying about you and your product or services. You can't be a strategist if you don't have the data to back up your planning. Use Google Alerts or search on Twitter or Technorati to see and heard what people are saying about you or your industry. Your customers are not going to have a conversation about you to your face, they'll be doing it somewhere else. The question should be, where are they and how can I monitor that? On the same note, don't think that social networking is something that happens to other businesses. Even if you're a B2B dealing with Baby Boomer decision makers I can promise you there is a social network out there for you. Social networking and content is no longer a young persons game. It's everywhere and pretending it's not affecting your business is just silly. For more established businesses you can use LinkedIn. Join the appropriate “Groups” that center around your industry or target market and then make sure you post all news, articles, and other content you generate to each Group. If GE is using Facebook and Twitter then you can too.

Why businesses need to embrace social media

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:11:45 CST

"Why do I need a blog or a Twitter account or a Facebook page? I'm a B2B business and nobody needs to know what I have had to eat for breakfast?" This was the remark I heard from a senior executive at one of our clients. Although I agree with the breakfast statement, the rest is bordering on head-in-the-sand mentality. Here's a list of excellent reasons for businesses to invest in social media channels and platforms, no matter what their business or audience. If you have more than one office the you have people in different locations that need to communicate through the web. Setting up a Yammer or Twitter account for you company reduces downtime lost to trying to find the right people or getting information you need. A quick "does anybody have experiencing with process engineering in chemical factories?" message on Yammer gets an instant response without weeks or months of research. Basic communication between teams improves exponentially when they know where you are and what you're working on. We have a client with dozens of global offices and staff members frequently travel to these foreign offices. Having access to each others travel schedules via Facebook allows them to quickly coordinate their meetings and reduce the confusion in scheduling these meetings. Interns and new hires need information fast. Reading the company blog or searching the blog archives gets them started quicker and gives them access to the blog authors. Going straight to the source helps them cut through red tape and old school line management channels. Feedback on company wide issues like health care plans and operational plans can be aggregated quickly and effectively using any number of social tools like blogs, wikis, and private communication tools like Yammer. One of our engineering clients that sells big complicated projects to state and federal level decision makers has established themselves as a thought-leader through their blog. By posting the smart ideas of the engineers to the blog they are populating the search engines with information directly related to buying decisions. This B2B company has sold $7M in new contracts from new contacts made on the blog with interested readers. There is a place for all social media in all businesses. The question is not so much should you use it but how you use it.

That same old VC song again?

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:11:51 CST

It might be because I just watched August last night but this sounds like a very familiar and scary story. In TechCruch yesterday, Erick Schonfeld, interviewed Institutional Venture Partner's Todd Chaffee about their joint $35M investment in Twitter. After some banter about the high growth rates and ubiquity of Twitter, Schonfeld gets to the meat of the conversation: Sounds good, but how will it make money? Chaffee is not so worried about that just yet: I love that here is this cry for revenue generation out of a company not even two years old. Relax, it is coming. Anybody else hear that pin drop? ************************* Addition to my earlier post: This comment on the IVP investment in Twitter from today's peHUB newsletter: A lot has been made about how IVP and Benchmark bought in at a valuation of between $230m and $250m for a company without a dime in profit. Not nearly enough has been made of the fact that Twitter accepted that valuation, despite having previously been offered around $500m to be acquired by Facebook. When’s the last time you heard of a venture deal in which the valuation was just half of what the company could get via a trade sale? Nope, I can’t think of one either. Lots of strange choices and comments coming out of the Twitter ranks. I'm watching this one very closely.

Working hard is back in fashion

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:01:37 CST

It's amazing to me that people can complain about the recession and not follow up on phone calls or leads. Don't complain about the economy if you're not willing to step up and make the extra effort. For too long now its been easy money for too many industries. They sit around and the leads flow in. I just got off the phone with a guy who's looking for an SEO partner. He has 55 clients that need SEO services. He's been calling around to find vendors to help him package those services to his clients. He made 4 calls to other companies before he called me. Only one responded. Is it possible that these people are so busy they can't answer their phones? I had similar experiences last week when I called around for a contractor to help with some work we had. When times are tough it's time to work twice as hard. As the competition fails it's time to do housecleaning. Instead of people responding to calls and following up I'm hearing complaints about how hard times are. Apparently it's seems to be easier to complain that do anything about the problems. Waiting for your clients to tell you where the opportunities are looking for trouble. Go to your clients and ask them how the relationship could be improved there was so much easy money made.

3 Easy Link-Building Strategies

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:42:58 CST

Link Building: Keep Rising to the Top! Arranging reciprocal link partnerships with other websites used to be an extremely effective tool for bolstering your organic search engine rankings. As webmasters figure out how to manipulate algorithms, however, those algorithms will inevitably be updated by the powers that be. Currently, search engine algorithms give far more credence to one-way incoming links, and the art of facilitating these is commonly referred to as "link-building". Link building methods are extremely diverse, and the term should only be considered as an umbrella over a variety of specific strategies, including: Paid links: Links can be purchased through link brokers or manually sought out one at a time by webmasters or web marketers. Brokers will provide you with a network of sites to choose from whereby you can customize the ever-important anchor text and select publishers relevant to your subject matter for a monthly fee. Doing it the old fashioned way is a long process, involving many emails or phone calls to prospective paid publishers, but may ultimately lead to the best value. Warning: Purchasing links on sites irrelevant to your content, or from link broker networks which Google has already "sniffed out", can lead to penalization - so do your homework and be cautious. Link baiting: Writing original, catchy content and submitting it to news sites and social media sites has become a popular way of garnering one way incoming links, and is commonly referred to as “link baiting”. Particularly effective are “how-to” articles, top 10 lists and video clip collections. The catchier the title, the better. Should you strike gold by becoming the next viral marketing darling, the huge number of links you’ll receive from other sites, blogs and news sites will be priceless. Here is a link bait example FTS created recently for a client which focuses on the term "wedding songs". Topic and content networks: Sites like Squidoo, HubPages and WetPaint can be categorized in a number of ways – content site, social media, etc. – but one thing is for sure – they are free and easy ways to create links pointing back to your website. If, for example, your website sells cell phones, you can build a resource lens about your company or a relevant topic and link using your choice of anchor text. The more your lens, hub or canvas is perceived as being an objective resource, the more traffic and incoming links it will get from other members of the network and people who stumble across it via search engines, passing the “link juice” on to your main site. These points are a high-level starting point, but specific examples help paint a good link building picture for the uninitiated. Simply put, high quality and original content, coupled with a base knowledge of the emerging social media and voting sites that have been rushing onto the scene, can do wonders encouraging the outside world to link to you. Build it, and they will not come. Build it and make it helpful or entertaining enough to the right person - and they will gladly link to you in a heartbeat.

Excuse Me. SuperPages. Can I Have Your Attention

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:51:45 CST

There has been a running joke since the inception of Fresh Tilled Soil that we are indexed within the main search engines and SuperPages under "top soil" and "soil" companies. Check it out for Boston or Wellesley. We get a laugh every now and then when our land line phone rings and on the other end a potential client is asking if we deliver. I always have to let them down politely and pass the lead along to a real landscape supply company. I'm questioning if this happens to other companies with unique names, but this experience pretty much assures me that it may happen more often than not. What's most disappointing is the way SuperPages has dealt with the situation. For the past couple of months we have been receiving calls asking us to update our listing. I'd be very interested in updating the listing but they want to charge us to do it. How does that make sense? Let's get this straight... They created a listing we did not ask for. Then incorrectly listed us as a company in the "soil" genre and now they're calling us and telling us that people are searching for our services (web design and marketing) and we are missing out on this potential traffic. Well of course I asked for some facts and data to support their claim and she was unable to provide it. Unfortunately, they were not interested in listening to me or answering my questions. I even asked to speak with a manager because it was quite apparent that I was speaking to someone who was not completely confident with the English language. To my surprise, she hung up on me. You know what would have been a good way to maybe get my business. Apologize for the incorrect listing, fix their mistake for FREE, and provide me with site analytics and facts so I can assess their value proposition. Now imagine if other companies ran a business this way... They would be out of business.

How to Create a Twitter Campaign 101

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:59:32 CST

If you are a novice to the art of tweeting then here's a little lesson on how to get started and create your first twitter campaign: The first step is to create an account on twitter itself. All you need is an email address and a password. If you are setting up the account for a business or a brand name then you'll need to use the name of the company or product as the username. Once you have an account with twitter the best thing to do is upload your email list (via gmail, MSN, Yahoo or Outlook) to the account. The contact upload tool will list all the people in your contact list with twitter accounts. There is an option to select the people you want to start following. In most cases, once you friends see you have an account they will then start following you. Your followers will be the people reading your tweets, or posts and, in time, you build up an audience that reads your tweets. Tweets generally consist of a combination of general news about your activities around the organizing of the event, like "had lunch with Joe Soap today. His new web application is going to rock" and specific requests, like "looking for a photographer in the San Diego area, anyone got suggestions?" You embed links back to the sites you want to drive traffic to or to interesting content. If you're linking traffic to a site or a blog, remember to install Google Analytics so you can track the incoming traffic and monitor how many visitors you get from your twitter account.

Elizabeth Gilbert's TED 2009 talk on creativity

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:19:47 CST

I'm smitten with Elizabeth Gilbert's take on creativity from TED2009. If you've ever tried to create something, whether it's a piece of music or a web app, you'll resonate with this story. Elizabeth muses on the craziness of creativity and the haunting power that visits works of genius. Her view is that genius is on loan from some other place and that we don't own genius.

Great examples of WordPress as a CMS

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:57:45 CST

Kevin Leary, our UI guru, has created a great list of sites that use WordPress as a content management system. It's quite amazing that these sites are all built on WP.

Increasing SEM & SEO Effectiveness through Social Marketing

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:44:29 CST

My friends, the internet is changing and this means that we have to tweak our SEM and SEO strategies to accommodate these changing times. Of course it’s key to continue to follow the standard “tricks of the trade” if you will, but you need to continue to look for new and effective tools to add to your arsenal. It’s really not that hard and you don’t need to re-invent the wheel to do it. There are a lot of social websites popping up left and right and these sites are gaining some serious momentum, so you know what that means?...time to jump on the social soul train and ride it. Why?...because if you don’t you are not going to be able to distinguish yourself from the rest of your competition…and who wants to be just like everyone else? (Caution: That was a rhetorical question and answering out loud may expose the truth). It’s time for us to use these social platforms to help optimize and drive more organic traffic to our client’s websites. Of course, some SEO strategies may be more effective than others, but mixing old strategies with the new can only increase your chances for success. It’s time to take a chance and see just how effective some of these new strategies can be. I’ve outlined one of the new strategies that I particularly like below in comparison to an older strategy. Old Way #1: Social Bookmarking: Now don’t get me wrong, just because this is an older strategy doesn’t mean it’s any less effective. Social bookmarking is a great way to build some significant links back to a particular website. Many of the social bookmarking websites allow us to upload title, URL, description and keyword tags that link back to whatever website we are trying to promote. The key it to get users to find you bookmark, click on the link and move traffic to your website. Again it’s a great strategy (and one I use a lot), but everyone’s doing it. New Way #1: Public Photo Sharing: In addition to creating a social bookmark (as mentioned above), why not upload some relevant photos to your favorite public photo sharing website and link those images back (using a URL) to whatever site you are trying to promote. People are really starting to gain interest in these types of sites. I was just on Flickr the other day and what I thought was going to be a quick stop to look at a couple of pictures turned to in an hour and a half charade. ..It’s really addicting! People are constantly searching for images on Flickr and what better way for them to happen upon your picture, click on your link and are directed to your website…BADA BOOM BADA BING…you might just have gained yourself a new lead or client! Step out of your comfort zone and give the new strategy a try. I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

Best interviewing questions

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:25:43 CST

When you are interviewing it's typical to ask standard questions like "what value do you think you would bring to this business?" The problem with questions like that is they can be answered by the candidate without giving away any real insight into their value or personality. Here is a list of questions we ask candidates as a way to understand them better: "Describe to me how you would deal with a client that made an unreasonable request of you?" - Here we're testing their knee-jerk reactions to conflict and their general management style. "If I was to visit your home right now, what would I see?" - There are two aspects to this question, how do you live and how would you react to me dropping in on you. We've noticed that organized people have no problem with this answer but people with messy homes shudder at the thought of it. "If you were the director of a digital marketing firm like ours, what would you do in the year ahead to ensure profitability?" - Everyone has a responsibility to manage their profitability. Answers like, "that's not really something I've ever had to worry about" are a serious red flag. "I'd like to call three references right now so we can make a quicker decision. Can you provide me with the names and addresses of those three people now?" - This is a litmus test for BS. If they come back with, "ah, I'll need to check in with some people first before I give you any numbers" you are wasting your time. This is not really an interview question but recently we were interviewing for a position from a list of about 7 candidates. I had been calling and screening people all day so by the time I got to the last person I was a little tired and cranky. I got the candidate on the phone and within a few minutes asked "can you get down here in an hour for a face-to-face interview?" It was a little unfair to expect anyone to be that available but it was a test to see how eager they were. She was there 45 minutes later. Today she works for us and is one of our rising stars. Promptness and action are huge indicators of future success. And finally a great question from my friend Rajesh Setty, "What would be a question you wish I had asked? Why? and what would be your response?"

Google Earth 5 goes for a swim

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:12:12 CST

I'm a huge fan of Google Earth and it looks like the latest version will not disappoint. The newest version features a time travel option to show you what places looked like back in history and ocean views. The Ocean views provide a dip into the blue yonder with accompanying video from National Geographic and some seascape profiles. I'm looking forward to the day when the Woods Hole guys link their ocean floor mapping into something as easy to access as Google Earth. I've also had this idea for a while of a map of the oceans that only shows the water component. No land masses, no ocean floors, just water floating in suspension in some watery orb.

The White House website gets a facelift and social media stamp

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:22:51 CST

The new White House site is up and it's an impressive leap forward for our typically stodgy government. I'm very impressed with the streaming video, blog and overall search engine optimization details. The video broadcasts make use of YouTube and Vimeo imbedding options and the site scores an impressive 97.1/100 on Website Grader. From a social bookmarking point of view the site is making big waves. There are currently 3,014 del.icio.us bookmarks: 3,014 and www.whitehouse.gov has 344 articles submitted to digg.com. These articles received a total of 8032 diggs (votes) and 2 of these articles made it to the front page of digg.com. It's great to see the President's office take such a strong lead on cutting edge web design and marketing. Apart from all the whiz-bang features the content seems to be the best part of the site. This snippet from the blog had me dancing around the room: "One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it."

Big Wins

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:08:46 CST

Being a web designer, sometimes it's easy to get frustrated with a piling workload, constant changes or demanding turnaround times. It's when I feel this way that I think of the several ways we've recently helped to truly make improvements in the online facets of our clients' businesses - especially for clients where 1 or 2 sales can make a major difference to their bottom line. We call these the "Big Wins" and there were recently cases where three clients who sell high-value products leveraged their redesigned sites to close business that single-handedly paid for the cost of the site and helped them enter 2009 with the confidence that design can really can help close sales. Spec Engineering recently started leveraged their redesigned site as well as custom landing pages we helped them design to start an AdWords campaign that helped them close a deal that brought them $7M to the table. Another client in Energy Management closed a deal as a result of their new site that more than paid for the cost of the redesign and has opened them up to new opportunities. Also in the Energy Industry, long-time client BluHomes.com generated several leads from our SEM/Blog strategy work, closing one which lead to the construction of one of their first major projects.

When is enough?

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:16:36 CST

Tonight I was watching Iconoclasts on the Sundance Channel. This episode featured Jon Favreau and Tony Hawk. Jon Favreau has had two great directorial successes, Elf and Ironman. The thing that stuck in my head was when he said he has figured out how to be satisfied with what he has achieved. He says learning how to enjoy what he has might be the key to success in Hollywood. I suppose the desire for financial wealth is no different from the desire to eat, or drink or smoke. There is a point at which wanting more is too much. Being satisfied with what you already have is replaced with the urge to have more. And more. Until it starts to destroy you. As an entrepreneur I'm sometimes tempted to want more than I need. We're surrounded with messages to have more. But more is not better. It's just more. In my first venture my investor, himself a very wealthy man, told me that when I make my first million I will want nothing more than to make 10 million. He said that it's never enough. It's hard to know when it's enough. I hope I find the maturity to know when it's enough and enjoy the journey.

Lessons from 2008 on running a strategic digital agency

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:07:04 CST

Each year we look back at what went right and what didn't. We also review the goals we set for ourselves and for the business. It's a good exercise and a bit of a kick in the pants as well. Small continues to be better than big: Our team grew a little this year but we remained lean and mean. Our deliberate choice to stay small forced us to focus on getting the best out of the people and resources we had. We kept a close check on productivity and budget, which created a more efficient workflow process and reduced project overruns to nearly zero by the end of the year (more on this data driven approach below). In one extreme case of staying small we weren't afraid to wind-down all of our part-time contractors so we could have a tighter team dynamic with our full-time team members. This renewed focus on staying small happened when we noticed ourselves saying things like' "we can always get a freelancer to take care of that if it gets busy". That kind of loose talk lead us to hiring a handful of contractors that we really shouldn't have needed if we just managed the projects and business more closely. Project management is a universal skill not a separate role: Improvements in how we manage projects and simplify workflow allowed us to reduce the necessity to have another layer of middle management. Although we experimented with dedicated project/account managers it always boiled down to "less is more". Instead of hiring people to manage people, we spent more time training our designers and search marketing specialists to be better at time management and communications. This gave our team more control over the decisions made at every level of the project and practically eliminated communication breakdowns. Make everyone a project manager expert and you'll find you don't need project managers. Daily goals and task management is the strategy: This doesn't mean we don't still have annual planning sessions and have big goals. In fact we still have quarterly and annual goals, and even one big five year goal. But goals are not strategies. The problem with long-term strategies is they tend to be background noise to what's really happening on the ground. By meeting every morning (similar to a Scrum meeting for you Agile folks) for a few minutes to discuss daily projects, obstacles and milestones we get really focused on the things we can control. It's very difficult to motivate people with things that are very far off in the future. It's easy to say "given our goal strategy of being the first choice of digital marketing agency for entrepreneurs, what 5 things can we get done today that will help us get there?" Manage by fact not just gut feelings: Data is our new best friend. As a creative agency it's easy to focus on the fun design and marketing ideas and forget about the hard data. Facts and figures aren't very sexy so digital agencies often ignore them. In 2008 we got really tough on project and financial data. We hired a full time financial manager to support our bookkeeper and part-time accountant. We also hired a consultant to come in and take a hard look at our processes and client success criteria. Using the heaps of information we had gathered about profitability and productivity we were able to make some smart decisions that immediately improved our margins. For example, we divided our clients into A, B and C categories depending on certain criteria. Then we checked through the profitability and productivity data and resorted them. We charted the data and this gave us a clear view of how we could move C clients to the B level and B clients up to the A level. Having worked in several agency environments it's pretty unique to see creative people sitting around discussing correlation and regression. Nurture financial and contractual discipline: Understanding the difference between cost conscious and value conscious became a deeply ingrained part of our culture. We have become expert cost analysts without losing focus on value. For example, we spent two days combing through our bank accounts and invoices looking for subscription charges for services we hadn't used for a few months. We found thousands of dollars of fees that were being charged to us that we really couldn't connect with client value. These are no-value costs that eat away at profitability. On the other end of the spectrum we weren't afraid to spend several grand on a client party for 200 people because our data showed us that previous parties resulted in a huge return in renewed client spending. Part of this detail-driven discipline was getting better at writing and negotiating contracts. Client, vendor, partner and referral contracts are essential to a good outcome. These contracts have helped us get exceptionally focused on areas of responsibility. Who's doing what for whom and by when? Our business rests on the promises we make to our clients so there has to be an equal amount of effort in documenting those promises in ways that make both sides happy. It's an art and a science. Provide a place where people love to come to work: This isn't something we needed to learn but after a stressful 2007 we had forgotten how to let go and have fun. Last year was a return to the frequent celebrations and daily silliness that makes us love going to work. My favorite line this year was Dan telling a visitor that "Friday's are a bit of a downer because that means I won't see everyone at the office for two days". Along with this is a flexibility that makes everyone feel less stressed about the daily workload. We're pretty flexible about time so on a perfect day for snowboarding we might hit the slopes for a few hours in the morning but work a few more hours later that evening. When it gets harder to tell where work starts and when play begins you're pretty close to a perfect work situation.

Press Releases, SEM and the Real Estate Game

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:08:54 CST

First off, you may be thinking to yourself what does real estate have to do with a press release and SEM? Well nothing… if you’re thinking in terms of the expensive/inexpensive house you may be looking to purchase (depending on how the current economy is treating you). In this situation “real estate” is actually a buzz word meaning: how much space you have to work with. In the world of web design, designers have only so much page space and they need to use utilize every inch of space to get the most bang for their buck. Creating a press release is no different; the rules are the same: you have to use your space wisely. Now, let us assume you have the standard one page press release to write…great, what do you do to make it the best press release you have ever written (or at least one that gains substantial reader visibility)? First, you have to answer the same boring, basic questions: who is your audience/who are you trying to reach, which is essentially the purpose for your press release. Even though these questions may not be particularly fun to answer, they are essential. After you have answered these questions it’s time to get creative and deliver a fully captivating, highly visible, content driving, search engine optimized, all encompassing press release (I hope that got your attention). Think of a press release as a mini-webpage…and design it like one. Remember to use your “real estate” space intelligently. Use formatting such as bold, italics and bullet points to create an easy-to-follow/read, SEO document. It’s also a good idea to embed specific graphics or videos as well, which are a great way to visually depict what you are trying to say. Sometimes pictures are better forms of communication than words and will definitely keep your readers interested. Adding links to specific key words will also be very helpful. This will not only allow your press release to rank well for the specific key words you used, but it will help your press release serve as a gateway…a gateway to drive traffic to various landing pages (with the same keywords) that you want to optimize for. It’s really about using these tools within your press release to strategically get the most out of the press release as you can. Hopefully by starting to view press releases in this way, you will be able to better utilize them in your SEO and marketing efforts. There are many other tactics that can be used and addressed, but this post was meant to simply highlight a few creative strategies to get you thinking about press releases in a new light. Take this knowledge and put it to good use. Ready…Set…Go (Write Your Press Release)!

The one lesson from Obama's marketing campaign

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:54:42 CST

I've spent a good amount of time trying to understand why the Obama campaign's strategies worked and how they can be adapted to our client's situations. What's surprising to me is that a lot of the commentary on the subject tends to focus on the branding aspects of the campaign. It's always a surprise to me that companies and organizations spend money on branding. Branding is the outcome, not the input. You cannot brand yourself into someone's buying behavior. In this economy most of the companies we are talking to or working with, no matter how big, don't have a lot of cash to spend on branding. Their goals are more focused on ROI and all the marketing must be directly tied to revenue. "What happens to each dollar and what does it result in?" is the question on their minds. Looking closely at the Obama marketing campaign it appears that the key focus was in building an online community of supporters. Several bloggers have suggested that this is the new model for how to connect with a group or consumers online and then transfer that online community to the real world. "That's a lesson that can be transferred to any small business or to anyone trying to sell a product or service," said David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing & PR." Hmmm, "...any small business..." might be a stretch but there are certainly many that can use this logic. The critical element seems to be in the transfer of the community marketing into actual sales. The secret sauce for Obama and all successful campaigns is combining the sales (conversion) and marketing (lead gen) objectives. The Obama marketing experts realized that you can do all the lead gen (email subscriptions, volunteer, text message sign-ups, etc.) in the world but if you don't convert it into real action (poster distribution, event organizing, grass-roots canvasing, etc.) it doesn't mean a thing. For as long as I can remember, marketing and sales have been separate functions. How often do we hear about non-aligned efforts where marketing generates leads but sales fails to get access to them or act on the leads? Generating leads is a complex and necessary part of all marketing campaigns. Marketing is not about branding. Branding happens when lead generation transitions smoothly into a healthy, positive conversion experience. The brand is the identity you associate with that experience, not the other way around.

How to plan for a design project

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:42:35 CST

We are often asked how to plan for a design and development project. As we've been involved in developing about 300 web-based projects for small and large companies we have some ideas around this topic. To be totally honest we learnt a lot of this the hard way. This experience gave us deep understanding of how to phase the projects to achieve great results. The best way to phase web based projects is to divide them into at least two phases. First phase involves rapid prototyping of the website by developing the graphic and XHTML prototype of the entire website. This prototyping not only gives you a visual perspective of the product, but also gives you the ability to nail down the scope of the project and the deliverables. This prototyping process might take about 1 to 5 weeks depending on the complexity of the project and number of iterations. Once the visual prototype is signed off, managing scope of the functional development of the project, corresponding time lines and deliverables becomes relatively easy as everybody will be on the same page. If there are any scope creeps, they will be pretty apparent. One option is to create two separate SOWs, one for rapid prototyping and another for actual functional development.

MA Named Best 'New Economy' State

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:54:07 CST

Just read a great article about why Massachusetts was just recently named one of the best "New Economy" states. My favorite exceprt is: "In recessions, there are higher levels of entrepreneurship because people who are laid off will use that opportunity to start a business," he said. "We won't be in this predicament forever. States that foster risk-taking and treat this time as an opportunity will be in a better position when they emerge - they'll be growing, instead of replacing the investments they slashed." Read the entire article here.

The Link Building Enigma

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:52:56 CST

What is link building? Link building is a very general, umbrella term used to describe any activities or tasks that involve getting other web entities to link to yours. Links are of the most value when they are “one-way”, meaning they link to you but there is no reciprocal link in return from your site to theirs. Search engines see one-way links as more objective because without reciprocation there is no need for another site to link to yours, unless they were truly impressed for some reason. One-way links are measured as more “objective” for that reason. What are some practical examples of link building? Link building activities can include relevant directory submissions, careful and relevant paid link brokering, press release/article authoring and submission, forum and blog commenting, linkbait strategies, providing link-friendly and free onsite resources and much more. Why is link building so important to SEM? Google, Yahoo and MSN consider one-way incoming links to a site to be “votes” for the site. It is also a good idea to ensure that any link to your site contains specific keywords that you are targeting, as search engines are very likely to begin associating link text with the site said link resolves on. The more general links to your site the better your overall chances for well-ranked keywords. The more targeted and relevant incoming links the better you will likely do for the keywords you are using in your hyperlinks.

Web Typography Tip: Quotation Marks vs. Prime Marks

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:26:11 CST

Don't use prime marks (a.k.a. “dumb quotes”) in place of quotation marks. You’ll look...well, dumb. The purpose of prime marks, or hatch marks, is to indicate inches and feet. She was 5'2" with eyes of blue. "I'm not dumb," she said. "I'm prime." Quotation marks have distinct “open” and “closed” forms, unlike hatch marks, which are straight up and down. “I’m not smart,” he replied. “I’m a quotation mark.” Here's the code. Now go out there and look smart! “I’m not smart,” he replied. “I’m a quotation mark.” Source: Thinking with type by Ellen Lupton

Which type size on websites?

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:47:25 CST

There is often debate between designers and clients on the font sizes for headings, body text or highlighted text elements on websites. I personally like a slightly bigger font. Even though I have healthy eyesight I still prefer reading a slightly bigger font on websites. It's sometimes hard to convince traditionally trained graphic designers that big is better online. I came across this posting on realitive font sizes by Wilson Miner, which seems to close the argument on this. The image shows how a magazine page, printed at 11pt, compared to a website at 16pt look almost the same when held up side-by-side. "After years of wondering why browsers defaulted to 16pt text sizes I’m starting to be convinced that long text really is significantly more readable on screen at precisely that size." This post reminds us that design is realitive and rules for print or PowerPoint cannot be automatically driven to web design without consideration.

Wordpress for iphone V 1.1

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:19:38 CDT

Wordpress has introduced a free download located in your app store on your iphone or your ipod touch. Takes just a few minutes to load and setup. Then you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Click here is more information on the download. "it is so apple" - Alex, Jamacia Plain Boston

Big Shots at CDIA - Photography Experts Speaker Series with Tony Corbell

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:42:34 CDT

The Center For Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) is bringing in big photographic talent with vast knowledge to make some noise in the Boston digital art and photography community. next up is Tony Corbell : photographer, traveler, educator, author and member of the Camera Craftsmen of America. The topic of Tony's talk will be "Lighting". The event will be held at the CDIA's campus in Waltham, MA at 274 Moody Street, Studio C on Tuesday, January 27th, from 6:30-9:30pm. The fee is $15 for CDIA students and alumni and $45 for the rest of us. For more information and registration go to www.cdiabu.com/bigshots.

Some tips on interviewing for a position as a web designer

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:33:53 CDT

This year, our company experienced incredible growth. With this growth, we are often looking for candidates to hire as web designers. Often my experience of interviewing these potential candidates is funnier than you would imagine. Here are some tips: Have more than one copy of your resume. We once had a candidate ask for their resume back because it was their only copy! Dress appropriately. Most offices these days are casual – business casual. We once had a candidate show up in a Karate outfit. Make you wonder if they always dress like that? Be early for the interview. By just hanging out in the sitting area, you can learn a lot about the company and its employees. Never say you are uncomfortable interacting with customers. Since Web Design is a service business you will need to speak to customers on occasion If you are really hungry and want the job, don’t be afraid to ask for it! Also, ask if there is a quick project you can do so they can test your work. Here is a chance to impress.

How to close the door when you work in a open office floor plan.

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:05:05 CDT

Most large companies have converted their work area for employees to have an open floor plan. The purpose of this is not to take away your privacy but to allow more natural light into the office from the outside windows and also promotes a more unified work environment. So the days of closing the door to your office are over! I have discovered that wearing headphones in the office during select times sends a signal to your co-workers that you are focusing and need to have some privacy (in effect, a closed door moment). Give it a try.

Flex Camp Boston 2008 is Back!

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:49:42 CDT

Flex Camp Boston is a full-day event featuring some top industry experts on Adobe Flex and AIR from both inside and outside Adobe. Come advance your Flex skills, meet members of the Adobe Flex team and network with local companies and fellow developers. Sessions will be geared towards developers with moderate to advanced level of experience with Flex and/or ActionScript. There will be plenty of giveaways, raffles and swag (and lunch). Date: December 12, 2008 Time: 8am-5pm Location: Bentley College, Waltham Cost of admission is $30.00. Click here to register.

Account Manager, designer and Search Marketing Specialists Needed

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:46:23 CDT

Help! We recently launched JetPack (that's our web marketing for small businesses company) and we're desperately looking for young people to help us do account management. Ideally they could be recent grads or working but looking for something new. We just need young, energetic and smart people. We don't need them to be expert in web marketing, we can train them. What we need is 'smarts' and energy. They'll be on the phone and email with clients most of the day. No sales, just chatting about their projects and keeping things on track. Do you know anyone that might be interested?

The Economy Is Not An Excuse

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:29:21 CDT

These are some of the common myths that people responsible for sales cling to when sales performance is poor. Excuse One: The economy is in a down turn Other versions of this are, “our industry is going through a slump”, or “the macro economics of our space have affected performance”. We hear these excuses all the time but there is little truth beneath them. Why is it that Warren Buffett can consistently make money investing in companies across diverse industries even during a depression? Simple, he invests in people not sectors or trends. Smart leaders consistently return results and even capitalize on competitors losses when the economy slumps. It is a red flag that your underlying strategy is broken if your business falters every time the market adjusts or slows down. Excuse Two: Our sales people are not making enough calls The quantity vs. quality is the most damaging and ubiquitous argument in sales conversations. For generations we have been led to believe that the input is directly proportional to the output. This myth is perpetuated by popular business themed movies like Glen Gary Glen Ross, Boiler Room and Wall Street. These movies convey the illusion that activity equals performance. The average sales manager perpetuates this myth by ensuring their sales people meet sales quotas for outbound calls or meetings. This is a fruitless exercise that does nothing but irritates your customer base and exhaust good sales people. Generate leads by helping people, introducing people to each other and by looking after your existing customers. Excuse Three: We need a better sales management tool Related to excuses about quantity is the excuse about sales tools. Sales people love to blame the tools and tactics they use. Regardless of the technology available there is no tool that can improve sales. Tools are accelerators of momentum not catalysts. Once a powerful strategy has started to produce momentum you can use tools to step up the pace but never for a second think that a sales tool will improve sales on its own.

Web Design World Boston - 2008

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:00:50 CDT

Web Design World returns to Boston December 8-10, 2008 for three days of information, interaction, insight and inspiration. Web Design World Boston is an incredible opportunity to gain insight and interact with some of the hottest designers / developers in the web industry. Held at the Weston in Coply Square.

Big Shots at CDIA Speaker Series Announce - Wedding, Portraits and Printing with Bambi Cantrell

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:27:44 CDT

The Center For Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) has scheduled another BigShot for their Photography Experts Speaker Series. Next up is Bambi Cantrell : an award-winning 25-year industry veteran with an unrelenting passion for photographing people. The topic of Bambi's talk will be "wedding, portrait & printing". The event will be held at the CDIA's campus in Waltham, MA at 274 Moody Street, Studio C on Monday, December 8th, from 6:30-9:30pm. The fee is $15 for CDIA students and alumni and $45 for the rest of us. For more information and registration go to www.cdiabu.com/bigshots

How the Media Twists the Truth With Graphics

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:37:56 CDT

I probably don't need to caution anyone that the media loves to spin a tall tale. This month's Wall Street crisis is prime fodder for the media's spin doctors. A picture tells a thousand stories and they can tell a thousadn lies too. Take a look at this graph from the Guardian in the UK. From Phil Gyford's blog: "We can see every little peak and trough. But it also looks as though by 14:30 the average was around one-fifth of the opening price — stocks had lost 80% of their value! Of course, they hadn’t. In reality they’d “only” lost around 9% of their value. Unless one is going to examine the y-axis and mentally imagine the bottom of the graph (which, in this case, would have extended off the bottom of the page by nearly a metre) the graph completely misrepresents the day’s activity. It lies."

Social Networks Fight Against African Violence

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:57:29 CDT

I grew up in South Africa. We watched as democracy transformed our country from the poster child of modern fascism to the world's newest democracy. One of the most powerful forces that lead to the transformation was the ability for common people to organize themselves against a seemly immovable repressive government. Those were the days before cells phones and social networks. Now in Zimbabwe, South Africa's neighbor, the common folk are using technology to organize themselves against one of Africa's worst despots, Robert Mugabe. Jonathan Gosier has noticed a very exciting trend in African political movements against violence and voter fraud. Sokwanele is a civic action support group campaigning for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe. Their website includes an 'election violence map' that provides detailed information related to localized occurrences of violence related to the election. During the most recent crisis in Zimbabwe, Sokwanele was used to get information out of the country when the government began restricting communication.

Adobe Max 2008

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:33:06 CDT

On November 16 - 19 , in San Fransisco , California Adobe MAX 2008 will bring together thousands of forward-thinking designers, developers, and business decision makers to shape the future of our industry. If you have not signed up it is a great time.Don't miss this opportunity to connect with other designers, Discover new technologies and inspire other creative minds. Click here to register.

Edward Tufte to visit Boston

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:58:10 CDT

If you have not been to the one day course Presenting Data and Information taught by Professor Edward Tufte here is your chance. He is visiting Boston again on November 17, 18 & 19th. Topics covered in this one-day course include: fundamental strategies of analytical design evaluating evidence used in presentations statistical data: tables, graphics, and semi-graphics business, scientific, research, and financial presentations complexity and clarity effective presentations: on paper and in person interface design use of PowerPoint, video, overheads, and handouts credibility of presentations multi-media, internet, and websites animation and scientific visualizations The fee for the one-day course is $380 per person. This fee includes all four books Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Beautiful Evidence The one-day course meets from 10.00 am to 4.30 pm.

Top of The Evolutionary Tree?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:03:19 CDT

As humans we love the idea that we're the smartest species on earth. We might be the smartest but we still haven't pulled off the really impressive stuff like these sharks. A female shark in a zoo has been observed giving birth to a pub with no assistance from a male shark. A virgin birth, that's something worth getting excited about. The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo. "This first case was no fluke," Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. "It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion." This story of virgin births reminds me of the line in the movie Jurassic Park that Jeff Goldblum's character Dr. Malcolm says - "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously."

Big Shots at CDIA - Photography Experts Speaker Series kicks off with Julieanne Kost and Matthew Jordan Smith

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:37:14 CDT

The Center For Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) is bringing in big photographic talent with vast knowledge to make some noise in the Boston digital art and photography community. First up is Julieanne Kost : Adobe Systems’ leading evangelist and educator and Matthew Jordan Smith : a Microsoft Icon of Imaging specializing in fashion and celebrity (seen on America’s Next Top Model). The topic of Julieanne & Matthew's talk will be " Layering/compositing in photoshop CS4 + fashion portraiture". The event will be held at the CDIA's campus in Waltham, MA at 274 Moody Street, Studio C on Monday, October 27th, from 6:30-9:30pm. The fee is $15 for CDIA students and alumni and $45 for the rest of us. For more information and registration go to www.cdiabu.com/bigshots

Analytics Package Tracks Real-Time Print Advertising

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:44:18 CDT

One of our partners in our small business search marketing company, JetPack, is a company called Conversion Associates. They just ran a very interesting campaign a few weeks ago to test the effectiveness of traditional advertising. Dave Jenkins, CA's CEO, explained to me that he wanted to give advertisers real time evidence and measurement to a traditional print marketing campaign. Think about that for a second, real-time measurement of print advertising. Impossible? Apparently not. Here's how the test was set up: Dave's team was given some space in the Boston Globe for the test. They placed a Conversion Associates ad in the Globe. The ad listed a specific url with the goal of driving people to a custom landing page. The ad simply said businesses should be tracking all of their ad dollars and if you wanted to see how they do it visit the listed web page. Conversion Associates used their own analytics package to monitor the visits, calls and form submissions. When visitors went online to see the landing page they had the option to view the results of the campaign. The landing page listed the phone calls from the print ad, visits to the landing page, video views, average time the video was watched, and phone calls from the landing page. The results were 6 total phone calls, 2 from the print ad (both were MassHighTech asking Conversion Associates to advertise with them) and 4 business calls from the landing page. They had 18 total visits to the landing page. One resulted in a sale. The 40 second video was watched on average for 30 seconds. So what did they learn from this exercise? Advertising in the Globe generates calls from competitive newspapers soliciting for advertising dollars. The 40 second introduction video is about 10 seconds too long. Visitors can be tracked in real-time from a print ad. Considering the high value of a new client account, approximately one sale per campaign is an acceptable acquisition cost. I'd like to see this campaign run again with some small tweaks to the landing page design and content. Overall though it's pretty compelling evidence that print advertising can be tracked in real time.

Investing In Yourself

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:30:26 CDT

With all of the recent news of Financial Crisis on Wall Street, you would assume that our workload for new web application prototypes and website projects has suffered - but the reality is that it's been quite the opposite. We're as busy as ever with new clients kicking off projects as well as with existing clients launching new phases to their sites and applications. We had to ask ourselves why, and other than taking pride in our work and hoping that translates to our clients, we realized something. During times of crisis when financial markets are unstable and it no longer seems safe or secure to invest your money with large, public companies, people invest in themselves. We've seen so many bright & courageous entrepreneurs spending or raising capital in recent months for web projects that they're truly passionate about that we've also been inspired to work those extra hours in helping them reach their goals. We've also been inspired to take some time and ensure our new SEM Analytics web app, JetPack, is truly up to snuff. Here's to getting over this period of instability and to trusting yourself and your own work ethic and instincts. Good luck.

Wealth only corrupts the corruptible

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:18:43 CDT

This morning I heard the Pope announce that the current global financial crisis is a reminder that the pursuit of money is meaningless. The Pope said, ''He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand''. Although I agree that pursuing money for the sake of money is futile, his statement might be perceived as meaning money is a corrupting force. Money, or the pursuit thereof, seems only to corrupt the corruptible. Money and wealth doesn't corrupt you, it only exposes what you already are. People who are giving and benevolent will very likely be the same when they have lots of money. It's very likely that having money hasn't anything to do with your ability to do good things. Watch out for people spreading the "money is evil" mythology. Money is not evil without somebody to make it so. The media loves to tell the stories of how money corrupts and destroys.

The Sunk-Cost Fallacy

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:34:45 CDT

I keep being reminded of a blog post I read this weekend on, of all places, a personal finance blog. The topic is the sunk-cost fallacy: "the mistaken belief that just becuase you’ve spent money on something you should continue to spend money on it". Read the full post here. This actually applies well to the world of digital marketing and the time and money we spend on our projects. Think of the "continuing to spend money" part as lost revenue on a site that fails to attract and retain users. If something is not working, there's no use fretting about the time and money that was already spent and whether or not that value has been extracted from the site yet. We need to be honest with ourselves and seriously consider the changes that need to be made. The good news is, we've already got a framework to build off of, rearrange, reorganize ... and the experience of our past mistakes to lead us to the right solution.

What a web designer can learn about business from watching "Kitchen Nightmares" with Gordon Ramsay.

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:35:32 CDT

I am not the biggest reality TV fan, but I found a show that actually teaches about business disguised as a cooking show. On Thursday nights I like to watch Kitchen Nightmares on Fox. Gordon Ramsey visits a restaurant in crisis and helps to turn then around. He has this great formula that he uses every week. Restaurant success recipe Step 1 - Keep your kitchen clean and organized. This is your showplace of what you do and where you create. Step 2 - Use fresh and local ingredients. Step 3 - Keep the menu simple and easy to execute for the kitchen and wait staff Step 4 - Have a marketing plan to differentiate you from your competition but also target a specific audience. As a web designer you can follow these same principals. Web Design success recipe Step 1 - Keep your design clean and well organized. In Many cases this is your customer first impression. Step 2 - Use fresh colors and techniques. Step 3 - Keep the layout and flow of your website simple and easy to navigate. Step 4 - Have a marketing plan to differentiate you from your competition but also target a specific audience. Hopefully following these steps and principles will keep your web design business out of a crisis.

Predictable irrational behavior and deadlines

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:13:54 CDT

Dan Ariely's ideas of Predictably Irrational claims that procrastination is a universally human issue. According to Ariely's studies, people do better when they complete the work closer to the start of the project than if they leave it to the last minute. Based on this idea he suggests that there are two things you can do to ensure delivery on or before the deadline arrives. The first is to set deadlines for competing the work long before the actual deadline. The second thing is to let the people doing the work set their own deadlines. The key issue with allowing the people doing the work to set deadlines is to tell them first about this concept. In other words, the fact that they are aware of this human behavior will make them set deadlines well be fore they are due. In the design of websites this might translate to asking the designer doing the work to set their own deadlines. Could you even request that the deadline must be at least 50% before the actual deadline? How would this knowledge change the way you work with clients?

Social media from a parent's point of view

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 07:28:55 CDT

I came across this excellent article on Remarkable Parents written by a dad, Jeremy Biser, that has discovered the importance, and necessity, of embracing social media. It's a reminder that social media is SO much more than a virtual playground for Millenials. It's part of our lives and the lives of our children, our parents, our customers and our vendors. "Looking back, I’m disappointed at my own ignorance. I wish I would have started a blog 4 or 5 years ago. I wish I would have discovered Digg or StumbleUpon or Technorati when they first launched. I wish I wouldn’t have grounded my teenage daughter for 2 weeks when I found out she created a My Space page and lied about her age on it." I wonder how many of you had similar fears and experience when you first heard about Facebook. It's still a little surprising to me to hear that some of our friends are only discovering Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter now.

Ten steps on how a web designer can optimize a new website for SEO

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:28:24 CDT

As a web designer you can follow these 10 steps to help a new website with SEO rankings. Step 1 – Name your web pages with a recognizable filename rather than a jumble of letters. Your filename will be come part of your URL. The file name should be no more than 32 characters including the “.html”. Good example: http://www.rentingyourhome.com/pricing.cfm Poor example: http://www.rentingyourhome.com/prcng.cfm Step 2 – Optimize your title tags with the below naming convention Page name | Company or organization name Example: Admissions | Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University Step 3 – Name all images in the image tag with the “alt” attribute and the “Title “attribute. Example: <img src="images/rapid-prototyping.jpg” alt="rapid protyping button" title=”rapid web protyping ” /> Step 4 – Fill out Meta tag description- Example: <meta name="description" content="Fresh Tilled Soil is web design and online marketing firm providing business consulting, user interface design, website design and search marketing services." /> Step 5 – Fill out Meta tag keywords Example: <meta name="keywords" content="boston web design, boston user interface design, boston web application and experience designers, boston search engine marketing, boston search engine optimization, boston social media marketing" /> Step 6 – Only use <h1> tag per page The h1 tag should be the heading or topic of the entire page. Having more than one <h1> is considered an error by SEO grading websites. Although it's not invalid code, it is not the best structure to follow. Step 7 – Add locations to the footer of your page. You may want to do this with a js “show/hide” to keep your footer design clean Example: Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Malden, Newton, Brighton, Quincy, Watertown, Arlington, Belmont, Dorchester, Lexington, Everett, Chelsea, Saugus. Step 8 – Register your web domain for a long period of time. 1 Year Plus. Google and other search engines like to see that there is stability with a website and that it is not a temporary spam site. Step 9 – Add a Wordpress blog to your website. wordpress.org Updating the blog on a daily/weekly alerts the web crawlers to visit your site as you have new content. Step 10 – Add your URL to Google www.google.com/addurl

Excellence is Still the Purple Cow

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:04:53 CDT

Excellence is still the purple cow.... When you design a website, develop a product, create a brand or make a cake, aim for it to be the best every time... Thank you Dee for continuing to make me the best looking birthday cakes.

One Platform for Contacts

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:52:34 CDT

Just a few hours ago, we were discussing how we wish we had access to one central database that held information about all of our clients so that we could send out things like birthday cards and have up-to-date contact information for everyone we've worked with - past and present. Part of this came from a desire to integrate a very light CRM system into an upcoming product we're developing, but the other part is the simple desire to reach out to clients and friends on days that are important to them. It then occurred to me that there is such a tool... and what's more - it's free. Plaxo has been solving this problem for years, free of charge. However, the unfortunate side of this equation is that if I counted all of the contacts in my address book who are using it as opposed to those who are not, the folks who haven't adopted it wind by a landslide. That lead me to wonder why people wouldn't want to keep their network updated on changes to their contact information, let others know when their birthdays or anniversaries are and simply keep in touch using a simple, passive and free web-based tool. If you're reading this and you've ever had the same frustration, then sign up for Plaxo for free right now and make connecting easier.

Website Design Project Management

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:34:58 CDT

What does project management mean for your company? Do you have multiple layers of PM? We've been discussing if project management has any value, and what is that value? It's a question that all service companies have to deal with now and again. There is no right or wrong answer on how any PM must get done, projects just have to be completed well and ontime. If you're building the Burj Dubai you need to have multi levels of managers overseeing each specific area and job on the site. Overseers are then checking their work and double checking it and the King oversees everyone. Or, if you own a casino in Vegas you have a mulit level of project managers handling the gaming areas of the hotel. Even if you're a plumber or painter you have to project mange and generally it's the person doing the actual work. This allows for a clean line of communication between the service provider and the client. Within FTS when we have a web design or search engine marketing project, we've used a project manager to handle general communication between clients and designers. Their job was to also handle creating To-Do's, Milestones and Q&A. This did cause a problem though. The PM had to speak with the client and then the designer, then the client again. This ends up becoming a difficult game of telephone. Our designers always work hand in hand with our clients through Basecamp. Having the PM work between the designer and the client creates a level of complication we find unnecessary. How have you handled project management within your company?

No more dropped calls with iphone 2.1 software update

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:48:10 CDT

On Friday, September 12, 2008, Apple removed their cone of silence and released the iphone 2.1 software update. Since downloading this software, I have not had one dropped call and I have had full bars with the 3G symbol next to it. I no longer feel like a Vista User. Next time I see Steve Jobs, I am going to "kiss him on the lips".

Site testing on a budget

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:11:20 CDT

The problem with most websites is that they have so many pages it's impossible to know where the leaks are. The truth that nobody wants to admit is that they don't know what's happening on their site. For bigger sites this might be something they think they can solve with money. The bad news fro the big guys is that money alone does not solve the problem - it's hard work to fix the leaky bucket. For the smaller sites trying to break through, this is great news. Having nothing more than hard work between the small impostor and the large incumbent means the playing field is very flat. Whether you're a big site or a small site the best place to start getting yourself to the top is to test what you have. Testing your website is the easiest way to find improvements that will either prevent bounces or increase conversions to your specific goals. Here are a few things you can test on your site: Gather data first before testing the site, you need a baseline to measure from Test all the way down the funnel, not just the primary pages Test one or two things at a time so you can see results from changes Headlines are the most important way to make instant improvements. Match the headlines on all your pages to the link that brought them there Test the questions in your forms Look for high bounce rates. First find the average and look for anomalies Make sure the actions you want visitors to take on your site are supported by the right content, information, instructions and calls to action. You may also want to check our UserTesting.com and Google's Wesite Optimizer.

Quick Harvest Time Tracking Review

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:45:27 CDT

We recently started using Harvest as a time tracking tool. For the last few years we have been using QuickBooks Online to track time. It's an easy enough app to use but the fact that it doesn't support Mac's was a real pain. We're a Mac only shop now (we have had a split of PC's and Mac's in the past) so the general frustration levels were now universal. We decided to keep QuickBooks for all our financial reporting and bookkeeping but we needed a better way to understand project profitability and progress. We researched several similar tools but picked Harvest for a few specific reasons: It integrates with Basecamp There is a desktop widget for Mac's and PC's that allows quick time adding The progress bars show you how far along a project is. The progress bar was the highlight for me. As the guy who needs to know what projects are at what stage so I can either bill a client or discuss scope creep before it's too late. Although we only charge fees on design and SEO projects we still track time to measure progress, profitability and track billing cycles.

Flowing Data Visualization Winner

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:31:53 CDT

Ever wondered what your alcohol consumption looks like over a few weeks? Flowing Data recently ran a competition to see who could visualize their personal days the best. From the Flowing Data blog... While I enjoyed all the entries (and I hope you all enjoyed making them), there can only be one winner. The winner is Tim Graham who took manual personal data collection to another level. From email spam, to beverage consumption, to aches and pains, Tim embraced the spirit of self-surveillance. He even made his personal data available in the forums. Congratulations, Tim!

Exclusive Threadsmith promotion

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:32:33 CDT

We don't often do this but we're promoting one of our clients. Threadsmith, has just re-launched their website. They are a custom embroidery company specializing in clothing and gear for groups, businesses and gifts. The cool thing is they have no minimums or set-up fees. The site uses real time design tools, which lets you create whatever you want to be embroidered on the clothes or upload your business logo. The company would like to get the word out to small businesses and also get feedback on the new logo upload technology so they are offering one free item (up to $30) through 9/23/2008. No strings attached. To get your free items simply enter code MFB9JVWJQ3BK at checkout. Feel free to pass this along to other small business owners who you think would be interested.

Social marketing tactical plan

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:34:27 CDT

Step 1: Identify your ideal customer profile (be very specific, this is not just a list of demographics) Step 2: Make connection with top blog authors (this is about relationship building and can be the hardest and longest part of any social marketing project. Sending an email with a press release does not count) Step 3: Arrange a brainstorming meeting with 2 or 3 of the top bloggers. This deepens the relationship and allows you to come up with a promotion where everyone is in tune and excited. Do not try and force your ideas on blog authors, they are not big on being bullied. Step 4: Ensure the promotion benefits all of the blog authors. Stay deeply involved by monitoring the promotions. Ideally the promotion will be scheduled to run over a period of time where each blogger gets traffic from the others by cross promoting. Step 5: Capture email addresses and develop an online community related to the topic. I'm making this sound easy but each project will be so different that community development will look different for each.

Turning back the clock with my iphone 3G

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:25:56 CDT

Early this summer, I was eagerly anticipating the July release of the new iphone 3G from Apple. Having an iphone already, I was very impressed and extremely happy with all of the features that were currently available on my phone. I was quickly accessing email, the web, and I had the best reception I’ve ever had with a cell phone. I was excited about the new features they were adding. However, I did not realize that I was trading new features and losing a feature like “making a phone call”. Since I purchased the new iphone 3G, I have experienced a drop on every call. Very frustrating to lose reception when you have full bars and the call drops. I have contacted Apple and they have had me update my software for the phone and are slow and almost unresponsive in telling me when I can get this problem fixed. I am feeling as frustrated with Apple as a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Above the Scroll

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:01:25 CDT

Being a web designer, one of the comments I hear very often is: can we move all the content “above the fold”. Usually, I try to educate my customers to use the term “above the scroll”. ”Above the scroll”, in web design, referrers to locating an item near the top of a web page so it can be viewed in a browser without scrolling. In August the screen resolution market share was listed at 1024px X 768px | 40% 1280px X 800px | 18% 1280px X 1024px | 13% 1440px X 900px | 7% 800px X 600px | 5% Other | 17% So this means as a web designer, if you want to keep all content “ above the scroll” then your maximum height for the website needs to be no grater then 768 pixles or 48em.

Abedeen Chief Marketing Officer Conference 2008

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:24:25 CDT

Last week I was at the Abedeen Chief Marketing Officer Conference. Some of the speakers included the CMO's of Walmart.com and Wells Fargo, VP's of Marketing from Levi's and HP's personal computing division and the Chief Business Development Officer from Kodak. If you want to know what CMO's are worried about in 2008 it's social media, web analytics and making CRM simpler. For the majority of CMO's social media is a black hole and their attempts to leverage it have been problematic. As one speaker pointed out, the analog is that many of these marketing organizations are trying to do the same thing they have done for years - be the one's in control of the conversation. It's similar to early websites. Before we really understood web interaction early websites just looked like brochures that had been scanned and hosted online. Most social media attempts are trying to put the website tactics to work in a place that's far more dynamic and fluid. The question we should be asking ourselves is Peter Drucker's favorite, "If we were not already doing it this way, is this the way we would do it?" Walmart.com's Cathy Halligan was refreshingly honest when she admitted that they are not sure what social media means to their 130,000,000 weekly customers yet. What she does know is that the reviews and comments on the product sections are slowly creating conversations between customers. This 'conversation-in-the-aisle' is the Holy Grail for Halligan because it drives loyalty and community. For companies like Walmart.com, Best Buy and Levis there is a direct, and fast growing, correlation between online research and buying behavior. In 2007 all retailers saw a massive spike in purchases directly influenced by online research. According to Halligan's presentation data some $603 billion in purchases were first researched online. What's really interesting is that this researching behavior is moving away from friends and family sources to online options like blogs, product review sites, and user generated product and service reports. The good news for web designers and marketers like us is that web marketing is definitely the most important area of spending and development for all companies. That said, the hard part is knowing how to position yourself on the web. If you're Levi's you combine reality TV and online design competitions to create a community. Patrice Varni, Levi's CMO, partnered with Bravo's Project Runway to create an innovative campaign. Even then, Levi has failed to see beyond the initial campaign and their follow up has been simply to gather email addresses. What they do with those email addresses remains to be see. More spam? Let's hope not. One of the outstanding campaigns we heard about was HP's "31 Days of the Dragon", which combined the blog business develop skills of Buzz Corps with some unsold inventory to come up with a blog author driven promotion. The campaign succeeded in driving serious traffic, comments and sales of the laptop in question. Others are also seeing increases in revenue directly related to web analytics learnings. Stephan Chase, from Marriott International, says that a deep understanding and application of their web analytics data has been so influential on bottom line improvements that he calls data "the next big creative". My illustrated (partial) notes from the conference are here if you'd like to check them out.

Carry on airline food

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:05:33 CDT

Can somebody please create some good carry-on airline food? Is it really that hard?

Simple explanations make money

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:28:26 CDT

We have been surveying our clients with short informal phone calls that ask questions like "what's the one thing you'd like us to do more of?" or "what made you want to work with us in the first place?" For me the surprise has been that our clients often work with us because we make the complex things seem more simple. Now what do you do with information like that? How can you package that? Can you even package simple explanations in a way that they become both valuable and viral? Lee Lefever at Common Craft has done exactly that. Check out how they have made the difficult easy... The only sad thing is that they are no longer accepting custom work. Opportunity knocks?

Re-Branding at What Cost

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:40:13 CDT

The other day I saw a Stop & Shop commercial suggesting a full re-branding of the popular supermarket's logo. So naturally I got to thinking about how this was going to affect their web presence, print collateral and physical signage at all of their locations. I wondered how much better might it be for the brand (and the environment) if instead of physically changing their interior and exterior signage, they instead started a campaign informing users that though their logo & branding would be updated in places like the web, shopping bags, flyers, etc., they would keep their physical signage the same in an effort to be more environmentally conscious. After all, enormous fiberglass / neon signs are not exactly easy to recycle. Would this message resonate more with their customers than a shiny neon sign donning the new logo? Would consumers really stop to think about the impact a change like this would cause? Would they care? What do you think?

Hofstadter's law

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:55:37 CDT

“Hofstadter’s law, conceived by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, goes like this: any task you’re planning to complete will always take longer than expected - even when Hofstadter’s law is taken into account. Even if you know a project will overrun, and build that knowledge into your planning, it’ll simply overrun your new estimated finish time, too, Hofstadter says. We chronically underestimate the time things take: that’s why Sydney Opera House opened 10 years later than scheduled, and why the new Wembley stadium opened last year, not in 2003, 2005 or 2006, each of which had been, at various points, the predicted completion date. It’s also why the list-makers among us get up each day and make to-do lists that by the same evening will seem laughable, even insane.”

UX designer vs. Salesman

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:42:17 CDT

My job is to sell design. It's made easier by the fact that almost all of our clients come to us looking for a design solution. We're not selling design as much as selling the value of the specific solutions we'll be implementing with each client. It's very unusual these days to find a client that doesn't understand the value of a well designed web experience. Here's the weird thing. Even though there is an almost universal acceptance that design is as important to business success as a comprehensive business strategy some designers fail to see themselves as part of the sales process. I still come across so many designers that think of themselves as designers and not as salespeople. Apparently sales and marketing are still considered swear words in most designer's heads. Sales is not only necessary for designers to understand but they have to embrace it to be find the channels for their creativity. I came across this posting by Christopher Fahey at Behavior which explains my frustration so much more eloquently: A designer who neglects marketing concerns and designs a product that the target audience sees as undesirable (because, for example, it lacks a sexy list of features or a glossy interface) is just as bad as a designer who neglects production concerns and creates something that is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to build (to manufacture, program, whatever).

Some thoughts on working from home

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:28:21 CDT

As you might guess, working from home is pretty great. I work when I want, how I want. I have little need for office attire like slacks and blouses and I can get a few house chores done in between work sessions. When the weather's nice, I work with the windows open and under natural light. Best of all, I enjoy a natural progression to my day, free of unnecessary stresses (like hitting traffic at the wrong time or freezing my butt off in an overly air conditioned office). All of these little conveniences aside, I think the most profound thing about working from home is the self reflection and examination it seems to cause. If I'm not in the mood for work, what do I need to change? my routine? my location? my attitude? All are posibilities and areas for experimentation. What does it take to keep me focused and productive? I've tried many strategies: very strictly block scheduling all of the time in my day, to do lists on paper and in various programs on the computer, using a timer and setting time limits to my tasks. Currently, my most powerful trick is simply waiting until 10 a.m. to check my email (its amazing how derailing all those messages can be to my equilibrium). Sometimes simply packing up my laptop and going to a coffee shop for the morning can make a world of difference. It is important, too, not to be your own source of stress. There was a period when I was really obsessing about getting a predetermined number of chargeable hours in each day, I may as well have been back in the corporate environment with the department director scolding me for being 5 minutes late again. I had to remind myself that I work from home, and I have to take advantage of that. Take the dog for a walk, end the day a little early, whatever it takes to remind myself how great this situation is and renew my gratitude for having found myself here. That alone is some powerful motivation!

Is strategy better when replaced by experience?

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:25:40 CDT

Just like a brand, the experience is what counts, not the strategy. If you're a web designer you might have encountered strategy that doesn't match up with the design goals. Strategy, and designing strategies, is a linear process. Experience is a non-linear process. Can you design a non-linear experience in a linear way? What if you let the customer experience define the strategy? Instead of spending the next 6 months creating a big strategy, launch with a good-enough product or service and create valuable experience. That way you can iterate and tweak on the move and let the experience design the strategy.

CDIA's Speaker Series kicks off with Ethan Marcotte

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:31:44 CDT

The Center For Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) is kicking off a cool new series of speakers this fall. First up is Ethan Marcotte who is a senior designer at the acclaimed Airbag Industries. The topic of Ethan's talk will be "Comps vs. Code: Couples Therapy". High-end design and standards compliant code don't sound like a match made in heaven but Ethan will prove it is. Ethan will discuss top-notch design and art-direction, as well as how to bullet proof their templates. The event will be held at the CDIA's campus in Waltham, MA at 274 Moody Street, Studio C on Tuesday, September 30th, at 6:30pm. The fee is $5 for students and $10 for the rest of us. CDIA alumni and students are free. Please RSVP by September 29th to speakerseries@cdiabu.com

Web design plans and myths

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:26:38 CDT

I'm not a huge fan of over-planning things. One my all time favorite quote is Mike Tyson's "everyone has a plan until they get hit". Tyson's own stupidity aside he makes a good point. There is a perpetual myth in business that planning something to the finest detail will avoid problems. The truth is nobody can predict what will happen 6 weeks out, never-mind 6 months out. In any project or plan there is the tendency to underestimate the time it'll take to get things done. Humans are tainted with a general laziness that tends to leave everything till the last minute. Especially tasks that are not very interesting. This quote from Wikipedia sums it up... In one study, 37 students were asked to estimate the completion times for their senior theses. The average estimate was 33.9 days. Only about 30% of the students were able to complete their thesis in the amount of time they predicted, and the average actual completion time was 55.5 days In web design it's better to plan in short spurts. Plan for a week or two ahead and then review the plan at the end of each period. In Agile methodology those periods are called sprints. In our office we call them common sense. Setting realistic attainable goals keeps everyone both focused and in a mild state of urgency. It's still possible to plan far ahead but don't get married to those milestones. Rather be prepared to adjust quickly and decisively when things don't do as planned. It's better to have an A+ team with a good-enough-B-plan that's well trained to deal with obstacles than a team of B players with a A+ plan.

JetPack is coming!

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:43:21 CDT

We've been hard at work on a new search marketing service that creates affordable packages for clients looking for something slightly less than a full-agency experience and a little more than just an automated software service. It's perfect for small companies who need a dedicated search marketing program but are more budget sensitive. The service, called JetPack, has already been running beta trials with several clients and partners. The packages will range from $1,500/month to $3,000/month and require no long-term contracts. These packages will combine PPC, SEO, landing pages with a simple to use dashboard that will highlight your visitors, leads, calls, and downloads in a single screen. For small to medium businesses looking for a search marketing package JetPack will be a simple and risk-free solution. We're still looking for beta users so please visit our splash page and sign up.

Energy (not fuel, enthusiasm)

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:31:11 CDT

Where does the energy come from to create a successful business, blog or project? I think it comes from the people that are joined together in the endeavor. The best way to get focused is to get passionate about your idea. Of course the people you work with are the primary reason you remain passionate. If you're working with people that support you and encourage you, then it's easy to start excited and energetic. Another way to make sure you stay energized is to work on an idea that's natural for you. Don't force it. Set yourself up for success by listening to what your market is telling you and align that with what you're good at.

SEO and design resources for agencies and studios

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:15:47 CDT

AgencyTool has launched and it's included a very comprehensive list of web and search resources. It's a little overwhelming but very useful.

Online marketing for beginners article gets it right

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:16:59 CDT

I came across this article after writing my previous post. It's an excellent summary of the things that are important in SEO and web design. The article is written from the often frustrating point of a client-agency conversation and outlines how important a long-term view is for search marketing success. Here's a snippet... The problem is that the way most people look at SEO (and they are thinking SEO, not marketing - it's up to you to show them the difference) is that they're going to pay a certain amount of money for the top spots for certain keywords. You can guarantee they've been told another company will guarantee 10 number 1 positions for $50. This is where ROI comes into play. ROI stands for "Return on Investment". Paying $50 for a $0 return is a bad idea - but people do it all the time, because it's cheap. Paying $5,000 for a $50,000 return is a great idea - but people gasp at the very idea they could spend that much in the beginning, despite the potential.

Which metrics to track for SEM?

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:05:20 CDT

Tracking keyword ranking is mostly a waste of time yet almost every site owners obsesses over them. So if keyword ranking has little or no value, what does? There has been much debate in the search marketing world about Google's decision to prevent automated tools like Web Position Gold and WebCEO from using ranking data in their reports. It's not surprising but it is disappointing if you are trying to track your target keyword's performance on Google's SERPs. In truth there are several more important stats to be watching. There are performance indicators that offer much more value to the website owner than keyword ranking. Here are the indicators we watch on our own sites and recommend to our clients: Incoming links: The quantity and quality of the incoming links to any given website or page will be as close as you are going to get to knowing your PageRank success potential. Bearing in mind that PageRank is itself not an indicator of success, incoming links will increase the opportunity of being highly ranked by all search engines. Another way links can help is to suggest future content themes and topics that correlate to audience interests. By looking at the links source and content we can see what type of sites and audiences are linking to our sites. Indexed Pages: The amount of pages on my site as compared to the amount of pages indexed by a search engine tells me where there might be problems. If Google has 100 pages indexed but my site has 1000 then there could be several things wrong with my site. The easiest way to solve this problem is to submit a XML site map to Google and set up a Google Webmaster account to ensure they are indexing my site frequently. The more pages that are indexed the more likely one of them will be found in a search. Conversions: At the end of the day we're all looking for conversions. Even sites making money from advertising are still shooting for email newsletter signups, form submissions, subscriptions and registrations for alerts. For ecommerce sites the conversion rate is the lifeblood of the site. If you need to be obsessed with a statistic then this is the one to get crazy about. Constantly doing A-B testing on offers, page layouts, user interface improvements and keyword choices should be the guiding direction of all your analytics. Title Tags: One other measurement we trust is how long does it take for a new page with new title tags to be indexed. Understanding the gestation period of a new page or a recently reworked page in terms of first page is critical to knowing when and how you can launch new offers or optimize an existing page. Organic traffic vs. paid traffic: Any site worth it's mettle should be trying to replace aid traffic with organic traffic. My goal with any new site is to quickly move the traffic from the instant-gratification paid advertising to the long-term optimized organic traffic. Some sites can benefit from having both paid and organic but only one is sustainable. There is also a direct relationship between organic traffic and conversions. A site's ROI is much higher for organic traffic so will always be my first choice for any future investment.

Is there a de-cluttering trend in the social networking sites?

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:56:32 CDT

The two social network sites I use most, Facebook and Last.fm have both rolled out slick new interfaces recently. I'm happy to see that both sites have managed to tame the clutter and keep the experience focused on the true purpose of the sites. The power of tab-style navigation is reaffirmed as both sites are using it to achieve better organization and intuitive browsing. You can compare the designs for yourself here (sorry, no examples of the old last.fm design. but if do a search, you might find some examples). Who's next ... MySpace?! (ha!)