New Media Campaigns Blog

Extending the life of your content

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:00:00 -0400

One of the most important factors of Search Engine Optimization is regularly posting good content on your website. But a list of your favorite TV shows or what you ate for breakfast isn’t exactly ideal. In a perfect world, you should be consistently creating compelling content that is relevant to your target audience and optimized for keywords you’d like to rank highly for.

But realistically, coming up with something brand-new to post to your blog every week can be a huge time burden, especially when your primary concern is to serve your customers. So, why not extend the life of content you already have? These can be articles you’ve written for other publications, marketing materials your company uses or presentations from talks or seminars.

Here’s a recent example of some content repurposing we did for one of our clients we help with SEO, the Raleigh business and intellectual property law firm Whitmeyer Tuffin, PLLC., which produced some very successful results.

1. It started with a lecture.

Randy Whitmeyer often lectures to classes at local universities on intellectual property law. Such was the case a few weeks ago, when Randy spoke to Dr. Ted Baker’s entrepreneurship students at N.C. State. Naturally, he put together a powerpoint presentation to accompany his talk covering intellectual property basics for entrepreneurs.

2. The presentation was uploaded to slideshare...

Rather than file it away for the next lecture, we added his presentation to the Whitmeyer Tuffin slideshare account so the information could be viewed and shared easily. The firm uses slideshare fairly frequently to publish presentations, which are then added to their website. Not only do these slides inform current and potential clients, it also establishes the Whitmeyer Tuffin attorneys as thought leaders in their industry.

3. And repurposed into a blog post..

Extracting and tweaking the information from this particular presentation would create more SEO value for their website than just embedding the slideshare. So, we used the biggest takeaway points to write an optimized blog post, the Top 10 Intellectual Property Mistakes Made by Emerging Companies. Because Randy had already put thought in to the presentation, it wasn't difficult or time-consuming to recycle the information from the slides for the website.

4. Which was submitted to directories and shared on Twitter.

To get the most out of any content you post, it should be promoted across the web to drive traffic back to the site and (hopefully) generate a few external links. This is usually pretty successful for an interesting, informative post such as this one, particularly when shared in the right places. The blog post became the subject of a Whitmeyer Tuffin tweet, and was submitted to several directories geared toward entrepreneurs.

5. The result?

The post was viewed hundreds of times in the first five days after being shared, and is now the second-most viewed page on the site (after the homepage.) The post’s link on the Startups subreddit drove 136 new visits alone. Overall, traffic to the Whitmeyer Tuffin site has more than doubled since last month, primarily due to directory referrals. The post is also ranking on the first page of Google for intellectual property mistakes.

This is just one example of how content that's already been created can be recycled into a successful website post. Where are some other places you look for site content to repurpose?

5 Tips for Writing Effective Meta Descriptions (and why they matter)

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Think back to the last time you picked up a book at a bookstore or the library. Chances are, you took a moment to flip it over and read the back cover before deciding whether or not it was worthwhile. Meta descriptions, found inside the <head> element in the HTML, are essentially the ‘back cover’ of a web page. They give search engines and potential site visitors a concise explanation of the content on the site. Meta description tags, as well as title and meta keyword tags, form a group of elements known collectively as metadata.

While meta descriptions do not directly factor in to your page’s search engine rankings, they do play a significant role in a page’s SEO. Writing relevant and accurate meta descriptions will increase your site’s click-through-rate from search engines, as they are often used as the description of your page when it appears in search results (and in links on social media sites like Facebook or Google+.)

Take a look at these beginner tips for improving your site’s meta descriptions to see if you’re getting the most out of your metadata!

1. Don’t overlook them

This may seem self-explanatory, but it’s easy for meta descriptions to land on the “nice-to-have” list when preparing a site for launch (since they don’t actually factor in to the algorithm used by most search engines for ranking websites.) Writing effective meta descriptions is neither difficult nor particularly time-consuming, and making the effort to create them will pay off exponentially for your site’s search engine presence.

2. Make them compelling, concise and informative

You may come across sites in search results with one keyword phrase in the description, repeated over and over again. It might even appear IN ALL CAPS!! Even with the best intentions, searchers and search engines view these descriptions as spam, and will avoid your site altogether. An ideal meta description should read as a brief, engaging sentence. It’s meant to grab a searcher's attention, spark interest in what's on the page and encourage a searcher to find out more by clicking on the site (while keeping the exclamation marks to a minimum.)

3. Keep them between 150 and 160 characters

Without a defined meta description tag, search engines will find text in the content of the page for the description (which may or may not be a good representation of your site.) Additionally, this filler text will get snipped at around 160 characters, which could make it unclear. Keeping your meta description between 150 and 160 characters will ensure that you maximize the space available and avoid having your text cut off.

4. Utilize (but don’t abuse) important keywords

Google (and most other major search engines) will bold search queries in the title and description of websites that appear in the search results. Because of this, it’s a good idea to incorporate targeted keywords (and your location, if relevant) in to your meta descriptions - if a word or phrase in your description matches the original search, the bold terms will likely catch the eye of the searcher.

5. Create unique descriptions

Another tactic website owners will sometimes use is to Copy+Paste the same description for every page across the entire website. While meta descriptions can’t help your page rank, duplicate content can certainly hurt it. Go through each page and write a completely unique description based on the content on that page, not what the entire website has to offer. If you have similar pages (such as a separate page for each product you sell,) create a formula to systematically craft unique descriptions because on product name, brand or color.

Many of today’s content management systems will automatically generate meta descriptions for each page based on its content. HiFi also gives users the option to edit the description, as the well as the title tag, for increased customization. What are the things you’ve found helpful when writing meta descriptions?

10 Common Mistakes Political Campaigns Make with Facebook Pages

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:38:33 -0500

1. Not promoting it

The first tip is super-straightforward, but it is so important yet so often overlooked that it is worth mentioning first. Once you create a Facebook page it needs to be promoted for voters and supporters to ever find it. Add a link to the page wherever you can online, including the campaign website, Twitter account, and Youtube video descriptions. Additionally, promote the page offline in places like on direct mail, campaign literature, TV ads, and in a candidate’s stump speeches.

Targeting Facebook ads to voters and potential supporters can also be tremendously cost-effective, so use some of the money budgeted for online ads (you are, right?) to promote the page.

2. Setting up a personal profile for a campaign

This is very basic, but I still see many campaigns get this wrong. Campaigns should be using a page, not a personal profile for a candidate.

3. Having both a personal profile and a page for a candidate

It’s the year 2012 and most people are on Facebook, including many candidates. Additionally, many candidates have been on Facebook for years now and accumulated quite a few friends. So the question often pops up on what should be done with a personal profile while a campaign is going on. It's best to simply hide the personal one through the duration of the campaign so voters don’t get confused trying to decide which place to connect.

4. Neglecting to set up a vanity Facebook url (and as soon as possible)

As soon as a page hits a certain level of “likes” (currently 25), a personalized url can be set up for the page that makes it much easier to remember. For instance, the default url for your page will look something like: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bob-Smithford/143854752232314.

A personalized Facebook url allows it to be a much simpler: http://www.facebook.com/bobsmithford.

Also, while this isn’t always possible, ideally this should be the same as your domain and usernames for every social network you are on. For example, take the Obama campaign: the domain name is barackobama.com, the Facebook url is facebook.com/barackobama, the Twitter username is @barackobama, and the Youtube username is BarackObama. Keeping a name the same across platforms makes it much easier for supporters to find the pages.

5. Promoting a page on print and TV with just an icon instead of a url

On the web you can simply click an icon and it will take you to the website -- but you can’t do this with a postcard or TV ad, so including a url is import so supporters can find a candidate’s Facebook page.

In the same way that you wouldn’t add an icon of a website and tell people to go there without mentioning the url, don't only add a Facebook icon and expect people to find it on their own. Use the personalized url set up for your page and include that on any print or video pieces the campaign puts out.

6. Never looking at Facebook Insights

I’ve often found campaigns don’t realize the wealth of information they have access to through the Insights tab on a for the Facebook page. There a wide range of data that can provide insights things like:

the demographic makeup of those who “like” a page
the best times for posting and the most interacted with type of posts
the number of people reached through a post
number of interactions with a post
how many times a Facebook page has been viewed

7. Not setting up a custom landing tab

Facebook allows a tab other than the wall to be designated as the first tab visitors will see that visit a Facebook page and are not yet fans. Facebook also gives us the ability to customize a tab specifically how we want it. By combining these two options, campaigns have a great opportunity to convert interested voters into supporters and supporters into donors, volunteers, and more. By default, visitors are shown the wall of a page.

As an example, take a look at how Mitt Romney's landing tab is currently set up. While there is more to it than is probably necessary, it includes valuable elements like an email signup, donation call to action, and more information for voters on why Romney should be President.

Another example is the signup shown on Elizabeth Warren's Facebook page:

8. Auto-posting tweets to Facebook

Facebook and Twitter may both be social networks, but both are different from each other in how best to use them. Many campaigns are tempted to autopost tweets from a campaign Twitter account to a Facebook page (or vice versa), but doing doing so removes the ability to customize messaging for the platform.

There many reasons not to do this, but here are a few:

Facebook allows more characters than Twitter, so it makes sense to take advantage of that and use when necessary
Facebook gives users the ability to attach links, videos, and picture with a status update. This is lost when autoposting
It looks lazy to voters
There's a good chance a campaign will not notice and consequently not respond to any comments people may leave on the Facebook update
It's much more likely that you will inadvertently barrage users with too many status updates because Twitter is set up for more frequent updates than Facebook

9. Using the Facebook page to dump press releases and official statements

Keep the press releases and official statements to the reporters and customize your message with a more personal feel for people on Facebook. Press releases are boring, so resist the urge to directly post these to a page. If you do, don't expect fans to actually want to read what is posted. Instead post pictures, videos, and shorter messages that people will actually look at.

Compare North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue’s Facebook page to Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Facebook page. Which do you find more interesting?

10. Adding the position sought to the candidate’s Facebook page title

This is something I know other people disagree with, but I strongly believe that the title for a Facebook page should only be the candidate’s name and nothing more. For example, use “Frank Miller” instead of “Frank Miller for Springfield City Council” because once Frank Miller gets elected, he will want to keep using the Facebook page but the “for Springfield City Council” will no longer be correct. Alternatively, if Frank loses and runs for mayor in two years, the previous page will no longer be able to be used and the campaign will have to start from scratch again.

Facebook doesn’t allow changing a page title if there are over 100 likes, and it’s an awful feeling when you realize the page you worked hard to build to hundreds or thousands of fans is no longer able to be used because the title is incorrect. Keep it simple and stick with solely the candidate’s name -- in the long run you will be glad.

Tips and Lessons Learned in Producing a Successful Infographic

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:10:00 -0400

Earlier this year, we saw an opportunity to build a site where businesses could post and share local news and press releases. Many of the sites in this space were badly outdated, too commercial or had simply shut down over time. Our website, NC Headlines, focused on optimizing releases for searches and also made social sharing and integration very easy. We had no plans to monetize the site, but thought it would be a good thing for the community and a way to get our name out there.

The site had steady growth over the first several months, but visits began to level off. We talked about different ways to market the site and decided that an infographic could be a good way to attract visitors, gain inbound links and that it would serve as a great inbound marketing asset for the site, moving forward. Below are the steps we took to build the infographic and a few of the things we learned along the way.

1. Choose a topic

NC Headlines is all about North Carolina and North Carolina Businesses, so our primary decision was around what specific state-related topic we should cover. We looked at things like business growth, schools, employment rates and state-to-state rankings. In the end, we chose to combine many of these, creating a snapshot of the state. Something that people could read, share and be proud of. By the end of the data collection, we were more impressed with our state than ever before. NC really is an awesome state and as someone who has lived here for my entire life, I probably take it for granted! By choosing a topic that directly related to our readers (North Carolinians) we ensured direct overlap between NC Headlines' target audience and people who would enjoy the graphic.

2. Gather information and assets

This step really ties-in with step 1, in that you’re going to need data to support your topic. With each topic considered, we did some light research on what data was readily available. You could always gather your own data to support the topic, but that was beyond the scope of what we could tackle for this project. In the end, we gathered information from a number of sources across the web and compiled a single outline of how we hoped to structure this information in the final graphic. A tip, be sure to include your sources while collecting the data so that you don’t have to go back and track down that information later on. Also, if you’re working in a group, as we were, post your outline online so that everyone in the group can see and edit it without getting into a nasty "reply all" attachment cycle. We used Google Docs.

3. Design

Topic, check. Data, check. Now the fun part! Review your data and explore different ways to bring these stats, numbers and comparisons to life with your designer. In our case, since our data was mostly bullet points of data and snippets of information, we relied heavily on supporting images and graphics to add some life to this relatively "static" information. We also sectioned off our data into individual sections in the outline phase, so we knew that the design needed to tie all of these sections together as one coherent design, but with clearly grouped sections. As web designers, this wasn't much different than the process we’d take when figuring out a site’s information structure and layout.

4. Distribute

When your infographic is ready to go, it's time to start spreading the word. Hopefully you have some good, established channels in place. For us, this was social media and the NC Headlines website. We posted the graphic to the site, which may seem obvious, but is probably worth mentioning. For SEO, you want to make sure the infographic is hosted on your domain and integrated into your website. When people click through, you want the site’s branding and navigation available so that people can explore other parts of the site if they’re interested. If applicable, also include a call to action on the same page as the graphic. This could include an email newsletter form or possibly some type of service or product you’re promoting that ties-into the topic of the infographic. We created a standalone page for the graphic and also added it to the sidebar for other pages on the site.

Once the graphic was on the site, we created a shortened link to the page. We used bit.ly since it has some nice, simple tracking options. If you’re using a social media measurement platform, like Argyle Social (another local company), you could also use that.

Next, put it out there. We first tweeted a link to the page, both from the site's account and also from my personal one, and then posted it to our company Facebook page. We chose to send it around early in the morning since we knew that was a time where we had seen good social activity with our followers in the past. Next, we did a little light prompting, letting co-workers know it was live and reaching out to a few friends. They retweeted the original tweet and within a minute or so it was in front of a few thousand people. A handful of those people also shared the link and within the hour we had gathered a few hundred mentions. If you get one or two people within this group that are big "influencers" in a social circle, you’re in for a nice spider web of quick sharing that can take off quickly.

One other quick note, be sure to put some thought into your tweet and ask yourself, “Is this something I’d retweet or share?” If not, try to reword it.

5. Measure

I mentioned bit.ly above. We also took a few looks at Topsy throughout the day and some reports on Google Analytics after the weekend. In all, these free measurement tools can give you a good picture of your reach. For more detailed measurements, I’d recommend taking a look at some software specifically built for sharing/measuring social reach and engagement.

Iterate

Don’t wait until the stars align to share your infographic, they probably never will and even if they did, your data will likely be outdated. Instead, get it to a point where you’re comfortable sharing and be prepared to respond to criticism and iterate. In our case, I left off the Charlotte Bobcats, an NBA team in Charlotte, from our list of NC-based sports franchises. Whoops. Not the end of the world, though. Several of our followers noticed the omission quickly and let us know about it. We’ll probably create a second version of the infographic shortly and we’ll include them in version 2. Overall, it’s the web, not a book cover, so just iterate and continue to improve with the help of others. In the end, this slip-up generated a few conversations and probably some sharing that may not have happened otherwise. So, if you’re a glass half full guy or girl, look at it as a silver lining.

Stats & Results

We saw a huge spike in traffic for the day, about 7x what the site normally has. On the social side, we had around 40 mentions on Facebook, over 300 clicks on our Bit.ly link, a handful of Google +1s and some additional sharing through email and LinkedIn. In all, we were really excited with the shorterm reach and as I mentioned earlier, we should continue to see longtail traffic moving forward.

Conclusion

This was our first attempt at producing an infographic, and we were very pleased with the results. 93% of the visitors to the infographic had never been to NC Headlines before, we gained the attention of a few prominent groups in the area, received a lot of inbound links to our side project, and got to brag about our favorite state. Overall, it was a great first experience, but I’m sure there are many others out there with their own unique experiences, and I’d love to hear about what you've found to be successful. If you’re willing, share your thoughts and tips in the comments below.

Blogging to Attract New Visitors, Not to Gain Subscribers

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:05:47 -0400

New Media Campaigns recently spoke with members of the local chapter of the Legal Marketing Association during their monthly meeting. While the entire conversation centered on social media and online marketing efforts, one point stood out above the rest when it came to blogging.

An LMA member voiced their hesitation to start a blog across their firm because they were afraid disparate voices and practices would hurt visitors’ willingness to subscribe. This question led to a spirited discussion around what the goals of an organization's blog should be and how to best realize those goals. Ultimately, we argued that the immediate goal of a company blog should be engaging new clients and building subscribers should be secondary due to the following reasons.

The True Goal of Blogging: Bring New People In

This kind of hesitation is common as most people instantly think “subscribers” when they hear about blogging as a strategy. However, the decision to blog or not to blog shouldn’t initially be framed by trying to optimize for the number of subscribers. The goal is to bring in new people to your site and organization. Subscribers may follow but even if you're not gaining actual subscribers, you’ll still be bringing in new leads and prospects to your site and that should be the primary goal of any company’s blog.

Take our company for example. Across our two blogs (HiFi and NMC), the total number of subscribers totals around 1,000 people. However, those blogs get more than 500,000 visits per year from non-subscribers due to people looking for good content and finding our blog.

Additionally, our actual conversions to project requests and actual deals are almost exclusively by non-subscribers. People find our content, enjoy it, look at our work, and then get in contact with us. It’s very rare for a subscription to enter that chain of events, and that’s why we focus on creating content to draw in new people rather than to simply satisfy subscribers who represent a minority of our readers.

Don’t get me wrong, subscribers are very valuable in adding vibrancy to the discussion on your blog and in having advocates that will frequently share your posts. But that’s just an added bonus and not the driving focus for companies blogging -- attracting and converting leads.

A Changing Landscape for Online Reading

While having a significant number of subscribers can be a great thing, the online reading landscape is changing, RSS use is declining and social media use is spiking, allowing plenty of other ways people can see your blog beyond subscribing.

With more people using Twitter and other social media, they’re much more likely to follow you than subscribe. And by pushing your posts on social media, you create a convenient way for your followers to share your posts with their network, increasing your organization’s reach.

Win by Creating Useful Content

Our goal is to create useful content, and not just for our subscribers, but for anyone out there interested in the topic. If you get subscribers, that’s a bonus. Useful content draws people in, and excites people to initiate a conversation and engage with your organization. By creating interesting, fresh content that is meant to engage a broad audience rather than just a few subscribers, you'll grow the overall pie of prospects/readers and hopefully the slice of engaged ones, too.

So, when deciding whether or not to blog, don't frame the decision by whether or not people will subscribe to your content but whether or not anyone out there will want to find and read any of your articles, and the answer to that question is almost always yes.

Speaking with the Legal Marketing Association

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:50:00 -0400

Recently, Clay and I had the opportunity to speak with the local chapter of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) during their monthly meeting. LMA is a well-established national non-profit organization made up of marketing and business development professionals within the legal industry.

Our talk was titled "Tackling Social Media and Making the Most of Your Online Marketing Efforts." As you might imagine, we covered things like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and also topics like SEO, Blogging and other methods of Inbound Marketing. For each, we tried to share first-hand examples from our own experience, best practices, and sample outlines or gameplans for getting started. We also discussed some of the tools and techniques to manage the workflow associated with these activities and how to make the most of your time without getting completely overwhelmed. Needless to say, it was a lot to try and cover in an hour! The slide deck wasn't meant to stand alone, but I'd be happy to share it with you -- just leave a comment below with your information or email me at jonathan@newmediacampaigns.com.

I was a member of LMA when working with Hutchison Law Group and found it to be a very valuable resource, both from a learning perspective and also because of the sharing and collaboration that takes place. It's a group full of skilled marketers and if you work in the industry, I would highly recommend getting involved.

Non-Profits Need to Put a Face to Online Fundraising

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:00:00 -0400

66 years ago, the United States military asked its decorated soldiers to tour the country and promote the sale of war bonds. A single summer of tours raised over $26 billion.

We can call it the War Bond Fundraising Philosophy; The idea that putting a face to fundraising efforts can make a campaign more successful. And 66 years later, this still holds true, especially when it comes to online fundraising efforts.

Research conducted by IUPUI Center of Philanthropy reported that one of the top 10 reasons donors chose not to donate to a cause was because the donor was “not informed how the contribution would be used.” Simply telling donors how their donation will help can only do so much; but if you can show them the potential impact of their donation, be it through photos, testimonials, or videos, you can compel them to act.

DonorsChoose.org does a great job of this. When you initially visit the website, you are immediately presented with a slideshow of photos accompanied by testimonials from teachers who have benefited from donor gifts. And when you visit a specific project on the site, the teacher writes a detailed letter as to how the gift will help their classroom and students.

Putting a face to your online fundraising campaign personifies your goal. Not only does showing tangible results give purpose to your online fundraising, it’s also a great way to shorten the gap online fundraising creates between the donor and the recipient. According to Nonprofit World Magazine, people donate to causes that show who their donation affects and how – in turn, making them feeling more connected to the cause.

With our non-profit web design clients, we’ve personally seen great results by personalizing donation asks. Here are a few of the ways you can show your donors how their donation can help:

Photos: Like DonorsChoose.org, you can provide photos and testimonials on your fundraising page, or even your homepage. Giving a visual representation can mean a lot more than just a written explanation on your website.
Email Blast from Stakeholder: Have a donation recipient write an email blast that you can send to your donor list explaining the importance and effect a donation would have.
Call-Out Box: Placing a Call-Out Box on the actual donation page that explains how the contribution will help gives a quick snapshot of the impact created, and the more specific, the better.
Thank-You Emails: Personalized thank-you emails from recipients to donors can share the impact of the donation and create a personal connection.
Video: Video testimonials that can be shot from a flip cam or video-enabled camera are a great interactive way to engage potential donors.
Testimonials: Providing testimonials from recipients in the side bar of your donation page explaining the impact of donations, and even other donor testimonials – why they are connected to the cause, do they know someone personally affected? – can further encourage donation.

Creating this human connection is as vital as ever when it comes to online fundraising. 66 years ago, decorated soldiers on tour for war bonds created a similar connection. They connected the war overseas to the home front. By implementing the War Bond Fundraising Philosophy in you online fundraising, you can create a similar connection. One that will help make your fundraising campaign more successful.

3 Examples of Inbound Marketing at Work

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:10:00 -0400

Inbound marketing is the idea that you can attract visitors and leads to your site and into your sales funnel without spending dollars on outbound marketing, such as advertising, cold calls, conference booths, etc. It's a strategy that we really embrace at our company and preach to all of our clients. We spend virtually no dollars or time on traditional, outbound marketing and sales techniques, instead focusing on drawing visitors by the content we create.

This strategy has paid great dividends to us in both sales and earned press, and I wanted to give three quick examples of inbound methods that worked well for us.

Blog comment turned into multiple articles.

In 2010, Inc. announced that they were going to spend a week working virtually to get the experience of many startups whose teams are geographically spread out. As a follower of Inc. and someone who works at a company with several employees working virtually, I found the Inc. article quite interesting and I left a comment on the blog saying that we worked virtually and enjoyed it. The next thing I know, I'm on the phone with Inc., giving them our five tips on successfully working virtually. The simple comment led to us being featured in a prominent publication.

The Inc. article ranked well in search engines and has caused many journalists doing research "virtual working" stories over the past year to reach out to us, including a large profile in the local News & Observer, which directly led to new business for our company. This simple blog comment drew in thousands in earned impressions and real revenue for our company.
Blog interview with local business leads to work for national client.

We write a variety of posts on our blog, and we recently decided to interview a local business owner that we thought was doing an admirable job online. Being a runner, I had always been impressed with Fleet Feet Carrboro's online marketing mix of email blasts, social networking, and blogging. (At the time,) FF Carrboro was not a client of ours, and we didn't really even think they'd be a great fit for us. We interviewed Brian White, the owner of Fleet Feet Carrboro, posted it on our blog and publicized it in our monthly email newsletter and across our social networks. Our goal was to help provide tips to other local, small businesses and also continue our commitment to the region. However, our return on this endeavor ended up being much bigger.

Within a week, our blog post had caught the eye of Fleet Feet Sports Inc., the national organization that franchises the local stores, and they reached out to us to start a conversation about their own website. We ended up working with Fleet Feet Sports on their new site (which just launched) and rolling out a template option that can be used by their our franchises. Our simple blog post interview led to a large engagement with a national client.
Consistently creating content around politics and online campaigning.

One of New Media Campaigns niches is political websites (our name makes more sense now, right?). Online campaigning is a really interesting and unique topic, so we find ourselves creating a lot of quality content about political web development on our blog. This content gets picked up by other folks in the industry, and they frequently link to it, which helps our Google rankings. After years of doing this, it's now at the point where we rank near the top of Google for most terms about political websites. These rankings are really valuable to us as they not only drive a lot of traffic to our site, but that traffic is incredibly qualified. These are people who are looking to buy or research political websites, coming to our content. It has led to us being featured in publications and speaking on panels around the country about political websites, and it also provides a steady source of inbound leads in the political space.

These three strategies have all resulted in generating both attention and sales for our company, and we didn't have to spend a dime on marketing or employ someone to cold call businesses all day. To be successful with inbound, you have to really commit to the strategy and make sure you're actually creating quality content and not just trash, since you ultimately want people to read and link to your items.

Have you had success with inbound marketing? What has worked for you that we didn't mention here?

Helping the National Center for Learning Disabilities Share the Love

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:05:00 -0500

We’ve been working closely with the National Center for Learning Disabilities to help them leverage their online presence and increase their online donations. To kickoff 2011, we wanted to build a tool that gives back to the thousands of supporters who help NCLD with their contributions in time, money, and efforts.

We decided a fun and meaningful project would be a tool that allowed visitors to send a customized Valentine’s Day eCard that features artwork by a student with a learning disability.

NCLD was excited about the project and gave us a greenlight to design and develop the tool.

Building the Application

We don’t manage the NCLD server, so in order to be able to build the eCard page quickly and manage it, we elected to build the page on our own server and point a subdomain (ecard.ld.org) at us. This approach allowed us to focus 100% of our energy on designing and building the best tool possible without having to worry about navigating potential technical issues.

The process of launching the page was really split into three phases:

Designing and coding the landing page
Designing and coding the card that would be sent to people
Developing the application that would send the card

We wanted the design of the landing page to be extremely clean and allow visitors to easily take action. The point of the page is to help people understand the tool and let them send cards to their friends – we didn’t want to overwhelm visitors with competing calls to action or takeaway from the purpose of this application.

For the actual eCard, we wanted to have a festive Valentine’s Day feel, which meant heavy on pink and red. Similar to the landing page, we wanted the card to have a clean design, putting the main emphasis on the sender’s message and the selected artwork. Additionally, within the card, we have links back to the site to encourage recipients to send their own cards, giving an opportunity of the campaign to have a domino effect as recipients become senders.

After we had completed the designs, the actual application was created using web standards and the Slim PHP 5 micro framework. Website visitors enter a personalized message and select artwork to send with their eCards. The web application dynamically builds a custom email eCard based on the sender's message and selected artwork and dispatches the email to the intended recipient.

After designing and developing the application, we had the NCLD technical team point the subdomain at our server to instantaneously take the project live.

Promoting It

Everyone at NCLD and NMC were very excited about the application and the fun it could bring to their supporters. The next step was making sure that we got the word out about the tool to ensure that it got put to good use and spread around. To promote the tool, we're leveraging three main tactics:

Email marketing
Social Media
LD.org traffic

To initially announce the new eCard application, NCLD placed a note about it in their monthly newsletter to supporters, encouraging the group to check it out and send cards to their friends and family. This email blast just included a blurb about the tool among other notes, but we also have scheduled a blast to go out on Valentine's day morning that alerts the NCLD email list about the project.

In addition to the email list, NCLD is using their social media presences to push supporters to the tool. The non-profit has a following of more than 1,800 people between Facebook and Twitter. This audience will be very valuable in spreading word about the landing page, as they're passionate about NCLD and are active in social media with their own networks.

Our third tactic to promote the Valentine's eCard is to place a button in the sidebar of NCLD's homepage. By doing so, regular and new visitors looking for information on the website will become aware of the campaign.

Magnifying the Campaign's Impact

As we continue to scale out the campaign we'll also be gathering valuable data that will measure its success. When analyzing the data, we'll not only be looking to see how many people send an ecard, but also if our subtle encouragement to take further action is effective. The theme of caring that is carried throughout the campaign also seeks to subtly encourage visitors to become more involved and donate to the center. So while our main focus is on the ecard itself we're also hoping to see the campaign serve as a catalyst for newsletter sign-ups and donations.

We're really excited to be a part of this initiative and we encourage you to send a card and support the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

Better Web: Weekly, Actionable Tips to Get the Most from the Web and Your Website

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 09:25:00 -0500

The New Media Campaigns blog has always been a focus for our agency. From the hundreds of posts we’ve written over several years we've benefited from site traffic, exposure and prospects looking for our help. Even more importantly, we’ve contributed lots of helpful tips and advice to our followers--pointing out trends, drawing attention to different tools and techniques and just generally serving as a valuable destination of web-related information. In 2011, we will continue to publish these posts while also launching another resource for site owners and online marketers--Better Web.

Better Web will focus on actionable items that will help to improve your website and/or online marketing, one week at a time. Often focused on beginner and intermediate topics, these weekly posts will shy away from the "food for thought" type dialogue and instead focus on actionable items that anyone can implement right away. If you run a website, market your business online or just want some help making sense of the always-changing web landscape, this resource is for you!

To ensure that you receive each weeks post, I hope that you’ll sign up for our email list. We're all busy and it's easy to bypass or overlook a lot of the great information that's being shared on the web. On top of that, the web is constantly changing and it can be hard to keep up. Add your name to our email list and let us help!