Links to Tasty Straight North Posts around the Web

• On the Content Marketing Institute blog, The Essential Guide to Meta Descriptions that Will Get You Found Online. Lots of screen shots that show what meta descriptions look like on social media sites and Google SERPs.
• On Crowdshifter, How a Blog Can Help Your Sales Force. If your company is sales-driven, this article will be of interest.
• On BlogHer, The Power of Pinterest: Simplicity. Pinterest is the hot topic in social media, and this post talks about why users are loving it.
• On SocialMouths, My Life Without Klout. Expressing my views only, a rant against where Klout is trying to take social media.
• On Search Engine People, How to Organize & Structure Your Website Content for SEO and People. If you want to be more up to speed on navigation best practices, content silos and content theming — read this.
• On Facebook Advertising, The Immense Value Of Small Talk In Social Media. Explains why you shouldn’t look down on people who talk about the weather on Twitter.
• On WeBlogBetter, How to Write an Online Press Release. Despite the popularity of online releases, not everybody is doing it right. These tips will help you get the most out of every release.
• On EverythingPR, 10 Practical Tips for Improving Your Lead Generation Website. Sometimes relatively minor tweaks can vastly improve lead generation. This article discusses simple but important adjustments you can start making today.

Hope you enjoy these

(Links image credit: Fotolia)

A highly-skilled designer can do brilliant things with a website’s design, but search engine optimization must be taken into consideration when shaping a new design. This doesn’t mean you have to go back to the Stone Age designs of the 90’s. Designers should work on a team with wireframers, developers, and SEO specialists to create a website formula that will be eye-catching for both viewers and search engines. Unfortunately, most web designers like to ignore SEO when building sites because they want to express their artistic abilities. Below is an explanation of commonly-made design mistakes that will ruin your SEO.

Using Splash Pages

Don't Make a Splash

Have you ever tried reading a book that sits on the opposite side of a brick wall? It’s just not going to work – and asking Google to read a website that hides behind a splash page is not much different. Your astonishing, psychedelic Java splash page may seem like the cool thing to do, but take my advice and don’t drink the Kool-Aid. The only thing you will accomplish with a splash page is the erection of a massive barrier between your website and search engines.

The reason Java splash pages create a barrier is because search engines can’t read Java. You’re basically creating a home page with no content or navigation. This will cause the homepage to be indexed improperly, stranding the rest of the website from proper indexation. If you absolutely must have a splash page, then add plenty of textual content and global navigation links in the body of the page. This is still a horrible idea, but at least it will give search engines something to read.

Building an All Java Site

Ever heard of the saying, “It’s like talking to a brick wall?” If you build an all Java website, search engines will be talking to a brick wall when trying to find out more about your website. When I explained the horrors of a splash page, I mentioned the fact that it creates a homepage with no content or navigation. Imagine an entire site with no content, no internal linking, and no real navigation. Basically, you have a piece of art, not a website.

On top of being completely SEO unfriendly, Java sites are annoying to use. Nobody wants to wait for pages to load. The worst Java sites are the ones where the applet is only 500×500 pixels – which seems to be a common trend with these types of sites. Here are some words of advice if you still think a Java site is a good idea. If people and search engines can’t read the tiny, Java-embedded text, navigation links, and have to wait 30 seconds for each page to load, then you will end up with a dead website.

Using Frames

Unlike the Nike commercials, just don’t do it. Any designer worth half their weight will also agree that frames are totally 1996. On top of being atrocious looking, frames will also make it extremely difficult for search engines to read your website. All that nicely written content you spent dozens of hours writing is now buried in the markup by the big bad frame monster that doesn’t want to let it be seen by Google.

Why does the frame monster keep Google away? Framed websites use three different html files to create the design. A normal website only uses one html file. This causes a major conflict with the indexation of the website, and only one of the files gets indexed properly. In fact, many framed websites won’t get indexed by search engines at all. It’s like taking all the internal linking on each of the three files, and throwing them in the ring for a Royal Rumble.

Using Images Improperly

Let me put this in very simple terms. Do not use images as your primary form of navigation. Google will get caught up admiring the vibrant colors in the pictures instead of trying to figure out what they are supposed to mean. I’m not saying to use pure text links for navigation. That would be a sin against modern web design. Utilizing text-over-image techniques with cascading style sheets is the best solution to the dilemma between SEO and design. Designers get their pretty, colorful images and SEOs get their juicy text links. Everybody is happy, right?

Aside from navigation, your website probably also uses images in the content area of most pages. While Bing is gazing at your glorious imagery, it will want to know more about the main images related to the page. You can make this very easy for her by optimizing the image. This practice will give words to the image without sacrificing the beauty of the design. Read my article on image optimization best practices for a complete guide on optimizing images.

Forgetting about Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are Nutritious for SEO

While hiking in the woods, you forgot to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Now you are hopelessly lost and can’t find your way back home. Does this sound like your website? Breadcrumbs not only help make the website more user-friendly, but they also helps search engines figure out the hierarchal navigation structure. They also reduce the need to overly expand the navigation bar with unnecessary categories.

If properly implemented, breadcrumbs create an internal linking matrix which will greatly improve search engine performance. Flashy Java-based breadcrumbs may look cool, but nothing performs better than good old-fashioned text links. Text links are easily read by search engines, and they allow for anchor text. Use one of your targeted keywords for the page as the anchor text for the breadcrumb. This will help search engines determine, “Oh hey, this page talks about respirator fit testing equipment.”

Using Images in Place of Content in Headers

Going back to the section about using images properly, don’t replace content with images. Using cool graphics with text for headers may look awesome, but it will hurt your SEO. The purpose of using header text is to emphasize the importance of keywords in the content to search engines. If you don’t use proper h1 tags, you will be depreciating the value of your content. This brings me to my next point about not using header text at all.

Not Using Header Text

Using header tags establishes the hierarchy of importance of content sections within a page, enabling search engines to determine the importance of text. The h1 tag tells Google that the text contained within is the most important, overlying idea of the page – which is why you will want to include a keyword in it. An h2 tag tells the search engine that this is a section describing the h1 tag. The h3 sections are read as sub-sections of the h2s. Any decent designer should be able to easily come up with a creative, eye-catching method of displaying header text.

Using Pop-ups

Pop-up windows are the most obnoxious design error a designer can make. Not only will most browsers block pop-ups, but most users will close the window immediately because it is annoying. That being said, search engines also find your pop-ups to be annoying. In fact, they won’t even index pop-ups as part of the website. Do you really want to infuriate visitors and Google? I think not! If it looks like spam, reads like spam, then it probably is spam.

Using Inconsistent Layouts on the Site

Even if you think a backpacking trip to the middle of the Mojave Desert without food or water sounds like fun, don’t do it to your website. Every website should implement global navigation and footer links on every page. A global navigation bar is the main navigation bar that is on each page. By adding this, your viewers and search engines will never get lost on the website. If you decide to omit this suggestion, take a gander at your analytics. The exit pages with the highest number will probably be the forgotten pages you stranded out in the middle of nowhere. Search engines will also look at this neglect as poor internal linking structure, which will impact your search engine rankings negatively.

Using Geo Redirecting

On multi-language sites, nothing is more convenient than adding in automatic geo redirecting to the correct language. Geo redirects read the geographic location and language of your computer to determine what language the website should be displayed in, and redirect you to the proper language-bearing website. If users are automatically being redirected away from the homepage, you will lose 50% of the link juice from your back-links. Most inbound links point at the homepage, so why would you want to tell Google and Bing to go somewhere else? Sure, it’s very convenient and makes perfect sense to automatically redirect, but it will hurt your SEO. The least inconvenient solution to this problem is to have a “pick your language” option on the homepage. By having users manually pick their language, you get the full strength of your inbound links. BMW does a good job at directing traffic to the correct geographic website with a drop-down menu. BMW also has a different domain and website for each country, and does their SEO separately for each site.

Embedding Videos Improperly

Videos are a great way to engage your audience in the subject matter. Custom pop-up media player scripts are an impressive way to capture the attention of viewers, but they won’t help your SEO. Again, custom media players are usually done with Java – making it impossible for search engines to read. It may sound a bit tacky, but embedding videos directly from YouTube will give your videos optimal search performance.

Using proper metadata, optimization, and embedding from YouTube will create a cinematographic atmosphere that Google can understand. Yes, YouTube does convert video files into Java, but Google acquired YouTube not too long ago, and has set up options to make the videos crawlable. Read my article on YouTube video optimization for a complete guide on how to do this properly.

Botching the 404 Error Page

Avoid an Error on Your Error Page

Implementing a custom 404 error page is a must-have for any website, but it must be done correctly. If you take the time to make a 404 error page, spend the extra few seconds it takes to add in links to return to the website. Forgetting this very simple task is like throwing someone over an electric fence then telling them to come back. Use our custom 404 page as an example. It’s humorous, has nice graphics, but also includes global navigation, footer links, and a button to return to the homepage. Don’t strand your audience or search engines. Having broken internal links depreciates the value of your internal linking structure, which search engines don’t like. If you don’t include links in your 404 page, Google will place more weight on broken links as being a website error during indexation.

Skipping the Footer Links

I’m sure I’ve beaten this one into the ground already, but proper internal linking structure with text links is mandatory if you want your site to perform well. Think of the footer links section as a secondary form of fully optimized navigation. This is the place where you can really smash in that juicy anchor text, and very few readers will notice it. This is also a place where you can include links to pages that you don’t want to place any emphasis on like the sitemap, terms of use, and privacy policy. If you can’t think of any better places to put social media links, this is also a great place to insert them.

Not Writing Optimized Content

Am I repeating myself? Am I repeating myself? Does this sound like the content on your website? Duplicate content is a huge no-no from an SEO standpoint. If Google, Bing, and Yahoo have to read the same content over and over, they will grab your website from their cupboard, throw it in a frying pan, and cook it up like the spam it appears to be. Write original content for each page on your website. Don’t scrape content from other sites either. It will not help your SEO. Also make sure you are optimizing the content properly so search engines and users read your content the way you want them to read it. Here’s a great article written by Straight North’s very own, Brad Shorr, on how to properly optimize content for SEO. Use that checklist to make sure you are getting the most out of your content.

Internet Marketing Strategy Requires Ongoing Attention

A Strategic Look at Marketing in 2012

Back in December I wrote a post suggesting that companies change gears too often on their marketing. The flip side of this problem, of course, is not changing gears often enough. How do you know when it’s time, as an old manager of mine used to say, to stop beating a dead horse?

SEO and Social Media

Certain aspects of Internet marketing need to be reviewed on a monthly basis, regardless of your results. In particular, I’m thinking about social media and SEO. Changes in these areas are occurring at lightening speed, and companies need to be extremely careful NOT to assume that just because something worked yesterday, it will work tomorrow. Questions that should be hotly discussed at this moment include:

• How should we adjust our social media and SEO activities in light of rising importance of Google+ in Google’s search results?
• What does the future of your Facebook marketing look like? Only a year ago, it looked like a slam-dunk winner. Now we see legitimate concerns that Facebook has peaked.
• Google is now hiding certain search data, making it more difficult to evaluate results. What adaptations need to be made in terms of strategy and metrics?
• As a larger SEO issue, two big factors are changing the very meaning of SEO. First, the line between SEO and social media continue to blur; second, personalized search threatens to render the traditional emphasis on pure ranking obsolete. Again, how do we adapt?

Six months from now, the key strategic questions might look completely different — which is further evidence of the need for continuous strategic review.

Mobile Marketing

Another area that merits frequent strategic attention is mobile marketing. Earlier we predicted that mobile marketing would be the big story of 2011. I think we were off by a year; although mobile was big in 2011, lots and lots of companies have only begun to formulate a mobile strategy, leaving a lot of room open for rapid development and deployment in 2012. These are some questions you ought to be discussing:

• How many of our customers are using mobile devices for business?
• How many of our customers plan to use mobile devices for business in the next 12-24 months?
• How are our customers using or planning to use mobile?
• Is our website mobile ready?
• Is there a role for QR codes in our mobile marketing?

Companies can quickly get outflanked by competitors on mobile, and playing catch-up will be costly and difficult. To avoid getting caught in that bind, start by surveying customers and prospects to understand where they are heading with mobile technology.

OVER TO YOU

What are your big strategic challenges for 2012? What’s changing quickly in your marketing world?

Contact us to talk marketing strategy: we’d love to lend a hand. We specialize in B2B and offer a complete suite of services, with clients in industries as diverse as credit card processing for small business and aluminum fabrication.

Let's Take The Confusion Out Of Font Selection

Why Font Selection Matters

Just like layout, organization, color scheme and photo selection, font can create a certain perception or feel of your site to visitors, as well as a certain emotional response. As Nick Harrison of Crain’s Chicago Business wrote recently, one of the keys to differentiating a company’s image is to “[b]e as consistent (color schema, logo, font, brand message, etc.) with all of your digital assets and communication” as possible. By using coherent font selections across marketing materials, you can enhance the sense of your brand and set your company apart.

Font also directly affects the reliability of how information is communicated to users, and that’s as true in the world of web design as it is in the realm of fonts outside the Internet—-where the poor readability of road signs has been known to lead to car accidents, for example. If a font is hard to read, it might not be able to communicate your message, or, even worse, it may annoy or frustrate visitors enough to send them away from your site completely. Easy-to-read fonts, on the other hand, enhance a user’s ability to understand your messaging and become engaged.

Readability of Different Fonts

The readability of a font is influenced by several factors, including style, size, spacing, alignment, font color, tint and background color. While less readable fonts may sometimes serve certain stylistic purposes, “in most cases, communication comes before style,” as Douglas Bonneville of Smashing Magazine says.

There are two main types of fonts available: serif and sans serif. Serif fonts are fonts with extra tails or embellishments on the letters, such as Times New Roman, Georgia and Garamond; sans serif are fonts without those additional details, such as Arial, Helvetica or Verdana. In print, serif fonts are traditionally more readable, but on the web, it’s the sans serif fonts that typically seem most legible through the pixels of computer monitors. As available technology continually increases the resolutions of computer screens, there may be less need for sans-serif web fonts; however, because of the familiarity users have developed with them on the web, they are likely to remain the preference of most designers.

When choosing a font for body copy, look for one that’s clean, legible, made to work well in large blocks of text. Fonts with decoration or detail work better as headers or small chunks of text.

General Qualities That Make for Easy-to-Read Fonts:

• Familiar style and shapes (which may explain the prevalence of Times New Roman in materials)
• Designed for the computer screen (such as Georgia or Verdana)
• Performs well on various operating systems
• High x-height (distance between baseline and top of lowercase “x”)
• Strong contrast between font color and background color
• Sufficient space between lines of text
• Sufficient space between letters
• Sufficient space between words

Beyond general readability, the type of font you select for a given web design should meet the particular needs of the project in terms of legibility, style and emotional response.

Size of Fonts

One of the most crucial aspects of font readability is size: font that is too small will be hard to read, but at the same time, font that is too big will waste space. So what size is the right size? Oliver Reichenstein of Information Architects makes a strong case for 100% font size for the body text of a web page (i.e., 16 pixels). “Initially it is more difficult to create a good layout with a big font size, but that difficulty will help you design a simpler, clearer site,” Reichenstein says. “[16 pixels] is not big. It’s the text size browsers display by default. It’s the text size browsers were intended to display … It looks big at first, but once you use it you quickly realize why all browser makers chose this as the default text size.”

Smashing Magazine agrees: “16-pixel text on a screen is about the same size as text printed in a book or magazine; this is accounting for reading distance.” Not only is 16 pixels a default size and a size comparable with typical print materials, but also, this larger-than-average text size particularly appeals to an older audience. Web visitors in their 40s work twice as hard to read as those in their 20s, Smashing Magazine reports, and those around 60 work four times as hard as that.

By choosing a 100% font size, you benefit the maximum number of readers—which means you market to the maximum number of potential customers.

Number of Fonts

When combining multiple fonts in one web design, it’s important to consider how they work together. Fonts should complement each other rather than confuse the reader: ideally they’ll have something in common but otherwise be totally different. In most cases, it’s best to use just a few. According to A List Apart, “One typeface can be enough to say what you need to say, and two is usually plenty. If you are using more than that, have a good reason–like trying to achieve a certain aesthetic–such as replicating the look of an old boxing, film or music poster, for example.”

The different fonts you choose should also be able to be easily distinguished from one another. “We don’t want to distract the viewer with the question, are these the same or not?” writes Smashing Magazine. “If we are going to throw another font into the pot along with Helvetica, much better if we use something like Bembo, a classic Old Style face.”

Incorporating easily readable, large, distinguishable fonts into a web design can greatly enhance web communication and effectiveness. Click here for more information on web design. Our agency specializes in B2B Internet marketing, with clients in businesses such as fire retardant clothing and welding gloves.

What's Your Take on LinkedIn?

To answer those questions, we took a look at what some social media thought leaders, various publications and other businesses have had to say about LinkedIn. Consider these opinions:

Perspective #1: LinkedIn Is Loaded with Potential.

“LinkedIn is the de facto online social network for business types. The thing is, lots of people are ‘on there’ but aren’t necessarily using it to the fullest.” Chris Brogan, ChrisBrogan.com

“Despite it being the third largest social network, LinkedIn still seems like that social network in the corner that people forget is there. That’s why having a LinkedIn company page is so crucial. Have your sales team send prospective customers to the page to check out new products and services. Add status updates in a location that few others are doing so. The best thing about LinkedIn is that there’s tons of uncharted territory, especially in the construction industry.” Carrie Ann, Industry Leaders Magazine

“Most people use LinkedIn to ‘get to someone’ in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized.”  Guy Kawasaki, How to Change the World

Perspective #2: LinkedIn Leads to New Connections & Business.

“Unlike the other social networks, people swarm to LinkedIn for one reason – to connect with others for business-related reasons. They’re looking for future vendors or job prospects or a way to build a resume they can cash in on later. Because the mindset of a typical LinkedIn user is much more focused than, say, that of a Twitter user, LinkedIn is the perfect platform to reach out and connect for business reasons. As a small business owner, you can use LinkedIn to find vendors you can outsource things to, connect with others in your industry you can partner with down the road, and more. People are on LinkedIn with the sole purpose of connecting for business reasons. Take advantage of it.” Lisa Barone, Small Business Trends

“With the dizzying number of social networking sites that have sprung up in recent years, trying to select the most worthwhile for your business can be a daunting task. However, there is one that stands out. Created in 2003, LinkedIn is the ONE social network that you, as an entrepreneur or business owner, should join. The goal for any business person joining LinkedIn is not to add friends and swap stories and pictures, but rather, to make new business connections.” Zeke Camusio, Startup Nation

“[LinkedIn] is actually one of the world’s best networking tools … The real value of LinkedIn is in using it to discover the hidden connections among my network and the rest of the world.” Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide

“Twitter and Facebook are both great places for B-2-C while LinkedIn can be a great way to go if you want to market to consumers and businesses. “Mary Rosenbaum, Fox Small Business Center

“I have seen people build their entire business, market a number of products and services, sell out their paid events, and become thought leaders in their niche all around a single LinkedIn group.” Lewis Howes, LewisHowes.com

Perspective #3: LinkedIn Is a Huge Waste of Time.

“Seven out of 10 journalists investigated in the Newswise study had user profiles on LinkedIn, and 42% of them responded to requests to connect via the social networking site. Among the journalists who replied to the survey, 75% confirmed that they use LinkedIn and gave detailed responses about their attitudes and perceptions of the value of social networking. In spite of this widespread participation, a majority of respondents indicated that the value of LinkedIn was unclear.” Newswise press release

“I’ve been a member of LinkedIn for almost two years now. I dutifully entered my credentials and kept them up to date. The only other interaction I’ve had with the service since then has been a continual stream of link requests. I’m selective about who I approve, limiting it to people I’ve only met in real life. And the net benefit of this selectivity? As far as I can tell, zilch. Nada. Nothing. I did get a cold call from a headhunter once based on my LinkedIn profile, but I don’t consider that a benefit.

Has this service ever been useful to anyone? I’m telling you, LinkedIn is the digital equivalent of a chain letter. If you really want to contact a friend of a friend (of a friend), just pick up the phone or send an email. If the only way you can reach someone is through this nutty online social pyramid scheme, you don’t deserve to be taken seriously. And I can guarantee that you won’t be.” Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror

“Based on all the people who have signed up with LinkedIn, there must be some demand for a professional social network, a place for networking, collaboration, brainstorming, idea-sharing, finding resources, and the like. But if the site is going to simply be a place where professionals get nothing but sales pitches, unsolicited job offers, and a Facebook-esque feed in exchange for their valuable data (and time), they have no reason to stick around.” Ted Samson, InfoWorld

“I’m sorry, I just don’t get it.  I’m sure it’s me and I’m just not making the most of LinkedIn, but before I spend any time and energy on a social networking site, I’ve gotta get something back from it, anything! The whole LinkedIn thing seems like a colossal waste of time.  Aside from some creepy people from my past, no one of value has reached out to me in over three years of having a profile.” Joshua M. Brown, The Faster Times

“Yesterday a business student interviewed me for his master thesis about the perceived trustworthiness within social networking sites. He wanted to know how I shaped my judgments about people on LinkedIn. His last question blew me away, although is was very simple. ‘How will LinkedIn be evolved in five years?’. I had never really thought about this. After a few minutes, I realized my LinkedIn network will be quite useless then. When we were discussing this devaluation, we both acknowledged it had two main reasons. We’re too friendly, and a lot of people go separate ways.” Ernst-Jan Pfauth, The Next Web

Perspective #4: It’s Not Magic, and It’s Not a Waste of Time. LinkedIn Is All about What You Put into It.

“Part of the reason our LinkedIn metrics are so high [is because of the fact that I am rather active in [a] group I founded and moderated which this weekend hit the 14,000 member mark. Still I think many underestimate the power of actively managing a brand via your network and groups on LinkedIn.” Tom Anderson, Smart Data Collective

“Like any social media tool, LinkedIn is about creating and nurturing relationships so make sure you put out the welcome mat. ‘It’s important to be known for being approachable, visible, and helpful in groups by sharing information, leading discussions, and contributing to the conversation,’ [Barbara] Rozgonyi [of WiredPRWorks] says. To achieve this, make a list of people you want to stay in touch with and follow their updates, leaving comments, and engaging in conversation. When you send your invitations, let people know why you want to connect and thank them for their consideration. And when you accept an invitation, offer to answer questions or exchange ideas about your area of expertise.  Ask them a question to get a conversation going, just as you would at a networking event.” Marla Tabaka, Inc. Magazine

“Although LinkedIn has been great for job seekers during the most recent economic cycle, it is much much more than that.  Individuals and companies are achieving more professional goals than imaginable on LinkedIn.  For example, LinkedIn can help you:

• Sell products
• Find new clients or employees
• Generate leads
• Receive funding for your company
• Obtain sponsorships
• Sell hundreds of tickets to your professional event
• Get national and local press coverage
• And last but not least, drive massive traffic to your blog

Achieving these goals on LinkedIn [doesn’t] come naturally.  You’ve gotta work the system on LinkedIn and experiment with different methods.” Lewis Howes, ProBlogger

Among all these opinions, one thing is certain: LinkedIn is a social network with millions of users. Whether or not that fact alone makes it a valuable marketing tool is still uncertain: as these perspectives reveal, the jury’s still out. In the months and years to come, will LinkedIn become more valuable? Less?

To learn more about social media marketing from Straight North, click here. Our agency specializes in B2B marketing, with clients in industries such as packaging solutions and restaurant credit card processing.

Here’s how I nurture a relevant group of follows.

1. Clean Out Spammers with TwitCleaner

TwitCleaner is a phenomenal Twitter utility that allows you to quickly and accurately purge your spam follows. I wrote about TwitCleaner recently – you can learn more about TwitCleaner here. If you haven’t paid attention to your follows, you will be SHOCKED to see how much GARBAGE has piled up in your house.

2. Clean Out Inactive Follows with Tweepi

TwitCleaner doesn’t do a great job of picking folks who are no longer tweeting. To clean out this group, I like Tweepi. It’s a little kludgy compared to TwitCleaner, but it allows you to sort your follows by date of last tweet. Again, you will find this pretty illuminating if you haven’t been paying attention: why follow someone whose last tweet was several months ago or a year ago? Useless clutter. There are several other ways you can sort follows in Tweepi, including …

3. Flush Unfollowers with Tweepi

Generally I don’t follow people who don’t follow me: Tweepi identifies unfollowers and makes it fairly easy to purge them. Not everyone on Twitter sees it like this, but for me, interaction is where I feel real value on Twitter. I don’t need to follow people who aren’t interested in interacting with me. If they are thought leaders, I have lots of other ways to keep tabs on their pronouncements, such as reading their blogs and simply following conversation about them on Twitter from people I follow.

4. Manually Follow Back

Until recently I used SocialOomph to automatically follow back. Then, as I mentioned above, I would use Tweepi and TwitCleaner to clean things up. This got to be rather monotonous and time consuming. So I reverted to following back manually. Although it takes a bit of time, I’m seeing several benefits:

• I can actually spend a few moments checking out the new follow’s profile and get a feel for what they’re all about.
• I can add them to a list in order to follow them more closely.
• I can send them a real, actual, non-automated “nice to meet you” tweet.

All this adds up to more opportunity to real engagement. I still use TwitCleaner and Tweepi, but only once every couple months and there’s not nearly as much to clean up.

5. Follow People Who Talk to My Follows

People who engage are the people I want to connect with. So when I’m on HootSuite and see a follow talking to someone I’m not following, I’m immediately intrigued. Most of the time, the friend of your friend will be your friend.

Over to You
Do you think limiting your follows is helpful? How do you manage your follows to keep them relevant?

Learn more about Twitter marketing. Straight North specializes in B2B, with clients in industries from glass block vents to dust monitoring equipment.

Content

Boring: Lots of industry jargon only you can understand.
Rip-roaring: Plain English.

Boring: Corporate speak; words or phrases like “synergy” and “deep dive”.
Rip-roaring: Plain English.

Boring: Long sentences that vaguely convey several inconsequential ideas.
Rip-roaring: Short sentences that sharply convey one important idea.

Boring: Product- and company-focused content.
Rip-roaring: Customer-focused content.

Boring: Expository, third-person writing.
Rip-roaring: Conversational writing that tells a story.

Boring: Content that takes itself way too seriously.
Rip-roaring: A lighthearted style.

Boring: Adjectives.
Rip-roaring: Verbs.

Design and Typography

Boring: Stock images that tell the same old story.
Rip-roaring: Custom images that tell your story.

Beyond boring: No images.
Rip-roaring: Images.

Boring: Bland color schemes.
Rip-roaring: Bold accent colors.

Boring: Overly wide or narrow margins that make reading difficult.
Rip-roaring: Line lengths suited for readability. (In the 600 pixel area.)

Boring: Uniformly styled headlines.
Rip-roaring: Distinctive styling for each type of headline.

Boring: Sites where every page looks alike.
Rip-roaring: Sites with unique page templates for various sections of content.

Boring: Long paragraphs with undifferentiated text.
Rip-roaring: Short paragraphs peppered with bold text and bullets.

Strategy and Structure

Boring: Sites without a call to action.
Rip-roaring: Sites that tell me what to do.

Boring: Deep page hierarchies that force me to click and click and click to find what I need.
Rip-roaring: Navigation that puts the info I crave never more than a click or two away.

Boring: Pages that take more than 10 seconds to figure out.
Rip-roaring: Pages whose purpose is immediately obvious.

Boring: Unsocialized sites.
Rip-roaring: Sites with a blog, social sharing and user-submitted content options (such as blog commenting).

OVER TO YOU
What have I missed? What makes a site boring to you?

Learn more about Web development services from Straight North. We work with middle market firms and specialize in B2B, with clients in industries as diverse as GPS vehicle tracking and merchant processing services.

Taking a Close Look at Microdata

One of the hottest topics in the internet marketing world right now is the impact of microdata on organic search rankings. Microdata has been around since the release of HTML5, and became an SEO factor during the summer of 2011 when Google, Yahoo and Bing came together to implement Schema.org. Bing’s Duane Forrester stated in the Bing Webmaster Center Blog, “this jointly supported protocol … helps us better understand your content.” Google has not yet disclosed its impact on search results – if any. At Straight North, we added microdata to our own site and ran an experiment to test the post-microdata effects on organic search rankings with Google and Bing.

Implementing Microdata

Adding microdata markup is simple and can usually be done within a couple hours depending on the size of the site. First, change the DOCTYPE on all pages to be compatible with the HTML5 format. In most cases, this will not cause any issues with the website. If you are running an ecommerce site, check out my article on best practices for ecommerce microdata for a step-by-step guide on marking up product-related pages. For B2B corporate sites, use my ecommerce microdata article in conjunction with my corporate B2B site microdata along with Schema.org to come up with the best-fit markup for your website elements. Once the markup has been added, use the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool to make sure it parses properly.

The Microdata Experiment

Upon completion of the microdata project, we decided to use Straight North’s leadership page as the test subject for this experiment. The names, positions, and variances in names of each person mentioned on the leadership page were added to a spreadsheet. We ran each name through Rank Checker, and recorded their Google and Bing rankings. After documenting the ranks, we submitted new sitemaps through Google and Bing Webmaster Tools then submitted the homepage to Googlebot and Bingbot to ensure the changes get indexed right away. Four weeks later, we re-evaluated the organic search rankings of the leadership page.

Google Microdata Test Results

After the four-week test period was over, there seemed to be very little difference in Google organic search rankings. There were some minor variances in ranks, but no solid pattern was apparent. Some went up, some went down, but most didn’t change. Google does not seem to place any weight on microdata at this time for SEO. Out of 48 keywords, nine increased in rank while nine decreased in rank. The other thirty saw no change.

Bing Microdata Test Results

Bing’s results greatly differed from the Google results. Microdata had a huge impact on Bing rankings. Before microdata, we weren’t even ranked in Bing for most of the keywords in the experiment. At the conclusion of the experiment, we were ranked on the first page of search results in Bing for nearly half of the keywords. Out of 48 keywords, fifteen increased in rank while only one decreased. The other 32 did not change. Thirteen of the keywords that were previously not ranked are now being ranked in organic search results.

Learn more about our SEO services. Straight North specializes in middle market B2B. Our clients do everything from credit card processing to vehicle GPS tracking.

Less Thinking, More Doing

The double-edged sword of creativity.

For Internet marketers, thinking creatively is a blessing and a curse. Having creative tendencies myself, I feel like a kid in a candy store every day I come to work. New platforms, new social media tactics, new advertising models, new insights for conversion optimization, and the like, are popping up faster than you can count them. There is no end to the innovation that can be applied to our marketing efforts or to those of our clients.

But too much change is as dangerous as not enough. Continual tweaking of programs means that you are measuring a moving target, which is very hard to do. Changing tactical, let alone strategic, direction after a matter of weeks or even months means that you may never stay with one idea long enough to fully test its effectiveness.

The upshot: marketing programs fail because they were never given time to succeed. If you want high performance Internet marketing, sometimes you need to just stop having ideas and put everything you’ve got into execution.

How much failure can you tolerate on the road to success?

One place where we’ve all seen this difficulty in action is email marketing. How many times has a company “committed” to an aggressive 12-month campaign, only to freak out after the second blast because the click-through rate is just slightly north of zero? When this happens, the less “committed” companies abandon the campaign and move on to the next best and brightest idea. Companies with more executional fortitude jump in and start tinkering: changing layouts, throwing in new calls to action, moving from disciplined split testing to throwing whatever they can against the wall.

It takes enormous discipline and sometimes outright courage to stick with a plan and methodically see it through all the way. Why is it that we marketers change direction so quickly and so easily and perhaps, so self-destructively?

• We live in an immediate gratification business culture. The usual temperament of entrepreneurs to boards of directors is a burning desire to see results this month, this quarter. This puts a lot of pressure on marketers – particularly in a terrible economy where corporate survival truly may be at stake.
• Coming up with new ideas and implementing them is more fun than the monotony of measurement.
• Changing direction provides cover. Shape-shifting marketing programs allow marketers to duck accountability.

What really works?

If I look at my own work honestly, these three things have come in to play more often than I’d like to admit. And as I continue to think reflectively on the topic, it occurs to me that my best results came when I avoided these traps and stuck with the original concept — by which I mean not only the creative concept but the executional concept as well.

It’s really not so tough to figure out why this is the case. So many times, our gut instincts are right and it is the evidence that is wrong. An email campaign can eventually achieve spectacular click-through rates even if the first few blasts achieve nothing.

I guess what I’m saying is, have confidence in your ideas. Stick with them. If you’re not sure you’ve hit upon the right idea, don’t “commit.”

OVER TO YOU
So … thinking ahead to 2012 resolutions, what are you going to commit to for your Internet marketing?

Learn more about Straight North’s Internet marketing services. We focus on middle market firms, with clients who market regionally and nationally in businesses including flame resistant clothing and merchant credit card processing.

The Answers You're Looking For Are In Here

An approach that’s worked well for us is talking to the client’s sales people. This is great because sales people talk and think like their customers, whereas a client’s marketing specialists talk, well … more like us. To understand what a B2B operation feels like in the trenches, where sales are being fought for, won and lost, there’s really no substitue for the sales rep’s perspective.

We’ll ask things like:

• Give us your sales pitch
• What objections do you normally hear?
• How do you try to overcome these objections?
• Why do customers buy from you?
• Why do they stop doing business with you?

What I always find interesting is not just the substance of the response, but the actual words and tone that are used. Marketing people and executives can throw around jargon that may or may not be meaningful to their customers. Sales reps, in stark contrast, almost always use terms that resonate with customers. They’ve learned through experience which buzzwords connect with their prospects — and which ones turn them off. They speak the language of their customers with words and story lines that are proven persuaders.

In terms of tone, you can sense the frustration when they talk about certain objections: a strong indication that the underlying issues require delicate and perhaps extensive treatment in the site content. You can also sense the confidence they express when detailing certain benefits they offer: a strong indication that these are topics to play up.

One word of caution: a sales person’s perceptions may not always align with marketing’s or the true situation. For instance, it’s not uncommon for sales people to view pricing as a huge obstacle (“the competition is giving it away!”) but in reality something other than price is causing the sale to be lost. If we sense big disconnects, we’ll explore them further until the client is satisfied our writer has the proper sense of proportion in handling the topic.

Now I’ll add something that may surprise you: I think that for a writer, talking to a client’s sales people is more valuable than talking to the client’s customers. The reason is simple. A customer’s head is wrapped around his own business, whereas a sales rep is living and breathing the business you are trying to write for. As a result, the customer may not be able to articulate his reason for buying something nearly as well as the person who sold it to him. This is not to say that talking to customers is a bad practice; it is in fact very useful for gathering marketing intelligence and gauging sentiment. But for details, language and context, I want the sales rep’s take any time I can get it.

Learn more about Straight North’s copywriting services. Straight North is a full service Internet marketing agency with a strong focus on B2B. Our clients do everything from merchant processing to GPS tracking for trucks.