MINDSCAPE

Over the past few weeks I have been blessed with a plethora of Web analytic data to mine and analyze. Although some of you may want to stop reading here, I promise this is not about data mining, but more about a typically missed listening channel. While scanning through endless analytic accounts, I started to notice a trend of a piece of data missing in each site’s analytic data. This is where the data analysis guys/gals typically start to throw up their arms and walk out the door. So instead of doing that, I decided to sit down and write this article with the hopes of helping you gain lost insights and a better perspective of what your visitors are telling you.more

Many students and educators are blessed by the opportunities available to engage with our agencies, Hanon McKendry and MINDSCAPE, and the people who make us who we are. We open our doors often to the curious minds that seek to know more about the advertising and Web industries we serve. While we give them an opportunity to learn, we also receive…in the enthusiasm, the freshness, the vulnerability of these curiosity seekers. We now also receive in another way.more

As I was organizing some papers, I came across an old marketing piece from the late nineties. Done by the Gardner Group in 1998, it illustrates how businesses can embrace the Internet (back then called e-business) and ultimately transform to efficient and powerful enterprises.more

If you’re a reader of this blog, chances are at some point in your career or life you will be a part of a team that builds and launches a new (or improved) website. For those of you who have launched a website, how were the first couple of days? Websites are a lot of work. They take weeks or months to plan, design, develop, create content and get to the point of going live. Website beta testing is done internally by your staff, your Web team and those you know. Given all this hard work, going live is a HUGE milestone, right?! It makes sense to want to tell people the day it goes live.more

Google, Bing, Yahoo – oh my! Over the past several months, search engines have been toughening up on quality keyword optimized content. With the Panda update, effective February, 2011, search engines are cracking down on inserting meaningful keywords, so that those inserted haphazardly cannot prevent your Web content from reaching search results. When writing copy for a website, press release, blog or other published venue, writers must not take the importance of keyword placement lightly. If there aren’t keywords in your content for search engines to locate, they will not place you highly in search results. It’s that simple. Of course, everyone wants to place as highly as possible in search engines, but how is it done? It can be tricky – but once you know the steps to take, it will be a breeze.more

Many companies want to know what the impact of social media is on sales. Unfortunately, there is not a magic formula that will say “for every fan we get on social media, we’ll get XX in sales”. But, using some super cool tricks in Google Analytics will help make some reasonable assumptions about social media’s impact on sales. For example, let’s say that you are selling widgets, and these widgets are only available for purchase by contacting your company. You write a blog about how cool your widgets are, listing out the features and benefits. You then provide a series of postings on social media, driving people to your blog about widgets (using tagged links, of course!). You also use some traditional methods like paid advertisements, etc. Over the next six months, your company sells 500 widgets. But how many of those came from social media?more

While shopping the LEGO website the other day, I ran across a free application they provide called LEGO Digital Designer. With it, you can assemble bricks from the included palette, then package and upload your creation back to the site. This looked pretty fun so I gave the software a whirl. Now, I am not a professional 3D modeler, but I do have experience in a few tools, such as Blender, and expect a few necessities in a 3D modeling application. LEGO Digital Designer does not have them. But that’s OK, I thought. I’ll just play around with it. For an experiment, I decided to model the building I work in, 25 Ottawa SW, Grand Rapids, MI, the home of MINDSCAPE at Hanon McKendry. My goal was to capture the feel of the building (being that it is LEGO and not a precise, 3D replica) without getting into too much detail. Well, that’s hard for me to do, and before too long, I found myself agonizing over placing bricks exactly where they should be to accurately reflect the building’s layout. Then I would take a step back, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I’m just capturing the building’s essence. Then it would get fun again.more

More changes to Facebook! YAY! I’m sure you've noticed that Facebook has, once again, made some changes. Given the amount of time it’s been since we’ve seen any major updates, it’s about time they rolled out something new and different, right? Here’s a breakdown of the major updates and, of course, my thoughts on them.more

I was talking to my brother the other night and somehow we got on the conversation of online advertising and not wasting money. Somewhere in the midst of this discussion I gave an example of making sure you are not paying for visits when a searcher is putting your business name in their search phrase. This is a waste of your money, because the intended user already knows they want to go to your site. Why not let them click the free organic link? In a very quick response he came back with a great analogy: “That is like giving every customer that walks in your door a dollar for showing up when they intended to anyways.”more

Much like measuring the results of traditional marketing (TV ads, billboards, ect), it’s difficult to analyze exactly what your social media efforts are doing to help promote your brand. In it’s purest form, “social media” is essentially the digital representation of social interaction. How do you truly measure the ROI of attending a network event? Or talking with someone about your business? You don’t- because you can’t but you do these things because you know that it’s piece of a bigger puzzle and can eventually lead to future sales. The same is true about social media: the impacts of engaging are not entirely known. But, if you are willing to spend a bit of time and put your thinking cap on, you can analyze some data and provide some tangible results.more

Content is everything. Content informs, educates, fulfills, inspires and helps your audience gain trust in your brand. It’s the act of giving them what they want, not telling them what you think they should know. In essence, it’s hitting them “right there.” Content keeps your audience on the edge of their chair, or makes them fall out of it when it’s really, really good. It’s not simply words on a page. It’s a page, or video, or post or workshop full of information that really means something to the audience. There are tons of types of content, but here are my personal favorites.more

A month ago, I wrote about the Google Page service. The Page Service caches your static content and serves it up from their servers for faster page views. It sounds great in theory, and perhaps it will perform well in practice. Currently, it’s still in a beta period and available to only a small set of webmasters. While I was researching that article, I stumbled upon a service called Cloudflare. Cloudflare already does what the Google Page service does, but also protects your sites from known threats like spambots, can auto-minify your site’s CSS and Javascript files, hides your email address from any spambot that may get through, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. Basically, they level the playing field for small websites. A small website no longer has to pay large sums of money to get the security and reach that giant, corporate websites get. And Cloudflare manages to do it all for free.more

The vast majority of blog readers don’t leave comments before they leave the blog site. Are you one of them? If so, it might be time to re-think the importance of commenting on blogs. If done correctly, your comments can gain exposure online and increase your network. While your personal blog and social media profiles allow you to share information and express opinions in your own social sphere, commenting on other blogs gives you greater exposure to those involved and interested in your particular niche. This offers an even larger venue to voice your opinion and provide thought leadership.more

So many times I find myself, as a programmer, diving into a problem with an initial thought of a solution that ends up being way too complex. I don't know if it's programmers in general or just me, but it seems that as I gain more and more coding knowledge and can take on more and more challenging problems, my brain can fall into a complexity trap. Now I have numerous tools (algorithms, patterns, etc.) at my disposal, and at times I tend to attack a problem with one or more of these tools without stepping back, taking a deep breath, and determining which is the simplest way to get something done. These solutions usually work, but the code can become messy and hard to maintain versus the simple way that I failed to see at the beginning.more

Have you Googled yourself yet? Ensuring your online presence is super important, as it should accurately reflect who you are. Whether you’re job searching, networking or trying to work your way into an elite group, it’s a sure thing that someone is going to dig deeper online to discover what you’re all about. To show you an example, I Googled my own name. Here’s how I look to the world: Renee Achterhof – Google Profile Renee Achterhof | Facebook Renee Achterhof | LinkedIn Renee Achterhof, Grand Rapids, MI | My Life Renee Achterhof (RAchterhof) on Twitter Renee Achterhof | Rapid Growth Media Renee Achterhof on the Behance Network Renee Achterhof (shoozer228) on Etsy We don’t necessarily have control over what results show up on which page in Google. That’s why it’s important to see which results do pop up, so that you can refine those pages to the image you hope to convey to those searching for you.more

Note: This is part one of a series of posts about measuring ROI of Social Media Picture this….. You FINALLY convinced your boss to let you champion that social media marketing effort you’ve been pitching for a year. YAY! You've created an awesome social media strategy, joined Facebook and Twitter (and maybe even YouTube or wherever else your awesome strategy told you to join). You're building your fan base, you're engaging in conversation, and you are in front of your computer every second of every day waiting with baited breath for the next opportunity to respond. Seriously- it is flat out AWESOME! Fast forward 6 months….more

Image Credit: Idea Go If you’ve read my posts about How to Get Started in Email Marketing and How Often to Email Your Customers, you may be thinking: "That’s great information, but how do I build an email list in the first place?" Good question! There are many different list services out there that you can purchase email addresses from, and still I’ve always questioned the success rate. I prefer to build my own lists to ensure that these are people (note: PEOPLE) who have visited the website and either requested information or found it helpful enough to request consistent communications. Building an email list can take time. Here are 8 tips to help you get started with building your list:more

One of the biggest fears for companies entering the social media world is receiving criticism from users or customers. Often, we hear that they are concerned about what people will say to them, about them, or that they will look bad on social media. Guess what- they are already saying stuff about your brand!! Regardless if feedback is positive or negative, people are talking about your brand. That’s why it is important to monitor these conversations and engage in social media to give your organization a voice. However, determining how to respond when someone is taking about your company on social media can be difficult at first. Start by reviewing the feedback and determining what the tone is. Most comments can be categorized as positive, negative, or offensive. Here is an overview of how to handle each situation:more

Mobile is convenient. Mobile is there with us, no matter where we are or what we do. We don't have to be sitting at home or in the office or in a coffee shop where our laptops are plugged in. Our world is outlet-less, whether we're in a meeting or on the bus or walking downtown. In the past, mobile was the future. It is now the present. So what does your mobile content look like? Is it easily navigational? Is content clear and distinct, or does it get jumbled or lost? Jumbly content is not fun for anyone. So how can you ensure your content is up-to-snuff?more

Can I Just Cut Some Code Already? All I wanted to do was let users share a video link from a web app I was building. I thought it would be easy. And you know what, it probably is. It's probably easier than what I'm going to show you here. But is it simply stated somewhere in Facebook's documentation? Not that I could find. So after piecing together parts of their docs, plowing through search after search and reading a multitude of blog posts, I came up with this solution.more