Inbound Marketing Blog

I had a meeting with a company that doesn’t have a website. Yes, businesses like that do still exist. Even in a day where it seems like you can get a website just about anywhere. They believed that they had to sell online in order to justify the investment in a website. I’m here to tell you there are many, many things a website can do for every business.more

You may have heard that Google+ asked businesses to wait before creating a business profile on the new social network. This is because they are working on some kind of platform or design specific to business use. For those of us frustrated by various businesses use of persona profiles on Facebook, this is great news. It means that Google+ will integrate businesses from the beginning, instead of creating something as an afterthought. Since it looks like it will be a few weeks before we’ll see a business feature in the new platform, I thought it would be fun to share my “wish list” for features I’d like included in this new design. Google- are you listening?!?more

So I finally got into Google+…. YAY! Now what? Here are my thoughts after 24 hours of using this new service. Due to great timing and luck, I FINALLY was able to get in and start using Google +, the newest social media platform from Google. Since I’ve been clamoring for an invite to the exclusive social networking site, you can imagine how excited I am that I actually got in! Now I am the envy of all my peers, also clamoring for an invite, while I get to bask in Google+ elite glory….. I obviously did a lot of research before joining this service so the process of signing up was no surprise to me. When you first start in Google + you are prompted to create “Circles” to organize your friends and contacts. If you are not familiar, the concept of “Circles” is actually pretty cool- Google understands that how we interact with each social circle of our lives can differ greatly. For example, the language and actions you use with your close friends is very different from how you behave in a professional work environment.more

I’m sure you remember Google Wave right? What about Google Buzz? When those services began I have to admit I was very excited to get in and try them out, and before I even had the chance, I was convinced they’d be successful. As I look back and try to determine the basis for that belief or excitement, I find it challenging to see what led me there besides my “biz-crush” on Google. I’m thinking I must have been blinded by my admiration and was allowing myself to believe that whatever they attempted to do, they’d do, and do well. Well … I learned my lesson, and I’ve made a commitment to never arrive at an “absolute” opinion again without taking the time to do some research and think things through more thoroughly before establishing my opinion.more

Content is the core of any website. Duh. Content is the meat of your website. It gets the message to the audience, hence, it is the most important part of your site. But there are many – too many – marketers who do not understand the critical value of content. Please read carefully.more

We’ve all found ourselves in the position of wondering what we could do to make a successful website and capitalize on the tremendous opportunities that exist online. If you are over the age of 35, this “technology stuff” might have you feeling completely overwhelmed and wondering if you will ever fully understand it to make money online. Succeeding on the Web is much easier than you would expect. This article will teach you the six steps necessary to be successful online. I guarantee it is much easier and more logical than you’ve ever believed. So, for all you 35+ geezers out there (myself included), just follow the formula, take action and you will be amazed at the results.more

I am guessing if you know me and that I own an Internet Marketing firm that you think I’ve either lost my mind or that I am planning on a career change very quickly. I’d have to say I’m getting closer to losing my mind than EVER considering a career change. The bottom line is I love marketing, I just hate the way companies and even some “marketing professionals” interpret what good marketing is. I think these same companies and individuals either forgot why they started their business, or perhaps simply started it for the wrong reasons. I believe the most successful companies in the world started their company with the intention of solving a problem that existed in the marketplace, and they had a focus on serving people who were experiencing that problem. Hey, I’m not naive. I know there are also far more people out there who simply jump into industries based on the obsession of chasing dollars and not because they are following their passion. I have no problem with these people either as long as they remember their responsibility to serve the clients they gain along the way. The following are three things that I believe give people a bad taste in their mouths about marketing.more

It's easy to get caught in the trap of constantly focusing on how we can make more money with our business. Some nights you lay in bed tossing and turning trying to figure out how you can increase your sales an additional $10k each month to afford that new employee, or maybe just so you can stop ending up in the red each month. It's a horrifying feeling and eliminates any chance you'll get quality sleep until you figure it out.more

I read recently that nearly 78% of all users check email on their mobile device. That got me thinking about email marketing and mobile devices…how can we improve deliverability? And how can we make emails easier to read for subscribers? Are you registered with different organizations and businesses who send you regular email messages? How many do you read on your phone? What do you see when you read messages on your mobile device? Those that are mostly text are a lot easier to read, aren’t they!?more

Not sure how often you should communicate with your customers? Our sales and web marketing expert, Rebecca Dutcher, shares her thoughts.....more

You may remember that I wrote a blog a while back about why you should set your business up on Facebook as a "fan page" instead of a friend account. And, you may remember my follow up blog about HOW to transition over, where I detailed steps on how to complete the transformation from a friend account to a fan page. These steps were very long and tedious, but at the time was the only way to make the switch. However, I discovered yesterday that there is an easier way. Before, businesses were setting up accounts incorrectly as friend pages. Often times, they built a large friend base before realizing their mistake. However, they were not converting them to fan pages because the process was so difficult and tedious. Facebook FINALLY woke up and realized they needed to make it easier to make the transition from a friend page to a fan page. And thus, I give you your one click option to make the switch..... WAIT though, before you click, read my notes about the conversion first so you know what to expect.more

MINDSCAPE is pleased to be a part of the City of Grand Rapids Mayor's 50 program. This program is designed to give 50 local high school students an opportunity to intern for local businesses. As part of the program, the student receives a paid internship with up to ten hours a week for six months. These students apply to be part of the program and are selected by the business based on interest, talent and skills. In addition, the students receive comprehensive training to prepare them for the business world prior to beginning their internship. Devin Rittenhouse, the first of our Mayor's 50 interns, wanted to share his thoughts on his experience at MINDSCAPE for 6 months. Devin is a junior at Rockford High School and recently turned 16 years old. He wrote a blog so we could share with you- click "read more" to check out what he wrote!more

For a few months now, my friend Jeff Bell has been bugging me to use link tagging in my social media postings and e-mails I send for the company. He’s all hopped up on his recent Google Analytic Certification and LOVES to tell me about the cool analytics tools available in there. (Yeah, I know, SNOOZE FEST, but he’s my bestie so I try really hard to pay attention!) Anyway- he kept going on and on about all the benefits of using link tagging to track driving traffic to the site. He’d say things like “you need to use link tagging because…” Every time he did this, my A.D.D. would kick in and I’d start to notice something shiny! Nonetheless, he’d diligently keep bringing the topic up harping on me about why I’m not using them more in social media postings and I’d continue to change the topic or find something shiny to pay attention too.more

Is email marketing still relevant? In a word, Yes! Email marketing is still a key connection point with your customers and prospects. With the influence and immediacy of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks, email marketing is how you can provide valuable information to your prospects and customers. Email’s can include information that they’ve opted in, and asked you to share with them. Social media is still incredibly important, but in this post, I’m just talking about email.more

NOTE: This is a follow up to my recent blog about the differences between a friend page and a fan page. It happens for many reasons: You hired someone to handle your social media who didn’t know what they were doing and they set up your business as a “friend account” on Facebook. Or, maybe you were just getting started on Facebook and weren’t sure what you were doing, so you set up your business as a friend account. Or maybe you did it intentionally, because it’s easier to build a fan base and interact on Facebook as a person (SHAME ON YOU!). Regardless of the reason, after reading my last blog about the differences between a friend page and fan page, you know you need to change your business over to a fan page. But how do you do this?more

Google announced late yesterday that it will make a major shift to its algorithm to significantly improve the quality of their search results by punishing and effectively diminishing content farm sites from the top of their SERP (search engine results page). You may not know what a content farm site is, but I guarantee you've landed on them many many times. It's those sites you click to after a search only to find a bunch of terrible, non-relevant content and a ton of ads or links to other sites. More likely than not, you clicked back to Google and tried another site, which is exactly why Google is making this change. They (Google) effectively drove you to a site that did not provide you with value, and it's Google's objective to give you the highest quality, relevant content for your search as possible.more

I’ve talked about this before- the difference between a friend account and a fan page on Facebook, but for some reason, I don’t think that the message is getting through. So I’m dedicating a rather long blog to discuss this topic is detail with the hopes of educating everyone and putting an end to this issue.more

Have you ever had to graph or chart your search engine rank over time, only to find that the results looked less than impressive? By default, when trying to graph these things in Excel, the picture looks bleak because all of our trend lines go down – toward 1. We would all love to have our sites rank at position 1 but this chart certainly does not make that clear!more

Every once and a while there are reasons where you may have some site owners who want individual reports for themselves and then some other entity wants to measure each site against the others. This can often be the scenario in the case of a franchise.more

Through some random surfing over at Smashing Magazine, I came across a site devoted to Dark Patterns. I was unfamiliar with the phrase, so spent a little time reading about it. What I found was that the phrase “Dark Patterns” is a catch all that applies to a variety of deceptive design patterns in web design. I watched a 30 minute lecture on Dark Patterns to become more familiar. Here are a few of the different Dark Pattern techniques I learned about.more