Welcome to the Digital Media Branding Podcast Episode 017

How To Grow Your Social Media Influence

Hello, I’m your host Carlos Quintero and I own a full service digital media branding and marketing company based out of Fargo, ND called MediaOnQ.

Today we’ll be talking about How To Grow Your Social Media Influence.

At MediaOnQ when we work with clients to help them come up with their social media strategy. 

In doing so, we always keep a single point in mind and that is, we want our efforts to produce engagement.

Engaging content helps us build trust and once we have the trust we cross over toward being influential.

Before we go on, I’d like to make a point.

There are a lot of companies and individuals out there who consider themselves to be social media experts.

Many have their own strategies that they deploy with their own clients.

I’d like to suggest that there is No Single Cookie Cutter approach toward social media for all companies and not even for all industries.

Could that be true?

Yes because after all we are dealing with people. And to top that, people in different markets.

So it all has to start with who is our target audience?

Once we pinned that down, we can begin to look at how we should structure our social media marketing plan, with the objective of building trust and influence through engagement.

I’d like to make one other suggestion.

Before you accept the advice from anyone including me, ask about their own strategy.

I really do mean that, because I believe that this is a question that is important to you as a small business or marketing professional who is about to spend time, effort and money on this journey.

Think about this.

Let’s say that you wanted to grow your YouTube subscriptions. Part of that strategy would be to produce a video or web video series right...

If you hire an agency or consultant to produce and launch this for you it will require time, resources and finances to get it done.

So, wouldn’t you want to see or know that they’ve had success implementing their ideas in on their own YouTube channel?

Or would you feel comfortable simply giving out your hard earned cash in hopes of getting results?

This of course would be true with any kind of Social Media Channel.

If someone is giving you advice on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and so on...take a moment to ask them about their own efforts and check out their channels.

Hopefully you’ll find that they are exactly who they represent themselves to be.

So now, let’s go through the 10 steps to help build your Social Media Influence.

#1 Do It All At Once

What I mean by do it all at once is to work on building your brand, building your product and promoting yourself all at once.

You don’t want to do this in steps because if you do, you will lose valuable time.

In other words, no one can build influence over night.

Every phase or aspect takes time to build.

So while you are building your product, you should be building your brand and promoting yourself, so that once the product or service offering is ready to launch you won’t be starting from ground zero.

#2 Understand What Each Channel Has To Offer

Not all social media should be used in the same way...

While this may seem a little obvious, it is surprising to see how many small businesses and companies out there misunderstand this.

So let’s break it down.

Facebook. Facebook targets people you already know. Family & friends and maybe even customers.

So with Facebook, understanding that you are really asking people you know to recommend or endorse you is key toward driving engagement and building influence.

Twitter. Twitter is more of the personal perception. The one-on-one connection with you or your company.

Think about that for a moment.

How powerful is it to know that you can connect directly with an individual?

How cool is it for your client base to know that they have a direct line to your business?

Allowing people to connect with a person or a company representative through Twitter, helps build trust, delivers one-on-one engagement and helps build influence.

Moving on to Google+.

Google+ is a bit different in that here you have the ability to connect with people with similar passions.

So with Google+ you are not targeting people you know but rather people who share interest, or industry peers.

The common drive, goals and inspiration is what drives the engagement and allows you to build influence.

Now let’s talk about Pinterest.

Pinterest, for all of you who are still ignoring Pinterest, you should check out the Digital Media Branding Podcast Episode 6 where we discuss how to use Pinterest for Business.

And another great resource which I would strongly recommend is Cynthia Sanchez and her Podcast Oh So Pinteresting. You can find her on Google+, iTunes or at her website OhSoPinteresting.com.

I’ll make sure to include links to all this in the show notes.

Pinterest is all about pinning right. What does that mean? Well pinning allows you to express yourself. 

Pinning allows you to explore and find new stuff.

How does this translate to you and your business? Well pinning allows your audience to interact and engage with your products and services.

If you can show how your product or service is a part of your customer’s life or how your product or service interacts with your customers then in my opinion you’ve hit a grand slam with Pinterest.

That type of engagement will build your credibility, trust, brand and influence.

The last social channel that we’ll discuss today is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn allows you to show off.

LinkedIn is a place where professionals get together to talk shop.

This is the ideal place to show off your products, services and experience.

Think of it as shameless self-promotion because it is ok if everyone knows that you are great at XYZ...

This now leads me to

#3 Create a Great Profile

Seems obvious right?

Again, amazing how many companies and businesses don’t or have not taken the time to do this.

With social media like most other things in life and business, you can’t simply go through the motions.

If you have a business page, on a social channel and you don’t have a profile, what does that say about your business?

Just last week, I had a consulting call with a new client who basically said. 

Carlos, I have 6 kids, own my own business and have all the friends I need so I don’t have time to complete all these profiles.

He is not in a unique situation. And frankly, I can see why he would feel that way...

My response to him was simple. 

Why then should anyone take time out of their life, because we all have busy lives right? To follow you, endorse you, trust you, promote you or even buy from you?

If you don’t have time or the resources to get this done, then outsource it. Hire a company who can help you get it done.

Skipping the Create a Great Profile step will diminish your social media efforts and it will make it very difficult for people to engage, trust or view you as an influential source.

#4 Become a Curator

What does this actually mean?

For your industry, I would guess that you are not the only provider of goods, services or information.

I would also guess that there are other items that relate toward your offering. Some of these may be of value to your own customer base.

If you organize the valuable content for them and make it easy for them to find what matters to them, you become a valuable resource.

When your community views you as a resource for more than just your product, services or information you’ve crossed over to the influential side of social media.

Now this does not mean that you copy someone’s content and post it as your own. It means that you mention the content and link them to the source.

#5 Leverage Social Sharing

If you’re providing value to your community or target audience, then why not ask them to share that value with their friends?

If you ask, you will most likely get.

Here’s an example. 

I purchased the RODE SmartLav a while back. During my testing I decided to make a video to show how it performed outside of a studio in windy conditions. I posted the video on YouTube and as of today have had more than 660 views.

I also Tweeted that I’d just posted this video and RODE Microphones favored my Tweet and Shared it with their followers.

How awesome is that?

Instantly, I was able to reach a far greater number of people thanks to their engagement with my content.

And now

#6 Show Some Restraint

What I mean by this is that not every post should boast about you and your business.

If you are following along, we want to create value beyond our own service offerings here since that allows us to increase our social influence.

So, I would suggest that one out of every ten post should be about you and the rest should focus on bringing some sort of value to your community and target audience.

I am not suggesting that you could not bring value with every single one of your posts but rather that when you make it about them they are more willing to accept and support the messages that are all about you.

In other words, your social media channel will not come across as spammy.

If any of you marketers out there disagree or have a different take on this please let me know. 

You can email me at [email protected]

#7 Use More Than Words

Here’s what I mean. When you post something on your blog or any of your social media channels how likely would you say people are to read a 1,500 word post?

Now let’s say that the same post has pictures in it.

If you are scrolling through your social channel and notice a picture that call for your attention...aren’t you more likely to see what it is all about?

So I’m suggesting that if you are taking the time to add a post, don’t settle for just words, add a picture or video to support that post.

Doing so, will help you get the most out of your efforts.

#8 Don’t Be Silent

I work with a wide range of clients and some are better at this than others.

When someone engages with your content, you have to respond.

You can’t allow yourself to be silent. 

Social Media is not like traditional media, where you put out a message and push out information and that is where it ends.

Social Media is just that, social. The goal is to create engagement, so when people engage with you give them the curtesy to show that you are thankful for their engagement.

This will help build your social influence.

#9 Link Back To Your Own Site

If you take the time to create content or bring value to your community and target audience then you should consider this content to be an asset.

If it is your asset, then it should live somewhere that you own and control.

So when you post on the social channels it is ok to link them back to your own website for them to consume the full version of the content.

Doing this, also allows you to share other resources and content that they may be interested in while building your own website traffic.

#10 Repeat Your Posts

It is ok to repeat your posts. Most of us know how fast Twitter moves right. So what are the chances that everyone who follows you is going to see the post at the exact time that you post it?

If you use Twitter, do you check for updates every minute of every day?

Or do you make time to go through all of the post that you missed that day or that week?

I am guessing here but I think that most of us don’t.  

So I am suggesting that it is ok to post multiple times in an effort to maximize your reach particularly with Twitter.

So how much is to much?

Consider your community or target audience, factor in time zones and I would say that tweeting 4 to 6 times over 48 hours is about the right mix.

At MediaOnQ we’ve experimented with that quite a bit.

When we post multiple times, say 3 times we get 3 times the amount of sharing and content consumption.

The opposite is true too though...if we post 6 to 8 times, we get people who drop off and unfollow.

We’ve just covered 10 Steps To Help You Build Social Influence.

#1 Do It All At Once

#2 Understand What Each Channel Has To Offer

#3 Create a Great Profile

#4 Become a Curator

#5 Leverage Social Sharing

#6 Show Some Restraint

#7 Use More Than Words

#8 Don’t Be Silent

#9 Link Back To Your Own Site

#10 Repeat Your Posts

Do you have any other tips or techniques that can help us achieve social influence? If you do, I’d love to hear about them and share them with our community. 

You can share your tips and techniques by email us at [email protected] 

I hope that you found this information useful.

If you did, please subscribe on iTunes, share it with a friend and leave us a review as this helps spread the message out to others.

Join me next time where we’ll continue to discuss a variety of digital media branding and marketing techniques to help you compete in today’s web economy.

Until next time, I’m Carlos Quintero. Thank you for listening.

How to Upgrade Your Thank You Pages

Welcome to the Digital Media Branding Podcast Episode 16. 

6 Steps You Can Take To Upgrade Your Website Thank You Pages

Hello I am your host Carlos Quintero from MediaOnQ.com. I run a Full Service Digital Media Branding & Marketing Agency that is based out of Fargo, North Dakota.

MediaOnQ offers a wide range of services to include Web Design and E-commerce. Many of our clients have Thank You pages on their sites. Some have them to thank customers for shopping or placing an order with them others to thank them for feedback.

Near the end of 2013 - which is the time of this recording. I am still amazed by how many online sites and marketers simply say Thank You on the page and leave it at that.

Consider this.

The people who get to see your Thank You page have already gone through the Marketing Conversion. 

In other words, they have successfully become a customer or a visitor who’s taken action and engaged with your brand and website.

So why would anyone who has secured a customer allow the transaction to simply be?

This became the inspiration for today’s podcast.

We will cover 6 steps that we can take to upgrade the Thank You pages on our websites.

Keep in mind, these tips will apply to many types of websites to include online shopping sites as well as sites that collect leads or feedback from their site visitors.

So let’s get started.

#1 Cross-Sell

If someone has already purchased from you, why not share with them other items that they too might be interested in?  

One company that does this exceptionally well is Amazon. 

If you run a search for any item, Amazon makes sure that you are made aware of other items that people who purchased or were interested in also searched for.

This approach is simply brilliant and I have to say that even way back in the late 90’s I remember working with clients who admired that approach.

To get this totally out there - yes, I am 41 so I’ve been around from about the start of the internet…

Not quite the start since I started my company in 1996…but close enough I suppose.

OK.

Let’s get back on track here.

Cross-Selling

When the thank you page only offers a thank you message, you are really only giving your customer one option and that is to close the browser window and be done or simply go back to Google or YouTube to find something else to shop for or review

One of the best ways to increase your revenue is to re-sell your existing customer or close a sale on those people who already want to buy from you.

You do this by increasing the average sale or spend.

Chances are that you’ve been up-sold or cross-sold before. I know I have.

Think about it.

Remember that magazine or chocolate bar that you picked up at the checkout?

How about that pastry that you purchased with our morning coffee?

Or that camera or smartphone that may have cost you an extra few dollars but was totally worth it because of the added features.

These are all examples of up selling and or cross selling.

The best part of cross selling or up selling is that you are simply presenting additional offerings or alternatives to those customers who are ready to buy from you.

Cross selling is much easier than simply targeting prospects…

The key to cross-selling is to make sure that you introduce your website visitors to other relevant items or content that may benefit them or that they may find useful.

So keep that in mind as you think about how you might want to implement a cross-selling strategy on your own site.

Obviously, if you need help or would like advice simply email us at [email protected], I’d love to help.

Next on our list is…

#2 Newsletter Subscription

I need to be clear here. If your website has adequate newsletter subscription opportunities throughout, then this is not the place to once again try to hammer the message home in hopes of a new subscriber.

You don’t want to come across as desperate…I like to compare it to when you were dating…because after all it is a relationship that we are trying to build here.

I’ve had clients ask me why they would need a newsletter when they have Facebook and Twitter…

Unlike Facebook and Twitter - A newsletter allows you more room or space to articulate and share valuable information about your product or service or that special promotion that is going on through the end of the week.

A newsletter allows you enough ways to show people how they might be able to access that special promotion or what actions they will want to take to participate.

A newsletter allows your business to stay in touch with all of those website visitors who love what you have to offer.

It allows you to embrace your audience.

You have to remember, they sign up or opt-in because they want your content and information…

Another benefit of a newsletter is that it becomes a one-on-one touch point. 

The newsletter is delivered to the customer’s inbox - it is not easy to read more than one email message at the same time right?

The idea is to build or have multiple, customer touch points in your campaign. So, a newsletter allows you to be proactive. 

You can present actionable items or content that allows your customers to engage with your brand, product or service…

This makes it so that you are at the top of mind awareness. It helps you build competitive barriers and for you as a company it allows you to prospect without hoping that someone might stumble upon your content or service offering.

Now I have to bring this up because a while back I was listening to a podcast by Ray Ortega aka @PodcastHelper on Twitter, where he mentioned newsletters and how they were a great way to stay in touch with your customer base should something horrible happen like your website crashes or some other tragedy.

Frankly, I’d never considered that prior to listening to the podcast but that is a very real world possibility and something that every business should consider in their security and disaster recovery plans and efforts.

Two more points that I want to make about a newsletter. First, a newsletter is less likely to get lost in the social media updates flood of messages and second, a newsletter is a friendly reminder that your company is still in business.

If you’d like more information about newsletters you should check out the Digital Media Branding Podcast Episode 8, which talks about how to optimize your email marketing campaign.

Moving along now to…

#3 Create a User Account

Many online vendors and storefronts offer a quick guest checkout option. 

This is sometimes convenient for those website visitors who may be accessing your store from a mobile device or simply don’t have time to go through the full registration process.

If that is the case, the thank you page is the ideal location to invite users to set up their account.

My wife Bert who is a senior media sales consultant always brings up the marketing phrase “business goes where it’s invited”…

So keep that in mind.

At MediaOnQ we’ve actually set up up specific incentives around those visitors who choose to take the express check-out options to help increase subscriptions. 

I will share that on average, we are able to increase subscriptions by 22%…so it does work.

So what is the key to increasing subscriptions? 

In a single word…Benefits. 

Offer some sort of benefit to the consumer and they will take it, thereby increasing your subscriptions.

OK, and now…

#4 Provide Useful Links

It may seem a little obvious or redundant but let’s say that you just purchased a new DSLR Camera.

You could share links to sample photos or video that this camera can produce as well as other people’s thoughts or even product reviews.

I’ll use myself as an example. Prior to purchasing my Canon C300 I read as many blog posts and product reviews as I could find and went through pretty much every YouTube and Vimeo video that was out there at the time.

I finally made the purchasing decision and today still find myself reading or watching any and all content that features the Canon C300.

I think that it would be fair to say that people always want more…

OK, next on the list.

#5 Social Media Sharing

There are some companies out there that are excellent at this like B&H and Amazon. When you go through their checkout process they give you the opportunity to share a comment about your activity on your social channels.

Make it easy for your customers and website visitors to brag and share across whatever social channel they prefer.

In other words, I am suggesting that you don’t simply limit them to share via Twitter and Facebook but rather open it up to allow them to share on Pinterests, SumbleUpon or whatever other channel your target audience may use.

This is also a great opportunity to invite your customer or website visitor to follow your company on your own social media channels.

If you’re running a non-profit or cause type of site, this could be a great way to spread the message about an upcoming event or theme-based month to increase the awareness.

Now for the last suggestion…

#6 Ask a Question

Take the opportunity to ask for feedback. Get creative, find ways of asking for feedback to help you improve the customer service, customer experience and improve the engagement with your brand’s products, service and information.

Keep this in mind.

You will want to keep it simple.

Don’t ask your visitors to type out an answer. Instead use a checkbox type of survey where the visitor can simply check a box to provide their feedback.

As of this recording there are several services out there that make it easy for you to create surveys like Survey Monkey. And if I am not mistaken Survey Monkey allows you to set up one survey completely free of charge so this would be my recommendation for you to try before you make a bigger commitment.

We’ve just covered my 6 suggestions for you to improve the Thank You pages on your websites.

Let’s go through this list one more time.

#1 Cross-Sell

#2 Newsletter Subscription

#3 Create a User Account

#4 Provide Useful Links

#5 Social Media Sharing

#6 Ask a Question

These ideas should help you enhance the user engagement with your brand.

We are dealing with people here so experiment with different combinations of those ideas and see how your customers respond.

Do you have any other suggestions or ideas as to what you might be able to do with your Thank You page? If you do, I’d like to hear about them. 

You can email me at [email protected].

I hope that you found this information helpful. 

If you did please subscribe on iTunes, Leave a Review and Share it with a friend.

Join me next time where we’ll continue to discuss digital media branding and marketing strategies to help you compete in today’s web economy.

Until next time, I’m Carlos Quintero from MediaOnQ. 

Thank you for listening.

5 Ways To Secure Your Web Hosting Account

Hello, I’m Carlos Quintero owner of a Full Service Media & Marketing company called MediaOnQ. 

One of our areas of expertise is website design and development.

So today, we’ll be discussing how to secure your web server as consumers not as network engineers.

We’ll be covering 5 key areas that impact our website’s security.

Our company website or websites the face of our business on the World Wide Web. 

Sometimes selecting a business hosting provider can be time-consuming but taking the time to find reliable business hosting is absolutely worth it.

Because once your website is up and you start adding content to it, it becomes a valuable business asset.

And for sure, an asset that is worth defending against malicious attacks.

Here are 5 easy and practical ways to keep your hosting account secure as you continue to grow your website.

Keep All Software Updated

Most small business owners use software like WordPress or Drupal to publish their web content and manage their website. Or if they have an online store they might use an application like osCommerce or Magneto.

Overtime, these applications and scripts are updated and revised by their development teams. 

Most often these revisions offer vital protection against bugs and security vulnerabilities.

Keeping your software up to date takes minutes. Where as repairing a hacked website could take days or weeks and in some extreme cases you make end up losing everything.

Of course this all depends on the severity of the attack.

So what can we do to keep all of our software updated?

Here are three action items for you.

First: Install security patches and updates as soon as they are made available. This will help keep your data secure and ensure that your website isn’t compromised by hackers.

Second: Make it a habit to regularly check your plugins and add-ons for updates and install those too.

Third: Always back up your databases before installing new updates - just in case something goes wrong.

You don’t want the headaches involved with not having a backup of your databases...that can be a topic for a future podcast.

Cleanup Your Accounts

When you first set up your web hosting account you probably will need to create multiple login accounts for things like FTP, email and database access.

Over time as you are exposed to what is possible your needs will probably change.

Some of these changes may cause for some of the original accounts to become redundant.

Or maybe there was someone on your staff who needed access for something specific and is no longer there.

Or maybe you worked with freelancers at some point and don’t anymore.

Leaving their login credentials in place as in not removing them would then leave their login details in limbo and that’s something you’ll want to avoid.

So here are three useful suggestions to help cleanup your accounts.

First - regularly review all of the user permissions and accounts in your web hosting control panel.

Second - remove any users that are redundant to reduce the risk of someone hacking into your hosting account, or misusing a login that has been long forgotten.

Third - remove any generic accounts that are no longer required.

Lockdown Private Files

It is inevitable. Not all files that are uploaded to your web server will be intended for public access. 

You may upload project ideas, contracts or even test data.

Some people continue to use their web server as a storage hub for archived material or as a way to share documents. 

Solutions like Google Docs or DropBox are a better option in my opinion but I still have clients who have not made that switch.

So the risk there is that as time passes, you may not remember what you’ve uploaded and that could present a security problem.

Web servers are intended to be accessible right, so safeguarding sensitive information is a must.

So here are my three suggestions to help you lockdown private files.

Fist - use the tools in your host’s control panel to lock down access to files and directories that should be private and periodically review security on any sensitive data.

Second - whenever possible use password protection settings on your sensitive directories.

Third And this is one that you will want to think about before you try it - set rules via htaccess files, but make sure that you are comfortable writing the syntax because a poorly-written line in the htaccess file can cause extensive problems with your website.

Practice Good Password Etiquette

You have been given one username and password for your control panel, one for your database or databases and another for your email accounts as well as another for your FTP account.

As tempting as it may be to use the same password for all of these - don’t do it. 

Why?

Because if a hacker got a hold of your password he or she could wreak havoc on ever part of your web server.

So here are my three suggestions to help you practice good password etiquette.

First - set all of your passwords individually and use a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, special characters and numbers.

Second - if you store or save your passwords on your computer, use a secure password vault from a reputable vendor.

Third - change your password every other month and make sure not to recycle passwords in other words don’t use a password more than once.

Backup Your Files Regularly

No matter how hard you work at keeping your web server secure and your website safe...there may be a time when the worst can happen.

Hackers may find a way in to your website and web server even if you are vigilant.

The damage they cause can take days or even weeks to fix.

There are some hosting companies that offer backup services as part of their standard package.

Most offer backup services as an added feature which means extra paid feature.

If you’re not sure if your hosting provider offers this service as a stand alone or included offering I’d suggest you contact them and ask.

Or you can check their website and see if the service is included.

Or you might check some web hosting review sites to find out how they stack up agains others.

The point I’m trying to make is don’t assume...find out.

So here are my three suggestions to help ensure that you backup your files regularly.

 First - find out if your web host offers backup services. Find out how easy they are to access should you need them and find out if you have to pay to retrieve lost files.

Second - if your host doesn’t offer backup services then you need to get into the habit of backing up your files, folders and databases regularly. 

Third - Don’t forget to backup email mailboxes.

We all know that creating and developing a website requires a significant investment of time and resources. 

But going through the process is not an option if we want to compete in today’s web economy.

So it makes sense to ensure that your investment is protected.

So keep these 5 points in mind as you work toward securing your web hosting account.

Keep All Software Up To Date

Cleanup Your Accounts

Lockdown Private Files

Practice Good Password Etiquette

Backup Your Files Regularly

Although it isn’t possible to completely protect against every possible attack or mishap, thinking ahead and securing your hosting account will help to ensure you are in the best possible position if the worst happens.

If you need help implementing any of my suggestions I am here to help, you can email me at [email protected].

I hope that you found this information useful.

If you did please subscribe on iTunes, leave us a review and share it with a friend.

If you’d like additional information about our web design and development services please visit mediaonq.com

Podcast Episode – LinkedIn For Business

In this podcast episode we will be featuring Bert Quintero, who is a Senior Marketing Consultant for Midwest Communications. Midwest Communications is not only one of the largest Media Groups in the country but also a media group that has a solid digital media strategy for themselves and their client base. We will be discussing how to use LinkedIn Company Pages for Marketing.

Hello, I’m your host Carlos Quintero owner and founder of MediaOnQ. MediaOnQ is a Full Service Digital Media Agency based out of Fargo, North Dakota. We’ve been helping a wide variety of clients ranging from start-ups all the way up to large fortune 25 companies by building what we call an Active Brand. Active Brands place your message where your customers are by bringing Video, Web, Mobile and SEO strategies together. Doing so allows you to effectively compete in today’s web economy.

Without any further delay, I’d like to welcome Bert back to our podcast. Welcome back Bert, it’s been a while since our Pinterest episode.

I really enjoyed the way you explained and laid out the information on Pinterests so if you ok with it, I’d like you to please run us through some Facts about LinkedIn for Business.

Bert – Well it is hard not to have LinkedIn on your marketing radar if your in business today and I’ll tell you why.

LinkedIn has more than 200 million registered users, in more than 200 countries across the globe.

More than three million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages.

Professionals are signing up for LinkedIn at a rate of approximately two new members per second.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network.

 

You’re making for a very strong argument here about how or why every company should be interested in having a LinkedIn strategy or make sure that they are on their way toward setting one up. 

Bert – Mike Grishaver, who is the Products Management & Monetization executive at LinkedIn, had an interesting comment about what LinkedIn Company Pages can provide. He said LinkedIn company pages can provide “a more powerful way to build relationships with your target audience” with its emphasis on visual and relevant content.

In my opinion LinkedIn Company pages give business a more complete set of tools to do effective marketing on a social platform.

I agree with you. LinkedIn offers people who have jobs a place to show off their skills, experience, knowledge and professional backgrounds.  I also did notice that LinkedIn is not where you find out if someone has a headache that day or not as it sometimes happens with other social media networks.

Bert – LinkedIn offers affluent and influential members which is a highly valuable demographic for marketers. 

As a user, you can quickly discover the people who are employed by a certain company or the various types of business a certain person has worked for and so on.

If you’re looking to connect with industry professionals and generate leads for your business – LinkedIn should be an integral part of your social media marketing strategy.

Thank you for that.

You’ve now set the stage. I am ready to learn all about the ins and outs of LinkedIn Company Pages and more specifically how I can use that information and apply it to help grow my business.

Bert – Obviously, I would suggest that every company take the time and invest in the effort to establish their LinkedIn Company Page.

Consider this…chances are that many of your employees are updating their personal profiles to show where they work.

Every person that connects with that profile may potentially click on your company’s name.

Hundreds or even thousands of users can easily land on your page through a simple click while browsing on LinkedIn.

Opinions will be formed based on the information that they find once they land on that Company Page.

As a business you should take advantage of this opportunity and work toward growing your company’s reach through your own employees.

That is a terrific concept; grow your company’s reach through your employee profiles on LinkedIn. -  Excellent advice.

Bert – In marketing there are two points that need to be made quickly and clearly.

What to buy and Where to buy

LinkedIn Company pages allow you to spread product or service awareness.

Company Pages on LinkedIn allow you to separate individual products or offerings.

In comparison, Facebook allows you to create a business page where you would then display all of your products or offering on that one single page. Facebook also then allows you to see which friends like that page. 

LinkedIn on the other hand allows you to narrow the engagement by allowing you to add multiple products or service offerings with images and descriptions for each making it easy for each product or offering to stand out individually.

This makes it easy for customers to learn all about the various products and services that your company produces. Customers are also able to see how many other users recommend your products and services.

This type of product awareness is very difficult to come by.

OK, in today’s web economy, accountability is critical.  Is it safe to assume that LinkedIn offers some sort of measurement for these product specific company page sections?

Bert – Yes. LinkedIn allows you to measure the engagement with each of your product or service sections of the Company Page.

So the marketing take away here is that we can spread the product awareness through LinkedIn Company pages.

In my mind LinkedIn has always been sort of a Recruiting Platform. Would that be a fair statement today?

Bert – I would have to say yes because job postings appear in search results on Twitter. Having a LinkedIn Company Page allows you to greatly increase your visibility across the web.

Many people are familiar with LinkedIn’s own Job Search Engine. More and more people are using LinkedIn to find great companies to work for.

So you’re suggesting that even though someone might have a job, it is possible that they would seek out or search for advancement opportunities on LinkedIn.

Bert – Yes. Passive candidates can present great opportunities for many companies.

The marketing take away here is that if you don’t have a LinkedIn company page you could potentially miss prospects, leads and even employees.

Let me recap for a moment because these 3 tips where excellent.

LinkedIn Company Pages help

1.    Grow Your Reach

2.    Increase Product and Service Awareness

3.    Allow Your Company to be Found by customers, prospects and potential employment candidates

Bert, please walk us through the LinkedIn Company Page, what’s important, what should people focus on and what they should avoid?

 

Bert –

LinkedIn company pages are broken down into six sections

1.    Home

2.    Careers

3.    Products

4.    Page Insights

5.    Follower Insights

6.    Employee Insights

As it is true with any kind of landing page – the LinkedIn Company Home page is incredibly important because it provides the first impression.

Make sure that you include a clear reason as to why someone should be interested in your company.

Talk about when the company was founded, who founded it and why.

Point out events or accomplishments that are noteworthy throughout the life of your company.

Take advantage of the news feed section. Be sure to post company updates, job postings and new hires.

Remember that this feed is your company’s way of communicating important messages to your audiences.

 

I always recommend that in those update posts you include a link back to your own company website since this is a terrify way to add back links from a trusted source while you help generate web traffic and leads to grow your business.

Bert – 24-hours after you post a company update you will start to see a few different metrics in grey.

These show the number of impressions, clicks and engagement percentage from your post.

These metrics are important because it allows you to better understand your audience. If something produces a great deal of engagement you can then try to replicate across other products or services.

Bert – There’s one more piece to this. It is important that you don’t simply forget about that post but rather Engage with the audience. Keep the conversation going by liking or commenting on updates.

That is so true, there are many companies that simply post on social media sites and expect the audience to interact with itself. Ignoring those who engage with you is always the wrong thing to do and frankly a waste of time for everyone.

 

Bert – I should point out that LinkedIn now allows you to interact using your company name and logo instead of as your individual profile.

That is a huge plus – and for some a lifesaver since they can delegate the task.

 

What can you tell me about the careers section of the LinkedIn Company Page?

 

I’ll start by pointing out that the careers section requires a paid subscription to LinkedIn.

 

If you work in a highly competitive field or want to be the company where everyone wants to work – The Careers page is essential.

 

This section allows you to help people understand your company’s culture. You can also showcase awards, map out career paths with your company, highlight your best employees and post jobs that target candidates using the automated job matching.

Not only can you reach thousands of professionals but you’ll also have the ability to see exactly who has viewed your job using real-time analytics. You can quickly find out how closely they match your job posting based on a 1-10 score and even dig further to see who the applicant is connected to on LinkedIn.

 

Great info – and just to restate this, the Careers section is a LinkedIn Paid Section…but it may be worth investing to further define a company page.

 

Let’s discuss the Products section a bit further. What can you highlight about this section for us?

 

Bert – The products tab is a great place to collect recommendations and display what you sell. My favorite point about this section is that it allows you to create links back to your own website to help drive traffic, generate leads and grow your business.

 

An important stat to point out here is that 70% of people follow links posted by friends and family.

 

Bert – I suspect that this is exactly why LinkedIn recommendations exist. These recommendations add a personal touch to a product or service that is not always there from a traditional marketing message.

 

And because each product or service can have it’s own picture, you can use that to display your call to action associated to that product or service.

Now let me ask you about Page Insights – what do they track and what’s the value behind them?

Bert - Page insights track page views and unique visitors on the overall company page as well as each of the individual tabs.

LinkedIn will also measure how many clicks your products or services have received as well as the number of members who are following your company.

The value to these metrics is in understanding who is visiting your company profile page and how much traffic is being generated for your website.

That’s pretty straightforward. Now talk to me about Follower Insights.

Bert – the follower statistics tab shows your company update engagement the follower demographics, the company update impressions and your follower progress broken down by recent users, new followers and member growth.

With these insights you are able to dig deeper into the page analytics by viewing engagements by clicks, likes, comments and shares.

And now the 6th and last section – Employee Insights

Bert – Employee Insights allow people to learn exactly which employees have new titles, which have departed recently and where did their existing employees come from along with the employee’s top skills or area of expertise.

This seems like a very useful tool for B2B (Business to Business) companies to use. You can quickly understand how much of the work or project you may be considering them for can actually be executed by them without strategic partnerships or other types of third-party arrangements. And on the other side, if you need strategic partnerships this seems like a great way to evaluate those potential partnerships.

How hard is it to set up a LinkedIn Company Page?

Bert – not hard at all but it is something that you should dedicate some time and put some thought behind.

Unlike other social media profiles, when you put together your LinkedIn Company Page you want to showcase your Company or Brand’s identity and persona.

Keeping true to your company’s brand in a professional way is key.

Now that we have a better understanding of a LinkedIn Company Page and how it can benefit our business we have to maintain it.

Bert – Maintaining the LinkedIn Company page once it’s been developed takes very little time.  It is definitely not like Twitter where you have to stay on it all day to keep the conversation going. Posting once per day is just fine for LinkedIn.

At MediaOnQ we try to keep it to 1-2 times per day. Exceeding 3 posts per day is frankly a mistake because the quality and value of the post tends to get watered down.

Bert – I agree. Companies should focus on the value of the post to their audience. Posting one valuable post per day will generate more engagement over 6 useless or irrelevant posts.  Always remember to bring some sort of value to your audience.

So it is fair to say that posting, monitoring, responding to comments and looking over the page analytics should take – 10 minutes per day.

Bert – Yes. If you have your posts planned out ahead of time you might even be able to cut that time down to 5 minutes per day.

Well there you have it – 5 to 10 minutes per day should be your time allotment to keep up with your company page in LinkedIn. 

Bert, it is always a pleasure to have you on as co-host on the MediaOnQ podcast.

Why don’t you tell our listeners how to get a hold of you should they have comments or questions for you?

Bert - I may be reached via email at or on Twitter  @ BertCue that is B E R T C U E.

Thank you for joining us today Bert – You have an open invitation to join us any time you’d like.

Bert – we covered a lot of information today. Will you be providing a transcript for our listeners?

Yes, absolutely – all the information that we covered will be available in the show notes and can be found at MediaOnQ.com

Thank you everyone for listening today. If you have any questions or comments about how to use LinkedIn for business or want to share our strategies, success stories or challenges when using LinkedIn we’d love to hear about them.

You can send feedback to .

If you found this information useful please subscribe on iTunes, Leave a Review and share it with a friend.

Join us next time where we’ll continue to discuss digital media branding and marketing techniques designed to help you compete in today’s web economy.

I’m Carlos Quintero owner and founder of MediaOnQ.com

Until next time, take care.

Welcome to Digital Media Branding Podcast Episode 13

How Video Improves SEO

Hello, my name is Carlos Quintero and I own a Digital Media Branding company called MediaOnQ. I've been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work in the digital space for most of my career as far back as 1996.

Based on my own personal experience working with a broad range of clients from small businesses all the way up to Fortune 25 companies, I’ve witnessed how video can dramatically improve a brand’s identity and search engine’s ranking on the World Wide Web.

It is no secret that Google owns YouTube. 

And as of this recording YouTube is the #2 Search Engine in the World.

You may not realize that more than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. That is simply more video than what most of us can imagine. The quality of the video is the only thing that can help brands stand out in this massive content pool. Adding well produced video content to YouTube will immediately impact your brands ranking on Google Search Page Results. 

It is important that I mention that Google will display video in their search results from other sources like Vimeo and Miro. We'll cover some of the factors that play a roll in how video ranks in a future podcast.

So how does all this work?

How does Video Improve SEO?

Let's start by pointing out that Quality Original Content is King when it comes to SEO. In other words, if you produce great content for your Blog, Business, Personal Pages or Podcast you will be rewarded by your audience through Engagement. 

Engagement - that is the name of this game. 

Engagement gives us the reason to care about how and where we rank on Google or Bing. We care because we want our content to be consumed by the target audience. 

Engagement allows businesses - Large and Small alike to increase their sampling, effectively helping them with prospecting efforts.

Engagement typically results in more conversions and higher quality leads.

Video can improve our SEO through Engagement.

Now let's talk about that for a moment. How does Video improve SEO through Engagement?

Well, Video Makes Content More Sticky

Video helps reduce bounce rates. A bounce rate is also known as a short click, which means that a visitor spend very little time on a particular web page.

According to a ComScore Study, people stay on a web page an average of 2 minutes longer when they watch a video. That is how Video makes our content sticky.

Video helps content rank higher. 

Video can actually help rank your content on Page One of the  Search Engine Results even with highly competitive keywords. Page One ranking results can actually be increased by 53 times simply by adding video content to that page. 

The main reason for this is that video simply less competitive. In other words, few people and companies are taking advantage of this opportunity.

Video allows brands to establish their claim on their niche…

Have you heard of be the first or the best to see the most success?  Well Video offers you and your business the opportunity to be first or better than others in your niche.

Here's a quick fact for you. More than 80% of video that Google displays in search results are informational videos.

Video helps improve your content's back-links.

Back-Links are important to an SEO strategy. Some of you may not know that Google's original name was back-rub, so yes, Back-Links are very important and having the ability to upload your video to multiple video search engines and directories is an easy way to create more back-links to your own site's content. The added back-links can help improve your own website's rankings.

Oh and let's not forget that video search engines make it easy for visitors to share and embed your videos on to social media sharing sites, blogs, news feeds and even personal sites. Again, this creates more back-links to your content and website.

What else can Video do?

Video adds Original Content to Your Brand. 

Original Content Rules on the Web.

Keep this in mind. If you produce a video and publish it, it will be unlikely that someone else will copy and paste it on to their own site and claim it as their own. So my advice to you would be that the more competitive your niche is the more video you should consider to produce and publish to help separate you from the pack.

Video also allows you to repurpose the content into other digital media platforms for additional content consumption such as Screen-shots, Text Transcript for your Blog or News Feed, PDF Download, PowerPoint Slideshow and Audio Podcast to name a few.

You can also use Video to build your website's traffic.

Yes, Video can build your Website Traffic.

You can leverage YouTube and other Video Consumption sites by building content trailers that help drive traffic back to your own site where visitors can then consume the full version of the content and possibly sample additional product, content or information directly from your website.

Here's something that I'd like to share with all of you. For those of you who don't know me, I love my Grandma for so many reason and here's one. When I was about 8 years old, I remember her saying that "when opportunity presents itself, it is your responsibility to take it". I remember thinking, what on earth is she talking about? 

Fast forward to today and here we are. 

Video levels the playing field - you too can be relevant, you can compete with the deep pockets and big boys. 

Leverage video. Grow your site, your blog, your audience and your revenue. And if you need help along the way, I'm here to help.

Join me next time where we'll continue to discuss a variety of digital media branding topics and strategies that will help you compete in today's web economy.

If you found this information helpful please subscribe on iTunes, leave a review and share it with a friend. 

My name is Carlos Quintero, Owner and Founder of MediaOnQ - Until next time, Take Care.

Carlos Quintero

QBusinesSolutions, Inc.

701-566-7328 office

Episode 11

What’s the Best Way to Reach Multi-Screen Users

Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the .

I’m owner and founder of , a Digital Media Branding Company in the upper Midwest.

So, what is the best way to reach multi-screen users assuming that our goal is to increase engagement with your brand’s products, content or information?

There are several options out there for you to deliver your web content to multi-screen users. Picking the right path to take however may not be intuitively obvious.

Let’s start by clarifying the terms multi-screen users.

When we talk about multi-screen users we are referring to all of us who more and more access the web from our smartphones or tablet devices.

This of course would not mean that we’ve abandoned our computers but rather that we fall into today’s norm which is using multiple devices or screen sizes to consume content.

Personally, I can think of at least one time this week where I watched a video on my phone and viewed it again later while I was at my office.

In episode 10 of the , I referenced a recent study called the Multi-Screen World.

There were two important points in this study. There were probably more than two, but two for sure that stood out to me.

The first point – People are connected all the time, particularly when they are sitting down to watch television.

It’s common practice for both my wife and I to bring out iPads over to the couch as we sit down to watch a show.

The second point – 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a single task.

Again, I can relate to this because I almost always check my email while waiting for my coffee at the drive thru. 

OK – I want you to think about this for a moment.

When you visit a website from a large company like say MSN, BestBuy or ; is your experience the same on your desktop as it is on your smartphone or tablet?

Hopefully the answer is Yes.

While how you interact with the content may be different based on the screen size, your experience with that brand should be what you’d expect which is to get to the content or information that you were after. This then creates the experience that will hopefully get you to want to come back and interact with that brand again.

The main emphasis here is the engagement. Some of these companies understand the need to increase the engagement and have tailored their interactive platforms to give their customers the experience they expect when accessing from various devices. 

At we call the tailored engagement experience – Building An .

So let’s assume that you are ready take your interactive platform to multi-screen users.

What are your options?

How do you get started?

How do you get the most bang-for-your-buck when you move forward with this type of strategy?

We’ll cover all of this and more, next.

There are three different approaches toward delivering your content to the multi-screen user. We’ll be covering each here shortly.

It is important that you know and understand that each business may have their own very specific reasons as to why they preferred one to another. In other words, there is no single cookie-cutter type of solution that will fit all businesses.

My goal here is to give you enough information to allow you to be successful regardless of which solution you’ve selected for your business.

So keep this in mind, they key to your success here will be in your ability to tailor the user experience across devices in a way that addresses the customer needs.

We covered how to determine what that customer need is by device in the Episode 10.

If you missed it, it will be worth your time to go through it, as the information we covered in episode 10 will help you establish your foundation for this type of project.

Ok, so now lets go over the three different approaches toward delivering your content to multi-screen users.

The first approach we’ll discuss is .

What is ?

Responsive allows you to optimize your site’s experience based on screen-size without the need to create multiple websites.

So a responsive website will adjust the size of your images, content layout and content visibility based on the size of screen you are using to access the site.

It is worth noting that it is not simply shrinking the size of your website. It is changing the way the content is being delivered in a way that will not affect the user experience.

What I mean by this is that if the site were simply shrinking, the text and buttons would then also shrink making it difficult for users to navigate through your site or read the text.

A Responsive Website will shrink the images to make sure they fit, but it will adjust the size of the text so that you can still read it and change the buttons so that you can use them on say a smartphone.

Responsive sites are also able to use gestures to navigate through the site. Gestures are the way that you currently use the native apps on your smartphone like dragging, swiping and so on.

Other advantage to a Responsive site include:

Having a single website to maintain.

Having a single URL for any one particular piece of content, this is important because it makes it easier for users to interact, share and link to your content. 

And, with a single website, there is no need to redirect to a mobile version of your site or have the need to promote sub-domains or other directories. This in some cases will help reduce load time.

So far it sounds like moving forward with a responsive website is the way to go, right?

For many companies it will be the better option but in order to create a great experience around your Responsive site’s content you will need to have device specific strategies.  This means that you will need to design your web content with your end user in mind. More specifically design the content in a way that will allow the smartphone user to interact with your site in a way that will allow him/her get to what they need or want quickly. Then do the same for the tablet user, the desktop user and the smart TV user.

What on earth does all of that mean?

In my day-to-day job I get to see all types of companies and a lot of them are jumping in to responsive websites without thinking it through.

What I am saying here is that for me as a user, it is annoying to visit a responsive website from my phone where the whole screen is covered by navigation buttons and in some cases it may take two full swipes to get to the site’s content.

So the more you make your user work to get to your content the less likely they will recommend it or enjoy the experience.

In the navigation example, thinking it through would have allowed for the navigation to turn into a drop-down type of list consuming one row of content rather than making the user swipe…

So keep that in mind as you select who will be and how that may work against your goals.

The second approach toward delivering your content to the multi-screen user is to dynamically serve different HTML on the same URL.

So your website would have to be programmed to automatically detect what type of device was accessing it and present a custom page, based on that specific device, on the same web address a.k.a. URL.

It is possible to design these types of pages for any kind of device – mobile phones, tablets, desktop computers and even smart TVs.

This type of solution is probably best suited for companies who have a technical resource on hand or maybe some type of retained services agreement with a digital media company because the customized style sheets have to be maintained on a per-device basis.

The big advantage however is the ability to specifically target the device and deliver the specific content they expect wrapped around a completely tailored experience for that type of user. 

The third approach toward delivering your content to the multi-screen user is to simply separate the mobile URLs a.k.a. web addresses.

You may have noticed that there are some companies that use .MOBI instead of .COM or others that use subdomains like m.mediaonq.com or mobile.mediaonq.com. And then there are others who use directories to deliver their mobile content. An example would be /mobile.

With these types of options you would then build a separate site for your mobile traffic. This second site would be completely independent of your original desktop version of your website.

The way it works is that a small piece of code is added to the site’s home page which allows the web browser – IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome or whatever browser you are using to automatically detect if the user is on a mobile device and then automatically redirects them to the mobile optimized version of your website.

A dedicated mobile version of your site allows you to tailor the mobile user experience making it a popular preference for many companies.

One of the most popular mobile frameworks is jQueryMobile – this frameworks allows you to build mobile websites that act and respond like native apps on mobile devices. jQueryMobile offers a wide variety of powerful option that allow you to tap into the smartphone resources like the photo, map and microphone options.

So if you need or want that extra functionality of say directions to your location directly from your mobile website, this is your best option.

So now that we have a better understanding of why it is important to target the multi-screen user and what our options are to deliver our content to them let’s discuss some real-world examples of the adaptive user experience.

This new, well sort of new multi-screen user has changed the way businesses need to look at their interactive platform.

Today’s users visit websites on a variety of devices so we need to think about the layout, visibility and context related content in a way that will allow us to adapt to our customers.

We need to deliver the right experience based on their device or screen size in order to generate engagement with our brand’s content, product or information.

Let’s go over a few examples of great, multi-screen user experiences.

We’ll start with The Home Depot.

What does the Home Depot site do well?

A few things actually, the most obvious is the fact that their site is optimized for mobile.

They’ve also made their store locator option the priority.

They offer a consistent look and feel to their brand across all devices.

And it is easy to navigate across any screen size.

Let’s look at an ecommerce type of website, 1-800flowers.com.

They offer a mobile friendly checkout experience.

They’ve also included a click-to-call option from their smartphone layout version.

The content is laid out in a way that makes it easy to find a gift quickly.

The site’s navigation is also easy to use across all screen sizes.

And the last site we’ll discuss is Starbucks.com

This site also made the store locator the hero in their design.

Starbucks offers a terrific touch-friendly experience across all devices making it easy to navigate and get to what you want quickly and effortlessly.

I may be a little bias here but out of the three sites, their multi-device experience stood out for me.

What are your thoughts around the multi-screen user experience?

Do you have a multi-screen experience that you’d like to share?

How are businesses in your market adjusting to multi-screen user?

Please visit and share your thoughts.

If you found this information to be useful, please subscribe to , leave a rating and share it with a friend.

Join me next time where we’ll continue to explore the building blocks that support .

I’m , owner and founder of .

Thank you for listening.

How To Make Your Website Work Across Multiple Devices

In today’s podcast we will find what it means to be multi-screen or what some call mobile friendly and what this actually means for different businesses.

Hello, I’m Carlos Quintero and I own a digital media branding company called MediaOnQ.

It is important that you build a website that showcases your business on every screen from smartphones and tablets to computers and even web enabled television sets and here’s why. 

When an individual is looking for your service, product or information they can either find you or they will find your competitor.

You must remember that your customers expect a great browsing experience regardless of what device they are using.

I’d like you to think about this for a moment.

Can you recall a time or times when you may have started reading an email on your phone while at a red light during your commute or while waiting for your coffee at the drive thru and then continued reading on your laptop at home or on your computer when you got to your office?

Or maybe you heard a commercial on the radio for a new car, and then used your tablet to check it out?

If these things sound familiar, that’s because they’re all part of the new norm in multi-screen content consumption.

In a recent Google Study called the Multi-screen World, they discovered that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a single goal.

And again, we are talking about everything from a smartphone to a smart TVs.

So what does this actually mean?

Well from my perspective it simply means that businesses need to adapt their web presence for smaller screens and I mean screens that are less than 7 inches diagonally.

It is true that normal websites when viewed on tablet devices generally render well enough to allow users to navigate them.  This however is not true when we shrink the screen size to that of a smartphone.

Here are a couple of questions for you to consider.

Are your customers able to interact with your content properly on all devices?

Is your company’s you web experience really optimized?

Are you currently offering customers exactly what they’re looking for based on how they consume your content?

In the next segment we are going to take the business perspective to help us understand how today’s customers interact with our site.

Recently, I posted a picture of my wife using her iPad while we sat down to watch a television show together after dinner.  At the time, she didn’t know that she’d actually inspired this episode of Digital Media Branding.

Studies show that people are basically plugged in all day long and often times while simultaneously watching TV.

This is where the light bulb should really come on.

Businesses that allow users to interact with their brand across all platforms and on all devices are going to naturally generate more engagement.

At MediaOnQ we call that having an Active Brand. Active Brands place your message where the customers are.

More engagement generally means higher brand recognition and more revenue.

So how do we get started?

We first need to clearly understand how today’s customers interact with your website.

We can do this by taking a look at the site’s analytics.

And in case anyone out there doesn’t know, Google provides terrific analytics tools that are completely free of charge.

If you need help with that please visit MediaOnQ.com and send me an email, I’d be more than happy to help.

The analytics can help us understand where customers come from, when are they visiting the site, what types of content they are consuming and what devices they are using to access the site.

Taking the time to analyze these stats is important because they will provide the areas of interest or more specifically where it is that you should be spending your time.

Now that you’ve gone over your site’s analytics you should have more of a clear picture as to what a smart phone user is looking for on your website.

You should also compare what say, a Tablet or Computer user is accessing on your website.

You may notice that each device may target different content on your site.

This is all valuable information because it will allow you to build a mobile site or more specifically a smartphone site or tablet site that focuses on the content and information that users want or expect when they access your site from their device.

What we are doing here specifically is tailoring the focus of your mobile site to specific audiences, rather than simply putting up a stripped down version of your standard website.

It is always important to keep the user in mind when designing the device-specific experience around your brand’s content, products or information. 

Successful websites always optimize the content to improve the engagement. This has never been more important than in the mobile web experience.

Staying on top of what your customers want and expect will help you provide a better experience for them as well as help set you apart from your competitors.

Loyal customers are often the best referral source.

If you found this information useful please subscribe to the Digital Media Branding Podcast on iTunes and share it with a friend.

Join me next time where we’ll discuss the variety of options you can take to make your websites adapt to the multi-screen web experience.

I’m Carlos Quintero owner and founder of MediaOnQ

Thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to the , Episode 8 .

Today, we are going to clearly define the which can immediately impact your campaign’s reach by helping you avoid the dreaded spam filter and getting more eyeballs on your content.

We’ll also discuss the Email Marketing Metrics you should watch closely as these can help you grow your business by building relationships with your customers while you solidify your competitive barriers.

Hello my name is ; I run a company in the Midwest called .

Since 1997, I've been fortunate enough to help many different companies extend their brand's reach out far beyond traditional marketing.

Leveraging technology has allowed me to help many small business owners; new business start-ups as well as large fortune 50 companies create profit centers around their brand's products, content and information.

In my job, I work with many aspects of the digital space and I found it interesting how many of my clients as well as friends and family members misunderstand the notion of email marketing.

This misunderstanding served as the inspiration for episode 8 of the ; .

Let’s dive in.

I decided to ask some of my friends and family members what’s their perception of email marketing.

Most of them were pretty sure that email marketing was responsible for filling up their spam folder daily…

The shocking truth is that they are not completely wrong. 

Some of you may disagree, and I am sure that I will get those emails but just about everyone I know has received one of those work from home emails that promise to show you how you can make a 6 figure income by simply working from home.

Lots of these so called companies attract people by using or implementing some of the most advanced email marketing techniques, which unfortunately undermine the efforts and practices of ethical companies.

I want to be clear. I am not saying that Email Marketing is Spam. These are two very different items that share some characteristics.

Here are some examples of the shared characteristics between Email Marketing and Spam:

Both are delivered via email and potentially can reach your inbox.

Both may contain big or fatty subject lines.

Both may contain information about a particular product or service.

That’s where the similarities end and here’s why.

The most important difference between email marketing and spam is that in an email marketing campaign the user has agreed to receive email from the sender.

Users grant the permission usually through a registration process or by signing up for a particular site. In this example there is no such thing as an automatic subscription.

Spammers on the other hand, build their email databases by purchasing email lists, steal email addresses or harvest them from websites through the use of grabbers from where ever they can find them. They then blast out email messages that fill up your spam folder.

Another huge difference between the two is content quality. For a detailed explanation on content and content quality I’d recommend that you listen to my as I cover this topic in depth and share great tips on how to survive and stand out by leveraging your content.

Legit email newsletters are tailored to the user’s interest, which is probably why they signed up in the first place.

Spam on the other hand can be as plain as a single line of text or a single link.

Newsletters tend to be well structured, well formatted and show off a good blend of text, images and sometimes-even video.

 

One other significant difference between the two is personalization.

Legit email newsletters are sent to one user at a time. You may have noticed that some spam has multiple recipients in the TO field of your email message.

Legit email newsletters also address you by your name in a greeting message at the beginning of the content.

In a Spam message you will not be greeted.

Let me say that one more time. In a Spam message no one will greet you.

So if you or your company is blasting out email newsletters or messages in bulk and not personalizing the content and greeting your recipient, you’ve categorized yourself as Spam.

Fix this ASAP!

One other thing to remember is to always include a way for users to unsubscribe.

It is important to build relationships and trust with your audience. The ability for users to unsubscribe let’s your audiences know that you will not push your content, service or information on them if they don’t care for it.

Now that we understand the differences between Spam and Legit Email Marketing Newsletters, let’s discuss the Email Marketing Metrics you should watch closely so you can grow your business, build lasting relationships with your customers and solidify your competitive barriers.

So if you have a business with an online presence, you definitely need to have some sort of strategy in place to build up your customer email database.  You’ll also need a newsletter. Newsletters can often times act as your first line of defense for your business.

What I mean by this is, that say your website went down for any number of reasons…how would you then stay connected to your customers to reassure them that you have not gone out of business?

You could do this through your newsletter. 

Also, let’s say that you launched a new product, service or published new information. It is fair to assume that your customers are not going to visit your website every day, every week or even every month. How then could you stay connected to your customers? You can do this through your Email Marketing Newsletter.

An Email Marketing Newsletter is one of the ways that here at we help our customers build what we call an . is much more involved than an Email Marketing Newsletter and if you’d like to learn more about Active Brands, please visit .

Now let’s assume that you’ve decided to start an Email Marketing Newsletter. You will want to pay close attention to six key metrics that will help you gauge the success of your campaign.

The first of these metrics is the size of your email list or database.

You need to continually grow this number. This is very important because you can expect to lose roughly 25% of your subscribers every year.

Don’t be fooled by what might appear as a constant size to marketing list. The fact is that it is constantly shrinking.

Wait. How is it that what I said makes sense? 

Well it’s simple really. Peoples lives’ changes constantly.

For example, if your customer is say a college student, once they graduate they may simply stop using their school email address or no longer have access to that email account.

Also, people change jobs or the technology they use.

So have a strategy in place that allows you to continually grow your email database.

The second metric that you should pay attention to is your “unsubscribe” number. A good rule of thumb is that if more than 5% unsubscribe, you need to segment your newsletter’s content to more specifically target your audiences.

Having a highly targeted list with relevant content allows you to keep “unsubscribes” to less than 5% but more importantly it allows you to deliver content of higher value and interest to your subscribers.

The third metric that you should pay attention to is the amount or percentage of successfully delivered email messages. This measures the number of emails that actually made it to someone’s inbox.

The fourth metric you’ll want to keep an eye on is the percentage of opened emails. This can actually help you better understand your company’s perception by your subscribers. Generally speaking, the higher percentages tend to represent high company recognition and trust.

The fifth metric you’ll need to monitor closely is the click-thru rate. The CTR or click-thru rate represents the number of people who received your email, opened it and clicked one of your links. You can use this number to measure the value your subscribers placed on your offering or content.

The sixth and final metric on my list of important metrics to track is the conversion level. This might be for most a little bit more complex or involved. To do this we’d assume that your content would have it’s own landing page on your website. You would use your web analytics to help you track how many of the people who clicked on your email offer took action on your own site, by acting on the offer.

If you’d like more information on this, please email me at and I will be glad to answer any questions or discuss it with you.

So now we have a clear understanding of what is Spam and what is a Legit Email Marketing Campaign. We know that having a newsletter for our business with a strategy to grow that marketing list is a key ingredient toward building an . And we know, that we must monitor six key metrics in our email marketing newsletter campaigns.

The last piece of this puzzle is to understand the .

I will go over these nine rules in order of importance, with the most important first.

Number One: Send emails only to those users who personally subscribed to your newsletter.

Number Two: Make sure that your email newsletter covers content that people actually subscribed to.

Number Three: Consistency; keep up with the promised consistency weather it is every week, every two weeks or once a month. Stick to your schedule.

Number Four: Send your emails out somewhere between 5pm and 8pm on Tuesday through Thursdays or on Saturday afternoon.

Number Five: Add a message at the top of your email that is similar to this; “to ensure you receive our emails, please add to your address book.

Number Six: Make sure that the FROM filed contains the name of your company or the name of the person responsible for the newsletter and it correspondence.

Number Seven: Always include two versions of your newsletter one in Plain Text and the other in HTML. If you choose to send an HTML version only of your newsletter expect that at least 5% will never open it or read it.

Number Eight: Do Not Use All Caps or Multiple Exclamation Marks In The Subject Line Or Message Body. If you use all caps or multiple exclamation marks know that the spam filter will be triggered and your message will never reach its destination.

Number Nine: Create subscriptions that cover different topics. It is ok to have a general newsletter, but also give your subscribers the option to only receive emails for the topics they are interested in. This will allow you to better target your audiences and lower your unsubscribe rates.

There it is, my advice to you on .

Is your email marketing campaign following the 9 golden rules?

Do you have any other points that should have been included in this podcast? If you do, I’d love to hear from you. Simply visit and leave your . , Voice Mail, or even , all the links are there at for you to use.

If you find this information useful, please subscribe to the , share it with a friend, or leave a review.

I’m , owner and founder of Media On Q and the .

Join me next time where we’ll continue to explore how to through a variety of .

Thank you for listening.

How To Customize Your About Us Page

 

3 Simple Steps to Transform Your About Page Into a Customer Generating Webpage

 

Most of the about pages on the web can be summed up by one of these words; Boastful or Boring, maybe even a combination of the two.

 

What do I mean? Here’s a real world example of what I am talking about.

 

Example One:

 

As a socially-responsible, global leader in design, manufacturing, distribution and aftermarket services, Flextronics is unique in its ability to provide end-to-end solutions through its innovative and proprietary systems—all to enhance customer competitiveness and success.

 

Example Two:

 

SEO Consult is the specialist search engine optimization division of Click Consult, who are a leading provider of search engine marketing solutions in the UK. Through a range of innovative, organic and ethical techniques, Consult have helped their 325+ clients reach highly targeted traffic, delivering a healthy ROI for both niche businesses and highly recognizable brands.

 

Let’s analyze this. Notice the sort of language that was used: leader, unique, solutions, innovative, proprietary, leading.

 

In other words puffery – well it is my opinion that it is simply puffery.

 

Is there a real purpose in using these types of words? Vanity maybe, as the only purpose I see is to attempt to try and make the company sound as good as possible.

 

So I’ll ask you. Do these types of words make the company sound great even if they are flat out vague and convey no clear meaning?

 

What exactly does innovative, organic and ethical techniques mean, when there are no supporting sentences to explain how they relate to the company offerings?

 

And who doesn’t instantly relate to end-to-end solutions, right?

 

From a consumer’s perspective, we should remember that it really isn’t all that difficult to shop around on the web. So if you are not going to take advantage of the simple three step process to improve your about us page then try telling me and your consumers with simple nouns and verbs what you actually do.

 

You don’t want your consumers and website visitors to think that you’ve strung together buzzwords into some sort of bureaucratic boilerplate.

 

Think of it this way. You would never want someone maybe even your competitor to simply copy your text and swap out your company name and no one would know the difference.

 

If that is you, please know that you have successfully positioned yourself and your online identity or business into the irrelevant category.

 

When your web copy is boring and conveys no clear information it tells the reader that you have a boring company.  I would guess that most of us don’t really like to invest our time or money on boring things.

 

Let’s explore this concept even further.

 

Why Do People Read Your About Page?

 

I’ll tell you that based on my experience of more than 15 years in the multi-media branding industry it is NOT to know whether you are a leading provider of solutions, or an innovative distributor of systems.

 

Believe it or not, people also don’t want to learn all about the history of your company, as many businesses out there seem to think.

 

So why do people read your website’s about page?

 

The answer is actually for the exact reason that people want to know more about anyone they’re considering forming a relationship with or giving money to.

 

They Want To Know They Can Trust You

 

They want to know that you are good at what you do.

 

They want to know that you are the right business to buy from.

 

They want to know that you will not rip them off…and so on.

 

So here’s another marketing take-away for you. When you use verbiage like what we covered earlier, with all the fluff words…people will mostly think and feel all the opposite things you want them to.

 

They won’t know they can trust you. They won’t know that you are good at what you do. They won’t know that you are the right business for them to build a relationship with and they won’t know that you will not rip them off.

 

People are not stupid. They know that if you use fancy language to describe something, without saying anything clearly at all, that you’re probably being less than honest.

 

We’ve all been exposed to politician’s right? It’s the same concept.

 

It is important that if you care about your business. And clearly you do since you are listening to this podcast. You’ll want to take a dramatically different approach. Think of it as a face-to-face conversation with a new client, customer or prospect.

 

This is one of the digital media branding rules that applies across all platform from your own website to your social media posts, web videos and mobile strategies.

 

If you would not say it out loud to a customer or client in the real world, it should never be published or posed anywhere on the web.

 

You Must Open Up To Your Customers

 

Sounds a bit scary right?

 

Most businesses out there are terrified about being open with their audiences or flat out think it is unprofessional to be human.

 

This of course makes no sense.

 

Being human is the only way to connect with your prospects. The really is that your prospects are human. You should not strive toward having people buy from you. You should work toward building your customer base and that requires a relationship, a connection…a human connection.

 

With that let’s talk about the three simple steps toward making that human connection through your about us webpage.

 

Step One - Tell A Story

 

Stories are how we think, how we learn, and how we relate to each other.

 

Remember this, your story does not have to follow the 3-act structure to be interesting.

 

The important ingredient to your story is that it must tell. Tell us about your company, your customers and how it is that they’ve benefited from your service, product or information.

 

 

Step Two - Make it About Something Interesting

What do people find interesting? People find real people interesting. We are particularly interested in people when they are in situations similar to ours or have gone through processes or steps that we are considering. Our interest is most stimulated when we have lots of clear, concrete details we can latch on to.

 

Taking this approach will help your story set itself apart in the minds of your website visitor, making it seem real, genuine and unique.

 

Make sure to pack it full of details that are relatable so that your prospects can visualize it and remember to tie it back to your product, service or content offering.

 

Step Three – Don’t “Photoshop” It

 

As tempting as it is to try and cover up, or make your company appear to be flawless and perfect…remember who your customers are and know that they are probably less than perfect and more importantly, they don’t expect that there is a perfect company or brand out there.

 

How can I say that with any certainty?

 

Easy, we all know there is no such thing as a perfect business.

 

In fact, it would be more beneficial to you to showcase how you overcome challenges.

 

When customers know you’re real…it makes it easier for them to trust you and as an added bonus it will make your company stand out.

 

Authenticity builds relationships, customers and trust. As people, we all crave authenticity.

 

There it is, my formula for optimizing your “About Us” webpage.

 

How does your about us webpage looking right about now?

 

Does your “About” webpage humanize your company and inspire trust?

 

Do you have any changes you’d like to make after listening to this podcast?  Or perhaps you have a different point of view. If you do, I’d love to hear about it. You can email me at or visit and leave your feedback there.

 

If you find any of this information useful, please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, share it with a friend or leave a review.

 

I’m Carlos Quintero owner and founder of Media On Q and the Digital Media Branding Podcast.

 

Join me next time where we’ll continue to explore how to compete in today’s web economy through a variety of digital media branding techniques.

 

Thank you for listening.

How To Use Pintrest For Business 

How To Use Pinterest For Business

Today, (commonly know as ) will be joining us to discuss:

What is ? Is Pinterest Relevan? Does Pinterest Matter?

She will also share with us creative ways to use Pinterest in our own marketing strategies and discuss how some brands are finding success with their own Pinterest strategies.

Q. Let’s get started with what is Pinterest? , can you share with us a little bit of Pinterest History?

A. Pinterest is a social network that got started in late 2011. Pinterest grew their web traffic – unique visitors by 155% in one month – Dec 2011 to Jan 2012. Pinterest made the at #5 in Dec 2011 beating out LinkedIn and .

In a nutshell Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share and discover new interest by posting, or pinning as it is called in Pinterest. Users can pin images, or videos to their own or other user’s pinboards. A pinboard typically has a common theme, for example photography, recipes, art, agriculture, and so on.

Q. How do users pin?

A. Users can either upload images from their computer or pin thing they find on the web using the Pinterest bookmarklet, called the pin it button. OR they can simply pin a URL

URL is the web address to the image that you’d like to pin.

Pinterest Jargon

A Pin – an image added to Pintrest

Pinboard – a set of theme based pins

Pinning – the act of visually sharing content

Repin – reposting somebody else’s pin

Pin It Button – button that can be placed on websites to make it easy to share on Pinterest

Pinner – the person who does the sharing

Q. Can you tell me why does Pinterest matters?

A. Pinterest matters for 3 main reasons: Web Traffic, Links or more specifically Backlinks and Social Sharing.

#1 Web Traffic

Any business that relies on driving a high-volume of website traffic to increase sales, should consider joining Pinterest.

The fact is that early research indicates that Pinterest is more effective at driving traffic compared to other social media sites and that includes .

Quick Pinterest Facts

Time Inc.’s got more traffic from Pinterest than Facebook (October 2011 – Ad Age Digital)

Eyeglass retailer reports that 11% of their social traffic is coming from Pinterest compared to 18% from twitter.

, blogger started pinning her work and received more than 10 Million page views and has increased her subscriptions by more than 16,000 blog subscribers. Kate was quoted as saying that her top 10 web traffic referral URL sources come from Pinterest.

#2 Links and Backlinks

If you are using the Pin It button on your pages, every single one of your pins will include a link back to the source. Links back to your own site are an important part of your .

If you’d like more great information on how to , check out the at MediaOnQ.com.

#3 Social Sharing

Because Pinterest makes it easy to log in to their network through other social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook, this basically means that your pins or content will be available on more feeds – ending up with more eyeballs on your brand’s content.

Q. How does Pinterest Make Money?

A. Pinterest is monetizing their social platform through affiliate programs. They basically take a cut of sales that are generated through pinned traffic.

The second social sharing advantage is that Pinterest makes it easy for users who are browsing content to add it to their Facebook or Twitter posts, embed it on to their own website or blog, Re Pin It, or email anyone they’d like.

I have to make a quick point here and say that Pinterest strongly discourages blatant self-promotion: In their own words Pinterest states “Pinterest is designed to curate and share thing you love. If there is a photo of project you’re proud of, pin away! However try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.”

Marketers, and content producers should find creative ways of showcasing the lifestyle vision of their brands. Show off your brand’s personality, community involvement and achievements.

As an example, if your selling shoes show off how comfortable they can be in a lifestyle setting – not simply pinning what they look like in the box.

Let’s say that I have a Pinterest account. I know that I will need to build reach so that my efforts are sustainable over time.

Q. Can you share with me what you would consider to be the best way to build my following?

A. The fastest way would be to promote through other platforms, add a Pinterest follow button to your website, promote your Pinterest on other social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter.

Consider launching a Pinterest contest

Make the best boards specific to a single subject as this will help build up that niche. This may mean that you’d promote other users pins to help solidify your own board’s niche.

Engage with others, follow other users you think you’d want them to follow you back, comment on other boards and pins, and interact with Pinterest content whenever it is applicable.

Q. How can we use Pinterest in our marketing strategy?

A. Use visual content you already have such as existing photos to showcase your company’s culture,

strong visuals from blog articles or your business’ news feed. Invite your audience to submit pictures for your news content, and or take photos yourself which can be used in your blog or news feeds.

You can also use any of the following:

Infographics & Data Charts

EBook and Book Covers (eBooks and Whitepapers help brands become leaders in their niche)

Photos of Your Customers help you promote happy customers

Host a Contest by asking users to create a pin up board that features what or why they love your brand! – Make Sure You Consult the Pinterest’s Terms Of Use

Create a Video Gallery by taking every chance you PR or public facing staff has and capture video.

You can feature off-line events such as a company picnic, a customer appreciation event, social gatherings and/or the holidays showcasing your business’ personality.

Remember to Measure Impact – Website Analytics are important

Q. Can you walk us through Examples of Brands on Pinterest, what they are doing right and how they’re accomplishing that?

Answer:

– Greek Yogurt, their boards feature recipes of how users can use their products!

– Has a board that feature flooring samples and styles – showcasing how clean they are! Another one of their boards is called Furry Friends, where they show you how they can clean up dog and cat hair through a series of adorable pictures.

– this is an online shopping website. ETSY is a retailer of homemade and vintage goods, their pinboards really take to heart what its brand stands for. They show you how you can make your own products and how to put their products to work in your daily life, which again, emphasizes the lifestyle philosophy that Pinterest promotes.

– their pinboards showcase products that their student population might find useful…all in their school colors.

– they have a board called badass machines, which showcases their current product line.

– Peapod is the largest grocery delivery service in the United States. They visually share stories of how the food gets to your office or home and what sort of produce Peapod has in stock this season…

Conclusion

Success in Pinterest isn’t necessarily about showing off your products or services directly. It is more about finding creative and innovative ways to show how those products and services fit into the lifestyle of your target audience. If you find ways to do that you’ll have what it takes to become a top brand in Pinterest.

Take these best practices and apply them to your Pinterest strategy.

Feel free to leave your feedback at .