Over a year later and I’m still talking about this sh*t

Just over a year ago, I wrote a piece comparing a few project management tools. It remains among our most popular posts to date.

I compared the tools and wrote up my thoughts. After much testing and tinkering I had come to a decision that Podio was the choice tool that we were going to use to move things forward with the business and really get our shit together.

That sounds nice, doesn’t it?

As we know, sometimes the best intentions are met by an asshole called “failure” and everything goes to the wayside. Please forgive my harsh tongue. I’m still wincing over here.

You see, Podio is an amazing tool. With the right person managing it you can make it sing and dance and pretty much do what ever the hell you want. The problem I’d run into with my small team was that it was a swiss army knife when all I needed was a bottle opener.

Let me explain: Podio can be configured and managed to do so many things. The simple items, such as task management are but a few clicks away. That’s great! However there were issues that were getting me behind. For starters, while the app performs smoothly, for the most part, performance just wasn’t as fast as I’d wanted it to be. Integrating with their API was difficult for a few tasks we wanted to automate with our website conversion forms. Another frustration was that the actual management/maintenance of Podio and our projects got out of hand. Simply put, we’re small. It felt as though we really needed to hand-hold our data. This made the task of managing… er… tasks a chore.

Booooo!

I’m not going to lie, I have battled with “oooh, shiny!” syndrome for a long time and I continue to do so. I’ve made an effort in my life to really weed out unnecessary things. Do I really need a rack server in my office? It’s cool to have it because I can test on it when I build sites. However, there are better ways to develop sites locally.

Therefore I took to researching again. About five minutes into the process I stopped. I remembered that I’m trying to “simplify” my life. I don’t need clutter. I certainly don’t need Gantt charts, a built-in CRM or any magical pixie dust. I need to manage projects, assign tasks. That’s it. I was reminded right then of Asana. I liked that friggin tool. I really did. I moved away from it because it was “too simple,” not realizing that this was the tool I’d wanted all along…

I went back to it, got things going and trained my team on it. Needless to say, the adoption was quick and easy, which is what I think it takes to make successful and continued use of a project management tool.

Asana has made our lives easier and has done so for the last six months.

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

It’s no secret. The world is more and more connected and it’s in no small part to Androids and iPhones (as of this writing, I’ve been on Android 4.1… It’s not out yet. Yeah, I think I’m cool) in peoples’ hands. That’s all well and good. The internet is pocket sized and it’s at our beck and call to prove people wrong within seconds of them claiming some obscure falsehood as truth. Have you ever done that? Looked up a fact on your phone to prove someone wrong? I do it all the time! Though, I’m mostly wrong. The last thing I was wrong about was that Nermal was a male cat and before that I was wrong about the Bills winning an NFL championship… This is why I no longer go to Vegas to gamble.

The point is that we consume the internet on our mobile devices anymore. That’s a great thing. As designers and developers of all things web, we are charged not only with the content we put out there, as Mike Monteiro so eloquently put it in his book: Design is a Job.  We are also charged with making the web a friendly and more pleasant place. With evolving standards and, of course, tools to consume all that interweb awesomeness we need to think differently. I’m nowhere near the first person to come up with this though; in fact, I’m a late-comer to the party.

That said, I simply wanted to highlight a project we just completed for one of our old clients, the Urban Dater. They wanted a more mature look and a new vehicle to make it simpler to consume their content, regardless of screen size. Enter Responsive Design. With the Urban Dater, we felt this would be a good opportunity to get something in the can that would be functional and still maintain an aesthetic pleasantry about it.

You can see three distinct layouts below. We think each one allows users to see the most import content to them regardless of the device their using.

Desktop

Tablet Layout

Mobile

How are you guys using responsive design for your sites? What do you think?

Let us kno!

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

It’s been a year since we first attended WordCamp Orange County. It was our very first WordCamp! Much of what we do is built on-top of WordPress, so connecting with the community and collecting knowledge, while meeting great people was a truly amazing experience. Since that first WordCamp, we’ve sponsored four WordCamps and have strived to be more involved in the WordPress community.

I’m excited to say, that I’ve been given the opportunity to speak at this year’s WordCamp Orange County, on behalf of DigiSavvy! I’m really, super stoked to be a part of WordCamp as both a sponsor and a speaker. I can’t wait to deliver my presentation. It should be tons of fun! I’m also looking forward to seeing what the other speakers, in attendance, have in store as well. This WordCamp has some great speakers lined up, such as Bill Erickson and Ben Metcalf along with so many more.

As I understand tickets are sold out, but do try to keep up on the local WordCamps that might be in your neck of the woods. You can see what’s going on with upcoming WordCamps here: WordCamp Central.

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

Make it so, number one.

As we move forward in 2012, we want to know that we’re providing a solid service for our clients and we want to know that we provide a solid, competitively priced service that gets our clients to where they’re growing.

So if you’ve worked with us in the past, we have a favor to ask of you. Please fill out our client satisfaction survey. Let us know what you thought of your project and our work together.

Fill out our survey by following this link: http://digisavvy.polldaddy.com/s/digisavvy-client-survey

We always love kind words, but if you thought we sucked, we want to know about it! It’s 8 short little questions. These go out with each project we complete now and we know this will help us improve going forward.

Word up!

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

It seems like only yesterday we celebrated making it to our first birthday. Looking at that first b-day post and seeing what happened in the last year has made me think a lot about 2011, in review.

First off, I’m really proud of this agency. We continued to grow and grow. We more than tripled the business we did in 2010 and that’s no easy feat. Chris and I have worked hard and collaborated on strategy and have come up with things that worked and some things that didn’t. That’s how you grow, right?

So as we head into year number two there are still plenty of questions to answer and things to hone. I think we’re still trying to be all things to everyone. Even though we can do a lot for businesses wanting to improve their online presence, but the truth is that we still are trying to carve out an identity for ourselves.

What’s changed since last year?

Not a lot, but a lot. Huh? We’ve tightened up our planning processes, added a project manager. We’ve also improved our time management and tracking, to assist in better identifying where we can improve our services to our clients. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s been a huge boost for our team in terms of productivity.

What’s to come for this Digital Marketing Agency?

A re-design
Chris has felt that our site lacks personality and a certain dynamism. It’s taken me a while to absorb, but the guy is right; he typically tends to be. =)  —  Chris and I have pretty dynamic personalities; we’re fun-loving jokesters, but also problem solvers at heart. We’re a hoot in any situation and we’re just plain fun guys. That personality doesn’t really come through when you look at our site. We think that it should! After all, if you met us, we sorta think you’d want to work with us. True story! =) – In the coming months we’ll be planning a new iteration of this here website

Honing what we do
Like I said, we spent a great deal on being all things to all people. While helpful to a degree, we’re not putting our best foot forward. We’ve talked strategy and really had a heart to heart about what our core strengths are and how we can best serve clients going forward. We’re story tellers and architects.  That is, each client represents a story when they come to us. They want us to take what they give us and make something from it. Chris pulls the ideas together, begins scripting the story and develops the narrative; I take that narrative and architect the foundation and create the form and function and make them sing. Together, we’ve done some great work and this year will see more of that in 2012; we’re already off to a great start.

With our strengths really coming down to strategy, architecting and problem solving, we’ll likely limit the scope of the services of what we offer, while shoring up those services we excel at.

How can we make it better in 2012?
Many things influence innovation and this year we will continue to innovate, get new business and make them happy and just be a better company overall. With 2011 in the rearview we took more risks and were rewarded; we look to continue to be risk-taking innovators and move forward.

We also plan on adding some talent to our “think-tank” this year. We’re going to be adding a copy writer to our team as well, to further round out what we do best.

Again, to all our clients, without your support, we wouldn’t be here! Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

Google began their experiment to include Google+ buttons in with Adwords ads back on October 10th. How is that expected to change the way people view advertisements online? More importantly, what does that all mean for you?

How does this affect you?

Incorporating +1 buttons and annotations within your ads is expected to leverage personal recommendations into your ads, potentially changing how people see your ads when they search. How? People will be able to see if their friends and contacts have endorsed (+1′d) your ad. That can have a profound affect on the effectiveness of your ads going forward.

How will the +1 button affect your organic search results?

According to Google, they state that when a user +1′s your ad it creates a signal that affects your organic search rankings. Translation: +1′s on your ads increase the quality of your site’s search engine rankings. Period. It’s really like a popularity contest, when you think about it. The same is true with backlinks. These are metrics that tell search engines “Hey, this website is compelling for this type of content/product/service, we’ll give more weight to it because other many other people like it.

What does the ad look like?

This is your ad and this is your ad with +1. Any questions?

Well, it doesn’t look a whole lot different from what it used to. I’ve provided an example of what the ads now look like with the +1 inclusion. In short, it jus gives people the opportunity to ‘endorse’ it and shows you which of your contacts have done the same. That can be a compelling call to action in that it inspires consumer confidence in a product or service when they know their friends/contacts have endorsed it.

Conclusion?

Search without social is a thing of the past and has been for some time now. Once search engines began including Social Network content, links and shares into their algorithms it was a clear message: Businesses can no longer afford to ignore the Social Media. Social Media matters. You CAN’T afford to ignore it any longer.

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

Okay, Pied Piper. Let's DO this!

This is an email I’m reposting that was shared by Lisa Hickey of the Good Men Project. The lady is a social media Maven! I figured this would be useful to our audience to share! Enjoy!

Ok, here we go. To get to 10,000

(some combination of followers, fans, connections, etc.)

1) You have to want it because you understand the results have value.

2) If you’re starting from 0, give yourself 3 months.

(you can do it quicker, but may kill yourself in the process)

3) You need a connection strategy and a content strategy, and the two need to work together.

Connection Strategy

1) Connect with people every day.

2) In “rapid growth mode” (i.e. the first 3 months) aim to connect with 100 people a day. The bulk of those should come from Twitter.

100 / day x 90 days = 9,000

The remaining 1,000 will seek out and connect with YOU. (Unless you have already spent years building a public name, then more people will connect with you first.)

3) Remember: “Nothing draws a crowd like a whole big group of people”

The more people you connect with, the easier it gets. The first 2,000 are by far the hardest. Once you get to 10,000, I would still suggest connecting with some new people a day, but you can be MUCH less aggressive and as long as you continue to be involved, your network will grow.

4) Here’s what worked for me. Daily I would:

Follow 100-125 people on Twitter

Friend 3-5 new people on Facebook

Connect with 2 people on LinkedIn

Connect with 5-20 people on Google+ 5-10

Connect with 5-10 on StumbleUpon

That ends up being more than 100, but not everyone will connect back with you.

Others like Reddit, Scribd and YouTube are more content driven sites, not true “social” networks, so the strategy there is more to put good content and comment when appropriate.

5) You may have different set of “favorite” networks that works for you. But my basic rule of thumb is – the faster I can connect on a network, the more I connect with daily. Twitter you can connect with 100 people in about 20 minutes if you’re in speed mode and are only mildly fussy.

6) Don’t connect totally randomly. You will need to mix up friends and strangers, but can do so judiciously.

Facebook – Start with people you know in real life and then move on to people that you’ve at least had a conversation with. Some people connect with people they don’t know, but in general, I choose not to.

Twitter – Here is the best kept secret for following people on Twitter.

Wait until someone @’s you or RT’s you. Then follow all their followers that look like you have something in common with. About 75% will follow you back – and they will be high quality followers even though complete strangers.

LinkedIn – Connect with people who you would want to hire, want to work with, want to work for or have some sort of professional relationship with. I connect with strangers IF I they are likely to fall into one of the above categories, and I always send a personal note. (Ditto Facebook if I’m connecting with someone that won’t immediately recognize me).

Tumblr and StumbleUpon – I use Tumblr and StumbleUpon as completely random ways of seeing what’s out there. Tumblr you only see content from people in your stream, Stumble you can “stumble “ stuff from either your connections or everyone who is submitting content to the topics you’re interested in. So, I am willing to connect with totally random people on both of those, as long as they are sharing interesting content.

Google+ — Everyone who is “Part of the Project” that is on there. Most of my followers there found me because I am known as an early adopter in social spaces.

CONTENT STRATEGY

1) Adapt your content to the networks. You should have distinctly different types of connections on each network (some overlap of course, but I try to keep them relatively different), and know what those people will like. What I put up on Facebook (stuff about the intersection of my kids and technology, cool photos, events I’m at that I’m sharing with my friends) is completely different then LinkedIn (work related stuff that I’ve written or shared) than Twitter (conversations, commentary on news, links to my content and others), than Tumblr (almost all re-blogs of random, cool stuff, interspersed with a few of my own links).

2) Use the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 strategy

1/3 of what you post is your own content

1/3 is other people’s content that you share

1/3 is actual conversations, connections with people

3) Think of yourself as a media channel.

- Timing – spread out your content throughout the day

- If you repeat links (which I would suggest ONLY doing on Twitter), say something different about them each time.

- Each network has a threshold for how often you can post without seeming spammy.

Facebook 3-4x per day (on my personal page, I general only do 1 or 2)

Twitter – once every 15 minutes, unless you are really engaging people, and talking about stuff, then unlimited.

Stumble and Tumblr – you can reblog/restumble other peoples stuff unlimited, try to mix in your own stuff every 10x or so.

LinkedIn – once a day

Google+ TBD, but I do once a day for now.

4) When you post content, don’t think about YOU, think about THEM. What will you post that will be interesting enough that they can’t help but like it? If you are posting your own blog post to Facebook for example, say something personal that gives people a reason why you want to share it with them.

That’s it! 10,000 in 3 months – go!

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

Proof. It’s important. Before I watch something on Netflix, I want to know that it’s good. Being something of a foodie, I want to know that the new place I’m going to is well reviewed on Yelp. I just do. For me, quality stands for quite a lot. These days, with all the social networks out there, and the juggernaut that is social sharing, finding quality products and services is even easier.

I say this because in order to promote your business, it’s imperative to include proof about the quality of your work. That is, provide real customer stories!

Now, how can you incorporate these stories and testimonials?

• Include your customer’s real names/titles and use their pictures, where possible. If they have pictures on LinkedIn, see if you can use that photo. Better yet, link to that profile. This adds additional authenticity to your testimonials.
• Don’t place testimonials in random places, instead place them where they are relevant to the work you did with the client. For example, if we have a blog post we wrote about one of our new client’s websites then we’d include a testimonial there for it, where it would make the most sense to have it.
• More is more. The more proof you have the better it can make your business look, especially since all these testimonials are authentic.
• Get Social. Create a presence on site’s like Yelp or other local review sites to help spread the word. Your reviews get aggregated on other services such as Google Local and the like.

Not matter what product or service you’re selling, potential customers want to know what they’re getting and what other people think. In other words, customers want to know if you’ve made YOUR customers happy, before they do business with you. Testimonials and customer reviews are powerful tools for your website and content for helping convert prospects into paying customers.

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

Marketing is like a recipe for your business. Get one!

Why do you need a Marketing Strategy? Let me put it to you like this: If I asked you to make me a home-made Cheese Cake and you didn’t know how, could you do it? That is, could you make a Cheese Cake from scratch? Let’s assume you don’t know how. To make me that cake, you’d need a recipe, directions that tell you what ingredients you need and then how to prepare everything with them in hand. Make sense?

Many times, our clients will put in a great deal of time and effort to promote their business online, using a tactic or two that they find online. Some usually meet with some level of success, but rarely, if ever, substantial enough to warrant continuing with said tactic(s). In a way, it’s like trying to make an omelette with a single egg that you haven’t cracked yet. It’s close, but not quite. More work needs to be done.

In fact that “shotgun approach” often misses its mark and fails to produce results. It’s not a single silver bullet technique that makes a marketing strategy work. It takes someone coordinating many of these “silver bullet” techniques in unison to help get you to where your business is growing.

Simply put: There’s a lot of thought that needs to go into the creation of your next marketing campaign. Doing so not only saves time later, but potentially reduces costs considerably as the campaign progresses.

Don’t Put Marketing Tactics Before Strategy… Ever!

You’ve heard the phrase “Don’t bring a  knife to a gun fight.” Seems like sound advice, right? If the knife wielding person did some research, or had some help they might not to that fight ill-equipped. Just sayin’!

Putting together an effective marketing plan not only requires planning, but it requires a lot of work! A lot of effort is spent on keyword research and refinement. This phase helps determine your keyword strategy and is required for your marketing strategy to be successful and it also saves costs.

In this phase you identify your target audience, markets and identify pain-points, while building value with your strategy. Understand who you want to sell to VS. who you’re selling to now. Often these two items end up being completely different! Also, understand HOW you’re talking to your audience. That is, do you talk about how awesome your company’s services are? That’s awesome, but you ought to be talking about how your company can help customer X do this thing or that project better than any other product. Build value for your customers; tell them the story.

These details should definitely be ironed out before you get started. Period. Once a plan has been set forth, everyone is on the same page, the strategy is defined and will be consistent. It’s not easy, and, yes, it’s a lot of work. The question is: How much is your business worth to you? Is it worth waiting, to get something done right the first time?

Have Questions? Ask Us Today!

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.

How do you define a keyword strategy? It's not as hard as you think!

If you’re on this site right now, reading this, then chances are you’re either a pro who knows this stuff and understands the importance of internet marketing. Or you’re a business owner or professional trying to increase your company’s profile online and target more relevant traffic to boost your sales.

We’re going to put together a little guide to help you do all of those things. We’ll show you how to leverage social media to help promote your business and get more traffic, as well as define a keyword strategy and more.

Define Your Keyword Strategy

So, what the heck is a keyword anyway?[sws_blockquote align="" alignment="alignleft" cite="Merriam-Webster" quotestyles="style01"]key·word/ˈkēˌwərd/
Noun: A word or concept of great significance. A word that acts as the key to a cipher or code.
[/sws_blockquote]

I’ve said it before, having a website online just won’t cut it anymore. Your competitors are increasing their profits by targeting relevant traffic online. How? By  using keywords, of course. Targeting the right keywords will help you drive quality traffic to your business’ website. Period. No hocus pocus or faerie dust. It’s a fact!

The challenge lies in selecting the correct keywords that are the most relevant to what you do. There are many ways for you to determine what terms would work best and how effective they may be.

How to Create the Perfect Keyword Strategy for Your Business

1. Create a list of relevant keywords for your business – The people you want to target are people that DON’T know who you are. Am I right? That is, your keywords aren’t going to be your business name, unless your business name is ‘Chinese Food Place.’ For starters, think of keywords or short phrases that describe are at the core of your products and services. For example, if you sell auto parts look at “Cheap auto parts,” or “auto parts store” with your city name. For starters, choose up to five keywords for your business.
2. Go for relevant keywords based on difficulty – Some keywords are more competitive than others. For instance, the term Cars is pretty competitive. Meaning lots of websites are vying to rank for that term. What about “Import Cars Honda.” Well, that wills till be competitive, but not as much. It’s a more focused term, thus not everyone is looking for it. What I’ve just described is called a “long tail keyword.” These terms are specific to your business, typically. Now, how does one find out about competitive keywords? Google’s Keyword Tool does just that. Not only that, but it can help you come up with more keyword ideas.
3. Start optimizing – Once you’ve chosen your keywords, it’s time to start using them on your website. I’ve covered the topic in this post. So do check it out to get more detail on the fine details of keyword usage.

Be sure to check us out at Orange County SEO, Web Design and Internet Marketing for the latest news and tips.