Think back to your first cell phone. Mine was a black and white Nokia with detachable faceplates and a wonderful version of the game snake. Those days are long gone and I now have an iPhone that makes my first computer growing up look like a sad joke.

Not only is this little device in my pocket faster than the computers of yore, it also has the power to view just about every bit of content on the web. But have you tried looking at a website that hasn’t been optimized for mobile devices?

It’s confusing. Images break, forms don’t work. A bad mobile experience means I’m almost certain to search for another site that offers a better user experience on my phone.

According to Google, I am not alone. Around 60% of people are unlikely to return to a site that’s not mobile friendly. User engagement increases by 85% with a mobile-friendly design. That is steadily increasing and for the most part businesses have been slower about catching up with technology than their customers.

In response to these numbers, Google has launched a information site called GoMo to educate owners of websites. The site provides data that makes it pretty clear: mobile browsing is here to stay.

Google’s findings are very much in line with the trends we see in our client sites. In fact, in reviewing a sample of the scores of websites SmallBox monitors, mobile traffic increased a whopping 230% in 2011 compared to 2010.

If you’re ready to get serious about mobile, SmallBox can help! Don’t be caught with a website that cannot be viewed by a huge percentage of your customer base. Contact us today for questions or quotes.

Have you ever checked the “Hidden Posts” on your business Facebook page?

The Scoop on Facebook’s Hidden Posts:
In an attempt to filter out spam, Facebook sometimes catches a legit comment in its snares. If you’ve ever gotten what seems like a phantom notification and can’t find the comment anywhere, chances are it ended up in the hidden posts. Check there regularly to be sure you aren’t missing engaging comments! You can “unhide” the post to display it on your wall.

Aside from devigning websites here at SmallBox, I’m also quite involved in the Indianapolis dance music scene. Having planned or organized over 100 dance music events in Indianapolis, and being such a tech nerd, I’ve learned several ways to make sure an event goes off with a bang. Here are a few things I’ve learned about promoting events online:

Offer as many ways as possible for fans to learn and spread the word about your events. Where you promote your event depends a lot on who your target audience is.

• Facebook. If you’re putting on a public event that in any way relates to music or art, you’ll want to create a Facebook event. You’ll also want to use your company’s Page and even your own Facebook profile to highlight the works of your featured artists or performers.
• Email Marketing. This might seem old school, but email really works! Always give your fans a way to sign up for your newsletter, whether on your website, through contests or a simple sign-up sheet at events.
• Think Local! If your event is about art or music, chances are there are local magazines and websites that will post about your event or give away free tickets. You might even get some coverage! Good examples in Indianapolis include NUVO, IndyMojo and Musical Family Tree.
• Other Social Spaces. Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIN might not have mechanisms especially for events, but any avenue that reaches your audience is a good one. There are tools that integrate with these services, however, like schmap.it, which offers credits for you to get your event in front of other twitter followers in your area.
• Your own website. Post your event on your own website! Be sure to include tools so that your visitors can easily RSVP to your event as well as share the event on their own social profiles.

Broad Ripple Music Fest event on Facebook

Target your promotions as best as possible, but don’t wear out your welcome. People have a low tolerance for noise in their lives, so it’s best to avoid being part of it. You might have 5,000 friends on Facebook, but unless you’re sure all of them want to attend your event, it’s best to invite only those that would be interested. Use Facebook’s friend groups or location filters for this. If you’re putting on an all-locals event, just invite locals. If you’re bringing a bigger, more established talent, you might send out invites to the surrounding cities and states as well.

To avoid annoying your fans, make sure your posts are relevant and well timed. Watching the details of an event unfold is exciting, so make a post when you’ve confirmed fire dancers for your event, but don’t beat your audience over the head with it.

Offer a discount to fans that are willing to purchase tickets ahead of time. This isn’t really an issue if you’re throwing a free event, but if you’re going to offer up tickets ahead of the event, be sure to offer a discount (and discount enough to make up for the associated fees).

Be a part of the community. This includes going to other events, participating in online discussions, making friends, supporting others’ events, supporting other bands, DJs, artists, and the organizations that support them.

Get your friends involved. Chances are you have friends that not only want to attend your event, they, too, want to see it a smashing success! Send them a quick note asking for their help and support. Ask them to take photos, design a flyer, spin fire, do live art or even just spread the word.

Last but not least, don’t rely solely on the internet! Didn’t see that one coming, did you? The internet is a great place to get the word out and for having meaningful communication, but nothing beats real life communication and a friendly smile.

Do you have any tips for promoting events online?

Businesses have lined up to offer their services at cut rate pricing, riding the bandwagon of deal-offering through services such as Groupon and Facebook Deals. Several Smallbox clients have used discounting services – sometimes we advise against deep price cuts, while other times it could be a good fit.

Whether it’s right for you or not, there are a few shifts in the deal market worth noting.

Taking deals into your own hands
Haute in the Heartland had a great write up testing Gap’s new site, gapmyprice.com. Why give more than half of an already significantly reduced profit, when you can create your own site and broker deals yourself? Why offer an item for 50% off if a customer is satisfied with a 15% discount? Limited products and uneven deals (as noted by Gabrielle) might not make for the best success in this case, but the idea is a solid start.

A newly launched subsidiary GrouponNow, only available in Chicago for now, allows vetted business owners to offer on-the-spot deals to react to real-time business trends. Users of their smart phone can view nearby deals on an app. Have a product you want to move? Are Tuesdays a notoriously slow business for you?

A Real Life Example: Once I visited a bakery at the end of the day. After I made my purchase they offered me a whole blueberry pie for free (best day ever!). Instead of giving up all earning potential, the on-the-spot deal allows the business to at least recoup the costs of ingredients and labor. The bakery, for example, could offer half-price pies in the last thirty minutes of business and likely never throw out or give away another pie again.

TIPS: Run your own deal of the day (or week) promotions. Email marketing is a great way to deliver a message like this without investing in a whole micro-site or divide your profit with a deal platform. Using a limited time offer like one day or week increases sense of urgency.

What otherwise might not have sold
National concert promoter Live Nation just announced a new partnership with Groupon, called GrouponLive. Live Nation hopes to reach new customers and move unsold concert tickets for one of its more than 20,000 annual events through last minute deals.

This will be an interesting trend to watch. After hearing many reports of business losing more than gaining through Groupon’s original model, discounting remnants might offer a more sensible path to new business.

A Real Life Example: In my volunteer work with Indy Film Fest, we used Groupon to sell tickets for the 2010 film festival to great success. We got feedback from first time visitors that it took the risk out of trying the festival and since we had a great capacity of seating and no hard cost involved, there was nothing to lose.

TIPS: Consider your costs and supply to help determine how low you can go. The real time nature of social media is a great way to communicate late minute deals in a more informal manner than using a paid promotion platform.

What do you think? Do you have any DIY deals ideas to share?

Read the writing on the wall: Email marketing’s not dead.  Not exactly the sort of epigram you’re likely to see scrawled on the restroom stall at CBGB.  “Email marketing produces ROI regularly and reliably,” is not a trending topic in the world of graffiti.  But you might hear some chatter about this out in the marketing blog circuit. And it’s true: Email marketing really isn’t dead. In fact, it’s booming.

I know what you’re thinking: email is so old school.  That’s what I was thinking when I found out that SmallBox did email marketing. I was like: what? I thought this was a cutting-edge company? Email marketing?

But it turns out that the people at SmallBox knew what they were doing with email marketing. In fact, email marketing is one of the most thriving and successful prongs of the business (for SmallBox, yes, but also for our customers).  Email may not be as sexy as Twitter, but—when managed effectively, depending on your company and your product—it will often be a more effective mechanism for bringing in return on investment.

I could go through and quibble about all the research and data that’s out there dedicated to this subject, comparing this data set to that one over there. We’ll get into that a little bit later. Right now, though, I’ll just cut to the chase.

Remember back when email was a hip platform—the hot new thing? Like, fifteen years ago, or whenever? There was a much smaller demographic pool open to email back then. Today, the percentage of Americans old enough to have a bank account who check their email daily is much closer to 100%. That means the number of Americans who are totally desensitized–for whom email marketing is totally played out–is smaller than the pool of new potential customers who are open to email appeals. That’s just one of the common-sense reasons why email marketing is still highly effective.

Another, harder to quantify, common-sense reason why email marketing is effective is that if your customers love your product, they want to hear from you.  They’re glad to be reminded that you’re still out there making great products.  For the cynics: take a look at the numbers.  If it works, it works.  And email marketing works.  It is the most direct, personal way to reach out to customers who aren’t already on your website, and that creates specific types of opportunities that are unique to email.

If you’re an e-commerce site: wouldn’t you like one more chance to communicate with the visitor who ditched his shopping cart right before making a purchase? In a real-life scenario your sales charisma and/or the value of your product would have gotten your customer over the hump. In person, you would have been able to close. Online, you’re going to have to reach out through email.

We’ve seen campaigns that prove email can get you up to a 30% conversion rate on lost sales–if you play your cards right.

If you’re a seasonal business: wouldn’t you like a more efficient way to remind your loyal customers to check you out when the time is right? Something more aggressive and targeted than PPC? Something more ‘one-on-one’ than Facebook Ads to let your loyal customer base know that you remember and you’ve got great new products again/the same great quality product they loved last year?

Email marketing was practically invented for this purpose.

Need a platform to convince your customers to upgrade to your new product without intimidating them, or scaring them off? A one-shot engagement of the customer’s attention through Facebook or even on your website might not provide you with the time or the psychic impact necessary to convert your veteran client.

We’ve seen email campaigns, played right, that have convinced up to 70% of an otherwise unmotivated, sluggish clientele to make the crucial upgrade.

Let’s crunch some numbers. I’ll cite a few figures from a white paper that Internet Retailer published. “73% of chain retailers, catalogers, virtual merchants and consumer brand manufacturers spend 5% of their marketing budget on email marketing.” Two-thirds of these people report that at least 6% of their sales come from email marketing. Note: This means that email is performing out of proportion to its cost by 20% in these companies. One-third of these retailers report that email is generating 15% of their total revenue. In other words, their investment in email marketing is performing out of proportion to its marketing price tag by 300%.

So two-thirds of companies who invest in email marketing find their campaign is performing between 20% and 300% better than their other marketing dollars.

By the way, SmallBox won’t work with you on email marketing if they don’t feel fairly certain that you are one of the two-thirds of companies for whom e-mail marketing will perform at a high level of return.

Granted, these strategies are working because they’re part of a larger, diversified marketing plan, but the implication seems pretty obvious: email marketing is an absolutely integral part of marketing for two-thirds of online merchants. That seems like a pretty straightforward takeaway.

Whether you’re looking for a scaled solution to fit your business and go after specific goals (like the packages that SmallBox offers) or a super-refined custom  email marketing software solution to deal with the massive nightmare of your million-thronged list of addresses (like Exacttarget’s), you’re probably going to want to consider making room for email marketing as a part of your marketing plan.

What has your experience with email marketing been? Does it square with the figures provided via Internet Retailer in this blog post? What do you think?

Note: all the statistics in this post were found on Marketing Sherpa.

There was an article in this Saturday’s edition of the New York Times about black-hat linkbuilding that we found interesting. This article might be very informative to the average reader but there’s nothing particularly novel about this ‘news’ to anyone at SmallBox.  Provocatively titled, “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search,” this article is just further confirmation of something that we’ve known for a long time: Google is getting more and more discerning about filtering good quality links and high-quality content out of the online jungle.

For anyone who doesn’t have time to read the ten page article, here’s a quick summary:

The NY Times noted that JC Penney’s was showing an abnormal level of dominance in an unusual diversity of keyword constellations in Google Search this holiday season. They showed up in a No. 1 ranking spot for keywords as competitive as “dresses” and “bedding” and as diffuse as “area rugs” and “grommet top curtains.” Other keywords where they were showing up in the number one spot included: “furniture,” table clothes,” “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” and “comforter sets.”  They beat out huge operations like Lowes, Home Depot, Bed, Bath & Beyond and any number of other Big Box retailers in keywords where these other industry leaders should have naturally dominated.

About 34% of Google’s traffic goes to the No. 1 website on the SERP.  The website ranked No. 2 pulls in about half of that, or 17% of all traffic. As you can readily imagine, with number one rankings in practically every product category for sale in their store, JC Penney’s must have been getting great traffic over Christmas.

So: how did they do it?

Well, unfortunately for them, they did it by using black-hat SEO techniques. Company executives claim that they had no knowledge that black-hat techniques were being used and it’s quite likely that they’re telling the truth.  They contracted a link-building service that used shady practices to get them results and now they’re paying the price. Across the board, after Google’s corrective measures, JC Penney’s has been buried back in pages 6 or 7 on Google, even for terms where they would, perhaps, naturally appear on page one or two.  That’s because when Google gets wind of the fact that you’ve been using black-hat methods they dock you.  Getting docked liked this is a known-quantity in the industry, that’s why reputable firms stay away from black-hat techniques.  This can really hurt revenue.

There’s no doubt that JC Penney’s reaped a huge benefit by dominating such a wide array of search terms over this Christmas season, but over the long run the campaign that brought them so much traffic between black Friday and Dec 24th 2010 is going to damage their bottom line.

Back in the Wild West days of Search Engine Optimization–say during the early days of the past decade–there were all kinds of ways to manipulate search results. You could type in your keywords over and over in white type-face against a white background and draw visitors like moths to a flame.  Trashy link-farms were a legitimate way to leverage the marketing potential of a website.  But that was a long time ago.

These days Google’s algorithm has gotten so smart that, believe it or not, honesty actually is the best policy in terms of how we drive online business. Thoughtful, well written content trumps keyword stuffed content.  Links from sites that are germane to your industry will usually help you a great deal more than links from random sites, and links from link-farms will end up hurting you in the end.  Google can tell.  They’re not omniscient yet, but they’re getting close.

That’s why SmallBox has focused on staying at the cutting edge of totally straightforward, strait-laced SEO techniques over the past few years. We always recommend to our customers that they make sure the code and content on their site is in good shape before investing in link-building.  The industry is always changing, and new opportunities appear practically on a weekly basis, but there is a consistent theme to our approach: we’re interested in long-term solutions because, in the end, long-shots don’t pay off.

To learn more about SmallBox’s SEO service click here.

Many of our clients tell us they want a blog, news section or both on their website. It’s common for many to opt for a blog simply because “blog” is a buzz-word, but it’s important to know the difference between the two and which choice is right for their company and which choice will have the best impact.

I’ll break it down for you.

The News section of your site should be a factual timeline of your company. This is where you announce information very specific to your company, such as new hires, upcoming events, or changes to your service or product offerings. You can think of your news section as an area for press releases. Just be sure to present your company the way you want people to think of you: your brand.

For example:

• Announce new products, services or offerings
• Announce recent achievements or awards
• Announce upcoming events

A blog serves as a space to discuss pertinent topics to your industry, not just your company. This area of your site allows you to be a thought leader within your industry and should always encourage open dialog and integration across social platforms. Blogging allows you to share your thoughts, opinions and reviews on a plethora of topics, just make sure to keep it interesting and relevant.

For example:

• Informative – teach how (easy it is) to use your product
• Editorial – offer opinions and reviews about topics related to your industry
• Promotional – announce upcoming sales, specials or contests

Remember your audience and your point-of-view. Your News section is generally going to be more official, and your blog should have a more personal tone. While it is often expected to announce the author of a blog post, that isn’t necessary for a News post. Additionally, while blogging should always allow discussion through comments, a News section usually doesn’t.

Hopefully this clears up the difference between a blog and news, but there’s one very important thing to keep in mind: you have to constantly update them. Merely having a blog or news page does not make it worthwhile, and not keeping them fresh can actually send a negative message. Constantly posting blogs or news keeps your company in mind and establishes that your company is always up to date. Not only that, keeping it fresh makes a significant impact on your Search Engine Optimization!

Google just introduced Boost, its newest advertising tool through Google Places. Currently in beta, Boost is available in only a handful of cities and not yet available in Indianapolis. However, in a recent conversation with a Google employee, I learned that Boost will be expanded to include Indianapolis in the not-so-distant future.

So small business owners, perk up your ears.

Designed for local small business owners, the core idea of Boost is simplicity itself. First, the business owner writes a simple business description, chooses business industry categories and sets a budget. Boost then automatically creates an ad campaign for your business, finding relevant keywords and managing your budget to achieve maximum potential. Essentially, Boost is a layman’s Adwords, without all the fuss of keyword research, geo-targeting or spending analysis.

Boost ads appear above the search results in the ‘sponsored ads’ section, or to the right of the search results.

On a local search that generates a map insert, Boost ads receive a blue pin on the map instead of the usual red pin.

Boost ads do not change organic search ranking and all analytics data is collected and viewed through the Places dashboard. Each Boost ad budget must be at least $50 monthly, but can be increased at any time. Ads can also be deleted at any point and the business owner will only be charged for the number of clicks that actually occurred during that time period.

More information about Boost billing and the advertising process can also be found in Google Places Help and on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Over the past few years, the buzz around mobile sites has slowly grown from a futuristic luxury to a necessary part of a serious online presence.

Have you seen the way your site looks in a mobile browser?
Big, beautiful graphics and perfectly sized text can show up as a tiny representation of your website, requiring lots of zooming and flicking of the fingers necessary to navigate. An element of a design that might be obvious (and important) on a desktop browser might be completely lost to the mobile user.

How many people actually look on their phones?
In parsing through Analytics data for our current and previous clients (something we like to do often!) we’ve noticed a huge upward trend. Over the past year, many of our clients have seen a 4 fold increase in mobile traffic, with some clients receiving as much as 15.5% of their overall traffic from mobile visitors.

Just take a look at these examples from two of our clients. Mobile browsing is going nowhere but up.

What are my options?
There are many ways to create a mobile website.

• Restage – This involves creating a separately managed website that is served up when the browser establishes itself as being mobile. A content management system can be used to keep it up to date. This is the most customizable & manageable option.
• Reskin – This involves making modifications to the display of content of your site. Often times this is done with a custom CSS file that makes changes to what is already being output. In other words, you might change the width of certain elements, change font sizes, or make particular items disappear altogether. This is not always an option, depending on how a site was coded, and offers the least number of options.
• Integrate – This is your best bet if management time is a concern. With this method, your site, managed in your current content management system, is displayed one way for desktop browsers and another way for mobile users. The content remains the same, even though the shell around the content is customized to the browser.

Needless to say, SmallBox can perform any of these three options. We call it our MobileSized! service.

There has never been a better time to get a mobile presence. Give us a call today or shoot us a message if you’re interested in exploring your options. Just take a look at our site MobileSized!

Next week, Tuesday to be exact, I will be presenting on the topic of Content Management Systems at the Masters Of Business Online. This is a great event that I attended last year. It brings together some of the best and brightest marketing minds who present on the topics they know best.

My presentation will focus on Content Management Systems. What’s a CMS? It’s the thing that powers your Website, or should. There are many different kinds and this presentation will be a primer in how to pick one that is right for your Website.

My session is called “The Power Of An Owner Friendly Website”. I’m scheduled for 3:10. Here’s the full schedule.

I’m just one of many presenters. If you have any interest in getting up to speed on any number of marketing related topics then this is a can’t miss event.

If you’d like to attend you can sign up below and use the discount code “smallbox” for $25 off!

http://www.getyourmbo.com/