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.

I’ve heard this echoed a thousand times: don’t tweet about food. Funny thing, though. Many of my personal tweets about food get an enthusiastic response. In recent months, my most @replied tweet was about meat loaf. Seriously. Part of it is that I’ve connected with other food lovers and so a food tweet is very at home in my twitter stream.

After offering consulting for a wide variety of brands, I can definitely say that each client and audience is unique and different. When thinking about new content for your brand, forget any generalities you’ve heard like ‘don’t post about this, don’t tweet that.’ What is okay for the casual swimming pool company, might not be kosher for the addiction treatment center.

Take this pineapple picture we posted to the official SmallBox business facebook page as example. It may not tell you that we offer amazing web design and marketing services, but it does provide a feel for our culture and let you know that we like to have fun. For SmallBox, there’s value in this type of message because we’ve decided we want to let people in – to see our space and get to know our team a bit. If you have a more buttoned-up, corporate culture, this type of post might not work for you.

So, how do you decide what’s acceptable for your brand?

Define Your Brand Tone
To determine what is acceptable, start simply by establishing your ideal brand voice. What words best describe the vibe you want to share with your audience? Pick 5 words, or more if you need them.

For SmallBox, we define our ideal tonality like this:
Knowledgeable, Bright, Community-Minded, Approachable, Witty, Personable, Creative, Fun. Sometimes cheeky. We joke, we give shoe-fives.

All content we create is filtered through this lens. In a way, this is just who we are, but it’s also well thought-out. With multiple personalities creating content for SmallBox, having this general direction clearly defined is critical.

Build a Team Who Gets It
As Jeb refers to in his digital brand ecosystem, HR is marketing. Hire and train a team that gets your culture and brand voice and can run with it. Having a tuned-in team that just ‘gets it’ lessens the need for strict guidelines or micro-managing oversight of all of your content creation.

Create Your Content Comfort Zone
What if your team needs more guidance? Your might find you need to spell out what’s black and white, and whether you’re comfortable in the gray areas. Let your content creators know if they’re allowed to be silly and make jokes. Don’t want your official brand twitter to comment on last night’s tv show or celebrity gossip? Say so. By providing specific examples of the types of content you want, and what you don’t, you’ve given your team the confidence to create within your framework.

Detailed content guidelines can be a considerable time investment up front, but really digging in to find your content comfort zone will make your future content creation easier and more focused. Add in a solid content strategy with your business goals, defined target audiences, an editorial calendar and more and you’ll really be set up to succeed in creating great content.

Email marketing can definitely benefit from the SmallBox belief in mixing magic and science for amazing marketing efforts. The magic part can be delivered through catchy images and clever messaging – these are often the first things people think of when they craft a marketing email. If you aren’t thinking science too – ways to test and optimize your emails, you’re missing out on opportunities to get better results.

The good news is, it doesn’t need to be overwhelming to get started. While there are countless opportunities to test, tweak and get more science-y (see our case study on how we did it for one client), you can start with one simple change. Turn your attention to what is arguably the most important line of your entire email – the subject line.

Testing Email Subject Lines
You can do your own basic subject line test in a couple of easy steps. Write two subjects lines that you can compare against one another. Divide your list into half and assign one to receive Subject Line A and one to receive Subject Line B. Then, just send two separate emails with the differing subject lines and see which garners a higher open rate. The hard part is writing them – you have very little real estate to convince your busy audience that your email is worth reading.

Here are some examples of email test strategies we have used at SmallBox to gain insight for our clients:

• We had one client offering a discounted product, plus a free gift with purchase. We tested one subject line with the free messaging and another with the discounted product. Even though the discount was more valuable than the free product, the free subject line earned a much higher open rate. (Hint: Free is a powerful word!)
• Another client wanted to promote several items under one broad category of their sales mix. We tested broad language vs. being more specific by mentioning the specific products. The specific product language earned lower open rates against the broader language, possibly because the choices seemed overwhelming, or less relevant than the general category.

Other subject line test ideas:

• Drum up interest with a little enigma. Test a cliffhangers like “And the winner is…” against “The Winner is XYZ.”
• Test adding numbers in your subject line. In one option, “Killer Summer Events” vs. “4 Killer Summer Events”

One More Tip – Check Your Subject Line Length!
I highly recommend using the Litmus Email Subject Line Checker, a free service to preview your email subject line in various email clients. What happens if the last few words of your subject line are the most important… and they get cut off? Let’s pretend you want to announce a sale on a few key items. You plan to use this as your subject line: “All Widgets, Thing-a-ma-bobs & Kazoos on Sale Now.” A quick review through the subject line checker shows that your audience won’t see the sale message at a glance.

The end goal is to engage your audience, right? If people aren’t even opening your email in the first place, you can’t begin to accomplish your goals. If you only do one thing to try to improve you email efforts in the next month or two, make it subject line tests. It’s easy to do, and you get instant feedback on what resonates more with your audience. Over time, you’ll identify words and tactics that work for you, and you can enjoy the your rising open rates – the first step toward more conversions from your email marketing.

Have you ever tested email subject lines? Please share any insights you’ve gained through your own testing in the comments!

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?

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.

Google Boost: it should be available in most major cities by this summer.  Is it going to be a big hit or not? Is it going to change the landscape of our profession or is it just going to be another little bump on the road?  Our guess is: it will make the pie bigger, but it won’t be replacing PPC management any time soon.

Pros of Google Boost include: ease of use, and an eye-catching factor.  Boost’s ads will stand out from other sponsored links, because they’ll be including star-ratings, reviews, and you’ll get a blue pin to distinguish you on the map from all the other red pins.  Also, it’s minimum price-tag is $50 dollars, which is lower than most PPC campaigns if you want to outsource the heavy-lifting to a professional. The cons include: limited control, diminished effectiveness, and a loss of equilibrium in terms of how sponsored links will be ranked.

Scanning the articles that have been written about Boost, and consulting our in-house specialists (re: Ben), the consensus seems to be that Google Boost will most likely act like a gateway drug–introducing small businesses to the power and potential of Search Engine Marketing, but ultimately leaving them wanting more.

Here’s the theory: Businesses who have yet to be sold on the concept that AdWords campaigns will produce a solid, measurable return on investment for them (especially if they hire a professional to run their campaign), will buy into Google Boost because its entry-level pricetag is relatively cheap. When they start to see the response, they will become intrigued–they will want to know more.  When they know more, they will want more control–so that they can make more money.  But they won’t be able to refine their campaign because Google Boost is opaque and one-sided.  Boost is not designed to integrate business-owners’ knowledge and input to make campaigns more profitable. At this point small business owners may try to mount their own AdWords campaigns, which, oftentimes, they will probably end up turning over to a professional.  Other business-owners will go straight to professional PPC managers when they see the results of their Boost campaigns.

So: our working hypothesis is that Google Boost will make the pie bigger.  What do you think?

If you need some advice about Search Engine Marketing check out SmallBox’s services here.  Or just get in touch with us here.

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!

This is a question I’ve been pondering for the last few months. Although you might think my answer would be- “always! let SmallBox handle it”- it isn’t. Beyond the fact that we aren’t going to be the right marketing outsource solution for every company, there are also very legitimate reasons for many companies to have internal marketing staff. Some of the variables include your industry, your marketplace, your size, your target customer, etc.

The question becomes when and how to go outside for these services. The challenge with modern marketing is that it is incredibly complex. The old days of print/TV/radio are long gone. We have a fascinating and frightful multi-channel world now. How a company leverages these endless marketing opportunities is often the difference maker.

Consider just the Web marketing realm. You have websites (infinite choices there alone, should you spend $2k for a WordPress site or build your dream home for $50k?), Search Engine Optimization (more science than voodoo but still a mystery zone at time), Pay Per Click advertising (Google AdWords for instance, like going to the Casino, it’s easy to lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you are doing), Email marketing (so many providers and ways to approach email), Social Media (ok, now I have my Twitter account set up, what next?) and that’s just the major areas of focus. You can get into Video blasting, banner advertising, re-targeting and a dozen other niche Web marketing options. It’s overwhelming.

So I recommend running a costs/benefits analysis when looking at your marketing spend. If you hire someone to build a new website, optimize it for search engines, oversee email marketing and set up Pay Per Click campaigns you will most likely only find someone that is really good at one or two of those things. Even if they are really good they won’t have the benefit of a team to push them to do go great work. So now you are looking at $60-100k yearly commitment minimum to bring on a full time employee for these tasks. Chances are you can find a local marketing shop that has expertise in most of these areas and it probably will come in at or under the cost of hiring a full time employee. Also, chances are that local firm will do a better job at getting you a return on your marketing investment than the in-house Jack or Jill of all trades.

If you are looking for a place to start I would recommend you do a Google search for Web Marketing Indianapolis and start with the companies on the first couple pages. You might just find us there.

Or you can just set up a free Web marketing consultation with me.