5 Marketing Principles I (re)Learned From Instagram

Illustration of woman watering social media channels in flower pots

I launched my @goodeggmarketing Instagram feed a few months ago and…crickets. Okay, not actually so quiet that you can hear crickets chirp, but, as of today, I’ve only got 88 followers. The number of likes per post are scaling up, but it’s still really hard to get a conversation going.

Although Instagram has a few unique quirks and restrictions, it’s really no different from any other marketing platform. Social media may be relatively new, but the basic principles of marketing still apply. Here are some marketing ABCs that I (re)learned from using Instagram. Continue reading 5 Marketing Principles I (re)Learned From Instagram

Images → Feelings → Motivation → Fiercely Loyal Customers

Crowd at a festival

The right images and sensory details have the power to inspire fierce customer loyalty. Photos of red barns, babies and puppies are almost always good for a Facebook Like, but are they helping you achieve your business goals?

Certain types of images, colors, sounds, and activities can evoke specific feelings, which tap into customers’ motivations, which can lead to customer loyalty. The key is to understand which tactics are likely to create the desired impact.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when you’re creating your Instagram feed, a Facebook ad, a logo, or any other marketing materials. Continue reading Images → Feelings → Motivation → Fiercely Loyal Customers

How to Create a Privacy Policy…and Why You Need To

 

Do You Need a Privacy Policy

Think you’re too small to need a privacy policy for your business or nonprofit? Think again!

Facebook thumbs up or downFacebook’s in hot water because they violated their own privacy policy. Don’t assume that just because you’re small–and you’re not doing anything “wrong”—that you don’t have to pay attention to privacy issues.

If you have a website, a POS system, an email list, or process customer data in any way, you should have privacy protocols in place and post a privacy policy on your website. While Facebook is probably too big to fail, chances are, you’re not.

Continue reading How to Create a Privacy Policy…and Why You Need To

Organizing Your Digital Photo Collection

How to Organize All Those Photos
How to Organize Your Digital Photos

 

Pictures aren’t just worth a thousand words, they’re beginning to replace them. Thanks to the ubiquity of the cell phone camera, the rise of the Internet and social media, our fascination with emojis, and our shortened attention spans, more and more communications are exchanged through visual images.

You’ve probably taken thousands of photos that you could be using on websites, Instagram, emails, texts, signage, etc. to communicate with your customers. If you’re like most people, however, your photos are on your phone, laptop, social media sites, old hard drives, and who knows where.

Wouldn’t it be great to have them all stored in once place and organized by topic, so you can find what you want instantly? Well, you can!

Continue reading Organizing Your Digital Photo Collection

SEO for Reluctant Small Business Owners

Title image for article on SEO for Reluctant Small Business Owners

Common Sense SEO
If you’re like most small business owners, you’re reluctant to spend $500+ a month to hire a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) agency.

Reputable SEO firms provide a host of useful services that can benefit your business, but unless you’re relying on web traffic to woo customers, you probably don’t need to hire an expert to get found on the web.

Here are three “common sense” SEO practices that you can do on your own.

Continue reading SEO for Reluctant Small Business Owners

Relaunching my Website: Lessons Learned

Relaunching my Website: Lessons Learned

Good Egg Marketing specializes in building websites, so when I wanted to create a new site for our own business, I figured it’d be a snap.

If I’d just wanted to give the site a facelift, but keep the same content, it would have been simple. But I was determined to create an easy-to-navigate site with lots of useful stuff and a fun, distinctive look.

Admittedly, I was busy running my business, so I wasn’t working on the site all the time. But all in all, it took over two years to complete!

Whether you’re starting a new website from scratch or building a new one, here are a few tips on how to create or relaunch a site, based on my lessons learned.

Start with Your Goals

I was really clear about what I wanted the new site to achieve and that helped me stay true to my vision throughout the process. Here are my three goals:

  1. Drive traffic to the site by providing useful content that people find on Google and other search engines. Yoast logoOver the years, I’ve written dozen of articles on a variety of business and marketing topics, but I never paid much attention to search engine optimization (SEO). This time, I used Yoast SEO to help ensure that each article focused on a specific topic and keyword.
  2. Encourage people to spend time exploring the website by making it easy to navigate. The content on my old site wasTools and Resources page from Good Egg Marketing Website grouped by date and format—articles, newsletters, and presentations—rather than by topic. The site organization made sense to me—and no one else. The new site organizes content by topic and by audience, so visitors can find what they need faster.
  3. Encourage people to hire us by showcasing our past work. When most people visit the Good Egg Marketing site, they’re already interested in us, but need to be convinced that we can help them. I included testimonials, case studies, and a list of our speaking engagementsTestimonial from Good Egg Marketing Website and clients. The content showcases our expertise; our client roster demonstrates that people have confidence in our work.

As I look at the analytics to see how people are using the site each month, I’ll be able to tweak it to achieve my goals.

Focus on Your Customers

As a marketer, I’m always telling clients to put themselves in their customers’ shoes  and address their needs.

The websites for many marketing company websites lead with who they are, what they do, and how they do it. All important stuff to include, Homepage from Good Egg Marketing Websitebut not at the top of your home page.

Our new site directly addresses frazzled business owners who feel overwhelmed by all their marketing choices.  A series of rotating marketing tips complements a short video that expands on that advice in a friendly, informal style.

Get the Visuals Right

The biggest challenge for the redesign was coming up with a distinctive look. Since marketing services are intangible, it’s hard to find an image that expresses what marketing is. I didn’t want to be yet another site featuring a photo of a flower or a mountain.

After playing with a variety of concepts, including a recreation of my desktop strewn with tools of the marketing trade, I was at my wit’s end.

General layout for Good Egg Marketing WebsiteI finally went to a graphic designer I’d worked with many years ago and started with a clean slate.  She interviewed me about my vision and ideas for over an hour. Ultimately, she came up with a dramatic, abstracted version of the Good Egg Marketing logo–a green egg!–that sets the tone for the site through shapes and colors.

Once she created the basic look for the home page, I was able to write headlines and text that complemented those images and she created additional pages that built on the same format. My web developer was able to turn her images into a flexible WordPress design and everything else fell into place.

Bake Mobile into Your Site from the Start

I knew all along that my website needed to look good, load quickly, and be easy to use on a mobile device. These days, Google and other search engines penalize you if your site isn’t mobile-friendl­y. Unfortunately, I didn’t put enough thought into how the images would work on mobile when we developed the site. Mobile version of Good Egg Marketing Website

We created the desktop site first, meticulously tweaking it to get it to look just right. But when we looked at the site on a cell phone, many of the graphics didn’t line up correctly. We were using a mobile responsive design, but the graphics needed extra tweaking. Ultimately, we were able to create an acceptable mobile version, but it required additional time and expense.

If you look at the analytics for your current site, you can see what proportion of your visitors are viewing your site on a desktop versus a mobile device. Even if you don’t have a lot of mobile visitors now, mobile will eventually take over, so you should bake mobile design into your site from the start.

It Takes a Team

Good Egg Marketing Website TeamJust need a simple site with basic information about who you are, what you offer, and why you’re in business? If you have good computer skills and the time, you can probably create a website singlehandedly. There are plenty of free or inexpensive website builder programs that let you DIY (do it yourself) pretty easily. If you want to create a unique looking site or organize lots of content, however, don’t try this on your own!

I managed the project and wrote the copy, but over the two years, I worked with two graphic designers, three assistants, a web developer/videographer, and a search optimization expert. Instead of bringing these talented people together as a team, I worked with them individually and sequentially. It seemed more efficient at the time, but in retrospect, putting a team together from the start would have saved time and money in the long run.

If I were starting over again, I would also decide which project management, storage, and communications tools I wanted the team to use.  We shared and stored some of our work on Google Drive and Dropbox, but we didn’t use them as consistently or effectively as we could have. In the future, I plan to use Trello and Dropbox for my personal projects, as well as with clients.

Final Thoughts

A good website isn’t static, like a printed brochure. It’s a living thing that you need to keep feeding and buying new clothes.

If you have a well-planned site, you should be able to adjust it as needed without needing a full redesign every six months. But, like fashion, web technology and design move so quickly that it’s inevitable that I’ll crave a new look eventually. When it comes time to build the new site, I plan to reread this article and take my own advice.

How to Use the Power of Symbols

Kate McKinnon wearing pink pussyhat in SNL skit
Kate McKinnon plays a Russian woman surreptitiously donning a pink pussyhat as “Vladamir Putin” brags about the happy population in this Saturday Night Live skit that aired on the night of the Women’s March.

Who would have thought that a pink hat could become a symbol of resistance?

Symbols are one of the most effective ways that you can build your brand, convey a concept, or launch a campaign.

A symbol can be a visual image, gesture, object, or idea that represents something other than itself. Merriam Webster describes a symbol as a “visible sign of something invisible.”

Continue reading How to Use the Power of Symbols

Harness the Power of LinkedIn: Simple Tips to Get More from Your Profile

Power of Linkedin

“I don’t know what to do with LinkedIn,” my clients and colleagues say when I suggest it. Although LinkedIn’s always been a useful way for me to keep up with and expand my network, I admit that up until now, it hasn’t offered much to users who aren’t actively job hunting, recruiting, or seeking new clients.

LinkedIn is about to launch a promising redesign, however, with an improved news feed and some snazzy messaging and meeting scheduling capabilities. With over 130+ million users in the United States (and at least 25 percent of them logging in regularly), LinkedIn deserves to be part of your marketing toolkit.

Here are my suggestions about what to do with LinkedIn.

Continue reading Harness the Power of LinkedIn: Simple Tips to Get More from Your Profile

How to Increase Your Email Open Rates

Illustration of declining email open ratesEmail is still the most trusted, popular and effective marketing tool available: that’s why our inboxes are stuffed with it. So what’s a good open rate for your marketing emails? Overall, average open rates hover around 21%, but open rates range from 11-27%, depending on the industry, Constant Contact reports.

The only statistics that matter are your own: Is the percentage of people who open your emails increasing or declining? Here are some tips to help you improve your open rates.

Continue reading How to Increase Your Email Open Rates