When Vine was first released over a year ago, I was skeptical.  How could anyone enjoy a 6 second video?  I mean, if you really think about it, what can be accomplished in 6 seconds?  A year later I’m ADDICTED.  Vine has become one of my favorite emerging social media applications, much like Instagram.  It captures the imagination, inspires creativity, allows me to escape into mindless laughter and has massive potential for brands. 

Basics of Vine

Vine is a video-sharing application for only mobile devices like the iPhone and Android.  It allows the user to record up to 6 second short videos.  Each video loops automatically and is available in Twitter’s timeline.  Much like Twitter, users develop followings and views have the ability to like, comment and follow whomever they choose.

Vine is owned by Twitter, so it has staying power.  I personally am a Vine addict.  I currently follow over 50 people and look forward to their short videos every day.  The app reminds me a lot of Instagram because it has a scrollable feed where you view all of your followers ‘vines’ or videos. 

Making your own videos is also very easy. Vine will walk you through the process, helping you understand how it all works.  Don’t be scared, it’s not too difficult.  To get started, basically hold your finger on the screen to record, get creative, and bam, you’re vining!

Why Vine is Going to Become Successful

I love Vine.  To me, it’s a stress reliever that really makes me laugh out loud literally, connect with celebrities that are creative and brands that are leading the mobile video revolution.  Vine doesn’t allow outside video to be used.  That means ONLY video recorded with your phone can be uploaded.  So with that in mind, watch this video and then try to imagine how they did it.

Amazingly creative people that make amazing short videos.  It’s like watching a movie in six seconds.  Vine is a powerful mobile app for many brands to communicate and participate in the conversation. 

 

 

Who should you follow on Vine?

There are so many creative and amazing people, but these are my favorite vine users.  They are extremely popular and innovative with the app.  They are the thought leaders.  They are people others imitate.  Whether you are a brand, blogger or an agency professional, these people will get you exposed to Vine and help you understand what it’s all about.  Go back and view their previous vines, even if they have 100 of them, they are only 6 seconds each, which means you’ll only burn about 10 minutes.

Marcus Johns

Marcus has a massive following and for good reason.  Funny, attractive, young and keeps it clean.  He knows his audience, isn’t afraid to think out of the box and is extremely creative.  Doing something you wouldn’t expect has helped him become one of the most followed viners. 

Pinot

The most amazing stop motion artist you will find.  He is based in Kuwait and creates the most amazing videos that defy logic.  Remember all videos are created ONLY with your phone.

Jerome Jarre

Have you ever wanted to yell ‘WooHoo’ in a crowded room of people and see what happens?  Jerome does it and gets hilarious reactions.  Combined with his French accent he is worth following.

David Lopez

David makes creative fun lighthearted vines that will make you laugh.  Often caught in embarrassing situations that happen to everyone David ensures you will smile. 

KC James

KC often collaborates with other viners and is one of the most followed vine users.  He generally uploads funny videos, such as ‘How to Recover from an Embarrassing Fall’.  He is a must watch .

Meagan Cignoli

Meagan is a photographer for the stars.  She travels and you get to experience her photo shoots with her.  She often uses stop motion to make pictures come alive. 

Chris D’elia

Chris is better known as the star from NBC’s Whitney, has become a Vine sensation.  His ‘that’s obvious’ vines are remade by countless users.  Although he can be somewhat crude at times, he is sure to make you laugh. 

Jordan Burt

Multiple personalities are all the rage on Vine.  Jordan or maybe its Dennis really has become a Vine sensation.  Check him out. 

Nick Confalone

Nick does hilarious lighthearted voice over videos with his infant son and a giraffe.  They are funny and very cute and his little boy enjoys every minute.

Jason Coffee

Other than loving coffee, Jason does amazing voice overs with his kids.  He is based in Hawaii and his kids willingly participate in amazing, creative voice-overs that make me laugh every time. 

Rob Johnston

Ever wanted to smile in a giant bowl of lucky charms?  This guy does.  He brings funny to Vine in a very unique way. 

Khoa

Who knew construction paper was cool.  Khoa has been featured on CNN, Mashable and other well know media outlets.  He animates using construction paper and tells a story.  A must follow!

Please leave a comment if you have other Vine users that you love and enjoy.  This is by far not a complete list.  There are so many great Viners, we’d spend days listing them all!

 

[Contributed by Nathan Engels, SEO Specialist & Blogger]

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SES Toronto begins on June 12 and will mark the first time LeapFrog Interactive has participated in an international conference. Thousands of marketing and SEO professionals will descend on Toronto discussing industry events like Google’s Penguin update as well as trends such as content marketing.  SES is one of the world’s largest search engine conferences and I’m excited to attend. 

I applied to be a speaker at SES because I love search. I love talking about it, keeping up with trends, learning new things from other thought leaders and most of all speaking with people who don’t have to Google: ‘What does SEO mean.’  

I will be at the Experts Roundtable hosting a discussion on Content Marketing. Content marketing is a very simple idea that really isn’t new, but getting a lot of attention recently. The basic principle of content marketing is this: produce high quality content that adds value.  So many times I visit company blogs only to find ‘blog posts’ that are essentially sales pitches. When is the last time you wanted to read a sales pitch. NEVER. No one wants to read content like that. The principles of content marketing encourage brands to write compelling content that is usually NOT about themselves, but about a relevant field. If you produce valuable content, it will get shared. The brand will also have something to feed the social media machine. Instead of sharing boring marketing memes repeatedly, you can share your content and have your fans spread it.  

Content marketing isn’t new. Bloggers do is every day and good bloggers do it right. They produce high quality compelling content for their readers. Those readers then share it, spread it, talk about it and the blogger gets the benefits of producing good content: traffic and recognition. Companies and brands are taking this model and on top of the potential web traffic and recognition, there is real brand awareness and market share to be gained. While bloggers generally don’t sell anything, companies do.

This will be my second Search Engine Strategies Conference and I’m excited to attend.  I attended SES NYC in March and it was extremely insightful. I hope to gain insight from thought leaders and innovators in search engine marketing. Google is very complicated and learning ways to rank better can be extremely beneficial to clients. 

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post where I share my experience and key take-aways. 

 

[Contributed by Nathan Engels, SEO specialist]

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I’ve been on Instagram for a while now and despise spammers.  They ruin social media.  Social media professionals generally are equipped to deal with spammers, but with emerging social media applications like Vine and Instagram that are becoming widely accepted, spammers look at them as the wild wild west.  Spammers descend in droves trying to get people to buy something and when they go to far it begins to ruin a good thing. 

My personal blog has over 20,000 followers on Instagram and I’m very active on the platforms  I generally get about 20-30 notifications a day.  I’ve set my notifications to only alert me if someone comments on my photos or tags me directly.  Last month I updated the Instagram app and a new feature appeared, “Photos of Me”.  I thought how cool, people who recreate my recipes can post them in here.  (My Instagram account is my personal food blog.)  I went three weeks before the first person posted a ‘photo of me.’  After a month I have 4 total photos. 

This past Saturday I was out with my three year old.  My phone had a modest 60% charge and we went to our local grocery store to grab some barbeque supplies.  I left my phone in the car for about 30 minutes.  When I came back, I noticed it was lit up with notifications.  It went dim for a moment while I strapped my daughter into her car seat and then it started buzzing and chiming.  It just wouldn’t stop.  Now for parents with three year olds, especially ones that can be a little moody when they don’t want to be strapped into their seats, it can take two or three minutes.  During this toddler tantrum, I kept hearing the notification chime, constantly, every second it would chime.  I thought, WHAT IS GOING ON?!  Is there an emergency?!

I finished strapping her in, got into the drivers seat and turn the car on, blasted the air conditioning, gave my three year old her iPad and then grabbed my chiming iPhone.  It took me a moment to figure out what was going on.  I started scrolling through the notifications and kept scrolling.  All it said was “xyz user has taken a photo of you.”  Over and over and over, 500 times.  I thought to myself, what?!  How is it possible, within a span of 30 minutes, to have 500 pictures of me show up in my profile. SPAM that’s how. Spammers had targeted my account because of my default settings established by Instagram.  My entire “Photos of Me” tab in my profile was littered with, ‘Buy more followers’ and ‘Get Free Followers.’  If spammers post on my pictures, I remove and ban them, but I didn’t know what to do with this particular issue.  I sat there, with the car running, for a few minutes and then I realized something even worse.  All of these vibrating notifications had sucked the life out of my battery.  I’m sitting with a 2% charge and the notifications are still pouring in.  I finally grabbed a screen shot, thinking no one would believe me later. 

After investigating the issue, I discovered that Instagram has an automatic or manual setting for ‘photos of you’.  This setting by default is set to ‘automatic.’  That means spammers can flood your account with whatever spam they want and you are stuck spending hours fixing it.  That’s exactly what I did off and on the rest of my Saturday.   I had to manually remove all of the tags in the photos of me section.  After I set my profile preferences to ‘manual,’ the spam soon stopped.  I pulled my phone into my charger, asked my three year old is she wanted an ice cream cone, because I sure did, and we started home. 

Social media can be tricky sometimes.  Dealing with ugly comments, trying to grow and be engaging, insightful and adding value to the community can be difficult, but spam gets in the way of all that.  Instagram and Vine need to make sure that spammers don’t drive people away.  I was so mad it happened that I told my wife it made me almost want to quit Instagram, I just love the community to much. 

Remember on any social media, check your settings.  If you update the app, often times that means that new settings are available.  Don’t learn the hard way like me! 

Let me preface this by saying that I am a blogger and I’m also an SEO.  I have been blogging ‘professionally’ for years and my blogs easily reach 100,000 unique visitors every month.  In fact blogging is what lead me into the SEO field.  So if you are around me for a few minutes throughout the day, especially in the search marketing department at LeapFrog Interactive, you will no doubt hear me espouse the benefits of bloggers.  This post is going to discuss why SEO’s should build relationships and not one-night-stands with bloggers and will touch on how bloggers can be beneficial to a client or brand’s SEO.

Bloggers are new.  They are exciting.  They are trendy, but most of all, they are real people.  To really blog requires effort and heart.  And when I say EFFORT that means writing 1,000 words plus daily.  Try writing 1,000 words every day and getting paid almost nothing for the first year as you build your audience; it takes a lot of effort. Bloggers LOVE what they blog about, or at least they better!  Good bloggers care.  They post constantly and deliver good consistent content to their readers who joyfully read.  On top of those thousand word witty posts, they field comments (both positive and negative) from complete strangers, they get, sometimes annoying, emails from marketers and try to put food on the table for their families.  It’s not easy.  So when PR and SEO professionals send a form letter that says, ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ it gets deleted without a second thought. 

So why do I believe in bloggers?  Why do I believe that bloggers can transform an online presence for a brand? Why do I believe that bloggers can work effectively with a digital agency? Because I have done it.  For years I have worked on campaigns for national brands.  I have even painted my face with chocolate pudding and exposed my audience to Cottonelle moist towelets.  (Yes they are awesome and yes I used chocolate pudding for a reason!)

Build a relationship

Bloggers can be the gift that keeps on giving.  Treat them right, care about their success and they will care about yours.  Bloggers are creative people, they will help brainstorm with you, help generate ideas for your client or brand, GOOD ideas.  We all know that older SEO’s wanted links.  Links will make you popular; links will get you on the first page they cried from the rooftops.  Boys and girls it isn’t 2008 anymore.  While links are important, building an online relationship that doesn’t involve paying e-harmony can be extremely meaningful.  ONE quality link from a good blog or website will have more impact than 1,000 junk links. 

So why a relationship?  Let’s step back a minute.  A blogger isn’t just a link, they are someone with influence, like a pro-athlete.  In the real world, pro-athletes promote  products.  In the online world, bloggers are just like pro-athletes except they usually blog in their pajamas on the couch.  They influence people.  So instead of begging a blogger for a semi-influential link to your site, take the time and build a relationship with someone influential. 

Here is why: when you build a relationship with a blogger, that blogger becomes an advocate with an AUDIENCE.  Unlike old school link building where no one cares about audience or influence, we NEED to care.  Traffic is important, time on page is important, and blogger advocates are the closest point to your website, a click away.  Unlike pro-athletes that promote a product, wear the product etc, the consumer must actively remember to visit your website.  While athletes can build brand awareness and brand visibility and have other great benefits, Peyton Manning is unlikely to consistently bring thousands of visits to your brand website, a blogger can.  Bloggers I know have more Facebook fans, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram followers than many famous people.  So let’s be real, bloggers are online rock-stars.  You would never go up to Peyton and say, ‘Hey give me a link man’.  So why do that to a blogger?

How to Reach Out to Bloggers?

So now I’ve convinced you that bloggers are important to your brand and it’s time to starting building those relationships. So how do I find them and reach them? Of course there is email, but let me clue you in, I work full time and get a lot of email.  But it doesn’t touch the amount of email I get from blogging.  Some days I get THOUSANDS of emails.  I have form responses I send back to readers but I honestly delete most of the emails.  With Gmail I use filters constantly.  If you’re a marketer, contacting me about a link or in a non-personal way, it is likely that as soon as you email me you are given a filter and you will never again show up in my email inbox.  Don’t be that guy.  When I contact bloggers for brands that we work with, I usually get creative.  I use Instagram, Twitter, even Facebook to contact them.  By being different I stand out.  I get noticed, and believe it or not they respond. 

I hope my zeal for bloggers persuaded you that bloggers are worth the effort.  Happy SEOing.

 

[Contributed by Nathan Engels, SEO Specialist & Blogger]

 

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We have all been there. You’re talking to your significant other and you have a slightest (or strongest) feeling that they’re NOT listening to you. 

So, you ask the ever famous, “Are you listening to me?”

Then, to your surprise, they respond back… “Yea, you just said [insert regurgitation of your last sentence]”

Sound familiar? Well believe it or not, this is much like email marketing. Now you’re probably thinking that is a bit of a stretch, but bear with me. There is much to learn from relationships that you can apply to your email strategy.

Let’s talk subject lines. First, if you want your users to open your emails you must entice them with an interesting and RELEVANT subject line. Don’t get too cutesy with your email subject lines, while clever short subject lines like “Hey…” or “Find Out How…” may have worked in some case studies it’s important to remember these are anomalies. Most subscribers want short, relevant, interesting subject lines that will catch their attention. Have you ever tried to spark a conversation with your significant other by saying “Hey, I have this really long boring story to tell you that you actually won’t benefit from or enjoy listening to.” No. So don’t do that to your subscribers either.

Let’s talk content. While including flashy graphics and links to you website are important for branding and site traffic, it’s not always necessary for your emails. Don’t cloud your emails with information overload, get to the point and give a clear call to action. We have all heard the term “passive aggressive”, don’t be passive or confusing when asking your subscribers what to do.  Be sure they get the information they need quickly, remember they are scanning not reading, and make the call to action clear so there is no room for misinterpretation. Just like my “are you listening to me?” example, email readers are only pulling out bits and pieces of your content…just enough to repeat that last sentence.

Timing. This is becoming increasingly more important as emails become more and more common. Remember that your subscribers are most likely reading your emails on their phone and they are connected to their phones 24/7. Timing is very important if you don’t want to get ignored. Would you discuss an important matter during the Super Bowl or the finale of The Bachelor? No. So don’t send your messages to your subscribers when you know they are most likely engaged in other, “more important” activities. 

Make it relevant. Before sending an email for sending’s sake, remember that if you want to build credibility with your subscribers and avoid the dreaded “unsubscribe” button, you have to send relevant information. Whether it’s a promotion, newsletter, or special event you have to find a way to make it personally relevant to your list or segment. Segmenting is the best way to help ensure that you can create messaging that is relevant to your subscribers, but remember that your segments are only as good as your data. If you don’t collect other subscriber attributes (preferences), you can’t market based on them. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking yourself “why would people want to read this?” and then reevaluating your messaging or how you’re presenting it.

Remember, while email marketing is an important digital marketing tactic, your emails are competing with all of the emails your subscribers get in one day. And while we, as advertisers, think what we have to say is fascinating, it’s not always the case with our subscribers. So if the only thing they’re going to remember is that last sentence, make sure it’s a good one!

[No real relationship advice was given in this blog]

Imagine a world where you say to your phone or glasses, “Restaurants in Downtown Cincinnati” and your device displays almost immediately the most popular restaurants, with the best reviews in downtown Cincinnati.  Wait, that day is here already on some devices, using Siri or Google Voice on the Android!  But what will happen with Google Glass as it enters the arena of search marketing?

While Google Instant changed search forever, it tries to make an educated guess and displays results as you are typing. I believe Google Glass and voice search will be another revolution. 

Imagine a device that doesn’t care about your webpage, but about the information contained within it.  Mobile search is growing increasingly more important for consumer based products and services.  A car dealership, for example, would be very interested in mobile searches because they have a physical location.  If you said to your Google Glass, ‘Okay glass, Google Kia dealerships in Cincinnati’ glass would not bring up a website, it would bring up locations on a map and direct you to them.  With the movement away from traditional websites and the immergence of mobile applications, SEO’s and marketing professionals know one thing for sure: everything constantly changes. 

While mobile devices like the Android are meant to browse the web, Google Glass is not.  It’s really meant for information.  Where is something, who is someone, text someone etc.   We all know that this is the first edition of Google Glass, and it’s just going to get better and better.  My guess is that it’s the future, and here is why.  It’s wearable.  While some creepy guys may wear Glass in the bathroom, for the most part I believe that Glass will become just as common as tablets.  I remember, years ago, when I was skeptical of the tablet.  Why would anyone want a small version of a computer that is difficult to type with, can do limited functions, is expensive and really isn’t much better than a small laptop computer.  I was wrong in a fantastic way.  Tablets have really taken hold because they filled a different niche that we didn’t know existed.   Sales people present with them, service professionals use them to stay in contact with headquarters and dads like me use them to entertain my 3 year old with powerful learning apps and the occasional Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix. 

So what should you do to continue to help your website rank high?  The one word that many love to hate: content.  No matter what happens, Google will always value good content.  Google’s overall goal is to connect people to what they are searching for on the Internet, whichever device they are using.  If you speak it, type it or in the future think it, the goal is to help Google’s users FIND IT.  Making content that people want is key.  If you are a car dealership in Cincinnati, make sure to focus on SEO efforts and the more good quality content you create that is relevant, the more your efforts will pay off.  Pay attention to Google+ as we see it will continue to integrate into other Google devices and services, like Google Glass. 

Even with voice search emerging, let’s not forget the overall goal of a search engine and it’s products: to connect you, the searcher, with what you are truly looking for.  When you, the business or marketer, create the content a searcher is looking for, and its high quality, valuable, and optimized for search, you will be found. 

[Contributed by Nathan Engels, SEO specialist]

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My name is Lauren Baldridge and I am the most recent newbie here at LFI. Welcome to my first blog post ever as I begin my journey as the JUMP! intern for LeapFrog Interactive! In addition to beginning my days as an LFI intern, I will also be finishing my senior year at the University of Louisville with a bachelor’s degree in marketing in the fall.

To say I have “hit the ground running” is such a cliché, but true. This is my first experience working for a digital marketing agency and want to soak up as much information and experience as I can.  Just in my first week, I have learned the ropes of project management software, sat in on both client and internal meetings, refined some formatting tactics, learned the ins and outs of WordPress, and developed business proposals. Whew!

Even though I am the newest intern here, it’s clear to me that LeapFrog Interactive is so much more than one individual department. Each department is constantly collaborating with another, which is an identifier of dynamic teamwork. Not only that, but everyone at the agency works together toward client and agency goals. Based on the interactions I have had with others in the agency, I can tell that LFI is a strategic full service agency that will help my professional growth.

I really look forward to my time here at LFI as an intern. I hope to experience more client meetings, projects, research, and whatever tasks lie ahead! Since I am just getting started here, be sure to continue checking the LFI blog as I take my first steps into the digital marketing world!

[Contributed by Lauren Baldridge, Jump! Intern]

Google’s Penguin update went live last night. According to Matt Cutts, the update will affect approximately 2.3% of searches worldwide.  The goal of the update: cut down on spam and sites using black hat link building techniques.

We have seen mixed results in the SEO forums on the impact. Some sites are no longer showing up for their brand terms whereas others have not been affected. 

At LFI, we have been researching our SEO clients and understanding the impact of Penguin 2.0. To date, we cannot find evidence our clients were impacted by the update. This is great news for not only our clients but also our Search Marketing team.

Our Search Marketing team works tirelessly to perform white hat SEO tactics via content marketing, social sharing, on-page metrics and more. Time and time again, our work weathers the storms of the Google’s algorithm changes and validates the work we are doing for our clients.

Below we have culled some of the leading SEO resources and their take on the Penguin update.

• Penguin 4, With Penguin 2.0 Generation Spam-Fighting, Is Now Live, Search Engine Land

• Google Penguin 2.0 Update is Live, Search Engine Watch

• Google Penguin 2013: How to Evolve Link Building into Real SEO, Search Engine Watch

• Penguin 2.0: PANIIIIIIIIC!!!…(or not), Search Engine Journal

• Penguin 2.0 rolled out today, Matt Cutts

• How about a discussion on Penguin 2.0?, SEOmoz

Content is King. For those in digital marketing, specifically organic or natural search marketing (or SEO) this has been the go-to message since the Panda update in 2011. That’s great. We need more content. But why is content so important for search engines and searches, and how do we know what type of content is best for our company or brand?

Let’s start with understanding why content on a website is important and why building content should matter to your company or brand.

Why Content?

Following the Google Panda algorithm update in 2011, quality content on websites became substantially more important. The Panda update, and its subsequent 25 additional updates, aimed to identify spam-like content and give greater authority to those sites producing high-quality content. Recently, the trend toward content marketing and search marketing has increased with the realization that content marketing is, and should be, part of an overall SEO strategy.

In the 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition from MarketingSherpa, it was reported that 65% of marketers deemed content creation as a very effective strategic SEO tactic. According to Interconnected World, 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine, and 61% of global Internet users research products online. In 2011, 92% of marketers saw content creation as either “very effective” or “somewhat effective”, with 50% viewing web pages as “very effective” for SEO. Additionally, 76% of marketers have content creation in place as part of their strategic SEO campaigns, 61% of consumers are more likely to purchase goods from businesses that offer custom content and 60% of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better product decisions.

In addition to the new emphasis on quality content, there are hundreds of additional factors that Google and other search engines use as part of their algorithms to determine search results and site authority. One of those is time on site. Engaging onsite content offers opportunities for increased time on site as site visitors explore your service and offerings for a longer period of time. Secondly, search engines crawl brand sites looking for information that is relevant to the keywords that have been searched by a user. With increased content, you are able to influence at least those two additional algorithm factors due to the keywords driving the site visit and the length of time that user is on your site, which helps drive the relevancy of your site to the keyword or key term the user searched.

Content offers an outlet for brands to provide additional brand presence and product information. By generating content, your brand is increasing the relevancy of targeted keywords for search engines, increasing sharable content which impacts search authority and improving the “freshness” of the site on a regular basis. By developing, publishing and sharing engaging content, your brand will be able to increase their SEO value, keyword relevancy and social authority. 

Types of Content

Once a brand or company understands why content is important and what impact content can have on its SEO strategy, the next hurdle to cross is deciding what content is right for your brand. Building a content strategy allows your company to determine the types of content best suited for your audience - think, “what information does my audience care about?” And “what content is my consumer most likely to share?” Being able to answer those two questions will help determine the type of content best suited for your brand. Content can range from blogs, landing pages for SEO, articles, whitepapers, press releases, photo galleries, product photos, videos and more. Anything that you can create that will increase the number of pages indexed from your site by search engines and that encourages sharing among site visitors will help boost your SEO strategy results. Sharable and engaging content should be top of mind when developing content for your site. If your audience responds best and is more likely to share photos of your products, then promote product photos and continually add new ones to galleries.

Content, specifically quality content is the moving needle in today’s SEO environment. Content not only improves the information and pages available on a site to be crawled and indexed, but quality, engaging content provides additional opportunities to share your site. Content sharability is important now, and will continue to increase in the future as social search becomes more prominent within search algorithms and user experience. After all, the goal of a search engine is to provide the best user search experience possible.

When I’m interested in something, I obsess over it. I research it. I want to know what it looks like, sounds like, and smells like. I want to figure out what makes it work. I look for different perspectives and angles that may or may not be related. Each clue reveals something new and significant about the subject matter that makes me dig even deeper.  I’m like a kid who sees the awe and wonder in everything and gets excited about the little things.

In both my personal and professional life, I strive to capture content in order to better explain it to the world. I have a need to connect people to something bigger than themselves. Telling stories is more than entertainment; it’s about shared experience.  Everyone knows the passion of a first kiss or the trembling of tragedy. We become fully human in these moments. Everything is interesting when you take the time to see what is really going on. 

Commerce is a part of the unique ecosystem of the cosmos. Products and services are characters in our everyday narrative, adding detail to our lives and prompting us to act or react. When your child gets a rash, you care about what cream you put on them. You do your research, find out the facts and you choose the one that has the power to heal. That brand has become a part of your personal tale.

If commerce is a motivator in the bigger story of life, why do so many companies choose to script it over capturing it? For years, corporations have produced some of the worst videos in human history. Teleprompter's steal the humanity of individuals in exchange for perfectly written brand copy, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Consumers are people, not “profiles.” They’re the characters in the story of life. When you settle for perfection, you miss out on real-life. Perfect copy can be powerful, but authenticity has the ability to change hearts and minds.

The power of documentary filmmaking is that you don’t have to manufacture insight and drama. You just have to find it. It exists in places that get overlooked everyday. A brand documentary allows people to discover something for the first time. It’s the drama and excitement of business and pleasure. It’s the place where commerce and everyday life meet.

Social media has knocked down the walls that protect brands and now they have to have real conversations with consumers. Likewise, scripted corporate videos are like an online dating profile: too good to be true. If you’re looking to get serious with your consumers, lose the teleprompter and capture real people who are excited to work for your brand and tell their stories. If your people can't do this, then maybe the problem isn't the video.

[Contributed by Brandon Faris, Director, leapFRAME]

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Mobile is here, mobile is now, mobile is everywhere. Mobile is where your customers are and it has rapidly become the best place for your brand to become a lasting part of your customer’s life. Apps have been downloaded billions of times to billions of devices; and still, mobile is young (Apple’s app store launched less than five years ago!). As this market matures and consumer preference changes along with it, consumer demand for quality is skyrocketing.

The metaphorical bar has been lifted and, unfortunately, most of the turnkey solutions and app generators out there just can’t reach it. To keep your users interested, your mobile app needs to do more than just echo your brand on their device, it needs to do so in a way that fits in to that user’s lifestyle and daily interactions. Interacting with your app shouldn’t feel like the user has left their world, your app should feel like an extension of their world.

Turnkey solutions and “app generators” have popped up all over the market causing an influx of “me too” and one size fits all interfaces. Running a search on an app store can turn up hundreds of apps for your search, so how do you stand out from the crowd? How can you capture the user’s emotion? Of course a great marketing team will help you go far in getting in front of users, but what is it that drives success once you’re there?

Quality! Surprised? I wouldn’t think so. Quality should drive all of your decisions for mobile. “How can a mobile presence improve the quality of my brand or campaign?” “How can I leverage mobile to improve the quality of life of my customer?”  Getting an app out there without thinking through the quality of the user experience can have a lasting negative effect on your brand through reviews and user perception.

Every phone operating system presents a different ecosystem and experience to the user and developer. Achieving quality on all platforms can seem like a ridiculously difficult task. The majority of the cost associated from this doesn’t generally come from the user interface; the cost comes from the time spent on porting libraries of backend code and business logic to each platform. To download a file and save it on each phone OS requires completely different code. Taking a picture? Different code for each OS. There is nearly zero cross platform abilities when using the recommended approach for each phone.

Hello Xamarin

Xamarin has done all of the hard work. Their mobile tools allow a developer to write all of their business logic targeting the .net framework and then use that same code on each mobile platform. The code you write is directly bound to the native calls for each platform, the performance is native and in some cases (Android) it actually out performs apps written using the standard tools. As a developer this can be summed up in one word, Freedom!

Things like downloading a file, taking a picture, getting a user’s location can all be written once, tested thoroughly, and tucked away so we can focus on delivering that awesome experience that you and your customers expect. When using Xamarin, the bar is not out of reach, we are the bar. We are able to dress our experience for the device and user in a way that feels natural and engaging; we can wear the right suit for every occasion.

The folks at Xamarin have a broad vision of the world. With employees living all over the world and working on every PC platform available, the Xamarin team has cross platform in their DNA. They are the team that implemented the open source versions of Microsoft’s .Net Framework (Mono) and have brought the C# language to nearly every device on the planet.

But what has Xamarin done for you lately? A lot! As a longtime user and Xamarin partner, I recently attended the Xamarin Evolve conference in Austin Texas for both the training/certification and the conference talks. During the conference keynote, Nat Friedman (CEO) and Miguel De Icaza (CTO) announced that they were bringing the latest version of the C# language (along with F#) to their mobile frameworks. They also announced an automated testing framework to allow you to upload an app and test it on hundreds of physical devices all at once. In addition to the new products and features, they announced the ability to develop iOS apps on Windows using Microsoft’s Visual Studio development environment, a move that is sure to make many enterprises very happy.

The announced Xamarin test platform, called Test Cloud is an absolute game changer. It greatly reduces the cost barrier for testing large application rollouts and updates. The attention to detail and quality that Xamarin showed with the product is inspiring. My tweet below sums up my feelings during the keynote and they have yet to change.

#Xamarin just opened a case of whoop ass on mobile development. #async, #fsharp, #iOSdesigner, #testcloud No better time to get on board

— Drew Greenwell (@DGreenwell) April 16, 2013

Over the last few years we have been increasingly happy with the Xamarin products and the value that they allow us to provide for our clients. There are way too many benefits for me to list them all here but the key is that these benefits are all targeting at improving quality, cost, and enjoyment; which echoes our core values. As always, we are happy to pass this value and experience on to you!

User-centered design is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of users of a product or website are addressed thoroughly at every step of the design process. The key to user-centered design is approaching a project, design problem, or piece of software as partnership on all fronts.

Developing a website that implements user-centered design is much like marriage. It is a relationship between design and the user, let’s take a look at the journey…

A digital agency enters courtship with a client because they share common interests, or responds to an RFP like an online dater to an e-Harmony ad. The relationship grows as each side proves themselves and displays trust. Eventually vows are made, the client and agency sign a contract. Work begins and the "marriage" is consummated, but things don't end there - there are plenty of kinks to work out. Just because expectations and a schedule are set, doesn't mean they live happily ever after.

User-centered design is a process within a process. During the length of a project, many iterations of a design will be created, scrapped, recreated, shot down, improved and eventually agreed upon. There isn’t just the honeymoon phase. Every relationship goes through its ups and downs. What isn't necessarily stated up front is that neither the client nor the designer is infallible. There will be differences of opinion.

Let's take a step back and look at who the user really is.

In terms of user-centered design, the user is the end consumer and target of all of the project's efforts. It's also important to note that the client is part of the user pool, although their opinions may be biased. In the user-centered design process, the user provides feedback at all phases and during all iterations of project. This can be everything from market research, ethnographic studies and report analysis, to more hands-on measures like usability and prototype testing.

In a marriage, however, the "user" is actually many people. Certainly, the spouses of a marriage are the most important individuals, but many other people affect this relationship as well. Peers, friends, family, counselors, lawyers, priests, and so on have the power to strengthen or break a marriage. Listening to everyone's advice all at once can be extremely problematic. Valuing outside influencers' opinions over your spouse is even worse. But, thinking you know everything and not looking for ways to constantly build and strengthen your relationship is the quickest way to lose the love and respect of others.

Don't forget that people and projects also change with time! There are no defined benchmarks in a marriage that say "if I hold in there for this long, I win." The same is true with a brand or project. Websites live on after their launch date, and should evolve with their users and with web standards.  Ask users for feedback with your designs and embrace critique and data. Ask your wife or husband how they feel, and actually listen. In the end, success can be measured by whether or not your partner (spouse, client or consumer), is happy.

The user can be the partner, priest, counselor, parent, etc. but what's important is the constant input. In the beginning the excitement and newness can help create a spark, but as time progresses, communication is what keeps it all together.

 

[Contributed by Alex Lockwood, Senior Designer]

 

Connect with Alex:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

View Alex’s Behance portfolio

I quit Twitter 4 years ago. I became annoyed reading posts about what people ate for breakfast, or that their favorite American Idol contestant was “so amazing last night.” Who cares?! Certainly not me. That’s why I decided to cut myself off from being one of “those people.” I promised myself that I wouldn’t return until I could provide something worth people’s time.

In the meantime, I set up my blog with the intent on sharing stories about my twin daughters and all the things that were going on with them. I needed an outlet for family and friends, who didn’t see them all that often, to be able to follow along with their lives from a distance.

As the girls got older, it became increasingly more difficult to track the new and exciting events in their lives. This was especially true when they started talking. That’s when the light bulb went off. I could use Twitter to keep track of it all (in 140 characters or less). The beauty of it was that it wasn’t me, it was them. It was content that people might actually want to read.

From that point on, my Twitter account, blog and the majority of my Facebook quotes would be “Twicethefunny.”

This…was my social brand.

Throughout the process of finding my own personal brand voice, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels to how brands should approach social media. Too often today, brands are just on social media for the sake of being there. Everyone else is. Right?

They’ve heard that if they don’t have a Facebook page, Twitter handle or a Pinterest account, then they’re missing a great opportunity to reach their audience. They crank out post after post in an effort to get in front of their consumers and “stay top of mind.” But that’s not really the point of brands on social media.

Brands often don’t take that step back to see if what they’re doing within these channels actually adds value to their followers’ day. They may not have the time to look at how they can create content, specific to each social channel, that allows their audience to consume their brand in bite-sized, valuable nuggets that they want to share, don’t mind reading or exploring. And to be successful in this space, brands have to make the time to figure out what their brand voice is. They don’t take the time to figure out what their brand voice is or to understand what’s important to their followers in these specific channels.

Obviously, it’s easier for me to go through this exercise for myself; it’s what I do for a living. There’s no pressure to “sell” my brand online, create meaningful content (my kids do that for me), or to justify spending money hiring someone to do it for me. But if you ask me, one of the most important things a brand can do online, in the social space, happens offline. First, understand who you are and what you have to offer. Then, find ways to creatively deliver that to your audience so they won’t just turn you off, unfollow you or hide you from their feed. Once you’re out, you’re out. And the last thing you want to be is one of “those people.”

Media Buying is quickly changing. The emphasis placed on real-time bidding and the exchanges is growing daily and will continue to grow. If you are interested in resources about this phenomenon currently taking place in media buying, view the article list below. Also, look for our upcoming edition of Logic & Magic where we discuss media buying at length.

• The war between programmatic buying and creativity, iMedia

• Real-Time Bidding to Take Ever-Bigger Slice of Display Pie, eMarketer

• Real-Time Bidding's Biggest Buyers: AT&T leads the programmatic pack, ADWEEK

• Agency Trading Desks Lag In Awareness, Understanding, MediaPost

• A Look Into RTB's Quality, Ad Impressions, Data & Future, MediaPost

• The 4 biggest myths about programmatic buying, iMedia

• Real Time + Real World = Real World Retargeting, MediaPost

• How Search Retargeting Is Bridging The Gap Between Search & Display, Search Engine Land

• Is RTB Helping To Increase The Pie?, MediaPost

• Exchange-Based Media Dominate Big Agency Spending: RTB Is Growing Fast, But Still An Also-Ran, MediaPost

 

Someone recently told me that if the end game of any professional or business relationship is the same, which it usually is, then there is no reason why the current game, or the ongoing relationship, should be rocky or at the very least not be able to be smoothed over. Anyone who has ever experienced difficulty with a relationship in general will tell you the previous concept is easier said than done. When it comes to affiliate marketing however, taking a little extra time to carve out a personal inroad to the established business relationship can make both parties a lot of money.

Media buying in the affiliate market place, in my opinion, is a last resort. I will admit that affiliate CPA networks can be extremely lucrative if executed properly, should you have the cash to manage it.

I empathize with the vast majority of the 9k affiliates I manage as fellow entrepreneurs, but that does not mean I don’t drive a hard bargain when negotiating on behalf of my clients. I generally stress a mutually beneficial partnership with little to no capital investment on my end when an affiliate approaches one of my brands with an advertising opportunity. However, I do my best to arrange the deal so that the affiliate has the potential to earn substantial income if they follow through on their part. As such, I have come to realize that there is no real need to exchange money in the traditional sense for media buying as a merchant but more so there is a need to incentivize those interested in working together, and prioritize those who take the deal seriously for future exclusive promotions.

One of the more regular negotiations I have with affiliates is trading ad placement opportunities with temporary commission hikes.  From a merchant perspective, the short list of things I am looking for are specific category header placements, newsletter banner placements (depending on stats), home page ad placements when applicable (i.e. Q4), or better yet, specific product spotlights. This is just a warm up before also factoring in sales strategy for the brand, traditional sales stats for the specific time placement of the ads, among other things. A thorough affiliate merchant manager must execute proper due diligence in order for this to work. For me, this not only includes SEM stats pulled from various high authority reporting tools, but also a reputation analysis as well as paid search security aka ad hijacking. If an affiliate is involved in this type of activity, depending on the severity, it may warrant stronger conditions of the negotiations in favor of the merchant, but only after they clean up their act.

One of the up and coming tools that I can use to sweeten the deal these days is a product catalogue within the affiliate platforms. In one case in particular, I was able to offer an exclusive affiliate link of a sports product to an affiliate who focused on just that one sport the product was tied to.  Sales went through the roof in a matter of hours and it even got brought up in a client meeting, at which point I brought it to the client’s attention that almost 70% of the surge was due to affiliate business development.  Needless to say, it was a good meeting.

If you have not noticed, newsletter banner ads and category header placements represent the same end game as any other avenue of media buying. In the case of specific product placement, there was not even a commission change, just a mutual understanding that I want what is best for my affiliates and am willing to put in the time to give them the tools they need to make lots of money. In other words, effort and general responsiveness go a long way and quickly build respect in a world in which you will most likely never meet 99% of the people you do business with face to face.

Numerous articles, even Matt Cutts himself, have indicated that a “major” search engine algorithm update, Penguin 4.0, is coming. The impact of which will be the largest yet of the Penguin updates. Google has made some interesting moves recently from shutting down Google Affiliate Network and penalizing Mozilla which would indicate Penguin could be very aggressive and shutting down small publishers who using spammy techniques to help drive traffic.

 

If you have been performing SEO marketing for any length of time, or you have had an agency performing SEO work, now is a good time to start evaluating the link building work, which has been done. Mostly likely, the biggest impact of the Penguin updates will be in the area of links coming back to your site. In the past it has been the easiest to game and thus many sites, including many reputable sites, most likely have “spammy links” on them. As a SEO or webmaster, take the time to start disavowing spammy links in an effort to improve your link profile.

 

SEO specialists, developers, research analysts, brand managers and CEO’s need to change their definition of links. A link = link is no longer the case. Modus operandi in the past was to acquire the most links you can the fastest. The result is a lot of bad links, which could be detrimental to your site. The focus of link building now must be on quality links. One link to a website with PR 6 yields much better traffic and results than 100 links from PR 2 websites. Link building is hard work. It is more in line with lead nurturing,  

 

The upcoming Penguin update will most likely impact everyone. Diligence will need to be had to minimize the impact to search rankings and traffic when it occurs.

In a previous post I discussed Universal Analytics (currently in public Beta) and some of the new capabilities that Universal Analytics offers. In this post I will address specifically how these new capabilities can be applied to digital media measurement.

Cross Device Measurement

Media is increasingly being deployed across multiple devices (i.e. Desktop and Mobile). If your website includes any type of login, then the use of custom dimensions can allow you to track a user ID to see how your customers interact with your site from multiple devices. This can significantly impact calculations regarding new visits and unique visitors, and can help get a fuller understanding of the reach of your media. This approach is not without limitations, essentially you will only be able to connect data from multiple devices where your users are logging in, but it is a notable step forward in gaining insights to how customers are interacting with your business online. 

Offline Data

For businesses that have both online and offline conversions, the impact of media cannot be solely measured by website activity. The measurement protocol provides new opportunities for tracking activity that occurs offsite (and offline). This can help provide a much truer measurement for the impact of media on your business overall. A great bit of inspiration for the possibilities that this opens up is provided by the folks at Loves Data Tying Caffeine to Productivity.

Custom Data Sources - Cost Data Import

As I mentioned in my previous post – custom data sources is an additional Beta component that is not technically tied to Universal Analytics, but is significantly more powerful when tied to the custom dimensions available within Universal Analytics. This capability allows for CSV files containing (non-Google) cost information to be uploaded programmatically to the Google Analytics API. The same ROI information that can currently be viewed for Google Adwords media can now be tracked for other types of digital media. 

While custom data sources officially only supports online media, there are some methods that can be used to tie in cost data for traditional media. For example, if your traditional advertising uses a custom URL you can programmatically add in the tracking parameters for all visitors coming to the site with that URL – this way you can associate cost data to those tracking parameters. Combine this with the Measurement Protocol in Universal Analytics and it now becomes possible to track the full impact and ROI of online and offline media. 

It should be repeated that these capabilities are still in Beta, and some features of Google Analytics (remarketing, cross-domain tracking) are not yet fully supported. While these capabilities open up new opportunities, many companies may want to wait until the beta is complete before deploying to production environments.

Uber-hip first cousin of more traditional digital media ad buys such as banner ads, social media ad buying is still a new territory that, for most, can seem like a shot in the dark. But with a little insight, a lot of creativity, and a bit of testing, it’s easy to navigate your first Facebook ad buy.

All you have to remember is A Little + A Lotta’ + A Bitta’.

A Little Insight…

Much like other forms of ad buying (social or not), there are ad options aplenty on Facebook. Before you buy, though, it’s key to know not only how each ad will be displayed, but what each type of ad can do for your page.

Display Ads: The most seasoned veteran ad type, display ads are the small image-and-text ads displayed on the right hand site of the user’s screen.

Display ads are the most targetable of all ad types, as they require no user action (i.e. liking a page, friend actions, etc.) to be seen. You fit the target demographic, you get served the ad.

Sponsored Stories: It’s a fact. We like our friends. So when your friend comments, likes, or engages with a brand page, we’d want to know that, right?

Sponsored stories are messages that come about from your Facebook friends engaging with a page, app or even that a brand has paid to highlight. Sponsored stories can be found on the right hand side or the page (like display ads) as well as in newsfeeds.

Promoted Posts: When it comes to prime real estate on Facebook, the top of the newsfeed is king. Advertisers: you can pay to be there with Promoted Posts. These highly engaging ads take the form of a Facebook wall update that is shared with page fans and their friends. They appear as natural stories in the newsfeed, and are an affordable way to drive traffic to your page.

A Lotta’ Creativity….

Deciding which type of ad will best help you achieve your goals is half the equation. The other half? Developing the creative that will get the click. Facebook does set a few parameters, though.

Facebook’s ad policy states that images and image thumbnails in promoted posts and sponsored stories must not contain more than 20% text. Whether you’re linking to your site or to a specific Facebook page or app, be sure that the visual you have with the ad is just that: visual.

What is the best driver for ad engagement? Quality images, especially in promoted page posts. Here’s a general rule of thumb: whatever would work well as a page post (and see the most engagement) would be a good contender for your next Facebook ad.

A Bitta’ testing….

Sometimes, finding your Facebook advertising sweet spot can be tricky. You may pick the right creative or ad type at first, but use every spend as an opportunity to test. What may work for one page may not work for another, and that’s ok. Continue to fine-tune your messaging, medium, and spend with every campaign, moving closer to your fans every step of the way.

So go ahead and maximize your social media ad buying spend. You can thank us for the math lesson later.

Current hot topics in search marketing include content marketing, social search optimization and Google’s Penguin effects on your link building strategy. And while those are critical search items for businesses to keep in mind as they continue to build SEO programs, sometimes it is good to remember the basics. In this case, optimizing the PDFs on your site.

Google can, and does, index PDFs as you may notice when you conduct searches and PDF documents appear as related to your search. While PDFs are not as prevalent on sites as they once were and may appear only in search on occasion, that is no reason to ignore the ones that you have, especially if they can provide critical information about a topic a search is requesting. So, I present to you my top 5 tips for increasing the searchability of your PDF documents.

1. Create a text based PDF document. Because Google, and other search engines, can crawl text-based documents creating your PDF in Word or Adobe Acrobat, you are increasing the likelihood of it being indexed by search engines.
2. Give your document an optimized file name that tells searchers what the document contains. For example, if your document were about Search Marketing for Mobile Websites, the file name would then be Search-Marketing-Mobile-Websites.pdf. This provides clear guidance to search engines as to what information your document contains.
3. Complete all of the document properties including the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords. The Title field works much like the title tag or meta title field for a webpage and is shown in search results. The author field should most likely be the brand name, as brand names are more relevant to searchers than individual authors. The Subject field should be treated the same way you would treat a meta description field for a webpage. Keywords should include the top 3-5 key terms or phrases you are targeting with your PDF.
4. Use SEO best practices for copy optimization. This means including optimized H1 and H2 tags, optimized copy with keywords and links with anchor text. Yes, that’s right, Google and other search bots can crawl those links.
5. On Site Placement. Think about popular pages on your site where your PDFs content would be relevant. Additionally, those frequently visited pages are crawled more often, making PDFs located on those pages more likely to be found and indexed by search engines.

And as with all your digital content, share it and integrate your PDFs into other digital marketing mediums as appropriate. PDFs offer a great call to action for within a PPC ad, as well as an additional resource to accompany a blog post or a digital response to an RFP. Links to PDFs can also be shared via social media to improve social search optimization (SSO) and provide additional insights for your fans and followers.

Don’t clog your site with PDFs, as search engines and searchers prefer HTML webpages. But for those occasions when a PDF article or other resource is appropriate, optimize it for maximum searchability and usability.