Don’t just wing it

A web marketing plan is just as important as your traditional business plan and marketing plan. 93% of business to business marketers are frequently using social media to produce new leads and new business. Before firing off a canon full of random babble at your audience consider asking yourself a few questions. What is your social media goal? Who is my audience and what do they like? How will I measure results and what kind of results should I expect?

SEO doesn’t just apply to your website

Social Media Optimization is the new Search Engine Optimization. Begin creating your social content with keywords in mind. Finding out just what keywords you should be targeting can be researched during the above planning phase. Also make sure that your social content allows your followers to easily link back to your website or desired landing page.

Don’t swat a fly with a hand grenade

"They said I was a womanizing, rumor-spreading, beer-guzzling, thief. That's harsh. I don't even drink alcohol."

As we’ve discussed before, dealing with negative feedback is something you’ll most certainly have to accept at some point. Although you can’t control what people are saying about your business online (good or bad), what you can do is ensure that you respond to unwanted negative criticism in a timely and most importantly professional fashion and help build and solidify those client relationships.

In the end, the telling tale on the successfulness of your campaign comes in the form of measuring and studying the results. To effectively gather results we must revert back to the planning phase once again when outlining your goals. What sort of metrics do you want or need to keep? Was the goal to increase online conversions? Increase newsletter signups? Generate more visitors to your website?

You’ll be much more confident in sticking with social media if you’ve planned your campaign properly and gathered the appropriate data to learn and improve for next time. If you’re looking to get your social media efforts off the ground, contact Point Click Media.

Attention to detail

Steve Jobs was a notorious micro-manager, but his extreme attention to detail and design, and even that stubbornness and swagger has led to some of the most innovative products of our time. His vision for making technology as simple and easy to use as possible combined with the sexiness of design is widely visible today.

Inspiring others

Let’s even forget about Apple for a second. After Jobs was booted from the company in 1985 he purchased a little known computer graphics company called The Graphics Group. Today that company is responsible for completely changing the way we watch movies. The group has now become Pixar, and with Steve Jobs at the helm for the 1995 release of Toy Story, Pixar has helped inspire a whole new generation of animated films that focus on perhaps Steve Jobs most intriguing personality trait – storytelling.

Being a visionary

His track record speaks for itself. Jobs had an uncanny ability to envision a product that people needed and bringing it to them. He wasn’t the first to create a computer, but he saw the vision of bringing them into the everyday home. He also wasn’t the first to create a device that could play music, but foresaw the potential to have a single device that could house a person’s entire individuality right in their pocket.

Forcing corporations to become innovative

Just ask the other techno-giants how tough it has been to knock Steve Jobs off of the top of the innovation tower. Jobs was never one to be content with what was already here. He was consistently stepping up the game and getting everyone to play catch up, and not only in the computer industry either. Jobs almost single-handedly forced the entire music industry to conform to a new digital age and also forced cell phone companies to change the way they operate with data plans.

Proving that a turnaround is possible

When Apple nearly bit the dust in 1997, Steve Jobs struck a deal with Microsoft that would help keep the company alive by cooperating on a few different technology fronts. Apple would then start producing some of the fastest and most powerful computers at the time and a whole new line of personal computers called the iMac. By the time the next annual report rolled around, Apple was worth nearly $6 billion. Then came the real revolution with the portable iProducts we know today.

There’s no debating that the man knew how seize an opportunity. For this lesson we thank Steve most of all, I know we at Point Click will miss you but we will keep the these lessons we learned from watching you with us.

Perhaps the Apple slogan used during their greatest turnaround period sums up arguably the greatest technological mind of our generation. Steve Jobs certainly knew how to “Think different.”

Myth #1:  Blogging is easy money

It’s pretty easy to come across stories of everyday blue-collared folks striking it rich on the Interwebs.  Whether or not they’re fact or fiction, many people just assume that they can slap together a couple of paragraphs once a month and be riding the gravy train to the next Charlie Sheen house party.

You'd better bring you own body bag

The truth is that a dedicated, well produced blog takes a lot of work.  Just the same as any other business venture, it’s the hardest workers that often reap the most benefits.  Success doesn’t usually happen by accident, so you can anticipate that the more you put into your blog, the more you’ll be able to get out of it.

Myth #2:  You can’t monetize a blog

A common misconception about web users is that they tune out any and all forms of advertising.  While it’s true that many people either consciously or subconsciously block out many forms of traditional advertising due to being bombarded with it everywhere they go, the fact is that well crafted and highly targeted marketing efforts often produce highly successful results.  This is why traditional advertising is somewhat dying out.  It’s akin to literally throwing a bag of elephant dung at the wall and hoping that something sticks with such a massive untargeted audience.

"Hey, when did they start running Durex condom ads on the Hannah Montana website?"

It’s important not to think only of traditional advertising methods, like covering every last pixel of your blog with banner ads, but to think outside the box.  Can you offer a membership or subscription service?  Can you offer your own products?  Can you promote affiliate or referral programs within your content?  If your blog offers value to the specific demographics of your blog then your monetization efforts will be much better received.

Myth #3:  You need huge traffic numbers to be successful

Your overall volume of traffic is not the be all and end all in determining the success of your blog.  The quality of traffic you receive is what’s key.  Picture this: would you rather have 100 people visit your blog one time and never return, or 10 dedicated followers who return every day?

Also, those returning visits keep coming back for a reason, so you’ve built a trusted relationship with them.  The 80/20 rule is a crucial principle in marketing.  That is to say that 80% of your business is generated by 20% of your customers and blogging is no different.

In part 2 of this topic we’ll examine 3 more common blogging myths.

So, a lot happened in 4 years since 2002, but you wouldn’t really know it from first glance at the Apple website (and that’s not a bad thing). In case you haven’t heard, those little mp3 players that Steve Jobs peddled as the future of music… well, it turns out that they kind of caught on. Apple sold like a couple kajillion or so.

But as the website continues to maintain the status quo, the product line keeps growing with the Macbook Pro and 30-inch Cinema Displays, all pushed by a brilliant marketing campaign that has devoured mainstream media from TV to radio to web: the Mac vs. PC ads. You remember the ones, with the uptight Microsoft corporate hack bantering with that kid who could barely keep up with a 50 year old John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard. The Mac vs. PC ads were widely popular and ran from 2006 to 2010 and no doubt helped Apple sell a few extra Macs.

Skip ahead 5 more years and you can’t even swing a sack of Palm Pilots without hitting someone with an Apple product. In fact, they’re probably so fixated on Angry Birds that they won’t even see it coming. So surely we’re due for the next great website redesign right? Not so fast Mr. Sulu…

And there she be… a sleek new menu and an even bigger showcase area for the newest product. There’s no question that Apple knows how to pimp their products. You’ll notice, though, that besides small tinkering like adopting a 1024×768 standard and other small graphical updates, the Apple website has kept pretty much the exact same layout for the past 10 years with a menu on top, a few badges on the bottom for various newsworthy items and a big honkin’ spot to plaster the newest and greatest product that will have you throwing your underwear on stage during Steve Jobs’ next keynote speech like you were at a Tom Jones concert.

So keep in mind that although it’s good to keep your brand fresh and in the spotlight, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to redesign yourself or your website every 6 months. Sometimes less is more and having a reliable identity that stands firm goes a long way in establishing your business. A company that can’t decide what it should be doesn’t leave a reassuring feeling to its customers. And hey, if you can take over the world while you’re at it… Bonus!

If you’re sick of trying to find your lasting identity, contact Point Click Media.

This guy. After falling and rising again during the nineties like a carpenter on Easter Sunday, Steve Jobs and Apple can’t wait to charge you $84.99 for a digital copy of Kung Fu Panda. photo credit: mallox

It’s interesting, though, to watch Apple’s rebirth leading all the way to today that, although the company itself has undergone a massive facelift with its product line, the Apple website has remained virtually untouched during the entire post-1990’s evolution of Apple products.

Here is the Apple website in 1998. It is ultra clean (get used to it) and it certainly resembles the Apple website that we know today. We can see that Apple has always been great at producing clever marketing slogans (“Blows minds not budgets”). Apple isn’t resorting to flashy gimmicks or a bold, elaborate interface to knock your socks off. They’ve always been about letting the product do it for you. It’s nothing special, but it works. As you’ll see throughout our trip through time, this 1998 website still holds up well even today.

Don’t adjust your set folks!  Although we’ve eclipsed 4 years you’ll notice from here on out that there won’t be any drastic visual changes to the Apple website for the next decade. We’re not quite at the  ‘i’ age yet with iPods, iPads and iTunes, but the website gives us our first glimpses at the glassy-glossy ‘web 2.0’ style that has been widely adopted by web designers everywhere. This is the major change to the website in 4 years – adding a menu to the top of the page. They’ve kept the page clean as a showcase area for their products and main content.

In part 2 of this article, we’ll look at what kind of effect the world-wide boom of the  iPod has had on the Apple website.

photo credit: Richard Faulder - This should be the cover of every Christmas comedy, ever.

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Well, it’s that time of year again. That time of year where all the dads on the block collectively try to out-do one another by igniting the transformer up the street while broadcasting an aurora borealis of holiday goodness into the night sky. No son, that’s not Rudolf tip-toeing across the roof with Kris Kringle in tow… it’s Daddy hanging upside down from the gutter by a string of LEDs.

So with Christmas being all about family we figure it’s time for a tribute to some of the best Christmas Dads to have ever shamefully signed on to be cast in an otherwise terrible Christmas movie:

Clark Griswold

How can any list of the best Christmas Dads not start off with Mr. Lampoon himself? Any man that can blow a cat clean through his living room floor or ride a flaming pizza pan down the side of a mountain at Mach 4 before crashing into a Walmart Back to the Future style all in the name of family just has to be the king of Christmas.

Peter McCallister

OK, so maybe a guy who leaves his kid at home and takes off with the rest of the family during the holidays isn’t the best dad per se… but Petey Mac gets Daddy Mac points for raising a kid that puts Homeland Security to shame on a shoestring budget. What 8-year-old do you know that can hardwire a blow torch to the back door AND remember the fabric softener? Every kid wanted to be Macaulay Culkin. I mean, without spending the night at Neverland Ranch.

Howard Langston

Although watching Jingle All The Way was as painful as swallowing a basket full of decorative Christmas pinecones, you have to appreciate a dad who straps on a rocket pack and has an all out brawl with Sinbad in the middle of a Christmas parade to get his kid a Turbo Man action figure. Now that’s parenting. To be fair though, no one needs an excuse to give Sinbad a beat down in public.

Tim Taylor

I know this one isn’t a movie, but at last who could forget the lovable Tim ‘The Tool Man’. The king of Home Improvement always had the most awesomely destructive Christmas displays ever. Not every nativity scene has a pneumatic manger than can fire baby Jesus the length of a warship.

It’s not easy being a Christmas movie dad, but with the constant electrocutions, snow bank face plants and flaming turkeys comes an unparalleled appreciation for family. We hope that you enjoy your family time just as much as we will during the holiday season.

Now, where’d I put that extension cord…

Note: Point.Click Media was not involved with this project. This is merely a review for study purposes.

Just in case you haven’t been following the evolution chart of social media, let me fill you in. In the beginning there were forums. Forums are a place where users can group together and discuss their favourite topics, everything from collective bargaining agreements to collecting belly button lint. Today, we have Facebook and Twitter to eat up 85% of our workday. But sandwiched in between the evolution of forums and Facebook is an interesting transition phase that is the subject of our study.

MySpace launched in 2003, and quickly became the place for stylin’ and profilin’ by allowing users to customize their own little corner of web. Users could design their own profile by adding virtually anything they wanted to it, from color schemes and photos to video to music. Basically, MySpace allowed anyone to swipe and plagiarize anything they could get their hands on to show off their individualism. However, in 2008, MySpace was quickly left to pick up the pieces of their shattered empire and suck in the dusty desert air after being slammed by that Mac truck that is Facebook.

But to their credit, instead of folding up like a cheap tent, MySpace has stuck it out and begun to make strides in winning back their clan. They’ve started with a swift facelift.

Now, contrary to popular belief or as this wordmark may have you believe, MySpace is not flat lining. MySpace is not dead. What they’ve done is taken an incredibly bold risk in allowing you to interpret the concept behind MySpace by making it whatever you want it to be. Although the above image is now the official corporate logo, there is also an accompanying wordmark that contains the full MySpace name, so for those of us who just don’t get it, there’s still a secondary logo to fall back on. There’s a lot that can be done with this logo, and I believe that’s what MySpace wants.

Although this rebranding makes me wonder about the endless amount of mockery that could fall on MySpace with that open ended logo… kudos to MySpace. They’ve taken a huge risk in adopting a logo and brand that can easily be misunderstood or misread. It’s a huge gamble, but they did it anyway. Sometimes big risk comes with a big payoff.

Let us know what you think.

The following is Part 3 of our series on transitioning your business materials to the web. To review the past articles visit the following links:

Part 1: Layouts
Part 2: Images, Resolution & Color profiling

Learning About Web Safe Fonts

Ah… fonts. Every designer’s best friend and secret love affair. Having access to great typefaces is bliss for us font freaks. We love them and cherish them. It’s a match made in heaven…

*Cue needle scratching across the record*

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T USE THEM ON MY WEBSITE? SMASH! KILL! DESTROY!!!

You see, with printed materials you don’t ever need to worry about a lack of fonts. When the product is printed, that’s it.  It looks great!

“That Awesomesauce-Italic-Bold-Condensed really makes Bob’s fax number POP!“

Unfortunately the web is a lot more dynamic and not every computer on the planet has all of the same cool fonts installed that your designer has. Alas, the mighty designer is left with a short list of common fonts referred to as ‘web safe’ to spice things up.

There are only a handful of fonts that are considered web safe, all of which you’ve likely seen in every email you’ve ever received from your grandmother. Yeah, those ones. She thinks she’s being stylish and hip by using bright yellow Comic Sans at size 72 to remind you about the pancake supper at church this Sunday. Unfortunately you’ll be unable to attend as the medicinal eye drops you require after this seizure-inducing invitation won’t wear off until Labour Day. Maybe by then her shoes will match again.

Here’s an official list of web safe fonts. (Pretty uninspiring, I know)

Until now the most common way around this was to turn your fantastic fonts into images. The problem of course, is that now your text can’t be read by search engines. Designers then began building Flash websites with all of their fonts embedded for your viewing pleasure.

“I just sat through 14 hours of pre-loading and my daughter’s wedding to access this guy’s contact information, but it was worth it. Look at those fonts!”

Finally, after much protesting and castrating of internet overlords, the technology exists to embed fonts dynamically into web pages.

photo credit: superfem - "WE'RE SAVED!"

Not so fast, Pancho Villa. Embedded fonts still increase page load times, and this new technology doesn’t account for older browsers. Remember Comic Sans Granny? That Netscape 4 browser she’s using to explode your retinas has no chance of displaying your fonts correctly. Although web standards are improving by leaps and bounds every day, we still need to realize that it’s just too impractical to be pixel perfect to every last person in front of a computer screen. If you truly want to play it safe, sticking with web safe fonts may be your best bet.

Next week we’ll bring navigation into the equation.

There’s a good chance that by now you’ve signed up for a Facebook profile, Twitter account or MySpace page at some point. Heck, maybe you’ve been enlisted to all of the above. If you’ve recently decided to take your business into the social media world, you’ll notice that there’s a lot to sink your teeth into, and without prioritizing your efforts you can quickly become overwhelmed and have your whole social media business plan crumble out of the sky in flames like the Hindenburg.

“Oh! The humanity!”

There are some very important steps to account for in the planning and execution of any of your social media plans. By performing these exercises before and during your social media endeavours, you stand a much better chance of reaching your goals.

1. Goals

Let’s focus on that first of all. Goals. Without a goal, what is your purpose of getting involved in social media? Any proper business plan should have well-defined goals attached to it, and social media is no different. Your goals don’t need to be pie-in-the-sky ideas either. Your main goals will likely be to increase company exposure and build customer relationships that will yield sales in the present and/or future, but a goal can be also be as simple as clarifying one customer service question per week, for example. Without goals or any intentions of sticking to your goals with social media, you may be inclined to focus your efforts elsewhere.

2. Listen and Observe

Remember the movie Short Circuit? You know, the 1986 Comedy/Sci-Fi flick featuring the lovable robot named Johnny Five that was heinously pillaged and plundered by the pirates at Pixar for their WALL-E franchise? Well, before he was crushed down into an earth saving, space traveling, pint-sized version of himself by Disney, Johnny Five occupied himself by satisfying his cravings for “input” by taking in all the information he possibly could. We can all learn from Johnny Five. By listening, reading and observing the people who are interacting with you and your business you can better gauge the effects of your efforts, properly identify your demographics, and effectively improve your customer relationships.

photo credit: emilydickinsonridesabmx - "Remember when Johnny Five and EVE were identified as rogue robots and were chased all around the Axiom? Wait a minute..."

3. Create and Communicate

Without original content and without communication and interaction, what makes you different than every other marketing scam out there patrolling the interwebs for their next pigeon? Creating content creates buzz, yes, but with that content comes a responsibility to back it up. Don’t just spam Facebook and Twitter with anything and everything. Choose your topics carefully, and most importantly, don’t let those topics sit. If people are asking questions about your business – good or bad – don’t ignore them. Contrary to popular belief, customer service is not dead. It’s just been sitting in the back room banging its head against the computer monitor because it can’t find the ‘any’ key. It’s up to you to use it.

There’s no exact science to social media. For the most part, it’s still just a hugely diverse group of people lolling with their bff’s and riding in their roflcopters. Still, by utilizing these three priorities for social media you stand a much better chance at making it work to your advantage. If you’re looking to save time by managing all of your social media accounts at once, I recommend Tweetdeck. It allows you to post updates to your Facebook, Twitter and all of your whatchamacallits all at once!

If you’d like to chat about your social media goals, contact Point Click Media.

photo credit: B Rosen "This is you after designing ads for 120 hours straight. Was it worth the 10 bucks a pop?"

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

After you’ve acknowledged which parts of your website have the most potential for advertising revenue, and after you’ve decided exactly what types of advertising you’ll be offering, you’ll need to decide on a value for each of those spaces and assign pricing for it.

This is likely to be the most difficult part of getting into online advertising – generating the revenue model. For one, you’ll need to study your metrics, demographics and statistics to find out which pages are the most visited. For example, your homepage will likely be your most visited page, and why not? The home page is the entry point to your website. It’s likely how your visitors find you through search engines or through referrals and it’s also where they go to find out what’s happening throughout your site. Naturally, the more traffic to the page, the higher the value – and with that you can associate a higher price.

You’ll also have to keep in mind things like production costs. Will your advertisers be supplying their own content? Remember that not every business has a team of designers ready to provide you with an awesome barrage of advertising. You may need to develop some concepts for your clients and have some back-and-forth with them to ensure their satisfaction.

When factoring in production costs, it’s not uncommon to see many websites budget the first week or month (depending on how the ads are sold) of a sale toward the initial production. Once those initial costs are covered, be it for the design work or perhaps a commission to whomever sold the space – then you can begin to turn a profit. This all goes along with ensuring that your website has a proper business model in place before you start lighting up your site with ads like a Christmas tree and lose your shirt by not covering costs.

Web advertising can also be sold in a slew of different methods. One is by dedicated time slot where the ad is sold by a number of days, weeks, months, etc. This is the most common and traditional way of selling advertising. Other methods include selling per impression or per click. This works by charging the client for a predetermined number of page views or by charging based on the number of times someone has clicked on the clients’ ad(s). Just as you can begin to get creative with what types of advertising you will be offering, you can be just as creative with how you sell it.

A proper business model is the key to making sure that your website blossoms into a healthy revenue stream. To do it properly, it’s not as simple as filling your white space with ad spots and plastering “Buy Me Now!” tags all over the place like a used car lot. There’s loads of strategic and careful planning to be done to ensure long time stability and viability.

We’ve touched here on the basics of preparing your website for advertising. If you’d like help in studying your website with the goal of helping it pull its own weight in revenue, contact Point Click Media.