This past week: Google's I/O conference ends today. They had a series of major announcements about their tools we like so much. Such as a new and improved Google Maps, new Google+ interface and added features and speed for Chrome on mobile. As expected Google efforts seem to focus on mobile and they are not alone Apple seems to be working on a new iOS with a new (trendy) flat look, but so far this is just a rumour. Windows phone reached number 3 (global shipments), surpassing BlackBerry for the first time, it is good to see that there is more solid choices in the mobile market. And finally the much talked about Facebook Home app is officially a bust, with AT&T pulling HTC Facebook's phone from their lineup. What does this means for the small business? For starters your own mobile experience is about to get better and as technology improves (at a very rapid pace it seems) more opportunities arises for businesses to connect with their audience. Without further ado, this week's tweet list; next week I'll be away but the roundup will come back on the 31st. Until then, enjoy the long weekend.
Still the best tool to reach the right audience-> Why E-Mail Newsletters Won’t Die
Email is still the most popular form of internet communication. When regulation aiming to stop spam was introduced, it indirectly helped legitimate marketers create good quality email lists. Now that most email list have a clear opt in and opt out, you can be confident that the people joining the list want to hear from you.
Google drive got more useful-> From the Web to Google Drive with just the click of a button
Once you have a Google account (such us a gmail email address) you can have access to Google Drive (amongst other Google tools). Google drive is quite useful to share and store documents and files. Now you can save website "files for download" directly into your Google Drive account. These files can be accessed from your desktop PC and your phone.
A new opportunity in texting-> How Messaging Apps Are Disrupting The Mobile Ecosystem
Traditional SMS phone texting is being replaced by internet based texting apps, such as: WhatsApp and KeeK with both networks boasting million of users.
Enticing that click-> Butter Up Your Social Media Calls-to-Action
When sharing content on our social networks we do it with the hope that people will click on the link to the full story on your website. Learn how to make the share more compelling for clicking.
Got this from a friend, great presentation-> The Small Business Guide To YouTube
Thinking about creating video for your business? Check this website first.
We asked and found the answers for you (at YWD that is)-> Asking the Right Questions About Mobile
At YWD we are committed to having the best mobile experience for our business websites. We are constantly looking and asking for the newest and most effective ways to deliver our clients website to the mobile visitor. This is why we offer the mobile version on every YWD package at no extra cost.
The jury is still out on this one but do it anyway just in case-> Does Google+ matter for small businesses?
There are contradicting thoughts on whether having a Google + business page helps your search results ranking. Even though there isn't a clear benefit for search, to setup a Google+ page is free and if a visitor does look your business on Google+ you will be ready for him/her.
Friday May 31st I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
This past week: There are encouraging sings that the US economy is on the recovery (no recession double dip). Good news for all businesses, and hopefully this will be an incentive to work their online presence and reverse the status quo for small business websites. Only 25% of small businesses in the US have a website and for Canada it is only 40%. Hard to believe these numbers in a time when accessing the Internet is becoming second nature to all of us; and clearly there are no businesses that cannot benefit from having a website. Without further ado; my list of tweets that will help your business do better online.
If your website isn't earning its keep, for sure-> Does your business website need a redesign?
This is true for every business, if your website is not helping your business, it is time to rethink the design and how it engages your audience (or potential customers). Your business needs to generate leads or sales, it has to be your marketing hub whether your marketing efforts are in print or online.
Listening is a good start-> 5 Questions to Ask Before Implementing a Social Media Strategy
Before you jump into the social media world for your business, you should look around at what others and your competition are doing. Luckily there are plenty of guides on social media on the web and most likely you will find plenty of posts on how to do social media in your business space.
They all help, keep on sharing-> Twitter & Facebook links affect SEO on Google and Bing
It has being said before, the url shorteners do give the SEO juice to the full URL. So don't worry, every share of your website or blog helps on the search result page rank.
The art of marketing B2B businesses-> How B2B content can make you popular
This is a tough one to crack, and I'm talking from experience. It is very hard to promote an abstract product such as website management and service. But it can be done, you just need to be creative.
"Do good for our customers and they will do good for us"-> Customer Service Lessons from Amazon
This is something we try to do with YWD clients (and prospects). This philosophy seems lost with big brands but in today's social media, review and check-in world; sharing good will is a must.
It does!-> Why Facebook Buying Waze for $1 Billion Makes Complete Sense
Waze is a GPS app that helps you find the best route for your destination. Once again Facebook is betting heavily on mobile, expect them to come up with something innovative if the buyout is completed.
Next Friday I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
This past week: Major efforts still underway by all major internet companies to capture and monetized the mobile user; the race is on for coming up with the perfect advertising model for mobile. As I have mentioned in previous posts the rate of growth for smartphones is unprecedented. Even though I lived most of my life without a smart phone, today I can't see myself without my phone; it is my goto device for everything from emails, weather to flight tracking. Every question and fact checking is easily answered with my phone, and like most people I use my phone to do searches and check my social network feeds. As a matter of fact smartphones have helped to push social media popularity and social media has helped in the sale of mobile devices. For example, you can't do Instagram if you don't own either an Android or an Apple phone. Social media and mobile are here to stay and every business should plan and strategize their involvement on both.
You can make your iPhone smarter-> Google Now Comes to iOS
"Google announced on Monday it is bringing its intelligent assistant app Google Now to iOS." The more you use it the more learns about you.
Be the authority of your business field-> Writing Engaging Blog Posts: It's All About Voice
The idea with blogging for businesses is to gain the trust of your followers (customers or future customers), buy trying to solve problems for your audience. While doing this you should make sure that you know what you are talking about and be knowledgeable on the subject at hand. Thus becoming an authority on the topic.
YWD has PickMonkey integrated-> 3 Free Photo Editing Tools That’ll Give Your Pics Sham-Wow
In a time when Photoshop is too expensive or complicated to just crop or resize images these online tools can be a good alternative. If you are a YWD customer you know that our asset manager is integrated with PickMonkey, which 90% of the time is all what you need to format your images.
Very optimistic chart-> Just How Big Will The New Mobile Market For Wearable Devices Become?
There is a lot of talk about wearable computing devices and Google Glass is the source of all this speculative talk. We still need to see how practical and usable Google Glasses are going to be; and beside glasses what other wearable devises will come into the market? A watch? We used to have calculators on our watches a couple of decades ago, and that didn't really take off.
Good post! The tide is shifting-> How Marketers Are Using Paid Social Media: New Research
As social networks come up with better ways to target the right audience the dollars spent seems to move from traditional to search and banner advertising.
Get the advantage less than 10% have one-> Restaurants overlooking the importance of mobile phone web access
This one is a no brainier for a restaurant owner. Less than 10% of restaurants have a mobile version of their websites (if they have a website at all). Get yours now and you will have an advantage over your competition.
No it doesn't-> Web Design vs. SEO: It Doesn’t Make Much Sense
SEO and web design should be part of the same goal; to help your business website to succeed. This is our philosophy at YWD. Web design should be applied with SEO in mind. There is no reason why you can't have a great design for your website, which can be properly search engine optimized.
Good case study-> Pinterest: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site With Pinterest
It worked well for Melanie Duncan and her business, Luxury Monograms. She was surprised by a surge on referral traffic from Pinterest and she didn't even had a Pin button. Read about how she capitalized on this new source of interest in her website content.
Next Friday I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
This past week: Feedback on Facebook Home is coming back from real users (500K downloads in the first week) and it is not very good. There are many bug issues reported including not being able to launch other apps beside Facebook's. I'm sure with time Facebook will be able to iron out the bugs and give the user a better experience, Facebook style. On other fronts LinkedIn and Tumblr are now displaying ads on their mobile app feeds, this is good news for the SMB. More competition for your advertising dollar. So far the best marketing value for any small business is on content marketing, SoLoMo (Social Local and Mobile). Due to the nature of mobile technology and the fact that people prefer to consume social media on their phones it is shaping up to be the place to spend your marketing efforts. This doesn't mean other more traditional means of marketing won't work, it just means that mobile is capturing more eyes as time goes on. Without further ado, my list of tweets for this week; mobile, social and local.
Business with blogs get 70% more leads than those without-> How to Get Eyeballs on Your Business with a Blog
I've often share posts and blog about the importance of blogging for a business, this infographic reinforces that view. It is a good diagram on how to distribute your original content and how to increase engagement with it.
And it is more accessible-> Why Social Media Marketing Is More Effective Than PR
Social Media and content sharing are game changers for many industries, including PR. In a way small businesses now can manage their own PR campaigns using the tools available in social media.
Not a bad idea-> Theft: 9 Ways to Protect Yourself From Losing Your Data
We depend so much on our PCs for work and personal life; just think for one second if you were to lose your PC with all your contact, emails and documents you keep in the hard drive. If you don't have a plan to quickly replace it, read this article, it will show you a few ideas on how to protect your PC and other electronic devices.
Want more clicks? check one of these-> The 10 Most Clickable Twitter Headlines
We all want people clicking on what we share, learn how to make your tweet irresistible.
Start small build with time-> Social Media Marketing: Get Out Now... You're Doomed to Fail
Great guide for starting from scratch. It takes time to build a relevant audience, follow the steps in this post and you might shorten the time required.
Another place to where to advertise-> Tumblr rolls out mobile ads, appearing alongside posts in user streams
All these free social networks need to make money to support their massive operations. Tumblr is no exception and it seems that they are going after people's eyes, on mobile.
Original own content is still the best-> I Hate Writing Articles What else can I do?
Good alternatives to writing them yourself, but keep in mind that original content is still the preferred alternative.
Comparing Ad networks-> AdGooRoo Report Pits Bing Ads against Google AdWords in Six U.S. Verticals
This post shows Google AdWords is still in first place; but Bing is not the only place where you can advertise and reach thousands beside Google. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Tumblr have their own ad networks. Sometimes these could work better for some businesses than Google or Bing.
It easy to setup, and Google places is the best yet-> Why Local Search Matters to Your Business
While competing for search result rankings with big businesses can be futile exercise (deeper pockets for bigger businesses),for small businesses using Local Search going can help to level the playing field.
Content and advertising all into one?-> Selling to Cyborgs: Marketing in the Age of Google Glass
Now that we have the first wearable computer in the market (well for select few for now), many questions arise about this new medium. One of them is, how are we going to advertise on glasses?
Next Friday I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
This past week: Both Facebook and Twitter have improved the targeting options for their ads. Now it is easier to target your audience if you chose to advertise on those two networks. The best feature I think is that with one ad you can target both desktop and mobile users; that's right, Facebook and now Twitter are the ones who are getting mobile ads right. They just add them to the feed and make them look like just another post from your following (although in both cases they are marked as sponsored posts). The race to get your eyes attention on the small screen is on, even Google is playing with enhanced features for their search ads. This is good news for everyone, the advertiser gets to display the ads to the audience they chose and the mobile user gets to see ads that would be of interest to them. Even though Mobile has grown very big in very little time it is still a very new medium and things are not all quite right yet. For example most businesses still don't have a mobile version of their website, with that in mind here is my list of collected tweets for the week that hopefully will help you get your mobile website going. If you don't have one yet that is.
The race for mobile bigger screen-> Apple's hazy, big-screen iPhone ambitions
I like my phone to fit in my pants front pocket comfortably. But I seem to be the exception, we are seeing bigger screens on all new phones blending the lines between smartphones and tablets (phablets).
Wearable computing the next frontier-> Wearable web access?
There will be a time (sooner than we think) when we will have to worry how our websites will display on Google glasses. Glass friendly?
Seeking Instafame?-> Instagram: How to Become Instafamous
Many brands have taken the jump into Instagram, and some are doing pretty interesting things with the pictures they post. Macy's and Coca-Cola are a couple I follow that share very good pictures. They both have a big following. This post shows you how to increase your following on Instagram; but keep in mind that quality still prevails just like in any other social network.
Popularity in tech comes with malware-> Mobile payments raise security concerns
Unfortunately just like marketeers and major brands, people that are up to no good follow the crowds. Right now the crowds are using mobile and malware is following.
More on Malware-> Malware On Mobile Grew 163% In 2012, Infecting Around 32.8M Android Devices, Report Says
Just like Windows based PC are the most popular in the computing world, Android powered phones are the ones with the biggest share in the mobile market. Therefore more malware is developed for that operating system; also Android open source nature doesn't really help.
Smartphone phone use is on the rise, #mobile SEO should be in mind-> The Expansion Of Mobile SEO In 2013
Soon mobile access to the web will surpass desktop access and just like you want your website to rank high on the search result the same needs to be done to the mobile version of your website.
Is this because more kids own Android phones?-> iPhones Trump Androids for Mobile Commerce App Usage
I keep reading this reports that there is more traffic generated by Apple mobile devices than Android ones. Even though there are a lot more Android powered devices. What does this say about the Android powered phone owners? They don't use it to surf the web?
Still a new industry by comparison-> The Biggest Challenge for Mobile Ads? Showing That They Work
Facebook and Twitter seem to be on the right track; but still Mobile and all the apps ecosystem is very new. A lot more data and studies need to be done before advertising in mobile will work as expected.
Don't feel left out iPhone users, its coming-> Facebook Putting "Mobile First," Bringing Home to iOS
It looks very cool, and for the Facebook power users it could be very useful. Expect this new app appearing not only on the iPhone but Windows and BlackBerry as well.
Facebook ranks as one of the top-three things people do on a smartphone-> Mobile Marketing on Facebook
Face book is one of the things people like to do on their phone, like checking emails. This one of the main reasons you need a mobile version of your website.
Next Friday I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
This past week: I'm keeping with the mobile trend for the past two weeks, since the more I read about it, the more I find that businesses in general are not taking the mobile audience seriously enough. To be fair, everyone has been caught by surprise by the fast adoption of smartphones and tablets, but the surprise came last year. We are well into 2013 and I still hear complacency from some businesses regarding their mobile websites. The truth is it doesn't matter the kind of business you own or work for, your business needs a website and a mobile version of it. If this is not the case you are losing business; studies have showed that mobil traffic on the web is on the rise and so is the sales of smartphones. People’s expectations have changed, if they land on your website and it is not optimized for the small screen they will move to the next search result. At YWD we want all our customer's websites to be successful this is why we added mobile optimization to all website packages at no extra cost. Having mobile in my mind here is this week's list.
My take on the subject-> Responsive Design the good and the bad
There a few design blogs that write the benefits of responsive design (one design for all screen sizes) and mobile first design strategy. While responsive design might be a good fit for certain kind of websites, for the vast majority (this include SMBs) it is not. Check my post to find out why.
Most posts on FB gets open on mobile devices-> 5 Tips to Make Facebook Marketing Mobile-Friendly
More then 50% (and this is still increasing) of Facebook traffic comes from mobile phones, through the Facebook app. Guess where those link are going to open when tapped by the mobile users?
Keep it to the point-> How Small Businesses Can Optimize Social Content For Mobile Customers
Mobile and Desktop audiences have different expectations even though they can be the same person. Having all of your website optimized is a good idea to ensure users coming from shared links (mostly on mobile devices) have a good experience.
Very good data, might change you mind about mobile-> Vision Statement: How People Really Use Mobile
From the Harvard Business Review, easy to understand charts about mobile usage and what most marketers are doing wrong.
Not convinced? look at the data-> Reality Check: Do You Really Need a Mobile Website?
The tale of a skepticic on mobile, did his own research and crunched his own data to come up with a big “YES”, you do need a mobile site.
PCs and laptops to become work tools only-> Smartphones, tablets and Windows 8 hasten the PC’s plunge
PCs sales are down across the world (with the exception of China, too many first time computer owners) and there is a lot of speculation as to why. Mobile and tablets are always part of the debate.
Next Friday I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
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