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How can online marketing help grow your podcast?

March 8, 2017
by Robin Moss

You have the best podcast, no doubt. Now you just need to give it that extra nudge, make your audience grow, make sure your brand is top of mind. How do you do that? Is your strategy in place?

I gave this presentation at the Podcast Dallas meetup in Plano. I covered, among other things:

Why you need an integrated marketing strategy
Branding – how and why it will work for you
Email campaigns – why they matter
Goals – you have to have goals to meet them

I’m including the deck in case you missed the presentation!

Choosing the Right SEO Firm, It’s Substance Over Size

May 12, 2016
by Robin Moss

You are looking for an SEO (search engine optimization) company. Do you go big or go home? Does a larger SEO agency mean better SEO results? Does the term work smarter not harder apply? Can a smaller company be just as successful as a larger one? Inquiring minds want to know!

I found an interesting post: An Expert’s Guide To How To Get SEO Right. Prati Dholakiya wrote the article and he works for a very large company, E2M. The post had some interesting points, so I copied the link and posted it on my Twitter feed. My friends at Ninja Outpost retweeted it. I respond to everyone who retweets me, so I mentioned to them that I didn’t think that you had to be the largest agency to provide your client with great SEO. They asked me to elaborate, and this blog post was born.

So how could a small agency provide great SEO, just as good or better than a larger firm? It’s possible because SEO is not simply the investment of the amount of time spent on the account, but knowledge. For instance, what if Amit Singhal, Andy Beal and Matt Cutts (I said what if) started a company? Just the three of them. We’d have a really small agency run by really amazing people! Call it “The ABC’s of SEO.”

Matt is well known for the advice he has given about SEO, and prior to his sabbatical from Google last year he was prolific with his posts about SEO and providing insights. I know I wasn’t the only one who waited anxiously for his next post to glean what Google’s latest algorithmic change would be.

What can I say about Amit? Until February of this year, he was the head of Google’s core ranking team. If anyone understands search it is Amit. His 15 years at Google have not only given him a unique perspective on search and how it works, but also on a variety of topics such as speech retrieval, question answering, and automatic text summarization as well as document ranking, document routing/filtering, and IR. And did I mention the man has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell?

Now Andy, okay, he already has his own company, but we are building our dream company so we need to round it out with reputation management, and Andy has that covered in spades. You might be asking yourself why does his name sound so familiar? Well, you’ve seen him on ABC News, CNBC and NPR. He’s everywhere as the expert on internet marketing and SEM.

So, is it the size of the company or the quality of their work? Neil Patel, who is kind of a big deal in SEO, says there are nine components for an effective SEO team. Nine. I’m going to summarize Neil’s blog here in case you don’t click on the link. You have to have someone to manage your SEO; you need someone to create great content; you need a great designer (he does specify a great designer so you might want to forget the neighbor kid unless they are really, really good!). Plus you need PR and link building; you need technical experts (see above), developers, an account manager (I guess the SEO manager is out getting coffee – a lot), email and social media marketers, and conversion rate optimizers.

I am not discounting that someone needs to be in charge. If you are going to do SEO for your company, you want someone to take ownership. Unless you have a really big company, you won’t need multiple managers. Small businesses will find that one person will wear multiple hats.

In reading the post I found that there was a lot of overlap in the nine key areas. For instance, a good web site developer will handle a lot of what is needed automatically. It’s just good practice. A good content writer will also work with their clients to determine what their keywords are and keep those in mind when writing content.

So you have to decide. You have a firm that is larger so they might have more bandwidth, and they’ll tell you they have “more” credentials just because they are larger. Or you have a firm that is smaller, and they might work smarter. They might just focus on those things they think are most important for your company.

Is the focus on the few rather than the many? A good manager doesn’t need a backup manager. PR, email and social – I’m glad they were included, but as someone with a marketing background, I can assure you I don’t want these run by my SEO company. I want them run by a marketing, advertising, and PR guru. The SEO company can give input, but not the other way around. That would be like asking the SEO company to tile my bathroom, an area where they have no expertise.

You can pick a large company, but then they want to do things beyond SEO. They want to control everything you do. Or you can pick a small company with expertise in SEO that will focus on your SEO.

With a large firm, you don’t get more credentials than the ABC’s of the world, or more ability to show results. If I have to pick large or small, I’ll pick my dream firm, “The ABC’s of SEO” of Amit, Beal, and Cutts. (Okay, it was a stretch.) The ABC’s may be small, but I bet they know their SEO, and I’ll do just fine.

4 Examples of Calls to Action and Why You Should Have One

June 27, 2014
by Robin Moss

First things first, let me define what a Call to Action (CTA) is: asking someone to do something or to take an action. This is pretty simple. You can ask them to subscribe to your newsletter, download your eBook, call for a quote, subscribe to your blog, etc. Some CTAs actually ask for the sale! Through your Call to Action you get to connect with people who visit your web site and continue the conversation. The hope of course is to convert visitors to your site into customers.

What are some specific examples of CTAs:
1. Not every sale is made on the first visit to your site, but getting people to subscribe to your blog or your newsletter you get the opportunity to connect with them over and over again. On The PerfectFit site you can subscribe to their blog on every page of the web site.

2. Green Peridot wanted visitors to their site to be able to book an appointment directly from the site, ergo the Request Appointment Call to Action which allows people to connect with them without having to go to the next step of picking up the phone.

3. eCommerce sites are usually big users of Calls to Actions – notice on the Polychem Coatings site the Buy Now and Email Us buttons, both ways of connecting to their customers or potential customers and driving sales.

Addison Arbor Web Site Design

4. As every non-profit will tell you, the most important thing is to have people support them. Addison Arbor has a Donate Call to Action on every page.

Why Should You Have a Call to Action on Your Site:

That is simple. CTAs help you generate sales and generate leads. Obviously a button that says “Buy Now” helps increase sales. A button that says request a quote might push someone to get a quote, that quote could lead to your next sale! People who go to your site want to have an easy way to take the next step – an easy way to book their appointment, to continue to receive information.

A Call to Action can “push” someone to donate immediately to your great cause, or to buy your product. A CTA won’t guarantee more sales, but it definitely won’t hurt them!

Does Social Media Break Things?

February 6, 2014
by Robin Moss

When breaking news happens where do you find it? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Social Media has changed the face of the newsroom and the way all businesses well, do business. Traditional news media often learn about events from Twitter. Businesses make major announcements on Social Media, Twitter announced their IPO on Twitter!

I had the opportunity to listen to Ron Corning of WFAA (the local Dallas, Texas ABC affiliate) speak about this very topic. Now news anchors often hear that the news they deliver is old – I saw that on Facebook yesterday! The one thing our daily broadcaster can bring is the sense of community and bringing it all together in one place. Mr. Corning not only brings local and national stories, but through his outreach helps provide free colonoscopies to the uninsured.

Social media can provide you with the joy of being the first to know the story, often before your local news station has even learned about the story. When US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson the first reports were not from a traditional reporter, they were found on Twitter. And the “iconic” photo – it was taken with an iPhone by a bystander and posted on Twitter.

When Osama bin Laden was captured the entire event was live tweeted – quite by accident – by Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) and later picked up by the media. It was a watershed moment. A secret attack closely followed on Twitter.

The Boston Marathon bombing, while obviously there were reporters on scene, the story unfolded on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. Right down to the announcement that the Boston Police had captured the bombing suspect, you guessed it, on Twitter.

And now Twitter is flooded with details from the Sochi Games about hotel rooms not quite ready for prime time…. It appears that the one thing that is working is social media!

Now how does this relate to your business you ask? The first thing many people do in the morning is check their social media accounts. How can you as a business ignore the place your customers go to first thing in the morning and the last thing at they do before they go to sleep? Marketers have always said you need to be where your clients are, and your clients are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

Okay, so you can’t be on every social media platform, I get it. You need to “pick your battles”. You just can’t ignore social media. When you started your business you got business cards, then you “finally” got a web site. Now you have to do social media. Who can forget how Oreo capitalized on social media when the lights went out at the Superdome last year during the “big game”. Yet another watershed moment.

You need to be where the breaking news is happening. Or better yet, you need to be the breaking news!

Geotagging – Off is Cooler Than On!

August 30, 2013
by Robin Moss

Geotagging – once again a hot topic in the mobile arena. Geotags add GPS coordinates to your photos along with a myriad of other information. This means that all of your photos have a tag that can tell everyone (with the click of a mouse) where that photo was taken within 15 feet. Which is why everyone is concerned about geotagging. Again. Everyone should be concerned about geotagging. I turned location services off on my camera over a year ago, it is really simple to do on most smartphones.

The reason you want to turn off geotagging is that while all that information is really cool when you go back years later to view your vacation pictures, when an unsavory type is tracking your child on the Internet you don’t want them to easily find where you take every picture of your child (right down to the school, or the bedroom of your house).

While some experts suggest turning off your phones GPS I think that is extreme. Once your GPS is off your maps don’t work, and I find that the maps come in very, very handy when I’m lost. Also, without the GPS turned on Find My Phone becomes inoperable. I think it is better to turn off the geotagging on your camera and on any other apps that you don’t want to use geotagging.

So how do you turn off geotagging? Well this depends on your phone. If you have an iPhone go to Settings – Privacy – Locations Services and then Turn your Camera to Off. If you have an app like Camera! you might want to turn it off as well.

If you have a an Android or Blackberry you can check out this awesome video by CNet! If you have a Windows 8 phone check out these directions. For other phone models, just check Google – Google can help you find anything!

Simplicity

June 14, 2013
by Robin Moss

ribit took our cue from Apple and Jonathan Ive and their new iOS 7 design. We have moved away from using a skeuomorphic design to one that simply reflects ribit’s desire to make the web easy to use and beautiful. It is all about simplicity, starting with our redesigned logo. She is still a frog, and yes she is still a girl frog, just in a simpler form.

And our new site, as you can see, is cleaner, faster, easier to navigate and yes – responsive! Our mobile site is very clean, and looks almost identical to our desktop version. It is quick to load (yes Google, we heard you talk about load times) and we worked hard to make sure that everything was optimized.

In keeping with our new theme of simplicity we utilized off-canvas navigation on the mobile version of our site. We thought this was a bit more interesting than the traditional menus and we also get a bit more creative with our site. Now we can give our clients choices!

The other thing we implemented with this site was making the social media icons a bit more prominent. We hope this means that you will share our posts more. Now that our new site is up I plan on blogging a bit more, so come back often.

Wander through the site, check it out on your smartphone and let us know what you think!

Should You Mobilize Your Web Site

November 16, 2012
by Robin Moss

We get a lot of people asking if they should mobilize their web sites these days and I have to say that our answer is a resounding YES! Having your site mobilized is imperative. You need your site to work everywhere your clients are.

More and more of your clients are on smartphones and tablets. In March of 2012 Comscore reported that 106 million people in the U.S. were using smartphones and in June of 2012 eMarketer predicted that the U.S. tablet market would double to nearly 70 million users. This is not a market you can ignore!

When it comes to mobilizing your site you have choices – you can decide to create a .mobi site. This is a stand-alone site that is created just for smartphone users. You can create an app (once again a separate entity). Or you can create your site using responsive design.

ribit creates their sites using responsive design for several reasons. First and foremost you only have one site to maintain. If you decide to develop a .mobi site or an app, when you make changes to your main web site you will also need to make changes to the .mobil site / app for consistency. We find it is much simpler to have one database to deal with, and the ability to keep the integrity of the design. Yes it can be technically challenging, but that is what makes life fun!

But can you make the site have a responsive design, have cool features and be visually appealing? Of course you can. I have three very different examples. First Addison Arbor Foundation. They came to us needing a site with a calendar, eCommerce and a blog that would highlight their mission to promote and enhance a sustainable, natural environment in Addison. The site need to look equally as good on desktops, smartphones and tablets. We designed a responsive site using WordPress.

Web Site

Smartphone

Tablet

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As you can see the site looks the same (yet different). While the interface changes to accommodate the mobile environment, the design is not lost and all their features (calendar, etc.) still function perfectly.

My second example is The PerfectFit. They wanted a visually clean site, easy to navigate and they wanted to highlight their blog – hence the blog slider on the home page. Now you might think it would be difficult to make that feature translate to mobile, with a little finesse we were able to implement the blog slider on all platforms!

Web Site

Smartphone

Tablet

[divider]
There are more differences between the visual “look” of The PerfectFit layouts on desktop vs. smartphone vs. tablet than on some of our other designs. ribit decided to make the navigation completely accessible on the tablet version while still highlighting the blog slider on the tablet version rather than use a drop down. This functionality is easy for the user (touch vs. drop down) while still visually appealing.

The final example is The Green Chemical Store who came to us wanting to have a site that highlights their products in a catalog, allows you to easily contact them with questions about their industry and of course, have a blog. The final result works on both the desktop and on mobile devices.

The Green Chemical Store designed by ribit

Web Site

Smartphone

Tablet

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Social Media Day 2012 – Video for the DIY

June 30, 2012
by Robin Moss

I’m celebrating Social Media Day today at DFW Rocks Social Media speaking about Video for the DIY. It is a really fun topic since I am definitely a do-it-myself kind of person! I like to use my iPhone, my laptop (I have a MacBook Air) and my desktop (an iMac). You can, of course do video on a Windows PC, I just prefer a Mac.

I do my video blogs using my built-in iSight on my desktop computer, edit it in iMove and upload it to YouTube. For today’s event I used my iPhone to interview a few people using FLIMIC Pro ($3.99) which not only lets you shoot awesome video, it lets you upload directly to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Tumblr, Dropbox, or FTP the video.

I like uploading the video to Dropbox so I can edit the video in iMovie. In a live 30 minute presentation you don’t get to do a lot of editing (especially if you want time to take questions)! Once the video looks great you save it and upload the video to YouTube. When it is on your YouTube channel you can easily embed it in your WordPress blog (or any html page) using either the embed code which YouTube provides or you can use one of the many YouTube plugins. I use the Artiss YouTube plugin, but there are many you can choose from.

I want to thank Victoria Wagner and Mark Neace for being good sports about being interviewed for this video!

I hope this was a helpful look into Social Media 2012 – Vide0 for the DIY!

Leap into Video Marketing

June 28, 2012
by Robin Moss

Yes, I’ve taken the leap into video marketing. After working with many of my clients to make and post videos on their web sites, I’ve finally taken my own advice and made one for ribit. So I hope you enjoy this one minute video explaining the advantages of leaping into video marketing.