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Project Management: Frequently Avoided Questions

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We’ve all been there, down in the dumps, confused about our client’s or boss’s wants and needs. We’ve all paced around struggling with questions that we couldn’t possibly begin to answer. So ask those questions, get the right information, and produce the best results for your team!
This blog will be part of a two part series that discusses Frequently Avoided Questions in two facets: Client Facing, and Employee Facing. I’ll tackle the thoughts we’ve all had when working on a project with a client as well as directly with your employees. Part One will delve into the questions you might be afraid to ask your clients. But it’s best to ask all of your questions for optimal Project Management, so let’s begin!

1. What are your expectations for our project?

Whether you’ve just begun to outline the plan for an upcoming project, or if you’re six months into the process, examining and determining clear goals and objective is priority number one. So maybe you’re thinking, “Ok, but what if we’ve had the goals outlined and the methodology keeps changing?”, have no fear! Simply ask the question again. Neither the client or the provider (Project Manager) wants to finish a project that’s nonsensical. You wouldn’t build a window just to lay bricks over the top and then expect your customers to be able to see your business through this nonexistent window. Reexamining the goals of the project and clearly defining the “Why?” to every project can go a long way. If you can’t proudly gleam at what you’re going to be doing, reassess.

2. What are some timeline goals we should be working towards?

Time! The ever closing window of opportunity. Don’t let that window slam down on your hand! Take control of the tasks that should be completed to finish the project on time. If you’re going to be developing an outdoor swimming pool, chances are, the deadline coincides with Memorial Day. But not all deadlines are as easily known. Create a space for your client that shows your flexibility and understanding of critical deadlines. Check out this blog from Mashable about Document Collaboration tools to see how you can connect on notes, rough drafts of documents needed for your project, and more.

Checklist

3. How can we do better?

The most important question to ask yourself, and your client, is “How can we do better?” No matter how smoothly the project has gone along, the level of stress derived from the project, or how the finished project compares to previous ones, it’s best to self-reflect and reach out for help doing so. Creating the habit of analyzing the outcome of every project will help to create a happier and cohesive workforce and client rapport. Understanding your team’s downfalls will help to correct them and provide support to assure your business thrives.

Frequently Avoided Questions Asked

So you’ve gathered the expectations of the project, worked to uphold the timelines in place, and reflected upon the shortcomings of yourself as a project manager and your team as a whole, now it’s time to tackle your next project with even more ambition and determination as last time! There are plenty of ways to assess your project’s goals and to create a seamless plan for success. Most importantly, find time to evaluate every project and work to better in the future.

For more advice or information regarding Project Management, Contact Us today or leave us a comment below!

Giving Thanks to SEO

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Thanksgiving is a popular Holiday for many Americans. The abundance of delicious foods and the gathering of family and friends is certainly something to get excited about. Traditionally in most households, members are sitting around the table saying what they are thankful for in their lives. Here at DaBrian Marketing, we wanted to give thanks for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by offering some tips to assure your website performs well.

Cover the Entire Table of Local Listings

When you think of Thanksgiving dinner, you imagine a table covered in food, right? The same is true for an effective SEO campaign in regards to local listings. Local listings are becoming an increasingly important ranking factor. People are frequently using search engines with local intent. In fact, a study by Google shows that 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information such as a business’s address, hours, and products/services offered.

Imagine your listings as different dishes. Being listed on Google my Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local listings should be your top priority. This is the main dish, the turkey. But don’t forget about the side dishes either. Being listed on other platforms such as Yellow pages, Yelp, Foursquare, etc, help as well. These are your stuffing, your mashed potatoes, and your cranberry sauce. The more you have covered, the better your meal (website’s performance) will be.

When preparing your Thanksgiving feast, you want to make sure everything is perfect. Before you place the food on the table, you should give it a taste test just to make sure. Similarly to SEO, you need to make sure your listings are perfect as well. This means claiming and verifying your listings, as well as making sure the listings are completely filled out and are consistent with each other.

Know Your Audience: Invite Relevant Traffic to Dinner

Thanksgiving isn’t just about food, it’s also about spending time with those who matter the most. When planning your celebration, you invite the most important people in your life. The same is true for SEO. As a business owner, those who matter most to your business’s success are your customers. So how do you invite them to your site? Well, it all starts with your content. If you regularly develop great content that speaks to your audience’s interests, relevant traffic will increase.

Besides stuffing our faces at the dinner table, we also engage in conversations with our family and friends. They speak to us, and naturally, we respond back. This same formula should be followed for social media. As stated in my previous blog about SEO predictions for 2016, content marketing and SEO have merged. This means that businesses must be active on their social media accounts, providing great content frequently, and engaging with their followers. An effect social media strategy will help develop relationships with your followers, which typically leads to them sharing your information with others, increasing your brand’s awareness. All of this comes back full circle to an increase in customers and sales.

Stuffing? - Yes; Keyword Stuffing - NO!

Now we all know stuffing is a must have dish at Thanksgiving. However, for SEO, keyword stuffing is a must avoid. In April of 2012, Google released the algorithm change known as “Penguin” designed to penalize for keyword spamming. While there is technically no optimal percentage for keyword density (how often your keyword appears within your content), your content should sound natural. Here’s an example of what not to do:

“At DaBrian Marketing, we offer Pay Per Click services. Our Pay Per Click services help businesses drive traffic to their site. For more information on Pay Per Click, please contact our Pay Per Click consultant.”

The use of Pay Per Click is obviously being overused. Not only does it sound spammy to the user, but your site will be penalized by search engines. Here’s an example of how to adjust your content to avoid keyword stuffing:
“At DaBrian Marketing, we offer Pay Per Click (PPC) services that are proven to help businesses drive traffic to their site. For more information, please contact our PPC consultant.”

SEO Tips - keyword stuffing

Invite Your Guests Back and Tell Them to Bring a Friend

So the dinner went well and you and your guests had a great time. More than likely you are going to send invites to those guests again. The same mentality should be true for SEO. You should send follow up emails to users that request or fill out any information. This will give you an opportunity to give more information about your business and to set yourself apart from the competition. If done properly, these will more than likely lead to more conversions.

People usually do not wish to hear others critique their cooking, but as a business owner, you want reviews. Traditionally, business owners have cringed at the thought of their customers giving reviews out of fear that they’ll be negative. While a negative review may not shed the best light on your business, it offers you an opportunity to humanize your brand by listening to your customer’s concerns, which leads to trust being established. In fact, A study by Reevoo, a social commerce company, found that 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative scores, while 30% suspect censorship or fake reviews when they don’t see anything negative at all. Reviews give business owners an opportunity to adjust their recipe and make things right through great customer service.

Conclusion:

An effective SEO campaign is something a business will be thankful for. Not only will it help a business’s site perform well in search engines, but it will also help increase traffic, as well as sales. From all of us here at DaBrian Marketing Group, we hope you and your loved ones have a Happy Thanksgiving!

For more advice or information about SEO, please Contact Us today or leave us a comment below!

By: David McDowell

Facebook Search Or Facebook Site Search?

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Facebook Search Or Facebook Site Search? You be the Judge!

After receiving a few questions from our client and prospects on Facebook Search. I wanted to provide some information about Facebook Search, impact to businesses, and opportunities.

Danny Laws, principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group advertising agency in Reading, PA. We do some work in the digital space. Obviously we get a number of questions from our clients as it pertains to conferences that they attend, things that they read, those types of components. More recently we got a call from one of our clients as it pertains to Facebook and Facebook search. It prompted me to put together a brief response to educate those individuals that may or may not be aware of the capabilities on Facebook more specifically. For those of you that don’t know there’s a great opportunity for you to take a look at those pieces, take a look at what’s out there in this space, and connect with a number of different people via Facebook.

One of the things that it’s available on Facebook, and I speak to that and I really trying to show some of that, is people say that Facebook is a search engine. I’ve heard that from a number of clients asking that question and positioning it in that way, because that’s how others that they’ve spoken to, things that they’ve read, conferences that they’ve gone to have positioned Facebook as a search engine. My personal opinion is that Facebook does not operate as a search engine in its entirety because it does not index all of the information, web pages, what have you in the World Wide Web that’s accessible for users. I would however consider Facebook an internal site search component that allows you to search internally inside Facebook to assess information, post videos, what have you, in light of the most recent changes.

Why does it matter to your businesses is the biggest question that I pose to a lot of our clients. One of the big things that I see as an opportunity is very much a potential increase in visibility and creating that exposure around post, around Facebook likes, around Facebook pages in itself, as well as the mobile accessibility. The opportunities here for businesses are very much around relevant content, timely post, whether be seasonal or event based or what’s trending and what’s hot right now in that very moment, and at the same time going back to the mobile components. Facebook pages are making sure that that information is live, relevant, and consistent with your target audience.

If you’re a business that you’re leveraging it within the ability to talk about offerings, to talk about subject matter expertise, to reinforce yourself as a thought leader in this space, let’s be clear, that needs to be done in moderation. Not simply posting about yourself 24/7. Not sharing anyone else’s content. That’s not a successful way to leverage social media in my opinion or the opinion of most of the staff here at DaBrian Marketing Group. But we break it down to the old school rule of thought of rule of thirds and probably expand upon that a little bit more.

The other thing as far as Facebook searches, how can it impact your business? I think post, check-ins for local businesses, and extending that reach and visibility for Facebook via your friends, the public, and for public information photos, what have you, as far as making sure that you can get that message out, clearly differentiate your products and services, and better position your brand within a local market and within your Facebook audience.

The other piece that I want to speak to here is how you align that back to the strategy. If you’re doing Facebook and you’re promoting on Facebook and you’re selling on Facebook it’s got to be a part of a comprehensive strategy which generally goes back to awareness, brand awareness, leads, sales. I’m over simplifying. One of the things that you have to make sure that you do as far as aligning back to those strategic points and those strategic goals and objectives that you talk about as a business is making sure that there’s a tie back as a very specific metric or a group of metrics associated with Facebook to gauge where you’re at with that performance.

Clearly as far as awareness you might look at post, page views, incremental store visits, website activity from Facebook as a generic example. Leads, are you getting contact us, are you getting calls, are you getting event signups, are you getting email subscriptions off of Facebook from the activity and the information that you’re disseminating to your target audience.

Then the last piece here is also that sales component, so Facebook being that it allows you to pat Facebook search and search and look at information. You also have an opportunity for e-commerce and e-commerce categories on Facebook. All of these components in my opinion will have a trickle-down effect across the board within Facebook search. When we talk about Facebook search it should contribute to high level awareness, it should contribute to lead generation to some degree, and it should contribute to sales via Facebook or attributing back to Facebook search or Facebook itself as part of your post, as part of your information that you talked about.

Now in light of that there are definitely some other components that you want to make sure that you take a hard look at and make sure you look at these things quite simply as far as sharing information. Now when you get to Facebook you get to this as a whole and you start to look at what’s available there from a Facebook perspective, as you can see what I’ve done here is very much a search on advertising agencies from where I sit.

Now what I will say to you is that I’ve done a search for advertising agency from my geographic location. Obviously DaBrian Marketing Group shows up there, but there are a number of other agencies within my geographic footprint that have Facebook pages that are not showing up. You need to keep that in mind as you look at Facebook search, that it is merely … It’s also tied to the individual to some degree. As you can see from this search that I’ve done that when I put an agency obviously DaBrian Marketing Group shows there, but there are other elements that are there as well that you definitely want to take into account.

The other thing that I would recommend is taking a look at the information that’s accessible, that’s clearly accessible on Facebook in itself. Facebook has a lot of information as far as what’s there. As you can see it gives you an opportunity for Facebook search to search. Is better than ever according to them. You also have some components as far as how you can search via mobile and see that information. Then finding post that you’ve seen previously on Facebook based upon keywords, phrases, what have you, however you want to define it, and those types of components that you may have remembered when you saw a previous post, and also being able to look and see what’s beyond your news feed is important.

I think that’s where the opportunity presents itself from a business perspective, that if you’ve optimized your Facebook pages, if you’re consistently in this space, if you’re disseminating relevant content that is impactful for your target audience I think that there’s a greater probability for you to see success in that space.

With that being said what I’d like to get across today first and foremost, Facebook search is going to be an opportunity for businesses but it’s going to be dependent upon having a clear strategy, having clear metrics to measure those components, aligning what you’re doing to achieve a goal, whether it be brand awareness, lead generation, what have you, and that with the understanding that Facebook’s search is more of an internal site search functionality and or capability than it is a search engine in itself.

With that being said I wish you the best of luck on social media. Keep an eye out for an updated post on our blog page where we’ll add a few informative links to support the Facebook search component and how others are seeing Facebook search within the industry. Thank you very much. Hope you have a good day and good luck.

How Mobile Friendly Design Impacts Your Website

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Why Should Your Site Be Mobile Friendly?

It is no secret that mobile usage has grown in recent years. Over 20% of Google searches are done on mobile devices, and 25% of internet users conduct their online search on only mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile, do you think it will still show up in the search results? Google updated their search algorithm back in April. Mobile users that use Google, with Google being the most popular search engine, will only see mobile friendly sites. If your site is not mobile, you will not appear in theses results. To read more about the Google algorithm change, check out our blog on it.

Why Mobile Design Matters

So what does all that mean for your business? If your site is not mobile-friendly, you’re completely missing at least 1/4th of potential customers. According to Think with Google, 94% of Americans with smartphones search for local information on mobile. Meaning you’re missing even more potential customers as well as your current customers are having a bad user experience by not being able to find you.

Users will look at products on mobile devices and revisit later on their desktop hoping their shopping cart is synced. The longer it takes for them to check out the more likely they will not complete the sale. In a study by MediaPost, 48% of shoppers that use their phone said that “ease of use” is the most important quality they look for on a mobile site.

bad mobile
Horizontal scrolling, mismatch of colors, forms too small. What not to do.
mobile friendly
Only need to scroll down. Menu stays at the top as you scroll. This is all good.

What To Consider When Designing For Mobile

You want to go mobile friendly now but not sure what to consider. For starters, any buttons and links should be big enough for anyone’s thumb to click and not have issues. Meaning, it needs to be fairly big. Your “Contact Us” form is the same way as the user needs to interact with it. If it is too small, when they click on one thing they will get a different option making them frustrated and have them potentially leave your site.

If a user is on their mobile phone, chances are they are hunting for something specific and your site can only be 1 column. Get rid of excess and unneeded info / elements. For example, if you have a sidebar on every page with info like a form for them to fill out, blog options, register options, it’s best practice to get rid of them for mobile. You don’t need to shorten your content at all, you’re just making all the useful information easier to find.

Got questions about mobile first design? Ask away in the comments below!

Are You Afraid of PPC Advertising?

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With Halloween in a few days, we want to look into why some small business are afraid to run PPC advertising campaigns. After taking a closer look at some of the spooky aspects of PPC, hopefully, you will find that it is not scary, but that Pay per Click is an opportunity to help you increase leads and sales for your business. Here are the top 3 reasons small business are afraid of PPC:

1. Scary Expensive or Scared of Wasting Marketing Budget

Sure you can set a daily and monthly budget to control cost, but that doesn’t mean that it is being used wisely. Did you know that you can schedule your PPC ads to only run during specific hours of the day to maximize the effectiveness of campaigns with limited budgets? In addition, there is geo-targeting for localized businesses, and device specific bidding if mobile or desktop traffic is more valuable for your business. If you are already running PPC, these are a few settings that you might want to check to ensure you are getting the most out of your campaigns.

PPC Advertising Halloween

2. Scary Results (or lack thereof)

As a digital marketing agency, we hear “PPC doesn’t/didn’t work for our company/industry.” Really? Are you sure? Before you dive into doing PPC advertising, set your goals and know how you are measuring success. Are you trying to generate phone calls, form submissions or online ecommerce sales? Whatever the end goal might be, set-up Conversion (or goal) tracking. This can be done within the PPC platform (Google AdWords, Bing Ads, etc.), but ideally it is set-up through web analytics (Google Analytics.) Connecting web analytics to your PPC will allow you to see beyond the basic Impression and Click data, and uncover if there is a problem with your landing page(s) or conversion funnel/process.

If you are already running PPC but are not currently tracking conversions, then this is something that you should set-up ASAP. We cannot imagine anything scarier than spending marketing dollars and having no way of knowing/measuring the return!

3. Scary Complicated and/or Too Time Consuming

Pay per Click may seem simple and easy at first, but there is a reason Google requires a person to pass 2 of 6 different PPC proficiency exams to earn their AdWords Certified status. To properly setup and manage an account one needs to know the ins and outs of the AdWords platform and understand how search (both paid and organic) works. While there are several tools available to help make monitoring and management easier, these are only tools. The person using the tools still needs the skills and know how to make the most out of the tools. For instance, a carpenter can do a lot more with a saw and hammer then a chef can.

If you don’t have the time to learn, set-up and manage your own PPC advertising, we highly recommend that you seek help from someone certified (Google AdWords or Bing Ads) to help manage your PPC. Before you seek the help of just anybody, make sure that you have FULL access to your account and that if for any reason you decide to fire/disconnect from them managing your PPC, that you get to keep your account. Because the second scariest thing we can think up is not having any insight/access to your own PPC account.

Even though PPC can be scary and be a daunting task for some companies, if you take the time to truly understand the value of PPC and its ability to gain leads and sales and reach potential customers, then there should be no reason to be afraid of PPC advertising.