Unfortunately, this is Social Media Marketing for many: Look deeply into my eyes… you are feeling veeeery sleepy… sleeeeepy… deeeeper… deeeeeeeeper… relax and let the social media mystique take you to a happier place. Deeeeper… Dee… Yeah, sometimes I feel like social media has cast some kind of spell over businesses, specifically throughout the marketing departments of some companies. It’s easy to be seduced. It’s easy to be swayed by viral videos, tweets, and blogs with thousands of readers. It’s easy to think that social media can be the magic pill to fix marketing mishaps. But in our passionate pursuit
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I had the honor of heading down to southern Iowa last night to talk to the Entrepreneurship students at South West Iowa Community College (SWiCC). My charge was easy enough; explain the steps I’d taken through entrepreneurship and how branding affected my decisions and the development of my business. But then I thought a bright-eyed group of burgeoning entrepreneurs deserved more than my typical “TRUE Branding 101” spiel. This presentation required a little “from the heart?” A little “I’ve been in your shoes?” Maybe this needed to be a little more personal. Of course, branding for entrepreneurs is paramount. “Without
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Mobile-friendly? What, you say? Yes, over night, the powers at Google changed their algorithms for search to require all sties to be “Mobile-friendly” or be excluded from mobile search. You can read more about their changes here: http://cre8wow.me/1yLU6XM This change is a great advantage to you and all of those that keep their sites current with search compatibility best practices. As Google enacts these changes, sites NOT mobile-friendly will no longer be indexed for mobile search results. Yes, you heard right… NON MOBILE-FRIENDLY SITES WILL NOT SHOW UP IN MOBILE SEARCHES AFTER TODAY! While standard desktop search will not be
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Brand communications strategies vary from company to company. But one constant is the need for a clear voice and a suitable score. How do you keep your brand voice in tune? After almost a decade of listening to the “solo brand voice,” we’re seeing a resurgence in the corporate “brand choir.” With that comes the need for better understanding, better storytelling and better management of corporate brands from the top down. Whether B2B or B2C, diversified corporations with multiple possible brand story-lines have a challenge ahead of them. And the need for consistency and a brand-centric communications plan is paramount
More Marketing News →‘Tis the season for pointless Email … Email Marketing! Email, email everywhere, but not a click to link… Okay that sounded better in my head… We have a love/hate relationship with email. Marketers love it for it’s economy, it’s simplicity and it’s tracking potential. Consumers love it for about a day and then get irritated when their in-boxes are swamped with “Awesome Offers” and “Amazing Deals!” Marketers and business owners also wring their hands and fret over each and every email they send, wondering, “What do I write about next?” or “Does it say the right thing,” or “…make the
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We normally don’t feature client work in the blog, but we’re really excited for the Website redesign we just finished, and we consider the process we took for this client one of the most important learning experiences we’ve had in a long time. When it comes to Website Design, you may find opportunities where you least expected. {The Client} hadn’t asked for the site updates nor did we expect to just walk in with a project and have the client say “Sure, we’ll spend some money with you! What the hell?” Canine Craze Performance Center, a professional dog training and
More Marketing News →Website security is no small part of providing great web development for clients. As a service to our customers, Spoke Communications is constantly striving to protect not only the aesthetic integrity of your Websites, your communications and connectivity, but the data therein. In recent months, the “hacking world” has become very aggressive with attempts on accessing the servers, Content Management Systems (CMS), and data within Websites around the Internet. These attacks have caused immeasurable amounts of damage to websites all over the World, and in turn the ability for companies or individuals to be effectively, efficiently, and economically represented online.
More Marketing News →With the the latest changes in SEO algorithms, Google, Bing and Yahoo are FINALLY catching on to ever-evolving black hat “questionable” SEO tactics. With that, “Content Marketing” (some prefer to call blogging) is becoming less effective and harder to measure success. So what is a digital marketer supposed to do? Email Marketing is a tried and true way to reach your target audience, drive traffic to your website and grow brand, authority and market share for your company. In this still young digital age, email, just a spry 20-something, still has it’s grip on businesses and consumers alike. What do
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Vine Marketing – #6SecondMarketing by The Brand Chef. Vine-002 – Basic Web Marketing To play the video with sound, hover over the upper left corner and turn it on. 😉 If you have to be reminded to have a PHONE NUMBER on the front page of your website, you might need something more than just marketing help. We just earned a client because of that reason (as well as being generally awesome). The client actually said, “We had 4 marketing companies we wanted to call this week and yours was the only one with the phone number readily available on
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Last week I worked up a quick post to prove a point. It was a simple demonstration that, with laser-focused SEO, results can be achieved MUCH FASTER than expected. Often times we hear, “With time and patience, we can get you to the first page of search engines within a few months…” Yes, in most cases, I have to agree, but, who has a few months to wait?!? For certain terms, broad-based and popular, getting results on search engines does take time. But think about your brand. Think about the specifics that make you unique to your target audience. If
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