Digital Posers

I'm sure if you work in interactive for a full service agency you can relate to the frustratoins that occur when a traditional media person or a traditional account person goes ahead and put a budget/estimate and/or timeline to a project that is dealing with online components.

I understand that there are urgent requests that come in from clients but that does not give the traditional person the right to go ahead and plan on your behalf.


For one, they do not know the amount of bandwidth you have available in your digital design and development schedule. Setting a delivery date can come back and bite both traditional and digital in the ass.

Two, they (traditionalists) dont know how to estimate out digital costs so if you end up going over estimate you(digital) are just going to have to eat that time.

Thirdly, it undermines your position on the interactive side.

So what should you do if you are a victim? Confront this person and place a little slap on the wrist. I know a lot of you dont want to make waves but you have to stand-up for your department or else you will simply become a tool to your agency rather than a strategic partner.

I am really getting tired of non-digital folks 'dabbling' in interactive just so they can put something on their resumes stating that they have interactive experience or because they think its no big deal...Especially at the expense of my team and our departments bottom line.

Be sure to call out what that person did and how those actions can dramatically effect your design and development calendars along with producing a sub par product and service. And that any future digital planning should be done with involvement from someone in your department.

As with any urgent request, they want it done yesterday and that can lead to disaster.


Dont get me wrong. I am all for cross-training and working together but as with any relationship this takes the effort of both parties.

So dont hesitate to stand-up and speak your part. You will save yourself a lot of frustration and misery in the future. And so what if certain folks end up disliking you. You are not there to make friends. You are there to make a difference.


Stewart Severino
Tweet me

sseverino@gmail.com

Starbucks-Power of Marketing

Starbucks marketing folks have trained the consumer well.
I am not a big Starbucks fan but I occasionally run in when I need some caffeine. Today, as usual I asked for a regular coffee, 'grande'...i paused for a second to remember grande=medium.
The lady behind the counter gave me a strange look and replied, "regular ? Thats boring...You look a more exciting guy than that".
I replied, "Na, just regular coffee, please". And turned around to the guy behind me and said, "what ever happend to just a regular cup of Joe, meduim or large, not Grande???
"The stranger agreed and began telling me how long his waiting time has gotten because of people ordering Cafe Macchiatos and stuff with steamed low fat milk".

You get the point.
The Starbucks worker looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole. Which was not my intention.

My point is, the consumer has gotten so trained by the marketing and advertising efforts of Starbucks throughout the years that when someone like me walks in to a Starbucks store and asks for a regular cup of coffee, we get looked at strangely and get questioned if that is really what we want to order.
Good job Starbucks .

Stewart Severino
Tweet me

sseverino@gmail.com

Search Engine Optimization Tips SUMMARY

It is simply not enough to use a bunch of keywords within your content. "But its still important for search engine ranking" Quote from maddock media .

You must know who your target audience is. Identify them. Make a list of the different personas that your business services. When you have identified each persona you can write content speficif to each one. Providing help to each persona.

Don't write about your products and services! Keep it interesting for your potential customer.
Think about what questions or problems they may need help with. That's how you write your content. Just be helpful. Don't write any jargon, keep it simple.


Help your customer become savvy to your industry. In the end they will see you as the expert in your field.

Then they will come to you for advice.

To learn more: About Author Stewart Severino, a marketing consultant who specializes in helping business owners and company's with marketing and advertising utilizing different customer touch points. Stewart is the author of the educational blog covering the topics in online, mobile and direct marketing. To learn more about this topic please visit, http://www.maddockmedia.com/

Search Engine Optimization -Tip 4- Optimize Pages

Optimize your Pages -

This can be done in conjunction with the writing. In fact it should be done at then to save time. I made this a separate step so that I could outline the finer points of optimization.

Provided that you are following the guidelines found in tip 3, your pages should already have good keyword density, now is the time to improve that optimization by adding optimized meta tags.
First is to write the meta description tag. While many engines will index thousands of characters in your description, I recommend no more than a couple hundred characters. That is about how long this paragraph is.
The meta description should be a readable sentence or two with the same keywords that you wrote the page for. In other words, the same phrases should appear in the meta description as the body. They should also appear as near to the front of the tag as possible however don’t sacrifice readability for this.


If the tag doesn’t make sense with them at the front, then reorganize until they do make sense. Be sure to use proper punctuation as well.
Also preferred but not mandatory is a meta keywords tag. While none of the major engines use this tag, other smaller ones, and some specialty engines do use the meta keywords tag. If your target uses one of these engines then it makes sense to have that tag in place.
Also, with the keywords tag there is a lot of debate over using commas or not. Personally I do not use commas. I just combine the phrases and remove duplicate words. For example, if the page is about real estate, water front property and property tax,then the keywords tag could be: “real estate water front property property tax.”
... go to tip 5



To learn more: About Author Stewart Severino, a marketing consultant who specializes in helping business owners and company's with marketing and advertising utilizing different customer touch points. Stewart is the author of the educational blog covering the topics in online, mobile and direct marketing. To learn more about this topic please visit, http://www.maddockmedia.com/

Search Engine Optimization- Tip 3 Content

Write your own pages-
Now that you have your keywords its time to write, or re-write, your content to make them more appealing to the target audience, inserting the key phrases you’ve selected whenever possible.
Keep in mind that you don’t want to over do it. Also now is a good time to ensure you have proper keyword density’s and page length.
I recommend pages that are 100-250pages long.

On this 100-250 word page you should have 2 or 3 occurrences of a key phrase, and you want to limit the key phrases used to 2 or 3. In other words you could have between 4 and 9 occurrences of all your key phrases per page. This should provide you with optimal keyword density.
Above all, make sure the pages are readable. Don’t optimize for optimization’s sake. If only one key phrase applies to the page, then only use one.

...go to tip 4

To learn more:
About Author Stewart Severino, a marketing consultant who specializes in helping business owners and company's with marketing and advertising utilizing different customer touch points. Stewart is the author of the educational blog covering the topics in online, mobile and direct marketing. To learn more about this topic please visit, http://www.maddockmedia.com/

Search Engine Optimization- Tip 2 Keywords

Pick the right keywords-
This may be the most difficult part of your journey, especially if you don’t fit the target profile. That is, picking the keywords they will use to find your site.

DO NOT GUESS!!
You can start by using free tools like FREE KEYWORD SEARCH. It gives you a good place to start picking keywords.
Start with a phrase you know your site is about (i.e. if you are in Real Estate in Houston, TX, then simply put “real estate Houston, Texas” in the search box). The tool will then not only return other related words, but also the search volumes associated with each for the previous 3 month.
A word of caution however: Sometimes, depending on when you use the tool, the search volumes are from a couple months ago. So if your product is seasonal based, the numbers may actually be lower or higher than represented.
Don’t be afraid to get a few hundred words to start. Remember, right now you are just gathering ideas – phrases that could drive traffic to your site. They aren’t all necessarily being used by your target customer.



At this point you want as many phrases on your list as possible. Don’t worry, you will cull the list pretty quickly.
Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always as for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.
A good rule of thumb would be to chose about one phrase per page. That doesn’t mean that you will only have one page per phrase, but it gives you a good target. So if your site is 300 pages, consider having a list of 300 phrases.
...go to tip 3


To learn more: About Author Stewart Severino, a marketing consultant who specializes in helping business owners and company's with marketing and advertising utilizing different customer touch points. Stewart is the author of the educational blog covering the topics in online, mobile and direct marketing. To learn more about this topic please visit, http://www.maddockmedia.com/

Search Engine Optimization- Tip 1

Identify the type of Persona-


Define your target audience.

It is vital that you identify your audience. You do not want to cater to the WHOLE. You want to center your content around a specific audience and fulfill their needs.

If you don’t write to the crowd you aren’t going to get too much business.

The best thing is to write down who you think the target is. Be as detailed as possible. For example, your target may be a 30-45 year old male, in executive management, who drives a Merceds. He makes $175,000 per year and has a Masters degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need. You should be able to picture this person in your mind. Not just the abstract idea of hm, but a physical look as well. The better you can picture them in your mind the more successful you will be.
Once you know who you target is the next step is choosing keywords.
...go to tip 2

To learn more:
About Author Stewart Severino, a marketing consultant who specializes in helping business owners and company's with marketing and advertising utilizing different customer touch points. Stewart is the author of the educational blog covering the topics in online, mobile and direct marketing. To learn more about this topic please visit, http://www.maddockmedia.com/

Mobile Marketing for Businesses

First consider the mobile phone. It is by far the biggest factor when considering mobile marketing. The mobile phone is personal, you take it wherever you go and you can't picture being without it. Remember, since this decive is so personal you MUST always request and gain the permission to communicate with a customer. If you dont you end up invading their personal space.
We can break mobile marketing down easily leaving out ringtones and downloadable wallpaper.
1)Mobile Customer Service
I'm sure you have seen these services around; Bank alerts, News and weather updates, Flight or Hotel alerts, etc...

All of the above serve 3 common threads.
1) You must have permission to communicate to your customer. They must give their consent.
2) You must give them the opportunity to Opt Out.
3) You are giving your customer more CHOICE. You are providing them with an aditional way of doing something. They get to choose one that is most convenient for them.



To learn more:
About Author
Stewart Severino, a marketing consultant who specializes in helping business owners and company's with marketing and advertising utilizing different customer touch points. Stewart is the author of the educational blog covering the topics in online, mobile and direct marketing. Check Stewart Severino out at