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Social Media & Web Marketing Courses in Maine

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Although the leaves aren’t changing yet, they will be soon (sniff!) and that means that classes are getting back in session.

This year I’ll be teaching not one but two classes at the University of Southern Maine:

Web Marketing for Small Business
In this 4 week course you’ll learn how to build an effective web presence for your small business or non-profit. You’ll learn about search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, blogging, social media, e-commerce, traffic reports, and how to build a web site that generates leads and makes sales. (Please be aware, though: this is NOT an HTML course. You’re not learning how to build a web site, but rather how to make a web site that will build your business.)

4 Thursdays, September 30-October 28, 7-9 p.m.
$215 (8 contact hours/ 0.8 CEUs)
Abromson Center, 88 Bedford Street, USM Portland campus

I’m also teaching a brand new course this fall as well:

Social Media Marketing for Businesses (and the People That Run Them)
Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are certainly popular, but should they be important parts of your marketing strategy? In this two-class course, you’ll learn how these and other popular social media sites can increase the online visibility of your business, and put you in contact with new audiences.

You’ll learn how to setup and optimize profiles on the most popular, influential sites, how to connect with people in the social media sphere, and how to measure your success. You’ll learn the do’s and don’ts of social media, how to build an audience, and how to listen to what people are saying about you and your business.

We’ll talk about social networking, blogging, online video and all the tools your company needs to master this new arena of marketing.

2 Wednesdays, November 10 and 17, 7-9 p.m.
$115 (4 contact hours/ 0.4 CEUs)
USM Library Computer Lab

Hope to see you there!

Rich Brooks
You Can Call Me “Teach”

Photo credit: Lee Nachtigal

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Posted in Analytics, Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Email Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing, flyte news | 2 Comments »

Machine Translations: Can Google Translate Parlez-vous français for Your Web Site?

Friday, August 13th, 2010

For years when people asked me about creating translations for their web site I suggested that if it was critical to their business they hire a translator to create secondary pages on their site in the languages they were targeting, especially if their site was full of jargon or idioms. (“Idiom, sir?”) There are plenty of examples of bad translations out there, be they machine or human created:

  • Our Mongolian hotpot buffet guarantees you will be able to eat all you wish until you are fed up.
  • Specialist in women and other diseases.
  • Poo Ping: Thai Cuisine

are just a few of the examples I found online. However, recently I had been reading that Google and other companies had made some giant steps forward by reading human translated documents (often from the UN) and comparing them for better understanding context and language.

So, when Goldbelt Tours, a client of ours, asked for affordable translation we tried Google Translate.

Here is the original page:

At the bottom is the translate bar:

And I chose French:

I especially like the “Contribute Better Translation” feature:

So, does it work? Well, I translated some of the French translation back into English:

Original English:

See it all, do it all, above it all.

Soar to new heights in scenic adventure aboard the Mount Roberts Tramway, Juneau’s top attraction, and experience the best Alaska has to offer.

Translated French:

See it all, do it all, above it all. Voir tout cela, tout faire, par-dessus tout.

Soar to new heights in scenic adventure aboard the Mount Roberts Tramway , Juneau’s top attraction, and experience the best Alaska has to offer. Atteindre de nouveaux sommets dans l’aventure à bord du pittoresque Roberts Tramway du Mont, Haut attraction de Juneau, et l’expérience le meilleur de l’Alaska a à offrir.

Translated English:

See it all, do it all, above everything.

Reaching new heights in adventure on the picturesque Mount Roberts Tramway, Juneau’s top attraction, and experience the best Alaska has to offer.

Final Decision:

Not bad. Now, I wouldn’t want some life saving device instructions translated through Google Translate for fear of being over or under medicated, or ending up with a defibrillator paddle being used on my butt, but for most non-jargony web sites that need to reach an international audience, Google Translate might be the right tool for you.

Rich Brooks
Veillez à suivre Rich Brooks sur Twitter tweets pour son habile.

(Translated back as “Be sure to follow Rich Brooks on Twitter tweets for his skillful.” Apparently there’s still work to be done.)

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Posted in Web Copywriting, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Optimizing Landing Pages – MarketingExperiments Webinar

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

HAND IN HAND IS THE ONLY WAY TO LANDJust finished listening to a webinar on optimizing landing pages put on by Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments. There was some great information in it–some I heard/knew, and some was new to me. Whether you’re looking to increase the leads your web site is generating or to sell more online, there was some sound advice when it comes to landing pages.

BTW, landing pages could be considered any page on your site, but for the purpose of this webinar the focus was on pages designed to get someone to take a desired action, such as request a quote, sign up for an email newsletter, etc. Although not necessary, these pages might be outside the normal navigation of the site, and only linked to from an ad or banner on another page.

  • Don’t overwhelm people with form fields. Keep them as minimal as possible, asking as few questions as possible.
  • Look at value vs. cost in the eyes of your prospects. If the cost (whether it’s time, effort or price) outweighs the perceived value you’re going to fail.

How do you fix this? Reduce the perceived cost and increase the perceived value.

You can reduce the perceived cost by reducing friction. Friction might come from unnecessary length or difficulty on the landing page. Look at your landing pages now. Is there too much text? Too much scrolling? Too many pages to purchase?

You can further decrease perceived cost by quickly answer the visitor’s questions:

  • Where am I?
  • What can I do here?

According to Flint you have “four inches and seven seconds” to answer these questions. If you don’t, your visitor will click the back button and you’ll lose the lead. When someone firsts gets to your landing page there’s a moment of disorientation; confusion is a big contributor to friction, so answering these two questions immediately will increase your conversion rate.

The next big fix is to increase the perceived value of your offering. Do this by identifying and communicating key factors that differentiate your from your competition. Use specific, quantitative & “instantly credible” language. Even if you’re not going head-to-head with your competition, you should still try and be as specific as possible.

I sometimes struggle with this (specificity) myself for our own landing pages. Do our web sites have 4x the awesome sauce of our competitors’ sites? Will signing up for our email newsletter make you 176% more smarterer? I’m still working on those metrics.

Some other bon mots I wrote down:

  • Lose all caps in your headlines…difficult to read and frustrating to visitors.
  • Use a strong headline; big, bold and dramatic.
  • Include at least one paragraph of text, w/bold and/or italicized text to highlight the important ideas. This paragraph needs to overcome the natural cynicism of anyone surfing the net.
  • Use images that draw the eye to the text, not that compete with it.

OK, now I’m off to optimize some of our pages and try some A/B split testing on them. Wish me luck!

Rich Brooks
176% Smarterer

Photo credit: Niffty

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Posted in Web Copywriting, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Web Site Design: The Ugly Baby Syndrome

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Baby SwanOn more than one occasion a person will tell me that they’ve received a lot of compliments on their web design. This in spite of the fact that their home page has cheesy animation, seventeen different fonts, and is a big, hot mess.

The thing is, when was the last time you told someone they had an ugly baby? Now, some people may argue that there’s no such thing as an ugly baby. Those people are wrong.

The bottom line is, even when confronted with a baby who–let’s just say–hasn’t come into their cuteness yet, we don’t let on to the proud parents. We still compliment the baby, and in really rare cases, we might compliment some other aspect of the baby. “What a healthy looking baby!” or “What a head of hair!”

The people who come to your web site and don’t like the design, or are confused by the navigation, or frustrated by the site rarely stick around to tell you. They’re in a hurry to get their questions answered, or rent a lake house, or buy a new stereo at your competitor’s site.

While web design is more than just how pretty your web site is–functionality, ease-of-use, and conversion all play a part–design impacts how people perceive your business and often dictate their first impression of your company.

So, is your web site ugly? I can’t comment on that, but what a head of hair it has!

Rich Brooks
Recovering Ugly Baby

Photo Credit: Amy Friese

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Posted in Web Design & Development | 1 Comment »

How Long Should Programming Last?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Dear Rich,

I had my web site developed by another company (sorry!) and recently some of the programming stopped working. A contact form and a tool that allowed us to update some of the web site ourselves returned errors. The web developer said it was due to a PHP upgrade (?) at the hosting company and charged me for fixing what used to work. I feel it’s the web developer’s responsibility and don’t feel I should pay for it. What do you think?

–Disputing in Damariscotta

Dear Disputing,

There’s no simple answer to this, as I don’t know how long ago the programming was completed, or whether there was a contract that guaranteed the work for a set period of time.

I will say this, though: programming has a life cycle; it doesn’t last forever.

Just like when you upgrade your computer you might find that some of the software no longer functions as it used to, programming on web sites works the same way. Hosting companies need to upgrade their software to improve security and scalability. When they do that, and how often, isn’t at the discretion of your friendly neighborhood web developer.

Even when a server upgrade isn’t to blame, programming needs to be regularly updated and maintained. As programming is around longer, it becomes a target for hackers and spammers. The upkeep and upgrades take time and resources to maintain.

My recommendation to you (going forward) is to ask your web developer how long she will guarantee the programming to work and whether she offers some type of extended warranty. Knowing that up front should protect you from any unexpected surprises.

Rich Brooks
Programming Life Coach

Photo Credit: MelvinSchlubman

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Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Design & Development | 1 Comment »

Affordable Small Business Web Sites

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

We often shine a light on the custom web designs we do for clients here at the flyte blog, but we don’t often give that same attention to our clients who use one of our ProSite designs. ProSites are our affordable, pre-designed (by flyte) sites built on WordPress.

They’re cost-effective, quick to setup, and easy to run. They’re perfect for startups, or businesses that would rather put their budget towards search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging or some other web marketing campaign.

Since so many of this year’s crop are using their new web sites to grow their businesses, I wanted to give them a little “link love.” If you see someone who can help you, please feel free to check them out.

If you’re looking for a new, affordable web site, if you’re looking to upgrade your current site, or if you’d like to be able to update your web site in house, a ProSite or one of our other sites may be right for you. Contact flyte today.

Rich Brooks
Small Business Web Sites

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Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Design & Development, Web Site Launches | No Comments »

Avoiding 403 Errors When Revamping a Site

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

After 13 years developing web sites you’d think I’d have seen it all. No such luck, as the Interwebs continue to surprise me.

Recently we revamped a web site for Hatch Billiards, a maker of custom pool tables and billiards furniture. We took it from being a static brochureware web site and ported it to WordPress so that Hatch Billiards could update and maintain the site in house.  As part of that conversion, all .html pages were renamed as .php pages.

Whenever you do a major revamp where page URLs are changing, it’s best practice to use a 301 redirect or mod_rewrite to help reduce any temporary loss in search engine visibility.

However, after the revamp traffic to the site was down. We could see that the site had been indexed by the search engines, but the contact page was ranking higher than the home page, an odd and unwelcome situation.

As it turned out, there was an odd bit of code in the htaccess file (sorry if I’m getting a bit geeky here, wikipedia definition of htaccess) that was telling the server to deliver the non-existent .html page rather than the .php page.

What made diagnosing this even trickier was that when people visited the page they saw what they should, but when search engine spiders visited the page they received a 403 error, telling them that access to the page was forbidden.

It was only because a friend of our client pointed out that when he tried tools like Website Grader the site couldn’t be found. That led us to realize people and non-human agents were receiving different experiences, and we then checked the htaccess file where the code was hiding. While we’re not sure why the code was there in the first place, it only took a couple of minutes to remove it. Hopefully the search engines will be returning more relevant results by the time you read this.

It was an important lesson for us to learn, and we feel bad that it caught us by surprise at the cost of traffic to Hatch Billiard’s web site, at least in the short run.

So, if you’re in the market for a custom pool table, or want some furniture for your billiards room, be sure to check out our friend Howard’s site. You’ll be glad you did.

Rich Brooks
403 culpa

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Design & Development | 1 Comment »

Web Marketing & Social Media Classes in Maine

Monday, June 21st, 2010

If you’re looking for help with your Web marketing or social media marketing for your business, I have not one but two courses I’ll be teaching at the University of Southern Maine this fall.

The first one is Web Marketing for Small Business, a course that I’ve now taught four or five times before. However, just like web marketing, the course changes every time I give it. Over the four weeks we’ll talk about:

  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Blogging
  • Social Media
  • Email marketing
  • Web design
  • E-commerce

and anything else that will help small businesses increase their online visibility, drive more qualified leads to their site, and convert that traffic into business.

The classes will be Thursdays, 9/30, 10/7, 10/21 & 10/28. To learn more and register visit the USM web site.

The second course, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, is all new. We’ll be delving into social media specifically, and how businesses and non-profits can leverage social media to grow, to engage, and to reach new audiences. Some of the topics covered will include:

  • Social networking (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • Blogging & podcasting
  • Online video & photo sharing web sites
  • Social news and bookmarking sites
  • Location-based apps (Foursquare, Gowalla)

and whatever else appears between now and then.

This course is two Wednesdays, 11/10 & 11/17. To learn more and register visit the USM web site.

Rich Brooks
Maine Web Marketing

Photo credit: James Sarmiento

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Posted in Analytics, Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Email Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing, flyte news | 3 Comments »

Artist Designed Ribbon Belts from Belted Cow

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Flyte recently launched a newly designed website for Belted Cow, a Maine company selling ribbon belts inspired and created by artists.

Visitors to the site can shop for a wide variety of belts for adults or children. One of my favorite belts is The History of Streaking. (No, the irony is not lost on me.) There are plenty of gift ideas, especially if your loved one has a love of nautical-themed clothing or likes to keep his pants up with an homage to the Tour de France.

Pets aren’t forgotten, as many of the cool designs have been appropriated for collars and leashes.

The site offers an easy-to-use shopping cart and is powered by a hybrid of WordPress and flyte’s own custom e-commerce programming.

If you’ve been searching for a fun, whimsical way of keeping your pants from falling down–especially when everything ends up on YouTube these days–be sure to check out Belted Cow.

Rich Brooks
E-Commerce for Small Business

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Posted in Web Design & Development, Web Site Launches | No Comments »

WordPress Conversions: Beauty is More Than Skin Deep

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

360FuelCard, providers of fleet fuel cards that benefit the environment, liked the look of their Web site.

What they didn’t like is the lack of control they had. Every update had to be run through an outside developer, hindering their ability to quickly add content. It also became a cost issue: adding new pages was expensive, making them thing twice before adding new content to the site.

WordPress gave them that control, and is helping them keep a cap on expenses. We took their current design and ported it over to WordPress, the popular open-source blogging and content management system platform. We also added a blog, so they would have a powerful communication tool they could use to keep customers in the loop and engage new prospects.

They can now update any page, day or night, uploading new photos or embedding videos of their products in action. And they can do it inhouse without having to pay an outside provider.

If you need a fuel card that’s accepted at nearly 100% of fuel stations across the US and contributes to a cleaner environment with every fill-up, be sure to check out 360FuelCard.

If you need to gain control of your Web site, and reign in update fees, talk to flyte about converting your site to a content management system.

Rich Brooks
Fill ‘er Up!

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Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Design & Development, Web Site Launches | No Comments »

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