Last month, I joined a sampling of the New Hampshire Tourism industry at the Annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism in anticipation as the new tourism brand for New Hampshire was released to the public.

As a former full-time tourism professional and brand manager, I am keenly aware of the process to rebrand and entire region, the factors to consider and the potential vulnerabilities if the brand doesn’t match how locals and visitors view the area.

Now over a year in the making, from research through strategy and creative, the new brand had potential for a big positive impact – or big flop – depending on the immediate industry reaction.

As the brand was being rolled out, it was very clear from concept thru creation, the *new* State of New Hampshire Brand, “Live Free and….” was a homerun.  Here are a few key factors that any business or brand can model after when going through a rebrand to achieve a homerun of their own.

1. Community Buy-in is apparent.

Buy-in from the key stakeholders, from small businesses through major corporations, is absolutely imperative.  Your stakeholders are the people who are going to sell the brand – it makes it much easier for them when it is something they believe in.  Involve them in the process early on, listen to opinions and continue to reach out to your stakeholders at each touch point within the branding process.

2. It is very clearly “New Hampshire.”

Your brand should be about you and exclusively you.  In research it was discovered that, New Hampshire’s former brand “You’re going to love it here” could be applied to almost anything.  By utilizing the State Motto “Live Free or Die” in an updated, fresh and innovative way, the State was able to make a brand that is clearly, 100% New Hampshire.

3.The brand can be used to promote every corner of the state.

Brands should be capable of promoting the whole package.  New Hampshire has the unique “issue” of promoting oceans, mountains, cities, quaint towns, vast wilderness and everything in between.  The new branded logo touches on everything and when combined with the appropriate treatment, effectively promotes every market.

4. The research is there to support it.

All brands should be backed by up-to-date research. Research was conducted on the New Hampshire brand for over a year.  Essentially, everything that New Hampshire could be known for, from skiing to tax-free shopping, was rated by stakeholders and multiple target markets.  Research also included other states, to identify competitive advantages.  The result was a thorough and all-inclusive picture of how vacationers view New Hampshire so that the State could not only build its new brand, but target its marketing plan and advertising strategies.

5. There is room for growth.

Brands should always be flexible and capable of adjusting to the movement within your company – otherwise, you’ll spend all your time going through a rebranding process.  The New Hampshire brand is timeless.  It is relatable to every sector within the industry from kayaking to tax-free shopping.

“Improv Asylum is excited to be launching its new website with SilverTech.  Their team spent a lot of time working with us to hone in on our specific and unique needs.  Our home page is more engaging for our customers and the CMS enables us to set up department heads so they can work on their own pages.” -Stacey Princi, Director of Operations

Improv Asylum (http://www.improvasylum.com) is a unique comedy theater, located in the heart of Boston’s North End, that features improvisation and sketch comedy.  As an ‘asylum’ for main stage shows like “Siri, Can you Title Our Show for Us?” IA is a staple of Boston’s nightlife.

When IA first met SilverTech, its website was old and tired and did not showcase the wonderful shows and talent that are presented.  SilverTech worked with IA to determine the cool look and features and ensure that it is vibrant, informative and easy to use.  It was important to the team that the photos, videos and imagery truly help to portray the hilarity that ensues on Improv’s stage.

Besides improv shows, IA offers unique corporate training, hilarious customized corporate shows and a student training center.  The new website puts all of IA’s offerings ‘up front and center stage,’ including integration with social media.

“We think our new site at ncic.org is outstanding.  It is attractive, functional and informative!  Everybody at SilverTech was attentive to our desires and got the job done.  Great job.”

-Jon Freeman, President NCIC

Northern Community Investment Corporation (NCIC) is a non-profit organization that works to address economic challenges in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and Northern New Hampshire.  Its focus is to build partnerships throughout the region to develop creative and effective solutions for individuals, businesses and communities.  NCIC’s lending and economic development professionals work to ensure the region continues to recover and build a strong business climate.

SilverTech was the winner in a competitive-bid process for the NCIC website project.

NCIC had several goals in the creation of their new website:

• Updated look and feel with vibrant photos and bold imagery
• Showcase the numerous successful business and industry partnerships NCIC has been able to help through their programs
• Improve usability and navigation

SilverTech met and interviewed the employees at NCIC to understand the organization and how to effectively showcase all of the extensive projects and programs to their potential audiences.  SilverTech worked with NCIC to develop a contemporary design that spoke to all users, ensuring that homepage real estate was attributed to NCIC’s goals for program promotions.

The end result is a comprehensive, attractive and mobile-friendly website that will serve as a resource for individuals in the NCIC region to reference and utilize the organization’s innovative programs.

So, it’s time to redo your website OR design a social strategy that builds in the social elements of your company — or both.  To ensure you get the best product at the best price, you pull in a selection of vendors to deliver their best presentation and “pitch.”  They’ll talk about their process, previous work and their awesome team – then almost always – about the use of best practices.  As the client, this is exactly the information you want to know to make an informed decision.

Or is it?

Truthishly? A best practice is only good until the moment the ‘best practice’ fails to perform and a new best practice is created.

The “best practices” for the battlefield of the late 1600’s when linear tactics were developed to spread soldiers out, replacing the best practice of square blocks in tight formations. Arsenic was once valued for its ability to give an attractive pale skin tone. Mercury was taken to prolong life.

At best, your industry’s best practices set you up to be a close follower. At worst, your industry’s best practices could ultimately prove to be self-destructive.

Best practices sneak up all the time in website development, design, SEO and the broader scope of digital marketing.  Remember when websites were a single page and optimized for Netscape?  Or when Yahoo! and AOL was the search engine of choice (aka “The World before Google”).

Technology gets better, but best practices often lag behind.

It’s true that in most cases, sticking to ‘best practices’ greatly reduces risk in the boardroom, but intelligently and creatively breaking the mold is what separates a safe success from the kind of success that truly builds a brand (and a career.) The most notable campaigns, from Blendtec’s ‘Will it Blend,’ series to Intel’s classic ‘Intel Inside’ launched their respective brands by intelligently saying goodbye to ‘the norm.’

Some move’s flop. Circuit City’s DIVX bucked the norm, but wasn’t the most well thought-out move for the technological limitations at the time. (Editorial Note:  I can’t help but see a little DIVX in broadband-based on-demand services from Netflix to Comcast. Sometimes, the technology, or adoption of the technology, isn’t there to back the big idea –yet.)

Infomercials, our own marketing history geek, Marc, would be quick to point out, may be one of the most successful examples of a brave company fighting best practices, only to become the new framework for successful sales ‘as seen on TV.’ (Learn a little more about his love of Infomercials and their lessons for marketing.)

Digital marketing allows for a phenomenal amount of creative license in the blending of technology and vision with the predominate nature of connected devices in the homes, hands and pockets of your customers. When your company is at that unique crossroads involving a website redesign or digital strategy, is that really the time to aim for “best practices?” Shouldn’t you always aim for bigger, better and more the potential to be much more profitable?

The best practices in your industry have been built on the hard-learned mistakes of those who jumped blindly, those who had the after-sight to see missed opportunities in action, and the success of those who made a measured next step. When you’re ready for your next step, we’re here to help.

“When you visit silverstatecu.com, you see intuitive navigation, an updated look-and-feel with clean lines and bold colors! The design of the website maintains a professional image with a creative edge, portraying the friendly, personal touch that members enjoy at Silver State Schools Credit Union. We couldn’t be more thrilled!” - Blake Boyer, SSSCU Director of Marketing

Silver State Schools Credit Union is a Nevada-based credit union with ten branches located throughout Las Vegas valley and Reno, NV.  Its mission is to provide exceptional member service and quality financial solutions – providing financial assistance, support, products and programs throughout a member’s lifetime and through all life stages.  Silver State Schools Credit Union continues its long history of focusing on education and providing membership to any Nevada educator, school support-staff, student and/or others directly or indirectly involved in teaching or education.

Silver State Schools Credit Union contracted with SilverTech because of our extensive bank and credit union experience and portfolio.  They asked us to completely overhaul the website with several goals in mind:

• Improve user experience overall with a more contemporary look
• Redesign information architecture and navigation to make finding information on the site more intuitive
• Create a more promotionally-driven website in order to help cross-sell products and services members might be interested in
• Promote the benefits of becoming a new member of the credit union, utilizing messaging and optimizing for search engines
• Deflect calls from the call center and encourage website usage among current member base

SilverTech spent several days on-site speaking with and interviewing managers from all credit union departments to learn about internal processes and discuss website opportunities.  SilverTech combined what they learned from these discovery sessions with what we know about online user behavior and online credit union trends to develop a recommended website strategy that included a new site architecture and design.

The new website is search engine friendly making it easy to find – easily navigable based on a clean design and intuitive site architecture, and is action-driven using visual cues to draw attention and intended click paths throughout the site.  In addition, SilverTech developed custom CMS modules such as a Rates Module which will significantly decrease the amount of time internal staff members need to devote to managing and maintaining content on the website.

See SSCU’s new website at http://www.silverstatecu.com.

See more of SilverTech’s featured work in our digital marketing portfolio.

A brief history of the pitchman

Ron wasn’t the first pitchman, he was just the first to really hit it on television. Ron learned the art of the pitch from his father at boardwalks and carnivals. Imagine a young Ron at the carnival with nothing but his product and a sample bench, a busker and a salesman. First he’d grab your attention, display and explain his product, then invite people to buy right at that moment.

Sure, Ron has a great smile and beautiful (sprayed on) hair. Yes, Vince Offer has enough energy and snarky humor to make anything a guilty pleasure. Billy Mays found so many excuses to own Mighty Putty than MacGuyver could swear off paperclips and duct tape for life.

For your brand to make it at the ‘boardwalk,’ you needed to grab people’s attention, draw and keep a crowd, explain your product plainly and demonstrate its value superbly.

Lessons from Pitchmen for Digital Marketing

1. Demand Attention

Like the carnival, boardwalk or late night television, it’s not enough to simply show up. Demand the attention of your potential audience. There’s no silver bullet to this but there are some great examples of brands tugging for attention online.

Dollar Shave Club published a brilliant display of a dry humor (and clear explanation) so strong that people couldn’t help but draw their friends in. Within days of being published, the monthly razor cartridge subscription service had earned millions of views.

Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign grabbed attention through our heartstrings with its dramatic, screen-worthy presentation that was simultaneously well produced and incredibly raw.

While ‘viral’ videos tend to be the ‘stand out’ examples of creativity and effectiveness, capturing attention can be as simple as a stunning and inviting website, an effective search marketing campaign or a truly engaging social media strategy built around useful, quality content.

2. Keep Your Audience Engaged

If you can’t keep the attention of your audience long enough to show your stuff, what was the point? Had ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ not moved Old Spice product, the campaign would have been a bust rather than a launching pad for the brand’s rebirth.

Pitchmen use a number of methods to keep the audience engaged, from the ‘flair’ of their presentation to offers and carefully curated storytelling – though they’re better known as customer testimonials.

Harley Davidson weaves tails of real riders to showcase the feeling that anybody can be a rebel, even if you’re a soccer mom or 3^rd grade teacher.

The soon-to-launch website of Soggy Dollar Bar, a SilverTech client, invites visitors into an online experience nearly as enjoyable as being on the island itself.

Storytelling is a powerful device for conveying any information. Rewrite your favorite case study in the framework of a story. A case study story framework includes an introduction, the crisis/problem, the solution, the climax (overcoming problems encountered in the solution) and finally, the resolution –that happy ending where your customer lived 463% happier.

Promote this story and your testimonials. Make them shine! Use the testimonials as you would ad copy on your own branded content.

Keep the ‘brass tacks’ version of your case studies around too. While your dramatic reads will be hard to put down, some people simply prefer Cliff’s Notes.

3. Expertly Explain Your Product or Service Plainly

There is a reason that Ronco inventions are always see through. Popeil learned early on that it is essential that customers understand what you’re doing for them. The magic isn’t valuable, the results are. For Ronco inventions, transparency conquered doubt.

Selling on smoke-and-mirrors rarely works today. Decades of snake-oil combined with unparalleled instant access to information has made for a very ‘real’ prospect base. If your current plan is to sell on ‘magic,’ you may notice that the first questions you get are about the real results of your unique, patented, space-age process. Even if your service is so complex to explain that you may as well be spell-weaving for your prospect, remember that the value is in the results –and that those results are MUCH easier to understand if they can see how your ‘machine’ built it.

Create an arsenal of similes, illustrations, animations or anything else you would require to explain your business at a family holiday. Remember that each member of your family learns differently, so blend the media types used for best effect.

4. Invite your Audience to Buy

If you’ve poured your heart, soul and budget into building and captivating your audience, don’t forget to sell! The pitchmen implore their audience to ‘act now!’ The best will often match the act with a special offer. Every touch point, every unit of content, every story and every demonstration should invite your audience to become a customer in addition to inviting them to hang around for more information.

Your first pitch may not be the one that sells and the same is true with online interactions. What’s important is that you build in a method for those who want to know more know more and those who are ready to buy in to buy in.

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Ready to apply these lessons to your business? Contact us to learn how you can use SilverTech to transform your brand.

On a recent flight back to Boston, I began to think about what makes our agency, SilverTech, run. Sure, you can argue there are a number of things that make our agency tick – our talented team, our dedicated clients, our award winning work, our top-notch benefits and yes, even our historical landmark building.

But, is that truly what keeps us all going?

I began to ponder this and then it hit me -Curiosity. Yes, the curiosity that my nearly three-year-old daughter exhibits. She’s curious about the Easter Bunny. She’s curious about what lies outside when the weather gets nicer. She’s curious about her younger sister…and about figuring out why daddy is gone on trips sometimes. She’s curious about that little device she sees her parents use so we can not only talk to each other but see each other (our iPhones.)

It is the culture we’re forming centered on curiosity that really drives our agency. It is what keeps us motivated. It is what keeps us focused on working with the brightest and most fun and influential clients and brands in the world. It is what keeps us motivated about what we can do with these great brands that we are able to serve. How can we push the limits? What are new things we can do to help promote the brands? How can the newest technologies enable our brands to interact with their audiences? What’s after the iPad? What’s next? What brings the best business and bottom line results?

It is this deep routed curiosity that drives me. And, I truly believe it drives most, if not all, of us at the agency to learn, to grow and to better serve the brands and clients that trust us.

Thank you, Mom and Dad! You encouraged this sense of curiosity in me when I was younger. You allowed me to take apart those old transistor radios so I could look at the circuit boards and the components inside…you allowed me to “work” at a local television repair shop (so I could de-solder electronic parts to have in my parts bins.) You let me play around with the Commodore 64 in music class and write my own programs (when all of my classmates didn’t know the first thing about what LOAD meant – never mind that ,8,1 part!).

You allowed me to walk to the public library so I could use the hour-long blocks of time on the weekends typing in programs from the library’s Compute! magazine only to spend hours more modifying them to see what else I could do with them…closing down the public library most weekend days.

You allowed me the freedom to beg and eventually have the ability to borrow (from my local Wartburg College Physics Department) my very first Heathkit Hero Robot so I could learn assembly language over my seventh grade summer break.

Thank you!

And, that curiosity lives on strong! That’s because we’re all curious about digital and “what’s next?” That’s why the agency plays around with new technologies, new social media platforms, new shifts in the digital marketing world – to better serve our clients and their brands. Our agency’s full of life-long curious learners. That’s in our DNA as a digital agency.

I can only hope I will continue to instill and (more importantly!) encourage that same level of life-long curiosity in my two daughters that my parents instilled in me. It is one of the most important life-long lessons I was taught!

Thank you,

Nick

For those destinations that haven’t had a chance to delve into the inner workings of a Pinterest account, here is a quick introduction to how it works.

Each user has an account, which is can be signed into through Facebook or Twitter (convenient, I know). The account then can automatically populate your friends/followers from those applications that are already on Pinterest, and then, of course, send invitations to those that aren’t. The rest is very simple: search, create a board and pin.

I’ll admit that the full potential of Pinterest as a visitor search or tourism destination tool was lost on me at first. At first glance, Pinterest looks like it was created by Martha Stewart, with canning jar lanterns, 101 indoor activities for children, 50 cool ways to style hair for the workplace and about every workout motivation picture available. But then, I realized: Pinterest was built for women.

It is common knowledge among travel professionals that women are typically the “bookers” for vacations. Since women typically fill the family/relationship planning role, women are the logical choice to decide whether or not the family/couple will vacation in Disney or Boca Raton.

But wait, it gets better. There are 11.7 million users on Pinterest – and the site is still growing. In fact, it holds the current record for jetting past the 10 million user mark faster than any other standalone social media website. The target market for Pinterest is women 18-34 from upper income households (don’t forget, we all sign-up with Facebook or Twitter so Pinterest knows our age) and those women are engaging. Pinterest users are participating on the new site twice as much as Twitter users did at the same lifespan of that social channel.

So why is Pinterest growing and why should your destination pay attention? Pinterest works because is light, fun and the ultimate wish list. Users post pictures of food they want to try, houses they want to build, bodies they want to have and vacations that they want to take.

How to capitalize on Pinterest

Approximately 80% of “pins” on Pinterest are “repins” or reused from another user’s boards to your own.

Visitor destinations have the ability to pin their own photographs by simply copying and pasting the URL into their own “pin it” option within Pinterest. The pin is a visual image, but does allow for a caption and a direct link to the website that the image came from. You can also help your website visitors along by including a “pin it” button on your own site.

This would be the time to showcase your destination’s most stunning photographs (you know, those “million dollar” shots) that have a good chance of being “repinned.” Mediocre will not do well on Pinterest. As the name implies, pins really do have to be interesting.

As with all forms of social media, don’t be disappointed if your pins don’t go viral. Aim for showcasing what is truly stunning, amazing and innovative and see what you get.

With the exception of exotic cases like Dell’s early promotional Twitter tactics, the best social media strategies are often as difficult to tie back to your bottom line as your efforts to improve customer service, be socially responsible or provide resources and information for your industry. These sorts of efforts tend not to ‘graph’ as well as website analytics and measurements that digital marketing has become known for.

Why are many of the best new media strategies so hard to track? Because, they’re new channels for the very business acumen that’s always been hard to connect to your bottom line; the effects of customer service, the impact of corporate social responsibility and the benefits of industry outreach.

As brands successfully adopt social media, they’re adopting new levels of community and industry outreach without rejecting customer care. The correlative data is there to match customer service quality and revenues. However, in a quest for the immediate and exacting metrics of other digital channels, too many agencies are pitching social initiatives stripped of customer relations in favor of more easily tracked broadcast methods. These rarely pay off in the long run, and it’s not really a strategy within the spirit of social interaction.

Today, we’ll discuss customer service and it’s natural extensions into social media. Every brand is different, but the gist of what you’ll read is that social media simply adores remarkable customer service.

Exploring Amazing Customer Service

In The Thank You Economy, marketer extraordinaire Gary Vaynerchuck recalls the lessons of his father and other community business members who would take pride in service derived from knowing and communicating with each customer intimately. Those were the ‘good ole’ days’ many of us have never experienced, and that is exactly what makes these kind of experiences so remarkable today.

To pull an example from Gary V’s book, it’s the butcher who remembers to leave a hambone aside for you on cold, wintery Fridays.  Why? He knows, you always make split pea soup on cold, wintery Fridays.

An inspiration of Jeanne Bliss’ I Love You More Than My Dog, a children’s shoe store owner, had earned a generation of clients for his ability to simply ‘be real.’ Running his business on passion, empathy, humanity and the occasional shared lunch, every stranger received the invitation to become not a customer, but family. Jeanne would take those same ‘old world’ values to become the first leader of Lands’ End’s customer experience team –a brand that would become one of the most respected, desirable brands in their industry for their customer experiences.

These aren’t social media strategies; they’re the customer service passions that have proven to generate referrals and word of mouth for decades. Today, those conversations are happening on Twitter, Facebook and a plethora of relevant social media platforms. It’s new media for old values.

The Customer Service Comeback

Somewhere in the 80’s and 90’s, customer service gave way to automation and bottom-line fanaticism. Grocers learned that they could increase profits by not having an associate carry your bags to your car. Mechanics started to upsell fluid checks that were once a courtesy at the pump. Customer service from most brands became a patience testing listening exercise of frantic mashing of our phone’s ‘0’ in our sanity’s swan song for human interaction.

For my generation, the ones who use reading glasses to Tweet, our cultural references for customer service lie somewhere between Sam the butcher from the Brady Bunch, the Soup Nazi and the movie Served. How’s that for a crowd with low expectations? That’s the bar and over the course of a few decades most of us have forgotten what customer service used to be. Our expectations today are lower than they used to be, which is why a spark of caring from a brand can ignite a wildfire of buzz.

In an underwhelming swell of streamlined business’ with clear profit channels, a scrappy digital shoe store named Zappos would make a name for itself with a daring leap into fanatical customer service.

In his book, Delivering Happiness, CEO Tony Hsieh credits the foundation of fanatical customer service for the brand’s booming success. In 10 years, through the .com bust, Zappos would rise to $1 billion in revenue – big shoes to fill for hopeful competitors.

Customer Service Goes Viral

Today, the brands who embrace remarkable customer service become, themselves, remarkable.

Customers want to be known! Customers want to be valued! Naturally, customers gravitate to brands with excellent service, avoiding those brands who have burned them in the past.  This is why many consumers seek reviews from peers before bothering to call for pricing.

When many of us experience extraordinary customer service, good or bad, we share it in conversation offline and on. It’s not unreasonable to think that remarkable customer service can go viral. Know that online, a fireworks celebration of positivity will drown out even the loudest squeaky wheel. Even Zappos gets customer complaints, but good luck finding them in the piles and piles of love letter reviews online.

How Service Gets  Social

Embracing social media is hard for many brands with dreams of Old Spice man, but it’s important to remember that social interactions from sewing circles to social media are the realm of the customer. Broadcasts into the conversation will land about as well on Facebook as they would shouted over the shoulders of a group at the pub –and it’s hard to tell which is more likely a venue for you to get socked for the disrespect.

There are strategies that can be designed to best fit your brand to the conversations and platforms happening online. While there is no ‘best strategy’ for all brands online, there are a few methods that have proven to be epic failures. That being said, when fanatical customer service becomes essential to your online conversation strategy, success –though a bit hard to graph- will be there.

Expand your Brand

Sure, you’re brand isn’t the local butcher shop, mechanic or shoe store. Your customers may be global with prospects numbering in the millions, but there are tools to help scale customer service. Customer relationship management solutions, or CRM, serve as your memory and marketing automation platforms, such as those built into Salesforce, can act as reminders to connect. Social media is your eyes, ears and voice.

Social media channels are a showcase for customer service, social responsibility and community involvement (your local community and the community of those you serve –where ever they may be in the world.)

Brands are quickly learning that it’s not enough to simply ‘be there,’ and that there likely isn’t a return of a non-strategic approach. The ‘age of the guru,’ it’s buzzwords and lack of acumen has passed. It’s time for social media to be recognized as an extension of communications. The channels are as measurable as a telephone in the hands of your best associates, and the realization is similar.

There is a bit more science to social media than traditional word of mouth. While you’re still dealing with the same dynamics of a traditional social graph for organic spread and sharing of brand awareness and messaging, you’re also adding a lot of the technical elements that come with the software interface of the communications channel, such as Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, the equation dictating which posts from the friends and brand you follow appear with relevancy in your feed. A proper social media strategy will balance both worlds in a way that best fits your brand, your audience, and your assets.

When you call SilverTech, you get a human being and not a phone tree. Usually, it’s Nanci. If you have the time, ask her about her dogs –you won’t meet a more passionate poodle aficionado. Why have a Nanci? Because the human touch, and the service that touch can provide, is core to our agency.

Customer service is back. Even brands who can afford to ‘buy out’ of customer service are rebooting their brand and reinvigorating the focus on customer care beyond price.

If you’re ready to explore how social media can  be used for your business in a way that best serves your sales, marketing, and overall business goals, contact us.

For the uninitiated, Pinterest users categorize your interests into boards populated with ‘pins’ of images found from around the internet. Others can vote it up and follow or like it boosting the board and growing the group of that interest. If you have an interest in ‘Ski Gear,’ and share your favorites from various online stores, others can re-pin and increase the position of the content by essentially ‘voting it up.’ Additionally, all of your Pinterest posts can be shared on to Facebook and Twitter.

Pinterest will be the love of e-commerce, affiliate marketing and product reviews. Why? People post images or videos of things they like, interests, things they want or things they want to do.

While the platform lends itself to art, culture and meme, it’s becoming the home of fashion with many creating boards of items they pull off the virtual racks from around the world -from a single brand or an hereto unimagined collection. With a click of the “Pin it” button from the browser bar, sharing is a single click for users.

What about the brands themselves? SilverTech client, Mimoco, designs really cool USB flash drives in original creations and licensed inspiration from Star Wars to Hello Kitty to Einstein. Mimoco could create various boards of interest and by typing in the dollar sign ($) into the description; the image will display a banner price point over the item also allowing it to be featured in the Gifts section of Pinterest. Fans can now post that item into a “Cool Office Toys” board or “Birthday Wish List” and this can continue to spread the brand item as users and fans see it.

As an aside, the use of Pinterest’s ‘Pin It’ button on a website, which is artfully crafted to resemble Facebook’s ‘Like’ button and Twitter’s ‘Tweet’ button, invites sharing while offering brands some ‘suggestion’ power for the picture and description pinned.

Now for something completely different -Gourmet Rasberry Honey Mustard. Pinterest has wildly popular with recipes and culinary inspiration where brands and gourmands can use Pinterest to help promote their own recipe sections from their websites by posting the recipes within various categories.

Imagine the power for a brand-created board called “Super Bowl Food Ideas” which includes a series of field approved, party recipes and that board’s ability to drive mouth-watering traffic to e-commerce and grocery isle satisfaction. As always, digital marketing should be connected through all of these channels.

From a tracking standpoint, focus on the website containing the products. By tagging the links on the site, marketing can begin to see how Pinterest is affecting sales and brand reach (most directly as a growing traffic source.)

Pinterest is fairly new but growing very fast. Who knows where it will be a year from now but I believe it will continue to be big and what I think will be the biggest change is how it will dramatically change social marketing for ecommerce.

Mulu Who?

A new company looking not unlike the little sister of Pinterest has already launched called mulu.me. And you guessed it… the core focus is on ecommerce.

Mulu’s twist allows users to identify charities for which they are raising money. Then, revenues generated from affiliate marketing are split between Mulu, the poster’s charities and the poster. Blended with a bit of gamification, users are awarded “Guru” points based on activity.

Mulu could be amazing, but it looks like it may run the risk of turning into a massive collection of spam depending on how items are indexed. One early suggestion I have is for the budding platform may be to partner with Open Table to allow the same percentage sharing for users that book at a suggested restaurant. Look for the Mulu launch party at SXSW in March.

Wondering if Pinterest, Mulu, Quora or even Facebook and twitter might be a hit for your brand? We’re here to help. Contact us or drop a question in the comments below, on Twitter or via Facebook.

Sounds familiar, right? Well, it should. With the latest economic downturn, cities and towns from all over the United States needed to diversify their local economies. The low-hanging fruit? Tourism. Visitors come, they spend and they leave – the perfect equation for stretched municipal budgets and small business owners’ pockets.

For all the businesses and brands out there that have been doing this awhile, you know it takes a lot of time, money, time, innovation and time to get vacationers to come to your town — and there isn’t a silver bullet. Mobile applications, traditional marketing and public relations will all be part of a successful equation, but a website is where the highest return on investment resides with the easiest methods for tracking goals. And guess what? Everyone else competing for your visitors has figured out that, too.

Luckily for brands and businesses, not all websites are created equal. There are good destination websites and there are bad ones. There are websites that look beautiful, but users can’t figure out where to click. The key is to find a happy medium with functional design.

Find Your Niche

I can’t even tell you how many travel sites I’ve seen that try to be all things to all people. I learned early in my tourism marketing career that EVERY destination has “something for everyone.” Don’t believe me? Do a Google search for the phrase “something for everyone” and see what comes up (after the Angela Lansbury movie filmed in 1970).

If your brand has something that no one else has, it needs to be front and center, not buried in an inner website page filled entirely with text. Tell me why I should do it, tell me how to do it, tell me when to do it and tell me what else I can do while I’m there. Is there an itinerary or vacation package? The easier you make this process for me, the better chance you’ll have of me converting to a real, live visitor – not just a browser on the web. Because, at the end of the day, it’s about how many heads are in beds and buying tickets – not how many visitors your website got in June.

Use high-quality photography

This is a pet-peeve of mine undoubtedly left over from an incomplete graphic design minor. There are so many travel websites that use pixelated photography, with bad composition or lighting.

Your destination is competing worldwide for visitor dollars. It is imperative that your assets, from hotels and shops to whitewater rafting and golfing, are showcased in the best way possible.

Take a look at the two photos below. Which one makes you want to take a trip to go golfing?

If you don’t have the skills or time to take hiqh-quality pictures of your assets under the best lighting, make a deal with a local photographer. There are always aspiring photographers who will trade services or photos for a link to their website or photo credit for recognition. If your organization has membership, doing a trade for photos in exchange for a complimentary membership is a great way to ensure that your photo library will stay updated.

To take it to the next level, use high-quality photos that include people. Those beautiful landscape shots are just that, beautiful. While potential visitors may look at them and think, “What a beautiful place” the key to really sealing the deal is to include people having a good time in the setting.

Again, take a look at the photos. Which one really makes you want to take a trip to go golfing?

Of course, photos should include your target demographic. Here, the Omni Mount Washington Resort (featured by SilverTech clients, www.visitnh.gov and www.nhgrand.com) chose to picture middle-aged males to convey a business retreat.

Rethink homepage real estate

A beautiful, edgy and just plain cool website is what everyone wants, but if the user doesn’t know where to click, your investment goes out the window. Additionally, if your most important assets aren’t on your homepage, what is the point of even having a homepage?

When was the last time you looked at your website’s analytics? Are people viewing certain pages more than others and are those the pages you want them to view? If your organization or business’ main goal is to get website visitors to sign-up for an email newsletter or book rooms, do these items have prime real estate on your homepage?

The eye naturally reads from left to right in a clockwise fashion, which is why the business logo is always in the upper right hand corner. But after that – what are you looking to show?

When we redeveloped the website for SkiNH, (www.skinh.com), SilverTech worked to the organization to determine what the top three goals for the new website. First, SkiNH wanted to make sure that www.xcSkiNH.com was equally highlighted and that both sites were given a similar look and feel. Next, the organization’s social media is a huge component of their business. Having a direct feed to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, contact email and Text Message alerts was key. Finally, that the cool features, such as the SkiNH Photo Contest, Interactive Resorts Map and Lift Ticket Pass were front and center on the page to achieve better conversions.

Of course, other items, such as the video of the week and upcoming events are important and were given homepage real estate, but the top three goals received prime locations.

What are the top three items on your homepage? Are they what you want/need to be there? If not, rethink a bit of the layout.

Track Everything

When was the last time you really looked at your visitor destination website without the rose colored lenses and without excuses? Do the callouts on the homepage entice you to delve further into website? Are they well designed and is the content engaging?

How many brands/businesses know how their website is really doing? Sure, Google Analytics has allowed us to see how many visitors to the website, their page views and average conversion rates – but do you know how many website visitors become actual visitors?

Be Fun

Vacation is all about having a good time. As the digital extension of your business or brand, your website needs to give the appropriate look and feel. For an older couple doing a winery tour, “fun” would be a completely different definition than a family vacationing in Disney World.

What is your target audience? Is it families? Is it couples? Is it a certain interest group like hikers, cyclists or skiers? What is the income level of the visitor you are targeting? Are your guests looking for a more sophisticated vacation spot or a place to kick back and relax?

For example, if catering to families, do you have coloring printouts or interactive games built into your website tying back to your brand? For the winery tour, is there an interactive map with interesting information or cool features? Is there a feature that allows your visitors to engage with your brand after the visit is completed? And no, QR codes don’t count. Think outside the box – and don’t go straight to QR code. Ironically, like the word “unique,” everyone has them.

Bonus: Find an Experienced Partner

You can’t take a better first step into bettering your digital marketing than partnering with an agency that’s done it all before. If you’re looking to earn your brand, community or business more recognition (and visitor dollars) then consider contacting SilverTech.

“Our web presence is a major part of our brand strategy and our goal was to select a partner that understood and shared in our culture and goals. SilverTech proved to be the right match for our current and future needs,” said David D’Angelo, vice president and second generation company co-owner. “We will create a truly unique b to c and b to b experience. We are a boutique brand and we want our website to evoke that look and feel,” said D’Angelo.

The scope of the project is wide ranging from creating an impactful brand feel, with spectacular lifestyle imagery to allowing wholesale customers to extract key information regarding inventory and order status. “The site will be a living breathing location that will encourage consumers and retail customers to return often,” said Steve David, director of marketing. “On one hand, a wholesale customer’s priority will be checking availability while a consumer may want to check the latest Facebook post or Twitter feed. We will create a unique online community,” said David.

“47 Brand is a remarkable story and we are excited to help enhance their message with a new digital platform optimized for PC’s, tablets and mobile devices. We are a team of digital marketing specialists and sports fans that have been wearing ’47 Brand products for years,” said William Storace, creative director at SilverTech, Inc.

The company will unveil 47brand.com to coincide with the start of the 2012 MLB season in April.

SilverTech, Inc. is a national digital marketing agency based in New England that expertly solves online marketing, technology, operations and commerce challenges by creating value driven, web, digital and data powered solutions to fit exact business requirements. SilverTech partners include: Life is Good, Polartec, American Water and Le Gourmet Chef.

’47 Brand is a privately held sports licensed company founded by twin brothers Arthur and Henry D’angelo in 1947. Forty Seven Brand is proud partner of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and over 600 collegiate programs. Forty Seven Brand employs 200 corporate and retail associates and is located in offices in Boston and Dedham, MA.

When Listing Online, It’s Tag It Right or Pay Up

When the Federal Trade Commission passed ‘The Textile and Wool Act,’ it was cause for most retailers to change how they display product online – and not everybody has updated yet. The act states that most textile and wool products display a label listing fiber content, manufacturer identity and country of origin. We know that you can look at your shirt, pants, jacket and even underwear to see where those tighty-whities were made, but brands also have to indicate country of origin online. Here is an excerpt from the act:

When a textile or wool product is advertised in a catalog or other mail order promotional material, either printed or disseminated on the Internet, the description must include a clear and conspicuous statement that the item was either “made in U.S.A.,” “imported,” or “made in U.S.A. and [or] imported.” Of course, catalog information about origin must be consistent with the information on the label. (See p.22 for more information about origin disclosures in catalogs.)

Where many companies have not followed the law closely on is the online world. Even some of the biggest retailers haven’t become fully compliant. Even some of the brands I personally love, such as Billabong, haven’t caught up with the newer labeling requirements.

By contrast, take a look at this example from The North Face and you can see under ‘specifications’ that the source is “imported” along with the proper fabric breakdown. SilverTech client Life is good® has also been updated in their newest optimistic products.

So why is this so critical? As the FTC has shown signs of enforcing this more, the penalties can be pretty steep, upwards of $16,000 per catalog item. No need to show some basic math examples here, brands can’t afford not to make this change.

The bulk of The Textile and Wool Act can seem quite complicated, but reads similar to a brand identity guide with how you should and should not display things. For example, you should not list 80% polyester and 20% SILK in an effort to highlight the premium fabric. Fonts and styles must be similar.

I strongly encourage brands to brush up on The Textile and Wool Act to learn more about what falls under these restrictions and how to make the most of it.

Over the past 16 years, SilverTech has worked with companies on their digital experience to include ecommerce, systems integration and ultimately everything dealing with customer interaction. We have seen a lot and learned a lot, and whether you’re Billabong, The North Face or a purveyor of the optimistic, let’s chat.

“Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration.” – Sumner Redstone

How the heck did we get to the end of the year already?  It seems like just yesterday we were working on Q3 and Q4 plans.  But, here we are, with less than 15 days left of 2011.

It seems right to take a moment to reflect on some of the common frustrations we’ve heard from marketers in 2011, to direct you to some great tips from this past year’s most popular blog posts in hopes to help you overcome some of these challenges in 2012.

Top Five Marketing Frustrations of 2011:

1. I optimized my website for search engines when it launched. Why is it not ranking well now?

I know it seems totally unfair that Google, and other search engines, continue to change the rules on marketers.  I mean they have the gall to switch things up on us without thinking about how much time went into our SEO planning or the cost and time associated with updating it.  Well, unfortunately for us, Google and those other search engines don’t work for websites or the companies behind them – they work for consumers seeking goods, services or information online and who want faster, more relevant search results.

So, yes, if you’ve blinked over the past one to two years, you may have seen your organic search ranking slip right out from under you.  So, what can you do to get it back?

First, don’t expect a quick fix.  Although we’ll occasionally be asked to work with someone who is inadvertently doing something that search engines frown upon that we may be able to fix fairly quickly, the majority of cases can no longer be thought of as something you do quickly and one-time prior to launching a website.

Search Engine Optimization needs to be something that you work at all the time.  Although that sounds like it could add more stress to your job, it isn’t so foreboding once you’ve developed a plan that prioritizes those elements that search engines like Google and Bing prioritize.  I could go on and on to explain but you’ll learn way more from watching this great video that includes great SEO tips.

2. We have a Facebook page but our fan base isn’t growing fast enough and we aren’t sure if investing time in social media is worth it.

Not every brand will grow fans, friends or “likes” by the thousands on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t successful if those they do get make meaningful connections.  Those who are successful, have a few things in common. They:

• Understand how consumers want to interact with brands in social channels. Consumers don’t mind hearing from brands now and then about special deals, exclusive events or even product benefits but they don’t want to hear the hard sell.  And they don’t want brands to fill their news feed so that the status updates of friends and family are buried.  There is an art and science (tip: review your Facebook Insights) to crafting appropriate, compelling messages on social channels.  If your fanbase is not growing, you need to take a hard look at why you aren’t engaging your users.  Are you using the right tone? Are you giving them information that provides a benefit/ value to them as individuals?  Are you showing off your personality and exposing your business’ emotional side?  Are you making them feel special for connecting with you?  Are you giving them information they will want to pass along to their closest friends/family?    For more tips, check out ‘Do they “Like” Like You?’ It’s Complicated on our blog.

• Have a social media plan. They are proactive with strategies to observe social user behavior (note we didn’t say guide user behavior – that’s a big shift in thinking for some marketers) and understand that the conversation on Facebook or any other channel has to flow or move in a direction that moves that relationship toward your end goal in order to show a return on your investment (time or money).  Strategic inspiration can often come from a brief look at some of the Common Social Media Strategy Archetypes.

For our clients, a social media plan consists of target definition, user behavior or social personas, objectives, intended success measurements, social channel tactics, content strategy with an editorial calendar, user engagement and sharing incentives, analytics integration, and resource assignments and tasks.  This provides us with a game plan so that we know if something is working or if we’re going off track and something needs to be adjusted.  And this is recommended for all types of businesses – not just retail.  We have clients in healthcare, utilities and even banking who are finding ways to succeed in social marketing.

• Use analytics to help measure success and calculate ROI. Unless you can conduct business on Facebook via a social shopping tool or something of the like, you are hoping your connection leads to business conducted with you somewhere else – in a store, online or via phone.  You need to have a plan that helps you to determine whether the time spent managing social media strategies result in measured success.

With clearly defined objectives set, you can use online analytics tools to measure whether or not your social efforts are driving anything from traffic to goal completions.  Check out these two posts for more information on how to set up your analytics Tracking On-Site Social Media Engagement with Google Analytics and Tracking Clicks from Social Media with Google Analytics. For the more adventurous data-based-marketers, Google’s Multi-Channel Analytics helps give your digital channel attributions credit.

3. I can access analytics for my digital assets and campaigns but I don’t have time to do anything with it.

This is one of the most common challenges we hear.  It’s not surprising seeing how distributed or divided marketing has become – even just digital marketing.  Digital strategies can no longer be lumped together as a line item that traditionally just includes your website.  It’s now an entire network of devices, assets, websites and channels that each needs their own strategies and measurement methods.  Because of this, marketing executives often collect analytical data without having the time or resources available to look at it, nevermind do anything about it.

I’m not going to say there is an easy fix for this but I will stress the importance and the impact that either finding the time to evaluate, test and tweak your strategies or hiring a digital marketing agency to do it for you could make to the bottom line.

Often the largest conversion increases come from some of the most seemingly simple and small usability changes.  This means, testing – even just a little bit – can make (and save) you a significant amount of money – thus allowing you to squeeze every last bit of ROI out of your investment.

4. I probably should be preparing a mobile strategy but not that much of our traffic comes through mobile devices.

Yet.  If you aren’t sure whether or not your business would be impacted if you’re site isn’t mobile optimized (or at the very least mobile friendly), let me tell you that the answer is yes.  To refresh your memory on how to find out exactly how much mobile traffic you are getting now, read Are You Losing Business to iPhones and Androids? a blog post from January 2011.  And, if you looked into it back in January when this post originally ran, run the report again now – you’ll see it’s grown exponentially in just a year’s time.

There are several ways to keep your mobile and tablet users happy.  If you don’t have time to put together a mobile strategy, I recommend you hire a consultant to help.  The more time that goes by, the more you risk frustrating busy customers and consumers and handing them over to your competition.

1. Mobile-friendly sites function across common mobile devices, even if it is the desktop experience squeezed into a four inch screen. The site is device friendly in that it won’t ‘break’, but neither the user experience nor results are optimal.
2. Mobile-optimized sites feature a user experience and design that feels native to mobile devices designed for smaller screens, such as touches instead of clicks and the slower download speeds of 3G networks over your home broadband connection. Not only does it work for the phone, it works for the user.
3. Device Agnostic Design, also called ‘fluid design’ or ‘adaptive design,’  uses a combination of design sensibilities and web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3 to create a design that feels as optimized on your desktop as it does from your phone or tablet by being literally flexible to fit your 22 inch monitor, 10.1 inch tablet or 4 inch smartphone.
4. Mobile Apps offer extensive flexibility in capability and greater access to mobile phone capabilities such as cameras, accelerometers, GPS and more. The downside? App development is often an expensive process, and few app types can be developed in such a way to be easily accessible to iPhone, Android, Blackberry and WebOS users alike. However, with the advance of HTML5, many apps, especially ‘utility’ apps, can be created as mobile optimized, device agnostic content rather than more expensive, less accessible apps.

5. We have data everywhere.  Customers get aggravated when our systems don’t talk to each other.

When security and privacy is a concern, signing into a website with your own user name and password brings a bit of comfort. But, when you find yourself constantly entering your login credentials for each task, your value for security can quickly give way to frustration.

The problem tends to stem from a combination of 3^rd party systems strung together like a yard full of Christmas lights with a single blinking bulb. The log in can turn an otherwise beautiful experience into a teeth grinding memory. In many cases, these systems can work more effectively with each other to make your user experience smoother, faster and generally more enjoyable without risking security.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, having your own login system may not even be necessary. For blogs, ecommerce and certain membership sites, Facebook Connect integration allows your users to sign in into your service using their own social media connections. For your customer, it reduces the need for memorizing login credentials. For your site, it allows you to use some of the customers social media profile and connection data to offer more personalized information, offers and communication.

Looking for a team of experts to help you with your own marketing frustrations? For over 16 years, the professionals at SilverTech have been helping brands make the most of their marketing budget with effective digital marketing strategies, web design and development and advanced system integrations. Feel free to contact us, or jot a note or question in the comments below.

Here’s to a successful frustration-free 2012!

Jolly Old St. Nicholas, lean your ear this way.  Or, lend me your iPhone.  Either will do.

Holiday shopping can be the most stressful time of the year – for Santa’s “elves” (aka Macys, Target, Best Buy and Main Street) as well as the patrons desperately searching for the best deal on Let’s Rock Elmo.  However, the perception is that when consumers add smartphones into the mix, the scales tip in their favor, leaving the stores the task of merrily matching their competitors’ prices.

There are stores, such as Lowes, that are embracing the mobile wave this shopping season.  Corporate issued over 42,000 iPhones to their employees in 1,700 stores with a simple task: help the customer.  Store employees were instructed to access inventory, check prices and refer customers to other stores if the product wasn’t in house.   It’s a little “Miracle on 34^th Street,” but it gets back to the basics of customer service.  Who knew that new technology would help stores get back to old school principals?

However, even with all the excitement that comes from finding that exact same TV $25 cheaper at Target than Best Buy or the thrill of asking for a price match, consumers are still not entirely happy about mobile usability.

According to a study release by Tealeaf Technology, a consumer analytics company specializing in optimizing web, 58% of the negative conversations about mobile shopping with leading mobile retailers was focused on “customer struggle issues” such as payment and search-and-sort problems.

Additionally, 21% mentioned features that would have simplified the mobile buying process to make it more intuitive – but were not available on that version of the website/application.

On the flip side, only 17% said the mobile sites and applications they used were easy to utilize.

Overall, the study is one indication of a popular viewpoint: mobile is a huge market – that isn’t even close to reaching its full potential.

So what does this mean for brands?  Holiday shopping is automatically following the growing trend of smartphones overtaking desktop computers by 2013 and undeniably, online retail shopping is making a comeback.  Since 2001, there have been seven online shopping days that have surpassed 1 billion in spending.  Six of those days were this year with Cyber Monday leading the pack with 1.25 billion – the largest online spending day in history.   This gives brands, of all shapes and sizes, the ability to set themselves apart digitally and harness a bit more of the coming flux in holiday spending power.

It sounds simple.  The best thing brands can do for their business during the holiday season to increase their online sales is to have an intuitive, mobile-friendly, mobile-optimized or even application with easy to use features.  Want to buy that TV from Target while standing in Best Buy?  Of course you can.  Don’t feel like driving back to pick it up?  The store will hold it for you or ship it to your house the next day.  Automatic price comparison of the top three competitors for this particular TV? Always available with a barcode scan.  Features and tools like these not only simplify the buying process, they are a value-add to the consumer.

We’ve all heard the adage: the best gifts really do come in small packages.  The brands paying attention to those small packages (mobile devices) are the ones who are getting the best gifts (happy stockholders).

Inbound links matter. A lot.

In a correlative study analyzing searches for over 10,000 keywords, it was found that inbound links account for over 40% of the weighting factor on search engine ranking. To put the gravity of inbound links into perspective, on-page and on-site keyword use barely accounts for 25%.

Now, before you jump on the careening ‘buy-links-bandwagon,’ remember this marketing geek’s search rule-of-thumb- The harder it is to get, the more it matters to great ranking.

Signals of Quality

Quality is more important than quantity, especially for long-lasting, sustainable results from your efforts. Some links are worth more than others. Quality is a measure of the linking site’s clout, content and context.

Clout

In search circles, we used to talk a lot of PageRank. Page rank was Google’s scoring of a website’s quality based on on-page signals such as keyword usage in content, domain authority and, yes, inbound links. While we don’t use the term PageRank that often anymore, the authority of a website still matters. Websites with authority tend to rank highly in their own searches and are often the go-to website in their field. A good reference, in the form of a contextual, in-content link, is a signal of your own site’s quality.

The ‘recipe’ for an authoritative site is robust, but it boils down to ‘trust.’ A respected publication is worth more than a personal blog. A master of your industry is worth more than a master of something completely different. A single link from a respected government website (.gov) is worth far more than a handful of links from a ‘cheap’ low-quality exotic domain often used by spammers, such as .info, .ly, and .ws.

Content

Being referenced in the content of a page, rather than as a link listing or menu item, is a signal to search engines that you just might know your stuff. To Google, you’re a research source on that topic… so long as the content is relevant.

Earning a link from myfishingblog.com stuffed inside an article on ‘building a better tackle box’ is so out-of-context that it would (literally) flag an alarm at Google. If it would be suspicious to a user, search engines have designed their algorithms to also be suspicious.

Context

Anchor text is the blue, underlined part of a link, and it’s what gives the link context. A keyword-rich link to your website is much more useful (and valuable) to search engines than a simple URL. Examine the links below.

www.silvertech.com | NH Ski Deals | SilverTech, a Digital Marketing Agency

Which link is the link for a digital marketing agency? While link A and link C will both take you to the same destination, link C’s context is much more useful for those trying to classify the link –be it a user or a search engine.

Also note that ‘click here’ is not a desirable keyword for any industry.

Jumping the Shark – Bought Links and the Demise of JC Penny

Quality is better than quantity… but what if there is a LOT of quantity? A hundred-pounds of copper is worth much more than a few karats of gold, but nobody has ever proposed marriage with a scrap heap.

For a price, you can buy a figurative ton of low-quality inbound links, but that’s not a great way to romance search engines. In fact, it’s what led to the very public, very messy breakup of Google and JC Penny.

In an effort to earn a fast rank increase on highly competitive keywords, such as ‘sweater,’ JC Penny’s SEO firm purchased thousands of links. The results were instantly phenomenal, with the retailer appearing in top ranking for a majority of their desired keywords, including ‘sweaters.’ Job well done, right?

Ask any baseball player about the long-term repercussions of quick-performance boosters, and you’ll find a story similar to JC Penny’s.

The ranking was short lived, and within days, their search performance began to sink. The links, while used in the right context, were from sites without much clout and without the right content. Google’s algorithm began discounting the weight of these links automatically, and flagged it for manual review by Google’s special-forces quality team, led by the amazing Matt Cutts.

Within hours, JC Penny dropped from top-spot ranking to ranking even lower than when they had started, and they were lucky to have only lost their reputation with a primary website traffic channel as catalog sales plummeted –it could have been worse. In baseball terms, it was just sent back to the minors.

Many who try similar schemes earn placement on Google’s blacklist, where the offending site is no longer eligible to appear on any search, even a search for the URL itself. In mafia terms, it’s dead to Google.

Getting Away with ‘Boosting’ Search Marketing

The aim of a quality search engine is to understand what the user is looking for, and return exactly that. It does this be using its own research from ‘crawling’ the internet to match the search to the best match in its memory, called an index. The algorithm is how the search engine conducts research, and how it ‘recalls’ the best results from its index.

Link schemes try to ‘hype’ the value of a website.

Some sites get away with it. There are thousands of sites link-scheming their way to higher results. It can be tempting to try it for yourself –to get an edge with the newest ‘untraceable’ boost.

With nearly 600 changes to their algorithm each year, Google is constantly working to provide better search results to their customers, meaning they’re looking for ways to constantly destroy attempts to ‘game’ their systems. Search engines are being tuned to get past the hype, and focus on the quality.

The best ‘boost’ for a baseball player is practice. It takes longer, but the results are more sustainable, and more likely to earn the respect of management. The best ‘boost’ for a website is to build a digital strategy for attracting quality inbound links.

There is no ‘best workout,’ despite the infomercials, because every player and every goal is different. What we do know, is that the best start is with a qualified, experience personal trainer.

There is no ‘best link building strategy,’ despite the ads, because each business and business goal is different. What we do know, is that the best start is with a qualified, experienced digital marketing agency.

Final Thoughts

Practice is time consuming and damned hard work, as is proper link building. In both cases, it’s not a ‘task’ as much as it is a lifestyle change with gains that make all the efforts well worth the pain. A proper strategy will balance your business goals and abilities, setting attainable, realistic targets as your begin to take your brand to #1 –and keep it there.

In this on-demand webinar, you’ll discover the on and off page signals essential for search engines to rank your website’s relevancy. Learn what it takes to earn better ranking without tricks, and the dangers and pitfalls of unsavory SEO tactics.

Though this is an on-demand presentation, we invite you to ask questions in the comments below, via SilverTech on Facebook or to SilverTech on Twitter.

Google+ is counting on a surge of brands to bring our followers into their platform just as we did with Twitter and Facebook. A sort of amalgamation of Twitter’s brief public sharing and Facebook’s rich media, Google+ offers brands interesting sharing and listening opportunities.

In 15 minutes and only five steps, your brand can have a page on Google+.

Step One: Log In to Google+

Log into Google Plus and scroll to the very bottom of your page.

You’ll want to have a personal account before creating your brand’s page.

In your page’s footer, you’ll find a link to ‘Create a page.’ As you scroll, Google+ will keep feeding you content, making the footer a little harder to catch than you may expect. Alternatively, you can visit https://plus.google.com/pages/create.

Step Two: Select Your Page Type

Are you a local business, big brand, institution or artist? What about ‘other?’ Take your best guess, but if you’re stumped, refer to the Open Graph protocol to ensure your pages are consistent across platforms. Ironically, you can find that information through Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol Guide under ‘Object Types.’

In this example, I’ve chosen to create a ‘Company,’ though the setup is the same for Products, and Entertainment page families. Google+ Pages for Local Businesses are even easier, and require only a phone number if you’re listed in Google Places.

Step Three: Enter Your Page Information

Complete the form provided to create your Google+ page. While it might be tempting to get in-depth in your description, anything above 60 characters is likely to be trunc… [truncated.]

You’ll be asked to upload a photo or logo following this step.

Step Four: Customize your Page

Click ‘Edit Profile,’ then the section of your profile you wish to edit. With this, you can add recommended links, edit your page information and upload pictures to your scrapbook, the row of five photos on the top of your brand page.

The Google+ scrapbook images remain in the order you post them, unlike Facebook’s randomization.

Step Five: Google+ Page Administration

Congratulations on your new Google page! Like Facebook, you can ‘use’ Google+ either as yourself or as your page. As an administrator of a page, you now have a small arrow beside your name in your profile. Clicking this arrow will display a list including yourself and each page you’ve created.

Great Google+ Page! Now What?

Like Facebook and Twitter, earning business and building relationships on Google+ will require both strategy and training to develop a ‘voice’ that fits the platform, your customers and your brand. Consider partnering with an experienced digital marketing agency offering social media marketing strategy. This strategic partner should be able to offer both tactical and technical guidance unique to your company and business strategy, including ways to profit from and promote a Google+ page.

Digital marketing forensics just keeps on getting better. A recent addition to the Google Analytics tool kit that exemplifies this improvement is Multi-Channel Funnels. With Multi-Channel Funnels you can now measure the effectiveness of each digital channel (and even off-line channels to some extent) that you use to reach audiences and drive them to conversion.

Conversions are (obviously) a wonderful thing. Like the high scoring star player on a soccer team they tend to be the focus of attention, while the other players who helped move the ball down the field often go un-noticed. Just like in sports there are often other players, or sources, that assist in achieving that coveted moment of conversion in digital marketing.

A coach of a sports team has an advantage. They can watch the conversion unfold, as the ball moves from player to player and finally into the goal. They can then watch films, to refine their game, utilizing successful plays more frequently and eliminating or refining less fruitful ones that waste time, effort and expense.

Digital marketers don’t have the luxury of watching a multi-channel conversion unfold in real time. But, Multi-Channel Funnels offer the digital marketer the equivalent of films in the coaching arsenal. Using Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics reveals the traffic sources involved in your customers buying cycle.

(Graphic Source: Google Analytics > Multi Channel Funnels > Overview

In the image above, the Assist Interactions show the referring source of traffic to your website. These interactions could take place in a day or over the course of a month or even more. If your analytics and channels are set up appropriately, Multi-Channel Funnels will reveal pre-conversion touch-points in order and tell you when each one occurred. You can even see the Assisted Conversion Value (ACV).

What about those traffic sources that aren’t showing up very often in conversion paths? Should you ignore or do away with them all together? That depends. Let’s say that SEM is showing up somewhat frequently as an assist in your conversion paths, but organic search is failing you miserably. If the cost of SEM is disproportionately high compared to the ACV, maybe it’s time to consider investing in SEO to generate better organic results.

If you know the cost associated with the channel providing the assist then understanding the value of its conversion assist and the frequency with which it is appearing in different conversion paths gives you the ability to measure the return on investment for the different channels you are using or relying on. Now you can fine tune your playbook for greater success. Requesting, appropriating and justifying your marketing budget just got easier!

Among the agency’s new or continued client relationships are:

• The Jimmy Fund / Dana Farber Cancer Institute
• Pepco, A Utilities Company Serving Mid-Atlantic Region
• Silver State Schools Credit Union, Nevada
• Midland Memorial Hospital, Texas
• Harvard Affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center, Massachusetts
• Norfolk Hardware, New England Kitchen and Bath Sales, Designer and Installations
• Catholic Medical Center, New Hampshire
• Loon Mountain Resort, New Hampshire
• SkiNH.com and Cross Country SkiNH
• New Hampshire Grand
• New England College

“We are fortunate to have the ability to continually bring in respected brands while continuing to serve the clients you already have,” said SilverTech Founder, Nick Soggu, “especially where some of our clients have been with us for nearly a decade.”

SilverTech was recently listed among Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing companies for the fourth consecutive year.

The full-service digital marketing agency serves brands with services and consultation to include in marketing strategy, web design and development, social media, email marketing, search engine marketing and online branding.

My decision to leave one of the largest, most prestigious agencies in the world was the hardest choice I’ve made in my career. The decision came with much anxiety and even some guilt. Like this article, it was based on my personal experiences with a big agency and the pleasing culture change of a smaller agency. Now settled into my new (smaller) agency home at SilverTech, I can honestly say that I feel it was worth the move -and here is why.

Big agencies can have the ability to make you feel small amongst the big brands, big budgets, and all-too-often big egos. With this, big agencies can see employees as “what have you done for me lately,” instead of recognizing each individual as a talented and valuable member of the team.

I was competitive and know that I offered the skills to be successful in big-agency advertising, but I was not seeing that my thoughts, opinions and expertise made a noticed ripple amongst the countless others fighting for the spotlight. I was ready to move on to a culture built on teamwork focused on client success. I chose to leave big agency life and go small.

Some big agencies can be very good at keeping secrets, and the best may be how they promote talent. I have over a year of insider experience and, frankly, I have no idea how people move up. Employees of mega-agencies can be left with no idea where their career path is headed and little reassurance that they’re on track for a promotion.

Employees are much more engaged when they feel they’re an influential member of a well-coached team. That’s why many small agencies are very successful in increasing output without adding to the employment pool. At SilverTech, I know that every member of the team is absolutely crucial to client and agency success, from founder to yours truly.

You may have heard the claim that big agencies lack the creativity or focus on effectiveness which many small agencies are known for. Too often, this can be an unfortunate truth. Not only do small agencies stand by their creativity with clients when it is the right decision for the brand, but they create and foster an environment where putting politics before a client’s returns on investment and honest innovation is unacceptable.

The switch to small has been a rebirth in my love of the industry and client service. Since joining a small, dynamic agency, I’ve learned that you can love what you do and still be human. My tweet on August 8^th sums it up best, “Really happy for the first time in over a year”.

Are you ready to join a motivated team? Whether you’re an experienced small-agency pro or looking for a change from the big-agency path, keep an eye out for digital marketing careers at SilverTech.

For many marketers, ‘like’ and ‘fan’ are interchangeable, but when Facebook dropped the ‘Fan’ moniker for the more enigmatic ‘Like,’ connections between brands and fans likers (?) earned an “it’s complicated” relationship status.

With less than half (42%) of Facebook users interpreting ‘Like’ as fandom for brands and 58% expecting exclusive access to content and deals, the otherwise approving ‘thumbs-up’ reads more like a subscription than a cheer.

As a marketer, I know what I hope for in a ‘like.’ I hope that they become customer, advocate and sounding board. That they have our Facebook page and hold our status updates for as long as Mark Zuckerberg shall allow us to live (or we move on to Google+). I’m hoping, like many marketers, that ‘Like’ is the first step to a brand-and-fan marriage.

Unsurprisingly, those people behind the ‘Like’ button clicks may find that whole brand/marriage thing a bit creepy. A ‘Like’ isn’t that serious. In fact, 37% have absolutely no expectation.

Source: ExactTarget, “Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Meaning of Like.” Sep 21, 2011

Statistically, the brand ‘chit-chat’ ranks fairly low, and promotional messaging is less than welcome… unless the messaging is an exclusive discount or promotion. (?!)

Fans of Malcom Gladwell’s TED presentation on Howard Moskowitz will remember that what people report to prefer, and what people will reach for, are often dramatically different. He uses the example where most of us would report to enjoy a dark, rich, hearty roasted coffee… but a majority will order weak, milky drinks instead. (Watch the TED Talk)

As brands, our relationships with social media followers are complicated –riddled with mixed expectations, emotions and concerns over personal space. Like any relationship, there is no ‘right’ way, but contrary to marketer belief there is such thing as ‘couple’s therapy’ for brands online, and the fans they cherish.

‘Couples Therapy’ for Social Brands

When the relationship between your brand and your followers seems rocky, neither pushing harder nor abandoning the channel are likely to bring you any level of success. Instead, try something new and actively listen and watch for feedback.

Try an exclusive promotion, and track the results carefully.

Design and share content of value, rarity and exclusivity –an ‘inside look,’ sneak preview or captivating back-story of your brand or product.

Bark less, increasing your social appeal can be as easy as broadcasting less often, and more on target.

Experiment and test often, and always with well-defined goals of your brand’s social media expectations.

Stop looking for a cookie-cutter relationship template, and embrace the uniqueness of your brand and followers. If a self-help book stated clearly that the key to successful marriage was Wednesday night dinners out at a casual restaurant paired with white wine, you’d cry ‘horseradish!’

Consider professional assistance. There are agencies available that can help strengthen and grow your brand’s social network while helping measure more clear paths to your marketing goals. SilverTech, for example, has been helping brands connect digitally for over 15 years! That’s a decade-and-a-half dedicated to the art and science of online marketing, building our unique insight into both digital culture and the business of brands.

If you’re looking to make the most of social media for your business, we’re here to help.

On Tuesday, October 4^th, SilverTech strategists will be hosting roundtables on three critical and current digital marketing topics.  All are free and will provide attendees with tips, ideas and success stories that you can use in your own digital marketing plans.  Space is limited to 25 per roundtable so follow the instructions below to register right away to reserve your spot!

‘Like’ This Roundtable – Social Media for Direct Marketers

Tuesday October 4^th, Exhibit Hall (Meet at Booth #100)  11:30am – Noon

In this roundtable session we will discuss how, as highly targeted messaging platforms relying on relevance and audience size, social media and direct marketing have more in common than many would think.

• Can social media be used to augment direct marketing, or is it an unnecessary distraction?
• Can social media success be tracked in direct marketing terms?
• Can social media be more direct than traditional direct marketing?

To register for ‘Like’ This Roundtable – Social Media for Direct Marketers:

Go to http://dma1.eventbrite.com or email Erik Strout at erik.strout@silvertech.com

Small Changes for Big Results – Conversion Optimization

Tuesday October 4^th, Exhibit Hall (Meet at Booth #100)   3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

What can just a 1% improvement in conversion rate mean for the online landing page of your next marketing campaign? In this session, we will discuss the small changes in usability and design that can lead to big results.  Plus, we will discuss best ways to do online multivariate and a/b testing.
Attendees will walk away with a conversion guide that SilverTech digital strategists have put together.

To register for Small Changes for Big Results – Conversion Optimization:

Go to http://dma2.eventbrite.com or email Erik Strout at erik.strout@silvertech.com

Digital Marketing Trends – Are You Keeping Up?

Tuesday October 4^th, Exhibit Hall (Meet at Booth #100)   4:30 – 5:00 p.m.

Join us in this roundtable discussion to learn about current digital marketing trends and which ones:

• Should be watched or monitored closely for the future
• Should be part of your current marketing mix
• Won’t stick around for long so don’t spend too much time on them

We’ll discuss ideas and success stories that will help get you started on future digital marketing plans.

To register for Digital Marketing Trends – Are You Keeping Up?:

Go to http://dma3.eventbrite.com or email Erik Strout at erik.strout@silvertech.com

MANCHESTER,  NH – 25 August 2011 – SilverTech, a national digital marketing agency, announced that the company was named to the 2011 Inc. 5000 list, ranking amongst the fastest growing companies in America for the fourth consecutive year.

“This award signifies the transformation and growth of our agency,” comments SilverTech Founder and President Nick Soggu, “our team has grown, our services more advanced and our clients more diverse.”

This year, SilverTech continued partnerships with clients such as Life is Good®, American Water, and Polartec®, while signing new clients such as Markem Imaje, Mimoco, Midland Memorial Hospital and the Joslin Diabetes Center.

The 2011 Inc. 5000 serves as a report card on the U.S. economy. SilverTech continues to rank among the fastest growing advertising and marketing companies.

About SilverTech Inc.

SilverTech, Inc. is a national digital marketing agency based in New England that expertly solves online marketing, technology, operations, commerce, and communication challenges for businesses by creating value-driven web, digital and data-powered solutions. Services such as online strategy, information architecture, website design & development, e-commerce, multimedia graphics & animation, search engine optimization, digital marketing, performance analysis, web application development and content management solutions are designed or customized to fit exact business requirements.

SilverTech clients include Life is Good®, American Water, Dr. Hauschka Skin Care, Le Gourmet Chef, Polartec®, Rita’s Ice,  and Pizza Fusion, among many others. For more information go to www.silvertech.com or contact SilverTech at pr@silvertech.com.

About Inc. Magazine

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. With a total paid circulation of 710,106, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit us online at www.inc.com

SilverTech Media Inquiries: Contact Marc Frechette, Marketing Communications Specialist, SilverTech, Inc. pr@silvertech.com 603-669-6600 x 28

Discussing the return on investment, or ROI, from digital marketing efforts is an essential and challenging aspect of my role as a Business Development Executive. The ability to demonstrate ROI for most marketing activities can been a challenge. The advantage of digital marketing, unlike a radio spot or an ad in the Sunday paper, is that the tracking and measurement capability can be embedded in the digital media itself. Email tracking, social media, pay per click, tagging and web analytics all provide a digitized stream of intelligence that can be gathered, sorted and analyzed for optimization and the measurement of ROI. In fact, a Pay Per Click campaign will add itself up for you! So why is the conversation around ROI still challenging?

There are many times that I am introduced to clients when they have already decided that they need a new website, an email marketing campaign, social media strategy or some other glorious investment that will save, launch or augment their brand. The prospect has a budget number in mind and has issued an proposal request or is looking to gather pricing and proposals from various agencies. You would expect most people in my position to be excited about finding an opportunity with some urgency behind it, but I really enjoy creating the solutions that solve business challenges, streamline processes and increase brand awareness and sales. Solutions like that provide ROI.

One aspect I use to gauge the ROI potential of new business opportunities is the prospects approach to their digital marketing project. To me, the clients approach has an impact on whether I can propose a solution that:

1. Can produce ROI
2. Can be executed by both the client and the agency
3. Can be projected
4. Can be measured

Sometimes clients approach various elements of digital marketing silos. They must have a website or social media presence for credibility these days. Maybe they will use it as a place to easily provide information about products and services. Maybe they will even implement ecommerce. Yet, despite the many functional areas of a business that a digital marketing strategy could enable, websites and other components of a comprehensive strategy are too-often implemented in a stand-alone fashion. Just another element of the corporation with a similar look, accurate information and a “Contact Us” form longing to be submitted. Consistency alone doesn’t build multi-channel strength.

In contrast, digital marketing elements that provide return on investment are tightly integrated with the various business functions they could serve and the business and marketing plans that guide them. Integrated digital marketing solutions such as this take time, pain staking discovery and open communication with stakeholders from different departments throughout the client’s organization. Just like this blog post, the first conversation is just the beginning!