Search engine optimization (SEO) continues to be an essential part of online marketing in the 21st century. SEO is a practice that allows your website to become more visible and relevant in SERPS (search engine results pages), therefore increasing your website’s chance of being visited by potential customers.

There are a number of factors that will affect how well your website performs in search engines, but the most important part is responsible content creation. Pages with high-quality, keyword-rich content are more likely to be found by search engines and rank higher in search results. Additionally, well-optimized websites typically have faster load times and provide a better browsing experience, leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

Since SEO is an ongoing process, it is essential to keep up with the latest techniques and updates. In order to ensure your website remains competitive and visible, be sure to:

Create quality content
Optimize your website for speed and accessibility
Update

For further assistance with your SEO, please contact one of our SEO Specialists today!

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Confrontation and Harassment and Bullying, Oh My! Let me share with you my recent experience. I was asked to speak on Reputation Management a couple of weeks ago and was shocked when a participant stood up, challenged my presentation, called me a liar and stormed out.

That in and of itself was bad enough, but the next day another speaker was challenged and a participant argued with her as well. Not sure if it was the same participant or not.

The age of the participant who I angered, millennial, early 20s. My presentation was on Reputation Management and after she left I made the comment that she needed anger management. Well the presenter from the second day was talking on Conflict Resolution! So the participant(s), again not sure if she was the same one or not, just needs some old fashion schooling on business etiquette and maybe some anger management.

For my presentation, I was speaking to young professionals about their online profiles and digital searches. The web is often our first and most important impression, and finding ways to monitor, improve, and control our reputations online is something that benefits everyone.

I pointed out that in our world today, the first impression of people now comes from what we can find online. People are Googling all the time and making critical decisions based on what they find.

Seventy-five percent of HR departments are required to research a candidate online before making a hire. Now this is where my seminar participant started to get agitated. In her opinion, HR departments cannot do this because it’s illegal. I beg to differ.

I quoted these statistics which further perpetuated the situation. Sixty percent of employers’ screen candidates via social media. This number is rapidly increasing — from 52 percent just last year and 22 percent in 2008. Employers are scanning social for red flags: 46 percent were turned off by provocative or inappropriate photographs, videos, or information; 43 percent by evidence of a candidate drinking or using drugs; 31 percent by bad-mouthing of previous company or fellow employee; and 29 percent by poor communication skills.

I gave examples of my own clients not hiring, rescinding job offers and shredding applications because of what they’ve found online.

I then asked for a couple of volunteers so we could do searches on them. The first gentlemen, had a few Go Fund Me pages for medical issues. On his Facebook page, he had several posts with medical issues. I suggested that he clean those up and maybe remove the posts and Go Fund Me pages where the campaigns have been completed. I told him that it probably wouldn’t stop me from hiring him, but it may stop others if they could see publicly that he had health issues.

This is where the participant flipped out, literally. I don’t know if I have ever been so publicly humiliated or had anyone ever scream and yell at me in a presentation before. She told me that it was illegal and in an interview you can’t even ask anyone about health issues.

I completely understand that, but we weren’t discussing the interview process nor were we in an interview. We were discussing an internet search to see if a business was even going to accept the application. We weren’t even close to an interview. I was giving suggestions on how to cleanup a profile or search for a potential employer. My suggestion about his Facebook page was to make his profile private so that all of that information wasn’t public.

I was completely flustered for a couple of seconds and had to quickly pull myself together, not respond and keep on going.

For the angered participant, you can ask questions in a presentation, but you should have pulled me aside and discussed this in private. I felt a little better when the speaker from the second day shared with me that she had the same issue.

These outbursts, in my opinion, come from our age of bullying. Where young people today, grow up bullying their peers and at this point in time, very little is done about it. Our bullying laws are not being enforced and so the spill over is affecting all of us.

I don’t have an answer as to how to deal with the issue. As for me, I may have to educate participants the next time that I speak. And ask that if they have something negative to say or disagree with my information to please stay afterwards and not to disrupt my presentation with their outbursts. I truly believe that we just need to educate this younger generation on business etiquette and what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior.

If you are needing help with your Online Reputation Management, please give us a call today! And let’s take the oh my out of confrontation and harassment and bullying!

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Your physical body dies, but Facebook is forever. What you post on your social media platforms is available here long after you’ve moved on to the Great Internet in the Sky.

Most of what you contribute to your accounts is probably harmless. But in some cases it can cause estate problems for family. Here is a look at the impact of your posts and how you and your family can handle them.

From Identity Theft to Lawsuits

Identity theft and financial lost are the biggest dangers of leaving social media accounts open after a person dies or becomes incapable of handling their own affairs. Criminals can hack your shopping accounts, bank accounts and personal data.

They can harvest financial information and personal data from your profiles and posts. There is a real danger that assets will end up as unclaimed funds, creating headaches for executors.

If a lawsuit is in progress when you die, social media posts can give your opponents evidence to bolster their case. If a relative decides to contest your will, the social posts can provide them with insights to help them further their claim.

It’s not just your internet accounts that leave a big data footprint. Your computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone also contain personal information. With the Internet of Things, all your mobile devices can be linked and share data.

Take Steps Now

Do you want others to have access to your emails, photos, data and documents after you’re gone? Probably not. The time to handle future problems is now.

List the accounts, usernames and passwords for your online presence in your estate documents and power of attorney. These can include:

• Social media accounts
• Shopping accounts
• Bank and financial institution accounts
• Tax and government accounts
• Video, photo and music accounts
• Email accounts

In your will and estate papers, specifically give your executors permission to access your accounts. This will avoid problems with privacy laws.

Find out how to remove data from your electronics. Leave all the necessary instructions in your estate papers.

And if you are a family member, don’t be sentimental and feel you are memorializing your loved one by keeping their accounts active. Close accounts to avoid identity theft.

Please contact Blast Creative for all of your Reputation Management needs!

The post Digital Ghosts: How Your Identity Lives on After Death appeared first on Website Design and Marketing.

A lot of people are confused by the concept of programmatic digital advertising nevertheless, it is a concept that has changed how online advertising works forever. Here are the answers to a few of your most frequently asked questions concerning programmatic advertising.

What is programmatic ad buying?

Traditional ad buying involves a complicated process of human negotiations and manual orders. To make things easier, programmatic ad buying uses software to buy ads. Programmatic ad buying essentially makes the purchasing of digital advertising an overall smoother and quicker process.

Why does it matter?

The use of human salespeople and buyers can quickly add up to be very expensive for companies. In contrast, programmatic digital advertising has proven to be more reliable and efficient. It all comes down to the fact that human beings have needs and limits to how much time they can put in every day, while machines do not.

By removing humans from the process of ad buying, programmatic advertising allows the process to be more productive and cost-efficient. Plus, it creates more time for marketers and sellers to create more valuable content, rather than wasting time and resources on menial tasks.

Is programmatic the future of advertising?

Programmatic digital advertising is becoming more prevalent every day. Companies that hope to be successful, and stay successful, in their advertising endeavors should probably look into programmatic ad buying.

The future will surely see all forms of media being traded programmatically, including television commercials. However, for now, programmatic ad buying is mostly focused on online ads and other nontraditional forms of media. This has not stopped many top companies from creating entire teams to manage solely programmatic ad buying.

It is clear that many businesses are aware of the success associated with programmatic advertising and are determined to take advantage of it.

Please contact Blast Creative for all of your Programmatic Digital Advertising needs today!

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On September 1, 2016, Google updated its algorithm in a big way which has greatly changed how search engine results are displayed. This update has been termed Possum since despite many businesses believing that their websites have been removed instead, these websites have just been filtered differently. Below are a few of the major changes that come with this update.

Filtering is Now Based on Address and Affiliation
Google’s new way of filtering shows the most relevant listings by filtering out other listings that are too similar. This means that in addition to businesses that share a similar domain or phone number being filtered out, businesses that share the same address as other businesses in the same category are also being filtered out.

Listings are not being prevented from ranking or being removed but instead, Google chooses one business to rank higher and pushes other business with the same address further down the results page.

Good for Businesses Outside of the City Limits
Businesses that are technically outside a physical city limit and depend on keyword searches involving that city name should see a boost in ranking. In the past, businesses that do not have an address inside the city limits find it extremely difficult to rank high in a city keyword search. The new Possum update seems to have fixed any of these issues since city limits are playing less of a role.

Small Keyword Variations Change Search Results More
With this update, keyword order has become more important. Similar keyword searches produce a different results page than before the update. Simply switching around the order of words in a phrase can greatly impact search results. Consequently, it may be best to utilize multiple iterations of a keyword in order to obtain a high ranking across many different keyword search variations.

Searcher Location is More Important Than Before
Making sure the searcher’s location is set to the correct city is more important than before. Depending on where the searcher is located greatly effects where a particular business ranks on a search page. Even including the city name in the search bar may still result in a lower ranking if the searcher is not located in that same city.

For instance, if a searcher is farther from the city in which they are searching for a business, the Google Search map appears more zoomed out.

Organic and Local Filters Run More Independently
Since the Possum update, the local filter and the organic filter are less synchronized, resulting in completely different behavior. Before the update, websites filtered organically by Google often resulted in a lower ranking. In contrast, the update allows most websites to enjoy a higher ranking when filtered organically. An example of this would be that companies now have two opportunities to rank in the 3-pack, with a www version and a version that does not use www.

 Contact Blast Creative for all of you SEO needs!

The post What Is The New Possum Google Algorithm Update? appeared first on Website Design and Marketing.

You’ve certainly heard of Snapchat by now, particularly given that the CEO turned down a $3 billion purchase offer from Facebook a few years back. The fledgling social media platform is now worth upwards of $20 billion, according to Forbes and Fortune – and that figure is only growing.

So, how is taking video with a short lifetime beneficial to helping you boost your business? It is precisely the fleeting nature of the interaction that makes it attractive to companies. The following are just a few of the tried-and-true methods for making this social media workhorse one of your platforms of choice.

Do a Video FAQ Using Snapchat

One thing that will never change about business is that your consumers will always have questions. It’s the reason most websites have a FAQ section; instead of hoping they navigate to that part of the site, do a Snapchat video and displaying the kind of dedication to customer issues that keeps them coming back. You can also use this feature to send out coupon information and promo codes.

Your Customers are a Part of Your Company

All this means is that you can use Snapchat to increase engagement by being inclusive. For example, GrubHub used Snapchat to include their users in a campaign that involved promotions and giveaways; they experienced a whopping 20% increase in new users after their exclusive Snapchat campaign. If you always remember to employ the platform to engage your followers and provide them with valuable information, then there’s little reason why a campaign like this can’t work for you, too.

Additionally, being inclusive also means showing them how your company works and what’s going on behind the scenes. For example, if you sell the kinds of products that are amenable to conventions – take “Snaps” while there of interesting things and send them to your followers; studies show that this keeps them engaged.

Touch on Social Issues

Although this one can be a bit dicey if not done correctly, it represents a tremendous opportunity to connect with your audience. First off, you should use Analytics to identify your demographic; then, you can better tailor your snaps to represent social issues that concern them. Dove soap did this by jumping on the body image bandwagon to resonate with young women. Soap doesn’t have much to do with body image per se; but their core group of buyers is certainly concerned with this issue – so it works out very well for both parties.

Just think of Snapchat as the most modern distillation of the essence of communication – conveying a story or message. What better way to do that than with images; and better yet, video that captivates and holds the attention of your audience? As a business, you can hardly ask for much more than that.

Contact Blast Creative for all of your Social Media Marketing needs!

The post Why using Snapchat is The New, Smart Way to Boost Your Business appeared first on Website Design and Marketing.

In the past, marketers did their best to present products and services in an effective way and then hoped for a positive outcome. They often developed their marketing campaigns based on data that was not always fresh or targeted. Plus, after the campaign rolled out, customer feedback was slow, limited and vague.

The introduction of social media changed all that. In fact, over the last several years, social media has transformed the way businesses market their brands, connect with customers and analyze data.

Here are 5 ways social media has changed how businesses now engage with their customers and grow their companies.

Creates a Two-Way Connection

When businesses share posts, tweets and other types of social media content, customers can now offer instant feedback to products and services. Social media allows a dynamic two-way connection with customers that can help marketers find out how customers think and feel about their products and marketing strategies. On-line discussions and media sharing can also help to establish a company’s unique personality, points of view and can be used to develop and nurture relationships with customers.

Encourages Customer Participation

When social media engagement allows customers to vote, give a thumbs up or respond in other ways, customers can provide companies with valuable information. Companies can use this information to create new products and improve existing products. As a result of this fresh and targeted information, companies can become stronger.

Promotes Consumer Opinions

Social media reviews can help marketers learn first-hand how consumers feel about their products and services. In addition, when consumers share their opinions, marketers can instantly respond to them. And, consumer reviews give them an opportunity to answer questions, provide information and gain valuable insights to what consumers want and need.

Provides Optimum Outreach

Marketers can now effectively reach more potential and existing customers than ever before. Businesses can use the power of social media and networks to build expansive, sometimes world-wide customer bases and grow brand awareness.

Offers a Cost Effective Marketing Method

Employing conventional marketing methods — including magazines, newspaper, television, radio, billboards — is usually an expensive way to reach consumers. On the other hand, if you know how to utilize social media and have the time, oftentimes you can reach your intended audience without spending a lot of money. Nevertheless, establishing, keeping and growing a social media audience can require skills and perseverance, especially if your company wants to earn customer loyalty and trust. However, if you have a marketing budget, you can hire social media experts to perform a variety of duties, such as designing marketing strategies that will expand your customer base and build effective campaigns that help your company succeed.

Social media marketing has had an enormous impact on the way businesses develop and present their products and services and learn about their customers. At times, the opportunities for social media marketing efforts can seem almost infinite. The future of social media marketing continues to look bright.

Please contact Blast Creative for all of your Social Media Marketing needs!

The post 5 Ways Social Media Has Changed Marketing As We Know It appeared first on Website Design and Marketing.

Microblogging giant Twitter, which released its unique Emoji stickers earlier this year, recently announced that they will now be allowing brands to use these stickers in a sponsorship capacity. Just a few months ago, online giants such as Techcrunch first reported that Emoji stickers had come to Twitter, and various companies were finding some success marketing these via their social media platforms. In the beginning, though, these stickers were of the run-of-the-mill variety, where businesses had to sift through the available ones in order to find those that were most suitable for their message.

Changes to Twitter Emoji Stickers

Although the photos were available for businesses large and small right at the end of July 2016, it is only as the summer concludes and fall begins that the branded variety is now available to help companies promote themselves.

As you would expect, one of the giant corporations is already onboard. Pepsi is ratcheting up the opportunities for its followers to engage by allowing them to place branded Pepsi Emojis on top of the photos they take and post. President of PepsiCo, Brad Jakeman, is banking on this as a progenitor of more conversations about the company. To date, Pepsi is using about 50 promoted badges of company loyalty in a dozen countries, such as India, Mexico, the U.S., Russia and Canada.

Twitter is also banking on corporations such as Pepsi being on board to spark even more interest in their promoted Emoji badges.  In their initial trial run last year, Pepsi’s rival, Coke, was actually a driving force of the beta (it wasn’t available to everyone). Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi were also in on the exclusive beta-run, during a time when the promoted #Stickers reportedly cost a cool $1 million per package. Clearly, even today that they’re widely available, only the most profitable brands will be buying into Twitter’s deal.

How Does it Work?

Twitter released an official statement revealing details of how it all works. Any brand that comes onboard can make between four and eight promotional Emojis that their users can then add to personal photos that they upload to their servers. They function as a sort of visual hashtag, where the accepted designation is #Stickers.

In general, visual media appears to be reigniting a new storm of customer engagement in the mobile space these days. Snapchat, which has risen to a nearly $25 billion valuation to date, capitalizes on this fact in perhaps the most obvious way with their video platform and geo-filters for photos. Facebook has done something similar, and Twitter’s latest promoted stickers are seeking to grab some market share. After all, Twitter still isn’t profitable; the hope is that adding a visual element to the stream of words for which the platform is known can infuse it with new life.

Please contact Blast Creative for all of your social media marketing needs.

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Snapchat plans to snag San Francisco-based Vurb, a search and recommendation app, for more than $110 million.  Vurb is an app that was launched in 2011 for iPhones and later expanded to Android and Amazon devices.  Its core purpose makes convenience a priority by showing the user what’s going on in the local area, right down to which groups may be performing.  It also offers recommendations and different ways to communicate with friends.  It seems to be the one-stop shop for finding out what’s going on in your local area, and then some.

 The Details
Vurb is available on both iOS and Android devices and has been referred to as a search engine, much like google.  Once you open the app and create an account, a search bar appears allowing you to search for anything.  Once you search for something the app will pull up relevant information regarding the search item, like Yelp reviews, and directions, to name a few.

However, below the search bar, most of the work has already been done for you.  Recommendations appear on everything from nearby restaurants, movies, performances, and even what’s showing on TV.  The app is also customizable.  You can set up preferences that reflect the things you’re most interested in.  The preferences will also reflect in the types of recommendations that are displayed.  In essence, Vurb is a messaging app, a social network, a recommendation service, and a personalized location-based search engine.

Social Options
Vurb provides many ways to communicate with friends and even has its own feed, much like Facebook.  You can message friends and share local events and happenings with them.  You can even bundle your search results together and share them with friends. This is convenience at its finest.  It even has Uber and google maps roped into the framework.  Although Snapchat is a messaging app, it will be interesting to see how Vurb and Snapchat mix.

Snapchat’s Vurb should prove useful to many people: personalizing searches and making everything easier.  With so many social perks included, it should make sharing any and every type of information a cinch for users.  The fact that the app provides users with information from a localized perspective, makes it extremely useful and personal.  An added plus is the fact that you can go a step further with personalization by using preferences.  It may not have caught on when it first came out, but perhaps Snapchat will give Vurb the steam it needs to power ahead.

Contact Blast Creative today for all of your Social Media needs!

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There is no doubt that SEO has become crucial for marketing in the Internet age, but it’s also a very volatile industry. There was a time when getting search engine hits involved using certain keywords and phrases several times within your web content, but Google’s constantly-changing algorithms have basically killed that SEO strategy. That doesn’t mean that SEO should be ignored in 2016, only that marketers need to change with the times and adopt new strategies to get their websites near the top of search engine results.

Optimize for Rich Answers

If you’ve entered a common question into Google’s search engine in the last several months, you’ve probably come across Rich Answers. These are short excerpts from websites that show up at the top of Google search results that provide you with a quick answer to your question. According to a recent study by Stone Temple Consulting, Rich Answers show up on 19.45 percent of Google search results. That may not seem like a high number, but it is almost certain to increase with time.

To optimize your content for Rich Answers, you should first rank your site well for the query you want to answer. This is the most important part, and it is probably the element that is closest to “traditional” SEO. You need to optimize your content for the keyword in the query, which should help you get onto the first page of a Google search result. Start your sentences with command words to sound more authoritative to Google, and keep your heading as clear and unambiguous as possible.

Google’s Rich Answers algorithm is still fairly new and cannot be boiled down to an exact science, but these simple techniques should give your content a good chance of showing up as a Rich Answer.

Measure and Improve User Engagement

User engagement refers to statistics such as how long users stay at a website, how often (or if) they return and where they click when they are using the site. It’s obviously very important and a good indicator of how successful a website is, but it is also very difficult to measure. Tools such as Heat Maps from SumoMe and Crazy Egg can help you determine where your visitors are clicking and how long they stick around, but it will be up to you to optimize your content by improving CTA links and other features based on the data you accumulate.

Mobile App Optimization

The mobile market is huge right now, and it only stands to get bigger. Google has recognized this and has updated its algorithm to encourage site owners to develop mobile-friendly versions of their websites. This not only means developing what are essentially new websites that can be easily viewed on smartphones and tablets, but it could soon mean developing ASO – app store optimization – strategies that are designed to get apps ranked highly on app stores. Apps aren’t indexed on Google searches now, but they are indexed on App Store and Google Play, making ASO the potential future of SEO.

Please contact Blast Creative today for all of your SEO needs!

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