We are pleased to announce that new HD Hudson site is now LIVE! http://www.hdhudson.com/

Yes, this 100+ year old brand—manufacturer of bug sprayers and various other spraying systems—turned to us to help them dramatically improve their online presence through the following:

• Establishing them as the global leader in sprayer systems
• Developing a problem/solution-friendly experience for consumers entering site
• Creating a user experience that allows one to easily search their multiple lines of products and parts

And we did Just that! Not only does the website have a clean new design that represents H.D. Hudson as the global leader in the industry that it is; it’s also broken out into three segments: Consumer, Professional, and Global Health for easy navigation between each industry . If that isn’t easy enough for you, we’ve also implemented a 4-step search process so you can find the sprayer (or part thereof) in the blink of an eye!

To Hudson’s delight, we exceeded expectations and delivered a highly organized and intuitive powerhouse of a site that quickly and easily allows users to find the Hudson product that best suits their needs.  So  you can now spend your time in your lawn killing weeds, instead of killing time at your computer trying to find the product you need to do so.

So, you’ve been told 2011 is all about local. As well as mobile. And social. And video. And reviews. And probably a number of other important elements of the online world. So what the heck do you focus on? Well…when it comes to getting your site found on search engines: all of them.

But! Fear not. Don’t freak out. This doesn’t require elaborate marketing campaigns combining all of these mediums. (In fact, avoid that.) And you don’t need to have the next “Old Spice Guy” idea for social media to have an impact. This just means getting your presence into a healthy mix of all of these mediums, which really comes down to providing great service and engaging with your customers. In other words, do good business. And use these online elements in a natural way.

Here’s an example of how you might integrate them into your everyday business process:

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1. Let’s say you have a special 3-day only deal for your retail website. Assuming you have your Google Places page claimed and optimized, you post the deal there on Monday (the start of the sale–one of your slowest days).
2. You also tweet about it and share it on Facebook, thanking your existing customers for being loyal fans
3. An hour later, you notice several retweets of your deal and thank those followers for sharing the love
4. Another friend of one of the retweeters sees the message, but wants to learn more about you first, so they search for you on their mobile phone. Luckily, you have a well-optimized mobile site, so this person quickly finds you and has easy access to exactly the information they needed (maybe info like what your company does, some testimonials, products, etc.).

Bryan Heredia, front-end developer and designer

We’re happy to welcome Bryan Heredia to our interactive team. Having started as a graphic design intern here he has already had an opportunity to learn the ropes. Bryan will be bringing his creative genius over to the interactive team focusing in on front-end design/build. He’s a Bryan-of-all-trades, if you will.

In college, Bryan studied graphic design and somewhere in there, he taught himself coding. At envisionit, he’ll be programming, designing, programming design, and designing programs. No big deal, really. “It’s all problem solving,” he reasons, a skill he applies in his own time when creating silk-screened posters, animation, and photography projects in the wee hours of the morning.

A few weeks ago, we covered two important points of blogging, now here are some hints to driving more traffic to your company blog, writing and presenting content, and making your posts work harder for you.

1. Titles matter.
   You may think of a clever pun or quippy quip for your title, but consider the subject of your post. Remember, both humans and bots are going to read your post. Think about relevant keywords in your post and use them in the post title. It’s just some simple SEO, basic common sense. For those who subscribe to your blog, your title may be used in the email subject line—so make sure it’s always clear and to the point.
2. Use your links.
   Speaking of SEO: drop in useful and relevant links to other sites and blogs. Drop in links to other posts you wrote in the past, as necessary. And speaking of useful links…
3. Give credit, and be credible.
   Your blog is a relationship tool, so be sincere and honest. Always, always cite your sources, be it a picture or a news article you’re commenting on. If you set up trackbacking when citing another blog post, well, there’s another crosslinking opportunity.
4. Connect to your social media sites.
   Take advantage of all those other points of entry by putting your blog on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you want, set up your blog to automatically post to these channels. Remember, this isn’t a strategy for getting your blog read—it’s a practice.
5. Write like you.
   People like company blogs that let them connect with the humans working behind the curtain. That said, there’s some wiggle room for human error and less-than-perfect grammar. So, it’s not the end of the world if your grammar isn’t perfect or you don’t particularly care about paragraphs, but remember that these things can make your posts easier to read. Write like yourself, and write about the things your readers care about—ignore the robots here. Again, your blog’s a relationship tool, so use it to start and sustain relationships.

Bonus tip:

• Blog readers love numbers.

Titles with numbers and lists (e.g., “Top 10 SEO benefits of top 10 lists”) always get more click-throughs. Remember, before people read anything online, they scan. Breaking content into little digestible nuggets will make things easier for your readers. And if you make things easy for your readers? They’ll come back for more.

Keep your eyes peeled for our “driving action” series tips on using social networks!

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The New Year was brought in with champagne bottles popping, balloons dropping, and unrealistic resolutions that never stick (congrats if they have for you). But once all the fun settled down, along came the expected tidal wave of predictions for 2011. It’s the year for this, the year of that, and I’ve got one more that you can add to the list- 2011 will be the year for mobile marketing. Oh, you want an explanation? Let me tell you why…

Growth

Mobile usage for search is increasing more and more every year, and with the launch of the new tablet category growth seems almost endless. In Fact, according to internal Google Data in Q3, Google searches from mobile devices increased by a whopping 130% year-over-year. In addition, a study by the Mobile Marketing Association found that 59% of consumers plan to do their holiday shopping via their mobile phones and overall Google searches have increased by five times the amount they were two years ago. That means if you aren’t optimized for mobile and aren’t doing any mobile marketing, you’re missing out on more than half of the consumer population shopping during the holidays.

Tools/Data

It seems obvious that the use of mobile phones to search and browse on the web has continued to increase every year, and every year they say “this is the year for mobile”, but this year Google is supporting that argument in a big way.

Say hello to the release of Google’s brand spankin’ new Mobile Keyword Tool.  This tool allows you to develop a more detailed keyword list to help target your specific audience. You can now find what people are searching for globally and locally from mobile phones, and not only that, you can also segment the audience by what type of mobile phone they are searching from (whether it be phones with WAP browsers, Full internet browsers like (iPhones and Droids), or both).

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We love partying at ROOF. In fact, we were there this weekend for the launch of Winter Fest to hear Gaga’s personal DJ’s spin. As marketers, what do we love even more? When ROOF comes up with a creative campaign to promote the ROOF staff, that resembles the NFL Draft YouTube campaign that is uber-popular. We’re not going to say who we voted for, but you have to check out Ask For Me and vote for your favorite video on their Facebook page.

Ask For Me at ROOF on theWit

If you’re not already testing out the Yahoo-Bing Paid Search channel, you may want to start thinking about it….Efficient Frontier launched a report this week in regards to the Revenue per Click (RPC) gains that the Yahoo-Bing transition is making on Google, most recently in Q4 2010. Note the chart that shows the 7 Day RPC average of both channels at the end of 2010. So is it time to add Yahoo-Bing to your marketing strategy?? It’s something to think about and consider if you are playing in the Google PPC game, or you are not ready to play with Google and want to test out PPC with a smaller market share.

WordPress launched The Daily Post way back in December 2010, to inspire bloggers to live up to their title and actually post blog posts in 2011. But not only to post posts, but to post all the time—daily, as you might have gathered. Daily Post presents a prompt from the question-and-answer social network of sorts Plinky. If you want to write about it, write about it on your blog. Then you have a new post.

But let’s back up a minute. Posts are good. A solid blogging foundation is even better. Here are two important points of blogging:

1. Your blog needs to have a point.
Approach your blog like a magazine editor. Magazines are all dedicated to a subject. Your blog can encompass content from a relatively broad subject, but topics should have some sort of underlying theme. (Take this blog, which is about interactive space. There are posts about technology, social media, and company news, but it’s all under the scope of interactive.)

It’s fine to dedicate your blog to an extremely specific topic—we could very easily write about blue Japanese gadgets weighing under three ounces with eight hour battery life—but make sure that topic is substantial enough to actually write about weekly.

2. Your blog needs recent content.
Here’s where the new posts come in. New posts show your dedication, which keep your blog relevant, which in turn boost your credibility or your organization’s credibility. Think of the poor, deserted blogs littered throughout virtual space. It’s always the same story: started with hope and enthusiasm, abandoned due to lack of interest. Don’t let this happen to your blog. Abandoned blogs make everyone sad.

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Alright, so you’re back in the office and ready to start the year off right. You want to invest more of your marketing budget in social media, email marketing, PPC advertising. You know that this year is going to be different. You can feel it. But you sit back and wonder, “what’s going to be the biggest trend and growth area this year in online marketing?” Local search. Trust me. Everything is going local.

2011 is going to be the year of Local. The Internet is getting bigger and bigger. Google has indexed over 1 trillion websites. There are millions of pizza restaurants, cafes, and florists. There are millions of everything. What does this mean? Local matters. It’s no longer important or in many cases possible to be number one on Google for the entire country. What matters is where your business shows up in your local market.

Remember that Google can tell where someone is searching from and this means SEO and SEM become a local game. You want to show up higher in search than the pizza place down the street, or more importantly you need too. With Google Maps, Groupon, Foursquare, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, and Facebook Places it’s become a local game.  Just look at Google trying to buy Groupon for $6 billion….they understand what the most important trend is. The Internet has arrived in your neighborhood and it’s crucial that your house look better than the one next door, or at least be easier to find.

One place to start: Make sure your business address is listed on every database and online map you can think of. Google, Bing, and Yahool Local listings are critical in helping your business show up in local search. Claim the listings and optimize them to show all facets of your business. Always remember to think local.

If you, your business, or your organization is afraid of commitment—social media commitment, that is—go ahead and stop reading now. Quitter.

Whether you’re blogging, microblogging, using Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or another site that connects you to others via the internet, ask yourself:

1.     Who uses this particular social media channel?

Some social networks are used by a pretty varied demographic (e.g., Facebook). Some don’t (e.g., Twitter is used predominantly by young urbanites, according to Pew ). Plan accordingly.

2.     What does your social media channel do?

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. Have a strategy. “We’re going to make a Facebook page” is not a strategy. “We’re going to make a Facebook page to offer exclusive deals for Facebook members and gather feedback about new products” is a strategy.

3.     Will you commit to updating the channel?

Well, will you?

Commit to social media, engage your audience, and reap the benefits. In our series of posts dedicated to driving action with social media, we’ll share some of our favorite tips so you can make the most of your chosen social channels.

Next up: Tips for driving action with your blog. Stay tuned.