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On the Internet, no one knows you're a beast. But those who are searching for a beast will find you if you leave big enough footprints.
(Hollister Creative illustration by Max Walter)
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Like you, we would freak out at a Bigfoot sighting. The elusive giant is scarier than the Loch Ness Monster. We can avoid Nessie if we avoid swimming in her lake in the Scottish Highlands, but Bigfoot could be
anywhere.
His big hairy audacious self has been sighted in the Himalayas, where they call him Yeti, and in Canada, where they call him Sasquatch. The first evidence that he had emigrated to America was found in 1958, when his two-foot-long, eight-inch-wide footprints were seen in California.
A monstrous footprint is a bad thing if you find it in your backyard or at your campsite. On the web, a monstrous footprint is a great thing for your business.
The digital footprint of your business is a way of describing the total number of places the business has appeared online, leaving its tracks across the Internet landscape. The more tracks you leave, the more likely it is that people searching for a business like yours will find you.
Size matters in a digital footprint. Aim to make it bigger and bigger over time. Below are tips on how to do that. But quality matters, too. You can waste a lot of time leaving tracks in places your prospects don't visit, so plan your trek accordingly.
Here are five free or inexpensive ways to increase the size of your company's digital footprint:
- Blog to add pages to your website. Each original blog article, video or infographic you post and optimize with relevant keywords provides fresh tracks for prospects to follow to your website.
- Share each blog on social media. Re-use your blog as a discussion topic to engage your audience in conversation. Pay $20 or so to boost it, so more people will see it. Ask others to share it.
- Claim all directory listings. Start by claiming your Google My Business listing. Then either spend time or buy Yext (or a similar tool) to claim, update and manage all online directory listings.
- Create profiles on industry sites. If any business or trade group you join has a website with member listings, get listed and pay (if you must) to add a hotlink from it to your website.
- Get accounts on B2C review sites. If you sell to consumers, weigh the risks and rewards of appearing on review sites such as Yelp and Angie's List. Reviews increase your footprint.
If your company is the online Bigfoot, you will get found more frequently than your competitors.
Need advice or assistance to increase your company's digital footprint? Hollister Creative offers consulting on how to do it and an array of do-it-for-you services. Call Kim Landry at 484.829.0021 or email kiml@hollistercreative.com.
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What do writers and Olympians have in common?
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The incredible looks simple when it is done incredibly well. (Newscom photo)
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It sure looks easy when Olympic gymnasts leap, spin and soar, but we all know that Simone Biles and her challengers devoted years of hard work to make those extraordinary maneuvers look effortless.
Practice makes perfect, whether you're an athlete aspiring to gold medals or a writer sitting at a computer in hopes of creating the words that will educate or entertain your readers and move them to action.
At
Hollister Creative, our experienced writers stay in tip-top condition by writing every day for every type of print and digital project. If you are writing for your business, follow these tips as you practice to perfect your skills.
- DO ask for help. Even the best athletes in the word have coaches. If you are not yet a polished, professional writer, get guidance from someone who is. We offer consulting to help our clients formulate an outline, estimate word counts and follow a productive process. With a knowledgeable coach to guide you, the copy you develop stands a better chance of being on-point and on time.
- DON'T expect it to be easy. Reading is so easy, most of us are fooled into thinking writing should be easy too. It's not. Reading is easy because someone else did the work of organizing the material and presenting it in a clear and logical way. When you're writing, the person doing that work is YOU. Figuring out how to pull all the facts together takes time. Be patient with yourself.
- DON'T assume all will go smoothly. Estimate the time you think you need to meet the deadline, then double it. Something will happen to slow you down. A source you need to interview will get the flu. A senior manager who must approve the copy will get caught up in a business deal. Building in a buffer is just smart. If the project goes more smoothly than expected, you will have under-promised and over-delivered, which should always be the goal.
- DO save energy for the final segment. The last quarter of your writing project will take almost as much time as the first three-quarters. Editing, fact-checking, shepherding the copy through the review process, rewriting as needed, then recirculating the copy for final approval is time consuming. Don't let your energy and focus flag at this crucial stage; it is needed here most of all.
If you need help with a first draft or a final one, call Kim Landry
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A picture is worth a thousand (key)words
We know it's frustrating when something you really want
to
see is hidden in plain sight. So we knowingly risk frustrating you
by saying it's likely the images you've carefully chosen for your company's website are hidden in plain sight - because they are invisible to search engines.
Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are not able to view website images. To make images "visible" in searches, you need to use metadata. That's descriptive text, invisible to human visitors, telling search engines about the image.
You write metadata for website images using your website's content management system. Metadata includes the alt tag and the image title. Alt tags add the most SEO value, ensuring that images are found by search engines and helping to optimize your website for relevant keywords.
Alt tag
"Alt tag" is shorthand for "alternative text" - the text search engines use as the alternative to the image. In 16 words or less, an alt tag should briefly describe the image and contain a relevant keyword phrase, preferably the same phrase for which the web page it appears on is optimized. For example, if you sell firewood, you might have a page optimized for "split firewood," and your alt tag for the cat-in-woodpile image might be "cat hidden on pile of split firewood."
Alt tags also have important functions for humans. They make the image accessible to blind and visually impaired visitors using a screen reader that reads web pages aloud. They also appear in place of images for visitors who have intentionally disabled images in their browsers.
Image title
This is the title of your image. Always change the generic name your camera gave the image, such as DSC00545.jpg, to something meaningful. As with alt tags, best practice is to include a keyword phrase. But don't use exactly the same text you used in the alt tag; change it up a bit. The image title can be written as you would write the title or headline of an article.
In some browsers (Firefox, for example), the image title will pop up when a visitor hovers over the image. Knowing this, there may be instances when you want the image title to be intriguing, as in "Can you find the cat camouflaged in these stacks of split firewood?"
DOs and DON'Ts:
- DO use the web page keyword phrase in your image alt tag.
- DO use alt tags on all images except for purely decorative images like banners and buttons; tagging those can actually have a negative impact on SEO.
- DON'T use the generic and/or nonsensical title your camera gives an image; change it to something helpful and relevant.
- DO make your image title specific to the image content, short and to the point.
QUIZ: Oh say, can you see
SEO helps people to see your web content and images. Songs and song lyrics are another way of seeing. Test your "Seeing IQ" by matching these "seeing" songs to the artists who recorded them.
- "I Can See Clearly Now"
- "I've Just Seen a Face"
- "I Can See in Color"
- "I Can See for Miles"
- "See You Again"
- "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See"
- "Have You Ever Seen the Rain"
- "If I Never See Your Face Again"
Need help with search engine optimization for your website? Call Kim Landry at 484.829.0021 or email
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Pixel perfect website redesign
Client's Challenge
Allied Pixel is a digital studio specializing in video production, website development and live webcasting. A team of filmmakers creates about 100 productions per year, ranging from web videos to documentaries and independent feature films. A team of developers builds and maintains responsive websites and executes local and global HD webcasts.
When Allied Pixel leaders decided the company's website needed refreshing, they could have decided to handle the redesign in-house. Instead, they weighed the advantages of a fresh, outside perspective and chose to partner with Hollister Creative for the user interface design.
Allied Pixel's skilled developers handled all of the back end functionality.
The challenge was to make a good website great with a more of-the-moment design, an enhanced user experience and more calls to action.
Our Solution
We achieved a more contemporary design by streamlining the visual presentation to eliminate clutter and by using modern body and headline fonts.
The home page slider previously featured images from various client projects. Each one aligned with the client brand, but clashed with the Allied
Pixel brand expressed in the look-and-feel of the overall home page design. The new slider is comprised of crisp black-and-white images showing Allied Pixel's people at work. As each different image comes up, it harmonize
s with the ultra-clean, black-white-and-green composition of the page.
To improve the user experience, we created bold buttons with icons to guide visitors from the home page to Allied Pixel's three main services pages. We also utilized sidebars to serve up secondary navigation menus. And we reorganized the company's extensive portfolio of client work into categories that align with the three main services.
Recognizing that the first question some visitors will ask is "Have you worked with organizations like mine?" we highlighted the firm's four major client categories: higher education, business, healthcare and nonprofit. To encourage visitors to engage with Allied Pixel, we added calls to actions as bright green boxes in the sidebar of each page.
Client Comment
"The team at Hollister was absolutely terrific. They asked insightful questions, provided thoughtful, smart advice and created a gorgeous website design. On top of that, they were just plain great to work with. I could not be happier with the end result, or with our experience partnering with Hollister Creative."
- Bill Haley, President, Allied Pixel
Three Quick Tips
If you are challenged to create a user interface design, here are three suggestions to help you:
- Stick with one brand: yours. Many types of businesses are tempted to highlight client work on the home page. If this makes sense for your business, find a way to do it without putting client branding in competition with yours. The home page is a place for visitors to experience your brand in a singularly powerful way.
- Make your portfolio purposeful. Without a firm structure, portfolios can grow organically as you add new work or get organized by a default such as the date each piece was posted. Help users navigate your portfolio by figuring out the arrangement that would be most intuitive for them. The categories might be work type, client type or something else.
- Ask visitors to take action. Business owners tend to think it is obvious they want website visitors to contact the company. But only the most motivated visitors will make contact without being asked. So make the ask, make it prominent but not pushy, and most of all, make it easy: One click from the ask to a very brief contact form that generates an email.
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A cool way to chill out in August
The weather outside has been frightful - and we bet you need something delightful to deal with it. This month's giveaway is the perfect solution for an oh-too-hot August!
Super Snow lets you instantly make snow in any climate, including ours in the summer. Just add water and you have more than two quarts of white stuff that looks like the real thing. Spread it out on your desk when you need to chill. Make snowballs to toss at the next office meeting. Sprinkle snow on unsuspecting sunbathers.
Want to close out August with a packet of Super Snow?
Email us a request! The first five readers who have not won in six months will receive one.
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