Too many social media marketing and website design companies don’t follow their own advice. That’s not cool! We’ve been pretty good about embracing the same things we suggest to our clients- web standards website design, getting involved in social media, and creating web video that properly positions your brand in the marketplace, to name but a few common themes. But even we fell down on something, until recently: our website didn’t fully work on an iPhone.

Well, to be fair, our website is so well-coded and well-designed that 99% of the website displayed perfectly on an iPhone or iPad. But, 99% isn’t enough for a company that’s pushing its clients to embrace the new web and mobile space. The problem was, our video on our homepage is Flash-based. This is great if you’re on a desktop PC or Mac, and it’s even OK on a number of mobile devices. But Flash doesn’t work on the iPhone and it doesn’t work on the iPad. While devices like this are only a small percentage of your website’s visitors, it’s good to support everyone you can.

So, we created a new website called m.patrickortman.com. You can visit it, even if you’re not on an iPhone, to see how it works. You’ll notice it looks and performs almost exactly like our “main” website. That’s cause we’re supercool, and it’s because we want to give those who have embraced rich media devices like the iPhone a web experience that’s equal to what they’d get if they were tethered to a clunky “oldschool” computer. From now on, if you visit www.patrickortman.com and you’re on an iPhone or iPad, you’ll automagically get the new mobile website.

And you know what the Kool Aid man would say about that: “Ohhh YEAH!”.

Awesome array of Kool-Aid Photo

Attention 99.5% of all businesses on planet earth- everything’s changed again! If you haven’t noticed, and adjusted how you do business accordingly, you’re probably on your way to becoming irrelevant. If you want to succeed online today, your business must take a holistic approach towards your digital marketing.

What’s a holistic digital marketing plan? It’s what Aristotle was talking about when he was prattling on about how “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Here’s a few common ingredients to a well thought out holistic digital marketing program:

What’s Your Story?

There’s a reason we promote PatrickOrtman, Inc. as a collective of digital storytellers. We’re not just design freaks or tech-heads, we’re a bunch of people who thrive on helping our clients tell their stories in a digital age. That’s important, because people have been educating and entertaining each other with stories since caveman days. Storytelling is how we relate to each other, it’s how we relate to the world. It’s truly amazing and somewhat frightening to me that most companies spend huge amounts of money on traditional and digital marketing without taking the time to figure out their stories. What makes your company unique? Why do you stand out from the competition?

Once you have your company’s story sussed out, it’s time to make sure that all of your digital marketing reflects that story. Your website needs to mesh with your print materials, and so forth. Spend the time to really work on who you are. Then make sure you’re projecting that image everywhere you are. And where does your company need to be? Everywhere your audience may be. It’s awfully hard to define your audience if you don’t have a clue about your story. See why figuring out your story is important?

Websites Still Matter

Your company still needs a really good website, hopefully one that follows web standards and one which helps your company stand above the competition. This is your home base, and you shouldn’t skimp here. Your website is often the first (and sometimes the only) contact a prospective customer has with your business. You know that, it’s been that way for well over a decade, now. But these days, a great website is merely the start of your digital marketing efforts. “If you build it, they will come” no longer applies, and hasn’t for a long time.

Build Your Audience

Any holistic digital marketing plan needs a strong social media marketing program. Several of our clients are noticing that more of their website traffic is coming from their social media efforts (Facebook, Twitter, and so forth) than from their paid search advertising. Some are noticing better results from social media marketing than from their broadcast television commercials and other traditional advertising, actually. This isn’t limited to our clients- check this article from Social Media Today. This will only increase as businesses use social media correctly, to truly engage customers rather than just broadcast information. Google notices this, and that’s why they’ve introduced Google Buzz. Pepsi’s noticed, too- check out their twenty million dollar bet on social media and viral marketing.

Content Is King

Viral videos, web videos, blogs, email newsletters, discussion forums, and so forth. They’re all content, designed for your audience to consume, comment upon, share, mashup, or whatever. They’re what keeps your audience coming back to your website and social media presence for more. Digital marketing isn’t a one-time expense. Like any good marketing, digital marketing requires a constant effort. Your holistic digital marketing plan needs to account for the creation and distribution of new content on a regular basis, or your audience will drift away, uninspired and uninterested. Of course, as with any component of your holistic digital marketing plan, your content must reflect your organization’s story.

Keep Your Eyes Open

One of the great things about digital marketing, as opposed to traditional marketing like television commercials, is that you can easily adjust your campaigns to enhance the parts that are working, and change the parts that aren’t. The very nature of the web is that it’s constantly mutating and evolving. Your holistic digital marketing plan should allow, and even thrive on this.

These days, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts.  So get out there and go holistic, today!

Holistic photo by Mary Hodder

You’ve jumped up on the Social Media bandwagon, so now you have to measure your Return on Investment (ROI), otherwise your boss will think you’re just goofing off on Facebook and Twitter instead of actually helping his bottom line.  That begs the question- what are the best metrics to analyze for your brand? Well, I recently came across this nifty article that may just help you out a bit:

http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/177448?utm_source=smt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Interaction is the key metric I use to gage how a brand is doing- based mostly on customer feedback, discussion and comments. It’s important to listen to what your customers and fans are saying and respond to create your own community. That said, I believe in the quality of feedback and interaction you’re getting, not quantity. After all, who cares if you got a ton of interactions from people who really don’t matter to your business? Well, yeah, you’d enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling, but not a lot else.

I also think it’s valuable to know WHERE your fans and customers are coming from- do you have a huge clickthru from Germany? Is all your feedback coming from people in China? You may want to think about that and use that data to cater towards your audience’s geographic location as well.

Please keep in mind that numbers don’t always tell a tale of truth. In other words, do not rely solely on your metrics. You may only have a few followers to begin with on a social network, but what you may not know is one of those followers may want to do business with you or may be an expert in their field and looking to you for advice. Again, quality of interactions count!

I hate spec work. Spec work is work that is performed for free, in the hope of getting paid if the “client” likes it. Spec work is a huge problem that formerly was confined to only the most desperate, untalented web design firms. But now, thanks to a tanked economy in many areas and unscrupulous clients who are asking for it, it’s spreading to design firms who should know better. Some say web design companies who submit spec work to a potential client are “showing initiative”. The reality is, they’re showing that they believe their time and ideas- the very things they sell to clients- are worthless.

Then again, maybe spec work isn’t so bad. Maybe we should start treating all our business interactions that way.

Next week, I plan on bringing in three housepainting companies. I’ll tell them this is the deal: paint my house, and if I like it I will pay for it. I won’t give them direction, such as what color I may like. I won’t ask them to educate me about the different types of paint and how they may wear over time. Nope. I’ll just have each painting company paint my house, and when I see a paint job I think I like, I’ll consider paying them. Or not.

Next, I plan on stopping by the auto mechanic. I’ll tell her I want her to make my car more high performance, and if I like what she does with it I’ll consider paying for it after the job’s done. If I don’t like it, I’ll just drive off.

Finally, I plan on stopping by the local farmer’s market. I’ll grab some awesome fresh produce, and instead of paying the farmer I’ll tell him that I’ll take all the produce home and eat it, and that I’ll pay him later, but only for the produce I liked.

Yeah, that’ll work.

Ten Reasons Spec Work Is Evil

Why We Will Not Do Spec Work

Another Article About Why Spec Work Is Bad For Business

Why Spec Work Hurts

But I digress.

I just read an article, backed by Harvard research, regarding Facebook and how effective it is as part of a marketing plan. Heck YES it is!  I like to think that social media brings out the conversation in people in an online discussion. A Facebook fanpage is an excellent place for this….especially with the “discussion” tab and comments in general.

In fact, our own Facebook fanpage work has produced great results for our clients. Two recent wins include new business for our adoption client, and a huge uptick in first-time callers for our psychic client. These results were reached only after a few months of a solid social media campaign that included a Facebook fanpage and some time dedicated to working the fanpage.

That’s really key- you must be willing to devote time and resources to your Facebook marketing. It’s not magic. It takes effort. But the payoff is incredible.

Of course, as stated in the Harvard article, “Social media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”  This is a no-brainer. it’s true with all forms of marketing. You must also be prepared to go both online and offline (omg i said offline!!!!) to reach the masses NOT on the Internet or at least those that don’t do the social networking thing. Depending on the client, we at POINC figure out a complete digital marketing package, it’s the only way!

Harvard Says Facebook Rocks

Typography is important. Blame it on sIFR- the original scalable Inman Flash Replacement for text on websites. It was a little clunky, it was often hard to implement, but it looked freakin’ cool. Web designers everywhere began implementing text replacement in the headers of their websites, and suddenly the web looked a lot better. Plus, it degraded pretty well if your browser didn’t support Flash. First, do no harm, right?

These days there are other text replacement alternatives that are a bit easier to use, like Cufon and Typekit. We use them both, depending on the client and their audience. These technologies let designers take typography on the web to the next level, and they help bridge the “design gap” between Flash-based and web standards based website designs. And that’s a very good thing, seeing as Flash-based websites kind of suck from a usability and maintenance standpoint.

If you’re a designer, you need to know about typography on the web. Go beyond Arial and Verdana, get creative, and watch your websites blossom!

Gap photo by The Lab

Shaun White in USA Today

This is a Camtasia-powered YouTube video tour of the PatrickOrtman, Inc. website redesign. It’s a simple screencast tour that shows off the site design.

The website follows web standards, used some nifty JQuery animation effects, and runs off a MODx and WordPress CMS.

One of the biggest problems businesses face in today’s digital marketing world is coming off like themselves through social media, their website, etc. Most companies’ social media marketing and web efforts still sound like stiff, homogenized corporatespeak. They’re boring and unimaginative, and that sucks. As part of our series of posts about image online, today we shall talk about tone.

Tone is a literary technique that is a part of composition, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, or many other possible attitudes.^[1] Tone and mood are not interchangeable. - Wikipedia

Digital marketing is about conversations- starting them, nurturing them, learning from them, and participating in them. It’s not about blasting press releases out there and putting us to sleep with bizarre Germanic compound words we know are made up, yet which fail to entertain. A big part of conversing is your tone, but a lot of businesses still don’t get that. Some companies fall down on tone because they’re lazy. Others fail because they’re scared. Either way, any company that wants to be successful and survive needs to find the courage to find their voice and put it out there.

The tone you choose to take for your marketing (both online and traditional) should be well-considered, and authentically represent your organization. Are you hip and cool, yet utterly professional (like us)? Or does your company have a bit more of a formal tone? Maybe you’re playful, maybe you’re serious. The point is, when people think about your company they’re not just thinking about your products or services. The tone you choose to embrace helps define your business. Smart brands know this. Think BMW. Think Apple. Now think about your company.

Is your company setting a consistent, engaging tone online and off? If not, you’re missing out on sales and you’re missing out on the biggest opportunity history has ever presented- the opportunity to build an amazing worldwide reputation that encourages casual browsers to become customers, and customers to become evangelists.

Now get out there- but watch your tone, mister!

Oops Photo by B. Rosen

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