It can be exciting when fans comment on your post or leave kinds words on your timeline. The whole idea behind social media is to engage and interact with your fans. However, it’s important to remember, you can’t always control what they are saying. Negative comments are going to happen, fans are going to rave about your products and people are going to ask the same questions over and over again.

No matter what the comments happen to say, it’s all about how you deal with them that is going to set the tone for your social media presence. Here are a few basic rules to help you manage the comments on your social network, no matter how few or how many fans you have.

DO: Always Respond

Respond to posts, no matter whether they’re are good or bad. When facing a negative comment in a public reply, apologize for any inconvenience and ask them to contact you privately. Provide them with a phone number or email address where you can further talk about the situation. This shows the public that you are taking care of the situation and that you are committed to your customers and the customer service your business provides. Unless a comment is inappropriate, contains spam or is considered abusive, don’t delete it. Address the issue as best as possible. Deleting one post can give the impression that you have issues to hide or have deleted posts in the past and that will not fair well with customers.

DO: Be Personable

Make it personal — “Thanks for the comment!” gets stale quickly. Not only does it get old, but it makes your company seem like you have no personality. Simply adding the fans name to the comment adds a personal touch. Also, always respond directly to comments. Facebook now allows you to reply to a comment. This ensures that the fan sees the reply and that it doesn’t get lost in a slew of responses. It also opens the opportunity for you to have a conversation with fans.

DO: Respond in a Timely Fashion

Be timely with responses — the quicker the better. Responding as soon as possible to comments (both good and bad) lets your fans know you are listening. A good general rule of thumb is to respond to comments within 24 business hours.

DO: Thank Your Customers

Thank customers for suggestions, even if they don’t bring anything new to the table. Whether it’s something you would never dream of doing (an idea to make a product better), or one of the best ideas you have ever heard, give a quick ‘Thank you for the suggestion’ to each fan.

The biggest rule of thumb is to treat your fans on social media like you would act towards clients or customers in real life. You would never ignore a customer, tell them they are wrong or make them wait for hours and hours for an answer. Put these simple business practices into place and you will see the positive benefits that social media can have on your business!

-Lindsey Sowa

In fact, many brands tend to handle social media much better than most users. I know I would much rather see a thoughtful or clever post from a brand than a friend’s photo of their cat or what they ate that day. Of course, with the good comes the bad, and brands can be as big offenders as anyone else. The following are some general practices for keeping your brand’s content both engaging and interesting.

Design For The Medium

With so many social media outlets at your disposal, it’s tempting to just post the same thing to all of them. However, certain designs don’t always work on every network — you need to design for the medium. You wouldn’t (or couldn’t) post a video to Instagram, so why post a wall of text to Instagram? At its core, Instagram is a simple and elegant way to share photos, like a more personalized, mobile Flickr. Accordingly, posts on Instagram should be simple and striking. If you’re going to add text to the image, just add a headline and reserve the caption for more details. If you really need to post an image with a lot of text, reserve the photo for a social outlet that is more frequented on a desktop like Facebook. It may seem like a simple idea, but it makes all the difference in the world.

Engage With The Fans

This may seem like a no-brainer to some, but it’s fairly common that many brands don’t engage with their customers. When creating your brand on social media, one may be prone to treat it as their own account. Sure, posting cat videos may be a pretty general (and effective) way to get likes and comments, but does it relate to your brand at all? Does it offer value to your fans? Unless you’re a kitty litter company, I doubt it. So, post interesting and relevant content that your customers can use, or better yet, make it yourself. This could be as simple as redesigning quotes in your brand’s styles, and can get as involved as producing brand videos or infographics. The idea here is that the content relates to the fans’ interests and it is branded in your own personal way.

Give Them Something New

Hopefully, you’ve taken my advice into consideration and are starting to create your own brand content that relates to your fans. Of course, now your brand is crazy popular and everyone loves it. That’s great! However, that doesn’t mean that people won’t get bored if you keep posting the same stuff. Social media networks are a great place to show off interesting content to your fans that they can’t see anywhere else. If you’re a clothing company, take candid shots of the pieces during production or even samples of the fabric for the next collection. Do you produce musical or video content? Show some behind-the-scenes steps of your process. The idea here is to show your fans what goes into the finished product. They can go on your website or to the store and see the end result — give them something new to see!

By following these three simple tips, you can become be a social media superhero. You know your brand and your fans, so design posts that will engage them. The best way to do that is to give them something new that they can’t find anywhere else, such as behind-the-scenes photos or product previews. Lastly, design for each specific social media outlet. Don’t put small text or important elements on Instagram photos, all that will result in is eye strain. If you do all of this, you’ll have more likes, shares, comments and follows than you know what to do with.

-Dustin Maciag

As with any relationship, the one between employers and interns is a two-way street. While hiring an intern is one thing, attracting one is a variable often overlooked. Focus on what you want out of an intern, present those qualities in your search and you’ll be able to find the right applicant in no time.

Let’s start with what you are looking for in an internship. When hiring an intern, the tradeoff between both parties is pretty straightforward. There is none to little cost for your business and employment is temporary. You’ll be receiving  highly allocated human resources that in turn develop knowledgeable field experience from a career and educational standpoint for the intern.

Much like a search engine, online internship listings will generate different results depending on where companies choose to recruit in the digital space. While a majority of interns are younger twenty-somethings either in school or looking for an entry-level position, determining what your expectations are for them as an intern will help narrow down where to post.

Popular job search sites like Craigslist and Monster have a wider reach and cost less to advertise on, but often yield higher quantities of less talented applicants. Depending on internship tasks and responsibilities, this may fit your situation. Internships of a more technical nature may require advertising on sites like YouTern and InternMatch. In many cases are internship sites specific to your industry. While it costs more to advertise internship offerings on these specialized sites, the return is finding more qualified applicants.

Choosing between generalized sites like Craigs List and industry specific sites like Media Bistro can also be determined by the size of your company. If you are smaller in scale with a low budget, tapping the local pool of talent can be crucial to achieving the best intern experience possible. If that is your circumstance, targeting certain resources within your area can help garner talent. A nearby university that has a good program pertaining to your industry, or even certain organizations or affiliations, can be a good source for referrals. Constantly asking and identifying what your company does now or has done to attract certain people to it is key.

Another question to ask yourself is “Does my digital, social, print and personal presence engaging enough to solicit the level of experience I am looking for?” The first place you should consider this is when writing the job description in your advertised post. Do you provide a decent synopsis on your company’s initiatives and culture? Are the job responsibilities clearly laid out? Most of all, ensure that both are accurate and realistic. If they are, you will enable yourself to filter out the applicants you want and those you don’t all from the point of contact. In the interview, remember to ask questions and talk the kind of talk your interns can expect during their internship.

Finally, consider where you can gain promotion elsewhere. Is the job description appropriately placed and consistent in the career section of your website and social media page? While the careers section on your website is essentially free advertising, it also serves as a gate or filtering device. Instead of being one of many jobs someone applied to from a job search site, a higher interest in your company can be demonstrated by someone that actually sought you out and applied directly.

Whether on social platforms, your web site or job search sites, advertising an engaging presence is the easiest way to attract quality candidates. Your interns will only be as good as the opportunity that you purvey in your advertisements and online presence.

Bonus Tip: Create opportunities for your interns that are exciting and allow them to express their personalities during their semester. If they remember having a great time, like our intern Alex in this video below, they will want to come back and do more great work for you.

A Whole New World: Tales From a Blue Wheel Media Intern from Blue Wheel Media on Vimeo.

Tempo

With praise from Mashable, Wired and ZDNet, Tempo is making a mark as one of the best apps, let alone smart calendar programs, to download on your phone. Offering the ability to send pre-populated late notices via email/text, handle call-in meeting codes and mapping services, this app literally does the work of two personal assistants.

Sunrise

Sunrise offers one of the most aesthetically pleasing menus of all smart calendar apps. Courtesy of easy to scroll menus, the screen can easily offer a view of the next two weeks or next two years. Compatible with Google Calendar and Facebook, the free app can connect to multiple calendars at the same time, features seamless time zone changes and the ability to add events quickly on the fly.

Cue

Connecting your account to every form of social media, all online communities and many email services, Cue may be the most pliable of all smart calendar services. By combining all of your most needed programs together, the app is capable of searching across all platforms to find the information you need at a moment’s notice. Cue recieves bonus points for the ability to handle/cancel flight reservations within the app.

Coolendar

Part task management, part smart calendar, Coolendar can easily be implemented in your daily schedule like iCal, Basecamp or Zoho. In addition, the app has social media-like abilities, which can make it easy to coordinate with coworkers using the same calendar. Tag your fellow employees with @ and use hashtags to create project-based drivers.

Calendo

The latest in smart calendar apps, Calendo is a helpful extension for the mobile Facebook program. The app is capable of finding events you might like to attend and offers easy sharing options for your own meet-ups. While Calendo won’t replace your old calendar app, it’s a helpful tool for discovering seminars, social media events and networking opportunities in your area.

With the help of these unique smart calendar apps, you can control your daily schedule and keep on task all from the palm of your hand.  After all, the best way to stay abreast of your workload is to be able to see it presented in an easy-to-manage handheld format.

- Eric Allen

Ahhh Yes. The new office smell. It’s sort of like the new car smell, except better. Blue Wheel Media (that’s us), a digital media agency that combines SEO, social media, and content marketing into a cohesive, integrated brand effort, announced its expansion into a new 4,000 square-foot headquarters at 1950 Stephenson Highway in Troy, Michigan. We are a two-year-old firm that has already outgrown its original building.

“We are very excited to move into this new space,” said Trevor George, CEO of Blue Wheel Media. “It will allow our team to heighten the service we provide to our clients, in a brand new, state-of-the art setting that is the perfect environment for performance, collaboration and creativity.”  The new office is equipped with portable workstations, an open layout that fosters teamwork, and an employee shuffleboard table for brain breaks.

The Blue Wheel team brings clients full circle (thus the “Wheel” in the our moniker) through a unique crafted process. It starts by diving deep into the client’s business operations and objectives. Once the team at Blue Wheel understands the voice and defines the brand messaging, the magic begins with the creation of rich search and social content that sparks engagement. The process then circles back to monitor conversations, constantly finding opportunities to further hone messaging, engage, and influence ongoing sentiment.

“There are a multitude of firms out there that will say they do one aspect of digital marketing, like SEO or social media,” says George. “But you cannot, for example, ‘do SEO’ without social media. Our approach that combines SEO, content marketing, and social media has proven to truly yield the kind of results that today’s marketers are looking for, and give them a real edge in today’s digital marketplace.”

The efficacy of Blue Wheel’s full-circle strategy has been proven with a client roster that has seen exponential growth for the firm, founded by George in 2011. Blue Wheel’s roster of enterprise and mid-market clients include The House of Marley, Cabinets to Go, Lover’s Lane, 6 Pack Fitness, and more.

Come visit us at 1950 Stephenson highway, Troy MI, 48083!

Fresh and Clean

Remember the 1990s or early 2000s? Geocities sites, anyone? Maybe it was just from my point-of-view, since I was a teenager, but everyone seemed to have one… And they were all horrible. Tons of gaudy animated GIFs, bold patterns, bright colors and Clip Art all clashing together in one big web page mosh pit. With the ability for anyone to make their own page, most users created whatever they wanted with no regard for design. Well, for a time, this translated to “real” sites.

Professional designers started to load tons of things on their sites and left most internet users not knowing what to look at. Thankfully, we’re now in an era where clean and minimal is popular, and I couldn’t be happier. The idea behind the trend is to simplify the site so much so that only the most important information is included. This can range from an image with a button to something more detailed, but still focused.

Bigger is Better

Next, we’ll look at a trend that you think would clash with the new, clean styling of many sites. Surprisingly, it fits quite well! There are a lot sites now utilizing huge images that span entire browser windows, as well as enormous, simplistic typography. While most don’t utilize both at once, it can be done. In most cases, to balance out this enormity, these sites tend to stay very simple, relying on the focused messaging or striking images to do the work.

Scrolling Over Clicking

If you have a Tumblr or Pinterest, you’re no stranger to this. These days, we’d much rather scroll than click. Maybe it’s mimicking the action of our smart phones, or maybe it’s just that clicking things on track pads is annoying. Regardless, many sites are now favoring scrolling over clicking. This can be used to navigate a blog-type page, viewing more content as you scroll up or down. However, it can also be used in much cooler ways like allowing the user to navigate through a web site story or controlling the speed and movement of the objects.

Hip to be Square

If you’re designing something, you would typically use a grid. If you’re designing for web, you’d most likely be using a 960 pixel wide grid structure. This is a framework that represents the standard width of standard screen resolutions. It has been put into use so that your site can be viewed easily by most people’s computers without any hassle. Well, many designs these days are taking grids to a whole new level. Designers are using grids of squares and rectangles, coupled with flat colors, cool typography and images. A good example would be the Windows Phone. I’m a Mac guy (as a designer, I pretty much have to be), but I can’t deny that the interface looks fantastic. A bunch of squares in a matrix can definitely look dull, but in the hands of a great designer, it can look very cool.

Integrated Illustrations

The influx of clean and structured sites, while polished, can look a bit boring to some people. Many multi-talented designers are looking for ways to make things more playful and fun. Well, that’s where illustrations come in. However, we’re not just talking about some icons to dress things up. No… We’re talking about large illustrations that are the backbone to the entire site! They set the style used throughout, draw the eye’s attention and can’t help but make the site look much cooler.

There you have it, five cool web trends that I have been noticing over the past few months. Use them, love them, but don’t abuse them. Know of any cool trends that I didn’t cover? I’m always on the lookout for cool, new stuff. Let us know your personal favorites in the comment section below!

-Dustin Maciag

Take a breath. It’s all very simple.

Understanding how to control your brand’s Instagram presence is the first step to answering these questions. Let’s break down five crucial things to remember when managing your company’s account.

1. Be Consistent

Like with any other social media network, it’s important to be consistent with your posts. Remember, posting one or two photos a day is sufficient. Posting more photos will bore your followers and you could quickly run out of content. If you post less frequently, you potentially run the risk of your followers forgetting about your brand. You want to leave them wanting more, but not hitting the “unfollow” button when you for flood their feed.

2. Establish A Voice

What is your brand about? What are you trying to accomplish with your account? This is not a channel to post product photos over and over again. This is your chance to show people a different aspect of your brand by getting creative. Make your Instagram content original and have it represent what you are as a business. Show your customers an experience, tell them a story and make them want to be a part of your brand.

In addition, make your voice better known by creating a hashtag. Does your brand already have a catchy slogan? Perfect. Turn it into your social media driver and use it as a signature on posts and comments. The more you use it, the more your followers will catch on and start using it themselves. The use of hashtags allows for the discovery of your profile from users that are not your primary connections.

3. Choose Content Wisely

There are a few important things you should take into consideration when choosing photos to post.

• Trying to fit too much into one photo can be overwhelming for a user. By utilizing apps like PicFrame, you can turn multiple images into one post that is uniform and stylized.
• Instagram doesn’t allow users to magnify photos, so make sure to limit the amount of text you put on your image. Use the caption section to write what you need to write and let the picture speak for itself.
• Make sure that your photos are clear. Pro Tip: Don’t try sharpening them in editing software. They will only look worse.
• Use all of the allotted space and don’t leave the dreaded “Instagram black bars” surrounding your great content.

  

4. Engage, Engage, Engage

Don’t be that brand that posts photos and doesn’t interact with your followers. Communicating with other Instagram users is the perfect way to build your brand’s reputation and relationships with potential customers. If someone is complaining on one of your photos, step in and put out the fire. When someone compliments your brand, thank them and offer kind words back. The most important thing to remember is to be human. Avoid sounding like a robot with prewritten generic responses as much as possible.

5. Web-Based Management Systems

No one has the time to scroll through a feed and comment on pictures on their phone. It’s inconvenient and annoying. However, websites like Statigram and INK361 offer the ability to view profiles, manage comments and search for mentions of your brand from your desktop. These programs also have basic analytic tools to help you measure your progress and presence on Instagram.

Using these simple steps, Instagram success for your brand is on the horizon. This relatively new social media tool can be extremely beneficial for your company when used properly. All you have to do is be creative, consistent and personable.

-Lindsey Sowa

With the updated algorithms, Google will remove spammy websites that don’t provide value or are a nuisance to a searcher. The issue has been how to determine the difference between a site that is acting maliciously and one that is acting in good faith.

Panda VS Penguin Updates

When announcing the revisions, Google’s Matt Cutts stated that Panda updates would be a rolling effort, meaning webmasters would get little to no warning about impending changes. Cutts also announced a “significant” change to their Penguin update that he believed will make major headlines.

While the Panda update targets content (duplicate content, thin content and stolen content), the Penguin update revolves around how sites receive backlinks. Sites that purchase links or have used other practices condemned by Google will see lower PageRanks. Now that we have a general understanding of what the Google algorithm updates do, let’s talk about how administrators can protect themselves and their website.

Panda and Content Duplication

The solution is simple, but the implementation is difficult. It’s important to understand that unique content is the Holy Grail for today’s SEO-er. Content featured elsewhere on the web, whether it’s your own site, a competitor or an informational source, is considered duplicate. This WILL create problems with Google.

The first step is to take an audit of your site content. Did your team write it? Was it taken from a manufacturer? Was someone hired to write it?  Review where all pieces of content have come from. Part of this process should include Google searching quoted content to see what returns.

Here is an example for a website selling Skull Candy earphones online. They were not ranked high for their search term. Upon Googling the product content, we found many instances of duplicate content.

Penguin and Link Building

Rewriting your content to be unique and SEO friendly will help fend off the Panda attacks (much less cuddly than the name implies), but defending yourself from the Penguin changes requires a different focus. The Penguin update penalizes companies for purchasing or improperly obtaining links.

The first step of the process is to stop this practice if you are continuing to do it. A year of good ranking is not worth another five years buried in the Google trenches. Cut. It. Out. It’s as simple as that. Proper link building should be a natural process that results from sharing real, valuable content with like-minded websites.

The second concern regarding Penguin is if you have already purchased links. Take inventory of who is linking to your site, either through Open Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Tools. If you see any links that look suspicious, you will want to take proactive steps, even if your site hasn’t been punished yet.

Google has a relatively new Webmaster Tool called Link Disavow, which allows webmasters to “unlink” certain links they believe to be malicious. While this tool needs to be used with considerable caution, early reports suggest it’s an excellent way to deal with poor links to the site.

Unlike our counterparts in nature, you can’t avoid Panda and Penguin by burrowing your head in the sand or staying away from the cold. Verify your site contains unique, well-written content and abides by Google’s backlinking policies, to stay on the right side of Google’s wrath.

-Zach Riegle

While many companies focus on relevant but general keywords to reach broad search results, many content writers use long tail keywords to make their writing more interesting. For example, using the keyword phrase “baby diapers” several times in a blog post will be met with much competition in a stream of diaper company sites. Yet, when using a long tail keyword like “funny diaper quotes,” you will be able to reach a more specific audience with a lot less competition. The flexibility of long tail keywords in your blog content plan will also allow you to have more fun with your writing.

You may be asking yourself, “Why would someone buy a diaper when they are searching for ‘funny diaper quotes?’” Part of creating interesting written pieces for your blog content plan is putting a different spin on the everyday, ordinary aspects of your industry. By having a little fun with your product and the keyword “funny diaper quotes,” you will be able to engage your consumer and create a relationship that goes beyond “Here, buy our product.” Taking this a step further, when posting your new blog to a social media network, you will be able to ask your engage your followers with questions that will provoke thoughts and conversations on your page.

Using long tail keywords will allow you to take your blog content plan in a different direction than your competitors. Look at what is being done by rival companies. They are probably writing boring content focused on obvious general keywords. Take their content, do the opposite and have fun when developing your blog content plan. After all, if you didn’t enjoy writing it, no one will enjoy reading it.

-Eric Allen

Whether employees work in product development, sales or marketing, anyone can capture creative content. Read on to discover ten potential situations, in which workers can easily snap pictures, leverage relationships and put together events that will translate into social posts.

How It’s Made
Your fans want to see how their favorite products are made. Provide them with snapshots taken at various points in the manufacturing process, from conception to finish.

Employees
You should introduce all of the faces behind your brand. These authentic photos of real employees in their day-to-day activities humanize the brand and breathe life into an otherwise ‘stale’ corporate perception.

Behind The Scenes
As you get ready to launch and promote products, you will have many opportunities to gather some great content for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and more. Offer followers an exclusive backstage pass to photo shoots for catalogs, the filming of a video and the red carpet at a premiere by snapping candid photos.

Culture
Share photos that are relevant to your brand culture. When consumers see that they share similar values with those of you company, it can easily make a purchase decision easier.

Feature Photos
Take close-up shots of your products that show the superior quality, detail and craftsmanship that go into each and every piece.  Here is where you can really show off what sets your brand apart from the rest.

Contextual Photos
You can also show your products “in action” by placing them in lifestyle shots. Offer customers a chance to envision themselves owning and using your goods before buying them.

Sneak Peak
Make an effort to reward fans for following you on social networks by giving them the first look at products that haven’t been seen by the general public. Be sure to leak subtle details about where to get products a week before their major release and build hype in online communities.

Workplace
People who follow you on social media have probably wondered what it’s like to work at your company. Provide a glimpse of a typical day at your office—work areas, decked-out cubicles, brainstorming sessions and meetings in progress are all fertile ground for making new content.

Events
Most brands are involved in their fair share of events, tradeshows and product launches. Use these opportunities to bring your followers with you wherever go. Your community will connect with your brand on a much deeper and emotional level by learning about the events you sponsor and causes you support.

Ambassadors and Influencers
If you have a team of celebrities at your disposal, you will want to fully leverage their social followings by sharing photos of them interacting with your brand and products. These posts will be sure to get fans talking.

If you want to continue growing an audience and increase engagement on your social media networks, you will always need a constant flow of fresh content. To do so, it’s vital for all brands to have a process set in place for collecting content, so that the company is represented by the people who know it best… the employees.

-Kayla Varcoe

THE BASICS

We’ll start by discussing serifs.
Serif fonts have flourishes as the end of strokes of letters and symbols. Times New Roman may be the most widely-known serif typeface. If a font doesn’t have details at the end of the strokes, it is a sans serif typeface. These are, more often than not, cleaner looking than serifs. They’re best used for headlines, while serifs are best used for body copy, like in books and magazines. That isn’t to say that they’re not well-suited to switch roles though. Sans serifs can look nice as very small body copy or captions, and serifs can make big, beautiful headlines.

The lesser-known two are script and display typefaces. Scripts are most easily described as “cursive” fonts, with fluid strokes that resemble handwriting. Easy, right? Well, display typefaces are a bit trickier. Basically these fonts are best suited for large sizes, like headlines. They have a wide variety of looks, but typically are very bold, stylish, decorative, or even a combination of all three. If they don’t look like the other three, they’re probably display.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

Now that we’ve covered the main types, let’s talk about which is best for you. First off, you need to decide what feeling you or your company want to convey. Are you classy? Modern and clean? Old school? or maybe you’re just far away from all of these. Own what you are and decide what feeling you want to display. A sans serif typically displays a modern and clean look, whereas a serif is more traditional look. Scripts can be a wildcard. Depending on the style of the script, it can range from elegant to playful. Display fonts are the same, as they can belong to a myriad of looks.

LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED

But wait, just one typeface for the rest of your professional life? This commitment might seem a bit daunting. Don’t worry, you can bring another font into the party! In general, you’ll want to keep things to two or three. Typically one will be your main “workhorse” font. This one is best suited to have a lot of weights and styles in the font family. I’m sure you’ve all encountered a font with bold, regular, and italic versions. Well, there can be so much more! Univers is a prime example of a font with an enormous family. From Ultra Light Condensed to Bold Extended, this family is expansive. The other font is best used to add some flair to things. You may want a sans serif as your main font, and possibly a nice, flowing handwriting script or whimsical display font to add some style. It’s up to you! Choose two fonts that mix well. Doing a little research can’t hurt, either. Some fonts are based off others, some may be from the same time period, or even from the same designer. As a rule of thumb, either choose two fonts with similar shapes and forms, or two completely different fonts. Choosing two that are similar will yield extremely boring results.

We’ve covered a lot here, and hopefully you know enough now to make some informed decisions. You’ll be spotting typeface classifications from across the room in no time. Decide which works best for you. Serif or Sans Serif? Script and display? Mix and match. You now have a solid foundation on typeface knowledge, what you do with it is entirely your choice. Good luck!

Have some great typeface combinations? Comment below and let us know.

-Dustin Maciag

Photo Selection

A recent study done by Social Media Examiner found that the size of your pin has an extreme effect on the number of repins you will receive on Pinterest. Images with a height of at least 800 pixels were found to have an average of around 1000 repins. For your own purposes, focus on finding imagery that is elongated or even take time to stack photos and create one long image thread.

Rearranging Boards

There is a flow to telling any story and Pinterest allows you to rearrange boards in order to tell your narrative however you wish. Found next to the “Edit Profile” button on your profile page, the “Rearrange Boards” option will allow you to drag and drop your boards in any order.

Cover Photos

Creating effective boards starts with amazing Board Covers. Hover your mouse over the middle area of any board and you will see the “Edit Board Cover” button pop-up. Click this button and you will be given the option of changing cover photos and repositioning the focus of the shot.

Thinking Outside The Box

Courtesy of Pinterest tinkerers like Vitamin Cr and Reachli, it’s possible to break through the conventional board and photo options to create something special. With no Photoshop skills necessary, use these tools to create interesting mosaic Pinterest board pieces, learn about the best times to pin and track your analytics to find out what posts are most impactful.

The world of Pinterest is vast, and putting your stamp on it means doing some creative thinking. Sketch out ideas and plan out your page before diving in. Pinterest is meant to be a community of individuals sharing interesting information and pictures. Embrace this community and become a vital contributor to the Pinterest lexicon.

-Eric Allen

Gather Information

Take a good look at your business and compile all of the relevant information that can be used to optimize a business listing. This is where the infamous “NAP” comes into play. Name, address, and phone number are the most vital to any business looking to be found online. Local search expert David Mihm releases an annual survey of Local Search Ranking Factors that lists other important attributes.

Things like links to social profiles, descriptions of services, hours of operation, photos, videos, etc. should all be included. Keep track of all this in an appropriately labeled spreadsheet.

Choose Your Weapon

Utilize the tools that can make your life easier. They explore the web looking for your business information through all of the biggest local directories, search engines, and citation sources. Get Listed (another Mihm site that was recently acquired by SEOmoz) displays a listing score and lets you know which business listings you still need to claim. They even divulge the best local citation sources by major city and business type.

Whitespark has a local citation finder that unearths directory, article, and news sites in your area. You can easily tell how trustworthy a potential site is because they give you the domain authority, discovery date, and a link to the “submit your business” page.

You’ve probably noticed that some of the results are a bit blurry. Well that’s because to truly benefit from Whitespark’s features you’ll need to cough up some dough. The $20 small business plan should more than suffice.

BrightLocal is a paid tool that gives you a lot of bang for your buck. It gives you a wider view of your local search situation. Citation discovery, ranking reports, competitive analysis, and review badges are just some of the ways they can be of assistance. I particularly enjoy how they organize the sites and let you know which require verification by phone. The main benefit is that now you don’t have to perform all of these tasks manually.

Obsess Much?

It’s generally agreed upon that the most important things to be aware of when establishing a healthy local presence are consistency and quality. Stay hip to anything that might change about your business and if something does, like a phone number for example, update ALL of your listings. It’s perfectly acceptable to become a little obsessive about it. If you start developing inconsistencies amongst your listings, then get ready to deal with some duplicates. Take pride in the accuracy of your citations. Let them shine like Grandpa’s Cadillac on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Don’t be afraid to build those listings out too. The influence levels on many directories are amplified when your business profiles reach 100% completeness. This goes back to the importance of collecting as much information as possible. Upload a logo, add a video, list driving directions, go into detail about the brands you offer, etc. If you’re not willing to tell people everything there is to know about your business, then why the hell would they even bother looking you up? Treat directory listings as an extension of your business’s social profiles. Pimp that sh** out!

You should now have a working understanding of how to correctly and appropriately display your business information online. End of tape one.

-Kevin Knecht

Luckily there is an easy way to instruct Google on which pages to index and which pages to ignore. The ‘no-index’ tag in HTML tells Google not to index this particular page in their database.

To avoid duplicate content by way of tags in WordPress, follow these steps:

1) Install the SEO Ultimate plug-in. This plug-in is my absolute favorite. It features a full compliment of SEO tools and is intuitive and easy to use. I highly recommend it.

2) Once the plug-in is installed and activated, you will see a list of different SEO tools. Select “Meta Robot Tags.”

3) Within WordPress you have the ability to individually ‘no-index’ any page, post or category. However if you are an avid blogger, this can get tedious. The solution is to set up a series of default values that will manage the indexing for you.

4) Within the Meta Robot Tags Editor, select ‘the tab default values’.

5) You will want to ‘no-index’ the following: “author archives,” “date-based archives,” and “tag archives.” All of these can create duplicate instances of the same content.

6) Once you’ve selected these three categories, the changes will be applied to all previous posts as well as any posts created in the future.

7) You’ll be able to check the success yourself. Check the source code on any of your tagged posts and search for ‘noindex’. You’ll find the source article is still being indexed, but the tagged versions will show the following:

There are many potential ways for Google to misidentify your site as having duplicate content. Making sure you aren’t compounding the problem with a poorly executed WordPress strategy is a smart and necessary first step.

Stay Optimized My Friends,
Zach Riegle

Digital endeavors are no different than physical endeavors. Opening a small retail store has its overhead: inventory, real estate, marketing, etc. Digital does too: the website is the NEW inventory; the new real estate. Constant development costs, low budgets, and changes in technology make it nearly impossible to maintain and grow a business without serious capital. And even with serious capital, how do you market what you are doing? It often takes time to grow a digital business, the same way it does a physical business.

Popfunk.com is an e-commerce t-shirt store that I own. One year ago today we set 2 goals: increase SEO rankings for keywords like Aquaman t-shirts, or Garfield t-shirts, or Batman t-shirts, and launch an AdWords campaign.

It took one full year of hard work creating content… Thousands — I mean THOUSANDS — of product descriptions, license descriptions, a database and system for editing title tags, etc. It took an entirely separate effort to create AdWords campaigns for hundreds of licenses and keyword categories. But with a focused strategy, eventually there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. And that is exactly what happened. An e-commerce success story built on a great product, careful strategy, and a lot of work.

At the beginning of the year we were averaging 75 orders per month. Now we are averaging 500 orders per month. That equates to around $1500 per month in sales vs. $30,000+ per month.

Popfunk.com’s monthly sales in 2012.

With the right team, like Blue Wheel Media, companies can identify and tailor strategies to deliver direct ROI. Most companies that work with us recoup our monthly service fees within 1-2 years of working together. Popfunk is a mere example of what we can do over time.

-Trevor

For the sake of this blog post, we’ll use the recent SMX conference as an example.

Attending The Conference

The key here is to find out what the official conference hashtag is. Without this, I’m stuck on a trail to nowhere.

Monitoring The Conversation

By simply following the #SMX live feed I can see updates in real-time from physical attendees.  At Blue Wheel, we’re big fans of Sprout Social for managing client social accounts. With their Brand Keyword Tool I can monitor specific panels by including the room number with the conference hashtag.

If one panel ends I can just turn off the corresponding room number and focus on the following session. Representatives from the conference will often mention when the next discussion is taking place.

If I arrived to the party late, no big deal. There’s bound to be a recap of the panels that I’ve missed floating around.

Network

The amount of people live-tweeting throughout each panel provides enough information for me to follow along as if I’m physically sitting in the audience with my laptop. And like at any conference, it’s important to network and establish contacts. I retweet others when they provide useful information and share new revelations as they happen.

This might even allow me to score several new followers who I may not have become acquainted with otherwise – just the same as if I were there networking physically.

Key Takeaways

Absorbing all of the new information and insight that I’ve gained from this experience is a bit difficult. To ease this process, I’ve created a Storify account to read over the information at my leisure.

I’ve pulled in all kinds of stuff from the #SMX Twitter feed: top tweets, all of the shared videos and images, and all of the people in the realm of conversation.

Until Next Time

As do most things in life, the conference has come to an end. It’s been a great experience filled with laughter, knowledge, and tweets. This is the time when most of the attendees have to check out by 11 so they can make their 1:00pm flight back to La Guardia or the moon or wherever, but not me. I think I’ll take a quick breather.

I’d say I’ve earned it.

-Kevin Knecht

We’re going to make a new website together! That’s great! But hey, I hardly know you. Let’s get better acquainted first.

Tell me about yourself and what you’re trying to achieve with this. Try to describe your company in just a few sentences… sort-of an elevator pitch. This allows you to get to the core of your brand, and allows me to figure out what you’re all about. Think about what makes you special. What sets you apart from the rest? It will not only shed some light on the brand as a whole, but also what your site is trying to achieve.

• What is the purpose of this site?
• Are you trying to raise brand awareness?
• Are you selling products?
• Are you showing off your work?

Knowing the purpose of the site affects the design significantly. A portfolio-style site wouldn’t work for a government program, just as a text-heavy news-style site wouldn’t be a good fit for a painter. We need to pinpoint the right system for the job or the site is doomed to mediocrity.

We have the basics out of the way, so lets get into the personality. I’m not trying to design some cookie-cutter any more than you want one (unless you do want that, in which case I’d love to). Let’s talk about styles for this.

• Do you have a style guide for your brand?
• Maybe some specific colors and fonts?
• How about some high-res photos?

All of these things would be ideal, but we can always come up with a plan if you don’t. Maybe you want a modern site? I might suggest a minimal, open layout using a nice sans serif font and some low-key colors, sprinkling in a few bold visuals here and there. The style of the site will be what sets you apart from the rest. While a nice layout can speak volumes, the styles you use in it will make it yours.

There will undoubtedly be revisions along the way. What you think you want (or what I think you want) beforehand can definitely change along the way. You might not know if you like (or hate) something until you see it. However, these topics can help us both hone your brand and help translate it into a glorious website. Getting all of these things hashed out beforehand can streamline the design process and, hopefully, allow us to nail it the first time.

-Dustin Maciag