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Recent Blog Posts
How to Handle an Employee Cybersmear
For many businesses and firms, meeting the needs and expectations of clients would be impossible without a dedicated team of employees working together for the betterment of the company. If you own a business, your employees are among your most important assets, especially those who are honest, loyal, and dependable. However, when circumstances or employee behavior leads to a termination, a disgruntled former staff member can quickly become a problem and a threat to your professional reputation. With countless internet forums available in which an angry ex-employee can post comments, rants, and veiled threats—actions collectively known as cybersmearing—the situation can spin out of control in just a few days. If you have recently parted ways with an employee that you think could be capable of such behavior, there are some things you can do to protect yourself and your business.
Smartphone Game Creators Use Facebook to Respond to Growing Criticism
Social media can be a powerful tool for businesses. Outlets like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others can provide companies with direct access to their customer base and prospective clients at a level that was not possible prior to the digital age. For many business owners, social media provides the opportunity to take a proactive approach to customer communication. It can also offer a forum for a company that feels the need to speak out in its own defense. Such was the case earlier this week when the makers of the world’s most popular smartphone game took to Facebook in an attempt to address growing frustration by the game’s users.
A Worldwide Phenomenon
About a month ago, Niantic, Inc. released Pokémon Go, an augmented reality game for smartphones and mobile devices based on the Pokémon series created by Nintendo in the mid-1990s. The game encouraged users to get up and move about in the real world while looking for Pokémon creatures to catch, train, and battle. Utilizing GPS and each device’s camera, the app can make it seem like a Pokémon creature is hiding in the corner of your room or in your neighbor’s yard.
Marketing Lessons Learned From Pokémon Go
Pop culture trends and crazes come and go with alarming speed. Often, they are fun for a moment then quickly forgotten as the collective interest turns to something new. Sometimes, though, a cultural phenomenon can develop from the simplest of sources. Over the last several weeks, a seemingly innocuous smartphone app has taken the world by storm, as developers combined a video game concept that began two decades ago with current GPS and mobile phone technology. By now, you have almost certainly have heard about Pokémon Go, as millions of players around the globe have taken to the streets as they try to “catch ‘em all.”
While you may be tempted to dismiss Pokémon Go as another passing fad, the explosion of the app’s popularity provides a number of examples for those looking to grow any business, including legal practices. By incorporating some of these ideas into your firm’s marketing and planning strategies, you may find yourself positioned for a popularity explosion of your own.
Maintaining Your Online Reputation Ethically
Opening your own legal practice took years of hard work, dedication, and personal sacrifice, not to mention a significant financial investment. Your firm, in many ways, is an extension of yourself, and when an unsatisfied client or someone else has a problem with your practice, it is easy to take such issues very personally. Today, more than ever, consumers and customers are utilizing online review outlets offered by Google, Yelp, and others or simply airing their frustrations for all to see on Facebook or Twitter. This has led many law firms to look into online reputation management, which is a series of processes that can help keep your professional image intact. Reputation management, however, presents some concerns of its own, and many have questioned whether such practices are even ethical.
To address these issues, Attorney Melissa Smart, litigation manager and senior counsel for The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, recently released a video that explains how attorneys can avoid making ethical mistakes with online reputation management. Ms. Smart offered three specific tips:
The Importance of Analyzing Your Website Analysis Tools
In today’s increasingly connected world, a well-designed website is crucial to your company’s success. A strong word-of-mouth reputation is certainly helpful, but there is nothing that compares to the reach of a powerful online presence that extends beyond your friends and neighbors. There are many factors that contribute to the quality of your website, and there is certainly room for discussion about what makes a good website. Dozens, if not hundreds, of site analysis tools are available to help website owners review their site’s metrics and performance, allowing them to make the necessary adjustment to improve. But how reliable are these tools? And is it possible that many of them are just trying to sell you a product or service?
Consider the Source, Especially If It Is Free
While not completely unheard of, very few services—either online or in the brick-and-mortar business world—are offered completely for free with no strings attached. Such is the case with most website analysis tools. Depending on where the tool originates, it could be offered with the sole intention of getting you to buy something or hire a particular marketing company.
Increasing Use of Ad-Blocking Software Changing Online Marketing
Anytime you browse the internet, you are likely to be bombarded with dozens of advertisements and marketing efforts by various companies trying to promote their products. Even a simple mobile app is often accompanied an endless cycle of ads; the ad-free versions typically cost extra. In recent years, more and more internet users have begun installing ad-blocking software—typically as an app or a browser extension—which attempt to screen advertisements and provide a more enjoyable user experience. Business experts, however, are concerned about the ultimate impact of ad-blocking software, and some have even gone so far to predict that such programs will bring about the end of the internet as we currently know it.
Advertising on Television
For many decades, television was the primary source of home entertainment and information. While cable television was available as early as 1948, it didn’t become particularly popular until the 1970s. This meant that most television watchers relied on programs that were broadcast locally and underwritten by corporate sponsors. In some cases, the name of the sponsor was part of the program title, including the United States Steel Hour, General Electric Theater, and Schlitz Playhouse of Stars. The corresponding advertisements throughout such shows were essentially the cost of doing business. Viewers were receiving entertainment at no cost to them; the expenses were borne by the sponsors, who, in turn, had the opportunity to present their products.
Is Your Website’s Speed Slowing You Down?
If you have ever seen or heard an advertisement for UPS, you have probably heard the slogan “Moving at the speed of business.” While this maxim certainly makes sense for a package delivery company, it could just as easily be applied to website development and management. Today, more than ever, the speed of your website is crucial to providing a positive user experience that results in strong conversion rates from browser to prospect to satisfied client.
Understanding Site Speed
Your website—even a simple one—is comprised of many different plugins, modules, and scripts, each one designed to perform a specific task or display certain information. When a user accesses your site, all of these features take time to load so that the page functions correctly and looks the way it is supposed to look. Each individual element may only take a fraction of a second to load, but loading the entire site can take significantly longer, especially if some of the scripts are larger and contain redirects to other places on the internet.
Optimizing User Experience Is Key to Video Marketing
When you are developing a strategy for any type of online marketing, you will constantly be told that you need to provide the best possible user experience for your visitors and prospective clients. While the idea sounds simple enough, it does raise the question: what does “user experience” mean? User experience is conventionally defined as a “person’s perception and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system, or service.” Optimizing user experience, therefore, will depend on the objectives you hope to achieve with your marketing campaign and the combination of media you choose to deliver your message.
The immense popularity of YouTube, Vine, and similar outlets indicates that importance of strong video marketing cannot be overstated. In fact, according to at least one study, the chances of getting a first-page Google search ranking for your site increases by more than 50 times when you effectively use videos. Creating and using video should also be done with the user experience in mind, and there are a few things you and your marketing team can do to help meet your goals.
Staying at the Front of the Pack: Maintaining Your Website’s SEO and Search Rankings, Part 2
A few weeks ago, we talked about a number of ways to help ensure your website continues to remain strong and near the top of search results. Although it would be nice, your site will not just stay that way without additional effort. Maintaining online visibility takes organization, work, and perseverance, along with the knowledge of what makes a website successful.
Last time, we discussed how the speed of your site is a major factor in optimizing your site’s search rankings. We also talked about how regularly-updated, engaging content can drive organic traffic and increase your visibility as well. From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, there are still other things you can do to stand out against all of the background noise on the internet.
Could a Different TLD Drive More Traffic to Your Website?
You may have one of the best websites in the industry. It could be full of visually stunning elements, interactive menus, and useful information for prospective clients. Your site could even be built for viewing on any size screen, offering an unmatched user experience. The greatest website on the internet, however, is virtually worthless if nobody ever visits it. The reality is that very few potential clients are going to take the time to type out your site’s Uniform Resource Identifier, or URL—more commonly referred to as your web address. Instead, traffic to your site depends on your ability to be seen in search engine results, which, in turn, is driven by search engine optimization, or SEO. There are many factors that go into effective SEO, but a new study suggests that optimization help may be available from a somewhat surprising source.
