Here is an infographic about what the W3C is telling us about HTML5

Peter Baio is an employee @ Mainstreethost.  He has been with the company for 10 years and loves HTML5, CSS3, Responsive Web Design, SEO and Cheese.

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If you follow sports or even watch the news for that matter, you have probably had the chance to see the elbow Metta World Peace (Ron Artest) threw on Oklahoma City Thunder guard James Hraden. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

“Metta World Peace” is even trending on Google as of this morning:

Mr. World Peace even has a section on his Wikipedia page dedicated solely to his disciplinary and legal issues throughout the years. The point here is that even after Ron Artest “re-branded” to Metta World Peace in September of 2011, the Los Angeles Lakers forward still seems to play with little to no class on the basketball court.

What can we as marketers learn from Metta World Peace’s actions when it comes to reputation and brand management? Below are 3 tips that will help you maintain positive brand awareness and a clean reputation both on and offline.

Don’t Keep Repeating the Same Mistakes

No matter what type of business you are in, if negative behaviors by your company have been brought to light in the past, correct your mistakes, don’t repeat them. In 2003, Ron Artest was suspended 3 games by the NBA for destroying a TV camera at Madison Square Garden. In the same season, he was suspended another 4 games for a confrontation with another NBA coach. Then came 2004 and the infamous Pacers/Pistons brawl where Artest was the center of altercations between fans and players. The disciplinary and legal issues go on and on for Mr. Artest/World Peace.

My point here is that as a company, you will never earn or maintain a positive reputation unless you are willing to fix what is causing your issues. If you run a restaurant and your customers are constantly complaining about the temperature of the steak, it might be time to look for a new cook.

Re-Branding Doesn’t Solve All of Your Issues

Similar to my first point, re-branding will not serve as the end all be all unless you are making positive changes within your company or organization. I tweeted this last night:

how can you have the last name “world peace” and throw an elbow like that? @MettaWorldPeace that was clearly blatant. #dirty ball player

— Craig Kilgore (@ckilgs) April 23, 2012

While Metta World Peace’s reasoning for the name change/re-brand probably wasn’t to indicate cleaner on court play, my second point is that simply re-branding your products/services does not mean you will avoid negativity carried over from your previous brand. For your own peace of mind, World Peace’s reasoning for the name change according to his court hearing was that:

changing my name was meant to inspire and bring youth together all around the world

Again, if you have issues that are leading to negative brand awareness or a less than pleasant online or offline reputation, don’t count on re-branding to save you.

Use Common Sense

The last point that I want to make is that all of this could have been avoided with some good old common sense. We see it all too often, whether it’s World Peace elbowing his opponents or KFC encouraging you to stock up on fried chicken during an earthquake, the constant here is the lack of common sense. Being active in sports for my entire life, I understand how easy it is to get caught up in the moment and let your temper get the best of you. Being a digital marketer at Mainstreethost, I realize that some of the biggest marketing opportunities arise in correspondence with current events or world news. At the end of the day, you are better off taking a couple of extra seconds to think about the damage your actions can potentially cause. Use common sense.

Conclusion

If you are responsible for your company’s brand awareness or reputation management, don’t continuously make the same mistakes, use common sense and realize that re-branding is not the solution to all of your problems. From a personal standpoint, learn from World Peace’s blatant inability to learn from mistakes when going about your everyday routines (don’t elbow people in the face and expect it to just blow over).

What are some of your favorite brand disaster stories?

Post by Craig Kilgore – SEO @mainstreethost

Twitter: @ckilgs

I’ve written a lot about beginner SEO in the past to include tips, strategies and my opinions about the industry in general. What intrigues me to continue writing about basics is the fact that digital marketing is fast paced and constantly evolving and this is something that will never change. With that being said, there are constants or “core” components that can and should be included in every digital marketing strategy in my professional opinion.

With it being so easy to get caught up in all of the “noise” and lose sight of digital marketing fundamentals, I share with you 3 beginner tips that have helped me reach such a high level of success with countless number of businesses.

Develop a content marketing strategy early:

Developing content is nothing new but given the introduction of Google’s Search Plus Your World, new social networks, growing importance of increasing brand awareness and other factors (both new and old), developing a content marketing strategy early on in the digital marketing process is a must.

Start this process by defining your business goals if you haven’t done so already.

Once you have your business goals defined, determine what type(s) of content will help you reach those goals (blog posts, visual based content, videos, etc.), and it could very well be a combination of multiple content types. At this point, you will want to create yourself an editorial calendar. Instead of getting more in depth on this, Distilled did a great job explaining why it is important to create an editorial calendar for content marketing here.

After launching a piece of content, get social with it. If you have an established following, getting social could just a matter of sharing your content with your audience. If you lack an audience, you have a little more work cut out for you. Guest blogging or sharing with an already developed community might get your more of a response and help you move forward towards your business goals.

Now that your content is published and shared with your social circle(s), this takes us on to measuring success.

Don’t focus solely on rankings:

When it comes to measuring how successful your digital marketing campaign is, don’t focus solely on rankings. Ranking on the first page of Google under a given key phrase does not necessarily equate to success. Is this key phrase driving relevant traffic to your website? Are your visitors converting? After reaching your site through a keyword search, at what point does that visitor leave your website? These are just a few questions you should be asking and ultimately measuring.

From a measuring standpoint, the screenshot above is just scratching the surface and should in no way be the end of your data analysis. At this point, I might want to analyze individual page performance to determine which of my pages are performing to my expectations. This could include product pages with high bounce rates and low conversion rates or blog pages with low traffic and low engagement rates (social shares, comments, etc.).

Remember, coming to conclusions on whether or not your site/site’s pages are performing is ultimately determined by your business goals which for the sake of this blog post, I am determining you set forth before implementing a digital marketing strategy.

Always be testing:

Now that your content marketing strategy is developed and you know how to measure success, don’t become complacent. From title optimization to UX testing, landing page designs and/or conversion rate optimization, ALWAYS BE TESTING! Sometimes the slightest modifications (location of a call to action button) can yield unexpected positive results.

Tools such as Google’s Website Optimizer are perfect for A/B testing.

A/B testing can certainly be time consuming and costly so if you are a small business on a budget, John Paul Titlow wrote a post titled 3 Affordable A/B Testing Tools For Small Businesses that is worth checking out.

Conclusion

Remember, when working in such a fast paced, ever changing industry, sometimes it’s the basics that will bring you the most success. I hope that you find my tips useful in your quest for improved visibility, better brand awareness, higher conversion rates and overall business success. Whether you are an in-house SEO or work for an agency, continuously set goals, define important metrics, develop a content marketing strategy and always be testing.

What are some of your go to digital marketing tools or sources for information?

(view original post here)

Post by Craig Kilgore - SEO @mainstreethost

Twitter: @ckilgs

Social Economics: How is Social Data Valued? Check out this neat little infographic via Backupify:

The internet and the digital marketing industry are extremely fast paced. From new technologies and strategies to new social networks and best practices, many business owners and marketers have a hard time piecing it all together. Even when you think you have a firm grasp on things, are you putting your best foot forward? One of the leading causes of misguided or misleading marketing advice, in my opinion, is the lack of a goal oriented strategy.

Before diving into keyword research, competitive analysis and everything in between… Before developing on-site, off-site, social media and content marketing strategies…  You need to ask yourself the following – what are my goals and who is my intended audience?

Whether you plan on hiring someone as an in-house SEO or are taking the agency route, defining your goals early is a must in my professional opinion and will help ensure a more dominant, successful internet presence.

What are my business goals?

As with traditional marketing, goals are a must when it comes to SEO/digital marketing. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Do you want to sell products? Do you want to increase the number of form completions (lead generation) on your site? These are all questions you should ask and answer before diving into actionable tactics.

In-House SEO

As an in-house SEO, it is your responsibility to obtain the feedback necessary to identify potential goals. This feedback can come from direct management, executive level management, etc. (anyone that has a say in the business’ direction).

Agency SEO

If you are an SEO within an agency, the steps you need to take towards determining your clients’ goals may be different than those of an in-house SEO. When communication barriers exist, it is your job as the SEO to work around them and/or break them down. In the end, identifying business goals should be the least of your marketing concerns.

One of the major advantages in-house SEOs have over agency ended SEOs are the more personal levels of communication with the people that matter in my opinion/experience. No matter your role, you as the SEO should identify goals (short term and long term) early on and develop strategies that will help you reach them.

Who is my intended audience?

Identifying your intended audience(s) early on in the SEO process is another must in my opinion. From highly targeted content to demographic influenced on-page elements, knowing who is going to be potentially influenced by your marketing efforts will help you develop and execute a more effective digital marketing campaign. Simple market research using tools like Google’s Doubleclick Ad Planner will give you a grasp on who your intended audience might be. Let’s say I am starting a business selling office supplies online. I might want to take a site such as www.officemax.com and plug it into Doubleclick Ad Planner. I will be presented with the following:

From here, I can identify what type of audience Office Max attracts. I now know that I will probably have the most success with content geared towards females between the ages of 45-54. I also know that their interests include office furniture, office supplies, printers, etc. This is awesome, useful data.

Other tools such as Sprout Social will give you a grasp on who your social audience is and how your content reaches them. Continuous, audience/demographic research will ensure that your content is of the highest quality throughout the duration of your digital marketing campaigns. The following is data from my personal Sprout Social account:

What this tells me is that I will have more success/higher engagement rates with males on Twitter and females on Facebook. Again, this is awesome, useful data.

Conclusion

Defining your goals and intended audience sounds pretty straightforward and most of the time it is. My point is that too often, it isn’t given the attention that it needs. Keep in mind that goals and audiences will not always remain constant and should be addressed on a campaign by campaign basis. Your goals and intended audience(s) should be revisited and reassessed from time to time and when necessary, adjust your marketing strategies to accurately reflect your findings.

Having a goal and knowing who you want to target is a must and should be the first step of the SEO process. Based on my professional experience, giving actionable advice and measuring campaign metrics/performance is much easier and effective with predefined goals in place.

Post by Craig Kilgore - SEO @mainstreethost

Twitter: @ckilgs

I came across this today and I thought I’d post it.  The infographic portrays how much distraction there is out there when being a digital marketer.

I have been in the SEO industry for almost 6 years now and can proudly say that there is nothing else I’d rather be doing professionally. It was almost by luck that I landed a position with Mainstreethost, a Buffalo, NY based digital marketing agency.

6 months out of a private college with stacks of college loan bills, I was willing to work just about anywhere. Having no clue what SEO even was, I interviewed and obtained an entry level position with Mainstreethost who at the time employed roughly 20 individuals. 6 years and 200 more employees later, I am heading up their R&D department and absolutely love what I do.

In the first couple of months, SEO was just a job to me, something that would hold me over until I found a career more closely related to my degree, a B.S. in Economic Crime Investigation. It wasn’t long before I realized that SEO was what I wanted to be doing as a career. With this realization, it was time to set personal/professional goals for myself and put a plan in place that would help me reach them. From there, it was solely my responsibility to stay on track and I credit most of my success to my colleagues and being able to learn and adapt quickly. Regardless of your profession, there is nothing more important than setting personal goals and creating reasonable paths to help you stay on track in my opinion.

The reason I shared this with you is because the concept of setting goals, creating paths to achieve them and staying on track is going to be the foundation of every SEO project you encounter in your professional career. Let’s discuss the importance of setting goals as an SEO and what you can do to stay on track.

Develop Your Goals Early

At the start of every project, even before developing a plan of attack, set goals. Don’t just set end goals either, set goals or benchmarks that you can evaluate throughout the duration of your project. Knowing if your company or client is focused on increasing brand awareness, generating leads or selling products will factor into determining your end goals, help you create a plan and allow you to provide actionable tips to your employees or customer.

If you work for a marketing agency and deal strictly with clients, goals can include improving traffic by a certain percentage, increasing leads by a certain number or educating your customer on how they can contribute to helping the cause.

If you are an in-house SEO, goals can include educating department heads on how they can contribute to your efforts, turning employees into brand advocates or increasing website conversions just to name a few. While goals can vary depending on your role, many of them can be applied to both agency and in-house SEOs.

No matter the type of business or what your actual responsibilities are, develop your goals early on.

How can you stay on track?

When it comes to SEO/digital marketing, it isn’t hard or uncommon to become distracted in your day-to-day activities. From client interruptions, new technologies/techniques or brain farts, unless you lock yourself in a closet or are working remotely from the middle of the woods, expect to be distracted from time to time.

With interruptions being inevitable, what can you do to stay on track?

If you work in a group setting like most of us do (SEOs, developers, creative minds, etc.), the first thing you can do is educate those around you. Make them aware of your responsibilities, what goes into your work and what they can do to help you achieve your goals or more importantly, what they can do to help keep you on track (via their skills). As I stated earlier, creating goals or benchmarks at numerous points throughout your project, not just the end, will help you stick to more realistic deadlines. The keyword here is realistic, don’t try to be superman.

Utilize your resources, delegate, follow up and repeat. Every situation is going to be different and ultimately, it is up to you to determine a reasonable path to help you stay on track.

Conclusion

I hope that my experiences, tips and advice will help you throughout your SEO journey. There are many different directions and approaches that can be taken with each of the projects or challenges you will be faced with throughout your career. Don’t get me wrong, there is much more to SEO than what I talked about in this post but by setting goals early, creating paths to reach them and staying on track, you are setting yourself up to be much more successful.

Stay tuned for a follow up post where I will share with you some tools to help you with all of this!

Post by Craig Kilgore - SEO @mainstreethost

Twitter: @ckilgs

(post originally featured on Business 2 Community)

I was watching college basketball last night and one of the commercials was from Microsoft showing off there browser IE9. The commercial made me think for a minute on what Microsoft was trying to accomplish here. The first thing that came to my mind was why wasn’t this released last March when the browser was introduced, especially since IE10 is right around the corner. Is all this a little too late?  If you take a look at the browser stats I would say no. According to StatCounter, just in the U.S. IE9 has been gradually increasing to a point where it’s number 3 on the list.  This progress is because of corporate America finally starting to switch from XP to 7.  I for one thing am glad to see this.

Overall the commercial is good way to tell the world that IE is still here and it’s here to stay.  With all the new features Microsoft has almost caught up.  There still is a lot that needs to be done and IE10 should resolve that but until then, good job Microsoft on this commercial.  It finally looks like you are starting care about your web browser.

Here is the IE9 Commercial, tell me what you think.

Peter Baio is an employee @ Mainstreethost.  He has been with the company for 10 years and loves HTML5, CSS3, Responsive Web Design, SEO and Cheese.

Connect with Peter
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I was going through my monster list of bookmarks yesterday and came across an infographic from FOCUS titled “What is HTML5?”.  It’s a great breakdown of what HTML5 is and what browsers are supporting the new syntax. The actual infographic is from 2010 so the percentage of HTML5 readiness has gone up with Chrome now at version 17 and Firefox at version 10, but you can see where we are heading.

The Web is ever changing and designing sites using HTML5 is the correct way to go.  I know that the majority of users use IE but that shouldn’t stop you from exploring HTML5.  There are many workarounds when it comes to IE and with IE9 out now and IE10 coming this fall, Microsoft has jumped on the bandwagon and embraced HTML5.  It’s for you too as well.  Here is a list of some sites a like to see the progress of HTML5

HTML5 & CSS3 Readiness | HTML5 Doctor | HTML5 Playground | HTML5 Arena

Peter Baio is an employee @ Mainstreethost. He has been with the company for 10 years and loves HTML5, CSS3, Responsive Web Design, SEO and Cheese.
Connect with Peter
Google+ | Twitter | Linkedin