The digital environment is constantly changing. Consumers are consistently taking in information through various channels, which include: laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, and even smart TV’s. Smartphones especially, have become so indispensable to our daily lives that 80% never leave home without their phones in hand. Given this shift in devices and usage, organizations need to adopt websites that are functional, searchable, and provide a great user experience to visitors in all aspects. There are SEO’s for all types of businesses such as plastic surgeon SEO. This is where responsive design comes into play. Responsive design refers to having a website that is designed and programmed specifically so that the design layout is universal across all platforms. The chief benefit of having a responsive design is that you don’t need to have separate mobile, tablet, and PC versions of your site. Responsive design is a shift in how we view websites across all devices. However, most don’t realize that a responsive design layout is a little different from a mobile design layout. A mobile website refers to designing a website that will appear on smartphones and tablets in the most user friendly way possible for those screen sizes and the correlating style of interaction. Design layouts for mobile websites aren’t usually the same or largely congruent to the desktop version of the site.

Although design layouts and aesthetics for responsive sites are meant to span across all devices, optimization is still an important aspect of any website. Let’s take into consideration the following statistics:

• 50% of mobile searches lead to purchase
• 95% of smartphone users have searched for local information
• 61% of users call a business after searching and 59% visit the location
• 90% of these people act within 24 hours

Given that more and more people are searching for information through mobile devices, search engine optimization is an important piece of the puzzle that may sometimes get looked over. According to Google, responsive design and seo hamilton go hand in hand, more specifically mobile SEO. Mobile SEO consists of numerous best practices that should be implemented for optimal mobile usage, but here are a few key things to remember:

• Fully optimize all local listings on both Google and Bing. Most mobile cenaless comprar search results are largely influenced by geo-location.
• Target shorter keywords in order to show up in mobile search results. Most users searching through mobile devices tend to use shorter keywords, which indicates that these searches are usually fast or quick in nature.
• Enable mobile web analytics in order to make data driven improvements to your mobile SEO efforts.
• Focus on usability and ease of use.  Users are more likely to bounce from a mobile site if they can’t (1) easily find the information they’re looking for, (2) the load time of the mobile site is slow, or (3) the website isn’t optimized for mobile use. These among other things will deter a mobile user form your site.

It’s easy to see that responsive design and fully optimized mobile websites are a sign of the next frontier of the digital landscape and should be adopted by any organization that doesn’t want to be left behind.

Need a hand establishing your company’s online presence, specifically in the mobile space? Give us a call or shoot us an email today. Over the years, we have established a proven method to help our clients achieve their marketing goals. We have also built lasting relationships with strategic partners such as Apogee Results. Together, we can help your business be a dominant player on and off the field.

As consumers we know “brands” simply as a particular product or service we like or dislike. However, as a business owner we know there are several factors to be considered before consumers can truly identify and trust a specific brand. In a perfect world, everyone would be a great target for all marking and brand identities but that’s not the case. Let’s cover the three main steps to creating an interactive branding message that your consumers can begin to connect with!

1.  Logo – (Noun) “A symbol adopted by an organization to identify its products or services” We all know it’s never about what you have, it’s about how you use it that makes the difference! Since you’ve spent the time and/or money on this masterpiece called your “logo,” make sure it shows up everywhere including business cards, social media sites, and any other promotional materials. Your logo is your company’s identity in a picture and the more you show it off, the quicker your brand recognition will grow.

Does this really matter, you ask? Consider this… how likely are you to remember a random fast-food restaurant you visited when they use generic bags and soda cups versus the restaurant that brands every cup and bag with their logo? That garbage in your car becomes advertising and will make an impression every time you see it.

2.  Interact – Who knew this was a part of branding? Speak directly with your target and, even more importantly, with your clients. Share and respond to social media comments, answer your phone using your company name and/or slogan, and use interactive communication tools such as surveys and email marketing. Remember, everything you send and share should always include your logo and slogan.

3. Solve – Your mission should be simple. Every business offers a product or service that offers results and/or a solution; and just because you know that, it does not mean your target market does. Leverage your interactive tools to share a clear, concise, and consistent solution that is unique to your brand identity. Remember, the process you use to help your clients may be complicated but your message should be simple enough to earn the trust and comfort of your clients.

Branding is more of an art than a science; it takes creativity, time, patience, and just like a painting, it will even go through an ugly stage. An initial brand launch should focus on creating awareness for your unique product or services. Luckily you have a friend in the industry- whether your current brand is sour or your business is brand new, HMG can help you too!

Nowadays, it’s rare to find a company without a website. And if you do, how annoying is it to scroll through Google and Yelp just to find their contact information? Having an online presence is necessary in today’s technologically centric world – just read our previous blog post about the importance of having a good web presence to see why.

What’s becoming increasingly important as well, though, is having a blog. Blogging has become a staple for businesses both big and small. It provides companies an outlet to show off their personalities, industry knowledge, and to engage their audiences with stimulating content. Nevertheless, blogging is a time commitment, so the big question still remains:

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New toll-ways, skyscrapers, and starting June 1^st 2013, Austin will be the third metropolitan area in Texas to have mandatory 10 digit dialing and more than one area code. It’s no secret, Austin is competing for the country’s fastest growing cities and as a result, we are expected to be fresh out of 512 numbers before the end of the year!

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If you’re a small business owner, you’re likely managing everything from your financials to your marketing activities–and you’re doing it all on a limited budget. While you know that you need a better way to manage your sales prospects, especially during periods of growth, you just aren’t ready to pay for a customer relationship management system to keep in touch with potential and existing customers.

At the Software Advice website, I help review and compare most of the major CRM (customer relationship management) systems on the market. But the truth of the matter is that many of the popular systems on the market can be too expensive for many small business owners. For these small businesses, it may be more effective to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach and build your own CRM system.

Building your own CRM system can provide several benefits:

• It’s affordable (read: free)
• It’s flexible
• It’s easy to use and customize

A great tool for building a CRM system on your own is Google Docs. If you have a Gmail account, you already have access to an easy way to build your own CRM software. Already widely used as a management tool, it’s fairly easy to extend the power of these applications to help with customer management. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview of how to do it.

Decide Who Gets Access–And What Information to Include
Google Docs allows all users to collaborate across any document thanks to their sharing and editing features. So, if one person changes a contact’s information, it automatically syncs across the system. This allows all document collaborators to see the change immediately. Beyond that, you can monitor user privileges to ensure that all users have access to the right information.

Once you decide who will be able to access and update data in your CRM system, you’ll need to create a Google Spreadsheet. After that, it’s time to determine what information you want to track about sales prospects in your spreadsheet. A few pieces of information that are a good idea to track include:

• Demographics – company name, contact name, email, phone number, etc.
• Prospect source – how the prospect found out about your company
• Next actions – a code that determine how you’ll follow (e.g. phone call or email)
• Contact log – notes from every contact you make with the prospect
• Estimated opportunity size – an estimate of the size of the sale
• Lead nurturing stage – a numbered system that shows how close the prospect is to purchasing (1 = aware but not interested; 4 = has purchased)

Keep in mind that this is just a starter list and you’ll likely want to record other information that’s specific to your business. So feel free to add any field that’s relevant to your company. If after a while you realize that you want to track more information, it’s fairly easy to add a new field.

Learn How to Manipulate the Data with Spreadsheet Functions
One nice thing about using a Google Spreadsheet is that there are easy sort features that allows you to sort by any field you like. If you only want to look at contacts with the biggest opportunity size, just sort by “estimating opportunity size” and you can view your most largest sales prospects from the largest potential sales to smallest.

Or, maybe you’re interested in the looking at the number of companies that are in the very beginning of the lead nurturing stage. You’ve already coded all entries that are in this stage of the buying process with a 1 but you don’t know how many of your contacts are at that phase. To figure this out, you can use a simple function known as a “countif()”. It works like this:

Determine the cell range you want to count sales prospects for (let’s say it’s cells C2 to C100)
Decide the criteria for counting each cell (in this case it’s a “1”)

To count all your prospects that are the beginning of the sales cycle, you can use the formula in cell C101: ‘=countif(C2:C100, “1”)’. This will give you the total number of contacts that are at phase one in the buying process. Of course there are a whole host of other functions that you can use to manipulate that data, but you get the idea. For a comprehensive list of spreadsheet functions that will work in a Google Spreadsheet check out Google’s help page.

With this method, you can start tracking their sales prospects in an efficient and paperless manner. And you can do it for free. As a bonus, you’ll also be able to access this data from anywhere with an Internet connection because information in Google Docs is stored in the Cloud.

Do you have any other DIY tips on creating a CRM system? Leave us a comment below.

Twitter is gaining momentum at an alarming rate and more and more businesses are using Twitter to create new revenue, build relationships and solve customer issues. As a Twitter user for both personal and business use, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. Below are 6 tips to writing good tweets and getting more followers!

1.  Keep it simple! Probably the most important piece of advice anyone can give you…no one wants to read a novel; especially on a network of fast-moving posts.

2.  Be original. Yes, I know this is trivial but a lot of people forget to use their own thoughts.

3.  Be personal. Bring your followers into your world, show them what YOU are about and make them feel welcome.

4.  Make ‘em laugh. If you can’t come up with anything creative then default to a funny joke, everyone can appreciate a laugh now and then!

5.  In conjunction with keeping it simple, make it catchy at the same time! Use words that define you and intrigue the reader. Separate yourself from the pack.

6.  Hashtags. Another no-brainer in the Twittersphere;  hashtags are to Twitter as SEO is to a solid website.

Web design has changed exponentially since the advent of web 2.0 in the early 2000’s. What used to be static-only websites have now been replaced with dynamic ones that incorporate many design features including widgets, social plugins and much more. Here are 12 tips to keep in mind when building or rebuilding your website.

1.  Show value– give people a reason to visit your site and keep them there.

2.  What does your website do? Are you informative, are you selling something? Include a call of action and let it be seen on the site!

3.  Simplicity– Keep it simple while still getting your point across.

4.  Myspace is out! That means no blinking text or magic cursors!

5.  Popups– Do I really have to explain this?

6.  Keep the home page accessible. I’ve been to many sites where once I click a link on the navigation bar, I cannot get back to the home page- so frustrating!

7.  Follow in Apple’s shoes and drop Adobe Flash– it’s processor heavy and there’s no place to embed SEO.

8.  I KNOW THIS MAY SOUND DUMB BUT DON’T CAPITALIZE ALL OF YOUR CONTENT.

9.  Speaking of words and content, check your grammar and spelling please!

10.  Use keywords and descriptive text that relates to your business. However, don’t over-embed keywords in your content- keep it natural.

11.  Be accessible, yes add a Contact page and put an email, phone number, something!

12.  Navigation is key! Keep a global navigation bar that allows accessibility to all of your pages.

I know the post reads “12 Tips” but I’m throwing in a BONUS, yay! 

13.  Social media integration- the key to the popularity and national/global success of your website and business.

If you’ve never heard of this odd application before, never fear (I was just introduced to it a few months ago)!  Once you get started, it’s a piece of cake.  For those of you that love organization, it’s a wonderful tool for you to manage all of your social media platforms in one easy place.  Although there are a few different types of HootSuite accounts, the version we will be investigating will be the basic account.

So let’s start with the basics.  All you need to do is go to hootsuite.com and create an account.  This doesn’t require much but an email, name and password.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll start by adding a social network.  As you can see, the three networks you are initially offered are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  By clicking on “add a different social network”, you are given many more options, such as: Google+, foursquare, WordPress, MySpace and mixi.

Choose the account you wish to sync first, allow HootSuite permission to that account and voila!  You should see something like this:

You can either compose or schedule a message by clicking in the “Compose message” box.  You will need to select your account by searching in the box which is right next to message composition.  To schedule, choose the calendar icon and pick your desired date and time.

If you would like to make any changes or view your scheduled items, choose the arrow icon located on the far left Dashboard.

To add on additional accounts.  Select the “+” tab at the top of the page.  You will then see the option to “Add Stream.” With the basic account, you are allowed up to FIVE different streams.  (Other accounts will allow for more streams depending on the price.)

You should now be able to complete the basic functions of HootSuite!  Can I get a woot, woot?!  If you’d like to learn more, you can always check out the free online tutorial they offer every member or contact us and we’d be happy to help.  Good luck!

The Client List: 4 Types of Clients, Pain Points and How to Deal

At HMG, we love our wonderful family of clients and customers. But, like any large family, there are a few that can, well, drive you a little crazy. Throughout my time working at PR, advertising and creative agencies I have noticed a distinctive trend in some of the “problem child” clients that take extra time, energy and effort to work with. While there are dozens of categories and sub-categories like law of attraction (I can’t wait to read the comments!), I have done my best to narrow down the 4 most common, and troublesome, types of clients that make Account Managers across the country face-palm almost every day.

1.     The Defensive Line
Think 260+ lbs., Texas born and bred defensive players.  Their goal? To keep the offense from proceeding down the field, of course.  And this is exactly how most of us feel when faced with a Defensive Line client. These clients or individuals tend to halt any forward progress you and your agency tries to make on their behalf. But they hired you, right? Last you checked you were the expert on hand to provide guidance on communications and lead the company to new, exciting territory. Well, not always.  Frustrations and confusion almost always accompany this type of client as agencies feel they are working against, not with your efforts.

Telling Signs:  Emails including the phrases: “This looks great, but..” “This is a little too much change for us.” Or “Let’s stick with what we already have in place.”

Symptoms: Stillborn campaigns, Account Executive migraines from beating on desk, drained agency hours with nothing to show, bi-polar or apathetic creative team

Remedy: Remember that you are on the same team. Try to understand and communicate with the client on intentions when creating a new strategy or creative direction. The client either wants the assurance of your capabilities (should they finally commit to change), is appeasing a task from higher up for new ideas or at the end of the day is protecting a brand that they built and a shift will be incremental, if any.  If the client appreciates and likes your work, congrats. They know your value. I guess the questions for the agency would be: Is having a solid offense strategy enough or are you tired of standing on the sidelines in this game?  Regardless, identifying and understanding this client is key to a stress-free relationship.

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Ah, the infamous Fifth Day of Christmas. I don’t know about you, but this might be the only part of the (original) song that I can actually remember every time.  But in the case of these Five Content Creation Rules, not rings, I encourage you to commit these to memory as well!

I’m sure you’ve already heard the saying, “Content is King,” but what does that really mean?  It all began with content as the key for search engine optimization and the huge role it played in positioning your company as an industry resource. Then came the rise of social and the need to push consistent communication. Creative tactics emerged through micro-sites and with social media popularity exploding, brands had to compete with the thought-leaders or become obsolete in the marketplace.

1.  Know Your Audience
Let’s be real.  If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach there’s no use in creating content at all.  Know who you’re writing for. Is it women ages 24-40 or men ages 60 and older? Decide who your audience is and then learn everything you can about them.  Find what questions they have, what motivates them and what they like. THEN, create your content.

2.  Tell a Story
Tell a story that is personable, approachable, tangible and memorable.  For example: Every year, The Hartford sponsors the Paralympics, and just last year the company decided to tell this story. They launched a media and video campaign through the medium of Facebook highlighting the athletes themselves. The result was a very successful and emotional story connecting with people on an individual and very personal level.

3.  Limit the Fluff
The average attention span is very, very short. You need to get right to the point or you run the risk of losing the audience. Eliminate any unnecessary points to keep content concise and hyper-focused. If you’d like some additional examples on the process of un-fluffing, check out one of our previous blog posts on a similar topic!

4. Make it Shareable
The best way to get your content out there is to spread it across all appropriate mediums.  So making it easy for others to share your content should be a BIG priority. Try to think of a blog that doesn’t prominently display social sharing buttons. It’s tough, right? That’s because most people won’t go out of their way to share your content so just make it simple!

5.  Say What You Know…
…and not what you sell. Customers are not looking to read your blog or micro-site to see what you sell, they can view that in a catalog or on the products and services tab on your site. They are interested in what you know and what you stand for. It’s time to start communicating as a trusted and relevant source and not as a sales script. Storytelling is the new content marketing.

See where your expertise and your customer’s interests overlap to tap into your niche. Tell a unique story and communicate in a way that no other competition can touch.