Five Quick Tips to Optimize Your Website

August 9, 2011

A few years back, you probably created a website for your business or organization. But have you done anything with that website since you first got it? If not, your site probably needs an update to be effective in today’s market.

Now, we realize the process of optimizing websites and creating effective web content can be daunting. There’s no one way to do it, and there can be a lot of steps: auditing your current site’s content, creating measurable goals, developing user personas, revising copy, testing user experience. Overwhelming, right? But everyone has to start somewhere. These five quick tips can get you on track to make your website work for your business:

1. Update regularly.
Take five minutes each day to update something on your website. This tells search engines that your website is active.

2. Create a schedule.
Decide ahead of time what updates you’ll do. Remember, four great updates are better than eight meaningless ones.

3. Focus on the future.
When writing, keep in mind where you want your site to be—not where it is now. The more you focus on where you want it to be, the sooner it will get there.

4. Add “alt tags” to images.
By describing your images using words, your photos have now become searchable. This gives search engines even more ways to direct users to your website.

5. Submit your sitemap.
This will tell Google, Yahoo! and Bing exactly what content you have on your site, making it even more search-engine friendly.

These simple changes obviously aren’t a comprehensive list. They are a starting point, though, to help you optimize your website for search engines so customers can find you online.

By betsy

Filed Under Technology, The Process

Don’t Be Content With Your Old Web Content Strategy

May 17, 2011

Here’s an impressive fact, straight from Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt: every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003.

Whoa. Mind. Blown.

Because of the Internet, people can access and share information more easily than ever, and they don’t want us to waste their time. As advertisers, our websites have to be good—make that really, really great—to get our customers’ attention among massive volumes of information. We have to think of the best way a website’s content helps customers, which will make a business achieve its goals.

That’s what we call content strategy management. Now, that’s a very simplified definition, but make no mistake: it’s a big deal for the future of websites, social media and everything else online.

The Old Way of Creating Content
Last week, I attended Confab, a content strategy conference in Minneapolis, Minn., and it motivated me to further understand the complexities of web content strategy. To understand why web content strategy is important, we talked a lot about how businesses created websites in the past. A business owner said, “I need a website!” without really knowing the purpose for it. A web designer laid out the website, and a copywriter filled in the blanks later. Often, this process resulted in extreme frustration, rewriting and redesigning. And that’s a lot of inefficiency, wasted time and lost revenue.

The New Way of Creating Content
With the glut of information out there, the old method doesn’t work anymore. Customers have many, many options, so if you’re not giving them the substance they need, they’ll go somewhere else. Plus, many alternatives are available to get your message out there—your website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and much more. Each one has to be carefully considered if it will help achieve your business’s goals. It’s not great to have a Twitter account just because you can. It should have a specific goal that meets your customers’ needs.

The quality of the content is what’s important. Think about who your customers are and what they want; then build your content around their needs. Luckily at HenkinSchultz, our process has always started with the message and the content. Thinking about content strategy has made us even more determined to be deliberate about content and our customers’ needs.

By amie

Filed Under Technology, The Process

The Internet of Things

March 17, 2010

ReadWriteWeb has been spending a healthy amount of time researching and discussing The Internet of Things, a concept that describes how, in the future, there will be more things on the Internet – sensors, devices, automated systems – than people.

A new video from IBM’s Smarter Planet group illustrates what The Internet of Things will mean to our future, specifically the social and cultural change that will occur as a result.


Our place as marketers in The Internet of Things is still being developed, and because of this there’s a propensity for fear. The technology is adapting far faster than we can keep up with, which leads to brash and unseemly forays into interruption marketing. We fight to be a part of the answer, and in doing so we bypass working with the system by working in spite of the system.

So what’s our responsibility?

As The Internet of Things becomes more automated, it will also seek out better ways to become more monetized. Which will lead to more opportunities for marketing. Which will lead to more ways in which a person is interrupted during their life.

It’s a slippery slope, and this is where our part will come in – our responsibility to understand, both for our clients and for the customers they serve, that not every channel needs to be interrupted.

That, by choosing the right channels, standing by permission marketing and understanding which options will help a brand (rather than hurt it in ways we may not even understand), we can continue to lead our clients to effective marketing.

All without taking advantage of society and its quickly fracturing attention.

(Via: ReadWriteWeb)

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, Marketing, Criticism, The Process

HenkinSchultz: Official Google Advertising Professionals

March 11, 2010

It’s about Analytics and Ad Ranking and CPC and Quality Score.

It’s about CTR and Keywords and Region Targeting and Content Bids.

It’s about CPM and Impressions and Ad Groups and ROI.

But really, it’s about understanding the basics - and the subtle (and sometimes complicated) nuances - of search engine marketing as it pertains to Google AdWords. And, furthermore, about presenting our clients with added opportunities for promotion and awareness outside the traditional printed and broadcast mediums.

So we finally got around to taking the test. And here we are: official Google Advertising Professionals. (And we’re pretty stoked, by the way.)

We get to show off the badge. But our clients get the real prize: an added level of knowledge and awesomeness from their chosen marketing partner.

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, Marketing, HenkinSchultz, The Process

Being a Realtor on the Web

February 23, 2010

Let’s face it. Choosing a Realtor can be scary.

A lot needs to happen in selling and buying a house, and that puts a lot of responsibility – and therefore, a lot of trust – into the Realtor/homeowner relationship. Trust that needs to be earned. Trust that can’t be forgotten.

Which means, often, homeowners are on the defensive when it comes to buying or selling. They don’t have time to set up meetings with prospective Realtors, listen to presentations and choose. And often, questions arise before the Realtor is even chosen. What will stop my house from being sold? What do I need to do to prepare? Should I even sell?

For that reason, Realtors are taking to new ways of getting their positioning statement public in more non-traditional ways. We are happy to help one local Realtor – Tony Ratchford – in this very thing.

The concept: offer a seminar on selling a home on the potential seller’s time. Instead of setting up an appointment, coordinating schedules and arriving in person, Tony and his team developed a short video that highlights the needs for selling a home – and the benefits of doing so with Tony.

It’s simple: request a password, view the video, and proceed from there – which, coincidentally can all be handled on the same site. What’s your house worth? What homes are on the market? What resources are available in the community? It’s all one click away.

Fully automating the Realtor/homeowner relationship while still reaching out for a personal touch. It’s the best of both worlds, and it’s the future of buying and selling homes.

Check out the site for yourself at www.WhyHomesDontSell.com.

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, Marketing, Design, HenkinSchultz

On Deadlines

February 18, 2010

South Dakota State University Foundation Web siteDeadlines are the bane of a creative’s existence.

They signify a finish, a point at which the creative process stops and the technicalities begin. Everything leads to that deadline, and as time approaches, stress builds.

It’s the nature of the business. And it’s what makes a good number of us thrive.

Sometimes, our deadlines are far away. We’re afforded a large chunk of time with which to make magic happen. But most of the time, however, we’re on tight deadlines. Publications and print dates and special events and product launches are all tied to a specific date, and to that specific date our marketing and advertising materials must coincide.

Deadlines are a bane. But they’re also a framework and a promise.

So when a super hot job lands on our doorstep, sometimes there are only a few hours available to plan, design and implement. Take, for example, the case of a recent Web project we handled for the South Dakota State University Foundation.

With site design approved on Tuesday, there was but a crazy overnight coding session holding it back from getting to them by Wednesday. And it was done. Four days later, after content was entered, the site was live.

What what?

Listen, none of us want to work on midnight oil deadlines. But sometimes, they happen. And when they do, there’s a certain feeling of accomplishment – and dedication – that drives us to turn it around in an emergency.

It’s a deadline. They’re the bane of our existence. But, they’re also what makes the industry so exiting, and, in a way, what makes it so rewarding.

What what, indeed.

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, The Process

Twitter as a commitment

February 2, 2010

Social media, social marketing, e-commerce, Web content, online anything, whatever you’re calling it today. The name doesn’t matter. No one cares about that.

The attention you give it, however, does matter.

Because we all know that every business is looking to jump full steam ahead into social media, regardless of need and viability, and we know that it’s totally the thing to do.

In many cases, that’s true. As long as you focus on the “to do” part of the equation. The “keeping up with it” portion.

An example, from right here in our dusty little village: The City of Sioux Falls, and its SiouxFallsSnow Twitter feed.

The goal of @SiouxFallsSnow is, naturally, to let people know when a Snow Alert has been announced, allowing residents to get their vehicles off of the roads and save them from possible ticketing.

Awesome idea. Seriously.

As long as you keep up, that is. Yesterday’s snow alert went silent on the Twitter feed. This morning, a “reminder” of the snow alert was posted. And, just 15 minutes later, a fellow ad twitterer, who relied on @SiouxFallsSnow for updates, was ticketed for being in a snow zone.

The issue: when you offer up a service – in this case, vowing to let people know when a Snow Alert has been announced – some people will keep you to your word. They will rely on your service. They will look to you for the information they need. And when it’s not delivered, they will wonder what happened, turn away and express frustration.

Nothing against @SiouxFallsSnow – on the contrary, I still think it’s a great idea. It’s just that this small incident highlights the importance of keeping up with a Twitter feed. Or a Facebook page. Or updating a Web site with new information. The content you offer doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it’s followed by real people, who look to you for information just as they would in real life.

It only takes one slip. From there, one errant situation. One frustrated follower. One mass message to the Twitterverse.

If you are going to promote social media or social marketing, make sure you’re doing it right. Similarly, if you are going to offer a service, even if it’s for free, make sure you back it up. Because whether you’re selling candy bars or letting us know about the snow alerts, we’re depending on you.

By Corey

Filed Under Technology, Marketing

On How NOT to Request Attention on the Internet

December 9, 2009

One of the first marketing mistakes I ever made happened early. It had to do with this blog, Post Haste. And, it had to do with my naivety in regards to other people’s time.

I had convinced our partners that we should develop a company blog. Very few other marketing agencies in our area had blogs, and it was time to take a dive into the ever-expanding world of Internet marketing and social media.

Searching for an audience – and looking forward to a jaunty dialog with our naturally intelligent readers – I developed a “Look At What We’ve Done!” e-mail. I sent it to every marketing and advertising blogger I could find. I said, essentially, why I thought our blog was great.

I gave them a look at something new. But I failed on one major level.

I never told them why it mattered to them.

Of the 100+ e-mails I sent out, I received only a handful back. Some were congratulatory. Some were dismissive.

One really stood out. The name doesn’t matter – I can’t remember it, anyway – but the tone was distinct.

It chastised me for asking people to care without offering a benefit. It hounded me for blindly grasping for attention - not by participation and discourse, or by giving anything of substance (because, at this time, there was very little on the blog), but by the assumption that I deserved it.

It taught me an important lesson: no one cares until you give a reason to care.

Fast forward to today.

A magazine I’ve never heard of sends me an e-mail. They assume I’m willing to help them pre-promote an upcoming issue. They open with a salutation of “Dear Blogger.” There is no mention of what I’m getting out of the deal, or why I should care.

I see this e-mail, and I see a little of myself that first time around, when I was promoting Post Haste by sidestepping relationships and blindly throwing darts, hoping some would stick.

It’s the same as sending out press releases that make more work for a journalist, or – even worse – assume a store promotion is real news.

It’s the same as blanket spamming a thousand Twitter users with a new e-commerce site.

It’s the same as knocking on my door, asking me to tell all of my friends about your product, and then leaving without even acknowledging my time.

And I know from experience. It’s not impressive. And it doesn’t work.

By Corey

Filed Under Technology, Marketing, Post Haste, Criticism

The heart of search: marketing Google

December 2, 2009

When it came to marketing, Bing went with humor. It went with the assumption that users couldn’t handle the amount of information they were given, that the Internet commoners wanted something more attuned to their thoughts. That their algorithm was better than Google’s, despite the difficulty in proving it.

Google? Well, they simply went for the heart.


We use search every day. It’s as much a part of our lives as the car we drive, the restaurants we frequent, the people we meet. Except for one thing: search leads us to those cars, those restaurants, those people; in a way, it’s so much more.

(Via Make the Logo Bigger)

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology

SEO vs. Content: Not a Battle After All

October 12, 2009

Search Engine Optimization gets people to your site. It boosts your page rank. It performs magic tricks, prints money and cures cancer. It’s the golden god of content management, at times, and it’s the number one goal of a company: get your name out there, and get it noticed.

If I sound a little sarcastic, you’ll have to understand that I’m a writer. Which means I have one goal over any other: create interesting content.

It’s this goal that makes me cringe when people say that SEO is the most important part of putting together a successful Web site; that copy should be manufactured with the robotic eyes of a search engine in mind.

And it’s this goal that often leads me astray, railing against SEO in the name of art and literature and everything the act of writing stands for.

Because the truth is – SEO isn’t king. And neither is content, anymore. Seems that both have to work in harmony.

See? Now I’ve just upset both sides of the debate.

There are two arguments in the battle. For SEO champions, it’s, “If your content is good, but no one sees it, is it worth it?” And for the content wonks, it’s “If you get people to your site, but they aren’t interested in staying, is it worth it?”

The real answer lies somewhere in between. It isn’t all or nothing for either side. You need both. In fact, one should naturally lead to another. Great content should generate positive SEO, as great content relies on communicating in a way that gives the reader exactly what they came for. And great SEO means you’re covering all of your bases – that you’re thinking for the masses instead of your little corner of intelligentsia.

It means more than compiling lists of regurgitated facts and keyword-laden copy. Conversely, it means more than developing beautiful prose more akin to Steinbeck than Sergey. It’s right in the middle. It’s what we sought out when we redesigned our Web site. And it’s helped us in both cases: better content and better search results.

No, it’s not SEO über alles. Nor is it content without regard to searchability. Simply put, it’s writing the way people will read. Will think. Will care. It’s managing content logically and creatively.

It’s copy written for robots and people. How futuristic. Are you doing it?

By Corey

Filed Under Technology, Marketing, The Process

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