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Moosylvania Blog

Your target audience can be difficult to engage, but with the right tactics used at the right time with the right creative, you’ll hit the bullseye by maximizing the effectiveness of your digital advertising. When talking about banner ads, it’s the targeting that gets tricky.

Here are a few targeting methods you should be aware of – techniques to help you aim your digital darts if you will.  Please keep in mind it’s not a one or the other sort of deal. You will typically want to mix and match your targeting to maximize your results.

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There’s only 2 months until Christmas, a month until Black Friday and a week until Howl-O-Ween. When’s a better time than now to review Google Analytics metrics that should scare any business owner or marketer? (more…)

There are several factors that go into search engine optimization and how your content ranks in the search engines.  If you had to break them in to two categories it would be the onsite and offsite optimization.  Social media marketing and optimization applies to both.  Here are a few simple takeaways about social media for SEO that you should know. (more…)

There are many different mobile marketing solutions being thrown around these days and we’ve heard it can get a little confusing.  The first thing you want to do is avoid is getting them mixed up.  Here is a quick Q and A to help get you up to speed.

What is a Mobile Site?

A mobile site is a website solely built for the mobile user in mind.  Mobile users are much more restricted when compared to a normal site designed for a desktop or laptop. Here are few main characteristics of a truly mobile site:

• Small pages sizes – optimized page sizes make for less bandwidth usage and quick load times
• Smaller sized pages – designed for smaller mobile displays
• Optimized navigation – simple and fast to navigation with less drop downs
• Less scrolling– not all phones scroll very well yet
• Controlled use of media – formats and usage of images, video, audio and animations should be selected carefully since not are all supported on mobile devices (like Flash on iPhones)
• Easy to find and click contact details – for calling and mapping on phones
• Options for full site – smart phone users may prefer to view the full website

What is a Mobile Friendly Site?

A mobile friendly site is a website that is set up to conform to the basic usability restrictions of mobile devices.  All mobile sites are mobile friendly but the opposite is not necessarily true.  Mobile friendly sites really just ensure that the site will function properly on mobile devices.  When a full out mobile site might be overkill for what your target audience needs making your site mobile friendly is an alternative.

What are Mobile Landing Pages?

Mobile landing pages are yet another opportunity to provide content to your mobile users online.  You could consider them as one page mobile sites typically with a very clear purpose.  They typically:

• Are the results of scanning a QR code or clicking a mobile advertisement
• Capture user submitted data for leads or signups.
• Provide contact information
• Provide options to go to full site or mobile site

What are Mobile Apps?

Mobile apps are applications designed to run on mobile devices (phones, tablets, mp3 players, etc.) and   what makes it an application is that it does something rather than just provide information; you could consider it more of a tool.   If you were going to create a mobile app you would also need to decide what would be the best fit, a native app or a web app.

What is a Native App?

These are standalone programs actually built for the mobile device’s operating system.  An application for a iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone would all need to be developed and programmed separately and specifically for the device in mind.  They need to be downloaded and installed to the device (usually through some mobile marketplace like iTunes store or Android Market).  They can run with or without an internet connection.

What is a Web App?

These are applications that run using HTML, JavaScript and CSS via the mobile device’s web browser and require an internet connection.  Web apps can be designed to work well across most mobile devices with wireless internet connections.  They are not standalone programs that are installed and stored on the mobile device.

Hope you found this useful.  Do you have other mobile lingo that needs clarifying?  Be sure to comment and let us know.

Moosylvania the Digital, Branding and Promotion agency that works with national clients including Bacardi, Balance Bar, Capital One, Dean Foods, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Sapporo Beer and Solutia, has just acquired us!!! We are already rockin’ it in Maplewood, MO!

“This acquisition brings best-in-class SEM and conversion capabilities along with strong mobile and digital talent that complements our existing team of more than 100 staff members and expands our digital offering,” said Norty Cohen, Moosylvania founder and CEO.

Our team will continue to operate as The Loud Few and will be housed within Moosylvania’s “Embassy,” a restored church listed on the National Registry of Historic Landmarks. If you want to check out our new home check out this video walk-through of Moosylvania.

Moosylvania has an outstanding creative and digital reputation working with exceptional clients and our services will create immediate synergies with their capabilities. Erin Steinbruegge, our founder, will be leading the team as vice president of Digital Operations for Moosylvania. We are all psyched to be joining forces.

A little more about Moosylvania

Moosylvania is “The Great State Of Design” where insights are hatched in its globally ranked research facility and brought to life in Digital, Branding, Promotion and Experiential marketing. Clients include Bacardi USA brands, Balance Bar, Capital One, Deans Foods, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Sapporo Beer and Solutia. For more information, visit www.moosylvania.com or contact Rodney Mason, CMO, at 314-644-7987, rodney@moosylvania.com or http://twitter.com/rodmoose. Follow Moosylvania on Twitter http://twitter.com/moosylvania and on Facebook.

We would really like to hear your excitement and feedback. Let us know what you think about the new team.

There has been this ongoing debate whether a site should use the www before the domain or if you should just omit it like this, http://domain.com.   From a search engine marketing standpoint I really don’t see a strong winner for all cases (be sure to disagree with me in the comments).  The most important thing to remember is whichever you decide to go with, ensure you properly redirect the other way to what you do use.

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Many of you are familiar with search engine optimization and the process of getting your site to rank well in the organic search results.  Then there is pay-per-click advertising where you pay or bid on a phrase in order to have an ad displayed for your site in the sponsored section of the search.  There are definite advantages in doing them both.  The real question is whether you should be in both the sponsored results section and the organic search results at the same time, for the same phrases? YES, and here are some of the top reasons why your internet marketing strategy should include PPC and SEO for the same phrases.

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I hope those of you that are new to Google Webmaster Tools finds this quick video helpful.  If you haven’t ever used Google Webmaster tools, this is the first step that includes adding and verifying your site.  Once you have done that, Google Webmaster  Tools provides a nice little suite of mutually beneficial tools. (more…)

Why does your business need a social media policy and social media guidelines for online activity?  It’s simple, it’s an easy way to protect your business, your brand and your employees at the same time.  Social media policies and guidelines simply outline the company’s expectations and principles in any social media communication.

You may have heard about the banker that got fired after posting to Facebook, or the Nestle debacle, or even the recent Kenneth Cole tweet mistake.  These are all examples where a little foresight into the actions and consequences would have been helpful to say the least.  They are funny to read about, but when they affect your business or someone you know….well no one wants that.  The good thing is, with a little planning and awareness, you can avoid most mistakes.

Below, we have provided two different templates.  The first is used to set internal social media guidelines and expectations for employees. The key is to not discourage your employees from using social media, but to provide them with guidelines so they understand how to avoid mistakes – like speaking on behalf of the company during a crisis or revealing client or company information.

The second template is for a public facing social media policy so your community understands your policies on things like comments and posts. This way, if you have to delete a comment due to profane or obscene language, you have clearly set this policy in advance. Hopefully, you won’t have to remove obscene comments from your community on your Facebook wall or blog, but should you have to, you can refer to this policy. This is why we recommend posting it on your website, so you can reference the link. If you have social media marketing in place, we recommend you also develop community guidelines like these.

Internal Social Media Guidelines Template

Social Media Policy Template

As a disclaimer, I am not an attorney, nor can I guarantee that these examples will be a perfect fit for your employees or business.  In certain cases, and depending on the sensitivity of your business, you may consider a more targeted approach and implement several social media policies to address acceptable employee activities, internal practices, and confidentiality for different social media channels.  Here are a few common examples:

• Employee Code of Conduct Online
• Employee Personal Blogging and Disclosure Policy
• Employee Personal Facebook Usage Policy
• Employee Personal Twitter Usage Policy
• Employee Personal Social Media Usage Policy
• Corporate Blogging Policy
• Corporate Commenting Policy
• Corporate Facebook Policy
• Corporate Twitter Account  Policy
• Corporate Social Media Policy
• Corporate Security and Password Policy

Here is a link to the Social Media Governance site and their online database of social media policies that provides a laundry list of examples.

Also, I do suggest consulting an attorney if you have concerns about where you need to edit your policy or if you should be using several social media policies.

I hope you you find these resources a time saver. Please download them, edit them as needed, share them, and let me know if you found them useful. Your feedback and comments are encouraged, please let me know your thoughts.

Of course, these policies and guidelines are part of your overall social media plan. Need help creating your social media strategy? Contact us to learn more.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be complicated stuff, but not all of it is hard to understand or even implement as a novice.  To give your website the best possible chance to be found in the search engines, you should at least cover the 9 SEO basics I’ve listed below. (more…)