Social Media Optimization

Douglas Karr is the President and CEO of DK New Media, LLC.  DK New Media services large and medium-sized businesses in online marketing, social media, corporate blogging and search engine strategies.

We've been working closely with the best SEO agency in the country, Slingshot SEO, for over a year now getting superior results for our clients.  Slingshot SEO was recently on Inside Indiana Business because they've been growing at a 400% growth rate now since their inception - not surprising.

The reason we enjoy working with the team over there so much is that we can set up a strategy where SEO is a portion of the effort, but not all of it, and Slingshot understands.  Some SEO Marketing Firms simply believe you should pump all your budget into rank... but we know that it's best part of an overall online strategy - with other acquisition tactics, design, and retention methodologies.


Congratulations Slingshot! The incredible growth and winning strategies you continue to deploy have been hugely beneficial to our clients.

Many companies jump deep into iPhone Application development.  It can be a costly endeavor, but not necessarily a required one. iPhone applications only work on the iPhone... doubling your expenses and codebase if you wish to also support Android. There's also the tricky mess of getting your application actually approved.

We decided to take a different route and, instead, develop our enterprise mapping application to support the Safari browser on iPhone (and iPad and iPod) as well as the Android browser.

We utilized an open source Apple User Interface generator that's quite stunning and is open source!  The Javascript project utilizes all the additional features of the browser, including swiping, pinching, hiding the address bar and even the ability to drag an application icon directly to your desktop.

By developing it this way, we cut hundreds of development hours off the timeline and actually delivered the project as a value add to the latest upgrades that Wild Birds Unlimited requested.

The application even utilizes the iPhone (or other device's geolocation capabilities and messages the user that they were found.  They can then click through and see the closest stores from right where they are standing!

The greatest feature of this application is that it's tied directly to the back-end of the enterprise mapping application.  Any updates made to store locations on the web or back-end are also utilized to feed this mobile interface. We're really excited about expanding the functionality of our enterprise mapping application  and supporting both iPhone and Android with it.

If you'd like to see the application in action, go to the Wild Birds Unlimited mapping site with your iPhone, iPad, iPod or Android device.  The site will automatically detect your device and forward you to the mobile application.  

If you're a store or retail outlet and looking for a great mapping solution, we'd love to help you out.  This application has been live for several years now and largely bug free (we just updated to the Google Map v3 API and added a few that we've since knocked out!).

I hate elevator pitches.  Elevator pitches never provide the insight into the talent and strategies that a company actually does, nor the experience that its employees have.  I don't have a pitch on our corporate site, either.  It's on purpose.

When I meet a prospect, I want them to engage into a conversation with me about what their problems are.  Our clients have had a wide variety of challenges - all centering around their online marketing:

• We have a major SaaS company that was spending a ton per qualified lead.  Through a great search engine marketing, search engine optimization and their own ongoing social media strategy, those costs have been reduced over 75%.  This is a company with an amazing marketing team - they simply lacked the resources to optimize their campaigns and we continue to provide those services - expanding to 4 product lines.
• We have a huge startup that didn't have any search engine authority and, as a result, had significant challenges increasing their online revenues.  Through ongoing search engine and social media strategies, and working with their team, we've been able to quadruple their revenue over the last year.
• We have a sports marketing specialist who needed a tool to attract inbound leads, so we launched Sports Fan Graph for them.  We develop and host the social monitoring application - and can utilize the code base for other clients if the opportunity arises.  The site has now been referenced in major newspapers and the company continues to drive a ton of leads with it.
• We have a retail company with over 300 locations that lacked local search optimization or a robust tool for prospective customers to find their stores.  So, we built an enterprise mapping application for Wild Birds Unlimited that continues to drive foot traffic to their locations, and is developed with a back-end that is indexed by search engines for both content and geolocation!
• We have ongoing development for porting content between systems, developing custom integrations, skinning themes, optimizing sites for conversions.... you name it and we work to do it.

Sounds like we don't have a niche.  Our niche is actually quite defined... we help companies leverage search, social media, email marketing and online marketing.  Integrated and cross-channel marketing strategies accelerate results.  Working in a niche ignores how each of these strategies work together to build results.

It's important to know how promotion on social can influence search... and how search can generate visits, but email can nurture them. How conversions are happening between the search engine and your site, between search and the corporate blogging platform, your calls-to-action and your landing pages.  How you're tracking all the progress in your analytics package.

It's a complex machine... and understanding your challenges, your competition, your tools, your timelines and your talent is something that requires a lot of expertise to manage and drive strategies with.  

Your marketing challenges are far more complex than I can fix in an elevator.

No one has suffered under the growing pains of DK New Media like Wild Birds Unlimited.  We built an enterprise mapping application for Bo and the team at WBU a few years ago.  I had built tools before, but this was the first time we built an application - and an enterprise application to boot!  The map location tool we built is developed in PHP, MySQL and Ajax with the Google Maps API.

WBU also let us build the system as an application so that we could distribute or sell the code for other companies to build on.  There are a ton of applications for a project like this.



Wild Birds loved the system and has been prioritizing some upgrades for us to work on.  A few months ago we got a final list and went to work!  We decided to take advantage of the incredible advancements in Google's Mapping API upgrade (version 3) so that we could eventually get mobile integration as well.  We built a great system, so we thought we'd have it up in a few weeks.

We were wrong.  Big time wrong.

It's a pretty hefty system, with a lot of back-end administrative tools to manage the sistes, publish them via KML, and display them nicely.  Not only did we underestimate the work we had to do, we also didn't realize that some of the version 3 tools weren't really primetime - like utilizing geoXML files (the way we built the entire system).

Our 3 week project turned into a month... then 2 months... and finally more than 3 months. We missed Wild Birds Unlimited annual conference... a deadline we thought we had plenty of time to make.  We even hired another developer to help troubleshoot and fix some of the really big issues we were having.  With all of that, the new system just went live today.

We did the right thing and steeply discounted the project... and we're going to continue to develop some iPhone interfaces to make it right. WBU has been incredible.  They've worked with us through all the delays and have been so amazingly patient with us.  This is not a reputation we wish to build as a business so I have to apologize to the team from the bottom of my heart!

We heart Wild Birds Unlimited and appreciate all the opportunity you've provided our young firm.  You've put a ton of faith in us and I want to continue to deliver... and deliver ON TIME as we deepen our relationship.

Today was a fantastic day at DK New Media!  Bill Dawson, his wife Carla, Stephen and I were all at the office together working full-time on clients.  We went out to Georgio's for lunch (great pizza on the circle here in Indy) and when we got back to the office - we had an amazing package from MailChimp.

We opened up the package and a handwritten note (on Golden Monkey Sealed) paper read:

Douglas,

Congrats on the new office!

Eeep Eeep,
MailChimp

Along with the note was an amazing handknit MailChimp cap and 4 beautiful (2XL!) MailChimp shirts. Wow - what a fantastic surprise (almost better than getting checks in the mail from clients ;).

I have to hand it to MailChimp and want to thank Allison DeFer, Client Relations, personally.  It means a lot that Allison took the time out and put such an awesome, personalized package together.

Now... I don't want to make any of the other vendors LOCALLY feel bad... but what the heck?!  MailChimp is in Atlanta! This is some serious schwag!

MailChimp has put our hometown to shame... as well as all those Valley boys that made schwag famous. No one else sent us a gift at this point to celebrate the new office!  Psst... even the local email guys that we love, too!

Well done, MailChimp!  We here in the Midwest salute your superior schwageliciousness - your East Coast benevolence left Indy and Cali in the dust!

PS: Don't even think about trying to suck up, now!  MailChimp is tops.

Bill Dawson has been a colleague and friend of mine since we began working at ExactTarget with one another.  Bill has worked for several marketing agencies and is well respected by his peers and clients.

Currently, he's been working with organizations like Wal-mart and Zappos to assist with their communication strategies.  Without a doubt, there's no one I trust more to manage DK New Media.  While I've been running the company with reckless abandon - growing and spending rapidly - Bill is going to help us now regroup and pace the growth.

Both Bill and I have always shared the same attitude with technology for a long time - figure out what you want to do first and then make the technology work for you to achieve those goals.  Together, we've made some incredible changes within organizations.

Bill is also an Adobe and Apple expert (he's to blame for my explosive Apple budget :).  While working with one company, Bill was the first person to walk into a Microsoft shop with a Mac - now that company supports both platforms and saw explosive growth.  He's a quiet disruptor, and he's not afraid to keep me in line.

I've been working (begging) Bill for several months now to come on board with Stephen and me.  We have one or more people we need to get on the team and I think our vision will be complete.  After that, it's simply repeating the model for each of our clients and repeating the talent - and we can continue to grow as large as we'd like.  

Our approach for inbound marketing strategies is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive online marketing process on the market - and it's time we leverage it for growth.

About a year ago, Kyle Lacy approached me and told me about his upcoming book, Twitter Marketing for Dummies that was going to publish with Wiley.  He asked if he could put a good word in for me regarding a Corporate Blogging book and I'm forever thankful.

Over the last year, with the help of co-author Chantelle Flannery, I believe we've written the best blogging book on the market - and it will hit the market on August 9, 2010.  

One of the key reasons we believe it to be the best blogging book is the timing.  Our predecessors wrote books while social media and corporate blogging were evolving... perhaps non-existent.  

Another key reason we believe it's the best blogging book is that we've done it... Chantelle and I helped over a hundred companies build exceptional blogging programs that provided them authority, industry leadership, an effective social presence and most of all - inbound leads.  We continue to help businesses with their online marketing and social media strategies, and even built our own businesses utilizing these best practices.  

This isn't a book of theories and marketing-speak, it's truly a guide that every business can use to get measurable results.

Rather than develop corporate blogging strategies for public relations and inbound marketing strategies, companies were simply climbing onboard the blogging bandwagon because of its social popularity - and especially its search engine advantages.  

Corporate blogging has now evolved and is the centerpiece of a robust social and search strategy online.  This book is over 400 pages and in the incredibly popular Dummies format perfected by Wiley.  From implementation, to team selection, to goals, to social integration and even legal advice, this book covers every single topic associated with leveraging your corporate blog. 

This book will be an asset for a one-person business or a Fortune 100 corporation and everyone in between.  Be sure to order your copy now - the book will hit the market on August 9th - just around the corner.

This was quite a challenging implementation with Expedia but a fun one!  Expedia has an incredibly tight brand and we needed to accomodate their layout pixel for pixel within Compendium.  Compendium's XHTML-compliant templating system is so flexible... it had everything we needed to really implement a great blog template.  We even touched it up further by generating a unique background for them (not requested in the requirements)!

Expedia's user-generated blog was launched and is garnering a lot of attention!

I often tell clients that the best methodologies involved in social media occur when you enable others to speak for your products and services.  Droning on and on about your stuff or writing post after uncompelling posts that are just trying to snatch some more keywords isn't going to drive business to your brand.  But a blog about how your customers are using your products and services has more authority than your bloggers ever will!



The additional integration was done in partnership with Centric Consulting and ExactTarget.  When I worked at ExactTarget, Centric was the best integration partners that I ever worked with - so I immediately gave them a call because of the visibility of this client.  It was a reuniting of sorts - working with Andy Clark and the team was amazing.

The timeline was beyond aggressive.  We rolled out a fully functioning platform within a little over a week! DK New Media was pulled in when another Integration firm didn't work out.

In preparation for Corporate Blogging for Dummies out in August, DK New Media built out a beautiful microsite for folks to purchase the book, contact the authors for speaking engagements, or follow them via social media.  They can also subscribe to a corporate blogging tip newsletter!

It's quite a robust micro-site, with future event integration, automated RSS feeds from multiple sources, integrated contact forms and, of course, links out to purchase the book!

Coyle Media is a social media marketing agency specializing in both social economic use of social media and sports marketing.  The sports industry is primed for social media use... you might even argue that the word 'fan' started with sports!  Pat Coyle is a social media consultant in the industry and asked us to build an application where we could collect and display fan and follower data for the sports industry.

We developed Sports Fan Graph, a robust system with a very great administration portal that monitors and updates statistics on fan following on social media sites (currently Twitter and Facebook).



The system will continue to be enhanced in coming months as we collect growth data and then merge other information with the current social media data.  DK New Media provides integration services online to many of its clients, including Coyle Media.

Stephen and I worked on the Wild Birds Unlimited Mapping application a few years ago and really enjoyed working with one another.  Stephen is DK New Media's first hire and will be working closely with Doug on the execution of contracts that involve development, HTML, JavaScript and CSS work.

DK New Media is not in the development business, our partners do a much better job.  From day to day on Search Engine and Conversion Optimization, we do need to get in and wrangle code to get things right - Stephen is just the right guy for this.  Stephen has worked with other Indianapolis Web Design companies, including Rarebird and Brandswag - both friends of DK New Media.

Wild Birds Unlimited has requested another project for their mapping application as well!  We'll be upgrading their application for Google Maps API Version 3 and adding a few more features!

Folks in the ecommerce business will tell you that sending email is like printing money.  Using an email marketing platform like ExactTarget affords a company a lot of flexibility with respect to integration.  As well, a templated enterprise blogging platform like Compendium is essential.



Utilizing some very cool jQuery tools, we were able to add a simple opt-in field on the Compendium Comments form.  If you fill out your name and email address, then click the checkbox, a job is sent to an external script that opts the person into an email list and sends them a welcome email... automated communications!

What a fantastic way of encouraging additional engagement with a visitor with permission-based marketing.  DK New Media provides integration services online for several platforms and technologies.  Please don't hesitate to give us a call so we can streamline your next efforts.

Carhartt is really at the forefront of leveraging technology.  They recognize that many people are visiting their blogs via search that have never purchased from the company - this is an ideal inbound marketing strategy!

We got a bit of flack when we launched DK New Media as an Internet Marketing Agency, encompassing web design, social media, ecommerce, search engine optimization, online marketing and email marketing.  Most agencies are advised to specialize in one field.  We purposefully don't... and so far it's working well for us.

Baggott Lane has been one of our clients that we've done some comprehensive work for.  They combine search engine optimization and marketing with blogging and ecommerce to drive sales to websites such as Global Toaster.

The company purchased a design through an online crowdsourcing site that provided us a raw Photoshop file.  The file looked great but was a mess to slice and dice for CSS.  We sent the file out to one of our Photoshop gurus, who had it layered and beautiful within an hour or so.

That allowed us to apply the design to two different theming interfaces - the first a Compendium theme utilizing the Yahoo User Interface template and the second was an ecommerce application.

Also integrated in the site is an automated Mailchimp RSS campaign so folks can sign up on the site and receive the blog posts via email.  We also integrated analytics throughout to accurately measure the results of all.  The net result is a beautiful interface that's tightly integrated to drive sales.

 Compendium is a platform leveraging both multiple authors as well as multiple keyword phrases.  Any decent social media consultant would ensure that analytics is properly installed and capable of measuring the impact of the platform.

With advanced analytics applications like Webtrends, Omniture and Coremetrics, monitoring different dimensions of your social media strategy are fairly simple.  However, Google Analytics, it's challenging to measure beyond a single dimension.  Google actually realizes this and advises its users to build multiple accounts when you wish to analyze multiple dimensions.

For Compendium, my advice is to have three accounts:

1. General account
2. Author Tracking account
3. Keyword Tracking account

Compendium's robust templating system allows you to customize your Google Analytics code and you can insert each account independently in the footer.  The code looks like this:

The yellow highlighted code adds pageviews with the 'by/author/authorname' format in the specific account that you apply it to.  Make sure that's not your primary account, though.  If you do that, you'll add pageviews and subsequently reduce your bounce rates because each page that tracks both pageviews means that there's no opportunity for a bounce.

The green highlighted code adds pageviews with the 'by/keyword/mykeyword' format in the specific account you apply it to.  It does this by splitting up the URL structure and pulling the keyword out of the URL.  If Compendium's URL structure changes, this will need to change as well.  Again, you'll want to put this in its own account.

Tracking by author will allow you to track conversions (be sure to multiply your conversion codes for each account as well) by author and keyword - this will provide your team with priceless stats on which of your authors are the highest converters and which keywords are the highest converters!  Concentrating and rewarding your strategy in those areas will help drive a successful inbound marketing strategy!

Scott Whitlock has been a friend and mentor for quite a few years.  His company, Flexware Innovations, is an Indianapolis Microsoft Certified Gold Partner and is a very successful Manufacturing Intelligence Solutions provider.  When Scott contacted me to assist on his new site design, I jumped on the opportunity.

The last site was a Joomla-based site that had run it's course.  It was complex, not too search engine friendly, and was partnered with a WordPress blog that wasn't updated very often.

The goal we set out to help Scott with was to ensure the new site was aesthetically beautiful, simple to navigate, reduced the content and increased the opportunity for conversions.

Scott worked with an Indianapolis brand and graphic design firm, FuelVM, who have built out a number of brands and different themes for content management systems, but never for WordPress.

We utilized a developer version of WooThemes so that we could use the existing framework and jQuery slide integration; however, the theme was probably rewritten about 75% to accommodate all the required features and navigation.

We migrated content from Joomla and brought in Indianapolis content developer Andrea Emerson to work with Scott to both simplify the content and make it much more compelling.  Andrea and Andrew (FuelVM) were fantastic to work with.  We migrated the site and went live tonight.

Aside from the data and media, the migration ensured all previous content that was indexed by search engines would still point to relevant pages.  All total, we redirected almost 200 links!  The new format will basically utilize the blog as a press release and company news information.  

As you might recognize, the manufacturing industry isn't quite Web 2.0 ready yet... although Scott has always been way ahead of the industry.  He was blogging years ago and even has a Twitter account.  This site is a beautiful start.  

We're going to continue to enhance the site to optimize inbound marketing leads and gain search engine dominance.  Flexware Innovation is a great site to have in DK New Media's portfolio and a fantastic company to work with.

 Paper-Lite needed a facelift!  Their old website was a static, table-driven site that was doing nothing for their business or customers.

They had a great brand, logo and color combination - but the site was dark, unfriendly, and couldn't be easily edited.  Paper-Lite is a company that's bringing other companies, like law firms, financial companies and healthcare companies into the 21st century - reducing paper and filing costs and implementing paper-lite solutions that meet all regulatory requirements.

DK New Media isn't simply a social media company, we also have talented designers and developers that can deliver a web site that will provide a great return on investment for your company.

Paper-Lite had some objectives:

a. They wanted their website to gain some search engine placement.  The table-driven, poor construction of the original site did not welcome search engines at all... along with poor page construction, it lacked sitemaps, pings, permalinks, or the content to let search engines understand what was important and not important.

b. They wanted their staff to be able to update the site easily.  Learning HTML isn't necessary nowadays with the fantastic selection of content management systems available on the market.  DK New Media converted their graphics, updated the look and feel, and built a custom CMS theme that better represented their brand and now allows Paper-Lite to update their site simply by logging in!

c. They wanted their site to drive sales.  The old site had direct links to tons of resources.  Paper-Lite didn't know who was downloading what... allowing prospects to simply drive through, get what they wanted, and drive off.  Now an integrated contact form system requests registration information and notifies the sales staff each time a download occurs.

d. They wanted a customer resource center for their clients to download and obtain protected content and information.  Now they can register users for the site and an entire menu system appears when a customer is logged in.

Web design is important, but ensuring a return on investment for your site is far more important.  There's no excuse for any small, medium, or large business to be running a static site anymore that requires development resources to execute.  Inbound marketing should be the primary goal of your website, not beautiful design.  

Start with the goal and work back.  If your internet marketing consultants aren't incorporating a great content management system, search engine optimization, Social Media, Blogging, Analytics, Customer Resource strategies, etc. into your online marketing strategy, find a new Internet Marketing Agency!

Applying themes in blogging platforms like Compendium Blogware and developing custom themes for content management systems like WordPress are becoming quite a specialty of DK New Media.

Some themes prove more challenging than others and this Sabrix one was a doozy!  There are layers on layers on layers in this layout.  Moving an image from Photoshop to HTML and CSS - as well as being bound by a complex core theme is quite an exercise in patience.

Thankfully, I've got a number of partners here in the region who assist when things get tough!  James Paden of Vibrant Solutions helped with a CSS positioning issue on the sidebar that was driving us nuts.  Mark Ballard, an Indianapolis graphic artist, helped with a Photoshop question.

Surrounding myself with other Indianapolis web design companies, Indianapolis Online Marketing companies and Indianapolis SEO firms is a huge differentiator for me in the marketplace.  I don't simply tack on SEO or Design to my list of services because I'm the expert... I do it because I've found the experts to help make my clients successful.

Honestly, I'm a bit put off by firms that say that they do everything... design, development, SEO, video, hosting, etc.  I think the average Internet Marketing Agency is great at one thing... that thing that they eat, sleep and breath.  I'm a web marketing consultant that is proficient at many things - but leveraging social media is my bread and butter.  I will deliver on this other work with the help of the experts I've surrounded myself!

Great advice from Intel's Social Media Guidelines:

If you're about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, don't shrug it off and hit 'send.' Take a minute to review these guidelines and try to figure out what's bothering you, then fix it. If you're still unsure, you might want to discuss it with your manager or legal representative. Ultimately, what you publish is yours—as is the responsibility. So be sure.

Many companies try to thwart any participation in social media fearing that they'll lose control of their brand. Employees are threatened rather than encouraged to participate. Reading through Intel's guidelines is refreshing. They encourage their employees to participate but also hold them responsible if things go wrong. It appears that Intel is now following their transparency guidelines by using real employees instead of actors!

On the other hand... after watching the real Intel employee's try to sing, the actors may have been a good move. (kidding)

Nevertheless, Intel's social media guidelines are a great example of how you may wish to craft your company's guidelines for your social media strategy.

Search engine marketing has 4 distinct categories - with strategies associated with each:

1. The platform that presents your content to search engines.  Everyone will tell you that the utilization of an effective platform makes the effort to improve search engine optimization much easier.  
2. The content presented to search engines.  How keywords are researched and utilized in that content.
3. The popularity of that content, as measured through backlinks.  Keywords and content will get you categorized popularity, but backlinks are the currency of the Internet!
4. Paid search, also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC).  An effective SEM strategy can almost always include an effective pay-per-click campaign.

Search Engine Marketing, Indianapolis, has some incredible resources for each of these strategies - and together they prove to be a power-house team for advancing companies' online presence and ability to attract inbound leads.

I'm proud to be a partner with some other companies that assist in this arena, and will soon begin executing parallel strategies with a first shared customer with Slingshot SEO and EverEffect.  Tonight, we spent several hours learning each others' approaches and discussing the exponential advantages of working together.

Most Internet Marketing Consultants fight over the pie and who can steal or get the most from one another.  This is not in the best interest of the client.  Balancing a clients' budget and effectively platform leveraging will yield the most results.



I'm looking forward to working with these folks on many, many engagements!  And it was an incredible surprise to find DK New Media listed on the new home page of Slingshot SEO!