My 2013 Social Media Ideology
Here’s are a few new ways I’m looking at social media for 2013 —
If you find anything useful or helpful, please share it and/or take it.
1. Branding over Marketing
To me, the mind set of marketing is ROI – return on investment. I’m normally very critical with my time and thus, I don’t want to do ANYTHING, unless I feel that my efforts (especially business activities) will bring have a relatively soon impact on my income.
However, I’m not realizing or see social media as branding instead of marketing.
With a branding perspective, the goal is making a lasting impression in the minds of either prospects or associates who may become referral sources.
With this mindset, I can assume a patient posture, preparing for future not immediate results.
2. Something is better than nothing
I need to fight off the perfectionist part of me that is just the flip side of procrastination.
By committing to do something, I’m resolving that I’d rather show flaws and be seen- than be picture perfect only in my own mind.
3. Outsourcing myself
My business takes care of other company’s online marketing needs. But who takes care of mine?
Pride has told me that only I can be the voice of my company. And with that, I’m rarely heard from since I’m usually so busy.
This coming year, I’m going to allow others to speak for me. I’m going to be a customer of my own product and see what I’m worth.
From Traditional SEO to Traffic and Conversions
The SEO world has gone through some major changes in the past year.
Unfortunately I’m not old enough to have lived thru major changes, however I am luck enough to have friends and mentors who have advised me as the to ways of world.
Concepts like “bubbles burst” and “tactics change but fundamentals always remain have been ringing in my ear – providing me guidance as I navigate this new landscape.
SEO is a tactic to help a company get eye balls to see and learn about their product.
The fundamental is that businesses need eye balls.
At one point this happened via fax machines (so I’m told) and relics on advertising.
I recall 2 years I sang the song of ‘The Yellow Pages are Dead’.
And now I find myself on the brink of worrying whether or not SEO has really come to an end.
Now, of course SEO is not dead. It hasn’t come to an end. Google is still making billions each quarter or month.
But the glory days of simple link building to boost website to the top of searches is no longer like it use to be.
Today, with the help and advise of my friends- I’ve come to realize that I must change with the times. And the my current simply yet profound change is to focus on traffic and conversions as compared to traditional SEO.
SEO is a means of traffic. But this means isn’t the only means. It may not be the best means either.
I’ve always loved helping people. I’ve never loved SEO. But when SEO could help clients, it became a very easy to create win-win scenarios.
Today, I realize that traditional SEO isn’t as simple as it once was – and so, I need to be bit more broad. Give people what they need and not my pet tactic.
Traffic is still critical. And they way we’re doing it now is a more encompassing model, using 4-8 tactics.
And conversions is even more critical. Our ‘design that speaks’ will analyze and improve a websites ability to convert traffic to leads.
It’s a time and season of great change, challenges. But we’re entering new seas of opportunity with hope and expectation… Will you join us for ride?
Dentoola is now managed by Design That Speaks!!
For inquiries on Dentoola Dental Consulting and online marketing, please contact Design That Speaks! at 918-200-9572.
Recommendations for Website Hosting in Tulsa
There are three basic questions you need to answer when you have decided to build a website.
1. What will be my domain name?
2. Where will I host my website?
3. Who will design / develop my website?
With all of these decisions, the most important things you need to think about are (a) quality services, (b) reliability (c) accessibility — to me these are the critical components that make a venture successful or incredibly frustrating.
In this post- I want to just speak on finding a website hosting company.
If you are thinking about where to host your website – I would recommend you NOT WORRY ABOUT IT! Seriously, I think you should first find a website design and then decide where to host it. This is because you will not be able to determine what features are required for hosting your website until it is built!! And even after it is built, when troubles arise you will likely need a technical expert to communicate with that company.
Many web companies will want you to transfer your website hosting to their recommended servers when you start working with them. I use to wonder why they did this since the amount of money they make is so small – it never really mattered to me. However, I’ve come to realize that when I design my clients websites – I become their first point of contact when there are technical/hosting problems. So when the website is not hosted on my servers, I have to go thru a third party company whom I have no relationship with and try to get answers for my clients. This becomes an unnecessary headache.
At Design That Speaks, we host our clients websites at NO COST for the first year, and only charge them in future years if we are not providing any marketing services. If you just starting to build a website and have questions about hosting, domains, or designs – please give us shout!
Now Offering Mobile Website Design in Tulsa!
With the recent completion of our own mobile website – www.dtspeaks.mobi – we are now offering mobile website design services for existing and new clients. (Note: You don’t have to visit that link – just visit the main site and you’ll be redirected) This experience has taught us a lot about what needs to be done to create a WordPress hosting mobile website that works well with an existing site…
NOTE: Though our company is continuously shedding our design services to become more effecting marketing and lead generation, we decided to get into mobile website design because when it comes to marketing, seo, and social – mobile is where the future is heading…
See the following mobile web/usage stats:
- By 2015, mobile usage will increase by a factor or 26. [source]
- Mobile browsers are 45% more likely to search for local services. [source]
- In the first six months of 2011, mobile website usage 77% [source]
- 1/3 mobile searches have local intent (The Kelsey Group)
So we’re convinced, and thus moving forward.
Later.
Where To Find Design That Inspires
One thing I can say about Flash design / development – was that those who had a passion for it, have a passion to be inspirational. I know when I first began designing in flash, I was drawn to it because of it the creative liberty.
As I mentioned yesterday, with the advent of Apple’s decisions and HTML5 Flash is a dying art, but I wonder if people will be as passionate about HTML5 as they were about Flash.
I doubt it.
Why? Because Flash seemed to flow out of people who loved design and story telling – not writing code. Though of course people who now work with Flash code as well – I don’t think that is the average candidate. I recall hearing an interview of Hillman Curtis – one of my original Flash heros. He no longer does anything in flash. Rather video. (In my understanding) He explained that flash turned into a programmers tool instead of designers tool.
So anyway, the question is – are there any inspirational designs out there? Are they all made from non-iPhone friendly Flash and take 3 minutes to load?
Well, I’m not going to offer any answers but I did want to list 4 of my favorite places to see inspirational design:
1. THE FWA
To me this is the place to get the best of a best – flash or flash-ish designs… Cutting edge. The latest and greatest from the best of the best.
2. Webby Awards
This the classic corporate sponsored national awards site for website design. What I like about is it’s diversity. You can select through multiple category and types like : Fashion, Media and blog, etc.
3. Ministry CSS
Ministry CSS is a gallery of church, missions and ministry websites. Even though it seems like 90% of it’s selection come from one company, I still like to go there whenever I’m going to design a non-profit and church website.
4. Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine is not a simple gallery like the rest, but rather a blog. The cool thing about it, is that you see styles and trends for various countries or years. You can see inspirational navigation menus or call to action buttons. It’s not just websites, but sub-sections or the components that make websites awesome to see and use and sell stuff.
Do you have places where you go for inspiration online? Please share in the comments area!
Hello HTML5 | Good Bye Flash
When you hear that Adobe – the maker of flash has come out with a HTML5 builder program – you should know the end is here. Geocities… Netscape… and now Flash. All memorable relics in the history of the web.
I began abandoning Flash when I started learning about search engine optimization and how to help my clients get traffic to their website. I quickly realized that Flash was not helping to communicate to search engines. Especially the clients who had full flash websites with either an “enter here” or “skip into” links – exclaiming the irrelevance of their slash page.
So then, we only used Flash sparingly, for things like rotating banners and video. Sometimes for image galleries and other times for fancy navigation menus.
But CSS navigation menus became or effective and jQuery came around… With tools like SlideDeck for creating large image sliders easily and efficiently without using flash and easily embedding into WordPress. Where else would you need Flash?
Lastly, there was Apple deciding to not allow flash to play iPhones or iPads. “Ding”. Game over.
So now, what is HTML 5 how to and why use it?
Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to learn myself.
We can get along pretty well sticking with basic HTML and CSS. However, to give users a memorable experience – we’re looking to what exactly we can accomplish with HTML5.
Stay tuned for more on this later.
- Arvell Craig
Tulsa Blogging Services for SEO
Few Tulsa companies know the benefit to blogging for SEO. (Not that Tulsa is in anyway unique, but it’s just where I live… It’s a small / traditional business mindset that is slow to embrace new trends, etc. I think we all suffer from that a little in various ways…)
Anyway – And for that reason Design That Speaks offers blogging service for them as apart of our search engine optimization process. Blogging is an incredibly way to help the effectiveness of web, seo, retention, lead generation and social media strategy!
Yes, it does help in all those areas.
SEO Blogging 101
When it comes to helping increase your website’s page rank and authority in search engines – writing articles on the blog that is integrated to your website will help you generate more indexed pages in the search engines. Having more indexed or cataloged pages helps your website to be perceived as having importance and value because of the depth of information it provides on your subject of product or service.
Blogging with links that direct people and ‘search bots’ to your main service pages, special, and other articles will also help the validity of those pages your are linking to.
Lastly, I’ll share when you are regularly posting new informative articles to your website – this can increase people’s time spent on your website ( lowering your bounce rate ), keep your website fresh and relevant drawing people back to your website, and it can give you something interesting to post on Twitter or Facebook.
NOTE: There are many more reasons and benefits for blogging. This post just scratches the surface.
We understand that most people who half understand the benefits but don’t have the time or presumably the creativity to keep the blog going decide to just not do anything. And for the reason we’ve decided to write blog posts for our clients.
Would you like to see some what we’ve done?
Stop Settling For Design That Doesn’t Speak
Honestly, when I first came up with the name “Design That Speaks” my thoughts were purely thinking of creativity and personal expression. However, in the many years since, (approximately 9) – we have changed our focus from designing for design sake, into ‘design’ as in creatively crafting a marketing focus website and seo campaign to which speak to our client’s customers in a language that helps generate leads.
Most design companies are good a creativity and personal expression. And when they take on a new client they also try to interpret the client’s identity into a presentation that is accurate a visually stimulating.
Other companies are really just programmers who dress themselves up as designer – but really are best at developing sophisticated systems, applications, and database.
Agencies tend to be good sales and generalist who can farm out the particular details to the best freelancers or specialty firms.
Design That Speaks is a passionate search engine optimization company which can design or redesign clean attractive marketing focused websites with which our client’s can manage themselves OR have us manage the website for them.
We understand that most of our client don’t really want to do ANYTHING on their websites. They want to have a reliable company whom they can trust to manage, update, advise, and market for them.
Our clients want to be experts in their business and have a company like us manage and market their websites.
We don’t work with everyone. Our style doesn’t mesh with every company. But for those whom we work best with – these relationships have turned into rich friendships. And that’s just they we like it. 
SEO Strategies for Entrepreneurs
I recently read this article on search engine optimization on Elance.com. In the article the writer was making the case the all entreprenuers and business owners need to not only understand seo, but they also need to have a practical plan for using it within their own business.
I personally could not agree with them more.
Now, of course I am biased since seo is what I do for a living. However, you need to understand that I didn’t originally do any seo or internet marketing. I was your typical website design and graphic designer. I got into this business because I loved creativity. The problem was, though many people came to me for my design work, they really wanted customers. They wanted a professional presentation in order to get new clients – and I was the one to help.
And so, I started building websites, designing logos, etc. But then I noticed years after those clients were still struggling. They had the “if you build it they will come” mentality. And that just doesn’t work. Thus I we searching to discover how to help my client’s get the success they really wanted from their webiste. And so that was when I discovered seo.
So, if you are an entrepreneur and don’t know what seo is or how it can help you – please see this very good seo article on elance.
Or you can look thru some videos created in the past for my churchmarketing.tv project – which teaches SEO in how-to videos. See the video entitled “Yellow Pages vs White Pages SEO” – it’s one of my favorites.
Lastly, if you have any specific questions regarding your own website – please see the banner below.
Arvell
Arvell Craig has helped our agency and our clients achieve dramatic positive results in search engine rankings. We are very pleased with his work, his advice, and so are our clients.
Our current web master is Arvell Craig. He is talented, knowledgeable, and responsive. He provides follow-up and I get regular emails on our website's performance. His SEO services have put Berkshire Dental Group on page one of Google for the search terms we requested. I would recommend him to you as a 'go-to'' resource for your company.
I just wanted to compliment you on all your work! Our website looks really good, I like everything about it for the first time in a long time. I am glad you are taking such a good care of our business! 
