Hand touching the word "Like". Social media facts Seafoam Media St LouisHow well do you know your social media strategy and etiquette? Can you craft content that will resonate with your audience? One of the biggest challenges of being a small business is finding the time to do social media properly. It is constantly changing, and what's trendy today could be a lost cause tomorrow—just ask anyone on Twitter the last time they saw a Follow Friday (#FF) happening!
Even the most seasoned social media pros know that in order to stay relevant, they have to keep learning. The two giants, Facebook and Twitter, change their rules up all the time. Other social sites, such as Pinterest, even have certain unwritten rules that many users and brands abide by. If you're not on top of how to go about things, your content could be falling flat! With that being said, here are some surprising social media facts that beginners and experts alike can learn from, along with an infographic from Mainstreethost.

10 social media facts you may or may not know:

1. Your biggest advocates (for engagement, retweets, and such) often have the fewest followers!
2. Twitter has multiple networks for communication. For more, check out this study by the Pew Research Center.
3. Original written content will get you the most attention compared to other media on Twitter.
4. Customers generally expect you to reply to their tweets within an hour, especially if they can see that you tweet consistently.
5. Retweets are more likely to happen in the evening when people are off work.
6. Fridays on Facebook is where engagement is best...for now!
7. Photos get shared the most on Facebook. Keep that in mind when building a content calendar.
8. Of the social networks you can be on, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest drive the most traffic.
9. The more engagement a post gets on Facebook, the more people it will reach. Aim to make your content as shareable and likeable as possible.
10. People share certain things for each day of the week on Pinterest.
Social media facts you should know Seafoam Media

Ice Bucket Challenge Jon Ward
Photo credit: Courtney Ward

The ALS ice bucket challenge has become one of the biggest cause marketing campaigns of all time. As of this writing, over 2.4 million videos have been uploaded online, and more than $50 million in donations has been raised, according to Time. To compare, they raised $2.9 million last year during the same period! What can we learn from this viral sensation? Despite a summer full of violent stories dominating headlines nationally and globally, a positive social media campaign can still make waves and bring people together if done right.
Here are the 5 biggest marketing lessons the ice bucket challenge taught us:
1. Word of mouth marketing is still one of the best ways to promote your cause
The origins of the ice bucket challenge are unclear (an article from Slate delves into the mystery of who started it) but there is one person who helped to bring it mainstream: Pete Frates. Frates is a former baseball player from Boston College with ALS. On July 31st this year, he asked some friends as well as celebrity athletes like Tom Brady to take the challenge in order to "strike out ALS", in his words. From there, it spread across the internet, and eventually to superstars such as Oprah and Bill Gates.
As small business marketers, we can take this opportunity to see that the campaign's success was based around two things: authenticity and word of mouth marketing. It was authentic because it was based around Frate's desire to raise awareness for ALS, and wildly successful because Frates was able to reach out to enough people and convince them to take the challenge. Thus, if your small business is creating a campaign based around social, every little bit helps. In addition to customers, ask your employees and family members to help raise awareness—the power of word of mouth marketing is never to be underestimated!
2. Timing is everything
What better time of year to dump ice cold water on your head than in the summer? The ALS challenge picked up traction thanks to the fact that it was very family friendly: kids are on summer break, parents may be on vacation themselves, and there was plenty of daylight hours to complete the challenge after a day of work. Would something like this be as successful if it were done in the winter? Possibly, but not as likely.
3. Simplicity attracts more fans
Too often, companies create social campaigns that sound like a fun idea, but end up alienating their fanbase because of the barrier to entry. You don't want to ask your potential customers for the equivalent of an essay just to take part in a promotion. Whatever your cause or contest is, keep the rules or entry simple, and you'll see more engagement. What was the ice bucket challenge?
—Pledge to make a donation to the ALS Association ($10 if you take the challenge, $100 if you don't)
—Videotape yourself dumping a bucket of ice cold water on your head
—Nominate friends to take the challenge
4. Do something a little different
The idea of a marketing campaign where you dump ice cold water on your head seems like a hard sell, right? It sounds like something we would have expected to see on a kid's game show! The reason it works though, is because it has just the right amount of social stigma. By nominating your friends, you're saying, "Hey, I did this...can you?"
The element of self pride and gratification is what works. It is silly enough to get people to want to do it themselves after being challenged by friends, but not too crazy where they might be more hesitant to try.
5. Jumping on the bandwagon isn't always a bad thing
Your small business may not have the next ice bucket challenge idea that sweeps the nation by storm. Can you still get positive exposure to your company on social media outlets by taking part in one yourself? Yes! Just ask the Energizer Bunny or the Carfax Car Fox.
Some have argued that brands need to be careful about taking part in these viral stunts, because it merely lends to narcissism. This in itself is true, but the fact that the ice bucket challenge revolves around a charitable campaign is what gives your small business a chance to show some personality while simultaneously supporting a good cause.
Have you learned any other marketing lessons from the ice bucket challenge? Leave a comment on Facebook or send us a tweet with your thoughts!

Website redesign checklist Seafoam MediaFor small businesses, a company website is often the primary tool for driving sales and converting visitors into future customers. To do so, it needs to be designed in such a way that clearly explains what the company does, and why their product or service is the ideal solution for a potential customer's needs. You may have designed the best product or idea for a service, but if users don't care to stick around on your website, they're not going to become your customers. In fact, you could be losing out to your competitors who have an inferior product, simply because they do a better job at communicating their core messaging!
When clients come to us with this problem, we often recommend designing a new website. We help by taking a look at their existing website and figuring out what's working and what's not working. In addition, we put together a brief website redesign checklist, featuring important marketing principles that should be focused on when building a new site. They are:

1. Keep your main content fun-sized

If you think of your content like a candy bar, then you'll know that you want to give your visitors a taste of what your company offers. That is, you want to intrigue them just enough to learn more about you, and click onto your actual product or service pages. Too often, home pages are cluttered with king-sized content, which people don't have the patience to read through anymore. Rather than do this, put your copy into bite sized pieces that can be easily read, without giving off the feeling of presenting a wall of text.

One recent client we did this for was The Social Affair. As you can see, the site is bright, clean, and simple, without presenting too much information. It gives the visitor just enough to want to know more about their catering services.

2. Present information in a variety of formats

Text. Images Video. Your website should consistently implement all three of these styles to present information. This is because potential customers all learn and absorb messages in certain ways. Some are drawn to large, high quality photos that convey the product or service you offer. Others want to read a beautifully written description of what it is you're all about. Lastly, some customers are more inclined to share your messaging if you present information in the form of a video.
Make sure to accommodate these preferred content formats by including text, images, and video in your website redesign checklist.

3. Make interaction easy

If you want your customer to take action, give them the opportunity! The placement and frequency of your calls to action should present a variety of ways to interact with you, the business. Thus, you can offer opportunities on each page to subscribe to your email list, to get a free consultation, a trial, and so forth.
In addition, your social media and other buttons should be large enough that your customer can easily engage with your brand if they want to. There's a recent case study we wrote about, where AMD experimented and found that having social buttons on their sidebar gave them the greatest interaction. Another thing to keep in mind is that a customer is only likely to stay on your page for 59 seconds or less, according to research from The Nielsen Norman Group! Knowing this, you want to offer plenty of opportunities to take action.
 

Finally, your website redesign checklist should include a strategy for guiding a user as to where they should go while on your site. To make a website optimized for conversions, you'll want to start by pointing them towards learning more about your company and the benefits your product or service offers. Then, steer them to a call to action, by making it apparent where they should go next. You can do this with arrows, organizing your navigation bar in a particular way, and also creating buttons that go to the next relevant page.

Wordpress guide Seafoam MediaWe recently stumbled across a post from web and graphic design site Noupe, where they shared a ton of articles relating to SEO and improving search traffic to your website. There is plenty of great content, but just one problem: sifting through all these articles takes a ton of time! How do you know which advice is timely and still relevant?
In our continuing efforts to make the SEO world a bit easier to understand, we've picked out a handful of articles with useful information that WordPress users of multiple skill levels can benefit from. Take a look at these five WordPress guides and see if you're following best practices when it comes to page speed, site security, content strategy, and overall search engine optimization.

Improving the page speed of your WordPress site:

This post from Vizion Interactive has some nice information on checking your code, and most importantly: your images! Image compression is what can make your site load in a flash, or at a snail's (or slug's!) pace.

Upping the security of your WordPress site:

This article points out a fact that many of our coworkers, parents, and even superiors fall victim to: having blatantly obvious usernames and passwords. It's become increasingly more common for sites to have data breaches because of this. To help secure things, you want make sure your login information can't easily be cracked, and that your data is continually backed up. There are a bunch of great tips in this article from WooThemes.

Understanding keywords and what affects search traffic:

We like this article from Econsultancy because it's nice, simple, and points out best practices when it comes to getting your WordPress page noticed.

A WordPress guide of what not to do:

For every tip and trick we learn about SEO, there's advice on what we shouldn't be doing. Fortunately, RazorSocial put together a list of the pitfalls you need to avoid, if you want to optimize your site as best as possible. One key takeaway they mention is creating content without any sort of SEO plugin. Having a tool such as SEO by Yoast will greatly improve your ability to avoid content mistakes.

Optimizing for Ecommerce:

This article from iThemes covers several ideas that we speak about often here on the blog. When you're trying to improve visitor click through rates on your site, it's important to be simple, efficient, and transparent about what you're offering.
Do you have any favorite articles or how-to pieces of information when it comes to WordPress guides? Send us a tweet or a Facebook comment with your favorites!

"Businesses are honestly looking at their web presence backwards."
These are the words of Douglas Karr, the founder of the Marketing Technology Blog. He has a valid point—we spend a lot of time tweaking our website and presence. However, that time could be better spent by analyzing everything from the perspective of a smart phone user. Most brand interactions these days start with a mobile device, and having a mobile strategy in place will help set you apart from your competitors.
Here's an interesting statistic: about two thirds of businesses are using some form of mobile marketing, but have only been active with it for about a year. The market for mobile is only to going to get larger, as smartphone based searches are expected to exceed desktop-based ones by 2015. With over 57% of Americans owning smartphones, including the 55-64 demographic, it's safe to say: we're no longer at the point where businesses can ask if they have a mobile website, or a mobile strategy—it is an expectation.
Knowing this information, it's possible to stay ahead of the pack by keeping well informed. One such topic we covered recently was that of ecommerce tips, including optimizing for mobile. As smartphone based marketing continues to grow at its current pace, your best weapon is knowing exactly what your customers want to expect! It may start with the website, but it can expand in many directions: a mobile app, optimizing mobile email templates, social media campaigns, and so forth. For more on this topic, check out the infographic below and see where many businesses currently stand in relation to mobile.
 
 
 

Conversion rate seafoam media blog
There's a saying that goes, "Don't sweat the small stuff."
This simple little quote tells us not to get too worked up over the tiny details in life, and to be more focused on the big picture. Most of the time, it's solid advice that can be applied in different situations. For example, someone working in a store might dwell over a sour experience with a customer, but fail to think about the fact that for that one unpleasant interaction, they had hundreds of customers that were polite and friendly. That is sweating the small stuff. One area in which this mentality should be avoided, however, is your small business website. Why? Obsessing over every little detail of your site could have a huge affect on conversion rates!

Conversion rates case study: AMD

Social sharing buttons, or rather, the placement of social sharing buttons, helped AMD improve their conversion rate by 3800%. That's no typo! The computer manufacturing company, which uses its website primarily for support and marketing (rather than consumer sales) was looking to increase social traffic. They currently had buttons on their site for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but wanted to see if the way these buttons are seen by visitors could affect their likelihood of clicking. What they found was that by increasing the size of the social media buttons, as well as their placement on the page (from footer, to right, and then to the left sidebar) they were getting a much higher conversion rate.
What are some psychological reasons that such a tiny design detail like this could improve conversion rates by as much as 38 times? The first is that of expectation—we as internet users have seen this configuration on many other sites (thanks in part to the Digg WordPress plugin that adds a social bar). Another simple reason for AMD's success is that they made those same social icons larger and easier to be found. Through their research, they learned that very few people were scrolling to the bottom of the page to find the footer, where the social icons once were. By having them featured prominently in a sidebar, it was much easier to click through and access their social accounts.
Finally, AMD took note of the psychological effect known as "F-shaped eye movements". This eye tracking study showed that the majority of readers (who read content from left to right) tend to do so in a "F" shaped pattern, first scrolling across the screen for content, and then looking back at the left side of the page and reading downward. Because of the placement of AMD's social media icons, they were more easily seen, leading to a much better conversion rate to their sites.
The next time someone tells you not to sweat the small stuff, don't believe them! Obsess and test every little detail of your small business website—it is sometimes the most minor of changes that can have a big impact on your ability to keep visitors on your site longer, and improve your conversion rate. Want more? For ideas on how you can further improve your website, check out our post on ecommerce tips!
 
 
 

Laptop with emails pouring into it. How to increase email newsletter signups by Seafoam MediaBuilding an e-mail list is essential for the success of any business. It's a form of soft lead that requires no pressure or commitment to buy, and can eventually convert customers who were previously digital window shoppers! When a user signs up for your email newsletter, it is one of the most valuable metrics you can track. Think about it for a second—these are people who are voluntarily agreeing to see your messaging! This is because they:
A. Like your brand
B. Want to stay updated with products and services you're offering, as well as any deals
Consider this statistic: according to direct marketing website DMA, email marketing has consistently been one of the most important metrics a business can focus on for the best ROI.

Unlike social media, an email newsletter is something your customers have a much higher likelihood of seeing. There is no filtering system or pay-to-promote system in place, so if your customer is subscribed, you know they will at least see the headline of your content!
With that being said, there are a few tips you can utilize to increase the amount of subscribers you're getting. Much of it lies in the design of your site, along with the way your copy can effectively persuade the benefits you offer!

How to get more subscribers for your email newsletter

Minimize the steps required to sign up. Rather than linking visitors to a separate sign up page, it is much more effective to embed a data capture form in the sidebar, header, or footer of your site. This allows a user to quickly and easily receive email updates. Think of it this way: faster is better. A first and last name, along with email address, keeps typing and clicking to a minimum. The more effort it takes, the less likely a user is to sign up for your newsletter!
Make your benefits apparent. No one is going to sign up for your email newsletter if they don't have a reason for doing so. Rather than simply saying "Sign up for our newsletter", make sure to include some creative angle or hook that will draw your reader in. Offering incentives (coupons) and special information (subscriber only advice) is a great way to persuade potential customers. It's all in how you write out what these benefits are!
An example of a great newsletter signup form is business plan website the OnRamp. Their newsletter call to action is simple, states benefits, and even injects a little personality and humor at the same time.
 
Cross promote on social media. If you're familiar with setting up custom tabs on Facebook, you can create a page offering an incentive to subscribers (if not, get in touch with us). You'll want to design it in a way that is fan-gated, requiring a user to first input their information. Once they've done so, they'll gain access to the actual content of your page, which can be a coupon, or perhaps a special deal that has become "unlocked" now that they are a subscriber. The example below shows how a social media incentive might look:

 
Be up front about when you send emails. One pet peeve that we can all agree on is signing up for an email newsletter, only to be bombarded daily by messages. This is one of the biggest turn offs for a customer, and a reason they may be hesitant to sign up for your email newsletter. If you're not the spammy type, try honesty with visitors to your site—let them know just how often they'll get emails if they subscribe to you! Many shoppers (especially millennials) appreciate transparency with a business, and are more likely to sign up if they know in advance what they can expect.
 
A/B test and find what's best. Sometimes, small design aspects can be the breaking point that determines whether or not users sign up for your emails. Experiment with the placement of your newsletter sign up form on your site, the colors of it, the copy used, and the overall style/feel of it. Monitor how different designs perform over time, and then choose the one that is most effective for your site.

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