Ditch The Pitch And Be Human Again [Free eBook Download]

Your Facebook page is flat, your Tweets have an echo, and your Google+ page seems to be more minus than plus.

You fell victim to the pitch. You suffer from acute push marketing disease. Don’t despair. The cure is here.

Social media marketing, free book

Download This Free eBook From Todaymade

Discover the top five things you need to put unsuccessful push marketing behind you. Learn:

  1. Why your online marketing will fail before it succeeds
  2. The secret to never using push marketing again
  3. What bad online marketing is, and how to avoid it
  4. Why finding your niche is necessary
  5. How to be human again

For a limited time, our absolutely free eBook will reveal to you the best way to find that missing audience for your social media program. It will help you learn to engage your audience and find the conversation you’ve been missing. Discover how your audience is made up of human beings, just like you, and how to connect on the same level. Build the trust between your customer and your business on the best foundation possible, with the help of our free eBook.

Ditch The Pitch And Be Human Again [Free eBook Download]

Marketing
Download This Free eBook From Todaymade

The True Grit Guide To Staying In the Game

True Grit is about stick-to-it-iveness. It’s about tough-going. It’s about a goal. And, less obviously, it’s about fighting through and alongside in our relationships.

Teamwork, even when contentious, can bring about success.

True Grit‘s heroine, 14-year-old Mattie Ross, was unable to hear the word ‘no’. She was determined to find Tom Chaney, the murderer of her father, whether a local sheriff or a Deputy U.S. Marshal or a Texas Ranger thought she could. Through rebuffs and setbacks, she managed to find Chaney and kill him herself. She did it with the help of those initial scoffers, “Rooster” Cogburn (U.S. Marshal) and LaBoeuf (Texas Ranger).

It’s likely we’re not all pursuing outlaws and criminals, but the character of Mattie Ross exhibits a few simple truths about how things are in life and in business, and how we define and decide what to do.

Truly Bad Guys

There are some bad guys out there — bad situations, bad moments, bad timing. Tom Chaney could be anyone or anything. He could be someone who hurt us personally, who stole our idea, who damaged our business, who killed our joy — or he might not be a person at all. Chaney is sure to come into our lives at some point and cause destruction. The bad guys can define us if we let them. Ross decided to be proactive, somewhere between vengeful (not good) and having a clear eye on justice (possibly good). Whatever the case, she certainly didn’t sit back and let life throw her about (definitely good). While maybe it isn’t a great idea to hunt down and destroy those bad guys in every situation, it’s more than OK to acknowledge the damage done and refuse to be defined by the who and what of our personal Chaney.

Truly Exhausting

Repeatedly throughout True Grit, Ross, LaBoeuf and Cogburn butted heads, refused to listen to each other, saw pride fall and mishaps ensue, and endangered each other’s lives, all in the pursuit of Chaney.

Make sure our pursuit is worth it. Make sure everyone on our team has the same goal. Make sure everyone is willing to achieve that goal and accept the fallout. Sometimes our own team exhausts us more than the pursuit of the goal, the personality clashes and chaos wear us down; are we willing to continue? Can we remain a team? Pursuit of a worthwhile goal can be tiring; we have to make sure we’re prepared. And, once we start, we don’t stop.

True Allies

Ross understood that as much as she wanted to kill Chaney herself, she needed help. She needed someone who knew the territory where Chaney had fled to, and so she doggedly pursued Rooster Cogburn to help her. She was also offered help from LaBoeuf, who, at first, she was antagonistic towards and refused. This conflicting relationship continued through the story as LaBoeuf hung on at the periphery, bungled up a stakeout, and, eventually, saved their lives.

If we’re going to make it happen, we need to admit and accept we need some help, and, carrying it a step further, accept help from places we don’t necessarily like. Cogburn knew the territory, but LaBoeuf knew Chaney. Ross needed both, in the long run. Some of the ground we’re going to cover will be unfamiliar, some of the “bad guys” we don’t really understand. In the end, Ross, Cogburn and LaBoeuf found admiration and a shaky trust in each other. The common goal gave them common ground. Find those key partners, find those allies, and dole out some trust.

True Results

Ross got her wish — she killed Chaney with a shotgun herself, and saw that her father was avenged. She also fell into a pit of snakes immediately upon doing so, and for the last part of her story, left her audience wondering if she would die. We watched her beloved horse run into the ground, and Cogburn himself nearly wear himself out to get her help.

Our goal might be noble, and it might be right, but getting to it doesn’t mean it’s over. Are we prepared to accept the result? Ross achieved her goal, but it had consequences she didn’t count on.

True Plan

We’ve been knocked down, but we refuse to stay there. We identify the goal to get us back on our feet. We find the friends — even the ones we really like — that can help us. We pursue, we accept the results. This is what True Grit looks like.

The True Grit Guide To Staying In the Game

Business
Teamwork, even when contentious, can bring about success.

The Offline Social Networking Game

Introducing the Offline Social Networking Game: A tactile social game for the whole crew.

The fun & friendly game for the whole crew!

Turn your office into a place where the popular people feel better about themselves and the rest of us hate our lives.

(ummm…)

Ok, so that’s not very nice (and not really true at all), but using only a paper box and slips of paper, you can take your online social networking skills to the real-world level.

Benefits And Rewards

We hate to make crazy promises, but we think the Offline Social Networking Game might give you at least a few of the following benefits:

  • You’ll come out of your shell (if you were in one).
  • You’ll feel like you have more friends than you actually do.
  • You can stuff your own box.
  • It’s a social network your mom can’t follow you on.
  • You’ll help your team learn all the necessary social networking lingo.
  • It will make you more friends and everyone will love you.
  • We’re pretty sure this was actually Mark Zuckerberg’s original idea for Facebook.

Be social on all networks at once.

How To Download

Sign up for the FREE weekly marketing tip from Todaymade, and get the The Offline Social Networking Game download today!


How To Play

The Offline Social Networking Game is something you can play with your friends and co-workers. Simply have each participant download and assemble the project sheet, using the directions below. Everyone gets a box and a set of social networking-themed tags. You can either Like (Facebook), +1 (Google+), Pin (Pinterest), or Tweet (Twitter) a message on paper and drop it in a friend’s box. That’s it! Whatever your team would like to do with the results is up to you, We’re thinking that here, at Todaymade, the person with the most “friends” will buy lunch just to prevent inevitable box stuffing.

Assembling The Game

1. Download the project sheet (see above). You will only need the project sheet, some tape, and a scissor

Cut the slot out as indicated.

2. Cut the slot out as indicated. This is where your friends will place their social greetings to you.

3. Fold along the dashed lines. There are four of them: Main Fold 1, 2, 3, and 4. Fold to the front and to the back of the paper so that the folds are crisp and flexible in both directions.

Fold along the dashed lines.

4. Bring Point A to Point A, creating diagonal fold Line 1. Repeat for points B, C, and D to create folds on Line 2, 3, and 4.

Once the folds have been made, lay the paper out flat on your desk. Flip your paper over.

5. Once the folds have been made, lay the paper out flat on your desk. Flip your paper over.

Along Main Fold 1, bring the paper up so the markings and decoration is on the outside of the box.

Fold along the dotted line (edge of colored area) to the inside of the box. This holds the box's shape and forms the bottom of the box. Repeat for the other side.

6. Along Main Fold 1, bring the paper up so the markings and decoration is on the outside of the box. Bring Fold A and B together behind this front flap you just created, with one over-lapping the other. Fold along the dotted line (edge of colored area) to the inside of the box. This holds the box’s shape and forms the bottom of the box. Repeat for the other side.

To make an enclosed box, simply bring up the inside flaps created by line E and F and tape in place.

7. You can make your box an open box by leaving it as is, or you can make it an enclosed box and cut a slit in the lid as directed. To make an enclosed box, simply bring up the inside flaps created by line E and F and tape in place.

8. Now, cut out the social networking-themed tags on the dotted lines. Allow your friends and co-workers to Like, Tweet, Pin, or +1 you as necessary. Happy offline social networking for everyone!

The Offline Social Networking Game

Social Media
The fun & friendly game for the whole crew!

Finding Facebook Fame With Laura Roeder

Although Laura’s career started in web design, it didn’t stay there for long. In 2009, Laura turned from web design to web marketing, specifically social media marketing. Now, Laura runs a very successful social media training company that specializes in training the ultra-small business on how to master social media marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even YouTube – it can be a confusing world out there, but Laura aims to make it easier for all of us. She self-published the book Facebook Fame, and has released several video training libraries that cover the gamete – Facebook to WordPress.

We were privileged enough to visit with Laura from her office (for February at least) in Buenos Aries where we asked her some of the most pressing questions about Facebook and how to win as a small business on social media. You can learn more about Laura’s business on her website, follow her own thriving community on Facebook, or check out her status on Twitter. Listen up, you too might just become Facebook Famous!

Finding Facebook Fame With Laura Roeder

Interviews
laura-roeder-facebook-expert

Business Pros – Check Yourself Into The Leadership Gym

We have gyms for our biceps, gyms for our fast food restaurants, and gyms for our children – why not a gym for our career? G5 is that gym for our career.  G5 Leadership is an online leadership training site that provides webinar style training to a live audience and even offers videos on-demand at a later date.

Cool, right?

G5 Leadership Training

G5 Leadership is something that I stumbled across a few months ago on Michael Hyatt’s blog. As you might know, Michael regularly covers the topic of leadership on his blog, so I immediately made note of his recommendation. At the time it was not affordable, but I kept it on the list of future purchases. Upon revisiting G5, I noticed that the pricing has changed. G5 is now VERY affordable, and is a must-have for just about any professional.

In his latest post about G5, Michael references the costs associated with normal leadership training. According to him…

“On a price-per-minute basis, you can get a degree from Harvard cheaper than you can attend most generic leadership training courses!”

That’s nuts! At $10 a month, G5 is a no-brainer for just about anyone. I have been subscribed for several weeks now, and have enjoyed some of the on-demand content which even includes a presentation by David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. In a few weeks, Scott Belsky, the author of Making Ideas Happen, will be featured. His books is one that we have recommended on this blog.

You can get David Allen's presentation on getting things done, on-demand.

It’s a pretty cool world out there. In marketing and business, there is just no excuse for not continuing to learn. G5 is now one of the new items in the Todaymade employee training manual.

If you are interested, give G5 a look. I am not sure how much longer it will be available, but there is still an active coupon code on Michael’s blog that will get you free access for a year! You get great leadership training, and all you pay is the big donut. Not bad, if you ask me.

Business Pros – Check Yourself Into The Leadership Gym

Business
G5 Leadership Training

Taking A Byte Out Of Digital Disorganization

[This post is part of the ongoing series 4 Steps To Getting Yourself Organized In The New Year. ]

It’s a new day and we have 300 emails staring back at us from our inbox, half of which are from yesterday or last week. We find files on our computer by using a search function and crossing our fingers. We have multiple computers and can’t remember which file on which computer is the most current version. It’s official: we need to organize our digital life.

Digital files accumulate quickly and haphazardly if we let them.

Owning Our Email

Our inbox is just that, an inbox. It’s not a storage shed, a catch-all, or a default option for the messages we don’t know what to do with. It’s meant to handle incoming or current email only, and anything beyond that is digital clutter.

First and foremost, set up some filters. Let technology be our friend wherever it can, and have it be a bouncer for our inbox. Start by setting up spam filters, followed by our own filters. The email system we use will determine the options available for what and how we filter and store our email, but we at least have to have something in mind. Our filters can automatically sort incoming email based on who is sending them, and categorizing or filing them accordingly. A few minutes to set up filters saves hours in the long run.

Second, unsubscribe to emails that we no longer want to receive. Perhaps we were really interested in that Jelly of the Month Club a few Christmases ago, but not anymore. Those emails are bloating our inbox, so it’s time to unsubscribe. In that same line of thinking, we should remember every time we sign up for an email newsletter that it will have a direct affect on our inbox. By all means, sign up for things that interest us, but think about it beforehand.

Third, there is no checking email, there is owning email. Checking email leaves us with emails that are weeks and, horribly, months old. Every time we check, we see they’re still there. Owning email means we decide what we are going to do with it from the moment we open it. Respond, delete, or process and file — these are our basic options. Don’t check email, own it. And don’t be afraid to delete. Not everything deserves to be in the National Archives. Just delete it.

And lastly, being kind to our fellow email users can help us, too. Use subject lines that are actually useful; don’t grab an old email with an unrelated subject line simply because we’re too lazy to re-type the email recipients. The subject line is going to help us when messages get replies, particularly in email systems that use threaded conversations.

Files, By Any Other Name

Image files breed on our computer’s hard drive. Spreadsheets seem to be spreading. Word processing documents run wild. The cycle never ends.

Organizational software can be a patch. Perhaps we don’t have the time to go back and individually re-name and organize a decade’s worth of photos of our kids and dog.  A quick fix is to get software that finds and adds tags or other useful content to our photos without the agony of individually slogging through our cyclopean collection . Picasa is a good, free option, but there are others available. While such software won’t fix a decade of poor organizing, it will help in the management of all of those image files and gives you the chance to get things in order bit by bit. There is no better time to start organizing like now, however, even if it only involves renaming files. It’s never too late to rename your photo files from something other than the default DSC-99999OMG.

Set your computer up with a folder structure that make sense.  Base it on how we generally tend to organize our work and thoughts. Whether by client, by project, by date, by collaboration, or by sharing status, set up a folder structure that works, and use it. Naming a file something useful, as opposed to “File 01″ or “Project For Today”, is going to help, too. Consider what the key search words might be used a year from now when we need that file and it isn’t fresh in our mind. Will our naming system include client, project, and version? Come up with something that allows each file to stand alone in a search, and not be based on the folder it is located in. That is, knowing it’s in “Folder A” might seem to allow you to get away with “Project 01″ as a file name, but if that file should ever be moved from that folder, will we know what it is? Good folder structure and good stand-alone file names will be a godsend when we’re doing a search.

Are We In Sync?

Syncing files across multiple devices is a big deal. We have smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, work computers, home computers…transferring files through USB or flash drives doesn’t cut it. We need to sync, or work in the cloud, particularly for our collaborative projects. Syncing services are easy enough to find, like Dropbox and SugarSync. Syncing is different than backing up (which we definitely should be doing). It’s allowing us to work on our documents, access our files, and in general, be less chained to our computer while still maintaining file integrity.

Working, creating, and storing documents directly in the cloud using Google Docs is another option. This still requires a system of organization, however, because cloud storage can be just as wild as our harddrive if we let it. Categories replace folders, but choosing a good name for files is still crucial.

Two Degrees Of Follow-Through

As with any system of organization, if it’s too complicated and fussy, we won’t do it.

The effort to be organized can’t exceed the benefit of being organized, or we just won’t keep it up. Organizing our digital life is no different. If it takes more than two or three clicks or levels of folders, if it isn’t possible to do within a five-second window, we won’t do it. Systems of organizing email and files that involve multiple folders and sub-folders on sub-folders and several levels of categorization some extra tags thrown in for fun just aren’t going to happen. We can’t remember that complicated of a method, we won’t file things consistently with that much sub-division, and in the end, we’re still unorganized.

Two or three clicks or levels. In five seconds. No more than that.

As with all things having to do with being organized, our plan has to be simple and decisive, and we’ll need to consider the extra tools (software or cloud/syncing options) that it’ll take to get us to digital nirvana.

Taking A Byte Out Of Digital Disorganization

Business
Digital files accumulate quickly and haphazardly if we let them.

How To Set Up The Perfect Google Plus Page

Getting a Google+ profile for our business has grown in importance now that Google, the leading Internet search engine, has made changes to how their searches work. The Google social search, called ‘Search Plus Your World‘, mixes public Google+ pages with regular search results. The idea is to make it easier for people to find all relevant information, including content that might be provided by friends privately through the Google+ and Picasa Web networks. So far, this new search option doesn’t include other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. What does that mean for us?

It means we need to get a Google+ page for our business, and we need it to be set up the best way possible.

Make The About Section Strong

First up: make sure our about section is completely filled in with all the information we want our followers to know about us. Adding recommended links on the about page to our other social networking sites is a great way to help people find us on on the web and spread the word.

Complete the 'About' page, and don't forget outside links.

Click on the blue ‘Edit Profile’ button in the upper right corner of our page, and navigate to the ‘About’ section. Click and then fill in the areas that apply; we don’t have to fill everything in, but the introduction, website, and contact sections really are important. We can add outside links by clicking in the ‘Recommended Links’ section of the ‘About’ page and entering the URL and title of the links we’d like to share. When we’re finished, click the gray ‘Done Editing’ button in the orange bar at the top of the page.

As with any of the content we put on Google+, we can specify who we’ll share our information with. The same applies for the ‘About’ section. We have the option to select a circle or keep it private as we edit.

Get A Fast 5000 Words

The importance of uploading our business’ logo goes without saying, but Google+ also has a scrapbook feature across the top of the page that needs to be addressed. A picture is worth 1000 words, so we need to give our fans every chance to learn about who we are and what we do. At the very least, have five scrapbook photos so that each space is filled in and can give our fans something to look at other than gaps and space.

Make sure to have at least five photos in the scrapbook album.

Click on ‘Photos’ to navigate to that section of the profile. Once there, find the ‘Scrapbook’ album, and click on it. This will take us to the page where we can upload photos to our scrapbook album. Once there, click on the red ‘Add More Photos’ button, and select five photos that best represent our brand. Remember, these will feature prominently. Drag and drop the photos into the uploader, and select ‘Add Photos’ when finished. The sharing setting can be adjusted to keep if within specific circles, or public. Consider making the album public. Our goal is to be social, and not restrictive.

If we’re active users of a connected Google Picasa account, we’ll see an album called ‘Scrapbook’ within that system. That album is connected to Google+, and can be managed in both places. We can rearrange the photos in the ‘Scrapbook’ album to suit a certain order across the top of the Google+ page. Otherwise, we can upload and work with photos directly through Google+.

For those of us who have created videos, the same method can be followed to get those on our Google+ page, too. Don’t forget to connect our YouTube account to our Google+ page by a link on the ‘About’ section. We’ve made that content — why wouldn’t we share it? Stock our Google+ page with all the relevant content we can, definitely including lots of great photos and videos. People want to get to know us, so lets help them.

The Essential Extras

While these few tips will get us started with a nice foundation, there are always things we can do to improve our visibility:

  • Add a Google+ badge to our current website. We want to get fans and followers on our social networks; the badge allows people to click through and find the Google+ page. Additionally, the badge tells Google that this is our official Google+ page.
  • Include the +1 button on our blog so that our readers can easily recommend our content.
  • Make sure we have a location in our profile. Google will automatically provide a map on our page so that our followers are able to find us.
  • Keep the page active, even if only in updating the ‘About’ section. Remember, Google loves fresh content.
  • Use other social networks to promote our newly stylin’ page. Get on Twitter and Facebook and point people in the Google+ direction.

Don’t forget to check out our page, and add Todaymade to your Google+!

How To Set Up The Perfect Google Plus Page

Google+
Make sure to have at least five photos in the scrapbook album.

Banishing Paper Clutter For Good

[This post is part of the ongoing series 4 Steps To Getting Yourself Organized In The New Year. ]

Confronting paper clutter is an absolute must for anyone serious about getting organized. That pile of sort-of sorted paper quietly mocks us, almost. Digging through a pile of hastily stacked paper to find the receipt we need is an extremely poor way to spend our time. Fighting back the waves of paper clutter doesn’t just happen. It requires us to be proactive. If we let down our guard once, and the paper marches in. It’s as if the paper wants to win, that unorganized piles are its natural state of being.

Keeping paper clutter at bay is a daily exercise.

Guard The Gates

It’s easier to stop the momentum of paper clutter by not letting it  get started.

Where is paper getting in? Determine those entry points, and then meet it there, head-on and with extreme prejudice, before it has time to settle in. When the mail arrives, sort it right away and not set it in a pile. When a stack of files ends up on our desk, dive in and deal with them. Receipts for business expenses? Log and file each receipt as necessary, and consider using a digital receipt service, like Shoeboxed or Lemon,  if it helps us deal with storage issues. It is easier to handle sorting something when it first arrives and is still new, otherwise we quickly become accustomed to seeing it in a pile and that pile becomes a kind of accepted feature in our work space. Absolutely no piece of paper finds a home that we haven’t designated for it on purpose.

Cut The Fat

If we realize we’re getting run over by hordes of incoming paper on a regular basis, we might consider a paper reduction act.

What paper do we have coming in that doesn’t need to be? Do we need all those phone books? What magazines do we actually need and read, and which subscriptions can we honestly stop, or acquire as a digital copy? Bulk mail, junk mail, credit offers — not only is it adding to our paper burden, but it is a serious waste of paper. Removing our name from mailing lists and communicating with others in a digital fashion is a great way to address this. Carrying that digital replacement of paper further means scanning and cloud storage systems instead of walls of filing cabinets. If we’re going to be really aggressive about stopping or dealing with paper as it comes in, we’ll do the extra work to keep it from arriving at the gate in the first place.

Set Up A System

The most basic outcome of paper clutter will be either file, throw/recycle, or use immediately (which will eventually lead to one of the other two). All the guarding at the gates and cutting the fat won’t help if we don’t have a system ready.

Our system is going to work best if we use it right away and not a day or week down the line.  Sorting the mail right when it arrives might mean we should actually stand over the garbage or recycle bin and make the decision right then and there on what we’ll keep, and what we’ll throw, recycle, or shred. From the pile of what we’ll keep, we have to decide what action needs to take place and we absolutely cannot fudge on following through. File or use — do it now. Doing it later means a pile of paper sets up shop on our desk and gets really, really comfortable there. Pretty soon it’s masquerading as a coaster for our coffee mug, a cushion for some books, or maybe serving as scratch paper for quick notes. Get used to little or no paper around. The status quo is not a tray of paper and files that we look at once a year; it is a tray that sees paper and files cycle through quickly as they work their way through our system. Remember, clutter is clutter. We have to follow our system.

Make Use Of Temporary Help

Sticky notes, notepads, notebooks — useful, and not evil. We need to jot temporary notes on paper sometimes. Though it might sound anti-anti-clutter, it’s good to have “single use” notepaper on hand for exactly that purpose. Otherwise, last week’s file folder sitting in a pile near the phone looks like a decent option for some notes pulled from a phone call. It seems innocent enough to write on whatever is handy, but that means that when it comes time to either use the file or find the phone message we have a problem of paper clutter that is serving two masters. We don’t use a fork to eat soup (usually), and a random receipt isn’t the best place for a quick note to our co-workers or a sketch of our greatest idea ever. Get notepads or sticky notes, or use an online note-taking system like Springpad or Evernote to record those sorts of things. Have them by the phone or wherever we find ourselves jotting down notes. Anything else is a wrench in the gears of our finely honed system.

The best chance that paper clutter has at developing and overwhelming us is that we would be too busy. Even if we want the paper to be organized and in place, and even if we have a pretty good system in mind, it just takes a few days of not getting around to it to leave us with a fairly large backlog of paper that needs sorting, filing, throwing, and sending. We gotta stay on top of it. Reduce the paper coming in, meet it at the door, deal with it immediately, and we’re good to go.

Banishing Paper Clutter For Good

Business
Keeping paper clutter at bay is a daily exercise.

Writing Killer Content That Sells To People And Robots

Words on a page captivate us. Words have the power to transform, instruct, and shape our thinking like nothing else. Yet, with all of their power, we often forget to use them to our advantage.

When you have great content – we can all just be friends!

When it comes to social media, the written word is the very foundation that we are building on. Our audience relies upon the things we write. They use our words to know what we are all about and if we are worth paying attention to. The web is, essentially, a castle made of content. We must embrace and master our ability to write like kings.

Keeping Our Two Audiences Content

There is no shortage of content on the web. With millions of blogs and websites in the wild, we can be sure to find content ranging from great to mediocre. What separates the great from the not-so-great, and why does it even matter? It matters, because our two audiences depend upon our content.

Identifying the first audience is easy enough. It is the visitor that comes to our blog. We can think of these visitors as potential customers. The tone we use for them should be friendly and approachable; we should be concerned about providing them with valuable information.

The second audience is much more mysterious. In fact, that second audience isn’t a person at all – it is the friendly giant that we all know as Google. Unfortunately, marketers and business owners often fail to consider how Google sees their website. In a world where 400 million Google searches take place every day, such a consideration is an essential ingredient to creating a great website. Great online content should not only resonate with a human audience, but also with a robot that regularly scans our content and recommends those who need our help.

Understanding PageRank

In the late 1990’s, Google introduced us to a completely new concept in search technology called PageRank. This ranking is a number ranging from 0 to 10 that determines the quality of a website. For example, a brand new website would start with a PageRank of 0, while a well-established site might have a rank of 7. With this number, search results are prioritized based on the PageRank score of the corresponding websites.

So, how do they calculate this ranking? Google is obviously very tight-lipped about their specific formula, but we do know that it is directly based on the quality of a website’s content and Google’s assumptions on how useful that content will be for its users. PageRank can quickly develop into a messy and confusing business – most of us only need to be aware of Google’s presence. We mainly need to remember that Google is evaluating our website content on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Brands that aren’t giving their website content the proper care and feeding it deserves will find themselves getting the short end of the Google-search stick.

Putting Pen To Paper

Are we convinced that powerful content is an essential element for social media? Great content helps us connect with our customers online. As we go forward and begin writing content for our new blog or social media page, there are few key points that we need to keep in mind.

1. We don’t have to be perfect.

For many of us, writing is hard – especially when we know that someone will be reading it. We easily fall into the habit of trying to over-perfect our content or, even worse, avoid writing it at all because we are afraid we won’t get it exactly right. We are worried about what people might say. The reality is that blogs and websites do not require perfection. They require content. The key to success is taking it easy on ourselves and moving forward anyway.

2. It all else fails, write like we talk.

Remember in Lesson Three where we dissected the divide between ‘marketing speak’ and human language? The web will reward content that is delivered in a conversational tone. This means that we all can become respectable online writers and communicators. When all else fails, remember to simply write like we talk. Have a conversation with our reader.

3. Practice makes perfect.

In the beginning, the going can be tough. Ask experienced bloggers; we’d likely hear about their start as a blogger with a laugh. Looking back at our early work can be painful, but it also helps us see how far we’ve come. That is the beauty of social media — we get better over time. A regular content schedule executed on a blog or Facebook page will provide the practice we need to make great copy. This is especially true when we get into the habit of monitoring and tracking our results.

4. We have to feed the Google Robot.

The Google PageRank robot is out there every day, scanning the web for new content. The question is, how often is it stopping by our website? How often it is peeking at our Facebook page? Google will pay attention to how often we update our website, and that frequency will affect how we are listed in search results. If we only update our website every few months, Google won’t have much incentive to come back any more often than that. When we finally do update something, it could be months before Google even takes notice. Google matters, and we must give it what it needs.

5. It is probably easier than we think.

In reality, writing great content is probably easier than we think. We should be writing about what we know best. Defining our topic and approach beforehand removes the roadblock of not knowing what to say. Good writing quickly develops when we choose the right topics. Stick to what we know, and we might be surprised at how easily the words flow.

Making Content Connections

At the end of the day, our goal as social media marketers is to make personal connections with our online friends and followers. The most powerful tool we have for communicating with them is through our written words. Creating content can be intimidating, but it is the backbone of the web and a necessity for any social media program.

Writing Killer Content That Sells To People And Robots

Blogging
When you have great content – we can all just be friends!

Grand International Now Booking Mobile Traffic

The Grand International, a high-end hotel located in Minot, North Dakota, is the latest website launch from the crew here at TodayMade. The facility features top-notch accommodations for travelers, meetings, and events . Looking towards the future, Grand International knew they needed a fresh look for their website, but more importantly, a way to meet the demands and needs of today’s mobile traveler. That’s where we came in.

Grand International Inn has a mobile friendly site for today's busy traveler.

We built the site using our own TodayCMS custom content management system, which allows Grand International to make changes to their website. We also chose to use our responsive website design technology, which allows the site to be viewed on any number of mobile devices. Like our own Todaymade site, the layout will automatically adjust to fit the user’s mobile device and screen size.  Now, whether the user accesses the site through their computer or their smartphone, they can expect full use of all the site features. Websites using responsive web design allow full accessibility across all platforms, including your web browser, Android, or iPhone.

The new website is optimized for the mobile user.

We didn’t stop there.

Using an active lead collection strategy, we included options for the user to get event planning information right from the front page. It’s not just a static brochure website – it encourages users to actively peruse and, inevitably, use the website. They can book a room, get questions answered, and contact hotel staff directly.

Be sure to stop by Grand International’s brand new website and see what they have to offer. And definitely don’t forget to try it out on your mobile device – check out the sleek responsive web design at work.

Grand International Now Booking Mobile Traffic

News
Grand International Inn has a mobile friendly site for today's busy traveler.