The problem many websites have today isn't that their pages aren't optimized, it is that they are difficult to access, read, and take action on. SEO basics are widely known and easy to implement. Developing accurate prospect personas and the information architecture and calls to action that will guide their sessions is more complex--but it is well worth the effort.

"Optimizing" is an interesting word. It is important to ask the question, "For what, or whom, are we optimizing?" Is the ultimate goal of your site to be Search Engine Optimized, or User Optimized? Oddly enough, most people get stuck on the SEO part of this but don't stop to think about what happens if the SEO actually works and brings great prospects to their site. Your site's success isn't measured in traffic; it is measured in conversions.

We believe that focusing on the actual user experience is the best approach to optimization. If users can get to your site easily, intuitively find the content that they are most interested in, and easily read it, then Google will be able to do the same. The reason that Google has become synonymous with the word search itself is that Google is the best at mimicking human behavior. Since Google reads through web pages and sites like we do, we people consider it to be the best search engine. Makes sense, right? 

We have seen time and time again that Google bait pages aren't great at bringing people in and keeping them. You may get a #1 ranking on Google for a certain phrase, but chances are that few people will actually search for that phrase and most of those that do click through to your Google bait page won't stick around for long once they get to your site. Why? Simple. It is because the page wasn't written for them, it was written for Google. Once they get to the page it just doesn't really seem all that interesting to them, so they bounce.

Plan your site and write your content for your prospects, make it an educational resource they can't live without, and I assure you that Google will respond in kind.

I just read/listened to Sarah's great post about the soundscape of the Newfangled office and got inspired to write down a few things I've recently learned about our historic digs. When we had our last front porch social with BlogAds (our upstairs neighbors) the mayor showed up, and he told me the history of our building.

Our building was actually the first public building in Carrboro. It was built because the train tracks happened to end at this location. They were supposed to continue on a half mile into Chapel Hill, but they ran out of funding so they stopped where they happened to leave off. The original use for the rail line was as a drop-off point for the local farmers to bring their cotton and tobacco. The man that happened to own the few hundred acre farm that abutted the tracks decided to build a building (our glorious office) to hold the offloaded wares overnight. Before long, he decided to outfit the building with the area's first steam engine. This was first used to power a cotton gin and later a grist mill--both of which resided inside the building. At some point between then and now more funding was acquired and today the rail continues on that half mile to a plant that powers UNC. The line is mostly used for coal transport to that plant.

Our journey from consultants to implementors and back to consultants again.

Newfangled is a very active place; things are always growing, changing, and being refined. Of all the new things going on, I am most excited about our new support model. Here's why.

It used to be that we would build a site and send it live, not knowing when our next experience with the client would be. One very important change would happen at exactly this juncture, we transitioned from our role of the trusted consultant who actively led our client to being just another implementor waiting for our client to ask us to do something.

This had predictable results. We built great sites that were embraced by entropy upon going live. After a few years our client--who may or may not remember us or even have the same point of contact in place--would feel the need to bring their site up to date and call us up (or not). This was not an ideal situation for us or our client, but this is how web development is usually done, and we didn't know any better.

Now everything is different.

When a site goes live today, all involved rest easy knowing that we will have an opportunity to speak together every single month for the purpose of making sure the site is on the right track and that the client is receiving the latest and most relevant advice as it pertains to their current and upcoming marketing objectives. This is mandated by Newfangled, and we take responsibility for making this event happen. Each and every month we do the research, schedule and manage the call, and follow up with a written summary of the call. 

What does this mean?

It means that we have figured out a way to preserve our status of trusted consultant throughout the life of the relationship. This is fantastic news for us and for our clients. We have greater impact, our clients receive better service and have better websites, and everyone is getting smarter all the time.

I believe that regularly focusing on the long term health of the sites we build instead of just the initial development of the site is one of the best moves we've ever made. I fully expect this new long-view approach to be the hallmark of many years of very successful, profitable, and enjoyable client relationships. 

There is a smarter way to manage your web site day to day, and year to year.

How much work did you put in to the last rebuild of your website? I bet you spent months putting your site redesign above all other priorities. If not, chances are good the site isn't live yet.

What happens after that site that you worked so hard on finally does go live? We've been building sites for fourteen years, and we know exactly what you do after a site goes live.

The site goes live, everyone is happy, and you can finally get back to your "real" job. Because you just put a brand new site live and want to see how it is running you log in to your Google Analytics account each day to see what is happening--every day--no matter what.... for a couple of weeks. Before you know it, years have gone by, the site is way out of date, and you start the whole process all over. 

This is a very predictable cycle, and it is terribly out of balance. It makes no sense to put 95% of your effort into building a website and leave only 5% for the ongoing measurement and nurturing of it.

Why don't you spend more time evaluating your site's performance and making subtle refinements along the way? There are basically two reasons.

Problem #1: You suffer from a lack of access to consolidated data.
What marketing manager doesn't have accounts with LeadLander, HubSpot, Workamajig, Eloqua, SalesForce and Google Analytics? You might not have all of those accounts, but I bet you have a few. While all of these services offer valuable and unique information, we have noticed that many of our clients simply don't have the time and attention necessary to review everything on a regular (weekly) basis. Even our clients that only have a Google Analytics account don't pay consistent attention to it. 

Solution #1: We put the data you need right in front of you.
When our clients log in to NewfangledCMS 5, they are greeted with a dashboard of reports that tell them everything they need to know about their site's performance, including which pages, referring sites and search phrases drive the most conversions, which leads are most active on the site, exactly what those leads are doing on the site (second by second and session by session), and what their ranking is for specific keywords, to name a few.

This data enables our clients to get a sense of how their site is performing at a glance. Unfortunately, delivering this data only solves half the problem, and it is almost useless without our solution to the second problem. 

Problem #2: Even with access to data, you don't know what to make of it.
In order to frame this I'd like to describe two truths about the web business that are a bit at odds with each other.

1. There is no money in people. Scalable online business models don't rely on people. Clients can find, sign up for, and use these types of systems without ever having to talk to anyone. At most, there might be 4-8 hours of actual human engagement per client, who then happily pay the monthly fee forevermore. This is true of every system mentioned above. Their basic business model is to operate without assigning specific human beings to your account for anything more than a handful of hours to get you sold, setup, and trained. There is not anything wrong with these systems, but we have observed that some clients need more than this in order to get the most value from their website. 

2. Without human engagement, there is little value. You aren't an analytics expert. It isn't your job to be able to see through analytics data and read the underlying story. You need help. Permanently assigning human beings to client accounts is messy, the margins are terrible, and resource training and allocation is an endless nightmare. But, as always, humans make the difference. Just as a website is an empty shell without smart, unique, and relevant content being continually added to it, relationships that lack a human element tend to be shallow.

Solution #2: Each month we give you the story behind the data. 
We call this solution Total Managed Support. Every month the Project Management team that worked with you throughout your entire site build reviews your site's performance with regard to content strategy, SEO and user patterns. That proactive review is followed by a scheduled call with you to review our findings and talk about your marketing priorities (online and offline) for the purpose of continually refining and customizing our research to your specific need. That call is followed by a recap email.

Why are we doing this? Wouldn't it be easier to create an automated system that just checks the site against some criteria and emails a report? Yes, that would be more efficient from every angle - almost - but it doesn't solve the problem. Using this model, we are not going to sign up 1,000 clients in the next month. Newfangled's mission is to serve a small number of clients perfectly, as opposed to rolling out an automated solution for the masses.

Who can afford a $40k website and $500/mo. for a service like Total Managed Support (which also includes hosting and support)? Not everyone, that is for sure. But we are resting easy these days knowing that we've got a perfect and entirely unique solution for those who have a need and budget for this type of service.

I have to admit, I've been quite skeptical of Twitter for a long time. When Bryn Mooth joked about Twitter being insignificant during her opening greeting at the HOW Design Conference a few weeks ago, I found myself agreeing - not with her intentionally tongue-in-cheek delivery, but rather with the face value of what she was saying.

I had been using Twitter via my iGoogle page for quite some time. That interface only let me see the last few posts from those that I'm following, and I wasn't really getting much from it. This all changed during my time at the conference though.

I happened to decide to give TweetDeck a try a few days before leaving for the conference. This was the beginning of my epiphany. TweetDeck allows a much deeper view into the Twitter landscape you're personally interested in. The interface lets you see up to 40 tweets at once, depending on your monitor size and the way you set up the application. This sounds overwhelming, but the design is great, and it actually makes it quite easy to scan many messages at once. The default view, which consists of columns for All Friends, Mentions, and Direct Messages, is great. I added a fourth column, for the hashtag #howconf, and this is where things got really interesting.

Someone, I can't recall who, suggested a Twitter hashtag of #howconf for all Twitterers to use to post any conference-related tweets. Within an hour it seemed that everyone at the conference with an iPhone (read: everyone) and a Twitter account (almost everyone) agreed to use this tag and started tweeting away. The speed and coordination of just this effort impressed me quite a bit. The use of the hashtag is what really blew me away, though.

I've been to plenty of conferences, but this one was very different and Twitter had quite a bit to do with that. The #howconf Twitterstream was a veritable play by play of the conference. Covering every topic of interest to a conference attendee from where to eat, to what to do, to, of course, juicy session info - the #howconf stream had it all.

Twitter allowed the the attendees to get a lot more out of the conference, and it allowed me to gain very honest insight into how my sessions went. From my perspective as a speaker, this was a bit unsettling but also added to the adrenaline rush of the performance at the same time. What drives a speaker to want to deliver a great talk is the acceptance of the audience, and in this regard real-time Twitter evaluations up the anty.

Conferences exist to inform, rejuvenate and inspire the attendees, and each session should support that intent. Twitter helped to further that effort and, in my view, helped each attendee craft their own custom-tailored mini conference inside the conference.

In the month since the conference Twitter has been a great tool for keeping the speakers and attendees in touch. The conference organizers have used it to send out updates about post-conference materials and such. This is a rough guess, but I think there have been as many #howconf tweets since the conference as there were during. I expect this activity to taper off pretty quikly, but the fact remains that Twitter took an event that lasted four days and spread the feedback, follow up, and communication about and around the conference over the course of about six weeks. To me, this represents a lot of free added value to everyone involved.

So yes, I am finally now a fan of Twitter!

What makes great web content? For the purpose of this post I am referring to content that marketers add to their site for the purpose of furthering their particular content strategy. I think the best content written for this purpose is found at the intersection of writing, inspiration and expertise.

The willingness to write is of course the first step. Specifically, you have to write educational content that serves your prospects - it should be content they come to rely on you for. This is why focused expertise is necessary, you have to know one niche pretty well in order to create meaningful content consistently. If you are a generic full service branding firm, your content is not likely to be that distinguishable from the next full service firm's. If you, say, specialize in package design for organic foods, you probably have a ton to write about in terms of both your skill set and the vertical you serve. But what about the last point, inspiration? This is where it gets tough.

Writing for a few weeks or months about top of mind subjects comes relatively easy to many of us, but the well starts to run dry after too long, fear creeps in and before you know it you've got writer's block. 

I know how I get inspired to write content for our site, but I was curious what other writers' thoughts were. To find out, I consulted LinkedIn in the forms of a Poll and a Question. I received a mountain of great responses, thanks so much to all who contributed! Here are the poll results:


It is pretty odd that among the results reading, people's own musings, and client dialog all evened out, but the graph above supports my personal experience quite well. I think that thinking, reading and observing your conversations with clients and colleagues are the three best ways to mine your days for inspirations for creating web content. 

In response to my LinkedIn question, I received some pretty outstanding answers, here are a few:

"With a few exceptions (David Baker, David Maister, a little bit of Alan Weiss) I work hard to avoid what's being written about the subjects I trade in. I'm sure I pay a huge price for this (e.g. occasional topics of complete irrelevance, missing timely issues) but I'll take the trade-off of not being influenced by 'conventional wisdom'. The best book I've read on selling was not a book about sales. The best book I've read on brands was The Origin of Species." - Blair Enns, Win Without Pitching

"When my clients ask questions about design, marketing, internet strategy, web design, communications or any other related industry topic, I find that it's a great opportunity to explore the subject and write a relevant article or post addressing it." - Eileen Burick

"I'll let you in on a trick that works. Remember the letters M - F - T, and you'll never need to look for content.

M - What's on their mind? What are they thinking about? What concerns them?
F - What do they fear? How can you help alleviate that fear?
T - What do they treasure? How can you connect with them on something they really care about?" - Brian Hemsworth, Newman Grace

So, what inspires you to write content on your website?

Last week I was in Austin, TX. to present a few sessions at the annual HOW Design Conference. There were a few things that really knocked my socks off that are worth mentioning. First of all, the conference itself was perfectly run. I've been to plenty of conferences and the HOW people made running a conference look fun and effortless. Everything seemed to happen as and when it was intended to happen. I had heard this much about the HOW crew, so I wasn't necessarily surprised but was still impressed nonetheless.

What did surprise me was the group of people attending the conference. In the middle of this economically difficult time about 2,000 designers of all ages, career stages, and locals came together in Austin. Now, I am not a designer, and I was a bit intimidated by having to present to a group of very hip designers that know their craft very well. I expected a crowd that was too cool for school, and I was dead wrong. The group at this conference was clearly there to learn, learn and learn as much as they possibly could. Both of my sessions ("Print to Web Breakthrough" and "Web Strategy that Works") were attended by hundreds of smart, eager and focused people who took constant notes, asked insightful questions and seemed to preface everything with a smile. I couldn't imagine a more engaged and good natured audience.

Lastly, Austin - dear lovely Austin. Perhaps the greatest success of the conference coordinators was their choice of city, hotels and facilities. I had never been to Austin, was a bit weary of the hype, and was pretty surprised to find a city that lived up to every word of it. Austin, I miss you!

Blair Enns, one of Newfangled's mentors, has an excellent two part webinar series coming up that I'd recommend to any agency that is interested in sharpening their positioning in order to increase their sales close rate. "Positioning Your Firm, Part 1: Strategy" and "Part 2: Language" are sure to be content-packed webinars with some valuable and immediately implementable takeaways.

All of Blair's webinars are free for members, and $99 for non-members. Blair hosts one webinar a month, and an annual membership to his site costs $395/year. Blair is directly responsible for the sales success of quite a few firms I've worked with, in addition to our own.

You can sign up for the webinars on his website: WinWithoutPitching.com.

I am also very pleased to announce that Blair will be guest hosting Newfangled's July webinar, which will be a 30,000 ft. overview of his Win Without Pitching sales process.  You can register for this free webinar here.