Blog Archives

SEO (search engine optimization) changed forever when Google integrated Google+ into its Google search results a few weeks ago. Basically, Google is now personalizing (to a much greater degree than before) its search results, based on the links and +1 recommendations of people in your Google+ network. Check out the example below.

I did a search for Don Cornelius, creator of Soul Train, on Google. At the top of the search results, there’s a note that tells me here are 20 personal results, or 20 links or posts that mention Don Cornelius by people in my Google+ circles.

If I click on personal results, I see the full search results list, but with the personal links at the top of the list. Holy smokes! That means that the Washington Post article on Don Cornelius, which was previously at the top of the page, just got overtaken by a link on nerdist.com because someone I follow and interact with a lot posted that link on his Google+ page!

This is just another example of how Google is heavily favoring its Google+ social network and another giant reason to:

• Create a Google+ page
• Encourage social sharing of your content across all social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+), but especially Google+

A study by Nielsen back in 2009 found that 90% of people 25,000 people surveyed “trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.” This makes intuitive sense. Think of all the people in your Facebook network who ask for recommendations for a contractor, camera or pediatrician. And consider the crazy, huge influence of mommy and wedding bloggers.

So, what’s your social sharing strategy? It could be as simple as making sure there is a Share This link on all of your articles, meetings and products. Or you could actively ask your customers and members to recommend your products and service to their networks in your e-mails, tweets, and e-newsletters.

• 1 Comment
• Tags: Google, Google Plus, marketing, SEO

For those of you who know me, you know that my husband Maki and I are gadget afficionados, we’re early adopters and we’re doing our best to live a green lifestyle at home and at work. So we were thrilled when Maki finally took delivery of his all-electric Nissan Leaf last November. But let me tell you, getting this car and getting the charging station installed was a journey that showed us it ain’t easy being green (as Kermit the frog would say).

First of all, Maki was on the Nissan Leaf waiting list for 18 months. 18 months! We kept getting these teaser e-mails and brochures about how the car was coming, but then there would be one delay after another. When Passport Nissan finally started taking orders, Maki was the first in line. Thank goodness we weren’t in a hurry to get a new car.

Actually buying the car once it became available was a snap. But then again, buying a car these days is pretty easy. You go in, you get financing through the manufacturer, you sign a bunch of paperwork and you’re done.

This is a photo of Maki during the assessment, which took place in August. The installation finally happened in November.

Getting the charging station installed so that we can charge the car overnight (using a regular AC outlet would take over 24 hours) turned out to be quite challenging. Nissan gave us a list of contractors, but then they all dropped out of the program. We finally got a company to come out and do the assessment and give us a quote, but they didn’t actually have any installers/contractors available in our area for a month. When we finally got a contractor, the company took forever to file the permit and then they missed their appointment (just never showed up, never even called).  When the contractor finally bothered to come out, actually installing the charging station was a snap because all they did was hook up the equipment to our already-installed 240 volt circuit and mount it on the wall.

Okay, so now we have the car. It’s pretty, it’s quiet and we feel super hip and green. But first generation products come with a price.  The Leaf’s range is less than 100 miles on a full charge. A few days before Thanksgiving, after driving our son around town for some errands in the afternoon, Maki headed out to Dulles airport to pick up my brother. According to the gauge, he had enough charge to get there and back. But he didn’t count on the gauge not being super accurate because range is affected by driving conditions, e.g., going fast on the highway lowers your range. So Maki is at Dulles and he realizes he can’t make it home. Remember all those TV ads about charging stations up and down the East Coast? Those charging stations don’t exist. Period. End of story. I called the dealer, I googled, I made calls. No charging stations. Maki even left a message with a woman who has a home charging station to see if she would help out. No answer.  I finally found a My Organic Market in Herndon that has 2 free charging stations. They’re not quick charge stations, but they’re charging stations nevertheless. So Maki, my brother and his girlfriend shopped at MOM and went to dinner. After an hour and a half, the Leaf had enough charge to get home. Phew. I guess we’re keeping my Honda Civic Hybrid for a while.

Do we expect to save a lot of money by driving the Leaf? Eh, not really. Our commute to work is short and we can’t exactly go on long road trips with this car. Do we think we’re saving the planet? Eh, not really. We know it took a lot of energy to make the car, especially the gigantic battery. But we do think that if we keep the car long enough, it will be a net gain for the environment because the Leaf does not pollute. We also know that companies rely on early adopters like us to lead the way, share our experiences with others, and pave the way for greener cars.

So far, we LOVE our Nissan Leaf.  If you’re in the DC area and you’re dying to get a ride or learn more, contact me or Maki at work. Maki is always happy to talk about his new car. :-)

• 3 Comments
• Tags: Gadgets, green

The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), which was introduced by Senator (D-VT)  on May 12, 2011, aims to give the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to “rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods”, especially those registered outside the U.S. On the House side, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced by Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) on October 26, 2011. The bills had bipartisan support and were expected to sail through Congress.  But today, passage of the bills are is looking more and more unlikely as SOPA and PIPA opponents’ voices grow louder and members of Congress are flooded with calls and e-mails about the bill.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve no doubt read about, heard about and discussed the SOPA blackout that’s happening all over the Web. Web giant Wikipedia has gone dark to protest SOPA and PIPA, while others like Craigslist, Google, Wired, WordPress and dozens of other sites have put prominent messaging and graphics that clearly show opposition to the proposed legislation. Wired and WordPress show large portions of their home pages blacked out as if they have been censored.

Wow. Let’s just stop and consider the reach of these Web site giants.

Google is ranked by Alexa as the number 1 site in the US and is visited by half of ALL global Internet users daily. So at least half of us today got messaging from Google about SOPA and PIPA. If you use the search tool embedded in your browser, you missed the black censor bar over the Google logo and the simple plea to: Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!, but the Google logo is still blacked out in the top left corner of all pages.

If you ignored Google’s censor logo and call to action, you probably did a search on Google and found a link to Wikipedia, which was blacked out for the day (just the English version). Alexa says Wikipedia is the 6th most popular site on the Web, so millions of us didn’t get to use Wikipedia to look up names, places and things.

If you were looking for a job, car or apartment today, you probably went to Craigslist, the 9th most popular site in the US. Although Craigslist did not go completely dark, an intro page urges everyone to oppose SOPA and PIPA.

And oh yeah, even though Facebook and Twitter didn’t join the dozens of sites that participated in the SOPA blackout, the conversations on these sites were dominated by SOPA and PIPA.

And then of course, there was the overwhelming coverage about the SOPA blackout by mainstream press, alternative press and bloggers.

All of this means that today, January 18, I would bet that the vast majority of American got some kind of exposure to SOPA and PIPA, most of it negative. And if just a fraction of the millions of Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit, Wired, WordPress (and on and on) users took action and contacted their representatives and Senators, today was a very busy day on Capitol Hill.

That’s one heck of a grassroots movement. How about you? How many sites did you visit that had some mention or call to action re: SOPA and PIPA? Did you contact your representative in Congress?

• 1 Comment
• Tags: marketing, privacy

My family moved into our new house last July and guess what? We’re not done with the unpacking and decorating. Yes, the new house is worlds better than our old house, all the furniture is in place, we have stuff on the walls, and most of the boxes are gone, but we’re not done and it’s taken months of tweaking to make the house fabulous.

Our move reminds me of every single website launch at Matrix Group. When a Project Manager reports that he or she will be done with a project when it launches, I warn that there could be weeks of tweaks and that we should just expect it. Here’s why:

Sometime, you just don’t don’t know where to put something until you’ve lived with it a while. I wish I could say that our information architecture process is perfect and we account for every piece of content, but it’s not and we don’t. Clients often have to live with a site for a few days or weeks before they figure out where everything should go. In the meantime, content doesn’t go up or it gets stored under some generic navigation called Resources. I feel like Resources is like our garage; there’s a lot of great stuff in there but it’s hard to find what you’re looking for and you know you need a better organization system.

The little tweaks can make all the difference in the world. The new master bathroom in our house is wonderful but it had a few problems. You had to walk inside to reach the light switch and the towel bar was several feet away from the shower. We were unhappy from the beginning but we didn’t know what we wanted or how to fix the problem. Then one day, my husband came home with a wireless outlet that he attached to the wall. Voila! We can now turn on the light before entering the bathroom! And a hook added to the wall just outside the shower solved the towel problem. Same with a website. We often need a few days or weeks of real users road testing the site before we can make the slight improvements to the flows and paths that make the site really great. For one client, we added a Google map link to a calendar application; it was amazing how much happiness 2 lines of code created.

You can’t finish decorating right away. Our new house is laid out in a very similar manner to the old house but nearly everything had to be re-arranged. Bookshelves got moved around the house, we re-arranged the closets, and the living room is completely different, even though the dimensions are the same and we didn’t buy new furniture. With website redesigns, small changes to the navigation sometimes means a total rework of the content and CMS. And clients often can’t conceive of how to “dress up” pages with images and formatting until they are live.

You’ll get more done if you throw a party. My mom always says that if you want your house to look good, throw a party. You’ll get the boxes unpacked, the pictures hung and the furniture arranged – just in time. When a client picks the launch date for their website, we ask if they will be unveiling the site at a conference or event. I love having a deadline tied to a conference because conferences don’t move, which means everyone hustle to get things done and it’s amazing how much content gets written right before the event and launch.

Anticipate the tweaks. At Matrix Group, we know that it takes time for clients to get comfortable with the new site, use its new functions and figure out what’s working and not working. Leslie Blum from Carolinas AGC calls them “iron outs” and she’s right on. It generally takes between 2-4 weeks to get the help text just right, all the new content loaded, and the integration use cases all worked out. So rather than fight the tweaks, we anticipate them and plan for them in our schedule. I will caution, however, that tweaking past 30 days can get counter-productive. You run the risk of the team losing steam and experiencing launch fatigue.

In the last 30 days, we’ve launched new sites for the Ironworkers, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the Washington Building Congress. Although the sites look great, we’re still tweaking. :-)

• No Comments
• Tags: project management, strategy, Web Design

Our social fundraiser last year was so successful that we’re repeating it this year. Help Matrix Group raise money for DC area charities by participating in our social media campaign. We’re starting with a pot of $1,000. We’re adding $10 for every new “like” on our Facebook page and every new subscriber to our YouTube channel. Then we’ll distribute the money according to votes for the videos about each charity on our YouTube channel.

This whole campaign has been about social media and group effort. First, I polled the Matrix Group staff to see if they wanted to repeat the social media fundraiser from last year. The answer was yes. Then I asked the staff to nominate their favorite charities; I picked the top 5 charities selected by staff.

Next, we reached out to the local charities and asked them to create an informative video that makes the case for giving them money. Not surprisingly, we got amazing, authentic videos from each organization. One was created by a volunteer who did a stellar job.

Next, we came up with a way to fold in social media, increase our reach, and make the campaign fun. So we filmed a kitschy video that explains the campaign and tied the donations to getting new likes on Facebook and subscribers on YouTube. The whole campaign, including creating the video, working with the charities and putting it all together on the web was made possible by my amazing staff.

Check out our funny video on YouTube explaining the campaign and introducing the charities.

Watch the videos of the five deserving organizations on YouTube. The five organizations are Doorways for Women and Families, Food and Friends, SPCA of Northern VA, Washington Animal Rescue League and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.

Here’s how YOU can raise money for those in need this holiday season:

• Like us on our Facebook page.
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• Vote for your favorite charity or charities by liking their videos on our YouTube channel.
• Spread the word about the campaign to your networks on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

You’ve got until December 20 to like, subscribe, vote and share. I’d love to raise $5,000. Can you help?

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• Tags: Facebook, Google Plus, Matrix Group, YouTube

My son’s Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar reminds me that we’re about three weeks away from Christmas, which means scant time to find the perfect gift for family and friends. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you’re probably shopping for some people in your life. As always, I polled the Matrix Group staff for their top holiday gift ideas.

• For the gamers in your life, a Playstation Move or an Xbox Kinect will let them interact with games in a whole new way. With these accessories, your body becomes the controller and you can run, jump, punch and dance to a new generation of games. My favorite Move game is Everybody Dance, which teaches you cool dance moves and provides quite the workout. I’m dancing every morning to try to lose the last of the baby weight. Hey, if Kirstie Alley can dance her way to a new figure, so can I!
• If you’re looking for cool game titles, check out Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Batman: Arkham City.
• In my office, we’re all about the techie toys and all things Star Wars are cool. James thinks the Lego Super Star Destroyer is super cool.
• For a different type of game experience, Tanya recommends Dominion Card Game. This game is so geeky, it won a MENSA award!
• If you want to shop for unique gifts that give back, Jessica likes The Greater Good Network Store. For example, shopping in their Hunger site raises money to fight world hunger and promote peace on earth.
• Jenny loves to hop on Etsy.com, which features mostly handmade items from individuals.  I especially like the reusable paper towels and storage box and wallets made from duct tape of different colors!
• Since zombies are all the rage, it’s important to be equipped with the proper zombie gear. Kelly has some great suggestions: a tactical vest, a zombie survival guide, and survival tools.
• For the kids in your life, a Nintendo 3DS will endear you forever (well, a few months at least), and a Mindflex Duel Game will let them test their powers of concentration and use their brainwaves to levitate a foam ball (no kidding!).
• For the movie lover in your life, we love the Roku LT streaming media box.
• And finally, since we all mostly have everything we need and want in our lives, how about making a donation to a local charity? There are so many good ones in every community, we hope you’ll think of them during this holiday season. Maria likes Oxfam USA and Heifer International.

How about you? What’s at the top of your list this year? What are you gifting and what are you hoping to receive?

• 2 Comments
• Tags: Gadgets

Remember the days when the web was new and we spent hours surfing and checking out random sites? Yeah, neither do I because that was soooo long ago. These days, I spend time on e-mail, the Matrix Group corporate intranet, my favorite news sites, Google reader, and sites linked from my favorite e-mail newsletters. When I’m looking for a resource on the web, I rely on Google or Bing. Or, if I’m familiar with a specific website, I go there for specific subject matter information.

This pattern is validated by user interviews and surveys that Matrix Group conducts for clients when doing a redesign. People visit websites because they need something; they don’t just randomly visit or navigate a site aimlessly hoping to find something useful. But here’s the rub: users rarely know exactly what they need. What they do know is that they need help with a specific topic or problem.

For example, a contractor might be facing an OSHA inspection so she visits her trade association website looking for resources on prepping for an OSHA inspection. She doesn’t know if she needs a book, a CD, a checklist, a webinar, white paper or consultant. All she knows is that she’s got 48 hours to prepare and she needs help fast.

But think about it. Jane contractor needs help re: OSHA inspections, but the website she’s visiting is organized by Events, Publications, Newsletters, etc. What she would love is to be able to find everything offered by her association that will help her with the upcoming inspection. A search is useful, but it might return too many results, and it’s often not curated. How does she know which search result will be most valuable?

This is where taxonomy comes in. If you’re one of my clients, you know that I am a taxonomy fanatic and I won’t let clients get away with NOT having taxonomy on their sites. A taxonomy is a fancy word for a classification system. At Matrix Group, we work with clients to develop a set of categories or topics that reflect members’ needs and special interests. Then we integrate that taxonomy into the content management system (CMS) and the association management software (AMS) so that everything can be categorized: news items, newsletter articles, magazine stories, meetings, webinars, publications, even supplier members.

Here are some great examples of taxonomy at work.

Leadership and staff of the American College of Sports Medicine know that members of the public visit the ACSM website looking for information on specific topics, e.g., exercise for women. So we implemented a taxonomy that lets the staff categorize everything on the website. The result is a topic index that lets the public view ACSM positions, brochures, fact sheets, books, news, events and outside resources. Today, a website visitor does not need to know what kind of service he needs, he can simply click on a topic to find everything offered by the association on that topic.

The Association of Small Foundations did something similar when we helped them create the Tools and Resources portion of their site. ASF knows that their members call, e-mail and visit the website when they need something, and that something is often related to a known set of issues associated with running a foundation with zero or few staff members. If a member needs help with governance, he can browse the Boards and Governance category and find resources on Building Your Board, Board Roles, Board Policing and Running the Board. These resources include articles, sample policies, FAQs, upcoming seminars, publications for sale, and a consultants. In ASF’s case, members and the public can browse the topics, but only members can access the protected content.

Now you see why I love taxonomies. Taxonomies connect people to content and let them more easily find the information and resources they need.

How about you? How are you using taxonomy on your site? Got any good examples of taxonomy in action on a website or app?

• 1 Comment
• Tags: Information-Architecture

On Monday, Google opened up Google+ and allowed companies and brands to create corporate pages. Previously, only individuals could create Google+ profiles (believe me, we tried to create a corporate page and were thwarted by Google!).

If you haven’t done it already, I encourage you to create a page for your organization, company, brand or initiative by going to the Google+ Create Page.

Even if you don’t know how or what you’re going to do on this new social media platform, I think you need to be on it because:

• Google+ has 40 million subscribers and that number is growing fast. It’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 800 million subscribers, sure, but 40 million is still a big number.
• Google+ users tend to be early adopters. According to Target Marketing, in the first few months of the network’s presence, the users were mostly young men, a third of users were between 25 and 34 years old and 59 percent of all visitors were male. This will surely change over time.
• Just as there isn’t one TV network or channel that dominates anymore, chances are your organization’s target audiences are on various social networks so you probably need a presence on all the major platforms.
• Google likes to drive traffic to its web properties, like YouTube and Blogger, so having a corporate presence on Google+ will be good for search engine optimization.
• Google likes to integrate its offerings, so there will surely be really neat tools to tie together Google+ with Google Analytics, Google search, AdWords, Google Reader, Gmail, etc. For example, there’s already a way to +1 an article in Google reader. +1 is Google’s version of the Facebook “like.” I’m especially excited about Ripples, which is an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network and help you discover new and interesting people to follow.

My dilemma right now is that I don’t know how the Matrix Group Google+ page will be the same and different from our presence on Facebook. If you’ve ever heard me speak or if you follow this blog closely, you know that I preach a layered approach to social media where each platform has a different purpose and content strategy. There is overlap to be sure, but it’s best to have a different strategy for each platform to encourage your target audiences to follow you in multiple ways.

As your marketing team ponders this same question of market positioning for your Google+ page, be sure to create your page early to reserve the name and have a presence for the early users who will be looking for you.

Have you created your company’s Google+ page? How will you be using it to connect with your customers, prospects or members?

• No Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, social networking

I was on the phone with a company receptionist the other day, trying desperately to reach someone in sales or customer service. Trouble is, the person I was speaking with could not have cared less about me or my needs. She kept repeating that she had no idea where anybody was, she could not leave her desk and all she could do was put me through to voice mail. You can imagine how that encounter made me feel about the company and their products.

In the corporate world, it’s conventional to believe that the person answering the phone is the lowest person on the totem pole. Worse yet, many companies believe we can replace receptionists with automated attendants: ring the doorbell for service or dial by extension.

Me, I’ll always have someone answer our main line because most people calling Matrix Group are customers who need help or prospects who need our services. So you better believe I want a warm, friendly, knowledgeable and committed person answering our phones! And because it’s not always clear to people who does what in a Web agency (do you talk to the programmer or a front-end developer or the PM about an error on your admin site?), a good receptionist can field and route calls efficiently.

My Creative Director Alex Pineda says that every employee is a brand ambassador for the company. So my receptionist, as the person who perhaps has the most contact with the most people, is arguably the most important brand ambassador I have. Which is why her title is First Impressions Officer. The other admins in the office, who also share customer interaction responsibilities, are equally important brand ambassadors.

Scott Spandauer defines a brand as “more than just your company image. It also includes your customers’ experience and the expectation you set when doing business with your company. In short, it is (a) promise.”

As a CEO, I may set the tone for our corporate culture and brand, but it’s my staff who live and reinforce it with our customers. Company owners everywhere, remember that your customers’ experiences start with the person who answers the phone and greets people at the door.

• No Comments
• Tags: branding, corporate culture, customer service, Matrix Group

So I’ve been on Google Plus for a while now. Actually, I’ve had an account for a while now, having received an invitation early, but I rarely post updates and I rarely read updates from my various circles. I’m simply struggling to integrate it into my life.

It’s not that I don’t like Google Plus. On the contrary, I like the interface, I like that it’s so easy to add people to circles and post updates to only specific circles, and I like that the interface is (for now, at least) nice and clean, not cluttered with ads.

It’s just that I’m feeling saturated. I already have my routine of posting interesting news items to Twitter, posting personal updates on Facebook, uploading my weekly video interviews to YouTube, checking into FourSquare when I go out to eat or visit a new place, and blogging once a week.

The question for me has become: what place should Google Plus occupy in my life?

I guess I could simply post the same updates to a bunch of social networks, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m connected with the same people on multiple networks, they would see the same posts and that’s no fun and a waste of time.

Perhaps Google Plus will become, like Twitter, another public persona for me, whereas Facebook is the network I reserve for family, friends and close network.

Sean Parker, a co-founder of original music file-sharing service Napster and a prominent Facebook shareholder, says that, “power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+.” Could this be true? In my case, my techiest of friends and co-workers seem to be more active on Google+ these days but my network is still firmly on Facebook. And yet, Google+ is grabbing subscribers fast. GooglePlusWiki says that there are now over 20M people on the network.

After pondering this issue for a while now, here’s where what I’m thinking. Although the majority of my network is still not on Google+, I need to be on it. Because no one network will dominate and it will be hard to ignore Google+. Just as I tell clients that they need to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr because their audiences are on these networks, I know that I need to be on all the major networks personally. I will figure out where to find the time to post to Google+. I will repeat some posts because there is some overlap in connections but it’s not 100%. I will hope that HootSuite will soon let me post to Google+ in addition to Twitter and Facebook. And I will figure out what brainspace Google+ will occupy.

How about you? Are you on Google+? What is Google+ doing to your Facebook and Twitter updates? Are you posting different things? How are you integrating Google+ into your day?

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, Twitter