Winter Is Coming

I wasn’t a big fan of the show Game of Thrones on HBO, but I have heard the phrase “winter is coming” and I always relate it back to that show. Without having watched much of it I don’t know how it relates to the various seasons or characters, but at this point it resonates with me. I couldn’t help but utter this very phrase under my breath this morning as I woke up to a new day, “winter is coming.” Not only is winter actually coming based on the time of year it is, there is also a metaphorical winter that feels like it is coming in my life. Winter is my least favorite season. I have self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD.) There’s no true diagnosis for this type of depression nor is there any definitive cause, but many experts say the culprit is shorter days and colder nights. Read the full article…

My Comeback Story: The Beginning

I woke myself up in the middle of the night last night and my mind was racing. It had been a long weekend of running around from basketball game to basketball game with my daughters, which was a joyous distraction from the “real” world. Mixed in between the basketball games were some very hard conversations I was having with my wife on a number of topics. They were honest, but at some times contentious, discussions about the state of our world on a variety of fronts. The details of each conversation are complex, tedious and not fit for public consumption. They are however, an important backdrop to why I woke up in the middle of the night with my mind racing. Hard conversations like the ones we were having can challenge you in so many ways. They can challenge your thinking on a subject. They can challenge you to look Read the full article…

What To Do When Your Creative Juices Just Aren’t Flowing

These days if your creativity is not on 10 everyday you are going to struggle to create content and was we know content is the key component to any good digital marketing strategy. What then do we do when our creativity juices feel like they have run dry? Any person who undertakes a creative endeavor will tell you that it is completely normal to feel like all your good ideas have dried up, but rest assured they have not, they may just need a little help blossoming on some days more than others. The good news is that there are some proven strategies you can employ to squeeze a little creativity out of those fingers and toes, even when you’re not feeling your most creative self. Here are a few of the things we like to use when we are staring at a blank white screen with no blog content Read the full article…

Three Things To Check If Your Google Ads Are Not Performing

There is good news about advertising placement in the digital space and there is bad news (there is even some in between news.) The good news is that it is cost effective even for a small business. The bad news is it can be challenging to get it right. The in between news, well that’s what we want to talk about today. One of the huge positives about digital advertising compared with traditional advertising is that you are not just shooting in the dark. You can start a campaign and then almost instantly see how it is doing. This is a great thing, especially for small businesses who are limited in their marketing spend. There are also a LOT of moving parts to “get right” in order to have a successful campaign. The moving parts can make or break your campaign and the in between news is that you have Read the full article…

How Many Listeners Should You Expect From Your Podcast?

Just like all of your digital marketing strategies you need to have a plan and measurable statistics to ensure that you are getting an return on investment (ROI) from your podcast. It is nice for your business to have a presence on the fastest growing content platform on the web, but if you don’t know what success looks like you’ll just be yelling into the abyss without a clear understanding if it is working. The good news is that most of the work of figuring out how many people are listening to your podcast and who they are is done for you if you pick the right podcasting host. For our podcasts we use Spreaker which is a cost-effective and robust platform that allows us to measure all of the statistics necessary to truly understand the ROI on our podcast episodes. When you are getting started you need to have Read the full article…

How Many SEO Blogs Are Enough

One of the most time consuming items on your digital marketing plan is going to be writing content in the form of SEO Blogs. Writing content that is optimized for the search engines but is easily digestable for your clients or customers to read can be a challenge for even the most experienced writers among us. It is, however, critical to your digital marketing strategy and if you skip it because it is time consuming you will find yourself spending more time pulling out your hair for lack of website traffic then you would have spent just writing the blogs. Search engines like Google thrive on content and serving the most relevant content to their users, it’s what gives them credibility in the eyes of their users. They want to be able to serve recent and relevant content so that their users find what they need quickly. If they do, Read the full article…