she's an author.

"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” - Toni Morrison

Introducing: the DIYPR Series

So, what is it that you actually, like, do?
– The Question

I’ve been playing around with a few different ways to describe what it is that I actually do. I’ve called myself a “digital marketer”, a “content developer”, “content marketer”, “digital content marketer”.

I try not to take this naming stuff too seriously and just focus on the work. But it’s become a bit of a game – a challenge I’ve accepted to try and find the perfect way to describe what it is that I do.

glazed_eyes

The long story goes something like this: I love ideas, worked in the PR industry for a few years, and have some front-end web development skills, so what I do is a combination of all of those things.

Then one day I got an idea. It started in my brain like: “Wouldn’t it be great if I could create something that could perfectly describe what I’m trying to get at? Maybe instead of trying to come up with the perfect phrase, I could just draw a picture.”

So I came up with something…

DIYPR_FINALgraphic (2)

The idea behind it is that this “stuff” — public relations, creating content, social media, marketing — can be easy. Especially for entrepreneurs, business owners, freelance consultants, independent-types who pretty much do everything (if not almost everything) on their own.

The key takeaway in this series of posts is:

PR opportunities are everywhere. Use those opportunities to build your social media profile and develop content that you can use and reuse.

If you’ve got a small business or you’re an independent consultant, and you’re going to host an event, do a talk or some other thing where you’re the centre of attention, make it a habit to get and track content from that event.

Keep in mind when creating content that the best stuff is content you can repurpose. If you create a blog post, presentation or video, create another piece for repurposing that you’ll keep. This way you can share something immediately and you also have something you can use in the future. Maybe use a calendar to pick a date for repurposed content, so that you don’t post something when it’s past the “expiration date”.

The big content guys do stuff like this all the time. They’ll have a webinar (the PR part), live tweet during the webinar (social media) and then have some type of content on their sites to connect with the webinar, such as a blog, or they’ll just post the webinar itself on YouTube or their website. Then sometimes that content will be reused in some way, maybe via a presentation or short infographic.

The "Basic" DIYPR.
The “Basic” DIYPR.

What to expect.

So over the next year, I plan to publish one or two DIYPR Series posts a month. I picked twenty business or organization types and described a PR tactic that could be used for that business in a particular scenario. Then I made up some ideas to show how each initiative could translate to social media and creating content.

Here’s what each post will look like:

  • business / organization type (ie. bakery, farmers’ market, etc.)
  • scenario: not applicable in most but I tried to include common scenarios, like a film festival or book release
  • the idea: could be considered “traditional PR” (ie. an event or campaign)
  • digital + content: ideas on creating content out of the idea, stuff that can be used for your website and would be easy to share on…
  • social media: I tried to go beyond “share photos on Twitter” for this section

What’s the catch?

There is none. The graphics, ideas and everything else associated are under a strict Do-Whatever-The-Hell-You-Want [Forever] License. Feel free to take and tweak as much as you like.

Just like with anything else though, the ideas shouldn’t be used in isolation. Feel free to use them as part of a plan you have already, or as a way to kick/jump-start your own efforts.

So with that out of the way, next week in the DIYPR Series: The Basics.

How to know when to rebrand + redesign your website.

A couple weeks ago, I attended a webinar for the Content Management Institute on website rebranding and redesign. It was an apt topic for me because I spent pretty much the whole Christmas break this past year on rebranding and redesigning my own site.

It’s strategy that wins wars… You have to have your website strategy clearly in mind before kicking off any redesign or rebrand project. Know what you want your new website to do.
– Lou Jordano (CMO, Ektron)

What my site looked like before I rebranded and rebuilt
Before: nerissamartin.com

Here’s some points on how I knew it my site needed to be redone. Hopefully something here can help you decide if you need to overhaul your own website, but if not, you’ll find four more reasons to rebrand your site below.

1. I knew I would still have to explain ‘what I do’ to anyone who visited.

While I was building the site, a part of me was getting mentally prepared to explain to people what I did. I knew that visiting the site wouldn’t explain everything right off the bat (hence the site I have now :)). I wanted my site to be all about my blog, so having it front and centre seemed to make sense. But my site wasn’t built to just be a blog, it’s basically the centre of everything I do, so it needed to be more than just a place I could list posts.

Being the core of my business, you would think the ‘About’ section (or information) would be essential. But on my old site it was literally a bunch of images that didn’t really say anything. Talk about a missed opportunity.

2. The bounce rate was ridiculously high, like 99.999%.

This is perhaps the biggest reason I know the redesign worked. After redo, the bounce rate dropped significantly. Granted, my site is more or less one page, but compared to other similar sites, the bounce rate is right where it should be.

Screenshot of my GA dashboard showing (YAY!) decline in bounce rate.

3. The site was inconsistent with who I was / what I did.

I wanted to include everything on the site – I’d gone to school a bunch of times, wrote a book and sang on the side. I wanted the site to have all that stuff in it but after a meeting with Heather, CEO @ HackerYou, I realized that in throwing everything on my site I had made a messaging-mess.

Rebranding gave me the opportunity to think of more creative ways to say what I wanted to. For example, using the typewriter image as the background for the first section. I also thought of blog post ideas and other ways I could use content to talk about music and writing.

4. I knew I would have to rebrand / redesign the site halfway through completing it.

This point speaks more to paying attention to your intuition. While I was building the site, I knew I would have to redo it. By the time this dawned on me I was halfway through, so throwing everything away didn’t even cross my mind.

I figured I would stay on track and that the finished product would be a kind of ‘holding page’ to just have ‘something up there’ until I got a real site. Except it wasn’t. I was spending hours on it, much more time than should have been if its purpose was really only temporary.

Sure I learned some new things and put my fresh HackerYou skills to use, but I was too far deep in building the site to get any perspective. This is where I learned the lesson of having a vision for your site.

A picture of my site on a blog post on my site. Very meta.
After: nerissamartin.com
Do You Need To Rebrand / Redesign Your Website?

I’m going to resist the urge to find every outdated / ugly site online and just post links with a full description of what they’re doing wrong. We’ve all seen a site that could use a refresh; doing that would be what the kids call “a read”. So here are four more reasons you may need to rebrand or redesign your site:

1. Your site was built more than three years ago and hasn’t been touched ever since.

A lot has happened in web development over the last few years. If you’re website is more than three years old and it hasn’t been updated, it’s time to look at how those developments can get you paid.

2. Your business has gone through some major changes.

Is there stuff on your site that is no longer relevant to you or your business? Do customers continually ask you for products or expect certain things because they ‘saw it online’? The solution is simple: update your site!

Use the opportunity to educate your current / potential customers and clients about your business. You’ll spend less time answering questions and more time making money.

3. You’re getting not-so-great feedback about the site, its features and / or functions.

If you’re getting unsolicited feedback on your site, consider it a gift. Most of the time visitors to your site will keep their [sometimes very valuable] opinions to themselves. But they’ve got insights, those silent witnesses. They have reactions to the way your site looks and how it works, and this information is probably exactly what you need to improve UI / UX.

Why not ask someone their opinion of your site, or send out a survey to a select group of customers / clients? Think of it as an opportunity to build a relationship and be prepared to offer them something in return.

Lorem ipsum stock image website.
Still got that lorem ipsum text and stock images up on your site? Then it might be time to redesign.

4. You want to, or are getting ready to, rebrand your business.

You’re lucky if you’re getting ready to make some changes to your business. Your website hasn’t been re-touched yet so in some ways you and your business are “starting fresh”.

While you’re considering rebranding your business, think about ways you could potentially update your website. You might want to reach out to a content marketing or development expert to ask about potential opportunities to update your site in a way that will be consistent with your new brand.

Conclusion

Websites are never finished only abandoned. You and your developer could spend the rest of your lives redesigning, rebranding, retooling, rewriting.

Having some guidelines can help you and your team decide how updates should be made, if they should be made. On a basic level, the changes to your site should follow the flow of your business. Rebrand your site if and when your business changes or people important to your business are telling you a redo is needed.

Using the Caret Symbol Selector in jQuery to make CPT-Gold.

One of the things that was on my wish list as a consultant was a way to show potential clients a clean, easy-to-read proposal. Something that was consistent with my brand, could be created and shared easily, and that I could update or customize as much as I wanted to.

CARET_final

The most important thing for me was having all the information for each proposal in one post, but I wanted to break it up into sections that could be navigated through like a typical website.

Each menu item in the navigation bar would link to a section of the proposal, but I didn’t want the webpage to reload on every click.

Enter the ^ selector and jQuery. [Thanks to slipsum for some ipsum, and some swears.]

sow_preview2

After planning out each section, the headings I needed, subsections and the overall flow I was able to create the custom post type. Then in the proposal template file, I pulled in each section under a specific ID, using “div_” at the beginning of each ID name.

The caret (^) selector in jQuery allowed me to select all divs with an id that started with “div_”. See here for more info.

To create the behaviour I wanted, I used .hide() on all the divs I didn’t want to show, while making sure to single out the section(s) I did want displayed with .show().

To start with, I created an intro ‘page’ that would be attached to each proposal. This would be the first thing users see when they land on the page, so all of the proposal sections needed to be under .hide() when the page loads.

Then once the user clicks on a menu item, all the “div_” sections are hidden, except for the one corresponding to whichever item was selected [I used .attr() to remove menu item links].

The title of each post would be the client’s name, so I used a .click() method on that to .show() all the sections (except for the intro) so the proposal could be viewed in full.

cmplt_sow_FINAL

Is your site getting the right traffic? Six steps to “yes”.

Last week I published a post on creating a vision for your website. This can help you decide the best direction to go in before development, and (spoiler alert!) can help you figure out what kinds of content you want to develop. After launch it can be tempting to just leave your site and hope for visits.

But we know better.

deploy3

Getting traffic isn’t just about getting traffic. Ideally you want to share useful content that’s targeted for your audience. If you’re doing that, the traffic you get will be people who are interested in what you have to offer.

So with that, here are six things you can do to make sure your audience finds your site.

1. Register your site with major search engines.

It takes five minutes.

2. Take care of your visitors.

Ideally you want visitors to go from being strangers to clients. Do you have content that helps them through this process? Stuff that requires them to stay a while? Here are some ideas on content you can develop that will help your visitors:

  • FAQs. Use any questions you get (or imagine you would get) on a regular basis. Think of this as content developed from your community, or as Copyblogger calls it ‘community data’.
  • Expose yourself. The ‘About’ page is part of what makes up any website. Think about expanding this to include anything anyone could ever want to know about your industry and business. This content could take any form that makes sense for you: blog posts, videos, etc.
  • The “Order” page. It’s great when someone is ready to buy. It’s also a great opportunity. If a site visitor is interested in buying your services or products, maybe they also want to subscribe to a mailing list or follow you on social media? Use your ‘Place an Order’ page to do get a sale and then build a connection.

3. Make an editorial calendar.

Following point #2, once you’ve created a vision for your site, you should have some idea of the types of content you’ll be publishing (ie. videos, blog posts, images, ebooks, news releases, etc.). You don’t even have to make a whole editorial calendar, just schedule posts and updates into the calendar you already use.

Here's a look at my editorial calendar. A constant work in progress.
Here’s a look at my editorial calendar. A constant work in progress.

4. Tell everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know.

  • Share on your social media profiles, send an email out to any subscribers or VIPs.
  • Update your business cards, flyers, t-shirts, boxes; anything you have with your business name on it is fair game.
  • Same goes for any content published to your site. Tell everyone when you publish anything new.

5. Learn more about web development.

  • You might be like,”but, why?” and “what does this have to do with content?” But don’t forget about your vision. Learn about the stuff you think you’ll eventually need so that when it comes time for you to build onto the site you have you’ll know what’s involved.
  • The second reason I recommend this is so you know how to update your site when you have new content. Nothing beats D’ingIY!

6. Check the map.

  • Keep your vision in mind and as business grows, check back in with the website to check that it’s consistent and represents your business accurately.
  • You should also make sure to have analytics set up on your site. I won’t go into too much detail (because), but in a nutshell as the owner of the vision you want to make sure you know how your site is performing against your goals.
  • In addition to tracking the traffic to your site, track traffic to the content you publish.
Conclusion

Get the right traffic to your site by registering on major search engines, create content that helps your potential clients and customers get acquainted with you and what you’re selling, and telling everyone you know. Keep your site consistent with your vision by checking analytics.