About Jodi Kaplan

How to Use the Internet to Defy Time and Space

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

mug This post was going to be a bit of a rant. Yesterday, I got a small package. I didn’t look at it too closely and thought it was Canon’s broken customer service returning my camera. I couldn’t understand why they’d go to the trouble, not to mention spend $7.50 in postage, to send it back to me. No wonder it cost nearly as much to repair as to buy a new one! They’re crazy!

Touch people through the internet

In the middle of the night, I realized the box was much too heavy to be a point-and-shoot camera. So, since I couldn’t sleep, I opened it. Inside was this mug (on the right), a lovely note, and two teabags. It was a gift from my wonderful friend Jule, who I’ve never met. I’d seen the mugs on her blog yesterday and asked for one — little did I know that I already had one! She mailed it two days before!

I read the note, drank my tea from the mug this morning, and felt really happy and touched that she’d reached out to me like that.

Connecting your offline and online marketing

Of course, Jule wasn’t trying to sell me anything, but connecting online and offline marketing is a great strategy. Sending mugs to everyone you know online may not be practical, but you can combine an online and offline marketing campaign.

For example, send a postcard marketing campaign to prospective or current clients and then follow up with email. Or send them to a landing page with a special offer.

Create a social media promotion for a new product or event, and then offer a special promotion to attendees who share your promotion or hashtag.

Share your thoughts

What do you do to connect with your blog readers or clients or others you may know online but never meet face-to-face? Or do you? Do you think this is important?

The Truth About Google Rankings

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

Have you seen websites or blogs with seemingly random words in bold type, such as, “Do you love polar bear keychains? I do. Here’s where you can buy polar bear keychains.” The words in bold seem to have no particular purpose. There’s no reason to emphasize them. Is there? Well, there is a purpose, and that’s to try to rank higher in Google.

Rank higher in Google

What they’re doing is trying to catch Google’s attention. Google’s algorithm “likes” text in larger sizes (such as headlines and subheadings), text in italics, and text in bold. It uses those signals to tell what’s important about the page and to get a better idea of the subject matter. People who randomly bold or italicize text are trying to appeal to Google and other search engines so that their pages will rank higher. The repetitive keywords are added in the hope that the post will get a small boost in Google rankings.

Get more attention

Sure, use bold when it makes sense, such as, “There were 500 candidates for the job, and I made the top 5 finalists!” When you look at sites with random bolded words, it’s distracting and looks odd. It slows you down (at least it slows me down). You want them to read, not wonder whether you went nuts with your bold tags.

Robots don’t buy anything

As Sonia Simone put it, “SEO is people.” I’m all in favor of ranking higher on Google, but not at the expense of human beings. Humans are the ones who will actually read your site (and make a decision about whether to hire you or buy something). Jonathan Fields ran a test with an article marketing whiz. She got him on the front page of Google for the keywords she was using. Great stuff! Except his clicks didn’t change.

What do you think?

Is the bolding OK? Will we all get used to it? Or is it annoying? Share your thoughts.

Image by Christian Ferrari

Friday Fun: Cool Tools!

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

Image via Wikipedia

OK, these two are really great. If I’d found them earlier, they would have saved me loads of time!

It took me ages to figure out the color of the blue font on this blog and match it to create the sign-up box at the end of my posts. With these tools, it would have taken a few seconds.

The first one was hiding right under my nose.

Digital Color Meter: It’s included with my Mac software. If you’ve got a Mac, you’ll find it in the Utilities folder. Fire it up and it will tell you the color formula (web or RGB percentages) for any color that you hover over.

Could be something on a web page, a file on your desktop, a font color in a document, anything at all. It will save you loads of time trying to match colors.

Firefox Colorzilla Plugin: If you don’t have a Mac (or even if you do), try the Firefox Colorzilla plugin. This will only work on web pages, but it will tell what color something is. It lets you zoom in, and has history and favorites palettes (so you’ll have a handy record of what colors you like). You can also pan over the page, without the scroll bars.

A Marketing Tip from a Musical (Using Reciprocity to Get More Conversions)

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

Image via Wikipedia

Remember this lyric from the musical Chicago?

There’s a lot of favors
I’m prepared to do –
You do one for Mama
She’ll do one for you!

In the musical, Mama (the warden) is singing about “reciprocity.” She promises that if you do a favor for her, she’ll do one for you.

Does a musical work in real life?

Sure, people in real life generally don’t stop and break into song in the middle of the street, but using the technique of reciprocity does.

It’s a strong persuasion technique which was famously proven by Robert Ciadini in his book “Influence”.

He reported that Ethiopia (an extremely poor country) donated large sums of money to Mexico after a devastating earthquake. Why would a poor country do that? Because Mexico had supported Ethiopia when Italy invaded years before.

When you’re good to mama, mama’s good to you

The idea is that if you do something for someone, they feel obligated to reciprocate in some way. So, you offer a sample chapter of your book, or a free report, or a free blog. Then you ask (and you have to ask) for something in return.

It doesn’t have to be a request to buy something (and probably shouldn’t be right away). Instead offer something that the reader will find valuable and useful. It can be a free landing page assessment or a report in exchange for filling out a survey.

The photo on this post is licensed as Creative Commons, which means I can use it, so long as I reciprocate with a link and attribution to the original source.

Reciprocity!

Oh, and feel free to tweet or Google Plus this post.

Web Design Decisions: Personal Taste or Market Importance?

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

Image via Wikipedia

Ever wonder how people can stand cheap design? Do you get mad when you see crappy logos, blinking/flashing ads, or weird web design decisions?

Someone on a forum got annoyed recently (I’m changing details) about crappy mugs (he sells nice ones).

How can people use those? I see them in offices or on TV and I want to scream!

He’s confusing personal with important.

Fine quality is important to him. It may not be important to other people. Why use cheap mugs (or cheap designers or cheap writers)?

1) They don’t know any better
2) They know and don’t care
3) Focused mostly on budget
4) Prefer to spend money elsewhere – such as fine tea or coffee to go in those mugs

Creatives vs. marketing (or non-creatives)

You (or I) may think sites such as 99Designs and odesk are a travesty. That doesn’t mean everyone does. And that market may not be best for you anyway. Ignore them. Go find clients who do care. Then convince them you’re a better alternative. Tell them why it’s better for them. Focus on the benefits they will get from a trained designer, not the benefit you get because they hired you.

I personally don’t care about the Liverpool Garden Festival, but somebody else cared enough to make this mug and successfully sell it.

“Personal’s not the same thing as important. People just think it is.” – Esme Weatherwax (bonus points if you get the reference).