Google+ was already kind of a mess. Then they redesigned it and made it even worse. The Roundpeg team has some pretty strong opinions on the redesign.

Allison

Why is every website now trying to Pinterest? Mashable, Etsy and now Google+ are all jumping onto a layout with big pictures arranged three or four abreast. That layout, with stories and pictures in individual pods arranged in rows, works great for Pinterest. But not every freaking site is Pinterest! Google used to be a leader, but lately all it seems to be doing is following. Copying Pinterest with Google+, rolling out their new streaming music service way behind Spotify–is this all a sign of a larger creative malaise at Google? Either way, not impressed, Google. Stop building giant statues of dessert and step up your game.

Peter

I remember when I signed up to wait for Google+. It was going to be the smart Facebook, a gleaming social spaceship at the center of the Internet. Just using it would redeem every meme and political rant posted by not-me. Today, my hope for Google+ goes mostly unfulfilled. It’s shiny and clean indeed, but Google+ is parched for humanity. Twitter is great because it’s a mess of people texting to the world at once. Facebook is like Times Square at noon on a Saturday, all adverts, weirdos and people with cameras. I want to like Google+, it could be my Facebook. Unfortunately, it’s still the early adopters in there. And they’re just standing in a circle, talking about Google+.

Tamre

Google+ has so much potential and it’s wasting everything it has going for it with redesign after redesign, lame terminology and usability that’s a joke. It should be intuitive and it baffles me that with their large group of talented designers, they haven’t created their own signature design and stuck with it. Then there’s the trying-too-hard vibe I get from the Pinterest-looking tiles and video chat full of effects. It’s difficult to take the dorky names Hangout and Hangout Parties seriously even though the video chats are useful. I’d be willing use Google+ more if it wasn’t so drastically different each time I log in. I want to love Google+, I really do, but until it figures out what it wants to be, I’m not getting too attached.

Lorraine

G+ was clearly designed for mobile devices, and the desk top was an afterthought.  While the web version ia clunky the mobile interface scrolls easily.  The extra large images fill the tablet screen, with all  relevant information, such as the number of comments and the title of the blog post superimposed on the image.  Browsing images and reading short posts is easy and elegant.  Not all of these elements translates to the desktop.   I still don’t think this is a great social network but a nice way to scan news updates.

 Whitney

From a web design standpoint, this site is a mess. Let’s just address the elephant in the room up front. Why the heck is the cover photo so enormous? I understand the whole visual appeal band wagon all the social sites have been hurling themselves on, but 2120 x 1192–really? That’s wider than the typical 1920px monitor. And why, upon loading your profile, can you only see about 10% of the cover photo and make me scroll up to view the rest? On top of all this, literally, is Google’s navigation and search bar that minimizes when scrolling down and expands while scrolling up, which is just annoying. Google, you have risen from start-up search engine to an empire nearly as big as Microsoft. Why would you stop utilizing your great leadership skills that carried you up there?

Jenna

When trying to sum up Google+, I don’t even really have words. All I can see is the cover photo when I visit someone’s profile. I feel like it’s just a joke. With that mandatory gradient on the cover photo, it’s like they’re trying to be the boss of me. For instance, with the Roundpeg cover photo, it takes our clean look and makes it murky. And the round avatars? Nothing looks good in a circle. What person’s picture is going to look good in that? There are no circle picture frames for a reason. As for the redesign of the main feed, I’m not really bothered by that. It’s Pinterest-style, which is what we’re used to looking at these days, though it’s a bit confusing about what was posted in what order. But as for the cover photo, I just can’t.

photo credit: neil alejandro via photopin cc

A pingback is very similar to a wombat. Both are tiny and mostly harmless. And should you run across one, you may not know what to do with it. Same thing with blog comments. Unless your blog is wildly popular, you may not get even one comment in a month of posts. If you’re getting started blogging, you should know the basics of comment (and pingback) moderation for when you do see one in the wild. Here’s a quick primer on these two related kinds of blog post feedback.

Pingbacks and comments are similar in principle. They’re a way for blog author to know what others have to say about their post. When an author writes about your post and links to it from their own content, you’ll automatically get a pingback to let you know who wrote it and where you can read what they said. The WordPress Introduction to Blogging describes pingbacks as “remote comments.”

Think about pingbacks as a way to let you know when your ears should be burning. If someone else is talking about your content, you want to know, right? This might be an opportunity to network with a new contact. Or you might need to respond to someone’s criticism. When you approve a pingback, it appears in your comment section as a link to their content. We’ll talk about guidelines for moderation and approval later on. You might have also get a few trackbacks; with a few differences, they’re the same as pingbacks, just an older technology.

The comment section displays below your blog posts. This is where users can leave messages to discuss your blog post. Anyone can leave a comment directly on your post under any name or alias and anyone can read the comments displayed there. It’s sort of like having a Letters to the Editor section on each of your blog posts. Depending on your blog’s settings, these comments may be left without needing to be approved. So whole discussions about your content can go on without your approval. However, most blogging systems give you the option to remove and delete comments.

One Way to Handle Your Comment Section

You might consider disabling comments and removing this section from your blog completely. There’s a risk involved in letting other people talk. They’ll praise you, agree with you and shoot you down all at once. People might say nasty things about you on your own blog. And your goals for the blog simply might not be served by hosting those discussions.

However, I’ve found that most comments on my posts for Roundpeg are from friends and people in the same industry. We allow all comments to appear instantly and rarely remove anyone’s comment. Instead, we try to respond to every comment on recent posts. The risk is worth the reward of building relationships with other people, whether they go and share your post with their friends, remember you when they need help later or just share a laugh in the moment.

You’re Going to Get Spammed

Just like comments, pingbacks can provide opportunities to network for your blog. However, both are susceptible to spam. Hosting spam in your comment section looks bad and can be dangerous for you and your readers. Use a tool like Akismet to zap most of that spam before it gets to you. Then just check out your blog system’s comment moderation to trash anything else that looks spammy. You’ll also get pingbacks from yourself if you link to content from a post on the same blog. Keep those in your comments if you want, but it’s ok to delete them.

Comments and pingbacks are a valuable way to enrich your blog with real relationships and lively discussions about topics that matter to you and your readers. With spam protection and some basic knowledge about these tools, you can avoid the pitfalls and enjoy one of the chief pleasures of blogging: the discussion afterwards.

This blog was created as a complement to the primary Asterion, LLC website to give the sales team to share new information and capture prospects through an email sign up form. Click here to view the blog

Let’s play Twitter fact or fiction for minute: you need 15,000 followers to be successful on Twitter. It’s fiction. There are social media “experts” out there who would have you believe that is a fact. Then they’ll take your money and give you 15,000 followers in return overnight!

Those new 15,000 followers you got overnight aren’t following you because they’re interested in your business. Empty numbers are like empty calories – they look good and taste good, but they hurt way more than they help. Focus on the quality of your followers, not the quantity, and the group of followers you do have will be worth much more.

Building up quality Twitter followers takes time and a real effort. The people you want as customers can spot authenticity a mile away so your activity on Twitter should be warm and personable. Potential followers want to feel like you care about them and if your tweets reflect that, they’ll be more likely click that follow button.

Make It a Conversation

It may seem like we’re beating a dead horse here, but the honest to goodness best practice for gaining new followers (in any social media network) is to create good content. That can be anything from links to helpful blog posts to articles you find interesting or even photos of what’s going on at your business. Mix it up with links that pertain to your industry to fun things you find inspiring. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on it, just make it genuine and valuable.

The time you do take should be used to engage with your followers and build online relationships with them. If someone posts a question that you know the answer to, go ahead and reply to them. Pose your own questions for feedback and trade a few tweets with those who reply to you. The results might surprise you.

People love it when a brand tweets them and there’s a good chance they’ll share your response with their friends, not just on Twitter but on other networks, too. When I received a reply from one of my favorite brands, I took a screenshot of the tweet and shared it on Facebook. Maybe that makes me nerdy, but it made my day and I was happy to share it for free to my networks.

Engage in Your Industry

Besides creating interesting content and engaging your followers, you can give yourself a boost by being active in your industry. Follow your peers and competitors on Twitter to be a part of your industry’s online community.

Interact with them as well by offering congratulations if they have a big announcement or to share information about new advancements. Non-industry people are watching and will recognize you as an authority as well as a business that plays nice with everyone.

It’s going to take time to build up quality followers organically and while you may never hit astronomical follower numbers, you can turn those followers into customers by being a resource for them and valuing their support.

photo credit: Kris Krug via photopin cc

There’s an old rule says all website content should be placed above a mysterious, invisible line. Never to be crossed, this line marks the zone below which nobody scrolls. If you’ve done web design, you’re familiar with this dreaded territory and clients’ requests to keep it all “above the fold.”

Designers sometimes fear that calls-to-action and content located below the fold will go unseen on small screens. And clients ask for calls-to-action placed high up on the page, pushed right to the top. As if users won’t respond to anything they have to scroll to see. There’s too much time spent fighting the fold and asking where calls-to-action should go. I think “where?” is the wrong question.

It’s not where, constable, but when that matters.

The term “fold” comes to us from newspaper advertising, where the physical limitation of folded papers made the top-half of the page much more valuable than the hidden bottom half. On the Internet, where computer screens don’t bend (yet), the fold is the point onscreen where a particular user must begin to scroll down to keep reading. When computer screens were small, cramped things and scrolling was cumbersome, the analogy fit. Users spent most of their time at the top of pages. Anything below 600 pixels was wasted space.

Mega-marketers like AOL actually designed their whole online product around the fold. If you remember the old AOL software, there were no scrollbars. Every article was carefully written and broken out into short pages to avoid falling below the fold and out of the spotlight of most users’ attention.

Today, things have changed. Screen sizes have fragmented, creating a hundred-thousand different “folds.” And studies show people scroll. Ding dong, the fold is dead. But we’re still talking about it.

One reason is that information hierarchy and information prioritization will always matter. Our limited and daily shrinking attention spans ensure that users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the fold. This means all essential navigation items and brand identification need to happen up top and your most important information should be given priority in the top-most portion of the page.

Long story short: Even though users are comfortable scrolling, you must organize information into a hierarchy.

To create a logical hierarchy of important information, you need to know your customer’s “when.” Every customer is at a particular “when” in their relationship with you. Their place in your sales process determines what’s most important for them to see in order to take the next step towards you.

Customers still early in their relationship with you may require more information before a CTA would do any good. In this case, an action button ahead of foundational sales information could be pushy and cause visitors to turn you off. Instead of a prominent CTA button, try an inviting headline and some persuasive copy. Then put your call to action in its logical place: at the end.

On the other hand, your products and services may be well known and your audience just needs to be called on to take action. If your customer is in this “when,” you’ve got a well established relationship and long copy would just get in the way. Prioritize your CTA and place it near the top. Show them what they need to easily complete the sales process.

Stop asking where the fold is and organize your website content instead. A clear and logical information hierarchy is the foundation of a solid web design, even when that means crossing below the fold.

photo credit: he-sk via photopin cc

AdWords Express is designed for people who want to test out online advertising but aren’t ready to make the jump into the deep end of the AdWords pool with a managed account. Google is targeting small businesses with limited resources to dedicate to their online advertising by offering to handle the account management. If you’re not currently using AdWords, trying out the Express product is a way to get your feet wet without investing too much of your time right off the bat, much like trying out the free version of that app before shelling out for the full version. With Express you are up and running quickly with well designed ads. You can easily see which words drive traffic and what if any qualified leads this type of advertising generates.

If you’re ready for a more targeted and flexible campaign with the ability to turn individual ads on and off as your needs change, then a managed AdWords account is the way to go. Managed accounts are more robust, full of tools to maximize your campaign. But you do have to manage it, staying on top changing bids for competitive keywords. This will involve  a lot more time, effort and resources than an AdWords Express account, and if you are getting started you might want to work with an AdWords account executive who knows what they’re doing.

Is it worth the effort? We think so. The ability to fine tune your ads will typically drive more qualified traffic (people who are genuinely interested in your service) to your website.  Recently we we moved a client from an AdWords Express account into a managed account. After studying the results we chose to spend more of his budget on some of the less competitive phrases and adjust the content on the landing pages to more closely match those keywords.  The result? We were able to double the amount of high quality clicks for the same investment.

Take a look at the differences of the two types of accounts side by side to see what will work best for your business based on your goals and needs.

Online advertising can be a useful tool if you go in with the right expectations and know what you want out of it. Google is making a push for small businesses to give AdWords a try by offering pretty hefty promo codes and free trials with both AdWords Express and managed accounts. It’s definitely worth a look and if you want to learn more, we’re happy to help.

Think of your five favorite foods. Now imagine pouring them all into a bowl and mixing them up. Unless your favorite foods are ice cream, chocolate syrup and ice cream toppings, (or you happen to be Buddy the elf) this combination probably doesn’t sound appetizing anymore, does it? That’s because all those ingredients, while delicious on their own, don’t necessarily complement each other.

This same idea can be applied to design. There are many different ingredients or styles and techniques to choose from, but trying to use them all in one place would be complete chaos. If there is too much going on, or if certain elements of the design conflict with each other, your viewer will most likely feel overwhelmed and your message will be lost.

I often have to remind my clients of this, especially if I’m working on a branding project for a new company. I totally get that you’re excited about this company and you want your logo to show off how great you are (AT EVERYTHING!!), but a logo can only do so much for you. It’s meant to be an icon to represent your brand’s style, but it can’t (and shouldn’t) tell your whole story.

It’s almost always better to focus on one idea and really show that off rather than to try and make a design be everything all at once. For example, trying to design a logo that conveys how high-quality your product is while also focusing on your low prices is extremely difficult. This is due to the fact that the colors, fonts and symbols we typically associate with quality are the complete opposite of  the ones we associate with saving money. Trying to blend these conflicting ideas into one logo means neither can come off as strong as they would on their own.

Just as a chef carefully considers and edits the ingredients in a recipe, a designer should always consider the elements of a design and how they relate to each other. I’ve often found the best recipe for a successful design is the simplest.

photo credit: stevendepolo via photopin cc

Just a few minutes a day to update or check in on each of these sites started to add up. Suddenly I realized my addiction was taking over my life, sucking hours out of my day.  I knew I needed to get my addiction under control.

While I have no intention of giving up social networking completely, I have started a 12-step program to help me manage my addiction, deciding when, where, why and how I will participate in social networks.

1. Set Objectives and Measures – Stop and ask yourself why you are participating on social networks. Separate out those elements you do just for fun from those that truly have a business connection. Then decide how you will measure your success. It is really important that you select one overriding objective. If you have too many, you will find yourself running in too many directions. Until you define your objective, don’t proceed to steps 2 – 12.
2. Who Is Your Audience -  The correct answer is not, “anyone who will listen.”  Again, the primary principal is focus. When you know who you are talking to, it is easier to decide which social networks make sense for you.
3. Find Your Voice –  Will you be serious, playful, sarcastic or sympathetic in your tone? In real life, I have a slightly sarcastic, teasing style of communication. That part of me comes through to my online personality as well.
4. Choose Your Topics - As you think strategically about your objectives, make a list of topics which make sense for you to talk about and focus the majority of your time on these topics. This doesn’t mean you can’t talk about anything else, but the more relevant you are around a specific type of content, the easier it will be to build a loyal following. It also means deciding what you won’t talk about–for me, that is typically religion and politics.  
5. Start With Your Blog – All the social networks are great, but if you are doing this for business, then your end goal needs to be to drive traffic back to your website.  Your blog is the best destination for visitors because they can come to exactly the content they are hoping to find.
6. Pick Your Platform – Refer back to step two. If you objective is to reach C-level executives, you don’t need to spend a lot of time on Facebook. On the other hand, if you are trying to reach teenage girls, you will need to understand how to communicate on Tumblr.
7. Create a Schedule - Social media can be a huge time suck. Managing my addiction meant setting boundaries. I hop on first thing in the morning for 30 minutes and again in the late afternoon. Do I miss things because I am not on all day? Sure, but I also get a lot of other things done.
8. Be Original – Every one of my competitors can write about three ways to improve your business, but few of them will use the metaphor of a race team, or sales lessons from a three year old. I write from my experience and it becomes content only I can write.
9. Be Visual –  With a smartphone in your pocket, your camera is always with you. Take lots of photos and use them to enhance your written content.
10. Be Responsive – When fans and followers reach out and comment on something you say, respond. Remember that social media is about ego and when you notice someone, they are more likely to notice you next time.
11. Use Tools Wisely – There is a huge difference between using tools to supplement your social activities and using the tools to run them. We schedule 5 – 6 posts to run though out the day on Twitter. These are typically links to other content we found interesting. This keeps the Roundpeg  brand in the news feed for our followers. We add updates as they happen and respond to comments and questions so we don’t start to sound like a robot.
12. Measure and Start Again  – If what you are doing is working, keep doing it. If it isn’t, change. Recovery from a social addiction is an ongoing process.

This outline is the subject of my presentation at CMS Expo in Chicago this week. If you won’t be at the event, you can still view my slides here:

This was a tasty project for us, because the team at Duke’s was kind enough to send us samples so we could really appreciate the difference.  We are glad they did.  The jerky was delicious.    But don’t take our word for it.  Check some out for yourself.  Go to: www.dukesmeats.com