Posted on March 7, 2013 by Joshua Duke
8 Comments

Social Media and Crisis Management: The Case of SimCity

EA Origin twitterI’m a huge nerd. I’ve said this before on this blog, and I’ll just reiterate right now. While my Steam game collection isn’t the largest at Standing Dog, it has to be in the top three, and my love for games is rivaled only by my love of social media.

So I was biting at the bit when my two passions collided recently like a high-speed bullet train leaving a virtual train station. SimCity launched, the online gaming community exploded like the finale to a Michael Bay film, and all that stood between the developers and a virtual tar-and-feathering was Twitter and the developer’s social media crisis management.

Continue reading →

Posted in Social Media, Twitter Tagged , , , , , ,
Posted on March 6, 2013 by Matt
15 Comments

SEO Problems You Should Be Sure To Avoid

656-02879461Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – you may already know this – is defined as making your website more relevant to what a particular person is searching for, so it’ll show up in the search engine results pages, thereby increasing traffic to your website. Even though it has a very simple definition, SEO has a very negative connotation to many people.

SEO is often misunderstood by many people to mean spamming the search engines and tricking people to get them to your website and eventually make money. Unfortunately, many people in the field do practice SEO like this, perpetuating the stereotype and giving the rest of us a bad name. But many of us practice SEO the correct way, using best practices and always keeping up with the latest developments, trends and algorithm changes.

Continue reading →

Posted in SEO Tagged , , , ,
Posted on February 28, 2013 by Jennifer Cabibi
5 Comments

Social Media Best Practices: Avoid Looking Like Spam

Social users avoid spam like it’s the plague. The minute that your content is determined spam, readers will stop reading and ignore it. It’s important to try your hardest and avoid making your content look like spam on social media. By following these social media best practices, you will finally get some attention from your audience.

Continue reading →

Posted in Social Media Tagged
Posted on February 26, 2013 by Chris Miller
Leave a comment

Content Marketing…Now What? Part 2

Part 2 of our 2-part series on content marketing explores the marketing-side of this evolving strategy. For those who missed part one, be sure to check it out here, or else you’re just getting one half of the strategy!

Now let’s talk about the fun part of content marketing.

The Marketing

You have a newsworthy event happening, you put out a press release through the wires, which is picked up. Linked in this press release is an article on your blog that goes into more detail, and connects the event on a personal level. Lastly, you have landing page you’ve built on your website about the event. Nicely done. Yes, at the heart of things this still matters greatly.

Continue reading →

Posted in Marketing Tagged , , , ,
Posted on February 21, 2013 by Chris Miller
Leave a comment

Content Marketing…Now What? Part 1

The buzzword of 2013 is content marketing. While the idea behind content marketing is not new, the execution of content marketing is becoming a growing focus for companies looking to increase traffic and conversions. This stems from both the need in social media to have unique, shareable content that will drive engagement and the fact that the new paradigm of SEO requires social engagement to happen for a site to remain relevant.

Now that agencies are catching up and focusing more on content marketing, it’s probably a good time to discuss what it all actually means. It’s pretty simple – create good quality content and market that content.

Continue reading →

Posted in Marketing Tagged , ,
Posted on February 19, 2013 by Rob Phillips
Leave a comment

A Hotel Reflagging eCommerce Checklist

When a hotel reflags to a new brand, a lot of things need to happen from an online perspective.

One of the more challenging and exciting things we get to work on at Standing Dog Interactive is assisting hotels through the transition of being re-branded.  Hotel reflagging is exciting because we are introducing something new into the marketplace (both in a virtual and physical sense) and challenging because there are a lot of pitfalls and hazards to doing this properly.

From the eCommerce side of things, the biggest component that most people focus on with a reflagging is the new website and what it will look like.  There is no denying that that is a very important factor as it is the underpinning for the ultimate success of the hotel online.  However, hanging the “We Have Moved” sign across the web is far too often an afterthought that comes up only after the hotel has already transitioned.  It is critical to plan ahead to ensure all bases are covered.

Continue reading →

Posted in Marketing, SEO Tagged , , ,
Posted on February 12, 2013 by Paul Griffith
Leave a comment

2013 Internet Usage and Operating System Trends

There are a lot of articles out there that claim to tell you how people use the Internet, but few actually explore normal Internet usage. Do people use computers more than smartphones? Is Internet Explorer the most popular web browser still? It’s important to get the facts straight because how people use the Internet and which devices they utilize affect the way marketers conduct their business. Here are our SEO and web developments in 2013 so far.

Since I head the production department at Standing Dog Interactive, where we focus on hotel SEO and general Internet marketing, I see analytical data on an almost daily basis and study the technology stats to keep an eye on upcoming trends. Mobile is obvious, as we have produced several responsive websites over the past 12 months, but are desktops really on the decline? And is the iPhone truly the number one player in the smartphone market?

Based on analytic data from January 2013 from seven hotel and resort websites (six in the United States and one in the Caribbean), this is what I found.

Continue reading →

Posted in Marketing Tagged , , , ,
Posted on February 8, 2013 by Cindy Prathoumvanh
Leave a comment

Google Announces Enhanced Campaigns: Dun, Dun, Dun …

Google, what am I going to do with you? At least once a year, you announce updates and changes to AdWords that keep us all on our toes. However, recently you dropped a bombshell on us with news of your new Google AdWords enhanced campaigns.

google-adwords

According to your AdWords blog, “enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.” With Google AdWords enhanced campaigns, PPC managers are now forced to advertise on multiple devices with one campaign rather than individual campaigns for desktop, tablets and mobile. Then at the campaign level, bids can be adjusted by device type, geography and/or time of day.

Now that we’ve had a few days to process the changes, I need to voice some concerns I have about the latest changes to Google AdWords.

Continue reading →

Posted in PPC Tagged , , , ,
Posted on February 5, 2013 by Jennifer Cabibi
3 Comments

WordPress SEO Plugin By Yoast: What Is It?…And Is It Worth My Time?

Best_SEO_Plugins

Best SEO Plugins

Like many bloggers, you may be looking for the best SEO plugins for your SEO strategy. As you conduct your research, you will find that there are oodles of WordPress SEO plugins that all seem to promise the same thing: a search engine optimization plugin that makes it easier for the user to optimize content to increase website traffic and improve your SEO strategy. This can often be a broken promise.

WordPress SEO plugins help you build the best SEO strategy for your content. There are many WordPress SEO plugins such as the All-In-One-SEO-Pack and the Squirrly SEO plugins that have provided much value in the past. However, there is a new kid on the block getting much attention: WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast.  Not only is this new plugin quickly rising to the top of the “Most Popular Kids in School” list because of its user friendly functionality, but it’s also proving to be highly effective.

Continue reading →

Posted in SEO Tagged , , ,