Employee Spotlight – Marc

Posted on by Ken Granger

Since Marc’s addition to the BrandCo team, he has become a huge asset in our Refresh department. One day destined to join Stark Industries, he regularly improves our processes and build times. Learn more about him below.

What do you do here?
I am a web developer on the Refresh team. I build, launch, and support all things Responsive Refresh.

What got you into developing / design?
I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering so I have a good background in code and critical thinking/problem solving. I also have a background in art which helped give me a good eye for design. Web development just seemed right to me.

If your co-workers could describe you in 3 words…
easy-going, friendly, helpful

Favorite resource / place for inspiration / brand:
I’m always finding great art/music/tech on Reddit.

Best thing about BrandCo:
I love working in small teams where your contributions really make a difference.

If you had a super power…
Teleportation, anything to get me off of the 528.

What is the defining cartoon of your childhood?
Nobody made me laugh harder than Bugs Bunny

Any special awards / milestones / fun facts about you?
I’m a classically trained musician. I played trombone for about 8 years and still like to write music on my free time.

When you’re not at BrandCo, what are you up to? (Interests, Hobbies)
I am a major foodie. I love cooking fancy or exotic foods. I am always trying hole in the wall restaurants or places I find in food blogs.

The one thing you’d like to share about yourself that maybe people don’t know:
I collect hot sauce…

How often should I blog?

Posted on by Ken Granger

One of the most common questions raised when beginning a blog is, “how often should I blog or publish new posts? ” In a less complex world, publishing new content several times a day would seem ideal, but rarely do businesses have enough resources to devote to such an endeavor nor do most have a captive enough audience they can entertain with such a content onslaught.

So, it is important to know what you can allocate in order to be successful by creating content for your blog. Not only that, be sure that you have researched what your audience’s reading habits and interests are, in ensure that you’re making the most with the time that you do devote. Below are the 4 ways to be sure that you’re creating content as often as you must in order to be successful in your blogging venture.

Be Consistent

Consistency has to be the most important part of blogging. Whether you intend on creating new content every day, week, or month, it is important to continue to be consistent with it. If your plan is to post once a month, post on the same day every month. Believe it or not, Google begins to take presidency to ensure that it crawls your website for new content on that day because it will begin to see a pattern. Amazing, isn’t it? If Google or other search engines are able to discover your posting schedule, your posts are likely to appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) much more quickly. Of course, this depends on the quality of your content, low-quality content will never help you rank higher – regardless of frequency.

Be Realistic

Whether you are writing all of your content yourself, hiring an intern, or utilizing a third party company, you need to know what you will be capable of rolling out when it comes to creating new content. When creating the content within your own business, it is always a good idea to write the first couple of posts that you have added to your editorial calendar, time how long each one takes to complete, and average it all together to get an idea of how long future blog posts will take. This makes it possible to be realistic about the amount of time you need to dedicate to creating new content for your blog.

Get as many people within your company involved in writing blog posts. Allowing for different voices and talents to be displayed on your blog makes it more possible to roll out more content on a consistent basis. Everything is better when you have help, right?

Lastly, if you are taking advantage of a third party company to write your content for you, understand the budget that you have to allocate to the task. Essentially, be realistic in what you’re willing to pay and the results that you wish to see from your money spent.

Check out the Competition

Some of the best research to discover your ideal posting frequency will be to take a look at what your competition has working for them. If their blog has been around for a while, it is very likely that they have figured out what works best when delivering content within your industry. If you find that they are posting every week on Monday and you currently do not have the resources to do the same in the beginning, make goals to get there. Start with every other week and build up to being able to post every week.

Be sure, however, to not attempt replicating a company outside of your industry, it is smart to learn from those that are doing what you do already, but doing it best.

Test, Test, Test

In the world of inbound/content marketing, you learn that you must constantly test yourself when you’re getting started to see what works best. Maybe you overestimated your audience’s interest in new daily content? You have to give it a try, at times, to figure that our for yourself. Try publishing on different days and at different times and see what difference it makes. Eventually, you will find the perfect rhythm to satisfy your company and your audience.

When asking, “How often should I blog?”

When you’re just getting started with a blog, even the most basic tasks can seem daunting – especially if you’re blogging for the first time. When it comes to frequency, however, don’t spend too much time fretting over getting it perfect. Find a schedule that works for you and your audience, and go for it. The worst thing you can do is publish inconsistently, so just make sure you choose a frequency you can keep up with. The more frequently you publish, the greater the chances of improving your SEO, so try to publish as often as possible – without sounding like a broken record.

10 Best Real Estate Websites of 2015

Posted on by Ken Granger

Responsive web design was the name of the game in 2015 and real estate websites were no different. Making sure that your site is viewable in multiple platforms such as cell phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop is crucial due to the changes to search engine algorithms, like that of Google, that took place this year. The below websites prominently display the ability for visitors to do property searches, as well as multiple calls to action that coin side with each business’ goals. Take a look at the 10 best websites of 2015 for Keller Williams agents created by BrandCo.

Kerr & Associates
Kerr and Associates website made by BrandCo

Betty Kerr and her team of associates host an amazing new responsive website that’s viewable on all different platforms. If you are searching for a home in the Orange County area of California, you are instantly presented with options to make your search much easier. The layout is simplistic, but quick to give information that its visitors may be looking for. Whether you’re looking to buy or to sell, there is something for you!The colors used throughout the design represent warm tones and a sophisticated pallet.

Joe PinedaJoe Pineda website made by BrandCo

Scenic is the perfect word to describe Joe Pineda’s new website. Joe is a Hawaii-focused real estate agent and his site greatly illustrates the beautiful views that he can grant for his potential clients. Within the homepage, you can see the most important call-to-action, which would be searching for homes. After which, you’re greeted by the opportunity to learn more about Honolulu and for home owners to learn the value of their previous purchases. The colors used throughout the website are bright and eye catching imagery is used.

Rita OrearRita Orear website made by BrandCo

A very fun and spunky real estate website with a nicely placed home search above the fold at the main call to action. This site has everything laid out beautifully for its clients. The menu is longer than most of those within this list, but contains a large amount of information. Community and school information is available, as well as information and pre-made searches for popular local communities located in the Indianapolis area. This website is built fully on the WordPress platform, making it easy for the client to maintain and add information.

Michelle AltonMichelle Alton website made by BrandCo

Michelle Alton is a real estate agent that focuses on finding homes for her clients that suit their lifestyles. Her website allows people to do their home searches regarding city, suburban, or cottage life. You are able to easily sign up for listing alerts, as well. Unlike most other websites, many links are available straight from the homepage regarding buyer and seller resources, as well as investment opportunities. With the use of cool, tranquil colors, this design really comes to life.

Imagine Utah Living
Wendy Anderson - Utah Living website made by BrandCo

Imagine Utah Living, the website of Wendy Anderson is one that is completely moving. All of the elements of the area in which this real estate agent serves is clearly represented, everything from mountains to lakes to woods. I am especially fond of the lower calls to action housed within circles. These elements stack very nicely when being viewed through mobile devices, which is important when it comes to Google search engines and the change that occurred to their algorithm in 2015.

Darrell GargalaDarrell Gargala website made by BrandCo

Darrell Gargala is a former real estate investor gone real estate agent. His website is meant to help guide others entering the real estate world. Located in Colorado, Darrell focuses on first time homebuyers, investors, and military. Calls to action include buyer resources, your home’s value, blog, and the ability to download his home-search app. As with all good real estate websites, this one also spotlights communities to increase ease of search for visitors.

Allison Ziefert’s Best NJ Towns
Allison Ziefert website made by BrandCo

Hyper local is a great way to describe the website created for Allison Ziefert. This New Jersey native knows that her clients are looking to buy within the communities of South Orange and Maplewood and has positioned herself to become an expert those areas. Allison’s website makes it easy for views to search for new homes and provides great information on surrounding communities. Not to mention, she regularly posts within her blog, adding to her Search Engine Optimization.

Brittany Purcell and AssociatesBrittany Purcell and Associates website made by BrandCo

One of the best things regarding the new website for Brittany Purcell and Associates is how the layout speaks to the reader. People visiting this website are often looking for homes in the Athens and Gainesville areas of Georgia. Calls to action help those visitors to easily find different kinds of property listings within those two hyper-local areas. To go into even more details within those areas, you can visit the Neighborhoods tab in the website navigations for subdivision and community information. Brittanysells.com is designed to be a very welcoming, southern, soft website and it surely delivers.

Kelli Bairn
Kelli Bairn website made by BrandCo

Quick, to-the-point, and highly stylized – a great way to describe Kelli Barin’s new website from 2015. This Colorado native real estate agent now has a very earthy and nature toned design that demonstrates many of the great things in her area. Calls to action on Kelli’s homepage include calculating home worth, relocation assistance, and a link to their blog with information for buyers, sellers, and the area.

River City LivingRiver City Living website by BrandCo

Ryan Vandaele is an Illinois and Iowa licensed agent who focuses on the river cities. So, what better website than River City Living? This site gives visitors the opportunity to search for properties in many different ways. They have access to the standard property search, open houses, to download the mobile app, and other links to properties sold by owners and many others.  Other great bounties of information are found throughout the homepage to take you further into the website, as well as a blog for them to regularly update their site.

6 Ways to Repurpose your Content : Content is Forever

Posted on by Ken Granger

Content forever has a place on the internet. Once you’ve published a blog post or page, the possibility of search engines recommending it never ends.

However, sometimes it can be difficult to find new topics to write about because it feels like you’ve already “done it all.” Well, thankfully, you’re not alone in this. Others have made habits of repurposing their content and have seen great results.

Syndication

Syndication is taking content that you’ve already published on your own site and giving other parties permission to repost it on their sites. Third parties can repost some or all of the syndicated content, but it is typically an exact copy.

Unlike duplicate content, however, syndicated posts always link back to where the article was originally published to give credit. Usually, the places you might choose to syndicate to have as large, or many times larger, the size audience you have on your own website.

Some websites noteworthy in assisting with this endeavor are: Medium, Social Media Today, and Business 2 Community.

Stretch out what you already have

Have some very successful blog posts or ones that you feel passionate about? Well, that content is worth building on. Below are 5 different ways to impact new audiences and create opportunities to be found on search engines. SEO galore!

  1. Pull out key statistics or talking points to post on social media and use the headlines for Twitter, with more in-depth thoughts used on Facebook.
  2. Host a webinar or Google Hangout to discuss your blog post.
  3. Make the audio transcription of your webinar or Hangout available – kind of like a Podcast.
  4. Publish an FAQ with your answers, if your webinar or Hangout received questions.
  5. Upload a recording of the webinar on YouTube.

Offer the content in different forms

Putting your content into different forms to be available, meaning that it makes more sense for your readers that are in varied areas of the sales process. Give these ideas a try.

– Post to Slideshow

Break your blog post into quick, easily-digestible pieces and touch on them throughout a slideshow. This is especially easy if you divided your blog post into separate key points by way of headers. Use each of these key points as a separate slide. This is a great way to share your content in a new manner. Give SlideShare a try for this option.

– Post to Infographic

While infographics are a more design-heavy option, it definitely is a fun choice. I personally love pinning and sharing infographics from sites like Pinterest. They’re informative and easy to read. Also, infographics give the ability to take something very complicated and break it down into pictures, making it much easier to understand.

– Slideshow to Infographic

If you’ve taken the time to make a blog post into a slideshow, making an infographic has become much simpler. Everything has already been broken down. You can also look at this in the opposite direction, as well. Infographics make creating a slideshow quite easy.

– Infographic to Motion Graphic

Motion graphics are videos that work much like infographics, presenting short-form, snackable content in an engaging way – but, because they’re animated, they have different sharing potential. Motion graphics have a quick ability to go viral.

Visual content to Pinboard

content is forever - repurpose it to pinterestIf you’re using a lot of images within your blog posts, Pinterest is a great place to focus your sharing. I recommend creating boards based on topics and pinning your own posts and information there. It’s amazing how fast things spread on this social network.

Create an eBook or ‘White Paper’

Find yourself returning to the same topic numerous times? Well, maybe you have enough information to warrant creating an eBook or White Paper to offer to your visitors. Offers such as these are commonly associated with landing pages and give the ability to capture leads prior to giving the interested party access. Both of these have become key pieces in content marketing.

Social Media

As it is probably a given, social media is one of the biggest ways to repurpose or bring life to your older blog posts. You can share the same article endlessly with different statuses to allow wide-spread interest to it. Remember that social media users respond differently to content depending on where it is posted. Twitter users expect a different approach than Facebook users do.  Try to avoid posting the exact same wording across the board, it will be noticed.

I hope this post has assisted you in some options for how to bring new life to your older blog posts. Those “oldies but goodies” deserve just as much attention as any of your newer posts. Let us know how these go for you!

Best Business Books of 2015

Posted on by Ken Granger

Reading is the quickest, easiest way to earn experience. It gives you the ability to learn from someone else’s experience and allows you to make it your own. So, we decided it would be beneficial to compile a list of the best business books of 2015

2015 was a great year for reading material to better yourself and your company’s morale. Below are seven works that we highly recommend due to their impact on BrandCo and our team’s performance. Not to mention, how we have decided to enter 2016.

  1. The Dream Manager
  2. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
  3. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
  4. Fearless
  5. It’s Not About You: A Little Story About What Matters Most
  6. Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company
  7. Gung Ho: Turn On the People in Any Organization

What books impacted how you operate in 2015? Please, share with us so that we can grow together.

12 Days of BrandCo Christmas 2015

Posted on by Ken Granger

We decided to use 12 fun, themed days to celebrate Christmas with our work family. Above, in this blog post’s featured image, you can take in the glory that is BrandCo’s 2015 Christmas tree. The whole team contributed and came together to decorate the tree with things that are important to us and our work life. You can find everything from desk knick-knacks to post-it notes. It really is a sight to behold.

Greeting Cards

20151211_091408Greeting Cards day was celebrated by all of our team members bringing in random Christmas cards. The cards were put into a bag and we all randomly drew our own. Three cards are passed around all of the days following for us all to say something nice to each other. (Yes, that one card does say Granddaughter on it lol)

Santa and His Reinbeer Day

IMG_9983What’s a Christmas celebration without Santa Hats? Well, definitely not one without a couple beers either. Reinbeer day was added in conjunction with Lager Day. Employees were allowed to kick back with a couple of cold ones while working and enjoying the festivities as they donned their Santa gear. Of course, this proved to be a day filled with extreme nerf gun battles, too!

Candy Cane Day

20151211_091709Candy canes are synonymous with Christmas and everyone has to favorite flavor. We purchased an assortment of canes for our team, including Starburst, Sour Patch Kids, traditional red & white peppermint, and Hershey Chocolate Mint.

Ginger Bread House Day

IMG_0018Team building was strong at BrandCo for Ginger Bread house day. Each side of the office got their own to decorate. Putting the main pieces together even proved difficult for us amateurs, but once we were past that hump, the creativity took over.

Christmas Telephone and Baby Photos

CollageTo say that BrandCo’s team were adorable babies, would be an understatement. We were all given a sheet with the baby photos shown here. Can you guess which of us are shown? Curious enough, we all had a lot of trouble picking each other out.

This day we also passed around two games of telephone, leading to some completely hilarious stories to read through.

Chocolate Covered Christmas

IMG_0021Chocolate day was soooo Rich. We had everything from marshmallows to Rice Krispy treats to dip in either our choice of milk or dark melted chocolate. Needless to say, our sweet-tooth were fully satisfied.

Winter Wonderland

IMG_0029Penguin stress balls and snowflakes were the focus on the Winter Wonderland day. Members of the team cut out and adorned our Christmas tree with themed snowflakes from Star Wars and Game of Thrones (yes, we’re quite nerdy around here).

Christmas Ornaments

IMG_0063More arts and crafts! As if we didn’t have enough on our office Christmas tree, we added more on! Each member was given two christmas ornaments to decorate by scratching. You can make a christmas tree or reindeer ornament.

Bah Humbug

IMG_0065Earlier in the month we were asked what our least favorite things about the holiday season were…and they ended up in a cross word puzzle. We were all given Bah Humbug pencils to fill it out with, topped with our very own lump of coal.

Reindeer Games

20151222_135635After some bad Oriental Trading reviews, this day didn’t quite go as planned. While we were looking to order a really cool antler game that you could throw rings at, we decided to go with these super cute reindeer beach balls to add to the festivities of the day. However, like most days, the office ended up breaking out their nerf guns. So, that counts, right?

Milk, Cookies, Nog, and Ugly Sweaters

uglysweaterdayChristmas eve eve was a hodge-podge of yummy goodies, interesting drinks, and bad fashion choices. Gesenia mixed the team up a batch of a Puerto Rican drink called Coquito, which I found delicious. Cookies that we all dug into early in the morning were brought in by Bianca. The four of us left at the end of the day made sure to get a photo of our tacky get-ups in front of our randomly decorated Christmas tree.

Secret Santa in our PJs

IMG_1501At the end of November, the team picked names out of a hat to get their Secret Santa assignment. Throughout the month of December, we all learned more about our assigned co-worker and tried to purchase them something they would love. This day we also came into work as comfortable as possible by donning our favorite pajamas. It was a great way to finish the work week before the holiday, by celebrating each other with gifts and comfort.

Thus ending another fabulous BrandCo Christmas filled with fun and time spent together.

Happy Holidays from us to you.

How do I decide on a Focus Keyword for my Blog posts?

Posted on by Ken Granger

Ever sat down to write some content for your website and been unsure of what you wanted to say?  If you find yourself in this position, don’t panic! Collect your thoughts, get a general idea of the topic you want to address, and choose your target demographic.  Whatever you do – don’t just sit down and write aimlessly. Unfocused writing can be one of the most frustrating experiences.  Odds are you’ll read everything back and feel like you filled the page with nothing but fluff. While you may have added some content to your website, did you really say anything of substance and was there a central focus to your thoughts?

Most of us write to keep our clients up-to-date and attract prospects that may be looking for the information we have. When your blog posts and pages have a clear topic, your content will speak volumes to your current and future clients.

When writing in a focused manner, you will need to start conducting your own keyword research to concentrate your efforts.

A keyword basically just refers to the phrase you want to show up for when searched.

So, when doing keyword research, you need to put yourself into the position of the searcher. What would you want someone to write into the search engines in order to find you? Would it be something like “best neighborhood for families in Orlando”? Then you need to start writing blog posts that would include this phrase…or phrases and words like it.

Search Engines are Smart.

Believe it or not, you’re not required to write your focused keyword or long-tailed keyword in the same order and wording each and every time in order to rank for it. Search engines anticipate the other ways that your keyword could be used. In the case of the focus keyword (which is long-tailed) “best neighborhood for families in Orlando” you could also write it as “what neighborhood in Orlando is best for families?” or “where do families live in orlando?”. All of these kinds of phrasing would help you rank for the kind of search that you’re shooting for.

In your keyword research, it is also important to check out what you’re competition is doing. If Joe Schmo, the leading company in your area, is killing search engine optimization by using a certain keyword, piggyback off of it and elaborate. As the saying goes, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

The biggest take away should be that, prior to writing for your website, you should do your research. Find our what your clients are looking for and what your competition is doing right. Doing these two big things will make your blogging efforts better and give you greater SEO results.

Employee Spotlight – Trey

Posted on by Ken Granger

To say that Trey has been an amazing addition to the team at BrandCo, would be an understatement. This guy is an innovator and always there for our CEO’s needs. Learn more about him by reading below…

What do you do here?
I am a DevOps & Software Architect, with the side role of an systems engineer – pushing production code and supporting the legacy bits is my forte.

What got you into developing / design?
Viewing Star Wars: Episode V “The Empire Strikes Back” on Wednesday, the 10th of April, 1996 sparked my passion for building complex systems.

If your co-workers could describe you in 3 words…
Motivated, as I persist through the trials and tribulations of Dev life. Adaptable, since I am able to adjust quickly to new environments. Malodorous….well, because I enjoy all things Seafood.

Favorite resource / place for inspiration / brand:
Heroku is my favorite PaaS because of the countless number of integrations, along with their great Support team. Stackoverflow is my favorite resource for finding and understanding solutions as I implement new components to our Systems. As for branding, I would have to declare myself an Apple “fanboy” due to their effort in tying the aesthetics of product design with function.

Interior_ES10Best thing about BrandCo:
The people that work here.

If you had a super power…
Time travel… I’d love to hand Allen Turing a MacBook and copy of “UNIX for Dummies” !

What is the defining cartoon of your childhood?
Arthur. I sparingly watched TV.

Any special awards / milestones / fun facts about you?
I pushed myself to set High School weightlifting records in the 119 weight class. My dedication paid off, as I received a full-ride to UCF from which I obtained a B.S. in Computer Science last Spring.

When you’re not at BrandCo, what are you up to? (Interests, Hobbies)
Perusing GitHub has always been a time-hole for me… along with Fallout 4 more recently.

The one thing you’d like to share about yourself that maybe people don’t know:
“Programming the Universe” by Seth Lloyd is my favorite book, breaking the universe down as chunks of information. As such, use the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment to explore quantum mechanics.

 

Stay tuned in for more Employee Spotlights soon!

What’s Your Dream?

Posted on by Ken Granger

Recently I have been reading The Dream Manager, and both thinking and speaking a lot about my dreams and goals. As part of our culture here at BrandCo, growth through reading and learning from the experience of others is encouraged greatly. This is how I came across The Dream Manager.

This book hosts a story set in a janitorial company that is trying to get a handle on their out-of-control employment turn-over rates. The company, Admiral, decides to turn things around by focusing on the dreams of their employees.  They start by creating a new position called the Dream Manager.

A dream manager was put into place to discover the dreams of the employees and to, in turn, assist them in devising plans and strategies to accomplish them. Through learning more about the desires and struggles of the people that work for them, Admiral’s leadership was able to better serve them, building a much more loyal, hardworking team.

The lessons learned in The Dream Manager have become a big part of how BrandCo functions. We recently had Don Hobbs come in and speak to us about The One Thing so we can begin following our dreams and building realistic plans to achieve them. Our CEO, Ken, has also helped us greatly in identifying our goals, putting a price point on them, and helping us create a real trajectory to them.

In all honesty, it’s hard to keep dreaming once you become an adult. Life becomes more about survival than dreaming big. Removing life’s every day restrictions and opening your mind to big possibilities is extremely powerful and can provide a newly energized purpose to your life.

I definitely recommend that you purchase The Dream Manager and start dreaming for yourself. It may just change your world.

Can I use pictures from Google Images?

Posted on by Ken Granger

It is one of the most tempting things to do on the internet. When writing that blog post or creating that new page on our website, we all know how important it is to add imagery to our content. All too often, we find ourselves looking within image searches such as Google to find the perfect image to pair with our writing, but did you know it’s bad practice to do so?

Believe it or not, all of the images from Google are not free for us to use. Google even warns us by mentioning it, albeit in very small lettering.

“Images may be subject to copyright”

 

Lucky for you and the rest of us that maintain websites and blogs, Google has added the ability for us to filter our searches by Usage Rights!

When searching within Google, go ahead and click Images, like we’re all used to doing. Once you have gotten to your standard lay out of Google Images, you can then click on the last option that says Search Tools. This will open up search filters like Size, Color, Type, Time, and the subject of this blog post, Usage Rights.

Usage Rights tell you whether or not an image is allowed to be used on your website, and removes those most-likely subject to copyright.

Google images search tool for usage rights

 

Types of usage rights

  • Free to use or share: Allows you to copy or redistribute its content if the content remains unchanged.
  • Free to use, share, or modify: Allows you to copy, modify, or redistribute in ways specified in the license.
  • Commercially: If you want content for commercial use, be sure to select an option that includes the word “commercially.”

While it’s definitely better to use your own photos when creating content on the internet, this is a much safer option than most of us have been using. Be aware that just because something is on the internet, that does not make it public domain.  Publishing copyrighted images on your website without permission from the owner may see you incur fees and even legal action.  Always better to be safe than sorry!