Adding pictures to blog posts is a common way to generate interest and make reading blog posts more interesting. However, the cost of photos adds up quickly, even when using micro stock which often costs $1.

There are several sources of free pictures available online, with varying license options. Understanding the license requirements isn’t as complicated as you might think. Understanding how to use freely available images and the associated licenses, opens up a large resource of easy-to-use photo libraries.

Here’s a really quick rule of thumb. When blogging for business purposes, I look for the following Creative Commons licenses.

• Attribution License
• Attribution-ShareAlike License
• Attribution-NoDerivs License

Free Blog Photo Resources

1. Everystockphoto
   This site describes itself as a “license-specific photo search engine.” By clicking on ‘advanced search’, you can specify the license options, making it easier to find commercial-friendly photos. The search results include many of the popular free stock photo sources.
2. Stock.xchng
   Stock.xchng has many photos available that don’t require attribution. However, the search results also have iStock photos which are higher quality but also require payment.
3. Flickr Creative Commons Search
   Using the advanced search feature on Flickr, you can find free images to reuse by specifying the Creative Commons license in the search criteria. Typically, a link back will be requested for credit. Check the requirements of the individual who created the image. They usually specify the preferred method of use. Alternatively, follow the license requirement on the Creative Commons website
4. Google Creative Commons Image Search
   Of course, a post like this wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Google’s image search. Using the advance image search on Google, you can specify keyword, image color, aspect ratio and usage rights. Look for images usage rights that allow ‘free to use or share, even commercially’.

Photo courtesy of: Hryck

Last Friday and Saturday, I attended ConvergeSE in Columbia, South Carolina. The event is a collaboration between Gene Crawford, Unmatched Style and Period Three, a local web design firm. The conference has only been running for four years, and has earned a devoted following, selling out in only two days this year. I was lucky enough to win a ticket in a drawing just a few days before the conference (thanks, WACH Fox!).

The event did not disappoint.

ConvergeSE is unique in that it unites all kinds of web workers. Designers, developers, usability experts, hackers, and business owners connect and learn from each other. The structure of the conference reinforces this: on conference day, everyone attends the same presentations together.

There is a great sense of community and resourcefulness among the attendees and speakers. The ConvergeSE crowd is one of action—they don’t just talk about the next big thing. They’re making it happen, both in their day jobs and in their pet projects. This is a conference for builders.

The overarching message I heard from the conversations, talks, and workshops is that we, as an industry, need to shift our focus away from websites and on to digital experiences.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re crafting experiences that are more tightly connected to people’s lives than ever. Ubiquitous computing is already here in the form of smartphones and tablets, and will become increasingly subliminal.

As pixel pushers, how can we be more strategic, more deliberate, and more holistic in our work?

How can we develop websites, apps and products that are joyful to use? Or, at the very least, worth using?

• Through process. Samantha Warren gave a great presentation about how she was inspired by the process of interior design and adapted it to web design. She encourages us to design systems that can adapt with the changing needs of a web initiative, not just pages or websites.
• Through design. Steve Smith‘s definition of design is, “To deliberately make something excellent.” At Github, he and his coworkers apply this methodology beyond the visual; to everything from installing hummingbird feeders to writing custom code to integrate their tools more closely. He challenges us to design the less tangible things in our environments and our cultures.
• Through curiosity. Today’s web workers are challenged to become multidisciplinary. Jeff Croft encourages designers to learn to code, and vice versa. By understanding all sides of what we are creating, we can make products that work better. The best teams are made up of professionals with hybrid skill sets.
• Through knowing our users. Jenn Downs of MailChimp showed off a novel way of conducting mobile usability testing on a budget. We can’t build successful products for an audience we don’t understand.
• Through culture. Even remote, distributed teams can work closely together and share a culture, with the right intent and the right technology.

I came away from ConvergeSE inspired, refreshed and ready to make awesomeness.

If you’re a technologist, I encourage you to stretch yourself to incorporate some of these forward-looking changes into your skills and workflow.

If you’re a business owner, I challenge you to think bigger about your company’s web initiatives. How can you go beyond your website to provide the best brand experience to your customers? What are some creative ways that you could take advantage of today’s technology? The opportunities are here, if you are ready.

Changes to our buying behaviors, the rise of social networks, demand for unique, intelligent content, the popularity of thought leadership and the overload of advertisements has brought content marketing to the forefront of Internet Marketing. Content marketing helps attract high-quality leads and make prospecting easier.

What exactly is content marketing?

Content marketing is a method of delivering content to potential buyers that doesn’t sell them. Instead, it informs them about a particular solution or market challenge that they are facing. It makes them more informed buyers, which lowers the hurdle to their purchase decision.

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

- Joe Pulizzi, The Content Marketing Institute

How does it work?

Using content marketing, a marketer moves buyers through the buying process. This process starts by educating prospective buyers about their challenge. After prospects are educated about the challenge, products or services are positioned as the solution. Finally, a clear call-to-action gives the prospect a way to move forward to inquire about the product or service.

Incorporating landing pages and conversion forms helps create a database of prospective buyers for a company. After a prospect completes an online form, they can be nurtured by email and by traditional touch points like phone calls.

The key to success is offering valuable, timely content. Nobody wants to be sold before they understand what the problem is and what’s possible. Offer informative content first. Help buyers make smart, informed decisions. Then guide them through a clear path to move forward.

What are the benefits?

From a marketing perspective, content marketing creates brand awareness and engagement. Content can be marketed both off-line as well as online. There’s no limit to the reuse of content. It can be incorporated into offers for campaigns of all types including print, email and sales.

Using content in sales campaigns creates another touch point for Sales staff. Content offers, linked to landing pages, can be offered in follow-up emails. This is especially useful for complex sales because a hands-off, informational approach is attractive to buyers early in the buying process. Follow-up content helps move the qualification process along and informs Sales if a prospect was interested enough to download the content. This helps make prospecting easier for sales.

From an Internet Marketer’s perspective, combining content marketing with traditional search engine optimization creates powerful inbound links to a website. It creates a compelling conversion element to attract website visitors into lead nurturing campaigns and creates sales intelligence by logging actions of individuals.

What content can you offer to help your buyers?

Note that we’re talking about the overall online presence of a business, including the website and internet marketing. Most businesses aren’t successful online without the support of Internet Marketing to drive qualified traffic to the company website.

Most businesses use their online presence to provide sales support and branding awareness. Other businesses may also use the web as a customer support tool. The online presence of a company is always changing so it’s important to prioritize the goals of the web presence to guide decision-making.

What is the primary goal?

Quantifying the value of a web presence utilizes goal priority to determine value. Sometimes appear to be of equal value. These competing goals put the overall investment at unnecessary risk because decision-making becomes unclear. Tying goals to an economic driver can help create clarity on priority. It’s important that all goals are prioritized and tied to an economic driver because the purpose for any financial investment is a return on that investment.

Lead generation and brand awareness are common goals that compete when they haven’t been prioritized. When you dig deeper, oftentimes the reason a company wants brand awareness is to drive sales.

Therefore, it makes sense to prioritize lead generation over brand awareness because lead generation ties directly to an economic driver, sales. Brand awareness will occur as part of the lead generation activity.

No matter what business you’re in, nothing should undermine the primary goal of your online presence. By focusing on the most important goal, you can easily say “no”  to ideas that will undermine the top priority or “yes” to ideas that support it.

How do you quantify the value?

Once you’ve established your primary goal, the next step is to determine how to measure the value it brings to your company.

Given the scenario above, the primary value of a lead generation web presence can be derived by looking at the quality & quantity of leads, the sales cycle for those leads and the value of closed sales.

Also, be sure not to overlook cost-reductions that occur because the website exists. For instance, you might have lower costs related to customer service if you offer self-serve options on the website. If you didn’t offer this cost-saving service online, what additional costs would the company incur?

We often find that a qualitative analysis is very eye-opening to businesses and vary greatly from impressions held without the benefit of actual numbers.  With a better understanding of the quantitative value your web presence brings to your business, you can take steps to improve it.

When you’re clear about the priority of online goals and the business value your web presence brings, the path to achieve online success becomes much clearer.

Free Download – Web Presence ROI Calculator

Our Web Presence ROI Calculator can help you easily see the return of your online investment. You can download it on our website.  Visit www.knowmad.com/roi-calculator.

Advertising on search engines has always been a great way to jumpstart online visibility and generate leads. Busy business buyers are using the Internet as their primary research tool to solve business problems. Pay-per-click (PPC) is a quick way to get in front of potential buyers by targeting the searcher’s real-time interest.

Did you know PPC is also a great tool to do quick and inexpensive market research, refine a keyword strategy, and get new content ideas?

Market Research

Test out product names, benefits, market appeal and marketing offers quickly by running ad campaigns tied to landing pages with a clear call-to-action for visitors. Measure how many times the ads are clicked and the action is taken to see which products, benefits and offers are most compelling.

Keyword Strategy

PPC can be used to discover new keyword combinations, long tail keyword opportunities and test keywords for conversions. New keywords and long tail opportunities can be discovered by using different keyword matching options and reviewing the results. The fastest way to test keyword performance is to use them in search engine ads and create a landing page with an attractive call-to-action offer.

Content Ideas

Because pay-per-click is actual search data related to your target keywords, it contains valuable insight into the needs of your target audience. Keywords and phrases from the PPC campaign can be used for blog titles and content planning.

“It’s too expensive.”

“It doesn’t work.”

Most of us have heard from a friend, who heard from a friend, a horror story about pay-per-click advertising. “Sally sunk $30,000 into Google AdWords and it didn’t work.” I’m sure your friend was right. I’ve heard these stories too, and I can understand why some people think pay-per-click is dead.

Pay-per-click (PPC) requires constant attention and, when managed poorly or forgotten, it is very costly. If you don’t have the time or expertise to manage it, don’t do it!

Or, educate yourself to learn more about your options and their pay-offs.

Budget Management

Setting a budget, instead of letting the software manage your budget, ensures that only a set amount of money is spent.

Relevancy is Rewarded

Ads closely aligned with page titles and content keywords are considered more relevant, which reduces the cost-per-click. Quality and relevance are rewarded in pay-per-click.

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are two- to five-word phrases that are less popular and less competitive than shorter, more commonly used phrases. Targeting long tail keywords is far more cost-effective and results in higher quality traffic because they target more informed searchers who are further along in the buying process.

Geographic Targeting

Geographic targeting (geo-targeting) is useful when a business is targeting a specific market for sales. This option prevents the ad from receiving unwanted click-throughs from searchers outside of the target market area.

Content Networks

Content networks allow ad placement on other websites based on keywords. This is useful if your target buyers are reading these other websites and you can create an offer compelling enough for them to engage the advertisement.

Are you using PPC for more than just display advertising? Or are you seeing a lot of value in PPC? We’d love to hear how you’re using PPC in your marketing efforts. Leave a comment below.

You might notice as you setup your business page on Google+  that you don’t have to verify you’re the business owner. Google Places requires telephone verification to ensure ownership of the business but this wasn’t included in Google+.

Why? Great question. I think we’d all like to know.

This means that ‘name squatting’ is entirely possible on Google+ unless you’re a global brand (and Google likes you). The only recourse at this time is to go ahead and create an ‘official’ presence for your business on Google+ by creating a company page.

Google has made it easy to create a business page by giving us a wizard style tool. Even though there are a few screens, it’s really just a two-step process asking for very basic information. Creating your business page on Google+ will only take you about 5 minutes.

Before you start…

You’ll need to decide if you’d like to be listed as a ‘Local Business or Place’ or as a company before you make your page. The only difference I discovered is that a ‘Local Business or Place’ links the page to a Google Place page and requires the business phone number. Creating a ‘Company’ page does not link a Google Place page and requires a website address for the business to get started.

Now, just follow these two steps.

1. Pick a Gmail account & login

Claiming your brand or business page on Google+ requires a Google account. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to create a Google account.

2. Create the Page

Visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create to make your page. Before you begin, you will need to decide if you’d like to be a ‘Local Business or Place’ or a ‘Company, Institution or Organization’.

When I elected our company to be a ‘Local Business’, our Google Place page turned up in the search results. I chose our Google Place page and it was linked to the new Google+ page (confused by the naming scheme yet?). If you don’t have a Google Place page, you’ll be prompted for the information to create one.

Creating a page is quick and simple, no matter which choice you make, due the wizard style process. You’ll add relevant information about your company like the company tagline, logo, etc. The process is straight-forward and self-explanatory. A lot of the information is optional. So, if you don’t have a copy of your logo handy — this can be done later.

The last page of the setup process prompts you to promote the page. If you’re electing to come back to this later, wait to promote the page. You can always do this later.

Now, you can integrate it into your marketing mix as it makes sense. When you decide to integrate Google+ into your marketing, be sure to checkout options for integrating Google+ into your website & blog including the badges. Giving people the ability to share content via Google+ will create more visibility for your business.

Post Automation

We haven’t yet seen tools that let you automatically post to the page like other social networks. Google just recently released an API for Google+ so we’re expecting to see post automation solutions soon.

Finding Your Google+ Pages

A couple of weeks after you make your page, you might find yourself wondering how to locate it in Google+ (like I did). In the left sidebar, you’ll see a drop-down that lists your pages. When you click on the page name, posts are made from the page instead of you.

Assigning Page Admins

Google+ now supports multiple admins for pages. You can add other profile managers, if needed, using their email address. This is found under ‘settings’.

Deleting a Google+ Page

Of course, you can always back out of the whole deal and delete your page.

Do you know the top 3 metrics to measure?

For most companies, the website’s highest purpose is to bring sales leads. If it’s not performing on this task, take a look at the following top three metrics for success.

• Total number of website visitors vs. visitors that become leads or buyers
• Close rate of sales leads
• Average order value

The number of metrics available for a website is daunting and trying to track all those numbers will distract you from real success. Instead, narrow your focus to metrics that will drive the business forward.

Is your website bringing more customers to your door?

By using the metrics mentioned, you can easily track the performance of your website and overall Web presence. If your metrics are trending downward, what is driving the change?

If traffic is at expected norms but interactions are down, you may want to review and update the product descriptions or offers on your website. If traffic has decreased, where are your previous visitors going? You may find you have a new competitor, visitors are finding more relevant content somewhere else online or your online market space has changed.

Are You Falling Behind?

When was the last time you reviewed your online competitors? The online marketplace changes quickly. It’s smart to complete this every 4 to 6 months or when your metrics significantly change. One way to do a competitive review is to search on your most valuable keywords and review both the search results and advertisements. You may discover new competitors or that existing competitors are gaining ground.

Due to the dramatic growth in the mobile market and the variety of devices available, our industry is experiencing a dramatic shift to support mobile devices in a maintainable way. In the past, servers pushed content to users based on what platform they were using- mobile, tablet or desktop. While this approach worked, it also had it’s share of challenges.

Simply put, it was expensive and hard to justify.

Device detection wasn’t 100% reliable. When a new device came to market, code had to be updated to support the new device. In years past, browsers on mobile devices were so different that there was no reliable way of creating a consistent user experience. Mobile was cost-prohibitive to most businesses because of it’s complexity and maintenance costs.

Now, things have changed.

Over the past year, designers and engineers have started to adopt responsive web design which includes fluid widths, scalable images and adjustable layouts that remain consistent across all platforms. Using a collection of tools and techniques, a single website design is created with varying layouts for different screen sizes to target the various mobile devices while still supporting the traditional desktop web. The layout and positioning of page elements change fluidly, based on the viewer’s screen width, resolution and browser capabilities instead of simply detecting the device.

Using responsive web design, variations are made to maximize the space available on the screen for a better user experience for each device. For tablets, consideration is also made for vertical versus landscape viewing.

What It Looks Like

iPhone Size

Desktop Size

The Boston Globe is the poster child of responsive web design at the moment. Take a look at how the layout changes based on the screen width. The first image is the Boston Globe website, resized for a phone device. The one second  is the desktop version. By loading the website and resizing your browser, you’ll see responsive web design at work.

Notice how the elements on the web page fluidly move to support the changing size of the browser. You can see how one design can support the varying sizes of internet-enabled device screens.

What does the future hold?

At Knowmad, we’re understandably skeptical when it comes to new web design fads and trends because we’ve seen a lot of fads come and go over the last 10 years which makes it easier for us to recognize that responsive web design isn’t a fad. It’s here to stay.

We’re even implementing responsive web design in our own website redesign project that is currently underway.

Responsive web design a much-needed, fundamental shift for the web design industry. It will become a new ‘norm’ just like print styles for web pages.

If you’re considering redesigning a website in the near future and you’re not yet considering mobile, add responsive web design to your list of requirements. For existing websites, it’s possible to refactor designs to support responsive web design. Contact your designer and ask about mobile support.

Mobile continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Even in the B2B market, we’re finding that buyers that prefer to research are using mobile devices for their research activities and a growing number of marketing emails are opened on mobile devices. Considering that emails typically drive readers to a website, it’s critical to the performance of your online marketing to ensure your website is compatible to mobile devices.

In our industry, we most often see content theft in e-commerce, blogging and publisher websites but it can happen to any website. This isn’t intended to scare you, just to let you know that it’s a common issue and there are a few routes available to protect your investment in online content. In addition to qualified legal advice, other web publishers are a great source for ideas on how to protect your content by learning about their methods.

We’ve also observed that, in our business, the issue of plagiarism is best handled by providing our clients with options so they can find a method that works best for them. Recommending a specific solution would expose us to certain undesirable liabilities. Ergo…

Our Important Legal Disclaimer

We can’t give legal advice; we’re not attorneys, laws change and each situation differs. You should consult a qualified attorney and the US Copyright Office if you have questions about copyright protection and to review any process created for plagiarism or copyright infringement protection.  We are providing information about common industry practices and not information about applying the law to a specific set of facts.

Now, let’s discuss the issue at hand.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

There is a law on the books that helps you protect your online content. It’s called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, signed into US Federal law in 1998. In Subsection 512(c)of the Copyright Act, this law limits the liability of hosting service providers by requiring a process to respond to copyright infringement claims.

This subsection works in favor of publishers, as well as service providers, by requiring each service provider to implement a process to handle copyright infringement along with a designated internal agent to respond to infringement notices. A directory of agents is available on the US Copyright Office website so you can locate the contact information for a specific service provider.

Here’s the relevant part of the act in regards to our topic:
Upon receipt of a compliant notification of claimed infringement, a service provider must respond expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity, if the service provider seeks to receive the benefits of the limitations of liability contained in § 512(c). A service provider is not required by law to remove the allegedly infringing material, but upon receipt of a compliant notification will deemed to have been placed on notice of the allegedly infringing activity, and without the benefit of the limitations on liability contained in § 512, may face secondary liability for continuing to host the allegedly infringing material.

What are my options for protecting content?

There are a couple of options that we’re aware of to proactively protect online content. You can create and display a license with your content. Large publishers tend to create their own and have attorneys on staff. The rest of us are far more fortunate, in that we don’t need to have attorneys on staff. There are licenses freely available online, like the Creative Commons License, for the rest of us.

Creative Commons License

The Creative Commons License provides variations of stated protection. There’s a handy ‘License Chooser’ on the website to help you pick the most appropriate license. Once you have the license, place it on your website. For instance, you can create a license page and link it in the footer of your website so it shows on every page.

One of the most common variations of the Creative Commons license is called “Attribution-NoDerivs”, which states that others can redistribute your content commercially or non-commercially as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Register with US copyright office

You can also register your content with the US Copyright Office. Although your work is somewhat protected even without registering, case history suggests the US court favors registered copyrighters, so it is probably in your best interest to register.

Here’s a good article about how to register copyright for online content with the US Copyright Office.

Best Practices

Put a copyright notice on every page and make sure it’s up-to-date. We typically put the current year in the footer. Some believe you should have a range of years.

How do I know if it’s been stolen?

Monitor your content online using services like CopyScape and Google Alerts. CopyScape offers free and premium products and the premium products aren’t very expensive. We use a service of theirs called Copysentry, which scans the web weekly and emails a report. The report tells me if our content is present on another website.

You can also use a script called Tynt to tag copied content with a link back to your website. This tool has a few purposes, including SEO and sending people back to your site when content is copied. This is great for scripted content scrapers and when people copy into emails.

It looks like this…

What do I do if my content is stolen?

Before moving forward, decide if it’s worth your time. If it is, then you want to ensure your content qualifies for copyright protection.

The first step is to contact the blog or website owner. Usually, just asking them to remove prompts positive action. If they don’t respond, you can send a Cease & desist email to them.

After contacting the website owner, you may decide to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint with Google, asking them to remove the content from search results. You need to be able to prove you published the content first. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use the Way Back Machine, an internet archive tool.

Once you have a DMCA, you can send it to the hosting provider and ask them to discontinue hosting the website with the stolen content. You can usually find the Copyright Infringement Agent’s email via the US Copyright Office. They will either contact the website owner on your behalf or disable the account temporarily.

What strategies have you used with content thieves?