8.6K
Downloads
88
Episodes
Running a business is daunting. There are too many things to keep track of and everything seems to cost money. So how do you actually grow your company without going crazy or broke? At GreenMellen, we understand the challenges of being business owners. As a digital marketing agency for over a decade, we've got experience helping businesses grow using the latest technology and marketing best practices. The Brighter Web podcast is aimed at sharing practical advice. The show is hosted by GreenMellen partner Mickey Mellen & marketing manager Robert Carnes. Join us to learn about effective organizational processes and digital marketing insights.
Episodes
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
Nonprofits are unique organizations for many reasons, including how they approach marketing. This can be both a benefit and a challenge for the professionals marketing for nonprofits. Let’s take a look at what makes charities different and how they can make the most of their digital marketing.
What makes nonprofit marketing different?
- Your organization has a mission
- Closely tied with fundraising.
- Sometimes slower to adapt to technology
- Organizations more willing to share with each other. Less competitive.
What challenges do nonprofit marketers face?
- Limited budget & resources. Marketing is viewed as overhead.
- Limited staff. Even large nonprofits tend to be understaffed.
- Lots of different audiences. Having to appeal to all of them.
- Marketers have to do most of the work themselves.
The way we think about charity is dead wrong— a TED Talk by Dan Pallotta
What are the benefits of marketing a nonprofit?
- A mission that people (hopefully) like.
- Volunteer help. Guidance from your board.
- Easy calls to action. Donate. Volunteer. Come to an event.
- Digital tool discounts (or free)!
What resources can a nonprofit marketer use?
5 Ways Nonprofit Organizations Benefit from Digital Marketing
Thursday Jan 19, 2023
Thursday Jan 19, 2023
When it comes to WordPress plugins, less is more. You don’t want to bog down your site with too many plugins, but you also need a few to help with your site’s functionality. Here are 10 of our favorite plugins to help your WordPress site operate smoothly.
Security and Spam
Content wins, and just producing solid content and keeping your site safe is the key.
- Akismet: filter for spam comments
- BlogVault: site backups
- ManageWP: a single dashboard for handling multiple sites
Search Engine Optimization
You can’t depend on these exclusively for SEO, but they can be a good guide.
- SEO Press: all-in-one website ranking plugin
- Yoast: The opinion of an algorithm from some guy in the Netherlands.
Content
These plugins can help you create great content and format your pages well.
- Beaver Builder: our preferred page builder
- Redirection: helpful for redirecting pages and blog post URLs
- Gravity Forms: a robust form creator
- WP Rocket / Imagify: speed up your website with caching and smooshing
- WordPress Editorial Calendar
Read More
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
We encounter so much information daily—it’s easy to get lost or confused. One of the best ways to combat this is to have a good note-taking approach. But how do you take effective notes and keep them organized enough to be useful?
Why is it valuable to take notes?
- Our brains are quite fallible.
- We work hard to keep it strong, and you can still forget things.
- Notes are a great way to know what was said, and what that meant to you at the time.
What can you take notes for?
- The two big ones are meetings and books, for different reasons:
- Meetings, to remember what we said and serve our clients appropriately.
- Books, to help me learn.
- This could be reframed as learning and logistics.
- Other things can include conferences, podcasts, task lists, etc.
What do you do with your notes after writing them down?
- For many people, just writing notes down is a huge first step.
- For me, it depends on the type of note:
- For meetings, I’ll make sure they’re cleaned up and in a place where the team can benefit from them.
- For books, I’ll add more context around them and put them in a system where I can use them later. I also try to pull out any gems and turn those into future blog posts.
Why do you prefer digital notes to physical ones?
- I’m digital all the way, mostly for the ability to share with others and do some great cross-referencing on my own.
- There are advantages to hand-writing notes, though some of the stated ones are a bit over-blown. The three big advantages that I hear about are:
- Handwriting slows you down, in a good way. Handwriting forces you to write about the topic rather than copying verbatim, which makes you think more. Be careful not to just type word for word.
- Digital shows too much information/distractions. This is true, but easily solved.
- Digital shows too many tasks — the list never ends. Well, configure it differently and make it end.
- I can be more present. Depending on the environment, a laptop may not even be appropriate, but manual notes are always find.
- The migration of manual notes to a digital system is gold. I take church notes by hand, but processing them is an enjoyable Sunday afternoon activity.
How is note-taking relevant for marketers or business leaders?
- It goes back to the two core reasons:
- For clients and meetings, you want to know what they said and remember what you promised.
- On the other hand, as a marketer or business leader, you should be constantly working on your skills.
- I recently wrote a post about the different ways someone might take notes about a book. It gives more detail about how to capture information that you read.
Thursday Dec 22, 2022
Thursday Dec 22, 2022
The best marketers are constant learners. We must keep up with plenty of trends to remain relevant. To help with that, let’s take a look at the six most popular ways to stay on top of digital marketing professional development.
Why is learning important for marketers?
- It’s always changing.
- There are no experts.
- It keeps you sharp and curious.
- You can be more well-rounded.
1. Books
- Books are undervalued.
- Expand your definition of reading: audiobooks count, too.
- A few reading suggestions:
- This is Marketing by Seth Godin
- How to Write Copy that Sells by Ray Edwards
- Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller
- The Story Cycle by Robert Carnes
2. Podcasts
- Podcasts are easy to listen passively.
- Practice active listening: take notes, and take action
- Some suggestions:
- WorkLife with Adam Grant
- Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam
- All It Takes is a Goal with Jon Acuff
3. Conferences
- Conferences are more active and offer an experience
- These are a quick boost of inspiration and encouragement
- Create a plan to get the most out of your time & investment
- Some suggestions
4. Email newsletters
- They’re making a comeback
- Good way to curate lots of online content
- Avoid content overload by subscribing wisely
- Suggestions:
5. Mentor
- They help to shortcut experience.
- Help you focus on a relationship
- Find someone you want to be more like
- Find a professional program to help connect you
- They’re mutually beneficial for both of you
6. Make it stick
- Make learning a regular habit
- Take notes to help it remain in your head
- Take action - implement what you learned
- Share what you learned
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Did you create a strategy before building your business website? Perhaps you skipped this step to save time or because you weren’t sure why it was needed. However, creating a website without a strategy can leave it aimless and ineffective. Let’s talk about why you need a website strategy and what it should look like.
Why is it important to have a strategy before building a website?
- So you build the website for the right reasons.
- A common way to spot strategy-less sites were clearly built for the business, not their customers.
- Think about what information your audience needs before you even begin.
But doesn't that slow the process down?
- Absolutely, but that’s ok.
- Speed isn’t the goal here. Or if it is, that’s a different conversation.
- You could go on Squarespace right now and literally have a site in a matter of minutes.
- Slowing yourself down can be a good thing to get the content right.
What should the website strategy include?
- It’s a deeper process, but it comes down to understanding who you’re trying to serve.
- Who are they?
- What are you trying to help them with?
- Why should they listen to you?
- What do they need to do to get started?
How can you implement this strategy into the site build?
- One, clearly, is the content. Speak to them in the right way—don’t use internal jargon (unless it helps with your audience).
- The other is the site hierarchy, the sitemap. Knowing your audience will give you a better insight into what kind of content would be beneficial on the site.
How does this benefit your company in the long run?
- We get a lot of clients that come to us with sites that you can tell were solid when they started, but they didn’t have a clear direction.
- The navigation has become overcrowded, there are a bunch of CTAs on the home page, three or four big buttons at the top, each trying to overpower the other.
- With no direction, it’s hard to know what to prioritize.
- A strategy gives you a road map for how to build and grow your website.
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
What are your business goals in the new year? You don’t have to wait until January to set new goals—but you should take the time to make sure these goals are effective. Join us as we examine the best way to set goals for your marketing this year.
Why is proving ROI in marketing so difficult?
- It can be hard to follow multiple visits all the way down to your bottom line.
- Increasing likes and followers is nice, but how does that help you?
- There are any number of marketing touches that can lead to new business.
- Increasing those touch points with your audience helps.
- But set goals around things that you know impact your business.
How many goals should you have? How often should they change?
- Layers. Bottom-line revenue is often the main one, and work up from there.
- You want more revenue? You need more leads.
- Want more leads? You need more traffic. Want more traffic? You get it.
- Build a marketing funnel and continue to optimize each layer.
What makes an effective marketing goal?
- SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound
- This helps you add context so you know what role it plays in your marketing.
- Keep your goal something you actually want to achieve so you’ll stay motivated.
What’s a bad example of a marketing goal?
- Eg. Increase revenue for next year.
- It’s notspecific enough and leaves out the context of how to get there.
How do you keep track of these goals?
- Set about 2-3 goals each quarter to stay focused.
- Write them down somewhere you’ll see regularly.
- Create a weekly scorecard to keep you focused regularly.
- Hire a solid CPA to help you figure out your money stuff.
Thursday Nov 10, 2022
Thursday Nov 10, 2022
Why is email underrated?
- People take email for granted. It’s kind of boring and reliable.
- It’s been around forever and most people have it.
- There are plenty of people who do email poorly.
- We talked about spammy email in a previous episode.
Why is email so valuable?
- You own your list. Not the platform it’s on.
- Deliverability is high. Assuming you do email the right way.
- Open rates are much higher than social reach rates.
- It’s media rich—meaning you can include links and visuals.
- Automation is much easier to accomplish—also talked about this in another episode.
How does email work with other marketing platforms?
- Everything should point back to your website.
- Use your social, podcast, and blogging content to drive emails.
- People are often willing to give up their emails in exchange for lead generators.
- Email is a way to nurture a lead you got from somewhere else.
What’s changing with email lately?
- Email open rates are less reliable with Apple’s auto-open rates.
- Email newsletters are making a comeback.
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
What is the magic email?
- It’s a way to get people’s attention in their inbox, but it’s kind of a last resort.
- I (Mickey) heard about it from Blair Enns (2Bobs podcast).
- The email is simply this: “Since I have not heard from you on this, I have to assume your priorities have changed.”
When do you use it?
- When all else has failed. This is your Hail Mary.
- After you’ve tried connecting with the person multiple times.
- For example, Mickey reached out to a person five times with no response before sending the magic email. He then got a reply 26 minutes later.
When should you NOT use it?
- Use it sparingly because the message is direct and snarky.
- Not on any relationships you don’t mind losing.
- It often gets people to respond, but not always positively.
Why do you think it works?
- Puts a bit of time pressure on. And some guilt, too.
- There must be some psychology behind what gets people to finally respond.
- “Works” is relative. A response is the main goal, though, and it works for that.
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Why is it important to know your audience?
- Why waste time communicating with someone else?
- Talk to people who you’re relevant to
- Every business exists to serve people; even if you’re B2B
What are mistakes businesses make with their audience?
- Thinking everyone is their audience; the more focused, the better
- Not fully understanding their audience; don’t make dumb assumptions
- Not staying focused on the audience; it’s not about you, it’s about them
How can we figure out who our audience is?
- Think about the people you serve? Who are your best customers?
- Figure out what they have in common; usually it’s the problem you help them solve
- Talk to some of them; learn about their motivations and preferences
- Look at your website users, social media followers, email subscribers
- List the demographic data; gender, age, location, income, occupation, family, etc.
What are the practical ways of staying focused on your audience?
- Creating audience personas is a helpful shortcut to processing this mass of information
- It focuses your attention on a specific character, rather than on statistics
- It’s OK to have a few different personas based on different audience segments
- Print these out and keep them visible as a reminder for who you’re reaching
- Think about the persona every time you write an email, social post, or blog
- But don’t overly generalize; keep meeting with people to keep it human
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Quick—describe Twitter in less than 140 characters. It’s not easy to be succinct, but that brevity is one of the major advantages of Tweeting. Twitter might be great for influencers or debating politics, but does it have a place in business marketing? #GoodQuestion
How is Twitter different from other social platforms?
- It’s more short form, micro posts with limited characters
- It’s more focused on trending news content
- Visual content still performs well, but it’s not entirely focused on that
- Twitter is simpler because it has less of the added features of Facebook
How can Twitter work well for businesses?
- It’s still a large and active social platform
- There are lots of conversations to engage in
- It’s a relatively easy platform to create short-form content for
- Best for newsworthy posts and conversations (especially using hashtags)
- A good way to keep on top of trends
Why might Twitter not be a good fit?
- Many of their users are bots and fake accounts
- Unlike LinkedIn, there’s a lot of political nonsense and anger
- It’s much hard to maintain an active presence— it requires multiple posts per day to stay relevant
- Sees a much lower engagement rate
- Mostly suited for influencers with existing large audiences
How can your business take advantage of Twitter?
- Use it mostly for quick updates and news content
- Leverage visuals— one of the best platforms for GIFs
- Join existing conversations using relevant hashtags
- Connect with industry influencers
- Set your expectations low and try to have some fun with it
What’s the future of Twitter?
- They already went from 140 → 280, next is “articles”?
- Open up API some more? Elon was planning to.
- Cluttering themselves with too many different features (eg. Spaces)
- Twitter Blue for $2.99/mo (ad-free, editing tweet feature)