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Tag: digital marketing

  • Learn Something New

    I read a lot of blogs every day. A lot of blogs. Today, one of John Saddington’s four blog posts today (he blogs for himself and for Desk) caught my eye and made me think. John wrote about Roost, a plugin for WordPress that enables Safari users to get push notifications of new posts.

    So what? I use Chrome. Why would I care about Safari users? I’m teaching Digital Marketing at GA, and one of the topics we’re covering is segmenting in Google Analytics. Just for kicks, I checked out the traffic that Atlanta Tech Blogs gets from Safari users, both desktop and mobile. Whaddya know! More than 30% of the visitors to Atlanta Tech Blogs are Safari users. That ranks second only to Chrome users. Who knew?

    So I had to eat a bunch of my own dog food as I teach the DGM class, and it was a really good example to show:

    • How our customers/users can be segmented
    • How we can address each segment in a different way
    • That we can offer each segment something of value
    • That we need to practice what we preach :-)
    • That we can all learn something by reading others’ blogs
    • That we are all more likely to make a purchase (or download) when someone we trust recommends it.

    Saddington is about as smart as technologists come, so I trust his advice. Roost was extremely easy to install and get running, so now I can offer my Safari visitors something of value: push notifications.

  • Normal is just a setting on the dryer

    We’re in session 3 of Digital Marketing at General Assembly, and the word “normal” has popped up in our discussions of analytics and measurement.  What is normal?

    Some would say “normal is just a setting on the dryer”, but we’re not talking about “life” normal, but marketing analytics normal.  In the DGM world, “normal” is what we would define as our baseline or what we generally expect.  For example, for this blog, I can expect on a day to day basis to get a certain number of users. That’s normal. I can also expect to get a certain percentage of that traffic from the normal sources, as exhibited below in the pizza chart from Google Analytics.

    Yes, I said “pizza chart” because my son said he thinks it looks more like a pizza than a pie, so he wants to call it a pizza chart. Pizza chart it is.  The chart above covers all of January, which is when I reverted back to Blogger from WordPress for this blog. So, this is my new normal, until the trend changes.
    Why do we care about normal?  Here are a few reasons.
    • Normal is my baseline. It’s what you can expect if nothing else changes.
    • Knowing normal, now I can manage traffic sources by exception, meaning that, whenever I see a spike or dip in any of the above percentages, I know to check it out.
    • Anything outside of normal is either good or bad. A spike can mean a popular post or a new social medial influencer shared a post. A dip might mean a domain, DNS, or bad link shared.

    Just like when you start monitoring any aspect of your health – weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc. – you first establish a baseline. Then you manage by the changes to that baseline, either good or bad.
    So, while normal is a setting on the dryer, it’s a very important setting in the health and growth of your web property.  Find your normal, and measure against it.

  • How To Start Your Email Newsletter

    Email-Marketing-Optimization

    There are many parts to a content marketing strategy. One of the most important parts is an email newsletter. Despite many cries to the contrary, email is not dead as a marketing tool. In fact, email remains the most effective digital marketing tool, in spite of the meteoric rise of the most popular social media platforms. Your customers may or may not check their social media accounts during the day, but business email remains the go-to choice for communication.

    Knowing and understanding that fact, you may be considering producing a regular email newsletter for your customers, users, sales channel, or other audience segments. Before you get anywhere, you must remember that an email newsletter is an integral part of your content marketing strategy, so the goals of the newsletter should support the goals of the content marketing strategy.

    Here is a straightforward 8-point plan to beginning your email newsletter.

    1. Choose an email service provider (ESP).

    Please, do not try to operate an email newsletter with GMail. There are hundreds of email service providers to choose from. However, since you are just starting off, my advice is to find one that has a freemium option, meaning you don’t pay for a certain limited number of subscribers. Mailchimp is one such provider: emailing even daily to up to 2,000 subscribers is free. I use Mailchimp to manage all aspects of the Atlanta Tech Blogs daily digest email.

    2. Ask the hard questions before you ever begin to create your first newsletter.
    • who is your target audience?
    • what content will you share in the newsletter?
    • where will you promote your newsletter?
    • when will you send each issue out?
    • why are you creating a newsletter (what are your goals)?
    3. Gather content.

    Gather content from all of your available sources— including your blog, social media channels, company news, customer and employee testimonials, video training, customer support, and product/service documentation. Remember, you’re creating a vehicle to share content, so you need to make sure you have a lot of content to tap into for each newsletter issue.

    4. Prepare & Plan your content strategy.

    For this piece, I mean to put it on paper with a plan for each of the following:

    • frequency
    • format (template)
    • types of content
    • amount of content
    • calls to action
    • opt-in tactics
    5. Promote the newsletter.

    Promote your newsletter on every page of your website, email signatures, social media channels, your blog, and every other digital marketing channel you employ. Most of all, to promote your newsletter, offer something of value to your would-be subscribers.

    6. Use best practices for maintaining your email subscriber list:
    • double opt-in – when a subscriber enters their email address, they should receive an email confirmation that they must click on to confirm that they did opt-in to subscribe.
    • easy opt out – make it very simple if someone no longer wants to subscribe to your newsletter. Don’t take it personally, just let them out.
    • “you’re receiving this email because” – include the simple reminder in the footer of your email newsletter template that reminds the subscriber why they’re receiving the email.
    • datavalidation offers a free service to check your email list against spam reports.
    • offer an alternate contact method such as a phone number or your social media account
    • respond to email inquiries from your newsletter
    7. Measure performance against your goals.

    All ESPs offer measurement and analytics tools, so you can easily track your most common metrics:

    • Open & read
    • Click rate
    • Subscriber growth
    • Unsubscribes
    • Spam reports
    8. Iterate what’s working or not working.

    Just like you should do with your blog or any other aspect of your content marketing strategy, you should constantly measure the results of your email newsletter against your goals, and change what’s not working. 

    If you walk through these eight steps in the creation of your email newsletter, you’ll be starting off on the right foot. Content is king, and email is still the killer app of content marketing.

    Kevin is a serial entrepreneur and veteran of 7 tech startups. He runs Atlanta Tech Blogs, Pitch Practice, mentors startups and entrepreneurs at ATDC, and teaches Digital Marketing courses at GA.

  • Week 1 of Digital Marketing @GA

    I could not ask for a more enthusiastic and engaging group for this session of Digital Marketing at GA’s Atlanta location. In our first two sessions, there has not been a dull moment.  So far, we’ve delved mainly into creating a brand and articulating that brand’s message.  Last night we got a great insight into why some people are more successful at articulating and achieving their goals through this wonderful TED Talk from Simon Sinek.

    Understanding that “people don’t buy your what they buy your why“ had a profound effect on the rest of the evening’s learning.  After the video we started with a blank white board and named 4 brands that the group thought were “good” and then four brands the group thought were “bad”. Very interesting dynamics occurred during this discussion.

    You can see the discussion starting to escalate below on Instagram,plus a demonstration of Comcast’s continued misunderstanding of “brand”, and then a good example of how not to do social media.

    After praising the good and torching the bad brands, we realized somethig very curious: the words, thoughts, feelings, and other things evoked by these brands – good and bad – had nothing whatever to do with their products.  That really brought home how we must be intentional about creating our own brands (personal and company) based on a set of core values, taught to us by FAKEGRIMLOCK.

    The final exercise for last night was for each of the students to create their own individual brand brief based on Mr. Grimlock’s MVP model above, and then get full-barrel feedback from someone else in the class, one-on-one. AS FAKEGRIMLOCK SAY…

    In this #DGM2 class, we’re learning by doing, by creating our brands, then creating a strategy for marketing and promoting our brands successfully. Next week, we dig into analytics. Who doesn’t love analytics?!?

  • DGM: It’s on

    The Digital Marketing (DGM) class at General Assembly‘s Atlanta campus starts TONIGHT, and it’s on from the start.  Here’s a quick peek into what the next 10 weeks will hold.

    Day 1 – we’re bringing Pitch Practice into Digital Marketing! Can you believe it? That’s right, the first step in your digital marketing journey is figuring out and then planning out your brand strategy, and that includes your elevator pitch. Everyone in the class will get to deliver their (real or made up) elevator pitch.

    Day 2 – FAKE GRIMLOCK TAKE STAGE WITH MINIMUM VIABLE PERSONALITY. THIS WHAT MAKE STARTUP.  I can’t believe I’ve kept this one quiet the whole time I’ve had the DGM curriculum at my disposal.  I reached out to FAKE GRIMLOCK on Twitter, and asked him to make a special appearance to the class, via skype of course. His reply? “ME CONSIDER THAT.” Either way, we’ll be referencing his awesome model for marketing.


     Guest Speakers galore! We’re pulling digital marketing rock stars from the Atlanta startup and marketing community, and bringing them into the class to overwhelm the students with their experience, expertise, and general awesomeness. If you’re not following these people on Twitter, in addition to Mr. Grimlock, you should be, and you will be after soaking up their DGM genius.

    Jason Dominy – The Dalton Agency
    Lindsay Trinkle – Write2Market
    Maria Joyner – Synapp.io
    Van Baird – State Farm

    And the over-arching theme of the 10 week, 60-hour class is taking a web property – new or existing – into the digital marketing stratosphere as we learn by doing the job, and create a real world digital marketing plan that these students will use on real businesses during and after the class.

    I am so excited to meet all these students and lead this class, and share their progress along the way.

  • Teaching Assistant Needed for Digital Marketing Class

    I’m leading the Digital Marketing class at General Assembly Atlanta starting Tuesday Jan 27. The class will take place every Tuesday and Thursday night through April 2 at GA’s location at Ponce City Market in Midtown.  The class is full, and we need a teaching assistant.  While there will be an occaision or two to actually lead the class, the main responsibilities for the TA are as follows:

    • handle administrative tasks
    • coordinate office hours 
    • planning outside-the-class activities, including:
      • field trips
      • panels
      • social events
    The requirements for the position are:

    • At least 1 year of industry experience (should not be only freelance work) OR former student of class who has worked 3+ months
    • Fluency in all topics of the DGM course
    • Approachable and works well 1:1 with students, 
    • Organized – ability to manage calendar, student progress tracking, class resource organization, etc.
    • Proactive – takes initiative to make the program better
    • Strong team communication skills


    It’s a sweet part time gig that pays a flat fee for your time, and you get full access to the entire Digital Marketing class, which is quite a value.  If you’re organized, positive, helpful, and have an unseemly liking to Google Analytics and spreadsheets, this one’s for you. Please DM me on twitter @kevsandlin or send me an email to kevinsandlin at gmail.  I’ll put you in touch with the GA folks to handle the particulars.

    If not, will you help spread the word?  Class starts in 3 days!  

  • Don’t go to college

    Following on yesterday’s topic, “Your college degree is worthless“, I’m tacking in a different direction today. What I learned in college is serving me very well today. However, when I was in college (get ready), we didn’t have smart phones, email, laptops, or social media. The world has changed – completely – and the mindset around a college education has to change along with it.

    Even before my time, if you had a college degree, you really set yourself above the fray. If you got an MBA (which I did), then you were head and shoulders above everyone else. There are still a set of very specific areas in which a college degree (not “the equivalent”) is required, including (but certainly not limited to):

    • Medicine
    • Engineering
    • Accounting
    • Law
    If you are going to pursue a career in these or similar fields, you must get a college degree, and then some. No getting around it, and all of those are very respectable and much in demand careers that pay well, enabling you to pay back all the loans you’ll probably need to get through all that schooling.



    However, if your bent is toward technology, either software development or networking technologies or any sort of digital skills, you do not need to go to college. I’ll say that again: to work in the fastest growing sector of jobs in today’s economy, you do not need to go to college. You do not need to spend 52 months pursuing a college degree just to say you got a college degree. You do not need to spent a ridiculous amount of money over those 4+ years when you could be working and earning money.



    College ain't cheap!



    Instead, you can engage in shorter, more specific, more valuable, and more employable education, like any one of the following:

    • learn to write software in 3 months for less than $15k. Software developers are experiencing negative unemployment today, especially in Atlanta. There are many choices:
    • attend a series of computer networking (Cisco, Microsoft, RedHat, etc.) bootcamps and earn the highest level networking certifications in less than one year.
    • attend a series of part time digital classes in UX design, Analytics, Business Fundamentals & Tactics, Data Science, Digital Marketing, Product Management, User Experience Design, Visual Design (just to name a few) while you’re working and earning money and learning to be the most valuable digital master in your company. 

    Not one of the careers that result from these skills requires a college degree. None.



    Or you can spend $100k to live with little or no responsibility for 4-5 years, learn how to drink beer, and then try to get a job in the digital age. Seriously, though, if you’re not going to pursue a career that absolutely requires a college degree, spending 52 months and well over $100k just to say you have a degree is not a wise investment of anyone’s time or money.



    If you’re inclined towards working in technology, you don’t need to go to college.

  • Top 3 Tech Skills to Get Hired in the Digital Age

    Cross posted from the General Assembly blog.

    When you graduate from college, you have a degree in some specific subject(s). But it is becoming increasingly important that you have practical skills when you enter the workplace, in addition to the specific knowledge you gained during your college career. When you enter the workforce, no matter who you work for, there will be some learning curve as you learn how they do business, what tools they use, and their processes and procedures. But wouldn’t it be great if on day one when you arrived at that sweet new job, you were teaching them new tricks?

    If you learn these three digital age skills, there’s a good chance that you will blow their doors off when you start work on Monday.

    1. Front end website development

    HTML5, CSS, Javascript, WordPress. For the non-developer, these terms are very intimidating, but a qualified instructor can make them music to your ears. When you enroll in one of these classes, it’s generally understood that you’ve never written software code before, and that’s where it’ll start. Then, 3-4 months later, you won’t recognize yourself as you crank out beautiful web pages and awesome functionality from your keyboard. Just think, the next time you have a great idea, you can just build it!  These classes are usually…

    • 3-4 months long
    • $3,500 – $10,000; financing is available
    • available in-person, online (on demand)
    • part time or full time “immersive”

    Why you should learn front end web development: so you can build your own websites any time you want to try a new idea.

    2. Digital Marketing

    SEO, site optimization, content strategy, social networking, paid traffic, analytics. Also might sound a little intimidating, but you already blog and use social media, right? Then you’re halfway there. Learn digital marketing, and you’ll understand that it’s not dumb luck that gets a website millions of page views, downloads, likes, and retweets. It’s a process, and anyone can learn how to make that process sing. The basics of marketing are the same as they always have been, but just that great word – digital – makes it move a whole lot faster and gives you instant data that old school marketers never dreamed of. To learn digital marketing, you’ll need…

    • A computer and Internet access
    • Free tools like Google Analytics
    • A spreadsheet software like Google Sheets
    • about 60 hours of class time (10 weeks part time)
    • approximately $3,000 if you take a formal class

    Why you should learn digital marketing: so you can market-test anything you build, gain traction and capture leads for your business.

    3. Ecommerce

    Shopping cart software, ecommerce gateways, merchant processing. When you want to find a product, you look on the Internet. When you find that product, and want to buy it, more often than not, you purchase it over the Internet. That’s ecommerce. It’s much more sophisticated than it used to be, but basic ecommerce is very much available to anyone who has the skills and knowledge to set it up on their website. With today’s plethora of shopping cart software packages, simple Internet gateways, and banks (finally) becoming very accepting of a “Mom & Pop” ecommerce shop, selling something on the Internet is something anyone can do. A very simple example is setting up your personal site with SquareSpace, which is already integrated with Stripe. All you do is tell Stripe where to deposit the funds.

    Why you should learn ecommerce: so you can easily setup an online store and sell just about anything you have or build or create.

    Combining these three skills makes you a triple threat, since you’ll be able to build it, market it, and sell it. Not many people can do that, but you can. You’ll be prepared to be the entrepreneur you’ve always wanted to be, setting up your own website and selling your widgets. Better yet, when anyone else you meet wants to do the same thing, you’ll be prepared to do it for them. That’s called being instantly employable.

    On average, it takes 52 months to earn a bachelor’s degree. Compare than to approximately 4 months it would take to learn to build your own website, create a strong following, and sell products from that website to actually make money. Not to mention the drastic difference in the cost of these two very different programs.

    Am I advocating that young people today not attend college?  Maybe. Maybe not. But in this day of $100k+ for a college degree when you can learn very marketable skills for less than 20% of that number in 1/10th of the time, everyone should at least give it some serious consideration.

    This post originally appeared on the General Assembly blog.