This is a friendly reminder that Google’s algorithm will update later this month, and it’s more important than ever to make sure your website is friendly not just to visitors on regular computers—but those using tablets and smartphones, too.

Here’s a direct quote from Google’s announcement about this update:

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

In other words, if you’re not catering to the growing number of users that are using mobile devices to browse the web, Google’s going to penalize you for it.

It’s not clear yet exactly what that will look like—but if you value getting new traffic from Google, it’s a good idea to pay attention to this change.

Not sure if your website qualifies as mobile-friendly?

Visit Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check—just enter your URL then click “Analyze”.

Uh oh, my site’s NOT mobile-friendly…what now?

First of all, instead of panicking and cursing Google, remember that making your website mobile-friendly is actually going to help you a great deal—and not just as it relates to your search presence. At the core, this change is reflecting the fact that more and more people are using tiny devices instead of big ol’ computers to look at websites—and it’s a basic marketing courtesy to make sure that your customers can find what they are looking for on your website with ease.

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, a user might visit your website and…

• have to squint to see teeny-tiny text
• then they try to click a button but click the wrong one because the buttons are so close together (oh, hello, frustration)
• then they try zooming in, but then can only see a teeny part of the page

That’s not ease-y, and it’s definitely not “friendly” to these humans who you are trying to connect with.

If you use a WordPress website already, the answer might be pretty simple—there are plugins that create a mobile-optimized version of your site, or you might choose to add a new theme or adjust your current theme to make it mobile responsive, which means the content will auto-magically realign itself to all the different screen sizes, from desktop to tablet to smartphone.

Shameless plug: Hello Blu Studio makes websites that are mobile-responsive, and has been doing so since before this Google algorithm announcement was made—because this feature is so critically important, I just can’t in good conscience allow my customers to get by without having it.

Have questions or need help making your website mobile-friendly? Let’s chat! I offer different levels of assistance to suit your needs and budget—from hour-long consultations to get you started on a DIY path, all the way to doing the whole thing for you.

Save money and market more effectively by deleting inactive email subscribers

If you’ve been using email marketing for your business, you know that your number of email subscribers is an important metric for tracking your customer relationships—and according to many marketing experts, it’s the most important metric. The more people opt in to hear from you, the more opportunities you have to stay in front of those individuals to share your message—and hopefully make more sales.

Today’s marketing exercise is, in some respects, a little painful. What I’m talking about is “scrubbing” your email list—deleting the inactive subscribers in your account.

On the surface, this sounds like a terrible idea (at least, it does to me). Why would I want to have 679 subscribers when I currently have 982? The bigger number of subscribers just feels better. It honestly hurts a little to think of just wiping a bunch of opt-ins out of my orbit.

But upon further reflection, I think you’ll find, like me, that you’ll be better off after “scrubbing”, or purging, your list.

Here are some reasons to face the pain and delete inactive users:

• They’re just not that into you: Inactive users are statistically proving how uninterested they are—if they haven’t opened your last 10 emails, it means they get way too many emails to pay attention to, or they aren’t making your emails a priority.
• Save money: Carrying all those extra users is adding to your total number of contacts—and if you ditch that dead weight, you might find yourself in a lower price bracket with your email marketing platform.
• Get more realistic reports: Campaign reports are a handy tool to learn in real time how people respond to your messages. Over the last six months I’ve seen my own open rate creep downward. I suddenly realized—with all these inactive subscribers in my account, that number was no longer accurate. Now that I’ve scrubbed my list of the people who never opened my emails anyway, the number will be higher—and more true to life. I’ll also be able to see with more precision which messages perform comparably better.

How to delete inactive subscribers

To delete inactive subscribers in MailChimp, go to your list, create a new segment, and customize the segment conditions to include the users that are inactive. Here’s a screenshot of how I did that:

Once you have that segment, you can select the users and either unsubscribe or delete them. For more detailed instructions on clearing inactive users and segmenting your list, check out this post on MailChimp’s website.

Not using email marketing yet? Click here to create an account with MailChimp, which is free for your first 2,000 subscribers.

Winona area readers: If you liked this post, don’t miss my Email Marketing 101 class on March 17! Details are here. It’s on St. Patty’s Day, so I may or may not be bringing mint chocolate chip cookies for the class….

HELLO, friend, and welcome to the [brand new] Hello Blu Studio blog!

I’m Michelle Urbick. You might know me from my other home over at Rosy Blu, but you might not know I’m also a website wizard with nearly a decade of experience working with hundreds of businesses on web marketing.

In this space I’ll be sharing marketing expertise, website wisdom and tips for getting your own message out to customers using the wondrous world wide web.

Hello Blu Studio got its name because good marketing is a lot like saying “Hello!”—marketing is simply the start of a conversation (with a lot of people). Therefore, the core of your marketing should always be about connecting with other humans, rather than using gimmicks and tricks just to make sales or increase traffic.

By way of illustrating there are as many ways to market yourself as there are ways to start a conversation, I’ve collected the wisdom of a dozen of my favorite business owners—the ones I look up to as influential brands both online and locally—on this question:

What’s your favorite way to say HELLO to people—and potential customers—who you haven’t met (yet)?

As you’ll see from their responses, there’s no wrong answer—their answers range from one-on-one to one-to-many methods, and encompass both online and offline communication. Some of them are a little unconventional…and others are classics that simply work.

 

Alexandra Franzen

“As a writer, my favorite way to say HELLO to people who I haven’t met yet…

… is to write the best blog posts, articles, advice columns and books that I possibly can.

By building a body of work that shows people who I am, what I love and what I believe in, it’s like waving “hello!” with my words.

If someone likes my particular flavor of “hello,” then they can swing over to my website — or into one of my workshops — to get to know me better, and continue the conversation.”

Find Alexandra at alexandrafranzen.com

 

Dyana Valentine

“In all of my speaking gigs (from emceeing, to big conferences, to 10 person intensives), I ALWAYS start with these stickers (that deeply informs everyone’s HELLO after that moment!):

and send thank you postcards, the graphic side of which look like this:

NOTE: Dyana shared even MORE wisdom about the ways she says hello—watch for details in a future post! Find Dyana at dyanavalentine.com

 

Paul Jarvis

“How do I say hi to my audience (my rat people)?

I write for them. Specifically for them, and no one else. As regularly (once a week) as possible, to let them know that I’m here, and that I care about giving them value.”

Find Paul at pjrvs.com

 

Sarah Von Bargen

“My favorite way to say hello to a potential client or customer? I use a four-part cocktail that goes something like this:

1. Follow them on Twitter
2. Tweet something (hopefully) funny and charming in their direction
3. Link to them in my weekly link roundup to send a bit of good-karma traffic their way
4. Drop them a friendly email!”

Find Sarah at SarahVonBargen.com and YesAndYes.org

 

Meg Worden

“My favorite way to say hello to people and potential customers I haven’t met yet, is the good old personal email. I still send a personal email to new subscribers saying, “thank you”, and “hi”, and asking a little about them. Because of this, I make great connections, increase conversions, have interesting conversations, and learn more about who I’m writing for.”

Find Meg at megworden.com

 

Molly Mogren Katt

“My go-to way to say hi is two fold:

1. I think a well-crafted tweet is a great way to get access to a someone, especially a high profile person. 90 percent of the time, they’re the ones monitoring their own Twitter feeds. Tweet at them & who knows? There’s a high likelihood they’ll answer!

2. Sent them a flattering, concise email asking for what you want. Check for typos. Include an action item. Be humble. Most importantly, be funny & real! This has worked for me many, many times. In fact, it’s how I landed my last job.”

Find Molly at heyeleanor.com

 

Halley Gray

“People love talking about themselves (including me) so I like to ask the what’s on their plate and what their business aspirations are. It’s fun to listen to people talk about what their enthusiastic about and it helps me understand them better.”

Find Halley at evolveandsucceed.com

 

Jen Vertanen

“My all-time favorite way of saying HELLO is by letting people ‘see’ the real me online – the good, the bad, and yes – even the ugly. I want people to see my picture, come to my sites, read my writing and either say – hey – I want to know more about Jen and her love of Aquaman and possibly her advice on business strategy — or — Meh – no thanks…not for me.

To take it a step further, those who do come in to say ‘hello’ get a personal greeting from me (sometimes in the form of an audio or haiku) with an invitation to tell me more about them so we can start to form a more personal connection.”

Find Jen at jenvertanen.com and almosthalfwaytohappy.com

 

Kate O’Brien

“I love people, so I say HELLO via human-to-human conversation, mostly in person (at an event) or over the phone. I have a couple clients I have reached out to via email because I love their work, I see that they are struggling in some way, and I offer useful advice (often this is pointing out typos or how their branding/marketing is off), and then we have a call. I give a lot of myself to my clients, so I pre-screen them by having a conversation and my gut lets me know if we are a good fit. If we aren’t a fit, I have a bunch of people I can heartily refer them to which also makes me feel good!”

Find Kate at understorycreative.com

 

Corey Koehler

“My favorite way of finding customers, for myself and my clients, is via paid media – specifically Facebook Ads and Google Adwords. I love it because paid media gets you and your message in front of your audience fast. And when you combine that speed with the testing and reporting these platforms are capable of, you can make improvements to your marketing messages very quickly. The faster you learn about what works or what doesn’t, the faster you can find more customers.”

Find Corey at coreykoehlermedia.com

 

José Peláez

“When I say ‘hello’ I go for quality and not quantity. After over 10 years in business as a freelance graphic/logo designer and with now countless advertising platforms and mediums out there to choose from, I know for sure meeting in person is my favorite and most effective way to say ‘hello’.

Meeting and connecting with people face to face gives me a chance to not only learn who they are and what they do, but also I get a glimpse of their personality, which I think is extremely important when deciding if they would be a good client for me, a good fit, someone I would like to get to know more and do business with. The services I offer are business to business, so a great place for me to say ‘hello’ to people would be at business networking clubs and events.”

Find José at pelaezcreative.com

 

Melissa Black

“I love those notifications from MailChimp that tell me I have new subscribers!  I feel like my e-letter is my opportunity to have a conversation with my community in a way that is less formal, and allows them to get to know me on a more personal level, while also letting them know the ways in which we could work together. I also like to reach out to new subscribers personally via email, and visit their website if they have one. If they have a newsletter, I will often subscribe, so that I can get to know them through their own community conversation!”

Find Melissa at blackinkvirtual.com

 

***

I hope the wisdom shared from these twelve wise owls will show you there’s no one right way to market yourself and connect with new customers. There are lots of different methods—and combinations of methods—that result in a successful business and satisfied customers.

If you need help saying “Hello!” through your website or online marketing strategy, feel free to learn more about me, check out my services or get in touch.

Thanks so much for dropping by!

If you’d like more from Hello Blu Studio, including ways to use your marketing to make real human connections, and to use your website more effectively and efficiently, click here to sign up for my email list.

 

What’s YOUR favorite way to say hello to new customers?