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Faster than you can say “fa-la-la-la-la” and deck the halls, the old year passes.

What you do now, at the end of the year, can set your business up for a successful new year, or keep you mired where you are now. There’s an old saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will always get what you have always had.” Meaning: if you like where your business is now, keep doing the same thing, but if you want growth, it’s time for positive change.

Digital Marketing Evolves Quickly

In the past year, we’ve seen enormous changes happening in the world of digital marketing. From AI to changes in Google’s algorithm, nothing stands still.

This past year, for example, we have seen:

1. Growing consumer pushback on AI generated content
2. At least four major Google updates and several minor ones that rocked many websites’ traffic patterns plus, renewed emphasis on Google’s “E-A-T” formula, which indicates that expert, authentic, and trustworthy content remains dominant
3. The iconic blue Twitter bird become a black and red X, with the social media giant now on shaky ground
4. Areas that were popular in previous years, including YouTube and video content and podcasting, remain hot (with no sign of cooling)
5. Increasing consumer reliance on trust indicators, such as reviews, to determine whether local businesses are legitimate and trustworthy (there’s that word “trustworthy” again!)

So, what’s a small business owner to do? Here are our recommendations for digital marketing resolutions for small business owners.

New Year’s Digital Marketing Resolutions

1. Avoid the use of AI-generated content. AI content continues to draw controversy, with increasingly vocal consumer backlash against all AI-generated text and images. Recently, Sports Illustrated, the venerable magazine and brand that millions love for its sports coverage and swimsuit issue, found itself in hot water after using fake author profiles, bios, and images created by AI as well as articles written by bots.

   The resulting debacle saw the company scrambling to remove content and a huge dip in confidence in the venerable brand. To avoid a similar negative effect on your own brand, avoid the temptation to use AI to generate content. It’s not worth losing the trust of your customers to save a bit of time and effort.

2. Focus on high quality, useful web content for SEO. Chasing Google algorithm updates is a fool’s race because the ‘finish line’ – first position on the SERPs – is always changing. It’s like the old Peanuts cartoons where Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown, and always snatches it away just as he goes to kick it. Google is always changing, tweaking, and refining the algorithm used to determine just where a page sits in the rankings. Gone are the days when we could use precise formulas to get pages to rank. Now, with so much AI-generated content flooding the market, it’s more important than ever for companies and brands to publish content judiciously.

Focus your website, blog posts, videos, and social media posts on perspectives that only you, as an authority on the topic, may have, or industry knowledge that you’ve gained from many years of experience. Publishing the same old, same old content won’t achieve the results you desire. Think outside of the topic box and write for people, not search engines, to court and woo both to love you. It sounds crazy, but it works.

3. Participate on social media platforms where your customers gather. Whether it’s Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or another platform, put your time, money, and effort into the platforms where your customers are most likely to seek the products or services you sell. Headline makers like CEOs behind X and Facebook are just that: headline makers. They are not the brand, and they are not a determinant of where your customers prefer to spend their leisure time. Go where your customers go online and participate on the platforms where they like to be.
4. Video and Podcasting Remain Hot: Yes, videos and podcasts continue to be in the news as exciting opportunities for content producers and advertisers. But, like all platforms, it’s only profitable if your customers listen to podcasts or watch videos. Some products or services lend themselves well to either podcasting or videos, others, not as much. This is where our experts at Dashboard can help you decide what, if any, channels you should advertise on or participate in.
5. Build Your Trust Up (and Don’t Lose It!): Trust, once lost, is hard to recover. But it is a priceless commodity in a world increasingly flooded with phony accounts, AI-generated content, and businesses that do not keep their word.
   

   So work hard on building good customer relationships and a high degree of trust with your customers. And ask for reviews. These trust indicators are priceless and excellent advertising. Positive reviews on Google, Facebook, Angie’s List, Clutch, and other review sites all help boost your business’ brand and visibility in the marketplace and shorten the time it takes for someone to move from search to lead or sale. We can help you develop simple, time-tested processes to ask for, and get, more customer reviews. Ask us about it.

Make Dashboard Part of Your New Year’s Resolutions

As far as New Year’s resolutions go, the list above is really quite do-able. It’s much easier than the resolution to wake up at 5 a.m. to go running every day, and definitely easier than giving up your daily cup of coffee in favor of something caffeine free (shudder).

We’re passionate about sharing with small business owners best practices in digital marketing. Whether it’s ensuring your social media builds your brand and generates leads or ensuring your website is secure, Dashboard Interactive Marketing resolves to be a small business’ go-to marketing partner for the new year. Happy New Year!

Call us at 763-242-2454 for a consultation or if you have any questions.

Does your business website feature a blog? When was the last time you updated it?

In the United States alone, there are over 37 million active bloggers, defined as content creators who have updated or added new posts to their blogs in the past 12 months. If that seems like a lot of content out there, you’re right – but it continues to grow because of its value to businesses to attract organic search traffic. Fully 92% of business owners say they blog because it’s a cornerstone of their digital marketing program.

Many companies begin a blog only to find themselves needing help to maintain or add to it over time. Competing priorities often divert time and resources away from the blog – and that’s a shame. The longer a blog remains dormant and untouched, the potentially lower its content sinks in the search engine ranks since Google and many other search engines place value on frequent updates. Aging, untouched content can be viewed by search engine algorithms as less relevant over time, making it harder to gain search engine rank and traffic.

Why Update Your Blog?

Blogs serve many purposes as part of a digital marketing plan.

• Search engine traffic: Blogs can attract organic search engine traffic if each post or article is optimized properly. The more people who find your website, the more opportunities you have to make a sale or generate leads.
• Useful information: A good business blog is more than generic articles. It helps establish expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, the so-called “E-A-T” formula that boosts the popularity of blogs in search engine results. The more your blog reflects your voice, authority, and perspective, the better – Google’s last few updates have rewarded content that offers original information in a compelling manner.
• Build brand: Blogs can also be used to establish a brand voice and tone in the marketplace. If the blog is written from a unique perspective or has a distinctive tone that reflects the parent company’s brand, it can serve as another essential place online to reinforce a company’s brand perspective.
• News and share-worthy content: Some blogs provide industry news. While the posts may not be evergreen, they still offer plenty of marketing opportunities because they may be shared and commented on.

But what if you do not update your blog? What if your last post was made weeks, months, or even years ago?

Old, stale blog content works against your website:

• It makes a site outdated
• It looks like you don’t care about details
• It may be ignored or even delisted by Google
• You lose opportunities for site traffic, leads, and sales

Updating Old Blog Posts – Breathing New Life Into Old Content

Although it is a good idea to add new blog posts if you haven’t done so in a while, updating older posts can also provide Google with information that your blog is active and viable.

What does it mean to update old blog posts? Here are some aspects of updating older posts:

• Revising or refreshing keyword phrases based on new data
• Updating titles to make them more appealing
• Adding new images
• Updating meta tags and descriptions
• Updating links and checking for broken links
• Updating information
• Revising the text to make it better reflect search intent

And this is only a partial list of what goes into refreshing older blog content. Much preparatory work must be done to identify where blog posts currently stand in Google’s rankings, what competitors are doing right (or wrong) to rank better or worse than your site, and so much more.

Benefits of Updating Older Blog Posts

As you can see from the previous list, updating older blog posts can be time-consuming. Yet it can more than pay for itself.

By updating older blog posts, you can:

• Improve search rank
• Increase site visitors, leads, and sales
• Provide fresh articles for social media sharing
• Reuse them for new content, such as turning a blog post into a PDF

No Time? We Do Content Updates

So don’t discount your older blog posts or a blog that’s been idle for some time. You can still get a lot of traction from it in the form of search traffic if you perform an update. But how to update it, and to what level of detail, can be challenging to navigate for the average business owner.

That’s why it is vital to work with the content and SEO experts at Dashboard Interactive Marketing. We can help you assess the current state of your blog and suggest update priorities to help you get the most bang for your marketing buck. Call us at 763-242-2454 for more information.

E-commerce is big business. According to Statista, e-commerce activity topped 4.9 trillion USD last year and is expected to continue to increase. Additionally, 58.4% of internet users buy something every week. Companies seeking to tap into this lucrative market in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales are flocking to major platforms to establish online stores.

However, just like opening a bricks and mortar store, opening an e-commerce store isn’t a quick or easy task. Think about what it was like to open a brick and mortar retail store (if you have one – if not, imagine one.) First, you must choose the location. Next, you must clean and decorate the store. Then, install counters, fixtures, and lighting. Now comes the hard part: setting up the cash register and transaction payment system. Add onto that loss prevention systems, inventory monitoring software, and payroll and time tracking software, and you’ve got a complex to-do list for sure. And that’s all before you’ve ordered product, hangers and hang tags, bags, and boxes, and stocked the shelves!

A virtual store is no less complex. Yet many business owners, lured by the promise of fast and easy setup by the software vendors, purchase systems and try to DIY their way through e-commerce store setup. Before you head down this path, we’ve listed four common mistakes companies make setting up e-commerce stores. Hopefully, this list will help you avoid these mistakes.

Four Common E-Commerce Setup Mistakes

1. Choosing the wrong e-commerce platform

Not all e-commerce platforms are the same. Some are better for business-to-business commerce and others for consumer sales. Some are intended for drop shipping companies, while others are made for direct-to-consumer sales. Each has its quirks, its pros and cons.

Working with a professional website developer or a digital agency can help you pick the best e-commerce platform for your goals and needs. Sit down with your digital agency or developer and brainstorm all the features you would like to see in your company’s new e-commerce platform. This will help them narrow down the list to the best choices.

Another consideration is how well the new e-commerce platform integrates with other software you are using. You may need your e-commerce site to integrate with both a public-facing website and a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) or cloud accounting system. Again, some e-commerce sites easily integrate with specific ERPs, but not all. Taking your time during the selection phase can help you avoid multiple headaches and costly custom programming later.

2. Poor site design and navigation.

Imagine a brick and mortar clothing store where items are jumbled on the racks. Nothing is arranged by size, color, or style. Customers would have a very difficult time shopping in such a store and would most likely leave empty-handed.

This happens all-too-frequently with e-commerce stores that have poor site design and navigation. Creating a user-friendly site design with clear, easy-to-follow navigation is imperative for an e-commerce store. Clearly marked shopping paths, in the form of logical categories, drop down menus, pages, and sections, all help customers find items quickly and easily.

The design itself must also be appealing to keep customers on the page and coming back to your e-commerce store. Just as you would clean and paint the interior of a brick and mortar store and install appealing lighting and fixtures to please the eye, so too should an e-commerce store provide eye-appeal. A professional graphic designer can keep you from falling into many of the mistakes that the untrained eye can make when creating a website, such as failing to account for various browsers resizing the page to mobile versus desktop display.

3. Not setting up shipping or taxes correctly.

Brick and mortar stores don’t have to worry about shipping costs for the most part. Unless they deliver items, like a furniture store, shipping isn’t a consideration. You take your item home with you. And taxes are simple with an in-person traction, too: you’re charged the taxation rate of the store’s locality.

But with e-commerce transactions, shipping and handling charges, as well as sales tax calculations, add unexpected complexities. Shipping may vary according to the customer’s choice, such as fast overnight shipping or slower ground shipping. And taxes can be highly complex, especially for customers in locations such as New York City, which has both a state and a local sales tax, or other areas of the country with similar taxation laws.

Setting up shipping parameters and taxation rules within an e-commerce system can be highly complex. By working with a consultant, agency, or developer who understands both the platform and the choices you’d like to give your customers, you can avoid costly mistakes that can lead to under- or over-taxation, failure to adequately report sales tax collected jurisdiction, or shipping errors.

4. Failing to consider organic search traffic during setup.

E-commerce product descriptions must accurately reflect the products being sold, but they must also do two other things: they must entice the customer by painting a vivid mental picture of the product and they must appeal to search engines. Do you have the skills to write product descriptions with limited word count and maximum search and customer appeal? Few people do, and most business owners would prefer not to work late nights writing descriptions for every item in their inventory.

Knowing not just what to do but how to do it correctly when setting up an e-commerce site for search engines is vital to the health and long-term profitability of your business. Without steady and increasing organic search traffic, you will have to spend more on paid advertising. Starting from a strong foundation of best practices for organic SEO is always the right way to proceed and less expensive long term than having to redo, revise, and fix things that aren’t done properly before a site launched.

Start Your E-Commerce Site with the Right Guidance from Dashboard

Dashboard Interactive Marketing has helped many business owners create and launch e-commerce stores. We’ve also fixed and updated quite a few over the years. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your business goals and suggest action steps to achieve them. If you are setting up a new e-commerce store or are unhappy with your store’s performance and sales, please call us at 763-242-2454 for a consultation.

Maintenance. From making sure you change the oil in your car to having your HVAC system serviced each season, it seems like everything requires routine maintenance.

The same may be said of websites, particularly WordPress websites. WordPress remains the world’s most popular website platform. It’s used by hobby bloggers and large corporations. It’s flexible, made even more so by add-on components called plugins.

Like many software platforms, WordPress plugins often issue updates. Therein lies the maintenance issue. If you’re not keeping abreast of WordPress plugin vulnerability issues, plugin updates, and other much-needed site maintenance, you could be at risk for a security breach. And if that happens, you’re in for a world of trouble, ranging from customer account and credit card data stolen, sites hijacked and held for ransom, malware and malicious code injection issues, and more.

Fortunately, there are many solutions available to business owners. These solutions include low-priced, high effort solutions as well as low-effort solutions outsourced to Dashboard. Let’s explore the issues first and then the potential solutions.

What Are WordPress Vulnerabilities?

Just like the software running on your computer that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, WordPress uses thousands of lines of computer code to display websites.

WordPress developers are only human. Often, despite their best efforts, their code can contain errors or “back doors” – something in the code that can be exploited by bad actors looking for a way into the site.

Think of your WordPress website like your home and the code like the materials used to construct your home. Your home may be a sturdy shelter that keeps you warm and dry, but if the wood used on the doors and windows is weak, or you have an all-glass front door that’s not shatterproof, that’s a vulnerability that a burglar can exploit. A single tap to the pane of glass may be all it takes to gain access to the door lock – and then to your house.

Some vulnerabilities in the code are like that single tap to the pane of glass. They enable criminals to enter through the back door. Cybercriminals may look to steal valuable data to resell on the dark web: customer names, addresses, social security numbers, credit card information, banking information. Or, they may seek to use your virtual “home” for their own nefarious purposes. In this case, they leave something behind: code. This code, called malware, often redirects visitors away from your site to a target website. Sometimes it also infects the browser of your site visitors, which in turn, infects their computers.

Close the WordPress Back Door: Update Plugins, Themes, and Cores

As these vulnerabilities become apparent, WordPress and companies developing themes and plugins for WordPress release patches. Patches fix whatever coding mistake, error, or loophole is found in the existing code.

When such patches are issued, a notice pops up in the administrator dashboard on a WordPress site prompting you to update the theme, plugin, or core.

The problem is that most business owners rarely log into their websites. Instead, they let weeks, months, or even years (!) elapse before checking the site – leaving vulnerabilities exposed.

Other issues beyond forgetting to update your site that can leave your site vulnerable include:

• Improper site setup, especially of e-commerce websites: We plan to share another article in the upcoming weeks especially for e-commerce site owners on just this topic. Setting up an e-commerce website requires more than adding a few plugins. If the site is not set up properly, many vulnerabilities may exist that give cybercriminals multiple points of entry to your site. This is where having a professional digital marketing agency build your e-commerce site helps prevent many problems later on.
• Too many plugins: Some experts believe sites shouldn’t run more than a dozen or so plugins. If your site is entirely based on plugins cobbled together to get the functionality you need, you’ve got a lot of possible vulnerabilities.
• Keeping unused plugins: Another vulnerable area are plugins that are deactivated but still in the site’s admin portal. Why keep them if you aren’t using them? Delete unused plugins if you are sure you aren’t using them or need them.
• Keeping unused themes: The same goes for keeping multiple themes in the background. You can easily re-add any WordPress theme you need. If you are sure you aren’t using a theme, delete it. Please be sure you aren’t using a theme, however. Some frameworks such as Genesis and Graphene are required to run other themes, so check with your webmaster or Dashboard before deleting things if you aren’t sure.

Other Elements of Website Maintenance: Call in the Professionals at Dashboard

Proper WordPress site maintenance is more than clicking “update” when prompted. It includes keeping abreast of vulnerability reports and checking on outdated plugins. For example, if plugins are not kept updated by the parent company, they age – and with age comes the opportunity for cybercriminals to tinker under the hood and test nefarious ways of infecting your site via the plugin.

The same goes for plugins added by developers in other countries. Some may be fine, but others may be questionable. This isn’t specific to any one country, but it can be an indication of a possible vulnerable area of your site.

Contact forms are notorious sources of infection. Email addresses are also potential entrees for cybercriminals if they can be easily scraped and used for phishing expeditions. Lastly, keeping the site free from possibly infected comments on blog posts or pages is also part of site maintenance.

Sounds like a lot? Feeling overwhelmed? Dashboard Interactive Marketing can help you build or fix aging websites that may be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Let us know how we can help you with your business or e-commerce website. Call 763-242-2454 for a free consultation to discuss your website needs.

Thirty years ago, a landmark piece of legislation was passed. The Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act ensures that people with disabilities have equal access to government-funded locations. This included things most people without disabilities take for granted: sidewalks, train stations, airports, public transportation, parking lots, bathrooms, voting places, schools and universities, and more.

But does it include websites?

When the ADA was signed in July 1990, few people had heard of the web, let alone used it. At that time, the internet was a rudimentary information distribution system. Fast-forward 30 years later and not a day goes by that most people don’t use the internet. Websites are ubiquitous. We watch our favorite movies on streaming services, listen to music via the web, read our daily news and weather, and shop from our favorite stores all with the tap of a button.

Because the internet has now become the main source of information, entertainment, and commerce for most people, many argue that yes, ADA compliance must also encompass websites, too.

Here’s what you need to know about ADA compliance and your company’s website.

Disabilities Come in Many Forms

The original Americans with Disabilities Act was primarily concerned with accommodating people with physical limitations in public settings. Such limitations may include physical impairment, coordination, motor skills, sight, or hearing impairments.

Today, the term “disability” now encompasses a much broader range of impairments. People with dyslexia, color blindness, and cognitive impairments may all come under the umbrella of disabled.

The ADA requires that all federally funded organizations, both for profit and not for profit, and companies with 15 or more employees provide ‘reasonable’ accommodations for people with disabilities. The burden of proof as to what encompasses ‘reasonable’ accommodations is on the business itself; any customer can complain (or file suit) that the business does not provide adequate accommodations. If a lawsuit is filed, it is up to the business to prove it has provided reasonable accommodations.

Aspects of Website Compliance

This notion of reasonable accommodations now encompasses website accessibility, too. During the pandemic, as people were forced to work and learn from home, it became painfully obvious that few, if any, websites are accessible by people with disabilities. Parents of special needs children, for example, found that many online learning portals did not accommodate children with dyslexia, learning disabilities, or color blindness.

Depending on the nature of an individual’s disabilities, screen readers, adaptive devices, or other equipment may be needed to make the internet accessible to the users. If a website is not coded properly to render websites for such devices, it may be considered “inaccessible.” It’s the digital equivalent of high curbs, narrow doorways too slim to allow a wheelchair through, television shows without closed captioning. Not everyone can use it. Such websites can then be deemed discriminatory against people with disabilities.

Search Engine Journal provides an excellent overview of the many aspects of website compliance that site owners must consider. Everything from forms to images and navigation must be considered to ensure that every site visitor can easily navigate and understand the information you are sharing.

Making Your Site Accessible

If you have never considered making your website accessible, it can seem like a daunting task. Where do you begin? How do you ensure that you have taken every reasonable precaution to welcome all visitors to your website?

The first step is to conduct a brief accessibility audit. Dashboard Internet Marketing can help you with this step. The audit examines both the site itself and the code underlying the site to ensure that adaptive devices can render your site properly.

Depending on the results of this audit, your site may need some major or minor tweaks. Major tweaks may require fixes to the code structure, buttons, and site hierarchy. Minor tweaks may include added alt tags or updating tags to ensure they read properly.

Remember that every aspect of your website must be compliant, not just the web pages themselves. Videos must have closed captioning available. If you offer PDF downloads, images and links in PDFs must also be accessible. Podcasts should also have closed captioning available so that hearing-impaired individuals can access transcripts.

With so many low-cost ways to render content, including video and audio files, accessible in multiple ways, it just takes a bit of time and know-how to ensure your site is accessible to all. There are plugins and other technologies to transform non-compliant sites into ADA compliant sites, as well as website themes and frameworks that are built with full accessibility in mind.

And while you may think you can shrug off ADA compliance as just another fad or tell yourself that you have only five employees and thus aren’t going to be targeted for a lawsuit, think again. Remember the stock photo lawsuits? There are attorneys who specialize in sending scary, threatening letters to business owners claiming they are using unlicensed images and thus violating copyright laws. Such letters, dubbed stock photo extortion letters, demand high fees to make the threat of a lawsuit stop. Similar letters are now arriving daily in the mailboxes of small and mid-sized business owners demanding money or face a lawsuit over website ADA-compliance issues. Do plaintiffs win in such suits? Do you want to find out firsthand? Most business owners would prefer to avoid such headaches in the first place. The way to do that is to take simple steps now to ensure your website is ADA compliant.

Not only will doing so offset the risk of a lawsuit, but it means you’re doing the right thing for people with disabilities. And in the end, that’s what counts; ensuring that all customers have equal access to information, goods, and services. It’s the right thing to do.

Dashboard Interactive Marketing is a full-service digital agency offering ADA compliance audits and fixes, website design, SEO, and SEM services, and much more. Please call us at 763-242-2454 if you have any questions or would like to request a free consultation.

You’ve just purchased a new flatscreen television and are setting it up for the first time. The television comes equipped with easy apps to connect to your favorite streaming channels: Netflix, Hulu, and…YouTube? Yes, YouTube can now be added to your television as a channel, and with your login credentials, your favorite content channels and subscriptions are just a click away.

Welcome to the new world of social media video. Whether you are a business-to-business company or selling directly to consumers, video has risen in prominence to the point where it is now ubiquitous. Everyone, from the local dog groomer to the largest air conditioner manufacturing company, seems to be producing videos. Should you add videos to your social media channel? And how do you get started without hiring an expensive camera crew and production team?

The State of Video for Social Media Marketing

First, a few eye-opening statistics on the state of video use in social media marketing. It’s not your imagination: video is everywhere and it is likely to increase in importance as part of the social media marketing mix over the next year.

• Video is the most underutilized social media tool, according to Sprout Social. Across three popular platforms, video comprises only 14% (Facebook), 11% (Instagram) and 5% (Twitter) of posted content.
• Yet companies say that videos work to help them acquire new customers. In fact, 93% of companies said video has helped them obtain new customers.
• Viewers retain 95% of a video’s message as compared to written content without video.
• And viewers like video. Half of the respondents to the Sprout Social survey stated they prefer video to other types of content.

It’s clear that people enjoy watching videos and remember their message. And it’s also clear that videos can work well for marketing purposes. They stand out from the constant flow of messages, especially because so few companies are taking advantage of the medium itself. If you’re wondering whether or not you should jump into using video in your social media marketing, the answer is clear: it’s worth a try.

Business-to-Business Video Can Be Effective, Too

“But,” you may be thinking, “my products aren’t interesting. I manufacture [screws] [nuts] [bolts] [fans] [filters] [lubricant oils] [insert your product here….] This is boring stuff. Nobody wants to see a video of my products!”

Many business-to-business companies with seemingly ‘boring’ products have used video effectively as a social media marketing tool. Videos need not be exciting or dramatic to capture customer interest. B2B companies may find that informative, how-to videos work well for their brand and marketing strategy. Other ideas for videos include:

• How something works – answers common questions customers have about your products
• Sneak peek – what’s coming soon to your product line
• Behind the scenes – show customers behind the scenes glimpses of your offices, manufacturing plant, warehouse, etc.
• Tips – offer tips to use your product, store your product, etc.

Getting Started with Social Media Videos

Now, here’s the reality of getting started with social media videos: it’s scary.

Yes, we said it. Scary.

It’s scary to put yourself out there and film yourself. Some people hate the way they look and sound. Still others are very uncomfortable on camera.

And that’s okay.

With the right gentle coaching, we can guide you through the process of producing video content for your social media platform. Our expert social media marketer and content marketer can help you:

• Create a video strategy for your social media channels that works with your overall digital marketing strategy
• Optimize videos around choice keywords so it is part of a multi-channel digital marketing campaign
• Develop story ideas
• Produce videos from still photos and stock footage (licensed videos from other companies)
• Work with the people on your team willing to be on camera
• Find specialized talent if you wish to hire a spokesperson

You needn’t invest in expensive equipment, but you do need the expertise to produce videos that get results. We’re here to help you achieve your business goals.

Social media videos are effective and they are underused by most companies. Videos are a great opportunity to maximize your social media presence.

So, whether you’re a local restaurant, HVAC company, or distributor of fan belts, we can help you stand out from the crowd in a positive way on social media through professionally produced videos. To speak with an expert, call us at 763-242-2454.

There’s a saying among marketers, “Don’t build your house on rented land.” It means do not build your website on someone else’s platform – for example, don’t rely on your Facebook page as your business’ primary presence online. Facebook and other ‘free’ places to build a web presence can shut down at a moment’s notice, taking your hard-earned followers and content with them. Or, they could decide to charge exorbitant fees for the service they once offered gratis.

The only way to ensure your website is your permanent storefront online is to pay for your own domain and hosting. Then, as long as you continue to pay for hosting and domain name registration, the site is your own to do with as you please.

But there is a corollary to the statement “don’t build your house on rented land.” Make sure you have the keys to your house. What does that mean?

Over the past several years, the team at Dashboard has encountered numerous examples of companies literally ‘locked out’ of their own digital properties. Perhaps they wish to bid the work out to multiple agencies to see who is the best fit for their current needs. Problems arise when they ask the initial site builder for the username and password. “Sorry,” they are told. “All changes must go through us.” And suddenly, they find themselves literally locked out of their own ‘digital home’ and unable to access their own website.

Who Owns Your Website?

The issue with businesses becoming ‘locked out’ of their own websites typically arises from the contract between the agency and the business. Most business owners read through the service agreement, neglecting the fine print.

When an agency creates a website, if they purchase the domain name and make an agreement on behalf of a business owner for hosting services, in effect, they are in control of the site. The work product itself, unless specific in the contract that it becomes the property of the business owner, may indeed remain legally ‘owned’ by the agency.

We believe that this loophole has allowed many web developers to literally hold digital property hostage. In some cases, small business owners have been forced to pay for the release of their own websites from such developers. In other cases, business owners have been forced to set up a second website elsewhere and hope for the best, since they are unable to get the “keys” – the password and user name – from the original contractor who worked on the site.

Read Contracts and Understand What You Agree To

The old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies to work as well as to health. In the case of website ownership, the way to prevent someone from preventing access to your site is to insist on access from the start – and that step begins with reading every word of your contract and understanding what you agree to.

When you partner with a digital agency or a web developer, do not assume that you are on the same page with them and that they understand you wish to own the final website. Insist that this item is listed in the contract and that you will be the ultimate owner of the site. Also insist on full administrator rights to your own website and Google properties, including Google Analytics, from day one. Administrator rights prevent others from changing passwords, like changing the lock on the door, without your permission, and ensure you retain access to all of the content on your site that you’ve poured so much time and effort into.

What to Do If You Are Locked Out

If you find yourself on the other side of the digital door and the key no longer fits the lock, meaning you cannot access your website, Google Analytics, or social media profiles because a developer insists on retaining access, you have several choices.

You can:

• Continue to work with them (even though you may feel your trust has been breached and they no longer fit your needs)
• Insist, through patient and firm repetition, that they turn the properties over to you
• Retain legal counsel – sternly worded letter from a lawyer can often do wonders
• Learn your lesson, move on, and begin again with a new digital property that you ensure you own and access

We mentioned at the start of this article that we have seen this issue many times over the years. Recently, this was encountered with a digital file for a print catalog, too. A printer refused to release the files back to the company. It appears that the trick of withholding access to try to lock in business has spread beyond the digital world and into the print world, too.

Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: lost business, lost revenues.

Working with an ethical marketing agency that understands the disruption such a problem causes is the best way to prevent being locked out, along with reading and understanding your contracts. Dashboard Interactive Marketing always ensures its customers have full access to all of the digital properties owned by the customers. We want you to receive the ROI for your marketing projects and we treat our small business clients with the same respect we wish to be treated.

If you’d like assistance with your website, digital marketing, or other marketing needs, please contact us at 763-242-2454.

By now, you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT. Unveiled in the fall by OpenAI, this natural language, machine learning platform seems to magically write seemingly perfect text. Ask it a question: it answers. Ask it to write anything, from why German shepherd dogs make great pets to a substitute for eggs in a recipe, and it produces what seems to be like the perfect answer. But is it perfect? And what, if any, role does it play in your marketing?

AI Writing Tools – Nothing New

Computer-generated text creation tools are nothing new. They’ve been available for creating content for many years now. We do not use them, and we caution business owners not to use them, for many reasons.

These so-called ‘article spinners’ can create absolute rubbish. The way that older AI writing tools work is by ingesting an original document and replacing various words with synonyms. The result often reads like the child’s game of Mad Libs with many hilarious faux pas.

Some will scramble and reassemble text into a document that mimics the original without dinging Google’s monitor for duplicate text (a no-no that doesn’t help with your SEO). But the result is almost always poor quality text that does little to serve the reader’s needs, and may hurt your SEO efforts in the long run.

Enter ChatGPT

When the OpenAI project unveiled ChatGPT, perhaps the most astonished and slightly frightened group of users were marketing writers. The chatter on business social networking sites like LinkedIn ranged from “it’s the end of our profession” to “bots will never replace us!” But both extreme views do not understand the value of ChatGPT and where it may fit in the overall creation process.

And, faster than lightning, comes yet another conversational chat model – Google Bard. Google announced its new Bard rival to ChatGPT for more AI-powered conversational search. The search engine giant has not allowed the public access to Bard as yet, so we were unable to test its ability to write in conversational language. Nevertheless, with the release of Bard, it’s apparent that the future of search will be around conversational AI chatbots. But will this impact marketing writing?

ChatGPT Is a Smart Search Engine, Not a Writer

Despite the fact that the output from ChatGPT appears to be original text, it frequently plagiarizes other sites. We put it to the test and discovered this for ourselves.

First, we asked ChatGPT a simple question: Why do German shepherd dogs make good pets?
Here’s the platform’s answer:

We then put the ChatGPT answer into a plagiarism checking tool called Grammarly. Grammarly also checks grammar and spelling. It found one punctuation error in ChatGPT’s tool – and 14% of the text directly plagiarized off of another website.

We repeated the test with a simple definition and asked ChatGPT to define content marketing. After receiving the response from the platform, we also ran it through Grammary’s plagiarism detector. Its response was 97% plagiarized from The Content Marketing Institute’s definition.

These are both short text examples but point to the limitations of using artificial intelligence to write original text. While some common phrases do occasionally set off Grammarly’s plagiarism detector, the sites such phrases come from are generally wide-ranging and not linked to the topic of the piece. For example, phrases like “makes a good pet” may refer to dogs, cats, goldfish or lizards; it might show up as plagiarism in a plagiarism detection tool, but by reviewing the sources referenced by the tool, it’s easy to see they aren’t directly related and thus not likely to be plagiarized.

ChatGPT, however, seems to be taking text from very closely related sites, with a high degree of plagiarism. Thus, it is not useful as a content generation platform.

ChatGPT Is Useful, But Not for Original Marketing Writing

The answers produced by ChatGPT are not meant to replace marketing writing. A good marketing copywriter infuses their work for a client with the client’s own messaging points, brand voice, and tone. The ChatGPT platform cannot do any of this. Instead, it searches the web and in just seconds, cobbles together the best result it can find.

We tested it several times, and some results were better than others. The harder, more industry-specific questions we asked it, the likelier it was to produce a slightly wonky response (and sometimes, a flat out wrong response). Because it cannot think like a human being, but can only scour the web for text that it believes matches the user’s intent, it’s like a smart, slightly more personable search engine. But it is not by any stretch of the imagination a creative marketing copywriter.

ChatGPT can, therefore, be used for writing prompts. What we’re suggesting is using it to inspire your own words. A question typed into ChatGPT may yield a quick answer, one that can be enhanced and modified by your own opinion and brand vision to become an original thought leadership piece – the kind of content that your customers, and Google, loves.

So, ChatGPT has a place in the marketing world, just not the place some seem to think it has. As it evolves, that may change, but for now, business owners would be wise to trust their marketing teams, and their copywriters, to craft original, brand-specific content for their websites, social media posts, blogs, and other needs.