How do we maintain a meaningful conversation with an online audience during these turbulent times? We live in a beautiful world, but sometimes it feels as though disaster can strike in the blink of an eye. Diseases, hurricanes, fires, floods, earthquakes – these things can deter from the normalcy we are used to. Here are 3 tips for communicating to your online audience during a crisis.

1) Stay up to date on relevant news.
Have you read the most recent updates? While this seems like an obvious place to start, it is the most essential. The last thing you want to do is take part in the dissemination of false information. Make sure anything you say or do is under the guidance of the most recent updates from reputable sources. For example, during the COVID-19 outbreak, the WHO and CDC websites’ most recent updates should be consulted before any and all decisions are made.

2) This is not an opportunity.
A crisis is not something you usually capitalize on. You should continue to market and sell your product or services, but this is not business as usual. All scheduled posts and ad campaigns must be carefully analyzed and rewritten with an added layer of care and empathy throughout the duration of the crisis.

Managing day to day business communication during this time can be very time consuming. That is time and energy that should be put into maintaining your business and the safety of your family. Having an experienced social media manager is extremely critical in these times. This person should continue effective communication with your audience, informing them of any updates with great perspective on the situation, with little focus on marketing new products or events during the crisis.

3) We’re all navigating this together.
Fellow business owners, teammates, and customers will turn to social media for support and guidance. Ask yourself: How are we able to help?

Shared experiences, expertise, and resources are invaluable in times of crisis. Businesses with remote workers prior to COVID-19 had already weathered many of the issues every company is now facing. Those companies can now share two things at once.

1. Advice on moving to a “work from home” structure by answering questions or releasing a “remote work guide.”
2. How to use your social media for good during times of crisis to help your community.

This not only helps other businesses, but it keeps your business relevant in the current conversation.

Answering the flood of questions you are bound to receive or creating a protocol guide is incredibly time-consuming for a small business owner, but social media managers can better communicate your plan to the audience.

In times where everyone is concerned about what will happen next, think about how your business can help. Remember to always communicate effectively with team members so that your brand’s messaging stays consistent. However, make sure to adapt your daily procedures according to any new guidelines. It is always better to over-communicate with your audience than under-communicate, especially during a crisis.

As you probably know, there are a lot of things that go into building a website. Planning for design as well as functionality can take a few weeks to several months depending on the size and needs of the website.

Imagine after doing all of this work, instead of visitors seeing a beautiful and engaging website, they see the image below.

Scary to say the least! Even scarier – many web designers have no idea what SSL certificates are or how to add them to your website. Roughly 20% of websites I come across do not have these certificates.

“SSL” stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and is a certificate verifying that your website is legit. Think of it as a blue checkmark on Twitter. With this SSL certificate, your website URL will now start with “https” instead of “http”. This ensures a “secure connection” according to web browsers.

So what does a “secure connection” mean? Say that you are selling t-shirts on your website – visitors have to enter vital personal information (address, credit card info, etc.) to purchase your awesome merchandise. When your customer hits “purchase”, the information goes from their browser to the website’s server to be stored. With an SSL certificate, that information is encrypted. Basically, that information is converted to a different language that only the receiving server can understand. That way, if a hacker were to somehow intercept it, they would not know what they are looking at and cannot steal it for themselves.

As of a few years ago, all web browsers now show the above warning to give visitors a heads up that the website is not secure.

Oh, and did I mention that all Monitor Media Group websites come standard with SSL certificates for no additional charge? Contact us today to learn more!

All images and videos used belong to Louisiana State University.

The 2019-2020 version of LSU football was something to behold. Their team smashed records and beat 7 different top 10 teams. But what was equally awe-inspiring was their social media team’s efforts.

According to frntofficesport.com, the small LSU social media team was responsible for 29 million engagements (likes, comments, or shares) on social media this year.

One video alone, posted a short time following their 2020 national championship win over Clemson received over 24.5 million impressions (post or video views) within just a few days. The estimated value of this exposure is worth over $551,000.

Get The Nat pic.twitter.com/1udC79q6cc

— LSU Football (@LSUfootball) January 14, 2020

$551,000 for just one 38 second video.

I started following @LSUfootball midway through the season after they beat Florida. Countless videos and graphics throughout the year grabbed the attention of not only me but millions of other people that gave them a whole new perspective on what LSU was all about.

The team’s culture and history, the university’s prestige, and the alumni’s love and passion were all put on display for the world – mainly donors and high school recruits – to see. Every time the football team did something historic on the field, the media team made sure everyone noticed. They addressed and connected with their audience like the industry had never seen before.

Overall, LSU’s social media team was responsible for 1.75 billion impressions over the entire football season. For perspective, second place belonged to the Clemson Tigers with 709.6 million (just 41% of LSU’s impressions).

While people may have different metrics for how to value social media exposure, one thing is for certain – if you are doing something awesome, you want people to know about it!

Want more?
Click here for a full Twitter playlist of videos
…and my personal favorite:

A Swag You Have Never Seen
This Is Our Time. pic.twitter.com/NuPaWdVM16

— LSU Football (@LSUfootball) January 9, 2020

The world of the web is changing every day with the way we view and use websites. Have you redesigned your website in the last 2-3 years? Maybe it’s time.

Here are 5 signs that it is time to rethink your company’s website in 2019.

1) Is your site promoting your social media? Do you use social media? While it seems obvious that people have and update social media, it isn’t so obvious that businesses do. Your website is where you want to send people, and social media is the best place to do that. While time consuming, social media is what people primarily use their phones for. When you post or do anything on social media, it should include a link back to your website.

Social media profiles can contain a great deal of information about your business, but overall it should be used to guide people to your site – where the information that you really want them to see lives.

This works both ways though. When people reach your website first, you want to make a connection with them that will bring them back in the future. Social media is a great way to do this. If they can easy click on a Facebook icon, they can “like” or “follow” your page in an instant. Once this connection has been built, you have access to their timelines to promote events and news related to your business in the future.

2) Is your site mobile-friendly? I mean, viewable without scrolling right, pinching and zooming. If you look at your site on an iPad or on a mobile phone, is it as readable as it is on your desktop? While readability is key and shows you want to be inviting to mobile users, it also helps you with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google cares that sites are mobile friendly, and so should you.

Read More About Mobile Design »

3) Is your design fresh? Aside from not being mobile friendly, does it look like a modern website? Is it visually pleasing, with large fonts and simple navigation? Todays designs are horizontal, not vertical, and when someone visits your page they will know if you’ve redesigned your site in the past few years, or if it hasn’t been touched since the last decade.

4) Is your site secure? Hackers are everywhere and if you are collecting any information, you should have an SSL certificate on your site. Even if you aren’t collecting information, it gives your visitors piece-of-mind knowing that they are surfing on your official site on a secured connection.

How do you know your site isn’t secure? If your site shows well with the ‘https://’ protocol, you are secure. Try it now. Most browsers give an indication right next to the URL. Being secure shows your customers, again, you care.

Oh, and it helps SEO as well!

5) Is your site gathering statistics? While a pretty site is nice, are you reviewing your statistics and finding out what people are looking at on your site. After collecting this information you can tweak it in the early months after going live to set users up for success when looking for information they need.

It is as simple as adding a bit of code from Google Analytics. After a few days of Google collecting information, you can see what people are looking for, whow they’ve reached your site, what pages they’ve read and how long they were on those pages — even heat maps of where they are clicking!

So… do you need a new website? 2019 is very promising for website design and development innovations. Starting out, we want you to be caught up so new ideas can be implemented quickly and easily to keep your customers coming back to a site that they see is well managed, just like your business!

Thank you to all of our customers for nominating us for the Tally Award for web design and development!

Click the button below to vote for your favorite web design team today!

Vote Now

There are a lot of media companies in Tallahassee and around the state… why should you pick Monitor Media Group for your new website?

Ideas

As a new company, we are constantly changing and learning. We don’t have a set template for every customer to follow, we know that every company has different needs and, therefore, each project needs to be crafted in a completely separate light.

Personable

We are a two-person team, not a big scary firm that sees you as just another project. We value your business, we are easy to communicate with, and we will not collect your final payment until you are completely satisfied with our work!

Mobile-first!

Welcome to 2018! Most of your customers are visiting the internet through their mobile devices. This means that when they come across your content, it has to look just as great – if not better – on mobile displays. That is why we create our projects with a mobile-first, consumer-friendly approach. Our goal is to make every experience with MMG products and content captivating, useful, and easy to navigate.

Experience

Though we’ve only officially been in business for under a year, we have over 30 years of combined experience in the web world. Our team has seen all of the trends that have come through, the ones that worked and the ones that only lasted a matter of months. We know what is out there and we know what you need to reach and impress YOUR target audience.

Features

So what are a few things this experience has taught us? Here are just a few tools that we use uniquely to make you stand out!

1) Twitter Bootstrap
Twitter Bootstrap is what we use to custom-craft WordPress websites from the ground up in a responsive design. With Bootstrap and our coding experience, we are able to bring any of your ideas to life. We also have a passion for keeping up on the latest web design ideas and tricks – there is always something new out there!

2) Online Chat
Our chat software is something you’ve already experienced. The box in the lower right corner of our site allows us to connect with customers immediately. With instant communication, there isn’t any hesitation one might face filling out a contact form or waiting on an email from a potential customer. It has amplified our business tremendously – is it something you could see helping your business?

3) Analytics
One of the programs we use allows us to organize guests to your website by date, location, demographic, device used, or activity on the website. Really just about any way you can think of organizing your site consumers, it can organize the data for us to diagnose user experiences.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve recently started using a similar product that captures heat maps of where visitors are clicking and even records videos of where they are going on your site. This allows us to experience exactly what the user experiences, and gives us an edge in catering to, and enhancing that experience.

These are only a handful of tools we use to amplify your message! If you would like to see what tools would work best for you and your business, just chat us and experience the MMG difference for yourself today!

Zach King: My Magical Life uses augmented reality to bring story to life

This morning on my drive to work in my mobile classroom, I listened to an interview with an author of a new children’s book, Zach King: My Magical Life. I was amazed at what they discussed.

According to the podcast, recently developed and published a hard covered book that includes the use of Augmented Reality (AR).  AR has been around a while, but something that uses it that you may be familiar with is the Pokemon Go app. In the app, you can look through your cell phone camera, and you can see animated Pokemon you are trying to catch come to life in front of you through your camera.  That is Augmented Reality. This book comes to life for young children. As they scan the pages through a camera on a mobile device using the app that comes with the book, characters are alive in front of them.

This book with an app using AR is the first of it’s kind. The author also has a movie contract for his new story. He wanted to get kids reading, and wanted to use his film skills for a children’s book – the result is a revolutionary use of his talent.

“The book comes complete with a code for a downloadable app that brings Zach’s vibrant world to fully animated, three-dimensional life. Zach King: My Magical Life is also coming to theaters soon, as the project has been picked up by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.”

How cool is this?

Imagine what the next generation will be “reading”! Hey Zach, if you are reading, send me a copy!

If you want to see more of Zach King’s film work, here’s a compilation of his vine videos — fun to watch if you have the time.