Author: southernviewmedia

With a “Hey, y’all” and an offer of sweet tea, anyone is welcomed on the Gulf Coast. Some visitors even stick around and make the coast their home. Jake Wallace, born in New York and raised in Boston, MA, is also a Gulf Coast transplant. Although, when you meet Jake, you won’t recognize him as anything but a coastal native, through and through.

During the day, Jake is a financial advisor for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. When he is off, however, Jake is a dedicated volunteer within the Baldwin County community. He is particularly proactive in the local chapter of the Kiwanis Club, an international service organization. You may recognize it as the older relative of Key Club. Among a variety of child-focused projects, the local Kiwanis Club has contributed money to local sports teams and the Baldwin County Child Advocacy Center. 

Besides serving in the Kiwanis Club, Jake is also an active member of the Alabama chapter of the Gift of Adoption. A national non-profit organization, Gift of Adoption hosts fundraising opportunities in order to raise funds to assist families with adoption. Instead of funding the full $35,000 to $50,000 for adoption, the organization funds the final stretch in order to assist more families. As of December 2020, the Alabama chapter has helped more than 70 families secure funding for adopting a child.

When not working in finance, volunteering with the Kiwanis Club or working with Gift of Adoption, Jake also serves as a chamber ambassador for the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce. He is a dedicated husband and a proud father of two daughters. Even as an avid traveler, Jake now calls the Gulf Coast his home, and the children of the coast are all the better because of him.

When individuals think of New Orleans, LA, they think of the trifecta: beignets, Mardi Gras and ghosts — in no particular order. However, New Orleans’ coffee industry also deserves a toast of recognition.

Bob Arceneaux is the owner of Orleans Coffee, a humble roasting establishment with 30 years of experience and a stellar reputation, and the new Parish Coffee brand. Orleans Coffee was the first specialty coffee roasting company in the city. In 2007, Bob became the owner of the company after working for 12 years as an employee. He now gets to enjoy traveling to Central and South America countries to visit coffee farms and mills. Bob’s dedication to brewing the perfect cup of coffee clearly shines.

Orleans Coffee is known for its contributions to a vibrant Gulf Coast food scene. When browsing their website or shopping in stores, you will discover a variety of roasts, all hand-selected by Bob and his team. If you crave more exclusive flavors, then you can also shop for Parish Coffee! Whether you are a local or a tourist you can find Orleans Coffee or Parish Coffee online. You can also find their one-of-a-kind roasts being served at several local coffee shops or purchase the grounds from many local grocery stores to roast at home! 

When prompted about future plans for Orleans Coffee and Parish Coffee, Bob explained that they will soon be donating to Hunters for the Homeless. A non-profit organization, Hunters for the Homeless is dedicated to eradicating hunger among the homeless population. Hurricane Katrina left many individuals homeless in New Orleans; as recently as 2019, 1,179 individuals were without homes. Bob, thank you, for taking the initiative to help these individuals!

So, whenever you are in New Orleans, feel free to take a minute to browse these specialty roasts in local retailers and supermarkets in the area! You know what they always say: stop and smell the…coffee?

THE CLIENT

Have you ever wanted to run your own business?

An entrepreneur, vehicle expert and family man, Scott Blair has launched many successful businesses. Now, he wants to help other individuals launch their own. He enlisted Southern View Media to not only build a website for T.R.A.C.K., but also to design and develop a website for 2U Mobile Solutions.

2U Mobile Solutions is organized to help individuals run their own mobile tire businesses. Yes, that is a real thing and a good business.

THE WEBSITE

Like Scott’s personality, the website is bold and honest. Design elements include tread mark graphics, simple animations and real photos of the business.

One of our designers created mockups of the homepage and secondary pages. After the client approved the artistic style and creative direction, one of our seasoned developers got to work. The developer built the site in Elementor over a period of days. In the meantime, a copywriter collaborated with Scott to write verbal content that reflected Scott’s messaging.

THE RESULTS

What is most important about the 2U Mobile Solutions website is that it distinctly differs from Scott’s other website that we created. At Southern View Media, we understand individual branding and messaging. Our sites are uniquely created to each client’s standards and purpose.
View the website for yourself here. Then, consider opening your own mobile tire business.

Google is the biggest, and by far the most used, search engine on the internet, with over 63,000 searches on the site every single second. That’s 5.4 billion searches per day, making Google a titan of a platform. As a result, getting a website listed on a coveted front page spot on the search results has become an industry all its own. That is a form of marketing we call Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

SEO is defined as the edits and optimizations we make to our websites that coincide with Google’s standards and algorithms. These changes make it more likely that our pages will show up in results. Gone are the days where setting keywords is all you have to do. Nowadays, it’s an art, especially now that many of Google’s most valuable algorithm secrets are just that: secret. But as marketers, we’ve uncovered many of the things that Google looks for when deciding on the best result for a search, and today we’re counting down 6 of those things that you can go and implement on your website today.

1. Cut down the data and speed up the site

One prominent aspect that Google monitors is your website’s load speed. Sure, people using your site may have slow internet, but that doesn’t mean it’s their fault that they can’t see your content. Large unoptimized images, embedded content and advertisements… All of these things often contribute to a site being considered slow. Google doesn’t just want fast-loading sites, they want lightning-fast loading websites. Your website should not take more than 1 or 2 seconds for the average person to load it. If your website takes longer to load, you’ll begin to see a major increase in your bounce rate. This rate measures how many people immediately leave (or “bounce”) your site for elsewhere. Consider all of the data on your site and optimize everything you possibly can. 

2. Avoid Duplicate Content

This one is more something to avoid than something to do, but it may be something to go back and fix. Google is harsh towards sites that feature loads of duplicate content, which is text that is the same between different pages. This can happen easily, as you copy-paste things like calls to action, blocks of information, and so on. Rewriting all of them to be at least slightly different will make Google consider those areas to be valuable extra bits of information.

3. Don’t Ignore Images

When optimizing for search engines, many website owners are quick to obsess over the text content of their site. But the fact is, Google places just as much of an emphasis on images. Your site’s images are key. Ensuring that you explicitly tell Google how to interpret them is the goal of a well-optimized site. Ensure that every single image has a descriptive file name and a written ALT tag describing the image in as much detail as possible. This is also important for your site’s accessibility, which is another plus on Google’s end. After all, it wants as many users as possible to be able to fully enjoy your website. Optimize your images, never forget that.

4. Link to other, relevant websites

“The web” is called such for a reason. No one website stands alone, and cooperation can make for an enormous impact on SEO. It may seem counterproductive to link to other websites, but for SEO purposes, we implore it. Linking out to other, relevant websites begins the process called link building, a crucial and often underlooked aspect of SEO. Many of the most successful websites link out to other high-quality websites because it creates a trackable traffic stream sourced from your website. 

Google can tell where people go and how they get there. If your users get to more sources of information from your website, Google will actually acknowledge that. It means that you’re providing more value to your users, and you’re willing to focus on giving them what they need. Of course, the natural next step to that is…

5. Getting some links for yourself!

The second part of link building is the all-important backlink. A backlink is when another site links back to yours, it’s as simple as that. But the complications begin there. Having amazing backlinks can hold immense value to your search rankings, but having “bad” backlinks can actually hurt you. So, what’s a good backlink and a bad backlink? Well, it all has to do with trust. Google implicitly has a trust score for websites that it ranks and uses that to determine the quality of a backlink your site receives. Essentially, a backlink is like declaring a partnership. You don’t want your partner to be a scammy .ninja website selling bottled air and snake oil. Instead, highly reputable sites with plenty of traffic and a proven track record make for the best backlinks. For example, backlinks from a .edu website almost always score high on Google’s trust, because of the requirements necessary to, well, BE a .edu. 

Also, hint hint, this is the precise reason that social media marketing is super important to your SEO as well.

6. Don’t overdo it.

All of those things said, modern SEO is about one thing, and one thing only: providing value. Optimizing for Google is important, but Google will take notice if you’re pandering. Remember that they’re focused on how you provide value to real people. Always write for humans first, and Google second. Trust Google to understand that your users are the top priority, and with enough effort put into helping them, your site will benefit on the SEO side of things.

Search Engine Optimization is, without a doubt, very time consuming, and not something every business owner has time to sit down and do themselves. But here at Southern View Media, we’re experts in the craft and know-how to make your website visible. If you’re interested in hearing more, give us a call. We’ll be more than happy to discuss how we can help.

This week, we’d like to raise a metaphorical glass to Gulf Coast staple, Beef O’Brady’s.

Without exaggeration, Jim Mellody changed the world in 1985 by launching the first Beef O’Brady’s. But that is not who we are here to talk about today. Larry and Linda Kessler’s story with the franchise began long before they opened their restaurant in 2006. Larry and Linda ate many delicious meals at Beef O’Brady’s while raising their two sons, Nick and Joel. By the time that the boys reached adulthood, Larry and Linda realized that it was only natural to invest in the Beef O’Brady’s franchise.

Larry and Linda live life with a glass-half-full perspective. Just look at their charity efforts! In the past 14 years, the couple has sponsored the following organizations: Spanish Fort High School Football Team, Daphne High School Football Team, Spanish Fort Elementary, Rockwell Elementary, Spanish Fort Middle and countless Little League teams. When they are not sponsoring Baldwin County schools, the Kesslers also host Spirit Nights. The nighttime festivities support all types of local organizations. For example, Spirit Night in October raised money for Breast Cancer Awareness.

What is next for the Kesslers and Beef O’Brady’s? The future is bright despite COVID-19 challenges. The Kessler family plans to continue supporting local schools and teams, as well as continue hosting Spirit Nights. If you would like to discuss sponsorship opportunities with the Kesslers, you should reach out to them!

In summary, the Beef O’Brady’s in Spanish Fort is a community cornerstone. Baldwin County is better with the Kessler family in it… And our stomachs are better with their jaw-dropping burgers!

Every business should be on social media. While a common phrase, some business owners may find it difficult to determine how to actually garner business from social media. If you’re confused, you’re not alone. We see tons of businesses struggling to convert their followers into leads every single day. So that is why we are counting down 3 of the best ways to convert customers from your social media content.

Let’s get started!

1. Become a Teacher

One of the best things you can do on social media is to become a teacher for what your business excels in. A lot of business owners are confused by this idea. We get asked all the time: “Why should I teach my clients, or worse, my possible competition?” It seems counterproductive, but the reality is that what people are looking for on social media is free content that has immediate value to them.

By making educational posts in the form of statistics or tips on whatever it is that you do, you are giving value to your followers who are interested in knowing what you do. You also present yourself as an expert on the subject, making it more likely for people to choose you when they’re in need of your services.

Win/Win!

2. Consistency is Key

You’ve probably heard this one, but let us reiterate: your social media presence should be consistent.

Ideally, you should post regularly, and at peak hours for your target audience. All of this is an effort to maintain a presence on your followers’ feeds. Because social media has grown so much, competition is fierce, and a spot on the timeline is not always guaranteed. That’s why we recommend posting often. Any post can be skipped over, for any number of reasons. With more posts, and each one bearing your branding in some kind of way, you will become harder to ignore and a regular part of your followers’ feeds.

3. Be Human

When it comes to social content, the goal should not be to post link after link to your website. By doing so, you’re coming across as more of a link-posting-robot than a person. Your page should blend in as best it can with the content found within everyone’s timelines: posts from people. Photos of parties, fun quotes or quizzes make people stop scrolling and actually engage.

That’s the keyword: engagement. Comments, likes, shares, anything that has users stopping to interact with your posts is the first major step in making customers out of those users. Focus on that and allow your feed to stay human, and your users will know and love you all the better for it. It increases your reputation and makes people more comfortable asking for your help when they need it.

Social media strategies can still be very difficult, however. Not all of us have time to sit on social media and find new things to post every day. But we do! Here at Southern View Media, we have an expert social media team that can ensure you have engaging posts on your feed as often as you want. Just visit us at southernviewmedia.com to find out more about how we can help you!

When it comes to gaining traction through social media, there’s almost no better way than to create Facebook ads. With many marketing tools and a worldwide user base of 2.7 billion people, Facebook can help you reach just about any audience. That said, with so many people utilizing the platform, the goalposts have shifted. Not everyone’s ads convert, and that is why it’s all the more important to slow down and consider everything when making your Facebook ads. From the creative to the targeting, we’re counting four things your Facebook ads need to survive on this competitive platform.

1. Precise Targeting

Targeting your ads to the right people is an art. It’s often a balancing act where you try to ensure your ads are seen by all the people you want to see it and no more. But the most common targeting mistake is that the audience is far too broad, as business owners fear that being more specific will ultimately exclude someone who may want to buy from them. It is true that by being more specific with your targeting, you do run the risk of potentially excluding someone from seeing your ad. But try to think of it another way. Without proper targeting, Facebook is going to have a harder time deciding who is best for your ads with your budget, potentially excluding even more of your target audience as Facebook serves instead to others who may not even look at your ad, let alone convert. Don’t fall into this trap. 

2. A Pixel for Your Website

Your ad’s ability to help you doesn’t actually stop when they click on the link. Enter Facebook Pixel. Though not a literal pixel, Facebook Pixel is a block of code that can be added to each page of your website to track your viewers as they move around and interact with your site. An important usage of the Pixel is tracking conversions, which are the actions you want those viewers to complete after seeing your ad. By tracking all the way from their initial viewing on Facebook, to the things they click on the website, you’re able to know precisely what does and does not work in both your Facebook ads and your website, allowing you to make more informed decisions whenever pivots need to be made.

3. Great (And Correctly Sized) Ad Creative

With a huge variety of ad types that allow you to add videos, photos, gifs, products and more, there’s a lot of room to play in the ad creative on Facebook. The ultimate question is: what will your audience respond to? That’s not an easy question to answer, especially if you haven’t been running ads for a long time. It takes a lot of time to measure and figure out what works, so what do you do? Our advice is to try everything. Change your ad creative and copy often, and allow each a fair amount of time to bring in new eyes. You may be surprised at what works, and what doesn’t. Remember that your ad creative is the first thing many may see of your business, so spend as much time with it as you can.

On another note, make sure that your images and videos are the proper sizes. Always consult the documentation for the specific kind of ad you’re trying to publish, and follow its advice as best you can. 

4. A Willingness to Experiment

As we said in the last section, changing things often is a must. The likelihood that your ads will perform to their best ability on the very first try is very low. The best Facebook ad campaigns are carefully crafted over time. Everything from the budget, to the goals, to the targeting and creative, change with experimentation and research. There’s a reason that Facebook gives you all of those charting and demographics tools. Making informed, researched decisions on how to pivot your ads is a must, and those are there to help you do just that. By doing this enough, your ROI will increase and allow you to achieve your ultimate goal with your online advertising: ads that just pay for themselves.

Facebook ads are a complicated subject, and many don’t have the time to constantly be checking them. That’s why you should hire an expert team of marketers with the experience necessary to kick Facebook ads into high gear for you and fast. Call us at 251.517.9425 today to find out more about what we can do for your business!

A new year is finally upon us, and a major theme for this year is “change”. The last several years have shown us just how much can change for business owners in a very short time, and this year will likely continue that trend. Keeping up with the times and pivoting your business accordingly is essential.

That’s why we’re listing off 4 of the most important survival tips going into 2021.

1. Embrace Digitization

Peoples’ needs for convenience are only increasing, so it’s becoming more essential to make sure that your business is online. There are many things a business needs to accomplish that, from building an accessible, functional and beautiful website, to being on social media and regularly using it to post to your followers. This new digital world we live in is indeed a lot of work, but it’s no longer just something that’s “nice to do.” It’s all but required. Do the best that you can with it, and remember that the time you’re spending is an investment in your business’s success. Of course, if you ever need help with bringing your business online, we can help you do just that.

2. Targeted Social Media Marketing

“Doing social media” is a common phrase these days, but for a business trying to garner more customers through these platforms, what do you need to do?

Creating a page and posting is great on its own, but to see results from your social marketing efforts, you need to make sure you know your audience. Facebook’s user base is some 2.7 BILLION users large, so it’s impossible to market to everybody. You need to narrow it down, which is a process called targeting. By deciding on a specific type of user, called a user persona, you can quantify what kind of content those users respond to the most. So instead of just “everybody,” your user persona might be women between the ages of 18-25 who are engaged shoppers. With a description like that, you can more easily determine where and what to post based on what kind of content frequently gets engagement from that audience.

3. Make Your Reputation a Priority

Maintaining your bottom line is of course super important, but a definitive trend that continues to grow is the importance of your business’s reputation online. People want to do business with companies they like and support, and maintaining a relationship with your audience by providing value can do just that. That is to say, make and post content that can help them. Use your expertise to craft a message that gives them something to think about, or laugh with, or even something that might measurably help them in their personal lives. Doing so will make it infinitely more likely for them to think of you when they need help, and is far more effective than constant sales posts consuming your whole timeline.

4. Don’t Stop Marketing

Due to the current extreme state of the world, revenue may be down. If you’re struggling, it is a good idea to cut costs where you can, but something we highly urge you to do is NOT cut your marketing. As Henry Ford once said, “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.” In other words, your marketing is an integral part of your business. Always market your business, especially in a time like this.

That being said, marketing can be a full-time job on its own. Not every business owner will have the luxury of time to do it themselves this year. In those cases, we highly recommend that you hire a reliable and professional marketing agency to get the job done for you, and here at Southern View Media, we do just that. Just visit our website at www.southernviewmedia.com to find out more about how we can help your business survive and thrive through 2021!

THE CLIENT

Entrepreneur Scott Blair had dreamed of opening his own tire, rim and chassis training center. In mid-2020, he fulfilled that lifelong dream by establishing T.R.A.C.K. Auto Training, a training center that is the first of its kind in the United States. We were more than happy to assist Blair in bringing his vision to life. In December 2020, we published a website as dynamic as him and his other brands.

THE WEBSITE

After many meetings with the client, a Southern View Media designer created a mockup of the homepage in Adobe XD. Upon the client’s approval of the initial design, a Southern View Media developer began building the site and the designer began the secondary pages. With its overall design and features, the website is simple and accessible but dynamic with its colors and shapes.

At Southern View Media, we believe in the details and use industry-grade techniques. Our talented developer built the website in WordPress. All 8 website pages were built with Elementor. Scott Blair wanted clients to register for courses online, so we utilized Google Calendar integration. Other Gravity Forms, such as the contact form, were customized with CSS.

A simple but satisfying detail is the custom preloader of a tire and wrench.

THE RESULTS

The final product is a modern website designed to attract clients, promote course registration and encourage sponsorships. You can visit the final site at https://trackautotraining.com/. Maybe you should sign up for a class while you’re at it!

The Client

The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo (ADSFR) is a big event here on the Gulf Coast every year, well regarded as the biggest fishing tournament in the entire world, where thousands come to compete in fishing for the finest specimens that the Gulf has to offer. In fact, they currently hold the Guinness Record for Biggest Annual Fishing Rodeo. We were honored when we were approached by the runners of the project, the Mobile Jaycees, in 2018 to build a brand new website for the event. Their site at the time was out of date; not responsive and generally lacked the creative feeling that they wanted to represent them. They wanted a website that worked, one that looked sleek and modern and included some much-needed features. So of course, we said OK!

The Website

With ADSFR having such a huge following, the website needed to be solid. We decided to use WordPress, for its reliability and extensible nature, which proved to be a good decision. ADSFR needed a series of features tailored specifically to the event, such as live weather updates that connect out to the buoys floating in the Gulf, as well as live leaderboards for the tournaments and live feeds. Apparel sales are also huge for the event, so the board wanted to support that through a new eCommerce section of the website, where users would be able to buy a variety of the events’ yearly items online during the event. These are all complicated features, and no existing set of code offered by WordPress was going to implement them.

So, we had to write our own. Our team of developers wrote a custom WordPress site, complete with PHP-powered interfaces completely unique to the site, that reliably pulled in all the necessary information. We lovingly crafted 32 individual pages, each one including all necessary marketing tags like Google Analytics and search console. The eCommerce portion was specifically built out to sell 13 different products to fans of the event in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By the end, the ADSFR website was functional, reliable and up-to-date.

The Results

Their website was a big hit. The update greatly impacted the participants’ and spectators’ experience by allowing them an easy-to-use space to get all the information they needed online. In July alone, the site amassed 50,607 sessions, a major increase.

As far as merch, with the help of our developers and advertising team, we were able to bring in tons of web traffic and sales for as little as $0.93 for advertising per customer purchase, an astoundingly good value that made them very satisfied with their ROI. Within just days of the site being online, over 600 merch orders were already placed. This site was a huge victory for our client and for us, and we can’t wait for the next annual event to see it help them again.