Mackey

Archives for February 2017

by

Make Your Photos Instagram Worthy with the Foodie App

 

Instagram makes me hungry. It’s like opening the app cues my stomach to start growling,  even if I’m not hungry. That’s because the food photos on there look so dang good. And, there’s no shortage of them — restaurants showing off their menu items, chefs highlighting their creations, and diners showing off the incredible meal they are about to indulge in. As I scroll through the amazing shots of food and drink, it gets me wondering two things. 1, How can I eat that food, right this minute? And 2, how the heck do they get that perfect shot?

We currently manage the Instagram account for one of our clients, a local Pasadena restaurant. Preparing photos to post for them has made the second question even more relevant (though personally, I am still very intrigued by where I can get the food). I’m not a food photographer and the client doesn’t have the budget to hire one (which would have been the optimal solution). So, the question became how can we use the resources we have (i.e. an iPhone) to capture shots of their menu items that will be able to compete with other food pics on Instagram? The photos we were taking never looked as good as the food did in person. And, it was tough finding filters that enhanced the food rather than making it look worse. After some research and lots of trial and error, I found an app that has forever changed the way we capture food — the “Foodie” app.

Foodie is a dedicated camera app for taking pictures of food. Launched by LINE Corporation, Foodie is a free app for both iPhones and Androids. You can take photos directly in the app (which I recommend) or upload a previously taken photo and use the app to make it Instagram worthy. Either way, our food photos are looking much better and are making us hungrier than ever.

We have spent a lot of time trying out the Instagram filters as well as other photo apps, but Foodie really became the most streamlined process with the best result. Here’s how:

1. It has over 30 filters specific for food.

Not only are the filters made for food, they are actually made for specific types of food. There are filters for Ice Cream, BBQ, beverages, and more. Each filter is optimized for food photography helping you to photograph any food you want.

 

2. It helps you get the best angle.

Often times a “top shot” is the best way to capture food, but I never seemed to get right on top. But, when using the Foodie app camera, it changes colors to let you know when the camera is positioned flat, directly above the food on the table, helping you get the perfect angle for flat lay photography.

 

3. Adjust brightness for darker shots

First off, natural light is MUCH better for food photos, so hopefully, this feature isn’t needed as much. Also, adjusting for brightness is a pretty common feature in photo apps (Instagram included). But, the one in  “Foodie” often serves as the perfect final tweak to your photo.

 

4. Easy Sharing

Similar to most photo apps, Foodie lets you easily share your finished photo to Social Media, text messages, emails, your camera roll, etc., making for a seamless edit and post process.

All in all, you could spend hours editing and tweaking to get the perfect food photo for your Instagram. And in the end, nothing will compare to an awesome camera with a skilled photographer behind it. But, if you don’t have that at your disposal, then the Foodie app is a great way to make sure your pictures make the food look appetizing, intriguing, and social media worthy.

Foodie is available for download on the Itunes store and through Google Play.

by

3 Simple ways to track events, goals and campaigns in Google Analytics

If you have a website or any online presence, you’ve most likely heard of Google Analytics. You may have even dabbled with overall traffic, page views, demographics, sources, etc. This information is all great and very useful, but more often than not, we’re looking for a way to determine if our campaigns, marketing, and website are working.

Google Analytics is complex, very complex. There is a lot of information you can get from Google Analytics and there’s also a lot of information missing from Google Analytics that you would love to have. But, unless you’re going to purchase an enterprise solution or even a few enterprise solutions, Google Analytics is the best we’ve got and if used consistently, over time we can use trends and its data to make better decisions on our sites.

Besides the basic tracking mechanisms, how do you track specific actions, events, and campaigns in Google Analytics? We’ve compiled 3 ways to better track goals (conversions), events, and campaigns. These three methods can be used in conjunction to better understand if your marketing efforts are indeed working.

Let’s dive in!

1. Tracking Traffic Source Using Campaign URL Builder

This is useful if you are wanting to track clicks through to the site from a particular source. Case in point, you run an ad on Pandora, it’s a beautiful banner ad. You want to track this ad for:

  • How many people are coming to the site from the ad?
  • The number of leads that came from Pandora that lead to conversions/ goals.

Using Campaign URL Builder from Google, you can create a custom URL that includes a query string that is tracked by Google Analytics as a source. You can then connect this source to your goals/ conversions (and events in fact), see numbers 2 and 3 below.

Building the URL’s is pretty simple:

  1. Go to https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
  2. Enter Website URL you are wanting to link to, ie https://mydomain.com/get-started/
  3. Campaign Source, enter the source, ie Pandora
  4. Campaign Medium, enter the medium, ie Banner (both this and the Source will display when looking up the data in Google Analytics)
  5. Don’t worry about the other fields unless you’re so inclined
  6. Next, under “Share the generated campaign URL” copy the URL to use for your campaign or click “Convert to Short Link” and copy the Shortened URL
  7. When you use this in your campaign, any clicks to the site from the campaign will be tracked as a Source / Medium with Google Analytics

View Traffic From a Particular Source

  1. Log into Google Analytics
  2. Click on left side under Acquisition > Campaigns
  3. Once you click into the Campaigns or a specific Campaign, you can add a secondary dimension to further understand the user’s interaction with the site. For instance the “Page” or “Landing Page.” Additionally here you can view columns for you goals/ conversions and how many goals/ conversions were completed via the Campaign.

2. Tracking Clicks and Events

Within Google Analytics we can track specific events. An event is an action the user takes with a site. For instance, how often the “Get Started” button on a website is clicked. This could really be any number of actions, i.e. when a user opens/ closes a toggle — essentially any click on the site.

The code looks something like: ga(‘send’, ‘event’, ‘Get Started CTA – Desktop’, ‘Click’, window.location.pathname); and is placed on the anchor tag for instance:

<a href="/get-started/" onclick="ga('send', 'event', 'Get Started CTA - Desktop', 'Click', window.location.pathname);" role="button">Get Started <span class="fa fa-caret-right"></span></a>

In the basic setup:

ga('send', 'event', [eventCategory], [eventAction], [eventLabel], [eventValue]);
  • Event Category = The object that was interacted with, ie a video or button (be specific)
  • Event Action = The type of interaction
  • Event Label = Categorization of events (currently we use this as window.location.pathname which gives the URL of where the event took place
  • Event Value = A numeric value associated with the event (we don’t use this in simple implementations)

GA Events Generator by Raven Tools has a great tool for generating specific event tags and information on more complex implementation of tracking events: https://raventools.com/marketing-reports/google-analytics/event-tracking/

Viewing Events in Google Analytics

  1. Log into Google Analytics
  2. On the left side find Behavior, then click on “Events” then on “Top Events” — we’ve found this is the best entry point for view by Category.

Similar to Campaigns, you can align events with conversions and goals. We use this often to track conversion funnels, form submissions, call to action, etc.

3. Conversions and Goals

With Google Analytics you can set up Goals/ Conversions. This is the end of the funnel. This could be a thank you page after a form submission, a checkout page, or whatever the end of the funnel is for your website. Goals work best when you set them up in conjunction with Event Tracking and/ or Campaign Tracking because you can see whether your marketing efforts are working or not working.

You set up the goals based on:

  • Destination = the last page in a funnel, ie a thankyou.html page after a user submits a contact form.
  • Duration = time on site
  • Pages/ Screens per session = number of pages visited
  • Event = Specific event conditions

Set Up Goals

  1. Log into Google Analytics
  2. Click on the property
  3. Go to the Admin tab
  4. Click on Goals
  5. From there you can add or edit goals.

View Goals in Google Analytics

  1. Log into Google Analytics
  2. Make sure you’re on the Reporting tab
  3. On the bottom left of the page click on Conversions, then click on Goals, then Overview

The above are three of the simplest methods we’ve found to better understand what’s working or not working in our campaigns and marketing efforts, but of course, there is much much much more you can do with Google Analytics. If you have other techniques that you use or questions about anything we’ve discussed above, let us know in the comments or shoot us an email, info@mackeycreativelab.com.

Happy tracking!

by

Do I Need a Facebook Business Page? 5 Ways Your Small Business May Benefit from Being On Facebook

Facebook is here and from the looks of it, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Its cultural relevance and social media dominance raise the question of whether or not your business needs a Facebook page. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple yes or no answer.  Without taking your business, target audience, and objectives into consideration, the best answer we can give you is “maybe.”

Now, we know “maybe” is not particularly helpful, and we want to be helpful. If you don’t yet have a Facebook page, you are probably already very familiar with the reasons against having it. For many small businesses, Facebook (and social media in general) seems like too much work.  Maybe you don’t know how to use it, or you think you don’t have time to manage it, or you assume your customers aren’t on Facebook. All valid reasons. But, there are also a lot of reasons why you may want to consider Facebook for your small business. Since these may not be as well known, we thought it would be most helpful to look at these reasons and show you why we think a Facebook business page could be a good idea.

You get a customer, you get a customer, everyone gets a customer!

At the close of 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion active users. Despite the rapid emergence of social media channels over the past few years, Facebook still reigns as the largest social media audience. And the more active users means the more potential customers for you. Of course, they aren’t all going to become customers, but Facebook’s extensive user base does open up new possibilities to find and interact with past, current and prospective customers.

The more ways to find you, the better.

We have a facebook page. Until recently, we rarely posted much. Currently, we have less than 100 people following us (and I am pretty sure we are related to over half of them). But, even with that minimal activity, if you search “Mackey Creative Lab” on Google, our Facebook page comes up as the 2nd and 3rd results, only beat out by our website. Having a Facebook page (as with other social media accounts) helps build your online presence. It gives potential customers another way to find you and interact with you. Plus, presenting the world with a consistent message across multiple online platforms grows your brand, increases its legitimacy and helps build trust amongst customers.

Nothing good comes for free unless your name is Facebook

Creating a facebook page for your business costs nothing. Sure, there are ways to spend money when using it —  paid Facebook ads, hire someone to create graphics, photos or videos for your posts, and more— but just owning real estate for your business on Facebook is free.

Not only is it free, but there’s a good chance it already exists—even if you didn’t create it. That’s because when someone, anyone, checks into a place that doesn’t have a page, Facebook creates an “unmanaged” page to represent the location. This page shows up on Facebook (and possibly Google) when someone searches for you, displaying anything another user has posted as well as any business location or hours information they are able to automatically pull. So, since the page is free and it may already exist, investing a little time to “claim the page” and update it with correct information that’s consistent with your brand, will only help.

Want more website visitors? Get them from Facebook

The most important thing is to differentiate between why we use personal Facebook pages (sharing photos of our puppies, kids, and food) and why we use business Facebook pages (to not share photos of our puppies, kids, and food). On a business page, Facebook posts can, and should, be used to link back to your website.  Put links to your website anywhere on Facebook that makes sense. The ultimate goal is to get users off of Facebook and onto your website. When done correctly, Facebook will help increase traffic to your website, which will help your overall search rankings.

There’s no such thing as TMI on Facebook

Should you decide to venture into some paid advertising through Facebook, you will be welcomed with the most sophisticated set of audience demographics available on the internet. Facebook advertising lets you sift through 1.6 billion users’ location, language, device, interests, behavior, gender, age, and education options to find the potential clients you want to target. The ability to target such specific demographics helps generate more qualified leads, making sure that the money and effort you cough up to post to Facebook is “well spent.” 

For a small business, Facebook presents a cost-effective and simple marketing tool to try and build your audience. Ultimately, how much it benefits your business will depend on the efforts put forth in building your Facebook presence and how that incorporates into a larger digital marketing strategy. But, even if those efforts are small and you don’t have a larger digital marketing strategy, Facebook could still help some, and probably won’t hurt. Still not sure if you need a Facebook page? Or, are you convinced, but need help setting it up? Let us know. We can talk with you about Facebook as it relates to you and your business as well as help you to get it going.

[button url=”https://mackeycreativelab.com/get-started/” color=”black” size=”small” type=”square” icon=”” target=”_self”] Contact Us [/button]