as mentioned i'm laura hill with breezy hill marketing and this is rob fish with the vermont digital economy project which is part of a form on council in rural development and if you don't know about that check it out online they have a great facebook presence and they are doing phenomenal things for vermont i am wildly impressed with their work and have been we rob and i met probably a year ago because he runs something called social surgeries where he helps not for help not for profit it's an impressive program rob and i talked about what we could do today and you guys a lot of you have seen me present before and different aspects of digital marketing social media web sites and what we wanted to do today on the recommendation of the western slopes board is to make it a working session and really talk about different press different social media and digital presence and which includes your website online people in our community what they're doing how it's working and and just share some thoughts that we have what what's working well where can make people make changes what can happen to improve that situation and and what's what can you guys do  similar to what they're doing so what are people doing that works so that's why this trust we want you to participate in this part of this part of this effort is to get feedback from other people in the community of what you're saying with your website what you're saying with your facebook page what message you're trying to get out there so it's a learning experience for everyone and everyone here is a teacher yeah totally agree the concept here is really to be engaged in to talk through some things and different ways of doing things but with that in mind we really do want to thank the people who graciously let us talk about their social media and digital presence and have your your names up here and have your business is up here because it makes a huge difference so we're starting with our community cares camp s which which has a great presence on line and if you're not familiar with our community cares camp you're going to hear a little bit of fan stuff from me today but i love what rob does and i love what  you do with our communicators camp it's a fabulous program right here in our town and she has a web presence that reflects the business reflects the organization of the business organization and what they do and i love the thinking around the website in that it is the home of the content so what i mean by that was one of the things that we talked about a breezy hill is your digital home base is your website so you can have a great social media program but keep it keep the richness of your content on your website and projected out into social media use social media as a speaker as a way to engage with people and talk to people but use your website as your core not tell and with a photo here you're you're seeing kids having a great time lots of happy faces and you've got some belly show in there you can't help but smile and laugh and feel like these kids are having a great time this is something i would love that my kids would get involved with so first props for the photo but one thing that stands out to me though is this i always say like keep the don't you want people to donate you want it front and center but i feel like by having it right there it doesn't say who you are first so some either moving the photo up and having some text under it that explains that has maybe the mission statement of the organization or that i can't see down here where the caption of the photo just having that be seen first i feel would be a better approach and maybe if possible put the donate button up here or on the menu or some somewhere else because that's i feel like that might be a bit too much how how effective has that been switch in both those in one sentence is just going to now to develop this website so it was probably a year and a half ago and what we did is we used a platform called weebly which we love for easy to use easy to build websites i it's very very user friendly so we were able to develop the website but marie has been able to update it consistently make changes to it it's a very friendly platform it does however have some challenges and i do i recall that there was a challenge in where to locate it and how to fit it in because it's a button so it's something that we can look at i also spoke with that jeff about it who was involved in this website project and we spoke about that click here to donate it's interesting because there is a definite belief thursday design a static and they get it done this concept so what's working and and we battle in talking with people about you really want to be design friendly and visually pleasing and welcoming and communicate a clear message and you also need to get the job done you need to make sure people know that they can donate on line so he was less concerned about the location what i was wondering looking back you know year and a half later you know looking at it now with is there an opportunity to have a tagline in here that says exactly what the camp is about so you know one sentence that lets people know what the the focus on the mission of the camp is and donate another another option might be if it's a much of this is possible than we actually but if with a lot of different sites whether it's warped wordpress where there's a slide or image they can link to somewhere but you can very well have a donate button right on the photo so then it's like ok i'm donating to organization and then the donate button connects it all together people are going to want to see but what is the what is the third thing you'll see what is the third thing whenever you go to a website what do you often looking for the location you know what does it it's way that way at the bottom i plan to have it above the fold or at least have a link on the menu that says it because some people won't get below the fold some people are just coming to the website to try to find your phone number to try to find your e mail address or you have been updating it with great content great pictures and video a lot you know there's video there's a lot happening on the site which is fantastic what i would love to see is either a blog added and would be easier to consume for people and i don't think i think often people are going to go so far down so a blog role help lets you present your information in sort of little capsule so you could have the most recent three blogs on the home page and then lo and links to the deeper content which might be a nice way to go oh another thing that was mentioned as on all the websites so check is how it appears on a mobile device does anyone have anyone have an i phone here  know our community cares camp dot org and you'll see that this is something you should do for all of your websites most of the new mobile most of the new internet traffic is coming from mobile devices and there's i believe this one looks great i know the other two organizations that one of them use well i think wordpress they all look great on mobile devices where instead of having to keep pinching in to get to the menu you see it as a list you can access everything on the site thank you so what's the benefit that we believe that's nice about this but it's not going to display exactly how it displays on a website it's going to give you a menu instead of having the whole website shows it which is really preferred for mobile devices because you're trying to look at a menu is pretty difficult but if you want to look at the  but i just feel like it would really help that's a great feedback yet logos are great for sort of encapsulating a brand for giving you a quick brand recognition so i completely agree with that statement could be back and i know we've talked about it they are choosing not to be which is the philosophical state yeah i mean are is that it's responsive to the size of the screen so whether it's the depending on the mobile device or whether it's a tablet or whether it's a computer audiences are women containing a use of like forty and sixty or something like that for my analytics so i'm hitting primarily and hitting people in the community who are donors are potential donors  things like that people are sharing people are commenting on it so when the picture with that picture there which is the last day of camp all of our counselors there and everybody loves that because everybody knows these kids these kids are are you know from the community  of that thrill because you know not everybody sees everything so i try to tell my ford and some other people please like and share so that it will get out to more people you know they try to me to come in my board please white and share things because occasionally i'll pay for something to go out on but i don't find that it has that great of an impact except that i know that more people saw it so something i feel is really important no i'll pay five bucks to up your audiences you have kids who attend the camp you have their parents you have their friends you have people in the community that like that the camp exists and then you have people who are concerned with the mission of the camp so you absolutely i see it all the time i'm very aware of it as another business in town so and i really appreciate it it's very effective so that's  be very confident that the people i'm tagging want to be tagged want to be engaged with in that way it's an interesting fine line a lot of very active facebook accounts are doing that but i think it's tricky  d it's interesting actually there's there's a facebook page i follow that around jericho and the the person it's related to zoom in on the person who often tags the people who attend and it's great and  totally positive and it's so upbeat and such a good energy thing to do but she recently put a post out there saying if you don't have the tag just let me know and i won't tag you which i thought was a great communicating with her audience and letting them know that this is a mechanism that she uses and she uses it to motivate people but it's also clear that there are probably people who aren't comfortable with that and so i think that's the fine line on tagging would you agree i would agree on that and there's also a setting within your facebook page where you can allow people to tag themselves that's another way of going about it as long as you monitor it is that means anybody who likes your page can tag them selves even if they're not in the photo so it's on the be a little bit careful with but it also puts the power back into the so i know for me if i'm tagged by someone that i'm not friends with i get a get out of occasion that's you've been you've been tagged on this video do you want to post it here to your time verses on a personal page if they're a friend of yours it's very easy so then so the other place you can tag in a specific really important for a business or a nonprofit pages is in a status update and i first of all that's wonderful that you put that you're going to be here at this breakfast and they would get in the hopefully they would like the page and share it with their friends so it's more of a like sharing a lot of what it comes down  to so overwhelmingly we love your presence so on on on facebook they're also we've looked at things on their side bar and so if somebody actually goes to your facebook page what do they see when they first land there we thought that you could move your donate app up higher yes you can actually move things around on your facebook page your left hand side bar you can choose what displays there and so when people do land on your page actually go to it it's nice to serve up the information you really want them to see it's great to have the reviews at the top that's that's fantastic i would you know probably put the donate right below the reviews and then about probably looking at  rearranging that information i think can be a good way to optimize your facebook and your facebook page your facebook and agent the other thing to note and you mention this is that you can promote your posts for five dollars and you know people eight hundred people see it  because what you're doing is so geographically oriented it's right around richmond it really does pay to play facebook is a pay to play environment you you really need to spend a little bit of money not a lot of money still that could change but right now it's not a lot but in order for your stuff to get seen broadly you really do need to spend a couple dollars you know you can go as low i believe is two dollars but you can go up five dollars  generally a good rule of thumb to get your post seen by your community and it's just it's especially when you have a post that has any kind of content to it if there's a richness to if it's sending if it's a blog post or if it's for real estate if it's a new listing you know those kind of posts promoting those posts to your audience or to your geographic location is a worthwhile effort it means it gets seen and you have a much better chance of getting that kind of that and gauge with that you want that viral spread people well commenting so just something to to keep in mind and facebook allows you to be incredibly targeted so i run the facebook page for the jericho parent association parent  association for the school and i can target down to the down to the town i can target with an age group i can get very very targeted on information about who sees my posts so  it's with real estate you can actually there's there's a layer of information where you can target to people likely to move it's pretty crazy what's available you don't have to get that specific but it's good to know that  when you're paying to play you can really get right into the news feed of people who might want to see what you're sharing that's want to stress you have to be really careful with if you don't use the geography filters i have one organization that will be named that decided they wanted to create a movement a worldwide movement for this cause and you can instead of paying to promote a post you can pay to promote your page and they did it without any geography filters well they ended up were people actually being paid to like different posts so i had to actually meet with the organization and tell them they have to start over after they spent about ten thousand dollars on  promoting your page is not a bad idea because what it does is if you get the more people you have who like your page they've agreed to hear from you and then when you promote your post to them they want to see it because they've already liked you page so i call it sort of it's opt in marketing as i'm agreeing that i want to see what you have to say so but but promote your page with that very targeted sense know who you want to know your target audience  whether it's geography or if it's special interest you know if it's people who are interested in vermont you can actually there that is actually a target you can make people interested in the state of vermont you know that that's it that kind of display in your news feed and ads can display in the right hand column viewer notice the little ads on the right hand side that's when somebody is promoting their page often it's not nice always promoting their page you could be promoting their website but and it but it also can show up in the news feed and i think it says it's suggested if you ever notice you're screwed scrolling down you're like i didn't like that page to it sometimes it's great out it a little gray just it yeah or just ignore it and it won't show up again usually it all had was and it we had seen other photographs of yours so we know you're yours and actually we looked at your facebook first so what we thought was we'd seen all these beautiful photographs of vermont and just stunning and we went here and that's not to take away we and so so while this is a while that the flower photo is beautiful we  want to see those landscapes who want to see echoes of a lot of the work you do in the website and when we are the other thing we're looking at is i think on your about you have a nice you were really great profile photo of yourself  i was interested in seeing that on your home page my reaction when i was i think you have an opportunity because of your business to use a slider image and and have rotating images i know you do a lot of like high school sessions in business sessions and i think it would be it would play really well to see the variety of different types of photography you do and see that displaying would help me if i didn't know you it would help me to know quickly without reading a lot the range of your of your skill set and that's really are specifically focused on photographers now there's one that's epics there's other ones where the first thing your you want people to see when they come to your page is your work that's why they're going to contact you that's what's going to draw them in i would agree with that i  are really great ways of displaying photography full screen you know where you click in to see the content it is nice to have some content on the home page and i'm not you know that's something that you definitely should talk with your web developer about but if there are some bold directions where you're above the fold could be just a dramatic photo and that's really compelling and we have become such a visual world with the internet that you really want to play to that our earlier conversation logos are are really really nice way to consolidate your branding into a simple image that can be repeated over and over again in a million different places and let people know remind people who you are and let people know you're sort of  static so somebody think about one other well it's actually two other comments first from looking at your site right now i don't know immediately that you're in the richmond in the western slopes area which is important if you're trying to find a photographer and it's also important for when the search engines come on your site you want your site to come up with people are searching richmond photographs or richmond for ta griffey richmond landscapes and i don't know if that would come through i haven't looked at your in a letter the other question i have is another way to bring people to your site and to get your work out there since we are in vermont it's beautiful look out the window is most postcards do you do so your work in any other way and could that be integrated into the website because that would be something that would help on the social media side and bring more people in and bring more income in hopefully yet thinking about yourself the media side of your face that side what i would also consider doing on the on the facebook side is to achieve a professional portrait session that isn't isn't formal or isn't too formal you know what i think of themes and things that people struggle with with portrait sessions when we talk with clients a lot they're interested in having their photo taken their interest in having a professional presence but they're so nervous about the the old school austerity business suit but it's like that isn't it so and especially in vermont i think that plays you know so how do we you know how can you talk to people and help them how can you provide value for people and understanding ways that they can do professional photography and do portrait sessions and do so in your sessions in a way that is meaningful while you're part of the next my do want to mention something specific to just two photographers a lot of times people are worried about their photos being shared or being printed or whatever especially on social media news use a water mark you want to make sure that watermark isn't very isn't really in your face there's other ways of doing it too that include like reducing the quality of the photo so it can't be printed but in general you want some of your stuff to get vineyard so i think this site displays beautifully it's it's a this is a i believe a word press site pops right out the images are lovely and but we did have we just noticed this when we saw it earlier and we and it happened just now the video is set to auto start and so i think that people like to choose when they watch it so if you can change that shocks me and it makes me just quickly close it which is not what you want to have happen with your website  the same thing goes with if you have it whether it's audio or video you can keep it to a minimum give the user the choice of whether plays or not so when we look at this so there is some of that some of the feedback that we've been hearing today well you can apply it be great to have the contact information upper right hand corner phone number e mail you know linked to your facebook because you guys are active on facebook would be all be good to have an upper right hand corner the menu also offers the opportunity to have that sort of that those bookends the home and contact on either end so it's very simple and easy to find things  like so again what you're doing is you're wanting it to be as simple as humanly possible for people to find what they need and so by the home and contact or just very everybody knows what those two things mean so if you you keep it at that base level you know people will find what they need want to say a map from unless i knew where huntington is i wouldn't even know that you're in vermont if i first came across your site i would also say people are most people that are coming to the area are going to come by your winery but they're not just going to your winery so a link to other events in the community other resources in the community even lodging there might be a case a chance for some crock cross branding across promotions i think that would be a great thing to have on the site as well so when i first came in i guess i googled monday to be here and it came up with a whole bunch of other wanting to win your  be that that would help your search engine results now google counts that against you so that information we want to have in what's called met a data which is inside the wordpress site so that all of that thing that really struck me about your site is the use of photography on your website and then i have spent i follow you on facebook and so i am aware of all the events that you do and you have great events and you have great images and when i came to your site i didn't get that so i think it would be interesting to have more on your home page about events and maybe more on the event page about all the different types of events because of pictures description you know you guys have a very actually you have a pretty robust events program a d i don't think your website lets people know that i think you have an opportunity because of what you're doing to to really display that it's it's awesome i love what you guys are doing and and so you have a chance with your website to drive people in and like you could do instead of having the video that it seems to load automatically it's another thing with using data you might want to have a slider on the front page like we spoke about with marie that one of them is like a picture of the event another one is the beautiful photo that was on the front page there was a smaller photo that was kind of a panoramic of the vineyard that draws people in so that might be another approach to doing it to get the information out there without overloading main page so where these where these are bold images are you could have where these images are you could have a slider that she slides through and you could have one that is strictly focused on events so it could be an event slide it says you know visit visit our event page to learn about you know whatever you know this summer is this summer's lineup and you can click on that bill that's image on the slider and it would take you to your events page and then if you can describe the types of events even that you would that you hold that would be great because then people you know maybe there's nothing this month but if i see that you do all these great events in the summer but it's september i'm like ok i'm going to remember that for next year that there's all these fun things going on there so that makes sense people are people that are wondering for the it's not just for the wine but it's for the experience it's for being in a beautiful place that's for the events it's for all of those things you're gallery photos are gorgeous and i just i think that there are a little you know this would allow you to share more of those beautiful images in a more prominent place that's that some of the thinking and draw them into what you're doing into the story you're telling yes just to put it out there  she hadn't previously liked your page you wouldn't have come up in search results because you don't have the unique facebook i d by by that i mean up at the very top there you see that i was very sorry to part most new facebook pages are facebook dot com slash huntington river vineyard so you can be a little like us on facebook where at this u r l try saying go like us on facebook dot com slash piece pages slash huntington dash reverse you get the idea you can change that in settings and it's called your your unique facebook i d so this is some of what i was referring to so so look at this i mean just stunning like to me that's beautiful and draws you right in but what if facebook decided that they just rid of business pages tomorrow and all this is living over on facebook let's get it on the website let's get it on your digital home base and let's send people back to the website to find more so it's it's you know really about  controlling your message and owning your message and using facebook as a way to project it and engage people but you also hopefully want to get it back there the other thing we noticed that we were we observed on the on the facebook page is this is a beautiful picture of grapes here but when you look at it see how it looks in a news feed it just doesn't display the same so we're wondering if you can find an image that's a little bit whether it's pulling a logo together or you know using your logo or it's and something a little bit closer up more something that pulls you in the for a little bit more visually simple i think is probably what you want it's such a small box there's so much going on you  when you're logged in as an admin you'll have under the more to have here but you'll also have more apps that's how you can search around and find a donate button you might have to add as an i frame it's facebook doesn't make it as easy as you would like to but one other thing that would be great to put on there is to sign up for your mailing list collect email addresses from your facebook page yes then you don't have to worry about facebook's ever changing algorithm you know people are going to get your content you're going to be able to stay in touch with people it's under more you have to go to add apps you may have to search around for it it's too much to try to explain right now yeah unfortunately but it is so something to consider yeah so one thing to we we encourage clients to do is to have a newsletter  and to capture email addresses so that you can keep communicating with your audience beyond social media and they say actually that e mail is still above social media as far as return on investment so newsletters you guys do a beautiful newsletter newsletters still move the needle more than social media social media gets brand messaging out but email e mail still gets opened at a pretty high percentage so encouraging people both on your website and your facebook page to register to receive information from you is really great marketing and if you don't have an e mail newsletter mail temp constant contact yet either of those either those are good mail chim know i think blogs are fabulous i love blogs so do a blog but then when you do the newsletter you have your blog content and it's right there and you load that into your newsletter with the first paragraph a beautiful picture and a link to the blog on your website and then  your newsletter is now driving traffic back to your website so they're not there they are they're good friends it's another newsletter is another way of communicating out about your book about your business about your blog so one one other thing to change in your settings on facebook is it's on this page facebook judges who sees your posts by how much interaction happens and one easy way to drive more interaction is to make sure that there's an option under comments where you can have what he called a reply comment replies turned on yes this would allow for so say this person is it too late to our speak that you could actually reply and it would be under it and let me know when to click on this and see if it so actually it is turned on this i think it's turned on this page i'm not sure of how it appear now it's me if that would be that would be zero action i'm admin but it would appear in line as opposed to at the same level so instead of having like thirty people comment on something and you're trying to respond to the first person you reply under it or if someone gives you a compliment just say thank you facebook's judging that is engagement is going to make more people see the initial the page settings and it's turn or turn comet replies on yet and they keep changing which is that a fault and maybe the default now but if you started your page a long time ago which if you have that idea i'm assuming you did you may have to turn that on yeah that's a good that's a good point to just anytime anybody comments on anything on your social media site respond just respond thank you thank you you thank whatever just always respond i can there are so many social media sites out there where people are don't respond and it's just a flowed out into the into the void then whereas if you respond to people commenting you're you're beginning to create that connection that can communicate and you're beginning to get what social media is all about want to mention valerie who's in the room here has been writing blogs for western slopes lately and she's also been doing the social media so if you guys are engaged on social media let us know send us a note and we will share and like and help spread the love of your content so just keep in touch and let us know that you're out there because we will we will keep spreading the word she did a recent blog that i wanted to make sure you guys saw this is a visual world got everybody in our twitter and facebook that's one last thing to mention whether it's offline or online make sure you have your social media profiles listed here you want it all connected you want to you want to connected be what are you shot and send it out to everybody if you if you signed in will will send out a screenshot so you guys can see where that is because it is a really nice feature all right thank you guys sorry for the technical difficult