Digital & Social Archives - Andy Fenstermaker, MBA

Relaunching FensePost: Renewing an Old Passion

March 10, 2022 No Comments

Let’s take a look back to 2006. That was the year I wrapped up grad school, earning my Masters in Business Administration from Washington State University in June of that year.

Grad school was a little different for me. It was like a do-over of my college days, where I didn’t get super involved and kinda kept myself on the down-low. When I went back, I did the things I wished I had done the first time around. One of the most notable elements was joining KZUU as a radio personality.

Suddenly, my passion for exploring and discovering new music increased exponentially, and I soaked it all up. And all the while, a new one began parallel to this: sharing these discoveries with anyone who would tune in. But it could only last so long…

Assortments, Digital & Social, Marketing & Branding, Personal Passions

COVID-19 is Changing How We Do Business

March 30, 2020 No Comments

A little over a month ago, it was business as usual. The economy was strong, the stock market was at or near all-time highs, and unemployment was at stunning lows. Then COVID-19 began to rapidly spread across the globe and dominate the media.

Everything changed, and at lightning speed.

Within a one to two-week period, millions began filing for unemployment, many companies froze their hiring, and those who were able to began working remotely.

Content Strategy, Digital & Social

4 Must Have Apps to Complement Instagram for Business

June 15, 2014 No Comments

At IRCE Chicago this year, Instagram was touted as a great space (if it makes sense for your audience) by several e-commerce brands including Bucketfeet and Chubbies.

I’ve been a big fan of Instagram for ages, for both personal use and for use as a brand. While it provides some frustration points for brand account managers, such as the lack of clickable links and the inability to easily access multiple accounts on a single log in, the benefits far outweigh the negatives if you are able to reach your customer base and target audience on the platform.

In other words, by being steadfast the platform has done a great job limiting brand creep into its space, allowing it to maintain a greater level of authenticity.

Still, for those who do not mind the labor involved, it can be a rewarding spot for brands with a keen eye. Especially now that they have added additional editing tools that give you the ability to manipulate contrast, brightness, warmth, saturation, shadows and more!

Once you’re in the space, there are several complementary apps to stick in your Instagram for Business toolbelt:

1. Studio App for iPhone

Studio Design App for iPhone is perfect for enhancing curated content or easily developing quick content on your own from your iPhone.

It’s also great for light image manipulation. Among my favorites is using the shapes tool to flood the image and adjust the opacity. Using a white shape, this gives you a true opaque look. Using a color over a black-and-white image gives you a duo-tone Blue Note effect.

The latest version of Studio has even more options with an assortment of “packs” you can download far beyond the standard elements I found so intriguing when I first discovered the app. I am only beginning to scratch the surface here.

One way I use this is to post a filtered image on Instagram and manipulate it afterwards to share on other social platforms. For example, here’s a design I just put together commemorating my experience this past week at IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition):

There are other similar apps like Phonto, but I haven’t found them to have near the editing and creative abilities as found with Studio.

2. InstaSize

Currently, Instagram does not allow you to post an image that is not square. Enter InstaSize; this is what I use to post full-size pictures.

InstaSize does this by adding white space to the sizes of portrait shots and to the top and bottom of landscape shots.

On New Years Day this year, my wife and I joined some friends for a hike around Whistle Lake in Anacortes. I captured some great shots but didn’t want to limit them to a square and used InstaSize to make it happen:

You also cannot do an image collage on the current version of Instagram, which is popular these days. InstaSize also has this capability. I used it to showcase the sexiness of my obese cat back in December:

3. Repost

Repost is the mandatory app to share user generated content. It allows you to easily repost photos others have shared on Instagram. While I have not used it yet, I will be doing so in the next week.

One brand that continually does this is Folk Magazine (the brand behind liveauthentic.us).

4. PicFlow

PickFlow is relatively new to me. I grabbed this one at IRCE after it was recommended from my Repost app. It allows you to create a quick slideshow of images then add music. You can include transitions if you like that sort of thing.

Here’s one I created after IRCE:

It reminded me of something I saw from Martha Stewart on Instagram for National Donut Day. While I suspect that Martha Stewart’s creative folks put this together using something much more sophisticated, you could do it using an app like PicFlow if you’re good.

If you plan to add music and use this as a brand, make sure you get permission from the artist.

Those are my four picks. Follow me on Instagram, and if you have some favorite apps of your own, let me know in the comments!

Digital & Social

Is Your Competition Buying Its Likes?

March 2, 2014 No Comments

The other day, I stumbled upon a little-known trick that can help Facebook Page admins analyze how they are doing in comparison to their competition. It’s all about how many people Like your page and your competition’s page, and analyzing that data as a performance benchmark.

But first, a quick disclaimer: I have yet to delve into Facebook’s “Pages to Watch” section as paranoia gets the better of me. Too many questions go unanswered — could Facebook one day inform Page admins of who is watching their page as encouragement to lure them into watching others? Given Facebook’s past with privacy, I’m continuing to hold off in those regards.

I digress.

What Your Competition’s Page Likes Can Tell You

Looking at the page of a competing blog, I was curious to understand why their page had so many more likes than mine. Clicking the “Likes” Tab (i.e. not “Likes” under the Page name) brought me to a page featuring a few insights about those likes. Here’s what this exposes to your competition:

1. Your Most Popular Week: The week when most people were talking about your Page. This includes any of that ever popular “reach” data and includes new Likes.

2. Most Popular City: The city where most people are talking about this Page.

3. Most Popular Age Group: Age demographic information on people talking about the Page.

4. Most Visited Week: The week during which the highest number of people checked in at that location.

And a few other items…

Analyzing The Competition

Now here’s where things get interesting. In questioning why this competitor had so many more likes that my Page, I noticed something astonishing and potentially quite revealing. Their most popular city was not just out of the country, it was from a place highly unlikely to generate that much discussion on the topic in question. My conclusion: It is highly probable the Page purchased these likes thus generating wildly skewed and somewhat deceiving results.

Another insight that led me to this deduction was the page’s engagement. Despite having a similar amount of posts, engagement too is fairly similar. This tells me that a much smaller percentage of people are engaging with their Page in comparison to mine.

Changes Over Time

A few weeks have passed and I’ve kept an eye on things. From South Africa to India, their “Most Popular City” eventually returned to the states.

This tells me a few things. First, maybe they didn’t buy their Likes; maybe they just aren’t influencing their target demographic. This is entirely possible, based on a review of their wall. Or maybe they’re posts have poor timing.

Either way, it’s not good.

More Harm Than Good

Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm tells the company how relevant content is to a viewer and dictates what shows up in fan feeds. Buying a slew of likes, then, may do more harm in a Page’s ability to show up in a feed. But that’s not all…

As Google and other search engines start placing more and more social proof into their page ranking consideration, seeing irrelevant Likes from overseas is likely to go the route of link building via guest blogging: Quality guest blogging is OK but guest blogging for SEO sake is not. Don’t be surprised if social proof re: Likes goes the same route in the very near future.

For further reading, check out this article by Jon Loomer on why you shouldn’t buy Likes.

Content Strategy, Digital & Social, SEO

On Google’s Hummingbird Update

October 27, 2013 No Comments

It almost seems like old news, or maybe news that wasn’t: about a month ago Google sneakily rolled out its latest algorithm and search infrastructure update. Last week they announced the occurrence at their 15th anniversary — the update has been dubbed Hummingbird.

MOZ SEO put together a quite in-depth article on the event and subsequent chatter that inevitably takes place after such a release in an article simply titled Hummingbird Unleashed. One statement in particular stood out to me:

We should stop focusing only on keyword optimization and start thinking about topical optimization. This obliges us to think about great content, and not just about “content.” Things like “SEO copywriting” will end up being the same as “amazing copywriting.” (…) If Hummingbird is a giant step toward Semantic SEO, then as SEOs, our job “is not about optimizing for strings, or for things, but for the connections between things,”

Within SEO, to me, there has always been a strong correlation between a few simple, common sense items and the production of good, quality content. Certainly, other, more complex items exist and are given weight — solid inbound links, site load time, certain elements of site build, etc. — but a page without quality, useful content is an irrelevant page.

Reading between the lines in the MOZ article, I see Google doing a few things.

Google and Conversational Search

First, and the article states this: Search is becoming more conversational, with results digging into the meaning and “semantics” behind the string. What this says to me is that posts, too, must become more conversational.

From a content standpoint, it’s become even more important to develop a solid voice.

SEO vs. Content Strategy

I have always felt there is a strong correlation between content strategy and SEO. This gained appeal, perhaps most notably, after Google’s Panda release.

With Hummingbird, the correlation is even stronger.

The strategy behind building links to generate authority, increasing a page’s social capabilities, and creating quality content is becoming more and more important with each newly released algorithm update.

Be A Follower

By far, the best thing you can do is read. I’m not sure where I first heard it, or even whether or not it’s a well-known statement:

In order to be a great leader, one must first learn to follow.

But even if you are a leader in this particular area of expertise, it’s always a good idea to see what others are doing and saying. Here are a few blogs I strongly recommend following on the topics of SEO and Content Strategy:

Copyblogger: This blog features regular posts by a variety of writers on topics relating to content on the web. From content strategy to SEO copywriting to email marketing, Copyblogger is a must-read for anyone who creates online content.

SEO MOZ: The Moz Blog is a great resource when it comes to staying up-to-date on all things related to SEO. The blog is a bit more on the technical and scientific side of SEO, so be prepared for that if you’re more on the creative side of things.

A few other notables in search, content strategy and social that I recommend are , Mashable and ReadWrite.

Above photo by fortherock on Flickr.