Depending on your level of knowledge about the specifics of website development, the process can seem like a black box. Having a good working knowledge of the parts involved can save your company from ending up in a situation, months or years down the road, where you find out you don’t have access to or even ownership of certain parts of your website or data. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll discuss the most important facets of website ownership. We’ll outline the items you absolutely must control to ensure your company’s website is completely under your control.

You already know the importance of trust but are you thinking about this important form of capital the right way? In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll explore brands looking at trust as something to be built rather than just simply something to protect. You’ll also learn how to build a trusted brand using five key insights.

Brands spend a ton of money getting the word out, driving engagement and generating sales, but fraudulent practices are costing advertisers billions every year. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about ad fraud practices separating you from your hard-earned ad dollars and costing you sales.

So, you have the insights to drive your media plan and your messaging but are you really using media “right?” In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about how to ensure your creative content is made to work ideally with each medium in the plan to maximize the power of your campaign with effective marketing messages.

Online sales are booming! E-commerce is the way! Brick-and-mortar stores are over!

To these paraphrased headlines, I have two words: Amazon Go. Here are another two: Amazon Style. And two more: Amazon Fresh. Yes, the world’s largest e-commerce retailer is actively pursuing a physical retail footprint, and they aren’t only ones. In today’s Plain Talk, we’ll discuss e-commerce vs. retail and why consumers still overwhelmingly prefer the retail experience.

For years, writing articles to help your website rank on Google has been important for generating traffic. For just as long, being found online has sometimes taken a divergent path from providing the most topical content for the user. If you haven’t heard, on August 18th, Google announced their Helpful Content Update. This might prove to be one of Google’s most significant updates to date. It is designed specifically to penalize websites whose content was created to attract clicks rather than deliver consumer-useful content. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll examine the Google Helpful Content Update and law firm websites and explain the potential impact on yours

Many of our articles are about tangible topics, with acronyms like ESG, ABM, or GBP. Marketing, though, is about the mastery of both the objective and the subjective to help you best sell your products or services. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll discuss black and white advertising and seven reasons why your brand might choose to use this creative in our full-color world. We’ll also learn some of the psychological impacts it may have on your consumers.

Good SEO has always provided the best bang for your buck in LeadGen. As SEO becomes increasingly more sophisticated and users demand better and faster answers to their queries, Google has a difficult job uncovering high-quality content and promoting the most relevant results for a user’s intent. This edition of Plain Talk will highlight questions regarding SEO and Google algorithm updates and how the right strategy can minimize impact.

While many workplaces quickly realized how big of an issue burnout had become and enacted measures to address this growing topic of concern—from increased health and wellness activities or incentives to encourage more of a work/life balance—it’s not always an easy fix for all employees. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll specifically examine social media manager burnout and how those tasked with creating and managing content to help your brand stand out may be at risk. We’ll also discuss ways to work with these team members to develop a system where burnout isn’t the norm.

Yes, you have a digital spirit animal. We all do. The question is, how do you know which one you are? More importantly, how can you keep it from messing up your digital marketing efforts? In this edition of Plain Talk, we will define bias in digital marketing by identifying digital spirit animals. We’ll also give you a clear path to building your ideal website.