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Robert Carnes

GreenMellen Core Value: We Share Our Expertise

Like most businesses, we have a set of core values at GreenMellen. These values are the motivation behind our work and the guiding principles for our agency decisions. Our five core values are: We are always improving. We are responsive. We do the right thing. We share our expertise. We think outside the box. To better understand these values, we thought we’d unpack each one of these principles. Let’s start with: “We share our expertise.” Why do we share our expertise? Who do we share it with? What expertise do we share and how? Why we share our expertise Digital marketing is constantly changing—so continuing education and professional development is important to keep up. But not every business leader has the time to attend marketing conferences or read the latest industry books. They’d be better off with a single, trusted source of information on digital marketing. And that’s exactly what […]

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How to Maximize Evergreen Content on Social Media

Do you struggle to create enough content to post on social media? You could benefit from planning ahead with content that can be recycled in the future.

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Keeping Your Email Marketing Legit

As long as there is email marketing, there will be spam. That’s a fact of life. So caring about doing email marketing the right way matters.

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4 Ways Word of Mouth Referrals and Digital Marketing Work Together

Even in a highly digital age, relationships remain central to marketing and sales. When used strategically, online and relational marketing can work together in tandem.

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Your Guide To Creating a Messaging Strategy For Your Brand

Effective messaging is about painting a compelling picture that the audience can see themselves in. Your goal is to help them clearly see themselves buying your product or using your service. A messaging strategy is a tool for framing your brand in a way that your audience will understand.

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Your Guide to Using a Content Calendar for Better Content Marketing

What’s a solution to help get you off the exhausting content-creation hamster wheel? A content calendar. Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.

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How to Discover Who Your Marketplace Competitors Are

Every business has competition. No one is completely alone in a marketplace. However, not every business leader fully understands their competition or the marketplace they serve.

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Why the 5 Ws of Journalism Matter in Your Marketing

There’s a well-known concept in journalism often called the 5 Ws. This idea refers to five common questions, all of which start with W: who, what, when, where, and why.

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Why Unsubscribes are Actually Good for Your Email Marketing

You may not know all of the expert-level email marketing terms—what is a churn rate anyway? But everyone should be familiar with what an unsubscribe is. That’s probably because you’ve probably unsubscribed from an email list yourself. (If you haven’t, you should give it a try sometime. Use a tool like Unroll.me to clean up your inbox.) Everyone gets too many emails. That’s true for you and it’s true for the people on your email list. Allowing anyone to unsubscribe at any time means that you can instantly stop getting emails from someone and keep your inbox that much tidier. Some marketers live in fear of unsubscriptions. They dread people leaving their email list—not only because it means they’ll have a smaller email list, but also because it means someone has rejected their content. Which can feel hurtful. But know that the unsubscribe can actually be your friend. When kept […]

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UTM Tracking Links: Why They’re Your Marketing Secret Weapon

Links are the building blocks of the internet. Being able to quickly and easily click from one web page or site to another is fundamental to “surfing the world wide web.” These days, they’re so common that we often take hyperlinks for granted. Using links to grow great content and analyze how your audience responds to it is one of the most underrated skills in marketing. Doing so is more realistic than most marketers realize.  That’s because of something called UTM tracking links. (What does UTM stand for? Keep reading to find out.) You may not realize it, but you likely click on UTM tracking links every day. They’re nearly everywhere, hidden in plain sight. And if you learn how to use them properly, they can be a true secret weapon when it comes to your marketing analytics. What are UTM tracking links? To start, what does UTM stand for? […]

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Google Analytics 4: What We Know and Think So Far

Google recently announced a major update to their popular Google Analytics platform. Since then, the marketing community has been buzzing about what this means for tracking web data. Google Analytics has always been a very valuable tool for improving your website usability. And the hope is that this update will only continue to provide more value. The fact that it’s completely free to marketers only makes it more of a no-brainer to use. Here’s an overview of the platform from the team at Google: At GreenMellen, we’re still getting up to speed on Google Analytics 4, but we wanted to share a few thoughts and insights that we’ve learned so far with you. Get Google Analytics 4 set up now One of the main disappointments with this new rollout is that it isn’t a seamless transition from the existing Google Analytics system (referred to as “Universal Analytics”). You can’t automatically […]

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What is a Marketing Funnel and Why Do You Need One?

Funnels are really helpful things. People use them every day to pour things into containers. They’re also used to make funnel cakes, which are delicious. They’re also used in marketing. A marketing funnel is a tried-and-true method for building a marketing strategy. It’s a way to break down your customer’s journey into different stages. There are plenty of different ways to build a marketing funnel, but the basic principle remains the same. Rather watch a video of someone explaining this concept? The stages of a marketing funnel Different marketers segment their funnel differently—using different names and numbers of stages. There is no right or wrong way to build a marketing funnel. At GreenMellen, here’s the way we break down our marketing funnels. Awareness The first stage is basic awareness of your brand. Before people can engage with you, they have to know you exist. Think about this like meeting a […]

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Would You Hire (Or Fire) Your Website if it Was a Salesperson?

What does your website do for your company? This could be any number of things, including: Act as a digital front door for your business Provide organic discovery from search engine traffic Host your awesome online content Strengthen your brand awareness But do you know what the most important function your website should serve? It should be a salesperson. If your website is not selling for you, then you should probably fire it. (Or at least make it into a better salesman.) Why your website should sell for you Websites are great for doing a lot of things. When used well, they can cover all of the things from that list above, and more. But selling is most important because that’s what grows your business. Any effective website is the entry point into an effective marketing funnel. Landing on your website should be the first step in their journey with […]

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[Recap] A Look Back at GreenMellen’s 2020

Are we crazy for wanting to look back at 2020? Despite everything that happened this year, there’s been a lot of good things to celebrate at GreenMellen. In the spirit of year-in-reviews that we’ve done in the past (see our posts for 2018 and 2016), we thought we’d recap some of the highlights that happened during 2020. 129 websites managed We love helping businesses maintain their WordPress websites with tasks like updates, backups, and malware scans. Over a hundred clients trust us with this important responsibility. We also launched a number of new sites during 2020—including a new version of our very own website! 1,598 support tickets solved Our fearless Web Support Manager, Natalie, cleared more than 1,500 support tickets submitted by our clients during 2020. She’s super speedy, too—responding to each ticket in an average of 26 minutes and 8 seconds. That’s because being uber-responsive to your needs is […]

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[ROUNDUP]: GreenMellen’s 10 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2020

There are so many different things we could say about 2020. You’ve heard all of the adjectives ad nauseum—unprecedented, challenging, bizarre, etc.  And as um… unique as 2020 has been, there were still plenty of perfectly normal things that continued to happen during this year.  One of them was that we continued to write blog posts to help your business with their digital marketing efforts. Let’s take a look back at our top 10 blog posts from 2020. Our Top 10 Blog Posts in 2020 1. How to Improve Your Marketing in 2021 You probably entered 2020 with high aspirations around your company’s marketing. You had big plans for social media and getting your email marketing back on track. This was going to be your year. Then history happened and all of your grand plans went out the proverbial window. Now that 2020 is almost over and we’re still uncertain […]

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