Since it is St. Patrick’s Day, this post only seemed fitting with the events that typically take place on today. One part of Irish tradition we do celebrate is the consumption of great beer. And what makes great beer is great hops!

Wisconsin is known for cheese, milk, farming, beer (even consuming it) and some would say the Green Bay Packers. But did you know that Wisconsin was once known for its hop production?

Wisconsin was a major producer of hops for a brief period in the late nineteenth century. In fact, Wisconsin produced about one fifth of all the hops raised in the United States. By the 1920s, a downy mildew had virtually wiped out the entire crop.

Today, Gorst Valley Hops is on a mission to bring hops production back to Wisconsin. From the beginning in 2008, Gorst started by growing on a personal 2 acre piece of land and has rapidly expanded to 15 combined acres with eight charter growers. Eventhough hop production disappeared from Wisconsin, the love for beer and brewing beer has never left the state.

Wisconsin has 72 active breweries, which include: two major brewers (Miller and City Brewing), seven craft breweries, 16 microbreweries, and 23 brew pubs. (Not to mention the number of home brewers) Beer is part of our heritage and our lifestyles. The history is so strong that we even named a sports team (Milwaukee Brewers) after the beer making process.

Gorst Valley Hops is currently providing all Midwestern (mostly Wisconsin) grown hops to local brewers for a selection of different beers. For example, Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee has created a beer called “Local Acre”. It is made with 100% Wisconsin ingredients, something they probably couldn’t do a few years back. All the talk about hops returning to Wisconsin on a serious level has sparked excitement in people. Part of our state’s history is starting to return thanks to Gorst Valley Hops.

If you would like to learn more about Gorst Valley Hops,  check out www.gorstvalleyhops.com

Cheers to great beer! Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone!

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Make no mistake about it.  It doesn’t matter if you have a powerful arsenal of promotional techniques, if you fail to impress and engage your visitors in 10 seconds or less, you’re most likely to lose them. If you want to lower your bounce rate, here are a few tips to do just that.

What’s a Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. The more compelling your landing pages are, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

1. Keep it Simple
Without a doubt the design of your website is the most important factor in trying to reach this goal. Websites that offer no white space for eyes to take a break can become annoying and cause people to leave. Keep the design simple, yet attractive. Use colors to draw attention to different areas, but don’t overwhelm.

2. Highlight Your Goods Above the Fold
Put your important items towards the top of the page. If you have an online store, showcase your products near the top. If you provide a service, display your work at the top. Strut your stuff and make sure people can see it. (Yes, flaunt it!)

3. Make your Navigation user-friendly (menu)
Your website should have a user friendly menu that allows any visitor to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Try to avoid using complicated drop-down menus and don’t bury your pages more than 2 clicks away from the homepage. I suggest using text links that contain keyword and staying away from flash menus.

4. Display Hotspots
A website hotspot is an area where people are automatically drawn to on the homepage. They are designed to get visitors to important pages quickly without even using the navigation bar. Hotspots will help you push a “call to action” or a product that you really want to sell. Make sure they are colorful and stand out from the rest of the website.

5. Improve Page Load Time
Make sure you have optimized the size of your images, kept the text/html code clean, and have designed the homepage to load in the quickest time as possible. If I have to wait all day for a page to load, I have already left the site before it even had a chance to finish.

6. Be Readable
Organize the content on the site to be legible and not just a huge mess. Bold the headers, italicize necessary content and make everything interesting to read or at least make people want to continue reading.

7. Place Search at the Top
In case people can’t find what they are looking for, they can resort to a site search. Some visitors get lost because they can find “exactly” what they want, they now have a quick fix for that.

8. Remove Auto-Plays or Pop-ups
Videos are nice, but they are not nice when your speakers are turned all the way up and the baby is sleeping in the next room. It is annoying, but not as annoying as ads that pop-up when you first come to a website. Get rid of them!

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So you’re on Facebook and you’ve taken it one step further and set up a fan page, now what? It’s time to optimize your page and use the power of social networking to bring traffic to your website and put dollars in your pocket.

Below are a few tips that can help:

Create Ideal Profile Picture – Attracting attention is the key to getting new fans, and your profile picture is first thing people see. Ensure fans can see your entire image by creating a profile picture that is 200 pixels wide, while height can vary as needed. This is important to know because Facebook will automatically crop images and your logo may be cut off.

Claim your Username –  I can’t stress this enough – this will make it easier for people to find you on Facebook. With that being said, make sure you keep it simple. (ie. www.facebook.com/yourcompanyname) For more information on how to claim your username click here (http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=896#/help.php?page=897)

Optimize Your Share Preview – Personal profiles as well as fan pages give you the opportunity to share links. This feature also allows users to select thumbnails images to be displayed, make sure you use the images as eye candy to attraction attention to the content that is being pushed.

Define A Schedule – It’s sounds stupid, but this is the biggest step that is missed. Create a calendar to use as a guide for your updates. Make sure you mix up different update types: status, link, note, photo or video updates. You don’t want your wall flooded with the same thing over and over again. Keep the content interesting, while letting fans know you’re the expert.

Check Your Page Insights – Just like analytics on your website, your fan page has tracking as well that can tell you the data/demographics you want to know about your fans. Your page views, post quality, interactions and number of new fans are all important. Pay attention to it!

If you would like Kella Design to put together a complete social media marketing plan for you or your company, please click here.

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1) Redesign Your Website

If you haven’t already, ramp up your marketing plan to update your website. Take a good look at your competitors and see how your website stacks up. Having an outstanding website will increase your sales and draw positive attention to your company. It may even lighten your work load if it is done properly. Plan ahead for items you would like in the future and at the very least have them in mind once you redesign your website. You went basic on the first one because you knew a website is a must, now is the time to do it right. Your investment in a custom built website will pay off in the end!

2) Brand Your Company

Sit down and take a little time to focus on your company image. Having a good company logo can increase the awareness of your company in your community even better than word-of-mouth can at times. If you paid your neighbor’s kid to come up with your logo, now might be the time to rethink that. Re-branding could be one of the best decisions you have ever made, and it will refresh your brand in people’s minds. Give yourself a new logo, update your business cards, stationeries, envelopes, etc. It’s a New Year and time for a new look!

3) Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon

It is not a fad anymore, it is a key component of your marketing strategy. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress are here to stay. When each are used properly they can become a great asset to your business. When you are tight on a budget, or the budget doesn’t exist when it comes to marketing, social media is the way to go. It’s cheap, flexible, gets quick results and gets easier with time. Social Media and Social Networking aren’t going away anytime in the near future. If social media hasn’t become part of your marketing plan, you have some catching up to do!

4) Allocate Money to Online Marketing

Websites with relevant content will continue to rule search engine rankings. No matter what your budget, you can place your ads on Google or Yahoo and they will be displayed as part of their advertising network. Your ads appear beside related search results, people click and connect to your business. The nice thing is that you only pay when people click. Set up SEO performance goals, make them specific, measurable and timely. At the very least you want to determine if the goal has been met and why a trend has occurred.

5) Communicate with Your Customers Through Email Marketing

Use email newsletters to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis. Your newsletters can include current or upcoming events, hints and tips, deals or promotions you are currently pushing, or topics of interest to readers. Email marketing will build relationships with current or prospective customers. You can use the newsletter as a subtle reminder to return to your website, and put your product or service back in the face of the end user.

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Well looky what we have here….a little blog brought to you by Kella Design!

What can you expect from this blog you may ask? We will hit up ways to help you with design, how to work with different clients, aspects of running a small business, emerging technologies, mobile apps, that myface or spacebook thing everyone seems to be talking about, and hoping my ADHD doesn’t take over and send you down some weird path.

Basically we will hit up stuff we are interested in and things we believe will help others that do the same things we do.  We also may confuse people…..I apologize for that!

So stay tuned, there is a lot more to come!

Happy Holidays and Safe Travels to Everyone as well.

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