Articles by Portent Staff
Portent Staff // 3 Sep, 2014
Mobilize Your Brand, It Pays Off
A brand is a pulse of a company and customers interact with it every day across print, media, online and social platforms. The ever growing mobile industry is changing the way customers interact with and purchase their favorite brand’s products. In this post I will provide three important suggestions to build your online brand. Let’s… Read More
Portent Staff // 21 Aug, 2014
Social Media Apps That You Don’t Need (or Want), But Should Try Anyway
Sometimes when you’re a social media strategist (or, really, just a human with a smart phone or tablet), you get stuck in a routine that involves the same few social media mobile applications. Whether I’m on the bus or about to go to sleep, I find myself checking my three favorite apps: Facebook (I know,… Read More
Portent Staff // 14 Aug, 2014
Blog Strategy: Think Inside the TV
I have a confession: I love TV. When I was a dirty-kneed seven-year-old sitting on our brown carpet, I watched the A-Team and MacGyver and Quantum Leap. I loved the consistency of these shows, how I already had an idea what the premise was going into it, and I loved to be surprised by the… Read More
Portent Staff // 18 Jul, 2014
The Death of Net Neutrality, or: How to Survive the Internet Slow Lane
So it’s come to this. Our last stand against a tyrannical regime. Our last chance for our voices to be heard before the FCC screws it all up. Yes, the FCC is at it again, and this time, it could cost all us site owners a lot of money. First, a primer Up to now,… Read More
Portent Staff // 10 Jun, 2014
Why Social Media Strategists Matter in the Digital Marketing Realm
If you work in social media, you’ve probably heard “Why?” more times than you can count. “Why does this matter?” “Why is social media valuable to my business?” “Why should we be paying you to help us?” I’ve been working in the social media world for three years now, and “why” questions are what I… Read More
Portent Staff // 13 May, 2014
My Ten Years: A Look Back at the History of Portent
I wouldn’t be surprised if some people in the internet marketing industry secretly called me an “old hat” behind my back. I’ve been at Portent for ten years now so maybe I deserve that. The average tenure at a company these days is 4.6 years . Fewer than 10% of people my age stay at… Read More
Portent Staff // 7 May, 2014
Do You Use Data To Improve Your Website Design?
The days of designing websites based merely on visual components are over, unless like being invisible. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against well-designed websites. Visual design of your website plays a key role in shaping your potential customers’ opinions of your brand. The first six seconds after someone lands on your website can… Read More
Portent Staff // 1 May, 2014
Harvesting Bulk Negative Keywords with Excel
When I was just a boy, my mother caught me out behind the garage using broad match. I couldn’t sit for a week. Later, I graduated to the hard stuff: media buys, QR codes, direct mail… bad scene, man. Still, despite her best attempts at teaching me the value of plus signs, quotes and brackets,… Read More
Portent Staff // 12 Mar, 2014
UX is the New SEO
Unlike Orange is the New Black or 60 is the new 40, this adage is true. UX is the new way to optimize sites for search engines because Google said so. Yes, that benign search giant has decided that links are no longer as important as they once thought. Out of deep concern for its… Read More
Portent Staff // 11 Mar, 2014
How to use Intention.js for Responsive Design
When developing responsive websites, you will inevitably encounter designs that require some kind of HTML reordering. Often this arbitrary reordering can be achieved through clever CSS tricks, but if that is not possible or practical, you may end up having to do some kind of javascript to sniff for browser widths. Enter Intention.js. Intention.js is… Read More
Portent Staff // 27 Feb, 2014
Are You Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns To Death?
Ok ok, now that I’ve gotten all the link bait title out of the way, let’s get down to actual business. Now, I love my coworkers but they also set pretty high bar. When I inherited a major cosmetics account from my colleague Michael Weigand, I knew I had my work cut out for me,… Read More
Portent Staff // 29 Jan, 2014
What’s Ahead for Social? Believe in Yourself(ie) for 2014
No matter where you looked in 2013, there was always someone within a few feet of you with his or her arm outstretched, snapping a photo or shooting a video. In fact, Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2013 was “selfie.” Yes, that’s actually a thing. On the bright side, at least it wasn’t… Read More
Portent Staff // 28 Jan, 2014
The Growth and Rise of Good Guest Blogging
If you haven’t already, I’d love it if you would read Matt Cutts’s The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO post to understand the context of my post. “Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your… Read More
Portent Staff // 16 Jan, 2014
As Good as It Gets: What dating can teach us about email marketing.
The greatest thing about email marketing is how direct the communication is. Email is the closest you can get to dating your customers. Creepy? Maybe a little. Intrusive? Not if you do it right. Why bother with email? (Reasons to take the leap) People sign up for emails because they want the inside scoop. They… Read More
Portent Staff // 14 Jan, 2014
A Front-End Workflow For The Evolving Web
The Setup Front End Development is a fairly new concept. Back when “Webmaster” was an actual job title there was no real “development” on the front end. Websites were structured using tables, CHSS and SSP were being joined together to make what eventually would be CSS. The web was still primarily a place for documents,… Read More