Yeah, I realize that’s not the actual quotation from Empire Strikes Back, but I really wanted to continue the movie quotation theme from last month’s Letter from the CEO, and this one is perfectly applicable!
In March, I wrote that Hanapin is increasing the investment in our blogs. They’re a great source of pride for us, we have a lot of fun with them, and they generate quite a few leads and business too! To that end, we did several new things last month: we added more custom illustrations, a new blog series, and we announced Hanapin’s volunteer initiative (more on that below). While last month was great—every single one of our engagement metrics on both blogs improved—I think this month will be even better! (Do you see the connection to Empire now? It’s better than Star Wars, just like this month is better than last month. Feel free to vehemently disagree in the comments. :-))
The team has planned a blog series for this month that I think many of our readers will find useful. Four Hanapin team members took the Google Analytics certification test and passed last month. They’ll share their insight with you, including how they prepared, what they learned while studying, and how the knowledge they acquired now benefits their PPC and SEO clients.
In addition to the blog series, if the team keeps up last month’s pace, they’ll write nearly two blog posts every business day! Two topics for PPC Hero will include Google Merchant Center tracking and new geo-targeting strategies in AdWords. For SEO Boy, two topics will be Piracy in Google SERPS and a follow-up of Google Instant and how it has impacted SEO over the last seven months. Last but not least, we’re expanding our journalistic skills to start covering PPC and SEO news. We’ve always focused on writing in-depth posts based on our client experiences, and now we’ll be offering breaking news updates too!
Following suit with last month, we’ll continue adding custom illustrations each month for the rest of the year. Two of our April illustrations will be for Earth Day (April 22) and Easter (April 24). There’s another one too that’s already been posted…we thought it was pretty clever. 🙂
Because we’re Hoosiers, we ran our own version of “March Madness” on PPC Hero. It was so well-received, we decided to conduct a new contest every month, and “SEO Haikus” is up for April! To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’ll be asking for your best “SEO Haikus” for SEO Boy. There will be a prize for the best one too, so keep your eyes peeled on how to submit them!
Hanapin is making a big investment in our blogs this year, and we’re doing the same with our team members and our community. Thank you to everyone who voted on which one of Bloomington’s 300 non-profit organizations Hanapin should volunteer at. This summer, we’ll devote a half-day of volunteerism to Habitat for Humanity. We’ll be sure to post pictures of the event!
Finally, good luck to Bryan, one of Hanapin’s Assistant Account Executives. Today is his first full day living in Europe! He’s taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play football professionally! His contract is for the next two months and for one additional month if they make the playoffs. He’ll be doing that while also working for Hanapin remotely. I know he’ll do well, and after you watch his highlight film, I think you’ll agree!
April is going to be a busy month on PPC Hero and SEO Boy. We believe in offering high quality, fun content for you, our readers! We know you’ll continue to find that content here on our blogs every month. As always, thank you for reading!
