REI Branded with Paul Copcutt
August 14, 2022
Listen to this episode here: https://bit.ly/REIbranded
This episode was originally released April 5th, 2022.
Is a website something you can do without?
[00:00:12] Monica.Mangelson: That’s a loaded question for sure. It’s definitely in this day and age, everything is done online and so you really need to be able to own your corner of the internet and you really need to be able to own the content that you’re putting out.
[00:00:24] Paul.Copcutt: There’s a leadership coach called Michael Hyatt and he uses the best analogy I think for kind of online presence is he likens the website to your home country. So that’s where you drive people to. If you want to go visit the country, you go visit the home, the website, but then social media platforms are like embassies. They give people a flavor for your country, but you want to drive them back.
[00:01:08] Austin.Mangelson: I think it’s just a really good space to control the marketing that happens on your website, so just like you were saying, you can pull people in using social media and other platforms and pull them into your website, but you control the story there, you control the conversation so you can tell people exactly what you want them to know about your business.
[00:01:27] You can push different things. You’re trying to sell or point them in certain directions. And it’s just a space where you can, it kind of has a negative connotation, this word, but manipulate people, you can drive them to be where you want them to be. I think that’s a really valuable space.
What are the important aspects people need to think about when they’re thinking about a website?
[00:01:42] Paul.Copcutt: Our attention spans are diminishing by the year. I’ve seen that a survey or something that was out there that. Well, we’ve got attention spans less than goldfish, but I think apparently that’s not true that it’s kind of effective, but how important is it to have, , somebody lands on your website for the , first time on that homepage? What are the things people need to be thinking about? To keep that person continuing to look through the website and not click away.
[00:02:09] Monica.Mangelson: That’s an awesome question. We actually looked it up just before jumping on this call with you and people spend less than a minute on per page, on your website. So you have less than 60 seconds to really capture someone’s attention. So a couple of things you want to get right off the bat is:
- Who you are and who you serve
- What your message is
- Exactly what you are offering to them, what they’re getting out of you, or how you’re going to help them.
So you want to kind of funnel them down your website to the point where they buy.
What are the visual things that you can do to help people follow that path?
[00:03:02] Austin.Mangelson: Yeah. Actually your [Paul Copcutt] website is a really good example of this. If you go through it, a couple of things stand out.
Hierarchy
[00:03:09] The first thing is hierarchy. So the things that are most important that you really want to get across to your visitors, you’re going to make those bigger. You’re going to make them bold. Maybe you’re going to make it stand out so that if you’re skimming, because most people aren’t going to read everything on your website, if people are going to skim it.
[00:03:26] And so they’re going to look for the things that stand out and read those. And you know, those big messages you want to make sense.
Calls to Action
And then I would say another thing is having lots of buttons or your call to actions. You want to make sure those also stand out and make it clear kind of what you want people to click on.
Pictures or Icons
[00:03:44] You can also break up a lot of the texts with pictures or icons. Different images because really we are very visual people. We like being we like reading stories through images. And so it’s helps a lot to have different pictures on your site and it just breaks it up and makes it easier to go through and look at.
In particular, pictures of people. We tend to like pictures of people, and we like faces. And so if you are building a personal brand, having your own face on there, smiling, showing that you’re trustworthy and easy to connect you is a great way to capture people’s attention.
Videos and Personal Branding
[00:04:15] Paul.Copcutt: That leads me to a question around personal brand. Taking it further from a picture. How important is video would having the video be something you want to put on your website? And if you do, is it front and center?
[00:04:30] Austin.Mangelson: Yeah, we’ve seen and heard a lot of people who on their homepage on the very top section on your homepage is often called the hero section. That’s where you’re telling them who you are and what you do. It’s your place to make sure that people know that they’re in the right spot. And a lot of people will put a video there,. Keep it short and going back to the attention span, you know, 30 seconds. But just a quick little introduction video of yourself talking. And I do think that’s a little bit step further, closer to making that connection with people even more so than a picture.
Pop-Ups on your Website
[00:05:02] Paul.Copcutt: And what about once you got somebody landed you know, one of the things biggest, annoying things I have when I go to websites is that pop up the, you know, within three seconds, the email thing slides across, and then you’ve got to try and find the cross to take it off because you’re still trying to read the page.
[00:05:18] And I’m certainly a fan of collecting emails because that’s a way to continue to keep in touch with people. But what about the timing of that kind of thing? And should you be offering some kind of incentive for people to exchange them their email?
[00:05:34] Monica.Mangelson: This is a really great question because I feel like this is something that a lot of people get wrong.
[00:05:38] So a lot of people, when you land on the website, instantly want to throw that in your face. And then, like you said, it’s really annoying and you don’t even necessarily know who is offering that to you yet. So what you want is:
- You want them to be able to land on your hero section. You want them to be able to see who you are and start to build that know and trust that people need before purchasing from you.
- Then, on the scroll down, once you’ve kind of hooked them in and they want to know more and they start to scroll, that’s when it’s appropriate to put a pop up so that they already know that you are somebody that they potentially would be interested in buying from. You’ve hooked them in that you’ve connected with them. I would wait about 10 seconds then have it pop up.
Creating Content for SEO
[00:06:52] Paul.Copcutt: And what about the website, whether multiple pages or the one page scrolling that seems to be the style now. Because we’re mostly on phones versus laptops. Is that what you’re finding in terms of design?
Homepage
[00:07:07] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah. So you’re going to want to make sure you have enough on your, your home page to tell them who you are, what your offer is again and make sure that they can get all the information they need without having to click to another page, because the likelihood of them clicking to another page. It’s really low. And so you want them, whatever page they land on, whether that’d be a services page or your homepage, you want to make sure they have all the information they need on that page.
[00:07:31] Austin.Mangelson: Well, it’s another thing too. It helps a lot with SEO or search engine optimization. Google is going to find you better if there’s more content on your homepage. There was a trend for a while where people would just put a huge picture on their homepage and nothing else. And then you click the menu and then you could go to other pages to learn more, but there’s no content there. And so Google’s not going to recognize that as a valuable page and so it’s not going to prioritize that and show it to people. And so the longer your homepage is to an extent the more information, the more value that you put on there. That’s going to tell search engines that, you know, people want to read this page. And so it’s going to help you be found easier.
Blogging
[00:08:13] Paul.Copcutt: And you’ve underlined a point around search engine so that there for people to understand, they’re constantly looking for new content as well. What are your recommendations around. Adding new content. What are the things that you’d recommend to your clients?
[00:08:29] Monica.Mangelson: There’s a little caveat to that. It’s new relevant content. So we’ve definitely talked to people who are like, “yeah, blogging is the way to do it, I can blog about anything!”. Blogging is really, in my opinion, one of the best ways to do it, as well as if you’re into podcasting or videos, you can embed those onto your website and you should but then you should pull the transcript out.
[00:08:49] And so you should find relevant keywords, so you have relevant content. We’ve talked to a lot of people who are like “oh, I can blog about what I ate for breakfast”, and that is not going to kill your SEO faster than anything else. So it makes sure that you’re, you’re putting relevant content onto your website and you’re publishing that and that’s through blogging as the main way.
[00:09:06] You can also embed YouTube videos and podcasts as well.
Backlinks
[00:09:09] Paul.Copcutt: And what about things like backlinks? I’ve heard, heard it a million times, but it’s not something I’m really familiar with.
[00:09:16] Austin.Mangelson: Backlinks they’re powerful. They definitely help. You don’t want to build them too quickly, because again, if you, if you build it too quickly and that’s going to tell Google that it’s not authentic, or it’s not organic. So you want to build it out at a constant steady rate and a good way to do that. Again, is if you’re doing podcasting or something you know, have, have whoever your guest is or whoever your host is share that link. And then you have another link to your website. You also want to link to other people’s websites that are in the related industry.
[00:09:46] Because again, that’s going to tell you. You know, this person has a website that’s linked to this other website about the same information we’re going to prioritize both of those together.
[00:09:55] Monica.Mangelson: So I guess for your audience, we should probably clarify that backlinks are a link to your website from somebody else’s website and then you also are going to want to have outgoing links. Which would be the website, a link from your website, going to another website that has relevant content. Obviously you don’t want that to be on your homepage at all, but that would be a great place, like in your blogs, if you’re like, oh, check out this cool article about real estate, you know, and then you can link to their website that way.
Repurposing Content
[00:10:22] Paul.Copcutt: What about repurposing content? Am I right in thinking, ideally you want the original piece of content on your own website?
[00:10:30] Monica.Mangelson: So you would ideally you would publish your long form content, your blogs, your podcast, your videos on your website, and then you would take the transcript of that, shorten it, tweak it, and then you can publish it across your social media or wherever else, your marketing.
Website Strategy
[00:10:43] Paul.Copcutt: We’ve talked a little bit about kind of the important things around a website. So somebody listening today, They are thinking, okay, I know I need a website. What are the things that need to be on the website? How do you connect the website to their brand?
[00:10:59] Austin.Mangelson: I think that’s a really good question because you are implying that there’s a plan, and there needs to be a plan. And a lot of people just kind of jump into it and they they’ll just throw whatever they want on their website and there’s not a lot of strategy behind it. And, or they’ll start a website and then start looking at other people’s website and trying to hand pick, you know, I want this and I want that. And, and trying to make it a mesh of all the other websites that they like, but there really needs to be a strategy behind what you do.
1. Clarify Goals
[00:11:25] When we work with clients, what we’ll do is we have what we call a brand clarifying questionaire. And so we’ll send that to our clients. And there’s a bunch of questions about what your brand and values are, what your goals for the website are like, is it really just to get information out there or do you want to try and get people to buy something?
[00:11:43] So we kind of flesh out what the purpose is or what they want to do with it. And different questions like that. And then we’ll take all the answers that they give us and we’ll have a conversation with them and kind of give them an outline or a wire frame. What we’re going to put on the website, where we’re going to put it in why?
2. Build Wireframe
[00:11:59] And then from there, once we have fleshed that out with a client, then we’ll start building it on our platform. We use a platform called Showit and it’s not until several steps into the process that we’ll actually start putting stuff together and putting design on onto the platform to to get it to look good.
[00:12:15] Paul.Copcutt: What’s the importance of doing that is that from an kind of an architecture, making sure that the sequence and everything follows first before you worry about dressing it up, I guess, for want of a better description.
[00:12:27] Monica.Mangelson: Well, and as designers too, we really want to get to know our clients so that we can build a website that represents them.
[00:12:34] So that whole pre prep process is just getting to know them so that when we do build a website, it truly reflects who they are and who their brand is.
[00:12:45] Austin.Mangelson: And I think there’s two aspects. There’s the design and the aesthetics of the website. And there’s the strategy. And I think the strategy personally, I believe the strategy is more important than the design.
[00:12:56] And so that’s why we start with that and we make sure we have a good foundation on our strategy to build our design around it.
Website Redesign
[00:13:02] Paul.Copcutt: What about redesign? What are the things that people need to be thinking about? If they’re thinking, okay, , I need a redesign or my website needs bringing up to date. What do they have to consider before they kind of pulled the trigger?
[00:13:18] Monica.Mangelson: So they want to:
- Consider who their audience is first and foremost, you want to build your website so that it makes sense for your audience and that they are attracted to it.
- Then you want to look at what makes sense to you, what feels good for you? Because you do ultimately want it to be a reflection of. Of who you are and who your business is.
- And then you want to make sure when you’re writing your copy or when you’re using a copywriter that when you read it out loud, it sounds like something you would say you want to just sound like you’re just talking to somebody and expressing what’s going on in your business just to make it as personable as possible.
- And then you’re going to make sure you want to make sure you have really good eye-popping images that are really cohesive together.
Common Website Mistakes
[00:13:59] Paul.Copcutt: So your voice, you’re wanting to make sure it’s a representation of your voice, versus sounding stuffy or corporate.. Okay. You mentioned a couple of the mistakes people make. What other mistakes do people make when it comes to websites?
Not Checking Links
[00:14:12] Monica.Mangelson: There’s so many different ways. So we’ve been things. Actually this is a really embarrassing example, but I’ll share it anyway. We use a tool called Hotjar and it maps your website so that you can see where people are going in and where they’re clicking away.
[00:14:27] So you can kind of tell what your, if you have a design flaw or and then I bought, so we were, we were watching our heat map and we realized that one of our links was broken and someone was trying to click that link seven times. And then that is what pushed them away from our website
[00:14:43] Austin.Mangelson: and this, this was an important link, it was the link to the navigation menu, which is really important.
[00:14:48] Monica.Mangelson: Super embarrassing to share, but it happens to everybody. It’s really easy to break links, like way easier than you think so constantly going in and checking your links is a really important one.
Not Using Keywords Correctly
Another one would be not using keywords enough in your website or organically enough in your website because Google can tell if you’re stuffing your website with keywords and it doesn’t make sense. They can also tell, obviously if you don’t have those keywords, then, then I don’t know what this website is. I don’t, I’m not going to show that to somebody. That’s a really big one.
Not Paying Attention to Mobile
[00:15:17] Austin.Mangelson: I would say another huge mistake is not paying attention to the mobile side of your website. We just read a statistic today, actually that 64%, and this was a huge study by the way, it was across 10 industries.
[00:15:29] There were like two point something billion users that were analyzed and they found that about 64% of website visitors will view only on the mobile, on their phones rather than on a desktop. And a lot of people spend a lot of time, you know, tweaking and, and designing the desktop version, but don’t pay attention to the mobile when there’s more people visiting that.
[00:15:51] And so it’s really important to spend an equal amount of time, if not more time. , you know, getting that part set up so that people on their phones, you know, see that it’s a nice website that it’s all the links are there, all everything’s organized and so that they are more likely to stay when they’re on their phones.
[00:16:09] Paul.Copcutt: I think he made the point earlier, Monica, about a target audience. And of course the younger, the target audience, the much more likelihood that 64% is 70, 80, 90%. I mean, I think about my two kids and yeah, they’re both 19 and 22. I never see them on a desktop or a laptop. I mean, it’s very rare, very rare.
[00:16:31] I mean, it’s, if they’re looking something up it’s, it’s on a phone, so it’s a great, great point to make.
[00:16:37] Austin.Mangelson: And I, again, I just wanted to make a quick plug, I guess, not for us, but the platform that we used, we use a platform called Showit and kind of the big benefits using. Oh, I’ve many is that it’s specifically created to design on the mobile version.
[00:16:52] There’s a couple other platforms that we know of that are a little bit more difficult to do. Not that you can’t, but it’s harder, but show it is made. You can see kind of a, a phone view on the side of the desktop design view and it makes it really easy to make it look good on their phones. So I just want to recommend anyone who’s looking into building, check out Showit, have a look and just consider it.
Which Website Platform to Choose?
[00:17:14] Paul.Copcutt: It’s not one I’ve heard of. Cause I mean, WordPress is probably the number one, I’m guessing for most kind of self-design or even for designers, and then you’ve got Wix and Squarespace. So there’s a lot to, for people to choose it. Again, does it depend on, you know, just the platform, depending on what you’re trying again, what you’re trying to do with a website, what your strategy is, might dictate the type of platform that you go with?
[00:17:38] Monica.Mangelson: WordPress for example is really good with SEO. Like for bloggers, it’s really, really good. It’s not good for DIY because it requires a ton of coding and it’s kind of clunky. You have to use a ton of plugins to make anything happen.
[00:17:51] Austin.Mangelson: There’s a huge learning curve.
[00:17:53] Monica.Mangelson: And then you have to make sure you’re maintaining it really well because if one plugin goes out, your whole website can go out. So it’s a little bit trickier that way. Wix is really good for DIYers. It’s not great for for SEO kind of purposes. Show it is our personal favorite. We love show it and we specifically chose to use show it so that when we hand off a website to a client, it’s something that they own and they can maintain and they can update really easily if they want.
[00:18:18] And it also uses WordPress for their blocking aspect so that you get kind of the best of both worlds. You get the SEO from WordPress. And the easy design aspect. The one thing show it’s not great for though, is if you’re going to a really big e-commerce site, then you probably want something like Shopify.
Maintenance
[00:18:34] Paul.Copcutt: And that’s a good point about maintenance. How often should somebody be checking their website and from a maintenance perspective or updated software and things like that?
[00:18:47] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah. Again, that kinda depends on the platform using with WordPress. You probably want to be going in weekly, if not, bi-weekly to make sure that everything’s running smoothly and we’re showing it, you can leave it a little bit more cause they have a really great Ken and backend maintenance team that will help you with your. Maintenance, but you do want to constantly be going in and checking your heatmaps checking your links. Just, just so you know, like if there’s a really easy fix that are bouncing people from your website, you want to, you want to know that and you want to fix that as soon as possible.
[00:19:16] Austin.Mangelson: We currently have a plan. One to two times a month, we’ll go on and check our Google analytics. We’ll check our Hotjar heat maps and just make sure everything’s working well, make sure people aren’t bouncing off of pages for some reason. So I would say on average probably one to two times a month is a good average.
What Should You Know About Logos?
[00:19:34] Paul.Copcutt: Just changing tack a little bit from websites to logos and no disrespect to anybody listening if you’ve got a logo with rooftops, but the real estate industry tends to, if you’re in real estate, then your logo has to have house roofs or something. What are the things to consider around logos? What should people know?
F.E.A.S.T.
[00:19:54] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah, Austin actually came up with a really great acronym when he was thinking about your audience and coming up with something really easy and it’s FEAST.
Flexible
So the first thing the F stands for you want something that’s flexible. So you want something that you can put on a business card and you want something that goes on a website.
[00:20:10] You want something that can go on the back of your car. You want something that can potentially go on a building or a billboard? So something that looks good in all of those spaces and all of those mediums would be the first.
Ease and Simplicity
[00:20:21] Austin.Mangelson: The E in feast would be ease or simplicity. The worst thing you can do is have a logo that has so many different elements and branches, and you don’t want it to look really complicated.
[00:20:32] You want it to be something where somebody can view it. I mean, a good rule of thumb is if you can view it on a billboard going down the freeway at 60 miles per hour and be able to recognize what it is and then be able to recreate it easily. Then, you know, it’s simple enough that people are, it’s gonna stick for people. It’s going to be a memorable,
[00:20:51] Paul.Copcutt: A biotech company that I used to work for in the UK many years ago, and their logo had seven different colors. And that the cost of every time you needed to print at the time letterhead or business cards.
[00:21:05] Oh, of course you had to find a printer that really knew how to get the colors, right? Because otherwise they bled into each other and it just looked a complete mess.
[00:21:15] Austin.Mangelson: That’s a really good point beyond just the simplicity of looking at it. I mean, the more elements and colors you have, the higher, the more expensive it’s going to be to print it in different places.
[00:21:26] Paul.Copcutt: And what’s the rest of your feast.
Appropriate
[00:21:28] Monica.Mangelson: So then we got A, so it’s appropriate, so it’s going to be appropriate for your audience. So you want to make sure that you’re thinking about who you’re trying to target and make sure that it’s visually appealing for them.
[00:21:38] Austin.Mangelson: And I think this is why a lot of going back to your point about houses for real estate.
[00:21:42] Yeah. Well thinking, oh, well, real estate houses. That’s appropriate for my audience and but they kind of do that at the neglect of the uniqueness, I guess. So you want to be appropriate to your audience, but you also want to stand out.
Personal Branding
[00:21:56] Paul.Copcutt: I’m going to ask you a question around personal brand logos, because something that I’ve seen and you can go online and get these kinds of ready, may not ready made, but you can kind of plug in your name and they automatically design, which I’m not a huge fan of.
[00:22:10] But letters. , first name, second, , certain name initials seems to very, a very popular way. What are the benefits of that? And what are the downsides of having a personal brand logo that just uses initials?
Benefits and Drawbacks
[00:22:23] Monica.Mangelson: The benefits to that is that people can immediately recognize that as you, so if you say.
[00:22:30] Monica Mangelson, you would think of me, you know, you’re not going to think of anybody else. You’re going to be thinking to me. The bummer with that is when people use their, just their initials, that could be anybody, like for example, we have we follow this lady her name is Elizabeth McCravy and she uses her initials E M a lot.
[00:22:50] And when I first saw that, I was like, I’m like, who is E M? And it took me a while to connect that that was the same person, right? That can kind of be a downside. And then if it’s not legible a lot of people like these really fun, fancy script fonts, but if it’s not legible like really quick, that can be a downside as well.
[00:23:05] Paul.Copcutt: Making me think too much. Yeah.
[00:23:09] Austin.Mangelson: I guess as another example, my, my little brother is starting up a car detailing business. And so we’re helping him get everything off the ground and get it moving. And his. His business name is letters. It’s three letters, OCD, and we were trying to find him on Google the other day cause he he’s just barely started. And so we’re trying to make sure that his Google, my business is set up and everything. And even just here in Utah, in the salt lake valley, there are dozens and dozens of car detailing businesses with the same letters.
[00:23:46] He thought he was being really unique and clever. And at the time we thought he was too, but then we didn’t really. That there’s a lot of people using the same letters. So that can be a downside, is people have the same initials as you. And so you get kind of lost in, in that that being said, I mean our business A and M digital design, we use our initials.
[00:24:03] I’ve tacked on a little extra on the end of that, but it’s something that we use. And so there’s definitely there’s, there is a usefulness to it, right? If you’re trying to create a personal brand and connect with.
Structure
[00:24:14] Paul.Copcutt: Okay. And what’s the S
[00:24:15] Austin.Mangelson: The S would be structure. And you, you want your logo to look balanced and kind of a good rule of thumb that I’ve heard about this is if your logo were a building, would it stand or would it a topple over.
[00:24:27] So you don’t want too much to be visually on one side or the other. You want it to look like it’s, it’s well balanced. There’s an equal amount of visual space and elements on all sides of your, your design. And then the T would be timelessness. Meaning you don’t want to get caught up in designing, based on trends, things that are super popular right now, because it might be popular now, but a couple of years down the road probably won’t be, or might not be right and then you might have to redesign, which could be expensive. It could take a lot of your time. And so you want to try and stick to design that. Kind of tried and true and something that’s going to last more time.
Taglines in Logos
[00:25:04] Paul.Copcutt: What about things like including a tagline or not? Is that, what do you want something to stand on its own? And the company name, I guess as well would be to kind of consider.
[00:25:16] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah. So you typically when you make logos, you’re going to want a logo suite. So you’re going to want like a main logo that can have your tag lines, like business cards. And then you’re going to want a secondary logo that maybe doesn’t have a tagline.
[00:25:29] So it’s just your business name. And that might be something you use for like billboards or flyers or something. And then you’ll want sub marks, which are like, you can use that. So favicon on your website or something like that. So typically it really depends on your setting. If it’s something where someone is looking at your logo for long enough to read the tagline, that’s a great place to put it.
[00:25:48] So you like your website, for example. But if it’s on a billboard, they’re not gonna have time to read that, so you’re going to want to keep it simple.
Colors in Logos
[00:25:54] Paul.Copcutt: It goes back t “It depends”, doesn’t it? I know that people don’t like to hear, but it really does depend because it depends what you’re using it for, where you’re using it. How you’re using it. So color. What about color now? Orange I understand Austin is a popular color of yours. I saw it on your social media or on your website was mentioned about orange.
[00:26:16] Austin.Mangelson: It’s really grown on me. I gotta say one select the color orange more than I did before.
[00:26:21] Paul.Copcutt: I mean, you see those kind of fans of color and, you know, very often. People say, oh, well, if you’re in real estate, you should be blue because it’s trust or dark blue because it’s trust.
[00:26:32] And how important is that? Or is it more about, again, going back to personal brand and what’s appealing to the audience?
[00:26:39] Monica.Mangelson: I would say it’s more important about personal brand and going back to your audience so you can very easily make yourself look like everybody else that’s super easy to do.
[00:26:48] But if you know exactly who you’re targeting, you’re going to know that what color set they’re going to want to see. So for example, if you are a real estate agent who really wants to help single moms get into houses and that’s your target market and you’re really focused on that. And I don’t even know if real estate works like that but let’s just go with the example and you know, that single moms is your target. Then you’re going to put maybe some pinks and maybe and purples, or maybe some more neutral colors because you know that moms right now are really into neutral colors. And you’re going to do something a little bit more feminine to attract your audience to you. If that makes sense. And then you’ll be way more eye-popping against all the dark blues. So that helps too.
[00:27:29] Austin.Mangelson: One thing that we have to try and balance when we are designing for people and creating logos and putting together a brand identity is you have this whole color psychology that you can look into and just like you were saying, blue is kind of evokes this feeling of trust colors like yellow are going to make you more happy and excited. So depending on what your goal is and what your business is, Play around with different colors to kind of evoke those feelings and emotions in people. So we have to balance that with also personal preference, because it is a personal brand.
[00:28:00] If you don’t want to use the color yellow, if the business owner hates the color yellow or orange, for example, you know, there’s a balance there between the color psychology and the intended audience and also there is absolutely an element of personal preference on the business owners part
[00:28:18] Paul.Copcutt: What about your own brands? What’s do you have a favorite personal brand and why?
[00:28:24] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah. I kind of mentioned to her before. I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth McCravy. I think she’s very good at owning her space and saying, this is me. This is what I like. She’s also very, she’s just very knowledgeable and really fun to follow.
[00:28:38] Paul.Copcutt: What does she do?
[00:28:40] Monica.Mangelson: She’s a web designer. She started out as a web designer and brander just like us, but she has kind of transitioned into the teaching space. And so now she teaches marketing.
[00:28:50] Austin.Mangelson: She does a lot of business strategy as well. A lot of our stuff is geared mostly for designers, but there’s a lot of her content that is really beneficial and powerful for it several other industries.
Favorite Brands
[00:29:01] Paul.Copcutt: What about you, Austin? Do you have a favorite personal brand?
[00:29:04] Austin.Mangelson: I definitely like Elizabeth McCravy. We’ve really delved into a lot of her stuff together. Another one that I really like, there’s this guy named Neil Patel. You might’ve heard of him. He’s the Ubersuggest guy. If you’ve heard of Ubersuggest his big thing is SEO and marketing, and he really stands out in that industry is one of the leaders.
[00:29:22] Monica.Mangelson: I think Austin just liked him cause his brand colors are orange.
[00:29:25] Paul.Copcutt: I was going to say his bright orange. That was, that was going to be my immediate question
Favorite Tools and Resources
[00:29:29] Austin only shops at Home Depot. Okay. I got it. What about you mentioned your favorite web design tools. Is there any other favorite tools or resources that you’re enjoying using at the moment?
[00:29:41] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah I mean, we mentioned Hotjar and show it. We love those two a lot. Outside of that, we really like Dubsado as a client management system.
[00:29:49] It’s really awesome for sending emails, for keeping track of all your clients and your projects and what you have going on.
[00:29:54] Paul.Copcutt: Yeah. You mentioned that on your website or I came across it when I was looking at your backgrounds. How similar is to do, you know, base camp at all.
[00:30:04] Monica.Mangelson: I actually have no experience to base camp.
[00:30:06] Austin.Mangelson: I don’t, I have never used it, but I’ve heard about it. And from what I understand, I think Dubsado is more of a client relationship platform, where you’re, you know, faced interacting with, with your customers. And I think base camp is more of a task management or project management.
[00:30:24] Paul.Copcutt: Yeah. Project management. I use it with my clients, but it is for sharing tasks and projects and knowing where everything is, it’s all in one place. But I got the impression decided that you can kind of do invoicing and there was a CRM element in email. And so that sounds like an all in one.
[00:30:40] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah. Honestly, a lot of those programs, there’s a lot of crossover and they’re all really good. And they, some of them have different strengths and different weaknesses and stuff. I dunno, we dabbled in a lot of programs for a while before settling up Dubsado. And ultimately the advice we were given was find one, stick with it, make it work for you. And unless there’s a huge problem and then switch.
[00:31:00] Austin.Mangelson: Yeah. So we mostly use for our client interactions, like emails and invoicing and whatnot. And then we use Microsoft to do. Just for our own personal business just for tasks that need to get done, reoccurring things. So we use a combination of the two.
Favorite Books and Podcasts
[00:31:13] Paul.Copcutt: Do you have a favorite business book or podcast?
[00:31:17] Monica.Mangelson: Yeah. We both kind of have this. Podcasts. We both really liked the Duo on Air podcast. It’s actually a relatively new podcasts, but they’re very fun. It’s a part of the reason I think we like them is because their business partners that work together.
[00:31:29] And so building a personal brand with two people is a little bit, it feels a little bit squished sometimes, so it’s fun to listen to them and how they do it. .
Two in a Personal Brand
[00:31:36] Paul.Copcutt: That’s an interesting question for the two of you, cause you all building a brand. A&M Digital Designs, but it’s two personal brands under one umbrella. what are the challenges you faced or is there any. as branders and marketers?
[00:31:49] Austin.Mangelson: It’s been tricky. And I would say just right off the bat we’re by no means experts in it yet. There’s always learning and we’re always trying to figure it out. But it is tricky. We are two different people. They have two different personalities. And I mean, as you’re trying to create a personal brand and then there’s two personalities and a personal brand, it can get tricky. And there’s been some stepping on toes and there’s been trying to, you know, work out different strategies of how we’re going to show up on Instagram and how we’re going to show up on our website.
[00:32:16] Monica.Mangelson: I personally would say the biggest issue for us would be figuring out whose voice to write in, you know, to keep that consistent because we talk very different because we’re different people, you know?
[00:32:26] Paul.Copcutt: That’s a very good point.
[00:32:28] Austin.Mangelson: So I guess a tip would be just experiment with different ideas. We tried for a while, both just as an example on how we’re trying to show up on Instagram.
[00:32:35] We tried for a while, like just both being on there all the time and that didn’t work out super well. So currently we’re experimenting with Monica has taken the lead on it at one month and then I’d take a lead on it the next month. We’re halfway through that, so we’ll see how it goes. And then we might reevaluate and try a new strategy.
[00:32:50] But I think that’s a good tip is just to experiment with different ideas and see what works for you, because it’s going to be different for every business partnership.
Favorite Quote
[00:32:58] And do you have a favorite quote.
[00:32:59] So I was thinking about this. I was like, what, what could be a really good quote to share?
[00:33:03] And I, I never have one quote always in my head that I just always reflect on because I like so many different quotes and it really depends on what kind of, what stage of life or what mood I’m in, I guess. But one that I’ve been reflecting on a lot the past couple of days is a quote It’s attributed to Dr. Seuss. I’ve heard that it wasn’t actually him who said it, but he said,
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
And I really liked that in this space of personal branding, because inevitably as you’re trying to create a personal brand, you’re gonna offend some people. You’re never going to be able to say and share a message that’s a perfect fit for everyone. And really to embrace that personal branding strategy you’re going to have to be okay with, with not everybody liking you. But that’s really why I like this quote is that’s. Okay. People aren’t going to like you, that’s fine don’t worry about them. But there are going to people who there are going to be people who love what you say, love what you do. And those are the, really, the ones that need to matter to you because they’re the ones who are going to build help build your business.
[00:34:07] Paul.Copcutt: You’ve made a really good point, Austin, because I think people are so tempted to what I don’t want to do this because that and that may not attract these people in there. I don’t want to do this cause that might not and then they’re trying to be something to everybody and then they end up being nothing to anyone. And exactly. Monica. Do you have a favorite quote?
[00:34:25] Monica.Mangelson: Not really. I was just going to tell right off, Austin’s give a good, amen.
[00:34:31] Paul.Copcutt: And how can people find out more about you and the services that you offer?
[00:34:35] A good place to connect with us is our website. It’s aandmdigitaldesign.com. And that’s really good place to connect with us. We also really like connecting with people on Instagram and that is @aandmm.digitaldesign.
Resources
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