Digital Natives. Small Business Focused. Minnesota-Based.
Blue Ox Websites & Marketing is based in Minnesota, with remote employees across Central Minnesota and the Twin Cities. We love helping small businesses, startups, and nonprofits get found online so they can spend less time worrying about their website or marketing and more time serving customers.
We’re dedicated to strengthening our local economies and communities, which calls for resilient businesses. Most of our team members stay with us for 8 years or more, not just because we build great websites, but also because we value learning, teamwork, remote work, and family.
What Drives Blue Ox
Mission
We build innovative websites and honest marketing strategies to help small businesses and nonprofits grow—and make a bigger impact in communities.
Vision
We’re here to grow alongside local small businesses and nonprofits, building lasting partnerships that help communities thrive.
Guiding Values
Creativity: Custom solutions, not cookie-cutter.
Reliability: We show up and follow through.
Approachability: No jargon, no gatekeeping.
Community: We grow with the businesses and nonprofits we support.
Remote First
At Blue Ox, we prioritize flexibility and choice while focusing on making meaningful connections with our coworkers and clients. While we’re primarily virtual and WFH, our teams meet in person a few times per year to celebrate accomplishments and brainstorm big, new ideas.
Benefits & Perks
Flexible PTO & Company Holidays
Prioritized work-life balance, with flexible PTO and 23-25 observed days off.
Family Planning
Paid family and medical leave, including for adoption.
Employer-Matching 401K
50-100% retirement matching.
Perks & Stipends
Monthly internet and equipment allowances to support remote work.
Learning & Development
Mentorship from senior team members, conferences, certifications, and online learning opportunities.
And More!
Meet the Blue Ox Team
Meet the team! We’re a small, local crew of real people who care about helping businesses succeed online.
Employees
Logan Gruber
ReFounder / Marketing Director
Base: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Tenure: 2016
Katie Carlson
Designer / Developer
Base: St. Cloud, Minnesota
Tenure: 2015
Kelsey Meyer
Designer / Developer
Base: St. Joseph, Minnesota
Tenure: 2017
Jonathan Gamble
Writer / SEO
Base: Cottage Grove, Minnesota
Tenure: 2024
Zeineb Kadhkadhi
Social Media / Designer
Base: St. Cloud State University
Tenure: 2018
Jen Gruber
Social Media / Designer
Base: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Tenure: 2024
Careers At Blue Ox
Application
How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking With Content Marketing
/in How To, SEOWhen a new client approaches us for a website design, one of the most common issues with their current site is that it hasn’t been updated in months or years. Your web designer or a dedicated person on your team should be constantly crafting new content for your website to keep it fresh.
A decade or two ago, it was common thinking that a website should be set in stone and only updated very occasionally, like a brochure or business card. That’s simply not the case anymore.
The Online Experience Centers Around Content
As can be seen by the popularity of sites like The Huffington Post, Reddit, HowStuffWorks and countless blogs, fresh, ever-changing content helps sites retain and grow a following and build their ranking in search engines. Sites which are constantly changing their content, being added to and improved are getting the most traffic.
However, each of those sites have a focus: news and opinion, cool and strange things from the internet, and explanations of how language, mechanics and other things work. Their content focuses on those things and their readers reward good content with clicks, time spent on the page and site, and sharing those articles on social media.
Therefore, your site should not only have new content, but it needs to be centered on topics which reinforce your business. This is the heart of content marketing.
Experimentation
Another great way content marketing can improve your search engine ranking is by experimenting with different types of content and different types of pages.
Do you have a blog currently? If not, that’s a great place to start, as blogs are a good way to create consistently new content based around a theme. Experiment with different formats of blog posts, like lists, ‘How Tos’ and others.
Also experiment with infographics and videos as well as text posts to see which perform better. Use your websites built-in analytics or sign up for Google Analytics to get a better idea of how each piece of content performs with your visitors, and don’t forget to promote it on social media!
For help with the whole gamut of content marketing, contact us today!
Why Having A Mobile First Website Is More Important Than Ever
/in Web DesignWe’ve mentioned before how more people are browsing the internet and completing Google searches on mobile devices than on desktops, and how this number continues to grow. But Google recently began another initiative to serve people a better mobile experience when using Google search. This initiative is being rolled out now, but won’t be fully in effect for a few months.
In some cases, website designers create two versions of a website: one is served to a searcher if they are using a desktop computer, and another is served if they are using a tablet or smartphone to search. These two separate sites often have different amounts and types of content on them, which means Google has two different places to look and two options to serve people. And for the most part Google will serve the desktop site in search results, which can cause confusion once the searcher arrives and the desktop content doesn’t exist on the mobile site.
Why Is This A Big Deal?
Google is solving this by beginning to index mobile-websites first, meaning if a mobile site exists, they will prefer this over the desktop site, even if the searcher is on a desktop computer.
If you have a separate mobile and desktop site, and your mobile site doesn’t mirror your desktop site perfectly, you’re going to need to do some work to keep your rank in Google search results.
Wait! Don’t Panic.
Don’t go and call your web designer just yet. In fact, if we are your web designer, you’re good to go as all of our websites are what we call ‘responsive’, which means they are one unified site which adapts to fit whatever screen it is displayed on, whether desktop, mobile or movie screen. Responsive websites have nothing to fear with these changes.
If you don’t have a responsive website, you may have a great web designer who is keeping your mobile and desktop versions of your site up-to-date and in sync. You’ll want to get in touch with them to find out if these changes will affect you, and you’ll want to verify by looking at and using your site on both a desktop and mobile device.
If you don’t have a mobile website or a responsive website, you’ll definitely need to do some work to optimize your site to be mobile first, which means it should be built first to serve those on a mobile device and then desktop visitors.
If you’re not sure how your site is faring, click here to see if your site is mobile-friendly.
If you’re worried about how your site will do as Google continues to implement changes to make the web more mobile-centric, contact us and we’ll be happy to talk you through some different approaches you can take.
5 Misguided Myths About Social Media Marketing
/in SEO, SocialSocial media marketing has been of interest to marketers and business people since at least 2007, but has been steadily popular since 2011 according to Google Trends. The need to fill your funnel from your fans and followers has grown, as has the mythology around the process of doing so.
Let’s take a look at some of the most misguided myths social media marketing manifests
1. Social Media Marketing Is Free
Sure, signing yourself and your company up for a social media account is free, and you may think that since you aren’t paying to advertise on the platform you can get away with your marketing plan for free!
The truth is, no matter what you do on social media, your marketing is going to cost you either time, money or both.
Your team’s time and effort are valuable, and the more of it you pour into your social media marketing campaign the better ROI you will likely see. However, time and effort cost the business money, so just know that nothing is free.
2. Social Media ROI Can’t Be Measured
When most people first start utilizing social media for marketing, they focus on the metrics in front of them: likes, shares, comments, etc.
But it’s important to go beyond these metrics and focus on two things at the same time: building a community, then driving that community to your website/landing page. In order to know if you’re building a community, you focus on those likes, comments and shares. To know if you’re converting people from your social media page to your website or to a sale, you’ll need to utilize Google Analytics and build trackable links for your social media posts.
3. Every Social Media Platform Is Valuable
Depending on your industry and needs, you’ll need different social media platforms. The demographics who use the site, it’s functionality and purpose, as well as how it is accessed will all play into whether the platform is valuable to you and can be used to increase sales.
For instance, a consulting business will see a lot more ROI on investing in LinkedIn, while a restaurant will see better results through Facebook and Pinterest or Instagram. You may not have the resources to tackle multiple sites at once, so be sure you choose the right ones to concentrate on.
4. Social Media Marketing Is It’s Own Strategy
Truly, social media marketing is best done in conjunction with a series of other strategies, like content marketing, search engine optimization, reputation management and more.
Content marketing helps you build content on your website worth sharing, which then draws people through to your website and makes them more likely to convert.
Search engine optimization helps your website flow better and become easier to read and navigate while making it rank higher in search engines, meaning people are more likely to enjoy working with you and like or follow you.
Reputation management helps monitor and direct people to leave you positive reviews on sites like Facebook and Google, which are also social media sites. This means your social sites will pull more weight with people, making them easier to convert.
5. Making Social Posts Mobile-Friendly Isn’t Worth It
If you still believe mobile phones aren’t where people do most of their web browsing – as well as nearly all of their social networking – you are living in the past. Nearly 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices these days, so it’s extremely important to make sure you’re optimizing your social media posts for mobile devices. You may be writing them on a computer at work, but that’s not how your followers are going to read them!