So it has been entirely too long since I have posted some fresh material on the blog, and I am well aware that I have been breaking one of my cardinal rules of not being active with your site. On the other hand, I have been very busy with outside projects that have kept me away from writing lately. So what is so important I feel I need to neglect an important online marketing commandment?
2 weeks ago, my father announced he would be running for the governors office of the state of Kansas! I have spent a lot of time working on his races before and this announcement was by far the most exciting to date. He has started off as quite the underdog, but he knew this coming in and we feel very good about our prospects.
So that aside, I found myself with some time today at the Java Break in Lawrence working on the new laptop and wanted write something up. Something I read about last week in regards to operations caught my eye and I wanted to pass it along.
David Lee Roth is a genius. There you go.
I don’t say it for his musical abilities. I am young enough to say that any Van Halen memories for me actually come from the Chicago Cubs in the mid 80’s which used “Jump” as the game time song.
No, David Lee Roth’s genius actually comes from a Fast Company article from this past month and he was able to come up with a sweet way of instantly knowing whether or not his expectations were being met whenever he came to a new city.
Known now as Section 126, the genius was a small disclaimer in Van Halen’s contract for performances and dictated that a bowl of M&M’s completely free of any brown ones would be in the dressing room upon arrival. All hell would break loose from David if the bowl was not there or contained brown M&M’s. So what makes this so interesting?
Van Halen’s performances at the time were very demanding technically and the group had very specific demands that needed to be met at every venue. It was too much for the band to show up and inspect every element themselves in a timely fashion, so they needed a quick way to know immediately whether or not the specs they needed were met. Enter Section 126.
Buried 2/3rds down in the contract, the bowl of M&M’s stipulation was just a shortcut to see if the stagehands had read the entire contract. That way, once the band got to a show, they knew right off if there were any reasons to be concerned. Personally I love this example because of its simple genius. I am still thinking of ways to build a bowl of brown-free M&M’s in a website, but I think it is a great lesson in operations efficiency.
Part of the Top 10 online marketing tools for small businesses includes an account with Google. The search giant includes access to many free and useful applications, and this week it was announced that Google has added another application to its lineup.
Google Buzz is the company’s latest entry into the social media sphere, and actually looks promising if nothing else. The sites saw 9 million posts in two days, and its features include mobile functions that help users add “geo-tagging’ to their actions.
What does this mean for business owners? It’s another site to meet with prospective customers, and I think in the long run this application might be the one to give Twitter a run for their money.
Google has already established its main revenue streams, and at this point as a company is simply adding new ones to become more profitable and users friendly. Twitter on the other hand has yet to pull a profit, and given Google’s history of letting other companies find solutions and then coming back with a bigger and better one, this might just be the killer.
The other thing to take from this is just how “wild west” the social media arena really is. The key ways of doing things are nowhere set in stone, and now is the time for risk takers and small business owners to experiment withe multiple online marketing strategies.
I am currently working on a campaign for a client and we are in the midst of planning a campaign launch. Going over all of the items our team has considered for making the event a successful one led to me this post about what every new launch needs to be successful in web 2.0.
Now in the old days, a launch really needed just some media and advertising and the rest would usually take care of itself. Today however more people are wary of what they see in the media and look to colleagues and friends for advice. These days the truly marketing savvy company would include an online strategy to bolster the momentum of a product launch.
This does not mean though that the company buys advertising online, and in fact is quite the opposite. A company needs to create and distribute tools for their followers to help pass the word along and generate excitement about the new product. This can be done ahead of time to build excitement, both through online and traditional media, and needs to consider what the follower would be excited enough to tell their tribe about INSTEAD of what the company wants them to push.
Whether or not businesses realize, they are now no longer in complete control of their message. This has been the case before with traditional media, but the number of players and their effective role was limited enough so that a company could reasonably dictate what a message was in most instances. Now the paradigm has shifted, and the followers are the ones dictating the message. Because there are so many people online creating messages, companies are really at the whim of what the people are saying.
For example, a recent Facebook trend has been the “Can this Pickle get more fans than Nickleback?” page. Now I am sure that the parent company of the music group is none too pleased that this page is taking off the way it is, but what can they really do? The momentum has been building, and its very possible that the group will eventually have more friends than Nickleback. The thing that should also scare business owners is that the page itself was created on 2/3, so in 6 days they have registered over450K fans. Viral sh!t-talking is something every company needs to be aware of.
So what are tools that companies could utilize? The same online options, including the Dark Horse Communications Top 10 Tools, with relevant information is a good start, but the underlying key is that they be portable. Followers need to be able to quickly and easily move along your message across a variety of platforms, whether its Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. Calls to action for the followers is also good, but even better when asking them to create their own recommendation content for your behalf.
I had an incident with a company in the hometown today that exemplifies why I like working with internet technology as much as I do. To be fair, I like tinkering with new tools and thinking about new ways to use products. I don’t like having to go back and read up on tools or languages that are outdated, and working with Sunflower Broadband today reminds me why I don’t have to be a computer engineer to work online.
I am putting together a survey for a client who wishes to have an online version. Normally this is not an issue as mot of the sites I work for use a web hosting service that has easy form creation or coding for me. Sunflower Broadband on the other hand, needed a phone call from me to start the process of figuring out what I had to do, followed by 2 more phone calls to settle everything out in theory. I got a link I needed, but there was absolutely no support given or follow up phone call. At this point I am strongly advising my client to look elsewhere for his hosting needs because at the end of the day, there are companies out there who are happy to make it easier and faster.
And that should be a lesson for all online companies today. Unless you operate in a monopolistic market, you need to be aware that the information age is not only making more products available, but the ease of use is also increasing. Companies that fail to recognize this and work to be market leaders will eventually go the way of Studebaker.
The most important thing about having a web presence that sells products is being able to collect payment. For most small business owners, the easiest tool to use would be PayPal, although there are literally hundreds of payment processors available to business owners online. The real reason I like PayPal is that fairly easy to setup and is quite a common tool.
For businesses looking to get involved with PayPal, the process is quite easy. As long as you have a bank account and online access to your accounts, you should be ready to work with only about 20 minutes of work. A company signs up with an e-mail and then associates a bank account to the account. 1-2 days later PayPal will deposit a small of money into the account, and the user will need to go back and enter the amount to confirm the account. Once it is confirmed, all the user needs to do is setup a link for the product and put it on the website. WordPress also has modules users can download that are made for use with PayPal.
Some web page solutions have payment processing built in for users and allow for more options, such as e-mail capture for marketing purposes. These are useful tools as well, but for simply getting into taking payments online PayPal is the best place to start for new and small businesses.
It’s Friday and I think we all know we all want to be somewhere else soon enough.
I was surfing the web today and found a cool little piece over at Mashable. There are five French scientists who plan on participating in a unique experiment that will look at the effectiveness of posts on both Twitter and Facebook. I think its interesting in its reach, but it should make a good point to everyone out there looking for results with social media. Whatever you are putting out on your digital profiles need to be pertinent and usable or your relationships will be strained with your followers.
Another good post talks about the top trends for the internet in 2010. The article talks about how live online video will make a big step forward this year and this article is still timely even though we are close to February.
And lastly, I am proud to say today that am an not a Social Media Marketing Expert. Most of the people in this business who are working at the small business level are those who are excited to work in this highly developing and evolutionary field. If anyone, INCLUDING ME, tells you that there is a basic plan for how to run a social media campaign works, you should thank them for their time and send them on their way. One statistic I love to think about is how in 5 years, over half the planet’s population will be accessing the internet on a smart phone as their primary method of connecting. The fundamental shift in communication that we are undergoing means that right now anyone trying to experiment with ways to reach and connect with their followers will be more rewarded than those who don’t. The other thing that it means is that there are no wrong answers right now.
We are all trying to figure out what the best plan of action is as we move forward technologically and communications wise. It’s a new morning in our world.
I recently got turned on to this application from a buddy of mine who was really interested in taking pictures and posting them online. It seemed a little different, but then my friends was a bit eccentric and then I left it at that. Having taken a new look at the website though, its really obvious why this is such a great tool for small business owners.
The site is great because for all intents it is the YouTube of photo sharing, and offers users a lot of the social media components that make Facebook and YouTube so popular. It allows for users to connect with contacts and post comments on other pictures. Users can setup privacy settings and limit what the general public or other friends can see. It also comes with a basic photo editing tool called Picnik that users can use to touch up photos.
The tool is useful for several reasons. One, it can be used to set up a back link collection to help get more attention to your site in search rankings. It allows users to setup a named unique domain where photo steams can be stored, like mine here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gthomasholland/. It also allows for users to share content on other sites by giving them several options.
Here is a picture I uploaded and am sharing using the feature:
So yet again the big question is how does this help a small business? Every small business owner is an editor in their own trade journal, and images are an important part of telling stories to others. My picture above tells me that I do enjoy being able to work on the road and online because it frees me up to take “vacations” and yet still be close to clients I am working with. What ever the point of your picture is, business owners need to take at least one maxim to mind.
The Zen Monks of Ancient Japan believed it was worthless to interrupt silence, pure and perfect as it is, unless what you had to say was truly worthwhile. The trick is finding out not only what to take pictures of but how to use them in a coordinated marketing campaign.
Down the road we will talk more about how we can use photos we take to help our web traffic, but right now we need to know that such options exist and are free for users.
I got this article forwarded to me from Ed Dale, and after reading it wanted to send it along to the blog readers.
http://mashable.com/2010/01/11/social-media-integration/
What this article talks about is how a company goes through different levels of social media usage and presence before the endeavor takes off and becomes a living thing. The basic premise is that 2010 will be the year that social media usage finally becomes developed enough that common structure and usage patterns will emerge as what’s “right” for companies.
The article is very heavy on concepts so read it when you have a spare moment.
It’s been a long couple of weeks, and with the holidays and vacations sneaking up on me, I haven’t been good at writing some more on my top ten list. Since Christmas 2009 is now gone, I figure its time to start 2010 blog wise.
Today’s tool is one that most people would not immediately suspect as a top marketing tool for small business owners. For a little back ground, commission junction is a website that allows users to become affiliate marketers of products through web links. The number of vendors is quite impressive and the pay rates are considered tops for online entrepreneurs. You can learn more about the site here: www.cj.com.
What Cj.com allows small business owners is access to a related set of products for a business that they can sell without having to worry about inventory, shipping or delivery. The links can be used in a variety of fashions and allow for business owners to earn extra sales utilizing online channels.
So how could this help the average small business? Our ever trusty example, Joe’s Plumbing, can go online and see several product lines that might be of interest. A search for “drain cleaner” pulls up over 1,000 products Joe can add to his website and get commission on for each sale. But if Joe truly wants to connect with his customers, he should add products that add a utility for his customers. Should Joe look for “green cleaner” he would find 603 products that are environmentally friendly. These are products that are probably not readily available in stores, but links to them on his site would help Joe out. Customers would have a place to buy green cleaners, and Joe gets a commission and goodwill.
The real key to success with using a commission account comes from finding products that your customers would like to have or would be excited to learn about and then sending them the information in a timely manner. The upside is that there is no inventory headaches and owners can establish another stream of revenue.