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January 20, 2010 By 2 Comments

I’m tired of social media

Gasp! There, I said it. I have a suspicion that others are thinking it, too. At this particular moment I am tired of social media. I have taken a few days to focus on other things and it has been great. I didn’t post anything to Twitter for a few days, I didn’t spend much time on Facebook, and I didn’t read any blogs.

Instead, I did some writing, worked on my book, did some strategic planning for my business, and had some very productive meetings with my team and my networking circles.

I think many times I am guilty of getting caught up in the fast-paced, “new and shiny” appeal of social tools and I get a little carried away in thinking that if I don’t engage in social networks all the time, then I will be missing out on something. Well, as it turns out, there is a world outside of Facebook. Who knew?

So am I actually tired of social media? Not really. Rather I acknowledge that I need to remind myself that social media is simply an evolution in how we communicate. It’s not a replacement for traditional marketing. It’s not a replacement for phone calls or meetings. It’s not a replacement for human contact. We need to look for ways to enhance our communication with social tools. If engaging on a social network adds value to my relationships, then it makes sense. If it distracts me from my goals, then it doesn’t make sense.

You know what else? Simply admitting my burn-out on social media helped me reevaluate how I engage with my networks and actually recharged my interest in jumping back in.

Social media will continue to be a part of my lifestyle. I will continue to learn, develop relationships, educate, and generate leads using social media. However, I will also get better at finding balance in my activities.

Oh look… Twitter is back up. Gotta go!

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
January 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The truth about credit card safety online

E-commerce has been around for a while now and to most of us, it is a normal way of shopping and purchasing products. However, I occasionally encounter someone who is uncomfortable using a credit card online. I’d like to clear up some misconceptions and provide some insight into what happens when you use a credit card online and why it’s safer than using your credit card at a gas pump.

First off, keep in mind that when you buy something online with a credit card, your credit card number is typically not ever seen by a human. When you type in your credit card number, you are entering it into a page that is encrypted so that even if someone were electronically eavesdropping, he/she would not be able to acquire the number. Once you click the “buy” button, the order information, along with your credit card number, is sent directly through an encrypted connection to a merchant gateway (like Authorize.Net) which checks the validity of the card, available funds, and tests for fraud. If all goes well, the transaction is complete and the money is batched to go from your credit card to the bank account of the merchant from which you purchased. All this happens within seconds and with no human intervention. As you can see, there is really no realistic opportunity for anyone to see your credit card number.

Contrast this with other ways that we use credit cards every day. We swipe our credit cards at gas pumps which leaves us vulnerable to skimming. We hand our credit cards to servers at restaurants, which leaves us vulnerable to anyone in the back of the restaurant with a camera phone. We withdraw money at ATMs, which leaves us vulnerable to both skimming and photo espionage. There are so many times that we offer up our credit card number in the physical world that are much riskier than purchasing online. Yet, sometimes we feel that buying online is mysterious and scary and so we feel unsafe. Purchasing online is typically much safer than a physical card purchase.

Remember that when your credit card is swiped at a store or restaurant, it’s going through exactly the same type of network as it does on the Internet. The only difference is that in a store or restaurant, a human gets to see your credit card number. Which sounds safer?

Some things to look out for when purchasing online:

1. Look for the “s” in “https://”. If you are on a secure site, the address in your location bar at the top will start with “https://”. Notice the “s”.

2. Make sure you trust the website. Amazon, Zappos, and Apple are all big companies with trustworthy websites. Buying from ugly, mom and pop websites that look like they were designed by your neighbor’s 5-year-old may not be all that safe. Make sure you have some level of trust with the merchant. Feel free to call them and ask how they handle e-commerce and what gateway they use.

3. Use a credit card, rather than a debit card. This ensures that if theft does occur, you are not liable for it and it does not deplete your bank account.

Though purchasing online may seem a little scary to some, it’s actually much safer than physical card purchases. If your credit card number is stolen, it’s much more likely that it occurred at a gas pump, restaurant, or through documents in your trash. Remember to shred often, be cautious about where you use your card, and look for the signs of a secure transaction and you will minimize your chances of being a victim.

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January 7, 2010 By 3 Comments

In a ROWE, every day is a snow day

Remember snow days? As a kid, the first big snow of the season was an eagerly-anticipated gift because it could mean that school was canceled, which would be followed by sleeping in, sledding, and other recreational hi-jinks. As we got older, snow days started to affect us in different ways. As employees, snow days could be dreadful because we were still required to drive to an office, which meant getting up earlier for the dangerous commute so we could get to work on time. Or perhaps we had a “flexible” boss who said we could stay home as long as we were working during business hours. The temporary telecommuting was mixed with pangs of guilt as we tried to make sure we looked busy by sending lots of emails and making phone calls while watching TV. Or perhaps the grumpy manager-types among us would become annoyed at the employees who were not committed enough to make the drive to work in the snow. Wow… so much drama and anxiety over some beautiful snow!

As I sit in my cozy living room by the fireplace, I am enjoying the minor snowstorm we’re having here in Indianapolis. Every time we get a good solid snow here, it seems to play havoc with the typical workday. Why? Because most companies in Indianapolis are still stuck in the 8-5, 40-hour week mindset. Because of this, we have things like “rush hour” and “commutes” which become worse during inclement weather. The Mayor of Indianapolis is even urging workers to “leave early” or “stay late” to avoid hitting rush hour in the snow.

In contrast, SpinWeb is a ROWE, which means that we are absolutely unaffected by this lovely day of snow. Why? Because we focus on results, not time or physical location. We have 10 employees but only two of us even showed up at the office today and it was just to briefly pick something up. No one “checked in” at 8am. No memo was sent out urging employees to leave early to avoid rush hour. It simply was not an issue. Emails were sent to clients, conference calls were held, websites were being built, and work got done – just like any other day. I’m sure many of our employees slept in and enjoyed some coffee by their own fireplaces as they watched the snow. Since our phone system is cloud-based, those who called our office got a live person who helped direct their calls to the appropriate person’s cell phone, just like any other day. The technology exists to allow us to break free of the need to sit at a desk with a hardwired phone. With laptops, cell phones, and the right infrastructure in place, we can operate with extreme flexibility under any conditions at at any hour of the day or night.

In a ROWE, the company focuses primary on one thing: what gets done. It doesn’t matter when it gets done, where it gets done, or much time is spent on it. What matters is that work is getting done correctly and on time. Employees take control of their own time and their own lives and everybody wins. That brings some excitement and enjoyment back into work, doesn’t it?

When you work in a ROWE, every day is a snow day. Enjoy!

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December 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

How to Keep Your Emails Out of Spam Filters

In this age of spam warfare, it’s very common to send a message to someone only to have it end up in that person’s “spam” folder where it can take days or weeks to be found, if it’s found at all. So how do you ensure that your messages get past your recipient’s spam filters and sitting happily in the inbox where it belongs? Here are some tips.

1. Send messages in plain text, not HTML or rich text. Plain text is clean, elegant, and lean. Since most spam is sent in HTML format with lots of bold, color, images, and other annoying elements, most spam filters will penalize messages that include these elements. Unfortunately, most email programs send messages in HTML or rich text by default so you must change your settings to default to plain text. Tempted to place your company logo or a cute image in your signature line? Don’t… spam filters will slap a penalty on your message. For more information about the joys of plain text email, try Googling for “plain text email“.

2. Use proper spelling, grammar, and formatting. It seems that this age of instant communication and frenzied messaging has made it ok to throw style out the window when writing email. I get messages all the time from people who omit the first name greeting, write in broken sentence fragments, don’t capitalize anything, and can’t be bothered to use spell check. The occasional typo is forgivable but it seems that many email users simply don’t care about proper formatting or readability. Since most spam is written poorly and makes use of odd attention-grabbing formatting and language, many spam filters analyze the content of the message and penalize messages that are formatted poorly and have lots of misspelled words. Crafting your messages with care and style will not only get you past spam filters, it also makes you look more professional. More about proper email formatting can be found by Googling for “proper email formatting“.

3. Don’t use a “weird” email address. Ever notice how lots of spam comes from an email address that it made up of a bunch or weird letter and numbers? This being the case, if your email address is “LuckySurfer845601@hotmail.com”, you’re probably going to be penalized for it. By the same token, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL (or any other major consumer email service) should never be used for business email. Not only are you more likely to get blocked by spam filters, but it looks unprofessional. Instead, use your company email address for business. Example: “michael@spinweb.net”, “john.smith@ibm.com”, or “bsmith@apple.com”. Your email address should match the address of your company web site.

These are some simple tips for getting past spam filters. By following these simple guidelines, your emails will become more professional and more inbox-friendly.

Filed Under: Technology
December 22, 2009 By 2 Comments

Bad website design is expensive

Some people think great website design work is expensive. On the surface, this is true since you generally get what you pay for. However, how often do we stop to think about how expensive bad design can be?

Bad design leads to frustrated website visitors who cannot find what they want. If you are a government entity with no competition, this means your constituents will end up having to call your office to get the information they need. This means that you will have to hire more people to cover the phones and spend more time on support issues. This costs more money. I love my community and I am very loyal to Indiana but the State of Indiana website is an example of an extremely poorly-designed website. Finding anything on this site is practically impossible. I know… I’ve tried! After spending 15 minutes on the site looking for something, I ended up having to call.

It’s even worse for businesses. If you’re a business, your customers have plenty of choices. If their needs aren’t met on your website or if it doesn’t inspire confidence, they won’t call – they will simply go elsewhere. This is expensive because that could have been a sale.

If you think great website design is expensive, try bad design. It can be even more costly.

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December 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

5 emerging marketing tools you need to start paying attention to

As 2009 wraps up and we look toward the new year, it’s nice to re-evaluate plans for the upcoming year and use the holiday downtime to focus on some initiatives for 2010. I know that the holidays are a great time for vacations but it can also be a great time to work on high-level strategic items, such as business plans, marketing strategies, and processes. It’s also a good time to make some personal commitments about what you will do differently to build your business.

Here are 5 marketing tools that are becoming more relevant all the time. I would encourage you to take a serious look at these tools and decide for yourself if they can help you grow your business.

1. Blogging. Though blogging is not new, it is still uncomfortable to most people. Nobody wants to take the time to blog on a consistent basis and no one knows what to write about. Well, that may be true but at the same time, nobody wants to take out the trash, either, but it must be done if we want to run a tidy business (or household). Blogging is a fantastic way to improve search engine rankings as well as build authority. It gives you a platform for producing re-usable content, visibility, and expertise. It helps build trust with your audience and also is a great personal development vehicle. If you prefer not to write, consider a ghost blogger.

2. Twitter. Out of the big three (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), Twitter is still the social network that is the scariest and strangest to most people. I encourage you to do whatever you can to get over it. Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for communication, lead generation, and research. I see referral opportunities almost every day on Twitter that most businesses aren’t even aware of. Pick up a copy of Kyle Lacy’s “Twitter for Dummies” book or attend a SpinWeb Twitter Seminar to learn how to get started. Just don’t be scared. You can grow your business with Twitter.

3. SlideShare. I love SlideShare and I think it is an under-appreciated gem in social media. SlideShare allows you to post your presentations online and share them with others. It also allows you to create a profile to give more information about yourself, and it also allows you to capture leads from viewers. Posting your presentations online is a fantastic way to build your platform of content and authority. Many of my speaking engagements have been facilitated by my use of SlideShare to clearly publish my presentation content.

4. GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar. Going a step further than SlideShare, GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar allow you to give live demos and presentations to people anywhere in the world on an almost unlimited scale by sharing your screen with your audience. Though I prefer in-person presentations, when it’s not possible or practical to travel these tools allow you to remove geography from the equation and present your content to a huge audience from varied locations. This allows you to build your authority, reach new prospects, and capture qualified leads. It also allows your sales team to deliver rich web-based demos to anyone in the world. If you become comfortable hosting web meetings and webinars, you will open up a whole new opportunity for marketing your business.

5. Your website. Ok, so business websites are not as new as some of the other tools listed here but I have to include it because I am constantly surprised at how often organizations neglect their own websites. Your website is your primary information portal and should be an investment that supports your marketing efforts and goals. It should be well-designed, well-planned, and should have the right tools in place for your organization and your audience. An outdated, poorly-designed, or poorly-managed website is absolutely unacceptable in 2010. Make the investment in a great website.

Make 2010 a year of positive change and new ideas. Step out of your comfort zone and build your business with some tools and methods and you may not have tried before. If you have any other tools that you would like to suggest, please feel free to leave a comment here. I would love to hear what you think.

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December 2, 2009 By 5 Comments

Why consider ghost blogging?

You’ve probably heard all the buzz about blogging by now. As you may have heard, blogging can help build visibility for you and your company through improved search engine rankings and distributed content. Blogging also helps add an element of transparency to your business because it allows your customers to learn more about the people behind the services you offer. Finally, blogging gives you a strong content platform to distribute via multiple channels, including social networks.

Blogging sounds like a great idea, right? However, what if you don’t have time to blog or you are not inclined to be a writer? This is where ghost blogging may be a good fit.

Ghost blogging is a service in which a company or individual writes blog entries on behalf of someone else. For example, let’s say Acme Corporation is interested in ranking better on search engines, as well as publishing industry articles that build credibility in the marketplace. Acme Corporation does not employ professional writers and no one on staff has time to become a great blogger. In this case, Acme Corporation might hire another company to write scheduled blogs on behalf of Acme. These blogs might be published as the CEO, Marketing Director, or a VP. The ghost blogger will do a brief phone interview with one of more Acme representatives in order to gather topics and outlines, and then write blog entries based on those notes.

This may seem inauthentic at first, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Rather than painstakingly trying to craft articles that communicate the proper message, Acme executives can now speak freely and comfortably during the ghost blog interview and know that their words will be crafted properly in the written form. Additionally, a good ghost blogger will structure content in such a way that important keywords and phrases are included in order to assist in better search rankings for Acme.

Most ghost bloggers will do a monthly or semi-monthly interview that produces about four blogs per month. Ghost blogging is a great way to build a content platform and improve search engine rankings. Additionally, it gives you great content to distribute on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. This helps strengthen your brand and authority.

So how do you know if ghost blogging is right for you? If you don’t have professional writers on staff, you want better visibility on search engines and social media, and you want to build a reputation of expertise in your industry, ghost blogging may be a great fit for you.

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November 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Web 2.0 Expo in New York

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. My session went very well and we got excellent feedback but I also had a wonderful time attending the other presentations and learning from other speakers.

The first session that really piqued my interest was “The Elephant in the Room: Social Media ROI.” It was an interesting session and the presenter did a really good job of keeping the concepts simple and productive, like reminding us that ROI is simply “(Profit – Investment) / Investment” – a concept that we sometimes over-complicate as marketers. I was a little disappointed that the presenter ran out of time because he kept answering questions from the audience rather than finishing his outline.

The next session that I really enjoyed was “Business and Community in the Facebook Era” by Clara Shih. Clara was an outstanding presenter who was very competent and had a smooth and articulate delivery. The subject matter was also more conceptual in nature, rather than technical, which made it easy for the audience to adapt the concepts to individual businesses.

From an entertainment standpoint, the highlight of the conference was “There’s a #Hashtag for That,” a Keynote by Baratunde Thurston. This presentation was absolutely hilarious and very insightful at the same time, covering creative uses for hashtags on Twitter. I’m normally not a fan of using foul language in presentations but he was so good that I was able to enjoy it anyway. Be sure to watch the video.

The last presentation that I enjoyed was “Effective Twitter for Business,” by Sarah Milstein. Sarah was a great presenter and the session was full of solid material but it was a bit more on the beginning level for my taste. It was nice validation, however, for my own Twitter presentations.

The next day was spent preparing and presenting my session, “Social Media – Secret Weapon for SEO.” I presented with John Limbocker and was sponsored by Verio. John, Janine, and everyone I worked with at Verio were fantastic and the session was a great success.

I learned a few other neat tricks, like the fact that you can place a plus sign at the end of any bit.ly URL to see its click-thru stats – even if it’s not your link. Pretty cool!

The Web 2.0 Expo was a great experience and I not only learned some great marketing and technology tips, but also gained a lot of new insights into speaking and presenting and have enjoyed polishing my own presentations as a result. I encourage everyone to take the time to attend conferences like this to continue to push your skills and knowledge to the next level. I will be able to serve my clients and my constituents better as a result of this continuous learning. I look forward to next year’s Web 2.0 Expo!

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November 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Know when to use your hammer

“When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase before and it makes a great point. In business, we all have hammers and we are all looking for nails. This blog post was inspired by a post by Seth Godin, in which he explains that different professionals will tend to recommend their own “hammers” for the same problem based on what they are familiar with. He goes on to say that it’s a good idea to know when to switch to a different hammer for different circumstances.

It’s a great point and I happen to agree but I would like to approach it from a different angle. I would argue that something more businesses need to get better at is knowing which nails to hit.

Many smart businesses are realizing the value of specializing and narrowing their targets in order to become really great at a few things rather than mediocre at many things. The problem is often that businesses have a hard time admitting it when their hammers don’t fit the nails that are in front of them.

As service providers, businesses need to have a clear picture of what they are good at and what they are not so that they can discern properly and know when to say yes and no to customers. A business that eagerly accepts every customer that comes along is inviting disaster since this can often lead to failed promises, unmet expectations, and inefficient work.

At SpinWeb, we have some great systems, processes, and tools. We know when to use them and who we can help. If we have an opportunity to work with a client and we know that the project will fit our systems well, we are eager to deliver. However, if we are asked to do something that does not fit our processes, tools, and skill set, we are very quick to politely decline the work and make every effort to refer that client to another resource that might be a better fit. If we can do a great job at something, we will. If we cannot, we will say so clearly and honestly. We know when to use our hammers and we want our clients to be happy.

In your business, do you know how to decide when to use your hammer?

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November 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Website load time may affect your Google rankings

I noticed an interesting article today on The Marketing Technology Blog about Google and its plans to account for website load times in its ranking system. The article was written by Doug Karr, who I respect a great deal and makes some good points. All opinion aside, however, this policy from Google is significant to businesses since it can impact how easily their websites are found.

Website load time is always an important factor to improve when creating websites, but as it becomes even more important, I’d like to touch on two things that play a huge part in ensuring your website is not penalized.

One factor is your hosting platform. As Doug points out in his article, if your website is hosted on a bargain basement hosting plan, it may get penalized by Google because of slower load times. I have always been in favor of high-quality enterprise hosting for business websites for a number of reasons but this only adds to the argument. At SpinWeb, we are very transparent about the fact that we are a Verio parter. SpinWeb websites are hosted in Tier 1 Verio data centers on high-quality hardware, extremely fast connections, and well-tuned servers. Verio is a owned by NTT Communications, which is a billion-dollar company with one of the largest and most reliable networks in the world. We rest easy at night because we partner with a business-class hosting provider which ensures that our websites load quickly and are backed by enterprise technology. We do not skimp on website hosting.

Another factor that affects load time is website structure. At SpinWeb, we take great care to utilize intelligent CSS techniques that accomplish more with less code. We also optimize images and Flash to ensure the smallest file size possible. If something can be rendered the same way with fewer lines of code and less overhead, we will do it. This leads to websites that load faster.

A fast-loading website is good for your visitors but now it is becoming good for search engine rankings. Make sure you are doing all you can to maximize your chances of being seen.

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