Alter Imaging

New Trends in Internet Marketing

vincent — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:23:27 +0000

The world wide web is well past the inceptive stage. It is a full-bodied content delivery system that virtually every industry has leveraged to some degree. Every modern company with any marketing budget whatsoever has a web presence. Most are marketing their company or their services on the internet utilizing pay per click ads or organic search optimization. That should be the norm. If you aren’t marketing an Internet presence for your company you missing out on this enomormous revenue stream.

But what is out in front of the curve? What trends are emerging that will shape how you reach your customers in the future? This article hopes to outline some of the new ways companies are marketing themselves.

Social Media

Every company should be utilizing social media marketing to promote their product and strengthen customer ties. Facebook recently passed the 500 millionth user mark and shows no signs of slowing down. Social media networks allow companies to strengthen and formalize existing relationships. Do this well enough, and it will lead to a greater amount of referral business. Do this extremely well and you can create an army of brand advocates. Look no further than your corner Starbucks for an example of passionate brand advocates:

On July 31st, Adbusters (an anti-consumerist magazine) called for a boycott of Starbucks and posted a story about the boycott on Adbusters.org. Within hours, supporters of Starbucks were commenting on the story and defending Starbucks. In their opinion, Starbucks was a good employer, a good global citizen, and good for locally-owned independent coffee houses.

Social media platforms you should be using:

Facebook allows you to create pages for your company or service and then purchase ads to promote those pages. Facebook ads can be targeted based on age, gender, location, and likes. They are also cheaper on average than traditional PPC ads.
Twitter lets you follow conversations about your company’s industry and monitor what is being said about your brand. Done properly, it can become another channel of communication between you and your customers.
LinkedIn is Facebook for businesses. It allows you to display your work credentials and give/receive recommendations from people you’ve worked with. InMail, a member-only benefit, can also help you introduce yourself to potential clients.

When entering the social media arena, follow these simple rules:

Don’t spam. A little self-promotion is to be expected but don’t constantly request people to follow you or you will run the risk of getting ignored and labeled as a spammer.
Start with a helping hand. Steve Knox, the CEO of Tremor, often talks about “reciprocal altruism“. Give without expectation of return and it will return. Follow this advice in social media and you’ll gain tons of honest fans.
Avoid political and religious controversy. Don’t make the mistake of expressing personal opinions on controversial subjects that have nothing to do with your business.

Mobile Web
Smartphones sales have been increasing steadily. Morgan Stanley predicts that smartphones will outnumber PCs by the end of 2012. That means more people will be searching for products and services from their handheld devices. Do you have plans to reach these mobile consumers?

The mobile web consumer needs your site to:

Load quickly. Keep your mobile version light. Keep the message simple and make sure mobile visitors can quickly and easily find important information.

Stay away from Flash. iPhone, iPod, and iPad don’t support it. You can use Flash on your full website but stay away from it on the mobile version.

Local Internet Marketing

Local internet marketing focuses on geo-targeting your business to its immediate surroundings. When Google displays local search results, they are typically at the top of the screen along with a map and phone number. As more and more mobile users come online and perform searches, the power of local search marketing increases. Most mobile search platforms utilize the searcher’s location when tabulating results. The better indexed your business’s address, the more likely you are to appear in the local results.

Here are some tips for local Internet marketing:

Make sure you are listed with Google Places, Yahoo’s Local Listing Center, and Bing’s Listing center.

Get listed in the Acxiom database. The easiest way to do this is through UniversalBusinessListing.org.

Get listed in Localeze.

This is just the beginning

Social media, mobile marketing and local internet listings are only the beginning of the new wave in emergent media marketing. The new consumer market is becoming more fragmented and individual consumers are becoming more educated. Simply put: mass media marketing techniques no longer apply.

Emerging marketing trends indicate a move towards what is being termed Experiential Marketing. The entails more interaction and involvement on a personal level with the consumer. By embracing social media, mobile web, and local internet marketing, you are moving your business in the direction of better engaging your clients and building a community of followers who can develop into brand advocates.

Internet Marketing: Agency vs. In House

vincent — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:29:51 +0000

A recent #SEO411 twitter chat spurred a side conversation about the pros and cons of working as an in house internet marketer vs. working for an agency. The participants were all search marketers and the split was pretty even down the middle between people who were in house or contract/agency.

I myself have recently made the switch, going from a technology manager with a focus on web to specializing here at Alter Imaging almost exclusively on new media marketing. It has been a huge adjustment to say the least. I hope I can document my experiences effectively to aid both new media marketers in their carrer arch (aim high, friends) and the companies that employ us make informed personel decisions.

Two months ago I left my comfy hobbit hole of internet technology program manager…a title that I created upon hire and held for four years. I built websites for the company, agents, and properties and marketed them on the web. We did heavy post-click marketing in that we incubated online leads and identified agents who were successful at managing them. Training played a critical role.

I count myself extremely lucky. I stepped from one well oiled machine to another. My current position is the internet marketing strategist here at Alter Imaging and the team here is amazing. I literally feel like I walked up, kicked the plane’s chocks out the way, and we took off.

OK, enough warm fuzzy about my previous and current employers. I’m going to break down my evaluation between the two positions with the weighted value in parentheses and all areas being evaluated on a 10 point scale:

Motivation (5) – Do I really want to do this today? Do they believe in what I’m doing? Do I believe in them?
Empowerment (5) – Can I do this? Will they respect my budget decisions? How much disclosure?
Alignment (5) – Are we on the same page? Do we all want to do this for the same reasons?
Education (3) – Does the position provide room for growth? Access to experienced mentors?
Fun (1) – We all want this to be a 10, right?

Agency Score = 154

Motivation – 9 (x 5) = 45

If I don’t perform for my clients they leave. Clients have zero loyalty for an agency that doesn’t deliver results. Frequently they feel the results will sustain themselves and wind down years of hard work. Agency marketers havet to figure out new channels and hustle for each client. The variety makes it a challenge but also keeps my job interesting. Plus, working for an agency allows me to leverage solutions across a wide client base. New ideas sprout from individual client interactions and mutate into new solutions that benefit other clients.

Empowerment – 6 (x 5) =30

This is the lowest score for agency marketing. Within the company, I’m 100% vested. I feel that my boss will back me to the hilt and respects my judgement. If my requests aren’t approved, there is a valid reason backed with data and experience.

The clients, however, are already spending money. They spend it on creating and marketing their sites. If I come up with a banner advertisement or radio spot or microsite campaign, I have to package up the proposal and sell it to them.

Alignment – 9 (x5) = 45

Everyone at Alter Imaging sees the value in new media marketing. Many of the developers and designers were working on marketing projects before I even started. We are all students of design and strive for great work.

The clients are the same way and I count myself lucky. They recognize that we’re partners and working towards the same goal.

Education – 8 (x3) = 24

I learn something new everyday. I’m now a specialist removed from doing excessive web design or development. I get to attend incredible educational events that inspire me to learn more about my field. Working for an agency, I can see myself one day going back to grad school and hopefully one day I’ll get to be like Steve Knox, running Tremor and dropping mass pyschnology knowledge on a crowd of hipsters.

Fun – 10 (x1) = 10

Fish, foosball, stocked fridge, Summer hours, a beach trip, and SXSWi. Nuff said

In-house Score = 120

Motivation – 8 (x 5) = 40

It didn’t matter whether I wanted to do it that day or not. Nobody else would. The number of leads that came in from the company, agent, and property sites were my only justification for being there. I enjoyed finding new ways of capturing leads.

Empowerment – 8 (x 5) =40

If I rattled my sabre enough, everyone would listen. Sometimes this meant I had to get pissy and call people I shouldn’t call and later I got lectured. But they did it. We did it. We all liked the results so I must have been right to act like a brat back there, right? Right?

Alignment – 4 (x5) = 20

The one true weak spot with my in house experience. I always found myself justifying what I wanted to do. I was basing my decisions on the web usage patterns because my only concern was hauling in leads. Management decisions could negatively impact the user experience. For example, agents wanted forced registration thinking they’d get more leads. They did, but they were mostly Mickey Mouse and Mr. Fu. Bounce rate went up and overall traffic started going down.

Education – 5 (x3) = 15

I learned everything I know about lead collection and incubation from my experiences in house. Early on, I got the chance to go to some incredible conferences and listen to marketers from Carat and other top-tier agencies. But in between those brief bursts I was on my own. Nobody else in the company built or marketing web sites. Because nobody else had my skill set, I had very little work interactions that were about *work*. The lack of conversations lead to a feeling of intellectual isolationism.

Fun – 5 (x1) = 5

The people were great. They had great heart and we did good philanthropy. But when I achieved something that I felt was kickass, nobody noticed. I felt boastful trumpeting my own achievements and, if I dared to self-promote, I felt like I was boring my audience with overly technical details.

Advice to Marketers

I think it is no surprise that I scored the agency higher. I did, after all, decide to change careers and I’ve got zero regret. I am very appreciative for the perspective that working as an in-house SEO has given me. I treat my clients like I work at their company. I visit them. I swap stories. I ask them all the time, “How is the job I am doing?”

The flip side of this is that I tend to do too much. I’m used to working on a project until it was perfect. I didn’t have to worry so much about time management because I was setting my agenda and priorities in house. I’m still getting used to the others’ schedules.

When working as a in-house marketer, your compensation is usually tied to the results your efforts generate. If you increase sales, you get a bonus. This is typically not the case with agency marketers. Your clients are paying you ahead of time anticipating success.

Advice to Employers

Whether you are contracting an agency or hiring an employee, you have to be committed stepping out of your comfort zone. But this is no surprise either, if you were comfortable with the concepts of new media marketing, you wouldn’t be looking to hire experts to do the job for you.

When hiring an internet marketer, look for a track record of proven results and ask for references. Remember to fashion the vision and strategy before a single ad or site is wire framed. Look for candidates who understand your business model, can clearly outline their strategy, and believe in your vision.

Raleigh Highlights

Paul Kwiatkowski — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:12:08 +0000

Setting up our Web design shop in Raleigh, NC has been great for us so far, but it isn’t all work! We’ve found some truly unique and fun stuff in Raleigh, and we wanted to share!

42nd Street Oyster Bar and Seafood Grill
508 West Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27603 (919) 831-2811

This establishment has been around for nearly 80 years, starting life as a grocery selling beer and oysters. Despite changing management multiple times, the bar has retained its classic feel and fun atmosphere. It was, and is, the place to go for oysters and a cold beer, though they serve much more as well.

Goodnight’s Comedy Club
861 West Morgan Street, Raleigh, NC 27603 (919) 828-5233

Goodnight’s is a nationally recognized comedy club, and has seen a great deal of notable comedians perform. The club offers a lot of laughs, and a lot of food at great prices. Its earned national acclaim too, making a list of “10 places to sit down and see stand up” in USA Today.

North Carolina Museum of Art

2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC 27607 (919) 839-6262

Beginning after 139 European works of art were aquired in 1947, the North Carolina Museum of Art has grown in size tremendously. Today it holds a vast collection of in-house permanent art, and also supports many travelling exhibits. The museum holds enough art that even someone barely interested in the contents could spend hours browsing. In addition to the art, the museum features a cafe, large enough to hold plenty of visitors, and serves food that surpasses most “museum food”.

The Warehouse District
Raleigh’s Warehouse district is a haven for arts and entertainment, full of life in what could have become a desolate area. The district is home to several notable establishments, such as the Flying Saucer, and the Pit. Basically, there’s just a ton to do here!

The V Foundation
Founded by Jim Valano and ESPN, the V Foundation has raised more than 90 million dollars since 1993 in its fight against cancer. Jim Valano was a former NC State basketball coach, who rallied friends and family during his fight with cancer, to carry on the fight when he passed.

The Carolina Hurricanes

The Hurricanes are relatively new to North Carolina, relocating and renaming in 1997. Although North Carolina seems an odd choice for a hockey team, the Hurricanes have found success here, winning the Stanley Cup in 2006.

Higher Education

We knew there were a bunch of schools in Raleigh, but we had no idea how many. All of these are in Raleigh, or are nearby.

In conclusion, we love Raleigh so far. It’s pretty doubtful things will change!

Websites Designed For Kids

Paul Kwiatkowski — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:02:42 +0000

People tend to focus entirely on Web design for adults. It hit us the other day, “why not look at web design for kids?” Doing some searching we narrowed down some of the most popular, best designed, and most unique websites for kids. Some are a lot like typical ‘adult’ sites, while some are vastly different. Keep an eye out for trends, I’m sure you’ll spot a few.

Silly Poems
With a bright design, big buttons and pictures, and an overall kid-friendly look, Silly Poems nails the “for kids” style of web design.

Disney’s Club Penguin
There’s a lot going on at this site, but Disney’s Club Penguin is easy to navigate, and fun to play around with. It gets cited a lot as a high point of web design for children, and it’s reputation is deserved.

PBS Kids
PBS Kids’ home page is nearly devoid of text, and this encourages kids to play around with the various pictures and interface elements. Almost everything reacts to contact with the mouse, and although navigation is left wide open, what is an isn’t clickable is extremely apparent. Moving around the site shows more awesome kid-friendly design. A personal favorite is the flash animation you find when clicking the Sesame Street link off the main site. Kids actually watch Elmo build the interface they will soon be using.

Yahoo Kids
Yahoo’s site for kids features animated elements, lots of pictures, big text, and a bright theme. It incorporates several ‘adult’ design elements such as a tag cloud, but uses them in a way that kids can understand.

Lego
Lego’s website is designed to be explored and to interest kids for a long time. They poured a lot of the fun of their toys into the site, and created a site to match what they sell.

National Geographic Kids
National Geographic Kids is a website that understands that pictures are more appealing than text. Lots of appealing images, coupled with some fun animation and bright colors should serve to hold the attention of kids.

Capstone Kids
This publisher’s website for kids is set up to direct kids to various books, and it does so wonderfully.

Hasbro Kids
This site is ugly. It is painful to look at from a typical design standpoint. However from a “will kids like this” perspective, the site is awesome. They cut down text to only what is needed, and focus on pictures. Glancing at this site you can quickly pick out games and movies, and get a quick feel for what you’ll be getting when you click something.

Discovery Kids
This action filled website even changes your cursor into chomping jaws.

Duplo
Duplo is Lego’s brand for younger children, and this site reflects that change in target audience.

Nasa Kids
Nasa’s Website for kids looks similar to it’s adult counterpart, but more age appropriate. All the space themed pieces are cool, and help drive home the location. (This is NASA, not Disney!)

Ask Kids
A kid friendly search engine and entertainment stop. Ask is designed so there is minimal searching for anything, even after you search.

WhyVille
Whyville is an odd case. It has both new kid-friendly features, but also is carrying over the old trend of left-alignment.

Sesame Street
Sesame Street’s own website. It is an excellent example of not making kids work to see all the page contents. Kids aren’t as likely to scroll down as adults, and putting everything in one spot is good for them.

Harry Potter (Scholastic)
This is Scholastic’s site for Harry Potter, and thus bears no real link with the various movie sites. Everything is designed to be clickable here, and there is a lot of animation showing kids what they can and can’t do.

ASPCA Animaland
The ASPCA’s site for kids. While it has a lot in common with ‘adult’ layouts, this one seems like it was tuned specifically for kids. Information is big and easily viewable, and there is a lot to grab attention.

Disney Game Kingdom
The Flash games hub of Disney. Packed with stuff for kids to do. Another ‘compact space’ design, there is no need for much navigation to find something to do. An intro video plays, showing just the right highlights to give kids a taste of the games they can play.

PBS Kids Democracy
A bright and unique site designed to teach kids the significance of democracy in America, and help them understand the 2008 election. This site is a perfect example of design specifically for kids. Nothing about this looks like it was pulled from another portion of PBS’ site. Everything is bright, flashy, and unique.

Jumpstart
Before the web took off the way it did, Jumpstart made some of the best educational software around. Today it looks like they’ve embraced the web as their new platform.

Shidonni World
A colorful and whimsical site, set up for kids to click all over.

Now that you’ve seen these sites, take a look at this one from 2000.

Yucky!
This site looks old and feels old, and rightfully so! It hasn’t changed in a decade! Back then the now-fading use of left justification was huge, and as you can see the site is built so that it will fit on a 640×480 screen.

Our 5 Favorite Raleigh Websites

Paul Kwiatkowski — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:12:06 +0000

Alter Imaging is opening a new office to bring our unique approach of web design to Raleigh, NC.

Now that we’re working out of Raleigh, we thought it would be fun to find our favorite Raleigh business websites. We chose 5, and rated them based on speed, design and usability. Each site is the best of it’s type; we didn’t want to pick 5 Sushi Bar websites (though they were all great!) We also gave them each an overall rating, partially influenced by the other 3 ratings.

In no particular order, here’s the top 5 business website designs from Raleigh:

Sono Raleigh
For one reason or another, Sushi bar websites seem to have a much higher design standard than other local attractions. In Raleigh, the best of the bunch is Sono. Sono’s website loads quickly, has just enough Flash, and generally just feels awesome. 30 seconds on the site and you’ll want to get up and go grab some Sushi!

Royal Oaks
Royal Oaks seems to have held one ideal above everything else when designing their site, and that ideal is “clean”. The site looks good, loads fast, and is easy to use. Among Raleigh construction firms, they really stand out, by holding back.

Raleigh Times Bar
Of all the websites for all the bars in Raleigh, only one makes you want to go grab a drink. That one is the Raleigh Times Bar website. Where other bars went overkill trying to put information everywhere, cycle pictures, and generally catch your eye- Raleigh Times Bar kept everything simple. Their message is that you can relax here, and that message comes through beautifully.

CTI Properties
This website is cool. It stands so far above the pack of property service sites that it might as well be the only one. It shows message and style, and doesn’t bog you down with unnecessary info like so many do.

Baker Roofing
Baker Roofing’s site is the best roofing company site in Raleigh, hands down. The Flash image slider in the middle adds a gallery without a need for a seperate page, and adds to the polish of the site. Everything is smooth, easy to find, and fun to use. If the goal is to give customers and potential clients a great experience before they buy from them, they absolutely succeed.

10 Quick-Fixes For Your Business Twitter Account

Paul Kwiatkowski — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:49:13 +0000

Every once in a while I browse through my followers list and often find very poor business accounts. Here’s a few things that take very little time to do, but will really help make your Twitter account better.

1. Get a Better Username
Make sure your username will clue people in to your business. Adding information about location or services might be good for you, depending on how well people know your brand. Best Buy doesn’t need to create “BestBuyElectronics”, but you might need to add a descriptor to your name. Adding location information might get you more followers too, as people are inherently more interested in what is around them. I have no reason to follow a pet store in Oregon, but one in Charlotte could prove useful.

2. Change Your Background
This should be a no-brainer, and it’s near the top of the list for a reason. A custom background shows you’re committed to this “Twitter” thing, much more than a plain background, or poorly done one. Things to avoid are backgrounds which require a high-resolution display to read (keep the side content slim), tiled pictures, and pictures that are too small.

3. Change Your Avatar
Another no-brainer, many businesses don’t seem to understand how important a good avatar is. You want your avatar to be instantly recognizable as your brand, that is your number one goal. At the very least, tie it in to your background; I should click your avatar to find out more about you, and see what I’m looking for very quickly.

4. Give People Quality Information
Your bio is important. It is a handy place for you to tell me what your business does, and hook me into checking out your website or following you. Think of it as a 140 character pitch. If you don’t have me by the end of the bio, you’ve failed. Keep in mind that the 140 character pitch may not have to sell anything at all, just telling me where you are and what you do may be fine as well (a car repair shop, for instance).

5. Give People a Reason to Follow You
This shouldn’t be hard for most businesses, but you need to provide some incentive for following you. This incentive can range from some sort of discount, to simply providing quality information. If you go beyond simple self-promotion and start sharing information, you’ll be much more enticing.

6. Show People Something of Yours
Adding to your Twitter feed by retweeting others or using a tool like Twitterfeed is fine, but I’m following you, not someone else. Show me something you’ve been working on, link me to a blog post you’ve written, or take a few quick pictures of your workspace. You don’t need to go into hardcore content-creation mode, just show me something original every so often.

7. Ask Questions
Statements and re-tweets only go so far! You need to pose questions to your followers, and sometimes ask them specifically. You want to encourage conversation, not be a digital billboad.

8. Respond to People
A lot of businesses seem to shy away from responding to people who talk to them. Don’t do that! Twitter works because it is a conversation. When people ask you questions you can do 1 of 3 things: reply in your public feed, direct message them, or do nothing. Doing nothing is just wasting opportunity; direct messaging them is ok- but should only be used for one word answers or days when you’ve tweeted too much. Responding publicly is the always the best option, because it shows everyone who follows you that you’re helpful!

9. Follow People Back
If nothing else, it’s a nice gesture when to follow customers back. It’s like saying “You are a valued customer”, by letting them know you are interested in their input. Keep the following to real people though, you don’t want to waste your time following bots.

10. Use HootSuite
The web interface of Twitter is fine, if you are a casual user. If you have thousands of followers, are following thousands of people, and you’re starting to get lost in the flood of Tweets coming your way, you need to use HootSuite. Hootsuite will make managing your Twitter account far easier, and gives you useful features like Tweet scheduling. Hootsuite.com

Why Your Business Should Consider Podcasting

Paul Kwiatkowski — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:37:59 +0000

Podcasting got its name when the words “iPod” and “Broadcasting” were combined. The concept of creating a broadcast specifically for an mp3 player has really taken off in the last 5 year and podcasting is now consider mainstream. Major broadcasting companies have turned much of their content into podcasts, and podcasting networks like TWiT have begun to spring up. Many businesses already use podcasting to talk about their product, brand, or industry, and so the question is: should you do the same?

When podcasting for your business, the chief issue is to build trust; the same as it is with blogging. You may find that you aren’t a great writer or are simply better at expressing ideas out loud; those are great reasons to consider starting a podcast. Additionally, podcasting allows for you to have a conversation, while blogging is usually a one-writer affair. Plus, you can always do both. Producing several types of content is certainly not a bad thing. The first step to podcasting, before everything else, is figuring out what you want to talk about. Because the issue is building trust, not advertising so much, you don’t have to focus on exactly what you do. In fact, you can even podcast about something unrelated to your business and still benefit from the trust your show will build. While that is possible, it still might be better if you talk about something somewhat related to your business.

Dog House Systems is a company that builds gaming PC’s, and while their podcast could focus on the computers they build, they choose to talk about all sorts of other things related to PC’s and computer games. Through talking about their industry, PC games, and tools to use with Windows, they aren’t directly advertising their computers, but in essence, that is exactly what they’re doing! Hearing about the latest game, the latest hardware, or tinkering with computers all have the same effect: they make the listener want to be able to do the things they hear about, and that makes them want a Dog House System. If you take the same idea and apply it to your business, you might have similar results. Talking about decks, grilling, and backyards just might make people want to pay you to build them a deck! Not every business can benefit from this sort of discussion, but a little creativity is all you need when choosing what to discuss.

Now that you’ve decided what you’re going to talk about, you need to set up how you’re going to record everything, and get in out on the web. I wrote a tutorial on how to podcast for free a little while ago, it should give you the information you need to get started. Basically, you need a microphone, software to record and edit your show, and a place to host your show. You might want to consider buying a decent microphone if you don’t have one to start with, and you’ll want to play around with the software to get comfortable before you record your first show. Once you gather the components together though, podcasting is pretty easy.

Podcasting has the potential to give your web presence a boost, build trust with your existing customers, and pull in new customers. You’ll find that it’s pretty easy to get started, and there is plenty of information to help you along the way. As long as you are careful about what you say, and come across as a human not a robot reading a script, I think you’ll see some pretty decent results podcasting for your business.

Email Marketing Basics

Paul Kwiatkowski — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Email Marketing can be a tremendously useful way to get a message directly to your customers, and it can also be a way to annoy them out of doing further business with you. The concept of email marketing is essentially the same as mailing out a short catalog or flyer to customers. You create a message for a specific audience, then send it off to them. Despite the simplicity of the concept, there are plenty of things to consider when putting together an email marketing campaign.

The very first thing you need to consider is how to get people to open email. After all, chances are you don’t open everything you get from businesses. There are three things to consider when you are thinking about how to get customers to open your message: title, frequency, and past usefulness. You can fill an email with liquid gold and still have people delete it on site if you aren’t careful with these things.

The Title is possibly the most important part getting people to open your message. Starting with a fresh campaign, the title is the most important part of getting your message opened. The first thing you need to do when coming up with a quality title is examine the title’s of emails you have opened. You want to mimic their success, and the best place to start is one of the reasons you opened mail from them. What did their title say that convinced you opening the email was something that you should do. If it wasn’t the title, and rather was simply *who sent* the email, then what reason did the company give you to open their mail?

If not the title, it could be assumed your history with the company, or your expectation of content compelled you to click the link. Either way, you can see that after the title, getting people to open your message requires a bit of trust. What all three come down to is the assumption of value within the message.

That value is determined by what content you choose to include within each email marketing campaign. What content you have to provide drastically alters the email you will likely create. Either you have a company blog, and try to get people to read that; or you don’t, and you provide other use for people.

If you have a company blog…
You’ll want to use that information in your email. If you send a monthly email to customers, consider summing up blog articles in a magazine style format. Present article titles, introductions, and a bit of commentary. Also consider using pictures from the articles in the email, since pictures are more appealing than text. Once you get someone to open your message, you want them to see something enticing immediately.

If you don’t have a blog…
You need to figure out a way to drive people to your website. If you have no new content, then try to sell something else. A sale, coupon, or new reason to visit your site. You’ll still want to provide something new for customers to read, since you don’t want to send the same message every couple weeks. Companies with online stores can highlight various products, and perhaps incorporate customer reviews or testimonies.

Do’s of Email Marketing
•Do provide value in your email.
•Do make it easy to unsubscribe.
•Do ask for feedback, and make changes to fit customers.
•Do take inspiration from emails you receive.

Don’t of Email Marketing
•Don’t send too many emails.
•Don’t make people jump through hoops to unsubscribe.
•Don’t make people “click to view pictures”.

Conclusions
Email Marketing is both the new mail marketing, and something much more powerful. As customers grow more and more distant from your business, you can’t afford to let them forget about you.

Forums are your Friend!

Paul Kwiatkowski — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:52:49 +0000

Internet forums, or message boards, are essentially the oldest social networks online. They are places for like-minded people to chat about certain topics, get help, and more. Today it is easy to overlook forums when thinking about social media. Their age plays a part, and the “niche-ness” of them prohibits massive amounts of members. Still, forums have an important place in the online world. They are go-to sources for knowledge about specific topics, and thanks to the crowdsourcing nature of forums, tremendous amounts of information can be provided to users.

So what does this have to do with business? Simple. Chances are there are one or more forums in existence for your particular industry or specialty, and it’s up to you to get active on those forums! Forums tend to like having businesses as active members. As long as the business owner is helpful and fair, members will often push clients to them. You just have to answer questions when you can, “get” a little of the forum culture, and don’t over-promote. Typically a link in your signature (a space after your comment) will do. Over-promotion on Twitter may get people to stop following you; over-promotion on forums can get you banned.

Find any and all forums related to your business, join up, and introduce yourself. Once you’ve set everything up on the forums, figure out what sub-forums (more specific discussions) you need to keep track of. You might get lucky and find that your forums have RSS feeds, but it is more likely that you’ll have to manually check the boards. If you get the conversation aspect of Twitter, you’ll do fine on forums. The cardinal rule you should remember is simply to be helpful. Even if you’re backing someone else’s comment up, you’re being helpful. When people see you helping out, and see that you work in the industry, they’ll begin to think of you as an expert in the field.

Once the forum members think of you as an expert, you should start seeing results of your labor. Unless the industry you are in is very local, or doesn’t make many sales, chances are good that members will start referring work your way. You might want to consider giving forum members some sort of discount when purchasing your services, as an additional incentive.

Additionally, taking part in forums gives you the chance to speak with customers, ease any concerns, and address any public complaints they have. If you are active on the forums you can explain your way out of trouble, while being inactive to mean big trouble for you. Here’s a hypothetical situation: Your company sells chairs, and you’ve recently gotten a huge number of orders from a forum. You run out of stock, and hold customer money for 3 weeks while you get more chairs. A disgruntled forum member starts a thread complaining about not having his chair yet, and other members start to chime in as well. Now, as an active member, you can calm the situation down by assuring people that their chairs are on the way, and they can get their money back if they wish. Thus, the situation dies down, and everyone gets their chairs. If you aren’t active at all, the thread gets nastier and nastier, until all members cancel their orders and completely trash your business. Now you have lost all their business, and people searching for you online may find this nasty thread and take their money elsewhere.

In conclusion, join forums. They may take some time, but are worth the effort, and can’t be overlooked.

What Does Your Logo Say About Your Brand?

Paul Kwiatkowski — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:59:12 +0000

A company’s logo tells people a lot about the company. A well designed logo can be many things, but it will almost always benefit the company it represents. On the flipside, a poorly designed logo can make a company look lazy, old-fashioned, or simply less attractive. A quality logo should not only look great wherever it is placed; it should also make people want to know more, or purchase whatever that logo is selling.

A great modern example of good vs bad logo design can be found in the energy drink section of any gas station. There you will find some of the best logo design next to some of the worst. The designers of energy drinks have gotten so focused on standing out on the shelf that they have forgotten to build trust with their designs. After all, just because you have the brightest can doesn’t mean I’m interested in consuming your beverage! Look at these energy drink cans:

Do any of them look particularly appealing? They don’t to me. Each features an incredibly busy design, and colors that drink makers tend to shy away from. Think about the last can of soda you drank- did it look anything like these crazy designs? Now that you’ve seen those cans, look at this one:

Looks more appealing, doesn’t it? If nothing else, it looks more consumable than the others. Red Bull has a rather plain design compared to most of its competition, but this has served it well. Its logo can be placed on nearly anything and still look great (just look at the number of sports they sponsor). What it comes down to is good logo design. Anyone who has ever had a Red Bull will tell you there is nothing extraordinary about it vs other energy drinks. The design simply makes it more attractive, and this has served the brand extremely well.

A quick search for “Minneapolis Plumber” returned a number of results, and web design aside, their logos were vastly different. Of the results these two were what I would consider the least attractive:

Nothing says professional like “clipart”. These two logos do very little to make me want to purchase their services. Sure, they may be the absolute best in town, but their logos certainly don’t reflect any kind of reputation. This logo is one of the better ones I found:

At first glance there is nothing remarkable about it, but when viewed after viewing the previous two it conveys modernity and quality. This logo is very simplistic, there is no real artistic quality to it, and yet it makes them look much better than their competition.

If your competition is using an updated, modern logo, and you’re using an outdated or ‘cheap’ logo, you should consider a redesign. You may feel your logo has sentimental value, or is familiar enough that people will choose you over your competitors, but the truth is you might be very wrong. In the case of plumbers, energy drinks, and a tremendous amount of other things, appealing design can count for much more than actually being good.

Does your logo reflect an outdated version of your brand?