Facebook “Ch Ch Changes”

Facebook “Ch Ch Changes”

David Bowie is probably looking at his Facebook news feed this very moment and singing this classic at the top of his lungs. I picture him saying “I thought I unfriended Prince after the ginkgo biloba incident” and “Why am I seeing ads about men’s makeup? That was only a phase.”  In actuality, I have to admit that's probably only playing out in my overworked imagination. But I’m sure many of you have noticed that Facebook has changed it’s news feed again and you might be wondering why.

The social media juggernaut is trying to design the perfect user experience. All the while attempting placate shareholders that require the business to find new, more effective ways to monetize their platform. This can be a tricky endeavor for a company that doesn’t charge a dime for usage. So the brain trust is in a constant state of tweakage. A little adjustment here, a line of code added there, and an algorithm overhaul, all designed to put the most accurate products or services in front of their customers...ahem...members. Here's a link to a video about the changes. http://vimeo.com/97740886

That’s right Facebook is learning. The reason your news feed if full of ads you actually like is because they want it that way. Every time you click on an ad or express interest in something that data is stored and your news feed adjusts accordingly. So if you don’t want to see ads about the top ten celebrity nose jobs, then I suggest not clicking on the ad. However, if you have charts and graphs that you constantly update that centers around sitcom stars plastic surgery procedures, then I say click away. Nothing screams “I need a social life” like a pie chart titled Calf Implants on Modern Family. In actuality, this pretty genius. The end goal here is to make Facebook the go to place for news and social interactions and the better they can make the experience, the more often you’ll return. 

A recent Mashable poll shows that 44.87% of users “Don’t Love It, But Will Deal With It”. My guess is that number changes over the next few months for the better. Meaning, you, me, and the 687 people in your friends list will slowly come around to "like" the experience. For any company their are two ways to market your business. The first is to respond to the market. Essentially a business owner takes a look around at what's going on in the world and responds to it by creating a product or service, or marketing a product or service in response to new trends. For instance, the click through rate is going up on Google Adwords, so you venture out and throw a couple thousand dollars at it to see if it works. Or you notice that more and more consumers are using alternative transportation to get to work so you open a bike shop. This is how most small businesses start. The second method is to create the market. The most cutting edge mega corporations do it this way. They predict what the consumer wants and then leads them in that direction. This is what Facebook does. In a nutshell they decided that their ads platform had to be cutting edge. So they decided the best way to do it was to launch a custom advertising platform and collected enough behavioral data to make it as close to perfect for business owners buying ad space. It's Google's platform on steroids. A business owner is only advertising to people who have already shown an interest in their product or service and now they're simply showing up as an option. Money well spent I say. 

Like most new things we're initially resistant to the change but rest assured you'll come around. Facebook ads aren't going away. If I look at it objectively why would I not want stuff in my news feed I'm interested in? Those Facebook execs are so smart. 

To Blog Or Not To Blog That Is The Question

It shouldn't even be a question, to be honest.  According to ThinkCreative, "Small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than small businesses that do not blog." While numbers usually lie, that's too big of a number to be totally wrong. What we've seen at E35 Creative is blogging went from something that those crazy artist types used to vomit their musings onto the intraweb, to being a useful tool for small business, to being a important part of the SEO puzzle, to not being an important part of the SEO puzzle, then back to being important again, to being the best way to get keyword rich content out on the web, and finally to actually being a very useful way to communicate with potential clients and customers. I know that's probably a run on sentence even with the commas. 

Yahoo for small business has compiled a bunch of statistics as to why  it's so important but I won't bore you with them all here. Just know that as digital trends are consistently in flux, often times driven by Google's algorithm changes, blogging is carving out a significant niche that looks like it's here to stay. 

Here's a few quick tips to make the blogging process easier.


1. Stick with what you know. We do a ton of research to be able to blog for clients, it takes time, but that's one of our services. If your a plumber blog about plumbing, if your a financial advisor blog stuff that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Regardless of what you do, you can find things to blog about.

2. Keywords matter. Make sure your content is rich with keywords. The search engine see that and it can positively affect your rankings.

3. Consistency is important. Your clients need to get used to seeing content from you. You will become the trusted authority. Also it matters for the search engines.

4. If you don't have time to blog hire somebody to do it. Over time it will pay for itself.

Original Content.... At Least For Now

At E:35 Creative  the question we most often get from potential clients is "Why does Google keep messing with my ranking?" It's a simple answer really, because they don't make a dime off of organic search results. At least up until this point they haven't figured out how to monetize them, therefor they'll continue to mix it up. "Well that sucks!" is usually the reaction. I usually follow with some ever-so-sincere response, wink wink, of how I empathize with them, and how they aren't the only business owner in this boat, and they just have to play the game. I tell them, that's why I'm here and I'm sure I can help. The reality is Google's schizophrenia keeps the phones ringing, even though SEO is only part of what we do.

I love the game to be honest. When I dream about Google's algorithm meetings, and I do it's an occupational hazard, I imagine a sinister group of a dark suit wearing executives sitting around a huge meeting table in a dimly lit board room, and they say things like "no it has to be more complicated than that" and "great idea that will really mess with people". It's probably not the way it all goes down but that's the movie that plays in my head.

All that drama aside, the latest Google updates have sent website owners into a tizzy and the best answer I have for them is "original, relevant content". The days of spamming backlinks are over. Although that still has to be part of your strategy. The best way to maintain and increase your ranking is to put out as much original content as possible, and the best way to do that is through social media. Your social activity is as important as breathing when it comes to Google's spiders.

Unfortunately the social world is ever expanding and contracting. What was relevant yesterday is not today. My advice is to start with the obvious platforms; Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+. One of the decisions that has emerged from one of those dimly lit Google meetings is forcing people and businesses to interact with Google+. Don't bother fighting it, just accept it. When you fight Google you lose.



Our best advice for a new client is this method: Update Facebook everyday, and link it to twitter, update Google+ everyday, blog once a week and put it on your website and social pages, write a press release every month, and put a video on Youtube once per month, Youtube is now a Google owned property. This is a tried and true method for moving your ranking. It won't happen overnight but after a few months it will. If you don't have time for all this, most business owners don't, you can always contact us. This is, after all what we do.

Your Faith and Business: Should You Wear It On Your Sleeve?

As a Christian business owner I have to ask myself how far out in front of my business card do I want to dangle my Christianity. There are a handful of questions that come to mind... Will wearing my faith on my sleeve turn a certain percentage of  potential clients off? Do we care? Do I expose myself to extra criticism when we make a mistake? Which we inevitably will.  Will we gain an advantage with Christian clients simply because we are like minded? Do we care? Morals and ethics aside, doesanything change during working hours as opposed to personal hours? Do we dumb it down between 9 am and 5 pm?

The questions really could go on and on but I'll stop there. The fact is that we could come up with a thousand questions and try to answer them individually but in reality we are only asking one: How "Christian" should I make my business? Here's the answer, drum roll please...... Uh, I don't know. I can't tell you that. That is between you and God. I'm not sure there's a formula.

I know a couple of business owners who have different takes on this. My good friend and mentor Mike who owns a very successful chemical application company and is as far out as he can be. From the name of the company to bible verses on their trucks, you know that this is a Christian company. He would say that over the years the his "way out in front" approach to his faith has certainly cost him customers but that God has blessed it so much it has more than made up for the loss. He would also say that his approach holds himself, his managers, and his employees accountable to a standard that is extremely high. If your going to be quoting Proverbs you better do world class work.

I also have a client that used to be a pastor and is now business consultant specializing in succession planning that doesn't nearly take that approach. He would never shy away from a conversation if one developed organically but he feels that he and his clients are best served by operating with honesty, integrity, and the highest level of client service. He feels these things will speak volumes into his client's companies as well as to them personally and if there is a time share his faith he will take it but he is mostly concerned about delivering world class service.

Here's the rub, both approaches are right and God honoring. Don't dismiss the fact that you have to get with God and figure this out for your company. There is no formula. This is a deeply personal thing God needs to speak into your heart.

Looks like there may be some face time in the near future.

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How to Take a Social Venture to Scale

By Paul Bloom


For a social entrepreneur with an innovative solution, the holy grail is scaling it—that is, taking it to a level where the new approach operates efficiently and effectively to achieve significant mitigation of a social problem. Indeed, many are under real pressure to scale as their supporters, not unlike investors in commercial ventures, clamor for higher social returns on their investments. But for every Habitat for Humanity, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Teach for America that has managed to scale, there are thousands that have stagnated or failed.
For the past several years, I have been studying the successful scalers to discover how they made the leap from local to large-scale impact. The answer isn't as simple as we might wish: their leaders have pursued a variety of strategies, and there is no single "best practice" formula for scaling a social venture. But the good news is that there are common elements—seven organizational capabilities that can be developed and combined in different ways to take a promising innovation to the next level. They are:
Staffing. It's hard to take a venture to the next level without knowing how to recruit, train, and retain talented people. Perhaps more than anything else, this has been the key to PlayWorks' successful scaling. It has figured out how to keep growing a staff of great "coaches" to supervise and manage recess in schools all over the USA.
Communicating. Susan G. Komen for the Cure has excelled here, getting the word out about breast cancer and persuading hundreds of thousands to support its work combatting it.
Alliance-Building. A great way to grow impact without a large organization is to partner with other entities such as community groups, governments, and corporations. KaBoom does this to build playgrounds in needy neighborhoods.
Lobbying. Here, a model is the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which has accomplished much by persuading legislatures, judges, and regulatory authorities to make tobacco products harder and more expensive for young people to acquire.
Earnings Generation. Increasing numbers of social programs grow with revenue generated by their own operations. Examples include the social enterprises in the "portfolio" of REDF (Roberts Enterprise Development Fund), which helps nonprofits create viable businesses (in food-service, property-maintenance, extermination, recycling, and other areas) to provide jobs to disadvantaged workers.
Replicating. Aflatoun has scaled its impact by making it easy for others to copy what it does, providing access to the curriculum materials it has developed for teaching children financial skills to franchise partners all over the world.
Stimulating Market Forces. The textbook example on this front is Fair Trade USA, which by creating a certification system for "fair trade" goods (that is, sustainably produced commodities like coffee, chocolate, bananas whose growers are not exploited by middlemen) gives consumers market information they previously lacked.
Does a venture need to have all seven of these SCALERS capabilities in place to have major impact? It seems safe to say that, in any scaling effort, improving at least most of them should be a goal. A given venture's "scaling strategy," however, can be thought of as the particular emphasis it puts on each of these capabilities relative to the others. And how does a given organization get that strategic balance right? It's a matter of careful thinking about the implications of the venture's theory of change and the ecosystem in which it operates.
Before even attempting to scale, the organization should be able to articulate and justify its theory of change—the logic model that shows how its innovation (whether it's a new product, new service, new way of harnessing human resources, new financing approach, new distribution method, or new legal or policy approach) contributes to mitigation of a social problem. If the innovation is a new pedagogical technique, it must be evident how it leads to lower drop-out rates, for example. If it is a new way to encourage childhood vaccinations, the innovator must show how it improves public health.
With the pathway to better outcomes clearly laid out, the next requirement is for the organization to study its ecosystem to understand how other resource providers, allies and rivals, forces and trends could affect its success. Depending on the "capital" (which can be financial, human, social, political, technological, or natural-resource capital) that others bring to the table, the organization can adjust the emphasis it places on building its own capabilities. Of course, ecosystems evolve, especially as economic climates and cultural norms shift, so this cannot be a one-time exercise.
A scaling strategy, in short, is a plan for creating a special blend of capabilities that fit well with an organization's theory of change and its surrounding ecosystem. Most social entrepreneurs want to maximize their ROI, even though the "social returns" they seek have more to do with jobs created, lives saved, or cleaner water. A well-thought-out scaling strategy is the best assurance —not only to them but to their many stakeholders —that they have the potential to make a real difference in the world.

Communication- Changing Forever

We normally don't consider 18-29 year old's a viable market unless your marketing energy drinks or a new way to download free music. It's not like there are too many 26 year old young men looking for marketing services or someone to build their new deck. This generation (the millennials) is living at home longer, going to school longer and not engaging in what even Gen Xers like myself would consider to be the adult norm, marriage, kids, house, car payment, blah blah blah. However while they may be slower to come around to adulthood, infuriating marketing firms across the nation, they are not that far off and the way they have chosen to communicate between each other and the rest of the world is altering the landscape of traditional marketing forever. Sound crazy, consider this, when is that last time you saw a young person pick up a phone book, or stop and write a number down off a billboard, or even watch a television commercial?

I don't want to say there isn't a genuine need for these things because there are quite a few generations ahead of these guys where this marketing is still relatively effective. Not nearly as effective as it used to be because even these preceding generation are adopting some of these communication mediums, albeit more slowly, but adopting none the less. The mediums include but aren't limited to: online video, text messaging, facebook, twitter, pintrest, blogging, and forums.

So the choice has to be made, do we choose to test the waters now on some of these non-traditional marketing ideas or do we let the wave crash on our heads in the next few years. There are so many opportunities to inexpensively make your marketing/advertising dollars work for you that doesn't include a $2000 monthly billboard.

Seek and you shall find.

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Posted 11 June 2012 21:13pm by Patricio Robles 

Since going public in what may be remembered as one of biggest IPO disasters ever, Facebook has come under fire as industry observers question the efficacy of its ad offerings.
But is all of the criticism of Facebook deserved? No, at least according to comScore.
Despite the fact that a large percentage of Facebook users say they're ignoring Facebook ads, comScore says that it's "time to change the discussion on measuring Facebook effectiveness."
In a blog post last Thursday, it previewed some of its findings from its upcoming report, The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works. comScore's key claim: "Facebook earned media is having a statistically significant positive lift on people’s purchasing of a brand."
It came to this conclusion through a "test vs. control methodology", which the analytics firm believes is far superior to the surveys which have indicated most Facebook users are not paying attention to ads and marketing content on Facebook.
"While surveys can be useful in assessing ad effectiveness lifts across attitudinal dimensions such as brand awareness, favorability and purchase intent, people tend not to provide very accurate assessments of their own behavior. And their accuracy in recalling their own behavior over an extended period of time can be especially unreliable," comScore's Andrew Lipsman explained.
So do comScore's findings, which will apparently cast a more positive light on Facebook, trump all of the evidence, some of it anecdotal, that Facebook just isn't as powerful a marketing platform as many had hoped it would be? Perhaps, but there are a few key points worth keeping in mind:

• comScore is not a disinterested observer. As AllThingsDigital's Peter Kafka notes, Facebook is a comScore client and the two companies collaborated on this new report, as well as an earlier report on Facebook marketing. While it would be inappropriate to suggest that comScore and Facebook are cooking the books so to speak, there's no doubt that with so much money being invested in social, companies in the online advertising ecosystem have little incentive to say "It just doesn't work!"
• There is no such thing as earned media on Facebook. comScore's report focuses on 'earned media' on Facebook, but is there really such a thing? Brands invest a lot of money in their Facebook Pages, but they don't really own them. Through its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook can control the reach of brand messages, and when Facebook makes changes, those changes can have a huge impact -- and not always for the better.
• ROI may still be questionable. Even if there are ways marketers can use Facebook to positive effect, brands will still need to look at ROI. After all, 'earned media' on Facebook isn't free. Case in point: of GM's $30m in Facebook spend, $20m of it was apparently going to its 'free' Facebook Page. Clearly, content doesn't create itself, and Facebook initiatives don't run themselves.

At the end of the day, the differing views on the efficacy of marketing on Facebook serve as a strong reminder that there's no substitute for defining, tracking and analyzing.
Facebook is changing, and will continue to change. Mobile usage is up, audience growth is slowing, and the company will continue to try new things. The only way brands can really make smart, well-informed strategic decisions around their Facebook marketing investments is to make sure they've defined KPIs for Facebook initiatives, are collecting the data needed to measure them and have staff diligently analyzing the data regularly to see if their investments are bearing fruit.
Brands doing anything less than this (like trusting a survey or a report) might as well flip a coin to answer the question, "Does Facebook marketing work?"

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Go Big or Go Home.... or Stay Small?

There is this misnomer that a company has to choose to either focus on large multi-service projects or strictly stick to small "one up" type of transactions. This is unfortunate because opportunity on both sides are going to present themselves and if a company is unprepared for one or the other they are going to miss out on a potentially lucrative revenue stream.

At E35 Creative we run into this on a weekly basis. We're an outsourced digital marketing company. We offer everything from graphic design to website development to brand management and social media integration. We have many companies who choose to utilize us with just one of those services because we're not in a position to turn the work down and I'm not sure I ever want to be. In fact we're in the process of starting and E35 Creative arm that builds websites in three days called 72hoursites.com. That's a "one up", transaction type of business if I've ever seen one. The end goal is to gain trust so we can be their 360 degree marketing company but they have to enter into our services somewhere.

The tough thing in this day and age is to build trust with a consumer who is bombarded with companies saying "trust me". If you can open several doors to your business so your customer has many entry point options, you have a better chance of turning a potential customer into an actual customer. Then you can execute their singular project well and get a chance to sell them on some of your other services.

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Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

 via Small Business Trends

Your website serves as your best tool for attracting attention from potential customers online. Since your web content is what really carries your message across and secures conversions, your content marketing needs to be optimized for your targeted customer profile.

But what if you have multiple targeted customer profiles, with different tastes and motivations, and they all require a different approach? Do you optimize for one group, at the risk of alienating or under-representing another? Do you target your content as little as possible, leaving your website with vague, muddled content that doesn’t attract any customers?

Divide and Prosper: Target Multiple Customer Profiles

The internet is a very versatile medium, and you shouldn’t worry about reaching one profile or another if your business caters to multiple customer bases. Your website cannot only be optimized for a single customer profile; you can optimize it for any number of customer profiles by putting extra work into creating separate user experiences for each customer base.
In simple terms: you can make your website reach who you want, and deliver it in a way that they can customize for themselves.
There are many different ways to implement multiple content sets for different customer profiles. Generally speaking, it is easiest to target individual customer profiles by creating a specific microsite or separate landing page for different customer types, and letting your visitors define who they are on arrival. Allowing your customers to identify themselves through selective content options can provide a wealth of valuable data that can drive your future online strategies.
To accomplish this, you need an entirely different set of webpages for each client profile. You can create individualized landing pages that speak to the pain points and specific needs of a hyper-focused target segment, or you can generalize a bit more and classify your targeted groups by profession, interests, or level of expertise.
Your website will need some sort of navigation options that make your differentiated webpages available to your visitors. This can be done with a simple dropdown menu, a site prompt upon arrival, a gateway page listing specific destinations for visitors, or any other number of creative, attention-grabbing methods.

Wikipedia Segments Their Content, and So Can You

The most common example would be any international website. Take Wikipedia for example. The landing page you arrive on is simple to understand, and vastly segmented. If you are a French or Italian visitor, Wikipedia would be fairly inaccessible to you if you landed on Wikipedia’s English-language front page.
By providing a globally-focused landing page to all users that arrive on their front-most landing page, Wikipedia has segmented their content based on language. The user then clicks their preferred language, and can access the content specifically tailored to them.
Amazon.com also segments their webpage based on languages. If you scroll to the bottom of the homepage, you will see under their bottom-most logo a list of other nations. Canadian shoppers can select Amazon Canada and access Canadian products at Canadian prices. Not only have they segmented their websites by language, but also by visitors’ professional levels immediately above this. If you are an investor or a member of the press, you can find content specially catered to you at Amazon’s Investor Relations pages or the Press Releases page.
Many international businesses have elegant, minimal landing pages that offer segmentation by geographic region, language, and level of interest. These are incredibly broad segments, and may not be immediately applicable to small businesses. You can, however, apply these general ideas to your small business website easily.

Make Segments Work for Your Business

Identifying your targeted segments is the first step in the process. You can use business research, site analytics, and any other resources on this site and others. Once you’ve researched your customers, you should be able to form a general profile of who your most valuable customers are. If you sell kitchen appliances, your segments may include profiles like “The Soccer Mom,” “The Newlywed Couple,” or “Dads Looking to Upgrade.”
From there, you can design content strategies around each profile. What motivates each profile? What do they not like? What are they looking for from your business? After the lengthy task of developing custom content for each of your specifically-targeted customer profiles, you can create special landing pages and other web content specifically tailored to them.
After your segmented content pages are done, you should include a navigation option or engaging interactive elements that prompts the user to identify themselves. However specifically or generally you provide definitions for what defines your visitors, make it clear that there are different categories they should fall under. Designations like “Just Browsing?” and “Looking to Sell” can direct visitors to entirely different sets of content.
After your navigation element is in place, watch your site usage statistics. The types of pages people visit will tell you the success or failures of your targeted segments. If you have one set of content that is hit far more often than another, you’ll know that the lower-performing target profile may need fixing, or might be unnecessary.
By watching your statistics and knowing where your traffic comes from, as well as where they go and who they are, you can craft content marketing strategies that drive results and greatly increase ROI with laser-focused, customer-targeting accuracy.

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New Facebook Pages Help Businesses Better Manage Their Social Media

BY Mikal E. Belicove| 18 hours ago|

inShare196

If you manage a business or brand page on Facebook, you'll be happy to know there's a slew of new features that can help make your job easier. Here's a rundown:
Administrative roles: You can now assign administrative roles to the people who help manage your page. There are five different roles: manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser and insights analyst. To assign roles to your Facebook page's admins, login to your Facebook account, visit the Page you manage, click Edit Page above the Admin Panel, and click Admin Roles in the left column.
Scheduled posts: You can schedule your updates to post at a future date and time using the Facebook sharing tool (that's the box you use to create and post a Status Update). Until now, the only way to schedule a post in the future was through a third-party app. But now, simply by clicking the symbol resembling a clock in the bottom row of the sharing tool and selecting a time and date that you'd like it to go live, you can post a Status Update, photo or video up to six months in advance.
Promoted posts: You can pay a fee to promote a post so it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your Page than you would reach normally. Friends of Facebook members who have interacted with a promoted post will be more likely to see the information in their news feeds. Promoted posts cost $5 or more.
Only pages with 400 or more likes are eligible to promote posts, and similar to scheduling a post to publish on a particular date, promoted posts are initiated from within the sharing tool. To promote a new post, click Promote on the bottom row of the sharing tool, where you'll be asked to set your budget and confirm a method of payment. To promote a post you've already published and is less than three days old, click the Promote dropdown menu in the lower right corner of the post from your Page's Timeline.

Google+ Adds New Local Listings Tab for Businesses

BY Jason Fell| May 30, 2012|

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Google's fast-growing, if only still nascent, social network Google+ has rolled out a new tab dedicated to providing information on local businesses. Located on the right-hand side of the Google+ page, Google+ Local allows users to search for businesses that are nearby, read reviews and find them using Google Maps.
For instance, if you search for "cheeseburgers" on Google+ Local, it will generate a list of restaurants near your location that serve cheeseburgers. If you click on one of the listings, you'll be taken to a local Google+ page that includes photos, reviews from people in your Google+ Circles and other information such as address and opening hours from the company's Google Places for Business listing.

For business owners, this means that a company's information on its Google Places for Business listing will now be available to users across Google search, maps, mobile and now Google+. It can be even more important now for business owners to verify their basic listing data, make updates, add photos and respond to customer reviews.

Related: What You Need to Know About the New Google+ Design 
Additionally, Google has integrated a business's Zagat score into its Google+ Local listings. Google purchased the popular business survey rating service last fall for more than $150 million.
"For example, a restaurant that has great food but not great decor might be 4 stars, but with Zagat you'd see a [score of] 26 in Food and an 8 in Decor, and know that it might not be the best place for date night," Google product management director Avni Shah wrote in a blog post announcing the Google+ Local launch.
The search giant also hinted that it will be further integrating Google+ business pages and Google+ Local listings.
"We know many of you have already created a Google+ Page for your business, and have been hosting hangouts and sharing photos, videos and posts," Jen Fitzpatrick, Google's vice president of engineering, wrote in a separate blog post. "We're excited that we'll soon extend these social experiences to more Google+ Local pages in the weeks and months ahead."

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The Infamous Pipeline

There's no great way to say this.... keep stuffing! The risk for many start ups or established companies that may be seeing a dip in revenue is to get frustrated and stop doing the things that you know will reap rewards in the end. For many owners and CxOs in this situation the temptation is to stop making contacts, stop walking in on other business owners, and stop picking up the phone. They've had several "good" conversations but nothing is panning out. I know how you feel, because I have been their in the past and I'm there in a few ways now.

I wish there was some game changing advise. There's not. The only thing I can tell you this: Established companies, take a look back at your history, this is probably not the first time you have been in this place, it will get better with disciplined systems and lots of contacts. Continue doing what's made you successful up to this point. Start Ups: Even though you are a start up this is probably not your first job, you probably have some experience in the field you've chosen to start a company in. Remember why you did it, be encouraged, and make sales calls. Have the guts to call on customers, figure out ways to reach out when they aren't banging down your door.

The business pipeline is a fickle mistress. You need to have her full and satisfied at all times but even then the faucet doesn't always turn on and when it does sometimes it's just a trickle. Many times she leaks before she's sent leads all the way to the end. But know this, it will always be like this. You may get better at putting in business that she prefers and you may get more skilled at nudging her along but the system will never change. Embrace it, make your calls, do your follow up, and she will flow... eventually.


Spokane Marketing, Spokane Website Design, Spokane Branding, Spokane Graphic Design
www.e35creative.com

LinkedIn vs. Facebook

This is an interesting infographic from Unbounce and Bop Design that points to the strengths and weaknesses of LinkedIn and Facebook for Business to Business (B2B) marketing. My two cents on this is that the platform doesn’t matter nearly as much as your strategy and talent to engage. The message this infographic brings is that you shouldn’t rule out Facebook for your B2B efforts… but I would leave the real results to what you find out with your brand!

For B2B marketers, conventional wisdom says that LinkedIn is the best social media platform to reach business decision makers. It’s built for business networking so you would think LinkedIn would be better for marketing to B2B customers. Let’s look at some stats…

Social Marketing Enables More Meaningful Customer Relationships

By Michael Brito

Much of the social business conversation revolves around the internal dynamics that make up an organization – culture, change management, technology adoption, process creation, etc.  This should certainly be the focus because social business is not social media. I just wrote a post last week about employee engagement and how social business can extract innovation from employees behind the firewall.
But many of these internal initiatives (as boring as it may seem) enable an organization to better communicate with their constituencies externally. In other words, a social business enables a brand to be more social (i.e. a social brand.) A few weeks ago, Mitch Lieberman released his version of the Digital Interaction Process, which I like a lot:

Here is how I interpret this diagram.

• The social customer is influential and they have no problem whatsoever telling the world about their experiences, whether positive or negative
• Brands are listening to the conversation using online monitoring tools
• They are collecting new social data about the customer AND/OR integrating that new data with the data that they already have from traditional CRM systems
• They are applying a set of business rules which will determine what to do with the conversation; and then building workflows that direct the conversation down the right channel
• Brands are attempting to become human as they attempt to engage with the social customer

Whatever we call this process – digital interaction, customer engagement or social CRM doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that we acknowledge that this process is happening today and has been for quite some time now.  And what’s more important to recognize is the collaboration and internal alignment that it takes in order to do this right. Marketing can’t do it alone. Support doesn’t have the resources, budget or “know how” and IT  probably wants to stay as far away from social as possible.  For this process to work, these teams need to work together and communicate.  Not an easy task, trust me.
One company that does this well is Comcast. 
Comcast Cable Company is a perfect example of a brand that has adopted this process.  In fact, they were one of the first to do this and often get all the glory for innovating the way they communicate with customers on the social web thanks to Frank Eliason. I am a huge Comcast fan and I have been a customer for over 10 years. I am happy with their products and the way they have handled my support issues over the years.
But not all Comcast customers feel this way.
Doing a search on Twitter will reveal a commonality of complaints about Comcast. One issue, which comes up daily, is that technicians are either late for their appointment window or just don’t show up at all. And for what it’s worth EVERY telecommunications and Cable Company has this problem, which is why many of them have established a guarantee of service.
Of course, if I am customer going through this, I can always pick up the phone, dial 1-800 Comcast and reach a support agent OR I can tweet at @ComcastCares and they will expedite my issue to the right office/support agent/technician. After all, this is what a good social brand should be doing, right?

• Comcast is monitoring
• Comcast comes across my Tweet
• They take my social data and couple it with my actual customer record so they know just about everything about me
• How long I have been a customer
• My support history (i.e. previous support interactions)
• Which products I subscribe to
• Demographic data
• They assign “my conversation” to the right region or office (I believe @ComcastCares is managed out of Philadelphia and there is a call center about 10 miles from my house in California)
• They handle my issue with empathy, solve my problem and maybe give me a $20 credit or 3 months of a premium channel for free

That is a common scenario for many brands today; and many of them are doing a really good job including Comcast.
But if social business enables better customer relationships what about solving the root cause of the problem?
The issue with technicians being late to appointments or not showing up at all is not a customer relationship management problem at all.  The problem exists somewhere in the internal process – from the time I call in to order to service – to when the support agent takes my info, assigns me my appointment time, inputs into a system – to when my service order gets picked up from that technician on the day of appointment. Something is broken in that process.  Or, maybe they just need to hire more staff.  Either way, it’s not scalable to handle the same (day in and day out) customer support issues over Twitter, especially since Twitter as a support channel is becoming widely adopted; and consumers in general are gaining influence, daily. Someday, small things like this just might come back to bite them in the butt.
A social business does more than they enable more meaningful customer relationships. It optimizes processes and changes the way it does business.

spokane marketing, spokane websites, spokane social media, spokane branding

Begin with a referral in mind

posted by: John Jantsch

A referral is the result a job well done, exceeded expectations and delivering an experience worth talking about. Most assume it happens after the fact, but I’m here to tell you it can happen consistently and predictably before the fact if you begin every decision you make with a referral in mind.

Sarah Korf via Flickr

My Grandmother was an old school, every stitch by hand, quilter. She made every one of her grandchildren and every one of her thirty plus great grandchildren a quilt. I remember asking her how she did it and she told me that she always just began with the end in mind. She would make hundreds and hundreds of decisions about where she was going because she had a single minded goal in her head.

Let me ask you this – What would need to change if you were to wake up tomorrow and proclaim that every single one of your clients would be so well cared for they would naturally refer their friends and colleagues? If a 100% referral rate was now your new standard of success, would that make you pause and reflect on just about every element of your business?

Would that make you think about how to over deliver as a design element of your products and services?

Would that make you think about ways to ensure your clients got the results promised?

Would that change the way you followed up 45 and 90 days after the sale?

Would it make you start introducing the idea of a referral during the sales process?

Could you confidently assure a prospect that they would be so happy with the result of the purchase that they would want to refer – before they ever became a customer?

Would it make you reassess ways you build trust? Would it make you freely give away information and training that is better than what your competitors charged for?

Would it change how you more fully integrated social media, content and SEO?

Yes, referrals happen because of what a referred prospect finds when they search.

Would it change your idea of what an ideal client looked like? Remember, one of the surest ways to generate referrals is to attract clients that fully appreciate your unique way of doing business.

So you see, referrals don’t just happen because of what you do after you have a satisfied client, they happen because of every thing you do before you even attempt to ask for the referral.

A referral happens most when you begin with the referral in mind.

spokane marketing, spokane websites, spokane branding, 

The Tyranny of Low Price

 By Seth Godin

If you build your business around being the lowest-cost provider, that's all you've got. Everything you do has to be a race in that direction, because if you veer toward anything else (service, workforce, impact, design, etc.) then a competitor with a more single-minded focus will sell your commodity cheaper than you.

Cheapest price is the refuge for the marketer with no ideas left or no guts to implement the ideas she has.

Everyone needs to sell at a fair price. But unless you've found a commodity that must remain a commodity, a fair price is not always the lowest price. Not when you understand that price is just one of the many tools available.

A short version of this riff: The low-price leader really doesn't need someone with your skills.


spokane marketing, spokane websites, branding, design, seo, outsource marketing

Facebook Marketing

  By Michael Fleischner

 

The recent announcement about Facebook going public mean a lot for marketers.  You might be asking yourself whether or not the $38 stock price is a good buy.  Personally, I think the stock price itself is meaningless.  What's significant is the fact that Facebook, much like Google, is here to stay.

It's quite conceivable that Facebook will morph and change significantly over the next few years.  But the reality is that they can.  Companies like FB and Google have something that most small companies do not - resources.  And when you combine social and marketing companies with resources, something amazing happens.  That something is innovation.

If you remember a time before Google Adwords and pay-per-click advertising, marketing was drastically different.  We were more focused on print ads, print advertising, and direct response.  At the time we didn't know how limited we were with regard to user information, behavioral data, and community.  One of the reasons marketing has changed so significantly is because large companies were in a position to bring innovations to the marketing world.

Facebook is in the same boat.  Now they have even greater resources to invest in innovation and taking the marketing community to the next level.  I don't know what they have in store but once thing is certain - they wont stand still.  Begin a public company all eyes will be on Facebook, quarter after quarter and year after year.  This pressure combined with billions in assets gives them not only the incentive to innovate but the resources as well.

It seems like everyday, small companies like Instagram and others come out of the woodwork but the reality is that they are far and few between.  Those you read about are often started in a college dorm room (where I would argue there is little or no risk) or are backed by large investors.  I think innovation would happen without these scenarios but it would take much long and the results would likely be far less interesting. 

Just as Google has brought major changes to the online world, so will Facebook.  As is true with most advertising platforms, the systems start off by copying what's already out there.  In time, they develop innovations of their own.  And finally, because the platform has so much of the addressable market, the technology is distributed and soon everyone has adopted a new advertising model.

I believe this is the trend we will see with Facebook.  Look for the blue giant to innovate and raise the bar when it comes to reaching or influencing potential customers.  They have the platform, they have the audience, and now, they have the incentive to innovate.  This is a perfect storm for once again changing how marketing is done!

 

 

Spokane Marketing, Marketing Companies in Spokane, Spokane SEO, Spokane Websites, Spokane Outsource Marketing.

 

www.e35creative.com

Seeds

There will inevitably come a time, usually early on in a young companies history that the leader or leaders will begin to doubt they did the right thing by starting a company. The questions will come flooding into their collective psyches... "Did we do the right thing by venturing out on our own?", "Wouldn't be easier to work for someone else?" "It's so much less intrusive on my life when I can simply punch the clock, and be able to turn it off at night." I know that last one isn't a question but it bangs around in my head constantly. You have to come to the answers to these questions and observations on your own.

I can promise you a few things...

1: It is absolutely, with out a doubt easier to work for somebody else. They carry the burden. You cash the paycheck. Even as a top notch engaged employee you will never feel the burden the owner does. He is responsible for providing work, company growth, making sure there's money in the bank for payroll. It rests on his shoulders.

2: Whether or not this company is the "right thing" to do can never be decided on when you are battling doubts. The doubts are temporary. They will go away eventually but they cloud our judgment so significantly we should never make a decision while experiencing them. However we should use them to redirect ourselves, or possibly even motivate ourselves. Those seeds are only valuable if we use them to move forward.

3: You will sleep better not being an owner. You will sleep better not being a leader of any kind. We don't get the luxury of turning off and on whenever it is convenient. Some people are built for it and some aren't, and that's ok. We have to decide whether or not it's worth it. The reality is most of the time the "worth" far exceeds our expectations. The late nights, the deadlines, the lean times, and the juggling act are sooooo worth it.

My advice, get a coach or mentor who's been through it. Lean on them to walk you through those times of doubt. They've certainly experienced them. It will help immensely to know that these experiences are not new and somebody has come out on the other side.

The other side is so much more radiant when we walked through the darkness.


www.e35creative.com

Ranking for signal to noise ratio

By Seth Godin

A whisper in a quiet room is all you need. There's so little noise, so few distractions, that the energy of the whisper is enough to make a dent.

On the other hand, it's basically impossible to have a conversation (at any volume) in a nightclub.
Signal to noise ratio is a measurement of the relationship between the stuff you want to hear and the stuff you don't. And here's the thing: Twitter and email and Facebook all have a bad ratio, and it's getting worse.

The clickthrough rates on tweets is getting closer and closer to zero. Not because there aren't links worth clicking on, but because there's so much junk you don't have the attention or time to sort it all out.
Spam (and worse, spamlike messages from organizations and people that ought to treasure your attention and permission) are turning a medium (email) that used to be incredibly rich into one that's becoming very noisy as well.

And you really can't do much to fix these media and still use them the way you're used to using them.
The alternative, which is well worth it, is to find new channels you can trust. An RSS feed with only bloggers who respect your time. Relentless editing of who you follow and who you listen to and what gets on the top of the pile.

Until you remove the noise, you're going to miss a lot of signal.

Stay Focused Or Do Some Tweaking

Most young companies will come to a crossroads pretty early on. There will usually be a potential change that will present itself and the leaders will need to decide how to  tackle it. It can come in the form of a change in leadership, it can come as a new product or service offering, and it can come in the way of scrapping your start up's marketing campaign and going in a totally different direction. Whatever it is, they will have to decide whether to embrace it or reject it and stay the course.

There's a few questions that will help guide a company when the fork in the road show's itself:

1: Can you honestly say that what you are doing is working?
If you take all the pride, and all the hurt feelings, and set them aside, is it working. Is the service valuable, is it selling? Is the product producing honest to goodness revenue? Is the marketing bringing a measurable return on investment.

2: Can you change without a complete overhaul?
Is this change going to affect the entire fabric of an organization, or is it a small tweak that can be easily integrated into the current culture. Does it feel bigger than it actually is?

3: Will making this change be too much for the current leadership to handle?
Is the leadership adaptable with several skill sets or are they very specialized in each of their roles?

4: How far off is the company from turning actual profits?
This is the kicker. If a company can really say it is knocking on profit's door, then a change can be the worst thing they can do. But if real profit is months or years off, then a change might be exactly what it needs.

These are just some things to think about for any start up. At E:35 Creative we are experiencing this exact thing and if we ask ourselves these questions we can honestly say that our change is very achievable with out a complete overhaul and will fit in nicely with our current service offerings. If that ends up being the case with your young company, I say... change away. Otherwise stick to what you know, what your passionate about, and remember all the reasons you started your business and stay the course.

www.e35creative.com