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98

Entrepreneur

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93

Openforum

  • Tanks for the Memories 7 October, 2012, 4:31 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: American Business: A family business that’s over 100 years old has outlasted the competition through diversification.
  • Getting Customers to Use Your New Web Features 7 October, 2012, 4:30 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: Top Five: Five ways to get customers to use your new website features from Mashable.com.
  • The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital and Buying an Existing Company 7 October, 2012, 4:30 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: Business Answers: Phil Town and Carol Roth answer viewer questions about the pros and cons of venture capital and buying an existing company.
  • Modify Watches 7 October, 2012, 4:30 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: Elevator Pitch: Let’s watch our elevator pitcher demonstrate his line of self-designed watches.
  • Small Business and the First Presidential Debate 7 October, 2012, 4:30 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: Small Biz Newsmakers: Phil Town and Carol Roth weigh in on the role of small business in the first presidential debate.
  • The Container Store 7 October, 2012, 4:30 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: Learning From the Pros: The co-founder and CEO of The Container Store gives tips for success in this Learning from the Pros.
  • “It’s Your Business” Tip #16 7 October, 2012, 4:30 am
    From MSNBC's Your Business: Our new book “It’s Your Business” is out October 16.
  • Poll: Majority of Small Tech-Firm CEOs Favor Romney 5 October, 2012, 3:00 pm
    From Courtney Rubin: The majority of the 200 tech CEOs surveyed think Governor Romney is the better candidate.
  • How to Be a Superstar in Meetings 5 October, 2012, 2:00 pm
    From Bruna Martinuzzi: Here are seven tips to make sure you stand out and demonstrate leadership the next time you get summoned to a conference room.
  • Take Your Site Mobile 5 October, 2012, 1:00 pm
    From Lauren Indvik: Not having a mobile-optimized website is costing you, big time.
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45

About.com

  • Customer Acquisition Lessons From Men's Underwear and Razor Blades 9 June, 2013, 2:59 pm
    The latest video from quirky razor blade company Dollar Shave Club has been the talk of the Internet last week. If you haven't seen it, take a look (it's already racked up almost a million views as I'm writing this post)....Read Full Post
  • Welcome to June and Customer Acquisition 2 June, 2013, 2:16 pm
    How did you find your first customer? I keenly remember setting up my first course on Skillshare. I thought I had a surefire hit on my hands. You know how many tickets I sold? Just one. Oh, the humanity!...Read Full Post
  • A Kickstarter Success With Much to Teach Entrepreneurs 31 May, 2013, 4:12 pm
    I've long been a follower of the influential marketing voice Joseph Jaffe on Twitter (if you're not following now, you should!) but when I heard about his Kickstarter for his new book Z.E.R.O. -
  • Marketing Tips for Micro Budgets 23 May, 2013, 4:49 am
    A lot of people make the mistake of thinking marketing is only to be done when you have a little extra money to burn. Not at all -- you can't get customers without getting the word out about your products or services, and if you don't have cash, there's still plenty you can do....Read Full Post
  • Could Tumblr Work for Your Business? 22 May, 2013, 10:21 am
    Tumblr a good marketing vehicle for your business? Until recently, I was rather skeptical myself. But I've gone to a few presentations and gotten to see the unstoppable power of the burgeoning social network/blogging platform up close and my feelings have changed a bit....Read Full Post
  • Developing More Social Media Influence Through Great Content 18 May, 2013, 8:37 am
    OK, are you ready to craft a content strategy to help grow your business? I have great news for you! We've got you covered with the second part of our two-part series on social media influence.
  • When it Comes to Social Media Marketing, is Content Really King? 18 May, 2013, 6:37 am
    One thing I've learned from years in the social media trenches is that there's a big persistent myth that hangs a lot of people up. That myth is great content, in and of itself, will cause users to flock to your offering....Read Full Post
  • How are You Using Social Media to Market Your Business? 12 May, 2013, 11:47 am
    I can't say that I always believed in the power of social media marketing. In the beginning, I wondered, can Facebook really support business goals? My trial by fire came when I was working on a marketing campaign for the British Tourist Board. Back in 2008, I was assigned by my boss to become "social media champion," that is, the person who helped the rest of the organization adopt and use emerging social media networks.
  • Happy Mother's Day! 11 May, 2013, 4:43 am
    Mother's Day got me thinking about "mompreneurs" -- they are moms who juggle the demands of raising kids with the demands of raising a business. But what are some of the best gigs for "work at home" moms? From blogging your passion to freelance writing to affiliate marketing to call center work, check out some of the best jobs for entrepreneur moms....Read Full Post
  • 6 Questions Your Marketing Strategy Should Answer 6 May, 2013, 2:30 am
    Marketing is my background -- I've spent more than ten years in New York working on marketing campaigns big and micro in nature. But that doesn't mean that crafting a marketing plan in necessarily easy. Every product or service requires a different set of questions be answers up front......Read Full Post
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33

SmallBiztrends

  • Is it Possible to Create a Business Startup Right After College? 19 June, 2013, 2:00 pm
    Is it a good idea to create a business startup right after college? Before you ask this question to an entrepreneur or your mentor, you need to find certain answers yourself. Becoming self-employed is a tough task, wherever you are in life. It is even more difficult to stay afloat once you start. Statistics say that 9 out of 10 new businesses fail within the first 5 years. Not an encouraging figure, but it is not impossible either. You need to possess the right mindset. Let’s take a look at what you need to ask yourself before you start a business after college. Determine If It’s Possible to Create a Business Startup Ask Yourself: What Motivates You to Take Up the Challenge? If the prospect of self-employment allures you because you think you just need to work for a few hours from a stunning beach sipping on a martini, you are better off being employed by someone else. Let’s take this one step at a time. Are you motivated by the easy way to get rich premise? If yes, you are in for serious disappointment. The majority of new businesses fail to recover any money invested within a year, let alone make profits. You can only succeed with years of hard work and patience. Are you motivated by the idea that you need not work for endless hours at an office? Well, a new entrepreneur often needs to put in as much as 10 hours of work every day. True, you can work as per your schedule, but that does not take away the effort you need to put in. The only way to succeed as a self-employed individual is to make sure that you are willing to solve a problem, need or want of a customer, and do it in a way that beats your competitors. To do this, you need to put in hours of hard work and take care of numerous responsibilities. Ask Yourself: Do You Love the Idea that Forms the Core of the Business? A new entrepreneur can attain success; but only when the driving force behind it is love and passion for the business. If you are enthused and excited about the central idea, the chances of your success increase. Does this mean that anyone who loves haute couture can start off as a fashion designer? It is not that simple. Think about something – have you designed anything for anyone? How well was it received by them? Did it find appreciation among others? You need to find the ONE thing that fills you with fervor and zeal. Only that idea can work as the core of your new endeavor. It is much easier to start a new business when you can identify your unique selling point. Ask Yourself: How Do You Plan to Handle the Finances? Many first-timers start off with the funds they manage to pool in from family and friends. The lack of real experience makes it difficult for them to impress the big investors who find interest only in ‘real’ businesses. Don’t be disheartened; the Internet gives you the best option to start up a new business right after college and that too at a negligible cost. It just needs to be a service-oriented online business, for the time being. Another advantage of starting early is that you need not bother about things such as paying off a mortgage or supporting a family. If you are still living with your parents, you can save even more money to invest in the start-up. If possible, continue to work part-time for someone else while you set up your business. This way you can rely on the amount you earn until your business begins to earn profits. A great thing to do is to work in the same niche in which you have your business. Ask Yourself: Can You Be a Jack of All Trades and Master Them Too? There is no secret to success for a new business. If you think that you can earn big and get rich without any effort, you are WRONG. It is possible to succeed only if you are capable of handling the numerous responsibilities that come with your own business. Remember, it is YOUR business; you will have to be the manager, the marketer, the advertiser, the accountant, the vendor and every other thing, at least initially. There is no way to avoid these responsibilities. You cannot take on employees, unless you have a huge budget, in a startup. The overhead would be too much for the fledgling endeavor. However, once you start off, you can outsource certain tasks to professionals. Getting advice and assistance from others can help you focus on the things that matter. You can create a business startup, not only after college, but wherever you are in life at present. Look at the brothers Shravan (12 years) and Sanjay Kumaran (10 years), the brothers who created mobile phone applications for their company Go Dimensions. The tech-savvy brothers from India are not yet out of school and they are already making their mark on the business world. At the end, it is the zest and passion you have for the idea and the effort you put in to transform it into reality that matters. The post Is it Possible to Create a Business Startup Right After College? appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • McAfee Hires Former Apple Executive to Oversee Small Business Market 19 June, 2013, 11:30 am
    When suffering a cyber attack, small businesses lack the resources of a larger company and face different challenges. In acknowledgement of this, global software security company McAfee has created a new senior vice president position to be in charge of the small and medium size business market. On Monday, McAfee announced filling that position with former Apple executive Bill Rielly, pictured here.  ”McAfee is building upon its experience protecting larger enterprises and establishing a dedicated team focused on protecting SMBs,” wrote Carly Listman, McAfee PR Manager, in an e-mail response to Small Business Trends about the position. We’ve reported before on how small businesses face an increasing threat from cyber criminals. A disproportionately high number of small firms are already the focus of cyber attacks, McAfee explained in a prepared release announcing Rielly’s appointment. These companies are also the least able to recover from the resulting damages once a data breach has taken place. For example, in 2011 more than 75 percent of data breaches targeted small to medium sized companies, says a 2012 report (PDF) from the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA). While larger companies are generally better able to bounce back from such attacks, a 2011 report suggests (PDF) 60 percent of small businesses end up closing their doors within half a year of a breach occurring. Rielly comes to McAfee from Apple where he served as leader of the SMB division for the Apple Online Store. He seems to have been chosen primarily for his experience with marketing to small and medium sized businesses and with managing global brands, rather than for any specific knowledge about online security issues. Michael DeCesare, president of McAfee, pointed to Reilly’s results in marketing to SMBs as a key reason for his appointment, noting he has had, “phenomenal success in taking some of the most notable brands in the industry and expanding their share of the SMB market worldwide.” McAfee is a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation, a multinational maker of semiconductor chips headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. Image: Businesswire The post McAfee Hires Former Apple Executive to Oversee Small Business Market appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • Savvy Businesses Say Yes to Mobile 19 June, 2013, 11:00 am
    Sponsored Post It’s exciting to see small businesses jumping on the mobile revolution.  I think it’s more noticeable with small businesses, because we’ve been conditioned to expect “old style” low tech ways of conducting business from smaller vendors.  But today that’s simply no longer true. Small businesses have the advantage of being nimble. We’re able to jump on opportunities and technology solutions that it would take larger businesses more time to implement. In some ways, smaller businesses are leading the way with mobile activity. And so we are seeing some innovative and inexpensive ways of using mobile devices out of the office. If you’re looking for ways to develop or extend a competitive advantage, consider using smartphones (and their bigger cousins, tablets) to gain an edge.  To get your creative juices flowing, here are 7 ways that small businesses are using smartphones while out of the office: Accepting mobile payments – A consultant who has just published a book; a landscaper who gives an estimate for spring cleanup and mulching; and a crafter attending an outdoor crafts fair – what do they have in common? All are using a mobile payment swipe device attached to their smartphones to process credit card payments.  Your funds get automatically swept into your bank account.  Add the ability to print a receipt right there, and you’ll really save time. More responsive service calls – It’s the classic small business dilemma:  your business is growing, and your field service crew is small.  If you have to schedule a crew while in the field, do they have access to work orders and other details?  Will they have access to driving directions?  A good navigation system integrated with your back office systems to make sure crews have the right information, can save money. There’s less wasted time, and less phone time verbally explaining job details. Tracking deliveries in the field – A local distributor of specialty foods needs to track exactly where shipments stand – verifying they were made, what was delivered, when and where.  And have a record of it for the company and for customers. A software solution tied to barcoding that tracks variances and issues an accurate invoice on delivery avoids follow-up calls – all enabled from smartphones — can make sure you get paid faster. Demonstrating before and after pictures – Providers of homeowner services have gotten smart about using before and after photographs of home improvement projects.  The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds new meaning when you are meeting with a provider for an estimate , and you see before and after pictures right there on a smartphone or better yet, a tablet.   In the past, service  providers had to rely on printing out expensive brochures.  It is much easier to make a sale when your prospect can see the quality of your work. Tracking timecards and distance/time – How exactly do you track the hours worked by  your remote workers, such as construction crews?  Construction companies and contractors have adopted wireless apps that track time and attendance, verified by GPS, to make the process efficient.  You get better recordkeeping, payroll can be more accurate, and your compliance is easier.  Oh, and you save money, too, through eliminating manual work and wasteful errors. Traveling light: have smartphone and tablet, will travel – For knowledge workers who fly on business, lugging around pounds of gear such as a large laptop, a variety of cords and charging devices, a briefcase and more, is literally a pain. The whole package can approach 10 pounds.  That 10 pounds of gear may not sound like a lot, but it can feel like a hundred by the time you get to your destination. And for security purposes you don’t want to check items like that.  Savvy business people have learned to travel light, with a smartphone alone or combined with a lightweight tablet for short trips.  It takes mobility to a whole new level, and it keeps employees happy and productive. Using smartphones for processing orders and work flow –  Some of the most savvy small businesses have integrated smartphones into their work flow.  For instance, one painting contractor told me he closes 20% more business by generating professional looking estimates and invoices on the spot at the customer’s home, after taking measurements and showing paint samples.   It’s all because he has forms available on a tablet that can be configured, finalized and printed on a mobile printer.  In other words, he increased his business by being innovative with technology. These are just some examples of small businesses using technology for an edge. How do you use smartphones and tablets? Smartphone Photo via Shutterstock The post Savvy Businesses Say Yes to Mobile appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • How to Use Google Analytics to Tell Where Your Website Traffic Comes From 19 June, 2013, 8:00 am
    The Google Analytics Dashboard can be scary and confusing.  I am going to break down how to use Google Analytics to tell where your traffic is coming from, and how to isolate one source from another to understand whether traffic from certain sources is growing. How to Use Google Analytics How to Get to Your Traffic Report When you log into Google Analytics, you see something like this.  Click “Traffic Sources” near the bottom on the left: That will expand the “Traffic Sources” accordion. Next Click “Overview” and you will get a screen that looks like this: Different Types of Traffic In the overview, you will see a pie chart that highlights 4 traffic sources: Search Traffic, Referral Traffic, Direct Traffic and Campaigns. Search Traffic: Traffic that comes from a Web search. Referral Traffic: Traffic that comes from someone clicking a link to your site from another site. Direct Traffic: Traffic where the “referrer is unknown,” such as directly typing a URL into the navigation window or clicking on a link in an email newsletter. Campaigns: Traffic from an adwords campaign. Diving Deeper Into the Sources To dive deeper into a particular traffic source, click “Sources” just under “Overview:” This will take you to another set of menus where you can take a closer look at a particular source.  You will see a chart that looks very much like the overview chart, except it will be a chart for only the traffic source you choose. In this case, I am going to click “Search Traffic… Overview:” This gives me a closer look into my search traffic, how it is trending.  In this case, my traffic is bumping along with no major trend up or down.  If I were embarking on an SEO project for this site, this is where I would go to see the fruit of my labor.  After all, if I am optimizing for search, then my traffic from search should increase. Where to Look in Specific Scenarios The first few paragraphs were a basic overview of the structure of Google Analytics and where to go to see traffic breakdowns.  Now I am going to talk about specific scenarios related to web traffic and where you would go to see the associated traffic trends. Scenario 1:  I Just Guest Posted on a Popular Site When you guest post on a popular site, provided your profile/bio at the bottom of the post contains a link to your site, the expected increase is in the “Referrals” category. Scenario 2:  I Just Put Out a Press Release A press release is a wonderful way to get publicity for your company, product, or service.  It is also one of the best-kept secrets (if not controversial) of SEO.  When you distribute a press release over the wire, you should see an increase in the “Referrals” category. Scenario 3:  I just Spent $1M on Google Adwords If you have your customer lifetime value calculation down to a science, that is a good time to embark on a paid search campaign.  You can track the results of this campaign in the “Paid Search” section of Google Analytics. Scenario 4:  I Just Revamped my Content Strategy You just finished a refresh of the copy on your website and put together a load of new, exciting and insightful content on your blog based on long-tail keyword search terms. You should see an increase in the “Organic Search” section of Google Analytics. Scenario 5:  I just Got Featured on Oprah Congratulations – Oprah is about to melt your servers.  Its a nice problem to have. When oprah says, “Go to www DOT yourwebsite DOT com” and 1 billion people hit your site at the same time, you will see an increase in the “Direct Traffic” section of your website. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that has become more useful and more complicated over the years.  For a free tool its awesome, but don’t expect Google to hold your hand and explain to you how to use Google Analytics. Understanding, measuring and tracking your traffic sources should be a fundamental part of your SEO strategy and hopefully this guide on how to use Google Analytics gave you some help. The post How to Use Google Analytics to Tell Where Your Website Traffic Comes From appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • 5 Ways Social Media Can Make Your Trade Show A Success 19 June, 2013, 5:00 am
    Social media is becoming a popular way for customers and businesses to interact. If you’re not using social media to its full potential, you’re missing out on a world of promotional possibilities. Incorporate social media into your next trade show and you’ll find that it can boost trade show success in many ways. 5 Ways Social Media Can Lead To Trade Show Success Social Media is Easily Integrated into Your Contests Social Annoucement Photo via Shutterstock Giveaways are standard at trade show booths, but you don’t have to stick with boring swag. Include a few big-ticket items that will draw more interest to your booth. To snag these top prizes, visitors must interact with your social media sites. There are lots of creative options. Tweet that the first person to come to the booth and share your code word will get the prize. Allow prize entries for a brief period for each item. Post the schedule on Facebook. You Can Continue Promotions Beyond the Trade Show Special Offer Photo via Shutterstock Encourage trade show visitors to follow your social media sites by letting them know that you’ll run a whole week of special promotions after the trade show. Each day offer a new deal such as 25% off certain services, free upgrades, BOGO offers, and more. This strategy will keep your potential customers involved long after your booth’s dismantled. Social Sites Offer a Powerful Destination for QR Codes QR Code Photo via Shutterstock If your trade show booth space gets swamped with visitors, passers-by may not want to stop and wait for personal attention or push through the crowd to peruse your giveaway pens and notepads (after all, the next table has similar stuff.) Include a large QR code on your booth that makes it easy for visitors to snap and move on. Make sure the page you direct them to has easy links for following all your social media sites. In the days and weeks after the event, direct your posts to your new and hopefully curious followers who want to get to know who you are. Include lots of features that will help them find out what you’re about. Event Pages Hype the Event Like Photo via Shutterstock Set up an event page on Facebook that’s focused on the event alone. This is a great way to get attendees excited and promote the many activities that will be going on. Interacting with customers before the show will give you a better idea of what they want to see. Don’t waste time lugging all your multimedia equipment along if a survey shows that they’re most interested in one-on-one conversations with sales reps. Use the funds to take more people along with you instead. Blogs go In-Depth Where your Booth Can’t Blog Megaphone Photo via Shutterstock Trade show attendees want to hit a lot of stops in a limited amount of time. You can send them home with a pile of literature, but it’s likely to get lost in the cavernous swag bag. Instead, blog about common questions before and after the event and direct your leads to this resource as an informative way of getting to know you better. Integrate your social media marketing strategy and your trade show event for a seamless promotion that will draw in lots of new customers. Never underestimate the power of a well-managed social site. Did you create a social media campaign for your recent trade show event that brought the attendees to your booth? Or have you seen some great uses of social media at recent conference or convention? Would love to read it. The post 5 Ways Social Media Can Make Your Trade Show A Success appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • Join Us for a Google Hangout With Tom Byun of Yahoo 19 June, 2013, 2:00 am
    We invite you to join us for a live Google Hangout with Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo Small Business, Tom Byun, as we discuss: How to run a small business with modern tools: Email marketing, directory listings, reputation management on review sites and more. Recession hangover tips: How to attract potential customers and engage current customers. Social media and small businesses: Reaching niche audiences on mobile and connected devices. New advertising methods that work for small businesses. How Yahoo’s recent acquisition’s of Tumblr and Rondee will help small businesses build relationships with customers. And the best part is – you’ll also have a chance to ask Tom questions during this informative session. As Vice President and General Manager for Yahoo Small Business, Tom oversees all aspects of Yahoo’s small business organization, an organization that has helped millions of businesses grow their presence on the Internet for more than a decade. Tom’s oversight includes marketing, product marketing, engineering, business development, sales and account management teams to ensure exceptional experiences to its business customers as Yahoo helps them grow online. Take advantage of this opportunity to get up close and personal with Tom.  We encourage you to ask questions and gain insightful information during the discussion. The details are as follows. Who, What, When, Where Who:  Tom Byun, Vice President and General Manager for Yahoo Small Business What:  Google Hangout When: Friday June 21, 2013  from 12:00 PM EST until 12:30 PM EST (New York Time) Where: http://smallbiztrends.com/hangout (the video will appear there once the event is streaming live), hashtag #LunchHangout In the meantime, if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, Tom has a solution for you.  He joined me last May for an interview, “Small Business: Solutions For The Overwhelmed.” He was also a 2012 Small Business Influencer Champion in the Small Business Influencer Awards (nominations begin again on June 25, 2013). Be sure to join Tom and me this Friday for a lunchtime hangout – we hope to see you there! The post Join Us for a Google Hangout With Tom Byun of Yahoo appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • How to Use Cloud Apps to Streamline Your Marketing Campaign 18 June, 2013, 4:00 pm
    Running a successful marketing campaign is contingent upon several factors. This includes realistic goal setting, organization, communication, execution, and keeping track of metrics. In the past, there were limited tools and resources to aid in a marketing campaign. These tools were primitive and many lacked efficiency. Fortunately, cloud apps have changed the marketing landscape and are ideal for business owners looking to streamline their marketing campaigns and their progress. Let’s discuss the benefits of cloud apps and some of the best ones available for streamlining marketing campaigns. Use Cloud Apps to Streamline Marketing Campaigns Data Storage Perhaps the most beneficial part of cloud apps is their ability to safely and securely store data. Whether you’re using spreadsheets, documents or forms, information can be conveniently saved and accessed whenever necessary. Since this data is in the cloud and not saved onto a computer, disc or USB, there are no worries about it being lost or destroyed. Even if your computer has a meltdown, all data from your marketing campaign could easily be retrieved online. In an uncertain world where there’s always the potential for curveballs and human error, cloud apps offer marketers a peace of mind that critical data will never be lost. It’s also relatively secure because the cloud can only be accessed by authorized individuals with the username and password. Convenience If you’re coordinating multiple people into your marketing campaigns, it’s important that everyone can quickly access the information they need. For instance, one person may be in charge of SEO, another in charge of social media and another responsible for email marketing. Using a cloud app allows each person to log in and work on whichever aspect of the campaign they need to from any location that has Internet access. This means that a small business can efficiently run its marketing campaign with employees across the country or even the world. Since many cloud apps are also available on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, this allows employees to complete tasks while they’re on the road and increase productivity. Low Cost Although big companies may have the funds to pay for elaborate software to run marketing campaigns, many small to mid-sized businesses are on a limited budget. Since many cloud apps are inexpensive or even free, they’re a great solution for staying on track without breaking the bank. Many cloud providers also operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, so there’s no need for long contracts and obligations. Besides this, updates and upgrades are usually part of the package, so there’s no need to pay additional fees. Now that you understand what the inherent advantages of cloud apps are, let’s discuss some of the more popular products on the market. Google Drive This is the preferred choice of many marketers and business owners because it’s simple, effective and free. According to TechCrunch, Google Drive had over 10 million users as of mid 2012 and this number is likely to keep growing. It’s easy to use and allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, folders, forms, drawings and presentations. The interface has a minimalist aesthetic with a clean, white background. Projects can be stored according to title, the last date they were modified, opened or edited for efficient organization. Unlike some more complicated apps, this platform is also highly intuitive and the basics can be learned by most people very quickly. This makes it practical and minimizes the learner’s curve. If you want to upload existing documents from your computer, it’s easy to do. Due to the large volume of free storage, it’s equipped to handle the data needs of most businesses. My favorite part of Google Drive is the fact that it allows team members to collaborate simultaneously on the same document. This means the whole team can view and edit a spreadsheet together, improving collaboration and reducing headaches. Many people also use Google Calendar, which is perfect for keeping track of deadlines and keeping things on schedule. It will also notify you via email when a project is due or of other important information. HootSuite When it comes to running a social media marketing campaign, this is one of the most popular and effective platforms. It allows you to manage profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Mixi and even Myspace. In a nutshell, HootSuite makes it easy to monitor user engagement and track the progress of a social media campaign. For Facebook, you can monitor feeds and coordinate posts with greater ease. On Twitter, it’s simple to schedule tweets, track how many mentions a profile receives, favorite tweets, etc. Integrating HootSuite with Google+ makes it possible to monitor circles, comments and user activity. It also provides more control over publishing to maximize the impact of a campaign. This platform incorporates a highly sophisticated analytics program to help marketers uncover information about their demographic. Data can be broken down by geographical location, language and posting source to gain insights. By integrating various social media profiles with this app, it will produce comprehensive analytics reports that can be broken down daily, weekly or bi-weekly. This makes it easy to spot trends and make the adjustments to better optimize a campaign. Evernote If you have a lot on your plate and are always coming up with ideas, this app can be very helpful. It can be accessed via computer, tablet or smartphone and allows you to store a variety of media. During a brainstorming session, you can conveniently make notes to view later. You can save images, important websites, files, snapshots and documents from one central location. Once data is saved, it can conveniently be retrieved on any compatible device regardless of where you’re at. Collaborating on projects and sharing notes with employees is simple, which helps capitalize on new ideas while they’re still fresh. Evernote also has a feature that allows you to search for whatever you’re looking for via tags. Consequently, it can hasten any project and eliminates having to manually search for information. Basically, this cloud app is ideal for small marketing teams that need to quickly share information and boost productivity. Regardless of the location of team members, everyone can work alongside one another to accomplish the most tasks with the least amount of effort. Since everything is stored online, there’s no need to worry about broken computers or losing valuable information. Asana When communication between employees is critical and there are tight deadlines, this app can come in handy. Asana is all about productivity and ensuring that each team member completes their tasks on time. Through Asana and email notifications, time sensitive information can be sent and received quickly. Individual employees can receive tasks, which can be prioritized according to importance. Since you can view other team members’ tasks and priorities, this can reduce wasted time spent at meetings and more time can be dedicated to actually getting marketing done. If you’re behind on a certain project, you will know before it’s too late and you can take the necessary steps to get back on track. Like many other apps, Asana can be used on a variety of mobile devices for streamlined access to information. Basically, this app is intended to improve communication and boost productivity. Cloud Apps Photo via Shutterstock The post How to Use Cloud Apps to Streamline Your Marketing Campaign appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • Apple Discusses $99 Plastic iPhone in 5 to 6 Colors 18 June, 2013, 1:30 pm
    [White iPhone 5] Apple products, including the iconic iPhone, may not be the first choice for many small business owners and entrepreneurs because of the price tag. But that could change if the legendary tech company were to offer a line of new iPhones at what even some in the industry consider the unbelievably low price of $99 MSRP. Actually, the speculation that Apple could release a cheaper version of the iPhone as early as this summer has circulated for months. Budget iPhone Could be Coming This week Reuters reported Apple is considering a budget iPhone in a plastic casing that might come in a variety of colors. The report says a cost as low as $99 has been discussed but not yet finalized. The article quotes several sources including some in the tech giant’s supply chain in Asia, but Apple has yet to comment. Back in April, website 9 to 5 Mac went a bit wild speculating about possible colors for a cheaper plastic iPhone line. The site started with colors used for a line of iPods already on the market and asked 3D modeler Ferry Passchier to create a gallery of 10 possibilities. Competition Tends to Drive Down Price Apple is under pressure to offer lower price and greater variety in a smartphone and tablet market where it faces increased competition from many rivals. Analysts say the company especially needs cheaper products to compete in emerging markets like China and India. We’ve reported before about budget mobile products targeted specifically at emerging markets, some not even being offered in the U.S. But there is no indication whether a cheaper plastic iPhone would be limited to these markets. Sources say the cheaper phone could be available later this year or as late as 2014. Image: Apple The post Apple Discusses $99 Plastic iPhone in 5 to 6 Colors appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • 5 Ways to Avoid BYOD Nightmares 18 June, 2013, 9:51 am
    Ten or 15 years ago, managing your information technology was simpler in one sense.  A company decided on its computing environment -– its designated operating system, devices and software –- and that’s what employees used.  Period. But then along came the BYOD trend.  BYOD, which stands for “Bring Your Own (computing) Device” to work, has swept America in the past five years.  Employees got used to using technology in their personal lives – so much so that that they didn’t want to give it up when at work. We all seem to want the flexibility to work from home and while on business travel, using devices we individually feel comfortable with.  And of course we all want to use the coolest new mobile devices rather than staid company-issued laptops or desktop computers. If your business is like ours, you’re now under pressure to allow employees to use their own smartphones, tablets and laptops for work.   A study last year found that 95% of large companies surveyed allow employees to use employee-owned devices for work.  It’s now become ingrained in the workplace. The BYOD trend has benefits, to be sure.  It makes for happier employees.  They can be more productive while working outside the office. BYOD Trend Challenges for Small Businesses But the BYOD trend also poses extra challenges for businesses: Control - One obvious thing is that it is harder to control your IT environment.  With companies relying more on technology to conduct business, there’s simply more to manage to make sure everything works as seamlessly as possible.  Top that off with employees using a variety of devices and operating systems … and complexity multiples. Personal vs. Work - Then you have the morphing of personal activities with work activities when people use a single device for both.  The question becomes how to partition them. How do you keep personal email separate from work email in a way that employees don’t resent, and that protects both the company and the employee? Mobility - Your team may work from different locations, such as their homes, or they may simply do more work while out in the field or on business trips. They will be using mobile devices and that brings added challenges. Mobile security is one of them – and that can be as simple an issue as a tablet getting lost.  One honeypot study found that when mobile devices where intentionally lost, in almost all cases the data was accessed, either for illicit purposes or simply to discover the owner.  If a mobility-related incident resulted in losses, the average was almost $250,000. Security - Small businesses in general face more IT security challenges than ever before.  According to one study, companies with fewer than 250 employees were the focus of 31 percent of all cyber attacks last year.  And with so many different devices, and so many of them being mobile devices, security concerns are multiplying. So, What Can You Do? A lot, actually.  The most important thing is:  do not turn a blind eye to BYOD devices. Recognize that the IT environment is very different today.  It calls for new policies, employee education, adoption of up-to-date best practices, and last but not least, implementing device management tools and other technology solutions designed for a BYOD environment. Here are 5 steps to take to operate in a BYOD environment: 1 .  Require Notification The whole idea behind the BYOD trend is giving greater freedom to employees. However, there are ways to achieve a sense of freedom, without abdicating control altogether.   For one thing, make it a policy that all devices have to be “registered with” or brought to the attention of your  IT administrator or any outside firm that assists you with IT, so that device management solutions can be enabled.  Some employers exert more control by creating a list of  ”approved BYOD devices.”  While this poses some restrictions on employees, at least it meets them halfway.  You have to know who is using what. 2.  Adopt Best Practices For instance, require mobile devices to be secured with a password-protected screen lock when not in use.  Also, require employees to notify the company immediately in the event a mobile device is lost or stolen.  These and other best practices will help protect your business. 3.  Create a Policy With freedom comes responsibility. Create a written BYOD policy for employees. This could be in the form of a memo, incorporated into the employee handbook, and/or placed on the company intranet.  Make employees aware of what is acceptable, and what’s not. 4.  Educate Employees Take the time to educate employees about the challenges and risks.  You’ll get more cooperation if they understand the “why” behind rules.  A lunch and learn session or simply bringing up the topic in staff meetings can go a long way. 5.  Implement a mobile device management solution This is probably one of the most crucial things you can do.  A mobility management solution gives you a way to manage multiple devices and applications, from a central dashboard.  It enables you to view the “big IT picture” and treat BYOD devices as integral points in your IT systems – not something separate or unrelated. Look for one that offers robust security and that protects important company data.  Security certainly will be at the top of the list.  But you also want the ability to monitor and manage mobile devices. Beyond that, some mobility management solutions can help you manage expenses, too, through consolidated reporting.  You can manage different devices and different plans through a single dashboard. Advanced security specifically for mobile devices, such as capabilities for remote wipe of data in the event a mobile device is lost, and data encryption, can create peace of mind. Data archiving solutions can also add to convenience. They help you meet disaster recovery and legal archiving requirements, and further secure your IT assets. Bottom line:  there is a lot you can do to allow employees the freedom and flexibility to use devices they prefer.  You don’t have to sacrifice protection of your business assets or create an unwieldy logistical situation in doing it. Shutterstock: BYOD Message, Mobile, BYOD at Work The post 5 Ways to Avoid BYOD Nightmares appeared first on Small Business Trends.
  • How Do Your Business’s Hiring Plans Stack Up? 18 June, 2013, 8:00 am
    Is your small business ready to hire or does it have any immediate hiring plans? If not, you’re in line with the majority of small and midsized companies in the U.S., according to the latest Sage SMB Hiring Outlook Survey from Sage North America. According to Sage, 25 percent of SMBs overall say they either have hired or will hire in 2013, while 47 percent expect staffing to stay the same. Only 7 percent have cut or plan to cut staff this year. The rest still weren’t sure of their hiring plans. The survey polled businesses with 99 or fewer employees. Companies with more than 20 employees were significantly more likely to have already hired or have hiring plans. Thirty-four percent of companies of this size had hired or plan to hire, while 34 percent planned to keep staffing levels the same. In comparison, just 18 percent of companies with fewer than 20 employees had hired or plan to hire, while 55 percent plan to keep staffing levels the same. However, size wasn’t the biggest factor in whether a company has hired or will hire this year. Increased demand for its products or services was the primary influencer, cited by 81 percent of companies that are hiring. Larger companies (with 20 or more employees) were also more likely to be hiring because they felt optimistic about the economy—36 percent cited an improved economic outlook as a reason they were hiring. The biggest reason companies aren’t hiring? Not surprisingly, it’s lack of demand for their products or services (40 percent), followed closely by economic uncertainty (39 percent), non-healthcare-related costs of doing business (26 percent) and continued uncertainty in Washington (20 percent). Prior Sage surveys reported taxes and regulations hampered SMB growth, but this survey shows that although both taxes and regulations are factors in hiring, they aren’t top factors for not hiring. Small business owners are a sensible lot, and what’s happening in their own companies—not factors outside their control—is the primary driver for their choices. There’s also some heartening news among the companies that have hired or plan to hire this year: A whopping 82 percent plan to bring on full-time employees, while 29 percent plan to hire part-timers, 19 percent plan to hire seasonal workers and 10 percent plan to hire contract workers. As small business owners know, hiring full-time employees is a leap of faith since full-timers typically cost more than other types of employees in terms of training, benefits and wages. Plus, few entrepreneurs relish bringing on full-time workers only to lay them off again—so business owners are typically feeling pretty confident before they bring on new full-time staff. The prevalence of business owners who are committed to full-time hiring means a significant percentage of entrepreneurs are feeling optimistic about their futures—and that’s good news. Hiring Photo via Shutterstock The post How Do Your Business’s Hiring Plans Stack Up? appeared first on Small Business Trends.
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32

WorkHappy.net

  • How to drastically improve the copy on your site, even if you only have 5 minutes. 2 May, 2013, 1:18 pm
    First, let me tell you a little story involving butterflies and bladders.  I've spent the past few days at MicroConf. Just a phenomenal conference, full of like-minded folks, loaded with actionable content. Not to get too carried away, but it was a life-changer. I'd go on some more, but I don't want you competing with me for tickets next year. On the second day, Joanna Wiebe from Copyhackers selected a handful of sites from the audience to do a public "tear down" of in front of these 200 folks. 200 folks I admire and respect. I had submitted my baby, my brand-new, just launched site (DownDetect.com) ahead of time as a candidate to be selected. As soon as she took the stage, an angry mob of butterflies started attacking my internal organs. She opened the first site and started working it over and providing some great, if slightly brutal feedback. Really good stuff. After she moved to the next site I could see in her browser window that she had about 12 tabs open. It dawned on me that she was working her way through these open tabs, and that the open tabs were the sites she had selected for tear down. About eight tabs in, I saw the favicon for my site. The angry butterflies grew teeth. Sharp ones. And they pulled out pitch forks. And chainsaws. And congregated in my bladder. I figured 7 tabs was a lot of ground to cover, so I would have the time to address the sudden urge, and from where I was sitting in the very front row I quickly slinked out the back of the room to the bathroom. What a baby, I know. I emptied my bladder and the butterflies relocated to my stomach and heart. I hurried back to the conference room and what to my wondering eyes did appear as I walked in the room than my site, my baby, my precious up on the big screen. She had already started. The moderator was looking for the site owner to hand the microphone to. I pulled a hamstring sprinting to the front of the room, groping for the microphone like the final runner in a relay race.  So here's what I learned, and how I dramatically improved the copy on my site in 5 minutes (and how you can too): After she said some nice things, Joanna pointed out the main problem with my copy - the language was all focused on me, and it should instead be focused on my prospect. I was selling myself, when I should be focusing on what's in it for them. In Joanna's own words: Talking about yourself -- even thinking about yourself -- when you write your copy will only do one thing: get in the way.It will shut down the sale.Which means that you are the biggest roadblock to better communication with your customers. This is the foundation of great copywriting: People don't care about you. They only care about themselves.You care about you. But no one else does. (Except yo' mama.)Your visitors want what they want. They do not "want" what you're trying to sell them.Your job then, is not to "try" to sell your visitors a product. You're trying to sell them themselves. Ok, so here's a fun little exercise, take a look at the version of my site Joanna (and everyone!) saw and see if you can spot the problems. To make it easier, I've color-coded my stupidity. BEFORE So as soon as I got home, I spent 5 minutes (and I'll need to spend more, we're not perfect yet) and turned those sub headings around. Check out the difference below (or see it here in the wild). AFTER Notice the difference? Yeah. Serious improvement. My humble thanks to Joanna for the help. I hope this gives you some ideas for your site.  I highly recommend Joanna's email list, by the way. The first lesson she sends out addresses the same topic I've addressed here in even more depth.
  • The most important entrepreneurial lesson I've learned. 28 March, 2012, 6:47 am
    I've enjoyed recreational fishing since I was a kid. Over the years I've had the chance to fish and associate with some top anglers, and I've noticed something about them - they don't waste time in an unproductive location. If the fish aren't biting, they quickly move to a new spot.  This applies to startup ideas too. Finding out if the market will respond positively has to be as early in the process as possible, and you should move on if it's not a fit.  I've poured emberassing amounts of time into terrible ideas that I thought were brilliant, so please learn this principle from me, it will save you unspeakable time, money and shame if you do: The market does not care how long you worked on something or how well you did it. Effort is not rewarded. The market cares only if what you've done is a fit for their needs. This can be a crushing truth, especially for a craftsman. We take our startups very personally, and the more time we invest in them, the more personally we take them. But if we're serious about turning our venture into something that pays the bills, and grants us freedom, we have to accept and embrace this truth. There is no reward for sticking to something for a long time, if it's the wrong thing. If it's the wrong thing, if there is not a market fit, you fail. And unfortunately, there is no correlation between time invested and market fit. And very often we have no idea what's going to resonate, and what's not, even when we think we do. This is why building an MVP, and validated learning are so important. Before we get too carried away, we have to find out if the market wants what we're building.  I leave you with a couple of multimedia nuggets for thought. Consider these as you determine what to spend your time and energy on.    Watch the first 2:30 of this video. This is a common success story. The idea fell in his lap, he got it out there almost by accident and learned that the market wanted it. Then he built it and succeeded. (Compare that to your latest gut-it-out effort.)    And finally, the great Derek Siver's explains this concept brilliantly here. (Incidentally, I highly recommend his book. Short and sweet, and full of similar insights, including the one shown in this video).    Side note: A very interesting benefit to the KickStarter (and similar) phenomena is that folks are pumping out ideas, and using KickStarter not just to raise money, but to validate their idea. This is huge. Especially for hard goods that require a larger capital investment to get started. 
  • LaunchRock 19 March, 2012, 12:27 pm
    What is it? LaunchRock: A service that provides a pre-launch page for your startup (you know, the "signup to be notified when we launch" type of site). Heres the one I created for a project I'm working on for startup founders (and those aspiring to be). Who makes it? LaunchRock Why is it the killerest? In addition to a nice pre-launch page, it has good social integration, encouraging those who sign up to share it with their friends via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr or email.  There are also some modest stats telling you your conversion rate, which can be helpful. It's fairly easy to use, and they've thought of a lot of details like a confirmation email, social integration where you can pre-seed what they say when they share, an ability to export all of your subscribers for easy loading into your favorite email sending system, and domain mapping (i.e. you can point your own URL to your page). If you feel too constrained by their limited template, you can embed the form on your own site, where you have more latitude. What could be improved? They offer a very limited ability to customize the design and layout for the fully hosted version. They have custom CSS "coming soon" which should help immensely. I was able to work around some of these limitations by using inline HTML and inline styles - which seem to be supported. It's fairly amenable to a little lightweight "hacking." How much does it cost? Free Rating? Reviewed by Carson McComas p.s. see also: Launch Effect which I liked a bit better. It's a WordPress theme with the same purpose.
  • List of the best online payment alternatives for entrepreneurs. 12 March, 2012, 4:27 pm
    There are few segments more exciting right now than alternative payment systems. Earth's collective contempt for the entrenched payment tech industry is ardent. This industry has abused users, built regulatory walls to competition, made things insufferable for customers, and as a result, put payment processing options nearly out of reach, especially for bootstrappers. Overcoming these hurdles is a huge barrier to progress. But the alternative payment world is red smoking hot right now, and I'm more excited about it than any other segment. The possibilities that are unlocked by this are exciting for entrepreneurs, especially bootstrappers.  No merchant accounts. No gateways. No exorbitant fees, or draconian setup processes.  Here are the most exciting ones: 2.9% + $0.30 Free for transactions under $10, $0.25 for over $10.  $0.50 for bank payment, 3.5% for credit card payment The exciting ones for meatspace businesses. Square2.75% for swipes, 3.5% for keyed entries  iZettle $0.20 + 2.75% Intuit GoPayment2.7% for swipes, 3.7% for keyed   
  • I call myself an entrepreneur, but to be honest, a lot of times I don't. 7 March, 2012, 2:24 pm
    I call myself an entrepreneur, but to be honest, a lot of times I don't. When someone asks me what I do - I often punt. I feel like if I'm going to describe myself as an entrepreneur, the next sentence needs to explain what that means - what I've done, what successful business I've launched. And I don't have a good answer for that. Oh I've cobbled together a series of modest successes, and I'm managing to feed my family, but I haven't yet built something that I can point to with pride and say yes - that, I built that, and that is now what I do for living. The term "serial entrepreneur" always sits a bit odd with me too. Or maybe I'm just reluctant to call myself that. I mean, I've had numerous entrepreneurial ventures. Numerous! But the truth is that if one of them had been the success I thought it would be, I'd be doing that, not launching another one. There would be no serial succession to the next one. At least not for a long time. Serial entrepreneur sounds like a synonym for serial failure. Not always of course, there are plenty of examples of successes there (Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Evan Williams). But Bill Gates wasn't a serial entrepreneur. Neither was Mark Zuckerburg. Or Jeff Bezos or Jason Fried. They're entrepreneurs. They built something and that thing is what they do now. They don't define themselves by serially starting companies. My goal isn't serial entrepreneurship, it's successful entrepreneurship.  So where am I going with all this navel gazing? I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Maybe it's because I'm growing pensive on the verge of launching my next startup (I really do believe this is the one!), or because I regularly get emails from folks who have gutted out that first hard part of getting something out there and now they're trying to make it work. But I want to start a community of those of us who have gotten this far. I want to create a community of launchers. I just have this sense that there's a whole group of us out here in the trenches trying to make this work - and there are a whole bunch of us who have made it work, and are making it work, and another whole bunch who haven't made it work, but are destined to, because they won't settle for anything less, no matter what it takes. These folks? These launchers? These, I feel like, are people I can relate to. And I want a way to learn from them, and talk with them, and hear their stories, and I bet I'm not the only one, I bet you do too. And if I'm right about that, I hope you'll come over and sign up for my latest project. It's called Launch Happy, and with your help, I think it can become something really good. At a minimum, it'll help you expose your business to more people. But I'm hoping for even more than that, I'm hoping it'll help you make connections, and friends, and customers. I'm hoping that wonderful things will spring from it, and that the net result will be more entrepreneurs proud to call themselves that because they've made it work, they've achieved success, they've connected, and learned, and grown, and been cheered, and helped, and challenged, and taught and can point with pride to what they've done and say yes - that, I built that, and now that is what I do for a living.  I think it can be something really good, and I hope you'll be a part of it. p.s. if you're not a launcher yet, but still want to follow along, please follow us on Twitter at @LaunchHappy or on Facebook and we'll keep you abreast.
  • Gumroad 5 March, 2012, 11:15 am
    What is it? Gumroad: A service that lets you "sell anything you can share" which is to say - anything you don't need to collect shipping information for. Each purchase ends with a download link. You create "links" that send you over to a Gumroad page where customers can enter an email address, credit card number, and boom - download what they purchased. (Here's an example I set up to sell one of my photos). Who makes it? Gumroad, Inc Why is it the killerest? It's not PayPal. Everything is elegant, simple and quick. For entrepreneurs, I could see using it to sell stuff like advertising slots, access to a beta release, an ebook, software, stuff like that. Here's a nice demo they put together so you can see how it would work. What could be improved? Your customers don't have to hassle with PayPal, but Gumroad does use PayPal to pay you what you earn. Direct deposit in my bank account would be a lot better. They also ask for a $10 minimum owed, and 60 days to pay you (I assume they pay quicker than that though). It's a touch buggy still (I created a link, and it created two for me - easy enough to delete one though). I'd love an embed option. Let me just drop a button on a page that opens up with this Gumroad goodness. Every PayPal button on the internet tied to an intangible could be replaced with it. It's a little pricey. How much does it cost? 5% + $0.30 per transaction Rating? Reviewed by Carson McComas
  • Bootstrappers, this is the golden age of the internet frankenstartup 29 February, 2012, 11:00 am
    Today I was struck again by what an amazing time it is to build an internet startup. I was on a phone call with a startup in the early stages. They've got an awesome idea, a smart team, good connections, validated market research, a bunch of groundwork laid, and now they're ready to turn the idea into an internet business. Like many of us, they're bootstrapping it. They need an MVP. Five years ago, they'd be toast. Three years ago they'd be out of luck. Two or even one year ago it would have been really tricky to put it all together. Today? They've got amazing options.  Here's the basic sitemap I helped them put together: They can cobble together various products and pieces which are very low cost, highly functional, and build something extraordinary.  This isn't a panacea, of course. Pulling it off well is going to take some care and work, but they can do in a couple of months what would have previously been virtually impossible for a bootstrapper. And this option is available to all of us. With these resources we can focus less on the technology, and more on the business. Which means a potential for higher output, higher quality, and greater functionality for a fraction of the ramp-up time and cost. Mix in some creativity and smarts, and things are starting to get really awesome. We're in a golden age of internet startup possibilities.  I'll leave you with this nugget from Seth Godin: Make something happen If I had to pick one piece of marketing advice to give you, that would be it. Now. Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you've been holding back from... and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go.   Resources from sitemap: LaunchEffect LaunchRock Desk.com (formerly Assistly.com) GetSatisfaction Wufoo JotForm WordPress.com / WordPress.org gumroad subhub Member.ly Shopify.com (behind which you'll want Stripe.com)
  • Launch Effect 4 November, 2011, 10:31 am
    What is it? Launch Effect: A free WordPress theme anyone can use to quickly create a professional looking, virally inclined pre-launch page for your upcoming product website, app, service, etc.). Who makes it? Barrel LLC Why is it the killerest? First let me state that I'm saving you some trouble, because I did this the hard way first. For my latest venture I started by building a pre-launch site from scratch. It's a couple pages, right? How hard can it be? Well - to do well, actually - kinda hard. Or, time consuming anyway. Consuming of time you should be spending building your New Thing. 1. It's very easy to set up - virtually anyone can do it. I'm no WordPress guru, but I went from nothing to a fully launched site in just a few hours. First, I fired up a super cheap hosting account with my registrar NameCheap. Once my account was set up, I logged in, installed WordPress (literally a few mouse clicks), then downloaded the Launch Effect theme, uploaded and installed it in my WordPress, made a few tweaks, and my site was ready to go.  2. It's got built in social-sharing tools and viral spreading motivation  This is perhaps the nicest feature and something you likely wouldn't have time to build yourself. And it's all baked in, and very easy to configure.  How it works: After someone gives you their email address, they're presented with a thank you message, and a panel of social icons they can click to share.  Subscribers are also given a unique tracking link. When they use that link (or any of the icons) to share, you and they will both be able to see how many folks they've sent to the site, and how many signed up themselves. Additionally, you can give them an incentive to share. On mine, I'm giving away a free lifetime account to someone who shares and leads someone else to sign up. 3. It's got great built in tracking As mentioned above, each person who signs up will show up in your admin panel, along with the number of clicks they've sent you, and how many of those have also signed up (plus conversion rate). Both you, and they can see these stats at any time. What could be improved? Tracking your referrals is too confusing for visitors. When a visitor shares, they have access to their referral, and conversion stats, but in order to see that information, they have to re-submit their email address into the signup form. Clever - but how on earth are they supposed to know that? There's really no good way to communicate that to them at this point. It needs to integrate with MailChimp and/or Campaign Monitor. First, it's very easy to export your signups in a CSV and import them into MailChimp - which, if you're only going to do that once, is no big deal. But ideally, you'd like to get an auto-response email to your signups. This would allow you to tell them about the referral stuff noted in my last complaint, as well as a few other bells and whistles that MailChimp offers. It's a bit hard to fully customize without touching the code. Out of the box, it probably does most everything you need, and you can certainly make a perfectly good-enough site without customization. But if what you want to do isn't exactly what the theme expects you to do, you'll need to dive into the css and/or php files. This is a minor niggle though, it has very solid customization constructs. It has only a small subset of the available Google Fonts to work with.  That said, they do natively support TypeKit and MonoType. And I note, they're working improving it. This roadmap looks great. How much does it cost? Nothing (it's free) Rating? Reviewed by Carson McComas p.s. Here's the one I set up. If you make one, please share it in the comments below.  
  • Why entrepreneurs should be watching Discovery Channel's "Gold Rush" 1 November, 2011, 9:33 am
    I enjoy entrepreneurship, startups, business and the like the same way my brother in law enjoys baseball and basketball. Which is to say, I'm a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth fan. Rarely a day goes by that I don't read, study, research, observe, or consult on the topic. And like many of you, I'm constantly engaged in my own attempts at it. It captivates my attention like little else. I'm only a casual sports fan, so working this metaphor further will be perilous, but I'll just say that Gold Rush is as close as I'm going to come to the euphoria, mental swings, and irrational emotional investment that some folks have watching sports.  Gold Rush is extra interesting to me because it has all the elements of an engaging startup story, but in a completely different context than my world. For the uninitiated (and my apologies for those outside the US who may not have access to it), Gold Rush is a TV series which follows a team of hard scrabble, go-for-broke, all-in, heart-and-soul, down-on-their-luck dreamers who aim to cash in on the current high price of gold by starting a mining operation in Alaska. Watching the sacrifices they make, the bond that builds between them, the impossible odds against them, and their pure unflagging determination in the face of a relentless wave of obstacles is, in a word, inspiring. The parallels to the startup world that you and I live in are myriad.  There are probably some weirdos who appreciate entrepreneurism, yet don't like this show for some reason, but I can't imagine who. The (relative) ratings boom the show has enjoyed confirms that my affection for the show is not uncommon. If you enjoy a good story, an against-all-odds tale of struggle in realizing your dream, this is a bit of television well worth your time. If you haven't started yet, do yourself a favor and start with season one. Unfortunately they don't make it easy. But there are a couple options.
  • Answers on Startups (a Stack Exchange site) 17 May, 2011, 11:45 am
    What is it? Answers.OnStartups.com: A question and answer site focused on Startups and Entrepreneurship. Who makes it? Stack Exchange (with a dash of clout from Dharmesh Shah) Why is it the killerest? Stack Exchange (the company behind this) have built a highly effective Question-and-Answer gamification format offering. They started with the absurdly successful Stack Overflow which is focused on answering software development questions, and applied the model to various other topics, including startups. All of us have questions as we venture into these challenging startup waters, and Answers OnStartups is a productive place ask them. Because of the reward system built into the site, you will typically get high quality, and varied answers from experienced folks who know what they're talking about. It also skews heavily toward online and software startups, which is where my own passion lies (as it does for many of you). What could be improved? I've been watching and participating for a few weeks now and I've had a great time, but two things could be improved: 1) The number of participants. What it has now is great, but I would love it to reach the level of some of the higher volume Stack Exchange sites. I know a bunch of you reading this have valuable insights to share, so get over there. 2) Some repetition in questions. Equity splitting, marketing, and funding questions occupy a large percent of the questions. That said, there are still interesting and helpful questions posted frequently. How much does it cost? Free Rating? Reviewed by Carson McComas
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23

Quicksprout

  • The 10 Secrets That Make Networking Easy, Fun and Ridiculously Effective 4 October, 2012, 8:00 am
    After ten years of being an entrepreneur, I’ve learned a thing or two about networking… One of the most important things I learned is that networking is a lifestyle. It needs to be worked into your DNA so that you are networking at all times…effortlessly and happily. When you treat networking as a lifestyle you don’t get anxious when you see a stranger at a conference, when the phone rings or you’re waiting in a long line. What you see and feel is opportunity. So, let me show you how to take those opportunities and turn them into profitable relationships with these ten networking secrets. Secret #1: Assume the burden of other people’s discomfort Ever go to an event or conference and just look around the room? What do you see? While you’ll see lots of people talking to each other, you will also probably see several people sitting at tables looking through the event guide or talking on their phones. These people are probably nervous about talking to new people…so they are avoiding it by looking busy. Well, you can help these people out by introducing yourself. See, they probably want to approach total strangers…but they just find it hard to break the ice. You can come along and make life a little easier for them, which could lead to some interesting opportunities. Secret #2: Give and expect nothing in return Ask any successful networker how they spend their time and they’ll tell you that they spend their time helping other people. They’ll spend their time visiting young people in school, at colleges, over lunch and at start ups. These networkers want to help people by sharing advice and helping them to avoid the mistakes they made. If you want to be a successful networker then you need to have conversations all the time with people, and you have to keep in mind that these people may not be able to repay you…and that is okay. Secret #3: Be proud of who you are Don’t have an MBA or a PhD? No big deal. Don’t try to hide from your past or your background, because sometimes all you need in this world is some serious hustle to succeed. This is why I like to share stories of people like Alex Mangini, Doina Oncel and Juan Chapparo, entrepreneurs I met at conferences.  They talk openly and eagerly about where they came from and where they are going. And their stories are great way to connect with people. I like to be really open about who I am and where I came from…even when meeting people for the first time. This way if I never meet them again…they still feel like they know me. Secret #4: Compliment early and often In the hyper-competitive world of startups and tech business it is really easy to get discouraged or bitter when you see someone else succeed…resist that temptation and use that success as an opportunity to introduce yourself. When I hear about someone who gets a good break, I try to meet that person and compliment him or her on their success. We may even have competing businesses…but I don’t care! Networking successfully is above those petty feelings that we have, and it’s all about encouraging people. See, you never know what kind of partnership or opportunity could unfold from meeting that person…and that’s the name of the game. Secret #5: Look for common ground immediately Before I head out to a networking event or get on the phone with a client I like to do some research on the people I want to talk with. My goal is to guide the conversation to places of common interest so we never get to that awkward moment of silence. I like to leave each conversation having made some kind of personal connection…and this usually happens with finding common interests. This could be as simple as having a mutual friend or it could be that you both like the same sport or outdoor activity. Spend time learning about the people you want to talk so you can get some insight on their interests. This will help you make that personal connection. Secret #6: Tap your sphere of influence cautiously As you have these conversations and make these connections, learn to treat their personal contact information like gold. What do I mean by that? Don’t start bombarding them with email the moment you get back to your office…don’t call them once a week to “chit chat.” Most of these people are very busy and the last thing they want to do is have their time wasted…and they will notice when you waste it. Instead, only contact them when it is absolutely necessary and you know you can offer them an extraordinary benefit for talking to you. If you can appeal to their self interest then they will most certainly love to talk to you. Secret #7: Do not keep your personal and professional lives separate If you are truly authentic in both your professional and personal lives, then you don’t have to shift to different personalities when you are in the office, at home or at an event. That drains energy, and is very stressful. If you are honest, authentic, kind and helpful across the board, then you will easily make connections with other people. It’s really all about a mindset that says you are going to help people in any situation you can. That’s one of the reasons I like to meet people everywhere I go because if someone asks me for help and I can’t help them, I want to be able to connect them with someone who can. This is why I will do searches on LinkedIn and connect with people with different skill sets than I have. Or I’ll try and attend conferences or events that aren’t focused on my industry. Secret #8: Pull—never push Networking is all about conversation and it’s about finding out more about the other person than telling them about you or your company. Napoleon Hill tells a story about how he went to a dinner party, and afterwards the hostess thought he was the most charming man in the world. Why? Not because he talked about himself, but because he kept the conversation focused on the hostess by asking her questions. You have to earn the right to be heard about what you do and what you want to accomplish. People really don’t care about what you do until they know that you care about what they do. So don’t push a conversation, instead gently pull on it by asking people about themselves. Secret #9: Include social media into your networking If you are treating networking as a lifestyle, then social media will fall pretty easily into your strategy. Just think of it as another method of communication and community. No doubt you are too busy to be on every social media site like Pinterest, Tumblr or Instagram…so I would suggest starting with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you are in an industry related to male-dominated technology, then you may want to join Google Plus …if you are in field like photography or fashion, then you may want to join Pinterest. Learn how to effortlessly integrate these social media activities in your life. When meeting people ask if they are on Facebook or Twitter, and connect with them on those social platforms. Secret #10: Lose control of your marketing Fifty years ago you would hear most advertisers and marketers saying that you had to maintain control of the conversation…that you had to control your marketing. Well, with social media and the Internet, things have changed dramatically. Today it is all about exchanging great content freely for the attention of readers and prospects. Consumers used to have to sit in the backseat and take what companies fed them. Now it’s the other way around and costumers who don’t like what they are getting will revolt. Just look at what happened to Netflix. So what does this have to do with networking? The idea is to hold nothing, except for proprietary trade secrets, close to the vest. Give it all away in conversation…on social media…in helping others…and let the world spread the message about what you can do. Conclusion I love people, I love meeting people and I love helping people. I really think more than anything else, those things are responsible for the success that I have today. So if I hadn’t gotten out there to network at such a young age I would not have the opportunities that I have today. And just so you know, I struggled at first getting out of my comfort zone and talking to strangers just like you. But once you start meeting people it will start to get easier and easier. What other secrets do you have for making networking fun, easy and effective?
  • How to Handle Price Objections 1 October, 2012, 8:00 am
    Don’t you just hate hagglers? The people who complain about your price points being too high… especially when they try to negotiate you down, right? I wish I could tell you that I have a solution to stop people from complaining about your price points. But I don’t. What I do have is a solution to get those complainers over the fact that you have a price that is “high”. And more importantly get them to not only accept your high price points, but also feel good about handing over their money to you. Here’s how you can handle price objections: Create case studies If you really want to show the value in what you offer, you have to create case studies. The simple ones won’t cut it, you have to give detailed ones… ideally with the exact things you provided and the results. To legitimize the case studies, make sure you put in testimonials from customers. This can be done in the form of video or text and if you happen to go the text route, make sure you include: Their full name Company name Their picture Title at the company If you want to see an example of a good case study, check this one out from Conversion Rate Experts. Offer a free trial One of the easiest ways to handle price objections is to offer a free trial. Remember, just because you are offering a free trial doesn’t mean you can’t take a credit card up front. With Crazy Egg, one of our biggest objections from people is that our prices are too high. We created a “free trial” offering in which people had to put in their credit card up front. That offer converted at 59% higher than our 30 day money back guarantee offer. Keep in mind that you will get a lot of people who will cancel your service before their free trial is up, so when you a/b test this you have to also include cancelations into your calculations. Explain the value The easiest way to demand a high price point is to explain how much money you are going to either make a company, or how much money you will save them. If you can explain this in an easy to understand fashion and provide case studies to back it up, it shouldn’t be hard to demand a premium price. A great way to do this is through sales copy. And don’t worry, your copy doesn’t have to be sleazy. I do this with Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com and I also used to do it for my Quick Sprout Traffic System. You could even spice up your sales copy by including a video incase people don’t want to read your copy. Offer payment plans When I used to sell the Quick Sprout Traffic System, some people felt it was a bit too expensive. They didn’t like the fact that I was charging $197 for an eBook, and video/audio training. Instead of reducing the price I tested out a few payment plan options: 3 payments of $97. 4 payments of $67. Although both pricing plans in total were more expensive than the original price of $197, the 3 payments plan option converted at 34% more than the original offering and the 4 payment plan option converted at 52% better than the original. With the 3 payment plan option I still got complaints about my prices being too high, but with the 4 payment plan option, I got almost no complaints. Plus I was able to charge more than the original price of $197. Explain what you don’t charge for Just like any good business, you want to go above and beyond for your customers. Which is why you probably provide a few little extra things for your customers at no charge. When people start to complain about your price points, you should explain how you go the extra mile for your customers and all of the little things you do for free. You can even express this on your website by bundling all of that extra stuff you provide into a “free bonus” for anyone that purchases your product or service. Explain why your price points are high If people understand why your prices are what they are, they’ll be more likely to pay them. Tell them your fix costs, explain what their money is being spent on, and even tell them your profit margins. People know you are in business to make money, but no one wants to feel like they are being screwed over. If your margins are reasonable and you explain your costs to potential customers, they shouldn’t have an issue. For example, Single Grain had an issue in which potential customers felt their prices were too expensive. Instead of reducing their prices they explained to the companies why they charge so much, then they broke down their costs and even shared their margins. By doing this they were able to sign on 33% more new customers. Offer lower price points for less and then upsell Now this won’t work for all businesses, but you could lower your price by offering a limited version of your product or service. Plus if people are happy and looking for more, it creates upsell opportunities. I actually had this happen to me when I tried hiring a copywriter by the name of Michael Williams. I didn’t want to pay his fee of $12,000 so he sold me on a smaller package that only cost me $3000. Funny enough, after 2 months, I went back to him and paid an additional $9000 to receive the rest of his services as I had a huge ROI on my initial investment. At KISSmetrics, upsells make up almost 10% of our new monthly revenue. We’ve found that a lot of companies at first don’t want to pay for our higher plans, but within 3 months of using our product, they’ll upgrade to a higher end plan after seeing a positive ROI. Focus on how you are better than the competition If people didn’t see the value in cars like BMW or Mercedes Benz, they would just buy something affordable like a KIA. The fact is a car like a BMW or Mercedes Benz not only has more features than a KIA, but also is better built. Consider creating a comparison chart that shows how you differ from the competition. This is done on the homepage of Crazy Egg. It provided a single digit increase in conversions, so not a huge boost but better than nothing at all. It also reduced support questions by almost half in regards to our prices versus our competitors’ prices. Stress the drawbacks of a lower price point In many cases, lower prices will come with a drawback. If you can explain the drawbacks of the lower price you can persuade people to pay your premium prices. A good example of this is RackSpace. They are one of the largest hosting companies and possibly one of the most expensive. They charge a lot, but their uptime rate is phenomenal. If you ever speak with one of their sales representatives they’ll quickly explain they are expensive, but they rarely if ever go down. They’ll also explain that their competitors may be cheaper but tend to go down more often. Then finally they’ll close hard at the end by asking what it would cost you every minute your website is down. For this reason they have done extremely well with their high price points. The company is worth almost 9 billion dollars as of today. Leverage perceptual price points There are a lot of little tricks you can do to make your price points seem like they are lower than they actually are. Walmart has actually mastered this. Instead of charging you $50 for something, they’ll charge you $49.97. That way you emotionally feel like you are getting a good deal. If you want to learn more about physiological pricing, you should check out this blog post on KISSmetrics. It has some great tactics with examples you can use and learn from. Even the smallest thing can have a huge impact on your sales. Such as removing the “$” sign from your price points, which can cause a boost in sales and reduce price objections. Conclusion The next time you are given a hard time about your high prices, don’t give in! Instead use the tactics above so you can charge the prices you deserve. I want to know how the tactics above work for you, so feel free to leave a comment with your findings or with any other ways you handle price objections.
  • Finally: An Easy-to-Understand Link Building Plan to Help You Recover from Penguin and Panda 27 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    Google has been brutalizing spammy websites for the last year with several aggressive updates. Penguin and Panda are the two most notable. While Panda targeted poor content, Penguin was targeting, for the most part, poor links. The question for you as a blogger or website owner is this: how do you recover and thrive in this new SEO landscape? What are some of the link-building tactics you should engage to capitalize on these changes? This guide will help you answer those questions…and more. Get press release links There are really two ways to get press release links: send your own or get included on someone else’s. You can’t really control the last one (though I will tell you what you need to do to get on someone else’s press release), so let’s focus on sending your own press release. I’ve spoken about this before on a post about getting infographics to go viral, so I’ll just cover this quickly before I talk about the actual link anchor text. Here are three tips on creating powerful press releases: Compelling lead: This is what is going to stop people and draw them in, so write a killer headline and first sentence. Unique approach: Don’t copy anybody. Get out of the box and craft an original hook that will pull people through your press release. Reader problems: Know your audience and solve one of their most meaningful problems. Hit their hot buttons. Some of the best services to use for online press releases is PRWeb, PR Newswire, PR Leap, and PR Free. Now let’s talk about the actual links. Less is more – Don’t cram your press release with a ton of links. Two or three links is enough. The key is that it is natural and doesn’t seem forced. Think strategically – Where are these links pointing to? Will they take the reader into a deeper discussion on a relevant topic? Or will they send them to a landing page they don’t expect? Your goal is to engage readers, and not annoy them. Diversify the URLs – Do not keep driving links in your press release to the same URL. If you have three links, then you should be sending them to three different URLs. Targeted keywords – Never waste anchor text on non-descriptive links like “read more” or “view video.” And avoid sending them to your home page, too. Make your anchor text work by using targeted keywords to get the best SEO value. Keyword formula – The best way to use keywords is in your headline, your lead and then your links. Press releases can be pretty pricy, so make sure you are investing heavily in getting it right. If that means hiring a writer skilled in press releases…so be it. It will be worth it. Get image links One often overlooked strategy for link building is with your images or your well designed web site. For example, if you’ve redesigned your website and it’s got some stunning features, then you might want to share it with some CSS galleries. Or you also might want to approach these galleries if you’ve run some design tests with some pretty interesting results. Another approach is to simply order your new site to be redesigned in CSS, and then have it submitted to CSS directories like CSS Mania, Best Web Gallery or CSS Elite. You can actually have your site submitted to over 100 galleries for $20 with CSS Gallery List. Naturally, if you get accepted into these galleries, you’ll get a link from a pretty good PageRank site. You can also use high-quality images on your site and posts and then give people permission to embed them on their own sites or pin to Pinterest. If you are really ambitious why not create a gallery and then give people access to the images. Right there on the page they can grab the code to embed images on their site. To make this strategy really work, you’ll want to follow some of these best practices: High-quality images – It’s essential that you provide images that look professional. You can’t expect anyone to take and use photos that look like stock or are blurry. The better the photos, then the better your image link building strategy will be. Make delivery easy – Grabbing an image shouldn’t be something users have to jump through loops to do. It should be as simple as grabbing the embed code. Make this a regular feature – Just like frequency with blog posts, displaying new images should be on a predictable schedule. Of course offer an RSS feed for this so people don’t have to check back every day. Compress images – Large images can suppress your page speed, and a huge library of images can slow down your entire site, so make sure you optimize your images for speed by compressing. You can use the WordPress plugin Smush.It. Get social media links When Twitter first came out, people started blogging a lot less and that meant that there were few “round up posts” that you could count on to get links for your content. Now you might get dozens of tweets and likes for a post, where in the past you might have gotten four or five links. Bloggers hated that because they weren’t getting the link juice. Well, now Google is starting to catch up and looking at social signals as a factor in the relevancy of content. Branded3 did a study where they found out that tweets actually do impact search rankings and recently Catalyst discovered that Google’s Authorship Markup raised click through rates. So, with that in mind let’s look at ten tactics you can increase social signals to your content. Use Triberr – This is a social media network that puts you in a “tribe” with like-minded bloggers. Your tribe could be five people or twenty people. It could have someone with 300 followers or 300,000. The cool thing is when you publish new content, they all automatically share it on their Twitter streams. Make social share buttons obvious – Make it easy for somebody to share you content. Use a scrolling share bar, and put these buttons at the end of the post, too. Create a worth-while social brand – If you have a lame Twitter account, people may be less likely to share your content. Build your social media brand so people will want to share your content. Encourage sharing - Don’t be afraid to ask someone for a tweet or like. Shoot an influencer an email or DM and tell them you have content their audience might like. Doesn’t mean they’ll do it…but it never hurts to ask. Create world-class content – Nobody is going to share crappy work, so make sure you are spending time building great videos, blog posts, interviews, infographics and so on. People want to share great content. So give it to them. Get content links The last type of link you’ll want to get is simply links from other sites. This could just be from another blogger who is linking to your content in his latest post. Or it could be a link from a guest blog post you published on another site that links back to you. Or it could be the link you leave in your bio. If you really want to boost your skills in the link game, check out these resources for link building: The Inside Scoop to Finding Link Building Opportunities with Free Alerts The 10 Golden Rules to Attracting Authority Links 7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid 10 Hard-Hitting Link Building Tactics That’ll Boost Your Rankings How to Leverage Link Blending and Stage 2 Link Building to Maximize Your Rankings Diversify your anchor text A good link building plan will drive an assortment of different kinds of links to your site. You should use a similar sort of mind set: creating a variety of different kinds of anchor texts. Let me show you the five most common: Ensure you have brand links – Whether it is your blog or business or both, make sure you sprinkle in a good dose of these anchor text links into your content. For me that could include Quick Sprout (my blog), KISSmetrics (my company) or Crazy Egg (my other company). And don’t forget your name. Exact-match keyword links – These are anchor text that matches the keywords you are trying to optimize. For instance, one of the keyword phrases that I could optimize this article for is Panda link building plan. The other one could be Penguin link building plan. Partial-match keyword links – It’s important not to over-optimize with exact match keywords, otherwise you can look like you are trying to game the system…and Google may penalize you for that. So use partial matches for this blog post could be Panda recovery plan or post-Penguin link strategy. Non-descriptive links – Finally, don’t forget to use anchor text that has zero keyword value. I’m talking about links like “Read More” or “Download this free book.” But if you are creating good content you won’t have to worry about “non-descriptive links” as you will naturally get them. Page title links – A portion of your links should be the same as your page title. For this blog post it would be incoming links that would have the anchor text of “Finally: An Easy-to-Understand Link Building Plan to Help You Recover from Penguin and Panda”. The key is simply to be natural when you are creating links. Do rigorous keyword research before you create content (at least during the content strategy stage), print out the list so you have it nearby…and then write. There is no way to get this perfect, so don’t worry about it. Conclusion Whether you actually got crushed by Penguin or Panda or not, it’s still important to know what happened with these two updates and how to respond, especially since a lot of these changes are meant to help content creators. And it really all boils down to this: creating value for the web. If you can do that on a consistent basis then you’ll rise in the rankings, get the exposure you deserve and succeed in your online business! What other link-building tips can you share to help people recover from Panda and Penguin?
  • 15 Little Life Experiments That Will Change Your Life 24 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    I test every little thing in my business… from call to action buttons, headlines, pricing plans, to even my design colors. And over the last 5 years I can confidently say it have made a few extra million dollars because of testing. But there is 1 big issue! Over the years I’ve optimized my business through testing, but I haven’t optimized my personal life. And just like business, you can optimize yourself so that you can do things like wake up earlier, have better relationships, work out more effectively, and even make more money. Just like testing in business, before you start fine tuning yourself it’s best to learn from other people’s experiences. So my buddy, Ramit Sethi, interviewed me and 14 other people to come up with some ways you can optimize your personal life. Here are 15 little life experiments that will change your life: How to increase your gym attendance by 300% If you are like my buddy Ramit and I, you probably have problems getting yourself motivated to go to the gym. Every morning, you probably groggily wake up and say, “ugh…I know I should get up…” and then roll over and go back to sleep. Day after day — even though you genuinely wanted to go to the gym. Ramit finally realized that “motivation” alone has very little to do with successfully changing behaviors. He started testing different techniques: adding gym to his calendar, sleeping 30 minutes earlier. He would test different approaches for 2 weeks, noting the outcome in a wiki. Sadly, he got mediocre results. But when he sat down to analyze why he wasn’t going to the gym, he realized: his closet was in another room. That meant he had to walk out in the cold, in his boxer shorts, to the other room, shivering while put on his clothes. It was easier to just stay in bed. Once he realized this, he folded his clothes and shoes the night before. When he woke up the next morning, he would roll over and see his gym clothes sitting on the floor. In fact, he couldn’t get up without stepping on them! The result? His gym attendance soared by over 300%. Key Takeaway: What tactics could you use to increase your gym attendance? Could you find a workout partner? Hire a trainer? Or simply use the “folded-clothes” approach? My suggestion: test them all. How to text message important people (and girls) Don’t you hate it when you text message important people or even girls and they don’t respond? Well, Nick Kho, figured out how to get people to respond to his text messages 90% of the time. Here’s how: Immediately after getting
 a phone number of a beautiful woman or 
an important person, send them a text message that states: Amber — it was a pleasure to meet you. Save my phone number in your phone because if you are like me, you don’t answer unrecognized calls. Cheers, Nick Over 90% of the time, you get an almost instant response of something to the effect of, “lol. I’m so like that too. Will do and it was great to meet you.” This works because the text makes the recipient feel important. It demonstrates that you have the intent to stay in touch with her after our encounter while simultaneously showing that you are someone that has higher value with an active social life. Nick has found that this script helps a lot in removing phone flakes because most beautiful women, and any other busy people, really don’t answer unrecognized phone calls. This is a major problem to a lot of guys who have great interactions with a woman they just met or a very important contact who is busy, especially if it was their first encounter with that person from an initial cold approach. In addition, when you call the recipient you’ve met after using this script, she is 3x more likely to answer the phone than if you were an unrecognized phone call. Key Takeaway: Follow-through is just as important, if not more, than approach. How to double sales (and halve refunds) by eliminating risk Do you want to double your sales? Well of course, who doesn’t, right! Jordan Reasoner ran a test on his business that not only doubled his sales, but it decreased his refunds by half. Here’s how he did it: Jordan helps people with digestive diseases like Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis naturally treat their symptoms with diet. In 2007, he was diagnosed with a life-threatening digestive disease, and this diet was so effective it saved his life. He took his experiences and techniques and wrote an ebook to help other people with similar problems. But the first year he had a big problem: 
his customers didn’t trust him. Why would
a sick, skeptical person try a $37 ebook? Why risk throwing away more money on yet another failed treatment that won’t work? Refunds were high, and people were still afraid to try the diet. That’s when he decided to completely eliminate peoples’ risk by testing a more confident 365-day guarantee against his original 60-day guarantee. What happened blew his mind. Refunds dropped 44% (from 9.25% to 5.14%)…sales doubled (roughly 200% increase)…and customers sent in more success stories than ever! All because of trust, which came naturally after giving people an entire year to try the diet and if it didn’t work, refunding their money… something they’d never get from the medical community. Key Takeaway: If you want people to trust you and you’re confident, ask yourself: “how can I completely eliminate risk to earn their trust?” Then test it. You may be surprised at the results. Conclusion Everything can be optimized in life… so don’t just try to optimize your business. I want you to read the rest of the “15 Little Life Experiments That Will Change Your Life” ebook (don’t worry, it’s FREE) and come back here and share what you have learned in the comments. If we all participate, share some life hacks, we can all live a more efficient life! I can’t wait to hear some of your life hacks.
  • How to Make Your Site Insanely Fast 20 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    No matter how beautiful your site is, your website page speed is critical to success.  Not only do faster load times help boost search engine rankings, but 40% of people will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. And to make matters worse, ever delayed second it takes your website to load, will cause a 7% decrease in your conversion rate. So how do you minimize your load times so you can maximize your revenue? Well, I’ve used the techniques below to optimize Quick Sprout and I’ve improved my load time by 5 seconds. Results of course vary, but if you follow the techniques below you can expect anywhere from four to six seconds in time savings. The basics For starters, the key to faster pages is reducing the front-end load time. For the end-user, 80% of the response time is tied up in HTTP requests. This is the performance golden rule. That means you have to minimize those requests. Here’s how to do that: Simplicity – Make the page design simple. One or two images, text. But you’ll probably want richer components on your site. Combination – Taking all the scripts and piling them into a single script, and similarly combining all CSS into a single stylesheet. The rest of the performance techniques I’ll share with you will also render HTTP requests lower. Combine images with CSS sprites If you have many images on your page, then you are forcing multiple roundtrips of the server to get all the resources secured. This slows down page speed. Sprites combine all background images on a page into one single image. The proper image segment will be displayed because of the CSS background-image and back-ground position properties. CSS spites reduce: Delays caused by roundtrips made as a server is downloading other resources. Request overhead. Total number of bytes a page downloads. You can use a service like SpriteMe to make this process easy. Otherwise you can follow the sprite recommendations made by Google. Enable compression You can compress resources by using deflate or gzip to actually lower the number of bytes a page is sending over a network. Using the GZIP compression algorithm, popular web servers like Apache and IIS do this automatically on HTML, CSS and javascript. You still need to optimize your content for compression. There are two things you need to do to make sure your web content compresses effectively: Create consistency across your HTML and CSS code. This happens when you: Order the CSS key-value pairs in a common sense way, like alphabetically. Do the same with your HTML attributes. Be consistent with your casing and use lowercase as often as possible. Make sure you are consistent with your HTML tag attribute quotes. Minify JavaScript and CSS – By getting rid of unnecessary line breaks, extra space, etc, this will speed up parsing, downloading and executing. I recommend using one of these tools to minify JavaScript: JSMin, Closure Compiler or Yahoo’s Compressor. Spread your static content with CDNs Because the location of the user impacts page load speed, spreading your content across servers will speed up this process. You can use a content delivery network (CDN) to make this happen. What exactly is a CDN? It’s just a collection of servers that exist at different places in the world. CDNs do two things: Send files faster – Cached files are sent from locations that are closer to the specified user. File size shrinks – CDNs deliver content that is without cookies. No bloated files. For example, a CDN service provider could have servers in California, New York, Sweden and Hong Kong. When a user accesses your site the server with the fastest network hops or quickest response time delivers the content. Someone in Philippines might get served from Hong Kong. Someone in Mexico might get served content from California. Using a CDN is a pretty simple code change, but it can be expensive. And while some large Internet providers have their own CDN, it’s best to use a service provider devoted to CDNs. Leverage browsing caching by using expires headers Any time someone visits your website their browser will store a ton of files like stylesheets, scripts and images onto their hard drive. That will reduce the number of HTTP requests and speed things up next time they visit. Those files have an expiration date in the header. This is known as “expires headers.” By default that expiration date could be set to 24 hours—meaning it will update every day. Very few—if any—websites need that short of an expiration date. There are two things about this rule you have to keep in mind: Static components – Set a “Never expire” policy far into the future. These components become cachable, avoiding time-consuming and unnecessary HTTP requests. Expires headers should be used for images, Flash, scripts and stylesheets. Dynamic component – Use a cache-control header to help the browser with conditional requests. The expires headers will tell a server how long to cache an item. Most static files should be set to 1 year in the future. Expires: Thu, 20 September 2013 20:00:00 GMT Apache servers should use the ExpiresDefault command to set the date out in the future compared to the relative time. Using the example above, the command would look like this: ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 year” You will have to change the component’s filename when you change that component in the future. From Google, you can see what cache response headers HTTP/1.1 provides. Enable HTTP keep-alive response headers HTTP requests are simple—they grab and send a single file and then close. That may be simple but it isn’t very fast. Keep-alive is a trick that basically says the web browser and server agree to use the same connection to grab and send multiple files. In other words, the server holds the connection open while you are on the site instead of opening a new connection with every request. This way your processor, network and memory don’t have to work too hard. Here are two common ways of enabling keep-alive: Enable HTTP keep-alive on Window servers Apache optimization: KeepAlive On or Off? Three performance testing tools Besides the tools that I shared throughout this article to help you with each performance-improving technique, here are three basic tools that will evaluate your site and then give you recommendations for improving it. Pingdom Website Speed Test This free page test tool from Pingdom will test the speed of your website. The results will match what real users experience because the test is done with real web browsers, including Chrome were Pingdom tests load speed, record the performance data and so on. And the results will show you what about a particular page is fast, slow or too big. YSlow This Yahoo tool grades a web page based on rules for high performance pages, gives you a summary of a page’s components, shows you stats on a page, offers performance analysis tools like Smush.it and JSLint, and then gives you a summary of what you need to do to improve your page’s performance. There is also a Chrome extension, which allows you test the page speed of any website: Page Speed Insights This is Google’s slick tool for web developers to help improve your website performance. With a simple drop of a URL into the text box and a click of the button and you’ll get your report: Suggestions for performance are broken down into high, medium, low and experimental priority. This is the tool that I used to come up with the recommendations above. Conclusion While websites get richer and cooler, this means that page speed also slows down. So each time you are getting ready to implement a new plug-in, code, rich-media…you have to ask yourself: What is going to be the impact on page and site speed? Sacrificing site speed to have the newest tool is probably not worth the money you may lose because of latency issues. So until a tool proves itself as a money maker, it’s probably best to hold off. What other ways or tools have you used to improve your site performance?
  • Author Rank: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dominating Search with Content Marketing 17 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    If you are a content marketer, blogger or writer, you’ll be happy to hear that there have been five recent SEO changes that will play to your strengths. Google made these changes for two reasons: selfish reasons and selfless reasons. Selfish in that these changes will keep more people on Google’s products. Not a bad thing from a business standpoint, but from a user standpoint some of these changes impact search negatively: The selfless reason is that Google is trying to deliver more content that is based on personal signals. They are trying to take advantage of the fact that people are more likely to read or buy something if they see a friend likes it, too. Whatever the reason for these changes, this is really good news for anyone who makes a living at creating content. Let me show you the changes, and then simple ways how you can leverage each one. Optimize personalized search Google has changed the SEO game by delivering personal results. This, of course, means that when you search for “social media tools” you will get different results than I will. The factors that influence these results are several: Google personalized search must be turned on – This is done by default. If you want to turn this off, you have two options. Simply sign out or click on the globe icon in the upper right corner. Your web browsing history – Google stores your browsing history, and then uses that information to dictate what kind of content it will serve up based upon your search term. Your content – If you are an online content author, then Google will deliver your relevant content for a search. Content shared by your social circles – Including you. These factors dramatically change the landscape. In fact, this pretty much ruins everything Google has attempted to do when it comes to organic search. No doubt it is a bold and risky move, but Google understands that the search landscape is changing. People are searching less and discovering more from content on the social web. Thus the emphasis on search signals such as the number of tweets. What are some steps you should take to optimize your content for personalized search? Increase your Google+ circles – It was no accident that Google launched Search Plus You World and their social network close together in time. The goal is to get people to sign up for Google+, and then making their circles larger. The more people you have in your circles, the higher in rankings relevant content will show up on a Google search. Your Circles see your content – Content related to people in your Circles will get top spots when people search. You can see the impact this has by using Google’s Ripple. Drive more traffic to your site – When someone visits your site, Google then connects your site with that visit, and then will deliver relevant content from your site to that person next time they search. When Google brings back the “Block Site” feature, naturally this won’t happen if someone hits your site, bounces out and then blocks it. Increase social sharing Another way in which you as a content creator can dominate the search rankings with your content is to get more and more social shares. A study by branded3 proved the connection between tweets to a particular URL and its ranking. Their results showed: 50 tweets or less – Not sure how much, but URLs received benefit in rankings with 50 tweets or less, but those benefits declined after that. 5,000 tweets – There’s a huge jump for a page that gets an average of 5,000 tweets. This would be content that goes viral on Mashable, BuzzFeed or Copyblogger. 7,500 tweets – When a page gets 7,500 or more tweets, they can easily show up in the top five SERPs on Google. Here’s a quick snapshot of ranking positions based upon tweets: No doubt it makes sense: if you have a page that’s got over 1,000 tweets…it’s going to do a lot better than a similar page in content that only has 40 tweets. This is probably true as well with other social networks, too, like Facebook. What this means to you as a content creator who wants to rank high is that you need to increase the number of shares your content is getting. Here are some tactics to help you: Make the social sharing buttons obvious – Your readers should never have to search for your social sharing buttons. Make them easy to find using a social sharing plug in that scrolls a long side the content. The other place to include buttons is at the end of the article. Encourage your readers to share – If you don’t come out and ask, then you may miss out on a lot of opportunities. Telling people what to do will boost your shares. For example, Dan Zarella did a study of re-tweets with “please RT.” Those generated 4 times as many RTs as tweets that without those words. Engage influencers  – Make a connection with a social media influencer, do lots of favors for them…and then ask them to share your content. How do you get their attention? Here are some tactics: Post round ups – Write a blog post that rounds up social influencers content and share it. Eventually they’ll see your efforts and reward you. Do a guest post – If you can land a great guest posting gig that a lot of influencers read, they’ll likely tweet your stuff…and maybe even follow you. Interviews – Conducting interviews with social media influencers is a great way to get to know these people. Employ semantic keyword research As Google gets better at segmenting search you’ll have more opportunities to rank higher and higher in verticals, which always leads to higher conversion rates since your prospects are better qualified. This means that you need to look for “advanced search” keywords. The procedure is pretty simple. Let me show you. When you perform a search, you can refine results with advanced search tool tucked away in the “Show search tools” on the right hand column: Your next step is to click “related searches”… …and then you’ll get a boat load of related topics for your search query: As you can see above, Google is giving you semantic options. Grab these keywords and start checking search volume with Google’s Keyword tool. Another easy tool you can use is Google Instant, which gives you even more choices than “advanced search”: Finally, make your keyword list better through Google Insights for Search. This tool will allow you to narrow keywords down via categories, for instance. If you want to learn more about semantic search and keywords, check out these articles: How to Improve Your Rankings with Semantic Keyword Research The 3-Step Process to Creating an Effective and Profitable Keyword Plan How to Create Smarter Content Using Semantic Keyword Research Play with the Panda update For spammers and content farms, Google’s Panda update was a nightmare. It was meant to penalize sites with low-quality content, and it came down hard. The upside is that those who are willing to create long-form blog posts that are detailed and useful will be rewarded. To help content creators create this kind of content, Google issued a blog post that recommended you to think like a Google engineer and asked questions to determine the value of your content. Since then I’ve created several blog posts that will help you create this kind of content: How to Write SEO-Friendly Blog Posts with These 13 Questions Neil Patel’s Guide to Writing Popular Blog Posts Neil Patel’s Guide to Blogging How to Write a Blog Post Implement the Google Authorship Markup There’s no denying it, rich snippet will increase SERP CTR and traffic. And search marketing firm Catalyst proved it. Here’s there analytics from their test (the arrow is when the rich snippet started to show up in results): If you have a hard time seeing, let me tell you what this amounted to a 150% increase! Although the results may vary, you can implement the Google’s authorship snippet and benefit from the same kinds of results. This is what it looks like: Not only does my profile show up, but the number of people in my Google+ network, and a link to see “More by Neil Patel.” Google is still perfecting this feature, so it is not a predictable or consistent feature, meaning you may implement, see results on some posts but not others…not see any results for a week or too…and it’s somewhat complicated to set up. That’s why I tried to create a simple guide to Google Authorship Markup. But it’s worth investing the time to set up because adoption of this feature is slow. That means you will definitely stand out in search results. In fact, adoption is only at about 1 out of five searches delivering the rel=author in top 100 results. Conclusion I think it is a really great time to be a content marketer! Even though we still have issues with people plagiarizing, for the most part those who dominated the search engines with shallow content are no longer a threat. Plus, the Google Authorship Markup is going to be really hard for brands to adopt since it is geared toward individual authors, which means you can be a David and fight the Goliath…and beat him! What other recent SEO changes benefit content marketers?
  • 75 Tips to Manage Your Social Media Efforts in 2012 10 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    With all of Google’s post-Penguin focus on natural link building and the increasingly high weight given to social performance by the company’s algorithms, it’s clear that social media marketing should be a priority for every business operating online these days. However, when it comes to social networking, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about promoting your business.  Take a look at the following tips to see what’s working in 2012, and which outdated social media marketing tactics should be avoided at all costs! On Your Website: Run a blog (and update it more than once a month) – The fastest way to beef up your social media marketing campaign is with frequent blog posts that your readers can share across their own social networking profiles. Respond to comments on your company’s blog posts – To encourage social sharing, you’ll want to start by building a community atmosphere on your blog.  Responding to comments on your posts demonstrates your willingness to engage with your audience. Post new blog posts to your social media profiles multiple times – Use tools that automatically add your posts to your social media profiles, but also use tools like Buffer that enable you to post your links multiple times.  This is especially important on Twitter, where updates can become buried quickly by the stream. Add social sharing buttons to the top and bottom of your blog posts (or use a scrolling option like Digg) – Some readers will share your posts as soon as they land on your pages, while others will want to wait until they’ve read everything before sharing.  Accommodate both styles with social sharing tools found in multiple places. Maintain a good balance of business, personal and promotional content on your blog – Business blogs shouldn’t be too dry, but they shouldn’t be overly personal either.  Use the “5:3:2 Rule” for best results. Encourage readers to share your posts on their social networking profiles – Don’t expect that all users will take action to share your posts without your explicit prompting.  Ask, and ye shall (maybe) receive! Advertise your social media profiles wherever you are online – If you send out an email newsletter, post to industry forums or engage in any other type of activity online, you should be advertising your social media presence whenever possible. Use your Google Analytics account to identify possible post topics – To come up with content topics that your readers will want to share, take a look at your top content pieces and top keywords within Google Analytics, and use this information to create future posts. Practice creating viral content – Monitor the performance of your blog articles and try to find commonalities between the posts that do best.  Use the lessons you’ve extrapolated in future posts to increase your likelihood of going viral. Set social media goals and monitor your ROI – Take the time to determine what specific benefits your social media marketing campaigns offer and compare them to your investments to better understand your overall marketing ROI. On Your Facebook Page: Offer free, unique products on your page – People love free stuff, so make something interesting available on your Facebook page and your followers are sure to share your profile with others. Set up your Facebook vanity URL – To make your page as easy to remember as possible, set up a custom URL that reflects your business name or tagline. Customize every graphic option available on your Timeline profile – Within your page Timeline, you can customize your cover photo, your profile image and the icons associated with all of your page’s apps.  Modify each element to create a consistent visual brand on your page. Use Featured Events to highlight your company’s milestones – Use full page-width Featured Events to recreate your company’s story and engage readers.  Here are seven examples of companies doing this well for your reference. Encourage fans to ensure your updates show up in their News Feeds – Recent Facebook changes mean that not all users who have liked your page will see your updates in their News Feeds.  Encourage them the take the following actions to make your posts visible. Follow up with reader comments – Any time someone posts on your organization’s page Wall, take the time to follow up.  Nothing reflects worse on a company than a series of unanswered comments or questions! Post engaging question prompts of comments to your timeline – Take advantage of Facebook’s social nature by getting people talking!  Asking question prompts like, “If you were stuck on a desert island, what five items would you want to have with you?” is a fun way to engage readers and keep them checking back. Create a custom branded Facebook app – If you have the budget, custom branded Facebook apps can add memorability and functionality to an otherwise plain fan page. Use apps that allow you to offer special discounts to followers who “Like” your page – If you do decide to go the app route, pay particular attention to programs that allow you to exchange premium content for page “Likes,” as these will help to build social proof. Experiment with Facebook Ads for “Likes” – Similarly, if you’re having trouble attracting followers the old-fashioned way, running Facebook Ads for “Likes” can help to quickly boost your subscriber base. Monitor your Facebook Insights – Facebook’s Insights program offers tons of valuable engagement statistics, so pay attention to the information displayed in this area and use it to structure your future campaigns. Respond professionally to negative feedback – Occasionally, you may encounter complaints on your Facebook page.  Handle these instances professionally and appropriately, without letting your emotions get the best of you! Create follower groups and segment your status updates – To make sure your status updates are as interesting as possible to your followers, experiment with some of the segmenting features Facebook offers. Determine the commercial value of a Facebook “Like” for your business – Having more “Likes” may increase your sales – or it may not.  Take the time to determine what impact Facebook promotions have on your bottom line in order to understand how much emphasis this tool should receive in your social media marketing campaigns. On Your Twitter Page: Make sure your username is memorable – Experiment with different variations until you find a memorable username that’s both available and meets Twitter’s character limits. Use a headshot instead of your logo for your profile picture – Twitter profile pictures aren’t large when displayed on the site, which means that logo detail can’t usually be seen.  Headshots or pictures of faces are much more appealing to site users. Customize your Twitter background – With the number of free tools online that can be used to create custom Twitter backgrounds, there’s no excuse not to take this important branding step. Split test your bio – Change your bio frequently and track which versions result in the most new subscribers. Post controversial content­ – Twitter makes it easy to share interesting content, which is why controversial opinion pieces often get spread around like wildfire. Monitor Tailored Trends within your industry – Instead of monitoring Twitter trends by geographic region, use the social network’s new Tailored Trends tool to monitor topics of interest within your industry. Get “best of Twitter” updates in your inbox – Using Twitter’s newest notification features can help you to track trending topics within your industry if you aren’t able to stop by the site frequently. Be personal – Twitter users want more personal information than followers on any other social network, so break down the barriers a bit here and share more details about your life on this site (just don’t go too crazy – save your drunken musings for your personal Facebook profile!). Follow users that follow your industry’s experts – To find new followers (and, consequently, boost your perceived authority on Twitter), go through the follower lists of experts in your field and follow as many new people as possible.  Many will follow you back automatically. Use Twitaholic to identify and build relationships with power Twitter users – Creating and leveraging relationships with power users in your industry is a great way to get your own content seen as quickly as possible.  Use Twitaholic to find these top performers within your field. Try Tweriod to determine when your tweets will be most effective – Using the free Tweriod tool will tell you when your followers are most active (and, therefore, when they’re most likely to see your messages). Use Buffer to pre-load your Twitter stream with helpful content – If you can’t be on Twitter all day, the Buffer tool (linked to above) can automatically release pre-loaded messages at certain times in order to build your perceived presence. Post inspirational quotes and sayings – No matter how cheesy or repetitive they may be, tweets based on popular or inspirational quotes tend to be shared on Twitter more often than other types of content.  Use them sparingly, however! Try Triberr to amplify your follower reach – Triberr enables you to team up with a network of friends to automatically share each other’s tweets, making it a great way to increase your online reach and quickly build exposure. Use industry hashtags appropriately – Keep an eye out for hashtags that are popular within your industry, but use them carefully.  Tying your content to hashtags will increase your exposure, but plenty of businesses have been burned by using these tools inappropriately (see: Kenneth Cole). Use Twitpic to share fun images – Finally, Twitter users respond well to images, so take the time to set up a Twitpic account for your Twitter profile and share fun pictures of your everyday life. On Your Google+ Page: Make use of enhanced image and video galleries – Google’s galleries are by far the coolest of the media features found in today’s popular social networking websites, so use them to their full advantage by uploading as many images and videos as possible. Add action-oriented hover text to your profile – Use Google’s hover text features to make the “at a glance” details people see when hovering over your name as engaging as possible. Use enabled formatting commands throughout your updates and posted content – Google+ supports a few different formatting commands (including bold, italic and strikethroughs), so take advantage of these tools to make your posts and status updates more visually appealing. Tie other social networking profiles to Google+ using the “Recommended Links” section – Make sure that your Google+ followers can find you on other networks by linking out to your various social media profiles. Post regularly, even if you’re the only one in your industry doing so! – Google+ is slowly building steam, but it’s still pretty quiet in some markets.  Even if this is the case in your field, keep up your marketing efforts on this service in order to secure the SEO benefits that come along with popularity on Google+. Claim any relevant Google+ properties – Depending on the type of business you run, you may be eligible for both a Google+ Page for business and a Google+ Local page.  Claim both if you’re able to in order to expand your social footprint. Hosting Google+ Hangouts on Air with Youtube – Videos are ranking incredibly well in the SERPs right now, so bolster your company’s Youtube channel by conducing Google+ hangouts with customers or followers on this popular video service. Attend public Google+ Hangouts hosted by industry experts – If others in your industry host open Google+ hangouts, join them in order to build relationships with these power users and expand your own web presence. Set up rel=author attributes to claim your blog content – To claim rel=author attributes, you’ll need to link your blog content with your Google+ profile. Segment your Circles to provide customized offers – As you add followers to your Google+ Circles, break them down into as many smaller Circles as possible in order to better tailor posts and offers to specific groups of fans. “Circle back” users who have added you to their Google+ Circles – When people add your profile to their Circles, it’s common courtesy to “Circle back” and add them to your own following lists.  Doing so creates good will amongst your followers and may expand the reach of your brand. On Your LinkedIn Profile: Pay attention to SEO keywords when creating your profile – Doing so will help your profile be more visible to users who search within LinkedIn for people with your specific background. Adjust your settings to “Full View” to increase your visibility – Setting your information to be displayed publicly will help your profile appear more frequently in the natural search results. Expand your bio section with case studies and information­ – The more information you can include in your bio, the better (whether you’re trying to attract clients, enhance your perceived reputation or increase your odds of appearing in the natural SERPs). Join LinkedIn Groups within your industry – Participating in groups is a good way to “see and be seen,” helping you to build your brand while providing helpful information to others. Start a group if you can’t find one that meets your needs – Alternatively, if you the existing Groups in your industry aren’t a good fit, start your own.  Just be sure you bring something unique and valuable to the discussion. Syndicate your blog to your LinkedIn profile – Plenty of plugins and software add-ons enable you to sync your blog posts to appear automatically on your LinkedIn profile. Post press mentions to your profile – If you or your business receives positive press mentions, be sure to link out to them from within your LinkedIn profile. Monitor LinkedIn’s Q&A section for opportunities to provide helpful advice – Offering advice isn’t just a good way to give back to your community.  It’s a great way to make connections and build your perceived authority as well. Use shared connections to expand your network – Periodically browse mutual connections within your LinkedIn profile for opportunities to expand your personal and business networks. Attend LinkedIn Events in the real world – Some communities host get-togethers for nearby LinkedIn users.  If these Events occur in your area, give them a try in order to deepen your online connections. Make connections amongst your LinkedIn contacts – Good karma comes back around, so take the time to introduce members of your network whom you feel could benefit from new contacts. On Your Pinterest Account: Optimize your website content for Pinterest sharing – Plain text blog posts aren’t good candidates for Pinterst sharing, so optimize your presence on this network by including aesthetically pleasing images and graphics inside your website articles. Target micro-demographics – Although Pinterest is primarily dominated by young to middle-aged women, look for sub-groups within this demographic to appeal to.  As an example, pinning content specifically for work-at-home moms of kids between ages 1-5 could help you to build more meaningful connections than trying to reach all women at once. Create instructional pin boards – Help Pinterest followers to get more out of your content by creating pin boards that instruct viewers on how to complete multi-step tasks. Build themed pin boards based on industry trends – Pin board topics should be relatively narrow (for example, “retro-styled home appliances” versus “kitchens”), and monitoring industry trends should give you some great ideas to work off of. Experiment with alternative pin board styles – Watch your industry for Pinterest users who are creating innovative new pin board styles that provide an exciting alternative to standard boards. Use business keywords in your Pinterest pins – Plenty of Pinterest followers use the site’s search bar to find content that interests them, so be sure your pins contain the necessary information to be found in this way. Make use of all three Pinterest linking opportunities – Each Pinterest pin gives you three opportunities to link back to your website.  For best results, make sure your URL is correct in all of these fields. Space out your Pinterest activities – Don’t flood the Pinterest stream.  Instead of pinning twenty new pins in one hour, add one new pin every hour for twenty hours. Practice regular Pinterest link reclamation – As pins are passed around, the information contained within them may change.  For this reason, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of seeking out pins that contain your products or images and asking owners to correct URLs if this occurs. Re-pin content responsibly – Before re-pinning other people’s content to your boards, make sure the pins are still functioning correctly.  No one likes to click on an interesting pin, only to be taken to a 404 page! Follow top pinners in your industry and ask them to follow you back – As with traditional social networking websites, Pinterest has power users as well.  Building relationships with these participants can be incredibly useful, as one pin from a Pinterest authority could substantially increase your on-site presence. Avoid Pinterest copyright issues – As a business owner, you’ll need to be especially careful of violating copyright ownerships when posting content to Pinterest.  Take a look at Mashable’s guidelines for avoiding potential legal claims. Be a person, not a business! – Pinterest users are highly skeptical of overly-promotional content.  So while it’s fine to be a business using Pinterest, make sure your pinned content reflects your personal sensibilities – not just the latest product you’re trying to pitch! Conclusion While implementing all of these guidelines at once may seem daunting, trying out just a few at a time can make a significant difference in your social media marketing efforts.  Take advantage of them now in order to maximize the potential this innovative new promotional opportunity can have on your business’s growth! About the author: Sujan Patel is the co-founder of Single Grain, an SEO Agency based in San Francisco, CA. Single Grain specializes in helping start ups and Fortune 500 companies with their digital marketing strategy. You should follow Sujan on Twitter.
  • The Definitive Guide to Increase Rankings with These 4 Content Freshness Tips 6 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    Freshness is one of the more recent factors that Google has added to their algorithm in the last couple of years. In fact, the Caffeine web indexing system was meant to help them find and identify fresh content among the massive amount of stuff that gets published every day…an impact that affected 6-10% of searches. Let me show you what this looks like in practice. Take the US Open. Search for “US Open” and here is what the results look like: The top news query is only 16 minutes old. The next one is one hour old. More importantly, the scores from the latest games are at the very top, which is Google’s way of trying to guess semantically what the user wants. But not every piece of content published needs the relevancy that a good freshness score can deliver. Here are some examples of content that could benefit: Current news – Whether it’s a riot in Syria or the bailout of a country, you want the most relevant and the freshest piece of content out there. This means the most relevant content could be less than ten minutes old even though it is not the most authoritative. Seasonal or bi-annual events – These events include elections or the US Open…events that occur periodically but predictably. Before Caffeine you might search for elections and get results from four years ago when you want today’s news. Practical but aged content – Some content is really practical but is old and so Google wanted a way to evaluate competing pieces of content based on freshness. Recipes and historical stories are really relevant even if they were written two years ago. More than likely you will fall into that last category…useful, but old content. So let me tell you how to reach the top of the rankings by increasing the freshness of your current content. Tip# 1 – Creation of new pages will impact freshness Search engines will judge a website with more pages added differently than a website with fewer pages added. In other words, a blog that publishes content seven days a week will get scored differently than a blog that publishes once a month. There are pros and cons to each approach. For example, the advantages of more frequent content are: Indexing your content frequently - The frequency of your content will train the crawlers when to come back to your site. If you publish content once a month, then the crawlers will more than likely only come back a few times a month. If you publish content on a weekly basis, then they may come around a few times each week…or even daily. Raising your authority – New content on a regular basis will suggest to the search engine spiders that you are relevant or at least trying to remain relevant. While not conclusive, that relevancy may indicate to the search engine spiders that you are an expert. The other piece to indicate authority is the credible links coming into your pages and the social signals. Increasing your traffic – Study after study indicates that more frequent blogging leads to increase in your rate of traffic. The disadvantages of publishing frequently are that it is hard to publish quality content consistently. Some of your posts will suffer. But if you publish on a weekly or monthly basis, on the other hand, you may not get the bump in traffic but you can create high-quality content consistently. Popular blogs that publish less frequently are Useit and Kaiser the Sage. The quality is always exceptional. You can get the advantages of both approaches. Here’s how: Invite other writers – Both Social Media Examiner and the KISSmetric blog publishes high-quality articles on a daily basis by using guest writers. Create a schedule – If you don’t want to use guest writers, then you’ll need to discipline yourself. The first step is to have a schedule of posts. Brainstorm on new ideas – That schedule is going to be full of new ideas that you generate. Pick one or two days a week that you sit down and research and create blog post concepts. Write a month-long series – Choose an over-arching theme for a particular month and write one section of that theme each day. At the end of the month you’ll have a quality guide like 31 Days to Blogging. Tip #2 – Document changes affect fresh content Another way that you can use freshness to influence rankings is by updating past documents. Let’s review the 3 elements and I will also tell you how to influence each element. The first is the size of the change: Review your posts daily – The day after you publish an article, re-read it and make any changes. Modify posts when linking to them – When you link to one of your posts from a new article, quickly review that post. Are there any changes in structure you can make? Any new ideas you can add? Change the headline or image? Audit your content – Schedule periodic reviews of old content so that every year you are auditing all of it. For example, every three months you could review 25% of your content. The second is the rate of change. How often changes are made to a page will also matter how they are scored. Design your home page to change daily – If you have a blog, this will happen naturally. An online magazine like Wired’s home page changes daily, too. Drudge’s home page changes as he updates the headlines. Can you change the image? The headlines? Create and update hub pages – A hub page is a location where you centralize articles around a topic. As you publish more articles in these topics, update the hub page with the new links. Encourage comments – Comments are way to generate keyword-rich user-generated content, but they are also a great way to indicate to search engine crawlers that your content is relevant, engaging and valuable. If people aren’t commenting on your articles, then search engines predict that you are not an authority and will downgrade your page. For a good guide on generating more comments see the article How to Grow Your Blog by the Rule of 10. The third is the importance of page. Your freshness score is influenced by what page you change and how much change you make to that page. Large changes to less-important pages might equal very small changes to very important pages. But it’s generally agreed that updating less-important pages is better. Here’s what to do: Identify your less-important pages – The first way you can split your content into important and less-important is like this: your high-navigational pages like home and about are important while everything else—your posts—are less important. Next, identify those posts that don’t get a lot of traffic or social shares. Remedy the problem – Ask yourself why the less-important posts didn’t get as much attention. Not detailed enough? Was the headline lame? The structure cluttered and unorganized? Whatever the problem, fix it. Tip #3 – Time on page Google will consider a page where visitors spend more time on as fresher than a page where visitors spend less time. In other words, more people will spend more time on new and relevant content. Here’s how to increase time spent on page: Use images – BuildZoom discovered that SEO optimized press releases with images outperformed press releases without images when it came to time on page. The outcome was 2:47 versus 2:18. And by the way, don’t forget to optimize your images for high page load speed. Use video – While results may vary, you can expect a bump in time on page of about 10 percent by using video. The key is placement is in the middle of your content and not at the top of the post. Use Facebook plugins – Use Facebook social plugins and you can potentially increase time on site and page. This form of social proof helps keep people on the site and can even encourage more comments. Increase page load speed – From both an SEO and user perspective, page load speed is important. Search engines can get their cues on page load speed from users. In other words, if users are bouncing from your site while a page is still loading, then that could count against you. Here’s how to decrease your page load speed. Write compelling copy – Increase time on page by writing great content and SEO-friendly posts, which is just another way of writing in such a way that people will love your content. Check out the Quick and Dirty Guide to Content Marketing and How to Write SEO-friendly Blog Posts with These 13 Questions.  Design to highlight content – Another way you can boost time on page is by displaying your best content with hub pages or “most popular posts” plug-ins. In addition, you could use a WordPress slideshow plug-in to display “Featured” content on the home page. Tip #4 – New links to page Your freshness score is also influenced by the rate at which a page gets links and the age of that link. In other words, if you are getting links from new pages then Google will adjust your freshness score more positively than if you are getting links from older pages. That means the way to increase your freshness score is to get more new links. Here’s how to encourage fresh links: Stay on top of trends – If you can respond to the hot topic of the moment, then you’ll attract links and social signals. For example, when the Penguin Update rolled out, you could have attracted links by writing a post explaining how to recover from the update. Use Google Trends and Google Insights to help you discover trends. Quote authorities – Interview an expert in your industry and then post that interview on your blog. The expert will probably link to it as will some of the bloggers in his audience. Update an old post – To increase the freshness score for an older post try to update it in such a way that people link to it with new blog posts. Then promote that update. For the most part, you’ll get most of your links from new pages. It just makes sense…people will be responding to your new content with their new content. But there are times when an older page (like a hub page) will link to your content. Conclusion Freshness is just one piece of the Google algorithm puzzle. Learning how to influence it will only get you so far, so it pays to have a comprehensive SEO strategy. That strategy should focus on developing valuable content, which will naturally influence freshness and other factors. But as you saw there are some tricks that you can use to influence freshness directly and influence your search rankings. Tricks like the ones for improving time on page, which is why a guide like this is important. What other methods have you used to influence rankings through freshness?
  • The Massive Guide to Getting Massive Traffic 4 September, 2012, 8:00 am
    Growing a blog takes time. It takes consistent sharing of great content for months and months on end. Usually it takes most people about two years to get big. This means that your growth is slow and steady as your traffic coming to your site is slow and steady. While that strategy will work…it’s always nice to get a huge jump in traffic every once in awhile. Would you like to know how to do that? Then study and apply the following online marketing tactics. Tactic #1: Write ultimate guides Over at KISSmetrics we create a lot of ultimate guides, as I do at Quick Sprout, too. These are great tools to generating traffic since people like to share them via social media, so I wanted to share with you the tips for creating your own based on an article by Kristi Hines called Creating Ultimate Guides and Using Them to Build Your Marketing List. Here are the tips to your first ultimate guide: Subscribe to hundreds of blogs in your field – Get to know what is going on in your industry…and wait for that single piece of eye-opening information that no one has blogged about…and then create an ultimate guide. Read posts on your topic – Once you have an idea about an ultimate guide see if there are any others out there. If there are, how can you make yours different? Can you combine some of the current guides to make an ultimate guide? Provide a ton of screenshots – Even if the topic behind your ultimate guide is pretty basic, provide screenshots. The visuals break up the content and help people scroll through it. If the topic is complex, then do screen shots of the steps. Present case studies – An ultimate guide comes alive when you share real life examples. People tend to believe what you are saying when you have credible examples. Once you’ve written the guide, your next step is to promote it. If you don’t have that big of an audience, then you may want to offer to share it on a popular blog. This is exactly what the authors of the Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies did with their Ultimate Guide to Facebook Marketing at Copyblogger. And once traffic dies down, the nice thing about your ultimate guide is that you can then turn it into a free download. Tactic #2: Get covered in big media, without spending a dime A few years ago I interviewed Chris Winfield of Blue Glass on public relations and how he got tons of press in big media like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the New York Times. The thing you have to know is that Chris didn’t spend a dime on that type of attention. And fortunately you can repeat his success with these proven steps: Understand your message – Knowing who you are and what your business stands for is your first crucial step. When you know your message, then you can target trade publications in that industry. Create a list – Pull up an Excel spreadsheet and start filling it with magazine, websites, blogs, trade journals and newspapers you’d like to appear in. In the column beside each entry type in the reporter who covers that field. Collect contact info – Sometimes you can find contact info like an email address in the article. Grab it! If nothing is available in the article, follow the link to the author’s page. If that’s not available, then you will have to Google their name, search LinkedIn or simply call the organization. Connect with the reporter – Email them when you read an article you liked and let them know that you’ve been reading them for awhile. If they email back, offer to help them in whatever way you can. Pitch reporters with ideas – When news breaks in your industry, send the reporter your angle of the story. Keep it short and to the point. If they accept your content, send them a bio. Go above and beyond – After your phone call make sure you email them additional information…act like their assistant in collecting research and data about the story. Get out of your office – And don’t forget to attend networking events, parties and press conferences. Talk to as many reporters as you can. Be friendly and not pushy. Get to know them, and understand what they need to write their stories. Building a relationship with a reporter as an indispensible resource will lead to more introductions and leads…so be persistent and become the person everyone wants to interview. When you finally get a break and a reporter writes a story using you as a source, then you’ll get that massive boost of traffic that you’ve been hoping for! Tactic #3: Suck in traffic with egobait Egobait is a pretty simple concept…offer a reward to people who accomplish a certain challenge. If they win, then they get to show off to the world. In other words, this technique appeals to their vanity. For example, Write to Done runs an annual top ten best writing blogs award. For those who win, they get to display a badge that declares they are one of the best. Of course that badge drives traffic back to Write to Done. Social Media Examiner does the same thing with their top ten social media blogs, as does Advertising Age’s Power 150 List. Even the social media tool Klout appeals to people’s vanity by showing them how influential they are in the social media world. The disadvantage of this technique is that it is not going to work unless you have some authority in the space. If you don’t and you create an egobait badge, then nobody will care. You first have to develop a loyal following through consistent publication of practical and persuasive content…and then you have to offer your badge year after year until it gains a following. Tactic #4: Create a stampede of visitors with StumbleUpon Paid Discovery StumbleUpon can drive some massive traffic to your site if you create a piece of content that goes viral on the site… However, that’s not easy to do because it’s sort of a guessing game on what will go viral…and you have to know some serious StumbleUpon users to help your content spread. It can happen, but it takes time, and if you don’t have time, you can always speed up the process with Paid Discovery. A Paid Discovery campaign is broken down into 5 steps: Choose a plan – You’ve got three options, make sure you choose the middle one or expensive one. The lower end plan doesn’t work to well. Enter the URL – Drop in the web address of the page you want Stumblers to stumble and visit. You can track this with a Google Analytics utm_parameter. Choose topics – You have 10 topics to choose from, and if you can’t choose, you can let StumbleUpon choose for you. You can also do a split campaign based upon topics. Choose your audience – Next, choose who your audience will be based upon demographics like gender, income and location. Set your budget – You can find your way to the front page of StumbleUpon with a priority placement, but that comes at a premium price. Or just set a daily spend limit and generate as many leads as you can afford. Schedule – You have two basic options…let the ad run as soon as it is approved or schedule to launch it at a predetermined time. Scheduling will allow you to create multiple campaigns at once. Add funds – Your last step is to pay for you campaign, and you can do that inside your StumbleUpon dashboard. If you want to optimize your content, select “Manual Targeting” before you submit content to see the most popular categories. Then experiment with your content to see which ones pull the best response. Tactic #5: Going viral on Tumblr to drive traffic Tumblr is great for meme-based content like goofy pictures of cats that look like Ron Swanson or a combination of the teachings of an old theologian and Justin Bieber to get Reinhold Beiber. Strike the right combination on Tumblr and you will create a meme that could get you some serious traffic. And the other way to go viral on Tumblr is to publish a long post. That may sound totally wrong for a site like Tumblr, but let me explain. When people who are flying through Tumblr come to a post that is four times as long as normal…they are going to pause and look. Then you’ve got them. The trick to making either technique work is to have links back to your site. Perhaps this means you share a long post on Tumblr, but link back to your site where you share even more details and data. For the meme, the link back to your site could send them to a gallery of your other stuff. Either way you’ll get massive traffic. Tactic #6: Timing your Reddit submissions and buying traffic Reddit is a huge site getting huge numbers of page views…back in December of 2011 they got a total of 2 billion. Meaning you can post content on Reddit and drive a boatload of traffic to your site. Naturally, you have to create great content…but when you share that content is just as important. Studies have shown that before 5PM EST time is the best time. But studies have also shown that other things affect your ranking on your submissions in Reddit. These include the fact that you shared an older story versus a new one or how quickly you get your first 100 upvotes. If it takes you 10 hours then your post will not appear as high on the front page than if you had gotten those 100 upvotes in the first hour. Here is a chart to explain… What’s interesting is that the first 10 upvotes matter just as much as the next 100. And those 100 matter just as much as the next 1,000… Keep in mind that controversial stories don’t really work as well on Reddit as you might think. The reason is that a post with many upvotes and downvotes doesn’t rank as high as a post that got proportionately more upvotes than down votes. In theory, a submission with 1,000 upvotes and downvotes will not rank as high as a post with 750 upvotes and 250 downvotes. Another element that affects your Reddit rankings is how many comments people leave. The more comments, the more weight that post will get. This means you need to use these strategies to generate more comments. And just like StumbleUpon, Reddit also offers a way that you can buy traffic on Reddit. And there are two ways that you can do this…buy an ad that shows up across all of reddit…or buy an ad that targets specific sub reddits. This approach can drive a lot of traffic since you are targeting a highly-engaged segment. Tactic #7: Leverage Pinterest like a power user The image-driven new social media powerhouse known as Pinterest can also provide you with massive traffic. But you have to know how to get people to pin images of your content and products from your website and blog. Here are 6 techniques that are tried-and-true methods for creating a flood of visits using Pinterest. Formatting photos - First off, your blog should be set up to allow people to share content on Pinterest. This means having a simple Pinterest button on your site. However, have you ever considered whether your photos are even going to work on Pinterest? You can check by going to this page and replace your URL with “YourWebsite.com.” That little test will help you see what people might see on Pinterest. If your photos are not optimized, then use these great tips on optimizing images for Pinterest. Put messages on your images – You probably put a lot of effort into writing great content, but do you do the same with your images?  To get people to pin these images, share a great message about your content on your featured image like this one from a blog post title from Complex Style. You can use tools like Pixlr, FotoFlexer and Gimp 2.6 to create these messages. Daily theme board – If you want to take the text-based message image idea into overdrive, then create a board in your Pinterest account that is based on a theme. Sevenly has done this very well with their Daily Inspirational board. Run contests and giveaways – Do a simple search for “giveaway” on Pinterest and you will see that contests are very popular. The reason they are popular is because of their ability to stir up traffic. Create a contest where people have to go to your site to enter, and you’ll get that spike that you’ve been dreaming of. Share pics of people, animal and cool technology – Since Pinterest is hugely visual, images of people and animals work really, really well. GE has created an account with boards that show off their badass machines , full of photos of trains, airplanes and huge turbines. The U.S. Central Command has done a really great job of humanizing their institution with a board called Interesting and one on their military dogs. Follow the golden rule – This one is simple and basic…if you want people to pin and share your pins, then  you need to do the same. You need to develop relationships with targeted users  and share their stuff. The karma will come back to you…I promise. Tactic #8: Write a high-quality guest post One of the hottest and easiest ways to give your traffic a significant bump is to write a guest article for a popular blog. Easier said than done, of course. Your first step is to build a relationship with the blog’s owner. Fortunately with social media, connecting with these bloggers is pretty easy. You can contact them on Twitter and comment on their site. When tweeting their stuff, make sure you are using their Twitter handle so they know what you are doing. Then head over to their blog and leave high-quality comment on posts. Get introduced by another guest writer. Contact one of the writers who has published on this popular blog and ask them for an introduction. That will give you credibility when contacting them. Meet them face-to-face. I love it when people come up to me during conferences and strike up a conversation. They are usually readers of Quick Sprout like Alex Mangini or Doina Oncel. After hearing their story I’ll either usually write about them…or give them the opportunity to write for them. Once you have that connection with the blog owner, make sure you take care of it. Make yourself available to do things that they need done…maybe it’s content there are missing…or putting a series of articles together they can package as a book. Now let me give you a few tips on creating a guest post that will actually knock them out…and create a stream of leads to your site. So, writing a popular guest blog post goes like this: Use simple words – You want people to be able to read and understand quickly what you are writing about…especially if it is about a complex topic…so write at a 5th grade level. Write advanced how-to blog posts – Once you have your topic, sit down and write out all the steps to accomplishing your stated goal. Then revise, working in greater and great detail. Links – Put plenty of internal and external links into your post. Bloggers love this. Ali Luke did a great job with her Copywriting Essentials from A – Z post. Create a conversation – Ask questions throughout your post that invite readers to think and respond about what you are saying. Prove you are the authority – Fill your post up with research and statistics that prove your point and show readers that you are an expert on this information. Create powerful headlines – Finally, concentrate on generating some truly persuasive headlines. This is by far the most important feature…so work hard at it! I know you can! Okay, now that will help you create a great article…but you’re not done yet. You want to catch all those leads you drive your site, right? Then do this: Use 3-sentence formula for your byline – Your byline is the bio on your guest piece…and to make it truly compelling and concise…answer these three questions: Who are you? What do you do and for who? What’s the call to action? Create a landing page – Next, the links in your byline should drive traffic to a landing page that is designed for that audience, and is tied into the topic of your guest post. Write a killer headline – Your landing page headline should address that blog audience. For example, if you wrote a quest post for Quick Sprout, you might write a headline like this: “Quick Sprout Readers, Get This Free and Exclusive Report on Traffic Boosting Secrets Today.” Write killer copy – Of course you have to write clear, concise and compelling copy if you want people to read what you wrote. Add call to action above the fold – Make sure you add a clear call-to-action button above the fold on your landing page. Do not bury it below the fold…or your conversion will sink. Add a short video on the landing page ­– This Eye View Digital study has shown that you can skyrocket conversions simply by adding a short video to your landing page…by almost 80%. Now that’s huge! Do not request a lot of information – The minimum amount of information that you need is an email address. If you can live with that, then don’t ask for anymore. If you want to, ask for a name…but asking for anymore than that and you will drive down conversions. Use social proof – A great landing page needs social proof. This includes things like endorsements, number of clients, subscriber counts and social media followers. Don’t forget the design – A well-designed site will always convert better than sites with poor design. No ifs, ands or buts. If you can’t do it yourself, hire someone. Test – Obviously this won’t be the first and last time you write a guest post…a good strategy involves writing dozens a year. That means you need to test with each one…maximizing your conversions each time! Tactic #9: How even an average infographic can get you 10,000 impressions People love infographics because they make complex ideas simple and visual. Several years ago GOOD magazine used them effectively to grow their magazine. Some of their most popular ones are The Almighty Dollar and Drugged Culture. LinkedIn also created a really sweet example of an effective infographic with their 100 Million professionals. And The Oatmeal’s 15ish Things Worth Knowing About Coffee uses humor to show you the history of coffee. The great thing about infographics is that even an average infographic can give you a nice boost in traffic. Why? Other bloggers want a simple way to give their readers content…so when they are offered the ability to embed an infographic into their site…they jump on it. This means you might get on the low end 5 people embedding your infographic. If they have an average of 500 subscribers it’s like getting in front of 2500 people. But if 100 blogs embed it with different sizes and subscriber amounts…then hold onto your servers! That kind of attention is also likely to catch the eye of people like Mashable who has a huge audience…which would amount to a huge score for you. Conclusion I get really excited just talking about all of these tactics that can drive traffic to your site because they are tactics that anybody can use…and they work! As I’ve tried to show you throughout this article that they’ve been used by people effectively…and I’ve used them myself…as well as using them for our sites at Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. What other ways do you know of that can help people drive a lot of traffic to their site?
  • Play the man, not the odds 27 August, 2012, 8:00 am
    If you play poker, you’ve probably heard the term “play the man, not the odds”. Well, that saying also works in business. Let me explain… Would you rather use logic or emotions to win a deal? Logic, right? To some extent you are right, but logic won’t get you the best deal. If you want to come on top from a deal you need to use both logic and emotions. Over the last 10 years I went from being able to closing 4 figure deals to closing 7 figure deals. It took me a long time because no one taught me to play the man (using emotions) instead of playing the odds (using logic). Here is a step by step approach that will help you to play the man and not the odds: Step #1: Make them nervous When someone gets nervous it throws them off guard and they are unsure of what to do. And do you know how the best way to do this is? It’s to show how you are the alpha male of the group (amog). And while some people may claim to hate amog’s, people still drawn to them, as they want to be associated with them. So how can you amog a potential customer or partner? Be direct – people are used to others cutting to the chase. It shows that you don’t care. Be assertive – don’t be passive with your tone of voice.  People want to do business with people who have confidence. Cut people off – this may sound rude, but if people ramble, cut them off. It shows that you are controlling the conversation. It doesn’t take much more than that to be an amog. Just practice with friends and family first, and let them know what you are doing of course, because it takes some finesse for it to work. Step #2: Show your value Now that people know you are the amog, you have to show your value. Make it clear what you can bring to the table because people don’t make deals based off of emotions, they also use logic. So this is where you use both. Prove your points as quickly and efficiently as possible, while answering any questions the other party may have. It’s also important that during this step you explain what you are going to do for the other party. Step #3: Get an amount Not every business deal is a cash transaction, but there is usually a financial transaction involved. Whether it is figuring out terms for a partnership or getting equity in a company, there is something that tends to be traded. Once you both have a clear understanding what each party is looking for (cash for work, or equity for a work…), you need to ask what they feel is a reasonable deal. In most cases they will respond with that they are unsure. And when they do this, make sure you don’t throw out an amount as that is the worst thing you can do in a negotiation. Instead give them an extreme example, such as: Well we know it wouldn’t be a dollar as that amount wouldn’t be worth it for me and we know it wouldn’t be a million dollars as that amount just isn’t worth it for you. There must be an amount in between that will work for both of us, if you don’t know of the amount, give me a rough range on where you think the amount should fall into. By saying that you will typically get a range for a potential customer. This will give you a ballpark on where you have to be. Step #4: Swing for the fences If you want money, equity or whatever you want, you have to explain why you want it and how the amount you are asking for is reasonable. The easiest way to do this is to explain how you are going to make them more money. And once you explain it, show them. You can do so through case studies and examples, or even walk them through what steps you are going to take with their business to achieve those results. If you can’t make a pitch based on how much money you are going to make them, talk about how much you are going to save them. But don’t talk about savings unless you can’t make a solid case on how you will make them more money. Step #5: Ask them what they think It’s not all about you! You need to get a good understanding of what the other party thinks. You can do so by simply asking: What do you think? If you did the previous steps above, they will typically want to work with you. If you didn’t, they will either say no or that they are going to have to think about it. Step #6: Cut it short After you get their feedback and how they ideally want to work with you, don’t keep on rambing by continuing the conversation. Try to wrap things up by transitioning the conversation into a closure. And when wrapping it up, make sure you let them know that you are going to follow up with them in 3 or 4 days on if you want to work together or not. By keeping things short it shows that you are busy and high in demand. Plus by saying that you are going to “think about working together” you’ve just turned the tables and physiologically they will want to work with you. Step #7: Follow up In 3 to 4 days follow up by email and request either a phone call or an in person meeting. You don’t want to tell people an answer of working together over email, as it’s hard to read a person over email. Emotions don’t come across the same way in email as they would over the phone or in person. Step #8: Close the deal Wrap things up and let them know when you will start. Dictate the terms, and get the documents signed. They may have questions at this point, but they should be good to go. If they are hesitant to proceed you need to go back and repeat the process as you probably messed up on step #1, which is the most difficult. If you don’t show how you are the amog, you will have a tough time closing deal for the price you want. Conclusion By playing the man and not the odds you are taking emotions into account when closing. Remember people don’t just purely make decisions based off of logic, emotions also go into decision making. A good example of this is the movie Pursuit of Happiness, in which the main character Chris goes for a job interview at a finance company. And he gets the job by the use of emotions even though he wasn’t dressed appropriately for the interview. If you can learn to play the people in the room, with the steps above, and not just use logic to close deals, you’ll drastically increase your odds of closing a deal.
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Everyjoe

  • Wale Reveals “The Gifted” Album Art and Tracklist 18 June, 2013, 8:15 pm
    Wale has announced that his upcoming album, The Gifted, will be released on June 25, 2013.  The D.C. rapper recently gave a hint at why he chose that title. He said: “The hustler, priding his self on the very things they hate … More »The post Wale Reveals “The Gifted” Album Art and Tracklist appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • Kanye West’s New Album “Yeezus” Released 18 June, 2013, 8:13 pm
    Kanye West’s album, Yeezus, was released today and, so far, critics are loving it.  In fact, Metacritic, which lists a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, currently gives the effort an 87% rating.  That’s amazing. After his appearance … More »The post Kanye West’s New Album “Yeezus” Released appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • “The Hustler” Trailer Video – New Hip Hop Show on Fuse 18 June, 2013, 5:44 pm
    We’re now happy to be able to bring you the official trailer for “The Hustler”. This show will debut tomorrow night on Fuse (11/10c) and we’re already calling it the best hip hop show ever created for television. Check out … More »The post “The Hustler” Trailer Video – New Hip Hop Show on Fuse appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • Doutzen Kroes Feels Generous in New York City 18 June, 2013, 4:46 pm
    While shooting in New York City recently, Doutzen Kroes gave us all a special treat. What was it? An honest to goodness accidental nipple slip that wasn’t contrived in any form or fashion. Nowadays, you can never tell what is … More »The post Doutzen Kroes Feels Generous in New York City appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • Hot to Get Tickets to “The Hustle” After Party Show 18 June, 2013, 4:18 pm
    Tomorrow night, “The Hustle” premieres on Fuse at 11/10c. Following the show, The Hustle After Party will air. During this follow-up program, the show will be discussed, the actors will be interviewed and — most importantly — there will be … More »The post Hot to Get Tickets to “The Hustle” After Party Show appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • 5 Reasons Why Huawei Ascend P6 Sucks 18 June, 2013, 12:55 pm
    A new challenger has entered the market. Huawei has unveiled their Ascend P6 with hopes that its status as the world’s slimmest smartphone gives it a way to standout in a sea of well-established competitors. It seems like every company … More »The post 5 Reasons Why Huawei Ascend P6 Sucks appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • Review: Mountain Men, Season 1 18 June, 2013, 12:23 pm
    The first season of Mountain Men is now available on DVD and, if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to live off the grid, this is the show for you! The History channel follows Eustace Conway, Tom Oar and Marty … More »The post Review: Mountain Men, Season 1 appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • Helen Flanagan Goes Nuts, We Celebrate 18 June, 2013, 12:10 pm
    We’re huge fans of Helen Flanagan. The British actress might not be the sharpest tool in the garage but her roundedness keeps our jaws agape. Today, a potential nipple slip has our attention — even though it’s difficult to tell … More »The post Helen Flanagan Goes Nuts, We Celebrate appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • Picture: LeBron X Floral Edition Shoes Guarantee a Heat Championship 18 June, 2013, 11:37 am
    Not that the San Antonio Spurs will use this as extra motivation or anything but the new LeBron X shoes were made with the assumption that LeBron James and the Miami Heat will win the 2013 NBA Finals. Check out … More »The post Picture: LeBron X Floral Edition Shoes Guarantee a Heat Championship appeared first on EveryJoe.
  • The EveryJoe Show: Taylor Swift Tweeted WHAT to Kanye West and Kim Kardashian? 18 June, 2013, 11:26 am
    BURRRNN! Could sweet little Taylor Swift REALLY have tweeted this epic comeback? If so, this was some sweet revenge. I guess she’s made of more than just sugar and spice, after all. Check out Elle Vega as she brings you … More »The post The EveryJoe Show: Taylor Swift Tweeted WHAT to Kanye West and Kim Kardashian? appeared first on EveryJoe.
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12

Guy Kawasaki

  • 10 Things You Can Learn From the Apple Store 9 April, 2012, 9:16 am
    My friend, Carmine Gallo, has written a book called The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty. The Apple Store is the most profitable retailer in America, generating an average of $5,600 per square foot and attracting more than 20,000 visitors a week. In the decade since Steve Jobs and former head of retail, Ron Johnson, decided to reimagine the retail experience, the Apple Store not only reimagined and reinvented retail, it blew up the model entirely and started from scratch. In his research for The Apple Experience, Carmine discovered ten things that the Apple Store can teach any business in any industry to be more successful: Stop selling stuff. When Steve Jobs first started the Apple Store he did not ask the question, “How will we grow our market share from 5 to 10 percent?” Instead he asked, “How do we enrich people’s lives?” Think about your vision. If you were to examine the business model for most brands and retailers and develop a vision around it, the vision would be to “sell more stuff.” A vision based on selling stuff isn’t very inspiring and leads to a very different experience than the Apple Retail Store created. Enrich lives. The vision behind the Apple Store is “enrich lives,” the first two words on a wallet-sized credo card employees are encouraged to carry. When you enrich lives magical things start to happen. For example, enriching lives convinced Apple to have a non-commissioned sales floor where employees feel comfortable spending as much time with a customer as the customer desires. Enriching lives led Apple to build play areas (the “family room”) where kids could see, touch and play on computers. Enriching lives led to the creation of a “Genius Bar” where trained experts are focused on “rebuilding relationships” as much as fixing problems. Hire for smiles. The soul of the Apple Store is in its people. They are hired, trained, motivated and taught to create magical and memorable moments for their customers. The Apple Store values a magnetic personality as much, if not more so, than technical proficiency. The Apple Store cares less about what you know than it cares about how much you love people. Celebrate diversity. Mohawks, tattoos, piercings are all acceptable among Apple Store employees. Apple hires people who reflect the diversity of their customers. Since they are more interested in how passionate you are, your hairstyle doesn’t matter. Early in the Apple Store history, they also learned that former teachers make the best salespeople because they ask a lot of questions. It’s not uncommon to find former teachers, engineers, and artists at an Apple Store. Apple doesn’t look for someone who fits a mold. Unleash inner genius. Teach your customers something they never knew they could do before, and they’ll reward you with their loyalty. For example, the Apple Store offers a unique program to help people understand and enjoy their computers: One to One. The $99 one-year membership program is available with the purchase of a Mac. Apple Store instructors called “creatives” offer personalized instruction inside the Apple Store. Customers can learn just about anything: basics about the Mac operating system; how to design a website; enjoying, sharing, and editing photos or movies; creating a presentation; and much more. The One to One program was created to help build customers for life. It was designed on the premise that the more you understand a product, the more you enjoy it, and the more likely you are to build a long-term relationship with the company. Instructors are trained to provide guidance and instruction, but also to inspire customers, giving them the tools to make them more creative than they ever imagined. Empower employees. I spent one hour talking to an Apple Store specialist about kids, golf, and my business. We spent about ten minutes talking about the product (a MacBook Air). I asked the employee whether he would be reprimanded for spending so much time with one customer. “Not at all,” he replied. “If you have a great experience, that’s all that matters.” Apple has a non-commissioned sales floor for a reason—employees are not pressured to “make a sale.” Instead they are empowered to do what they believe is the right thing to do. Sell the benefit. Apple Store specialists are taught to sell the benefit behind products and to customize those benefits for the customer. For example, I walked to the iPad table with my two young daughters and told the specialist I was considering my first iPad. In a brilliant move, the specialist focused on my two daughters, the ‘secondary’ customer who can influence a purchase. He let the girls play on separate devices. On one device he played the movie, Tangled, and on the other device he brought up a Disney Princess coloring app. My girls were thrilled and, in one memorable moment, my 6-year-old turned me to and said, “I love this store!” It’s easy to see why. Instead of touting “speeds and feeds,” the specialist taught us how the device could improve our lives. Follow the steps of service. The Apple Store teaches its employees to follow five steps in each and every interaction. These are called the Apple five steps of service. They are outlined by the acronym A-P-P-L-E. They are: Approach with a customized, warm greeting. Probe politely to understand the customer’s needs. Present a solution the customer can take home today. Listen for and address unresolved questions. End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return. Create multisensory experiences. The brain loves multi-sensory experiences. In other words, people enjoy being able to see, touch, and play with products. Walk into an Apple Store upon opening and you’ll see all the notebook computer screens perfectly positioned slightly beyond 90-degree angles. The position of the computer lets you see the screen (which is on and loaded with content) but forces you to touch the computer in order to adjust it. Every device in the store is working and connected to the Internet. Spend as much time as you’d like playing with the products—nobody will kick you out. Creatives who give One-to-One workshops do not touch the computer without asking for permission. They want you to do it. The sense of touch helps create an emotional connection with a product. Appeal to the buying brain. Clutter forces the brain to consume energy. Create uncluttered environments instead. The Apple Store is spacious, clean, well-lit, and uncluttered. Cables are hidden from view and no posters on placed on the iconic glass entrances. Computer screens are cleaned constantly. Keep the environment clean, open, and uncluttered. The three pillars of enchantment are likability, trustworthiness, and quality. Apple’s engineers take care of quality, and the Apple Store experience personifies likability and trustworthiness. I’ve never left an Apple store without being enchanted—in fact, I seldom leave the Apple Store on University Avenue in Palo Alto without being enchanted and buying something too! Resisting Carmine’s book, like resisting an Apple Store, is futile, so just get it here: The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty
  • Free social-media webinar with Mari Smith and me 20 March, 2012, 5:25 pm
    Mari Smith and I are going to have a rocking time explaining the seven hottest social-media business trends in a FREE webinar. Sign up here: http://bit.ly/7_smtrends See you on March 28th!
  • How to Understand and Master Google+ 20 March, 2012, 9:21 am
    In 1983 I saw a Macintosh for the first time and fell in love. I loved Macintosh so much that I wrote a book about it. In 2011 I saw Google+ for the first time and fell in love again. And now for the second time in my career, I’ve written a book about a product: What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us. I wrote What the Plus! to help people understand and master Google+. I cover the essential Google+ skills: creating your profile, circling people, commenting, posting, responding to posts, hanging out, and sharing photos. Here’s what some experts had to say about the book: “We didn’t expect over 100,000,000 people to join Google+ so quickly. If we had, we might have written a tutorial like this one. Lucky for us, Guy has written this wonderful introduction to Google+. Highly recommended!” Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice-President, Social, Google “What The Plus is the G+ motherlode! Guy’s book will make you fall madly in love with Google+ and never look back!” Mari Smith, author of The New Relationship Marketing and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day “People ask me why I like Google+ better. I struggle to find the words, but Guy Kawasaki not only figured it out but shows you how to get the most out of this new social network.” Robert Scoble, Rackspace videoblogger You can get more information, read the reviews, and order a copy here.
  • Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK 20 January, 2012, 11:46 am
    Over the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are conservative.” “Jupiter says our market will be $50 billion in ten years.” “Several Fortune 500 companies are set to do business with us.” “No one else can do what we’re doing.” “Hurry up because other investors are about to do our deal.” “Our product will go viral.” “The large companies in our market are too big, dumb, and slow to compete with us.” “Our management team is proven.” “We filed patents so our intellectual property is protected.” “All we have to do is get 1% of the market.” The average number of these ten lies that I hear in most pitches is ten. At the very least, tell investors new lies. Top Ten Lies of Investors “I liked your company, but my partners didn’t.” “We are patient investors who want to help you build a great company.” “If you get a lead, we’ll invest too.” “There are no companies in our portfolio that conflict with what you’re doing.” “Show us some traction, and we’ll invest.” “We love to co-invest with other firms.” “We’re investing in your team.” “We have lots of bandwith to dedicate to your company.” “This is a plain, vanilla termsheet.” “We will get other companies in our portfolio to work with you.” Do you know what the difference is between the lies of entrepreneurs and the lies of investors? The investors have money. It’s not all bad news. Think of everything that an entrepreneur needs (tech ones, anyway), and you’ll see that most things are free or cheap. Marketing: use blogs and social media to promote your products. Tools: most tools are Open Source and free. Microsoft offers free versions of applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the cloud! Infrastructure: More cloud goodness—you don’t have to buy servers anymore. People: callous for me to say, but in a recession, people are free or cheap. Office space: what office space? You can work out of your garage (like David Hewlett and Bill Packard) or just form a virtual team. The bottom line is this is one of the cheapest times to be an entrepreneur, so go into your garage and start prototyping. Then when you need to create enchanting documents to raise money using PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, we’re all set to help with Office Web Apps, SkyDrive, and my templates. Promotional consideration paid by Microsoft.
  • Design a Sam Adams beer 20 January, 2012, 9:24 am
    Now this is a fun project. I’m helping Sam Adams “tap” the knowledge of beer drinkers and crowd source its next brew. Join the party by getting the app and designing your beer: The final brew will be released in Austin in the first week of March. #sponsored
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9

Springboarders

  • “All I had was an idea, a few contacts…and $2000. And off we went” – Priya Sharma on her deep dive into entrepreneurship and the birth of Toronto Custom Suits 7 July, 2010, 9:21 pm
    Are you an armchair entrepreneur waiting to open your dream business but don’t have capital to do so? Are you waiting for the ‘right moment’ to jump into the deep, dark world of business? Wonder what it’s like to ‘bootstrap’ a new business? If you answered YES to any of those questions, you want to hear the inspiring story of my newest guest, Priya Sharma, founder of Toronto Custom Suits. Join us as Priya talks about her initiation by fire into entrepreneurship and her adventures in the fashion world… Faheem Moosa: Thanks for joining us, Priya. Tell us about Toronto Custom Suits and why you started it. What makes TCS different from other players? Priya Sharma: Toronto Custom Suits is a men’s custom suits business that I started a little under a year ago. I have been a part of the corporate fashion world in Toronto for sometime now, but like many other people I wanted to start my own business and to have my own line one day, but there was never a right time for that. When the recession started in 2008, many people in the industry were victims to downsizing and I was no exception. Suddenly I found myself with no job and I was pondering, “Do I apply for a job that I don’t really love just so I can be secure and go through the motions? Or do I take the opportunity to follow my dreams?” It’s not as though I was giving anything up first place. I decided to go with the latter and wondered, “What can I do that will allow me to use my experience and my knowledge in fashion and be profitable in the Toronto market?” I realized that in Toronto, you could either go to Harry Rosen and get an incredible bespoke suit with great customer service for $4000, or you go to a Hong Kong or a Thailand based agent – such as Maxwell’s – that puts out a decent product for a cheap price but with little to no service. I realized there was a huge gap in the market. I realized that if I kept my overheads low, offered great customer service and utilized master tailors from the Far East, I could really be on to something. And that is how Toronto Custom Suits was born. What makes us different from all the other people that do this is by far our customer service. When I ask my customers what keeps them coming back to Toronto Custom Suits, they mention customer service, not the price point. It’s all about relationship building and offering what’s current in the market for men, in addition to working with different body shapes and sizes and determining what’s going to be perfect for each individual client. It is much better than offering a cookie cutter suit to our clients and saying ‘Here’s what all the Bay Street folks are wearing, so you should wear this too!’ FM: Talk us through the start-up phase and your bootstrapping experience. PS: Well, the startup phase in general was tough, honestly, it’s probably the one phase with this whole experience where you really feel like giving up – it’s one massive, uphill battle. But if you get through it then it’s really rewarding. I had an idea, I had some contacts from my previous work (I did product development, so I have some contacts in Asia) and I didn’t have a job. And so I took $2,000 from my savings and I told myself that I am going to start this entire business on this $2,000. And with that, off we went. I didn’t know for sure that this was going to work, I didn’t know what was going to happen but I knew that I needed to try it. I used the $2,000 to get myself set up legally and just to get the initial word out so I could sell a few suits and test the market, and also finance my growth. That was my plan. This involved me getting really creative. I hired a web designer that came recommended through friends. I promised them I’d give them a lot of future business if they could help me get started for a small fee. They did a fantastic job, and eventually when I was profitable I went back and I did a complete overhaul. But the point was in the beginning I just did what was necessary to have something that represents who we are, without compromising on quality. When I started there was no retail space. Our pitch was that we are mobile and will come to your office or home. Our main clients were the finance professionals who just don’t have the time to book appointments for an hour and go through the buying process. That was our big pitch. It really helped keep overheads really low – which is the biggest key to our business model. In the beginning all these things are really tough when you only have $2,000 and don’t take a pay cheque. Every cent that you earn, you put back into the business, because eventually you need to purchase things like rolling racks and steamers and mirrors which cost a lot of money. So, the startup process was definitely rough, but once word of mouth started to spread, it made for an easier ride. Another secret to the business model was that I initially carried no inventory.  All I had in my hand when I started this business were some books, some fabric swatches, and a catalogue that told you what kind of options you can get, and just one sample – a jacket and a pair of pants. Every time a client placed an order, I used the payment as working capital. There was no inventory, there were no stocking of things and the business functioned just on a per order basis. For the most part, I still operate this way. But these days I do have a lot more samples. If I come across a novelty piece I will order a few of them in standard sizes to show customers. So we have a lot more samples to show people but we don’t sell anything off the rack. FM: How did you get the word out about your company? What methods did you try – what worked and what didn’t? PS: When I first started I thought my target audience was going to be downtown Toronto professionals that wear suits everyday. But as we started growing, a new clientele opened up that I didn’t focus on but just evolved…and that was the wedding client. Wedding suits soon became the number one item we sold! And it wasn’t planned but just worked out that way. In terms of advertising, there were a lot of things that worked, and a lot of things that definitely did not work. And when you are on a slim budget, hindsight is always 20-20, so when you go back you think ‘Oh, I wish I wouldn’t have put any dollars into this’, but by that time it’s too late. Sales events didn’t work for us. Sales events are where you are hoping to get walk-by clientele during a launch party of sorts, etc. where you are trying to attract a large group of people. We now realize the reason that didn’t work was because your typical custom suit customer wants to have an intimate experience, a one-on-one sales process. You can’t have that sort of consultation with somebody in a large group setting where there are people walking by and asking questions, so that did not work. Handing out fliers and all that type of ‘in your face’ advertising did not work either. On the other hand, Google advertising and search engine optimization worked extremely well for us. If you’re looking to buy something, especially for the first time, you are very likely going to Google it. So if we can make ourselves rank #1 on Google, then that allows us the opportunity to connect with first time suit customers, who don’t already have a tailor or supplier. Once given that opportunity, if we give them a great experience and a great product, there’s no reason why they should go anywhere else. That being said, by far the best advertising for us has been word-of-mouth. Happy customers are walking advertisements. If someone feels confident and happy in their garment and is walking down the street and someone asks, ‘Where did you get that?’, they will say with pride – Toronto Custom Suits! FM: What has been the most challenging aspect of your bootstrapping experience? Is there anything you would’ve done differently? What learning can other entrepreneurs take from your experience? PS: I think for myself, honestly, the number one most challenging aspect was the internal battle to stay positive and focused. There are external things such as managing cash flow, etc. but the one thing that’s important is to have a positive attitude everyday. When you start and there is not a cent coming in but just money going out, it can be tough on you. It’s easy to get stressed out when small things don’t go your way, like when you have a few leads and they don’t work out. That can get you all worked up and make you wonder if it is not going to work out. Once you give up mentally, you are done.  There’s no way you are going to be profitable if you are not on your A-game – it’s going to go downhill from there. If you believe in your gut that you’re on to something, then everyday you must tell yourself when you go to bed that you are on the right course. Even though you didn’t sell anything today, remind yourself it will get better, and that way people believe in you. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody is going to believe in you.  For anybody else out there who is thinking they want to start a business, we all think that we want immediate results right away, but even though that doesn’t happen in most cases, follow your passion and then the rest will come. FM: What’s next for Toronto Custom Suits? Where do you plan on taking the business? PS: Right now, I’m focused on building the Toronto client base. When I walk outside my door everyday I am surrounded by potential clients. So I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop. There’ll always be more room for growth, but when I think of the future I feel that with the way this is going, once we have a solid presence in Toronto, then Calgary Customs Suits or Vancouver Customs Suits or Ottawa Customs Suits are really not that far behind. I was toying with the idea of starting these operations myself… That’s the direction we are moving towards. However, we are still very new and I definitely haven’t reached all my goals. There is so much work to be done but it’s tough not to get excited when I look at the kind of growth we have had so far. That being said, right now I really, really want to build the Toronto market, have a substantial presence and have a lot of happy customers wearing Toronto Custom Suits! - Check out Toronto Custom Suits here.
  • The single most important factor in FreshBooks’ phenomenal success – with Mike McDerment, CEO 11 April, 2010, 9:26 pm
    If you’re a FreshBooks (online invoicing service) user, you know how obsessive these folks are about customer service. The benefits of delivering a great customer experience are obvious – more loyalty, leading to more sales and (hopefully) more profits. But how do you even begin to build a customer-centric company culture? How do you remain consistent, especially when your company’s growing really fast and things keep changing at the drop of a hat? Can you measure something as vague as ‘good customer service’? These are questions that kinda keep me up at night. Being a FreshBooks customer for several years, I’m convinced that an awesome customer experience is the single most important factor that catapulted the company into the spotlight in a fiercely competitive industry. Since launching in 2004, FreshBooks has over 1.25 million users! I’ve always wondered what it is that really goes on inside FreshBooks that allows its team to deliver exceptional customer experiences. So I invited the devil himself – Mike McDerment, CEO – to find out: Faheem Moosa: Mike, thanks for taking the time to speak with me – it’s always great to have you here. FreshBooks is known for its strong customer service culture. Was this a conscious decision you made early on or has your customer service philosophy evolved over time? Mike McDerment: I think there have been a series of conscious decisions along the way but where it came from I would say it was more our culture, and the truth is I didn’t realize where it came from until I went through an exercise with an outside consultant a while back. We had had somebody have a look at what we were doing and give us some objective feedback.  And the first thing that this guy did was he sat down one at a time with the founders of our company and went through the various stories from our inception to understand our motivations and the way we work. He made something very clear to me, which I never really realized until then.  Before I was running FreshBooks I was running a successful little consulting firm. We never did any marketing for it – we basically just built the business through word-of-mouth one customer at a time and had pretty big clients by the end of it (largest real estate brokerage in Canada, largest privately-held real estate company in Canada, travel companies, etc.). We built the business doing a great job for each client and were really good with setting expectations and delivering against them, all of which is very long-winded way of saying that when we built FreshBooks we had a culture that kind of migrated to this business. When we were running our consulting firm in a basement, we were very focused on customers – we spoke to them, took good care of them, we wanted them to come back and we had done everything we could to foster that kind of attitude and orientation ever since. And so now the conscious decisions are around ‘how could we do a better job of that?’ Why would we invest two months of our employees’ time, (everyone at FreshBooks starts and spends their first two months in customer service)? It’s a massive investment – we think it’s very important so we do it. FM: Describe some of FreshBooks’ customer service initiatives that have delighted its customers. Which of these initiatives are you most proud of, and why? MM: Well I am going to be dead simple…everything we do here is about the customer – everything!  I love the days when we improve the product  - that delights the customers. I love it when I see new things deployed that have been built by our development and design teams. I love it when our customers are happy about it and give us feedback and are up fired up…that is extraordinary.  We run a Software as a Service business where adding new improvements to the product is a big part of offering great service – we do that every two weeks. And then there are things like…we just always answered the telephone from day one and we still get phone calls from people who literally phone us just to see if we’re there and to see if its not a hoax that our phone number is on our website. So every time we take one of those calls I am really proud of that. It’s a simple thing but I love being able to deliver that experience to somebody where they weren’t expecting anyone to be there. In terms of specific stories…we have done all kinds of things. For example, one of the more noteworthy ones is we send things to our customers from time to time. We will send somebody – who is nice with us on email and really like what we are doing – a T-shirt or flowers. There has been times when people had a late night issue, were really cramming to get some invoices out the door and just needed support because their credit card was toast and they needed to get into their accounts so they can send some invoices. I go, ‘Okay you send some invoices and pay us back when you get paid’. And sure enough, they do. Pick any one at FreshBooks and speak with them because they’ve have all been in service, and have all done a million little things for people. Sometimes the really heroic stuff is the ‘little thing’. FM: What challenges have you faced while building a strong customer service culture amidst rapid growth? Is there anything you would have done differently? MM: I honestly feel like we make it a lot easier on ourselves by hiring the right people – people who share our values. We don’t hire people who we think are going to be short with customers because chances are that it says that they are not a fit for this culture. I also think we make things a lot easier on ourselves by starting everybody – no matter what department – for the first two months in customer service, because they get so grounded in our customer, our product and our culture that they understand the importance of this. For example, the marketing team always knows that they can talk about great service because they lived it themselves and they continue to do so during our ongoing rotation that sends them back to customer service once a month or so. I think just ingraining customer service as the bedrock of the experience of everybody who is on the team has made it a lot easier for us to get buy-in. I think in several other organizations service is perceived as a cost centre whereas I perceive it as an opportunity.  The better you know your customer, the better you can serve them. And the better you know them, the faster you can realize other opportunities in the marketplace. If you do a better job of developing a product you are going to generate more word-of-mouth – all of which creates this virtuous cycle where when you take care of customers, they help you market the product. This helps drive more business so you can work on the products some more so customers can continue to tell people about it…and on it goes. It’s hard to say if there is a massive change or anything that I would’ve done differently.  I actually think our culture has evolved and the way we teach people has been extraordinary.  Everybody who starts here gets a ‘buddy’ who works with them for their first two months to answer questions and lead them through some of the internal curriculum about how we do things.  And this has evolved as it needed to, which is fascinating. So, I can’t say that I would do a lot differently. Frankly, it has been wonderful to see all of that evolve out of our culture naturally and that people want to do the best job they can to help others get up and started. FM: What tools, systems or processes do you recommend entrepreneurial companies make use of to deliver extraordinary customer experiences? MM: First of all, I think it helps if you break down all the experiences your customer has – whether it is trialing your product or visiting your website or just visiting your office – and designing the hell out of those experiences. For example, when someone’s visiting your office, ask yourself how you can make that experience extraordinary. Can you do better than just say, ‘Hey how’re you doing, sit over there and here’s a newspaper?’ I think you probably can. So, break down all the touch points your customers have with your business and try to make them more remarkable. Frankly, I feel like we still have a lot of work to do there, which is just great because it means there’s just lots of opportunities to improve.  So that’s not just about using ‘tools’. It’s about creativity and taking the time to not accept whatever you have today but to reinvent and try to improve it. As for tools, I think you need to figure out what works best for you – its not so much the tool that matters. I’m a big fan of the telephone. I’ve been talking to customers on the phone for a long time. Also, there are tons of services and software that will help you manage, for example, email that comes in from your customers or a phone system that will help you manage calls.  However, it’s my belief that it’s not about the tool but about how you use it. Tools can help efficiency, but if you don’t have right team to use those tools, just forget about it.  The tools are always secondary to the execution. FM: How does FreshBooks measure its customer service initiatives and ensure a high Return on Investment (ROI) from each initiative? Mike McDerment: Interestingly, this is something we are thinking more about. There are several metrics in a recurring-revenue business like ours, such as churn rate, lifetime value (LTV) etc. that can be influenced by customer service.  Historically, we just focus on answering all our phone calls from 9 to 6 or sometimes even later than that. We are returning emails within two business hours or less (except maybe on Monday mornings when it might be three hours because of the backlog from over the weekend), so that’s really important.  We also focus on responsiveness to date, and now we are looking at things that we can go further in. There are other metrics that we look at, but the trouble is some of the stuff does not relate just to customer service, right? There are metrics like the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is the measure of your whole business, of which service is a component. Can you directly attribute NPS to customer service? It’s hard to say. We currently don’t ask customers to rate their customer service experience on a scale 1 to 5, which might be something we would do in the future. I should point out that we don’t look at our service team as just a service team. Our customer service team does a lot more than just respond to emails and pick up the phones and stuff like that.  Our core support team only does support for about three days a week. On the other two days they are working on projects that help advance the business in one way or another, whether it’s by developing content that teaches people how to use the product, working on some of our internal systems – perhaps documentation – to make people better in doing customer service themselves.  I think that’s a balance that most outsiders wouldn’t expect, where sixty percent of our customer service folks’ time is actually spent on the role itself, while the other forty percent is spent doing other important stuff.  I think that speaks to the kinds of people we like to have in customer support and the influence we think they can have on the business. If we have this same conversation in a year, I feel like I may have more to say on the subject (of metrics), as we are just kind of opening this up and seeing how we can apply ourselves to this.  I think the opportunity is for us to do more to service than we offer and I have a feeling I will never have that feeling go away. I am also very reluctant to describe certain metrics like average call time – I don’t ever want to know how long the average call time is. Because I just think a call should be as long as a call is. Having said that, I think there are other things that are important like  ‘responsiveness’ times or maybe the percentage of your customer base you talk to every month, etc. I am curious to see what we come up with in this regard. So I think there is a whole bunch of things that we will be exploring in greater detail; as we get larger obviously it will get more challenging. Today we’re a 40-person company and have everyone involved in support. Maybe we are 90 people or more, we will have learned a lot and look at this stuff differently than we do today. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • The 10 Goals That Changed An Entrepreneur’s Life – with Joe Cirulli 8 April, 2010, 6:29 pm
    This post first appeared on Mixergy. When Joe Cirulli reached in his pocket for some money to buy a soda and discovered that he had only 12 cents left to his name, he was embarrassed. Then he got angry that he allowed himself to get in that position. Soon after, Joe wrote down a list of 10 goals. The list included “Save $1 million,” and “Own a Mercedes-Benz like the one driven by the Six Million Dollar Man” and “Own a health club in Gainesville.” (See the full list below.) He read his list every morning and every night. Then, one at a time, he achieved all of those goals. In this program, you’ll hear the inspiring story of how he did that, and you’ll get advice on how you can too. Can’t see the video? Click here. The 10 goals 1. Own a health club in Gainesville 2. Make it respected in the community 3. Earn $100,000 by the age of 25 4. Own a Mercedes-Benz like the one driven by the Six Million Dollar Man 5. Own a home in the mountains and one by the ocean and build another for his parents 6. Become a black belt 7. Become a pilot and own a plane 8. Travel all over the United States 9. Travel all over the world; and 10. Save $1 million. About Joe Cirulli Joe Cirulli owns the Gainesville Health & Fitness Center, a 65,000 square foot club with over 28,000 members, along with Gainesville Health & Fitness Center for Women, a 24,000 square foot women-only center. 2004 marks the 28th year of business for GHFC. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • Involver’s Founder Reveals How The Smartest Brands Use Facebook – with Rahim Fazal 25 March, 2010, 6:36 pm
    Regular readers of this blog might remember my interview with Rahim Fazal, Founder of Involver, a few months ago. If you missed that interview, you can check it out here. Andrew Warner of Mixergy recently caught up with Rahim and engaged him in a fascinating conversation, primarily revolving around how brands can get the biggest bang for their buck on Facebook. Here’s what Andrew had to say, followed by the interview: I asked Rahim Fazal to teach the business side of using Facebook because his company, Involver, has helped brands like American Apparel, Us Weekly and Puma grow their businesses using social media. Here’s an example of what they’ve done. “We started working with Us Weekly, the popular gossip magazine, in April 2009,” he said in this program. “And they used the Involver product, and its suite of applications, to grow their Facebook Fan Page in about six months, from 2,700 fans to over 250,000.” Why does growing fans even matter to a business? And more importantly, how can you go from building your business’s fan-base to monetizing? Those are the two big questions that this program answers. Along the way, you’ll get to know the entrepreneur who co-founded Involver, a guy who negotiated the sale of his first company for $1.5 million while taking his senior year final exams. Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! Can’t see the video? Click here. About Rahim Fazal Rahim Fazal, is CEO and Co-Founder of Involver, the fastest growing social media platforms for brands. He is a three-time entrepreneur. While still in high school, Rahim co-founded a web-hosting company and negotiated its sale for $1.5 million while taking his Senior Year final exams. He then started a web services platform business and eventually took it public, becoming one of the youngest directors ever of a publicly traded company in the United States. In 2008, Inc Magazine named Rahim one of its top 30 entrepreneurs under 30, and in 2009, iMedia named Rahim one of the advertising industry’s top 25 digital thought-leaders. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • How Serial Entrepreneur Noah Alper Created The $100 Mil Noah’s Bagels After Bouncing Back From A Failure 23 March, 2010, 7:12 am
    This interview first appeared on Mixergy. Noah Alper is open about his setbacks. His previous company, which aimed to sell giftware from Israel to born-again Christians, “was a total and absolute failure,” he admits. But things change fast for entrepreneurs and just 6 months after he closed that business, he launched Noah’s New York Bagels and “had a tiger by the tail.” In this program, you’ll see how he did it by being a mensch, a Yiddish word which means “a person of integrity.” Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! Can’t see video? Click here. About Noah Alper Noah Alper is the founder of Noah’s New York Bagels, which he sold for $100 million 6 1/2 years after launching it. He is also the founder of six other ventures, including the grocery store company, Bread & Circus, once the Northeast’s largest natural foods chain and now part of Whole Foods Market. Today he consults in areas of entrepreneurship, strategic management, executive coaching and business planning. He is also the author of Business Mensch, a book about lessons from his business experiences. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • How Australia’s Internet Pioneer Helped Get The Country Online – with Lloyd Ernst 17 March, 2010, 5:45 pm
    This interview first appeared on Mixergy. Lloyd Ernst introduced Australians to the internet by getting the country’s most tech savvy into hotel ballrooms and blowing them away by showing off how email worked. He was introducing them to the future. That’s what he does. It started when he hooked up a computer in his garage to a phone and created a bulletin board called PowerUp. At first, only one person could log in at a time, but as the business grew he paid for more modems and more phone lines and pretty soon his customers could talk to each other. Then the internet came and PowerUp let its customers connect to the world. But how do you explain something so new? That’s where the ball rooms came in. After selling PowerUp, his next company, WebCentral, helped companies set up their first web sites, back when the concept of web sites was still foreign. Listen to this interview to hear how he built and sold WebCentral, and how he continues to ride the cutting edge with his latest company, Event Zero. Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! If you’re reading this on your RSS Reader or email and can’t see the video, click here. About Lloyd Ernst Lloyd Ernst is a founding shareholder and Director of Brisbane based Event Zero Pty Ltd, which developed a Complex Event Processing CEP platform which is design to provide organisation with Real time operational intelligence by analysing very large amounts of data in real time from disparate data sources. He’s also the founder of PowerUp Pty Ltd, WebCentral Pty Ltd, XtreamLok, and SinoCode Ltd. You can see is full biography on Lloyde.com - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • How The Founder Of iContact Reached $1 Mil In Sales A Few Days After Turning 21 – with Ryan Allis 15 March, 2010, 4:56 pm
    This interview first appeared on Andrew Warner’s Mixergy. When he was 16, Ryan Allis wrote and framed a big goal: to build a company with $1 million sales by the time he was 21 years old. “I missed it by 18 days,” he says. “But I sure as heck would have missed it by 18 years had I not written down that goal and figured out how to align the people in my life and the knowledge and resources I needed to bring into my world in order to make that happen.” Ryan says you can get there too. He made it happen by launching iContact, whose motto is “email marketing simplified.” In this program you’ll see how he hustled to get his first customers. You’ll see the struggles on his way to reach his first million and how the business generates over $3 million in monthly (not annual, but monthly) sales. Oh, and now he has new goals. He wears 2 of them on his wrist every day. You’ll see them in the interview and hear Ryan explain what they are. Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! If you’re reading this on your RSS reader or email and can’t see the video, click here. About Ryan Allis Ryan Allis is is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of iContact, the leading global provider of email marketing services to small and mid-sized businesses. He is also the author of the book Zero to One Million, which reached the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list. And he’s the founder of The Humanity Campaign, a non-profit organization that provides support to community-based organizations in the developing world. If you appreciate this interview, you can thank him on Twitter. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • “The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur” Talks About How He Built Zoho Into A Bootstrapped Powerhouse – with Sridhar Vembu 11 March, 2010, 5:27 pm
    This interview first appeared on Mixergy. “The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur” is what Forbes called Zoho’s co-founder, Sridhar Vembu. He’s become a little less unknown since that article came out, but when it bubbled to the top of Hacker News recently I read it I wanted more details about how he bootstrapped Zoho into a profitable online application provider. So I invited him to Mixergy to tell us the story of how he built his company. Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! If you’re reading this on your RSS Reader or email and can’t view the video, click here. About Sridhar Vembu Sridhar Vembu is the co-founder of Zoho, Corp. The company is organized around 3 major divisions. Zoho.com provides a comprehensive suite of applications for businesses – from on-line productivity to CRM and custom applications. ManageEngine allows enterprise IT organizations better manage their networks, servers and infrastructure. WebNMS focuses on the needs of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the network and telecom space. You can see his Hacker News submissions and comments here.
  • How A Driven 16-Year-Old Built A $100 Million Net Worth By The Time He Turned 25 – with Gurbaksh Chahal 8 March, 2010, 9:56 pm
    This interview first appeared on Andrew Warner’s Mixergy. Oprah showed how dramatic the transformation was for internet entrepreneur, Gurbaksh Chahal. In the before pictures, she showed a tiny Indian kid with a turban, who was picked on by other kids and how’s family struggled financially. In the after shots, she showed an adult with a stunning penthouse, hot car and confidence to spare. I invited Gurbaksh to Mixergy to talk about how he did it. In this program, you’ll hear how at 16 he got the idea to create ClickAgents, the ad brokerage business. And how he funded it by selling ads before he could even run them. You’ll hear why he sold the business. And how he made his next startup, BlueLithium, profitable within 3 months. You’ll hear why he sold that company to Yahoo! and about his vision for gWallet, his latest startup. Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! If you’re reading this on your RSS Reader or email and can’t view the video, click here. About Gurbaksh Chahal Gurbaksh Chahal is currently the founder and CEO of gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media. He left high school at 16 to form Click Agents, an Internet advertising company, which he sold two years later for $40 million. In January 2004, he launched a second company, BlueLithium – the next generation in Internet advertising. The company was focused on data, optimization, and analytics and became a pioneer of behavioral targeting. On September 4th, 2007, Yahoo! announced that it was acquiring BlueLithium for $300 million in cash. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
  • How to negotiate like a pro – with Jim Camp 4 March, 2010, 5:40 pm
    I really appreciate the comments and emails from many of you about the usefulness of this blog. I know I’ve been inconsistent with my posts lately and have none to blame but myself. Part of the reason for this is that Springboarders, my business planning company, has been commanding much of my attention lately. And of course that’s a good thing – business is terrific and no complaints! However, I am a bit frustrated at my inability to post interviews frequently and don’t want to let you down, especially those of you who enjoy reading my interviews with successful entrepreneurs. So, today I am going to try something different. There are several websites/blogs out there with fantastic interviews of successful entrepreneurs. My intent is to periodically post a select few of these interviews on my blog so you guys can get the benefit of reading/viewing an eclectic mix of interviews. I assure you I will pick and choose only those interviews that I feel would be of value to you guys. I plan to continue interviewing entrepreneurs whenever time permits, so you will see original content from time to time. I would love to hear from you whether or not this idea makes sense. I’m always open to suggestions, so feel free to leave a comment below or email me at fmoosa [at] springboarders.ca The following interview first appeared on Mixergy, which in my opinion is one of the best websites showcasing interviews with successful entrepreneurs. Check them out if you haven’t already. In the video interview below, Andrew Warner (Founder of Mixergy) speaks with Jim Camp, whose “Start with No” negotiating methods have been trusted by over 500 multinationals and have been taught to over 100,000 students till date. Negotiation is an important part of everyday life for most of us. For entrepreneurs, it’s even more important. I know I’ve made several blunders both in my personal and business life and when I look back, I realize how I could’ve gotten what I wanted simply by knowing how to negotiate with, convince and influence people better. Enjoy the interview! Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart! If you’re reading this on your RSS reader and can’t see the video, click here. About Jim Camp Jim Camp is a leading global expert on negotiations and has trained and coached over 100,000 people through thousands of negotiations in more than 500 multinational organizations, including Texas Instruments, Intel, Applied Materials, Merrill Lynch, IBM, Cisco Systems, Prudential Insurance, and Nationwide Insurance. Camp is the best-selling author of two negotiation books in 12 languages, Start with No and No: The Only System Of Negotiation You Need For Work and Home. - Want to be notified when there is new content to read on this blog? Just enter in your email address here and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. If you prefer using your RSS Reader, subscribe here. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else. Thanks! – Faheem
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