Effective Representation Through Social Media
Many people and businesses become disenchanted with social media because the time involved does not provide a Return On Investment (ROI). Some even begin their foray into social media without a frame of reference for understanding why or how it works. Let’s clear the deadwood. Social media works if you:
- Are talking about something you deeply understand,
- Provide information that is compelling and topical,
- Present your information in a way that is unique or entertaining
Understanding Social Media
Now that we have the elements for success in place, we need to examine what we understand about social media. Let’s take a moment and think about how our frame of reference has changed in the last 10 years and how we view personalities vs. influencers. Don’t worry. If you don’t understand the difference between a personality and influencer, we’ll get to that!
For an example, let’s consider talk radio. Remove the subject matter and how you may feel about certain talk radio personalities and consider the relationship. The host of the radio show talks about certain subjects and then clearly breaks for commercials. Some radio hosts are the voice behind the commercial. Even when that is the case don’t you know it’s a commercial? You don’t for a minute think that the personality is talking about the product out of a sincere interest in the product even if the personality says, “I use it and I like it”. I think most people know that the personality is paid by the radio station(s) or that the air time is funded by the products. There is also a certain level of suspicion that the personality is, like an actor, playing a role geared towards ratings.
It’s all about You!
In the late 1990′s a fundamental change started to occur. We saw individuals starting to market themselves. In 1997 Tom Peters at FastCompany published an article called “The Brand Called You“. For many, this article summed up the conversation of the times which highlighted the power of the individual. Even some progressive personalities like tech journalist Leo Laporte started personalizing their conversations. Leo turned his audience into a community which helped his independent endeavor “This week in Tech” turn into a multimillion dollar business. Robert Scoble became the mouth piece of Rackspace.com and since has built a personality that far exceeds his employer Rackspace. “The Brand Called You” said, “Along the way, if you’re really smart, you figure out what it takes to create a distinctive role for yourself — you create a message and a strategy to promote the brand called You.”
Business Success Using Social Media
You may be thinking to yourself. Okay great for Leo. He had an audience from his radio and television shows that appealed to a niche market and he capitalized on it. You may also be thinking, “Is Rackspace crazy? What company in their right mind would take an employee and fund the growth of their own personal celebrity”? The effect of having a spokesperson for a company is obvious. The effect of having a spokesperson who can be a real person and speak honestly about the company is powerful. If a company is really focused on providing value, a good spokesperson can turn the customer base into a community. This is a double edge sword. The representative needs to be a cheerleader for the brand. For the best results, the individual/company shouldfollow a QFD (Quality Function Deoployment) plan that is further supported with external data collection tools. QFD is a process that turns customer demands into future quality. Real life representatives for a company can help shorten the life cycle of gathering information and making improvements. A focused plan is the only way to ensure full product cycle ROI.
The Big Bang of Influencers
Representatives in the social media landscape can quickly become influencers. Influencers can persuade individuals to make purchases or upgrades which can be directed through specific channels to quantify the results. Product codes, landing pages, and campaign centric phone numbers are often used to separate the influencers traffic from regular marketing efforts. It’s important to understand that influencers appeal to a community, not an audience and therefore are held to higher ethical standards. Take for example, David Pogue of the New York Times. David recently came under fire for not disclosing his book deals about tech devices he was also reviewing. Because of this, the Times now references his other work at the bottom of the articles. There are no concrete ethical guidelines for disclosure at this time. It is also apparent that the rules are not the same for all influencers. A fine line between disclosure and the monetization needs to be walked. Knowing the community and utilizing social media tools to communicate to the vocal minority is the best way of protecting your social media investment.
What are you going to sell this Holiday Season?
IT’S HOT! The sun is shining and the last thing on your mind is the largest retail opportunity of the year. If you have something to sell, are you ready for Christmas? If not, the time to act is now. In this short article I’m going to attempt to give you a crash course in e-commerce. It’s my hope that if you’re ready to act, you’ll come with most everything needed to get started. So let’s get started.
The most obvious thing you need is a place for people to find you and place orders. If you do not have a domain name, we can register it for you. Once you have a domain name we’ll need to set up hosting and a secure certificate. The secure certificate (also known as SSL or TLS) keeps all data between the browser and your website safe, allowing your customers to feel comfortable sharing their personal information and payment information. Hosting has become a commodity where you get what you pay for. We only offer enterprise grade hosting services in hardened facilities connected where the internet meets to exchange data across networks. This enables our servers to route around network congestion providing the best service to the greatest number of people. Now we need something to sell with. E-commerce solutions are varied and we have settled on a 3 tier approach that can service the individual selling a product or two to multi-brand/storefront solution tied into a single administration point providing dashboard style reporting on sales activities. Let’s describe each tier and decide which you fit into: Tier 1: You have a product or three and you need an inexpensive method of selling your product. You have a flat rate that covers your shipping, handling, and any applicable taxes. You do not anticipate any changes to products offered or total calculations. Tier 2: You have a single storefront selling products that need to be categorized and searchable. You have a single point of origin for all shipping and would like to calculate shipping costs across one or more carriers or shipping methods. You also would like to either securely capture credit cards for offline transacting or setup an automated online method. Tier 3: You have a catalog of products that need to be sold through several websites. Websites can share shipping and billing methodologies or have unique settings. Some of your products may overlap stores, and or find themselves bundled with other products. You need to be able to target different target markets or market segments and orchestrate your marketing efforts to each website while maintaining a single point of administration and tracking of products inventories and sales. Moving from tier to tier has it’s own development costs, so it’s a good idea to consider where you will be in 2 years and make your choice accordingly. Each level has it’s pro’s and cons that are specific to your vision. Give us a call, we want to make sure people can find you in time for Christmas.The River
Life has a way of wearing away at you, the way a river wears away at its banks. It’s easy to feel like it’s our job to resist at all costs. It seems right to remain strong, to hold ourselves rigid against all that comes, and all that tries to break us down. Inevitably though, we break down. We’re human after all … not granite. All those grains of sand and pieces of dirt that made up the river bank are lost forever. Washed away never to be seen again. We fear loosing everything we use to identify who we are. So, we gather our strength, look for hope, and weather on. That mode of thinking produces a life of struggle and of hardship. We fail to consider the wonderful amazing journey that is possible if we just let go. We fail to believe there is more to ourselves than everything we have surrounded ourselves with. What would happen if we let go? What would happen if we put our energies into minor course corrections as we flowed with life? Who would we become if our identity was defined by our journey and not our hardships?
– jeff
Website Moving/Updating Guide
When we move from one house to another we pack up everything and transport it to the new house. Some of us have employ the time honored tradition of beer, pickup trucks, and friends to make the physical move happen. It’s time consuming, tiring, and when you’re done … still expensive. Something always breaks. You always need more something than you planned on, which costs those precious dollars you were trying to keep. When you wake up the next day you are often exhausted and surrounded by a mess. The other alternative is professional movers. Professional packers and movers come in and pack each room, label each box, and deliver those boxes to the correct rooms. You find yourself familiarizing yourself with your new surroundings and getting comfortable as the moving effortlessly happens around you. The difference between the two experiences is budget. If you have an old website and you want to move into a new one, both options are available to you. We provide training in moving content or we can do it for you. It’s a matter of budget.
If only moving were that simple. What about mail? It’s easy. You simply fill out a change of address form and the Post Office takes care of it for you. Guess what? It’s just about that simple. You supply us a list of email addresses and we setup your new mail and transfer it over the weekend. When you come in Monday, you check your email one last time to clear out any remaining messages, then change your email settings to the new server. Once you point your mail client to the new server, your mail will function like normal. If normal means you get a lot of spam, we can one up the post office. Simply upgrade your mail boxes with Graphics & Motion SecureMail. You will be amazed at how much less spam (read junk mail) you receive. Additionally SecureMail provides protection against Viruses and Phishing attacks. In case you don’t know, Phishing is where someone pretends to be someone they aren’t (like your bank) in an attempt to get your personal information.
I’m certain that every time you’ve moved you do your darnedest to make sure everyone you can think of knows where you moved. I don’t know about you, but every time I miss someone … okay a lot of people. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could put up an invisible sign that only your friends could see that would direct them to your new house? On the web, we have these giant long addresses called URL’s. You know, that string of text at the top of your browser that goes from http://www.address.com to something so long you wouldn’t even want to attempt to read it? Those things change when you move and it makes it impossible for the search engines to know where those old pages have moved to. In comes 301 redirects. These redirects are custom coded and act as that invisible sign pointing your old pages to the new ones so your visitors find you. Mapping redirects from an old site to a new one requires planning and can be time consuming. Redirecting every page might be cost prohibitive, but if you get all the key pages it can go a long way to making sure you keep those hard earned visitors.
I hope this website moving/updating guide helps you understand the key steps to a smooth transition.
Content Mangement System’s (CMS) and Return on Investment (ROI)
Content Management System (CMS) Return On Investment (ROI)
CONTENT MANAGEMENT (CMs)
Wayne’s article (The Simple Joy of Website Updates) already discussed the merits having the power to make your own edits. What you may not have considered is giving your customers or community the power to submit content to you! Editing and publishing content submitted by your users is a great way to stay customer or user focused.
SYSTEM (cmS)
In a CMS, the page organization and links are managed by the system, because of this you can organically grow your site and re-organize its structure to fit your business as it’s needs change. The cost of setting up an tailoring the system for your business creates additional overhead for new sites but is mitigated quickly as you save money in navigation/structure/interface edit costs.
Built-in Base Level Search Engine Optimization
Content Management Systems (CMS’s) provide basic formatting that makes it easy for Search Engines to find you and “Spider” your content. Search engines use programs that check websites for new and updated content. Organizing your content is key for search engine placement. They also provide basic tools so you can improve search engine placement. One of the many things we teach customers who participate in our marketing programs, is how to effectively use these tools each time they edit or add a page to the system. Our periodic review of statistics will help you make good decisions in improving the search-ability of your site. In some cases we can produce better results through a fine tuning process called Search Engine Optimization.
Design Independence
Content Management Systems (CMS’s) “load” a web design. This means that your design is separate from the system or the content. When it’s time for a new design, we simply create it and load it in. Unless we are changing the structure of the site, no changes to the system or content are required. This represents a huge savings and empowers you to compete visually.
Plugins for Additional Utility
Content Management Systems have a plugin architecture that allows the developer community to write add on programs to extend the functionality of the system. There is seemingly limitless potential for custom development. Custom development of course is expensive, but most commonly used programs have already been written. As long as you are willing to accept the way these pre-written plugins operate, you can have amazing functionality for relative little cost. Examples of the more commonly used plugins include:
- Community Management Tools
- Calendar and Event Management
- Photo Galleries
- Shopping Carts
- News and Blog’s
- Multi-Admin/Editor Management
- Custom User Experience Based on Role or Group
Minglewood Hall
I recently installed new SSL certificate on Apache web server, wrote a mod_rewrite, and worked with Ticket Biscuit to Secure converging pages in both our content management system and the ticket purchasing system. I’m a big advocate for server and site security and was happy to help out with this project.
Minglewood Hall is a new venue opening soon in Midtown Memphis. Located inside the beautifully renovated building at 1555 Madison Avenue, The Hall offers a wide variety of possibilities for any event.
Different results in challenging times
Bill Drennan of Performance Systems recently asked me:
If we expect to get different results in these challenging times, what are the few critical things that we must personally do differently…starting now?
My answer:
Progress happens by doing things mostly right and correcting along the way. The very idea of doing things differently suggests that you were on the wrong path entirely. When people feel pressured they often leap to extreme measures. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “Extreme times call for extreme measures”. While this expression may have some truth, we need to be careful about the decisions we make and our outward communication.
Companies and individuals have contacts, skill sets, and experience. Utilizing these three things and adapting is key to success. A business may need to retool or an individual might need further education to adapt to a changing environment. What’s critical is to adapt or correct … along the way. Endurance is key in challenging times and we must continue to endure as we improve as well as inspire confidence in everyone around us. Businesses and individuals who choose to see this as an opportunity to stand out from the competition will benefit.
- Discuss strengths and opportunities for collaboration.
- Find your unique voice and let everyone in your contact list know what you have to offer.
- Be available to participate when opportunities present themselves.
- Never give up.
Browser Compatibility & Development
Traditional print design starts with the premise of a static size and shape. The designer then takes into consideration the material printed on and the dynamics of any surrounding or competing visuals. The web however is dramatically different. The size and shape are not guaranteed and there are no competing visuals. Furthermore different browsers display the code that constructs the web page differently.
You might be thinking to yourself, “I thought there were web standards”. You are indeed correct. The web standards are created by a group called W3C (www.w3c.org). However, there isn’t a browser created that is fully compliant with any of the specifications put out by this organization and some interpret the specification differently or ignore it all together! This means that as a web designer you end up coding for multiple browsers. Even if a customer wanted to pay for the time to code a site for all browsers and all their versions, it would be nearly impossible to produce an identical visual result across the board.
Browser Compatibility Bang For The Buck
Internet Explorer: 67.55%
Firefox: 21.53%
Safari: 8.29%
Chrome: 1.12%
Opera: 0.70%
Netscape: 0.57%
Other: 0.22%
Targeting Firefox and IE7 and Above you end up addressing over 70% of web users. To boost the number over 90% graceful degradation of the code should be considered for IE6. With this practical and economical approach to target browser consideration you can guarantee wide target audience delivery. This does not mean that display will be identical from one browser to another, but the differences should be minimal.
Creative Challenges : Elizabeth Gilbert
Creativity isn’t a constant it ebbs and flows and yet for the last 16 years I’ve been paid for consistency. It’s a tough gig, but i love it.
My house and the houses of others are decorated with my paintings, but I’ve only completed 1 painting in the last ten years. I’ve completed countless designs for print that are likely occupying space in landfills. Electrons and pulses of light that carried my designs to the screens of computers around the world now deliver others creative endeavors. The paintings remain. I might have to start painting again.
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on how creative people can create a protective psychological construct to mitigate the taste of failure that comes with daring to create.
Womens Foundation : Site Redesign
Over the past week I migrated Womens Foundation for Greater Memphis from one content management system (Mambo 1.x) to (Joomla 1.5.x). Included in the migration is a refresh of their old design in CSS Box Model.
The Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis (WFGM) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit grant-making organization. Fostered by an initial gift from local philanthropist Mertie Buckman, it was established in 1995 to encourage philanthropy and foster leadership among women and to support programs that enable women and children to reach their full potential.
