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By far the most important aspect of email marketing is the concept of permission. It’s the only thing separating you from the spammers of this world, but for many, it remains a grey area. It doesn’t need to be. First of all, let’s clarify what spam is, and then what kind of permission you will need to use our email marketing software - Campaign Monitor. This is so important, because you may encounter legal issues if you don’t comply with the Australian CAN-SPAM laws.

Being ‘legal’ is not enough - our definition of spam

While the CAN-SPAM laws are a step in the right direction for classifying and reducing spam, we don’t feel they go far enough. Our definition of spam goes beyond the laws in most countries and encompasses what we believe to be true permission email marketing.

Spam is any email you send to someone who hasn’t given you their direct permission to contact them on the topic of the email. But that’s not enough. Permission is a fuzzy word open to interpretation. Let’s get into some specific scenarios so it’s clear what does and doesn’t constitute permission.

The type of permission you MUST have

You can only email subscribers using Campaign Monitor if you obtained their permission in any of the following methods:

They opted in via your web site
This could either be through a newsletter subscribe form or by ticking a checkbox on another form. This checkbox cannot be checked by default and it must clearly explain that checking it will mean you will be contacting them by email.

They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed
If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by email AND they ticked a box indicating they would like to be contacted.

They gave you their business card
If someone gives you their business card and you have explicitly asked for permission to add them to your list, you can contact them. If they dropped their business card in a fishbowl at a trade show, there must be a sign indicating they will be contacted by email about the specific topic.

They purchased something off you in the last 2 years
By making a purchase from you they have provided their permission implicitly. Feel free to email them but at the same time, we think it’s always better to ask anyway, so why not include an opt-in checkbox as part of the checkout process.

Scenarios that DON’T equate to permission

Basically, anything outside the examples above doesn’t equal permission in our eyes, but here are some examples to make sure we’re crystal clear:

You obtained the email addresses from a third party
Whether you purchased a list, were provided one by a partner or bought a bankrupt competitor’s customer list, those people never gave YOU permission to email them and they will consider your email spam. No matter the claims of the source of this list, you cannot email them with Campaign Monitor.

You scraped or “copy and pasted” the addresses from the Internet
Just because people publish their email address doesn’t mean they want to hear from you.

You haven’t emailed that address for more than 2 years
Permission doesn’t age well. Even if you got their permission legitimately, they won’t remember giving it to you. If you haven’t sent something to that address in the last 2 years, you can’t start now.

Need more information? Contact us and we'll be happy to guide you through the process of utilising email marketing to grow your business.

Most individuals I speak to seem to feel that getting involved in online communities equates to having to spend all your time online and besides, how do you determine what works best for you?

Rishad Tobaccowala of VivaKi has developed a useful exercise for figuring out your brand's perceived identity and personality. He suggests you begin by choosing a few key words that best describe your brand, under the following three categories:

1. Niche. What makes your brand different, and what attracts folks to its niche?

2. Voice. How does your brand "express" itself?

3. Story. What story sits behind the formation of your brand and its ongoing role in the marketplace?

Going through this exercise may help sharpen your brand's voice—and boost its social presence. Social Media Consultant, Roderick Low, has outlined below five ways you can easily improve your online community:

1. Make the community prominent.
Don’t hide your online community behind a link. Bring it right up to the front page. Anything less, and you aren’t giving your community the respect it deserves. If you are serious about your online community, prove it by giving it serious exposure.

Show that you value the opinions of your members by featuring their content alongside your own editorial content – you are equal partners in this.

This goes further than just proving your commitment to the community. It puts the community in front of eyeballs. A lot of the time, visitors won’t even notice a link to your community – so put it where they can see it if you want them to join and get involved.

2. Keep it simple.
You don’t need fancy features and a glamorous site design. Most of the time, these are simply distractions. Keep things simple. There is nothing wrong with basing your community solely on a forum. You don’t necessarily need a full range of ’social networking’ features. People need to be able to communicate – it’s as simple as that. They can do this with a basic forum.

Fancy designs are often just an ego stroke for the organisation that commissioned them. Remember, an online community isn’t about you – it’s about your members. Strip everything back and keep it basic. Your community may not look glamorous, but it will be far more likely to contain activity and member engagement.

3. Tell me why.
I come across a lot of online communities that don’t explain or outline their purpose. As crazy as it sounds, there are a lot of people building communities without actually making it clear what the purpose of the community is.

Sometimes this is obvious from the name – but even then, I need to know why I should join your community rather than one belonging to your competitor. Ensure that all visitors to your site know why they should be joining and getting involved in the community. Keep it short, simple, snappy and accurate.

4. Be active.
As a community manager, you need to be active in your own online community. You can’t be a matchmaker unless you get to know members of your community. You can’t learn from your members if you don’t know who they are.

Lead by example – get stuck in and enjoy the community. If you aren’t active or if you aren’t enjoying being active, your community has a problem. Fix it.

5. Build relationships at home and away.
Some people who contact me stress that they are highly active in their community – in fact, sometimes they are its chief contributor. Of course, a community isn’t a community if there is only one person doing the talking. If this is happening to you, it’s an indicator that you need to be more proactive.

Just because you’ve built an online community doesn’t mean people will flock to it. You need to get out there and find members. Fortunately, that’s never been easier. Your potential members are out there writing blogs, telling the world what they are doing on twitter, and networking on Facebook.

Don’t stalk these potential members, and don’t spam them. Get to know them. Comment on their blogs, provide value. It’s all about what you can do for them – not the other way around.

For more insights and valuable tips & ideas, follow SPINN Media on Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media is everywhere these days. A recent report however shows that when it comes to small and medium-sized businesses, social media is still a missed opportunity.


Here’s an excerpt from this post that first appeared in the American Express OPEN Forum for Small Business. The 2010 Business Monitor United States report commissioned by UPS, indicates that in spite of all the positive press that social media gets and all the use cases we’ve seen emerge over the past few years, small business owners are taking social media for granted. When done right, social media can be a valuable source for customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction. Here are a few reasons to help drive the value home. 



Information is There for the Taking
Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to the web. Ignoring, avoiding or just not looking at what people are sharing online about your small business or your competitors is just plain lazy.


Now more than ever people turn to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, Yelp and a slew of other sites to share information and make it publicly available. As such, there’s a wealth of information that existing customers, future fans and online detractors are putting into the public domain, and there are a plethora of tools to make it easy for you to follow along.


The customer that tweets about a poor experience, the guy that leaves a tip about a venue on Foursquare, or the woman that tweets about being overwhelmed by an event she’s planning, are all real humans sharing real bits of information that if ignored could translate into missed opportunities.


In the case of the person with the poor experience, if it’s your business being discussed, offer to step in and fix the problem. If it’s a competitor, offer to let the person try a comparable product free of charge. When it comes to Foursquare, acknowledge great Foursquare tips, even if they’re not for your own business. If you can help the woman who’s overwhelmed, do it, even if it is just by responding, “is there any way I can help?”


As a small businesses owner, it’s your responsibility to use these bits of public information to build relationships, improve customer service and enhance your products. 



Simple Works
Finding the right way to use social media can be daunting, especially when there are so many examples of big brands pushing the limits of creativity and possibility when it comes to their Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare initiatives. Often times the big guys forget that it’s the simplest of gestures that can have the greatest impact. But simple works.


On the simple side of things, just take the time to acknowledge customers that mention you. Did someone tweet about dining at your restaurant? Did they check-in at your venue? Did they share a story about your small business on Facebook? These actions that take place in the public domain are all opportunities to connect with a current or potential customer and make them feel special.  


Responding is easy — a simple “thanks for stopping by,” or “how can we make your next visit better?” tweet can go a long way and even make someone’s day. Yet, it’s something most companies take for granted. People like to be recognized, but often times they’re never presented with an opportunity to associate restaurants, stores and other venues with the people behind him. You can create that opportunity by recognizing their patronage, which in turn should help ensure that they return for a future visit.


Another simple thing you can do is post signage — on your website and in your store — to indicate that you’re social media-friendly. The Express retail chain has their chief marketing officer’s Twitter handle printed on all their bags, which works to reinforce that the company cares about person-to-person connections. Take that idea and apply it to your own business. For that extra touch, make stickers, punch cards or window decals that showcase your small business’s online personality and reinforce that you’re interested in conversations with your customers.



Your Size Works in Your Favor
Starbucks is the perfect example of an early adopter brand that understands social media, and yet their size prohibits them from engaging with every customer that walks in the door.


As a small business, your size is your friend in social media channels. Use your small size as an advantage and respond to each and every person that mentions you. Since you’re working with a smaller customer base, you can also build customer Twitter Lists to separate different categories of customers into groups, which should help you offer more personalized customer service — something the big businesses don’t have the time or resources to support.


Here’s an easy example: Who are your most frequent customers? Make a Twitter List called “Regulars,” and add your regulars on Twitter to it. 


In doing so, you’re associating patronage with prestige. Your efforts could even inspire semi-regular customers to frequent your business more often just so they too can get added to the list. This tactic might also serve as a catalyst for one regular to connect with another, though you could also facilitate customer-to-customer connections with introductory tweets. So if a customer tweets for a recommendation, you could respond with something simple as, “@customer1 good question, I like the cheesecake but @customer2 really loves the custard.”


These types of personal exchanges highlight the advantages afforded to small businesses using social media. Need more information on how you can get started with Social Media? 
Contact us for a free discussion.

Facebook is probably one of the most cost-effective and powerful mediums around that can help your brand connect with its target market.  Dean Rieck is a direct-marketing copywriter and consultant, and publishes the popular Direct Creative Blog and Pro Copy Tips. Here’s an excerpt from an article he wrote recently about how you can get the best bang for your buck from your Facebook fan page.

If you're a business using Facebook, you've probably set up a fan page. Fan pages are specifically designed for businesses and brands that want to connect to customers and prospects on a large scale.

A fan page lets you grow as big as you want, send updates to an unlimited number of fans, and keep the focus on the organization without revealing the administrator behind the scenes.

But once you have your page set up, how do you maximize your fan base and get the most out of your page?

Some social-media gurus think that "old-school" marketing techniques have gone the way of the dinosaur and won't work on Facebook or other similar platforms. I disagree.

Yes, you have to nix the hardball language and deal with people on a more personal level, but common marketing methods can still give you an edge in social media, especially on Facebook. After all, good marketing isn't medium-specific. It's about clear, direct communication.

So let's look at how you can use some proven marketing techniques to take your page from wimpy to wow and start attracting more fans, encouraging more interaction, and getting more benefit from your Facebook fan page.

1. Advertise your page
Forget the "Build it and they will come" mantra. If you want people to know your Facebook fan page exists, you have to tell them.

At a minimum, link to your page from your website and blog. Put the link high on your Web page, especially in hot spots such as the masthead or at the top of the right or left column. Include a Facebook icon to call attention to the link.

To power-up your advertising, use Facebook ads, blog posts, banners, and any other advertising to get your page in front of people.

2. Blast out a direct invitation
Don't be shy about it. If you want fans, send an email to your list and say something like, "We'd love you to join us. Click here to visit our page and become a fan." I know some people will consider that too pushy, but why be ashamed to ask people to be your fan?

3. Build your Facebook brand
Mention your page in brochures, direct mail, business cards, email signatures, advertisements, packing slips, fulfillment materials, everywhere.

Your Facebook page is just like anything else you want to make popular. You have to spread the news through every public customer contact point as often as possible.

4. Share lots of company information
Every fan page includes an Info tab where you can provide a clickable Web address as well as a company overview, your mission, and information about your products and services.

But don't settle for filling in the minimum information or feel constrained by the preset categories. Get creative and provide other information as well.

For example, in your company overview you can list links to specific pages on your website, your newsletter sign-up form, other social media, or whatever else you want.

5. Create a landing page with a call to action
Why let people land on a wall that's filled with random posts and comments?

In the application directory, Facebook provides a special application called Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language), which lets you use basic Web markup code to render just about any Web page you want in a box or a tab.

Just install the application, insert your code, and adjust your wall settings so that people who aren't yet fans land on that page when they first arrive. You can give a short description of your organization and ask people to become a fan.

I use that technique for a fan page I run for a nonprofit, and it doubles or triples the number of visitors who become fans.

6. Scream your Web address
At the top left of every fan page, you can upload an image. Most businesses opt for a logo. That's fine, but it is also the perfect location to show your Web address.

Yes, you have your address in the Info area, but there's no guarantee anyone will look at that page. But you know that everyone will see your logo.

So modify your logo image to include your URL in big, bold type. It's not clickable, but it's a cue for people to check out your website.

7. Add plenty of content
Direct-mail experts have known the power of content for years, and the same holds true online. The more information and interactive opportunities you provide, the better your page will be at educating, converting, and retaining your customers.

Post something to your wall at least once a day, though two or three times is better. Also, adjust your wall settings to allow fans to post comments, photos, links, and videos.

You can also use the Notes application to import an RSS feed, the YouTube application to post videos, and the Discussion application to host a mini forum.

8. Push offers, events, and more
You can use Static FBML for more than a landing page. You can add a little shopping area, special offers, coupons and rewards, event or promotional announcements, job postings—anything you need.

Think of your fan page as an extension of your main website. Just be sure to read the terms of use to avoid blunders that could get your page shut down. Facebook deactivates pages without warning or remorse.

9. Do some "direct marketing"
Unlike groups, where you are limited to communicating with 5,000 members, a fan page gives you the ability to send direct messages to an unlimited number of fans. It's like email but shows up in your fans' notification box.

You can use the feature to drive traffic to your page, announce events, or share important news. But don't overuse it. Just as you wouldn't email a customer five times a day, you need to exercise common sense with Facebook direct messages.

10. Solicit email subscribers
Here we go with Static FBML again. You'll find it's the most powerful tool Facebook provides. And if you have an email list, Facebook gives you one more venue for signing up subscribers. Just put the code for your subscription form in FBML to create a tab or sidebar box, or both.

11. Research your fan base
The Insights tool allows you to see metrics on your fans, such as how many comments and interactions you have, the number of active fans you have in various age categories, the growth of your fan base, where your fans live, and more.

It's not a particularly robust research tool, but it does provide a snapshot of how your page is performing. Facebook has announced that more features are on the way.

12. Research your competition
You research your competitors everywhere else, so why not on Facebook? See what they're doing to promote their page and engage fans. Take note of the features they're using, how they interact with visitors, the type of content and how frequently they post, and their growth rate.

There are some very smart businesses on Facebook. Learn from them.

13. Take advantage of every feature
Facebook is packed with tools for sharing videos, importing your blog posts, listing events, conducting polls, starting conversations—hundreds of ways to interact.

If you're serious about making your fan page a destination for customers and fans, take the time to research everything available to you, and use whatever makes sense for your business.

Just because Facebook is social media doesn't mean you have to go limp on your marketing efforts. You just have to play by the rules and use your marketing savvy to energize your Facebook page.

Give us a tinkle if you need help with setting up your Facebook Fan page.

Become a fan, a SPINN Media fan by simply clicking here.

You’re looking for a STAR employee to fill the shoes of your departing high-flying, results producing Executive. How do you start the recruitment process?  Better yet, where do you start?

Sharlyn Lauby recently posted this article on the American Express Open Forum on how you can use Social Media to your advantage. Here’s the full article:

The goal of recruiting is to find the right person at the right time. Logically, that means one source is never enough. You'll want to tap into diverse mediums to find the best candidates. Social media is no exception. Each platform has its own unique demographic. You'll want to consider that audience when making the decision about which applications to use for your recruiting efforts.

Regardless of the application, there are some common elements of using social media for recruiting. Here are six things to consider:

1. Create an online presence that reflects who you are.
Having a nice avatar, succinct bio and current contact information will make people want to connect with you. Be sure to organize your social media profiles to provide potential contacts with a better idea of who you are so they have a reason to communicate with you and form a relationship.

"It's about being human", explains Bill Boorman, author of the Recruiting Unblog. "People connect with people, not brands. Connect with everyone because you never know who will make that referral or connection for you."

2. Make the most of your time.
A large part of any success with social media is involvement. This is especially true if you want to use social media for recruiting. While mobile applications can help with this, Boorman agrees, "It takes a big investment of time to build a talent community." To target your efforts, he suggests asking people directly which channels they use and looking at what your competitors are doing. "Consider directing your messages to a single point, like a relevant blog or company website."

3. Individualize your approach.
At some point, you have to connect with people you don't know and become a part of their conversations. "I actually find it easy," says Chris Havrilla, national recruiting manager for Hitachi Consulting, a global leader in delivering business and IT strategies. "I have found if you communicate with people in a meaningful and thoughtful manner, you can never go wrong."

Havrilla's approach is to connect with people who have a genuine interest in his business and industry. "I follow or connect with people related to that space, ‘listen’ to and learn from the conversations, and participate when appropriate. If you are connecting with someone directly, be ‘individualized’ in your approach – take the time to understand who you are reaching out to and be respectful of their time and attention."

4. Be authentic.
Recruiters always want to see the 'real candidate' and in order to do that, they have to be real as well. Amanda Hite, founder and CEO of Talent Revolution Inc., says when it comes to social media: "Remember it's NOT about the tools it's ALL about the relationships."

So don't be afraid to be yourself. Hite adds, "Being the authentic, unapologetic you is totally on trend. But more importantly, when you embrace your own authenticity and stay committed to 'being you' no matter what, you'll attract the kind of clients and employees that do the same and are the best match for you."

5. Share interesting stuff.
All work and no play is boring. So sharing news and tidbits of general interest can create what might be the equivalent of "social media small talk," which leads to bigger conversations. Sylvia Dahlby works for SmartSearch, a leading talent acquisition system and recruiting business software solution firm. She works from home and lives in Hawaii. "Before social network sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, I belonged to dozens of old-style online newsgroups. Now, I leverage the new social networks much in the same way," Sylvia explains. She says it's still important to interact with others.

One of the things Sylvia mentioned was her Twitter account because she mixes her recruiting knowledge with Hawaii tidbits. "My Twitter account is for personal branding and making connections. I mostly tweet about my work, my product and the recruiting industry during business hours, chat with friends and business associates throughout the day, and throw in a mix of my hobbies and certain interests (such as Hawaiiana). I treat Twitter as my office 'water cooler' or after-hours 'cocktail party' where I can catch the news and buzz from people in various online communities around the world."

6. Focus on substance.
If someone directs a question at you via social media, find a way to respond, even if it's to take the conversation offline. "The key is substance," says Steve Browne, executive director of human resources for LaRosa's Inc., a Cincinnati based regional pizzeria with 63 locations. "I'd recommend people using social media for recruiting [focused] on substance and not just resume information. Look at how the candidate is connected in the social media arena, and are they contributing to their profession, or just lurking. If they're engaged online, chances are they would be engaged working for your company."

Many recruiters realize that when it comes to recruiting, social media tools are just that – tools. The real value is in how the tools are used. Havrilla explains, "Social media can give you a great and efficient way to engage with your community – candidates, clients, customers, partners, prospects, etc. – on a very level playing field with the companies you are competing with for talent (or business). The key is to make sure you have the time to invest in to it. At a very basic level this is all about networking. The use of social media tools has greatly enhanced my ability to build, grow, and nurture my network. These tools are not a magic bullet though – to get value from your network, you have to add value to it."  

Privacy is such an issue these days, especially with the explosion of numerous social media websites that have sprouted over the last few years. I have a soon-to-be thirteen year old who has requested for a Facebook Profile. We’ve made a deal that once she comes of age, she can. We’ve been carefully going through the etiquettes of social media for a few months now and I can only hope that she adheres to the guidelines we’ve established.

For those of you that are still unsure on how to use the medium, here’s a guide that was first published by ConsumerReports.org in an article that appeared in the June 2010 Consumer Reports Magazine.

1. Using a weak password
Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word "houses": hO27usEs!

2. Leaving your full birth date in your profile
It's an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you've already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

3. Overlooking useful privacy controls
For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don't want anyone to have access to that information anyway.

4. Posting your child's name in a caption
Don't use a child's name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn't on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.

5. Mentioning that you'll be away from home
That's like putting a "no one's home" sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.

6. Letting search engines find you
To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook's privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn't checked.

7. Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised
Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities.

"What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious," says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment "Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes" every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents' regular comings and goings.

Wish me luck!

Join us on Facebook and Twitter for more insights and updates.

Social Media Marketing – it’s on everyone’s lips these days. The questions to ask yourself  is not if you should be using social media, but how you should be using it. Social media is fast becoming much more mainstream. Apart from Facebook, Twitter, Digg and LinkedIn (to name a few), another medium that has gained traction over the years is YouTube.

Popular TV programs such as Glee and America’s Got Talent opened up their auditions via YouTube. Teen singing sensation, Justin Beiber, was discovered on YouTube. Thousands of brands these days showcase their promotions and launch new products via their YouTube channel. You can do the same via YouTube or a web Video. All it takes is a little imagination and creativity.

Your customers are your best sales people. Why not build customer confidence with a web Video testimonial? There’s nothing more credible than having your customers talk about their experiences with your company, in their own words. Word-of-mouth, even if it is viral, is so powerful. Where do you start?

Ted Page, cofounder and creative director of Captains of Industry a marketing agency and video-production company based in Boston, oversees the creative development of videos, and interactive Web marketing campaigns for a range of renewable energy and clean-tech clients. He’s come up with the top 5 reasons why, plus 10 tips for making testimonials work harder for you and is based on an e-book, "How to Make Customer Video Testimonials."

Why

1. Credibility.
Having real people on camera who have had a great experience with your brand lends unassailable credibility to your message. Your customers are your very best salespeople. They are the ones who can honestly and credibly explain to potential customers that their solar panels are cutting their electric bill, or that their vacuum cleaner is the best.

2. Your website is a TV channel. Make sure it has good content that people want to watch.
Your web TV channel is on 24/7. And the best part is, since you're not paying a network to air your commercial, or a magazine to place your ad, your media costs are zero. Accordingly, the process of having customer testimonials on your website is simplified.

3. More referrals.
Customers are honoured to go on camera and praise your business. They know that what they say matters and that you value their opinion. It's a source of pride for them. And what do proud people do? They talk with their friends about what they've done. They become, in effect, a more motivated ambassador for your brand. Often, the result is additional qualified sales leads and a lower cost for customer acquisition.

4. Give people something to Tweet about.
Good content and social media go hand in hand. People see something, then send tweets about it to their friends—amplifying the power of your testimonials.

5. Get across the personality of your company.
The era of un-advertising on the Web is much more personal and human than the brochure-ware of the past. Nothing speaks to the unique personality of your company better than the people who trusted you—and are glad they did. Your customers are your brand, and they have a lot to say.

Clearly, video testimonials are a perfect fit for almost any company—including yours. Now, here are some tips for how you can make them truly effective.

How

1. Tell a story
Before you interview people, think about what story you want to tell. For example, do you want to get across that wind farms benefit local economies? Or that your software is easy to use? Once you know what story you want to get across, develop a list of questions that are likely to inspire the interviewee to tell the story you're looking for.
If you are planning to have multiple people in a single video, you can edit the piece so that the various responses string together to create a compelling narrative.

See these examples of video storytelling created for First Wind, a developer and operator of wind farms.

2. Make your videos "snackable"
Keep each video less than four minutes—ideally not more than 1-2 minutes long. People hunt for information and prefer to nibble short videos.

3. Aggregate your videos in an online media center
A media center like this one from Alteris Renewables makes it easy for customers to browse.

4. Guide viewers into your online sales funnel
Picture people at their computers, watching your videos. They've watched three or four, and now they're ready to take the next step... perhaps to request an estimate. The layout of your Web page that's displaying the videos should clearly show your offer and encourage viewers to click.

Think of your videos as cups of delicious coffee at Gloria Jean’s. The longer people hang around, the more likely they are to buy. Just make it easy for them to take action when they're done sipping, or you'll lose them.
You have to be careful, however; you don't want to be in the customer's face, selling overtly. Remember that this is un-advertising: You're educating your customers, but also making clear that you are there for them when they're ready to buy.

5. Encourage absolute honesty
When you interview customers, encourage them to tell the unvarnished truth and not to gild the lily just because they're on camera. People see right through BS; they also recognize the truth when they see it.

You might even want to have a customer talk about a situation where, for example, a problem occurred with the product you're selling, and how your company recognized the error and fixed it. That approach gets to the heart of credibility, and your customers will appreciate it far more than canned expressions of delight.

6. Optimize your videos for search
Do some research to see what search terms your target audience is using to find solutions such as yours. Then give your videos titles that include those search terms.

In addition, when you post the videos to your Web page or YouTube channel, include some text that's relevant and searchable and make sure the text is in close proximity to the video. Some companies actually publish transcripts or abstracts from the videos on the same page as the videos because search engines can quickly locate text, but not necessarily video files.

In addition, when you publish your videos on sites such as YouTube, add "tags" to each video that put them in easily searchable categories (e.g: solar power, cars, widgets).

7. Keep publishing new videos
Just as you're constantly gathering customer case histories for print, it's important to continuously publish videos to your site. Customers like seeing new, fresh stuff on your site. And search engines will rank your site higher if it's frequently updated with new content.

8. Interview customers who reflect your ideal new-customer profile
Look at the buyer personas of customer groups that are most likely to buy from you, then find current customers to interview who match those profiles as closely as possible. You want your Web audience to relate to the person they see onscreen.

Also, remember that you're not looking for models. You need people who look real—not like they just jumped out of a David Jones catalogue.

9. Intermix shots of your customers with images or video of your product
Seeing just customers on camera can get a bit dull. Spice up your testimonials with a roll showing customers using the product.

10. Pre-interview your customers
Have a call with each customer before the shoot to give them a sense of what you'll be talking about. You don't want to tell them what to say, but talking with them beforehand in general terms about the subject can set their mind at ease and help them to be more relaxed during the interview.

If your product or service is of a high quality and your customers derive satisfaction from them, they would gladly say positive things about your product in videos. The credibility and acceptability the videos would give you and your product is unquantifiable. Ready to get started?

Contact us if you’d like to develop your new website with a video feature added in. While we don’t produce videos, we know businesses that do and would be happy to point you in the right direction.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more insights into the world of digital marketing.

Steve Jobs has just posted a long open letter  listing Apple's decision to not support Flash on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

Jobs claims Flash drains the battery of mobile devices and is not very good for multi-touch operation. It’s also a proprietary system, and claims that web standards should be open, like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript while admiting that Apple's mobile OS is proprietary.

In short, Apple doesn’t want “a third party layer of software [to] come between the platform and the developer.” He concludes, Flash is a relic. “Flash was created during the PC era –- for PCs and mice,” he says, “but the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards –- all areas where Flash falls short.”

Here’s the full text of the letter:

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

The world’s biggest brands are under the spotlight with the launch of a new Australian social media website which ranks good and bad brands based on categories such as how they treat their customers, the environment and their employees. As reported in B&T today:

Launched yesterday, Brandkarma aggregates comments on 300 iconic brands providing each with a score. At the heart of the platform is the Brandkarma flower which has five petals focusing on how the brand treats its customers, employees, investors, suppliers and the planet. Users enter comments about one of the five areas and grade the brand with a colour from bad (red) to good (green). The colours are then reflected in the relevant flower petal, depending on the number of responses.

Brands featured on the site - which include Google, Apple, Tesco, Toyota, Nokia, McDonald’s and Nestle among others - can also be compared on the five criteria and overall ranking score. The site, which is currently in beta testing, was designed to help people make better brand choices as well as influence brand behaviour for good.

Increasingly people are understanding there are consequences around the things they buy, and not all brands are made equal. Most people want to do the right thing, if they knew what it was, and they knew where to start and it didn’t cost them much money. And finally people increasingly rely on friends, family, colleagues and strangers more than they rely on business leaders, governments, NGOs and experts and certainly marketing. Brandkarma is a way to pull those things together.

It represents the ever changing dynamics between the five key stakeholder groups which are customers, employees, suppliers, investors and the planet. It is all five of these that gives you an indication of the brand’s karma.

Users need to register at the site www.brandkarma.com where they can fill in their profile details. News feeds about the brands are also included and users who are active are ranked on how much they “Doo” or contribute on the site, enabling them to attain “Super Doo’d” status.

Brandkarma will not moderate comments unless they are flagged by other users.

Networking? Does it give you the jitters? What’s the right thing to say or do? Networking is not everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re one of the many that are unsure on the protocol when it comes to networking, you’re not alone. Lynette Palmen is the founder and Managing Director of Women’s Network Australia (WNA) and she’s come up with 5 cool tips to help you “soar through the roof” when it comes to networking.

Rule #1
No-one has the legal right to add email addresses collected whilst out networking to their subscriber lists unless permission has been sought to do so.

Tip: Email those you meet and invite them to join your subscriber list. But you will need to give them a good reason and value for opting in. So make that email your best work.

Rule #2
Start listening to others and what their needs consist of, as opposed to pushing your own agenda. You'll be amazed as to what you learn by asking people about themselves. 

Tip: Be open and genuine in your questioning - it is not an interrogation of sorts.

Rule #3
Never call someone to try and promote your agenda or sell anything unless you have exchanged business cards and made eye contact with them. Don't ever confuse authentic networking with cold calling, they are completely different methods.

Tip: Learn the valuable lesson that two authentic contacts made at any networking event will always outweigh 20 business cards collected randomly.

Rule #4
If you say you are going to follow up - make sure you do so. Ensure that you systemise a process for the activity so it happens within a reasonable time frame after the original contact took place.

Tip: If you have no intention of following the person up with a call, tell them that you look forward to connecting with them at the next event.

Rule #5
Don't expect to turn up to a couple of networking events and then have your phone ringing off the hook. It takes about 18 months to build relationships that develop into the ignition of trade within your networking circle. It all takes time, repetition and consistency.

Tip: Networking success is not based on how many sales you make or the number of leads or clients you obtain. You may never make a sale but you could connect with an idea that turns your entire business or career around for the better.

Are you ready to get out there and start networking? Drop us a line if you have some useful tips to share.

‘How do I get followers on Twitter?’ – it’s a question everyone is asking. In a recent post, Twitterholic, Jo-Lynne (follow her at @dcrmom) shares some tips on being the kind of Twitter users people want to follow. Use Twitter to build relationships, to keep connected to the outside world and to find articles and information that you wouldn’t discover otherwise.

Choose carefully whom you follow on Twitter. As with any other social network, there are ways to grow your community. In Twitter-speak, this means to gain followers. Jo-Lynne has put together this list based on the characteristics of the people she most enjoys following on Twitter. We found it to be informative and are happy to provide an excerpt from her article:

1) Be Interesting
It’s fine to announce what you’re doing and thinking and what you had for lunch, as long as you do it in a way that is entertaining to your followers. Twitter is micro-blogging, and like on your blog, if all you do is give a play-by-play of your mundane daily happenings, you will lose followers. The people I enjoy following find a way to make me smile with their quips and one-liners, even if they are just informing me what they had for breakfast. Here are a couple of examples from the past few days.

@subdiva could have said, “Packing to go to Disney tonight!” but instead she wrote: “Packing up to ring in the New Year on the happiest place on earth. No, not the wine store…”

@rocksinmydryer could have said, “I hate dieting” but instead she wrote: “May I just say, for the record, that PORTION CONTROL STINKS? Thank you, that is all.”

Of course not everything you post has to be clever, but if you’re just sharing your thoughts and happenings, try to make it worth reading.

2) Be Informative
Not every tweet should answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” If you are going to participate in the Twitter community, you need to give something back. I love it when people post links to helpful articles or leave bits of advice and information. Post whatever comes naturally to you. @skinnyjeans reminds her followers every day to get up and drink a glass of water and gives us a much-needed pep talk in the middle of the afternoon. I love this! @problogger always links to the articles he is reading, and I have found lots of new bloggers to follow this way. Not all helpful information has to be your own. If you see a good tweet, do a “retweet” so your followers can get the benefit of the information that is being shared. 

3) Be Interactive
Don’t be a “hit and run” tweeter! In other words, don’t just log into Twitter to tell people what you are doing or link to your post and then leave. Respond to tweets, ask questions, answer questions. Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue, and the more you participate, the more you will get out of it, and the faster your community will grow. 

4) Be Promotional
Yes, it’s okay to promote your own work, as long as it’s not all self-promotion, all the time. I love it when people link to their recent posts on Twitter. I almost always follow the links, especially when it’s done in a thoughtful way. I can’t always log in to my feed reader and catch up on my favorite bloggers, but for some reason, if they post a link in Twitter, I usually take the time to follow it, especially when they introduce the link in a thoughtful and interesting way. Which brings me to my next point. 

5) Be Personal
For a while I used a plugin that automatically tweets a link to every new post I write, but I have turned off that feature and opted, instead, to write a more thoughtful introduction to the link I’m sharing. Maybe ask a question, or make a comment or introduce the link in a way that pertains to the subject of the post. No one likes to feel that they are getting spammed. And they are more likely to read it if you make it sound like it will be interesting or helpful. Don’t, however, be tempted to use the old bait and switch tactic to get readers to follow your link. They will wise up and you will find yourself unfollowed.

And while we’re at it, TURN THE ROBOTS OFF. It’s impersonal and insulting. I unfollow and block people who use automated responses. Period. The end. 

6) Be Considerate
This is definitely a case of “do as I say, not as I do” because I KNOW I am so totally guilty of this. And yet, it bears mentioning because it really does get annoying, at least when other people do it. Sometimes we get into so many conversations or we have so much we want to share that we find ourselves clogging the Twittersphere with a long series of tweets. This is annoying. I won’t promise never to do it again, but it’s something to keep in mind. If you find yourself going back and forth in conversation with one person, it’s time to take the conversation to Direct Messages. Or email. Or text. Or, gasp, the phone. Believe it or not, some people DO still use the telephone.

7) Find a balance. Finally, balance all of the above. If all you do is promote yourself, people will tire of you. NO ONE is that important. If all you do is update your daily happenings but never respond to others or give anything back, people will tire of you. NO ONE is that interesting. Balance is key.  

Follow Jo-Lynne @dcrmom
Follow SPINN Media @spinnmedia

For so many small business owners, generating leads, converting customers and creating a predictable flow of business is a constant battle. While there are many reasons for this, the primary one is that most small businesses focus all of their marketing attention on selling, when they should really focus every fibre of their being on creating a better customer experience.

According to John Jantsch, a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine.

John advises the best way to generate more leads is to create a customer experience that makes people talk. The best way to convert more sales is to create a customer experience that puts sales and marketing on the same team. The best way to create a predictable flow of business is to create a customer experience that builds trust over and over again. Here is John’s advice on how your business can market itself:

The logical path
Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you. Once you’ve established know, like and trust, you can more easily move to creating try, buy, repeat and refer.

These seven steps make up what John calls, the Marketing Hourglass that produces a logical progression of steps from the point where a prospect first becomes aware of your business to where they voluntarily work to help you grow it.

Creating a marketing system that addresses and offers products and processes at every step along this logical path is how you teach your business to market itself.

Plug the gaps
Almost every business attempts to move from know to buy, without addressing the phases in between or after. This causes gaps in the customer experience and often leads to generating a customer that’s not a good fit or one that doesn’t value your unique way of doing business.

By carefully plotting how a prospect comes to know your business, how you help them understand and like the unique benefits of doing business with your firm and how you build trust by showing them customer proof and expertise, you properly prepare them to try and buy your products and services.

Of course once a prospect decides to become a customer you must work equally as hard at plugging any gaps in customer service, delivery, packaging, communication, and even finance. In every fashion that your business comes into contact with a customer you are in that instance performing a marketing function.

Ask yourself this question: Does every department in your organization produce positive customer experiences?

Here’s how to find out.

Become a customer of your business. Follow an order or service request around your entire business from advertising to asking for a referral and see how many gaps you can find.

Gaps come in many forms, but the two most common are gaps that are produced intentionally – a process that doesn’t make sense to anyone but Bart in customer service, and unintentionally, no follow-up process to make sure your customer is thrilled.

Process and product
As you teach your business to market itself, you need to arm it with products, services and processes that can make this notion a reality.

If you sell a product, surround it with services that allow you to create a better product experiences and repeat sales. If you sell a service, ask yourself what products might enhance your services or be used to create a trail priced version of your service. Ponder these lists of questions as you consider your gaps.

Product/service questions
• What is your free or trial offering?
• What is your starter offering?
• What is your “make it easy to switch” offering?
• What is your core offering?
• What are your add-ons to increase value?
• What is your “members only” offering?
• What are your strategic partner pairings?

Process questions
• How do you identify an ideal customer?
• How do you use content to build trust?
• How do you nurture new relationships?
• How do you present your offerings?
• How do you orientate a new customer?
• How do you assess value delivered?
• How do you teach and educate?
• How do you handle problems?
• How do you create success stories?

If you can address and fill the gaps from know to refer with products, services and processes that create a winning customer experience, creating a well-oiled referral engine will be your reward. Good luck!

Does the content on your website really speak to you customers? Need a hand developing a plan of attack for your web content? Sally Bagshaw from Snappy Sentences has developed these helpful tips for you:

1. Know your audience and their motives

It’s amazing the amount of businesses out there who don’t know anything about their target audience. Basic customer research is easy to do and can involve online surveys, web analytics, or data that has been gathered through other channels including newsletters, call centres or user testing.

Don’t be afraid to ask your existing customers why they chose your product or service in the first place. You may be surprised at some of their motives, and the knowledge will enable you to tailor your content to suit both their needs and the needs of potential customers.

2. Don’t try to sell. Try to solve a problem

Most people are put off by a hard sell. How quickly do you try and get rid of telemarketers who call you at home?

The web is no different. Visitors can quickly leave a site (and never come back!) if they feel you are just trying to push a product or service down their throat, or if you just focus on your business (and not them).

A better way is to understand what problem your product or service will solve for your customer, and shape your content accordingly. Play on the emotions of the customer – use words such as ‘feel’ and ‘imagine’.

For example:
OK - XYZ security screens are the best in the business. Choose from a variety of designs and materials to make your home more secure.

Better - Feel safe and secure in your own home with XYZ security screens (the customer wants to feel safe and secure). You can choose from a range of designs and materials so that your home won’t have the appearance of Fort Knox (the customer doesn’t want their home to look like a jail).  Use this ‘problem solving’ approach and your customers will be able to imagine applying your product or service to their specific situation – a key step in the purchasing process.   

3. Choose a tone and style and stick to it

Pick a personality for your site. Is it professional, formal and sensible? Or is it fun, cheeky and conversational? Make everyone who writes for the site understand the personality so that the tone and style remains consistent.

Also, decide on some strong call to actions, and use them throughout the site.

4. Punctuate consistently and keep sentences short

Develop a short style guide to document the rules for punctuating bullets, headings, addresses, telephone numbers and the like.

Short sentences are easier to read on the web. Don’t be tempted to cut and paste from a printed document – make sure you review and re-write for your website.

5. Write for your audience first. Please them and you’ll please Google

Don’t turn your site into a keyword overloaded, unreadable mess by trying to include every keyword you can think of in your content.

• Write content that your target audience wants to read, in the language and terminology that they understand, and you’ll end up doing well in search.

• Take note of how people find your site (what keywords and phrases they use to search), and tweak your content as needed.

• If you have a lot of services, break them up over different pages so you can write quality content for each page.

And finally, don’t forget to review your content regularly. Content isn’t a set and forget component of your website. Keep it up-to-date, keep it relevant, and keep it fresh.

Snappy Sentences can develop sizzling web content that will make your customers sit up and take notice of your product or service. They also run writing for the web workshops, facilitate content workshops, write style guides, and offer traditional copywriting services. Visit www.snappysentences.com for more information.

This may sound shocking, but your company may already have more than enough traffic on your Website to achieve your business goals—but the problem is that you may have a leaky Website. That is, prospects and customers are visiting your Website, but very few are taking the next step to do business with you. Do you have a leaky Website?

Bob DeStefano is an international online marketing strategist and professional speaker with over 15 years experience working with B-to-B companies. He tells us how to diagnose the problem and, more importantly, how to fix the leaks.

How to Tell If You Have a Leaky Website

To determine whether you suffer from the symptoms of a leaky Website, review your Web analytic reports that track visitor behavior and look for the following issues:

• Your conversion rate is low.
How many anonymous Web visitors turn into named leads for your sales process? Your conversion rate is the measure of your ability to persuade your visitors to take action and reach out to you. If your conversion rate is low (or nonexistent), your Website definitely has leaks.

• Your bounce rate is high.
Your bounce rate measures the number of people who arrive at one of your Website pages and then leave without doing anything. They are a good indicator of whether your Website meets the needs of your visitors, or whether they think it is a complete waste of time. If your bounce rate is relatively low (under 25%), then your Website is doing its job effectively, leading prospects to the next step. If your bounce rate is high (over 40%), you have a leaky Website.

How to Plug the Leaks

If you have a leaky Web site, don't fret. The following tips will help you plug the leaks and optimize your Website for more leads and sales.

• Make sure your content is customer-focused
Prospects are not visiting your Website to kill time. They are there to find a solution or solve a problem. Does your Website content draw these prospects in—or cause them to bounce away?
To draw them in, make sure your Website engages prospects by offering customer-focused content that speaks to their needs and provides a solution to their problems. Talk less about you and your company and more about your customers' needs and concerns. If your content is customer-focused, prospects will stick around and ask for more.

• Don't rely on your 'contact us' page
Do you want to turn your Website into a lead-generation machine? Then stop relying on your Contact Us page as the sole method for prospects to contact you. Rather, offer visitors easy access to contact information on every page of your Website in a consistent location.
You will be amazed at how many more prospects will reach out to you if you invite them to do so.

• Make an offer they can't refuse
Now, take it one step further by supplementing your contact information with relevant calls to action that will compel your site visitors to respond.

When crafting your offers, think about the audiences you are trying to attract, as well as the various stages of the buying process they may be in. To attract individuals ready to buy, offer product specials, quote-request forms, salesperson consultations, and online ordering.

In addition, to help you build a marketing database, offer softer calls to action for the tire kickers and early-stage buyers. Examples of soft calls to action include downloadable "how to" guides, whitepapers, "ask the expert" question submission, and e-newsletter subscriptions.

• Simplify your lead generation forms
Are your lead-generation forms as daunting as a tax return? If so, simplify them immediately. Don't try to qualify prospects with your online forms—that's the salesperson's job.

The more fields you require to be filled out, the fewer people you will hear from. So, ask only for the most basic information that a salesperson will need to reach out to the prospect and begin the relationship.

Also, make sure that those forms immediately get to a knowledgeable salesperson for follow-up. The best time to follow up with a prospect is when they are still browsing your Website.

• Shorten your checkout process
If you sell products online, take a close look at your checkout process to identify leaks. How many customers who add an item to their shopping cart actually complete the sale?
If you are losing many of these valuable customers, look for opportunities to simplify your checkout process, including the following: cut the number of clicks required to complete the sale; communicate shipping costs early; offer a progress meter to let people know where they are in the process; and offer alternative (offline) ways to order.

• Make your phone number obvious
According to research, people are highly likely to want to pick up the phone and call when they are browsing a company's Website. To boost the number of inquiries you receive, don't make your visitors hunt for your number. Make your phone number one of the prominent calls to action on every page.  In addition, use a unique toll-free number on your Website so you can accurately track the number of calls you receive from Website visitors. 

Intrigued? These steps are just foreplay to what really goes on inside the pages of 'Sleeping Your Way to The Top in Business – The Ultimate Guide to Attracting & Seducing More Customers'. Author and Public Speaker, Ben Angel admits his new book is certainly not for the fainthearted. His methods for attracting new clients to business are unorthodox and some would even say controversial.

Angel says, “The marketplace is flooded with lookalike businesses, the only way to stand out and attract more customers is to do something very different. Business can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and remain quiet. With the advent of social media we have seen a significant rise in the number of channels in which consumers are bombarded with by marketing communications. To achieve cut through it is going to take more than a well designed brochure or website to stand out. It requires much, much more.”

Here are Ben's 7 simple strategies you can use to help you bring in New Customers:

1. Social Proof:
Social proof or ‘pack mentality’ provides evidence others have tried and tested the scenario, goods or services beforehand and given it the ‘thumbs up’ of approval. Social proof is often the catalyst needed to assist you to convert prospects to new clients. Apply social proof throughout your marketing material by presenting evidence demonstrating others approval of your offerings. This can be done via: testimonials (video & written), media endorsements, commentary on blogs and published articles in your area of expertise in industry journals and magazines.

2. Packaging (Yourself):
Personal branding is self expression amplified to influence and command attention. Identify your most admirable traits and put them to market. The only thing your competitors can’t copy is the essence of who your are as an individual. Just as we have a business brand, we also have a personal brand. To develop it, answer the following question: “What do you want to be known for and why?” This will form the foundation of your personal brand.

3. Be Seductive:
The essence of being seductive is learning how to be interesting. Our whole world is built around stories of interest that grab our attention and draw us in. How do you draw your clients in? Do you tell long winded stories about your business? Or, do you share inspirational ideas in which your clients can get what they want? Become an information advocate and produce content that teaches your clients how they can get the results they want whilst engaging them in the process. This may mean up-skilling yearly and even pulling concepts from other industries to add colour to your conversations.

4. Who to Sleep With:
There are movers and shakers in every industry. As a business professional who wants to get to the top, you are going to need to identify who these individuals are and make contact with them. Be-friend them and be sincere about it. It is not what you know but who you know. Identify individuals who have access to your target market on mass but are non-competing. Build relationships and work out ways in which you can assist one another. A friend in business will do more for you than a business colleague who happens to be a friend.

5. Groomed Professional:
55% of all communication is visual and it only takes four minutes for someone to lock in a first impression and countless meetings to undo it. Studies prove that the better you look (and look after yourself), the more you will get paid and the better you will be treated. Example: Suits that are structured give you a professional appearance to which others draw conclusions about you, such as – that you are professional, structured and care about the finer details. Make the extra effort and you will convert more clients.

6. Flirt or Fail:
To flirt is to behave as though attracted to someone, but for amusement rather than with serious intentions. A 2004 study found that there were two types of flirting – romantic and platonic. Platonic flirting in the work environment makes you memorable and creates a lasting impression compared to your dreary counterparts. What you think on the inside appears on the outside. What’s your inner world saying about you? Express your personality appropriately and you will gain the influence and credibility other’s won’t.

7. Move Me:
When in the presence of a prospective client, colleague or the media, you will need to move them emotionally if you want any kind of impression that has lasting impact. Shift them energetically throughout your conversations by getting them to experience various positive emotions whilst in your presence. This could be getting them to laugh several times through to sharing stories about their and your personal or business challenges during the conversation. Whatever you do, do not have a monotone conversation that doesn’t make them smile or laugh. Observe yourself in the next meeting you have and see how interesting you really are.


There you have it - The 7 steps you must do to sleep your way to the top in business. Ben’s book 'Sleeping Your Way to The Top in Business' is available exclusively through his website www.benangel.com.au

Are you listening? Do you know what people are saying about your brand?

Pam Dwyer, recently posted an exciting article on the most popular tools that you can use to monitor your brand’s reputation. This is an excerpt from one of her recent postings. You can also visit Pam’s blog site on: http://www.pamorama.net/

If you have customers, odds are they’re talking about you to their coworkers, to their friends, and to anyone else within earshot — including those on social networks. Isn’t it in your company’s best interests to be engaged and take part in the conversation so you know what’s being said and can respond appropriately?

As brands get going with social media, they find that understanding who is talking about them online, what they are saying, to whom, and where is a great advantage. After auditing your current brand footprint, you’ll be armed with the data you need to start weighing what’s important to your audience about your brand and where you should have a presence.

Build a list of keywords and terms about your brand, customers, company, and market, then use some of these free tools to get a clearer view of what people are saying — with this knowledge in hand, you can begin to really develop a social-media strategy:

1. Addict-o-matic: Allows you to create a custom-made page to display search results.

2. Bloglines: A Web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client.

3. Blogpulse: A service of Nielsen BuzzMetrics that analyzes and reports on daily trends in the blogosphere.

4. BoardTracker: A useful tool for scanning and tracking forums conversations.

5. FriendFeed Search: Scans all FriendFeed activity.

6. Google Alerts: Target keywords that are important to your brand and receive streaming or batched reports.

7. HowSociable?: A simple way to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social Web.

8. Icerocket: Searches a variety of online services, including Twitter, blogs, videos, and MySpace.

9. Jodange: Tracking your brand or a product is one thing, but turning that tracking into a measure of consumer sentiment about your brand or product is something else entirely. Jodange’s TOM (Top of Mind) tracks consumer sentiment about your brand or product across the Web.

10. Keotag: Keyword searches across the Internet landscape.

11. Facebook Lexicon: What are people talking about on Facebook? Lexicon searches Facebook walls for keywords and provides a snapshot of the chatter volume around those terms.

12. Monitter: Everyone is talking about Twitter, but what are people talking about on Twitter? Beyond the integrated search of Twitter apps like Seesmic and TweetDeck, Monitter provides real-time monitoring of the Twittersphere.

13. MonitorThis: Subscribes you to up to 20 different RSS feeds through one stream.

14. Samepoint: A conversation search engine that lets you see what people are talking about.

15. Seesmic: Monitors multiple Twitter accounts and enables keyword searches and tracking.

16. Surchur: An interactive dashboard covering search engines and most social media sites.

17. Technorati: Search engine and monitoring tool for user-generated media and blogs. Billing itself as “the leading blog search engine,” Technorati has been helping bloggers and those with their fingers on the blog pulse stay informed for years.

18. Tinker: Real-time conversations from social media sources such asTwitter and Facebook.

19. Trendrr: Want to know how your brand or product is trending compared with others? Trendrr uses comparison graphing to show relationships and discover trends in real time. Use the free account, or move up to the Enterprise level for more functionality.

20. Tweetburner: In the world of Twitter, URL shortening is the key to effectively connecting with the public. Tweetburner also lets you track the clicks on those magically shortened links, giving you some hard numbers.

21. TweetDeck: Not only a great way to manage your Twitter account, but the keyword search means you can see what people are saying about you.

22. Twendz: Public relations firm Waggener Edstrom’s Twitter-mining tool that monitors and highlights user sentiment in real time.

23. Twitter Search: Twitter’s very own search tool is a great resource. Can be subscribed to as an RSS feed.

24. UberVU: Track and engage with user sentiment across FriendFeed, Digg, Picasa, Twitter, and Flickr.

25. wikiAlarm: Alerts you to when a Wikipedia entry has been changed.

26. Yahoo! Sideline: A TweetDeck-esque tool from Yahoo. Monitor, search, and engage with the Twittersphere.

Listening and making sense of how your brand lives on the Web is only part of the calculus — the next step is how you leverage that information to engage with your audience.

A 10-step game plan or practical guidelines that will make you a better member of the social-networking communities in which you participate. Full details of this excerpt can be found in author Paul Chaney’s "The Social Media Handyman" (www.thedigitalhandshake.com ).

1. Pull, Don't Push
One of the first lessons you will learn very quickly when engaging in social media is that old-school marketing tactics don't work. Don't come out of the gate pushing your products or services. New tools require new rules.
For example, don't respond to new Twitter followers with a "Thanks for following. Visit my website for a free... [insert promotional message]."

Such a response is a dead giveaway that you are new to social media and do not yet understand that it's a "pull" medium, not a "push" medium. If I want to review your credentials, I'll read your bio. (You did complete your bio, right?)

2. Win the Right to Be Heard
Social-media engagement is a conversation, and participation in the community is required. In fact, you might say that participation is the fifth P of marketing. (The four Ps are product, price, place, and promotion.)

Your value as a participant is judged by the value you provide to the community as a whole. Be a "glory hog," and you'll garner little attention. Share freely, and you will become a respected member.

3. Content Is Still King, but Conversation Is Queen (and Conversion Is the Prince)
Nothing beats well-written, informative, entertaining content in all its forms: blog posts, tweets, videos, podcasts, images, webinars, or whitepapers. Place yourself in a position of being a knowledgeable expert (assuming you are, of course). Community is the context.

Moreover, keep content and commerce separate. Never the twain shall meet is a good rule of thumb. Editorial and advertorial content should be distant kin, if related at all.

4. Authenticity and Transparency Are Social-Networking Cornerstones
The words "authenticity" and "transparency" may seem trite, but I believe they remain the cornerstones of this new media-marketing paradigm. Be real. Be open. Be honest. Admit mistakes when you make them.

 
5. You Don't Have to Be on Every Social Network
It's impossible to maintain an active presence on every social network, and you don't have to. You do have to be where your customers are, however. They expect you to be there.

6. Give, and You Shall Receive
Having an attitude of helpfulness goes a long way toward establishing a credible name for yourself in social-media circles. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood," said St. Francis of Assisi. "People don't care that you know, until they know that you care" is how I put it.

"Lose control of your marketing," is how author David Meerman Scott puts it. Give ideas and information away freely, with no strings attached. Be willing to give up control of the marketing message (as if you could hold it close to the vest in the first place, given the current Web 2.0 landscape).

7. Don't Throw the Marketing Baby out With the Bath Water
The rules of marketing still apply to social media—well, most of the rules, anyway. Social media is another channel to build your brand and market your message. It's not a panacea, and it's not a replacement for other forms of advertising and marketing.

I have learned that marketing has room for integration. Email and search remain the areas where most marketers spend their top dollars, and for good reason: Email and search both perform very well. All forms of marketing are interrelated, and social media is finding its place in the spectrum.

8. Social Media Is a Mindset, Not Just a Toolset
You have to incorporate the essence of social media into your thinking. Don't just change your toolset (tactics); change your mindset (strategy).

9. Be Yourself, Whoever That May Be
A good friend of mine has a mantra that she follows in every respect: "Be yourself." (It's even her personalized license plate.) No better advice can be given, whether or not you engage in social media. One thing is certain: You can't be who you are not. (See Step 4.)

Use your photo as your avatar and your name as your handle. That's not to say you shouldn't have an identity tied to your brand. It's just that in social media people would rather relate to and build trust with other people than with brands. It's a trust economy, after all.

 
10. Social Media Is Not a Religion
Although it does come with a set of largely unwritten rules (sorry, I don't know of any stone tablets that have been brought down from Mt. Sinai), social media is not a religion, no matter how hard guys like me try to make it one. There is room for experimentation. In fact, experimentation is the only way the medium will grow.

The following article is based on an excerpt from Paul Chaney’s  "The Social Media Handyman" , author of The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.

Much the same way a power company connects homes and businesses with electricity, Facebook is a "social utility" designed to facilitate connections between people as well as businesses. Accordingly, it can be highly useful as a business tool. This article addresses various ways that businesses can market using Facebook.

Facebook Public Profile
A Facebook Public Profile (aka a Facebook Page) is an ideal place for businesses to establish a beachhead within the social network. It is, also, one of the most overlooked.

I've noticed that many companies use other parts of the platform (Groups and personal profiles, in particular) to set up a presence, but they never bother to create a Public Profile.

One possible reason may be that Facebook lists Public Profiles under the advertising category, which may lead people to believe it is a premium feature. It's not. Businesses can set up a Public Profile at no cost.

Facebook Public Profiles, which mimic user profiles in design and function, allow users to express their support of your business by adding themselves as fans. They can write on your Wall, upload photos and videos, and join other fans in expressing opinions on topics introduced in discussion groups.

You can send regular updates to fans, and, unlike personal profiles, which are limited to 5,000 members, the number of fans you can have on a Public Profile is unlimited. In addition, you can set up a business page without having to provide a personal profile.

One of the best reasons to have a Facebook Public Profile is that it can be indexed by search engines. That is no small consideration, because Facebook is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet.
If getting noticed on Google and other engines is an important part of your online-marketing strategy, then using Facebook Public Profile makes perfect sense. After you set up a Facebook Public Profile for your business, make it your base of operations from which all other forays into the network extend.

Facebook Events
Another useful Facebook feature, one that can be launched directly from your Facebook Public Profile, is Facebook Events. With it, you can let fans and others know about upcoming events and activities your business will be hosting.

A restaurant can use Facebook Events to promote appearances by musical acts. A B2B company can promote upcoming webinars or workshops. Nonprofit and civic groups can enlist support for fund-raising activities.
Remember, activities that Facebook members engage in are reported in the newsfeed, so word about the events can spread quickly and virally.

Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups allow you to create or participate in as many as 200 affinity- or geography-based groups. Each can serve as a viral channel for extending your presence within Facebook, and each can be used as "fishing pools" to help you find prospects and build relationships.

Before you set up your own group, however, participate in two or three groups to learn how they operate. As with Facebook Events, use Facebook Groups to supplement your business page, not act as a substitute for it.

Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads resemble Google AdSense ads in that they are primarily text based, but they do allow inclusion of a small graphic.

You can opt to include Social Actions, which are stories about a user's friends that are related to and displayed alongside your advertisement. Whenever a user takes an action associated with the ad, that user's avatar and screen name will appear along with the ad on the friend's profile pages. That result implies endorsement, so use the component wisely.

The problem with using ads on Facebook Ads or other social networks is that members rarely click on the ads. The average click-through rate for Facebook Ads is estimated to be an abysmal 0.008%. That means for every 10,000 times an ad appears, it is clicked on only 80 times.

People don't visit social-network sites to view advertising; they visit to be social. Still, Facebook Ads provide another way to extend your presence on the site, so they may be worth considering.

Facebook Apps
One of the first things you'll notice when you begin participating in Facebook is the bevy of widgets (what Facebook refers to as "applications," or "apps" for short).

The apps, created by third-party developers, number into the scores of thousands and cover every conceivable category, from games to music to travel to just plain fun (and just plain stupid).

It's easy to get caught up in the hype, but sooner or later "app fatigue" sets in. Some applications can be used to promote your business inside Facebook. One way to do that is by developing branded applications, or "appvertisements," that connect your company and the people you wish to reach in a more useful, meaningful way.

For example, Buddy Media, a company that develops branded applications, has launched dozens of campaigns for leading brands. Its data shows measurable success in engaging users.

"In particular, users spent an average of 2 minutes and 35 seconds engaged with our branded applications per visit, or 75 times greater than the time consumers spend interacting with traditional banner ads and five times greater than the time spent watching a typical TV commercial," said Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow.

You don't need to develop applications yourself. You can incorporate many of the business-oriented applications already available in the applications directory, such as business cards, networked blogs, and testimonials, to help promote your business.

It's worth looking through the business category to see which applications might be useful for your business.

Facebook Lexicon
Lexicon is Facebook's answer to Google's Zeitgeist. It is a tool you can use to spot and compare trends inside the network.

In Lexicon, you input single words or two-word combinations and compare as many as five strings per query to mine and analyze millions of Facebook Wall posts.

The results are returned as a variety of graphs and charts. For marketing professionals, the results gleaned can provide valuable insight into what's on the minds of Facebook users on a daily basis.

Lexicon pulls only aggregate information, and the privacy of its members is never violated.

Facebook Share
Facebook Share is a small button or hyperlink you can add to your website that lets visitors share the site with their friends on Facebook. Essentially, it's a way to drive traffic. Facebook Share is easy to install, but it does require a minimal knowledge of HTML.

Facebook Connect
Facebook Connect is the next evolution of the Facebook platform. It provides a way for members to log in to other websites using their Facebook account and "connect" their Facebook identity, friends, and privacy settings to those sites.

For sites that use it, Facebook Connect means never having to create another online profile. You take your online identity with you wherever you go.

To better explain how Facebook Connect works, let me cite as an example Kudzu.com, a website that aggregates user reviews and ratings on local businesses.

You can log in to Kudzu using your Facebook account, and from there you can interact with all your Facebook friends. When you write a review for a restaurant, for example, you'll have the option to publish that story on Facebook, where your friends can see it.

For business owners and marketing professionals, two aspects of Facebook Connect are important:
• First, Facebook, once a walled garden, is now open to the entire Web via third-party sites. And when we're talking about third-party sites, we could be talking about those you own.

• Second (and this could be the most important factor for you), Facebook Connect is not just a registration system but a marketing channel that comes complete with a built-in audience of multiplied millions, some of whom may find their way to your door.

Facebook Connect does require a slightly more extensive knowledge of HTML and programming, but implementing Connect should not be difficult with the assistance of the many Facebook application developers available.

Personal Profile
In social media, people relate better to other people than to brands. Face(book) it: We like to do business with people we know and trust.

An ideal scenario is to have a brand or company presence via the means outlined above, and to supplement and extend that business presence with a personal one.

Though your company can create a Facebook Public Profile or ad without creating a personal profile, there are many reasons to have a personal presence: to network with colleagues and peers, to find business contacts, to build business relationships, to grow your personal brand, to target your niche audience, to increase traffic to your website, to enhance your Google rankings, and so much more!

Having a personal profile is a way to extend that digital handshake and get to know people in a more casual, nurturing environment where you can make friends.

Conclusion
For many reasons, Facebook can be used effectively as a tool for business. Start by setting up both a personal profile and a Public Profile (Fan Page) to showcase your business.

Consider running some ads to drive attention to your Page. Although they may not result in loads of clicks, at least they are inexpensive. Judiciously and cautiously leverage your network of friends, encouraging them to become fans and to invite others. (In other words, don't overload them with invitations.)

What benefits can be accrued? Quite a few: brand awareness, personal engagement with your customers and prospects, a network that allows fans to easily and quickly share your message, and inexpensive advertising to boot. What's not to like?

Identifying what keywords to use for your web site can mean the difference between success and failure so it's important to get it right. How do you convince someone to click through and visit your landing page without going over your 95-character limit? Most businesses want a cost-effective way to bring in more customers. The problem that most new business owners face is that they do not have extra money to spend on a fancy research keyword tool. The challenge is to find prospects who are thinking about your products at the exact time that you reach them. 

So what to do? Use what you already have at your disposal and maximize your free resources of course! If you are looking for a free keyword analyzer, try the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

Is your goal to make direct sales via ecommerce on your website? Is your goal to capture sales leads that you can follow up with to make the sale? Alternatively, is your goal a combination of both of these outcomes? Once you have determined a goal, you need a website that helps you achieve that goal.

Your website should be eye-catching and well organized, and include landing pages for your products or services. To see some examples of landing pages, perform a search for your services, and look at what other companies in your market are doing. The landing page for your advertisement might be your main website or homepage if your website focuses tightly on one product or service that you're advertising. Otherwise, the landing page should be a page within your website that focuses on the specific product or service you're advertising.

If you're selling directly from your website, your site should include a secure ecommerce system. Any good, technically competent web design firm can set this up for you. Once you have a goal, web site, and landing page, you're ready to sign up for Google AdWords.

How to write your Advertisements:
• Include a Strong Keyword or Phrase In Your Title
If people are searching for gift hampers, for instance, their eyes will likely scan for the specific phrase "gift hampers." You have a 25-character title to get searchers' attention, and a 70-character ad to make them interested enough to want to click on your ad. This isn't a lot of text, so make it worth your while.

• Avoid Long Words
Keep It Simple. "An 'automobile' is a 'car.' A 'giveaway' is a 'gift.' An 'offer' is a 'deal'". Using short words can give you two or three extra words to work with.

• Be Specific
Stand out from the paid and organic crowds with precise descriptions that go beyond basic keywords. The phrase "16-foot ocean kayak" will attract more relevant attention than the more generic "kayak."

• Include A Call to Action
Having a good call to action can increase your Click Through Rates (CTR) and also increase your campaign effectiveness. A searcher needs to know what’s in it for him if he clicks on the advertisement. He is already in a page full of related links that he was searching for and you are just one of the many. So if you are going to take him away from this page, you will have to ensure that he knows what he will get from your page.

• Format Your Ad
Make sure your ad is formatted properly with correct casing & spelling. You only get a very small window of opportunity when it comes to grabbing the attention of your customer. Capitalizing the first letter of each word is a common practice which makes your ad copy look attractive. However, you can test with various other methods and use the method that works best for you.

• Highlight your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
How different are you from your competitor? What makes your product or service unique? What benefit would the customer get after buying what you sell? Your proposition must be something that your competitors either cannot, or does not offer. It must be unique and something that your customers can relate to and can benefit from. Example: If you offer free shipping, 24/7 support, money back guarantee or you are professionally certified, won awards or anything else that can help you to boost your initial credibility and trust – then Include it in your Ad copy.

When you write extremely short copy, you must remember to stay focused. There is not enough room to sell the customer within your copy, but there IS enough room to pique their interest. Use the limited space you have to punch up the biggest benefits or end results your customers are looking for and you’ll see bigger returns on your AdWords investment.

Watch this YouTube video by Jay Roberts on how to use Google’s free AdWord tool. The proof—as always—is in the pudding. Keep testing and testing and testing until you get ads that grab the attention of the right prospects and then convert best into clicks and sales.

Contact us if you need help in establishing your Google AdWords Campaign.

Search engine optimization is a method of increasing the amount of visitors and the awareness of a website by ranking high in the search engines. The higher the rank of a website in the result of the search engines the better the chance the website will be visited by users.

Over the last few years we have seen the emergence of some major internet companies, with search engine giant Google now amongst the most influential on the internet. While there are other search engines such as Yahoo! and MSN, which have a place and a presence on the internet, Google is by far the most powerful. If you have no presence on Google, your chances of success will diminish drastically.

Here are some basic SEO tips included in the search engine optimization tutorial you might consider doing yourself to get better search rankings and increased site traffic:

1. Keywords:
It’s important to know which keywords to optimize for. If you are a retailer of gift hampers, it’s important to know what consumers type into Google while searching for gift hampers. There are many tools available on Google that can help generate this for you. Try the keyword tool in Google AdWords or Wordtracker. 

Do a search for your top keywords and analyse the results that Google throws up. View how many times a particular keyword appears in the title, in the description, in the URL and on the page content. 

2. Title:
Ensure that the title of your page is not more than 60 characters. That’s all that will be read by Google. 

Once you are done analysing the search on your keywords, understand how you can structure the content in your title, description, URL and home page, in that order.  Ensure that you are higher than your competitor. Having said that, don’t try to use all your keywords in such a way that it’s non-meaningful or desperate. It’s a fight between quality and quantity.

It’s important for Google to know that you have not put junk in your title. The way they determine this is by checking if the words in your title match those in the content of your page. If they are not, you won’t do as well as you could. So figure how you can have those keywords on your home page, too.

If you and your competitor have the particular keyword in equal quantities on your title, the next factor becomes the placement of keyword. In this case, you have to ensure that the keyword in your title is before that of your competitor’s. For instance, if the keyword is the 25th character of your competitor’s title, yours should be anything less than that. This way you will feature higher.    

3. Multiple URLs and URL address:
Don’t place all your keywords in your home page. Optimize all the URLs in your site for different keywords. It’s important to achieve a good balance between content and form. Don’t let extra content kill the design of your site. If your URL address contains the keyword, Google gives it more weight. 

4. Keywords Meta tag:
Disregard this. Google has stopped reading this a while back. 

5. PageRank:
A simple formula devised by Google to check relevancy and the quality of a site is PageRank. It’s a vote that shows how other sites look upon you. If site x points a link to site y, then that’s a vote of confidence in site y by x. This goes well in Y’s PageRank. The more quality links you have in your kitty, the better. Work towards getting more people to point towards you. Read up on PageRank on Google.

Sometimes sites which are less relevant as yours may show up higher than you. That’s probably because they have a higher PageRank than yours. Don’t worry. You can’t help that. Just work on yours. 

6. Content:
Google will give more weight to content right on top than that below. More brownies will be given to content in H1 (header) tags than regular content. More weight goes to larger font than smaller. Negative marks will be given (and you will probably disappear off Google) if you try to hide content by making it non-readable (either making the font the same colour as the background or making it very small).

Ensure that you have your keywords in a higher density than other words. Quality content is more important than quantity. So, ensure that when you are filling your page with keywords, it still makes sense to the customer. Otherwise, they will leave your page in no time and all time spent on SEO will be worth nothing.

7. Images: 
Don’t use any flash, unless people know your URL and you don’t have to depend on SEO. If you do, use good images that compensate for the lack of flash. Googlebot stops when it sees flash.

Did you know that you could put a name to your images? There is something called alternative text. Use this in the best way you can. What is alternative text? In case your image does not show up in a browser, the alternative text describes the image for the user. So, if I have the company logo and that doesn’t show up for some reason, the alternative text will. So, don’t fill keywords there, but then again, don’t forget to put your company identity / or category in there. 

8. Age of your URL:
This is another factor that Google considers important. A competitor’s site that is less relevant may show up higher if they have been around longer than you. There’s nothing you can do about this though. Once you cross the one year barrier, you will probably be in the same league as your competitors.

SEO is a high impact, high value tactic for reaching Customers online. It focuses on Customers seeking a business’s service and not the other way round. Many smart businesses are starting to see the potential long term benefits of a committed SEO strategy during tough economic times to get more bang for their buck, so the question asked is why shouldn’t you be doing the same for your business?

Interested in what SEO can do for your business? Speak to us.

As a business owner, you’re constantly under the watchful eye when it comes to your brand. With the proliferation of the Web, it has never been more important for a business to communicate its unique message clearly. One of the easiest ways to recognize a company and distinguish it from others is by its logo. We have all witnessed our fair share of poorly designed logos. Below, we go through 10 common logo design mistakes that you should avoid if you want to create a successful and professional logo:

1. Designed By An Amateur
The business owner wanted to save money by designing the logo quickly themselves. Or a friend or relative who claims to know a little about graphic design does it as a favour. Or the wrong people are commissioned. Example: Your local printers are not likely to be proficient in logo design. Talk to an expert. 

If your logo looks amateurish, then so will your business. A business should know where to look when it wants a new logo. When hiring an established and professional logo designer your logo will be unique and memorable. You won’t run into any problems down the line with reproducing it. Your logo will have a longer lifespan and won’t need to be redesigned in a couple of years. And most importantly, your logo will look professional.

2. Relies On Trends
Trends come and go and ultimately turn into clichés. A well-designed logo should be timeless, and this can be achieved by ignoring the latest design tricks and gimmicks. Focusing on current logo trends is like putting a sell-by date on a logo. Understanding what they trends are and using it to create or develop a logo that blends longevity and the company’s values is key.

3. Uses Raster Images
Using raster images for logos is not advisable because it can cause problems with reproduction. Maintaining visual consistency by making sure the logo looks the same in all sizes is essential. The main advantages of vector graphics for logo design are:
* The logo can be scaled to any size without losing quality.
* Editing the logo later on is much easier.
* It can be adapted to other media more easily than a raster image.

4. Contains Stock Art
This is simply taking the easy way out. This mistake is often made by business owners who design their own logo or by amateur designers who are not clued in to the laws on copyright. A logo should be unique and original, and the licensing agreement should be exclusive to the client: using stock art breaks both of these rules. Chances are, if you are using a stock vector image, it is also being used by someone somewhere else in the world, so yours is no longer unique.

5. Designing For Yourself Rather Than The Client
You can often spot this logo design sin a mile away; the cause is usually a designer’s enormous ego. If you have found a cool new font that you can’t wait to use in a design, well… don’t. Ask yourself if that font is truly appropriate for the business you’re designing for? For example, a great modern typographic font that you just love is not likely suited to a serious business such as a lawyer’s office. Some designers also make the mistake of including a “trademark” in their work. While you should be proud of your work, imposing your personality onto a logo is wrong. Stay focused on the client’s requirements by sticking to the brief.

6. Overly Complex
Highly detailed designs don’t scale well when printed or viewed in smaller sizes.  The more detail a logo has, the more information the viewer has to process. A logo should be memorable, and one of the best ways to make it memorable is to use the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid.

7. Relies On Colour For Its Effect
Without colour, a great design may lose its identity. Try to match the colours to your target audience. Every business owner will need to display their logo in only one colour at one time or another, so the designer should test to see whether this would affect the logo’s identity. People design logos without taking into consideration their future use. Be sure to deign your logos with the intent that they can be used on the internet, in print, on a street sign, embroidered on a backpack, and screen printed on a t-shirt.  Make your logo as powerful in both colour and black & white.

8. Poor Choice Of Font
When it comes to executing a logo, choosing the right font is the most important decision a designer can make. More often than not, a logo fails because of poor font choice. Finding the perfect font for your design is all about matching the font to the style of the icon. But this can be tricky. If the match is too close, the icon and font will compete with each other for attention; if the complete opposite, then the viewer won’t know where to focus. The key is finding the right balance, somewhere in the middle.

Every typeface has a personality. If the font you have chosen does not reflect the icon’s characteristics, then the whole message of the brand will misfire. Bad fonts are often chosen simply because the decision isn’t taken seriously enough.

9. Has Too Many Fonts
A logo works best with a maximum of two fonts. Using too many fonts is like trying to show someone a whole photo album at once. Each typeface is different, and the viewer needs time to recognize it. Seeing too many fonts at once causes confusion. Using a maximum of two fonts of different weights is standard practice. Restricting the number of fonts to this number greatly improves the legibility of a logo design and improves brand recognition.

10. Copies Others
This is the biggest logo design mistake of all and, unfortunately, is becoming more and more common. The purpose of a logo is to represent a business. If it looks the same as someone else’s, it has failed in that regard. Copying others does no one any favours, neither the client nor the designer.

SPINN Media’s Graphic Design Services offer Logo and Corporate Stationery Design & Development. Contact us to discover how our Graphic Design services can benefit your new brand development project.

Someone recently sent us this email that gives us all food for thought. We loved it so much that it is reproduced here:
“ Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes later:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pulled hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly…

45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and then silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

What no one that day knew was this - the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate musical pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats
averaged $100 a piece.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in that metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised were: in a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.....

How many other things are we missing?”

When was the last time you stopped to listen to your: customers, employees and yes, even to your inner self? What pressure points to you need to push to move your business forward? Have you listened to the music?

With 2009 well underway, your goals and strategies probably look a lot different than they did just last year. As your business evolves with the new economic realities, let us not forget that many of your prospects exist in the same state of insecurity.

It is time to rethink marketing materials that no longer speak to a customer's needs.
Cost-cutting is not the answer; re-engineering value is and this is an area that SPINN Media, a proudly Australian owned and operated digital marketing company, can assist you with.

SPINN Media specializes in 3 key areas:                                                                                       
Custom Website Design and Development l Graphic Design l Marketing Consulting

We have developed a short list of 10 ways your company can thrive in a slowing economy. Here it is:

1. Start from the beginning
Refreshing your brand will give you a good excuse to talk not only to all your existing clients but also will allow you to reflect on your communications and core message.

2. Reduce costs and improve your results
You have the choice to send 10,000 postcards or letters where you won’t know if the recipients have read them for $1.50 each (total: $15,000 of admin, creative, print, postage) or send 10,000 emails for $100 and get instant analytics and results. It is time for you to start re-assessing. Don’t stop marketing! Just spend your money wisely by using digital communications.

3. Make your website a real tool
Create interactivity with your target market. Use a silo marketing approach and create additional landing pages specific to each of your products or offers so that readers landing on your pages are not confused by the array of other products or services on your site. Keeping your visitors focused on your page will dramatically increase your conversion rate.

Ensure your website is current and has exciting, relevant content to engage your audience; use your content management system to optimise your Meta tags and key word density within your web pages so the organic searches can find your specific product or services.

4. More communication and more presence
Online strategies are the perfect vehicles for communicating with customers and generating additional purchases. Combine communications using emails, social networking, search engine optimisation, blogs, emails and websites to keep on growing your business and moving forward.

5. Target! Target! Target!
Online database management provides you superior targeting ability. With average conversion rate of around 1.5%, this is an ideal way to reach the other 98.5% that have taken the time to visit your site but haven’t yet converted. So keep communicating.

6. Measure, Track and Survive
Online marketing offers greater measurability while allowing you to track behaviours in comparison to traditional media advertising.

Do you know who has read your advert in the newspaper or magazine? No chance. With email marketing, for example, you can! This is of course due to the awesome technology, where every mouse click is tracked, usually anonymously. Use this data to understand how much each lead and sale costs you.

7. Build your distribution network
Talk to other businesses, yes that’s right you remember the old tool called the telephone…it’s still works to build relationships. Call businesses and start cross promoting your services, develop a referral program and even a joint event with an associated business targeting the same customers and share the costs and the rewards!

8. Convert and manage sales efficiently
During tough times you cannot afford to lose leads and clients, make sure you are using an appropriate customer relationship management (CRM) tool, so you always stay on top of it.

Focus on increasing your conversion and not just the number of new leads or enquiries. Work on your client base as it is 75% easier to convert an existing client to a new sale than pitching to a new customer. Do some research on unconverted leads to find out why they aren't buying from you? Create an online e-learning centre for your staff and your clients. Providing education is a great way to build brand advocacy.

9. Listen to your customers and the market
Send a simple survey to all your clients with a great incentive (never forget the incentive). Read all media, books and relevant business articles to keep you thinking about your business and how you must adapt. If you keep learning through customer feedback and constantly think about how you can improve your offering, you will only continue to grow your business.

10. Forget about the world economy and all media hype
Journalist rarely deliver good news; they exploit the human nature which is constantly craving for sensationalism. Remember the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” where Elliot Carver said “there is no news like bad news”, well yes it was a movie but…

Think about it, it’s easier for the media to sell newspaper or advertising if the Headline says “The World Economy has Crashed” than saying the “The World Economy is Great”. The media always exploits negativity to build their own fortune. Stay focused on your business  and keep doing what you do best or better yet, improve everything you are doing!

Now is a great time to reflect and re-invent yourself, to become more efficient and drive your business as hard as possible. What’s stopping you from growing?

Contact SPINN Media today for free health check on your marketing activities.
Remember, standing still is not an option.

"The one and only rule to remember when you are seeking to stand out from the crowd," says David Tyreman, "is [this]: Don't become part of the crowd in the first place."

Tyreman’s book World Famous: How to Give Your Business a Kick-Ass Brand Identity  is packed with suggestions to help your business gain a powerful presence in the market. The opening page of the book features a quote from Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead: “Success isn't about being perceived as the best at what you do, it's about being perceived as the only one who does what you do."

How do you set your business apart from your competition? Tyreman talks about the need to offer your market a distinct benefit or value. If you pin your hopes on "just buy from me" with no real value proposition, then you will suffer the consequences.

Marcia Lindquist says, “You need to focus on how you do business, determine if you are the best solution for your customers’ problems, and then go out of your way to meet their needs.” She has developed a 5 step process on how you can hone your customer focus for better results.

1. Focus on your customers’ needs and wants.
2. Assess your own strengths and resources.
3. Differentiate with the customers’ best interests at heart
4. Make a map of their needs and wants and record it
5. Focus! Focus! Focus! only on that map and don’t get off-track

There are a lot of businesses out there offering the same products, services and even benefits. Understanding what makes you unique from these companies can help you better position yourself in the marketplace. This is where you convince your clients and prospects to actually buy from you.

What is your stand on this?
Drop us a line or contact us for a free consultation or a cuppa. We would love to meet you.

Twitter is the latest free social-networking and micro-blogging craze that enables its users to send and read messages in up to140 characters. It is based on a very simple question: What are you doing? 

With more than 37 million people a month visiting www.twitter.com  it’s a wonderful way to keep in touch with friends and let them know what you’re up to and where you are. Many businesses use Twitter to broadcast their company’s latest news and blog posts, interact with their customers, or to enable easy internal group Communication.

According to www.twitterholics.com  Hollywood heartthrob Ashton Kutcher has a staggering 3 million followers in just 7 months. Ellen DeGeneres, Britney Spears, CNN Breaking News, Oprah Winfrey and Barrack Obama feature well, too.

There is now a slew of Twitter-friendly applications to enrich your Twitter experience and it keeps growing by the day! According to www.squidoo.com  “Twitter applications can be called by different names. They are sometimes called "twitter tools", "twitter add-ons" and the likes. But whatever the name they are called, they are simply websites which have built-in scripts that complement Twitter.”  Squidoo has listed 275 Twitter applications which you can read about by clicking here. Also watch a YouTube video on how you can get started on Twitter.

Here is a quick review of some of nifty Twitter apps: 

www.tweetbeep.com 
Tweetbeep provided by Twitter lets you know whenever someone else tweets about you or about your blog. Much like Google Alerts for Twitter, it provides hourly alerts whenever a stranger or a friend of yours mentions your name in his posts and conversation. 

www.twitpic.com
Great way to share your photos on Twitter. You can log into Twitpic using your Twitter username and password. Upload your picture(s), include text and your tweet will go out with a link to the image. How cool is that?

www.tweetlater.com
TweetLater allows you to schedule your Tweets over time.  This would be good for Tweets where you are not necessarily trying to interact with others such as market updates or news bites. TweetLater will also send you an email with your replies and messages so you can respond quickly and appropriately.

www.tweetworks.com
Tweetworks is designed to make micro-blogging more useful for people and businesses. It is based on the simple premise that people like to talk about stuff with other people. And it is the stuff (ideas, questions, politics, sports, arts and so on) that brings people together and around which they form community.

You can create and participate in groups, public or private. Plus the conversations you have in the groups are threaded so you can follow the discussion AND you can choose whether or not your conversations get pushed out to your twitter stream for all your followers to see.

So the question is: What are you doing?

We have been so busy helping our clients develop and design their websites, corporate materials and new branding that we haven't had time to update all the work that we have completed. It is always a joyous moment when we successfully handover a superb project and receive that pat on the back from our clients.

Over the next few weeks, we will continue providing you with more information on how you too can become net savvy. Why not sign up for our newsletter? You'll receive regular updates and information on emerging technology and trends.

If you would like to have a chat on how we can help you, call us on: +61 7 3818 3725 or email: info@spinnmedia.com.au

We'd love to hear from you!

Specialist life insurance provider, Aurora Life Insurance Solutions (the name just says it all!), recently came to us for the design and development of a new corporate logo. They had a fairly good idea of what they wanted and after completing a simple Logo Design Brief, there was no stopping us.

Aurora Life Insurance Solutions had a hard time deciding on which logo to select. Afterall, they had a whopping 14 to choose from! After a few days of deliberation, they made their final pick. And what a winner it is. Visit the Our Folio page to have a look at the lucky number one.   

To save on cost, Aurora Life Insurance had opted for our Business Stimulus Package where all businesses that sign up for a Logo Development Package will receive a BONUS Stationery Design Set for FREE! Like to find out how you can save money, too? Simply click here for more details. 

The next phase for Aurora Life Insurance Solutions is a spanking new website which we're both very excited to start work on, in a few weeks. Keep checking back soon to see how we fare.

In these difficult times, how you present your brand is more important than ever. We understand the challenging and ever changing dynamics of running a small to medium sized business.

We have a few questions for you:

• Is your fear over dropping sales preventing you from focusing on what your customers are looking for right now?
• Are you paralyzed by fear and uncertainty?
• Are you playing it safe and staying in a holding pattern until the economy improves?
• Or have you opted to show courage and leadership by steering your brand to maintain share now and grow into the future?

During this downturn, whatever companies do, or more importantly don't do, will have far-reaching impacts on their customers and brand for years to come. Companies that faced the challenges head-on, retained their wits, and took appropriate actions will be the ones leaving their competitors far behind.

With this in mind (and an excuse to celebrate our new website launch!), SPINN Media is offering all businesses an opportunity to revamp, refresh or create an engaging brand identity with great savings in store.

Sign up for a logo development package by 30 June, 2009 and receive a BONUS stationery design set for FREE! How is that for value? There has never been a better time to purchase a logo development package.

This offer will entitle you to the following:

• Logo Design plus these great BONUS offers for FREE:
• Letterhead Design
• Envelope Design
• With Compliments Slip Design
• Business Card Design for up to 5 names

This BONUS offer is only valid for a limited period, so contact us for more information.

Standing still is not an option.

“Your friendly neighbourhood wine dealer”. That’s how Kevin Watson, CEO of Warrego Wines described himself when we first met. If you haven’t been to the winery yet, take a leisurely drive down the Warrego Highway. Set amongst picturesque mountains, the quaint little Queensland winery is one of the best we’ve been to.

Due to popular demand from female customers, Warrego Wines recently started producing a sparkling new red wine. Packed with a powerful punch, Scarlett O’Bubbles needed a quirky yet stylish identity. Within minutes of speaking to Kevin, we understood precisely what Kevin and Scarlett needed in terms of a wine label.

We set about illustrating a movie styled image of a sophisticated woman in a wide brimmed hat holding a glass of bubbly. Kevin was thrilled! SPINN Media had delivered once again. It’s what we do. We listen to your needs and we understand how important it is to keep the lines of communication open so that our clients understand that we will go that extra mile for them.

Scarlett O’Bubbles has since proved to be a popular choice for wine lovers, especially the ladies. And Kevin and Scarlett are laughing all the way to the bank!