Tuning Out The Noise

October 20, 2008 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

To a lot of people first getting involved with online and social media, a lot of it can initially sound like noise (and frankly, some of it, a good deal of it, is).

With all of this chatter around, how does one stand out from the crowd?

By focusing on what you want to accomplish as a business or organization.

A fellow blogger (but in a completely different field, Real Estate; as well as he runs the Great Lakes Investment Fund) has an “axiom” if you will – Activity or Accomplishment?

There are lots of things you can do online to create activity – that’s the simple part. Accomplishment? That’s another story.

Using online to tip the scale from interest to opening wallets is a challenge, but it can be done.  How?

Quality and value.

Quality posts, quality podcasts, quality content, that provides value.  Always ask yourself the question – if someone comes by, are they going to need this?  Is this important?

Look at the leaders in the space you’re in, not just the popular ones but the ones who make money or forward their business with it.  Most times, it’s about quality.  It’s about the little things (and big things) – hosting things on your own domain, making sure the blog matches the brand and looks professional, podcasts that sound like they’re in a studio (98 of the top 100 are created by professionals, many times in studio situations), making sure your content has a voice and you’re interacting with people in meaningful ways (i.e. no spam).

If you want to be the best, you need to execute like the best.  You can take different tacts; you can try new technologies. But it all should be good, if not great.  As Seth Godin says in his book, “The Dip,” there is no room for the mediocre or average.

Filed Under: Business, Love Your User, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media Fundamentals, Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: accomplishment, activity, dennis fassett, noise, seth godin

Web Search Strategy Simplified from Commoncraft

October 16, 2008 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

I don’t always just forward stuff on, but I think this is the best explanation of how web search works and why it’s important to be specific.  As always, the Commoncraft people do a great job of getting things across simply.

Hat Tip to @dannysullivan on Twitter for passing it around.

Filed Under: Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: Commoncraft, Search Strategy, Tips

Are You Selling Your Services Or Your Ads?

October 10, 2008 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

While following some links doing some research for vendors and partnerships for an upcoming project, I came upon a really disturbing trend that I thought -might- have died in 2001, but alas for the people perpetrating this crime against themselves, no.

The amount of companies that I see putting google ads or other ads on their company site is alarming. There’s nothing worse as far as confusion to visitors than for you to have your services next to Google or other advertisements, that are many times for your competitors (even worse).

Regardless, ads on your company site are a definite no.  Also, free hosting is a no, especially branded free hosting (such as “powered by GoDaddy”).  Your brand is your most valuable asset – guard it well, and if you’re not willing to spend even $7-$25 a month on a basic plan, you obviously don’t value your business as much as you should.  It’s pretty obvious why you’re not getting business (4 of 5 times, I run into these issues from posts, friends or blogs about how “nobody hires them.”)

The impression such techniques leave is a very negative – if you’re putting Google ads on your company site, you’re looking pretty desperate, regardless if you are.  And I only say this because I know from experience, having made mistakes.  Do not trade 50 cents today for the 50 dollars tomorrow; brand and business establishment take time, and probably more time than you think.

Where so many startups and small businesses go awry is that they dilute or confuse their message to customers around what they do and what benefit it is to hire you and have you do work for them and/or buy your stuff.  Whether it’s through ads on the site, the messages you put out; keep your business and your personal brand focused.

Want to see someone really smart on personal branding?  Check out this slideshow from BrandCamp ’08 by the personal branding expert Hajj Flemings. The podcast will be coming out next week with his presentation in it’s entirety, but wanted you to get a taste of what’s to come.  I’ll be linking to the videos, audio and iTunes subscription links when they’re out.

Filed Under: Online Marketing Fundamentals, Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: branding, personal branding, selling services

GUI Tip: Tabs need to keep state

March 18, 2008 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

Here’s a fast, free GUI (Graphic User Interface) tip.

Your navigation is extremely important – it “orients” visitors to your site.

If you decide to use tabbed navigation, it works a lot like a physical folder would – the tab is attached the folder, and when you pull on the tab, the folder opens.

However, it’s very common in the web world due to lazyness or lack of programming skill to make the tab not “save state.”  That means, if you click on a link, when the new page loads the tabbed navigation should change so that the tab that is “active” (or looks “connected”) to the page below should be the new page.

Even worse is if you click on different page tabs and the active tab that is connected to the main content stays the same – so you go to the media room, but the navigation bar looks like you’re still on the home page.  It confuses visitors.

Not changing state is lazy programming – it can be done a variety of ways (even in flash) – and a little thing to look for to decipher the skill of your prospective developer.

Filed Under: Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Web Sites

iPhone SDK… the Third Web

March 10, 2008 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

Amazingly, there are now three versions of the web today.

There is the main version – displayed on computers and the like; the mobile version, for the Blackberrys and Nokias et all; and now, the third version, the iPhone version.

A version that is flash-free; a version that is undeniably going to integrate with the new SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone taking what are now “web apps” and giving them the ability to run them in a dedicated manner and using the web as a data source instead of for the whole experience.

Now that there is going to be Exchange integration and the like, there will be more and more people who are tied to it; and with the iPhone having an insanely high smart phone market share so fast, it’s now a consideration.

My ranking of the importance of these “webs” are:
1) Mainstream
2) iPhone Based Web
3) Mobile Web

You just don’t have the ability to do what you want to on traditional mobile web platforms; I am thinking that spending the resources to develop there might be folly, especially since it’s quite obvious that in a year or so the new standard is going to be putting the full version of pages on mobile devices.

Filed Under: Web Sites
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