I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 90.

Some listeners of The Bella Buzz podcast might be old enough to remember how interesting it was that a 24/7 all-weather television network appeared on their cable television (1982 btw).  Many questioned whether it would be possible to sustain viewers and maintain an actual business with this format.  The answer became a resounding yes.

Today, the information The Weather Channel distributes has landed on numerous forms of media beyond the coaxial cable systems.  We are delighted to have Vice President of Brand Strategy, Derek Van Nostran, join us to discuss their efforts in using social media to drive their content.

Our timing for having Derek as a guest was quite appropriate as we just had a very early Nor’easter snow storm in New England termed #Snowtober all over Twitter.

The Weather Channel has been receiving some recognition, including a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Excalibur Award for their Weather Social project.  Weather Social incorporates the volume of activity and conversation taking place on Twitter, and appears on a segment of the broadcast.  It is literally possible to “view” the progress of a storm front by monitoring the activity of people on the social network.

It takes a lot of technology to parse the volume of data that appears, even when looking at just one single social network like Twitter.  The Weather Channel relied on Wiredset and Trendrr to help them excavate the relevant information among the noise.

Some companies have come to realize that they actually do have a valid social media strategy, many still have not, but for The Weather Channel the strategy clicked when they realized that by incorporating the local nature of weather with the local nature of social media, they could improve their ability to cover a story.  Thus, the birth of millions of “Social Meteorologists!”

The new iPad app is a tremendous upgrade from previous versions, as they came to understand that users wanted to be able to access the basic weather information first, and then drill down into the details in more time.  The full earth view is tremendous!

Thanks for your time Derek!  Looking forward to the continuing evolution of The Weather Channel, integrated in exciting ways into our every day lives.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 86.

Long time Twitter users Desiree Scales and Joe Magennis speak with Brent Herd, the Director of Southeast Partnerships for Twitter, on this episode of The Bella Buzz podcast.

In the face of feature enhancements by other major social networks, Twitter continues to provide a simple to use platform for communications.  With 140 character limitations and minimal user disruption, the service continues to be a stronghold for messaging and breaking news coverage in particular.

It is possible that many listeners were not aware that Twitter had opened some satellite offices with the intention of helping brands take advantage of the sponsorship opportunities.  Brent opened the Atlanta office in January of 2011 and has dealt directly with some of the major residents of the city such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola.

He has gone beyond just a simple sales role and has witnessed first hand how some of these companies are integrating Twitter into their total customer service package.  Delta has their own Social Lab set up with flat screen panels to monitor Twitter activity.  They use the real time information that they are collecting to respond to customers, to be proactive, and even manage connecting traffic. They have  a specific Twitter account @DeltaAssist for these efforts.

There are a variety of different sponsorship opportunities available on the platform, Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts  ..   Brent gives us a nice breakdown of each segment, specifically pointing out the company’s intention of making them as organic as the conversations on Twitter themselves.

• Promoted Trends – Giving the advertiser the ability to own one of the hashtags that appears in the Top 10 trends on Twitter.  It is analogous to a placement on a web site home page.

• Promoted Tweets – (interesting factoid; It took Twitter about 3.5 years to get to 1 billion tweets, now they do 1 billion tweets in about 3 – 4 days!)  Advertisers now have the ability to put together a very targeted campaign, including geo-targeting, so that a finite group of users will see a sponsored message.  These can be very affordable campaigns since they are based on CPA type models.  They use the term “engagement” as a measurement, which includes Replies, Retweets and Click Throughs.  Current engagement statistics are 3% – 5%, much higher than standard click through rates on the web.

• Promoted Accounts – helps brands build a follower base in a very quick time period.

Another interesting approach to using Twitter and the ability of a brand to develop a “personality” is the way that Coca-Cola uses the @DocPemberton account.  This is a fictional representation of the inventor of Coca-Cola, who lived in Atlanta during the 1800′s.  This consistent messaging represents a form of branding that is less intrusive than the standard dissemination of corporately crafted fare.  (Baseball fans will be reminded of the @OldHossRadbourn Twitter account)

To wrap up our conversation, Brent fills us in on the Analytics dashboard platform for publishers, with hints at features to come. Also, keep an eye out in the coming weeks for the deep integration of Twitter with the new iOS devices such as the iPhone 5.

We want to extend our sincere thanks to Brent for joining us on the podcast, and we look forward to another interview in the future.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 83.

Automattic really is for the people, and we are fortunate to have code wrangler Beau Lebens as a guest on the episode of The Bella Buzz podcast.  Automattic is the company (and I hesitate to call it a company because that seems to diminish their ethos) behind the content management system called WordPress, as well as many other open source projects.

Desiree met Beau during her recent visit to the Microsoft campus.

Beau fills us in on the recent WordCamp gatherings including the event in San Francisco where over 1000 participants gathered to hear about the latest updates, share insights with the community, and work with the newest WordPress users to help them understand how to develop a robust online presence.

Watch the WordPress.tv presentation called the State of the Word from founder Matt Mullenweg. It is his annual summary of the development of the platform.

WordPress is a free, open source, platform that has truly become the standard by which all content management systems are judged (The Bella Buzz & Baseballisms both run WordPress). It has grown into such a powerful presence by allowing its users to submit requests and even code to the project. Operating under a GNU General Public License allows users to modify the platform, which in turn provides others with tested enhancements that can be incorporated into the code base for wider distribution.  This has spawned an entire ecosystem of templates and plugins that work on the platform.

There are two communities of  Wordpress users, and Beau is focused on providing some crossover services. WordPress.com is where users can set up a site that is hosted and managed behind the scenes by the team at Automattic. This means that servers are set up, updates are installed, and it is much easier to use. But it comes with limitations.  The WordPress.org camp is for users looking for more customization and are not worried about servers and backup and domain management.

Beau and his team are introducing Jetpack. This plugin allows the self hosted WordPress.org users to benefit from some of the tremendous features that the WordPress.com community has.  Jetpack brings great stats, hovercards, shortlinks, even the great editor called After the Deadline.

If you have any questions about Jetpack or WordPress in general, take advantage of the growing community of users who are willing to share their knowledge.  Reach out to Desiree if you want to talk about developing your web presence with a WordPress foundation.

You can find Beau at his blog Dented Reality or on Twitter, feel free to mention you heard him on The Bella Buzz.  Thanks Beau for your time!

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

I am privileged to produce a couple of podcasts on behalf of the “Facebook for Kids“, WhatsWhat.me.  They are building a kids-only social network, targeting 7 – 13 year olds who are too young for Facebook, but can benefit from participating on social networks.  The protect and educate objectives of What’s What is a truly noble mission.

This is a conversation that I had with the Communications Director for the National Cyber Security Alliance, a strategic partner dedicated to Internet safety through education.

Enjoy the conversation, and please let me know your thoughts.

In this episode of the What’s News podcast, we are joined by the Communication and Outreach Director for the National Cyber Security Alliance, Aimee Larsen Kirkpatrick. We are very appreciative of Aimee taking the time from her busy schedule to speak about the extraordinary efforts of the NCSA, and about the results of their latest survey.

The NCSA’s mission is “to educate and therefore empower a digital society to use the Internet safely and securely at home, work, and school, protecting the technology individuals’ use, the networks they connect to, and our shared digital assets.”

The organization sees the need for education on the security and protection of our digital assets, but also the need to provide a solid foundation for our children. Kids need to understand how to use this great technology at their disposal, with the end result of producing exemplary digital citizens and workforce contributors. There is a great cultural change required to find the resources, train the teachers and develop the curriculum that is going to help our kids succeed in this new global community.

Teaching safe online behavior cannot be completed delegated to the school systems however, parents are responsible for holding up some part of the bargain.  We discuss this very issue on many episodes of the This is What’s What podcast series, however there are many households in the country that do not have parents who are capable of helping their children navigate these challenging shifts.  The NCSA is helping to provide the tools, lesson plans and teaching materials to integrate into the classroom.

The C-SAVE Program extends beyond providing materials to teachers in the classroom, and reaches out to IT professionals who are acutely aware of the need for preparing our entire population for engaging in online activity. The Cyber Security Awareness Volunteer Education Program establishes that volunteer as a great resource for the community and helps promote corporate responsibility at the grassroots level.

We invited Aimee to join us to discuss the specific results that were determined by the recently completed survey titled - The State of K-12 Cyberethics, Cybersafety and Cybersecurity Curriculum in the United States.

The categorization of the issue has provided a great framework for the conversation since many distinct elements can be lumped under the common heading of “cyber security”. The NCSA has received great feedback globally on guiding the dialog within these categories.

• Cyber Ethics includes elements such as plagiarism, piracy, privacy, hate speech and other aspects of Internet usage that have a somewhat moral component.
• Cyber Safety might include social networking, sharing of personal information, predators, location based applications and sexting.
• Cyber Security speaks to concerns related to malware, viruses, password protection, identify theft and even National Security.

Certainly, each of these categories can be cross pollinated by specific examples, but it helps to focus attention and guide the conversation when addressing the big picture topic in this way. We applaud this approach and plan to adopt the language in our own discussions.

A significant result of the survey is the difference of opinion regarding who owns the primary responsibility for teaching these skills. The teachers and administrators who were surveyed believe that it is the parent’s role, while IT coordinators felt that the school should be responsible. Aimee believes this stems from the IT coordinator’s total immersion and understanding of the complexity of the safety concerns, and that they are aware of the lack of skill on the part of the household to handle primary responsibility.

There is some tension in the classroom in that teachers are achieving maximum bandwidth already, with all of the targets and mandatory curriculum topics taking up a full work day. Adding more duties, and the training required to effectively teach these new (and fluid) topics, dictates adjustment. Teachers understand the need for incorporating this into the classroom, but are looking for assistance in achieving the goal.

Aimee identifies the fact that the true cultural change will take place as the very youngest students, those who are growing up with this technology completely integrated into their lives, learn and incorporate these behaviors and habits on a consistent basis. This 21st Century skill set will be hard wired into their consciousness.

This is a global issue, and many countries are looking at the U.S. for guidance since we have been leaders in this technology. We have the opportunity to join with countries as diverse as Egypt, Malaysia and those throughout Europe and the African Continent on a singular mission of making the internet safer for our children. We should not be myopic on this, rather, we should embrace the successes that are achieved elsewhere and expand the dialog to include all concerned global citizens.

Where do we go from here? Aimee and the NCSA want to reinforce that this must be advanced in an holistic manner, through many efforts including grassroots, professional development, political discourse, and funding, not just through one or two specific initiatives. If we just take the approach of responding to the “headlines of the moment”, we will end up spinning our wheels and not addressing the issue in a methodically efficient manner.

For access to great resources for parents, teachers, and businesses, visit the website of the National Cyber Security Alliance at StaySafeOnline.org.

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We look forward to getting your feedback about the conversation, and your particular questions and comments about the topics we’ve discussed.  You can send an email to Feedback@whatswhat.me, or leave us a comment.

For parents looking for a safe social networking environment for your kids, we encourage you to check out the serious safety features available as a member of WhatsWhat.me, a safe Facebook for Kids.

Please subscribe to our This is Whats What podcast via iTunes so that you do not miss a single episode, and please give us a rating so that we can help reach more parents about this important topic.

… or finally, subscribe via the RSS link, so that you receive all of the other terrific content that we publish in between the recordings of each podcast.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 78.

I strongly believe that the future of content discovery and presentation on the web will be as a result of curation.  A powerful role in our digital futures will be that of the Curators, who will develop strong communities around their topic of expertise.  Digital Content Curation will become a science taught in academic institutions.

Please share your comments!

This week on The Bella Buzz podcast, we talk with the CEO of Mech Media and Founder of Shareist.com, Scott Jangro. Scott has an outstanding reputation in the Affiliate Marketing industry. In 2010 he was honored with the Affiliate Summit Affiliate Marketing Legend Pinnacle Award.

His current efforts are focused on developing a robust curation platform that provides stellar aggregation functionality, with visually appealing content presentation, combined with social features, that advances the evolution of information discovery on the web.

The act of digital content curation is born out of the typical meaning of the word applied to art galleries and museums. A curator will examine and evaluate numerous items for inclusion into a very specific exhibit presentation. Those that are deemed worthy are included, and those that are not are discarded. As applied to the current state of the web, a curator can provide a valuable service in the face of the growing challenge web users face, the exponential growth of the amount of content published on a daily basis. A curator will aggregate and maintain a collection of links to relevant, original content on a specific topic.

As the amount of published web content becomes a staggering sum, web users are finding it more and more difficult to locate the content they are seeking through algorithmic search. It also becomes difficult to distinguish the original source content from the scraped, auto-generated, repackaged article designed to simply generate pageviews. It is an important aspect of the curator’s responsibility to start at the seek and discovery phase, but continue to drill down to the original source of the material.

A well curated presentation of a topic will contain links to original sources of content that have been exposed via a thoughtful and continuous search for relevant information. It will also contain bits of editorial content that the curator has included in order to put the links into context with the rest of the presentation. Why was this included? What is the most relevant portion of the content? .. These types of insights from the curator will help the visitor determine the best content for further exploration. In this digital information era, the topic curator will be as valuable as a skilled reference librarian while providing a preservation service to future explorers by compiling a comprehensive resource on a topic.

A less obvious component of curation comes from the additional social elements that are incorporated into the platform. By allowing user comments and sentiment ratings, the curator can re-examine the inclusion of the content in the topic and use the perpetual feedback loop to improve the quality of the presentation. A curator can select to include or ignore suggestions from the users, but the overall refinement of the topic improves its relevancy over time. This is an advantage to digital curation that is not quite available in offline scenarios. A participatory community develops.

To put the content curation concept into perspective for a business owner, the ability to achieve a consistent content publishing strategy has proven to be successful, as numerous business blogs have been introduced covering a variety of topics. The pushback has always been the time commitment for coming up with original content while operating a business. By adopting a curation strategy, a business owner can provide customers with the information that they are seeking, including some original content and editorial, while developing a significant “reference library” within their specific industry.

Larger businesses might adopt the use of curation to keep their field staff informed about the latest developments within their industry, including company updates, and product sales and marketing information. A Sales Manager could develop curatorial responsibilities, with content presented behind a firewall that allows the team to read up on the most important internal and external articles, to help them close the deals they have been pursuing.

As we continue in this evolution of information discovery, it is quite likely that the search engines will modify the algorithm to reflect the value of content curation in the future, and a renowned curator will provide signals to the search engines that the content included in their collection has merit.

The Shareist platform is currently in an “invite only” beta, and expects to open to the public within the next few months. Listeners to The Bella Buzz podcast can submit a request for setting up a curation site simply by indicating that you heard Scott on the podcast. Visit Shareist.com to sign up for your content curation platform.

Scott has also produced a video that will help you get a better sense of launching this curation platform – How To Set Up Your Shareist.com Website.
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The Bella Buzz is sponsored by Constant Contact. Connect, Inform, Grow. Constant Contact’s leading email marketing, online survey and event marketing tools help all types of small businesses.

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

I am the co-host of This is What’s What, a podcast discussion with Internet Safety expert Katie L. Greer.  We discuss current events regarding the safety of children on the Internet.  This is episode 16. 

For this episode of the This is What’s What podcast, we discuss the proposed California legislation SB 242, which contains some provisions dealing with the privacy settings of social networks as well as parent’s rights to oversee the profiles of minors.

We take a look at the pros and cons of using facial recognition software, and how the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, recently told a London audience that it was a service that Google was “unlikely” to create.

Director of Internet Safety for WhatsWhat.me, Katie Greer, leaves us with an Internet Safety Tip that addresses establishing some best practices for tagging pictures of family and friends on social networks.

California SB 242

Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett has introduced a bill as the Social Network Privacy Act. The bill addresses two significant issues that we have discussed on this podcast in the past, the difficulty users encounter when trying to set proper privacy controls and the responsibility of parents overseeing their children’s profiles.

The very first aspect of the bill establishes that a new user to a site should have all of the information collected during the registration process default to a setting of private, rather than the current default of public.  It is a common complaint, even from the most informed user of social networks, that it is difficult to understand all of the ramification of the privacy settings.  The bill also insists that the information be presented in “plain language”.

The San Fransisco Chronicle is reporting strong opposition from internet companies. Opposition that includes complaints that the requirements are unworkable. This would be a legitimate complaint for parts of the bill, however as we discuss in the podcast, the change to the default privacy settings is certainly not one of them.

The true challenging aspect of the legislation comes from the portion that attempts to provide some control to parents over the networking actions of their children.  The bill gives parents the right to request the removal of any personally identifiable information, and to have the removal take place within 48 hours.  Failure to knowingly comply would result in a $10,000 fine in each case.

There are so many reasons why this proposal would be considered unworkable, that it calls into question its ability to pass the State Senate General Assembly.  Katie points out the fact that Facebook for example does not have the most responsive customer support system for users (although she mentions that they are quick to respond when contacted in an official capacity from law enforcement). Simultaneous to this bill making headlines, Facebook and others were testifying to the United States Congress on privacy concerns and what came to light is that there are only 100 staff members at Facebook who monitor these types of activities. This does not bode well for 48 hour response.  More importantly, how would Facebook determine exactly who has the right to request takedowns?  Without any form of authentication process in the first place, determining this authority from a broken home or a parent outside the jurisdiction of California would make implementation of this portion of the privacy bill unachievable.

This is an initial volley in the ongoing struggle for consumer protections and the social networks. These companies are built on the basis of mining personal information for economic gain, and in some cases can take advantage of the mass populous’ lack of understanding of the privacy policies.  There needs to be some corporate responsibility as we are now living in an environment where there can be actual harm caused due to lax privacy controls, but where the government oversight comes in is still to be determined.

Facial Recognition Software

We felt that it was a good idea to respond to the use of facial recognition software, particularly as it is used as an authentication feature for WhatsWhat.me, in response to Eric Schmidt’s recent discussion of its capability. His belief, and his previously stated belief, is that it is so accurate it could be used in ways that cross the line of privacy.

WhatsWhat.me uses the accuracy and validity of the software to ensure those who are signing on to the platform are indeed the users who set up the original MeKey for the account.  This provides safety for members, keeps adults from impersonating kids, and is the strongest authentication among social networks vying to be the “Facebook for Kids”.

Facebook and the many photo sharing sites use facial recognition as a feature for tagging and identifying others in the photos you are uploading.  It has become common to get a message with a picture crop asking for the name of that individual.  When that information is entered, the site will comb through its entire database, not just yours, to attempt to attach that name to a face.

A real differentiating factor between other companies using facial recognition and how WhatsWhat.me uses facial recognition is how the pictures are stored and how they are shared.  Under COPPA regulations, personally identifiable information including most certainly pictures, may not be shared with any third parties.

Internet Safety Tip

Katie wants to make sure that you have conversations with your immediate family about how you would like to deal with photo tagging on Facebook.  Do you want your kids names to appear connected to any pictures? If not, an easy solution is to have your family tag an adults name to a kids picture.

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We look forward to getting your feedback about the conversation, and your particular questions and comments about the topics we’ve discussed.  You can send an email to Feedback@whatswhat.me, or leave us a comment on this week’s post.

For parents looking for a safe social networking environment for your kids, we encourage you to check out the serious safety features available as a member of WhatsWhat.me, a safe Facebook for Kids.

Please subscribe to This is Whats What via iTunes so that you do not miss a single episode of these conversations with Katie Greer, and please give us a rating there so that we can help reach more parents about this important topic.

Or subscribe via the RSS link, so that you receive all of the other terrific content that we publish in between the recordings of the podcast.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with    Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 75.

We are very pleased to have Benjamin Trotter, the founder and CEO of the social shopping engine, Storefront Social. This exciting new startup allows brands to conduct ecommerce activity directly integrated into their Facebook Fan Page.

This tool is at the forefront of the latest wave of online marketing in the retail space, the intersection of social sharing and commerce called “social shopping.” Since the days when shopping took place on streets and in “markets,” consumers have been relying on word of mouth as the best way to determine good deals and reliable merchants.  As we moved towards industrialization and mass media broadcasting, we lost much of the referral aspect of where to buy, but the social media boom has allowed that “social graph” back into the buying decision.  The largest social network of them all, Facebook, did not have an easy solution for a merchant to sell product, until now.

During our year end 2010 Technology Prediction podcast, we foreshadowed this type of retailing taking place on Facebook.  We believed that within the year 2011, platforms would develop that would allow merchants to quickly and easily showcase their products directly on the site.  Benjamin has achieved that reality.

Benjamin’s idea had its genesis while he was the Director of Ecommerce for a children’s clothing company.  He was exploring all channels for generating traffic, with a particular focus on the social media sites, and started focusing attention on the company’s Facebook page.  Since products change frequently in the clothing niche, he focused on using simply data feeds to display product from their site simultaneously on Facebook. As soon as the traffic and conversions started flowing in from the page, he knew that he had something that could be packaged and sold to others.

On the first day of his proof of concept attempt at allowing others to use the platform, he received a support request from a customer who had signed up and was integrating his system .. and he was off and running!

As with all great entrepreneurial stories, Benjamin came to the conclusion that he needed to take that leap of faith and go all in with an attempt to turn this platform into a full-fledged business. The application comes with a free trial startup, so with over 50,000 users, sometimes clients can slip through unnoticed …  that is until a client the size of Borders Books users the app to display inventory on Facebook.

An interesting analytic that has been discovered is the correlation between Facebook fans and the views of the commerce page.  Intuitively, one would think that the higher the fans the higher the views, but in fact the reality that Benjamin sees is the higher the interaction with fans the higher the views.  As we discuss many times, social media is an ongoing dialog that takes real activity. It cannot be just placed out there and expected to generate returns.

Some key selling points for the way that Storefront Social handles these transactions include directly passing off the commerce functionality to the client’s ecommerce platform, privacy protection, no customer service silos, no additional reporting requirements and no added layers of transactions.

Future iterations of the application will include features such as a notation in a shopper’s Facebook feed when they have made a purchase, and conversely, getting some customization of product recommendations displayed based upon a shopper’s friends list or personal interests.  Benjamin believes that the company relocating to Austin will allow him to get more directly involved with the Facebook staff in offices in that city.

They have also been able to create custom applications for their larger enterprise clients who are looking for a more branded approach to this integration.

An example of an SMB customer who has seen the direct impact of using this application is The Pond Outlet. Their Facebook page had about 7000 -8000 dedicated fans, when they integrated the $29.95 Gold Level of storefront.  During that first month time period, $600 had been spent on Amazon suggested search and garnered $3000 worth of revenue, while Storefront Social generated $7,000 worth of sales!

We really thank Benjamin for his time and wish him the very best in developing this exciting technology. Take a look at the website at StoreFrontSocial.com to sign up for the free 7-Day Trial, visit them on their Facebook Page and drop a message to Benjamin to tell him you heard it on The Bella Buzz, or send a message on Twitter @StoreFrontApp.

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The Bella Buzz is sponsored by Constant Contact. Connect, Inform, Grow.  Constant Contact’s leading email marketing, online survey and event marketing tools help all types of small businesses.

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with   Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 73.

Before we get to our special guest on The Bella Buzz podcast, Desiree has the great fortune of announcing that Bella Web Design is the recipient of a 2011 Webby Award, a prestigious international competition that honors excellence on the Internet.  Yeah Desiree!

The honor was awared for the work that they did on the Universal Wisky Experience web site. It is a beautiful use of the WordPress platform with custom design.

For more information about the 15th Annual Webby Awards, visit their official web site.

Our conversation today is with the CCO and one of the Co-Founders of BatchBlue Software, Michelle Riggen-Ransom.  We had the great pleasure of speaking with her business partner Pamela O’Hara on a previous edition of the Bella Buzz, and felt it was time for a followup on the great product that they have developed.

Their Batchbook SaaS package is a comprehensive management system that tracks contact information, monitors social networking channels, tracks communications and provides a full Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system geared towards the small business market.

Desiree has recently integrated the service into her site strategies for clients.  She had noticed that her clients were having a disconnect when sales leads were coming in through the web site via email, and found a great solution by offering to integrate the BatchBook CRM software as a service offering. Desiree will be able to offer a 30 Day trial for her clients interested in using the service.

The iPhone App has been a great addition to the product line and came directly from input from their customer request forums.  One of Michelle’s favorite features is the ability to takes photos at conferences, and then add the contact details right on the spot. This overcomes the fact that 80% of business cards obtained at conferences end up in the trash!

Batchbook was launched around the same time that many social platforms were becoming widely adopted, so by integrating these tool at the very core of the software, it provides a built in benefit for helping small businesses manage their contacts.

The company also has a number of “friends with business benefits” and have integrated many of the other services that a small business owner might use, so that it seamlessly flows together in one efficient dashboard.  To find out more about the alliance and the mission that these companies are devoted to, visit The Small Business Web site and join the community.

A key factor when deciding on any CRM solution is the pain involved with trying it out, but also ramping it up to full usage.  Many SaaS providers find that customers are disabling the service without using it to its full potential.  There is no way to determine if the solution is correct without giving it a full try.  Batchblue provides a 30 day trial and has an extensive onboarding and support system in place to make sure that clients are getting the most out of the product. This includes webinars for specific topics and even industries.

This is a very progressive company that has some exciting things on the horizon, so keep an eye out for future announcements (and hopefully podcasts!) regarding new products.   You should also check out the active forum community that has developed and start networking with people who are willing and able to offer advice to anyone interested in learning how to run a successful business.

The team does get out to various events, so keep an eye out for them.  Recently they attended SXSW, RETechSouth and are very involved in many of the BarCamps around the country, so if you see them say hello, and that you heard about them on The Bella Buzz!

One of Michelle’s favorite ways of defining her company is that they “put the relationship in customer relationship management”.  We believe it.

To connect with Michelle, you can email her at mriggen(at)batchblue(dot)com or on Twitter @batchblue.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with   Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 72.

This week on The Bella Buzz podcast, we begin our series of focusing on emerging technologies entering the marketplace and their application for small and medium sized businesses.  Desiree and Joe are pleased to speak with the Founder of Nutshell Mail, Mark Schmulen.

Before we get to our guest, Desiree catches us up on the session that she presented at RETechSouth called The Art of Engagement in 140 Characters or Less. This was a presentation about the art of writing to be engaging, confined to the space of a Twitter post.

Consistent with our efforts to introduce guests with interesting backgrounds and an understanding of the changing world of marketing communications, we had a great time talking with Mark.

His company was founded in 2008 with the intention of building a better way of keeping track of all of your social networking activity.  The free service allows you to schedule an email delivery with the important content from the social networks that you participate in, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc.. By having it delivered to your inbox on a consistent basis, you can eliminate the constant distraction of wondering if you missed something in your network.  The company was recently acquired by a sponsor of The Bella Buzz Podcast, Constant Contact and Mark is now the General Manager of Social Media.

One of the principles that Nutshell Mail was built on was “Getting Things Done” or the “GTD” space. Names such as David Allen and Tim Ferriss of The Four Hour Workweek were very influential for the founders when trying to develop a tool that would help manage the social media space. The email Inbox was the place where this could actually happen, “on your time and on your terms.”

A great side effect of using Nutshell Mail to manage the social media marketing efforts is a peace of mind.  Having the knowledge that something will not get missed in this listening station, you can go about your business while still being actively involved.

Constant Contact saw some synergy between the companies as a way to demonstrate that email and social go hand in hand.  They have been very innovative, (and there is more to come!) about providing some tools that will help small businesses find ways to communicate with their engaged customer base.  In both cases, Nutshell Mail and Constant Contact find a common point of connectivity with people through the email Inbox.  A company saying is “email lights the fire, while social media fans the flames!”

To stay in touch with Mark, you can find him on Twitter at the handle @mshmulen, or search for him on Facebook and LinkedIn.  We are also very proud to be have Constant Contact as a sponsor of The Bella Buzz podcast and look forward to new tools that the will be introducing to the over 430,000 small business customers that they serve.

To sign up for the service, you can visit either Nutshell Mail or Constant Contact.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 69.

We speak via Skype connection, rather than the limiting 140 characters of Twitter, with long time friend Becky McCray on episode number 64 of The Bella Buzz podcast. Becky was an early participant in the SB Buzz tweet chat that we discussed many episodes ago, and after we dispose of the tributes to the iPad2 coming out of Cupertino, we get into the social media wisdom that Becky applies to her many endeavors.

Becky is a content producer! In one form or another she has blogs set up that deal with Small Business, her liquor store, tourism, her personal musings, and many many more topics. She is fluent in social media and provides great insights to her clients, friends and neighbors on how to get the most out of their efforts in this evolving space.

Coming off the dialog about the new iPad2 and what it means to the development cycle, we have a great discussion about location based apps and the future of these apps in tourism and small town business. Becky believes that destinations must mobilize their constituents to prepare for visitors, by ensuring that there are quality tips, reviews and recommendations on these services. It is the inside information from local residents that visitors should find on services such as Yelp, Urban Spoon, Gowalla and Foursquare.

Becky is really interested in the future of apps that are connecting people based upon interests. We have seen the beginnings of this with the Get Glue app which is based around television shows, movies and books. She would like to extend this to activities in a way that the original Twitter asked the question “What are you Doing?”

Where most of these current versions of location based apps have a competition or game approach, what it really boils down to is the quality of the information that they contain.  It is not so much that someone has visited the same location the most times that sets them apart, it is what they contribute in the form of relevant information.

Becky uses an interesting term to identify the target market for the small municipality that is trying to attract visitors passing on the highway and patronizing the chain restaurant. She uses the term “Explorer” as the most likely person to venture from the tried and true, which comes from the Kansas Sampler Foundation. This foundation understands the need for adopting new technologies and tactics, in order to succeed in rural economic development.

This topic also gives us a chance to explore the release of Shop Alerts, an app that pushes coupons (and hopefully reviews) to opted-in customers willing to get presented offers based upon passing through a particular location.  Taken to a larger scale, this could be applied to a municipality enabling “geo-fencing” to reach out electronically.

Of course, all of this technology is reliant upon strong internet connectivity and opens an entire debate about our responsibility to ensure that all of the country, and the developing world, has access to high speed internet.  In order for equal opportunity to exist, we must diminish the digital divide.  In many rural parts of the country, reception and internet access are difficult to find.  Becky recommends that any business with wi-fi hotspots clearly mark their locations for out of town guests.

We wrap the episode with a quick discussion about time management and how Becky slices up her priorities in a Get Things Done approach.

You can connect with Becky on Twitter via her @BeckyMcCray account or through her online business card at BeckyMcCray.com.  A big Thank You shoutout to Becky from The Bella Buzz and we leave a standing invitation to join us again any time to continue the conversation!

NOTE: After the recording concluded we had a further conversation about Becky’s post titled Titillating is not the same as interesting.  As Becky mentioned during this conversation, “I bet you wish we were still recording right now” .. indeed.

From our perspective on The Bella Buzz, our digital footprint is long lasting.  We hope that our words will be heard for many years into the future and that we can be proud of our legacy.  By avoiding sensationalism and maintaining high standards we believe that we can demonstrate our integrity to respected people like Becky, and feel comfortable in our children discovering our works and ideas.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.