Let’s start with the basics, first. Your Avatar is an image that helps identify your posts and comments on blogs and web forums. An Avatar is a graphic representation of you in cyberspace– it’s a figment of your own creation. It could be:
• a picture of you, which will show off your face,
• a logo, which will build brand recognition, or
• a product picture, which will build product awareness.

Gravatars are globally recognized Avatars. Gravatars have been made popular with the increasing use of WordPress and other themed blogs and forums. Your Gravatar automatically follows you from site to site, appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog.

So why should you have a Gravatar?

1) When posting and commenting on blogs and forums, your online identity will be consistent and easy to use.
2) Your Gravatar will be recognized more often by the same people that comment and post on the same blogs and forums you visit. You will get increasing recognition of you, your brand and/or your product.
3) You’re more likely to be viewed as a real human, meaning your posts and comments will get through spam filters.
4) Your posts and comments stand out more that posts and comments without a Gravatar.
5) Your hidden agenda– getting more visitors to your site– will actually work.
6) If you have a company blog (which most of you should), you’ll want a Gravatar when you reply to posts on your own blog.
7) Gravatars are easy to use. They are simply connected with your email address(es).

How do you get a Gravatar?

It’s easy to sign up, and it’s free. Simply visit www.gravatar.com and follow directions from there. For those with multiple companies and identities, you can set up one main profile with multiple email addresses and correlating images. Or you can set up multiple accounts at Gravatar if you wanted to keep things separate.

Show your stuff! Comment below and show off your newly-minted or time-trusted Gravatar.

Copyblogger Media has another useful tool, ScribeSEO, on sale (50% off!) but sale ends Wednesday, April 25, 2012. We don’t see sales from CopyBlogger very often, and we’ve never seen anything discounted like this!

ScribeSEO helps you easily improve the SEO of each article/post you write. Find out more here and enter promo code “smart” to get the discount.

Happy ranking!

Thanks for your support, and we look forward to seeing you at Infusioncon 2012 in just a few short days.

If you ordered one of our Fusetastic t-shirts, don’t forget to check your email, twitter, etc. for the time and place to pick up your shirts.

See ‘ya there!

Last year at InfusionCon, many of you were jealous of our cool t-shirts. So this year, we’re giving you–our fellow fanatics and friends– the opportunity to join in the fun.

If you want one of our free t-shirts, request one below, and we’ll have it ready for you at InfusionCon. For some extra fun, if one of our “undercover agents” spots you wearing your shirt, you’ll get some extra “tastic love” with goodies we’ll be giving out. If you order a shirt, we simply ask that you wear it at least once at InfusionCon . . . even though it’ll be so cool, you may never want to take it off! Oh, and by the way, it’s not recommended to wear it more than one day at InfusionCon (unless you want to sit it alone.)

We’ll email, text, and tweet you where you can pick up your shirt at InfusionCon, so be sure we’ve got all your info below. Be sure and submit your t-shirt order by Wednesday, March 14th at 11:59 p.m.

And good news. If you want a chance to be enlightened and edified by one of our wiz guys, now you’ve got a chance at InfusionCon. We’ll be presenting at InfusionCon during the Add-On Product Showcase, currently planned during the 2nd day, morning break-out sessions, with moderator Marc Chesley, Infusionsoft’s VP of Development and Technology.

Reserve Wiztastic’s FREE InfusionCon T-shirt

(We’ll email, tweet, and/or text you where you can pick it up.)

(WARNING! If you’re an introvert and the idea of total strangers stopping you and asking you where you got such a cool shirt terrifies you, then we DON’T recommend that you order a shirt.)

Re-branding has taught us some fun little gems of knowledge. Perhaps you can learn something from our experience. . . . .

1) To get some new name ideas rolling, we hosted a “Name Us & Win a Geek” giveaway. This helped us get the word out that our name was changing and have some fun. Granted, our new name ended up being an internal creation, but we decided to give some love to those who helped contribute to the idea bank. If you participated in the “Name Us & Win a Geek” giveaway, you will receive a “consolation prize” of $100 WizBucks.*  Use your WizBucks to:

- Get a free copy of Sizzle
- Get $100 off Forminator
- Get $100 off  jvJuice
- Apply it towards API scripting or any other service that we do.

2) Perhaps the biggest challenge for us was to come up with a name that had an available domain. Ideas for names were plentiful, but we wanted a matching domain name to go with it. The site we used most to check for available domains was www.bustaname.com.

3) A few Marketing 101 “rules of thumb” we wanted to implement:

- an easy-to-remember name
- an easy-to-spell name
- an easy-to-pronounce name with 4 syllables or less
- an easy-to-read font
- a name that conveyed the essence of what we do
- a simple “iconic” logo to emphasize the essence of what we do

4) One thing we discovered from our contest was that most of you out there identify us with “tastic,” so we decided to make it stick.

6) Because we were re-branding, we wanted to keep the “flame” theme or something similar to have some semblance to our old name.

We appreciate your love and support as we make the change to our new name. If you contributed ideas to our contest and haven’t already been contacted about winning $100 WizBucks*, please contact us.

*WizBucks valid thru April 15th. If redeeming for services, scheduling is subject to availability.

You may have heard that Infusionsoft has recently updated their trademark policy. Many service providers, including us, have to change our names to stay in compliance.

Sure, we already have some ideas up our sleeves. But we wanted a way to connect with the brainpower of other intelligent people out there. So we thought, “Why not crowdsource to our own customers?”

So here’s your chance. Be immortalized at our company and name us. Give us a new identity.

Our top pick will win a geek for a day! Translation: the winner will receive an Infusionsoft makeover with eight (8) man-hours of us doing whatever!

Here’s a few Infusionsoft-friendly things we could do for you if you win:

• Amazing marketing analytics
• Web 2.0 design
• Infusionsoft process mapping
• Killer checkout processes
• Crank up your Affiliate system
• Custom API scripting
• Membership sites, and more

And here’s a few things to think about before you start brainstorming:

• We can not use words like “infusion”, “infuse”, “fuse”, “fusion” in our new company name.
• We may not use misspellings, abbreviations, phonetic equivalents, or trademarks that rhyme with or sound like the Infusionsoft Trademarks.
• We may not use abbreviations or foreign language translations of the Infusionsoft Trademarks.

Here’s a few tools we’ve used to help us in our search for a new company identity:

http://www.dotomator.com/
http://companynamegenerator.com/
http://www.nameboy.com/
http://wordoid.com/

One last thing: you can submit as many ideas as you’d like. The more names you submit, the more likely you’ll come up with a gem of a name and win!

To enter your ideas, Tweet your name suggestion to @fusetastic or simply leave your suggestion in a comment below or you can always email us.

Happy brainstorming!

Day 1: Circa 11 p.m. as things were winding down

$10,000 bucks for two days of work on your business.

Most small businesses I know would shy away from spending 10k for two days of consulting on their business. After all, that’s a pretty big investment and commitment. If you would have asked me before Infusionsoft’s 48 Hour Implementation Accelerator Event held last week, will you get your money’s worth? I would have responded, “Probably not.” While I was sure it would be helpful, no way it would be “$10,000 dollars worth” helpful.

(Spoiler Alert: What I saw and experienced the last two days at Infusionsoft’s headquarters was nothing shy of jaw-droppingly amazing.)

Both Juan and myself, were invited to attend the event and serve as project managers assigned to a particular Infusionsoft customer. We received some background information on the business (provided previously by the customer in the form of a questionnaire) to review the night before.

The morning we got started, I could sense the nervous tension by Marty, my assigned client. While he didn’t come out and say it, I could sense that he was excited to get going, but a bit nervous about whether his time and money invested would be worthwhile. This was a large investment for his company and a big sacrifice for him– he needed it to pay off. I’m sure he was wondering as we got started, “Is this going to end in another half implemented project, which never pans out? Did I just blow 10k– and my valuable time?”

What I experienced by the end of that first day was awe-inspiring. At the end of those first 15 hours (yes, it was a long day), I started hearing comments like “If I left now, it would have been worth every penny.” “This is awesome, I’ve never had such a clear plan of action.” Everyone was a bit star struck, and brains were getting loopy, but there was a sense of, “This is awesome and tomorrow will get even better.”

The next day, the “fun” continued. As the project manager to my assigned Infusionsoft client, I dug deep, flushed out all the things that needed to get done, and enlisted the talent that Infusionsoft had also invited to the event to gett’r done. That talent included: copywriters, photographers, videographers, designers, business map coaches, gliffy pros, social media experts, API programmers and an army of Infusionsoft’s Done-For-You-Services crew. Between all of us, we were busy fixing up Infusionsoft dashboards with relevant metrics, writing up follow-up sequences, adding Infusionsoft setups and customizations, and all-things small-business marketing-related.

I’m not shy about admitting it: Juan and I are amazingly talented with the Infusionsoft app. But with the larger team we had at our disposal to help implement, things happened at breath-taking speed and with top-notch quality.

The event ended with dinner and a bus ride back to the hotel. Only clients and other Infusionsoft certified consultants were together on the bus ride back to the hotel. No Infusionsoft employees or personnel were there, so I’m not sure if anyone over at Infusionsoft has heard this story . . . yet.

Here’s what happened on the bus: One of the clients shouted out, “Was that amazing or what? Does anybody else totally think this was worth it?” Others on the bus shouted, “Yes, totally!” Someone instigated a quick survey, “Raise your hands if this was totally worth the 10k?” Hands shot up and cheers yelled out. Someone pulled out a video camera and started recording impromptu “testimonials” about the event and interviewing folks. If you get a bus-load of fanatics after two, long 15-hour days of business implementation, then I think you can call it a success.

Was it a success? Absolutely!

Everybody worked super hard the entire two days. I personally invested all the talents at my disposal to make this event worthwhile to Marty, my assigned client. I confided to Marty, that I had selfish reasons in helping implement some awesome Infusionsoft-ness on his business: my goal was to see him on stage next year as a finalist at Infusionsoft’s Ultimate Marketer Competition.

So get your “GAME ON” other project managers and participants in Infusionsoft’s Accelerator event! Let’s see what you got!

In my next post, I’ll detail out exactly what we did for one of the client businesses I was assigned to: Fitness Edge.

"Right-y tighty. Left-y loosy." Seemed good advice now.

Ever had an “Oops moment?” You know, the kind of thing that makes you cringe? Cower in shame? Hopelessly relent?

RadioLab (one of my favorite NPR shows/podcasts) devoted a whole episode to “Oops” moments. . . . stories of unintended consequences. . . . and the making of the Unabomber. (Now that’s a big Oops.)

Most recently, I was humbled by an Oops moment while attending the Infusionsoft Customer Tour in Dallas. As we were discussing Infusionsoft checkout options in a class setting, one member of the audience said, “I’ve used that script from Fusetastic (Sizzle), and it increased our checkout conversion by 90%.”

Jordan, the presenter, pointed at me, “Tim from Fusetastic is sitting right here.” I waved to the audience, thinking this to be a proud moment. Then, the same audience member announced, “I tried to contact you, and you never returned my call.” My proud moment, quickly turned to embarrassment. (Frown. Big frown.)

And obviously a big Oops. An Infusionsoft specialist that failed to FOLLOW UP?! (Umm . . . that IS what Infusionsoft’s platform is all about, right?)

Well, I’m not sure how or why that person slipped through the cracks, but we are on a mission to make amends.

Surely, we have happy customers out there. But we want to know: Can you tell us how we’ve treated you? Share a few thoughts on your experience with one of our products or services?

We are so serious about this, we are even willing to bribe you. Simply “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this blog post. If you respond before January 15, 2012, we’ll send you a special gift. Be sure to include your full name (the one we SHOULD have in our database) if you’d like to get our “thank you” gift.

If you aren’t a customer yet, tell us what we can do to convince you otherwise! You’ll need to include your name and email address to add to our database– that is if you’d like to get our “thank you” gift, too.

Thanks for helping us turn over a new leaf.

I suppose it’s OK to toot your own horn if it’s good news you want to share. And so . . . here we are, tooting our own horn because we have good news to celebrate!

(Drum roll, please. . . .) Fusetastic is now official. We are Infusionsoft Certified Consultants! (This is Infusionsoft’s new program, replacing what used to be called CMAC or Infusionsoft Certified Marketing Automation Coach).

While we have had over 3 years experience from the outside looking in, (and often breaking Infusionsoft barriers) we have now been officially trained and tested by Infusionsoft at implementing effective marketing systems for small business.

We applaud Infusionsoft for their work, for their dream of helping small business succeed in automated marketing. And we look forward to providing Infusionsoft Certified Marketing services to you.

Ryan Hartman's Winning Face

Congratulations to Ryan Hartman, Fusetastic’s iPad 2 Giveaway winner. He was pretty stoked when we notified him the other day.

When April 1st came up, we sat there moaning, “Who is going to print out all those entries and put them into a hat for the drawing?” Being techy, we knew the paper-in-the-hat wasn’t going to happen, and so we thought maybe we should integrate a computer algorithm to randomly select the winner. But even that seemed boring.

Then it hit us: We’re Infusionsoft experts! Let’s have our Infusionsoft app help us choose the winner. Using Brad Martineau’s nifty idea, we figured out we could use Infusionsoft to select the winner.

Here’s how it worked:

1) Of course, everyone who registered for the giveaway was given a special “iPad 2 giveaway” tag on Infusionsoft

2) We pulled a report, de-duped and cleaned it up

3) We designated two Infusionsoft users and created a Round Robin ratio assignment with random selection. We found it amusing that Infusionsoft refers to this feature like “picking a piece of paper out of a hat.” (I guess we couldn’t get away from the hat after all.)

4) We distributed all of our iPad 2 Giveaway entries into our virtual, Round Robin hat.

5) For extra fun, we approached the selection like a March Madness tournament, with several rounds of winners and losers. Each round dropped half the contestants out of the winning pool.

6) After five rounds of giddiness and play, we had randomly selected our winner!

While you’re probably rolling your eyes at our nerdy-ness, we take pride in loving Infusionsoft and making it do things that it wasn’t necessarily meant to do. This stuff is what floats our boat!

While winning an iPad 2 is definitely a cool thing, we can all be winners when we turn our Infusionsoft app into an automated revenue-building machine. Are you ready to win?