A valid question, up until today I didn’t always have the world’s greatest answer for. While at heart I am a total stat geek and love winning badges and stuff, because after all at it’s heart Foursquare was always meant to be a game I have never been able to truly articulate how it has worked for me personally. But today I have an actual experience to share with you.

Today I got a new project request submission from my website asking me for help with a new WordPress website project. Why did they choose to fill out my form and give me a call? Because on my homepage I have a live twitter feed that is connected to my Foursquare account and the last place I checked into was the local pub in my hometown on Hillsboro NH. This new client found my website searching for website developers in NH who work with WordPress and then saw my homepage with a few samples and the fact that I was very local to them so they decided to call. Amazing. Just that simple.

Social media channels are all connected for a reason because they feed off one another and when configured properly in your website they all serve a common goal of extending your reach as an organization and to also represent you as a professional and person. When I stop and think about it in a bit more detail you can really tell quite a bit about a person just by looking over their various social activity feeds if they are using them as social connective channels and not just for straight broadcast mediums. The point is that Social Media works and it’s not going anywhere, figure out where your customers hang out and make sure you are apart of those spaces or you are going to continue to lose customers to the businesses who are.

Does all this social media stuff sound confusing or like more work that you just don’t want to deal with? That’s ok, that’s what I am here for! If you are curious or are looking to put together some social media marketing strategies for your business fill out my contact form or give me a call at 603-325-2429 and we can schedule some consultation time to discuss your growth goals for your business.

In December of 2010 I was contacted by a former professor of mine from Keene State College who I had connected with over Twitter about an opening for an adjunct professor for website design at Keene State College. My interest was piqued so I sent an email over to the director of the Media Arts Department who just happened to be my website design 101 professor from 2001. I had a great interview and I was offered the opportunity to teach Web Based Media I and Web Based Media II in addition to my current full time gig as Interactive Media Director for FirstTracks Marketing Group.

Awesome. Call me Professor Nelson, has a nice ring to it.

It was an interesting realization when I took the job and was passed on a syllabus from a professor who had previously taught Web Based Media I & II…I had A LOT of work to do. I basically had to build my own curriculum from scratch. Choosing the books we would use (special shout out here to Sitepoint because I used their books in both my classes and they were a HUGE help), scheduling out projects, and trying to put it all together into a package that would result in a solid understanding of HMTL, CSS and how to use the box model to build and design websites. It was a very stressful process for me. I am what you would call somewhat of a perfectionist so the idea of not being totally planned out for all my classes was terrifying to me for the first couple weeks.

What’s a <div>? Inline vs. Block Level huh?

I have to say (and this is not surprising) that the toughest thing for my students to wrap their heads around was what a DIV was and what the difference between inline and block level elements were. The concept of having containers that you can name and then style was a tough one for most to grasp at first. And then expanding on that idea with the knowledge that your basic HTML tags can also work the same way as the DIV’s you create really blew a few minds at first.

The first couple of attempts at building a proper box model layout using floats resulted in a lot of unnecessary DIV tags with students doing things like wrapping all of their images and paragraph tags in DIV’s thinking that’s how you needed to organize things to gain control of them. I found this to be an interesting interpretation of my lessons and was not something I was expecting to see but then again this being my first go at teaching in a classroom there were more than a few things that happened that I didn’t expect.

I am VERY proud of all my website design students

With lots of demonstrations and a fair amount of white board concept drawings though I feel really good about what all of my students were able to achieve. NONE of the websites listed below by my students use tables for layout purposes of their sites, a fact I am very proud of. Take a second and check out my students work below, they all worked very hard to wrap up their final projects and as a whole did very well.

Will I teach website design again?

That is the question everyone keeps asking. Some of my Web I students wanted to already know what I was teaching in the fall and those close to me are curious if I will go back for another round education. The short answer is yes. Having a semester under my belt and all my new materials put together now the time investment on my end would be a lot easier to manage strictly from a time prospective. Plus there are a lot of things I would love to have a second go around on in terms of how I teach certain parts of each class. I was very excited and encouraged by all the progress my students made and I think with a little more refinement on my end it could be even better.

So now I wait to get my student evaluations and see if Keene State will want to have me come back, I am anxious and excited to find out. Stay tuned for more news and for future postings where I will share some more specific thoughts and ideas about how the semester went and some quick tips and ideas that came about from my experience with my students. If you have comments or questions about what it was like for you teaching your first time or if you just want to share some thoughts and experiences of your own or have questions about website design feel free to share them below.

Sharing your perspective and thoughts is important.  No, critical.

I do a lot of proposal work in my position as Interactive Media Director with FirstTracks Marketing Group. About two months ago I had a final presentation meeting for a website project we were trying to land with a community college in Maine. We ended up coming in second for the proposal. One of the ways I like to deal with my career experiences is to write about them. I do this so that I can explore as many angles of the situation as possible and I also do it so I have something to remind me of how and why we are doing what we are doing. I find it to be a cathartic experience where I can truly absorb all the aspects of what we’ve done and what I’ve learned from the experience, good, bad or indifferent.

So what happened with this post?

I’ve been guilty with my personal website (because I work full time) of thinking of my web site as something just for me because it’s not my primary focus every day. Turns out, it is much more important than I realized.

I got an email the other day from a previous client, Siege Technologies, who I designed their company logo and new WordPress website for this year). They were meeting with another business and showing off the website I had built for them. They noticed that I had written a new post and decided to check it out. Turned out, I had some rather obvious spelling and grammar errors in my writing that left them with a less than favorable impression of the quality and attention to detail I put into my writing.

Here’s what my client had to share with me about my latest post:

“There are people (like me!) that feel that if you either don’t care enough, or aren’t able to write things correctly then you probably shouldn’t get the job. (That’s overly harsh… but the point is if you are in a field (and I would argue there are lots of them) where communicating is important to your brand/reputation, then attention to detail/spelling/grammar is worth the effort!)”

I don’t disagree with anything they said here. In my opinion, if you are going to take the time to write something and make it available to the public you had damn well better take the time to make sure it’s perfect no matter where you are publishing it. I am grateful to my client for taking the time to share their feedback and perception of my writing. They reminded me how critical and important my own digital presence and perception are. Hopefully my experience and sharing will do the same for you as well the next time you decide to publish your next article.

My Key takeaway from the entire situation / experience

Make sure you take equal if not more care with your own personal digital image. People are reading what you write and equating it to what you do and the quality of work you produce. This is how I have always and continue to approach all of my professional work and will now strive to make sure that even my personal musings, thoughts and opinions are always held to the same high standard. So what about you? Have you ever had an experience like this? How did you decide to make amends and move on in a positive way? Please share your thoughts below!

I really hate it when I come in second for a website development job….but this is how we evolve.

This year has been a good one, filled with great opportunity and few narrow misses that I know we could have landed with a bit more experience and insight into the industry. This is how I always try to take the RFPs that we don’t end up getting, use it as a learning experience, ask questions, get as much information out of the contact as they are willing to share, things like:

• Was the winning bidder selected the cheapest?
• Was our pricing competitive with everyone else?
• Was our location or distance to you an issue at all?
• What system did you decide to use for your new site?
• How could we have improved our presentation?
• What other areas could we have improved upon to possibly change your decision?
• Did our proposal do a good job explaining our product and services?

Here’s the most recent example of what I mean

These are the big questions that have helped me to learn a lot more about the projects we didn’t get and a fair amount of industry insight as to what potential clients are looking for most from their vendors of choice. Case in point….over the past three months I was working for FirstTracks Marketing Group trying to land the website development contract with Eastern Maine Community College. We came in second, out of 35 potential bidding vendors (not bad if you ask me, but not good enough unfortunately). Obviously my immediate reaction is frustration and disappointment but I was able to have a nice conversation with the director of the college to dig a little bit deeper.

Here’s what I discovered

A few less surprises at this point as I have been doing this for a few years now, but to keep a long story short:

1. The winning bidder was the cheapest – something you really need to keep first and foremost in your mind when dealing with any non-profit, healthcare, state project, or educational institution. The old addage “money talks” really holds true here.
2. Distance was NOT an issue – we were the only bidding company in the finals NOT from Maine, did not make a difference to them
3. They loved our design work
4. They loved our proposal
5. They decided to use WordPress for their new website – this is important to note because we were proposing to use our own custom CMS system we have developed for a number of reasons, the most important of which was to develop a custom Access Control Layer system for their new site.

What do I take away from this?

Based on this most recent round of feedback on a missed opportunity I have come to the following 5 conclusions:

1. Price is king, always has been always will be, even when a fixed budget is proposed, they don’t want to see how you can best use that money they want to know how you can do what they want to do for the least amount of money possible
2. Location is quickly becoming less and less of an issue. Do local companies still have an edge? Yes of course they do, but as technology continues to shrink the world there are no shortage of ways to complete projects without ever having to meet in person. It’s all just a question of client comfort.
3. Providing design samples with your proposals is a pain but 9 times out of 10 worth it. Even though we didn’t get the job, they raved about my design work, it only took me a few hours to put a few samples together, and it went a long way towards differentiating our skill set from the other competitors.
4. My proposal formatting is working. We are constantly getting to the final rounds of these RFP processes, which means our strategic planning and presentation materials are doing what they should do, enticing our potential clients to our products and service solutions.
5. I am seeing a lot more WordPress usage for larger enterprise level sites. This isn’t a bad thing by any means, I do quite a bit of design and development work in WordPress these days. It is the world’s best blogging platform and if you can find plugins to do what you want your site to do there is fast becoming not much that it can’t do with some tweaking and customizing. And in this case I learned that there is a phenomenal plugin for WordPress that actually lets you create a multi-level access control system for your site. Which is something I am positive I will end up using for a future project at some point. A definite big time take away that is going to add to my ever expanding bag of tricks.

So what now?

Now we look to the next project, armed with more information and feedback than ever before. This is a constantly evolving process where we are always striving to hone our presentation elements and improve our materials. I try to not take these things too personally, remain objective and continue to believe that sooner or later with all our continued hard work and effort that we will start hitting these RFPs as often as we like. It’s all about being a good judge of the situation, reading your potential client and providing them a solution that they can’t possibly say no to. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your website development agency.

I would love to know what your experiences with the Website RFP are like. What things have you learned? Feel free to leave your comments below, let’s start some discussion and see if we can learn even more from each other. If you are looking for help with a project you are trying to land, I am always available for phone and in-person consultation meetings. Please fill our my contact form for more details.

Some of the more interesting figures from this new version:

• Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 and 96% of them have joined some social network
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic totals in the US
• 1 out of 8 couples in the US that are married met via social media
• Facebook added 200 million users in less than a year
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest
• Generation Y and Z consider email Passe’
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content
• 90% of people skip TV advertising using TiVo/DVR

Social media isn’t a fad it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. Not sure where to start or how to effectively leverage this new technology to communicate better with your customers? I can help you craft your social media presence and help you plan your content strategy. I am available for onsite training and consulting, simply fill out my contact form and let me know what your goals and challenges are.

Just spotted this on GameTrailers this week posted by ScrewAttack. If you have been to a pizza place or arcade in the last 20 years I know you have seen one of these machines. I just thought this was a fun and funny little video that kind of took me back a bit….

NEO GEO was always one of those things that you always heard about as a kid but could never have…..I mean the damn system cost a bundle and I believe games were up over $200 bucks a piece (this is back in the early 90′s mind you)! Anyway please enjoy the video, the way they shot this video was actually really fun, and the guy singing the song really commits to his character here, I thought it was a riot!

Great stuff, keep up the great work Keith!

This is a video I came across in a tweet by one of my favorite authors today David Merrman Scott, now in this case who tweeted it to me isn’t the important thing here, but what I found myself doing after I saw the video below. This is the latest music video from the group OK Go. (If your not familiar with the original video they produced you can see it here to get caught up.) That original video helped catapult OK Go onto the global music scene, and the video below is their latest original video for their new song “This Shall Pass” off of their new album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky.” I have to hand it to them, this is one of the most creative and fun videos like this I have ever seen that is being used for marketing purposes like this.

State Farm Insurance was the sponsor of this complex and clever video presentation (and based on the almost 1.6 million views this has gotten in only 30 days it would seem this was a smart sponsorship on their part). I have to imagine that it took them at least 10 tries to get this to work properly. The most impressive thing I found with this was not just the complexity of the process but the fact that they synchronized the entire thing to their music, that was truly an amazing feat of planning in my mind.

The key point I want to share here with you is that ANYONE CAN DO THIS! All you need is a great idea that will interest people, this video in my opinion is proof of that, there is no two ways about, people in general like really cool stuff. Think about your business, your customers, and their interests and see what kind of new and creative fun ideas you can think of to generate visibility for your brand. Give them something worth talking about and sharing with others and they will.

VIDEO CREDITS: Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

January 23, 2010:

Despite driving around the block seven times before I found the building, the event was great. With over 500 attendees, the full gamut of design and programming professionals from New England and beyond were well represented. It was particularly interesting monitoring and connecting with the attendees live via Twitter (you can review that activity by logging-in to your twitter account and searching for #wcbos). It was especially engaging to communicate with the other people I was at the event with while we were in different sessions and to keep tabs on what everyone else thought about the sessions they were in while it was happening. It added a completely new interactive dimension to the live event that I had previously only experienced in online webinars. This interaction provided me with a HUGE amount of relevant communication with other like minded professionals that I was able to add to my current Twitter network and make it more valuable to me and the people who follow and communicate with me.

Are you thinking about a new website in 2010?

Isn’t it about time that you got your online content up to snuff? Give me a call today at 603-924-1978 or fill out this quick contact form . We can show you how our websites will help your business grow and make you more money!

What I learned at Wordcamp Boston 2010:

• The true power and potential of the WordPress Loop: Took in a great presentation that detailed the various functionalities that can be created through the use of simple shortcodes. A shortcode is a syntax function for WordPress that allows you to insert custom functions directly into your posts and pages, increasing your ability to efficiently deliver dynamic data. As an example, say you wanted to pull a dynamic list of article links in a certain category, all you have to do is write the proper PHP syntax into your WordPress functions.php file and set up the shortcode and then insert the call into your page or post using brackets and publish your page. Presentation by Michael Erlewine.
• How seamless and powerful AJAX and JQuery can make your WordPress website: These are powerful frameworks that, as our presenter Jim Doran described, are so well organized and documented that it makes the process of adding dynamic functionality to a website almost feel like cheating! I can’t wait to start breaking down all the libraries and plugins available to keep improving our website designs. If you are looking for more info and details about the package development framework, please visit www.jquery.com.
• Security tips and plugins to keep your WordPress site safe: This session by Brad Williams, WordPress security guru and devoted Colts fan, delivered a valuable list of tips of how to secure your WordPress website installation from hackers. Some of the best plugins presented were:
  • wp security scan: Scans your WordPress site for vulnerabilities and gives you prevention suggestions
  • exploit-scanner: Searches your entire WordPress site for anything suspicious and reports them back
  • wordpress-file-monitor: Sends you an email when critical core files of your WordPress site are edited and uploaded
  • login-lockdown: locks out people logging into your WordPress site that have failed a few times in a row
• Parent / Children Theme Relationships create more seamless upgrade processes for large sites: If you are planning to build a bunch of sites off the same general theme and manage all those sites as a package, this is the most efficient way to manage the ongoing upgrade and design of ALL your websites. When you build a Child theme off of a Parent theme, you gain the ability to customize all aspects of the presentation of that theme while leaving the “core” of the package intact. All future WordPress releases and upgrades to that theme will work with all of your child themes regardless of how much you change the design delivery. Presentation was by Daisy Olsen.
• Getting seen on the web using Video: This was a great presentation by Steve Garfield discussing how easy and accessible it is to share your videos online and how much visibility it can gain your business when done well. One of the best things that Steve did was show off his mom’s blog (she is 84, one of the oldest living bloggers in the world), basically saying, if she can do this and make it interesting surely you can too! You should check out this YouTube video of her, very funny, and reminds me of my grandmother!

Conclusion

So many great tips, things like this: 20 WordPress Plugins You Have Never Heard Of, new data management techniques, security info, and ways to sell things online using WordPress. For the $30 I spent to attend this event, I definitely got a lot for my money. I will absolutely be on the lookout for the next Wordcamp in my area, and I would like to thank to all the hard working volunteers who put the event together and, of course, the wonderful staff who put on all the great sessions. Oh, and if you want more information, including video of all the sessions I attended, you can to find them On WordPress.TV in a few weeks, enjoy! Check back at the official Wordcamp Boston website for ongoing updates as well.

This is one of lines from Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs that really stuck with me the whole way through. There are so many publishing methods available these days that empower small and large businesses alike to command a level of online reach that was previously unattainable to people without the deep pockets to advertise and plaster their messages anywhere and everywhere they saw fit.

This excellent book is aimed at the 99% of the business world who are confused and unsure of what to do with the world of Twitter, Facebook, and Google that they find themselves living in today. It’s aimed at plumbers, photographers, health care organizations and manufacturing company executives -  large corporations and small businesses alike who are relatively unaware that their working lives are about to change, or have already started to change in confusing ways and have no idea what to do or how to benefit from it.

Inbound Marketing describes how “old marketing” is dead or dying.

The days where simply pumping money into print or radio advertising guaranteed success are fading faster by the day. Instead, you need to engage your customers and provide them reasons to come to visit your web site. The idea is to turn your web site into a hub, stuffed with relevant, remarkable blog posts, videos and interviews. This method of compiling lots of expertise-based information that helps support your business position will only serve to generate an outstanding amount of upward traction and mobility for you in your search engine rankings as well as bringing you the high quality lead generating traffic you crave.

This book has a wonderful emphasis on hands-on advice.

Not only is it inspirational, but it’s also packed with practical wisdom. It talks about the power of Twitter, and then gives you advice on how to choose a Twitter handle. It talks about the rise of the superstar blogger and the death of the press release, and then it talks about how to decide whether you need a PR agency and, if you do,  how you should hire one (like us here at FirstTracks Marketing of course). It stresses that your employees will need to learn new skills if they are to survive in this new world, and then it talks about what those skills are; what steps your employees need to take to get them; and how you can track how they’re doing. Each chapter contains a valuable checklist of things you should do, right now, to start improving your inbound marketing.

So how will you evolve your marketing tactics in 2010?

I am personally VERY excited about all the great new ideas I got from reading this book and am really looking forward to implementing some new content strategies and tools to help build hubs for our current clients. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help get you set up with the right tools for Inbound Marketing call me at 603-924-1978 or fill out my contact form.

Your primary goal with social media should be to identify, engage and monitor the communities that are most relevant to your products and services.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

• How can I discover the most influential blogs and social media outlets that affect my products, services or corporate reputation
• How can I monitor them? How much time should I, or my team, spend on social media monitoring and outreach?
• How do I communicate effectively with them?
• How can I evaluate and measure the impact that social media conversations are having on my business?

In asking yourself the above questions you then need to prioritize how much social media ranks in importance with the rest of your overall media relation and marketing strategies. Most of the small businesses I personally deal with could benefit greatly from creating a simple blog application and connecting that with a Facebook page, Twitter profile, and LinkedIn profile, depending on who your primary target audience is.

Ok, so how could that work for me?

For instance if you’re a restaurant, I wouldn’t suggest using LinkedIn because you will be looking for customers to come and eat at your restaurant not professional business contacts for professional services, UNLESS as part of your restaurant experience as an owner is franchising restaurants. Then you would have lots of professional experience you could share within that professional network that people will find interesting and relevant to that particular area of professional expertise that could lead to future high value connections.

In the above example, a restaurant would find more social value connecting with customers on a personal level through more casual communication mediums such as Facebook and Twitter. These two platforms are excellent conversation management and launching platforms. The way I would set it up is to create an account in each platform and then you can link your Twitter updates directly to your Facebook status and then you can share your blog based information updates, links, thoughts, and specials across all three platforms by simply publishing your content in one place and feeding your links and ideas through another.

Time for some wrap-up

This is a quick and simple way to start expanding your reach as an organization while providing you way to connect more directly with your customer base online. This is the kind of dynamic marketing and strategic planning that I specialize in. Yes I can build and customize all these platforms for you, but more importantly I can help you build out your content strategies for your platforms and show you how to results that you can track and measure over time, making your marketing efforts accountable and less of black-hole in your overall budget.

Give me a call today at 603-325-2429 or fill out this online request form today and I will get back to you immediately to discuss your project and get you marketing smarter not harder online.