Tribeswell

The Conclusion of Our SEO Series (part 7 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:48:31 +0000

Hopefully we’ve helped you get a better understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) and given you some tools that can help you take your online marketing to the next level.

Through the principals of SEO, keyword research, content creation, link-building, and social signals, can be intimidating. It is definitely something that gets much easier with time, patience, practice, and perhaps with the help of a professional internet marketing firm like Tribeswell.

We wish you success in all your marketing endeavors!

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

Social Signals and Search (getting the edge) (part 6 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:48:25 +0000

If you want to take your search engine marketing to the next level, it is important not to neglect the importance of social signals. Social signals occur when one of the visitors to your website decides to share a page on your website on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

While it is debatable how much search engines take social signals into consideration, it has become clear that your social media presence does have some effect on how highly your pages will rank in search engine results.

So, how do you get people to share your pages on social media sites?

The first step towards obtaining more social ‘shares’ is to make it easy for people to share links to your website. You do this by including social sharing buttons on your site. There are a ton of really simple tools that allow you to add facebook ‘like’ buttons, re-tweet buttons, or google+ sharing icons to your website.

If you’ve done a good job of creating useful content, then it is likely that some of your visitors will be eager to share links to your pages on social media sites.

Share it yourself.

Another way to get the ball rolling with your social presence is to share pages from your website on your own social media profiles. You can even have your employees or friends, family and colleagues share your content on their profiles.

This can be a great way to get things started, just don’t overdo it. Be sure to share links occasionally and it is likely that some of your social media friends will re-share your content which will increase your traffic even more.

Read the conclusion to our Search Engine Optimization series…

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

Why all the Links? (part 5 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:48:12 +0000

What is a link? A link (or hypertext link) is a powerful web protocol where text or images on website pages can be “clicked-on” and then the user is taken to another page.

Links are one of the key elements that make the internet work and analyzing links and anchor text is one of the key ways search engines deliver relevant results to users.

What is anchor text? Anchor text is the text that you click on in a link. So if I wanted to create a link to my homepage, http://tribeswell.com, and I create a link in a block of text that says “website design experts”, then the “website design experts” is the anchor text.

When a search engine scans the web and adds pages to its index, it also takes note of all the links on each page and the anchor text included in those links. If the search engine sees a link with anchor text that says website design then it infers that the page that is linked-to is important for the term “website design”.

The first links to think about are the links on your website that link to other pages on your site. It is important to have a strong internal linking structure within your website. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re a real estate agent and you have the following pages on your website: “Selling Your Home”, “Buying a Home”, and “Current Listings”.
Let’s say you’re working on the “Buying a Home” page. It would be beneficial to include a link on that page to your “Current Listings” page, and the anchor text for that link might be “see all our current real estate listings”.
You’ll want to do this same thing across all your pages and throughout all your content.
Go back to your keyword research and make sure that your anchor text contains the keywords that you’d like to rank for.

Another important factor in your search engine rankings will be links from other sites. When a search engine comes across a link to your site its algorithms infer that your site is important.

But not all links are create equal.

If you receive a link from a site that has a large number of links, it will receive more weight than a link from a site with fewer links. Another thing to consider is having links from a wide diversity of sites. If all of your links come from the same sites, it’s not as effective as having links from lots and lots of sites.

So how do you get sites to link to you?

Are you a member of any professional organizations or your local chamber of commerce? Often if you are a member of an association, all you have to do is contact them and ask them to link to you and they will do it, especially if you are already listed on their website.

Another great place to find links is with blogs that cover your industry. Contact the owners of such blogs whenever you are doing something newsworthy and ask them to write a piece about you. Just be sure to be polite and personal. Don’t just blast out impersonal press releases.

And once you’ve done all this, you can start thinking about your social presence…

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

Content Strategies (that actually work) (part 4 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:48:01 +0000

If you want to win searches for lots of different keywords, you’re going to need lots of pages on your website. Each page is going to be optimized to rank for 1 set of keywords. Here’s an example:

Imagine you’re an attorney located in Bloomington, Indiana who specializes in several different areas of law: business law, criminal law, real estate law, and family law.
You’ve done your keyword research and you’ve got number of keywords for each area of law that you practice.
You want your homepage to rank for the keyword “attorney bloomington indiana”, your business law page to rank for “business law bloomington indiana”, your criminal law page to rank for “criminal law bloomington indiana”, etc.
In addition, it would be useful to have sub-pages under each category that relate to even more specific keywords that will help you win even more searches. So, your “business law” page could be supplemented with additional pages that would be aimed at winning searches for “forming a corporation”, “forming an LLC “, “intellectual property law”. You would also want to create sub-pages for all your other areas of practice.

In order to effectively win searches you’re also going to need to strategically place keywords in strategic locations on each page. Sorry, but you’re going to need to know a little bit about html to make this happen (html is the code that makes up your webpage).

So, let’s say you’re working on your page for “family law”.

The first thing to look at is the URL of the page (the web address that the user types into the browser). You’ll want the URL for that page to be http://www.yourwebsite.com/family-law/ because that is the keyword you’re trying to win with that page.
Next you want to look at your title tag. The title tag is the title of the page that appears at the very top of your browser (usually above the URL). It is also the title that will appear in your search engine results. You would want to make your title tag something like “Family Law Bloomington Indiana”. Many website programs provide easy ways to edit the title tag, so just ask your website design company to help you with this.
Next you should look at your headers. Headers are usually the large text elements on a page. Your headers should also contain the keywords you want to rank for. So a great header tag for your page might be “Leaders in Family Law”.
Next you want to look at the actual content on your page and make sure that it is clearly written talks a lot about family law.
Finally, you’ll want to include a call to action in a prominent location on the page. A call to action is an invitation to the visitor of the page to take the next step. You might include some verbiage like “The best way to determine if we are a good fit for your family law needs is to set up a free initial consultation, contact our legal team today” and then link that text to your contact page (or put a contact form right on the page if you’re extra savvy).

So, now you’ve got some great content. Let’s talk about links…

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

Keyword Research (in under 250 words) (Part 3 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:47:31 +0000

A keyword is a term that a search engine user might type in to find your webpage. So if you’re a website designer in Bloomington, Indiana, then some of your keywords might be “website design bloomington”, “website design bloomington in”, “bloomington web design”, etc.

Some keywords are really competitive and some are much less competitive and therefore easier to win. Here’s an example scenario:

Imagine you’re a dealer of vintage Italian sports cars. It would be very difficult to get a first-page ranking for the keyword “car” because you’re competing with hundreds of millions of other pages that talk about cars (car manufacturers, the wikipedia page about cars, car parts sellers, the list goes on and on).
It would be slightly easier to get a first-page ranking for the keyword “sports car”, but still extraordinarily difficult because that is also a very competitive term.
It would be easier still to get a first-page ranking for “vintage Italian sports car dealers” because it is more specific and therefore less competitive.
It would be even easier to win the term “1963 Ferrari 250 GTO for sale in Indianapolis, Indiana” because it is very very specific.

So keyword research is basically just making a list of terms that people might use to find you in a search engine. It’s good to have a lot of specific keywords.

Now it’s time to talk about how you’re going to win some of these keywords. So we’re going to need to talk about content…

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

How Search Engines Work (the simple explanation) (part 2 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:47:18 +0000

Search engines are built by some of the smartest mathematicians and computer scientists in the world, so this is a highly simplified version of how the ranking process works.

The first thing a search engine needs to do is take a snapshot of the entire internet. It does this by running a software program called a spider that goes through every page in the internet and scans the content and adds it to the search engine’s ‘virtual’ copy of the internet, which is called an index.
Then, computer algorithms (basically really complicated math equations) analyze the index and determine how every piece of the internet relates to every other part. It determines which pages link to other pages, which pages have been shared on social media sites, which pages have been linked to from important blogs, and it also analyzes the content to determine if there are any duplicates.
Then, you (the user) go to the website and type in a search query (when you type something into a search engine they call it a search query) and the search engine spits out hundreds of thousands (or in some cases millions) of results. The top result is the result is a link to the page that the search engine’s algorithm has determined is the best match for the words you typed into the search box.
Lastly, the search engine gathers information about how will it has answered your search query based on your behavior. So if you do a search, look at the results, decide that none of the pages match what you were looking for and do another search, then the search engine’s algorithm can learn from that and try to do better next time. Or, if you click on the first search result, and immediately hit the back button, because it wasn’t what you wanted, the algorithm can infer that that link was not an appropriate result for that search query.

So, to win searches, you’ll need to do things that will indicate to the search engine algorithm that your website is important for the keywords relating to what you do. So, this might be a good time to talk about what exactly a keyword is.

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

Search Engine Optimization for Mere Mortals (part 1 of 7)

Colin Clark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:46:52 +0000

We want to show up on Google! We want to dominate our competitors! We want huge website traffic! We want to be number 1 when you type in _____________!

When I meet with new clients, I generally hear some variation on these questions. Marketers and business owners are hip to the fact that search engines are the #1 way that people find solutions to their problems, and they want in on the action.

The problem with marketing on search engines is that it is significantly more complicated than older forms of marketing. In the old days, most people used phone books to find solutions to their problems. Got a leaky toilet? Search for a plumber in the yellow pages. Easy. If you’re a plumber, all you have to do is buy the biggest ad in the yellow pages that you can and you’ll get lots of easy business.

For a number of reasons, todays consumers have turned to search engines and forsaken phone books:

Phone books are big and bulky, a smart phone easily fits in your pocket and is always with you. Most people work closely with computers anyway. Computers are a daily reality for most people. Phone books are not.
Search engines provide lots more information about service providers and products. You not only get a list of answers to your question, but you can read reviews of other users, compare the full websites of several different providers, and make more informed decisions. In the yellow pages, the largest ad goes to the guy who pays the most money for it… period. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best option for you.
Search engines are fast. Google can get you an answer to your question in the blink of an eye. To use a phone book you have to remember where you put the phone book, dig it out, find the appropriate page in the book… we’re busy people, who has time for that?

For these reasons (and because I run an internet marketing company and I’m totally biased), I think it is wise that marketers and business owners are starting to invest more time and money in obtaining favorable search engine results.

So how do you get your company to the top of the search engine rankings? It helps to know a little bit about how search engines work.

This Article is Part of a 7-Part Series on Search Engine Optimization, Other Articles Include:

A Quick Thank-You to My Hosting Provider

Colin Clark — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:48:00 +0000

When I first started building websites I used a hosting company that I was familiar with, but that ultimately didn’t work out very well (I won’t mention any names, but I will say that they were the only company that provides web hosting that had a commercial in the superbowl.)

The main problems I had with my previous hosting supplier was page loading speed, uptime, and they had a really slow backend that made it take forever for me to find problems and fix them. Their customer service was acceptable, but not great.

I started searching for a new hosting company with those things in mind. I asked other web professionals that I trusted and did some research on the internet and ultimately decided that Hostgator was the best fit for my needs. I now have multiple hosting packages with Hostgator and host dozens of websites there.

Here’s a quick list of my favorite things about hostgator…

cPanel – I realize that most hosting providers offer cPanel, but Hostgator is very good at supporting it.
Support – Hostgator has helped me with every single problem I’ve ever had. I’ve never gotten off the phone with their support line and not had my problem solved… no matter how complex the problem was.
Security – The few problems with security I’ve had (and my track record is REALLY good considering how many websites we support), have been handled quickly.
Cost – Hostgator is not the cheapest hosting out there, but the pricing is fair and they’ve been a great partner to help us grow.

So, anyway I just wanted to say thanks to Hostgator for being a great hosting provider!

Should You Assume that Your Current Business is Dying?

Colin Clark — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:56:19 +0000

Yesterday, Kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and took in a $950 million cash infusion from Citigroup to allow it to trade on the stock market. The once mighty company who once dominated the photography market is now basically insolvent.

What happened to Kodak?

The main thing that killed Kodak was an inability and unwillingness to adopt to digital photography. They were originally the technology leader in digital photography (a Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera back in 1975), but they felt that it would cannibalize their film business and decided to abandon it.

Eventually, Japanese competitors developed inexpensive digital cameras that made Kodak’s business obsolete. Kodak made a mad dash to try to catch up, but by then it was too late.

What can we learn from Kodak’s misfortune?

My takeaway from the Kodak story is that you should never assume that your business model is sound and that you should always be looking ahead to the next trend.

I look at what Tribeswell is doing right now: Website Design, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing… I wonder what the next big trends will be. Website design is basically a commodity. Even mobil app development is being commoditized. That doesn’t mean that good businesses can’t be built around them, but eventually these technologies will be replaced by something new.

If you’re not on the cutting edge of your industry, I think you should really be thinking seriously about where your business is going. Will there be anything left for you when the thing you’re doing becomes obsolete?

Why We Love the Nest Thermostat Website

Adam Patarino — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:01:45 +0000

So we were recently turned onto a Nest thermostat and their gorgeous website. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a new product by a collection of ex apple and google employees who together coalesce into a dream team of functionality and design experts.

Right off the bat this site strikes you as downright beautiful in how minimal it is. The center image grabs your attention right away and practically begs you to click the video link, which we recommend you do – the video just gives further appreciation toward the care for design.

Whenever we design sites we do our best to make sure the site stays out of its own way. Meaning, we want the user to access the information they want as quickly as possible. A site like this shows the mastery of usability and functionality. Absorbing content isn’t just painless its enjoyable. Scrolling through the ‘our thermostat’ page is fun not to mention easy on the eyes. The high quality graphics and effective placement of information allows you to understand the message without getting bogged down by the content.

Websites like these get webdesigners like us all geeked up. We become inspired and want to bring the enjoyable experience to other users through our projects. So don’t be surprised if you see nuances from Nest’s site in our future websites. Here’s to bringing the web into the future and creating web sites people really want to use and enjoy visiting.

Big Trends for Marketing Success in 2012 (top 10 list)

Colin Clark — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:24:39 +0000

It is now 2012 and it seems that the marketing landscape has changed even faster than I could have ever predicted (and that’s pretty fast). We’ve been helping lots of our clients plan ahead so that they can effectively deal with this change and stay a step ahead of the competition. Here are a few pieces of advice that you might want to consider as you work on your 2012 marketing plan.

Buy Ads on the Big Sites

The mega-big sites like Google and Facebook are bigger than ever. They have hundreds of millions of users and that includes most of your customers and future customers. If you’ve never advertised on Google or Facebook, 2012 is definitely the time to start. Here’s my recommendation:

Set aside a small portion of your marketing budget to perform a few test campaigns.
Buy some targeted ads on Facebook or Google Adwords.
Adjust the targeting to find out what will drive the most traffic to your site.
Find a good mix and do MORE of it.

Go Guerrilla on the Smaller Sites

2012 is the perfect time to get personal on the smaller social networks, blogs, and social apps. There is less competition for people’s attention on smaller or newer sites. Just be sure to be real and contribute to the community (don’t just spam people).

Collect More Information About Your Customers Than Ever Before

In the information age, data is basically the same as cash. Have you been collecting customer email addresses? (you should have been if you’re a regular visitor to this blog) Start reaching out to customers on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networks. If you’ve got a great brand, people will WANT to connect with you.

Time to Get Serious About Content Creation

The day is rapidly approaching where you will be totally irrelevant online if you’re not creating useful and interesting online content. Believe me… your competitors will be doing it soon. Your customers have questions and needs. It’s time to create content that addresses those needs. Start with text content and then move on to video, podcasts, apps or anything else you can think of.

Combine Online and Offline

Most of your customers is currently carrying a laptop, tablet, or smartphone on their person. Why not take advantage of this? When customers come to your retail location, have them spread the word online. Offer discounts or other incentives for customers who ‘like’ your page on Facebook or ‘check in’ to your location on Foursquare (or other services).

Think Mobile

It’s amazing to me that there are still a lot of high-profile brands that don’t have mobile versions of their websites. In 2012 if you have a website, then you MUST have a mobile version as well. Once you HAVE a mobile website, then you should definitely start using QR codes and other forms of mobile marketing.

Think Local

If you thought local was a big trend in 2011, then that’s NOTHING compared to what it will be in 2012. Basic stuff like updating your Google Places page and having your local locations on your Facebook pages is not enough. Everyone’s doing that! You’ve got to be actively soliciting reviews from customers, participate in local networking, and solicit links from local media.

Ditch The Stuff That’s Not Working

Okay people, it’s 2012. Why are you still placing ads in places that aren’t trackable? If advertising in print publications, the yellow pages, or billboards is actually working, then by all means keep doing it! But, at LEAST use some sort of tracking like a unique URL that people can go to, or a trackable phone # so that you can tell what’s working and what is not. 2012 might be a great year to drop the marketing initiatives that AREN’T WORKING!

Get Crazy with Customer Engagement

Your customers are online doing… stuff. Why aren’t they doing YOUR stuff? Why aren’t you providing interactive things for your customers to do on your website? Why aren’t you soliciting their opinions with surveys? Why aren’t you offering cool contests for them to participate in? Why aren’t you listening for feedback on Twitter and Facebook?

Measure Like You’ve Never Measured Before

In 2012 there are more marketing options than ever before. How are you going to know which ones to keep pursuing if you don’t measure? You should be checking your website traffic early and often, adjusting your tactics to take advantage of what’s really working, and always be trying new things, because the thing that’s working now probably won’t be the thing that works in 2013.

10 Things You CAN and SHOULD be Doing With Your WordPress Website

Colin Clark — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:44:07 +0000

Most websites get built by someone like me, they look great, and they make an impact for the first couple of months, then they never get updated again, visitors and search engines stop caring, it slowly dies and then again the company hires someone like me to rebuild the site and the cycle starts all over again.

It doesn’t have to be this way! Today’s websites are typically built using a Content Management System (CMS) which allows website owners to easily add and change pages, engage visitors and search engines, and keep the website alive and vibrant. WordPress, which is the CMS that we use for all of our clients’ websites, because it has the largest development community, is flexible and secure, and is extremely efficient and easy to deploy websites on the platform.

This list is not WordPress specific. Most content management systems will allow you to perform the marketing functions listed here. However, if you don’t have a website that is built using a CMS, you can always contact us and we can get you all fixed up.

Okay, enough chatter. On to the list ->

1. Add Pages for ALL Your Services

Lots of websites have a ‘services’ page. It lists everything the company does, and for an average website this is totally fine. But, if you want to have an above average or GREAT website, you should create a page for each service you provide.

Why you ask? Having unique pages for each service is great for your visitors and for your SEO (search engine optimization). If someone is searching for someone to perform a specific service for them, a long list of services is fine and dandy, but a page specialized for EXACTLY what they need is much much better.

2. Start a Blog

The key to maintaining an active user base on your website is to be constantly creating new and interesting content. The best way to organize lots and lots of content is through a blog. Blogging creates tons of high quality content that engages visitors and search engines. Blog content can also be repurposed for email marketing, print media, ebooks…

3. Create Landing Pages

What is a landing page? definition via wikipedia

In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.

How about a real world example… You own a company that does professional floor cleaning in Bloomington, Indiana. You buy an add on Google adwords that displays whenever someone searches “Professional Floor Cleaning Bloomington Indiana”. When someone sees the ad and clicks on it, they’re taken to a specially designed ‘landing page’ on your website. You’ve optimized this page to sell your services to the customer so it is likely that you will convert them to a customer.

4. Market Your Site via Social Media

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have millions of users. These users are constantly sharing links and discussing brands. Isn’t it time you got some skin in the game?

The first way to start getting visitors from social media sites is to build up your own following and share links with that following, but that’s not exactly scalable. The next thing to do is to include sharing buttons like the ‘Facebook Like’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons that are prevalent on the web. These buttons allow your visitors to share the pages on your site with their followers, then some of their followers will visit your page and share with their followers. Creating feedback loops like this can be a powerful source of traffic to your site… so why not do it?

5. Perform Some Simple Search Engine Optimization

Search engines are complicated. They’re basically designed by mathematicians and computer scientists. However, properly optimizing your website is NOT rocket science.

If you’re serious about marketing your business, you need to be serious about marketing on the internet, and if you’re serious about marketing on the internet you need to get serious about search.

Today’s content management systems provide tons of tools that help you adjust content, title tags, keywords, internal links, and all the other things that effect how search engines rate your site. There are also tons of SEO blogs that tell you exactly what to do to get traffic.

This is a list of some of the top SEO blogs on the web. I found it by doing a simple Google search. Everything you need to know is on these blogs. Don’t have time to learn SEO? Hire Tribeswell to do it you.

6. Post Videos

2 ways to leverage video on your website:

The easy way: Repost cool videos that you find on the web (like on Youtube) on your blog or website and write your own commentary. Your visitors will appreciate that you found something cool for them.

The hard way: Either learn to create and edit video (and trust me with today’s technology it could not be easier) or pay a video production company to help you create videos for your website.

7. Create Photo Galleries

A picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore a gallery with 10 pictures is worth 10,000 words. There are tons of great-looking photo gallery tools that can display galleries on websites. Most cell phones now take great pictures. Put the two together and you’ve got a great compelling reason for people to visit your website.

8. Let Fans Connect With You via Social Media

Every visitor is a chance to connect with a future customer. However chances are they won’t buy from you the first time they’re exposed to your brand. But, they might fan your business on Facebook or follow your company on Twitter.

Your website should make it EASY for visitors to become fans and followers so that down the line they are more likely to become customers.

9. Run Surveys

Want to give your customers an incentive to visit your website? Why not ask their opinion? You’ll get people to come to your site, you’ll get valuable information about how your business is performing (in the eyes of your customers), AND they might even share your site with some friends via social media.

There are great tools available to do this including: Simple form-building tools like Form Assembly, form building WordPress plugins, or purpose-built solutions like Survey Monkey.

10. Convert Visitors to eMail Subscribers

The #1 fastest cheapest and most effective way to build traffic to a website is email marketing. But, are you making it easy for people to get on your mailing list? Are you providing incentives so that people actually WANT to join?

The great thing about having a website that’s built on a CMS is that you can do cool things like offer eBooks or other downloads in exchange for signing up for your email distribution list. You’ll keep your email list growing and vibrant and your visitor will receive the added value of premium content.

If you do it right, it looks like this…

What do you think? What types of things would be good to add to this list? Have you tried any of these strategies? Are they working?

Is Facebook the New Microsoft?

Adam Patarino — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:33:26 +0000

We all know Microsoft has become synonymous with reactionary, slow, and a general lack of innovation. I mean how long did it take them to get into the smart phone game? Even now they are playing catchup in most markets they compete in. Lately, it seems, Facebook has been taking pages out of the Microsoft handbook as they fall behind in new social networking trends.

Looking back, Facebook wasn’t the first to add location check-ins, friend groups, feeds, status tagging, or even chat. All features we use every single day. They all came from competitors like Twitter, and Google+. Additionally, Facebook has been acquiring small social networking firms like hot cakes. Their new modo is seemingly “acquisition and copying over innovation.” This is pretty typical of massive companies. The bigger they grow, the slower they move.

When Facebook first came out it was one of the most innovative services around. It let users share information like no other service before and became the new company to beat. Today, the only changes they make are ones users hate, and prove to make Facebook more difficult to use. My only hope is that this new attitude brings them down. I would love nothing more than to have all my friends move to Google+ or even Twitter, or maybe some new competitor. The social networking scene could really use an Apple to come in and change the way we do things and do it right.

What They Don’t Tell You in Business School

Adam Patarino — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:32:29 +0000

As a business student I’ve been in the process of being groomed to meet the demands of the business world for the last four years. Or at least so I thought. To their credit, my professors taught me a great deal about business theory, ethics, problem solving, and communication. I always thought I would stroll out of business school and rock whatever job I walked into on day one. What I wasn’t prepared for was how terrifying and sometimes overwhelming it can be to manage clients and/or customers.

Getting hired at Tribeswell was easily one of the best moments of my life. In the last 6 months I’ve learned roughly 10x more about business then last 4 years of business school. There are simply things that school does not prepare you for. Losing, for instance, is one of them. My first time trying to sell a website was borderline a disaster. And my first few opportunities to work with clients proved far more challenging than I ever anticipated.

In an industry like web development and technology, there are a great deal of things people simply don’t know that they don’t know. And trying to sell a service that they don’t understand while not coming off as pretentious or patronizing is an incredibly delicate balance, especially as a 22 year old with a semester left in college. Thankfully Colin, and the Tribeswell crew have been really patient and supportive as I learn the ropes.

In addition to communication and client management, Tribeswell has given me the opportunity to express my passions of business, technology, and design simultaneously. Everyday is different. That’s what I love about the technology industry. Contributing to that market has been incredibly rewarding as I learn about web design, and help develop new solutions to meet our clients needs. I’m excited to come on full time in May, and more excited to see how I develop as both a business person and web developer.

Attn: Web Designers – What are the rules for stealing a client?

Colin Clark — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:20:03 +0000

I don’t lose a lot of clients. We’re extremely good at what we do and we take care of the people we work for. However, it is inevitable that if you stay in the game long enough you will lose a client or two along the way.

Most of the people we currently work with worked with someone else before they worked with us. I would guess that about 60-80% of the business we have came from wooing the client away from another design shop or marketing firm. So, I don’t get mad when it happens to me.

I DO get mad when a web designer contacts me out of the blue and says “So-and-so is now my client, I need ftp access, DNS settings, wordpress logins, etc.”

I get really mad.

This is incredibly unprofessional! If a client wants to work with someone else they should contact me DIRECTLY and let me know that the new company will be contacting me and authorize me to release their information.

Here’s the thing…. Client’s don’t know that they should do this, because they’re not in our business. You have to TELL them the right things to do and not just go shooting off emails.

Be a professional. Think about how you would like to be treated. Give some respect to the other guy (or gal). It’s our job to make sure that things are done the right way and that our industry maintains a hight degree of integrity.

Can You Ever Fully Trust a Business Relationship?

Colin Clark — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:38:48 +0000

It seems like lately I see more and more examples of business partnerships that end up with one party ripping off or screwing the other. This is probably because I recently read the Steve Jobs biography and everyone in the computer industry has traditionally copied Apple whenever they create new trends. Here are a few examples…

Microsoft Rips Off Apple: Apple created the Macintosh graphical user interface and Microsoft was the #1 creator of software for the platform, but in the end they ended up creating Windows which pretty blatantly copied the Macintosh.
Apple Screws Microsoft: In the late 90′s Apple made a deal with Microsoft to include Internet Explorer with all new Mac’s only to create the Safari browser a few years later.
Apple Steals Ideas from Microsoft: At a dinner, a Microsoft employee talks about their idea to create a low-cost tablet computer. Steve Jobs gets wind of it and beats them to the punch with the iPad.
Google Uses Inside Information to Steal from Apple: While on the board at Apple, Google CEO Eric Schmid oversaw the creation of the Android operating system which has competed directly with Apple’s IOS in both the smartphone and tablet markets for several years now.

And there are obviously a ton of examples that don’t involve Apple…

Google Alienates Content Suppliers: With their Panda update earlier this year, Google penalized a lot of sites that were creating (arguably) some of the most useful content on the web.
Facebook Steals from Everyone: Almost every feature on Facebook has been stolen from other sites… By my calculation they’ve stolen directly from Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, Google, and many others.
Twitter Steals from App Developers: The entire framework of Twitter is built around features that were built originally by 3rd party app developers. Some of these companies have been acquired by Twitter while others have just plain gotten screwed.

So, if the big names in tech routinely steal from smaller companies and each other, is it possible to trust 100% in your business relationships? How wary should we be about working with other companies? Is there any hope of both companies benefiting and no one getting hurt?

The Death of the Netbook

Colin Clark — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:23:34 +0000

Maybe I’m getting older. Maybe I’m getting smarter or more sophisticated. Maybe my tastes are just changing… But I used to really love the concept of Netbooks, and now they really seem pretty useless.

Back in December of 2009, I wrote a post titled, ‘Why I Love My Netbook’. I mentioned its compact size and cool appearance and how it forced me to be productive and not multitask.

So, when Steve Jobs announced the iPad basically said Netbooks were crap, I obviously disagreed.

I recommended Netbooks to my family and friends. My wife bought one. My mom. My sister-in-law… And guess what we all have found…

You Can’t Really Do Very Much on a Netbook

Netbooks are not bad for surfing the net. If you just want a highly portable and cheap way to get online and check email and social networks, then by all means get a Netbook. But, if you need to actually DO anything else, forget about it.

Netbooks generally have bad keyboards, so they’re not that good for heavy-duty word processing (or blogging). They have tiny screens and underpowered processors, so gaming is out as well. In fact there aren’t ANY apps at ALL that are optimized for Netbooks. Netbooks make EVERY app worse.

Even the computing industry has pretty much abandoned the idea of the netbook, turning towards the new UltraBook platform of thin bodies, fast solid state drives, and supercharged processors.

If you had asked me in 2009 if netbooks would be going away, I would have told you that you were crazy, but my experience is that Tablets and Ultrabooks and cheap traditional laptops are pretty much eliminating the need for Netbooks. Thoughts?

Unleashing the Execution Virus

Colin Clark — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:54:31 +0000

It’s been several years now since I read Seth Godin’s “Unleashing the Idea Virus”, and for the most part it still holds true. But that’s not what I want to talk about today…

What I want to talk about is unleashing an Execution Virus. And the reason for this is that almost every idea has already been thought up. Actually basically every great idea has been thought up and I can prove it.

Facebook was one of dozens of social networks that came out in the mid 2000′s… they just made it cooler by only allowing college students to join and more useful by requiring people to use their real names.
There were already TONS of search engines on the market when Google came out. Remember Lycos, Altavista, and Yahoo (Yahoo no longer does its own search).
Automobiles had been out for at least 30 years when the Ford Model T was released.
Computers have been around (arguably) since the mid 1800′s, but it took Apple to create one that the average person would actually want to buy.

You can’t sell an idea. You can only sell execution. That’s why Seth Godin’s last few books have been about execution, not ideas. So here’s my advice…

Focus on the ideas that you can execute today. Most big hits are evolutionary, not revolutionary. And, remember that it’s much more impressive to tell people about this awesome thing that you built than the awesome idea that you just had.

The Big Bad Best Buy

Adam Patarino — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:03:02 +0000

As you’re doing your holiday shopping this year be aware of the malicious and nefarious corporations that are out to steal directly from your wallet. I know that sounds dramatic, but its true. What businesses am I talking about specifically? Best Buy of course.

Coming home for Thanksgiving means upgrading my parents computer and installing a new Solid State Drive so they aren’t stuck in the 90′s in terms of computer power. Of course after buying a new SSD, video card, and RAM I forgot to buy a SATA data cable to connect the new hard drive. My mistake.

Given the small town they live in, I had to drive up to the nearest mall to buy a cable from Best Buy. After getting strange looks from three employees I finally found someone to show me where the hidden SATA cables were. The final asking price? $20!

For those who aren’t computer hardware junkies like myself, this is a total crime. The average price on newegg.com is $4. Yes you read that right. 1/5 the price Best Buy charges its poor, uninformed customers. And Newegg ships it free to boot.

So as your buying your electronics this Holiday season, please remember to stay far, far away from Best Buy. I know that 50″ television looks cheap this year. If you have to, get it, and get out. No cables, especially HDMI. In. and Out. Everything else, look online. Trust me on this. Together we can stand against this tyranny and bring down the evil empire of 5x markup.

G-Chat Now Available in Google+: Is this a good move?

Colin Clark — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:58:33 +0000

I popped on to Google+ today to find a dialog box stating that gchat had been added to the service. My first reaction was that it was pretty cool. It instantly added the conversation I was having in Gmail to Google+, which is kind of convenient… Your conversations go with you wherever you go.

However, I’m friends with lots of people on Google+ that I’m don’t necessarily want to talk to every day and now they’re all added to my Gmail chat list. I would prefer that this hadn’t happened. I use Google+ and Gmail for very different purposes. Gmail is all about productivity, connecting with clients, and staying in touch with close friends. Google+ is more about media consumption and staying in touch with what’s happening in my extended network.

Add to this the fact that Facebook has already had chat for a while and it TOTALLY SUCKS and I’m not sure that having your chat client and social network all in the same place makes that much sense.

I’m sure there are some settings I can change to get it exactly how I would want it, but still…

What do you think? Do you like the new feature? Was it a good move for Google+ to take?

10 Ways Small Retailers Can Compete With Big Box Stores (Without Resorting to “buy local” PR Campaigns)

Colin Clark — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:21:41 +0000

I’ve been seeing tons of “buy local” ads lately, and honestly it makes me a little worried about the future of small business in America.

The fact is… with today’s technology, almost ANY small retailer should be able to EASILY compete with the big box stores. The other fact is… a lot of small retailers simply choose not to use social media, ecommerce, or location services to effectively acquire new customers.

I love small business. Most of my clients are small businesses. I am a small business. However, we all need to face the realities of the world. There are big companies out there that have huge buying power, huge marketing budgets, thousands of stores… they have a lot of advantages over us.

But… we are faster, we can execute new ideas more rapidly. So, here are 10 strategies that the average small business can adopt to start being more profitable right away.

1. Get to Know Your Customers – Start using a CRM & Email Marketing

If you are a small retailer, then you have a lot fewer customers than a big box store. That means that in order to be really competitive you need optimize the relationship you have with each and every customer. Then you can send targeted marketing messages via email (which is an extremely inexpensive way to send marketing messages), and sell more to each customer.

High tech email marketing software (like Mailchimp, which is what I use), can help you organize your contacts, monitor who is responding the most to your marketing messages, and optimize your campaigns and lists for continued success.

Best of all, it is super-easy to get started. Go to your locally-owned dime store (if your town still has one), and buy a notebook. When customers come in, ask for their name and email address and write it down. Tell them you’ll send them a coupon just for signing up for your super-exclusive gold-star customer program.

2. Become a Master of Ecommerce

The cost of running an Ecommerce site has dropped pretty substantially. A lot of small retailers could drastically increase their business by having a good website built that can also sell products.

There are a few pretty obvious advantages to selling online.

The location of your customer is irrelevant, you can sell to anyone anywhere.
It’s always open. If your customer wants to shop at 3 in the morning they can.
You can suggest related products, offer free shipping at a certain order size, or any number of other tactics to increase the number of products each customer buys from you.

But there are also some other advantages that you might not have thought of…

Local customers can shop at home (or at work) on their computers, then come into your store as more informed consumers.
Product pages count as content, which means that Google (and Google products), will index them. You will get more search traffic.
If your products are awesome and your product pages are well designed and have social sharing built in, you can get a lot of social media traffic from visitors to your online store.

Running an online store will definitely take some extra work on your part. It will also take time and money, but… it will be worth it if you execute it successfully.

3. Sell Your Products on Amazon

Last year, like many other men out there who don’t like shopping, I did the majority of my Christmas shopping online. Particularly on Amazon. Instead of driving around in the freezing cold for hours and going from store to store, I kept a tidy list and bought everything all at once from Amazon in the comfort of my home office. It was heavenly.

One thing I noticed was that most of the items I bought were not shipped directly from Amazon, but from smaller merchants.

Amazon is a great equalizer. If you get good at selling there then you can let Amazon do the marketing for you and simply ship product whenever orders come in.

This post explains how to get started selling on Amazon.

4. Master Location Services like Foursquare or Facebook Places

Millions of people regularly ‘check-in’ at the places they visit. If you can get more people to ‘check-in’ at your business, you can greatly raise your brand awareness, and get more customers in the door.

The key is to create incentives for customers to ‘check-in’ at your location. You can offer discounts, or put customers who check in into a drawing for a gift certificate. Use your imagination, and if that doesn’t work, go on Google and type “foursquare small business promotion ideas”… there are 279,000 pages of results. I’m sure you’ll find some great ideas.

5. Create Information Products

If you own a small retail business, you probably have a TON of knowledge about the stuff you sell that the average person would find useful. If you create an eBook with this knowledge, you can sell it to make some extra money, or give it away in exchange for people’s email addresses and you can then add them to your email marketing software and sell them products down the road from your online store (some of these ideas work better if used in conjunction with each other). Here are some ideas:

If you own a furniture store, create a home decorating guide.
If you own an archery shop, create an ebook full of bow-hunting tips.
If you own a record shop, create an ebook with information about turntables and vinyl maintenance tips.
If you sell cameras, create a comprehensive guide to taking great pictures.

6. Feature Your Best Customers

If you feature a customer and tell their story in a blog post or on Facebook or in your Email marketing (ask their permission of course), they will share it with their online friends. It is likely that their friends will share their interests and some of them will likely become customers.

Here’s how I recommend executing this strategy. First, get a website that has blogging functionality. Then write the stories of your best customers (with their permission). Having this content on a website that you OWN will help you get more search engine traffic.

Then share links to the story on Facebook and Twitter and include a short excerpt in your email newsletter with a link to the main article. Internet marketing works best when your website is the hub of your marketing system with all other sources driving traffic there.

7. Become a Total Social Media Ninja

Get good at social media. Connect with your customers on Facebook and Twitter. Post cool and useful links. Post your ideas.

Social media websites are free. Using them effectively is not brain surgery. Start with Facebook and Twitter. Just don’t talk about your own company too much. Be real. Be normal. Don’t be a marketer on social media. Just be a person.

If you have a large following online (with high-quality followers), marketing your business will be a whole lot easier.

8. Make an Online Documentary About Yourself

Online video is not just the wave of the future… it’s also the wave of the present. You can buy a pretty decent video camera for 500 bucks, a Mac (for video editing) for $1200, and you can take a video editing class as well or just look for free tutorials online. Basically you can get up and running with a full video production setup for less than it would cost to do a commercial on your local cable station.

Today’s video tools are really good, really cheap, and really easy to use. If you get really good at creating video content (also it would help to become a total Social Media Ninja), you can get a ton of traffic to your website, tons of exposure for your brand, and lots of new customers.

9. Become an Early Adopter

I noticed a trend when Twitter came out, and I’m noticing it again with Google+… If you are an early adopter of an online social network, you will have a lot of influence, because it is less crowded.

Keep your eyes open for new technologies and social websites. Don’t be afraid to jump on the bandwagon and try something that isn’t proven. The fact is… once it’s been proven, it will be crowded and thus, more difficult to get exposure.

10. Become a Photojournalist for Your Business

You can buy a really nice professional camera (preferably a DSLR) for $500 – $1000. Use it to take pictures of everything your business does. Post pics on your website, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or anywhere else online that your customers might see them.

You can also get really good at taking product pics for your online store or Amazon store (or Etsy store or Ebay store, they didn’t make this list, but those are two more great places to sell your products online).

DSLR cameras also take awesome video, so you can use one camera for both still shots and video. The key to getting good is to practice, read online tutorials, or take a class at your local jr. college.

Some Final Thoughts

None of the ideas on this list are free. They all take money or time or both. The real question is whether or not your business can afford to NOT take these ideas seriously.

The world has changed. Those who choose not to adapt will likely go out of business, or at the very least see their profitability diminish.

You can either use the Internet as the most powerful small business marketing tool that has ever existed (which it is), or you can ignore it and let the big box stores roll over you like a steam roller.

The choice is yours.

Is there such a thing as bad (or useless) website traffic?

Colin Clark — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:54:03 +0000

If you’re monitoring your website analytics closely (and you should be), the chances are good that you will win search engine traffic for things that you didn’t intend… especially if you blog regularly.

For example, right now I’m getting a lot of traffic for the term merry christmas. I don’t really sell any merry christmas type products or services. I just wrote a post 2 years ago called “Merry Christmas from Tribeswell – Free Christmas Music Download”.

Chances are, few people who come to my site from this search term are in the market for ANY of the services I provide, but that doesn’t bother me, because…

The more traffic you get, the more traffic you get.

The more hits you have on your website, the more social shares you earn, the more links you obtain… all of this will pump up your other content. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a blogging keyword strategy or take care in writing your posts… you should, but the fact of the matter is, these random traffic spikes are still beneficial.

What about hits that are out of your geographic range?

Many businesses that I consult with work in a defined geographic range. When they write a blog about something, it might get views from all over the world. This is still a good thing. It increases the likelihood of links and social shares, and the authority of your blog or website.

Traffic is always a good thing.

Top 7 Marketing Apps I Couldn’t Live Without

Colin Clark — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:42:31 +0000

This is a follow-up post to my ‘top 10 productivity apps’ post that I wrote a few weeks ago. These are my top 7 apps that my team uses every single day and we couldn’t live without.

WordPress

I wouldn’t have a business without wordpress. World class CMS, thousands of amazing plugins that do almost anything, a massive development community… WordPress just keeps getting better and better. At this point there are few websites that make sense on any other platform.

Mailchimp

Eight words… Free accounts for lists up to 2000 people. This is the killer app for email marketing. It is beautifully designed. It has tons of unique and useful features. It’s actually fun to use. Beautiful templates. I can’t say enough good things.

Facebook

Have you heard of it? There are amazing things that you can do with Facebook pages these days, and amazing ways to integrate Facebook into your website for marketing. Facebook continues to be a great source of traffic for this site and all of our client’s sites.

Youtube

If Youtube were JUST a place where you could upload HD videos (in an incredibly intuitive way), and embed them on your website, it would still make this list… But, it also has an awesome social community, it’s the world’s second biggest search engine, and is supported by every major mobile device. For me it is the only solution for online video.

Google Analytics

There are a lot of ways to track your website traffic, but few that are this good, and NONE that are this good and this FREE. There are very few sites that need more features than you get for free with this product.

Hubspot Website Grader

Need a quick snapshot of how effective your website is at any given moment? Go to www.websitegrader.com. I use this tool every time I start working with a new client. It pulls data from all over the web to let you know exactly what you need to do to start increasing your marketing effectiveness.

iStockPhoto

If you’re going to be doing a lot of Internet marketing, you’re going to need a steady supply of quality stock photography and artwork. iStockphoto is the biggest and the most cost effective.

The tougher IT gets, the tougher YOU get.

Colin Clark — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:56:46 +0000

Starting a business, running a business, managing people… it’s no walk in the park. It takes a crazy kind of person to even start something in the first place, let alone endure those months where you have little to no income and what can seem like a mountain of problems and worry.

It seems to me that doing things that are hard, and pushing through and finally succeeding, makes it a lot easier to persevere through the next obstacle. Plus, you can start doing things that are harder and harder and build something that you never thought was possible.

So, here’s to the obstacles… the hard things we entrepreneurs have to persevere through on a daily basis. Here’s to our scars and callouses. Here’s to the ‘tough’ that makes us tough enough to build something great!

Notes On Coming Unplugged

Colin Clark — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:11:52 +0000

A few weeks ago I realized I needed a serious break. My phone was giving me a notification every 15 minutes for one reason or another. Email was out of control, and it seemed some sort of media had infiltrated every crack of my existence.

So I decided to unplug….

I packed up my wife and son, set an out-of-office on my email, changed my voicemail message and then powered down my phone, tossed aside my laptop, and took off.

We decided to visit the farm where I grew up. There is a cabin there that is warm and cozy and also NOT hooked up to TV or Internet. We enjoyed the beautiful fall weather, went hiking at local nature preserves and state parks, visited some friends, and even hit a flea market.

So, what was it like?….

It was pretty weird at first. I experienced withdraw symptoms similar to when I quit smoking. I was anxious and on edge. Apparently I have a pretty serious media addiction.

Eventually, however, I started to feel better and I really gained some much needed clarity. I bonded with my family and it was amazing to not have the distractions of email, facebook, or TV. It ended up being an amazingly positive experience.

So, what did I miss?…

The best part was that when I got back and powered up my email I hadn’t really missed anything at all. No fires, no floods, no disasters… I had successfully gone without any sort of media for 3 days and 3 nights and everything was fine.

It was an incredibly great experience. I’m now planning to unplug for at least a few days once a quarter.