The ultimate goal of the website was to generate $1 Million. The site went live on August 26, 2005 and became a massive hit within just a couple months. By the end of October, 1400 people claimed 500,000 pixels. The final block of 1000 pixels were auctioned off on eBay for an astounding $38,100,  well exceeding his initial goal of $1 Million.

How did his idea take off? He began by selling his first block of pixels to friends and family. Sales grew slowly initially by word of mouth. Once multiple block holders started promoting the page URL, it took off virally.

It is well known that the President has inherited a host of challenging issues including but not limited to the War in the Middle East and the economic recession. Most would agree that these challenges will take at least a decade to resolve regardless of who’s in office. The fact is that the President’s approval rating has dropped below 50% and many analysts suggest this number will continue to decline.

As social media communities such as Twitter, Facebook, and DIGG continue to grow at alarming rates, what will this mean for the President’s approval rating?  Will he stand a chance for re-election in 2013?  How much clout or social influence do his critics have on social media platforms?

Brand Awareness - Is your customer aware of your existence? They need to know about you as a source or option. Your location, whether it be brick and mortar or the first page of Google are important factors in determining your Brand Awareness and market penetration.

Product Features and Benefits - We are all customers. Have you ever compared features of a particular product or service? We all do it. A good example is when shopping for a Cell Phone Service Provider. We compare the features of various plans offered by the competing companies. Most importantly as customers though, we focus on the benefits. What will that cell phone do for me? Maybe it’s the security and peace of mind to know that I can call anytime or anywhere during an emergency? Or maybe it might make me feel good to know that my monthly bill will be a flat rate every month.

Product or Service Pricing - Let’s face it, there are customers that price shop. Then there are customers that are willing to pay more for what they perceive as a better value. Have you heard the term, “Getting the most for my money”? 

Brand Reputation - what does your market think about your brand? Dominos Pizza recently learned that the majority of their market had the opinion that their product sucks. They learned specific details as to why their customers felt their product was inferior against their competitors. Dominos then used social media to their advantage by asking for customer input to develop a new and improved product.

Word of Mouth - What are your customers saying about your company, product or service? Results from studies have shown that a satisfied customer may share their buying experience with 1-3 people. On the other hand, if they had an unpleasant experience with your company, they are likely to share that information with 10 people. This is one of the reasons customer loyalty is so important. Social media and customer rating sites have made it extremely easy for customers to review and share their buying experience. Smart companies are learning these new marketing concepts and using them to their advantage.

The most successful companies today are leveraging their knowledge of the fore mentioned concepts with social media technologies. In my blog post titled, “Corporate Marketing– Simplifying the Social Media Challenge”, I discuss a simple and effective way for companies to approach their social media strategy.

Connect with me:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• E-Mail

Merry Christmas from Proteus Design Studio!

2 quarts apple cider
1/2 cup brown sugar
Dash of salt
1 teaspoon dried ginger
1 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
cinnamon sticks

Combine cider, sugar and salt in a saucepan. In a small piece of cheesecloth, combine spices, and tie off. Add spice packet to cider mixture, and slowly bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 18-20 minutes. Remove spices.

Serve hot cider in mugs with cinnamon sticks.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/10/what-is-social-graph-executives/

Give a “free” speech about a topic involving your industry. Don’t talk in terms of your product directly though; engage the audience with information that is beneficial to them and teases them with your product. If you’re a Heating and Air Conditioning company for example, give a free speech on how to save money on energy costs throughout the year. This way you’ll be perceived as an industry leader, not just another salesperson. You want people to think of you as a valuable resource. There are organizations that love to have guest speakers. When was the last time you had an audience listen to what you have to say concerning an issue that your product addresses? When one of those audience members has a Heating or Air Conditioning issue, who do you think they’ll call? Through your creative use of speech, you’ll build rapport, credibility, and trust. People want to do business with people they like and trust! Don’t you?

Creative Writing

Another valuable sales and marketing tool! Use the same concepts as in “Free Speech” above, but put them in writing. Write your way into their lives with valuable information they can use. Tease them with your products in a round about way. Promotional materials are more effective when people are interested in the content. People don’t want to hear about your product or its features; they usually throw that type of literature in the trash can. Give them valuable information and they will keep reading and more importantly, pass it on. Newspapers have been doing this for centuries! Develop rapport through your writing style. If they like what they have read, who do you think they’ll go to when considering the products in your industry? Get your articles published in newspapers, newsletters, and industry trade magazines to name just a few.

Give them Value

I have a friend who is an attorney and used this technique the other day. He gave a powerful and compelling presentation in the form of a testimonial from one of his clients who had been severely injured in a car accident. He spoke of how he was able to assist his client with legal representation that enabled her to receive a healthy lawsuit settlement. I immediately noticed the effectiveness of his ability to gain the full attention of the audience. At the end of his presentation he handed out accident cards for your glove-compartment, with important instructions to follow in the event of an automobile accident. It had his contact information at the bottom as well as emergency contact information. Everyone went out of their way at the end of the meeting to thank him. Now that’s value! Follow this approach and you’ll be amazed at the results.

A lot of people ask what the differences are between the following types of marketing companies:

• Advertising Agency
• Ad Agency
• Marketing Agency
• Interactive Agency
• Interactive Advertising Agency
• Interactive Marketing Agency
• Search Engine Marketing

And so on, and so on…

I put together a lens in Squidoo that explains various business models in the Marketing/Advertising Industry and what their responsibilities are.  Keep in mind that there is much overlap.  Some companies may carry the same title, but provide a wide variety of services while others are tightly niched.

The article can be seen here:  My interactive marketing agency Squidoo lens

If you have any questions or would like to offer additional insight, please do.

Thanks in advance,

Chris Turnquist- CEO, Proteus Design Studio

Web Site Design Marketing Objectives

• What is your primary goal with the site?
  • Establishing your credibility
  • Describing your products or services
  • Completing sales transactions
  • Offering customer service and support
  • Communicating company identity or branding
• What are your secondary goals?
  • Search engine friendly?
  • Generate repeat traffic?
  • Encourage visitors to recommend it to others?
  • Create an online community, send emails?
  • Increase customer loyalty?
  • Encourage visitors to stay and visit many parts of the site?
• What is your intended use for the site?
• How will people find the site?  By searching in a search engine or because you gave them your URL?

Who is Your Target Audience

• Who is your target audience?
• Will they be accessing your site via dial up or high speed connection?
• How will you be accessing the site (connection speed and browser)
• What is your target audience looking for?
• What questions are your customers constantly asking you?
• What can we include that would WOW your customers?

Web Site Design Look and Feel

• Have you seen any sites that you would like to model yours after? Or site designs to avoid?
• What do you like about those sites?
• What colors do you prefer for the site?
• What image the site should convey?
• Home page design: three column tabloid, two column information or splash screen?
• How wide do you want your site design to be?
• Do you want your pages to be easily printable or do you want to offer PDF files of information rich pages?
• Vertical or horizontal navigation bar preference?
• Do you want your site to use only graphics, only photos, or both?
  Are you interested in animation files?
• Do we need to take photos of you, your staff, your services, or your products?
• Do you have any vendor supplied photos or graphics you are authorized to use?

Logo and Branding Identity

• Do you have a logo?
• Do you have a digital copy of it?
• Do you need a logo or would a stylized typeset of your company name be sufficient?
• Do you have a tag line? How would you describe your business in one sentence to a family member?

Web Site Content Creation

• Do you have any existing written materials we can start from?
• Do you have this information electronically?
  • Hard copy brochures
  • Client presentations
  • Customer letters
  • Information flyers
  • Case studies
  • Customer testimonial letters
  • Your resume
• What menu categories make sense for you. Here are some common choices:
  • Home
  • Services-how many
  • Product categories
  • Customers
  • Testimonials
  • FAQs
  • Forms
  • Articles or other informative topics
  • Pdf files to include?
  • Links or resources
  • About us
  • Contact us

Website Promotion- Search Engine Optimization

• What search terms do you expect your customers will use to find you?
• What search engines will they be using?
• What organizations, companies or sites can we ask to link to your site?
• What organizations, companies or sites would be valuable resources for your readers?

Website promotion- Social Media Marketing

• Do you want people to share the useful information they find on your site with others (Viral word of mouth advertising)?
• Are you going to cross promote your site through YouTube, FaceBook, LinkedIn,etc.?
• Do you have the resources, both human, time, and financial to execute a successful social media marketing campaign?

Miscellaneous Considerations

• Have you registered a domain name?
• Have you secured hosting?
• Do you have your site access information?

Web Site Maintenance

• How often do you envision updating the site?
• What content will need updating?

Schedule and Project Timeframe

• What is your timing for this? Beginning and finishing?

A more economical solution to generating leads over the internet is to use social media. Setup a blog to discuss your industry topics. Blog posts need to be done on a regular basis. You can setup a free blog at either wordpress.com or blogger.com. Both sites are easy to use and will allow you to be up and running in short order.

Commenting on other peoples blogs is a great way to get noticed in your industry. Goolge your keyword or kewords that you are working on ranking well for (also include the word blog). Find a blog that comes up in your search results that you’d like to participate on. Make sure you put a link to your blog or website when commenting on someone elses blog entry. This way you benefit from a external backlink.

Commenting on someones YouTube video is also another way to build relevant backlinks. Over time, you will see your website increase in rank for the keywords you are focusing on. If you would like to find out how your business model could benefit from using social media, call us to schedule a free social media marketing strategy.

• Socialmarker – They offer a free service that reduces the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website/blog.
• ShareThis – ShareThis lets you instantly access all of your profiles, blogs, friends, and contacts for easy sharing and updating.
• Twhirl – A fantastic Twitter desktop client that improves your twitter experience, and it offers various configuration options to adapt to your personal needs.
• Zemanta – It allows your browser to understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant.

Plus all the great widgets available from Social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, etc… Have you come across any cool widgets or tools that you can’t live without? If you have, please share

Another suggestion I have for franchisors selling franchises is to contribute to community sites sucha as LinkedIn and facebook. Join and start your own groups within communities. You’ll soon find that it’s not too difficult to connect with people that are interested in similar Franchising topic(s).

I have started a Squidoo lense that is designed to provide information to Franchises on how they can grow rapidly using social media and web 2.0 technologies. For more information, you can visit the lens here: Franchise Marketing Ideas

Please bookmark the site as I will try to update with more information on a regular basis.

You Tube – I think everyone has seen or heard of YouTube by now. In order to succeed on YouTube and have your video shared, you may want to upload video content that is funny or has some other type of value to your potential audience. A sales pitch about your stuff probably won’t get a large response. The best example I can think of at the moment is a series of videos by a company called, “BlendTec”. The videos are titled, “Will It Blend”. The videos have seen over 20 million views. Now that’s market reach!

Facebook – Facebook is one of the most Web 2.0 social networking tools. You can join a group of people that all have a similar interest. You could provide that group with valuable information that relates to your services and or products and draw them to your website.

MySpace – At MySpace, you’ll have more flexibility when it comes to the way you display information. You can create a very professional design with your brand. You will be able to create a profile for your business, not just a personal profile like you would at Facebook. The objective here once again, is to develop a social group of people by offering them something of value.

Flickr – Flickr is a website that you can upload and share photographs and images with countless other users. You could upload photos of your website redesign, your store location remodel pictures or maybe some pictures of your product in action.

Squidoo – On Squidoo, you can build a reputation as an expert in your field. Rather than sell your products and services, just share your knowledge on your topic and become the “go to guy or gal”.

Digg – Digg will help drive a tremendous amount of traffic to your blog site. The strategy here is to create a network of friends. Find friends that have articles with a large amount of Diggs. When you post your article, have them look it over in hopes they will Digg it and share with others.

This is just a very brief list of some social media sites you can use immediately to drive more visitors to your website or blog. Just remember to post content that people will find valuable rather than pitch your business or products. Keep it social.

If you are interested in learning more about using social media to build your business, then give us a call at (858) 779-9170!  We love helping companies succeed on the internet.