The Out-Smarts Blog and Podcast

Back by popular demand is our monthly reasons to be cheerful post where we share the new media discoveries we have made over the last month so that you too can feel the joy!

Process and operations have been a big focus lately - getting our shop in ship shape as it were so you’ll see a bit of a pattern in this month’s reasons - they all help us do business a little more effectively:

Toggl - allows you and your project managers to track their time effectively over the Net. Because its all done on-line it allows your managers to track their time even when they are at customer sites. Simple yet so powerful.

Ta-da Lists - our friends over at BlueLime Media tipped us off to this one. Here at Out-Smarts we are always writing lists for everything from sales targets and marketing to-do’s to lunches. Ta-da provides a great way to keep track of these on your desktop and to share them with colleagues. No excuses now for forgetting those 2008 resolutions.

BlogFuse - recently launched with their first app which makes it really easy for you to create a Facebook app based around your companies blog. In about 5 minutes (or so!) we were able to launch Out-Smarts first Facebook app using this sweet technology - thanks to the folks over in Kansas for that and also for their unparralleled support.

Reasons Archive:
Nov 2007
Oct 2007
Sept 07
Aug 07
Jul 07

Here for your Friday enjoyment is a funny little clip found on YouTube all about the social networking tech bubble.  Blog in the womb indeed!

1. Use Twitter to market to you audience (assuming your audience are Twits that is (or should that be Tweets?). It can be used for branding and networking effectively. Dosh dosh lists 17 more Twitter marketing applications and innovative Tweet uses.

2. Participate in the blogosphere. Find blogs pertaining to your industry or your target audience and get commenting. You would be amazed at how this can help spread the word.

3. Find out about new technologies that make it easier for people to do business with you - like Skype - the on-line phone service or that help you present your offering more effectively - like Flickr the photo site -  and make full use of them on your website.

4. Get creative with video clips about your company: make them quirky, funny or alternative and post on YouTube. You never know, this could be the next big meme.

5. If your not comfortable with writing blog comments or posts or are camera shy, why not consider a Podcasting your message. Its much easier than you think.

6. When you find interesting articles, pages or clips, share them with your others in your field. I Stumble but hear that Magnolia and Deli.cio.us are great for this too.

7. Join Facebook, MySpace or Linked In (or all three) and get networking. You know the old adage about a friend of a friend being your friend too: its so much easier to do business with people you’ve been referred to by a friend or colleague.

8. Use Internet advertising technologies such as AdWords or Facebook Social to reach and promote to the right audience.

9. Forums or chat rooms where your audience collaborate are great ways to get involved, join the conversation and establish expertise with a wider audience.

10. Get wiki with it. Join Wikipedia and share your knowledge (but be careful not to be blatantly corporate or your posts will just get deleted) with the global audience.

One of the best aspects of blogging is finding out where your audience comes from. Google analytics has a great mapping tool that allows you to view where your traffic is from at a glance (its especially useful if you are considering expansion into new territories) and I do love to check out the diverse locations of our visitors. We’re located in Vancouver BC and off course the bulk of our traffic comes from Canada but this blog attracts visitors from all over the world from Korea to South Africa, from Alaska to Australia.

Hello to you all!!!

There’s one anomaly in our traffic stats and that is the number of visits we get from the UK. You would think, given our proximity to the US that traffic from there would be second only to Canada but thats not the case at all, in fact we consistently get much more traffic from the UK than the US. This is a quandary I’ve been puzzling over for a while now. Could it be the writing style? Or Perhaps its because the content is more applicable to the UK market? Maybe you can tell from these musings that I am indeed a native of that windswept island?

Visitors from Slough, Iver and London - do us a favour and shed some light on this! Cheerio for now.

Back in the last century the web was seen as a great way to create an on-line brochure. The idea was that if you had a web presence you could be attracting new business 24/7 while you were sleeping. Alas the days of the static website have come to an end. Its simply not good enough these days to slap up a web site and leave it to stagnate for months. There’s nothing worse from an audience perspective than returning to a website that hasn’t changed since your last visit or worse a site that has dated “news”. I don’t know about you but when I go to a site like that I assume the company is kaput and go elsewhere.

A website is no different from having a phone, if no one knows your number then no one is going to call, if you don’t answer or return your calls then having the phone is pointless. Interaction is key. Likewise a website is simply a tool to facilitate business but if there’s no interaction you may as well not bother.

Fortunately technology has also come a long way in the last decade or so and its becoming easier and easier to create dynamic user experiences that will keep visitors coming back. A blog, for example is the perfect way to ensure that your site is updated regularly and it encourages users to interact. RSS feeds are another way to make your site fresh by linking to applicable news feeds or posts from iconic blogs in your industry. Using photo and video technologies to showcase your offering and allow for an enhanced user epxerience is made simple by the likes of Flickr and You Tube. None of these techniques cost much to implement but the impact of these on the effectiveness of your web site can be huge.

Brr Brr Brr Brr - is there anybody out there?

Right now there’s so many exciting developments in new media, marketing and on the Internet in general, that its becoming quite a task to decide which makes me the most cheerful. November saw Google announce Open Social and Facebook enter the Internet advertising market with SocialAds, the XO was launched as was Kindle which lead me discover my first reason:

Askville by Amazon is a neat application, you can ask the community any question about any topic and with any luck the community comes up with satisfactory answers. I always have questions so I expect I’ll be using it a lot.

Docstoc - has a wide range of business templates and documents available to share. There’s some debate about the quality of some of the documents therein but the concept is great especially for small businesses.

Zoho - I Stumbled upon this on-line solution aimed at providing everything from word processing and spreadsheets to CRM and project management.

Kijiji- I like Craigslist and use it regularly to good effect so I was pleased to find this Canadian alternative.

I’ve been using Google Adwords for a while now for targeted online promotion of my business and so far so good, I’ve been relatively happy with the results. What I like best about AdWords is the fact that you can get going and test the waters really easily. For as little as $5 per month you can get started with campaigns and tweak to see what works and what doesn’t before expanding your promotions.

Enter Facebook and their business pages. Business pages are great - a free way to raise brand awareness amongst your network and their friends. However, their advertising component whilst being attractive (you can reach out and promote to a highly targeted demographic including age, location, sex, keywords, education, workplace, views and relationship status) isn’t great for those who want to test the waters. Unlike Google, Social Ads have a minimum daily investment of $5 for advertising. Really what you are paying for here is the targeting capabilities and the investment may be worth it. $5 is not a lot you may think but for small to medium sized companies already happy with Adwords it may be prohibitive (especially since the Facebook option is new and the effects of advertising in this forum are untested).

Has your organisation tried Social Ads yet? What response rate are you getting and how do the results compare to your experience with Google Adwords (if you’ve used that)?. Please let me know and so that we can feature your comments in a future Out-Smarts Internet Advertising blog post.

When I meet with executives in the finance sector and talk about new media adoption I usually get the response that investors are typically old school and like to do business the “traditional” way. I always have to ask about the next generation of investors - those for whom new media adoption is the norm: have these financial organisations considered how they will attract these new investors in the future without using new media?

Steadyhand, a local financial organisation that provides mutual funds does just that. It bucks the trend both in terms of the mutual funds services it provides and its approach to new media adoption which is leading edge to say the least. The company has adopted a blogging policy that encourages all employees to contribute as well as Internet advertising and social marketing strategies that effectively reach and involve their target audience.

Traditional finance companies should take note - this is the way of the future.

According to a Gartner report, corporate spending on Web 2.0 is set to increase. Companies are catching on to the benefits of Web 2.0 and these technologies are set to gain a bigger share of the corporate budget in coming months.

Web 2.0 is the ineractive web. It gives companies the ability to go full circle in their on-line relationships with clients (it closes the feedback loop and turns it into a constant cycle of communication as well as an invaluable source of research). Web 2.0 also has applications within the organisation allowing widely dispersed teams (for example) to communicate more effectively and work better together thus positively impacting productivity rates.

When it comes to Web 2.0, collaboration is key and any area of your business that will positively benefit from enhanced collaboration and communication could potentially benefit from implementing a Web 2.0 strategy.

I was going to keep this one for our Reasons to be Cheerful post for October but its too good to wait. I am always looking for examples on the web of innovative companies that are using Web 2.0 and its collaborative capabilities in really innovative ways. I came across an example of a web site that really does this well called Threadless. This T shirt design company that truly engages clients online by:

• encouraging visitors to design their own T shirt or order from the catalogue of unique and popular shirts;
• promoting participation by using blog technology so that visitors can share tips on design, opinions on T shirts and other hot topics;
• hosting an ongoing competition that draws visitors back by having them vote on the best designs submitted this month - winners get a cash reward;
• building a loyal following that shares photos of T-shirts and wearers building loyalty;
• having users sign up as members of the “Street Team” and begin promoting the Threadless web site to earn T Shirt credits and virally spread the word.

Threadless uses Web 2.0 to market its offering very effectively - go take a look and be inspired!