Good Riddance to the '00's...

Good Riddance to the ’00s. History Suggests Things Will Be Better Over Next Ten Years

Worst 10 years in a row on the stock market.... Long term is a different picture.

Track Competitors Hits in Bit.ly

Quick trick - copy a Bit.ly link. Paste in your address bar. Add a "+". Hit enter.

For example, http://bit.ly/5eGW7n+

Returns:


Thanks to Brent for the tip.

Pierce Technologies Receives 2009 Best of Business Awar

Small Business Commerce Association’s Award Honors the Achievement

SAN FRANSICO, November 7, 2009, Nicholas E Pierce Technologies has been selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Computer software and accessories category by the Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA)

The Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA) is pleased to announce that Nicholas E Pierce Technologies has been selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Computer software and accessories category.

The SBCA 2009 Award Program recognizes the top 5% of small businesses throughout the country. Using consumer feedback, the SBCA identifies companies that we believe have demonstrated what makes small businesses a vital part of the American economy. The selection committee chooses the award winners from nominees based off information taken from monthly surveys administered by the SBCA, a review of consumer rankings, and other consumer reports. Award winners are a valuable asset to their community and exemplify what makes small businesses great.

About Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA)

Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA) is a San Francisco based organization. The SBCA is a private sector entity that aims to provide tactical guidance with many day to day issues that small business owners face. In addition to our main goal of providing a central repository of small business operational advice; we use consumer feedback to identify companies that exemplify what makes small business a vital part of the American economy.

SOURCE: Small Business Commerce Association

CONTACT:
Small Business Commerce Association
Email: Press@SBCAAwards.org
URL: http://www.SBCAAwards.org

Online Christmas 2009

Working with online retailers is part of our marketing agency's practice. This year - 2009 - has been really interesting.

But the good news is in comparison to last year beginning of November - early December, the sales trends are much stronger.

• We are seeing multiple items purchased in a sale return.
  
• We see more impulse buying.
• Average order size is on the rise.
  
• Increase in one visit to purchase has increased.
  

While we are not rejoicing yet, the last 4 weeks have been strong. With continued activities on the website traffic from social media efforts, advertising and customer promotions, we predict a solid end to 2009.

Tips: What makes a great tag line....

Naming a business is, to me, the second most difficult task for a business. Yes, you have to live with the business name daily for the life of the business. Yes, if you make a mistake it drives you crazy as your business changes. Yes, it is extremely difficult to change once you decide.

But - the tag line permeates everything else in your business. This makes the tag line actually more important. Tag lines -

1. Set the tone.
   
2. Answers the most nagging question of why you do what you do.
   
3. The "hook" for your prospects.
   
4. Employees react to that message.
   
5. Face front on all marketing pieces.
6. A conversation starter.
7. Makes a memorable marketing campaign or jingle.
   

Don't take this lightly. It is also the shortest piece of marketing verbage you own. Effective tag lines are 3 to 6 words. Reminder - you can trademark your tag line.

A few memorable examples:

• You're in good hands... Allstate
• Just do it... Nike
• Snap, Crackle, Pop... Kellogg Rice Crispies
• We try harder... Avis
• We bring good things to life... GE
• Don't leave home without it... AMEX

Don't go in to this process lightly. Make it a priority. This is a few things we do in our creative process for our clients:

• Talk it out.
  
• Mock up several tag lines with your logo.
• Mock up various campaigns around the tag line.
  
• Test it out on your website or other electronic media for comment.
• Photoshop your tag line on a billboard.

Our tag line - "What did you sell today?" 5 words, short, engaging, and what my mother asks me every time I talk to her. Seriously, she is tougher than any sales manager I've ever had.

After all our creative conversation, mock ups and versions - this is the ultimate question-

Did your tag line work for you, or against you?

How to Import Your Blog To Facebook | eHow.com

Twitter, no problem. Anything else, you name the platform, no problem. Facebook?????? Have to look at each time. Maybe keeping the information will help....

How to Import Your Blog To Facebook | eHow.com

Import Your Blog

1. Step 1

   Head to the "My Notes" page once you have logged in to Facebook from the home page (see Resources below).

2. Step 2

   Click on "Import a Blog" in the Notes Setting box.

3. Step 3

   Enter the URL or RSS feed of your blog in the form provided. Be sure to select the box confirming your ownership rights and click the "Start Importing" link.

4. Step 4

   Confirm that Facebook found the correct blog and choose to "Continue" or "Cancel" depending on the results. You can't edit external blog posts from within Facebook.

5. Step 5

   Keep blogging! Facebook will automatically add your new blog posts as notes on your profile.

Success: Customer Success Story

Just the facts, ma'm:

• Our customer contracted on 7/21/2009.
  
• The website relaunched on 9/24/2009.
  
• Ready for Christmas sales.....
  

New Tool To Try: Share In

Share In The blending of email and social media answer? Going to try and see...

Support and Contact Info: Google, Bing and Yahoo!

Why is it company contact info is sometimes the hardest to find? Understand that answering the phone is a major business expense - but isn't that how you help prospects/customers/bring in money? Why else is it called "Customer Service"?

At least bookmark these - current (for now). Not sure how accurate all of these are, we'll be doing trouble shooting on Monday for a client...

Google's Support Page

Yahoo! Company Contact Us

Yahoo! Customer Service Numbers (as of 4 months ago)

Bing Customer Service

Gather and Use Twitter Metrics - wikiHow

Gather and Use Twitter Metrics - wikiHow

How to Gather and Use Twitter Metrics

Contents [hide] 1 Steps 1.1 Follower Count 1.2 Twitterholic 1.3 Google Analytics 1.4 Tracking Retweets 1.5 Tracking Links 1.6 Twitalyzer 2 Related wikiHows 3 Sources and Citations

Are you using Twitter to gain more visitors to your site? If so, do you know how effective your efforts are in achieving this goal? Twitter metrics are numbers related to Twitter that can help a person evaluate their standing in the social media community, or determine the effectiveness of campaigns on Twitter. There are a number of different tools for getting data regarding your twitter activity.

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[edit] Steps

Follower Count

Follower count is a metric that you will need to when looking at other metric data as you may want to divide this number by other numbers.

1. Go to Twitter.com and the profile of the account you want to get a followers total for.
2. 
   Look for the box in the upper right hand corner. It should should say Name, Location, Web, Bio. Below that are the number of followers and the number of people the person is following.
3. Record those numbers as you will need them for other metrics described later in the article.
   
   
   • As metric data, the general thinking is that for a company, the more followers the better. The ideal number for a company would to have over 2,000 followers. It shows interest in the general public of the company. A large number of followers also tends to demonstrate a degree of consumer awareness.
   • If there is a huge difference between followers and following where the following far exceeds followers, then this metric generally indicates that the account belongs to a spammer.

Twitterholic

Twitterholic is a site which shows the growth of a Twitter account over time in relation to the number of new followers and follows. It also compares Twitter account follows based on region by ranking them.

1. Go to http://twitterholic.com/ .
2. In the box, type the name of the Twitter account you want to check the metrics for.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. After you finish typing, hit the Go button. You will be taken to another page. The page will tell you, based on number of followers, what the account is ranked compared to all people on Twitter and in the region the person lists in their profile's location field. It will also show you a graph which shows the number of followers over time. Below that, a table will appear which also shows the same information as found in the graph.
   
   
   • This metric can be useful in terms of identifying celebrities on Twitter as they will frequently be ranked highly in their geographic location and will have a graphs with steep incline because they will get a lot of followers in a short period of time as people find them.
   • The rank for a region may be a helpful number in terms of identifying if your account has the right amount of recognition for the size of the geographic location it represents. Example: If you run a candy store in a small town in South Dakota, 300 followers may put you in the top of your region and you might have good recognition in your market area.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a common metric tool. This section presupposes that you have Google Analytics installed on a site and that you have access to it. This section looks at this metric to help you determine how effective Twitter is at driving traffic.

1. Login to Google Analytics.
2. Select the site you wish to measure how effective Twitter is. For example, let's say you want to see how much traffic your Twitter updates drive to your blog. Select your blog in Google Analytics.
3. Click on Traffic Sources on the left sidebar.
4. Click on Referring Sites.
5. In the Find Source box below the table, enter Twitter and click go. (If you see Twitter in the table, do not click on it as you will not get a clear picture as Twitter.com does not include mobile Twitter and Twitter search.)A new chart and table will appear. Below is an example of such a box from Fan History Wiki at fanhistory.com.
   
   
   
6. Look for the number of visits in the period. In the case of our sample, the Twitter account (fanhistorywiki) sent 157 visitors per month to the website in question. The Twitter account, as of this writing, has 2901 followers.
7. Calculate visits per follower. In the FanHistory example above, the site only receives a disappointing 0.05 visits per follower in a month period. Some higher benchmarks include wikiHow at 1.98 visits per follower or TechCrunch at .6 visits/follower. ^[1]). If your number is above 1.0 visits per follower per month, you are probably delivering compelling information for your followers. If your number is well below that, you are not doing so well and you may want to consider changing your Twitter strategy.

Site	Visits	Followers	Visits/Follower
wikiHow, 4/29/09	4427	2206	1.98
TechCrunch, 3/09[1]	150,000	250,000 (estimated)	0.6
Fanhistory, 3/15/09	157	2901	0.05
EncyclopediaDramatica, 5/11/09	21,971	579	37.9

Tracking Retweets

1. 

   
   Do a Twitter search for the name of your Twitter account and "RT". Then repeat with your Twitter name and "retweet" (because some people spell out the word when they retweet). The results will show which of your posts were retweeted, which means that your followers found them interesting enough to share with their followers. The higher percentage of your updates that get retweeted, the better.
2. Go to Retweetrank.com and enter your Twitter name into the text box. This will tell you how many retweets you're getting in relation to other Twitter users. Seek to raise your percentile.

Tracking Links

1. Create custom links for Twitter. Let's say you're tweeting about a particular blog post. Create a short URL under your domain that redirects to the actual blog post. Then see how much traffic that intermediate URL gets.
2. Use bit.ly to shorten and track links. To see how many clicks a link is getting through Twitter, add a plus sign (+) to the end of the bit.ly URL. For example, http://bit.ly/J5JCZ links to How to Unclog a Toilet. If you go to http://bit.ly/J5JCZ+ (note the plus sign) you will see traffic stats for that link. If you create an account with bit.ly, you can create your own custom link and track its performance separately from other bit.ly links pointing to the same page.

Twitalyzer

1. Go to Twitalyzer.com and type in the name of your account, or any account that you would like to research.
2. Read the results. The account is analyzed in five ways: influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, and clout. See How to Understand Your Twitalyzer Analysis.
   
   
   

   
   

Sales Slump? You May Be Suffering from Disconnected Usage Disorder (DUD).

Disconnected Usage Disorder (DUD) is a debilitating corporate dysfunction similar to multiple personality disorder in individuals. It’s the corporate version of Sybil or, more recently, Tara on the United States of Tara, Showtime’s comedic drama. For business, symptoms include weak sales and non-productive employees.

Recently, we were exposed to a case of DUD while attending a sales seminar conducted by two business consultants. The two pitched their consulting services to a group of senior executives from several different companies. The salesmen were articulate, engaging and presented a compelling story of increased revenues and profits. In general, they were the embodiment of the success aspired to by all the attendees. At the conclusion of the presentation, their pitch became a DUD.

The flimsy business cards they presented to the attendees could be found in any office supply store, ten blank cards to a sheet. The brochures didn’t match their presentation, in quality or content. And – when we pulled up their website – another DUD appeared. Tara was off her meds when she built this website.

Inconsistency is one of the quickest ways to raise doubts in the mind of your prospects. They need re-assurance, not conflicting messages.

Integrated communication does not change its message depending upon the media or audience. An integrated marketing approach addresses all prospect touch points, consistently. The impressions you make must be uniform across:

1. Print and electronic advertising or promotion, both online and offline;
   
2. Out-of-home advertising (e.g., outdoor and transit);
   
3. Trade shows and corporate events;
   
4. Corporate websites;
   
5. Prospect and client communication by customer service;
   
6. Sales presentations and proposals;
   
7. Collateral material including stationery, business cards and brochures;
   
8. Public relations.
   

One of the best ways to ensure communication consistency and avoid a DUD is to have a single internal individual or an external agency responsible for message development and delivery. As communications steward, this individual or agency should play a major role in supervising all communication programs. In addition to ensuring a more consistent message, having a single party responsible reduces the likelihood of nonproductive turf battles thereby increasing the efficiency (and efficacy) of the total effort.

In developing your integrated communications strategy, the first step is to know thyself. What is your corporate personality? What promises, implicit and explicit, are you making to your prospects? Then, eliminate the DUDs.

Elimination of inconsistent or conflicting messages increases corporate credibility, strengthens your market position and increases the likelihood of a sale. It also helps ensure that all your employees are “marching to the same tune” and that their efforts are more coordinated and productive.

eGrowth Marketing is an integrated marketing agency with a demonstrated expertise in strategic planning; sales training; message development and delivery; production supervision and program assessment.

twtpoll :: Do you use Google Adwords? (via @emarketgirl)

twtpoll :: Do you use Google Adwords? (via @emarketgirl)

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