EvoBloggito

Business Survival is a Multiple-Choice Question

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 23, 2009; Category: Business, Marketing, Zeitgeist; Tags: Business, Economy, Future, New Rules; No Comments

Times are tough, and they’ll get tougher, according to just about every expert opinion you can find. Optimistic experts say the recession will last through 2010; pessimists forecast hardship for the next decade. The wailing and gnashing of teeth among business owners and their employees (not to mention the experts) has reached almost biblical proportions. According to the common wisdom, if you’re not whining and shivering with fear, you look a little foolish, like you don’t know what’s up.

But what does whining, wailing, and teeth-gnashing accomplish that is helpful to your business? Anything? No, I thought not. Times are tough, and business owners need to accept that as what is (gosh, that sounds so…Zen). But tough times don’t render us powerless. Along with tough decisions about cutting back, there’s potential for finding new and better ways of doing things that create new opportunities.

As the downturn worsens (and all the experts say that it will), every business owner has to choose one of three options:

1. Fold up the tent and go home.
2. Hunker down and try to survive.
3. Recognize there is an opportunity in tough times to thrive, and decide that you have the courage and determination to take advantage of it.

Whichever choice you make, do it consciously, because it’s the unconscious choices that will do you in. If you choose "C," recognize that you will have to do things differently than in the past, that the changed economic landscape is no longer fertile ground for the "tried and true."

Choosing option C isn’t about "manifesting wealth" or "attracting good fortune." It’s about finding better ways to engage customers and working hard to gain their loyalty. It’s about having confidence in the value you have to offer. It’s about knowing that, whether the recession ends in 2010 or 2020, you’ll still be here, providing that value.

Evolution of the Web

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 20, 2009; Category: Video, Zeitgeist; Tags: Change, Education, Future, New Rules, Web-based Applications; No Comments

The Machine is Us/ing Us
Found this video on a social media site I belong to; it’s different than an older video I remember with a similar name. It’s a bit melodramatic, but it provides a reasonable overview of how the web has evolved from static content inseparable from format, to database-driven content separate from form.

7 Ways to Get and Keep Me as a Subscriber to Your Blog

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 19, 2009; Category: Blogging, Marketing; Tags: Blogging, Marketing; No Comments

I subscribe to a lot of blogs on a variety of subjects, and regularly find new blogs to add to my reader. I unsubscribe almost as regularly. When I first began subscribing/unsubscribing (it’s a little like gardening; planting and weeding), I was not conscious of my reasons for adding or keeping feeds. Over time, I’ve become more explicitly aware of my criteria.

Not every post has to meet each of the following criteria, but a blog that meets most of them over several posts has a pretty good chance of my continued attention.

1. Interesting topics – This is the most obvious, and probably baseline requirement. If you’re blogging about topics that I don’t care about, I won’t subscribe. Which is OK, because someone else will. And thank gawd not all blogs interest me: there are only so many hours in a day.
2. Personality – Say what you have to say in an interesting way. If you’re interesting enough, I can overlook some of the other requirements on this list. I want to sense who you are, but I don’t necessarily want to know what you had for breakfast (everyone knows that’s what Twitter is for).
3. Frequency – It may not be humanly possible to blog too often (if Chris Brogan can’t do it, probably no one can), but if you’re not blogging at least once a week, I’m probably going to lose interest.
4. Breadth, or depth, or both – Give us this day our daily breadth: well maybe not daily, but once in a while surprise me with something unexpected. Depth, on the other hand, satisfies my need to know more about whatever I came for. If I continue to hear the same message restated or repackaged over and over again, I’m going to conclude there is nothing more to learn from you, and I’m gone.
5. Show me other interesting stuff – Introduce me to other bloggers or web services or useful information. Send me off to check it out. I’ll come back to see what you’re going to point me to next.
6. It’s not all about you – It’s probably impossible to blog without ego, but the best bloggers, the ones who’ve earned a permanent place in my reader (Darren Rowse, for example), seem to be primarily about helping their audience learn something. If feeding a hungry ego is a large part of a blogger’s purpose, it’s quickly apparent and difficult to read on a regular basis, even if valuable information is offered.
7. Respond to comments – Some of the bloggers I read regularly recognize comments as an opportunity to further the conversation. Occasionally, the discussion is more interesting than the post, which is a nice bonus.

Part 7, Why Bad Websites Happen to Good Companies: Failure to Install or Monitor Site Analytics

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 15, 2009; Category: Bad Websites/Good Companies, Design/Development, Marketing; Tags: Business, Google Analytics, Marketing, Web-based Applications; One Comment

You would think that a company that puts many thousands of dollars into its website would want to track website results to find out how many unique visitors it gets, where they come from, what content is most read, and dozens of other useful bits of information that have the potential to inform smart decisions about the company website and provide clues about how to increase its effectiveness. If so, you would often be wrong.

Many business websites have no analytics packages installed, other than whatever the webhost might offer as a standard package. In many cases in which an analytics package is installed, there is no regular monitoring of the data or any attempt to use it to guide decisions about the site. Why is this? There are probably far more reasons than I am aware of, but here are the big three that I hear again and again:

We don’t get any traffic.

Understood that it can be demoralizing to look at evidence that your website or blog is not drawing the crowds you’d envisioned. However, looking closely at the data can give you clues about why that is the case, and perhaps clues about how to build on the traffic you’re getting. Of one thing I’m certain: not looking at the statistics because they aren’t what you’d hoped is a good way to make sure they stay that way.

We don’t have time to look at the data.

I have to admit this one usually finds me with no response, often with my jaw dropped, searching for socially acceptable words. People find or make time for what they consider important. If information that can help your website become a more effective marketing tool isn’t important to a business in a recession…

We don’t want to spend money on an analytics package.

Google Analytics is free, and it should be considered the bare minimum in site analytics. When you think you need even better information (along with other assistance in increasing site effectiveness), there are packages available for a fee, such as those offered by Hubspot and Compendium, which should be considered investments, if you are truly serious about increasing your site performance.

If you’ve heard other "reasons" offered for not utilizing analytics, or if you have particularly good responses to the ones above, please share them here. Maybe, with your help, I won’t be sitting there with my mouth open next time I hear one of them.

For more posts in this series, see the “Bad Websites/Good Companies” category at right.

Blogging for Business in New Mexico

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 11, 2009; Category: Business, Marketing, Zeitgeist; Tags: Blogging, Business, Economy, Marketing, New Mexico; No Comments

Evo operates in New Mexico, a state ranked at or near the bottom of the nation in too many business, economic development, public education, and social equity categories. I’m not saying anything that isn’t common knowledge in New Mexico, though many would prefer it not be known outside the state.

We have natural beauty (out the wazoo), a rich and varied cultural heritage, and loads of creative, passionate people. People live here because they want to live in a beautiful place that has soul, and New Mexico delivers big on that score. But business-wise: let’s just say that when a recession comes along, we don’t have as far to fall. Alongside all the passion and creativity, there is a stubborn resistance to things new and different (especially, perhaps, in Santa Fe, the "City Different").

Very few New Mexico businesses understand the opportunities offered by social media marketing (isn’t that something the kids do on, whadyacallit, face-space?), although many of them understand that their brochure website that hasn’t been updated in the last year or two isn’t doing a lot for them (and come to think of it, neither is their yellow pages ad). Even fewer understand social media marketing as a lower cost, more effective alternative than traditional marketing efforts. We look at this as an opportunity, but changing mindsets is an uphill battle with few allies available.

One group who is listening, however, is the City of Santa Fe’s Economic Development division. They know they have to be creative to provide meaningful support for economic development with their limited resources, and they’re struggling with how to best accomplish that. I appreciate their willingness to hear what I have to say about social media’s place in stimulating economic development, and I want to give them a shout out for considering something outside traditional approaches, outside the usual economic development box.