Is the Economy Turning Around?
March 12, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
More small and medium sized companies are proactively contacting us and looking to become findable and engaging online through effective web marketing strategies. So is the economy turning around…or is the realization that Marketing online is not an option anymore? I believe it’s the later.
In Iowa we lag behind the national trends which means that we’ve probably not seen the worst of what’s coming. But the message here is that businesses who spend smart marketing dollars today will reap massive benefits when things do turn around and growth starts again. Spend smart. Use the technology tools available to your business to reach out and engage your markets (and find some you never considered). If you need help…pay for it.
Managing the Edge Awarded Top 100 Small Business Technology Podcast
March 11, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
The very smart and savvy folks at Small Business Trends Radio put Managing the Edge into their “100 Best Small Business Podcasts” lists in the “Small Business Technology” category! If you’d like to subscribe you can do so here.
This is great recognition for Andy Brudtkuhl and I as we just reached our 30th episode on the show and we’re only picking up steam. The podcast as a vehicle to share knowledge, build value, develop a reputation, demonstrate skills, etc…is unparalleled.
We have great time doing the show too and putting what we preach into practice. We’re living what we provide our clients and that authenticity is driving business growth. Thanks Andy and SMB Trends, and to our amazing audience that keeps us inspired to share knowledge in our special way.
“Social Media” Sleeps with the Fishes
March 10, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · 3 Comments
I hope you’re still with me and please let me explain.
Like many of us, I live in an always on, hyper-connected, socially engaging, linking, tweeting, statusing, emailing, automating, filtering, searching, blogging, podcasting, video’ing world that accelerates geometrically each few months. In this world it’s hard to remember that most businesses are still NOT doing much of the above as part of an overall web strategy.
If I meet with 100 businesses over the next week, I’ll find that 50 are “experimenting” with some of the above and perhaps 1 or 2 are strategically using over 50% of the tools to become “a socially findable and recommendable” business. The balance are still stuck with their old brochure site that hasn’t been updated in 3 years because “The girl who built my site for free to start her design career went to work somewhere and we don’t even have the passwords to change things if we wanted to.” (I’ve spoken to 2 businesses doing a combined $45 million in the last 2 weeks in this exact scenario)
It’s ironic that if asked, every one of the businesses in my survey would say the first place they…and their target customers look for information on people, products, places, and services is the web or more specifically, “They Google It”. Yet…when asked if Internet Marketing as a real part of their marketing strategy…vs. simply playing with the tools in an ad hoc manner…nearly all say no.
In most cases, companies are merely bolting on more features to a broken platform…like putting a fresh coat of paint on a rotting structure. There may be some benefit…but ultimately the structure is shaky. This is why social media as a stand alone practice is not the recipe I’d like to see being cooked in most business kitchens.
Can a company see great result with the bolt on approach. Yes. But most will not reach anywhere near their ultimate potential without an integrated web strategy for their companies. I’ve seen the examples like you have of the pizza place or the retail store seeing more traffic by advertising/sharing/connecting on Twitter. Some businesses are more suited to this strategy agreed.
I believe however that the term and practice of “Interactive” or “Social” Marketing is far more relevant and representative of reality. So for me…”Social Media” as a term and practice sleeps with the fishes. To get transformative results, it’s best to take a holistic approach that encompasses the client’s:
- Website platform
- Business methodologies
- Definition of Conversion (call,click,buy,submit information)
- User interface
- Email marketing
- Local search
- Local business listing
- Social findability and organic placement
- Online brand (employees and company)
- Target markets
- Metrics for success
- Commitment level from the top down
- Desired keywords and long tail hyper targeted keyword opportunities
- Ability of the company to execute on a strategy period…from a human resource standpoint (the NUMBER ONE reason we see failure in the online world is the skewed perception that these tools can just be added to Jimmie in marketing’s role “because after all he’s young and gets this stuff.”) Who’s responsibility is this and what are the metrics of success?
As with other tools (like blogging a few years back) Social Media converts and luminaries get sweaty and preach Gospel on the street corner and proclaim the arrival of the savior (aka Twitter)…but as a disciplined professional you know that without a comprehensive Interactive Marketing strategy behind your efforts that social media is….well….social. It is possible and desirable to state loudly and proudly that you’d like social tools to become transactional and that’s where most companies and consultants don’t execute.
Entrefest Wrap Up
February 28, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
The createWOWmedia team had an amazing time at Entrefest 2010. Thanks again to the UNI team that gave us great support as we streamed and recorded video and audio. We even did 4 episodes of BizTactical and interviewed some very smart entrepreneurs.
The exuberance and passion that I heard in the walls was amazing. I didn’t get to hear ANY of the sessions this year because we were just too busy in our multimedia streaming suite. Next year I hope to change that. Stay tuned for video and more clips coming from our 2 days of participation.
Take a look at the twitter stream from Entrefest and see the great commentary coming directly from the show.
New Media Marketing – It’s Still Rock n Roll To Me
January 22, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
Over the last year we’ve seen an explosion of “social media coaches” on the scene. I think that’s great. While the approach of “teaching new media” to key players can work…what’s more critical now is that we’re getting “back to the future” of more holistic marketing guidance.
So many companies are behind on their marketing period. They’re still spending money on banner ads and magazine ads in the name of “branding”. We work with a company that has found an entirely “new” budget for marketing after some simple analytics performed on their current web marketing presence. How many people are actually converting? Bupkis. OK let’s stop doing that. Done. New budget.
So what’s needed out there is a complete marketing plan look. Define what tools might supercharge and accelerate marketing efforts. Then deploy the tools and the revised plan. If the comprehensive approach isn’t taken, a company may still see great results. But too often we see the “bolt on of social media” approach that brings lots of new eyeballs and “relationships”…without ever closing the deal.
So there is no “social media” or “new media” to me anymore…there’s simply marketing and whether you’re being effective…or not. New Media Marketing is still rock and roll to me.
Quick Hit: Ebooks and the Long Tail
December 7, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I wrote an ebook about two years ago. It’s called Confessions of an Ex-Enterprise Salesperson: What’ I Really Meant When I Said ————-_.
Every now and again, someone finds it out there based on a keyword search. Someone links to it. Someone subscribes and provides their email address to receive it. It’s been reviewed by some IT bloggers than linked at got me a ton of traffic a while ago. My point is that it’s still providing possibilities.
Get the content inside you OUT and into the marketplace. Do it for free. Charge. I don’t care. But use the long tail of Internet content to your advantage now.
New Virtual Coaching Option for Businesses
December 7, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
We’re making a big push to serve businesses (especially the smaller ones who are getting squeezed) with usable knowledge and strategies to become more findable and engaging on the web. To that end, we’re beginning a ongoing web based coaching system that provides 10 minutes of structured content then 50 minutes open QA with 6 clients at a time.. TWO times per month.
This way we’ll all get our fair share of talk..and QA. We will use a video-audio conference solution like Skype or Oovoo and we might even try to utilize TalkShoe. We’ll cover topics like audio, video, blogging, content creation, and all of the findability and organic SEO mojo you’re looking for.
Our goal is to put like minds in a virtual room during a one hour time block twice per month. That’s 2 hours of discussion, QA, feedback, interaction, and learning for the sweet little price of $47/month. We’ll set you up on a recurring monthly charge and you can quit, bail, jump, drop, leap, hop out anytime you choose with one simple email or call.
If you’re interested in this, you can email me directly doug@createWOWmedia.com and we’ll get you signed up. We anticipate the first session to be in early January. Once we have a group of 6, we’ll form another one and progress until we are full. We’ll probably start with an end of business day time…and a lunch and learn mid-day time to start with to accommodate your schedules.
As always, one-on-one consulting is available from our team but we know how tight resources are these days. We’re trying to strike the right balance for you and bring you value. If you’re ready, hop on board.
Investment: $47/month recurring on your credit card.
Times/days:
- Wednesday’s beginning at
- 12PM-1PM
- 2PM-3PM
- 4PM-5pm
- 6PM-7PM
Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit Case Study
November 16, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 2 Comments
I wanted to pass on a quick recap. I posted on my participation in IES this past weekend where I streamed my talk on Interactive Marketing. I told the participants in my session to Google “Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit” in 30 days and see where my post was in the results. The net result is that…
My content (both the post and the ustream.tv recordings of my chat) appears on the first page of results and did so within 24 hours of me hitting “publish”.
Here are the reasons that I see for this result…most of which we talked about in our session.
- I have used the 3 key words that define the event. I used “Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit” in my title and it’s sprinkled throughout naturally. I haven’t forced the issue or “tried to pack in more instances that the post deserved.” I’ve also used IES multiple times but there are a lot of organizations and groups out there with that acronym so that will be harder to get on page 1.
- I have embedded video that I streamed live and recorded into the post. This is another “content outpost”. Why not stream something live and get the recording with almost no effort? Sure it’s not the best recording but I told my participants as I always do that “I don’t use handouts” but how would you like to replay this entire chat again anytime you’d like to extract the key points? They thought that wasn’t a bad idea. Notice that this recording is ALSO on the first page of results.
- I am probably the only person using a WordPress based / blog based site to talk about this conference. The conference doesn’t have its own site yet and anyone with information about the conference has a fairly static site. My blog post was done before I left the conference on Saturday. Was this a lot of effort? No. It took about 15 minutes to write and post.
Summary: I have the platform that lets met rapidly put out fresh content (WordPress). Google loves fresh content and since I’ve been doing this a while…the magic Google engine gives my site a little respect. I used the exact keywords that people will probably search for if they’re trying to get information on this event. I’ve used multiple forms of content (video, written word) and I’ve pushed that content into additional outposts (ustream.tv). This blog post will be part of an automated newsletter that goes out occasionally to my email marketing subscribers too. When I get 5 new posts…the newsletter is “magically created” with no effort on my part thanks to (aweber email marketing). Remember that setting up your infrastructure NOW means you don’t have to think about it later. I also linked out to many other sites in my post so perhaps these folks know this and are now aware of me…increasing my chances of getting inbound links back from them.
BONUS: During the conference, I ended up meeting 3 people that I have known and follow only through Twitter. During the day, they told other people that we’d met and that we were having lunch, attending my session, etc. 10 new people have followed me since the conference and if we consider that they’re ALL Des Moines based…I have just added to my local network in town, solidified some FACE TO FACE relationships that were purely and casually online until now, and created some case study results to share with my audience.
Not a bad 48 hours I’d say. Now anyone who knows me understands that I’m not your typical, “SEO guru”. I don’t know the ins and outs that some companies practice to “back door sites to the top” using buried meta information (did I lose you? me too). Like a good business person, I worry about that which I can do something about…and I pay to have the rest taken care of. I let the tools and systems do their job for me like having a WordPress site with the best plugins to say “Hi Google…I’m here”. Then, I write and create video with rich content with an eye for key words. See…simple.
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Immigrant Entrepreneur Summit Drake University
November 14, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I had the pleasure today of speaking at the Immigrant Entrepreneur Summit at Drake University. It was a powerful day filled with the entrepreneurial spirit and rugged individualism that makes this country great.
I connected again with the conference organize Ying Sa and her magical company Community CPA that is the driving force and creative vision behind IES.
I also got to connect with Igor Dobrosavljevic and his smart girlfriend (she attended my session 
Suzana. I finally met Justin Volrath too. There was ample opportunity to chat Lori Bosley too from Mojo’s (you have to have their fish tacos!) and Foxboro Business Center. Toni Lampley was here too among others from NAWBO Central Iowa that I met recently when I spoke to their group.
So the bottom line is that I spent the day absorbing the power and spirit of Central Iowa’s rich immigrant community and participating in the awesome collision of the ON and OFFLINE worlds. What a day! I hope I can come back again next year and have stories to tell about how many immigrant entrepreneurs we guided into online findability bliss. Thanks so much for asking me to participate. Videos below. It seems the recordings broke into 2 pieces on their own. Sorry for the quality and the walking off camera…I just set up the Mac book on a whim to provide a record of this talk for my guests. No paper!
Cheers
New One Page Bio and Speaking Information
November 4, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked for a bio and picture for an upcoming speaking engagement I’m doing (post on that soon). Instead of the usual email I opened up Apple’s Pages Application (part of the iWork package – Family pack of 5 seats only $99), and hunted for a nice template and the result is below. This took me about 1 hour and I feel that it’s already paid for itself. It’s gone out to about 4 people, all of which were very impressed. I know there’s work to be done on the images, etc. and graphic designers will certainly find faults…but for that hour expenditure I perceive great value.
http://createwowimages.s3.amazonaws.com/dougbio2009_q4.pdf
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