Next week we’ll start adding names to each resource so you can see which Synotacker is suggesting each article.

Mobile

Ideas for information architecture and CSS structure for tablet and handheld devices: WebVisions New York: Progressive Enhancement and How Sci-Fi Created Better Interfaces, Core77, 1.19.2012

Augmented Reality

QR Codes to provide quick links to online next arrival information are going up on Trimet stops: QR Codes coming to stops and station, Trimet Blog, 1.19.2012

Wearable electronics: FLORA from adafruit

Kickstarter project for scent notifications: Olly: The web connected smelly robot

Email Marketing

73% of all B2B leads are not sales-ready, but only 35% of B2B marketers have established lead nurturing campaigns.  Research has shown that lead nurturing lifts ROI by 35%. The importance of lead nurturing in the complex B2B sale, Marketing Sherpa Blog, 1.19.2012

Registration during a purchase, webinar registration and website registration pages are the most effective ways to grow your list.  Email Research: Top 3 tactics to grow your list, Marketing Sherpa Blog, 1.17.2012

Persuasion & Copywriting

Pitfalls to avoid when putting calls-to-action on webpages, from clutter to button location to overestimating the visitor’s next step: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/worst-call-to-action-examples/

Why we end up writing our marketing copy like a distracted teenager and how to fix it: Understanding Plots and Subplots when Writing Salesletters, Psychotactics Blog, 1/23/2012 

How to survey your customers and learn what their true pains are.  5-step email survey process leads to 600% revenue growth, MarketingSherpa, 1/24/2012

When putting together a marketing plan, ask yourself  1) How well do you really know your target client group? d) Do you have a clear and compelling message that sets you apart from competitors? 3) Are you putting your best foot forward online? Three Questions for Marketing Plan Success, Hinge Marketing, 1.16.2012

Design

Designs that move beyond a standard box layout, mostly using WordPress (one cheats and uses Flash): 10 WordPress Designs That Surprise, Delight, and Think Outside of the “Box”, The Daily Egg, 1.20.2012

Infographics

Two more examples of trendy yet effective infographics:
http://frugaldad.com/patents/
http://www.commonrootscafe.com/2011-the-year-in-numbers.html

Search Engines

Google is starting to penalize sites with lots of ads above the fold to continue to improve visitor experience. Pages With Too Many Ads “Above the Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm, Search Engine Land, 1.19.2010

Humor, History, and Technology

At Synotac, we explored these ideas during a Lunch + Learn on January 10.

When planning for a presentation, we can easily get distracted by providing too much information, creating overly dense slides that distract from our presentation, or talking for an “impressive” amount of time.

I am working with these three core ideas to help shift my presentation style towards engaging stories that provide value for my audience:

• Take my time
• Less is more
• Be present

Take my time

Creating a good presentation takes time — both serious chunks of time to consider the presentation goals, content, and audience, but also “spaces” to let the ideas percolate and mellow.

Sometimes, there won’t be time either to really develop the presentation contents or reflect on the contents, but ideally there will be plenty of time to let the presentation evolve.

Don’t underestimate the difficulty of creating a good presentation! Ideally, use different tools (index cards, post-its, big pieces of paper) to encourage your thinking to move beyond your initial expectations and linear thinking.

Less is more

This idea can be applied to both the presentation contents as well as the visuals, typically slides, for the presentation.

We often think the longer we talk, the more value we are providing. Unfocused rambling or a fire hose of data will undercut our key points. If your presentation can be made in twenty minutes, don’t fill an hour with talking. Sometime you’ll be lucky enough to have an hour available, and this is a great time to think creatively about activities and other interactive options for the time.

Our slides also fill with unnecessary clutter and dense information, confusing your key points and also distracting the audience as they try to read the slides while listening to you.

The slides at the bottom of this post are from the Lunch + Learn — they are not meant to make sense without my presentation, but do give an idea of slides that are hopefully supporting the presentation.

Be present

This applies both to the preparation for the presentation and when giving the presentation itself. Even if you are only going to speaking to the audience without interaction, by really being engaged with your presentation, the audience will also engage.

For many of the presentations we do for web design, we get to have lots of interaction with our audience, which allows us to change gears, shift focus, and otherwise improvise once the presentation begins. This is a great opportunity to make sure we are really connecting with our audience, but only works when we are really present with our audience

Resources

• Presentation Zen: Simply Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds, 2008.
• Garr Reynold’s website as well as his books since 2008 on presentation.
• Nancy Duarte’s website and books
• Prezi: a tool for building presentation visuals beyond slides
• Presentation examples:
  • Bobby McFerrin’s brain hack (and many other TED talks)
  •  Hidden Power of Smiling (also from TED)
  • Drive with whiteboard drawing
  • Pecha Kucha
  • Gel Conference

Synotac Lunch + Learn: Presentation Zen slides

While there are a variety of Facebook applications that accomplish this goal, RSS Grafitti is our favorite because it’s easy to configure and works with multiple accounts. Designed for Facebook Page administrators, the application actually allows you to post any RSS feed to any wall. If you’re managing multiple Facebook pages this would be particularly useful, but it’s also an easy way to automatically post your own blog content.

First, make sure you have a feed set up for your blog. We suggest you use Google Feedburner to manage your web feeds. Then, add RSS Grafitti to your personal profile and configure it for whichever Facebook page(s) you are administering. While the process takes only a few minutes and is intuitive, full instructions are available on the RSS Grafitti Wiki. The two important pieces of information are:

• The name of the feed
• The URL of the feed

After configuring the application, your blog posts will automatically be posted to your Facebook page with the blog source name, date, and RSS grafitti icon.

Understand what questions to ask before jumping on the social media bandwagon

When deciding how to use social media, first ask yourself, “Who am I trying to interact with? Are they using social networks? Would they want to hear from me?” Answering these questions will help you target your campaign and maximize activity on channels where your customers are active.

Learn about your target customer

Deciding whether to use social media is largely dependent on your target audience. How do you know which social media channels your target customers are using? Rather than guessing, try using a data driven analysis of your customers and prospects. The services FlipTop and RapLeaf allow you to get data from email lists; you can upload an email list and get information about which social media channels your customers use as well as information about their demographics.

Professional vs. personal email

When using a social intelligence platform like FlipTop or RapLeaf, be aware that your customers may have multiple email addresses. Individuals may use personal email addresses for some social accounts and professional email addresses for other accounts. Keep this in mind when drawing conclusions about your target customers’ usage of social media channels.

The “real person” behind the account

In B2B social media marketing, the person behind the account you’re engaging with may not be who you expect. For example, when it appears that you’re engaging with a business owner you may actually be engaging with an employee or a third party hired to manage social media.

For more information, check out the full slideshow:

If your request is urgent and you need immediate assistance, please call us now: 1-888-320-9255

Or, perhaps you have online resources they can access while they wait for you to contact them. For example:

Our website is full of information and resources. While you wait for us to respond to your email, feel free to …

• Explore our upcoming events
• Find inspiration on our Galleries
• Learn tips & tricks on our blog
• Read case studies

Provide additional opportunities for engagement Whenever a visitor fills out a contact form on your website, that visitor has already displayed a high level of commitment to your organization and is more likely than the average visitor to take more actions on your site. Suggest further ways for them to engage with your organization! Examples:

• Join our blog conversation on xyz
• “Like” us on Facebook
• Fill in our online survey

Curious what a contact success page could look like if you integrate these suggestions?  Here’s an example of a Contact Success page that includes pertinent follow-up information and additional calls to action :

THANK YOU FOR CONTACTING [BUSINESS NAME]

We have received your message and will respond within 48 hours.

Looking for even more information about [business industry]? Sign up for free today, and receive our eNewsletter: delivered to your inbox and featuring tips, testimonials, new developments and unique coupons for discounted services!

If your request is urgent, and you need immediate assistance, please call us now: 1-888-320-9554

“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.”

-Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

This week’s Lunch + Learn focused on “The Business Model Canvas,” a tool for strategic management and entrepreneurial development. Billed as a tool that “allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model,” (www.businessmodelgeneration.com) the Canvas enables envisioning and re-envisioning business models.

The Business Model Canvas includes categories for all components of a business model (you fill these in with sticky notes and a sharpie):

• Key Partners
• Key Activities
• Key Resources
• Value Propositions
• Customer Relationships
• Channels
• Customer Segments
• Cost Structure
• Revenue Streams

 
By mapping your current business model – or your business idea – onto the canvas, you can identify gaps, weaknesses, and opportunities in your model. The Canvas is also helpful for strategically identifying your business model pattern (open business model, multi-sided platform, etc.). Perhaps  you realize that you’re marketing through a narrow channel base and you could expand to include web sales and partner stores; or, perhaps you realize that you could shift towards a self-service customer service model through providing web-based support services. The Business Model Canvas can be used to re-evaluate your current business model or to begin modeling a new idea.

When we experimented with the business model canvas during our weekly Lunch + Learn, we found the exercise helpful in analyzing our clients’ businesses and generating new ideas. Check out the slides from our Lunch + Learn below and let us know what you think of the business model canvas!

As many of you know, Google chose Portland as its beta city for Google Offers, and Floyd’s Coffee Shop in Old Town Portland was chosen by Google as one of the first Google Offers participants. Floyd’s was chosen partly because of positive online customer reviews; on their blog, Google announced that “Our first Google Offer will be from beloved local java shop Floyd’s Coffee. Husband-and-wife team Jack Inglis and Cris Chapman opened Floyd’s seven years ago, offering up espresso, coffee, breakfast burritos and more. They now have two convenient locations—one cozy, brick-lined shop in Old Town and another Stumptown watering-hole in Buckman.” The Google Offer allowed consumers to purchase $10 worth of food and drink for a mere $3.

Floyd’s happens to be located just down the street from our Synotac office and is one of our favorite local coffee shops, so after seeing the mad rush of customers at Floyd’s on the first day of the deal we were curious how the Offer would pan out for Floyd’s.

Floyd’s co-owner Jack Inglis reported that the publicity generated by the Offer was worth the investment – of course, Floyd’s benefited from extra publicity due to participating in the beta Offer. Inglis wanted to draw customers from outside the neighborhood and found that the Offer did draw fresh faces. Inglis stated his awareness of other business’ criticism of daily deals and noted that a business’ success with a daily deal “depends on the industry you’re in”. When asked whether or not he would participate in Google Offers again, he said he would, but not until they’ve fully paid off this initial round.

Deciding whether to participate in a daily deal certainly does depend on your industry, business model, customer base, and how much potential you see for gaining repeat customers.  Businesses should weigh these factors carefully before participating in a daily deal.

But savvy business owners are quickly realizing that their interests and the interests of these social deals websites are often not the same, and that poor planning can turn an engagement with one of these sites into one of the biggest mistakes a small business can make.  Based on the experiences of a few of our clients, general marketing best practices, and a number of case studies online from business owners, we have compiled this list of how businesses can use Groupon without losing their shirt:

1. Know how much you are willing to spend to acquire a new customer.  In Direct Response theory, it is always emphasized that you should never expect to break even on the first sale; you will make your money on the lifetime value of your new customer.  It is very important to know what a typical customer is worth to you, what the hard costs of your product and labor are, and then to expect a significantly lower lifetime value for those who are driven to your business because of a coupon.  Businesses often end up discounting the cost of their product or service by 50%, and then they give away 50% of the money that is received to the online deal website.  Make sure that your profit margins can absorb the discounts you agree to.  Many of the success stories from online deals sites chose to charge more money (i.e., discount less) than the sales rep wanted, which kept out the coupon cutters and resulted in more serious, interested customers using the service.
2. Know how many customers is too many.  Most businesses only have capacity to handle a certain number of customers at a time, beyond which point you will be forced to turn customers away, potentially alienating new customers and loyal, repeat customers.  This is often a foreign concept, since most of us think that you can never have too much business, but too much business can be a very bad thing if not planned for.  Most of the online deals sites will allow you to cap both the date range to redeem the coupon and the number of coupons that can be “sold,” but you will often have to push the sales rep for these features.
3. Have a plan to retain your new customers.  Many of the users of sites like Groupon are so-called “web coupon cutters” who will never come back to a location once they have redeemed their coupon.  This is especially important if your business is intensely local (like a coffee shop) but the online deals site will be attracting visitors from areas that make it extremely inconvenient to come back.  Build loyalty programs that will be interesting to your new customers.

In this series of posts we’ll examine the daily deals industry, starting with the distinctions between Groupon, LivingSocial, and GoogleOffers:

• Groupon: The behemoth of daily deals sites, Groupon allows consumers to signup for coupon offers from local businesses. If a set number of Groupon users signup for a particular coupon, the customers are granted the coupon. Groupon charges a cut of the coupons sold, and the businesses get increased exposure and potential new customers. Of the daily deals sites, Groupon has the widest range of discount offers.
• LivingSocial: Living Social works similarly to Groupon, with consumers able to register in a specific city or market. Living Social has a greater number of household and personal care offers than other daily deal sites and has a dedicated section for travel getaways.
• GoogleOffers: Launched in 2011, GoogleOffers is newer than the other sites and is currently available in Portland, Oregon (but soon expanding). GoogleOffers doesn’t require a minimum number of users to signup for a coupon to activate the coupon. Google aims to ease user experience by combining GoogleOffers with mobile payment capabilities (via the “coming soon” Google Wallet). Another feature that sets GoogleOffers apart is that Google will sometimes pay businesses for unused coupons (coupons that are sold but not used).

The market is flooded with daily deals sites and businesses are becoming more savvy with understanding the benefits and risks of offering “deals” through these sites. Having a strong customer retention strategy and understanding the details of these services is critical for businesses considering using any daily deals site. Stay tuned for more details on how businesses can strategically use daily deals.

This week’s Lunch and Learn focused on best practices for using today’s top three social media platforms in the U.S.: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. According to Nielsen, 22% of all time spent online now is on social networking sites. Given this statistic, it should be no surprise that this topic drew a sizable Lunch and Learn audience. During the session we covered the mechanics of each platform and discussed strategies for streamling and managing your social media presence. Access the full slideshow presentation here.

Here are the top four takeaways from our social media Lunch and Learn:

1. Link your accounts: To streamline your social media process, you can link individual accounts (for example, you can link your Facebook account to automatically update your Twitter account). Even better, you can use Hootsuite to manage all your social media accounts through one portal. With Hootsuite, you can create posts for distribution to any or all of your social media accounts and you can schedule your posts for specific days and times. With Hootsuite, you could spend 10 minutes on Monday creating and scheduling all your social media updates for the week.

2. Monitor social media: If you want to maximize your efforts, take a few minutes each week to monitor social media. Looking for Twitter chatter and scanning Facebook updates can give you a sense of how people view your business. Try setting up a Google Alert for your company name or product – Google will send you regular emails with the latest relevant Google results for your chosen terms. Even better, try monitoring your industry, your business, or even your competitors using the social search engine Topsy. Topsy allows you to conduct “real-time search for the social web” and is a great way to closely monitor social media activity.

3. Integrate your social media activity into your existing marketing efforts: To maximize your social media efforts, integrate Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn into your existing marketing efforts. Capitalize on content you’re already creating – such as blog posts or email newsletters – by posting these to your social media accounts. Also, make sure to link your social media accounts to your email signature, website, blog, email newsletter, and more.

4. Create engaging content: Making sure to produce engaging content is key to social media success. Establish a consistent voice and post useful and engaging updates and resources. If you’re using LinkedIn try starting a Group or posing a question. On Facebook try adding applications like Slideshare or YouTube Video Box to add rich content. Most importantly, engage with your fans and contacts; respond to their comments, ask them questions, and start building your online community.