Monthly Archives: August 2009

Mitch Joel & Six Pixels of Separation

Everyone is connected, connect your business to everyone. Why all the hoopla about being connected? That’s the question Mitch Joel answers in his new book, Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch Joel has been called the “Rock Star of Digital Marketing.” In this episode of Power to the Small Business Mitch discusses his new book and why any, and almost every, business should be engaged in the online world of digital marketing.

Guest: Mitch Joel, Author of Six Pixels of Separation
Length: 28 minutes

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Mitch Joel- Six Pixels of Separation Show Notes

Selected quotes from the show:

“It’s not a question of why we would want to be connected, we all are connected.”

“That’s fundamentally what someone who’s buying from anybody wants, they want a real connection with someone.”

“It is never too late, because it’s not a question of being the first in or the last in, it’s a question of people providing, and giving tremendous value.”

“People say blogging is dead, fine, here’s what I think: The ability for you to have a thought and be able to publish that thought instantly to the world in any platform you desire, in text, images, audio, video, and it comes up immediately, is brand spanking new.”

“Everything is with, not instead of.”

“Which businesses are willing to stand up and say: business has fundamentally changed.”

Show Links:

Mitch Joel’s Book: Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone.
Mitch’s blog and podcast: Six Pixels of Separation
Mitch Joel on Twitter

Bonus Link: Social Media: What to do for your business.

 

SEO: The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

Search engines can be the number one source of traffic to your website. But it’s not that simple. Your website content has to be indexed properly by the search engines, then ranked high enough in the results so people will see your site. Thus the need for search engine optimization, or SEO.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, you get the meat and potatoes of search engine optimization. Practical tips on how to tune up your website so that you will get more website traffic through better rankings in organic search engine results.

Guests: Sri Nagubandi, SEO Director at Rosetta, an interactive agency in New York.
Length: 25 minutes

SEO Primer

Before listening to this episode, there are some basic terms you need to know:

Anchor Text – The actual text you see on a page that contains a link to another site. It is often underlined or highlighted in another color (most often, but not always, blue).
Keywords – The the words people might search to find your business on a search engine.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization, optimizing your website to increase your rankings in search engine results.
Titles – The titles you see in the top title bar of a web browser.
URL – A website address. For example: http://www.yoursite.com/contact-page
WordPress – A free, open-source, website content management system. (Tutorial: Build a Website with WordPress)

Email subscribers and feed readers – If you don’t see the player, click here to listen toPower to the Small Business
You can also download the mp3 file here: Download Power to the Small Business #35(for personal use only)

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Press the play button on the player above and get started. Comments, questions? Please share it in the comment section below.

Basic Search Engine Optimization Show Notes

Sri Nagubandi

Selected quotes from the show:

“SEO is successful when you do a little thing, or some activity on a weekly or monthly basis.”

“If you are doing an initial website with WordPress, if you are spending more than $500 t0 $1000, you’re getting ripped off.”

“If you are serious about your website as a vehicle for your business, you should be, at a minimum, writing something (content) once per week.”

The Fundamentals of SEO:

  1. Solid technical foundation for your website
    – Make it easy for spiders to crawl, index, and understand your content and intent of your site
    – A clean source code for your website that is easy to read.
    – Stick to a free platform like WordPress or Drupal that have built-in SEO functions.
  2. Good on-site optimization
    – Friendly URL’s
    – Friendly titles
    – Content written for both people and spiders
  3. Ongoing effort to get good-quality links to your site
    – Links include keywords that will be searched to find your business

Most important on-site elements for SEO

  1. Keywords in the page title and the URL
  2. Well-written content – Write content that incorporates keywords within the content, but write in a way that is understandable and flows well for the reader.
  3. Your pictures and video elements of your site should have proper tags and file names. [Alt tags]

Website analytics is a key source of information for content writing. Use analytics on your website to determine what people are typing in to search engines to come your website.

Getting started with SEO for your website:

  1. Plan out your calendar. Don’t be discouraged when you first start. Start out by tackling little things first and do SEO one step at a time.
  2. Then tackle the on-site SEO: URL’s, pages, content copy.
  3. Ask for links to your site, using the right anchor text.

Local Search

  • Have your address and phone number on your home page if you are a local business.
  • Claim your listing on the major search engines.
  • Your content on the site must contain local clues: trade area, local address, local phone number.

The most important search engines are: (1) Google (2) Yahoo/Bing (3) Ask

Show Links:

Sri Nagubandi’s site: www.SriNagubandi.com
Sri Nagubandi on Twitter
Sri’s company: Rosetta
Check out your status on local search engines: www.GetListed.org
Website Content Management: www.WordPress.org
Claim your local search engine listings on GoogleYahooBing.

 

 

 

 

The Experience Economy: 10 Years Later

10 Years ago Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore published the classic book: The Experience Economy, in which they said a business is what it charges for. If your business is competing solely on price, then you’re a commodity. Pine and Gilmore said that instead, businesses should be a stage; creating memorable events, thereby allowing them to charge a premium.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Experience Economy with a look back and a look forward at the relationship between business and the customer’s experience. Are businesses engaging customers in memorable experiences? How can they earn a premium and create customer loyalty?

Guests: Joe Pine, Jim Gilmore authors of The Experience Economy: Work is Theater & Every business a Stage
Length: 31 minutes

Email subscribers and feed readers – Click here to listen if you don’t see the player
You can also download the mp3 file here: Download Power to the Small Business #34 (for personal use only)

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Press the play button on the player above and get started. Comments, questions? Please share it in the comment section below.

The Experience Economy Show Notes

Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore

Selected quotes from the show:

“You are what you charge for. If you charge for undifferentiated stuff, you’re in the commodity business. If companies, because of this recession, treat their offerings as just stuff, then they’re commoditizing themselves.”

“Advertising today is a phoniness generating machine.”

“Place-making should rise to rival marketing as the dominant discipline of demand creation in businesses.”

What’s the state of the customer experience in the economy? There has not been enough of charging explicitly for the experience. …To a great extent it accounts for the economic difficulties that the United States and other countries find themselves today.

Determine what business are you in:

  1. If you charge for tangible things, you are in the goods business.
  2. If you charge for the activities your employees perform, you are in the service business.
  3. If, and only if, you charge for the time your customers spend with you, are you in the experience business.

“Increasingly, people decide what to buy based on how authentic they perceive it to be, and that authenticity is self-defined.”

The Key Standards of Authenticity:

  • Being true to self – Does this offer match the company that’s offering it.
  • Being what you say to others – What you say is actually what the customer encounters.

The most difficult step to participating in the experience economy is your theme. The theme is your organizing principle around which your experience is created.

Show Links:

Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore – Strategic Horizons
The Books: The Experience EconomyAuthenticity

joie de vivre Hotels
Think About Event and Manifesto

The Customer Experience Map – Download and instructions