Expected Outcomes

Archive for the ‘Business practices’ Category

I was reading a white paper from HubSpot this morning on how people are choosing who they do business with, what they are buying and how they choose to spend their money.  The article I was reading discussed one of my favorite topics: push versus pull marketing. Let’s look at a handful of the stats I read about in the first chapter of this white paper:

You already know that the Internet has changed how we find what we want, connect with our friends and seek advice when making a purchase.

• Today more than half of US residents and more than three-quarters of US adults are online.  More and more of those online people are online with their “smart phones”, becoming mobile as well as online via their computers.
• More than one-third of US consumers spend 3+ hours online every day with another third spending more than one hour.
• Nearly half of direct (snail) mail pieces are never opened.
• Marketers (the big guys in particular) are shifting their budgets away from “outbound” to encompass “inbound” marketing utilizing blogs and social media.

As Craig Davis, Chief Creative Officer for the 4th largest advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, said, ”We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”

Are you using interruption marketing or being what your perfect client is interested in?

I often wonder how people stay up-to-date on their social media tools.  Several times a month it seems like the Facebook look and feel gets tweaked.  I took a month long class on Facebook  during Q1 2011 and a lot of the information is already out of date.

This month I am taking a class that is easily 40 hours in length, not including my own study time in reviewing what I am learning, on social media tools.  I read at least 10 different newsletters that come to me daily and try to limit my research/learning time to no more than 4 hours daily.  After all, I do have a couple of businesses to manage and a dozen or so authors to return emails to daily.  When I read something new, or listen to a podcast that has something in it I have not heard before, I research it, the person saying it and then figure out how it integrates into my business and my consulting. How can a person who is running a business, writing a book or having a life stay up on all this?

Which tools do you use regularly? Please, share how you manage to stay up-to-date on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the other tools by commenting on this post.

Logo

Recently I was getting ready to order new business cards and realized my business card “look” was becoming, well, dated.

Staying fresh, up-to-date and savvy is important. Ordering hundreds or thousands of business cards, brochures or stationery because of price breaks on quantity may not be a good use of your money.  Being nimble, flexible and timely means being able to turn on a dime, whip up a new look or simply refresh your old one.  Tags lines need a second look while reviewing your business card look…

Branding is a big word in looks these days.  Your “Brand”  is on a Facebook page, your website, your blog, your brochures, your business cards, your personalized license plate. So how do you afford a “freshen” up look or a whole new design?  I have been told by one branding house that it starts at $20,000.  That might be chump change to Coca Cola or Coco Chanel, but to most small business people, that is not going to happen.

I re-found a website today.  I have not used this; however, I have talked to at least one person who has and he was satisfied.  It is called 99 designs. I have a lot of acquaintances and friends who are either brand/graphic designers or web site designers.  There are a handful I recommend on a regular basis.  But for a budget minded individual starting their own shoestring indie business or a struggling entrepreneur who has survived the economic downturn of the past few years and has a tighter budget than their shoestrings, this could be a solution.  I liked what I saw on the website.  I think it is worth considering.  So I had to bring it up as a budget solution.  Those designers that want $10k or $20k really don’t want the person who has so tight a budget that 99designs is a stretch so you aren’t harming anyone when you go that route.  When you are in a better financial position and need a good designer, give us a call here at expected outcomes and we’ll give you a referral to some top notch affordable website or brand designers.

Recently a website owner/blogger has been copying and pasting articles written by legitimate freelance travel authors into his/her own blog.  The freelance authors own their copyright and did not give this blogger permission to copy their article.  And to add insult to injury, the blogger seems to have run the articles through a software product that re-writes the article.

That kind of software is legitimate for re-writing your own materials, but not other people’s content.  And depending on the quality of the software, sometimes the end result looks pretty badly written, which was the case here.  It is a criminal act against copyright law to deliberately steal someone else’s content and re-purpose for your own blog.

It is a legitimate use of others’ content to take the first 100 words or the first paragraph of an article you want to reference and then link back to the original article with a “read more” link.  If you are uncomfortable with that concept, you can always check with the author.  This kind of content referencing is called a “pingback” and is actually a good link back for both the original author and your own blog.  This method of referencing an article will increase search engine rank status as well, depending on how many pingbacks an article receives.

There is a form most web server hosts require to investigate this kind of illegal activity.  expected outcomes has a copy of this form should you ever need it.  You can simply email us via the “contact us” tab on this website to request a copy of the form.

On behalf of the two authors who’s content was stolen,we requested the site be removed/taken down by the web hosting company.  Since this only just occurred, check back in a few days to see what the end result is.  we will comment to it here.

Have you ever had your content stolen and misused?  Comment here and tell us about it.

UPDATE – January 28, 2011:

After submitting the appropriate form on behalf of the content authors, including screen shots of the pirated content, the legal department of the hosting service wrote back thanking us for our due diligence and that the website had been taken down pending removal of our content.  Last night when I clicked on the bad content the site was dead with a message to contact the hosting site.  This morning the site is back up but the scraped content we complained about has been removed.  Most of the content on the website has been scraped from other legitimate websites.  Hopefully those website owners will find out they are being scraped and take action as well.  All is well that ends well.

We all would like to have friends do business with us.  They are the easiest (or are they really?) to garner as clients because they already know and trust us.  But the question begs to be asked:  How do you charge a friend?  Do you charge the going rate, a discounted rate, or do it for free? 

My first answer is “Never do it for free! ”  Invoice even your sister/brother/mother/father for your services rendered.  You may choose to give them a discount for the project, but let your invoice show your real rates and real time it took to complete the project.  Then show the discount and present them with a net invoice.  This is important because when they refer you (and let’s hope they liked your product or service enough to refer your), they need to be able to say what their experience was worth.

An old adage is to never do business with family.  There are instances where I might have to agree with that, but let’s face it, getting started in business is not always magic.  Sometimes you need that first sale and it has to come from a family member.  Just remember to charge them.  You both deserve it!