Archive for the 'Business' Category
Mobile Marketing, Web Development, Web Consultancy, Widget Marketing - It’s been a busy few months
We’ve been deep in client projects over the past few months, so here’s a quick rundown on some of the things we have been up to.
Mobile Marketing : Online solution for a retail customer to enable them to easily communicate with their customers via an opt-in text messages for products and services. Features included message personalisation, campaign maintenance and delivery statistics. We’re really pleased with this work.
Web Consultancy : Helped a major Irish Travel Industry organisation in developing theit online marketing strategy including more than a hat tip to a stragetic use for all things social media and web 2.0.
Project Management and System Specification : Project Management for a major overhaul of an online booking engine and website, along with the specification of widget based affiliate system.
Viral Marketing Tools : We are just finishing up a project with a financial institution that involves widget development (both javascript and flash) and embed capability on websites, blogs and social network sites such as facebook.
Joomla Development : We have also recently completed a major Joomla implementation, which included the development of new modules and components for easier client maintenance, data extraction and customer support.
Wordpress Development : In tandem with all of these, we have been kicking along with some of our core web development skills in developing Wordpress based sites, and designing bespoke plugin features where necessary.
We’re looking forward to a bit of a break over the next few weeks…
Managing a Businesses online reputation - common sense should prevail
We are becoming pretty familiar with bloggers every now and then ripping into businesses that are providing poor customer service and poor customer experience.
I’m talking here about someone that writes a less than complimentary blog post on a product or service; I am not talking about conversations and threads on an online forum, etc.
Most businesses will have little experience about how to engage properly with negative commentary from bloggers, who by definition will be pretty savvy communicators.
The jump from email, phone and forum dialogue through to discussion on the bloggers site - an away fixture if you will - is a lonely place to be slugging it out in defence of a product or service.
The thing that’s missing for me though in these encounters is the success rate or closure rate for the blogger vs. how it could have been achieved through “traditional” avenues?
Does the public dialogue and exposure help solve the problem?
Does the service provider often just dig their heels in and say “feck you” to the negative criticism of the blogger - thinking that it will go away.
The latter is the worst case scenario for the blogger - probably more than made up for by increased traffic and just a little more profile.
The worst case scenario for the service provider is in how their brand name will probably now be submerged in negativity in their first page of SERP’s.
From that perspective alone, they should be swallowing their pride, desisting from cease and desist and such foolishness, and attempt to make the customer happy - regardless of the feelings of indignation, anger and loathing that they feel.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Listened to a podcast featuring Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine on the IT
Conversations network last night while out walking.
His talk centred around his motivation and proposed proposed model for giving away his next book for free.
This was a pretty painless 30 minutes for a quick whip around of the notions of free that we are all familiar with, but have not maybe considered for our own businesses.
Yet everyone is familiar with the low cost printer where you pay premium for the replacement ink; or the cheap flight where you pay for onboard entertainment and refreshment; or most annoying of all, the cheap “razor system” with the expensive blades.
Most of the models that Anderson discusses not surprisingly, were based around publishing and books, with the ideas and statistics being particularly interesting. For example, making selected chapters available in PDF format, giving away audio versions, etc;
An example was given from Make Magazine where downloadable instructions were getting something like 5.7% click-thru rates on embedded advertisements. Impressive.
So what is the motivation for giving stuff away for free? Of course it has to be based on selling the customer something else. Free is the way to maximise the audience - you give it away in the expectation that you will be able to sell other products or services. Anderson’s own expectation is very simple - with free books, he believes he will sell more speaking events.
The link to the show notes and podcast are here - i really like his take on what makes books indispensable -
“excellent battery life, fanstasic sceen resolution, portable, looks good on your shelf and easy to flip through”
Online communication tools and Academia
Now that Jon Udell has moved to Microsoft, it appears that he is in a good position to arbitrate on behalf of ordinary computer users to the geek community. His weekly (or so) podcasts are one of the few places where you can hear the difficulties or potential difficulties of the majority being articulated and sounded out.
A recent podcast available on IT Conversations, was with Geoffrey Bilder of Crossref. Though the discussion was written up in the shownotes as focusing on the importance of link permanence and citation - all very noble things - it was actually much more interesting than those shownotes suggested.
In particular, “what’s new and cool” not fitting in with a sometimes traditional academic community is a reality check for any technology businesss building and designing online communication tools.
Mobile Marketing, Web Development, Web Consultancy, Widget Marketing - It’s been a busy few months
We’ve been deep in client projects over the past few months, so here’s a quick rundown on some of the things we have been up to.
Mobile Marketing : Online solution for a retail customer to enable them to easily communicate with their customers via an opt-in text messages for products and services. Features included message personalisation, campaign maintenance and delivery statistics. We’re really pleased with this work.
Web Consultancy : Helped a major Irish Travel Industry organisation in developing theit online marketing strategy including more than a hat tip to a stragetic use for all things social media and web 2.0.
Project Management and System Specification : Project Management for a major overhaul of an online booking engine and website, along with the specification of widget based affiliate system.
Viral Marketing Tools : We are just finishing up a project with a financial institution that involves widget development (both javascript and flash) and embed capability on websites, blogs and social network sites such as facebook.
Joomla Development : We have also recently completed a major Joomla implementation, which included the development of new modules and components for easier client maintenance, data extraction and customer support.
Wordpress Development : In tandem with all of these, we have been kicking along with some of our core web development skills in developing Wordpress based sites, and designing bespoke plugin features where necessary.
We’re looking forward to a bit of a break over the next few weeks…
Managing a Businesses online reputation - common sense should prevail
We are becoming pretty familiar with bloggers every now and then ripping into businesses that are providing poor customer service and poor customer experience.
I’m talking here about someone that writes a less than complimentary blog post on a product or service; I am not talking about conversations and threads on an online forum, etc.
Most businesses will have little experience about how to engage properly with negative commentary from bloggers, who by definition will be pretty savvy communicators.
The jump from email, phone and forum dialogue through to discussion on the bloggers site - an away fixture if you will - is a lonely place to be slugging it out in defence of a product or service.
The thing that’s missing for me though in these encounters is the success rate or closure rate for the blogger vs. how it could have been achieved through “traditional” avenues?
Does the public dialogue and exposure help solve the problem?
Does the service provider often just dig their heels in and say “feck you” to the negative criticism of the blogger - thinking that it will go away.
The latter is the worst case scenario for the blogger - probably more than made up for by increased traffic and just a little more profile.
The worst case scenario for the service provider is in how their brand name will probably now be submerged in negativity in their first page of SERP’s.
From that perspective alone, they should be swallowing their pride, desisting from cease and desist and such foolishness, and attempt to make the customer happy - regardless of the feelings of indignation, anger and loathing that they feel.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Listened to a podcast featuring Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine on the IT
Conversations network last night while out walking.
His talk centred around his motivation and proposed proposed model for giving away his next book for free.
This was a pretty painless 30 minutes for a quick whip around of the notions of free that we are all familiar with, but have not maybe considered for our own businesses.
Yet everyone is familiar with the low cost printer where you pay premium for the replacement ink; or the cheap flight where you pay for onboard entertainment and refreshment; or most annoying of all, the cheap “razor system” with the expensive blades.
Most of the models that Anderson discusses not surprisingly, were based around publishing and books, with the ideas and statistics being particularly interesting. For example, making selected chapters available in PDF format, giving away audio versions, etc;
An example was given from Make Magazine where downloadable instructions were getting something like 5.7% click-thru rates on embedded advertisements. Impressive.
So what is the motivation for giving stuff away for free? Of course it has to be based on selling the customer something else. Free is the way to maximise the audience - you give it away in the expectation that you will be able to sell other products or services. Anderson’s own expectation is very simple - with free books, he believes he will sell more speaking events.
The link to the show notes and podcast are here - i really like his take on what makes books indispensable -
“excellent battery life, fanstasic sceen resolution, portable, looks good on your shelf and easy to flip through”
Online communication tools and Academia
Now that Jon Udell has moved to Microsoft, it appears that he is in a good position to arbitrate on behalf of ordinary computer users to the geek community. His weekly (or so) podcasts are one of the few places where you can hear the difficulties or potential difficulties of the majority being articulated and sounded out.
A recent podcast available on IT Conversations, was with Geoffrey Bilder of Crossref. Though the discussion was written up in the shownotes as focusing on the importance of link permanence and citation - all very noble things - it was actually much more interesting than those shownotes suggested.
In particular, “what’s new and cool” not fitting in with a sometimes traditional academic community is a reality check for any technology businesss building and designing online communication tools.
