Wednesday, May 30, 2007
One Degree is one of those sites that I check regularly. It is Internet Marketing Insiders writing about Internet Marketing, and it’s an incredible resource.
Until recently the site was owned by Ken Schafer, VP Product Management and Marketing at Tucows. But the announcement yesterday was that Kate Trgovac has taken the reins. Way to go Kate.
Kate and I met at Vancouver’s first CaseCamp and she is a very smart cookie. Kate, aside from contributing to One Degree, also writes a blog at MyNameIsKate.ca.
We recently sat down to talk about Work Industries and the Personal Technologist.
Here are the 5 Questions and Answers.
We talked about:
- The impetus behind the “personal technologist” service
- How we work with clients
- The target demographic
- And how the personal technologist is different than tech support
Read the article on One Degree.
Thank you to Kate and One Degree. Please check out the great articles and resources on the One Degree site. If you’re doing any online marketing, you need to know about this site.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
I’m often in the position of being an advocate of online communities. I think that when they’re well conceived and executed they work incredibly well to connect people across roles and organizational constraints. But it can be a hard slog to prove it.
(Not that I really believe in proving things with numbers. I believe marketing is practice of faith, not reason. Yet I have to be able to discuss numbers with some familiarity, and report on progress and results.)
Then today, via the Will Pate experience, I discovered a great post from Bill Johnson on the ROI of Online Communities, with numbers to boot!
Bill and Joe Cothrel presented the following numbers at the Online Community Business Forum.
- Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users (AT&T, 2002).
- 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).
- Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006).
- In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options (ASP, 2002).
- Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options (Forrester, 2006).
- Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
- Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
- 56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more (Annenberg, 2007).
- Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail (Jupiter, 2006).
There’s also an accompanying ROI of Communities powerpoint presentation (PDF). So now there are some good numbers to talk about when we talk about how to quantify the ROI of online communities.
Now the nubmers aren’t perfect. In fact, to me they’re more valuable for their consistency with each other and with my experience of conceiving and executing online communities, than as standalone factoids. Basically, people involved in online communities are more engaged in every behaviour you want to foster on your website and for your organization.
What more can I say? Connect with your people and you’ll discover in practice what makes communities so special. But don’t expect a flood. Online communities work more like drip irrigation than a fire hose—small, discreet interactions that accumulate in effect and momentum over time.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Were you wondering what happened to the May Underwire Newsletter? Me too. Here it is.
Tech 101: Top Tech Tools for Business
Tech tools can be time savers and time trackers, unfortunately a tool has not been built to create more time in the day. No matter, there are some great tools available for freelancers, contractors and in-house staff.
I recently spoke at the Editors’ Association of Canada—BC Branch monthly meeting. Here are the 5 tools I recommended:
1. For organization: Basecamp. Basecamp is a project management tool.
2. For calendars: Google Calendar. Google Calendar has all the basic calendar functions you can imagine, but it also let’s you share
your calendar with others.
3. For money management: Bring in the cash with Blinksale. Blinksale is great for service-based businesses who need basic invoicing tools.
4. For large emails: YouSendIt.com. YouSendIt is good for file attachments that are too big to send by email.
5. For productivity: get Harvest. Harvest is how I track my hours. Sometimes you do not want to know, but when you do, Harvest is a good tool.
Read the full post for more information on Top Tech Tools, including the big top 100 list from Cogniview.com.
Word for the Day: RSS
I like to think of RSS as “Real Simple Syndication.” It is a way to subscribe to your favourite blogs and news sites, or any site that offers RSS subscription.
RSS is similiar to subscribing to an email alert or newsletter. But different. You need an RSS reader, which is sort of like your email inbox, but it is an inbox for your RSS feeds.
I suggest checking out the one-page primer on WhatIsRSS.com or watch the CommonCraft video from Lee and Sachi. They do a great job of visually explaining RSS.
Watch the video.
Read the full post on RSS.
Ask for Support
Is some piece of technology driving you mad? Are you a non-techie in need of support? Email me your questions for next month’s newsletter.
This month’s Ask for Support is an Excel tip for finding duplicate entries.
Find out how. Get the formula here.
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See Also:
Underwire Newsletter for April
Work Industries Blog
Monique’s Personal Blog
Monique’s Upcoming Events:
July 17:
SFU Summer Workshops: Book Marketing Online
July 27:
SFU Summer Workshops: Magazine Marketing Online
Not a subscriber? Sign-up here for the free montly newsletter.
Friday, May 25, 2007
What do you do if you suspect that you have duplicate entries in your Excel spreadsheet?
Just find them. But use a formula.
1. You need to have at least one column that holds a piece of standard data, like an email address, ID number, phone number. Something that is identical against which you can compare.
2. Sort the grid by the column with standard data. For this example, the data is in column A.
3. Create an empty column next to this standard data column. Make sure the column is formatted as General.
4. In cell B2 type this formula:
=IF(A1=A2,“Duplicate”, “Unique”)
The formula reads, “if cell A1 is equal to cell A2, then this is a duplicate record and put “duplicate” into the empty cell, if it is not a duplicate then put “unique” into the empty cell.
5. Copy and paste this formula in the whole column.
6. Then you want to change the data from formulas to values. Select the column with formulas. Go Edit > Copy. Then Edit > Paste Special.
In the Paste Special pop-up, select “Values”.
7. Now you can sort your file by the column showing Duplicate and Unique, and delete the Duplicates.
Fun stuff.
Several days ago I posted about the search for the top tech tools for small businesses and freelancers. I was preparing for a presentation on Top Tech Tools for the Editors’ Association of Canada—BC Branch monthly meeting.
Darren Barefoot pointed me to an amazing and thorough list of the top 100 tech tools.
Here is the big-ass list, as Darren called it.
My presentation was only an hour so I stuck to the top 5 tools that I use every day. They may not be the best tools for you, but they are the ones that work for me. The tools I recommended are:
1. For organization: Basecamp. Basecamp is a project management tool.
It nicely stores all project communications, files and contact information. I use it instead of email for messages related to a project.
2. For calendars: Google Calendar. Google Calendar has all the basic calendar functions you can imagine, but it also let’s you share your calendar with others. You can make parts of it public or private. You can sent event or meeting announcements to others. And you can import other people’ calendar into yours.
For example, my partner James and I need to be able to book client appointments and be able to see when each other is free. Google Calendars lets us manage our own calendars as well as a company calendar.
3. For money management: Bring in the cash with Blinksale. Blinksale is great for service-based businesses who need basic invoicing tools. With Blinksale all your invoices are in one place. You can see what invoices are paid, open and overdue. It integrates with Basecamp so you don’t have to retype all your client contact information. And it let’s you send out invoices and reminders in an easy, simple way.
4. For large emails: YouSendIt.com. YouSendIt is good for file attachments that are too big to send by email. It works especially well for files that are 1-2 GB, which you really should not send via email with most email clients. There is a free YouSendIt service that lets you upload your attachment to the YouSendIt server. YouSendIt then notifies your contact that a file is there waiting to be picked up. It is email, but not email.
5. For productivity: get Harvest. Harvest is how I track my hours. I can see multiple projects and multiple users and export reports on how we are spending our time.
Sometimes you don’t want to know, but when you do, Harvest is a good tool.
If you want to learn more, check out the individual sites or visit Congniview.com for the top 100 list.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
A client who we’ve been working with extensively lately is Think Salmon. What is Think Salmon?
Think Salmon is a way of life. It’s how we think, learn and act. It’s how we protect and conserve the rivers and places where salmon and humans live.
Think Salmon is also a place to learn about salmon, to connect with salmon in your community and to make changes in your life to help salmon and salmon habitat.
One of the main focuses of the site is to get people to share their salmon stories. Through those stories, each of us can see that salmon matter to us: culturally, economically, socially and deliciously.
So I invite you to visit Think Salmon and share their salmon story. Comment on a story. Ask a question of Professor Salmon. Drop in to a salmon event.
Don’t think you have a salmon story? I bet you do. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘salmon?’ Do you have a favourite story about catching salmon? Seeing salmon in a river? Eating salmon? How about a story about a friend and salmon? A salmon photo? Some salmon-inspired art?
Those are all salmon stories. Our landscape and our culture here in the Pacific northwest is made of those salmon stories. We need to be proud of it, to foster it and to protect it. In a way, we are all part-salmon. Without salmon we don’t have forest, birds or bears. We don’t have the things we rely on to live. We’re loosed and disconnected from our natural world.
So Think Salmon. And protect salmon. And save the lands and waters they depend on for their survival.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Here at Work Industries we use a lot of web-based tools to help run our business. I’m interested in what tools you love to use for your business. What tools do you recommend?
Post them in the comments and perhaps some of your favourite tools will make their way into my presentation on Wednesday at the Editors’ Association of Canada—BC Branch Meeting.
Wednesday, May 16, 7:30 pm
Welch Room, 4th Floor, YWCA Health & Wellness Centre
535 Hornby Street, Vancouver
Tried, Tested, and True: Top Tech Tools for Business
Web-based tools allow for simple, cost-effective ways to access information from any computer. In this one-hour presentation, you’ll learn about the top web-based tools used by one small-business owner, Monique Trottier, to:
* organize and share files with clients and project teams
* manage multiple clients’ contact information, project documentation, and correspondence
* track time, and subcontractors’ time, against each project
* create invoices and track payments
Although the discussion focuses on web-based tools, alternative desktop applications will be discussed, and audience members will be invited to share their top tools with the group.
You’ll leave with a better understanding of how to assess and use web-based tools in your business.
Please join us! Admission is free for EAC members. Non-member admission is $10 at the door ($5 for students with valid ID). Light refreshments will be served following the program.
editors.ca/branches/bc
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